Day 4

Christmas Day.  It's a quiet day, a lazy day.  The one day of the year where there's no agenda and one can just be, surrounded by family, food, hot cocoa, scattered and shredded gift wrapping paper and opened boxes.  It's a day when it's futile to worry about the silent phone.  No prospective employer would call on this day, so the phone can be comfortably silent; not feeling my eyes boring into its plastic shell, willing it to ring.  Tomorrow is Sunday, another day to just be.

If things hadn't changed I would have been worrying about the snow we're supposed to get tomorrow and on Monday.  I would have worried about my commute.  I would have worried about how I would look to my bosses if I told them I'm scared of getting out on the road when it snows and that I'd like to work from home.  Things like that used to gnaw at my insides.  So I am thankful.  Snowy days and Mondays won't have the power to get me down for awhile.  I might even get to build a snowman with my daughter. 

I need to work on my resume...

Day 3

It's Christmas Eve and I do feel the love.  I am surrounded by well-wishers.  Some say I shouldn't be sad, some tell me to think of this as a much needed break that should be spent resting, relaxing and hugging my child.  It's all good advice.  I need to hear what they are saying to me.  I am listening, absorbing and also waiting for the words that no one has uttered yet.  No one has told me not to worry, at least not with confidence.  The way I tell my daughter that a shot is nothing to worry about, that it will be no more than a pinprick and that's it.  There's no one around to tell me that.

I've taken a good look at how I feel about all this and I know I am not sad.  The misery is over, the misery of feeling like nothing but an expensive piece of furniture at work.  I haven't felt more invisible anywhere than I did at this place.  I was quiet about my work, I knew no one except my next door neighbor.  I was able to amaze and amuse a few people with my caustic turn of phrase sometimes but otherwise I was suffocating in a pervasive state if invisibility.  I was spending four hours commuting each day just to go to a place so lacking in warmth, intelligence, a sense of community, goals, long term vision, effective leaders.  So sadness isn't something I feel.  I had considered quitting and walking out like some others had before me; one had gone off on a "walkabout", another had simply walked out one day, never to return.  I guess I play safe.

So no, I am far from sad but there's a worm within and it's eating at me from the inside.  There's nothing I can do about it.  People can console you through your sadness and there are so many things in the world to be sad about, job loss isn't one of them.  But what to do about worries?  How does one chase them away?

Perhaps it has something to do with age.  When I left home and traveled 10,000 miles to start a new life for myself as a stranger in a strange land I don't remember being worried.  I had faith in myself, my self-confidence might even have been enviable to others.  It seems to have vanished now.  I don't know if I can pull it off again.

Day 2

It didn't matter that the Jimi Hendrix song released on May 12, 1967 was about an entirely different sort of experience.  It was an anthem of a generation that wasn't preoccupied, not then, with the mundane realities of bosses, jobs, promotions and this very establishment concept of 'experience'.  It still kept popping up in my aural and visual fields when I first got serious about a post-MBA corporate career in the year 1998.  As though hearing the song everywhere wasn't enough William Sutcliffe even wrote a book called "Are You Experienced?" in 1998.  I started seeing subway and bus faces hidden behind the covers of this book.

I imagined baby-boomer bosses and hiring managers, now all grown up, sitting in plush chairs behind large desks and asking me in that classic Hendrix way, "Are you experienced?"

My resume could fit on one page in 1998 and because I wasn't experienced enough the experts suggested I display my MBA education at the very top.  All I heard back then was "experience, experience, you need experience, you don't have enough experience."  When I discussed the futility of a day's efforts with loved ones I used to complain about the dilemma of finding a way to get experienced without being experienced in the first place.

Like all desperate phases that phase passed and I was able to jump from one experience to the next over the next 12 years.  The resume went from a page to three pages, each experience leading to a job that was similar to the one where the previous experience was earned. 

I am older, wiser and more experienced now.   They can't deny I am experienced.  Except as I stand here, one step poised at the threshold of a very crowded job marketplace, I am learning that "experience" is a perishable commodity with a set shelf life.  By the time you earn enough experience it's already too late.

Almost like bananas.  You buy them at the supermarket when they still look green.  You leave them in your fruit bowl and watch them as they turn a lighter shade of green and a little yellow the next day and then you better eat them right away if you have an aversion to the overripe, very yellow and soft-on-the-inside kind, the kind that's only good enough to be mashed up for banana bread.  Yes indeed, an experienced person is exactly like an overripe banana that no one wants...unless they love banana bread.

My friends in the recruitment industry are telling me that I am too old to sell myself based on education alone and selling myself on 22 years of steadily growing experience ages me and makes me look too old and too overqualified.  I am now asked to make some changes to the resume where I look as though I only have a few strong years of relevant experience.

Well, no problem.  I'll get working on that right away.  I am still too young to become banana bread.  As I start trimming, restructuring, finding a young and smart looking font and selecting powerful keywords, keeping in mind that the keyword emphasis has shifted from action verbs to hard-hitting nouns during my years of gainful employment, I can't help but wonder about the absurdity of it all.

There was an article in The New York Times today about a town in Alabama where true to financial predictions the pension fund for town employees ran dry by 2009.  Retirees here stopped getting pension checks.  Some went back to work in their late sixties and others became dependent on the charity of others.  They ran a race all their lives only to hit a dead end, a concrete wall at the end of their race with absolutely no way out.

This is life in all its absurd glory and I am willing to embrace it with all the joie de vivre I possess at this moment. 

Day 2 brought this realization home.  The draft of the new resume is open in another window on this computer.  That window is minimized for the moment, the task is a dreary one and there are too many distractions at home.   I might have to go to the sunny periodicals room of MOPL again to get this done.

Day 1

I dropped Anoushka off at the bus stop and got myself a sausage, egg and cheese biscuit at McDonald's.  It was combination #4.  Love McD's breakfast menu.

The next stop was Mt Olive Public Library (MOPL) where I knew the coffee was not free but didn't know where I could pay for it.  I was embarrassed when the receptionist thought I had asked "if" I had to pay when I had asked "how".

It's a nice, serene place.  The periodicals section is awash in sunlight.  I had forgotten how quiet a library could be. So much nicer than the cacophony of New York workers at the ex-office whining about their shabby, shoddy treatment at the hands of arrogant Floridans.

At 9 am, library opening hour, there were two of us exhaling frosty, wintry breath as we waited for the doors to open.  I greeted him and wondered if perhaps he shared the same circumstance as me.  Was he new to this life or is this the only routine he has had for the last several months?

I picked up The Star Ledger.  I don't even remember the last time I had glanced at it.  I have been reading my papers online now, from a desk bathed in fluorescent light, surrounded by gray cubicle walls.

The last time I got newsprint on my hands, papers still had an extensive classified section for job hunters.  I didn't find such a section.  Instead I saw several pages of a section called "Legal Advertising".  Each ad was the sheriff's office inviting bids starting as low as $400 on various real estate properties.  I didn't want to dig deeper in order to get all my facts right because my fear was that these were all a result of foreclosures.  That thought is a scary one for an unemployed person responsible for a mortgage in a bankrupt state in a country on the verge of bankruptcy.

The Star Ledger had other news about our governor capping salaries, fighting the federal government about repaying $271 million on a half finished tunnel that will no longer be built and doing nothing about property taxes that don't go away even if you lose your job, like income taxes do.  There is probably a frightening connection between these opinions expressed in the editorial section of paper and the aforementioned "Legal Advertising" section.  A connection that I am rather unwilling to explore on Day 1 of my state.

The USA Today looked cheerier.  It was colorful.  The growth rate of US population has slowed down.  The 2010 census shows that we are now a nation of 308 million people, a 9.7% growth rate, the slowest since The Great Depression.  Probably not a bad thing, all said and done, although it is sad to note that the population of Michigan actually declined; no jobs, no prospects in the glorious erstwhile automobile state.

The other story on the second page of the USA Today was of a hardworking couple who had lost their home where they spent many Christmases and were now living in a garage like space of their parents' home.  This year their kids' gifts were donations from charitable organizations.  They were happy, they had faith that this wouldn't go on much longer.  They were good Christians and God wouldn't let them down.

They have their faith, I have the words of my daughter that echo in my ears day and night, "These things don't happen to us."  She has grown up seeing that such things don't happen to us.  We have navigated her life so far in a way that she didn't sense any choppy waters.  I must preserve her innocence somehow, preserve the belief that these things don't happen to us.  She is too young for the lesson that anything could happen to anyone, anytime and that the pillars she leans against can crumble too.  All lessons should arrive in due course, not prematurely.  For now, our magnetic north pole is more or less aligned with our geographical north pole and there can be no cataclysmic shifts.  Not for her, not now.

A phone call interrupts this reverie. It's the hubby asking where I am.  When I tell him I am at the MOPL he says, "Oh no! You are one of those people now!"

