One tight one

If you’re single and making decent money in the US, you probably do some or all of these things on weekends- you go to the mall to shop, you go drinking with your friends, if you’re religious, you go to the temple, if your parents are hoping you’ll get hitched this year at least then you go on what I like to call- ‘shaadi-dates’ (but what should actually be known as “mental-illness-inducing vortices of awkwardness.”) Occasionally, you’ll go visit other single friends in nearby cities or states so that you can go with them to the mall, drink with them, and swap stories about their mental-illness-inducing vortices of awkwardness.

But the one thing you’re sometimes FORCED to do on weekends is a Walmart run or a Target run. THAT is when the sh*t hits the roof, for me anyway, and makes me realize that perhaps the reason I am not married yet, is because my subconscious won’t permit me to enter the state of holy matrimony, which is only the first step towards the decidedly UNHOLY state of maternity!

I like to think of myself as a sensible, kindly individual, one that likes children for the most part. I enjoy babies. Like to count the tyres they have on their chubby arms and legs. I like to tickle them and make them gurgle with delight. I like asking toddlers silly questions and hearing their adorably intelligent answers. Seeing as I share a lot of their interests- Avatar on Nickelodeon, PSP, Gianormous amounts of ice-cream- kids and I, we get along pretty darned well. But then, all of a sudden, along comes a weekend demanding a Target run.

Desi kids at Walmart/Target/ Kmart seem to me like they’ve suddenly either discovered the existence of a previously unknown nasty side, or like they are their own evil twin, whose purpose in life is to embarrass their poor desi parents who cannot even resort to the standard desi fallback of ‘one tight one’!

I talk only of the desi kids because the very first week that I set foot in this country, I knew, so long as the parents here continue treat their kids like mature adults/ friends/ thinking partners/ drinking buddies, no good can come of it, and no kid will behave in a supermarket. The old Indian standby of ‘one tight one’ is a non-existent concept here. And more’s the pity. I’ve seen plenty of angelic blondes and cherubic brunettes kicking and screaming who could’ve done marvelously with one.

I have a theory about why desi kids go insane only or particularly at Target and Walmart. They look around. The see the gora angels and cherubs on the floor, banging their little fists, kicking out as the hassled gora parents says “Jeremy, sweetie, don’t bang the floor with your fists, it’s unsanitary”. In the face of that superb bit of parenting, Jeremy continues to bang the floor, and throws in a face blue from holding his breath for good measure. Little Aryan or Nikita [and by the way, why can’t Indian parents in the States do a better job of naming their kids?] looks over, learns that parents may be controlled by such simple yet wonderful means as breath-holding and fist-banging, and decides to try it out at the first available opportunity.

Poor unsuspecting parent of Aryan/Nikita, in the home linen aisle suddenly hears, “Papa, can I have the toy/ game we just saw?” “No, you have enough toys at home” says responsible desi parent. “Waaaahhhhhh” goes the now-wise desi kid. “But I waaaaaannnnnt ittttttt. I don’t have spiderman. Everyone has spiderman! I waaaaannnttttt iiiitttttt.” Parent turns around, shocked, looking a bit like they’ve just seen their dead grandmother, and tries to pacify the child with “But beta, remember, we bought batman last week? And we have to run home now, or we will miss Spongebob!” To no avail. The whining turns into wailing which can soon turn into a full-blown tantrum.

Parents looks like they wish they’d never given up the use of contraceptives. Parents look at each other with open hostility, as though to declare “this unattractive whiny/waily quality our offspring is currently displaying comes from YOUR side of the family!” Parents’ look changes from shocked to accusatory to murderous. They know what would put an end to this. One tight one. Unfortunately, they’re in Target. And Target is in the US. Target is not a good place to administer a dose of ‘one tight one’. So they do the next best thing. They tell the child, “if you don’t start behaving yourself in exactly 1 minute, you’re going to get one tight one, as soon as we get home.” Child, blissfully unaware of the mysterious ‘one tight one’ continues to wail.

Parents forget about shopping anymore, grab their little, howling bundle of sorrow and runnnnnn out of Target. Mommy straps Aryan or Nikita in, extra tight. Papa drives like the fuzz is on his tail. They get home in record time, to the loud sounds of spiderman-deprivation. They get into the house, and that child, that beloved angel, that little American baby, finally becomes a desi-they’ve learnt what ‘one tight one’ means.

The OTHER men

I have a theory. Part of the reason a lot of us totally awesome women are still single is, the other men in our lives.

