We checked into the hotel close to midnight after a long drive. The lobby area was heavily decorated for Halloween with a ghost presiding over the front desk. A woman came over in a couple of minutes to check us in. I opened the door and walked into piles of clothing, an unmade bed and strong smells. Apparently the system had not registered the person had extended their stay, marked the room as clean and given it to us. They system also showed there were no other rooms available. The woman continued to smile a big smile at us even as my frustration mounted with time and growing tiredness. She offered no solutions other than repeating that her supervisor was on her way. For a well know hotel chain to commit this kind of faux pas placing customer privacy and safety at risk was already mind boggling but that unrelenting smile on that woman’s face was even more aggravating.
At some point in the next hour that we waited to have the situation resolved, I realized that half of her face was paralyzed giving her a permanent smile. It made me think about the great difficulties she must face everyday in a customer service role with such a handicap where she is unable to convey any expression except the one her face is frozen into. My aggravation over the situation faded as I felt sorry for her unique plight. She was dealing with the same problems as her peers - bad system design, poor workflow management, lack of autonomy to make game time decisions when that’s an essential job function given the diversity of situations humans can bring about, she had this unsolvable problem that could make a bad situation significantly worse.
I had a good mind to file a complaint with the hotel's VP of customer service about the what had transpired. But considering that the only outcome of such a complaint would be some punishment of this poor woman who had no role in causing the trouble I had experienced. That would be the way the hotel would make me whole and bury the sins of their leadership's incompetence. I knew that I definitely did not want that outcome for me or for this woman who God had blessed with an unfading half room smile.
I have traveled alone more in the past few months than I have done in a long time. While the pandemic raged, I also grew older and a less happy traveler. Looking back I am not sure when if ever I was excited for travel. It was theoretical wanderlust with me being reluctant to enjoy the process as much as good traveler must.
When I was a child, my mother would pore over the maps of the different Indian states and propose adventures by train that took us through towns known and unknown, some having historical significance others blessed with nature's bounty. She saw what was possible in a magical dreamscape where the reality of booking tickets at the railway station, packing for the trip, finding places to stay along the way and understanding what modes of transportation to use - simply did not exist.
She made it sound easy and possible. We never made any of these imagined trips - my father was a realist though back then I simply did not see it that way. I only saw the field of dead and abandoned dreams of travel. That must have set the tone for me even before I realized it. That travel is inherently difficult and prone to delivering unpleasant surprises and mostly impossible. The magic got stripped to the bone. When we traveled together for the first time I thought these ghosts from aborted trips past would come to haunt. They gladly did not. I was not the best planner but a few trips later I got into the swing of things. Mistakes were made but none so bad that the trip was ruined.
Traveling alone brings back memories I wish would not come back.
It was a hot afternoon in Grenada and we had wandered from the narrow alleys of the old town over to a small square full of people enjoying their tapas and drinks under the shade of tall trees. We found an empty table and took it promptly. The place was a hive of activity and the thrum of people talking and laughing filled the air. Just about everyone other than us was local. We had wandered into the more mundane part of town, where locals were going on with their lives and were out for lunch on a workday. No one paid any heed to us and that is the sign I look for when scouting for a place to try local food. This was also the afternoon we discovered Tinto de Verano too. It was not listed on the menu and yet all around us people had this lovely looking drink we wanted to try as well.
We asked the waiter to get us what the folks at the table next to us were having. There is something about the hot summer sun, the pace of Spain in that weather and some other intangibles that I can't describe that make this the perfect drink. One is not enough as we were to find out. There are super market brands of the Tinto, each restaurant has its one variant of it, they are all delightful but some are truly standouts. That afternoon in Grenada we had the standout kind. The waiter explained it had more than the standard ingredients one mind find in a recipe. A bit of vermouth was involved among other things. Sometimes perfection can be encapsulated in a moment like that - the balance of all elements to make an afternoon sublimely memorable.
I have by now seen the all of my desi brethren traveling with me. It is about Day Four and as I had predicted we have not exchanged any smiles or pleasantries with each other. A desi woman alone on cruise with her minor daughter is an outrage even by the low Class C standards that no self respecting desi would want to dignify with their acknowledgement. But what is life without the outliers - the desi that falls outside the established cluster - happily there are some of those too. And so it happened that I ran into Dusky with Blue Eyeliner while getting myself a bowl of fruit one afternoon. She made polite small talk as she served herself and we parted ways smiling at each other. We were to meet by the coffee machine the next morning.
