The Hole in My Heart

by
NINAD JOG

Given that my heart beat loudly and seemed to want to jump out of my chest every once in a while, my parents decided to take me to a ‘heart specialist,’ as cardiologists were commonly known. But where could we find one? We could not pluck one out of thin air. We couldn’t get a referral from our family doctor, because we didn’t have one ever since we moved to Khar two years earlier. We could drive around the neighborhood on my father’s scooter and look for doctors’ signboards, hoping one of them would be a cardiologist, but it was far from certain that we would find one. Even if we did, what was the guarantee that he would be competent and would treat me—a complete stranger who had wandered in without a referral—with the same personal touch that he treated other patients?

Fortunately, my mother knew a woman living in the housing complex in Dadar where she grew up whose husband was a cardiologist. So off we went, my parents and sister and I, in my father’s yellow sidecar scooter, to his office in Dadar T. T. (T. T. being Tram Terminus), near Khodadad Circle, one weekend. It was a good seven kilometers from our home, but not too far from where my grandparents and an aunt lived.

He welcomed us to his office, which I thought was posh because it was air-conditioned and had large black leather sofas and plush chairs. As he listened to my parents tell him about my palpitations, my attention was drawn to a large painting of two tigers on the wall.

“Do you like the painting?” he asked me.

I nodded.

“You too are a tiger, just like them!” he said.

I blushed. I was used to being called a cat because of my green eyes and a skin complexion noticeably fair by Indian standards. But no one had called me a tiger, at least not in a long time. I felt quite powerful! He was surely a nice doctor, a ‘likable chap,’ as the British would say.

He made me lie down on the consulting table and listened to my heartbeat with a stethoscope, moving it all over my chest. Then he asked his technician to get an ECG, which the technician did by taking me to a different room.

“Don’t be scared, Pingo!” my father assured me as the technician applied gel at different spots on my chest. “The gel might feel a little cold, but you won’t feel anything when he takes the ECG.”

I was quite nervous, as it was the first time my electrocardiogram was being taken as far as I knew. Once it was done, the technician asked me to get up and wear my shirt while he went to the doctor’s office and gave him the ECG printout. A few minutes later, my parents and I were back in the doctor’s office, seated at the table across from him.

“I examined your son and looked at his ECG,” the cardiologist said. “He has a murmur, because there is a hole in his heart.”

The words fell on me and my parents like a ton of bricks. I could scarcely believe what I had heard. If I already had a hole in my heart, the doctor’s words cleaved that most vital of my organs wide open. Overcome with fright, I melted into the chair I was sitting in. I started shrinking and shrinking until I was as tiny as an ant. The doctor, his desk, the painting on the wall, the furniture—the entire room, in fact—became as big as an auditorium. Never in my life had I felt so small. Never in my life had I seen my parents so worried.

The doctor was quick to notice our extreme discomfort. “Please don’t worry,” he assured my parents with what I’m sure he thought of as a soothing smile. “Surgery techniques have improved to the point where it can be easily corrected. I can tell you the details when you make up your mind.”

My parents were unnerved, but my father, ever the pragmatist, took it in stride. “We have enrolled him in a technical school,” he told the doctor, “so he can learn some smithy, carpentry, fitting, turning, moulding, and engineering drawing right from eight grade and get a leg up when he attends engineering college. I too did the same when I was growing up.”

It was the cardiologist’s turn to be shocked.

“Your son is simply not strong enough to become an engineer,” he told my father quite matter-of-factly. “He should not attend even a technical school, let alone an engineering college, when he has a weak heart.”

My father heard him out.

To say that my parents and I felt dazed on our way home, as if we had been hit by a truck, would be an understatement. My sister was just six years old, a little too young to comprehend the gravity of the situation. Without warning the world around me had collapsed, leaving me still standing. Why, oh why, had it not been the other way around? I started thinking of myself as a ‘heart patient,’ a term I heard quite frequently since then, always accompanied with pitying looks. I’m not sure whether I was consumed with self-pity, but I do remember being immensely scared. In one fell stroke I had been reduced from a ferocious tiger to a bashful kitten. This cardiologist was not a likable chap after all. My regard for him evaporated as abruptly as it had first manifested.

