Namibia:

Waking up with temporary amnesia in the Namib desert,

Having afternoon tea with camels and some nice German ladies in Swakopmund,

Begging the bartender for Savannahs in the best (and closed) Swakopmund bar at 8:30 with puppy eyes, coaxing – English, German, Damara clicks-and our extreme youth,

Drinking aforementioned Savannah lights on the pier extending into the Atlantic, listening to the crescendo of the waves dancing to the light of the Southern sky (and getting nothing but mixed metaphors in my head),

Saying no to fueling the car when half empty, driving for 300-odd kilometers in the middle of the Namib-Naukluft park and finally finding a petrol station after we were running on petrol fumes,

Trying not to show panic about the petrol situation whilst constructing Doomsday scenarios in the head,

Gawping with awe at the Milky Way from the rather posh tented camp in the Sesriem canyon,

Stuffing the face with springbok, kudu, impala and other assorted antelope,

Painting the desert red in Sossusvlei,

Anti-climactically, finding Windhoek amazingly boring.

Western Cape:

Understanding what gale force winds really mean at the Table Mountain,

Listening to the best string trio (and accordion) at the Waterfront and watching an impromptu dance by a 70 year old woman,

Crossing the highways from V&A to the Westin – ignoring the usual warnings of not to walk,

Watching the spectacle of Penguin against the world at Boulder Bay,

Screaming through a 30′ boat ride through roller coaster seas for a Cape fur seal encounter at Hout Bay,

Getting completely drunk on a wine “tasting” tour of the Groot Constantia estate,

Discovering the prettiest cottages in the world in Franschoek and Stellenbosch,

Figuring out that CT is a great retirement option,

Falling in love with the Cape route,

And finally, discovering the meaning of life at the Cape of Good Hope (“Don’t sweat the small stuff”)

Rest of South Africa:

Swaying to U2 in the Soccer City stadium in Jozi,

Using the power of the tele zoom to get close enough to The Edge to touch him,

Driving through Johannesburg CBD at 7:30 PM in a convoy, hoping that noone would smash the car windows…

… hearing that happened to a friend later anyway,

Living in Sandton for so long that the hotel staff welcomed me home when I showed up after 4 months,

Getting utterly lost on the way to Hartbeespoort dam and driving through Alexandra, where they’d kill you as soon as look at you…

… and driving alone through a 6 km stretch of road with the concise warning: “Area prone to car-jackings”,

Partying: in Sandton, Rosebank, Parktown… just partying,

Running through the rain at 1 AM, regardless of warnings not to walk at night and arriving at the hotel filled with awe at our daring,

Getting a massage in the middle of the bush at night,

Finding myself in the middle of a discussion on whether to fuel the car or to break-down and leave ourselves to the tender mercies of the supposed terrorists lurking in every corner,

Meeting and greeting two leopards – mother and son, in the Sabie-Sabie,

Coming face-to-face with a pride of four lions that also would rather kill you than look at you,

Encountering a family of warthog taking the highway in the Kruger and anthropomorphizing them (“Darling, let’s take the highway, nay?”),

Discovering masculine skills like “cooking a braai”,

Finding the South African accent in my English,

Falling irrevocably in love with the country.

Lesotho:

Taking one hour to travel 200 m from South Africa into Lesotho,

Entering the country with just an entry stamp!

Searching for the donkeys that were mentioned in the Lonely Planet as Lesotho’s chief mode of transportation,

Adjusting to the low light conditions in a shabeen,

Making WWII jokes in a group of Germans and Israelis (woe is me),

Checking out the mad skills of a medicine woman (and also her trusty blue steed/storage area).

Europe:

Walking with my mouth fully open in Keukenhof,

Partying till 4 AM on Saturday morning with a bunch of Germans in Berlin…

And partying till 3 AM on Sunday morning with the same bunch of Germans whilst forming an elite club called “League of Shorties”,

Visiting the Ice Bar in Amsterdam with the Shorty and friends, cackling at the joke, “I don’t have the key. I am level 3.”,

Defiantly ordering a cappuccino in Milano at 2 PM and pretending not to see the Italians dying in the aisles,

Exploiting the executive lounge of the Ambassador Hotel, having breakfast in bed and lunch at St. Germain in Paris,

Building up my house with Pooja in Brussels,

Running through Frankfurt airport Terminal C to the First Class terminal with luggage (3 km including passport control) in 15 minutes behind two directors,

Gawping at Hamleys London again and wishing I was 5 years old,

Discovering the finer points of London (shopping).

