Hide and Seek

A couple of weeks ago I found myself at the intersection of my school, quite by chance. Given that I had not been there in more than a decade, I had expected to be flooded with emotion. Strangely I was not.

The reasons could have been many. First: I have grown up -- eighteen years is a long time and probably I have outgrown the people, the place, and the memories. Second, and perhaps more pertinent, that the place around the school – and the building itself – has completely transformed; it no longer looks like my school (the way a place looks, I am told, has a huge impact on how it makes you feel). And so, for almost ten days I drove indifferently through the road just like I did many, many years before, but I neither felt the agony nor the ecstasy that one usually expects to encounter in such situations. 

Then one morning as we -- my husband and I -- were rushing through the street behind the school (the one in front was too crowded), I spotted a familiar silhouette. As we drove closer it became clear that it was our Geography teacher, a lady I was very fond of, as she was of me. In another few seconds she was right in front of the car, barely a few feet away from me waiting for us to pass. She had not seen me although I had. I looked away. Somehow I did not want her to see me, and she did not. In a jiffy we were past her, gliding towards our destination.

Shying away from people I have once known, even been close to, has been a habit with me. I have hidden from classmates, college friends, ex colleagues, current colleagues, neighbours, even relatives. I have dunked my head, changed course, left my meals halfway, switched elevators just to avoid making the mandatory small talk with those who had once been an integral part of my life but have little, or nothing, in common with me now.

When I told husband what had just happened, he seemed surprised: “Why did you not talk to her?” I had no answer. But it got me thinking: why is it that I shy away from people, the way I do. What is it that prevents me from talking to people? Am I embarrassed about myself? Am I just too insensitive? Do I care nothing about the good times?

I have since been thinking about it; although I do not have a definite answer, I do have an idea: it is my way of dealing with change. The change that is inevitable, yet painful. 

That day by dunking my head and avoiding the teacher, I prevented myself from having to get off the car and face the reality: everything had changed in the last eighteen years, I was no longer an awkward teenager but a mother of two. By avoiding long-lost friends I do the same: evade the truth that their lives, and mine, are running just as normally without each other as they did when we were together. Perhaps that is also why I can never be friends with an ex -- wait, I do not even have an ex!

Change perturbs me. It makes me uncomfortable. While I want new things, people, experiences in my life, I am extremely frightened of letting go of the existing: I want to live in Delhi, but not leave Bangalore. I want to be a writer, but not stop training. I want to stay a girl but be a woman. I want the lover, the husband, the friend, and the boyfriend all at the same time. But I know it's impossible. And that, I think, is my problem.

Some Yellow Pages, And A Long Forgotten Post

I clearly remember the day it arrived. Wrapped in bubble wrap and enclosed in a corrogated sheet, it was home delivered by Flipkart. (No, I had not discovered Amazon yet). It was love at first sight. Its soft black leatherette cover and smooth chrome yellow pages had me swooning. They were so perfect that for days I had not put a pen to them lest I spoilt them.

The notebook was a perfect gift to put the wandering thoughts of an amateur writer to paper and give them some direction. It seemed to have worked well for in the year and a half, if I may say so myself, the thoughts and the words have come a long way. And the notebook too. 

The first thing I eventually wrote on it, after my name that is, was something that still remains unpublished -- even on the blog. It was perhaps the most honest piece I ever wrote, a reflection of how I felt at that point in my life. The second, again unpublished, was a short poem. I started to write in it regularly only a few months later, and only the pieces that were important yet hazy in my mind. They somehow found a structure, flow, and meaning once I started to put them on the handsome yellow pages of the notebook. The rest, not so important ones, meanwhile would be written straight on the laptop. 

In the last eighteen months since, I have bought, and have been gifted, many more notebooks. Some came from husband, some from brother, and some from a friend, who loves notebooks equally if not more (I wonder if there is a reason why all my gifts come from men). But all of them remain untouched. Some I preserved for my book, and some for my London trip (both still a distant dream). The true reason however, I suspect, was not to let go of this one: the firsts are always closest to your heart, aren't they?

