Cricket Club

Not too long ago, in July, I wrote an article about girls who play cricket. I mentioned that it is a topic very close to my heart. Twenty years back, when I was in my early teens, I desperately wanted to play cricket. I don't understand how or why no one in my family ever paid any heed to it, or that why they didn't even buy me a cricket bat, (I have the same dilemma about chess, nobody ever bought me a chess set) even though I got lots of thoughtful gifts quite a few times a year from my close knit extended family. Anyway, after I finished college and came to the US, I basically gave up all my hopes of ever playing cricket. Nobody cares about cricket here, I assumed.

But, thanks to globalization, I saw changes.

the first one was watching cricket World Cup at home in 2011 and also at work! The Software Industry is full of expat Indians, and with them they brought cricket over to the Western Hemisphere. The second big thing was the All Stars match in 2015 where the "boys we grew up with", namely Sachin, Rahul, Wasim, Steve, Shane, Kalu, Murali, Jonty, Shoaib, etc etc came all the way to play here. At the Dodgers Stadium where we saw a blending of cricket and baseball, it opened a new horizon. We bought a cricket bat here and I anticipated a new era of playing cricket in the US.

Fast forward to end of 2017. Many things are going on in my life right now and all of them are pretty stressful. I did not want to add another stressor to it. But a few days back I saw a post on our neighborhood web page saying "Play Cricket". There has been a talk of opening our local cricket club (again, thanks to expat Indians) and the person who thought about it has been asking people to join. I immediately sent a note asking if women can join too. He said that I can't joint he team, but I can play/practice with them. So be it! My most handy male ally, aka Arnab joined the team and I found my way in. Initially I was not added to the Whatsapp group but like a friend of mine says, I don't have the problem of ever feeling neglected because I don't let people neglect me. I asked this guy specifically to add me to the group. I attended the first match yesterday, the first ever of the club, played miserably, because I have not played in years and lost my reflexes, but I captained the winning team and kept wicket for the first time in my life!

The ball has started rolling, and I have found my ground. If I did not take this chance, I would never be able to tell my future daughter that she can be whatever she wants to. Also, I owed it to myself, to make sure that I can fulfill my dream. I don't have to worry about "if I were a boy" or "if only our society let us play". Now the control is in my hand. I don't have to ask anyone to buy me a bat, nor do I have to worry about upcoming exams. Yes, so far I am the only girl in this club, because sometimes we don't have an option but to be the first :) Hopefully, I will be able to inspire a few more in my lifetime.

Some serious batting practice is coming up soon!!

PS: Marry wisely, because a good partner can not just enrich your daily life, but also immensely help in making your dreams come true! 

A glass of eggnog

It is Friday, pretty cold even for the middle of November. We have fallen back from daylight savings, so in Seattle with the perpetually overcast skies, it seems to get dark at 2:30 in the afternoon. I came back home on a day like this and as I was going over my machine learning course, I poured myself a glass of eggnog for comfort. As I sprinkled some cinnamon powder and took a sip, the creamy sweetness filling me with goodness, I wondered from when did I start associating eggnog with this kind of comfort? I did not grow up relating eggnog to Christmas, or winter. The first time I had eggnog ten years back, I wanted to spit it out. It smelled disgusting, and the flavor of raw eggs in them brought me close to throwing up. The same happened with apple cider. Some of my other Indian friends and I were looking for places to spit it out and we finally emptied the cups down the drinking water fountain in our department.

I found telling a friend whose house we generally go for Thanksgiving, that I like it being dark and gloomy as we gather round the turkey. If it was sunny and warm outside it would be so incongruous. What happened in the time during the last ten years which has brought such changes in me? Things that I had no idea about are now normal facets of my life.

I think it is because I let myself absorb new things, and that I love talking to people, ask them details about how they spent the summer holidays, what are their memories of Christmas, and slowly get myself acquainted with the new culture, or cultures because as everyone knows, the US is a salad bowl of cultures around the world.

On the other hand, here's the chance to share mine. Last month, for the first time, I hosted a "Bijoya Sammelani" or get together after the Bengali festival of Durga Pujo. The fun part was other than one friend (just him, not his wife) was Bengali. The others were not Indians. They came to this gathering, asked a lot of questions about Durga Pujo, how we celebrate it, what we eat, how are we supposed to behave, and they ate all Bengali food. They even picked out bones of the treacherous fish ilish. There were fun conversations around, no gossiping, no uncomfortable jokes, just a lot of laughter over good food and good company.

It feels nothing different when you compare one day to the other, but when you look back a few years, you see stuff changing. The more new things we learn, the more new things we open our hearts and homes to, we just pave the way for a more enriched life.

On Machine Learning and my realizations thereof

I promised to myself that this will not become a technical blog, so I am not going to talk about the details of machine learning. Just to let people know the backstory, Artificial Intelligence is a subject that interests me and there was a time when I planned a career in academics and thought that is the subject I would pursue. But then things turned out differently and I went towards a career in software. However, Coursera has shown me time and again, that if I want to learn something, the Universe would help me do so. I took courses in Physics from there too. This year after listening to Dr. Fei-Fei Li's keynote speech at the Grace Hopper Conference, I decided to start studying machine learning. The course I found is from Dr. Andrew Ng and without any exaggeration it is so far the toughest course I have ever taken, physically or virtually!

The first week was overwhelming. After a whole day at work, in the evening I started the course and I felt like my brain would just explode. Without any fluff, he dived straight into math. Algebra had never been my strong point so I gasped when I saw a lot of linear algebra sitting there. And it just wasn't algebra. Literally all the math I had learned, including geometry, co-ordinate geometry (also 3D), trigonometry, and even probability and statistics are being used everyday in a matter of fact way. One thing I must admit, even though I did not realize it when I learned these in high school, I actually did spend a lot of time practicing these. My parents would still say I should have spent some more time studying, but now I know these stuff has got firmly etched in my brain somewhere that even though the surface may accumulate some "dust" over the years, they would not be forgotten. It has become like muscle memory :)

The second part of the problem is programming. Thing with math and programming both is unless you get it right, it won't work. You can yell at yourself, or at the code (or math) but it still won't work. (Cursing in Bengali doesn't help either, I have tried.) So when I had to solve equations and put them in MATLAB (a language I barely ever touched in undergrad, and then never after) I was initially in terrible shape. For a few days I just scratched my head and tried to remember why exactly I decided to take this course. But there is one thing I did not do. I did not give up. This is an unpaid online course which just takes one click to give up. I told myself if I cannot do anything by Sunday, then I will stop taking this class, but until then I will try. That Sunday morning, I had cold hands and I was frantically going over the mentor's notes to understand the problems. Slowly things got better, programs compiled, they showed expected values. Then I ran test cases on them. Those gave right answers as well. Then I submitted my work, and as science is supposed to work, I got full points!