The thaw from the previous afternoon had now turned to into an ominous chill. This happens a lot in desi to desi interactions when one party has miscued the other party's "true" class. In this case Dusky with Blue Eyeliner probably had me pegged as something other than the Class C that I really am. With the error of judgement having cleared overnight, she was now embarrassed about having spoken to me earlier. I responded to chill with a half smile so we could both save face in this awkward situation. In our subsequent encounters, Dusky with Blue Eyeliner ignored me like I was a piece of furniture. The world was right once again. She hung out with her family - husband and what looked like in-laws. This was not a clustering and aggregating desi - there are always a few of those. They would end up Class C, if they chose not to improve their social graces. The clustering phenomenon was an interesting one to observe as time passed. Most desi families would in the least have another family that they were joined in the hip to. The party of about seven to ten (including all of their kids) moved en-masse. By day two the ladies may occasionally split with fifty percent of the kids and the men went with the rest of them. They were always together for dinners and shows often dressed in a coordinated theme or style. They made little effort to befriend other desis organized in clusters similar to their own. I saw a few new clusters form on the ship but most were prefab. While a two family cluster was the most common, I saw several larger ones. Typically, these folk were upwardly mobile Class Bs or Class As. No matter what the configuration a cluster was always an island that did not allow outsiders in. Like Dusky with Blue Eyeliner, a few desi families were traveling solo. But unlike Dusky with Blue Eyeliner, some were anxious to be part of a bigger picture. To that end, the phenomenon of aggregation. In this case the seed group was a large one - I would say about five different families. Based on the interactions between them, they did not seem to have the long history and cohesion like the cluster families had. This was a random collection of families that spoke the same native language.
By day three, a lot of the straggler families had piled on to this group until the aggregation was over fifty strong. They were able to commandeer a couple of full rows at the theater during showtime. It was easy to tell who the alpha pair was in the group. Their class and standing increased the profile of the aggregation on the whole. All of the ladies wanted to be close to Prom Queen and emulate her sense of style. Mr Prom Queen was sadly not Alpha Dog in the aggregation. That mantle fell on a gentleman with a rather homely wife. He was leading the charge as far as the men.
The pastel colored buildings, the toasty sun, warm breeze, the smell of conch fritters frying in hot oil, honking cars, colorfully painted taxis, loud music and the languid flow of life around me take me back to the home of my childhood. Traffic is fairly chaotic but we are able to walk through intersections, in and out of the winding alleys back to the main street. Policemen are controlling traffic the good old fashioned way using their arms and a shrill whistle. I tell J this is a little like time travel - I am back to being her age in small town India where I grew up.
I show her trees she has never seen before - coconut, banana, papaya, custard apple, sugarcane, palm and mango. In the courtyard of our home, we had most of these trees - back then they were nothing remarkable; everyone I knew had them in their backyards too. Our neighbors had a gigantic jackfruit tree in addition to everything we had. Their guavas were infinitely sweeter than ours. I did not know that I would feel this huge pang of nostalgia at the sight of a fruit laden mango tree worlds away from the home of my childhood. We managed to sight a bread fruit tree which was new for me too. The last time I tasted bread fruit was on a beach vacation at Goa over fifteen years ago. Even ten years ago, India was already a far cry from what I feel nostalgic for. Every year that I have not been back since then, it moves further and further away from what is imprinted in memory - morphing into something that is impossible to understand unless you have been part of it yourself. Every year that I have not been home, I feel there is less reason to go back - there is nothing left there that will be familiar to me. I would feel like I am visiting a foreign country and may actually feel homeless. Until I go back, I can still imagine an India that does not really exist and continue to indulge my nostalgia of home and homeland. I wonder if that is the reason, I have hesitated to make that long overduetrip.
The islands in the Caribbean were strangely a lot closer to what I have been longing for. Chickens running in around in the yard ( J had never seen a rooster till now and got busy trying to take a picture - she would run into stray goats, donkeys and even horses) , small vegetable patches outside the house, the winding roads up the hills with trucks honking at each other around blind curvesto alert each driver of the other's presence.
