I know I said to a lot of people that I'd be home today... but everyone knows that I'm not very good at things like numbers. Sorry.
At first, I was just LALALA HOME! BED! SLEEP! because these were very exciting things after a harrowing and uncomfortable plane trip. It was only after I woke up this morning that the familiar post- holiday depression started to creep in. I tried to push it away with a 67th viewing of Hum Aapke Hai Koun, which is essentially a 3 1/2 hour long wedding video with lots of beautiful smiling people who are just happy all the time. I thought it worked but after turning it off, the wave of depression hit again with redoubled force and a plaintive voice was now crying in my head: "whyyyy doesn't my life look like theirs???". I took to restlessly flipping though the books I bought in India because they have a bookish smell that makes me happy. I know I'm crazy. I just finished watching Roman Holiday (ahh, Audrey!) but now it's back to square one. Does it count as nostalgia if it only happened a few days ago?
A few people have asked me today, "how's India?" or "what's it like?". It's not a simple question. What do I say? Full of people? Big? It's particularly odd to answer because having spent over two years' worth of my life there in holidays, I'm not exactly a tourist. Most the salient differences have become normalised to me, so what I find to be noteworthy probably isn't what you want to hear. I'm not really interested in giving you the ridiculous exoticised version, though I am sometimes tempted to write something sarcastic about the natives in their colourful costumes that struggle to keep their chins up in the face of crippling poverty and the caste system... but this is the internet and lots of people won't get it.
This trip was only 2 weeks long and we spent all of it in Chennai, where my grandparents live. Chennai is a pretty sleepy city and Besant Nagar, the area they live in, weirdly resembles Cherrybrook in some ways. I love it though- going back to slow, stable Besant Nagar is the most comforting thing in the world and for some reason, it makes my "real" life feel frivolous and plastic in comparison. It offers me everything I need: food, freedom and very good bookstores.
This is what I do every day:
I wake up, eat breakfast and then grate coconuts. This activity is filled with much more adventure than it sounds like, because of the lethal apparatus involved. If I don't pay attention, I could slit my wrists. I do random bits of housework to impress my grandparents and then I go upstairs, here:
and paint and read books. I return downstairs for lunch and then read for a while, till everyone's taking their afternoon nap when I slip out and roam the streets like the vagrant I am. I go to the beach, buy food, buy clothes/jewellery/books, explore uncharted territory. All my purchases (and including food, there was a LOT of them) came to less than $200 over three weeks.
On a daily basis, I buy a coconut and drink from it. This is partly because I'm addicted to the stuff and partly because I'm in love with the lady who sells it. She is one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen in my life, with a willowy frame, lush hair and deer-like eyes. She sits in the dirt but she is always poised and elegant. Somehow, she's even graceful when she raises a sickle over her head and roughly swings it down to hack a coconut open. I rarely approach her before 12:00 am because until then she's engrossed in the newspaper and the way she pores over it, I feel like it's on the brink of swallowing her up. She is also extremely unself-conscious and transparent, which is something that's probably true of most people there. She has a gorgeous 4-5 year old daughter and a stupid-looking husband who sleeps a lot.
In the late evenings, sometimes I accompany my grandmother to the park next to her flat. I love this park so much, not only because it's pretty but also for the motley of people that fill it. It's usually being circled by kids from the neighbouring karate school in bright, white uniforms. They have to pause often to respectfully edge past the strolling old men who will hardly bother to keep to one side. Manual labourers sometimes chitchat around the pond but they usually move on quickly. There are little kids being hilarious on the swings and their parents (mothers, mostly) gossiping in the corner. My favourite part is the row of benches occupied exclusively by toothless old ladies in fine silk saris (including my own paati) who silently watch over the whole scene with enlightened smiles.
At night I read, eat, sleep. Repeat.
At first, I was just LALALA HOME! BED! SLEEP! because these were very exciting things after a harrowing and uncomfortable plane trip. It was only after I woke up this morning that the familiar post- holiday depression started to creep in. I tried to push it away with a 67th viewing of Hum Aapke Hai Koun, which is essentially a 3 1/2 hour long wedding video with lots of beautiful smiling people who are just happy all the time. I thought it worked but after turning it off, the wave of depression hit again with redoubled force and a plaintive voice was now crying in my head: "whyyyy doesn't my life look like theirs???". I took to restlessly flipping though the books I bought in India because they have a bookish smell that makes me happy. I know I'm crazy. I just finished watching Roman Holiday (ahh, Audrey!) but now it's back to square one. Does it count as nostalgia if it only happened a few days ago?
A few people have asked me today, "how's India?" or "what's it like?". It's not a simple question. What do I say? Full of people? Big? It's particularly odd to answer because having spent over two years' worth of my life there in holidays, I'm not exactly a tourist. Most the salient differences have become normalised to me, so what I find to be noteworthy probably isn't what you want to hear. I'm not really interested in giving you the ridiculous exoticised version, though I am sometimes tempted to write something sarcastic about the natives in their colourful costumes that struggle to keep their chins up in the face of crippling poverty and the caste system... but this is the internet and lots of people won't get it.
This trip was only 2 weeks long and we spent all of it in Chennai, where my grandparents live. Chennai is a pretty sleepy city and Besant Nagar, the area they live in, weirdly resembles Cherrybrook in some ways. I love it though- going back to slow, stable Besant Nagar is the most comforting thing in the world and for some reason, it makes my "real" life feel frivolous and plastic in comparison. It offers me everything I need: food, freedom and very good bookstores.
This is what I do every day:
I wake up, eat breakfast and then grate coconuts. This activity is filled with much more adventure than it sounds like, because of the lethal apparatus involved. If I don't pay attention, I could slit my wrists. I do random bits of housework to impress my grandparents and then I go upstairs, here:
and paint and read books. I return downstairs for lunch and then read for a while, till everyone's taking their afternoon nap when I slip out and roam the streets like the vagrant I am. I go to the beach, buy food, buy clothes/jewellery/books, explore uncharted territory. All my purchases (and including food, there was a LOT of them) came to less than $200 over three weeks.
On a daily basis, I buy a coconut and drink from it. This is partly because I'm addicted to the stuff and partly because I'm in love with the lady who sells it. She is one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen in my life, with a willowy frame, lush hair and deer-like eyes. She sits in the dirt but she is always poised and elegant. Somehow, she's even graceful when she raises a sickle over her head and roughly swings it down to hack a coconut open. I rarely approach her before 12:00 am because until then she's engrossed in the newspaper and the way she pores over it, I feel like it's on the brink of swallowing her up. She is also extremely unself-conscious and transparent, which is something that's probably true of most people there. She has a gorgeous 4-5 year old daughter and a stupid-looking husband who sleeps a lot.
In the late evenings, sometimes I accompany my grandmother to the park next to her flat. I love this park so much, not only because it's pretty but also for the motley of people that fill it. It's usually being circled by kids from the neighbouring karate school in bright, white uniforms. They have to pause often to respectfully edge past the strolling old men who will hardly bother to keep to one side. Manual labourers sometimes chitchat around the pond but they usually move on quickly. There are little kids being hilarious on the swings and their parents (mothers, mostly) gossiping in the corner. My favourite part is the row of benches occupied exclusively by toothless old ladies in fine silk saris (including my own paati) who silently watch over the whole scene with enlightened smiles.
At night I read, eat, sleep. Repeat.
