Tough as nails

My maternal grandfather - "Dadubhai" as we grandchildren used to call him and as he used to call us grandsons had a certain aura about him. Images pulled from as far as my conscious memory goes always seem to project that one single image of him. He was not a very large man, no, not at all. In fact, if I can retain such a lithe figure when I reach his age, I would consider it to be a major achievement. But in his diminutive figure, he seemed to carry so much weight, every pound of his worth 5 of ordinary men. The fact that he spoke so little added to the intensity of his eyes which would register a spark of surprise only when a goal was scored in any football match he would be watching on TV. Even his final days when he had become old and infirm could not snatch the power he could exercise merely through his eyes!

His legend was built even more around the stories we had heard of his younger days, none of which - in a most self-effacing manner came from him. Stories about how he had to leave his home village in Bangladesh for Kolkata on an extremely short notice with the local police looking to arrest him for being an active revolutionary for India's freedom. Stories about his genius at playing bridge and mathematics, about how he was a magical football player didn't do him harm either. You'd need just one look at the man, and then you wouldn't doubt the truth in any of these stories. The clinching proof if any was required is the fact that my dad, like most married men not the greatest fan of his in-laws still has that awe in his voice when he speaks of Dadubhai's carrom and mathematical skills.

Dadubhai was never the most emotionally expressive person around. His affection for his grandchildren would at its most extreme assume the form of his knobbly, tough hands stroking our tiny palms. But his presence in the room was like a giant umbrella under which we would play unfettered. A sporadic guffaw would bring to our attention that he was indeed keeping an observant eye on all our activities. I remember being especially fascinated by the little box of smooth wax matchsticks and the packet of Navy Cuts that were always by his bedside. He was a regular smoker and when he was not in the room I would pick up the packet of cigarettes and revel in the strange odour of unburnt tobacco that I love to this day. I frequently wondered to myself whether this was the secret to his iron-clad mystique.

It's been years since Dadubhai and a few years later Dimma passed away but we've still got some furniture from my grandparents' Salt Lake flat. The chief attraction for me among these is the folding camp bed which would be opened out in our honour whenever we stayed at the Salt Lake flat. Mom and grandmother would tell us exciting instantly made-up stories about being in a jungle as we lay in darkness on the squeaking 'folding khaat' as we kids called it. But now when I see the bed gather dust in the corner, the first image that it brings up is of this simply dressed man who would without a word open it out for us, smile a sly smile and go on with his routine ways. If there was ever a man whose idealistic, dependable character spoke through his behaviour, words being superfluous, that was my Dadubhai.

New York

No, I haven't been there yet. 4 long weeks of inhabiting the US of A, and I still haven't found the willpower to propel me there. But I am so tired of incessantly writing about my apartment that I've decided to stop doing it. All I've managed to do is one measly trip of about half an hour to Boston and that's about it. Cape Cod for three continuous weekends was beautiful but Sandy Neck beach is hardly the place to feel the pulse of urban America.
The fragment that I've seen of Boston is alluring. Sitting outside the Walmart superstore of our one-horse town Taunton waiting for our cab to show up, I was beginning to form the opinion that the USA has only obese, ugly ladies. But a subway ride through Boston caused a rapid and most welcome change of opinion!
I am curious about what New York will be like. Images of Times Square, Brooklyn Bridge and the windy tunnels in between the squabbling skyscrapers of Manhattan spring to mind. And also a very unlikely image of its sewers because of the memories of my favourite cartoon show. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon show was probably only as intelligent as it sounds, but I absolutely loved the show as a kid. It was a weird mix of American cool with pizzas, skateboards and teenagers and Japanese style complete with senseis, ninjas and pop philosophy to boot. These 4 fellows (the Turtles) were the quintessential urban New Yorkers and it's not hard to imagine them coolly saunter the mean streets of the Big Apple, with special Ninja skills at their disposal. Thanks to their adventures, New York has an active, bustling presence in my imagination even before I set foot there. I don't expect meet Leo, Mike, Don and Raph (That's them, the 4 Turtles) on arrival but if their pretty reporter friend April'O'Neil wants to interview me, I'm all game. It is time for me to stop daydreaming and get back to real life planning, you think? Well, I am on my way albeit slowly. At least it's been an consistent effort for all of my 23 years. I am still trying...

