Author: Tejas Rao

It’s really cold in Gandhinagar. Okay, it isn’t as cold as other parts of India get, and it’s surprisingly warmer outside my room than it is on the inside, but I feel really cold here. I always have. It’s why, although I enjoy the even semesters on campus a lot, I’m a fan of the odd semesters: specifically September and October, when the rain has subsided, and the winds blow a cool breeze across campus. I much prefer the heat to the cold. Despite living in India for 11 years now, I don’t think my body has fully acclimatized to the country. It’s cold enough for me to always be wearing a jacket and multiple layers, to prefer pyjamas over shorts or anything of the sort, and pretty much always have socks on to keep my feet warm.

Staying here in December 2017 increased my capacity to withstand the brutal cold, but not by much, to be frank.

The sun’s out and everything, but since one of the windows in my room broke, I’ve been struggling with the cold wind entering my room. To combat this, I devised the greatest thing I’ve ever come up with: heating up some water.

Usually when I drink warm water from my kettle, I never allow for it to heat up to the kettle’s maximum. I’ll maybe shut it off within about 30-40 seconds, because I don’t have the palette or the desire to consume overly heated water. I much rather prefer warm stuff. But now, I let the kettle heat up completely – till the water inside boils and it auto-switches off. Then I warm my hands by holding the sides of the kettle. I can do this for minutes together – almost 20-30 minutes before the water is of a consumable temperature, and then drink the warm water to warm myself up completely.

 It gets me feeling fuzzy and nice on the inside, which is honestly all I can ask for in this weather. One thing I realized a little later, however, is that I feel terrible about the kind of energy I’m wasting. As a result, I do this less often: only when it’s cold enough to warrant the consumption of warm water. Otherwise I put a brave face on and make it through the day by wearing my layers and socks.

This might serve me well if I move abroad. It may not. Only time will tell.

Keeping a clean room was never really a forte of mine. I’m not strong with continuous maintenance. I prefer cleaning-up in cycles. Cleaning up frequently, rather than daily: to reorganize and get stuff in order, or where I want stuff to be. This was at odds with my family when I was growing up, given that the house was cleaned up and reorganized on a daily basis: to ensure things were never out of place. My mum’s philosophy towards things is that they should always be where you expect them to be. The problem is that for me, that’s very different to what typical organization looks like. I expect things to be where I’ve mapped out a place for them in my brain – which is often not where you’d intuitively grab for things.

This made moving into the hostel a lot easier. I no longer had to organize in a manner that suited aesthetics or suited how my parents wished for things to be organized. I could organize the way I wanted to. That freedom was something I found very liberating for a long time, because while I could keep the room clean – I didn’t have to bother too much about its aesthetics. Something I learned pretty quickly though is that aesthetics matter; and they matter because they often reveal how organized a place is. I learned to organize in a way that looked presentable. My University instituted this clean room award thing: an award I derided and laughed at, but hoped I’d win. If nothing, just to show my parents I had this clean room I actually maintained without their interventions.

Each time I come back to campus I have to undertake a massive cleaning effort. It takes ages, and honestly is one of the most cathartic things I do when I come back for a new semester. It makes this place feel like home again. I know I’m not going to win that clean room award. Of that I’m very certain. But, I know that my room is clean. It’s the cleanest it will be for the rest of the semester. I’ll take that and move forward.

I’ve been thinking about returning to campus for a while. I’m not sure how I feel about it at the moment, so I’m hoping that this entire essay I end up typing out will become about my feelings. I can’t promise you anything though.

This is the last time I have to go back to Gandhinagar for the start of a semester. I’m sure I’ll visit Gandhinagar in the future. I have no doubt about that. But its the last time I need to go say “wow, a new semester at GNLU”. It’s the last few months of “oh, I’m studying for my undergraduate degree in Law”. That’s weird. It’s weird to think that these are phrases I won’t recycle when May comes around. It’s odd to think that my “growing up” has reached some stage of finality. I’ve learned so much. Especially in the last few months.

Returning is defined as “coming or going back to a place or person”. I didn’t expect to see person included on that definition – it’s caught me a little off guard. In a sense though, I am going back to people. My roommate, my neighbours, my batchmates, my juniors, my friends. There are categories and swathes of people with whom my relationship is defined by our interactions on this campus. Come May, it appears as though that relationship will change forever, if it hasn’t already.

