Dud Sea Scrawls The Writing, clearly, is not on the wall!

It’s not very often that I am able to take away a meaningful message from a Bollywood flick so I had to write about it. The movie in question is Laaga Chunari Me Daag.

The story is an old chestnut overdone Bollywood-style. A family of four in a decaying mansion - the mother spinning the years away Arachne-like on the sewing machine, the idle father hoping the next lottery ticket will reverse the tide of his fortune and the two pretty daughter unequipped to seek a better future.

The story of Manohar and his son Rohan is also the story of the Indian middle class renaissance, a transformation that happened between three to four decades. Manohar was in his teens at the height of the Naxalite movement. He observed from the sidelines but never participated - he did not buy into the ideology.

When you have the Deepak Chopra brand on your side you can write a book called 100 Questions from My Child and get a bunch of endorsements when in fact content at random places on the web gives you both food for thought and chuckle in far more generous portions.

The house was was dark except for the living room. Sheila could see a flickering television screen through the window. Vibha answered the door right away. “Come in” she said as if they had met last only a week ago. It was a tastefully furnished home without any ostentation. The smell of spices wafted in from the kitchen. Setting the cake on the dining table, Sheila followed Vibha into the kitchen “Smells lovely. What are you cooking ?” she asked. “Nothing much. It’s chicken dhansak and rice”

When he had asked her if she had read The Rocking-Horse Winner, she had said “Yes, it was a nice story”. She had read it at least fifteen years ago and did not remember much except the ambiance being dark and intense. He said “It is one my favorite stories. I saw myself in Paul the very first time. I still can.”

At the end of very long days and specially if it happens to be an important Hindu festival, I ask myself what J and I are doing in this country far away from family, roots and culture ? There is no family within a thousand miles of us. We get by as well as we could hope to in a foreign country thanks to the kindness of strangers and friends. Yet, I can’t but help think of Diwali and the flickering earthen lamps, the smell of firecrackers and the gentle nip in the air just when my neighbors set their Jack-o-lanterns on the patio.

It is common knowledge back home that Bong dudes are prone to being profoundly weird. The gents themselves might describe themselves as “profound” (which is their misplaced belief) but us women know that the operative word is weird. Without further ado, a small sampling of the said weirdness, I have come across over the years.

Miracle Unvisited

I have been reading The World Is Flat the last few days. Of the many sound bites that pepper the book, the one that will stay with me is on page 256 where Friedman talks about how young people in China hang from the rafters and scalp tickets just to hear Bill Gates speak. He says “In China today, Bill Gates is Britney Spears. In America today, Britney Spears is Britney Spears - and that is our problem”

I sense that Gaurav is getting bored and restless. I used to be a size two gym rat until I got pregnant - it didn’t feel important any longer. I wasn’t trying to stay in shape for me - I was driven by insecurity maybe. I realize that I am no longer the woman he was once attracted to, I try to keep up with business, technology and politics. The internet is my best friend second only to the local Barnes and Noble. I think I can still hold my own in a conversation but its not the same thing as being able to buy him an expensive gift on his birthday with my own money. Each time I swipe his credit card, it feels like a little more of my self- esteem is draining away. I don’t know if he even notices.

For seven years he has had this dog and that’s how long he has been single and looking as well - strange when you read the two facts in the same sentence. He has accepted his situation with a certain dogged determination. At one point , I was close to asking “So what have you decided, will it be the dog or a woman in your life ?” but thought the better of it given how that could be interpreted.

India’s unique selling proposition today is the ability to combine a high-rolling lifestyle with abundant opportunities to stack up on good karma. It strikes a deeply resonant chord with the expat desi.

There is a heart and soul about India that expats are finding easier to sense in the context of an easy to replicate NRI lifestyle complete with obscene compensation packages and a white hot club scene. Its never been easier to claim their longing for family and homeland is more than they can bear - if only the date for the all important citizenship interview came around sooner to plug their bleeding hearts.

