Caramel (and some cheese)

It is said by the movies (and psychology textbooks, presumably) that women tend to go for men who remind them of their fathers. Being a middle-aged Bengali man with a love for Discovery and National Geographic, Ayan definitely fits the bill. But he also reminds me of other members of my family. He is as finicky as my sister, balking when I fall in bed while still wearing clothes, I have gone out in. He reminds me of my mother when he is being chatty with random strangers in the metro, at the mall, or in the voting queue. Sometimes, he even reminds me of my grandmother.

My memories of her, Dida, are inextricably linked to the seasons. And, as in any self-respecting Bengali family, with food. It isn’t even the elaborate cooked meals that come to mind now – except her prawn malai curry perhaps, but just the snacks we shared over evenings of adda and laughter, and the afternoons that went in preparing them.

Summers were spent sitting next to her as she sliced mangoes over her bothi, while I assiduously finished up the fruit on the seed. Later, when guests came around, plates of the diced fruit would be served up with glasses of Coke.

Monsoons were sweetened ‘labour tea’, with the milk boiled to an inadvisable extent, along with crispy shingara or chop supplied from VIP Sweets. Sometimes there was batter covered slices of onions and cauliflowers she fried at home.

Winters, mild as they were in Calcutta, involved more work. There was a whole process of boiling jaggery with water, then when it cooled down, using it to bind crisp puffed rice, into her famous moa. To be honest, it wasn’t a hit because of the taste. The USP was that tins of the moa could be brought back to Delhi, at the end of the winter break. And then nibbled at through the weeks, with milk in the evening, or offered up as proshad during the Saraswati Pujo my mother performed at home.

Eventually, Dida’s health deteriorated, the adda diminished, and the moa became store bought. I rarely sought one out to eat and thought about it even less.

Till one day at the movies. As I sat bored, munching on salted butter popcorn, my hands touched a sticky piece and I looked down, to notice a caramelized piece that had entered my tub by mistake. Unthinkingly, I put it in my mouth and immediately fell in love. The deliberate purchase of tubs of mixed caramelized and cheese popcorn is a movie going ritual now. But I didn’t make the connection with the homely comfort of moa for a few more months.

I was working from home in Bangalore on a listless summer afternoon, missing home, and dreading the multiple calendar-blocks I still had to cross before calling it a day. Ayan asked me if I wanted to eat a snack to ward off the boredom – that reliable way of putting back all the kilos lost at the gym. I agreed, but then shrugged at all the options he listed – grapes, makhana, momos. Finally, he saw my unenthused face and left me alone. But came back in 15 minutes with a bowl of –

“Popcorn”, he said.

I frowned ungratefully in response.

Then he placed the bowl in my hands, and it was not the usual pressure-cooker popped corns we had at home. He had decided to caramelize sugar and then lather the regular popcorn in that brown, gooey syrup. For caramel popcorn at home.

Things that made me happy

A beautiful bunch of litchi

A super stunning sunrise

(In descending order of happiness caused)

I saw Into the Spiderverse last weekend, and wept copiously at a scene where Miles Morales's mother tells him that his parents are always concerned about him because in the real world, there is no one who might be rooting for Miles the way they do. She lets him go away if he promised that he would take care of that little child in him, like his parents. I think my weeping was because of the fact that it hit me that I had not loved myself as parents would. But also that I probably never had a family unit looking out for me that way. Or may did at one point - Baba, Dida, but do not have anymore. Honestly, though, I might be just finding new things to be sad about, because who has that system anyway?

(I mean I can't even say 'the Movies!' anymore, once Bollywood grew up).

Catching up

I haven't blogged here in three years. I always assume nothing even happens in my life, unless I actually take stock this way. Though to be honest, not much has changed at a fundamental level.

I'm in the same job as before, and complain about it just as much. I keep having epiphanies about how I can completely change things (including my attitude) but it comes and goes. I'm still overweight, and constantly struggling with it. And my phone conversations with my mom are still of the yes-no-don't ask me so many questions variety.

This is all happening in a different city though - Bangalore - where I have been living since December 2021. I got married in November of that year, to the man I was bellyaching about in the drafts of this blog. Then suddenly towards the end of 2020, I started feeling comfortable about the idea of marriage. I remember the exact moment actually. I had just started a diet and kept admirable restraint on myself all day, especially in the face of a tough work-day. At night, I had piled on a carefully prepared and assiduously measured meal of rice and chicken, and was just settling down into a video call with A, my partner in the then 'situationship'*, when I fully dropped my meal on the floor. And promptly burst into tears. 

