Ant R

So, Dussehra over, Diwali is over, and all I have written is some harakiri inducing poetry that doesn’t rhyme in a single place. God knows what I was upto. I don’t keep track of stuff I do, I hope he does, he would need it someday for the ‘evaluation’. Anyhow, barring a few mortal occasions, life’s not been too bad. My house can now be called a home, one would like to live here now. It has also been having visitors. My brother dropped in, friends have been dropping in, parents dropped in. This sudden advent of visitors has somehow been too much of confusing information to handle for my maid who was used to seeing the solitary me in this house for so many months. Which is perhaps why, when my mom told her about my brother, my maid provided her six different versions of visitors who she thought was my brother. My mom was confused and aghast because, yeah, you know how moms are. 

Mom’s penchant for chatting up people and socialising has always worried me. On Diwali eve, while we were sitting on the lit up terrace, she enthusiastically suggested we go and socialise with the neighbours - a proposal I rejected outrightly. Later that week I heard dad had gone and ’socialised’ with my most non-cooperative ground floor neighbour, who he thought was a nice poor man who nobody in the building likes, hence he feels I should go and coffee with them. I informed that indeed, I am included in that list of nobodies because he is a jerk. Dad apparently also had a chat with the broker, plumber, carpenter, electrician and the owner of the colony cab rental agency whom he has asked to ensure ‘my safety since I stay alone’. Brilliant, so now the entire colony knows there is a single woman living here, including prospective thieves. 

They are somehow unable to understand that being neighbours doesn’t automatically qualify people to be included in my active social circle (which, I admit, is more electronic since the people I can relate to are far and few, literally). Besides, if I do have free time outside of work, I’d rather spend it with interesting people like myself. Alright, that was narcissistic. 

Talking of which, I have a feeling that some people at work feel I have an attitude. But to my own surprise, I realised that it is an accusation I am not to keen on denying. I may have sub-consciously adopted it for two primary reasons: a) the ability to deliver hence accept only quality work and b) the unwillingness to be used overtime by those who don’t. Thanks to the ‘attitude’ I no longer have to write all the speeches. Having worked with some of the best minds in the industry earlier on in my career, it now amazes me to see the sharp decline in quality and attitude among ‘professionals’. I watch in amazement as a fair majority of people spend most of their time looking for ways to piggy back on a bunch of hardworking people. Also, I seriously want to know how many calories does the human mind take to ‘think’, given the rare commodity it has become these days. Anyhow, more on than later because this post ends here (because I want it to). 

After 3 months of exile, I had decided to go home hoping to get some rest and have home cooked food cooked by someone other than me, for a change. Well, let me tell you that my primary objective was not met. My trip lasted 10 days of which 4 days were booked by my folks for a family ‘outing’. I thought home-coming was already an outing for me, but God had other plans. Second, I had called in my bro to visit home during the same week hoping his presence would take away some of the attention off me, and also give me some rest. I was wrong there too. Of the remaining few days when I was in my home town, and when I was not scooting around the city sampling food all over, I was sweating over the wok cooking his favourite dishes. This in addition to Mom’s special requests, too. Moving on, the family trip was booked at some supposedly starry resort in a beach town.  When we reached there, we found that starry or not, all buildings on the that sea-side were badly corroded due to the salty winds. But thankfully, we could see the beach, and we were staying at the far lonely end of the beach which was peaceful to think of. 

Bro somehow is always excited about any trip, though I was not really keen on tripping with my folks. There are several reasons, all of which could be summed up as one primary reason, we are different kind of people. Radically different. On a holiday, I usually have a vague broad plan in mind, but hate to microplan to the minute; something my folks pride themselves for. Somehow the lack of spontaneity and the hours of decision-making kills it for me. 

Also, my dad has a habit of packing in too many things in the itinerary, consequently they would call us on the phone extension at 6am every morning and then walk upto our room and ring our doorbell exactly half an hour later to ensure we were up. Which obviously we weren’t. Because we knew they would walk up to our room and ring the door bell to re-wake us. The breakfast was also an interesting time every day. We would gather in the breakfast hall and bro would go around the buffet doing a recci and come back to inform everyone what to touch and what not to. The breakfast was also interesting for one more reason, the live flautist. No he did not play well, whatever he played we couldn’t decipher, he was way off tune and it wasn’t one bit pleasing to our ears. But he tried his best. We sometimes suspected he was also the part-time cook, because some of the food was equally bad. 

