Moan and Groan

Dear all,

 

This is just a short note to let you know I am not dead. I am sick. Basically the flu – body ache, fever that won’t go down, cough which has transformed into cold – and if that wasn’t enough period. AND I’m in office – I chose to come in because I had meetings scheduled that I’d rather get done but dang, sitting here is killing me. Mid-morning my boss came by and told me to take a hike. But I persist. All to evade the stress of not rescheduling a meeting.

 

A couple of weeks ago my sister came down with a nasty bug. Diarrhoea accompanied by headache and muscle pain. This being the girl who never falls sick – the one and only time she has ever puked was when she was pregnant (“OMG, it’s so horrible. Everything just comes out. Don’t know how people do it more than once”) – she was struck actionless by the illness. She had no clue what to do.

 

Later, I asked her: “So the pain didn’t go after you took Tylenol?” and she paused and then said sheepishly: “I don’t know why I didn’t take Tylenol. I only took it on day 3 and God, it was like magic. Now I know why people get addicted to painkillers.” And I had to gently explain to her that people who are addicted to painkillers pop pills to dull an emotional pain and not a physical one and if you’re taking pills within the medically prescribed limits for good reason, it doesn’t count as addiction. Then she was describing her headache and I said: “Did you try putting a hot water bottle or warm compress?” and again she was struck dumb. Apparently, she had to google what to eat when one has diarrheoa and was horrified that only congee and toast was showing up. A week later she is back to going out jogging.

 

Some people, I tell you. I am sick so often, I’m like a walking dictionary of remedies. It is very odd being related to someone who a couple of times during our childhood tried to fake an illness so she could get some attention.

 

That said, day 2 and this illness is getting old. It doesn’t help that V is out of town on work so I have to guiltily let the helpers hold the fort and avoid my own children. Benji is the one who gave me the bug; Mimi, touch wood, has been immune but that could change anytime soon. I’m seriously considering the flu shot.

 

My mom commented that I fall sick too often and I contested that but she pointed out I’d had a severe cold a month ago. Probably is, I’m doing everything right. Eating fruit and veggies. Taking a multi-vitamin on top (my pregnancy one, no less), exercising (okay kinda). So why why? It’s small consolation that everyone in the MTR seems to be sick. I cannot fall ill every time the weather changes.

Tribulations of a small kind

A couple of weekends ago, I sat through one of the most stressful 10 minutes of my life. On my lap was Benji, his eyes wide, his lips pursed firmly shut. It was his first kindergarten interview.

You may recall that I went through a dilemma about Cantonese vs English kindergartens and finally decided to stick with the five English-medium kindergartens I had applied to. A few weeks ago, we got a letter asking us to come down for an interview on Saturday afternoon. I was pleasantly surprised that it was scheduled for a weekend, but apparently this is common in Hong Kong where both parents work. I called up and asked if it was possible to change his interview time to the morning and was even more surprised when they agreed. All systems looked good to go.

I had then had a mild panic when I realised I had no idea what happens at these interviews nor had I made any attempt to teach Benji anything appropriate. A quick survey of anyone I knew with kids in Hong Kong who did not go the international school route did nothing to allay my fears. Everyone assured me that it was very easy and they just ask the child stuff like their name, to identify pictures such as fruit, alphabets and primary colours.

Problem is Benji doesn’t know any of this. He knows plenty of stuff that he is interested in – like the names of different vehicles (car, train, plane, crane, auto, moto, boat etc), words like cockroach and umbrella etc but not the sort of generic things they would probably ask. He plays with colours but we hadn’t tried to identify them yet. He refuses to say his name though he can say all our names. The alphabet I thought he was supposed to be going to kindy to learn. And I’m ashamed to say we’ve never properly drilled Please and Thank You into him.

Lax parent that I am, I have never really been bothered to teach Benji things systematically. As long as I can see that he’s learning new things, I’ve been okay with it. So just because a school textbook would teach A for Apple, I didn’t specifically feel the need to do so. He’s developing a vocabulary, unconventional though it might be, and I figured he’d around to fruit eventually.

But well, this might not hold water at an interview. Who knows, maybe there’s some really good reason why every kid must be able to tell apples from oranges at age 2?

Anyway, I figured fruit might be too ambitious so I started with trying to get him to identify himself first (no success!) and to say please and thank you (success! But only if prompted). Colours I have had no success with and I’m beginning to think he might be colour blind (finally I googled and apparently on average kids on average identify colours around 3. Why then would they ask two-year-olds is beyond me. I guess they need to ask something).