Nobody saw my happy dance for five straight minutes after that!

From the next week, things got better. I understood approximately how much time I need to allot for the programming assignments. I also decided to tackle the problems each day rather than keeping everything for the end of the week.

There has been another realization about the thing called impostor syndrome. As the society we grew up in is silent about achievements but vocal towards failures, we have been conditioned into thinking that failures are our direct responsibilities. Like, as students, if we did poorly on a test it was because we didn't study enough. But if we did well, it was received with a "that's ok, try to do better next time". So we still generally undermine ourselves. As this course is tough and it is from Stanford, to be honest, I initially felt very stupid. Then I felt that maybe the problems are not very tough, it is just taking me time to figure it out. Finally after submitting them, I looked at the Github repos of some mentors and saw that their solutions are less optimized than mine (it would take more time to run their programs than mine) and that they have not used the concepts like vectorization which was taught in class. That made me realize that I actually got the concepts, and I know better than some others! Being able to work in MATLAB also boosted my confidence that we don't really have to learn a new language now, we just need to learn the syntax.

Difficult challenges are a treat to the logical brain! Need to start reading about Neural Networks now... happy learning :) 

10!

On this day in 2007 I boarded a Lufthansa flight to come all across the Globe with two suitcases and a backpack. I had just enough money to sustain myself for one semester, and no experience on how to thrive in a foreign land where I practically knew no one. As you can tell, I spent a terrible birthday that year, and a very homesick Indian Independence Day. Alone at my dorm, I had asked myself "what am I doing here? Why did I come here?" when I didn't know what to eat, had to roam around the campus looking for a job, or didn't understand what the professor was saying in his heavy southern accent. Life was not easy. Now I look back and wonder what gave me, and hundreds of international students like me, the strength to continue. Perhaps because we have a habit of not giving up, or that we have been hardened by the extremely competitive academic situation in our home countries. Anyway, I survived.

And I survived happily.

My world, which was limited to an oversized family, some close friends and relatives, and mainly the Souther part of Calcutta suddenly exploded and encompassed people from all over the world. I realized what it meant to be a "people person" and to have leadership skills. By the next year, I had three celebrations for my birthday, including a midnight party, and on that Independence Day, I was the Secretary of the Association of Indian Students and I led everyone to sing the National Anthem.

At the completion of 10 years I am looking back and connecting the dots. What did I learn? What did I experience? I am getting amazed at what I found out.

The main thing I learned is independence. How to live alone. How to manage studies, work, grocery shopping, cleaning the place, file taxes, do everything a human being needs to do in order to live a decent life.

The second thing I learned is to appreciate people. In general I love being with people, but the different kinds of people I meet, I am realizing that we don't have to agree to everything to be friends. Even if I don't agree with some of their ideas, I found that they are basically good people. And at the end that is all that matters.

It is great to be exposed to new cultures, new foods, new places, new activities. Of the foods that top my most-favorite list, most of them are not stuff that I ate 10 years back. Activities like camping, hiking, or kayaking were almost unknown to me in India. On the other hand, my American friends now know the results of cricket matches that India plays, they hear bits and pieces about Indian politics, and we discuss international news. Having pets is another great experience for me which would be difficult in India (having three of them would be very difficult).

Travels to many places of the world has also been possible because of my wonderful husband. Not sure how this would have worked out in India, because I don't know if we would have met if we lived there :)

Simple joys like having my vegetable garden, walking with friends at downtown park, taking a comfortable bus ride to work, are things that I love too.

On top of everything, I'd say that fact that I can express myself, that I can be just what I am without trying to "fit in" to any expected role is what makes me feel this is truly "the land of the free".

PS: This is how I celebrated my "10th year in the country" with my international friends :) Yes, there were two celebrations!

Our girls

Like everything in life, writing takes practice. One of our famous Bengali movie directors, Ritwik Ghatak, once said that you need practice even to think. I agree with it. I have not been blogging for a few months, and then figured out that I need to get back to it. Probably because a lot of thoughts were bubbling inside me, and also because I need to keep up my practice.

Today I will write about something very close to my heart - girls who play cricket. Yesterday we watched a nail biting Women's World Cup final with India finally submitting to England at the "home of cricket". It was disappointing, very much so, losing by only 9 runs. A lack of experience showed, not enough maturity too, probably. The girls lost, yes. But I saw a different perspective too.

Cricket has been so far the first thing to show me gender inequality. As a teenager, I yearned to play cricket (I still do), but it wasn't really possible formally. I did not see girls at the cricket coaching institutes, in school too girls were not interested in cricket. Even our sports teachers did not show much interest in teaching the girls how to play cricket, or rather any sport as such. Also, like I have mentioned many times before, academics were of the utmost and only priority. The boys could at least spend some time outside, as girls that was also not much possible. I remember having diary entries where I mentioned how my life would have been if I were a boy. Luckily, gender identity was not a thing at that time in India, so being a tomboy was ok. Something amusing maybe, to others, but nothing to be worried about. Anyway, I missed my chance at playing cricket. An elderly uncle once mentioned if I could try to play at least club level cricket. But with my school leaving and engineering entrance exam round the corner, I did not have the guts to justify the need for playing to my parents. I had to be content with playing in the neighborhood a little, some more in school and college, that too if the boys let me play with them. Maybe if I knew the things I know now, about letting someone be, or if I had the capacity to reason, I would have done something different.

Here's my article for those girls who have to swim against the current. Those ones with scraped knees, grass stained clothes, and cropped disheveled hair. Those girls who are just "one of the boys". they have to play with the boys because other girls won't want to play such rough and tumble games. They don't care how they look as long as they are comfortable. I saw some of them in the Indian team over the last few weeks. The young ones, still in their early twenties, who are representing their countries. They had to challenge a lot of long standing rules. Coming from working class families in the suburbs, I wonder how strong their will is to succeed. They were not coached to make them cricketers, most of them were "sent to play" with their brothers because it would give them something to do. One used to play with the neighborhood boys before she was spotted for the local team.

Compared to the teams of England, Australia, or New Zealand, our girls don't have a strong background. They have to fight poverty, lack of infrastructure, lack of coaching to finally make it to the World Cup. And it is not just India, but the rest of the sub-continent too. Many of them have to fight religious orders too, besides the idea of "but you are a girl".

From the World Cup final at Eden Gardens twenty years back, when nobody really cared about women's cricket to yesterday when the whole country (and Indians abroad) was glued to their TV sets, these girls have come a long way. Yes, the win would have been historical, but even in defeat they have started a new era of inspiring young girls to pick up the willow and leather. Hopefully, cricket coaching centers would accept girls now, and no teenager would have to write "I could have played cricket if I were a boy" because the girls team would be a great place to belong.

