The inevitable has happened. I hoped it wouldn't. Like "The Secret" advised, I visualised in my head what I really wanted but it just didn't work. What they say is true. The sands of time are like current stock prices. Once they start falling, no amount of prayers, bail outs or new presidents can stop them.
So as I was saying, the inevitable happened. I turned 30.
As ridiculous as it may sound, I truly believed that it would never happen to me. I'm not sure what I expected would happen instead, but whenever I thought about the future, near or far, I always saw myself as 20-something year old. There I am, celebrating my 25th anniversary, a glowing 28 year old drinking champagne out of an elegant flute. Oh, oh and there I am again, receiving a lifetime achievement award for excellence in writing, a totally hot 26 year old in a dress to die for. And look at me, a glamorous 27 year old, telling my teenage children to stop fighting with each other or I swear to God, no food for a week!
When I turned 29, I felt that things had gone far enough, that the madness would finally end and I'd stay that age forever. The night before my 30th birthday I sent out a fervent prayer to the almighty, asking him to please stop before it was too late. I was just not ready for such a big blow. Just give me a few more years as a 29 year old. But all I got was an extra hour in the day instead. As the country turned their clocks back, my countdown timer was switched on. From here on, it was all downhill.
It's not like I'm a negative person, unable to accept change. It's just that turning 30 really really sucks. First of, there are the physical changes.
The night I turned 30 I sprouted 4 grey hair and my digestive system stopped working. Honestly, I'd never heard of terms like heartburn and indigestion before but ever since my birthday, I eat one extra curly fry and there's hell to pay the next day. My already comatose metabolism is now officially dead and it seems that from now until my death, weight can only be gained and never ever lost. My skin has said goodbye to any kind of glow or shine and welcomed instead such permanent guests as dark circles, under eye bags and age spots. It does, however, continue to sprout the occasional pimple, so that now I'm in the market for an anti-aging acne cream.
My shopping list has also become been touched by the cold and grey fingers of the 30 curse. Anti aging creams for my face, hair colour for my grey mane, calcium and multi-vitamin tablets for my bones, extra-intensive care lotion for my hands and clothes in various shades of greys, blacks and browns.
Along with birthdays and anniversaries, my dismal calendar now has dates marked for mammograms and pap smears. I am now in an age bracket where my chances of getting every disease known to man have gone up exponentially. Plus there's the deafening tick tock of my biological clock. This is unfortunately not accompanied by the necessary ka-ching of the cash register, making it (thankfully) impossible to pay heed to.
People (old people) claim that turning 30 is great because you're wiser and more comfortable in your skin. In response, I would like to say that I would anyday take my youthful 23 year old skin over this 30 year old carcus. And as far as wisdom is concerned, I pretty much peaked at 27. Quite frankly, I've learnt nothing in the last three years that's worth getting old over. If anything, I am now a crabby and choosy old woman, waaaay less fun than the 20 something year old who was game for anything and did not shudder at the word spontaniety.
From gossip about who's sleeping with whom, my social chit-chat has turned to home loans and diaper rash. The hunt for a sexy dress for new year's eve has been replaced by the hunt for a child-friendly new year's party.
The other day I was complaining about being 30 to an older friend who consoled me by saying that things really go to shit when you turn 35. Although I can't see how it can get worse, I would like to issue a fair warning to everyone: If you find yourself in my way in 5 years, scram. I can promise you, I will not be in a good mood.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
The problem with Facebook
I'll be honest. Generally speaking, I'm a grade one Facebook offender, guilty of almost every Facebook crime there is to commit.
Like the quiz, the list of offenses is endless. While it took me some time to get onto the FB bandwagon, once on it, I was milking it for all it was worth. And it really is a great social networking tool (also the right place to learn how to play poker), perfect for keeping in touch and sharing your life's goings on with your friends.
Notice how I use the term "friends".
Friends. As in people you know and like and trust. People who you don't mind seeing your pictures and knowing your moods. People you want to stay in touch with even after you've moved cities and for years to come.
Not acquaintances, not random office colleague you haven't met in 10 years, definitely not the stranger you rode on the lift with once who's name or face you couldn't remember if your life depended on it.
Then why the endless friend requests from unknown people whose table you sat across from at a dinner for a 500?
Don't get me wrong. It's not that I fancy myself to be some kind of super woman who, to paraphrase Kung Fu Panda, blinds people with her sheer awesomeness!! I'm just an ordinary girl who happens to be on Facebook, and for some people that's all the qualification you need to be their friend.
