Hyderabad Part II: Only I can't seem to get to the bit where I'm IN Hyderabad

I’ll give this another shot then.

I packed very little, because I take great pride in travelling light, and then borrow or buy most things when I get to my destination. But I didn’t forget my trusty maroon shawl because I have a great horror of feeling cold, feeling hungry, and needing to visit restrooms on train trips. The shawl wouldn’t be too useful for the latter two (unless in desperate circumstances) but the very knowledge that my big red shawl glowed quietly to itself in my tiny overnight bag made me feel positively toasty.

Of course I had to take out a lot of other things to make space for it: like the lower halves of all my outfits and toothpaste, but it was a minor sacrifice. And I had no use for my shawl because they give you blankets on trains and once I reached Hyd the friends I was visiting rolled over laughing at the sight of it; because well, it was Hyderabad in July.

Anyhow, I get ahead of myself. I asked around at work about how long it might take to get to the railway station from work (distances are stupid in this city) and I got advice ranging from 3 hours to an hour. So me being me, I left 3 hours in advance, and again, as is usual with me, I reached my platform two whole hours before scheduled departure.

I perched myself on a bench under the relatively merciful Bangalore sun and swung my legs as I read my book about teenage vampires. Profound literature is a MUST on long train journeys. The platform was entirely innocent of fellow passengers, so I kept the dogs and several unsavoury characters company until some people started trickling in.

This last paragraph will give you the impression that I serenely passed the time reading my vampire book; but that isn’t entirely true. Every 12 minutes or so: I would root around in my bag for my ticket; inspect it as if for the first time in case I had got something wrong, like the day, or the coach, or the train; and then…affecting a casual attitude, I would carelessly hoist my bags and water bottle over my shoulder and amble over to the train that was still locked up tight. I would then proceed to scan the list of passengers and locate my name; and ensure it hadn’t, by some dark magic, vanished off the page since the last time I checked (viz. 12 minutes ago). Satisfied that it was still there; and telling myself that it was too late in my life for another Ushasi Sen Basu to crop up in the same compartment; I would try the door handle once more and saunter back, relieved for the time being.

This I did for two hours. But despite all this activity I unfortunately managed to finish most of my vampire book; which left me with only a few pages when I finally boarded the train.

(To be Continued...promise to be in Hyderabad by the next post)

Intended to be Hyderabad Diary 1: However post is afflicted by Damn Digressions.

Though I'm a gem of a person otherwise... (I’m not blowing my own trumpet. Long ago when my age could be counted in single figures a schoolmate of mine had called me a diamond. I repeat the conversation to you verbatim -- you be the judge of how impartial this comment was.

Me: Your sister is so sweet! (ruffling a little runt’s hair on the Ashok Hall Junior School bus.)
Girl: Don’t touch my sister!
Me: Why? Is your sister a diamond?
Girl: YOU are a diamond!!! (accompanied by much frowning and shaking of fists)) ...

...As I was saying, though a thoroughly priceless sort on the whole, one major flaw that people nag me about is my staying-in-touch skill, or lack thereof. So while other people manage their time by calling friends and relatives on the way to or back from work, or while eating lunch (as -- I must add -- the person they’re having lunch with gets more and more furious), in the loo (I've never been great at multi-tasking), etc – I never seem to find the right time to call people up. It happens therefore, that some friends tire of being the ones to make the effort and just stop calling.

It was with considerable alarm that the realization dawned on me: I had started getting news from my husband about all the friends I’d left behind in Hyderabad 4 and a half years ago. So when my Dad called me to say he’d be in Hyderabad on business and would like to meet me, I seized the opportunity to kill several birds (birds - aka friends and relatives; and kill them with kindness and company) with one stone (i.e trip---you must try to keep up with the metaphors, let me know if I’m going too fast for you.) and resolved to travel to Hyderabad for the weekend.

The husband begged off citing work after stringing me along till the last day or two, so I went alone. I'm quite used to travelling alone by now, because it’s very hard to coordinate spur-of-the-moment trips with a workaholic spouse.

Besides, we don’t believe in sitting in on private conversations of friends we don’t share, smiling inanely at private jokes that have to be explained, and essentially being a pain in the ass to the friend who isn’t comfortable discussing private things in front of a person just because he/she is married to a close friend.

That wasn’t the case with these friends (and of course my Dad) in Hyderabad, but I was just explaining why we travel around a lot by ourselves.

OK, to get back to what I was saying before I was rudely interrupted by a damn digression. (‘Damn Digression’ is a good name for a rock band.) …

Actually, on second thoughts I can see I’m going nowhere with this travelogue – I’ll give it a shot again tomorrow.

Since I’m meandering all over the place in this post (senile dementia) ; I’ll mention two more things before I go.

1) Thank you all for taking the trouble to add yourselves as my followers. It’s a very sweet gesture. (And unexpected in one or two cases.)

2) I watched ‘The Notebook’ yesterday and have decided Ryan Gosling is quite definitely hot. Weird that I’ve seen him before and never felt it. I have decided I will watch his other movies closely and come to an educated decision.

