So am I excited as usual? Not really, not this time ’round. There’s not been much going on on this blog. It hasn’t been a highlight of my life this year.

This blog’s getting older; it’s just a few months older than Google Reader. They are putting down Reader on July 1. What of this blog, I wonder. Especially since most people who read this blog seem to follow it on Reader. I suppose everyone’s shifted to an alternative, or like me, given up reading stuff on RSS. Yeah, shocking isn’t it, I don’t follow blogs anymore unless I’m following the author(s) on some other social network and receive updates whenever they update their blog. It hasn’t made a difference to my life, it seems like.

This makes me realize people didn’t really need to read me here. Of course I knew all along, but at some corner of my mind wondered if people eagerly awaited my next post. But I guess getting to read my blog is probably like the free soda refill at a deli. You have enough to read, you don’t really need more, but what the heck.

It saddens me somewhat that writing and reading aren’t anymore a highlight of my life. I have newer hobbies. Reading and writing were hobbies that didn’t require much of time or money, and now I have more of both than I ever did. Which means I can afford to get fancy-shmancy yarn to knit with, I can spend hours watching and performing improv, I can get back to machine learning basics like never before, and I can actually go watch many concerts live.

And I feel less powerless than before, which means it doesn’t feel like writing is my only way to change the world. I’m also less idealistic than I was, so I don’t even try to change the world with my writing. I feel my views are less unique in this world where everyone voices their opinions on social media and it feels less and less like I have anything unique to give.

I write less as a result.

So you don’t get to hear about the Museum of Math or the Dengue Fever concert I so thoroughly enjoyed, or how gorgeous I found Cornell’s campus to be, or my experiments with hair chalk, or about the anatomy of a heartbreak, or New York during Christmas, or a neat collection of knitting patterns I have finished thus far. Or even about Eileen’s cheesecake cupcakes.

But that’s okay.

Someday soon I’ll find something that moves me so much that I’ll have to write about it. Someday soon my fulltime job will be one which agrees with my writing-mood schedule. Someday soon my threshold for ‘stuff good enough to blog about’ will be low enough to include all the things I do regularly. Someday soon I’ll not be so shy about writing fiction. Someday soon I’ll flesh out all my sketch ideas into concrete seven-minute-long sketches, get them read out and reviewed, and put them out here so that someone finds them and films them.

Or maybe I’ll move to a different blog, unconstrain myself from what I’ve made this page out to be and write more trite stuff. I don’t know.

For now, I’m rather proud of this bonny eight-year-old who sometimes throws tantrums at me, and who I cheerfully nurtured as an infant but now feel guilty for neglecting, even edging on forgetting its eighth birthday, but who manages fine being a latchkey kid. No doubt it’ll make me prouder than before. Someday soon.

Deal is, this is kind of alien to me, to have a place for everything and keeping everything in its place. Or to have a time for work and a time for play. And a knitting basket full of so many different coloured balls of wool. Kind of feels like living someone else’s life, on occasion.

And when shreds of the past slip in, my subconscious revolts against the present. I go to a place where it feels like I’m still wanderlust from April 2008. And there’s nothing I can do about it.

Some other times, I feel out of touch with how I used to express myself. The emotions seem new. The calmness is strange, the lack of constant agitation feels strange.

I fear losing who I am, forgetting the lessons learned at the school of hard knocks, leaving all that behind for something that’ll only end up being fleeting.

I often feel the urge to create something beautiful, but feel crippled because I have forgotten how.

Things I’d taken for granted previously now feel scary. There’s little that’s familiar that I can hold on to.

And that’s why I’m here, hours before something kind of important, blogging. Because I’m scared and this feels familiar and comfortable.

• Watch movies: Until a year ago, my primary form of entertainment in the USA used to be watching movies. I had the pleasure of like-minded friends who’d make sure I caught every last Pixar movie, every blockbuster that came out, every thriller worth watching. Before that, there were endless hours in front of the TV at home, on World Movies or Sony Pix, watching a twisted Korean movie or a sweet Thai movie. And innumerable Kannada and Tamil movies the names of which I’ve forgotten, but the plotlines I clearly remember. I don’t do that much anymore. My aim in life has been to not plonk myself in front of a screen every evening for the past year. So yeah, I do Netflix, but it doesn’t have the randomness of TV. There isn’t anymore that wonder of a movie you have no idea about. The blind acceptance of whatever comes your way. When on watching a bad movie you don’t consider it two hours wasted. I ought to get back to doing something like that. It makes me explore things I wouldn’t have otherwise.
  
• Read books: My reading habit has been the worst casualty of my habit of never coming home until it’s obscenely close to bedtime. I don’t get to read on my commute because it’s rather short and involves changing trains. I don’t own a tablet, and until recently I didn’t own many books because they are a burden when you’re constantly moving house. NYPL rocks, but I haven’t really taken much advantage of it.
  That said, I don’t feel the quality of my life dipping that much. There’s enough I get to read on the Internet everyday. Shorter pieces, certainly, but they are so much more current, more elegantly structured, easily digestible. You find it easier to discuss those with friends.
  Of course, I do miss the sharp plotting, foreshadowing, and such storytelling techniques, as well as the long form, and my life would be much richer with these things than without. But I notice I’m not so anal about reading as I used to be before. I don’t judge people for not owning a full bookcase anymore. While I still squeal with pleasure at beautiful bookends, I don’t find myself sharing pictures of fancy bookcases and libraries anymore. All those things that came with a reading habit – good grammar, structured thinking, an air of curiosity, lots of worldly information – they now come even without a reading habit. And that’s okay.
• Read Indian English writing: This I completely don’t regret. I used to be fascinated by any and all Indian authors who wrote in English. I now realize most of them wrote tripe they themselves didn’t understand. I don’t really enjoy reading the NRI writers’ works about India. Their perspective reeks of misunderstanding and misplaced romanticizing. I haven’t felt many Indian authors have their perspective be grounded in reality. And when it is, it isn’t the sort of reality I can connect with. Either that their perspective is completely unlike mine, or they write so badly that they fail to communicate their perspective to me in a way that I can love it. They all take themselves and their Indianness too seriously for my liking. I know there are folks who have a more chilled out perspective, but they don’t write well enough for me.
  I’m quite sick of arts-student type rhetoric-filled gimmickry-filled writing. I just want to read some genuine feeling, unadorned, raw, freeflowing yet somehow structured because that’s how the author’s mind works or they’ve taken the trouble to organize their thoughts. It feels fake otherwise.
  Also, I’m done, done with Magic Realism and a thousand new controversies won’t get me to read Salman Rushdie again.
• Outrage: I’ll never have long discussions with people about their views on some random topic that doesn’t directly affect me again. I’ve done that enough. A good number of times on this blog. My past levels of passion on various useless topics makes me cringe a little. I don’t anymore care if someone else is wrong on the internet or in real life. It’s a serious waste of good energy that can go into a few hours’ more sleep.
• Outrage w.r.t my rightwingery: I’m still on the Indian Right, politically. What I am not however is a fan of endless foolhardiness. The BJP goes out of its way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. They can’t be arsed to clean up their public image. They can’t put a spin on things such that they aren’t putting their feet in their mouths. Yes, the media is harsh on them, but that should only be an impetus to get better PR. And I’ve never agreed with them on their social conservatism. Yeah, maybe the main politicians don’t even think of social conservatism, but they don’t rein in the ones who do spout social conservatism. The endless misogyny, the slutshaming, the homophobia… I can’t stand for any of this. If there’s an alternative that’s socially progressive and gutsy fiscally and in other aspects, I’d gladly vote for them. Again, the problem is, too much rhetoric, not enough action items.
• Whine about not travelling enough: Alright I’ll come out and say it. I’m glad to finally admit to myself that I think travelling is overrated. I do like exploring new places, but I do also like quietly listening to music at home.

