There's a lot of beauty in ordinary things

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My four years in college had numerous highlights, but I clearly remember my lowest point. It was a Friday afternoon when I trudged back from class and sunk into my futon, miserable as hell, and switched on the latest episode of The Office on Hulu. As it turned out, it was the Jim & Pam wedding episode. You know, the one with that dance in the aisle, that shot of Jim and Pam on the Maid of the Mist, that look of almost paternal joy on Michael's face when they're declared husband and wife. "Why the hell are you smiling like an idiot?" my room-mate asked me when he walked in.

I just watched the series finale, and it's a heavy feeling. A moment from the show that keeps coming back to me is the final few seconds of the season 3 finale. Pam's in the conference room talking to the camera when Jim interrupts her. It was the moment the show had been building towards, and Jenna Fischer and John Krasinski absolutely nailed it. Jenna Fischer spoke about this scene in an interview on NPR's Fresh Air:

"In that moment when Jim burst into the conference room while Pam's giving an interview and he finally asks her out on a date and I turn to the camera and in that moment... the one that they used I'm sort of tearing up and the reason that I teared up was because when I looked back at the camera I saw Ken Kwapis and he... his eyes were full of tears and he smiled at me and gave me a little wink, like 'that's right, you finally got what you wanted sweetie'..."

Pam was right. The reason The Office worked was simple. There really is a lot of a beauty in ordinary things.

Café Tales IX

The evening sunlight strikes her hair, turning strands of brown to gold. She looks at the camera. At me. The sadness in her eyes, as if crying out to someone who’s never coming back. Paired with that laugh of hers. Mystifying. She’s in focus. A blur of green and yellow behind her. Lens flare. Her laughter dies, but that look in her eyes remain.

What has she seen?

The Perfect Compromise

“Nostalgia is truly one of the great human weaknesses. Second only to the neck.” – Dwight Schrute

Source: Deborah Austin

I moved from Austin in August 2010 for work, and as part of relocation I was given a month of corporate housing in Redmond. While the short commute to work was great, it seemed to be the only perk of living in a place where the sound of crying babies broke the overwhelming suburban silence. When I’d interned the previous summer, I noticed how those interns who had found accommodation in Seattle were instantly cooler. They walked into house parties with an enviable aloofness, a detached “Ya, I live in the city” entering most conversations. Terribly impressed I decided that I had to live in Seattle. I was twenty-one, and starting off at my first real job: city living beckoned. I imagined the nights out in bars, weekend mornings at Pike Place Market, and afternoons in coffee shops. Beautiful women were always part of these wonderful imaginings, of course. Unfortunately, the optimism began to fade quickly as I encountered apartments with no vacancies, apartments with vacancies but poor commute options, and a fast dwindling timer on my corporate housing. Before too long, my mind was doing that thing it was so good at: make compromise tempting.

I decided to give Bellevue a shot. A suburb west of Redmond, and east of Seattle: the perfect compromise. I’d heard one of the leasing managers mention a place called Elements that had cropped up recently in downtown Bellevue. As I pulled my car into the building, I was immediately taken by how fancy it was. The floor-mats were boldly inviting (“Welcome to artful living”), the elevator spoke (“Going up!”), the artwork on the walls made no sense, and the cement pillars were intentionally left unpainted. The place also smelled so nice and adult. There was potpourri everywhere; a stark contrast to the apartment I’d shared in Austin that smelled like a Febreeze-Axe cocktail at the best of times. As I waited at the concierge desk (they had a concierge!) for the leasing agent to show me around, my brain went into fifth gear to convince me that Seattle living was over-rated: I could always drive there if I wanted to, right?

