Hay fever

It’s a Saturday afternoon in April. Driving out of Whitefield, the light is clear, the fields – yes there are still a few – are green, the lake is blue. A breeze rises on the bridge and rocks the trees around the old airport. One of those freak winds is pouring out of Wind Tunnel Road, so the raintrees in the satellite research centre are raining leaves and pink needles down on us as we pass. The gulmohars have suddenly asserted themselves orangely , the jacarandas are noticeably purple. The creepers on the walls of old houses are in full bloom. Everywhere the air is full of yellow petals and the pollen that is Bangalore’s trademark in health care circles. It is summer in my city, both old and new.

These come together at an unfamiliar restaurant on St Mark’s Road where I meet two old friends for lunch. The last time we met was at our graduation, but contrary to all rules, the lunch was fine. One of the lunch companions had been one of my two best friends all through college. Now, all through lunch, I constantly feel not so much an absence as the presence of one more chair at our, the echo of another laugh far away across the Atlantic. Just as when she and I reconnected in Philly two years ago, there was an echo of this laugh all the way from Seattle. Spritzers and starters, sandwiches and grilled fish and I am on the road again. Heading down Church Street looking for the used-book store and missing all three storeys of it for the second time, I spare a thought for my driver who must have the most mind-numbing job in the world.

By five-thirty I am wandering into Mocha, a little shisha break between lunch and dinner. I’ve only been here twice over the last four months but they greet me as a regular. At 6 pm, the place is filling up fast with the pre-pub, pre-club crowd. I begin to feel guilty about taking up a table and ordering nothing but endless glasses of Moroccan tea, but I'm clearly being considered sacred because I’m writing. As in so many other cafes, the staff are showing an unsolicited respect for my pastime. But also, this is Bangalore, where someone releases a book on the hour, every hour, so they never know who I might turn out to be. If I ever publish my book, the acknowledgments list is going to read like a Time Out directory.

I notice some of the (very) young girls looking at me and I can see in their eyes the same ambition I had at their age to be the “cool” woman sitting on her own and writing. I want to tell them all that glitters is not what it’s cracked up to be but am safe in the knowledge that most of them will take the other road. As the crowd empties, it’s time for me to go too, to meet other friends at Empire, a Bangalore institution in a standing-room-only part of town that the complaining IT immigrants seem never to know. Ten years after I last ate here, the food is exactly as it was, no nasty surprises, no disappointments. Our voices come from a place that does not age, the conversation is eternal.

It’s an early dinner so I arrive home before my parents have had theirs, bearing gifts of fried sheep’s brains. I find them talking to my cousins in Providence on Skype. Right now, I can’t remember my age or what year it is, time is sublimated into a vacuum, in spite of the visible fact that the niece I held when she was two days old has now been around for almost as many years. It is summer in my city, as it was then.

Mission impossible II

Lately, I haven’t been able to find the impetus to update my blog. I compose posts in my head all the time but they never get written.

It’s more than a year now since I’ve had to write for a living. I spend my time among Excel sheets and Powerpoint presentations. I find myself using management speak more and more, without making the effort to replace those words with some that actually mean something. If I’m not careful I will turn into Dilbert’s pointy haired manager who has no knowledge of his team’s “ground realities”. And today, when I’ve sat down to write, the muscles are rather stiff.

Anyway, I hereby return once more to updating my blog regularly, if only as an attempt to ignore a weird erosion of my self that seems to be out of my control.

I paused there for a bit because the café changed the music and after the years of Middle Eastern conditioning, it’s still a bit of a shock to hear a remix of Hava Nageela in a public place, both that it’s being played at all – over a muezzin’s call, incidentally – and that it can be turned into something you can dance to.

Perhaps that's a new post, coming soon to a blog near you.

Travelling light

Different management exercises over the years have returned the unanimous, ironically unchanging, verdict that I’m an "excellent change agent", the ideal person for drumming up enthusiasm in the office about something new. This is because I have a high level of indiscriminate curiosity and a crawling restlessness that plagues me and mine when things have been the same for too long.

It also means that I am unperturbed at arbitrary changes of desk and other crises of convenience and filled with unholy energy when things go wrong in the middle of critical events. It is almost solely responsible for my reputation for being good-natured under pressure. It's hard to see how all this would help or hinder the people who report to me, but I definitely recognize it early enough in others to divert to productive things, so some good must come of it.

