Of Fashion, Passion and Obligation

I was on a train with a colleague and we were having a long conversation on just about everything to beat the gloomy and boring Paris winter. He told me how passionate he was about cars and how has found his new passion for horse riding. We talked about watches, discussed Fashion, I told him how much I liked his new coat etc. He suddenly asked me what I am passionate about in my life. I frankly didn’t have an answer. You know, I told him, I come from a very modest family in India and frankly, there are a whole lot of things I haven’t done in life. I may like a lot of things but I cannot tell you something that I am passionate about.

We got out of the train and climbed down the stairs to transfer to another one. I saw a young mother trying to push her baby’s pram up the stairs, struggling with a bag on her shoulder. Cursing Paris for not having ramps, I offered her help. I helped her all the way to the top. Merci, she said, c’est gentil. I looked into her eyes and it seemed familiar. De rien, I said and I walked away. For a minute, it seemed as if I saw my own mother through her eyes. That’s just the emotional me, I thought.

This is my passion, I told my friend. To help people, to do something for the needy, to strive as much as possible to see that there is a change, and at the same time, not expect anything out of the experience. “Karmanye Vadhikarasthe, Ma Phaleshu Kadachana” is what I believe in and that’s what keeps me happy.

I don’t deny being attracted to worldly pleasures as passionate objects because finally I am a human being. But that being said and me being a student, I guess I have discovered my new definition of fashion. Fashion for me is to wear what I want to wear without having the fear of giving it up. I adore the watch that I wear but at the same time, I am not terribly worse off without it.

I was at a friend’s San Francisco apartment and she complained how her patio plants had paled off due to the summer heat. I volunteered to take a look. Wearing all the impeccably tailored clothing that I wore and the watch that I had on, I put my hands into the soil, made a small hole in the pot for the water and replanted the plant. My friend yelled, watch out, you may spoil your shirt. “Oh, don’t worry about it. After all it’s not worth so much.” I guess I had discovered a new sense of freedom. A freedom that topped my joy of buying things I like from the places I want to, at prices I want and not worrying about losing them.

I believe that I have an obligation to live for people around me. Vivekananda once said, “He alone lives who lives for others, the rest are more dead than alive”. I guess I discovered my inner Fashion mantra trying to fulfill this obligation.

Chutney Pudi

America never ceases to amuse me. All the more as days go by and I think I fairly know what the culture is like here. I am amazed at how people make friends, how quickly people start associations like girlfriend-boyfriend, significant other etc. I had an exchange student coming to my university last quarter. Within two days, she was calling a classmate of ours as her boyfriend. Woah, isn't that light speed?

As I stand bedazzled by their speeds, I wonder why we are slow. Our lives are so different. I still remember the first few days of my life here. I was just bothered about whether mom's Chutney Pudi had reached safely, whether the Parachute coconut oil I brought along hadn't leaked and how I should plan on calling my distant cousin to come and get me some Anna-Sambaar! Long Transatlantic calls in the night to mom telling her how much I miss her, asking how my darling sister is doing at her studies and how dad's health is...

I am not sure!

I have written about my dental ordeals in the past. I have problems with my gums and they coming back. So I went to the dentist. I hate the medical system here. What on earth do they mean when they say "This might be it but I am not sure". Idiots! What did they do in medical school? They are too scared because they are dead if they are sued!

According to me, a doctor-patient relationship is something that should not be constantly threatened by the fear of getting sued. It should be based on mutual trust and respect for each other. When my doctor says something, I trust him and go ahead with the medication. This allows the doctor to be confident with the patients and become an expert in accurate diagnosis and treatment.

I mean, whats such a big deal in figuring out what's going on in my teeth? Its not my intestine, pancreas or something. You look at my teeth and say you are not sure what's happening. Totally idiotic!

Food For Thought!

I sometimes curse god for giving me such a high metabolism rate! I seem to get hungry often but cannot eat a lot at one go. My stomach is way too small. :(

This often leaves me in the question of what to eat the next time I am hungry which is almost always in the next two hours. Being a grad student here in the US makes my life all the more complicated. Not that I don't have choices here but I have very little time to drag my ass around in search of food.

The sheer association of food with home makes things not just complicated but emotional and nostalgic too. Bangalore probably has a food joint every 100 feet. You see all sorts of multicuisine restaurants to Udupi Upahars and Shanti Sagars who serve hot Rava Idlis.

Talking about Bangalore food, how can one ever forget the street vendors? The innumerable street vendors on Thindi Street, around Krishna Rao Park, Gandhi Bazaar and Malleswaram 18th Cross! Coming to think of it, street food according to me is not just food, it is a phenomenon. It is a way of life. It is a way of destressing yourself after a bumpy 2 hour ride from Electronics City. It is an occasion to meet friends and socialize.

I made Bhelpuri at home one day here in San Jose. It tasted just as perfect but there was something missing. I was wondering for long what was missing and it turned out that the only thing missing was the paper cone that it is usually served in. There is no fun eating Churmuri or Bhelpuri at home. It is a social concept! You have to eat it with a bunch of people, on a dirty sidewalk, in paper cones, giggling and gossiping! That's where all the taste comes from!

