On a temperamental music player

Like a billion other people on this planet, I've been living a nightmare for close to a month now, waking up every morning in terror, wondering what new names I'll hear today. The weekends have been the hardest, because all I have then is my constant doomscrolling. For the most part, workdays have been easier, because work is a distraction. But yesterday was tougher than usual, and I wrote a whole depressing post about it, and then decided I'm not ready to send it out into the world yet. So it's sitting in my drafts, hoping to see the light of day some months down the line.

So let's talk about something a little more cheerful, 'kay?

We gifted Baba a Bose radio/CD player for his 50th birthday. Well, I say we, but it was Mamma really. And at some point during the past decade that I've been gone, that went kaput, and they bought a new one. Except, as I discovered during my sojourn last year, this new one has a bit of a personality. 

It took me a while to realise that it wasn't my parents turning it on everyday at a very high volume, to a radio channel none of us listen to. It came on randomly everyday at the same time, all by itself, blaring loudly. If the radio happened to be on, and you were listening to a different channel, it would actually switch to whatever that infernal preset channel was. So I decided* to fix it. Since no one knew where the user manual was, I turned to Joi Baba Googlenath, and figured out how to change the alarm settings.

My parents like listening to the English music shows that still come on AIR FM Rainbow** at 12 pm and 6pm, so I went in and set alarms for it to come on everyday at those times, at a far more reasonable volume. Everyone was happy, and I actually won*** Daughter of the Year for a change.

Cut to six months later.

One of my coping mechanisms for the past month has been to have a daily call with the parents, instead of our usual 2-3 times a week. Depending on my meeting schedule (and the father's bridge calendar obvs), I call them either at 8am while making my chai, or at lunch time. And for a few days running, I was getting irritated at how rude they were being, turning on the TV at abnormally loud levels while I'm on the phone with them. 

As it turns out, they were doing no such thing. Their temperamental Bose system took advantage of my departure to change the alarm settings all by itself, and has gone back to turning on at a strange time at a strange volume on a strange channel. And since I'm not there to fix it again, my parents' new approach is to wait till a minute before it comes on, and call out to each other - "the radio's about to come on! go stand near it so you can turn it off!"

Be amused by the little things you guys, because the next time I'm home, I'm going to have to Google how to fix the damn alarm settings all over again.

* Mayyyyyybe less "decided to", and more "was prodded into"

** No, YOU try typing, saying or thinking AIR FM Rainbow without that blessed jingle playing in your head

*** versus just running unopposed

Where we share a few anecdotes about this whole demonetization thing

I was rushing to an offsite meeting, when a news alert popped up on my phone, saying Modiji was about to give a live news conference. I texted the family, in case they wanted to watch. I walked into the meeting room, put my stuff down, and since we were still waiting for one or two people, figured I'll go get myself a cup of tea. As I was walking out of the room, another news alert popped up on my phone, making me gasp out loud, and making everyone in the room to turn and stare at me questioningly. Turned out, Modiji had just announced all 500 and 1000 rupee notes were illegal tender, effective in three hours.

The parents were staying with me in Amreeka at the time. They landed back in Delhi a week after the sky fell on all our heads, and decided they should try and exchange some money at the airport, because who knew what the situation outside would be. When I called them, some 4-5 hours later, thinking they'd be home by then, they were still waiting in queues, because of the four currency exchange counters at Delhi's International Arrivals area, one was open. But what infuriated the father the most? This counter, that was operated by a public sector bank, was giving an exchange rate 10% worse than what the exchange rate actually was.

I landed in Delhi a few days later. Now, I have been a huge fan of credit cards since I started my first job, and realised that using a credit card meant I could a, earn some interest by leaving money in my bank account till it was time to pay my card bill (because Indian banks actually give you some interest), and b, I could earn reward points for all card purchases. So for me, using my credit card wherever I possibly could was a no-brainer for the one week I spent in India. And my parents are also in the incredibly privileged position of being able to decide whether they want to go to Mother Dairy and pay cash, or to the grocery store in the market and pay a little more for milk and vegetables, but be able to pay by card. But that doesn't work everywhere. You still need cash to deal with the autowallas, or the electrician repairing your iron, or the sweets shop you've been having pani puri at for decades.

