First it was Delhi, where I just shut myself up for the most part, hanging out with a closed group of friends, not venturing anywhere beyond was absolutely necessary. I know it was a knee-jerk reaction to the events of early 2004… wow, six years ago. But that’s what I did with my life. Pined for one boy, spent all day in the company of books and bookish girls, and I’m not saying it was a bad thing at all.. it’s just that I was letting go of myself, bit by bit… letting go of the girl I used to be.

No one would say I’d lost my touch in those days. I was still quite fiery, but even then, something within me was dying out. I remember those sultry summer afternoons when I would lie alone, singing the same songs over and over again, face down, twirling my slippers round n round on the floor, in sync with the song. I’d get bored and solve a Sudoku puzzle, I’d pick up a book to read, then back to same songs over and over again.

Cut to 2006. Stuck in a room with four other girls, two of whom were depressingly dirty, I still managed to keep myself from screaming and hurling obscenities every time I saw the muck.

Until in Ahmedabad, I had stopped by the roadside for the hundredth time that day, asking for directions to an elusive celebrity’s home. And I suddenly realized how nice I was being to the man who had waved me off without giving me directions. A few years ago, I would have bludgeoned the man or at least say something nasty so he’d have a rotten evening. But I was keeping my cool, not getting frustrated. That’s not who I used to be.

That’s not who I am. I keep things shelved away too long nowadays. I think twice before verbalizing anything I want – at least anything significantly different from the norm I want. Oh, I have no qualms in asking shamelessly for the fifteenth glass of water that I don’t wanna drag my sorry ass downstairs for. But if I want to go out and do something on my own, I think for days, weeks, before saying it out loud, before doing it, for fear of disrupting the easy inertia of routine we’ve fallen into.

Since I returned from Cambodia, I’ve been itching to shut myself up in a room and think and write all about the trip. But I haven’t done it, for fear of ruining a perfectly nothingless afternoon. I have held back too much. But I don’t feel like I can break free right now. Not until I feel secure, which I don’t, in Saigon. I pine for the company of family and friends, for the beauty of our home before. But I’m stubborn about not wanting to go back to India and we left our home because, despite the beauty, we decided to leave it.

I don’t really know where this rant is going, so I’m gonna just sign off for now, hoping that things won’t fall back into old routine, and I will find some way to break the monotony.

I need to start living my life again, on my terms. It’s not gonna be easy but it’ll kill a lot slower than suffocating in this sludge.

Sunset from our apartment in SJ

As I was growing up, and it wasn’t THAT long ago.. As I was growing up in the 90s in India, I always saw the sky studded with stars. I took them for granted. I never thought, then, of an eventuality where the stars would not sparkle any more.

In Guwahati, Patna, Ahmednagar, Dehradoon, Pune and Ferozepur.. the stars always shone.

And I missed them only when they were gone. I first noticed the starless skies in California, in San Jose, where the only thing in the sky is the moon. A bigass moon it used to be too. But strangely enough, no stars.

Of course it was the pollution in the SUV-ridden valley. The pollution made for glorious sunsets – pink, green, purple hues in the skies. And from our beautiful 9th floor apartment, we watched those sunsets every evening, marveling at myriad hues of light.

Until the sun dipped, and a lone star remained – all others too obscured by the same pollutants that catalysted the sunsets. We used to sleep watching the moon from our bedroom window. Through the clear glass, the moon sometimes looked so big it would fill up the entire window. But always, the absence of shimmering stars struck discordant, like the absence of seeds in watermelons (I never could get used to the seedless varieties).

And now, sitting on the roof in Saigon, gazing up at the skies, I see again the midnight gray skies, despairingly empty of any shimmer. Sometimes, on a really, really clear night, I can spot the tail of the Ursa Major. But it’s not enough.

The human race, as a whole, is culpable for the absence of stars in our lives. It’s as if the most beautiful citizens of the night have gone into self-exile, damning the human race with an impenetrable, opaque grayness.