I answer, "Yes indeed, I am...and loving every moment of it!"

I look around me now, the retirees are trickling in.  I wonder if I am in one of their special MOPL, sun-kissed spot.  I should probably head on out, go home, clean the closet, organize the kitchen, the books, de-clutter, settle down with some dreamy creamy hot chocolate and find a beautiful "Jobs R Us" site to explore...especially since the man sitting next to me has just started talking to himself.  I should grant him his privacy.

Signed the papers

I signed the papers
I said I had no questions
When they wanted a reaction

Perhaps a reaction
Is more of a band-aid
for them, even if it comes
gift-wrapped as a kind and gentle
opportunity for me to let loose.

But no, I am not Florence
and I offer no comforts.

Something animates my steps
these days.  I stand tall.
I am starched stiff.
I am a body in motion
Yet to register
the external force.

So I walk tall
Not meeting an averted gaze
and claiming with pride
the space that's already

sterile.

Conversations

This morning I announced in my Facebook status update that I love garrulous salespeople.

On another note, yesterday in Andy Martin's piece, Beyond Understanding, in NYT's series - The Stone - I got interested in his quoting Simon Baron-Cohen:

"In his book “Mindblindness,” Simon Baron-Cohen argues that the whole raison d’être of consciousness is to be able to read other people’s minds; autism, in this context, can be defined as an inability to “get” other people, hence “mindblind.”"

When I announced that I loved garrulous salespeople two of my dear friends responded.  R said that she did too and that silence was overrated.  I responded to her comment saying that I just loved watching how they were all lit up from inside, putting their best foot forward, when they were trying to make a sale.  I implied that it was interesting to watch the process.

There is a heater in my cubicle that emits a series of dings as it automatically switches on as the thermostat dictates:  Ding...Ding...Ding...Ding...and then the welcome heat.   The dings may not be obvious in the sales people but they are very much there.  They are trying to get me to buy something or to make me a repeat customer.  Do they know that I am aware that they are trying to sell to me and that I am watching them with hidden amusement as I decide whether to be "sold" or not? Or do they think I feel as though they are my newest best friends and that I am all warmed up for a sale because of this newly minted friendship?

At my response, which is only partially the reason I like garrulous sales people, R came back with a response that she missed the "sales" bit in the comment and she felt that her response was probably off base.  Stay tuned R!

Another friend, J, responded that she didn't like garrulous salespeople who went on and on about their product.

She has a point.  The sleazy used car salesmen, and so many other types fall in this distinctly unlikable category. But I responded to J with a couple of anecdotes.  The ones that had prompted my comment in the first place.

I was strolling home last night and I decided to stop at Cafe Galet, a tiny French patisserie.  I wanted to try one of the macaroons on display.  There were orange ones, green ones, brown ones...So I had to ask him what flavors they were.  He explained them all.  Then he told me that the mocha one must be had with an espresso and that the chocolate one went well with a cappuccino.  He also said that one small one was enough, that it packed so many calories.  He was incredulous that a customer before me had purchased sixteen of them and was washing them down with le Coke!  He went on to wring his hands at how Americans didn't care what they drank with what they ate.  It was beyond him.  I flashed back to a memory of my time in Cannes when some co-workers had ordered Coke with chocolate mousse making our waiter and the waiters on neighboring tables frown.  I also quizzed him on his delicious looking madeleines.  They were smaller in size than the mass-marketed Entenmann's.  Some were the familiar golden yellow and the others were greenish.  He said the greenish ones were pistachio flavored.  He stated that madeleines only tasted good in these two flavors, that chocolate ones were horrible.  Of course one can't talk about madeleines without discussing Marcel Proust, especially with a Frenchman.

I ordered my chocolate macaroon and a cappuccino as he suggested but when I pulled out my credit card he said he only took cash.  This led to another conversation on how banks were crooks and why he only accepted cash.

I enjoyed our conversation.  I returned to him this morning for a buttered croissant and a cappuccino and talked some more about the "delicieuse" soups he was planning to serve for lunch.

The other anecdote was about a woman who had a gemstone jewelry stall at the Bryant park holiday shops.  She had some amazing pieces, a lot of them fashioned with different varieties of Jasper, Opals and Kyanite.  I am fascinated with gemstones so I was full of questions.  However, Helen (at Helen's Corner) was reticent.  She wasn't offering up any information.  At first she was only answering me when I asked a question.  This time my questions were the catalyst for the "Dings".  But then she warmed up and started telling me about everything at her store....the Red Creek Jaspers, the Black Lace Agates, the African Opals and the Kyanite.  I asked her about her creative process and her sources.  I came away with so much information and so much fascination at how some people were making such a go of their Plan B's.

So I love conversations.  I love to see people warming up to converse.  I was telling another friend today that the thing I yearned for the most, the thing that would make me the happiest, was having someone with whom I could have long, meaningful conversations.  I told this friend that I remembered his conversation with the owner of an antiquarian bookshop here in NYC, when he was visiting.  He spent an entire afternoon at this shop talking to the owner about Indian geopolitics, listening to him about his 1979 visit to India, learning that the son of the owner of this shop was a famous sportscaster in the NY tri-state area.  Even a second-hand retelling of the conversation was interesting to me.

Conversations where there is give and take, where one listens and learns and where I one is heard in turn, where one can willingly share a bit of oneself, no currency, no riches are more valuable than that.  For me such conversations have been especially rare this year. 

Which brings me to the three points I wanted to make here.  One that I probably seek out conversations with "garrulous salespeople" because I am starved for conversation.  Sounds pathetic perhaps but not necessarily - it's probably a sign of resourcefulness in making up for dearth, I'd say!  And they do their best to listen...it's a part of the warming up "ding".

The second point is that R wasn't off base at all in her first comment.  She was in fact right on target.  Silence is overrated.  Conversation isn't rated high enough.

The third goes back to "mindblindness" - the raison d'etre of consciousness is to be able to read people's minds - to see where someone is really going with a thought.   This is what makes something like a status message interesting, seeing where people think you are going with any given thought.  :)

Perspectives

My social interactions and associations are often with like-minded people.  My friends and acquaintances tend to espouse liberal views and shun conservatism, libertarianism, tea party-isms and other conservative fringe elements.  That's just the way it is.  If my television remote ever stumbles upon a station where Glenn Beck is holding forth or where Sarah Palin and her clan are "refudiating" this or that and talking about a future White House residency then I would probably have to cleanse and purify my erring remote, rinse it clean, make it a "born-again" remote.

Many of my co-workers and friends live in New Jersey and commute to New York City.   We wouldn't be exaggerating if we were to characterize our commutes as horrendous or as a major drag on the quality of our lives.  The distance between my home and my place of work is approximately 54 miles but it has taken up to 3 hours on certain days, certain conditions to traverse this distance.  The plan for a trans-Hudson Commuter Rail Tunnel was welcome news for those of us who share in this misery.  There was a promise for shorter, more efficient commuting.  Some studies even indicated higher property values.  Those of us who rest our heads on pillows in New Jersey care about higher NJ property values and property taxes that are held down as a result of higher property values.  But NJ Governor Christie shot down the idea for the moment.  Nearly half of all the NJ voters supported his decision.  It was a matter of not being able to afford the $9 billion price tag plus potential overruns on the costs for the construction of this tunnel.  The latest news is that other financing options are being explored and that NJ voters want New York City to contribute to the costs. 

I am pleased to learn that other financing options are being considered for this project, that it isn't necessarily dead in the water yet.  But I doubt Governor Christie's willingness to explore and exhaust every option.  Politicians like Governor Christie don't strike me as visionaries who would rather find better ways of doing things than slashing health care, education and policing budgets to make ends meet.  They really don't come to office with long term goals or a plan of action.  They just stand at a podium and tell people they are against taxation and often in states like New Jersey that's enough to get them elected to a gubernatorial office.  Slashing requires no vision and no further action.

But that just shows my bias and my perspective.  The disappointment and anger at the block on the trans-Hudson tunnel also reflects my bias, my perspective. 

A few days ago I was in conversation with the parents of Anoushka's classmate.  They have jobs in New Jersey, not too far from where they live.  They appeared sympathetic to my commuting plight and this led to my mistaken feeling of comfort in sharing my chagrin at the Christie decision.  My comments generated instant heat and anger and a valiant defense of the governor.  In earlier conversations it had seemed as though they missed their former state of residence, a state where it is so easy to get around if one lives in the Bay area or in San Francisco.  The BART is unmatched in convenience.  New Jersey, by contrast, is all cars and clogged highways with poor signage no matter where in the state you are.  So I had assumed they would be in favor of mass transit options.  But, as I said, I was mistaken.  A non-confrontational person like me had finally gone and broached a controversial subject with people who weren't like-minded.

