message in a bottle (02.2003 - 09.2008)

We were supposed to wear our white physical training uniform on the day, despite whichever day of the week it was. And for a reason too. The white us made the whole school turn into an ocean of white foam.

Every year on the Independence Day, we would go to the school for an hour. Empty handed, we would march straight to the assembly area and line up for the action. To be truthful, I was never too excited about the longish speech by the principal but the rest of it was fun. Patriotic group songs by each house – Raman, Tagore, Ashoka, and Shivajee – followed the speech and then the chief guest would hoist the flag and we would sing the national anthem. Although, singing the national anthem was a part of our daily assembly at school, it was always special on days like this. The drum beat was louder, the voices were stronger; it all seemed to have a meaning for a change.

The best part came in the end. As we would make our way out of the assembly area, the teachers would hand each of us a brown paper bag with a laddoo and a samosa inside. Such happiness for us little kids.

Happy Independence Day. :]

She was exhausted by the heat and by changing multiple buses. Not a very good thing when one is appearing for a job interview, she thought as she looked around herself. The receptionist sat behind a high wooden desk, only her extremely fair face with brightly painted lips visible. The phone kept ringing non-stop. Behind the glass door that separated the reception area from the work area, she could see the regular hustle-bustle of a busy Monday morning.

There was another person waiting besides her. He was busy reading the newspaper as she sat back and scrutinized him. Around her age, this boy was dressed causally in blue jeans and an orange check shirt. And sneakers. Lines formed on her forehead as she wondered if he was here for an interview as well. But who dresses so casually for an interview? She was soon distracted by the absence of the interviewer. She had tried to be smart and had clubbed two interviews that morning. Well, it was the sensible thing to do since they were both in the same area, which was in general very far from where she lived.

As she sat there hoping for an interviewer to emerge from behind the glass door, the orange-shirted boy ruffled the newspaper, the receptionist talked on the phone, and the clock ticked. When someone did walk out from behind the glass door, the big needle of the clock had completed half of its hourly journey.

She then found herself being ushered into a meeting room with an oval table and chairs all around it. A fat wad of sheets was thrust under her nose and she was told that she had two hours to finish the test. She took a deep breath and began reading the test paper. In two minutes time, the door opened again and the orange-shirted boy walked in with a fat wad of papers in his hand. She looked up and smiled. He smiled back.

An hour had passed as she sat engrossed in writing the paper when the door opened again and another girl walked in with another fat wad of papers in her hands. She looked at the two occupants of the room but did not let her expression change at all. She took a seat as far as possible from the other two people.

There were still twenty minutes to go before her allotted two hours came to an end. Her paper was done. Almost. There was this one silly question carrying one mark that she could not figure out. Could she leave it? Leave a question unanswered when she had time! How could she? But she must hurry or else she would be late for her next interview. She looked around the room. The new girl was writing her paper and her expression was still the same as it had been when she had entered the room. She then looked at the boy. He sat across from her. In comparison to the girl, he looked much favorable. She cleared her throat and said, “Excuse me,” he looked up.

“What is the distance formula?” she knew that this was an extremely simple, and hence stupid, question and was slightly pink as she looked at him hopefully.

He looked at her for a very short moment and then said, “Oh, are you talking about question 32? But see, you do not need the distance formula. It is a trick question and the answer is there in the question itself. The correct answer is the time specified in the question. Option C.” He smiled. She gave him her fake smile in return and he got back to his paper.

What the…! Speed x Time or Speed / Time was all she had wanted to know! She had asked him a question and he had told her everything except what she had asked. Slightly embarrassed by her own impulsive query and angry at his helpful response, she ticked option C and left the room.

Back in the reception area, she handed her paper to the receptionist and thought that she should forget about this vaguely humiliating and hugely anger-provoking experience. She tried to calm herself down for the next round. After all, what were the chances that she would see that orange-shirted stranger again?

Can you guess the chances?

