I am going to write the South Indian girl's guide to living with a white boy (or girl? I don't know enough about living with white girls). Based purely on anecdotal evidence.
Here are a few things.
1. They will try to put their big feet on everything- on tables you might eat off, on you, on the nice chair you do your best to keep clean. This might even be with shoes on. Or even worse their mum will do this. And to keep things pleasant you will have to swallow that shriek of outrage and gently maneuver them out of that position.Or suffer.
2. You will have to be polite when the mother of your relatively aware white boy wants to put on a safety pin in solidarity with People of Colour. I understand white people are anguished about Trump as well, and maybe everyone in your church is wearing a pin, but church full of white people, with one token Indian named Bob is part of the problem. I will make this a while chapter- things the white mum or your white boy may say or do. How to navigate without losing your mind, the goodwill of this nice older lady, or making your white boy feel terrible for being the progeny of old white people. My take is he can't help it. Just as I cannot stop my nearly 70 yr old Indian father from saying racist things without meaning to. All I can hope for is that he doesn't vote for Modi again .
3. Food- there will be an entire chapter about food.
How to turn his endless bottles of salsa into the tamatar-pyaaz component of your sabji or chicken curry.
How not to turn purple when your nice Southern boy suggests putting a ham hock, or some sausage in with your lentils to give it some fat.
How not to cry inside when he takes your biryani, puts cheese on it, wraps it in a corn tortilla, and eats it with chipotle sauce.
How not to murder someone when they look at the paneer you made, all on your own, from glorious full fat milk, from American cows as big as Indian cars, and say "It's just like Tofu right?" NO IT BLOODY WELL ISN'T. Just like how not all white people are the same....
There will also be some ranting about pound cake and it's incomprehensible popularity.
4. You will have to train them into getting used to you stealing their towel occasionally. Actually I don't think a lot of other people do this. This is not a brown girl thing, it might just be me.
Also- housekeeping and gardening. I grew up with grandparents who were enthusiastic gardeners but I have never encountered anything like the suburban American's passion for lawn maintenance. Just seems mad.
5. A relative that you encounter only at family gatherings, like Thanksgiving and Christmas which are coming up, might ask you if Indians pay income tax. Yes. And we have had the concept since before this country was called America. Next?
Showing posts with label rambling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rambling. Show all posts
Thursday, November 17, 2016
Sunday, June 19, 2016
Thoughts- some but not all related to Father's Day
It is Father's day and my Facebook feed is a stream of people putting up sepia tinted pictures of their fathers.
I cannot relate. I love my father, and I wish I could see him more often, but I am unable to channel all of this on Father's Day.
At the moment I am trying to get him to send me the phone number of my grandaunt so I can call and check on her. He is in Bangalore and I am in the U.S- the time difference matters and if he doesn't get on this within the next ten minutes or so I will have missed my window to make this call for yet another day. He is in the middle of dealing with his own mother, who has Alzheimer's and has of late been hitting the young girl we have hired to help care for her. I doubt my father can relate to the way we think of Mother's Day. Loving and caring for his mother have changed him, just as her illness has changed her.
Every day we try to hold on a little bit more to the memory of who she used to be, so that we can handle who she has become now. Doing that hurts too, because things are so different, and we wonder how we became this way. Old age is horrible. Let no one say otherwise.
On Father's Day I think to myself, I hope I can be as present for my parents as they were for their own. I am all the way across the world, and have a decade or so to make it possible for them to live here, or convince myself that life would be better if I moved back.
What this means is that in my father's best years, and my mother's, which are now, I will be far far away. We are missing out on having fun with each other but there isn't a way in the world you could get me to move back to Bangalore at this point. I am so happy to have grown up there, but it now it makes me sad. Landing there and not being at the little airport near Indiranagar makes me sad. The long long road back to Koramangala makes me sad, as does the visible evidence of the corruption linked to the new airport. The air is impossible to breathe, and I feel the grime coating me- settling on me as I settle into the city. All the bisibelebhath and lunch thalis in the world cannot make up for the loss of the city I grew up in.
Landing in Delhi or Mumbai do not have the same effect. No matter how unbearably hot, or noisy Delhi is it will always have my heart. Delhi was ever uncomfortable- you just accept it and move on. Mumbai I have no feelings for- so landing there or not landing there have no meaning to me. Bangalore was my home, and I am having trouble accepting that it has changed so much, and become so very unlivable.
I cannot relate. I love my father, and I wish I could see him more often, but I am unable to channel all of this on Father's Day.