Take a friend request I got some time ago from a guy called X. It said, "Hi! Remember me? We were both on Subhash's team for three days that time in Mumbai."
The truth is that I was last in Mumbai 6 years ago, I barely remember Subhash, I have no idea what team he's talking about and as far as X is concerned, neither his picture nor his reminder message ring any bells.
Then there is the guy who (I think) was at a potluck dinner I attended the other evening. He may have passed me a fork, although I wouldn't bet my life on it. But I can bet my life on the fact that through the course of the evening, not one word was exchanged between us. In fact, I don't think we were ever even within a 15 foot distance of each other. But sure enough, by the time I got home from the dinner, there was waiting in my inbox a friend request from the fork passer. And unlike X, he did not even bother with a "remember me" message. I guess he was running out of time since he had to hurry and add each and every one of the guests at that dinner.
There's also a particularly shameless lot of requesters who simply add you if the two of you have a common friend. That's just the height of laziness if you ask me. I mean, at least make the effort of stepping out and meeting people. Don't go poaching on other people's friends!
I get it. Facebook is not just a social utility site (or whatever they claim to be). It's a contest to see who has the maximum friends, so we may finally know who the most popular person in the world is. (The suspense has been killing me!)
Of course, by adding unknown people to your list the only suspense you're ending is of who the saddest person in the world is.
- Does my profile picture have me posing for all I'm worth under trick, dim lighting to give an the appearance of natural and effortless beauty? Of course.
- Have I ever untagged myself from photos posted by others where it was not my above rehearsed look but natural and very far-from-beautiful self that had been captured? Yes.
- Are my photo albums shameless attempts at convincing my Facebook friends that my life is a non-stop party full of alcohol and an endless stream of friends and clothes? Oh yes.
- Do I leave cryptic status messages in order to come across as cerebral and uncaring of what the world thinks of me, while really being quite silly and very concerned about trying to make an impression? Hell yeah!
- Have I refused to go to the gym because I had "so much work I could die" and spent that time on on Facebook taking endless movie quizzes (including the endless movie quiz) instead? All the time.
Like the quiz, the list of offenses is endless. While it took me some time to get onto the FB bandwagon, once on it, I was milking it for all it was worth. And it really is a great social networking tool (also the right place to learn how to play poker), perfect for keeping in touch and sharing your life's goings on with your friends.
Notice how I use the term "friends".
Friends. As in people you know and like and trust. People who you don't mind seeing your pictures and knowing your moods. People you want to stay in touch with even after you've moved cities and for years to come.
Not acquaintances, not random office colleague you haven't met in 10 years, definitely not the stranger you rode on the lift with once who's name or face you couldn't remember if your life depended on it.
Then why the endless friend requests from unknown people whose table you sat across from at a dinner for a 500?
Don't get me wrong. It's not that I fancy myself to be some kind of super woman who, to paraphrase Kung Fu Panda, blinds people with her sheer awesomeness!! I'm just an ordinary girl who happens to be on Facebook, and for some people that's all the qualification you need to be their friend.
Take a friend request I got some time ago from a guy called X. It said, "Hi! Remember me? We were both on Subhash's team for three days that time in Mumbai."
The truth is that I was last in Mumbai 6 years ago, I barely remember Subhash, I have no idea what team he's talking about and as far as X is concerned, neither his picture nor his reminder message ring any bells.
Then there is the guy who (I think) was at a potluck dinner I attended the other evening. He may have passed me a fork, although I wouldn't bet my life on it. But I can bet my life on the fact that through the course of the evening, not one word was exchanged between us. In fact, I don't think we were ever even within a 15 foot distance of each other. But sure enough, by the time I got home from the dinner, there was waiting in my inbox a friend request from the fork passer. And unlike X, he did not even bother with a "remember me" message. I guess he was running out of time since he had to hurry and add each and every one of the guests at that dinner.
There's also a particularly shameless lot of requesters who simply add you if the two of you have a common friend. That's just the height of laziness if you ask me. I mean, at least make the effort of stepping out and meeting people. Don't go poaching on other people's friends!
I get it. Facebook is not just a social utility site (or whatever they claim to be). It's a contest to see who has the maximum friends, so we may finally know who the most popular person in the world is. (The suspense has been killing me!)
Of course, by adding unknown people to your list the only suspense you're ending is of who the saddest person in the world is.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Faking an accent in the elevator
You know those people who go abroad for a month on some training program to New York, are made to stay in an apartment in Jersey City that's being shared by 3 other Indians, find an Indian store to buy groceries from, go partying with their Indian friends except for the one night when their local co-workers took them out (pictures of which are instantly put up on facebook), stay back an extra week to vacation with their aunt in NJ who takes them to Niagara Falls (the American side) and an outlet mall from where they buy a GAP sweatshirt which will be their uniform for the next 12 months, and then come back to India with an American accent?
