Weverb12 #23 communicate [LISTEN]

Describe a conversation that you had this year. Why was it memorable?

I'm sure I have had many conversations this year that were interesting, engaging and possibly even life or thought altering. And of course, most of them were with The Bride, as she says here (shameless me plug hee). Some were with Chocolate Boy, who has turned out to have been possibly Big Mistake of 2012, because of sigh him not talking to me anymore for no reason I can fathom. Several were with Amma, some with Scoo, and plenty with a random selection of people across the board. But if i were to look back and think of a conversation that I can point to and say this, yes this very conversation changed my life dramatically, it would have to be the one I had with OW, The Bride and S.

S is a friend from the days at Toilet, except he wasn't really a friend. He worked in the same team as I did, our tiny group of ten, and we had a ton of friends in common. But--he later explained this to me--he doesn't socialize with people in his team, so always remained slightly douchebaggy and distant. I ignored him. Then one day in 2010, I ran into him in a bar in CP completely unexpectedly and we made polite conversation. He disappeared again. Then, one day in July I saw something on his Facebook about living in Delhi and asked if he was here. Very enthuly he replied and said let's get a drink, which we did, since 1. I can't say no, 2. I was DESPERATE for friends and 3. Any excuse to drink.

Our hour-long quick drink became three hours and five drinks and so began a lovely friendship involving alcohol and hilarity. The thing I liked most about S was that fact that he had that trait I call Hyderabadi, where anything goes. You want to hang out and I'm having dinner with a friend? Come! That super openminded welcoming attitude doesn't exist in Delhi, and I really appreciated having the security of convivial company when I needed it. He was relaxed and tolerant, and would happily talk about anything, and felt no need to talk exclusively about what interested him, which again is super rare.

Then The Bride came to visit and I drummed up drinking company--after all the girl hadn't had a nice desi out drinking with friends in dive bar scene for so long hee. OW and S both came, and OW displayed some startlingly adolescent behaviour--which should have warned me, but sigh I must always believe the best of people. And we ended up, OW, The Bride, S and I, in my house till 3am, having a long ideological discussion on gender and and identity politics. And throughout that conversation I would find myself opening my mouth to say something, only S would say it instead. Or I would say something and he'd nod frantically and say 'EXACTLY!' And I discovered over the course of that conversation that this man (yes, man, not boy) is a revelation. He is actually everything I would want in a partner--not because we agree, but because we seem to approach things the same way, with the same mindset and attitude; because we both believe in live and let live, and persuasion, not yelling. I cringe as I say this, but he was kinda like the male version of The Bride.

Starting that conversation, I began to see all these sides to him I never knew existed and (you know where this is going...) today he is a very dear friend, and of course the object of my affections. And well, the object of HIS affections is his girlfriend of ten years. Yay MinCat, I sure know how to pick em. Though I should be glad this one is wrong only because of said girlfriend--nothing to do with who he is, which is usually the problem!

The New Year Post

Let's sum up 2011, shall we?

POO.

Yup, I think that covers it.

What? You want details?

Well, I broke up with BBot. The Dragon dumped me. I found the perfect job. I cried myself to sleep for a few months. My parents were a rock. I was desperately lonely. I dated a LOT. I dated a psycho. I learnt a LOT about myself. I hid from the blog for a while, but I made it back.

And now I have friends in Delhi, who call me drunkenly on at 2am New Year's Day to yell WE MISS YOU GET ON A PLANE NOW. And I miss them too, after ten days in Hyderabad (though the two days in Chennai probably helped a LOT).

I think I finally know what I want to do with my life; I have finally made some peace with wanting to have kids; I am surer than I have ever been about the kind of person I want to be with, whether I'm willing to settle, and, most importantly, that I am just fine on my own. I even managed to hang out with BBot twice on this trip.

Gotta say 2011, you ended okay. But fuck you were SUCH a boy. *shudder*

Be nice to me 2012, I kinda need it.

Holy Devlin

Well, it's the Holy weekend as it were, as my dear friend KaraokeBoy explained, it's not happy Easter till Sunday; today is only Holy Saturday. Yesterday was Good Friday, only to me, who spent the day with Katie Melua and Stephanie Plum, and more importantly, Ranger, it was more like Awesome Friday.

