A Dream Project

I went into Consulting right after college. I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready to travel to incredibly glamorous places like Monaco, Barcelona, Hong Kong, and <insert other awesome city names>.

I readied my passport and looked up all the nearest embassies in New York to streamline my visa processing times. A few days later, I ended up in my first project…at Rochester, New York…in the middle of January.

Rochester in winter - they called it the "Lake Effect"...those bastards

As I shoveled my car out of 5 feet of snow, I told myself the next place would be better. Years passed and I worked at Richmond, Connecticut, Jersey, but never Barcelona. When I ended up in Wilmington, Delaware, that was the last straw.  I said “Fuck this” and I quit.

For a year and a half, I worked at a place where I went back to my apartment every day after work. But soon, the travel bug in me started to stir. I got an offer from a consulting firm and I succumbed!

This was where I got the opportunity to be part of a “Dream Project”. I call it the “Dream Project” because that’s what it was: I traveled the world on somebody else’s money.

My client was an oil and gas company with various manufacturing plants around the world. We were to travel to those plants, interview the business units and understand how well or poorly they managed their documents. It seems like a trivial problem to solve, but when companies have to manage several terabytes of data, they end up wasting tens of thousands of hours and money trying to find the right documents (I promise that’s the end of my sales pitch).

My first stop was Hamburg, Germany. It was cold, I was incredibly jet-lagged and I had insomnia-induced heartburn all night. When I reached Sens, France, I hadn’t slept for 4 days and my heartburn still danced around my chest all night. I finally called home and yelled at my Bengali father for passing down his weak digestive genes to me. This made me feel slightly better.

I finally decided to find a pharmacy store to get some Zantac. Sens was a small town situated two hours from Paris, and had a population demographic of 50 people.  They only spoke French there. Realizing I will need to climb over the language barrier in order to get my medication, I decided to bring some reinforcement with me: I dragged my analyst, Brandon, to the Pharmacy.

As we walked through the street, Brandon asked: “Why do I need to come with you, again?

“Because I said so,” I replied.

“Oh, right.”

We reached the pharmacy and I said “Bonjour” and the pharmacist replied, “Bonjour!”

Then I stared at her awkwardly, unsure what to do next. Brandon decided to help by pointing to my stomach and making a puking face. The woman looked confused. I told Brandon to stop that because it clearly wasn’t helping. Then I proceeded to point to my stomach and made a puking face.

The woman frowned slightly and then went to the back wall to look for the medication. Brandon and I high-fived as we always did when we were successful with something. The woman came back with two boxes, one that said “Constipation” on it and another that said “la diarrhée”.

“Hmm,” I replied, “Close but not quite.”

Then I started to point to my chest, making pained expressions until the woman finally understood and gave me the French version of Tums. Technically, I wanted pills like Zantac, but I settled since this was the furthest I was going to get with my French-speaking and miming skills. 

By the time I got to Paris that weekend, I felt like a new person. Those must have been Tums on steroids! I started eating everything that came my way, which, in France, was invariably delicious.

 Brandon and I went to a crepe place and I decided to order a crepe with Nutella. I saw the word “fraise” and thought it was “whipped cream”, which I thought would be delicious with my Nutella. So I pointed at the menu and said I wanted that too. The waiter looked skeptical but complied. Brandon decided he wanted the same thing in the exact same combination and the waiter looked even more unhappy. Turns out, “fraise” means “strawberry”. 15 minutes later, Brandon and I were met with FOUR large crepes: two Nutella crepes and two Strawberry crepes. I ate one of them and I forced Brandon to eat the other three, promising him great ratings during his performance review. He realized halfway through the third one that I had absolutely no say in his performance review, but it was too late. I felt bad and I gave him my French Tums.

Endless crepes

After France, we went to Scotland, which turned out to be one of my favorite places. The majority of our stay was at Dunfermline and after meeting the friendly people and eating the delicious food, I decided I would love to find myself a Scottish husband and settle down in Edinburgh. I quickly created a profile on SexyKiltMen.com (the results of which I will divulge in another blog post).

Finally, we landed in Kongsberg, Norway, which is about 2 hours north of Oslo. It’s a ski town and we lived in a place called “Grand Quality Inn” situated near a huge river that frequently had slices of iceberg float past you.  Any hotel that has to convince you of its grandness or quality through its name is usually not the best place to stay at, and, in this case, it was completely true….not the best place, but it sufficed. 