During the tour, the leasing agent tossed more things in: a heated swimming pool that was always maintained at 72F, a gym with designer dumb-bells, a television screen in the mailroom to let me know if I had any packages to pick up, and a French bakery downstairs to meet my munching needs. The one downside he said was that there was construction going on in the commercial space below their only vacant apartment. “The construction will happen between 8-4 on weekdays, and we’ll give you an insane discount to compensate for the noise. Would you be OK with that?” he asked. Would I be OK with that? I thought about the apartment in Austin I’d just moved out of, the futon I used to sleep on, the leaves we discovered beneath my futon when we threw it out, the flies that bred in the kitchen, the washers and dryers in the common area that were often casualties of booze fuelled weekend nights.  “Would you be OK with that?” he asked again. I scratched my non-existent beard, nodded and said, “I think I can make that work."

So for two and a half years, I lived in Bellevue. On paper, the area had everything: bars, parks, malls, a multiplex, an art museum, a public library, even a statue of Gandhi. But it felt a little too planned. It’s as if a survey was run to determine what constituted good living and then lo and behold downtown Bellevue was born. The problem was, you hardly saw people on the streets. The mall was the main draw, and if you were so inclined you could spend an entire Friday night there – start with happy hour at the Parlor on the third floor, go bowling at Lucky Strike on the second floor, sign off with shots at Paddy Coyne’s on the first floor, and then stumble back home. I loved my apartment, though, and while the itch to live in Seattle didn’t go away, it was hard to give up the terrific deal I’d landed. But the construction below my apartment eventually ended, and my rent rose to more accurately reflect the market price. I went on another apartment hunt and due to an enormous amount of luck, I found a place in the Cap Hill neighborhood that met my every requirement—barring intentionally unpainted pillar.

I remember when I was in middle school my parents sold the washing machine we had used for many years. It was well past its prime, but I felt a pang of sadness as I saw it dragged away to be dismantled and have its parts sold. So imagine my hits of nostalgia as I moved out of my first apartment post-college. I walked around to check if I’d left anything behind. The movers had come and gone, and the emptiness of the place reminded me of the day I moved in. I had sat by the window, waiting for the truck carrying my stuff from Austin to show up. I was twenty-one, and starting off at my first real job. It wasn’t too long ago, but it certainly felt that way as I locked the door to #317 one final time.

Final act

Source: indi. ca

Rama kept his eyes focused on the palace at the distance as he stepped off the last slab of rock with his name on it. An army of monkeys, led by Hanuman, marched behind him, their large feet thumping against stone, their loud voices singing songs of their ancestors, the bridge swaying to the heavy beat. As the alliance of man and monkey entered the island of Lanka, the signal to Ravana was clear: We’re coming for you motherfucker.

Rama’s thoughts were consumed by Sita, lest he forget what she looked like or what she smelled like, or that feeling of waking up next to her. But with every passing day, Sita’s face became a hazier memory. As he neared the palace of his wife’s kidnapper, he had no such worries about recognizing Ravana. The narcissist had installed, on the ten corners of his massive home, ten animatronic heads of himself, each displaying a different emotion. Rama stopped and stared at the head facing his direction; it was taunting him with a coy smile. And all of a sudden, a wink. A wink. After months of roaming forests and asking monkeys for favors, after months of dealing with an exhaustion he hadn’t been prepared for, and after months of being chipped away by a constant sense of loss, the anger that had built up inside him came out, all at once. He held Ravana’s coy smile in sight as he ran towards the palace. Incomprehensible guttural sounds emerged from him. Hanuman and his fellow monkeys followed the galloping Rama, running and mimicking the sounds made by him. It was an avalanche of noise; the most overwhelming expression of rage the island had ever seen.