But as they say, everything that begins must, and does, end. And so, the notebook running into its last few pages is also coming to an end. Today therefore, after going through at least ten new notebooks -- most of them matronly and boring -- I finally chose the one closest to this: it has a beautiful embossed cover and it came as a gift from my notebook fanatic friend. Pretending to be excited about a new notebook, I flipped it around, caressed its cover, ran my fingers through its pages; I even wrote my name in it with the most beautiful pen, but I could not feel the connect. In a matter of minutes I had put it away.

And since morning, I have been busy writing in the last few pages of my yellow and black rubberband. Trying to make sense of millions of things that have been going on in my mind. Who knows scribbling in it one last time might just rid me of the everlasting writer's block.

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P.S. My first piece from the notebook, lest it gets lost:

Two people live within me. 

One is simple, docile, loving, obedient, loyal and practical. Second is complicated, independent, wild, carefree, instinctive, impulsive, passionate and possessive.  

The first loves to plan, obey, fall in line, cook, clean, mother, and smother. The other wants to break free, live one day at a time, take risks, wander, sing, dance and love. 

Often there is a conflict, and often the first one wins. The second however strong it seems, is mostly treated as an unwanted guest. The world, I know, prefers the first. But it is the second I love.

     

Kismet, Karma, And One Nursery Seat

This post was featured on the first page of Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.in/anubhuti-krishna/kismet-karma-and-one-nurs_b_6523086.html?utm_hp_ref=india

2569. 3251. 3257. 2567. A smiling, suit-clad gentleman pulled out small chits of paper bearing four digit numbers from a cardboard box. He, somehow, happened to be the only one smiling in the room of more than thirty people; the rest sat holding their breath, clutching on to their chairs, crossing their fingers – and in some cases toes as well. The tension was palpable; the silence deafening.

I have imagined myself doing several things – climbing a mountain, rowing a boat, bungee jumping, even writing books – I had, however, never imagined myself sitting in a room full of strangers waiting anxiously for my number to be called out – not even after the toughest job interview. But age – and parenthood – does strange things to you. It makes you cold – as I was now, shivering in a comparatively warmer room – just as it reduces you to a bundle of nerves for something as trivial as your toddler’s nursery admission.

I had not been so edgy the first time around; in fact I had been far too relaxed. Being a rebellious mother of a rebellious daughter I had declared it to everyone – including the soft, yet prodding voices of our neighbours in Bangalore – that my child will not go to a big school until she was big enough. And she did not. It was her luck, or destiny, therefore that she found the only vacant seat in a fairly good school when it was finally time for her to graduate to a proper school.

Five years and another child later, things were different. With experience I had realised that sometimes there is merit in flowing with the tide rather than against it. I was a little more settled with the thought of a three-year-old being sent to a proper school. I suspect there were other covert – and overt – elements too: the outgoing, talkative, hyperactive girl whose energy levels I find hard to match, the teacher at play school who constantly talks in incorrect English, and, most of all, the need to get some time to myself after seven long years of incessant mothering.

So, while most people were vacationing – or nursing a hangover – on the new year’s day, and many days afterwards, I was driving from school to school in blinding fog, jostling my way through long queues, pleading with the snooty security guards, and cursing myself for all those times when I had judged, mocked, even sniggered at parents getting worked up for their toddler’s admission (in my experience, one often ends up doing all that he laugh at others for).

If getting the forms was a back breaking, hand numbing exercise, filling them up was nothing short of a nightmare: some forms were to be filled in black ink, some in blue; some schools needed passport sized picture of the child, others wanted stamp size pictures of the entire family; some required immunisation card, others wanted a wellness certificate from the paediatrician. And yet others demanded us to list our three-year-old child’s achievements.

Submissions were another story altogether. The otherwise deserted kiosks at the schools resembled a beehive with parents of all shapes, sizes, and class stinging their way through the crowd to reach the coveted desk only to find out that they had a missed attaching a document or attesting the ones attached. Then there were schools that insisted everything be done online – only their websites would not work for hours, even days.