But there’s also Things I Wish I Did More:

• Code more
• Write more – sketches, fiction… blogging frequency’s okay.
• Read more textbooks. There’s just so much to learn, and so many basics I feel I’ve messed up on!
• Swim more, ice-skate.
• Improv more. Somehow, life happened since October and I haven’t been doing much improv. I ought to get back to it!

So many cool things. So little time. And so much goofing off waiting for me. Sigh

Among other things, I discovered that a lot of concerts happen in the area. I don’t anymore have to worry about getting back late. And it works great even if I’m by myself, thanks to the excellent public transport this city has. So I ended up watching a lot of concerts. Let’s see how that went.

• Norah Jones: Last April at Tarrytown Music Hall. I had no idea this place existed. My friend had an extra ticket and while I had only listened to two Norah Jones songs properly until then, I decided to just go. Turned out to be a test concert for her tour for Little Broken Hearts a month later. Two hours later, Norah had a new fan. Her voice has an ethereal quality to it.  Her manner makes you feel she’s just a regular girl you’d meet at a slumber party and do your nails with and who you’ll grin at when she has her arms full of Grammys and you won’t for a moment think she’s being snarky when she says “And I didn’t thank my grandmother either” when the media asks her why she didn’t thank Pt. Ravi Shankar in her Grammy acceptance speech. I also have grown to like her country band The Little Willies. Her music doesn’t take itself too seriously, be it when she’s covering Dolly Parton’s Jolene or singing melodious yet creepy songs about what she’ll do Miriam who’s done her wrong. I love how effortless she makes it all seem.
  Here’s The Little Willies singing about Lou Reed cow tippin’. 
• The Manhattan Transfer: It was Last.fm’s recommendations which introduced me to this jazz vocalese band. I wrote about the concert here. It was a very enjoyable evening. It was raining like crazy as I hunted for a Kinko’s to print my tickets out near Grand Central, and I made a mad dash in my soaked ballerina flats to catch the last train that would get me to Tarrytown in time for the concert. It was still cold and rainy and dark as I trudged up the slope to get to the music hall. It was downright magical to hear jazz vocalese being performed live. When we all stood up in an ovation after Birdland, it didn’t matter that I was the youngest and brownest in the crowd, or that the two women next to me had large bobbing Adam’s apples and that had made me unsure about beginning a conversation with them or that the old couple next to me called me ‘coloured’…. all that mattered was we thought the band did a wonderful job and we had had a great evening.
• The Raghu Dixit Project: All the Bangaloreans in the tri-state area came together at Joe’s Pub that evening. Everyone had that typical RV/PESIT look about them. Their performance was just like I remembered them at NITK in 2007, though only Raghu Dixit and Gaurav Vaz remained of the then-lineup. Their token eye-candy was the flautist this time, as opposed to the guitarist while at NITK. Everyone who’d come, Bangalorean or not, enjoyed the concert a lot. There even was a caucasian woman who danced on tables and jumped up on stage as the band finished. She was introduced to the crowd as the band’s ‘stalker’. They played old songs, new ones, movie songs, folk songs… they’ve always been good at showmanship and kept the audience on their feet pretty much the entire duration. Pretty good, I’d say.
  