I woke up at eleven today, which anyone will tell you is insanely uncharacteristic for me, especially since I went to bed at twelve and woke up once to let the maid in. But, for some reason, I did not want to get out of bed today. I finally did. I squeezed my eyes till they felt less heavy, and I drank some chai and listlessly checked email. Maybe it's delayed jetlag I thought. I scrolled through reader, and talked to a friend about seeing a movie. She declined, so I went and saw it myself. I had lunch in the food court and read Eleven on Top, and giggled to myself hysterically for an hour, before I went in to see the movie and nearly pissed myself laughing.

Then I had a few hours of what the fuck are we doing with our lives with my friend before I headed out to a beeeg gay dance partai. Only, the Poo and Dragon between them, the lazy bums, didn't want to wait till ten thirty when the partai started, so here we are, at eleven thirty, sitting in my living room. And I'm listening to more Katie Melua and writing posts, while Dragon is in her room, chatting with someone, and the Poo is on the divan, reading her book.

Somehow, tonight was a night I could have used a very drunken party, or some serious affirmation. Or both. But ther'es no fun in a reluctant party! So this post is for my friends back home, for KaraokeBoy, and Diepe, and Krum, and DancerBoy, and SingerBoy; for those friends of mine who are always ready to party. I really needed you guys tonight.

Traffic, the talking continues

Responding to The Bride's comment, I realised I might as well write a new post.


Bribes, here is my problem: the point of fines is to punish people for contravening a social contract, and act as a deterrent from making those violations. By this definition, yes it doesn't matter.

I'm letting my objection to violating said social contract stay out of this.

The other thing with fines is, they are a source of income, along with taxes, which many people evade in India. Those fines end up paying for flyovers, repairing potholes, building pavements, buying buses, etc. Granted, with corruption etc possibly half that money reaches its destination, if not less. Again, set aside the problems with corruption and suchlike. To have the kind of infrastructure one wants from a city, to have an MTR, you need the fines to go to the government, because the more that goes in, the more that eventually makes it way to the destination.

That's why I always pay fines.

They went through this period where they were writing down the license numbers of cars who ran traffic lights, parked illegally etc. But of course we were all bothered by this because frankly what's to stop someone from just making up a number or randomly picking numbers to have a quota filled? Camera surveillance is the best option there. But cameras are expensive to install at traffic intersections etc, and don't work for parking violations and so on. They did install a few here and there, but they hit upon the simple yet brilliant solution of giving the cops digital cameras. So one is now treated to the sight of a policeman slowly walking down the street in a measured way, taking a photograph of every car that's violating parking regulations. Some time later said person will receive a complicated legal letter that allows him/her, among other things, the option of compounding the offence* by paying the fine. Hilarious, no? But effective.

They also have them at major intersections with a lot of violations in a particular direction. By them I mean the skinny cop with his trusty digital camera, taking pictures of people running lights, etc. I've often wondered if I could just take a few myself of people driving the wrong way, making illegal u-turns on the flyovers, etc., and submit them. The next step maybe? Perhaps if Chandrababu Naidu was around with his e-obsession.

One thing that worries Appa occasionally is how, if you promptly pay the fine, you seem to get more. Of course they have photographic evidence of the violation, but there are about 5 people committing it at the same time as you, so do they send you the ticket because they know you'll pay? While I agree that if you've committed a violation you should indeed pay, the trouble is that half the time it's extremely difficult to know you're committing one. Many of the major traffic lights in our side of town are off most of the time, with a policeman directing traffic. Often there's one directing even when the light IS on, and if the cop is waving you through to run the light, can they then ticket you for it? There are lots of these weird lights on T-junctions, where the people going along the top of the T shouldn't have to stop, but the light will be red, and if you DO stop a cop will furiously wave you on...so which of those lights are supposed to be obeyed and which aren't?

Etc.

*Yup, compounding. I did a few double takes myself, and though wait they DON'T want me to pay? But BBot explained to me that there's a complicated and clearly archaic nomenclature in place that defines offences are compoundable and non-compoundable, where compoundable offences can be adjudicated by the police inspector/superintendent and can be settled by pootling down to the station and paying your fine. Non-compoundable ones have to go to court.

Traffic. No, really, this is RIDICULOUS!

