Album 4: I wish. I wonder. I hope.

I wish my dad were still alive.

I wonder if he knew how much I loved him.

I hope to be more like him.

Album 3: A Love Affair

It didn’t happen the first time. It was the second time I went to Europe that I became (and still am) a total Europhile. I am infatuated with Germany and Italy. Call it obsession. Call it whatever you want. Call it love.

The first time was as a gawky, thirteen-year old who trailed despondently behind her pretty sisters through five countries. The second time I toured Europe with a Eurail Pass in hand with my friend Jo and her parents - her parents (who were really cool and in total contrast to my dad) pretty much let us do whatever we wanted without the million WhoWhatWhyWhen and How inquisition that I was always subjected to.

We traveled through Europe and had some fun times.

In Germany, I translated the specs for studio lights in four languages.

In Switzerland, we got kicked out of the train at the border.

In Italy I started my love affair with Florence.

In Spain, we went with the station manager at 1 am to see Madrid by night.

In Portugal, we tended the bar when the bartender passed out (gee, I wonder why?).

Pshaw! say the backpackers of today. Lame-o! Whatever. It was the 70s.

Album 2: India Diary

We took the kids to India (almost) every winter. Apart from the photos which serve as good memories, there were their diaries, which were fun to read and gave us a good perspective of our desh from their ABCD point of view.

Here are excerpts from my son’s album from a trip he made when he was nine.

It was fun staying with family. The kids got a lot of attention. A lot of love. And a lot of gifts. Well, my daughter did. She got gold necklaces and diamond earrings. My son got ganjis. Not just any ganjis. Rupa ganjis.

It was fun eating out. “We ate lunch at The China Garden. The food was excellent! Better than any Chinese restaurant in the States!”

Well, I guess not all the time. “We went out to dinner with my cousins to the New Yorker. The pizza was De gou tant - which means disgusting in French. It had one speck of sauce and 20 pounds of cheese.”

It was fun eating at home. Well, again, not all the time. “Today’s Christmas! Also my cousin’s birthday! Today we celebrated my cousin’s birthday by having the biggest turkey ever. It was made so beautifully, it looked as if a gourmet cook prepared it. There was just one problem - I hate turkey. Call me crazy if you will, but I think it just doesn’t have any taste. So I ate Indian food. After dinner, we all had cake and chocolates. I wish my birthday was on the 25th too.”

It wasn’t always fun. “A bad thing is the pollution - it is awful. It’s the pollution that makes me wheeze. They call me Wheezer William. There is dust, bugs, trash and dirt flying everywhere you go. My mom, sister and my aunt go shopping. I watch TV, play basketball and golf and then start wheezing.”

That year, we also did the Golden Triangle. We went to the Amber Fort on an elephant.

Who would’ve thought that my daughter would be making the same trip almost exactly fourteen years later and come back with a ring on her finger?








We went to Jaipur. At the museum, we saw the Bhagvad Gita “handwritten in about number 5 font size”. On the way to Fathhepur Sikri, we got a flat tire. While the driver was fixing it, the kids looked around for entertainment on the side of the road.  “It was kind of fun, because there was a pond and we threw rocks in it. There was an old lady, who yelled at us for throwing the rocks. We gave her thirty cents to shut up. My mom called her my mother-in-law.”

The old lady was not the only one who yelled at him on the trip. On our return to Bombay, we attended my nephew’s wedding. “We were hungry, so my mom ordered french fries. She got mad because I put the ketchup bottle in my turban.” I realize Indian weddings are boring, but sitting patiently with the guests is the least he could have done. “Pahiniben and I were sitting behind them. She said that what happens if I pinched a guy’s butt? She tried it and he screamed! It was funny.”

Nope, it wasn't funny. 

Album 1: Bhutan

It should be fitting that I start the Album Blog with one of my top five countries in the world.

Bhutan is a country after my own heart - I could easily retire in one of the monasteries and spend my days in pensive circumlocution, wearing a kira and spinning a prayer-wheel.

