Transition

Did you ever feel numb due to so many emotions at once, so many people, so much happening around you and to you, so much that you have to do, so much that you are responsible for, including people that you stay away from writing your thoughts down, that you think it might be unhealthy for you? A less pensive me would have called this  stage "Happy". But now that I am looking at things in a different light altogether, I refrain to describe this phase of my life as "Happy" or "Busy".
When I came to Mumbai, I had taken a vow not to go about life the same way that I had gone about when I ventured out to Delhi from Calcutta. I did things differently this time. Things had to be different too. I came here to work.
I will start from the very beginning. After my fourth and final semester got over, I practically had no break. The Sealdah Rajdhani was running late as usual, we got down at Durgapur and not Calcutta, went to Dad's bungalow and was in continuous tour mode as it was my Dad's last stint outside Calcutta. When I finally reached Calcutta I had only two days to go for Mumbai. Only two days to pack, to find out all my contacts in Mumbai, to listen to people's suggestions on how to live in Mumbai, prepare myself for the next phase of my life, to say goodbye to everyone. Couldn't complete everything on my checklist, but I made a fairly good job of it, i'd like to believe. I was going to Mumbai with mom and bon 7 days before my date of joining. This was for two purposes: 1) To look for apartments, hostels and 2) To search for internships for my sister. We were betting everything on a city that three of us had never set foot in, in our not so long lives. The city didn't disappoint us. Bon got through a fairly good firm,I found a fairly good place to stay at least initially. Dad came to complete the rest of the job. He dropped me off at the 5 star hotel in Pune where all the supposedly elite Chrysalis B-school(we 3 from DSE were the only non-MBAs) batch for the year 2013 would have a 5 day induction program. When dad freshened up in my very posh hotel room, for the first time in my life I think I figured a look on his face that told me that he is actually happy that I am where I am. He is generally very disapproving of anything "corporate".
The induction was a very general overview of all Business Units of the Company("the most popular IT company") and the Consulting people( us and 30 others like us from the A,B,C B-schools) were all lost in the Technology part until the last day when our BU was explained to us. We were relieved to have had a break from the HR and engineering stuff. Bonding with the rest of the 130 MBA grads was a bit difficult, given our non-MBA backgrounds, but at the end of the week, some became really close. I guess when you go through the same ordeal, you can't help but become friends. Some of the MBA people had packages so high, that we were dumb-founded when asked ours and muttered something back like "privacy policy".
We came back to Mumbai and we were allowed to stay in the guest house for a about a week and that was the week all the Chrysalis batch did their house hunting. I was relaxing back because I had the hostel booked and had no intentions of moving to an apartment immediately(yes I'm saving a lot of money, that the rest of my colleagues aren't).That weekend was the the rainiest, just like this one.
Office first day was not that scary. Our manager, seeing the "timid" look on our faces actually asked us whether we were missing our classes, that consultants should be confident. I felt happy, distinguished as I was the only one who got a laptop on the 2nd day itself, the only one to get a laptop in the first week of joining out of the Chrysalis batch of 134, just imagine! My team was already decided, I was to be in the predictive analytics team, which had a very efficient, a very bengali team leader, who is from the same undergrad college as me from Calcutta. There are other team leaders from IITs, NITs. On the 3rd day itself, we were bombarded with a data set and had to give analytical insights(using SPSS) to a mock client on the 5th day. We had just one laptop, one day to learn SPSS, prepare a PPT. We somehow managed to present some story.
That weekend I shifted to my hostel, found rather amiable people there. We have a 5 girl gang group(including my sister) and we stay in each others rooms so much that people confuse our room numbers.
Working can empower you in ways more than one. The grand architecture, the reverence, your handsome and pretty colleages, the team work, the parties, the cafeteria. I am just a one-month-experience-old fresher, still being trained in softwares,still being given only mock consultation projects, so can't say much on how it is when you have real work pressure, but as of now,office seems pretty cool. I don't expect much but to enjoy and love what I do.
I still can't conclude whether this phase is "Happy" or "Busy" or neither or something else altogether. Just that a lot happens and it numbs you.
The city is friendly, the sea numbs you again by its vastness, the people helpful( an autowallah came all the my back to my hostel to return my Company ID Card), the undulated roads give you the feeling of a hill-

View of Vikhroli Hills from the Conference Room

station, the city is beautiful when it rains as long as you are under the shade, the green-hills from our office are picturesque, SRK's Mannat rather disappointed me(I had expected something more grand), Antilla, the Ambani Villa, I found gaudy as well.

Crazy things that I did/do:
1) Posed as a TISS student and got special discounts from a beauty salon.
2) Ran after a very rare bus with my heeled formal shoes, fully clad in formals.
3) Lost my phone, purse all at one go, got it returned on the same day.
4) Refused a date with a much-sought-after guy.
5) Wore skimpy outfits and make up just to impress myself.
6) Bought a 10K watch with my first salary.
7) Sent 10K home(so i'm broke now).
8) Decided that I will stay and manage in the working women hostel even though all my Chrysalis batchmates have taken luxurious flats.
9) Laugh out so loud in the Office Cafeteria that people ogle.
10) Laugh out so loud in the hostel room that whenever I'm silent or thoughtful my girl gang thinks that something is wrong.

