I don't like this one bit - Aaa-cchhooo! I hate missing Uni so close to exams (though some might argue that one is more productive that way) so I could sneeze all day into aromatic tissues that I picked up (Aaa-cchhooo!) from a well-timed sale at Paterson. What's the point of having them smell like (Aaa-cchhooo!) peach or apple or vanilla? It's not like I can sme-(Aaa-cchhooo!)-ll anything right now anyway, and it's not very nice to be reminded of temporary disabilities!
In the (Aaa-cchhooo!) midst of the deadly swine flu epidemic, I guess a regular flu is bittersweet at worst but this is the 3-(Aaa-cchhooo!)-rd time in 4 months that (Aaa-cchhooo!) my organism has been humbled by this lyctic bas-(Aaa-cchhooo!)-tard of a Rhinovirus! I used to have an immune system to die for! I almost never (Aaa-cchhooo!) fell sick - maximum a fever a year with a few throat-aches, usually (Aaa-cchhooo!) associated with the over-consumption of Coca-Cola or Baskin-Robbins' cookie dough (Aaa-cchhooo!) ice-cream. (They don't kid when they say that stuff isn't good for health!) But St. Pete's PMSing (Aaa-cchhooo!) weather conditions, false promises of a warm Spring day and living (Aaa-cchhooo!) next to the Gulf of Finland where the average wind-speed is 4m/sec (that's high, right?) have shattered this iron-curtain of an Indian immune system I used to be so proud of.
The only good thing is that I am (Aaa-cchhooo!) again accepting get-well-soon cards, flowers, chocolates, return-(Aaa-cchhooo!)-tickets to warm places etc. and you know where to find me ;)
Aaa-cchhooo!
Wednesday 29 April 2009
Friday 17 April 2009
Remembering London
As fanatical as I may be about Russia; as homesick as I may be for India; I will always say that there's no place like London! My only problem with the capital of the Old Empire was it's weather but clearly, that won't be an issue anymore. There is always something worse in life! Today, for instance, St. Pete was at -2 with 'heavy' snow. (Well, it definitely felt heavy for Spring!)
I went to London for the first time way back in 1997. This was the first time my 11 year old feet stepped on foreign soil and I was smitten by the idea of London. My Dad was studying at the LSE back then; and Mom, Arpita (my sis) and I had gone to spend a few months with him.
Arpita and I both enrolled into schools. Those were some of the best days of my life. I loved how school began at 9:30 and not at 8:00 like in India. Every morning, I walked her to school and read her a children's book in her school's library. I still remember, 'A Mother for Choco'(1) about a orphan chick who is looking for his mother and finally gets adopted by Mrs. Bear - that was our favourite book and I read it to her at least a dozen times.
I would then head to my own school - Sheringham Junior, where the day would start off with a casual chat with my class-teacher, Mr Robinson, a remarkable person. I loved how he made an effort to get to know everyone and how encouraging he was, which was such a contrast to how most teachers behaved in India. (Needless to say, those who didn't behave like this became very dear!)
Classes were always fun. In India, we read books, underlined all the points depending on which questions were posed at the end of the chapter and we went home, where we neatly wrote these answers out. London was so much more dynamic - we didn't just read the books but we watched videos and went to museums, we debated these questions and we went home, where we made colourful projects about what we had learnt - and this "what we had learnt" could have been anything we wanted. Moreover, as a geeky Indian, I loved being able to answer questions like 11 times 13 in 2 seconds, while the other students would still be staring at their notebooks. I bet they hated me for this! And they also made fun of me because they could never understand why I would always stand up to answer the questions. But nevertheless, they played with me and they were my friends. Those differences were never taken personally even if they were annoying. My classmates in India were never so kind...
Fast-forward to 27th September 2004: I landed at London Heathrow and this time because I was going to the LSE...
