On distractions

The mother is a strong believer in the power of distraction. When the brother and I would start squabbling in the back of a car as kids, she would suddenly say excitedly:

Look at all those trees! Let's count how many we go past!

Or:

Why don't we count how many Maruti 800s we pass on the road?!

Quite a few, as it turns out, when you were driving in Delhi in the 1990s. So by the time we got bored of counting, we would have forgotten what we were fighting about, or even that we were fighting at all.

The brother and the sister-in-law visited me this past weekend, and at some point the three of us got into a heated debate over something while waiting for our desi Chinese takeout to be prepared. I can't remember what we were arguing over, but it was quite clear the three of us were not going to agree anytime soon. And suddenly my brother turns to his wife and exclaims:

Look at all those red lights! Let's count them!

His wife stared at him utterly confounded, as I burst out laughing. By the time she understood what her husband had been trying to do, an entirely different argument looked likely to erupt.

Luckily for my brother's life and marriage, our food was pronounced ready at that very opportune moment.

Where The Flash reminds me of The West Wing

A dozen posts have been written in the past few weeks - all in my head, of course. And as expected, none of them made to the interwebs.

And before we proceed, allow me to say there are perhaps spoilers ahead, so proceed with caution.

So. I'm watching this week's episode of The Flash, and there's a scene where Joe West gives the watch his father gave him to Barry Allen, saying he always wanted to give it to his son. Now, Joe has a daughter, and as it now turns out, a son as well. But the watch his father gave him must be given to the boy he brought up as a son.

And this episode reminds me of an episode from one of my favorite shows - The West Wing. I love that show, and I watch it over and over. That show is why my list of new shows to watch keeps growing longer and longer, because I just keep going back to that show.

But just because I love The West Wing doesn't mean I'm blind to its flaws. Like just how chauvinistic it is. The brother sent me an article about the show several months ago, and my response was this:

I don't see why the word secretly is in there. Anyone who doesn't admit Aaron Sorkin is an asshole and a sexist and an utter douchebag is an idiot. 

That article is spot on about everything, by the way. Especially the fact that CJ Cregg would never have become Chief of Staff if Aaron Sorkin hadn't left the show after the fourth season.

AnyWAY. Why this episode of The Flash reminded me of The West Wing. There is an episode in the second season, I think. It's Thanksgiving, and Bartlet has Charlie running around trying to find the perfect carving knife. After several rounds of this, Charlie discovers Bartlet already has a knife and exasperatedly asks why he needs another. And Bartlet says it's because he's giving it away - to Charlie. Now, this knife - a Paul Revere knife, which apparently means something - has been handed down the generations in the Bartlet family.

Now, here's my thing. Joe West has a daughter, but in all fairness, he brought up Barry, and so calling him his son who deserves this watch his father gave him is... okay. Sorta.

But. Bartlet. The man has THREE daughters. THREE. And, at this point in the show, has known Charlie for just about one year. ONE. Compared to TWO DECADES of having three daughters.

Tell me Sorkin isn't an asshat.

Flashes and flashbacks

Like with most things I am terrified of, I can pinpoint the exact moment lightning began to scare the bejesus out of me.

I was in my early teens, and the mother used to teach in a school that ended a good hour after the brother and I got home. So as the responsible elder child, I was in charge of making sure the brother and I changed after getting home, ate our lunch, and (ideally) started on our homework by the time she got home. Which of course meant that we would get home, put on the TV, dawdle over our lunch, and then squawk and change five minutes before she would actually get home. (Oh, like you didn't know this, Ma.)

Good times.

Anyway, one afternoon, we were having our lunch while watching TV. I can't remember if a storm was already ongoing, or if it sprung up out of nowhere, but I do remember that our sofa was against the windows, and the TV screen faced the balcony door. And that it got darker as the afternoon progressed. And suddenly, out of the blue, a streak of lightning flashed across our TV screen, all the way from across that long living room of ours. And I'm pretty sure I grabbed my poor younger brother and screamed.

Not so good times.

I love rain, and I'm quite fond of thunderstorms. But lightning, to put it bluntly, frightens the crap out of me.

Last night, as I left work, after hearing about tornado warnings coming and going in various parts of the city, I looked up at the sky and saw lightning continuously flashing in the sky several miles away. In the direction I was headed. A part of my brain said it looked a lot like when the particle accelerator exploded on The Flash, but the rest of my brain kept having flashbacks to that afternoon all those years ago.

Of retrievers and their focus

There's a video that's sorta gone viral over the last couple of days that had me cracking up the first time I saw it.

That dog knows what he wants, he does. And he reminds me of another dog, another golden retriever, who was just as single minded and focused about what she wanted.

One of my fondest memories of Kyra is this one evening when we had gone out, and got really late coming back. Kyra hadn't been given her evening meal because we weren't home to take her for her walk, so we had called to say we were five minutes away and that she could be fed. We walked in the door to see my poor ravenous princess furiously gobbling her meal, but at the same time, so thrilled to hear us walk in that her tail was literally (yes, I used it, go away) spinning with joy as she ate. But only when she finished eating did she turn around to come jump at us. She had her priorities, she did.