There are various ways in which pre-existing, non-romantic relationships with members of the male persuasion can thwart our matrimonial (or even just dating) ambitions.

First let’s examine the different not-romantic relationships we have with men.

Men in our lives are- our dads, our brothers, our guy friends, our ex-boyfriends [whom you regret dating to the extent that if given a choice between an amputation and dating them, knowing what you now know about them, you would pick the amputation], bosses, subordinates, sales guys at shoe stores, pizza/ Chinese food delivery guys, and please, don’t tell me you “don’t have a relationship with” the last two, because that would just be a big fat lie.

Each of them has either behaved atrociously and damaged our psyche in some slight way, turning us off men almost entirely, OR has created in our minds a 100-foot cutout of what we think our man should be, by being super-great himself.

Our dads fall into the latter category. Having raised us, read to us, taught us to write, cleaned our scraped knees, made our models for school, taught us to ride bikes and play cricket, and in my case, to cook, dads are usually the first male role models we have. For the longest time, we measure every single guy we meet against their almost unattainably high standards of being a man. But then some of us are rebellious, and choose to go out with someone antithetical to our dads, and very soon we realize what a foolish mistake we’ve made.

Our brothers are, 99% of the time, self-appointed guardians of our honour/ morality police putting Taliban to shame. Need someone to glare at the cute guy next door? Call your brother. Bench-mate from accounting class about to ask you out? No, no, no, my dear. Brother already knows about it, and has challenged said bench-mate to a duel unto death. Friend of a friend even remotely interested in getting your number? Brother dearest has cut all the telephone lines in his locality. Oh brother!

Our guy friends also fall into 3 sub-categories. One, the totally wonderful ones, who have all your dad’s great qualities and none of his idiosyncracies, on whom you crushed for, like, EVER, but who have girlfriends (whom also you unfortunately happen to like) OR the really funny/ fun bad guys who admit they’re hound dogs. They don’t respect women in general, but think the sun shines out your behind. They’re crushing on you for like EVER, but you would never give them the time of the day. The 3^rd kind are your ‘brothers-from-another-mother’. They are simpatico but don’t want you to do anything stupid. You would do well to listen to them, because sometimes they come up with gems like “see…like how a peNNin manadhai oru peNN dhaan arivaaLo…ade maadri oru aaNin yeNNathai oru aaN daan arivaan”; loosely translated-“just as only a woman knows the pain/ feelings of a woman… only a man knows another man’s (Bad) intentions [presumably with regard to me.] This one I got from my friend Anand Subramaniam of New Jersey whom I find to be well up on his platitudes (and impatiently awaiting my next post!) He said this when I told him I was going on a date with a guy who was in town for a conference. Anand seemed to think the conference was bunkum. He said “avan figure-a correct panna varan“; loosely translated- he’s coming to patao me.

The less said about the exes the better. Some have been known to disgust their ex-girlfriends so much, the poor women have changed sexual orientation!

Question is, inundated as we are, with advice from or the example of these upstanding gentlemen, or, alternatively, disgusted as we are by the sorry figure some of them cut… what are our chances of ever being normal and objectively judging a guy who’s interested in us? I’d say NIL.

But you know what? I don’t mind. Because the good guys’ goodness teaches me what I should look for and what I deserve, and the bad guys’ badness tells me what to avoid like the plague. It’s only a matter of time before my superior sifting skills have found me the man of my dreams.

An ode to Girl Friends

Occasionally, one hears a woman say to a man, with a hint of pride in her voice, “I don’t have too many female friends, you know, too much politics. Most of my friends are men.”  This, in my humble opinion, is either a lie or worse, it is something they believe to be true but discover sooner or later to be as un-factual as can be.

Whenever I have heard this statement and turned around to look at who it was that made it, it is one of 3 kinds of women:

1.     A five foot nine blond with a figure that’s a perfect 10… usually to a man old enough to be her dad; because she is looking for a sugar daddy.

2.     A woman ‘dressed for success’. Austere, dark pin-striped pant-suit, no-nonsense hair, limited jewelry, the barest minimum of make-up, and that because society demands it of a woman… in conversation with a male colleague with whom she works on Wall Street or the financial district of the town/city she is from, to indicate her interest in being allowed into the inner circle of the old boys club.

3.     A very, very young girl. New to college. Probably her first time away from home… to a guy she’s flirting with-and you can rest assured she’s never had her heart broken.

