Two years ago, just as I was leaving for Los Angeles, I saw Swades. I made a mental note to myself: If I ever found it difficult to leave LA and come back, I’ll just watch Swades and I’d feel so horribly guilty, I’d come back. So first order of business when I landed here and took a Netflix movie rental connection: List Swades as the last movie in my queue.

Today I was listening to some old Hindi songs on Youtube while updating my website and A R Rahman’s ‘Yeh Jo Des Hai tera’ (http://ping.fm/1ivhu) started playing. It does not help that I am altready swimming in nostalgia and self pity for being in the US and then this song…the one thing I had protected myself from for 730 days…pops up in a queue of songs by Rahman.

To add to the misery, I just finished chatting with a friend who was belting out the list of places in Bangalore to eat new varieties of Dosas.

Now I know myself pretty well by now…I won’t be crying, but once I leave LA, I’ll bet nostalgic about it too. I’ll think about the weekend rituals, the getaways, the memories we created in the multiple apartments we stayed in and it will create a small space for itself in my heart.

Why am I not able to just stick to that image? Why does everything have to be at least a year and an ocean away from me before I become fond of it?

I started following Barkha Dutt on Twitter to cure my homesickness. Once you get reminded of the crime and politicians, you will reconsider moving back. But that ain’t helping. Because for every tweet from her, there is a CNN tweet of how someone got shot 10 miles from my house in broad daylight while waiting in a parked car outside a Walmart.

Suffocation is my only panacea. This void has to be filled, stuffed, burst at its seams and snuffed out of me. I am going to get some of my relatives, servants, the chaprasis at the sales tax office, the college peons, clients, reliance and vodafone call center people, dhobis, shopkeepers, beggars at the railway station and the mad guy at the temple to come on Skype with me and interact with me over the period of a day. And that’ll be the last of these nostalgic blog posts.

It is just a little weird when people ask me why oh why would you want to leave this wonderful country and go back to a country where:

Beggars fill the streets

Pollution fills the lungs

Men shove and jostle you in lines

Rich people are still succumbing to dengue fever

Water borne diseases are everywhere…

Now, I am not saying there is no difference, because if that were true, I would like living here. But the problems are everywhere…I cannot quit on something because it has problems.

Yes for some USA is a god sent release from micro managing parents, annoying inlaws and lower standard of living. But if that was the reason you live 10000 miles, why fake a connection with a place you don’t really like to begin with? Why call India once a week, wear a saree on Diwali, make ready made samosas, watch cricket on the internet, arrange bollywood themed parties, talk about how corrupt Indian politicians are, wonder why India can’t have such clean streets and hatch detailed plans about what US inspired business you will start once you go back.

And when exactly is that? When US doesn’t need you anymore? When you get the pink slip? When you realize that India has huddled masses that will make for a great market for your company? When? And if and when you do go back, let us see how many of those entrepreneurial ventures you will start or even take part in. Let us see how many non profits you will voulnteer for if it is not needed in a college application.

Why would anyone want to live in a place where they cannot be themselves? And you don’t become yourself just by changing your location. If you were waiting to come to the US so you could wear trendy clothes, go drinking at any time, smoke pot and swing, then there is something so deeply wrong with that, I wouldn’t want to comment without consulting your shrink.

So do me a favour, if you love living here, continue, God knows India doesn’t need more skeptic cynics. And when you finally get thrown out and only India will take you back, do not invite me to your thanksgiving dinner.

Cheese is my birthright and I shall have it

When I was young, (notice how the word ‘younger’ is not even an option anymore) I would sneak into the kitchen and pray on the shrikhand. During those long summer afternoons after shazam, he-man and the fun-zone were up, I would look for things to interest me. Everyone would be asleep and the fridge would always be accessible.Sso I would dig deep, find the shrikhand, take a spoonful (heaped) and then replace the shrikhand so no one would know.

Then came the era of cheeses. My dad would travel far and wide and bring us cheese – ones with blue veins, ones as smooth as milk itself, ones with hard wax coverings. My sister (older by 4 years) would experiment with all of them. She is fearless. The smell would put me off. The foul smell combined with a bad incident involving the wax coating and my ignorance saw to it that I would not touch cheese for a very long time.