I think the fact that he didn't laugh at me (I know I might have if the situation were reversed) suddenly made me feel that I could do marriage. I didn't admit it aloud immediately of course, and went back on it many times in my head. But I guess realizing that a moment is all it takes for things (including you) to change, can be weirdly empowering?

Anyway, I moved to Bangalore and hated the city with a lot of energy. Initially, I was completely working from home. Then these kids joined from a University here, so I started going to office more frequently. My colleagues are still kids though, so it's hard to be friends with them. I joined a writing workshop too which gave me structure to write, and an introduction to people I know, outside of work, who also don't know A. That is still not the same as friendship as all of us are never free at the same time, and more importantly, the safe space we had to talk about deep, dark things while we were still doing the workshop, is not available anymore. I miss that space.

This week I bought a car, another thing I didn't expect to happen. I am learning to drive, I would say,  more from a sense of competition than a genuine desire to take to the roads, despite the fact that I regularly have to bear the brunt of Bangalore's bad public transport and lack of cabs. Perhaps my reluctance is because of the fact that I also regularly bear the brunt of the terrible traffic situation here. Anyway this messy urbanisation has led me to believe that urban economics is my true calling. I'm watching some tutorial videos, let's see if that interest sustains.

Shruti and I have decided to start quizzing again. I'm not answering any questions yet, but we made and held one quiz which was a bit of a hit amongst the six of us. I'm hoping that continues. I am also working on a new story, though what I actually need is to rework some of my existing ones and send them off for publication. That would be a nice win, I think. [Ok will send at least one story today, SOMEWHERE].

I am also feeling something personally that I don't know how to articulate. Or probably don't want to articulate, for fear that it's incredibly childish. I think I am feeling used. In the sense, that I find people have a sense of entitlement towards my time and emotional and mental labour without me getting anything in return. I don't know if this feeling is fair, in the sense that I reflected on some of my own actions, and feel that I may have used (different) people too, without giving them much in return. So I guess what I am feeling is a mix of indignation at being used, and guilt at having used other people. 

Is this how life is? Do we all use each other?

*I did not know this word existed then. Google tells me it may refer to a sexual or romantic relationship that is not formally defined. I'm just choosing to assume that this holds for the arranged marriage - yes - no dynamic I was in.

Life in a Metro…in 2007

Life in a Metro released thirteen years ago, in May 2007. At the time, Deepika Padukone was still unheard of, waiting to make her debut in November.  The Big Three of Indian cricket were still active, and it was a “bold move” to name Dhoni as the Captain of the T-20 squad, which went on to win the inaugural World Cup in September. Twitter had started less than a year ago and the current Chief Beneficiary of Digital India was only starting his second term as the Chief Minister of Gujarat. And Anurag Basu, the director of Life…, was five years away from his career defining Barfi!  

For the most part, Life… has none of the light dreaminess of Barfi!, except a stretch with Nafisa Ali and Dharmendra who play Shivani and Amol – a couple who revive their romantic relationship in their last years. There is an undefinable sweetness in their romance, be it their reunion at the railway station, as Amol crosses the track between platforms to get to Shivani, their joyful traipsing across Bombay, or their quiet togetherness in bed. And the newness isn’t in that these people are old – we had already had Baghban (2003) and Pyaar Mein Twist (2005) ­­– but that they are familiar. Shivani could have been your retired-school teacher grandmother, playing truant from the old-age home with a portly man dressed in an untucked shirt, who was not your grandfather.

The other unusual bit about the film is its treatment of Shruti (Konkona Sen Sharma) who is about to turn 30, unmarried, and plain. She undergoes a realistic makeover about 20 minutes in (after she has met her eventual love interest, who likes her as she is), but at no point do you feel that the character herself has had a personality implant on account of that. Moreover, the filmmaker takes out time, in an otherwise frenetically paced screenplay, to show her spending time on the upkeep of her new appearance. And these are not the aesthetically pleasing shots of make-up being applied, but the ugly bits involving hair oil and face masks.