They loved Christie's decision and supported it because a tunnel to NYC was meaningless for them.  Why pay for something that was meaningless to them at the moment?  Perhaps they had already decided that they would never seek employment in New York City.  Perhaps there are no long term costs attached to the gas 302,500 New Jersey residents burn in commuting to New York City.  Perhaps these NY commuters are not the ones who contribute to the New Jersey boast about of annual income of $70,000 being the second highest median income in the country.  And I say this without sarcasm - perhaps these things are significantly less important than an increase in our New Jersey taxes and a more efficient means of getting to and from the city.

It is all a matter of perspective.

Two other things did come up during the discussion.  One was whether New Jersey's economy was in the worst shape of all other states.  I was sure it wasn't-was sure we were ahead of California, Michigan and Nevada.  But they thought New Jersey was the worst.  I had to research that assertion and it turns out NJ might be in the bottom five based on the budget deficit and unemployment numbers (around 9.4%) but  it certainly isn't the worst.  The states I thought were worse off really are - CA unemployment 12.4%.

The other was an implied assertion that the number of NJ residents working in NYC wasn't a significant number.  From my skewed perspective this number was more than significant.  Why else would I face a 3 hour commute every morning and night with Lincoln Tunnel being the narrowest bottleneck? So I had to dig into the numbers.

I collected some information from these sites:

http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/34000.html
http://www.us-places.com/New-Jersey/population-by-County.htm
http://www.newgeography.com/content/001721-new-york-commuting-profile-from-monocentrism-edgeless-city

Did some rather liberal extrapolation, such as assuming that only 56.6% of the 6.4 million people, who lived in the counties from which commutes to NYC originated, worked.  Since 43.4% of them were either under 18 or over 65.  Further assumed that the 9.4% state unemployment percent applied to all these counties evenly (probably faulty) and then determined that about 302,500 people commute daily to NYC from NJ.

Hmm...so in a state as densely populated as New Jersey, 8.7 million people living in 7,417 square miles, is this number significant? Is it enough to justify an expensive tunnel? What do three hundred thousand of us contribute to our state's budget even if we labor across the Hudson? Do we deserve a tunnel to bring a modicum of comfort to our lives?

Don't really have any of the answers.  Just know that I want my tunnel and don't mind eating a little humble pie when it comes to respecting another perspective.

Mental Spelunking

A few months ago I reported starting a vision board.  In concept, a wonderful idea.  Of this I am convinced.  When you take the pains to state your intentions, if you spend time thinking about it, cutting out pictures, finding the right words, cutting and pasting things on construction paper; ritualizing the thing in any way, it's all a means to imprint what you want on your neural networks.  I've never doubted visualization even through all the layers of cynicism and hopelessness that have accumulated over the years.

When I was younger I wanted things with greater desperation, with intense hunger.  I wanted to ace my driving test after finishing 4 weeks of driving lessons (didn't visualize parallel parking well enough - so it took 2 attempts), I wanted to come to the US, I wanted an admission to the Delhi School of Economics and later to the Stern School of Business at NYU for my MBA.  I wanted a job that would support my education.  Hunger was a driving force behind everything I wanted or needed.  I couldn't imagine a life where I would fail to get any of the aforementioned things.  So visualization was easy.  The goal was shimmering in the horizon, crystal clear and intense.  I imagined myself hitting every note that I needed to and then went on to hit them.  Sometimes with such ease that I felt I was getting more than my fair share of blessings.  I was always afraid that the troughs that were sure to follow would be as intense as the crests ridden.

My vision board from a few months ago is still incomplete.  It's languishing in one corner of the dining room, the red construction paper fading to pink.  There's even a coffee stain on it somewhere.  Someone in the home, perhaps me(?) who didn't think much of this piece of work probably rested a cup of coffee on it.  A vision board is an exercise in futility when the vision has either ceased to exist or has exiled itself deep in a dark cave somewhere.  Perhaps finding it requires some mental spelunking of the highest order.

I really don't know what I want next, this feeling of being lost in a perpetual fog is so real.  And if fogs really scared me perhaps I'd flail harder and make a more meaningful effort at getting out of it.  But the thing about fogs is that once you're in them they aren't quite as threatening as they appeared from the outside.  They could even turn fascinating.  In a fog things in one's immediate vicinity look clear enough.  I can see my fingers and my toes.  I can see well enough to step around the rocks and pebbles in my path, I know I won't step into puddles or ditches.  But as far as the panoramic vision goes, I am blindfolded.  I haven't a clue.

I don't know if I want to accept the futility of any resistance and roll with this viscous flow, that threatens to pull me under sometimes, or if I want to emerge, fight, dig deep, determine what would be the right next move, one that wouldn't leave me wishing for a return of what I had before.  One where I won't discover brown, desiccated grass again.

This stuff I am writing today is all about me.  I am whining,  trying to come to terms with the parameters of my existence.  But as I do it I know that I enjoy writing.  I like it because it probably releases some endorphins within.  It makes me feel good for some fleeting moments.  But do I like it enough to make a living out of it?  I have no ambitions of being published.  Or, if I do harbor such thoughts, they are tainted with consternation.  I could invent a story that may or may not sell but I don't have what it takes to push my finished work, to submit manuscripts to people, to deal with rejection.  I balk at the idea of any self-promotion.  Then I tell myself I won't be able to support myself or my family during the phase where I can't sell my work or when I am busy facing rejection.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained they say but can things be ventured with a real danger of tampering with the well being of my family?

So what of acceptance? Contentment with what I have? Those ideas don't lack merit.  Perhaps there's nothing wrong with total surrender.  The choices I made have led me here, to this point where I can't find any pleasurable moments during the day.  If I accepted this as my fate, if I told myself how much I like having a house, a car, a family that loves me, my freedom to explore a frequent, binge like indulgence in gemstones, or clothes, or books, or...egg cups on eBay... would it really be so bad?

I smile at strangers, I make small talk in elevators, I kid around with friends and family.  I pretend for fourteen hours, because pretense has a way of morphing into reality.  I am waiting for this morphing to reach completion.  Then I go home and have a couple of hours of untainted and genuine fun and frolic with a daughter who is growing up too fast.

This should be enough.  It feels right for this to be enough.  It might be too late to build something out of this yearning to live a life that's drenched in the succulence of art, music and literature.  A beautiful life where money is meaningless and the commute takes one from one's bedroom to one's sun drenched kitchen for breakfast with the family. It might be too late for that and the yearning only causes dissonance.

There is a world of meaning in this message from a friend who embraced Buddhism - Nam Myoho Renge Kyo - which essentially refers to the flow of life and to take a cue from the lotus flower that flourishes even in a swamp.  I cannot find any fault with this message even if I abhor any membership in any organized religion. But this message is indeed flawless.

Perhaps the next words I need to cut out of a magazine and place on my incomplete vision board are - Accept.  Surrender.  Think of the Lotus (not lotus eating).

That should go up on the vision board along with a detailed picture of the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that I want in my living room.  I am desperate enough to visualize and achieve the construction of these bookshelves, along with a library like ladder that helps one reach for the books on the highest shelf.

What is she saying?

There's a new addition to the cast of characters who permanently inhabit the corridor between the Port Authority Bus Terminal and the Times Square train stop.  She paces the area, making her speech in a sonorous mezzo/alto voice.  I have been walking past her for the last week.  I am in a rush like all the other commuters who are paying no mind to anything these people say.   I act as if these tunnel inhabitants are invisible to me.  The other commuters appear to be acting as if they are invisible to them as well.

Except...I am not certain whether they are acting or they really don't notice the speech makers, the subway evangelists, the Indian accented, bespectacled evangelist, the really short and highly skilled accordion player, the Chinese man playing his bamboo flutes in a pentatonic scale, the little boy on the keyboard, the superb violinist who I now know is Susan Keser - Violinist for Hire, the family of five, undaunted in their acapella rendition of something or the other, the old Chinese woman seated outside the newsstand - asking for nothing but pleading all the same.  I blend in with my fellow commuters...except...I know I am acting while being hyper aware of these subway tunnel citizens who appear to have dropped out of the raw deal that the rest of us have made in our lives.


The pre-caffeine faces are all blank in the morning, sans animation, all programmed to reach their bathed-in-fluorescence destinations with no emotional stops in between. 

This new woman wears a plaid jacket and boots.  She has a warm woolen scarf tied around her neck and she never smiles or stops to take a breath, as though doing so would derail her train of thought, wreak havoc on her momentum.  The Doppler Effect of her voice remains with me for a very long time. Even after I've reached the end of the straight tunnel I feel as though I am still hearing a phantom echo of her voice even though her actual voice is out of hearing range.

