Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Creative Relief

My Engineering classes often drained me, and sometimes, the only courses that motivated and re-energized me were ones that had nothing to do with Engineering. I would take Shakespeare, Italian Cinema, Foreign Aid, International Affairs, and even The Study of Kosher and Halal Meat (yes, that was an actual course which primarily consisted of students eating meals cooked by the professor's wife).

Of all these, the one course that I absolutely loved was my Poetry class. I had a huge crush on my professor. He was an African American musician who would start narrating a poem in iambic pentameter, turn on some beats and start rapping the poem along with his own lyrics that he would make up on the spot, intertwining poetry and rap like the intricate weaves of a quilt. We were in awe of him and he was totally unaware of it.

I've included three poems that I had written in the course. I hope you won't find them too tedious to read.

The first poem was an assignment on writing an Elegy. I decided to write about one of my grandfathers who suffered from depression. He was not part of my immediate family but, as with any joint family with innumerable grandparents, cousins, et al, I was told he was family and that I should call him grandad. This was simply my perspective of him when I was a kid, so don't ( necessarily ) consider it an accurate representation of him.

My Other Grandfather

If you were to come back to that home;
Yellow smoke would stain the walls—
All because of him.

Those were the stairs he walked up
And walked down everyday at sunrise.
The ignorant would question the state of
His mind.

Uncle would title
Him the laziest man in town.
Uncle would make fun and ask
Him: “What was the hardest
Work you did today?”
He would smile and reply to Uncle,
“A lazy man does no hard work.”

You’d see
Him with his brown
Tobacco powder, shooting it up
His nose—coughing violently.
A lithe body lying limp,
Decaying on the bed.

His dark eyes would seek
Out your questioning gaze,
His mind observe your
Creased brow:
He would say, “Don’t frown near
Me. I was never heavenly.”

And then you’d leave him,
Your mind burning unhappily.

~~~~~~~ *~~~~~~~*~~~~~~~~

I used to love writing Haikus. This one is about all the seasons of the (East Coast) year. You'll notice there are five stanzas even though there are only four seasons. I added an extra stanza for a season that I made up: that time of the year between winter and spring where you just can't take the harsh cold anymore and you're madly hoping for Spring to arrive. For me, that is my fifth season!

A Season of Haiku
 
Through sheltered windows
You see sultry morning sun
Beating down ill will.

Last splash of color
Before shedding of green leaves.
Leaves rustle to peace.

The heater is down
Midnight blue ice forms slowly
From last night’s iced tea.

Please pass winter blues;
Waiting for naked bare trees
To swell tender fruit. 

Sun slits through, letting
A flower bloom and a fruit
Retain spring juice again.

~~~~~~~ *~~~~~~~*~~~~~~~~

Lastly, we had to write a Blues poem. I loved the overdramatic, melancholy nature of Blues. It forced even the most jaded people to become hopeless, lovelorn romantics. I remember going through several revisions of this poem and my professor would invariably come back disappointed in me because he felt I wasn't opening up enough. You can assume this was the last revision where he chose to give up on me.

Memory Lane
 
I keep strollin' down memory lane
And it drives me insane.
I stare 'cross lonely streets and remember
Burnin' desire on a blues winter night.
Now time’s gone and, baby, so have you.
I see the sun’s up and flowers've bloomed.
Ol' lady Winter’s left but my blues remain.
So I keep strollin' down memory lane
And it drives me insane.

Now, because my Blues poem isn't very good, I felt like I should leave you guys with one that is downright amazing.  By Langston Hughes, the below is an excerpt from his poem "The Weary Blues":

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
     I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
     He did a lazy sway . . .
     He did a lazy sway . . .
To the tune o' those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
He made that poor piano moan with melody.
     O Blues!
Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
     Sweet Blues!
 

Monday, February 18, 2013

Norway, So Far


A few weeks before I had to leave for Kongsberg, my manager and my client pulled me aside to a conference room. They both sat down with grim expressions and took turns  looking concerned and taking deep breaths.
“Shilpi,” my client began. “We’re worried about you.”

“What do you mean?” I replied, puzzled.

My manager and my client looked at each other and my manager said, “It’s minus 22 degrees in Kongsberg…I’m talking Celsius”.