Freaky as they come

This is really freaking me out. Just a couple of days after my own bucket list post, I watch the movie "The Bucket List". For the uninitiated, a bucket list is a condemned man's last wishes, the things you wanna do before you figuratively kick the bucket! I watch the movie to find my list creepily similar to Morgan Freeman's character. Ride a fast car! Check! Do an African Safari on a Land Rover! Check! Spend a day at the Taj Mahal! Check! Gaze at the Pyramids from the Sahara! Check! Sky dive! Check!

It's even more ominous when I consider that I wrote that list casually, without even wondering whether I really wanted them to come true. These thoughts were like flotsam on the sewage canal of my thoughts that I picked up and I find them in resonance with a Hollywood scriptwriter's. Coincidences like these that are too shady to considered co-incidences tend to give me the goosebumps, and not exactly of the pleasant kind. It is not a perfect method by any means, but it does keep the suspense in my life alive.

Home Alone

Now that the 4 week transition period that I had with my colleague whom I replace here at on-site is over, he's back home in Calcutta. Leaving me to fend for myself in the vastness of America. Not that I'm hating it too much. The thrill of an unscripted adventure tingles my senses. Then I look across the devastation that is also known as my studio apartment and rest my eyes on the place I love to hate. That place is the kitchen.



During my time in Calcutta, I religiously avoided any kitchen activities by buying cooked stuff off the street. But Taunton, Massachusetts is hardly the place to search if I were looking for good ol' 'tarka dal' and 'roti'. So the dull pain of having to cook my own food lingers on like a reluctant rain cloud. If there is one activity that makes every lazy bone of my body groan in disgust, it is cooking. So much effort is put into that one single act and cursed with my culinary skill set, the effort just is not justified. I did manage to stir up a semi-palatable dish of cauliflowers and potatoes but the thought of having it to do it every day for the rest of my stay here gives me the shivers. The aesthetic nightmare that my flat is right now is a side issue, considering the criticality of whether I'll be able to perform the basic survival act of cooking myself food. Walmart is always there like an old friend with its kilometres of stacked packaged foods, but also like an old friend doesn't really care how good or disgusting what is being served is.



All factors taken into account, I am still elated with the idea of being alone. Being able to drop off to sleep whenever I feel like it without offering lame justifications to raised eyebrows has to be at the top at the list of the guilty pleasures I intend to indulge in. Leonardo Di Caprio needed the keel of a gigantic ship and the exhilarating company of Kate Winslet to say this. I say this in the comfort of a little flat in the anonymity of suburban America with a laptop on my lap. The sentiments in the words ring true in both cases. "I am the king of the world!"

The Day of Reckoning

It's official. Deathclock.com - a website that I had heard of a long time ago and found time to browse only yesterday has chosen the day for me. It offered a variety of combinations to evaluate a day of demise and the two combinations that I tried with an honest heart conjured up the same date. Scary, huh? And then I tried various other false combinations of smoker/non-smoker ('coz I am somewhere in between) and sadist/optimist (somewhere in between again), just to check and the dates were came up different. But the original date was what stuck in my mind.

July 8th, 2021.

My last day on earth, and then maybe onto a happier, prettier place. That leaves me about 13 years to do what I came to do, or at least to figure out that I was intended to serve no purpose at all. So many things to do, places to visit, people to meet and so little time. My impending demise leaves me with at least one less worry. That worry is the need to worry or be sad because frankly speaking I haven't got time enough. If that fateful Thursday (Yes, Deathclock.com told me that too) is really to be my last and I were to pick a really self-centred list (as a condemned man ought to have the freedom to) of 13 aims to be accomplished off the top of my head, they would be the following:

