Giving Thanks

Thanksgiving morning, I rushed to the supermarket for a quick last minute shop of forgotten items. Paper napkins and candles, for example. As I browsed through the aisles, there was a person next to me speaking loudly on her cellphone.

"Frickin' hell, I can't believe Thanksgiving time has come around atgain. I might just die, having to spend the entire weekend with the family." As you can imagine, I was shocked. But also instantly hooked. Actually, mostly I was just hooked. The person on the other end of the phone presumably uttered clucks of sympathy, for then my woman was grumbling again. "I can't believe they created a holiday forcing the entire family to spend time together. Just frickin' so irritating."

The sentiment was so incongruous with the goodness of Thanksgiving, and the excitement of a long-weekend, that I couldn't help but chuckle to myself. I was tempted to stick with her, I must concede, and see how the rest of her weekend transpired. But I had guests of my own, and things to get done, so I rounded the corner and continued my hurried shop.

In the next aisle I passed by two boys in their early twenties, two roommates doing their weekly shop, I quickly surmised. As I passed, I heard one say to the other, "I've never been more unenthused about anything more than this weekend. You can't imagine how boring it is to spend an entire four days with the family. It kills me."

Crikey, I thought to myself, as I quickly picked up what I needed and headed for the front desk. What's with all the Thanksgiving scrooges.

But I quickly forgot about it as the girl at the checkout started ringing up my items.

"Working on Thanksgiving?" I asked her sympathetically. "I hope you at least end your shift in time to be home for dinner?"

"Oh gosh, I always volunteer to work on Thanksgiving!" she responded with a laungh. "My family's mental, I'm happy to be out of the house on Thanksgiving day."

And all of a sudden, if I hadn't been before, I was especially thankful for the people with whom we sharing our giving of thanks.

Turkey Day

This morning, as I brushed an icycle off the tip of my nose, I rather disappointedly resigned myself to the realisation that winter is actually here.

Still, what that really means, I suppose, is that Thanksgiving is already upon us. This year marks the first time that Mike and I are hosting Thanksigiving at ours (well, come to think of it, it's the first year we have an 'ours' to host at). So we called the gang, and then we couldn't have anyone left out, so we called other friends who didn't have alternative plans, and all of a sudden, we were too many to cook for.

"Delta, what in the world are we going to do?! I can't cook for ten people! I don't even think I've ever made mashed potatoes before!"

Delta looked at me for a moment. "Let's just get it all on Fresh Direct".

And so it comes to be that the first Thanksgiving we are hosting, we are actually ordering the meal pre-cooked and pre-delivered from our online supermarket. Even (especially) the potatoes.

Welcome to the twenty first century.

When you know you're on to a lucky day

This morning I jumped out of bed with the fright of my life. Heart thumping in my ears and the works. Looked at the clock, and it was 8.30. Eight-thirty-frickin'-o'clock!!
"OMG f*&%ing shite!!" I shouted.
Poor Delta, soundly asleep next to me, rocketed out of the bed with a personal heart attack of his own.
"What happened?" he asked, once he'd surveyed the place rapidly and elimimated fire/earthquake/intuders, and had caught his breath a little.
"I guess I slept through my alarm. Go back to sleep," I told him soothingly. As if anyone can go back to sleep after being awakened like that.


Then I looked at my alarm and realised I hadn't overslept it. In fact, I'd entirely forgotten to set it the night before. How inconvenient. Especially seeing as I was supposed to have a 9am meeting this morning. There was no way I could make it to work by 9.


No time to think no time to think. Just pull on my jeans with one hand while brushing my teeth with the other and then quickly feed the cat while pulling on my socks and. Crap. There was just no way I was going to make it in on time.


So I logged into my email with all the noble intention in the world of confessing my over-sleep, and grovelling for a reschedule. Pulled up my inbox, and what's the top email there? An email from the person I was supposed to meet that morning.

Sorry, personal emergency, need to reschedule.


I couldn't believe my luck. Guess he had overslept too, if you ask me. Moot point anyway. So I put on my most magnaminous tone, and responded that of course I understood and would be willing to reschedule. But of course. Because that's just the kind of forgiving person I am.

Optimistic and hopeful

I hesitated to write this, I didn't want to go down rathole of politics, but I just have to. Or else think I might just burst.

"I think I'm going to head down to DC for Obama's inauguration speech in January," I told one of my colleagues yesterday.
"Oh you're just saying that because he's black." she retorted (obviously a republican).
I just blinked. I had no idea how to respond to something like that. It hit me in that instant, our spheres of comprehension, our parameters of reality, were so entirely different from each other, I couldnt' even bring myself to talk to her on the subject.

