Month: June 2019

It’s very difficult to find people who have similar tastes as yours – in anything, really. But this applies a lot more to pop culture than it does to food. Largely because everybody appreciates well-cooked food, but not several show similar appreciation trends to pieces of music, or art, or writing that one may consider to be done well. That’s a very convoluted sentence, but you get my drift.

Thus, finding someone whose recommendations you will trust blindly in and invest both your time and money in, is a rarity. When you do, though, it can spark some of the happiest moments, and can broaden your horizons in terms of the amount of art you end up consuming.

I’ve been privileged enough to be surrounded by several such individuals. Today I got to meet one such classmate from college, who picked a movie I didn’t feel to keen on when I saw the genre, warmed up to with the trailer, and loved by the time it finished. Worth my money, worth my time, great company, 10/10 fun day.

Today was spent trying to figure out why on Earth our house had wet floors when it was so bloody hot outside and the air-conditioning was on a cool 24. Turns out it’s too hot for a 24 degree air conditioning temperature, and with the humidity levels being as high as there, some wiring has gone crazy and lo and behold, our floors are a little wet.

Weird.

In other news, I have rediscovered my love for dates and will now be consuming them everyday on the rest of this trip. That is all.

Sometimes, being in a country where Sunday is the first working day of the week puts a  lot of things in perspective. The “Monday blues” become “Sunday blues” for one, and well, it means you’ve got a day off where the rest of the world is working. But it also means you’re working when the rest of the world has the day off. The dilemma also stretches to making international calls to call home. Either you call on Saturday, or you’re unable to because of work.

When you’re on holiday though,  none of this matters. It’ll never matter what the first day of the working week is, for it is always a holiday. That feeling is one I’m holding on dearly to, especially as I inch closer and closer to my internship, and closer and closer to becoming someone to whom working weeks and holiday leave days matter. What a world that must be like.

I literally spent today buying one pair of shoes. You see, since school gave us some neat sports shoes as part of our uniform, I never spent time buying all-purpose sports shoes, or a neat pair of trainers to use for activities. I did own specific pairs of shoes: for basketball and tennis, and several things, but I never spent the same amount of effort in figuring out a pair of shoes I could wear as casuals and as sportswear. My school shoes just sufficed. Today was one of the first times I had to figure that out, and that was a bunch of effort – especially with the kind of technology they’ve come up with for shoes. Each brand literally offers the same technology with a bit of variance (like the material they use for their insoles and outsoles, and the material with which the shoe itself is knitted), but it makes for such a massive difference to the way the shoe grips your foot and the kind of comfort it provides. Add to that a bit of bias owing to brand loyalty and advertisements and second-hand reports of shoes, and boy oh boy are you in for a treat.

It took me four hours and an avocado milkshake, but the decision has been made. Shoes have been purchased. I guess now comes the part where I actually use them.

You know how I was pleased that I was getting into a routine? I think the issue with routine is that it’s a lot tougher to find something intriguing to write or blog about. Your day begins to feel less interesting. This blog gives me that awesome avenue to write about all the things that are turning in my mind, but it also gives me the chance to reflect on my day and find something that stood out – something that no other day has given me, and something to be grateful for, that I can share with the interwebs – a void that I assume 17 people read, at most.

Today was the second day of the weekend. The weekend in the UAE is Friday-Saturday, which is a massive change from the Thursday-Friday I was used to for a very long time. My weeks started on Saturday. When everyone around the world celebrated Friday evening as the beginning of partytime, I slept at 8:00pm to be ready for school the next day. Gone are all those days. I still can’t believe I slept at 8pm once upon a time.

In my house, Saturdays bring with them the fresh smell of potato-onion sambhar and ragi mudde. If you don’t know what ragi mudde (pronounced muddhey) is, there’s a couple of things you need to read, of which “A Horse and Two Goats”, a short story by R.K. Narayan is right on top of the list. That piece was the first time I heard ragi mudde being described in literature, and it made the story so much more relatable for me. I digress. As I was saying, Saturdays have always meant this in my house.

The weird thing though, is that we partook in this family activity when we stayed in Dubai, and I remember burning my tongue because I tried to eat the ragi when it was far too hot, but we didn’t ever consume ragi mudde in Bangalore, a place where ragi mudde would’ve been amazing. I have eaten it during my internship – because it was available at the Court complex and I was super eager to try it out, but I haven’t eaten it the way we do at home, with both my parents, and that’s something I sorely miss when I’m at college.