I used to scoff at such people. "Bah!" I would say, secure and proud in my natural tongue, "I scoff at such people!"
Today, I'm not scoffing.
In fact, I'm the opposite of scoffing. That is, if the opposite of scoffing is cringing. With embarrassment. And a feeling of "Et Me Brutus?" (Or is it "Me Tu Brutus"? Damn you Google's language tools. You're about as useful as a bail-out plan that gets rejected.)
Anyway! Let's just tackle one language at a time. And that language is English. One that I thought i was fluent in, had spoken and written in long enough for it to be part of my identity. My strong, proud Indian identity which I love to flaunt whenever i can. And that identity comes with an accent. A nice urban Indian English accent with it's own rules for pronouncing a fairly decent sized vocabulary. And most importantly, an accent that I believed could be understood by all.
Not true.
It all began at Starbucks. As I rattled off a rather lengthy order to a cashier one day I found that instead of hurrying the process along, my regular speed of talking had doubled the time it took for him to figure just what the hell it was I wanted.
Evidently I'llgetacafemochatallandastrawberrycoffeecakeplease is as good as me placing my order in Hindi. Lesson 1: Speak sloooooowly.
The problem with speaking slowly then was that it made me lose my entire rhythm. You know, how everyone speaks in a certain rhythm? In any given sentence, you tend to go high on some words, low on others, elongate some, skip lightly over others and pause when you want to create an effect?
Like right now?
Well, with my normal speaking speed being cut by 60%, I'd totally lost my rhythm. I was coming across as ET trying to order a mocha and a strawberry coffee cake. I. Simply. Could. Not. Go. On. Speaking. Like. This.
Losing your rhythm when you're nearly 30 is not an easy blow to deal with it. Fortunately, this impediment only arose when I spoke to Americans. Unfortunately when you live in America you tend to speak to a lot of Americans and therefore the problem would rear its ugly head quite often.
Like a lumberjack without his saw, a musician without her instrument, a sitcom without canned laughter, I felt helpless and handicapped. I simply had no way left of communicating. And thus the unthinkable happened. Without even realising it (at first), I started to speak with an American accent.
It began small. Words like "like" and "mmm-hmmm" entered my vernacular. I found myself using "yeaaah" quite unnecessarily. Then the lilt of the words started to change. Soon a whole new rhythm was born, an ugly bastard of a child that was neither Indian nor American.
It horrifies me and grates on my ears. But for some reason, my brain has no control over my mouth! While I'm perfectly normal when I speak to my own countrymen, place me in front of the other 5/6th of the world and just hear me go!
There's more.
Lately, it's not just the way I speak, even the words are coming out all wrong. My car runs on "gas", I get my food "to-go", I travel in an "elevator" and horrors! I actually asked another Asian how much a "gallon" of milk in her country was.
Everyone's heard of ABCDs - American Born Confused Desis. I wonder - just what do you call an Indian-born super-confused recent-entrant-to-America desi?
I used to scoff at such people. "Bah!" I would say, secure and proud in my natural tongue, "I scoff at such people!"
Today, I'm not scoffing.
In fact, I'm the opposite of scoffing. That is, if the opposite of scoffing is cringing. With embarrassment. And a feeling of "Et Me Brutus?" (Or is it "Me Tu Brutus"? Damn you Google's language tools. You're about as useful as a bail-out plan that gets rejected.)
Anyway! Let's just tackle one language at a time. And that language is English. One that I thought i was fluent in, had spoken and written in long enough for it to be part of my identity. My strong, proud Indian identity which I love to flaunt whenever i can. And that identity comes with an accent. A nice urban Indian English accent with it's own rules for pronouncing a fairly decent sized vocabulary. And most importantly, an accent that I believed could be understood by all.
Not true.
It all began at Starbucks. As I rattled off a rather lengthy order to a cashier one day I found that instead of hurrying the process along, my regular speed of talking had doubled the time it took for him to figure just what the hell it was I wanted.
Evidently I'llgetacafemochatallandastrawberrycoffeecakeplease is as good as me placing my order in Hindi. Lesson 1: Speak sloooooowly.
The problem with speaking slowly then was that it made me lose my entire rhythm. You know, how everyone speaks in a certain rhythm? In any given sentence, you tend to go high on some words, low on others, elongate some, skip lightly over others and pause when you want to create an effect?