At the moment I am trying to get him to send me the phone number of my grandaunt so I can call and check on her. He is in Bangalore and I am in the U.S- the time difference matters and if he doesn't get on this within the next ten minutes or so I will have missed my window to make this call for yet another day. He is in the middle of dealing with his own mother, who has Alzheimer's and has of late been hitting the young girl we have hired to help care for her. I doubt my father can relate to the way we think of Mother's Day. Loving and caring for his mother have changed him, just as her illness has changed her.
Every day we try to hold on a little bit more to the memory of who she used to be, so that we can handle who she has become now. Doing that hurts too, because things are so different, and we wonder how we became this way. Old age is horrible. Let no one say otherwise.
On Father's Day I think to myself, I hope I can be as present for my parents as they were for their own. I am all the way across the world, and have a decade or so to make it possible for them to live here, or convince myself that life would be better if I moved back.
What this means is that in my father's best years, and my mother's, which are now, I will be far far away. We are missing out on having fun with each other but there isn't a way in the world you could get me to move back to Bangalore at this point. I am so happy to have grown up there, but it now it makes me sad. Landing there and not being at the little airport near Indiranagar makes me sad. The long long road back to Koramangala makes me sad, as does the visible evidence of the corruption linked to the new airport. The air is impossible to breathe, and I feel the grime coating me- settling on me as I settle into the city. All the bisibelebhath and lunch thalis in the world cannot make up for the loss of the city I grew up in.
Landing in Delhi or Mumbai do not have the same effect. No matter how unbearably hot, or noisy Delhi is it will always have my heart. Delhi was ever uncomfortable- you just accept it and move on. Mumbai I have no feelings for- so landing there or not landing there have no meaning to me. Bangalore was my home, and I am having trouble accepting that it has changed so much, and become so very unlivable.
Friday, March 4, 2016
Spiders in the Stupa
I woke up screaming this morning at 4.52. J noted the time, as he prefers not to be woken up before 7.00.
I dreamt that I was with a friend, probably my Italian former-flatmate Jonathan, with whom I have enjoyed living and traveling. He's given to mystical musings, and has a deeply philosophical approach to many things, combined with the chance that any little things may drive him batshit. He is a dreamy temperamental sort. I am less dreamy, and often just as cranky.
In the dream Jonathan and I were walking in a crowded city, and looking for a quiet spot to rest and muse. The constant rushing, and racket of the city had gotten to us, and we needed to recover. We might have been in Thailand, it definitely felt very Asian. We might have been Buddhist monks, not sure. We did know that we had been left this Stupa in the middle of the city (by a benefactor, by friends, Airbnb booking, remains unclear). There was a giant gate, and a driveway that sloped down. The compound had lots of trees, overgrown greenery, and a complete absence of people. Some way in there was a beautiful black, red, cream and golden stupa, matching the work on the gate but larger. The top was not domed or pointed but shaped more like a gopuram- so kind of broad haipin like. I have a very clear picture of this still, even though it has been several hours.
We walked up to it, I was a step or two ahead of Jonathan. I walked towards the locked door, and had climbed up the first step when I saw a massive brown, white and yellow spider in the middle of a web that went diagonally across the entry way. It was looking at me, and moved as I started turn to run away.
At this point I freaked out and woke up crying. J rolled over, and had me tell him the dream. When I was done, and whimpering again from fear (I really do not like spiders) he said something which did nothing to make the situation better.
"Maybe it just wanted to give you a hug".
He tried to fix this later by adding "You know, like Charlotte, from the book". But it was too late.
No doubt tonight I shall have terrible dreams about spiders trying to hug me with all 8 legs, J will try to calm me by wrapping himself around me, I will try fight him off as if he were a spider, though he has only half the number of limbs, and it will end with more frights and flailing, for at least one of us.
I dreamt that I was with a friend, probably my Italian former-flatmate Jonathan, with whom I have enjoyed living and traveling. He's given to mystical musings, and has a deeply philosophical approach to many things, combined with the chance that any little things may drive him batshit. He is a dreamy temperamental sort. I am less dreamy, and often just as cranky.
In the dream Jonathan and I were walking in a crowded city, and looking for a quiet spot to rest and muse. The constant rushing, and racket of the city had gotten to us, and we needed to recover. We might have been in Thailand, it definitely felt very Asian. We might have been Buddhist monks, not sure. We did know that we had been left this Stupa in the middle of the city (by a benefactor, by friends, Airbnb booking, remains unclear). There was a giant gate, and a driveway that sloped down. The compound had lots of trees, overgrown greenery, and a complete absence of people. Some way in there was a beautiful black, red, cream and golden stupa, matching the work on the gate but larger. The top was not domed or pointed but shaped more like a gopuram- so kind of broad haipin like. I have a very clear picture of this still, even though it has been several hours.
