No one knows when my dad was born. Not for sure anyway. My grandparents lived in a very large joint family in Namak Mandi in Agra. No light fell on the very narrow street on which the house stood - because the houses were placed close together and were 3 stories tall. You walked through a narrow passage to enter a courtyard flooded with light. From the terrace, you could see the Taj Mahal - just a little ways away... Women occupied the upper floors - little lattices covered the balconies - so they could see the courtyard - but not be seen themselves - in keeping with the strict mughal traditions that must have prevailed in the area in earlier generations.
That is where my dad was born. In a house filled with lots of uncles, aunts and cousins. No one kept track of births or deaths. And so it came about that even though my great grandfather was a well known judge, and my grandfather a lawyer - when it came time to fill out his birth date on a form - my father was left to his own devices.
Dad says he thought long and hard about the date to pick. He finally settled on Christmas Day - because that is the day a large number of people celebrate. It was easy to remember. And so it came about that every Christmas we would celebrate my father's birthday. My young niece kept up the tradition while I was away. And the last couple of years we've tried to see if we can outdo ourselves with having a non-Gujrati birthday party - it is Christmas after all - and we all grew up among Catholic friends in Bandra.
One year we all went out to a champagne brunch at one of the hotels in Mumbai - and had a GRAND time. Last year , Dhruti got a caterer to provide a "continental" menu of 3 kinds of pasta , soup, and a host of such things.
This year we decided we would go with our traditional macaroni in white sauce (the kind we had before we heard of beschamel and ragu) with tomato ketchup, crackers and cheese, and etc. And we would have a few Thai items on the menu.
Desert was to be a rum cake from re-Joyce made in the traditional goan style. And since the champagne cooler at Nitin's favorite wine story broke the previous night - we would go with my favorite - Sangria.
The ENT at Sadr Bazaar not withstanding the throat was pretty bad. So on the way to my parent's house I stopped at the chemist and got some cough syrup. I drank a couple of tablespoons full and made my way upstairs.
I helped set the table and was cutting the cake. I tasted a couple of pieces. YumMMMy!!! Then I told my cousins and niece to finish making the fresh rolls cos i really had to take a nap.
I woke up as the sangria was being made... and I just had to have some. It wasn't right - so we worked on it, tasting it... and then it was just delicious. So we all had a glass.
My dad said later that he had a very good time. So did all the other guests. Me - I am still trying to remember. But the macaroni and white sauce were delicious with the ketchup. So was the sangria !
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Internet Years , Dog Years, Telecom Years ?
At the height of the dot.com bubble , they said each quarter was like a year. Given the pace, given the intensity of the experience, you could easily rack up a decades worth of experience in under 3 years. Just like a dog...
Well I've been in India riding the telecom wave for the last 11 quarters. And in the first couple of years each quarter certainly felt like a year. The richness of experiences - the variations, the fluctuations, the changes - before I knew it a full 4 quarters had passed, and the old way of life seemed almost like fiction.
Weekends vanishing in endless errands and chores, days passing by sometimes without seeing another person. Spending the entire day talking to a whole host of people - feeling connected with a large community but just on Sametime - for you non-IBMers that would be Instant Messaging or Yahoo Messenger or AIM . When you actually saw them face to face - you struggled - "uhm - can't we just log on to Sametime - I seem to have forgotten how to look at a person and talk at the same time"..........
Now when I think about it, I wonder if I just had an active imagination - whether the deer grazing around the pond in the backyard were real ? whether planting petunias in the baskets around the deck was real . Did I really paint that deck with my own hands ? Did we really re-seal the driveway that summer ? Did I really ride around my yard on a John Deere tractor cutting grass ? I know I never shoveled snow - well except that one time the blizzard of 96 - do people really move their clocks forward and back with the change of seasons ? Do I really drive a car ? Did I actually drive in the winter from what was that town I lived in NJ to Syracuse and back - all by myself ?
It all sounds like stuff I must have read in the countless books I've read over the course of my life. But that is what I did for 17 years.
