Jam

A friend's mother died recently. A sudden death, a death of one too young. My friend told me about those last few days, her mother on a ventilator, in an intensive care unit, tracheotomy in place. She said that her mother used the written word to communicate. Two days before she died, her mother frantically signaled for her notebook and wrote the word 'Jam'. Faced with the collective incomprehension of her near and dear, she explained that by her calculations (she had been hospitalized for close to a month by this time) the supply of jam in the house must be running low and needed to be replenished.

Jam. What clearer indication of a life well lived? If ever I find myself in critical care, forced to live on what may well be borrowed time, this is what I would wish for myself. May I live my life such that at the end of it my one concern is jam. That I have no regrets but that the level of jam in the jar may slip below whats acceptable and there will be no one to notice. That I have loved so well, there is nothing left unsaid. That if I have children, I have done such a good job with them, that if my only message to them is top up the jam jar, they will want for nothing.

To all those out there whom I love, and even those whom I just about like - here's wishing you a jar of strawberry jam on your death bed.

The celebrated Zem

Welcome to the latest installment of my Spot The Difference series of posts. Once more, I call your attention to one of the many charming differences between life in India and the USA.

In the country of my birth mattresses are discreet creatures. They lurk shyly on beds across the nation. They do not intrude. One could go a lifetime without spending more than an hour thinking of a mattress. Mattresses here are a different breed. They are in your face. I defy you to listen to your radio for more than an hour without having some cheerfully aggressive soul tell you all about the fantastic deals on mattresses that are yours for the asking - and the first 3 years of financing is interest free! Um, what? I need to buy a mattress on a monthly plan? And grow old paying it off? And it is not made of gold leaves? If I die, do my progeny take up the burden? Are there family feuds over mattresses when granny dies?
Mattress stores abound. No, the word 'stores' does not begin to cover it. Emporium perhaps? Or gallery. Anyway, they abound. There are eleven of them within a five mile radius of me. Here is an excerpt from an online review of someone's mattress buying experience:
"I dreaded the experience of buying a new mattress after the heavy-sell experience I've received in the past - just as bad as trying to buy a car"
A car! The mind boggles.

They must be throwing a party on Squornshellous Zeta.

The cursing of the seeds

A perfect world would be a world sans papaya seeds. I am fond enough of the fruit. I have nothing against papaya trees, you understand, long may they grow and greenly prosper. I would, however, prefer that Mr. and Mrs P. Tree manage to make their gorgeous babies without the seeds.

I find that I cannot adequately describe my feelings for papaya seeds. Words fail me. However, smoke signals fail me more, so I will manfully make do with words. Papaya seeds fill me with deep disgust. My reaction to the black mass of them clinging glutinously together is visceral. Every fibre of my being revolts against the abomination of their existence. I would rather embrace, and lovingly at that, the slimiest, wartiest, most tentacle prone creature from the very worst alien movie of your choice than have to gaze upon papaya seeds. I could run on and on. I'll spare you though. The long and the short of it, neatly summarized for those of us who are slower on the uptake than the rest, is that I dislike papaya seeds a tad more than your average Joe.

What provoked this spew of venom, you ask? I was ambushed by the seeds. Being a reasonable person, I came to terms with the fact that though I find said seeds repulsive and nauseating, they probably do not deserve immediate extinction. It takes all kinds. All I asked was that we keep to our own corners, the seeds and I. Half the earth for me, the rest of the planet for them to gad about in, doing whatever distasteful thing it is that papaya seeds do in their spare time. I bought seedless papayas and raised a glass to their happy sterility. This happy state of co-existence came to a grinding halt last week when I slit open the fruit and was greeted by multitudes of the enemy, smugly, stomach-churningly, foully grinning back at me. A dastardly act. If it's a fight they want, we'll give them a fight. A call goes out to all good men to come to the aid of the party. Etc.

It turned out though, that having grimaced and delivered the seeds into the dustbin, repeating the mantra of yuck all the while, I was hard pressed to actually draw up war plans. My army was surprisingly tiny. And I make an excellent general but a surprisingly poor grunt. So I settled for this rant instead. May they know no happiness in this world or the next.

A conversational tool

Coffee conversation this morning, over the hissing of the steam machine.

"They have a prompt"
Somewhat hungrily, a touch of greed, "A plum? Who has a plum?"
"Plum? No, prompt, a prompt"
Definite grumpiness at the withdrawal of the possibility of a snack, "Who does?"
Impatience creeping in, "They do"
"Who? Oh they? They have a prompt!"

There is a lesson to be learned here. An important lesson about human communication.

The power of repetition. Don't knock it till you've tried it. The next time someone does not appear to comprehend some piece of wisdom that comes sailing out of your mouth, don't bother rephrasing, paraphrasing or explaining. Just repeat the same sentence. Again. And again. And yet again. You can try varying the volume if you get bored. Play around with the emphasis. On each repetition give a different syllable its day in the sun. Experiment with tone. Or pitch. The success rate of this tactic will surprise you.

