tamasha

the lines on my face your fingers once traced

Since everyone else is doing it...

Also, my Dad is on the phone right now, and had to spell something for someone. He started with, "S is for... semiconductor."

I mean... really?

don't you love her as she's walking out the door

Clearly, Venus is in Leo (my star sign) because I've been asked out three times this week (Romancer clarified that he was, indeed, asking me out on a date). Maybe that's normal for some of you, but not for me.

So, there was Romancer. Then... there was the Canadian. Yep, that's right. He claims to have made a mistake and "wants me back." This is ridiculous, as I was never his in the first place. If I weren't going away tomorrow for a couple of weeks, I would have considered seeing him again, ONLY because he's a good kisser. But I'm glad there's a plane ride getting in the way of my poor judgment.

Also, today I got a phone call from one of my coworkers. She had a birthday recently, and celebrated with a dinner party at her apartment. I went over early to help her set up, and at some point we realized we needed more wine. On the way out of her apartment, we saw a couple of neighbors, her super, and her postman. I noted that she is way more friendly than I am.

So she leaves me this message starting with, "I don't know what kind of vibe you are giving off these days, but go with it. My postman wants me to tell you he's interested in you."

Huh?

Apparently he stopped her this morning and shyly asked about the Indian girl she was with the other day. He wanted her to say hi to me for him, and to ask if I'd like to go out some time. She said she was flustered, and then said, "Yeah, she's really smart," because she wasn't sure I'd want to date a postman. What me being smart, supposedly, has anything to do with it, I dunno.

So, Venus, honey, could you find someone I'm actually interested in? Otherwise, you're no good.

K, thanks. :)

just start the chase

Romancer is a former student teacher at Utopia. Despite that, he's five years older than me. Very much into how political issues affect our teaching. He will not be at Utopia next year, but rather a head teacher at a charter school in another borough.

We became Facebook friends recently when I lowered my privacy settings. We hadn't talked since June, but I recently tagged a photo of him.

Then, there was this exchange:

u missed

Between You and Romancer

Romancer - Today at 10:24am

a wicked [blah blah blah] last week

what u been up to?

R

Tamasha - Today at 11:17am

Too bad I wasn't invited.

I've been up to some professional development, but mostly just relaxing. I'm traveling in a couple of days.

I just noticed that we have a mutual friend. How do you know [him]? We used to work together.

When does school start for you?

Romancer - Today at 12:33pm

[work related things for a couple of] weeks. argh

still writing one more paper for grad school

off to the adirondacks on thu for a week. where u going?

up for taking a walk in the park, prospect that is, on a cool evening?

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

It seemed like a totally normal, friendly exchange until that last line. Is he asking me out? Or do people just take walks like that?

As an fyi type of thing, I'm not sure what my response would be if he were, in fact, asking me out.

what you think is love is truly not

There's a buzz about the classroom - the murmured hum of learning. I switch off the lights to get their attention. It's not the most effective method, so I often have to wait, pointedly placing my hand on my hip (When did I turn into this person?) and checking my watch. It's good to teach them social cues, right? The thing is, I can't be fake. I won't be fake. That's one of my rules for teaching. But not being fake means not engaging in those tried and true techniques of quieting down the class, the counting backwards from 5, the "If you can hear my voice, clap once," the "Ago, Ame" call and response. Those things are just not me, so I suffer through, and my kids learn that each adult has different rules. This is a good thing, I think.

So, I switch of the light and I wait a minute. They slowly silence themselves and look at me expectantly and I start, "OK my darlings ---"

"Wait. Are you talking about us?"

but you couldn't share the pain, no, no, no

It turns out to be much worse than we thought. At 27, just as all the parts of her life begin to gel (if such a thing ever really happens), she will have to endure a summer's worth of hospital rooms, prickly injections, chronic sickness, and the inevitable and heart-wrenching loss of her lustrous hair.

Truth be told, it's her hair that she's most worried about. The other stuff, nah. I keep hearing phrases like, "It's not the bad kind," and, "At least we caught it early." But she whispers when she talks about her hair.

When we lived together in a big house in a small town near a small college and a big city, we'd talk about our hair. We were especially jealous of her wash 'n go luck. She never needed MD's flat iron or Princess' curlers. She didn't need to blow dry in sections like me, whose hair would stay wet from morning till night otherwise. She could wash it and put it up in a ponytail and an hour later it would be dry and free of the ponytail bump (you TOTALLY know what I mean).

And now? It's falling out, in clumps she said. But first, it went gray. The next time I see her she won't have any at all.

i had to find you, tell you i need you, tell you i set you apart

He was a boarder in her mother's flat, S-bappa. K-pachi was just a girl when her father died, and her mother took in a young law student from Goa. The rent alone would be more than K-pachi's father had earned.

Then one evening a few years later my grandmother (K-pachi's mother's cousin and close friend) and grandfather saw S-bappa an K-pachi on the promenade that runs parallel to Marine Drive. Holding hands. 50 years ago. In India.

It was only right to tell her cousin, who flew off the handle. Naturally, no? S-bappa insisted that he loved her daughter and wanted to marry her. He said he'd marry her right then and there. But K-pachi wanted a proper Brahmin wedding.

