Where I use italics to emphasize how pained I am

Technically, I will admit, I have a flatmate. However, we lead entirely separate lives - I like to get home and stay home as soon as I'm done in school, and she likes to study in school and rarely comes home before 1 AM. Therefore, for all intents and purposes, I'm pretty much living on my own.

Which is actually great, given our previously discussed discovery on how little I need people around me. The problem arises, however, when I go shopping for groceries. Why is everything in this country so big? Or was it big back in India too, and I never paid attention because I didn't need to?

Our meals are completely separate - I'm not sure if she even eats, actually. So when I'm shopping for groceries, I'm shopping for one single person. Wherein lies the problem. I buy a packet of salad leaves, it should last me a week, but invariably spoils before that. Cauliflowers are the size of what a watermelon would be, back home.There is no concept of "half-bread" here. After being out of eggs for more than a week (they got recalled, apparently), Target finally got some in yesterday - all in either family size packs or in sets of dozens. Where are the half-dozen sets I need, dammit? I needed flour because the mother gave a really easy recipe for soup, but the smallest packet size I could find is going to last me six months.

Is desh mein log kitna khate hain?

I mean, even the dishes. The flatmate bought a lovely and full china set of plates, bowls, etc. before I even landed up here. Only, those bowls. They're huge. Like, bigger than the soup bowls in China Club. Seriously. I had to go on a very long hunt before I finally found a set of small, reasonable sized bowls (which were actually super cool, because they come with plastic lids, which means I can also use them for storage, but that's not the point).

The brother had always warned me that servings when you eat out are huge in this country. And I discovered that very, very quickly. So if I buy a sandwich or a quesadilla for lunch from the cafeteria in school, I know half  of it is coming home for dinner or breakfast the next day. What no one ever warned me about was how much extra one ends up buying to make things at home.

What makes the situation somewhat better is that yours truly has now started driving (that's right - I CAN NOW DRIVE). So I don't need to depend on someone to take me to Target, shop up for the week, and then watch everything spoil because I thought I'll have time to cook something with that mushroom, but guess what, I didn't. I can, usually, stop by on my way back to school and pick up whatever I need to cook either that night or the next day - assuming I have the energy. The trouble with that is I then also end up buying a whole bunch of stuff I never intended to buy. No walking up to the corner shop and saying "bhaiyya ek half bread dena".

The only thing catering to the single-person-living-alone that I can see are those frozen meals-for-one. And there is only so much of those meals that one can have.

A good girl

Several moons ago, I was headed for dinner with a colleague and her husband, and her husband decided to have a smoke while we waited in the car park for some another colleagues to join us. He asked if I smoked, and before I could respond, his wife chimed in, "no, no, she's a very good girl."

Two nights ago, I asked a classmate what he thought when he first met me. Among other things, he said he thought I was a "good Indian girl", and that while some of the other impressions have changed since then,  apparently I am a "good Indian girl."

A good girl. Me. Why? Because I don't smoke, don't drink very often, haven't been in a series of relationships, what? I'm trying to understand this phrase. Maybe all of these things are true about me - I do lead a very uneventful, and even what some people might call dull, life. This makes me good?

So any woman who does all these things is therefore not good? I think that's what bothers me. You want to call me a saint for not being fond of certain activities, that's your prerogative. But by definition, we're then judging the women who do make those choices. And I don't like to be reminded that even today, this still ends up happening.

Things I've learned about myself in 3 months

I like cooking. It calms me, even though I'm not very good at it.

I prefer eating home food much more than my mother would have believed about me. I also don't like sandwiches and pasta as much as I had thought I did. Give me good old roti sabzi any day.

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Nearly two decades ago, the father got transferred from Chandigarh, where we had lived for most of my childhood, to Delhi. Apart from the culture shock and the discovery that the distance between Sector 34 and Sector 17 was really nothing compared to the distance between any two places in Delhi, I was convinced that I'm not a big city person. This belief lasted with me right up the moment I landed in the US.

Because I like to pretend that I'm still an anonymous blogger, we're going to leave out where I live and study. Suffice to say, it's a small town, where you can't get anywhere without a car. Despite which you barely see any cars on the road. And it's quiet; God, it's quiet.

I spent two days last week in Atlanta, and wow did it feel good to be surrounded by tall buildings and actually hear cars on the road. My friend was freaking out about being stuck in a traffic jam on our way to an appointment; a teeny weeny part of me was actually thrilled about it. I sat in a restaurant for dinner, gazing out of the windows, just watching the cars go by, listening to them honk away. I used the train to get from the hotel to the airport, and it was nice.