I think, and I don’t know whether I’m right, but at this point of time in my life, I think, that it is really ‘every man for himself’. People must fend for themselves, and equally, we all must take the responsibility to do what’s best for us – for each one of us. Because what’s best for each one of us has to be best for the planet too. We have to fight the pollution, keep our running costs to a minimum, recycle and reuse, and move to the countryside if that’s what it takes to see the stars again.

I can’t wait to move to the countryside.

Vietnam is a country of salon services. Manicures and pedicures can cost as little as 10,000 dong (or 50 cents) each, feet cleaning costs about 60,000 dong ($3), hair cuts cost 40,000 dong ($2), and getting your nails done (which is a mani/pedi plus painting the nails with intricate designs) costs 25,000 dong ($1.25). Sure, these are your basic, hole-in-the-wall salon rates, but the services offered are at par with the $22 manicure I used to get at Rivermark Nails in Santa Clara. Mind you, all the staff was Vietnamese there too!

Now, why, in a country like this, does one need to scrimp on personal hygiene. I don’t believe there’s ever a reason to scrimp on personal hygiene, but really, in a country like Vietnam, where it’s so cheap to keep your feet fungus-free, and stink-free! I could post some pictures of disgusting feet, but I wouldn’t want you to be turned off, and I wouldn’t want to have ‘Happy Feet’ Google ads spamming my blog.

You have to consider the fact that for two years, while I was in the U.S. of A., I was quite cut off from the rest of humanity. You see, there were people, but they weren’t too close to me. Close enough for me to see, or smell, their dirty feet.

There were colleagues, in office, but I had a separate office of my own.. not just a cube, an office – a whole room to myself. There was an occasionally-occupied desk in the room, but the occasional-occupant was such eye-candy, and smelled so wonderfully of pine-nuts and Bailey’s! The rest of the colleagues had their own, separate offices. We ran into each other occasionally, but never in a space crunch, where I’d be forced to smell their feet. Or, see their feet. Even in the warm weather of California, we wore closed shoes to office. The air-conditioning on full blast in the summer never failed to remind me how cold it was gonna get in a few months.

And, before that, in India, I don’t remember any of my friends EVER, EVER taking a walk if their feet were the least bit dirty. Yes, I belong to the upper-middle class in India, a society in which women can afford and go for manicures and pedicures, thank goodness for that.

Then, why, oh-dear-god-why, do women in this country, not get pedicures when they desperately need them? It amazes me to see black sole upon black sole, blackened by the pollution and dust that envelopes Saigon, walking freely and uncaringly, clad only in flip-flops, and sometimes not even that (shame!).

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.

Anyway, with so much going on in my little brain, I really lost it at the driver in the car behind us in the parking lot at Ahmedabad airport. Baba came to pick us up and he had barely backed out from his parking spot when the driver behind us began honking at us. I turned around sharply and showed him the middle finger, and launched into a series of expletives. Pratik, being Pratik, told me to calm down… (as he continued to do through the rest of the India trip).

But really, I think there are some things people need to learn in life – like not honking the house, rather street, down, and not breaking the queue. Gosh, I lost my temper at a jackass who totally ignored the fact that Pratik and I were in line at a movie ticket counter. I really gave it to him, the obnoxious bastard. I should have punched him hard actually, to make sure he remembered never to go out of turn ever again in his life. He did offer an apology at the end (of a very loud tirade where I asked him whether he ever went to school and learned waiting in line.. haha), but a very ‘I’m a dude; you’re just another angry young woman.. shut the hell up,’ kinda apology.

UGh, Men.

A lot of Pratik’s school friends were in Ahmedabad when we were there, so we had a lot of rocking parties. One that stands out in memory is the one when Nupur puked all over the bathroom, Varun slapped me, Janak kissed me several times, Diya fretted over Janak, Varun launched into a monologue of some very serious expletives, Vikram tried to be the Maj. Vikram and control the outlaws, Gunjan wagged his tongue at every camera in sight, and everyone hugged everyone else like there was no tomorrow. That, incidentally, was also the first day I made Babganoush, and it was a huge huge hit. TO see my super simple Babaganoush recipe, click here. Twas a lot of fun.