We walked up to it, I was a step or two ahead of Jonathan. I walked towards the locked door, and had climbed up the first step when I saw a massive brown, white and yellow spider in the middle of a web that went diagonally across the entry way. It was looking at me, and moved as I started turn to run away.
At this point I freaked out and woke up crying. J rolled over, and had me tell him the dream. When I was done, and whimpering again from fear (I really do not like spiders) he said something which did nothing to make the situation better.
"Maybe it just wanted to give you a hug".
He tried to fix this later by adding "You know, like Charlotte, from the book". But it was too late.
No doubt tonight I shall have terrible dreams about spiders trying to hug me with all 8 legs, J will try to calm me by wrapping himself around me, I will try fight him off as if he were a spider, though he has only half the number of limbs, and it will end with more frights and flailing, for at least one of us.
Thursday, January 15, 2015
I keep falling asleep in different parts of the house over this horrible document that needs editing. The dog is tired of being startled awake whenever J comes upon us. J is tired of having to wake me up so that I can get this done and we can have our life of leisure and poverty back. I am tired of falling asleep in the cold and waking up covered in dog hair while being told off by an irate American.
Friday, October 11, 2013
Friday evening party anthem
I realise it is a bit of a cop out to just keep posting poetry that might reflect some of the things I have been thinking of late.
As I type this I am sitting on what must be the world's third most comfy couch. Against my left elbow a little beagle is curled up, and making wheezy sleep sounds. I have Chopin playing on the stereo, and while it gets dark earlier each day, inside the house it just gets cosier as the year turns towards winter.
I have about a week's worth of work to do and two days in which to do it. The couch is my home, the dog my only friend, and eventually tears will replace the music. Until Tuesday when regular work, the 8 hours a day sort, will begin again. I cannot wait.
As I type this I am sitting on what must be the world's third most comfy couch. Against my left elbow a little beagle is curled up, and making wheezy sleep sounds. I have Chopin playing on the stereo, and while it gets dark earlier each day, inside the house it just gets cosier as the year turns towards winter.
I have about a week's worth of work to do and two days in which to do it. The couch is my home, the dog my only friend, and eventually tears will replace the music. Until Tuesday when regular work, the 8 hours a day sort, will begin again. I cannot wait.
Sunday, June 24, 2012
in the summertime
things to do while spending the summer in switzerland, generally understood to be among the most lovely places to spend a summer.
1. write 60 page long papers over 2 weeks. field e mails from anxious professors over missed deadlines. this only makes the situation more enjoyable.
2. decide to work part time at what must surely be the most boring job in the world, paying bills for serbian policemen who are being sponsored by the swedish national police board to learn 'strategic management'. try to figure out what strategic management might entail- not that it matters though because all your time will be spent dealing with cantankerous accountants, one of which has a single gropey hand (the right one).
3. develop a repetitive stress injury from using the computer too much, because staying in and furiously banging away at your keyboard is what summer is all about.
4. stop signing in on skype. your friends want to meet and go to one of the concerts being held in parks around town, but you cannot keep saying no because it makes you look un-fun, and forces you to acknowledge how slowly you are progressing at your writing. avoid them instead.
5. develop a bizarre obsession with daily talk show hosts and their work, craig ferguson for example. you must choose a show that has been on for at least 5 years, if you choose the late late show, which has been on for 8 years. 8 years x 40 minutes a day gives you plenty of time-wasting fodder on youtube.
6. eat vast quantities of biscuits. in the little time that you do have to spare you must concentrate on sending yourself into one sugar coma after another.
7. get yourself an earworm. here. this will do for now.
1. write 60 page long papers over 2 weeks. field e mails from anxious professors over missed deadlines. this only makes the situation more enjoyable.
2. decide to work part time at what must surely be the most boring job in the world, paying bills for serbian policemen who are being sponsored by the swedish national police board to learn 'strategic management'. try to figure out what strategic management might entail- not that it matters though because all your time will be spent dealing with cantankerous accountants, one of which has a single gropey hand (the right one).
3. develop a repetitive stress injury from using the computer too much, because staying in and furiously banging away at your keyboard is what summer is all about.
