Doodles

When I doodle I fill every corner of a page.  I create a mosaic of triangles and squares butting up against similar or complementary edges.  I color in these spaces and add texture while leaving slivers of white between each adjacent shape.

But the geometric progression goes only so far and no further.  Dots soon appear around the edges and now there's every chance that these dots would get surrounded by sinuous waves, petals or paisleys.  It's surprising how wonderful a launching pad a paisley makes for an emerging pattern.  If life were to be lived on a paisley plane perhaps we'd never reach a dead end.  There would be room for innumerable maneuvers, embellishments and enhancements.

The sinuous waves that surround the dots lead to some interesting possibilities, especially if one inks in a cosine curve over a sine curve.  Each dot then looks like a dazed pupil within myriad eyes.  Imagine surrounding a square space with a chain of eyes, surveilling everything within and without?

But it can't end there, it's an ever-morphing, ever-changing space.  The pupils sometimes become the center of a flame and flames can reach outward and all around until their tips start curling into spirals that meet, greet and hook up with other spirals, they travel around the page like wanderers or settle in and give birth to baby spirals scampering, cartwheeling or cavorting around the space between two ruled lines.

Some rogue spirals are trapped in triangular, rectangular of square shapes, caged and confined forever, no release possible, the most they could expect is an ornate embellishment of their cages with more dots, waves, petals or paisleys; their prison is walking through this space all alone.

And just like that an Eagles song sneaks into one's doodling mind, "don't you draw the queen of diamonds boy, she'll beat you if she's able, you know the queen of hearts is always your best bet", and you proceed to draw exactly that, a queen of diamonds, despite the warnings against it.  Hearts are rather a closed shape, two bumps and a point, what can one do with a heart, except trace another line around it, and another around that, in a repetitive, obsessive manner, desperate for protection, the stronger the shields around it the less breachable or breakable the heart.  One could draw a zigzag pattern within it if it has been broken.  Those are the only choices with the heart or the queen of hearts, protect it or leave it vulnerable for whatever comes next.

The queen of diamonds is a always a better option.  Her diamonds offer four sides.  Each side the foundation for more diamonds (do diamonds beget diamonds?) or triangles or squares or even dots, waves, petals, paisleys or spirals.  It might even be possible to reach the outer edges of the page with diamonds at hand.

Chronically Untouched

I killed it.  Or so I thought.

Scooped out

shovels full of dirt,

to carve a deep, dark space.

I buried it.

I moved on then,

free of shadows, radiant-

with just a tinge

of the graveyard grays.

I listened,

sought confidences -

reserved judgments.

They loved to talk,

to share momentous miscellany -

I listened.

But with listening came

a peculiar conceit,

of being anointed,

of being blessed

with lifetimes lived

in a single, vicarious 

vampire breath.

That radiance is now tainted.

The shadows have risen

from the deep, dark pit

where need

could never slumber.

Boston Bombing

Someone sits out there tonight, watching, waiting, perhaps relishing the carnage he has wrought. Someone out there wants something. What does he want? Who planted the seed of this thought in his head? Was there a coach, a master puppeteer in some cave in Afghanistan pulling strings? Or did someone hear voices in their head that told him to kill and maim?

Speculation continues. Is it a terrorist cell seeking to avenge the death of Osama bin Laden or Is it a domestic terrorist, someone who hates the government, the president, hates paying taxes, hates having gone to war, hates calls for gun control, hates Roe vs Wade, hates being unemployed for the past four years or even the past four weeks and spends his time looking up recipes online for cooking up bombs?

Or is it someone with a mental illness - someone who has been off their serotonin re-uptake inhibitor meds, or someone who hears voices, real enough and compelling enough to them, telling them to become a lethal instrument of carnage?

With ten years of expertise in anti-terrorism efforts they will soon know exactly who it was. This waiting, watching creep must know that it is a matter of time, perhaps just a matter of a couple of days. When he is being led away in handcuffs with a lawyer whose job will be to ensure he gets the fairest trial possible, will he believe he's going down for some cause or will he be on another plane of sentience while his lawyer tries to convince a judge that he isn't mentally competent to stand trial?

Where do we send prayers now and for what? Three people are dead and 140 are injured, some were running just a second before they became amputees. We pray for peace every day, we pray for the safety of living relatives. What prayers can we say for the dead? What can we say to console grieving relatives? Who is the entity taking receipt of these prayers and can this entity ever ensure peace on earth and peace to an insane mind?

Anger tonight seeks a target but the target isn't forthcoming. It lurks in the shadows waiting, watching, perhaps calculating its next move while tears are shed and little ones are tucked in with a calming bedtime story that could preserve their innocence and their faith in humanity just a little bit longer.

Hungarian Woman (If on a winter's night a traveler...)

We sought each other out
In those commuting days
Of yore. I liked saving her
The seat beside me because
There is nothing more
Comforting in a cold bus,
On a wintry day, than a
Substantial woman clad
In full length mink.

We conversed about the boots
And the bags she designed,
The intricacies of her trade,
The nuances of a designer bag
Or a thigh length boot and
Ways of instant identification of
Fraudulent handbag DNA.

She was as surprised
to learn that I did not
celebrate a Name Day
As I was to learn that she did.
A fixed name,
For a fixed day
of the year,
And the finite nature of
The pool of all
Hungarian names
For every Hungarian newborn,
Is still cause for
My complete conceptual
Befuddlement.

She told me she spent
A day of the week, every week,
In her apartment in the city,
And when I stopped seeing her
I imagined she had
Moved there for good.

I stopped commuting
To the city myself,
Unless there was cause
For a special appearance.

One such occasion arose
Just last week.

I saw her seated, on the
Seat where we usually
Sat in the old days.
She looked at me
As she would look
At a stranger, no signs
Of recognition in her eyes.

If she could have read
My mind then or heard
My thoughts, she would have
Wondered why a stranger
Knew she was from Hungary,
That she designed
Boots and handbags
And that she celebrated
A day of the year with
So many others who
Shared her name;
A name I had never learnt
Despite our commuting
And commuted conversations.

Quintessential American - IV

There was that time when waiting in line to go up the Washington Monument, just a few short weeks after my arrival in the country, I was spellbound by the couples standing in line ahead of me.  It was a hot summer day, one of those days when everything gleams, the grass appears greener, the sky at its bluest and there's color everywhere with people picnicking on the grass, kids turning cartwheels, cotton candy sellers walking around - in short, the kind of day where a solitary soul feels that much lonelier or unloved, unwanted and foreign. 

The young men ahead of me had their arms wrapped around the waists of their girlfriends or wives.  One was caressing the small of his girl's back at the place where the fingers could imperceptibly (unless someone in line, behind him, was intent on watching) breach the waistband of the shorts or skirts and reach in, just slightly, for a quick, barely noticeable brush of the place where the dimples in the back gently curve into the backside.  The girls stood on tip toes, every now and then, to lightly kiss the cheek of the boys or men they were with or they would gently rest their heads in the bend of the necks of their guys.  The touching was casual and intimate all at once. 


It was entrancing and distressing for me and it filled me with unbearable longing, underscoring my loneliness and otherness.  Even after all these years I remember the sharp pang of those moments so much more than the view of the Smithsonian mall from the top of the Washington Monument.


I had never approached boys in a way that signaled attraction.  Even in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, attractive female bunnies often approach good old Bugs, fluttering tiny balloon hearts out of long eyelashes, leaning forward, breathing desire.  But I possessed no apparent internal switch that told me to turn my girl on when approaching an attractive member of the opposite sex, neither was I ever approached in that manner, or so I believed.  My receptors were blocked and I was truly oblivious.  If I realize this state of oblivion now, it is only in hindsight.  Sure there was a boy in college who met me at the college library at the same time every morning for months, whose company I cherished, but nothing indicated to me that perhaps a signal to move things on to a different level, whatever that level might be, was intended by either one of us.  Whether this was a cultural manifestation or a personality trait was unclear to me.  Going after a man, sending pheromones his way, what a concept! It was a rather alien one.


But the move to America was all about embracing change, among other things.  The situation demanded further observation and an in-depth study of the art of signalling intent in subtle or not-so-subtle ways. 

The "rep room", mentioned earlier, was as good a lab as any.  The words "political correctness" had not yet entered the American consciousness in the late 1980s.  Women in the workplace could still be called, "sweetheart" or "doll".  Catcalls and whistles at a woman's attire or general comportment were still commonplace and were even welcomed, or so it seemed to my foreigner's eyes.  If a woman was promoted and advanced in her career at a faster clip than a male colleague, men, and women, issued snide remarks about her morals.  "He's done her" and "it figures, she puts out" or, "oh yeah, I saw them making out in the supply closet".  By the time I figured out what putting out or making out meant I was well into wondering whether this was an acceptable, essential and altogether indispensable career move for a woman or whether it was malicious gossip targeting successful women. 

