Tag: home

#12 Postcard – Choices and the Roads not taken

They say everywhere you go becomes a part of you somehow. But don’t you also leave a bit of your self behind, every place you leave?

They say everywhere you go becomes a part of you somehow. But don’t you also leave a bit of your self behind, every place you leave?

I cannot think of any city I have lived in without feeling that lump in my throat, except Trivandrum. And maybe that comes from the knowledge that Trivandrum is home, it’s where I’ll always go back, and there is no leaving, really.

I’ve lived in Delhi, Georgia, Texas. And there are different, younger versions of myself residing in all these places. I only have to go back to see them.

When I visit Rajiv Chowk, I see the 22 year old me on my way back from visiting Valyamma or Achu Annan, waiting for Dwarka line on the other side of the rail. My backpack is filled with the fish fry Valyamma packed for me, or all the Haldiram’s Achu Annan bought me. In December that kid is preparing to become an IAS officer, in March she’s decided she will do International Relations in JNU, and in 2 years I’d be there for my visa interview at the consulate before I leave for Atlanta.

Years later, when I moved from Atlanta, I was sad. I was leaving behind my grad school friends, a place I had grown to love and that I could see becoming my home, a college that gave me my graduate education, a campus I loved to walk around in, gardens and shops I grew to enjoy visiting. I haven’t gone back, but I know I’ll find that 25 year old kid walking the bridge to Target, smiling mindlessly at dogs and the sunset and the dressed-up women posing at the Memorial gate.

There is comfort in familiarity, and I embrace that fully.

To think that we’re where we are because of choice, chance, and the associated what-if’s I grapple with if I ponder long enough (and I’ve had the privilege of choice for a few years). What if the 22 year old me followed another trail of thought to discover something else, what if I’d stayed in Atlanta and not moved?
But we could spend the rest of our lives playing What If, and then some.

Today I was walking back from the Indian grocery store, and I realized I’m growing comfortable here as well, and I’ll miss stuff whenever it is that I leave. I’ll always miss Delhi because it has some of my happiest memories, and that happy innocent kid that I can never go back to. Atlanta, because it gave me so much. Texas, too.

So maybe what we leave behind is our present selves, because we know there’s no way to hold on that comfort even if we want to, except in the form of memories.

But whenever I visit, I know I’ll find those younger versions. They never ask, How are you? Because they aren’t curious, somehow, they’re happy right there.

That Delhi kid still lives somewhere around Karol Bagh. She looks forward to finding out what’s in her evening tiffin, shuffles her way through the loud crowds of CP and reads her yellow Vision IAS notes on the long metro rides home. In Atlanta, Crash Into Me still plays in my room on a dark, rainy evening while Uma hums a tune in the kitchen, putting the chai on.

And maybe we like to think there was something more there, something we missed out on by leaving, that we can’t get back to. That secret, the answer to the what if, only the version that stayed behind knows. Yet when you visit, they only offer you a naughty smile. It’s a secret that will stay there, stay there with that version of you that you left behind. 🙂

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#7 Postcard – The librarian

Saturdays are good because you can leave the library an hour earlier than usual. Saturdays are also Bring your kids to work day. If Miss Dena from admin office brought Bella Anne to the library, M’s two girls would be upset to leave by 5.

Saturdays are good because you can leave the library an hour earlier than usual. Saturdays are also Bring your kids to work day. If Miss Dena from admin office brought Bella Anne to the library, M’s two girls would be upset to leave by 5. After saying their goodbyes, the children would run in circles in the outside lawns until Miss Dena raised her voice, and M would have to put on her stern face.

The downtown library crowd was more engaging than the South East branch where M was posted the first six months. There, the crowds were mostly parents dropping by after work to pick up books for their kids, always asking for recommendations (the South East branch stayed open till 8).

In downtown, the weekday crowd spanned university students, retirees and stay-at-home parents with their toddlers. They were also more patient in the queues to drop the books, actively participated in workshops, and took their time to learn the automated check-out and check-in machines – even Carla who was 84, one of their oldest patrons, and still visited regularly during the pandemic. It was partly why she enjoyed working in a library, a similar crowd at a Walmart line would no doubt form a disgruntled bunch.

