I wonder...

Like in past, my present halat is best summarized by this beautiful song. Except the part about driving a car, fast and far, because I'm still not allowed to!

Lemon Tree
By Fool's Garden

I'm sitting here in the boring room
It's just another rainy sunday afternoon
I'm wasting my time
I got nothing to do
I'm hanging around
I'm waiting for you
But nothing ever happens and I wonder

I'm driving around in my car
I'm driving too fast
I'm driving too far
I'd like to change my point of view
I feel so lonely
I'm waiting for you
But nothing ever happens and I wonder

I wonder how
I wonder why
Yesterday you told me 'bout the blue blue sky
And all that I can see is just a yellow lemon-tree
I'm turning my head up and down
I'm turning turning turning turning turning around
And all that I can see is just another lemon-tree

I'm sitting here
I miss the power
I'd like to go out taking a shower
But there's a heavy cloud inside my head
I feel so tired
Put myself into bed
While nothing ever happens and I wonder

Isolation is not good for me
Isolation I don't want to sit on the lemon-tree

I'm steppin' around in the desert of joy
Baby anyhow i'll get another toy
And everything will happen and you wonder

I wonder how
I wonder why
Yesterday you told me 'bout the blue blue sky
And all that I can see is just another lemon-tree
I'm turning my head up and down
I'm turning turning turning turning turning around
And all that I can see is just a yellow lemon-tree
And I wonder, wonder

I wonder how
I wonder why
Yesterday you told me 'bout the blue blue sky
And all that I can see, and all that I can see, and all that I can see
Is just a yellow lemon-tree

I Arrive...

* This was written on a round trip from Delhi to Gwalior last year.
** The guy in the photo is not me.

Train journeys are all about possibilities.

I take one, towards the end of December last year from Delhi to Gwalior. My train, Bhopal Shatabdi, is scheduled to leave at 7.10 on a wintry morning and I leave from home at 6.30, running late as usual. During the ride from home to station on an auto-rickshaw, I realize it’s been quite a while since I took a train journey, and that my mother was right about wearing that extra sweater as icy winds slapped me in the face for my folly.

At 7’o clock, I was running through the quieter-than-usual New Delhi Railway Station, cursing Bhopal Shatabdi for leaving from the farthest possible platform. Anyways, I board the train in the nick of time, catch my breath and take my seat next to the window. I look out at a platform bathed with white light. The scene comprises of dozens of families stretched out on the floor in various stages of rest and slumber. The train starts with a jerk, and a group of middle-aged ladies sitting nearby start muttering silent prayers. A big yellow board at the edge of the platform proclaims in bold black letters ‘NEW DELHI. Height above mean sea level: 216m’

Train journeys are all about possibilities. I think of it as a change in state. When you arrive, you are no longer the same person who departed. You can make new friends en route, or find old enemies; you may get diarrhoea from eating stale cutlets or jaundice from drinking contaminated water. And, dare I say it, you might even discover love. Sitting there in seat no. 17 of coach C4, I discover my love for Chai-Parle-G Biscuits.

I reflect on the year that has gone past. I graduated and entered the real world, a world that is as enticing as unforgiving. I fell in and out of love thrice, a record low. I had a taste of a life totally foreign to me, and got hooked to it. I finally learnt to cook, including world-class pasta in Arabiatta sauce. And I was rounding off the year with something very close to my heart.

I have always loved train journeys. As a kid, every time my family took a train journey, I was allowed to buy a comic or two for the journey. Though I have strolled past the days of lapping up Nagraj and Super Commando Dhruv, I still feel there is something romantic about train journeys. While flights seem more business-like, trains are kind of rustic and charming. In the movies, you see the hero and the heroine singing songs, dancing on the roof of the train, while other passengers, who would have probably haggled over reservations a little while earlier, leaving their berths and dancing to their cue. You never see that sort of a thing on an airplane, do you? And when in air, you remain immersed in your iPods, laptops and seat-belts, impervious of your surroundings, apart from occasionally glimpsing outside to see that serene carpet of clouds. In a train, however, you can see everything - the lush green fields, barren lands, sparkling streams, sleepy towns… You move your feet to the sound made by the train when it crosses a bridge. You recount that Sonia-Vajpayee-Lalu Prasad Yadav joke when the train goes through a tunnel. You quibble with vendors over moofali and ward off flirtatious eunuchs.