I was twenty-one at the time and only had quarter-baked ideas about things.  The fact that women around me appeared accepting of these notions or even encouraged them was confusing to me.  I couldn't figure out whether my confusion was a result of an Indian upbringing or whether something was straining at my inherent sense of right and wrong that had nothing to do with my culture or my roots.

I had shed some of my shyness and reticence after being here for a few months. I was still following my moral compass and had convinced myself that putting out or making out would not become my stepping stones to success.  I had decided on an informal and friendly approach toward everyone I met, men or women. I would laugh at their inappropriate jokes because humor didn't bear censorship and because the first and only show I could watch on a cheap and unreceptive television set at that time, "Married with Children", had desensitized me to all manners of inappropriate humor.  It was vulgar in a former life perhaps, not anymore. 

This approach, however, was fraught with danger, as I soon realized.  Three instances come to mind:

• My boss, Dan, spent a lot of time helping me assemble my first few pieces of furniture, a roll top desk, an entertainment center and a bookshelf.  He even took me car shopping for my first car.  He was always around, offering advice, checking up on my well-being.  Sometimes his wife accompanied me and I had got to know her well too.  He often took me out to lunch during our work day and after one of these lunches one day he decided to go to his bank where his wife was a teller.  He chose the drive thru window option for depositing a check and withdrawing some cash.  On this day his wife was the teller who was working the drive thru window.  I looked up at her from the passenger side, waved and said, "Hi Tracy!".  She didn't wave back, nor did she smile.  She looked upset and angry and I felt extremely awkward with that unreciprocated greeting lying between us.  Dan looked a bit tense as well.  As we were driving back to work I asked him why Tracy looked upset and I was stunned to hear him say that she was jealous of me!  I stared at him in disbelief and asked, "Jealous of me? Why?" He just snickered and decided not to further enlighten me on the subject.

• On another occasion a very helpful female colleague offered to help me move.  She said her husband would drive his pick up truck over and that they would be happy to help.  I was thankful.  The three of us worked well together, lifting, moving, hoisting and getting me settled in.  Her husband was handsome, his whole face lit up when he smiled.  I thought nothing of sharing this innocent observation and told my co-worker what a gorgeous smile her hubby had.  I thought she would be flattered but I saw the smile disappear from her face as I finished uttering my pronouncement.  Within seconds all I was left with was an angry glare, followed by an abrupt goodbye.  I was too young to realize my mistake back then, I just stood there, rooted in confusion, wondering what I did wrong.  Now that I am older and wiser I know not to publicly share an innocent appreciation of other people's husbands! 

 

• Then there was this co-worker who often brought her fourteen year old son to work after his school was over.  He used to sit in the rep room doing his work and a lot of times she asked me to help him with his Math or Science homework.  He was a good kid.  We used to kid around, talk about comic books or movies when I wasn't helping him study.  One day our big bosses were in and I wasn't able to spend time with him because we were tied up in meetings.  When I got out of the meeting some of the other ladies appeared to be in considerable distress because Sean, the kid, had had a temper tantrum of sorts and had yelled and screamed at his mom about something.  They had had a full blown, file folder and print-out throwing fight.  I asked what happened and was told that I was the reason for the tantrum.  I wasn't around and he got very upset.  Someone remarked, "you turn him on".  I had no idea how to react to that extremely embarrassing remark that was uttered without a hint of embarrassment by the person who said it.  It was a moment that ranks rather high in my list of awkward moments.

With these moments resting in my wake it was clear to me that I had a very long way to go towards earning a badge in American quintessence.  I was an ill-equipped candidate at the outset, one who had a rather Rain Man (or Rain Woman) like approach to man-woman relationships.  It was clear after these incidents that certain lines could not be crossed even if all that was intended was friendship and camaraderie.  There were limits, there were invisible lines that could never be crossed and one needed to tread with care and a level of discernment that was still not a part of my nature.

Several years later, after absorbing these invaluable lessons about avoiding jealous wives, hormonal teenage boys and other people's husbands' smiling countenance, I changed my ways to the best of my abilities.  I made sure the men I met were single and in their mid-twenties.  But this was when I became aware of expectations that elevated my concerns to an entirely new level.

Quintessential American - III

"Where are you from?"

That question still comes my way, even after twenty-five years of being in the US. Saying India, without hesitation, used to be easy.  The question was a welcome ice-breaker as far as I was concerned. Having pegged me securely and having assigned me a slot in their brains my interlocutors could now branch into several areas of conversation.

"How long have you been here? What brought you here, so far away from home? This is what I've heard about India, is it true? Does this still happen? My doctor is an Indian, love him to death!"

These were the expected branches of conversation once they ascertained my origins. I rather enjoyed the interaction.

But I soon learned that these questions were not always welcomed by other Indians or Indians who had lived here longer than I had. I met my husband in 1991. He had been in this country since he was eight. He grew up
in a very small town in upstate New York, the town of Dansville, population 5,000, where his family was the only one adding a tinge of diversity to the white demographic.

His childhood experiences were so different from mine with things like camping, fishing, inner-tubing, Little League, football and an adolescence replete with all experiences that are verboten for most Indian teens of the era in which I was a teen. Roasting s'mores by a campfire or going down streams or creeks in the inner tubes of a tire or knowing when it was trout season were alien concepts for me, things I hadn't even come across in books.  And this was a list of things boys did, I haven't a clue what girls did.  He does tell me that his older sister's friends used to surround him in his pre-teen years as they tried to practice their kissing skills on him!

We've driven through his hometown sometimes.  He points out all the white picket fence homes of his childhood, the elementary school, the middle school, the high school, an old boarded up building that used to be the Blum Shoe Factory; that family now a part of ours.  As I try to see things through his eyes I realize things haven't changed much here.  This is one of the places in real America where time more or less stands still, the kind of town that coming of age movies made in America use as a backdrop as they portray the angst of people who yearn to leave it all behind and chase big cities and bright lights.  When I see places like this I imagine Billy Joel talking about Linda and Eddy in this:



Or John Cougar talking about Jack and Diane here:



Or, finally Paul Simon, using an upbeat melody to point out line dried clothes getting dirty in the wind and the colors of the rainbow looking black in this:



Could one stake a claim at American quintessence while lacking all the experiences that make up an American personality?

I got the first chance to witness how annoying the origins question could be to someone who has been through these experiences when after we got married, on our first trip to NYC together, the driver of the horse carriage we had boarded for a trot around Central Park, asked with great innocence, "Where are you from?" I was still only four years into the country and was about to blurt out India when A stopped me with a gentle pressure on my hand and said, "Buffalo, now let's go!"

I was surprised at how unnerved the question had made him. Back in 1992 I couldn't wrap my head around this short, dismissive answer to the innocent question from the carriage driver.  The tone of A's voice had stopped the poor guy from asking the follow up question that I saw him dying to voice, "But where are you originally from?"

These days India is not what I say when I am asked where I am from.  I say I am from New Jersey because I suppose I am more interested in steering the conversation toward topics of immediate interest, indebtedness, home values, unemployment, traffic on Interstate 80, movies, TV shows, late night talk shows etc.

I am ill-equipped when it comes to answering questions about India now.  Where before I was amused at comments like, "Oh, your mom's coming! What does she look like, does she wear a turban?" or the people who asked, "Oh you're from India, which tribe?" now I would stare at them as though their IQ points were about the same as that of a tomato. 

Perhaps now I have gained a better understanding for why my sister-in-law to be shooed away some curious, prying strangers who wanted a side seat at our big Indian wedding at a hotel in West Henrietta, NY. 

At some point the need to get taken for granted superseded the amusement derived from strangers' extrapolations based on ingrained, false images of snake charmers and swamis.

Quintessential American - II

There were the people I met - Anne, Tracy, Barbara, Joe, Ben.  They were all doing the same job for different publishing companies.  Our paymasters were different but we worked together in the same place called a "rep room".  The lines between competition and collaboration were blurred in this place and as a young foreigner in the rep room I found myself amidst a very protective circle of friends. 

In those early days, before I learned how to drive, I used to walk a couple of miles to a bus stop to wait for one of the two buses that took me home.  The walk was on a lonely and industrial stretch of road and I was always dressed to the tee as I walked.  One day my wait for the bus was exceptionally long and distressing.  Hours went by and the bus was nowhere to be seen.  Then a stranger came along in a red convertible.  He asked if he could give me a ride.  I hesitated for just a second or two before I accepted his offer.  We had a nice conversation along the way and then he dropped me off at home.

