Prologue: The New Normal

In late January, a colleague came down with cold and fever. She was back at work in a few days but the cold turned into a hacking cough and refused to go away.

“Keep sipping hot water” the usual tips and discussions started.

“Take steam”, “Try Homeopathy”, “No, I think you should go to a doctor, you probably need antibiotics”.

“There is this new virus in China...” “Oh don’t scare her, this is just due to our office AC”

Her cough was cured after a course of antibiotics.

The discussion about the ‘new virus from China’ kept intensifying. WhatsApp forwards and YouTube videos started flooding us with medical jargon and statistics.

Everyone knew the name Wuhan by February. Conversations were dominated by data, the gory fascination of watching a trickle turn into a deluge, the flood turning from China into Europe and Asia. The rest of the world started talking about Italy and Iran and South Korea with growing fear and also with a tinge of smugness.

We were still safe, we kept reminding ourselves, smirking at people wearing surgical masks at bus stops.

Wasn’t the virus still far away? It was just another one like the MARS and the SERS which touched a couple of countries and went away.

Unfortunately, this virus kept sweeping aside conventional wisdom and international boundaries with complete disdain. While we were laughing at WhatsApp videos of people in other continents stocking up on toilet paper for the next decade, the trickle started appearing right at our doorsteps.

Lock down: Three months and counting

Yes, the government ‘set us free’ almost a month ago, but my lockdown continues. Because my concerns and priorities are different. And because frankly, it hasn’t been that difficult for us to remain locked down.

Both my husband and I have been able to work full-time with the bonus of not having to commute through the traffic, and even travel across cities. Once they got over the frustrations with learning through the box, the kids continued with their classes online. As a family living across different states most of the time, we were thrilled to be together, grateful to be safe.

Learning to cope with the new normal had its unique challenges. I kept thinking of recording the lockdown experiences in a blog. 

But then, besides my usual excuse of no time, there was also a strange feeling holding me back.

A mix of guilt and regret. Guilt at having a good time when people were losing jobs, homes and loved ones. Conducting cooking experiments and enjoying family meals when people were dying trying to reach home. Regret at not being able to do anything much to help. I donated to a charity but looking at the sheer number of people setting of for distant homes in worn-out slippers, clutching on to their meagre belongings, that amount was a tiny drop in a bottomless ocean.

There were also the special challenges we faced as a family living together, locked down with just each other and no other face to face interaction with any other human being.

Some days were great fun, some were.. let’s say not so fun.

They were certainly a first in many ways, so it would be a shame not to record them.

Let me start with the last 3+ months and then try to record the present too.

Mandore-Another trip to the past

I have been feeling low since yesterday in spite of keeping extremely busy and doing and saying everything to stay positive.

I even thought of not writing and just staying with my thoughts.

My thoughts took me to another time I was sad about missing Sankrant in Jaipur-the first year of college, and since there were many of us missing home, we decided to do something about it and the day-scholar friends decided to take us out to celebrate, Jodhpur style.

They procured the kites and spools the Charkhis and we drove to Mandore for the open spaces.

Mandore is the old city. It was abandoned after multiple attacks convinced Rao Jodha to build Mehrangarh and the city of Jodhpur at a more strategic location.

Mandore is mainly known for its well-preserved palace gardens, a picnic spot for locals and a place to click pictures of beautifully sculpted cenotaphs/chatris for the tourists.

It was once more famous as Mandodri’s maika, her parental home and Ravana’s sasural. Jodhpur to Sri Lanka must have been quite a distance in that age. Ravana had a private plane so commuting might have been still ok, but I wonder how they coped with the cultural differences.

Ravana probably spent quite some time here (before he got embroiled in the Ayodhya controversaries) because this place still echoes with the music of the instrument he invented-the Ravanhatha. 

The war would have destroyed everything in his Golden Lanka, but the strings of the Ravanhatha continue to make their music.

That was pretty commonplace for us.

