Handy(wo)man

Going out for brunch on Mother’s Day is a frightening proposition. The hype, the clamor in the packed restaurants, the (sometimes false) gaiety, which goes with the mandatory gift of flowers/chocolates, and if the kids can’t make it over the state/continent to see the woman who gave birth to them, there is always the cheaper and conveniently alternate option of the Hallmark card. Although these days our offspring don’t even have to take the fifteen minutes out of their busy lives to do that - fifteen seconds worth of sending an ecard works just as well to make Mom cry.

When my kids were small, Mother’s Day was the Best Day of the Year. There was peace. There was quiet. There were no kids. My present to me was my husband taking both of them out for the whole day and leaving me alone. I know I sound worse than Tiger Mom Chua, but don’t knock it till you’ve tried it. A brunch is two hours worth of food that gives you indigestion and a doggie bag of leftovers. A day without the kids is heaven.

A few years later, when the whining and crying and exuberant ‘let’s run around the house and drive mom crazy’ days were over, I still eschewed the $6.99 Champagne Brunch scene in favor of hanging out in the house in my pajamas the whole day.

And my husband gave me ‘real’ presents (as he called them).

One year I got a Cordless Drill (Dewalt 3/8 inch 12 volt). When I told my friends, they were appalled and asked me exactly where I planned to stick it. No! No! I exclaimed. It was the best present ever. Better than a sparkling stone? they asked. Wayyyy better, I said as they walked away, planning to defriend me as quickly as possible.

I charged the drill and then walked around the house with a swagger, ready to tighten, twist and turn every loose screw in the house. I heard that my (de)friends did suggest I adjust the few loose ones in my head, but couldn’t see their comments on facebook.

If this were an Indian movie, this would be the time for the black-and-white flashback ... to 1982 - and the move as a newlywed into a beautiful house in Mission Viejo. A beautiful house whose toilet wouldn’t flush. (No, for the one-track minded - I did not stick unmentionables down the potty). On checking with the neighbor, she suggested it was an easy fix by buying a flush valve at the local hardware store. (Now let me tell you Donna knew her toilet well - she saw her plumber once a month). So off we went to National Lumber and that’s when my (second) love story began. I was in Shangri-La, in Utopia, at Disneyland. I was in heaven. I inhaled the aroma of the wood. I fingered the wrenches and the ratchets with awe. I roamed the aisles bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. I checked out the nuts (screw and crown). The washers (flat, fender, rivet and my favorite - the tooth washer). The bolts (lag, u-bolt, carriage and eye). The screws (deck, drywall, wood and machine). And the nailssss!!!! I had never seen so many different types of nails before.

We bought the part and I waited for my husband to fix the toilet. And waited and waited. One month of running to the downstairs bathroom almost ended my (first) love story. Too embarrassed to admit to his newlywed bride that all he knew was how to open the packet, he kept making excuses. In frustration, I rolled up my sleeves, took the packet from his hands (the one he had cut open carefully with the scissors - he took his one job very seriously) and fixed the toilet. Eureka! I shouted and as my new career blossomed, my husband retired from what he had never done in the first place ... and went back to more important things ... like pondering the truth between the two debatable schools of thought advocating “free will” or “pre-determined destiny” (fatalism).

In all fairness, I did give him other chances. We once heard a crashing sound and thought it was an earthquake, only to find that the shelves he had fixed in the closet had come crashing down. How was I supposed to know that you cannot put more than three paper towel rolls on a shelf? Next, he affixed a curtain rod in the kitchen. Or tried to. There were so many holes in the wall, it looked like target practice at a shooting range for the blind. He kept losing the fillers inside the wall. I was sent to get a fresh pack of fifty fillers. Then I had to go back again to get bigger ones and bigger screws. When he finally finished and draped the curtains, we stepped back to admire his handy-work. I noticed one curtain was six inches shorter than the other. His solution? Let’s open up the hem to match both the sides.