The next day my co-worker Anne said she had come looking for me at the bus stop intending to ask if she could give me a ride home but I had already left.  I told her that my bus never came and I had accepted a ride from a stranger.  She stared at me, speechless and silent for a few seconds before she lost her temper with me.  I got a good yelling from her and then from all the rest of them as they collectively wondered how I could have done something so dumb, so stupid.  They kept saying anything could have happened, I could have met a serial killer, a rapist.  I just mumbled something about the guy appearing trustworthy and telling them I was safe after all.  But they were having none of it.  I was thoroughly chastised but somewhere inside there was a warm glow.  It was heartwarming to see that all these strangers really cared about me.  There were no special ties, no real relationships with them, we weren't even employed by the same people but they felt responsible, really responsible for my safety.  They were all upset at Dan, my boss, for not being gentlemanly enough and dropping me off every night since we lived in the same area.  Dan got the rough end of it from them.

After this incident, and until I bought my own car and learned how to drive, someone was always driving me home.  Even when I learned how to drive but the idea of taking on the maze like streets of Washington DC for business purposes filled me with cold dread, Anne always drove me to my own assignments.  I can never forget all her kindnesses to me, for as long as I live. 

I got invited to Thanksgiving Dinners and other parties.  There were people who helped me move when I changed apartments and people who offered to teach me how to cook (little did they know what a losing proposition that was).  Someone was always around to help me out of a tricky situation or to offer advice.

This too was Americanism at its best, selflessness and kindness.  Perhaps I would have witnessed something similar even if I had lived an adult life in India but that's an experience I will never have, it will forever live in the land of conjecture.  What I have registered is that when I was ten thousand miles away from home, often alone, often unsure, I met so many people who were willing to hold my hand through every situation, who were always looking out for me when I needed this care and concern the most.

This stands out in my memory, again as a contrast to the time when I had solicited help from my father's Indian friends.  As someone who straddles two continents and two cultures I always find myself returning to the same points of comparison. It was important for me to take a test of English as a foreign language (TOEFL) in order to secure admission to the university.  I still didn't have a car and I had asked my dad's friend if on the morning of the test, since he worked at the same place where the test was being held, he could pick me up from my apartment, on his way to work and take me to the test center.  He had agreed and had said that it would be no trouble.

However, on the morning of the test, the clock kept ticking and no one showed up to pick me up.  I kept waiting and finally walked to a payphone to call and ask if he was still planning to pick me up.  He never came to the phone, his wife did.  I was on the verge of tears, but she didn't hear it in my voice as she went on and on about how I needed to become self-reliant and self-sufficient, how I couldn't continue to expect "uncle" to help me out even though I had outgrown all help this uncle could have given me after the first few weeks of my arrival.  She said it was of no concern to her if I missed this test taking date, that there would be other dates when I was more capable of taking care of my own transportation needs.  I kept stuttering and trying to say that uncle had said it would not be a problem for him to swing by and pick me up on his way to work but to no avail.  I finally hung up on her and walked back to my apartment with heavy steps and teary eyes wondering if there was any way to get myself to the university, twenty minutes away from where I lived, to a test that was going to start in twenty minutes.

By the time I got back to my apartment I realized that I had somehow locked myself out of my own apartment as well.  I just sat down on a bench near the steps and started wiping silent tears.  That's when the building superintendent tapped me on my heaving shoulders and asked if he could be of assistance.  I told him how I had a test to take and no means of getting myself to the venue in twenty minutes.  He offered me his hand and said, "Come with me".  He led me to the parking lot and his battered pick-up truck.  He said, "hop on!" I did and then we rattled our way through the gates of University of Maryland.  I was able to take my test as scheduled and when I got home I didn't have enough words to thank the super.

More selflessness on display.  A trait that signaled, 'if it doesn't cost me a dime and if it means the world to you, then I am there for you". 

Over the years I found so many Americans who were so nonchalant about offering a helping hand and about as many Indians, now settled in the US of A, who, with every gesture, every word spoken or unspoken, implied a marking of territory of sorts as though someone new from back home threatened their peace and security, their sinecure.  They could have achieved all means of success and acclaim but they appeared insecure on their perch, as though the effort of a kind gesture toward someone from the old country would topple them over in ways that would make immediate recovery impossible.  They looked at one as though they were saying they made it and they weren't allowing moochers on board.

Kindness and charity didn't come as easily to them.

Even as I write everything I have written so far, I feel as though there is an element of self-fulfilling prophecy in all of this.  I expected the best, I approached my new world as though I expected from it an exalted outcome, I put my best self forward and I got it back in spades, at least in those early years.

My accent, my ignorance, my demeanor were all as novel and as strange to my new friends as my friends were all culturally different and strange to me and perhaps we were all on our best behavior.  No one was being taken for granted in our mutual interaction.  The first impressions on either side were favorable.

After taking this long walk down memory lane and as I typed the passage above, I realized I have stumbled upon a major clue toward answering this question about the quintessence of Americanism: taking things for granted.

In the beginning I took nothing for granted, everything was either a pleasant or a nasty surprise and I dealt with it as the moment dictated.  But one lives and one learns and one of the lessons learned is that as the years go by, in a particular place, with ones friends, with ones family, in fact with all aspects of life, we take an increasing number of things for granted.

When that happens we lose something essential, we lose an incremental note of grace each time we take one more thing for granted, perhaps.  The more familiar we are with something the more graceless things get and the more graceless they get the more at home we feel.  No one epitomizes grace in a state of extreme comfort and such comfort is always a cherished goal despite the price one pays.
 

The Quintessential American - I

"Do you feel like a quintessential American?" I asked A.

"These days I do, at the nadir", he said.

"Hmm...that's not quite what I am getting at", I said.

To which I said, "almost everything is a point of comparison for you, between India and America. When we see a brilliant movie or TV show, with flawless direction and lines of dialogue that never miss their mark, you ask me if I can imagine an Indian movie or show with the same attributes. When we see an intelligently designed product you ask if I can imagine it coming out of India. When we see people trying out adventurous things like bungee jumping or diving off a cliff you once again ask if an Indian can be imagined in such a situation. Even when you wolf down habaneros by the dozen you question the ability of Indians to stand heat in their food to the extent that Americans can. This one is really strange because Indians are famous for eating hot food! So tell me what it is that sets America apart in your mind? What trait, what characteristic? And how American do you feel? You've been here longer than I have!"

"It's hard to explain. I see it through sports. Football, baseball...how it's played, how it works as an instant ice-breaker when you are around people who follow the same team or even when they follow other teams, people bond over sports, something active, something energetic. I don't see Indians radiating energy. Every time I go to India I see people sitting around discussing politics or Hindi cinema. I was always stunned on my trips back to India when I heard people get into serious discussions about how many people Amitabh Bachchan single-handedly fought or how many storeys he jumped and survived! It's as though Indian cinema is more real to them than reality. And every movie buff talks about heroes! How are these actors heroes? What have they done that's so heroic? Do you ever see Tom Hanks or Harrison Ford being called a hero? I don't think this way, Americans cannot possibly think this way."

We have been through similar discussions on several occasions during our twenty-one years of marriage. His view of India doesn't necessarily mesh well with mine, even though I can't deny the fact that actors and actresses, for some mysterious reason, reach an exalted status and that politics does get discussed with directionless passion, just for the sake of discussion.

We both think of the time in the nineties when we were visiting India and we were talking to some of A's young cousins, little kids, who said they couldn't do well in school and that it wasn't worth doing anything with their lives because Laloo was in charge. I haven't heard little American kids say that their grades don't matter because Bush or Obama are in charge.

But none of this gets us closer to the question: what makes one American?

There's the sports immersion that appealed to A because he came to the US at the age of eight. A world viewed through the lens of American sports is certainly uniquely American. He still carries around an entire century of baseball stats in his head and remembers his Little League or high school football days with fond nostalgia.

It was different for me. I grew up with stories of America. My parents always referred to it as my country. I never imagined an Indian future for myself. In Indian crowds, in uniquely Indian dirt and poverty, amidst the rudeness of bank tellers or in the face of bureaucratic red tape I used to hear about how smooth the process would have been in the US. I also heard that Americans were friendly and lively and always wished and greeted strangers or offered help if someone's car was broken down at the side of the road. To me it sounded like heaven on earth and my heart was set on America.

I thought I could learn about America from Archie comics! (I wasn't too far off in this estimation). I devoured these. I never missed a single episode of Star Trek or Diff'rent Strokes or I Love Lucy; these were the only shows that made it to India during the years when I was watching them. I needed to absorb the diction, the culture, the sights and sounds through the pages of comic books and novels and through the black and white television images.  Sidney Sheldon, Ayn Rand, Tootsie and my parents' fond recollections of a carefree time here all helped construct a particular image of America in my mind.

I started spelling things the American way, dropping the unnecessary "u" from words like color or labor and spelling words like organize and mesmerize with a "z" (pronounced zee).