Thanks to my American education, I had no idea what that meant. I just imagined the North Pole.
My client sighed and continued, “We are concerned because we haven’t seen you buy any thermals wear yet. And, Shilpi, you feel cold in Houston when it’s 65 degrees Fahrenheit out.”

So when I packed for Kongsberg, I wasn’t shy about taking my ski gear. I didn’t care if I was going to be the only retard wearing ski pants to work – I refused to be beat by cold weather.
I also wasn’t sure whether I would get the kinds of food I’m used to. My colleague, Anja, had assured me that there are grocery stores—“not as big as the ones in Houston, but they have some stuff,” she had said.

I decided to play it safe and take some stuff with me, just in case. My suitcase, by the end of it, contained all sorts of random crap that I wouldn’t use (at least I haven’t used it so far). Here were only some of the items I took along with me:

1)      A bag of basmati rice. I’m not kidding. I’m Bengali and I wasn’t taking a chance. If I went all the way there and found out there was no rice, I would have hung myself.

2)      Oatmeal

3)      Cholula hot sauce

4)      Crushed red pepper

5)      Spices (Cumin, red chilli powder, and five spice powder).

6)      Paper plates

7)      A sketch pad and a set of charcoal and pastels to sketch with. I guess I thought I’d become the next Dali while in Kongsberg.
Approaching Kongsberg via train
Kongsberg is a small ski town two hours from Oslo. The population is about the same as the number of guests invited to an average Indian wedding: 25,000 people. The ski slopes here are open until 9 pm every day, including weekdays. You know how we Americans come back from work and watch TV? Kongsbergians go skiing.

The ski slopes lit at night


They put me up in a tiny one-bedroom apartment. I’m not kidding when I say it’s compact. The rooms were a little bit like nested Russian dolls: you walk into the living room, and you’d find the kitchen in there too. You walk into the bathroom, and you’d find your laundry room. The person who gave me the quick tour of the place actually walked into the bathroom (while I stood outside because two people would not fit in that space), stepped over the toilet and pushed the shower curtain aside. Next to it sat a washing machine.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “This is all state-of-the-art. So if you shower next to this machine, you will not be electrocuted.”
“Thanks Rogen,” I replied, “Electrocution didn’t even cross my mind. Now I can shower in peace!”

After years of being put in hotels, I wasn’t used to fending for myself in an apartment. You have to constantly think about what’s running low and time your shopping accordingly. For instance, I went to the grocery store (which had every kind of cuisine imaginable, btw, including ten different brands of basmati rice. I can’t believe I carried an entire bag across the Atlantic.), and bought all this shit that I’d never use: like Thai Red Chilli paste, Pesto Sauce, Sabayon compote, etc.
An entire wall of "Hindi" spices can be found at the Kongsberg grocery store

Meanwhile, I forgot to buy: salt, paper towels, and toilet paper: three items essential to one’s wellbeing, comfort and happiness.

Only when I was running dangerously low on toilet paper, did I start looking for additional rolls in the apartment. It didn’t look like they had given me any extras, those cheap bastards. All stores are closed on Sunday so I had to wait until the week got started to go buy toilet paper. I was literally down to my last square. I remember looking at the square piece of tissue and wonder whether I should go pee or if I should wipe up the spill of raspberry jam on the kitchen counter. It was a difficult time.
It didn’t get any easier when I tried to cook for the first time. Because the place was so small, a tiny wisp of smoke would set off the fire alarm. I attempted to cook pasta that night. I had to boil the water while the stove was on its lowest setting. The exhaust fan was weak; I could've inhaled the vapors faster. So while I waited for the water to boil, I had to intermittently wave a tower near the fire alarm to make sure it wouldn’t go off.

After an hour of boiling both water and pasta, I took a piece of pasta out and tasted it. Fortunately, there’s a word for when you’ve fucked up and undercooked your pasta: the Italians call it ‘Al Dente’. It’s like calling anything burnt “char-grilled”. These magical words make inedible food edible. My pasta was so al dente, it made jolly ranchers seem like marshmallows.
The problem with the fire alarm was actually pretty easy to solve. The next time, I just opened the living room windows to make sure there is enough air ventilation. My second attempt at cooking pasta went a lot more smoothly. A day or two in, I learned how to take care of myself.