My last job needed me to fly away now and then to meet another team, do the same work in a new place, a ritual which kept the demons quiet for an unprecedented six years. Fortunately, my current job also offers some opportunity for change of air; I was told apologetically at the start that a portion of my team sat in another city. And so I recently went on my first business trip to Chennai: I took the fast train at dawn, an auto rickshaw from the station to the office and returned by the night mail the same day.

It was an inspiring departure from the style of travel to which I'd no business getting accustomed, but in many ways also exactly the same. The step by step releasing of latches and bolts as I approached the point of departure and the complete letting go of the soul as the train pulled out. The sudden, comprehensive frizzing or flattening of the hair when I arrived, no matter how prepared I was. The group dynamics in the visitee office. The way my time was efficiently disposed to the last second. It was all familiar.

As was the almost tangible urge to just get off at some other station and keep going for a while. I used to stand for a moment below the airport departure boards before a journey, like some people do at altars or idols, silently seeing myself on that flight to Amsterdam or Sao Paolo, Turin, Almaty or Baku.

Looking out of the train window, thinking of lounges and limousines, I was glad that I had had my fling with the bling when I did, because the corporate world’s generous days must be over now. Sales conferences in exotic locales, brainstorming at beach resorts, unlimited-hospitality office parties… these are all gone, if not for good, then definitely for a long time.

I voluntarily got off that business-class gravy train, but on some days it’s hard remember why. There's a sizeable difference between being the omniscient, omnipotent creative director of a revered global account and just another manager among many in a company that has 400 employees on my floor alone. The difference is especially keen in times of client wrangles – time was when my mere presence was enough to effect a truce; now all the words I speak are not enough unless endorsed by someone else. Then I remember that I had had to earn that status. And it needs only a few seconds' thought to bring the swings and roundabouts into focus, a deep sense of grateful relief that helps the heart drag the ego of the ex-god out of bed the next morning.

At 11 pm, I walked into Chennai Central, only slightly under the influence of the almost mandatory farewell drink, and my coach was at the other end of what seemed like the longest train in the world. As my high heels started to feel like needles I realized that I loved this gritty commute that my business travel had become.

As always, the "excellent change agent" trumps the ex-god ego. That is the secret of my success – or lack of it, according to some (widely discredited) sources.

Travelling Light, Cliff Richards, 1974

When a dog dies

There’s a tin full of rusks on the shelf for a dog that disdained dog biscuits. There's meat in the freezer and millet in a bin since he wouldn’t touch dog food. A chain hangs expectantly outside, a collar with black fur on it still lies in the back of the car.

When I’m reading late at night in the farthest bedroom of the house, I can almost hear the familiar grunt of a big animal walking under the bamboo, down below. I still seem to feel the loose paving stone go thud-thud as he walks over it into what we fondly call “the orchard” (two prolific papaya trees, a smelly cherry that only birds will eat and one fruitless custard apple). Fallen leaves still rustle all night long but it’s only the small creatures of the night going their way unmolested now.

When a dog dies, it's easy to be in denial about it. He could be somewhere at the back, in his "room" under the tank, in the garden, off chasing something. The porch always seems as if he just left it for a while.

I’ve been dragged into many unresolvable conversations about people's feelings for their dogs, whether they’re like those for children or friends or other family or even justified at all. I’ve found these arguments strangely distasteful and I now see why. Loving a dog is like loving a dog; it is unlike any other kind. I’m not quite sure what unconditional means where love is considered – it seems a bit of an oxymoron to me – but I think the thing is that dogs are all heart and instinct. So you respond in the same way, a way that tends to bring out only the undiluted good in you. There are no power struggles, shadows or second guesses here. It’s an outpouring of sentiment anointed by the relief of not having to temper it in any way. So when your dog dies, you feel the loss just as purely.

Our first dog came when I was five and my brother was four. So this is not the first such loss we have known, and it won’t be the last. Each one was a wrenching, but this one, he was special. Perhaps it’s also my own age now but he was different from other dogs.

For one thing, he was beyond question the biggest German shepherd I've ever seen, his face more wolf-like, his gait more lion-like than most of his breed (lying sedated on the table in the pet hospital, he looked like something caught with a tranquiliser gun in a jungle). He never licked you like other dogs, he nudged you instead, almost knocking you over. He was too big to jump or frolic, so developed a habit of bounding like a dignified bolster. He slept like a duck-billed platypus with his nose pointing forward and all legs splayed.