A veteran war horse of the dating game once gave me advise out of pity for my naiveté “Spend time just talking to them, go out for lunch, forget dinner do lunch or coffee..go dutch, disengage all the trappings of ‘dating’ while still dating.” Anyone would agree all of that makes good sense. In an ideal world, one would graduate from friendship to relationship to love and the transitions would be natural and seamless. That is theory and then there is practice.

A poem about departed love

Some reasons why men will call women even if they have zero interest in her relationship-wise

The hapless H4 wife is one among the many stereotypes that abound about desis. Having known many myself, I have an appreciation of their plight though the desperation that this TOI article describes is news to me.

A few years ago, an American coworker, Dave had made an interesting observation on the career progression of desi IT professionals. “In your culture, a developer is considered to be lower caste than a project manager. So whether or not they have the talent or inclination everyone wants to graduate from being a low caste developer to a high caste manager. That’s not how Americans see things. I have been a developer for the last twenty years and I will continue being a developer for the rest of my IT career. “

Shunya e Buke was recommended to me an “absolutely must see” an introduction to the “brave new world of Bengali cinema” which I have not kept up with. It may be a while before I get a chance to, but the story line has me hooked already. For a western audience it may be hard to fathom how the issue of the padded bra and the deception thereof could surface only after matrimony. Maybe if they turned the clock back several decades, it may even strike a chord.

What better petri dish than Craigslist’s Casual Encounters for a little social experiment - the results are fascinating but not wholly unexpected. I had always wondered about ads posted by married men who said they looking for a "discreet intimate relationship". How many bored suburban housewives and nymphomaniacs are out there to fill such a huge demand for their goods and services ?

As luck would have it, I ran into one such man online. When he first contacted me, I did my preliminary due diligence - included but not limited to Google, Zabasearch, Yahoo Groups - to ID who I was dealing with. There were inconsistencies. He was out there "as unhappily married and looking" in the adult oriented mailing lists and groups but as single on the more mainstream dating sites. Being that I was curious about his type, I went ahead and accepted his contact and started to chat online.

A girlfriend forwarded me this article in Forbes on careers and marriage asking me “Whadya think ?” Very provocating question given that I fit into the exact demographic that Michael Noer is advocating men should avoid.

In India, tragedy is mourned in moderation and then we move on – life goes on and a living has to be made. We do not stage public theatricals of our loss, market it and fetishize it like it were the most tragic of all tragedies that has ever befallen mankind.

Sometimes you wish America would stop acting like a rich spoilt brat and stop flogging the dead horse of 9/11.

Unhooked Generation by Jillian Straus is a must-read for singles in their 30s who wonder why they are finding it nearly impossible to get (and stay) married and have a family like humans done for time immemorial. Her analysis of all that ails Gen-X is spot on. I particularly liked what she has to say on the subject of casual sex.

It’s not often that a mailbox clean-up exercise puts my dating disasters in such clear perspective. Now, this E sounds like a man after my own heart – small wonder then that he is MIA since 1997.

Watching the expressionless John Abraham woo an equally bland Lisa Ray with verses from Meghdutam is a slap on the face of the destitute widows of the early 1900s, who were often forced into prostitution just to have enough to eat. With her unflappable serenity, au natureil makeup and gym toned body Lisa Ray makes widowhood of the 1930s look quite desirable.

The number in her caller-id stirred something in memory hard to grasp or recall but there was no mistaking the voice.

"Did you miss me ?" he asked like they had not spoken in the past few days instead of a whole year.

"I didn’t know I was supposed to or I’d have tried to be dead on a vine pining for you" Sheila replied. Only MJ would have the nerve to irrupt into her life and lay claim on everything like nothing had changed.

It was his chutzpah that she had found so attractive - a man who reveled in the effect he had on women. "We had such great chemistry and I really did like you. Why did you have us drift apart ?" he asked.