Reunions make me queasy. I am not one of those people who had a Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na campus life, I haven’t gifted anyone a kitten (though I still believe that gifting someone an animal is a very contentious issue) and I have never danced with Pappu and Co. at a friend’s birthday party.
I would say that 40% of my life on campus was miserable. For most of my professional degree years, chasing first, a Bachelors’ and then a Masters’ in Pharmacy, I was miserable, and wanting to be someplace else.
Why did I waste a seat? I am still asked.
Forget the seat, I almost wasted my life. What about that?
It has taken years, almost decades to wipe out those memories and make new ones. Why then, would I want to go for a college reunion?
Well, for one, the person who asked me is someone I like and found redeeming in the whole experience, although, even then, he was largely a nerd, and chased the clichéd going-to America-doing- a PhD-finding-a-suitable girl-and getting married-and-living-happily-ever-after-dream. But he had the balls to call a spade a spade, and make no bones about his dream. There were a couple of others too who alleviated my state of misery, but about the large majority, the less said, the better.
There are people in your life who turn you into who you are simply because you don’t want to be like them. Running into such people and their sterile auras is reminding yourself about the ‘you’ that was.
Most were just roll numbers—I know them more for their positions at their lab work stations than their personalities or how they made me feel. And the funny thing is, with my tam-bram memory, I remember each and every one of them. I thought I’ll take the husband along so at least we have each other, but he firmly stated that he had no intentions of meeting my ‘molecule’ friends.
The last time I went to such a reunion, which was eight years ago, I came out feeling like an oddball. I had completely digressed from the field, had nothing in common with any of them, was still single and dating, a concept none of them really understood.
This time, we will be more or less on par as far as marriage, spouse and baby goes, but I still feel like an oddball.
Okay, so I am not giving back to the world of drugs and molecules. I will never find that vaccine for cancer or synthesise that radically cheap drug for AIDS. But I will also not be the one who is responsible for repackaging a vanilla pill and selling it in the market for four times the cost. Or making you realise that ZPTO (or whatever it is in shampoos) is a big thing. I write, therefore I am.
Family reunions are another thing. You decide you must do them, because “after all, it’s family”. So you make an effort to get to the back of beyond to attend your cousin’s cousin’s wedding. You decide you will try and be nice to people who were not very nice to you, or your parents. But when you come face-to-face, it’s the same thing. They still look like roll-numbers.
Happy new year and all that!
Showing posts with label Nostalgia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nostalgia. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Front row blues
I always wanted to be a backbencher.
It is the only thing I ever really wanted when I was in school. Sadly, I never made it.
Okay, here are the gory details—I have a rather short mother and a rather tall father. I inherited the wrong genes—so I ended up with the wrong nose and the wrong height, and spent most of my school years sitting in the first row.
Yes, I was in one of those schools where you 'sit according to your height.' And life always seemed to happen behind my back. All those ample bosomed, long-legged girls in my class seemed to inhabit an ecosystem that thrived on sleaze, sleath, voyeurism, boy-talk, pranks, defiance and all things exciting and wonderful.
I so wanted to belong there, to be part of their plots and schemes, to be the bad girl, to be the one that had the audacity to tell the teacher that she hadn't done her homework.
In contrast, I was the one who 'paid attention in class' and knew all the answers and always turned in my homework on time, my notebooks remained as meticulous as ever, my uniform was always ironed, and my compass box always had everything in it.
So all my life's ambitions paled into the background, while I, completely by default made it to the nerd rank—something that took me years and some serious messed-up-ness to wash off.
Every year in June, when we entered a new class and places were allotted, I would breathe deeply and hope to stretch a few inches, so that I could at least get promoted to the second row. But that never happened. Because at age 11, I realized that I had stopped growing vertically. So there I was—relegated to front bencher status year after year.
Even in the annual class photograph, when I thought I could creep into the back and blend, the teacher would pull me out, and say something derogatory like 'the small ones can sit in front, please!"
I desperately wanted out of the first bench stigma, and as long as I was in school, I didn’t see a way out. So it was no surprise why college felt very democratic and liberating, chiefly because one could sit where one wanted, and no prizes for guessing which was my favourite spot.
