Incomplete complications

I’m reading this Independence Day special issue of India Today on my flight to Montreal. And I start pondering, like I have done ever so often in the recent past, about Nationalism, India and my nationalism and my India. Every time I hear, read, talk, see anything about India, I’m filled with this irresistible urge to go running back home, grow roots and never leave. Then I wonder… what is it that keeps me from doing exactly that, right now?

Five years is a long time. I started my adult life here in the US, and in five years you “weave tangled webs”- make friends, create routines, build patterns- that are hard to leave behind. It’s here that I came into my own as a person, as an adult, earning my own keep and doing my own laundry. It’s here that I experienced the incredible convenience and utter loneliness of island living. It’s here that I live with my boyfriend, my books, my weekend India calls and my many pairs of shoes. This cocoon I have, is hard to give up. Also I have this niggling suspicion that there are things to do, places to see, oceans to swim in, people to meet in this part of the world … all of which may never happen if I pack my bags and leave right now, never to return, as the story goes.

So I don’t leave right now, and wait instead for the right time and the right opportunity. Months could become years could become a lifetime and I could still be here- with confused teenaged children and all- still waiting for the right time and the right opportunity. The thought scares me silly. I wonder why? I wonder why human beings feel the need to be where they can say they belong. It’s such a strange need… this need to belong.

But this obsession of mine to return to India is a bit more complicated. There is, of course, the need to belong. There is also the sheer joy of living in a complex cultural set up like India. Only the monotonous sanity and sterility of life in the US can teach one to savour the unpredictability and quirkiness of our homeland. But in addition to all of these, there is also the random feeling of guilt. At leaving, at not being ‘home’…the guilt of a deserter.

I think of these boundaries of nation, which should be no more sacred than those of religion, language, caste and place… but somehow they are or have become! If I should feel guilty about leaving the motherland to live in some strange country, I should also feel guilty about leaving my native Chennai to go settle in Bangalore, Bombay or wherever within India.

I remember reading Tagore’s denunciation of Nationalism when I was much younger, and wondering if he was not just making excuses for his lack of national fervour. I wonder now if I’m making the same excuses too. Or maybe I am just growing up.

Gilmore girls and other guilty pleasures

I have no clue how this happened. It happened suddenly, and against my iron will. It all started at Yellow Stone. Amidst much girl-talk on a particular hike at Yellow stone, conversations drifted to the G.Girls. Some one remarked, rather mildly, that they liked the show. Some one else seconded it. And then a month later, on one rather sleepy tuesday afternoon, desperately trying to find something...anything... to keep myself occupied, I stumbled across G.Girls. And now, I'm hooked!

It's one of those things that you don't talk about, things that you don't admit even to yourself... like one's weight, for example, or like the fact that one opens a bottle of wine by oneself on some boring work-day afternoons (perks of working from home :) ). Being addicted to Gilmore Girls is like that. It came as shock even to me that I was enjoying a soap. But hey you learn something about yourself every now and then. It's what keeps the joy in life... and your hair from turning gray.

Anyways, here's the worst part. I learnt very recently that the season that I'm watching right now is the one at the very beginning- much before Rory got admission into Yale... or Lorelai started going out with Luke. I happened to catch one episode from the current season one of these days, and maaan was I shocked to see how my flock had grown.

Rarer than a blue moon...

... here it is, the double post. This one is more like a news flash, really. Ganyamanya and I are coming/going to India in September! It's been almost two years... so I'm reeeelly looking forward to it.

And Krix, nottum fairum to be running away to some god forsaken hell hole right when I plan a trip to India. Pliss o pliss... be there!

Post script

... there is illustration. Just spent a few happy minits of my increasingly hectic life viewing Paige Pooler's blog. http://eyeswideapart.blogspot.com/. No- she's not a friend of mine, and no- this is not a plug. Just sending out happies into the universe.

Talking about illustration and such like, there is something meditative about art. And sports. Or physical labor, for that matter. I remember being lost for hours on end on a single sketch, trying to get a certain twist of the eye or twinkle in the arm just right. 6 and a half hours would have gone by; my left leg would have gone to sleep and woken up several times over; i would've skipped several meals in the meanwhile; and I would not so much as notice (try taking one snack away from me now, let alone a meal!). These days, I try to work for 20 minutes straight... and in that time I've made 7 trips to la la land! I take 22 chai breaks in a day. I browse. I blog. I call random people. All in an attempt to break up the dreadful monotony in my slow and painful trudge up the corporate ladder.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced Chick-sent-me-highee, i swear am not making this up- he he he) spends his life studying human beings and happiness, and he determined that human beings are happiest when they are in a state of 'flow'. I think he defined 'flow' as an intensified emotional state when one is immersed in a challenging activity which requires one to extend one's abilities in order to complete the task at hand. I think that's what is missing in corporate careers... there is no immersion, no passion, no happiness, no nothing. Well, one can hardly be passionate about opening and closing excel spreadsheets, attending meaningless meetings and filling toner in the printer. I do not exactly stay up outside the window of my 'corporate career' all night going "But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks?It is the east, and 'corporate career' is the sun."

I wonder... what prompts us to stay in these meaningless jobs... and many-a-time, for life?

(True Post Script: This ponderous meanderous post is multipurpose:
1. It's an excuse to get away from the above mentioned lifeforcesucking work
2. Implied in the post is the excuse for not having blogged in forever
3. It's an opportunity to show off that I have heard about someone called Chick-sent-me-highee (he he he) )