He was one of the few single dogs we’ve had, so maybe he grew up reserved because of that. Though I remember his father used to be introverted even in the company of four others and his mother was a sleek, secretive killing machine (enlivened teenage times at our friends’ place), so perhaps it was just in his blood. There were other things bequeathed by his long bloodline: he had all the eccentricity and vulnerability of the last scion of a highly bred clan. Even the traditional enemies of all our dogs - telephone linesman, newspaper boys, meter readers, postmen, water men, vegetable sellers etc - tended to acknowledge his magnificence even while wishing he didn't exist.

But he was more than the sum of the parts. He was, quite simply, Oscar. And there's a little hole in the fabric of the day for each of us, that bit of personal time with Oscar. For my mother, I think it must be the early mornings, for my father, last thing at night when locking up. For my brother, it might be the bit of blank space when he arrives from the airport on his next holiday here.

When I got home from work yesterday, Rana, the neighbour’s dog came rushing up to his gate and looked at ours, both hopeful puzzled. There's an Oscar-shaped hole in his universe too, and knowing what happened doesn’t make it any easier for me to accept either that he's not going to turn up.

The neighbour sent a message late at night: “Miss Oscar having the last word. Don’t know whether to take Rana’s barking seriously without Oscar’s affirmation.” That's funny because we only took Oscar’s complaints seriously when endorsed by Rana.

When a dog dies, you lose both him and the part of yourself that he liked, perhaps the best part of you, maybe the only one you liked too.

A muffin in the morning

I walk in and there’s a surge of joyous familiarity. The waiters wear Turkish caps and I say “shisha” the way I would have if I was in the Middle East. The music is a reckless mix of old rock, hip hop, nineties sentimentalists and swish contemporary numbers whose classifications are as irrelevant as the names of the artists. My CD collection, for the most part. When my Moroccan tea and shisha arrive, they are good, very good, not just approximations. The keeper of the shishas is the most on the ball of all those I’ve come across. Coal gets replenished almost before you notice that it needs to be.

Halfway through the menu, it leaves off the cheerful listing of croques, crepes and panini to state suddenly: “There are only two refuges from the miseries of life – coffee and music” . Nevertheless, the place itself is bright and happy. Earth colours, with the occasional splash of pink or turquoise, assorted “art director’s pad” furniture and the option to buy the chair you’re sitting on if you’re so inclined.

But most of the clientele here is not in the furniture-buying demographic. They wear tight t-shirts of the FCUK War variety and are at least 15 years younger than I am. So shisha is clearly the thing of the moment then, but it fits so easily into the Bangalore ethos that it seems surprising it wasn’t always here. I notice someone who’s sitting alone in a peaceful trance and the thought crosses my mind that, this being Bangalore, the strong fruity scents could mask quite easily the more delicate herbal scents of private blends that have always been here. Also, this being Bangalore in 2009, the smokers are inside, while the non-smokers are outdoors. This is one of the many Wonko-the-Sane features of our times.

I message my friend in Dubai to say I’ve found “a shisha place so perfect I could cry.” She replies, “Is it Mocha?” It is. The one on Lavelle Road. I’m told there’s another, better one, but I hate Koramangala with a passion. On Lavelle road, the tech parks are hidden away and Bangalore Club is reassuringly close, its elitist disdain for Bengaluru hovering protectively over the venerable Gulmohar trees. People don’t seem to speak Hindi much on this street, or if they do, it’s at a normal volume, not one that carries for miles. (I have nothing against Hindi per se. I just despise people who move somewhere and then refuse to integrate, and it so happens that the ones I come across these days invariably speak Hindi.)

The food is good. The apple-cinnamon muffin is, in fact, the best I’ve ever had. It’s not idle praise - my favourite type, I’ve tried these from so many supermarkets and bakeries, airport lounges and cafes that if I plotted them all on a globe, it would look a little like an Emirates route map.

The night before I left Dubai, a friend asked me what I would miss about it and I replied that I wouldn’t know until I left. I thought my answer to this question was going to be “shisha culture”, and it’s true that I do miss that, but It turns out that what I miss most is me.

