surprise surprise, a duplex!! :) The first thing that hit a very surprised me when I opened the front door. Stairs running straight up to the bedrooms and bathroom. Bright, airy and with a kitchen a size just about right. The next surprise was in the form of two entrances to the house.
When we went around looking at the house from the outside, the first time we visited the complex, both these possibilities did not occur to us. I have the bigger bedroom for now. Yay!! But roomie will have it when it is her turn. So yay for her too!!
Now, only awaiting the reunion with my belongings when I pick them up from the garage tomorrow. Plus the house saw two sets of guests today. One visiting me, the other visiting roomie and her hubby.
All in all, a happy end.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Sunday, September 13, 2009
733 sq ft.
In my fever induced delirium, I dreamed of shelves. Some, neatly arranged with clothes and books. Some, a general hodgepodge of stuff which I left to tackle later on as I empty my ten boxes and one huge bag of belongings that currently lie in a friend's garage. I also dreamed that my two bedroom apartment actually has four bathrooms. What richness, what joy. Roomie and me would never have had to worry about conflicting schedules, if only it were true.
But, it is actually the kitchen that I wanted to dream of most. Know its dimensions, know where exactly I would line all my spices and curry powders. How high were the shelves and how far above could the 5"2 of me reach if I had to get the rice out of the container or the mortar and pestle to grind the peppercorns for pongal. Know how much space I would have to move when I dance about chopping, scraping, frying, garnishing, cleaning and scrubbing during those oh so precious times of leisure. I do hope it is roomy. The map of the apartment layout that I have is not very encouraging. The kitchen occupies a very tiny little portion of the 733 square feet I will soon call home.
I so badly want to know if sunlight floods the house. I hope it does. I want to stay in bed on Saturday mornings and wake up to a house filled with bright airy light as I lazily count a part of the morning hours away. These moments when I would feel the tension of the week's courses, classes, assignments, student emails and hectic commuting slowly leave my body and mind if only for a few hours.
I saw it from the outside one day. When roomie and I went to pay the security deposit for it. A nondescript ground floor apartment which we reached only after a vigorous uphill trek. Much like every other apartment in the graduate student housing complex of UT, Austin. Given its low student rentals, the brochure warns us that the only furnishings it comes with are a refrigerator and a stove other than the usual carpeting and air conditioner and heater. So, I wonder about the interiors; what idiosyncrasies; what nooks and cranies will hold the furniture; what spots will turn into favorites and how having a room of my own at last will feel.
But, I did not dream of all of this. And when I got up I still was in the living room of the house that I am currently staying at with my meagre belongings around me. It will soon be a month of living out of two suitcases and one cabin bag. So, I cannot have enough of the layout map as I obsessively pour over it ever so often looking for clues which will allow me to deduce the character from the bare structure of lines that separate the rooms from one another.
I cannot wait to be reunited with my belongings, cook in a kitchen of my own, sleep in a room of my own, return to a home of my own. I cannot wait to consign my suitcases to a corner far away from my eyes so that I do not have to go through the process of tediously hauling them to the floor and opening them every time I need to get my stuff. Ah, closets and shelves to arrange my stuff on, what luxury. And clothes that I need not wash and recycle endlessly as I have been doing for the past weeks.
So, my imagination is taking off on wild flights of fancy. More so because I love the idea of shopping and setting up a home. I know that my tiny little house may not live up to all my fancies and there is a good chance that I will be stuck in a damp gloomy place. But, it will still be a house with a room that I can call all my own.
My move-in date is fast approaching. The endlessly long waitlist for the apartments at long last will have our names at the very top. And I will soon have the key to open the front door with trembling hands and eager eyes all bursting to explore and discover.
You are invited. Please do come visit.
But, it is actually the kitchen that I wanted to dream of most. Know its dimensions, know where exactly I would line all my spices and curry powders. How high were the shelves and how far above could the 5"2 of me reach if I had to get the rice out of the container or the mortar and pestle to grind the peppercorns for pongal. Know how much space I would have to move when I dance about chopping, scraping, frying, garnishing, cleaning and scrubbing during those oh so precious times of leisure. I do hope it is roomy. The map of the apartment layout that I have is not very encouraging. The kitchen occupies a very tiny little portion of the 733 square feet I will soon call home.
I so badly want to know if sunlight floods the house. I hope it does. I want to stay in bed on Saturday mornings and wake up to a house filled with bright airy light as I lazily count a part of the morning hours away. These moments when I would feel the tension of the week's courses, classes, assignments, student emails and hectic commuting slowly leave my body and mind if only for a few hours.
