You never believe it’ll happen to you until it does.

Growing up, I never thought I’d be one of those girls. You know, with parents that wait up for them, and don’t let them out. With parents who make snide remarks that consistently undermine them. You know, with parents who don’t let them go out with their friends, parents who gently and persistently erode their lives until they don’t know if they're living in reality or a soap opera. One of those girls who’s always lying to her parents about where she is, who she’s with. One of those girls that will make her friends cousin pretend to be someone he isn’t so that her father will be a normal human being.

But apparently, I am one of those girls. “Oh! You’re going out carousing again” “Ha ha ha you’ll be up all night and lazy lie abed you’re going to sleep till 8.” Carousing – do you even know what that word means Amma? Do you? Because if that’s what you think you raised your daughter to do, then well you might as well a madam in a brothel no? And lazy lie abed? When is the last time a twenty-eight year old woke up at 730 because you would want her not – not because she slept early. Not because she had to be at work. Not because of anything. Except the fact that it makes a difference to YOU. You who can’t appreciate one damn thing about her. You who spend all you energy and time and insinuation telling her she’s not good enough, she’s failed. You who are hypocritical enough to say, be whoever you want to be, just the whoever we want you to be.

And me? I’m lying down taking the kind of behavior I’d be furious of my friends put up with, my mother and father would be furious of my friends put up with, my mother and father would give their own friends hell for for inflicting on their children. Can I support myself? Yes. Do I have savings? Yes. Do I have to live in your house? No. Do I have to live by your rules? No. Do I choose to? Yes. Why? Because, whatever it is, I am the child that is HERE. I may not ever have done anything the way you wanted, I might be the eternal disappointment, and if I’m not you sure do a helluva good job convincing me otherwise, but I’m HERE. I’m HERE. Under your roof. You can SEE every drink I have, every friend I see. You know what time I wake up. No, I'm not doing you any favours. But hey guess what, neither are you.

But because it’s not in your language, you cannot see the work I do. You cannot see the value I can bring to lives. No, not just in terms of my work. You cannot see the people who are GLAD that I’m their lives, the people who say I DON’T CARE HOW FARFETCHED IT IS, YOU ARE FUCKING AWESOME YOU WILL DO IT SO WELL. And when you are forced to see them, you can dismiss them because they’re your stupid child’s stupid friends. And she really did fuck up with one friend so of course she has no judgment.

Why do I care? I don’t know. Maybe it’s because you always told me I could do anything I could be anyone. That there are no rules about how someone should be or should act. That if I fulfill my responsibilities to other people, what I do otherwise is all mine. That being social is GOOD. That having conversations and interactions is GOOD. That I'm actually BEING a responsible contributing adult. Maybe you need to have a failure child. Maybe you need to see what it's like to have that.

I just wish I could turn it off. Like I have so blithely told people in the past, parents are your past. However much you love them, they are your past. You are your own future. But when it's you, your parents, the people whom you think gave you that feeling that you are superwoman you can do anything...it's not that easy to walk away. And god KNOWS I have tried. Emails. Conversations. Being the adult. Adapting to them. Now I'm done. You're the grown ups, right? Especially if I'm the fuckedup child.

Sometimes I just want to be the kid you know. That one. The one they love. The one they believe in. The one that they support.

Not the one they always question. Not the one they always doubt. Not the one who's always defending herself at the age of twenty-eight for doing things her older sister did at the age of FIFTEEN. The one whose presence is acknowledged and appreciated. The one who gets an "Aw you woke up early to spend time with me" not a "Good afternoon its 8am you lazy bum."

But I think I have FINALLY accepted that I'll never be that child. That child already exists. They don't need another one. Thank god I have a decent relationship with that child who can do no wrong, despite all the history.  I'll never be good enough. Ah what a cliche. Now to grow a pair and accept it.

So you know what Amma and Appa? I love you. I respect you. I drive kilometers every week to spend time with you. I lose hours of sleep every day to conform to how you think I should be. And you cannot even begin to acknowledge it. Well now, you're getting her. That rebellious fractious obnoxious child. That one who doesn't care what you say. That one who does what she wants and parties like a crazy person. That one who wakes up at 3pm and makes unreasonable demands. Cos fuck, if I'm paying the price I might as well enjoy the product no?

I'm done being a grown up only to be treated like a child. Let's see how you like actually getting what you think you've got.

