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!

Thoughts "under" the sun!

Off late, especially after I have become a manager, I feel very different all of a sudden at work. Though nothing much has changed, I feel important and more importantly, responsible. I am supposed to take care of the kids that report to me and I am supposed to review their work etc. Though the kids are as lazier as I am, they somehow seem to love me a lot when compared to other people at work.

Over one of our Baskin Robbins adventures that I take the kids out to, I asked them what motivates them to work and what is it they look forward to everyday at work. They started buttering me as usual with their “Oh you are nice.” “You are not authoritative”. “You don’t blast us”. kinda statements.

Heck, why would I if they do their work properly? Today, I had a heavy lunch at Dominos with an old friend and was climbing up stairs introspecting why the kids gave such a great feedback about me when I met an old colleague. After exchanging our ritualistic pleasantries, I asked him what’s new. He told me that he had been promoted to the post of a Project Leader and he has 5 people “under” him. First, I actually didn’t comprehend what he was saying. What he actually meant was that he was responsible for the crimes of 5 engineers who reported to him. I congratulated him on his success ritualistically and just climbed up to the 3rd floor quickly.

Now as I sit in my chair, I am asking myself whether this is what people expect from their work lives. Is becoming a Project Leader or a Project Manager such big a deal and why do people crave to have people “under” them? Yes, responsibility is a nice thing and the fact that you are being entrusted new responsibilities is great, but how can you feel somebody is under you?

I personally feel it very derogatory to use words like “under me” or “below me” to describe your reports. Why can’t people use more sophisticated and professional terms like, “I have so many reports” or “I manage so many people”. All of us are in the company to earn our living. Right from the chairman to the guy who cleans the pantry does it to earn his bread and why don’t people realize this? We should attribute due respect to everybody no matter who it is and whether he is a junior engineer or a high level manager. India has forgotten the archaic rule of the Queen since 1947 and despite the fact that it has been around 61 years, we still tend to accord archaic definitions to terms in management. I think the kids thoroughly like me because I am not patronizing or authoritative in an archaic way.

Is power only to boss around? Isn’t there a better way to look at it? Does being archaic serve the purpose? Can’t we use power to create a difference in somebody’s life; professional or personal? Can’t we use power to create a well being in the society that we live in? Instead of considering people to be under or below you, can’t you think them as young little ones in your nest that you need to nurture? I'm still thinking...