Teatotaller

I like tea. I’m not addicted to it, but I definitely don’t mind a nice cup every now and then. I’m not picky about how it’s made, or what kind of milk is used to make it. I’m okay with whatever amount of sugar is added to it. I don’t even need it hot. I don’t need (or like, to be honest) fancy additions like peppermint or chocolate. I’m not even a big fan of the universally popular “masala chai”. In short, when it comes to tea, I have no specifications.

Well, except one. My tea has to be made by someone else.

It all started on one of my trips home during my university years. My mother, who had strictly forbidden me and my brother from indulging in coffee or tea in our younger years, finally deemed me old enough for the “a cup a day” routine she had been following for years. This was only applicable for the holidays, though, because she didn’t want me to get addicted (like she had) and wanted me to live a relatively caffeine-free life.

It’s a good thing, then, that I adopted my “anyone but me” policy with regard to my preferred tea-maker. (I get the feeling my father has a lot to do with this attitude, because he, too, loves tea and coffee, but refuses to make it himself as much as humanly possible.) It worked perfectly. As long as I was home for the holidays, it became a routine for Mom and me to sit in the afternoon, drinking nice, hot cups of tea (made by her, of course), munching on snacks and chatting about everything under the sun. I had to stop the routine whenever I went back, because if I wanted a cup, I’d have to make it myself, and that, of course, was just out of the question.

Then came a new addition to my family, in the form of a fun, pretty sister-in-law. Who, it just so happens, was a big fan of tea herself. No, not just a big fan of tea, but a big fan of serving tea. It was like she was made for me! Now, I didn’t want to become a slave to liquids, so I never asked for a cup myself, but whenever she did offer, I never had the heart to say no. When my parents came over for a few months to visit, it was like being home all over again. Hot cups of tea in the afternoon, snacks and chit-chat! Fun times.

This rou”tea”ne hasn’t slowed down since it started a few years ago. I’m now at home on holiday, and come 4pm, you’ll find me in the living room, my usual Mum-made cup of tea in hand, gossipping about inane things with my mother (and recently-retired father). It’s tradition, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. For me, tea is no longer just a refreshing, energizing drink to shake off the drowsiness of the afternoon. It symbolizes “family time”. A time to sit down with the people I love and share stories and experiences.

I’m reading Salman Rushdie’s “Midnight’s Children” right now, and in it, he talks about food taking on the characteristics and personality of the person making it. So you get references to guilt-filled chutneys, curries that taste of determination and anxiety-riddled pickles. Along the same lines, I’d say my daily tea is flavoured with generous amounts of fondness and affection. That’s why I don’t make my own tea… because it’s never going to taste as good as when it’s made by someone who loves and cares for me.

Ahoy there!

So, as is probably obvious if you’re reading this, I now have a WordPress account. Yes, I have finally jumped on the WP bandwagon. (Was there ever a WP bandwagon? I don’t know. Let’s assume there was.) Why, you ask? Oh, let me count the reasons. (No, seriously, let me. I love lists.)

1. I haven’t updated my Blogger account in months, and I don’t really feel inspired to go back there and kick-start it. AGAIN. Especially because I know it will go dead again in a few months (or if I’m feeling spectacularly lazy, right after the kick-start post), and there’s only so many times you can resuscitate something before you just have to let it go.
2. I’ve always been fascinated by the WordPress interface, and wanted to give it a whirl.
3. Starting up a new blog when you have tons of other stuff you should be doing is always an irresistible prospect, isn’t it?
4. Whoa, I always thought it was spelt ‘irresistable’. Mind = blown.
5. WordPress endeared me to it by asking me to agree to its “fascinating terms and conditions”. Direct quote.
6. Going back to the old posts on my other blog was making me cringe. Oh, the unnecessary ellipses! I figure now that I’m into my 20s, my style won’t change as drastically, so the most this post is going to get from me when I’m 30 is a slight wince.
7. I’d rather get used to a whole new system than figure out what updates Blogger has made since I last used it back in my previous life.
8. Dude, WordPress lets you “like” things! You know, Facebook style! Who needs well-written, insightful comments when you can register your pleasure with a single click of your mouse? JOY! (If Blogger also has this feature now, don’t tell me.) (Also, I just typed “let’s” instead of “lets”. I need to start blogging again!) (Okay, just spent another 10 minutes figuring out which one was correct, because I totally confused myself there. Sheesh!)
9. Although it does occur to me that I myself do not benefit from this “liking” business unless every blogger I follow jumps ship as well. HMMMM. *plots*
10. Because I don’t like ending my lists on odd numbers. (5 is an exception because it’s wholesome.)