Earlier on my dad had acquired an encyclopedic series of books for us called "Learning by Doing". These books had been authored in America and were basic science books that taught science through illustrations and experimentation. I devoured those books. I especially loved the illustrations, the most poignant ones showing a father or a son or a father and daughter standing in the fenced in yard of a typical American suburban home as the father pointed up at the night sky to planets and constellations. It was an image that got etched in my mind.

Since my dad had obtained a doctorate in the Sciences in this country and since I thought of him as a scientist who made sure my first few words were, "DNA is the building block of life", in my ideal sense of America, dads were scientists and they held their kids' hands through observing and through doing things together, helping them think for themselves.

When I was older and it was time to start thinking about my westward journey I read some of the literature the embassy put out. These books and pamphlets said Americans were friendly, talkative, engaging, that they respected personal space and breaching this 3' distance between yourself and others was frowned upon in informal social settings. I absorbed these facts as well.

I thought I saw some of this in action when I went to the American Embassy in New Delhi to get my first US Passport. An American girl behind the passport counter was demonstrating something to her colleague by breaking into an impromptu dance. I was entranced. Never in my life had my own personal interactions been so buoyant, so energetic.

Was this what it meant to be American?

There came a time when I didn't have to wonder anymore. I held my father's hand for the very last time as he led me here and indicated more confidence in my ability to make it here than I could muster up for myself.  But no inner thoughts were daunting enough for me to decide against this move.  I was here, out of the air-brushed world of my imagination and breathing the air, feeling it on my skin. I landed here in the fiery brilliance of fall. I saw colors I had never seen before and endless highways. I saw more cars than people and then I started meeting the people.

There was Mr Christian Dunyoh, at the employment office, who rolled his eyes and shook his head in despair when he learned that I could neither type nor drive and that all I possessed was a legless BA Honors in Economics. He found me a job nevertheless and will remain memorable for his chagrin at my lack of life skills and an optimism that remained unaffected by it.

The next stop was the workplace where my boss was only a year older than I was. I was all set to call him sir or Mr Sierra but the former wasn't done and the latter, he said, was his dad. He was simply Dan and I was to call him that. He told me that first names were to be used all the way up the chain of command. Informality in addressing people was my first lesson.

The second workplace lesson was that there was no concept of putting in some time or deserving before desiring. There was no break from desire, here in the new world, relentless desire drove this engine.

My boss was new in his role when he hired me and he was campaigning for his next promotion from day one of his current job. He took me in his confidence and often pulled me aside to help him plot his next moves because even at twenty-one, like all Asians, I was perceived to be in possession of some ancient wisdom and insight. Or perhaps it was just my ability to spell correctly. Whenever I asked him what made him think he could be promoted just a couple months into this job, he told me that this was the way things worked, that all it took was enhancing ones visibility to upper management, to not miss a single opportunity to be in their faces and to even pretend one was Italian when one really was Puerto Rican.

This was a novel idea for me. I came from a place and a time where almost everyone I knew worked in the public sector and there were no fast tracks to the pinnacle. One had to put in the time, earn seniority and take a step up when the time came. I grew up hearing how honest people were inevitably on the slow track. The ones who hopped, skipped or jumped ahead used political connections and the Hindi word, pairvi, was often heard in this context. I suppose it meant using inside connections to get ahead. So this world where one thought one could simply reach out and pluck a promotion out of thin air, was new to me. This was 1988 of course, and this country still had jobs and things like career tracks.

What stood out from my initial American experiences was evidence of an unquenchable, infinite thirst riding the perfect wave of hope. Even if one's microcosm showed tinges of despair, the macro picture erased it all with finesse. On a larger, grander scale an American was always soaring above the earth and looking down at a glittering blue, luminous perfection.

In those early years a quick adoption of this attitude was indispensable for me. See, I, have never felt lucky and I have never felt as though I could attract wealth or success. But coming here did bestow upon me a sense that with tenacity and determination I could possibly turn things in my favor, just a little bit.  Just that hint of a feeling, often just something that whispers in your ear and brushes against your fingers that says it is all possible here more than anywhere else in the world, is a quintessential American feeling for me.

The Company Men

I didn't see the entire movie, just tuned in at the part of The Company Men where Ben Affleck's character was calling himself a loser at 37. It was easy enough to piece together the facts after half the movie was over. They couldn't pay their mortgage, their son gave up his Xbox, the wife worked double shifts and the American dream hadn't crashed and burned but was close to it.

The movie became one of great interest to me after I filled in the blanks. They could have been telling my story since I bear the scars of two layoffs.

The first time I became an unbearable cost at a progressively impoverished corporation I left them my jar of pennies and a note saying it was a donation to help stall their imminent financial demise.

The second time around I wasn't quite as cocky. I was older and nervous. At that time plan B hadn't yet made an appearance. The fog was dense. There was no occupation or income to state on any forms, there was a massive student loan that would once again start burgeoning out of control by feeding on capitalized interest while the payments got deferred. All degrees of freedom were gone, obliterated. I was alone, losing oxygen.

There were those moments of self-loathing that can only come to a firm believer in choices and consequences. Was my past littered with bad choices and bad decisions? Had I willingly drained my career of all its lifeblood, was I incompetent and ill-equipped for life.

And then there were the moments lit by the sickening light of the thing called hope that said none of this was my fault, that there was no longer any stigma attached to the loss of one's job, that we were all together in this sinking, stinking ship.

Neither realization allowed for the tearing of a check from that meaningless checkbook, tied to a bank account that was in the red and getting redder by the minute because of the fees banks liked to charge accounts that didn't have sufficient funds on deposit, and to write a check to the mortgage company.

They said money can't buy happiness. In that state of impoverishment one hoped that the originator of that saying had faced a firing squad in some dictatorial regime for having uttered those inane words.

Happiness. What is happiness if it isn't being in a state that provides infinite degrees of freedom? And degrees of freedom are always bought or sold to the highest bidder.

The sun still came up when it did, time continued its brazenly audacious task of aging you out of any potential open positions meant for unscarred young things who had just tacked up a framed degree somewhere in their 500 sq ft studio apartment above a Manhattan bodega.

So there was a lot of sitting around, walking, flailing, falling and squinting for direction through the thick fog. But fogs are just that, fogs; wispy, temporary, a veil, not a wall. If one staggers through it, collects a few burrs, stumbles over some logs and steps in some ditches eventually a bramble free path does emerge.

I find myself on just such a strange path now. The game has changed and the rules get made along the way. The lesson one learns is to shake any residual belief in permanence, to distance oneself from historical lessons and from the idea that the past has any bearing on the present.

The brilliant nerds around us get rich and richer by designing and programming gaming scenarios where one battles lurking danger, vanquishes, conquers or surmounts and proceeds to the next level.

No game addict quits after level one and no life addict should either. It is all one massive exam; solve a problem move on, solve another move on and continue doing it until your body gives out and the soul stands poised for flight into nothingness or into something incomprehensible or unimaginable.

I am in my sinecure hammock for the moment, taking occasional dips in a time soup; Dali's clock, melted to a point where dawn is unrecognizable from dusk.

I reminisce and recollect my days of enslavement to the clock, the neuroses and the panic it induced, running to catch buses, trains or cabs, screaming at the long procession of red tail lights, praying I won't be sharing an elevator with a boss who would raise his left hand and train his eyes on the wristwatch there to make a silent point about punctuality. I think about the skipped lunches the forecasts, re-forecasts, the reconciliation of actuals to forecasts, the late nights spent at the office and I marvel at the involvement I had shown, the way I had internalized and assimilated every nuance of the business, only to be summoned to an HR office one Friday to be told that costs had to be cut and that my position was being eliminated.

How can one allow oneself to live and breathe a job that gets "eliminated" without a second of thought by the masters one so selflessly served?

These recollections inspire awe and wonder and reinforce the lesson that your interests are of no interest to anyone but you, that you need to solve your singular problem and move on to the next sans emotion and sans attachment, believing that each step you take is a non sequitur; it doesn't follow a logical, linear progression.

One only need review my dad's career and life to verify this: Hawaii isn't predicted for the fatherless son of an Indian freedom fighter, an in depth, doctoral level study of the Pacific Caulerpa does not predict a life in snowy Canada or in an agricultural university on the outskirts of a small town in Bihar. None of this predicts a lifetime in Delhi, some pioneering work in the area of vocational education in India or a life of quiet retirement in Canada where managing every nuance, every measurement and every reading of one's blood pressure or sugar or creatinine is as much of a full time job as the founding and running of an institute of vocational education in Bhopal. Those years have receded so far back in our memories, they offered no hints, no clues in 1996 about what 2013 would have in store for him.