Finally, I just gave up. The day dawned bright and clear and after V completely ruined my mood by nagging me on my tardiness, we arrived on time in the end. It started off well. We were sent to a room full of kids with toys spread out on low tables. The parents could sit with the kids (apparently some interviews take kids to a separate room. How cruel! Not sure I would want my kid to be in said schools).

I had been afraid Benji might be rowdy but he was perfectly well behaved. My only complaint was that instead of focussing on the intelligent toys, he found himself a truck. All around me parents were nudging their children towards matching blocks etc and quizzing them on animals, plants, etc. Encouragingly, most of the kids either ignored their parents or got the answers wrong.

Then, teachers came and fetched each child and one parent for the interview proper. Unfortunately, when Benji’s turn came, we made him drop his truck which he was not very happy with and then he saw the teacher, a blonde blue-eyed lady, and he was even less happy. The teacher was sweet enough to say he could bring the truck so I had him go get it.

When we went into the interview room, which was a regular bright classroom with child-sized tables and chairs, Benji trailed me reluctantly and then wouldn’t even sit in his own chair. The teacher first held up a paper with the outline of a ball on it. Now, honestly, even I had to look hard to realise it was a ball because it wasn’t coloured. Anyway, Benji just stared. She then asked him to colour. Now, normally, Benji is quite enthusiastic about colouring but this time he wouldn’t even pick a crayon. I had to give him one and he just held it limply. The teacher suggested – how sweet she was – that maybe he didn’t like purple so we urged him to choose and he chose red. After much coaxing, he drew a small line. She then, desperately I guess, asked him about his truck and he wouldn’t even say “car” his favourite word.

In the interim, I felt obliged to babble to cover the acute embarrassment of my child behaving like he did not possess the faculty of speech. I didn’t say very intelligent things also. When asked what he liked to do I said be outdoors, and play with cars. Perfectly normal but nothing that presents him to any advantage either. Ugh. I was totally flustered and emerged dismayed when the teacher finally gave up and said goodbye.

I had been hoping that we’d be done with just this one interview and wouldn’t have to do the rounds of the other schools but it appears this one’s a goner. I’m not very optimistic about the other interviews going brilliantly either. Benji is not going to perform well in these settings. That day we checked in on the other kindergarten I applied to and they were having an open day with a free music class running so I went in with Benji. He took one look a the Caucasian teacher and went tense. His whole body was literally stiff for at least 15 minutes and he stuck to me. Only towards the end of the class did he loosen up and begin to participate properly.

The fact is he’s a kid who clams up in front of strangers. He takes at least half an hour to get warmed up and we don’t have the luxury of that. I can push him to interact with people but if his personality is shy, there’s not going to be great progress in two weeks. God knows, I’ve had 30 years to get over my insecurities and they only started fading in my mid-20s through the love of a good man and alcohol.

I also question the whole interview process. This one was hardly onerous but it seems counter-intuitive. There’s a slim chance I wouldn’t be saying this if my kid had sailed through. Why ask kids to identify two-dimensional objects? Why not hold up a ball and ask what it is? As Plato said, twice-removed from reality and all that? Why ask kids to colour when their motor skills are not that developed? Hell, in some countries they don’t let them pick up a pen till they’re 6. Why ask kids to identify colours when the average age for this capacity to develop is 3? Hell, why have an interview with kids a whole year before when developmentally so much can happen in even a month?

MinCat confessed that she was baffled that parents get so stressed out about kindergarten. I explained that my reasons for being stressed were not related to Benji not getting into the best school. I was afraid he wouldn’t get into any that I applied to. Maybe I should have applied to 15 instead of 5. The fact is that most parents apply to around 5, one doesn’t have time or energy for 15. Applying and attending interviews is not our full-time job after all. My one criteria is that the school be near home – I don’t want him wilting in the MTR like the kids I see every morning. There is also the matter of the fees, which can be really steep and if you don’t have a choice, you have to pay them.

There is the more far-off anxiety of primary school and parents can be forgiven for hoping that if they expend some energy at this stage, they will be saved at the later stage which is even more competitive because the good kindergartens have informal arrangements with primary school. So that’s why parents get flustered – it is often over other factors than ‘the best’.

Anyway, one down, four to go.