The gates to the palace opened slightly and Ravana walked out, alone and with swagger. “Oh, hi Rama,” he said coolly, addressing the man who’d arrived to end him. “What took you so long?” he asked, offering Rama his hand, an offer that was duly refused. As Rama locked eyes with Ravana, he shuddered, ever so slightly, but just enough for the king to notice. “I promise I won’t bite,” he laughed, tapping Rama on the cheek. Then gripping Rama’s bicep, “You’re a strong man.” “Where is Sita?” Rama asked. “Oh she’s around, Rama, she’s around,” Ravana whispered with a smile. “By the way, I was thinking, you know, looking at how angry you are, oh boy, you should see how red your face is. When I look at how angry you are and how pissed off Sita is… I don’t know if you know this but… anger turns me on. Now think about this: a threesome. You. Me. Sita. Now, that would be fucking epic. What do you say?” Rama fell backwards awkwardly, as a high-pitched noise in his ear and the worst headache of his life confirmed that the headbutt had been futile. “I’ve got these in surplus,” laughed Ravana, tapping his skull, standing over his fallen foe.

As Rama lifted himself up, he made eye contact with Hanuman, the monkey who had first discovered Sita’s location. By the time Rama was on his feet, Hanuman had exchanged positions with the monkey behind him and was out of Ravana’s sight. “You do realize,” Ravana said, circling Rama, “that you’re trying to take on the greatest warrior EVER with an army of monkeys.” The monkeys whipped their tails against the earth, sending up a cloud of dust and unsettling the birds in the trees. “Cool trick,” Ravana deadpanned, moving in closer to Rama. “Think about it, man. You, me and Sita. The three most beautiful people on this planet. Now, imagine the three of us together. Are you imagining that? Now add in my ten heads. Think of the sexual possibilities.” Rama noticed Hanuman’s charred tail wagging from one of the large trees that flanked the palace gate. The monkeys let out a collective gasp as Rama grabbed Ravana’s face and kissed him. Hanuman emerged from the tree, Sita on his shoulder with a sword in her hand, a picture of fury. Rama parted lips and ducked just as Sita’s sword arrived. She slashed and chopped away as one head replaced another until there was none left.

Sita jumped off of Hanuman’s shoulders and tossed the sword aside. She walked over to Rama, droplets of red trailing her as they fell from her blood-splattered sari, “Long time.”

Waiting for Rahman

“Kumbudra saami onnu dhaane, avangala mattum ulla vidraanga?” The Paati standing behind me was losing her cool as she saw the VIP pass holders being let in while us paying ticket holders, a mass of Rahman fans, stood in the mud, desperate to get to our seats. The official reason for the wait was that the organizers were still setting up chairs for our section, but as the wait time grew to an hour, the Paati’s sentiment found more and more support. “Neenga sollunga Paati!” yelled a miffed member of the youth generation. Chants of “Down, down India” erupted, mixed with deeply felt rhetorical questions like “Rahman’a paakarthukku indha naayadi thevaya?” The policemen stuck to their ‘setting up chairs’ line, while disillusioned fans demanded that the organizers show up and explain what was taking them so long to arrange the seating. “Dei, naanga chair podarom, ulla vidunga da!” shouted the guy standing beside me, accurately foreshadowing what was to happen. The shoving force of the pissed off crowd eventually got too much for the policemen to handle, and so they opened the gate just a little. People slammed against each other, curses rained fast and furious, and the guard’s unheeded requests to the crowd to show their so called smartcards before entering added to the tragi-comic nature of the affair as the line snaked painfully through the small opening.

Murphy was probably high-fiving himself in his grave as the rain, which had threatened earlier in the day, made an appearance again. It wasn’t a light drizzle, no, this time it was a full-on shower. Umbrellas rose out of nowhere, collected the rain water and deposited them on the people sitting right behind as the wielders tipped them back every few minutes to get a better look at the dark stage. As we sat, drenched, in the chairs we had picked up from the VIP section and brought back to our own, we were forced to watch on the big screen Jaya TV’s numerous ads, the mind and mood made to suffer most by the oft-repeated ad of a serial where a daughter promises her father that she will never forget him, even after she is sent to live with her husband’s family.

