Category: Home

An airplane mode for iPhones and I

As someone who’s lived away from home since the age of 17, I’ve spent a significant amount of time traveling to and from home. When I was in college, it used to be 15-hour overnight bus journeys or 20-hour train rides. Then I moved to the US about 8 years ago, and since then it’s been 20-plus hours of air travel each time I want to go home.

I find that whenever I’ve taken these long international flights, I don’t just put my mobile devices into airplane mode – I put myself as well. This is particularly true when I’m flying from India back to the US.

Do you know what I’m talking about? Is this a common first-generation immigrant phenomenon? Picture this: you spend months, if not years on end, thousands of miles away from your family. You get to visit home once a year, if you’re lucky – given the state of the world right now, it’s easily two to three years without seeing home. So when you finally get to make a trip home and get a few precious weeks with your people – before you know it, it’s time to leave, and you are swamped with a ton of powerful emotions. The millions of goodbyes you have to say. The sheer number of love and blessings and good wishes you carry with you. The amount of love is just overwhelming, like a cocoon surrounding you. And you never want to leave. The last few minutes at the departure terminal curb – saying goodbye to your parents, not knowing when you’ll see them next. The double-barreled swords of visa and COVID restrictions you’ll have to navigate to see your family again. Meanwhile, the other parts of your heart are tugging you the other way. Your husband of just over six months, whom you can’t really bear to be separated from. Your friends, who you see even less of, now that you have moved to a different city. Your independence, the life you painstakingly built for yourself from scratch – it all beckons. And so your heart is torn, yearning for all your loved ones to be at the same place, longing to be whole again. But that can only be done if they all collect in one room together. And given everything going on at the moment, it has been impossible to bring everyone together, not even for your wedding. And so the heart has no choice but to remain forever yearning, forever incomplete, forever aching.

And because you cannot afford to fully experience all those feelings when you’ve just reached the airport and have a 30-hour journey ahead – you turn off the signal, you go numb. You go into your airplane mode. You purposely put some distance between yourself and your emotions – and instead focus on the next step. You worry about your luggage being overweight. You sigh at the serpentine security queues. You fumble to take off your shoes and your jacket and your work laptop and your personal laptop and your kindle and your phone, and put them all in a tray without bumping into others or dropping something. You keep all your documents ready for the immigration counter. You glare at the idiots who don’t wear their masks properly; the very sight of exposed nostrils irritates you these days. You worry about reclaiming your baggage at the claim – visions of just standing at the carousel with the merry-go-round turning endlessly, delivering everyone’s bags but yours flood your brain. You hope that a freak storm doesn’t delay your flight – if it did, you’d have to rebook your connecting flights, painfully redo your PCR test, and pray to the universe that you haven’t caught the virus at some point during travel. You focus on getting through your journey with minimum hassle – because that is all that you can deal with at this point. Just trying to keep track of night and day, what time zone you’re in, what country you’re flying above – because you can’t deal with the painful emotions. If you let yourself feel them, you wouldn’t get on the plane in the first place. You’d be bawling your eyes out in the serpentine security queue, making it even harder for the agents to match your face to your already unrecognizable passport photo. You would be so sad, so broken up to be on a long unending flight, each minute taking you a mile further away from home – you couldn’t face it.

And so you activate your airplane mode when you’re flying. It’s not just for devices, you see.

Of Races, Fights, and Cheekbones Exposed

I start pedaling so rapidly that my feet are a blur, and the wind is hitting my face hard enough to force tears out of the corners of my eyes. But this still isn’t fast enough. I lean forward, lower, closer to the handlebar with laser-sharp focus. The road is clear and open in front of me, the scooter’s roar is still somewhere behind me. My breath is escaping in short gasps and pants, and I am now just two streets away from winning. I can almost taste the victory! But suddenly, the roar of the scooter sounds much louder, and I quickly glance over my shoulder to check how close it is. Big mistake.

I’ve always been a very careful person. I’m over-cautious and self-preserving, and this has been evident since I was a child. I never had to get stitches, barely ever got hurt, avoided confrontation of all kinds, and never got into fights. While I did play on the streets every evening, and cycle around the colony to get everywhere, I was always careful, non-aggressive and very peaceful.

However, this photo tells a different tale:

karate kid

 

That’s me, barely 7 years old. Notice the karate uniform. The medal around my neck. And the gaping wound on my right cheek.

Did I get into a fight? Yes, I did. Did I win a medal? Yes, I did. Did I sustain a wound during this fight? Nope, that was a much too respectable way to sustain an injury.

Every time I look at this photo, the memory of how I ended up in such a state is so vivid that it’s like flipping over a Time-Turner. If I close my eyes and take a deep breath, I can almost feel myself whooshing back in time, and as the clock hands race backwards and the calendar pages flip back page over page: we travel back to a time almost exactly 21 years ago, and to a place halfway across the world back in India …

… And BAM. I am 7 years old. I am in the second grade, and loving it. I ride my bicycle to school every day. One fine afternoon I am invited over to my mom’s friend’s place for lunch. I love this woman to no end – she is my version of a fairy godmother. This fateful afternoon, she has invited us over for lunch. My mom is going to bring my baby brother (then just over a year old) to her place, and I am told to come to her house straight from school, instead of going home.