At work

I like busy people. At around 9, when a particular bus from Seattle comes to Bellevue Transit Center and a bunch of people cross the street to get to work they radiate some kind of positivity. The same when they grab a cup of coffee from the local Starbucks, the baristas working like bees, or when at lunch people go out to eat with their co-workers, the whole place hums with a sense of purpose, of belonging.

Being an ENFJ, I love people and I get energy by being with people. Coming to work has its own set of positivity for me. To say that I love working would be an understatement. I am one of those people who feel charged after a relaxing weekend to get to work on Mondays. It is not that I don't like weekends, but I love Mondays as well, because I have things to look forward to, challenges to meet, problems to solve and people I love spending time with.

Other than providing an income, and giving a practical way to use the knowledge I acquired from school, there are a lot of things I learned about myself at work. I found out that I have leadership skills. Throughout my entire life in India I have been told to hold back. I was getting into too much trouble, I had (well, I still have) strong opinions and airing them was not a smart thing. Here. I am encouraged to speak up. I am learning how to lead properly, that is utilize the natural tendency but to sharpen that as well. I have understood that my level of enthusiasm is above the national average, and instead of yelling at others for their lack of energy, I am learning how to get people to feel more interested and take part in activities.

Problem solving, especially in the STEM field is a.. how do I put it... it is probably the only thing which can give you something close to superpowers! In the software world, we mainly deal with things intangible. You can see a computer, but you can't feel the lines of code that does most of the work. We see the life in those lines of code, and get unnecessarily attached to them. Just the idea of someone using tab versus spacebar can cause religious wars in the software industry. We are a bunch of crazy people, but we love our weirdness. NOTE: not all software engineers are introverts.

There is a comfort in knowing that in science there is the concept of absolute truth. What I mean is, like when you add two and two, the answer would always be four. Similarly, if your friend has guessed a random number between 1 and 100, and you want to find out what is it, math tells us you only need (at most) 7 tries. And that is true! If you do it right, you won't go beyond 7 tries. That's what binary search is about. If you need more tries, you can be absolutely certain that you are doing it wrong. There have been times when my code didn't run as expected and I started cursing it, or pulling my hair. However much I may do either of those, it does't help because the computer, unluckily is a non-thinking, non-feeling weird thing. It doesn't care. Of course I found out there is stuff I missed, or wrote wrong. Once that is fixed, the code runs. There is no gray area in between!

I need to conclude this article with the people part. Arnab once asked me if I go to work to work or to have a social life because he only heard plans for coffee, lunch, or walks. It is true, because socializing is a big part of my existence and my friends at work help that. We have almost a dozen people to eat lunch with, they are all crazy in their own ways. If you see us then, you'd think we are a bunch of high school or college kids who know each other for many many years. They are those people who know my deepest evil wishes, on whose white sofa I can totally put my dirty feet on, and they can also tell me to my face that I need to stop wasting money.

It is very clear that I have found the right place where I belong.

My kind of meditation

Nowadays meditation is well known in the world, both in the east and west. People do yoga and meditation a lot. There are even apps for guided meditation (some of them are really well). Meditation is definitely a very good thing to calm our minds, get rid of anxiety and bad thoughts, but it is not easy for me. I have tried it, and I am still trying it, but I have to put a lot of effort in just sitting still. Introspection doesn't come to me easily, I get distracted and charmed by the whole wide world around me that is filled with sights, sounds, smells, and of course people!

I have found my calm place in the water of the swimming pool. That is a place where I am mostly alone in my swim lane, and there is just water and me. With my swim cap covering my ears, and my glasses taken off to wear goggles, I am actually cut off from the entire world around me. Its just my arms and legs moving in a rhythm, and my head turning for breaths in a cyclical motion. The gentle lapping of water beside me, the bubbles in front of me, and the surface of the water as I see from below surround me in a world of calm. There is nothing I can do about anything in the world at that time, other than just swim. The black line below is a constant reminder of discipline and balance. You can actually translate that to a life lesson too.

Swimming has amazing health benefits, we all know that. It is the only one exercise that works on all our muscles at the same time, especially the hard to work on - core. It is immensely helpful for cardio, and our lungs. For kids who are still growing, it helps in bone development. I have been forever known to be a scrawny thing that eats very little (especially here in the US where portion sizes almost match my weight), but recently my appetite has increased and it has been catching the attention of people. "You want that too along with your lunch?" I have had friends ask me.

I knew about these physical benefits, but it is the mental ones have amazed me more. Just like they say in guided meditation, that with every exhale let the bad thoughts go away and with every inhale let the good thoughts come in, the same happens in swimming. You can imagine the cool water washing off all your anxieties and worries that you exhale, and with each inhale you get a fresh breath of life. Once you are in water, you don't have to really think of anything other that getting enough air. You can't see anyone else, and nobody can see you. Everyone looks weird in their swim caps and goggles, so looks don't matter there anyway. The stretch of blue-green water in front consists only of the good vibes that envelop us.

Floppy

People talk about Karma a lot these days, it has entered regular conversation, but I have actually seen good Karma in action once. That is when I got Floppy.

As a six-year-old girl I should say I was pretty well behaved. When I came to San Fransisco to visit my uncle and aunt in mid 1991, my dad specifically told me not to buy too many stuffed animals because I had quite a lot of them at home. Now, I doubt if I would have listened to that, but as a well behaved six year old, I did. There were tons of them around me at Disneyland, Sea World, The Universal Studios, they all had their fair share of stuffed animals being sold as souvenirs. I could have asked for them and I believe, if I was polite, I would be given a few too. But I didn't. I even remember picking up a penguin that had rolled off the rack and putting it back in its right place. It was not a minor temptation, because in the early 90s, stuffed animals were not found in abundance in India, and the good ones were very, very expensive.

That is when Karma watched me and decided to reward my good behavior. One day before we were coming back to India, my uncle's friends came and they brought a big stuffed animal for me. That was Floppy. He is one of the biggest stuffed animals I have got. Something like a cross between a teddy and a rabbit, he has the chubbiest face, big ears, and big feet. To say that I adore him would be an understatement. He is like my brother.

He has been beside me, quite literally for almost all moments of my life. He has held my hand with his fat paws when I was in school and my academics were not very pleasant. He has been patiently waiting when I left for the US, and then came back again to take him with me. He has stayed up at night when I was sick. Now, he is there when Arnab goes on business trips. He also keeps me company if I have to work till late night anytime.