Of course it's because he's black!!! Don't you understand the enormity of what that means?! I wanted to shout.
But propriety (and my role as an HR bod) demanded a more polite etiquette than that. So i just smiled outwardly, and bit my lip inside till I almost drew blood.

But it was so much more than the race issue. It was larger than the petty and singular view of race that had polarised the country before. It marked the point in time when we had suddenly grown up, as a people, as a country. When we actually said to ourselves, that's enough of this rubbish - we are better than this. And for this, I could barely comprehend the surge of pride I felt. For this country which wasn't even my own, but to whom I felt a sense of belonging anyway. A country which had risen to the demands of the current day, and proved that the whole is truly better than the sum of its parts.

On election night, we had called everyone over for an election party. Over pizza, beer and wine, we alternately cheered and jeered at the telly, lifted by our own elation. Outside in the streets, as the news slowly unfurled, all of New York turned into a roaring continuum of excited chants and cheers. The atmosphere was contagious, spellbinding.

For the situation is more than Obama himself. It is the philosophy of unity he stands for. It is about witnessing history, in the making.
I am optimistic and hopeful, for the future that lies ahead.

A life of humour

Like I mentioned in my previous post, I've decided to participate in National Novel Writing Month (nanowrimo) for November. The thing about nanowrimo is that it demands an alarming alacrity of thoughts, and some hasty typing that gets my fingers in a tizzy. Needless to say, I'm already considerably behind schedule. Per my own calculations, I should have been about 10,000 words done today, in order to complete the requisite 50,000 words by the end of the month. But if truth be told, I'm on an embarrassing 5,700. I feel pressured, and pushed, and facing a tremendous writers block. Stuck at 5,700, what kind of novel is this going to be. Bah humbug.
"What are you writing about?" Delta asked me the other day.
"Oh, just about myself. I figured I'd start with the time that I moved to NewYork, and just see where it takes me."
"You're writing about yourself? So, erm, I hate to ask this but, how's that different from your blog?"
Touche.
I'll tell you how it's (marginally, microscopically) different. My blog is semi fictional. I mean, all the stuff that I said happens does actually happen, but I use some literary license to dramatize the mishaps of Ficali - you know? Just like a director might do when they make a film like "Into the Wild" (except with a lot less fame, no money at all, and considerably less glamour). So there's a bit of dramatic license, for humour's sake.

But with this mini-novel, I was determined to stick to the truth as much as possible. I started documenting my life with an exacting amount of accuracy, and a surprising amount of memory for detail. I started relating incidents as they actually happened.

But you know what? The stories were still funny. Without any exaggeration at all, the stories that encountered in my life just had a penchant for the ludicrous, somewhat like a Chevy Chase movie.

That's the story of my life. Just one funny thing after another, and me at the butt of it all. Rather an element of pathos to it all, but who am I to complain. I mean, I'm getting a blog and a mini-novel out of it, after all.

Literary Panic

Somehow, in conversation with a colleague at work, I talked myself into signing up for National Novel Writing Month. Which means, over the month of November, I have to write a short novel of 50,000 words (~175 pages of type). Which comes down to typing about 2,000 words a day. Arduous, but achievable. I mean, there's people who climb Mt. Everest, for gawd's sake. Surely this was doable.

Of course it sounded to me like a lofty goal - but still, an exciting challenge. Until I suddenly realised that November starts tomorrow. Which means, if we do some nifty calculations and work back from t here, that I now have less than twenty four hours to come up with some semblance of plot, theme and characters.

I wonder if there's a Booker Prize for incoherent literature.

The Pitfalls of DIY

Trrrng, trrrring.
Delta's picture was staring up at me on my iPhone.
"Hi there! How's things going?"
"Erm, I have a bit of a problem here."
Sigh.

Earlier that day, Delta and I had scuttled over to Home Depot to buy new metal switch plates and dimmers for the lights in our apartment. Things like this make us positively brim over with ill-contained excitement. Our enthusiasm for homebuilding knows no bounds.

"Are you sure we should be doing this ourselves, Delta?" I'd asked cautiously, when he started fiddling around with the wires.
"Of course!" he'd reassured me, "this isn't rocket science, you know."

So now when he said there was a bit of a problem, I wasn't quite sure what to expect.
"Well, the good news is," Delta continued, "the dimmer is working perfectly."
"Great!!" I exclaimed excitedly, knowing what a difference this would make to our living room. "So what's the problem?"
"Well, the bad news is, somehow, the hallway switch is now turning on the light in the kitchen."

What.

"Seriously?"
"Yeah. It works, but for some reason it works in the kitchen."

Craziness.