However, I am yet to understand what she says.  I know a language or two well and I have a sense of how some of the ones I don't know sound.  I can assign a broad, general region to most of the sounds I hear.  She doesn't sound like she is from anywhere.  She punctuates her delivery, she uses recognizable inflections but she doesn't make any sense at all, the words are unearthly.

I am left wondering why.  I wonder what place she calls home.  She isn't unkempt or noisome.  I wonder why she chose this venue or where she was before.  What's her last thought as she turns in at night? Does she set the alarm clock for a certain time each morning, not wanting to be late for this unpaid gig at the tunnel? What drives her to do this everyday?  Is she as familiar with the 9:15 am faces that treat her as invisible every morning as some of the ones who only pretend she's invisible are with her face and her voice?

Rainy 14th Day of Diwali

It's raining.  I hate carrying huge umbrellas and tiny umbrellas do nothing for Manhattan rains.  I guess I'll leave the umbrella behind, pull up the hood of the cozy jacket that makes everyone wonder if I went to Princeton, and duck into the nearest subway station.  The hood doesn't quite stretch all the way to the front so we'll have to deal with some residual frizziness of the hair.

Tonight we'll go home and light the diya that is supposed to keep dark spirits at bay.  If it wasn't too rainy I'd have ventured out to Edison in search of some succulent gulab jamuns and sparklers but the weather is too disgusting. I just want to catch up on some sleep since I was up till 2:00 am, working.

Diwali is going to be a remote access work day, since it isn't a festive holiday in these parts - still not anywhere near Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwaanza in the diversity and inclusion scales.  So we have to celebrate it in our quiet little neck of the woods, without any friends or family.  The right shoulder goes into phantom spasms at the thought of lugging the damn thing again.  The straps of the tote back will be cutting into flesh and bone, probably inflicting a lifetime of damage.  I am still sore from carrying it home last night and back today this morning.  Why is the damn thing so heavy?

But hey, as long as I can skip three hours of wretched commuting in the rain tomorrow morning I can shoot for good spirits.  Diwali in the day long company of the Nukster should cheer me up quite a bit.

It isn't possible to end this mundane account of the day without saying a few words about our resident Dolores Umbridge at work.  The facilities manager who believes she wears a blinding aura of supremacy around here.  When the office temperature is unbearably frigid and people turn on space heaters she comes storming down to ask, "Do you know what it's like to be burnt alive?"

When she spots an isolated offender dribbling some office milk in their cereal she takes away the half & half privileges from the entire office.  I am waiting for the day when she will decide to take away the coffee!  Against our Umbridge there are no higher courts of appeal.

She has been around with a measuring tape, measuring the length of every office cubicle.  Now she's budgeting space.  She wants to condense each cubicle by about two feet so that another closet sized cubicle could be created for some unfortunate newbie.

I had steered clear of her atrocities and unpleasantness thus far.  Today she took away my printer.  And this now is war.

Going to take this in my stride for now, count to10 etc, go home, unwind and hope for a pleasant Diwali.

Happy Diwali to all who care to wander on over here.

Silent Contemplation of the Seedless Grape

The skin was stretched tight, the color bearing the translucence of peridot, shimmering on the sun dappled breakfast table.  Was there anything more perfect than a seedless grape?  Who needs a pit taking up space within?  

Pit - an angry sounding word.  Did the word sound angry because of all its other connotations: a concealed hole in the ground, a trap, a sunken area, scars, depression? Because a seed - the very bearer of the genetic material that would result in future grapes - couldn't by itself create this feeling of anger toward seeded grapes; this feeling of something lying there, waiting, of something building up and congealing inside.  Something ready to unleash a new wave, a new generation of confusion, of anger and of all forms of ferment upon one's insular and smooth world.

She broke one off and rolled it around her tongue, feeling the velvety texture with her tongue, reluctant to break the skin, even if it promised a flood of unbearable sweetness coursing over her teeth and gum and finally down her throat.  The seeded ones sat there too, untouched, unwanted.  

Her shopping list had said "seedless grapes" but he picked up whatever the heck he wanted - not paying any attention to her needs, her desires or to any of the words that left her lips these days.  She had bit into one with extreme annoyance and then, without uttering another word, had grabbed her car keys and walked out the door to buy the green, large seedless grapes she wanted.

She cleared the table, shaking off her grape-filled reverie.  There were other things to do, other evils to taste or spit out.  With the most important meal of the day out of her way she could now some other fruits - blackberries, for instance.

She would soon be confronted by the fluid facial muscles of the guy she was forced to call boss.  His eyebrows, eyelids, saggy cheeks, pupils, would all swim up for a second or two and then swim swiftly back to the contemplation of his Blackberry.  He would expect her to prattle on about the things on her “plate” while he dove headfirst into his “fruit” of choice.  The urge to swat the thing out of his hand would be barely contained as she sat there, unheard, for the second time within a few short hours, on the same day.   She blessed him instead, “Be one with your Fruit, go forth and merge”.

The day had been half spent in the silent contemplation of grapes and blackberries.  There were other concerns, other forms of all consuming mindlessness to worry about but the pit within was growing and demanding all her attention.  She could feel it taking over, taking control inside.  There were several layers to it.  There was a hint of personal inadequacy, a tinge of guilt, a brushstroke or two of helplessness blended rather seamlessly with anger and impatience, the whole lot had then been die cast in the leaden weight of passing time.

Time with it’s illusory, rubbery feel.   She remembered when it stretched into eternity.  When the days seemed long and when a year seemed endless.  The world was full of possibilities because time appeared generous, giving and forgiving.  Depictions of the Roman Empire at it’s peak came to mind with fat emperors lounging around on plush thrones, biting off the succulent grapes proffered by the slave girls sashaying all around them.  

Just a few short decades ago time felt just as benevolent as the languorous stupor of a Roman king’s palace in the heyday of the empire.  Then came the realization that suddenly a year didn’t feel as long, that years were just folding in on themselves, piling up into a pile of debris in a corner of her consciousness, summed up in two words: the past.   At this stage even this realization wasn’t worth the effort.  One might as well date one’s letters, one’s bills, one’s work with the next year’s date because it was right here - just a blink away.  This dark, multifaceted pit showed every sign of expanding and taking over, bursting through the skin.  What ate Gilbert Grape was perhaps the grape itself, all the way from the inside.

She thought of her friends.  All like-minded souls with their own varieties of grapes to contemplate. Each one desiring the seedless kind and in sharing adding to the growing pits within each other.  

But in some ways her pits bore more of a resemblance to pitfalls...

Santa Lucia - A Neapolitan Boat Song

So I am learning how to play second violin on Santa Lucia - A Neapolitan Boat Song.  I am at the point where I am playing each note well and where practicing with an annoying metronome is finally yielding some rhythmically sound results.  The next task at hand is to make it sound not just technically sound but beautiful.  To add a lilt to it, to sway with it.  The teacher's suggestion was that I should put myself in a boat in Naples, this song playing in the background.  How would I feel? How would it make me sway? She asked me to channel those imagined feelings for the right effect.

I see what she is saying.  I know how doing so would help.  I remember reading Arnold Steinhardt's book - Violin Dreams - where he makes the point that a well played Ciaccona should make one dance.  Imagining a room full of people dancing the Ciaconna should help the violinist lend just the right degree of lyricism to his playing.

Playing Bach's Partita for solo violin is too distant a dream for me and might even be several lifetimes away.  Though the point of feeling swept along in a Neapolitan boat is well taken.  What's needed for this mental fugue however is a mind where the gritty and all too real images of being swept down Route 80 in fits and starts, flowing in a very different way than a boat in Naples, with the windshield wipers beating a quarter note at 110, don't rudely intrude.

[I could have played with so much grace and so much fluidity if I was of a place where a musical gondolier ferried me hither and thither, if I wasn't in a state called New Jersey, working my way east to a city called New York every morning.]

Even as I typed the parenthetical thought above I cringed at the notes of discontent with the grace notes of whining misery.  I do not approve of these sad and sorry notes creeping into my life.  I want to drive them away with as much determination as I want to eliminate the squeaks, the creaks the harshness and choppiness that creeps into my violin playing when I've had a rough day, when I've felt stressed and harried, when the hand holding the bow trembles and shakes and presses down too hard on the string.

Even if Naples or Venice or Hawaii and it's swaying Hula hasn't been in one's past and isn't in one's future, one shouldn't feel handicapped when it comes to letting the mind roam free, imagining the pleasures, the beauty that could take one's breath away.  True misery comes from the jaded inability to conjure up even a mental image of a place where one can sway and float with eyes closed, carefree.

Stop playing in loops!

1. Ignoring or addressing the "Left Front Turn Signal Malfunction" notification that my car insists on announcing with an earth shattering "DINGGGG" every time I want to signal a turn or a lane change to my left.  I did park in front of a reflective surface at night just to see if the left front turn signal flashed when I wanted it to.  It did.  So is this "DINGGGG" a feature built-in by the manufacturers to make the repair shops at dealerships richer?