So there. Now that I’ve justified my reasons for jumping ship to WordPress, I shall now embark on the arduous task of letting it gather cobwebs while I not-so-inconspicuously ignore it. Fair winds!

Home Sweet Home

A few days ago, I got my Singapore Permanent Resident card. It’s a funny feeling, having a card that says you’re a permanent resident of a country you’ve only been living in for 4 years. In a silly sort of way, it feels like you’re betraying your home country. Like you’re saying your home country isn’t good enough for you to be a “permanent resident” of. Then again, my passport is still Indian, so I justify to myself that that is the most “permanent” of all things anyway, so it really doesn’t matter that I live elsewhere.

This sort of dual identity leads to funny situations. Like longing for home and Mom’s cooking and Indian TV channels when you’re in Singapore, and then getting jittery when you’re actually back home because you’ve gotten so used to the Singaporean way of life that you can’t really re-adjust to the noise and pollution of India. Your immune system finally goes out of whack, so when you go home and binge on food that would usually not do you any harm, your stomach reacts unfavourably because, as your relatives remind you, “Your body is no longer Indian; you have to remember these things before you go eating and drinking stuff you can’t handle!”. You start converting things to rupees when you shop in Singapore, and do the exact opposite when you’re in India. You complain about the difficulty of owning a car in Singapore, and then complain about the state of public transport in India. You want the best of both worlds, but all you ever do is complain about what you don’t have in either country.

It used to happen all the time in my first few years in Singapore that whenever I said, “I’m going home”, people would immediately thinking I was talking about my India home, when actually I just meant “my room in the hostel”. I guess I was liberal with the word, because most of my Indian batchmates reserved it for India, which was the only thing worthy of being called “home”.

I still don’t know what exactly makes something “home”. Is it where you go at the end of the day to cook your meals and go to bed? Or is it the place you’ve spent most of your life at? What if you shuttled around from place to place, and never really stayed in one place longer than a few years? Is it where you hang up your “home sweet home” banner? Is it only home if if your family lives with you? Do housemates not count? Will you ever be able to spend 18 years of your life in one country and call another home? What does Daughtry mean when he says “I’m going home, to the place where I belong”? Where do I belong?

I live in Singapore and I work for the Singapore Government. I teach Singaporean kids, and I have Singaporean friends. Every morning in school, I sing the national anthem and say the pledge. People ask me why I do it if I’m not a citizen, but I don’t see why not. The concept of “dual citizenship” may not apply to me in theory, but I do believe in it from a practical point of view. I can’t stay in a country and study in it and work for it without actually believing it to be my home. At the same time, I can’t forget the place I grew up in, the country I spent most of my years in (and this will be true until I’m at least 37) and the country that houses my parents.

I don’t know where the future will take me. I might go back to India, I might stay in Singapore. I might even go somewhere else. It doesn’t really matter. You make a place in your heart for every single place you set up camp in, and you treat every single one like home. Because when you’re home, you’re happy, and isn’t the ultimate goal in life to be happy wherever you go?

Home really is where the heart is. There’s just a little piece of my heart in every place I’ve lived.

Aal Izz (Predictably) Well!

I just realized it’s been AGES since I last did a review for a movie here on this blog, and having just come fresh off a viewing of ‘3 Idiots‘ in the theatre, I guess there’s no better time than this to get cracking. Usual spoiler warnings apply!