We have a lovely lunch, and at the end of it, mom and I head out to go home. Normally she takes both me and Kiddo on her scooter, but in this case, while she has her scooter, I still have to ride my bicycle home. It isn’t very far – all I have to do is ride straight down the main road (which has a bit of a slope I enjoy freewheeling down) and take a left at my row of houses. Mom says I should head out while she is saying her goodbyes, and this makes sense to me because her scooter is so fast that she will overtake me and my bike in no time.

And so I wave, settle down on my bike, and set off. I reach the main road pretty quickly, and happily start wheeling down the slope. The road is wide open, and completely empty – it is my road. The wind is whistling in my ears, my hair is flying like some sort of birds’ nest on top of my head, and my heart is pounding away in my chest with the sheer exhilaration of going downhill.

In the middle of this, I suddenly hear the distant but distinctive roar of my mom’s scooter starting up. She and Kiddo are on their way! They are still far behind, but will catch up in no time. It is a pity that scooters can go so much faster than bicycles. Or… wait! What if I pedal really, really hard? I already have a head start! Maybe if I go very very fast, I will reach home first and win! Alright then, the race is ON!

So I speed up even more. With sharp bursts of adrenaline pumping through my system, I start pedaling so rapidly that my feet are a blur, and the wind is hitting my face hard enough to force tears out of the corners of my eyes. But this still isn’t fast enough. I lean forward, lower, closer to the handlebar with laser-sharp focus. The road is clear and open in front of me, the scooter’s roar is still somewhere behind me. My breath is escaping in short gasps and pants, and I am now just two streets away from winning. I can almost taste the victory! But suddenly, the roar of the scooter sounds much louder, and I quickly glance over my shoulder to check how close it is. Big mistake. That split-second loss in concentration is enough for my bike to start wobbling. I am going fast, really really fast, and now the handlebar is suddenly vibrating. I squeeze the bars even tighter, trying to wrestle back control from the bike, but it is a losing battle, and a nanosecond before I crash, there is a moment where I register the tiny bits of gravel spilled over on that patch of road, the alarming weaving of my handlebar, and the wind, which is now whistling in my ear, ‘too fast, too fast’… and with a final shudder, the front wheel of my cycle draws a mighty arc, and the bike and I crash onto the gravel-encrusted road.

For a minute, everything goes silent. I lay there, stunned and stung. I have lost. Lost control of the bike, lost the race. My hands are still clutching the handlebar of my now horizontal cycle. I seem to be scratched in more places than I can mentally inventory. And then… the welcome roar of my mom’s scooter fills me with relief. Mommy is here! I am going to be just fine.

I am rushed to the dispensary, my cuts and scrapes are cleaned. Most of them are superficial, except for a giant gash on my cheek. It appears as if all the flesh has been scraped off my right cheek, and the nurses are alarmed to see white bone through all the bleeding. Yes, my cheekbone is now visible and exposed to the world. I am given a quick tetanus shot, and am rushed to the ambulance to be taken to the nearby hospital because this is serious, and I require an X-ray. A momentous event indeed – almost all regular ailments are handled at the dispensary, but if they are taking out the ambulance for me, my injuries must be quite significant indeed. I am bemused, yes, but also feeling a sense of importance because they let me ride the ambulance up front. My poor mother has to deal with this whole situation on her own, as this happens to be the very weekend my dad is out of town for work.

A few hours later, I have been diagnosed with no broken bones. I only have a surface injury on my cheek, and I am lucky my eyes weren’t hurt. A family friend picks us up from the hospital and takes us home – where I am generally made a fuss of. I am quite fascinated and take to eyeing my (still barely visible) cheekbone every time I pass a shiny surface. My recovery is fast, and my face is healing nicely.

Three days later, my karate instructor drops by to inform us of a karate competition starting just then. He wants all of his students to participate. My parents tell him that I am already injured, but he explains that it will be a very basic fight, I only have to fight another girl at my skill level, and even if I lose, I will still get a medal. Ten minutes later, I am all dressed up in my karate uniform. My instructor drives me to the competition. I fight another girl, not very well – I lose the fight, but win a silver medal.

There is an award ceremony later in the evening, and some official shakes my hand and puts a medal around my neck. I am quite proud of myself. Even if it is more of a participation award. I might have lost control of my bike. Lost the race with mom. Lost the karate fight. But I have won a medal, and today, I feel like a winner!

Of Childhood, Chicken Pox, and Camaraderie

Falling sick is the most miserable feeling ever. I recently had a nasty bout of cold, along with a sore throat and fever. It wasn’t debilitating in the least, but highly annoying and inconvenient. After spending a whole day in bed, making myself hot tea and soup, fetching medicine, and gargling with salt water (ugh!) – I was sick of being sick, and promptly resumed my daily activities, to hell with the illness.

