Hidden Agendas

I flipped burgers for a bit while in graduate school.  It paid for rent and food, and I kinda liked the mind-lessness of it.

While there, I became friends with a co-worker, call her Casey, a bisexual single mom who was known for sleeping around.  She didn't try anything with me, knowing I was in a relationship. But she and I hit it off well, being cigarette buddies and all that.  She would tell me stuff about her life in general - her kid, her current girlfriend and the occasional guy in her life. I would tell her about grad school and the Indian prof with a pretend American accent who pretended to have trouble pronouncing Indian names. We never hung out, outside of work, for some reason, and I don't quite know why.

Once at the grill, she suddenly cursed and hid behind a wall.  I asked her what's wrong.  She said she was hiding from that Indian guy.  I looked and the only Indian guy around was Umh, a post doc.

"Who are you hiding from again? Umh?"

"Yeah thats him" she said, peering around the corner. "He's such a pervert."

Who?Umh?

Umh was one of the few stand-up guys I knew.  You know the kind - the quiet, the all-ways smiling, really good at cricket, the guy who doesn't utter a bad word, eager to help out and really smart.  The school topper cum cricket team captain cum quiz champion.  Plus he was married. His wife was in India with a one year old.

So again.

Who? Umh?

"Yup.  He keeps asking me out in this creepy way.  Once I said yes just to get rid of him, and he said meet me at the parking lot.  Who fucking meets anyone at the parking lot?"

Who? Umh?

"What the fuck is wrong with you? Yes him.  He even said his name just the way you say it."

That kind of brought me back.  Er..hmm..so did you meet up with him?

"No! I stood him up. Which is why am standing behind this wall.  Shit, he's coming this way. I gotta go."

Sure enough he came and said hi and wanted a grilled cheese sandwich.  I was pretty flabbergasted. The dude was vegetarian and didn't even drink.  Not that those are mutually exclusive to morals but still!

I pressed her again, but she seemed pretty certain.  Not pretty. Absolutely certain.

One of the gujju guys laughed at me when I mentioned this to him. No way, not Umh, he said.  I realized then that I shouldn't have told him.

Some part of me believed her.  She had no reason to lie. And she's not the kind to mistake things like this.  You don't mistake a creepy guy asking you out 10 times with someone else, no matter what skin color.

October

"O hushed October morning mild, 
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
To-morrow's wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all."

- Robert Frost

You might think life has become mundane, but it's not that bad.  It has become very technical, though.  Time is now divided between re-writing and re-re -writing a review paper to the likes on particular reviewer and laying down the math for the big thesis. 

The said reviewer was rather unkind, but there is some fault of mine.  I didn't know who the big guns are in the field, and one thing that is important in science is this concept called literature searching, or in simple words - 'make sure you mention the big guns and that you're not treading on anyone's toes'.  I have spent my professional life, albeit small, in research, and it seems to me that very rarely is scientific research about discovering the truth.  It is sometimes a very political game that is merged with business. The business part, I get, the politics maybe not.  But one has to learn the ropes.  

And yes, the big idea is being started upon.  There is equal parts excitement and equal parts nervousness (oh god, please let this work, I cannot afford to start all over again).  And since it's the beginning, it all looks beautiful and well-placed and almost meant to be.  The ugly side has not been shown yet.

Fall is looking very pretty this year.

 

In the Kingdom of Pee

HG notoriously has a weak bladder. On a good night, she gets up only twice to pee.  If she drinks a whole glass of water before bedtime, she's screwed.  Travel is a whole another matter.  HG has developed an immunity to whatever condition the toilet is.  She will pee anywhere - in a clean toilet, in a dirty toilet, in a very dirty toilet, in a a very very dirty toilet, in a life-forsaken toilet - and even has improvised when no toilet was around.   Her pee stories are legendary and the poor thing is often a brunt of jokes for family members.