We preferred listening to Shah Rukh Khan singing on blasting car stereos and of course flying kites in that vast open space.

Once we were ready to go back, one of the local guys insisted that we could not go without tasting the ‘chunti ki chakki’. Nobody would have noticed the badly-lit shop set in the crevices of the thick stone walls of the fort, where you had to stoop to enter. A girl had to go and make the purchase. The owner was probably as old as the crumbling fort. “He doesn’t sell his sweets to tourists and boys.” He was nice to me even though I was not a local and added a few extra grams.

Years later, I went back with my husband and kids. Not to fly kites but to buy the ‘chakki’. I wondered if that uncleji would be there or if even the shop was still standing.

It wasn’t difficult to find it this time. It was bigger, had tube lights and a proper door. No signboard still, but everyone knew of it. There was a different shopkeeper-polite, courteous, and who let anyone buy his sweets. The chakki tasted the same, but I didn’t have the heart to ask about uncleji.

Thankfully, there wasn’t much else that had changed in the ten years. The chatris were well preserved and the gardens were not so crowded. This time, I stopped to listen to the guys in matted white kurtas and colourful turbans playing the Ravanhatha.

Going back does that to you.

(all pics from Wikipedia, I don't have my photos from college days)

A Sky full of Kites

If you have a friend who grew up in Jaipur, you would have probably heard these stories for many years.

It is the day we miss home.

The kite-flying day.

It is the day we miss our sun-soaked terraces and the nip of winter breeze that lifted the kites as high as the aeroplanes (that was the target anyway). The day we miss the open spaces and the camaraderie of a thousand bits of paper intermingling in the skies, falling down, being chased like trophies, and carefully restored with homemade glue to fly again.

This is was the day in the sun. Thousands of kids (and much, much older kids) stayed up the previous night, tying the ‘tan’-the thread tied in a triangle to ensure the best flying angle for the kites. We lived on the terrace all day, eating pakoras in the deafening noise from a hundred loudspeakers and yet too focussed on that tiny coloured rhombus in the sky to hear anything. And when the sun went down, and the kite could no longer be seen, we flew them with candles.

We came down only when the chill of the evening reminded us that it was still January (or moms made us come down threatening us with all sorts of dire consequences). And then we fell asleep with aching limbs, leaping in our dreams to catch the falling kites.

There was so much science behind mending a kite, shredding non-repairable ones to fix others, tying the ‘tan’, the calculation behind the proportion of the different strings the maanja and sadda to be used, the dynamics of pulling the string at the right speed to cut through another and of course trying to run faster than the wind while estimating where the fallen kite will fall and to catch it before the others.

There was so much passion. The kites had names depending on the patterns and the colours. You would starve, stay parched, and not go to the loo for hours, for the thrill of feeling the kite tug the string through your fingers.  You could be clobbered for letting a favourite kite get sniped. And catching a falling kite was worth bruises and knocks and at times even broken bones.

You think that’s crazy for a flimsy bit of coloured paper? Spend 14^th January on a terrace in Jaipur!

Photographic Memories

As I wrote before, Mr Google hijacked an entire evening by forcing me to sift through photos.

It was however an interesting exercise. I flipped through multiple folders, smiling at some memories, laughing out loud at others and cringing at some.

The years before we all had mobile cameras were so much better. I had one-tenth the numbers of photos to go through. And I am not even talking of roll cameras here-where each photo would be carefully composed before clicking, and people would decide what to click depending on how many clicks they had left on the roll.

We were much more trigger happy with the digital camera-but even those were thoughtfully clicked. 

I remember positioning my camera with the 10 second timer to click myself while travelling on my own. At the bottom of the hill, an old lady stopped to chat “Oh You are that girl who was clicking photos of herself!” 

I thought of that complete stranger from another country as I flipped through a few hundred selfies (no, not exaggerating) that the girls had dumped in the folders when they changed their phones. Selfies when they were dressed to go out, at their shabbiest, rolling eyes, sticking out tongues, making faces, sticking on snap-chat ears…phew. Those were supposed to be fun!

