Memoirs of a vagabond

The long journey home.

2010-06-05T13:05:00.000-07:00

It’s like stepping into a childhood dream and living it all over again. A foggy memory come true. It’s reaching and touching the nostalgia that until that moment lay buried deep within. It’s allowing my heart to feel again. A deep sigh. A tired exhalation. A secret spoken out loud. It’s touching a portrait from long ago and watching it come alive. It’s smelling the jasmine out on the porch and finding my way through the lost alleys of my childhood. The familiar smell of you. It’s closing the door to the seven year distance between us. The past merging into the present. My two worlds collide. It’s knowing I’ll see you soon. The long journey home.

Unwritten

2010-02-17T15:05:00.000-08:00

The saddest story ever told is the one that hasn’t been written yet. A dark tale of a heart that weeps, its blood red nostalgic tears seeping and staining the dirty white snow in which it lays. Sitting atop once fond memories that now lie buried deep below this frozen ground. The cold winter wind moans in grief, sweeping furiously through the landscape before pausing reverently at this mound. This graveyard of memories, I visited it today. Bringing flowers, I placed my hand on my heart that weeps nostalgically, not once daring to uncover the memories from their burial ground, lest they haunt me. Not once daring to tell the saddest story ever told.

Writer's High

2010-01-14T11:12:00.000-08:00

It’s the struggle of your heart to find just the right words with which to express itself. That obsessive urge to find clarity that consumes you. It’s the longing to be heard of the voice that screams inside of you that you constantly muffle with the noise of the world around you. A lost identity that searches for a face.

It’s that moment in which you sit at your writing desk and the world disappears around you, melting into an insignificant nothingness and all that remains are the memories that you revive, the dark fears that you confront, and the dreams that you find freedom in.

It’s that heat of passion in which your soul recognizes its truest self and spills itself out into the words that your pen furiously scratches onto paper.

That’s writer’s high.

In memory

2009-12-03T14:11:00.000-08:00

Your woolen shawl that smelt a strange comforting fragrance of vicks and ointment. The dentures that we loved to hide. The way you would mix up small pieces of deboned boiled fish in small pieces of rotlo and feed it to me when I was little. When you gifted me my first ever white jeans and I swore they were the coolest thing any teenager could own. Our banter back and forth when you would ask me to massage your legs. The knick knacks you’d always have hidden away in your closet that you’d dig out for us to have. A perfume from one part of the world, a lotion bottle from another. Little bits of jewelry that you’d ask me if I liked. My favorite pickles that you sent for me all the way from India and asked me if I wanted anything else. That night when we went for a walk, inching along the footpath, you holding on to my hand and stopped for bhel puri at the food stall. When you scolded me for being a spoilt brat. The loving way in which you would place your hand on my head and ask me if I was happy. How you held on to each one of us and hugged us for the longest time when we left. And ran out the door onto the porch to receive us when we came back. Tears of sorrow turning to tears of joy. Your sense of humor. Your laugh that I’ll never see again. The letters I never wrote. The phone calls I never made. The years that passed us by. And then the phone conversation I had with you when you found out about my love for a man you’d never ever met and all you asked was “is he a good man?”. Your unconditional acceptance. The face in the mirror that I inherited from you. The care you always showed even when there was just silence from my end. The words I never said. The many excuses that I made. I never once said how much I care for you, and it’s the deepest regret I’ll ever have.

Unending conversations, countless images, the many words both spoken and unspoken over the years, endless memories that ebb and flow through the seas of nostalgia in my head, now make me cry.

I know I don’t say much when I should, but just for one last moment I wish I could say and you could hear that I miss you so much, grandma. And that I do really care.

Fate

2009-11-17T11:38:00.000-08:00

Do you believe in fate?

That sneaky old lady who creeps upon you when you least expect it? Startling you and then laughing uproariously at her own dirty joke. That mean, cranky old hag who carries all your good fortune in that dirty sack over her shoulder and laughs menacingly at you as you stare at the empty packets of nothingness she hands over to you when you beg? You know, that stern crabby woman who raps on your knuckles with her long walking stick, pulling out a scraggly list of all your misdeeds, remembering your many flaws long after you’ve forgotten them. That grouchy old rat who is impossible to please.

Do you believe in fate?

She just curled up her wrinkled lips and smiled at me today.

Relationships

2009-11-09T10:31:00.001-08:00

So fluid. So mercurial.

Dissolved before ever created.

Created before it could dissolve.

Existent even amidst nonexistence.

Nonexistent even amidst its existence.

A concrete identity even when unnamed.

A slippery nothingness even when named.

The complicated web of trust.

Fine threads. Delicate strings.

A beautiful silk tapestry. But pull one string and it comes undone.

Cynical and me?

I just let you reach in and grab my heart.

Mornings in Africa

2009-09-18T11:04:00.000-07:00

At first all I see are the eyes. Eyes without bodies. Big green dots lighting up the pitch darkness of the night like fireflies. As my sleepy eyes grow accustomed to the blue black darkness outside of my tent, silhouettes start to come alive.

The jagged edges of umbrella acacias fill up my horizon. A mournful wuuuu huuu huuu breaks through the quietness of the night and I see the curved outline of a bush baby crawling slowly into sight, its big sorrowful green eyes all the while watching me. The heavy built frames of buffaloes dotting the savannah, softly grunting. A flicker of a tail swooshing and somewhere out in the velvety darkness a hyena laughs at his own secret joke before running off. I hear muffled rustling in the tussock grass around the tent and turn my head toward it just in time to see a startled bush duiker dart out of one bush and into another. Up in the trees a twig breaks free, and an accusatory chattering ensues between the black and white colobus monkeys. I hear scampering and swinging in the trees, as Africa awakens out of its slumber.

The weaver birds always awaken first. Noisy and loud, bickering back and forth, chasing each other, flashing streaks of yellow into the blue hours of dawn, dangling from one nest, flying into another. The hadada ibises squawk loudly at them scolding and shaking their heads in disapproval, their loud cries resonating into the early morning. The go away birds pitch in their dissatisfaction at the scene, hopping from one branch to another calling out at everyone to just “goooo goooo awaaaay”. The noisy choir of morning birds in the air grows louder and louder and then all of a sudden there is silence.

There it is – that breathless sunrise. Just as suddenly as the first warm glow rises up from the dark abyss of the horizon, the noise of the world around me hushes into a perfect silence. It’s as if nature and I agree that this is a sacred sight that can only be gazed upon in the midst of absolute serenity. Peace and quiet fill my world for that one moment as the sky fills up with crimson and orange rising higher and higher up into the sky until a perfect fiery ball of red sets the sky aflame. It is only six in the morning but already Africa is on fire.

This isn’t the memory of a single morning, but rather the nostalgia of countless memories of waking up to countless breathless sunrises in my beloved Kenya.

The waiting

2009-09-17T13:37:00.000-07:00

We play a waiting game – life and I. I wait for it to turn into what I expect out of it. And it waits for me to turn into the person it wills for me to be. Some days life wins. Some days I win. And in all the days that lie in between, there’s just the endless waiting.

Faces from different places

2009-09-08T19:32:00.000-07:00

There he is. The boy who once knew me for the little girl that I was. The one I hung around with over my holidays, playing marbles in the dirt, riding our bikes around the neighborhood. The one who taught me to swim by shoving me into the swimming pool. I thrashed and slapped the water. But today I can swim.

And that’s her. The girl who became my very best friend. The one who befriended the shy seven year old me when I first started school in Kenya. The one who helped me make friends. The one who loved goldilocks and the three bears just as much as I did. And believed me when I said fairies were real even when everyone else didn’t.

That photo right over there? The one taken the third year of high school.
The mary jane shoes. Polished and shiny black with white socks up to the knee. White shirt and a gray skirt with a navy blue blazer thrown on top. Complete with a matching blue tie slung loose around the neck. And we all collectively hated it. A bunch of awkward teenagers, searching for self-identity.

And that’s her. The one I keep telling you about. My teacher from high school. Who always dressed funny. The one with the big glasses, who once apologized to the trashcan. And yet the one who believed in my ability to achieve more than I dreamed for myself.

Him. Him. And her. My college buddies. The people I travelled around Kenya with. The ones I get together with even now, laughing uproariously into the wee hours of the night, remembering shared memories of camping adventures gone bad.

Faces collected in different places over time, brought together in one tight space. The collage that makes me me.

I just joined Facebook.

Incoherence

2009-09-01T11:11:00.000-07:00

A congested mess. Words stuck together. Like an icky gooey mess. The blink-blink of the cursor, waiting and waiting for that single elusive word. A single lost muse. A single slippery thought to color its blank white pages with the splitch splotch of black ink that spits out onto paper when a hundred untouched feelings, a hundred unspoken words come undone. A dotted collage of black against white. An elaborate sketch of intricate feelings. Parts of a painting still incomplete. A single elusive word is all it takes. And then they spill out faster. Words chasing one another, tumbling after one another, bumping and colliding to fill the empty spaces between the lines. Words evocative and provocative. Vivid and descriptive. Begging to be used. Bringing to life a writer’s foggy dream. Spilling out the secret hidden thoughts buried within the innermost depths of the writer’s soul as a tight knot comes undone.

Whispered prayers

2009-07-12T18:03:00.000-07:00

I light a candle and whisper a prayer.

In the quiet depths of my heart, I recognize your sadness, your unbearable suffocation. My heart breaks for you, setting loose a thousand emotions. And I watch as the countless feelings contained within my whispered words float on a prayer, and are carried gently by the thin threads of the blue gray smoke of the candle wafting its way toward you. They glide gently in the air, crossing the distance between us, reaching you when I cannot.

In the empty loneliness you feel they find you. They uncoil and unravel around you. Whispered words of a whispered prayer, they comfort you. My love wraps itself around you. They promise to protect you.

I light a candle and whisper a prayer, knowing deep within my heart that even despite the large distance between us, when my prayer finally reaches you, you will be okay.

~vagabond~ © 2009

The child within

2009-05-10T16:43:00.000-07:00

Remember the five year old that once was?

The one with the lopsided pigtails and the big curious eyes? The eyes that grew bigger and rounder as she stared into the fish tank ogling at the colorful fish that swam inside. Her face brightening up into a big, dimpled smile as she called out gleefully to everyone to come see the "fishies" inside. The trip to the aquarium. Her first trip to the aquarium. The one that would create the magic of a childhood memory freshly formed lighting up her face for days thereafter as she talked about the visit to her friends, embellishing her stories with exaggerated details over how big the aquarium was and how colorful the fish were.

Remember the five year old who had a simple innocence to her being?

The one with the naivety that only childhood can bring? She frolicked around the neighborhood in her tshirt and boyshorts, scruffy knees speckled with dirt from playing marbles. Chatting up to friends and strangers. She had unquestionable faith in people. An inability to read hidden intentions and the implicit belief that people were inherently good. She trusted openheartedly. Accepting them for who they were. As they were. Without ever trying to change them. Because there was never a need to.

Remember the five year old that believed in happy endings?

The one whose face radiated with endless sunshiney optimism as she listened to stories on her grandpa’s lap? She had absolute belief that things would turn out okay. No matter what. That no matter what else happened to the characters in the story, things would always be okay in the end. The knowledge that stories always had a happy ending. The absolute belief that life would turn out okay.

Remember that fearless five year old?

The curious little girl who let go of her mother’s hand on the busy city streets and found herself lost and all alone? She had no doubt whatsoever that the world was a safe place and that she would be found. She had an unrestrained, uninhibited curiosity over life. Fearless to dream big dreams. And eternal faith to accomplish it all.

Remember the five year old that once was?

Somewhere in life’s complicated maze we’ve lost sight of each other, she and I.

I miss that inner child within.

~vagabond~ © 2009

The Longing

2009-04-20T16:25:00.000-07:00

It tugs. It pulls. It frustrates. It yearns. It mourns. It weeps. It lashes out in anger. At the world. At me. It hopes. It dreams. It hurts. It bruises. It yells and screams.

The longing of a caged heart just to fly free.

~vagabond~ © 2009

Restless rain

2009-03-08T16:38:00.000-07:00

Dark gray clouds threaten the angry sky above me. The raindrops continue to pound noisily against the rooftop just as they have all morning long. A silver bolt of lightening darts through the sky, its silvery whiteness brightening up a dark gloomy day, if only just for a moment. A loud roar of thunder escapes through the clouds, its resonating boom waking up the quietness of a lazy afternoon. I gaze out of the window and watch the water puddles swallow up the ground beneath them, growing bigger in size, one quick raindrop at a time.

When I lived in Kenya, rainy days made me feel happy inside, in an ethereal, dreamy sort of way. There is something extremely satisfying about watching the first of the long rains of the season end a stubborn drought. The dry thirst of an entire savannah quenches up before your eyes, as the yellow brown ruggedness magically transforms itself into a luscious green. Back then, I found rains inspiring. They quenched the thirst of my own parched soul. This Midwestern winter storm that rages around me just doesn’t soothe my soul quite the same way. Instead it makes me unbearably sad. And restless. And extremely homesick. Except that, for the longest time, I’ve been wandering around lost, and just can’t seem to find where home is.

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Splat! I stomp through mud puddles, a spunky five year old, dressed in my favorite bright yellow rain coat, holding on tightly to my mother’s finger as I skip along the road. We run from one side of the pavement to the other, hiding under the rooftops of various stores along the way, seeking shelter from the monsoon rains. The streets are already starting to flood and I’m just happy that school has been cancelled for the day. As we pause for a break through the rain under a rooftop, I spot a man roasting singodas (chestnuts) on a charcoal stove along the side of the road, a big red umbrella covering both him and the singodas and the stove all at once. The earthy smell of the fresh roasted singodas wafts its way through the raindrops towards me. It’s my favorite street food of all. “Pleeease mum, can we buy some? Pleease? Pleeease?” I beg and plead. “Okay, okay…we’ll get some.” She gives in. “But you can’t eat any until you get home. You’ll get the black soot all over you.”

In that moment, beneath the flimsy shelter of a roadside store rooftop, basking in the warm heat emanating from a charcoal stove, watching the monsoon rains flood the crowded street ahead of me, reveling in the thoughts of eating hot singodas once I got home, I felt completely at home. It was the only home I had ever known.

Mumbai, India. Where countless memories of a carefree childhood lie buried. Where the earliest of my memories were formed. Is this home?

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We’ve been driving in circles for the past hour. The rain continues to drum a steady beat atop the Range Rover as the windshield wipers sway wildly back and forth frantically trying to clear away every drop. Long branches from the trees around us reach out and grab at the windows of the car, scratching it as we drive along the narrow dirt trails carved into the forest. In the midst of the thunderstorm, the forest ahead of us looks dark and eerie and we are by all counts lost. Lost in Mau Forest. I regret ever coming out here today. I regret my year long internship with the WWF (World Wildlife Fund). We had gone into the forest to search for the mouth of a river, had found and marked the origin of the river but lost ourselves on our way out of the forest. We didn’t have any food with us, no water and we were slowly running out of gas. And the steady rain made it impossible to see through the forest ahead of us. What was I thinking when I had decided to go along? A herd of gazelles suddenly bursts out of the thick forest around us, interrupting my thoughts, darting out from the trees on one side of the narrow road, disappearing into the nothingness on the other side of the road. I never should have come.

And then all of a sudden, the forest gets thinner, and the narrow trail opens up and we look through the rain to see a small village dotted with mud huts along the edge of the forest. We search around for someone to ask directions from and then we see her. She sits by the doorway of her mud hut, watching the rain pour down, patting to sleep a baby wrapped up in a bright purple khanga around her chest. She looks at us with curiosity as we approach her, her face lighting up into a bright smile as she realizes that we’re just lost. She invites us into her cow dung plastered mud home as she calls out to her husband to help us. “Mzungu! Mzungu!” a bunch of small children surround us, touching our face, feeling our hair, exclaiming in joyful astonishment over how different it is from their own African features. As I stood in the doorway of her mud hut, sheltered from the rain, I felt safe once again. I felt at home.

Kenya. Where I first discovered what I wanted out of life. Where I first learnt to pursue my dreams. Where I truly grew up. Is this my home?

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And then there is this angry Midwestern winter rainstorm that I watch outside my window today, that bears an eerie resemblance to all the storms in my life that I’ve weathered over the past few years to create a career and a life for myself here.

America. The country that I came to in the hopes of turning dreams into a reality. The country that showed me a secret courage I didn’t know I possessed. After having lived here for eight years of my life, shouldn’t this be my home? And if it is truly home, then why does this storm outside sadden me, and make me miss home today?