The car has also told me that my tires were flat or the dynamic traction control was off or that the steering fluid was depleted when it really wasn't.  I need to stop thinking about the car that cries wolf.

2.  Thinking of traffic when I am stuck in traffic.  It just puts me in a horrible mood.  I should learn to just "roll" with it, or not, whatever the capricious traffic gods and goddesses want.  What is it that drives me crazy about this?  Is it that this phase of life refuses to pass? I am not the only one in the world who needs to travel 2-3 hours before arriving at the work desk.  I am not the only one who is creating this massive carbon footprint by burning millions of hours of gas, idling in traffic.  If my problem isn't unique then the solution can't be too unique either.  It is lurking out there, staring me in the face somewhere.  I just can't see it.  Maybe if I wasn't thinking about traffic when stuck in traffic - I'd see it?

3.  A certain someone.  I wish her well, always and will say HAMH any number of times, but I really don't want to think about her anatomy and physiology.  I don't want to worry about calling her, I don't want to worry about what she'll say when she calls me.  I don't want to feel the muscles in my jaw, my neck, my shoulders tensing up when she's talking to me, when all I can say is "Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh" while thinking I am not a doctor, I am not a psychiatrist, I am not a physiotherapist, I am not a chiropractor, I am not a gastroenterologist, I am not an osteopath, I am not a neurosurgeon - I really can't help...really I am quite helpless...I wish I could help but I can't.  I am sorry for your back, your legs, your thighs, your bones, your spine, your calves, your glutes, your skin, your scalp, your lipid levels but any possible cures are beyond the scope of both the halves of my brain. 

4. Obsessing about the time not spent with my daughter.  I can either take a chance in life and take whatever steps are necessary to find a way to spend more hours with her until her college going years or I can tell myself to believe she is strong, resilient, a millennial kid, a compassionate kid who will not remember me as an indifferent parent, who will think of her childhood with fondness.  But the thing I need to stop doing is obsessing about this.  There should be no room for niggling, circular thoughts that keep one awake all night in life.  There should only be decisive action.  Inaction kills like nothing else.  Pointless pontification is meaningless.

5.  Loans.  They will get paid off when they get paid off.  Thinking about them isn't getting them paid off any sooner.

6.  Wondering what this life will amount too.  Another senseless line of thought when the only things that are real are birth and death.  There are only dust bunnies, lint and a handful of dirt between those two bookends.  So no matter how many sleepless nights we go through it is all headed for glorious dust-dom.  So why the agony, is there a purpose to this constant agonizing other than leaving one feeling off-kilter all the time? To what extent is this life about choices and consequences, about checks and balances? The so called "right" choices don't always have the "right" consequences and accidentals are probably more important in the shaping of any life than a set linear course.

7.  Thinking about whether I should be thinking about this temporary separation at all.  Wondering if the stoicism I feel about this is normal or if I should be falling apart and by so doing hastening a reversion.  After all I haven't been given a load I can't bear.  Every circumstance gets taken in one's stride as always.  Even if these all encompassing strides still involve significant mental churn and constant ferment.  What would constant togetherness achieve? Why are the phone conversations so mundane, so dissatisfying, so much about bills and money? Where is the richness of experience? Why is it not possible to not think about this and just live?

8.  Worries that I'll never master music or the arts or literature.  How ridiculous that sounds to the rational part of the brain.  There are no masters! The knowledge here is infinite.  Eighty or so sentient years are not enough to plumb the depths or scale the heights of art, music or literature.  So why do I always feel like I am in competition with myself and the whole world? Why is it so impossible to just sit, listen, absorb and then do it some more?

Unstoppable Impulses

What goes through your mind when you see a misted up glass window in a car or in a bus? How about a misted up glass door in a shower?  Well I know what goes through my mind - there's an unstoppable urge to place the edge of a fist, the side where the little finger is, on the glass, so that it looks like an infant's foot sans toes, and then to add little dots around this "foot" so it looks like a baby placed a tiny foot there.  

Of course I always make two such feet.  Most people I know just make one and it's too weird to imagine a baby hopping on one foot and too depressing to imagine just one leg.  

The days are getting shorter, darker and colder here in the western hemisphere and misty surfaces are abundant wherever hot and bothered, stressed breaths emerge from frowning faces of stressed commuters and workers and collide with cold surfaces.  

It was one such night tonight as our bus crept along Route 80, barely moving for several minutes.  Some people had given up on getting anywhere anytime soon and were snoring their blues away.  Others were getting a head start on tomorrow’s assignments as they plugged little numbers into little spreadsheet cells.  I was staring at my own reflection in the bus window, wondering when the glumness set in, if there was a clear demarcation, a point after which it all started going south.  When did the eyes take on this dull, glazed sheen, when did the lips acquire a seemingly permanent downward turn, when was the last time I was happy or moved or touched.  It is not as if such moments have ceased to exist, it’s just that they are hard to recollect when the blues set in and one’s reflection defines an unpleasant reality.  

The glumness was threatening an accelerated downward spiral when I caught sight of the man sitting across from me.  I see him everyday and I’ve never seen him smile.  He is always serious, always working on the bus until it’s time for him to get off.  One gets the impression that he has a super important job in some Fortune 500 company.  However when my eyes drifted in his direction tonight he wasn’t gazing down at his computer.  He was staring at the misted up bus window.  And then he raised his hand and I noticed the fist.  The next few moments went by in slow motion as I wondered, “No! Is HE really going to do what I think he’s going to do? It can’t be!” And then he did it.  His fist went up against the glass and created a little baby foot.  Then his index finger came out and dotted five little toes around the foot!  I was stunned.   I couldn’t believe this man had felt the unstoppable impulse to create the impression of a baby’s foot in the misted up glass of the bus window.  How uncharacteristic of him...or was it really?  I smiled.  The blues from just a few seconds ago all but forgotten.

I absently reached inside my purse, took out a large orange flavored Tootsie Roll lollipop, and popped it in my mouth.  My lips couldn’t possibly stay turned down as I was sucking on a lollipop.  The serious man caught my eye and smiled.  He knew I had seen him do the baby’s foot before.  I wondered if he was wondering if someone who looked as glum and blue as me while on the bus would be an orange Tootsie Roll type.  

Wonder if our unstoppable impulses really say more about us than anything else.

Places - 4

This is from a time seventeen years ago when I was rather green, or certainly a darker shade of green than I am now.  My opinions were unformed; like formless clay.  Perhaps they are now taking some sort of a discernible shape at the metaphysical potter's wheel but back then they were like clay being softened for some future ceramic project (a project that is way past any scheduled completion).

I had started a new job then, one that promised an annual week long visit to some place that wasn't in United States and was often in Europe.  The location of choice the year I started this job was Marrakesh.

I remember being beyond a normal state of excitement.  Oh I was not going around saying how much I had always wanted to go to Morocco or how awesome it was, how exotic...none of that.  It was just a destination that filled me with curiosity and a sense of awe that names like Casablanca and Marrakesh have the power to inspire.  But I was rather surprised at how underwhelmed my coworkers were at the prospect of this trip.  There were constant moans and groans and whining along the lines of, "Why couldn't it have been Venice, Monaco, Rome or Cannes?"

I used to ask them, "Marrakesh is exciting! Why are you guys so bummed about it?"

I don't know if I ever got an answer that made sense to me at that time.  The answers indicated the following notions and/or perceptions:

a) Poverty
b) Squalor
c) Poor facilities and amenities
d) Bad food
e) Bad water
f) Poor transportation
g) Getting sick
h) Getting robbed

None of these concerns diminished my enthusiasm about the trip.  I hailed from a country where these things were commonplace.  After all it couldn't possibly be as bad as sidestepping all kinds of feces on the roadside en route a bus stop or seeing people urinating against a wall or spitting and expectorating in stairwells and alleys and walls etc.  Gold chains were often snatched in buses and trains, women were scared of traveling alone or traveling in crowded Delhi Transportation Corporation buses for fear of being molested.  So how bad could Marrakesh really be?

But the moans and groans continued until we left on Royal Air Maroc.  The airline made them even whinier, they seemed to forget that all airlines experience turbulence and that this wasn't a RAM specialty.

It was as if my co-workers and co-travelers were closed to any possibilities.  They didn't even want to give this destination a chance.  I decided to ignore their negativity and see things for myself.

I had a wonderful trip.  How could one not in a place as culturally rich as Morocco? Our hotel was palatial, the services, the rooms were all extraordinary.  The locales chosen for the evening events, the dinner functions were all amazing in their splendor.  Everything was rich, exotic and wearing a sheen of textured brilliance.  I was very pleased to be there.