"So what light does the kitchen switch turn on?"
"I'm not sure yet, I'm still trying to figure that out."
"Delta, are you serious? I don't think we can live with all the wrong switches turning on the wrong lights."
Even as I said it, I was thinking to myself, actually, it could be pretty entertaining.

And very quickly, I found myself quite accustoming to the idea of random switches for random lights. In fact I was just about to suggest it to Delta, when he cut my thought off right there in its nascent stages:
"You know what? I'm quite liking this. Wait till I connect it so you have to pull the flush to start the microwave."

Lesson 3: Strangers must smell funny

Whilst in Bombay, we wanted to learn more about the Doorstep School, a charity organisation that supports and sponsors the education of streetchildren in Bombay. Nooj, who has already been involved with the organisation for several years now, put us in touch with the organisation's founder, Bina. So we met Bina late on Friday afternoon, and she talked to us about the organisations and the initiatives it had undertaken.

Then she asked if she could take us to the field, so we could meet the children and and see their classes being conducted in the slums. We entered the narrow, dingy corridors of the first slum, and started cautiously making our way towards the centre, where the school had set up base in the midst of the little one-room homes, tightly packed up against eachother like coins in a roll. There was a raggedy old stray dog lying languidly in the sand, enjoying it's afternoon siesta. Bina stepped past him as we pressed on. The dog, sapped of all its energy under the direct glare of the sun, barely reacted. I stepped past him next. He barely twitched a muscle to shoo away a hovering fly. Then, just as Delta started to walk past him, the dogs nose suddenly pricked up. It cocked its ears and rose up to a sitting position in a sudden burst of alertness, and emitted a low-throated growl of warning.

We've probably just stepped in it's territory, I figured, and it'll stop when we walk a few more steps away. But it didn't. It wasn't about the territory, we suddenly realised. It was about Delta. Out of the hundred or so people passing through or just hanging out in that little area, it had picked the one white guy, and decided there was something different. And he wasn't having any of it. The dog followed us along for a little while growling threateningly the entire way, keeping all three of us on edge. Then, suddenly tiring of Delta, it headed off in its own direction, much to our relief, and we proceeded further into the slums to see the school. We laughed to ourselves on how odd it was that the dog had picked Delta out from the entire crowd, as the person to feel threatened by.

Half an hour later, having spent a thoroughly enjoyable time with the children and the classes, we were heading out of the slums from an entirely different direction than where we'd entered. We were deep in conversation about the school and its initiatives, when suddenly we heard a growl in the distance. It can't be, I thought, but yes, it was. The dog had somehow kept a watch out for Delta, had picked him out amongst the crowds in the distance, and came pounding towards us from more than a hundred yards away. Barking and growling loudly the entire way as it approached. It had actually been threatened enough by Delta's presence (white skin? different smell? American accent?) that it had hunted him out from the crowds to chase him out of the slums.

The dog didn't harm any of us in any way, but it sure made us all remark in wonder about it's uncanny discernment.
"I probably smell funny to him," Delta remarked, "just a scent he's never smelled before."

Lesson 2: Never take anything for granted

We needed to get passport sized photos taken so that Delta and I could get updated membership cards to our club in Bombay. So we headed over to a local photo studio to get the pictures taken.


The taking of passport sized pictures is done with a formidable level of seriousness in this city. Once Delta was seated in front of the camera, the photographer said, "look a little left. No not that much, now look a centimeter to the right. And up a bit. Now smile." And he continued with commands like that until Delta's face was positioned in his camera lens to perfection, before he would agree to click. And then he started with me. "No, look down more, we're seeing too much forehead. Smile less. No teeth. Look up into the lens. A little to the right." All of these commands had to be obeyed by subtle movements of our heads until we were positioned to the photographer's satisfaction. There was something reassuring about the amount of conscientiousness applied to our pictures. I felt like we were guaranteed the mugshots would come out good-looking. Now, if only the guy who took my green card and driving license pictures had applied this level of diligence to my photos, I wouldn't have to cringe every time I produced those documents for inspection, would I.


"Come back in fifteen minutes and we'll have these photos developed for you," the photographer told Delta and I. So we left the store and wandered the streets for a while, taking pictures of everything of interest we encountered. Finally, about half an hour later, we headed back to the photo studio, only to find a dejected photographer shaking his head in apology. "I'm sorry, but my memory card got ruined. I've lost all the pictures on the card. I'll need to take the two of you again." And so began the entire process of perfected head-positioning all over again.


"Come back in fifteen minutes and we'll have these photos developed for you," he said again, once he'd re-taken the pictures. So Delta and I hit the streets once again, with another fifteen minutes on our hands.


