The final hours

The clock on my desktop reads 2253 as I type this. In another one hour and seven minutes, I will officially be twenty years old. I catch myself looking at the clock with a kind of dreadful fascination.
Twenty... that's an age that once seemed almost impossible to reach. I am no longer to be a teenager. I'm to be a responsible adult in every sense of the word.
I have lived through two decades, and watched history being made. I've lived through the Kargil War and September 11th. Ten years from now, I will be able to tell children reading history books that I saw it all happen. They will stare at me open mouthed and wonder if I've lived forever. I used to do the same with thirty year old Aunties...
I've completed seven years of teenage and not done one crazy teen-like thing. The maximum trouble I've ever given my parents is to go off in a fit of sulks at an inopportune time. Parent's pet, teacher's pet- I've been priggishly, revoltingly good.
Though it certainly hasn't been a bad life to lead- quite the contrary actually- I can't help but regret that I've never done anything honestly crazy or wild or stupid- the kind of thing that a teenager is expected to do. And now, I've lost the chance to do it. Atleast, I can of course do something incredibly stupid anytime I choose in the blink of an eyelid, but where's the fun in that when you're twenty with all the world's cares hanging upon you?

Look at me right now- the last hours of my teenage are slipping away and I'm sitting in a stuffy hostel room writing in my blog. As I think about it though- that wild side- getting bubblegum highlights and a pierced navel- who am I kidding? That's not me, it never could be me, try as I might. I don't like pink and I've heard navel piercings really hurt. My idea of a fun evening is being curled up in bed with a good book, or practicing dance, or baking cookies in the kitchen while listening to music. I guess I was just born grown up.

But thinking about it... I don't think I would have it any other way.

Two weeks in Chennai

When I first decided to come to Chennai for a winter project, the thought did cross my mind that I'd get a few good blog posts out of it. But well, the two weeks end today and I'm yet to post about watching Bharathnatyam performances or eating at Saravana Bhavan.
Its been a wonderful two weeks, the kind of holiday everyone should have. I must admit, I was very reluctant to come to Chennai because the last time I was here for any long period of time, I fell very sick. But then I decided to give the city another chance, and boy, did it redeem itself.
Where else can even security guards spell my name perfectly? Where else do women dress up in Kanjeevaram silk and diamonds to attend a music concert? Where else do people speak exactly the same language (Tamil) but with so many accents as to be quite unintelligible to each other?

Its been two weeks of moments snuck away from work to attend concerts, of reading Kutcheribuzz everyday and sighing over the wonderful performances I'm missing, days and nights spent in an acid green lab poring over code, two weeks where the weather gravitated from school-closing-level floods to thirty degrees in the shade, of learning that "Parrottas" are very different from "Paranthas" and that people find my ignorance on this point laughable, of stopping my scooter whenever I saw a deer in the IITM campus and wondering at the innocence of their eyes, of teaching Sanskrit to my little cousin and discovering how much Geography I've forgotten, and of meeting wonderful new people who know so much and work so hard, they both shame and inspire me.
This post is perhaps too brief to give anyone a true idea of the impression Chennai left on me. I leave for home tonight, once I'm there I promise to write much more. There are so many tales to tell, freezing in the Central leather institute, traveling on a bus where the conductor refused to let me buy a ticket, a dance performance that gave me goose pimples, the caterer in the Staff Canteen who spoke French, and so much more.
But in the meantime, Merry Christmas everyone!!

Melodrama

In Scrubs there is an episode called 'My Drama Queen'. Watching it recently made me think, aren't we all, men and women, drama queens to some extent? I have two friends, very deeply in love. They constantly bicker and I've often wondered at it. Now I realize its because they enjoy the spice a bang-up quarrel lends to daily life.
We all have a love for the sensational. Some of us love it so much that it leads us to be impractical. My love for the melodramatic doesn't always manifest itself in visible form, but there's a lot of stuff going on in my head. For example, when I'm waiting to cross a busy street, my mind can jump from what would happen if someone was run down by a car, to how I would ride with that person in an auto to the nearest hospital, to frantically trying to remember all the first aid I know, all before the traffic light changes.
Sometimes, I wonder. The stuff that goes on in my head is so interesting, I don't think I notice too much of the real world. I guess I'd better start paying more attention when I cross the street.

