Dreaming of Malibu Sunsets

I am in no mood to write on my blog these days. Apathy mostly. I am moody, a little withdrawn perhaps. One might say I have an autumn mindset. Leaves have fallen and the sky is cloudy and dark. Why on earth should I be happy?

I think of many things I can write about. Happy, positive things! But when one negative thing just sits there bothering you, nothing else seems to matter. Know what I mean? (Now say that last line with the same earnestness of the stage manager in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town.)

My whole travel schedule is up in the air because someone from work is coming to the US next week for two days and would like me to be here. What this means is my other Europe trip gets pushed back to the week after particularly because next Thursday and Friday are bank holidays in that country.

Enough complaining. After all is my “happy birthday to you” today.

Before all this began, when life was a perfectly comfortable sixty-nine degrees, I would get in my car and drive down Kanan Road to PCH to Coogie’s which is a little restaurant in Malibu. (Next time you sit down to watch Austin Powers part II where Mike Myers say how England Countryside looks nothing like Southern California, pause your DVD player. That is Kanan Road.) I would sit down with a newspaper and order a Santa Fe omlette. In a corner, sitting with two young boys would be Pamela Anderson, which her face partially covered in poodle hair. I would drink a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. Or if it is the evening, I could amble into Barefoot bar (were mel Gibson recently got drunk) and get myself a Martini. And the sunset would be spectacular. Sunset is always spectacular if you are on PCH in the evenings.

Two days in a row, Kenny G trailed my car on PCH around that time. His car was black, mine silver. We raced up Kanan through the tunnels in the night. That was a pretty good time. Why can’t I have that day today?

I am cursed to put up with Kenny G in more ways than that. I have been trapped in close quarters with Kenny G that I needed to wash my face off his saliva that accompanied the awful muzac he produces. I once met an Indian in a Pow-Wow who claimed he was the one who taught Kenny G how to play his music. Damn Indians!

Still, I would be happy.

There are days when I could drive relatively fast to get to Redondo Beach in the evening after work. There is a beachside restaurant with live Flamenco performers. The boardwalk is wide and the beach is peaceful.

I miss it. I miss the stillness of palm trees in the evening when the wind dies down. Driving by the ocean, you pass a power plant and if you lie down on the beach, you can see the underbellies of planes are they take off from LAX into the sea.

It is so much better to see the underbellies of planes than being inside them. It is so much better to be a giver of random kindness than be a recipient of intended cruelty.

I am going to close my eyes and breathe in slow. I think I can smell oranges and lemons. California is a state of mind.

Smanie implacabili

It rained continuously all day. I drove around, trying not to get out of the car. Shopping and watching the town from inside my car. Listening to operatic music.

I am feeling so lost. I wonder how long would it be before everything normalizes. Endless beginnings and interruptions. False starts and hopes. A day dawns with promise and ends with catastrophe. Or is it the other way around?

Christa Ludwig sings with so much feeling. I can feel her voice rising and filling the room. I turn the lights off and sits back in my chair.

Perhaps it is the turn of the Albanians. Things always come to pass.

Come Scoglio.

Opera buffa its finest tradition. Alfredo Kraus in his finest. Juxtapose this to impossibilities and endless waits. Complicated plots. Implausable excuses. Transpose them to modern times.

Ah, lo veggio!

What am I to do? Mornings and evenings. There is nothing to any of this, just simply a dream. A smile. What do we want? Soldiers leave, Albanians arrive. Albanians depart, soldiers arrive. The plot is so complicated. I know where this story ends. I have read the libretto.

Donne mie, la fate a tanti

Why does it become so complicated? It does not have to be. It could be something simple, without lies and prevarications and schemes. But it will never be. That is how the world is. Just be. But it won't be. Scorpions and zen masters, it is all in their nature.

Non siate ritrosi

I am going to sit here into the night listening to the opera. I have a few books with me. Tomorrow I will seek surprises. And I will smile all over again.

So here I leave the blog a quiet night. Un aura amorosa.

Fall, what a beautiful fall!

Everything looks so beautiful. I normally would never have noticed these things, but my frequent absenses from the US has made me pay more attention to the mundane things this rmoning as I drove to my office.

First of all, I felt so good driving the car. I just enjoyed the way it drives. I like the way even the German cars are tuned for quietness for Americans. In Europe, cars are tuned for some engine noise that they seem to like.

I was listening to NPR and they played an original recording of Carl Sandberg reading one of his poems (Fog) this morning. Of course, the elections are two weeks away and I am more excited about this than ever since the 1992 elections. There is a good chance the Dems will get control of the house or the Senate or the both and that would be SO great. Finally I hope there will be some accountability! Patrick is all set to win the Gubarnatorial race in MA. Former Clinton official. I am happy to see the back of Handsome Romney! I feel terrible I won't be able to vote since I will be in Spain on election day.

The leaves have turned!! Sugar maple leaves are such vibrant scarlet red this fall. The whole foliage is an exploding orgasm of colors. I wish i could drive upto the Catskill mountains this weekend and just get lost in the colors.

I didn't even complain about the traffic this morning. There is a pleasant fall chill in the air, 42 degrees F (which is around 7 or 8 degrees C I think.) And I love it. And I slept well last night, so I don't look like a zombie.

Tonight I want to eat a regular American meal and watch some TV:-) How you miss silly things when you are away, even if it is every other week:-)

Random Musings Before the Flight

getting ready to go the airport. Beck to the other town. Must keep airlines in biznes by constantly feeding the pipeline.

Meanwhile, if you want to feel great about being great, learn these phrases by heart and use them in conversations. Randomly, without any sense of irony or wit!

So good to see you, mw-a mw-a.
Mahvelllous!
No hardfeelings.
You can't hurt me, I got there first.
I have not felt anything since 1926, but I look maahvellous, don't I?
Not tortured today. Like my Fendi?
That was so yesterday!
Ah! this martini's to die for but would it kill you to add another olive, for crying out loud!
This is nothing, my hairdresser Andre makes a killer mojito.
We need more jalapeños in this kicker, it ain't kickin' yet.
Have you really seen what he was wearing, I mean, howcanhe?
My psychotherapist is really big these days!
I get all my therapy from my feng shui consultant!
Don't forget your colonic irrigation, honey.
I know this fantastic guy on the 43rd street, just use the side door, he is so hip, there is no main door or signs.
Are those REAL? Don't tell me they are not!
Don't you just love my palstic surgeon?
Read anything?
Noooo time sweetheart, just glancing the back covers these days.
Lets do lunch dahling.
Call me, I will text you!
Let's party together sometime.
It was only a quick fuck, got dressed before I came.
I would fuck you if I weren't in love with you.
There isn't enough therapy in the world to fix that.
I definitely would shag you but you make a big deal out of it.
No, it was just sex.
Ease it out baby, ease it.
Pubes, did you say pubes?
What a lovely parchement!
Sex is so 90s, I just do kundalini yoga!
Would love to chat but gotta go.
Ciao ciao.
See you next in Rio!

Capiche?

By the way, because people are wondering, it is FICTION!

Now bee-have while I am gone. Don't touch anything. Don't do anything I wouldn't do.