Rereading the old blog

A lot. Don't ask. I find all these interesting things I want to return to, 6 years later. Y'all might remember the thirteen post I put up a while ago. I've tried to write those posts often, but well, hasn't happened. But the rereading at least pushed me to think about these things again!

So, thirteen songs against which I had no defences, back in 2005.

Thirteen songs I have no defences against. When I hear them I have no hope of not being whipped across the temporal-spatial continuum. For future ref, none of these lists is comprehensive or static. Just the first 13 in each category.

1. Always – Bon Jovi. I associate it with a time in my life and the people who populated it, and it yanks me back there with a physical painful jerk. Yeah now it makes me snigger. And exaggeratedly sing along, with actions. 
2. Trouble – Coldplay. I could be walking on the road in the blazing noon sun, but in my head I’m in a cold, dark, and empty place of peace. Now it feels more like sorrow than peace.
3. Lightning Crashes – Live. I’m sitting on the floor of the lil room in Misha’s house, its dark and Chica is playing the guitar over the noise of the cooler. You know, I don't think I've heard it in forever. Maybe cos Chica, who played it, is gone and wants no part of my life, and OOF, who sang it is gone and I want no part of his life. It's a nice enough song though...
4. Love me for a Reason – Boyzone. [Stop sniggering you lot! Like Mr. Sumner sez, don’t judge me, you could be me in another life, another set of circumstances.] I’m in the backseat of the car, being driven home from French class, just going round the Public Gardens roundabout. It’s dark and the a/c is on cold. This memory seems to have been completely wiped. Thought I guess I should play it first eh. 
5. Every Rose has its Thorn – Poison. In Scoo’s altima, cruising down the 5 in the carpool lane and belting out the lyrics at 90mph. Yup, still got this one. I guess family stays forever eh.
6. Pal – KK. On the steps of the shops opposite Mata Gulab Devi College Girls’ Hostel, like a buncha shady characters, Ships in her orange white and black shawl, me in my black shawl, on a Delhi November evening. Ahhh released this one too. In fact I find the song a bit whiny these days.
7. Horse with no Name – America. On the floor of Aleya’s drawing room, nicely tipsy, watching Debayan and Chica do their synchronized head-bob with tongues sticking out. This one also stays...
8. Jhanjariya – I have NO clue. This one time my cousin Ajay visited and proceeded to launch into it when someone demanded a fast number. Also erased, maybe cos said cousin doth not inspire the fondest feelings these days...
9. Baar Baar dekho – Rafi (?). Waltzing round the living room – aged about 9 I think – with my sister and my cousin, playing the “guitar” on badminton rackets. Nope don't have this anymore either.
10. Hero – Enrique Iglesias. Crooning along with Adit while trying to control hysterical giggles. This one stays.
11. Yaron – KK. At Bhongir. Chillin. Ohhh yeah this one's gone too. Woo.
12. Cotton-eyed Joe – Who knows??? Standing in the door of my sister’s bedroom in Marredpally, and watching my adorable 1 and a half year old (?) nieces boogie. Hee. Now I imagine Her Ladyship of Wogglesworth boogie-ing to it.
13. Twist and Shout – The Beatles. Room in HMI guest house in Manali, asking my sister and cousin [who is wearing a green jacket, you remember tad?] wot on EARTH that guy was saying. Got this one too.

I toyed with writing a list of songs that move me now, but yeah it ain't the same. Though Angel by DMB makes me purr cos (puke buckets ready ladies), it's my BBot's ringtone. i.e. what plays when he calls me ;)

Grateful

Last night, and this morning, I sat next to BBot and watched him nearly rip his hair out in sheer frustration and boredom, because he was "on a call" with self-important idiots in the US, had nothing to say, has nothing to gain from listening, and yet had to spend hours glued to the phone. I said, "Hah, welcome to my life in corporate whoredom." At that moment I realized that I am now free. And whatever the worries that plague me right now about the choices I have made, or the viability of the path I have chosen, or my own ability to be different and stand by never going back to the Brothel, or any equivalent, I know that I made the right choice.

Snail mail

Recently I received a much abused post card whose ink had mostly been washed off by I hope the monsoon rains. It was from Broom, and was a part of one of her month resolutions to mail a postcard every day.

