IT, mystique and relationships.

I took this really interesting class, Advanced Operating Systems under Dr.Griff @ UK and in one of the classes he talked about pervasive computing. Quite fascinating -- images of intelligent lighting systems, homes, even clothes that warm up or cool down according to a person's body temperature by using nanocomputers! What I want to write today is not exactly pervasive computing as the definition goes but in a way, this seems like pervasive computing to me. Think of the number of social networking technologies there are -- facebook, myspace, twitter, blogs and information engines -- google, yahoo search, wikis. It seems to me that people are finally finding outlets to express themselves; outlets they could not even have dreamed to adopt a decade back. That's great, mostly. From the disgruntled house wife (Home maker? -- Think "Mitr") to the adolescent gamer, everyone is online and "connected" all the time!

I wonder if this whole wave of constant-connectedness will change the dynamics of human relationships. Let's take blogs for instance. I hear SRK and Amir Khan blog too. It was big news when the big B started blogging. Now, my very first serious crush, SRK, blogs too. I assumed I would be thrilled but when I googled for his blog, I almost wished I wouldn't find it. Somehow the charm and mystique he (and bollywood) stands for would be lost if I read it and realized that he is just like you and me. But then, he is human too, just elevated to dizzying heights, I guess. So, why wouldn't he want to blog and express what goes through his head? Thoughts and observations too trivial or too complex to express face-to-face but perfectly safe as bits on a screen?

The same goes for facebook. Almost everyone at work is on facebook -- we know each other's trivial and not-so-trivial thoughts that we feel we need to type as status messages on facebook, we know our big days and celebrations, our not-so-great moments and setbacks. Everything bare for everyone (or perhaps a smaller network of people) to digest.

I sometimes think if I were a teenager in this current era, I would find it very hard to fall in love! The mystery or hidden faces of people no longer have a chance of existing in the shadows. So, I don't really get a chance to wonder if he is thinking of me, if he secretly reads classic romances or if he actually cries at sad movies, if his friends are wild and unpredictable or if he has a hidden talent. Thanks to social networking sites, they are all out there for me to see. I know most of what there is to know about him. Hmm...interesting. Wonder what li'l r~ would think of this comment when she becomes a teenager :)

On the other hand, I have reconnected with faces from my past. We are sort of in-touch. We thumbs-up each other when we see photos we like, we comment on random posts now and then. Not what you can call a heart-to-heart talk, laughing and giggling over college days, but still not strangers who need to be reintroduced after several decades either.

So, what does this all come down to? Absence no longer makes the heart grow fonder because there is no real absence in the real sense of the word, unless of course you are like my brother and are phone/internet-free because you are in some quaint little town somewhere in Kashmir hiking towards the Himalayas? But then you are back to being connected and the magic is there for everyone to see -- which sorts of disperses it and makes it not so magical...right?

I mean, my brother texts me, my gynecologist texts me about appointment details and my boss does when he is in meetings and cannot actually call. Seems like we are all there for each other. No mystery, no wonders.

"Hmm, the last I saw her was when I graduated...she always wanted to settle down in America...wonder if she is still with so-and-so..."

becomes

"Hmm, the last I saw her was when I graduated. She is now in Africa, a travel guide who has written several books on the topic. Nope, she is still single."

There is a difference...isn't there? It all seems fabulous if you think about it -- I can see my blog comments on my iphone when am waiting at the dentist's office. Don't have to worry about delayed gratification. It's all instant. But then, the kindle can never replace the authenticity of a worn-out novel in a library. I guess, that makes me old-fashioned. But, you already know that -- you saw my facebook update.

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Heaven-Hell

Am beginning to think there is no such thing as just love; Or hate for that matter. Where there is love, there will be hate lurking in the corners ready to pounce and shake things up a bit. Where there is hate, there probably was love earlier whose space it now occupies. I wonder if this is true for all absolutes. Even the most dastardly person will probably cough up a little bit of bravery when the right situation calls for it and even the most courageous man will surrender to fear sometime...

One of Jhumpa Lahiri's short stories had a woman in it who describes the change in a man she loves as "Heaven-Hell"; She happens to be married and develops feelings for this other man who relates to her in ways her husband can never can, she marries in India and settles down to a life of being a bored house-wife in the US and meets this desi Grad student by chance...anyway, it's an interesting story - He ends up falling in love with an American girl and she says something like, "He has changed so much...it is like Heaven-Hell", somewhat like the love-hate feeling that we often encounter in life, I guess.

Sometimes, I wonder if I invest way too much in relationships. So much easier to not be involved and just flit along from person to person as my whim dictates and just have a fun time. I have often declared with a little more than a hint of pride, "Oh, he is my closest friend", "She would definitely tell me" and then, poof! One day, he is no longer my closest friend and turns out, she didn't really tell me about it...and then I wonder what went wrong? Expectation? Pride? Or maybe just that these things exist in pairs. And the exact opposite feeling/event is probably occurring right now in another parallel universe and given some time, they just exchange places.