Two Poems For The Fallen

October

The summer just turned gray and left
Leaving the door open to the chilly draft
We are still playing this game of chess
Of protracted moves and pauses, and countermoves

A waltz, stepping forward, then back, then a move left,
All across the dance floor until a shoe drops.
Salt in open wounds, the screaming man is now
Named a tortured soul and cast aside

What rough beast hosts this gathering of fools?
Upon whom does he pray? I have a door left half open
Yet I am shackled, to the floor of possibilities
Intrigued and disgusted, how deep is my self-hate?

Winter is around the corner licking it lips
Last vestiges of the fire are extinguished
Hope too dies a silent death, and truth be told,
None will be the wiser for it than I.

In this cold, where poetry dies an eventual death,
You, me, and the night are still swinging in the wind.

Battle For Words

What is the language of the poet?
Does he speak in metaphors?
His dialect of feelings is scripted in endless lacerations
Each drop of blood that trickles out is his exhalation
Like mango flowers sprouting on branches
At once fragrant and mortally fragile,
Each cut is a word unspoken, each pause its syntax.

What does the poet want? Is he aware of the
Power of words? Does he buy that the pen is
Mightier than the sword? Is the gun mightier than both?
If poet knows what he wants, how does he
Invent his language to suit the ministry of pen?
Who lends him words and phrases?

How does he sing his poems? Does he pause to weigh
Or sing his words carefree for it’s dust returning to dust?
Seek truth between small gaps in narrative,
And meaning in lapses in memory and subtext?
Is he forced to release his unspent feelings against his will
Or hold them for a gentler tomorrow?
Hold on to them like an oyster holding a grain
And hope for a pearl of wisdom when meaning relents?

What do you want from the poet? Fill your shadows with light;
Confusion with lucidity? Be silent against his will?
Paint over the evanescent shades of mood with mirth?
Is his mother tongue intrigue of intellect? Or raw emotion?

How does it end? Each night he loses his battle to confusion.
Memories envelop fallen words like blankets in the cold
Dead feelings arrive in a coffin every morning when the smoke clears
And he prepares the funeral for silence that falls between words and
Meaning. His song lies mute, his instrument silenced and
His windpipe, crushed from the electric embrace of emotions.

Indianapolis: Whose Farm Is It Anyway?

I wrote about a soulful city yesterday. So I thought I will follow it with a city that is not so soulful - Indianapolis. I spent five years of my life in Indianapolis, traversing its main and side streets and patronizing many of its restaurants. When I think of midsize American cities like Indiapolis, I am quite struck by the scale of development in the last one hundred years that made the country what it is: a wealthy new land that buys and builds its history. Indy (as it is affectionately called by the locals) also is a solidly republican city in a republican state, no matter which democrat gets elected. There were only two sides of the politics in Indy, conservative and fundamentalist. They were friendly simple folk who prayed, went to work very early, came home and prayed some more. I don’t know what sins they were accumulating in their private lives that required so much praying.

I find it difficult to write about Indianapolis because all my memories are antiseptic. There are no contrasts, no uneven patches, no hazy yet powerful knots of memory that drags you by your shoulders and make you confront your ghosts. I lived an even keel life that included a boring commute through back roads, frequent visits to the museum or the downtown and Broad Ripple restaurants, sterile shopping and drinking coffee at the Abbey. Abbey was a large coffee house in Castleton, which was entirely furnished out of pew furniture from an old church. The only interesting place I used to go to was Slippery Noodle, which was the oldest blues bar south of Chicago with a long and storied history including historic tours as a way house, a brothel and a hotel. It is a non-descript building on a non-descript street but the place rocked with great and new bands coming through. We fell in love with an electrifying Cajun blues band from Bloomington called Mojo Hand. The lead singer was fantastic; it is a pity they never made it big.

Considering that Indianapolis is about twice the size of a lot of happening towns, you will begin to understand how life was so simple there. There are very few restaurants, bars and outside venues. Indy is a sports-crazy town and basketball is the primary religion (and Larry Bird is the main patron saint.) But since I was never into American professional sports, I was not quite comfortable in the life around me as it revolved around minor league games and NBA. I don't necessarily think I was bored; there were things to do, but does an Elton John concert count as something to do? Once out of boredom, I remember driving (without any plans) one morning from Indianapolis all the way to Toronto, Canada in the Mid 90's. It snowed quite a bit and I was driving very fast and made it to Windsor in record time. But it was already dark and the rest of the journey was miserable with wind and hale.

Indy was also the only town I have ever lived in North America where the Indian association(s) actually built a secular civic building and not a temple. It was a non-descript building on the west side of town that hosted everything from obscure Punjabi festivals (Phoolkari, anyone? The ABCD woman who was married to a white colleague of mine who hosted the festival was so offended when I told her I had never heard of it before) to religious celebrations. The only bizarre thing I remember about the whole pecking order of things is when Janmashtami fell on Independence Day (I hope I got them right, or was it Republic day?) Independence day celebrations got the boot. Having said that, the city did have a fairly sizable Indian population that occasionally had high profile Indian concerts or exhibitions in prominent venues. The governor sometimes showed up and clapped religiously as some prominent-looking Indian community leader expounded on the virtue of the event.

How can I end this without golf, after all we are talking about the Mid-west here? I have played in many courses around town, but my favorite (for comedic value) was this little 9-hole course in Greenfield. It was reconverted from farmland and the owners didn't even made an attempt to make it look otherwise. The water hazard was a real stream running by the course that was the original irrigation channel. I developed a bee allergy there after being stung twice by two different bees on 2 consecutive visits. I don't think anyone ever played there except the foursome that I was part of, but it was good to go during a long lunch break and hit some balls even if the potential price was a horrible death from a bee stingJ

Outside Indy, there is a University called Ball State University (They don't try too hard. What were the rejected alternative names, I wonder.) Closer still, Kokomo is famous for the world's largest steer and tree stump. Need I say more? On the way to Muncie, just as you cross the Indianapolis city line, there is a creek called Nameless creek.

If it were Bombay, they would have first called it Hornby Creek. Then after Independence, they would have renamed it A. K. Jaiswal Creek. Then Shiv Sena would have called it something like Mahatma Shri Jytoiba Thunde Visarjan Creek (what is the Marathi word for Creek, anyone?) There might have at least three fights over the name, at least one of which would have included a protracted legal battle between the relatives of Messers Jaiswal and Thunde. Mid-day would have posted pictures of political leaders visiting the creek to support “local residents” in their fight for the right “historical” name.

What more can I say about a city that doesn't even bother to name a creek?

Bombay, a city retold

Garcia de Orta was a Jew with Portuguese blood and Spanish education. Forcibly converted to Christianity, he ended up in Bombay and built a nice handsome house with a garden in the front. Little did he know that his house was to be the center of one of the largest cities in the world. The old town hall itself was built at the site of this first pucca house in South Bombay. This piece of land which saw grazing, inquisitions, lynching, military parades, garbage dumping, idle loitering and the birth of the oldest stock exchange in Asia was the spot from where I started my Saturday morning walks. In my teens, I used to walk all the way from the Asiatic Library to Churchgate station. This is where the whole history of the city began. All the way from a private house in front of grazing lands for goats, it evolved to the town hall with a parade ground in front and later to the Asiatic Library with the Fort Common laid out in the front. It used to be called Elphinston Circle, named after a former Governor of Bombay. Now it is renamed to Horniman Circle to honor Benjamin Horniman, a newspaper editor who championed India's cause for freedom. (Any rumors that the Horniman circle is named after the horny men who loiter in its premises, of course is pure speculation and wishful thinking.)