You realize you are in the United States when:

1) You walk out of the airport and don’t see porters
2) Multiplication and Division by 50 seem to be easy but important tasks
3) You get up at all weird times during the first week
4) You realize that Comcast is the only Internet Service provider
5) You are made to sign on two year contracts on virtually any phone you buy
6) You start using the Internet for trivial tasks like looking up the weather that too on the Fahrenheit scale
7) You count in pounds and ounces forgetting your grams and kilograms
8) You are scared of getting hit on the road because you are used to seeing the opposite direction for traffic.
9) You go onto sit in the left seat in the front of your friend’s car to realizing the steering presence
10) You realize Malls are not vertical structures but spread out areas
11) Safeway or Albertsons are the only places where you can buy your grocery and you do it once in every 20 days
12) Virtually every restaurant is owned by a big company and offer the same menu across the country
13) You realize you are lost and there is no one to ask for directions
14) You carry your GPS everywhere you go, blindly following the left and right directions by a female voice.
15) You need a GPS or Google Maps to reach home from any X point
16) You hear people saying “You have a good one” not knowing what that one is
17) You start using your iCalendar or Outlook for trivial noting down trivial tasks like meeting your friend for coffee
18) You walk into a bar and realize you don’t know the names of any of the drinks they have
19) Caffeine seems like an inevitable tonic for day to day activities
20) You look at the backside of even Lays to find out Calories and Sodium content
21) You have to look carefully to choose between low fat, non-fat, high fat, half and half Milk!
22) You realize that coffee is not equal to a 3-hour conversation. It is a drive through or a To-Go affair.
23) You realize that there is something called Voicemail and everybody uses it
24) Electric switches, water handles and almost everything works in the opposite sense. Luckily the clock is still the same clockwise and anticlockwise.
25) You take flu shots to prevent flu
26) Rebecca is Becky, Katherine is Kathy, Gregory is Greg, Robert is Bob and James is Jim
27) Everybody thinks you speak Indian
28) You suddenly realize that Macy’s is where you buy all your clothes
29) You see everybody having a pickup truck
30) Honeywell makes your fan and you get GE cameras.
31) You have two bank accounts called Checking and Savings
32) You buy a shredder to shred all your credit card bills. Identity theft is right at your door step
33) You pay $6 every month for your trash
34) Everybody asks me whether I want to stay in the States or go back as if I have escaped some hardship in India
35) They make you set your clocks one hour behind and ahead calling it Day Light Saving

Tornado or a Tsunami!

I haven’t got back to blogging since a while thanks to my hectic graduate student life. I am living in the United States since the past three months, a country I never thought I would inhabit even once. It seems to me that when destiny had it for me, a strong force pulled me out of where I was, uprooted me and planted me here in the bay. A Tornado! A Tsunami!

Now that I have recovered well enough, I am back to blogging!

Socially yours...

“I am getting ready to go out. I am meeting a friend” I screamed out to my mother from my room. She had plans of dining out at a Thai restaurant which I had politely refused. I had just mentioned to her about the Thai restaurant where my friend was going to dine with his date and she wanted to dine there to. I had already made plans of meeting a junior from college.

I came out of my room dressed in Khaki shorts and a grey Reebok T shirt. I have always loved wearing old grey T shirts, washed and washed innumerable times, soft and skin friendly. My mom was little shocked for she had assumed that I am going on a date. “Don't you want to look presentable to your friend?” she asked smilingly. “I don't care”, I shrugged as I put on my footwear, “It is incredibly hot”. Bangalore has started to become excessively warm this summer, due to which I am mostly in shorts except the conferences and the customer meetings that I need to attend. “It is as much important to dress for the society as it is to dress for oneself, if not less” she said flipping through the magazine she was scanning.

I didn't react. I was getting late. I just ran out of the house, into the block to fetch myself an auto rickshaw. Managing to negotiate a decent price with an autowallah, I sat inside to remember my mother's words. I started wondering whether it was that necessary to be presentable even in this humid and killing weather. Are we that important that the society actually pays heed to what we wear? We anyway don't belong to the “Saif Ali Khan was as usual stunning in his brown leather jacket at the party” gang.

I have always believed in living for myself. I live for myself and hence I live for the society. This is my theory. While a part of me agrees that Indians live for the society, the other part hurtfully denies it. We are the same people who are as conscious of the society as to not kiss in the public and at the same time as indifferent as to pile up heaps of garbage unattended in places. Is this hypocrisy? I certainly think so.

All I believe is to be socially aware. When I say “socially aware”, I mean to say that one needs to know constantly how his actions are affecting the society. I was commuting on my scooter to Vijayanagar yesterday to attend a wedding reception. It nearly took me two long hours of commute while going and about the same on the return trip. While I was just moving inches on the chord road, I noticed that the agonizing traffic was all because of a religious festival organized by people on the road. Was this all necessary? It may be hundreds of years old as a festival and one may not prefer forgetting it, but imagine agonizing around five thousand commuters for around two hours hours each on a weekend! Sigh!