Make-Up Parking

by
NINAD JOG

Everyday's story differs in the details, but the outcome is almost always the same, and thankfully so.

As I drove along the side street near my office earlier this morning, the free street parking appeared to be full. But I noticed a large Honda car nestled in one of the spots -- noticed it because its lights were on, which probably meant it was about to leave or had just arrived. I slowed down and pulled alongside it.

The driver, a middle-aged woman with her long hair covering half her face, noticed me even though she was preoccupied doing her makeup, and waved me away. I drove on. Mighty kind of her to give me a heads-up, I thought, or else I'd have waited for who knows how long, hoping she would vacate the spot.

On second thoughts I could see that she had just arrived, because from what I've observed, women often do their make-up when they arrive at their workplace, not when they leave home. Besides, her car had Maryland tags, and the very fact that she had parked on a street in Virginia suggested that she had arrived at work. And oh, it must've been dark when she left her home in Maryland, which explained why her car's lights were on in broad daylight.

(Maybe I should try my hand at being a detective. I might succeed beyond anyone's wildest dreams.)

My only hope of finding free parking now lay in the school parking lot across the street. But a quick glance told me it was full. Every spot was taken, now that the snow from the blizzard of two weeks ago had melted and freed up the three spots it had occupied.

But I turned into the lot anyway, just to make a three-point turn in the lot to turn back. I could've made a U-turn on the street instead, as there's no divider, and my car can make tight turns, being small. Besides, on occasion, a spot in the school parking lot has opened up after I made the three-point turn and got ready to leave the lot, making it worthwhile to venture there in the first place.

But today I had no such luck. The lot continued to be packed with cars and woefully bereft of people. It was not going to be a lucky day. I resigned myself to parking in the garage under my office building, paying the $8 in parking charges, an amount that seems heftier with each passing day.

As I left the lot and drove back along the side street, my gaze wandered to the other side of the street. And lo and behold - there was a big hole in the free parking spots. So big that an elephant could have sat in it if it wanted to.

I could scarcely believe my eyes. The woman who had waved me away, so urgently, so ungraciously, so unseemingly, just moments ago, had vanished without a trace -- along with her make-up kit, and more importantly, her car.

At that point my mind switched to auto-pilot mode. My car didn't hesitate before making an immediate U-turn in the middle of the street. Safety be damned. Parallel parking was a breeze. Venturing into the school parking lot even when it was full did have its rewards. The day did not get off to a bad start after all.

(p.s. I should not try my hand at being a detective. I'll get caught on the wrong foot, and I will fail miserably. That much I can guarantee.)

Together We Enter, Together We Leave

by NINAD JOG

When I booked a flight from Dalat for me and my friend, I had implicitly assumed that we would be assigned seats next to each other. But imagine my surprise, not to mention dismay, when his boarding pass said 29G and mine said 29E.

Clearly, he had a window seat and I an aisle. How could the airline have made so callous a mistake, such egregious an error? Hadn't we booked two seats under the same reservation? And which passenger, in his right mind, would knowingly choose a middle seat and sit smack dab between us? What had kept him from choosing a window or an aisle?

I confided in my friend my misgivings, but he was not too concerned – a reaction that, oddly enough, reduced my agitation and calmed me down.

All was not lost. At least we would be sitting in the same row on the same side of the aisle. He would look out the window at the inky blackness and the clouds and the unfolding city lights, while I would lose myself in a book, trying my best not to get distracted by the hurly-burly of passengers heading to and from the toilets and the attendants serving drinks and checking our seat belts for the umpteenth time. Besides, the flight would be a short one, no more than an hour, and before we knew it, we’d be on the ground in Ho Chi Minh City.

Yet I couldn't help feeling cheated. I longed to sit next to my friend, not only because he had gone to such great lengths to make my first-ever trip to Vietnam a stunning success, but also because it would be his first flight. I wanted to whisper in his ear what little I knew about the minutiae of flying: the plane is pushing back from the gate, it's taxiing, it's waiting in line for take-off, it's taking off, it has reached cruising altitude, it has started descending.

But above all, I wanted to sit by his side and comfort him, reassure him, if he got scared when the plane picked up speed while taking off, or shook when it hit a wall of clouds or bumbled into an invisible pocket of turbulence, or bumped violently when it landed – events that had scared the daylights out of me when I took one of my first flights, from Mumbai to Goa, over three decades ago, towards the end of my teenage years.

Of course there was another possibility that would let us sit next to each other on that day, my penultimate day in Vietnam. What if the plane became narrower in the back, as many airplanes do, and there was no room for the middle seat? My friend would get his window, and I my aisle, and we'd still be sitting next to each other. But an Airbus 330 doesn't narrow down to such an extent, and even if it did, our seats were not in the back of the aircraft, although they were closer to the rear than the front.

But this possibility did not strike me. Which was just as well, for if it had, it would have offered a glimmer of false hope, a momentary one, before being snatched away by disappointment.

Then I had an epiphany. All I had to do was swap seats with the intruder in our midst. Of course any passenger in his right mind would relinquish his middle seat in a heartbeat for an aisle. How could this simple solution have eluded me? Why, oh why, had I agonized over something so trivial?

Boarding time came and went, but there was no sign of the plane at the gate. Maybe it was there but we couldn't see it in the dark. Oddly enough, the flight had two flight numbers, even though it was not code shared with another airline. Both flight numbers were for Vietnam Airlines flights, something I had never seen before. Even more strangely, the flight had two boarding gates, one for the flight with one number, and the other for the other. First the odd seat numbers, and now the odd flight numbers. Things were getting curiouser and curiouser.

To all intents and purposes it appeared to be a full flight. Throngs of Koreans milled about in the waiting area, talking excitedly to each other. The Europeans were more sedate, as were the Vietnamese and other Asians. I looked for Indian faces, but in vain, and unsurprisingly so.

When our gate opened a quarter of an hour after boarding time, one of the many secrets was revealed. We hadn't been seeing things when we didn't see the plane; it was indeed absent. It was parked not at the gate but a short way away on the tarmac. Which was understandable, as Dalat's airport was a small one. And gleaming in the darkness were two flights of stairs, one in the front and the other in the rear.

We entered the plane through the rear door, unlike most of the other passengers who were fixated to the front door like bugs to a glowing lamp.

And lo and behold, another surprise was in store. There were two passengers in our row – a man and a woman, elderly, European, sitting in the two aisle seats across the aisle from each other. I couldn't believe my luck. The unthinkable had happened. The woman had read my mind and swapped her middle seat with mine. She must have sure possessed some ESP!

A wave of relief swept over me. I had been saved the bother of asking a stranger for a favor. My friend and I could sit next to each other and I could comfort him all I wanted and whisper in his ears to my heart's content.

I looked up at the frame below the baggage racks for the seat signs. There was a large sloping symbol, followed by the letters GED. I was taken aback. Something was not right. Who would have thought the sign would pour cold water on our parade?

"Our seats are G and E," I told the woman, staring uncertainly at the two vacant seats.

She got up immediately. "G is the window, and E is the aisle," she snarled, with a brusqueness, a contempt that caught me off-guard and led me to suspect she was French – a suspicion that was we later confirmed when we overheard her talking to her travel companion. She stepped aside and waved us in, and not gallantly.

Confusion was written all over my face even though my desired goal had been achieved. I motioned for my friend to take the window seat and eased myself into the middle seat. "What on earth happened to seat F?" I wondered off and on throughout the thirty minute journey while taking breaks from telling my friend all about the mundane minutiae of the flight.

Only days later did it strike me that the letter F does not exist in the Vietnamese alphabet, so G does indeed follow E. Shame on me for not realizing it, despite having learned the alphabet and a few Vietnamese words in the days before my trip to the country.

The sloping symbol preceding the G was a picture of a window, although I didn't understand it at the time. Perhaps I would have latched on to the missing F if the letters had been reversed to appear in the correct order, DEG. Or perhaps not; perhaps it would have confused me to a different degree.

But I have no one to blame but myself. If anyone made so callous a mistake, such egregious an error, it was me. Or rather, I.

Cupcake Runneth Over

by NINAD JOG

"You should have a cupcake!"

"Cupcakes are so cloyingly sweet. On the rare occasions I have them, I feel like bathing them in fiery spices."

"There's hot sauce in the kitchen cabinet. Should I get you some?"

The woman had Vinod cornered, that too at a company event of all places. Only an Asian colleague could have had the presence of mind not to be thrown off by the peculiar preference for a spicy dessert; only she could have had the gumption to assist Vinod in his endeavor. He was tempted to take up her offer.

Vinod was tempted to take up her offer, but hesitated for a moment, and ultimately demurred. There was no point in drawing attention to himself and becoming the laughing stock at a celebratory event where the company's top brass were in attendance. No matter how blissfully oblivious to other people's reactions he professed himself to be, some lines were best left uncrossed.

