Peachy Affair

Almost two years ago I bought peaches from the grocery store’s local produce section here in US. There was something about the peaches that caught my attention, I can swear they had a golden glow (but I guess that will be easily discounted as hyperbole).

The peaches had the freshness and smell that brought back some childhood memories. They almost reminded me of the earthly smell of early monsoon back home in India. You can only romanticize the smells at the onset of monsoon; later the damp smell feel stale and overbearing as the rains and fog envelop you constantly for the next three months.The other good part about early monsoons was the fruity tradition, a carton of freshly picked peaches, apricots, plums & pears- the 'Pahari' fruits made their way from Nani’s orchards in Paharpani all the way to Nainital for us kids.

Needless to say, there was just no way that I could ignore the urge to put some in my shopping cart. They looked good, even better than the ones that made the hilly trek back home and I was already counting the odds if they could rival the old ones in taste. Sometimes you wish your guardian angels can step in and hold you back before you make such comparative tests of character- even if it is just peaches.

Those peaches were heavenly just like the ones from my Nani’s farm. They had the perfect smell and the perfect peachy juiciness. I ate all but one, I wanted to share it with my roommate who was not much of a fruit enthusiast but I was almost certain she would turn a new leaf when she tasted one of these. My enthusiasm knew no bounds and I called up my mom to tell her of my discovery.

I again went later in the week to get some more of those godly peaches, but I didn't get the same ones. They felt drier-almost drained of their juiciness. My quest continued, my roommate introduced me to peach yogurt as a substitute. I also experimented with peach ice-cream for a while, but you can’t fill a void with yogurt or ice-cream. I took this obsession to the next level with peach long island and Snapple peach black tea. But to no avail..

And since that day I am the cursed ones, looking for those same peaches and having never found them again. I buy them each time only to be let down, I have three peaches in my refrigerator but there are nowhere close to the ones I am seeking.

When I dig deeper about my Peach-fanaticism, I can clearly see how the germ entered my system, as a child I was not a big peach fan. When I was leaving India towards the end of July and I was doing my list of things to eat before I leave, my mom especially bought me some Pahari apricots (we no more have Monsoon fruit basket coming from my Nani’s orchard, that tradition slowly ended with her death). I believe those apricots were just my mom’s way to reconnect with a childhood tradition. With that one gesture she had triggered something else. It was not really about peaches or apricots anymore, it was love for a shared inheritance.

So I understand that this peach quest might be a bigger metaphor in my life, but currently my search is on a purely fruity level at least that’s what I want to believe..

Floating Thoughts

Someone always tells you what the best part would be when you start out with something new..

Yesterday learning to float on my back for the first time, I was remembering an old conversation. In his characteristic excited style, dost A had told me long back-"Back-floating is the best part"..Its a weirdly amusing feeling to let go of yourself and be water borne on your back, i couldn't agree less.

And then I was thinking no one can ever tell you what the worst part will be..you have to take the fall yourself  to realize how hard it hurts and if you can stay afloat in the end..

I have just too many thoughts when I swim..
When i am swimming outdoors I tend to think about the universe and the bigger things in life and when I swim indoors my thoughts tend to be more inwardly focussed-the petty challenges of day to day life.

I like to believe that swimming is like a zen state for me with wise floating thoughts!
 

Fluff!

'Certain things they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone.'- The Catcher in the Rye

Recently I read two books-'The Invisible Man' and 'The Catcher in the Rye'. The central theme in both the novels explores the feeling of alienation, the search for an identity and a certain disillusionment with human behavior. But it is a different alienation in both the novels- one deals with the racial alienation of an individual and the other explorers the physiological alienation of a teenager.

I have to admit that I cannot write an intelligent literary review for 'The Invisible Man' now (its been a while since i finished reading it). However I have a favorite quote from the book which sums up the essence of the book for me : "I did not become alive until I discovered my invisibility." This is the sad truth of existence for a lot of people in the world and the book is a voice for them.

I choose not to write a literary review for 'The Catcher in the Rye', but I would attempt to create a version of the protagonist post the ending of the novel using some imagery from the novel. Here it goes:

I stand at the edge of this crazy cliff..
It’s all silent here except for the wind having a little tiff-
With the waters below and the Rye fields above-it’s a crazy riff!

It’s all silent here except for Phoebe and her gang
She is Killing me with her old hag act as she runs to tag
I’m thinking again about the Ducks that disappear when winter plays tag
I am sure they all hide somewhere cozily under a bag!

I think about the ducks sometimes when I guard the cliff
It’s reassuring to know they’re safe somewhere in bliss

In my mind I keep going over stuff
It’s like Snowballs that roll around and gather fluff!