So many of those self-help counters had stood empty for over a year now. The staff still regularly stacked the New Releases shelves, updated audio books on the website, and had recently refurnished the top floor lounge, although occupancy was down to less than 20%.

Saturdays were more idle because there would be no inventory arrivals, no new Interlibrary Requests to process. M sat at the reception with Bullock, the young assistant who had recently moved from the west coast, and talk about the California housing crisis (It was home, but I already love Texas). The kids would spend time in their section on the third floor without bother (except that time almost two years ago when they first tried to open the Emergency door, sending alarms and the security running, and her heart almost rose to her throat as she rushed to the elevator). Most summer Saturdays they would be occupied in workshops – origami-making, marble painting and crafts – attended by the staff’s young children, pre-teens from town and a handful of sportive adults.
Hardly anyone had attended them in South East location, but who thought it was a good idea to open a branch near a factory site?

In the evening once the girls were downstairs, Bullock would let them grab office stationery from her desk – marker pens, custom HB pencils and colored paper. M would then take them to Flying Fish across the Museum of Art, leaving their bags in the car. The girls always got fish and chips with extra dip and a soda drink, she would have the catfish sandwich with iced tea. Sometimes they’d order a plate of calamari rings. (Only once, when the kids were off on summer camp, she had tried their margarita with the then-assistant).

The grill had a wall dedicated to polaroids of first-visits, there was a picture of the three of them pinned up there from their first day at the place. That was also the day the emergency alarm went off, there was no Dena or Bullock present, it had been a lonely rollercoaster Saturday with the kids. Nonetheless, having them spend weekend at the library was a huge convenience.

M listened as the two of them munched and talked about how many books Stephanie read that day (Paula did not like to read), or how they had dozed off during the recycling workshop. Some days they bumped into Mrs. Sanders on her way back from the university.

As they drove home, the girls argued about whether they should move to California themselves (everyone is pretty there like Miss Bullock, that must be real boring, it went on). M looked at the weekend or what remained of it at her disposal. Tomorrow she had to run the laundry, sew the pinafore sleeve Paula had torn earlier in the week, and get the long pending car-wash. But tonight she’d finish the dishes while water filled in her tub, proceed to light those bath candles that’d been lying in her bottom drawer for over half a year, and then she could attend to the new release of Murakami, waiting in her tote bag.

From the Origami workshop at Arlington Public library

#3 Postcard – Domestic happiness

Of fresh laundry, domestic chores and the increasing returns of cooking. I couldn’t have thought this thought last year.

I cooked ramen noodles today, using my own condiments instead of the packet mix. I got way too full from eating and drifted into sleep while watching KVizzing with the Comedians, on the same couch that I was finishing up my book yesterday.

Cooking is probably the only chore out of all the drudgery that one must go through – including laundry, doing dishes, sweeping/mopping, cleaning up after cooking – where I get increasing returns over time.

I mean, I do get a sense of domestic happiness when I carry a still-warm load of clean laundry from the dryer back to my closet. Each time I walk in to pick up a clean t-shirt or a pillow cover, I can’t wait for the dirty pile to fill up so I can return their sweet Tide scent to them. But the process stays the same. Nothing changes.

But with cooking it’s an improving curve, still, for me.
I have tried pad thai from 6 places here so far. While they didn’t taste all that different, at least half of them had no crunch left in the vegetables and were overwhelmingly doused in soy – which raises the thought I could’ve cooked it better. And I couldn’t have thought this thought last year.
I don’t feel too strongly about pad thai though.

After waking up from my nap, I had another half-plate of my ramen – it smells distinctly of fish sauce which I don’t mind and there is the crunch from cabbage.

There is also some joy in just looking at my kitchen shelf and wondering – what if I get cooped up in here for two weeks? It is a convenient thought because my groceries would never last more than two weeks, and my imaginary emergencies cap at two weeks 🙂

I just had my third cup of kattan for the day, noticed I’m running low on brown sugar and am low-key excited because of the high I get from restocking. There must be a name for this?