Over the next few days I continued to experience the palpitation episodes at the same frequency as I did before, typically in the afternoons when I was home alone. But palpitations or no palpitations, the prospect of undergoing terrifying open-heart surgery always weighed heavily on my mind. It was the silent sword of Damocles, itching to fall, the elephant in the room eager to trumpet its presence.

***

Luckily, my father had a bright idea. He decided to seek a second opinion, even though some of the people around him advised him against doing it. In those days the doctor’s word was final, for the doctor was the human avatar of God. The very notion of seeking a second opinion amounted to dissing him, sending the message that you didn’t trust his judgment, that you questioned his very competence.

But my father put his foot down. “There’s no harm in seeking a second opinion,” he told the naysayers quite firmly. “Who knows? He might confirm the cardiologist’s diagnosis, or he might refute it and recommend a completely different course of action.”

I had a sinking feeling that the second cardiologist would confirm the original diagnosis and give the go-ahead for the surgery, but I was nonetheless heartened that my father was seeking a second opinion. At the very least it would delay the surgery by a few weeks. The lack of a need for surgery was too much to hope for, but the longer the inevitable was postponed, the more time it would give me to build up the courage to face it.

We were back to square one, as we had to start the search for another cardiologist all over again. As luck would have it, my father and his colleagues had contacts at Jaslok Hospital, the swanky hospital that had recently opened on Cumballa Hill in South Bombay. It helped that the air-conditioning company my father worked for had air conditioned it from top to bottom, all twenty or so floors of it, and my father had played a prominent role in the process, at least in his telling.

My father obtained a referral to a cardiologist named Dr. Anil Mehta at that hospital and got an appointment for a consultation. We made the ten-mile trip from our home to the hospital on my father’s scooter. I cannot say I took an immediate liking to the new cardiologist, perhaps because he spoke to me in English rather than Marathi, a language I was nowhere near fluent in despite having studied it since an early age. Besides, it was best to withhold judgment about the new cardiologist until he offered the final verdict. Scratch the tiger once, and it turns into a shy kitten.

Dr. Mehta too took an ECG and advised us to get a 2-dimensional echocardiogram. The 2-d echo was a cutting-edge technology in those days, in the early 1980s, at least in India. Few hospitals in Mumbai provided it. Sion Hospital and Bombay Port Trust Hospital had the machines, but they were not in operation, as they had not been ‘commissioned,’—either for a lack of knowledge of how to operate them, or a lack of money, or both. Only one hospital in Mumbai had a functioning machine and, luckily for us, that hospital was Jaslok.

We made a separate appointment to get the 2-d echo scan, and yet another one for Dr. Mehta to evaluate the results.

“Let me tell you something,” the technician told my parents after he took my 2-d echo scan. “But please don’t quote me on it. There’s nothing wrong with your son. His scan is perfectly normal.”

The words were music to our ears, but it would have been premature to celebrate. Technicians aren’t always right.

When we next met Dr. Mehta, he echoed the technician. “Ninad’s heart looks normal. All the chambers have normal sizes. I don’t see any holes. I can’t find anything wrong with it.”

But he did not unequivocally rule out all possible maladies. My parents and I were nonetheless immensely relieved. The unthinkable had happened. My surgery had been postponed, perhaps indefinitely. Maybe I would never have to undergo it. I could hardly believe my good fortune.

But I still had to confront a horrible truth. My palpitations continued unabated. They happened just once or twice a week, but they had not gone away. The rapid heartbeats, the panic and the confusion that set in, the need to read the Brer Rabbit book to stop them, were all steadfast. How was I supposed to face the unpredictable thud-thudding of my heart? Accept it as the shape of things to come? Grin and bear it? Understand it as an inviolable part of my manifest destiny?