But his real reason was slightly different. Hot sauce may artfully mask the intolerable sweetness of a cupcake, but it cannot negate the harmful effects of added sugar and the surfeit of saturated fat. Sugar's a toxin that's best kept at arm's length, or so say the wise men.

"Are you leaving?" the colleague asked, seeing Vinod walking toward the conference room's exit.

He nodded. He didn't let on that he wasn't calling it day; that he was merely going right back to his office and continue working. He would leave it up to his colleagues to eat and drink and make merry. Having eagerly looked forward to the afternoon event -- with its vaunted Georgetown cupcakes, apple cider and champagne, it had let him down. Or had he let it down?

Vinod was no stranger to Georgetown cupcakes. Five years ago he had trekked all the way to Georgetown with a newly-minted friend, that too in the sweltering summer heat, all because the friend was craving cupcakes. Vinod would've done anything to please his Cambodian friend, for such is infatuation. Never mind that the man was a good fifteen years younger than him, and the chance of dating him was zero. As they sat on the banks of the Potomac, eating the delicacies that they had queued up for over twenty minutes to purchase, Vinod had feigned a genuine love of cupcakes. The Cambodian man had fallen for it hook, line and sinker, but it hadn't raised the chances of the two of them dating each other: those stayed at zero.

Now that Vinod was at a company event, the infatuation was history, and the memory of eating cupcakes on a river bank had dissolved into in the mists of time. With a job that he was in no danger of losing, there was no reason to please anyone by eating cupcakes.

"You eat so healthy!" the Asian colleague fired by way of a parting shot as Vinod left the conference room.

Vinod gave her a strained smile and returned to his desk.

***

Not a quarter of an hour passed before another colleague passed by his office - the one who hadn't been in the conference room when the event started, as he had been away at a meeting. He asked Vinod if he had sampled any of the cupcakes. Vinod shook his head and asked him the same question.

"No, I didn't. And I don't plan to. I just looked at them!"

Vinod was surprised, for he knew his colleague to have a sweet tooth. Perhaps he was controlling his carb intake. "I didn't have them either," Vinod told him. "I worshiped them from a distance, then rushed back to my office and had a small piece of dark chocolate - that too eighty-five percent dark!"

The colleague pointed a finger at Vinod -- a benignly accusing one, noted Vinod -- and laughed heartily; a laughter that rang unfettered in the deserted hallway.

"I won't be surprised if people think I'm a snob," Vinod told himself. "Such a snob!"

***

Leaves were hurriedly detaching themselves from trees, autumn was in the air, and even the shrubs and bushes were turning deep red with embarrassment. But to Vinod it felt like it was raining cupcakes, for just the past weekend a visitor to his home had offered him one out of the blue.

"We got you a cupcake!" he had announced cheerfully, soon after Vinod's roommate introduced the strapping Filipino man to him at his home one night. "It's in the kitchen. We had cupcakes for dessert when we ate out."

Vinod thanked him warmly and rushed into the kitchen, his mouth watering. He deftly retrieved the gift from the bottom of a large brown envelope. But imagine his disappointment upon discovering that it wasn't a chocolate cake. Maybe it was a cheesecake or a vanilla cake or God knows what other flavor. A cake that wasn't a chocolate cake wasn't fit enough to call itself a cake, be it a cupcake or be it a wedding cake.

When the guest asked him a few minutes later if he liked it, Vinod made no secret of his disappointment. "I eat nothing but chocolate cakes!" he snapped grumpily. "But thanks all the same; it's the thought that counts."

The guest was visibly taken aback. Who would have thought the slightly built Indian could be such a rank ingrate, a spoiled brat, one given to looking a gift horse in the mouth, one all-too-capable of pouring cold water on a kind deed? Too often in life does kindness go unacknowledged, let alone rewarded.

How could Vinod have salivated at the prospect of having a chocolate cupcake one weekend, only to spurn it without a second thought a few days later, when rows upon rows of cupcakes - both chocolate and non-chocolate ones - awaited him on the large table in the company conference room. Was he that fickle?

The truth wasn't hard to fathom, although Vinod was loath to admit it. Had it not been for the heavy lunch and the handful of nuts he had eaten a few minutes before the company event, he would have salivated just as much, and would have surely deigned to have at least a small piece of cake. No matter how strong willed he fancied himself to be, he did succumb to temptation every once in a while, healthy eating be damned. Hunger is the best sauce, and it is sayings like these that ultimately take the cake.

***

Gone were the days when Vinod genuinely enjoyed eating all sorts of cakes and pastries. While growing up in India, he would get to eat them rarely -- maybe no more than three times a year, that too if his parents bought them from the Monginis bakery in the neighboring suburb, or if he was invited to some kid's birthday party, which was rarer still.

He could never tell the difference between cakes and pastries then, and he couldn't tell it even now. To him they were the one and the same. It never bothered him when people laughed at him and looked down upon him for his ignorance. Some of them even took pains to put him wise, but he never remembered the explanations. A cake was a pastry was a cake. There! Piece of cake!

Despite finding himself at the receiving end of an endless stream of cake-pastry jokes, Vinod found ample occasion to look down upon a particular group of people - not the ones who made fun of him, but the ones whose strict vegetarianism kept them from eating anything containing eggs, such as cakes and pastries.

Chief among them was his father. In fact his father was the only one in their family who largely stayed away from cakes. On the rare occasions that he had a piece, Vinod would feel triumphant - triumphant that the avowed vegetarian was eating humble pie, if only a piece of it. Vinod and his mother and sister also thought of themselves as vegetarians, but like many Indian vegetarians, they weren't averse to eating eggs.

It all fit in well, for wasn't his father a self-made man, one who grew up in relative poverty in a small town in rural India, studied in a school having Marathi instead of English as its language of instruction? How could he be expected to eat a cake? And there at the polar extreme was his son - an urban kid studying in a Catholic school, with English as the medium of instruction, in what was arguably the most Westernized city in India? Of course he was going to eat his cake and have it too! Who cared if he couldn't tell a cake from a pastry? That was a trivial matter; what truly mattered was whether one could eat a cake or not.

Little could he have imagined that one day in the distant future he would follow in his father's footsteps by largely forsaking all desserts - not because they contained eggs but because they weren't healthy.

***

But temptations did beckon, especially if it was a chocolate cake. Disappointed that the cupcake that his roommate's friend got for him wasn't a chocolate cake, Vinod helped himself to an extra piece of dark chocolate from his pantry and went to bed.

The next morning there arose the question of when exactly the friend would return home, all the way to Baltimore, a good seventy-five miles away. The answer was obvious: using the same modes of transport that he had taken the previous evening: two suburban trains, one inter-city train, one bus, and a car ride from Vinod's home to the metro station, which Vinod's roommate graciously agreed to provide.

The Filipino man pored over various bus and train schedules, jittery with anxiety as he racked his brains to minimize the time he would spend waiting for buses and trains and reach home before it got dark and cold. Vinod guessed that it would take him a good three hours at the very least.

"I don't think we can have lunch together," the guest told Vinod's roommate, as Vinod hovered within hearing range in the living room. "I should get going pretty soon."

It was Vinod's turn to fling a surprise. "You don't have to worry about bus and train schedules," he announced grandly. "I'll drop you home in my car - all the way to Baltimore!"

It took a moment or two for the offer to sink in. A wide smile lit up the guest's face. He stopped cowering and stood up straight. "Thank you very much!" he cried. "Thank you!"

"Are you sure?" his roommate asked Vinod, for he didn't want to put him through the trouble of driving over an hour each way.

Vinod said he would be fine; he had given several of his friends rides to Baltimore over the years. He told the guest that they could leave at any time he wanted, including right away. The Filipino man decided to leave in the afternoon, and he and his friend went out to lunch. They invited Vinod to join them, but Vinod said he would prefer to eat at home. The two returned home in the early afternoon.

"Look what we got for you!" cried the Filipino man, giving Vinod a small brown paper bag. "A cupcake!"

Just as he had the previous night, Vinod rushed into the kitchen, his mouth watering. He deftly took the gift out, and gave a whoop of joy. For what lay in the bottom of the bag was no ordinary cupcake; it was a chocolate cupcake. Vinod thanked the guest warmly, and soon they were off.

Unfortunately, the drive to Baltimore took a good ninety minutes due to traffic jams, but it was well worth it. It was no walk in the park, nor was it a cakewalk.

Vinod and his roommate eagerly shared the parting gift after Vinod returned home. They bit into it not on the banks of the Potomac, but at the dining table of their suburban apartment, looking out the window at the magnificent fall colors. There was no reason for Vinod to feign a liking for the chocolate treat; he genuinely enjoyed it. After all it was a piece of cake.