Those fat paws and big ears give me a sense of assurance that Floppy is there with me through all good and bad days.

The Privileged Ones

It was just a normal day for me today. Getting up in the morning, breakfast, work, meetings, pizza lunch, little shopping, coming back home, dinner, and now lounging before going to bed. There was one good part about today, I had my yearly merit increase/bonus pay meeting with my manager, and like all the other years, I am very happy about it. On this Women's Day, I choose to be grateful because even though this was just a normal day for me, this still shows how privileged I am. This day without any extraordinary events is still a great deal fantastic to many, many, girls around this world.

Why?

When I woke up, I was given coffee by Arnab (not for Women's Day, he does it always). Even to this day, Indian women are told to serve tea to everyone in their in-laws house. I don't do that at my in-laws house either. I get served breakfast like every other person in the house, my sister-in-law takes care of that.
I had bacon for breakfast. Yes I was born in a Hindu household, but no one has ever put any restrictions on what I eat because of any religious reasons. I can eat what I want as long as it is not bad for my health.
I go to work, and I love it. I have been brought up to realize that I am good at studies and I should have a stable profession. I was pushed hard to complete my higher education and I am happy that I kept my parents wishes. They "wished" it only because they knew my potential and limitations. They didn't really tell me I can be whatever I want to. When I wanted to be a scientist, my father pointed out the problems, but he also explained how Computer Science would be a better profession for me. Fortunately, it has been so far. As USA is still struggling with a very minor percentage of girls in STEM majors, I am thankful about how my sister and I were brought up, and so were many of my girl friends back home.
At meetings I don't have to struggle to make my voice heard. I work in a team with very few women (if there are very few girls in STEM majors, software engineers won't pop out from deep space) but our ideas are given importance, our voices are heard, and we feel comfortable to "sit at the table" as Sheryl Sandberg says. I am encouraged to use the whiteboard and think aloud. I collaborate with my peers and love sharing ideas.
I have guy friends and I love them! No, Arnab doesn't have set rules for me about who can be my friends. Unlike many irritating men whose bloated male egos get hurt when their wives have male friends, I am fortunate enough to have a man who doesn't care about which gender my friends fall in to. He laughs when he hears our funny antics as I tell him what jokes we said at lunch time, or some hilarious compilation of out of context statements that is a signature thing in my friends group.
I don't have to ask for Arnab's permission to go shopping, but I love to go out with him. Actually I don't even buy my own clothes without him. Many women dread to tell their husbands that they bought something either because they overspend, or because their husbands control how much they should spend. Having a relationship where you are hiding an expense from your spouse can't be a healthy one. I don't fall into that category.
Dinner can't be enjoyed well if you don't eat together. We cook together, prep food together, and eat together. It is our own little family ritual. Today Arnab prepped dinner. I did the cleanup afterwards. A marriage is a team work, and we choose to follow that. I don't have to toil with cooking everyday because my husband would only eat fresh cooked food. My in-laws don't instruct me on what to cook for my husband. He is a grown up man, if he wants something that bad, he can cook that himself.
Lounging before bed. That is my me-time and nobody bothers me for that.
That is when I can sit, unwind, and retrospect on my day, and on my life. Even though I say that I am fortunate, I think there are certain things that I actually chose for myself. Yes, I was fortunate that my parents brought me up like this, but choosing a life parter has been a deliberate decision on my part. I could have been unwise, but I didn't. I gave this a lot of thought, as much was possible by my 24 year old brain, and I chose the right person. I was empowered to do that, for sure. I didn't have an arranged marriage, so I had to do all the thinking. Choosing my job is also a deliberate effort. I could choose to stay at home. I could choose to step back and not be so involved at work. There was no reason to step up to be the President of our Toastmaster club. But I did those. I did those to enhance my life. I did those to prove to myself and to many many generations of girls after me that a woman's life doesn't revolve only round her family. A woman has all the power to make her own world as charming as she wants to.
When my manager congratulated me today on one more "solid year" and discussed with me what technical details to put in my goals for the coming year, he was not encouraging only one employee, he was encouraging a woman to pursue her dreams and love it! The merit increase I got is not to make me feel smug, it is an honor to receive it for something I love doing. It isn't just for me either, it is for those men and women who paved the way before us, who showed us, time and again that a woman's place is not just in the home, it is in the whole wide world. 

For the lifelong love of learning...

... how to cook.

There is a Bengali story by Syed Mujtaba Ali, where one of the characters mention that if you are not interested in trying food from a different country, then you are not open to learn about a new culture/religion. It is true that your home food would always be your go-to comfort food, but the more you open yourself to world cuisine, not only would your tastebuds thank you, but your horizon would increase.

Even though I have started cooking French food, and a little bit East Asian
food, major cuisine areas like Mexican or Italian were still only limited to restaurant eating. Blue Apron has changed that for me (and Arnab, naturally).

I knew of Blue Apron for a few months before I decided to give them a try. We take fish, chicken, and vegetarian food from them and for the last month it feels like in our kitchen, we have traveled the entire world! I had no idea that pasta can taste so amazing, nor than African peanut sauce is a heavenly thing. I did not know that it would be possible to eat Thai food for lunch and Italian food for dinner the same day! We have reduced eating out by a lot, and the best part is that no food is wasted.


They send us the ingredients, carefully portioned out. So if I need a tablespoon of sake, I won't have to buy one full bottle. Similarly, if I had to find that myself, I wouldn't even know where to get the African spice blend. I did not know what a Meyer lemon is, or what kind of fish is Barramundi! But now, thanks to Blue Apron, I have cooked them and ate them. There is another great thing that happened. We are happily eating salads and our vegetable intake has increased a lot! I used to hate romaine lettuce, but with the unusual salad dressings I am making, even romaine is tasting great! I think the main thing is so much variety, it is not letting us get bored.

When the output is great, naturally the interest level also soar. Especially because I love cooking. A kitchen with beautiful prep bowls, a recipe holder, and wooden spoons have been my dream from a long time. It gives me good vibes, if that is a way to explain it. There is a great joy in cooking, making food from scratch, and then looking at the finished product with pride. And when that is food that I have not even seen or heard of before, like say, cannelloni pasta, then it is even better!

Blue Apron is named so because chefs wear blue aprons when they learn to cook. I bought this apron from the site so that it reminds me every time I cook, that I am always learning something new, and to keep my mind open, to stay humble, and to learn from my mistakes.

Let the girls grow free

Indian parents have different parenting style for boys and girls. As they rightly mention in the 2016 movie Pink, girls have peculiar standards to adhere to, where the length of their skirt, or the time they come home defines their character. So does having guy friends, or free mixing. Recently, I read a news article about a college in India which has made me wonder how we are trying to bring up our girls.