Some parts of Life… hark back to an older era of film storytelling. Sharman Joshi’s track ostensibly seems like an update of Shah Rukh Khan’s Yes Boss (1997) – even his character is called Rahul. Rahul’s love interest Neha (Kangana), sleeps with the Boss, in contrast with the earlier film where Juhi Chawla and the boss (Aditya Pancholi) were in an adequately 90s’ style platonic affair. Neha has a troubled past and mental health issues which she helpfully spells out for us in a terrible ‘offhand’ this happened – that happened sequence. Yet, Yes Boss, for all its well-lit frames, comedic subplots and cheerful music, is the darker (and better) film.

Shah Rukh Khan in Yes Boss had an independent, almost crazed ambition. Ensuring a certain lifestyle for his mother was only a part of that. Rahul of Life..., despite his questionable tactics, is primarily a ‘good son’ driven by his father’s dreams. While Yes Boss had the menacing Aditya Pancholi in the eponymous role, the boss in Life… is at most mildly threatening.  Moreover, in an unrealistic depiction of office life, he seems to go out of his way to help Rahul “meet investors”, while Pancholi’s character used everything from promises of career advancement, petty bribery, flattery and emotional manipulation to get his employee to do his bidding.

However, the thing that struck me the most last night, while watching the film was, how representative of 2007 Bollywood it is. And I’m not just talking about the presence of Shiney Ahuja, over-plucked eyebrows, the voice-overs or the ever-present background music. In 2020, would a filmmaker be compelled to give the otherwise unconventional Shruti and Monty such a rom-commy ending at the railway station*? Would a gay character’s only function be to play out a Madhur Bhandarkaresque twist, even if it is to give the heroine a character arc?

Or take Neha. She attempts suicide after her boyfriend-cum-boss humiliates her and spends barely a couple of days in recovery. She then resumes the affair and while en route to another secret rendezvous with said boyfriend, realizes that Rahul truly loves her. Her reaction is to get out of the car, and literally run after him, all the way to a happy ending. In 2020, Neha would go to therapy, quit her job and break up with her boss, and tell Rahul she needed some time to find herself before jumping into a relationship with him. In the interim, she would also school him on consent if he tried to kiss her while she was asleep – though my cautious optimism leads me to believe that 2020 Rahul would not have tried such a thing in the first place.

And finally, 2020 Shikha (Shilpa Shetty) wouldn’t have needed her husband to be such an asshole, to contemplate having an affair**. She would also belly-ache far less about sleeping with the handsome, gentle man she just happens to meet at bus-stop (She would have actively sought him out on Tinder). Though even 2020 Shikha would probably still choose her marriage over the chance at a fresh start.

*Irrfan’s deadpan “Lekin petticoat, blouse toh sab iske size ka sil gaya, tumne itna late kyun kar diya bataane mein”, to Konkona’s confession of love notwithstanding.  

** He misses his marriage anniversary party to sleep with the woman he has been seeing for two years already. Then yells at his wife when she asks him where he was.

Thinking about tech

The blogger interface has changed. I wonder if anyone else blogs anymore, but this makes me feel slightly more relevant. 

I'm committed to meeting my full life goals again. In lieu of having an actual full life. 

It's alarming how quickly human beings form emotional attachments, even now when we are all apparently self absorbed droids. I don't mean infatuation, or even love. Just intense co-dependence which makes you want to reach out to your phone, and tell the person you are attached to (the attachee?) about all the random things that happen to you through the day. Is it because most of us are disconnected from the people we physically spend the day with? And it's much easier to open up when the interaction is mediated by technology? 

On one hand it is. We are all funnier on chat when you can edit a message thrice before finally hitting send. When it's easier to hide behind privacy settings and take time to send out a more thoughtful reply. It's easier to hide the momentary irritation, the giveaway facial expressions that could open up a chasm between people. It also probably makes you braver in admitting things than you would otherwise because the fallout (good or bad) is not immediate. 

On the flipside, how do you know if the other person is even interested in you and your life? If you can't see their face, if you can't see how focussed they are on you as you talk, if their interest is taken up by other tabs, other chat windows? 

Notes on reading

Also known as ek teer se do nishaane (re meeting my real life goals) .

I was reading today how Germans, during their period of hyperinflation were afflicted with cipher stroke. Where they would unnecessarily tack on zeros when reporting numbers. So if someone was asked the time, they could respond with 3000. This ex boss of mine was affected similarly with the dollar stroke. If asked to convert 300 million people to lacs, he was wont to multiply the number with 70.

