Break Away

I’m not too much of a caffeine consumer nor a big believer in the goodness of smoke/walk breaks.
I think anyone who has seen me at work realizes that I have enough walk breaks forced on me day in and out as I trot from one dreaded meeting to another.
When I’m on one of these work imposed walk breaks, I find myself admiring the people motley spread across various zones in the office, indulging in self righteous cloning to fit into the social mold.
Total strangers exchanging nods of rapprochement across their shared hot spots, Stimulants in the form of coffee and pretty girls sitting aplomb (talk about the absolute dearth of good looking men at work!), hysterical laughter in the corridors, ephemeral clouds of fancy perfumes, office couples who (sometimes!)make you wish you had your better half right by your side all day, the raconteur of every group animatedly reporting the latest gossip, pathetic souls hopeful for promotions looming in the background as they nod in agreement with every word the boss utters over their routine smoke breaks, high maintenance babes on the way back from the rest room freshly painted faces and the works, brotherhood of the stalkers, the mommy’s association engaged in agitated talks about the forthcoming school exams, strangers clutching onto resumes waiting anxiously in the lobby to be interviewed, the security staff looking at people suspiciously at the beep of every swipe card...the sheer diversity of the multitude of people...all the drama, the colors, the noises...makes for some unadulterated entertainment!
I couldn’t agree more…All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances.

It’s all about embracing the differences!

I dedicate this post to some of my best friends from the north of our country,who truly love and respect the south as much as they love their own land.
This one is for you Pinkster, Tara, Nimi, Kanika, Saku and Pragu!

So, dear old AT is indulging in his quotidian, free caffeine at the office cafeteria (All alone of course!) and a Chomu (Chapatti oriented masses) comes up to him, points at the chair next to AT and asks him in hindi...”Kya yaha pe koi aa raha hai”?(Anyone coming here?). Poor Chomu had no clue about ATs antisocial status.
Anyways what follows is even funnier, AT looks up and replies, ”Aarum verinilla, kasara editho”!(In eloquent Malayalam….No one is coming,(Like duh!)you can take the chair”!
Chomu is shocked by the strange language thrown at him and immediately switches over to English, and AT, having proved his point, obliges politely.
Anyways, that set me thinking….why Hindi?
I don’t know what speaking Hindi with a south Indian accent is, but I believe I do a good job at it.
After years of wrestling with the language through school..I feel put to test even now!
All credit to Bollywood! Far from mastering the language, I can just about manage haggling with the auto drivers and shopkeepers
A lot of people live under the misconception that Hindi is our national language, hello ignoramus…it is our official language and one of the 22 scheduled languages of the country.
When there is clearly an invisible division between the north and south of India isn’t it unfair to assume that everyone knows Hindi.
Thank god for globalization and the IT boom, South India is actually on the world map and to the rest of the country we are more than just “Madrasis” down south! To their disbelief they discovered that the very same lot of Madrasis comprise of Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Konkani, Kannada, Coorgi, Tulu, Badga and Toda speaking masses with a multitude of dialects to boot!
Its 2008 and yet, we have to endear comments about our not so colored skin, not so oily hair and not so funny name!
Although ignorance is bliss, someday may all these misconceptions be dispelled….
May you appreciate the idli, appam, bisi belle bath and andhra meals as much as you relish your chaat and roti,
May you appreciate the safety of our territory and the hospitality of our people,
May you realize that we are more literate yet less arrogant,
All the world needs is more mutual respect!
Ironically, there never was a united India until Britain made it so. We were a nation of warring states held together by the British Raj and today they left behind a language that in some sense unites us as a nation
A funny thought occurred to me though….what if Hitler had conquered Britain in 1940?? :)

Mama,I'm coming home...