The slave auctions in Bombay also happened at the same Parade Grounds. Slaves from Africa were brought down from the ships and auctioned off to wealthy people. These black slaves used to camp outside the city walls near what is Nariman Point today. After they were freed, they joined the native population and interbred. If you look at “East Indians” (Christian fishermen who originate from the Bombay islands as opposed to those who migrated from Goa) even today, you can see African features in some of them.

More recently, Horniman circle also served as the birthplace of Asia's first stock exchange. The trades were carried out under the banyan tree that still stands inside the Horniman circle . Of course BSE moved out from under the tree to multiple dwellings since then, eventually settling into its current posh location on Dalal street. History of love, domesticity, intrigue, conflict, terror, murder, slavery and subterfuge! How can you not love a place like that?

In November, when the heat becomes more bearable, sitting on the steps of Asiatic library with a book was actually very calming. There were always an assortment of humans idling on its steps; young couples who pretended to study by scattering books and journals about them, homeless men and women, retired people with serious and sad faces, people who can't decide whether to go inside the building or not all sat on its steps with equal sense of ownership. But I don't think I ever saw many tourists there; there are no major markers that announced to the world that this was the real focal point of historical Bombay.

If you walk from Horniman Circle towards Churchgate station and if you know where to look, you will see the first church in Bombay which still retains its structure, St. Thomas Church. The station gets its name from the church and even though, it is really far from the station, the Fort Gate demarcating the end of the city at what became Flora Fountain was called the Church Gate. The gate is gone and so is the fort, but the names lives on! Inside the church, you can actually see how the British lived if you care to step in quietly and spend some time reading everything on the walls and the floors. There is never anyone around. I found the church to be one of the last vestiges of calm in South Bombay where silence is much priced because it is in such short supply. On your way, you pass Akbarallys, which used to be an institution in Bombay.

Flora fountain is a handsome structure. Unfortunately, it is completely over shadowed by tasteless and random Indianization that involved renaming, installing a pointless memorial just so it can be renamed Hutatma Chowk, a name that has absolutely no bearing on the history of Bombay. The tilework on the floor of the square is appalling and reminiscent of a pay-for-use toilet. Before beautification, (Beautification: noun, To render a historic building ugly in Maharashtra by use of tasteless painting and tiling) it was a pretty area. Diagonally across from Flora Fountain is the High Court.

Once in a while, in the afternoons when the court was in session and I had free time from school, I used to go to the Court to listen to the arguments in criminal cases. I loved Justice Lentin's court. He was clever, erudite and funny and had a great insight into all things. Unfortunately, I can't say that about all the judges. Some had poor deportment and poorer language skills. If you could walk around freely in the building today, you will see some interesting architectural features and a somewhat confusing sculpture of justice, clearly inspired by Indian humor.

As an aside, the original court was in the Admiralty Building on Apollo street (now called Bombay Samachar Marg) and the building still stands.

Anyway, walking down from Flora Fountain to Churchgate station, one passes the Post and Telegraph building. This was the ONLY public place in all of Bombay from where one could make an ISD call. In the 80's, the lobby was packed at night with tourists cramming into its stuffy portals to call home at half-rate.

Cross the street, and on your right is one of the last two functioning wells in south Bombay. Every other well (including one outside the high court) have been shut. I once traveled from Colaba to Malad, mapping every well in the city with an Iranian Hydrologist for his thesis. Ask me about hunting for stonage implements in the TIFR campus and in Malad, both well-known Neolithic sites. The blogger has very strange interests, but we already know that.

On Saturday mornings, this place would be quiet and devoid of the hustle and bustle of weekdays. You can actually see the statues on the sides of the road. You cross into Churchgate station via the underground crossing and enter its dark and damp lobby. There used to be a newspaper vendor inside the station. This was the only place that sold The Telegraph and The Statesman. I used to buy both, just to make sure. This was when M. J. Akbar used to edit The Telegraph. The station canteen was a sorry affair with places just to stand and eat. But the hot food was good and hygienic since hot vadas literally sold like hot cakesJ

I guess all this is what makes me a Bombayite (and never a Mumbaikar, incidentally.) I know a lot of cities pretty well enough to navigate around them, and I can tell you where the best sushi is in most of them. But with Bombay, I knew the secrets, history, nooks and crannies, and I connected with it. In spite of the nitwits that rule the city trying their ignorant best to erase the history of this glorious city and replace it with a nonsensical fictional historiography of jumbled Maharashtrian names and monuments, a palimpsest of its real story still remains, if you know where to look. In your mind's eye, you can subtract the crowds and all the ugliness beautification has created and see it for what it was and will be, an amazing city of great diversity designed by the British, modified by the rich Parsis and Gujaratis and built with the toil of Indians. Some of the history is really hidden behind the names (Charni Road, Marine Lines, Esplanade, Colaba Causeway and Pydhonie are all names derived thus.) By the way, if you have some pull with the BEST, ask them show you their archives. I have had the great fortune of spending hours in the archives of BEST, Times of India and other places sifting through thousands of historic photographs.

Bombay didn't just happen. It is not just its food (Cannon and Sardar's for Pav Bhaji, Kayani's and Bastani's for Irani cafes for example) and ever changing and ever vibrant life that makes it a special place. It is also its history, the secrets and the stories.

We have a responsibility to tell them and retell them. Otherwise the fake historiography of jingoistic ignorants will erase it from the consciousness of its denizens forever.

So, does anyone know which railway platform was the location of the original Mumbadevi temple that (for no apparent reason) gave the city its new name?

Things To Do in In This Town When You Are Lonely

10:00AM Saturday: Wake Up, clean the apartment
1:00PM: Phone calls, Diwali greetings mainly
2:00 : Unthaw frozen pizza, burnt it in solidarity with burnt cake, eat whatever was left of it and wash it all down with coke
3:00 : Re-edit a poem, not happy with it yet.
4:00 : Rest, read books.
5:00 : Iron clothes. Take out trash.
6:00 : Get ready to go out.
7:00PM : Dinner at Heaven with 70 people, at one point an American girl of Indian origin was sitting across me. Also met a Polish physician who moved from Dentistry to general medicine; that is unusual. Most people were nice. Notable Anomaly: An obnoxious Italian gay man makes a pass. I leave the dinner and move to the lounge.
10:00PM: Run into the usual crowd. So many familiar faces. This is what is great about this town, you do run into the same people everywhere. With some, I speak for a fleeting minute before they have to go. We walk outside and stand in the light drizzle chatting.
11:40PM: Run into more people. Heaven is packed with about 150 people. We shuttle between inside and outside. Run into a UN friend from Canada and we debate on Catherine McKinnon's legal cannon and if sexual intercourse is really penetration or enveloping(the syntax of male hegemony). Intense academic discussion on the syntax of gender relations for a Saturday night party! Fortunately, I don't think many people heard the dorky conversation. She is writing a book on women's issues and gender politics. We talk about Germaine Greer(strictly the 70's vintage Greer. I have no idea what she is thinking these days with her new work. She really sounds nutty in "The Whole Woman") and I say I am disappointed how feminism in the 70s really marginalized the double-marginalized: women of color. She agrees. She doesn't publish on feminist journals for the same reason. She is going to send me some papers and we will have a proper lunch sans alcohol to talk about this more. She will be in Saudi Arabia next week in a helicopter wearing a burkha. I hope her boss would allow her to expense the cost of the Burkha. It starts to drizzle further. We all move inside into the little cubby hole. Everybody has a drink. The two Aussies are going to Shakers. I get invited to a group breakfast tomorrow at 10:00 AM.
1:30AM Sunday: I manage to convince everyone including the feminist UN person to go to shakers. We walk the whole distance. Inside, we run into the Minister of Culture for a middle-eastern country. We move across to the other side. Run into more people.
3:00 : I want to go home. Poeple ask me to stay for another 5 minutes. I volunteered to walk the Indian girl home because she lives on my way. She is not ready to leave.
4:00AM Sunday: We leave the place. She is apologetic when she discovers that it is actually 4:00 and not 1:30 as she thought.
4:20: I walk her down to her door step. She asks me to sit down on the bench outside for 2 minutes.
5:00 : I leave her at the door and walk to my place. It is getting really chilly and I am not wearing a jacket.
5:15 : Arrive home.
6:00AM Sunday : Write this before going to sleep.

