Picking a date

Pick a date, the brother says. Just pick a damn date, and I'll agree to it.

Pick a date, I said a week ago. Don't keep telling me we have to take a decision and we have to fix a date. Just do it.

Pick a date, the mother says. I need to know what we're thinking.

We need to pick a date, the father says.

Tuesday morning. The very last time my foot was used as a pillow.

We were all agreed we needed to pick a date. But no one would do it. How do you? How do you say this is the day we say goodbye to our golden retriever, the dog who's been part of our family for eleven years?

I was a month short of 17, the brother 12, when she came to us. Since then, every family decision has included her. We should go for the movie at this time, because we can give her evening meal and take a her for a walk before going. I can't spend the night with friends because she'll be all alone; come to Gurgaon so I can come back and feed her. Let's drive to Kasauli/Jaipur and find a hotel that allows dogs so she can come with us. Tell the boarding facility her likes and dislikes so she doesn't miss home. The boarding facility gave her too much chicken, and now she won't eat ghar ka khana, so now what do we do? Make the brother talk to her on the phone so she won't vomit again because he left.

In keeping with all the family discussions and decisions she provoked over the last 11 years, this one, the biggest of them all, was also done as a family. And so it was decided that yesterday was the day Kyra, my darling princess, would leave us to go to whatever doggy heaven there is out there.

The day after my last post, Kyra stopped eating altogether, and had to be put on daily drip. We cancelled our tickets to Kolkata, and for the next ten days, my only excursions from the house were to her clinic and back. Her blood was tested every few days, and the results were terrifying to say the least. At least twice we went through evenings convinced this was her last day with us, mentally preparing ourselves, only to find out the idiot was improving. In the words of her vet of ten years, she is - was - a miracle dog.

But even though some - all - of us desperately wanted to believe that these improvements meant a new lease of life for her, it was also clear that not only was this just borrowed time, but she would also be completely dependent on drip and medicines for sustenance and food. And so, after intense debate, and a great deal of tears being shed, the decision was taken on Saturday. And Tuesday - yesterday - was set as the date.

We spent her last few days with us the way she liked it best, sitting with her, taking her for drives and walks, taking lots of photos - although she was no longer as enthusiastic about modelling as she to used to be, and just being with her as a family. The brother and I took to sleeping on the floor on the parents' room at night; she managed to climb onto our mattresses a few times.

There were moments when I got incredibly frustrated by the waiting; we had taken the decision, why prolong the agony? But in the end, it was worth it, because we gave her some of her best days. When she went, on Tuesday evening, she was surrounded by all four of us, the way she loved it to be, but hadn't got enough of in the past few years.

We spent a large part of the evening reminiscing, of the good times and the more painful times. We smiled and laughed while talking of her antics, we cried - all four of us cried. Her doctor called late at night to ask how we were doing, and to remind us it had been the right decision. We knew that, but I suppose we - I - did need to be reminded, because the guilt that we may have let go too early is there, no matter how much you rationalize it.

The mother said something a few days ago that I keep going back to. Normally, when the brother and I visit home, we're off doing our own things. Going out, meeting friends, holing up in our own rooms busy with out laptops and phones. This time, this visit, we spent almost all our time in the lobby, with her, with the family. Kyra brought this family together all her life. In her last days, she did that more than ever before.

Go in peace, my lovely. May you get lots of gummy bears, chicken, photo shoots, and belly rubbing wherever you are. The house feels very empty without you.

An update on the princess

Some years ago, a former colleague asked me how old the princess was. On being told 6 or 7, she had asked "isn't it time for her to die then?"

First of all, No. Second of all, who the hell says something like that?

When I came home this past winter, the princess, now 11, looked and behaved much older. A part of me was aware and terrified that I may not ever see her again. And then, halfway through my sojourn in London, a call came from the parents telling me she had fallen terribly ill, had been taken off all forms of protein because of renal failure, and worst of all, may not make it more than a month.