Anyhow, we did have some nice times too. For example, when we had to tip-toe over a man-made jetty made of sand bags over a tiny lagoon to get to the beach, and we saw tiny red crabs and skeletons of some giant turtles. Their shells were missing so we suspect they did not die natural deaths. Greedy inhuman humans. Also nice, was the drive in the rains to Konark, where we visited the famous Sun temple. We couldn’t help noticing some of the erotic sculptures, and a great deal of variety for that matter, man on woman, woman on woman, dog on woman, snake on snake, threesomes and more. Too much variety for my taste. I wonder what holier than thou explanation will our religious fanatics give to that. Mom was glad we did not hire a guide because apparently on her earlier visits, she had heard them giving embarrassingly intricate descriptions of the sculptures. Porn temple, as some would probably call it. But I am not complaining, afterall I was not there for religious reasons. I was keen to see the venue where every famous Odissi dancer has performed. It was nice to see the attempts to preserve the ruins. 

One of the good things of visiting a beach town is the seafood. We has a good time sampling the fried seafood on the road-side stalls lining the beach. Also mentionable is a place called Wild Grass where the food was damn good and the ambience was better than the food. We were seated atop machans as we ate. Dad felt a bit sick though, and the rest of us were busy blaming each other for feeding him all the street side non-sense earlier.

The best thing on the trip though, was the boat ride to Chilika lake. It is probably Asia’s largest lake, and what’s more, it even meets the sea. 5 hours of boat ride might seem a bit too much, there were times when we could only see water around, I even dozed off for a while. But we got some great shots with our cameras, vast stretches of water, driftwood, dolphins, some lucky guy chilling under a shady tree on the banks, etc. There was even a sudden storm in which we got stranded; the boatman parked the boat on a nearby island and covered the boat with plastic sheets to keep us from getting drenched. The storm lasted for about half an hour and then suddenly it stopped and all was bright as earlier again. Can’t imagine how sailors put up with such whims of nature. 

In the hind sight, it was a nice break. I just wish there was less activity though. Or maybe not. Sometimes it is so difficult to make up your mind as to what you like. I’m probably scheduled to go camping next week. Now let’s see if I can like it. 

Staying alone might be fun, but its not easy. It has been two months since I shifted to another city, and after 

three years of unwanted parental protection I was most determined to stay absolutely alone this time. No roomies, no flatmates, just me and my much savoured solitude. So far, it was so good. Until I started shopping for home. And ordering furniture. And doing the laundry. And cooking. Managing a house on my own has been pretty challenging. For starters it takes a week to deliver a bed that is usually delivered in 2 days, because there is noone at your place to receive the package except on weekends. Ditto for courier. In fact, I cannot even ask for a courier to my office because I sit in a Ministry building where human entry  is so procedural that no courier guy would ever bother  delivering. (It is different for monkeys and dogs because they loiter around freely without a govt. pass) Not that I am being couriered very intelligent stuff from home. They recently sent me a package  containing some semiprecious stones (that I am expected to wear for good luck) and a dry twig (that I am supposed to carry in my purse). I would have, of course, asked for something more useful such as packets of shiitake mushrooms, five  spice and some such. Yes food of course, what else am I ever passionate about?

That reminds me, I have been eating around quite a bit despite complaining continually about the bad weather, which, in actuality, is bad. Thankfully the food is good. I am also thankful to the small gutter group we have formed at work; partly named because of the level of sophistication in our discussions, and partly because of the kind of additional work that flows down to us when others stop delivering. Somebody’s tattered report, someone’s rejected document, papers with bad english, papers which make no sense and files which have no defined takers. I have been turned from an environment expert to the official copyeditor,  the transport planner has become the administrative head and the urban planner has been reduced to a multipurpose man friday to no one particular person. To add to the injury, we all report to a fat ugly female bureaucrat who scares unsuspecting young boys by flashing her thunder thighs under the table and dismisses young women with equivalent vengeance. 

Unfortunately, these are not things to be told when someone asks ‘How’s life?’ so I have been managing with a non-descript nod these days.