There was a shoe-shine man who had set up shop on the sidewalk outside the studio, with an eccentric look to him that immediately drew our attention.
"Man, I would love to take a picture of him!" I said.
"Well, why don't I get my shoes polished, and then you can take a picture," Delta suggested, so we approached the man for a polish.
"How much for a polish?" I asked the shoe-shine guy in Hindi.
"Just pay me as much as you like when I'm done," he suggested.
I hate it when people do that, because you nearly always end up paying far more than you would if a price had been pre-agreed upon. I tried to coax a price out of him, but he was adamant on his "at will" payment policy.

As he diligently rubbed various coats of various types and consistencies of polish into Delta's shoes, I asked Delta, "how much do you think we should pay him?"
"Erm, I was thinking a hundred?"
I smiled. Delta was falling into the tourist trap of paying far too much for a service because he was converting from dollars. "A hundred rupees? You know he probably gets five for this when he does it for the locals."
The shoe-shine man looked up. "This is not a five-buck job, ma'am," he said, in clear, fluent English.

Delta and I both did a double-take. It was entirely unexpected for a man living and peddling wares on the streets of Bombay to speak fluent english. But before I had time to examine the amazingness of this fact, I was overcome with a wave of mortification. Right in front of his face, I had told Delta it wasn't worth more than a fiver. How does one backpaddle out of that one?


"Erm, you're right, you're right," I stuttered.

The shoe-shine man continued to mumble under his breath for a bit, decidedly unimpressed with my attitude. And Delta and I stook in awkward silence, unable to talk to each other about the shoe-shine experience anymore, fully aware that he could understand everything we were saying. The awkward silence went on for about ten minutes, and I'm convinced he put on an extra effort of diligence and an unnecessary two coats of polish, just to prolong his moment of revelling.


Finally, when he was done (and it had seemed like this moment would never come!), Delta thanked him and told him what a fantastic job he had done, and gave him the hundred he had first talked about. And then he sat himself down on the sidewalk next to the shoe-shine man, and asked him if I could take a picture of both of them together. The shoe man was happy to oblige.


I had just raised the SLR to get my shot, when the shoe man suggested, "why don't you stand over there to the left instead, you'll capture a nice light falling on our faces. I moved over to where he suggested, and saw that the lighting was indeed much improved. I looked at him in surprise.

"I used to be a photographer," he explained.


Wonders never cease. Here was this man, living on the streets of Bombay in tattered clothes, who would have ever thought he had been fully educated, spoke english, and had been a photographer. Unbelievable. Shows you can't assume anything of anyone.


I wonder what happened to him in life to bring him to where he was. But that would be a thought for another day. For the moment, we were just filled surprise, awe and admiration.

Lesson 1: Bombay is a party city

No matter what crazinesses New York brings into our daily lives, Bombay is just a whole different kettle of fish.

Our flight over was everything we could have hoped for. I'd been a bit worried that we might have a problem at airport security, seeing as I haven't had a chance to update my passport yet, but the kind people at security seemed unconcerned by the different names I bore on my ticket and passport, and who am I to interfere. We also managed to swing a seat in first class, which, on a thirteen hour flight, makes a world of difference. when we reached our seats, Delta and I gaped at each other in surprise. On this new 777 plane, no luxury had been spared. We had each been assigned little pods, and infact my only complaint would be (since I must have one), that out pods were so big it was difficult to talk to each other. As Simone would say, Oh, welp. They brought us a glass of champagne before the flight took off, and Delta and I toasted to our first trip to Bombay together. And positively gluggled the champagne in our excitement.

Our first night in the city, my parents said one of their friends were hosting a party, and had invited Delta and me to join. Would we be interested? Of course, we said. I mean, a quiet little get together with my parents friends, it would be a great chance for us to talk to everyone, right?
Wrong.

As soon as we entered the friend's apartment, Delta and I did a double-take. The apartment had been converted into a nightclub. The lights had been dimmed, loud bollywood music was pulsing through the apartment, alcohol was flowing freely, and everyone who had got there before us was pretty much already drunk. I mean, these were my parents friends!
"I'm heading for the bar," Delta murmured, and we knew we'd need a drink or two just to catch up. An hour into the evening, we'd eaten a bit, we had a couple of drinks in us, and we sashayed onto the dance floor and started pulling out our repertoire of bollywood moves. Jumps, hops, hand-swinging, head-bopping, spinning and twirling and hip-swinging, the entire kit and caboodle. I couldn't complain about it, it was rather fun. We just lost ourselves in the boogey of the moment. Although every few minutes, when we grew conscious of what we were doing, our eyes would meet and we'd laugh in sheer disbelief. Here we were, trying to keep up (and failing miserably) with the partying habits of my parents friends!

"Boy, Bombay sure is a party city!" Delta commented as we returned home later that evening, as we stared at each other in awestruck silence. And this marked the beginning of our vacation.