I was about eight years old and having the best vacation of my young life. We, folks and I, were in the hills of Pahalgam, Kashmir. Papa was there on work though, and mum being an army officer's wife was also on duty. I, on the other hand, was totally free and having a time of my life. As if the green hills and the distant snow-peaked mountains, the sounds and current of the river Lidder, the tall and dense forests of the Chinars were not enough, we were also staying in luxury tents.

So as I said, parents were busy with their respective duties, I usually was left alone to wander on my free will with a few directions and rules. One such idle sunny morning, I decided to collect the fragile mauve flowers of the great Chinar trees that surrounded our tent. I went on a trail imagining myself to be Red-riding Hood for a while until the image of big bad wolf flashed in front of me and the idea ceased to seem enchanting. After spending almost the entire morning gathering flowers, I collected them all in my frock and got them back to the tent. Now, I had to find something to do with them.

Sitting on the make-shift bed covered with pure white bed sheet, I laid down each flower carefully on the bed  and admired them. I was sure parents would be super happy to see my handy work. In the excitement, I decided to decorate our little tent. I ran about putting flowers on each table. Somewhere in the enthusiasm, I knocked a jug of water that was sitting on the dressing table. It wet the white tablecloth and ruined some of my flowers. I sighed. I did not want parents to see the mess and had to do something before them came back.

As I removed the contents of the dressing table to take the tablecloth off, I noticed a bright purple stain on the pure white cloth. I freaked. For a moment, I stood there staring at the purple stain willing it to disappear. It did not. I forgot all about my pretty flowers and decoration. Now, I had a single mission and that was to clean the stain off the tablecloth before the folks saw it. For the life of me, I could not understand how those fragile mauve flowers could have left such a bright stain! But I had no time to dwell into such matters. Mummy was, and is till date, very gentle and forgiving. Papa, on the other hand, would be most definitely classified under the category of strict fathers. Especially when it came to messing with other people's stuff. Now this tablecloth happened to be other people's stuff. We were staying in the army's tent, weren't we? Someone would see the stain and report it to who so ever cared about these things and that guy would ask papa to explain and then papa would come home and ask me! I was fucked, only I did not know the word back then.

I stood on my toes to reach the wash basin's tap and rubbed the bathing soap on the stain with all my might. But no, the stain would not go away. I tried and tried and tried again. After what seemed like hours, could have been ten minutes, I decided to confide in our orderly, as given the advantage of age, he was sure to know a way out. He helped me scrub some more and then gave up with a sigh and asked me to talk to mum.

How I passed time till noon is something that I have not understood till date. Worried about the wrath that was ready to befall me, I sat outside our tent gazing downhill at the other side of the road where my parents sat doing stuff in one of those green tents.

At last mum came. Thankfully alone. And I told her. Do you know what she said?

"Do not worry, girl. I too mistakingly got my lipstick on the tablecloth this morning. The laundry guy will take care of it. "

I then looked at my mum's face. Her lips were painted in a light shade of purple.

I totally feel like a teenager these days. An American teenager, no less. The feeling of course is as far removed from the reality as can be given that I have never been to America, and I exited teenage almost a decade ago. 

This feeling comes from my two main occupations at the moment. I have been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and reading The Princess Dairies. I know, I am not only too old for these but also too late as the years go. But as I said, these little things do not seem to matter.
 
Watching and reading so much high school drama made me think about my school days, which had very little in common with Buffy and Mia's. Yes, I too worried about exams and boys back then but I was neither a vampire slayer nor a princess of lesser-known European country bang in the middle of Italy and France. But thinking of school days, what I remember most is my close bond with those five other girls. It was strong and beautiful. I am still in touch with four them today but we have all drifted apart and have very less in common, which is very disturbing in a certain way.