4. stop signing in on skype. your friends want to meet and go to one of the concerts being held in parks around town, but you cannot keep saying no because it makes you look un-fun, and forces you to acknowledge how slowly you are progressing at your writing. avoid them instead.
5. develop a bizarre obsession with daily talk show hosts and their work, craig ferguson for example. you must choose a show that has been on for at least 5 years, if you choose the late late show, which has been on for 8 years. 8 years x 40 minutes a day gives you plenty of time-wasting fodder on youtube.
6. eat vast quantities of biscuits. in the little time that you do have to spare you must concentrate on sending yourself into one sugar coma after another.
7. get yourself an earworm. here. this will do for now.
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Tea-time
I took a nap this afternoon and dreamt that my grandfather was at the door to have tea with me. He was fumbling with his mobile phone because he wasn't quite sure how to use it, alone, and slightly unsure about if he was there at the right time. And it was so disappointing because even in the dream I knew this was wrong- it was him but it could never have been him.
1. My grandfather was always on time; at places at the time he wanted to be at. If he was at my door it was the right time for him to be there. And he would never have been tentative about if it was a good time to see me. It was always a good time to see me. He knew that.
2. My grandfather knew how to use his mobile phone. The two things he needed to do, disconnect calls and delete text messages without reading, he had mastered. Everything else was unnecessary and there was no uncertainty about this either.
3. We lived together, so there was no reason for him to visit me for tea. Had we lived in the same city we would have been in the same house. This visiting business was for other people. We were intimate enough to sit at the same table every night and eat out of the corner of each others plates. It wasn't the cute quirky thing grandfathers who occasionally see their offspring and dote on them do. It had the slightly competitive tinge of people who live together and know that whoever gets to the chutney first gets to eat more of it. Though we were never like this at tea. Only at breakfast.
But it was nice that he came to visit me while I was napping. There aren't too many other options left to us.
I think the dream was brought on by a deep deep desire to have someone make me a really good cup of tea.
1. My grandfather was always on time; at places at the time he wanted to be at. If he was at my door it was the right time for him to be there. And he would never have been tentative about if it was a good time to see me. It was always a good time to see me. He knew that.
2. My grandfather knew how to use his mobile phone. The two things he needed to do, disconnect calls and delete text messages without reading, he had mastered. Everything else was unnecessary and there was no uncertainty about this either.
3. We lived together, so there was no reason for him to visit me for tea. Had we lived in the same city we would have been in the same house. This visiting business was for other people. We were intimate enough to sit at the same table every night and eat out of the corner of each others plates. It wasn't the cute quirky thing grandfathers who occasionally see their offspring and dote on them do. It had the slightly competitive tinge of people who live together and know that whoever gets to the chutney first gets to eat more of it. Though we were never like this at tea. Only at breakfast.
But it was nice that he came to visit me while I was napping. There aren't too many other options left to us.
I think the dream was brought on by a deep deep desire to have someone make me a really good cup of tea.
Monday, February 6, 2012
hugh laurie love
over the last 3 days i have watched every single episode of house. always appreciative of the talents and physical perfection of hugh laurie, i find i am now verging on obsession.
this is how i felt at 15 when patrick rafter was my tennis god. slightly loopy. and full of deep sighs and an almost physical longing.
it does not help that house is a horribly addictive character, with issues that he is unable to resolve. i don't need to see him in every boy i have ever dated- too much fun, horribly unreliable, and addicted to something.
following on the hugh laurie bender i've been on i downloaded and attempted to watch the girl from rio. disaster. there are some things even i cannot do for love. like sit through that movie.
they should make an app that has people's voices in them, an app where you can convert a pdf file into a sound one- and have hugh laurie or alan rickman read your essays out to you. i know i would get a lot more work on food security done if it was hugh laurie's voice telling me about pds take-off. wouldn't that be wonderful in your i pod.
this is how i felt at 15 when patrick rafter was my tennis god. slightly loopy. and full of deep sighs and an almost physical longing.
it does not help that house is a horribly addictive character, with issues that he is unable to resolve. i don't need to see him in every boy i have ever dated- too much fun, horribly unreliable, and addicted to something.
following on the hugh laurie bender i've been on i downloaded and attempted to watch the girl from rio. disaster. there are some things even i cannot do for love. like sit through that movie.
they should make an app that has people's voices in them, an app where you can convert a pdf file into a sound one- and have hugh laurie or alan rickman read your essays out to you. i know i would get a lot more work on food security done if it was hugh laurie's voice telling me about pds take-off. wouldn't that be wonderful in your i pod.
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