Basu (in Economist in a Real World) spends a lot of time explaining how inflation management policy may not be as straightforward as commonly understood. So while in general, raising policy rates is supposed to be a way for liquidity tightening, it may not necessarily help if distortions lead to the rate settling at a situation of deficit liquidity. Assuming regular downward sloping demand for credit and upward sloping supply of credit curves, a raising of rates may mean that demand falls but supply rises, thus only exacerbating the liquidity and inflation situation.

The Economist recently covered a related policy niggle - the measurement of inflation itself, in a modern economy. For one, goods being consumed change every year, so statisticians may be quite behind in tracking inflation. In fact they never quite catch the first fall in prices of a good or service, that in fact, enables mass consumption. CPI measures not accounting for quality change is again a problem that is more notable for digital access goods than others. Controlling for quality, it's likely that digital access prices are falling, though the index itself will reflect otherwise.

More fundamentally, the CPI measure may mean nothing if critical goods and services have a price of zero, as is true for most digital platforms. This is a non trivial issue if you consider the fact that imputed rent (with no actual transaction backing it) is a part of price indices.

The Indian government is planning to import bull semen from Brazil to impregnate desi cows, in a bid to increase the milk output but some cattle breeders are protesting this love jihad. (No, I'm being flippant.)

To bypass liquidity constraints that farmers face due to delayed cash transfers (for instance in the case of fertiliser subsidies), the Government is mulling e wallets that will be pre loaded with cash, and will only be redeemable at PoS at the input suppliers'. I feel pressured to use PayTM now.

Pixel 4 would have been a hit with all the bengali pipu pishu types. Had they released it in India and had any bengali the capacity to buy it.

Update on nothing

I'm on Day 2 of a productivity kick, where I have resolved to do four things daily - reading the newspaper, physical exercise, reading something policy related and writing. Now that I have written it here, it's possible I will never get anything done.

On the writing bit, I started a short story, for which I wrote one paragraph last night. And tonight I got hit by writer's block. So naturally, I revived the blog - where I let my mediocrity thrive.

Talking of mediocrity, I adapted Macbeth in Hindi. I think I should similarly mangle all of Shakespeare, while ensuring the women get the meaty dialogue, while playing with the men.

Now that I think about it some more, it's definitely an idea.

I want to write about something else here, but I will censor myself for the time being. But this is a placeholder, so that I remember to write about it in a couple of months. I'm sure my wide readership will not mind.

Observations 1

I really have none.  I don't know whether this was caused by some recently acquired self absorption or the fact that I rarely see any other people, like those leading vastly different lives anymore. All I notice is my strong panic every morning,  and especially on Mondays. And it apparently shows on my face because everyone in the world recognises it. My mother comments on it,  my cab mates adjust their seats to ensure I have more space,  and my colleagues do too.  But they are mostly panicked themselves so I think being near each other calms us down.

Also even though I am not doing a great job of observing people,  I do understand that this would be another great way of stress management. In general when something bad happens to me I assume that it will make my memoirs more interesting. Now I have to consciously imagine that life is a movie and everyone is a character whose motivations and behaviour I must observe.  So my boss is not yelling at me,  he is a boss,  yelling at his employee, and I must notice how he is executing the yelling scene.

My instructor/director has also spoken about how stressed out actors are though,  because of their job insecurity. That makes them adopt tricks like yoga to stress manage. And I saw a video of a YouTuber who claimed to be stressed every morning as well. So it's possible that doing anything for a living seems to automatically be a stress creator.

The only working person who I see never being stressed about his work is my brother in law. Maybe I  spend some time observing him.

Theatre classes: the announcement

I joined a theatre workshop and to no one's surprise,  I love it. 

The instructor has told us to write  daily log of stuff that happens to us,  and how we responded in the moment. So that basically means that this space is going to become active again!

I don't know when I stopped liking my grandfather. It was also the same moment that I stopped loving him, I think.

Or maybe I never loved him.

Growing up, my mother used to tell us stories about he had been a strict disciplinarian. Though I think I always thought that was code for distant. She told us a story about how a colleague of his asked him what class his daughter was in, and he had no idea. That was the first and only time, he came back from office early, and went through my mother's books. I thought this was unthinkable, given how over-involved my own father was.