But, in spite of all of this, the crowd waited with a patience specially reserved for that one man and his music. “Our capacity to wait is limitless, and we reach for the stars!” Aaron Sorkin might have yelled had he been part of the audience. But even this patience can wane. Just when it seemed liked the excitement had been dampened, just when it looked like the crowd’s energy was all but extinguished, this earnest voice arose: “Unthan desathin kural, tholai dhoorathil adho, seviyil vizhadha?”

So worth it.

Those Bright India Blues

I walk into my room in Madras and it’s as I left it in 2006, when I moved to the US for college. There are stickers of him stuck on my desk, newspaper cutouts from his best games kept inside drawers, and Sportstar posters of him on the walls. As I look around my room, I find a placard I’d made comparing him to the Don, a placard I’d carried to the India-Pakistan game that took place in Madras in ’99, yes that game. When I look out of the window, I see the street where my friends and I used to play cricket after school. At the best of times, a tree was the stump, and a big Onyx bin marked the boundary. But even when things were less than ideal, we adapted. Our rules morphed to suit the state of the street. Underarm cricket, overarm cricket, French cricket. Cricket with a rubber ball, cricket with a tennis ball, cricket with a cork ball. Cricket in the thumping rain, cricket in the searing heat, cricket under a streetlight. We tried ‘em all, but there were some things about the game that were not open to interpretation. Things that stayed the same irrespective of the format. Things that we considered sacred, that we followed without question. When it was our time to bat, we may have stood in front of a tree but that didn’t stop us from asking for a leg stump guard. We didn’t have to find the bowler amongst a sea of fans, but that didn’t stop us from squinting. We didn’t wear abdomen guards, but that didn’t stop us from doing the crotch-adjust. We had to share our pitch with motorists, flower sellers and cranky old uncles, but that didn’t stop us from ‘gardening’, halting whoever came in front of us with one quick raise of the hand and then tapping the tar road with our bats. I walk into my room in Madras and it’s as I left it in 2006, but till this morning I could look at the stickers and cutouts and posters and know that while I was no longer that kid playing cricket on the street, he was still going to be around in those bright India blues. Till this morning. 

On Sunday, at Chepauk, India will take on Pakistan and that special madness will be missing in the crowd, that unavoidable outpouring of joy and gratitude, that undeniable excitement from knowing that he’s padded up and about to walk on to the field. On Sunday, at Chepauk, India will take on Pakistan but Sachin Tendulkar will not.

Anyone else need a hug?

Backpacking through Prague and Budapest

I spent my Thanksgiving break in Central Europe with my too-heavy backpack, the people I met along the way, and myself for company. I landed in Prague’s Vaclav Havel airport at 9AM on the 22^nd and made my way into the city using their awesome public transport system, much like the public transport system at every other major European city. I got out of the subway and headed towards The MadHouse, the one hostel whose address I had written down. The confident strides I’d started my journey with quickly switched to a halt as I realized that I had no idea where I was going. If it weren’t for the kind citizens of Prague who noticed my situation (illustrated by a huge, unwrapped map in hand, and an utterly lost look on my face) and pointed me in the right direction, I would have tired myself out walking in circles around the subway station.

One of Prague's many cobblestone streets

“Are you checking in?” asked Jess at The MadHouse. “Well… I haven’t made any reservations,” I said before explaining that I was visiting for three days and that I was thinking about spending one of them in Budapest. “You’re in Europe for 3 days… and you want to visit Prague and Budapest? But Budapest is 8 hours away by train...” “Yes,” I replied, settling into the chair across from Jess who looked at me like I was a crazy person, “I’m planning to sleep on the train.” After confirming out loud that I was indeed not of sound mind, she suggested I pay for a bed on Saturday and leave my bag in their storage room while I walked around Prague and Budapest for the next two days. This was really nice of her; most hostels wouldn’t have let me keep my bags lying around two days before my actual check-in. I signed up for Saturday and received a welcome beer in return. Nothing like cool Czech beer at 10 in the morning.

