Covent Garden

harrassing the mobile guy

Last week I went to Covent Garden and came away with a very ‘British experience’ – I say that only because most of the characters in this act were probably British.
I love the street theatre in London and Covent Garden is apparently a popular spot for such activities.
London was enjoying a brief spurt of an ‘Indian summer’ in the last week of September; huge crowds had come out to enjoy the sun.
Only one week ago, but it feels like a far away memory already, given how cold the weather has turned now.
We saw three different performers that day at various points in covent garden and every performer tried to tell the crowd in different ways why ‘street performance’ is still powerfully alive or even necessary for this country.
It democratises music and drama, especially in London where every play or an act costs several expensive pounds at a theatre. Street performances, on the other hand, are almost free. Here, people pay after the performance, if they want to, mostly because they have loved it, and balance out for others who probably found it equally joyful but are too broke to spare money (like me).
Or as one performer said, we could even pay with ‘love’.
I have this particular memory of a singing troupe trying to wheedle some coins out of the gathered crowd on this Sunday afternoon. The lead singer of the troupe had just spotted a chap talking on his cellphone. Till then he had restrained himself to calling out “don’t just walk away, you!” and other variations of “how rude”. But now he got his entire band, playing beautiful music on their crafty huge violins, to surround the mobile-man and out-disturb him. Even the crowd was firmly with them, which only meant that things got jollier and noisier, given that the crowd was already absolutely friendly by then.
At another point, this singer picked out an audience member, fished out his CD and sang “I want your money”, “please buy this CD” (only 10 pounds).
This audience guy was most probably british. He was round and portly, in a deep blue beach shirt wearing sunglasses, sitting with two other companions – one man, and another woman. The three of them were old with significant greying hair, probably were also retired, but together they looked like those rich bankers one sees on television.
He was certainly not overwhelmed or dumb founded with this attention – within three choruses of ‘I want your money’; this banker looking guy joined the singer in a duet.
“I don’t have money,” he sang. “To buy me your CD”.
“Someone, please give me money, for I want his CD”.

blurred image of the audience chap singing

For those of us who had gathered there, this was a moment plucked out of time, as clichéd as it sounds. In recent times, I’ve felt this way at least once before; like some act was unfolding in front of me, spontaneously, without the benefit of invisible puppet masters.
We were having a jolly good time already because of the band, but this random chap, with his amateur – off key at parts – singing, had taken the act to another inspiring level. Definitely worth someone’s 10 pounds. Ofcourse it could entirely be possible that it was a staged marketing event targeted at sentimental types like me, as a friend later suggested. But my gut says it really was something spontaneous.

Months later from now, I’ll probably be still telling people that I once did a cooking class with Claudia Winkleman.

Till now, there have been two kinds of reactions to this statement.

“Who is that?” ( accompanied by a strange facial contortion) “I like cooking, I like eating, but I really don’t watch these cookery shows”.

That was my boss.  Ofcourse, Claudia has done only one  cookery show, mostly she does the BBC, she does dancing shows, she does autographs, she is apparently huge in UK’s television industry. like a celebrity.

The cooking class got an idea when one of our friends walked in star strucked behaving like a general idiot, asking Claudia if he could take a picture with her, and just to  increase the odds that there would be a picture, he asked for a second one.

“Oh, I do television in UK, mostly rubbish,” she said, when we asked her who she was.  Rubbish could be her word. “Oh that because I cook everyday for my children, mostly rubbish”, she said, after she finished making the first dish 20 minutes before the rest of us.

Till I met her, I really didn’t know who this woman was. Actually I didn’t know who she really was – even her last name – even a day after I met her, till I thought I should probably wiki her. It’s no wonder no-one I know, knows anything about her.

But she was funny – like a good comic used her kids, husband and mother for material.

“It depends how you were raised, my mother wasn’t a great cook. I mean, cooking really wasn’t her thing. She would say, ‘you know Claude, just put it in the oven and hope for the best”

“His mother is a great cook, he must be depressed,” about her husband.

“My god, if I didn’t have kids I would shoot myself,” commenting on how noisy kids are around the pool and spoil romantic moments for other couples, who are probably on honeymoon.