He wasn't necessarily the greatest father, especially if you ask my sister. But he was my favourite person for a very long time in life - the only person besides my grandmother who would tell us stories (even though they were largely from his head, and not from the large stack of literature that was Dida's source material), the only person I would trust to teach me math, the person who would run after me on Sunday afternoons to get me back home to have a bathe and eat after a day in the sun, goofing about with other children in the colony. I used to be terrified of my dad turning up for PTMs in schools. Other parents would scold their children if they got bad marks, my father would scold the teachers. He told my third standard class teacher that she made us carry too many books to school, never once entertaining the thought that I was the irresponsible child,  merrily carrying everything every day, instead of sticking to the time-table. In seventh standard, he genuinely wondered how I could have gotten a C in Physical Education. Though he and I don't get along as well now as we did when I was a child (mainly because he is losing every filter of his with age, and has a tendency to say the most hurtful things, extremely nonchalantly), I never think of him as a person I would be scared of. And no matter how many arguments I have with him, or how far I want to be from him, to escape his over-attentive fussiness, he is someone I will always count as being on my side.

My grandfather was definitely not that type of father. He was a fun grandfather though. During our Calcutta summer breaks, there were some days that were reserved for him. He would take my sister and I out - mostly to Nicco Park, or Bonobitan, or Nandan, buy us knick-knacks and then bring us back home in time for lunch. We knew that he was terrified of feeding us junk. So if he took us out to eat, it had to be a suitably darkened restaurant with sombre waiters and dignified menus. My sister and he also had a friendly camaraderie, which I was not party to. Everyone loved, indulged (and pinned all their dreams and hopes and ambitions on) the first-born. She used to compare Dada to Amitabh Bachchan, and I secretly agreed, too shy to say it out aloud, too introverted to even have an independent relationship with him. He was after all someone who seemed to terrify both my parents. (It was different with Dida, who was my other favourite person for all of my childhood. She was the type of grandparent who found a way to brag about her grand daughter to sundry relatives, old neighbours, random cell-phone salesmen, once a ticket-seller at a movie theatre).

And then Dida fell ill.

Seeing my grandfather respond to it, through the years, killed any secret childhood admiration, or love, if there was ever any, bit by bit. I always found him resentful. She was everyone's favourite, even his siblings loved her more. She had lost a younger sibling, and then with it, her will to be healthy or even live. And she was a hindrance. The help who had to be around to care for her, annoyed him. Her health impinging on his social calendar irritated him (I think I have inherited this selfishness from him, another reason I think I will be terrible at marriage.). He couldn't understand why she was weak, why she couldn't summon the will to be better. And he seemed to be waiting for her to die. Because then he would finally be free.

It's not even been a year since her passing. He is now unwell - a mild jaundice compared to her Parkinsons'. But he is still selfish as ever, refusing to eat. My mother is still scared of him, so can't stomach the idea of forcing him to do anything. And I feel very little sympathy for him now, only anger. Anger for making my mother see her own father willfully kill himself, in spite of her best efforts. Vindication - hoping he finally understands what he did to Dida. And hopeless - hopeless that age will rampage even on limited (and terribly selfish) dreams of happiness.

Work notes 2

In the morning a few days back,  the fire alarm went off in office. A few seconds later an announcement clarified that it was a false alarm and asked people not to panic.

No one even looked up from their work.

Who are these people migrating from Nepal to Eritrea or Burkina Faso?  Really,  I want to know.

I just internally sniggered after reading 'Netherlands'.

I think the first sign of truly settling into a job is when you start dreading Monday mornings again.

Are almost 30 year olds allowed to cry out of jealousy?  Like literal shedding of tears.

Work notes I

The NSSO Consumption Expenditure Survey asks households about the grams of ganja they consumed in the last 30 days.

It's probably not much, given that India ranks 140 among 156 countries on the World Happiness Index. Before you start accusing the publishers of bias ('Happiness means different things to people in India' etc.), know that the index is based on a survey of citizens where they were asked to evaluate their lives and place themselves on a ten-step ladder based on the evaluation.

What could possibly be making Indians so miserable? Lack of work-life balance, the upcoming elections, the dementor-like electronic media, agrarian distress, unemployment, fears of war would be my guesses. Apart from the daily drudgery of human existence of course.

By the way, for those keeping score, Pakistan is at the 67th rank on the Index.

I'm currently obsessing over a colleague who bad mouthed me to the boss.  Well,  obsessing less than I did on Friday when I first learnt about it. But I think there are two learnings from this: 

- I'm much less cooler than I thought. 

- people can dislike you for the most random reasons. Reasons beyond your control.  So as long as your own conscience is clear,  it's best not to give a fuck about what others think. 

Checking in

I read some of my recent older posts, and thought I should update my vast readership about what's going on.