Calcutta was great too. It was the last of the big Indian cities that I had not seen. A lot of people had warned about the craziness of the city, the population, the over-Bangaliness and all the rest, but honestly, I really liked the place. It is overpopulated but where in India is it not. The city is crazy.. but that goes with its history. It’s not Chandigarh which had an architectural plan before the first brick was laid. This is a city where the tram line runs in the middle of a busy road, and people must run to the very middle to get on the tram. It’s a city where the Metro is worse than the Mumbai locals, and the taxi drivers go to sleep in the middle of green signals at traffic intersections.

It’s nuts, but the city is cheap, the food is f-ing fantastic, and there’s culture, there’s life. It’s not a hostile city, and more people could communicate in English than in Delhi. P and I explored more Calcutta in a month than my parents did in 6 months. By the end of our trip, I was taking my mom out to show her the various markets I had discovered.

It was really much colder in Calcutta than I had expected it to be, and much of my nights were spent acclimatizing to the cold conditions (after Ahmedabad, and a warm summer in SJ).

Can’t remember anything else of particular interest that happened in the two months we were in India. Will update with another post when I do remember something.

Ever since I saw this picture of the Overseas Highway, I haven’t been able to shake off the feeling that my life depends on driving this route. Those magical blue waters have been calling out my name for heaven-knows-how-long. And I can’t wait to be there.

I know the pleasure of a road trip is in the journey itself. But for once, I just want to get t omy destination. Can’t wait to go snorkeling and maybe even diving. I’m not sure whether my back is up to it yet, but heck, I’m quite enthused to give it a shot.

We set off tomorrow from San Jose, and head to Los Angeles, where we’re staying with Pratik’s school buddy, Shantanu. We’ve done the LA thing before, so we’re just doing a sleepover there. With Shantanu, we’ll explore the glamorous Palm Springs Saturday morning, and then head to Phoenix, AZ. The plan in Phoenix is to take our Couchsurfer host, Karen’s suggestions and go hiking or exploring the city in the morning. Google tells me there are quite a few spectacular hikes around the city.

We’ll head to the Airplane Boneyard in Tucson later in the day which has more than 4000 retired, or mothballed (as I understand it’s called) military aircrafts. The satellite view of the Boneyard is fascinating, to say the least. Here’s a screenshot.
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We’ll hang out the rest of the evening in Tucson, with our host Jason and his son. We plan on going to the Colossal Caves near Tucson, unless Jason suggests something funner to do. I wouldn’t really mind not going to the Colossal Caves because we are going to explore Carlsbad Caverns the day after. Carlsbad is not really in our direct route but the pictures of the caverns are deadly beautiful, and I’ve always wanted to explore caves (ever since I read an Enid Blyton where the Five explore one with stalactites and stalagmites). I am claustrophobic, but hopefully the caverns will not have more than squeezable spaces.

We’re staying with a retired couple, Peter and Cathy, at Carlsbad. Actually, Peter is retired and he’ll hopefully join us at the Caverns. Tentatively, we’ll be staying in Carlsbad two nights because Peter suggested we take a whole day to explore the caves. But in case, we’re done with the caves sooner than noon (we plan on being there when the caves open), we’ll head east to San Antonio and stay with our host, Mike, who has a home right on Canyon Lake. I’m quite inclined to sleep out on the deck, if its warm enough. I so do hope it is! I love sleeping outdoors.

With Mike’s home being a few miles beyond San Antonio, we won’t really be exploring the city too much. We’ll probably soak in the sun and swim in the lake and have a lazy morning.

That afternoon, either Nov 4 or 5, depending how long we stick around in Carlsbad, we’ll head out to Austin. We haven’t found a host yet in Austin, and I wish I could stay with more than one of the people I’ve sent out CS requests to, because all the hosts in Austin seemed to be so so cool! Hope someone confirms by tomorrow, so I can go ahead and send out requests for New Orleans and Jacksonville too.

Austin sounds like a really great city, so we’re sticking around for two days. Pratik and I are just excited about Barton Springs, but I’m sure our hosts can suggest a hundred interesting things to do every day.