To receive a call like that, to get news like that, no matter how mentally prepared you think you are, when you're a continent away from everyone you love, is the worst feeling possible.

Anyway. The princess is a tough cookie, and her vet has got through renal failure once before. And so she pulled through. There was serious concern whether my family would be able to leave her behind to come be with me for my graduation, with the father insisting he would stay back if need be, and me saying I wanted him there and that the brother should stay back if someone had to. The brother had no issues with this plan - at least, none that he vocalized. The mother was a little offended no one asked her to stay back or come, and insisted that she would be coming no matter what, which confused me a little - I mean, why would we ask her if she was coming or staying if we all knew she would be coming no matter what? Eventually of course, she recovered enough to be put into a boarding facility and the family did come to me after all.

AnyWAY. I arrived in Delhi this past Tuesday morning, after the worst 24 hours of travel, and there she was, at the airport to pick me up. She looked good, because the place she was put in really took good care of her grooming. On the other hand, it was very quickly apparent to me that her abilities to see and hear are not as good as they used to be. She's extremely picky about her khana, hasn't barked once since I've been home (not even when a friend came to visit), but has snapped at the brother a couple of times.

We took her to our vet this morning, and we got him to check her hearing. He says it's lessened yes, but isn't completely gone. Which I suppose is a blessing of sorts.

I don't quite know what's going to happen with her. But for now, I'm making the most of her presence in my life.

I was speaking to a family friend yesterday morning, who asked me if Kyra was excited that I'm home. I was explaining how she's aged and doesn't show much excitement about anything anymore, and got this is response:

"Well, you know, she's more used to your brother coming and going frequently these days and that probably excites her more. She probably doesn't care about your coming all that much anymore."

Who the hell says something like that?

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.

A cat experiment

Of the many, many things I miss about home, the princess is one of the most... missable? missed? You get the drift.

So lately, I've been contemplating getting a pet. Because much as I love living alone, sometimes you want to have someone go crazy with happiness when you come home, and dogs are so good at that - especially when they know you're going to feed them. But then I figured getting a dog isn't the most practical option, because crazy as B-school has been, once I start working, I won't be home all day anyway, and it's not fair to a dog to leave them locked up alone in an apartment for hours on end.

So then I started thinking about getting a cat. I'm told they're fairly independent, and actually like being left alone all day. But I wasn't sure if I was a cat person. So when my friend asked me to cat-sit his, well, cat for a week while he was out of town, I decided to use this time to see if I could live with a cat.

In a nutshell, no. I mean, I love this cat. Because you know, he's my friend's cat and you have to love your friends' children no matter what. But he's so... strange. He would be waiting for me at the front door every day, which okay, is a lot like the princess who I swear can hear you coming home from three lanes away. But then, this cat would roll on the floor and come run against your leg, but if you start petting him, walked away.

And well, okay, I talked to him like I talk to the princess, and I may have had to remind myself to do so in English and not in Bengali. But even when it was in English, all I got was a disdainful look of "please, can we not be so chatty?"

No, I'm really not a cat person. Maybe I should get a goldfish.

Of something that changed

She was one of the first bloggers I started following when I discovered the world of blogs and Google Reader some, what, seven odd years ago? When I joined twitter a couple of years later, she was one of the first people I looked for and started following there as well.

She was - is - a few years older than me, and since I was still a student at the time, was fascinating to me as a single, working woman. She was independent, and confident, and sassy, and open about her life and relationships in a way I never saw myself being. She wrote beautifully, and I often found things on her blog that I had been thinking about only a few days previously, articulated and thought through in a way that seemed so perfect.

I never reached out to her in any way, beyond perhaps the odd comment on her blog, or a random exchange of tweets. But her thoughts, her writing - they continued to be favorites for a long time.