The last two lines almost describe my mental process.. and the last word helped me give the blog a name..
I hope I did justice to the title of the post :) The lofty goal to write an intelligent book review will have to wait for a while!

(tag- a playground game that involves one or more players chasing other players in an attempt to "tag" or touch them)

To August

I had almost written off August as an uneventful month only to realize that this month has special significance for all US college graduates. The degree of this significance (pun intended) depends on how much 'college' you have in you.

If you are a fresh student starting in the fall session, somewhere around the second week of August you will get introduced to a whole new set of people in your life, and it will be the start of a new august chapter. For an international student the significance is much more, we usually shore up in the first week of August just to get settled in before school begins.The weather too is on the kinder side to make the transition smooth. And this is the story of that one day in August when we made that leap of faith.

If you are living the sordid work life, this is the month when college football starts and henceforth you get a chance to proudly wear your university colors to work. You would have already paid the $6 monthly fee for ESPN so that you have something to look forward to when you head back home from work for the next 4 months. Better still you would have made a plan already to drive up to the University for a homecoming game and meet some old buddies.

If you are in any kind of relationship with a fellow college-goer, there is a good chance that sometime in August was the first milestone for the chain of events leading to the state of affair as they stand today. I would give milestone credit  to even that lame August evening when the two of you get introduced and have a conversation for the first time and the next day the girl doesn't remember the guy's name and confuses him with someone else and the guy intermediately writes off the girl as a snob with special note to himself- never approach her again!

This is how life unfolds and memories are made a day at a time, a month at a time. This concludes my ode to August and yay! finally a blog for this month and the record still stands :)

What's with the open mouths??

A sorry state

Is there a way to know what you really want to do? Not just feel something in a fuzzy way in your head, but know something right into your bones and muscles so that everything you do mirrors what you really want.

Tragedies often bring this helpless feeling where you want to do something but you have no clue how or what. I sat miles away from home and read how my home state was ravaged by the flash rains with no administrative preparedness to handle any conceivable natural tragedy. I sat miles away from home and read when a freak accident wrecked a friend’s life- you get electrocuted in a Delhi shopping area because no one cares about having unsafe electric wirings conducting electricity all the way to your parked car.

I don’t want to write any further, because the sad truth is all my current agitation is futile..

Movie review-'Before..' trilogy

This will have to be the kind of movie that could possibly lie somewhere in my imagination. Or maybe this is the kind of movie that I would have loved to imagine by myself. In either case it is but understandable that I absolutely love it.

I am talking about Linklater, Delpy and Hawke in the ‘Before’ trilogy- Before Sunrise, Before Sunset & Before Midnight. I finished watching the latest installment yesterday and thought of writing briefly about them. The movies are all about conversations that mirror life, conversations between two people in different contexts, different cities and different times of their life. The tone of the conversation changes as life takes them through different phases and the viewer can picture their life together through their 'long conversations'.. Each of the three movies focus on a different phase of life.

In the lives we live, we talk all the time with everyone around but we share the magical ease of talking or even silence with only a few people. However the magic is not just about two people, it is also about the place and the movie captures it beautifully in the picturesque backdrop of Europe. Since it is a movie it plays out in Vienna, Paris & Greece but for the lowly people not in the movie business alternative arrangements often surface out magically in our backyard all in course of a good conversation!

I guess for me the whole premise of loving the movie is the fact that I know the joy of such conversations. If I  try to draw a physical parallel for a good conversation I'd say it is like exchanging a volley over tennis net without keeping score. You run, you stretch, you challenge-play the offensive, you collaborate-play the easy shots. You just keep the flow going and the ball from hitting the ground. Now I don’t play tennis so this analogy may be technically incorrect but I watched a game few days back and I felt that this mental image was closest to what i wanted to say. A good conversation is like a game- it’s about timing, pace, humor, challenge and having fun. The two characters in the movie know how to play this game of verbal exchanges and it’s a delight to watch.

The movie is also a delectable character study, in the course of their conversations you feel as if you know them in flesh and blood. You understand how each of them thinks and how differently from the other. They bring different perspective to the same conversation, to the same situation. They bring with them their different upbringings, their different cultures and you can sense it clearly. I think the worst conversations for me are the ones where someone tries to sound like you. They might have the best intent but the moment they lose their original selves, it’s a tedious exchange- it’s no fun to listen to you. I can at least say that for myself-(I can bore myself to death, heaven save the listeners).