But writing the exam is one thing, waiting for the results is quite another. While writing the exam you usually prioritise, think of what all you can complete in the stipulated time and do your best; in the time between the exam and the result however, you introspect upon what could have been done better – and how.  

In the week between submission of the forms and the draw of seats (so much for lottery being banned in Delhi!), I had been introspecting too.

In the last three years that my elder one had been going to school, we – my husband and I – had visited her school several times. We loved the place, trusted the teachers and agreed with their style of functioning (trust me, it is very hard for us to collectively appreciate so many things) and were certain that the younger should go to the same school too. But there was a problem: we had never made out of turn polite conversations with the teachers or the principal. When most parents would stay back after the PTM to say their hellos to the Principal, we would quietly leave. We did not send them New Year’s greetings or Diwali wishes even. And now I was worried about its repercussions: what is they found us too egotistical?

I had been trying to get myself used to the idea of her going to some other school (if she got a seat, that is), when the call came. It was from the school. They wanted to check if we could attend the draw for the sibling category (siblings have a separate quota, thankfully). It was not mandatory, they added. My first instinct was to not go – it was far too cold, plus I trusted them to be fair. But the mother within me pushed me: what if our presence – or absence – becomes a deciding factor?

So here we were, sweating under the arms on a freezing morning, sitting with other expectant parents (no pun intended), with a hope in our hearts and a prayer on our lips. The seats were seven, the applicants fifteen. Five numbers had already been announced and only two were remaining. 

With five seats already gone, I was now thinking of the way ahead -- will she continue to go to the play school, to a teacher who speaks incorrect English? Should we try some other way to get a seat (I had no idea what the other way would be though)? Is her luck so hard that she will not be able to go to a good school? Does all our good karma amount to nothing --  when I saw the husband smiling at me. It must be stress, I thought. “Done!” He whispered. In my nervousness, I had not heard the sixth number being called out – it was ours.

That party isn't over yet!

My piece in The Hindu today: http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/the-tudor-england-celebration-of-the-twelfth-night/article6753827.ece

Christmas has come and gone, and the New Year has already arrived; the holidays are coming to an end, and it is time to hang up your party boots – and that little black dress – until the next season. Or not quite.

According to tradition, the season of Christmas is yet to get over with the final – and the largest – feast remaining to be celebrated on the night of 5^th (or 6^th) January, a celebration that has been pared to a great extent with the passage of time but is far from being extinct.

The custom of celebrating the Twelfth Night traces its roots to Tudor’s England, when it not only symbolised the end of Christmas but also the end of winter that was supposed to have set in with the All Hallows Eve (now Halloween). The night was marked by a large community feast where everyone – the king and peasant alike – would gather; gifts were exchanged, music was played, and the roles of the society were reversed. The king, and the other nobles, would assume the part of the common man and would serve and wait upon the commoners; the commoners meanwhile played nobles for the night. There were also instances of men and women cross dressing for the revelry.

The evening began with the cutting of the cake especially made for the feast. The cake fortified with dried fruit, nuts and alcohol, was baked with a bean in one half and a pea in the other. It was then decorated with a thin layer of sugar icing and a holly spring. The guests, as they arrived, were served with a piece of the cake each – the men from one half and the women from the other. The man, who got the piece with the bean in it, became the king for the night and the woman who got the pea, his queen. Together they would preside over the evening full of dance, music, food, and wine.  

But fun and revelry were not the only elements of the celebration. Like every festival there was an element of religion too – or twelve: the feast was preceded by twelve days of Christmas, each signifying something special. Christmas, the first day, for example, signified the birth of baby Jesus, while the eighth day signified the beginning of a new year. The rest of the days were dedicated to various saints, and the final, or the twelfth day, was dedicated to the three wise men (who had travelled to bless baby Jesus); these twelve days culminated with the most extravagant feast of the season on the night before Epiphany.