• The Doors (of the 21st Century): aka Krieger-Manzarek. They’ve got a lead singer who does a pretty awesome Jim Morrison. Ray Manzarek looks just as erudite and classy as he looked in the band’s heyday. Robby Krieger looks like just another little old man with funny pants and a great shock of white hair, but two minutes with a guitar and he’s a powerhouse. Ray’s brother Rick Manzarek came in with the lead guitar for a few songs, I don’t particularly remember which ones. (This is why you’ve got to blog just as soon as you finish a concert). I was initially trying to record the songs, or to sing along or to try and remember the songs, but with the long interludes and solos and improvizations, I just gave up and sat back and closed my eyes. It was the closest I’ve got to a religious experience. The band are very loud, very ’70s, very cheery, very prone to cussing. They remembered Jim, they got up and pranced around, they screamed, they played their hearts out. From Riders on the storm to Indian Summer to Light My Fire, the music transcended every pore of my being, and when they finally got around to LA Woman, it didn’t matter anymore that they were playing ‘my song’, all I knew was I didn’t want them to stop playing. I’m someone who makes fun of Morrison poetry, but in that music hall with the music so loud, and a powerful-voiced young man spouting them, the lyrics all came together and made sense.
  The crowd was interesting as well. Lots of ex-hippies. The sorts who are balding badly but still have a ponytail. The sort who still try to drink like they did in the original Doors concerts, but now end up going to the restroom every half hour. One such man next to me was reminiscing about driving down Sunset Blvd passing by a billboard advertising the latest Doors album, LA Woman, with Light My Fire playing on the radio when the announcer interrupted to announce Morrison had been found dead in Paris. His much-younger wife piped in with ‘I wasn’t born then’, and we laughed. 
• Bob Dylan and Mark Knopfler: I had the highest expectations for this one. If listening to Krieger-Manzarek had been a dream-come-true, Bob Dylan would be downright legendary. Didn’t pan out that way. First, we’d gotten the crappiest seats at Barclay Center. Secondly, it was at Barclay Center, which is a ballpark. The problem with a ballpark is, it’s too large. I was too far above the stage and watched the whole thing with my camera zoomed in to 25x. The acoustics were okay. But then Mark Knopfler was the least interactive performer I had watched until then. Most of the songs he played weren’t any of the popular ones from Dire Straits. I’d have liked to appreciate the Celtic-sounding numbers he played, but not one song got an introduction or even had its name mentioned. The band was introduced at the very end. There was hardly any greeting the audience or acknowledging us.
  I thought Dylan would be better because he famously performs at his grandkids’ school impromptu. How wrong I was. He acknowledged the audience even less than Knopfler did. He sang all his songs in a gruff monotone with very little hitting the higher or even the mid-ranged notes. I had great difficulty identifying which song it was that he was singing. The lighting was terrible.
  If all that weren’t enough, the audience enthusiasm was pretty low. Any burst of enthusiasm would remain rather localized because the place was so large and people were so sparsely scattered. One group starts going ‘woooooo’ and realizes they sound out-of-place and just as others start picking up on it, they stop. And everyone stops. I just didn’t feel the enthusiasm the way I had in the other ones. It was a pretty huge let-down I’ll say.
• The Queen Extravaganza: This is Queen’s official tribute band. Their act is produced by Roger Taylor and the show is designed by the same guy who used to do it for Queen as well as for Led Zeppelin and RHCP and Floyd. I was warned they were loud, but I had no idea how much until they started playing. They had two wonderful vocalists, Mark Martel hitting the higher notes, and Jennifer Espinoza doing the powerful lower notes. Neither did any falsettos, I was disappointed to note. Their enthusiasm is boundless and their energy is infectious. They had these screens in their backdrop where they played footage from Queen concerts and music videos. I especially loved their rendition of Don’t stop me now, where they flashed the lyrics along with little pictographs.
  The audience were astounded by their Bohemian Rhapsody where they played the original music video and the band did all the parts live except for the Balland and Opera bits for which they played Queen’s recording. They played all the well-known songs including Radio Ga ga, Killer Queen, Tie Your Mother Down. Mark Martel sang a very very soulful Somebody To Love. They ended it with We are the champions and We Will Rock You.
  This was truly a dream-come-true for me. I’ve loved Queen for many years now, love their music, love their showmanship. This was the closest it can ever get to the real thing, and I had the time of my life listening to these songs. If I ‘just let go’ and surrendered while listening to The Doors, I was alive and ready every second for Queen. It made me smile for weeks after and nothing could faze me.
  My enthusiasm for the band was however beaten by a banker who said he’d been to Queen’s concerts and pronounced The Queen Extravaganza ‘nearly as good as the real thing’, and a sixteen year old Brazilian boy who loved astronomy as much as he loved Brian May and spoke perkily about learning to stargaze from Brian May’s blogposts and tweets. And a couple of girls from Yonkers who said to me, ‘Ooh, Freddie was Indian too, did you know?’.
• Upcoming…. I’m dying to attend Dengue Fever’s concert in April, and wondering about Steven Wilson too. I’m a tad pissed about missing Roger Waters and Jethro Tull and hope at the very least, Jethro Tull perform again in 2013. I’d love to attend one of The Little Willies. I’ve heard there are a lot of concerts of Bollywood singers, but I’m somehow not too enthusiastic, but maybe that’ll change. I’m hoping AC/DC choose to perform, given I’ve missed them at Indio a while back. Rickie Lee Jones and Fleetwood Mac look promising. Maybe I’ll check out some jazz at BB King Blues & Grill or the Beatles tribute bands there. Maybe I’ll finally try Birdland. Or maybe I’ll say yeah I’ve attended more concerts in a year than I have all my life before and not go for any more. Let’s see how it goes. Watch this space

My gap year where I discovered myself after college. Where I collected my bearings. Learnt to laugh, to feel, to trust and believe.

It’s been a good year.

I don’t know if I should even be saying anything. In the time between when she was assaulted and when she passed away, I was having a good time. Lots of friends and acquaintances coming in to town, and I end up coming home at hours that would be considered unreasonable back home. I often come back home by myself, unescorted. What’s more, I do everything by myself. Initially in this city, it wasn’t much of a choice – I hardly knew anyone. If I had to rely on company, I’d've never discovered half the spots I intimately love here, wouldn’t be doing improv, wouldn’t have gone for writing classes, wouldn’t go for random Reddit meetups, wouldn’t furnish my home, wouldn’t…. do anything!

My behaviour and demeanor would be termed ayyashi in an Indian city.

Enough has been said about the mentality of Indian men and the government and patriarchy, and I guess I needn’t repeat all of that, given others have said it better than I could have. All I know is how not being constrained by my gender set me free.

I’ve always been the good kid who walked the straight narrow path. I don’t like to take risks. I just like to be left alone to do my own thing. I don’t like to fight the system. I’m not the rebel sorts. I hate having to fight for what I need; I prefer negotiating. I’m the meek nerdy girl you don’t really notice. That said, having a father and mother like mine means you end up with interests in random things your friends  usually don’t share interests in.  And you know what? That combination makes life hard!

You don’t want to stay out beyond your curfew, but you really want to go for Toastmasters which holds meetings late in the evening. You don’t want to go out with a crowd that has only boys, but that’s probably the only way you can attend that concert you’ve been dreaming of since forever. It’s hard to make friends because they all live so far away and they hang out late after class and you need to leave because you don’t want to get home too late. You want to take pictures of the sunrise, but you aren’t supposed to be out that early. You want to exercise in the sun, but it’s weird to do so on the terrace because the neighbours have lechy sons.

And so on. These seem very much like problems of the privileged, I know. I’m lucky to be able to go away from home for higher studies. I’m lucky my parents save money for my MS and not for my Mrs. But the sort of roadblocks in my way are roadblocks too.