And there was, quite simply, no cash.

Our neighbourhood market has branches of three different banks, and ATMs of at least another half dozen. On any given day, only one bank would have cash available in their branch and/or ATM. And you knew which one had by cash by seeing the mile long queue that would be outside. We went everyday to check, and only one day did the father manage to withdraw some cash - and only because on that particular day, the bank that had cash had opened a separate senior citizens' line, and he now qualifies for those.

If a bank didn't have cash, they also had no clue when they would have cash. They didn't know when they would receive any.

My parents and I were fortunate enough to be able to choose to use other forms of payment to a large extent. My grandmother? Not so much. She lives alone in Kolkata, and I was able to go see her for a day this time. She hasn't used a bank account in decades, and is almost entirely dependent on the cash her children give her. And so her entire savings suddenly turned worthless, till one of her children could come and swap it out for her. The woman who takes care of her is in an even worse position - she has no bank account, no ID proof to open a bank account, and therefore she has no clue what to do now.

Look, I think it's fairly obvious to anyone who knows me at all, or y'know, reads any of my rants, that I am not, have never been, and never will be a fan of Modiji or the party he belongs to. I was devastated in 2014 when he became PM, but there was also a part of me that wanted to be proven wrong about him, that he would be good for India. Simply because being right wouldn't help anyone, would it now?

When this demonetization thingummy was first announced, I thought it might be a good thing. Black money and corruption is a serious issue in India, and if this was the best way to tackle things, I was all for it. But in the weeks since, talking to people, reading various viewpoints, and quite simply, seeing how this has been implemented is leaving me completely disinclined to believe this will do any long-term good.

I can understand trying to keep this policy shift a secret till you're ready to go, so the people you're after could genuinely be taken unaware. And I'm not going to get into whether certain business houses were kept in the loop in the weeks leading up to this, because meh. But how do you not realise just how cash you would need to replace for the the average person trying to lead their lives? And plan for it accordingly? And when you realise you haven't planned things out correctly, is it really that hard to come out and admit you messed up? Instead, we have a PM who refuses to come to Parliament to listen to the Opposition, a Finance Minister who keeps repeating this is how we'll go after black money, and an RBI governor who basically came out and said something to the effect that only dishonest people were facing trouble in this new world. Yes, because every single person in Gurgaon who had no cash because the damn banks have no cash is dishonest. Thanks, you guys.

What's been equally exasperating is the way things keep shifting on you. First they said they'd accept old notes at government run hospitals and petrol pumps till December 15, then they said this only applied to the 500-rupee notes, not the 1000-rupee notes. Then on December 1, they announced this would be only till December 2, not the 15th.

What a complete shit show.

I am told things are marginally better in the week since I came back from India, but not completely. I honestly don't know how long this shortage of cash is going to continue; I do think anyone who thinks it's a matter of weeks, rather than months, is being overly optimistic.

But I would be happy to be wrong about this.

Goin' home

I went home for two weeks.

I landed at the airport, and stood outside waiting for my parents to pick me up. A car pulled up, with an older couple in the front, a dog at the back, clearly waiting for their offspring. It wasn't for me. Their son showed up and got into the car; they drove off, and my parents pulled up. For the first time since I left home, and came back to visit, the back seat was empty.

We reached home, and there was silence in the house. Excited voices chattering over each other, yes, but silence otherwise. No paws pattering (or slipping, as I used to perennially worry) on the marble floors. No deep sighs of exasperation when I got into arguments with the mother, or the brother when he showed up a week later.

I celebrated my birthday at home this year, and my parents brought out a cake and the camera and gifts at midnight. And my mother took a piece of cake and dropped it to the floor, in memory of the four-legged idiot who would go berserk on hearing the words "happy birthday" and would salivate and palpitate any time a cake was baked or cut at home, and would be the first one to be fed every time. And I looked the other way and pretended I didn't see.