Curry Up!

by NINAD JOG

An East Asian colleague chanced upon me when I was having breakfast in the office kitchen. "What's that curry smell?" he asked.

I told him it was lentil soup. I wasn't sure if he was thirsting for more detail, or else I'd have told him it was a mixture of Gujarati Dal and Latin style black bean soup, into which I was dipping a single slice of bread slathered with peanut butter minus the jelly (Yummy!)

When I was having lunch in the same kitchen a few hours latter, he happened upon me yet again. He looked at what I was eating, and exclaimed: "You're eating the same thing! Curry for breakfast, curry for lunch!"

Before I could respond he stormed out of the kitchen. Otherwise I'd have told him that I was having spicy mixed vegetables with steamed tofu and cooked Korean 12-grain rice and barley. The two meals had nothing in common other than a few spices that gave the curry smell. To me they were poles apart; to him they were one and the same.

I wasn't altogether surprised, for I've often heard this refrain from my East Asian (and Southeast Asian) friends, "You eat nothing but curry!" Methinks they may be largely unaware of the variety of Indian foods - to them it's all the same dish as long as it has curry flavor.

Maybe I should try to enlighten them - which I will gladly do as long as I don't have to curry any favor.

Close Encounters of the Unexpected Kind

by NINAD JOG

I don't know about you, but I get absolutely thrilled when someone hails me in a public place and the person turns out to be a friend or colleague whom I didn't plan on meeting and had never imagined I'd run into.

My thoughts then run as follows: What a supreme coincidence that we happened to be in the same place at the same time! They noticed me! That too in a crowded place. They more than made up for my inattention! I count for something! I feel loved.

It may be a commonplace occurrence for you, but it doesn't happen to me all that often. So imagine my delight when it happened not once yesterday, but twice in a single day. Twice, I tell you, twice!

***

"Ninad!" cried someone when I was fishing savory foods from the salad bar at the Korean lunch place near my office. I turned and noticed an Indian colleague was also doing the same. "I came here before you" he informed me. "I saw you entering."

I was a little embarrassed, as I could have easily asked him out at the office. I used to in the past, ere I came to know that this particular cafe was not his first choice although it was my hands-down favorite.

Both of us had originally planned to take a carryout and eat at our office desks, for there's little to be gained by sitting by yourself in a cafe. But having found each other, we gamely sat at a table in the cafe and chatted about err.. same-sex marriage becoming legal in a majority of U.S. states, of all things!

***

"Ninad!" came another voice as I was rushing down the escalator at a rapid clip at Rosslyn metro station in the evening on my way home. I looked to my right, and there, on the parallel escalator was a friend. Not just any friend, mind you, but the one who is an avid reader of my books, the one whose office is but two blocks from my own.

I stopped dead in my tracks, positively thrilled. He asked me if was taking the Silver Line. I said Yes; he said so was he. We started chatting with great gusto. But oddly enough, the distance between us began to increase -- I felt myself shrinking from him :-(

Luckily I identified the cause and made amends forthwith: I climbed two steps up my escalator. His escalator was moving a tad bit slower than mine, probably because it was more heavily loaded. There, simple fix!

Once we reached the platform, I looked at the signboard and learned that the next train would arrive within a minute. I got all nervous and edgy. My friend guessed my discomfort and asked me if I wanted to walk a little further along the platform.

"Let's walk right up to the front!" I announced. "I like to get into the first car, as it's the least crowded."

I should've at least had the decency to frame the order as a polite question, but I was too agitated to think straight.

He agreed, and off we went. We boarded the train, remained standing, and chatted all the way until he got off at his station. He didn't have a chance to read the big fat book he was carrying, and I didn't read the slim little novel that was tucked into my backpack until he left and I plunked myself down into a comfortable window seat.

I'm not sure if he'd be comfortable if his identity were revealed, otherwise I'd have told you in a heartbeat that it was Spence.

Needless to say, the unexpected encounters truly made my day. Two in a single day, mind you - two! I can scarcely believe that they happened.

Aqueous Marinade

by NINAD JOG

Have you ever marinated fish fillet in plain water?

That's what I ended up doing today, although I didn't mean to. All I wanted to do was defrost the frozen cod fillet -- bought from Trader Joe's, no less -- by dunking it in hot water for ten to fifteen minutes. When I put it into hot water, secure inside the flimsy plastic bag in which it had been sitting, it looked like the plastic would melt any minute, as if it were my heart.

Not wanting to taste fish that was melded, welded, and garnished with molten plastic, I took the fillet out of the bag and dunked it into the pot containing hot water by itself.

When I took it out after a quarter of an hour and held it over the kitchen sink, the water started draining out of it. It drained and drained and drained, showing no sign of stopping. I had no idea fish could absorb so much water! But then again, this was a creature from the sea :-) (Hindsight is 20/20.)

It wasn't long before I lost patience and stuck it into the oven that I had preheated to 400 deg F. And there I let it sit for a good twenty minutes.

At the end of said twenty minutes, the fillet was suppurating (I meant to say bubbling, but I couldn't resist using a fancy word) so copiously, so unashamedly with fat and who knows what other secretions that had oozed from it! I garnished it with a mixture of six finely grated cheeses and some fish curry masala, and my roommate and I smacked our lips as we devoured it.

It was such a welcome contrast to the baked cod fillet I had last week, which I had defrosted in the microwave. After baking it in the oven for twenty minutes, it had tasted so insipid, so bereft of life, so dry -- as if it had just woken up from a long nap in the Sahara desert. Everyone gets their just deserts, I suppose.

I for one wouldn't mind marinating a frozen fillet in plain water again, although I imagine one marinated in a somewhat less plain marinade would taste a notch better.

When a fish lands in hot water, taking the water out of the fish can make you feel like a fish out of water.

Vive la aqueous marinade! Pardon my French.

The Stumble and the Trip

by NINAD JOG

I managed to achieve something today that I had never achieved in more than twenty years of running on the treadmill: I stumbled and nearly fell.

Mercifully I wasn't running too fast - just 5.0 mph, and I grasped the handles just in time to break the fall. But the experience was unsettling, to say the least. You'd think it happened at the end of a long, tiring day, but no, it took place an hour before noon, when I was neither underfed nor overtired.

Did I see it coming? You bet. Not the exact moment of it (or else I'd have prevented it), but the distinct possibility of it. Stumble, stumble, stumble, I had gone as I entered the gym a few minutes earlier. Stumble, stumble, much to my alarm, as I walked on the treadmill to warm-up.

Would it have happened if I had slept an extra hour the previous night - the usual eight instead of seven? Or if I hadn't had twice the amount of wine last evening that I have nowadays- half a glass instead of a quarter glass - that too after teetotalling for several weeks? Perhaps. Gone are the days when I could down a full glass of wine every evening, day after day, without getting hung over, without tripping the next day.

I was sufficiently worried of falling that I concentrated on every step when I broke into a run. I followed the advice of those who meditate: "Focus, focus. Live in the moment." The strategy worked well - but just for ten minutes.

Then the mind wandered and zeroed in on the news about the Islamic State that was being broadcast on CNN on the large TV screen suspended from the ceiling in front of me. It's funny how the mind has a mind of its own. Soon enough, I tripped.

Runners on the neighboring treadmills cast anxious glances at me, but looked away on noticing that not much harm had befallen me. I steadied myself quickly, reduced the speed to a mere 3.0 mph walking clip, and acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. The incident was a wake-up call, and I would have ample time to lick my wounds later.

At least I wasn't in as bad shape as one of my colleagues who fell onto the treadmill while running at a furious 8 mph, hurt his head, got expelled to the floor by the running treadmill, and bled profusely from both knees a couple of years ago.

I could have called it a day and headed home right away, but I did complete the other activity that I had set out to finish. I lifted weights - not free weights - but on eight or nine different machines no less. I didn't think I'd stumble or drop any weights while lifting them, and I didn't. Sometimes its good when one's predictions come true.

After leaving the gym I bought groceries and Indian snacks from the stores next door, motored home, had a hearty lunch with my roommate, and took a long afternoon nap, only to wake up to see the drizzle had stopped and the sun was straining to peek at me through the clouds. I didn't think I'd stumble if I went running outdoors, but I didn't go.

When all was said and done, the trip to the gym was well worth the trip.

Let There Be Light

by NINAD JOG

This morning, the crack of dawn marked the two-week anniversary of the power outage in my condo complex in Reston, when the power was out until late at night because power cables overheated and burned under one of the buildings.

Several firetrucks, ambulances and police cars rushed to the scene, and firefighters could be seen raising ladders to the top floor and to the roof to do heaven knows what. Rescuing people maybe?

Many residents of the complex left their homes and stayed in hotels or with their friends and relatives that night, because they were told that the power may not be restored for days while the repairmen tried to pinpoint the precise location of the fault. I chose to stay at home, because it wasn't hot enough to need air-conditioning, and I would go straight to bed when it became dark, thank you.