You are advised against taking Mechanical because it’s not a woman-friendly field. You want to do a project with one professor but he is a creep you don’t ever want to be left alone with. You correct a lecturer in class and he casts aspersions on your character (this really happened to me). While your mostly-male team is trying to negotiate with a professor, you are asked to step in and ‘turn on your feminine charms’. Some girls you know wear jackets in 35 degree heat because a colleague stares at their chests and the people above him won’t take their complaints seriously. You hear of a much-loved former colleague being fired for sexually harassing the office looker, and though you are shaken, you are hurt even more by your friends accusing her of doing all this just for a fat settlement (mostly because they are numb with disbelief), and you wonder what would happen if you were to blow the whistle on someone who troubles you… would these same friends who hold you so dear turn against you?

When I joined gradschool in the US, I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of don’t-care I faced. No one cared I was a girl. No one looked at me weird if I stood my ground about a technical point and was proved wrong; it was expected I do that. No one cared if a researcher was a man or a woman. I couldn’t anymore rage about being discriminated against; I had to contribute equally. I could stay at lab past 2am, and I’d get escorted back by the cops. And I didn’t need that, really… I could walk back and it would be perfectly safe. No one talked down to me because I was a girl. No one made me uncomfortable with their eyes or touch. The world was telling me ‘Here, you have all the opportunity and none of the constraints, now you have no excuse for not kicking ass’. It was sort of scary because I was never used to feeling that.

When I finally had free time on my hands in New York, my mind and body initially protested greatly at my resolution to never come home before 9pm on any given day. It wasn’t safe, my mind and body yelled. There’s some catch, they screamed. I kept myself away from staying home with my entire self kicking and screaming. Soon, I was comfortable talking to strange people, going to places that I wouldn’t have dreamt of going to, and my only gripe when I stay out late is that I lose out on a few hours of sleep, or that the Q train doesn’t run express. I see me blossoming as a person, without the constant worry that someone is staring at my bosom or looking to grope me. I feel less helpless. I see myself finally get that sense of entitlement and innocence I’ve longed for for so long. Somehow it felt like I’d lost that with constantly preparing for the worst in India. There are no strangers judging me for my choices here and wondering aloud if my mother did a good job raising me. I feel free.

I’ve had shady creepy experiences, but I’ve always been comforted by the fact that things can’t get too bad, there are cameras everywhere. And that even if something happened, the perpetrators would be brought to justice. The confidence that if I called 911, the cops wouldn’t say creepy shit and get away with it.

The confidence that the rule of law was in effect in New York City.

Yes, we can go on blaming the general attitude of the people, of Indian men, of Indian parents, society and everything for what happened to so many women in India. But in my opinion, that’s not it. Strict laws and their strict enforcement can go a long way in changing how society thinks. There are plenty in New York City as well who’d be too glad to do it the Delhi way, but there are cameras everywhere, the laws are strict, the courts are strict, citizen groups won’t let go of any such case easily. There certainly are flaws in this system, and perpetrators do get away occasionally. But the fear is enough to deter a lot of people from committing crimes. Not just rapes. Mugging and murder too.

If the streets are safe, people no longer have an excuse to lock their daughters up. If the legal system is secure, rapists don’t get away scot-free. Parents of girls start chilling a bit, let their daughters go to a larger variety of places. The presence of a larger proportion of women changes the social dynamics of any place. Boys grow up seeing more and more girls in their activities, and the whole idea of the difference between the genders stops being so stark in their heads. Sure, to see change in the society and its mindset, it’ll take at the very least another generation, but as an immediate effect we can see the number of crimes go down, and that is not a small thing.

And that’s why we shouldn’t lose sight of legislating on stronger laws, police reform, judiciary reform, and electing officials who toe our line on these things.

Mum’s the Word

Anita took the avocado peeler out of its packaging and hung it with the rest of the cutlery. An impulsive grab while grocery shopping for tonight’s dinner. She wasn’t used to cooking for more than one person. And now ten were descending on her for Thanksgiving dinner. The thought gave her a dull ache in her limbs.

Atleast she didn’t have to make everything; just the turkey, gravy and dips for the hors d’ouvres. Michael was bringing the stuffing,   Angela-akka said she’d bring scalloped potatoes, and Albert-anna and anni were bringing biriyani. Aishu had finally got time off from her lab. Stephen was doing dessert.

Stephen. Anita hadn’t seen her younger son for almost a year now. Just a few days after he got back from his semester in Europe studying Art History. He’d had a job waiting for him in New York, and left home soon. Too soon for her liking. She stood still, the pestle hovering over the bowl of avocados. Mike and she had had an amicable divorce, and after the first few years of resentment, they had learned to be friends. Still, she felt increasingly lonely as she approached retirement, and wished her son would call her more often. Aishu on the other hand was more attached to Mike, called him more often than she called Anita.

Basting the turkey lovingly with an apple cider glaze, a smile spread across Anita’s face. Her brother and sister would soon come. Mike would, too. But most of all, her babies were coming home!

* * *

“Say what you will, Albie”, Angela said “it is very inappropriate to call her ex husband and all”.

“Aiyo, akka“, Albert said for the millionth time that day, “who else is there for her at this age? Aishwarya is in Chicago, Stephen is in New York, who is there to take care of her?”  Nancy, his wife, nodded along, too scared to say anything more countering her sister-in-law.

“Are we not there?”, Angela said in her self-righteous manner.

“Angie-akka,  Ani takes care of you more than you take care of her. Especially after your operation”.

Angela scowled.  ”She should never have divorced him in the first place”.

“Why do you bring up all these old stories? This is why Ani is forced to ask you to come and stay with us instead of with her”

“When they were getting married itself, I didn’t approve. I had taken her aside and said ‘Ani, he doesn’t seem a good boy’. Did she listen to me? No. No one listens to me.”

Nancy disappeared into the kitchen on some pretext. Albert followed her.

“But whatever we say to Angie-akka, I still am not comfortable with Michael coming.”, she said.

“You know Ani has always been like that no. Marrying that fellow even after Appa opposed it so much, then divorced him, and now their children do whatever they want, no rules nothing”.

“Aishwarya does modeling these days itseems”, Nancy snidely added.

“That boy is also some artist or something. Still mooching off parents’ money on Europe trip and this and that.”, Albert grumbled. “If I’d had a son, he wouldn’t have grown up like that”.