Suddenly, the world began to look like a different place, and I felt I had shed my front-bencher baggage.
I felt further rehabilitated when once, I walked out on an exam paper, because I had no clue on the questions asked. The proverbial bad boy hanging outside said, "I like that. You are a cool chick." I hated admitting to him that it was the first time I ever did anything cool.
But it is kind of different now. I am still all of 5" 1, but I can fill a room. And I don't have to be a bad girl to do that. I finally know that small is beautiful. I am at peace with my size. Or the lack of it.
It is the only thing I ever really wanted when I was in school. Sadly, I never made it.
Okay, here are the gory details—I have a rather short mother and a rather tall father. I inherited the wrong genes—so I ended up with the wrong nose and the wrong height, and spent most of my school years sitting in the first row.
Yes, I was in one of those schools where you 'sit according to your height.' And life always seemed to happen behind my back. All those ample bosomed, long-legged girls in my class seemed to inhabit an ecosystem that thrived on sleaze, sleath, voyeurism, boy-talk, pranks, defiance and all things exciting and wonderful.
I so wanted to belong there, to be part of their plots and schemes, to be the bad girl, to be the one that had the audacity to tell the teacher that she hadn't done her homework.
In contrast, I was the one who 'paid attention in class' and knew all the answers and always turned in my homework on time, my notebooks remained as meticulous as ever, my uniform was always ironed, and my compass box always had everything in it.
So all my life's ambitions paled into the background, while I, completely by default made it to the nerd rank—something that took me years and some serious messed-up-ness to wash off.
Every year in June, when we entered a new class and places were allotted, I would breathe deeply and hope to stretch a few inches, so that I could at least get promoted to the second row. But that never happened. Because at age 11, I realized that I had stopped growing vertically. So there I was—relegated to front bencher status year after year.
Even in the annual class photograph, when I thought I could creep into the back and blend, the teacher would pull me out, and say something derogatory like 'the small ones can sit in front, please!"
I desperately wanted out of the first bench stigma, and as long as I was in school, I didn’t see a way out. So it was no surprise why college felt very democratic and liberating, chiefly because one could sit where one wanted, and no prizes for guessing which was my favourite spot.
Suddenly, the world began to look like a different place, and I felt I had shed my front-bencher baggage.
I felt further rehabilitated when once, I walked out on an exam paper, because I had no clue on the questions asked. The proverbial bad boy hanging outside said, "I like that. You are a cool chick." I hated admitting to him that it was the first time I ever did anything cool.
But it is kind of different now. I am still all of 5" 1, but I can fill a room. And I don't have to be a bad girl to do that. I finally know that small is beautiful. I am at peace with my size. Or the lack of it.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
One of the boys
Scene 1
I am eight years old, and get punished in class by being made to sit in the boys’ row. The teacher doesn’t know that I love it. I poke a chubby-cheeked boy next to me to show him my pencil is sharper than his. He gets a clot in his eye and has to be taken to the hospital and my mother thinks I have had enough of ‘being with the boys’. She soon relegates me to an all girls' school, and endless death by estrogen. I never forgive her for that.
Scene 2
I am on my fourth cup of tea at the university campus, hanging out with the boys (again) trying to get that terribly important degree I didn't much care for, when a tall gaunt frame walks into my frame of reference. He looks like a cadaverous poet—gaunt, stubble, thick glasses. "Remember me?" he says. It takes me less than an instant to squeal, "Shit! Nikhil….You are the guy that got poked in the eye.” He tells me he recognized me for being the only girl in an all boys adda. We spend the next four hours discussing the past twelve years, and a crush is born. He writes me notes, poems, songs; he reads me notes, poems, songs…He brings out the girl in me. I stop hanging out with the boys.
Scene 3
Third job. Highlight of my day is lunch from Bhavnaben, a local caterer who doles out piping hot, gujju food day after day, which pretty much gets me ready for the dumbest brief from the client servicing team in the agency. Only that I share my dabba with a boy, and we are constantly in a race for who makes it first. Because there's no loyalty to the co-eater, only to the food. And since I eat like a man, it makes it all the more challenging to Amit, who comes huffing and panting from wherever he is at the dot of one p.m, only to find that I am already on my third phulka. It annoys him endless. When I quit, he is thrilled. Now he can share the dabba with a real woman, he says.