The only other compulsion that is as forceful as the need-to-pee is the need-to-not-wake-up.  Sometimes, the two clash (esp. as I mentioned before, if a whole glass of water is involved).  They wrestle with each other for dominance of HG.  And the resulting scenarios are pretty funny to watch.  I came home yesterday to find her lying on  the bed with very sleepy and sad eyes.  Yes, she needed to pee and yes she didn't want to get up.  This was the usual but what happened next was completely unexpected.

I wish I had the ability to hand off the need-to-pee to someone else.

Eh?

As a punishment you know? It'll be my reward for doing good.

And then came the fascinating story of the Kingdom of Pee.   

In the Kingdom of Pee, every man or woman is given a certain quota of a number of pees as a burden to carry around upon birth.  This quota is handed out by a set of gods called the Pee Birth gods.  Every person's conduct does is carefully observed by the Pee Conduct gods (shudder!).  If a person has done something good, not a regular everyday-do-your-job good, but a good of good significance, then the Pee Conduct gods will grant you a wish - you can hand out 10 need-to-pees to someone you don't like.  You can't force the good deed, it has to be completely accidental.  (What she meant by this was not too clear, but I am guessing it's something like you delivering life-saving CPR on your way to work when you're not even licensed to give First Aid. It's got to be that accidental, I suppose.) And you can get an option that no one should hand you their need-to-pee too.  So HG's survival 101 was this  - you should ask for Option 2 as your first reward (No one shall hand their need-to-pee to Thee!) and from then on Option 1 (Thou can hand over 10 need-to-pees to one that Thou detests! Oh for Pee's sake, stop handing them off to your husband!)

The rules of the Kingdom of Pee broke down of course under my persistent What-if-scenarios, but in the end of this, seeing my flabbergasted expression, she goes - Hey you know what I realized? 

Gulp, what?

 I can make up shit as I go along.

You can't tell from the way I walk that...

Well..I got through the quals.  In the end, the big guy's ego had to be stroked - not too much, not too little - just enough for him to feel important and make him feel ...validated.

In the beginning I did study - hard.  Hours and hours of logic everyday.  It even gave a new mode of thinking.  There was one question set handed out and I completed it.  There were no more question sets from then on.  I just solved questions from the text book and slipped them under his door.

Look, am working hard. You've made an effect.

After a time it became apparent that there was going to be no re-examination.  No re-quals and no re-testing.  I doubt he even looked through my answer sheets.  In the end, he simply signed the document and we went off to vacation to Boston.  I suppose I shouldnt complain about how this turned out.  It's just that the pointlessness is more overwhelming than the importance.

I'll take the logic, thanks.  I'll even take the lesson on whom to watch out for.  I feel nothing.

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After living with HG here for almost two months, I have deduced that there is a certain pattern to when she asks me to do something about the house. Here are the three modes
1) If you are standing in the vicinity of something that needs to be done - honey, do this.
2) If you are standing in the general vicinity and you are a presence that is sometimes a tad unnecessary - honey while you're there, can you do this?
3) If you are nowhere in the vicinity and  there is something that needs to be done - honey on your way here can you please do this?

The best part is that all this is asked irrespective of what you are doing.  You could be doing  nothing (close the windows), peeling potatoes (can you increase the AC?)  or vaccuming (she actually made me stop vaccuming to ask me throw something in the garbage).  I was once working, and got up to pee when I was asked to switch off the fan.  The fan was nowhere close to me or my path from the couch to the loo, but there it was - I was asked to to make a detour to where she was and to switch off the fan.