“Leave no, Albie, the children have been through enough. It’s not anyone’s fault they are like that. Both Mike and Ani feel guilty and overcompensate by letting the children do whatever they want. What else will they do?”

* * *

“Knight, eh?”, said Stephen to the elderly gentleman riding shotgun with him. “You’ll make a dork, stocky Knight, George”.

A dignified smile spread across George’s lips, somehow making his well-proportioned olive-skinned face even more stately than it already was. His greying at the temples only accentuated the effect.

“It’s not a Knighthood, Stephie-boy. Just an OBE. And at this point, it’s just speculation”

“Humility, eh? I mean, you did hear it from the Queen’s press secretary.”

“Yeah. But if I go around telling it around, I won’t be able to put on my surprised face when the list does come out, will I?”.

“Oh come, you can tell my folks that now and they’ll only like you more. It’ll help our case when I tell them you’re George Alaganathan, OBE for Charitable Services rendered to the Empire, than the whole Royal Family instead of George who I met in Europe and took a fancy to”.

“Stephie…… are you sure you want me at Thanksgiving? I mean, you’re seeing your entire family after ages, and I don’t want to intrude…”

“Nah, it’ll be okay. Mummy and Dad don’t mind when I bring friends over”.

“You know that’s not what I’m worried about”.

“Relax. It’ll be fine.”

“I’m fine meeting your parents. I’m not so sure about your extended family….. are you sure you want me there with your uncles and aunts and everyone there?”

“George, when else can I take time off and go meet my parents? And when do you ever get time off anyway? We’re staying the night at Ma’s place aren’t we… we’ll talk to just them later after everyone else has gone home”.

George still brooded.

“Forget about it and keep a look out for some place we can get some gigantic cake or the other?”

***

“Where in Sri Lanka was your family from?”. Appa and Albert-mama had rather taken a liking to George.

“Near Jaffna. It was very long ago, Sir. My mother escaped to live with relatives in Birmingham in 1984, when the fighting was just starting. I was just a lad then…. I thought it was just for a few weeks.. but…”.

And thus began a line of conversation Stephen had heard only a million times before, which George invariably was asked to narrate whenever in the company of diaspora Tamils.

“Was your father Alaganathan Arulsamy?”, Angie-periamma interrupted. “In 1983, when I was involved in the Christian Mission in Vavuniya, I think I had met him… wasn’t he a civil servant in Jaffna then?”.

“Illai-nga, my father was Alaganathan Manivannan. Passed away in 1980 itself. He was not a civil servant actually, just an electrician.”. George gave his faraway smile that always managed to charm everyone.

“Oh, your mother must have been Dhanaletchmy? I remember she was very active in the local church…..”

“Oh, yes, you know her then. Wonderful to know.” George’s face lit up with genuine happiness.

Stephen suppressed a giggle. George’s mother Rukmini had remained a devout Hindu until her death.

“Turkey’s delicious-nga. Best I’ve had in a very long time”, George added to Anita who then giggled like she was eighteen and said “Oh, it’s nothing”.

That old fox, Stephen smiled. George, having had his charitable organization that helped immigrants and refugees to the UK assimilate for the past twenty years, knew exactly how to make people feel comfortable.

Mike and George then went into a long tirade about how the US government had been unfair about Raj Rajarathinam. Stephen tuned out.

“Aishu, my laptop’s not working pa, fix it no”, Stephen turned to his sister. She gave him a look that suggested she’d heard this joke a million times. “Northwestern computer science and you can’t fix your brother’s laptop?”.

“Poda, you’ll use Internet Explorer and it’ll have a thousand popups and toolbars and viruses you’ve got from random sites”.

She leaned in closer, and in a low voice, said “What’s going on here?”.

“Nothing, George didn’t have anywhere to go for Thanskgiving, so I brought him here.”

“Don’t give me that Stephie.”

“Not now, Aishu. Later”.

***

“No, no, it’s alright! Nancy and I will clear the table, please don’t bother!”, Anita shooed George as he attempted to help her in putting the dishes away.

George tried to protest when his phone rang, and he excused himself as he pulled it out of his pocket.

“Kudutthu vecchirukanum, Stephen”, Angie-perima was saying, “To be friends with a man as highly esteemed as this. His mother was a very distinguished and dignified woman, and I’m happy to say he would have made her proud…..” She trailed off and stared into space.

“What’s that?”. Angie-perima walked over to where George had been standing. She picked up a bulky leather wallet.

“Oh, that’s George’s, perima. Give it here…”. Angie had already opened it.

“What is going on here? I demand to know. Who is this man?”. She thundered.

Everyone looked around in confusion. Just then, George walked back in from the patio.

“You are not Dhanaletchmy’s son”. she said as she burnt him with her gaze. “That boy died of measles.”.

“Ah, madam, you caught me there. I was just…”

“And now…”, she sobbed, “What are you doing with our boy? See everyone, he keeps a photo of our Stephie in his wallet”. She held his wallet open for everyone to see. Sure enough, there was a photograph of Stephen, standing by the Thames.

“Who are you?” Mike and Albert-mama cornered George. “What is this supposed to mean? Our boy shows you kindness and this is what you do with it, is it?”

“No, sir, it’s all just a huge mistake….”

“Appa, Mama, please leave George alone. He’s done nothing.”

“Stephen, what is going on?”, Anita angrily asked.

“Amma, Appa, Aishu, George and I are in love. I brought him here to introduce him to you people. We wanted to talk to you later tonight. We certainly didn’t mean to let you find out like… like this… “

“What have you done to our boy?” Albert was livid. “I know all your types. Catching boys at an impressionable age, and brainwashing them. Should whip you people senseless”.

“How can you call yourself a Christian?”, Angela’s eyes were full of hot tears as she clutched at her cross.

“Everyone, please calm down. I know my brother. He isn’t gullible enough to be brainwashed. He’s been aware of his preferences for quite a while now”.  Aishwarya protectively held her brother.

“You knew, Aishu? Why didn’t you tell us before?”. Anita burst into tears.

“Amma, it’s Anna‘s business. I left it to him to tell you in whatever style he found suitable”.

“Why didn’t you give me any indication at the very least? Some warning? Why didn’t you, Stephen? Your poor mother has to find out like this?”

“Amma…. I…” Stephen mumbled.