Apparently, kebobs in Kongsberg are famous and we quickly found the most delicious kebob place ever! I seriously have never had such good kebobs in my life. We ended up going there day and night and became great friends with the owner, who we called “the kebob guy”. Since we had an Indian, a Chinese and a Singaporean in our group, he specially made a hot sauce for us, which he called the “Super Spicy Sauce”. We put that shit on everything: kebobs, pizza, pasta, ice cream. Everything!

Hot sauce ice cream...mmmm



In Kongsberg, we met users at each end of the technology spectrum: some were extremely knowledgeable, and utilized all available systems and tools to quickly do their work, and some could barely put a desktop and a mouse together in order to use it. I was presenting to several users about the merits of an Enterprise Content Management system: “you can not only categorize your content with metadata, you can also search across repositories, run reporting and other metrics on your logs and automatically archive any documents past your retention policies!”

At that point, a user, who looked bored and unconvinced, interrupted me and said “This system may help me find a document, but can it help me find a word within the document?”

“….sure,” I replied, “…but…. you can do that right now, too.”

“Oh,” she replied, now awake and excited, “How do you do that?!”

“Well,” I said, “it’s ‘Crtl-F’.

She nodded vigorously and wrote that down onto her notepad. I looked at Brandon then and saw him trying to keep a straight face. 

No need to spend millions of dollars if you have the power of "Control F"

At the end of the trip, we had to catch a train from Kongsberg back to Oslo. We were running a few minutes late so when we reached the train tracks and saw the train’s wheels slightly hissing, like it was just about to leave, we panicked and started running with our very large suitcases. The client grabbed my suitcase since I couldn’t run with a 70 pound bag.

We had to run down a flight of stairs, cross the tracks and run up another flight of stairs to come out on the other side. My middle-aged manager ran ahead of us like a mad man with his suitcase balanced on his head, both, surprising us with his sudden speed and agility and humbling us with his single-minded determination to go home. He leaped into the train, threw his suitcase inside and dramatically held the doors of the train open, yelling, “I won’t leave without you guys! Hurry!”

Brandon, with his analyst’s drive to always please his boss and get a stellar performance review, did as our manager yelled and dove into the train. My client stumbled and tripped with both his and my suitcases and fell into a crumble inside the train. I finally joined the lot of them and we all took turns wheezing and high-fiving each other.

That’s when we looked up and saw the Norwegian passengers look at us like we were crazy. Turns out, the train wasn't about to leave for another twenty minutes. Right after our dramatic entrance, we saw an old woman with a walking stick shuffle up the steps of the platform towards the train. Each of her steps was about a minute long and we wheezed and panted as we watched her take all twenty minutes to climb the stairs, cross the platform, and enter the train in excruciating slowness.

“Well,” my manager replied in his usual succinctness, “that was the dumbest thing we’ve done in a long time. I’m exhausted.”

“So am I,” agree the client.

“I can barely breathe,” I wheezed between breaths.

“Wait a second,” Brandon replied, and looked at me in confusion. “Why are you tired, Shilpi? You didn’t even lift any suitcases.”

“I...have no idea," I wheezed back.

“That’s unacceptable, soldier” replied my manager, “Drop and give me 50.”



What my client looked like carrying our suitcases (minus the heels)



A week later, we were in Singapore. Singapore is crazy hot. As usual, I spent the first few days jet-lagged and cowed down by indigestion. I then spent the next few days walking between air-conditioned buildings. Singapore is known for its food courts and it, singlehandedly, redefined the term “food court” for me. I had no idea it could be this amazing. The food court I went to had an Opera-theme, so the ceilings were draped with fake chandeliers and there were sculptures and plush seating around the food courts. Lining the walls were stalls with cheap, incredibly delicious food from every imaginable place in Asia.  I ate the best crawfish of my life, and then I ate Thai food, Korean food, Singaporean food, Indian food, Chinese food, and finally finished it off with a fresh fruit juice consisting of carrots, tomatoes, dragon fruit and various other ovaries from various other plants.

Finally, I landed in Brazil. We stayed at a place right across the beach. The weather was 75 degrees Fahrenheit.  There were half-naked people walking around. And there was fresh seafood at my disposal. I was in my element. Every day after work, I dashed into my hotel room, put on my swimsuit, changed into my flip flops, and ran into the sea like a crazed dog. The waves were incredibly strong and I invariably lost my flip flops in the water and had to walk back to my hotel barefoot.