Ping pong :)

Only there is no winner or loser and by the time we figure out if we played it all right, the game is over.

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A good fight.

Growing up means also having to realize that good fights like good laughs are rare. I tried to think of the last time I had an honest, involved fight and gave up after counting back five years. I have had fights, actually let me take the blame here, I have fought often in the past five years but they were not what I would call good fights.

They were either the lame, watery, excuse-for-a-fight-variety where I vaguely expressed displeasure and did not wait to ascertain if my displeasure was registered, you know, the kind where halfway through the fight, I backtracked and just gave up because I thought it wasn't really worth it in the big scheme of things! These fights kinda suck. The issue is not resolved, you don't have the satisfaction of having fought a good fight and there is no closure!

The other variety is the no-holds-barred loud and ugly fights, which is fine as long as I can resolve them at some point. The problem with these fights is that while you have the satisfaction of raising your voice, expressing your opinion forcefully and disagreeing disagreeably about something, the most important part of the fight is not handled correctly - the end! If you mess up the end, you have another bad fight on your hands, the kind that can end friendships or leave it in a lukewarm, comatose almost pitiful state which makes you think of the good times you had knowing you can't have it again. Just as bad as the first variety.

Which brings us to the really good fights. The ones filled with strong emotions and powerful words, tears and scorn, the kind that scares you but then eventually dies down to a resolution - ties broken for good reason or made stronger for better. These are the fights that are fought for the right reasons, they still may involve jealousy, possessiveness and traits not really treasured but they are inspired by closeness and fear of losing the relationship. Like really good movies, such fights are hard to come by. Until then, I'll be twiddling my thumbs with empty fights or none at all.

So...wanna fight?! :)

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Won't you stay back?

This sucks. People, hear me loud and clear. If you want to leave, don't get to know me. If it's too late for that, then at least don't be my friend. Jeez! Is it too late for that too? Then at least don't become a close friend! Don't have a good sense of humor, don't make my days any easier, don't relate to me, don't listen and please act distracted when I talk. Frown and interrupt, talk obsessively about yourself, act lost when I express a vague thought and delight in my little blunders.

What brought this on? One of my colleagues at work is leaving for good! He is fun to work with, cracks me up with his jokes and is smart! So, I thought if all the people around me who make my life a bit more pleasant, a bit more fun start leaving, where does that leave me?!

Aside-->Wait a minute...even if that happens. Internet is not going anywhere. I can still blog. And my blogging friends will still exist no matter where they move to. Gosh! Don't you just love technology at times? You guys rock!

Somehow, email doesn't quite work when we really want to stay in touch. It is really a mode of impersonal communication, I can think of several misunderstandings that originated from emails. So many of my close friends have left or perhaps I did. But, the few emails I get from them (usually piggyback-emails congratulating, commiserating, announcing significant events) only make them more distant than they already are. A sudden flash of a smile on a teenage kid I once thought was one of my best friends in Bits fades in and just as quickly fades out as I finish reading,

"Hey, happy birthday! Have fun machan!"

No unread emails.

Oh well. Life goes on. Just that sometimes everything seems to go still for a moment when a fond memory, an impulsive hug, the glint of a tear when we parted...unspoken words carried away by the wind alight unbidden...and then it's business as usual.

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A journey with many stops...

So, our predominantly singles gang in Lex has now jumped teams and most of our members now fall in the to-be/just/recently married category. For someone who has lived here for the past 7 years, this is another of those changes that I initially need to make adjustments to accommodate, and then adjust and finally assimilate. I remember a comment I heard recently that the real friendships are forged during your College days (For some reason, this reminds me of "Musthapha Musthapha..." from Kadhal Desam - I saw it in Bits and loved the experience - a bunch of us lit candles although it was forbidden, threw paper bits, it was riot!) but I have gained some meaningful experience and hopefully a few long-lasting relationships after Bits...In terms of social life and relationships, living in America has been quite an interesting journey for me.


GOLU @ my apartment.

In 2000 (the year I came to the US), I had no idea that I would be sharing a one-bedroom apartment with a 30 year old woman from Hyderabad who had spent several years living in N.India and then Canada and had an almost fanatical urge to keep everything squeaky clean (let's call her R~), a 20 year old from Hyderabad and a 22 (25?) year old from Madras. So the 4 of us managed to co-exist in that apartment for about a month when R~ decided she had had enough of us and she would prefer the apartment to herself. So, we packed our few belongings as R~ scrubbed the kitchen floor and we shifted (one of my many moves as a student) to a 1BR apartment in another block. Life was all hunky-dory. The 3 of us decorated the apartment, unpacked as much as we could (I kept most of my Indian dresses and winter wear in my humongous "India-suitcase") due to the limited closet space. I learnt to cook (still remember the first dish I made -a pulav with peas, three spoons turmeric and less salt, k taught me to make maggi and tea!), kept my first Golu, and was thrilled about it. My gang was predominantly Telugu-speaking and I picked up the language fast and even watched a couple of movies (Murari?, Manasantha Nuvve...). And wished I could also watch Tamil movies at times. Unfortunately the small Tamil gang at that time was pretty closed, under-grad friends who didn't seem like they were accepting new members :p

Never thought I would learn to even stand upright on skates!

