For the last eight years, there has been one extremely amusing part to every trip back home. Tamil soaps. Old ones from before I left for Singapore or wherever, new ones that had been picked up in between. Ridiculous plots, absolutely unbelievable characters. Women whose sole aim was to ruin another family, with revenge strategies bordering on insanity. Men or women crooning like life was ending in the guise of background music. Grandfather watching these soaps as if his life depended on it.

Each vacation, for the few weeks/days spent at home, I’d watch my grandfather watching Tamil soaps with utmost concentration, keenly getting involved in the drama, going to bed depressed because of the hanging ending to that day’s episode, shedding silent tears, body convulsing, at particularly sentimental dialogues.

This time has been no different, but I wonder if the ridiculousness has gone one notch up. Keeping me particularly in splits has been one that shows at 8.30pm everyday, in which a district collector has been reduced to the job of finding an herb in the forest for his mother-in-law, where he is accosted by a beautiful villager. Let me wind back a little to give you the background. The evening I happened to come across this piece of amazing storytelling, on the show was a snake on a rock beside which the collector – dressed, as he is in the jungle, in a vest and an unbuttoned shirt, complete with a hat, sunglasses and a backpack – happened to pass by. A second later, away from the collector’s eyes, the snake turns into a – erm – beautiful damsel dressed in vintage finery. She begins to sing, the brown-eyed snake-woman, asking if he doesn’t remember her, while he is obviously far away and oblivious to the pining of the snake woman as he randomly walks around looking for some magic herb. The song freezes, and we get to know the history – the collector, 500 years back, was a man of valour who had scrounged the forest for an herb that would cure the king – currently his father-in-law – of his blindness.  In exchange for the herb, though, he had to marry the snake king’s daughter. Of course, the man of valour eventually escaped with the herb and married the blind (now cured) king’s daughter (you guessed it right, his wife in the current janma). And I think you’re getting my drift, the snake princess has returned. For the rate at which this story is progressing, it will be another month before we get to know what happens to the snake princess who has been waiting for 500 years, to the collector’s wife, and whether he manages to find the herb for the mother-in-law. But I have time, so I’ll wait. The same story also has other critters such as a goat that eats an exam answer paper and ‘talks’ aloud that it is keeping the paper safe in its stomach, and a parrot that helps a student copy (you know, Munnabhai/Robot style, except this is more grassroots). So there is enough and more to keep the story going before we have to deal with the key conflict between the snake princess and his wife that the dashing collector will eventually face.

Another comes during the day where a man suffers from a disease sure to kill him, one that gives him terrible headaches. But the blasted man is so concerned about keeping his impending death from his blasted family – I don’t know why, but he thinks that his sudden departure is somehow going to help them cope better with his death than knowing that it’s coming. As such, it’s comical to see him running away from his family every two days, as he tries to keep the splitting headaches a secret. So he ends up fainting by the road, curling up in the temple, hands clutching the head in agony, as the temple bells ring loudly and worsen his headache. And the poor wife, advised by the sad mother, with no knowledge of these horrid changes in their son’s life, tries all tactics ranging from enticing him in the bedroom to taking him to the temple. Of course, all along, the music jumps from happy, optimistic jingles to anguished cries of women or men as the headache story comes up again.

There is also the soap that has been showing for the last five years, I think, but in the seven days I’ve spent at home now, I haven’t seen the lead character in the many glimpses I catch as I move from one room to another carrying my laptop during the power cut. There is the other where, typically K Balachander style, there are women speaking different south Indian languages live under one roof and offer wise quips about the political and bureaucratic scenario in the country. Then there is the other where the step-mother gleefully offers another man money after he rapes her step-daughter and leaves her pregnant with a child she can’t abort because it’s too late.

All of them make the feminist in me cringe. All of them start off happy – you should see the teasers they play before a new soap is about to begin – but it’s at the most five days before all you see is tears and all you hear is the wailing man or woman in the name of background music. I wonder who thinks these soaps bring in good money – and well, actually, how they bring in good money. But most of all, I wonder, just how people watch them day in and day out, when each story goes through the same iteration with the elements just placed at different points: if serial A has a sick man now, B has a woman with an unwanted baby and a man who cheated her; in three months, they’ll both exchange their scenarios, while another new set of problems, such as a money scam, a sudden death, or a lover from the past, will eventually crop up. I guess you forget what happens easily, given how many you watch and how often you watch them… Good for these soap directors. Otherwise the proletariat masses would have woken up to the bourgeois bullshit long ago. 