And there it is; the end of my dream project. It was amazing while it lasted and I can only thank my lucky stars that I got the opportunity to do something like this. I met a lot of great people along the way, and when we had a final week in Houston, all those people came to the meeting scheduled by my client. I looked around the table and saw those familiar faces, each face reminding me of a place and a memory. It was an incredible feeling.



Cheezy picture to get my point across



Kenya - Hakuna Matata!

Here are a few memorable moments from my trip to Kenya:

1) The street vendors. In Kenya, a stop at any traffic light meant dealing with the street vendors. The street vendors will surround you like flies surrounding a carcass and try to make you buy a circular piece of aluminum wiring for 20 dollars. Or worse, once he realizes you won't pay anything for it, he will try to trade you his supply of goods for the elastic rubber band around your wrist. This makes you suddenly wonder if your 2 cent rubber band may actually be more precious than, say, a gold bar. In the end, however, you are so adamant about not giving into these pushy vendors, that you wouldn't trade that damn rubber band in for a diamond bracelet.

However, I did give in to the vendors who appealed to my keen business sense (which consists of Chapter 1 of 'Rich Dad, Poor Dad' and season 1 of the Apprentice). The following street vendor tactics impressed me the most:

• No matter what they're selling, from paintings and figurines to bottled water, they will claim that "they've made it themselves".
• Some of them argued that buying their goods would bring about social change and promote the culture. When they paired that line with "I made this myself", I folded like a deck of cards and bought that piece of wire for $5.00
• Some of the tourist shops would have attached workshops where the local artists seemingly carved and sanded half-made sculptures to further lure you into the idea of hand-made crafts. In a candid moment, when they had thought all the tourists had left and they hadn't accounted for my overactive bladder, I watched them promptly drop the sculptures and have a loud debate about FC Barcelona vs Manchester United.

2) Lion King. During the entire trip, the "Circle of Life" and "Hakuna Matata" took turns playing in the back of my mind. The fact that my entire knowledge of Kenya peaked at Disney's Lion King was, both, acutely embarrassing and unforgivable.

3) The red-colored cocktail that I drank, which (unknown to me until later) had beets in it that proceeded to stain the next 3 days of my bowel movements an angry red, which, in turn, resulted in one of the most dramatic showdowns between me, WebMD, and the local medic.

4) Remembering the exciting Cheetah chases and violent kills that you watched at the National Geographic channel, and then comparing those to the dozing, half-bored/half-annoyed cheetah lying 4 feet from you and wondering why this magnificent creature reminded you of your grandma's house cat.

You patiently wait for the cat to wake from its nap. Twenty minutes later, when the most active part of the afternoon was to watch the cheetah yawn and pee at the nearest tree, you wonder if that cheetah would give a damn if you had thrown an impala right near his paws.



I'm a vicious killer, but the sun can hurt my eyes



Sleeping with paws up in the air...nice

 

5) People and their cameras. I had already been warned that I would get camera envy, especially since most of the tourists carried lenses as long as my leg. Meanwhile, my camera was a digital point-and-shoot. When I realized I was more concerned about capturing a great picture than enjoying the scene unfold in front of me, I put my camera away and just watched everything through my binoculars.

Later, I exchanged email addresses with the guy who had the longest lens (Yes, I intentionally worded it this way) and asked to exchange pictures with him. At first, he regarded my camera with skepticism, but then agreed when I told him I had some exciting, albeit blurry, shots of Big Foot. The joke's on him of course, since not only is there no Big Foot in Kenya (we all know Big Foot lives in the Himalayas along with the Dalai Llama and Brad Pitt), but these pictures of Big Foot that I took were actually images of my mom at the buffet table during lunch. The camera's shutter speed was no match for her greed.

6) "Kill-Butt", the friendly hotel manager at Samburu. "Your name is Kill-Butt?" I asked him, instantly admiring everything about him, and he smiled in acknowledgement.

I went to Kill-Butt for everything, from setting up a fan and an extra bed in the hotel room to breaking down and weepily admitting my debilitating addiction to the "Hot in Cleveland" TV series. Later, when I wanted to mention Kill-butt on the hotel's feedback form, I asked him to spell his name. He nudged his jacket aside to reveal a name tag that said "Gilbert". I secretly nursed my feelings of 'dumbassyness' for days, thereafter,

7) The women. From the cheerful waitress at Samburu to the dignified Gift Shop lady at Nakuru, the women of Kenya displayed a wealth of knowledge, wit and potential that far surpassed their male counterparts.