Kerala elections – from Texas

LDF had won, but the bigger news of course was that NDA* had scored 0 seats, sending Malayalis all over the world (once again) into the collective self-patting that we love to engage in

I once read an article someone wrote about their father who moved to the US 40 years back with family. When asked if he didn’t miss home, the father said he had woken up every one of those days wishing he were back in his hometown in India.

I woke up this morning to an Instagram filled with stories from my circle. They were all about Kerala election results. Last night on our video call, I had found from Amma that LDF was leading. LDF had eventually won, but the bigger news of course was that NDA* had scored 0 seats, sending Malayalis all over the world into the collective chest-thumping we love to engage in.

In the kitchen, I glanced at the hashbrowns I’d planned to fry for breakfast. I then proceeded to take out dosa batter from the fridge, and put on my kattan (black tea) to boil.

*part of BJP/Modi’s party, put briefly

Afternoon showers and WFH

Taking a shower during a lunch break when working from home has been an unexpectedly cathartic joy during WFH.

Taking a lunch-hour shower when working from home has been an unexpectedly cathartic joy during WFH.

Of course these days are rare. But when the opportunity presents itself – a full afternoon hour with no meetings, when you aren’t drained by the forenoon’s work, and where you manage to have time for lunch too – a bit of Moroccan Rose in the middle of a day’s work is quite nice.
Amidst IDEs and slide decks and to-do post-its pasted on to my desk because they won’t stick to the wall, and a lot more stationery than I would ever use on a work day.

The bath scrub feels like rubbing fragrant sand on my back, yet there is nothing quite like scrubbing fragrant sand on your back as hot water flows seamlessly over it. It bothers me that the running shower doesn’t bother me as much as when water runs in the wash basin or even in a sink.

Lunch-break showers can last utmost 10 minutes. And I’m not just writing that because I’m wary of a colleague or my manager (or a future one) that might be reading this and questioning my work ethic otherwise. But because it’s a Neverland, a newly found one. Nothing quite like knowing you can waltz into your shower any moment and turn the knob to usher a trail of soothing warm water ready to caress you wholly, sending steam all up your bathroom mirror and curtain, washing down your hair and face and body.

I don’t know if one day I’d take an afternoon shower because I’m frustrated or foggy at work, but let’s hope not.

Snapshot from Finding Neverland, 2004.

#12 Then they smile and float away

It’s strange how for many of us, our privilege to fly was in fact earned for us by others who complied to stay.

I ask, “But how am I to get up to you?”

They answer, “Come to the edge of the earth, lift up your

hands to the sky, and you will be taken up into the clouds.”

“My mother is waiting for me at home,” I say,
“How can I leave her and come?”

Then they smile and float away.

Clouds and Waves by Rabindranath Tagore

I first read the above lines in 2016 while away from home. I didn’t realize it was an excerpt and that the poem didn’t end there. The abrupt end of it came as a cold shock, as if the last line served to close any possibilities, implying the child never left. Yet the brevity of it hit harder – that the clouds understood and left as soon as they had arrived – that there was no discussion, only a simple thought backed by a young boy’s emotion and rationale. It was as if Tagore meant life was usually that simple.

I was 22 then and more free than I’ve ever been. It was more than what many I knew could afford with their time and obligations, and I was quite aware of it. The lines hit hard because I do know people tied to homes, as well as others that leave homes and not entirely out of choice. My mother always said – well she says many things – but one was about how children are like little birds, to be kept in their nests only until they grow wings. And then we let them fly away.

It’s strange how for many of us, our privilege to fly was in fact earned for us by others who complied to stay.

I googled the poem today to see if I felt anything differently now. I was surprised to see there were more stanzas and that wasn’t the end as I’d thought. I still think it can form a whole, just startlingly short, cold and real.