My train of thought is broken by a sheepish voice making an announcement, as the train slows down. A yellow board announcing ‘GWALIOR. Height above mean sea level: 212 m’ passes by. The train passes through a slum colony lining the edges of the railway tracks. I see half-naked children with distended bellies running along the train, waving. I smile and wave back. After racing for almost a minute, their legs betray them and they are left behind as the train slowly marches on. They stop in their tracks, and emit a shrill cry of thrill, jumping and clapping their hands in elation. Seeing their spirit and joy, I am filled with a vague feeling of bliss. And a vague sense of purpose. And in that moment I realized why after all train journeys meant so much to me.

After days of brooding over my return, seeing India and its lush green fields, barren lands, sparkling streams and sleepy towns weave past my window, I finally feel that connection again.

There and Back again...

Once upon a time, there was a chicken who lived in a dusty little pen with his family. The chicken was very inquisitive by nature and, though he was very proud of his pen, he always wanted to take flight and reach beyond the fence, to see the entire farm with his eyes.

One day, the chicken woke up to find all the birds and animals gathered in the field. On going closer, he saw a duck called "Professor", quacking to everyone around him about his pond. The chicken was really impressed by the duck and the way he quacked and asked him if he could accompany him to explore his place. The duck agreed and together they left for the west.

On reaching the pond, the little chicken couldn't believe what he saw. The ducks had pushed back the waters to make some land where they could bathe in sun. Everything was so neat, clean and green. The ducks were really nice to him and so were the other birds. The females, called the "chicks", were so much prettier too. He made loads of friends and discovered many wonderful things.

"Professor" asked the chicken to make an "Ultra Low-Power Cardiac Sense Amplifier", to which the chicken gladly agreed. He was having a lot of fun, doing his work on weekdays and "birdwatching" on the weekends. Every now and then, his friends took him to the brewery and slurped the liquid they called "high-without-fly". They also showed him some kind of grass, which made them act like cuckoos!

Everything was going great till the time chicken realised he had to fly back to his pen. He finished the amplifier, bid farewell to everyone and left for his trip back. Though he felt guilty about it, he wished he could stay there forever. Last three months were the best three months of his entire tiny life, and he felt a little sad going back to his noisy little bird-cage, in a pen littered with bull-faeces.

Though settling down in a foreign land was tough, this journey back from the unknown to known has been a lot harder than I ever expected.

The Salsa Story

Its 2 o clock in the night, and I am up writing this stupid post for a group of vella people to enjoy it the next morning. But I can't help it. A bloody mosquito has been buzzing his ass off, making short work of my sleep. A sudden thought: if I was granted a magical wish, I'd wish for this mosquito to be larger, so that I could snap its beak or whatever and stick it into its ass. But then I thought, it wasn't really a bright idea. Firstly, I'd have to dispose its body after fulfilling my sadistic fetish(s). And it might not be that easy after all, snapping its beak or whatever and sticking it into its ass. And imagine having one magical wish and spending it on mosquito enlargement. How crazy would that be!


So I am sitting here, now hoping for a magical wish, in any case and muttering curses to that noisy bastard. In the meanwhile, I decide to write something about my last few days, which have been a bit more than interesting -


A month into my intership, and life takes an interesting turn!

I was coming back from the cafeteria after having some bad self-cooked lunch on a monday morning. So obviously I wasn't in the best of moods and started cribbing about my nearly non-existent social life, in what I was told "The Land of Actual Opportunities", to Vaibhav, a skinny PhD guy who is growing a beard in order to look like Tom Cruise, I dont have a clue how (though apart from that, he is a pretty cool guy). We are walking towards the EWI building and and I spotted a poster. It had some gibberish in Dutch, but what caught my eye were two words-Party and Gratis. Gratis means Free and it was one of the first words I learnt here. You can all guess why.

Well I dont know how it works for other people, but a sudden surge of hope always makes me do the "John Travolta Walk on Staying Alive". And thats what I did, much to the consternation of the nearby people.

Anyways, I made it to my lab without creating any furore. And there I checked out what it was really about. SoSalsa, a society for salsa enthusiasts, was organizing a week of salsa parties. It sounded perfect. But there was one small glitch - I just dint know how to do salsa.

To be continued...

Wash 'n' Wipe : Fighting the early morning b"loo"s

The previous two posts were reportedly a bit solemn and against the spirit of the blog, so I am writing this one just to "wash" away the sobering effect.

Though I had been anticipating it, the gravity of this issue "pressed" on me when I woke up to my first morning in Delft. I pondered hard about this while brushing my teeth, and a realization zipped past me that millions of people must have scratched their heads to find the perfect solution to bridge this fundamental divide between civilizations, this irreconcilable difference between those who wash and those who wipe. I also realized that probably this is what the "American Born Confused Desis" were afterall confused about. To paraphrase Kipling -

East is Lota, West is TP,
And never the twain shall meet
Not even when both stand presently,
at God's great toilet seat

Something inside signaled me to hurry up. I summoned my creative faculties & some coffee and immediately got down to the task at hand.