Somebody decided that studying development would involve a lot of economics. And somebody in my university decided that we would do economics a lot (times) lot. And these somebodies are currently ruining my life and sleep.

I agree I should have studied these earlier, when they were being taught in class and I either vigorously nodded along – they all seemed to make sense then – or was nodding anyway – off to sleep. I agree that it’s four days before semester exams begin and I have no business talking about life or sleep, but you can read whatever I’ve said even through my college days, and life and sleep do not take a back seat ever in my life.

So right now, I am breaking my head over one blessed, Nobel laureate soul named Solow. Tagging along are his brethren Barro, Martin, etc. Somebody decided that they could randomly start off with an equation g(t) = a + by_o. Who said that was ok? What is ‘a’? What is ‘b’?! (They thankfully decided to clarify y is income). As if this wasn’t annoying enough, somebody decided to have fun and replace ‘a’ with alpha and ‘b’ with beta – really, what are you trying to pull here?! I know economics isn’t my strength at all, but I am a fairly logical person, but here all I see is a flagrant flouting of any kind of logic.

The other thing that really annoys me is how they quickly ‘assume’ things to ‘simplify.’ Let’s assume that labour productivity is constant. Let’s assume that all savings are invested. To simplify, let’s just divide both sides of the equation by L. I don’t know how it works in your world, but in mine, these aren’t simplifying things. And if you’re simplifying everything, please could you care to explain how these models can, in any tiny part of the world, help us understand the goings on in the economy or be used to predict the path of development most suited to them? Seriously, if you assume labour productivity is constant or that savings are invested, you’re assuming wrong. Get a reality check!

As I struggle to see how anything that any of these intelligent men said makes sense in the larger picture, the sample question paper from last year tells me to stop bothering and simply learn them by hook or by crook (the ‘crook’ method is what’s working now, with random ways of remembering models slowly beginning to be employed). I shamefacedly lament the lack of opportunity to write anything based on general observation or experience. I can’t help but laugh thinking of the plight of the poor professors who have to assess these (well, my) papers and imagine the looks of incredulity they might give at the absolute rubbish they will encounter. Too bad.

All I know is in just about 11 days, all of this will be over, and there will be a two-month break before the next bout begins. Wish me luck as I brace myself to delve deep once again into the world of misplaced letters, incomprehensible graphs and incongruous oversimplifications. 

... are a raucous affair. I decided to blog about it this morning at 6am, when I woke up to a mixed alarm of howling dogs and mosque azaans. I lay in bed, eyes closed but mind completely awake and taking in the sounds of the weird morning and awakening. It was as if the azaans were echoing off each other - for the number of mosques in my locality, it's no surprise - there was not a second when somebody wasn't singing, and all that varied was how loud the azaan was, depending on how far the mosque was from you. In that darkness, the azaans reminded me of when my friend walked around with her iPhone in the breathtakingly beautiful Blue Mosque of Istanbul while I sat shivering in a corner with my eyes taking in the splendour of the mosque at night.

And as if to wake me out of my reverie, the dogs howled some more; it was bloody awful, eerie and was ringing in my ears. At that moment, despite the fairly animal-friendly self I was (even if I'm tempted to run in the other direction or yell back at a barking dog), I wanted to find a stone to throw in the direction of the dogs and have them scatter away in fright.

And as if this wasn't enough, the doorbell rang and made me jump - my roommates were returning after spending a whole night at the library studying.

What else happens? I shouldn't forget the crows that go berserk at some 3 in the morning, cawing away like the morning wasn't going to break. The security guard blowing on the whistle like crazy, and walking around the apartment, beating his sturdy stick on the ground, as if it would be any deterrent to a sulking thief. I'd listen to the man walk around the apartment, tracking the sound as it faded and came back aloud again. Oh yeah, there's also the random something he burns in a little pan every night - to ward off the mosquitoes, apparently - that will make you choke if you happened to open the main door.

There is another man I should talk about. A complete nut case, loudmouthed and rude old man who cleans our building's staircases once a month or so. He is loony enough to think it is alright to ring the bell multiple times in succession at 6 in the morning and yell at us for buckets of water. I have yelled back at him in my broken Hindi, and roommates of mine who are not easily shaken have given them a piece of their minds too, leaving me shocked (and grinning) at their ferocious displays of anger.