• I quit my job. Currently on my notice period. Which, you would think, would make me happy, given that my primary source of unhappiness was it. But who would have thought - my unhappiness stems from more deep seated insecurities and inadequacies I have within. Really, big surprise.
• My parents don't know I have quit. As always, they will be the last people to know about any decision I take. They actually think I'm blissful in my current job, so my next life step should be to 'settle down'.
• A friend of mine just found a job in Jaipur. Which sort of renewed my faith in God. Or coincidences. Two of my favourite people are now in the same state capital, a few train ride hours away from me.
• I got over my ill-advised crush. The recovery has been so amazing that I absolutely cannot believe that I used words like pining and longing in his reference. I also called him a cunt though, which is, well, accurate.
• My sister took me to a Buddhism meeting. I felt very very divorced from that group, though apparently all first timers feel that way. I don't know how these first timers get over their disgust of other believers admitting to praying for big cars, however.
• Last weekend, my family dragged me for a road trip to Keoloadeo National Park in Bharatpur . The rickshaw wala who doubled up as guide was very helpful - pointing to the Palpal Heroine (read Purple Heron) and Pentistlor (read Painted Stork). I wasn't too miffed about the pronunciations though - he admitted he was not an official rickshaw wala early on - just the regular type who ferried passengers in the city, but came to the Park whenever he could get away with it. I was also convinced he had a secret life as an underground boxer, looking at his mis-shapen cauliflower ears. I think that's a question I could have asked if I were on a solo trip - not with family who would look all surprised at my new found precocious ability to make casual conversation with North Indian male adults from a different economic strata.
• I also secretly drank rum in the hotel room, and then went to dinner, suitably tipsy. I would think my mom would suspect my cheeriness but she probably put it down to the nice weekend I was having.
• The return journey was terrible though. Was stuck in traffic for half the day with a squabbling couple. Also ended up missing the engagement ceremony of a college friend. She is getting married today. I'm going for it, I think. Though I don't have clothes, logistics, or a gift, planned.
• I'm currently extremely resentful of everyone who is getting married. Not the ones who are already married - because they got married unreasonably early and I almost feel sorry for them. But the ones getting married now - in their late twenties. Like by all accounts, this seems to be the 'right time'. Most of us know ourselves fairly well now, have some sort of clarity about our careers (however bleak the future may seem), and have the sense to know who we want. Except I still feel 14 - where I absolutely cannot imagine being tied to a person (a man, of all things) whose feelings and ambitions and desires I must keep in mind while making a decision about my life, which consideration may not even be reciprocated. Forget about the love, and the sex and the household chore division and the feminism and other complicating factors. And I am resentful that others seem to have matured faster than me. 
• And I also hate the dynamics-change. Like I realise, that for most of my married friends, their priorities are going to change. I mean they should change - if they are tying their lives to another person, that other person should come before me. Especially if it's an arranged marriage, in which case all the time that they have before the wedding, should be spent getting to know the person they have to live with, forever (ideally). So the logical part is clear to me. It's just that I am absolutely hating seeing it happen. Where I'm supposed to be mature and logical and not pushy and clingy (and therefore truthful), but I can't help feel very afraid that everyone is growing up, and my parents are right that if I don't get married, I will just end up being a bitter, lonely, single lady with no friends. Because really, I'm halfway there already.

At the airport

If you are not a man of a certain age (and hence don't feel entitled to being served by uncomfortably dressed young women), it's rather easy to love the idea of Air India. They have flights to everywhere - from Lilabari (which I recently found out was in Assam, and till a few weeks back was the nearest airport to Itanagar) to Pantnagar (which I'm guessing is a dusty little town in Uttar Pradesh).

For some years now, I have thought of doctors as having the best jobs, but now I'm thinking pilots don't have it bad either. The entry barriers are high, and only people with lots of prior privilege get through, but if you can break in, it's a rather cushy job. Especially because you can never ever take your work back home.

The Terminal 3 airport is extremely impractical, though I will never admit this to non Delhiites who unanimously like to compare Terminal 1 to a bus stand (which is ridiculous, especially from people whose most frequently used airport is Chennai). The terminal must have been designed by a Delhi person, who lived in the suburbs and had to cross 50 km everyday to reach anywhere. Also must have been Punjabi, given the wall to wall carpeting and garish patterns and the gigantic brass statues used as decoration.

