Incredible stuff. Yes, why indeed do people send out missives to others when the chance of being read is so low?

In Istanbul, I’ve become the tourist that I usually love to make a mockery of. My mouth is constantly open, my jaw perpetually falling, my desire to buy souvenirs and junk never ending. I am also wedded to my tourist guide book.

It’s a vast city, and the shopkeepers constantly call out to you. They try to make you halt by first asking if you’re Indian. And then rattling Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan and Aamir Khan. (Sometimes even Indira Gandhi and Hema Malini).

There’s more to this city than these ancient parts. But for now, I am dazzled by them.

(in a different post I may talk about the dazzlement caused by the amazing visit to a Turkish bath).

I don’t doubt it but on nights like that you are reminded why you fall in love. With cities. And people. In that precise moment when they look at something so beautiful, they seem to swell with a glow. The kinds that comes from eating sharp mango chutney. (Like when you make that thaack noise in your mouth assaulted by the sour and sweet of the chutney)

So I look at the man sitting next to me. Still wise but perhaps not and weird. So I say “Yes Guruji, such things always happen when you cross Camden”.

…Indians will be upset about a westerner having a better understanding of their country than they do….
…The bitter truth is, Slumdog Millionaire could only have been made by westerners…
I have no doubt that Slumdog Millionaire will encourage many more honest films to be produced in India. But they should be ashamed that it took a white man to show India how to do it…

Err. Of course white men know India better than any Indian does. I thought years of the British Raj had established that. No?

Gopinath belonged to some district in Tamil Nadu. It was hard to pinpoint the exact place. Sometimes a grandfather insisted that their roots were in Tanjavoor. Another aunt put her foot down and said it had to be Kumbakonam. Over the generations, the illustrious family had inched northwards. At some point, residing in Hyderabad. The next generation living in Bombay, via Bangalore. Some even lived in Bhopal. But they were disowned. Gopinath moved to Delhi. But much like the geographical confusion that had drowned out part of his identity, he lived in Delhi and worked in Gurgaon.

But at home he was Gobi. The miraculous Tamil alphabet, which perhaps was crafted in a moment of a need for a devilish level of simplicity, didn’t technically distinguish between a “pa” and a “ba“. Hence, Gopi became Gobi. In front of his friends, his mother would lovingly refer to him as Gobi. Over the years, Gobi got married. His wife was Aandal Anandi Oonjaloor. In sum total, they became Gobi and Aloo. As is obvious with good South Indian couples living in the North, they had a baby.

For Gobi, who while growing up had stolen books on travel and romance from his neighbour, the entry of a child was a shock. Yes, he did feel a certain level of fondness, but its shrieks and diaper changes wore him out. He must have been that small once. Once while powdering its bottom, he thought of how similar the veena was to a child’s bottom. Gently rising, like the kudam. He decided then, that his child was going to be instrument of his dreams. His child was going to grow up, have long hair, wear jeans and maybe even have a girlfriend.

This reflection on possibilities filled his heart. He was drawn again into the whirl of self-pity and reflection. It showed in his eyes, this heaviness. His mother, ever the vigilant one, asked, “Gobi, ellam okay va?”. Gobi, in that moment, thought, surely his mother must feel the same tenderness for him, as he felt for this child turned upside down in front of him. He said, “Amma, manasu kashtam”. His mother, slightly hard of hearing, asked him again. He said “Kashtam”.

In her eyes he could see concern. She rushed into the kitchen, and he heard the sounds of various objects being mixed, ground, powdered and mixed. She walks out with a steel tumbler and a spoon. Tells him, “Here, here.. I made you kashayam². Everything will be okay.”.

1. Trans. Heartache. More on the term here. [back]
2. Bitter concoction of various herbs and sundry like ginger, pepper and other things. Horrendous taste usually [back]

But it’s time for some change, and so from the coming Monday, I will no longer be the Regional Editor For South Asia at Global Voices Online. There are business cards to be thrown out, descriptions to be changed and other such things. I needed to move on, and have been looking for work in other corners (and even countries)!

But Global Voices has been an integral part of life since 2005. I will continue to volunteer with them, and write a post every fortnight hopefully. The other sad part is that I am going to have to aggressively prune my feedreader. At 3000+ feeds, at least 3/4ths will disappear soon enough. Among the Indian blogs, I am going to have figure out who I prefer reading.

So yes, here’s to three years and more than 3500 posts with GVO. So long, and thanks for all the links!

SG was my English teacher for a few years in high school. But our connection went deeper than that. We used to talk about random things, and one day discovered that my dad and her dad worked together in the same regiment, and were posted in Meerut. And that a particular couple that I saw in old photographs was actually her mom and dad. SG was one of those few teachers I got along with. I conspired to get out of every possible biology lesson, and went for a million debates through the school year in random schools. And she would come along. It was on those long bus rides to other school that we became friends.

She’s a big shot in a school in Hyderabad now. I met her after a long time and to my eyes she hadn’t changed a bit. I had stayed with her family for two weeks eight years back, and when I saw her babies again, they were all grown up. Her chutku son who used to hang on to my waist and hated Sri for “taking me away in the evenings” is now six feet tall and listens to Pink Floyd.

Monday night it was pouring. Cats, dogs, cows, and water. SG and I took two flimsy umbrellas and walked out in the rain, giggling. Me taking her photographs, and her rejecting a number of them. Half drenched we ran inside, and her dad gave us a towel with a stern look. Her kids who refused to get out in the rain looked at her with total amusement. I got the family to listen to some funny stuff on YouTube. We looked at old photographs and I discovered one with both her and my mom in it. Probably from when I was about a year old.

She asked me on the phone, how could I have been your teacher. It’s unusual, this friendship. I stopped calling her ma’am. I am more vigorous and shameless with my puns. We sometimes trade gossip from the old years, but there’s absolutely no yearning for that arrangement. No nostalgia, just chai.