It's only a matter of a few weeks. The apartment will soon be history as we move to campus accommodation. I wonder how mornings will dawn there - I anticipate queues for buckets and brushing teeth, and don't look forward to it, because hostel life in Singapore was a breeze that way. But well, it's all part of the big experience package I signed up for when I decided to move back. And what the heck, doing it for five days is going to get you used to it. Yay to hostel life!

And BY THE WAY - the blog is SEVEN years old! Wow. I feel OLD. The blog is OLD. And there are at least five people reading it, I think, so yay again. 

It’s a strange feeling. It’s been six months since the move back to India, six months since I became a student again, six months of feeling like an old, wise, out-of-touch-with-India woman, six months of alternating between missing Singapore and digging India. SO MUCH has changed in these months, and today I realized, for the first time – and maybe it’s simply a carryover effect of all the good things happening in university over the last few days – but I’m totally happy about the move.

So the university turns 75 this year, and there’s been quite a bit of (well-deserved) hoohaa, but I should be thankful – these events made me get closer to the ground realities, soak in the atmosphere, convinced me I really am back, and told me that it’s all for the better.

The first of these was the session on surveying M-Ward East, a collection of slums that have the worst Human Development Indicators in Mumbai. After a couple of days of mayhem and understandable disorganization – over 1500 students were to be involved in surveying 20,000 households, using tablets, so it was an organizational nightmare – we set out into the field, armed with water bottles, hand sanitizers, stoles around our heads, et al. I was excited about the project – my course doesn’t have sessions where you have to go to the field and interact with the beneficiaries of the development process I am supposed to initiate – but was at the same time very unsure of how far my Hindi would take me. Luckily, I was teamed up with a boy who had no issues with Hindi, and the very first survey we did will always stay in my mind: him completely at ease, joking, laughing, connecting with the people, and me listening to his every word to improve my fairly abysmal Hindi vocabulary. Over the next seven days, I realized how many things we take for granted – running water, electricity, access to medical facilities, etc. As a relatively socially conscious person, of course I was aware of problems people have with these things, but to see them live, in one of India’s richest cities, was shocking (yes, even though we’ve all seen Slumdog Millionaire). I spoke to women about their reproductive health, struggling to ask questions about their sex lives, vagina, etc. (resorting to crude ways of asking about it with a ‘Sorry, my Hindi isn’t that good!’), only to hear a number of them tell me nonchalantly about their babies who have died; it was especially painful to hear of a woman’s abortion experience, when her midwife put her hand so far deep into the woman’s uterus that it got scratched by her nails and was infected for months after the incident. It was an eye-opener in a number of ways, and most of all driving home hard one lesson – I have nothing in life to complain about, when there are millions who are surviving through days, forget living through them, hoping or planning. These seven days, life went by in a flash: coming back late at night after the surveys, showering, falling on to the bed and not waking up once till the alarm rang the next morning.

And this Monday, the school started its platinum jubilee celebrations. Four days of seminars, panel discussions, academics debating theories that went over my head, listening to a monk from Arunachal Pradesh telling us about their sentiments about being part of India, hearing out an activist supporting Manipur’s Irom Sharmila who has been fasting for eleven years to repeal a draconian army law, listening to students from the North East giving their views on how they feel alien in India even as the country claims them as one of its own, watching documentaries and short films by brilliant student filmmakers across the country, cheering performances from a highly-talented Naga troupe and a bursting-with-energy, feminist troupe from Tamil Nadu, hooting and going wild at a beat boxer’s performance, and wrapping it up by dancing to the DJ who had to stop spinning by 10pm to not annoy the residents nearby.

And this evening, somehow the realization that I talked about at the beginning of this post struck me, as we watched the cooks and servers at our dining halls and canteens put up a smashing performance – the one I think that got the most cheers and even an encore. For all that I have cribbed about the university, the curriculum, the bureaucracy, the pseudo intellectuals, prissy girls, wannabe boys, childish people, professors stuck in decades-old procedures and all that – there is something we have all learnt in our few months here, and something I know we will have learnt by when we graduate: appreciating others, and respecting people from backgrounds very different and often much more difficult than your own. Yes, the really urban ones will never be chummy with their more heartland friends, we will all form our groups with people from similar backgrounds, some of us will pretend to know more than our professors or criticise anything that comes our way – but somehow, and at some point, we shed these selves and know that in no way can we consider ourselves superior to anyone else, worthier than anyone else. The university suddenly seemed to be a beautiful place to be in, and I was proud to be in a place that had done some incredible, life-changing work in its 75 years of existence.

