Delhi Post 3.1: The household awakens

Before I continue where I left off, I would like to add a personal note. Today is a special day in the Hindu calendar. It is “Rakhi” (Rakshabandhan), a festival which falls on the full moon day of this month and celebrates the unique relationship between brother and sister. On Rakhi, a good Hindu sister ties a thread around her brother’s wrist to commemorate that relationship and a good Hindu brother buys his sister a present. When we celebrated Rakhi in years past, my parents bought a gift and, as a matter of form, handed it to me so that I could give it to my sister Mallika.

Now I am older and would like to give her something more than a pro forma gesture. So I want to tell you (captive audience that you are) what led me to start this blog. I actually had a blog on blogger.com before starting this one on wordpress. I kept my old blog reasonably updated throughout my first year of law school. But eventually I grew sick of my own blog posts, finding them pompous and largely uninteresting. The few exceptions were conspicuous by their rarity. And so, the blog fell into disuse and most of the posts were deleted.

After recently checking out Mallika’s blog (at http://mallikarao.wordpress.com), I decided to start a new blog of my own. Though I had perused her blog in the past, I had never taken adequate time to digest what was written there. Now that I have really read it, all I can say is that it is fantastic. Mallika is a phenomenal writer, and reading her inspired me to see if there was any spark yet left in me, after years of nothing but law school papers and legal briefs. And so I am blogging anew. This time, I have resolved to renounce my former practice of schilling about whatever current issue of culture or politics or economics I am vaguely interested in but unqualified to comment on.* Instead, I want to talk about the things on which I have something to say–if not something interesting, then at least something my own.

So here’s to you Mallika, for inspiring me to write.

P.S. I will buy you a real gift here in India

*To my readers who have blogs that comment on such issues, please don’t be offended. I read those blogs, and find some of them to be interesting and thoughtful. Mine, however, was not one of the good ones.

Okay, now we return to Delhi and to Chinnu. But our journey back takes us through one small detour. I hope you will indulge me.

There is a story which presumably travelled along the ancient routes carved by Buddhist scholars in China and Japan before it diffused at last into the literature of Zen Buddhism. It begins like this:

Once upon a time in ancient China, there were two close friends. One played the harp skillfully, and the other listened skillfully. (Since I have spent the last three years learning to “think like a lawyer,” I will refer to the former as “Player” and the latter as “Listener.”)

Whenever Player would play, Listener would interpret his melodies. “I can hear the wind rushing over a mountain,” Listener would announce. “Here is the running stream!”

Over time, Listener fell sick and died. Player kept his harp, but no one could appreciate his music the way Listener had. In his grief, Player cut his harp strings and never plucked the harp again.

The story usually concludes with a statement such as “even now the cutting of harp strings is considered a sign of true friendship” (in Japan), or “even now, the cutting of harp strings is considered a sign of great despair” (in China).

But my purpose in telling this story is not so mundane as providing a largely unverifiable explanation for a largely unverifiable social practice. The pertinent “moral” of the story, indeed the upshot of all this, is that both artist and audience are necessary for human creativity (otherwise it is like the famed soundless tree falling in the forest). Art does not flourish in a solipsistic vaccum. Every musician needs a listener, every painter, a viewer, (every blogger, a commenter), and, to get to the proverbial point, every chef, an appreciative and hungry mouth to feed.

If you can see where this road has taken us, then you, astute reader, will barely bat an eyelash when I tell you what was now occupying Chinnu’s thoughts. With the creative labors vis a vis breakfast completed, Chinnu’s attention had diverted itself to the glaring problem at hand: our audience was asleep.

(I realize this is an awkward place to break the story, but I am tired and would like to post this before the end of Rakhi. I will try to post the rest of “Post 3″ and Post 4 tomorrow. If I am really efficient, I might even get through number five!)

Delhi Post 2: A Classy Breakfast

Continued from the previous post . . .

One thing I soon realized about Chinnu is that he has a somewhat spotty understanding of the actual mechanisms by which water, kettle, stove, and tea bag combine to make drinkable tea. It was this justifiable ignorance (he is not generally allowed near the stove) which was to bring about the failure of his “chameleon water magic trick” at his grandfather’s eightieth birthday celebration the next day: an experiment which, like many of his projects, was ambitiously conceived but perhaps lacking a bit in empirical basis. But I am getting ahead of myself. At the moment he and I are making tea.

I located a kettle and filled it with water from the filter. Chinnu searched for teabags, finally settling on Chinese green tea, and I found the sparker to light the gas stove. In the meantime, Chinnu placed tea bags into three mugs so that his brother Chirayu would not be left out of the fun. I had just set the kettle on the stove when Chinnu asked if the water was ready to be poured into the mugs. I told him that we had to wait for the water to boil: “You have to be patient, wait for the steam to come out of the kettle.” Hardly thirty seconds later, I was lost in thought, pondering the relative merits of lying down in bed versus standing in the kitchen. Suddenly, I heard his voice: “Siddarth bhaiya, I saw the steam!”