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Living segments of my life simultaneously on three very different, diverse continents allows me to soar free amidst them, opening up my life to cultures and customs so different from and yet so alike to one another. And for that unique perspective of a free flowing life, I’ll always be grateful. But it also gives me the saddest feeling of fitting in everywhere and yet truly belonging nowhere. Each of these places that I’ve lived in, that I’ve grown up in, that I’ve had life changing experiences in, holds on to bits and pieces of my soul, but there is none that my soul stakes its claim on. I recognize the turbulence of the storm outside. I recognize the restlessness it brings. It’s time for me and my gypsy soul to move along, in search of a new home. I’ll wander. I’ll roam. I’ll search some more. And perhaps I’ll realize that while there is no one place that I can call home, all these places that make me me together define home.

~vagabond~ © 2009

PS. This post was eerily written around the same time that Bindu asked "where is home?". She has an extremely interesting post (read it here) answering the same question. Bindu, you have my answer now.

In the footsteps of strong women

2009-02-08T15:06:00.000-08:00

She throws the fish head into the pot of boiling water and searches around the empty kitchen for something else to put into the soup. She tosses in idle pieces of carrots, a tomato and an onion, the last of any food in the house, even as she contemplates over what to serve for dinner the next night. It has already been a month since the mailman brought her any money – the money her husband tried to send her every few months, his small income from toiling away as a manual laborer in another distant village. There is no telling when some more money will arrive again. Until then, she will just have to find ways to stretch the meals, to raise and feed six children all on her own.

Perhaps she’ll get lucky, she reasons as she stirs the watery broth. Perhaps she’ll get some more fish heads for free from the market at the end of the day – left over pieces that nobody else wants to take home. Saving her worries over tomorrow for another day, she pours the watery liquid into six small bowls. “Not fish soup again, Ma”, complains a little voice. “Drink it up, fish head soup makes you smart”, she encourages.

Each day brings with it a new struggle. There are always school fees to be paid, doctor visits to be made, shoes to be repaired, old clothes that need stitching, six mouths that need feeding. And yet she faces every day with a resilient spirit, refusing to be knocked down by whatever struggles life brings her way.

There is a knock on the door. It’s the post man with some money. But even as she stretches her hand to receive the money, it quickly passes from her hands into the hands of all those who stretched their hands before hers, demanding payment for every favor lent in the past.

I admire her spirit of resilience, her silent tenacity. I admire this woman who is my grandmother.

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She takes her first step into her husband’s home. She stands in her bridal clothes by the doorway inspecting the tiny two room house – the small kitchen and the living room that makes the entire house. There is a communal toilet outside, some distance away from the house, shared by everyone else who lives in the neighborhood. He shows her the tiny bathroom he built into the kitchen just for her, so she can take a shower with some privacy in the mornings. She peeks into its tiny space and wonders how she’ll wrap her sari around in its small space. Or how she’ll comb and braid her long hair without a mirror in the house. Lost in anxious thoughts, she looks up into the face of the man she had chosen to marry. Had she made the right decision? She had turned down suitor upon suitor because she contended, she didn’t want a rich husband who would take care of her every need, she had wanted an educated husband who would respect her and treat her as an equal. He looks at her, trying to gauge her reaction to the house, wondering what she will say. “It’s just a starter home. I’ll work hard, we’ll save money to move somewhere else later.” She looks up at him and smiles, knowing she made the right decision.

Months turn into years, and she tenderly turns the two room house into a home. Then one day, he comes home, bursting with good news. He has just been offered a job abroad, should he take it? The very thought of leaving all her friends and family depresses her. Her first instinct is to put her foot down and say no. No, they can’t leave this home that they’ve created for themselves. No, they can’t leave the family or the life that they’ve created for themselves here. But then she looks up into his face. And she sees the enthusiasm, the dreams, the ambitions, the hope, the possibilities contained within. And she nods. Yes. You should take the job. We’ll be okay.

She gazes out at the view from the airplane as it takes off, rising high up into the clouds, leaving her country, her home, and the life that she knows behind her. In that moment, she chooses instead to put her own dreams, ambitions and hope into the hands of this man she has decided to trust. To trust him completely as she starts life afresh in a whole new continent far away from home.

I admire her implicit faith in life, her very strong courage. I admire this woman who is my mother.

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I turn around to take one last look at my family as I walk on to the airport gate to check in my luggage. I see the tear that rolls down my mother’s cheek, and I want so desperately to run back to her and wipe it away. She smiles at me through her tears and waves a goodbye. I lift my hand and wave back in response, a tight lump forming in my throat. The enormity of what I am about to do dawns upon me and suddenly I feel scared and afraid. Why am I leaving the security and the comfort of the only world I know to start a new life in a country whose culture and ways are alien to me? I don’t know anyone in America. I have no friends or relatives there. I will be completely on my own. What if things don’t work out the way I’d imagined them to be? What if the elusive dreams that lead me there disappeared from sight along the way? I contemplate turning around but then stop and take a step forward heading to the gate.

I’ve wondered about that moment so many times over the years. What stopped me from turning around at that moment? What prompted me to take that first step ahead, to have the courage to move to America? What made me believe I would be okay despite it all? I still don’t know the answer but somewhere deep down inside, I think it is the power of the legacy I possess. I walk in the footsteps of strong women.

~vagabond~ © 2009

A few moments with myself

2009-02-01T16:43:00.000-08:00

Lately, I cant hear the voice of my soul speak to me. I miss our conversations. The searching, the dreaming, the creating something out of the nothing. Finding myself within myself. Discovering thoughts misplaced. Ideas forgotten. Dreams abandoned. Planning new journeys to undertake. Instead, a noisy chaos surrounded me. A blur of rushed activity. Overbearingly important and seemingly necessary yet meaningless and unuseful. As the noise from the chaos around me grew louder and more demanding, the hushed voice of my soul spoke softer and softer, growing tired and weary, fading away from a whisper one day into the stillness of a tormented silence. I missed the voice of my deepest expressions, the nurturing voice of my dreams, the voice of my innermost conscience, the voice that calls me to live life again and again. Lately, I've been straining to hear it speak to me again. I've begged and implored it to talk to me again. To speak louder that I might hear it above all chaos. When all I really needed to do was just to step away from the noise, to walk away from the chaos, and to just listen.

~vagabond~ © 2009

Thoughts

2009-01-25T17:29:00.000-08:00

So many thoughts in my head.
Noisy and cluttered. Disarrayed. Confused. Jumbled. Knotted up. Tight and twisted.
A thousand different emotions all tangled up.
Demanding. Wanting. Longing. Hurting. Nostalgic. Sentimental.
A messy cobweb.
Incoherent and loud.
And yet not five minutes of calm serenity to de-tangle it all.
To pause. To breathe.
To just express it all.

~vagabond~ © 2009

8 weird things that you didnt know about me

2009-01-18T14:06:00.000-08:00

I normally hate doing tags but this time I've been double tagged by both Alok and Cuckoo to do the same tag and I can see them giving me the evil eye every time I stalk their blogs, walking right past the tag and ignoring it to the best of my ability. So for once, I'm just going to raise my hands up in the air, surrender and just do the damn tag. So here goes...eight weird things that people don’t know about me.

A snake or a rat? Which one would you pick up if you saw it on the ground? Which one would send you out of the room, screaming and shouting for dear life? Which one would give you the creepy crawlies? Which one could you absolutely not stand? This is where things get weird. Because you see, while I have perfectly no problem holding a snake or even two in my hands, I go absolutely nuts when I see or even hear about the faint possibility of a rat being present within a thirty mile radius around me. During my undergrad years, I co-founded a herpetology conservation and education program in my university and snakes do not faze me out one bit. Rats on the other hand are a whole different creature. They creep me out endlessly. I cannot stand the sight of one. Not even in a photo. They give me the heebie-jeebies. It would bring me endless joy if every single last one of them got exterminated and were wiped out from the surface of earth.
My taste buds. They're quite possibly the weirdest thing about me. My favorite vegetable of all is karela. I once got one of my American friends to try it by enticing her with "It's delicious". A disgusted face, two glasses of water and three candies later, she still hasn’t forgiven me for it. And the last time I checked, I am still the reigning queen of unusual, disgusting and weird food combos. Ever tried peanut butter-banana-and honey sandwich? Or a bhel puri sandwich? Go on try it, it's delicious. You can thank me later.
I absolutely hate makeup. Detest it is more like it. I hardly ever use it, and on the rare instances when I do use it, I walk around all day painfully uncomfortable like my body just got taken over by an alien whom I barely recognize in the mirror. In fact, I did not even know how to use makeup until I was midway through my twenties. I learnt how to apply foundation by video-googling it because I was too embarrassed to tell my friends that I didn’t know anything about it. Girly conversations on makeup still annoy the daylights out of me even today. Deep down inside I attribute it all to having more guy friends than girl friends when I was growing up. Which had an upside and a downside. There, that's a whole lot of weird contained in that paragraph right there.
I can be totally OCD about some things. Obsessive-compulsive to the very last bone in my body. Like setting the alarm at night to wake up early in the morning. I just don’t trust myself to wake up without an alarm. So I set it. And then check it before I go to bed. And then settle into bed and check the alarm again to make sure I set it for the right time. And then place it on the side table. And read a book. And turn a page. And check the alarm again to make sure it's on. Put some lotion on my hands. And check the alarm again. And then adjust my pillows. And check it again one last time before I turn off the lights and go to bed. And of course, I recheck it if I get up in the middle of the night to pee.
My right leg is jinxed. Over my lifetime, I have twisted my right ankle three times. Fractured my right leg in two places all at once. Bruised the same leg black and blue endless times when I was learning to play hockey in school. And even have a scar to show from the time I fell off my bike and jammed a spoke from the bike into the cut in my ankle. Klutzy things happen when I am around.
I once ate mosquito repellant thinking it was toothpaste. I blame it entirely on the packaging of the tubes. Both tubes had the same white background with red writing on it. Except that I didn’t read the writing and proceeded on to eat the repellant. After which it took endless amount of eating actual toothpaste to get rid of the taste of repellant. After which I was disgusted by the taste of both toothpaste and repellant and stopped eating both.
I have horrible observational skills. In the words of Joe, I would be the worst person to be present as the only person present at a crime scene when it happened. Because I wouldn’t remember the color of the murderer's hair or eyes or clothes or anything particular about him or her or whether it was even a him or a her. I once told a work colleague how her new hairstyle really made the color of her eyes stand out only to get a dirty look and be told, "I haven’t changed my hairstyle. I switched over from wearing glasses to wearing contact lens" I stunk at my hematology course because I would look at a cell under the microscope, look up and get asked how many nuclei I saw within it, and say "Erm. Hang on, I need to look again."
I cannot for the life of me parallel park. I just cant do it. No matter how many times you teach me to do it. Which brings to light the other bit of weirdness I possess. I have the patience of a flea when it comes to learning something I don’t care for. I do not like to learn to crawl and then walk and then run. I just want to get to the running part and get the heck over with learning how to do it. Already. And thus, I cannot parallel park. Because I don’t have the patience to figure out how. How I passed my driving exam to get a license without knowing how to parallel park is a complete mystery to me. On the day of my exam, I was able to miraculously parallel park for the first time in my life and the phenomenon has never repeated itself since.

Erm. Is anyone still reading this crap? I think I may have put a little too much weirdness out there and lost my audience. See, now this is exactly why I don’t do tags. But if I'm going down, I'm taking all of you down with me. So to spread around the embarrassment of being a weirdo, I tag 'A', Trisha, Bindu, Lakshmi, and Dust and Vamsee. Muhahahaha!

Charlie and me

2009-01-11T17:08:00.000-08:00

I had read the book Marley and Me long before it ever got made into a movie. And it immediately became my favorite book despite the fact that the ending made me choke up and cry. Sob is more like it. Which is why I was so hesitant to go watch the movie version of the book. I wanted to see it and yet I didn’t want to see it. I was afraid if the movie was anything like the book I would burst into tears in the movie theater itself. I finally watched the movie this weekend and yes, the movie did make me cry but it also inspired me enough to pen down bits and pieces of my journey with my own dog.

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CHARLIE AND ME

Charlie at eight weeks old

Charlie today (three years old)

I didn’t really need another dog. I already had a dog. And yet I couldn’t just drive by the house advertising German shepherd puppies without taking one small look. Just one look, I promised. I had absolutely no intention of getting another dog. I was only going to look. How much can a look hurt, really?

I had barely stepped out of my car when I saw a small patch of brown fur wiggling free out of the small fenced in backyard. Seven other puppies yapped around him, cheering him on as he burst through the small opening, dove right past me into the blueberry bushes along the side of the garden. “Oscar!” I heard a voice shout out, “Come back here, right now! Oscaaar! You’ll get yourself run over, you silly puppy!” Excited over his new found freedom, he joyfully sniffed through the bushes, running around in large dizzy circles all around the garden, before finally coming to a stop right at my feet. Panting heavily, he looked up at me with his big brown puppy eyes, a blueberry colored tongue sticking out on one side of his mouth, inspecting me with a cheeky grin on his face.

Before I knew it, I had laid out a blanket on the car seat next to me and he was coming home. “Oscar, huh?” I said to him as I picked out burs and dry leaves from his blueberry infested coat. “What a solemn, grown up name for a dog as goofy as you. You don’t look like an Oscar to me. You need a more goofy name. Like…maybe…hmm…Charlie?” “Charlie?” He perked up his ears and cocked his head to one side and looked up at me. And Charlie it was.

A little girl came up to me one day, not too long after I had brought him home and asked me where Ears was. “Excuse me?” I said. “Ears. You know, your puppy with the big ears. That’s what all the other kids call him.” For the longest time thereafter, everyone in the neighborhood called him “Ears”. Strutting down the street with his happy go lucky personality, and his big, oversized ears, he soon became everyone’s favorite puppy.

I remember the first time he saw snowfall and puzzled over the soft white flakes that fell on his face. He looked up to the sky with the most perplexed look on his face. “It’s snowing, Charlie!” I shouted out happily to him, rolling up a snowball and throwing it at him. “Woof!” he barked as he caught the snowball midair and bit into it, baffled over where the ball had disappeared. A few more barks later, he was in love. He jumped in and out of the white blanket that covered the ground, burrowing his nose into the snow, biting at it, coming up with a brain freeze, and trying to figure out where it all came from and where it all disappeared to. Winter is still his favorite season of the year.

And then there was the day I came home to an exceptionally quiet Charlie. Gone was the rambunctious little dog who would greet my arrival with sloppy kisses and instead he just lay there, tired and exhausted, barely able to lift up his head. “Want to go to the park, Charlie?” – his favorite sentence of all time and nothing. I brought out his red ball and tossed it in the air. And still nothing. No reaction from him whatsoever. He just lay there on the carpet, not even wanting to eat or drink. I frantically called up one vet office after another, only to find them all closed for the day. I would just have to observe him through the night and get him to an animal hospital first thing in the morning. As I sat down on the floor next to him, he placed his head into my lap and let out a big sigh. I stroked his head and sang softly to him and hoped and prayed that he would be okay. The next day, the vet declared he had panosteitis – a self limiting, fairly common, not-so-serious disease, equivalent to growing pains in dogs. A few days later, Charlie had recovered completely but to this day when Charlie is afraid or ill, he nudges into my armpit, places his head on my lap and doesn’t settle down until I sing to him.

He is my sunshine on cloudy, gloomy days. No matter how miserable a day I may have had, he makes me laugh in his own silly, goofy way. Whether it’s the day he was chasing a ball and ran into some ice and went skating on all four paws or the splashing around in the lake that he calls swimming, it’s hard not to laugh when you’re around clumsy Charlie.

And then there are those days when I just need to talk to someone and he listens. There was the day right before I quit my PhD when I wondered where I was going in my life and called home and cried over the phone in sheer frustration. After I placed down the phone, I was consumed with the enormity of what I was about to do, and a flood of mixed emotions swept over me, and as I sat down on the couch, tears suddenly flowed down my cheeks. And there was Charlie, sitting by my side, licking away the tears as they poured down my face. Or the day when I had a terrible fight with Joe and just lay in bed too angry and upset to talk to anyone. There he lay, right by my side, nuzzled next to me as I hugged him and cried.

When I first got a dog, everyone warned me about how destructive dogs can be. They told me about how they’ll chew up slippers and shoes and furniture alike. And how noisy and yappy they will be. About how they’ll break things. And how they’ll pee and poop all over the place. But Charlie did none of that. He turned out to be an incredibly obedient dog and amazingly easy to train. What no one ever warned me about however was how he would trample all over my soul and leave his indelible paw prints scattered across my heart.

