Smart pain

The first time I discovered smart pain was in a public restroom when the light automatically turned off on me because I was sitting too still.  Try as I might, I cannot forget all the objects I bumped into while trying to exit the restroom a few minutes later. Felt actual pain.

I define 'smart pain' as the trauma caused by smart devices.  Devices capable of inflicting smart pain can range from simple motion sensor lights like the one alluded to above to sophisticated smart speakers like Google Home and Alexa that can hold full blown conversations with their owners.  I vaguely remember hearing a story of someone's Alexa misunderstanding their conversation and placing an order for seven thousand oatmeal raisin cookies or fifty-six bags of cat food or some such ludicrousness.  Real pain, that!  And of course, we constantly hear about the vulnerability of privacy caused by smart devices that clandestinely collect personal data.

Everything is smart these days.  A smart key gets you into your car.  A smart thermostat controls your furnace.  A smart speaker controls your lights.  A smart TV controls your entertainment needs.  A smart phone controls, well, you.  There is no escape from all this smartness.  And we regular humans are barely beginning to catch up.  Like the time I was standing in front of a lamp blurting out various permutations and combinations of commands trying to turn it on until someone walked into the room and turned it on by nonchalantly flipping a switch!

Polyglot, what!

India is one of the most multilingual countries in the world.  The Indian Constitution lists 22 official languages, but the number of spoken languages and dialects is a staggering one.  Back in 1956, the Indian Parliament enacted the States Reorganization Act, which resulted in Indian state lines being drawn in a way that people with different mother tongues had to holler over state borders to communicate with each other.  And while there continue to be disputes because some people keep wanting to redraw these lines so they can holler louder across them for some inexplicable reason, most Indians and persons of Indian origin around the world have managed to stand largely united amid linguistic disparities.

 

It is no marvel that the average Indian is multilingual.  Having grown up and lived in pleasantly cacophonic soundscapes where my left and right ears were subjected to different languages and dialects simultaneously, I automatically acquired the ability to converse meaningfully in five languages and fake meaningful conversations in least four more using basic phrases.  And this by no means is an extraordinary accomplishment.  Ask any person of Indian origin and they will profess to skills similar or, in many cases, superlative to mine.  In fact, we are multilingual to the point that we can train our kids to be multilingual as well and still keep one language a secret from them so that we can use it for undercover parental communications!  Ergo, any arguments regarding the pros and cons of being multilingual sound trifling to the average Indian.  Delayed language fluency in multilingual kids, it seems -- pfft!

A book purchased on Amazon with the intent of converting my fake Kannada into the real deal 

(partially successful project, this)

An inevitable outcome of this multilingual culture is the intermixing of languages.  This has resulted in the birth and evolution of hybrid languages like Tanglish, Hinglish, Kanglish, Tenglish etc., which serve well for creating comedic effect in conversations, for example -  

 

Why this kolaveri di?

Straight-a po!

Come here na?

Ay don't sing like this type of filmi songs no!

What and all he is doing, chchaa!

Lite teesko

OK boss, do one thing

Chill madi

etc.  

One hybrid that I grew up listening to a lot was the typically Puneri hybrid that organically manifests when a native Marathi speaker attempts to speak Hindi, for example, 'Mereko pohane ko nahi aata, tereko thaaook hai na?  Mug tu majhya samor swimming pool mein udi marke kaiko mereko ola kar raha hai? Poosne ko towel bhi nahi hai, ab anga waalega kaise?' or as P.L. Deshpande succinctly called it 'Hindi chi chindi karane' in his book Batatyachi Chal through lines like 'Hum Trilokekar, aur hum Gupte, aani Baba Barve acharya hoenga maloom hai acharya hoenga!'  

This macaronic propensity among Indians is not a new phenomenon.  It has been a part of Indian culture for many years, evidenced by old languages like Manipravalam (an eclectic blend of Tamil, Malayalam, and Sanskrit).  The well known composer king Maharaja Swati Tirunal is said to have been fluent in over 13 languages and has composed Carnatic compositions in all of them, including Manipravalam.

Another curious outcome of this multilingual culture is the knack of switching accents many Indians possess.  I addressed accents in a previous post but didn't specifically address accent switching.  And no, I am not talking about the oft heard wannabe Ame'zhi'can or Bri'ish accents bordering on cultural appropriation, like this conversation from my engineering college farewell party I remember too vividly for some reason - 

Boy 1: (in fake accent) Ay yo, I ain't drinkin' man!