But it wasn't long before I started regretting my decision. Just as it got sufficiently dark, making it impossible to do anything without a flashlight, I got sufficiently bored and lonely, and wasn't feeling sleepy. Besides, the skies darkened, and it started pouring cats and dogs. All hope of the power supply being restored that night was lost. Why, oh, why, had I not taken the other residents' lead?

But lo and behold - the lights came on just then - power was restored! I had been rescued from the depths of despair. My decision had truly reaped dividends. I fired up my computer and caught up on all that I had missed that day.

A fortnight has passed since that incident, but it burns fresh in my memory. Why am I feeling the need to recount it? Am I a stickler for anniversaries? Aren't the burned underground cables water under the bridge?

Not quite! On the day of the outage, the power was restored not by replacing the cables, but by connecting a large, truck-sized generator to them, a machine that made a whirring sound loud enough to wake the dead, making life a living hell for the people staying in the buildings nearest to it.

That night, we knew that the generator would keep running for a day or two, and we knew that it could keep running for a week or so. But little could we have imagined that it would still be humming along two weeks later. If there's an abject lesson to be learned about the difference between 'could' and 'would', this would be it.

I still keep my bedroom window shut and turn on the air conditioning when I'm home. My building is mercifully not too close to the generator, but its incessant hum isn't exactly music to my ears. Let there be light, but let silence prevail.

Words To The Wise

by NINAD JOG

"It gets dark at night," said Jen as she started writing the sentence containing the word 'night' that she had come up with.

I asked her if she knew the spelling of night. She gave me an uncertain look, so I spelled it out for her.

"The 'g' is silent!" she said brightly, beaming at me. I wondered if she knew the spelling or had seen the similarity with other words such as bright or light. In any case, I was pleasantly surprised that she knew about silent letters. I asked her if she knew why there was a 'g' in the spelling if it was silent. She shook her head.

"When people first wrote the word two hundred years ago, they probably pronounced the 'g'," I told her. "It's similar to the modern German pronunciations of night and light," I added for good measure. It didn't strike me at the time that the English spelling of 'night' must have been around for far more than two hundred years.

Jen thought about it for a few moments. "Is anyone from two hundred years ago still alive?" she asked pensively.

I was taken aback. I shook my head, albeit reluctantly.

"Are they lying under large stones?" she pressed on.

I nodded. I knew that my sister had told her about people being buried in cemeteries after they died. But it hit me that at some level, my niece thought the people were still alive but were forced into graves against their will.

I regretted mentioning the historical aspect of the spelling. At six years old, my niece was too young to brood about such dark a matter as death. I made a note to mention it to my brother-in-law when he and my nephew woke up from their afternoon naps. "Jen, let's play a different game," I suggested hastily.

My niece readily agreed. She took three sheets of paper and assigned me three different exercises. One involved choosing an appropriate word from a list of three words—finish, mad and sad—and filling it in the blank in the sentence "Is that boy ___?"  "Pick sad," she wrote on the paper by way of a hint, lest I go mad and finish it differently. Needless to say, I was only too happy to choose sad. Jen was pleased that I had dutifully followed her instructions. She gave me a big C for correct when she graded my work.

The second assignment involved choosing all words rhyming with 'fat' from a list of six words. She was visibly surprised when I correctly chose hat, sat, mat and cat, but didn't choose man and win. Clearly, I had done well even though no one had taught me how to do it. I hadn't been in her class when her teacher taught it, at any rate. I must have learned somewhere else. Jen gave me an X mark, indicating that she had graded my work, and yet another big C.

The third assignment had a surprise in store. I had to place the following letters in alphabetical order: a, k, m, t, u, v, x, s. I noticed that all of them were in the correct order, except for the trailing 's'. In attempting to mimic her teacher, Jen hadn't yet mastered the art of scrambling the letters out of order. I did the assignment and was about to give it to her when I noticed that I had somehow overlooked the 's'. I managed to tuck it between the 'm' and the 't' in the nick of time.

But I got two large X marks for my efforts—one indicating that she had graded it, the other saying I was wrong! I pointed out that I had in fact done it correctly. But Jen shook her head. "That's not an S," she charged. "It's a Z!"

I told her she had drawn a mirror image of S. But Jen was adamant. If she had written it incorrectly, it was incumbent upon me to correct it. The X mark stayed in place; it didn't get replaced by a C. Wrongs cannot be converted into rights just by making appeals. My overall score was two out of three.

"You can do better next time!" she assured me. With that, she taped the three sheets together with scotch tape and handed them back. "You can take them home to Virginia," she told me.

And that is exactly what I did. I brandished the assignments to my roommate and two of my colleagues in the following week. "So cute! So innocent!" they exclaimed. "Your niece is so smart!"

To this day, the three taped sheets lie in the Family bin of the plastic drawers in my closet. You can rest assured that they will remain there for a long, long time.

***

As the afternoon wore on, Jen devised another game. She wrote the word 'mother' and drew a vertical line through the center of a fresh sheet. "You write words that have the letters from 'mother' on the left side, and I'll write them on the right," she told me.

I agreed. I covered the first three letters of the word and asked her what remained. She was thrilled to discover 'her'. I wrote it down on my side of the sheet. I then covered the last two letters and told her what remained was a moth. She was pleased, but looked crestfallen when I wrote it down. The score was an unnerving 2-0. She was falling behind. Something had to be done.

"What's the spelling of 'home'?" I asked.

Jen proudly recited the correct spelling. I asked her if each of the letters from 'home' appeared in 'mother'. One by one, she pointed them out. Her face lit up with sheer joy. It's as if a miracle had taken place. Who would have thought 'home' could hide so unobtrusively in 'mother'? I was reminded of a similar joy that I felt when I first came across mathematical structures in abstract algebra called Normal Groups. I was no babe in the woods—I must have been in my twenties or thirties by then—but I was mesmerized by their beauty, amazed by how well they fit in. Sometimes I think it's the ability to experience the sheer sense of wonder that keeps us young at heart.

Jen proudly wrote 'home' on her side of the sheet. "What's the spelling of hot?" I asked her. "And what's the spelling of other?" And so on it went. If she didn't know the spelling, I would spell it out for her. If she didn't know the word, I would explain what it meant and spell it out. In either case, she would identify the letters among those of 'mother' and write the word with a flourish. Bit by bit, her score rose, while mine remained stuck at two.

When it reached a point where I could conjure up no more words, the score was a heavily lopsided 2-19. Jen was ecstatic. "I won!" she cried. "I wrote nineteen words; you wrote only two!"

I feigned disillusionment. But I smiled wanly nonetheless, for I didn't want to overdo the dismay. I didn't want her to feel unduly sorry for me. It is in battles such as these that the joy of losing far outstrips the pain of winning. I look forward to losing many such battles in the future.

Jen's mother wasn't around that weekend, for she lived and worked in a different state. But the spelling of my sister's relationship to her daughter had sure come in handy. Intentionally or not, it had laid the groundwork for playing the game of Scrabble.

***

Come to think of it, my niece's thinking was anything but irrational. Since she was the one who had written down the words, it was only fair that she was racking up the points. Coming up with a word wasn't the same as writing it down. Who cares who first thought of the word?

My mind went back to my years in post-graduate school when a fellow student was upset that his name was relegated to the third author in a research paper, although he had written the overwhelming majority of it. "That's not fair!" I had exclaimed indignantly when he told me about it. "You should be the first author because you've written the paper. The staff researcher should be the third author, not you. You should complain to our professor!"

And that's exactly what he did. I don't quite recollect how the matter was resolved, but my chagrin—and my friend's—seem misplaced in retrospect. We didn't realize that the staff researcher was justified in her insistence on being the first author, for she was the one who had come up with the ideas for the research. My friend and I were mere minions carrying out the orders of the higher-ups.

***

Twenty years later, fast forwarding to the present, it was on a cold, cloudy afternoon that Jen suggested we come up with words ending with 'ick.' She thought of three or four words, and I came up with more than a dozen. She excitedly wrote down each one of them down and counted them. "We came up with eighteen words!" she announced triumphantly.

That night, I read her a book before going to bed, as I often do during my weekend visits to her home every month. But this time, she too read a similar book after I was done. I was impressed by how good she was at reading. I can remember that my reading skills were no match for hers when I was her age. The American practice of pronouncing a word phonetically one syllable at a time had gone a long way toward making her a good reader.

I could also tell that like all adults, she settled upon the shape of a word's spelling to read it, once she had crossed the barrier of detecting what the word was. Mistaking 'the' for 'that' was an unfortunate consequence of this practice. But in a story where the main character was Mr. Miserable, Jen kept referring to him as Mr. Misery. I corrected her two or three times, but then gave up. Clearly, she preferred to think of him as Mr. Misery, and I was loath to rob her of what I saw as her reader's poetic license.

