Well, considering I’m not doing much with it anyway, and it is slipping away from me for lack of practice.

I really don’t mind doing a language exchange with people who want to learn Hindi. At the very least, you could learn a few useful phrases for when you’re traveling in India, and I will not forget them.

Sad state of affairs, especially because I used to be a Hindi topper in school (if any school buddies are reading this, remember you have no right to dispute anything on this blog.. I know too many of your dark secrets. grrr..)

Both P and I have noticed a sharp decline in our usage of Hindi in the last year or so but the beast has been rearing its ugly fangs once too often in the last month. We’ve always been more comfortable conversing in english, reserving our depleting hindi vocabulary for rainy moments, i.e. when we need to communicate secretly in the presence of non-Hindi speakers. But then, you can easily get away with speedy Hinglish too. Read More…

1 Comment | In: India, Vietnam | | #

This was a really, really simple Babaganoush recipe that was a major hit at P’s school reunion/drunken night party.

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No Comments | In: India, Recipes | | #

So the cross-country road trip is long over.

And if there have been no updates since, it’s because life been a long series of habitual nothingness.

In the time since the road trip, mid-Nov through mid-Jan, P and I were in India… chilling our butts off, if there is such an expression.

It was sort of sad leaving the States, leaving the life we had established for ourselves – a life that was just the two of us. It had nothing to do with leaving ‘the States’, which to most Indians at least, is like committing monetary suicide.

It was about leaving the home we had pieced together with curtains and cushions and vases and Ikea goodies. It was about the $60 bed we loved so much and were so proud of. It was about the $4k car that we pinched pennies to pay off. It was about the experience of driving away for weekends, driving to SF after a boring two weeks in San Jose, it was craving Indian kebab and heading to Zafran every few days. It was about having Smithwicks on tap at O’Flaherty and requesting pecans in every salad. It was about dropping Pratik to work and meeting him for lunch and then picking him up in the evening. Well, it was a weeny bit of a heartbreak leaving our lives and knowing that we will probably not return to it.

And, there were the butterflies, Vietnamese butterflies, in my tummy. We realized when we moved to the States that moving to a new country was not as easy as it sounds. There’s a ton of stuff that one must unlearn and a ton more to relearn.

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No Comments | In: India, Mimetic Musings | | #

This is the home I want to live in, all my life, beginning asap.

http://www.oprah.com/media/20091021-tows-stine-home-tour

Oprah toured this totally-enviable home in Copenhagen. I think this woman must be rich to afford such a wonderful home. And I love how clutter-free it is. I’m sure all those anti-clutter and home-organizing bloggers and flockr groups will inundate this woman with requests to feature her home in their virtual space.

For starters, I’m going to get that green into Pratik’s bedroom in Ahmedabad. He has these pale green walls all around right now. And truth to tell, I find it very tame. This time, we’re throwing some color on those walls!! Haha.. here’s a look at his room right now..

Do you see what I mean? I don’t know why I look so scared in this pic, I don’t ususally do. I love the best in Pratik’s home. It’s low, and classy. We need more space in that room too. Gonna spend some time working at it, this time around. Dang, wish we had Ikea in India

No Comments | In: India | | #

To everyone who thinks, I bungled up with the headline, think again.

Indian media is as far from emerging from the stone age as it could possibly be. And I am not just talking about the quality of stories on India TV and Aaj Tak. Really, there’s very little the Indian media seems to be learning from the doom in the West. If I may proclaim so, the recession has hit the traditional media industry the hardest of all. It’s not mere budget cuts that are affecting media persons.

The media in the West is turning over and d.y.i.n.g. Newspapers, TV channels and radio are laying off journalists left, right and center. News spaces are shrinking as advertising disappears.

So what are the smarty pants up to? Hell, they’re moving operations online. Last week, Seattle Post-Intelligencer switched off its printers and moved all editorial to the web. With the PI gone, Seattle is on its way to becoming the first newspaper-less city in the world (of course there are the backyards of Africa and Asia where people have never seen newspapers but who cares about them anyway).

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1 Comment | In: India | tags: aaj tak, backyards, budget cuts, center news, doom, india tv, indian express, indian infrastructure, indian news, journalists, media persons, newspapers tv, pi, recession, seattle post intelligencer, smarty pants, stone age, swastik, tv channels, twitter. | #

Delhi. For the longest time, I couldn’t wait to get away. Now, I am away and can’t wait for the airplane to touch down in dear old, dreadful Delhi.

People argue passionately that Delhi is characterized by contradictions of wealth. But to me, the supreme contradiction lies in the seasons that inevitably become the subject of frustrated conversations.

Summer for the sweaty millions is torturous anywhere in India but Delhi has the most sweltering summer of all.

Hordes of people scramble for every patch of sinewy shade. The parched lips of child beggars open in an eternal cry for ‘paisa’. The rich cool themselves in their air-conditioned cars and air-conditioned homes and air-conditioned restaurants. Groups of lanky teenagers in unbuttoned shirts whistle at girls passing by; the girls gaze downwards, pulling their prickly synthetic dupattas closer to their bare necks. Couples crouch behind bushes in the overgrown gardens of Humayun’s tomb (a UNESCO World Heritage Center), touching urgently, knowing the only spies here are the pitiable eunuchs begging for money. At night, the newly weds throng to India Gate to cool themselves with neon ice-lollies and gaze at the shimmering lights of Rashtrapati Bhavan (the President’s mansion).

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No Comments | In: India | tags: delhi, heat, humayun's tomb, India, momos, summer, weddings, winter. | #

It was not a sleepless night I spent the day after my interview for the Indian Express. But the three times I woke up on that hard hotel bed, I murmured to myself…’Indian Express, Ahmedabad’. That’s how much I wanted this job. That’s how much I wanted to be here, of all papers, of all bureaus. Ahmedabad kicked off my career. All this city meant to me before I came here was the ’suspended-in-the-air-tap’ fountain I had seen in a photograph in India Today years ago. And of course, it also meant I wouldn’t have to depend on my parents for my monthly (ahem) extravagances.

And then I came here. To work, finally. Done with studying for a bit. Time to do something I loved doing. Letting my curiosity loose. Sniffing out stories by the wayside, in anesthetized hospital corridors, in flooded villages and barren ones.

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No Comments | In: India | tags: adrenaline, ahmedabad, air tap, apointment, curiosity, daily dose, evenings, footpath, hospital corridors, hotel bed, india today, indian express, kick ass job, onlookers, pothole, rainwater, scooty, sleepless night, three times, wayside. | #