We went out, and no one bothered closing the kitchen door to prevent someone from sneaking in. I did, out of habit. We came back home, and no one jumped off the sofa guiltily, or came pattering up with a wagging tail to greet me. I went down to the basement, to the father's office, and there was no one sprawled on the stairs, blocking my way. The brother went for a run every morning, but there was no one sighing patiently as he and I argued over whose turn it was to take her out.

Two days before leaving, I was sent to get the laundry, and I passed the father's white board, where he's put up post cards and magnets sent to him by his kids over the years. And next to them, was the release form he signed for her cremation, when she left us nine months ago. And I read it, and broke down. And bawled.

And I came back upstairs and my phone was playing music, and this song came on, and the silence in the house grew louder.

I went home for two weeks, and Kyra wasn't there to greet me, or sleep with her head on my feet, or eat my birthday cake, beg for food with those guilt-inducing eyes of hers, or make me go for a walk at least once a day. And the house felt so damn silent.

Bein' home

In the last 26 days, I have...

...read:

• The Mine, by Arnab Ray
• The Hunger Games trilogy
• The Godfather by Mario Puzo

For someone who has read practically nothing in the last two-three years, this is quite impressive.

...watched:

• All four seasons of Coupling
• Both seasons of Sherlock
• Both seasons of Downton Abbey, though some episodes seem to be missing from what I have procured, and also I only realised halfway through the show that it is Downton and not Downtown.
• The season finales of Community, Castle and Once Upon a Time
• Ishaqzaade
• The Avengers
• The IPL final

...eaten:

• Gol gappas and samosas at the neighborhood shop
• Genuine Indian Chinese food at a dingy street stall
• Calamari at HRC, Delhi
• Mughlai paratha at Kingdom of Dreams - could've been better, could've been worse.
• Aloo ke parathas at Jhilmil Dhaba, Karnal - with dollops of Amul butter and dahi
• Mushroom achaar and apple juice from the NAFED (now called HPMC, I think) stall at Jabli 
• Butter Chicken at Giani da Dhaba, en route to Kasauli
• Thukpa and momos in a dingy little shop in Lower Mall, Kasauli
• Chai at Ross Common, Kasauli - a charming little hotel where we've stayed when I was a kid
• Chicken rolls at Badshaah, New Market
• Breakfast at Flury's
• Pretty awesome vegetarian sizzlers in Patna's only mall
• My favorite dishes at The Monk, Gurgaon
• The mother's aloo posto, luchi-mangsho, shepherd's pie, and dosas
• The father's salami sandwiches

...visited:

• Jabli, Kasauli, and Chandigarh. With the princess in tow, because the hotel we were staying in let us bring her along, and gave us a lovely little "studio cottage" which came with a tiny kitchen where we could make her khana too
• Kolkata, to meet the grandmother
• Patna, to visit the brother

I did NOT get to:

• have Bhutta
• visit the Inayat Khan dargah in Nizammuddin for Friday evening qawwalis, followed by a meal at Karim's
• go to Kake da Hotel
• have Shorshe-bata or any of mum's fish dishes
• eat at Big Chill
• go into Delhi as much as I would've liked, or visited CP, or Khan Market, or Dilli Haat
• go swimming

It's been a good month. Short, though.

Baby steps

I slept with the lights off last night. I realise that in the grand scheme of things, this is not a very big achievement, but bear with me a bit. I slept with the lights off last night, for the first time since my apartment was broken into and ransacked a week ago.

So fine. Clearly there is something about me that makes me an easy target for robbers and thieves. Yes, I have a history of getting robbed whenever I travel to Europe. And I was devastated after the incident in Italy, and it took me a couple of months to get to a point where I stopped breaking down over every other thing.

But  there is something particularly violating about your apartment being broken into, as opposed to being robbed on the street. To have someone enter your home, go through everything you own, turn every handbag they find inside out - it is, as someone said to me on twitter, like someone forced their way into coming and looking inside your life.

I've got on with life. You don't have much of an option, after all. And I've recovered much faster than I did two years ago. I've started sleeping with the lights off.

Now to stop getting startled every time the flatmate uses her key to open the front door and come in.

Baby steps.

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.