Of course I didn’t have the heart to delete them all, it just took a few hours to select and delete a whole lot of them. All road-trip shots of the sun and the sky, clouds, coconut trees, roadside tea stalls and temples just had to go. Deleting beaches and sunsets was tougher, but those of monuments was easy-we could always google them.

What I retained were the ones with people-the kids and their school days, stage shows, dance classes, birthday parties, fun outings and even the random ones clicked sitting in the lazy afternoon sun. I guess those are the moments that matter when we really need to choose.

Those and the travel photos. Google will make my do a further clean-up soon. I need to curate and save those memories before that!

Christmas Memories

It’s been a long time since the full family was home for Christmas. And I don’t mean the extended Indian family-even the four of us, the nuclear unit, haven’t been together for Christmas since the elder one went to boarding school seven years ago.

Then the younger one followed her, then came college for one and changing jobs for us. We are now a visiting family. I feel like the one at the railway station waving good-bye to one train and waiting on the platform for the next one to arrive.

All the work that I keep cribbing about-office, home, writing, studying-that is just something to do while I am waiting. This is what I really live for. The precious moments of togetherness-and those are getting so few and far.

Instead of getting all maudlin over the way things of change, let me recall the best memories of Christmas:

•      Jingle Bells! Yes, it wasn't Christmas without the whole school singing Jingle Bells while the plumpest nun came as Santa Clause and gave the whole class the same gift. There was a TV shaped Tin Coin Box I had got one year, which I used forever, one of the plastic legs gave in long ago, but I think that box is still there in my parents’ home.
  
•    Life took a 180 degree turn: Inter-House Music competition at FAPS. The kids used to prepare with the intensity of preparing for the Cricket World Cup. Our house would be ringing with carols all month.
  
•     Playing Santa for years, till the girls caught on and also made their father join. The planning and gift wrapping and the joy of watching people open their presents.
  
•       Christmas celebrations in the apartment. The earnestness of the play practice, dressing up the kids and watching them enact the same story.

I guess that part of life has come full circle.

We haven’t even put up the tree this year. Now we don’t have the enthusiasm and the energy, and they don’t have the time.

But then what will we look back to after a few years?
We’ve got to create some memories to stay with us.

Let me take out the fairy lights.

Child's Play? Memories of 'Nursery' Admissions

Sixteen years ago, as a young mother, I went through the Nursery school admission process.

The playschools coached us and the kids. They held special seminars before the admission season where experts came to give talks (and everyone from book publishers to health food and insurance companies sponsored the events). 

The school principal almost ‘forbade’ me to go to my hometown for my younger kids’ birth (in February) because the elder kid’s admission ‘season’ began in October of that year.

If you think I was ‘hyper’ to give in to the pressure, let me tell you that:

• One of the schools used to give out only a limited number of forms on a first-come, first-serve basis; starting from 8:00 am in the morning. People queued up from the previous night.
• A family we heard of, had converted to another religion to get their kids admitted in a sought-after school.
• People shift residences to meet the address criteria of well-known schools. To counter this, one of the schools wanted prospective parents to provide proof of residence for the previous five years. (Maybe that inspired the idea behind one of the most contentious bills in our country).
• here were coaching classes for three-year-olds and special sessions for parents. This was eighteen years ago, now I hear the kids don’t have any tests/interviews. Maybe the parents go through extra-special-sessions now.
• One of the schools had written tests for parents. Both parents had to appear for the same test, sitting in different rooms-I guess the answers were then compared. I wonder what they did after that.
• Application Forms asked for our qualifications, qualifications of maternal grandfather and grandmother, paternal grand grandfather and grandmother only.
• One form asked us to list the most important people we knew in the fields of education, music, sports, arts, etc.
• Most forms asked, “How can you contribute to the school?”
• I guess the question asking, “What make of cars your family owns?” wasn’t even surprising.