There are people at airports who will reach unearthly early and then be pissed off when people who come in time for their flights want to cut ahead in queue. And then express this pissiness loudly. I mean do they consider that assholes like them are crowding the check in and security counters unnecessarily? And if they weren't there, the people who are on time or slightly late, would be able to pass through more easily?
And this isn't even coming from a place of anger. I'm actually always early.

A crowded airport where you have no option but to queue up is fertile ground for introspection and self flagellation. But I have now decided to treat myself like I would treat a friend. Which is a rather daunting task if you are your worst enemy. In every way.

The pointlessness continues

Though it's not completely edit-proof today. I admit I deleted an entire paragraph I started with, which talked of the hopelessness in my life - the dreary work situation, the frustrating family situation, and the absolutely friendless-ness (in person) situation. And there, I have practically written all of it anyway. But I don't have the heart to delete this again, so I will continue to write like the existence of this paragraph can be ignored. Do you feel like a stupid fucker for having read this paragraph?

Talking of stupid fuckers, guess whose day started with her feeling like one?

Not me. I started my day by making a Whatsapp group with some ex and current female colleagues, who while together in Chennai, were part of a closely knit women's support group. So I whined and gossiped for a little while in the morning, which is really as perfect as a morning can get.

I did feel like a stupid fucker a little later though, when I read the newspaper. Rajiv Kumar, the Deputy Chairman of the NITI Aayog had tried to claim that demonetisation had not caused the slowdown, which is a predictable stand for a bureaucrat. In his view, the large NPAs (which had begun to be identified better under Raghuram Rajan's term as the RBI Governor) of banks may have been the reason. This, as a partial reason, is not incorrect. Yet - and I realise I'm providing context too late - I had spent a good 10 minutes bristling yesterday, when some news portals put out clickbait-y articles with headlines such as 'NITI Aayog bureaucrat blames Rajan for growth slowdown'.

How can a person with as much cynicism about the media as me, be taken in? Maybe because this time the clickbait appealed to my biases?

There is still no point to this post

I have a shorthand for whining. It's where I thrust my wrist out at people, in a silent but over-dramatic plea for them to slit it. Fortunately or unfortunately, no one takes it seriously, so it's still possible for me to procrastinate on stuff I really need to get done, and sit here, writing pointless blog-posts instead. I haven't done this, this thrusting of wrist at people, in a few months though. For some time, I was sequestered with only two senior male colleagues, who would never take this behaviour in the right spirit. (If you are my friend, you probably know that the right spirit involves miming a brutal slitting. If you are my best friend, you know that it involves thrusting your wrist at me in return). After that, I got company of people belonging to the same generation, but who seem to derive some kind of pleasure from life, and work (shorthand for people I can get along reasonably well with, but who I can never fully come to love as my own). Essentially, they are not the right audience for my whining either. Instead, I have to resort to verbalising my disgust in the form of furious Whatsapp messages to people, who, if physically present would have been the perfect audience. But all this verbalising just makes me angrier and angrier, and then sadder and sadder, and then more and more hopeless about the future.

No, I'm not trying to say I miss anybody. Shut up.

There is no point to this post

Really, there isn't. I just realized I am out of writing practice, my sentences are not flowing naturally, like they had a tendency to do, a few months back, when I was working on the worst thing in the world. (There was a project post that, which shattered my mental stability and continues to lead me to question my faith in everything and everyone, but imagine, this is still something I hate more). Basically, I had taken on the mantle of telling overpaid development sector professionals, having tax-free incomes in a global donor agency that women are people too, and deserve to be targeted, when designing development oriented projects. And how else to tell them, except through a 300 page, well-referenced document crawling with laboriously placed hyperlinks (placed by yours truly, over the course of the most traumatic 36 hours of my life), that is guaranteed to be read by no one. Not that I think anyone should read that garbage, even though it is, well-written garbage, where the words went shooting out.

Anyway, the point of this post is to write, write without censorship, and write without editing, and write without a plan or an agenda, to get back into the groove of just writing. Mainly because I need to remind myself that Plan A was to write, and that it is still possible to activate Plan A, while trying to salvage the Plan B I'm currently stuck in. No writing about the frustrations of Plan B though. Plan B is currently open on the same laptop, on a window that is definitely not incognito.