I purposefully didn't talk about the plot, I think it is the execution that really matters here. Meeting the love of your life in a train journey in Europe is straight from some romanticist's playbook and I would have been the first person to dismiss it, but here I am raving about the movie. A good reason to watch it I say!

The day called Birthday

We need celebrations in life to break the monotony of living, and we reserve special celebrations for the day when this chain of living started- the birthday celebration
Each year we have a story of how we celebrated this day last year and over the years this one day can serve as a good pointer of life. Some birthdays are just stellar, some not so great but still there is always a silver lining, some loved one manages to salvage the day for you :)

I can try to describe the birthday celebrations with the help of some alliteration I remember from early childhood-
Cut, Cute, Cake
Do, Disco, Dance
Sing, Sweet, Song
Live, Long, Life
This is how we signed the birthday cards with generous wishes for the benefactor distributing birthday sweets in class. The sweets were ‘Ravalgon’ one year then moved to ‘Dhishum toffee’, ‘Cofffee Bite’, ‘Alpenliebe’ and I guess by the time I reached college, kids in schools had graduated to ‘Centre Shock’- who wants the boring sweetness after all for the birthday. I am not the most updated person but I am sure the kids generation today must have found a way cooler way to celebrate birthdays than our dinosaur generation who flaunted a super frilly frock with matching hair bands on this day and gifts that parents chose for us!

So we have covered all things sweet so far and we can now move forward to the tradition of giving gifts and how it gets complicated with every passing year. All humans are not born equal, some are better gift givers and some are hopeless at this skill. Gifts are difficult because it entails making a judgement both at the givers and the receivers end. How big? How small? Does it? Does it not?
All these questions somehow go into formula to calculate the ‘special quotient’, you have no control over the variables, no one knows the exact formula but each one of us imperfectly run these calculations. However all I care is I manage to smile and get a smile in return..

Birthdays in the Facebook generations have advanced in some more ways. Somehow now the entire world knows that it is your special day. 'Rosetta stone' & 'Starbucks' wants you to send a birthday gift to your friend. Google will celebrate your birthday with a special doodle and on clicking the dooddle your own profile on Google+ will open. A bunch of emails from some other services will also be there to greet you in your mailbox. Welcome to the party unwanted attention!

But most importantly, birthdays are the day to stop and appreciate the people you have in your life who try to make the day special for you in their own way.We need a day when friends should make a call and wish you if they want to stay in your good books.We sure need a day to feel loved and appreciated!

This post is dedicated to bhai and bainu and thank you for the special musical performance!

The psyche of a goodbye..

First Act:

Some nights are cold for everyone and some nights are cold just for you..

Sometimes the reason is simple, it’s the blanket or the heating in the apartment to blame and you know you can fix it the next day. Sometimes you are left cold and awake all by yourself because you have traded away the known comfort of your life ‘here’ for the unknown adventure of a new life ‘there’.  It’s the fear of losing the comfortable blanket of friends, family, festivities and food behind that makes you break into a cold sweat. Fortunately the pragmatic mind can explain the cold shiver and point out that it is simply because you have packed and shipped away your warm blanket.

Second Act:

The cold night wakes into a slightly numb morning at the sound of the anxious alarm by the bedside. In its numbness the following lines ring true
 

“There is a line from Verlaine I’ll never now recall..

There is a street nearby from which my foot steps are barred..

There is a mirror that has looked its last on my face..

There is a door I have closed for the final time..

Among the books in my library (I can see them now- Managerial Economics, Marketing principles-Kotler)

There are some I will never open again..” -Jorge Luis Borges

Third Act:

With a gentle lurch the plane wheels begin to glide on the runway. The pilot maneuvers a gentle turn towards the blinking lights of the runway and the plane passes by the signal man in his fluorescent vest. The flight attendants repeat the usual safety instructions. To an outside eye, it is the perfect slow lingering frame with the pacing hum of the engine slowly building up; the prelude before the bellowing engine hits full throttle and the flat expanse of the ground begins to race by. Then in one pregnant moment the wheels lose contact with the tarmac, fold back in and the plane becomes air bound. I believe this is one moment that defines ‘losing touch’ and ‘leaving behind’ physically. From this vantage point my mind was looking inwardly at all the ‘leaving behinds’-the glances, the words and the warmth of the last hug. This recollection was vividly overpowering and I knew not when it lulled me back into a peaceful sleep..

Fourth Act:

I am in a new place, among new people but I am not alone. An old familiar face from a time I thought I had left behind surfaced back again. So I am sitting in my new apartment, looking at the rain fall against the windows sipping my cup of green tea and hoping that life may keep taking me to places as long as it gives me a chance to reconnect with people I once left behind..