My princess wasn't quite aware of the fact that she was supposed to be a retriever, you know. When you threw something for her to, well, retrieve, she would run like crazy after it, pick it up, and then sit down to chew on her new treasure. So over the years, we came up with a new game. We used two toys, and when she would pick up one and sit down with it, we'd promptly throw the other. And Kyra would drop her first toy and run and pick up the second, at which point we'd throw the first toy again. Rinse. Repeat. But boy, was she focused on whichever toy she was running after.

The brother will tell you the princess was one of the most emotionally intelligent dogs to ever walk this planet. All I have to say is, there are retrievers, and there was, well, our retriever. The best dog in the world.

Certain members of my family may also point out that my use of the word "we" in this post is somewhat misleading. I will have you know I ventured into the outdoors at least once a year with her, thank you very much. Sometimes even more often. So there.

Parental conversations

Conversations with and about my parents over the past few months.

The mother: Why are you coming now if I can visit you in a few months?
Me: Umm, you do realize you're not the only reason I like to come to India?
*offended silence*
Me: There are other people and places in my life, you know...
The mother: I got it after the first line, you know.

************

Me: So I renewed my lease for a year.
The mother: But... what if you finally meet someone?
The father: One of them can always sublease or something.

************

Me: It's really sad how awful my Hindi and Bengali is. Even the brother speaks better Hindi than me now.
The father: All of that may be true, but you have the best understanding of lyrics to Bollywood songs out of anyone in this family.

I felt so proud and validated.

************

The brother: What are you getting Baba for his birthday?
Me: He sent me his usual email of what he wants.
The brother: I didn't get this. What was on it? Was it for everyone?
Me: No, I get one every time I visit home. Things to work on - my health, my temperament, my ambition, the way I talk to people...
The brother: Oh. Are you doing any of that yet?

************

The father: You've been silent these past few days.
Me: Umm no, I Skyped with your wife almost every night.
The father: Oh. I wasn't informed.
[less than an hour later]
The mother: You can call your father, but not reply to my whatsapp message?

Competition nahi hain, bhai.

************

The father: So my eye surgery's on the 14th...
Me: Oh good, you finally got around to scheduling it.
The father: Yeah... but I need to talk to the doctor if it makes sense.
Me: If what makes sense?
The father: If I should have eye surgery after I've been up all night watching the World Cup final.

Of ants, souls, and stories that stick

When I was a kid, we lived across from a park, and often walked through when returning home from friends' houses, or the market. There were a lot of ant hills in this park, and I don't quite remember what prompted this, but my mother once told me that these ant hills are the homes of ants, and if you knock any of them over, even by mistake, those ants will hunt you down, and destroy your house. I don't think my mother was quite as graphic as this, and I have never bothered to find out if this is a true fact, but even today, some 20+ years later, I choose not to step on any ant hills should I see one, thank you very much.

When my brother was a kid (and I therefore a somewhat older and wiser kid), we visited the Kali Mandir in C R Park (and while looking up its exact name, I discovered it has a Wikipedia page all of its own). The brother and I were bored while the parents did their chatting-with-God thing, so I told the brother that the stones which have names written on them (dedicated by families of people who have died) have the souls of said deceased individuals trapped inside them. And therefore, while we need to walk all around the temple while waiting for the parents, we need to make sure we don't step on any stone that has a name on it. And so we did.

Some ten-odd years later, with the brother now a teenager, we visited Kali Mandir again. A lot more stones had been dedicated by now, resulting in hardly any blank stones left. I watched my brother stand in one spot and try to figure out how to go anywhere in the temple complex without stepping on the souls of some poor departed-from-this-world individual.

Whenever I go home next, I want to drag him there and see what he does at the age of 23.

Kiddo

A long, long time ago, he used to be scared of snakes. 

One morning, the four of us went out for brunch. It was a holiday, and just an hour back, I had tied a Rakhi on his wrist, despite the mother's annual grumbling that it wasn't really a Bengali festival. We were crossing the road to the restaurant when a snake charmer approached us. My kid brother, who was already itching to take the rakhi off, grabbed my arm and whispered, "Didi, can you just protect me today from that snake? I'll take care of you after this."

He's the complete opposite of me, the brother. He's reserved, practical, and inexpressive. I'm... none of the above. But then out of the blue, there'll be an email or a gift that will make me all emoshunal, just like that.

I used to bully him when we were kids. We played our own version of the Crystal Maze, he was my unwilling student in countless sessions of Teacher-Teacher, half his birthday gifts were automatically declared to be mine, and numerous other things I would rather not tell you. Then one day, he grew up, and wisened up. And now I go to him for advice, and he acts all wisdomous and all.