Old Town Square

Enjoying a morning buzz, I bought overnight train tickets to Budapest at the main train station (Praha Hlavni Nadrazi) and then made my way towards the city square. The weather was chilly and gray, just in case the miles away from Seattle were to make me feel home sick. I spent a couple of hours walking around in awe of the narrow, curved streets (I’m a sucker for cobblestone), stopping every few minutes to take multiple pictures of beautiful buildings hoping at least one would stick. Lunch was pizza—food isn’t one of the highlights if you’re a traveling vegetarian in Central Europe. People had their oh-you-poor-thing face ready whenever I asked for their vegetarian options. After pizza—it was fine, just like pizza in any other city—I headed to Old Town Square. It didn’t better Venice’s St. Mark’s Square for me, but it was still pretty special. All I need is good street music to romanticize a city, and there was this happy quartet lighting up the afternoon with the ‘Church of Our Lady before Týn’ as their backdrop.

The Jewish Quarter

Cal, our walking tour guide, was an Australian who had recently graduated from Charles University in Prague. Over a couple of hours he gave the group a fascinating account of the city’s history as he led us through the public square, Josefov (the Jewish Quarter), Namesti Republiky (the Republic Square) and the Wenceslas square which houses the National Museum. The Jewish Quarter with its incredible synagogues and various architectural styles is the most affluent part of Prague today. “Luckily, the buildings in the Jewish Quarter were left untouched during World War II,” Cal said before adding, “Well, luckily is a strange word to use. Hitler wanted it to be a museum of an extinct race. And so he let it be.”

The John Lennon Wall

You, you may say 

I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one

As I rounded the corner to the Lennon Wall, Prague’s most colorful expression of love, hope & freedom, a street musician was kneeling in front of it, guitar in hand, singing Imagine. His earnest cries of “Imagine all the people” just made it a perfect, perfect moment. I had asked Cal if it was worth checking out the Lennon wall in the night and he said, “Actually, it’s strangely better when there’s little light out.” The wall is different every day as artists, good and bad, let loose with their spray paint to make their mark on this awesome canvas. Great artwork does get painted over, but then there’s always the promise of something newer and better. I scribbled on it too, an unimaginative “Hey Jude”. It felt pretty good.

Waiting at Praha Hlavni Nadrazi for the train to Budapest 

“We’ll reach Budapest next week,” joked Bela, a man in his mid-fifties, sitting across from me in the second-class compartment of the train from Prague to Budapest. It was 3AM and it seemed like almost half the people in the train were getting out. “This is just Brno, long way to go,” he confirmed with a smile. I nodded my thanks, and stood up to stretch. I had fought terrible jet lag the previous evening by forcing myself to keep walking through the streets of Prague. The plan was to catch up on sleep on the train ride to Budapest. No suck luck. There were no sleeper berths in second class. Each cabin consisted of 2 rows of 3 seats each, and there was an elaborate feet shuffle to ensure that you didn’t step on the shoes of the person across from you. I was beyond frustrated when I first saw the seating, jetlag beating the shit out of my mind. In hindsight, the poor seating was the best thing that could have happened.

The hallway of nocturnal chatter

“The Wire is the greatest show ever,” declared Sandor, a fellow passenger who also couldn’t sleep, towards the end of a two-hour long conversation that amongst many topics covered the similarities and differences between train systems in Ukraine, Russia, India and the Czech Republic, the various film and T.V. adaptations of Sherlock Holmes, the economic struggles in Hungary, and how Baltimore stood out the most for Sandor when he visited the US (“And this was even before I saw The Wire!”). He teaches English (Neil Gaiman and Agatha Christie, in particular) in a city north of Prague called Liberec and was on his way to Budapest to meet his girlfriend. “Budapest is a poorer city, a tougher city than Prague,” he said when I asked him what to expect. “I used to live in a college town in Finland when I was working on my Ph.D., and I met more assholes within minutes of arriving in Budapest than I did in all my time in Finland.”

