Holeedayy

The day the brother's Board results came out, we went to Kasauli for the weekend. I haven't been back since, and I didn't even get to pick up mushroom pickle from NAFED. Hmph.

Barely three months later, he left for Boston, completely unwillingly and unexpectedly. When he came back for his first summer vacation a year later, soon after I finished my post-graduation, we went to Mumbai and Mahabaleshwar for a family holiday. Well, the father went on work, and we sort of tagged along.

A month later, I started working. In the three years since then, I've been to Calcutta, alone for work and with the mother otherwise, to Nasik with the father, and Jaipur with the brother. The brother's been to Ajmer and Assam with the mother, and he's joined the father in Hyderabad and Calcutta. We've all had individual trips - alone, with friends, or with colleagues.

We've all travelled, - but the four of us, together, haven't gone on a holiday in three years.

24 hours from now, the parents and I leave for Boston, to see my kid brother graduate from college. And then the four of us head to the UK for a family holiday.

In a couple of months, the brother takes up his first job, and I join B-school. Who knows when this will happen again?

I should go pack. Dammit.

Oh Calcutta!

When friends, particularly non-Bengali ones, visit Calcutta, I'm usually filled with feelings of jealousy. But when they come back with tales of Park Street, the best continental or Italian restaurants in the city, partying nights, or having luchi-aloo at Oh Calcutta (!!), I invariably feel like they're talking of a city I've never been to.

In all the years I've been to Calcutta, I've visited Park Street exactly twice, and the promised visit to Flurry's has never yet happened. Calcutta for me has always been about relatives and my mother's college haunts. Visits there tend to get restricted to the same beloved places.

It's about the pavements of Gariahat and the maze that is New Market. The Sardarji at the purse shop who always smiles in recognition when he sees the mother, remembering vociferous arguments and long-drawn negotiations in the years gone by. The rolls at Bedouins, the jhal-muri at Nandan. Convincing my Mam, my grandmother, to skip cooking a heavy Bengali meal for one day at least so we can take her to the Chinese shop at the corner - which we enjoy far more than any 5-star restaurant my uncle wants to take us to; I get that from her. Strolls down College Street, and cutlets at Coffee House. The tram rides where my uncle insists I sit in the Ladies section of the compartment, away from him and the brother - even though we three are the only passengers in the compartment. Riding the metro to Esplanade simply to ride up the escalator and come down again - it was the only station with an escalator in those days. Stopping to pick up Ujjaler chanachur on the way to the airport or the station, with the father looking grimly at his watch.

Visiting my mother's numerous relatives, all of whom exclaim how much I look like their niece - even though my mirror tells me I take after my father. Speaking on the phone with the numerous relatives I haven't been able to meet - and hearing in great detail every ailment they and their spouses have had in the past year. Hearing my grandmother's neighbours yell at each other from corner of their house to another - all of which can be heard through the open walls between the two houses. Going to her neighbour's house to visit Doctor Dadu and Didu - the elderly couple who've been in that house for as long as I can remember and who always manage to make me feel so loved, even though there is no blood connection between us.

I love Calcutta, I do. But more than four days there, and I'm yearning to get away from all the questions. But those four days are usually a little piece of heaven.

Mam moved last year from the tiny little house she's lived in for nearly three decades to a high-rise building. I haven't visited her there yet, and in some ways I'm dreading it. Calcutta with no music coming in from the neighbour's houses in the morning and the evening? What is that like?

[PS: This post has also been posted over at Desicritics.]

This is home.

I swear to you, Bengalis are the only community I know of who, on being asked how they are, actually tell you how they are. Seriously.

Mamma and I spent a week in Kolkata last month, and it is just incredible how asking a person how he/she is will get you very comprehensive details of each illness/ailment suffered in the past week by not only the person you're speaking to, but by every member of his/her family as well. The trip was incredible though. This was the first time I actually went around the city on my own, and the first time we did more than just visiting various relatives. Most importantly, after years of looking for it, my mother and I finally found the shop in New Market she used to frequent in her college days for the purpose of buying silver jewelry. Apparently, I forgot the meaning of the word stinginess while there, because by the time I exited that shop, all the gift money I had saved for the past two years had been spent.

We also discovered, for the first time perhaps, just how exasperating and unprofessional doctors in Kolkata are. Doctors in the NCR may be mad and annoying, but at least they're in their chambers during their scheduled hours and at least they pick up the damn phone when there's an emergency! I still love Kolkata, but if I had to live there, I think I'd go quite mad.