Homes have balconies with railings and stairs leading up to them. That would be where you could take a nap on a winter afternoon after a big meal. The smell of the air has traces of everything - the good, bad and the ugly. Flowers I had not seen in forever - all colors of bougainvillea and red oleanders, are blooming everywhere. J was puzzled by my excitement over them and offered to take a pictures of me around my "favorite" flowers. And then there were reminders of reality - the high volume of western tourists everywhere, the harbors packed with yatches, speed boats and ofcourse any number of cruise ships, island souvenir shops overflowing with merchandise Made in China, duty free shops selling every well known brand of jewelery, watches, bags and perfume. Hair braiding ladies at every street corner - the occasional Starbucks, finding it easier to get an American meal than an local one. The best views of the ocean from up in the hills, obscured by ugly and often unfinished construction.
Dinnertime on Day One after a full day of being at sea. J and I have scoped out the potential options for dinner and made our choice. Turns out that desis think alike even if they belong to entirely different classes. When we arrive to be seated, we are handed a pager and asked to hang around in the neighboring bar area for about thirty minutes. So J and I walk over to said bar to find a cluster of Class B desis occupying several couches waiting to be seated just like us.
They give me a withering look of disapproval. The only open spots are at the bar and they follow me with their eyes to see if I will do the unthinkable - sit at the bar with a young child. You can never put anything past the clueless Class C types. I spare them the moral outrage. The rest of the world is scattered around but they have been unable to create a force field specific to their country of origin as the desis have done. We decide to hang around the stairs instead so I have a good view of the crowd and can also hear the pager beep. That is when I first see Entranced Youth (Class A) traipse down the stairs, her permed hair following behind her. She is floating in dream state, her head held so high that it interferes with her line of sight.
I wonder if that is how she carries herself at all times or if this is some cruise ship specific thing that Class A desis do. Class mannerisms can be difficult to grasp if your vantage point is at the bottom of the barrel. Anyway, I observe Entranced Youth with fascination. I figure she is a junior in college. She reminds me of some family I have in NY area (very Class A folk). Like her those kids act like they are the chosen ones who have truly lived and owned the "American Experience" and the rest of their desi peers are not quite in the same league because they never received the"Members Only" memo.
They tend to be the queen bees of their little Class A communities and have the ability to stare through the average population like it were a homogenous transparent object. The parents from what I have seen in my own family, are in considerable awe of these kids and treat them like they were the embodiment of all things America that they aspire to. The expectation from Class C relatives such as myself is to watch and learn from the best and ofcourse be respectful. Sadly, I failed to meet expectation on all counts and my uncle and aunt have not been in touch with me for nearly ten years now. When a Class C is offered a chance to upgrade and they are obtuse enough to pass, there have to be some consequences.
The local accent is overdone just a tad, almost to overcompensate for any stray traces of desiness that may have rubbed off on them from their parents - they tend to worry about stuff like that a lot. Entranced Youth's hair is a halo almost. The outfit a cross between waif and hipster - clearly I am not fashion forward enough to understand the statement she is making there but am able to sense lack of clarity. In my simplistic view, a young girl with a slim figure can choose to show leg or not, bare midriff or not, bare arms or not - in any combination. What we had going on here was a little different. A pair of tiny shorts and dark pantyhose, a diaphanous long sleeved shirt with a collar over a tank top and then the clouds of permed hair and the "natural look" interpreted as no make up. In the time of The Big Bang Theory, where being confused and desi is nearly impossible, Entranced Youth has made it her life's mission to grapple with ethnic, cultural and racial identity.
I look at her and dread J morphing into that thing at twenty. I glance at J sitting on the stairs minding her own business and wonder what if any measures I can take to prevent that from happening. Then I see Mirthless Mom enter the stage. Maybe it has to do with age, but she is no longer able to stage the Queen of Sheeba entrance like her daughter. But the woman is grim - the last time she smiled the house may have caught on fire - what else may explain the permafrost on her face, her hair is a smaller halo and sits stiffly around her head. She makes no eye contact with the world and like Entranced Youth has the floating walk that makes you worry if she may collide into something. I look back at Entranced Youth and notice the non-smile imprinted on her face. Maybe it runs in the family.
You almost need someone to be in charge of clearing the way for these ladies to walk their dramatic walk. Mirthless Mom is with Regular Dad - the standard issue desi male, average height and weight, well aware of his surroundings, present in current space and time, dressed to blend in and not stand out.There is absolutely nothing about Regular Dad that would call attention.You could stare exactly in his direction and completely fail to notice him. There is something to be said for taking being average to the extreme. Maybe the combination of Mirthless Mom and Regular Dad produce one such as Entranced Youth. Maybe there is hope for J yet.
