And strangely, I have seen This much more of Yindiya and still only 62% aa? What is that? Stupid States that sprout up every half hour.

visited 22 states (62.8%)
Create your own visited map of India

visited 26 states (52%)

I went to SC a few days ago - that officially puts me over the 50% mark on the number of US States visited. Yohoo! :)

Chocolate Fudge

When I was a child, my amma had all the time in the world (or so I thought) and in her need to make her first born happy, she constantly would bake and cook and re-bake and re-make until there was something, anything that I liked and ate with a happy face. Of course, I was a rich, spoilt brat that thought mothers (as much as they were loved) were put on the planet to serve their young (or, at the very least, me) and that criticism was the only form of honesty that they expected.

As a result, the strawberry milk shake always went down the drain, the train shaped cake she made for my birthday, appropriately wasted, the bread she tried baking, ceremonially rejected. The examples are endless. The point is, there were a few things that she could make - and even those I would eat if they were made just so. One of those things that I Loved was this chocolate fudge. It was a basic MilkMaid recipe - surely, it was not my mother's cooking genius that made it so right (besides, all her skill I had rejected on callous grounds of dismissive youth) but there was something about it that I was convinced was because amma made it. Other mothers just did not know how to do exactly the same thing (I would later learn that this was true about my mother's parupu sadam as well: but thats another story).

So this chocolate fudge was not any chocolate fudge. It had to be stirred just the right amount of times : it could not be too burnt (it would then taste life toffee - yuck) and it could not be too watery (then how was it fudge?),it could not have too many nuts (then its like kadala urundai!) but it could not have too few either (then it was like plain chocolate). The milkmaid dabba had to be completely clean, and the Cadbury's cocoa tin had to be just the right size : so many conditions to make the perfect fudge.

And amma would sweetly stir, and stir - as I sat with my teacher saree (usually, her dupatta made into a saree to teach my class of stuffed animals) on the kitchen medai (platform) - allowing me to tell her exactly how much she could allow it to "set" before it became my perfect fudge. To date, condensed milk and cocoa on a stove reminds me of those times in Sudarshan. Is that what being a parent is all about? Having your child playfully dictate to you and actually listening to it? Stirring incessently without skipping a beat to make it just the way they want it - even if they would not have known any different if it was made another way?

Whatever it is, it made me walk down an extra aisle in Safeway today and buy a can of (non fat) condensed milk and (fresh ground) cocoa to make my "Amma's chocolate fudge". And come back and instantly make it, stirring exactly as I had forced her to (while she was my exact age, come to think of it - she was 27 when I was 7!) and thinking to myself that no matter how much I say it, This is why I want to have children soon. So I can stir for them. So when they go away and live their own lives, they Know how I love them.

Isnt that a happy thought? A big kitchen, children at the counter (loud, happy), warm smells of home. Yellow light?

I cannot wait.

Dear 94305,

The Stanford campus is large. Not larger than any other University campus in the US, I suppose, but certainly larger than Cambridge and of course, no comparison at all to my little law school back home. As you know, this is why I bought my (beautiful, blue, cruiser) bike. As I suppose it happens with others (but so much less me, for I am a genius in these matters), I have been finding it difficult to get around this grand place - this new, beautiful place that I love, is more than magnificent, new. And for this reason, I am often on the wrong street, on the wrong side of the road, without headlights and breathless.

Today, on my way back from the altogether disastrous Math Quant class and after two hours of substantive reading (Durkheim!) and yet another hour of Zumba! (yes, it is spelt with a ! on the syllabus) - I rode home for the first time on a dark street and went completely off track. I was not just on the wrong road, I was completely on the opposite side of the acre large campus, looking at nothing but pitch darkness and without my trusted 3G signal.

It was scary and surreal and all those things you think are romantic but are, in reality, a tad more real than you expect them to be.

----

Half an hour and three wrong turns later, I was still on the same road - only, this time, I looked instead of feeling scared. Behind the darkness, there was the brightest sky - and not a sound in the clean, crisp, Palo Alto air. I might never be at home here, but there are some instants, when it all comes together to give you some peace.

In the middle of all the Quant type things that Life throws you, these small bits of heaven are comforting.