Life wouldn’t be life without Charlie in it. He shows me how to laugh out loud. And he shows me just how unbelievably irrelevant a lot of my fears and anxieties are in the bigger, broader doggy context of life. How my job is just a job and does not take precedence over playing in the park. How it is so much better to sleep and dream of chasing squirrels than it is to lie awake in bed worrying over tomorrow. How it is so important to just be comfortable in your own skin and accept yourself as you are – big, silly, clumsy goofball and all. How nothing in life is quite as important as a walk around the neighborhood every evening. And how sloppy kisses from a dog who loves you just for you can make everything seem better.

From the first day since he stepped into my life till now, it has been quite the journey for Charlie and me. Over the years, I’ve changed careers, moved apartments, moved cities, almost had to return home, gotten a new job, gone through the happiest moments of my life to depressing, abysmal moments when nothing seemed to go right, and through it all the one thing that has remained constant is his presence by my side. No matter how circumstances may have changed the chaotic background of my life, through it all there has always been Charlie and me.

There are dogs. And there are dogs that leave a paw print on your heart forever. And then there is Charlie.

To see more photos of Charlie, click here.

The jitters

2009-01-04T18:43:00.000-08:00

I have the jitters. The new job jitters.

I'm starting a new job tomorrow. My first real job here in the United States. My first job here that isn't work disguised as "gaining experience" in the form of internships or clinical rotations or research assistantships. My first real job that brings with it the coveted work visa and a salary finally higher than the measly wages paid to overworked, underpaid grad students.

It's the start of a new journey. And I'm nervous and anxious and panicky and sweaty. And yet in so many ways I'm excited too. Excited to begin it all. I am finally ready to put all the worries and anxieties and uncertainities over the what-could-have-beens, and what-should-have-beens of the past year behind me and just finally take a step forward and embrace the new year of possibilities that lies ahead of me.

I have no idea what to expect out of this. No idea what lies ahead in store for me. No idea where this journey will take me. And the not knowing scares me a little. I wonder if I'll like them. Whether they'll like me. I wonder if this will turn out to be the smartest decision I've made. Or whether I'll look back at it and kick myself in the butt. I wonder if this will bring me fulfillment. Or whether I'll be miserable at it day after day.

And yet regardless of where it takes me, I'm finally ready to embark on the journey. And I embrace it all with endless, eternal hope. Hope that I can be good at what I do. Hope that I enjoy it enough to want to come back to work on it everyday. Hope that it provides me with a sense of satisfaction. Hope that I can form new lasting friendships. Hope that it opens up new career directions for me. And hope that the journey, despite all the nervous jitters, is pleasant after all.

~vagabond~ © 2009
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Yes. I am perfectly aware that I am rambling. Nervousness makes me incoherent. But I do want to document these thoughts and this moment for myself. So forgive me if this post doesn't sound very coherent to you.

UPDATE:
Thanks for all your good wishes. I do appreciate them all. I just thought I'd clarify...this isnt technically my first job. I have worked ever since I was eighteen years old and have held many different jobs over the years. My first job was in an different career field...you can read about about my very first job here. After a horrible experience that left me hating my previous career, I switched career paths and this is my first new job in my new career. It is my first true job in the sense of the work visa, but I have worked informally for NGOs here in the US before. I know these jitters are normal, but I always feel them the first day of a new job nonetheless. It takes me a couple of days into my new job to get them out of my system. LOL.

Trapped

2008-12-18T17:03:00.000-08:00

You know that annoying feeling you get when you can’t string together your words into a sentence that makes sense? I've been feeling a lot of that lately. The inability to communicate. The inability to write. The inability to make coherent sense. And it is frustrating. I sit here in absolute silence, my cursor on the blank white screen blinking at me and I blinking back at it. We have nothing to say to each other, and it is beyond annoying. For as long as I can remember, I have relied on writing to let loose the endless stream of thoughts, feelings and emotions that remain buried within me and with this dry spell I am going through right now, I feel...what's the word...trapped.

Just then I hear a loud moan escape from the floor beneath me. It sounds deep and rumbling, almost like a grown man trying to stifle a scream. The first time I heard it, I almost jumped out of my skin. I then proceeded to arm myself with the heaviest Bible I could lay my hands on just in case I needed to shove it into the face of the ghost who liked to moan. After walking all around the apartment armed with an assortment of religious paraphernalia, both a cross and an om pendant swinging on the necklace around my neck, looking like the high priestess of some ancient religious ceremony, I finally established that the moans were actually coming from the apartment beneath mine. I let out a big sigh, relieved I didn’t have to share living quarters with a ghost, and concluded that my new neighbors were in fact weirdoes.

Over the next few weeks, the moaning got much more intense and a lot louder. I even heard doors slamming and loud banging on the walls. I woke up one morning to the sound of a piano being pounded upon. Noisy keys irately played, without a tune. As the encore presentation with the grand finale of shouts and bangs came to an end, I stormed out of bed. Enough was enough. I decided I had heard enough of my noisy neighbors and picked up the phone and dialed the apartment manager to let loose a barrage of complaints against my neighbors. “We’ll see what we can do,” she reassured me. Days turned to weeks and nothing ever happened. The banging and the shouting and the pounding and the slamming continued as it always had, and instead I purchased a barricade of pillows to bury my head under to drown out the sounds at night.

Then one day the unexpected happened. As I stood at the door to my apartment, fiddling around in my purse for my keys, I heard the door slam beneath me, and then footsteps. My neighbors were on their way out while I was on my way in. This was my opportunity! I could finally see them face to face and tell them what an awful nuisance they were being. With a long speech prepared in my head, I rushed down the stairway just in time to see a short, fat, bald man waddle out of the apartment downstairs. He was even shorter than I was and with small arms and small legs, his odd shaped head looked almost too big for the rest of his short stature. He rushed up to me in his awkward penguin walk and stopped abruptly right in front of me, peering at me from beneath his small slanting eyes. “Who are you?” he finally snapped at me.

“I…I…I live in the apartment above” I mumbled, caught a little off guard by his demeanor. “How old are you?!” he continued the interrogation in the same rushed breath.“Huh?...Um...29” I replied. “What’s your name?” he rushed on without pausing for me to reply. “You have two dogs”. A statement more than a question, lifting up two stubby fingers on his small hand. “TWENTY NINE. TWENTY nine. Twenty nine.” he repeated to himself and wagged his head and hypnotically pondered over the numbers. I stared at him not knowing what to say.

“Bobby!! Bobby! Come back here!” all of a sudden I heard a woman say. A woman in her fifties with graying hair and a gentle, kind face rushed up to us. She looked at me apologetically, trying to gauge the situation, ready to explain or apologize, whichever was in order. “It’s okay” I said. I smiled at her and walked back up the stairs to my apartment as she grabbed him by the arm and led him back to his apartment. I now knew. I finally understood. And subsequent conversations with his caretaker by the stairway confirmed what I already knew. My new neighbor had Down’s syndrome.

Down’s syndrome is a genetic disorder, a chromosomal defect that results in varying degrees of physical and mental abnormalities. My neighbor, a grown man of 35 years suffered some mental retardation as a result of the disorder. While he was perfectly capable of walking, talking, feeding and dressing himself, he needed constant supervision in order for the state to allow him to live in an apartment of his own. The kind old lady in the stairway and a few other caretakers rotated on a schedule to take care of him. Bobby, I have learnt, loves walks by the river, obsessing over numbers, finding out people’s birthdates, and playing on the piano. He is absolutely terrified of dogs and no amount of reassurances from any of the caretakers will convince him otherwise. He loves to sing in the shower and I often hear him shouting loudly, out of tune in the bathroom. And on days when he is frustrated and unable to communicate, he moans and shouts and bangs on walls and slams doors.

Sitting by my laptop, unable to string a sentence together, I hear the familiar moans from the apartment beneath me, and I feel sorry for Bobby. In my trivial frustration over being unable to compose a sentence, I realize his much deeper agony over the inability to communicate. Hidden amidst every moan and every shout I hear a painful plea, a desperate need to be understood. He bangs and pounds against the walls, he slams doors, setting loose the emotions trapped within him, the only way he knows how. And even on a day when I can’t seem to find the right words to express my thoughts, Bobby shows me that I’m grateful to be able to write them down at all.

~vagabond~ © 2008

My life through my lens

2008-12-05T15:21:00.000-08:00

A couple of months ago, I started out on a particularly depressive phase of my life, marked with enough instability and uncertainty to drive anyone crazy. It is inconsequential what happened to me or why, because ultimately it’s always something or the other in everyone’s life. Life has a certain overbearing way of introducing big ripples into the most tranquil of lives. It doesn’t matter what the causes of your own personal woes may be, but there is always that one moment in everyone’s lifetime when life just seems unbearable suffocating. And I had arrived at mine.

It was somewhere in the midst of all that chaos that I got interested in photography. In the past, I had always tagged a camera along with me when I traveled but now, in the midst of the turmoil I was going through, I turned to photography as a daily distraction. I needed something to take my mind off what was going on within me, and I took up photography as a hobby. I started tinkering around more with my camera, taking it with me everywhere I went, carrying it with me every day, and capturing the most mundane things on its lens. One day, as I walked my dogs in the evening, I captured a family of ducks that had waddled along our way. Another day, driving along my way, I stumbled upon an interesting looking church I had never noticed before and photographed that. A bright red maple leaf here, a stark white birch tree there. Fall leaves on the withered summer grass, winter snow on the drenched fall leaves. I photographed it all.

And slowly, almost unnoticeably a transformation started to take place. It is difficult to hate life in the same breath in which you remark at its beauty. The more I searched my world for the perfect shot of the day, the more beautiful the world around me became. In my quest for the best photo, I started noticing little things I hadn’t noticed before – how the fuzzy blossom of the dandelion has the tiniest little hair, how a duck’s tail has just the perfect curl, how bright red winter berries can brighten up the gloomiest of days. The mundane, ordinary things around me that I’d taken for granted suddenly radiated with a hidden beauty. And I slowed down. I paused to finally admire life.

Photography to me is almost meditative. In that one instance in which you shut off the rest of the world to capture the one image on your viewfinder, you catch a vision of life at its finest. In that one moment in which I zoom out the world and focus in on the delicate cap of snow sitting on a wildflower’s head, everything else about life seems trivial and inconsequential, and all the beauty of the world seems contained within that one glimpse of life that I peer at through my lens. Life in that moment is beautiful, no matter what else. After months of passing life by, I finally started to pay attention. And instead of agonizing over a future out of my hands, I started to live life in the now. Somewhere in the turmoil of my heart, photography brought me the calm peace that follows a good cry.

As I flip through the pages of the photo album of my life over the past few months, I don’t see pages filled with the fears, anxieties and insecurities that comprised my days. Instead, I see the fun filled moments that made me laugh on an otherwise gloomy day. Or how tranquil the day was when my heart was aching. Or how much there was to be thankful for even when I felt utterly ungrateful. They capture just how beautiful life was even on the days when I thought my life was an abysmal mess. And they fill me with hope. They heal my broken heart.

Of all the life lessons that photography has taught me, perhaps the most important is this – no matter how ugly and gray life may seem on the gloomiest of days, when you crop out its ugliness, zoom in and capture it in just the right frame, life is always beautiful. No matter what else.

~vagabond~ © 2008.

Pay it forward…the butterfly award

2008-11-25T08:46:00.001-08:00

Years ago, I watched this beautiful movie Pay it Forward that inspired me endlessly as I am sure it inspired everyone else who has ever watched it. It’s the kind of movie that makes you want to go out and change the world. Can one good deed change the world? Yes, it can…if you pay the deed forward. The movie revolves around the obligation to pay the world back with three good deeds when you receive the favor of one good deed. Give back to the world three times the goodness that you receive from it. When someone does something nice for you, don’t just pay the person back for their good deed, find three other people out there in the world that need you and pass the good deed forward.

I was reading through the comments on one of my blogs yesterday when I noticed a really nice thing that someone had done for me. Thank you, Alok for giving your butterfly award to my Lens of a vagabond blog. It totally made my day. And while I know the below don’t really need me to brighten up their day, I think they truly deserve the niceness of the award and I’m simply paying it forward:

1. Prashant Bhardwaj (Om):
He is an extremely talented photographer. If you’re ever looking for photos to tug at your heart, check out his blog. I find the photos on his blog extremely inspiring and truly enjoy looking at the unique perspective of the world through his view finder.

2. Alok (Hello World):
Yes. Yes. I know he already got awarded. But since I’m picking blogs I truly enjoy looking at, I’ll be honest and pick this one again anyway. I like how his blog always has variety. No new post is like the one before. Journeys taken, conversations had, photos clicked, movies watched, all are fair game on this blog.

3. Diana (Expressions of Life):
She has such an interesting and unique way of writing. She could be talking about the most mundane, every day event of our lives, but her unique perspective, her different way of looking at the event makes the post so very interesting to read.

4. Cuckoo (Cuckoo’s Cosmos):
She doesn’t just own a blog, she owns an entire universe of blogs. Want a hub of activity? Go over to Cuckoo’s Cosmos. It’s always bustling with people, both new and old, with opinions on everything and anything. With three separate blogs on musings, travel and photography, you wont run out of things to read and ogle over.

5. Dust Unsettled:
When I first started my blogs and thought I was simply talking to myself, the first ever comment on my blogs came from him. Look at the first comment on my first post on Lens of a vagabond and you’ll notice it’s from him. He was always so encouraging. It saddens me to see that he may perhaps have left the blog world entirely, and it’s a pity because he is an amazingly good writer. Some of the best posts I have ever read came from his blog. I hope someday he returns to writing again because he does it really well.

I was asked to pick five people to pass the award to. If I could pick more, I'd have picked every single last one of the blogs on my blog roll. They're all very interesting in their own unique way. I wouldn't have you on my list otherwise now would I?

~vagabond~ © 2008

Wishing and hoping

2008-11-13T16:58:00.000-08:00

Have you ever desperately pleaded with life to make things go your way? You begged, bargained and pleaded that things would turn out the way you wanted them to. Wished and hoped. And then one day, boom! suddenly all that you’ve been asking for gets granted. Exactly how you asked for it. Except that now you realize that you just don’t want it anymore and that life was perfect just as things were before.

I guess I just don’t know what to wish for right now.

~vagabond~ © 2008

The Chaos of Life

2008-11-09T15:04:00.000-08:00

Do things happen for a reason or are they just random occurences strung out of sequence on the string of life? Does life just happen to us or do we actively choose the circumstances we land ourselves in? Am I just a natural born klutz at walking right into disaster or has disaster been stalking me all along?

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about life and the series of events that have landed me to where I am right now (in an uncomfortable tight spot) and wondering how I got there in the first place and if I could have avoided these circumstances in any way. And the answer is both yes and no. (Erm. Blame it on the dual Gemini tendencies in me. One twin says yes. And the other then has to step in and say no.)

Yes, I could have made different decisions at different stages of my life. Gone a different direction. Followed a different path. But I wonder if in some parallel universe, I would have still landed up here right in the same spot, regardless of which direction I wandered. Because all those different decisions, all those different actions would still have been guided by the same spirit of who I am deep down inside.

A while back I read a book on Chaos theory and I learnt of the butterfly effect. The butterfly effect refers to the idea that the smallest change in one corner of the world, such as the flapping of a butterfly's wings can lead to the most profound changes in another corner of the world. The notion that if we were to go back in time and change the smallest bit of anything, things just wouldnt be the same anymore. The one small change would escalate into a series of larger changes of much bigger impact and before we know it, life would move along in an entirely different trajectory, and we'd find ourselves at an entirely different end point.

And I think about it and wonder if that's truly how my life operates. Would things really be any different for me right now had I made different decisions, walked alternative paths? In as much as I'd like to believe otherwise, somehow I dont think circumstances would change a whole lot. Because all those different decisions would still have been made by the same soul. A different situation, a different scenario and I'd have still wanted what I want out of life. Perhaps I'd end up making a whole series of different decisions that would lead me inadverently along a path that is just parallel to the one I am on today. And despite walking a parallel path in some parallel world, somehow I believe that the spirit of who I am would have called upon me to still be present under different circumstances at the same junction in life. Perhaps this particular situation, this tight uncomfortable spot that I am in right now wouldnt have been a part of my life, but then there would be other situations just like this one, and somehow despite meandering along a different path, I'd someday still find myself back at the same end point.

Perhaps I just want to believe that I can change the course of my life, and perhaps to a smaller extent I really can. But truth is that even if I had the capacity to make that choice, to delete some events and edit others, the true calling of my soul would still find a way to lead me back where I'm supposed to despite a different trajectory.

~vagabond~ © 2008

Farewell

2008-11-08T13:11:00.000-08:00

Dear Nagging thoughts in my head, Silly irrationalities, Anxieties over what-will-be, and all other assortment of bullying thoughts,

Despite the enormous amount of space you occupy in my head, you are a tiny speck in the context of my universe. And while it has been cozy obsessing over you, I simply cannot allow you to ruin my life anymore. So I'm looking you in the eye and asking you to leave.