Ofcourse, paperwork was a completely unacceptable option. Because you know that you could wipe and wipe till, mixing metaphors and anatomy, you are blue in the face but you'll still be a dirty bum. I had to be true to myself and my ablutionary identity.

After 10 minutes of "brainstorming" and several inspection visits to the site, when no fool-proof epiphanies presented themselves to me, I resorted to Google - the nanny whom you reach for everytime you are in trouble and need a quick answer. I tried searching for signs of any trails my predecessors followed to their road of redemption. and then there they were...

I was amazed by the creativeness of people that spanned across religions and nationalities. A plethora of ingenious tricks and postures were advocated, including pumice, bottles, cups and even shoes! I'll give out the ones that i found to be the most interesting ones.

One sore-pressed soul came up with what might be described as the 'Ganga solution': take a purificatory bath each time you go to the loo.

The suggestion, however, has inbuilt impracticalities. For one thing, many bathrooms don't have showers but bathtubs, filling which is an awkwardly time-consuming exercise, with your host wondering what on earth is taking you so long in there, and an impatient queue of fellow guests building up outside the door. Moreover, immersion in the stagnant water of a tub merely means a redistribution of ritual and other pollution rather than its elimination.

Another recommended the use of one's shoe as a receptacle to convey water from the tap to the site of application. True, you'd have to walk around with one wet shoe. Still, better squelchy toes than an icky bottom. But what if you're wearing open-toed slippers or sandals?

As for me, I finally zeroed onto one particular solution and improvised it a bit according to the given loo. After having performed the whole maneuver successfully, I felt like coming off age. I could now proudly say with a click of the tongue - "Yep! Been there, Done that!"

I'm no Superman

For my next entry, I will just be copy-pasting the lyrics of a song. I dont think any other group of lines could summarize my feelings these days, more beautifully.

Superman
by Lazlo Bane
Soundtrack - Scrubs

Out the door just in time
Head down the 405
Gotta meet the new boss by 8 am
The phone rings in the car
The wife is working hard
She's running late tonight again

Well
I know what I've been told
You gotta work to feed the soul
But I can't do this all on my own
No, I know I'm no Superman
I'm no Superman

You've got your love online
You think you're doing fine
But you're just plugged into the wall
And that deck of tarot cards
Won't get you very far
There ain't no hand to break your fall

Well
I know what I've been told
You gotta know just when to fold
But I can't do this all on my own
No, I know I'm no Superman
I'm no Superman
That's right

You've crossed the finish line
Won the race but lost your mind
Was it worth it after all
I need you here with me
Cause love is all we need
Just take a hold of the hand that breaks the fall

Well

I know what I've been told
Gotta break free to break the mold
But I can't do this all on my own
No I can't do this all on my own
I know that I'm no Superman
I'm no Superman
I'm no Superman

Someday we'll be together
Someday
Someday we'll be together
Someday
I'm no Superman

2 weeks and counting...

Hmm... So two weeks up in Netherlands. Time for another entry.

The calender says its been 15 days in Delft. I can't really tell. Time is such a funny thing, sometimes it just flashes past you, and sometimes just refuses to budge, like now...

During these two weeks, I've come to know the pleasant and the not-so-pleasant aspects of life here. Firstly, all this cycling presented too much exercise for my groin initially, and left me with a sore rear (the miscreant is shown above). But I have got more or less used to it now. What really is a "pain in the ass" is cooking. Every day!! Man! Dont know how I'll arrange for the remaining 75 dinners lined up, waiting to be cooked.

But the worst of all is... longing. Longing for the days I spent, surrounded by friends and family. The few acquaintances I've made, have been good to me. But thats the occupational hazard of being a graduate student - The friends you make are as busy as you, if not more. And nothing can make us f**kers part with our money easily.

Sometimes I get this weird feeling, something similar to the one I always have when I get pen sets as birthday gifts. But I guess, you gotta catch whatever life throws at you, and catch it with both hands. You cant always have aloo ka paranthas for breakfast and rajma chaawal for dinner, or come home from work to find someone waiting for you, eager to hear your "you-know-what-happened-today" stories. But you can have a pale,tasteless pasta and the satisfaction of making it on your own for breakfast, or you can come home just in time for your daily 7'o clock, 1 hr of F.R.I.E.N.D.S, followed by half an hour of Scrubs!

Bottomline - You gotta adapt...just like my butt.