I've given it some thought. Here's why this technique is successful:

a. Headphones. The noise associated with modern living. Ear wax. People hear less than they used to. Its not that they don't comprehend, they just did not hear. Give them a second chance.

b. People are lazy. It takes effort to actually listen. To pay attention. To analyze what someone has said, to rummage in the attic of your head for some forgotten context, to snap out of your pleasant daydream and be dragged kicking and screaming back to the hallway conversation. People try and make you do all the hard work, provide the frame of reference, perhaps throw in a little joke to make it more palatable, work on an analogy. The greedy ones will even expect a metaphor to be included in the package. Repetition is your defense. It forces your audience to do their share of the work.

c. People are not always smart. Sad, but undeniably true. It has to be said. If your audience belongs to this category, repetition might be the best tool in your arsenal. It requires little effort on your part (you can plan your grocery shopping list, recite poetry in your head, try to find a word that rhymes with retard - all while you say the same sentence out loud sixteen times). This gives the slower ones time to catch up with the conversation.

Try it. And remember to be appropriately grateful when it works.

Shiny happy people

Back home, I smiled when I was happy. And if not happy, at least marginally glad about something. This was not an anomaly, you understand. I was safely within the bounds of normal. Here though, I have to smile all the time. Every single person you pass by will grin maniacally at you and inquire after your health and well being. Strangely though, they are not particularly interested in your response. This is a good thing, because minutes tick by as I attempt to force my expression into submission and then threaten my throat with a licking it will never forget if it does not formulate an inane response in the next thirty seconds. By this time the grinner is usually fifty yards away and getting smaller by the second. Its exhausting, pretending to be a beam of sunshine the livelong day, especially if you don't have a naturally sunshiny disposition.
If I smile one more time today I swear my smile is going to turn on me and attempt to bite.

An embarassing start to the week

It was a lovely day until suddenly it wasn't. I was in the best of moods, an oddity given that it was Monday morning and I had not yet partaken of the morning cup of coffee. I breezed into a gas station (did you notice how localized I've become? I didn't even think petrol pump, I promise), leaped out of my car and started with 'gas dispensing process step one', also known as opening one's fuel tank. I then realized that I had left the engine running, so reverse darted to shut off said engine. Imagine, if you will, my chagrin, my horror, my dismay that knew no bounds when I discovered that I had locked myself out of the car. Lets recap, so that you can fully grasp the situation:
a. Car
b. Running engine
c. At the pump, preventing any other car from filling fuel
d. Locked
e. All windows up
f. Keys firmly in ignition
g. Me, bearing an uncanny resemblance to the village idiot
Oh, I called for help, and help duly arrived, forty minutes later. But those are forty minutes I would not want to relive in a hurry. First, there was blind panic. I am very good at blind panic. Headless chickens have nothing on me. Once I tired of this, I ran hither and tither from fabled pillar to well known post. Long phone conversations ensued - with automated voice systems, with a helpful person from my car rental company and finally with a representative of Chevrolet. The only happy moment was when the Chevy rep did her best to make me feel smart again. Having taken down all the details of my situation and my location, she asked, "So will you and the vehicle stay in this location until help arrives?". Ummmm....yes? While I waited for my saviour to make an appearance, I attempted to act nonchalant around my car. I leaned against the car and stared into the distance (pose sustainable for 40 seconds), cleaned my car windows (good for upto 4 minutes), walked around the gas station (excellent move - took me away from the waiting line giving me the evil eye, and ate up nearly 5 minutes), fiddled busily with phone (6 seconds) and gulped nervously like a fish (2 minutes). Having run out of ideas, I went back to what I was apparently best at - my retard impersonation.
Eons later, a perfectly nice man named Ed rescued me. The nightmares will last a lifetime.

Living with an uncomfortably full bladder

If I was to ask you, politely of course, to drop your pants in full view of random strangers, my guess is that you would politely decline and proceed to eye me askance for years to come. Strangely enough, this seems to be the norm in restrooms in California and as far as I can tell nobody is being given the good old askance look. In a public toilet in this sunny state, the cubicles are built with as little material as possible. They stop a good foot above the floor. They miss the ceiling by a multitude of feet. And then there are the doors. These doors refuse to have anything to do with the rest of the cubicle. Clearly superior, they stand aloof, making minimal contact with all that surrounds them. The end result is something like this:
1. Frame
2. Hinge
3. 1 to 1.5 inches of air, bridged by aforesaid lonely hinges.
4. Door
5. Repeat inches of air
6. Frame
On close observation one would notice that all the other doors in the state are on talking terms with their frames. They fit snugly. All is peace and harmony. In the restrooms however, door and frame are perpetually estranged. the interval of a movie at a theatre, for example, you could choose to empty your bladder. If you are so inclined, you could also observe any number of strangers indulging in this same act. You can bond and not feel lonely. You could slide notes to the person in the next cubicle, or even a cow, if you were willing to squeeze said cow just a tad.
Call me a prude, but I am carrying a full bladder around with me much more than I used to.