The second reaction to my statement has ofcourse been – “YOU cook?” or “You COOK?” or even “YOU COOK?”. “Do you  NOT remember what happened?”

To clarify, I cooked meat. I took pork, beef and fish in my own pretty hands and arranged them in containers, seasoned them, garnished them, and later ate them.  I even have the recipes  for them.

Yesterday rowie and i spoke on the phone. Rowie was at a cake shop in lion kingdom, trying to find that one black forest that would be the least fattening for her ass. And she said, so hows it going. And I said, yaah, OK OK, good good.

I was trying my experiment number 2 on her ( although philosophers say it is the wrong way to go about things)

Expt number 2 is to see what happens to the brain when you refuse to acknowledge it is thinking of that dangerous droopy-smiley icon. Does it stay zipped like that dead man’s heart on that cardiograph, as in does the brain wave stay neutral. Or does it go haywire and agitated – upset that you are getting away with a lie. ( On some days, my brain is totally out of control, its own person, doesnt listen to me, agrees to things, go to places i would normally refuse to do, etc)

Anyway, technically, what one is supposed to do is to tell the brain the truth – yes, putts im aware you are droopy, heres how we can cheer you up – remember that hammock on that beach in Goa and that  potful of honey? No cell phone, no nothing, just you and the sun and the sand and the life that is a breeze. Thats right, keep remembering, and watch the droopy become smiley and a toothy grin. Its called showing your brain who the boss is (it is you).

But in reality, Rowie said, oh yeah? And I said, thats right yeah, so how was your day.  And she said , OK ok good good.  And that was how a nearly lousy day was rescued by a belly laugh and ok ok good good ended up becoming a code for a crappy day.

This really happened. It did.

Btw, current experiment 1 has been to keep changing caller tunes every week and trace the song, which gets maximum sources to call me back. Not going anywhere, that one.

Well, a new country then


By and large, Nepalis like Indians . Many look like us, speak like us, eat like us, mostly they feel a great sense of kinship with us.  One day, on one bus ride from Kathmandu to Pokhara, we had to cross a 100 year old bridge which had crossed its expiry date just the week before. Imagine that – bridges come with expiry dates.  Weirdly, an advertisement for a Nepali life insurance company was painted on the wall at the start of this bridge.
A board at the start of the bridge said as much in Nepali = the bridge is weak, has developed cracks, and only one vehicle can pass at a time.  By now, this bridge had become a traffic bottle neck. On each end of the bridge a bunch of cops would streamline vehicles and allow one vehicle at a time, and what was left unsaid was – travel at your own risk.

At times like this, (and many other times before and later), somebody would stop to bemoan the state of  Nepal and how this had come to pass and how there is no hope for the country and invariably tag India along.  ‘ Both countries, so much corruption, nothing can happen in Nepal, its like India, our leaders are corrupt  and eat up all the public  money’.   And the usual. Unlike Indians though, they actually have genuine fondness for the old monarchy, that was wiped out a decade ago,  a huge conspiracy theory in itself.
Many Nepalis have at some point traveled to India, as tourists, for a job or as  student s and are very familiar with our language, our film stars, our movies and culture.                     One  night at a cafe, the cook stopped by our table to talk about India, his experiences, food, how except for UP and Bihar, Indians are by and large honest etc and let slip that he had tried very hard, but in vain, to date or marry an Indian girl while in India. But there were some very serious issues. One was the complete lack of interest on behalf of Indian girls towards Nepali men. Many Indian guys had scored with Nepali women, but it was fairly difficult to get Indian girls interested in Nepali men, he said. The other objections were less  fundamental but more dramatic. Indian women get to keep the title to their property, post marriage as well which he said was unfair – after marriage, both partners should get equal rights to the property.  ( I have no idea if that is true). Also Indian women, he said, did not contribute to the income of the house.  Nepali women did all the house work and had a day job to earn additional income. Indian women just expected too much, he said.  ‘They look at the bank balance before they look at the guy”.  He probably told us all of this because we were Indian women, apparently traveling alone, although we had made it amply clear there was a very huge group waiting for us back at the hotel.