The dense fog only ever allows immediate action on that which stares us in the face, the rest lies in wait, asleep, awaiting our tread.

There's no room

She sat there, listless, yawning, waiting for her daughter's violin class to end.  Her eyes were unfocused and there were bags under her eyes.  She seemed incapable of taking another step.  She could have curled up and taken a nap right there on the carpet of the waiting room.

I commented on her tiredness, told her she looked ready for bed.  I was waiting for her daughter's class to end as well because my own class started next.  On Tuesdays I do have an elevated level of stress because I need to time things perfectly: leave work at a certain hour, catch a certain bus, pray for flowing traffic etc.  But I wouldn't dream of giving up my violin classes because of this.  In fact if my class was two hours long instead of 30 minutes, even if it started at 8 PM and ended at 10 PM,  I would still love it.  I would prefer it longer.  It's the only time of the day when I am doing something good, something that enriches my life, something that is so far removed from what I do to earn a living.

Our conversation went on.  We started talking about Route 206 and how clogged it got during rush hour because of all the construction and the long stretches of one-lane traffic.  I experience Route 206 on Friday nights or Saturday mornings when I go for my Hindustani classical vocal lessons.  I told her my reasons for traveling on this route on certain days.  That's when she told me how impressed she was with my efforts at taking classes, my desire to learn new things.  She said it wasn't possible for her to absorb anything new at all at this point in life.  She said there was no room.  She said she was crazed enough at work and all she wanted was to relax with a glass of wine after work and not do another thing that involved getting off the couch.  Just bringing her daughter to violin and soccer and basketball was an immense strain.

I told her I would get crazed if all I was doing was my work, that moving numbers around in spreadsheets would cause early brain death for me if that was all I did with my time.  I mentioned I would be bored out of my mind if I wasn't finding ways to learn new things.  I said that it was difficult for me to find inspiration in number crunching.  She said her work inspired her everyday.  That there were new challenges everyday.  Each work day was different for her, there were new problems to solve, new opportunities to explore creativity, to get absorbed in her work, creativity was rewarded, employers cared.

Hmm...so where before I was feeling mildly superior for having interests outside of work and the energy to explore them after a fourteen hour long day, now she had swiftly turned the tables and backed me into a corner, forcing me to the recurrent exploration of the "where did I go wrong" theme.  How did all my choices lead me to a place where all I do is move numbers around? Why am I so singularly incapable of finding something exciting to do to keep body and soul together in fine functioning order, without craving newness? I click open all my files, review everything I have on my plate a million times, trying to find something new, something exciting, a different way of doing something, some way to find enchantment and contentment in what I do and I continue to draw blanks.

If a hammer is all that is "officially sanctioned" to perform all necessary tasks in my role then all my problems do take on the morphology of a nail.  I am not allowed to stray.  I am not allowed to emerge from my straitjacket.  So I stay put.  I smile and take pleasure from the wide-eyed looks of wonder that I get when people say things like, "Wow how do you do it? I couldn't."

Student Loan

It was an automated response
It confirmed receipt of payment
And showed me a new balance
Not much different from the old.

The response stated quite clearly
Its "no reply" nature. It promised
A swift bounce back, a notification
That an attempt to communicate
With the sender would result in
Undeliverable bits and bytes.

Longitudinal research on my life
Will show an undiminished loan,
Borrowed fifteen years ago and
Still as fresh and as youthful as
The day it was born. It is in fact
A burgeoning beauty,
With no concept of age or death
Or diminished stature.

It feeds, it grows and it feeds
Some more. It has reached
Immortality. I am certain it
Will outlive me.

So I fired up a response
To the no-reply address. This
Wrath needs to be bounced
Off the walls of my padded cell.
I am straitjacketed and shackled
But I can still scream "usury",
And have it fall back on my
Crumbling self.

Poetry

I have been hanging out with poets and people who want you to believe that what they are writing is poetry, for many years.

Identifying that which deserved the tag of poetry back when studying language and literature was a requirement, in ones school years, was not so challenging.

I didn't much care for what it entailed. I never liked learning all those lines by rote and then being asked to recite it in class. None of our teachers delved any deeper into the subject. Studying English was generally fun because textbooks came with stories, but poetry was like a bump in the road, something for which one did the bare minimum required in order to get by.

I am certain many of you would say that it wasn't so in your schools and that your teachers made the study of poetry meaningful for you. That is entirely possible but it wasn't the case for me.

We studied a lot of poetry in school. We were asked to read it, learn it by rote, recite it and perhaps answer a few questions about it on exams. Nothing more, no painstaking exploration of ideas. But despite its resemblance to an onerous chore, identifying what set poetry apart was never a problem.

One noted rhyme, rhythm, meter and an exploration of thoughts an ideas within those bounds, as though these explorations were endlessly possible, in infinite combinations within these bounds, as though these limits, these external constraints didn't even exist or impede. In the final product one sensed that which differentiated prose from poetry.

Beyond those student years, life ensured a rigorous and methodical schooling for me in the prosaic and mundane non-arts. I fell headlong into soulless pursuits. Poetry was a distant memory. But it has managed to become a part of my history in recent times.

I came in close contact with writers, many of whom told me they couldn't express themselves in prose and preferred poetry as a means of expression. Many of the folks I met were close in age, so they were probably schooled in the same manner, in the same era as me. So I marveled at their love for poetry and their distaste for prose.

I started reading what they were writing. Later on I graduated to asking them why they called what they were writing poetry, their works were nothing like the thing that neatly slid into the exalted slot reserved for poetry in my brain. These so called poems came without form, without structure, without a spine. They resembled words slithering around on a page or a screen in rather messy configurations where a few lines were longer than others, nothing rhymed and no ideas other than yearning, loneliness, lust and longing were ever explored. They appeared to be journal entries that were being aired out with line breaks and mushy language.

I wasn't criticizing, I was just puzzled. Perhaps this indeed was poetry and ideas like consonance in recitation and adherence to meter belonged in the dark ages. Perhaps poems were supposed to be like yawns or tears or other impromptu ejaculations, delivered in the moment of their creation.

But with so much wondering and seeking going on I was bound to run into a poet who has kept up quiet but sustained efforts at telling the world that poetry wasn't a yawn or a tear. Rather it almost always needed to be a wondrous alchemy of words, observation, metaphor and structure and that sacrificing linguistic excellence and elegance was never an option.

I now sought poetry where a larger thought, a larger idea could be explored even through the casual observation of the most mundane. Poetry could now be found in ink drying on paper, in waiting lines, in waiting rooms, in hospitals, in cafeterias, on buses, on ferries, in the spaces between things. I didn't need to accept longing, yearning, loneliness or, at the other end of the spectrum, the verbatim description of recent events as poetry. It was liberating.

I tried writing some of my own poetry. The streets of New York City glitter at night, have you noticed? In the day time Lincoln stares up at us out of pennies embedded in the sidewalks, homeless people push their lives around in shopping carts, no one looks at anyone in an elevator, there's a certain air of desperation in interviewees and an air of extreme discomfort in interviewers, there are people who draw smiley faces or baby's feet on misted up bus windows when they are stuck inside a bus with steamed up windows on a wintry night, all these things make for poetry in the truest sense because there is that which the eyes see and that which can be attributed to what one sees.

The key to poetry lies in this attribution, this is the realm where the concrete and the sublime come together seamlessly.

There are those who write about world events and natural disasters. They want to tell us about the people who lost everything in Hurricane Sandy and they reproduce news reports in rhyme. This is not poetry. You cannot describe an earthquake and the resultant loss of life, limb and home and call it poetry. In these instances the poetry lives in the aftermath, in between that instant when one was whole and contemplating one's things to do list for the next day and the instant when one's home was reduced to rubble, rendering all such lists extinct.

And when poetry is all of these things, when it explores all that's interstitial, that's when it becomes irresistible food for ones soul.

Did I Leave Footprints?

There was a credenza
In a corner of the room.

I paid it no mind

Perhaps it served
Some obscure purpose.
I had rested
A coffee mug on it once.

We gave it away last spring
Dragged it to the curb
On recycling day
And left it there.

There's a square depression
In the shag of the carpet
Where the credenza once was.

The original hue
of the carpet was
a much brighter beige, it seems.

I walked out the double doors
Of the Port Authority Bus Terminal
This morning and squinted up at
The New York Times Building.

Did this still feel like it once had?
Like home?

I walked east, then south
Balancing a purse, a tote and
a steaming cup of coffee.

I noted the woman dressed in
The all familiar black who had gold
colored shoes on with red laces.

I was indeed here even if my gait
was wobbly. estranged.

I even recognized
The bagel and coffee vendor,
He was at the same spot
on my old beat.

He did not remember me.

Back at home much later
I see the lighter colored
rectangular track where
the credenza once was.

These footprints were permanent.