Childhood turned in to youth and Amul introduced cheese spread. It looked like Shrikhand and came from a company I love and trust and I thought I’ll give it a try. I loved it. My sister innocently asked me, ‘How can you like both shrikhand and cheese? Don’t you have a sweet tooth?’ and fearing that somehow by me having cheese shrikhand would stop being produced or bought or Amul would close down, I avoided the cheese spread.

When I moved to US, we experimented with many types of cheese and overdid it. Now the doctor says lay off whole milk and stop eating like a toddler.

So I went to Whole Foods to get me some of that soy cheese that is flavoured to fool the tongue. I got the pepper jack flavour so it could add some punch. I came home and made myself a heart healthy cheese sandwich (Yes, there is such a thing like that.) and it was hot and the cheese was melted and I had my first bite.

It took me some time to down the heavy brown bread and the ashen chalk cardboard combo that’s called soy cheese. So frustrated, so disappointed and so without opt

Wow, tiny seats. It is funny how the train that runs through the length of LA has the smallest width height and seats. There is no place for my bag and my water, and god forbid I add a laptop to that. And if you happen to wear a coat or even a jacket, you are going to be taking space that doesn’t belong to you. It is like the trains in New York…congested and tiny.

I remember the last time I was in this train. I discovered it after an hour long taxi ride. I looked out of the window the whole way home, marveling at being able to breathe in without the stink of the outside filth inside the train. And to commemorate that moment, I took a deep breathe today. And the smell…oh, the smell. It wasn’t filth, far away from it. It was medu-vadas and chatni and sambhar – the whole enchilada. Totally confused and convinced I was dreaming, I looked around. Just mushu pork. Yes, I am certifiably home sick.

At the station, a beggar was asking for money and I said nope and then in the train, a woman was selling her wares – freshly made bead jewelry. Yeah, like I haven’t fallen for that before. The number of things I have purchased in Bombay trains for 10 bucks – clips, bindis even a load of lemons.

Then when I come home and wander out at night in my apartment complex, the cool wind hits me. It is refreshing and carries with it a hint of nostalgia. You see this same temperature was part of my daily life at MDI Gurgaon. The minute I feel it, I am taken back 8 years to the multiple walks from the room to the computer center. Its funny how Gupta and Mookerjee are totally forgotten and the cold I remember. It seeps into your bones and taints it. Then you can never walk out the door without a jacket or shawl. Where is that global warming now?

My LA life is like a beautiful lie. It is like I am day dreaming and my Mumbai life is juxtaposed on it and at times the differences melt away and for a few seconds I forget where I am.

]]> http://lavanyadeepak.wordpress.com/2009/12/06/from-los-angeles-to-mumbai-in-1-second/feed/ 0 lavanyadeepak http://lavanyadeepak.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/im-surfing-the-google-wave/ http://lavanyadeepak.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/im-surfing-the-google-wave/#comments Wed, 25 Nov 2009 07:55:04 +0000 Lavanya http://lavanyadeepak.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/im-surfing-the-google-wave/ ]]>

It could be that I am just a geek and that is why my heartbeat started racing when I got a Google Wave invite, but c’mon these are exciting times. Amazing softwares, genius companies outsmarting each other all for us, fickle customers. Don’t want to sound rude, but our generation: we are tech-sluts.

Now, what is Google Wave? Way too many people have said it better than I ever can, so Google it. But I experienced a phenomenon so rare that it hardly happens once a year…and I experience it twice today. First I chanced upon Yahoo! Pipes while trying to figure something out at work. I was furious that no one had told me about it. I hadn’t even heard about it. And all this after trying to crack Joomla. Joomla is so deceptively easy that it rivals Ubuntu in making your head spin. And then Yahoo! Pipes is so intuitive that I wanted to start coding something, just for the heck of it. And after I retire, play some Wii and eat, I go to check my email and there I see an invite from Google Wave. That’s it: my day has been made.

