2.5 years in USA

It has been 2.5 years since I came to USA and 2 years since I blogged. After spending 2 years in Virginia, I am now in Washington State. What has changed? A lot has!

Of Tamil Nadu:
One of the changes wrought by this sojourn in USA is a change in my accent. With this statement you may think that I have acquired some silly, affected American accent, which is not the case. I have succeeded in acquiring a South Indian accent; at least my parents and my sisters think so. I think it may be true, since I have had mostly South Indian friends in USA! I listen to Tamil songs, eat Tamil food and even speak English like how they do in Tamil Nadu! I learnt a lot about the culture and history of Tamil Nadu because of my friends, who are so patriotic (jingoistic?) about their culture and rich heritage, primarily influenced by moustached 50 something men romancing 20 somethings and performing gravity defying acts in their movies. Their ‘patriotism’ is so remarkable that any derisive word uttered against these 50 somethings brings out their incensed best. In a historic clash of the cultures, my Tamil roommate had remarked that ‘Sivaji – the BOSS (Bachelor of Social Service)’ is in fact greater than Shivaji, the Maratha warrior. I don’t know about other cultures, but I feel this manic jingoism … oops fanaticism … oops patriotism is lacking, at least amongst Maharashtrians.

Of Roommates:
When I first came in USA, I was so excited to stay with roommates because of my notion that every night with roomies will be an all girls pajama party. To say the least, it did not quite end up as I had thought. The disagreements were about issues petty and not so petty. My pet peeves were waking up to find a house full of my roommates friends whom I don’t know, who are unwilling to speak in a language that I understand and later I had to end up washing the plates left by all of them. I am sure my roommates will have some pet grievances about me. Anyways, it was a growing up experience for all of us, and all of us went through a lot together. Though they are not my best friends, I wish them well.

Of Movies:
I was quite a movie buff even before I came to US. But in US, watching movies is a habit for lack of anything better to do. Some of the best times I have had with my friends and roomies was while watching movies. I remember being mesmerized after seeing Fight Club and Memento and later having hour long discussions about the movies. I also remember being bored to death in movies such as Zodiac and Fantastic Four Rise of the Silver Surfer. Some movies are simply ‘special’ such as Oceans 13 and Pirates of the Caribbean.

Of MS:
Doing MS in Virginia Tech was an amazing experience. I started out with my mind filled with frivolities and at the end I ended up with a thesis and much more seriousness with respect to my career. I was amazed and intimidated by the superior level of all my peers but later learnt that the only person with whom I have to compete with is I. It was a difficult battle of survival with a tough advisor and myriad courses. The trials were many and the triumphs few, but at the end it was worth it.

Motion Sickness, Fountains and Californication!

3 states in USA..that too just 6 months after my 1st plane journey in 10 years,
it is indeed an achievement. Even more so for me. The reason being, I am a terminal case of all
kinds of motion sicknesses...car, bus, train, taxi, bullock cart, see saws, unclean rest rooms, etc. I suffer from such a bad case of vertigo that even the sight of a whirring umbrella makes me queasy. So I had desisted from planes. I have puked in nearly all forms of public transport in India. I did not want to earn the dubious distinction of doing that in a flight.

But I suffered planes, taxis, and Greyhounds here, during the trip. Rather
they suffered me. Also to my eternal delight, I discovered that one of my friends has
a worse case of lympho sarcoma of the 'puke'stine to the chagrin of that person!

Anyways enough digression. Let me start the much awaited tour desciption!

First leg: Los Angeles
Los Angeles was a disappointment. I imagined the hometown of Hollywood to be jazzy, glittery, plush. The downtown can be called the exact opposite. It reminded me so much of good old Dharavi. Gutters, garbage... yes it was all there. I pity the poor students of USC. They stay in hell holes and also in the perpetual dread of gangsters and muggings etc. But the next few days
it only got better, Malibu, Santa Monica, Pacific Coast Highway were all pretty.

Second Leg: Vegas
My lasting memory of Vegas were the fountains of Bellagio. It was romantic and moving. Right in the middle of the strip, amidst all the crass lights and cheap thrills. The song to whose accompaniment the the water danced and shimmered was a touching dirge about the lives sacrificed for America. Sometimes the spouting water shot up many storeys high, some other times it just languorously fizzled. Somehow the moment though ephemeral will last forever in mymind. I could only nod my agreement to the old lady besides me - 'Spectacular! '

Third Leg: Grand Canyon
The wanton commercialism of the tour with which we went, prevented us from really soaking in
the majestic view that the canyon offers.

Fourth Leg: San Francisco:
That is 1 city in the US that anyone would take a pleasure to live in. The reasons are many.
You would be walking on the steep roads and suddenly, before you,
a breath taking view of the bay and its bridges. Designer attires and accesories are sported by everyone. The hustle and bustle, the vivid colors, the sheer throbbing, pulsating life of the city...those are the impressions that I carried when I left. Also all kinds of PDAs (Public Displays of Affection) abound in the city. By kinds, I mean people with all kinds of orientations.