We went through that whole experience and managed to get the kid into a great school. We kept photocopies of all filled-in forms because I was pregnant and would need to start preparing for the other one soon.

Wow! This was such an awesome exercise in confidence building.

Of course, I can handle college admission. I can handle it twice too.

When you drop your camera in the sea

Smitha’s post on cameras brought back another memory for me.

Of a trip where our digital camera fell into the sea at Kanyakumari and refused to get switched on

The next stop was Thiruvananthapuram.

The Service Centres said they would take a week to let us know if it could be repaired. Still hoping that it could be, we picked up a Kodak Camera which used a 'Roll' of film to print pictures.

I didn’t know they still existed.
My daughters thought it was weird. What you don’t get to see the picture? How do you click then? How do you know if a picture got clicked?

You don’t. You see and you click, and you wait till you click all the photos, and go back home, find the time to drop off the Roll for printing and pick it up again.

It sure is an exercise in patience. And you do not have the luxury of clicking away in haste, deleting in leisure. 

But you do get to treasure the moment.

And when will I grow up?

My Laptop’s gone.

And I am finding it so hard to adjust to another machine.  It’s like your best friend leaving school and having to sit next to the new student in the class.

You speak to each other but the conversations and memories of your old friend always encroach. You resent this new guy because he is not your old friend. You know you are being irrational, but…

That’s fine as school kids, but to have such hang-ups about a machine at my age is just not done. So I try to break the ice, move the conversation beyond the banalities of just work and start blogging.

It’s awkward initially, like talking to the stranger who replaced your friend, but then you find he is not so strange and maybe you just find a new friend as I just manage to stitch a new post.

Gosh! And I thought I had grown beyond getting ‘senti’ decades ago! 

Durga Puja around the corner

I found a maid who said she doesn’t want any leave during the year.

And then the catch:

She wanted annual leave to go to her parents’ home during Durga Puja.

Yes, even though I would do anything to get out of eating fish and roshogolla, there’s still a Bong in me, who went all mushy about going “home” during Pujo..

I was so glad about her still managing the annual trip that I said yes and turned away to stifle a poignant memories...

I forgot about it as the months went by, till “that time” of the year came around.

She had booked her tickets, and planned to reach her village two days before Shashti, confirm the dates for Kali Puja (Diwali), since it was the only time in a year that she could spend with her family, and then book her return ticket.

I did hit the panic button then, googled the dates for Kali Puja and offered to book her return ticket online…

OK, so if Kali Puja is on 17^th, would you know when is Bhai Phota (Bhai Dooj)???

Ahemmmm (nostalgia definitely has it limits) it should be on 19^th…

Okkk can you book my ticket on the 20^th?

Done

…before she could think about the next event on the festival calendar.

So as my maid completes her Puja shopping and packing, I start getting prepared to wake up an hour earlier in the morning and pack up an hour later for the evening, for the next month and a half.

Although I am dreading this time, I can’t help admire this lady who earns a fraction of what I do, giving it all up to go back to her roots to spend time with her friends and relatives, knowing that many of the odd jobs that she is leaving, will not be waiting for her…

She knows that she’ll lose out on a lot of money but is sure that this is what is more important to her and that she can always get another job.

I envy her sooooooooooooo much!

Purani Jeans---and the memories

Purani jeans--------

I still have mine from those days…along with memories that would take ages to key in.

One of those memories is of the desperation to avoid a particular Professor’s class. As there was no other way to escape, we had to dive out of the window, climb onto the terrace and hide in an empty water tank till the coast was clear. We would have gone for a filled-in tank too, such was the fury of the tempest and our strength in being together.

I feel like doing it again, burying my head in sand, till the cyclone blows away. I’d take my chances with a water tank too, but this once, there isn't any place to retreat to...

When thunderstorms arrive, I’ll have to go out and get drenched.

And I am on my own.
Guess that is the toughest part.

If only some things could have been like those days………