Be used or get used to it
As I am typing this, a brahminy kite and a black kite are hovering outside our window. They do this every morning. From whatever little I’ve read about birds of prey, it can be safely concluded that they are canvassing for their next meal. Every circle that they take is a knowledge-capture of what creeps beneath. An attack is seldom random in their world: the other day, I saw a kite with a tiny snake (rat snake?) held on by its talons. Spectacular view. Ridiculous accuracy. Back in Gurgaon, I spotted predatory birds once in a while thanks to the commotion caused by pigeons and squirrels. Here, there are no flock of pigeons (for a shitty creature, they were quite big on grooming) close by and there are no peacocks (nor their harems) strutting either. Only big birds flying majestically at the top and little birds making do closer to the ground.
One question for me that repeated itself in the recent past — “Won’t Mangalore be too slow for you after living in bigger cities?” — tells you everything that is wrong with our understanding of what a city should feel like. Granted that different people have different priorities when it comes to living (we rarely choose) in a place, it’s incredulous how little emphasis is laid on things that actually matter. Quality of air, water, food and folks. But, no. For some reason, it’s perfectly alright to cough our way through smoggy winters, wash your hair with hard water and have fruits that are artificially ripened, and be in the company of people who are least interested in helping anyone without a price. Of course, there are several downsides to smaller cities but pace isn’t one of them.
Speaking of slow lifestyles, our stuff hasn’t arrived yet. We packed them off from Gurgaon on the 20th of last month. It was supposed to reach us on the 30th. It’s the second of November and there is no sound from the movers & packers yet. For the past two weeks now, we’ve slept like nomads with the echo of our voices reverberating in empty rooms. If only service-driven companies stayed true to their word and respected time. If only people did their jobs well without somebody having to remind them what their job is. If only moving to a new city was as romantic as Instagram makes it appears.
Oh, by the way, it took us an entire day to get our WiFi going. And I don’t blame anybody here. For a change, nobody is responsible for this tardiness. It’s just the way things work in some part of our country. You call four internet vendors but only one of them is willing to visit you over the weekend. He sends two men at 10 am — a miracle of sorts because they were late by only 30 minutes; the usual delay is upwards of an hour or two — and they get going. Until lunchtime happened. An absence of 4 hours ensued. Then, two new men showed up. Finally, at 8 pm, the WiFi was up with Ranga’s name on it. What I am trying to convey here is there is nothing wrong with the pace here. Every city functions in its own style. Who the fuck am I to demand anything different?
Being a person who cribs a lot but does too little to correct a situation can be a blessing as well as a curse. Blessing because you stay occupied by a situation and don’t feel blank. Curse because you know exactly what’s wrong with you (not the situation) and yet you are helpless by your own design. My greatest superpower is I feel like shit all the time. Imagine a train chugging away from the platform and a person chasing it. That’s me in perpetuity. If I get on the train, there is nothing left to chase anymore.
Every two months or so, the privileged lot on social media in this country try to create a hero of a delivery guy, plying for any of the e-commerce platforms, for merely riding a bicycle. Turns out the pedals on bicycles are a symptom of poverty, not integrity. Instead of focusing on the fact that the person has zero EMIs to worry about and is working hard with utmost dignity, the social media puffins will cast the anointed person as a patron saint of hardship. Wonder why we’ve never seen anyone make a postman riding a humble bicycle a hero yet.
Competition is healthy only as long as you know why it’s there in the first place. Having to choose between Coke and Pepsi is alright because both are overrated pesticides but having to choose between two persons is not OK. Yet, day in and day out, we are expected to prioritize ABC over MNO and so on. One is kosher while the other is not. It’s like having to choose between the narrator and Tyler Durden from Fight Club (1999). Well, they don’t exist without each other.
Ranga has taken pretty well to Mangalore. If not the city, then the apartment building at least. After traveling for 38 hours on a train from Delhi — being uneasy during the first 8-10 hours, only to sleep like a log on my berth later, and establishing that he doesn’t recognize pugs as a dog family just like Pakistan doesn’t recognize Armenia — he seems perfectly fine. Only his clinginess has gone up a bit. Maybe inside his 20 gm brain, he must have assumed that we have brought him here only to abandon him as he is getting older and toothless. I feel for him because unlike me — who don’t have friends here — he can’t go and make new friends. The street outside our building is ruled by two bitches and he takes U-turn every time they bark crazily at him. So much for chivalry and courtship.
When old people die, they take with them a treasure that can never be retrieved. Take the example of a woman in her late 80s who spent nearly all her life on farming. The kind who would tap a tender coconut and tell you exactly how much water or coconut milk it contains. The kind who enjoyed spending time with labourers on the farm than family members. The kind who would wake up from her siesta because she heard a big mango fall somewhere outside. The kind who would look up at the sky and could gauge for how long it might rain. The kind who had the magical touch when it came to planting an almost-dead sapling. The kind whose last words were, “Those red tomatoes are rotten inside.” The kind who received her last fill of water from two labourers who stayed with her the whole night while her family was busy with her granddaughter’s wedding. The kind who waited until sunrise to leave this planet.
It’s my wife’s birthday today so I thought of dedicating a paragraph to her. She was born in the same hospital that Aishwarya Rai chose to take birth in. Later, she went to the same school that Jayalalitha once went to. She was a shy kid who played cricket with boys. After college, she spent a considerable amount of time in Muscat, working for Calvin Klein. Later, she returned home and worked for several companies, before becoming the fourth Bangalorean to join Zomato in 2011. This is also the time when her food blog post gained traction and got featured in newspapers. Two years later, she met the awesomest person (read: me) ever. The past decade saw her get better and better in the field of cooking & baking, while she continued to hone her content creation/management skills. One thing that has remained constant about her is her composure. She is the only person I know who remains calm under ALL circumstances. I hope she stays the same and hires me for writing her biography someday.