Indian colleges have come to news many times for following stereotypical gender roles. At IIT Kharagpur, one of my friends was told to not go out wearing shorts. Boys were not allowed to come even to the reception area of girls' hostels. In our college, we have never been able to go to the boys' mess, even for working on projects together. That is why, I didn't get a chance to work on our load runner and step climber robots as they were being built at the boys' mess. These are still lower on the rank of weirdness. One of my friends from a different part of India said that in the college shuttle, boys and girls were kept segregated. In the recent news I found that even in college canteens (cafeterias) boys and girls are told to sit apart. No touching, hugging your classmates are allowed and basically any kind of interaction between the two genders is being discouraged.

This is not normal.

In the human world, one has to invariably come in contact with people, and in most cases they would not belong to your gender. People need to be taught to mix freely with everyone so that "the other gender" is not looked as an alien being, and interaction with them becomes normal. As I changed from an all girls' school to a co-ed school around my teenage years, I saw this difference very well. Those girls who grew up with boys had no inhibition talking about periods or other girl topics with the boys. The boys also were a lot more understanding and now I find the majority of them to be much more accommodative and supportive of their spouses. That is because they have been exposed to girls as their playmates, classmates, friends, from a very early age.

In our society, when a girl is in her late-teens or early twenties, she is considered "good" if she does not have a boyfriend. Having a boyfriend still indicates she is too modernized. Having multiple boyfriends means she had questionable character. Parents still feel proud to say, "my daughter is pretty shy around boys." I feel that is a problem they should try to fix rather than being proud about it. If your daughter is shy around half the world population, that is a very serious concern. How would she interact with her colleagues later? Or her future male manager?

I don't understand how girls and boys who have led segregated lives manage to work on their marriages. Again, having an arranged marriage means you are an obedient child, where you have put full trust in your parents. I have a coworker, who very proudly said that he didn't even see his wife before the day of his engagement. Another girl saw her future husband at the airport on the day of her engagement. I asked her if she would be able to back out of the match had she disliked that guy. She said no, because she was utterly terrified of disobeying her father. These people get married, have kids, and mostly stay married forever because the girls know they have to compromise. Gender roles are strictly observed, and these days the girls do both household work and outside work.

Parents need to understand that controlling your kids lives by archaic rules are actually devastating. You are not letting them grow properly. If a girl always have to worry about what the society would say, then she is wasting her energy in trying to fit in, rather than trying to be herself. Mixing with boys is a necessary thing, and the earlier the exposure happens, the better. Let them know that boys don't come from Mars, they are just regular human beings with emotions. I have seen many cases where boys behave in utterly funny ways - from my friends in junior high, to my friends at work. They still don't know the right way to load a dishwasher, the toilet seat stays up, tables are wiped wrong, and they laugh at our sense of fashion. But that is the fun part of sharing this world with them. They are intermingled in our lives as fathers, uncles, brothers, cousins, friends, neighbors, teammates, or colleagues. The more we mingle with them normally, the more they would also learn about us, our feelings and our emotions. That way we would be able to create an interdependence where both genders can be empowered.

My "first born"

On Valentine's Day as people are celebrating their love in innumerable ways starting from fancy dinners, romantic getaways, or simply red roses and chocolates, I also want to celebrate my love that needs no language, no words of love, and not even the commonalities of a species. It is the special bond I have with my "first born".

With Mota in early 2010

Lightning, or as we call him, Mota is our first pet. Even though May is the eldest one, Mota is our first born as we adopted him first. A big boy, weighing around 14 lbs at almost three years of age, he was still quite shy. But it didn't take him much long to become a mama's boy. Within weeks he was snuggling with me, and I still remember the day when he first put his head on my lap and slept.

Over the last seven years he moved with us from our apartment to this house, has adapted to sharing his home and parents with his two sisters and has grown into a handsome orange and white cat. Whoever sees him, the first thing they say is "wow, he's handsome!" A social eater, he has the personality of a gentleman. He just retires upstairs if there are guests, if he comes downstairs then he watches people for a while before greeting them with a friendly head bump.

With me, he has a special bond. He just loves me beyond words. The gentle purring and kneading on my belly shows that he considers me his mom (cat-mom actually). Every night he would come to me, sniff my nose and then curl up with his head on my tummy. I never knew that this bond is so deep until last week when he suddenly fell sick. What at first seemed to be UTI was actually a case of urinary tract blockage because of tiny stones, like sand, in his kidneys. Even though it is very common in male cats his age, and is completely curable, to see him suffer and meow loudly terrified Arnab and me. On the car ride from his local vet's clinic to the pet hospital, I just kept my hand on his back to make sure he was breathing. The pain, as the vet told us was excruciating, but as the pain killer kicked in, his breathing became a little easy. They admitted him to the hospital within minutes of us bringing him there and the doctors immediately started doing the tests. For the next three days all we could think was of him.

Snuggles help him recover fast

This was the first time in our lives with Mota not at home. Even though he is calm and doesn't run around all day, the house felt different without his gentle presence. I am notorious for being a heavy sleeper, and up till last week, neither sickness, nor heartbreak, not even exam results have been known to disrupt my sleep, but with Mota at the hospital, I kept waking up every few hours and Arnab and I took turns to call the hospital to enquire about him even at night or early morning hours.

We are lucky to have workplaces that let us take days off because he was in the hospital. On last Friday, we were ready to bring him home. When we got him back, he was lethargic to say the least. He had a cone on to prevent him from licking his belly, and that made him wobbly. He would just plop down next to me and sleep. If I got up, he would awaken immediately. And then I saw he was actually holding my PJs while sleeping. That's when I thought that the whole biological relationship thing is so overrated. There is just one thing called love, and that doesn't care about what you say, what gifts you give, or what relationship you have with a being. True love has no expectations, it is that feeling which makes you feel good when the other person/being is just there with you. That is why for the whole of Saturday Mota didn't leave my side. He would lay his head on my lap and fall asleep.

Arnab and I spent two more sleep deprived nights as we had to wake up to feed him (he can't eat on his own with the cone on) and to give him medicines. We are also monitoring his water intake o that the same problem does not recur. It is tough. He is confined to the master bedroom now, also using the master bath, and our room is smelling like a cat shelter! We don't seem to mind, I guess that is what labor of love is all about.
To have a soul that loves me so deeply that he can feel completely safe when I am there elevates me to a position of being loved. It is a great feeling, especially because there is no expectation. To be loved by someone this deeply are those moments in life that makes me feel good to be a human being.

PS: The house is again feeling like home, as all five of us are here once more!