Edited to add: There is a happy ending to this story. This evening I finally managed to prise open our mailbox and it turns out the one letter I saw sitting there last evening was from the above-mentioned kindergarten accepting Benji. Wow. I must say I’m pleasantly surprised that the school understood that he’s not a freak but a regular kid who’s just shy. Though I’m pretty sure the decision to accept us had a lot to do with us being “international”. Anyhoo…celebratory dance!

 

Waiting

Waiting for Godot is one of those classics of modernist literature that we studied at university. I clearly remember Professor Eunice going something on the lines of: “You lot seem like a fine bonny bunch. How come you all get this?” and us looking vaguely sheepish and proud.

The fact is that when you’re 21, there’s a lot of angst and the world is a dark place so nihilism appeals.

But I am no longer 21. There is, as ever, angst but not of the kind that needs to be swathed in black. And yet, watching the play being performed last night, so much resonated.

We studied how the ideological underpinnings of modern art and we appreciated the play when we read it as students but watching it, I was struck how the experience is so much like looking at an abstract painting. You are given only the bare bones of an idea or an impression but that means that it is just bursting with meaning. Before watching this play, I could only imagine how that sort of thing would work out in theatre and now I know.

It was a thrill to see an enactment one had only hitherto imagined. I took V and was interested to see how he would respond but it seemed the stars were not aligned for this one because first, we lost the tickets and then he came down with diarrhoea and basically had to leave within the first 20 minutes. Although he claimed he was enamoured of the bit he sat through, I have a feeling he would have enjoyed it had he not been feverish and stuck around.

As for this particular performance, it was excellent. In reading the play, we tended to focus on Didi and Gogo but in this rendition Lucky, of all characters, was a real star and then Pozzo. Maybe because I am reading a paper on the narratives of domestic helpers, the Lucky-Pozzo dynamic reminded me of the employer-helper relationship, how it has all the potential to and often does turn into variations of that theme and I wonder if others in the audience were squirming too.

Somewhat predictably, I also thought of Didi and Gogo’s relationship in terms of marriage. One of the most uplifting moments of the play is when Didi and Gogo embrace – a rare truly authentic expression in an existence characterised by performance. There was an audible awww from the high school students two rows in front of me.

Mostly though, the play reminded me of the amusingness of the human condition – how it is in the end just a search for meaning. I was reminded of so many people I know our age who are waiting for some sign that will tell them that they need to change their job, their life, their relationship but that sign never comes, just the hope of the sign sometimes does. If there is a moral to this play at all, it comes ironically from Pozzo and Lucky, who worse of than they ever were, say that when they fall down, they get just get back up again. In the end, that’s all the meaning we’re going to get.

 

One, two, 32

This started out as a moany post. Serendipitously, I had grabbed Caitlyn Moran’s How To Be a Woman on the way to work and it opens with her being pelted with stones on her birthday by yobs who mistook her for a boy and it made me smile.

 

I can’t escape the hints of blue though. It has been, if I am completely honest, not one of the good years. The high point was the birth of Mimi in January. The low points were almost everything else.

 

I was blue through this pregnancy which I put down to hormones. But there was also exhaustion which was the defining character of this year. I was just getting back into my groove with Benji being literally able to stand on his own two feet when bam! Again. That was it, really, the again. Not, wow, I’m/she’s pregnant, but again, and all the drudge than comes with that.

 

Then Mimi was born and of course it was crazy and it was marginally better because I knew it was going to be but it was marginally worse because I had this sense of – whoa I am doing this again. But I’m supposed to be experienced and know the drill but that doesn’t make it god less tiring or less frightening when your child keeps crying and you can sort of see the thought bubble over everyone’s head that says: “Why is she going crazy, again?” and you try to hold it together because being crazy twice is not amusing.

 

The casualties have been my marriage and my body in that order. I have agonised about the former all year. I have gone from my husband is enemy number one to indifference to a sort of sisterly affection to the stirrings of something which is more than anything else a grab for what we once were, all the while loving him but not always being in love. In love is what a marriage needs. Somewhere just before or in between the babies we lost the romance, or I thought he lost it and so I did.

 

When people hurt me I tend to shut them out and it’s a testimony to how much I love this man that the shutdown happened after so long. Now, for the sake of us all, I’m supposed to raise the roof beams but frankly, I’m too tired. I just want to curl up with a book and read.

 

My body does not help. It is no longer anything but a service to my children. First food and then something to be played with. My breasts have gone from being an erogenous zone to appendages. The cruel irony is that they’ve gone down a size. And yet, one button of my shirt always gapes open as if they’ve become wider.