With the passage of time however, especially after the reformation period (when the puritans abolished most of the practices of the Church), the feast began to lose its value. Without the religious element it became a playground of mischief and was no longer the happy amalgamation of classes. In the nineteenth century after the Queen officially abolished Twelfth Night festivities, the focus shifted to Christmas as the primary day of celebration, which it remains to date.

In the modern times the festival is subtle and mostly symbolic. It is usually celebrated in small gatherings with wassail, a mulled, spiced cider drink, and tortell, a ring shaped cake stuffed with marzipan. It is also the night when the Christmas decorations are finally taken off.

Although Twelfth Night longer is what it used to be few hundred years ago, but it still seems to be a valid excuse to party one last time, until next holiday season. 

Up There In The Clouds

My piece in The Hindu today: http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/how-to-use-cloud-function-with-a-smartphone-or-a-computer/article6748835.ece

A few weeks ago, on my birthday, when my husband walked into the house sullen-faced and empty-handed, I was worried. Not so much about the hands being empty, for he had already bought me presents (although I could have done with a few more), but more so with the glum expression. After all, it is not everyday that your wife turns thirty-five – and cooks the entire birthday meal by herself. My questions to him yielded no response and he remained listless through the evening. Only after the guests left was the reason revealed: husband, who loves order to the limit of obsession, while clearing his phone of an unwanted picture, had accidentally deleted the entire album. Given that he, like most people, only uses the camera in his phone, he had ended up losing almost five hundred pictures, which included the ones from his South India trip, and the recent Himalayan expedition.

Working on a closed network – and laptop – in office, and having a MacBook at home (syncing an android phone with an Apple is a task in itself) had ensured he had no backup either. Obviously he was heart broken (wife’s birthday happens every year but a journey into the depths of Tamil Nadu and heights of the Himalaya doesn’t). The rest of the night was spent trying to undo the damage. Every single person who knows anything about phones and technology was contacted but the pictures could not be recovered. What he did find out however was that the loss could have been prevented had he hosted the pictures on a cloud.

Now I do know a thing or two about cloud computing. I also know how it is used and where. But I was clueless about individuals having access to cloud space. Apparently in the years that I had stayed away from technology, clouds had become personal spaces too, and were now accessible to all and sundry.

The tradition that started with Google, when it came up with Google drive – a network storage space for Gmail users – is now being followed by Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and many others. All you need to do is to sign up with them. You can chose to access the cloud through your computer or smart phone, store all your data, pictures, music and files, and access it from any device in the world. Even if the primary device is lost or damaged your data will be safe and accessible.

What we also discovered was that husbands phone, a Samsung S4, had come pre loaded with Dropbox, one of the most popular cloud for personal usage, only he had been too busy – or ignorant – to notice it.

Setting the application up was a breeze, even for technology novices like us: log in to the app, download it on your computer through the link they mail you, and in just a few minutes you are good to go. To access – and control – your account, you just need to click open the tiny icon on the top of your screen (bottom in case of a windows OS). The pictures from the phone are synced instantaneously; the documents however have to be dragged and dropped into the box. You can share the data, organise it the way you like, save semi-finished files – and access them later – and even pause the syncing if you want. And you can access it from any machine through their website, if not the app.

The free account that comes with the phone gave him 2GB space; he had an option of buying more space for a fee, or to refer others and earn more space as a reward. Husband, presumably preferred the latter, spamming every possible mailbox (even converting a few people like my father) and earning 48GB of extra space, taking the total to 50GB.

Since the time, he has been advocating cloud usage to everyone he comes across. Even though he claims to have noble intentions (he does not want others to suffer like him), I highly suspect his intent (free space for ever referral, remember?). On his part, he has backed each file, contact and picture and has been checking it from time to time for his satisfaction.

And so, last week, when he dropped and damaged his phone beyond repair, he did not seem perturbed at all. “I can always buy a new phone,” he said, “as long as my pictures are safe”. Sitting in the clouds they indeed seem safe.