Story of writing stories

I don't remember from when I started to think of stories in my mind. The first one I remember is probably from when I was around five years old. It was a story about a violet fairy. I don't remember anything else, but I think it was that time when I really loved fairies. I also loved to think of how a little fairy can choose one color and get everything in that color. Then there was a phase when I loved to imagine stories about my stuffed animals. All of them are still a huge favorite of mine. I simply LOVE them! They lived somewhere far off in little toy towns (heavily inspired by Enid Blyton's Noddy) and I still remember where they studied, what language they spoke, the name of their town, who was whose sibling, everything in details. My mom just told me yesterday that she found a card given to me on my seventh birthday by all my stuffed animal buddies.

From around fifth grade, I became a book worm and started to read a LOT! People who love to write are those ones who invariably love to read. It is the love of reading that slowly sends us on the track of trying our hand at creating something new. In my pre-teen years I was also slowly getting exposed to science fictions, adventure stories, and my all time favorite detective stories. That is when I got a little bold and started to write adventure stories. Sometimes those would be in the outer space, whereas at others it maybe in the ocean or on a deserted island. My problem is that my mind is way ahead of my hand, that is I can think of many ideas, but then I can't really string them together as a story. Either I put too much details, or I jump from one incident to another without a proper pace. The same thing continued in my early teenage when I fell under the influence of Saradindu Bandopadhyay and his historical fictions. They are the most romantic stories I have ever read (probably the most romantic ones in the history of Bengali language) and when the heart starts to blossom in early teenage, my dreams were full of Arjunbarma, Chitrak, Bigrahapala, those brave princes and the bold and beautiful princesses - Vidyunmala, Sumitra, and the like. Even today I am still under that spell. I read some of my old half written stories while I was in Calcutta earlier this year, and I found that all the historical stories I ever attempted (all unfinished) were so heavily influenced by Saradindu that it probably falls under the category of plagiarism. In my defense, I would use Apu's idea from Pather Panchali and say that who has ever been able to light a torch by sticking it in the ashes? You need fire to light a fire. Saradindu definitely has imbibed in me an urge to create. How I would do that, I have no clue though!

There is another person who has showed us that you need to be responsible and thorough when you are writing. That person is Satyajit Ray. I spend so much time thinking about details, that I have lost my mood for writing often. Firstly, the names of the characters need to be figured out. Unless that is done, I can't think of how the characters would be. Then, where they live have to be thought and imagined. If they work, or study, then their ages must be calculated properly. Details about their jobs, or ranks have to be researched. I can't just call someone a Commander-in-chief without knowing what ranks his battalion has. I can't write a conversation between two law students if I don't know anything about the subject. Characters have to look real, and incidents have to be correct. It isn't easy. The most difficult sort of story is a detective one. It has to make sense, the clarification must sort all the points, and it must be realistic. For example, if a person murders someone, there has to be a pressing reason for it. You can't just say something vague like "oh that's because she hated him." You need to reveal enough details for the reader to be interested in the plot, but not give away the main things which would make the detective come and use his/her mind. With science fiction and detective stories, you have to be very detail oriented and clear all the points of the story. I have read some really bad detective stories and bad science fictions too, which have showed me what not to do.

I write for myself. I have probably given people six stories to read in total, and they are not the same people. I am my most severe critic, so if I like something then that is probably the best I have created to my potential. But, so far there has been no story that I've written which I like. When I read them again, I definitely feel like editing them. Either there are too much details, or the conversations sound unreal. There is also a problem about language. Should I write in Bengali, or in English? There is one story I am writing now which is set in early twentieth century Bengal. That one can be easily written in Bengali. But for most of my stories there are conversations in mixed languages, and then it becomes difficult to choose the main language for the story.

Being an ENFJ, I value human relationships a lot. That reflects in my stories. In most cases, the main protagonists are women with strong personalities. They may be love stories, or not, but those characters are very confident in their own abilities and in their lives, even in the face of difficulties. I am also very much mood driven. I started writing a story while I was in Calcutta, but after coming back to Seattle, I just can't think along the same lines, so that story is sitting unfinished. A certain thought would come and hang around for a few days. If I don't write it down fast, I'd lose it. I get to imagine the scenes like watching a movie, and I see them right in front of my eyes, then I write them down. Now, I am focusing more on being disciplined and finishing what I have started to write, unlike what I did in my teens.

We have a very little part of our general human lives that are in our control, but when we are writing stories, then we can plan and do everything that we like. We can live a million lives through our characters, we can experience joys and sorrows spanning over space and time. Writing gives us immense power and empowers us with the joy of Creation.

Short hair - the pleasures and pains

The longest hair I ever had in the entire 32 years of my existence, is shoulder-length. It isn't that I don't like long hair, I do admire it on models, but for some reason it does not suit my personality. Maybe because I never had it, I don't know why, but I don't look like myself if I have anything longer than a short bob. Though there have been times while wearing Indian clothes and thinking how strange they are looking with my asymmetric pixie cut, however, in the long run the days I like my short hair outnumber the days I wish for longer hair by a huge margin.

Why do I have short hair?

From time immemorial my mother used to get my hair cut short. Probably because she has short hair, or maybe because she thought managing long hair on a little girl is difficult. I don't know why, but that is what I always had. I really wanted to have bangs, but I wasn't allowed to get those either.

Why did I keep cutting my hair short?

Around my early teenage, I started becoming quite a rebel. At that time when girls slowly turn into proper girls, I became a tomboy. Getting rid of the girlish traits became necessary and I sacrificed my hair, turned to wearing more boyish clothes and started to have the temperament of a tomcat. (This tomcat part is something my entire extended family agrees with. That is somehow the best description of me as a teenager.)
Later, in my late teens to early twenties, I discovered that there is a couldn't-care-less attitude in tossing my head which I mastered. For that having short hair helps.

When did I really regret having short hair?

On the day of my wedding. I was probably one of the very few Bengali brides who had that short hair. It was impossible to even part my hair from the middle, let alone try a tiny pig-tail. They couldn't think of having an updo, so they added tons of weird wigs. It looked disgusting. The only good thing was the whole contraption got covered by a veil.

How did it feel to have shoulder-length hair?

It felt like "too much hair". While sleeping on my side, hair got in my mouth, hair covered my face. While eating a taco, I once got sour cream on the ends of my hair (very odd feeling).

What was the best thing of having longer hair?

Getting a real updo, with a flower in my hair. I was so shocked at that event in my life!

What has been my favorite haircut so far?

An asymmetric pixie. It has the sleek look of pixie, that emphasizes the facial features. (You can't hide behind your hair). For thick, healthy hair, a good pixie accentuates the hair too, because you can't do anything to your hair that short. The asymmetric part adds a little weirdo effect that goes very well with my personality.