• Aamir Khan once again tries to send across the message of revolutionizing the education system in our country. Whether or not it works in real life, one has to applaud him for the effort, at the very least.
• The three idiots are good, and their chemistry is believable, but the job could have been done with a younger cast.
• “Aal Izz Well” sounds stupid at first, with the ridiculous accent and the spelling and the over-usage of it in the trailers (I get that each movie has a “catch song”, but there’s really a fine line between catchy and annoying), but in context, it’s actually pretty hilarious. The lyrics to the song are super-funny as well.
• Only Boman Irani could play a caricatural role – his Viru Sahastrabuddhe, fondly referred to as “Virus” by his students, speaks with a lisp, wears his pants too high, imitates Einstein’s hairstyle, takes 7.5 minute naps (in which he gets mundane work done for him, like shaving) and generally terrorizes his students – and make it genuine. A+!
• Not everyone has that talent, unfortunately. Pia’s fiance is hopelessly exaggerated, and Chatur “Silencer” Ramalingam comes close to being annoying, but a few zingers here and there save him from Suhas’s fate.
• Kareena Kapoor does a decent job as Pia. Nothing earth-shattering (a la “Jab We Met”), but nothing to complain about either.
• Madhavan’s glory days are gone, methinks, at least looks-wise, and I don’t get the point of making him a Qureshi, when he so obviously doesn’t look it. Sharman Joshi is a lot more pleasing to the eye, but I could have been spared the torture of seeing both of them in nothing but underwear. *shudders*
• “Millimeter” is criminally underused, but both the actors who play him (young and old) get a solid thumbs-up. Refreshing, funny and completely natural.
• The setting of all of Raju’s home scenes in black-and-white, with sad ’50s music playing in the background, is truly inspired. At times, I felt inclined to be appalled at the mocking of a truly serious situation, but I couldn’t help laughing either.
• I would have been fine with Rancho/Chhote being only a school teacher (there’s a message there about money not being the only/absolute measure of success), but the Phunsukh Wangdu ending is icing on the cake because of its sheer brilliance.
• Some of the jokes fall flat because they’ve been circulating the internet for ages, but every now and then, there’s a comedy gem to mask the not-so-funny stuff. There were several bits that had me howling with laughter, and that’s always a good thing.
• There are the usual Bollywood cliches that could’ve been avoided – the now obligatory kiss between the leads (see what you’ve started, Emraan Hashmi?!) and the almost-wedding scenario are just two examples. The movie also toes the line with the melodramatic pregnancy plot, but I guess it was there to prove a point, so we can ignore it. The predictability factor is high, though, with very few “twists” that are genuinely surprising or unexpected. (P. Wangdu was a happy exception, at least for me.)
• The borrowing of material from “Five Point Someone” … that’s where things get kinda so-so for me. I think the film would’ve worked fine with a normal script, but the insertion of random events from the book make it a bumpy ride. Emotional rollercoasters are fine, but this one seemed a little too all over the place for me.
• Kudos to the team, however, for not resorting to European locations for beautiful scenery. The Ladakh and Simla parts were particularly gorgeous, and it was nice to see them actually fit into the plot.
• I feel justified in making a comparison to “Dil Chahta Hai”, considering the movie itself invites it, what with the similar set-up of two friends searching/waiting for the third in the present, and the rest of the story being told in flashbacks. I’m afraid DCH has spoilt all of us as far as friendship-of-3-guys scenarios go. Those guys had their flaws, but their friendship seemed natural and effortless. That reunion scene in the hospital, where Akash and Sid make-up and hug each other … that sense of relief and closure and that level of emotion is never reached in “3 Idiots”.

All said and done, it was entertaining and it sent across a good message. I’d definitely recommend at least a one-time watch, particularly if you’re a fan of college comedies. Just don’t go in expecting JWM or DCH, and you should be come out satisfied.

Automan, Automan, friendly neighbourhood Automan!