8) Lake Nakuru with its stunning plethora of birds, white rhinos and black water buffalos. My van consisted of six women, including me. When the van took the final turn to reveal the lake, we broke into excited exclamations and jabbering that rivaled a noisy hair salon. Eric, our exasperated driver, had to actually say "Calm down, ladies, just calm down."

Lake Nakuru with its pink flamingos

9) My new Group On friends. Our entire group consisted of 30 people, from honeymoon couples to aunts and nieces, mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and a few lone rangers, who were all put together because of their common, impulsive decision to buy a vacation package through Group On.

10) The leopard. Leopards are impossible to spot during game drives. We looked fervently for 7 days and then we decided to give up. On the last morning, when we were driving out of Masai Mara, one of the girls in the jeep, Jessica, suddenly said "Wait. What's that on that tree?"

"It could be another log, like last time," one of us chimed in.

Then the log turned its head towards of us and we realized it was a magnificent leopard. We all screamed in delight, which was enough motivation for the leopard to effortlessly jump down 30 feet and slink away into the forest.

It all happened so fast that only one of us caught his picture. It's a faraway shot and we can only see the cat's silhouette. But it was apt, because the leopard is just that elusive.

The Art of Commenting

In today’s day and age, it’s easy to share your unwanted opinions with the rest of the world. From online news articles to YouTube to retail product reviews, the world wide web wants to know exactly what you think and feel: your uncensored, honest opinion is in demand even if it's interspersed with misspelling and grammatical errors.

Often, the reader’s comments are more interesting than the product or news article, itself. Especially, when the comments get personal!

Today, I read an article about why Sanskrit should not be declared a dead language in India. The most popular comments and arguments for not shelving Sanskrit with Latin and other dead languages were:

- Sanskrit is the mother of all Indian languages

- Sanskrit is the language of GODS.

You can tell right away that people take this shit very personally because they capitalized “God”. I thought to myself: “So what if it’s the mother of all languages? It can be the fucking great-grandmother of all languages in the world but if it’s not relevant to today’s day and age, who gives a shit?”

But it doesn’t matter, because, as someone else said: Sanskrut is the mother of my Mother toung!

“Mother Toungs” aside, my favorite comment of the article was:

 All the glorious literature is in Sanskrit. As such, for all Yoga practitioners and teacher around the world, Sanskrit is milking cow.

This comment is fantastic because the analogy is so over the top: you learn to appreciate the fact that speaking Sanskrit can actually somehow relate to milking cows. Who knew?

My favorite comments usually have to do with Indians and Pakistanis bickering over who is better. The said video or article will have nothing to do with the ancient animosity between India and Pakistan, but just like a flurry of Justin Bieber comments, an India-Pakistan frenzy can result from the most mundane of videos. I was watching a trailer of an Indian movie called “Delhi Belly”, and a passionate Pakistani commented, no doubt in reply to an Indian's equally colorful comment:

1)      we pakistani fuck ur indian moms then u indian comes .... Pakistanis r ur fathers bloody indian fuckin ass whole ...

 It’s such a convincing argument. There are definitely no ‘wholes’ in his statement.

Then a proud Indian replied in comparable eloquence to the thoughtful opinions of his neighbor:

2)      Listen up you asshole......you and your fucking terrorist infested country is of no use to this world and hence can go to hell......Pakistan is more likely to be called Bullshitistan.....dipshit.....­..get a life loser....if you are a son of a single father, then dare not to speak another word about our country....for its our country who is mercifully sparing you thieves constantly...any other country would have Nuked your bloody soil and send all you crap bastards to hell !!!....

The Indian’s comment is studded with creativity: to rename Pakistan as Bullshitistan is, both, genius and pragmatic. Makes me wonder why it hasn’t already been done.  

 And this is, by far, my favorite:

3)       u fukin pig shit eater , eat my shit . u son of a whore go search u r father . u r mom a whore who can take an elephants dick in her filthy ass . fuckin joker how dare u talk shit like this . i will naked u r mom and sister and make them run naked on the streets u tick of my pubic hair .

This is brilliance. I can’t even tell if this guy is an Indian or a Pakistani but, either way, he is my hero. Since the first time I encountered this comment, I always wanted to use the line “You tick of my pubic hair”. But this insult is much better delivered by a guy than a girl for reasons I don’t want to get into.