I don’t like the cold.
Winter makes me sluggish and often keeps me under the weather.
It’s normally that time of the year when I take my annual leave and head to the unknown. However, this year I made the mistake of making plans with some unreliable friends and ended up at my parent’s home.
My folks couldn’t have been happier, while I discovered and practiced hibernation to some extent.
I hadn’t stayed at home for more than a couple of days after the time I left home for College.
Coonoor has changed a little, or maybe I have. The extended stay at home revived a lot of old memories.
Like your average kid, I daydreamed in class, read every possible piece of literature apart from my school curriculum while I was pretending to be studying, imagined I’d die for my friends, talked endlessly on the phone and believed my parents had no clue what was best for me.
As cliché as it may sound, over the years I’ve sheepishly realized that I was clearly wrong every single time.
On hindsight I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do for most part of my life, but today my problem is that I always know what I want, always.
My brother says that I plan and execute my life meticulously. When he first passed that judgment it really got to me and then I realized that he was right in some sense. I had made up for the lack of focus from my younger days yet stuck to my reputation of radical extremes.
Funnily, when I was younger the only thing I thought I knew was of my conjugal future.
Stereotypical scheme of things….I’d marry a Thomas or Chacko, or a more obnoxious mallu Christian name and name my sons…John, Paul, George and Ringo after the Beatles. Turns out I have changed so much!
All my life I left I never really had a choice.
My dad made most of my decisions and my mom stood by him.
I had the longest hair in comparison to all the boy in the neighborhood and that’s as good as it got, while the girls I knew ran around looking pretty with long locks of hair.
I was forced to play cricket and was never bought a Barbie doll.
I had no choice but to learn to play the guitar over my personal preference towards the piano.
I had to take science group after the 10th grade over my choice to pursue the commerce stream.
Today, the same parents have let me independently take the biggest decisions of my life and my stood by me whatever my decision maybe.
This trip made me realize that living with the parents wasn’t as suffocating as I had anticipated it to be.
I had a laidback holiday, indulging in absolute gluttony and eating every meal like it were my last, exerting myself with postprandial exercises such a channel surfing, text messaging and rummaging through the fridge for in-between meal munchies. I felt like Garfield, the only thing active about me was my imagination. A stark contrast from the routine hectic holiday schedules I set out on year after year.
I enjoyed watching movies and debating with my dad late into the night.
Evening walks and sporadic grocery shopping trips with my mom.
I spent hours poring over old photo albums and rearranging them, listening to some good old music that I grew up with….the salubrious mountain air, the traffic free roads, the spectacular sylvan surroundings-I realized how much I had taken these things for granted all these years.
I felt like a baby and definitely slept like one…i lose track of pretty much everything…until I realized it was time to pack my bags
I felt like a child returning to school after a long summer break. This trip had brought me so close to my parents that I didn’t mind living at home for the rest of my life.
As that realization dawned on me I was shocked at how differently I would have left about this a few months back.
It was finally time for me to leave, I pulled my nebbish self together and tugged at my luggage unwillingly.
My dad called out from the main gate, we were running late.
The drive to Ooty was a blur and I before I knew it I was sitting on a bus to Bangalore after kissing my parents goodbye.
The lights were dimmed and I turned up the volume on my iPod. Coincidentally, the track that was playing was mama, I’m coming home.
Tears streamed down my cheeks and I realized this was the first time in twenty five years that I had cried while leaving home.
Home is truly where the heart is…

Growing up(The Bouleversement in 1986!)

Sibling rivalry is inevitable. The only sure way to avoid it is to have one child.
My parents had no intentions of avoiding it.
Bicker,Banter,Laughter and Love....Sun-kissed and without a worry in the world..we’d climbed every mountain and rolled down every hill!
I dedicate this post to my only sibling (without whom I would have had the most painless and gain-less life!) and to our rather interesting childhood.

Phase One:
October 27, 1986
Life has never been the same ever since I was deprived of my only child status and that was just the beginning. Talk about life changing, and I hadn’t had the slightest presentiment about what destiny had in store!
Being an only child makes you a brat but having a sibling often makes you a victim. I was not even close to being a brat when he arrived!
My nine month long anxiety attack lead to the most hyped entry in the Ambat family history, the most adorable baby in the world had arrived with a wee too much fanfaronade!
My grand mom weeping out of sheer joy, her oldest son finally had a son to carry forward our Syrian Christian lineage and family name for generations to come!
(Grand mom was deeply disappointed when I was born, she so wanted a grandson…years later, the more I started resembling her, vanity got the better of her!)
Back to brother-he hogged the limelight, stole my parents and had me exiled to my grandparent’s place where I lived in absolute denial.