Dear Automan,

Today is a special day. I wouldn’t have remembered at all, but my grandmother reminded me. Indirectly, of course, but it was her switching on the TV and setting it to Sun TV that directed my attention to the loud advertisement for “Padaiyappa” in the first place. One of Rajni Kanth’s most famous movies to celebrate his whateverth birthday. And as I was rolling my eyes at the unreasonable love people of the South seem to have for him (let’s ignore my similarly irrational love for SRK here, shall we?), I was reminded instantly of you.

You, and your love for ‘The King’, as you called him. I remember when you went to watch the first day, first show of “Baba” when it was released, at an insane 5 or 6 in the morning. You picked us up for school that morning, so incredibly excited that you had watched your idol in action after such a long time. You wouldn’t stop making the \m/ sign for AGES. I remember rolling my eyes then, too.

I think I was too young back then to appreciate your presence in my life, but now that I’m back in the same town 6 and a half years after leaving it, I see things a lot more clearly. Back then, you were just the man who picked me (and several other girls) up for school every morning and dropped us back every evening, nothing more. Now, thinking about it, you were so much more.

You were the man who waited patiently every evening as I sat in the library after school, picking books to take back home with me. You were the man who agreed to take me on the second trip home, even though it would be out of the way then, just because I needed a little more time to finish the chapter of the Harry Potter book I had started and was too engrossed in to put down and go home. You were the man who used to entertain us with funny stories on the way to and back from school, the man whose auto was always full of laughing girls. You made sure I got my preferred seat in the auto when I reached the right age (‘seniority’, we called it), and that one day when I fell down and injured myself on the grounds after school, you took extra care to make sure I was okay and got home safe.

You even gave me a nickname that caught on so quickly, I was called nothing but that in school for the next five years. Of course, you didn’t mean for it to be a nickname, but the funny way you pronounced my name, combined with the fact that you always added “ma” to our names out of respect, even though we were less than half your age, made sure of it anyway. I bet the girls at my school remember me by that name even now, even if they don’t remember how exactly it originated.

I don’t exactly miss my school life, but I can’t deny that some of my best school years were spent here in this town. And you were a big part of them, whether or not you realized it.

I don’t know where you are now or what you’re doing. You might have won the lottery, for all I know, and gone away to live peacefully in a big mansion on the outskirts of the city. And yet, I can’t help looking out the window of the car whenever I’m passing by the school, just to check whether you’re among the many automen waiting in line to pick a new bunch of students up and drop them off home. I haven’t caught sight of you so far, but I hope that if I ever do, you’ll remember me as fondly as I remember you.

Happy birthday, Automan. I don’t know how old you turn today. For that matter, I don’t even remember your name – you will always be “Automan” to me. But wherever you are, and whatever you’re doing, I hope you’re happy. And I hope you’re still as big a fan of Rajni Kanth as you were back then.

Nostalgically,
Me.

Onward!

I’ve been thinking about what to write in this post ever since I published the last one – that makes it about 5 weeks now, wow – because I’ve been at an utter loss as to how exactly (if at all) I should celebrate my 100th post on this blog. On one hand, I can say “I wrote a HUNDRED posts on my blog” with much pride and joy. On the other, I’d have to complete that sentence with “… and it only took me four and a half years to get there”, which is slightly embarrassing, and proof of the laziness I try so hard to hide otherwise.

But like it often happens, I only grew more confused the more I thought about it. Which is why it is so amusing that the idea for what to write in this post came to me today as I was in the bathroom (all great ideas originate there, just ask Archimedes) in a single word.

Onward.

The word holds significance to me on two levels. It reminds me, first and foremost, of the motto of the school I have been working in these past four months. It never really meant much as long as I was working there, but now that I’ve left, poised on the brink of what can be called the actual start of my working career (training to become a proper teacher), it resounds with me much more. I joined the profession not knowing if this was indeed my calling. I still don’t know, but when a bunch of students from one of the classes I handled for the few months I was in the school came up to me on the last day and hand-delivered a big banner filled with photos of themselves (apparently so I wouldn’t forget them) and lots of post-it notes thanking me for being their teacher and asking me to come back to the school next year, I figured I was doing a good enough job to give it a try. A real, proper shot. My first ever stint as a teacher might not have given me much by way of pedagogy or teaching tactics, but it did give me the motivation to go forward in this line of work, and I owe that to the school. Onward, indeed.