From Austin, we’ll head to New Orleans, a place I haven’t explored much. I hope to meet with Wilson, and get some suggestions of the best places to visit around town. It’s not going to be a long stay in New Orleans at all, because our drive fro Austin to New Orleans, and from New Orleans to Jacksonville, FL are both 9 hour drives. I know it’s not the best way to do it, but heck, we have a plane to catch back to India.

From Jacksonville, we’ll head to Miami, do some essential sighseeing, and then to Key West, where we’ll languish on the beaches for all its worth, snorkel in the blue waters forever, and get thoroughly sunburnt. Aaah, bliss
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Here’s our rough itinerary:

Cross Country Itinerary

Here’s some excerpts from the post. Sqcary…

So I was standing on the street corner checking my email with my iPod touch because I still don’t have the internet at my new house…someone must have circled around and seen me standing there. So he was waiting behind me and drove by me on the sidewalk, grabbed it out of my hand and I ran after him to try and catch up, but he managed to speed away with it in his hand. I was screaming at the top of my lungs down my street. Gone.

…after 3 months in this country I’ve already fallen victim to robbery from my hand, a taxi driver who tried to rip off my lap top (and charge me extra for the ride), and someone stealing my wallet at a market.

This quintessential simple rule to rocking writing has been drilled into every journalist living or dead, me included. It’s what makes for great news stories, shocking yellow journalism, and even the racy Shobhaa De columns. But, why would this rule so journalistic be applicable in the ESL world?

Because it works! Every friggin’ time.. Try it teaching letter writing, or paragraph writing, or essay writing, or note writing, or email writing (for all those fancy, big-buck business ESL teachers).

It’s the 5 Ws and One H rule from hell. I love it. It worked brilliantly the first time I used it in a formal letter writing lesson back in the days of St. Giles and the CELTA. And now, I use it all the time, in every kind of writing.

No writing lesson is ever complete without referring to the baap of all writing rules.

The 5 Ws and One H

W – Who
W – What
W – Why
W – Where
W – When
H – How

Think about it. If students can answer those 6 questions every time you ask them to write a letter to their friend, won’t you be super-pleased (for some strange reason, I’m reading that sentence over in the Kentucky accent of a woman I know, and it sounds de-liiight-ful).

Explain to your students how important it is for them to give there readers a complete sense of the subject they are writing about. To do that, fully and completely, the reader needs to know the six most essential things about the subject/topic. Who, what, why, where, when, and how.

Let me know if anyone else has tried this in ESL classrooms, and does it work for you?

Tucked away in a back alley full of seedy inns and lodges, this one was refreshing. It’s just two blocks from the bustling main street of South Lake Tahoe, where all the restaurants, shopping, music, and casinos are. The bright green, brand new signage – which first drew us to this hotel – stands out on a street full of yellowed ones. The place looked quite new. Our room was nice, had a TV, coffee pot, wine stems and a chilling bucket (no ice though, no wine either) and the bed was comfy.. so comfy that we spent a lot of time in it

For once, we made sure we had an early start from home (or hotel, as we’re now staying at the Homestead in Sunnyvale). I was super-worried about traffic all along, it being the beginning of a long weekend, and don’t we all know what happens on the route from Bay Area to Tahoe on all weekends! We were on the freeway by 7.30ish.. super early for us, since we’re weekday 10 o’clock wake-uppers. That helped, and we cut the usual 4 hour drive time by an hour and arrived in Tahoe, cruising at 75 mph all the way, around 10.30ish.

I had mock-booked a hotel the Friday before (just in case) (gave them the debit card number minus 5 plus 4 to reserve a room) and it was on this same street but it looked way too depressing for us to even venture in. We walked around, evaluating a few other equally shady looking hotels and settled on this one.. The only disappointment was the pool – they have one but it was swimming with leaves and bark of the eucalyptus above. No issues.. since the lake was just a couple blocks away anyway.

They let us check-in right when we arrived, though the regular check-in time was 3 pm. Score. The shower was awesome. I love the pins-n-needles feeling of sharp jets of water on my back and I had just that. I was in there for a while after bubblegum left. We headed out around lunch time and found just about the most crowded lakeside restaurant possible. It was right next to the Lakeside Marina, gosh, can’t remember what it was called.