“Where did I go wrong with you? Mike, where did I go wrong? Where did we go wrong?”, Anita sobbed into her ex-husband’s arms.

“Stephen,  what did we do to make you feel you can’t trust us like this? How long has this been going on for? Everyone goes through confusions, Stephen. You shouldn’t let others take advantage of those confusions of yours. You could have talked to us about any confusions”.

“And you would have said they exist only in my mind!” shot back Stephen. “This is what I am. And I won’t let any force on that take this part of me away from me”.

“Aah, I’m feeling faint”. Angela shrieked as she crumpled onto the couch. Nancy rushed to her with a glass of water.

***

Albert and Nancy had taken Angela away, not before cursing the whole family and telling them nothing good will ever happen to this dysfunctional family. George patiently stood in the patio while the family disappeared into one of the bedrooms to talk. He gazed at the stars, worrying for Stephen, worrying for them.

“Chilly, isn’t it?”. Aishwarya was standing next to him. “I’m used to colder, this isn’t so bad.”, George said. “Listen, I’m really sorry for everything today. I was uncertain about my coming, but I never anticipated things could go this way”.  Aishwarya looked at him.

“I know what you must be thinking. I must seem like a dirty old man….”

“Listen, as fiercely protective of Stephen as we are, we at the end respect his choices. Besides, he loves you. I’ve never seen him this way about anyone”.

“Likewise for me. I had consigned myself to a life in the closet, ‘Confirmed bachelor’ as they call it. Until I met Stephe at a fundraiser”.

“He’s a great guy”.

“He’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me”.

“He says the same thing”.

George smiled shyly.

“Just promise me one thing? I know I can’t ask you to never break his heart. But if he breaks yours, do be gentle on him? He’s only a boy.”

* * *

An hour later, they were all having a nightcap of brandy, toasting George and Stephen. Mike said it was wonderful to have George be part of the family, and Anita said they both were lucky to have found each other. They laughed and talked. George narrated stories about how they met in Europe, mentioned his plans of expanding his charity to America and said he would no doubt need the goodwill of people like Mike and Anita to do so. Finally Aishwarya began to yawn while laughing at Stephen’s jokes, and everyone went to turn in. Anita stumbled while getting up, and Stephen went with her to tuck her in.

“So… what do you really think, Ma?”, Stephen asked.

“You both are really in love, aren’t you Stephe, I can see it in your eyes”, she smiled.

“Yes! He takes good care of me. He’s always there to tell me right from wrong. He’s my rock. He’ll give his life for me”.

“Of course he will, Stephe. That’s what a significant other is for“

“Mm?”

“Stephe, be your own person first. It’s easy to not get a chance to develop that if someone’s always protecting you from the world. Don’t make the mistakes I made”.

“But Mummy, you’re so independent. You raised us almost single-handedly”.

“I wasn’t always, Stephe. Even now, I find it hard, keeping my own company. I’m still learning to be happy without having to have someone else working at making me happy”.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you are exactly where I was just before I married Appa. You don’t have to commit to the first person who asks you to, you know that, right? I was very naive. Appa was just getting ready to settle down. I never explored myself as a person, Stephe. I gave up a promising career, all my hobbies. And who do I have to blame for that? Not Appa. He never stopped me. It never occurred to me to take care of myself. If I’d waited a while, things might have been different… Appa and I aren’t right for each other, Stephe. We can be friends, but it just got too difficult toward the end. I don’t want you to become like me, Stephe”.

“Ma…”

“First take care of yourself, Stephe. Don’t let anyone make you feel obliged to put their needs first”.

“Yeah, he is a lot like Appa. But he’s awesome, Ma. Gives me a lot of space. The long distance really does help. He doesn’t always get it that I want some alone time, but that’s our challenge. That’s something we have to work out.”

“We’ll work it out, Ma. Don’t worry. I’m just glad you’ll be there for me no matter how it turns out. It’s… it’s comforting to know.”. Stephen squeezed his mother’s hand.

He rose to leave.

“Ma?” he said. She turned. “I love you. I want you to know that”.

Anita hugged him close. Her baby boy was growing up.

My first month in NYC, I sublet a rather filthy and rather tiny space in Harlem for a month from a shark sorta girl. I was given an option of taking over the lease which I tried my very best to escape and successfully managed to. I moved to someone’s living room on the Upper East.

After being used to a ginormous So.Cal apartment, a tiny Manhattan apartment with its microscopic kitchen is going to induce claustrophobia, never mind half a living room. But then, it was Manhattan and I stayed for a while.

Eventually, my circumstances were such that I needed to find a larger space. By this time, I was tired of drifting from one set of roommates to another (lived with a grand total of 12 roommates so far), getting to know someone and their quirks from scratch. I also decided I’d like it very much to fill the fridge and larder only with things I liked, use all the tiny space there was for just my stuff, be able to keep the lights on at 4am if I wanted, offer accommodation to any friend who needed it, exercise at odd hours without the sound of my breathing pissing someone off, and choose a name I liked for the Wifi.

Househunt. And good lord, it’s hard finding a satisfactory place in NYC. Let me give you a brief account and some tips.

Location, Location, Location

It’s good to settle on a neighbourhood before staking out. I needed a place close to shopping and hobbies with as short a commute to work as possible. Hopefully not by a sole subway line that is out for repairs every weekend (I’m looking at you, 7 train). This much isn’t difficult. Most places in Manhattan and the western parts of Queens and Brooklyn fulfill these criteria. It gets a little more complicated when you are on a budget. That by itself eliminates the nicer larger apartment blocks.

I initially started my search with just a budget and a rough idea of what sort of an apartment I was looking for. I’d answer all the ads I could find on Padmapper and Craigslist whenever I was in the mood months before I even planned on moving out, just to get an idea of the market. Turns out, a lot of the affordable places are in supremely shady neighbourhoods.

Take for instance a rather rowdy-looking tranny yelling insults at me in Bushwick where I’d found the nicest apartment I’d ever found. Or getting teased rather painfully near a project in Long Island City.

It’s also good to use tools like Trulia to find crime rates at any given location and neighbourhood. Mostly, these were right on the mark, but it’s not still a completely clear indication. Reddit is a great resource to ask people about how safe a particular area is. To me, it seemed better to go by what (a large number of) people said… i.e., don’t listen to one or two people’s opinion, listen to the opinion of a crowd. But ultimately, you need to go visit neighborhoods at different times of the day to gauge what it feels like, and listen to your gut.

