Indian Ameri
Friday
Participle - Participating Continuity
Instead of 'so-called' utilizing the opportune moment of the free Thursday evening in years to draw bright tangents with the dark circles, the heart took the road less taken. Turned out, that the road was in fact the parallel wooden rungs of a long iron ladder over which the mechanical monsters pass behind the Desi street hooting every night. Twenty counts of "taken pictures" later, I was stranded soaked from the breezy rain, over a railing deficit bridge several miles from any area I know in Lexington. A pick up by the senior roomie later using the i-phones google maps location finder, discovered that I had actually ran around eight miles on a railroad just by listening to a rhythmic song. Somehow, the jog steamed a great amount of pressure out of the cooked bheja.
Time well spent on finishing an old photography project somehow induced the Ghajini's intuition to make a call to Lady Liz (LL) and Skipper (SP) inquiring about their wedding anniversary. Turned out that the pair got married by registered paper on July 24th, while the real "Thaali/Mangalsutra" episode occurred two weeks later (after LL eloped from her village 'alone' back in the late 70s). Skipper's discussion of restlessness for those torturing 14 days and LL's mute excitement experienced in the presence of my grannies for a lil' over 12 happy days proved a real enthusiasm for the year. Every time I probe deep into my parents romantic adventures, I learn something interesting. As a token of appreciation of their guts, I gutted out the truth of finally passing the final stage of the faculty interview from IIT-K. And as a token of sharing some principles, I also informed them it's just a back up plan if things turn 'fatal' here in the States. This sharing somehow instigated the curiosity in Skipper, and we ended up detailing a discussion on just the phrase, "What is Nano?"
Ended the night with an experimental kitchen attempt to extract rose flavor from a bouquet of bought love using coconut oil, hot water, and a never used antique 10 ml extraction column. A few spoons of mango pulp and milk gave it an exotic drooling taste.
Off the rail roads of romantic adventures:
1. Fortunately every roomie I had in the past 5 years turned out to be good in character. Or is it the perspective of seeing, appreciating, and 'extracting' the rosy-goodness in all that I've been with? For the two days of sleepless fundamental scanning and multiple book reading, I'd been offered Nescafe, given hot soup, compelled with black coffee, and satiated with a nice "busy-belabath." In return, the party demands not one, but two blue labels from me. :))
2. It's early summer/spring and the 'hippy' vision is already kicking some neural dendrites' ass by noticing a lot of things on the walk to the lab. The recent count of non-human materialistic smiley faces on the road has been six (and these are not visions of clouds changing into the faces). And every time I cross the concrete cemented smiley, I think of taking a picture with the phone and sms'ing to the fan.
3. Three and a half years of points of no return were reanalyzed and the pick of the lot ended up on 'turning around, sighting a shut door, getting into the elevator, and thinking "The answer for the long sought question is now."'
4. A lot of muteness is shown by me on the field and it is really making me feel young and energetic.
5. "Screw you" was the exact phrase Dr. Hi used, while he was analyzing my response to the rude reviewers query. Coincidentally it was the same phrase I used as I read the query 2 days ago. Also he used twice the term, "What a d**k!!" in front of me as he read the reviewers next query. Non-coincidentally I wasn't that peeved with the bloke.
6. I am doing another jog definitely when it rains and this time I'm going to listen to "not alone" all the way till I meet the polar express.
Labels: Anniversary, dad-son, Lady Liz, Skipper, Songs
Sunday
The Triad
After waiting six brutal hours of night time in India, for a change I woke up dad, told about the cousins video and asked 'what was all that about?' A series of discussion with queries directly to the lady at grace gave me this - (Am assigning characters to my family members from now on)
LL (Lady Liz of the royal empire/mom in layman's term) made friends with a bunch of Velachery Maamis, personally hired an autowaala, shunted too and fro during Skipper's (Skipper Penguin of Madagascar/dad in NRI language) off-field work, and finally figured out the right kindergarten for CJ (Nibbles/nephew to me; Cool Jay/grandson to her making them the LL Cool J pair). She even started bribing the ABCD teacher with her so called delicacies (Poor skipper. Still bearing to his Lady's cooking). And she blatantly admitted that this feat of her doing for Cool J made her forget her pain for a while and just partied with a success implied dance.
Skipper's comments as sputtered when interviewed were, "I fell in love AGAIN son!" After confirming that during his comments, LL was busy dropping two sugar clumps in the tea she is preparing in the royal kitchen, I agreed to skipper that I bow to his patience of passion. While, this was the case developing back in MumsLand, here Nibbles was all excited to even write KRE (Kindergarten Regional Examination) and TOIFL (Test of Indian as a Foreign Language), started watching desi movies to improve his grandmother tongue, stand in queue for a visa, practicing the right answer for "Tum India kyun jaa rahe ho?" and finally making a list of what cheese (like achaar) to take to India and how to tackle the customs officials when caught on transporting perishable items. When asked, "Why are you so interested in going to India?" the shrill voice in the phone proved the excitement that "I can eat Dosa with my haaaaaaandssss!! Gaaampa make yummy i-keem tooooo" Thinking about the Pillsbury dough eating a fried dough and the yet to be recognized by the apple inc. product - i(ce)-c(r)eam as homemade by Skipper, I'd guess I'll witness these and more interesting stuff when I go to India later. For now, all I need to do is figure out a way to meet the kid (been 3 months), and send him to India soon.
Life away from the Triads!
Sickness issues - 33 teeth leading to 2 decays below the visible region, an anesthesia induced bi-teeth removal and mistaken poking of the other side, mouth ulcer developed on the poking zone leading to inability to even gulp semi-solid food, leading to malnutrition, metabolic breakdown, night fevers, and further misery by skipping gym for 3 straight weeks, which lead to muscle relaxation and severe cramping.
A "frick it!" rejuvenation jog turning all stupid coz I fell on my elbows trying not to do a stampede on the rain-induced-worm-migration kept me locked and sealed. Finally a rebooting of the system by two days of good rest ensured that I was fine enough for some friendly water polo. But, as the apple falls due to gravity, I tore a fragment of my back muscle fiber keeping me stiff for enough time. And finally, the sickness drought struck lightning, by a first ever shin cramp during a backfoot punch drive for a four. While, the guys were ball watching and appreciating an elegant shot I 'never' attempted, Chotu was stretching my leg by pressing hard on the ankle and knee region. His sarcasm during the physio, "Ab toh accept karo ki bhooda ho gaya. Retire ho jao re". Been two days that I'm still limping around the department attracting concerns.
Lost in Migration - Somehow the gold chain I wore, broke loose and got lost somewhere. The part that worried me the most was that the dollar in that chain was 32 yrs old. It was dads first piece of jewelery out of his savings (and it was insisted by mom to buy one for him). The symbol had been lurking around as the symbol in three different houses that was built over three decades, was part of my brothers college life, and in spite of my disinterest in wearing it, mom believed that it would protect me from danger (Always made fun of it, but somehow felt guilty after losing it).
Irony of work - Return of the sick graduate led to a back log of experiments broiling my way out. But the real irony was, the post doc got sick due to gall stone issues and I ended up being the scape goat of a senior to work on this 11th hour for advisor crisis-industrial project. While, I single handedly optimized the reaction to make the best contact lenses as required, not even a single cent of the time I spent on perfecting this project turns into a para in the corners of the last pages of even the appendix chapter of the thesis. Strangely everything on the thesis seems to be giving trouble 'only' at the last step. This has kept me from even finishing revisions for the paper and submitting it for final acceptance.
Strangely the word rat poison reminded me a little over a decade old memory of how circumstances led to the coining of the word "Guli" Although I can never imagine, I still have the right to glance about the possibility of "what if that accident never occurred?" I can only wish....
Rejection - After two weeks of intense phone interviewing and back and forth e-mailing, finally I was let go from the possibility of having a back up option of a faculty researcher job in India on the basis of "inexperience". Guess, I need to rewind my life back by 5 yrs and stay put.
Florida awaits - For some unexplainable reason, I'm skipping the plan of making it to Panama City for the weekend. And I still can't figure out what the heck is the reason about?
Anyhooo the post is long, the debt in penning one was longer, and the satisfaction in finally coming out of sickness is the longest (hope it ends tonight)......
Labels: dad-grandson, dad-son, India, Irony of life, Lady Liz, Nephew Nibbles, PhD, Skipper, slumber along shadows