Googled it. Internet connection’s super slow here. Will fill in this _________ when the connection fires up again. ___Lakeside Beach Grill and Marina___

Yeah, so it was the most crowded restaurant and we saw just one wild-haired woman/man (pony tail, hawaiian shirt and shorts, no boobs, guess who) taking orders. Two reminders, some fretting, and half an hour later, we hadn’t seen either sangria or sandwiches.

Two blocks back to the hotel, a half hour later, we headed two blocks in the other direction.. towards the main street. Found a charming little restaurant called the Driftwood Cafe. Isn’t it a lovely name for a cafe? And they had driftwood, starfish, ships-in-bottles and all sorts of Blyton-ish paraphernalia hanging around.

The menu looked tame – the regular sandwich-salad cafe – until I spotted something unfamiliar. Escargot. Sounded like fish, and the description was nice. Served with green onions, garlic and butter. It turned out to be snails. Before the waitress could finish saying ‘Snails’, I said ‘Yes.’ I’ve dreamed of eating snails since I read a Three Investigators (Mystery of the Two-Toed Pigeon, I believe) way back when I was 12/13.

And the snails were purrfecto. I hated that they were swimming in butter, and that the butter had all the green onions and garlic mush in it. So if I wanted the good mush, I had to drink some of that ugly melted butter. But the snails more than made up for it. Yum.

We walked about a mile after to work that butter off my round-n-shiny belly. Found a shady nook of a beach and parked ourselves. The view was breathtaking and the sun made us barmy. We took a little nap right there on the beach before heading back to the hotel. With some beer, baby carrots and spinach parmesan dip, we were set for the night.

Unfortunately, we had some very loud neighbors the next morning, and woke up unnaturally early for having had such a late night. We took the day to drive all around the lake, about a 72 mile loop. When choohe in the tummy beckoned, we found a rustic cafe that served watermelon shake (oh, if only we’d known it would come with milk.. ack) and grilled chicken pesto sandwich (can’t go wrong with that, eh).

The water in Tahoe is simply stunning.. the blue is emerald like in postcards. The sailboats and private piers are as picture-perfect as possible. Rippling around my ankles, the early September water felt cold but not chilly as you’d expect so far up north here. In fact, we saw a lot of women peeling their clothes on the beach, and propping themselves up on ashy elbows. A lot of kids were in the water, splashing around and wobbling on the smooth stones at the lake’s bottom.

We hit the casinos that night. Blew $2. We’d learned our lesson back in Vegas last October. This time, we were here just for the cocktails. Unfortunately, Harrah’s, Harvey’s and Montbleu didn’t seem to be giving out free cocktails, at least not to those of us wandering around the penny slots. Sigh, w/e.. Too bad we had to shell out for beer and cocktails in a casino! Vegas, heart you for saving us booze money.

Kayaking was the only thing on our agenda the last morning of our weekend. By the time we got down to the water though, it was already quite late and we could only rent the kayak for an hour. Also, we had to sign a stupid form saying we wouldn’t venture deeper than 200 feet off the shore, and when we got 200 feet off the shore, the water still just about as deep as half my shin. We could actually stick the paddles to the stony bottom and push the kayak forward, it was that shallow. Disappointed, we kayaked far west at least a mile beyond the beach where we’d started off. At least we could go into deeper waters without being spied on.

It was already 1.30 when we got back to the hotel, two hours after regular check-out time. We took a quick shower, packed up and went down to the reception to leave the keys, only to find a notice saying we should leave the keys in the room. Cool, we took off just as the sun was beginning to warm the morning chill away.

Predictably, there was a lot of traffic all along US-50. We picked up a cute Argentinian hitchhiker on the way, which helped pass the time, not just coz he was really cute but coz he was smart and a great conversationalist. So a regular 4 hour drive took us about 6 hours on our way back, thanks to the traffic. And we stopped at Arup’s swanky new apartment in Pleasanton to say hello. Made impromptu plans for a swim, rushed to JC Penney for a swimsuit, and swam a little.

Arup promised us dinner but then backed out, crazy fella. We had tacos at Taco Bell past midnight on our way home.

Fun weekend, I tell ya.