In case anyone is wondering why I haven't written anything interesting or intellegent, here is why:-)

Dude, where is the exit?

For a fleeting moment I thought
I glimpsed a light in the eyes.
For just a second
I saw a cloud of disappointment.
Before the rain starts and the cold traps us,
Is there a moment of warmth?
Then the mind trapped shut just as it opened.
Feeling less and abandoned!
Abandoned.
The vision died a troubled death.
Outside where crickets go to
sing their dirge,
I am safe from illusions.
But was I wrong to interpret the light
as hopes for a rainbow?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sometimes you know disaster is going to strike and it does.

This blogger likes small gatherings and meaningful conversations.

You walk very gingerly into a gathering. Gingerly because you feel it is going to be bad. Often because you don't know anyone there and the only person you know, the host, doesn't give you the time of day. May be they are busy or may be because they know everyone at the party, don't realize you don't. And you are seated next to an Azerbaijani man who claims to be a diplomat. Given that President Ilham Aliyev is a strongman, it doesn't surprise you that the "diplomat" is not very diplomatic.

You are deeply tired. Your day was filled with inane activities all the time, you are balancing your tiredness with the need to be present.

Despair takes root. You spend 10 minutes in the restroom contemplating escape. You really don't feel like making new friends, much less making the rounds. The host as previously mentioned is the only person you know (and who warmly invited you) yet has plenty of time to chat with everyone else but YOU. You make sure that the host is on the other end of the room. You make your way to the door quietly, but the host happens to be right there at the exact moment you are at the door.

You make weak excuses. You walk out and take a deep breath.

As you walk home you realize you are still sad.

Opera or Michael Bolton

Nothing to write because this blogger has been busy:-)

Interminable meetings and lack of sleep do not make a good story. I fell asleep by the laptop and closed it with with my glasses still sitting on the keyboard. I am glad both are intact.

It is dark and gloomy here. Going to parties to have a good conversation is like going to a Kamathipura hooker looking for intimacy (no personal knowledge of the latter, in case you are wondering). Allahabadi taxi drivers in Bombay please take note. You know it is all downhill when you are on your third martini and on the THIRD repetition of the same funny story that was not even that hilarious the first time it was told.

Speaking of funny stories, I was in a meeting with a few French-speaking people. I used the common English (American?) expression "many ways to skin a cat." After a few confusing stares, this devolved into a discussion on the merits (and demerits) of actually skinning a cat. After a while, a man offered up helpful hints on how they skin goats in Afghanistan. I tried to get them to focus. But this went on for some time. Note to self: Idioms are best avoided when speaking to people en Anglais for whom English is not even their 2nd language.

Now for something truly exciting.

On November 17th, the Opera in my town(le Grand Théâtre)is performing Così Fan Tutte. So the crazy person that I am, I have re-arranged all my travel schedules to be here so I can attend. Why, you ask. (Well you don't, but this is a good device for me expound on the reasons.)

In the same Month of November, an American Opera House is hosting Lionel Richie and Michael Bolton! Puh-leeze! And if you are a Michael Bolton fan, don't despair; they have medications that will treat conditions like that. And remind me to bring ear plugs when you invite me over for dinner. In fact, if you ignore Nutcracker (which should be ignored), there isn't one decent performance at that Opera House this season. Compare that to Vienna Opera (Volksoper Vienna) and you will see why I bemoan the sad state of affairs there. In fact, I already bought my tickets to go see Die Fledermaus (which is an operata and not an opera, if you are stickler for that sort of thing) in Vienna on February 7th. I was torn between carmen and Die Fledermaus but I figured at least I will get a few laughs out of the latter.

PS: I will be updating the blog quite sporadically from now on. Because I am packing for my weekday trip to Vienna on February 7th. And I am otherwise busy tending to my hair and cleaning the apartment. And I have heard that the great nation of Burkina Faso is celebrating its Independence day next August. All in all, a very busy time:-)

Busy Lives

Sorry about this double post. But I had to write this. I don't blog-surf that much, but today I followed a thread and ended up on someone's blog and this is what I learned.

1. She is a "housewife with a child"
2. She is very, very busy
3. She can't post a lot because she is very very busy
4. She is too busy to post because she is packing for a weekend trip!!!???
5. Did I mention she is very busy?
6. Diwali is on Friday, apparently. This is not going to help how busy she is.

Here I thought I had a moderately busy life. But I get to post, sometimes more than once a day. I attend meetings, travel a little bit even for weekend trips, and even socialize.

Apparently not. By the way, this is one of my triggers: people who say they are busy just set me off. You try working non-stop without much sleep in two continents and then tell me you are busy. I guess I am never that busy.

I totally dig lazy. Or "whatever." "Had better things to do." "Have a life."

But busy? OK.

Who wants to do the math? How many times did I say "busy" in this post?:-)

Shoot me next time I wander into a busy blogger's blog.

India Explained

The biggest pastime for the educated in (and of) modern India (and I suppose for the rest too, out there in Bharat) is to reflect endlessly on all the faults of the country and how to fix it. Anyone with half a brain (and some with complete lobotomies) has a fully developed solution to what ails the country. Unfortunately, none of us agree on what is ailing India. By the sheer force of this obsession (bending the spoon with will power and all that), we should have fixed all the problems by now. I think the obsession gets worse the farther you are from India and the longer you have been out.

The ideas that have been suggested to me include military rule (of course, Pakistan is a stellar example of its success) and genocide (Lallu Prasad Hitler?) on the one hand to dissolution of the country into 22 small countries on the other. And everything in between. Most of the extreme ideas, not surprisingly, come from the NRI/PIO (Non Resident Indian/Person of Indian Origin) types.



Even so, Indians living in India seem to be a very touchy when the NRI/PIO type desi flies in with a suitcase full of foreign smells to offer solutions to their problems. The same complaints they shared that morning with their neighbor become points of pride. If you care so much, why did you leave, they ask. As if they would have made a different choice if they were in our shoes. It is a different India, they tell us, not the country you left behind. Of course, it is a different India, but a different India built on the foundations of the same India.

So, I generally keep my opinions to myself when I am in India. But I too have my own opinions on how to fix India. They too are simplistic, unworkable and is born more out of frustration than pragmatism, blame it on my peripheral lobotomy.