Google Wave could stink and it’ll still be something I use. I am all for the underdogs – Yayy Jacob Black and all that, but when it comes to Google, there is no way I am not flying with the leaders. Just today, I created an intranet site to keep all my stuff together on Google Sites. Agreed, their netware isn’t perfect and leaves a lot to be desired, but for software junkies like me, there has to be something new and exciting. Excel is old, Google Squared cuts it. VB is passe, Google Forms is awesome. MS Access is boring, my own little piece of code embedded into my iGoogle page is rocking. So I know some of you don’t yet have Google accounts because your email id has been with you since forever. But you don’t have to check your email on Google, just have an account and please provide it in your contacts page. It would be so sad if I cannot invite you to barbeque because you did not tell me you had a GMail account.

And then there is Twitter and Facebook. I mean, what more can a geek ask for. Ok, I can think of a few things, but I am quite happy with the turnout today. A world full of endless possibilities and free software…boy! am I going to be poor the day they start going Premium on me.

This is the second time I am writing this…wasn’t going to, but it is
required to show how Indian and US are so very similar and clear some
misconceptions.

As I wait at the Union Station for my long distance (Amtrak) train to
arrive, I think of the historical significance of it…so many have
come before me and so many will after me. Everyone waiting for
something, every single agenda defined by a time specified on the
ticket. A double decker train arrives, the steady light bathing the
tracks single handedly, the horn it blows and the wind it brings in to
the station as a way of calling attention to this magnificent modern
marvel. The bell increasing in volume says that when it pulls in to
the station, everyone better pay attention. Majestic like an elephant,
slick like a leopard.

It takes me back to standing in Dadar station, waiting for an outbound
train…eager to get cozy with a book in the middle berth of an
overnight train, no disruptions, no bothers, just the gentle
rollicking of the bogey. We would wait on a crowded platform, it would
be either raining or something would be leaking, so there would be
some water around, there’d be a lot of chatting and hawking and
hauling of bags, but when the train pulled in to the open tracks, it
would fill the space and even if not a double decker, it would look
majestic as its light paints the vermicelli rain drops and the horn
announces the solution to everyone’s worries.

But as I wallow in nostalgia, I feel there is something I am missing
here in the LA station…I can’t put my finger on it and its a good
thing too because I remember just as a board the train, that the thing
that would complete this picture is a stinky station loo. Especially
the gents. The stench that would carry for a kilometer due to our
“environmentally irresponsible” use of water instead of toilet paper
and the very lack of that water.

But just as the thought enters my mind, I brush it away. No way, I
say. There’s no stinky loo in India, I am making it up. You see, when
you are away from your country, you go blind to even the worst things
about it. I cannot think of anything bad for now. Who says long
distance relationships don’t work out?

I get down at my stop and walk towards the office. I see a gardener
fertilizing the flowerbeds and I give him a courteous smile. But as I
make my way up the stairs, a vaguely familiar smell stops me. Where is
it coming from? Why is it so familiar? Where have I had this feeling
of wanting to gag and ask questions simultaneously? Just as my eyes
start to scan for a dead rat, it hits me. It is the smell of cow dung.
5 years of working on MART’s research projects in rural India give me
a certificate to identify this smell. A smell that many people in
India wake up to and sleep to. And having lived in Matunga (read
Temple Town) for 25 years, I have understood that you cannot avoid it.
But, what is it doing in a city in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area?

The gardener says its the fertilizer he is using and I am sure they
are going organic now a days when it comes to manure. But I cannot
help but smile when I think that even 10000 miles away, I cannot
escape some bovine intervention. Just know that, the next time you cut
your birthday cake in the middle of the road, I’ll be thinking of you.

PS- The phrase Bovine Intervention, I believe is pinched from the
title of an article Ramanathan wrote for Podar Pageant. Don’t remember
if he came up with it or we did, but had to give credit.

My meaning of the word ‘cult’ refers to small break-out cultures that have a following. I wonder how cults started? Did someone get pushed around too much? Did existing cultures try to just snuff out the individuality from one person? Was he the only one who could see the other light? And once he saw it, he could convince others to do so too? Most cults were started with noble causes…it is the following, the followers and what the feeling of being followed does to a brother that corrupts it. While most cults signal ‘don’t come too close’, is there a cult for everyone who wants to break free? Or are we just a society full of people trying to break free? Is everyone feeling this way but not talking about it? Is it manifest in the many status updates that are about #hateboss #mykidsdrivemecrazy and #mywifeischeating? What if everyone is struggling to burst out of the culture that like the womb keeps us inside a semi transparent sac so thick that we cannot break out of it till the right time? Is the culture protecting us? Sometimes when I see a stoned teenager, I know that my Indian crab background has kept me from doing foolish things. But it has also kept me from doing some awesome things.