First time away from home is both exciting and scary to say the least. There were things that weren't so much fun - this was the first time I had to do my laundry - but there were things that made me feel like an adult instantly. This was the first time I could do things on my own terms. I could oversleep without Mom and Dad giving me a hard time for the rest of the week. I could go out whenever I wanted with whoever I wanted (Mom and Dad are still a bit strict though with time they too have grown up!) The London Underground completely eliminated by dependence on the need to be picked up and dropped off. Plus unlike New Delhi, London is very safe for women and I didn't ever have to worry about getting r*ped and murdered(2). And most importantly, this was the first time I had a debit card with my name on it. Being in control of my own £inances - even if that money came from a ridiculous 12.5% student loan that had to be paid back - was a big step for me! So in London, having dropped my chains, I was taking cautious steps and big leaps all at once...
The first cut is the deepest. And London is so dear because it is so many first cuts - first time abroad, first university, first love, first job, first apartment...
I went to London for the first time way back in 1997. This was the first time my 11 year old feet stepped on foreign soil and I was smitten by the idea of London. My Dad was studying at the LSE back then; and Mom, Arpita (my sis) and I had gone to spend a few months with him.
Arpita and I both enrolled into schools. Those were some of the best days of my life. I loved how school began at 9:30 and not at 8:00 like in India. Every morning, I walked her to school and read her a children's book in her school's library. I still remember, 'A Mother for Choco'(1) about a orphan chick who is looking for his mother and finally gets adopted by Mrs. Bear - that was our favourite book and I read it to her at least a dozen times.
I would then head to my own school - Sheringham Junior, where the day would start off with a casual chat with my class-teacher, Mr Robinson, a remarkable person. I loved how he made an effort to get to know everyone and how encouraging he was, which was such a contrast to how most teachers behaved in India. (Needless to say, those who didn't behave like this became very dear!)
Classes were always fun. In India, we read books, underlined all the points depending on which questions were posed at the end of the chapter and we went home, where we neatly wrote these answers out. London was so much more dynamic - we didn't just read the books but we watched videos and went to museums, we debated these questions and we went home, where we made colourful projects about what we had learnt - and this "what we had learnt" could have been anything we wanted. Moreover, as a geeky Indian, I loved being able to answer questions like 11 times 13 in 2 seconds, while the other students would still be staring at their notebooks. I bet they hated me for this! And they also made fun of me because they could never understand why I would always stand up to answer the questions. But nevertheless, they played with me and they were my friends. Those differences were never taken personally even if they were annoying. My classmates in India were never so kind...
Fast-forward to 27th September 2004: I landed at London Heathrow and this time because I was going to the LSE...
First time away from home is both exciting and scary to say the least. There were things that weren't so much fun - this was the first time I had to do my laundry - but there were things that made me feel like an adult instantly. This was the first time I could do things on my own terms. I could oversleep without Mom and Dad giving me a hard time for the rest of the week. I could go out whenever I wanted with whoever I wanted (Mom and Dad are still a bit strict though with time they too have grown up!) The London Underground completely eliminated by dependence on the need to be picked up and dropped off. Plus unlike New Delhi, London is very safe for women and I didn't ever have to worry about getting r*ped and murdered(2). And most importantly, this was the first time I had a debit card with my name on it. Being in control of my own £inances - even if that money came from a ridiculous 12.5% student loan that had to be paid back - was a big step for me! So in London, having dropped my chains, I was taking cautious steps and big leaps all at once...
The first cut is the deepest. And London is so dear because it is so many first cuts - first time abroad, first university, first love, first job, first apartment...
That’s probably why nostalgia is so unbearably powerful when it’s for London. The craving is so real that I can...
...see the traffic at the High Holborn crossing where I waited for 38 to go back to my hostel on Rosebery Avenue;
...smell the midnight hot-dogs and pizzas at Leicester Square and Tottenham Court Road;
...hear “The next stop is Canary Wharf” on the Jubilee Line;
...taste pineapple coolers at Ping Pong, the peri-peri sauce at Nandos, the strawberry cheesecake ice-cream at Haagen-Dazs;
...and feel the wind in my hair while crossing the Thames to get to the Lehman building on Bank Street
Coming to Russia made me realise how ‘Indian’ London really is. London has a huge Indian community so no one stared at me when I was out in the street. There are a gazillion Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi restaurants for the Brits love “curry” as much as we do. Diwali and Holi are celebrated with the same fervour as in India though not on the same scale. And I used to get invitations to Bollywood parties all the time. Therefore, Russia sometimes is twice as hard because not only do I miss London, I miss India more than I ever have!