Scene 4
Suitable boy says he loves being with me because I am like one of the boys…..What? This is not going well, I think. He explains that it is because I am a straight talker and I don't speak in riddles like women do, and don't talk when not required; that makes him less stressed around me. This gets me curiouser and curiouser. Oh! We are getting into buddy zone, I think. Who are these women, I wonder. I want to be the mysterious one, I resolve.
Scene 5
I still haven't acquired that aura of mystery. But I am definitely getting closer to being a woman. Even though I love to drive, do my taxes, and I don't dig blow-drying, or being fetched and dropped. But then, neither do I dig pool, play station or soccer— things that the object of my affection would love me to.
Scene 6
Before I move into my new apartment, my architect-interior designer landlord looks at me approvingly and says I look the type who will keep a good house. And the type who will not have wild parties. I am stumped by his stereotyping.
Scene 7
I am in a open-air restaurant in Jodhpur, trying to get a voyeuristic view of the big fat wedding. I am being served by a two-earringed waiter who asks me if I want a beer. I am stumped by his non-stereotyping.
P.S….I have finally decided that I don’t need to choose. That I can be both women, and they both can be me.
I am eight years old, and get punished in class by being made to sit in the boys’ row. The teacher doesn’t know that I love it. I poke a chubby-cheeked boy next to me to show him my pencil is sharper than his. He gets a clot in his eye and has to be taken to the hospital and my mother thinks I have had enough of ‘being with the boys’. She soon relegates me to an all girls' school, and endless death by estrogen. I never forgive her for that.
Scene 2
I am on my fourth cup of tea at the university campus, hanging out with the boys (again) trying to get that terribly important degree I didn't much care for, when a tall gaunt frame walks into my frame of reference. He looks like a cadaverous poet—gaunt, stubble, thick glasses. "Remember me?" he says. It takes me less than an instant to squeal, "Shit! Nikhil….You are the guy that got poked in the eye.” He tells me he recognized me for being the only girl in an all boys adda. We spend the next four hours discussing the past twelve years, and a crush is born. He writes me notes, poems, songs; he reads me notes, poems, songs…He brings out the girl in me. I stop hanging out with the boys.
Scene 3
Third job. Highlight of my day is lunch from Bhavnaben, a local caterer who doles out piping hot, gujju food day after day, which pretty much gets me ready for the dumbest brief from the client servicing team in the agency. Only that I share my dabba with a boy, and we are constantly in a race for who makes it first. Because there's no loyalty to the co-eater, only to the food. And since I eat like a man, it makes it all the more challenging to Amit, who comes huffing and panting from wherever he is at the dot of one p.m, only to find that I am already on my third phulka. It annoys him endless. When I quit, he is thrilled. Now he can share the dabba with a real woman, he says.
Scene 4
Suitable boy says he loves being with me because I am like one of the boys…..What? This is not going well, I think. He explains that it is because I am a straight talker and I don't speak in riddles like women do, and don't talk when not required; that makes him less stressed around me. This gets me curiouser and curiouser. Oh! We are getting into buddy zone, I think. Who are these women, I wonder. I want to be the mysterious one, I resolve.
Scene 5
I still haven't acquired that aura of mystery. But I am definitely getting closer to being a woman. Even though I love to drive, do my taxes, and I don't dig blow-drying, or being fetched and dropped. But then, neither do I dig pool, play station or soccer— things that the object of my affection would love me to.
Scene 6
Before I move into my new apartment, my architect-interior designer landlord looks at me approvingly and says I look the type who will keep a good house. And the type who will not have wild parties. I am stumped by his stereotyping.
Scene 7
I am in a open-air restaurant in Jodhpur, trying to get a voyeuristic view of the big fat wedding. I am being served by a two-earringed waiter who asks me if I want a beer. I am stumped by his non-stereotyping.
P.S….I have finally decided that I don’t need to choose. That I can be both women, and they both can be me.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Hairrrum scarrum
It is strange that I found myself roughly the same time as I found my hair.