Dear AB and BC,

(As a child, I thought love was AB and BC. When they held hands in 1980s Madras, I melted into a puddle, even as I overanalysed the scandal. And when they hold hands now, after many many years of cannotlivewithouteachother marriage, it reminds me that there is hope for happily ever afters.)

I have been meaning to write you both a note for awhile now. But you know how this is : I think sappy thoughts and I think them some more but between the thinking and writing, I find a clinical reason not to send it. But meeting you for a little bit last week was exactly the impetus I needed.

As always : fabulous milestone with the [work] and I have no doubt this is just another start. You are both such great examples to follow and to see people come back and make a difference (and a real, accessible difference at that) successfully is exactly what we need in this generation to prompt us to return and do our bit(s).

What is more, as personal mentors, you are both the perfect blue print for aspiration. Every time I see you both, I remember the larger goals : those checklists that usually take the no-priority back seat when you are busy collecting degrees.

I remember the important stuff when I see you two : keeping in mind the people that matter (usually, old friends and invisible ones that actually make the difference), being generous with your home and your heart, being respectful of each other without it turning into benign platitude, being madly in love.

And why am I writing to you now? So you know that you both give me hope. So you know that even when I do not keep in touch, you both have helped me write and rewrite my priority checklist. So you both know that you have played an important part in my fighting hard at the right things, letting go of the ones I had to, and knowing (in difficult measure) the difference. So you both know that when I think of the kind of love that holds and heals, shapes and saves, I think of yours.

It is true, like you said to my pre-teen self. What else is there to fight for?

x

Dear PC,

There is something about being home (and by this I mean peed in home - not foryo home) that forces you to readdress (however unsuccessfully) ambiguities of your past. I have been home for just over ten days now - just enough time for one that has not lived here in ten years to get restless - and while I stay largely quiet, I am still pulled into generic conversations about life trajectories that are anything but generic.

For instance -

Extended family visiting from the Gelf, after initial niceties : "We are very broad minded - you have to get married when you are ready"

(Code - When are you getting married? Everyone worries about you. It might already be too late to dip into the iyer pool of eligible SF software engineers)

Random Maami I do not even know that well, says over my mother's freshest filter coffee "Yen Ponnum Kalyanathiku Munaadi Ippida thaan iruntha" (my daughter was also like this before she got married)

(Code - All you new age independent pseudo intellectual girls will have to realize that we will win over you with our pressures of commitment and when we do, you will succumb willingly and be happy)

Fat astrologer, in general conversation, again - "unnaku ithulelaam nambika irukaathey - romba modern ponnu !" (you do not believe in all of this do you? - you are very modern!) and then, to my mother "let her marry whoever she wants - even a north indian - do not ask her before she is a little older - say, next year".

(Code - I have no clue when your daughter will get married. I am just being vague to make you feel happy - even though, it is clear, there is no parallel universe in which you thought you would find this girl a husband. And yes, when I include north Indian in the realm of her matrimonial possibilities- I am trying to show my absolute broad mindedness to the extreme chance that she is all the crazy rebellious things I think she might be.

The chance that she might marry a white boy? What? A white Boy? What? People do that? )

Like I said - I have been home for more than ten days. The initial novelty of a You Ess visitor has faded - Madras has taken me by both blazing red horns and doomed me to its eternally caustic hell of not so polite conversation.

If it was not providing me with so much amusement, I would sigh.

x

Dear Cal,

Have I told you I love Calcutta? I am happy every time I am here - its dirty, people do not follow traffic rules, the weather is revolting - all of that is true. But it makes me so happy on the inside. And in this hopeless romantic avataar, I walk the streets happy, drink cha (yes, unsweet) at Oxford on Park Street (and then again at a matka wala near Russel), breathe in the air and smile silly at large pink billboards that old couples built in the 1950s (do you know about Flurys?). I have only been here a day, but somehow I am young again and I believe.

Anyway, this is not about Calcutta. At least it is not entirely about Calcutta.

I was having maas and radha bhalabhi at a friend's house for dinner and his dad, while narating his love story (it is still unclear how I get people to talk about this stuff - but anyway) said to me : "everything else is rubbish. love is the only thing worth fighting for" (he married his wife when he was 23, against much opposition and when I did not look excited about the idea, felt the need to convince me that being clinical about romance was a crime).

Have you been?

x