give this your own title!

Having always been a person who dislikes any kind of change (wardrobe being an exception), I am yet again at a point where I can do little to control the situation.

A couple of months ago, appa informed me about the big promotion that he got. Yay!! I won’t say I was surprised. For the amount of work and effort he puts in, this to me is a trivial reward for him. Naturally my opinion is biased because it’s about a person who I yearn to become like someday — both professionally and personally.

Switching back to the point — he then put a very excited amma on the line. After our initial ‘ayiooo wows,’ ‘yays’ and ’sooopers’ she slipped in the other half of the promotion which was moving to another city.

I would be lying if I said this was great. And for being the heartless soul that I am, I gave my parents umpteen reasons for why this move isn’t worth anything, ranging from ‘the city is too crowded’ to ‘this is not the age to socialise and make new friends.’ Yes I know, I can be mighty immature and stubborn sometimes. But sigh. Me ain’t happy about this move.

To justify my unhappiness, here’s what I think. Many middle eastern kids (I said many and not all –exceptions do exist) get confused when they have to decide where they are from. We know that we are Indians and culturally identify with that term. But when it comes to discussing Indian politics, agriculture, weather, and other basic cultural facets — we’re limited to textbook knowledge. Our connection to India is limited to our birth and other annual vacations.

We move to the gulf at a very early age and live there through our entire school years. A few choose to continue there if there are options, but the rest move out to a whole new setting for higher studies. Eventually our parents also move out to another city, or back to India cutting off the last bit of connection left to our childhood. So when the time comes for us to answer the question — where do you belong? What should we say?

Walking down the memory lane…

Once again the past year just flew by since diwali. Growing up in Oman, all my knowledge of diwali was restricted to my memorized hindi essay ‘mera priya tyauhaar’ (my favorite festival), like most other children who grew up in the gulf. I knew why we celebrated diwali, how we celebrated it, but it was all restricted to videos in the television.

Celebration of this festival was entirely different in the gulf. There were no crackers, except for a few that were smuggled into some local Indian store. But the chances of getting hold of those dwindled from barely anything to nothing at all. Preparation for diwali would begin a week prior to the festival with amma going on a marathon cooking session. She’d make 7-8 kinds of barfis for us, and 2-3 other kinds for a couple of other aunties.

The day of the festival began with our phone ringing at 5am with relatives from India calling to wish us. Since we got the day off, I’d slowly wake up around 10 am and wear some jango salwar and start distributing sweets around my building following my mother’s pre-planned script:

Me: ‘Hi aunty. amma wanted me to wish you a happy deepavali and give you some sweets.’
Aunty (in some old nighty) : ‘Ohhh. Thank you baby. What a pretty salwar. Wait one minute ok?’
And then aunty would run in to her kitchen. Take if the sweets fom our dabba and return it to us with some sweets from her house. Talk about the heights of recycling!

The evening witnessed appa and me driving around to people’s houses to distribute more sweets, while a bunch of other kids came to our house with boxes of sweets. I always secretly wondered why we didn’t just give sweets from one house to the other. The dabbas were being recycled, why not the sweets too?

During these rides appa would always remind me how unfortunate I was to be celebrating deepavali in such a boring way.

‘In our days we’d wake up at 4 am. Ajji would oil our hair and we’d run out and burst crackers….Here all we do is feed you unfortunate souls sweets all the time..cha!’

Deepavali was also a time for enemies to show off in school via their moms. “Bhala tumhaari mummy ki sweets meri mummy se behtar kaise?” Recess was chaotic with students storming in an out of classrooms munching on every sweet that our hands found. This goes without saying, but our teachers were also flooded with many boxes of sweets.

For being accustomed to such a celebration, I was in for an entirely novel and exciting treat last year when my parents announced that we’d be in Bangalore for diwali. The essay that I wrote envisioning the perfect diwali finally came true. The bursting of crackers began at 4am and probably didn’t stop for the next week. The roads were filled with tonnes of bits and pieces paper, the already pathetic and slow traffic in Blore was slower, unknown relatives were introduced, and I could go on — but it was one of the best times ever in my life.

Yea, its an entirely different feeling when you are at home for a festival. Thanks to the very friendly and welcoming desi population in Nashville, I haven’t been missing home a lot. After making some mandatory calls to wish people I’m getting ready to go to the library. Yea things are a little different, but the realization of the occurrence of a festival is alive. The local temple supposedly has a decent cracker bursting session. We had a potluck last night. And while I do miss the hustle bustle of people flooding in and out of our house, the noise of the crackers, the noise of the telephone ringing, the excitement of new clothes — this is something special too, and I hope it is the same for everyone. So here’s to wishing all of you a very happy and safe deepavali

Image courtesy: festivals of India album — facebook.

Bzzzzzzzzz

Sleep, slumber,snooze, nap, call it whatever you want – all I have to say is that my body’s seriously lacking it! Its only been two weeks since the dawn of a new semester and life has been crazy. Classes have been added and removed from my schedule like diapers on a new born – and anytime I get a little breath of air from preparing for these courses, I find my profs waiting for me with open arms. Sigh. I can go on for millenniums, but I think I’ve gotten my point across!

On a recent talk with my friend, we were discussing how desperate we have become for the basic necessities of life — music, food and sleep. She, a fresh of the boat in the pardes is still adjusting to the weird ways of this country and its people, said ‘Seriously girl. I eat every time I spot something edible at any time of the day, close my eyes every second that I don’t have anything to do, out of fear that I might not get either for a fortnight!”

I find the sound of her troubles sadistically comforting because I realize that I am not the only one new to this busy routine. Yes. This is an entirely new for me. I have seen my dad slogging for years now. He goes to work at seven, comes home for a quick lunch, leaves, comes back home, grabs a bite of dinner and is back working until eleven and then he calls it a night! Today I wonder, how has he’s done this for years without complaining?

“Ho Ho Ho! Every thing begins and ends with a big O! ,” says my old man. I groan at the mere sound of the ‘O’ word. I really envy those who manage to stay super O-rganized and hence more efficient. I’ve used the fanciest of tools and wasted hours creating the prettiest of spreadsheets and time tables with the hope of being organized. I even walked through the stationary stores in town which are filled with arrays of things – post it notes, multicolored files, paper separators –hell if you wanted to you could use one color for each day of the semester and still not exhaust the resources that they have! Somehow, at the end of everything, I find utmost pleasure with dumping everything into my old raggedy blue bag which has endured the load of everything from food particles to pen stains to cosmetics. Needless to say, every other night I find myself printing the same papers over and over again – when will I ever learn?

If my ranting hasn’t proved it yet, I regurgitate my point — I need sleep. I desperately need sleep, with a couple of mugs of hot chocolate and a mommy hug. Sigh! Cant wait for this semester to end.