Regular Dad looks up at J and I, does not smile and looks away promptly. Desis I must point out always catch sight other desis in their vicinity. I am guessing I have been correctly classified as a Class C. The pager beeps, we are famished by now and are very ready for dinner. J has been entertaining herself the whole time, chatting with me sometimes but generally happy on her own. She has no idea she was in the presence of Entranced Youth and family.
Very quickly I realized that a cruise ship is a gigantic petri dish in which to observe human nature. The challenge is to find the most interesting subjects and be able to observe them over time. Readers of this blog would be aware that I am fascinated by all things desi being desi myself. A displaced desi that has not had the benefit for frequent visits and therefore continued growth in the home culture, ends up turning into a very odd species of desi ( I will refer to this type as Class C of desis) I am one of those and so is DB. Our kind does not fit anywhere in the desi ecosystem. The second generation desis (referred to as Class A here) assume we are wannabes and treat us with disdain. They tend to have very tight cliques with no room for those unlike themselves. On the other hand, first generation desis (referred to as Class B) who maintain strong connections to home by means of enrollment into the local desi communities, semi-exclusive socialization with other Class Bs, buying homes in desi-fied communities, desi cable television and frequent trips to India, think we are too flaky to be part of their set. There is a long list of qualifications that we do not meet to enter either of these classes that I will not even go into. I have been lucky to run into some odd balls such as DB and myself over the years, but sadly they have been a floating population in my town. While Class C's will gladly welcome any class of desi into their non-existent fold, no upper class desi is remotely interested in our company. I had to only scan my surroundings on the ship to see that we have a lot of Class B and a scattering of Class A and sadly no Class C desis. My estimation was I would spend the trip without the desis on board acknowledging my existence. I would be stared at quite a bit but no small talk would be made. It would be a miracle if someone smiled at me or God forbid actually talked to me. As desis class up, they learn to give desis such as myself a lot "space" to be. We are free to do as we wish without comment or input from the higher class desis. It is their superior way of tolerating an inherently inferior species. Ten years ago, it bothered me, today I have come to terms with my place in the modern desi caste system. There are distinct advantages to being at the bottom of the totem pole, I have come to realize. The view from our room is beautiful. Sunlight pours in all day long, the ocean goes from being cerulean blue to a faded indigo. J sits on the ledge of the window to watch the water sometimes. The waves are deceptively small and tranquil. We enjoy going up to the highest deck to feel the wind almost blow us off our feet. There is so much to explore around the ship, we spend our time getting familiar with where we will be spending the week. There is way too much food all times of day. J is in junk food heaven - she has an eight day pass to eat anything she likes without comment from me. The poolside is the party place almost all times of day. Lot of live music and quite a bit of dancing. It is hard to find a place to sit down because every spot is either taken or strewn with people's belongings. J is not able to enjoy the pool because the salt water bothers her eyes. The captain announces we will be passing Cuba at a certain time - I miss the last part and never find out if and when we did pass it. None of the crew knows anything about it.
From the time we first met , DB has insisted that it would be healthy for us to take a week or so off from each other every year - we had spent ten (me) and fifteen (him) years living alone and could feel claustrophobic if we did not get some alone time after a while.We had wanted for him to transition slowly into my household after marriage - taking six to nine months to complete the process.
In reality, the logistics did not work out as we had wished; the move was much quicker and we were not ready to cope with the challenges that it presented. Surprisingly, J adjusted to him a lot sooner than we expected but the two of us were like Schopenhauer's porcupines. So once the dust had settled, he started to remind me that I needed to take a vacation with J, get away for a bit - enjoy some alone time without him. And finally this Christmas we were able to make it - a Caribbean cruise. A mother-daughter trip is a very special thing - the first time to a new country even more so. J is now old enough that she can fully participate and enjoy the journey. She got really excited helping me pack for the trip - it was what made it real for her. Yet, when DB dropped us off at the airport, I felt a sense of deja vu andsome simmering resentment at him for making me do this alone and not going on vacation as a "family". For years, J and I had traveled everywhere together - that was the only way and it was the extent of our family unit. Other than the wedding ring, nothing seemed to have changed in my life. But J seemed to see the vacation in a very different light. She has fading memories of the time when I was a single parent - so this was like a new adventure for her. By the time our plane landed in Miami my spirits had lifted.