 

More obviously, I have become wider. I felt obliged to put on something halfway attractive this morning but eschewed wearing a vest under the shift I chose and belatedly in the MTR I noticed that a space between buttons was gaping open giving people a view of my blessedly coordinated black bra. And then I looked up and there was a Western girl, French or Russian – the worst kind to look at during these times – who had big hips and a belly but a thin face and I thought, I can deal with that, big at the bottom but a face to look at.

 

But alas, even my hair has turned traitor. Skipping the haircut in Bombay was a bad idea because it has gone completely mad. So this morning, I tried to pin it back and now every large, unattractive feature is out there for all to wonder at.

 

A week or so ago, I came across something on John Gottman’s work on marriage and one of his findings is that marriages at least in the US predictably run into trouble around the time the first child is due (which is so commonsensical but sometime you need an authority to remind you of the intricacies of it). And I’ve had two children so this might, after all, be the prosaic explanation for all my angst. I hope so, even though I don’t feel entitled to it because three-fourth of the world has it so so much worse..

 

I am too grown up now to even be dramatic about it. (Well, clearly except on this blog). First of all, I’ve run out of escape routes. The biggest thing about having children is that it ties you to life. I used to comfort myself that my children can survive without me when they’re 18 but now I realise that if my mum offed herself in my early 20s, I’d be fucked up so I need to be bright and bonny till they’re 30 and hopefully moved on to the loves of their lives. Not that I’m going to kill myself – I would have earlier when I was really unhappy if I was serious about it – but it’s comforting to think one needn’t go on and on. And as a parent there’s no statue of limitations on when you stop worrying about your children. Even when they’re 40, there’s always going to be a small ball of fear in me that something bad might happen to them that I’m powerless to prevent.

 

It doesn’t help that the future is not orange but grey. I feel like I’m living in limbo with the move to India looming. I keep flip-flopping on it but mostly I’m trying to talk myself into wanting to do it because I don’t have the strength to be the one that forces someone else to do something they don’t want to do. Yesterday, I went to the Post Office and after the guy at the counter had summoned his reserves of English to explain to me what to do and I did it, I thought: ”Why am I leaving this seamlessness to go somewhere like The Hunger Games where if you’re not an expert with the bow and arrow or can attach yourself to someone who is and deal with that dependency you won’t survive?” But I have stopped thinking these thoughts out loud.

 

I try to be mature and nod and glide through life like a swan these days. Except that this morning Mimi fell flat on her face on my watch and V glared and the door to all this swung open just a bit and I couldn’t stop everything cascading out in time. But I have grown, because in the past I would have sent some kind of cutting text but now I just call to mind all the good things and when that doesn’t work dream about cigarettes I have no hope of smoking.

PS: This is not a plea for sympathy. The therapy is in the telling. Plus, this is a record.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Passage to India – conclusion

I almost missed my flight home.

Proving that human beings will blithely assume that the worst will not happen to them even if the odds point to the likelihood of the worst, I arrived at the check-in counter with baggage roughly 7 kg overweight. I was sweetly informed that I would have to pay about Rs 4,000 to get them on the flight. Realising that my precious banana chips and bottles of Frooti did not justify that expense, I decided to resort to Plan B which was to remove the excess items.

However, when I opened my suitcase, a very Indian impulse overcame me, which was to scan the system. I sheepishly confess that when I opened my suitcases and removed the bottle of Frooti and packets of Maggi and dosa mix, I was racked by the impulse to save them as the realisation dawned that the woman at the counter had not weighed by handbag, which thanks to my penchant for oversized totes can take on a Mary Poppins-like quality. Thus, I eliminated just one bottle of Frooti and a pack of Maggi and transferred some dosa mix into my handbag.

Fingers crossed, I went back to the check-in counter, where this time she weighed only my suitcase. I was still 2 kg overweight but the price I had to pay for that was acceptable to me. When walking away with my boarding pass, I noticed that the Frooti and Maggi were still on the chair I had left them. So I grabbed the Maggi and put it back into my hand luggage and transferred the dosa mix back too. In my defence, I am deeply ashamed of all this and will never ever do it again.