I have realized, sadly, that increasingly when I care about the problems of India, I care more about things that matter to ME and not necessarily to Indians in general. I worry about airports, surface transportation, government rules on foreigners and PIOs, infrastructure, slow internet, electricity and pollution. That does not mean I have no opinions on everything else that affects India. Those opinions might make 365 seperate blog posts.

I just know my limitations.

I thought about all this yesterday on my flight from the US to Europe. The flight was full of Americans and Indians going to India on business trips. I heard an Indian gentleman "explaining" India to a wide-eyed woman who was on her first trip to India (and from the look of it, to any third-world country.) The sad part is, the first book that explained India to me that made rational sense (albeit, from the eyes of a foreigner) was In Light of India by Octavio Paz.

Can you explain India to someone? Much less, can you "fix" India? Does India need to be "fixed?"

There is a genetics lab in a University in the US, where a Gujarati scientist hangs a "holy fish" as a symbol of his Hindu religion. Holly cow, a holly fish! Now the Caucasian-Americans in the lab have taken to asking new (and very confused) Indians coming in, where their holy fish is.

Explain that to the Indians.

Quizas, Quizas, Quizas

There is no treatment for this madness. But madness appears ike an outbreak of water-borne disease when you lease expect it. Vargas Llosa writes that, "The fact that man is master of destiny does not mean, of course, that all men choose their lives under equal conditions, among equivalent options." Often we do not choose well, and then we spend all the time trying to justify choices. I am dreading the trip back to Europe. I am too tired and ill to make this trip. Yet, I am forced to go.

To suffer from all the maladies of the place. Extraordinary pathologies. After-work drinks. More events missed than attended. Regrets for missed events. Tiredness from attending events. More apologies, offered and accepted? Cross purposes and clever words. Smoke screens.

Will there ever be a truce? A normal moment?

Yet there is an attraction to this job and place I cannot fathom. May be I can rationalize, but why? Rumi says:

"The chess master says nothing,
other than moving the silent chess piece.

That I am part of the ploys
of this game makes me
amazingly happy."

I keep on trying to make sense of things that have no sense. Endless meetings. Addiction to espresso. Palace coup. "You're not mad enough. You don't belong in this house."

Should I trade this in for a sedantary job in California? A job that involves no more than an occational trip? I am never sure.

The light is begining to fade outside. I haven't packed. I hear rustling of the branches outside and the chattering of dry loose leaves. I haven't had lunch yet and the sun is already going down.

This is what I get for sleeping in the afternoon. My eyes are burning. I was trying to listen to Milhaud's La Création du monde. Then fell alseep right on my chair.

Tonight I shall dream of hissing oranges.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(The title, in case anyone is wondering, is from the Spanish original written by Osvaldo Farrés of the song "Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps" made famous recently because of its use as the title song for the BBC serial "Coupling.")

The Drumstick Tree

In my childhood summer home , where I spent hours playing alone, I came to know all the trees and plants intimately. Often, I incorporated them into my fantasy play (being a great fan of Cervantes Saavedra, I had my own Indian version of the adventures of Don Quixote de la Mancha (Don Quijote) happening in my head), mostly as villains, sometimes as props. For a young boy abandoned to his wits in a large place, this really helped me kill the time without going insane. Of course, if I indeed went insane, it was difficult to tell in that place.

My favorite tree was a fallen drumstick tree (Moringa oleifera) that never quite died. The tree was in its supine position from as far as I can remember. But except for its disabled status, she was quite alive and functional. In fact, it suited everyone just fine for the tree to be like that, because you could access the drumsticks with great ease. I love the tree because it could be alternatively a bridge over an imaginary moat, a narrow passage into the castle, a treacherous forest as the branches were still thickly foliated) or a fallen soldier. The tree had its branches upturned to heaven, and if you walk as far as you could without breaking the branches and look into the low walls of the snake temple. Generally people avoided this part of the property just in case there were any snakes. I don' think it ever occurred to them that snakes probably didn't know that the snake temple was built in their honor.

We also had a moat around the house (now you are wondering, what sort of a house is this? Those who know me, knows the answer. Let's just say, it was no ordinary house) that had dried up from disuse and there were thick vines growing in them. These wines, 6 or 8 inches thick connected the trees from one end of the moat to the other and formed sort of a net covering the moat. I organized a posse one summer to go down the abandoned steps into the moat to clean the floor of all the debris and thorny sticks that had fallen in, so we could create a little hideaway there. Old plastic chairs were brought in and the floor was lined with newspapers. For a few days, we even cut some vines and used them to swing from one of the moat to the other side until all of us had lost enough skin from the friction and minor accidents. Just Tarzans, no Janes.

I am genuinely surprised that nobody was seriously hurt in these misadventures. The elders never seem to miss us during these events. Once in a while, someone would get an allergic reaction from poison ivy or poison oak and all of us would be yelled at for that. I have seen a snake or two, but no real close encounters.

When jack fruits were in season, the smell betrayed a ripe fruit that was at the bottom of the tree. You could always get a servant to cut it up and bring it to our den. Or imli (Tamarind, Tamarindus indica) with salt. Or large citrus fruits (I don't know what they are called, they are larger than grapefruit, but not pink.) There was always something to eat. I think I got all my crazy imagination from this place. In fact, I keep going back to that time and place for inspiration, even after all these years, when I try to write.

After seventeen years, I had a chance to visit the house a few years ago. I had meant to walk by my favorite drumstick tree when I was there. But I was told that nothing remained, no trees or vines. When I was driving in through the large arches, I think I was most excited about connecting with the moat and the drumstick tree. Without all of that, it wasn't the same place.

A few years ago, I was in a tiny hamlet called Alajar in Spain. Hiking through the country paths, I took a detour and ended up by a river and an abandoned house. It occurred to me then that the childhood memories were transplanted to another place. Same time, different place.

I am convinced that I can find my fallen drumstick tree and the moat somewhere in this world. Perfectly preserved. Just waiting for me to show up and discover.

I just have to look a lot harder.

The Night Ennui Came To Town

Yesterday I felt better enough to drive around a little bit. Then felt really tired. this town is gloomy and looks like it is about to rain. Spent the rest of the day on the phone on conference calls. Today I thin I shall go to my office and show my face to all and sundry in case they thought I a dead. I don't even want to think of the Sunday flight back. Next week will be hetic. So this week, staying sick, helped.

So here is something I wrote a few years ago.


(A prose poem)

And on the fourth day he said,"Let there be temptation."
And there it was.

One the fifth day, all trouble broke out.

The town drunk was the only one that saw it coming. He said he saw snakes falling from trees into the water and silently slithering away without splashing. But we thought he was hallucinating.

Then the fever started. We shivered in the dreaded ecstasy of the cold. We mopped around the house and whined. Our noses were blocked and eyes turned red. Our sexual organs, that had seen all the activity that feverish temptations bring, coiled in slumber like dead serpents and our semen froze in fear.

We were tired. We were unhappy. We desired the comfort of warm bodies and deceitful promises. Except, all the women had forked tongues that coiled around their mouths when they opened their mouth.

"What did you do to our women," we asked them in alarm. They hissed in casual indignation.

We wanted to feel better. Not be cold and tired. We wanted to speak up again and drink wine and whiskey in cherry-wood paneled bar rooms and wanted to work up casual banter while fantasizing.