Goodbye. And goodriddance.

Yours truly,
~vagabond~

PS. I know you'll try to stay in touch, but really, you dont have to.

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~vagabond~ © 2008

Eye to eye

2008-10-28T08:53:00.000-07:00

You dwell in the past.
I live in the present.
The past you talk about is irrelevant to me.
This present I live in means nothing to you.
You expect me to go back in time and undo things already done.
I expect you to move forward and accept them as they are right now.
And unless time collides,
we'll just never see eye to eye.

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~vagabond~ © 2008

My happy place

2008-09-26T10:49:00.000-07:00

I want to move to New Mexico. Well, actually I'd like to move to Mexico. But since that isnt even a realistic option right now, for now New Mexico will do. Ever since I visited it a year ago, and then again this year, the place keeps calling me back. It's this strong urge to want to live there, this strong feeling of belonging, almost as if "that desire originated in the soul of the universe". You'd have to have read the Alchemist to get that last part (if you havent read this book, forget this blog, rush over to the nearest bookstore right now and start reading it NOW! I am not exaggerating when I say your life will never be the same again).

You know how when things get really, really stressful, your mind takes off and finds comfort in its happy place? Well, my happy place is the memory of this one morning in New Mexico last year when we were driving through the Jemez Mountains - just Joe and I. We had spent the night camping literally in the middle of thick forest because we got lost. We had tried to take a short cut through the mountains and lost the road we were supposed to be on. Sounds a little filmy, doesnt it? But no, there was no dancing around the trees bursting into a Bollywood song. And it really did happen that way. And it was getting dark and if you've ever driven through the Jemez Mountains, you'll know that the smart thing to do is just stop, sleep and wait for the morning to see your way. Because the narrow road winds up and down around the mountain and it's easy to drive off the cliff in the dark. So we camped in the middle of a ponderosa pine forest and waited for morning.

My memory is of that early hour of the morning when we had set off again to drive. After talking to some construction workers we encountered along the way, we realized that the road we were meant to take was under construction and we would have to make do with a dirt road that led out of the mountains. And so there we were, driving through the heart of the mountain, on a bumpy dirt road, building up a dust storm behind us as we drove on. The only car along the road for miles on. Literally in the middle of nowhere. The sun's rays filtering in through the thick canopy, lighting up the path ahead of us. And it was driving along that forgotten dirt road to nowhere, that for the first time in months, I felt unburdened and carefree. The stress of all I had gone through in the past months seemed trivial, and nothing in the universe felt as important as being there, right there in that moment, savoring what life had brought along my way. What lay ahead of me was not important, and what I had been through was temporarily forgotten. I was content with the tranquility of that moment in itself, just simply driving along that endless road, warming up under the early morning sun rays, looking out of the window. Life was simple, right then.

The trees soon cleared up and we got a glimpse of the luscious green valley, dotted occasionally with small spanish style houses or pueblos as they are called, that are the trademark of New Mexico. Clay red houses with little bancos built into them. Hand painted tiles sometimes plastered into the walls. Bright red chile ristras dangling from the roof. A horse or two grazing free in the backyard of the valley.

It was at that moment that my soul decided this is where I belonged. I had found my spirituality. It wasn't buried in some church or temple. It was right here, in this little corner of the world where I felt happiest and lightest at heart.

~vagabond~ © 2008

Coach bags, Manolo Blahnik shoes and New York City

2008-09-25T08:20:00.000-07:00

Warning: A large portion of this post is going to be mindless rambling, but I need to vent and I rarely need an audience for that. And if you love Coach bags, or Manolo Blahnik shoes or New York City, and you're still reading this, my apologies.
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Recently I had the misfortune of encountering a relative I simply just dont like. We're as different as chalk and cheese, me and her. The trouble is, while I make my dislike for her obvious and she knows it and the whole world knows it, she insists on playing mind games instead. Pretending we get along. Pretending we're similar after all. To her own convenience. Even though we're not. Not in the slightest bit. Dont you hate it when people do that? Pretend to be diplomatic and polite and hypocritically, sugary sweet when all you want from them is to be real? The only good that comes out of this extremely disastrous relationship is the fact that she makes me appreciate my own life a little more every time I encounter hers. I know, I know, I sound a little bitchy but she does have that effect on me.

So in a sickeningly saccharine display of her fake affections toward me, Ms. Snobby-two-shoes gifted me a sickeningly pink 'Coach' bag. For anyone who hasn't been living under a rock for the past decade, a 'Coach' bag, right along with Manolo Blahnik shoes, represents the epitome of having made it to Carrie Bradshaw status in Sex and the City. Think snotty looking purses and shoes that cost hundreds of dollars. And she is a Carrie Bradshaw of sorts. Because the concept of success in her head is analogous to how many Coach bags you own, and whether the clothes in your wardrobe are true designer wear, and whether or not you live in New York City, the mecca of all Carrie Bradshaw wanna-bes.

I dont own a Coach bag. I dont care for designer clothes. And I dont want to live in New York City. Mighty unsuccessful, huh? And I'm okay with it.

Because what I do want is a life full of experiences. In the end, stuff is just stuff. It sits in your wardrobe, you staring at it, it staring back at you. And while it tries really hard to dress you and give you an image, in the end it doesnt have any say in who you are. But the experiences you live, those are what truly define you. I want to live my life to the fullest. Travel new places. Experience new experiences. Be enveloped in new cultures. Have no regrets over what I didn't get to do. And when I'm 90, I know I will remember the day I went white water rafting down the Colorado River or went camel riding in the Rajasthan. What I will not remember is the hideous color of the Coach bag I owned in 2008.

PS. Any bets on how long it will take before I sell the Coach bag on ebay?

PSS. I do not hate New York City. I do want to see New York City, but only for its architectural beauty, its cultural diversity. Not for a shopping extravaganza. And not to live in it.

Epiphany

2008-09-12T08:29:00.000-07:00

There's a simple solution to my complex problems. Just let go.

For a while now, I've been dissecting my misfortunes, placing them under a microscope and picking at them with dissecting needles, teasing them apart, trying to figure out where I went wrong, what I did wrong, how I could possibly have avoided the situation I am in, and on and on. No I'm not a masochist. But my analytical little head needs a reason. The fact that shit happens is just not a good enough answer for it. The voices in my head demand to know why the shit happened in the first place. It's what years of being a scientist does to you.

So I tried assigning blame. Just so that I would have a reason. Just to make the voices in my head shut up. I blamed myself. I blamed people I love. I blamed random strangers that had nothing to do with my problems in the first place. I blamed God. And the universe in general for conspiring against me and making me so miserable. And the voices in my head finally shut up. Because I'd given them the good, solid, analytical reasons they needed. But I was still miserable and unhappy inside.

So I figured miserable and unhappy was the way things were meant to be. And I moped in it. I whined. I grumbled. And I blogged about it. And when things went from bad to worse, I allowed for them to be. Because that was how things were meant to be. I played the destiny card. Things were the way they were because that's how they were meant to be. Unhappy is how I was meant to be. I was going through a bad phase, I reasoned. And that gave me permission to be miserable, mopey and grumpy.

So mopey, grumpy and I went to the park with the dogs yesterday. And I was playing tug-on-a-rope with Charlie, my german shepherd, when the great big epiphany hit me. Okay, so bear with me here. I know it's not like I discovered a new law in physics, but still when it hit me, it seemed pretty huge. And for all you so-wise-and-philosophical ones, if you've known this all along, play along with me here, this is MY moment under the sun.

It suddenly struck me how this tug-on-a-rope game that I was playing with Charlie was so similar to what life and me had been playing all along. I pull in one direction, and life pulls harder in the opposite direction. I want it to go one way. It wants me to go completely in the opposite direction. We both hold our ground and pull the rope, struggling with all our might. In the end going nowhere. I get frustrated and angry and tug harder on the rope, and then suddenly it dawns on me. That all I have to do to make this sick, frustrating game end is to let go.

Perhaps the reason it took so long for this epiphany to dawn on me is the fact that I am such a control freak. Letting go simply wasnt an option I had considered. Because letting go meant letting someone else or something else take charge. And that scares the daylights out of me. I mean, I cant even trust someone else to drop the mail in the post office for me, because they wont do it right, and I'm talking letting go. This is huge.

But I'm finally ready to do it. I'm ready to stop being such a control freak and just let go and let things be the way they are. Sure, it'll drive me crazy when things dont go my way. But I'm not going to tug and pull and fret over them anymore. I'm going to go with the flow. And not struggle so much to make things go my way. Who knows, perhaps I'll even like the new direction that life pulls me in. And if I dont, it's not the end of the world. I'll just pick myself up and walk away. Life and I arent going to tug-on-a-rope anymore. Because I simply let go. And I'm ready to move on.

So here's to letting go. Letting go of situations I cant avoid, people I cant change, things that are clearly beyond my control. I refuse to let them bother me. And turns out, shit happens is now a good enough answer for me.

~vagabond~ © 2008

Frustrations

2008-08-30T11:42:00.000-07:00

Lately I think I've lost the will to fight. Things just seem to be spinning out of control. Life is hellbent on proving to me just who's in charge. It shuts doors, I open windows. It shuts windows, I bang really hard on the walls and open up a hole. It seals up the hole and I'm just about ready blast the whole damn place up and for once make life happen on my terms. And yet, I cant remember the last time that that happened.

I am tired of struggling so hard. Of making big sacrifices to attain every small thing I want. Of paying big prices to earn small rewards. I am tired of constantly falling. And even more tired of picking myself up when I fall. I am tired of saying "it's going to be okay" or pretending it's going to get better, and giving myself false hope. I am tired of pretending to be okay when I call home. Of acting big, bad and brave. When all I really want to do is cry and sob. I'm not strong. And I'm not courageous. And I'm tired of fighting it all the time. I'm perfectly content to lose and let go.

I hate it when my sis calls and asks for advice. And I hate it worse when I have nothing but false hope to give back. I'm tired of being depended on. I am fed up of being looked up to. And I dont want anyone to count on me anymore. I'm not perfect. And I hate it when you all shower your high expectations on me. I'm tired of trying to make things happen. Of trying to change the way things are. Of trying to make miracles happen.

A huge part of me just doesnt care anymore. And yet, I care. Enough to feel embarassed that I feel this way. And I worry. And I wonder what you would say if you knew just how frustrated I feel...if you knew just how tired I really am.

The gypsy

2008-08-14T18:47:00.000-07:00

A free spirited gypsy from a previous life lives on within me. Ever restless, she beckons me toward change. Fiercely rebellious, she craves freedom. The constraints of my caged life torment her. Rambling clouds, soaring eagles, unbridled horses, she shows me, all roam free. The shackles on my feet turn to glistening anklets as she dances through my life watching the red, blue, yellow caravans of life pass us by. Breathing in the now, living in this moment. The sunshine on her face, the breeze through her hair, all awaken her soul and light up her smile. She loves the open road with its endless possibilities. My life with its one destination scares her. I envy her careless freedom, her reckless spirit. If just for one lifetime, I long to be her.

The Meeting

2008-08-09T17:06:00.000-07:00

Would he still recognize me? Will he have changed? Would he be a different person now than he was before? The last time I had seen him I was an awkward teenager. A shy fourteen year old. And I was with my parents. That makes all the difference. Because back then, they did all the talking to him and I just filled in the gaps. Even so, he always knew how to bring me out of my shell. He has always been a vibrant man. Full of energy, the life of the party. When he was in a room, you heard his loud laughter before you even entered the room.

My mum has four brothers, I have four uncles, each with a personality completely different from the other. If you met them separately, you would never guess they are brothers. But for me, my Dineshmama was always the one who knew me best.

Riding along in the car, waiting for the moment of reunion after fifteen years, all sorts of memories swarmed through my head. It's funny how the most inane memories that lay buried and forgotten over the years suddenly resurface when a familiar name comes to mind. I try to tell people about him and the first image that comes to my mind is of him holding a rat by its tail chasing my cousin brother and I around the house with a mischevious glint in his eyes while we kids shrieked loudly, running around the house. I had come across the rat quite by surprise, fumbling around for my slippers under the stairwell in my grandma's house and shouted loudly for mama to come get rid of it. And then there's the day he saw us feeding a goat with vegetable peelings, and dared us to go pull on its tail. Yup. Only my Dineshmama would come up with silly pranks like that. And yet, he was gentle and kind too. Like the day I got scolded by mum and he saw me crying and took me out for a motorbike ride and some icecream. Or the day he sneaked in a stray puppy into the house just because us kids wanted him to. My grandma would be horrified if she knew.

Over the years, we grew distant. My trips to India became fewer and far in between. Other things in my life took precedence. Studies. Career. Friends. Other relationships. In a quiet unassuming way, our worlds grew apart. The relationship that could have been grew silent. Until yesterday. When I got the phone call to come see him in Chicago.

The bizarreness of it all wouldnt leave me. It felt strange and awkward to be meeting the ghost of a man that I remembered only through memories. And here in America of all places, when all I had known of him was in India. It felt disorienting and bizarre. And yet, I was excited to see him after all these years. And nervous.

What would I say to him? What would we talk about? I havent seen him in years. I have nothing to say to him. Ofcourse, we'd talk about my aunt and my cousins. He would ask about my parents and I would ask about my grandma. But what else was there to say? He doesnt know anything about my life here. And I know even less about his. He doesnt know me. And I dont know him.

I saw him before he saw me. Time always stands still in our memories. We expect the people in our memories to stay the same, to dress as they did before, to look as they did years ago. When I saw him look so old and tired and frail, I couldnt believe it was him. The years have been harsh to him. His health hasnt been keeping up well, so I've heard. I wondered if I should even have come. Time changes people. Or rather people change over time. Would he be cold and formal? Would this be awkward? I shouldnt even have come.

He rushed over toward me when he saw me. His eyes welled up with tears as he embraced me. "You look just like your mother", he said. He placed a paternal hand over my head and asked me softly, "Everything okay, beta?". And in that one gentle moment of care and concern, I knew it was going to be okay. I was glad I had come to see him. I knew it wasnt going to be cold and formal. I knew it wouldnt be awkward. Because two alienated strangers had once again become family.

~vagabond~ © 2008

I did it!

2008-06-21T18:02:00.000-07:00

I've wanted to do it for a while...and now I've finally gone ahead and done it.
Check it out!

Are you still here?
...
...
...

What part of Check it out! did you not get?
...
...
...

Why are you still here reading this?
...
...
...

Aren't you the least bit curious about what lies there?
...

Just go ahead, do it.

Click on the link.

Do it now. Geeeez.

Just, DO IT.

Phaah! Fine. Have it your way, then. DONT do it. But then you'll never know what it's all about.

:D
Ok, ok...so it was a cheesy, lame attempt to make you go from here to there.

But admit it, I made you look, didnt I? :P

The Bucket List

2008-06-15T10:41:00.000-07:00

I watched the movie 'The Bucket List' last night and loved it! The movie voiced out what I've always said to myself...that I do not want to wait till I'm old and gray and dying to start doing all the things that I've always wanted to do before I "kick the bucket".

About a year ago, on my birthday I was roaming around a bookstore looking for a good book to buy (my favorite way to spend birthday cash) when I came across a book titled "100 things to do before you die". I fell in love with the concept of the book but ended up not buying it. Not because I didnt think the ideas in the book weren't great things to do, but because I wanted to compile my own list of things that I want to do before I die...unbiased and unprejudiced by the ideas in the book. Maybe it was the book, maybe it was the fact that I was turning a year older, maybe the fact that life just felt like a blur, or maybe just all the coffee gushing through my veins...but I sat down in the bookstore last year on my birthday and compiled an earnest list of all the things I want to do before I die.

Is it a coincidence then that I watched this movie that revolves around the same concept last night, two days before my birthday? Maybe the universe is trying to remind me of my own bucket list...and maybe it's time to bring out the list, scratch off some of what's been done and add some of what needs to be done.

My Bucket List:

(yes, yes, I do realize a lot of it revolves around travelling...but then again, that really IS pretty much all I want to do before I die)

1. Climb a pyramid in Egypt.
2. Drive a dune buggy full speed up and down a sand dune.
3. Eat an authentic plate of tahjin in Morocco.
4. Take a photo in front of the Taj Mahal.
5. Go white water rafting on the Colorado River.
6. ~~Do a road trip through the American Southwest.~~
7. Take my parents and sister on an all paid for surprise trip to a place they have never been to.
8. Sponsor a child's education all the way from elementary school into college.
9. ~~Adopt a dog from an animal shelter.~~
10. Learn to drive a stick shift jeep.
11. Ride a motorbike through the Kyber Pass-Ladakh.
12. See a volcano up close.
13. ~~Learn to canoe.~~
14. ~~Hike down the Grand Canyon.~~
15. ~~Visit an archaeological dig.~~
16. Take a photography class.
17. Eat cajun food in the french quarter of New Orleans.
18. Go scuba diving.
19. Eat a cuban sandwich in Miami.
20. Visit Chinatown in NYC.
21. Trace down my genealogy.
22. Visit a monastery in Tibet.
23. Explore the Sof Omar caves in Ethiopia.
24. Ride on a camel (okay, okay so I already did this one but I was only five years old and cant remember what it felt like).
25. Go backpacking around South America.
26. Roam around the Mayan ruins.
...and the list will go on every year as I age, with new items added on, and some items cancelled off.

Note to self whenever you come back here to read this:
Too much of our life is wasted in waiting for the right moment and right opportunity to start doing the things you love to do. But the truth is there is no right moment to do all those things other than right now. True, some of the things on this list will take years before they get cancelled off. True, there will be compromises, sacrifices, detours involved in the living of life. But with every compromise, sacrifice and detour, remind yourself of where it is that you really are headed and what really is important in life. Try not to get absorbed in the little things that take you off the road. And above all, when the opportunity presents itself to you in your now, dont wait for a better tomorrow to live that moment...grab it with both hands, and live it in your now.

Note to all those lurking about here reading this:
Got a bucket list of your own? Do share. ;)

Lonely

2008-06-08T08:06:00.000-07:00

It was a quiet hike in the early hours of the morning. Not a soul around in sight. Just me, and the quiet trickle of the cold water sloshing around my feet. Every breath I took, every pebble I upturned, every sound I made, echoed and reverberated off the tall, grand canyon walls. I stood lost in the winding tunnels carved by time. Occasional sunshine filtering in. Silence pierced by the squawk of an eagle cruising the winds way up high. It could have been a cold, lonely walk, but we had each other...my loneliness and I.

© ~vagabond~ 2008

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PS. This is my contribution to Cuckoo's photoblog topic of the month.

Photo: Personal collection, taken on a hike down the Narrows, Zion National Park, Utah.

This image may not be reproduced without permission from the owner of this blog...and if you ask nicely, I may just say yes.

In life, go right, then go left, then right some more.

2008-05-24T20:00:00.000-07:00

Why can't we just spend an eternity living life exactly as we want to, doing just what we want?

Shouldnt life really be about truely living and not just surviving? When did it all become about making ends meet and doing what was expected of me? Whatever happened to purposeful living and not being stuck in a rut? When did I lose my idealism and settle down instead for a dose of reality? Whatever happened to waking up with a zest for life and making dreams happen?

I want to.
I ought to.
I should.
I could.
And yet, I cant.

Sometimes no matter how much you want to live life on your own terms, life reels you into a complicated maze that you just cant find your way out of. And the saddest part is the longer you keep wandering through the maze, trying to find your way out, the more life passes you by. Perhaps, I should just stop spending the rest of my life searching for a way out, and instead accept the constraints of the maze I am in, and just start living life now. In my today. Even if it is within the boundaries of this maze.

©~vagabond~2008

Spring cleaning

2008-05-18T16:35:00.000-07:00

Ever have one of those moments when life sucks so much, and everything stinks so bad that you just want to clean up the world and make it a better place to live in? You just want to wake up to a beautiful day, be a much more sunshiney person than you have been in weeks, and go out, reach out and touch someone's soul. You want to do something genuine and real and nice, simply because it makes someone else feel warm and loved and fuzzy inside, and you feel nice because you just made someone's day. It's a nice feeling to know that you in your own little way made a tiny bit of a difference to the world, that you brought a small bit of warmth to an otherwise cold, cold world.

©~vagabond~2008

weather forecast

2008-05-03T20:50:00.000-07:00

Monday: Dark and depressing.
Tuesday: Cloudy and gloomy.
Wednesday: Strong gusts of wind. Tornado watch in effect.
Thursday: Possibility of rain mixed with hell...erm...hail.
Friday: More dark and depressing.
Saturday: No real need to crawl out of bed.
Sunday: Occasional sunshine. Sun will peek out of the clouds today.

Not summer yet. But spring is here. And if it wasnt for the endless winter, I'd never even feel the warmth.

Sometimes, it has to get really bad before it can get really good. The rain will stop. The clouds will separate. Sunshine will fill my heart again. And if it doesnt, I'm packing my bags and moving some place tropical.

© ~vagabond~2008

I miss...

2008-04-19T18:14:00.000-07:00

I miss when things were simpler, when life wasnt quite so complicated, when my heart wasn't quite so bruised up, when unquestionable faith was just enough, when I believed I could conquer the world, when just my belief alone was enough, when skepticism was just a random word in the dictionary, when optimism defined me, when I believed in "this too will pass", when hard work merited a reward, when the world was all fair and square.

I long for casual days of innocent naivity, to regain my trust in a fair and just universe, to trust that things will be okay, to be content in my now, to have implicit faith, to not worry about what lies up ahead, to bandage up my broken heart and let it believe in the goodness of the world again, to regain the courage to dream again, to believe that dreams do come true, and that "this too will pass"...

...I really do want to believe...

© ~vagabond~2008

Crappy, crappy day

2008-03-10T14:18:00.000-07:00

I feel absolutely miserable. :( I want to crawl into my bed, curl up in fetal position and have a good cry.

It was my first day of my clinical rotations today, and talk about everything that could go wrong going wrong. I showed up LATE for my clinicals on the FIRST day. Who does that?! I swore I would never be THAT person. I woke up this morning to a gigantic headache (I think I'm down with a bug and there couldnt be more wrong timing for this), it snowed enough to build a snowman on my car the night before, the roads were icy, I parked in the wrong parking lot, almost had my car towed before I was able to get it to the right parking lot, had a photo ID taken where I look racoon eyed and horrible, and spend my day having an awful case of nervous jitterbugs on my first day to work. And I actually want these guys to hire me after I'm done with the rotations?! I wouldnt hire me right now! I really need a job after this to start paying my student loans and I'm supposed to be doing an outstanding job so that they'll want to hire me or they'll give me these really nice recommendations that can get me a job elsewhere and instead I ended up looking like a ditzy blonde on her first day at work. I am so majorly pissed at myself, so dissapointed with everything, and I need today to just end.

Oh, and did I mention I drove down the wrong way on a one -way?! Yeah. That's a whole time low even for me.

UPDATE: Erm. I feel foolish about my dramatic outburst. They did like me after all. And I did get the job. Despite all that^ :D

Then and Now...

2008-03-03T13:48:00.000-08:00

Last week would be the week I warned people about. The week that I would be walking around the campus dressed like a bag lady, scraggly haired, and bleary eyed. Did you see me? You probably smelt me before you saw me. Yup. That was me, wafting through the crowd in that heady mixture of overdue laundry spritzed with febreeze and some over-ripe fruity perfume. I had this hazy, dazy confused look on my face, and I snapped your head off for trying to make small talk with me. Remember? You started to talk about the weather, and I glared at you like that girl from the Exorcist, flung my short notes in your face and started randomly spitting out medical jargon at you. Yup. That would be me. Last week. Exam week. And not just any set of exams. Those were THE EXAMS. The final FINAL ones. You know, the last ones before I start my clinical rotations in a week. The very last final, final exams.

Aah! That was the good ol’ over-caffeinated last week.

But this is a new week. This would be the week I said I’d sit on the couch in front of the TV and not budge. Randomly flip the channels to watch every senseless show ever aired on TV. Still bleary eyed, and scraggly haired. Except this is for a much better cause. Endless TV that requires no thinking.

*stretching out lazily on the couch and giving a deep sigh of contentment*

My brain feels liberated.

The Package

2008-02-18T13:13:00.000-08:00

My mum has always maintained that I am waay too sentimental. And as much as it kills me to do so, I'll admit it...I'm one of those nutty people you've heard about who cries over commercials. I know, I know, it's a little ridiculous. But then again, there's something just so heartwrenching about that humane society ad about the happy little dog with his big brown eyes peering hopefully out of its tiny cramped cage wanting to be adopted and taken home. Maybe it's just the dog in the commercial. Maybe it's the message of the commercial itself. Maybe it's just me. But either way, if you've watched that commercial and never secretly wanted to bawl like a baby, may I just say, you've got an icy, icy, cold, cruel heart. There, I said it.

So last week, I bawled like a baby. And no, this time it wasnt the commercial on air. It was more legit. I got a package from home.

At first I was really excited. I arrived at my apartment to find this big box waiting for me at the doorstep, and a warm fuzzy feeling came over me as I saw my dad's familiar handwriting all over it. They hadn't even told me they were going to be sending a package.

For the past month or so, my parents have been doing a mini-tour of all sorts across India - visiting my relatives scattered across various different states, and taking their dream vacation to see Delhi, Udaipur, Jaipur and the surrounding locale. I remember when my mum called me right before they were going to start their holiday and cried over the phone (alright, so maybe that sentimental thing is all in the genes). You see, this was going to be the first holiday that my parents and sister were going to take without me. We've toured India countless times over the years, but always together as a family. This would be the first time in all these years that they would be holidaying without me tagging along, and my mum was getting all teary-eyed over it. "It's okay, mumma...just take lots of photos for me, and I'll be sightseeing along with you.", I convinced her. In the end, they had a good time, and over the next few weeks, I kept hearing "oohs" and "aahs" over the phone at every mention of the taj mahal and the red fort and the pink city and the endless destinations they had been visiting. And then I got the package.

I grabbed a pair of scissors and cut through all the tape holding the box together, all the while shaking my head in disbelief over the sheer quantity of cellotape used. I could get an anonymous package from anywhere in the world and I would still recognize my dad's trademark obsession for tape all over the package and know just who it came from. After cutting left, right and center, the box fell apart pouring out bubble wrap and styrofoam peanuts all over my living room. I reached out for the biggest small box within the main box and set about undoing the obsessive tape work holding this smaller box together. I let out a big gasp when the packaging finally came apart and I saw what I was left holding in my hands. It was a small, pure marble, replica of the Taj Mahal...just as intricate and delicate in design as I imagined the real Taj Mahal looked like. It was simply beautiful. I set it gently on the side table in my living room, and continued to sift through the styrofoam peanuts.

Two marble elephants, one with a small piece of the foot chipped off. Not too noticeably messed up, I reasoned. I could easily hide the chipped off foot by placing it at the right angle next to DVD player in the entertainement center. A box of kaju katli from Mumbai. As I opened the box and took a bite of the yummy goodies, I fondly remembered all the holidays I had travelled with my family to India. No matter where else we had been traveling in India up to that point, before flying out of the country, we would always stop by this one particular sweet shop in Andheri that we all insisted sold the best sweets. We'd buy small boxes of halwa, and other sweets to gift out to friends back in Kenya. I insist I do not have a sweet tooth, and I generally hate ghee laden ladoos, but when it comes to kaju katlis, my dormant sweet tooth comes alive. Stuffing my mouth full of the katlis, I continue to search through the package.

A couple of small, beautiful, framed pictures from Jaipur. I fantasize using them to make a picture collage to decorate the walls of my boring apartment. They'll definitely add some life to the place. A pair of silver dangling earrings. My sis sure has good taste. A few satchets of instant pani puri mix. Mmmm. I'm craving some pani puri like right about now. I could use a trip to the indian grocery store, I decide.

Clothes. A bohemian mix of western and indian styles. Tunic style tops with artistic embroidery. And just in the right colors too. No funky bright reds, greens and yellows. My beloved hues of black, white and cream. It's amazing how a single whiff can take you back on a journey through the years. I do my own version of a febreeze ad and raise the clothes to my face and suck in the smells contained in the clothes. The clothes in the package have that distinct new-clothes-from-a-shop-packed-inside-mum's-suitcase smell to them. They remind me of countless holidays spent with my family, wandering down the unknown alleys of an Indian town, admiring the endless gallery of salwar kameez, tops and jeans hanging from impromptu displays created outside the stores. The haggling over prices with shop owners and the excitement of wanting to wear the precious new clothes at the next given opportunity. I sniff at the clothes and a warm feeling of nostalgia sweeps over me.

And then I saw it. The one item in the package that overwhelmed all the emotions I felt inside of me as I opened the package and reduced me to tears. It's a paper bag and as I peek inside it, my throat tightens and I feel all choked up. I empty its contents on the carpet and pick each one up. Inside the bag are brochures and pamphlets and postcards collected from every single place that my family has visited during their trip to India this year. Postcards with views of the Taj Mahal from every possible angel. A booklet advertising the Swami Narayan temple. Leaflets collected in Jaipur. Brochures from the various mosques and temples they had been to. And as I leafed through them, a sob broke loose and I cried.

You see, my dad's most precious legacy to me has been his love for travelling. It's the one passion we share together. Sometimes to a point of annoyance to the rest of our family. My dad jots down bits and pieces of his day in a diary he carries when he travels. I blog when I travel. My dad takes an infinite amount of time positioning us and finding the best angel for a shot on his old kodak camera. I take an infinite number of photos in the hope of the best shot on my canon digital camera. He talks to rickshaw drivers about the most authentic restaurants in the area. I consult yahoo travel on the best places to eat wherever I travel. He collects brochures and pamphlets wherever he goes. I collect brochures and pamphlets wherever I go.

A flashback to all the trips we've taken to India together reminds me of all the brochures, pamphlets and postcards we've collected together over the years. Two of each. One for me to hang on to, and the other for him to hang on to. My mum would often complaint of all the paper "junk" that we were carrying back with us, and why we had to have two of everything. Once we were back home, we'd set aside a day to go through all the brochures and pamphlets and exchange whatever I had that he was missing and so on and on it would go, back and forth with all the postcards and leaflets, laughing and re-living the adventures of the trip through the exchange of the souvenirs.

As I looked at the contents of the brown paper bag, I realized what my dad had done. Even though I was missing on their trip, my dad had still collected twos of every brochure and postcard he had picked up during their travel - and sent me my own copy of the trip. It was his way of taking me along on yet another travel adventure.

Packages from home have a strange way of flooding your heart with a mish mash of mixed emotions. This one made me cry.

LOST AND FOUND

2008-02-02T11:21:00.000-08:00

Every so often I drop by the local animal shelter to look at the dogs they have there. And no, I’m not looking for another dog to adopt. So the fact that I walk by rows and rows of caged dogs without any real intention of taking them home makes me sound a little sadistic. But truth is I’m curious.

A few weeks ago, I was out walking my dogs in the evening when I noticed a dog walking down the other side of the road. I assumed its owner was probably jogging or walking some distance behind it. Then all of a sudden, right before my eyes, the dog dashed smack into the middle of the road, into the way of oncoming traffic. Panic stricken, I searched frantically up and down the street for its owner. It was then that I realized that the dog didn’t have an owner – it was a stray.

Screeech! A car slammed hard on its brakes, then swerved around the dog and continued down the street. A few other cars zoomed by, honking loudly at the dog, without even bothering to check up on it. Perhaps they too, like me, had assumed that its owner was somewhere close by. The poor dog, terrified by the cars zooming past it, scurried back into some bushes along the side of the road.

I hurried back to my apartment, just a short distance down the street and locked my dogs up, all the while stuffing dog treats and a spare nylon leash into my pockets. Sure enough, when I rushed back to the spot where I last saw it, the stray dog was still there, hiding in the bushes, shaking with fear. “It’s okay, sweetie”, I coaxed it softly, stretching out the dog treats in my hands. But to no avail. It was just too terrified and dashed around wildly from one bush to another. Soon a crowd of people had gathered around, asking who the dog belonged to. Everyone took turns, cooing softly at the dog, trying to get it to come toward them but all the noise just scared the dog even more and it dashed once again into the path of oncoming traffic in an attempt to get to a “safe” place. The crowd gasped as a car once more screeched its brakes and swerved around the dog, zooming past it down the street. As the dog stood frozen in the middle of traffic, someone grabbed the leash out of my hands and managed to put it around the dog, leading it back to the safety of curb of the road.

Amidst the confusion that ensued next, I somehow wound up with the dog, while the rest of the crowd dissipated back to their separate ways. I walked back to my apartment with the dog. ‘It’ turned out to be a ‘she’. And she looked up at me with her big, brown, sad eyes, not knowing what to make of me. Was I someone to be trusted or should she put up a struggle? I petted her head and scratched her chin, talking to her, and trying to put her at ease. But she was still skittish and very unsure around me. Back at home, I offered her some dog food and water. She sniffed hungrily at the dog food and gingerly moved toward it, before scooting back in fear toward the door, deciding she still didn’t trust me enough to eat anything I had offered her, no matter how hungry she was.