Earler in the day,
The guy at our meeting,
The disembodied
Speaker phone voice,
Whose face I've never seen
Swore he had met me
And had known my name
For "hundreds of years"
He insisted, "who hadn't?"

Makes me wonder
If there was a marked,
permanently etched,
Indentation
Where I once was.

Sunset

This was prompted by someone's picture of a sunset.
***


As the eastern seaboard ascends into darkness in golden hues of slanted light,
I squeeze the sand between my toes and let the water cover me up to my knees before it recedes again, taking with it the sand I was trying so hard to hold. I feel the gentle brush of the breeze add another layer of gold to my hair and skin.

A lover would taint the moment. Words would be as unwelcome as the misplaced applause between two movements of a concerto. As the sun glows brighter each second and as the expectation of darkness starts building up to a crescendo, I feel a disintegration of all that was me. In that one moment I am nothing. I am insubstantial and I perceive no boundaries, no endpoints to my nerves, my skin, my limbs.

There are clouds now that offer pink and purple streaks across the orange orb of brilliance and darkness is at hand.

There is a frisson of fear now, darkness is the impending denouement. I lift up my camera. I want to capture the divine in its final moments and share it with virtual friends who would be awakening to brightening skies on the other side of our planet. I intend an image that defines the pleasure, the sensuousness of an ephemeral moment of sensual absence and divine presence.

I expect a copyrighted image that tells of the keenness of my eye and boasts of my aesthetic. I am all perverse humanity now as the growing darkness devours the divine and I start the long walk to the boardwalk and the blinking neon palm trees, scrolling through my camera roll for that one image that would set my social networks ablaze with appreciation.

Automata

About automata I obsess,
Although this I do confess,

I knew nothing about them,
until Scorsese's enchanting go,
at Brian Selznick's Hugo.

Hugo sought a heart shaped
key, to let his automaton,
be that which he was meant to be.
I sought beauty and artistry
and an afternoon tinged
with a hint of mystery.


Scorsese, blessed by Mesmer,
cast a spell, and delivered,
as he carved out voids,
and filled them with dreams,
and an arc of resolution,
tailored and trimmed,
for our consumption.

This fiction spun alive
every dust-ridden archive,
and museum basement,
revealing abandoned and
creaky inanimates - worn,
broken, yet concealing,
logic and precision.


Our own Morris Museum,
set up displays when they
obtained some and news
reports showed wide-eyed
kids, each one a forty eight
inch bundle of wonder, awe
and fascination.

Their robot puppies didn't
do the trick, their walking,
talking and peeing dolls
fell woefully short, against
a smiling figure that could
enchant while writing,
sketching or playing ball.

Renaissance creations
from Parisian courts,
with elegant vetements
and a hint of a soul -
What made them tug
at heartstrings, like no
robots ever could?


****

I find automatons fascinating.  There is poetry around them, they are ancient attempts at the secrets of the soul.  I find our obsession with creation, especially when we make successive, iterative, evolving attempts at assembling something that can be like us without emerging from a womb.

I was building on a conversation with my daughter, often my muse, and I mentioned to her that perhaps we come close but never simulate humanity in its entirety because we never program irrationality or impulse or impetuousness or the times when we do something that defies all expectations and all paths that would be considered logical, meaningful or rational, in other words the eternal Spock vs Kirk debate.

Can one work irrationality into the complex internal mechanisms of an ancient automaton or a futuristic android? Who knows! But for now my daughter concurred that we made more irrational decisions than rational ones as humans.

Illustration: Anoushka Thakur

Solipsism - 7

It just occurred to me that if I hadn't put myself through the process of acquiring an MBA degree 15 years ago or if my graduate school studies had been free, I would have considered myself in a very happy place at this moment.

I am not questioning the worth of that degree but examining its full worth may be a futile exercise in hair splitting.  Because no matter how many things I put down in the column entitled "Pros", the "Cons" would forever weigh down the scale, forcing the other side all the way to the ground because it has left me with what appears to be an unerasable debt.  I don't have enough years left in my working life to be able to erase this debt.  It is almost like those asthma or COPD commercials for the drugs for these conditions.  They always show a lumbering elephant walking around the person playing the part of the asthmatic.  The person playing the part appears somewhat content having consumed the drug being pitched but the elephant never leaves the room, it follows her around at a slow but steady pace.  I suppose these commercials hint at the incurability of these conditions, suggesting that their drug will only temporarily relieve the onerous condition.

I spotted another commercial for a drug for gout a few months ago.  Here the gout afflicted person was initially carrying around a huge, unmanageable and unwieldy jar of bilious green fluid, balancing it on his person, on his car, living his life while carrying this thing around.  Then the drug got prescribed and the jar shrank in size until it was barely visible in his messenger bag.  Well, lucky are the consumers of this drug if the claims made in this commercial are valid.  In my case my various jobs have been an extremely inadequate pill for the bilious loan I am carrying around.

The degree was rendered inadequate in the Bush years, I suppose, and it has never regained its worth or adequacy, joining the ranks of all depreciated things - homes, cars, employable worthiness as a function of advancing age.  It is my elephant in the room or my big jar of gout.

I can ignore it.  I can go days and months without thinking about it, just sending an automatically paid, painful pound of flesh the way of a lender appropriately initialized as SM, every month.  I try to remember the most memorable television miniseries lines ever spoken, "when you are forgotten you cease to exist" [Merlin] and I think of all the wise men who say you can become what you pretend you are.  I've tried to visualize it crumbling to dust and disappearing, I have tried to forget it, I have tried to pretend I am debt-free but it sticks around like a big jar of gout or a dolorous, trunk and butt swinging elephant.  Perhaps that's the big "Pro" - this degree keeps me from being trampled by the object of its own creation.  Circular reference rears it ugly head again.

So much for the enthusiasm of ones twenties when everything seems possible and all dreams are still alive.  Then on come the shackles, in some form.  There are worse shackles in other lives I suppose and again, what purpose will complaining serve? We'll carry it around till death do us part from it.

I did intend for this solipsistic detour to be somewhat upbeat - note the first three lines where I say I would be in a happy place but for this thing - but I lose my smile when I think of this thing that I can't possibly afford to not think about.  An extreme evil in the form of capitalized or compounded interest will be wrought on my person if I ever really forgot about it!

So we labor on, relishing momentary joys, doing what we can, never what we would love to do because forgetting it is simply not an option.

Solipsism - 6

Today I got to chat with a cousin who was like a best friend growing up.  She is just a couple of years older than me but on those occasions when we met we never ran out of things to talk about.  We often stayed up all night discussing everything under the sun.  I haven't seen her since 1996.  But we reconnected on Facebook today.

Through a whole lot of small talk, when I got around to asking her about how other relatives of ours, who live in her city, were doing she said something that carries echoes and reverberations for me. She said that she really wasn't in touch with anyone else.  She said, "Main bhi sab ki tarah shayad khud hi mein simat gayi hoon".  That's not easy for me to translate literally for non-Hindi speakers but it hints at the broad and all-encompassing nature of isolation that we all feel at some level these days.

It is sad to me, this isolation phenomenon, even as I too exhibit signs and symptoms of it.  I never pick up the phone to call anyone if I can help it, I am extremely telephone averse.  Even in the world of online chatting I am least inclined to take the initiative to greet someone unless I am absolutely certain about reciprocation.  I feel that if I greet someone it should yield a conversation, if it doesn't it leaves bad vibes and niggling, circulating thoughts of rejection; lack of reciprocation being one of my pet peeves.  So a superficial, unadmired and unwanted part of my self prefers a state of protected self-containment.

What's ironical is that this is not my preferred state.  There is a gregarious conversationalist who likes to talk, listen, laugh and trigger laughs, who is trapped within these solipsistic walls of skin and bone.  In fact I've never been able to heal this rift within.  When I look back at my childhood and early youth (because the present times would be my late youth - no doubt!), I was gregarious, and was often called witty and funny when I was in familiar and safe surroundings but I don't recall a single day of going to school, or work in later years, where I was free of fear and anxiety.  I was scared of my teachers, my classmates, bad bosses, I never said a word in class, I never asked any questions, I never raised my hand.  I tried to render myself as invisible as possible, all the while wishing that this wasn't so, wishing that I could be the same person I was at home.  Things eventually changed quite a bit, with some conscious effort, but I am still not the one resolved entity who is the person I like, who is trapped within.

But it is this person who answered my cousin in these words, "Mujhe to bahot curiosity hai sab ke bare mein. Kaash itna time hota ki India mein sab se mil pati, sab ko hamesha apne dayare mein rakh pati."