(In no particular order)
1. Drive a Porsche 911 down a sun-baked Mediterranean coast.
2. Go on a majestic cruise across the width of the Atlantic from England to America.
3. To visit the remote islands of Easter in the lap of the majestic blue Pacific.
4. Hike up the Andes to the haunting ruins of Machu Pichu in Peru.
5. Spend a day on the cool marble of the Taj Mahal, on a baking Agra summer day (That's the only thing on this list that I've accomplished yet but I don't mind doing it all over again)
6. Do an African safari in a Land Rover, where else but in the Serengeti!
7. Get astride a KTM Super Duke and let it rip through desolate night-time city streets.
8. Visit one of those mysterious paper palaces up in the mist covered mountains that frequently make an appearance in Japanese paintings.
9. Live for a month in an old seaside mansion complete with its own grounds bordering the sea, its own guard dogs and a family ghost too.
10. Work a job that pays me for being lazy, i.e the lazier I am, the higher I am paid. Something like a model for the comforts of Kurl-On Pillow.
11. Sit on a desert dune and just gaze at the Pyramids from a distance.
12. Sky-dive from the highest altitudes humanly possible to feel the incomparable thrill that must come with free-falling and gliding through the air.
13. Put all of the above and every incident that occurred in between into a book that everybody'd would love to read (Now that's wishful thinkng, if there was ever any)!

Life isn't such a pain if you find that you don't have to deal with it for too long. For such a wonderful sense of transience, I owe a very grim website my heart-felt gratitude.

An exercise in frugality

An exercise in frugality, that is the true nature of the studio apartment to which I have to be confined to whenever I return home from frazzled and spent from yet another tough day of office in the USA. It's got a carpeted floor like most other houses here, unfortunately it's already blotched with stains of an unidentifiable nature, the vestiges of its previous occupants. The TV in the corner of the room serves as the sideboard for all paraphernalia ranging from keys, defunct mobiles, change, ID cards and what not! It's ironical that in the land of the idiot box, the occupants of this one room apartment take the minimal interest in it and it serves the purpose of junk furniture. And not that it is defunct. It works too but the charms of passive entertainment are not attractive enough for people on their first fleeting visit to the USA, as the previous occupants of this room and now me are. There is no furniture apart from an easy chair and a sofa set so swamped with long forgotten clothes that it's quite hard to see them. There's a cupboard and an attic whose contents I cannot dare to describe. A little kitchen with the customary fridge and microwave whose use I hope to minimize and a tiny switch in the corner for a functional AC (thank goodness for that) complete the picture. An apology of a mattress where salvation is sought in deep slumber also dots the landscape and order will be the last word on your mind if you ever enter here. We eat off paper plates, we minimize any kind of activity that might lend this room a single element of permanence. One week from now, it'll be my room alone 'coz the other inmate whose lifeterm is served will be leaving for India. If there was ever a room that said "Only temporary" without the use of a board, this has got to be it.

Inane and pointless

Must be a psychological thing, this not wanting to write until there is an Internet connection. On paper, a laptop provides me with infinite possibilities to make good use of my writing inclinations but when confronted with the ample opportunities I conveniently sidle out, This post is going to turn out like so many of them that I've put down in my journal back home. It's all about how I want to write but somehow lack the initiative to do do.

Things can only improve from now on in and that happens to be my only consolation. Coming to America and all the associated excitement is too strong a influence to let me return to my lazy ways very easily. Though I have grown past the stage of doing a cartwheel whenever I saw a Harley roaring across the roads in front of my house, I have still managed to retain a sense of wonder about how radically different things are in America. The people here seem to be obsessed with size as everything around here comes in two sizes - big and super big! The system and order that prevails here is like some kind of an otherworldly experience for us chaos hardened Indians. The houses are well kept and neat, and in a neighbourhood like ours you could never tell that so many people live here but for the occasional car making its way out of the car park. It is an unique experience and worth thousands of times more than the money I get for working in the USA. 4th of July just came and went. It'd have been a great time for me to sample first-hand the high season for American patriotism. But as usual I wasted a long weekend, lazing around at home!