My parents were in a quandary. Whose diagnosis should they trust? Dr. Mehta’s or the earlier cardiologist’s? One said he couldn’t detect anything wrong with my heart; the other was eager to put me under the knife. Much as my parents wanted to go with Dr. Mehta’s advice, what if the other cardiologist was right? What if they decided to forgo the surgery, only to see my condition get worse and possibly cost me my life? The decision would haunt them for the rest of their lives; they would never be able to forgive themselves.

***

Luckily for me, my father had another bright idea. He decided to consult yet another cardiologist and get a third opinion. The people around him—family and friends and colleagues—were incredulous. Second opinions were rare but not unheard of, but third opinions were simply beyond the pale. Then, as before, my father paid no heed to the naysayers. I’m not sure how he found the third cardiologist, but I remember we made two trips, both to a hospital different from Jaslok—the government-run Bombay Port Trust Hospital, located in a seedy neighborhood not too far from the comparatively pristine neighborhood of Matunga, where my mother worked as a college professor.

The first visit was to get some type of a test (perhaps another ECG), and the second was to meet the cardiologist, Dr. Arun Chaukar. What would his verdict be? we wondered with bated breath. Would I be proven guilty of having a hole in my heart, and sentenced to the knife as a punishment for my crime? Or—dare I even contemplate it—would I be fully exonerated?

We met Dr. Chaukar in his office, which was just as dark and dingy as the entire hospital. He appeared to be a few years older than my father but was just as jovial as him. He greeted me with a big grin and immediately put me at ease. He got straight to the point.

“Do you get tired, do you start panting, when you climb one flight of stairs?” he asked me.

“No, I do not.”

“How about two flights of stairs? Three?”

I thought the questions were so ridiculous, so besides the point, that I started laughing. What did climbing stairs have to do with panic attacks and palpitations? I had the attacks mostly when I was home alone; never while climbing up stairs.

“No!” I cried. “I can easily run up the stairs without getting tired.”

“He climbs three flights of stairs several times a day when we go to Pune during the summer and Diwali vacations,” my father explained. “Our flat in Pune is on the third floor.”

“He even climbs Chaturshringi Hill without panting,” my mother added.

Dr. Chaukar burst out laughing. “I have looked at his ECG and his 2-d echo,” he said. “There’s absolutely nothing wrong with him. There is no hole in his heart. He just needs to eat more and gain some weight.”

With that, he prescribed me a B-complex vitamin tablet. The prescription was superfluous, as the pill was available over the counter at any chemist. I knew because my parents took one capsule of the same vitamin every day. But the very sight of a paper prescription made the requirement all the more real. In my mind, it was the pill that would save my life. Absent the prescription, who knows whether I would have taken it regularly.

My parents and I were thrilled. The score was now 2 to 1 against the hole-in-the-heart hypothesis and the need for immediate surgery. We felt relieved that Dr. Chaukar had told us so unequivocally, so confidently, that nothing was wrong with me. From that day onwards I started taking the B-complex capsule. It was no mean task, as it was a large pill to swallow, and I always had trouble swallowing pills. But my appetite improved by leaps and bounds, probably because of the pill and, slowly but surely, I started eating better. I remained almost as skinny I was, but the extra layer of meat on my bones, no matter how thin it was, kept the palpitations in check. Before long, the palpitation attacks tapered away, although it would take another five to eight years for them to fully go away.

As it so happened, I continued to attend the technical school, and attended it all the way up to twelfth grade, getting my feet wet with many of the skills my father mentioned. Carpentry was my favorite, especially the tenon and mortise joints, followed by fitting. I was wary of turning, as I was a little scared of working with lathes. Moulding I absolutely hated, mainly because our teacher had a bit of a temper. Smithy was the toughest, as I wasn’t strong enough to wield the sledgehammer. Engineering drawing was a delight, while the electrical circuit assembly was largely a mystery. But I must have done okay, for I joined engineering college afterwards. I might not have been particularly strong, but neither was my heart particularly weak. I might not roared like a tiger, but neither was I a bashful kitten.