A Tropical Sunday

A tropical Sunday from 5 years ago

Sundays without practice are rare. Opening the Whatsapp group (renamed the previous night to Practice at 9) with a half-open eye at 8:50 on Sunday morning, only to see the latest message ‘no practice’ – heavenly. It’s afternoon, my stomach is full from all that kappa and meen curry, and I have a nap to look forward to and I also look forward to waking up hungry so I can go downstairs and eat more of that.

If you’re from a tropical place you’d know a Sunday lunch isn’t lunch if you haven’t sweated profusely either during, before or after it (I know it’s a tropical thing because Mark Wiens shares the sentiment). The kitchen is hot and humid, so is the market, so is the car, so is everything. Nobody wants to be outside but it’s Sunday so you have to sweat.

I should’ve aimed for a productive Sunday but it’s Sunday, and all that sun is going to lull me to sleep.

I should draw the curtains before falling into a nap, otherwise I’ll be sweating like shit when I wake up. Why are Sundays so drawn out yet so similar and short?

I wake up sweating like shit anyway, my back unpleasantly drenched, face sweaty, the sun bathing my room in all that light even with a single window open. The world outside is bright and blinding at 4, a distant jackfruit tree in my neighbor’s backyard hissing in the hot afternoon breeze. I stretch my arms, and the black pants I wore to market with Achan earlier falls to the floor.

Ugh.

I look around and the room is still messy. I cannot believe my room is still messy. It was messy before I fell asleep, it was messy when I was 15. It’s messy now at 20. It looks glorious in the sun though, all the colors (read clothes) on the single bed, encroaching onto the double one. And on the rack. I must find time at night to clean up, I’ve been judged my whole life for a messy room.

Well at least I have stuff on the walls, that should offer some redemption. Why can’t people just watch Jack Sparrow and the weird cat stickers on the walls and ignore the rest of the room? And David Beckham shining in the rays, who I’m not even a fan of but Tessa gifted that when I was 14? Why’s that still hanging on the shelf? How have I not noticed? The last time I noticed it I was 15 and rearranging this room and adding an embarrassing handmade curtain on the steel book shelf.
Has anyone else noticed?

I want to sleep, but WAIT THERE’s KAPPA. That’s why I welcomed sleep in the first place. Do you know how horrible it is to fall asleep, wake up to realize there’s nothing nice to eat? If not you can never appreciate a sleep with the knowledge that something nice awaits for when you wake up.

Upstairs at 4 is just bright sunlight everywhere, it’s blinding. (Luckily I didn’t need glasses and didn’t get headaches when I was 20). Okay, Amma’s outside in the garden-slash-rainforest. The tiles are still warm and the day still bright.

“Harvesting aana amma?”

“This is the second batch,” she says holding up her cupped palms filled with kovakka. She’s also munching on them. I pick two sturdy looking light-green ones (that’s how you know they’re not ripe/bitter inside) and throw them in my mouth, proceeding to carry them all in my t-shirt crinkled basket.

I have never understood how people dressed up neatly at home. I probably dressed nice from 5-9, from 10-15 I’d rather not look at what I wore at home, repeat for 16-19. In a lot of pictures from those days I wear a shiny shorts from my brother’s jersey set (I had like 4 or 5 of them*), and one of his tee shirts I had picked up, or some random top from my cupboard that I wore like a derelict. 100% of the time I looked like someone who received terribly mismatched clothes from a donation.

The pictures are hard to look at. My mother never had issues with what I wore though. And the pictures are unbearable I tell you, and I have confronted my mother in later times on how she could let her only daughter walk around like that.

“There’s more,” I proceed to the creeper to pluck. “How long you been here.”

She tells me what she’s been up to while the rest of us have been on our Sunday siesta.

“Ottum orangeelle!” She slept a while. She’s really happy when she’s out here and lights up like a child every time there’s a rose blooming, and its close-ups end up in her Camera gallery. She also loves attending flower exhibitions and clicking photos at odd close-up angles, the latter also with couples at their wedding receptions. (I never got it back then but guess some 5 years later I click trees and gardens wherever I go as well.)