And then at some point, that changed. I started finding her posts a tad too much. There was bitterness creeping into them, her brand of feminism was becoming a bit too rigid for me, her standards were becoming a bit too high for them. Her accounts of relationships made me feel glad about my continued singlehood, her seemingly increased bitterness made me realise the mother might be right about me ending up a bitter and lonely spinster. She seemed to expect too much from the people around her, and was becoming a bit too caustic for my liking.

I'm not sure if this was true, or if it had always been there and I had just mellowed off-late. But at some point in the last month, I unfollowed her on Twitter. And it was easier than I expected. I still follow her blog, but I'm not how long that will last either.

I'm not sure what prompted a whole post about her. But it feels a little like a relationship - albeit one-sided - that suddenly changed and then soured. And it feels a bit sad.

A walking-talking disaster

I'm not quite sure what's going on, but I feel it needs sharing with the world at large. In the three weeks that I have been back in Amreeka, I have:

• burned my right arm fairly badly by reaching over my electric kettle to grab a tea bag just as it was letting out ridiculously hot steam. So I now have a ugly patch right in my line of vision.
• burned my left arm slightly by touching my hot non-stick pan by mistake (No Mother, I did not tell you about this because it was not very major. Teensy, really.).
• had my right foot stomped on by some twit at a party Friday night, so that now every time I wear my rubber Bata-lookalike slippers, it hurts.
• cut my finger this afternoon while carting trays of samosas to our school's Holi celebration. That foil was sharp, man - so much so that five hours later, the bleeding still hasn't stopped.
• jerked my knee minutes later and bent it a bit awkwardly. Now this, granted, happens to me quite often enough, but coming as soon after as it did, was a bit nerve-wracking.
• UPDATE: I have just discovered that being thrown into a pool of mud this afternoon has led to some big fat scratches on the right elbow, which have now started hurting. I am never playing Holi again.

A previous period on non-stop accidents has been documented here. Maybe this is something that I am meant to go through every time I move to the US.

Nuggets from here and there

I'm in my last semester at business school (wow, time flies), and taking two classes this semester, both of which vary between being fascinating and putting-you-to-sleep boring, all within the space of two hours.

The professor in my first class today showed this video, from Louis CK's appearance on Conan O'Brien's show a few years ago. The entire conversation is funny, but the segment between 2:15 and 6:05, which we saw in class, is brilliant. Watch:

"Everything is amazing and nobody is happy" by Meowbay

True, isn't it? We take technology and all offers us so much for granted, we forget that when we were born, or even as growing up, we didn't have any of this. @_GoneNative wrote this post a while back that had a line I absolutely fallen in love with and shared here:

"My generation has had to say a lot of goodbyes in quick succession to the things we built our lives around. I have a feeling the next lot will find it easier to use & throw."

That's true, in a way, but also so sad.

And then, in my second class today, we were talking about price discrimination, for possibly the gazillionth time since school began (and I still suck at it. go figure.), and our professor shared this passage, which I think is the most beautiful description of price discrimination that I have seen in a very long time.

It is not because of the few thousand francs which would have to be spent to put a roof over the third-class carriage or to upholster the third-class seats that some company or other has open carriages with wooden benches… What the company is trying to do is prevent the passengers who can pay the second-class fare from traveling third class; it hits the poor, not because it wants to hurt them, but to frighten the rich… And it is again for the same reason that the companies, having proved almost cruel to the third-class passengers and mean to the second-class ones, become lavish in dealing with first-class customers. Having refused the poor what is necessary, they give the rich what is superfluous.

 ~ Jules Dupuit (1849), On Tolls and Transport

It's a good day, when your classes make you see or hear something that strikes a chord, that makes you think, that makes you want to share it with everyone else.