And for some reason, I left the place happy, brimming with hope and eager to push out the cynicism that has been entrenched in me since moving back. And for this reason, I knew that this move had to happen; it’s a phase of life God planned for me, to help me learn some things I would have not learnt so effectively in Singapore. I have no idea where life will take me next, and where I want to be, but for now, this seems perfect.

P.S., and note to self: Don’t be fooled by all this optimism. It’s time for classes, assignments and worst of all, dissertation, to begin, and be sure to look out for a crib fest next month. 

Rockstar was the only Hindi movie I wanted to watch badly in 2011. And with much enthusiasm, despite reports of a sagging second half, I set out last weekend to watch it in Eros in Mumbai. Before anything else, it was a pleasure to not watch the movie in a multiplex – it’s been at least six years since I did so! The screen was huge. I was prepared to be blown away – with amazing visuals, and most of all, what I’d come for, Rahman’s music on dolby surround sound (which was surprisingly non-functional in the cinema, I think).

As for the movie – I’ll not talk about the script or the wooden doll Nargis Fakhri (why, Imtiaz Ali – she destroyed the very soul of the movie). To me, the movie did a brilliant job – thanks to Ali, a zillion times from the Rahman fan – bringing the god-awesome-brilliant-out-of-the-world songs to life on screen through Ranbir Kapoor. And is this the guy who was unbearable in Saanwariya all those years ago? Good lord, hasn’t he matured as an actor – this might very well be the break that he got hints of at Wake Up Sid. Thanks to him, the songs sprang to life, dripped with agony, pain, exuding promise, happiness, steeped in anguish, anger, oh-world-up-yours-ness. After watching Sakkarakatti, I realized how directors could mutilate songs on screen (remember the zombies in Chinamma Chilakamma) and make you relive horrific memories the next time you listen to them (it took me a few months to get over those images). Ali has simply made me cherish each song even more, feel the emotion in each song that Mohit Chauhan and Rahman create. After the movie, I became an even bigger fan of Kun Faaya Kun – the beautiful lights, the mosque, the haunting music on screen – love. At 3.15am, a few hours after watching the movie, I played it on the iPod on bed, lay with my eyes closed and – for the first time even though I’ve heard it before – moved to a different plane; one where Rahman’s voice felt as if they were ripples on water; the first bit on the harmonium with Javed Ali’s and Rahman’s voice felt like heaven; and when you realize how the divine sound awoke the music within JJ, Mohit Chauhan’s voice carries a meaning of its own.

And The Dichotomy of Fame – gave me a pleasant shock when I saw Shammi Kapoor playing the shehnai (yes, I could have made the link when he was introduced as a shehnai player) – but it became even more beautiful when Ranbir could so powerfully emote to show his anguish, pain and annoyance – and what, beautifully, brought out the best music in him. Aur Ho, a song I usually paid little attention, became a haunting portrayal of confusion, and knowing what those mysterious lines the lady sings are, makes it lovelier. Sadda Haq became powerful, and I was screaming with joy in the cinema hall. I love Sheher Mein even more, more deeply in love with Phir Se, and must seriously work on editing Tango for Taj my ringtone.

I’m so much more in love with the soundtrack that I don’t mind sitting through the movie again and enduring the pouting woman’s face, just to relive every song and watch Ranbir bring it to life. What more could a Rahman fan – and a true music lover – want?

HOME, MUMBAI: This must be the first time since I started blogging that I haven’t mentioned my birthday and put a traditional I’m-xx-old-oooh-aren’t-I-growing-old post. Have managed to do it while working crazy hours or slogging on the Final Year Project, but one difficult exam on Oct 5 put me off it this time. Guess it’s a sign of old age. Yours truly is now 25 years old. It’s c-r-e-e-p-y as hell to associate this number with me, but I’ve realised I’ve talked about it so much that 25 only feels natural. It’s only because I’m back in school and there are all these 1990-born children in there. And the fact that kids born as late as 1996 – yes, ninety six – are in class ten now! I remember when I was in class ten! 

But 25 is nothing, I know. And I mean it, not just because I’m that old. I think 40 is the real killer. Even 39 is ok, you’re still in your 30s and as a woman, probably done with taking care of your toddler child(ren) and hopefully back at work. Forty is still far away, so it still feels old. 