Okay, this sounds deep, but I have a point here. If there can be a human mascot for tropical, evergreen, deciduous forests, it is my family. Each one of us has been blessed with manes that will pass down to at least three generations unless we marry extremely bald people. The only difference between the mother’s side and the father’s side is the degree of wiriness, rather twistings per inch in the locks; my mother’s side scores slightly higher for its tighter ringlets. I fall somewhere in between…
I remember feeling like a gawky adolescent, in my thin frame and ample mane, sighing at the girls in my class who tossed their hair from side to side by mere flick of a chin, while mine remained stubbornly unaltered. It took nearly two hundred brush strokes to part it into two, and then a further fifty before it was rendered to a form that a child from a decent family should assume—I am referring to my two long, oily plaits, which ran up to my waist.
Every Sunday, washing the aforementioned hair was some ritual—being soudi, I was doused with gallons of coconut oil and massaged till my neck was dislodged. Post the laborious wash, when my ringlets were at their glorious best, and I felt like some star from the sixties for precisely thirty minutes, my mother would say, “Comb your hair now, or it will be difficult later…” And it would— it would expand to six times its volume thereafter—I never understood why people need volumnisers.
A few years later, I did the same to my baby sister, and often wailed about having to perform motherly duties of such nature—trapping all of her into those damn two plaits and getting her ready before her cantankerous school mates started yelling her name from under our balcony. I had a bad childhood, as you can see…
As I grew older, and the hair wilder, there were jibes at every corner:
Do you use conditioner?
When was the last time you oiled your hair?
Have you thought about straightening?
Have you combed it?
It’s so rough, no?
I silently wished that I would undergo a genetic transformation and wake up one morning with Neetu Singh tresses that one could sleep through and still look like a daisy. I had no role models—there were no Noyonika Chatterjees or Kangana Ranauts or Kamal Sidhus -- films and television were teeming with straight silken tresses… and I felt like an outsider…
Till I realised—my hair was actually me, crying out from being made to conform, being what you are supposed to be, rather than what your heart wants you to—and then it all became crystal clear… to liberate me, I would have to liberate my hair.
After much research and rejection, I landed at Mario Miranda’s flat. His son Raul was the man picked for the occasion, and I found myself in a room facing the sea, watching Mario sketching, and new-born boxer pups flitting about with their mother in tow. “Wow, I am really doing this in style,” I thought..
Raul turned out to be the man who re-baptized me. The first thing he said was, “Wow, this is wild—I love your hair. There’s so much you can do with..” The lock-chop resulting in a fido-dido look did great things for me, but most importantly, I felt redeemed.
He also taught me to throw anything resembling a comb out of the window. Forever. I soon learnt the fine art of finger combing and scrunching.
It was also the time my mum was lining up suitable boys for me, and was obviously cross that I had destroyed my biggest asset! But I was beyond caring. Finally, I had found the freedom to be me, and was at a point where I could celebrate my hair, and metaphorically, me. Finally, I found the courage to let my hair down, literally and figuratively.
So now when someone musters the audacity to ask me, “Why don’t you try straightening?”, I look them in the eye and say, “No, because I enjoy being me.”
How times have changed! Now, I get asked, “Are those real curls?”
Okay, this sounds deep, but I have a point here. If there can be a human mascot for tropical, evergreen, deciduous forests, it is my family. Each one of us has been blessed with manes that will pass down to at least three generations unless we marry extremely bald people. The only difference between the mother’s side and the father’s side is the degree of wiriness, rather twistings per inch in the locks; my mother’s side scores slightly higher for its tighter ringlets. I fall somewhere in between…
I remember feeling like a gawky adolescent, in my thin frame and ample mane, sighing at the girls in my class who tossed their hair from side to side by mere flick of a chin, while mine remained stubbornly unaltered. It took nearly two hundred brush strokes to part it into two, and then a further fifty before it was rendered to a form that a child from a decent family should assume—I am referring to my two long, oily plaits, which ran up to my waist.