They lived in that flat for more than 50 years; K-pachi for her whole life. There they raised my three favorite aunties. There K-pachi became the matriarch of our community, translating our texts into Marathi and even English. Just for me, she once told me with a sly smile.

It's there that S-bappa used to sit on his rocking chair, slowing inching toward the verandah on the cold linoleum floor, the Black Label sliding the edges off the tinkling ice cubes.

They were like a third set of grandparents to me, especially in the past few years when I no longer had any of my own. The minute I woke up from my middle-of-the-night arrival in Mumbai, I would shyly knock on their door. Either K-pachi or the servant would lift the mail slot open and shut, and I would hear the familiar clicks of the unlocking door.

I would slide off my chappals and peer into the living room to be greeted in one of two ways. Depending on his energy level, S-bappa would either declare my name in his booming voice, preceded by an "Arre vah!" or he would hum an old Bollywood song, his voice becoming gravelly by the time it reached the part with my name. He treated me like an adult, unlike many of my uncles, to whom I am still an unmarried child.

I can't bear the thought of going back to a world without him.
*************************************************************************
I wrote this exactly a year ago.

and I guess thats how you started

Parle-G Biscuits

Submitted by Sneha Goud

There are always some kids who seem smarter than the rest. Ever wonder how they got to be that way? If you had to think real hard for the answer, then probably you've never eaten Parle-G.

That's from the website for Parle-G biscuits. My dad buys a package of them every few months from the Indian grocery store. He'll eat a few when he gets home, after ripping away their insufficient paper wrapper, which is no substitute for a sturdy American box. Then they sit in the back of the cupboard for a few more months until someone throws them away. The grinning, genderless toddler on the front always looks so unaware of his fate.

Parle-G biscuits taste like sawdust. The crumbs get stuck in your teeth. I have no idea how to pronounce the name, probably because I didn't eat enough of them as a kid.

Source: McSweeney's

tied up in ancient history

Clearly, the 90s are back, and I am so... psyched. I was weirded out when the 80s were back, but really the pinnacle of my interest and involvement in pop culture occurred in the 90s. Delia's is selling Doc Martens (don't even ask why I was looking at that website) again. People are sporting colorblock t shirts and vests and hyper-color. 90210 is back. Plaid is back. Cuffing your t shirts is back. OK fine, maybe I'm going overboard.

So, inspired by The Wackness (which no, I have not yet seen) and Brimful and Zen, my 90s mix.

A real post is coming soon.

don't like his baggy jeans but i'ma like what's underneath 'em

I was out on Smoke on the Water for the long weekend (wait, it wasn't a long weekend, was it? Ha!), enjoying the... heat? thunderstorms? air conditioning? with my parents. They'd invited B Auntie and P Uncle over for dinner one night, which I was looking forward to and dreading at the same time.

My dad went to graduate school (in the States) with B Auntie and P Uncle before the two of them fell in love. They were part of the "international student" contingent at their school. Back then, P Uncle worked at an ice cream shop and hit on the pretty Greek girls. B Auntie says she wasn't paying attention to pretty girls at the time.

Now they're rich. OK, maybe rich is a relative term. But they're better off than my parents, who are pretty well off. Or at least it seems like it. They live in what feels like an old Tuscan villa. They're one of the few non-white members of their country club. Country club? My parents were not into things like that when I was growing up.

This couple has a daughter my age who I suppose I could consider my first real friend. Once we started going to elementary schools in different towns we drifted, but it was never a big deal. That said, from what I know of her now, I wouldn't say we'd be fast friends again.

P Uncle and my father knew each other in college in India. Even though P Uncle has his PhD, he says my father is the only man he knows who's smarter than him. At dinner, P Uncle asked my father if he'd like to go to a reunion of sorts that's being held in NYC. My father balked. He doesn't do well at desi functions, especially one that would be full of middle aged men's oneupmanship. He declined, but B Auntie pressed the matter.

"C'mon. We have to do this for our daughters."

My parents both burst out laughing; this was not the way to convince my father to attend the event. B Auntie said all he had to do was find out who had sons, she'd do the rest.

So then, of course, the talk turned to eligible boys. And I tuned out. But only sort of. They talked about how so-and-so's son is engaged to so-and-so's niece. How such-and-such's son is a great catch but unfortunately a bit too young. And then my mom mentioned the elusive K. K is the son of one of their mutual friends. No one has seen K since he was 10, which means I was 6, which means I don't remember him at all. My mom says, "I hear K's a chef now, and doing pretty well. He lives in the city."

B Auntie says, "Bah! No, no, my daughter said, 'Mummy, white collar only.'" My cab sauv went up my nose making a rather unattractive sound. "What? You don't think so?"

"Well," I sputtered, my nose aflame, "I mean, he's a chef. That's kind of interesting. At least he's got a steady job." I was the only one at the table who thought that was funny.

"You'd be OK with a blue collar guy?" asked P Uncle.

"What does blue collar even mean? Is a chef blue collar? I don't know. But I'd marry a chef, if that's how we're thinking about it."

"Would you marry a truck driver?"

Sigh. You can't win with these people.

no wonder there's panic in the industry, i mean please

I know it's been said before, but I blame Facebook for the decrease in everyone's blog activity in the past several months.

In other news, I'm deciding what to spend my stimulus check on. Suggestions (other than something that will help me not end my sentences with prepositions)?