I think that was the point when I took (or was it snatched?) the toolbox from his hands. But I blamed myself for all the disasters. Something should have tipped me off when he once read an instruction manual and asked me: Which one is the Philips Screwdriver? And also when he was amazed to find that the purpose of a stud finder was to find the stud and knock the nail into it and not avoid the stud. It was unfortunate that the neighbor saw him doing this, spread the word throughout the street and was subsequently referred to as Mr. Stud.

Trips to National Lumber (now turned into Home Depot) were done on my own from then on. Apparently reading about the Arab-Israeli conflict, analyzing the Single European Entity, checking Tendulkar’s cricket scores, discussing regional policies in shaping Third World countries and other (boring) stuff was preferable to accompanying a wife to the hardware store; a wife, who shrieked with joy when she got load of a miter saw. I didn’t care. I learned about ceiling joists and crown moulding, gables and girders. How to apply faux finishes and lay tiles.

And then came HGTV. A tad too little and too late, me thought. By this time I had already painted a good portion of the house and every wall was covered with artwork and artifacts brought from my travels. Mexican tribal masks vied with Mughal Paintings, a collage of a Chinese mirror and shadow puppets from Thailand, Mola art from Panama with Hawaiian shells. All bought, installed, anchored, riveted, sawed, planed, framed and furnished ... by yours truly.

When I first started to paint the walls, my family was all for it. Part of the reason was because I did not ask for their help, opinion or advice. My son did, however, help paint the dining room and the sixteen foot staircase wall. He was smart enough to weigh the odds of Mother falling and breaking her leg/back/arm equalling to no food and dirty clothes for months, as opposed to straddling a ladder for an hour or so. But then I got carried away. Walking around with the paintbrush in my hand, I scoured the house for fresh wall/pillar victims. There came a point, sadly, when they decided to put a stop to it. “Put the paintbrush down!” I was threatened. “Step away from the paintbrush!”

So I am done. Cleaned the drill bits, reorganized the pliers, boxed the stapler and the nailer and the glue gun, labeled the paint cans, and retired the toolbox.

Now I just rest and indulge in armchair fantasies. While my girlfriend dreams of being marooned in Tahiti with George Clooney and another (guy)friend wants to be locked up in a kitchen with Rachel Ray, I have my own dilemma: Should I choose Bob Vila or Mike Holmes when I am exiled to Habitat for Humanity?

Jab Pyar Kisise Se Hota Hai

When I was small, I remember my sister taking perverse pleasure in teasing me with “Bharat loves Bharti” and “Bharti loves Bharat”. It wouldn’t have been that annoying had I known that I would marry someone named Bharat, and make that statement come true, which would have been the ultimate revenge.

But the Bharat she was referring to was Bharat Bhushan. Ewww. Double ewww and ulti.

Every time she pushed my buttons, I would stomp my foot, throw a tantrum and cry. She would grab all the good-looking guys for herself - Shashi Kapoor, Cliff Richard, Paul McCartney ... and I was left scraping the bottom of the barrel: Pradeep Kumar, Joy Mukherjee and Biswajeet. Triple eww.

Except with Shammi Kapoor - a love affair which continues today. Crazy as a coot, and not as serious as his brother Raj or as handsome as the other brother Shashi, but oh so lovable with his manic energy and trademark wacky swagger. Salman Khan tried to do a pathetic imitation in the new Bollywood “Jab Pyar Kisise Se Hota Hai” and failed miserably. And ripping his shirt open wouldn’t have helped him either. What made Shammi Kapoor even more endearable was his impersonation of Elvis in "Dil Dekhe Dekho", singing Meri Neeta, a copy of Paul Anka’s Diana and the outright plagiarism of the Beatles’ I Want to Hold Your Hand (Dekho Abt To in “Janwar”).