Boy 2: Abbe paagal hai kya, 'ain't' sab kaun bolta hai!

Boy 1: (in regular accent) Ay gappa bas, America mein sab aishi hi English vaaparate hain...

Followed by intense teasing because Boy 1 had just received an admit from some U.S. university.  

No, I am not referring to people like Boy 1.  I am referring to Indians who seem to be able to effortlessly jump state or country lines by switching articulation and intonation styles accurately and genuinely.  Case in point, my older daughter, who can not only flawlessly switch between Tamil and Havyaka languages, but also shift seamlessly from a standard American (or Ohio) accent to a mixed Tamil/Kannada accent while speaking English.  Now, whether our local school system thinks this is a good thing or not is a different matter altogether...

Long Drive

That long drives, especially with family, are daredevil undertakings is an indubitable fact.  Furthermore, I have observed that with time, these sojourns tend to consistently rise up on the scale of effortfulness.  Gone are the days when I could just hop into the car and drive 10 hrs from Youngstown OH to Louisville KY to meet my friend Amit a.k.a. Cookie, deliberately choosing country roads instead of interstate highways and stopping at random convenience stores along the way to purchase local brands of weirdly flavored Pringle-like chips, tiny mint chocolates, and orange colored sodas.  Gone, also, are those days when Pavana and I would go on long drives through winding Pennsylvania roads, chewing the rag about this and that, me sitting at the wheel and Pavana carrying out her favorite project of tidying and organizing the glove compartment, and occasionally reprimanding me whenever she found a half eaten chips packet or a receipt that showed proof that I had once eaten chips out of a packet.  

These days the drill begins many hours before the actual drive.  The notes app on the phone starts getting populated with a long list containing some straightforward entries like phone charger, diaper bag, E-ZPass, etc. and some mysterious ones like banana, pot etc.  Next, two large suitcases are pardoned from their exile in the dark regions of the basement and loaded with clothes that seem to be enough for a couple weeks but are in reality intended for only a couple days.  A dozen stained Walmart cloth bags find their way to the kitchen island and start getting filled with snacks that are blasphemy on regular days but inexplicably not so for the drive.  Meanwhile, the Instapot merrily beeps away announcing the culmination of the cooking process of tomato rice that would then be transferred to individual Tupperware boxes for everyone to eat on the go.  A meticulous strategy is chalked out detailing which bags go where in the mini-van, when baby is fed and changed, who uses the restroom last, what is the sequence of getting into the mini-van, who sits on which seat, etc.  When it is time to leave, everyone gets into the mini-van as planned, but not without considerable yelling and shrieking and a couple extra trips back into the house because the person responsible for filling water bottles forgot their job.  Finally, a single chant of "Bolo Bajrang Bali ki Jai!" puts an end to the commotion and everyone settles down.  The rubber hits the road and everyone heaves a sigh of relief (and silently prays that the baby won't fight the shackles of her car seat).  

Within 5 min, a lone voice is heard from the back seat -- "Are we there yet?"

Mattress Mattress

I was introduced to the great American mattress by the kind souls at The Chapel on the campus of UAkron.  Being an international student with meagre means, I had signed up with them to receive some free basic furniture, which included a blue 6" twin mattress with a bunkie board.  The mattress was apparently unused, and therefore passed the test of sanitariness.  It had however been damaged in during transportation, causing the original buyer to reject it.  Other than the frayed seams and an obnoxious mutilation of fabric on the non-sleeping surface, the mattress wasn't visually unappealing.  Also, one didn't have to perform a finite element analysis on the mattress to know that some springs were damaged; the mattress was bouncy in some parts and recalcitrant in others.  My 23 year old body however organically adapted to this unevenness with no problems at all.  I was in fact quite pleased with this free piece of bedding.  I was and will always be grateful to have received it.  It stayed with me for two years until a particularly ghastly army of bedbugs infested the off-campus UAkron student community, and I had to transfer ownership of the mattress to the said bedbugs.

The reason I tell you this story is that I want you to know I wasn't always hypersensitive about my nightly support surfaces.  I don't want you to think that I am one of those people who use plush mattresses as an example to grumble about the decadence of civilization and societal collapse.  That being said, I truly don't understand the great American mattress.  You know what I am talking about.  I am referring to the luxurious looking, opulent, rich mattress you find in hotels.  The mattress that is meticulously attired in clean white sheets with enough layers to confuse you as to which two layers to insert your body into.  The mattress that cause your posterior to descend so much when you sit on it that you can feel the rest of the mattress at your elbows and you suddenly feel like a diminutive human.  The mattress that is so cushy that you wonder if your body will get entirely engulfed in it like a slice of aloo in besan batter during the bajji making process.