Agent Provocateur 

There is simply no escaping real estate agents/brokers while hunting for an apartment in NYC. One smart thing to do would be to walk around the neighbourhoods you want to live in and call the listed numbers to see if they have apartments to let, to bypass any real estage agent. But when you look on Craigslist, even when you look for apartments listed by owner, you would find the listings to be dominated by agents. You can of course report them for being wrongly classified, but there’s no escaping them. Agents do have good listings with them.

But you know what, agents aren’t all that bad. If you know how to work them, that is. Lots of them want to just foist this or that apartment on you. They’ll tell you all sorts of tall tales, sing you praises of this apartment and its superintendent or that neighborhood and how close it is to the laundry. Read between the lines. Ask lots of questions. Stick to what you want. Don’t get distracted by what they say. Get a feel of the agents, don’t let them bully you into going for places you wouldn’t otherwise. Being a frail 100-pound girl, I got a lot of this. I deserve a medal for not taking the first overpriced apartment that came my way.

And oh, the agent fees. I found one month’s rent to be the norm. And mind you, 12% fee is NOT the same as one month’s rent. Do the math.

From what I’ve seen, the agents in Queens are less smarmy than the ones in Manhattan, but both will eat you up given a chance.

And, ‘East Williamsburg’ is real estage agent speak for Bushwick. And when they say Upper East or Upper West, make sure they don’t mean Harlem. Because what seems like a good deal in UES/UWS might be expensive for Harlem.

God of Small Things

Face it, most New York apartments are tiny. The ones in good locations close to midtown/downtown even more so. But that doesn’t have to mean you shell out a premium to live in a matchbox. Location isn’t everything. I found this studio near Juilliard which cost roughly half my earnings, but which the agent said was ‘cheap, because it’s small’. How small could it be, I wondered. My imagination failed me. This apartment probably had enough space for a twin mattress or a table, but not both at once. Just how does anyone live there, I wondered hard.

And seriously. Do not despair. You’ll definitely find a larger place for lesser than how much that outrageous apartment costed to rent.

If it’s too good to be true…

…then it probably is. That’s true of everything in NYC. More so about apartments. Double and triple check everything. Google the hell out of the broker, landlord and apartment. You’ll be surprised what you find. Speak to the neighbours, to the folks in the subway close to the location, the shopkeepers around the place. Ask them if the laundromat’s alright, how late they stay out until they deem it too unsafe to walk back home, if the landlord’s cooperative. Don’t just listen to the landlord and the broker.

I found a spacious studio on the upper east for a rather decent rent and no broker fee, and would have taken the place. Then I got chatty with the broker and found that the place had been on the market for three weeks, a near impossibility for the location and rent. They mentioned the metro construction outside as being the reason people don’t want to take the place. I googled for the place, and found that it was on the bedbug registry, and the tenants were complaining about how the owner was uncooperative and refused to pay for the treatments and wouldnt even let them out of the lease easily. I turned the place down. Bullet dodged.

But at the same time…

You’ll have to close in quickly on deals. Good places don’t stay on the market for longer than a couple of days. Acting pricey doesn’t quite work because if not you, there are a zillion others eager to take the place. If you find a good place, swoop in. The trick is to be able to know enough about the market and the area that you can make split-second decisions without losing too much. Do your research online before you go to see the apartment. It’s always better to have visited the area a few times before and talk to people who live there so that you have a better idea of what it’s all like there. It’s not all that easy for an immigrant to gauge these things intuitively and takes some time. It’s of course awesome if you find someone who thinks just like you to advise you, but I haven’t found all that many Indians who’ve been here for a while and know neighbourhoods in Queens and Brooklyn well enough as well as have your concerns in mind.

You can’t be too careful

Even if you’ve got everything sealed, things might not go according to plan. You need to have an adversarial mindset to tie down all the loose ends. My most horrific story involves this really nice spacious apartment in a superb location for a rather reasonable rent. I called and let the broker know I’m taking the place and was in the process of filling out forms. Then I googled the address again and looked at some results I’d missed the first time around. The results included a sex offender registry entry. It was the fella on the other end of the corridor from the apartment I would have taken. I noped the heck out of there.

There’s no place like home

After more than a month and a half of seriously looking, I found a rather good place for an okayish rent. I love the location; it’s alive in every sense of the word. Not everything’s perfect, but it’s better than everything else I found. I’m busy drilling holes in walls and putting in anchors and screws to hold up shelves and pictures, and twisting together DIY furniture. I still check Craigslist in paranoia that there might be a cheaper nicer place I might have missed, but so far, I seem to have picked a good place. The modem/router they gave me has a bug and I can’t seem to change its name. It’s apparently a known issue. I’m rather cut up about not being able to call my Wifi ‘NoLifeWithoutWifi’. But right from when the sun hits my face and wakes me up to when I come in from the cold to a warm place I can make a nice meal in and go to sleep feeling safe and content, I can’t help feeling more than a little pleased.

Prof. Sainani talks about how we make scientific literature difficult to read. About cutting down long phrases, substituting simpler words, using verbs for nouns, reducing jargon, basically get to the point already? My question is, can you really get a short story out of every research paper?

I have maintained for self-defense’s sake that creative writing and exam/report writing are not the same. In creative writing, you try to communicate an idea. You weave the story to let the other person fill in the details. Like a normal conversation, it is okay if the other person gets about 50% of what you have to say. The goal here is  keep the reader engaged. Science on the other hand is exact. Research papers, more so. If one sentence is misinterpreted, if a protocol is not clearly etched out, the outcome might be completely different. We do not get synonyms to make jargon sound beautiful. AND we have space/time/attention constraints to explain every word to a noob in the field.

How do you explain your work to your liberal arts roommate or your next-door labmate? Can we excuse a veteran professor for the fresher dozing off in his class? Is the Road Romeo allowed to be a nerd?

Most people say that science is boring – that it is too dry and too much mental effort. It is ridiculous, they say, the effort you put into these things which don’t register the senses. Does this have anything to with the way we talk about what we do in the lab? After all, desk-clerk’s job to file client information is equally specific. Where did we begin to err? Are scientists inherently bad communicators?