I want to say to these women, if you really don’t have any close girl friends, I am sorry for you. The world over, girl friends are the single most important support system for women to rely upon. And if, like me, you’re a single woman, then the importance of your girl friends (whether single or double) increases exponentially. I will explain why.

Girl friends are the spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down. They’re sugar and spice and everything nice.  They’re there when you need them, and when you think you don’t (but really you do.) Girl friends are the lubricant that makes the ride of life smooth.

They make you feel beautiful, when you feel uglier than sin. They make you feel like a super model, when you feel as fat as the Michelin Man.

They go with you to Goa and drink neat rum every night for 3 nights while you cry over the boy you thought was the love of your life who merely thought of you as his ‘just for now’ girl*.

They eat a whole chocolate cake with you when you’re both on a diet and then tell you tomorrow’s a brand new day and then actually drag you out of bed to take you to the gym/ morning walk the next day!

They bring you coffee/ tea/ sympathy when the latest louse you were stupid enough to give your heart to played football with it for a bit, and finally trampled all over it.

They take you clubbing when all you want to do is get into your sheep-print pajamas and get into bed and cry for the next month or so, because you make horrible life choices. Usually you come out having been hit on by anywhere between 3-5 men (depending on the size of the club and how much time you spent on the dance floor) and totally back in the groove.

They join you in royally abusing your boss and his/her entire family when your increment doesn’t meet your high standards.

They warn you about the new louse you’re falling for. They introduce you to their very decent guy friends and colleagues to prevent you from going down the louse route again.

They stand up for the Real McCoy (if and when you do find him) when you’re mad at him about something completely insignificant and about to throw away the best thing you’ve ever had.

They cry buckets, shedding huge pearls of tears, when Mr. Right proposes and you FINALLY get engaged.

They convince your dad your fiancé is actually worthy of your hand in marriage and should not be put through the Spanish Inquisition.

They go shopping with you, visiting shop after shop in search of the perfect sari for the reception, never once complaining after you make them visit 30 shops only to return, in the end, to the very first one.

They sit next to you and hold your hand when your heart feels like it’s about to race right out of your chest cavity, when the priest says to you and the love of your life… this is it, this is real, this is forever.

They help you cook like a 5-star chef (or at least buy food from the best 5-star restaurant) the first time you have your in-laws over for dinner.

They get their husbands to introduce your husband to people he needs to know for work.

They go to Lamaze classes with you even if your husband comes with. (You ask them to, because you know you need them there; husbands are notoriously prone to fainting in delivery rooms.)

They treat your children like their own. Taking care of them, as you would of theirs.

There is a lot more I could write here, but my girl friends (you know who you are), and girl friends in general, are so awesome, I’d be up for a reeeeaalllly long time. So to those misguided women who take pride in not having close girl friends I say this again- I’m sorry for you, because you don’t know what you’re missing.

 

*[The phrase/description ‘just-for-now girl' is courtesy Helen Fielding, my inspiration and also my fave female author after Jane Austen- she ties for second place with J K Rowling]

Pushing 29…away

If the fashion magazines are to be believed, pink is the new black, and 50 is the new 40. And that means 40 is the new 30? Ok yeah, sure, why not? And 30 is the new 20? Nooooooo. No, my naive friend, no.

The gap between 20 and 30 is one that cannot be bridged by pithy fashion magazine quips. For a woman, the decade between age 20 and 30 is a gaping chasm into which have fallen such wonderful things as the ability to party all night and look like a daisy in the morning (even if you slept with make up on), the permission to wear mini skirts/ bubble gum pink lipstick or nail polish/ your hair in two ponytails, your skin tone, and most importantly (if you are a single woman) your parents’ faith in you to actually make something of yourself… even if you are the CEO of the world’s largest online shoe retailer or something else equally awesome.

20 was when you were swatting away dozens of men away each week because you ‘needed your space’. 30 is when you sing “I could’ve danced all night” when a cute guy sitting waaayyyy across the bar from you glances at you, and holds your gaze-with or without a smile- for anywhere from 10-15 seconds.

So is the big 3-0 the number to dread then? No. After all, that is not the title of this post. Ladies and Gentlemen, I put this to you- 30 is not the most dreaded number in a single girl’s life. That number is 29. Here are my reasons for it.

1. You feel that because you are still in your 20s and this is (possibly) your last year in them, you can do stupid things like: a) buying a ticket to Ireland with money you were going to invest in mutual funds- of the safe kind, then b) Getting incredibly drunk in a bar with a girl friend who has drunk you under the table and needs to be taken home on a stretcher and finally c) To add injury (of the mental kind) to insult, making out with a ugly, red-headed 17-year old boy whom you know only as “Lad”!