The family also spent a week or so in Mumbai and it's nearby hill stations recently. Quite a lovely trip; the father took us around to his college, hostel, and haunts from college days. I also found the perfect bag while shopping in Linking Road; it is huge and everything I ever need to carry with me (which, as some of you may know, is quite a bit) and still have space left over. And those are just a few of the highlights of the trip.

We're now back home. Things are happening at home. Life is back to normal, or as normal as it ever gets with my clan. I'm back to disliking shopping with a fervour (although I do need to visit Fab India fairly soon). The princess of the house is getting used to having the whole family with her most of the time, and is throughly enjoying being taken for walks by the brother every morning (as much as I am enjoying the extra half an hour of sleep since that particular morning duty is taken care of for the next four months at any rate).

I have also come to realize the truth of something I have been trying to deny for the past nearly fourteen years - this city is my home. The NCR is where I feel most comfortable. Oh, I love traveling and visiting other cities. The people here are ridiculous, the weather is crazy, and the transport system is capable of driving me to suicide. I've got my whole life ahead of me and there's no saying where I'll end up eventually. But for now, this is home.

Missing her already...

The family's off on a week-long vacation tomorrow, and the mother and I went to drop Kyra (the golden retriever) off at her usual boarding place today. I swear to you, there is no bigger heart-breaking sight in the world than Her Highness looking back at me oh-so-reproachfully as she's led away by the doctors there.

My mum was busy with the formalities when Kyra was taken away, so missed the departure. I told her not to go in and see Kyra one more time, but she insisted on doing so. Kyra, of course, seeing Mamma, bounded up to her, thinking it's time to go home already. Net result, Kyra was even more mournful when Mamma walked away, and Mamma was more upset than before.

I usually try to avoid dropping Kyra off when we go on vacation, because I inevitably break down. I couldn't get out of it today, but managed not to break down completely. The mother, on the other hand, has never ever dropped Kyra off before. I think she now knows why I try to avoid it.

*Sniff*

Prologue to a Comedy of Errors

I've been reading this blog for a while now, and this post filled me with complete glee.

You see, two years ago, my family was finally leaving for our dream vacation in Europe. Only the thing is, at ten in the night, just as we're about to leave for the airport, we discover my passport is missing. I, of course, promptly went into hysterics (by which I mean, I started giggling and couldn't stop) while the father opened up every piece of luggage that was supposed to go with us (and mind you, my family does not know the meaning of travelling light).

Possible locations for the passport included the photocopy shop I had visited earlier that evening. The father has a penchant for photocopying everything as many times as possible, and for some reason mine was the only one with no copies having been made. So at 2230 hours, the brother and I dash down to the market, where of course, all the shops were closed. Resourceful person that I am, I called up the cell phone that was listed in front of the neighbouring shop, got the photocopy shop's owner's number, and called him up. He, of course, claimed that he had been in the shop at eight when the entire shop had been searched for some person's missing cell phone and no passport had been seen anywhere.

By the time we got home, my dad had searched through pretty much the whole house with no luck. My hysteria was rapidly reaching a peak when, after some discussion, the father announces that the mother and the brother will proceed with the vacation while we shall stay back and see what can be done. I still don't know who was more shocked - me, at the fact that I wasn't going, or the two of them, considering the only thing they knew about the logistics of the entire trip (which I had planned and arranged) was that it would be somewhere in the aforementioned continent.

So anyway, we dropped them to the airport, and spoke to the airlines, who said that two of us could travel later. We came back home, and went to the market again, with a torch this time. So at two in the night, the father and I are searching the market alleys and carpark to see if I had dropped it somewhere by mistake. No such luck, so we came back home and went off to sleep.

I got up at eight in the morning, and the first thing I did was call up the xerox shop, where the chap who picked up the phone very coolly informed me that of course my passport was with them. As I said at the time, may all the Gods shower curses on that owner for being so clueless about what happens in his shop, and zillions of blessings on the chaps who run the shop for keeping my passport safely.

The airline came through as well, and exactly twenty-four hours after the first half of my family, the father and I were on our way to Austria for what was to be the most accident-filled yet best vacation I've had till date. Although I could've done without the big grin and the bright "So it was at the photocopy shop after all, was it?" I got from the airline lady.

And it's not just me who does these things anyway.