But while I was complaining about how awful it is to feel sick, and how I’ve always hated it when my body has let me down, I realized that this wasn’t exactly true. Illness is only horrid when you’re a strong, independent woman living alone, and have nobody to fuss over you, plump your pillows, and feed you soup. Sure, I have people who’d fuss over me over text and chat, but unfortunately almost all of them are far away. The worst part of being sick isn’t the illness itself, but the fact that you’re in charge of dealing with it, treating it, and fixing it. Nobody else will set up your doctor’s appointments. Nobody else will check your temperature every few hours. Nobody will ruffle your hair and bring you hot khichadi from the kitchen, unless you specifically decide to swallow your pride and ask your friends to come over and babysit you. Being a sick adult is horrid, however – as far as I can recall, being a sick child was rather enjoyable. My memories might be tinged with nostalgia, but childhood sicknesses always seemed to involve happy events such as getting time off from school, and being taken care of by mom.

One of my fondest memories of being sick is from the summer of 2002. I’d just finished class 6, and was all set to enjoy my two-month-long summer vacation. Two whole months of lazy afternoons in front of the water cooler, eating juicy mangoes, reading a ton of books, and playing Boggle with my friends. This particular summer was made even more thrilling by the fact that two of my favorite cousins were coming over to stay. My kid brother and I were wildly excited. When our visitors finally arrived, we made a happy foursome – Kiddo and I, and both cousins. One of the cousins was a total bookworm, and she and I engaged in friendly competition to read the maximum number of books per day. We drove my parents nuts by talking about Harry Potter day in and day out – after a point we were banned from talking any more about it. Our creative workaround was coming up with a whole lexicon of code words for every single character, location and event at Hogwarts (yes, my Pottermania started quite early). The other, more gregarious cousin, got along fantastically well with Kiddo, who was just 6 years old at that point. Together, we all laughed and teased, took turns at playing non-stop RoadRash on the computer, went to parks, and even had a midnight feast in the middle of the night, Enid Blyton-style, which was super fun to do in secret, but in retrospect I’m fairly sure my parents were aware of all the whispered giggles and clanging of steel utensils in the night!

This idyllic nature of our summer was sorely tested by a sudden and unexpected rash of chicken pox. One of the cousins developed it, presumably after having being exposed to the virus on her train journey, and exactly two weeks after that, my brother and I fell prey to it. The other cousin had enviable immunity, having already had it as a baby. While chicken pox certainly threw a wrench in the proceedings, that summer still went on to be one of the most memorable vacations I have ever had. Yes, the rashes were gross and painful, and quickly transitioned to itchy. Yes, we had to drink a horrible concoction of some herbal remedy, which was supposed to help generate more poxes, and develop lifetime immunity. Yes, we were all quarantined and restricted to the house, and couldn’t see any of our friends. And yes, my poor mother had to take care of sick kid after sick kid all summer. But honestly? For us kids, we had all the companionship we needed, and after the initial fever and shock wore off, we would try to out-compete each other – with who had the weirdest-shaped rashes, and what was the most effective way to lessen the gag reflex after a dose of foul-tasting medicine (crunching a giant spoonful of sugar right after gulping down the medicine seemed to work best).

Eventually my cousin stopped being contagious, and they both left – leaving Kiddo and I alone and still quarantined. Now of course until this point the two of us had gotten along well – we had our occasional brother-sister spats, but were quite fond of each other. However, that month, that summer – was when we transitioned from mere siblings to good friends. Chicken pox left us solely in each other’s company – we couldn’t see any of our friends who were steadily returning from their own vacations at grandparents’ and other assorted relatives’ homes. School wasn’t in session yet, and even if it had, we’d probably have to stay home to prevent infecting our classmates anyway. So it ended up being just Kiddo and I, all day, every day – and it was all kinds of fun. I read out books to him (not surprisingly, a lot of Harry Potter), we played all kinds of games together, and we ended up becoming really close companions. Not to say that we weren’t absolutely thrilled to finally be declared non-contagious, and to get out to see other people – but that was the transition point in our relationship.

Today I consider my brother to be one of my closest friends. He’s an incredibly funny and sarcastic narrator, and our stockpile of inside jokes grows by the day. But aside from all the hilarity, I am routinely surprised at how thoughtful he can be, and at the impassioned discussions we end up having. His perspective and his thoughts are well-articulated, and I sometimes have to do a double-take because all my interactions with him are also superimposed by memories of him as a naughty 3-year old child hiding all my school supplies when I was running late. Kiddo as a child was great, but Kiddo as an adult is pretty awesome as well. This is the one person I have known since the day he was born, and I know that no matter where I am or what I’m doing, he’s got my back – and I’ve got his. Here’s to you, Kiddo – my brother, my confidant, my friend. I’m so proud of you!