***

The next day, I presented her a book containing several short stories and essays, and opened it to a particular page. "Read this sentence," I urged her, pointing to a particular paragraph. Her face lit up when she read it. "That's my name!" she cried. "Yes," I replied. "Because it's you who I have written about, when you were almost three years old."

I pointed to a few other sentences that had her name in them, and she gleefully read all of them. She asked me if she could circle all the occurrences of her name. I said Yes, but by pencil, not pen. Ultimately she didn't circle them. I should have let her circle them with a sketch pen, right then and there. Maybe I'll let her do that on my next visit.

"How did my name appear in the book?" she asked me. I reiterated that I had written those sentences, in fact the entire book. I showed her the cover with my name on it.

But Jen was mystified. "How did you write it in such nice letters?" she said. I could see the source of her confusion. She had seen people write with pens and pencils and sketch pens and crayons, but never had she come across anyone writing the printed word. She also asked me how I had printed the book. I explained to her I had typed the book on my computer and given it to a company to turn it into a book. She asked me if I had made the cover. I told her Yes, I had taken the cover picture and given it to the company to make the cover.

My niece was finally satisfied. "I too want to write a book!" she cried. I told her she would when she grows up. "I want to write it right away," she insisted. "I have already written one in school!"

I remembered that she wasn't kidding. She had indeed written one in school a couple of months earlier as part of an assignment. It came complete with a cover page, a title page, a table of contents and individual chapters. It was no more than five pages long, but it was a start. I marveled at the education system that encourages kids to write their own books from a young age.

***

When my brother-in-law dropped me off to the airport that evening, the kids were sad, as they always are when I leave. We stopped at a Subway restaurant, and my brother-in-law went inside to buy a sub for dinner and chips for the kids, while the rest of us waited in the van.

"How long have I been alive?" Jen asked me from the back seat. "How long has Rohit been alive?"

I was surprised by the question, for it came out of the blue. "You've been alive for six years," I told her, turning around in my seat to look at her. "Because you are six years old. Rohit has been around for over three years, because he's three."

"Was I dead before I was born?" she asked.

"No, you weren't dead," I assured her. "You simply weren't around. Neither was I before I was born. None of us were."

Jen nodded. It struck me that I wasn't as aware of death—or of being alive—when I was her age. When I learned of the death of the mother of my friend Rommel, I thought it was an exception. I never imagined any of my loved ones could die, let alone me. And I had no idea that death awaits every single person. But my niece shows every sign of possessing that understanding. On each of my visits, the topic raises its head, and it's because Jen brings it up. For whatever reason, the specter of death always hangs in the background.

One day, it will come to each one of us, for it is a sentence that we cannot escape. But for now, it's time to revel in my niece's seemingly precocious grasp of words—the ones that are wise as well as those that are otherwise. It's an assignment that I have tasked myself with, one in which I hope to get all C's rather than two X marks.

For when it's time to turn the page, it's best to leave no stone unturned.

Heavenly Marriages, Earthly Weddings

by Ninad Jog

Recently I attended the wedding of my longtime friends Dip and Shawn. As they dropped me home in their van after the wedding, I thanked them for inviting me. "I felt privileged to attend it not only because was it my first gay wedding," I told them, "but also because it was the first wedding of any type—gay or straight—that I attended in the United States, even though I have lived in this country for twenty-two years."

"Really?" they gasped.

I lost no time in tweeting this fact—the fact that the wedding was a double first for me, not the fact that the newlyweds had gasped—on Facebook. When an acquaintance in India read the post, he wondered why I hadn't been invited to any weddings in over two decades.

But truth be told, that wasn't quite the case. Several of my cousins had invited me to their weddings during that period, as had a few of my friends. But those weddings took place in India, not the U.S., for the overwhelming majority of my friends were Indians in those days. Even if they were Indian immigrants to the U.S. like me, the mother country was their home ground for tying the knot.

I did attend a couple of such weddings—that of my cousin Amol and my of friends Amar and Sonali—but only because they took place in Mumbai or one of its neighboring cities when I happened to be making an annual trip to India to meet my relatives. Never did I visit India with the express purpose of attending a wedding.

Maybe the people whose weddings I skipped missed my presence, particularly my cousin Ratna. But I had my own excuses for not attending. That I hadn't accumulated enough leave from work. That the airline tickets were too expensive. That the wedding was planned at too short a notice. And so on. Never mind that the excuses didn't have much of a leg to stand on, let alone two to walk on without limping.

And always, the elephants in the room—the ones with their large floppy ears and piercing ivory tusks—went unmentioned. That I had scant appetite for sitting through the various long-drawn rituals of Indian weddings — rituals that I found to be largely inane. That as a gay man, I would never have the right to get married and the chance to participate in those very rituals that I professed to despise. That I didn't give a second thought to whether the bride and the groom missed me or not.

If my friends' weddings took place in an Indian city far from Mumbai, such as New Delhi or Chennai, it was implicitly understood that I wouldn't attend them, even if I happened to be visiting India at the time, for I limited my visits to Mumbai and Pune. My friends were gracious enough to present me their wedding invitations nonetheless—invitations that I have carefully saved to this day in the Friends bin of the plastic drawers in my closet.

***

Come to think of it, I did get invited to a wedding in America. Approximately fifteen years ago, my friend and ex-colleague Prakash invited me to his. But I didn't even come close to attending it. I didn't have too many lame excuses this time. I could have easily made the trip to Texas. I could easily afford the round-trip airline ticket from Washington, DC to Austin. I could have easily taken two days off from work.

But the room teemed with elephants. Prakash was an Indian-American. In fact, he was an American for all practical purposes, for he had migrated to the U.S. when he was just three. And although I had worked with him on a project in Atlanta, socialized extensively with him, and even gone camping with him and his friends to Arizona, I didn't feel as comfortable with him as I did with Indians like me who had emigrated to the U.S. at later ages.

And there was the little matter of his wife. She wasn't Indian; she was an American-born Chinese. How would an Indian-Chinese wedding work? Wouldn't it be ultimately a Western-style wedding, by virtue of being held in the U.S., a format that I am utterly unfamiliar with to this day? It didn't put me at ease, for I had barely begun to emerge out of my Indian cocoon despite being in America for seven year. If anyone had asked me if I was racist, I would have denied it—and vehemently so—just as I would now.

Add to that the fact that I was even more socially awkward at the time than I am now and did not feel comfortable wearing a suit and a tie. How was I supposed to conduct myself at the wedding? Who could possibly guide me? I was reminded of the movie Party from 1968, in which the comedian Peter Sellers plays a bumbling Indian guest unfamiliar with Western ways. I was afraid I'd be a similar fish out of water at the wedding. I didn't mind being cast as a comedian, but I didn't want to sell myself short by following in Sellers' footsteps.

I did not even bother to RSVP Prakash's invitation. Not surprisingly, we lost touch soon thereafter. To this day, I haven't been able to re-establish contact with him. I can't help but wonder whether my absence at his wedding played a role.

***

My earliest recollection of attending a wedding is from when I was four or five. It was Sudhir uncle's wedding, bang in the middle of Pune's monsoon season with its gray skies and intermittent drizzles. He was clearly my favorite uncle, for I remember blushing with wonder whenever he visited my home.

"Sudhir Uncle's wedding ceremony will start in a few minutes," my mother told me as we waited among the audience in the packed wedding hall. "It will be a registered marriage."

"I'll play the baaja when they arrive!" I declared firmly, brandishing the small harmonica that I was carrying.

True to my word, I played the harmonica loudly enough that my uncle and his bride heard it as they signed the marriage papers.

Over the next few years, I attended a number of weddings in Pune and Mumbai, mostly those of distant relatives. At those ages, attending weddings meant sitting cross-legged on a wooden platform, having lunch from a metal plate placed on the floor, studiously refusing to eat all the dishes they served except the mixture of rice and yellow lentil soup.

Only when I grew older did I realize that not only were they all Hindu weddings, but were also Marathi weddings, typically among people of the Brahmin caste. I also learned that Indian wedding rituals vary not only by religion, but also by region, language and caste.

***

I must have been in sixth or seventh grade when my parents and my sister and I piled into the sidecar scooter one night after dinner and traveled the seven kilometers from Khar to Dadar T. T. to attend the wedding of one of my father's colleagues.

We had been invited at 10 p.m., and there we were, on the dot. We made our way to the rooftop terrace and sat on the chairs lining the terrace wall. The music was loud, the terrace was well-decorated and the mood was festive. I remember the Bollywood hit Kabuji kabuji, gum gum! was playing. But sign of guests there was none. The bride and groom too were nowhere to be found. After a few minutes, a young couple came to the terrace and smiled at us. The woman was wearing a skirt and stockings, and what appeared to be dance shoes.