I saw it from the outside one day. When roomie and I went to pay the security deposit for it. A nondescript ground floor apartment which we reached only after a vigorous uphill trek. Much like every other apartment in the graduate student housing complex of UT, Austin. Given its low student rentals, the brochure warns us that the only furnishings it comes with are a refrigerator and a stove other than the usual carpeting and air conditioner and heater. So, I wonder about the interiors; what idiosyncrasies; what nooks and cranies will hold the furniture; what spots will turn into favorites and how having a room of my own at last will feel.
But, I did not dream of all of this. And when I got up I still was in the living room of the house that I am currently staying at with my meagre belongings around me. It will soon be a month of living out of two suitcases and one cabin bag. So, I cannot have enough of the layout map as I obsessively pour over it ever so often looking for clues which will allow me to deduce the character from the bare structure of lines that separate the rooms from one another.
I cannot wait to be reunited with my belongings, cook in a kitchen of my own, sleep in a room of my own, return to a home of my own. I cannot wait to consign my suitcases to a corner far away from my eyes so that I do not have to go through the process of tediously hauling them to the floor and opening them every time I need to get my stuff. Ah, closets and shelves to arrange my stuff on, what luxury. And clothes that I need not wash and recycle endlessly as I have been doing for the past weeks.
So, my imagination is taking off on wild flights of fancy. More so because I love the idea of shopping and setting up a home. I know that my tiny little house may not live up to all my fancies and there is a good chance that I will be stuck in a damp gloomy place. But, it will still be a house with a room that I can call all my own.
My move-in date is fast approaching. The endlessly long waitlist for the apartments at long last will have our names at the very top. And I will soon have the key to open the front door with trembling hands and eager eyes all bursting to explore and discover.
You are invited. Please do come visit.
12 and a half
rules to be a good journalist, says Ramachandra Guha. Also a good researcher. Hell, a good productive human being, if I may add.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
The song of the road
Leafing through the pages of long long ago, I came across this piece. Unfortunately, it still holds true today. Am displaying it here in the hope that giving it a new lease of life would help in some way :)
It is one of my favourite fantasies, a long-cherished romance. And as favourite romances go; this one too is as yet unconsummated, waiting for a bolt of lightining to strike and bear me away in a flash. Cause that is the only way it will be realized.
And one of these days I mean to. Board the first sooty, smoke-belching State Transport bus or a train I see to nowhere. No plans, no nothing. Just like that. Me and my backpack, the bus/train and co-passengers.
Journeys fascinate me. It is my ‘fix’, though I have remained an armchair gypsy much more than I like. Travelling is a process I love. It is a simple kind of a joy, to trace the path you are going to take from point A to point B on a map. Wondering just what lays in store for you this time as you go through the motions of booking your tickets and packing your bags and taking stock of your fellow passengers as you make yourself comfortable on your seats. And then actually travel the way your finger has already traced.
But, as I said, it is a simple kind of a joy and though I revel in it, there is something more; before I could emerge as somebody befitting the tag of a traveler. In my eyes at least.
You see, it has always been the unchronicled that holds a special place in my heart. The undiscovered and the ‘boondocks’. The places you don’t hear much about. Or only of unsavoury incidents if you do. These are the ones that are the farthest from the ‘touristy’ and the ones described as sleepy. The places which long-distance trains whiz disdainfully past or stop by for only a few seconds.
But I want to sightsee these. To know their hawa, paani and fasal as Mulayam Singh Yadav would put it. To know the meandering roads those lead to these far-off places. Removed so far from the kind of life I am familiar with and know.
These are really small towns and cities. Some unknown and some fairly known. The kinds where a stranger would be immediately recognized. I want to experience their character, to know their reactions to a stranger who crosses their path for no apparent reason at all. No reasons, except a curiosity to just see their way of life and their native habitat.
Perhaps, it is the omniscient journalist in me, but it is a strange kind of longing this. To want to attach; an image, a face, an experience to these far off places that lure and intrigue and are nothing more than names on maps to me right now.
I want to trade the known for the unknown. Revel in the luxury of knowing that I am unafraid to try the untested. To just step out off a train as it halts at some random station somewhere. Wish I had done that in Bongaigaon in Assam for no reason other than the fact that the name had a nice ring to it or Cooch Behar because it looked so beautiful in the early nippy dawn of December and I so badly wanted to linger around and wait for the faint pink stain morph itself into a heart-warming blazing orange.
Or oh, when it struck me the strongest in New Jalpaiguri in West Bengal only so that I could know just how ‘new’ it was from just plain Jalpaiguri.
Well, New Jalpaiguri also for the fact because She left the train there. She earns a living singing Bengali folk in trains. I don’t know her name, but regulars on the Kamrup Express which runs from Tinsukia to Howrah told me that though they didn’t know where she boarded from, she always got down at New Jalpaiguri. I had followed her through the length of the train trying to speak to her as she went about singing the most sweetest songs I had ever heard.