Immigration was quick but when I landed at security I noticed that I had only an hour to go. Anywhere else, an hour is a long time but this is Bombay. At 12.30 with the line only inching forward, I was beginning to panic. A Jet Airways staffer came around calling for my flight and took me ahead – though actually I didn’t skip anyone because there was a separate women’s queue and everyone in front of me was male. Since there were only about seven women ahead of me in the queue, he assumed I would be fine. Unfortunately, the machine was slow, and then a cabin crew came and they screened all 10 or so of them first and if anyone had a problem, the whole process got held up. I finished the security check at 12.55 and my flight was at 1 am. I raced to the gate, where there were people waiting for me. As I was ushered outside, one of the ground staff said: “Last passenger, praise the Lord!”

The ground staffer escorting me told me he had called my dad (I had registered his number) to ask where I was. He was sweet enough to call my dad from his phone so I could tell him I was okay. I boarded at 1 am and I suppose the flight was waiting for me.

After that, it was uneventful. My exertions of the past two hours meant I slept soundly practically the whole flight.

Before I dosed off, I realised that I was homesick. Homesick for India. For family and friends but also for faces that lit up in welcome when they saw me and for people that took me as ordinary, as one of them, even if slightly foreign. I realised that in focusing on the rational advantages of living abroad (efficiency, developed infrastructure, safety), I had played down the emotional disadvantages (dislocation, isolation, racism). I began to think that moving back to India might not be a bad idea, after all.

V and Benji picked me up at the Airport Express. The entire ride home with V, I enthused about India. About how my family rallied around me, about the camaraderie with friends, old and new, about how my neighbours faces lit up when they saw me, about how people looked at and loved and protected other people’s children, about how the kids play with abandon, unstructured, about how I am many degrees less a foreigner there than I am in HK even with my stilted Hindi.

And then he told me about a friend of his who was beaten up by the police in Bangalore. The cocoon of certainty I had built up about the possibilities about life in India evaporated in the face of my one abiding fear – the lack of safety and how close the chaos of corruption is to everyday life in India. V pointed out that in India one still has the tools and the connections to cope with this. I am not sure I have any connections and anyway, how useful would they be after you’re black and blue like his friend, who is actually well-connected, was. I could wish away my own safety more carelessly than I would my children. The vulnerability of my children has turned me into a tiger.

Later, when I talked to friends about the wonder of India, I realised how lame I sounded. Doubts surfaced about my reasons for contemplating a move. I did realise one important thing though: raising my kids in Hong Kong is far from ideal. I am condemning them to being outsiders for life, for never really knowing what it is to belong and the insecurity of that, and that that this loss of identity is not something I can wave away as small. It is big. We need to move somewhere inclusive for the sake of our children because what we can brush off as adults will be the structure that forms our children’s sense of security.

Even as adults, living in a place where many doors are closed due to language, due to prejudice, due to the impassivity of the culture, has affected us. We are colder, harder, more isolated. For our own sakes, we may need to thaw.

Finally, in India, I realised that for the first time in a long time, thoughts of going back to work evoke a negative response. It’s not as if I was ever passionate about this job but I liked it well enough and most importantly, I didn’t dislike it. Lately though, there has been more work and more stress and even if not at the levels demanded in the commercial world, it is not meaningful enough for me to want to care. V has been saying the same about his job for a long time – he is not passionate enough to continue doing it when it becomes unpleasant and now the time has come.

I can, of course, switch jobs in Hong Kong. V cannot. And so, we are hurtling towards big changes and I must do that thing I am not very good at – choose, even if no perfect choice presents itself.

 

Passage to India – 3

I arrived home on Wednesday night in the midst of a party for visiting family, complete with skirmishing uncles and aunties hissing at them to stop it. My cousins arrived and many scattered conversations were had. It was nice.

On Thursday, I lolled around resolving to get my eyebrows done and giving up when my dad came back from a business trip. In the evening, mum and I went to Shopper’s Stop. As the elevator doors opened and we made our way to the first rack of clothes, we were accosted by enthusiastic salespeople. I headed to the fitting rooms arms laden where, for once, I was thankful that several things were tight and remembered that the last time I bought something in one of these malls, the colour ran the first time I washed it. On being asked, the salesgirl kept nodding in the Indian way and saying “normal wash” until I twigged that normal in India does not mean in a machine but by hand.

Dumped all the clothes and decided to focus on jeans and shoes, which I really needed. The main target was to get mum a handbag but I also did a detour to Mothercare. After about 45 minutes of this, we headed to the cashier where I had a mini heart attack at the bill. Quietly paid and resolved not to buy anything else thereafter. Ever. The problem is that I really liked everything I bought so although I went through it all twice at home, I couldn’t find anything to return.