You see, my earliest memories of eating at home come from eating in the kitchen. While we had a dining table, on the weekends, we used to spread out newspapers on the kitchen floor, place cork mats on the paper, and arrange all of our food. After that, my parents and I dined on the floor with steel plates. I used to be given small tasks in this, like laying out the paper properly, and arranging the cork mats appropriately, while my parents put in the hard work. And ragi mudde was best eaten like this. I also remember my father yelling at me for something, but I can’t remember what. I feel like it was mostly because I disliked something, or because I spilt water – a very common occurrence.

My memories today are naturally more vivid. Mudde day is when….Oh My God. Mudday. What a great pun. That’s how I shall refer to it henceforth. Mudday is basically the only day my father enters the kitchen to do anything apart from washing dishes and putting things in order. It’s the one day in the week he actively participates in, and thoroughly enjoys preparing food. My mom makes a pretty mean onion-potato sambhar, and the smell of sambhar powder wafting in the air can bring anyone to their knees, I do believe. Seeing my dad in action is what I enjoy the most though. Ragi mudde is basically a massive ball made out of ragi that’s cooked over flames for a while. You put some ghee at the center of this ball, plop it in sambhar, and belt it with your fingers. You occasionally spill sambhar, and then you drink all the leftover sambhar + ragi from your bowl. There is NO other way to consume this.

Spoons especially are a farce.

But preparing that ragi ball is some serious work. The substance is bloody sticky, especially as it cooks, so there’s a lot of heavy kneading involved. The separation of the massive ragi into consumable mounds is also a challenge – since the substance is hot and pretty much glued together (someone needs to research its chemical properties). Speaking of, small footnote: I genuinely wanted to learn about the specific heat capacity of ragi when I learnt the concept in Physics, but I forgot and I’ve forgotten ever since and it has now been 4 years since, and I still have no idea.

Coming back.

That ragi ball making is what my dad does. His face gets animated as he pounds and kneads the dough thing with a wooden spatula, and my mom is usually the one he cross-checks the “cookedness” of the ragi.

It’s a real family moment, and I genuinely feel like a Prince when I receive the first bowl.

Damn man. 3 more Saturdays and I’m out of here.

In other news, I met a very cute cat today.

I’m slowly settling into a nice little routine in Dubai, which is something I’m quite enjoying. This is especially since my life is devoid of any schedule when I’m at University, and even more so when I’m in Bangalore – since it’s absolutely impossible to predict when a “scene” will pop up. Dubai is relatively a more quiet time for me, which gives me the opportunity to use more time for personal goal fulfillment. A large part of this – in this break especially, is centered around meals and learning to prepare/enjoy them. That’s been exciting.

In other news, I find myself longing for the pool more than much else these days. The reading appears to have taken off ridiculously, but I haven’t reviewed a book or an author in a while – so there’s probably some time I must devote there soon. I’ve been using the nifty little keyboard I bought myself and doled out a few covers, which are on my SoundCloud. That’s gotten me pleased.

Today was spent largely in the company of family friends who are pretty much family, and have played a massive role in my upbringing – taking care of me for a whole week, on occasion, and pampering me no end. It’s with them I feel most like a 10-year-old, the age I exited the United Arab Emirates, and the last age at which I spent a large amount of time with them. I haven’t seen one of them in over 6 years now, and we only ever chat when I’m in Abu Dhabi, or when I genuinely feel like irritating her on social media (which has become rarer as time as passed), but nothing seems to have changed.

I love that.

If you read one thing today, please read this:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/may/02/where-oil-rigs-go-to-die

Today’s been a very warm kind-of-day. That’s true of the temperature of every place I visited today, but it’s far more true of the kind of feeling I’m left with in my heart as I head to bed tonight. There’s a variety of reasons for this, and considering how daily this blog has become since the start of this month, I guess I can spend enough time on it to explain why. I owe myself that much.

We left Pune today. Seeing my paternal grandmother wave us off brought back several memories because we’ve always left Pune this way. Most of my Pune trips have been with my dad, and I have a very vivid memory of us driving off to the airport in a cab/car and my grandparents waving us as we drove out the rocky roads of the colony they stay in. Every single time, my grandmother said the same few words, her voice quivering. “Come when you can, there isn’t any obligation. We have a phone so we can keep in touch.” Her sentiment, in it’s simplest form, was to make sure we weren’t going out of our way to see her. Or disrupting our “very busy lives” to make time for her.