Phase Two:
I wasn’t abandoned by my folks after all but yes, I did return home to share my domestic space with this new entrant, brother. That was the beginning of a short-lived era of rapprochement.
We grew up in Wellington, in a scary antediluvian British bungalow for most part of our growing years.I was on my way out of the cute phase with one foot into the ugly gawky phase (face?) while the little one was basking in undivided attention and getting cuter by the second.
Who would even want to look at a scrawny sere sibling?
I moved on with my vapid life….hiding my precious teeth under the pillow for the tooth fairy, burying my nose in books about mystery solvers and secret castles, discovering the sheer joy of scribbling on walls and finding innovative ways of discarding unwanted vegetables and milk from my staple diet.
Brother starts talking. I don’t understand why parents are so excited! It’s not their first child to speak. Sigh.
Brother, is smooth. I assume he likes girls. It’s one of the first words he coined-Girlie!
I am a girl, that makes me girlie. My name is Aswana. That makes me Asha+girlie.
I’m 25 and the name still sticks. My parents have forgotten they named me Aswana.
Nobody who knows my parents know my real name. My friends came home with me on one of the summer breaks and once we got back to college, even they had forgotten my real name.
Thank you brother!

Phase Three:
He is fast! Brother is up and running. He learnt to walk shortly after.
He’s already a budding sport person. Father is thrilled.
Brother is quite the trencherman; he has been feeding like a shoal of barracuda since birth.
Mother is thrilled.
She looks at me sadly. What do I do with this girl? She looks malnutrition.
Brother lives on only vegetables and swears by curd rice.
For me it was a life defining moment when I first tasted the variety that once walked on four legs or once swam across water bodies somewhere in the world…It was love at first bite!
It is a strong possibility that there was a mix-up at birth. There was a Palakkad Iyer lady who had also given birth in the hospital room across where mom had given birth to brother!

Phase Four:
I’m doomed. I have officially crossed the cute phase. It is also sinking in that it looks like brother will never have an ugly akward phase.
Brother is bright. At two and a half he dictates terms to the parents. I don’t know how he manages this but by two and a half we are on the same school bus and yes, he is the cynosure of all eyes and I am his under-aged nanny. Brother realizes he doesn’t like school in a few days, and is going on a one year break, god had answered my prayers. Apparently not, the next one year until his re-entry I am hounded and asked about him by seniors and juniors alike. Brother, I can’t wait to have you back! I like being a nanny to a spokesperson. Brother is back in school. He is the brightest young star. Pretty seniors pull him out of my hold and carry him into class, teachers love him and me, well I am still the wallflower.
Believe me at four its difficult to educate a kid on the principles of sharing. Thank god for small mercies, I didn’t have to share my pink frills and doll houses with the sibling. However, there was a negative side to this as well. I returned home from school every day to a post-war scenario.
My dolls were handicapped and their homes destroyed while the ostensibly peaceful culprit sat looking all guiltless and mother thrilled at how the sweet child amuses himself all alone at home.
I think I hate brother! Now I couldn’t wait for him to start schooling any sooner.

Phase Five:
The stars are changing positions. Muhaha.
To ameliorate my suffering God makes brother human finally.
I believe fervently in god again!
Brother is getting there. He’s learning the art of breaking things.
He loves noises-mainly crashing, shattering, slamming, banging…
This love for noise still remains. You should know by his genres of music.
Like all boys he hasn’t discovered a civil form of communication yet.
His actions speak for him. So little brother here is quite the hector
Having one child makes you a parent; having two makes you a referee!
So my mom doubled up as both.
He lost no opportunity to display his physical strength and my self-preservation instincts kept me close to my mother for a long time.
My vocals took a sharp turn from puling and shrill squeaking to a more profound high pitched screaming and shouting. That year I also landed in the school choir. Coincidence?
Like I said the stars have changed positions.