Budapest, by the Danube

A grim, gray air hung over Budapest, the fog obscuring the tremendous buildings lining up by the Danube. Bela, the friendly Hungarian from my train cabin, was kind enough to show me the way to the Parliament, the huge Gothic landmark I’d decided to use as my starting point. Bela, who had lived in LA for six years, added to what Sandor said, about circumstances being dire in Budapest: “I’m going to the hospital today to give blood because my friend’s brother needs it and the hospital has none. This is 21^st century Europe, and a hospital in Budapest has no blood.” I walked along the Danube, and maybe it was because it was Saturday, but there was hardly anyone out on the streets. I checked out the view of the city from atop Buda Castle, walked a bunch to shake off the jet lag, took breaks from walking to rest my feet which were in pain due to my terrible shoes, and then had to walk a bunch again because sitting down meant falling asleep on a bench. The only thing that kept me up at the station that night as I waited for the train back to Prague was the really cold weather.

The tram ride up to Buda Castle

I was sure I’d sleep on the train ride back to Prague. No such luck, again. I gave up on sleep at around 11PM when a Slovakian cop came in to fine the four Greek girls in my cabin for smoking on the platform. “Now that we’ve paid,” said one of them handing over 10 euros to the cop, “can we smoke?” They were from Crete and were visiting their friend in Brno. At Brno, I moved to a cabin occupied by four college students and a really cute musician who had quit college and moved to Prague. She spoke about her travels, about how she once hitchhiked her way to a town in Southern France, and played music on the streets to pay for the trip. “There’s no way you could have seen the old Yugoslavia,” countered one of the college students at one point as she was talking about her childhood. “You’re far too young for that,” he asserted, and then started a tangential conversation about how he's doing a Bachelor’s degree in Peace at Brno. A Bachelor’s in Peace. “It’s the toughest program ever,” he said. I don’t doubt that.

Early morning Prague

I looked out at rooftops and church spires, at streets and bridges, at the sun attempting to peek out from behind a curtain of clouds. It was about 6:30 in the morning and I was atop the Prague Castle, with only two silent guards at the castle entrance for company.  I had arrived at the Prague train station at 4AM with time to kill as the hostel’s reception opened only at 9. After spending a couple of hours writing, it struck me that I had the perfect opportunity to see the sunrise. I took a train to Prague’s castle district and walked up the Old Castle Stairs (Staré zámecké schody). I looked over the railing every few seconds as I climbed up and struggled to believe that I had all these incredible sights around me, all to myself. There was no one around and this was tourist packed Prague. Finally sunrise, and I felt shivers running through me. As I headed towards the hostel, I walked through side streets and tiny walkways, a slow wander through a city whose citizens hadn’t risen yet to meet the day’s demands. The opportunity was rare, to walk unhurriedly and in silence through one of Europe’s most magical cities.

The Charles Bridge, built over the Vltava River, seemed to be the most popular tourist attraction in Prague, and with its numerous artists, baroque statues and photo-ops, it wasn’t hard to see why. I went for a late afternoon walk on the bridge, my final few hours before heading back to Seattle, and was struck most by the lovely music on display. I crossed the bridge and entered Nerudova, a street packed with stores, hotels and restaurants. I took a random turn at an intersection and somehow ended up in front of a church. In a city full of tremendous buildings, this church wasn’t out of the ordinary. But that was the crazy thing, that this magnificent building, with its imposing scale and incredible attention to detail was not out of the ordinary. At this point, I was exhausted, my body beaten up from the walking and the jet lag, and I was far away from anywhere I could call home. But I had this moment where I realized that I was surrounded by beauty, by structures that reminded me of the strength of the human will, the capacity of human creativity, and I thought to myself: I don’t know if I’ll ever be here again, but at this moment… I’m here. I sat down on the pavement, pulled out my notebook and jotted it all down, with the hope that long after the fact, I can read about it and relive a wonderful trip.