No matter how much I may have chafed at the fact that the Lebanese are “so appearance-obsessed”, these are some of the things I miss about being surrounded by them:
- Extravagant compliments several times a week on the lines of “gorgeous hair day” or “stunning shoes”, making the effort not only worthwhile but necessary.
- Hairdressers who can tell from one glance out of the corner of their eyes what is very, very wrong with your look. And the fact that a) they understand fully that this is not a mere concern but a life-altering tragedy and b) they can fix it.
- The perfect manicure. India wins hands down on the pedicure but you really wouldn’t want to put those hands down where someone might see them.
- The nicest clothes in all sizes – because no matter how big a Lebanese woman is she will not brook compromise in the matter of dressing. You won’t catch her hiding in a large kurta and stretch pants.
- Shoe salesmen who understand completely that you will never, ever be able to buy the 2000-dollar Manolos but would like to try on five different ones anyway.
- The cuisine. I have to admit they are right – there is nothing in the world to touch Lebanese food. To any Bangaloreans reading this I have to say that the stuff being sold here is an abomination.
- The Mediterranean ethos – Give them a plate of hummous, a pot of coffee and two packs of cigarettes, and they can make a little corner of mellow sunshine anywhere, any time. They carry it within them.
- Elaborate, impeccable chivalry in lifts, doorways, parking lots. This used to make me laugh, but the truth is that you could be looking your absolute worst and still end up feeling like a visiting supermodel.
- The fact that a mass of curls and too-high heels do not merit staring. You would actually have to be a visiting supermodel to get this.
I complimented my boss on her bangle today and also remarked that it was unusual to see her wearing one. She said that she’d noticed someone touching up make-up in the loo and remembered that she was a woman too and should really make more of an effort. We laughed and I said that that went for me as well. I laughed again later that day when I caught sight of myself in a window – the Lebanese colleague and friend who used to share my office would have been seriously worried, assuming he even recognized me in my unfinished state.
As I came to the end of this post, I heard, with a rush of startled sentiment, someone talking Arabic in that familiar dialect. At the table behind us, three Levantine boys were lounging elegantly with their shishas in the way that only they can do.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Saturday, November 07, 2009
Shashi Tharoor, Twitter and other kinds of cautious optimism
Last week, it was the 175th anniversary of the landing of Indians in Mauritius, mostly “indentured labourers who overcame unimaginable privations and succeeded”. India sent a Dhruv helicopter as a present. Elsewhere, efforts were begun to have Kerala's snake boats perform at the 2010 Oxbridge Boat Race. India voted for the Palestine resolution at the UN Human Rights Council. A few weeks ago, an Indian locomotive was flagged off in Benin...
I know all this from Shashi Tharoor’s Twitter feed. Along with about a hundred thousand other Indians, I only discovered his page during the cattle-class brouhaha, and then became an avid follower. Now I even get it on my phone. Several times a day, I’m distracted or delighted by a glimpse into another world. If nothing else I get a random thought from someone who’s better read, more travelled and far more informed than I, which are not always things you can say of a politician. I wish more of them were out there willing to talk about their days – simply seeing what they choose to tweet about would be such an insight into their ways!
The Times or the Hindu tell me that people are being murdered in their beds, our cities are on red alert, people are starving, someone’s starting something inadvisable in the name of religion, and the Karnataka Government is ignoring the plight of flood victims in favour of some spirited infighting. I need to know all this, but it’s also a relief to be able to balance it with some positivity. This, then, is the attraction of Shashi Tharoor’s tweets – hope. In small, 140-character doses, on an everyday scale. It’s a side of Government you rarely see because hope does not make for banner headlines (unless it’s the big, dramatic variety, as in “America’s first black president”), and the purveyors of news usually don’t bother with it.
His tweet after a meeting in London covers it: “We live in a world of opportunities, not just threats”. He’s in Bangalore today for a Tweet Up very close to where I work, but unfortunately three in the afternoon on a working day is not a convenient time at all.