And yet it all seems light years away.... The last 10 months in particular have been a blur. And my dream life as the DPE of a single account feels like it was nearly 10 years ago. Contradictory as it may seem - in one moment time seems to stand still - and yet it seems to flash right by.
For example - i was thinking about the latest deal we signed. The first major hurdle is always whether or not the acquired employees got their paychecks on time. And so as I was going through my mental list of things to worry about and I wondered whether or not we had paid everyone (its a difficult job in India - cos we actually want the money to be deposited in their bank accounts - and I must write another item on banks). Then I realized that the deal was only 15 days old. Paychecks aren't due for a whole other 15 days. And yet - so much has been packed into the last 15 that it feels like we've had this account for atleast 6 months !!!
Thank God there haven't been 10 birthdays in the past 10 months !!
Is it good ? is it bad ? I haven't a clue. It just is.
Well I've been in India riding the telecom wave for the last 11 quarters. And in the first couple of years each quarter certainly felt like a year. The richness of experiences - the variations, the fluctuations, the changes - before I knew it a full 4 quarters had passed, and the old way of life seemed almost like fiction.
Weekends vanishing in endless errands and chores, days passing by sometimes without seeing another person. Spending the entire day talking to a whole host of people - feeling connected with a large community but just on Sametime - for you non-IBMers that would be Instant Messaging or Yahoo Messenger or AIM . When you actually saw them face to face - you struggled - "uhm - can't we just log on to Sametime - I seem to have forgotten how to look at a person and talk at the same time"..........
Now when I think about it, I wonder if I just had an active imagination - whether the deer grazing around the pond in the backyard were real ? whether planting petunias in the baskets around the deck was real . Did I really paint that deck with my own hands ? Did we really re-seal the driveway that summer ? Did I really ride around my yard on a John Deere tractor cutting grass ? I know I never shoveled snow - well except that one time the blizzard of 96 - do people really move their clocks forward and back with the change of seasons ? Do I really drive a car ? Did I actually drive in the winter from what was that town I lived in NJ to Syracuse and back - all by myself ?
It all sounds like stuff I must have read in the countless books I've read over the course of my life. But that is what I did for 17 years.
And yet it all seems light years away.... The last 10 months in particular have been a blur. And my dream life as the DPE of a single account feels like it was nearly 10 years ago. Contradictory as it may seem - in one moment time seems to stand still - and yet it seems to flash right by.
For example - i was thinking about the latest deal we signed. The first major hurdle is always whether or not the acquired employees got their paychecks on time. And so as I was going through my mental list of things to worry about and I wondered whether or not we had paid everyone (its a difficult job in India - cos we actually want the money to be deposited in their bank accounts - and I must write another item on banks). Then I realized that the deal was only 15 days old. Paychecks aren't due for a whole other 15 days. And yet - so much has been packed into the last 15 that it feels like we've had this account for atleast 6 months !!!
Thank God there haven't been 10 birthdays in the past 10 months !!
Is it good ? is it bad ? I haven't a clue. It just is.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
New Year's Day 2008
Happy New Year !! SMS after SMS trying to say it cuter, better than the previous one. Sometimes you got repeats, some were repeats from last year. The one thing they all had in common was they added to the prosperity of the telecoms.
Last year, I spent New Year's eve with friends, and then New Year's Day and the 2nd of Jan trying to get back home - thanks to the thick fog enveloping Delhi.
I am determined to eliminate fog as a cause of inconvenience this year - so I take flights that are scheduled to land in daylight. So far it has worked.
We were ushering in a new contract in Mumbai over the end of the year, so I decided to park myself there.
Despite the 2nd trip to the ENT at Sadr Bazaar, the throat was doing poorly. So I weighed my options. Go to a party with friends where I am likely to want to talk and laugh - both activities that result in incessant coughing. Drink alcohol which the ENT said was a no-no. Eat fried foods - my favorite - and one that instantly irritates my throat. So eat veggies and no dip, sit quietly and sip warm water and watch others laugh and drink - or crawl under the covers and watch soap operas .