Leaving the port and the city in gathering darkness until the horizon was wiped clean of tall buildings and the bare sky had taken over. One in a group of thousand strangers on a floating vessel in the middle of the ocean. Having the choice to lose access to phone and internet completely was strangely liberating. Anyone who wanted to contact me would now have to wait and I would need to make peace with beingoff the grid as well. And this was only a little after six in the evening - we were to be at sea all day the next day. I realized that I had not had a slice of quiet, unconnected time that long in the last fifteen years. I was not entirely sure how I would fare butdecided to remain as unconnected as possible for the duration of this vacation. I wanted to experience my thoughts flow without interruption.
One of my least favorite things to do is to plan for travel. It was not always this way. As a child, I could spend days going over maps and travel itineraries before a family vacation. Then there was the joy of counting down the days left before we left. After becoming the responsible adult and head of household no less (as I had been for close to ten years now), planning for travel turned stressful and irksome. It took some extremely determined friends to drag me out of the house, force me out of inertia and on a trip. I enjoyed traveling that way because I had nothing to worry about except being physically present.
The Explore feature on Kayak is a wonderful concept and a step in the right direction for one such as myself. In addition to showing me options in destinations for my budget, choice of activities etc, it would be great if I could get hotel availability, suggested itineraries based on my interests - in general a higher degree of aggregation and consolidation. In the ideal world, I would look at my options and select one and magically I would be all set for the trip. This is possibly the next best thing to the idea choosing a vacation destination by throwing a dart on a map while blindfolded.
The idea of bringing a bazar or souk to you couch is a very interesting one. The more interactive and immersive the experience, the better for the customer. Imagine having a virtual reality application that gives someone the feel of walking through a crowded marketplace in an unknown country - even without being able to purchase, that might be worth spending some money to enjoy. This does seem to be an idea with some legs.
As the virtual and real worlds confluence more and more, travel will lose a lot of its charm. If one could experience it all and not have to expend money and energy to get there, it would take more than just visiting a place to get something out of it. Used to be only some parts of a country were popular tourist destinations and the discerning traveler would go elsewhere and have a memorable experience.
With technology where it is today and headed for in the future, finding those pristine, unknown nooks will become more and more difficult. Part of the travel experience has always been coming home to share one's stories. Today's audience is a jaded bunch - people have been there and done that. They know everything there is to know about the place you just visited and have heard about it from several others. The bar is much higher if you wish to thrill and delight them with your travel story.
In his book Falling Of the Map, Pico Iyer writes "When we chose a place to visit, the way a country carries itself and markets itself - the way it knows itself, really - is everything. We flee certain resorts not just because they are touristed but more because they have begun to see themselves through tourists' eyes, to amend themselves to tourists' needs, to carry themselves in capital letters : because in short, they have simplified themselves into their sense of what a foreigner wants."
He goes on to say that Vietnam "still has the bashful charm of a naturally alluring girl stepping out into bright sunlight after years of dark seclusion"
I could not help drawing a parallel between Iyer's examination of what makes a destination more or less attractive to what makes a person more or less interesting to a potential partner. "Touristed" might translate to having had multiple relationships in the process of trying to find "the one". To that end, the longer someone stays in the dating pool, the more "touristed" they become.
The process specially over an extended period of time would likely make the person more amenable to "amend" and "simplify" themselves until there is no "charm" or "allure" left in them. They arrive at that point carrying their need to be a relationship in "capital letters" and in doing so, drive away the more discerning among potential partners. The romantic partner equivalent of an astute traveler like Iyer may not by stopping by to be with them.
Learned about the Shanti spa at San Miguel, Mexico by way of Mexicowoods. India is recreated many different ways all around America - temples, restaurants, grocery stories,ethnic clothes and jewelry stores and more. They always look out of place no matter what their location - walking into desi restaurant in a strip mall where nothing else has the remotest connection to India is always unsettling. So is finding oneself inside what is made to resemble a temple after walking through the doors of an office building.
It takes a while to get oriented though sometimes the setting is little too incongruous for this to happen. Food (possibly the closest connection to home) is re-purposed in strange ways to cater to local tastes. By when you get directions to the place on your GPS unit or Mapquest, there is little left to salvage the "authentic" desi vibe about the whole deal.
The directions to Shanti, the Indian spa in Mexico, makes a desi feel at home right away. Everything about it is approximate and imprecise - you have to follow a set of landmarks to get there. That seems much closer home than I anything I have seen north of the border.