Photo courtesy: Shashi Tharoor (@shashitharoor) flagging of a Benin Railways train being pulled by an Indian locomotive | TweetPhoto
I know all this from Shashi Tharoor’s Twitter feed. Along with about a hundred thousand other Indians, I only discovered his page during the cattle-class brouhaha, and then became an avid follower. Now I even get it on my phone. Several times a day, I’m distracted or delighted by a glimpse into another world. If nothing else I get a random thought from someone who’s better read, more travelled and far more informed than I, which are not always things you can say of a politician. I wish more of them were out there willing to talk about their days – simply seeing what they choose to tweet about would be such an insight into their ways!The Times or the Hindu tell me that people are being murdered in their beds, our cities are on red alert, people are starving, someone’s starting something inadvisable in the name of religion, and the Karnataka Government is ignoring the plight of flood victims in favour of some spirited infighting. I need to know all this, but it’s also a relief to be able to balance it with some positivity. This, then, is the attraction of Shashi Tharoor’s tweets – hope. In small, 140-character doses, on an everyday scale. It’s a side of Government you rarely see because hope does not make for banner headlines (unless it’s the big, dramatic variety, as in “America’s first black president”), and the purveyors of news usually don’t bother with it.
His tweet after a meeting in London covers it: “We live in a world of opportunities, not just threats”. He’s in Bangalore today for a Tweet Up very close to where I work, but unfortunately three in the afternoon on a working day is not a convenient time at all.
Photo courtesy: Shashi Tharoor (@shashitharoor) flagging of a Benin Railways train being pulled by an Indian locomotive | TweetPhoto
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
The almostness of being
There’s something about large, multi-platform railway stations that’s particularly exciting. I think it’s possibility. The air, the sounds, the hectic quiet in the wake of trains – they’re all about chances... second, third, tenth, missed, regained, awaited. Having grown up with a father who's crazy about trains (and often just crazy, in a way that all fathers are), it’s impossible to separate the acquired tastes from the inborn ones. It doesn’t matter; the fact is the romance of the rail is now an inseparable part of us. I always emerge from a station energized and exhilarated.
Chennai Central is special in other ways too. It’s always been my favourite one. This has also been my favourite city for as long as I can remember, but that I think is mostly because it was the first big city that I knew. People who live in Chennai tend to laugh hysterically at being described so by someone from Bangalore, but I have inside knowledge and believe me, Bangalore is the world’s largest small town, malls, multiplexes and Kingfisher Derby notwithstanding.
Having family in Chennai, I’ve visited it practically every year since I was a baby. I examined my feelings about this, while looking into parked engines, watching the weirdos who seem to be permanent exhibits in the central hall, reading labels on passing parcels, arguing with seventy-five auto drivers and then handing my bag to the chosen one. There is no bad stuff whatsoever there – my trips were all good, first in the house of a kindly great-aunt and uncle in childhood, some teenage years with the closest thing I have to a sister, the equally welcoming house of another great-aunt in young adulthood. I wept through two wrenching funerals in this last house but it hasn’t dimmed the good times there.
The corresponding trips to Kerala, I must now admit, were uniformly terrifying and traumatic. Even now, preparing for a visit, sometimes just seeing the achingly beautiful landscapes in travel programs, the language itself that I speak without restraint, can bring out the old crippling feelings, the buffer of the intervening years crumbling without warning. The concept of family works in mysterious ways.
Returning from Chennai, I dragged myself to the door half an hour before arrival because no matter how infirm and tired I’m feeling, I have to see Whitefield station pass by. I stood there for the rest of the journey, getting in the way of the catering staff and enjoying the speed that threatened to whip me out into the darkness, calling yoohoo in my mind to every landmark I recognized until I felt the train braking and went back for my bags.
I was going to say something here about the unique joys of rail travel but remembered that I used to do the yoohoo thing from the air too whenever I returned to Dubai from a business trip.
But if you’re travelling to a neighbouring city, the best option is first class on the Shatabadi. If you count two hours to and from the airports, an hour of checking in, taking your laptop out of your bag and putting it in trays, half an hour of being herded to gate to bus to airplane and back, the annoyance of having to stow trays, shut your laptop and pack away everything every ten minutes, this undisturbed five-hour journey in what is essentially an armchair in a living room is the ideal way to arrive somewhere for a day full of difficult meetings.
Chennai Central is special in other ways too. It’s always been my favourite one. This has also been my favourite city for as long as I can remember, but that I think is mostly because it was the first big city that I knew. People who live in Chennai tend to laugh hysterically at being described so by someone from Bangalore, but I have inside knowledge and believe me, Bangalore is the world’s largest small town, malls, multiplexes and Kingfisher Derby notwithstanding.
