Popagandhi

written in January but disappeared into a notebook I didn’t want to see again

1. The act of crossing roads is no longer sacred. Having taken on Kolkata’s, you stroll across any road with any traffic, believing yourself above traffic, bullocks, kamikaze vehicles and the humans inside and outside them.
2. When you miss a bus, you sprint for it and want to fling yourself at its back door, grasping some imaginary bars you think should exist on anything which calls itself a bus. But they don’t, and the doors shut tight — and horror — the windows are sealed. Air-conditioning exists.
3. When driving, or next to someone who is, you now believe the horn is only to be directed towards the vehicle in front of you: all other motorists have to be warded off by (1) knocking your knuckles against the sides of your door (2) and chanting “ya ya ya!”
4. Squat toilets are now a-okay. They help build butt muscles.
5. You pack mineral water, a flashlight, toilet paper, mosquito repellent, into your bag. Every single day.
6. You turn up for a 7pm appointment at 9.30pm. That old joke: 7pm IST, India Stretchable Time.
7. You can’t fathom the concept of dinner until 11pm, at the very earliest.
8. You become appalled by the flesh shown on Western media: it beats you how anybody can depict sex the way it is without horses galloping in the wild, rings of fire, and without dancing of any kind.
9. You think the Lord of the Rings ran way too short and you want your money back.
10. You’re shocked that personals ads in newspapers at home are so ambiguous, rather than “fair convent educated 25 year old Brahmin (of a specific subset of Brahmins) family”. Then again, with larger sample space, the odds of being closer to X-bar are greater.
11. You’re even more shocked the ads don’t necessarily have matrimony in mind, that your mother has no intention of placing one for you.
12. In response to finding out somebody is Indian-born but has been living in the United States, you say: “So he’s a Not Required Indian.”
13. And there are people around you who understand that joke.
14. When meeting little kids, you try to shake their hand by sticking out your index and little fingers. They think you’re insane.
15. You go to your teh tarik uncle and order “chai”.
16. Unwittingly, you hand the teh tarik uncle three Singapore cents. Because tea was always one rupee, and you can take home the cup.
17. You send back your teh tarik and demand 5 times more sugar.
18. Everybody thinks you’ll be knocked down by a car one day, given how you cross roads now.