Every Sunday, washing the aforementioned hair was some ritual—being soudi, I was doused with gallons of coconut oil and massaged till my neck was dislodged. Post the laborious wash, when my ringlets were at their glorious best, and I felt like some star from the sixties for precisely thirty minutes, my mother would say, “Comb your hair now, or it will be difficult later…” And it would— it would expand to six times its volume thereafter—I never understood why people need volumnisers.
A few years later, I did the same to my baby sister, and often wailed about having to perform motherly duties of such nature—trapping all of her into those damn two plaits and getting her ready before her cantankerous school mates started yelling her name from under our balcony. I had a bad childhood, as you can see…
As I grew older, and the hair wilder, there were jibes at every corner:
Do you use conditioner?
When was the last time you oiled your hair?
Have you thought about straightening?
Have you combed it?
It’s so rough, no?
I silently wished that I would undergo a genetic transformation and wake up one morning with Neetu Singh tresses that one could sleep through and still look like a daisy. I had no role models—there were no Noyonika Chatterjees or Kangana Ranauts or Kamal Sidhus -- films and television were teeming with straight silken tresses… and I felt like an outsider…
Till I realised—my hair was actually me, crying out from being made to conform, being what you are supposed to be, rather than what your heart wants you to—and then it all became crystal clear… to liberate me, I would have to liberate my hair.
After much research and rejection, I landed at Mario Miranda’s flat. His son Raul was the man picked for the occasion, and I found myself in a room facing the sea, watching Mario sketching, and new-born boxer pups flitting about with their mother in tow. “Wow, I am really doing this in style,” I thought..
Raul turned out to be the man who re-baptized me. The first thing he said was, “Wow, this is wild—I love your hair. There’s so much you can do with..” The lock-chop resulting in a fido-dido look did great things for me, but most importantly, I felt redeemed.
He also taught me to throw anything resembling a comb out of the window. Forever. I soon learnt the fine art of finger combing and scrunching.
It was also the time my mum was lining up suitable boys for me, and was obviously cross that I had destroyed my biggest asset! But I was beyond caring. Finally, I had found the freedom to be me, and was at a point where I could celebrate my hair, and metaphorically, me. Finally, I found the courage to let my hair down, literally and figuratively.
So now when someone musters the audacity to ask me, “Why don’t you try straightening?”, I look them in the eye and say, “No, because I enjoy being me.”
How times have changed! Now, I get asked, “Are those real curls?”
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
Phone unfetish
For someone who has an opinion on men who carry umbrellas or wear synthetic, I am rather dull when it comes to flashing my own devices.
Okay, I will make a confession here— I am something of a gadget relic; I have a Nokia 1100. I also own a tape-deck, which incidentally, empowered me to listen to a 12 year old tape of Alan Parson’s Project, post his concert in Bombay, while the rest of the world was still figuring out ‘how to get that CD?’ And I have a hand-me-down laptop from my brother which still gets me all worked up on account of blink-and-you-miss-it option to choose from Linux or Windows. I also do not own a six CD changer, or power windows. I just change my CDs and roll my windows on my own. What? Doesn’t go with my image? I have heard that. Get a life? Well, get in line. I am like that only.
I am not in a hurry to sort any of the above. Especially my phone with the in-built torch. For the upwardly mobile and technologically snobbish, it is the same phone that was till a few years ago, advertised as the highway truck driver’s phone, or the phone for the nation or the farmer or some such. Today, they don’t even sell it, I am sure. I do notice that autowallas and cabwallas have higher end phones, so obviously I own something representative of a different era. Gadgets to me, are about convenience, not about elegance.
A friend of mine, the I-like-to change-my phone-every-six- months type always has a point of view when she looks at mine. “O God, how can you be seen with this? Move on!” I actually felt sorry for her finding an identity in an inanimate object and smiled to myself.
But I must admit, I did go through an interim snobbish phase, when I got myself a 6610 or whatever, and it looked oh-so-delicate that my ample hold-everything-I-own bag didn’t seem like a comfortable home for it. So I got one of those bags which had a special pocket for the phone on the outside. Except someone else also knew about the ‘special phone pocket’ and the phone got nicked. It more or less convinced me that higher end technology is not meant for me.