I want to know about every cousin, every uncle, every aunt, every old classmate, every friend I've ever had.  I never want to lose sight of anyone I care/cared about.  That's why I will never fall out of love with social networks. I am puzzled and confused by people who don't find it worth their while to keep a permanent connection going with everyone they've ever known.  I am not capable of understanding it.  I am the one person who means it when she says, "stay in touch", after a gathering or congregation of like-minded souls and perhaps the only one saddened by the inevitability of falling out of touch.

Well, the conversation with my cousin was one of the highlights of the day.  Nothing happened as I had planned last night, none of the things I talked about in "Solipsism - 5" came true.  The violin will still happen but the cooking, the baking or the tennis didn't happen since the baby of the family decided that she would rather spend the day with a friend.  She went to the mall and came back looking like this:

What can I say! The person trapped inside her is a Hernando, sadly!

Hernando's parents spent the day driving around listening to the music collection on my iPod and browsing at Target where Anil wanted to find an ottoman that would fit with ease within my workspace for the times when he wants to sit next to me while I work.  We found a good one at Target.  When he is not sitting on it, I can use it to elevate my legs for ideal blood circulation while working.

On the car ride back we were making random lists.  He made a list of women on screen who have epitomized the beauty ideal for him over the years.  It is a pretty unusual selection:

1) Nutan
2) Jennifer Connelly

3) Tanuja - only in that one 3 minute long song from Jewel Thief.  He says she had a very chipmunk-y face in most movies but in that one song she was magical.

4) Olivia Newton John

5) Believe it or not - Meenakshi Seshadri

He has apparently spotted something divine in all these faces.

It was my turn, and my preferences were based on the feelings that each one inspired early on, during a single viewing:

1) The actor who had a lead role in the movie Love Bug - Dean Jones.  When I saw the movie at the age of 13 or 14, he epitomized America for my America-addled brain.  I could have watched the movie a million times.

2) Bill Murray in his role in the movie Razor's Edge.

3) The idea of Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind.

4) Michael Douglas in anything.

5) Robert Downey Jr., in anything, these days.

No Clooneys or Pitts on my list, they aren't bad but they are too universally admired for my tastes.

Next, he started a list of a single most admired trait in anyone on screen and came up with the way Madeline Kahn giggled in all those glorious comedies and Jack Lemmon's nervous laugh.  I thought it was an interesting list to compile, I agreed with his choices. I had never given much thought to a compilation of this nature but I would go with the following:

1) Jack Nicholson's character and how he let his misogyny get tortured out of him in the movie, "As Good As It Gets".  As a woman I should hate this scene, but I loved how he delivered it:



2) Also, loved the special ironic style Gene Wilder displayed in all his movies, especially this one, "Fuzzy Wuzzy was a woman?" - I never stopped laughing during this movie:



3) Alec Baldwin in 30 Rock, on SNL, even the Capital One commercials.

And tonight the list making will continue now that we're bitten by the bug...

Solipsism - 5

Worked another thirteen hour day.  One thing kept leading to another.  Most of this work entails going down various rabbit holes to find the one thread that will connect all actions and consequences together.  I like following the logic and looking for the one thing that will tie all things together, neatly, with a pretty red bow on top.  I despise clutter and unholy messes of thought and action and I could lose myself in a succulent mess that needs straightening out.

But the longer I live the more the realization that a balanced approach to "work" and "life" is a pipe dream, at least for me, hits home.  Out of the two I'll always tilt toward the one that engages my mind to its maximum potential and somehow "life" always loses while chasing this dream.

I'll use the weekend to give life a nice head start tomorrow.  Starting with a full night's sleep, cooking a healthy breakfast for everyone, baking stuff, exercising, playing tennis with the family, now that we found an indoors court.  A two hour violin practice session will do my soul some good too.  We'll end Saturday with a movie or two and repeat all of the above on Sunday.  This still doesn't account for any reading or writing time, that appears to be a luxury that is still somewhat out of reach.

With this much of a handicap, one hopes life can finally take the lead in this race.  Perhaps we'll be able to restrict all work and all thoughts of work within the nine to five range starting Monday, one can dream.

Read everything I wrote above and now I am yawning with boredom! So yawwwwwn...bye for now.

Solipsism - 4

There is something to be said about writing, at least as far as I am concerned.  I have been successful in increasing the number of hours I devote to sleep each day, over the last three days.  This is a good way to throw down some sandbags and...take flight? Not yet.  Not quite yet.  We are still missing a target destination and perspective.

In other news, and in the vein of feeling heartsick about leeching any negativity out there through inconsequential thought meanders - tragedy struck very close to home today.

We live a few miles away from Budd Lake in New Jersey.  It has always been like our very own Lake Geneva.  Its beaches are a popular community destination in the summer time and in the winter people use its frozen surface for ice skating or ice fishing.  Our winters in New Jersey are not as harsh as they are in other parts of the country.  However, we do get a couple of weeks of deep freeze, never more.

This past weekend we were driving by the lake and, for Anoushka's benefit, I pointed toward the lake, at some sailboats.   I couldn't stare left too long. I was driving.  But she spotted several people out on the ice, walking.  We remarked at how confused we were that people could sail and skate in the same lake, at the same time.  Obviously some parts of the lake were frozen solid, some were not.

Last night we heard the news about two teenagers who had walked out on the lake over the weekend, about a 100 feet in, at 6:00 pm, when the world here is already pitch black, with intentions of ice fishing.  They never came back.  The body of one of them has been found by the divers, the other boy is still missing.  State police divers are doing their best and working around the clock to find him.

These boys were alive last week, this week their parents, their friends, their family are wondering how they will ever go on.  Some people heard them screaming for help, saying they didn't want to die, but in the darkness none of them could pinpoint the exact location of the calls.  They are shaken, we all are.  But they heard the screams and couldn't do a thing. There is no one to blame.

The difference between being here and not is just that one instant that was forever out of our grasp.

I've lived long enough by now to take note of people being there - living, breathing, laughing, expressing opinions, making plans, lamenting failed plans, envying others, sharing their successes, their lives, their loves through social media or through poetry scribbled on ceiling fans and walls and journals - one moment and gone the next, leaving in their wake all these things that they will never know about, severed from everything that was about to happen after that one instant that was out of our grasps.  The devastated people they leave behind, who hug each other around wreaths being laid and candles being lit, asking, "Why him? Why her? Why not me?" are the only people who feel death going about its sterile business, affecting only the living.

This moment is the only one that matters.  The past is important but irrelevant despite the best efforts of our minds trying to convince us it matters more than it does.  It creeps around like ivy, latching on wherever it can find purchase.

The future is an unknown abyss.  We only know this moment.  We won't even be the same persons tomorrow that we are in this moment.  Despite this we spend our lives in the long and ominous shadows of memories taunting us with scars of abandoned dreams and abandoned plans, demanding a core consistency from all future endeavors, acting as the all-important arbiters of success or failure, wielding the choice and consequence baton, as we labor on enslaved.

And yet, what would we be without our memories, the single thing that stitches us together and keeps our changing, morphing, evolving selves strung together in an arrangement that passes for the face we present to the world.

Perhaps the right thing to do then is to reject these insidious demands of core consistency from our memories and shake things up a bit, live a little, view ourselves and present ourselves to the world as someone who acknowledges the past, takes what lessons it brings and uses these lessons as catalysts for our next iteration or next avatar.  Pearl necklaces are boring, I'd rather be a collection of carnelian, chalcedony, coral, turquoise and jasper. Why ever not?

Certainly something to think about.

Solipsism - 3

This was the third night of sleeplessness.  Once again it was unintentional.  I was on track with my schedule and tucked myself in at 11:30 pm but I was still gazing at the clock at around 4:00 am.  By the time I got sleepy it was time to wake up again to get Anoushka fed and ready for school.

I had made myself a list of things that needed to happen in order to get me back on track: workout, work, lunch, work, violin, dinner, some light entertainment (reading, television viewing) and bed.  Except for work, lunch and dinner I failed at everything else.

Tomorrow is another day, or so they say.

I'll attempt going to bed at a reasonable hour again but I don't know if oblivion will be easy to achieve.  The niggling thoughts last night took the shape of a visit, several years ago, with someone who calls herself a psychic.  The only thing she told me was that I carried anger within. I laughed it off at that time because I've never considered myself an angry person, certainly not someone who lets anger fester.  I laugh away too many of my failures to ever consider myself angry. 

But on sleepless nights when one's thoughts are a convoluted mass of confusion, ugliness is well within the realm of possibilities.  I was angered beyond reason at the fact that I was a victim of cost-cutting twice within the last three years.  I was angry at myself for chasing dollars and leaving jobs that I never should have left.  I was furious at the people who make hiring decisions, appointing people in roles that would always be challenged in tough economic times and I couldn't believe my stupidity in not questioning these hiring managers or asking them, during the interview, when they said, "any questions?", about the potential longevity of positions in which I was interested.