However, I remain optimistic and hopeful that I may, one day, get to use a part of the above comment in my everyday life. Perhaps, during a job interview or even in the happy moments of a close friend getting pregnant, I can offer my heartiest congratulations by saying:

“U fukin pig shit eater, eat my shit. U son of a whore go search u r father…”

A Day in the Life of Carnegie Mellon

My friend, Aash, requested I write about some moments from undergrad because going to CMU, in itself, is an experience that begs to be blogged. So here goes...

There are two kinds of people at CMU: the geniuses who truly belong there and then…there's the rest of us. Similarly, there are two kinds of classes: the easy A courses like “Engineering and Public Policy”, or “Science, Technology and Ethics” that students clamored to get into in the false hopes that it would offset their Fs in other courses. Then there were the rape-your-ass engineering courses that would keep you awake for 57 hours straight, and starve you for 14 hours before your unshowered, tired body pushed you to the only place that would be open at 3 am and stuff greasy French fries down your throat, only to have you vomit it out an hour later at the nearest bathroom.

A 2nd year Mathematics course was, surprisingly, an easy-A course. The professor couldn’t be bothered with the undergrads so he would use the same tests, with the exact same questions every year, for the last 5 years. We would memorize patterns of answers, like “AABCDBBDBACBBADDDC”, from our practice tests and hope those questions came on the test, which it always did. The hardest part of the exam was to not be the first one to submit the test. In an auditorium of 250 students, when you’re taking a final exam that’s five pages long, it would raise a few eyebrows to hand the paper in under two minutes. So you ended up looking up and scanning the crowd, and notice the others also scanning the crowd, because most of us were done taking the exam, but nobody wanted to be the first one to hand it in.

Then there were the rest of our engineering courses that fell under the ass-rape category. 211 was one such course. The “Fundamentals of Data Structures and Algorithms” had nothing fundamental about it. Of the people I know who took that final exam, not a single one of us have forgotten that experience. For these courses, you spent months studying and attempting to understand concepts like data abstraction or modular program composition. But it never helped. No matter how much you studied, it never fucking helped. When you received the test paper, you’d scan the questions and every single one would look like a foreign language. Accompanying the realization that you don’t speak this language, is a sickening, sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach; time slows down and your entire life flashes in front of you, including the future where you foresee being kicked out of college and your home. And after wasting 60 minutes out of the 80 minutes just staring at your paper, you start writing furiously, forcing your elementary understanding of math, physics, logic, and language to come together to form some coherent response that will perhaps get half credit and maybe even result in a decent score after the curve. You maddeningly hope that all your friends fail. You want those fuckers to fail so the test is curved up!

After the 211 exam, five of us walked out like we would in a funeral procession and sat down on the snow-laden lawn. It was dark and easily 0 degrees and one of my friends started sobbing. I touched her shoulders and said it was going to be okay only to realize she was laughing hysterically. “Dude, I bombed that shit,” she said. “I’ve never failed anything so fucking spectacularly in my entire life.”

I burst out laughing and the rest of us joined in and there we were, lying on a foot of snow, laughing with tears in our eyes. It was either that or go hang ourselves.  So we laughed, astonished at our resolves to continue living normally, instead of ripping our hair out, stripping our clothes off, yelling expletives and running our naked asses straight into an asylum.

One of my favorite professors (and I’m deliberately not mentioning his name for the sake of privacy) was a sweet-natured, French man who students loved to take advantage of to get an easy A. Rumor had it that if you went to his office hours and had a few conversations with him, you were guaranteed a B. If he remembered your name, you were guaranteed an A.

My friend Aash and I decided to try our luck and went to his office.

“Hi professor,” I said, “Here are our thesis papers, but we wanted to drop it off in person because myself, Shilpi, and over there, Aashni, wanted to chat with you for a few minutes!”

“Oh really?” he asked in a thick, French accent, “Vot eez it that I can help you weet?”

“Oh well,” Aash replied, “we just wanted to say hi really and wish you happy holidays!”

He looked at us skeptically and replied, “Vel, eez a good theeng you girls are here…I am very perplexed by sum sing and vonted khonfermation on eet.”

“Oh shit,” I thought as we sat down and furiously started recalling what we had learnt in the past year.

Then the professor opened his cabinet, took out a small figurine and placed it on his desk.

All three of us quietly stared at a Lingam, a symbol of worship in India and of Shiva’s male creative energy.