After tying her leash around the leg of a table and leaving the food and water in front of her just in case she decided to eat, I dug through the yellow pages searching for a local humane society. Several wrong numbers later, I tried the last phone number on my list. A quick glance at the clock showed exactly five in the evening, and I hoped beyond all hopes that they were still open for the evening. Miraculously, someone answered the phone on the first try. I explained the situation, and thankfully, someone promised to come over to pick the dog up within the next half an hour.

The whole time I was on the phone, Lucky (what better name for a dog who had survived this ordeal?) eyed me suspiciously. I hung up the phone, and knelt down on the floor beside her. She was clearly hungry yet too distrustful of me to eat. As I petted her and ran my fingers through her long, matted hair, I wondered how she had ended up on the streets. Did she once belong to someone who had cared for her? Had she just run away from home? Why hadn’t they put a tag on her if they really cared about her? Why wasn’t someone looking for her? Did someone just dump her on the streets because they no longer wanted to care for a dog? Did she know her way back home? Did she in her doggy little head wonder where her owners were? Or what she had done to be left out on the streets? Did she miss them? All sorts of questions ran through my head. And then all of a sudden, she nuzzled close to me, laying her head down on my lap and letting out a big sigh.

Just then my phone rang. It was the humane society – they were just a short distance away and wanted me to meet them with the dog at the entrance to my apartment block. So I gently pushed Lucky’s head out of my lap, got up and clapped my hands, “Come on, Lucky…let’s go…walk?” Clearly, all words she had heard before, because her ears perked up at the prospect of a walk as we clambered out of the door. As we waited out in the streets in the frigid weather, I wondered what would have become of her had I or someone else not seen her on the streets. Would she have made it through the cold, winter night? I realized she still hadn’t eaten anything yet, and I remembered the doggie treats in my pockets. I extended them out to her yet again. This time, she finally took a bite, and then ate ravenously out of my hands. I emptied out all the treats I had on me, and she ate them voraciously – she had clearly been hungry all along. She finished them all and started to lick my hands. She has just begun to trust me, when the humane society minivan arrived.

What ensued next is the worst memory I have of the entire evening. As soon as the man got out of the car and opened up a crate in the back of the minivan, Lucky seemed to know exactly what was going to happen next. As the man coaxed her to come toward him, she dashed behind my legs, yelping and looking up at me with the most betrayed look on her face. I felt like a horrible person inside – a conspirator in some hideous disgusting crime. She was just starting to build trust in me, and I already betrayed her. She put up a struggle, all the while yelping and whining and trying to hide behind my legs. Finally, the man managed to grab hold of her and shoved her into the crate in the minivan. As he slammed the door shut, I heard her barking and whining loudly inside. The last memory I have of her is her face as the door shut behind her – her panic stricken, frightened eyes looked like they just lost all faith in humanity.

Do you know what I hate the most about the entire ordeal? The fact that I don’t know how this story ends. I don’t know if it has a happy ending. I don’t know if Lucky ever found her owner. Or if she has a new home. Or if she’s still in a shelter somewhere waiting to be adopted. Or whether she was euthanized because she just wasn’t "adoptable" and the shelter didn’t have enough space or time to give to her. I hate the not knowing how it ends….and it haunts me.

I peak into rows and rows of caged dogs in the shelter because I’m curious. I wonder if I’ll see Lucky again. I wonder what became of her.

~vagabond~ © 2008

Photo credit: http://www.continentalkennelclub.com/Breeds/Images/CavalierKingCharlesSpaniel.jpg

Disclaimer: I do not by any means claim ownership to the photo used in the blog above. The dog in the photo is not "Lucky". I simply searched around google images and came across this photo of a dog that looks remarkably similar to Lucky.

A trip down memory lane…erm…Devon Avenue

2008-01-05T19:22:00.000-08:00

In the six years that I’ve lived in America, I’ve been to Chicago dozens and dozens of times. Well, when you live in a small Midwestern town surrounded by cornfields galore and Chicago is the largest city two hours away, let’s just say, you visit Chicago every opportunity you can get. But even so, I had never heard of Devon Avenue until a few weeks ago, when I got disgustingly, unbearably homesick.

“Maybe we should just go walk down Devon Avenue”, Joe suggested when I finished my marathon session of watching every hindi movie ever uploaded on youtube and emerged out of my post-diwali, pre-new year’s mithai ka dibba bought from the only Punjabi store in miles around here. “Devon Avenue?” I looked at him perplexed, “Where’s that?”. “In Chicago” he replies ever so casually, like this is a nugget of information he has shared with me a million times before. But I digress. Turns out, Devon Avenue is the heartland of ethnic diversity within Chicago - a single stretch of road that consists of an orthodox-Jewish neighborhood, Russian-American neighborhood, and an Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi neighborhood. Did anybody say “Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi neighborhood?!” Where have I been all this time?!

I knew we were on Devon Avenue even before I had had a chance to read the road sign. I knew when I saw the festive store signs, in everything from Arabic to Gujrati lettering, advertising everything from halal meat to electronics to luggage to fish. I knew when I saw the colorful stores with hot pink sarees, neon yellow salwaars and bright purple skirts. I knew when I saw the familiar throng of people in pyjamas and prayer hats strolling down the street. I knew when I saw the paan shop and little groups of people idling around outside the store on a weekday. I knew right then I was in Mera Hindustan. Ahem. That is, Little India. Or Litte Pakistan. Or Little Bangladesh. Or the closest it comes to home, anyway.

If I ignore the heaps of snow along the sidewalks, and zone out the icy winter wind stinging my cheeks, and focus only on the street ahead of me, bustling with crowds of people going into and coming out of the dozens of Indian/Pakistani stores lining the street, then the street ahead of me looks exactly like it belongs somewhere in Mumbai. It’s hard to believe I’m still in the Midwest.

We’ve arrived on Devon Avenue smack in the middle of lunch hour. And first thing’s first – we’ve got to eat. Driving up and down the street, one thing is clear. It’s not going to be an easy choice to make. Devon Avenue is lined with dozens and dozens of eating options – Gujrati, Mumbaiya, South Indian, Bengali, Pakistani, Indo-Chinese restaurants all lure customers in, each advertising the special cuisine of the region. A delicious smell of kabobs intermingled with sambhar, vegetarian manchurian and chaat wafts through our nostrils. I haven’t eaten Pakistani food in the longest time and so we decide on the Sabri Nehari Restaurant for lunch.

Everybody comes to the Sabri Nehari for its famous sabri nehari – a tender meat curry that the restaurant is named for. From what I have read on the internet, Sabri Nehari has the best nehari in all of America, and it’s time for us to test that out for ourselves. So undoubtedly, we order the nehari. I order the Frontier Chicken – a grilled boneless chicken dish with onions and tomatoes that is highly recommended on the menu. If the picture on the menu is anything to go by, then I’m sold already. Assuming that the size of the naans is the same size of the naans at our local eatery within our Midwestern town, we order three naans and one paratha.

The naans and paratha arrive first, and they are humongous in size! Had we known how big the naan would be, we’d have ordered fewer pieces. A complimentary salad arrived next, along with sweet chutney and a coriander based green chutney to dip the slices of cucumber, onions and tomatoes in. Then the nehari and the chicken arrived…after which I blanked out over the next half an hour, because I was lost in a happy daze of good smells, finger-licking good food, and the soft instrumental background music of “Ajab si” from Om Shanti Om. The food was excellent and quite possibly the best Pakistani food I had eaten in a really long time. The restaurant itself too is quite clean and has a charming ambience. Ironically, the walls were graced with paintings and decors reminiscent of Italy rather than India or Pakistan, but the attempts at creating a romantic atmosphere within the restaurant clearly didn’t go unnoticed.

After leaving the restaurant with bellies full and boxes with leftovers to carry back home, we decided a walk down Devon Avenue was in order. All around me are immigrants bustling down the street armed with plastic bags filled with the unique groceries and knick knacks available only along Devon Avenue. We join the army of immigrants and proceed into Patel Brothers – the biggest Indian grocery store along the avenue. The store inside has aisle after aisle filled with every imaginable variety of paratha, all types of Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi spices, bottles upon bottles of all kinds of pickles, bags of different species of rice, ingredients for the most remote recipes, and snacks that I remember seeing only in India. I shop my heart out…enough food to stock up my Midwestern pantry against a blizzard of nostalgia.

After dropping the grocery bags in the car, and adding some more quarters to the parking meter, we continue our stroll down the street. We do what everyone else on this street does. Enter random stores, check out their interesting wares and walk out of the store and enter the next store. Music stores selling Bollywood’s top hits, book stores with their displays of Movie and Stardust magazines and gift shops with interesting trinkets – we cover them all.

Joe has never eaten kulfi in his life. I decide this is something no individual should ever have to go through in their life. So I take it upon myself to introduce him to the glorious taste of kulfi. We enter King Sweets, a café/shop that sells all sorts of barfis, mithais, sweets and savory snacks. I wasn’t even sure that they would sell kulfi, and I skim through the food items in the display window. Not seeing any fridge around or any kulfi eating customers, I hesitantly ask the store owner whether they sell kulfi. “Aaah. Kulfi. Yes.”, he answers smiling broadly at me. He seems rather pleased that I’ve asked for an item that isn’t even on his menu. He disappears into a back room and reemerges with a stick of plain kulfi and another of mango kulfi.

Kulfi is India’s answer to ice-cream. Like ice-cream, it is made by boiling milk, flavoring it and then freezing it. I am not sure what the recipe differences between kulfi and ice-cream are, except that kulfi tastes phenomenally better than ice-cream and is extremely decadent. If Joe’s slurps are anything to go by, he clearly agrees.

Business taken care of, we continue our pilgrimage down Devon Avenue. Everywhere around us are people buying stuff, people selling stuff. Within the everyday transactions however, I notice an exchange of more than just cash and commodities. “Sarlaben, haven’t seen you here in a while” “When is Mansoor’s sister’s nikaah?” “Are you going back to India for good?” “Archana, don’t forget to buy the aachar for dadi amma”. A burst of laughter amidst old friends. A wailing child sobbing for a candy. An old man and his cane inching along the sidewalk, stopping to spit out paan. Young girls giggling as they pass a group of desi boys. It’s not just cash and commodities on Devon Avenue.

Soon it’s dinner time and we’re on the search for yet another exciting place to eat.

Back in India, we have these small roadside restaurants known as dhabas. They are nothing too fancy. If anything, their ambience (if at all any) consists of crude sitting arrangements and is designed out of sheer practicality rather than aesthetics. They are just small, simple shacks designed to serve travelers along the road and are largely frequented by truck drivers and rickshaw drivers. Yet ask any local driver to direct you to their favorite restaurant in the area, and they’ll tell you to go to the dhabas – that’s where they have the real food. Ghareeb Nawaz reminds me of those dhabas in India where I’ve enjoyed some of my best meals.

From the outside, Ghareeb Nawaz is hardly anything fancy. If you are on a date and are looking for romantic ambience, go to the Sabri Nehari, or go to the dozen other Indian/Pakistani restaurants a little further down the street…but if you’re looking for good food, REAL good food then keep walking right on in through the doors of Ghareeb Nawaz.

Ghareeb Nawaz loosely translated means “Place for the poor” or so I’m told (my hindi is pretty pathetic and my urdu barely exists). And if the prices on the handwritten menu at the lone counter inside are anything to go by, then “place for the poor” it is, indeed! Meat thali for $4.50?! Veggie samosa at 50 cents a piece?! Khorma for $3.50?! Ethnic food doesn’t get any cheaper than this in America! The skeptical me would have rationalized that at those low, low, prices, the food cant be any good, and that the only reason the prices were so low was because the quality of the food wasn’t any good and the low prices were the only way the restaurant could attract any customers at all. But the skeptical me wasn’t rationalizing. The skeptical me was too busy sniffing, drooling, and ogling at all the delicious food floating past the counter into the hands of heavily salivating customers.

“Biryani!” I’ll get chicken biryani, I decided after soul searching through the menu that was full of so many food items that it was literally spilling all over the place. Yup, literally. Be sure to look left, right and center when searching for an item on the “menu”, because the menu isn’t just contained on a board behind the counter, there are additional items on scraps of paper along the side of the counter, as well as scribbling on a chalkboard next to the counter. There are just so many food items available that if you’re anything like the indecisive me, it will take you a while before you commit to just one. Joe selected the lamb biryani and sheikh kabab.

As we waited for our order, we looked around. There isn’t much to look at, other than a few posters on the walls of Mecca, and a donation stand on the side, accepting donations for the renovation of some masjid. At the back is what looks like a prayer room. The seating arrangement consists of bright yellow, plastic seats. Some people have described the interior as dingy and depressing, but I actually thought the bright yellow gave the place some cheer, and while it might not exactly be as fancy as is expected from a restaurant in Chicago, it is what it is – a restaurant with the spirit of a dhaba. Inside I see friendly cabbies stopping for a lunch break, two Somalis huddled around a biryani, a Punjabi family equally confused over what to order, and a few Pakistani men dressed in pyjamas scraping out the last bits of their curries with naan. Everywhere around me is animated conversation in all different dialects and the jolly banter that can only be found surrounding a well enjoyed meal. Dingy and depressing? I hardly think so.

“Holy crap!” I exclaim, when I taste my chicken biryani. For one thing, with the tricolored rice dotted with pieces of chicken, it looks so good. For another, it smells divine…of cloves and elaichi and fragrant rice and spicy chicken. And the taste is like no other biryani I have ever tasted out of India. I think I’m in love. The biryani is spicy but just spicy enough. Not spicy to a point where all you’re tasting is just red pepper and all you can feel is the the throbbing of your tongue as it pulsates to the hot chillies…but just spicy enough.

Joe is equally exuberant over his lamb biryani. I’ve never been a fan of lamb or mutton…they all have a distinct sheep-y smell as far as I’m concerned, but Joe insists I try the sheikh kabab. In the end, I’m glad I did because it changed my definition of the words “mutton” and “kabab” forever. The kabab is so richly seasoned that I wouldn’t even know I was eating lamb were it not for the very succulent, soft texture of the kabab.

“Deeelicious!” is what I’ve got to say. And here’s the best part – for the meager $10 we spent on the meal, the portions are so huge that we have plenty of leftovers for dinner.

As we head back to the car, ready to return back to our small Midwestern town, I feel lighter at heart. After a day bustling in and out of the little stores along Devon Avenue, I’ve realized that for immigrants like me, Devon Avenue isn’t just about the interesting merchandise or the exotic restaurants lining the street…for immigrants like me, Devon Avenue offers a glimpse of home. And I can leave knowing that whenever I get nostalgic for home again, there is a street around my Midwestern corner where I can transport myself home.

~vagabond~ © 2008

Road Rage

2007-12-30T18:20:00.000-08:00

I hate driving. No, I don't mean I dislike driving. I mean I really, really HATE driving. I may just well be the world's worst driver. To me, driving is all about getting from point A to point B and all those traffic lights, stop signs, speed bumps, pedestrians, other cars etc etc are just annoying little nuisances that get in my way as I'm going from point A to point B. I don't understand people who roll down their windows, turn up the music, one hand on the steering wheel, whistle and enjoy a "good" drive. Nah. Me, I'd rather be the person sitting next to that person. You know, the person who's stretched out lazily, enjoying the cool breeze blowing through her hair, listening to the music, watching the road go by, and letting my thoughts ramble wild as I simply ride along.

I've always known I hated driving, but I've never quite realized just how many things really annoy me about driving. Apparently, the rage runs deep.

Parallel parking. Honestly, it's the invention of the devil himself. Half the world humbly acknowledges it's impossible to do, but then the other half of the world just goes ahead and insists on parallel parking anyway, making the rest of us look stupid. Which idiot came up with this one anyway? Why cant we all just get along and park however we feel like? So some of us are good at parking with our tails sticking out and some of us can parallel park. Big deal. Just park the darn car and get out of it. What does it matter if you're on the yellow line or within it? Isn't the much more important fact that that you've made it to your destination? But no, we've got to fuss over being inside a line and over a line. Sheeeeeesh.

A slow truck clambering slowly down the inner lane as I'm about to enter the freeway. Should I slow down as I enter? Wait. The truck's going real slow. If I slow down, I might as well stop. But there's another car behind me. And this is the goddamn freeway. Maybe I should just speed up and go cut infront of it and then speed up reeeal good and I'll be fine. Wait. Too late for that thought. Okay, here's the truck going by now. Right. Oh well. So much for all that thinking. I'm on the freeway now. Maybe indecisiveness is my REAL problem.