Friend one: We shall call her Dolly, which happens to be her pet name. She was the prettiest girl in our class – the one with big brown eyes and thick long lashes – beautiful in every conventional way. Her dad, sadly for her, was the Geography teacher, which meant that she had to take an extra subject (Geography, duh!) in plus two and slog longer hours than the rest of us. Now Dolly was always under pressure to perform well because most kids whose parents were teachers in our school were slackers and Dolly’s dad did not want his daughter to live up to this reputation. I think this is the reason she never realized that the cutest boy in our class (who read Atlas Shrugged and Gone with the Wind during the free periods and wore songs and poetry!) had a thing for her. Not like Dolly never did anything but study. She always found the right excuse and the time to catch every movie that starred Saif Ali Khan (Ew! I know he is quite decent now but I am talking Aashiq Aawara and Yeh Dillagi days.). The rest of us laughed at her because she chose Saif over Shahrukh, but she did not care. I liked Dolly a lot; she tied up with another girl for the position of my best friend.

I remained in touch with her during my graduation days, despite us being in different colleges and then we did our PG together. Only, by then she was married and also had a kid. She used to talk about her kid during our weekend classes and then drag us along to meet him and her husband at the end of it. At 21, I did not want to spend time listening about diaper change and stuff. She is the only friend who I am not in touch with anymore.

Friend two: She was the Cool Chick, the most adventurous of us all. She always had fun things to talk about and obsessed about Shahrukh Khan when she was not balancing a P/L account. She claimed that she had never had a crush on anyone but Shahrukh Khan, and needless to say I found this very disturbing. Yes, there was a time when I thought that she would turn out to be a lesbian hiding behind the façade of SRK fandom. However, this thought was misplaced because as I write this post, she is carrying her first baby.

Friend three: She is the Surprise of our group. Yes, this girl was mostly quiet, though when she did talk she was very opinionated. Her mum was also a teacher in our school and that too of Sanskrit. If you have ever been to a school that teaches Sanskrit, you know that those teachers are the nastiest and the meanest and the strictest. Her mum was no exception. She even chided me for speaking in English in her class. Hello! How on earth am I supposed to ask someone to pass the book in Sanskrit? I can only recite shlokas and shabdroop in this language, remember? Anyhow, I digress. So this surprise used to work really hard, and laugh at us for talking about Shahrukh Khan so much. She also asked me how I could manage to top the class while all I ever did was watch movies. 

I say she is the surprise of our group because we all thought she was the kind of girl who would study literature and then get married as soon as she finished college. However, Miss Surprise went on to be faculty of French in an MNC in Bangalore. And also a mother of cute baby last year. We talk once a year now.

Friend four: She is and has always been the Housewife. Well, she got married only in 2006 and has been working for a few years now but that does not matter. Another kid of a teacher, Miss. Housewife had declared in class two that she wanted to grow up and become a housewife. So there. Things like these stick. Forever. She was one girl who despite having a teacher for a parent managed to stay normal. I never saw her whining about how her mum wants her to do better in Accounts or Math. However, she was always the one to point out where our actions rated in her Morality Chart. Yes, she had this Morality Chart in her mind. She would rate everything we said or did accordingly. So when I decided to handover a valentine day’s card that a boy had slipped into my bag to the most feared teacher, she gave me an A+. That I scarred the boy for life, however, is another story.

 Miss. Housewife recently became a mommy and is blissfully happy. I am happy for her.

Friend five: She was, is, and shall always remain the Weirdest of us all. Her knack of attracting trouble is impressive. She lived right next to the school (hence, got home first), so was always the one I called for homework when I was sick or missed school for some reason. During lunch hour, she would make us stand on our toes to peek over the boundary wall at her neighbors and tell scary stories about them. I have always maintained that she lives in a freaky neighborhood. Her happiest moment was when she got a crank call and the caller insisted that she looked like Sridevi (there has to be a limit to suspension of disbelief, right?). During our college days, she repeatedly came to me for advice on her love life (or lack of it) and when I asked her what made her think that I, who had never been on a date, could give her good advice, she blinked and said, “But you read novels.” The fact that she never did get around to talking to the guy she had a crush on says a lot about the knowledge I gained from my novels. But that does not stop her from coming to be for advice till date.