I think it’s best to figure out these feelings as time passes by.

The winter has given me a newfound love for my family. This isn’t to say I didn’t love them before, or love them as deeply earlier. It’s just to say that I had fallen out of touch with what that meant or extended to. Distance and time changes relationships. That’s a universal fact, and my own relationship with my family, and my extended family, has been through being separate – and having a large amount of distance/time separate us, to living next to each other, within the same house. Naturally, the dynamics are different in each phase. I’ve known that going to University has meant that I’ve fallen out of touch with several members in my family – because I don’t see them as frequently and get to share stories with them, but it’s also meant that we’ve cherished all the time we’ve spent with each other, to catch up as best as possible.

Every occasion my family decides to spend time together is a memorable one. Today, we got together to celebrate my great-grandmother’s (Big Ajji) 92nd/93rd birthday. Her daughters and some spouses, my mum and her sister, her caretaker, and me. A small crowd, but a crowd that literally brought tears to her eyes when she got to hear us sing happy birthday and cut her cake.

We got her this gigantic yellow cake: a pineapple flavoured cake that contained frosting and icing representing her favourite Indian sweets and snacks. Big Ajji loves eating things she shouldn’t be eating – especially the sweet stuff and the spicy stuff. Naturally, one of the first things she went for was the icing itself: the icing murukku they had supplied on the top of the cake. It was hilarious. She was so eager to get to eating the cake that she didn’t want to wait for a knife to cut it. She cut her first piece with her fingers.

My Big Ajji is a gem. She’s got a childlike enthusiasm about her most days she’s sitting up. I admire that tremendously, and the two things I know, deep in my heart, is that first, I’m not going to let anyone in my family lose that – I’m going to do everything in my power to keep that childlike enthusiasm alive. Second, I’m going to ensure I don’t lose it myself.

There’s a lot of comfort in a good sandwich. I follow this subreddit, r/grilledcheese, where people post pictures of grilled cheese sandwiches they’ve made at home – and it never fails to bring a smile to my face when I see one. I think the ingenuinity of it comes from the creativity in picking out a type of bread and a mix of cheeses to get a result that leaves you happy – and the fact that there are so many combinations that are possible, with that limited set of ingredients. It’s always joyful to see. Another subreddit I enjoy is r/sandwiches. The art of constructing a sandwich isn’t one that I want to delve into too much detail on, but it’s something I truly admire. It’s a skill I’ve been trying to master for years.

My mum made me a snackbox to eat during “break”time in school when I was in primary school in Dubai. Sometimes, she made me these cucumber sandwiches I loved, which used to make my day really frequently. We also had a really nice sandwich maker at home, a maker that essentially created these triangular sandwiches that were closed pockets filled with some great surprises: because I couldn’t see into it till I had taken a bite. My favourite one was a cheese-sweetcorn mix. Sandwiches eventually evolved into the unhealthy really quick: I grew into nutella and peanut butter and eating those with a passion, and excess filling on any sandwiches.

For a while though, the sandwich moved away from my primary staple comfort food for snacking. A large part of this was some drive to become healthier: by trying to eat ragi, or fruits, or something else apart from bread. Another part of this stemmed from trying to ensure some amount of diversity among my snacks in life.

That was until, very kindly, all of us began ditching our snackboxes to dine on the chutney cheese sandwiches another friend of mine got daily for his dabba. It was almost like aunty began packing extra sandwiches for him because she knew two of us would be eating one of them. They were perfect. So perfect, that on a trip to Pondicherry, aunty made us a loaf of chutney cheese sandwiches to take with us for the entire car ride. They were the first snacks we consumed (read: demolished).

Moving to University, the cheese sandwich remained a staple in my diet. I put this down to the fact that we’ve got a separate counter for the cheese sandwich on our campus, and also the fact that its the one food that you’re able to chomp down on the way to class.

In Bangalore, I really enjoy frequenting a sandwich shop. I know it sounds absurd: visiting a shop that basically puts bread slices together and some fillings to boot, but this place makes the most incredible sandwiches I’ve ever eaten. I’ve always visited this place with one of my closest school mates. Today, I visited it with one of my University seniors. Although the company was different, the bread and its contents tasted unchanged.