Anyhow his monologue continued and then for some reason, he began comparing women from all the other countries he had been to. “Indonesian women are very nice, straight forward. If they like a guy, they dont stop to look at other things. True, they are a bit dark, but they are very good of heart”. Here, laughter just came. Needless to say, we did not return here. Although, he was a great cook. The grilled fish, spinach soup, fish soup and the lemon tea we had that night was our first awesome meal of the trip, even if it was a non-Nepali meal. I did not much like the traditional Nepali food. They probably feel the same way about our roties, but the Dhido , even if it is very healthy, takes a lot getting used to.
Food is expensive.  Mother was aghast when I told her that . When she was there, a kilo of ladys finger and brinjal cost less than Nepali Rupee 1, which is almost free for Indians because of the conversion rate. But that was two decades ago. Now, on the tourist circuit, the prices are hedged for a European tourist, counting in Euros.

We barely interacted with Nepali women. In fact, the only Nepali woman we saw who made an impression was on first day on the Indian side of the border. A chap was sitting on the last seat smoking a cigar and a Nepali women took him to task, loudly and boldly. Although it made no difference to the smoker chap, it prompted the wimp of a conductor to put up a token request asking people not to smoke inside the bus.  Our guide book pretty much said the same thing. Nepali women do not hesitate to make a great fuss when they are right, but for various reasons we saw very little evidence of it on the trip.

Most of our interactions were with Nepali men who had ample experience in dealing with tourists. One chap we met would greet us only with a loud , jovial, ‘HI, how are you’ followed with a ‘ had good sleep? Good rest?” – the latter greeting for some reason tickled me to no end.  It is a country which has exploited its tourist potential almost to maximum capacity. People are very sweet and  like any other touristy place, try their best  to rip you off politely and promptly.

But on most days it did not even feel like a foreign country.  They have seen our hindi movies, their buses have our latest songs. One young fellow  we met at Chitwan National Park  was a huge salman fan ( = because salman is  so handsome). Salman is a huge name in nepal, much like how Rajnikant is in japan. Local stores have ‘best of salman khan’ CDs. Dabang probably could have recovered all its money in Nepal alone.

Nepal is excellent for adventure sports. According to my friend, it offers stuff for tourists which almost no other National park in India offers. Chitwan for instance offers jungle walks, and overnight stays in jungles. Paragliding over the Annapurna is a popular thing that tourists do and for that reason alone, I think I could make another trip to Nepal.

We were able to only do  the elephant safari. On the second and the last day at Chitwan, as we were on our way into the jungle on an elephant, a lot of Japanese tourists went crazy with their cameras. Some of them waved to us, and we promptly waved back. I like to think that many Japanese family albums will have our pictures – of our mahout, our 20 year old female elephant Maruti, my friend, me and this French-Portugese engineer tourist, now working in China, who was on a Nepali holiday.

new feelings

I am domesticating. This occurred to me just after a glass – newly washed ,wet with water — slipped and crashed at my feet. This was just after I had decided I must stop drinking out of juice cartons . It was uncool, uncouth and unsafe. Only recently had father emailed about someone dying after having drunk straight out of the carton — many a rat or a lizard has at some point at some Inland Container Depot made a carton its home was the general drift. 

So when the wet slippery glass left my fingers and took less than one tenth of a second to shatter into tiny shards, my first thought was: well, thats new. I have never dropped a glass before. Unlike previous instances of spilling milk, dropping heavier items like telephones, Internet modems, mobile phones and televisions, this time there was no one chastising or calling the pot, a black or kettle or anything – just an odd sort of a ringing silence – the glass many very well have rung the temple bell. 

Yes I love it, getting used to it, even if I am sometimes afraid I could get habituated to this — this silence, the golden hue of it and the ringing peals of it. I feel like a fearless woodpecker building my nest, cluttering it up with pillow cases, breaking glass, making beds, clearing up, paying the help and newspapers, killing cockroaches and even getting my own food, sometimes maybe cooking it. 

