This post is long due. I’ve been wanting to do this post since March, when I returned from a month long trip to India, but other, seemingly important things like finishing my PhD degree and defending my thesis came in the way and so I was not able to get to it until now. Luckily, the storm has passed away and I have survived (to tell the tale). I have a plenty of time now because basically I’m unemployed I’ve a few months of vacation - a scenario I could abuse to do some soul-searching trolling, blogging, and maybe write that goddamned novel. 

But oh, enough about me. How are things with you, you non-existent readers? 

Travelling in India in Feb-March, 2015 I was bombarded with so many small stories and incidents that I couldn’t help noting them down. After living about five years abroad, I’ve unknowingly developed an “NRI attitude” and thus things that appear interesting to me maybe downright offensive silly and trivial to the average Indian reader. Having said that, here are a few “recollections”:

1) After some deep introspection, I’ve come to the conclusion that my love for India is a direct function of the emptiness level of my stomach at any given moment. On a full stomach, I seem to care little about the country, and I plot ways to stay abroad and live a comfortable life. But on an empty stomach, India suddenly becomes a solution to all problems, and I begin fantasizing about all that street food one could devour in a lifetime and how having eaten lots of good Indian food in one’s life would be a greater achievement than anything else. 

So, every time I ate something exquisite on my trip I suffered a existential crisis. I asked myself, “Why? Why have I spent five years of my life living in remote, desolate villages places of Iowa and Denmark? Has it been worth travelling and living abroad and missing all that good food that could have been eaten?” Then I began to ask even more trippy questions like, “Do we make our choices or our choices make us?”

2) I met this waiter at the Calangute beach in Goa who was extremely intelligent and hospitable. As I chatted with him, I figured out he had a Masters degree in History from University of Calcutta, and was unable to find a better job in Goa. There, in front of me, stood a live victim of academic inflation. It made me wonder if I too would suffer a similar fate, one day. 

3) I’ve grown up in Chandigarh and lived there for nearly 18 years before moving out. But it was the first time on this trip that I actually noticed the homeless people on several traffic lights and junctions. I’m sure they have been there all the time but on this trip their presence suddenly became too noticeable. They were no more a part of the background noise; they became, as I looked left and right from the safe, confines of my four-wheeled metallic box, the rising heroes and villains of the road. 

4) In India, there’s the complicated economics of exchanging envelopes of cash upon meeting with relatives. Previously, when I was a kid, I viewed the chaotic spectacle of adults thrusting cash in each other’s hands/pockets only as an outsider. It often used to terrify me, and I would worry that some sort of a fight has broken out between the aunties and uncles of the family at the end of the meeting and winner of the battle would be the team which ends up transferring more net cash to the other. Although, paradoxically, receiving much more than what you have given or receiving much less than what you have given are also not the desired endings of the battle. Unfortunately, this time I was not a kid anymore, and I found myself inside the battle with little knowledge of the unsaid rules. There are no strict rules defining “who” one should consider giving money and “how much” the amount should be. Such decisions are mostly taken upon a whim and based upon vague concepts like love etc. 

5) At the Mansa Devi Mandir, which has been a popular hangout place for many citizens of Chandigarh, religion and business still goes hand in hand. On one side are the countless people crouching over the feet of deities in search of some hidden treasure and on the other are the rows of shopkeepers who thrive on the expense of people buying gifts to please the all mighty. While the demands of bhakts have not changed much - all they want is to be smacked in face by a bit of good luck - the temple has undergone a major technological evolution. The prashad in the form of misri (crystallized sugar, a substance our brain loves) now comes in fancy colored pan-masala type sachets - which one should still accept with both hands. The donations are now computerized, and CCTV cameras are abundant throughout the complex. Finally, at strategic corners in the temple, you may now find the new age bhakts taking selfies with their favorite gods.