A few years ago, I worked on an advertising campaign for something called intelligent switches. Apparently, the various lighting systems and gadgets in your house switch on upon your arrival. Now, how ridiculous is that, I thought. Imagine telling someone, “even my door can sense my arrival.”
But there is a huge subtext to why my phone makes me feel empowered. It does have its advantages, for sure.
Advantage one is that no one wants it, so it will never get stolen. I have left it behind countless times in loos, at work, in my car, at shops, restaurants, and always got it back.
Advantage two (which is what the sales guy made a pitch for) is that it is really sturdy and low-maintenance; I really dropped it a couple of times to check if that was true and it sure was! So, I am not worried about scratches and bruises …
Advantage three, and this one has a deep, philosophical bent to it is that it helps me clear the clutter from my life.
Let me explain. In my phone are various numbers (I call them miscellaneous) that I have never called and never intend calling. They are usually the ones that are thrust upon me by randoms, “Let me give you a missed call, so you’ll have my number. Or worse, “I’ll biz-card it to you”. And thereby the numbers gather. Till one day when I actually have to save a number and my phone memory says its full. And then it allows me to do what I love doing: replace the miscellaneous with the real. Deep, no?
May be I find a certain comfort in knowing that a gadget is not more intelligent than me.
Okay, I will make a confession here— I am something of a gadget relic; I have a Nokia 1100. I also own a tape-deck, which incidentally, empowered me to listen to a 12 year old tape of Alan Parson’s Project, post his concert in Bombay, while the rest of the world was still figuring out ‘how to get that CD?’ And I have a hand-me-down laptop from my brother which still gets me all worked up on account of blink-and-you-miss-it option to choose from Linux or Windows. I also do not own a six CD changer, or power windows. I just change my CDs and roll my windows on my own. What? Doesn’t go with my image? I have heard that. Get a life? Well, get in line. I am like that only.
I am not in a hurry to sort any of the above. Especially my phone with the in-built torch. For the upwardly mobile and technologically snobbish, it is the same phone that was till a few years ago, advertised as the highway truck driver’s phone, or the phone for the nation or the farmer or some such. Today, they don’t even sell it, I am sure. I do notice that autowallas and cabwallas have higher end phones, so obviously I own something representative of a different era. Gadgets to me, are about convenience, not about elegance.
A friend of mine, the I-like-to change-my phone-every-six- months type always has a point of view when she looks at mine. “O God, how can you be seen with this? Move on!” I actually felt sorry for her finding an identity in an inanimate object and smiled to myself.
But I must admit, I did go through an interim snobbish phase, when I got myself a 6610 or whatever, and it looked oh-so-delicate that my ample hold-everything-I-own bag didn’t seem like a comfortable home for it. So I got one of those bags which had a special pocket for the phone on the outside. Except someone else also knew about the ‘special phone pocket’ and the phone got nicked. It more or less convinced me that higher end technology is not meant for me.
A few years ago, I worked on an advertising campaign for something called intelligent switches. Apparently, the various lighting systems and gadgets in your house switch on upon your arrival. Now, how ridiculous is that, I thought. Imagine telling someone, “even my door can sense my arrival.”
But there is a huge subtext to why my phone makes me feel empowered. It does have its advantages, for sure.
Advantage one is that no one wants it, so it will never get stolen. I have left it behind countless times in loos, at work, in my car, at shops, restaurants, and always got it back.
Advantage two (which is what the sales guy made a pitch for) is that it is really sturdy and low-maintenance; I really dropped it a couple of times to check if that was true and it sure was! So, I am not worried about scratches and bruises …
Advantage three, and this one has a deep, philosophical bent to it is that it helps me clear the clutter from my life.
Let me explain. In my phone are various numbers (I call them miscellaneous) that I have never called and never intend calling. They are usually the ones that are thrust upon me by randoms, “Let me give you a missed call, so you’ll have my number. Or worse, “I’ll biz-card it to you”. And thereby the numbers gather. Till one day when I actually have to save a number and my phone memory says its full. And then it allows me to do what I love doing: replace the miscellaneous with the real. Deep, no?
May be I find a certain comfort in knowing that a gadget is not more intelligent than me.
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