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.
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.
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.
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.”
“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?”
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.
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 22nd 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 21st 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.