But we could not raise our voices and our limbs were tired. The bar stools stayed vacant waiting for our arrival.

We dreamt of making love.

But there was no love to be made. There was only silence. Our love bubbled in our souls like hot ointment in summer and poured out of us like the wasted reminder of lose.

We went to churches and prayed. We lighted candles and offered our penances through tears. But God had already left for the day. Behind the altar, we saw blood spots. Purple tongues surrounded us in anger.

Can we get better? Can we tell our old stories?

Who knows?

For now, I am waiting for my eyes to open.

Five Stages of Grief

(Sorry for the long post. I just wrote this poem. It is not yet edited. Needs a lot of work, so comments are welcome and much desired, both on structure and content. the references are common enough that I am not footnoting them. I peomise to take all constructive criticism seriously so I can edit this better. If it is beyond redemption, say that as well.)



1. Denial
The expert says, her voice barely over a whisper
Never yours
From the flat five stories high, I seek to make sense
Of the architecture of my life and outside the window
A church that resembles a football stares me in the face
And the logic of your transgressions begins to take geometric shape
Inside I have a Moroccan carpet and little else that is mine
A few suits, articles of personal hygiene
A computer, groceries and an iPOD
No possessions that connect me to life, no old posters, scribbled poems
Or picture postcards, memories of thirty-seven abandoned years!
And forget the sounds, this land is eternally quiet

2. Anger
The expert looks up, her time is up, social life beckoning
Hate you
You need a vacation from hatred
Find a map and an index card to find life again
Do something, I can only react
I am just a mime, acting out your pain
Over cheap beers and plat de jour
Then I saw a woman, bending down over the workmen
Body turning bronze, glistening with sweat
Looking for laughs, moving with music,
A step forward, a step back, head tilted,
A big smile, celebrating something that needed celebrating
Your lips were parched, thirsty, your eyes beaded
Late in the evening, when the music stopped
When you carried loads of feelings, traded them for cheap laughs
And stumbled home or wherever the walk took you,
I shall know I am not in the night anymore
Fontan to Muffat, Nana runs and finds the curse
Within herself. Help is no recourse
And power is without might
So there is nothing to do but wait
Will the scene change in time
Before the smallpox takes its turn?


3. Bargaining
The expert says, now deeply disturbed, like a fox
We spoke about this before
I like to think he died in his sleep, peaceful
Without debts and unpaid compliments
He had no “I love You”s left to spend
No “I hate you”s to say
Perhaps a cough or two, not even loud
Enough to wake others up
Like turning off for a time, taking a break
He may have abdicated, divided wrongly in pique,
And forced Cordelia into France
But I did not eat fish in his watch
He cheated by departing
before his day at the cliffs

I try my pockets for chump change, a beggar waits under a brothel
As I pass, it is getting colder; Mont Blanc peeks from under the clouds
Back in my room, familar sounds echo to form grotesque vocal shapes
I can feel the ground separating, first a slow cut, then the whole
Earth shakes loose, falls apart, I fall, holding on to the chair,
But the chair is falling too, and the table, and my laptop
And the picture frames, the lone plant
I reach for the autograph book, an insurance, for eBay
As I fall into the dark depths, erased from memory
Identities gone in a second, disappeared
A play within a play, rituals acted out in precision,
Tears when expected, mechanical movements when called for,
A spontaneous eulogy, I look over and see Lena and Joel
Standing still, like statues in the wrong temple
I know it is time to leave, or I will drown in warmth

4. Depression
The expert says, in a voice tingling with irritation
Never call again
Death happens, but in sleep, peacefully?
No! That is not how it happened.
There was blood, and some fear and a lot of facial
Convulsions. He forgot to say he loved anyone
He did have hate left in him, his death was interrupted
Repeatedly by hate. In the end he left no poems,
No apologies, no neatly scribbled notes
Just a trail of blood that drew a neat squiggle all the way
From the wrist to the floor, like a red nylon wire
Are you my Roland Zagreus and am I your Mersault?
And what have I inherited? Curses, a poem so beautiful and haunting
That I will never get to read?
Channeling yourself in memory? Loathing?
A long run from the tracks, from possibilities?
Your nihilistic gift by proxy results in nothing
Except more nihilism, even then I refuse to go.


Acceptance
The expert says, her voice now bloody and frothing
Never will be
A long walk ensues, a lantern is carried first
Head then, the body lies still, tied and bound
More memories, death has a funny way to
Shake up strange feelings in people; perfectly fine
Just that, I cannot be responsible for the deaths
And the dark shadows and bad decisions from the past

A. Alternatives
Expert vanishes, into thin air
Three dots take her place, dot-dot-dot
Outside, tangentially over a distance is another street
Another country, another world, another evening
That is never mine
A divine itch separates these two worlds
Heart burns, fears, deaths, recanted invitations to sit at the host table
Lies, half-truths, open sores that many hurtful lacerations left
I watch it and laugh, then try not to cry
No promises to return, no tears
Not even false starts that lead to the wrong path
Promontories on the way, mere obstacles, often seats
(for I too have been seated, seen, learned)
Seldom objects of desire, never end-goals
Does the maman have to die every time before the stranger
Seeks meaning? A play attended, alone
Or with lies, sparks the alienation of self
Arguments ensue, battles are fought,
Camus dies out of context and is forgotten
Reach back and remember, where did the
Fulcrum lose its screw?
I don’t like Sundays either.


Postscript
I am still sleeping, quietly in my bed, dreaming
For me, this is just a scene. I don’t even play a role,
Not even as an extra. Sometimes I like to think I am just a voice
Edging you to follow Hermia, what good comes of Egeus follies?
I seek my Puck, O Goodfellow, I know when you will awake
And see the wisdom for short-ended sticks
Scene changes and dream vanishes.
The expert has vanished, perhaps toasting to a party
Finding young George, seeking a plinth
To harbor all the vacating bricks

Housekeeping

I had to enable comments moderation and word verification on the blog following an increase in spam. I apologize. I promise it is not meant as censorship. I am also thinking about seperating my poems and more fictional pieces into a seperate blog.

Last night went to OM lounge in Harvard square. Had a chance to meet a certain expert in South Asian studies from Oxford who is now teaching at Harvard. On his 4th whiskey. OM is great, it is vaguely influenced by Indian and Nepalese decor but the food is nouvelle cuisine. Drank a fairly young Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand‘s Cloudy Bay . Very nice, with a pleasant citrus bouquet. If you are looking for a perfect wine to go with your greens, sushi or asian foods, I will absolutely recommend this without reservation.

Still sick. And on long, interminable conference calls where I can only catch the other word.

Ten Worst Jobs I have Ever Done

It is really early in the morning in the US. But I am already up and half my workday is over since I am on EU time (in my head). It is slighly chilly and nice. And I am working from home today. I am still down with fever.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

10. There is Fungible in My Yoghurt: I once worked a really pointless job for a very prestigious company, reporting to a complete idiot. The idiot had no clue what I was supposed to do and he forgot why I (and a lot of others) was hired so I kept on making busy work for myself like putting together pretty slides and convincing him to send me on interesting trips all over the place. He, despite being a native English speaker, had a very poor command over the language. It delighted my colleagues and I to no end when we used words in the wrong context in the hopes that he would pick up the usage. He once wrote in a friend's annual review that he needs to be “more dogmatic." Highlight of the job: An all-expense paid trip to India with a highly convoluted purpose including throwing parties in all major cities to "host key people" and getting away with a $40,000 bill for the trip.