Regulars greeted her with familiar smiles and so tuneful was she that first-timers shoved currency notes into her outstretched hands. She charmed me, this frail old lady with the most beguiling smile. She who made a living out of something which was a ‘heritage’. And while it put food in her belly, it also gave joy to people as she sold back to them their own long-forgotten and fast-dying out culture. I wonder if she realizes the enormity of what was for her a matter of living. This unwitting symbol who was a reminder and guardian of folk culture.
These are the stories I most like. The ones that I want to write. And there are many, I know. Buried in the boroughs of places salted away from mainstream eyes, going about their businesses far from the madding crowds.
I want to go there some day. To Mithila, Muzzafarpur and Deoband. To Gadchiroli, Jamkhed and Tikiapara. To Thangachimaddam, Shirpur and Malegaon.
And then some more.
To experience, a slice of life.
PS: Of course there is Prague too.
So, Godspeed.
It is one of my favourite fantasies, a long-cherished romance. And as favourite romances go; this one too is as yet unconsummated, waiting for a bolt of lightining to strike and bear me away in a flash. Cause that is the only way it will be realized.
And one of these days I mean to. Board the first sooty, smoke-belching State Transport bus or a train I see to nowhere. No plans, no nothing. Just like that. Me and my backpack, the bus/train and co-passengers.
Journeys fascinate me. It is my ‘fix’, though I have remained an armchair gypsy much more than I like. Travelling is a process I love. It is a simple kind of a joy, to trace the path you are going to take from point A to point B on a map. Wondering just what lays in store for you this time as you go through the motions of booking your tickets and packing your bags and taking stock of your fellow passengers as you make yourself comfortable on your seats. And then actually travel the way your finger has already traced.
But, as I said, it is a simple kind of a joy and though I revel in it, there is something more; before I could emerge as somebody befitting the tag of a traveler. In my eyes at least.
You see, it has always been the unchronicled that holds a special place in my heart. The undiscovered and the ‘boondocks’. The places you don’t hear much about. Or only of unsavoury incidents if you do. These are the ones that are the farthest from the ‘touristy’ and the ones described as sleepy. The places which long-distance trains whiz disdainfully past or stop by for only a few seconds.
But I want to sightsee these. To know their hawa, paani and fasal as Mulayam Singh Yadav would put it. To know the meandering roads those lead to these far-off places. Removed so far from the kind of life I am familiar with and know.
These are really small towns and cities. Some unknown and some fairly known. The kinds where a stranger would be immediately recognized. I want to experience their character, to know their reactions to a stranger who crosses their path for no apparent reason at all. No reasons, except a curiosity to just see their way of life and their native habitat.
Perhaps, it is the omniscient journalist in me, but it is a strange kind of longing this. To want to attach; an image, a face, an experience to these far off places that lure and intrigue and are nothing more than names on maps to me right now.
I want to trade the known for the unknown. Revel in the luxury of knowing that I am unafraid to try the untested. To just step out off a train as it halts at some random station somewhere. Wish I had done that in Bongaigaon in Assam for no reason other than the fact that the name had a nice ring to it or Cooch Behar because it looked so beautiful in the early nippy dawn of December and I so badly wanted to linger around and wait for the faint pink stain morph itself into a heart-warming blazing orange.
Or oh, when it struck me the strongest in New Jalpaiguri in West Bengal only so that I could know just how ‘new’ it was from just plain Jalpaiguri.
Well, New Jalpaiguri also for the fact because She left the train there. She earns a living singing Bengali folk in trains. I don’t know her name, but regulars on the Kamrup Express which runs from Tinsukia to Howrah told me that though they didn’t know where she boarded from, she always got down at New Jalpaiguri. I had followed her through the length of the train trying to speak to her as she went about singing the most sweetest songs I had ever heard.
Regulars greeted her with familiar smiles and so tuneful was she that first-timers shoved currency notes into her outstretched hands. She charmed me, this frail old lady with the most beguiling smile. She who made a living out of something which was a ‘heritage’. And while it put food in her belly, it also gave joy to people as she sold back to them their own long-forgotten and fast-dying out culture. I wonder if she realizes the enormity of what was for her a matter of living. This unwitting symbol who was a reminder and guardian of folk culture.
These are the stories I most like. The ones that I want to write. And there are many, I know. Buried in the boroughs of places salted away from mainstream eyes, going about their businesses far from the madding crowds.
I want to go there some day. To Mithila, Muzzafarpur and Deoband. To Gadchiroli, Jamkhed and Tikiapara. To Thangachimaddam, Shirpur and Malegaon.