An overspeeding me behind an overspeeding truck. An overspeeding me trying to overtake the overspeeding truck. Why? Because all trucks by virtue of their being a truck scream "overtake me". But not this one. Because this truck doesnt even really believe it's a truck. It actually thinks it's a cruiser. When it's not. It's just a truck. A truck which is overspeeding and speeds even faster when it sees me trying to overtake it. Damn trucks! They should all just have a special underground tunnel built just for them.

People sitting next to me while I'm driving instructing me on where to go.

"It's a left here." *left blinker* blink* *blink*
"oh wait, nope a right...yeah, yeah, definitely a right." *right blinker* *blink* *blink*
"Oooh. This looks unfamiliar. I think it was a left after all." *left blinker again* *blink* *blink*.

Or

"On this exit" as I see the exit fly by.

Or

"Turn here" Screeeeech. "No, not here as in right here. Here as in here, the next one"

Sheeeeesh.

And for the record, I dont handle criticism very well. It's one thing for me to know that I'm a bad driver. But I'm not exactly thrilled when someone else points that out to me. "You just blew off a red light!" "Er. No I didn't. It was orange when I zoomed past" "It turned red when you whizzed through" "Yeah, whatever. Next time, YOU drive"

Maybe someday all my dreams will come true and I wont have to drive. Maybe gigantic conveyor belts will replace the freeways of the world and all we'll have to do is sit on one as it delivers us to our workplace or to the mall or wherever. Or maybe some really smart, frustrated driver somewhere will come up with an intelligent car that drives itself. Or maybe I'll just relocate to a place with better public transport. Until then....sigh...drive I must.

HONK! HONK!

~vagabond~ © 2007

Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani

2007-12-22T12:49:00.000-08:00

I know, I know…the timing of this blog makes no sense whatsoever. We’re four months too late for August 15th (India’s Independence Day), and a month too early for January 26th (Republic Day). But then it is what it is. One moment I’m feeling all jolly, merry and Christmas-y and then bam! just a simple phone call later, and I’m all nostalgic, patriotic and desi. It’s all part of the NRI package. Just one of those clauses in tiny italicized print that nobody tells you you’ll be signing up for when you choose the life of an Indian living abroad.

I was only five years old when I left India with my parents to spend a lifetime abroad. You’d think that being that young, I’d have no memories of what life in India was like. But I do remember. I remember it all. I remember being a brat in kindergarten and having my Parsi teacher yell at me…the stories my grandpa would read me from the Amar Chitra Katha…the swinging on banyan trees in my grandma’s village… playing marbles in the dirt with my cousins…the trips to Juhu beach with my mum and dad. Or at least I think I remember. Because it’s hard to tell where my own memories end and where those of my parents begin. I grew up in a family that never let me forget what it was like. A family that cherished every memory of their life in India and lived every day in nostalgia, reminding their kids of the life before now, what things were like back then. A family that made sure that no matter where I grew up or where I would live years later, I’d always remember where it was that I came from.

It’s been several years since I moved out of my parents’ home. And of all the things I miss when the familiar pangs of homesickness hit, I think I miss the stories the most…the sitting around our living room in Africa during a blackout, in the dim glow of a lantern, talking about life back in India.

I called home today. No, not my home in Africa. My home in India. Where a large part of my extended family lives and where my parents are visiting right now. The phone lines were extremely horrible but even despite the choppy lines, I could hear the laughter of a clan reunited in the background as the phone passed its way from one hand to another. There’s a certain bitter-sweetness to blessings given over a telephone wire, tears over a shared memory, an unexplained closeness toward strangers who feel like family, an eerie distant closeness to places and people that exist only in your memories. For me, that bitter-sweetness is what I know of being Hindustani.

I came across this clip today, and it reminded me of all the times I’ve been frustrated over India…times when I’ve been unable to contact my parents in India and angrily snarled at the phone “This is just so typically India!” or expressed my disapproval over how events were conducted in India and mumbled, “This never would have happened in America”. This clip makes me feel intensely proud of my country, and my heritage, and reminds me of where I come from…and between the clip and the phone call and the wave of nostalgia that’s flooding through my heart right now, despite growing up abroad, I can truly say “phir bhi dil hai hindustani”.

~vagabond~ © 2007

Writer’s Blog

2007-12-18T10:48:00.001-08:00

I have a bad case of writer’s blog…err…block.

I’ve thunk and thunk and this is all I can come up with.

*blank look*

*chirp* *chirp*

*nervous cough*

Umm... Err...Ahem...Writer’s block.

Alright, so any moment now it’s gonna happen. Those hopelessly tangled knots of thoughts within my head are going to come loose and splatter themselves all across my computer screen.

AAAAAAAARGH!

Nope. Nothing yet.

I haven’t written a blog in over three months. You know how every semester you have that one teacher who is completely irrational, totally unreasonable, unbelievably arrogant and drives you absolutely nuts? Yup. In a humiliating conspiracy by fate, I had four of those the past semester. And between studying for stressful exams, writing technical papers and giving technical presentations, any creative juices that I may have had flowing within my being have been sapped dry. Not that there was too much to begin with. Creative juice, I mean. But just enough to fuel occasional rants over the state of the universe or sad monologues over things that made me nostalgic or just records of events that made me happy, angry or sad (just in case God forbid someday I forget the things that made me mad). But right now, it’s all dry. Not even a drip of creative juice flowing in those blogger veins.

Zilch. All dry.

So in the sad pursuit of elusive inspiration, I surfed through the internet. Again and again. From cover to cover. I may just have scrolled on to the end of the internet too. And sorry no, for those of you who were searching, there is no pot of gold at the other end of the internet. Just endless rants and monologues by one happy blogger after another over the sad state of the universe.

Nope. Nothing there to break my dry spell.

Coffee. That ought to do it. I need a good old coffee shop inside a good old bookstore. Barnes and Nobles with a Starbucks inside. A well brewed cup of coffee at a window seat of a bookstore surrounded by endless aisles of words is what I need. And it’s snowing outside. Even better. Sweeet. This is going to be great. Best way to jumpstart my brain into cranking out a blog.

*Mind numbing silence*

Nope. Did not work. On the bright side, I am now highly caffeinated.

So I finally figure maybe the best way to make this sad state of affairs end is to just write…to ignore my inability to write and to write anyway…to blog away. Even when I’ve got nothing to say. To blog despite my blogger’s blo(g)ck. To just keep going against all odds. To…holy crap…wait a minute….did I just write up a blog?!

I’ve written up a blog!

Doggies Day Out

2007-08-23T12:33:00.000-07:00

I took my dogs swimming at the lake (Lake Michigan) last weekend. There is this fairly isolated stretch of beach an hour’s drive away from where I live that few people know about. It’s a dog lover’s paradise. And because it’s not really a public beach as such, the only rules or regulations are those created out of common courtesy by the few people who frequent this beach. And most of us are dog owners. So dogs are welcome here.

So last Saturday, on a particularly hot summer day, after a strenuous hike over the sand dunes, I introduced my dogs to the lake. As we meandered down the dunes, and the lake came into view, Ally (my two and a half year old black lab mix) took one look at the massive span of water ahead of us, wagged her tail and let her inner Labrador loose. And no, I don’t mean figuratively, I mean she literally ran loose. She tugged at her leash, broke free and made a sprint toward the lake, and by the time I had caught up with her, she was already swimming like a pro, going in circles around me as I tried to get hold of her leash. Labradors are known for their love for water, so I wasn’t too surprised to discover that she already knew how to swim. Besides, aren’t ALL dogs born swimmers?

The answer is NO. Nope. Not ALL dogs know how to swim, and not ALL dogs are born swimmers. And how do I know that? Because the whole time that Ally and I were in the water, there was Charlie
Charlie (my one year old German Shepherd pup) standing at the shore, with the most perplexed look on his face, head cocked to one side, barking in utter confusion at the water.

“Chaaarlie! Come! Come!” I shout out to him, coaxing him to join us in the water. He wags his tail happily in response to my call, tiptoes into the water, gets startled by a big wave of water exploding over his paws, and then turns out and runs back to shore, finding comfort in dry sand. Charlie
Charlie is a big boy – even at just one year of age, he weighs about 90 pounds. But despite his big size and intimidating looks, everyone who knows Charlie
Charlie will tell you that at heart he is just one big baby. And so here we are, Ally and I in the water, Charlie
Charlie on shore…too big a scaredy cat to get into the water.

Given his big size, I can’t exactly pick Charlie
Charlie up and drop him into the water. And calling him while I’m in the lake with Ally hasn’t been working out too great either. It’s time for a different approach. So this time, I pick up his red ball. Yup. The red ball. The red ball that is the one great love of Charlie’s life. He loves the ball to bits and pieces. Knowing his obsessive love for the ball, I carry it with me for moments when I need to distract him. And I figure if anything is going to coax Charlie
Charlie into the water, it’s going to be his favorite red ball.

“Chaaaaarlie! Come! Go get your ball!” I shout again, tossing the ball into the water. “Ball?” his ears perk up at the sound of the one word that he knows so well. His eyes dart quickly to his most prized possession floating away in the water. And into the lake he goes, barging clumsily through the water, frantically trying to get to his toy, all the while bewildered by the waves crashing around him.

I lure him in further away from the shore, wading in the shallow water with the ball in my hand, drawing him deeper into the lake. Charlie
Charlie follows, with his eyes glued on the ball, all the while with Ally swimming expertly in large circles around him, sticking her tongue out in a grin and showing off in front of him. I reward him occasionally by tossing the ball back to shore and he clambers after it, happy to be back on land. And on and on it goes, me luring him into the water with the ball and him anxious to be back on land.

And then just like that, several repetitions later, it happens. He is no longer afraid of water. He is no longer anxious to get out of the water. He is confident. And he believes he can swim. Um. Er. Ahem. Except that he really cannot swim. In fact, he doesn’t even have a clue. But in his doggy little head, Charlie
Charlie whole heartedly believes he is swimming.

What really happens is this:
“Chaaaaarlie! Aaaally! Go get the ball!” I shout and toss the red ball into the lake. Ally swims gracefully toward the ball. Charlie
Charlie leaps confidently into the water with an impressive, water-spraying splash. He splish-splashes his way through the water, all four paws in all four directions, and fully convincing himself that he is swimming in water shallow enough for him to stand in. He steals the ball from Ally as she’s swimming back to shore. And then brings the ball to me, his tail swooshing merrily back and forth, eyes sparkling in giddy joy, proud of his brave achievement. I look at my brave little pup, pat him on the head and let him believe he can swim.

It’s finally time to head back home, and I drag two pooped out dogs back to shore. It turned out to be a pretty successful first day out at the lake. “Swim? Let’s go swim?” I think my dogs just picked up a new favorite word.

~vagabond~ © 2007

When I'm not here...

2007-08-21T11:53:00.001-07:00

When I'm not here, I'm there.

Check out: Travels of a vagabond

Meet Average Joe

2007-08-08T16:39:00.000-07:00

“Average Joe”. Otherwise known as my best friend of nine years, my one and only great, true love, my soul mate – whose true identity shall remain forever unknown on this blog (I feel the need to protect him after subjecting him to mass ridicule, mortifying embarrassment and public humiliation through my indiscreet narration of our intertwined personal lives). Also referred to as simply Joe.

World, meet my Average Joe. Average Joe, meet my World.

~vagabond~ © 2007

The Assistant to the Research Assistant

2007-06-29T09:31:00.000-07:00

Last year, I switched careers. I pressed the ‘pause’ button in my pursuit of a life long dream. I stopped to re-think my career aspirations. And in doing so, I started a journey backward – reminiscing over what had led me to where I was. I found myself remembering the people, the places and the events that had shaped me into who I am today. I think perhaps what left the biggest impression on me as I trudged my way toward building a career was the experience of my very first job.

For many people, first jobs are often measly, low income positions or even volunteer or unpaid internship positions taken up for the sole purpose of gaining some hands on experience. They’re often filled with endless tedious/boring/monotonous tasks that are grudgingly performed in the hired intern’s quest to climb the career ladder. For me, though, I think I struck gold when I was searching for my first job.

I was fresh out of high school, trying to sketch out a career in Conservation Biology/Environmental Science with barely a clue as to what it all entailed other than the fact that I was big on recycling and subscribed to the National Geographic magazines (yeah, I was a nerdy kid :| ). A local WWF (Erm...the World Wildlife Fund, though working at the World Wrestling Federation too would have been a job to boast about!) branch in my hometown of Nakuru, was looking for a student intern to assist with data collection out in the field (Lake Nakuru National Park - LNNP), and since nobody else had applied for the job, it was mine to keep.

Technically speaking, I was an assistant to a research assistant whose job duties entailed "assisting the assistant with the assistant's jobs". Out in the field, I was a little kid in a candy shop who just couldn’t get enough of being out in the field, being up and close to wildlife and who was out on the biggest adventure of her boring little life. Over the course of the one year I worked there, I helped around with everything from collecting water and mud samples from the lake, analyzing the water and mud samples, collecting meteorological data from a weather station out in the field, assisting in conducting flamingo censuses, collecting macro-invertebrate specimens from the lake and the rivers emptying into the lake, and some less adventurous days filled with plain old data entry into a computer. It ended up becoming the most memorable year of my life.

Now, almost a decade later, I look back and think fondly of those days. It inspired me enough to compile a list of the various memories from that one year – the highlights of my days as an assistant-to-a-research-assistant:

• The daily visits to the lonely weather station that stood in the middle of the vast, open grassland. I remember the resident baboon (Curious George, I named him) that had for the longest time made up its mind that the weather station was the coolest place to hang around, until we had had enough of broken rain gauges and scattered instruments and finally put up an electric fence around the station. I remember the occasional stray gazelle that would sneak up on me ever-so-softly and startle me out of my wits. I remember the day I saw a Cape Buffalo
Cape Buffalo. Photo source: http://www.lazoo.org/travel/images/kenya_buffalo.jpg off a short distance from the weather station, and panicked over how I was going to make my way back from the weather station to the car. I remember gathering up the courage to run madly back to the car, only to find the buffalo rolling its eyes at me as if to say “What IS up with her?”.

• The time we saw two male White rhinos White rhinos in LNNP. Photo source: http://www1.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/3088547/2/istockphoto_3088547_rhino_lake_nakuru.jpg
battling it out smack in the middle of the road. There we were driving the car back to the office after a long day out in the field and suddenly out of nowhere came these two massive males charging at each other, fighting over a territory right in the middle of the road. I remember thinking about how incredibly lucky I was to see one of the most endangered mammals on the planet ever so casually living out its day to day existence right in front of me.

• The first time I participated in conducting a flamingoFlamingoes in LNNP. Photo source: http://static.flickr.com/56/168969539_6ac4115caf.jpg census. There are absolutely zillions of Greater and Lesser flamingoes out on the lake during peak season – from atop a cliff, the viewView of Lake Nakuru from Baboon Cliffs. Photo source: http://home.earthlink.net/~billmurrellphotos1/KenyaTanzania/Park-5-15-Kenya-Lake-Nakuru.jpg is that of a pink mat atop a carpet of blue water. I was baffled by how anyone could possibly estimate how many flamingoes were out on the lake at any given time. Until I realized that there were more than 20 people involved in the effort and that each person would be counting the number of flamingoes on a small segment of the lake, and that there would be repeated trials, and that all it took was a little bit of math and extrapolation. Duh!

• The day we almost got mauled by a lioness. Okay, so I’m being a bit dramatic. But just a tad bit. It was the day we (the research assistant and I) had been obtaining water samples from a river on the inside of the park that drains into the lake. For the record, the rules and regulations of the national park discourage (or is it prohibit?) visitors from getting out of their car while they are in the national park. For good reasons. But as employees of WWF, we were exceptions to the rule. We were out of the car, walking a short distance upstream with our high tech looking water quality analysis gadgets, totally focused on our job, and occasionally cracking jokes and talking and laughing loudly, when a KWS (Kenya Wildlife Service) car drove close up to us, and a game warden rolled down the car window and hissed loudly at us to “Get into the car, NOW!”. We had no idea what all the fuss was about until we were safely packed into the car. Then he broke the news to us – there was a lioness snoozing on a branch of a tree right above us, and she’d been watching us the whole time. We were just darn lucky the KWS car happened to be patrolling when it did and saw the lioness on the branch and saw us right under it. Brrrrrrr!

• The opportunity to get to know and work with a world renowned entomologist, who would eventually become a very close friend and a much cherished mentor. I remember burrowing arm deep in soft mud from the various rivers emptying into the lake in search for Chironomid larvae
Chironomid larvae. Photo source: http://www.ru.ac.za/academic/departments/zooento/Martin/chironomidae2.jpg - a wriggly, sometimes red, sometimes white worm that acts as a bio-indicator of water quality. I remember having the most meaningful conversations about science and about life in general with her. I remember the 80 something year old lady chasing butterflies along with me, sharing the same exuberance as the 18 year old me, imparting everything she knew about butterflies and insects to my impressionable young mind.