My uncle was in the film business and he and my dad were on first name terms with the Who’s Who in the film world. We heard names like Mehboob Khan (his wife came every year to tie Rakhi on Dad) and the Chopra brothers (B.R and Yash) and Gulshan Rai, without knowing who they really were, and famous actors, who we occasionally ran into when we went to Film Centre, to see the color trial runs of the movies. My uncle had established the first color processing laboratory in Southeast Asia and till today, it is a thrill to see ‘Processed at Film Centre’ in the title credits of the old movies. We were never allowed to attend the glamorous parties given at White House, given our youth and the fact that Bollywood (although the term was coined in the 1970s) was portrayed as the Big Bad World out there.

Motakaka and Dad did let us, however, peek in at times, and sit in the foyer, as the celebrities traipsed in and out. One evening, I hit gold, as Shammi Kapoor passed by. Seeing me reading comics in the dim light, he patted me on the head and said, “Bacché! You will spoil your eyes!” I was pretty upset when Vishnu insisted I wash my hair the next day for school.

Raj Kapoor’s and the singer Mukesh’s daughters went to our school -Walsingham. I remember the driver and the ayah sitting with Dabbu and Chintu in the car, waiting for school to let out. How they drove all the way from Chembur to Nepean Sea Road every day boggles the mind. Were they to try that run today, it would take them a good two hours one way.

Snobbery ran deep in us. Dev Anand once rang the doorbell at our house and Varsha opened the door. Pretending she did not recognize him, she left him standing outside and yelled to Dad that ‘someone’ was here to see him. His ego now deflated like a punctured balloon, Dad said the actor did not talk to him for years.

When starstruck, out-of-town guests pressed Dad to arrange outings to film shootings, Dad forced us to accompany them and we went grudgingly. I remember having nightmares for days when we took in the shooting of Sadhana (actually a puppet stand-in) plunging to her death from a chandelier in “Woh Kaun Thi.”

There is only that much you could take of a Hindi melodrama. In my days, almost every movie had the same hackneyed, cloying plot: a romance between a rich boy and poor girl, or vice versa. Enter villain. Enter long-lost twin/father/mother ... with the staple “Ek andheri raat thi” flashback. Introduce twist in already complicated plot. Introduce innumerable songs sung in a variety of costumes in totally deserted gardens (where do you find a deserted garden in India?) and infinite number of coincidences, a long fight sequence (guess who always won?), a court scene (peppered with “Objection, Your Honor!”), the police chase (with Iftekar as the staple Inspector, rapping his baton on an open palm), and ending with a tearful, mawkish reunion. There were no sad endings, unless the producers wanted a flop on their hands. Intermissions gave you the opportunity to take a restroom break and a bag of salty, stale popcorn. Two and a half hours later, the lights would go on. Two and a half hours you would never get back of your life.

There was no kissing (nothing past first base if even that), but we knew exactly what went on when the couple ducked behind a bush/tree, and two butterflies/birds flew out. Things got really progressive and ooooh! so scandalous when the movie “Aradhana” showed a steamy love scene. It went through the whole sequence of the storm, the wet clothes, the crackling fire, the revealing towel, the open shirt (and hairy chest), and relentless necking which led to ... spoiler alert! ... a surprise nine months later. Rajesh Khanna seemed to have the gratifying (for himself and pubescent boys in the audience) habit of singing in the rain with his heroines in wet, clingy clothes - (Do Raaste, Shehzada, Apna Desh, Ajnabee, Roti, Prem Kahani), that I am surprised he didn’t catch pneumonia.

The most popular villain those days was portrayed by a thespian called Pran. Here’s a guy you never want to meet in a dark alley: the pencil-thin mustache, which he twirled incessantly with the trademark evil sneer and the beady eyes – one smaller than the other.

It was an odd coincidence that every time Pran made an on-screen appearance, my cousin had to take a bathroom break, especially during his attempts to rape the heroine. If he succeeded, the subtle inference was from the tears, the rent sari and the smudged bindi. It came as a shock to hear that Pran’s real-life persona was in total contrast to his screen image. Nevertheless, seeing him on the screen and in my nightmares was enough reason not to want to meet him in a dark alley or anywhere else.


By the way ... I got over being teased about Bharat Bhushan. But the “Bharti loves Bharat” still holds true.