A lot of people I know have frustration and regrets. About not having enough fun in college, of having too much fun in college, of never learning an extra-curricular in school, or not taking enough initiative in class. I have all of those regrets, and more. My biggest regret is my ruined teen years - which I lived through like a hermit. I wasn't a docile kid by any stretch of imagination, who bottled up her unhappiness and lived under the thumb of tyrannical parents. Instead, I was an over-mature prude, who had a more severe moral outlook towards life, than people thrice her age. Hell I was such a prude, I never so much had a hormone addled crush.

Ok no, that's a lie, I did. For as long as I remember, I was sweet on the class topper. He wasn't a friend, just my occasional desk-partner who I got along reasonably well with, always a head shorter than me (we stopped interacting completely in high school - so I don't know whether that persisted), and always a few marks ahead. When we were little, all of my classmates had a crush on him - I swear all, even the boys. I think I remember people fighting to have him on their cricket team during long break. And sure, you might say, that maybe he was really good at cricket, and I'm not stereotyping - nerds could have athletic abilities too. Except, I'm talking about book-cricket, which, along with long break, maybe terms you don't understand. I don't have the patience to explain the intricacies of the game (long break was a 30 minute break to eat 'lunch' at 10:30 am, as opposed to short break, which was at 9, to eat a snack), but take my word for it, it requires neither smarts  nor athletic ability. Hence the only possible explanation is that the little boys of II-A (and then III-A and IV-A and V-A) had the hots for their longstanding class topper.

The point is that as we grew up, people moved away from the good, wholesome class toppers, and started crushing on boys who were far more stupid, and who would grow up to be far more conventionally attractive. I, on the other hand, continued my devout admiration-from-a-distance, till we graduated (I recently added him on Linked-in, which is apparently how I keep in touch with people now).

I liked no one in college. All five years, not one boy.

And since then I have had a grand total of two crushes (three if you count a passing fancy for a good-looking colleague that was a mostly pleasant distraction), both of which were again on the nice wholesome class topper types, and both of which have crashed and burned. I look at the first of these with some degree of fondness though - it would have never worked anyway. The second of these, is one of the only two men I have ever described as a cunt. And judged myself for pining over. And pined, I have.

Hence my regret of not living it up in my teen years - if I had exhausted my teen years with immature, ill-advised crushes, this nonsense would not have carried over to my almost-thirties. An age, where everyone else seems to be ready to get married and settle down while I agonise over Plan As and Bs and long for a completely terrible man, being near whom, basically necessitates that I surrender my mental stability and faith in everything and everyone.

Yes I know this is a waste of time, you reading this. See the heading - it's practically a disclaimer. 

Starting new project.

#willnottalkbeforeitbecomessomethingconcrete

Dida

Grief can affect people in different ways.

You can be all practical, deciding to prioritise an official visit over rushing to Kolkata on hearing the news of Dida’s passing away, knowing that she is gone already. Knowing that all there will be to see, is her bloated, dead body, surrounded by aging relatives and neighbours, some talking about how they had just come to see her the other day, others, about how she had suffered greatly, and would now finally be at peace. Some others attributing their usual Bengali affliction of heartburns and acid reflux to premonitions of ill-tidings, yet others, talking about the steps that should have been taken to prevent her untimely death.

You can be all practical, knowing that you have been grieving for the last five years already – that death is only a culmination of a long period of wasting away. When every next photo, showed her progressive emaciation; when every next conversation with her meant more lost threads, and longer spells of hallucinatory observations; when the phone conversations stopped; when every next visit meant lower chances of her recognizing you, responding to your coaxing or your touch.

But then, what is this impulse to weep, this inopportune onslaught of tears? When browsing books, but not being able to read a preface by a behavioural economist, because he wants to discuss Tversky’s period of illness and death. When sitting alone at the airport, sipping coffee, and thinking of the last office trip, when you made a detour to Kolkata, and saw Dida for the last time. When travelling long distances in rural UP, in a dark car, with a government employee talking about being over-looked for a promotion by a corrupt boss and imagining Dida’s indignation at this injustice. Or when a friend sends you a photo reminding you of the life you used to have (even though that life had nothing to do with Dida), and days which have deserted you forever. Or even when sitting for the pujo, at her kaaj, resolutely refusing to repeat the Sanskrit prayers being spoken aloud by the priest, because Dida didn’t like us to say things we didn’t understand – not because she was irreligious (she wasn’t), but because she didn’t want us to inadvertently ask the Gods for something wrong (sons, for instance).

Or when writing a blog-post about her but finding a single post to be inadequate to explain what she meant for you.