Pardon me for engineering the above digression, but all I can say is that three-and-a-half decades later, it feels good to be still alive. Someday I will surely tell you how my palpitations ultimately ended and what the underlying causes might have been. I would have told you the whole truth right now, but I simply do not have the heart.

February 2018

The Heart Skippeth a Beat

by
NINAD JOG

It happened suddenly, without any warning. My heart started beating loudly and rapidly—so rapidly that I was afraid it would jump out of my chest and fall to the floor. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. Who could I turn to? I was home alone, and the neighbors were either out at work or taking afternoon naps. Even if they were home, I’m not sure if it would have helped, as we were not on good terms with them. I grabbed the keys to the flat from the desk drawer in the living room and bolted outdoors. I climbed down one flight of stairs and dashed out of the building, unsure of when—and whether—the palpitations would stop. I stepped outside the building’s compound and started walking along the lane towards the main road in a highly agitated state. My peace of mind was gone.

The afternoon was a quiet one, hot and sunny. It was always hot and sunny in Mumbai, except during the monsoon season when it rained incessantly, and in winter when it was a little less hot but just as sunny. A fisherwoman was walking towards me, a large basket perched precariously on her head. If she had had a good day, she had probably sold most of the catch while making the rounds door to door and was now heading home. A cyclist was riding his bike on the left side of the road, taking care not to fall into the open storm-water gutters that lined both sides of the lane. At the intersection with the main road stood a hawker by his cart, loaded with yellow and green bananas, gazing at the rickshaws and scooters and cars and the occasional red public transport bus—known by its acronym as the BEST bus—that hurried along the tree-lined avenue either toward the sea, or in the opposite direction, towards Khar railway station.

The very normalcy of the world outside my home, the sight of ordinary people going about their business without any worries, had a magical effect on me. The palpitations subsided and eventually stopped, much to my relief. My heart was no longer keen on jumping out of my body. But I couldn’t take any chances. What if the thud-thud-thud started again? I continued walking.

I turned left onto the main road and walked the two hundred or so feet to what we refereed to as the Malabari’s shop, the tiny convenience store from where we bought bread and eggs and other miscellaneous items. By then I felt sufficiently confident that the loud thudding of my heart would not return. I turned around and started walking back. I and smiled at the hawker when he recognized me and grinned cheerfully at me. The bougainvillea creepers were dropping to the ground from the twenty-foot high walls enclosing the large bungalow across the street, their yellow and reddish flowers making the most of the sunshine. I looked at the tall jackfruit tree in the compound of the neighboring building to see if it had borne any fruit. It had not. All in all, it was a placid afternoon in the early 1980s in the suburbs.

I returned home, still smarting from the five or ten minutes of sheer panic I had experienced. It felt so surreal. The moment I opened the front door to the tiny one-room-and-kitchen flat where I lived with my parents and my sister, my anxieties returned. What if the palpitations made a comeback? I had to do what I could to keep them from recurring.

I went to my cupboard and pulled out a copy of Enid Blyton’s book on Brer Rabbit. I opened a page at random and started reading it. I had read the whole book before, but there was no harm in reading it again. I lay down on the only bed we had, the settee in the living room, and continued reading the book. The more I read, the more my anxiety diminished. It would be another two hours before my sister would come home from school at 4 p.m., but I was confident I could survive until then without falling to pieces.

She would go downstairs to play with her friends from the neighboring building within minutes of coming home, after changing out of her school uniform and having a cup of milk, leaving me alone at home once more. But I was not unduly worried, for late afternoons carried with them the joyful promise of my mother’s arrival home from her job as a college professor. Besides, even though my sister was not at home, I could see her playing downstairs with her friends—a sight that, oddly enough, reduced my loneliness even though I was too old to be part of her group.