Conversations with friends

Sometimes you go for extended periods of not meeting or talking with someone and forget how entertaining conversations with them always were. Take my friend who I met this evening, for instance. I met her after a gazillion years, after two months of being in the came city, three days before I have to leave, and spent the entire three hours giggling helplessly. A sample of the numerous anecdotes she shared about her life teaching the most entertaining students in the world:

My friend: So if you do this presentation, I'll give you points towards your final grade.
Friend's student: Do we get extra points if we're smart during the presentation?
My friend: You get points if you're smart at any time during the class. {I assume at this point, her internal thinking was a big fat DUH.}
Friend's student: Really? So if we dress up well for class, you give us extra points?

I'm not too sure how my friend finally clarified that she and her student were clearly talking about two different meanings of the word smart; I was too busy cackling with laughter by this point.

Then there is the gal pal who got married a little over a month ago. Forget about the lack of consideration shown in getting married at a time when it was just not possible for me to be there (resulting in these kind of incidents: this, followed by this), but she has now decided that this is the year that I absolutely MUST find a boy of my own and get married. And this is why:

Her: 28 is our year
       I have declared it
Me: Yes Ma'am
Her: 2013
       it’s ours
      2017 is baby year
      you have no time
Me: good God
      you don't want a baby before that?
Her: well a lil planning never hurt
      well ok so if u have so will I
      we need to coordinate
Me: hehe
      you can go ahead it is okay
Her: so our kids can marry each other
Me: haan so have a boy
Her: I’m giving you 4 yrs
      no more
Me: so I can have a girl a few years later na
      she will need an older guy
Her: true that
      I’m on it

And then there are friends I haven't seen in three months and miss simply because they say the most random things which you're not sure you should be commiserating for or laughing at. Such as this:

I don't ever need to worry about wrinkles and stuff because I take after my grandmother. She had the most perfect and flawless skin. Except for the part about the skin cancer, that is.

Is it any wonder I am friends with these people?

What do you say?

Among the many social situations that make me uncomfortable, one of the worst is when someone I know, especially someone I care about, loses someone they love.

Because what do you say? What do you say that adequately conveys how deeply sorry you are for their loss, but doesn't sound like it's about you? Because that's my concern - that when someone loses someone they love, I put myself in their shoes, and feel sorry because I imagine how I would feel if I had lost someone I love. It brings alive my fears of losing the people I love. All of which makes my condolences just sound trite and selfish.

When I was 16, a classmate lost her father. A little over a year ago,my godfather lost his father. And I was at as much of a loss for words as I remembered being at 16. I asked on twitter, that fountain of support and suggestions, and got some responses. All very valid responses, but none of them made it any easier to send that email or make that phone call.

Then a fortnight ago, a professor at school who I am fairly close to lost his mother. And I started wondering again. What do you say?

I sent him an email, since I'm not in the US right now. And he replied too. But I was still left feeling that the email I sent was utterly trite and pointless.

And all of this is still about me. It's my discomfort with not knowing what to say, my inability to convey how I feel. Maybe it doesn't seem trite. Maybe it does mean something to the person I'm writing to. But I never quite know that.

A very belated "ooh it's a new year" post

Well, if blogging more regularly was to have been a goal for 2013, we can just forget all about it, can't we? If it makes things any better, this one is only 26 (well, technically 27) days late, as opposed to last year's annual recap being an entire 31 days late. Although maybe I should have just done the 40 questions deal and be done with it.

Oh well, this post's been in the works for a while, so let's see how it turns out.

For the first time in a while, I'm writing my annual year-in-retrospect post knowing - sort of - what the year ahead holds for me, and where I'll be - vaguely - this time, next year.

2012 was... strange. It had parts that sucked, it had parts that were awesome, it had parts that were utterly stressful just like 2011 but which were manageable because other stresses from 2011 went away. I seem to have lost a few very precious people, formed friendships that have helped me survive the year, and learned more about myself in the process.

A large part of the year involved a fairly irritating job search. As mentioned several times previously, I suck at the whole networking nonsense that is a necessary evil in B-schools in the Yoo Ess. Ergo, getting a job I wanted was traumatic and tough. Add to that a fairly awful living situation, a friend circle that I had more fallen into than chosen, and getting used to the whole being away from everything that is loved and familiar, my first few months at B-school - and the last few months of 2011 - had been... difficult.