My Very Own Ararat

My friend Seta recently came back from a vacation to Armenia. She considers herself Armenian first, and everything else sits on the back burner: Christian, Lebanese, American. Although she had been brought up in the Armenian tradition - the language, the customs, the culture, she had never before laid her pedicured foot on the soil of the Fatherland. Of course, she snorted, the macho men would never deign to call it the ‘Motherland’.

I could feel her excitement as she described the flight to Yerevan. As the plane dipped its wings, the pilot urged the passengers to look out of the window and Mt. Ararat came into view. The Mt. Ararat where Noah was supposed to have landed his ark. The Mt. Ararat which is a sacred symbol for the nation of Armenia and its people.

She sat transfixed in her belted seat, she recalled, with tears streaming down her face. I could feel her sense of wonder, the nostalgia, the feeling of ‘coming home’. I felt moved to tears myself. And then I felt jealousy.

I wanted my very own Ararat.

Aww, you have the Taj Mahal, she said when I confessed, trying to placate the green monster. But did I feel the same emotion, the same sense of proprietary oneness when I saw the Taj Mahal? Well, yes, my eyes did open in wonder, my heart skipped a beat, but then I got goosebumps the same way when I stood in front of the Leaning Tower of Pisa ... or the Grand Canyon ... or even while walking on the Great Wall of China.

Did I have no sense of national pride for the eternal and beautiful symbol of India? What about when I see the American flag flying in all its glory? It seemed I harbored no single loyalty. No profound connections linked me with a deep sense of belonging to any one place.

Don’t get me wrong. I love being American ... and Indian ... and love everything German and Italian. I love waving my American passport with pride and kiss the soil with relief when I come back home from any foreign travel. While I hate wearing a sari, I love the salwar khameez and the bindis and enjoy celebrating Diwali and all the other hundred Indian festivals. My need for logic and order and punctuality could give me honorary German citizenship. I crave a pied-à-terre in the Tuscan countryside when I retire, and could die in ecstasy listening to an Italian aria ... preferably with some prosciutto in my hand. I watched Toshiba Sunday theater religiously for years and my husband would roll his eyes and walk out of the room. The Japanese version of “Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi” is much better, trust me.

But I want more. I want a cry-when-I-see-Ararat emotion, a passion that binds me one hundred percent to one culture. Right now I feel like a hybrid mutt, an amalgamation of whatever cultural meme I absorbed growing up.

I lived in a parallel universe - figuratively speaking of course. Raised in India, but speaking English at school and at home, wearing headbands and pedal pushers , singing along with the Beatles, twisting to Chubby Checker, eating fondue, playing roulette and making brownies. The body was a Bombayite, everything else was angrezified. I was an Indian who ate chocolate and cheese and not rasgoolla or ras-puri. I was a Hindu who didn’t know the story of the Ramayana. I was a Gujarati who never did garba, let alone own a dandia. I did eat dhokla - give me some credit.

Learning languages just stirred the pot and exacerbated the hybridization. After English, Gujarati and Hindi, I took French for eight years, then German in college, then Italian in Florence, then Japanese. Language immersion was the way to go, and I slept dreamed and lived the languages and imbibed the culture by staying in the countries.

Was I confused? Did I wonder about my cultural identity? Probably not - being busy dealing with the quotidian life in a milieu as close to paradise as a child could imagine.

There is, however, always the need to box, if not by yourself, by others. There is always the desire to label, to name, to stereotype. I was no fob, no Francophile, no paesano; not a gori, nor a gaijin. Where did I fit? Where is my box to check, my circle to color in? No category for raised in India, lives in America, loves German, homesick for Italy, modifies French verbs and wears a yukata in the summer.

It seems I am an everything bagel. Every sesame seed, poppy seed, peppercorn, garlic and onion flake representing a word, an experience, a custom and a culture baked into the flour of my very being. So I live my life as an amalgamation of different ingredients that I have picked up along the way - a veritable international smorgasbord if you will.

So, Seta, while I envy you your own Ararat, I think I will take my ark and travel the globe with it, letting it rest where it may.