While cleaning out the endless crannies in my room. I found a huge stack of postcards I bought on various trips, mostly to Europe, in the vain hope that I would gaze upon them fondly when on my couch I lie in vacant or in pensive mood. Hah. Fat chance. Forgot they blooming exist!

So, anyone wants a postcard in the mail? Subjects are:

1. Flamenco
2. Spain (Salamanca, Valencia, and random posters of bullfights and flamenco peformances, and two demanding equal rights and the right to smoke in the workplace.)
3. The Beatles
4. One funny one about the characteristics of people in the EU
5. Prints of various Turner, Goya and obscure impressionist paintings
6. Print of Blake's "Newton"

If you want one, email me with postal address and preference, if any.

P.S. Editing to add something of which Mungi's comment reminded me. My grandmother has always sent us inlands, I have one for almost every week I was in college. She even used to send aerograms to my sister in the oosa. Now she writes em out on bits of paper and resident grandchild emails it. However, she caused no small sensation on the small island of Bar Harbor when the Poo was a recipient of a REAL letter from a REAL person with a REAL intention.

OCD

Everyone has their slight tinge of OCD, right? Whether it's someone wanting everything done their way, or needing minions all the time, or not being able to step on cracks or washing hands and never eating food that's fallen down...er... you get my drift. This evening, as I refolded all the clothes the maid had folded, including the towels, whose only crime was that they were inside out as it were, and I could see the label tucked into the hem, I thought I should make a list of mine.

OCD

1. Folding things just right. Shirts and top half things in thirds, evenly, so that they are as small as possible, and then doubled or trebled depending on length. Pants folded with the butt on the outside and the crotch pulled out as far as possible, and then reshaped to fit regular shape. It takes me about 10 minutes to fold a salwar, and I'm usually scared of patialas. Square/rectangular things with corners and edges matching up perfectly, and if they're warped, then the outside must not show anything uneven!
2. Getting every last faint feeling of dirt or oil off the vessels on the outside and bottom as well as the inside. 
3. Putting off lights and fans and switches when I'm not using them. OR someone else has temporarily left the room.
4. Noting down page numbers of books left open facedown, and then closing them with a muttered curse for person who left them so.
5. On a related note, smoothing out all dog-ears in a book before I read it.
6. Needing everything in a system. Even if I think up the system after 95% of chaos has been included, I will spend hours fixing it and then halfway through come up with something new and start over. To wit, the music debacle.
7. Things must be angled. Appa and I have clashed over this many times, because in his universe things must be perfectly aligned and at right angles. Good thing my room is a hexagon!
8. Rinsing dishes out before leaving them in the sink, and preferably soaking them also.
9. Homogeneity in my mouthfuls - every mouthful must have the same proportion of all components. One reason why I love one dish meals, and eating with my hands.
10. Spotless counter before bed. Wiped down with cleaner and all. And scrubbing the sink after doing the dishes to get the lil bits of food stuck to the sides off.
11. How my chai is made first thing in the morning: Measure 3/4ths of a large mug of water, pour into pan, put on fire, add milk to just the right colour, put in one spoon of Society tea leaves, and leave on sim till it comes to a boil. Turn up till it almost boils over and off and pour out onto sugar that was put into the wet mug and has half dissolved already. Edit: The Mungi is the only person to ever have managed to make it just right. For which we love her. And that's why we managed to survive a year living together ;)

Not OCD:

1. Eating off the floor. Really, if it's not sticky and wet and I dropped it, I'll pick it right up and eat it. This one gives BBot the heebie jeebies.
2. Daily baths. TMI people? Hee. You want this blog to revive it won't be pretty ;) As long as it averages out to about 365 a year it's all good.
3. Making my bed. I got into the habit while in college of hopping out of bed and making it immediately, and changing the sheets every week like clockwork. Not so much anymore. If I DO make it though, it has to be perfect...with a king bedspread on a double bed, lengthwise, and the top tucked under the pillows and the extra hanging off equally on every side, and NOTHING touching the floor. While off the bed the spread spends all its life in a bundle on the floor, but details...

People who know me in real life, any contributions?

PS: I'm dedicating this one to BBot, who, over the past year, quietly and uncomplainingly adopted 3, 4 and 8, and panders to 11 by letting me make my own chai, and 2 by letting me wash the dishes. Though maybe some of that has to do with my needing chai long before he's awake, and him disliking my standing behind him muttering as he does the dishes and then not surreptitiously feeling all of them and redoing them...

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.