No question about it, I'm definitely a big city person.

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I'm much more of an introvert than I had previously imagined. Not only is it really hard for me to strike up and maintain conversations with people, but I really can survive quite happily without meeting or hanging out with people. A bit worrisome, how little I need the company of others. Also worrisome, my inability to "network", given how much importance it has in the whole job search process here.

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The things you learn. There was something else I wanted to include in this list, but I forgot. Oh well.

The sounds of rain

I've mentioned briefly, I think, in the past, about waking up to the sounds of rain falling on the skylight back home. It's a soothing sound, one that usually made me snuggle in further into my razai and snooze a little while longer.

It's been raining off and on for the past week or so here. My classmates don't undertsnad my fascination and delight with rain; it makes them utterly gloomy.

Rain here brings out a tinge of nostalgia and homesickness in me. Why, I'm not sure, given that it's greener here, there are no traffic jams, and the roads can last beyond a ten minute shower.

But it annoys me no end that while I can hear every step taken by my neighbors who live right above me, the sounds of rain get completely shut out from my apartment.

Conversations I miss

The brother, to me, a couple of months ago:

People quote Voltaire, Shakespeare, and all sorts of great writers. You? You take pride in quoting Friends.

My aunt can be somewhat... decisive. She makes all these plans, and then just gets everyone to follow through. It's quite awe-inspiring, the way my relatives who're otherwise quite decisive themselves just give in when she gets going. The clan got together a while ago for a Sunday brunch, and she was railroading people into doing things her way as usual, while her husband watched with a resigned expression on his face.

Me: I think I'm going to be just like Mashi when I grow up.
Uncle: Good God.

The mother informed me some time back that the father and she had been having discussions of great importance:

Her: Your father and I were talking, and we have come to the conclusion we are now a middle-aged couple.
Me: Umm, hello? I've been calling you buddha-buddhi for ages now.
Her: Yes, but now we have realised it.

A friend, who we shall call J. A., started working in a school as a school counsellor. The younger classses were manageable, she tells me, but she went through utter stress the day she had to meet the 16-year-old brats from Class XI for the first time. So what does she do to break the ice? Introduce herself in the following manner:

My name is J. A., and I am not a terrorist.

I kid you not.

On the other hand:

Father: Why did you go to the eye doc if you aren't going to put those drops?
Me: I didn't know he'll give me drops to put!

He was not amused. :-|

Stayin' sane

I haven't been happy with the last I-don't-know-how-many blog posts I've churned out. They said what I wanted to say, but not how I wanted to say it, if that makes sense.

Part of it, I think, comes from my desire not to let a almost-two-month-long break from blogging happen again, like it did last year. (Of course, part of it could also be that people have simply stopped commenting or even rating my posts, but I'd like to believe I'm not so dependent on external feedback.) One of my hopes for this year was that I would write more. But somehow, that's not happening - not the way I wanted it to. Even my presence on twitter has reduced dramatically ever since I quit the job - apparently I need a regular structure to my days and something to distract me from for that to happen. So whenever I have something to say, I go ahead and say it without really paying much attention to how it's coming together. Which sucks.

In Orientation earlier this month, the Second Years repeatedly emphasized how crazy the next two years are going to be, with no time to breathe, or anything. As one SY put it, "you'll suddenly realise it's been three months since you spoke to your brother, or emailed your best friend." Eeks. Their point, however, was that all of us need to identify what's important to us, and make sure we block time to do that, be it daily, or weekly, or whatever.

At the time, I wasn't sure what those things would be for me, except for probably keeping in touch with people back home, which honestly, isn't really an option ever since I bought this BlackBerry. But over the last few weeks, I've realised it's this. Blogging. Tweeting. Reading blogs.

This month, while hectic, has been much easier than what things will be like come September. So far, I've managed to make time to go through Google Reader every day and check into Twitter once in a while. Because that's what keeps me sane, I've realised. It's often my only way of even keeping up with what's happening outside this campus. So I need to make sure I keep this up somehow.

And as far as my writing is concerned, well, I'm not going to say I intend to stop blogging altogether till I feel the perfect post come out - that could take pretty much forever, wot? But I do hope those feelings of satisfaction and output that blogging used to give me come back soon.

