half-moon bay and other experiences

so i hung around in chennai for a few days after i got here on a sunday morning. my mom still teaches in the school i went to and she takes off early. my dad takes off earlier so it's usually just me and max till about 2:00 pm.

i was all the eager-beaver the first few days, i was still quite disoriented time-wise and was up at 4:00 am raring to do stuff. turns out there's not much you can do at 4:00 and so i did a fair share of navel-gazing. at about 5:45 i'd head out to the beach with my dad. the beach is just down the road and it's great out there. i used to
call it half-moon bay on account of the countless bums lined up squatting on the beach but the cops have (pardon the pun) 'crack'ed down on that :). so it's no longer 'eyes-straight-only' running, you can actually look around and enjoy the sunrise and water as you run past huffing and puffing jogging aunty-jis on the verge of a massive stroke, faces all red and bloated capillaries about to pop.

about 10:00 i'd head out to landmark to pick up some books. it's amazing that they have a section dedicated to books in english by indian writers. and it's not dominated solely by the oxford twanged, trinity college returns.
there's a huge variety, amit chaudhuri (who belongs to the previously described class but retains his innate indian'ness), jhumpa lahiri, anita desai, upamanyu chatterjee, hari kunzru, vikram chandra, amitav ghosh and quite a few more.
i'm currently on lahiri's 'namesake' after ploughing though kunzru's 'transmission' and chaudhuri's 'a strange and sublime address'. namesake is a pretty good read, i'll post a few reviews of the books in a bit.

after the bookshop forays i'd head out to the coffee day in ifthahani center and sit there surrounded by gucchi-touting, cellphone stroking teens looking suave and excited all at the same time. they sit four to a table sharing a cup of coffee staring at their phones. they either have it to their ear, or they're staring at it intently or they're offering sms messages to a strange and new-age cellular god, like priests chanting shlokas around a fire. ever so often a phone would ring and there'll be a mad scramble for phones all around. i was conspicious there, with my lack of a cell-phone standing out almost like i was naked. in fact i could have sat there butt naked with a phone and would have drawn lesser scornful stares. the waiter plunked my coffee down at the table with an inaudible "humph".
the other thing differentiating me from the guys sitting there is the lack of 'boxer-peek'. my jeans were at about waist-level unlike the other adonis-clones with their jeans around their knees and boxers peeking out like little imps. i was hopelessly not 'with the scene'.

somewhere through the week i took my mom to the jewelry store to buy her something nice. this is turning out to be an annual ritual that only my mom and the mastercard company appreciate greatly. what started out as a hunt for a small studd or a nice pair of earrings soon turned into the hunt for 'the most expensive piece of metal with shiny stones set in it'. the people behind the counter started rubbing their hands under the counter and i could hear the owner of the store on the phone ordering himself a new car. meanwhile, my wallet started a slow burn in my posterior. we walked out of there happy. my mom happy that i cared enough and me happy that it was over. like surgery, it hurt but nothing that many months of therapy can't heal.

so my driver and the maid at home fell madly in love and got married sometime last year. i still recall the phone conversation with my mom

me: how're things there?
mom: big trouble, i think there's some kitch-mitsch happening between the maid and the driver
me: nice! good for them
mom: shut up. you don't have to face the scandal
me: what scandal? they like each other, so what?
mom: but what if something happens?
me: ah yes, perhaps you should talk to them
mom: chee, i can't talk to them about these things
me: write a letter to the editor then. if you were in the us you could have gone on the oprah show and talked about this
mom: we just bought a book that's featured on the oprah book club
me: groan. traitor
click.

and now they're expecting their first kid. she's in the hospital and this guy just hangs around at our place, too confused to do anything concrete. i doubt he's even 23 years old. it must be pretty stressful for him coping with all of this. to add to that he's a maniac driver who's responsible for numerous dents. hopefully fatherhood will tone his driving skills down!

a few assorted things happened that week including being asked to leave the restaurant at the gandhinagar club because i was wearing shorts. so we sat outside on the lawn which was nice. it was the healthiest meal i've eaten. the mosquitoes sucked the blood out of me at the same rate at which i was eating. i speculated for a while about the possibilty of using mosquitoes as part of a crash-diet but figured the the idea might not have much appeal.

and then we drove out to kerala on saturday morning but more about that in a few hours when i get back from the gym. i go to a gym here called - believe this - maverick.