I went at the invitation of my friend Patrizia, who is married to one of the Ministers. I flew to Calcutta to catch the Druk Air flight. Waiting in line at the airport, I was approached by the airport manager and then escorted to First Class. Hmmm... can life get any better? I thought. It did. Patrizia came to greet me on the tarmac in ceremonial garb and it just got better and better. I spent a wonderful five days with her family. I toured Thimphu and visited the Dzong at Punakha. A dzong is a fortress, built with hundreds of wooden planks joined together without a single nail and no formal architectural plan. I climbed to the top of one of the 108 Chortens (stupas) the Queen Mother had built for her son. We had tea and went dancing with royalty.




Drawing done by Patrizia's son Ugyen.

I stayed at the Yeedzin Guest House where Suresh and Purna looked after me as I were a Queen myself.




I got a personal tour of the Thimpu Dzong by the Honorable Lyonpo Ugyen Tshering.

Less than a million people live in this country where the focus is on the GNH - Gross National Happiness. The people are gentle and considerate. Traffic courtsey is in complete contrast to the chaotic each-man-for-himself mayhem on Bombay streets. Overtaking another car, one gives a short beep in acknowledgement and driver Pema would even give one each time he passed a cow.

As I left Bhutan, I was given a note by the hotel staff, which ended with:
“Lastly, I would like to say, plez madan (sic), save your journey with peace and happiness.”

No one could have expressed it better.

A Baadha-A-Month

I was beginning to pinch more than an inch. The muffin tops had swelled to inner-tube proportions and with every step undulated in slo-mo waves. It was time to do something. Something drastic. Something excrutiating.

It was time to cut out the chocolate. (Insert blood-curdling scream).

Well, if I was going to cut out chocolate, why not all sweets. I mean, if you are going to cut off a finger, why not the whole arm. Ok, so this explains why I failed Logic in my sophomore year. And all this time, I blamed Professor ‘Black Crow’. My Elphinstone College alumni will surely remember him:
Crows are black.
Swaminathan is black.
Therefore Swaminathan is a crow.

I know, I know, college humor has come a long way since then.

The One Month of no delightful, saccharine confection  was more painful for the husband, who has an umbilical cord connection to the sugar bowl. Thirty days passed slowly (and sugarlessly), the inner tubes went back to looking like muffin tops and life went on.

And then I started thinking of doing another “One Month” deal, except why torture myself this time? After all, I deserved a reward for knocking off one whole pound. Hmm... how about one month of A Movie A Day. The son had just signed up for a Netflix account, and in true desi style, I thought I should vasoolofy the one month free trial membership.

So followed one month of streaming movies and watching them on my iPad. Most were good, only because I chucked out the bad ones within ten minutes. Hey! have improved. I used to be a lot more uncharitable and intolerant, and barely give them a chance five minutes past the titles ...

So, here is a list of the movies I saw. Caveat: No money-back guarantees. Also, I am into the weirder-the-better, independent kinda foreign movies. No fantasy, no Big Production, no sci-fi. Mention Julia Roberts or Tom Hanks, Aniston, Depp or Stiller and you're outta here before the titles even start.

1. No One Killed Jessica
2. Guzaarish
3. Life in a ... Metro
4. The Sicialian Girl
5. Sabah
6. 7 Khoon Maaf
7. The Red Balloon
8. The God Who Wasn’t There
9. Prête-Moi Ta Main
10. Freakanomics
11. Mumbai Meri Jaan
12. Les Poupées Russes
13. Road, Movie
14. Alles Auf Zucker
15. A Wednesday
16. Oye, Lucky, Lucky, Oye
17. Dear God
18. Inform and Delight
19. Maria Larsson’s Everlasting Moments
20. A Song for Martin
21. Passionada
22. Prague Duet
23. Hawaii, Oslo
24. Angela
25. Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead
26. Autumn Spring
27. Vanished Empire
28. Inch’Allah Dimanche
29. Tuya’s Marriage
30. Turtles Can Fly

Since the movies did not take up more than two hours of my time, and I have OCD when it comes to cleaning and organizing, I started sorting all my albums and photographs the rest of the day. I discovered I have 40+ albums, so next month, I will do an Album-A-Day and blog the contents daily, with trips down memory lane and foreign countries. Friends and Family will be featured on a regular basis. Unflattering portraits will (try to) be censored.

And now, excuse me, I hear some Lindt calling my name.

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.