Unbelievable.
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The First Onam

My first onam in the US some years ago saw me diligently making payasam for my roommates. All said and done, I was a bit homesick and plus it made my parents happy to know that I was involved in some form of celebration. It came out OK, as far as I can remember, but it took so much effort that the subsequent six Onams saw me just pick up the phone and call people to wish. I have, correction - had, this block when it comes to Malayalam dishes. I couldn't say which was what, much less cook any of it. So when I heard HG rattle off dish names and ingredients, I was rather looking forward to a first true Onam. The Real McCoy thing. With rice aka chor, sambar, cabbage thoran, avial, kootu curry, inji pulli, potato thoran, pineapple pacchadi, semia payasam and pappadam. (So much for the block! Ha! How about them apples?) Oh wait..I forgot the best part - this sadya had non vegetarian items of chicken roast and fish fry too on the menu list, a concept completely foreign to me, one that caused my mother some frowning before she satisfied herself with "Oh but I guess Sunday is not Onam". People can satisfy themselves whichever way they want. HG wasn't backing down. And I was thinking .. "yum".

A drive to the Indian store in Indy saw a bit of this looking-forwardness wane off. HG was driving, having freshly passed her learner's permit. She was also yelling, at me (the instructor of American road rules), that n+ years of driving slow will not permit her to go the highway speed limit right off the bat. She was also yelling at me that n+ years of driving has given her enough skills to avoid hitting parked cars. We wont go into whose fault was what - but there was a moment where I thought - Aye, will this Onam be pulled off OK? Or will there be a meltdown?

But making ups happened. And cooking was started on Saturday night. I was up first with my sambar. And we realized there was no daal. Or rather, the "right" daal. HG said use this other daal, I think it should be OK. Silly me, even after witnessing her debacle , I still listened to her. Half hour later, we were tasting feet-like stuff in yellow and making faces. Us -0, things-that-went-wrong -1. Thankfully, the international store here sold daal, so off we went. We then realized that we are running quite late on our schedule. So I went into Speed mode, freaking the heck out of HG who said later, just call me when you're done. And I did. Sambar was done.

Chicken was then marinated. Cabbage was next (again me), along with HG making her kootu curry. We had gotten frozen bengal gram for kootu curry and there were panicked phone calls to aunts (since Moms were sleeping) about whether this was the right stuff. But we finished it off. Cabbage first, Kootu curry second. And things were said, like "oh this is your cabbage, I would have made it this way" and "oh so this is what kootu curry is". Fish was marinated as well. And potatoes were boiled for the next day. Inji pulli was begun. More frantic calls to mums (this time they were up) were made. Without any further catastrophes this too was passed. Tired that we were, we called it a night. It was past midnight. And there was still much to do.

And of course, we got up late, close to almost eight. Guests were supposed to come by 130 pm. Potatoes were frantically cooked by me. And I was pretty sure we wouldn't make it, when HG went into zen-like mode. Fear not, she said, things will get done by 10.30. And things did get done, amazingly. Damn, this woman really goes when she goes. Not without bugaboos though. The pineapple "refused to boil" in HGs words. My sad jokes about them being Mexican pineapples, and thus something that needs reckoning, were not appreciated. Curses were flung in all directions - at the pressure cooker, at the size of pans, at the pineapple, at me. But everything did get done and every bit was perfect looking. And both of us were looking happily at each other. The end was in sight.

At 130 pm the guests sauntered in wishing happy onam. The dishes were photographed and then dug into. Yum was the most frequently uttered word.

HG was truly happy. She was tired, but she had done it. Thrown our first onam sadya as a home and a family. She was up for the challenge, always was. This was her doing, with a lot of good help.

Best part is, there are plenty of left overs.

Yum.

The Porn story

I grew up in a disciplined and a very protected household, with the result being that I never hung with my schoolmates. I was never allowed to join any school team, even though I was very good at sports, and was only allowed once in an inter-school event. I never ventured out to any of classmates places and no one in particular came to mine. The overall effect of such was that I was introduced to most things came late in my life. Especially guy stuff - like knowing all the mallu bad words, and watching porn.

This was before the internet, at a time when video stores were prolific. Sure, there were movies with adult content in them, but these were all fast forwarded by my dad at first and my big sister later on. Dad even yelled at our video store guy for giving a kid a comedy movie (I forget the name) involving a sperm bank. A watchful eye was kept on my viewing activities. Then, we moved video stores and this new one had a rack dedicated to porn. And I would scheme, from being filled with boyish curiosity, on how to go about discovering it. One afternoon, my friend E's place became free and he invited me over. And that was were the first screening happened (I was in the 11th) amongst other gents who had a rather exceptional knowledge about this stuff.