“Ees it true,” began the professor, “of vot they say? Ees it really…a…?”

I saw Aash quietly look at the professor. “Um…” she began, “What have you heard?”

“Well,” the professor blushed, “I’m too embarrassed to say, really…”

“Preposterous!” I heard myself say, already offended about whatever nonsense he may have heard. “That,” I yelled, “is a symbol of worship in India and Hindus around the world pray to it! It is a symbol of destruction.”

“Shut up Shilpi,” Aash cut in. “Professor, I think what you heard is…true. It is, indeed, what they say it is.”

“What the hell—“ I began, but stopped as the professor nodded his head and shuffled us out of his office.

Outside, I turned on Aash. “Dude,” I said, “What was that all about? Why did he show us a damn lingam?”

Aash looked at me and was like “Dude…you don’t know what it is, do you?

“Of course I do! It’s the symbol of dest—“

“Shut the hell up about destruction. It’s Shiva’s dick, okay.”

“…Wha -at?”

“The lingam is Shiva’s di—”

“Why the HELL would we worship that?”

“Beats me. Dude, how did you not know this?”

“It’s not exactly something my mom can tell me,” I yelled. “Btw, Shilpi…that thing that you’re praying to…it’s a penis”.

“Yeah, well you learn this in school, you idiot. Not at home.”

“What the fuck…this is horrible. Hinduism sucks.”

Chapter 1 - Dad and the Lady in the Rain

A lot of people have requested a blog post on my dad, or 'baba' as I call him. Here's one to start of with:

I observe my dad at work; at home; and with his friends—his life is full of light humor that frustrates the people who live with him, but amuses everyone else around him. I would describe my dad as a socially lovable, perpetually confused, workaholic. An odd combination I know, but you will understand if you read on.

I remember once we were returning from my friend’s, home that was maybe a ten minute drive from mine, and we got lost. He took a wrong turn and we ended up in a strange neighborhood that dad insisted was the correct way to go home. After a few loops in the neighborhood, realization dawned on him: this was not the correct way. “Don’t worry,” he said, “We’ll ask for directions.”

It was hurricane season, and that night it rained like any stormy night during a scary movie. He spotted a person slowly walking a dog. In this weather?! I thought. My dad drove up to him screaming “Sir! Sir!” at the top of his lungs, trying to get his attention. The lady walking the dog wasn’t too pleased at being called 'Sir'. She replied “Yes?” with venom dripping down her mouth. My dad stared straight into her eyes and said, “Sir, can you tell me how to get to Cranberry road?” The lady paused looking a bit startled, but then started giving directions. With that, my dad said, “Thank you so much, sir”, waved goodbye to the lady and drove away.

I looked at my dad then and said, “You know, she was a woman, right?”

“Yes I know,” he replied. I didn’t ask him to elaborate. We drove the rest of the way home quietly.

            My dad is like that. Once he makes up his mind about something, nothing can change it.

Once, dad tried to book a one-week cruise for us. He called the travel agent and asked what cruises go to the Caribbean. The travel agent listed ten cruises ending with Norwegian, Princess, and Carnival.

“Ah yes,” said my dad, “I want the last one; Liberty cruises.”

The travel agent said, “You mean Carnival?”

Dad: “Yes, that is what I mean. So what does the Liberty cruise have other than pool and spa?”

“Um,” the agent began unsurely, “Carnival cruises,” he said emphasizing the word, “has several things to offer.” He then listed the amenities.

My dad: “Excellent. We’ll go for Liberty travels!”

“Sir, it’s Carnival, not Liberty,” said the agent as politely as he could.

Dad: “Excellent!”

A small pause, and then the agent started again, “Alright, well how many passengers?”

“Three,” replied my dad.

“Two adults and one child?” the agent inquired.

“…Yes, two adults and one very small child,” replied my dad.

“How old is your child?” asked the travel agent.

Dad: “21”

That was the end of the conversation. A long pause. A little static. And then, for the first time in the history of customer salesmanship, a travel agent hangs up on the customer.

            Like I said: once dad makes up his mind, you cannot budge him: just as it didnt matter to him that the 'sir' in the rain was a lady, it didn’t matter that the actual name of the cruise was Carnival; dad had already decided that he wanted to go on Liberty travels with his wife and his very small, 21 year old daughter.