I grew up in a land where most people sleep on cotton or coir mattresses.  As such, even the highest number of springs in an American spring mattress cannot meet the mattress hardness I am used to.  Until last year, I would complain daily to Pavana of a neck sprain or a backache and spend many nights sleeping on the floor with an old comforter.  One fine day, Pavana literally dragged me to the neighborhood mattress store and forced us to spend a fortune on an extra hard mattress.  This mattress was supposed to be the liberator to my nightly anatomical woes and Pavana's solution to put a stop to my incessant grievances.  

However, much to Pavana's chagrin, this wasn't the case.  

My current sleeping arrangement is a futon mattress covered with a 100% cotton Bombay Dyeing bedsheet.

Right ho, Wodehouse!

Today is the 139th birth anniversary of my favorite author P. G. Wodehouse.  Thanks to PGW's brilliant novels, my adolescent years were spent in the esteemed company of many Jeeveses, Berties, Psmiths, Mr. Mulliners, an army of butlers, valets, aunts, uncles, dukes, earls, viscounts, and a pig called The Empress of Blandings, who all seem to come to life and share room and board with me through PGW's brilliant prose.  Wodehouse was my comfort reading growing up, and continues to be so even today.  PGW, or 'Plum' as his first name Pelham had apparently elided to in his circles, undoubtedly stands among the tallest of the tall in written comedy.  

One of my absolute favorites is 'The Code of the Woosters'.  If you have read the book, you know what I am talking about.  How could one forget how the droopy saucer-eyed Madeline Bassett breaks off her engagement with the horn-rimmed spectacled newt-fancier Gussie Fink-Nottle, and how Bertie travels to Totleigh Towers to heal the rift between the Bassett and Gussie under the pretense of assisting his Aunt Dahlia, famed for her booming voice owing to years of fox-chivvying with the Quorn and Pytchley, in pinching a silver 18th century cow-creamer from under the nose of Sir Watkyn Bassett in order to appease Aunt Dahlia's husband Tom and in turn prevent a life-ban from the delicious food dished out by God's gift to the gastric juices aka Anatole at Brinkley Court in Worcestershire, and how in the end Jeeves relies upon the psychology of the individual to save the day and wins Bertie's approval to go on his world cruise!

Thanks to both my parents being huge fans of P.G. Wodehouse, our bookshelf in my childhood home was filled with a battery of lightly tattered orange spined Wodehouse paperbacks, each one containing the small Penguin publications logo on the cover and moderately foxed pages inside waiting to tickle my funny bone with the most absurd premise imaginable.  It owe to both my parents for introducing me to the idyllic world of PGW and his idiosyncratic band of characters ranging from the quirky members of the British nobility to the unemployed but rich English youth living their lives on inheritances to dignified and erudite valets capable of solving any problem!

Okay, time to curl up with 'Uncle Fred in the Springtime' now!

Baaton Baaton Mein

Common wisdom lays ample stress upon good communication in order for a marriage to be successful.  Yet, whenever I am in the presence of a septuagenarian or octogenarian couple with a long and successful marriage, I am invariably struck by the scarcity of the spoken word between them.  It almost always seems like they are just happy co-existing.  So what is their secret?

The answer lies in their ability to communicate effectively using non-verbal cues.  Pavana always says that I am quite the bumbling idiot when it comes to picking up on non-verbal cues, especially when we have someone over or when there are more people present than just the two of us.  I do not completely disagree with her.  At the same time, I don't think she is particularly adroit at picking up on all of my non-verbal cues either.  And that's okay.  We are merely into the 12th year of our marriage, and we are both evolving as marital communicators and learning as we go.  The learning happens at different rates though, which is why we sometimes have small conflicts.  I leave it up to you to decide who is the faster learner; it should be pretty obvious!

And then there is also the written communication (read texting).  As a young couple in the early days of our courtship, our conversations were embarrassingly frivolous, or at least they seem so now.  Those were the days when cell networks would offer 100 free text messages per day, and I remember we would exhaust our respective quotas every day with the said frivolities.  Today, I can safely say that we have evolved well past that embarrassing stage of our relationship.  Our text message exchanges are still embarrassing, but in a different way.  Sample the screenshots below.  And also know that in most cases, each exchange is the only worthwhile text conversation had in that entire day. 