This morning, driving to work at a more normal hour than my usual 1pm, I found myself stuck in traffic. Insane traffic. I travelled all of half a kilometre in 40 minutes. Really. Mind you, this wasn't technically rush hour, it was past rush hour - 1030am. Granted, it rained and everything falls apart when it rains, but for heaven's sake! All that road widening and we're still stuck in traffic as bad as it was when they were building the flyovers...

Anyway, there I was, sitting in standing traffic, unable to read my book, and cursed with racing the engine since Roxy's new trick is to protest stop and go traffic by dying if left in neutral after about half an hour. Once I finished swearing in six languages, I began to think of solutions.

The first one that came to mind was the good old, odd numbers on M, W, F and evens on T, T, S. anyone on Sunday. That's a little hard to implement, as is anything in Hyderabad, because well who's going to catch the people breaking the rule and fine them and not let them get away with a bribe? These solutions only work in internally panopticonised* worlds, and India is definitely not one of them.

Then I remembered those glorious two days when the call centre cabs were on strike. The roads were empty. I tried desultorily to google information on this, but I couldn't find any (BBot, DiscoDancer, volunteering?) so I'm going to say one third to half of the four wheelers on the roads in Hyderabad are owned by companies who provide transport to the multinationals who have their BPOS in the city, and spend their days transporting copious quantities of call centre workers to and from various points. These guys are hellions, and commit on average one traffic violation every ten minutes. How about if we averaged that to about two an hour and totted up the amount of money the city should be getting in fines, and imposed it as a tax on either the companies who run the cabs, or the ones who use them?

Half of that money could go STRAIGHT into upping the salaries of traffic policemen. That would give them some incentive to not accept bribes. One quarter could go into snipers who shoot tranquilizer darts at every two wheeler that commits a violation. Said driver will wake up bound and gagged somewhere on the outskirts of the city. Ok, ok, I'm kidding. Though I think we could also apply the average violation tax to two wheelers and autos... So, one quarter could go into infrastructure - drains, maintaining the roads, building pavements etc. The rest should go into building an overhead light rail metro.

Eventually, buses should become free, and taxes on other vehicles should be enough to run the public transport system.

Of course, eventually, global warming will end, as will war.

Till such time, I think I'm going to telecommute.

P.S. I forgot, if they banned municipal vehicles and staff on the arterial roads between 6am and 11pm it would help a lot. The pyschokiller garbage trucks are terrible, the street cleaning trucks are terrifying and nothing is scarier than making a turn to have to screech to a halt cos there's a little old lady in a visibility "vest" wielding hr broom.

*I actually think this is fascinating. I alway thought the idea came from Foucault, but I think I might be mistaken. However, I think that this Panopticon has been so neatly internalised in Western society that one would never dream of doing something wrong even if there were no witnesses, because we each have our personal prison supervisor in our heads. This is also why, of course, the honour system works, and cheaters have so much to win.

Home

Tonight I can write the saddest lines... 

Naw. Not even if I tried REALLY hard.

Tonight I realised I'm home. No, really. This city has always pulled me back to it, in some bizarre, cruel, twisted joke (yes yes many adjectives = bad writing I know), only it turned out to be truly life-altering. I don't think I could be the person I was in March 2008 again, and I think that's not a bad thing at all.

I found a home tonight. And rediscovered another one.

The bar we often go to on Friday nights, usually crammed to bursting point with our friends and their friends and their friends, ad nauseum. As a corollary, the people who the bar stand for. I walked in, and sat down; grinned at the bartender and said no, I'm not drinking tonight, I'm driving. I ate my momos and giggled with PK, swung by to say hello to the DJ (my current musical HERO), and it hit me that whenever I walk in, I'm home. It doesn't matter how mad I was before that, how crappy my day/week/month has been, it doesn't matter who's there or who's not - I'm home. I'm lost in the warmth that lingers in your sheets on a cold winter morning. You know, that whiff of perfume from the last time someone slept over, the wrinkles on the sheet and the fantastic shapes in the quilt. It just makes me smile. Something rushes through me and pushes at me, whispering "THIS place".

And then I drove home, to the parental house. I swung by the turns and pulled up on the driveway. I got out of the car, and the breeze brushed past me. The house twinkled at me greyly, and the moon turned the clouds to jewels. The gate creaked open, and after the appropriate wiggle, the door opened. The wind though the house covered me with the jasmine that my mother planted under my window, and over my first dog's grave. I smiled. The feeling rushed through me again and murmured "THIS place".

Yes, indeed, THIS place.