Odd as it may seem - soaps, a comfy bed and room service seemed far more appealing than agitating my throat further . As I was informed by someone - I must be getting old. To prove that this was not true, I decided to have a drink with a good friend at the respectable hour of 7:30pm. The ENT would not begrudge me the one dirnk would he ?
Every restaurant and bar in the hotel was gearing up for the grand party - the bar was open - but they had moved all the chairs out. Old people do not stand and drink - they sit down . So do I !! So we leaned upon the maitre'd at the coffee shop to let us in for a drink. There was a grand buffet and table was set up for the party - with stars sprinkled on the cloth and gorgeous masks for the event later in the evening.
Making conversation with the young server - who wanted to know if we were here for the party - I told her I was Scrooge's granddaughter. To us "old" fogeys this seemed like a very funny and appropriate statement of my state of mind with respect to partying in the New Year. But the young lady seemed very confused. Any doubt I had about whether or not I was from another time and place vanished when the young lady said she had neither heard of Charles Dickens nor of A Christmas Carol.
Had my drink, and went back to my room. The phone was ringing off the hook. One of my not so young colleagues wanting to discuss a work problem. Done by 10:00 and I got into the red pyjamas with the paw prints and climbed into bed . And the phone rang again. Another colleague, another problem. We were joined by yet another colleague around 11:15. And before I knew it - it was 12:30am. Midnight had come and gone. The New Year was upon us, and I hadn't watched a single soap operat yet !!!
And the SMSes kept flowing, the revellers kept dancing downstairs, and the network switched to a telemarketing show. The cough meds kicked in and I fell into a deep sleep !!!! HAPPY New Year !!!
Last year, I spent New Year's eve with friends, and then New Year's Day and the 2nd of Jan trying to get back home - thanks to the thick fog enveloping Delhi.
I am determined to eliminate fog as a cause of inconvenience this year - so I take flights that are scheduled to land in daylight. So far it has worked.
We were ushering in a new contract in Mumbai over the end of the year, so I decided to park myself there.
Despite the 2nd trip to the ENT at Sadr Bazaar, the throat was doing poorly. So I weighed my options. Go to a party with friends where I am likely to want to talk and laugh - both activities that result in incessant coughing. Drink alcohol which the ENT said was a no-no. Eat fried foods - my favorite - and one that instantly irritates my throat. So eat veggies and no dip, sit quietly and sip warm water and watch others laugh and drink - or crawl under the covers and watch soap operas .
Odd as it may seem - soaps, a comfy bed and room service seemed far more appealing than agitating my throat further . As I was informed by someone - I must be getting old. To prove that this was not true, I decided to have a drink with a good friend at the respectable hour of 7:30pm. The ENT would not begrudge me the one dirnk would he ?
Every restaurant and bar in the hotel was gearing up for the grand party - the bar was open - but they had moved all the chairs out. Old people do not stand and drink - they sit down . So do I !! So we leaned upon the maitre'd at the coffee shop to let us in for a drink. There was a grand buffet and table was set up for the party - with stars sprinkled on the cloth and gorgeous masks for the event later in the evening.
Making conversation with the young server - who wanted to know if we were here for the party - I told her I was Scrooge's granddaughter. To us "old" fogeys this seemed like a very funny and appropriate statement of my state of mind with respect to partying in the New Year. But the young lady seemed very confused. Any doubt I had about whether or not I was from another time and place vanished when the young lady said she had neither heard of Charles Dickens nor of A Christmas Carol.
Had my drink, and went back to my room. The phone was ringing off the hook. One of my not so young colleagues wanting to discuss a work problem. Done by 10:00 and I got into the red pyjamas with the paw prints and climbed into bed . And the phone rang again. Another colleague, another problem. We were joined by yet another colleague around 11:15. And before I knew it - it was 12:30am. Midnight had come and gone. The New Year was upon us, and I hadn't watched a single soap operat yet !!!
And the SMSes kept flowing, the revellers kept dancing downstairs, and the network switched to a telemarketing show. The cough meds kicked in and I fell into a deep sleep !!!! HAPPY New Year !!!
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