Sometimes I wonder if it would have been better to settle for dominion status with our former colonisers so we could have been one big happy family! In any case, we Indians still think of England as our second Motherland and love her to death! Perhaps, a more accurate slogan during our Independence Struggle would have been, "Angrezon, Bharat chhodo...taki hum tumhare peeche aa sakein!" (“British, quit India...so we can follow you home!”)
PS - This post is dedicated to Medha, Dheer, Divya, Dhiren, Varun, Kanishk, Ali, Pallavi, Manyu, Herschel, Farhad, Neha, Ankit, Khushbu, Sasha, Sonia, Peter, Valerie, Sharmin, Chris and Kate. Without you, London wouldn't have been the same!
Notes:
1. A Mother for Choco: http://www.amazon.com/Mother-Choco-Paperstar-Keiko-Kasza/dp/0698113640#
2. This safety issue made me realise what kind of civil liberties I was missing at home and till date this is one of the biggest reasons against moving back to Delhi.
Saturday 4 April 2009
I'm bringing Lazy back...
Privet vsyem!
I know I have been ridiculously out-of-action. Not because things haven't been happening but because so much has been happening that...well...I have felt too tired to write about it and generally submitted to the voice of the lazy 'devil' Aanch that sits on my left shoulder...
So what now? Well, these are difficult economic times so we've had to regrettably fire her. And now, I, under the sound guidance of my halo-bearing 'angel' Aanch, am back at your service...
Here's what you've missed:
1. Temperatures continue to be in-tune with oil prices i.e. they're heading back up. Spring is slowly approaching. The cute-little flower buds and happy song-birds that they used to show in Bambi and Lion King to depict Spring still seem like a cruel joke but the days are getting longer, DST has ticked away, the Sun is becoming more than just a guest-star in my Bollywood life and the snow and ice are slowly melting to reveal the long-forgotten colours and textures of the mud and gravel underneath (along with the occasional unpleasantries of perfectly-preserved pre-Winter dog excrement...)
2. Dorota (my Polish flatmate) and I went to Murmansk, the largest city in the world north of the Arctic Circle. I have to say, while it felt great to be so far up-north (See satellite image: http://www.maplandia.com/russia/murmanskaya-oblast/kolskiy-rayon/murmansk/), the 20 hours we spent there sandwiched between 27 hours of train journey each way, were more than enough! The city is bigger than I expected but still small enough so we were able to walk a big chunk in around 4 hours. But among the Alyosha statue overlooking the Kola Inlet, the Museum of Regional Studies (Probably the № 1 employer of taxidermists in Murmansk), the red-brick Lighthouse and the rather stinky Aquarium, the highlight of my Murmansk trip was falling waist-deep in snow! Even though, at one point I was terrified - because even when Dorota tried to pull me out, there was no ground beneath my feet on which I could have pushed myself up and out and any attempt to this end only sank me deeper into the snow – without this incident, there would be little else worth remembering from Murmansk!
3. This is an uncomfortable time of the year for a brown girl in Saint-Petersburg. 20th April is Adolf Hitler’s birthday and whilst I really don’t care about Nazi-boy’s birthday, I do have to watch out for racial hatred in Europe’s skin-head capital. My Schengen won’t be ready in time, so my planned escape to Latvia is essentially turning itself into a self-imposed house-arrest to avoid getting beaten-up or stabbed. (Hmmm...every beautiful city has an ugly face!) From what I hear, sometimes even the Police turn a blind-eye to Neo-Nazi activities and it’s only the old, wobbly Babushkas who shout at these xenophobic trouble-makers. I guess, if you survived the Leningrad blockade, very little in life must scare you! Kind of makes you wonder why Supernanny wasn’t originally Russian instead...
That’s all for now. I must say that the ‘devil’ Aanch sabotaged me again. I sat down in front of the computer to write a cover letter for a job application but ended up doing this blog-entry instead. Oh well, just coz we fired her doesn’t mean she isn’t good at what she does...
Back to work now...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)