The Graphical Nature of Relationships

When you’re right in the middle of it, reasoning is muddled. But math can help in understanding the different progressions of relationships! You can actually plot it. I realized this in a JK Rowling-epiphany-while-riding-in-a-train sort of way. Ok fine, I lied – I was traveling in a plane and I don’t think my discovery will go on to become an epic 7-series book and movie blockbuster, but let’s not get stuck on details.

In Physics, there is no such thing as an instantaneous object. An object can have a certain width, breadth and depth, but it cannot exist until you actually introduce the 4^th dimensional aspect of time. Given a certain time frame, that particular object exists! Relationships, similarly, are not quantifiable at an instantaneous moment, or what we call the present. In the present, you might think things are perfect, but you both may either be converging into a perfect marriage or diverging into a sticky breakup.

 Just like a 3-dimensional object cannot exist without the passage of time, the 4^th dimension of a relationship is the amount of enthusiasm each person has in the relationship. If this is not making any sense to you, it’s cuz I’m totally making this crap up.

Anyways, let me explain with a graph:

If you plot your enthusiasm versus your partner’s enthusiasm over time, its best that your slopes don’t intersect, because that generally means you guys are starting to feel differently about each other, which could mean a potential break up in the future. Take a look at the graph above:  you start out undecided while the guy is pretty enthusiastic in the beginning, and after some amount of time, just when you start to get intrigued and comfortable with the circumstances—BOOM! Your ass has been dumped. Or your ass is not working out anymore. Or your ass has been replaced by somebody else’s ass.

Of course, an intersection doesn’t necessarily mean a breakup! If you fall under either of the two graphs shown below, you guys will be fine!

         

Here are a few others, with explanations. Which category do you fall under?

A.      On-and-Off

You guys can’t make up your mind and take turns liking each other. Hopefully your emotions will stop yo-yoing and you guys will realize that ya’ll can’t live without each other. This stuff makes for excellent romantic comedies.

B.      Not good

Yeah, you need to break up with him/her. Like right now.

C.      Incest

You found the man or woman of your dreams until you go to a family reunion and find out you’re related. That’s bad luck. But, looks like your cousin is still interested. …Awkward…

D.      Hanging on to the past

Ah yes, this is where the other person doesn’t like you anymore and you want to go back to the time when everything was perfect, so you build a spaceship and travel back in time. You think this is a totally rational plan to fall back on but, really, you need to stop living in the past.

Seriously though, don’t ever take my advice because the only thing these graphs reveal is my nerd-at-heart mentality. So, yes, PowerPoint decks can make anything look official, but we also know it’s just another way of putting lipstick on a turd. Good luck with your relationship or the lack thereof! J


© Copyright by Shilpi Chakrabarti 2011

España

Spain was a whirlwind. Spain was everything I desired and more. Ok fine, I wouldn’t go that far, but it was bloody fantastic. Let me tell you about it.

My friend Aash and I landed in Seville and decided the first thing we should do was something crazy. So we spotted the sole Indian girl on the bus and made friends with her. She had been to Spain several times before and she offered to show us all the local and hidden treasures of Spain in the next few days. She promised us the best food and drinks and fun and friendship. We waved goodbye to her as if we were childhood friends. We texted her later that day and she didn’t reply. We called her later that night and she didn’t call back. What a bitch.

That night we went to a Flamenco show. By the fourth glass of wine, Aash and I were caught up in the drama and anger of it all. “She,” I slurred, “is very passionate.”

“Why is she so pissed?” inquired Aash.

“I think she found out the guitar player is gay. I’m pretty pissed off about that myself. So frickin cute...I swear, if he wasn't gay, I would...”

Anyways, let's keep it PG. Aash was all about Spanish food for the first few days. She wanted only authentic tapas – patatas bravas, huevo y jamon, paella, sangria. Unfortunately, coming from the land of spices, Aash found almost everything bland including my company. “Hot sauce!” she would yell as she flung her fork and knife towards the waiter. The waiters had no idea what we were saying. One brave young waiter did try to figure out what the hell we wanted.

“Sal?", he inquired.

“No, no” we replied in exasperation.

Waiter: “Jamon?”

Aash: “…Jam?”

Me: “No, not jam. Ham.”

Waiter: “Vino?”

Me: “After this conversation, yes dammit. Bring four.”

Waiter: “Pimiento?”

Aash: “Pimi….yes! Those are those spicy green peppers right, Shilps?! Yes, damn you, bring me pimiento!!”

We high-fived in triumph, as if we just decoded Caesar’s cipher, when the waiter came back with some black pepper.