On fall-time kid hygiene:

On domestic smells:

On furniture rearrangement:

On nocturnal duties:

So irrelevant that I can't even think of a title:

Family portraits

"We need to go for a photoshoot with Appa and Amma before they go back to India", declared Pavana.

I sighed, not because I have anything against family portraits; I am actually a sincere proponent of documenting memories via photographs.  I sighed because my mind went back to a particularly bitter experience we had had recently with a local photo studio.  The propensity of such establishments for swindling customers into paying for pointless photo packages is well known.  However this one time, not only did we experience the usual smooth talk soliciting unsought packages, but we were also almost hoodwinked into paying for low quality prints and products that we hadn't even ordered.  Meanwhile, manager after manager mysteriously kept quitting the establishment and we kept getting re-directed to an elusive individual of supposed authority at the 'corporate office' to talk to about our perfectly bona fide concerns.

"I'm looking at booking a professional photographer", said Pavana, effectively bisecting the bedlam in my head.

"But", I countered, "private photographers must be really expensive, no?"

"This one is really cheap', replied Pavana triumphantly, "she has some deals and all.  Seems like it'll cost us only $100 for a session plus prints".

She had a point.  $100 for a session and prints was cheap, considering the aforementioned photo studios that would never allow one to walk out without spending at least $200.

"Okay fine, when?", I asked.

What followed was a exhaustive conference scrutinizing our schedules and trying to find a suitable time slot with the photographer.  After scrounging for an hour here and an hour there in our respective activity registries we finally reached a resolution.

"Nothing is clicking.  I guess it won't work". Pavana sighed this time.  I fixated on the pun that had been uttered inadvertently, but resisted joking about it.

"Fine", I said instead, "How about we just go to a local park and I click photos with my iPhone?"

Pavana moodily nodded affirmative.  I got the familiar feeling that she didn't trust it would ever happen.

Remarkably, we did find a couple free hours to implement this plan this past weekend.  We bundled the entire gang into the minivan, threw a few clean diapers and a box of yogurt bites into the diaper bag, and drove to the nearest park armed with a fully charged iPhone.  Notwithstanding all the distraction caused by particularly impatient photo subjects, dog poop at the most unexpected locations, other families already occupying good photo locations, and a kid who wanted to pee urgently but also wanted to go on a 1.1 mile walking trail called "Blue Bird Trail" to spot blue colored birds, we miraculously managed to click some excellent photographs.

Ironically, we spotted a family getting their photographs clicked by a professional photographer.  On our drive back home from the park, Pavana remarked, "You know, I think it was the same photographer I was trying to book!"

Jeans

Trends in fashion follow no real logic. What is more, the basis of promulgation of these trends among the public is also suspect. Case in point, jeans.

I have come to understand that jeans pants started becoming mainstream in the 70s, and the public was largely told that they would feel comfortable in these pants. Inexplicably, this garment has survived through changing fashion trends. Think about it. Tie-dyed shirts with jeans in the 70s, neon colored tops with high waisted jeans in the 80s, tube tops with acid-wash jeans in the 90s, and leather jackets with low-rise ripped jeans in the 2000s; jeans pants figure in every decade.

In my opinion, the comfort provided by jeans is overrated. I have never felt comfortable wearing jeans. Denim is a coarse material. Moreover, jeans pants are seldom flexible. I have never been able to sit cross-legged comfortably while wearing jeans. The pockets are excruciatingly tight, meaning, if I am sitting and my phone rings, I have to twist and twine my body like some contortionist to extract my phone and answer it in time. Also, most pairs I own become tighter when washed but proceed to get looser and looser through the day, which means that my A.M. decision to skip a belt starts backfiring after noon. Oh, and speaking of washing, not a single pair of jeans I own dries uniformly in the dryer. As such, laundry days routinely end with blue pants hanging to dry at random locations in the house, usually with the wet remains of a grocery bill or other such paper balled up in each pocket.

Parle-G and Uncle Chipps

A pair of angelic albeit slightly somber eyes peered at me through circular plastic spectacles that sat on the middle of her nose.  Her hair was short and wavy, presumably brushed, but unkempt looking.  Her typical bright yellow 90s shirt with jet black stripes made her look somewhat like a harmless tiger.  A faded purple satchel kept slipping off of her left shoulder while she tried to balance a water bottle on her right hand.  I couldn't stop staring at the water bottle.  I found myself waiting for it to fall.  I wondered why the harmless tiger wouldn't just put it in her satchel.