Second attempt at pasta

The only thing I was having trouble with was sleep. I couldn’t get over my jet lag. I would come back from work every day, groggy as hell, take a random nap from 6 pm to 8 pm, wake up, cook for myself, eat, and then fall asleep at 11 pm. I would wake up at 2 am fresh as a daisy. I would then watch episodes of Breaking Bad all night and fall back asleep at 6 am. The alarm would go off at 7 am and I’d wake up wanting to kill myself. This went on for an entire week.

On the weekend, I went into Oslo to hang out with a few friends. We went to some local breweries and a few hours into it, we were all pretty happy with ourselves. One of the guys (who was Swedish and claimed to have ‘yellow fever’), kept insisting we go to a karaoke bar in the hopes of him meeting Asian women. We obliged because he lived in this small ass town two hours from Oslo and rarely came into the city. As we walked into the karaoke bar, loud, high-pitched Thai songs screeched into our ears. The rest of the guys looked really pissed while our Swedish friend tried to strike up a conversation with the nearest Thai girl. Five minutes later, he came to me and said, “Well, I asked that girl a question, and she said nothing. Then I asked her girlfriends the same question, and none of them said anything. Finally, I asked the guy sitting next to them the same question, and he didn’t reply either.”
I laughed and told him that he needed a wingman. He took along one of his friends, and later that night, the wingman ended up with all the women. It was ironic, painful and hilarious to watch.
We had gone to Sushi for dinner and at the end of the meal, one of the guys realized the placement of his straw. We instantly became like a bunch of 12-year old boys and started cracking up.

When I returned home the next day, I waited until 10 pm. Then I crawled into bed and nestled into the sheets. When I opened my eyes next, I saw sunlight seeping in thru the window. I smiled: after eight sleepless days, I had finally slept through an entire night.

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Keeping Your Sense of Humour

We have already accepted that time is an illusory concept (if you haven't, I'd get on that). We define a new year hoping to wash away all the things we fucked up the past year and start anew. The New Year starts and not even two months into it, you realize you've already fucked up. It's fine. Time is an illusion. Restart the New Year again. Reset. I declare Feb 5th a new year! So happy new year to us!

As shit happens, it’s important to keep a sense of humor through it all. And be happy! Holy crap, we suck at being happy. I once saw a YouTube Uploader categorize a bunch of his music as “DepressiveMusic”. What the fuck? Why do we take such pleasure in being miserable?

And a word of advice, if you will allow it: don’t settle for less just because you feel alone and miserable. Funny story, but one of my guy friends likes to cuddle and misses doing that when he doesn’t have a girlfriend. We once started out a conversation with him saying, “Promise me you won’t make fun of me?”

And I replied, “OMG…I’ll try.”

He said: “Ok, well I just feel like cuddling with someone. Don’t tell me you don’t like sitting on somebody’s lap once in a while?”

Now, because he is a pretty big guy, I replied: “What I want to know is whose lap you’ve sat on…and did that person survive it?”

The point (apart from calling my friend fat) is that we are at our most vulnerable when we feel like this. This is when we start accepting the kind of love we don’t deserve.

And while we are still talking about men wanting to cuddle: I think we need to remove any gender stereotypes that are applicable to the female species. We are often accused of being needy, indecisive, insecure or over analytical. When a man does one or more of those things, he is labeled a ‘vagina’. Personally, being a dick is much worse than being a vagina. I don’t feel too strongly about this point, so I’m not going to harp on it. But seriously, stop saying shit like “You’re such a chick” as if it’s a bad thing.

 And to conclude my series of random thoughts: always try to find that one funny thing that will lighten up the entire day for you. Today, for example, my manager told me about the name of a Chinese restaurant in Jeffersonville, Indiana that would be a lawsuit waiting to happen, if it weren't owned by a cute, warm chinese family. The name could be borderline offensive, but it is also fucking hilarious. Can you guess what the name of the restaurant is?

Click the link below to find out. It made my day:

 
We'll end with a Calvin and Hobbes strip because, as always, it captures the essence of life: