Experiences

It was a pissy, rainy, cold, and gloomy weekend. Everything was gray and wet. The sun didn't even make an effort to come out of the clouds. Breath condensed. Just the kind of weather that depresses M. It made me want to burst into tears as well. The rain ruined my plan of going to the Chicago Botanic Garden. I went to the mall instead. Northbrook mall is a fairly large, upmarket mall just about 1.5 miles from the hotel. Very unlike its namesake in Peoria. Anyhoo, the plan was to stay AWAY from the shops and watch a movie at the amc attached to the mall. Both plans went quite awry. Well, although I stopped before the "Date Night" poster (Steve Carell, Tina Fey), I chose to watch "Back Up Plan" instead. I like J Lo, so shoot me. I should've read the reviews, but I didn't, and put my blind faith in Good Movie Fairies. Alas, they didn't come through for me this time. The opening animation as the credits rolled should've been enough...

It is your average conference room. Long oval table. Profusion of gray upholstered chairs. Gray carpet. Gray everything. I am sitting on one of the long sides of the table, facing a gentleman across. He is a study in brown -- shaggy sandy hair, brown shirt, brown horn rimmed glasses. He is not the only one I invited for the meeting. The other gentleman is late. Or MIA. We don't know. We had decided to start the meeting without him because we don't know whether he is going to make it. Oh he does, although it is more of an entry. He is a tall, lanky gentleman with Spanish good looks. He stops at the entrance and announces, "I will sit by the lady!" And walks to my side of the table, pulls up a chair next to me and sits down, even as his colleague is going, "Of course! You must! Heh heh!" The man next to me shrugs and says in heavily accented English, "You know - to help her," and turns and flashes his pearly whites at me. (He is one of ...

Finally got a laptop, cube, network access, and e-mail ID at office. I love the standardization in this country - it is as if I have never been away. I feel like a plug in component, ready to play. They use Dell laptops, Lotus Notes, and a cafeteria that works on exactly the same principles as Cat. Only the office building is nightmarish. It is spread out on the three limbs of a quadrangle. In the middle is the parking lot. All buildings are interconnected with walkways, staircases, and corridors. They are all strangely named as 53e and 64w. They don't use elevators in this office - they walk. Everybody must be putting in at least 2 - 3 miles of walking everyday. So here're the directions to the cafeteria from my cube: 1. Start at cube 2. Walk straight along an indistinguishable corridor for 3 mts 3. Turn right 4. Meander until you find a staircase 5. Climb down to 42 W 6. Walk left for 2 mts along another indistinguishable corridor until you find the wal...

Retired Bank officer Ramasubramaniam sat at his table near the window overlooking the courtyard of his building complex, rolling the shells in his hand thoughtfully. He looked outside with unseeing eyes, his brows furrowed. The unseasonably warm Sunday afternoon caused sweat to bead on his forehead, but he seemed oblivious to it. His lips moved silently in a chant. The air hung heavily around him, oppressive. He thought that he could feel a menace in it. He was worried. Not in the familiar, prosaic, petty way that a middle class man with a bank job and two kids worried, but in an inexplicably bigger, deeper way. He looked back at the shells in his hand and reluctantly arranged them for another reading. He came from a family of astrologers, experts who mixed the science with an ancient knowledge. As an educated man and rationalist, Ramasubramaniam had tried to deny his lineage, his unfortunate gift of natural intuition, but its force had been too strong. He usually did his re...

“Madam, you are not eating?” Bhuvana looked up from her book. It was the man sitting across. He was big—barrel-chested, heavy shouldered, and strong. His dark pitted and scarred face sported a bushy mustache. His hair was closely cropped. He was wearing a white shirt whose first two buttons were undone to reveal a bushy chest. There was gold all over him—thick gold chain with a tiger-claw pendent, a thick rope-like gold bracelet and an enormous ring on his left ring finger. Bhuvana smiled slightly. “No,” she answered shortly and tried getting back to her book. “You will get nothing past Chenagalpet,” he continued. The train rattled on through what appeared to be pitch dark and desolate landscape, endorsing his words. “It’s ok, I’m not hungry,” she replied. “Thank you,” she added as an after thought. The man and his wife exchanged glances. She was a thickset woman in an orange saree. Faint yellow of the turmeric she must’ve applied in the morning still clung to her ebony chee...

I don’t remember when it got dark that evening. The coconut palms lining the beach were silhouetted against a pink sky first and then pitch darkness, punctuated by dim lights flickering here and there. Our Beach Villa was definitely not on the beach. It was in a narrow lane up a hill away from the beach. We drove past the deceptively cheerful white picket gate down an all-too-short drive in front of a squat two-storied bungalow. We were greeted by a man in a T-shirt and shorts, who turned out to be our ethically-challenged caretaker for the next two days with a curious staccato way of speaking. We deciphered two things eventually from him--we were the only guests at the villa for the weekend and there was no dinner. While spreading ourselves all over the villa presented no problem, food was a definite problem. We intrepid city slickers set out to find food. To our chagrin, there was no food in Kashid and no food in Nandgaon, the next village. We found a kitschy bar complete wit...