When people from other countries indicate that they are big fans of Hindi film actors and Hindi film music I am always pleased, it always makes me smile and in Morocco this happened with some frequency.  They all wanted to know if I knew and could sing the song, "I am a disco dancer", for them.  There were also the carpet salesmen who were eager to show me a flying carpet.  They had me sit on one then they lifted up the edges and swung me around on it.  It was all so much fun.

But that's a digression from what I had really been thinking of writing about.

Feelings of shock, shame and general disgust have passed through me in waves over the last few days as I've seen India stumbling and fumbling with the preparations for the Commonwealth Games.  There are.graphic pictures of squalor at the accommodations for the athletes, there are reports of rampant corruption and substandard construction, it appears as though every ugliness hidden under the "India shining" rhetoric of the past is suddenly out there for the world to see.

These reports don't seem inaccurate and they are building perceptions, adding to stereotypes, further fastening the third world tag that India has been eager to shake off and burn in the recent years in a bid to be recognized as a powerful player on the global stage.  Perceptions are quite a force.

Ages ago when the dream of coming back to the US was just a glimmer in my eye, Indian news magazines were reporting the "dot-busters" incidents in New Jersey.  It was frightening to read about this and it led to us jumping to the conclusion that America had turned into a place where Indians were routinely shot and killed.  That's how powerful perceptions are.  The perceived intensity of a real event is always amplified and magnified. 

At Marrakesh, my American colleagues got into various debates with the European visitors when we got together at the end of the day for cocktails or dinner.  The Americans continued to whine and express their dismay at the signs of poverty all around.  When we visited the souks they failed to take any pleasure from the local color, the hustle and bustle, the various arts, crafts, textiles, tapestry, rugs, pottery etc. on display.  They were always too busy wrinkling up their noses and complaining about the smell, the dirt, the squalor.  They said it depressed them to see how people lived here, so on top of each other in such congestion.  They thought it was all very sad and the conference should not have been organized at this venue.

The European viewpoint, which was always offered to contradict the American one, was about how irrelevant the poverty and the squalor were and how shallow it was for Americans to not see how happy people were, how at ease with their situation, how accepting of life as it was for them.  The Americans were bashed for their desire to change everything, to drive things to a place where the rest of the world was better off not going.  The Europeans relished Moroccan cuisine, the Americans kept asking the waiters to make spaghetti with meat sauce for them if it didn't exist on the menu.  I just kept glancing from one group to another thinking about the deeper undercurrents that flashed through the behavior of both sides.

I wasn't able to form an opinion about whether things in the world needed to be spic and span and up to snuff by American standards.  I couldn't find fault with the American spirit of driving change, of changing your circumstances, these are the things this world is built on - a desire to make things better.  But isn't "better" relative? The Europeans' attitude was extreme as well.  It seemed strangely snobbish, as if the scenes they were witnessing were in a museum or a zoo, as if they were walking around saying, "how utterly quaint!"

In my mind there is some tenuous association between the reluctance that athletes from countries like Scotland, New Zealand and Canada are showing in wanting to attend the Commonwealth Games in Delhi and how my colleagues felt about going to Marrakesh.

Yes things may be bad in India, bad enough to make the Indian diaspora cringe because the reality of how things are is clashing once again with the pride Indians can so easily be roused to feel because they threw the British out, because things get outsourced to India, because it is the largest democracy in the world, because publications like The Economist sometimes call India an Asian super power.  A pride that is so easily bruised when a satirical article in Time magazine jokingly refers to the city where Thomas Edison was born taking on a third world tinge because of an overwhelming presence of Indians.  Why take offense to the truth? I have seen enough betel juice stains on Edison streets to be more saddened and despairing than offended by that article. There has been immense pride and what we are now witnessing is the fall that was inevitable.

The real India still has a large percentage of people living below the poverty line, the real India needs a Right to Food campaign because obviously many people are denied this basic right.  The problems go much deeper than anyone can fathom.  The media gloss about a rosy, shining India should be taken with as much of a pinch of salt as is the current media condemnation.  A flat perception is not how one can see and understand a country like India.

As for the whiny athletes from first world nations, why not go with an open mind, play the best game you can, win all the medals you can and return to your plush lives? You might even emerge as enlightened citizens of the world contemplating future courses of action toward shaping a better world.

I have to write so I don't do other useless things

I can either rest the laptop on my lap and find a million distractions on the computer as I try to unwind from worthless yet tiring days, or I can just open up this box on blogger and start typing whatever comes to mind.  Typing up stuff like this doesn't cost money, or at least doesn't involve a direct an immediate outlay (the costs are hidden in my carbon footprint and in my energy bill) and is ultimately more fulfilling than anything else I end up doing when I am tired of thinking about all the things that are ostensibly important things to think about.

The thing that I am most tired of thinking about is not being able to write.  So here I am, writing.  I know I am just rambling and not saying anything that could interest anyone or anything that could take me to that haloed place where writers dwell.  Let's just say I am being selfish.

The last 164 words have soaked up the last ten minutes with such seamless ease, ten minutes that would have been spent on Facebook scrolling through my news feed and gaining nothing from the experience.  These precious minutes could also have been spent on the website of New York Times or The Guardian.  Ordinarily this is time well spent but then one notices the "share" links at the bottom of all the articles one reads and one wants to share them with one's virtual friends.

Such sharing, be it links to news or one's own thoughts, always leads to expectations of reaction.  The reaction, when it comes is like a drug.  It feels good to be heard, to find people who share one's views but then one craves more of the same.  The "reaction drug" is as viciously potent as any other easily abused drug.

The voicing of an opinion, the public declaration of our likes and dislikes, the sharing of music or of any article, from any news source one frequents, also has tinges of competition; more self-branding, more shouting about one's uniqueness.  It's nothing more than ensuring some form of minor immortality.  It amounts to virtual screaming, often shrill in pitch. And since birds of a feather do always flock together all "friends" often end up sharing the same links, the same songs.  They "like" the same things.  So if I hadn't been spending the last twenty minutes talking about this virtual screaming for attention I probably would have been screaming for some attention and what would that get me except more self-loathing?

[This post will end up appearing on Facebook because I checked a box somewhere, some time ago, that makes everything I write here available to everyone on Facebook.  So even as I talk about this virtual screaming I am still doing it and have no intentions of not doing it or undoing it.  But hey, shame is another casualty of these times we live in.]

So, yes, this piece of writing is pointless.  It's directionless, it's going nowhere and doing nothing for anyone.  But these days I am a real nowhere woman, sitting in this nowhere land, making all my nowhere plans for nobody.  But when I allow even one word to follow another word; when words go marching one by one - hurrah, hurrah - I feel better.  The change in mood is almost instantaneous.  The air clears a bit.  I can think again, even breathe again.  If before I was in a state of numbness about my condition, about standing at the corner of "This Dull Life Street" and "Exciting New Life Avenue", paralyzed, now I feel as though I am ready to take a step in the right direction.  Writing anything, even nonsense such as this, has that immediate effect.

I feel like nattering on some more... about changing the settings at home, about placing a desk near a window, about surrounding myself with floor to ceiling bookshelves, about not taking for granted the importance of the right physical setting for doing the thing one is most passionate, most serious about.  Resting my head on the headboard of the bed with the laptop crouching in the space between my knees and my belly while I do pointless things on the Internet is not going to help me with my need to write.  Writing this gibberish has allowed me to see this with some clarity.  The ghostly light of this realization should last at least until the next ramble en route to some meaningful writing.

This ramble is now coming to a close.  It has succeeded in clearing away some of the funk.  Some happy hormones appear to have been released and I feel somewhat prepared to think about or take on the next set of ostensibly important tasks.

Places - 3

Earlier this week I was coming back through the lobby of my office building with the lunch I had just purchased in one hand, the other hand reaching in to find the electronic card that would let me in through the security turnstiles, when my boss, heading out to buy his own lunch appeared in my peripheral vision, his hand raised in a gesture demanding a high five.  I returned the gesture, trying to make it look as natural as possible given my discomfort with all high five and fist bump types of actions.  A few seconds ticked away during the process leaving nothing but a sense of absurdity in their wake.

A gesture of camaraderie such as the one noted above would have made so much more sense with anyone else.  In this case I just proceeded to the elevator with an expression of derisive mirth as I thought about all the stresses from just a few months ago, nights of lost sleep, expressions of lament to anyone who would care to listen, getting nauseous at the "this too shall pass" panacea that listeners offered.  All a distant memory now.  Not because these moments passed but because they became irrelevant.  How I felt a few months ago about the events that transpired was absurd, the events themselves were absurd and the way things stand now underscore absurdity encore because they don't appear to have followed from anything that preceded them.  Context appears to be as fungible and perishable as bananas on a supermarket shelf.