It was over our evening cup of coffee, around 6 p.m., when my father had also come home, that I told my parents about the thudding of my heart, what we refer to in Marathi as dhud-dhud-na.

“How did it stop?”  my mother asked me, a look of concern writ large over her face.

“I read Brer Rabbit!” I confessed sheepishly.

I’m not sure what my parents made of it, especially as I made no mention of the fact that I had dashed out of the home and walked around in an agitated manner for a good five minutes before coming back. I don’t think I was able to convey to them the feeling of sheer dread that I felt—as if the sky was falling, the world was coming apart, and I was getting crushed.

“If it happens again, just lie down,” one parent advised.

“Drink water,” said the other.

“Breathe deeply.”

I nodded. I was not surprised, because in those days the cure for many ills was to drink water and lie down for a few minutes and whatever it was that was bothering you—be it a stomachache or a general feeling of malaise—would go away. Hopefully, this was a one-off event, and the palpitations would never happen again.

But I was sorely mistaken. Happen they did once again, when I was home alone on a weekday afternoon, just like the first time. Nothing that I had done earlier that day could have presaged what was is store. I came home from school at the usual time, around 12:30 p.m., and had stone-cold vegetables and chapatis for lunch in the tiny, dimly-lit kitchen that doubled as the dining room. Then I spent a good forty-five minutes reading the day’s Times of India, my only source of news in those days, since we did not have a TV. I eagerly looked forward to the treat that lay in store, a treat that appeared just once in a blue moon: half a cup of cold coffee sitting in the fridge, coffee left over from the previous evening because my mother or father had not had a full cup, or a guest had paid us a visit and had just half a cup. The taste of cold coffee was something to die for; it was head and shoulders better than hot coffee. If only I could have it every day!

After having coffee, I sat at the desk to do my homework, marveling at how wonderful I was feeling. Life was not too bad after all. What a striking contrast it was from other day when I had palpitations and had to rush out of the home! Surely that was history, a mere footnote in the day-to-day journal of life’s happenings.

But that’s when it happened again. The thud-thudding, the panic, the sense of dread descended upon me out of nowhere like a demon, holding me hostage in its vice-like grip. Once again, I dashed out of the home and walked in the neighborhood for a few minutes before coming back and reading Brer Rabbit. Once more, the furry creature came to my rescue, driving the demons of doom away.

When I told my parents about it that evening, I’m sure they were even more concerned. We hoped it would not recur, but alas, I had no such luck. In the next few days, the attacks showed no signs of relenting. Not only did they become more frequent, I could often bring them on just by thinking about them. Perhaps that’s how they had started the second time, when I marveled at how they history. But I became better at managing them. I did not have to leave my home when they struck; all I had to do was immerse myself in reading the children’s book, a book that was quite fitting, for I was a child, probably a seventh-grader, a year shy of entering my teens.

I soon began to dread coming home from school and being alone at home all afternoon, alone and friendless in a tiny flat on the first floor, dark and dingy, with its two living-room windows and tiny balcony facing the backs of other buildings, rather than the street—not the most gorgeous of views. The palpitation attacks became even more frequent, occurring even on the weekends when my parents and my sister were at home. I would rush to my parents at once, and my father would promptly hug me, but the attacks could not have cared less whether I was alone or in my father’s arms. They had a mind of their own; they stopped only when they felt like it. Only one creature could vanquish them—Brer Rabbit.

I had a sinking feeling that they would be my steadfast companions for the rest of my life, casting a dark shadow on my well-being and perhaps calling into question my very survival.

When my father announced one weekend not long thereafter that it was high time we consulted a doctor, his words were music to my ears. I was certain that the doctor would, in one fell swoop, exorcise the demons that had been haunting me and laying waste to my peace of mind.

 
February 2018
 

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.