US:

Spending most of Easter Sunday stuck at church in Philadelphia, praying for the service to end,

Finding Gino’s Philly cheese steak superior to Pat’s,

Appreciating the Rockefeller Center for more than its architecture,

Stumbling on NYC’s best cupcakes at Magnolia’s (yum),

Getting a handle on Warhol at the MoMA,

Signing up for membership at the New York Met and spending 10 minutes next to the half bust of Nefertiti,

Watching Jon Stewart on Monday and Steven Colbert on Tuesday,

Coming away much affected by Colbert’s personality and introspection,

Wearing jeans in the Waldorf-Astoria lobby  and learning about the dress-code later,

Feeling overawed by the New York skyline,

Listening to the story on Osama Bin Laden on the flight home.

The Philippines:

Never figuring out how exactly to cross the street in Manila,

Partying with French folk!

Ingesting most of the ocean during a sailing trip in Boracay and nearly capsizing,

Getting unbelievably sunburnt due to an obstinacy to put sunscreen,

Listening to reggae at 1 AM by the seaside

Reading a book at 2 AM by the seaside,

Discussing life and other dilemmas with a friend at 3 AM by the seaside,

Paying taxes to come to the country, go through the airport, leave the country, sneezing etc,

Paying 600 pesos to get from one side of the airport to the other…

… and missing the connecting flight anyway.

Australia: 

Spending a rather topsy-turvy Christmas in Melbourne,

Meeting the 12 Apostles on the Great Ocean Road,

Checking out the marine life at the Great Barrier Reef,

Equating Cairns to Kerala in my head, down to small waterfalls,

Impressed by Sydney’s unique mix of New York city skyline and Australian panache,

Discovering, once again, the meaning of life during the best New Year’s Eve celebration on a cruise through the Parade of Lights (“Always display a child-like wonder”)

Ringing in 2012 in the best possible way with a million other Australians.

Happy New Year, people!

And there he was, looking at me with his beady eyes accusing. A bird.

I looked up at the “Do not feed wild animals” sign and carried on eating and reading my book.

The bird continued to stare at me with a look in its eyes that suggested it could do that all day long. I looked around and noticed that there was birds similarly engaging other tourists at different tables, looking fixedly at their food.

I was contemplating putting the box into the dustbin when I felt claws in my lap. I screamed and jumped up, and the bird fell to the ground and went back to its original position.

We had reached an impasse. Both of us looked into each other’s eyes. My hand crept up to one fry and dropped in 5 feet away from the table.

He was off like a shot in pursuit of the now-stationary morsel. He clasped it in his singularly pointed beak and scampered off at top speed away from the table.

And at the same speed, his friend ran under the table from the other side to take up the old position.

“Uncanny”, I thought and resolved not to give the birds any food, closing the box and taking two fries out to eat.

There really was no excuse for what happened next. I was dipping my fries in sauce and reading the engrossing adventures of the Scarlet Pimpernel (continued) when the bird rushed my bastion, hopped on the box, snatched my fries from my hand and fled from the scene of crime with two other birds in hot pursuit of the mother lode!

As I stared at the retreating petty criminal, my old friend Bird #1 returned to his original spot.

***

“Well done, Oliver Bird. How much did you get for me today?”

“Well, Fagin Bird, I got these two fries from the odd brown lady, and this giant red strawberry from the yellow man in the other corner.”

The head of the Bird Cartel of the Great Barrier Reef was well-pleased.

***

Thanks, Kavity, for finding my real-life experience highly amusing on Gtalk.

For me, the moral is clear. All ye chickens, try and be as organized (crime) as these birds are. Carpe Diem. Seize the (err) day. Gather the fries while ye may.

And realised how much I miss South Africa.

A monologue in the smokey haze

A jazz-fueled stupor

An almost religious fervour

A puppet held by its strings

Who knows what tomorrow brings

Because it is a vaudeville life.

A custard pie in the face

There is nothing as truly terrifying to a small child as a clown in its grinning rictus. No amount of water sloshing in comically oversized pants, custard pies bandied about in humorous jest or spouting fake flowers could ever endear Bozo to his main clientele – the 10th birthday crowd.

A monologue in the smokey haze

The stand-up comedian wiped his damp hands on his trousers and squinted out into the audience. The bright lights started to unnerve him.

“Folks, you know what happened to me on the way here?”

“No, but I am sure you are going to tell us right now,” yelled a heckler from the back of the room. There’s always a wise guy who comes to see a funny guy.

Hecklers always made his life easier. The world, after all, operates on a simple maxim – it likes to see wise guys taken down a few pegs. And he was the man to do it.

He wasn’t nervous anymore.

A jazz-fueled stupor

The 50 piece orchaestra reached the crescendo of the final movement in the symphony. It was all the boy could do to breathe.

And then silence. A clarinet blew the last note.

There was one single suspended moment of utter perfection.

The boy has now grown up into a jazz musician who plays the saxophone in a modish bar in the upscale part of town. He endlessly strives for the perfect last note. The day he does, he has decided, he will take up the clarinet.

An almost religious fervor

The Glorious Mr. Fotheringue (pronounced Foh-thuh-ranj, in a pseudo-Gallic fashion) had a manic look in his eyes that completely unnerved his manager.

“Mais oui, zat ees right. I want my next performance at huh Eiffel tohver. I am sure you can provide for some danseeng Bengal tigers. Zuh tigers are always a bon idee. And I weel make zuh tohver disappear.” 

The manager was nonplussed, “But that has already been done.”

“Mon dieu, zat Daveed Copperfield fellow again, iz eet? Has he left any famous building for zuh Glorious Fotheringue to make poof yet?”

The Glorious Mr. F, in his next billing, was mauled by Timmy, the dancing Bengal Tiger he had brought in as a prelude to his grand finale – making Heathrow Terminal Five vanish in a poof of indignant smoke.

There is a moral in this story – don’t try your funny tricks on Heathrow Terminal 5 – it plays the game better than you do.

A puppet held by its strings

The puppeteer always felt like an Omnipotent God, when he sat up in the rafters controlling his little puppets on the stage.

“What is Free Will when stripped to its bones?”, he thought while making his little prince dance through the Enchanted Forest. “That poor doll there dances to my tune, speaks through someone else who reads the words I wrote and has his entire story mapped out. Where is Free Will in that?”

His hands stilled. “Where is my Free Will?,” he looked upward and dropped the strings.

The wooden controls fell on the stage with a clatter and the story was over.

The puppeteer had become that dangerous thing – an Indifferent God.

I then go to other extreme and tell people my childhood stories – of having people at my beck and call, of being a privileged Army brat and of driving to college in a Fiat Palio when I turned 18.

The truth, like everything else in my life, is infinitely more complex, infinitely more varied and has the strongest woman in my life to blame.

Here’s the real story:

One of my earliest memories is that of sitting on a porch in my Secundrabad home with a soldier who is standing on his head. (They were the jawans who were asked to help out the officers – we had slightly less than most officers since my father was, if nothing else, one of the most prinicipled men ever. ) He was standing on his head because of a pact I had made. For every headstand or somersault he turned, I would have one spoonful of milk. Evidently, I was a wilful young child. My mother regularly blamed my father, who thought that I was the most delightful thing in the world. Really.

I woke up screaming from a nightmare in the middle of the night, in someone else’s house, yelling I wanted to go to my mother. My family friends took us to my parents’ house. It was silent and there were people all around. I went to my mother, who was lying in the bed, surrounded by people and went and sat next to her. She was crying and I had no idea why. I snuggled upto her and fell asleep.

I was on my first flight ever! We were going to Madras and everyone was hugging us. Unfortunately I caught a fever in air. I remember the stewardesses coming to give me crocin, which I promptly threw up. We landed and went to the most palatial house we’d been to – there was even a swimming pool! But by now I was burning and seizing up. I had to be admitted into the hospital where they put an IV drip into my left hand.

Then things are a blur. My mother says the only reason she could live through the nightmare of her husband’s death was that her young daughter needed her more.