I greeted his enthusiasm with some skepticism, which was validated when I opened the kettle and showed him the clear surface of the undisturbed water inside. “Wait a few minutes, you’ll know when the water is boiling.” But Chinnu was not so easily placated, he punctuated his incessant pacing with variants of the same question: “How much looonger, Siddarth bhaiya?”

Thankfully the laws of thermodynamics were kind and the water began to boil soon enough. I poured water from the kettle into the three mugs and the two of us transported them to the kitchen table. But Chinnu’s excitement was short-lived. Just as he was about to put mug to anticipating lip, I explained to him that tea has to steep in hot water for a few minutes before one drinks it.

“Seep . . . ?”

“Steep. When you put tea into the water it has to steep before you can drink it.”

I could see a hint of incredulity in his crestfallen expression, and I wondered what he thought of me; like an overly-concerned mother I stood by his side and admonished him to be careful when he was climbing his chest-of-drawers, instructed him to be patient while we waited for the water to boil, and now, just as he was about to enjoy the fruits of our labors, I was using fictitious words to delay his gratification.

Nonetheless, he bore the news stoically, and used the time to investigate the tea bag by twirling it around the tines of a fork he had snatched from the kitchen (and, I would discover later, tearing open the bag and examining the falling tea leaves as they descended back into the mug). He claimed that Chirayu liked his tea cold, which seemed a bit dubious; but it was hardly seven o’ clock and Chirayu would not be up for another two hours, so it was convenient enough to justify drinking the tea without him.

With green tea settled gently into my belly, my thoughts turned once again to climbing back into bed. This pleasant reverie was interrupted when Chiranthan came up with a new project involving the stove (and therefore requiring my assistance).

“Siddarth bhaiya, can you make sizzlers?”

Sizzler is one of many words that I have encountered only in India, roughly translating to food (often including meat) grilled on a skillet.

And so I found myself in the kitchen once more, peeling apart small circles of frozen chicken salami and tossing them into an enormous metal pot which Chiranthan had insisted on using in lieu of the two skillets propped gently between the faucet and the kitchen-counter wall. “This will be a test of your strength and resistance to cold,” he had explained after failing to pry apart the pieces himself. But three years of “cooking” during law school had transformed me into an adept at separating fused pieces of frozen meat, and Chinnu watched with some admiration as each piece of salami fell neatly into place on the metal pot’s rounded base.

The salami was followed in quick succession by a packet of chicken sausage and talk of melted cheese. It was clear at this point that Chinnu was running the show, and my stomach churned slightly as the remnants of my after-midnight khana voiced their strong disapproval of the idea of consuming this meat and cheese concoction. But Chinnu insisted I join in both cooking and eating, wisely concluding, I think, that the quality of the food would likely improve if I were forced to eat it with him.

“Everyone is in for a big surprise,” he exclaimed, “we’re making a classy breakfast!”

Chinnu was at his impatient best again, claiming the meat had cooked long enough when it was just beginning to show signs of thawing, and even turning off the gas a few times while my attention was diverted. We narrowly escaped disaster when I intercepted his attempt to toss cheese into the pot as well. When I had persuaded Chinnu of the wisdom of melting the cheese slices in the microwave instead of on the stove, I set about dicing a small onion and slicing a tomato to pacify the mutiny in my stomach and ensure that at least some vegetables would be consumed as well.

“We’re making a typical American breakfast!” Chinnu said gleefully. I laughed, not knowing how else to respond. My typical breakfast is cereal or cottage cheese and fruit, or maybe an omelet. Sometimes, when I am especially hungry, I may have both.

While the cheese slices began to liquefy in the microwave, a debate ensued as to whether the breakfast would be more accurately described as French or American. The debate was fairly one-sided, with Chinnu holding forth on both positions until he had convinced himself that it was, in fact, French.

“The French have a lot of meat in their breakfast. We have substituted chicken, but the French use pork.” It was not clear that even he was entirely convinced, but for the moment he was content with this analysis of the situation.

One thing was certain: “We’ve made a classy breakfast, Siddarth bhaiya, they are in for a big surprise!”

Delhi Post 1: Chinnu

This is the first entry in my new blog. I’ll be blogging about my post-bar exam travels. Right now I am in Delhi visiting my aunt and cousins. Here is the first installement . . .

I woke up suddenly to see a little figure waddling around and opening the blinds near my bed. Light streamed into my eyes and made me aware of a slight headache. I looked more closely at the figure by the blinds, it was my cousin Chiranthan. He was saying something about it being morning, time to get up.