Like right now?
Well, with my normal speaking speed being cut by 60%, I'd totally lost my rhythm. I was coming across as ET trying to order a mocha and a strawberry coffee cake. I. Simply. Could. Not. Go. On. Speaking. Like. This.
Losing your rhythm when you're nearly 30 is not an easy blow to deal with it. Fortunately, this impediment only arose when I spoke to Americans. Unfortunately when you live in America you tend to speak to a lot of Americans and therefore the problem would rear its ugly head quite often.
Like a lumberjack without his saw, a musician without her instrument, a sitcom without canned laughter, I felt helpless and handicapped. I simply had no way left of communicating. And thus the unthinkable happened. Without even realising it (at first), I started to speak with an American accent.
It began small. Words like "like" and "mmm-hmmm" entered my vernacular. I found myself using "yeaaah" quite unnecessarily. Then the lilt of the words started to change. Soon a whole new rhythm was born, an ugly bastard of a child that was neither Indian nor American.
It horrifies me and grates on my ears. But for some reason, my brain has no control over my mouth! While I'm perfectly normal when I speak to my own countrymen, place me in front of the other 5/6th of the world and just hear me go!
There's more.
Lately, it's not just the way I speak, even the words are coming out all wrong. My car runs on "gas", I get my food "to-go", I travel in an "elevator" and horrors! I actually asked another Asian how much a "gallon" of milk in her country was.
Everyone's heard of ABCDs - American Born Confused Desis. I wonder - just what do you call an Indian-born super-confused recent-entrant-to-America desi?
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
The First Cut
Getting rejected is never fun. Getting rejected in a foreign land even less so.
Maybe I was just feeling overly confident after getting my visa at the first attempt and being let into the US without a strip search - where I come from, such feats make it to the papers, right below "athlete almost makes it to first round of obscure unknown Olympic sport". Maybe it was that hogwash 'secret' book I'd just read which claims that if you really want something the universe hears you and makes sure you get it. Because that fateful day when I walked into HSBC to open an account, I expected to walk out with a credit card. With a giant spending limit. First of all, what the hell is a person supposed to do here with a credit card and second, any activities I had in mind (read shopping, eating and shopping) absolutely could not be carried out without one. So imagine my dismay when the nice man behind the desk politely told me that I'd been rejected. Reason: no credit history. Err...I just got here 3 days ago, how am I supposed to build up a credit history if you don't give me a credit card?
So after rejecting me and rendering 80% of my list-of-things-to-do-in-America undoable, I was cheerily told to "have a good one!" and escorted right out of the bank. Ironically, the door to the bank was right next to the bus stop and the universe could not have done a better job of putting me in my place.
That was the first one. What followed after was like a rejection sitcom. Every week I would find myself in a not-so-funny situation where someone would turn me down (and secretly giggle about it, I'm sure!)
Gap Shopping Card? Rejected. Reason - no credit history.
State Driving License Test? Not allowed to take. Reason - not enough credit cards or shopping cards, thus not enough points required to take it.
ZipCar Membership? Not eligible. Reason - absence of state driving license.
You see?? You see how crap feeds on itself and gives you more crap to deal with? And do you see how no American movie ever prepares you for rejections of this nature? I mean, the worst thing that ever happened to Carrie was when her shoes got stolen at a party. And at the end of the episode, she even got that lady to buy her a new pair. Sigh. This was not what I signed up for.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Once upon a time
I had a dream.
It had a swanky apartment with giant windows and warm mood lighting. It had exclusive little stores where everything was one of a kind and the owner knew my name. In my dream the food was always organic and the wine always unpronounceable. Egyptian rugs kissed my feet and cashmere throws kept me warm. Weekend getaways alternated between cosy mountain cottages and soothing riverside spas.
It was a vivid dream and a happy one. A dream worth pursuing, worth dumping your home and your friends and family for, worth even shelling out large sums of money in the name of a higher education for. It was a dream that was guaranteed to become a reality in a year. My husband would be making money and I would be spending it. Yin and Yang, co-existing in perfect harmony.
Well, things haven't quite turned out as I expected them to. Yes, I'm in America. Yes, my dear husband is well on his way to getting that dream MBA ticket that'll ensure us happiness for now and ever more. But there's a twist. See, we were fortunate enough to have landed here just as this country was going through a bit of a "slow-down". (Read the papers, they're full of details of what this means for everyone else.) What it means for me is that my dream has been a tad altered. It's everything I thought it would be, just in black and white.
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