Who do you live with, wherever you live, people ask and I shrug and say, oh I don’t think i can do the whole PG thing any more ( but I’m doing the roosting thing, I think) or when young curly office colleague expresses wonder and awe at the death a cockroach, fat, flying and the first at my hands — just a week after pastagirl and I shrieked the house down ( it was my other friend who got blood on her hands for killing that cockroach) it dawns on me, this is domesticating – if that’s even a word. These are the moments when I can actually see time moving – not just a second hand and another after that but time moving like how a particle of matter moves in space. These are the moments when I feel life slipping or changing and thats when I hear someone singing– SO How Does It Feeeeaaal? To be on your own, no direction no, like a complete unknown. But the rolling stone, me, is domesticating, for lack of a better word.

on contradictions

 Traveling is not all that its talked up to be, especially on trips that require one to rough it out on an assignment. I always always have wanted a job with a travel profile, and I have one now. But I regret each time i have an outstation assignment – when I have to get up at unearthly hours to make a quick departure. At those 5am moments, I always promise myself I will immediately reevaluate everything I’m desperately wishing for. One cant be too careful about what one is wishing for and I did desperately wish for a traveling sort of a job.

Even two days on the road, alone, without a bath, indifferent food, lack of decent bathrooms or even a bus driver who insists that there is no stop for the next one hour with a ‘ladies bathroom’ is enough to make one intensely dislike outstation assignments – the truly, the only saving grace is the quality of the assignment (duh).

After a point, most places look pretty much the same. The same kind of trees, the same kind of winding roads, nearl the same sunset, something even the same kind of people, same dialogues.

Sometimes its the hope that something beyond that tollnaka will change that makes us go that extra mile, it is the adventure, yes. People say even that travel broadens one’s horizon – we never return wearing the same shoes we leave in. But who has measured this intangible thing. Its just a series of anecdotes leading to the formation of a theory, a quote. 

Its perhaps just the fatigue now that I want to scream when a trip is round the corner. It feels jaded. Again perhaps its only the people or the lack of them when I travel – then again its not so much the roads we take but who we take them with that broadens the mind. So, maybe traveling in leisure with some friends is all that its talked up to be but then from past experience even this is only until the time I feel cramped in space, style, and thought and yearn to go wild. Grow at my own pace.

 

On travel

Curly from work is only in third year – or would have been in third year if he deigned to attend classes in my city’s landmark college on landmark road (– guess which? )

But Curly decides no, he won’t go to study economics and the WTO but join a newspaper and write — which seems all right, and behooves a responsible kid but on the other hand, if one has a lifetime to work, must one start early?

After all it is only once in life that one is twenty, must one spend the year working in front of a broken keyboard on a broken chair in a dingy, poorly ventilated office. He has a lifetime to do that.

But then he says, I went to college for two years, did not attend class ( cos no one does, even the teachers), did what other kids do and wasted time splendidly. I’ve been there done that, tell me what else should I be doing if not working, he asks.

And I rack my brains hard enough. I worked too when in college, after lectures unlike Curly who’s younger to me by whole four years, I’m hardly the person to say, don’t work.

But if my college was like that, with assured attendance and an assured degree and no lectures then I might have traveled. Maybe saved enough money and gone to Europe, and the Central Americas. Maybe gone to the North east or the Valley or sailed in the Sunderbans, instead of hankering after all of that now, when even a month’s leave means having to pay for it.

SO I tell young Curly that is what you should do my boy. Travel. Forget college, you unlearn all of it in less than 2 months after one joins the workforce.

And after this sage advice I removed myself to continue reading about Mugabe’s Zimbawe, where Cholera is raging and poor George Bush, who no one wants to talk to, not even his own party people. And I cannot help feeling that the world would have been less dangerous if these two had traveled in their youth.

 

On living

Dee once said not able to live alone was a sign of a ‘high maintenance’ person. That phrase stuck. We were discussing about high and low maintenance people and emotional neediness, clinginess, needing someone to be around when you return from work, in other words — not able to live alone meant  high maintenance emotionally, according to wicked Dee.

So I want to tell Dee, hey I’ve managed to live alone these last two months. It’s all right, even if it is crazy sometimes. But a room mate might be nice.

Learning to live with one-self is tougher than learning to live with some one else.