While this made a lot of sense back when we were in the UAE, and we spoke on the phone every single Saturday, I haven’t been able to understand it as much since I’ve grown up. I never understood why she said it. She said it today as well, and it’s all I thought about as we drove down to Bombay. My thoughts are pretty simple: she doesn’t want us to think of her as an obligation. Plus, since my dad moved out after Grade 10, she’s always seen him as someone who comes home for a break (and to be pampered, ofc) whenever the “fursat” (freedom/time) arises. I think that trickled down to me as well – especially after I moved to college. To say the least, I don’t know how to make her feel like she isn’t an obligation for any of us, because going to Pune makes me feel at home in a way I can’t compare to much else. Gulab jamoons and all.

Driving to Bombay was another really fun experience. I type this out as if I was in the driver’s seat when I was honestly asleep for the first one hour. I woke up in Lonavla because my mom wanted to buy chikki. She called it a protein bar. We took selfies outside the small foodcafe thing they’ve built there, which is when it struck me that this was the first time it was just the three of us flying an international flight in 10+ years (June 2008 is the last one we can recall). That’s a ridiculous amount of time considering we each average about 8 flights a year (My dad’s stats have been deflated to account for normalcy). I know this reeks of privilege, but this means that as a familial unit (and I get this is horrible statistical phrasing), we have likely spent a fair amount of our time in different cities, or flying to see each other, rather than flying together. That hit me in my head, because I know how much my parents enjoy family holidays. As I grow older and begin to earn, I know that’s an experience I want them to be able to live out.

Then of course there was the matter of the pav bhaji. As we got to Bombay we had to decide what to eat. My mom got to pick, and her decision led to some route mapping to ensure we ended up in time for our next destination and got to eat some great Bombay food. I knew zilch in the area, so I called up my personal Bombay Yellow Pages, a very dear friend, whose enthusiasm upon hearing I was in the city was something I could sense on the phone. Honestly, I can’t quite understand why people get excited when I’m in their city, but it was so nice to hear that we might have been able to meet if I had more time. His suggestion was spot on and the food rocked. But what came before that, and all the navigation to the spot (Shiv Sagar, Bandra), rocked a lot more. Sitting in the car, my dad and I both recounted to my mom (who hasn’t spent time in Bombay) what our experiences in each part of the city were. My memories are raw, they’re barely six months old now. My dad’s proper memories of the city come from 2007-08, and before that, from the early 1990’s. The crazy thing was that he could remember landmarks and routes: despite living in and traveling to over 25 different territories since. I guess what I loved about it was the fact that my dad and I could both share in the commonality of our experiences from Bombay – it honestly is a city like none other, and it makes you feel that the minute you enter (mostly because of the sweat).

The day just got warmer from that because we got to spend time with Opa. Opa is my best friend’s maternal grandfather. He’s seen me since I was 6. My parents developed a relationship with him progressively, and naturally, and we knew we wanted to pay him a visit despite the short time we were in the city for. His proximity to the airport helped the logistics. Seeing him brought a smile to my face. He was overjoyed by the visit. The conversation was good: we just updated him on the small things in our lives and heard from him about his experiences in Europe. What I’m taking away from that entire conversation is how he was able to find something to relate to with each of us separately: my mom, my dad and I, and to find something to relate with all of us together, to tie in the conversation, if you will. I admire him for his personality and his graciousness with his time. Opa even had cakes and tea for us when we visited, a welcome surprise.

The last part of this overly warm-feeling essay is the fact that I’m in Dubai now and I flew with my parents. It comes out of the fact that we came “home” together – just as we departed for our home in Bangalore together in June 2008. I was up to the usual: irritating my mother for several parts of the flight, and getting looks of disapproval or extreme joy from my dad (because I irritated my mom successfully, or I crossed the line). I noticed two things: 1. My mom was more at ease with both my dad and I around, and 2. My dad really missed the company on flights.

You see, my dad travels a lot more than either of us – because of work. Several of these trips are solo trips, or with his colleagues, with whom he shares a primarily professional relationship. As a result, a lot of his time is spent on technology devices in-flight as well. Today I could see how much he enjoyed the flight because he was able to interact with his co-passengers, rather than sit through the flight quietly, alone. It’s the small stuff: pointing to the window and saying “look, there’s rain”, or “look, there’s Dubai”, and the big stuff: sharing a screen with my mom and watching a nature documentary without headphones on (because my mom’s headphone jack didn’t work). I know he loves his travel, but I can tell. Our presence made a difference.