All said and done..many miles, many vehicles, many holes in the pocket, and many many memories...

My Sojourn with SRK

We always reminisce about the past. Especially, now that I am a grad student, I remember the carefree, 8 hrs of sleep a night days, during the not so distant past (though it seems light years away)! But I have a very vague recollection of my school days. A hazy mish mash of memories! But one incident I vividly remember, was when Shah Rukh Khan happened to me.

I was 11 when it hit me. Baazigar had just released. Theaters were in a sorry state then and cable tv was on the rise. I saw the movie till I think Shilpa Shetty's plummet to her death. And something changed. Maybe it was my first brush with watching movies independently. Before tben, in my family watching movies was watching Sholay for the umpteenth time or some
inane movie about bashing up baddies. And again, I re-iterate, something changed.

First time I saw that the 'hero'
1. need not be a cop framed by the corrupt system
2. need not be a college romeo
3. need not be a man who is righteous

Shah Rukh in Baazigar was cunning, wily, selfish, Machiavellian and perhaps evil. Then came a spate of his movies. In Darr he played the role of a warped obsessive lover. If in Baazigar, his motives were inspired by 'righteous' reasons (though he uses craft and crime to achieve his ends), in Anjaam his motives were also not defended. Maybe I was accustomed to watching the hero always being fettered in a set paradigm, or just the onset of hormones at 11, it cast a deep impact on me. But love hadnt' happened till then. It happened at 12. With DDLJ.

I laughed, I cried, I sang, almost danced, while watching the movie in the theater. Why, I still do not know. In the time span of 1 year from 7th standard to 8th standard , I must have watched the movie at least 20 times (and that is a conservative estimate). And the funniest part is my obsession was shared by siblings , parents, and even believe it or not ...grandparents. In that 1
year we went to see the movie thrice in the theater. And to top it all, just 3 years ago, when I was 19, my full family went to watch it again in Maratha Mandir, a decrepit theater in Mumbai that has never seen the sun rise, without the first matinee show of DDLJ since the year I was 11.

After DDLJ, me and my sister started believing that there exists a Prince Charming, who will come on a white horse and whisk us away one day. Later we realised that the Prince was the same person in her case and mine ..ya guessed it right, Shah Rukh. This was a cause of strife between us till our teens lasted.

I enjoyed DTPH and KKHH, though not as much as DDLJ. In recent times, Kal Ho Naa Ho also was an entertaining experience. I found SRK's diabolical sense of humor in it , reminiscent of Chandler in Friends. Also I wept in a very different way while watching Swades. His contempt for the parochial mentality of the villagers and somewhere his strife within himself, with his double standards was completely relatable.

This is not a debate about his acting prowess. It is just my personal journey with SRK and his movies! Though my obessive, compulsive disorder has diminished (people will say otherwise)
he still has a special place in my sundry musings :) But a word about the actor and not the persona. If I can relate to him even after 12 years of movie watching, both Hollywood,
Bollywood and soon Mollywood, there has to be some merit in his abilities, which often gets dwarfed behind superficial stuff like he danced at weddings and appeared in a soap advertisement and whether he is metro/hetero.

I would personally like to see him as Rhett Butler in a desi take off of Gone with the wind.
He could play the rakish, crafty, lusty, also the righteous, the love struck, the jealous man Rhett Butler was! Kareena would fit the role of the feisty Scarlett. I cannot think of a fitting parallel to the Civil War in a desi scenario. But I am sure someone will think of something! Wot say, Mr. Bhardwaj?

My Promised Land

Like most Indians especially hooked on to Friends and Sex and the City, I also dreamt of someday landing on the shores of USA. My dream started turning into reality. And like most dreams that do that (turn into reality), it was no ways as good as you thought it would be! But after a nightmarish plane journey (more on that later), I reached USA. And was it the effect of the severe nausea and delirium(after effects of 24 hrs suspended in mid air) or anything else I don’t know I half expected Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlie to come striding down in their Manolo Blahniks to greet me. I didn’t expect people from friends as I had seen the season finale and I had had some closure. But there were no Manolos and no Blahniks. There was only a cleanliness so unnatural and so uncharacteristic (of India and esp Mumbai) . I was like “Hellooo?? Did Naseeruddin Shah make his directorial venture about coming to this over sanitized and western commodized India??” Because they are the only 2 things I find missing in my homeland, at least in the immediate space, closest to me.

I wrote to my parents, “We met people of many nationalities. All are friendly and polite and blah blah.” My amazement at the politeness levels lasted for a day or 2. Soon that politeness became ‘cloying (definition: annoyingly sweet)’ I am not used to people thanking me for my patience after waiting for 10 mins in the queue of the bank.

