By the candlelight

So, I was lighting up some of those colourful, fruity-flowery scented candles at home this evening after a weekend of super-cleaning and was reminded of the simple, traditional, white, long pillar candles we light when we do not have electricity (which is quite a regular thing) back home.

There's something magical about that candle.*~*~*~*~*

Of course, it takes a while for it to set in. Once you stop cursing the electricity for disappearing just at the most important part of your tv show you were watching while having dinner, then running out in your pjs with kozhambu dripping down your fingers to check whether the neighbours still have their power supply and  furiously complaining to the EB, only then scrambling for those candles which choose to play hide and seek only in the dark! But once they're lit, they transport you to this whole different world...... 

 
Have you ever tried cutting the flame with your fingers? Or chased pallis with wet cotton balls? Or had idli-sambar-molaga podi picnics in the moonlight on a paai? Amma always came up with the best stories then, more than making up for that stupid tv show we were missing, and Appa hosted the most exciting antakshari game making Anu Kapoor's CloseUp Antakshari a child's play, with the neighbours, our humble audience, listening in to the donkey-like renditions by my brother and I of film songs.  

The way the entire city slows down is downright miraculous. People slowly migrating to their balconies or doorsteps, the only sounds heard are those stark calls of crickets and frogs, people chattering and the cars whooshing past on the main road; the only lights are from the cars that pass by and fireflies if you are lucky, and the only things you can see would be the silhouettes of the tall coconut trees swaying to the tunes of the sea breeze against the moon and starlit sky.

These technology-impairing moments are just what we all need once in a while to remind us what the world looks like and sounds like without whirring machines and noise-polluting, electrical thingamajigs! Its just the type of digital-detox for the soul I would like sometimes, especially when the only time I abstain from dependence on a machine is when I'm asleep. In this age of electricity generators and phones/tablets, I doubt we'd bring out that old white candle any more. I stay in a place where I've never had a power cut! I tried switching off all the lights and machines to make a pseudo-power cut and it didn't last for 5 minutes.


Once, when I was younger, my grandfather asked me for 5 rupees in exchange of showing me something extraordinarily out of this world. Excited, I quickly dug out the coins from my piggy bank and paid my due. My grandfather then pointed to the sky and showed me a rainbow. I frowned at him and said, "Thatha, I could've seen that for free, its right there for everyone to see!" And he said to me, "Yes you could've seen that for free but did you?"  I was quite surprised I had not noticed it until he stopped me and pointed it out to me. He then bet me that if I had set up a stall for this and did the same thing with every passerby, not only would I be rich, but 95% of the people would've been ignorant to it, when its right there!

I bet that magic is there all around, but we need the candle light in the darkness to point it out.

Today I lit the candle for that wondrous, white candle, for the magical moments it showed me!

The smell of filter coffee

Everyone's familiar with the infamous 7 deadly sins - anger, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony. I find there are far more deadlier sins than these. I present to you, the 6 and a 1/2 dudly sins of students travelling abroad for higher studies (mainly in the context of Indian students)

#1 Miscalculation
 
I got 23kgs to pack 1 year of sustenance to bring to France (minus 4kgs of the empty bag weight). My list had at least about 65kgs of things I wanted to take with me. And in my head, *ominous announcer voice*- "What's going to actually make the bag?" I felt like I was on one of those reality shows, spotlight on me, the sound of clock-ticking, impending doom playing in the background and my 'survival' depended on these choices.

How does one choose between 1/2 a kilo of Amma's carefully concocted rasam podi and a new, warm, wool sweater? French text books or my leather-bound diary? Here's where the miscalculation muddles my mind, where I figure both weigh the same in terms of mass, importance and utility! There's no question which finally made to the bag! (is there?) After ticking off items that 'made the bag' from my list, packing, eliminating, repacking, eliminating, again repacking, eliminating even more and AGAIN repacking, I still had to undergo the embarrassing ordeal of unzipping my bag in front of all my seemingly irritated, cussing co-passengers in the line behind me, to unload a few precious grams, before checking in at the airport (Cos obviously those few extra grams would've tilted the aeroplane to one side and caused it to crash, unless i shed them.) They wouldn't admit it, but they were quite obviously entertained by the open show of all the secrets in my bag, while sweat rolled down my wrinkled, tense forehead to my red hot cheeks! And as I breathe to myself - Never again, never again!

#2 Homesickness

Weirdly, its only when you leave your home-town, do you become super cognizant of your roots. There's this sudden surge of loyalty towards your country in your blood. Those local mannerisms and subliminal innate habits become blatantly obvious in the strange atmosphere. We strive to keep every last bit of that nature conserved in everything we do, much more than we would even back home.
When I see another one of "us" walking down the road, its true, I do react thinking 'OMG!! I thought I was the only one!' Trust me, I didn't believe it till it happened, and we pretend like we've known each other for years. We interrupt almost all conversations with 'You know, back home....'.