Having family in Chennai, I’ve visited it practically every year since I was a baby. I examined my feelings about this, while looking into parked engines, watching the weirdos who seem to be permanent exhibits in the central hall, reading labels on passing parcels, arguing with seventy-five auto drivers and then handing my bag to the chosen one. There is no bad stuff whatsoever there – my trips were all good, first in the house of a kindly great-aunt and uncle in childhood, some teenage years with the closest thing I have to a sister, the equally welcoming house of another great-aunt in young adulthood. I wept through two wrenching funerals in this last house but it hasn’t dimmed the good times there.
The corresponding trips to Kerala, I must now admit, were uniformly terrifying and traumatic. Even now, preparing for a visit, sometimes just seeing the achingly beautiful landscapes in travel programs, the language itself that I speak without restraint, can bring out the old crippling feelings, the buffer of the intervening years crumbling without warning. The concept of family works in mysterious ways.
Returning from Chennai, I dragged myself to the door half an hour before arrival because no matter how infirm and tired I’m feeling, I have to see Whitefield station pass by. I stood there for the rest of the journey, getting in the way of the catering staff and enjoying the speed that threatened to whip me out into the darkness, calling yoohoo in my mind to every landmark I recognized until I felt the train braking and went back for my bags.
I was going to say something here about the unique joys of rail travel but remembered that I used to do the yoohoo thing from the air too whenever I returned to Dubai from a business trip.
But if you’re travelling to a neighbouring city, the best option is first class on the Shatabadi. If you count two hours to and from the airports, an hour of checking in, taking your laptop out of your bag and putting it in trays, half an hour of being herded to gate to bus to airplane and back, the annoyance of having to stow trays, shut your laptop and pack away everything every ten minutes, this undisturbed five-hour journey in what is essentially an armchair in a living room is the ideal way to arrive somewhere for a day full of difficult meetings.
10 years after Kargil
About a month or so ago, we watched the remembrance ceremony of the 65-day war in the Himalayas. We would have anyway because we’re all fans of military ceremonies, but this time there was also the fact that we knew one of the names inscribed on the memorial. My strongest memory of him is of a laughing boy on a terrace telling us about army life, making light of hardship and homesickness. Later that night I searched for the letter written from the border a few months before the fighting broke out. As usual I had taken too long to reply, I was setting up a new life in Muscat, had a lot to do, put it off. And the next note I saw with his name on it was a post-it on my desk from the office manager with the news that Captain Vikram Menon had fallen in Kargil. We were four cousins born in 1973 and then one afternoon, just like that, we were three.
I still have correspondence pending. People I really care about but haven’t mailed, for no clear reason. Missed calls I haven’t returned, others that I haven’t made. Facebook friends I need to actually get in touch with. My friends’ parents just down the road that I want to visit but inexplicably haven’t. Their grandparents. Birthdays I’ve not acknowledged, though I always remember, every year. Meet-ups I’ve ditched or not set up. Simple, casual conversations that I haven’t had with the people I see every day. I draw my tired thoughts around me and huddle within, and all the while, time is passing swiftly by.
I didn’t find the letter, but I haven’t looked everywhere. It will turn up, and when it does, I can finally hand it over to his mother, about nine years later than I meant to.
I still have correspondence pending. People I really care about but haven’t mailed, for no clear reason. Missed calls I haven’t returned, others that I haven’t made. Facebook friends I need to actually get in touch with. My friends’ parents just down the road that I want to visit but inexplicably haven’t. Their grandparents. Birthdays I’ve not acknowledged, though I always remember, every year. Meet-ups I’ve ditched or not set up. Simple, casual conversations that I haven’t had with the people I see every day. I draw my tired thoughts around me and huddle within, and all the while, time is passing swiftly by.