Our memories define us and one would assume how we behave today has some relationship to how we felt the day before, or what we did the day before, or what was done to us the day before, but that is so rarely the case.   We look for themes, we yearn to impose an ex-post narrative upon the scatter diagram within the Cartesian coordinates of our lives.  But if there is a pattern it is stretched on a canvas so grand in scale that we can't possibly discern it during our short lifetimes.

Take the cauliflower leaf for instance, the outline of which was being traced by my dad on graph paper, on a day when I had accompanied him to his office.  This was when he was working at Sabour Agricultural College in a place called Sabour, the back of the beyond of backward Bihar; not even remotely comparable to the whiteness of Canada or the bluish green Pacific charm of Hawaii.  I can't recall if Sabour was a village or a town or just something in between.  We lived there for a couple of years.  I was six years old and my brother was three.  I was somewhat fond of the place.  I never forgot the seven or eight mango trees around the house, the other families with kids my age all living in close proximity, the parks, the gardens.  It was a carefree time for a six year old.

What could be better than eating mangoes by the bucket and romping around wild? But in retrospect I sense it was a dark phase for my parents who had returned to India after six years of being in the United States.  Sketching the outlines of a cauliflower leaf on graph paper isn't something that a research scientist, used to working with state of the art electron microscope technology of those times, did.  It was random, it was absurd and I can't understand how it helped along the general narrative of our lives.  Ranipur and Kumaitha to Honolulu and Ottawa and then a place like Sabour makes it all look so random and so lacking in any grand design, just like the high fiving moment with my boss during a senseless filler moment of the day. But these interstitial phases of our lives, when we are waiting and wondering if something better will ever come along, often cause our biggest miseries.

We shared our living quarters with another family at Sabour.  It was a type of duplex with a large shared courtyard.  The lady on the other side was well settled in the life of Sabour and directed some taunts toward my mom who insisted that her two babies would never do any growing up in that godforsaken place.  She insisted that we would be out of there soon and that my brother and I would not forget our English and adopt the slow-as-molasses Bihari Hindi drawl of that region.  She was quite alarmed at the prospect of that happening!

In retrospect these were just two years of our lives but the two years must have felt like an eternity of miseries and worries to them at that time, a time when as a young couple with two young children, they were at the peak of their worries about what the future held and how they could either mold it and shape it or let it rest, contented or resigned to "fate".

Then out of the blue an opportunity materialized out of the ether, a new clearing in the woods, a new direction, setting us all on a path that could not have been logically deduced.  For my parents this was the move to Delhi.  The place where we were to be for the next ten to fifteen years.

So I sit here waiting for my clearing in the woods, for the path that's out there, obscured in fog or just unseen by me even if it sits in plain sight.  I know this much is true: whatever that next step is it's not something that will follow, de rigeur, from whatever it is I am doing at this moment.  I can't plan for it at least not in any conscious way.  But I do wish I was blessed with some fog lamps!

Places - 2

So many of us, especially the believers in a western, non-fatalist, deterministic line of thought are certain we can plan our lives.  Much effort and much thought goes into having a vision and then directing and acting in a self-written play, taking center stage, lifting the curtains on the enactment of our own scripts.  We want it rendered alive, drawn out of the recesses of our brains and made real.  Willpower plays a key role and certain cinematic cliches like "if you build it they will come" or people saying "dream big".

I am attracted to this line of thought as well.  I make lists, I set goals, I resolve to do certain things, not do certain things.  I gain immense satisfaction from checking things off my lists.  My notebooks and journals are full of plans and lists.  I have spreadsheets that track our expenses, I have repayment schedules chalked out for my debts, I have fitness goals, writing goals, I want to train hard enough to become a seasoned musician, I want to live in a home that isn't mortgaged and drive a car that's paid off, I want to share breakfast with my family every morning; I, like everyone else, believe that these things could make me happy because if I live here, in this country, at this point in time then I have to believe in the pursuit of happiness.  All my steps and all my missteps are taken in an elusive pursuit of happiness while the definitions of happiness keep morphing as I become a different person from one day to the next.

But this is what it always remains, despite the stacks of notebooks chock full of plans and lists and grand visions, we never move from pursuit to destination.  There's nothing wrong with an eternal pursuit, this is what life is all about, but as I grow older I realize that the most gratifying moments in my life have been the unplanned ones, the serendipitous ones.  Something unexpected happens, as it did for my Dad when he took off for Hawaii, and everything changes.  "Plans" almost always get relegated to the dark attic-like space in the surrounding ether that stores all the roads that weren't taken because we took detours from the most obvious plans, from the ones that appeared to be the most logical segues at any instant.

The most logical segue for me in 1988 certainly wasn't a final move to the United States.  I was in the middle of a master's degree in Economics.  I was uninspired and listless and not at all at home with the mind-boggling squiggles of Econometrics.  The prospect of another year of mastering something that was so challenging and so uninteresting was unpalatable in the extreme but I was resigned to it.  I was sticking to the plan and willing to put myself through every stage of the torture, despite distractions, despite immense boredom.  The plan was to finish that degree.  But something unexpected happened again when my dad got a Fulbright scholarship that was to take him on a tour of universities within several states in the US.

I remember those days, I remember standing at the terrace of our New Delhi flat at Mandakini Enclave, gazing at the horizons, wondering what life had in store for me.  Boredom was the most overwhelming state back then, with distraction close on its heels.  I also had a very distressing asthma condition and my parents had been assured by a doctor at the Patel Chest Institute that my problem might go away with a change of venue; a change that would take me 7,000 miles away, perhaps.

So the biggest and most pleasant surprise of my life was when mom and dad asked me if I wanted to accompany dad to the US.  As if they needed to ask! Of course, of course! I had never wanted anything more than I wanted that.

I was often asked what I would do in the US.  Unlike others my age who came here having secured an admission to an Ivy League institution, or some others who got married early and followed a spouse here, I didn't have a plan.  I used to say I would "earn and learn", that this is what Americans did.  A vision of learning while earning was all I had, no other plans, no other details fleshed out.   And even this broad vision was only trotted out for the curious, the nosy.  All I wanted was to break free, to start afresh.  I wanted to see my own footprints in the sand as my fingers slipped from my dad's guiding grasp, amidst a pool of tears - both his and mine - as I walked on with steps that were shaky and determined at the same time.

Places - 1

I like listening to Ranipur and Kumaitha stories whenever I am sitting in a living room of the 17th floor of my parent's apartment building in Ottawa, watching the sun set at the Rideau River, the skies the color of mystic topaz.  In my mind, I occupy some sort of a moving point within the imaginary lines of the scalene triangle marked out by these three points on the globe: Ranipur, Kumaitha and Ottawa.  Or perhaps the boundaries of my existence don't map out a triangle at all; There would be too many points left out in a shape as restrictive as a triangle.  What of Honolulu, Patna, Sabour, Delhi, Columbia, Washington DC, Baltimore, Hackettstown and New York? Perhaps it's more of an amorphous and amoebic shape that our footprints have traced.

People are always curious about my antecedents.  They want to know where I am from.  I still haven't figured out a short answer to this question.  What could the short answer be? My parents still don't have any trouble saying they are from India and my daughter could just say New Jersey and be done with it.

I don't have the luxury of a short answer in a country where attention spans are short and most questions are rhetorical; demanding a non-answer or no answer at all, and the question is asked in the first place because the person doing the asking is stocking some shelves in his or her brain and wants to be able to find a special shelf for me.  The answer I give could put me on a shelf for which I don't particularly care. 

When I have the luxury of a leisurely answer I tell them I was born in Hawaii (at the US-Canada border the officers sometimes want to know how that came to be), grew up in New Delhi, did some more growing up in Maryland and DC and then ended up in New Jersey.  An answer that could be a head-scratcher for those shelf-stockers.  In the end I probably get stashed on a shelf reserved for miscellany or exotics.  Of course there are always those who walk up to me and want to know, "habla Espanol?" and still others who ask if I am from Ethiopia or Somalia - maybe something about the longish nose, the eyes the curly hair, the dark complexion, who knows?

I can't name any one place as a starting point for me.  Even though, as a child I used to view the slides and photographs from Hawaii as often as I could, I was entranced by the colors on the island, the blues, the greens, the exquisite colors of the saris my mom wore, saris that were still fresh from her trousseau.  She never gave the impression of being in an alien environment there, she always looked gorgeous and at home, even with her two long plaits of thick hair; a hairstyle not seen in 1960s Hawaii.  They were so young and in such a perfect place.  I recall with vivid clarity a picture of my mom standing next to a hibiscus plant, the colors were so rich, so tempting, I used to feel I could sink deep into the picture if I stared long enough and hard enough.