I don’t remember my father’s funeral. He’d died at 41. My mother was 36 – her children were 12 and 3. I can’t remember my father’s face, what he looked like, what he liked, read, said or wanted.

All I remember is the life that followed. The life that was made by my mother.

This is the woman who used to leave her children to school, and went to air travel classes in the evening. This is the woman who made one room (that’s a bedroom-drawing room-living room-room) house above a garage a home. This is the woman who taught herself how to ride a moped in 3 days without having ever ridden a cycle.

When my father had died, she didn’t know how to do anything – work for her living, open a bank account, pay electricity bills. Nothing. She had to teach herself to do these things, alongside, working a 9-5 job and then coming back to home to look after her children and her parents. And also how to change fuses.

I remember going to a government school sitting behind my mother and sister on a 30 cc moped (the year was 1990) and finding it funny that my mother was the only woman who was doing that on the streets of Trivandrum. She was deemed by all the autodrivers “the woman in the bob-cut” (she learnt that much later!)

We weren’t rich by any stretch of the imagination. But, growing up, I never knew that. I had good clothes, good food and a lot of inherited spirit.

Then my mother started to work harder. She bought a petrol station for Indian Oil under the Army quota. She moved, like post-liberalised India, from a moped to a scooter and then to a Maruti 800. She taught herself to drive and then we drove till Kodaikanal.

The autodrivers were puzzled. “Where was the woman in the bob-cut?”, they asked.

She now had a Fiat Palio.

She also decided to take her children abroad – we went to SE Asia when I was 8 and 12 and to Israel when I was 15. Those were high-points in a rather normal life that left my friends wide-eyed. You remember when airplanes had smoking sections? I do – we had to sit in them in a haze of smoke. Yuck.

However, India and Kerala, being India and Kerala, the world had a very decided opiion.

Everytime my mother took a decision that was at odds with the norm – travelling abroad, for instance, there were people reminding her that she had two daughters to marry off. When she bought a car, they told her that she should sit at home and mope as she was a widow. When she decided to move her petrol station, they asked her if she was mad.

But then, my mother actually knew better than the stupid world. She wasn’t asking for the free (and utterly useless) advice she was getting.

Nowadays, my completely self-made mother is more peaceful than she has been her whole life. Her children are settled down – though she doesn’t completely understand her younger daughter’s ideas about life. She is enjoying her grandchildren and now, even has time to go travelling the world. She even gets compliments on how her children have grown up – from people whose kids made wrong choices.

And all that, ma, is for you. You deserve it. For being the strongest person I know.

I’d never realised how hard it was to find a house.

Three years after settling down (after a fashion) in Brussels, it was time to (gulp) live alone. Atypically, for me, at least, I’d made a list of places I wanted to check out. Lists were made of attributes of the house that I wanted to spend a substantial amount of the time I was not spending in hotels.

As every child knows, there are three rules about house-hunting: location, location, location. For three years, we’d been living in a spectacular house (old landlord, don’t ask) in just a slightly-dodgy part of the city and I’d decided that this time I was going to be moddish, if not completely stylish, in the choice of houses.

There was only one problem; actually make it two – I needed to stay in the same commune (suburb) of the city I had been before, so that it made all the reams of paperwork easier on my busy self and 2) budget, budget, budget. While Brussels is not as expensive as London or Paris, it can get a bit tight for a single person wanting to live in something slightly bigger than a studio in a good part of town.

So, I ran a few searches on Immoweb and in end-May, decided to send out requests to house agencies/owners on properties I ostensibly could like.

Out of my indiscriminate mails (30-odd), I got 4 replies for the next week and decided to take the plunge.

Contestant number 1 was a 50 m2 house 20 metres away from the office (could be a good thing). So, I walked out at 2 PM one day and went to the apartment complex. The house was tiny and was shaped in just the way that made putting anything resembling normal sized furniture a nightmare.

I looked up at the house agent and gestured to the open-plan kitchen, “Yes, I see that you have all the appliances. However, where can I put a table?”

She pointed to a 0.5 m deep recess in the wall and mouthed, “Tabletop and barstools.”

By the time I’d visited the bedroom and she’d drawn a squiggly shape for where the bed should be, I’d given up.

We shook hands and I mentally pbbt-ed.

Contestant number 2 was near the woods and was lovely, dark and deep.