I had arrived in Delhi very late the previous night to find out that my luggage had not come in from London Heathrow. While filling out an absurdly detailed form reporting the missing luggage, I struck up a momentary friendship with “Dips” (Dilip), a Delhi-ite software engineer in Germany whose luggage had also decided it would rather stay in Europe than endure the hot humidity of Delhi in August. Dips let me use his phone to call my aunt, Prathibha. She couldn’t understand anything I was saying because the over-excited crowd of people around her were incessantly shouting, probably the names of people they had come to receive at the airport.

The Delhi airport has two exits, which was just enough for my aunt and I to stand at one airport exit each and not find each other. While I searched for my aunt, I asked three European girls if I could borrow one of their phones to make a quick call. They were not as friendly as Dips. I finally found Prathibha Aunty, and after some explanation of my lack of luggage (I had only a backpack and two bottles of Red Label Johnny Walker), we were off to her apartment near Connaught Place.

It was close to two in the morning when we arrived at the apartment. Although I had eaten well on the plane, I pretended I had not eaten at all so that I could be polite and have some of the food that the cook had prepared. Predictably, my request for just a little food produced a banquet of palyas, chapatis, rice, dhaal, and the like.

I could still feel the after effects my ill-advised meal when I woke, along with the headache that I attributed to mild sleep deprivation. Chiranthan was bustling about the blinds, making sure that the maximum amount of light would hit my face.

“Why are you opening the blinds?” I asked shakily.

“It’s a country of free choice of action, isn’t it?” he responded.

This was my first introduction to Chiranthan after many years, and upon hearing his question, I had to remind myself that he had just turned ten. I was still half catatonic and was slowly grappling with Chiranthan’s reply. I wanted to ask him what should happen if one person’s free choice infringes on another’s right to sleep, but all that came out of my mouth was a kind of pathetic cooing:

“Chinnu . . . please close the blinds.”

After this weak attempt at persuasion had failed, I asked him for the time. He informed me matter of factly that it was eight o’ clock. I had slept on the plane and, it seemed, close to six hours in Chinnu’s crib-like bed (which Chinnu and his twin brother Chirayu insist on keeping). . . why was I so tired? I would later discover that it was closer to six when Chinnu decided that it was best I vacate his bed.

Lack of luggage also meant lack of pajamas, so I had to ask Chinnu for my pants which were strewn on the floor at the foot of the bed. Once I was more modestly garbed, I got out of bed and attempted to engage little Chinnu in conversation.

“How was your birthday party?”

“It was over too large a range,” he said, rather cryptically.

“Geographic or temporal?”

“Geography! Don’t even get me started about that.”

So I was tired and had mispoken. I tried again.

“Spatial or temporal?”

Chinnu’s eyes widened and he leaned towards me:

“Gangsters always measure the area of a bomb blast . . . ,” he said in tones of grave importance. ” . . . I too measured the area of my birthday party and it was over too large a range.”

Many of Chinnu’s claims are propositions he has derived for himself, through a kind of mathematical deduction from first principles. As for the gangsters, it was obvious that they would make careful measurements of radii of destruction because you can “imagine what a comedy it would be if the bomb exploded and spread over an area of only two feet.” Indeed, this would leave the gangster in an awkward position.

Chinnu was now off the ground, climbing the shelves of his chest of drawers. He soon extracted a children’s book and Whiskers, a small stuffed tiger. Whiskers, by the way, is Chinese, on account of the intertwining of his whiskers which Chinnu continuously winds together in the manner of a cartoon Confucian sage.

As we walked towards the kitchen, I tried to hug Chinnu, but when he turned to hug me back he fell into me and knocked his head into my jaw. Chinnu is very tall for his age, almost as tall as I am, and I had to remind myself one more time that he has just turned ten. I grabbed a book of my own, which I had flicked from my cousin’s place before leaving New York, and we sat at the kitchen table to read. (Mukund, I hope it’s okay that I’ve borrowed your copy of The Argumentative Indian, I promise to return it in good condition when I get back).

I tried to stay focussed, but Amartya Sen’s musings on the implications of Bengali film maker Satyajit Ray’s work regarding the problem of inter-cultural exchange proved too opaque for the early morning hours. I looked over at Chinnu who had found his specs and was poring intently over “Catch That Crocodile” (or, as Chinnu would say, “Catch That Crocodiiiiiiile”)—a thin book illustrated with whimsical blue line-drawings resembling wood block prints.

His book seemed more interesting than mine, so I read it with him. It is a funny story with many characters—the fruitseller, the policeman, the doctor, the wrestler—all members of a village who one by one attempt to catch a crocodile that has strayed from the river into the village. In the end, it is the overlooked and underestimated fisherwoman who “catches” the crocodile by luring it back to the river with a trail of tasty fish.

As soon as we finished reading, Chinnu decided that we should make tea. I was a necessary part of the enterprise because Chinnu is not allowed to use the stove: “It ain’t happenin’ without you bub,” Chinnu said in a mock Texas accent.

Continued in the next post . . .