We could begin by rambling less and sticking to generalities. We could include humor and use day-to-day references instead of science jokes. And how about counting jargon in conversation.

Can we somehow combine creative writing and research paper writing? Can we have a normal research conversation? The true test is probably a creative writer easily writing a research paper.

I didn’t really pay it all that much attention. I downloaded the album the song was on called Sleepwalking Through The Mekong and rather liked those songs, but I didn’t do much else about that. Dengue Fever seemed rather indie, and back then didn’t seem to have a working website. Further, I immersed myself into whatever Last.fm recommended to me. Which seemed to be a lot of Celtic. Then I went through a phase where gregorian chants were the only things that gave me that epic feeling of importance while coding.

A few weeks ago, I started listening to Dengue Fever again. Then I found their website (that worked, it wasn’t working before), and their Facebook page which they seem to update regularly. From Youtube’s auto-generated playlists of the most popular songs of the band, I discovered they have more than just a couple of albums to their name. Their earlier albums are in Khmer – the language spoken in Cambodia. I like this song called Tip My Canoe from Sleepwalking Through the Mekong. But their more recent songs are in English as well. Check out this song called Mr. Bubbles, which roughly is my favourite of theirs.

I looked up the band, and realized they aren’t just some Cambodian band. They are a bunch of folks based in southern California. Zac Holtzman (a decidedly non-Cambodian name) was in Cambodia when his friend fell ill with dengue fever, and they hitched a ride on a truck to get him to the hospital, and the folks in the truck were playing old Khmer rock songs that decidedly sounded psychedelic, probably more so under the influence of a fever. He picked up a few of those tapes and found that his brother in California was coincidentally listening to the same music. And, a band was born. No, wait, they went to Long Beach near LA, to this area called Little Phnom Penh, where they found a fresh-from-Cambodia singer called Chhom Nimol (whose family seems to be full of famous singers in Thailand now). And then the band was born.

So there I was, totally amazed at the sort of sound these people had, so utterly psychedelic, so evocative of a Far-Eastern movie that tries to incorporate the best of the West into it, probably made with a very young Jackie Chan. I can’t wait for their new albums. I can’t wait for them to perform in the tri-state area, and wishing I’d gone to one of their performances when I still lived in Orange County.

By now, Last.fm is recommending me similar songs. And just like that, I come across this song called Jam 5 Kai Thiet, by a singer called Ros Sereysothea.

If you listened to that, you’ll find it sounds the same as New Year’s Eve by Dengue Fever which I linked to in the first line of this post. I was shocked, pissed, and feeling a little let down. So these guys were just covering old Cambodian songs? Is that the only reason why their music sounds so authentic?

I listened to that entire album Jam 5 Kai Thiet was from. It’s called Cambodian Rocks. It has a lot of nice gems. Like any random sample of songs from any era, there are godawful ones, and godawesome ones. With this album, the number of godawesome ones totally trumps any of the sucky songs.

I find it hard to match song to title, given I don’t know any Khmer that I can at the very least distinguish one word from another, but I find the songs all growing on me. I rather like this one called Yuvajon Kouge Jet or Broken-Hearted Man.  The one I’ve found the catchiest is this one called Maok Pi Naok or Where from?. There’s this old-timey, innocent, carefree air about the singers’ voices in that particular song. This one called Twist makes me want to dance.

I did try listening to newer Khmer songs and songs from other genres in that same era, but they sounded rather ordinary, not commanding of attention like this album. Chhom Nimol’s siblings’ songs in Khmer/Thai (well, they are all famous in Thailand, so not sure if they sing in Khmer) don’t quite match to Dengue Fever’s sound.

The bulk of the songs in that album seemed to have been sung by these singers called Ros Sereysothea and Sinn Sisamouth. And also Pan Ron. When I looked them up on Wikipedia, it broke my heart to learn that they were killed in labour camps during Pol Pot’s regime in Cambodia.

Not just them. Most of the singers on that album seemed to have met their end during the Khmer Rouge period, as they were artists and performers and were well-educated, two things that automatically qualified them as enemies of the Khmer Rouge. It didn’t help Sinn Sisamouth’s case that he started singing protest songs against the Khmer Rouge.

For perspective, imagine for a second an alternate universe where Taylor Swift or Justin Bieber were killed by the government they lived under.

I’ve only read about the horrible regime of Pol Pot. I don’t have the stomach to watch The Killing Fields. But imagine going from singing such cheery, carefree songs, incorporating the latest trends from the West, having a great entertainment scene, to the government killing 21% of the country. Cambodia even today doesn’t seem to have a vibrant movie industry. The arts are good as dead because an entire generation of artists and performers were executed, and another generation scarred and impoverished that revival seems hard. And today, Cambodia is essentially under a dictatorship, so free speech, which is integral to arts, is dealt with with an iron fist. Movie theaters, which were plentiful before the Khmer Rouge are derelict now, going by the Wiki page (I also came across an article talking about Cambodia’s entry for the Best Foreign Film category at the Oscars this year). I wonder how long it would take for a nation to recover from that sort of a blow. And I don’t mean just the entertainment industry.

I’m not under any illusion that pre-PolPot Cambodia was paradise. Or that the people who live there now live in utter hell. But why did change have to be so damaging?

Either way, it’s really great there’s a band like Dengue Fever that actually sells records and performs at various places. It’s not just about preserving the psychedelica of that era. It’s not even about the legacy the singers from back then left behind, though it’s wonderful to know that psychedelica is taken to a whole new level when it’s sung in a nasal voice and recorded through a broken mic. It’s more than that.

It’s about how someone like me with no hint of Khmer becomes aware that someone like Sinn Sisamouth existed, and why he died. About someone like me becoming sensitive to the level to which a country has fallen and is trying to pick itself up. And if someone as lazy and disinterested as me can get this sensitized with just a few clicks of a mouse, I’m pretty sure a lot of others can too. It might not mean much, but the next time there’s a news article about Cambodia, it might get more comments than usual on the NY Times website… which might translate into more coverage, and maybe when Cambodia has its Khmer Spring, we tweet enough about it to make it trend, enough for our governments to probably have a more populist official position on it.

I don’t believe in the power of online activism. I doubt sincerely that liking stuff on Facebook will bring down governments. But it sure does make it easier for us to be aware of things around us, and make more informed decisions when we have to.

Also, the music is catchy as hell.