But I take a deep drag of my grape shisha, and it’s one of those times when the universe flows through you in a steady, glowing beam. Maybe that’s three refuges – coffee, music and tobacco, where “coffee” stands for food or beverage of choice and “tobacco”, for whatever you enjoy by yourself.

An evening with Chugtai

The last time I was moved to a standing ovation was after two hours of Placido Domingo in 2002. It was my first experience of live opera. The tennis stadium in Dubai seemed to fill with applause from the bottom and reach right up to the sky (one of the reviews the next day said “the applause seemed to go on for hours”). I don’t remember clapping but I know I didn’t want to stop. It was a swelling feeling of utter satisfaction, of having been granted a magical view of genius, the opening up of the mind to a world with a different standard.

Last night was the same. It was the first Hindi play I’d ever been to and I wasn’t expecting anything at all because I didn’t know enough to do so. I went because Naseeruddin Shah was in it and him I already respect. It was a tribute to Ismat Chugtai, three of her stories narrated by the three actors. I’d never heard of her before I bought the ticket but found out in the days that followed that everyone else seem to have had. I learned a lot about her writing and her history in many conversations, but nothing prepared me for the sheer joy in her writing. The lightness of her wit and the casual cruelty of her satire were masterly. Happily, the actors were more than equal to the task of doing it justice. The acting was masterly, the direction, tone-perfect. It was a flawless performance of an amazing writer’s work.

The language was Hindustani, rather than Hindi. This, I am informed, means that it has a lot of Urdu in it. What it means in practice is that the language is the lyrical, elegant version, not the abrasive export from Delhi. Of course it also made some of the words hard to follow, but one got enough from the acting and the context to not lose too much.

I have to mention the lighting because it’s in danger of being dimmed a little by the brilliance of the actors. I don’t know enough technically to pinpoint what exactly it must be lauded for, I only know that it is the best lighting I have ever seen.

My introduction to theatre was through a theatre group that imposed very high standards on itself. As a result, I tend to be hypercritical of the plays I go to. Yesterday, I found nothing to cavil at. Nothing. It was worth every penny of the rather expensive ticket. That’s, like, a huge deal!

Sadly, the extravagant violin-shaped glory of Chowdiah Memorial Hall is rather faded. The walk down the length of the neck of the violin to the doors is still a pleasure but the lobby that used to seem lushly expectant is now just a featureless milling point. The auditorium is as imposing as ever but many seats are in need of replacement and the AC needs overhauling. The acoustics, though, are actually much better than I remember. Perhaps Row Z is the magic part where it all comes together. (Yes we were in the absolute last row; Naseeruddin Shah draws a full house.).

It would be a terrible shame to let Chowdiah fade. Perhaps a fund-raising theatre/cultural festival? Corporate donations? A combination? Somebody help!

White tigers, slumdogs and softening of the brain

I am scared of watching Slumdog Millionaire. Will it be another weary disappointment in the White Tiger style? The chances are high. And do we really want to win an Oscar when all that means is the likes of NDTV can embarrass themselves by asking AR Rahman whether it's a sign that "Indian music is now accepted internationally"? Do we not do enough of this nonsense already without the slightest bloody provocation? It is depressing in the extreme.

Our over-spiced mixture of pretension, apathy and a remarkable capacity for toadeating has now officially reached toxic levels. We don't lose any opportunity to pat ourselves on the back or "put India on the world stage". Our very real art movements are distorted and diluted by the hype that seems terribly necessary. Our very real history seems to be going this way too. And there's no point talking about sports at all unless you want to end up throwing yourself on the floor and drumming your heels.

In the corporate world, all that is wrong and ridiculous about the Global Way has been adopted enthusiastically without the leavening bits: the brusqueness without the respect for time, the sacrificing of manners without the resulting efficiency, the self-imposed urgencies, the delusions of grandeur. None of this is new to India – but they used to be the preserve of medium-sized government officials and middle management in public sector companies, nobody aspired to it or lauded it.

The news channels are equally execrable. I have the luxury of finding Fox News funny but I can't laugh about our own versions of it. Most of it is an orgy of cluelessness. Idiot girls arguing about feminism without ever understanding the word "independence". Equally IQ-challenged boys talking about the aforementioned girls. People of all kinds mouthing off about "issues" without stopped to think about them, all this presented as hard news.