Phase Six:
My dear sibling brought out the best in me that anyone has ever brought out-my vicious wagging tongue(a weapon that most people still consider my greatest strength!)
I also mastered the art of faking extreme pain every time brother even came close to attacking me while dad was anywhere in the vicinity.
Shortly, I found myself actively involved in dramatics at school.
In reality I honed my acting skills at home, in a very consistent and determined manner and even today attributes to the drama queen in me!
However our childhood did have its rare moments of collective sibling brilliance, like for instance the time we locked mom out of the house and watched cartoons for a really long time, the time when we managed to push a visitor’s bike into a gutter nearby or when we lost our dog during one of the evening walks.
I’m sure people visited our home for sheer entertainment value.
My father loves cricket. It is understandable that my brother play the sport but why me?
I still don’t know but I had spent my entire summer break playing cricket with my brothers and their friends. One of my cousin’s friends thought I was a boy the whole time. I hated him for years. I was not sure why.
I thought I quite liked my tom boy image but I guess I never quite forgot to wear matching hair bands ever since. My brother really got along with that boy. Would you wanna know why!

Phase Seven:
Life is getting even better. Brother is now in the “recalcitrant” phase.
I think the parents like me better. Muhaha.
I don’t get beaten up anymore though I still wag that vicious little tongue of mine at him in moments of absolute joy and sorrow…I can be exceedingly evil and cloyingly sweet too!
Brother is the latest under-cover agent. I soon discovered that he works for himself, I think it’s his latest hobby.
An unusually argus-eyed brother spies on me at school and home, eavesdrops on my phone conversations and reads my diary whenever he can get a hold of it!
He disapproves of my friends, detests my crushes and is the official snitch only now, working full time for the parents.
I can’t wait to leave for college.

Final Phase:
Distance does make the heart grow fonder!
Me leaving to College was the best thing that happened to us, we actually started talking and confiding in the years that followed.
I don’t know when this happened, but somewhere along the way little brother transformed into a fine young man.
Today he’s an accomplished man and holds a dual degree in “Selective Listening”&“Smooth Talking the Parents”.
He sports the a hirsute look , that I totally disapprove.
He takes off on road trips to never land and leaves me to answer paranoid mom.
I occasionally indulge in the extremes…fussing over him or staking him-He hates it both alike!
As long as we have each other we will never run out of fights and I think that will always hold good.
I guess you get the drift!
We still have our indifferences but we have decided to peacefully co-exist all the same.
I love him to bits and I guess there is an ounce of love for me hidden away in some corner of his little heart.

Rick Sick?

It’s a funny condition.
I don’t know if the world has discovered and termed it yet. I go through it painfully almost every day of my life and in my neologism it would be “rick-o-phobia”!
I cannot tell you how much I abhor that clan of licensed looters.
The auto rickshaw industry in Bangalore is a thriving one.
The auto rickshaw is like a monster on wheels with a monster at the wheel!
So every now, and then I find myself at the mercy of the much loved autowallah.
The most popular philosophy among auto drivers in Bangalore is that double meter is their birth right!
Double meter applies at the following times;
Early in the morning,
Late at night,
During the drizzles and rains,
You are more than three unfortunate souls,
Your house is too far,
Your house is too near,
Your house route has a one way,
There is too much traffic in your part of town,
And at other times it’s simply “double meter” because he doesn’t like your face!
(Sigh. How I wish we occasionally had double meters at our work place too!)
So you pretty much end up paying this much just about every time you have the misfortune of taking an auto and if he doesn’t demand double meter you can be well assured that this is the classic case of a faulty meter rick.
As if to make us feel any better, they have a consolation prize in the form of one-and-a-half meter.
I could buy myself a handbag every month with the money I over-pay the autowallah’s above the actual fare. Sigh.
God forbid you are one of those unfortunate souls who crawl to work with a laptop-you can actually go by the concept of a triple meter!
They love IT guys and the assumption is that all laptop clad people are fleece-able members of the IT fraternity.
Come to think of it an auto actually determines how your day goes.
A fight with the auto driver first thing in the morning is not the most ideal way to kick start your day!
Abuses flying your way in a language you barely understand right on the middle of the main road, bang opposite your office.
Aha-Not a pretty sight...ask me…
Through the elevator ride up the seventh floor, I’m thinking of one of those nightmarish forwards about the auto driver attacking some lady who threatened to complain about him!
Paranoia should have been my middle name!
On the contrary if you happen to have the good fortune of meeting a decent auto-wallah (an absolute rarity in our silicon valley) that would pretty much make ones day.
I remember the time an auto driver had come back all the way to return my friends phone that she had forgotten in an auto or even the times an auto driver returns the exact change back to you.
Exceptions do apply to every rule!
Here is some informative info for all you auto goers;
I happened to stumble across this article sometime back which gave numbers where one can lodge complaints against misbehaving auto drivers,
Bangalore Centre:080-25533525
Bangalore West:080-23324388
Bangalore East:080-25253726
Bangalore North:080-23376039
Bangalore South:080-26630989
So the next time you're stranded, cheated or ill treated just buzz one of these numbers and let me know if it actually works :)
And start saving up towards that car/bike that will steer you away from mercy of the ruthless auto drivers of Bangalore!
A few of us get the better of the autowallah’s like one of my friends, Anu. She never gets a rick to Domlur from Airport road as its just 2 kms away (Well! Walking is not her forte.), so this is what she does every single day…
She tells them she wants to go to a destination further away and while they are passing through Domlur she has an unexpected emergency and so she gets off at her real destination paying him the exact fare. So there we go, there are ways to beat the system!
As for me, I moved to a place close to work, I walk to work these days-that’s my short term plan.
And my long term plan-well, I’m getting married in a few months…that should solve the problem. (Wink! Wink!)