No fun, no games

What’s the point of life
If risk is just a board game
You roll the dice
But you’re just hoping that the rules change

Hugh Grant -Dance with me tonight

What if life itself is just like a board game? I find the idea infinitely depressing. Even if you take your biggest life changing decisions based upon the rolling of a die, you're eternally doomed to go round and round and round in endless circles about the same board. Then when you're finally tired of it, you fold the board and everything you've ever achieved- money, property, titles, family... slithers to the floor in a heap of cheap plastic.

My Favourite time of day

When I was in school and all through junior college, my mother used to make me strictly adhere to a bedtime. By 9:15 I was to be tucked in and by 9:30 all lights were switched off. Almost always absorbed in some fascinating book, I'd beg heartrendingly for five minutes more which God bless her, she'd always grant. Most days those five minutes would suffice- except for really absorbing books which I would then carry to the bathroom and read there with a towel stuffed under the door to hide the line of light visible from outside. But most days I'd curl up contentedly in bed and dream till I slept off.
Those ten minutes of bliss were and always have been my favourite part of the day. Dreams are so wasted on sleep. However vivid they were, when you wake up all you're left with is disappointment, that those images that seemed so real in your sleep, turn so pale and lifeless in harsh daylight. Its like some horrible art thief replaced the van Gogh in your mind with a faded watercolour. But dreaming when you're awake- thats a whole new picture. You get to pick your fantasies and live then snuggled cosily in a warm bed, while drifting off comfortably to sleep.
Each night I would pick my fantasy, I could be a Spanish princess or a WWII nurse or a busy careerwoman. I could decorate dream homes, travel around the world, own and raise hundreds of dogs. I could be an Ayn Rand heroine staring at New York's skyline or Elizabeth Bennet turning down Mr. Darcy. If I was bored of fantasies revolving around me (and this happened, about once in a blue moon) I would live out all my favourite "if only" moments. If only Scarlett had realized she loved Rhett earlier, if only Tess hadn't been seduced by Alec, or Angel had found the letter she wrote him, if only Elfride Swancourt had lived. In all my stories they always had happy endings (Except in Elfride's case where I wasn't really sure what would have been a happy ending. I don't think Hardy himself knew, which is why he killed her off in the first place) Each morning when class got boring, I'd plan what I would dream about that night.
Since coming here, I don't have a bedtime anymore, I only sleep when utterly exhausted, leaving scant time for dreaming. More often than not, I fall asleep watching a sitcom or cramming desperately for a quiz. All this has left my quite dream-starved, and now as I look back, it has made my life considerably poorer. After all, isn't it like your very own Neverland, where you always stay young and if the ending isn't happy, it just means the story isn't over yet. So now I shall go to bed, turn off the lights, snuggle cosily under my warm covers and in my Neverland, go wherever the night takes me.