9. What was I Thinking? I nearly got fired (the polite term is, encouraged to leave) from a job I hated and was completely, insanely boring. It brought out the worst in me and needless to say no work ever was done. Fortunately I was spending more time doing job searches than the job, so when the end came I think everyone including me was so relieved. Highlight: Sneaking out during work hours to hang out in restaurants with a brainiac guy from the nearby University discussing philosophy.

8. Fudging Numbers When people Died: Once working on a trial, the company wanted to massage certain things when more people taking the drug died than the ones on placebo. I quit. Fortunately, the fudging didn't work. The drug never went to market. The company doesn't exist in the same name. So, relax. Highlight: The people died were terminal anyway. Small comfort.

7. Muddy and Hot, Stinking and Drinking: One muggy summer, I worked as an assistant and all-purpose gopher to a crew of people running some stability experiments over a coal mine in Southern Illinois. It was about 2000 degrees and we were mainly paid in beer. All day, in the scorching heat, we would haul cables through farmland and set off minor dynamite charges and then collect the data in (primitive, bulky) laptop computers. Highlight: In the evening, red and stinky, we would walk into a Pizza Hut and gorge on the buffet. It was mostly fun.

6. Teach the Teacher: Teaching Education majors who have no interest in Science. They had to take science classes to meet the Gen. Ed. Requirements; we had to help them pass the tests. I have lectured to dead squirrels with more brain activity than these specimens. No wonder American education system is in crisis, because these former students of mine are now full-fledged teachers in high schools. May Darth Vader have mercy upon my soul. Highlight: Eye-Candy.

5. Too soon To Tell: This was not a terrible job per se. It is just that I never did it long enough to find out. I once semi-interned (semi because I was not a US citizen then) for a Senator at his/her (giving the gender gives away the person) field office working on environmental policies. I thought it was a historic time. Then, in one week, I crashed my car and totaled it. I was too poor to buy another and there was no other way to get to work. So that was that. Highlight: None.

4. Who Needs To Buy a millionaire? In the eighties, to make some extra chump change, I worked for a glamorous Ad Agency in Bombay interviewing very wealthy people to see if they would like/use very expensive (yet completely useless) luxury products if they were introduced in India. Armed with a single specimen of the item in question and a script, I would visit them in their great apartments at the appointment time and pepper them with inane questions. Most often, they would say things like, "I am not Dhirubhai Ambani. I don't think I can afford it."

After some time, I improvised to make the interview more fun. Once in a while, a beautiful daughter or daughter-in-law would come into view. None of those products ever came to market and I am proud to say, I had nothing to do with that.


3. Beware of Dog (and Owner): Walking around very republican neighborhoods canvassing for support for the Clean Air Act is a little like looking for donations for Pakistan Nuclear Program at a Bajrang Dal rally. Let's just say, there were mean dogs and meaner owners. One of the girls who was going to UC Law School was so spooked when a group of people chased her that she quit on the spot. I think she was the most idealistic of all of us.

2. No Balloon, No Party: Same Ad Agency as #4. This time, collecting information from middle-class married couple (well, men really. How many middle-class Indian women would volunteer this info to a stranger in the pre-web days?) in focus groups on condom use. This proved to be too difficult for once, being young doesn't do anything to your credibility. Finally, we faked the results by getting my best friends to respond as if they were middle-class married couple. Fantasy condom use of 18 year old boys is not even in the same planet as the real situation.

1. Have Hairnet, Will Eat: Worst-ever job, food service worker. After the Internship was lost in the car-wreck, needed a way to pay the bills. It was too late to get a RA-ships or anything with a modicum of usefulness. So, donned a hair net, got on the food line, served people their breakfast. I liked the dishwashing the best though, we could hang out in the kitchen and goof off all day. In the morning, had to wear a thick jacket to go into the meat locker which is -20000 degrees to yank out slabs of frozen meat. Couldn't wait for summer to be over to resume #6.

A city in Europe

It is a cold, sunny day here. Trying to fit a quick meeting today before I leave for the US was a bad idea. Especially since I am burning up with fever. In the elevator, I am surrounded by vely large and very blonde men. I feel so terribly insignificant.

An Indian girl walks by, she is wearing a corduroy jacket. She spends the few seconds that we share the same space by trying not to make eye contact. So, I know she is from India and not just someone of Indian origin. This is the simplest test of determining national origin when I see an Indian woman on the street. If she makes eye contact and is polite, she is probably from UK or the US. If she gazes intensely at a fixed invisible point 40 degrees away from you to the third floor of a building, then she is from India. This high art of rudeness is perfected by Indian women and reserved particularly for Indian men. I don't think they mean to be rude, it is instinctive, even in a place like here, where it is highly unlikely that the Indian man will ask her "to make friendship" or make rude comments. I smile inside as I see that.

I feel weak. Need fluids.

Why don't they get a new script?

My niece is here from the US for the weekend. She says she came to visit her uncle, but the reality is quite different I think. She is here to get some bragging points with her dorm-mates about a casual trip here than spend time with uncle-types. Either way, I am glad she is here. I took her to the old town and we sat on world's longest bench (I know, I know, this town doesn't have much else to boast.)

She loves the town so far (Twelve hours of total awake time.) But her biggest problem is with the language. She just doesn't understand why they (the French, the mayonnaise-eaters, you catch my drift, Pierre?) have to use our script (this is a very interesting thing, how English has really become ours, just like the English claim curry is theirs) to spell out our words and pronounce them so wrong! She has particular problems with Nations and Manor. So she is on a silent protest-strike against the whole French language:-) She wants them to get a different script and leave English alone.

Of course, she is joking. Sort of.

One of her classmates in the Genetics class (who is a pre-med student) thought that Atlantic is next to California and to get here, one has to fly over Asia. This girl apparently is very smart and extremely hardworking. My niece was shocked at such blatant and unrepentant display of ignorance. But you will be surprised by what you hear in American universities. I know. I have taught American undergraduates. I am still in therapy to get over the depression from the experience.

So, lets agree on one thing. The French ought to get their own script and leave the rest of us alone. And Americans ought to get their own planet, and leave the rest of the world alone.

And then, I will be writing about weekly inter-planetary travel.

Beam me up Scotty!

PS: I edit very poorly. In fact, I hardly ever edit. I don't write these posts on MS Word and then upload; I write them directly. It is terrible. I feel ashamed. I go back and reread some stupid stuff I have written in the past and I don't know if should edit them and fix all the errors of the ADHD-induced writing or to scrap them entirely. Will you, dear reader, ever find it in your heart to forgive me?

In which he plays 99 bottles with plum wine

It was a beautiful early winter day when my car left Shimla for Kalka. I had decided against the toy train because I didn't want to waste another perfect afternoon listening to the endless whining of punjabi children. It was a happy day and the scenery was out of this world. Two hours into the journey, I was hungry and was looking for a place to stop and eat. I saw this HP tourist place tucked off the road in some small town by the side of the road. On a whim, I stopped the car and went in hoping for a quick meal.