Very chastened, I headed for dinner with Curly. Obviously, I wanted to eat Chinese food, the inauthentic kind. I ordered chilly chicken and tucked into it happily. I can testify that the leftovers were yummier (salivating again). Hilarious moment when I asked the waiter if they had Chinese tea and he said yes and then I asked what kind and he said “Chinese!” Turned out to be Jasmine and very well brewed but in a miniscule cup, which I am sure also cost the earth and apparently can be refilled but I didn’t know.

Because we didn’t want the evening to end, we went to Eat Around the Corner, which is a fancy version of JATC which used to be my regular adda, and had coffee (me) and cake (her), again at what I consider high prices for India. We had insightful conversation on the exact cost of living a certain lifestyle (the kind I would want to live) in India which has begun to scare me. We ascertained that it is a lot. Curly also made the case for Bombay not being the ugliest city in India because of the seaface which is a fair point. We also discussed how we had had little ambition and no idea that there were possibilities beyond Bombay when we graduated, and those of us who had an inkling that there was a world of academic possibility out there (like yours truly) were too lazy to act on this awareness.

On Friday, I visited a friend who has had a baby and lives near Powai in a gated community that is like an oasis. It overlooks Aarey Milk Colony so you can stand in her balcony and fantasize that you are in some verdant village, complete with villager strolling down a mud path, milk pail in hand. Her apartment complex reminds me of the one we live in in Hong Kong with the difference that when you step out on to the street it’s complete chaos. She has also moved from abroad and confessed that until she moved into this complex, she was depressed. I am beginning to understand the appeal of gated communities, mostly to people who have children.

On Friday afternoon, mum and I went for a facial to Mudd spa, a recommendation I gleaned from Ashwathy’s comment on one of my earlier posts. In terms of the slog work of blackhead extraction, this one was only so-so but the massage was thorough and the ambience decent, albeit a little messy. My mother emerged dazed from the pampering and swearing she is going to do this every few months.

Met Curly and another friend for drinks. We were supposed to go out but a Singapore-like evening downpour that seemed to be happening every day the week I was there and so we canned that idea in favour of sitting around in her living room. It was fun gossiping and reminiscing over cocktails, until they noticed that I was almost horizontal on the couch and alas, had to be driven home.

Saturday morning was a family brunch in honour of some far-flung relative who was in town. I planned to pay my respects and make a fast exit in order to do some street shopping and get a pedicure but ended up staying till everyone started leaving. Ended up with a pedicure at Lakme salon which had prices I could understand although it was crazy busy and a little lacking in ambience. I had a shoe bite on my foot which the pedicure guy brushed over so it opened up (gros!) and now I have visions of having contracted some horrible disease which I shall ignore.

In the evening, I met my baby cousin, who is a teacher and doing her Masters, at Bagel Shop (Café?). The last time I had been there it had just opened and was madly crowded but now people seemed to have moved on to the next big thing and so we had our pick of armchairs and didn’t have to shout to hear each other. The autorickshaw situation in Bombay is beginning to replicate other cities where the drivers just don’t take you anywhere unless it’s far far away. (Sorry, R’s Mom, I know I pontificated on your blog a bit when you wrote about this. I still understand why they do it, just that it’s horribly annoying to be at the receiving end. I noticed that most of people I know have their own car, often with driver attached. It results in very little walking though.)

Then went to other cousins’ house for pre-dinner drinks, where I startled them my enlightening them that the sexuality of women is fluid. And I was informed that my cousin’s daughter had, at the morning’s brunch, pegged me as a foreigner and on being quizzed why she thought so, said: “Because she’s so fair!” We all collapsed giggling helplessly at this but since cousin’s wife had promised daughter she would never repeat her error to  a soul, we had to countenance the little one with straight faces.

I got to sample the Bandra-Worli sealink which was very cool, one part (we kept saying “where is it pink?” like plebs for the longest time) was lit up in pink in honour of Breast Cancer Awareness Week. We were deposited in Palladium mall where you have to go through a security check to enter. We had a beautiful dinner at Indigo but I realised that I have done this enough. I don’t need to eat/party/shop in this kind of splendor anymore except maybe very infrequently. I don’t think I can live the life of the streets either but the in-between is good enough for me. So maybe there’s hope for me surviving economically in a modern Indian city.