I’m looking out for the really young and tiny ones now, like the ones where the wilted flower is still intact, they’re probably a couple of days old and are super crunchy. They go straight into my mouth. I’m a bad person.

There’s a wind and all the mango trees and the curry leaves and everything else in the forest sing. Not dry rustling leaves on the ground but healthy, rich and evergreen bunches thick on tall branches. Tender curry leaves and long mango leaves and fat broad ones on the jackfruit tree plant which never grew up. There’s usually also tiny birds on the chembarathi, often attacking at my brother’s window with their sharp tiny beaks.

I ask if there’s tea.

“Illa,” she answers in a duh way. Sunday tea is late unless I’m ravenous and there’s nothing to eat and I prepare tea in a fit to calm myself down.

“Well it’s hot here I’m going inside, is anything on TV”

“Arinjudade, nokeella” (yes she is from Kollam :D)

I proceed back inside with my t-shirt harvest cup – and plunk transfer them on to the dining table. There’s a brass vase-like holder (that doesn’t match the table) which I should probably use but it stays empty. If I were hungry enough I’d chomp down all of it myself, but today there’s kappa so that’s where I’m going and couldn’t care less.

Later in the evening

I’m sitting on the verandah entrance with my tea cup, legs spread on the lower steps. (Pictures of the pose exist, they’re terrible). One of the things about tea is drinking out of a cup you like, and figuring over time just how strong you need it to be (and just how much) to relax, and how much to refresh. I notice how dark(er) my knees have become from that single knee drop step in the choreo, and a solar-system shaped blob from childhood that persists. I had claw marks from our poochas criss-crossing all over my two arms and my perennial concern during ages 7-9 was what if they’re permanent, how would I explain them to others (as I am now) for the remainder of my life that I wrestled with cats to take their ticks out? They’re gone now, so will this blob sooner or later I guess.

I now drink from a Walmart mug, but then I’m 25 26 now, after many effortful attempts the tea is prepared in a microwave and for better or for worse, I’m okay with that. Unlike the claw marks, I can still find the solar system somewhere in there if I look hard enough.

Favorite/first photo

We had a bunch of virtual social activities in the orientation week of my summer internship. There were 55 of us summer interns, and one of the activities was sharing a favorite picture or a memory. I cannot say I enjoyed all the games we played, particularly If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would you want to be?, which seems like it would be a fun game during Covid, but it was one of my bad days so the only place I could think of was home. (It was my fourth month alone in my apartment so…)

I landed in Atlanta on August 5, 2019. I was to stay temporarily in a senior’s apartment not far from where I live now, before moving in here. Another Gatech-bound student and I got off at the building, my network wasn’t working and he wasn’t able to get through to his friend to let us inside. So we waited on the pavement with all our luggage for somebody to show up and open the gate for us. That’s when I clicked my first picture in Atlanta, which is what I shared in the Photo-share activity.

Waiting outside with 50kg of luggage on my first day in a foreign country with no phone network is not something I’m familiar with, but the frame before me (apart from being obviously clean and well-maintained) was hot, humid and green, just like my home. This photo was a moment of taking it all in, realizing that Atlanta might not be too unfamiliar territory after all.

(While sharing with everyone, I mentioned for context that I was from Kerala, the “tropics” where it’s humid and full of trees, so this scene felt a lot like home, even while being away from home.)

Trees and beautiful skies – Atlanta

 It rained later that day and I had a beautiful view from the room I was staying in. Shruthy wasn’t arriving until two days later, and I wasn’t jet-lagged so I just sat in the room watching the sunset and vehicles go by.

I hadn’t met the senior whose room I stayed in, but I saw her books and her desk, a couple of framed photos. And I hadn’t imagined a lot about this place (Atlanta or college) before coming here either, so it was just a lot of observing and taking in, than Aah’s or Ooh’s.

Ikea was right across the road (behind those trees) and I could see inside the building at 2am, past the scant traffic. I saw people climbing stairs in those hours, and for a while I simply sat on my bed and watched somebody sitting at his desk, like I expected something to happen, but nothing did. It was a great view to Ikea as well and I probably would’ve spent a lot of time just looking at it had we continued to live there, the way I watch the trees here. 