MUMBAI: The rains. The snails in the bathroom. The incredible amounts of dust. The university’s absolutely ridiculous methods of functioning, which besides ripping apart in feedback forms, self-important I have decided to give some suggestions to (anticipate a post which states I’ve been kicked out of university!). Whittling down weekly beverage consumption (:P) sessions to once-a-month-if-lucky sessions (somehow I frequently run into dry days every time I’m downtown!). Fortnightly movie sessions to oh-is-that-the-name-of-a-new-movie-ness to friends still in Singapore. Unlearning the conveniences of things like air-conditioned ATMs, easy bill payments and finding anything online. Learning how to yell at someone in Hindi – be it the stupid pizza delivery people with no change for 500 for a 468 rupees bill, or the ATM guard who decided to be cheeky and asked if we couldn’t read the non-existent sign that the ATM wasn’t working. Marvelling at Maharashtrian cooking that has tomatoes and coconut in pretty much everything, and at the sweet samburr. Getting acquainted with different Hindi accents and identifying their origins. Sitting through a conversation I have no interest in with a polite and smiling face. Being called graceful (yikes! But turns out I am…) A dandiya session where my pathetic coordination skills provided amusement to the children I was dancing with. And perhaps a significant achievement which my parents might testify to: sleeping through a whole hour of power failure at night only momentarily waking up to realize the fan wasn’t working. 

You would realize I haven’t even gone into the studying part of it. It was just like jumping into an alien experiment I have no clue about. The first couple of months were spent in pretty much open-mouthed amazement at just how disorganized and bureaucratic things can be here (“Please write a letter to...” for anything and everything), and the next two months were spent adjusting to it. Exams have been written with half-baked, half-remembered knowledge, and I have nightmares about grades, till I convince myself I should look beyond grades and all that. 

Maybe it’s the whole end-of-exam and going-home warm feeling, but I’m pretty happy at how it’s turned out so far. It’s been a challenge, there have been many disappointments, but what’s life without anything like that?

HOME: I’m at home for Diwali after seven years, and I’m bored. It’s somehow not the same as celebrating it in Chennai. I miss – gosh, has it been that long, it feels ridiculous even saying this – school friends, visiting relatives, and the excitement about new clothes and sweets and spicy savouries. Sitting in a random city away from these people and with two wisdom teeth extractions, I haven’t even got the will to get off the couch, go to the road and light the ‘shaastratukku’ crackers that have been purchased (yes, and by the way, what’s with the bloody expensive crackers they sell these days?! Good lord!!) 

TV, with its 200+ channels holds even lesser attraction. Stuff cooked at home remind me of a literal experience of the saying ‘Kai ku ettinadhu vaai-ku ettaliye’ (what the hand can reach, the mouth can’t). 

The vacation is nearly over, there’s an event at home soon, the world’s population has officially hit 7 billion, and it’s raining all the time in Coimbatore, and I don’t have any inkling on what to do for my dissertation. That’s what vacation has become. YAWN! 

Somehow, all this while, returning to studying didn't feel that difficult. As in, you had to sit in lectures, listen to some interesting professors, some drones, some 'ok' ones. And submit a few assignments - reading books and reviewing them, getting lost in technical jargon; writing term papers - starting them with utmost ambition only to see it all whittling away in the face of the deadline. It all got done, and got done with relative ease (yes, in retrospect, but still...) - maybe it was just akin to writing a press release that I used to sit on and finally rush through when the client suddenly remembered and asked for it. Screw the academic language - I simply wrote whatever my head said, with clarity. But now, exams stare down my face four days from now, and I'm staring at a volume of documents to read that's unimaginable. Explanations, critiques, papers written by twits who seem to be more intent on showing off their command of the English language and less on making people understand what they want to say. Theories that simply befuddle my practical head, and theories that arise to critique the aforementioned ones. This is it - the moment of reckoning. What studying again was to lead to - exams that test your ability to remember and lesser on your ability to understand theories and apply them.I slave over these documents at the rate of five pages an hour, which is terrible, given that a number of distractions beckon and I willingly give up at the drop of a hat - newspapers, sitcoms, songs, writing notes such as this one.

This has to pass. Otherwise I'm staring at an October-full of agony. I've done so many exams before, passed 12th grade with reasonable success - this can't be that bad, can it? Wish me luck while I mutter 'Come on, Vani, be serious' under my breath every ten minutes.