I intended this to be an ode to sandwiches, and the delight of eating them. Instead, now, I’ve been distracted to the extent that I’ve forgotten what I was writing on about and the emotion I wanted to capture. Now, I’m craving a cheese sandwich.

That tells you enough about the power of bread, I think.

Mattresses are unique objects. While they provide padding and structural support on the bed, I’ve found mattress technology fascinating. How do you increase the comfort people feel in the last few conscious moments of their day before they sleep? How do you guarantee that they’ll sleep better, when it’s likely not a feeling they will recognize till they awaken the next morning?

I was never really much of a bed person. I found it easier to get things done at home while I was sitting on my beanbag, or at my table. It gave me something concrete to rest on. My bed was at an awkward angle as it was, which made sitting up uncomfortable. As a result, I’ve enjoyed most of my life sitting at desks and being productive. This was until I moved to University and recognized the freedom one possesses when their bed provides them with back support and can keep you seated up. In the first few years at University, my bed was against a wall, but at an angle that stretching out my feet while sitting was an improbability. In the winter of my third year, I changed that: actively moving the bed toward a corner, thus allowing for back support and leg-stretchability. In that time, I’ve basically become a bed-person. My mattress has become a source of comfort in this place: quite literally being the most comfortable place in my entire room in the hostel.

When we relocated from Dubai to Bangalore, I remember trying to help out with a lot of the furniture selection we had to do. My parents gave me a lot of freedom to select things for my own room, and I wanted to make sure I did justice to that freedom by exercising it wherever possible. The one thing I remember vividly is that we went to this Kurl-On mattress showroom in Marathahalli to figure out mattresses for the house. We needed 3 of them. My parents picked out something super-comfortable for their bed. Mine was a tier below. Just as comfortable, without the expense. I remember seeing the pattern on the mattress: it was cream coloured with flowers, as opposed to the dark, solid grey mattress my parents picked out, and being concerned. I voiced the fact that they were getting me something different than they would pick out for themselves, which made them reconsider and order the exact same mattress for my bed too. I was a spoiled child, clearly. But every night I lay down on my pillow and felt this additional comfort: not because it was a top-end mattress model, but because my parents and I were sleeping on the exact same mattress. Separately, but together.

Today, we had to throw out that mattress on my parents’ bed. For a reason we couldn’t quite diagnose exactly. Which brought back a flood of memories, naturally. It’s weird to think that I didn’t fully appreciate its comfort when it was there – but now, that I look at the empty wood its left in its place, I realize how valuable an asset that mattress was in my life. I’m not sure when or how we’ll replace it. Even when we do though, things aren’t going to be the same: the mattress in my bedroom will no longer be an exact replica of what my parents sleep on at night – eliminating another common thread that tied the three of us together in our home. I’m glad we spent enough time together over this winter to endure that tearaway.

I hate dust. Not only does it give me some terrible allergies, but I hate the smell of it. I dislike knowing its there. It makes things feel, unused. It’s one of the reasons why I find it easier to commit to activities after I’ve made an investment in them. I can’t see dust settle on anything. It’s why I have difficulty staying still as well – because I know that it means there’s dust settling someplace. What dust has always represented to me is the under or unutilized. The untouched. The uncleaned. The past. It’s always represented something that could be better used, or be better serviced. I think it’s one of those things I inherited from my dad, but when I’m in the mood to clean up, I clean up things pretty well – because knowing that something is untouched, bothers me.

So everytime I come back home to dust in some part of my house it bothers me a lot. I spoke about this with my mother, lamenting the fact that although the place is maintained really well there are these small specs of dust in the most unreachable places that frustrate me. She said something poignant in response. The fact that dust has settled doesn’t necessarily need to be looked at as something untouched from the past, or something negative. It should and can always be looked at as something untouched because you’ve moved on from it – from the past into the present and to the future. You’re doing something else now that necessitates that dust settles on the past. And that’s okay.

It’s small, but its representative of how I think I’d like to be living. Maybe one day I’ll celebrate dust, instead of sneezing at it in disdain.

I’ve previously written on this blog about how unsatisfied I had been with my friendships tapering out with school friends – and the kind of thinking I had done since to ensure nothing like that happened again. In my first two years of college, the fact that it had happened hurt me. In the last two years though, I recognized how natural it was, although it was weird to come back to the same city everyone still called home and be unable to meet anyone at all.