I cursed out an old boss in this state of sleep deprivation for saying to me that they all felt stupid if I took a vacation, for saying that I was the voice of reason for them, for involving me in major decisions, for relying on my analysis for most of the cost-cutting decisions that were made while I was there and then for writing me out of the budget when I was the one predicting a budgetary shortfall.  I couldn't stop thinking these thoughts in endless, unresolved loops.  I couldn't believe I was so easily taken in, so eager to believe what amounts to nothing but the shoveling of copious amounts of bovine stercus by all concerned.

After I had spewed out all this ugliness from one part of my brain to another, my thoughts took on a post mortem aspect as I asked myself where I had gone wrong and whether I had ever made a decision of which I could be proud.  I thought hard.  I couldn't come up with a thing.  There is something within that ensures a perennial falling short in the view of my sleepless conscience.

This is just what happens at night.  I tend to regain my equilibrium during the day as I tell myself that I am being too hard on myself, that it's really as easy as marking down points A and B on a mental map and finding a way to span the distance.  It's a shame that instead of contemplating the means to span this distance at night, just before falling asleep, my thoughts turn on me in attack mode.

So anger, yes, I probably carry some within.  But it is all self-directed.  There's anger at particular circumstances and the bit players who played a role in the manifestation of said circumstances, but that's all superficial.  I am mostly angry at myself for becoming a victim of that circumstance, at always being acted upon, rather than being an actor.  The rational "day time" version of me is determined to never become someone who is "acted upon" again.  But the nights are defined by self-flagellation and hair shirts.

And really how shameful is all of this? The only thing that's keeping me anxious and awake all night is how I rehash job losses that don't even have a bearing on my present circumstances.  I have moved on to a role where I am more in charge of my destiny.  Why then?

There are countless others with countless real problems.  Some are shivering in their cold homes because after Hurricane Sandy their power never came back, some lost their homes, so many lost their children to the guns wielded by a mad man, there are so many things that are worth contemplating, to which one can devote countless sleepless nights.

I know I am blessed.  Why then can't I learn to act like I am?

Solipsism - 2

It's almost 8 pm.  I woke up at half past noon after having stayed up till about 4 am in the morning.  No, I wasn't working this time.  I gave myself the weekend off.  We were watching a movie - Of Love and Shadows - about the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile.  Anil searched the entire Netflix library and came up with this one because it starred one of his favorites - Jennifer Connelly. He can't pass on any movies starring Ms Connelly. 

Antonio Banderas was in it too.  I remarked at the radiant and dewy quality of his complexion.  In fact, he is the only actor whose poster I've ever had up on a wall near me (of course this was back in the early 1990s).  We agreed that there was some eye candy for both of us in this movie as we settled in to watch. Not a bad movie at all, even though it wasn't as good as Isabel Allende's novel.  No movie ever does justice to the novel on which it is based.

Well, that was the reason I slept in on Sunday and had to wake up with a start when I realized that violin lessons were starting again after a three week long break where I didn't pick up my instrument even once.  I hadn't missed a single day of practice until three weeks ago but the recent spell of lethargy has been so pervasive that I haven't done anything that fit my former definition of myself...even though these occasional spells of lethargy are, unfortunately, a part of my personality.  

The main source of discontent is always about not having written something/anything down because that is the only thing that makes me feel good, that brings me a modicum of satisfaction.  As one can see, there isn't much to write about.  Such is life these days.  There are no interesting conversations, no insights, no expectations, no grand desires, no newness.  

Some suggest one should write what one knows.  There was a time when I was learning and growing and seeking progress but I haven't sought these things in quite some time.  Now I only know stagnation, it seems.  I don't have a sense of what lies ahead and I don't know what I should want from myself.  I used to think contentment was a vaunted ideal but I now think discontent and flux is a preferred state, it ensures an appetite.  

All I know is that these blog posts will appear with some regularity now.  The things that stopped me from living in my head, from showing how self-absorbed I am, through words on a blog, have ceased to matter.  I want to write about how I am feeling at the moment, after all, this is what Michel de Montaigne did in the sixteenth century when he documented every feeling, every want, every need, every experience, no matter how bland or irrelevant. He even locked himself away in a tower in order to write about his feelings! Why not make him a role model? 

These period dramas are really getting to me, making me seek role models from over 500 years ago!

I need to explore what this is, this place that feels like an island between happiness and unhappiness, a place of eerie, stagnant calm.  Is this it? Or can I get a boat ride out of here to a place where some goals and targets are still in sight?

And if anyone chances upon these posts and thinks I need some talking to, just think of these lines from a Billy Joel song, "When I'm deep inside of me, don't be too concerned, I won't ask for nothing while I'm gone..." 

These posts do not warrant a concerned phone call or a solicitous inquiry on Facebook.  Those should only happen when one is unhappy or depressed.  I am neither.  Like I said, I am in a contented, zero expectation, no happiness-no unhappiness state of being.  I have my moments of joys, sorrows, excitement but it all settles in on a flat-lined average at the moment.  

One day it will change.  For now I know I'll sleep well because some black letters have crawled across the screen.

Solipsism - 1

A few days ago my Facebook cover photo displayed the image of a woman wearing her house.  It was the photograph of a photograph displayed at MOMA.  The idea was intriguing to me for several reasons.

For years spaces have given me something to think about.  I remember a house we used to visit as kids; the house of my late aunt.  She lived in what we used to think of as a posh Patna neighborhood.  The homes there were huge with lawns, balconies, porticoes and armies of servants, not something we were used to seeing in a barsati or a duplex in Delhi.  Without launching into the other materialistic attributes of my aunt's house, let me just say that the house was her and she was the house.  One couldn't imagine one without the other.  It was as if she shared her DNA with the house, it was so much a part of her.

What is a house except for a space enclosed within four walls, a ceiling and a floor, just bricks and mortar (or wood and metal here in the US)? I realized it was so much more when we visited the house after my formidable aunt passed away.  That home had lost its soul in a very palpable way even though she was the only member of her large family who was now missing.  Something, some crucial essence had left those spaces and even as a kid I could feel it and sense it at some indescribable level.

I felt another instance of this affinity for spaces when I spent a couple of nights at a friend's home in Delhi.  I was there for just two nights.  I hung out in many different spots in her house - the couch in her bedroom where we shared a cup of tea, her porch that looked on to an immaculately maintained garden where we had our breakfast, the dining table where I chatted with her mother-in-law about some memories that could only have been considered shared memories had we lived in the same place at the same time but felt so anyway.  I felt welcomed in her house, embraced by her space.  Now when I see pictures of her home, her garden, the ivy on her walls, the Gurjari furniture on her patio, it all feels so familiar, so much a part of me.

Another such space is a retreat in the Berkshire mountains in New York.  I have spent a few days there, once with my husband, once by myself and once with my daughter.  The grounds there, the vegetation, the openness of design when it comes to the rooms and the meditation spaces gives me a strange sense of attachment despite it being someone else's space, someone else's home.

A picture that became a Facebook cover photo for me next was Van Gogh's famous painting of a room - Bedroom in Arles.  One could stare at this bedroom in Arles forever and wonder about the artist.  The bed is situated at an angle that blocks the door.  Perhaps it hints at an aversion to uninvited intruders, perhaps it also hints at the occupant's reluctance about leaving this room.  All he needs appears to be in the room, some food, some water, some clothes and what appears to be his life's work, including a self-portrait.  It appears to be an attempt at fusing his identity with the space he inhabited during his Arles days. At least that's how it appears to me.

There must be a million different insights into Van Gogh's reasons for painting the bedroom in Arles.  I am simply thinking about my home as I think through everything I've said above.  I rarely leave it these days.  I think of things I wrote in the past where I referred to my town being a bedroom community.  I felt no connection to my own home those days.  I came home just to sleep.  Now I never leave home if I can help it.  I don't want for a thing that is to be had outside.  The seasons don't bother me; I couldn't carry out weather-based small talk if I had to, it's always 70 degrees Fahrenheit where I am.  My car doesn't get started for days, I sit here day after day, my face lit by the fluorescence from the computer screen as I solve someone else's problems with extraordinary zeal.

This "extraordinary zeal" hints at a surreal immersion, some form of narcotization or escape.  It's as if some invisible force is blurring the lines that defined me, that made me feel distinct, things like a desire to express myself through words, to read what others have written, to sing, to play music, to even watch television, are distant memories  These days I just lose myself in work, completely.  When I do glance up the sun is about to rise again sans the sensation of a new day, new beginnings.

I am an entity that wears my house and loses some of its essence to an extraordinary zeal about something that probably doesn't deserve such devotion.

The spaces that feel so familiar and so comforting are perhaps only so when one gets an occasional, tantalizing glimpse at what's within.