As the show went on a little baby made an appearance in the frames projected on the walls and that baby born in the month of June, the month of the pearl, on an island that is often referred to as the pearl of the Pacific, was enveloped in all the love and care her two very young parents showered on her.

Every time I saw these slides I felt special.  When school was dreadful, when friends were hard to come by, when teachers frightened me and any spectacular academic achievement seemed impossible in an intensely competitive world, I could lose myself in pictures of Hawaii and convince myself that my life would be exciting and different, because the starting point of my narrative was unusual...in my mind.  The shimmering Pacific of my dreams always soothed and comforted me and kept me from lapsing into the dread of ordinariness.

So they reminisce now, towering high above the streets of Ottawa.  They launch Google Earth on their computers once a day and trace the rural roads that lead right up to their ancestral homes in Ranipur and Kumaitha.

Dad peers at the aerial view of Ranipur, a small village near the city of Bettiah, in the middle of the erstwhile Bettiah Raj, where he took his very first steps.  His dad, a freedom fighter, a Gandhian, born at the tail end of the 19th century, couldn't see beyond the vision of an India free of the British.  That was the only thing on his mind.  He was beaten by the British, jailed by them for passive resistance and satyagraha and each instance made his resolve stronger.  But there were some moments of reflection when he gazed upon his son playing in the courtyard and dad remembers my Baba asking him,"What will you do when you grow up? Will you be a rickshaw puller?" Maybe he knew India would be free and independent soon enough but he couldn't envision a bright future for his son within independent India.

Mom traces the roads that led up to the village where she grew up, a village called Kumaitha.  I always thought Kumaitha was a funny sounding name, but she mentioned it came about when Kumbhkarana, on his quest to vanquish Rama and company, sat there for some rest and relaxation, "Kumbh baitha" (Kumbh sat here) became Kumaitha.  I recall the maternal side of the my family being constantly ribbed and ridiculed by my dad about their propensity for long siestas, a la Kumbhkarana.

My mom's grandfather and my own grandfather were contemporaries and friends.  Both of them fighting the British in the Gandhian way, both passionate about the cause, they rode the crest of this passion all the way, until they breathed their last.  Their dedication, their work, their sacrifices bore fruit.

I hear these stories and make attempts to juxtapose the trajectory of my own life against the stories of these ancestors and it makes me question the heft of "nature" in the "nature vs nurture" debate.  Do I possess these genes of passion, of conviction? Or did nurture overwhelm nature completely, vanquishing it, making me a privileged and complacent person, lackadaisical about so many things and taking so much for granted?

I live in a world where I don't have to imagine my daughter pulling a rickshaw.  But she is also a child of privilege, how many things would she take for granted?

Dad and mom talk about a large chunk of their pre-Independence childhood spent playing in the dirt.  Dad was in the Gandhian system of basic schooling.  He tells me about Basic School and how all they did was weave thread from cotton, dig the earth using a shovel, plant things.  There wasn't much emphasis on anything academic.  The focus appeared to be the development of efficient agrarian skills.  He never wore anything but khadi growing up.  My grandfather passed away when he was twelve and I hear stories about the rest of his childhood where all the basic needs of food, shelter, clothing were essentially being covered by the wave of goodwill that was my grandfather's legacy.  I hear about him trudging several miles, the first of every month, to collect the money for his school expenses from someone who wanted to see him get a good education.  He didn't enter the world of academics until a much later age and had no English until 8th grade.

It is always amazing and fascinating to me that he ended up in Hawaii on a grant from the East West Center of the University of Hawaii for a doctoral program in plant physiology, given his entirely rural background; by some benevolent quirk of fate the rickshaw pulling prophecy was dodged and dismissed.

This fascination of mine will endure for me as it does for my parents.  There must have been so many days of despondence, of not knowing what life had in store for them, of wondering, of frustration until things literally turned on a dime (or 25 paisa coin) for my dad and someone encouraged him to fill up an application that would have him winging his way more than half way across the world.  The 25 paisa application that he reluctantly filled out at the urging of a professor at his college.

Nothing: Part 30

[Note: Possibly of no interest to anyone else]

I am an unabashed eavesdropper.  I love listening in while pretending I couldn't care less about what's being said around me.  There is something so thrilling about overheard conversations even if the most mundane things are being discussed.

If each stage or each day of our existence is like a single bead or gem, several of which have been strung together on a thread of memories, in an elegant necklace defining our existence, then overheard conversations certainly reside within the interstices.

I usually sit on the very first seat of my bus on the way back home because the other front seaters are usually the ones who love chatting with each other and with the driver.

A few weeks ago the front seat occupants were two women who were returning to New Jersey after a day spent in New York City.  I soon learned, from listening to their chatter, that they were school bus drivers by profession.  They were so excited at being passengers in a bus that wasn't painted bright yellow and where they weren't doing the driving.  Throughout the ride they kept comparing notes on the equipment, asking the driver what the various buttons and controls on his dashboard were, marveling at his cushioned seat which he was smug enough to inform them was made by the same company that supplied airlines with the seat used by the pilots.  They adored the smoothness of the turning angles; something their bright yellow tin could never achieve and the quiet passengers who never needed to be disciplined.  Of course that theory was soon blown to bits when the driver had to grab his microphone in order to silence the obnoxious cell phone chatterer in the back.  They said they were tempted to drive our bus just to see how different it felt.  I was stunned at the level of palpable excitement they were emanating.  The bus driver did have to concede a point to them: the school bus ladies had the POWER! The power to stop all other traffic short simply by extending the long arm of the bus that ends in the sign that reads "STOP".

I never knew that a bus could have such an effect on people! But then again, I have never been a school bus driver, so how would I know, how would I even begin to grasp the sheer thrill?

Yesterday I sat with a woman who appeared to be a good friend of the driver who was taking us home.  Their conversation was a treat.  They were talking about another driver they knew who was thinking of retiring.  The woman wanted to know why he would consider the retirement option since he was young enough.  She asked the driver, "What would he do? Sit on the porch, read a book?"

Here I was thinking to myself, "Hmm, I wouldn't mind either one of those options given how my days have been blurring into each other, retaining no distinction, no shape, leaving not a trace of having been lived."

The driver replied, "Well he could do anything, he has enough saved up.  He could live.  He could get a girlfriend, move to Florida, anything he wants."

The woman replied, "I don't know what I would do if I retired.  For me the best place to retire would be New York City.  That is my dream.  Why would anyone want to retire anywhere else? No other place makes sense.  You never have to drive you can go wherever you want, walk anywhere, do anything you want, restaurants, parks, theater, movies - all within easy reach.  I would be so happy here."

The driver concurred and said this was his dream too.

I thought of all the places I had considered for my own post-retirement days - Quebec City, San Francisco, Vancouver - specifically Victoria or Paris.  I was much younger when those choices were made.  I was seduced by the breathtaking, seductive beauty of those cities.  But now that I heard the driver and the woman discuss New York City I felt my inner voice saying, "Of course, New York is such an obvious choice, it seems like a no-brainer! Who wouldn't want to retire here, I love it so much I even like coming back on the weekends when I don't have to be here for work."

The conversation then moved on to their favorite Broadway plays.  Les Miserables, Beauty and the Beast, Phantom of the Opera topped their lists.  The woman said that a close friend of hers had played both the Beast and Gaston in the B'way production, over a period of several months.  This certainly is the type of information that makes one exclaim, "oh wow, really" even if one doesn't know the person who said this nor her friend.  We are always eager to lap up all instances of discovery when it comes to "six degrees of separation".

The topic of theater segued into what was for me the most interesting tidbit of the evening.  The driver shared some history of the bus line that serves as a mobile shelter for me for at least a third of my day.  I won't mention the name because every time someone wants to search for L Buses they will be directed to my blog. (These people would be searching for bus schedules or something, in a hurry, and Google would unceremoniously dump them on my blog).

So, it seems this bus line was started by someone who had a Mexican wife who was a showgirl on Broadway.  He used to drive her to Manhattan and back everyday.  Soon enough there were several women from Mexico in Dover, NJ who were showgirls who needed to commute to and from Manhattan on a daily basis and at all odd hours.  This was the spark that led to the idea of L Buses which number in the hundreds now and originate at the Dover, NJ terminal.  That's where they are returned every night where they are cleaned inside and out and put back on the road every morning.  The operation is gigantic and is now run with supreme efficiency by the daughter of the considerate, bright and resourceful founder and his beloved showgirl wife.  She runs the bus line with her husband and her own daughter stops by to help with the paperwork although her true passion lies in becoming a veterinarian.

Interesting! At least to me.  Learnt something I never knew, never would have known if I hadn't been so fond of eavesdropping.  Is it useful information? Maybe not, although it would make for interesting small talk with other passengers some day when we're waiting for a bus and are chatting about nothing in particular. 

It is an enchanting interstitial event.