On another level, the word shows me where I need to go now that I’ve reached the first (significant) landmark in terms of this blog and writing. I might often get lazy, and might “give up” on the blog with the frequently used excuse of not having the time, or (worse) not having things to write about, but it is always on my mind, and some day or the other, I WILL come back to it to pour my heart out. This blog grows with me, and matures as I do, literally changing in front of my eyes. (I cringe when I look at my older posts … I can’t believe I used to write like that! I often have to curb the instinct to go back and edit all of them to suit my tastes now.) As I move forever onward, so does this little corner of the web.

This post is therefore dedicated to two sets of people. One, my students at the school, for giving me a real, honest shot at the job I’ve chosen, and two, the wonderful people who read this blog religiously and take it upon themselves to constantly poke and prod me when I neglect it for long periods of time. You know who you are. I couldn’t ask for a better audience.

Happy 100th post, blog. Onward!

Morning, sunshine!

I’ve never been an early bird. Like, NEVER. Even when I was a kid, and I was the most obedient thing on the planet, waking up early was the one thing no one could get me to do regularly. I still remember the times my father used to yank me out of bed and throw me straight into the bathroom in an effort to get me to wake up and finish my morning duties in time for school. I even remember that one time my parents tried waking me numerous times to no avail, before giving up and realizing they needed to teach me a lesson. I didn’t go to school that day because I woke up at 12 in the afternoon. It was only after a lot of pleading and crying that my parents agreed to write me a leave letter that didn’t say I had missed class because I woke up late. Ah, good times.

And then university life came along, and what a blessing that turned out to be. No more waking up early every morning unless I had a class. Even then, my friends were around to give me missed calls, or in more desperate cases, bang my door down until I woke up. (Oh, they can tell many, many stories about trying to wake me up!) Life was blissful, and I never saw a single sunrise for the four years that I spent in university. (Unless, of course, I was staying up late, which is another thing altogether.)

And then university life was over, and it was time to get a job. I happily applied to become a teacher, and got in, not realizing what exactly was in store for me. I knew schools started early, but I wasn’t quite aware of just how early “early” really was, until I started working proper. I woke up extra-early the first day, but then as time wore on, it hit me that “extra-early” was going to have to become “normal” for me very soon.

And now, here I am. I’ve been working for four months now, and every day, I wake up at unearthly hours to get ready and travel to school. I bathe and dress in the dark, because the sun has usually not yet risen and I don’t want to wake my roommate up. The girl who used to sleep at 2 every night morning, has been reduced to going to bed at 10.30 every night (oh, the horror!) in order to get enough sleep to wake up on time in the morning.

Since the academic year is now drawing to a close, and school has officially closed down, the teachers get to come slightly later than usual these days. A few days ago, as I was getting ready to leave the house, I looked out the window and saw the most gorgeous view (I live on the 12th floor, so the view is good) I have seen in quite a while. The sky was a beautiful blue, tinged with pink and purple, and I could literally see the rays of the sun (distinct, separate bands) spreading out over a vast expanse. It was the kind of thing children draw when they’re asked to depict a sunrise, except it was real and absolutely breathtaking. I tried to take a picture, but my camera batteries chose that exact time to die on me. I resorted to my phone as a last attempt, but a picture taken on a phone can never do the real thing justice, can it?

I woke up at around the same time for the next few days, camera batteries charged, in order to catch a repeat telecast, but luck was not on my side. I guess the sun rose earlier than usual that day, or for once, the sky was clear enough of rain clouds to be able to actually see the sunrise, because it was never quite the same after that. I still hope to one day catch that amazing spectacle, but I’m not sure when that day will be.

As I ponder my ill-fate, however, I realize this: I miss the freakin’ sunrise every morning because I get up and leave for work way too early to catch it. Whoever thought THAT day would come, huh?