Even while it wasn’t my favorite of plans, this country and a lot of people here have been extremely kind to me in the time I’ve been here. I’ve got to witness chaos – good and bad – especially in the last few months. Some days I marvel that it’s happening right before me, that I get to learn, witness and be a part of it, while some days the history overwhelms and exhausts me. But maybe that’s the way it should be. And I do love that it’s hot, humid and green here.

View from the room – Evening showers, sunset and tech trolley hub

#7 And never grow up

Remember when you were a kid and fell sick? The whole world just reduced to a bed-ridden little you wrapped in blankets and your mother who sat by your bed and attended to you 24×7, who showed up by your side every 2 hours with oranges, ORS and medicine while you ate and drank everything she asked you to even while making faces? You knew she was going to make it right.

Or how even after growing up, on a really bad day the world could reduce to essentially just that?

Yea.

Monsoon Diaries : Steel tumblers and tea in steel tumblers

I can drink tea directly from the steel tumbler at home – the smaller one with the steel handle – only when I have prepared it. Because with Amma’s tea there’s enough only for 4 modest-sized glasses (or 5 or 6, based on how many of us are missing from home), no more. And why would you drink from a tumbler if your glass had as much (tea) to offer? Unless you didn’t want to bother washing that extra glass.

We also have in our kitchen the steel tumbler with the steel handle in a bigger size, it lets me pretend I’m chaya-adikaling (beating tea?) over the kitchen sink that temporarily functions as a spillover tank for the tea I send flying all over. Usually little, if any, is left by the time I’m done performing the rhythmic beating (adikal).

Image result for south indian tea shop gifA scaled-down demonstration of beating tea. When you really perform the act, it should look something like this :downloadBeating tea/Chaya adikaling (to scale) for people who haven’t witnessed the sorcery. I’m a bad witch, I guess. Also a bad translator.

I specifically mentioned the steel handle of the steel tumblers because we also have in our kitchen a steel tumbler about the same size with a black plastic handle that we take kanjivellam (rice water), and occasionally tendercoconut water in. We don’t use it for much else, it lays abandoned in an unwieldy corner of the kitchen until somebody falls sick. And then all of a sudden it is everywhere you look.
(Kanjivellam has been claimed by Malayali Achans and Ammas and Ammummas and Appoopans to have high nutritious quality. Some go as far as assigning analgesic, antiseptic and antibiotic properties to the magical drink).

Since the arrival of June, the steel tumbler for kanjivellam with the plastic handle has taken over my home.

 

Evenings are for tea.
Mornings are also for tea but morning chaya would be Amma’s monopoly.
I like to be generous with tea, both for myself and others. It helps that I’m bad at discerning proportions, unlike my mother. There is not too much difference in our processes, only in our products.

Amma’s chaya (served in glasses) :

1. Pour enough water in the vessel for 4/5/6 people
2. When it boils, add enough Kannan Devan Tea powder aka chayappodi
3. Add enough boiled milk followed by enough sugar

Define enough? Quite ambiguous yet not exactly uncertain, rather open to interpretation. Are we doing modern art?
Enough is enough!

My chaya (served in glasses and a tumbler) :

1. Pour water in the vessel. Take some out if I think it’s waay too much but otherwise I do not meddle. Like I said, I’m generous. A little too much water = a little too much tea. And that never hurt anybody. No?

2. Add tea powder when the water boils – enough chayappodi to color all the liquid, doesn’t matter what shade as long as it appears brown. (If not, you probably shoved in the wrong condiment. Throw out the water discreetly and start over).

3. Add milk – how much ever is left in the paal paathram (also did I mention I’m generous).

4. Time for more tea powder because you knew that was waay too much milk before I even added it.
Yes indeed, waay too much is Amma’s daughter’s catchword.
Define waay too much? That’s cute, you’ll know.

5. Sugar, usually followed by some more tea powder. More sugar. What? Be generous.

And there you have it. The path to attaining high BP. But that never killed anybody. No?

 

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