Self-appointed moral police march into a nightclub in Mangalore and assault the patrons, but instead of calling it the criminal and unconstitutional act that it is, there's a lot of drivel on TV about the anatomy of violence and the driving forces of our times and the "youth".

We are aggressive about random things but will do nothing to stop injustice or crime. Mumbai's educated thousands will march in protest against an attack on the Taj but they won't rally around when the Shiv Sena terrorises an elderly shopkeeper on the wrong side of the railway tracks.

Among the newspapers, our choices range from the prissy Hindu to the scurrilous Times, and not one of them employs a writer who actually learnt English. And what the fuck is a terror attack? Is it something like a panic attack? It sounds a lot like how I'm feeling now.

India has always been complicated. Life is crowded. There are always too many people and too many things in your face. People are rude. Places are dirty. Rules are fluid. The simple act of numbering streets can become a metaphysical nightmare. But all this is still true and unadorned. This is India as it has always been, take or leave in as-is-where-is condition. As the travel books say, all it needs is time and once you get used to it, you enjoy it.

But the nouveau India is another matter entirely. It makes you want to throw up. And I'm very much afraid that Slumdog Millionaire is a child of this, a beautifully designed Penguin India cover and blurb, with nothing in between. The Oscar nomination has only deepened this suspicion.

Have to add: Two days before the Oscars, I finally watched the movie (mostly because of not wanting to be left out of the fervour if it won anything). And I liked it. As my friend said in his comment, take away the hype and it's a sweet rags to riches story.

The sun also rises in Burdubai

February 2008: A few insomniac pictures from my flat in Dubai

The Englishness of America

It's about an hour and a half to the Presidential coronation and the colonial roots are showing. The uncharacteristic amount of complicated ceremony combined with the surprising lack of drama makes this very much in the English style. Crowds waving flags, children carrying flowers, slow, stately motorcades, a hundred weird little traditions.

At all other times it's so easy to forget that the US were a colony too. I remember remembering with a shock as I stood outside South Station in Boston, looking around and wondering what the buildings reminded me of. I also remember wondering why a) it should be a shock and b) it should be important. I still don't have the answers.

For once, it's possible to watch an American public event without wanting to give them a good kicking. For one thing, this time the media's breathless superlatives are actually justified - this is a "historic event" and the result of it will be "felt across the world", so while you might wish that CNN wouldn't use the H word quite so often (or for that matter, invoke Lincoln in every third sentence), it does not really set your teeth on edge.

As an unreformable sentimentalist, I am a sucker for "historic occasions", and so much the better if accompanied by hymns, salutes and ceremony. It helps that at the end of it there is sure to be one hell of a speech delivered with all the punch and panache that only a black orator can pull off.

The debt gene

Money is hereditary. Not the presence or absence of it, but the instinct that governs either. I sincerely hope that like all genetic gifts this one is also significantly affected by the environment and can be learnt or unlearnt up to a point. Because if it can’t, I am doomed. I am terrible with money, the condition seems to be entirely independent of my wishes or actions.

Yet, I am not fundamentally undisciplined. Inside (and not that deep down either, unfortunately) I am that annoying straight-A student who needs kicking, wholesome Hilary the class monitor, Hannah the head nurse, Her Holy Martyr Edith of the Clipboard. So my first response is usually one that propitiates authority and seeks approval (any other kind needs this one to be suppressed first). At best, I am Hermione Granger. Nor am I a stranger to grown-up financial responsibilities – I’ve dealt with them all my adult life and not done too badly either.

Nevertheless, money runs circles around me and then rushes off cackling, to leap recklessly into the nearest black hole. After years of blaming it on unlucky wallets and wasting small change on the obsession with keeping one coin for luck in any unused bag, I’ve realized that the lucky coin should be inside you not your bag. So, to neutralize the birth defects, everyone should be taught practical finance at school. Failing that, what the world needs is financial counselors, a combination of shrink, accountant and life coach who will be the change you want to see in your bank account. Oprah had the right idea with her Debt Diet and panel of advisors. That should be a real, regular, accessible job. Maybe it is…

If I was really Hermione Granger, I could just wave a wand. Money, like food, is probably one of the five exceptions to magical transfiguration (ref: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows), but maybe genes are not.

Money is the stupidest thing we do as a species. And we spend our entire lives ruled by it.