Delhi

Delhi taught me a lot of things. That gender matters. That your life could be so constrained ( by your gender, by society, by a zillion other things) that you have hardly any space to breathe ( just following the routine) and still you manage to "live", never questioning, never trying to break free and be almost proud about it.
No one ( read NOT PARENTS, NOT FRIENDS) had ever told me that ,I can't go to all GIRL trips alone, that you NEED a BROTHER/ BOYFRIEND/ MALE PARENT to accompany you. Delhi (or should I say a particular female around me) told me so. In Kolkata, me and my gang of girl friends would sit in a dark alley smoking even at 9: 30 pm in the night. We'd do things that even guys would never dare. I thought Delhi would be one step ahead of this. But alas, it didn't keep its promises.

I first discovered this massive gender discrimination (that culminated in or culminated from a low female: male work ratio, its a vicious circle anyway) while boarding the Delhi Metro for the very first time in my life at New Delhi Metro Station. The male queue was unending. The female queue was hardly 2-3 aunties long. I was momentarily happy, but then had to wait for dad and was delayed anyway. I was simply stunned by this very low female: male ratio. Where did all the women go? This is true for any station, other than the DU Metro station. Now, ofcourse I don't feel elated or disappointed anymore, when I see this. I've gotten used to such stuff.

In Kolkata when I would tell agony aunts and ever so curious relatives about my friends, they could never tell whether its a girl or a boy that i am talking about. Its because he/she doesn't figure in Bengali. I immensely enjoyed when they speculated over the gender of the person that I was referring to, sometime nervously trying to joke whether it was my boyfriend that I was referring to. In Delhi, when I talk to some-one aunt-like he/she invariably comes in(in Hindi) and the gender's no longer a secret. Why should gender come in speech anyway? Isn't it the greatest and most used form of gender discrimination ( well it does in English too, and maybe in many other languages but not in my mother-tongue and I am so happy to brag about it).

Without parents, I 'grew up' in Delhi. It taught me manipulation, politeness. You are always polite and laugh , even when your heart is burning. Or your heart never burns, you are just a stone, unaffected by whats happening around you so you laugh/smile always. Either way, lesson learnt. I had never learnt to fake stuff, to not speak out my mind out before coming to the National Capital.

Lastly, being an economist, I would also allow for the possibility that all these above attributes may not be city specific,  that my sample size is not large enough to draw such conclusions, but alas I'm a human being too who is just noting down her own observations and inferences.

Ei meghla dine akla, ghore thaake na to mon.

Did ever your spirits light up, listening to a song that probably your grandmother adored, then your mum and a 15 year-old you would have been indifferent to? It had happened to me just now and thus the need for this post. Other reasons might have contributed. For example, getting the opportunity to chat with your old school friend (who's also in the same part of the city as you) in pure bengali, about Bibhutibhushan's novels that had chilled you to the core, about Professor Shonku & all his adventures, about your resolutions, how you've turned into a person that probably a 15-year old you would have despised and last but not the least how today's weather in Delhi inspired a particular genre of Rabindrasangeet in you, how the night-watchman gave a start when he heard you singing "paagla haawa baadol dine" and "Aami chini go chini tomare". I was searching for video clips of Satyajit Ray's movies that had Rabindrasangeet played in them. Emaculate, each one of them. I came across this wonderful "adhunik gaan"( though its probably 50 years old, everything post-Rabindrasangeet is adhunik to mum's generation & beyond).
Biswajit lips in this song. And how delightfully he does so. You can be hopelessly in love, hopelessly not in love, waiting for some-one, not-waiting-for-someone..whatever your state might be, the melody will always delight you. Hemanta's sleek voice enchants. I'm sure I've seen this movie quite a few times. Will have to call her up to get the name.
There are times when for days at a stretch, you wait for something to happen that will break the monotony, to enthuse you with life again. This song did that to me, today. I think I will be a more active person tomorrow.
Its 3 in the morning. I better get some sleep.
Sweetdreams to me. :)

