message in a bottle (02.2003 - 09.2008)

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?

Before I opened my eyes in the morning, I took a moment to decide whether it will be a happy morning or otherwise. I could hear the cool breeze and the rhythmic flutter of the curtain against the open window. It was surely going to rain but I need not worry, I do not have to go to office today. Happiness index rises.

I do not have to be at work because I am down with chicken pox. Happiness index dips rapidly by three points. But I can sleep in. Index rises one point. I turn over and sleep some more.

Around 9:30 am, I decide to have a bath. Bathing is not easy when you have the pox. You have to be careful not to touch those boils at the wrong place, but you still have to gently scrub the lotion from last night away. It takes long to take a bath.

Eat a lot of delicious food and make it healthy too are the instructions from the mothers. Who wants to cook delicious food for oneself? Not I. I usually eat three square meals. Dinner is the healthiest because husband is around to monitor it.

I work from home. Sit on the drawing room couch, my laptop placed on my lap, looking out at the greens of woodlands from my window every now and then. The rain comes often. It plitter-platters for a few minutes and then the sun shines again.

I sometimes read my book or take a short nap. And I wait. I wait for the pox to disappear. I wait for the husband to come home. I wait for the rain to come again.

Saving is a great habit. Hunting for cheaper alternatives and bargains is the birth right of every Indian but when it comes to footwear – never compromise. Money spent on a good pair of shoes is investment. In the name of healthy feet that bear the burden of your person, please never buy cheap shoes. Thank you.

I have a tendency to crib about small things without paying any special attention to my words. I cannot remember clearly but I am sure this is what must have happened a month or so ago.

I returned from my workplace in Hyderabad, which is very conveniently located only 2.5 km from my extremely comfortable house. I picked up some veggies to go with the pasta I planned to cook for dinner. An hour later the husband walks in and we sit down with a tall glass of juice each and discuss which movie we want to watch tonight. Somewhere in between the movie, the pasta, and the time for bed, I go "my life is so mundane. I wake up, go to work, come home, play a game, and sleep. Then I start all over again."

The husband must not have paid attention to this meaningless crib but someone else did. He who knows it all decided to give me a taste of a non-mundane life. Yes, this is what must have happened to my extremely comfortable and predictable life until last month.

In less than fifteen days, I wrapped up my life from Hyderabad, said my b-byes and flew to Delhi. In Delhi, I packed some more, said hurried b-byes to some more friends, discussed life and priorities with family and my boss and then flew to Singapore. Once here, it took exactly five hours for my Singapore-is-a-fun-city bubble to burst. The city is still what it was eight months back when I first visited it but my perspective has changed. Then, I was a happy tourist willing to spend my dollars on awesome toys, comics, books, and oh-so-hot dresses. Now, I am a lost soul searching for a house and a job in a foreign land. Yes, this is what you get for speaking without paying attention to your words.

Life is not bad right now. In fact, at the moment, it is pretty good. We have been put up in a very fancy service apartment, which is bang in the middle of the most happening section of the city. I begin my mornings with a swim in the wonderful pool surrounded by palm trees and yellow umbrellas. I sit in Starbucks and make posts on LJ during the day. I walk around soaking in a very different culture. I marvel the joys (and disappointments?) of this materialistic world of shopping malls. But in between these activities, I contact a thousand agents to fix up viewings for a house to be rented, research the job market of Singapore, and worry. A lot.

But this time, I know better than to crib. :)

I am now in a huge shopping mall of a city, where people do not believe in laughing much. Yes, I am not kidding you. I have been here four days and I have not seen a single person on the road smiling. That has to be odd, right? I mean you have bags full of goodies from Prada and Gucci in your hands, did that purchase not make you happy at all?

Singapore - a city I had fallen in love with instantly when I came here on a short trip last year. It is amazingly clean, there is rain all the time, has disciplined  traffic, is extremely fashionable and super cosmopolitan, also has a beach! But this time it was different. Let me begin from the beginning.

So I toppled and slept in the flight after a drink of Bailey's Irish Cream and when I woke up the hostess was already collecting stuff and readying us for the landing, so far so good. After landing, like a couple of headless chickens, we hurried to the currency conversion counter and got a pre-paid card for the phone -- folks to be called up immediately as per orders. By the time we made our way to the conveyer belt to collect our luggage, everyone else had already cleared up. So we picked our suitcases and headed out. The apartment turned out to be a good twenty - thirty minutes drive from the airport. We checked in and I jumped around in glee on seeing the luxuries that welcomed me for the next one month. I knew I would ultimately find something to worry about even in this duration but right now, I was happy. The bubble lasted exactly thirty-seconds and then our luggage came up. Only one of the suitcases was not ours. I freaked. The husband freaked. Called up the airlines and headed back to the airport. After a good ten minutes of "what next?" we bumped into the party who had picked up our luggage by mistake. Exactly similar suitcases, what are the chances? Pretty high, considering this has happened to me once before as well.