A World Without Labels

Are you one of those people who can’t REST until you label other people? So much so, that you will take some half-assed impression you haven’t even bothered to verify with a second look, or by comparing notes with another acquaintance of the labelee, and just slap on a tag so you can feel better?

And of course labels are made for sharing, you’re too unselfish to keep them to yourself, so once you’ve come up with one you make sure everyone gets a persuasive speech in its favour. Those who resist of course get labels of their own, so it’s all good.

Once everybody is neatly labeled off( like what my mother in law did with all the spice bottles in my kitchen cabinet --“Jeera -cumin”-- with pieces of paper and a ballpoint pen); you can feel that you’ve introduced some order in the madness and uncertainty that is human existence.

Now-- you think, as you stretch your arms luxuriously over your head and congratulate yourself on a job well done – now I’ll know exactly what to expect from so and so person. There will be NO surprises and I can in fact predict and pre-empt everything he or she does.

Every action that confirms the label will be announced “I always TOOOOLD you she was clumsy, now she goes and falls off a five-storey building. No of COURSE it wasn’t depression, silly, it’s CLUMSINESS like I always said. We all know she was CHEERFUL but CLUMSY.” Every action that contradicts your summing up of a person will be instantly forgotten, because it’s unimportant.

I find, that people are full of surprises (both pleasant and unpleasant, I hasten to add.). Especially as they change (for the better or the worse) with years and experience . The same label can never cover the same person in different situations at different times. Those I would condemn as resoundingly stupid from their outlook and beliefs might turn out to be brilliant at their jobs. Those I think as gentle and wonderful will reveal an unaccountably vicious streak. People you think will pounce on you and kick you when you’re down sometimes turn out to be more understanding and supportive than the others you were counting on.

At the most you can, if you MUST, label a person like so: “she’s stupid, but only about things that matter to me. I daresay she thinks I’m stupid too because I don’t know what Vishnu’s fifth son was called.”

Somehow, that judgement lacks a certan something. It lacks the satisfying slap of a label stingingly and irrevocably delivered. And it leaves one confused. Shades of grey wherever one looks.

On second thoughts, bring on the labels. Atleast I’ll know how I’m expected to behave (clumsy but cheerful) and be able to deliver a stinging judgement on someone else when I’m irked.
If the option is chaos and murder; I choose labels.

Here's Looking At You...People.

Though I have occasional bouts of acute misanthropy; what redeems people in my eyes is that everyone past a certain age is a story.
Some of these living, breathing stories don’t know that’s what they are. Of those who do, 90% don’t know how to tell theirs (urk, don’t even get me started on how resoundingly boring people can be when they tell their life stories… “ Then I was born at 7 am, and I opened my eyes at 7:02 am…” (two hours and several wishes to die a speedy death by the auditor later)…”and then I said “…tubelight. Call the electrician.” …) but bottomline is every life is enough of a story to have a book or a movie made on it.

Of course, the movies are of all kinds -- sepia tinted, pre-independence period costume movies, arty depressing movies where the protagonist just sits in a dark room and cries, action movies, comedy movies, teen ‘coming of age’ dramas, Oscar winning movies, masala movies where the hero and heroine dance around in the rain on a weekday afternoon in Venice, or ‘slice-of-life’ quirky movies about very normal people (read: ugly) doing very, very mundane things. But they’re all still stories.

I look at a lot of people around me and wonder, “I wonder why she only wears red and black. What’s the story behind that?” (I don’t work in a colony of red ants: that was an example.)

I had a physics teacher at my school, who was as vindictive as they came. But on every weekday morning after our school bus picked her up; she would take her usual place right up against the front glass of the bus next to the driver, settle in, and then take out what appeared to be the same tattered letter everyday and read it with lingering and evident pleasure all the way to school. It made me wonder about her, and frankly I itched to know what was in that letter.

I look at extremely domesticated, traditional housewives, busy with their daily work of looking after their husband and kids; and often wonder how they were when the world with all its glorious choices held its doors open for them. Did they have different dreams? What was their story? Had they a crush on the north eastern student on the mini bus to school?* How different would their lives have been if they acted on that impulse?** Had these women thought they would make a good doctor or an actress before they were told to marry someone their parents chose for them?

The paradox of my constant wondering about people’s lives of course, is that I have a horror of acquaintances*** who volunteer a blow-by-blow as I mentioned earlier. I also shy away from asking people about their lives, disgusted as I am by some of the regrettable questions I myself have had to dodge quite often from total strangers.

Sometimes it happens that people vouchsafe interesting confidences about their life to me without any prompting, maybe BECAUSE I’m not always sniffing around for information. Sometimes such exchanges are so profound or startling, indeed, that it renews my faith in how absolutely fascinating human nature is. I live for such conversations -- but they are rare, and more importantly, cannot be forced.

So I am destined to remain eternally wondering about most people; which, if you really look at it, might be best for all concerned.


*Wait…that was me…
**NOT me. He had an acne problem, to be honest.
***note to my friends to pay especial attention to the word ‘acquaintances’. I EXPECT all the gruesome details from you guys.

Lotus Bum.