On my last morning, I did middle class India. I zipped around Bandra with my dad on his motorbike buying banana chips, idli makers and 1 litre bottles of Maaza that turned out to be my bête noire. Baby cousin came over for lunch and we oohed over the wedding album of just another family wedding I missed because I was due to give birth. We ate more Chinese food.

Too soon, it was time to go. I had had hopes of going to church and if not praying, viewing relics and memorabilia on display for the church’s 160^th anniversary. These were dashed when my mom said I should stay home and Granny-sit while the parents went to church. I had hopes of walking down Hill Road and buying things dirt cheap without bargaining. These were dashed when I realised that the shopping of the morning had resulted in suitcases bursting at the seams.

At some point, I looked out of my kitchen window and watched the children screaming and playing at 8 pm exactly as I had done when I was a kid. If I had waited just half and hour, I’m pretty sure I would have heard parents calling and the kids whining: “Aunty please, let him stay, just one more game!”. This one thing has not changed, then, and I am glad for it.

When in Bombay, there are always too many people I would like to meet and I have to pick carefully. It has been a small effort in prioritizing and knowing how people rank in my life and how I rank in theirs. There were three people I contacted, who were on my second list of people to touch base with, who  didn’t make an effort so they have been struck off. It was just as well because I was struggling for time anyway but it’s good to know where you stand.

On the whole though, I was touched by the warmth and strength of the ties that are still there. It really made me take stock of what I am missing in terms of people and all the goodness they bring by living abroad. More on that later.

Passage to India -2

Having had my hair washed and oiled at an overpriced salon in the airport, I proceeded to fly to Delhi via Indigo which was fantastic. Up in the air, I considered buying a samosa for Rs 120 and balked. My shock and awe at the price of things in India will be a continuing theme of this series of posts.

MinCat picked me up and we drove to JNU to pick up a cousin of hers, giggling at the gate at the cloneness of hipsters (black-rimmed glasses, nose-ring, short curly hair, cigarette, kurta).

My first impression of Delhi: it’s Bangalore but bigger. Tree-lined streets with houses but wider, better roads with more organised traffic and bigger houses. Right off I could see that the infrastructure here is better than any other city I have been to in India.

We went to this complete dive bar, where the entirely male clientele paused and stared as we entered (three women, and one 21-year-old long-haired guy) and then proceeded to ignore us. We ate the best butter chicken I have had in my life and some divine kebabs (salivating as I write this) and drank for a negligible sum. I smoked my first cigarette since Feb 2010. V had earlier texted MinCat to request her to not let me smoke. Her response: Not getting into this.

We tottered out of the bar and down the street to buy provisions. I glanced around furtively for ambushers, this being the notorious Delhi and all, but noone seemed perturbed by the sight of three unescorted women prancing down the street. Then we went to MinCat’s flat and got stoned and had huge philosophical conversations and played taboo and conceded defeat to the boys when we had actually won and giggled over their competitiveness. I realised, on my nth cigarette, that I really need to do this every once in a while. This is missing in my life – the intellectualised debauchery.

And also, much as I make fun of hipsters, I am one of them. The difference is that I have some mainstream elements. I can allow myself to relish the Shopaholic series and not take an ironic position. I can take a step back from playing the part. At least, I hope I do.

The next day we drove to Gurgaon to visit a friend. She doesn’t live in Gurgaon proper but I did get a sense of gated communities. She has created a wonderful home with so much character in the midst of what is essentially a nondescript settlement. We reminisced and listened to rock and played with her baby.

On my last day in Delhi, we were tourists. We went to Chandni Chowk and wandered through alleyways attracting curious stares. We stopped at a handmade paper shop where I started bargaining, did a quick conversion and just paid what he had asked for. On the way out, MinCat asked the shopkeeper where we could eat. He looked at me and said: “Ye kya khayenge?” She assured him that I could eat anything off the street, though none of us were quite sure of this. Anyway, we ate kachoris and chole batura and I was fine, thank you very much, Mr Handmade Paper.

Then we proceeded to the Red Fort where I got an audio guide and did my thing, which means listening to every single word of the narrated commentary. I refrained from clicking the numbers for additional information because there was a poor boy accompanying me and sweltering (MinCat had settled herself under a tree with our bags). Everything in the Twentieth Wife series came to life and I wanted more, more more.