Note: I really love my hair. That is probably the only thing I am concerned about in my looks. I also take good care of my hair, no coloring, no extra treatments, just coconut oil, and shampoo. I also religiously wear a swim cap while swimming :)

Biryani

The last couple posts became a little serious, so I decided to lighten the mood (my mood, mainly) by writing about biryani. For those who don't know what this is, here is the Wikipedia link - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biryani

I am not going to tell you the history of this dish, neither am I going to write the recipe. Firstly, because this was my first attempt at cooking it and also because I can't write recipes (plus, this is not going to be a food blog). Here is an amazing step-by-step recipe that I followed - http://www.sharmisthadey.com/2014/10/kolkata-style-chicken-biryani/ If you follow the measurements and use the right spices, you would have a great pot of biryani too!

Dry roasted spices ready
for crushing

Basmati rice

Here's the story. I love to eat (though it doesn't show on me) and I figured out that if you know how to cook, it basically means you can eat whatever you want to, whenever you want! It is very empowering. I also don't understand why people think cooking is tough. It isn't. It is just like chemistry experiments. You add certain chemicals (spices) and they behave in certain expected ways to create an end result, which is (or should be) edible. That's all there is to it! I started treating recipes as instructions and followed them step-by-step, quite an easy task for my analytical brain, and figured out that cooking a new dish can boost one's self confidence a lot. Especially, if those are foods you have not eaten before, like French food for me. Even though I cook regularly and was getting more and more confident, I still had no idea how to cook biryani. But I love biryani. Then I searched, came across the above link and gave it a try yesterday. I realized certain things about biryani, and in the same way, about life.

Saffron strands in milk

Holy trinity - onion, garlic
(paste), ginger (paste)

People assume that biryani is a very rich dish, full of spices, ghee, and hard to digest combination of onion, garlic, and ginger. While it is true that all of those are indeed used, the end dish is way lighter than say, a spicy curry. Also, the flavor is more important than the taste. If the flavor doesn't seem (rather smell) right, you will lose your appetite. I kept on doing a smell check at regular intervals, and also after adding the spices, or after adding rose and keora water to make sure I am on the right track. Use of saffron is another vital thing. I have never seen saffron before, let alone use it. So when I put a few strands of saffron in warm milk yesterday and looked at the changing color of milk, I was amazed. I smelled and tasted that milk, oh, it was heavenly! It has become my most favorite spice now. Please don't use turmeric as a substitute of saffron ever, neither would it bring the delicate color, nor would the flavor be right. Also, turmeric will cover the flavor, or at least get in the way of the other spices.

The interesting part of the dish is about its subtlety. Like an aristocratic lady, who would never wear flashy or bright colored clothes, but would wear the choices diamonds, biryani doesn't have a color like curries, not does it have oil floating on top, chunks of onion, or worse still tomatoes sitting in a gravy. It has just the color imparted by saffron and a little bit by fried onions. The rice grains are all separate, you can pick them up individually if you want. It is a delicate dish made with the choicest spices and I was very happy with the end product.

PS: This was a dish cooked with ingredients from the world over. Basmati rice from India (or Pakistan), chicken and eggs from local Washington farms, Yukon gold potatoes from Canada, saffron from Spain, keora water from Arnab's local grocer at Calcutta, rose water from Morocco, and spices from all over South Asia!

Gender

This is the time of the Women's March in many cities within and outside the USA which is trying to bring women's issues in the forefront (sadly, though many women are ignorant about it and/or choosing to not support other women) and this is also when I was reading National Geographic's January issue, a special coverage on gender. There is one thing I learned, and that has opened the door to much more linked thinking, that is "gender is a spectrum". From time immemorial, we have known that gender is binary. Little kids know too that girls are supposed to play with dolls and boys with trucks and guns. Growing up, I did not have guns to play with. When I was eight, and my cousins little older, I remember our uncle giving us toys where my boy-cousin was given an electric circuit board with batteries and wires and my girl-cousin was given a mini-piano. It was normal thinking that a boy would love making those electric circuits, but ironically it has been the two girls in our family who became engineers and the one who got the electric circuit board didn't like anything technological, so that game was left at the back of his cupboard for years, only to be donated by his mom later.

Why do I like the idea that gender is a spectrum?
Because it has answered many questions I had about myself and many people around me.
If gender was binary, where would tomboys fit? What about those men who have a natural inclination towards make-up or dress designing? Our problem is that we have created boxes and we try to push and shove everyone in those boxes whether they fit in, or not. And, we try to make everyone's lives our business. We have decided that if you are a girl, you need to do certain things, like - be caring, gentle, pretty, not-so-smart (at least not smarter than your future husband), maternal (don't want kids? What kind of a woman are you?). Similarly, for boys, they - have to be strong (boys don't cry, right?), can be all rough and tumble, have to be the future breadwinner (stay at home dads are insulted, but stay at home moms are glorified). In the eastern context, there are more double standards. A girl has to be subservient and promptly make her in-laws place her home, but a boy would not go to his in-laws unless he is formally invited.

Let's try to make the world a better place for all.

These things are baseless. Let's get out of these stereotypes, and stop containing people in buckets. A person is first a human being and then anything else. Look at a kid as a unique person with his or her individual likes and dislikes. Figure out what he or she likes. Don't mould her choices based on your ideas, or worse still, society's expectations. There is a friend of mine who (and his wife) wanted to stop their daughter from getting in the pink madness. They intentionally chose a theme of blue and yellow for her birthday, but most of the guests brought pink colored gifts and some even wore pink clothes. Introduce them to all kids of toys. There is another person I know of who insisted that his daughter not change tires, because "some tasks are good to be left for men to do". My niece told me last year that she doesn't play cricket because at school the other kids said it is a boys' game. Her dad explained to her briefly, as much as possible to a five-year-old, that everyone can play cricket and there is nothing called a boys' game. Then this year we played cricket with her at home. She enjoyed it immensely! Take the moments when you can help bring some change, and do something. Even if it is a tiny thing at that time, it may have a big impact later.

Pic courtesy - Yana Das (From Womens' March in SF)

U. Ray and Sons

There are people who impact you quite directly with their ideas and teachings. In most cases they are our parents, close relatives, some teachers. It can also be friends, or older siblings/cousins. There are also a kind of people who impact us indirectly. The good thing about them is that, you don't have to share spacetime with them. For me, there have been innumerable people who have shaped my thoughts and plans, dreams and speech, but I have never met them. Like, Rabindranath, through his songs and poems have touched the hearts and minds of every person who loves Bengali. Swami Vivekananda has never ceased to believe in our strength even at times when we doubt ourselves. Netaji has shown how one man can build an army, Nazrul has imbibed in us the will to stand up even when we can't. Saratchandra, Saradindu, Narayan Ganguly, Syed Mujtaba Ali have enriched our lives with stories. Ashapurna has shown us our roots, which for one thing has helped me be even more grateful to Vidyasagar and Rammohan Roy. They have all done their parts, and they have all succeeded in bringing up a generation that put most emphasis on education and chose "plain living and high thinking". Now that generation is no more, the mall going, partying kind of people definitely have forgotten everything they could have been immensely proud of. But I am not writing about them, I am writing about me.