2012 changed that. Like I said in last year's annual flashback post, the mother's visit over winter break bought my two worlds together, and in a way reminded me of who I am, why I had chosen to move half a world away, and what was important to me.

It was easier, after that, to hang out with the people I liked and wanted to get to know better, rather than people I seemed to have fallen in with. To take the decision to make the most of a fairly horrendous living situation for the rest of my first year, but to look at living alone for the next year.

My apartment got robbed, in February. My poor luck with international travel isn't restricted to Europe, it seems. I visited India for two weeks on a school consulting project trip in March with a group of my classmates, and got to see the country very differently. Just two days at home is woefully short, though. I got an internship - eventually. It wasn't what I would have liked, ideally, or what I  thought I wanted to do full-time, but it was something I knew would give me valuable experience and help me make up my mind about a full-time role, and so I took it.

I think I truly began to enjoy school and life in the US once that internship was secured. That last term of six weeks - I had classes I was enjoying, I didn't have to network any more, I no longer gave a rat's ass about pretending to be someone I wasn't for people I didn't give two hoots about, and I had a whole month at home coming up. I found friends I cared about, and who cared about me, who offered help when I needed it the most, and who were just... incredible.

May. I came home. I spent nearly four weeks in India, packed in quite a bit of travel and eating and reading and watching TV shows, met up with people I loved, and discovered some people didn't want to meet me. A fabulous family holiday in gorgeous Kasauli.

And then Chicago. For three months. And less than a week into my time there, one of those it-can-only-happen-to-me type incidents happened, involving my passport, a very by-the-book HR person (no wonder people don't like HR), an extremely helpful Indian consulate, and a lot of trauma and drama. I kid you not. Maybe some day a blog post all about this incident will happen.

The summer was a lot of fun, teaching me a lot, about the work I don't want to do, the things I don't do well professionally, and the kind of people you can trust. Also what a good thing it is that I am a mix of utterly stingy and impulsively extravagant.

And then I came back to school. School this year was definitely about why I had come here. The job search stress was there, yes, but it was better this year because I put to good use the one big thing I learned during my internship - it's okay to ask for help, it's okay to reach out to people - and as a result did a better job of the whole networking thing.

I was a lot more social this year - even if it was with the same people mostly. That totally counts, despite what certain friends (and readers of this blog) might say. I got my freaking driving license. I first got wait-listed for going on exchange, and then managed to get signed up for London. I learned to live alone - which is SO perfect for an introvert like me, but SO terrible for trying to be more social.

I gained back all the weight I had lost when I first got to the US, and then some. I substantially improved my tolerance for alcohol. I bought a new laptop. I started wearing dresses, and even make-up. I went to Puerto Rico with friends over fall break and had the most fabulous time doing nothing but eat, drink, and lie on the beach. I got a freaking job, one I actually wanted.

I was home for the last two weeks in December (although more passport issues made that questionable for a while), and then two weeks into the new year. The new year was brought in like old times - at home with the parents, squabbling over what to watch on TV, with some chips and coke, and gummy bears for the princess. And for the first time since moving away from home, I left without knowing when I would be back.

Some relationships were renewed and strengthened, some ties of friendship loosened. Some loved ones died, some grew old and fragile. Friends got engaged. The princess began to feel her age.

I grew comfortable with myself this year, but impatient with my life. I gave up on some people who used to be very important to me, but refused to continue to entertain those who meant nothing to me. I made attempts to be more social - even hosting my first Diwali get-together ever - but stuck to staying in when I really wanted to.

All in all, it was a good year, 2012 was. And 2013 holds good things. Two months in London, two months back in school before graduation, a summer of who-knows-what, and then back to the working world.

Yes, good things lie ahead. Mostly. I think.