But let me tell you about the time I broke out of the sac. And it is not that I am dreaming or I just made the inside of the sac feel like the outside with wishful thinking. No, I chose to break out and risk it. That kind of risk can only come with great belief and faith. And those two things I have in plenty. A belief that I was meant to be on the outside, a faith that I will not be left stranded without protection. But the support is no longer there. What is funny is how I can see those inside and no amount of logic can get them to come out. The sac has a door and it opens inwards…but everyone is pushing against it, so there is no way it gets swung inside.

The world outside is beautiful, free of judgement, free of unnecessary emotions, free of futile pettiness and most of all, free. It comes with a price…it gets lonely, because anyone who comes out doesn;t want to create another sac that soon. But give it time and there will be another one just like the one we escaped. As strong as the need to belong is, the need to not feels stronger here. One needs to belong only to one class: human kind. And most of us do not even do that: we fight like animals, do everything to meet our most basic food needs, we eat other living loving things, we engage in predator mind games, and we get our kicks from stealing things that are not ours.

I think if we all belonged to the human cult, that would be nice for a change. Yes, it feels good to be part of a church, it is amazing to have your frat brothers and sorority sisters at your wedding, the free Mason meetings are a blast and Indian food at an Indian wedding feels like a part of heaven. But why can we not think of life as a long long distance train that goes in a squiggly circular pattern? The stations repeat at times, but it is only for some time. Why settle in one place and think you found your heaven even before you start exploring? Enjoy the little pieces of belonging, but don’t belong to the pieces. There is no room on this planet for more nations to be formed. It is time to mingle, cross breed, mix and match and break that wish bone in two.

Aladdin has freed the genie and the genie doesn’t even know it. That is sad.

Well, I was going to name my blog ‘From Matunga to Manhattan’, but we never lived there, so it would be kinda misleading. But if you are reading my blog, you absolutely need to know some stuff.
The facts:
I live in LA, which is in California. So I DO live in California. If you don’t know the states and cities, don’t sweat it. We didn’t grow up here.
There are very few Indians here. This fact is always refuted by families living in Artesia and Culver City. But LA is not like New York of SF where you could bump in to your countrymen regularly. Here it happens once a year.
We don’t particularly love it here, but are trying not to be spoil sports.
My beliefs:
I am a green nut. So if I get you a gift that is packaged in newsprint, just thank me for keeping the earth clean and don’t roll your eyes.
If you come to my house, do not expect me to stack you with tissues and napkins, in the hope that you might need them. If you want one, ask for it. Or else use the clean kitchen towels.
If you come to my house and leave the lights on in the restroom or other rooms that you wandered into (ok, who am I kidding, we have only 2 rooms), I am going to form a opinion about you, and you don’t wanna know it. So practically any waste of any kind is frowned upon, but you will never know it.
I travel by train and bus because I hate the idea of polluting the air for my daily needs like grocery and library. But yes, we will take road trips because flying is even worse. And before we become secluded hermits, we shall buy a hybrid.
It kills me to walk slowly or wait for the elevator.
I believe totally and wholly in the concept of faith. I am 0% religious and 100% spiritual. If I have to choose a religion, it would be Rahmanism.
I have been praying to get fat from the age of 20. I finally achieved it 2 years ago and I am unable to complain.
I want to establish an educational scholarship with the money I make from my work. So for all practical purposes we are a single earner family.
I am a conservationist and it goes beyond water, food and energy.