Where we push a 1 Rupee coin into the grocery-cart coin slot, instead of risking the loss of 1 Euro.
Where we insist on managing with free-wifi, the slow downloads and constantly disconnected skype calls until they change the password.
Where we cant figure how to 'groove to club music' and wish they'd play chamak challo instead 'cos the steps are easier.

Where coffee is not enough, it has to be the smell of filter coffee..

#3 Fantasy

For me, I like to pretend I live in a bollywood movie. The storyline is quite evident, this completely confused, clueless girl (c'est moi) finds herself in some strange city to pursue her dreams, and through all the bollywood clichés of getting lost, making friends along the way who speak different languages, finding that comfort zone in zucchini sambar with rice and salwar-kurta with eskimo boots, few dance sequences on the road and Kishore-Rafi songs on the tram, several tears later, saving the world Rajnikanth (I know no better superhero) style, find that bridge between native and new, and of course, live happily ever after. That's the dream.
Yes, I do tend towards a mild bollywood fixation. But how do you expect me to walk down the same snowy, romantic roads of Switzerland in DDLJ and not to expect a Sharukh Khan to come running from the opposite side? Of course I would settle for a Gerard Butler or a Johnny Depp too, no problem!

#4 e-Life

I get the dexter-syndrome (from the cartoon, Dexters laboratory) everytime I come abroad.
symptoms: Fear of the outside, love the indoors, feel like a fish out of water outdoors (make that a naked fish), spends life on the machine, with the machine, by the machine!

I spend hours google translating french documents and websites instead of going for french classes. Spend all my time online, talking, bragging and complaining about the place here without experiencing it just as much! With the computer and internet being the sole connection to the rest of the world, I'm housed in an e-world than the real one. That way I get to be anywhere I want, any time I want. The freedom to connect and disconnect anytime, convenience of a delete button, the easy-life behind a computer screen. FB/skype/chat/email woven together makes the perfect trampoline to bounce upon when things in the real world are intimidating. It sorta trumps the point of coming all the way to france to study, doesn't it?

#5 Procrastination

I moved into my studio last Wednesday around 10 am. Finally the chance to slowly get my crazy, nomadic life into order and set-up shop. I unpacked half a bag (basically pulled out things onto the floor) and watched 3hrs of Grey's Anatomy on my computer. Made grocery lists, lists of things I need to clean the apartment, admired the view of my apartment, made more lists of things I needed to fix and stuck it up on the wall. Unpacked a little more and rewarded myself with half an hour of FB, 1 hour of g-chat with a friend about creating a dividing line in my room between things arranged and things that weren't, 1 hour of reading gossip on Yahoo!news, created a blog, read some old diary entries, checked my mail a few times, doodled on my agenda book, considered 10 possible ways of arranging my furniture, watched few videos on youtube, several strips of PhDcomics and finally finished unpacking 2 days later at 10 pm. Oh! Did I mention I only had 2 bags?

This whole going-abroad-and-studying thing has this big, fancy word leached to it, called independence. That's basically doing things when you like, how you like. I spell that p.r.o.c.r.a.s.t.i.n.a.t.i.o.n, cleverly camouflaged. Without alarm-mom breathing down my neck, maintaining a proper to-do list in her memory and kicking our butts around to get things done, I love to procrastinate until a larger force comes along - last minute tension! Me, with my fancy filofax (costing me 8.50 Euros), post-it notes, mobile reminders, computer alarms, still cannot escape the wrath of procrastination. *sigh*


# 6 an a 1/2 Chocohol-Cheesetin Consuetude

Aah, the chocohol and cheesetin highs! Dangerously combining some of the original deadly sins of lust, greed and gluttony..

The cheese and chocolate here, no less than a droolicious, delectable  drug, an absolutely sinful addiction. Its not consumed, its devoured! It almost casts a spell on you, that you're drawn into these sections first at the grocery store. Even the kgs of guilt that build up on my mirror reflection cannot seem to break the trance. All the other 'sins' dissolve in this one. There's new found purpose to my course abroad as the difficulties dilute in the delusional, cheesy-chocolatey PhD.

My planner pages now carefully divides itself into 3 columns - Lab experiments, other appointments, things to buy at the grocery store

After a million attempts at my very first blog post, I fail to fathom how this ended up being it, but I would say it pretty much sums up what inspired blogging for me - My memoirs from Mami to Mademoiselle.