In her shoes?

She strutted into the room with an aborning sense of anxiety. After all she was here on a self imposed torture to dissect the room of the so called supernal stranger she would love to hate.
“So this is her sanctum”, she mused to herself.
She seemed girly, yet not entirely. The room was done in shades of pink and blue-not quite stereotype and the colors did go surprisingly well together.
I wonder what type she would fall into, it had a strange stasis.
It suggested that she bordered dangerously between being a girl’s girl and a guy’s girl…..maybe little more of a girl’s girl.
The room was strewn with cushions, way too many infact…a side table on one corner of the room by the bed lodged a bedside lamp and a pile of books mostly clichéd best sellers, few books on Indian as well as world history and a bunch of travel journals. Your conventional reader-maybe voracious, maybe not!
A lone figure of Garfield confirmed that she didn’t hate stuffed toys but she sure loved Garfield and the donkey from Shrek. Cliché again!
The inbuilt shelf in the wall housed photo albums and some nonage baggage (teenage scrap books and dog-eared year books!)
Girlie girlie girlie!
She examined the bangle stand disdainfully; it was a mélange of every possible color in the world flirting with each other…not her type definitely!
She was so not like her and that made it maybe easier to dislike her even more!
Maybe...maybe,there just might be the slightest chance that they could be friends in another life in another world.
In the middle of this extensive examination she caught a glance of herself in the mirror across the room,
And admired what she saw, and she knew a lot men would agree. Few vain moments later her eyes ran across the room evasively again.
Finally they eyes rested on the shoe rack…they had a pair of floaters and two sneakers that were lost in an array of neatly arranged varicolored shoes.
Some had large heels, some tiny and few were flat…the wide spectrum of shoes brought about the obvious conclusion that there was a shoe fetish of sorts.
She had seen women who could boast of larger and far better collections but the owner of the room was definitely fond of shoes.
What else was she like? She mulled over that thought as she maundered about the room.
Her large kohl adorned doe eyes swept across the room a last few times and her gaze finally lingered on a photograph.
It was a picture of him and “her”.
Tears stained the floor invisibly and washed everything else out of sight.
“What did she have that I didn’t?” The only question playing on her mind as she ran out of the room sobbing.
She wasn’t sure if she hated her but in a vague moment of clarity she was sure about one thing…she was sure she wanted to be in “her” shoes…only so that she could be with him.

All I want!