There is an amazing amount of talent on Flickr but this India themed photo-stream caught my eye. Some of the images are familiar from my own Indian experience, others not as much but there is a certain warmth and strength of character about the pictures that are distinctly India. While at Flickr, I wandered across the many places I have either lived or visited in all across India - seeing what strangers had seen of these places, guided by tags they had left behind like so many breadcrumbs for me to find my way around.
The towns photographed in 2007-2008 look nothing like they did twenty or more years ago. The roads and intersections are familiar by name but have been completely redefined by the newer landmarks that now define them. It took me no more than an hour to traverse the course of a couple of decades. I realized that I would be a complete stranger at any place in India that I have not visited within the last five years or more. It is as if the life that I have lived so far, the identity that I call my own is in serious need of recalibration.
A most timely find for this time of year - vacation options for single parents. I have experienced some of the same challenges that this column talks about. Feeling slightly odd to be the solitary single parent family in a "sea of two parent families" or at least bigger families with relatives standing in for the absent parent. If J and I travel somewhere it feels as if we merely teleported ourselves while still sitting on the living room couch. The scenery is new and different but nothing else is - something remains missing from the vacation. Unless we have friends traveling with us, the time off does not have the rejuvenating effect I look for.
I used to wonder if that was just me seeking what I don't have at the cost of not appreciating the many blessings that I do have. I would chide myself for not being able to live in the present and enjoy what the moment has to offer and get frustrated at not being able to quite do so. It is very comforting to see that I am not alone in feeling odd and left out in crowds and that there is niche for people like me who want to travel with their children and make it a trip to fully enjoy and remember. Despite everything, in the end it is true that : Adults who travel alone with kids face some pressures that two-parent families don’t.
Every once in a while, when I feel the tension between the forces of rooting and the desire to wander the world, I find my thoughts turning to maps, geography, history and many ways the planet can be sliced and diced in our imagination to make for bite sized travel destinations.
Here in my little town, with one main street running though its heart, I have lived long enough to know the nondescript stores and restaurants nestled in obscure side roads that branch on both sides like feeble tendrils unable to draw the traffic, bustle or energy of the predominant thoroughfare. When I am in these places, I feel like a traveler without really having traveled.
Reading Seventeen Pebbles by Jane Hirshfield took me back to a time long ago when I loved collecting pebbles whenever I visited a new place. It was my kind of memento. Sometimes leaves, sea shells and twigs would be added to give more definition to my memories.
As I was to find out, pebbles are not so different from one another even I found them a thousand miles apart. Once inside my box of "treasures" I could not tell the places apart. Hirshfield's pebbles unlike mine are as distinctive as they are beautiful.
After Degas
The woman who will soon take a lover shaves her legs in the bath, considering: Would knowing or not knowing that she does this please him more ?
Maple
The lake scarlets the same instant as the maple. Let others try to say this is not passion.
Lemon
The grated lemon rind bitters the oil it steeps in. A wanted flavor. Like the moment in love when one lover knows the other could do anything now wanted, yet does not.
Sentence
The body of a starving horse cannot forget the size it was born to.
I was familiar with Rita Golden Gelmen's name because More Spaghetti, I Say ! used to be J's very favorite book a couple of years ago. Recently I read her book Tales of a Female Nomadwhich is not a children's book. I liked it for a variety of reasons. It is a story about a woman coming out of the relatively secure cocoon of a long marriage unprepared for the solo life.
It is of course a fascinating travelogue written from the point of view of someone who wishes to immerse herself in different cultures, participate in the lives of strangers but not judge them; a journey of self-discovery that was prompted by difficult personal circumstances. As a woman, a single mother and an immigrant I found it easy to relate to all the themes that come across in this book. Needless to say it feeds my unsatiated wanderlust.
She says at the end of chapter three : And while I was in Mexico, I discovered something intriguing. Once I leave the U.S., I am not bound by the rules of my culture. And when I am a foreigner in another country, I am exempt from the local rules. This extraordinary situation means that there are no rules in my life. I am free to live by the standards and ideals and rules I create for myself.
That is exactly how I feel being by myself in a foreign country free from the social constraints my own home and culture would have imposed on me. I am at liberty to reject the mores of my native and domicile cultures and live by rules that might be considered odd by both. It is an exhilarating feeling and well worth the pain that such journeys tend to be.