Several exciting, stressful, happy - trips, fights, confessions, talks, moves later, I became friends with a Marathi/Hindi gang. Around this time I shared an apartment for a short time with a memorable room-mate, a 65 year old Bengali lady who stored a huge fish in her fridge everyday - it was always there, stored above the vegetable tray - I stopped storing anything other than milk in the fridge, I also stopped cooking at home. How I came to stay with her is an interesting story, about my not having an apartment and being declined temporary accommodation from all the senior Indian girls in the apartment complex :p Anyway, by then, I had moved away from my earlier gang, just a general drifting-apart in some cases, conscious moving-away in others and I began to fit in with my new gang. I wished I could speak/see/hear some Tamil though. Finally, k probably bored of my constant complaints suggested that I start a Tamil Cultural Assoc (at that time the Indian Students Association frowned upon regional movie screenings and any thing presented in a language other than Hindi/English), around that time I remember meeting D~ (my first impression of him was "Gosh, this guy is critical of everything in Lex!" - he found it strange that we did not have dinner in big groups and sometimes ate alone, he mentioned it about three times the first time I took him to Walmart and I thought he was a strange sort of guy! D~, by the time you get to reading this post, it would be pretty old anyway, so am hoping this will kinda slip by unnoticed :p), so anyway, I had my first real conversation with D~ about starting a Tamil Cultural Assoc and the rest as they say is history (Yeah, yeah, I like to gloat! So what?). Finally I had my beloved mother-tongue all around me and I reveled in her embrace!


During my trip to Arizona (for some reason, I had an impulse to try out pigtails :p)

Around 2003, I had a good mix of Hindi and Tamil speaking friends and then a Gujarathi (Yes, I insist on the "H") room-mate. More drifting-apart, fights, make-ups, messy birthday parties and impulsive road trips later, I now find myself in a predominantly Tamil-speaking mini-community. The surprising outcome of organizing cultural events is that I got to know the mamas and maamis in Lex and in some strange, comforting way they filled a gap in my life - I still missed my parents and relatives back home, but now I have people to remind me of them, to ask me where I purchased the pattu podava I am wearing, was it one of my marriage sarees? Someone to say, not unlike relatives back in India - "You should drop by more often, we are at home only, come and join us for dinner sometime..."

My very first car, my cute '93 Camry which I lost in an accident :(

Talking about relationships, I enjoyed working with the professors @ UK, I remember having interesting discussions, academic and otherwise with my professors - my Math TA prof, my Statistics-TA prof, my advisor. And I cannot forget the day when the wretched lady in my department insisted that I had forged my professor's signature on my defense slip and perhaps, I would never be allowed to get a degree. In retrospect, I think I shouldn't have cried and depended on my advisor to sort it out, I should have handled it myself. But, he was an angel that day, who convinced her that I was a good student who deserved her degree :p God bless him (although he made me edit my project report 11 times - each time the proposal would be smudged with red lines - "Dangling participle", "Active, not passive!", "Wrong use of the word 'example'", "The density of red on this page is too high for me to continue!").


Guess who managed to graduate!

Anyway, coming back to Tamil, k's complete sentences in Tamil surprise me every now and then. All my years at Lex, I yearned to experience my mother-tongue and finally it had come true. k says I tend to exaggerate when I tell him how all my life, I have wanted to learn and be near Tamil, as if "she" were a real person, a friend I sorely missed...I don't think he believes my story that I cried for weeks together when we shifted to Bangalore from Madras in the 80s, I sense his mild skepticism when I tell him, 5 years later no-one was happier than I when we shifted back to Madras; I insisted on taking Tamil as my third language in-spite of 5 years of Kannada and Hindi and I actually did pretty well (thanks to my mom's help with essays on Bharathiyaar) :)

So, believe it or not, I know "exactly" what the phrase below means...perhaps I needed to be away to realize how much I missed it...Bharathantyam and living-in-Madras are other example s of this same feeling (Not only am I repetitive, so are my feelings!) but that's a whole new post!

"தமிழுக்கு அமுதென்று பேர், இந்த தமிழ் எங்கள் தமிழ் இன்பம் உயிருக்கு நேர்..."