I think the last time I saw several people together, in a group gathering was three years ago. I met a couple of people here and there in the middle, football games, or walking their dog together, but never really got to go out with everyone the way we used to. I think that was a natural consequence of everyone doing their own thing and figuring out stuff. It was great then to find out that a group meet up was actually happening, and that I was free to go. It was a surprise to see one person there I hadn’t seen since my first year ended.

On what can only be summed up as a delightful evening, I learned about the people my friends had become since we left school. A lot of it felt like the old days, but a lot of it felt new: and I think that’s how all meetups ought to be. Nothing stays the same forever, and it would shameful to imagine people as such – yet I did. For a long time, I expected all our friendships to remain exactly what they were at the end of 12th: one massive gang of everyone in our class, hanging out as we used to, talking about the exact same things as we did, and doing all the things we did then. I’m glad today showed me that while our friendships have changed, there’s no reason not to embrace that change. Another thing I recognized at the end of the evening is that there are few people I don’t need to be in touch with all the time, who will still be around all the time – and that’s just as a result of the fact that that’s how school was. We were always around each other, the lot of us, but we weren’t in touch 24*7. We’re a pre-texting friendship, a pre-continuously checking in on each other friendship. Those go on.

They’ll change.

But they’ll go on.

I remember reading Chetan Bhagat’s book “2 States” at my aunt’s house, and then finishing the novel while in the washroom. I had a nasty habit of reading books in the washroom really frequently at the time. The book was a page-turner, filled with stereotypes and flashy romance scenes, and a fast plot that kept you glued. If I was to critically review it, I would give it a low-rating, but it was one of those books that once you finished, and realized was based on his own story, was pretty awesome. I found it cool that he could take something so personal: a marriage and the tale of how it came to be, and convert it into such a filmy story. At the time, I remember thinking it would be perfect on the big screen (it came, but was ok-ok/sad), and also wondering if these kind of stories were true. I was, and am, a romantic who believes in love, so it blew my brains out that this was an origin story.

I witnessed a two States thing happen last night. A confluence and conglomeration of two cultures that could not be farther from each other if they tried. A celebration of two individuals from different parts of the same country, and a merger of families. Oh, it was incredible. Naturally, our energy levels for activities were distinct, but my word was it an enjoyable event. To think of the cultural variations would be an essay in itself, but to reflect on the fact that all everyone was committed to was ensuring that everyone had an enjoyable time? That’s a sentence. It was joyful and wonderful and everything an engagement function should be.

I was horrified to be in an attire different to everyone else at the engagement: everyone wore Indian formals/casuals and I ended up in Western formals with shoes to boot. My confusion was set aside when I realized my get-up matched perfectly with the aesthetic of the interiors and that my formal shoes kept me agile enough to run around where a need arose.

Every city has neighbourhoods that possess characteristics which end up defining the individuals that live there. Neighbourhoods essentially provide the environment, the perfect cocktail of nature and nurture in the nature v. nurture scenario, and the background to which any finished article is made. My neighbourhood made a distinct impression on me when I was younger – not only because of the people I got to interact and mingle with, but also because of the community I was surrounded by. The area I live in had nothing when we first came in, but grew out of nowhere to become what it is today: a beast that’s unidentifiable to individuals who visited in the past, with the unpredictability of not knowing what will become of it in the future. Looking at the neighbourhood on Google Earth or Google Maps perhaps best represents what the neighbourhood was 2 months prior to the date of the search, and I reckon that this is the way its always been.

As a result of where I’ve lived, there are some newer neighbourhoods I’ve never explored. This city is steeped in history, and as I moved away from the city, I became more aware of and closer to its past. What the city was, and how those parts grew, became essential to my understanding of the place – so much so that I failed to recognize or offer recognition to newer neighbourhoods that were under construction. Something I always felt was that the place I stayed was “young” and “new”.

My neighbourhood is old now. 15 years old and growing, if we count time from when the first actual community popped up in this area. That’s a long time.

Today I went and explored an area close to the airport. A new neighbourhood. An identity so distinct from the place I live that it is unrecognizable to me. For so many children though, this will be their home. They will not know traffic, or the horrid tales of getting to the old airport. Their deliveries for food are likely to come from eateries based at the airport itself. They will not wake up early for flights, nor leave in anticipation of missing flights. When helitaxis eventually arrive, they will not have to use one.