He left for the US for his undergrad studies on 24th August 2007. Rakhi that year was on 28th August. I broke down that day, because I had never spent Rakhi away from my kid brother. I sent him a rakhi and a card that year. Five months later, he came home for winter break. Suddenly, in the midst of all the animated catching up, he looked at me and said, "oh, wait." He pulled out his wallet, handed me the rakhi I had sent him, and asked me to put it for him. By the time we woke up the next morning, of course, it was hanging from his cassette rack on the wall, where most of his rakhis over the years landed up.

Last year, we exchanged countries. He went back to India after graduation, and I came to the US. I spoke to him an hour back. I told him we were discussing siblings at dinner tonight, and I had told them about Rakhi, and of this incident. He responded, "oh? I did that?"

*eye roll*

He thinks my blog is quite silly, so it's unlikely he'll read this post. But I just wanted to say, again, I love you kiddo. Despite the fact that you save my number under Duddo rather than Didi on your phone.

What, man?

The mother and her younger brother have an age difference of about 7 years between them. One afternoon, when she was in college, the two of them were at the bus stop, waiting for a bus to take them home and away from the rain. A guy, standing nearby, kept staring at my mother. My uncle, at age 11 or 12, took offense and walked up to the guy and said, "What, man? Can't you see it's raining?"

Decades later, I was in my early teens when the brother and I were making our monthly visit to B.C. Roy's Children's Library in the car. I was sitting in front, giving a last read to the book I was about to return, and didn't really notice when we stopped at a traffic light. When the car started again, my 8-year-old brother piped up from the back seat, "Why were those men in the bus staring at you, Didi?" I shrugged and said I didn't know. "Well, I glared at them and then they stopped."

Protectiveness clearly runs in this family.

I can never say or hear the words "what, man" without bursting into giggles.

After the rain...

Was going through unpublished drafts of old posts, and came across this one which started sometime in 2007:

Have you ever gone to your front gate after it's stopped raining and looked at those droplets of water that hang from the grill? Have you ever tried to take them onto your finger and balance them there for as long as possible?

My brother's friend was having lunch with us recently, and he was rather bewildered at the debate my brother and I were having over our individual reasons for enjoying filling ice trays. Personally, I love seeing the way the water cascades over the squares while you keep pouring the water in just one spot. I think it's just fascinating.

The brother had some other very elaborate reason for loving filling ice trays, which I can't now remember. I do however remember the bewildered look on his friend's face, and his "But... they're just... ice trays."

I was on the phone with the best friend yesterday, and our topic jumped from serious topic to frivolous jokes, and back to serious issues, with the same ease a gazelle displays while prancing around.

I miss having such random conversations. There are very few people you can have them with.

The essentials

I have a #genuinekoshchan, as they say on twitter, for the menfolk today. And to be absolutely fair, I also pose it to the women who will not identify with what I am going to ask.

How, in the name of all that is holy, do you people manage without handbags? To take off from what Shwetha wrote on her blog some time back, there are things that are essential and must be carried everywhere.

I'm known for my penchant for big handbags. I have, in my defense, tried buying smaller purses in the effort to look more formal or some such thing, but the things just don't fit in! There's my wallet (which in itself is fairly bulky), my keys, my little pouch which holds all the various loyalty cards I have (and as I've mentioned before, I have a lot), the case which holds both my glasses and my sunglasses, tissues and hand cleanser, and basic medicines which I always carry around. If it's the monsoon I carry a little umbrella with me, if it's winter a teeny-weeny bottle of moisturizer, and if I'm headed to work or for meetings, then I usually have a note pad and a pen. Sometimes there's a book. There's also the little Ganesha statue my mum gifted me which I carry. My phone and its earphones are usually in my hand anyway because I use it to listen to music - assuming I know where my earphones are, they are currently missing, does anyone want to gift me a pair?

I change my bags often, and each bag has a bunch of miscellaneous stuff anyway - old movie tickets, earrings I was wearing and took off because they hurt, the receipt from a restaurant or the NH-8 toll gate, the last eyeliner I lost. But the essentials listed above - those I move from bag to bag.

So tell me, how do you manage without all that? I mean, even if I'm going to a shaadi and am forced to discard my nice handbags, I usually have a tiny purse with the phone, some cash, and mayyyybe an eyeliner and/or lipstick to be on the safe side - because you know, we're girls and we need to use/carry these things blah blah blah. And if the car is there, I leave a handbag with everything else in the car!

Most of the guys I know roam around with just their wallet and their phone*. I used to stare open-mouthed at these girls in college who could come with one register and a tiny clutch purse which wasn't even big enough to carry their car keys and their phone. Well, they also wore heels to college, know full well that that was just a disastrous idea given the cobbled paths we had, but that's besides the point. My point is, don't you need all this stuff?

*This may be a good time to point out that the brother is not like that. He perpetually needs music and a book and so carries a jhola everywhere he goes. Very shmart the brother is.