And this is true for each of us. Traveling with my parents, for me, meant that I had to think a lot lesser about everything. Traveling with my dad meant I got lounge access in Bombay and used a very fancy washroom.

Most of all though, traveling with both of them meant I did not pay excess luggage, and for that, I am grateful.

Goodnight.

If I am to participate in the task of recounting what my day has been like, it would honestly make me sound like a productive human being because I can use flamboyant language to make it look like I’ve done a lot, when I have in fact, done very little. Such is the illusion of the holidays.

Honestly though, today’s biggest learning has been to take care of the kind of products you use on your skin. And that skin irritations suck. I’ve also learnt that skincare products: especially medical ones, cost far more than they should. Medication should not be this expensive. Actually, chuck that – because understandably, skin medication is something that not all people need.

Today I saw how much a pack of sanitary pads costs. That shouldn’t be so expensive at all. Someone really needs to cap those prices at an affordable rate.

There are several people I can’t recount my first meeting with. The opportunity to catch up with these kind of people always brings a smile to my face. It almost appears that irrespective of the status of your present-day relationship, including “never talk except when in the same city”, the fact that you know each other for so long means that the relationship automatically picks up exactly where it left off. There’s enough update-giving, there’s a lot of jokes, and there’s enough familiarity that breeds confidence to be yourself: if that’s something you fear.

Amidst the first rains in Pune, today provided me with a chance to do just that. The fact that these people drove down to our house despite the rains is something that I can’t help but appreciate. It’s such a simple task, but when it rains in Pune, there is literally rain on the road because of how clogged things get. It floods occasionally too. Braving that takes some courage.

These folk are family friends, but they were/are so close to my dad’s side of the family that they’re practically family. For all intents and purposes. I love that.

As soon as I told a friend from University I was in Pune, his hometown, he got excited. Several people would be in Pune this weekend, which gave him a great excuse to come home. Living in a hostel, it’s not like it takes much for us to try and plan for some escape, but when you’re doing an internship in Bombay, planning anything is a nightmare because of how unpredictable your life and schedule can get. But lo & behold, here he was: my batchmate, my friend, my debating teammate, and generally the guy who finishes my water in class before I’ve even had a sip – and that’s saying something, especially given the amount of water I consume.

Driving around a city with someone from that city is an entirely different experience to visiting a city as an outsider. I got to see him speak in Marathi, we drove past his old school, and we ended up having some lovely sandwiches and great conversation. It’s times like this when I realize how much I’ve benefitted from my time on campus, and how much I value the friends I’ve made there.

I’ve also managed to get a lot of reading done today, an unexpected benefit that arose from being clued to my Kindle right from breakfast. I didn’t anticipate how much my reading speed today would be impacted by merely carrying the device around with me, and keeping it in my back pocket. But it has.

Also, a word on buying undergarments in shops in India. I don’t understand why I struggle so much in interacting with females who sell me my innerwear, or why I shy away from purchasing the same with my parents around.  Such an odd feeling to find strange. Oh well.

Till today, I didn’t think that thinking was tiring. But as I lie on my bed typing this out, I’m pretty pooped. That too after taking an afternoon nap, which is especially uncharacteristic for me.

Today was the first day of my grandfather’s one-year death ceremonies. They went off well, and the next two days should go off smoothly too.

Today was also the first time I met my Chikkappa on this trip. My dad’s younger brother, he’s always been the cool uncle, essaying a role where distance genuinely breeds affection. Him and I spent three weeks together during summer when I used to come to Pune, and I have a lot of fun memories of us. He was the reason I had an extended bedtime – because he used to come home from the clinics/hospitals he visited only past 11pm, so I got to stay awake just to talk to him and watch TV. He was also the cause of my love of counterfeit books, uppinkai, and chutneypudi.

More than anything else though, I have three highlighted memories of him. The printouts he made to welcome me to Pune, which were colourful WordArt posters, every single year. The “Road Rash” I played on his computer. And the FIFA World Cup 2006. That was my second FIFA World Cup, and I had watched every game in Pune with my Uncle. Come the day of the final we slept in the hall so we could wake up on time to see the game. He woke up and discovered that the electricity had conked off, so didn’t disturb me. And then he woke up and saw the last few minutes – including the headbutt. When he tried waking me up, I refused to budge, and slept soundly through the night – seeing the controversy in the paper the next morning.

Catching up with him is always great.