So MinCat kindly drove me to India Gate and Rashtrapati Bhavan and I thought of Paris. Then we went to Hauz Khas village with its trendy stores and galleries and cafes and over a coffee served to us by a firang manager, I confessed to MinCat that this was the only India I could envisage myself in and she asked me when I had ever been part of authentic India anyway and there was no shame in living a slightly ghettoised existence (I flatter myself that MinCat has a vested interest in me moving back to India but I take her point).

I was also very excited to take the metro. It was a surreal experience, a train that looked like the one in Hong Kong but full of only Indian people. While its trappings were foreign, its practice was Indian. People sat shoulders touching, squeezing in where their bottoms fit. I liked the camaraderie of it. We also travelled in the general compartment (almost wrote men’s compartment) where a seat freed up and I offered it to an older guy and he insisted I take it and I sat down. All very civilised.

At the airport on my way back to Bombay, I had only hand luggage to carry. I was surprised when they spotted the scissors and some other metal object in my make-up pouch and asked me to remove it. I opened my suitcase and sent panties flying searching for the offending items. Finally, they took the scissors and let me off without the other thing. Landed in Bombay and took a prepaid cab home myself very smugly.

Passage to India – 1

Last week, I went to India. The week before that I was going crazy getting stuff done so that I could go to India. That explains my absence.

Braving the disapprobation of all and sundry, I went to India without the kids. Since I’m pretty sure nothing of the sort – by which I mean jaunting off on trips, particularly trips to India – is going to happen again anytime soon, I decided to jet off to Delhi in addition to the usual Bombay.

Why Delhi? Because I am tired of telling people I haven’t been to Delhi. I want to strike that off my list. But mostly, I wanted to visit MinCat.

I flew out on a Sunday night instead of a Friday – missing my aunt’s 70^th birthday bash in Lonavala (yes, 70-year-olds are still boogeying while I mostly ignore my own birthday now) because I wanted to spend the weekend with my kids. Everyone came to see me off at the Airport Express and Benji threw a fit when he realised I was leaving. My heart broke.

I had no sense of relief or enthusiasm on the Airport Express, like I usually do at the start of a holiday. Right up to the time I boarded my flight, I was dazed. Also, I had a cold. As the flight took off, I was seized by panic. What am I doing? I thought hysterically. Images of my babies kept flashing through my mind. Yes, I’m dramatic that way.

I didn’t sleep a wink on the flight because I had wisely (not) chosen a window seat and there were two guys to climb over every time I wanted to pee. Counter-productively, the thought of climbing over them kept me awake and feeling like peeing more than I would have had I just gone the eff to sleep. I marvelled at how unenthusiastic I was feeling about this holiday.

I watched The Hunger Games. It took me half an hour to get into it and then I was hooked. I assume I can tick Lord of the Rings off my list now. I get the general idea. I didn’t want to watch or read anything after which was a problem because I couldn’t sleep.

When I landed in Bombay, I realised I was stressed out. I just wanted to get from point A (airport) to point B (home). I swanned through the airport like a firang, wrinkling my nose at the musty carpet smell and only just tapping my foot as the baggage failed to appear while around me Indian travelers raged at staff who may or may not have been from Jet Airways. I rolled my eyes at the trolley war to go through the green channel.

My dad picked me up and I marveled at a newly-built car park that looks 20 years old and has two lifts that can accommodate only 2 people and 1 trolley to get to the first floor. As we drove through home, I realised I felt no sense of nostalgia or homecoming. A long time ago, the very smell of Bombay would move me. Now, nothing.

My building epitomised the shabbiness of the city. All the more so because it is under repair, broken, dusty, cement exposed. The city too seems to be under repair, or rather in disrepair that I know to be perennial.

The next morning my extended family from Hyderabad who had come to Bombay for the aforementioned 70^th birthday party came over to visit me. It was lovely to see my uncles and aunt who I had lived with for two years. They got me chicken 65 from the roadside stall I used to love. They advised me to eat it only when I was back from Delhi in case my stomach collapsed.

I took an auto to the airport for my flight to Delhi. It was the ride of my life. Zipping down the highway, ignoring signals, me clutching on for dear life with one hand over my mouth to fend off the pollution.

Inside the airport, I had an epiphany. This is the only India I could live in now. Air-conditioned, glass-enclosed, sanitised, dotted with upmarket shops, getting an oil massage for Rs 1,200. I never wanted to be one of these people, inauthentic. But that’s who I am now. The question is – could I afford to live this way if I actually lived in India?