Each one of these girls was a gem of a friend, in her own way. I treasure the moments (however insane they may seem now) I have shared with them. Just because I point out their weirdness does not go to say that I was superior to them in any way. I was equally weird, with a dash of extra whims.  It is only fair I describe myself next.

Friend six: That would be me and Nerd is the only name that comes to my mind. The only time I liked to be center of attention was when the exam results were announced. I would shun every opportunity to participate in extra curricular activities like nobodies business. I would avoid talking to boys as much as I could help so that no one talked about me. (This did not help at all though. People took me to be a snob with a superiority complex and talked about me all the more.) I hung with a group of girls who always talked about Shahrukh Khan and refused to go any place where these girls were not invited. I tried very hard to be in the good books of my teachers without running errands for them, because that would make me bad in my classmates’ books. Yes, I was a people pleaser. Or maybe, still am.

I am missing Penang today, which is very odd given the fact that I have spent only a few hours on that isle. So when I shut my eyes to remember the point I want to mention in the document at hand, I see the winding road to the QueensBay mall with the ocean on one side and the skyscrapers on the other. For a moment I see flashes of extremely clean and almost hauntingly empty roads and then the terribly crowded and almost suffocating sight of the Prangin mall blinds me. After almost an hour of thinking about the day that I spent in George Town, I have decided that I will reminisce about it once and for all and then get back to my document.

---

I step into the huge building my eyes wide and breath held for a moment. No, it is not my first time in a mall, nor is this mall anything out of the ordinary; it is mostly the excitement building up inside me. I run from one showroom to the other looking at every designer item and not noticing much because I want to see it all in the designated one hour. I want to buy something just so I can remember this day – this feeling more than this day, actually.

---

It is a huge shoe store. I look around and I see so many fancy things that I cannot decide what to pick up. I look at the shiny golden belle shoes for a few moments and then look away to search for something less jazzy. I look at one pair after the other, discarding everything because I am impatient: too red, too flat, to high, to broad. Ultimately, I am pointed out a pair of black open-toe sandals that zip up at the ankle. “Gorgeous, but too expensive,” I say. “I will buy them for you,” he says and I thank him with joy, forgetting that as of last week our finances have merged and his buying is not very different from me swiping my own plastic.

---

It is post lunch time and I am browsing those endless shelves labeled ‘Fiction’ in Borders. I turn around to face the graphic novels section and marvel at those ultimate editions, neatly wrapped in sheets of cellophane paper to prevent us from finishing the book in the bookstore. A boy of around ten, his shirt un-tucked and his uniform shorts a little dirty, is going through the latest comics with great earnestness. I close the book in my hand and observe him. This is serious business for him; unconcerned with his surroundings he looks for the right issue and then moves to graphic novels to lust for those expensive items that his pocket money would probably not buy. I watch him pay at the cash counter and then walk out of the store looking content with his purchase.

---

I look out of the window of my luxury bus. Most buildings are old and remind me of the British era, except the temples. There are a lot of those, one after every ten buildings. This view undergoes a quick transformation as the bus turns from the crossroads. Now, I see huge skyscrapers and wide clean roads. This mix is what makes this town so different from the rest of the cities I visited in the last few days. When I get down from the bus in front of another huge mall, I find myself in a completely different part of the town. Here people ride on trishaws (also called bugbug) and the emptiness that I had been seeing since morning is replaced with huge crowds of locals rushing about.

---

At twilight, I stand in the queue to get back onto the ship. As I approach the port’s exit I turn around for one last glimpse of the beautiful George Town. I see an ancient white and red building; a building so very British. The green creepers making their way to the second floor add to its character. Just behind this building, I see the tall clock tower – white and blue, and ticking. I close my eyes to capture this picture and today, that is the exact picture that flashes in front of my eyes when you say the word - Penang.