Hemlock Society

Shouldn't killing yourself be legalised, irrespective of whether you suffer from an incurable disease or not, whether you are terminally old or not? After all its your life! If you think the opportunity cost of living is too much for you to bear, isn't it better for you to be non-living ( Though I'm not sure whether you become "non-living" after death) ? This argument can be countered in the following melodramatic, filmy way: You have no right to take your life since you are not the one who created it? ( I'm not sure what exactly "creation" implies here, and when ''exactly" are you created? Is it at the moment that the first sperm penetrates the first layer of the ovum, or when the XX & XY chromosomes combine themselves to form a new DNA combination, or when the heart of the foetus beats for the first time )
I was in a convent school where the nuns used to describe the above phenomenon as "miraculous". Sister would say ''out of those millions of sperms, one was chosen and you were born" much before that joke in 3 idiots. That you should consider life a precious gift, given that many 13 year old girls had displayed 'wrist-cutting' tendencies in school. To look into the lines of your hand and see how special you are because the intricacies of your palm are unique to you and you alone.
But you might not think that way. You might be fed up or tired or simply bored of your life like the protagonist in "Veronica Decides to Die". I don't understand why killing yourself is a crime. Some wise man had once said this before he died, " Now I'm ready for the next great adventure, Death". Many great people knew the exact time of their death much before it actually came. There was the great Mathematician, Ramanuja who had calculated the exact timing of his death, there was Swami Vivekananda who knew that he was sitting for his last meditation. These people died young and if they knew they were dying and  did nothing about it, was it not voluntary? There are western musicians and idols who had innovated new ways of making themselves "non-living".
I am not arguing in favour of hemlock societies around the world.
Just a thought. I have watched a Bengali movie of the same name. It had the usual cliched ending. But started off in quite an interesting way.

Cooking and ilish

When you stay alone you do all kinds of jugaad with food. You have a sandwich for a lunch. A pizza for dinner. A cup of tea for breakfast. Somehow you just don't want to cook for yourself. Normal meals are of the least importance to you when you are the only one in the house. Shopping for groceries is another deterrent.
I think this is because cooking is always for someone. What incentivises you to go through the process (if not being paid) is to make your loved one taste your invention and the pleasure of sitting down with him/ her and savouring the food, talking about how the day went and warming your ears now and then about how good you cooked.
Cooking with mothers is always fun. I realized this partly a few months back. When at home, I used to be indifferent when I used to hear gossips about how some didi had called up her mother thousands of miles away to know when to put the shorshe(for the Bengali challenged,shorshe is mustard) in the ilish(ah well..no one can translate ilish unless you taste one..I'll just tell you what it is..it is THE MOST DELICIOUS fish to eat among the Bengalis, Oriyas, Gujaratis and the national fish of Bangladesh) or how much water to put when boiling spaghetti and how are the number of whistles of the pressure cooker and the potato's tenderness related to each other.
On this note let me narrate a curious incident to you. I was at the Subhash Nagar mall's(New Delhi) retail SPAR that day with dad and bon. We were in the fish market and looking for spiced dried chicken that just needed frying since we were too lazy to cook. We went to the place where all fishes were kept in line. Without the walls and with some more fishy smell, you would feel like you are standing in some fish market in Kolkata. All childhood memories returned when dad and I would go the nearby fish market to fish fish! I was in such a reverie while dad was checking out the prices. There was pomphlet, rohu etc. Suddenly a sardarji came up to dad and started asking which one tasted what. I was smiling. Bon said " How lucky that Sardarji is. Getting a Bengali to answer questions about fishes". She was actually right. Back at home, dad had a few Punjabi friends who would come to dinner and ONLY HAVE ILISH. Gosh I used to get so angry. Ilish would be bought specifically for them and my share would reduce to only 2-3 pieces.
Ilish has gotten very expensive now. Last monsoon it was Rs. 1500/kg at Delhi's Chittaranjan park. Someday when I have the money and patience I will buy 1 full kg of ilish, all the required spices, I will call up mum thousands of kilometers away to know the recipe of the fish that had enchanted my taste buds in almost all the monsoons of my life.

I hear ilish is about to be extinct ..given  the high demand from all over the world. I don't pay heed to such rumours. I know there will always be some big healthy ilish waiting for me to get cooked and to enchant my taste buds again, nomatter in which part of the world I reside in.

P.S. Ilish was not what I had in mind at all. But bon's returning from Kolkata tomorrow and she's bringing only fried rohu and not ilish. Last monsoon's ilish were missed by me. I guess a year and a half of separation from your favourite fish does this to you.

Western ghats beckoning

View of the Western Ghats from the Rajmachi point, Khandala on the Mumbai Pune expressway

The Western ghats always had intrigued me. In fact Western India always had. I had seen the peaks, hills, rain-forests, wildlife sanctuaries and lakes of the Himalayas( right from Kashmir to Darjeeling), the hills of the Vindhyas( Central, South India), the beaches all along the Coromandel Coast(East and South), all the temples and their invaluable architecture( South mainly) but never the West. In 2010 I had made an attempt. I did visit Kerala with a friend and her family. I was absolutely taken away by Munnar, a green retreat in the Nilgiri Hills of the Western Ghats. Munnar was at its greenest and rainiest best when I had first laid my eyes on it on 24th October, 2010. The locals said it hardly stopped drizzling there in that season. We spent only 2 days out of the 15 day trip in Munnar. I knew I had to come back.

Today sitting in my couch in Delhi, I realize that in not more than 6 months I am going to be within a half an hour driving distance of the beautiful Ghats. I think more than the Arabian Sea, it is the green hills of western ghats that I am looking forward to. Cheers to wishes coming true!