The dusty little playground had white chalk line markers denoting spaces about 4 feet apart.  About 35 kids just like us, all within the ages of 8 and 11, had gathered at the playground for the Camlin Art contest.  I had ridden pillion on a Bajaj scooter with my Thatha, who had dropped me off at the venue with strict instructions to drink only from my water bottle.  On the playground, extroverted kids had formed groups and were chattering away excitedly, while the hesitant ones like the harmless tiger and myself were standing by themselves.  I was suddenly jolted out of my trance at the harmless tiger's water bottle by a strong voice emanating from two inappropriately loud speakers.  The source of the strong voice was a wiry young man, probably in his early twenties, standing at a makeshift podium.  He enthusiastically rattled off a welcome note, gave information about the contest prize (a Camlin hamper consisting of art supplies), and invited us to use the white chalk line markers to find a space to sit.  Kids began scampering around to find spots close to their newly found friends.  Being an introverted kid myself, I wandered around the playground to find a spot away from the boisterous sort.  Finally when I sat down, I found the harmless tiger sitting right next to me.  She was peering at me moodily through her glasses.  I smiled at her halfheartedly.  

"Hi", I mumbled hesitantly.

I was almost startled to see her face break out into a bright grin.  

"Hello", she chirped in a high pitched voice.

The loudspeakers cackled again.  Suddenly, as if on cue, the grin disappeared and her face took on an expression of extreme focus.  The topic of the day was announced: "Prehistoric Age". I soon got busy with drawing colorful dinosaurs and Mesozoic fauna on the sheet of paper given to me.  I ended up depicting a fairly unimaginative landscape.  An awfully asymmetrical pterodactyl was flying above a bunch of trees and staring down at a tall diplodocus chewing on a peculiar leaf.  A triceratops that looked more like a rhino was drinking water from a stream. A tyrannosaurus rex was also bizarrely present, resting under a tree.  After a while I glanced sideways at the harmless tiger's sheet.  Her canvas was much more imaginative that mine.  She had illustrated an action scene of two allosauruses trying to hunt a little baby stegosaurus while a large brachiosaurus was trying to save the baby.  The mother stego was standing afar, presumably unaware of the danger her baby was facing.  A pterodactyl was looking down on the scene from the sky with its mouth open, as if it was shouting for help.  Quite avant-garde, I thought.

It was soon time for us to turn in our sheets.  The harmless tiger and I looked at each other and smiled.  A friendship of sorts had germinated, or so it seemed.  Kids broke out into groups again, chattering away.  The harmless tiger and I found a large rock to sit on.  She sipped water from her water bottle.  I took out a packet of Parle-G biscuits from my bag and started chomping away.  It semi-occurred to me that I should share my snack with her, but for some reason I decided not to.  She produced a packet of Uncle Chipps from her satchel and started crunching away.  I could sense that she also semi-thought of sharing the chips with me, but had then decided against it.  It was alright, I hated Uncle Chipps anyway.

"Good competition this", she said, rather suddenly.

It took me a couple seconds to comprehend what she was talking about as I was still in the process of swallowing a soggy Parle-G.

"Ya", I responded when my mouth was free.

"What did you draw?", she asked.

"Oh nothing, some dinosaurs and trees, that's all", I said.

"Oh", she said.

I couldn't think of anything else to say.  So I decided to eat more Parle-G.

"Did you see my drawing?", she asked suddenly.

"No.... I..", I fumbled.

"I saw you were looking at my drawing.  It's okay.  Did you like it?", she asked, her somber eyes lighting up.

"Yes, very thoughtful drawing", I said sheepishly.

Silence, except for the sound of munching.

"Chip?", she said, holding out the Uncle Chipps bag.

"No thanks", I said, "I don't really like them".

Her eyes became somber again.  I felt sorry for her.

"Parle-G?", I offered.

"No thanks", she replied, "There are too sweet".

The sound of chip crunching and biscuit munching filled the silence again.

Shortly, my Thatha arrived on his scooter.  It was time for me to leave.  I blurted out an "OK bye" to the harmless tiger and departed.  I thought she waved as our scooter bounded off, but I'm not entirely sure.

After a few minutes, I suddenly realized that I hadn't even asked the harmless tiger her name.