I occasionally get -- though they’ve been getting fewer and farther between, with the years -- out of body experiences. I won’t call them experiences, because a split second can’t really be an experience. That reminds me of an episode of Frasier. A woman calls into his radio show complaining about sex with her much older husband, and says,“I’ve been inoculated slower!”. (Ha ha.)

That was a total digression, this post isn’t about that, however much my readers cry out for it.

So going back to what I was saying, I very once in a while get a feeling like I’ve just popped out of my body for a wee second, and everything is as clear as day. It’s almost like it’s your body which confuses you. For that one moment you get to slip your skin; and as you hover a few feet away everything makes sense, everything is in its proper perspective, there is no pain, no annoyances; the things around you just ARE, nothing more. And then as though your body realizes it’s mistake, it tucks you back in with a quick imperceptible action, like a lady with an errant bra strap, and it’s all normal again.

There are other times, when I’m not thinking about anything In particular, that I get a different version of it. You know the trance-like state one goes into when you’re a passenger on a car or bus (I wouldn’t recommend it if you’re driving the thing); where you’re just vacantly staring into space until you get to point B. My eye will happen to alight on one of the hundreds of people that I pass on every trip, and I get a quick flash in my mind’s eye of a window or some such. I like to think it’s insight into that person’s life, and feel a little bit like Bruce Willis in ‘Unbreakable’, on the rare occasions it has happened.

So far I haven’t put it to the test, viz, follow these unsuspecting people home and check if the grills on their window match the one in my vision. I’d rather not, because this makes me feel like I have a superpower and I don’t want proof that it’s an eye infection or mental disease. Though totally useless and unreliable; a superpower is still not something you sneeze at.

Do any of you have a superpower? Let me know if you do and we can form a League Of Totally Useless Superpowers for the Betterment (or not) of Undeserving Mankind. (LOTUS BUM).

What's the deal with famous people?

I don’t know what it is about famous people that fascinate us so. Whenever I get some spare time on the computer I hungrily devour everything there is to know about famous people.

They’re not always predictable ones -- I just googled Rani Lakshmi Bai and then Ben Cross in succession, one leading to another through the whole 1857 rebellion-The Far Pavilions- Ashton Pelham Martin (my first love)-Ben Cross progression.

Yesterday I looked up Igor Stravinsky and George Harrison, and that led to Don Henley…I go where my thoughts take me. Long live Google and Wikipedia, I say.
I anxiously read through facts about their childhoods. Facts which, if a boring acquaintance were to share about his or her own life, I would condemn as the most boring thing I’d heard all day, and pretend to fall asleep immediately after. There’s just something else about famous people; darned if I know what it is.

And look at this whole Shiney Ahuja thing. (‘Shiney’… did his parents think he’ll turn out normal with a name like that? He must’ve been beaten up routinely in school.). Shiney and his wife ‘Anupam’. A marriage made in heaven ... the groom is called ‘Shiney’ and the woman has a dude’s name. (what’s up with that?)

What you all know and are groaning that you have to read about here as well is this: He has raped his possibly underage maid. No he hasn’t touched her, this is preposterous. OK I might have had a little consensual sex with her… Of course he hasn’t, my husband is a good husband and a great father… Ok I might have had more than a little sex with her… No the medical reports make it clear it’s rape, does he think he can get away with this because he’s a famous actor, etc etc.

Kudos to the victim for stepping forward and I hope he is castrated and rots in jail.

But wait! The media won’t leave it at that…over and over and over goes the looped tape of Mister Shiney in a tight t-shirt being bundled into a police van. We all watch agog at the same footage over and over and ‘tsk tsk’ disapprovingly. All the while there are women out there being raped in our country every minute. Raped and then raped again. But hey the media’s not interested, neither are we, because is your rapist’s name ‘Shiney’, madam? Not even Goldy? Then get over it. Such things happen.

I am not making the pompous point that the News should just be a long list of all the nameless victims of rape across the country to the exclusion of all else, because that’s not possible and people would stop watching the news. What I’m trying to say is, we shouldn’t fool ourselves into believing we would’ve given this young girl a passing thought if a famous actor hadn’t been involved. In fact, even now, we’re interested in what his wife is saying more than what the victim’s name is.

It’s just bizarre about celebrities. However stupid or boring or ugly they are as people, they’re as irresistible to us as a Shiney (ha ha) trinket to a magpie.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll have to google why Jeffrey Archer went to jail.

Obviously!!!

Shall I tell you what ELSE annoys me? The word ‘obvious’. It looks innocuous in itself, but hides a wealth of smug, know-all, if-I- get-more-full-of-myself-I’ll-burst patronization I am yet to encounter in any other word.

Why are you angry with me?
I think it should be obvious.

(If I’m asking you it’s not obvious. And there’s no need to torture me further, because really I care enough to ask you and you should be happy about that.)

What does the word ‘equity’ mean?
I can’t believe you asked such an obvious question.

(I’m sorry, were you born with that knowledge or did someone tell you, you pompous git??? Now quit wasting my time being snotty, and just tell me.)

Is the earth flat and does the sun go ‘round it?
Zounds! Thy asketh the most obvious queries!

(I rest my case.)