And then some more.
To experience, a slice of life.
PS: Of course there is Prague too.
So, Godspeed.
Monday, August 10, 2009
In my life and times in Pune city,
there is only one other incident I remember akin to the present day eerie uneasiness that has blanketed the town. And that was the day the Babri masjid fell. But, even then there was not this feeling of being under siege. No school buses doing the rounds, downed shutters at malls and multiplexes after days of remaining empty, waking up to yet another story of a life lost and turned into another scary statistic, panicky citizens walking around in green masks and just that hard to shake of feeling that something very sinister is lurking in the air. And there actually is.
In May, cases of swine flu in India amounted to stray stories measuring nothing more than a column and a few inches. Most were false alarms. A few tested positive and quietly recovered and nothing more was heard. Pune suddenly woke up to the very real danger of swine flu in July when students in a school caught the infection from a classmate who in turn caught it from his American-returned cousin. Sadly, there has seemed to be no looking back after that and Pune threw up the country's first swine flu victim. All the more tragic because of the sweet faced innocent promise that her 14-year old face seemed to hold. And very ironically someone whose religion taboos the pig as unclean and unholy.
In all of this, I cannot help but wonder at the wisdom of consuming animals as food. I am as die-hard a non-vegetarian as they come. But, first the mad cow, the avian flu and then the swine flu. Viruses that were transimtted to humans only because they were bred and handled in the course of the commerce of human-eat-animal food chain. No, am not still not turning vegetarian in a hurry. Old habits die hard. And I suspect that I am definitely an eggetarian for life if nothing else.
But, the stomach does turn. Slowly, but surely.
In May, cases of swine flu in India amounted to stray stories measuring nothing more than a column and a few inches. Most were false alarms. A few tested positive and quietly recovered and nothing more was heard. Pune suddenly woke up to the very real danger of swine flu in July when students in a school caught the infection from a classmate who in turn caught it from his American-returned cousin. Sadly, there has seemed to be no looking back after that and Pune threw up the country's first swine flu victim. All the more tragic because of the sweet faced innocent promise that her 14-year old face seemed to hold. And very ironically someone whose religion taboos the pig as unclean and unholy.
In all of this, I cannot help but wonder at the wisdom of consuming animals as food. I am as die-hard a non-vegetarian as they come. But, first the mad cow, the avian flu and then the swine flu. Viruses that were transimtted to humans only because they were bred and handled in the course of the commerce of human-eat-animal food chain. No, am not still not turning vegetarian in a hurry. Old habits die hard. And I suspect that I am definitely an eggetarian for life if nothing else.
But, the stomach does turn. Slowly, but surely.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
The woes of first world hens
includes not laying eggs because they can't take the heat at around 37 degress Celsius. Immense cackling followed on learning of this being the reason for egg shortage in Austin. Hot, hot, hot. Go veg y'all. Heeee Hawww.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
It is incredible
the number of things that sometimes need to fall into place and how long one can wait for the said things to assume their rightful positions. Even as you get on with life and try to do without. Makes for an interesting journey if nothing else.
You could look forward to the light at the end of the tunnel and pray that it not be that of an oncoming train. Or else, you could await the passing of the obstacle ridden darkest endless hour of the day which carries after it the harkening of the unbridled light of dawn.
You anticipate this happiness for yourself even as you see, congratulate and partake in the joy of others around you reaching the stage where you would like to be. You suddenly become somber as the clock ticks away and you wonder and ponder what if anything you might be missing. You allow yourself a moment to revel in the sweet promises of someday, sometime, somewhere till the busyness of moving on overwhelms and jolts you back to reality.
It is a very welcome drizzly evening in Pune and such are my thoughts as I dip a salty into a cuppa of steaming hot coffee from the cosy comfort of my terrace.
Meanwhile, the evening traffic snarl below tries to sort itself out.
You could look forward to the light at the end of the tunnel and pray that it not be that of an oncoming train. Or else, you could await the passing of the obstacle ridden darkest endless hour of the day which carries after it the harkening of the unbridled light of dawn.
You anticipate this happiness for yourself even as you see, congratulate and partake in the joy of others around you reaching the stage where you would like to be. You suddenly become somber as the clock ticks away and you wonder and ponder what if anything you might be missing. You allow yourself a moment to revel in the sweet promises of someday, sometime, somewhere till the busyness of moving on overwhelms and jolts you back to reality.
It is a very welcome drizzly evening in Pune and such are my thoughts as I dip a salty into a cuppa of steaming hot coffee from the cosy comfort of my terrace.
Meanwhile, the evening traffic snarl below tries to sort itself out.
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