And I completely hated all “80 m2 of high-gloss hardwood floor with fully equipped kitchen, white marble bat-tub, reasonable price-”ness of it. For a reason that had nothing to do with its granite foyer, 24 hour security and peaceful neighbours.

Sigh, moving on to Contestant 3 that was touted as being near the ponds of Ixelles, a duplex with toe tingling goodness.

It was in a dodgy part of town and not really near the ponds. I was distinctly feeling uncomfortable as I drove up and down the main road trying to find parking (a normal Bruxellois pastime). 30′ later, I found parking and walked up to a maison de maître (A townhouse typically from Belgium or the Netherlands) and found the owner was MIA. After calling him and checking in to see when he would be back, I walked back to the car.

Till I felt someone following me. I clutched my purse tighter and walked faster. The person behind me kept up.

I slowed down; he modulated his pace.

I quickly turned into a corner and stopped, waiting for him to either go past or turn the corner. His footsteps slowed down and he slowly came into view. I started walking again, crossed the street, stopped and looked across at him.

It was a small teenage boy in a hoodie.  And I was petrified.

He kind of looked embarrassed and he didn’t cross the street.

I nearly ran down to my car, tossed my purse into the boot and called the owner.

“Yes, I decided not to view the house. Sorry. There doesn’t seem to be much parking around here.”

Not to mention that your area seems to breed teenage delinquents like little nasty weeds.

I had another mail from a house agent –  there was another hardwood floor wonder to visit. On to Contestant Number 4.

By the time I got to the massive apartment complex, I was laughing. This one was near a hospital and was surrounded by funeral homes and crematoriums.

I had a mental picture of explaining to my mother, “Yes, ma, I live next to 5 funeral homes and I regularly see dead bodies in an Ambulance.”

That conversation was bound to go well.

The house owner was surprised to see a girl given my last name and that he’d been emailing me as Monsieur Georges. Regardless, he took me upstairs to a flat that overlooked a tiny garden.

I tried to make small chat with him, “Sooo, this hospital seems convenient.”

He was ghoulishly happy, ”Yes, it’s great. The pompiers have to switch off their sirens 500 m from the hospital, so we never hear them“

My smile had a fixed quality, “These hardwood floors are excellent.”

He didn’t seem to notice the non-sequitur as he prattled on about the excellent parks, playgrounds, parking and funeral homes that could take care of my non-scheduled emergencies.

I shook his hands, assured him I’d call him in some days and walked away thinking, “Fat chance.”

By now I was seriously getting fed up but I still had Contestant Number 5 scheduled for Saturday.

I showed up on time for the meeting, by which time the agent had called me twice already.

The area was better this time – no teenage delinquents, no funeral homes, near the office and bang opposite – wait for it, an Indian restaurant and the church I go to. It was also 100 m from the Embassy of India for any of my non-scheduled passport related emergencies.

A very earnest looking Greek boy was waiting outside the house.

“It’s the first viewing for this house.”

“I see.” I added in my head evilly, “Is it also the first time you have ever had a client?”

He opened the door into a living room and dining room that was around 3.5 m wide. I narrowed my eyes, giving my best house vulture look.

“This is narrow.” I said rather obviously.

The boy was, by now, looking terrified. “I worked here for 2 years and I love this place”

Well, it might be good enough for terrified looking Greek boys, but it ain’t good enough for smart, suave and just-oh-slightly naive Indian girls.

I walked into the kitchen and then walked down a flight of concrete steps that were two steps away from plunging to my death.

They were that scary.

Continuing in my vein of obvious statements, I pointed out to Apollo with me, “This is a concrete floor. Are you planning to do something about it?”

He was in a apoplectic seizure and said in a small voice, “Carpets?”

“Hmmm…”

I walked up the stairs, sat down. And on the sofa, I realised it. I’d fallen in love with the flat. In spite of the concrete steps from hell, the peeling floor downstairs, the glass floor/skylight that looked down to the bedroom, the tiny fridge and hot plate, I felt a connection to the flat I’d never felt with any of the other contestants.

I looked at Apollo and said, “Can I put nails in the walls?”

Said he, “As long as you don’t knock a wall down.”

“Heheh. No, I will let you know in two days.”