2. At 29 you work hard to keep 30 away. So you join a gym, to prevent your thighs and upper arms from jiggling as much and prematurely reaching the floor. Problem is, because you ARE almost 30, the gymming is painful, and, let’s face it, you already look kinda crappy in tights and anything sleeveless…so you never end up going anyway [There goes the money you were saving to invest in life insurance]

3. 29, the last year in the glorious decade that was the 20s, and you are suddenly overcome with remorse about all those great guys you swatted away 9 years ago, and it becomes your life’s mission to track them all down- every last mother’s son of them. And invariably, you will either find out they are married with 2 kids and a dog, OR they are still single, in which case, you date them and discover a) reason they are still single and b) that you did the right thing swatting them away in the first place  .

There are many more, but because I am very depressed today (I turn 29 in exactly 3 months- this is my last quarter of a year’s worth of sanity.) and as I can no longer stay up late and look like a daisy in the morning, this post must end here. To my sisters who’re pushing 29, push HARDER I say. If you spend the money you were saving to buy that cute 1-bedroom in Lonavla, you can probably buy this new cream I saw in Sephora made from Himalayan Lichen and Pacific Sea Cucumber jelly. It’s only $200 an ounce.

There is hope yet!

Yesterday, 4th of July, returning home I took the T (Boston’s beloved/hated-depending on what your experience with it is-public transport system. The ‘T’ is short for, I assume, the Train/ transport/ transit etc. etc.)

I was squished against the door by a very young, ridiculously attractive hispanic couple who seemed fused together and didn’t seem to mind the crowdedness at all. In fact, I suspect even if there weren’t such a crowd, they’d still have stood that way- like her head was soldered to his shoulder and his arm to her hip. 

Anyway, so, as I stood with my left shoulder buried into the frame of the door and the right hand groping for any sign of  a bar so I wouldn’t land on my butt the next time the T driver decided to brake, a 60-something year old, white-haired gentleman got on. HOW he found space to stand between my poor shoulder and the door is a mystery I am still trying to solve 24 hours after the fact!

So, as Americans are wont- correction: as caucasian Americans are wont-he greeted me (as though we’d known each other for years), asked if I’d been to watch the 4th of July fireworks and asked if I’d ever ridden the T when it was so crowded before. He was a sweet old man and I answered all his questions, very satisfactorily I think, adding for good measure how good his country was and all that I admired about it.

Then it was my turn. So, kind of obviously, I asked him if he was local and if this was his first time seeing the fireworks in Boston, the birthplace of the revolution. He answered he was local to Western Massachusetts where’d lived the last 25 years of his life, after growing up in Connecticut and going to college in New York. And thennnnnn he said…. “Yeah, I just got married last year, and my wife lived in Boston and I just moved” and he pointed to this pretty, petite, graceful fifty-something year old who had been waving both arms for a while trying to get his attention to tell him that theirs was the next stop!!! Then the train slowed to a stop, he said goodnight and that he enjoyed speaking with me, and he got off. But as he did, he left me with a cataclysmic realisation!

I say, if HE can find love at 60 AND move from the ‘burbs to the city for it… Hell, YES there’s hope for me (us- to any singletons reading this) yet. 

True Lies

Sometimes I feel, living in the US as I do, I am very lucky and MUCH better off than my contemporaries in India, who are regularly subjected to Kaanda-Pohe sessions by their poor, hassled parents.

For those who’ve never lived in Maharashtra, Kanda pohe are a kind of fried rice flake dish (aval upma for the tams reading this) flavoured with lots of onions.

A kaanda-pohe session is the equivalent of that ubiquitous scene in a number of 80sand 90s Hindi films where a girl’s brother is sent out to the halwai round the corner to buy kachoris and jalebis. When he returns he has to enter ignominiously through the kitchen window so his sister can bring out a tray of the fried goodies to serve to a prospective groom and his folks, and so that the parents can pretend their daughter made them and extol her many accomplishments in the kitchen department.

But because there are a LOT of hassled parents out there, this thing is commonplace. This is not seen as being duplicitous in any measure. It’s their way of doing the best they can by their foolish, useless children who couldn’t be normal and hook up with someone in college! Here are some of the other ‘true lies’ told in the hope of an early alliance:

Aamch mulga ameriket bara lakh rupay per annum kamavto

(Our son makes Rs 12,00,000 pa in the US- because Rs 12,00,000 sounds so much better than $30,000)

Our son has very clean habits.