"Where's the wedding party?" my father asked them.

"They aren't here yet!" the man answered brightly. "They must be getting ready."

The minutes rolled by, but there was no sign of any of the other guests, let alone the bride and the groom. "How long can we wait like this?" my father grumbled to my mother. My mother shook her head. Come 11 p.m., my father was grumpy, I sleepy, my sister bored and my mother exasperated.

Finally, my parents could take it no more. We got up and stormed out. The music continued blaring loudly, the mood was just as festive, and the place was just as deserted. My father drove the scooter all the way home, and we were in bed by midnight. Suffice it to say that all of us were bleary-eyed and sleep-deprived the next morning—not to mention none the merrier.

That night was the closest I came to attending a Christian wedding, although it wasn't the last one I attended that operated on Indian Standard Time. To this day, I haven't attended any other Christian wedding anywhere in the world.

***

Needless to say, I haven't attended Muslim or Jewish weddings either. Or for that matter, Zoroastrian, Jain, Buddhist or Sikh ones.

I take that back, though—at least the last part of it. I did attend a Sikh wedding, but I don't remember it, for I was only two. It was the wedding of one of my father's colleagues. Or was he his boss? Or boss's son? I'm not sure; I'll have to ask. All I know is his name: Mr. Kharbanda Singh.

My parents and I went from New Delhi to Chandigarh to attend it and to do some sightseeing in the city designed by the Swiss architect Le Corbusier. As we sat with the other guests in the steaming auditorium amidst a sea of turbaned and bearded men, I sat snugly in my mother's arms. My father had covered his head with his handkerchief, while my mother had covered her head—and mine—with the loose end of her sari. For Sikh religious custom required everyone present to cover their heads.

But I had little patience for such niceties. With one deft move, I cast aside my mother's sari from my head. My mother put it back again, but I brushed it off once more.

"Let's place a handkerchief over Pingo's head," she whispered to my father.

She took a handkerchief out of her handbag and placed it over my head. When I brushed it off, she put it back on and held it there with her hand. And all the while the Sikh priests kept chanting religious rhymes, saying prayers and fanning their holy book.

And all the while, my parents kept praying that the ceremony would end soon.

Eventually my parents' prayers were answered, and they heaved a sigh of relief. Off came the loose end of the sari and the handkerchiefs. "Off from our heads" was indeed a far more palatable alternative to "Off with our heads."

"Let's not stay for the wedding lunch," my father suggested. "Let's go back to our hotel."

And that's exactly what my parents did, with I still in my mother's arms.

***

Fast forward to four decades later. I haven't been invited to any weddings in the past few years mainly because all my peers have gotten married long ago and are busy raising kids even as we speak. Or they have been forced into singlehood by choice or circumstance.

A few years ago, I expected to be invited to the wedding of Rich, a white American friend from college, for we were quite close. But that was not to be. A part of me was disappointed, of course. But a bigger part of me was relieved, for I had been apprehensive about attending what I thought would be not only my first Christian wedding, but also my first Western one, complete with its stiff formality and ridiculous rehearsals.

For although I'm no fan of Hindu weddings with their endless rituals, I like them for their seemingly impromptu and decidedly chaotic nature. While the priests are busy chanting intonations in Sanskrit—a language that hardly anyone understands—and pouring liquids from one pot to another, most of the guests largely ignore the holy men, busy as they are catching up with each other on the latest gossip.

Was I the only immigrant who hadn't attended a single wedding in the U.S. in over two decades? I decided to find out. Fortunately, I didn't have to cast a wide net. Two friends told me they hadn't attended any weddings in the U.S., although they have been in this country for around fifteen years. One was an Indian immigrant, the other a Chinese one. I felt relieved. I wasn't the only socially challenged creature lurking around. Others were kind enough to keep me company.

***

I had been looking forward to attending Dip and Shawn's wedding not only because it would be my first gay wedding and the first one in the U.S., but also because it was going be my first non-denominational one. I didn't think of Uncle Sudhir's wedding as strictly non-denominational, perhaps because it was accompanied with some pomp and ceremony. Besides, I was too young then.

I had to make sure that I reached the courthouse well in time. For shorn of its religious sheen and thereby deprived of endless rituals, the ceremony would be a short one. And there was a fat chance of it starting on Indian Standard Time, even though one of the two grooms was Indian! The slightest delay, and I would miss it in its entirety.

I thought of driving in to the city, but didn't want to take any chances. What if I got stuck in traffic? What if I didn't find parking? Finally, I took public transport to get there, and reached an hour before the ceremony was scheduled to begin. I sat on a chair in the waiting area, reading Maurice, one of E. M. Forster's works. What better way to spend time waiting for your gay friends to get married than by reading a celebrated gay novel written a hundred years ago?

The ceremony was a sheer delight. Impeccably dressed to the nines, Dip and Shawn cut splendid, confident figures. Bedecked in an orange sari, Dip's mother looked far younger than her years—and noticeably thrilled at the prospect of the wedding. If only all mothers were just as liberal, just as accepting as her! The Justice who conferred the marriage vows was a genial, portly old man who seemed to be genuinely enjoying what he was doing, as opposed to grumpily doing his job.

Afterward, Dip and Shawn graciously treated all the half a dozen or so guests to a sumptuous lunch at a highly rated Turkish and Mediterranean restaurant nearby.

***

Delightful as Dip and Shawn's wedding ceremony was, who knows when I'll get the next invitation to a wedding? I wouldn't be surprised if happens sometime in the next couple of years though, for the American Supreme Court's decision to legitimize at a Federal level the gay weddings conducted at a State level have opened the floodgates to gay weddings. Half a dozen of my gay friends and acquaintances have tied the knot, and the dominoes can only keep falling.

But if I am invited, who knows whether I will attend it? For the talents of this wedding critic at conjuring up lame excuses to avoid attending are still a formidable force to be reckoned with.

When all is said and done, I wouldn't object to attending my own wedding, though. As long as I don't forget to get married, that is. And as long as the rituals don't last for hours and hours. As the wag said, "What's mine may be yours, but what takes hours is never mine."

Hide-and-Seek

"Where's Rohit? Is he under the bed? No. Is he hiding behind the nightstand? No. Is he hiding behind the dresser? No."

"He's in the closet," said Jen. She didn't even turn around to look at me as she stood on a plastic stool by the bathroom sink, washing a stainless steel glass with soap and water.

I took my niece's hint and approached the closet. The door was shut. I knocked on it twice. "Rohit, where are you?" I called, trying to sound exasperated, as if I about to call it a day. "Are you in the closet?"

My nephew opened the door, a big grin lighting up his face.

"Oh, there you are!" I cried. "I looked for you everywhere but couldn't find you!"

He laughed heartily, a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. He had no doubt who the victor was. He took my hand and led me to his own room. "Next time, look here also," he advised me. He led me back to the master bedroom. "And look here and here and here," he said, pointing to the bed, the nightstands and the dresser.

"Okay, I will," I promised.

Off he dashed back into the closet and slammed the door shut.

"Where's Rohit?" I cried. "Is he under the bed?" And so it went, on and on until he had hidden in the same closet half a dozen times and I had searched for him in the same locations.

And all the while, his sister continued washing the glass, squeezing generous dollops of liquid soap out of a bottle.

"You know he's in the closet!" she pointed out gleefully after Rohit and I had played the game twice in a row.

"Yes, but he thinks I don't know. You too were like him two years ago!"

I don't think Jen believed me. A month shy of turning six, she had become far more skeptical of adults' explanations than before. She continued washing the glass. The kids' father had gone to play tennis, while their mother was away in the Midwest, where she had moved when she found a job, leaving the kids in her husband's care. She wasn't visiting that weekend, which is why I had chosen to visit her family at their home in Albany—to help my brother-in-law with the chores and babysit the kids.


To be honest, part of what I told my niece that Sunday morning at summer's end wasn't true. She wasn't anything like her younger brother when she was his age, at least when it came to playing hide-and-seek.

"Hide somewhere else!" she had chided me on a previous visit. "Don't hide in the same place again!"

I had lost no time in obeying her orders.

When my brother-in-law entered the kitchen a minute later, he was visibly surprised to see me crouching on the floor near the sink, in full view of anyone who entered the room.

"Shhh," I told him, placing my finger on my lips. "I'm hiding!"

He gave me a quizzical look, but left me alone. He took a dish out of the fridge and placed it in the microwave.

My niece burst into the kitchen soon thereafter, followed close on her heels by her brother. The two dashed into the adjacent laundry room. Neither of them saw me, for I wasn't in their path. Upon discovering that I had indeed taken her advice, Jen came out and scampered to another part of the house.

But her brother lingered. Just for a fleeting moment, just long enough to turn his head and catch sight of me. He let out a whoop of joy. "Ninny, Ninny!" he cried. "I found Ninny!"