I will gloss over my last viewing, where the house owner looked at my very modest heels and informed me it was a bad idea to scuff his floors with my shoes and asked me to oil the bathroom floor every six months.

I called Apollo up and said yes.

I had my home.

STEP 2: Signing the dotted line

Three weeks later, I was at the house agents to sign the papers.

After signing 100 papers in triplicate, the main man (also a Greek I shall now deem Zeus) looked up at me and said. “Great. Let me write the address down for you.”

He wrote it down. I took the paper from him and zoned into the pin code.

“That can’t be right. It’s 1050 Ixelles, not 1000 Brussels” (Big difference. Ixelles means a 2 hour and 3 week wait to renew your papers. Brussels implies 5 hours and 2 months)

He laughed, “No, it’s Brussels.”

“Excuse me! It’s Vleurgat, and your ad said 1050 Ixelles.”

He opened the website, said, “Whoops”, and changed the pin code.

And there was nothing I could do.

STEP 3: Obsessing about details

I wanted a bookshelf. And I didn’t want it from Ikea. EVERYONE did Ikea. I wanted something with character.

I went to websites, and more websites, haunted expat forums in a bid to stave off Ikea and even visited sites designed to enhance standard Ikea crap. In short, I had turned into an OCD version of myself.

And then I bought this. And this and this, for good measure.

After dragging around 50 kilos down the big shelves at Zaventem, I was exhausted. I promptly called Pooja (from Amsterdam, no less) to come and have a fun weekend assembling furniture.

She obeyed my summons, weirdly enough. We spent two days carting all my stuff around, setting up the shelves and having a rather great time.

My OCD was still not done. I was still on the lookout for odds and ends, and I bought out the African crafts market to fill the house up. In the middle, I accumulated a Macbook Air, Samsung 40′ TV and a Blu-ray player.

And I curl up in my bed at night, reading from my Kindle. Life is just so good.

Pictures coming up below. Yes, because I do love this place SO much.

Rather beige-y, but it's mine!

Ikea bookshelf customised with words from the heart

Closer look at bookshelf, Obelix and graffiti

Overspending was never this good

Assorted things I like to do

Food shall be consumed. Here

The domestication begins

Stepladder to heaven, stairway to hell?

All girly and pink!

Drawers on drawers

Orangutan on the sidetable

In the rustling of a few calender pages,

The days, swiftly, they change.

I remember those halcyon days, I do,

Of reversed Cs, E’s and two times two.

Before confusion beset my poor soul,

Before I assumed this responsible role,

I remember I was quite young and gung-ho,

From shiny hair to tippy-toe-toe.

In the rustling of a few calender pages,

The days, swiftly, they change.

Then I moved on to pretended understanding,

Of calculus, science and that other thing.

(At the tip of my tongue it is,  trust me,

Dammit, my memory isn’t what it used to be)

Head stuck in the clouds, nose firmly in a book,

Adolescence passed me by with nary a look.

In the rustling of a few calender pages,

The days, swiftly, they change.

College came and went in a dizzy,

Quite quickly, more’s the pity,

Made my friends, few and fast,

These friendships are meant to last.

Things were beginning to make sense,

Or maybe I was getting less dense?

In the rustling of a few calender pages,

The days, swiftly, they change.

Where have the last three years gone?

People tell me I have grown up.

Yes, I get a monthly cheque,

I pay my bills.

But I still don’t know what I want, will I ever?

Help me please, I have now become young-ish,

And from Miss I don’t want to be Missus.

In the rustling of a few calender pages,

The days, swiftly, they change.

This one thought that girls were a waste of time.

She thought that she could change him, because which girl didn’t like a challenge ?

The next kind of wrong guy for her was the player.

It’s important to note that there are many people in Pakistan and there are many people in the Pakistan government, so you have to be careful about tarring everyone either in the country or the government…

There’s a whole generation out there that does not understand the significance of events I lived through – the Gulf War, the 93 bomb blasts, the Gujarat riots, 9/11, 26/11, the IISc bombing, the Parliament terrorist attack. The thought is a bit chilling. But then again, I still don’t fully understand the Cuban missile crisis or the Khalistan movement.

A person’s reality is fully based on their here and their now.

I heard about Osama’s death on my flight back from New York. A very fitting place (at least in my head!)