The video store content however remained elusive.

A short time later, my parents had to leave leaving me the sole occupant of the house for a whole weekend. A-ha. Among the list of banned things that I was going to do, a visit to the video rental was going to be one of them. Among the others, if you must know, was trying to play basketball at the nearby church playground, watching late night TV and smoking a cigarette on the terrace. Plans were made, and nervousness was quelled. The video store guy after all knew my parents, both being frequent temple goers. But I had a feeling it might be OK. The day came and I rode the bike to the place.

The rack was empty.

I quelled further nervousness and reasoned with myself. If I didnt ask now, there'll be no tomorrow. Maybe he just shifted it.

I asked.

Er, cheta, what happened to all the ..cough..blue films?

Oh that. I gave them all away and I stopped that stuff.

I was so suprised and taken aback that I blurted out "Why?!" and immediately regretted it. I didn't want him to think of me as a horny teenager, but I was just so immensly suprised at why this guy would do this ..now... after such a long time of harboring these films. Thankfully, he didnt appear to think any such thing.

"I just stopped it. Got up one morning and decided to get rid of it all. It's not because I was scared of being caught or anything. I just couldn't do it, couldn't go the temple every day and look at His face. So I got rid of it, didn't even sell it for money."

Hmm.

As I left the place, I waved to his little girl. Maybe having her in the house was one reason.

'Tis an Iron and Wine afternoon

The return of Ykas from vacation saw the resumption of animated talking between him and Sequence L.

I wouldn't say that the residents of the graduate student office are characters right out of PhDcomics. For one thing, there's only one white guy in this room. And everyone here are hardworkers that maintain regular hours and are fairly normal to talk too, . But there is a lot of cross-talk and there are certain quirks.

W, the white guy, is a baseball fan. Him and the Puerto Rican-Ramirez-die-hard-follower get together often to shoot the baseball shit. W is not exclusivelly a baseball fan - he can talk any sport with anyone who cares to listen. During the world cup, there were frequent REALLY LOUD curses coming from his end one day. I thought his research was collapsing.

"You ok W?"

"Yeah I will be once USA fucking scores".

You get the drift.

Then there are the South Koreans. The wise, aged, been-there-done-that couple of guys who are silent except when they start jabbering in korean. The newest member to this club, Sequence L, is not welcomed wholly by these two wise men, but is tolerated purely on an origin-ship context. The lady south korean, Dr. Ho, on the other hand, is the most hardworking amongst all of us - extremely focused and a general joy to have a next desk person.

Incidentally, Sequence L (you might have guessed) is an expert on gene sequencing analysis. He worked for a bit before returning to grad school and always begins his questions with the phrase "Back in the day, when I was..".

Then there's young Ykas. Him and SL are a match made in heaven. Both love to jabber - ceaselessly.

The chinese are a group on their own cherishing their native tongue. The bot who sits behind me speaks English in a very mechanical voice and goes 5 days in a row in the same clothes. the other guy constantly clears his throat once he starts thinking. A, when she was here, would get so mad at this sound that she would boost the volume of her headphones to deafening proportions. Unfortunately for me, her headphones were leaky and thus there I was stuck between the throat-clearer and bad-sounding-bhangra. Throat-clearer's wife is quiet, for the most part, until she connects with three other chinese women. Then it becomes a chinese allegro of what I assume is fashion and gossip (since our field is not terribly this exciting).

And me? I ain't much of an office talker, but I used to curse when shit didnt work. But not anymore. Since I got rather intimidated by Dr. Ho's quiet working routine.

Most days will find me behind headphones. This afternoon found me hooked on Iron and Wine after one of HG's music suggestions.