My brother-in-law laughed. Crouching on the kitchen floor in full view of everyone wasn't too bad a hiding place after all.

*

It wasn't me who dreamed of hiding in plain sight, though. That honor belonged to Jen.

Back when she was four and a half or so, she would tell the adults to close their eyes while she hid. When she said she was ready, we would start looking for her, only to find her just round the corner, standing by a wall. Or she would be sitting on the couch in the same room, her eyes tightly shut. We would shake our heads and laugh.

But her brother was another story. Even at the age of two, he was astute enough to know that hiding meant going somewhere out of sight, ducking underneath a table or a chair where no one could easily spot you even when they entered the room.

When I first hid in the laundry room, brother and sister looked for me all over the house in vain. I could have nodded off while waiting for them, had I not struck up a conversation with my brother-in-law who chanced into the kitchen midway through the game. When I heard the kids approaching, I cut short the chat  and slithered right back into my hiding spot.

"Daddy! Where's Ninny?" my niece asked morosely. "We can't find him. We looked everywhere!"

"Did you look in the laundry room? Go look in the laundry room."

Jen and her brother marched dutifully into the room. And there, standing in plain sight, was I.

"Ninny! Ninny!" they cried triumphantly. "We found you!"

When it was my turn to hide once more, history repeated itself. Except this time it was a farce. Brother and sister searched all over the home but didn't find me. Jen complained to her dad, who had been chatting with me seconds before. "Did you look in the laundry room?" he asked. "Go look in the laundry room!"

Jen peeped into the laundry room, but I was nowhere to be seen. Her search had indeed drawn a blank. "He's not there!" she protested.

"Look again!" her father urged. Again she looked, and again I was nowhere in sight. "Daddy, can you please give me a hint?" she asked meekly. My brother-in-law chuckled. "Did you look behind the door?"

Jen and her brother marched into the laundry room and peeped behind the door. And sure enough, there I was. "Ninny, Ninny!" they cried, their faces covered with big smiles. "We found you!"

*

I was reminded of my own childhood when I played hide-and-seek with my friends and my cousins and my sister—the same sister who had now moved to the American Midwest.

Needless to say, I enjoyed every single one of those games. We would hide in various nooks and crannies inside our flats, or behind bushes or hedges or trees or the pump house if we played on the grounds of the building in Pune.

But the game of hide-and-seek that I remember most vividly isn't one that I played with my peers. It's one that I unwittingly forced my parents and grandparents into playing.

"Where's Pingo?" my mother wondered aloud as she searched for me in the bedroom of her parents' flat in Mumbai one summer evening. "Is he behind the dresser? No. Is he under either of the cots? No. He must be in the kitchen. But I've looked for him there already. Let me look again."

Her footsteps soon grew fainter. It was getting dark and musty where I was hiding. I was already covered with dust and cobwebs and was afraid I'd get bitten by spiders and other insects.

My father joined in the search, and so did my grandparents. "He couldn't possibly have left the flat," I heard one of them saying. "We would have heard the front door click."

After what seemed like an eternity, my dad marched into my grandparents' bedroom. With one deft move, he pulled the heavy iron trunk sitting under my grandfather's cot and peered into the darkness behind it. And there was I, curled up in a fetal position, avoiding his gaze.

"Here he is!" he cried. "The thief!"

I hadn't stolen anything apart from my parents' time, but I dreaded what was in store. It was obvious that my dad would seek to give me a good hiding for playing truant. But mercifully enough, the spanking never came to pass. I can't imagine why he had a change of heart.

"Let's read the next lesson about India's freedom fighters," he said, opening my third-grade history book after getting me to sit by his side on the living room settee. "The chapter is about Lo Ba Gun Tea."

My mother covered her mouth with her hand in embarrassment. "Don't call him Lo Ba Gun Tea!" she admonished him. "It sounds disrespectful. Call him Lokamanya Tilak!"

"I know who he is!" my father snapped. "After all, he was my father's friend. Besides, those are his initials in Marathi!"

I felt relieved. The lightheartedness of the exchange was proof positive that my fears about being spanked were misplaced.

"I can't imagine why he avoids studies at all costs," I heard my parents tell my grandparents later that evening. "Even though he does quite well in school!"

*

But that was over three dozen years ago. Time flies. Before you know it, childhood gives way to middle age. Where did youth disappear? You can always dress like a kid, act like one and pretend that you look young enough to be mistaken for one. But there's no gainsaying the fact that it amounts to living in denial. Seeking to hide from the truth can take you only so far.

In another two years, my niece will be as old as I was when I dragged my elders into playing hide-and-seek. Will she still play the game? Will she play it in pursuit of a malicious objective—or any objective for that matter? Or will she have outgrown it? Only time will tell.


"Where's Mommy?" Rohit once asked me when we were playing hide-and-seek in his house. It was surely a bolt from the blue. Perhaps his uncle's presence had reminded him of his own mother's absence. He was younger at the time; not yet old enough to get a thrill out of hiding in the same place over and over again.

"Mommy's in Missouri," Jen replied promptly, placing a protective arm around her baby brother. She never hesitated to take him under her wings.

"Mommy too is playing hide-and-seek," I felt like telling them. "Just like she did when she was little."

The Smoking Gun

I was in the living room with my parents, chatting about matters mundane and profound, when my father's gaze fell on a shiny black object lying within arm's length on the writing table.

“Where did this come from?” he asked, pointing to it. He hadn't noticed it lying among the piles of papers and neither had I. He was surprised to see it was a gun. “It must be Aai's,” I told him, recalling that my mother had mentioned having one.

But before my mother could say anything, my father picked it up, pointed it toward the open window and pulled the trigger.

A loud shot pierced the afternoon stillness and a wisp of white smoke billowed out of the gun. ‘Startled’ would be too mild a word to describe how I felt. I was visibly shaken, and so were my parents.

“I didn't think it would be loaded!” my dad cried, echoing my own sentiments.

“I had loaded it with Diwali cracker rolls,” my mother explained, snatching it from my father and putting it back on the table. “I took it out of my handbag a few minutes ago. After all, it's only a toy gun!”

All of us started laughing. Our relief was palpable. We made our way into the kitchen to have hot coffee, even though we were stewing in Mumbai's sweltering heat and the ceiling fans were spinning full speed. The incident was surely the high point of Day Three of my short visit to my parents’ home in India.

Seeing my dad hold a gun, I thought of the times when I had done the same. Twenty years earlier, I had been sitting in a computer lab on the campus of the University of Maryland late one Saturday night when there was a knock on the door. I wasn't unduly surprised; I figured it would be my friend Sridhar inviting me to join him for a coffee break. We had the unusual habit of pulling all-nighters on the weekends every once in a while, for it was easier to concentrate on our post-graduate research projects and make progress at that hour without being interrupted.

When I opened the door, I was surprised to see Kedar. He was all smiles. “I saw the light through the crack in the door. I figured it had to be you working at this late hour.”

I welcomed him into the lab. It was deserted; I was the only night-owl. We sat at my computer and made small talk, but only briefly. He was bubbling with enthusiasm, as if he was eager to tell me a secret. I wondered what epiphany he had had that was itching to be revealed.

“Look what I got!” he cried, reaching for his backpack. “You won't be able to guess.”

I didn't bother guessing - not because I didn't have the patience to make a string of wrong guesses and look foolish in the process but simply because I didn't share his excitement. He could have been carrying two onions for all I knew.

But Kedar pulled a gun out of his backpack. Shiny and silver-colored, it was no bigger than nine inches. I didn't know enough about guns to tell whether it resembled a pistol or a handgun. I took one look at it and shrugged.

My indifference was lost on him. “Hold it in your hand,” he urged, grinning widely.

I might as well please him, I figured. I took it from him in one deft move, pointed it toward the lab's door and placed my finger on the trigger. “Boom!” I cried.

Both of us burst out laughing. I handed it back to him, and it promptly disappeared into his backpack. “I can't tell you where I got it!” he said tantalizingly.

“Perfect! Please don't,” I felt like telling him. “I really don't care.” I used to play with such guns during Diwali while growing up in India; I was sure he did the same. Toy guns didn't have the same allure for me as they once did now that I was no longer a kid. It was easy to guess how he had obtained it: he must have asked a friend to get one from India.

As Kedar left the lab, I wondered for the umpteenth time whether he—the fellow student who stood a couple of inches taller, was a few shades lighter, a year or two younger, shared my green eyes and brandished a toy weapon in front of me—was my second cousin. He and I had a cousin in common, but we didn't have a common ancestor that we knew of. We had talked about it and ultimately decided that we were indeed second cousins. In the midst of the culture shock of moving to America, both of use felt reassured by having a cousin close at hand.