Once inside, I just came face to face with my perfect moment. It was better than the three days I had spent in Shimla. In a courtyard, they had chairs laid out casually surrounded by flowers. The staff was lazy in a pleasant way and there were nobody there except an NRI Hyderabadi group. I ordered food and decided to taste the HP plum wine that was on sale there. The wine was delectable, the scenery incredible, I had to be nowhere in particular, cell phones and blackberries didn't work, nobody in the world knew where I was and to top it all, the bushes around the little lawn were marijuana(not hemp, Cannabis Sativa Sub sp. Indica*). After two bottles of plum wine I was in heaven. So far so good.

That is when the great idea hit me. Why not take a case of the plum wine back to America and casually serve it at a soiree and delight them with the story of how I found it. So, in my inifinite wisdom I bought a case, loaded it in the car and continued the journey down to Kalka.

I got to Kalka around 6 PM, open the trunk and discover that at least one, may be more, bottles have broken inside the case during the journey. Kalka, a dusty little Indian town with none of the charm of Shimla had dispensed with electricity that evening. So I decided not to open the , instead opting to drain the fluid through the seams of the box. The case was wet and anyone who has done 12th grade organic chemistry will tell you that this highly sugary solution seeping into the cardboard as it oxidizes, produces the most obnoxious smell.

I carried this wet, stinky case and dragged it to what seems like the only decent place in town to have dinner and because there is no ventillation, the place reeked of the wine by the time I am finished. Not a great way to make friends. I took the night train to Delhi with the wet, soggy, smelly case and the A/C made the cold wetness even more unbearable. By the time I arrived in Delhi, I could hear things jiggling in the case.

I opened the case, look at the bottles. Two lost. Glass shards are discarded. One bottle is drunk without pleasure that evening. I also realized that since the manufacturer has used plastic caps instead of cork, 3 bottles are completely useless since air has gone in and the wine has the general flavor of urine.

6 Bottles left.

I fly to Bombay with 6 bottles after washing and drying and of course repackaging. In spite of all my best efforts, I get to Bombay with 3 more bottles in bad condition. They get flushed down the toilet. The remaining 3 are OK, but sticky and wet. They are bathed again, dried with the love one lavishes on one's firstborn and repackaged.

Now I am really determined. I flew back to the US with the remaining 3 bottles. This time I took all the precautions. The caps wont come off unless there is a bomb in the plane. I landed in the US with three precious bottles. Unfortunately nobody had told me that the HP plum wine was BEST enjoyed soon after production and kept chilled unlike the regular wines.

The bottles looked great, but the wine looked sickly. It was opaque and tasted like vinegar. Not sweet and nauseant.

Lovely ending to the perfect moment.

Total number of bottles purchased: 12
Actually consumed: ONE-UN--UNO-EK
T-shirts damaged in the process: 1.5

Before you laugh at me, remember what Jack Handey said, "It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For more discussion on the difference, see Small E. and Cronquist A., A Practical and Natural Taxonomy for Cannabis Taxon, Vol. 25, No. 4 (Aug., 1976), pp. 405-435

Missing California

Apologize for the disjointed and rambling post today. How is this different from the usual, you ask. This one is particularly rambling.

I drove from Ferney to Gex tonight. Aimlessly drove through dark narrow roads including a detour through the empty parking lot of a grocery store (and a liquid bio break in a dark field. I am confessing to terrible crimes.) Strangely enough, at that time of the night, France looked a lot like California. I missed breakfast at Coogie's. Simpler times.

I thought of driving from Malibu to Sacramento, California's sleepy capital.

Sacramento is a smallish town. For the capital of a major American state, Sacramento does not have the pomp of LA or the hipness of San Fransisco. Most people in LA probably doesn't even care to acknowledge that Sacramento exists. It is dusty and earthy and houses many bedroom suburbs full of police officers and teachers who can't afford to find housing in the Bay area. It is really not on the way to any place on the tourist map and unless you are on your way to Yuba city or Chico, you don't end up accidentally in Sacramento.

Few years ago, walking around Sacramento, we ended up watching Paula Poundstone. Paula seemed tired after all the allegations and accusations around alcoholism and child abuse, but she was still funny and wonderful. Another time, I flew in from LA one evning to attend an Eric Clapton concert at the Arco arena. This was before the days of terrible airport security and long lines. I think I was disappointed. I don't remember too much else about the concert itself. attending two performances in a city that don't visit that often.

But that is not why France reminded me of CA tonight.

California Inland Empire is so different from the South and the North cities. Bakersville is the main city and the surrounding areas is so agriculture focused. By the coast, Pismo Beach and San Luis Obispo still retain the charm od old-world CA. If you ever go to San Luis Obispo, do go to Madonna Inn and look at the men's rest room. Don't worry if you are female, plenty of women enter those portals to admire the kitsch. I won't tell you what it is, you are going to have to go there.) Driving to Hearst Castle in San Simeon through absolute beauty of abandoned beaches and stark terrain is something you should do at least once. There is a small town whose name I don't remember about twenty miles north of San Simeon that has the most fabulous French restaurant right on the main street overlooking the ocean. You would never expect to find it there and once you find it, you would never want to leave.

So may be France does not really look like CA. So, sue me, I still miss CA.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Facts That Will Never Help You in Life

1. The album cover of Hotel California features a Santa Fe style bell tower that is now etched in the memory of all the fans of the Eagles. Don Henley spent some time in a state psychiatric hospital in Camarillo and the bell tower is from the state mental hospital campus.

2. The mental hospital closed many years ago and re-opened recently as the new campus of the Channel Island State University. I used to go there once in a while when they had good guest speakers. I remember speaking with the ex-Sandinista poet Gioconda Belli when she spoke there. As she read her poems, fighter planes from nearby Pt. Mugu airforce base kept on taking off over our heads.

3. My former neighbor John bought a cutglass window from Don Henley. None of these facts are related in any way.

Sex and Death to the Age 17

(With apologies to Spalding Gray)



Until I was ten, nothing happened to me.
It was an even time, I don’t remember much
Until mother left father and
Went back to live with grandmother.
I don’t remember much except the smell of
white starched shirts I wore to school
And I hated the smell of coffee.

At eleven, I probably had my first crush.
Grandmother fought with my aunts and
Went away to Delhi. And I looked out with fear
for occasional visits from father.

At twelve, I was ashamed of myself
And how I didn’t have things
Others seem to have in plenty
And learned to tell lies to cover myself.

At thirteen, my school friend
Over a fight at home drank poison and killed himself
(Many years later, we learned his father
Had killed him and made it look like a suicide.)

At fourteen, I discovered masturbation.
Experimenting with myself
On a bed, one hot March night
And was too scared when all that
I had heard so much of just happened.

At fifteen, the nice man my mother trusted me With,
molested me.
I still remember his rough hands and tremble.
Never trust a mustachioed man!
A month after that, he got married
And was gracious enough to invite me to his wedding.
I smoked a stolen cigarette and wished I were dead.

At sixteen, I discovered porn and depression
Solitude. The art of walking aimlessly
And pursuing idle habits of the weary.
I learned to get lost and stay away
From the sight of others.
I learned to become invisible.
My parents reconciled.

At Seventeen, I tried to kill myself.
Thrice. I don’t think I failed because
I was incompetent.
My heart was really not in it.

Between all this
I somehow grew up
Grew some hair on my chin
And learned to cover my fear.

At Thirty Seven I have learned
How to order a tall café latte
At the Starbucks on Quay Mont Blanc.
Quite a long way to come
For a familiar cup of Joe, don’t you think?