All the houses are in picture perfect order. They dot the picture perfect landscape. Oh how I longed for the mayhem, the chaos, the utter ruckus on the streets !! And did I meet anyone like Carrie et al?? Umm, all I can say is that the ladies here, nowhere resemble the SATC brigade. There are no sizes 2 here like Carrie. They are a lot bigger (lets make it a hell of a lot bigger) than anyone in SATC. They probably resemble Tulsi and Savita of Kyunki Saas bhi kabhi Bahu thi

Is this is a satire on the dirt in India or on the traits of Americans, I ask myself?? But I amswer myself this is just a random thought by a very homesick person who is separated by many miles and 2 oceans from her home (even if it were smelly and noisy) and her current abode (which many will regard as a heaven on earth ). As I conclude, I can only think of the saying
“It is a very dangerous business stepping out on the road in front of your house, as you don’t know where it will lead you. –Bilbo Baggins”

A Close Encounter of the Mysterious Kind

Ghosts, Spooks, Aliens- what rot! As students of Science we ought not to believe in them and be frightened by them. Yet in the heart of our hearts we nurse a secret fear of them, probably instilled in us since childhood stories of bugaboos. We found this out to our own peril, at a place not so far away from Mumbai, at Matheran.

We, as in me and my 3 friends fancy ourselves daredevils. We eat from really dreadful roadside shops when the others cower from fear of jaundice and diarrhea. We had also gone for trekking in Dalhousie on 31st December to experience the snows and sub zero temperatures. So we thought a trip to Matheran in the monsoons a cinch as compared to our earlier escapades. So we set off on a Thursday. We prayed that we get plenty of rains in Matheran as Mumbai was going through a dry spell then (This was before 26/7). Rain Gods did not disappoint us; in fact we were quite sick of their largesse by the time we returned. Anyways, when we reached Matheran sheets of rain were crashing down from the heavens and we realized that we had landed in a ghost town…

Or so we thought. Matheran wears a different garb on week days and a different one on week ends. It was deserted with a smattering of people here and there. Undaunted, we embarked upon our wanderings. Trees lined the dirt roads. The shade of the trees combined with darkness of the overhead clouds lent a twilight-like atmosphere even at 2 o’ clock in the afternoon. All around us were ruined houses left since colonial times. All in all it was quite eerie! We were searching for ‘Apple Point’ which finally turned out to be non-existent. At 4 o’ clock the darkness had deepened. I was slightly uneasy but did not voice my fears to my friends for the fear of being scoffed at by them, who were by the way were yelling at the top of their voices. Any ghost asleep in his/her slumber of centuries must have woken up by the sheer noise we were making.

5 o’clock and still no sign of any Apple or Orange point. The darkness had thickened. We finally had to admit that we were lost. We stood at a fork in the road with no clue where next to go. Prajakta the trekker in our group had earlier regaled us with stories of ghosts who live in the hills and deliberately made weary travelers go in circles for their spite and entertainment. The stories seemed uncannily relevant to us then. Finally we began to yell, “Anybody there?” We tried its variants in Hindi and Marathi. To no avail, as no one answered…Then finally we got an answer- a whistle. It was melodious but tuneless all the same. A sound that road side romeos make. That scared us. We yelled again, but all we got was the whistle. The trekker of our group, Prajakta was struck badly. “Lets go from here, hurry”, she remarked. We complied and fled.

We trudged on and finally we came to a point –‘Lord Point’. Our travails were rewarded as the view was magnificent. Gossamer strings of silver and gold rain water cascaded down the green clad slopes. The view made us forget our mysterious encounter of a few minutes back. We started making a ruckus again. We yelled (cussed) all our class mates names roll number wise. We broke into an impromptu jig on the tune ‘Rakhi can’t dance without music,’ which emananted from Rakhi’s refrain ‘I cant dance without music.’ After the racket and the dancing came a moment of quiet. This was the scariest part as we heard it then – ‘the whistle.’ Now we all were scared big time. The ghost of the road side romeo was upon us, or so we thought. The whistle continued intermittently. Melodious and tuneless, but ceaseless all the same. We were truly spooked and so we scooted from there. On our way back, we came across a shop selling goodies, meaning food. Between bites of hot steaming food, we again forgot our tribulations. The level headed one- Shweta asked the shop keeper ‘Uncle is there any bird out here that whistles like a man?’ The shopkeeper replied ‘Yes, it is called Gogil.’ Well the mystery unfolded. Our ghostly whistle was in fact the call of the bird. Bit of an anti climax finally.

As we trudged back the Gogil’s cry followed us. We laughed at it and wondered how something so innocuous could have scared us so badly. Yet this incident brought to the fore the secret fears that lurk in the dark corners of our mind. Hopefully we realized that we need to look before we leap and not leap before looking. So, henceforth we have decided to restrict our foolhardiness to eating in dubious road side stalls.