I didn’t find the letter, but I haven’t looked everywhere. It will turn up, and when it does, I can finally hand it over to his mother, about nine years later than I meant to.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Asatoma satgamaya
And so an American president signs a bill after lighting a lamp in the presence of a chanting priest. The little ceremony was strangely touching. But it still left me with an unease so deep and fundamental that I can't spot the reasons for it. I think one more thing was eroded today. It feels as if all this is probably good for this generation and the next, but ultimately bad for the human race. But, as I said, no coherent thought emerges, just unfocused foreboding.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Everything I do, I will do tomorrow
I’ve set aside time every day to work on my book, so of course my blogging has become alarmingly prompt and prolific. I’ve also caught up on most of my correspondence, am well up on my YouTube watching and have added to my store of random internet trivia while “doing research” for a book that is not hampered by facts in any way.
Procrastination is the second half of the two-for-one deal that is the writing gene. My best poetry is written under the pressure of a deadline for something else, holidays are planned when I have other urgent priorities, and wardrobes are organized when I’m already late for an appointment.
I have another top-class distraction now – a delightful sitcom called The Big Bang Theory. I’ve been tiresomely recommending it to everyone I meet. It has filled the void left by the fact that both Friends and Seinfeld have been watched until memorized and Grey’s Anatomy in its sixth season has dwindled from medical drama to merely drama. Book and blog can now only get written on the days when there’re no new episodes sitting on my laptop. My Torrent pipeline (one half of which is probably reading this) is almost Columbian in the fix it delivers.
Mercifully TV itself is not an attraction. I don’t so much watch it as overhear what my parents are. This is quite a good way of keeping up with the more popular serials and the news without having to actually sit through them. The only time I consciously plug my ears is when Barkha Dutt is holding forth in her “We The People” slot – this is so that my mom’s viewing pleasure is not ruined by periodic explosions of venom from my room. I do make occasional forays into Ten Sports when there’s high profile football, Formula I or some other sporting event that happened to catch my eye on the Yahoo homepage. These usually have the best commercials too – when you don’t watch them every day, they’re fun.
I had a list of things to accomplish in the first half of the year. They weren’t. Instead, a lot of others (that should have been there) got done. I didn’t get a driving licence but I did join a gym. I still don't get enough sleep but I’ve stopped smoking. I didn’t hit the halfway mark on my book but I finished painting the table I’ve been meaning to for years.
This characteristic becomes rather inconvenient when it’s annual appraisal time at work and I have a list of achievements that are significant but have no relation to the goal sheet I submitted last year. I’ll just have to do some creative match-the-following. Just as soon as I finish transferring a drawing of a complicated Inca sun on to a perfectly fine t-shirt for embroidering with sequins at a future, unspecified, probably very distant date.
Procrastination is the second half of the two-for-one deal that is the writing gene. My best poetry is written under the pressure of a deadline for something else, holidays are planned when I have other urgent priorities, and wardrobes are organized when I’m already late for an appointment.
I have another top-class distraction now – a delightful sitcom called The Big Bang Theory. I’ve been tiresomely recommending it to everyone I meet. It has filled the void left by the fact that both Friends and Seinfeld have been watched until memorized and Grey’s Anatomy in its sixth season has dwindled from medical drama to merely drama. Book and blog can now only get written on the days when there’re no new episodes sitting on my laptop. My Torrent pipeline (one half of which is probably reading this) is almost Columbian in the fix it delivers.
Mercifully TV itself is not an attraction. I don’t so much watch it as overhear what my parents are. This is quite a good way of keeping up with the more popular serials and the news without having to actually sit through them. The only time I consciously plug my ears is when Barkha Dutt is holding forth in her “We The People” slot – this is so that my mom’s viewing pleasure is not ruined by periodic explosions of venom from my room. I do make occasional forays into Ten Sports when there’s high profile football, Formula I or some other sporting event that happened to catch my eye on the Yahoo homepage. These usually have the best commercials too – when you don’t watch them every day, they’re fun.
I had a list of things to accomplish in the first half of the year. They weren’t. Instead, a lot of others (that should have been there) got done. I didn’t get a driving licence but I did join a gym. I still don't get enough sleep but I’ve stopped smoking. I didn’t hit the halfway mark on my book but I finished painting the table I’ve been meaning to for years.
This characteristic becomes rather inconvenient when it’s annual appraisal time at work and I have a list of achievements that are significant but have no relation to the goal sheet I submitted last year. I’ll just have to do some creative match-the-following. Just as soon as I finish transferring a drawing of a complicated Inca sun on to a perfectly fine t-shirt for embroidering with sequins at a future, unspecified, probably very distant date.
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