I talk my mind. If I am silent, it is because of respect…because I always have something to say.
I love to talk about myself because I find it so exhilarating that I know so much about some topic.
I hate talking bad about people over a certain age.
I think all moms are great cooks and cooking is a hormone you produce after child birth if you didn’t already have it.
I think kids are good fun and one cannot expect the fun to last.
I am an adventure ride warrior. Love them and cannot get enough.
I have been blogging since 2004 and I hope, I won’t be needed to explain a lot of that stuff to the jury.
I think I am just like others.
Now, for the part where no one else thinks I am like them:
I denounce smoking, pot, gambling, races…basically anything that you consider fun would be a no-no.
I don’t wear leather, but I have a purse my room mate bought me and I will always have it.
I don’t wear silk, but my parents asked me to wear it for my marriage and promised not to bring it up again.
I don’t eat meat, but I am not vegan..well, not yet anyways.
I don’t like fireworks for the air pollution part, but if I think the world is going to sink anyways, bring it on.
I like flowers only when they are not plucked out.
I don’t like wooden furniture, I would rather have kick-me-on-my-shin-stub-my-toe wrought iron around the house.

And…I think I have carpel tunnel.

I notice it for the first time here. I am standing between the travel and biography aisles of the library and trying hard to concentrate. But the more I try, the better I notice the carpet pattern. My mind is not switching on at its usual speed. I had picked up a Frommer’s guide to Washington DC as we are going there next week and I turned to see a auto biography of Bill Clinton. The Frommer’s guide in my hand had a picture of Abraham Lincoln’s statue. The heuristics buzzed without a second’s delay. The connection was made. Both ex presidents. And then I remembered how I used to get Clinton’s name confused with the Microsoft guy…

That was when the alarms went of. The Microsoft guy? Why am I calling him that! Of course, I know his name. Heck, I spent half my college life maligning it. But it doesn’t offer itself to me.

I try. I keep saying Microsoft and Bill to myself over and over again hoping it will stumble out of my sub conscious because it is no longer a part of my conscious memory. I look around. No free computers to go and search for Microsoft + wikipedia. I’ll get the name in an instant. As I search my brains and say Bill…Bill…all I can remember is that some chip designer melded the words ‘Bill Sux’ on to the microchips in very minute lettering. Is his name Bill Sux? Bill .. Something small. Something very generic. Bill Sux…Bill Gates. (the buzzing stops) Yes, that is it. 9 minutes and a blog post later, I remember. Wow, either Bill Gates is totally out of the public eye or I am showing signs of amnesia. And I can prove that I contracted it from my pet who has conveniently forgotten that she ate health food till last week.

On a more serious note, everyone please get tested for Alzheimer’s. It is going around and we aren’t getting any younger.

——————————————————————————————————

Ok, so ever since I installed Linux, I have had to go back to Windows to use Windows Live Writer for blogging. Not these blogs but my official ones. It was a perfect piece of software built on an imperfect platform and obviously they weren’t making a Linux version of the same. It ran seamlessly, connecting me to all my 7 blogs and it felt real, it was what the term WYSIWYG was coined for. The background of the blog, the tags used, the passwords, it remembered everything. I was sure it was a means to taking over the world – get everyone addicted to Live Writer. But anyone who has tried Linux will tell you: switching back to windows is really bad for blogging morale. So I sought an alternative on Linux that will kick Live Writer’s ass. But sadly, no ass kicking ensued for very long. I have tried the following, all with the same results (Sucks, sucks bad, does not even load, not compatible with Ubuntu)
w.bloggar (I cried when this happened)
BlogJet
BlogDesk
Thingamablog
BlogTK
ScribeFire (Oh, the suckiness)
Zoundry
Gnome (what were they thinking)
and many more that have slipped my memory.

For some of the above, I installed Wine so that windows programs can work on Ubuntu. I was willing to have the devil’s OS tippy toe on my godly OS just so that I could have a decent blogging experience. This is how we end up in hell.

Every post on every forum written on this topic had the same disappointing theme. No one had found an alternative. And Linux communities are more close knit than the Veerappan posse. So I tried thinking back. When I didn’t have Writer, what did I do? And I remembered, I used Flock. It is a browser that is perfect for social networking and also has a blog editor plugged in. And then I went through another low. What if they didn’t build Flock for Linux? So with my nails bitten and fingers crossed, I searched for it and low and behold! It was there. It downloaded and now I am writing a post on it. Damn, my slow memory! But the lesson to be learnt: Sometimes old habits need to be resumed. Not everything new is great. If we can cut through the cloud, we can see clearly what plagues or eludes us. And lastly, Windows can bite me.