100 Garpar Road

Not a single day goes by where I have not read or thought or talked about these people I just mentioned. They are part of my life, they are part of my thoughts. However, even out of them, there is one family which has helped shape me holistically. That is the family of Upendra Kishore Ray Chaudhuri. Apart from the Tagores, I don't know of any other family where everyone was so talented. By everyone, I really do mean every single person. They could write, sing, paint, excelled in sports and studies, were pioneers in multiple aspects of the society. I think the Tagores were far more philosophical and hard to reach, but the Rays were more approachable, fun, and way more mortal. The best thing about them is probably the fun part, they all seemed to be enjoying life. It would be totally wrong to think that they had perfect lives, Upendra Kishore, Sukumar and quite a few of their relatives had a small lifespan but to think of their lives just as a count of years would be unjust. They gave us centuries of work and ideals even in their short lives. They tried to bring up young kids across Bengal who would be inquisitive, bright and would concentrate on building healthy bodies as well as healthy minds. The children's magazine "Sandesh" (meaning both news and a Bengali sweet) was created from this legendary press U.Ray and Sons that has brought up generations of children quite successfully. The various articles throughout a century have focused on science, literature, animals, history, mythology, biographies, science fiction, detective stories, riddles and puzzles, nonsense rhymes, kids' competitions for writing, painting, and even stories on film making. The able editors have translated many stories from across the world and have introduced Bengali kids to a whole wide world. It is through the pages of Sandesh that I was introduced to scientific articles about the Sun, about Orion, I read Greek and Norse mythology, and have laughed and laughed at the funny antics of Pagla Dashu (crazy Dashu) and his friends. Satyajit Ray introduced us to detective stories, but while telling us about the adventures of Felu-da and Topshe (who we all think of as our cousins) he taught us history, geography and instilled in us good habits of reading about a place before visiting it, of being responsible and not writing about something without doing your due diligence of researching about it, taught us the etymology and right pronunciations of innumerable English words, and has also taught us about strength of character all while engrossing us in those world class stories. Satyajit Ray has also introduced Bengali film to the world audience. His masterpieces - Pather Panchali, Sonar Kella, Joy Baba Felunath, Charulata, Mahanagar, Agantuk, Nayak, are still unparalleled.

Introduction to Satyajit Ray happens at a pretty early age, but I came to know Leela Majumder well in my late teens. She and I share a common bond as we are alumni of the same school. I read her "Kheror khata" and laughed. Even now when I am stuck for ideas to write a humorous speech for Toastmasters, I translate her anecdotes and repeat them. They can, even after decades, very easily make an international audience laugh. I read her cookbook like a fiction and it is hard for me to decide which I enjoy more - cooking, or just reading the book. Her cookbook, dedicated to all the girls of Bengal has been my most favorite cookbook ever. I like her style of writing and her choice of recipes. Same with her autobiographies - "Aar Konokhane" (written mainly for young readers) and "Paakdandi" (for adult readers), those books make me feel like she is sitting right in front of me and telling me those stories. Her writings have made Sukumar Ray (her older cousin, Satyajit Ray's father) take a human form and come alive. I can see Upendra Kishore coming up the stairs with the first copy of Sandesh straight from his press. I see them laughing and singing, Upendra Kishore showing little kids how to watch the moon with a telescope, them making up stories and drawing cartoons.

When I was young, I learned new things from these books. As I am growing older, I feel that they, through their own lives have shown us how to have a close knit family, how to bring up kids who are close to Nature, and how little people need to really have a happy life. It brings me back to Jerome K. Jerome's thought in Three Men in a Boat, that we need to get rid of the lumber of our lives that we pile up our tiny boat with. This family didn't have that lumber, that is why their boat was so easy to pull.

They have faced sorrow, the grave sadness of losing your loved ones at an early age, financial crisis that came with it and their lifelong love, Sandesh being discontinued as their press had to be sold. But they have left a legacy. That legacy lives amongst happy, inquisitive children, children who lose themselves in books, who write weird stories and create impossible experiments, those who love Nature and them who finally grow up to be happy, responsible, global citizens. We have got so much from people who didn't know us but loved us so much that they gave up all their time, money and energy to bring us up right. We just need to be grateful to them and keep the legacy intact.

The City of Joy

Churmur

I was taken on a trip to see the new parts of Calcutta, towards New Garia, where wide highways with multiple lanes are propping up, the well-lit roads have numerous modern high rises on both sides. The area is complete with supermarkets and the best part is the extension of the Calcutta Metro Railways to cover the southern, eastern and under-the-river channel. It is really great. A city has to move ahead to the future, and Calcutta, albeit after a long time, seems to be catching up. Since last time, I am seeing the city to be much better and cleaner like any decent city should be. The supermarkets are stacked with things like olive oil, bakeware, and toilet tissue, stuff which were not really available easily here in the Bengali areas. A ton of fancy restaurants have also come up. One doesn't need to go to Park Street for continental food any more. Steakhouses and pubs have become quite common and even though they don't really match the Bengali mindset, I think this is a part of globalization we will all have to come to terms with.

Fish fry

While on vacation from Seattle, the stuff I crave most are all available from the street hawkers in Gariahat. For some reason, I feel that Gariahat, with all the clothes, purses, mehndi, and household goods shops that you see on the street has more charm than even Champs Elysees. Here the hawkers at least still call me "didi". I prefer "didi" (elder sister) or even "mona" (a special term of endearment used for young girls, only by people originating from East Bengal) over the massively used "madam" these days, especially at the shopping malls. The phuchkawala in front of our house is still here and he still makes those heavenly mouth-watering phuchka and churmur. He remembers me and makes his usual joke of adding too much green chillies because he knows I don't eat spicy food.

Calcutta to me lives here in the woven cotton sarees, small cups of tea, jhaalmuri, and in the crowded buses. It is in the taste of fish, where the mustard paste is blended right, in the chocolate sandesh of Bhim Chandra Nag, in the smell that wafts in the moment you enter Nahoum's confectioners, and through those innumerable walks along noisy, crowded, and quite dirty streets that engulf you in a sense of warmth and belonging.