They will forge tales and identities of their own, and I’m curious to see how the neighbourhood and its residents evolve to keep cognizance of that growth.

The title of this post is a clear allusion to Billy Joel’s favourite Billy Joel song: Scenes from an Italian Restaurant.

I took an auto-rickshaw to go visit a friend’s house late last evening, and the auto driver was in a jovial, conversational mood. Naturally, therefore, he began voicing his grievances. I wasn’t too interested in spending time on my phone (something I usually do in auto rides), so I lent him my ears – to listen, to respond, to chime into the conversation when our grievances matched.

He started off by telling me how he missed speaking Kannada with his customers, an issue that I’ve heard several auto drivers talk about. He brought in a unique perspective though, and wondered why native Kannada speakers weren’t encouraging individuals to learn the language. When I suggested that this was perhaps conversation that took place privately that he was unaware about, his grouse was that it ought to be a conversation that took place publicly – that recognized that the language was in decline and was being used in a limited way in the biggest urban city in the State. Encouragement, he claimed, was more effective when it was publicly called for – when there was a public account of how the Government and prominent private personalities speaking up about the issue, and clamouring for their voice to be heard in their own language. Something he told me was that there was this old video of Robin Utthappa and KL Rahul (both cricket players who play(ed) for Karnataka, and grew up in Bangalore) speaking in Kannada that did the rounds frequently on WhatsApp groups he was a part of – just to recognize that they knew the language. He wondered whether there were similar videos of Dravid speaking in Kannada in interviews, or at school functions, or even with other national personalities speaking the language.

We then moved to discussing my profession: the Law. One thing he wondered was why I needed to go to Law school to practice the Law, and what knowledge I gained by spending 5 years in another State other than my own. I have a very eloquent answer for this I couldn’t quite translate to Kannada, but I didn’t have an answer for the first part: which pointed to a more systematic question about why University education mattered, and why we ought to pay money for it. He answered it for me himself: the exposure it provided.

That concluded a rather eventful, enjoyable conversation – not because there wasn’t more to talk about, but because I reached my destination.

A drink with jam and bread was definitely the first time I heard the phrase.

I’ve never had a strong affinity or preference for tea or coffee. As I grew older, I’ve found comfort in the chocolate milkshakes and hot cocoa I can make in the hostel when I’m in the mood for warm drinks. This isn’t to say that I don’t enjoy exploring tea or coffee: I adore that activity – finding new things always excites me, but, if I’m asked at an evening gathering what drink I’d prefer, I would struggle to come up with an answer. This puts me in awkward situations at several group gatherings, where I refrain from asking for anything around tea-time, and at awkward circumstances after breakfasts at relatives’ houses, when I choose not to drink things. I overcame this obstacle by feigning a preference that mirrored the preference of my host, something that would bring the most joy to the group without causing any inconvenience for whoever was hosting me on a particular day.

None of that brought me personal relief though. I was as confused as ever, not because I enjoy both drinks equally, but because they are met with equal reactions of indifference. I like them both because when served warm on a cold day they can bring a lot of comfort. Things are made particularly tricky because my roots and the way my identity almost mandates a self-identified preference for coffee, but my upbringing and my formative years were spent in a country that’s known for its tea variant.

Ordinarily, it would be this stage of the essay that led to a resolution of this conflict: some indication that I have some sort of a clear preference.

Unfortunately, I do not. Not as of yet. I think it’s very mood-dependent. I’m very, okay, with both drinks. However, my indifference has definitely been replaced with a, satisfication, if you will. I now enjoy drinking tea, and drinking coffee. I like them both. Equally. At par with each other. I have no preference, not as yet, but I enjoy the taste of both drinks on the tongue. Which I think is a step forward.

I think all of it stems from how I spent the break, and how I ended up learning to make tea for my parents. Good tea. I accompanied my mother when she drank coffee, but I accompanied them both in the evening as they drank their teas, and I learned how the flavour pores into the water and then into the milk. How the beans and leaves ooze out complexity only our tongues can understand and our noses can process.

It’s one of the things I will miss about being at home with both my parents. Especially given that we consumed a copious amount of biscuits while we were at it.