Janice her two kids, J and I were in DC for the Cherry Blossom Festival. Pathological multi-tasker that I am, I decided to swing by the Indian Embassy to get some passport stuff done while I was in town so the trip would be "productive" and as well as fun. I must have been hallucinating.
We walked the kids from Dupont Circle to the Embassy ignoring their protests. Five or six blocks on a windy morning, the walk was not very fun. Upon arriving there, I found that I was in queue behind sixty people to even drop off the paperwork. The magic window of opportunity would be over in an hour. The woman behind the counter was highly disgruntled and screamed at me when I had the temerity to ask her a question. It seemed her life's purpose was to embarrass the heck out of any customer who so much as dared to walk up to her. Groveling worked a lot better as one old gentleman was proving by example.
I stood there considering my options. We could sit around for the next hour and still miss by a whisker with sixty people ahead of me in the queue. Also, Madame at the counter had taken a very dim view of me even before I had been granted audience with her to review my application. Chances were that she would find something terribly wrong with it and ask me to return with corrections the next day.
It has been four years since I was last in India but that is a poor excuse for being taken by surprise by Madame's MO. She was merely being herself, i.e. a disgruntled government employee vested with powers completely out of proportion to her salary. While returning to Dupont Circle, I thought about how easy it is to get used to a well ordered life even after spending most of my life in India.
It got me thinking about the popular stereotypes about NRIs who return to India and act like they never belonged there. If I were back home, dealing with something like this, would I have felt any different, accepted it as the way things are meant to be and not whined about it. As I recall, whining was allowed - we all did that but we did not expect better or different. To express surprise or righteous indignation would be considered very odd. I think I did a little of both that morning and felt rather silly for doing so.
Yet in a perverse way, for a little while I was home again among well known things grown somewhat unfamiliar with time and distance. It felt like coming out of the wardrobe in the Narnia Chronciles when I stepped out on the street and into America once again. India had disappeared as quickly as it had appeared.
I had a chance to visit the Wright Brothers museum at Kitty Hawk recently - the literal birthplace of aviation. A Bengali compadre who was also visiting took it upon himself to explain to me why I should be overwhelmed at what I saw.
Had it not been for the airplane the modern world would have never happened - we would still be in the Dark Ages. Though he did not mention it, but for the Wright Brothers my forefathers would still be living on rent collected on their vast tracts of farm land in Bangladesh and I might have been completely illiterate and married with a couple of dozen children.
While I understand all that in theory, I found it hard to get excited about the museum itself. It did not inspire wonder and awe like I thought it would. Maybe it is a case of information overload - there was nothing in the museum that could not have been dredged off the web via Google. The artifacts were not antique so there was no real sense of travel in time.
I think what I missed was the intimate, human feel. For a museum about two people, there was very little about them as individuals that did not relate to aviation like personal effects, letters and memorabilia. The focus being aviation, a technology which not easy accessible to the common person, someone like me feels rather lost and wonders when they can head out to Nags Head where the sand and the surf would not challenge them in any way.
J is very patient for someone her age but making her stand in line behind a few hundred people to see the Hope diamond at the Natural History Museum was more than she could take. The guy ahead of us joked that we must all have rocks in our heads to go through this to see another rock.
The last time J and I were standing in a serpentine line like this one was about five years ago when we were at Tirupati for her mundan. Waiting in line becomes second nature when you grow up in India. There are always several hundred sometimes thousands of people ahead of you no matter what you are trying to get done. You learn to patiently await your turn. This is the only way we know to bring the masses into some semblance of order.
I have been out of touch with waiting the last few years. But this wait could not be more different from the one in Tirupati. My visit to there with J was the third in my life. The two other times were memorable and I looked forward to that moment we would get to be in front of the deity. The wait as before had been very worthwhile, there was a sense of exhilaration that I could give J this experience while she was still so young.
Here we were waiting to see the biggest blue diamond in the world with a legend of curse on anyone who possesses it. The experience was a lot like trying to catch a glimpse of a celebrity. When at last we reached our destination, it was a little underwhelming. I felt relieved to get out the door and out of the museum.
I was convinced that I must have rocks in my head to wait close to two hours to see another rock. But that's what that a heady mix of diamonds, kings, Gods and curses reduces ordinary mortals to. J was entirely unimpressed. It took the dinosaurs downstairs to redeem the trip somewhat. We must come back another time. Note to self - When in a museum, do not wander away in the direction of gemstones and the like. Show more consideration for J.