We stared at the black pepper, depression settling over us in thick, heavy blankets.

“Let’s go to an Indian restaurant tomorrow,” said Aash without preamble.

“Fuck yeah. I’ll be snorting the garam masala from the kitchen floor.”

Food aside, we saw some of the most brilliant architecture in Seville. In the middle of cobblestone streets, dotted with romantic street lamps, stood a Cathedral holding paintings and carvings of stoic Catholic beliefs and the remains of Columbus’s genitalia. Oh yes, we were different people in the romance-infused air of Seville. We got lost amongst the gypsies that insisted on selling rosemary twigs to Aash as if they were precious diamond bracelets; amongst the street musicians that played a heart-wrenching tune while we walked through quietly-lit streets; amongst the Plaças with street vendors selling balloons, and lit tops that would fly high into the air, and a whistle that made you sound like you inhaled helium, and many, many other essentials.

We took a train to Cordoba to experience more Moorish architecture and it was truly enthralling. We went to see the local Cathedral there, which had started out as a church and was converted to a mosque when the Muslims had conquered the Christians in that region. The mosque had then been converted back to a church after the conquered Christians re-conquered the conquered Muslims. The final architecture of the Catedral, today, is the result of layers and layers of testosterone, resembling a set of Russian dolls, with each doll built slightly bigger, and better and overshadowing the previous one.

We left the beauty and elegance of Seville, and were confronted by the blatant promiscuity of Ibiza. Ibiza was a beach town with a contrasting landscape: of quaint, quiet villages and large, glittery clubs. For a moment, I felt bad for Ibiza and its gradual progression from a pretty peasant towards a garish, gaudy prostitute. But make no mistake, this prostitute was by no means cheap. We ended up spending more money there than we did in the rest of our trip combined!

That night we went to David Guetta’s closing summer party. It was the epitome of fun. We were right there, staring at Guetta work his magic as neon glowsticks, heart-shaped balloons, lasers, smoke, and huge robots swayed to the rhythm of “I gotta feeling!” We were so deliriously happy walking out that we didn’t even realize a bunch of guys had felt us up on our way out. Or maybe that was the reason we were deliriously happy? Don't quite remember the exact order...

Anyways, we went back to the hotel room from the club, changed, took a ferry to an island and biked for an hour to a beach. Then we fell asleep on the sand like newborn babies.

Finally, we landed in Barcelona. I looked skeptically at Aash and said, “Listen Aash…I know you…we have two and half days in Barcelona, ok? We can’t spend it all shopping.”

“No, I know, we’ll go shopping on Sunday. We’ll spend all of Saturday doing the tourist stuff.”

We woke up on Saturday and walked into the streets of Barcelona with our tour books out, sneakers on and baseball hats snug on our heads. We were going to see Gaudi and the Sagrada today, but before that we were going to get breakfast. I took ten steps when Aash already disappeared into the nearest Zara. Shit.

I dragged Aash out of the store and decided to go for breakfast. We went to Pita Inn and our ‘breakfast’ consisted of falafels drenched in tahini and hot sauce.

“Jeez”, I said walking out, “if people knew the crap we were eating while in Spain.”

Aash giggled, “So far, Indian food, Italian food and, now, Middle-Eatern!”

That evening, we relaxed with a glass of wine on Vincent’s balcony. Vincent was the person who owned the apartment that we were renting. He drank his white wine with ice, which apparently is the norm in Spain. Aash and I also learned how to pronounce David Guetta’s last name.

“Who?” said Vincent.

“Goo-ate-ah,” replied Aash, “the DJ?”

Vincent: “Ohhhhh, you mean ‘get-ta’.”

Aash: “Oh, is that how his name is pronounced in Spain?”

Vincent: “….No…that’s how his name is pronounced everywhere.”

“Not true,” I replied, “In India, he is Goo-ate-ah. Jai Sri David…”

“…Balakrishnan Goo-ate-ah,” Aash finished off, completing the ridiculous lie.

Vincent never facebooked us like he promised. But Aash and I were fine. We were more than fine actually. We were happy and relaxed and delightfully free from the ties of real life. Here in Spain, as we walked the musician-lined labyrinth of streets, as we strolled and sipped Sangria next to a river, as we ate in a candle-lit café while watching women dance flamenco; we bonded, reminisced, and rekindled a friendship as ethereal and blissful as the enchanting region of Andalusia.