Since then I have been roaming the streets in awe of ultra slim girls with flawless skin who never show a hint of a smile. I like what I see but I have a strong feeling that there is a lot still hidden from me. This city is definitely not as embracing as the last one was, but I am hoping I will warm up to it somehow. After all, it does drizzle all the time here and there is this fantastic pool in the apatements. I should go out buy myself a swimsuit now. I promise to keep you posted about my explorations and adventures with food.

Breezy mornings, and waking up on the call of the idli vendor;

Mad traffic, overcrowded autos, and walking down to the workplace;

Tall buildings, silent bays, glass pane and the view of red treetops;

Random lunches, grocery shopping, and experiments in the kitchen;

Unclear multilingual conversations, then watching regional movies to decipher those;

Exploring cuisines and eateries, to get over the disappointment of the houseful board;

 

Lazy weekends with friends and films, sipping soda in that dark room;

Calling home all the time, and forgetting bills that needed paying;

Walking home with a friend, or with some music;

The moments, the places, the habits, the people - will all be missed.

Can I please replace milk with olives in my diet? Pretty please?

It was almost like being back to school – three days of the week that just went by. Great part was that I was enjoying the training. Maybe if I pick up a subject that I really enjoy, I could go back to school for a while. It would be nice. And I think I can afford it, especially now that I have a husband who can pay the bills. Okay, that was a cheap shot but so what?!

So, do you know of Victor Frankl? I did not until I attended last week’s training. I still do not know a lot about him but I know a small something which is enough for me to think of him as a hero. While Frankl was in Nazi concentration camp, he discovered that the choice is always yours to make. When Nazi made him undergo humiliating and inhuman experiments, he decided to choose his reaction to those actions. He survived them and maintained his sanity all through. This made me thing if those moments when I feel awful because getting tickets to a certain movie is not in my control or when I am unable to plan a vacation due to circumstances out of my control. I have been living with the belief that I am a product of my circumstances, which is untrue. I am a product of my choices.

So while we are on the subject of heroes and idols, I realize that I want to become like Celine from Before Sunset. Yes, I know she is a fictional character. Yes, I also know that she is pretty confused and slightly depressed, but hey, I never said I want to be her – I want to be like her. I get to choose what I like and what I don’t like even in my fictional idol, right?

This reminds me that it has been ages since I talked about movies and books on this journal. Strange! There was a time, not so long back, when all I talked about here used to be movies and books. And food. Food was usually accompanied by tempting pictures. Let me correct my folly and talk about my favorite reads from last few days.

I just finished reading Bone - a grand comic book with amazing art in black and white, a brilliant story and fascinating characters. Written by Jeff Smith, it is a story of adorable creature called Fone Bone, Bone being the species of cuteness with huge noses. Fone Bone and his magnificent adventure that introduces him to princess and queen of the lost city, makes him friends with huge red dragons, tiny leaf-like bugs, hairy baby monster, and makes him fight a war against locusts, huge army of veiled humans called stick eaters, big hairy rat-monsters, a humongous mountain lion, and lots of other weird fellows.

Another beautiful graphic novel I recently finished was The Absolute Sandman – Volume 1. Written by the charming Neil Gaiman, this is a collection of 20 stories about Sandman – the lord of the dreamland. This is what can be classified as dark fantasy that blends age-old myths with the modern day life. It is one of those hard-to-put-down collections with splendid art and vivacious use of colors. I found myself glued to it for weeks though because the beautiful hardcover ensures that I cannot carry it with me. You sit down on your comfy yellow beanbag and read this book, turning each page with care. It is a collector’s item – most definitely.

In between the fat comic books like Bone and Sandman, I picked a couple of issues of Scott Pilgrim by Bryan Lee O’Malley. Scott is a twenty-something boy living in Canada with a gay roommate. Since he is between jobs and broke, he shares everything that his roommate has, including the bed. He begins with dating a high-school girl but soon moves on to a mysterious chick with seven evil ex-boyfriends. His life is crazy, Scott’s. And reading about it, awesome fun. The life story of Scott comes in four issues and sadly, I have only three. Issue one, two, and four. You nice soul living in the US, do you not feel like hunting for the third issue in your local bookstores and mailing it to me? Yes, yes? Oh, thank you so much. =)