It's bluish purple. It's vast and intense.
It has no shape, no name, no religion.
It lives between you and me.
More on my side than yours.
It is the bastard of the world.
Fatherless mongrel, fruit of none.
Glows in the dark and in sunshine.
Sometimes beautiful, sometimes grotesque.
This thing between you and me,
one day will go away.
This thing between you and me will die.
I know.
24 November 2011
16 November 2011
Nightmare, rainy New York day, sunset at 3:30pm and the weight of impending deadlines. Back in India I would light a Classic Mild and go out for coffee with my friend. Right now, I'd just talk to myself = blog, roll tobacco, smoke it and get back to work. Does this make me feel better? I sure hope so.
13 November 2011
The Dishwashing Nightmare
We all have had a string of housemaids while in India. And then when some of us moved to the United States we became our very own Housemaids. The queen of the kitchen and the toilet bowl, this interesting transition is alien to those back home, fooled by the glamorous Facebook photo updates from the Malibu beaches and the Brooklyn Bridges. That woman smiling with her million-dollar-software-engineer husband at Brooklyn Bridge was just scrubbing her newly acquired American non-stick with Ajax Super Strong Lime two hours ago. That was probably when you were getting your hair blow-dried and fabulous at the local salon for five hundred bucks. That's ten dollar for our Brooklyn Bridge lady. And the only thing she's getting for that much money here is her next order of Ajax super strong lime 40 ounce pack from amazon.
You are contemplating between Karim's biryani or Rajinder's chicken tikka for dinner. She is deciding whether to launder or to pack tomorrow's lunch. You decide both and enjoy a delicious dinner with friends or lovers or family. She decides laundry first and then tomorrow's lunch. Suddenly you realize, damn, I forgot the reshmi kabab. She remembers, damn, I forgot to clear out the kitchen. Ouch, that reshmi kabab was a dreadful miss.
Mrs. Malibu beach on the other hand or shall I say other coast is having a fancy dinner party with her other Indian friends at her place. Her newly acquired four hundred dollar Pottery Barn couch, spruced up with cushions dressed with mom-in-law-made crochet covers, is the center piece of the evening. Of course she and her husband spent all of friday night building that from scratch when Mr. Malibu got a frightful sprain in the back that murdered the prospects of any other kind of heavy workouts for the rest of the nights to follow. She tagged the photo "our new couch" under the album "LA Life". Then she tagged her entire gang of family and friends over different tiny corner's of the body of her priced possession. So, when you were checking out that picture, relaxing on your equally fabulous free-home-delivered-and-built couch, leaving a comment on her picture and wondering why it wasn't yours, she was loading her dishwasher with the aftermath of her dinner party and staring at the cycle timer with exhausted eyes.
The Facebook myth of the "American Dream Accentuated" gets fucked up when you get here, fall for the charming beauty of America, the luxury of choosing from a hundred and fifty brands of everything when suddenly your decaf medium roasted Jamaican coffee mug, low fat skimmed milk yogurt serving dish and mildly sweetened organic honey coated cereal bowl from the previous day come tumbling over you like a great tsunami wave and hit you on your head. Well then all you can do is smile, load the dishwasher and fool yourself with how the Ajax Super Strong Lime dishwashing liquid smells just a little bit sweeter than good old Vim Bar.
You are contemplating between Karim's biryani or Rajinder's chicken tikka for dinner. She is deciding whether to launder or to pack tomorrow's lunch. You decide both and enjoy a delicious dinner with friends or lovers or family. She decides laundry first and then tomorrow's lunch. Suddenly you realize, damn, I forgot the reshmi kabab. She remembers, damn, I forgot to clear out the kitchen. Ouch, that reshmi kabab was a dreadful miss.
Mrs. Malibu beach on the other hand or shall I say other coast is having a fancy dinner party with her other Indian friends at her place. Her newly acquired four hundred dollar Pottery Barn couch, spruced up with cushions dressed with mom-in-law-made crochet covers, is the center piece of the evening. Of course she and her husband spent all of friday night building that from scratch when Mr. Malibu got a frightful sprain in the back that murdered the prospects of any other kind of heavy workouts for the rest of the nights to follow. She tagged the photo "our new couch" under the album "LA Life". Then she tagged her entire gang of family and friends over different tiny corner's of the body of her priced possession. So, when you were checking out that picture, relaxing on your equally fabulous free-home-delivered-and-built couch, leaving a comment on her picture and wondering why it wasn't yours, she was loading her dishwasher with the aftermath of her dinner party and staring at the cycle timer with exhausted eyes.
The Facebook myth of the "American Dream Accentuated" gets fucked up when you get here, fall for the charming beauty of America, the luxury of choosing from a hundred and fifty brands of everything when suddenly your decaf medium roasted Jamaican coffee mug, low fat skimmed milk yogurt serving dish and mildly sweetened organic honey coated cereal bowl from the previous day come tumbling over you like a great tsunami wave and hit you on your head. Well then all you can do is smile, load the dishwasher and fool yourself with how the Ajax Super Strong Lime dishwashing liquid smells just a little bit sweeter than good old Vim Bar.
06 November 2011
The beginning...
She was an ordinary girl fighting the same battles as everybody else. She was trying to find herself. She was trying to be somebody worthwhile. She was doing all this while she was living in two countries together. With a whole future lying in front of her at America she had friends, family and loved ones in India. She may have travelled many many miles away from her homeland but was she ever able to leave it?
Her pc was still set on India time while her wrist watch was ticking along the Eastern time. Life may have separated her from where she belonged but her heart, her mind never allowed that to happen. And what was really so wrong about living in two countries together? It wasn't like cheating or anything. It's not even a matter of switching on and off. The two spaces perfectly co-existed for her. Mere physical presence was not everything.
Giving up on one thing for a new pursuit was not for her. Why couldn't she love two places at the same time. Why couldn't she have what she had and have some more? This was not a dilemma, not some sort of psychosis. This was a fact. She was living and loving two countries together.
Her pc was still set on India time while her wrist watch was ticking along the Eastern time. Life may have separated her from where she belonged but her heart, her mind never allowed that to happen. And what was really so wrong about living in two countries together? It wasn't like cheating or anything. It's not even a matter of switching on and off. The two spaces perfectly co-existed for her. Mere physical presence was not everything.
Giving up on one thing for a new pursuit was not for her. Why couldn't she love two places at the same time. Why couldn't she have what she had and have some more? This was not a dilemma, not some sort of psychosis. This was a fact. She was living and loving two countries together.
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