I know I am a month-and-a-half late but what the heck - I want to recap the year 2007 and I will go ahead and do it right now. With pictures. Here is one important picture from each month of the year:



It started with me showing off the rock on my ring finger and ended with me dancing at mindnight with my husband. So to say the very least, it was an eventful year. But marriage was not the only significant thing that happened in 2007. It was also the year when I rediscovered my love for traveling, when I made a lot of new friends, when I fell in love with the city called Hyderabad, and of course, the year of attending a lot of wedding ceremonies. In all, it was a good year. Yes.

Milk was never my drink. Of course, as an infant when I was deprived of every thing which was remotely delicious and had to survive on that smelly-white-liquid, the ignorant child that I was, I had to drink it. But soon after I gained some sense, I shifted to better things.

The first sip of beer happened at the age of eight. We were at the officers’ mess and I was sitting in a room full of kids, a rickety television, and a VCP that had a wired remote control. The eldest kid had the remote in his hand and would skip the dialogues of “The Bridge on the River Kwai” to come to the action scenes. Bored by the bang-bang, I walked out searching for mother. Found father instead. He was seated, strategically, on a barstool next to the earthen pot with a sprawling palm plant. If father were not in the army, he would have been a teetotaler. Standing next to your commanding officer, without a glass in your hand, is harder than a civilian can imagine. So this was his strategy – sit next to a plant/washroom and at every possible opportunity toss some of the contents of your glass into the pot (flower or otherwise!)

On this particular evening, I spotted him deep in conversation with a colleague, nursing a half-full mug of forth in his hands. I walked up to him and whined about being bored and wanting to go home. Nothing happened. So I scratched his leg like an unrequited puppy. Still no attention. I raked my brains for something that would make him look at me. I dare not stomp my feet on the floor coz I clearly remembered the sharp slap that was placed on my cheek the last time I did that. On an impulse, I raised myself on my toes and made to grab the mug from his hands. To my surprise, father let it go with a sideways glance at me and a simple, “do not drop it on the floor.” Amazed and disappointed, I stood there. Tears brimming in my eyes, I looked down at my hands and saw golden liquid covered with froth. Looked up at father and saw him immersed in conversation again. I slowly raised the mug to my lips, hands shaking a little. First sip. Did not taste anything. I was simply scared. Father was right here and I was drinking out of his glass. Second sip was a mouth full. Face swollen like a balloon, I put the mug on the closest table and ran out.

Once I was outside in the lawn, I let the liquid go down my throat. It was bitter when I first ran my tongue around my mouth. But then, I tasted the aftertaste. The slightly dry, mildly bitter flavor was amazing. I liked this brew. I wanted more but damn, I was usually not so brave. This one time was a fluke.

I waited ten long years for the third sip. Really. And I waited much longer for a complete mug of beer. My own mug. That happened on one lazy April afternoon in the year 2004. But yes, it was worth the wait.

Cross-posted @ Making of a Geek

The other day I went to my college. The atmosphere and the experience can be best described as surreal. It has been many years since I finished my graduation and the building has changed a bit over the years. The students still crowd the corridors but they appear stylishly different. Ringing of cell phones is something that I do not connect with college. The oily spring rolls have been replaced by sugar coated doughnuts and Nescafe iced tea has replaced the bottled cold coffee. But some things, like attending lectures, do not change.

I sat in the last row of the classroom trying my best to blend into the environment. Girls walked in slowly; some murmuring greetings, some looking disinterested, some absorbed in themselves. The sound of chairs being pulled back, ruffling of sheets, and screeching of pens as they hurried across the lined pages of the registers taking down the notes was nothing less than what can be called déjà vu. However, what differed was my interest in the lecturer.

She stood there trying to explain the steepness of slope and the multiplier formula to the girls. In her floral kurti, colored beads hanging around her neck, she looked every bit like a Macro Economics teacher. She pushed her hair back and encouraged the girls to speak as she discussed the GDP in a closed economy. I sat there admiring her, almost in awe. The fact that I was able to solve a numerical in her class after years of gap of studying the subject is totally credited to her simplified explanations.

You can call me biased because this lecturer is my best friend but hey, it does take a lot to cover the distance from the benches of a classroom to the blackboard. And sumthn2say has covered it beautifully.