The perfect Cookie

This time when I was home, I hadn't really intended to do any baking, having truckloads to mug. But I'd forgotten N's birthday and the only way I could thing of making it up to her was by baking her a batch of "I'm sorry" cookies. I decided to become daring and create my own recipe. Perhaps it was the mood that seized me, I felt I simply couldn't go wrong. The first thing I espied on entering the kitchen was a pot of sparkling honey. I promptly appropriated it for my purpose. I beat together butter and sugar until the mixture became wonderfully light and fluffy and then poured in a stream of golden honey. As the flavours fused, I could feel further inspiration rising. Gazing around the kitchen I found freshly powdered dried ginger, an intensely spicy, slightly bitter scent that paired perfectly with the floral sweetness of the honey. In it went after a delicate shower of whole wheat flour. The result was a lovely buttery dough that simply begged to be kneaded.
The oven reddened in anticipation as I shaped plump little spheres and rolled them in almond slivers. I jealously watched over the cookies as they cracked open in the oven's heat, revealing delicate yellow honeycombs under a honey brown crust. As the almond slivers baked to a crisp brown I opened the oven and took them out. The scent filled the air and pervaded the entire house. While baking always smells good, this scent was extraordinary. Out they came aided by my eager fork and I set them out to cool and harden. Hot from the oven, they were wonderfully cakey and they began to harden as they cooled. Two batches later, everyone in the house was asking for a taste but I had managed to fill a carefully guarded box for N.
My greatest problem when it comes to baking cookies is that sometimes I simply forget they're in the oven. My concentration this time held out till the very last batch, when distracted by an interesting conversation I totally forgot until a rich scent of roasting ginger filled my nostrils. Then I ran to the kitchen to find my final batch deeply browned and certainly not giftbox worthy, but still safe. Another minute and they would have been inedible.
Hours later, I returned to the now cooled oven and prised out a blackened cookie. I inhaled as I bit in and the flavour hit me full force. It was a rich buttery, spicy, sweet scent condensed in one intense mouthful. The flavours had time to settle and fuse and the product was enchanting.
None of the cookies survived for me to photograph, they all vanished mysteriously during the night. I will be making these again really soon though, the very next time I go home. Now, if I could only remember the proportions...

The Journey Home

"Your picture of social triumphs is quite fascinating, Phil, but I'll paint one to offset it. I'm going home to an old country farmhouse, once green, rather faded now, set among leafless apple orchards. There is a brook below and a December fir wood beyond, where I've heard harps swept by the fingers of rain and wind. There is a pond nearby that will be gray and brooding now. There will be two oldish ladies in the house, one tall and thin, one short and fat; and there will be two twins, one a perfect model, the other what Mrs. Lynde calls a `holy terror.' There will be a little room upstairs over the porch, where old dreams hang thick, and a big, fat, glorious feather bed which will almost seem the height of luxury after a boardinghouse mattress. How do you like my picture, Phil?"

"It seems a very dull one," said Phil, with a grimace.

"Oh, but I've left out the transforming thing," said Anne softly. "There'll be love there, Phil -- faithful, tender love, such as I'll never find anywhere else in the world -- love that's waiting for me. That makes my picture a masterpiece, doesn't it, even if the colors are not very brilliant?"

Anne of the Island- Lucy Maud Montgomery

When people ask me where I'm from, I'm still confused. Should I say Tamil Nadu, which is where my parents are from, or Secunderabad where I was born but have lived in for only a few measly years? Should I launch into a long winded explanation of how since my Dad's in the army I've never lived in one place for long or should I risk ridicule and say I'm from India without further details. The answers I give are generally one of these, though I rarely do the proclaiming I'm Indian thing.

My idea of a home is not a city or a locality or a house. I've changed too many of those. But it is the place where the people I most love are. When I came to college everyone told me I was to have two homes henceforth. I thought so too and indeed, tried very hard to make it true. But much as I love living here in a hostel, doing crazy things with amazing friends, I have never yet called it home.

I sing all the time for a week when my plans for going home get finalized. I have hour long phone conversations with Amma on what all we're going to do together as soon as I get there. When I finally do get there, the time flies by on wings, surrounded as I am by familiar objects and loving faces. My parents do everything they can to make every visit extra special. They seem to think I might not want to come home if Amma didn't cook all my most favourite dishes for every meal or if Appa didn't stock the fridge to bursting point with all my favourite sweets. They needn't ever be afraid of that though. Its home! How could I not want to come back again and again, or stay for ever?

When I finally have to leave, I never want to go. I've been doing this for two and a half years now, but still when the train chugs away and I wave at my bravely smiling parents, I feel like a part of me is being wrenched away, very painfully. By the time I return to my hostel and start unpacking, the feeling is just a distant memory. But reading this paragraph from L M Montgomery's book just reminded me of it again.

I go home next week. Happy Diwali everyone!!