With oneself, one is left to deal with a whole lot of mess all alone, and not all of it is emotional. In the past two months, I’ve left the gas burner on twice  the first time for seven hours and I was not even home that time.

I thought I’d burnt down the house. We had gone to watch the closing ceremony of the CYG and each time the cell rang, I thought it was the office calling to report a fire in K.

One night I came home and went straight to the bathroom and a big flying evil cockroach leapt out at me. Many nights, I’d get nightmares about lions and tigers chasing me through the woods. Living alone means battling insects and animals on your own. IT means if some nut case broke down your front door in the middle of the night, you’d have to handle it yourself.

Then you’ve got to keep the house clean. You’ve got to pay all the bills on your own — and keep track of the bank account, and see how the money disappears regularly—the heart really bleeds.

It’s almost easier to sort out the emotional aspect. One becomes tougher, independent, you answer to no one else. You’re drunk on freedom. After a while, talking to the walls is even fun.

Its tough to live alone, but it can be done. But I’m arguing for living with company. It’s a chance at joy. It can be exasperating, but there has to be delirious, glorious joy sometimes. I’d recommend to get a friend to move in as  neighbour, but that might not be economically practical. More practical is to get a room mate. The trouble only is when the room mate ends up being unbearable. One’s own mess can be ignored for a while, but someone else’s mess is intolerable, they say.

The question for me is — is it better to be depressingly angry and exasperated with a roommate or inconsolably depressed and suicidal with oneself?

… an oscillator

 I feel i must write some thing now and then, just to keep this thing alive. i can act like there is no time, when it is really mismanagement of time. Earlier time was divided into semesters. At work, it is divided into weekly meetings, though only just. Even the most exciting jobs can get predictable. Excitement can also saturate beings. But i feel im living in phases, with a 90 degree time lag, sometimes maybe 270 degree. This work till that work / plan comes through. i am here till i go there. This, that, here, there are the troughs and the crests and if i make a good graph, they might make an uneven saw tooth formation. I might be an oscillator. It could be a sine wave formation, but a sine is too predictable and i definitely dont want that as an input. 

I can be tangential but this is still about time.

When i was smaller and more malleable, mum often said — study now child, you cannot see time move. Before you know you will be staring down at the question paper.
I have spent many afternoons staring down (or up) at the long hand of the clock, just to prove that i can see the time move, but most of the studying has been done in the ‘eleventh hour’ as father calls it.  I am hoping this eleventh hour will rise to the ocassion this august and september.

I have an exam, but besides that, pasta girl and i are on a secret mission. We have plans to accost a lot of random people, even the ones on the roads, into being our fnew best riends.  I have to basically find new best friends within a fortnight. Pastagirl will be away for more than a month between august and september, another good friend ’72 mm’ (:D)  is leaving the clan to cross the seven seas in mid august. A dear friend akshoo has applied for a transfer out of pune. I am just running out of people i can still call on a saturday night at 11 pm and crib. I will admit that my immediate future looks rather bleak and unfriendly, so i have pressed into action – the eleventh hour plan. 

Which we put into action on saturday, walking down FC road when we spied an interesting looking house, which we thought  was perhaps a theatre group because of a pablo neruda quote outside. Pasta girl wanted to poke around. And when we rang the bell, the lady welcomed us in and it turned out to be the house of four hopefully interesting architects, who are sold on the wadi-type, minimalistic, mediterranian type style of architecture.

And as much as i realise that i might not be able to afford these guys when i build my home, nor can i call new architect friend at 11 pm on a saturday night, my movie plans for saturday evenings are at least taken care of, so said new architect friend – apparently they screen fancy european movies on weekends at the architect house, which has a pretty water body — by the by. And im thinking this is atleast better than a year ago when i would end up working for lack of other options.

Yes, maybe i wont have to pay for my sins jusst yet. p.s : i am so effing tired of this city. I so want to move, but being friendless and clueless in a new city is something i am not up to, at present. I need more time. I want to climb up to the menacing clock, unscrew the glassy cover and tell the long hand to stop moving, and if it doesnt listen to me, physically stop it from moving. Stop long hand stop, it is not yet time. I am still young and i want to be fine.