I want an antiquarian cottage on a knoll, far from the maddening crowds to call my home,
I want to wake up to the smell of freshly brewed coffee wafting into the room and sunshine on my face,
I want to sit on the porch, stare at the bright blue sky and smell the wild flowers in spring,
I want to run after my pup as he chases a fleeting cloud across our lawn,
I want to go on the longest drive after the rains with the strongest wind against my face,
I want that granddad I’d always wished for, who will tell me stories of our glorious past and the freedom fights,
I want to look at black and white picture of strangers with stranger expressions called ancestors,
I want to laugh so hard that I end up with tears in my eyes for no particular reason,
I want to roll on the grass and have a feather tickle my ear,
I want to eat with my hands and let out a subtle burp,
I want to have a delectable meal not feeling guilty I binged,
I want to travel to strange lands and embrace the differences and similarities,
I want to bust those occasional-turned-frequent pimples on my face and end up with no scars,
I want to splatter in the rain and not catch a cold,
I want a shoulder to lean on and a laced hanky to snort into when a sad movie ends,
I want to dabble in paint and lose myself in my favorite song,
I want to watch a ladybug sun bathe and a rainbow disappear,
I want to hear the leaves rustle and the wind blow,
I want to go on an endless walk holding the hand that’ll never let go,
I want to capture the happiest moments and the loveliest sights and treasure them in a photo,
I want to scribble on recyclable paper with bright blue ink in my father’s fountain pen,
I want to whimper and whine about problems that are not mine,
I want to see the sun go down and the moon come up,
I want to count the stars in the night sky and name the prettiest one after my grand mom,
I want to be hugged and told I’m loved
I want my mommy to kiss my scraped knees and bruises away,
I want to wear my warmest sweater and be tucked into bed
I want to fall asleep with a book in my arm, a pink quilt on my back and the happiest dream over my head.
But most of all I want to be four again.
That’s all I want!

In our times!

Let me begin ab ovo…Adam and Eve cavorting about apple trees, all that fuss and semi clad drama.
It was all fun when it began….we sure have come a long steep winding way.
Someday I’ll look back and wonder what I’d tell my children of my times….That we had it all figured out wrong?
In our times…
Time they said was money, but money was never time…
We signed peace treaties and made bigger bombs,
We married for convenience and not for love,
We worked for money and not passion,
Religion united people from across seven seas but separated brothers of the same land,
We feared to dream yet shied away from reality,
We beautified our body and killed our soul,
We solved the most complex problems yet the real ones still remained,
We used our head and not our heart,
We existed but we didn’t quite live!
Yet hope floated…
For the very best part of my day was when I fell asleep every night….I was transported back to a time when I scampered around the Garden of Eden again….honey bees…apple trees and happy memories.

Fait accompli!

The phone dropped from my trembling hand. The urge to cry was strong, I tried but I couldn’t.
The memories were turning crimson and in a matter of seconds they had completely burnt out. It was all over...just like that!
All those years meant nothing suddenly...I tried to gather all those special happy memories...random moments...it seemed like a bootless exercise...I persisted but couldn’t find a single one...not one.
This couldn’t be true,this nightmare was going to end when I woke up.
It has always been an obsession with me-I have a back-up of everything from random personal emails to the weirdest chat conversation...and all those photographs! Imagine the irony of the wipe out of all those memories closest to my heart!
I couldn’t believe it could happen to me. I'm sure my mind was playing games...Maybe it was the stress at work. Maybe it was everything together. Maybe it was nothing!
The idea seemed eerily familiar,like a déjà vu...it was that movie...what was the name again?
I had watched it on the strong recommendation of a colleague...yes that was it-eternal sunshine of the spotless mind...the movie had freaked me out of my wits but I thought it would be so surreal yet life changing if everyone had the right to get rid of all those rotten memories of those further rotten men who never deserved us in the first place!(as any well wisher would put it.)
Inside my head was a mocking voice saying, careful what you wish for! I was sure that was the devil himself talking.
I was beginning to freak out by now..it couldn’t be true,it couldn’t be happening to me!
I logically reasoned to myself that these things don’t happen in a real world.
Am I beginning to lose my mind? I needed to talk to someone. I couldn’t decide who...and where could I start without sounding like a lunatic?
Left with no choice I lay abed and last remember staring at the dusty ceiling endlessly while the TV that blared in the background seemed strangely therapeutic.

I don’t know when I fell asleep but when I woke up the next day all that remained was a strange inveterate pain...