Ow :(

In the six weeks that I was made to get a tetanus booster shot, I have:

• cut a vein on my left hand (one day after getting the shot) while trying to get something off a glass shelf at the pharmacy;
• given myself a four-inch long cut on my right forearm merely by holding a plastic folder;
• burnt myself at least twice while cooking;
• nipped my finger while cutting vegetables;
• scraped my shoulder while scaling a freaking wall;
• banged my right hand against hard wood;
• stubbed my toe on a weekly basis; and
• given myself sundry paper cuts, all at least half an inch long.

Those last two, admittedly, are no uncommon incidents in my life. But the rest of it? The eleven years between my last tetanus booster shot and this one were not this eventful in such a compact period of time.

International conversations

So I'm an international student, don'tcha know? And while most of the conversations over the past three weeks have been about what we all were doing before B-school, and what we plan to do after this, there's also a lot of interest in my background.

You've never lived in the US before? How come your English is so good?

I'm sort of taken aback by how many times I've been asked this question. Yes, my English is probably better than the average Indian, but I'm just so used to having spoken it all my life, that it startles me every time someone asks me this question.

Classmate: What's the time difference between here and India?
Me: Ten and a half hours.
Classmate: Oh yeaaaaaah, you Indians have that funny "and a half" thing going on.

I had not realised this was such an unusual occurrence. Really.

Oh you're Indian! I love Indian food! Chicken tikka/ Butter chicken is awesome! You must make it for me!

Because y'know, Indian food is pretty much entirely made up of what you get in Delhi and Punjab. For the record, I have never cooked a chicken dish in my life. My specialities have just recently expanded from Maggi and Knorr soups to include pastas. Indian food - of any region - remains a distant goal. Except arhar dal. I make awesome arhar dal.

A conversation yesterday was interesting though. I was again asked how I'm finding the transition, and I again responded that it's really really quiet. And a classmate told me, "But you know, coming here, to a small town like this, will probably tell you so much more about the real US than going to any of the cities in the North East would. Those cities are too cosmopolitan. This is the real America."

And it struck me, that's quite possibly true. If my classmates came to India and visited me in Delhi, got introduced to my friends, saw Mumbai and Bangalore, would they get a sense of the real India? We, the "urban", English speaking, Indians can afford to travel around and get the kind of exposure we do - we are a minority, aren't we? And we - at least I - tend to forget that.

More impressions

Am I homesick? I don't know. Too soon to tell, surely.

I miss the chaos of Delhi. The noise. The constant honking on the roads of Gurgaon. Even the traffic jams.

I miss the loud and colourful Pepsi and Coca Cola hoardings on shops in the local market.

I miss the father's voice. The princess' entreating eyes. The mother's quibbling over my room.

I looked out of the car window while coming home tonight and I could see hundreds of stars. That's how clear the sky is. But I couldn't see Orion's belt, which is usually what I see if I look straight up standing at the gate back home.

I look for familiarity everywhere. So the early morning cool air and the green trees remind me of Kasauli. The drive around a residential area in downtown tonight reminded me of military cantonment areas back home. And the restaurant we went to felt like The Big Chill for a while.

So am I homesick? Maybe a little. And to think it's only been a week. And school hasn't even started.

First impressions

I'm 26 years old, and I've never lived away from the parents. College, grad school, three years of work - it all happened from the comforts of home, where the biggest decision I had to make was what to wear the next day.

I stood in Walmart's yesterday and spent five minutes trying to figure out which type of milk I should go for. I finally chose Organic and Fat-free; it sounded healthy yet more appealing than soymilk. It took me ten minutes to figure out which mop stick to buy; mainly because the cheapest one didn't have refill mops available, and the ones which did were too expensive. Buying an iron was easy - the cheapest option was also the only brand I'd heard of.

My Japanese flat mate and I invited people over for dinner tonight; I, all the Indians I know, and she, her friends from the language pre-classes she's been attending. I was chatting with a Colombian girl, who's moved here with her boyfriend. Both of them will be going to school with me, and as it turns out, both lived with their respective parents before they moved here. So they spent 15 minutes today trying to figure which type of soap they should buy for the dishwasher. As I told her, it felt SO good knowing I'm not the only one in this state.

In other news, people keep asking me if I'm homesick. Now that I've given in and bought a BlackBerry, with everyone just a text/BBM away, not so much. The only time I sniffled a little bit was when the mother showed the princess on Skype this morning. She can't get a smartphone. Maybe the mother's idea of inventing a cell phone for dogs has some merit.

May I also say, that for all the talk about Indians behaving very differently when they go away from their country, at a dinner party of people coming from the Far East, South America, and Europe, the Indians were the only ones walking in two hours late. Indian Stretched Time is a constant everywhere we go, it seems.