(He ALWAYS showers the day after a drunken orgy and occasionally does the laundry on a weekly basis instead of fortnightly)

Our son is spiritual, not religious.

(His mother has been from temple to temple to pray that if and when he does get married, he will not stand up in the middle of his vedic wedding ceremony, declare that the havan kund is a disaster waiting to happen, take the bewildered bride by the hand and go off to the nearest registrar’s office to be married ‘spiritually’)

Our daughter is very adjusting

(She will take the Bud Light if you don’t have Corona)

Our daughter is very soft-spoken

(Ever since she lost her voice screaming at that heavy-metal concert)

I shudder to think what would happen if all these parents decide to go into real estate or used car sales!

Fanny Pack-itis

There is nothing more depressing than looking through hundreds, nay THOUSANDS, of profiles on shaadi.com (which activity feels, rather depressingly, to me like rummaging through the cut-price bra bin at Victoria’s Secret on their bi-annual sale in the hope that I will find my size… today at least… please god?) than to come across what seems to be the perfect guy, and then find out… yeaaahhh,  really not.

The guy in question, or I should say his profile, will usually have a really nice photograph. He’ll look cute in the thumbnail; even teeth, open countenance, mischievous eyes, boyish grin. Reading the standard info tells me he is a chamathu Iyer boy, no vices (well, apparently ‘social drinking’ has gained respectability in the community so much so that those who know their wine are not automatically termed “kudikaarans” anymore. If anything that might be a selling point –“Our son took a wine tasting course in South of France, you know.” And may even be a source of slight snobbery ”No, no! The boy does not drink whiskey, beer and all, only good wine”- How do YOU know if the wine is really good, mama? Eh, eh eh?)

Further examination of the profile shows that the Nakshatram is a match, and the gothram is not… phew! So far, so good. About me section reads- “I am fun-loving, well-travelled, and have been told I have a good sense of humour”- Sounds sane enough, if a little dull and déjà vu-ish. No warning signs of Texas Chainsaw murderous tendencies nor any of the “I want a verrrry beautiful, fair-almost albino- girl who will serve my parents hand and foot and knows how to cook panch-pakwaan everyday.”(replete with the most horrendous grammatical mistakes- ones that make me wish Esperanto was the world’s language for transacting business, even the matrimonial kind) – Seriously, what are guys who put down stuff like this thinking? Wait, are they thinking? Probably not.

Anyway, I digress, so to continue… I get all excited. I can hear nadaswaram, shehnai, church organ, sub-Saharan chanting, Alanis Morrisette, all in my head. I feel something I have not felt in MONTHS-a glimmer of hope. A heart beating faster. I approach the “express interest” button. But then… I notice the words ‘album’ under the thumbnail photograph. So I click on it and it expands the picture I’d been admiring. There he is, cute face, being all 5’10 and nicely built and then…,AAAURRRGGHHHHH! What is that? WHAT IS THAT? That hideous appendage to his hip? It’s not! Surely it’s not… a FANNY PACK!!!!!

But it didn’t end there. The next picture was of him wearing those weird coated sunglasses that make everyone look like Jeff Goldblum in ‘The Fly’ standing by some weird pond-looking thing surrounded by Asian people of the Mongloid race but who all had their back to him. Singapore? Thailand? But why those hideous sunglasses? That is probably why the others were looking away.

But really the third photograph was the one that did the complete opposite of sealing the deal for me. The man wore teeny, tiny short shorts. Hot pants, really. The picture was taken in someone’s apartment, on a couch, where a peroxide blonde with her roots exposed was, for lack of a better word to describe the pose, draped around him.

Now, I fully expect comments to the effect- “US la idhellam sagajam, ma” [for those who do not know tamil, that translates roughly into “This kind of thing goes in the US”] OR “If you’re going to be so picky, you’re never going to get married” OR “Fanny Pack-itis is completely curable- All it needs is a course of antibiotics, consumption of ALL the Rambo movies in the span of 48 hours and yeah, ‘So you think you can dance?’ is totally contra-indicated.” But the point is not that I object to his decision to wear the fanny pack or the sunglasses or the teeny shorts or the blonde. I question his intelligence in posting those particular pictures on shaadi.com. Really! What WAS he thinking? Oh wait, no, he wasn’t.

So no, no wedding for me this December either, I guess. But that’s ok. At least I won’t be the one warning the children about the dangers of Fanny Pack-itis.