Quibbling over the X and the Y

[I don’t think it’s fair to your dad that you spend twenty-two years of your life believing that he was “supposed” to take care of the television when it conked and pay the electricity bill when it came and yet “you” are the all-independent
new-age (wo)man........I don’t think it’s fair to you that after believing in all that, at the vulnerable age of 23, you are thrown into an alien land where you not only cope with urban life, differing attitudes to race, women's rights and socially taboo subjects such as homosexuality, BUT ALSO telemarketing, health insurance, customer service, toll-free calls and cell phone bills.....But then, whoever said the world was a fair place.....]

My little mop of hair was disheveled, my laces were out and as I rubbed the sweat off my hands onto the shorts that clearly couldn’t take it any more, I tossed my friend an evil, victorious grin. As you can probably imagine, I didn’t make a pretty sight. But I’d beat him in a roller-skating race and that’s all I cared about.

Life was simple then....

That was the time when the best part of day was the early morning when I’d scoot right out of bed and trot along beside my dad for that wonderful morning walk, drop off my sister at the bus stop and pout all the way home if I didn’t get to run across the road like that boy did.

When it was my turn to get to school, however, early mornings were no longer fun, but once I was scrubbed and uniformed and satcheled, the worst was over, for what followed were fantasy lands harboring magic chairs, the less exciting but more likely merry-go-round, unintelligible yet very real goods in the art book, the world of limericks and the joy of seeing my name in print; but nothing felt as good as that all-important high-five from the boy that crossed the finish line just abreast of me.

Then came the phase of stringent teachers, boring morning math, incomplete home works and unfair penalties, but it seemed a price worth paying for the afternoon that was to follow---hours of back-bench popcorn munching, unpunctuated periods (pardon the pun) of delightful dozing, barely suppressed snickers and cross-classroom-chits, Shakespeare in uniform, endless throwball, an occasional hiking expedition of vying to do just as well as the guys and everyday attempts at clinging on to that last precarious step on the bus because all of them did .......

High school brought with it late afternoons of hanging out at umpteen fast food places by the alma mater, a badly timed yet luxurious home-cooked luncheon, long hours of the salty seaside air, discussing Darwin and H.G. Wells alike through miles of formidable Chennai road, carrying back the remainder to the phone (in the unusual case of running out of breath before topics to talk on), uninterrupted, thirst-ridden reading, oratoricals and sales appeals and What’s the good word and the realization that competing with the men on an intellectual level was just as much fun....

College had something different to offer--- late evenings of sneaking onto the terrace and gazing at big bear while discussing dream men and our fond hopes of finding them in the not-too-distant future, on-the-spur-of- the-moment decisions to watch the latest romantic comedy in town, long hours of cycling through pitch darkness in the pastoral surroundings of the university campus, rejoicing on a sudden opportunity to go home to loved ones, endless games of Literati and cracks at The Hindu Crossword, contemplating on Rand’s objectivist philosophy in the wee hours of the morning, aiming to read A Brief History of Time because all the smart men out there had....

Where my moments of greatest reproach included buying a Barbie doll on relenting to peer pressure and giving in on one occasion to rely on a man to pull down my baggage for me, I prided myself on being one of the few girls that could handle a yamaha with effortless ease and having the privilege of being thrown out of hostel for heading one of the most far-reaching strikes in the history of the university! Perplexing, because bagging the academic proficiency award in high school or winning at the top art competition in the nation had left me relatively blasé.

Life sure was simple then.

Somewhere between leaving my home country and traveling to a foreign land (albeit my cherished dream for years), between wanting to be with home and family and wanting to be all on my own, between loving solitude and freedom and suddenly finding myself with too much of both, between looking at men as mere yardsticks and looking at them as potential life partners, I had redefined too many standards in life.

I don’t take credit for the redefinition, however........

That credit goes to that month-old American Express bill on my desk screaming for attention, that hour-long toll-free call for one extra dollar billed to me (yeah, yeah, I said toll-free), the familiar-screech of the fire alarm after 250 difficult minutes of oh-so-delightful Indian cooking, the life-and-death matter of haggling over that important car insurance quote, the conking of every possible gadget I own after a fateful power surge, that half-a-day of NYPD-grade explanations because I forgot the existence of the burglar alarm, Microsoft Word giving up on me two hours before my qualifying proposal was due, finding myself homeless because my room mate happened to find a cheap thrill in hanging up on the land lord, the spectacular snow storm that decided to take me, my friends and our rented car through two exciting 360° turns, the three hours I spent trying to get home because I dodged a jug handle on a complicated Jersey highway, my priced Camry bursting into flames, minutes after I stepped out of it.........

Yes, those are the moments in your life when “wanting to be as good as the men” takes a backseat.

And standing testimony to those very moments is that little bundle of brown fur in the far corner of my room....