Talk about digressing! I started writing about marriages and friends and landed up in languages! Gosh, I can think of a million other things to write about my student life here but it's lunch time and am starved! Anyway, I discovered some old photos and thought I would add some visual touches to my disconnected reminiscence.

Life...can be strange at times. Memories too. But, in a comfortable sort of way.

Fall in Lex (when we were still students @ UK)...a season when our sleepy little town explodes in colors!

p.s - apologies for the spelling mistakes in Tamil.

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If only...

Words. Slippery little devils. That's what they are. So often, I open my mouth to express a wish, a thought, a feeling and the little devils twist and turn and change flavors so that I end up saying not entirely what I felt, sometimes not at all...how many lifetimes would I have to spend before I say exactly what I feel right when I feel it, when it would make the most sense, when it would convey the feeling it ought to convey? Instead, I churn and chew and mull over the same thoughts and emotions until the perfect little train of words that ought to have conveyed what I felt are lost in the dark, and am left with cliches, awkward pauses and silences bereft of their meaning...and I sit staring at the old email, holding a phone receiver that is silent after the click at the other end...wondering for the umpteenth time if I should have handled it better...

Sometimes, what we call "advancement" might just be another step backward...of course, a million unopened proposals floating over the web and 143s cluttering chat messages claim otherwise, but nothing beats an honest, face-to-face conversation where expressions and gestures fill in the gaps where words cannot...when I know by his walk, the way his eyes linger over seeming nothings, the way he breathes, when he knows exactly what he wants to say and I hear him say it, sometimes with words, but equally well without...ah, but what we do instead is convince ourselves that a phone call a month or a few lines emailed in a hurry between meetings to a loved one will fulfill the purpose that reading her face and laughing with her will...

We are a lazy bunch. We want to communicate and not commute. And so we type what we think is an email that is as good as a personal meeting, a chat that supposedly reflects what we think, even a telephone call that tries to share our thoughts...and we misread the silences, the symbols, the unspoken words...and before we know it, it's over - the connection and the relationship with it has ended even before it began. But, the memory remains. Like an old scar that never quite heals, a dull pain that surfaces to remind you of the unfinished chapters in your life...

If I had instead talked to you, standing in front of you, holding your hand, watching you as I said the words that painted my thoughts, would you have understood?

PS - Don't worry if you don't get what am saying, sometimes I don't get it either :)

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Doing the dishes.

Ask me to name one thing that has been around ever since k & I got married, always there to remind us of what life can offer, that "if we dish 'em out, we better be able to take it",always full, always loud and always demanding our attention, and I would reply instantly (like those annoying first-bench students in school who would raise their hands even before the teacher asked the question - I, on the other hand, was cool, I sat on the second bench, NOT the first! Ok, aside over, back to topic now->)...where was I? You know what? I am not very fond of asides, as my Professor once said, "If you think something's important enough to put in parenthesis, you might as well make it part of the original sentence". Anyway, back to our constant companion:

"The Sink!" (accompanied with drumroll)

You are now going to ask me if I have had too much of coffee or javascript for the day and perhaps, I should blog at a time when my brain decides to construct relatively saner thoughts? And I would say, "Ah ha!".

Actually, I would say, "Let me explain why" but I would probably throw in the "Ah ha" too - it make such an impression in a conversation, don't you think?

Where was I? The sink. Yes, our long association (especially k's looong association) with the sink began during our marriage - nalangu (the fun and games part of a TamBram wedding). I had a small container of dal and k had to convince me to give him the dal and this is what followed:

"Please give me the dal"

Lol (like that would work!)

"I will buy you a saree/piece of jewellery/something cute if you give me the dal"

"Gee, thanks! But, no thanks!"

"Ok, tell me what you want..."

(Now we are talking!) "Promise to do the dishes the first three months after our wedding"

And things were going pretty much according to plan (mine) when k's mom, who until then was busy chatting with her sisters, suddenly turned to k and asked, "So, what did she ask" and after being informed of my demand, she said, "Whaaa? My son is not going to do the dishes! Poooor Kamal" etc. k, predictably, beamed.

I, being the docile, shy bahu etc smiled and looked down and gave k the dal.

Scene change. Fast-forward a year into our marriage and you will see "beaming k" loading the dishes carefully into the dishwasher (hey! don't give me that look, I cook and unload the dishwasher!)

Scene change. We are at B&P's place and have just had tea. I rinse my mug at the sink and k follows. But we notice that he spends an extra long time at the sink. Apparently, their sink (like ours) is unhappy with k and wishes to gush out in anger at him.

Scene change. We are at work and I walk into the break area at around 10 AM and whom do I see there but my dear husband, staring morosely at the office sink. It clogged too!

And that's when k made peace with his constant companion, the kitchen sink. They clog less when he's around now and he in turn, treats them with the TLC that a faithful companion deserves!

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