• The day we waded halfway into the middle of the lake in overall-like, heavy waders, to obtain mud samples. I remember turning around to head back to shore to see a herd of wild buffaloes waiting for us back on dry land. And waiting and waiting, soaked above knee high in mud and water reeking of blue-green algae, wishing and hoping and praying that the buffaloes would move on, and we could get back into the safety of the car.

• The day we drove up so quietly and so close right next to a Rothschild Giraffe
Rothschild Giraffe. Photo source: http://www.birdsasart.com/Rothschild's%20Giraffe.jpg grazing on an acacia tree. And I rolled down the car window and touched its tail. Score one, me! The giraffe did not look amused.

• Driving in circles, lost inside some part of the Eastern Mau Forest, trying to find our way out, in the middle of a thick thunderstorm. It’s still a mystery to me how we found our way back out.

• Stopping by Makalia Falls
Makalia Falls. Photo source: http://www.pontact.com/images/WA07Lg.jpg to collect a water sample the day after the news of a woman mauled by a leopard while collecting water near the very same waterfalls made the newspaper headlines. And then nervously keeping an eye on a small hole in the cliff, suspected to be the den of the leopard and her cubs, while trying to rush and obtain a quick water sample.

The memories go on and on…countless little details that flood my mind and remind me how it all began. For me, the ‘assistant to the research assistant’ wasn’t just my first job; it was my first step in a journey to self-identity.

~vagabond~ © 2007

Priceless

2007-06-27T07:31:00.001-07:00

Camping equipment, groceries and other supplies: $120.79
Fuel cost per gallon: $2.89
Total estimated mileage: 2956.17 miles
Estimated driving time: 42 hours 28 minutes
Number of states we're planning to travel through: 11
The number of days before it all happens: 11
The anticipation and excitement over a forthcoming road trip: PRICELESS!

~vagabond~ © 2007

Packrats Anonymous Inc.

2007-06-22T07:55:00.000-07:00

Alright. So I'll admit it - I'm a packrat. I hoard onto stuff. Even when it's seemingly meaningless and worthless to the rest of the world. As long as it holds some sentimental meaning to me, I'll keep it. And the awful part about being me is when you've moved and changed addresses several times over the years, it becomes harder and harder holding on to everything you collect. Sometimes you end up having to let go, and that can be quite a traumatic experience as any true blood packrat will tell you.

It all started out with just one small shoebox and a collection of greeting cards. Next thing I knew, the one shoebox just wasn't big enough to contain all the little snippets of memories I had collected along the way. The one small shoebox divided itself into two, the two small shoeboxes fused into one bigger shoebox, which then morphed into a much bigger cardboard box, and the last time I checked, the big cardboard box has now given birth to a litter of many more boxes, all containing items dear and near to my heart, which I swear will come useful at some later date.

So in pledging my loyalty to Packrats Anonymous Inc., I thought I'd share my list of random items that I've cherished at some point or the other that have made their way in (and perhaps not yet out of) my shoebox-formerly-labeled-as-"Memories":

1. A small cork-stoppered glass bottle, with an even smaller rolled parchment inside, scribbled with a scrawny "I LOVE YOU" handwritten by the love of my life, given to me as a valentine's gift nine years ago.

Yeeeaaaah. Who knew we'd still be together almost a decade later? It's validation of my good judgment even back then. ;)

2. Stones.

Yeah, I know what you're thinking - who collects stones?! I do. You know, the real smooth, peculiar shaped, interesting colored ones that stick out in the sand. I used to collect them every time I walked along the shores of Lake Michigan. But then when you consider I walked there several times a week, that's a lot of stones, and I filled up a lot of glass jars, and then every time I moved, and it was annoying to haul stones. So I stopped collecting them. Well, technically. I still do, but only if they look really, really interesting.

3. A baby tooth from my dog Charlie
My dog, Charlie.

What?! Don't look at me like that. You'd have to know him to see why I'd do that. He's not even a dog...he's...he's..well, he is a dog, but not a doggy dog...he's just so darn human like. I'd say he's my baby but then I don't want to sound like the annoying Paris Hilton type of girl who dresses her dog in hideous pink outfits. Uggh. :{

4. Greeting cards.

I'm the queen of sentimentalism. I used to save every card that anyone ever gave me - birthday, christmas, congratulations, thankyous...and seeing how horribly addicted I was to it, if any of my enemies had sent me a "I hate you" card, I'd still have saved that too. I broke that habit when I left Kenya...now I don't save every random card that anyone sends to me, I only save the extra-mushy ones that are oozing with sentiments.

5. The geeky academic little knick knacks and nerdy humor stuff from atop my desk when I was pursuing my PhD a year ago.

I quit halfway. And I just don't have the heart to give away or get rid of the geeky knick knacks because they represent a very memorable phase of my life - a time at which I was doing exactly what I had dreamed of doing all my life, but suddenly found myself hating the whole experience...a very passionate yet agonizing moment in my life. Goes to show you, you don't always know what you want from life until you have it in your hands.

Ahem. Enough of the philosophizing. Moving on...

6. Fridge magnets and Postcards.

I have a fridge magnet and/or a postcard for every single place I have ever traveled to (well, almost every place I've ever traveled to - I don't have one for the small villages I visited in Africa but it doesn't even matter because they don't even know what fridge magnets are and it's not like they'd ever object to their lack of representation in my collection). That's just my thing. People buy T-shirts and other souvenirs. I buy a fridge magnet and a postcard. If you were to visit me, my fridge and all the magnets on it from all sorts of places would make interesting conversations. There's a story attached to each one.

The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. That's it. I'm in recovery now.

~vagabond~ © 2007

The Same, Old, New Thing.

2007-06-18T09:21:00.000-07:00

Ever noticed how some things remain the same no matter where you go?

Sure, when you first move to a new country, everything about the country seems strange and new and foreign - the culture, the customs, the language (and sometimes it's not even about the fact that you don't understand a word of what is being said...sometimes it's just about how it's being said to you), the bizarre gestures (what is it with nodding their heads in response to everything you say, even if it's in disagreement?). Heck, even your electronic appliances let you know that they don't feel at home. But then, after months of fumbling around strange elevators (or are they called lifts here?), spitting out disconnected phrases from your beaten down speak-strange-foreign-language-in-30-days handbook, and purchasing countless voltage converters and travel adapters for your countless electronic appliances, you settle down into a calm sense of belonging. And the longer you stay within that country, everything about it starts to feel old and familiar, and you get the eerie feeling that this is the same country you've lived in before, maybe even for years, and that perhaps it is the same old thing no matter where you go.

External appearances aside, no matter where you go, at heart, people remain the same. When you get down to the basics, beneath our different dress codes, different languages, different body gestures, we're all still the same people, with the same concerns, living the same life in different guises. The same questions plague us, be it in form of a casual "Still single, eh?" from a fellow American or the disappointed Asian shake of the head and a "You're getting old, you know" or the African matter of fact "Pretty soon, no one will want to bring their cows and marry you". We crave for our version of success - be it in the form of fulfilling our great American dream, or just plain owning a house of our own someday, or perhaps adding to our great wealth of the many cows/goats/pigs we already own. No matter where we live, we always believe in greener pastures that lie elsewhere - those that live in developing countries migrating in search for a land filled with promises of a "better" future, those that live in developed countries migrating in search for a land with less materialism, more "soul".

Heck, the more you travel and the longer you stay in a place, even the food from all across the globe starts to merge into one. Case in point the samosa aka the samoosa aka the sambhosa aka the bourek. Same filling, different wrappers...different fillings, same wrapper.

Sure, when you first land in them, all countries start off as brand new, but then somewhere along the way, during your stay, you reach a familiar level of comfort when the new doesn't feel that new anymore. Perhaps you just have to live in a country long enough, and give it a chance, to realize that maybe things aren't so different after all, that this new country is at heart the same old country you've lived in before...perhaps pulsating to a different heartbeat, but at soul, the same country nonetheless. And when you do get to that level of comfort, you realize that no matter where you go, it's just the same old 'new' thing all over again.

~vagabond~ © 2007

It's a procrastinator's life

2007-06-13T08:34:00.000-07:00

If there were an annual award given out for procrastinator-of-the-year, hands down I'd win it every year, without even breaking a sweat. So in celebration of the one thing that I'm really, really good at, here's my list of things that I'm procrastinating on right now, this very minute:

1. Sorting out my whites and my darks so that at some future date, I can actually get my laundry done in an organized fashion. I will get it done soooon, you know.

2. Replying to one of my closest friend's fourth (or is it fifth?) email asking me if I'm going to be attending her wedding in August in Seychelles. "No!" The answer is "No!" but I just don't have the heart to reply and say, "No, I will not be attending your wedding because flying to Seychelles would be the quickest way to empty out every last dime I have within my meager bank account...but that doesnt mean I dont love you or that we arent as close as we used to be...what?!...do you really think it's easy to say no to seychelles?! come on!"

Yup. So instead I choose to procrastinate.

3. Returning my aunt's zillionth phone call in the past month to express concern over the fact that I'm still not married. Sheeeeesh. I miss the good old days when she still lived in India, long distance cost a fortune, and phone cards were a thing of the future.

To call or not to call is the question.

4. Returning books that are waaaay overdue at the library. Maybe they wont even notice they're overdue if I just don't show up at the library ever again. ;)

5. Replying to emails from people who call themselves my friends, but who really are only my friends by virtue of wanting to know exactly what I'm doing with my life, so that they can tell me how much better they're doing in their life. :/ I've had enough of "Do you have kids yet? Oh, I'm only just asking because I just gave birth to a baby boy last month." Seriousssly, were we even competing? I didn't know, otherwise I'd have gone over to Malawi along with Madonna and adopted a kid.

6. Going grocery shopping. There's nothing wrong with an appetizer of stale crackers, an entree of ramen noodles, and the last bits of icecream left in the tub as dessert. I'm doing just fine with my three-course meals, just so you know. :|

7. Getting rid of my junk mail. No, I don't want another credit card. And while I do enjoy leafing through the Avon catalogs that you people keep sending me, I never buy anything. And why send me coupons for take out and delivery places that don't even deliver within this zip code?! I've reached a point where I peek into my mail box, look at all the junk mail lying in there waiting for me, stuff it all back into the mailbox and walk back into my apartment cool and composed without any mail. 8)

This ought to do it for today. Now, this is true therapy. Try it. Got a list of your own? Do share. :)

~vagabond~ © 2007

Conversations with your soul

2007-06-12T08:05:00.000-07:00

The hardest thing in life, I think, is to find yourself...

...to really question what it is that you want out of life

...and even harder it is to look the answers from your soul in the eye and face the realities that make you YOU.

It is so easy to accept your friends as they are, to remain loyal to them, to defend their causes, to make excuses for them, to not judge them for who they are...

...but it's even harder to look at your own naked soul in the mirror and to accept yourself as you are, to remain loyal to who you are, to defend yourself against the world and remain true to the soul within you.

It is so easy to chase a dream once you see it in the hazy clouds over the horizon...

...but so much harder to extract that hidden dream you barely knew existed from the innermost depths of your soul, to give it life and paint it with the colors of hope.

It's easy to sit and dream and imagine what it would feel like to hold that seemingly impossible dream in your hands...

...but harder still to dream with your eyes wide open to the real world you live in and then dare to LIVE the dream instead of just dreaming it.

It's easy to sit and wish that life would change and complain about how it's never quite how you want it to be...

...but if for one moment life asked you back what it is that you wanted, how easy would it be for you to answer and know what to ask for?

The hardest thing, I think, is to have conversations with your soul.

Mbuzi on the house

2007-06-08T11:23:00.000-07:00

*Warning to the easily grossed-out and the queasy-stomached: You may not want to read this particular blog*

One of the things that makes travelling so much fun are the meals you eat along the road. There is something to be said about a pani puri eaten fresh off the streets of Mumbai or a baguette straight out of the boulangerie in Paris. But nothing beats a goat cooked over an open bonfire in the middle of a national park in Kenya.

It was the summer of 1999 and a huge group of us (a bunch of friends and an assorted mix of equally irresponsible strangers) had gone camping in Maasai Mara - one of the most famous national parks in Kenya. As was the tradition of all of our camping trips, we stopped by the customary village-on-the-outskirts-of-the-park to pick up groceries. I am not quite sure how the discussion started, but I think it had something to do with the sight of a very healthy goat tied to a stake accompanied by a fast-talking, business-savvy Maasai goat herder convincing us that nyama choma (directly translated as roast meat) was the best meal we could eat out on the road. Heck, he would even offer us the bargain of a lifetime - we could buy the goat, and he would come along with us to the campsite and "prepare the meat" (read slaughter) for us and take the goat head off our hands. Before I knew it, standing stiffly at one end of the already crowded matatu, between the red, ripe tomatoes, golden yellow potatoes and a big bag of red onions was a tall Maasai goat herder and the by now bleary-eyed and panic-stricken bearded goat. :/

We rolled into our campsite into the late hours of the evening, and amidst the general confusion regarding offloading the matatu, how best to position the tents and where the "kitchen" area ought to be, our brave Maasai warrior headed off into the bush with our prized dinner. A short while, and a dreary "Baaaaaa" later, he emerged with a big grin on his face. "This, I take home", he said, waving a goat head that vaguely resembled something out of a low budget horror movie. "This, you keep", handing over several personality-devoid slabs of meat to us. Numerous hand shakes and a heart-felt bunch of "Asante sana"s later, he disappeared into the dark of the night, leaving us to cook our meal as we best saw fit.

There is just something very memorable about the whole experience of cooking mbuzi (kiswahili for goat), seasoned with a random mix of Indian and Kenyan spices, over an open flame, all the while with everyone simultaneously expressing their opinion on how best the goat ought to be cooked..and then proceeding on to eat the nyama choma at various stages of the cooking process because you thought it was cooked when it really wasnt...*gag*...and then finally having it cooked overdone. But still, there's something to be said about the whole memory of a meal eaten under the great big starlit African sky, with distant animal sounds mixed into the chatter of friends surrounding a dying bonfire.

It wasnt until the very last piece of goat meat was tucked away into the bellies of some very happy campers, that we realized the enormity of what we had just done - we had consumed MEAT in the middle of a NATIONAL PARK filled to the brim with WILD animals! : Who's idea had it been to bring a goat in the middle of a national park, anyway?! That too, a park reputed for possessing Africa's top predators! With visions of lions, leopards and hyenas running amok, sheer panic ensued, followed by the grim realization that we had nowhere to dispose the bones and left over meat.

A heated discussion followed, and somewhere amidst the flying accusations ("You just couldnt walk past the goat without inviting it into the matatu, could you?!") and the absurb suggestions ("What if we just keep it in the matatu overnight?", which invited an angry glare from the matatu-driver-who-would-be-sleeping-overnight-in-the-matatu), we decided that dumping the meat and bones down a pit latrine was our best option. So a team of the few, the brave, and the proud lead the excursion down to the sole pit latrine at the edge of the campsite, and hid away the last bits of dirty evidence of our prized dinner that evening. The meat and bones from the dinner may have been easily enough disposed off, but the memory of our meal would continue to haunt us progressively through that night...at moments when we thought we heard a lion roar too close to the campsite and it really turned out to be nothing...or when someone had to pee desperately in the middle of the night and remembered that the pit latrine was currently "occupied"...or when we were convinced that the green eyes peering at us in the dark during the excursion to the bush latrine were carnivore eyes that turned out to belong to a lonely gazelle that has strayed too far from the rest of its herd.

Yup. That's memorable alright. There just isnt anything quite like meals eaten around a campfire. Especially if its a mbuzi eaten in the middle of a national park.

Translations:

1. Mbuzi - goat
2. Nyama choma - roasted / grilled meat
3. Matatu - the Kiswahili word for a minibus like public transport vehicle
4. Asante sana - Kiswahili for "Thank you very much"

~vagabond~ © 2007

On the art of vagabonding

2007-06-08T11:09:00.000-07:00

I am a desi girl, grew up a mhindi, now living in the land of the yankees. I occasionally hopscotch around, crossing states, countries and often continents.

Yup. I'd say vagabonding is a skill that comes naturally to me.

Translations:

1. Desi - term used to refer to people/things of South Asian origin.
2. Mhindi - term used by Kenyans to refer to an Asian-Indian.
3. Yankee - term used to refer to an inhabitant of the United States.

~vagabond~ © 2007