***

I must have known about guns from a very young age, but they became a tad more real to me when I was four. My father had left India to work in the Middle East, leaving me and my mother, who was pregnant, alone in Pune, in the top-floor flat of a newly-built building in a suburb so remote that we could see millions of stars in the night sky from the balcony, shining far more brightly than the dim, yellow street lights of the distant city.

But no matter how bright they shone, with night came the darkness. And with darkness came fear. Fear of ghosts, of evil spirits, scary monsters, not to mention large grasshoppers. What if they spirited me into the darkness in the middle of the night, never to return? My mother wouldn't have a clue; she would be fast asleep in her bed. Or what if an intruder broke the triple locks and bolts that my mother secured on the front door?

“Don't be afraid,” my mother told me one afternoon. “I'll shoot a thief if he breaks in. I keep a gun under my pillow every night!”

“Show me the gun, show me the gun!” I cried, eager to see a real gun.

But my mother demurred. “It's only for adults. I keep it locked in my cupboard during the day. Don't tell anyone though, because it's a secret.”

From that day onward, my fear of thieves receded, although my fear of other apparitions remained undiminished. I felt reassured but also a little uneasy. I couldn't articulate it at the time, but what if my mother mistakenly shot someone who wasn't an intruder?

I lost no time in sharing the secret with my friends from the building, as well as with my kindergarten friend Ajoy. “But don't tell anyone,” I warned them. “It's a secret.” I also told my grandmother on her next visit to Pune. She laughed, much to my bewilderment. I couldn't imagine what was so funny. After all, it was no laughing matter.

Only years later did I learn that my mother had good reason to be afraid, because a prankster would ring the doorbell in the middle of the night and run away by the time my answered.

I was eight or nine when my cousin Amol's parents bought him a toy rifle. My father had returned to India by then; I had a younger sister, and the four of us had moved into my grandparents' flat in Mumbai, a short walk from my cousin's home. The stars had disappeared, but so had the darkness, for everything was brightly lit at all times of the day and night.

Amol would take aim and pull the trigger, only to have a plastic cap shoot out of the gun but get yanked back by the string attached to it. The gun wasn't powerful enough even to harm a fly. Or perhaps it was, but it didn't matter, because houseflies that were adept at evading fly-swatters weren’t going to succumb to a rifle-toting kid. Besides, my cousin was more interested in shooting toy soldiers.

I lost no time in asking my parents to buy me a similar gun. Imagine my shock when my parents refused. “It's too expensive,” said my father. “Guns aren't for little kids,” said my mother. “You can have one when you grow up.”

I was disheartened. How could a gun be safer in the hands of my cousin? Wasn't he almost three years younger than me? And how could I not possess something that he did? Whatever happened to fairness, to equality? I cried and cried but to no avail. My parents steadfastly stuck to their guns.

It didn't take long for my grandfather to notice my plight. He took pity on me and bought me an identical rifle the very next day. I was thrilled. I lost no time in going on hunting sprees with my cousin. Off we would roam - inside the flat and on the building grounds, shooting at targets real and imaginary, but never once wounding any of them.

At long last, I was getting to use what my mother had assured me she had always possessed. I knew at some level that my rifle was a child's toy, but in my mind it was close enough to the real thing.

***

There are times when I wonder whether my views about guns have changed over the years or whether they have remained stubbornly the same.

Early one morning this past summer, more than twenty years after moving to the U.S., I was visiting the town of Newport News on a work-related trip. While I was having breakfast at the hotel, sharing the table with three people, veterans of the U.S. Forest Service whom I was working with, the conversation somehow turned to whether I was a U.S. citizen. I said Yes, I had been naturalized four years ago.

“Do you know anything about the U.S. Constitution?” one of them asked me, smiling sagely, stroking his gray beard.

The half-joking, half-sarcastic nature of his question wasn't lost on me. “I believe I know a thing or two about it,” I replied testily. “But what I care for most is the Second Amendment.”

“Ah ha!” he exclaimed, his smile turning into a grin. “The Second Amendment.”

Oddly enough, the other two men didn't smile. Instead they gave me wary looks. I didn't give it a second thought, though. They may well have had good reasons to be less than welcoming of the Second Amendment. To each his own.

I finished my breakfast, hopped into my car and drove the eight miles to work. The three men followed me in theirs.

Fifteen years ago, when I was relatively new to the United States, I was called upon to assist a customer at a small software company in old-town Alexandria, just across the border from Washington D.C., along the banks of the Potomac River.

As the week drew on and the customer became more comfortable with the computer code, we also talked about all manner of things. The subject soon turned to guns. “Guns don't kill people; it's people who kill people,” he explained, avid gun enthusiast that he was. I can't recollect how many guns he owned; all I remember is it was more than one.

“It's people who use guns,” I countered. “A gun isn't a robot that can wake itself up, take aim at someone and shoot him dead. It's people who use guns to kill other people."

But the customer was adamant. “Guns make us safer,” he adamantly insisted. “They level the playing field, they let us defend ourselves.”

“I might have seen your point had I grown up in this country,” I told him, “But having grown up in India, where ordinary people cannot possess guns, I can testify that it's much safer not to have them. The number of gun deaths is an order-of-magnitude lower.”

He remained unconvinced. Had I known at the time that he was the type of guy who saw safety rather than harm in guns, the type who didn't think twice about dismissing evidence if it flew in the face of his beliefs, I wouldn't have bothered arguing with him.

How could I have gone from being ardently anti-gun to espousing the Second Amendment—the right to keep and bear arms—within a span of fifteen years? What on earth caused the hundred-and-eighty degree turn?

Oddly enough, the answer emerged in the aftermath of the Newtown killings of December 2012. When 20-year old Adam Lanza shot his mother dead in her bed, then killed twenty people, including a dozen school kids in one of the worst mass shootings in America, there was a lot of debate in the media about the Second Amendment.

Only then did it dawn on me that I had mistaken the First Amendment—the one which guarantees freedom of speech—for the Second. You might think of it as a lame excuse, although it’s a matter of shame for me. How could I have missed something so central when I have a reputation—at least in some quarters—for being a traveling encyclopedia?

If only I could go back in time and tell the veterans of the U.S. Forest Service what I truly meant! The gentleman who smiled sagely and stroked his gray beard while asking me if I knew anything about the U.S. Constitution had it right: I didn't.

If anything, my aversion to guns has hardened over the years. I'm sure I'll never do target practice, let alone own a gun. Power for me doesn't flow from the barrel of a gun but from the tapping of a keyboard, and not a musical one at that.

To this day, I cannot tell the difference between a pistol and a handgun. In fact, it is the fear of guns that has kept me glued to the suburbs. Never once have I lived or worked on a long-term basis in Washington, D.C. or any other U.S. city. There's always a chance that I could still fall victim to gun violence, but the chance may be slimmer in the suburbs.

Ever since I had the talk about guns with the computer programmer at the customer site in old-town Alexandria many years ago, I have come across all manner of wingnuts who zealously espouse what they think is the right of ordinary American citizens to possess assault weapons. But I steer clear of them as much as I can, for there's no point in taking a shot at changing their minds.

***

The Newtown killings didn't just clarify my own thoughts about guns; they also shed a light on my mother's.

“I should stop carrying a gun,” she told me when we were discussing the school shootings. “I keep it in my handbag.”

I was astonished, for I didn't know until then that she carried one. She couldn't see my astonishment, for we were speaking on the phone. She was in India, I in the U.S. I didn't ask her if it was a toy gun or a real one, for the answer was obvious. Gone were the days when I believed my mother's claim that she hid a real gun under her pillow at night.

I did ask her why she carried it though. “To scare anyone who tries to harm me on my way to and from work,” she explained. At that, both of us laughed. “I know it sounds ridiculous,” she added.

“Instead of carrying a gun, why don’t you take a musical keyboard with you - the one I gave you many years ago?” I suggested. “If someone threatens you, just whip the keyboard out and play a tune. Either he will die laughing or the music will scare the daylights out of him, and he will promptly turn tail and flee!”

My mother burst out laughing.

I didn't put two and two together at the time, but I later realized she had been getting repeated death threats from a bunch of goons who talked loudly outside my parents' flat almost every night for an hour or two. “Kill her tomorrow when she's on her way to work,” one would tell another. “I won't do it,” the other would say. “We've already paid a professional killer.” A third would ask, “Is she home tonight?”

When I visited India shortly after our phone conversation, my mother did good on her promise of not carrying the gun anymore. She took it out of her handbag and kept it on the table. It was that gun that my father had spotted and pulled the trigger.

Weeks after my cousin Kedar visited me in the computer lab one Saturday night twenty years ago, I learned that the gun he had brought with him was a real one. I don't know where he had got it or why he had it. No wonder he was reluctant to tell me.

To this day, it remains the only real gun I have handled, if only for a few seconds. I have no idea if it was loaded or not, but I sure am glad I didn't pull the trigger. 

August 2013