All clear!

India visits always involve more lunch and dinner invitations from friends and family than my poor stomach can handle. Though I'd like to pretend that it's a chore to go eat all that good food, the truth is, I gladly suffer the indigestion in exchange for goodies I will never make or eat in the US.

On one such occasion, we were all over at my uncle & aunt's for lunch, and had finished packing in an ungodly spread. Post lunch - pre coma conversation was ongoing when my Grandmum announced that it was the worst Bangalore summer yet, and that she needed a drink of water.

So off she went to the table near the refrigerator where all the bottles had been placed. If it were me, I'd have just glugged from the bottle, but she did the decent thing and poured herself a glass, and remarked disappointedly that it wasn't cold since it had been out for a while. We all resumed talking, and a second later, there was an agonized squeaking, and we all turned around to see my grandmother shove the house-help away from the sink and spit a whole mouthful of water out.

Once that was done, she sagged against the counter and said..."AIYO! My mouth and throat are on fire!! What was that!?". Turned out, she'd just downed half a glass of Gin, neat.

Her first reaction when she realized what she'd done was to say.."UGH! You people drink this by choice? Mad."

Now, any time she says anything remotely conservative sounding, we let her know that she's joined the ranks of us degenerate alcoholics, so this kind of hypocritical attitude isn't going to fly. She's such a sport though..she laughs harder than the rest of us put together. :)

India's Favourite Sport

India is a cricket-crazy nation, and my family is most definitely high up there on the scale of craziness where the sport is concerned. I however am not. In fact, in the span of my life in India, I may have watched at most 2 complete games if you cobbled together the bits of the ones I caught on TV while on my way to the fridge,  stepping out the front door, or if I happened to be sitting in the living room when my sister ran in throwing a blue fit about how dare the channel be on something else other than a game that was in progress, and didn't I have a book to read or something?

Now that you have a fair idea of my deep involvement with the game, I want to share that I went to watch my first live cricket match at Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore where the Royal Challengers, Bangalore gave the Kolkata Knight Riders a fair trouncing. I shall also admit that this is 4 years after my move to the States. Better late than never, what?

My sister, seated next to me ruptured my left ear drum during the course of this outing with her incessant shrieking, so if I don't respond when you talk to me, move to my right and repeat. Also, I narrowly escaped with both eyes despite some frenzied flag waving by this very large, not young man in the row in front of us.

That I was also people watching rather than being riveted to the game is a cause of disappointment to my sister, but I have no such regrets. In fact, the guy who was dancing as though possessed - rapidly jerking his head with his tongue hanging out, which in turn caused his considerable belly to also rapidly jerk (imagine a walrus having a seizure) - more than made up for a wide ball. I had no idea that a Bollywood song could inspire such reactions.

The spouse, having had no exposure to cricket since his childhood was spent doing little league and soccer, and who this outing was really in aid of, had his first taste of India's favourite sport. He rather enjoyed it, contrary to his pre-conceived notions about the speed of the game, and the possibility of being able to pack for a trip between runs.

In any case, good times were had, much thirst was experienced (since they don't allow any bottles with liquids into the stadium, and if anyone has a strategy to get to the iced tea vendor before he is mobbed and robbed of his meagre supply, let me know) and I finally bonded with my family over that game.

Shoe Karma

The whole of last month was spent building up to my trip to the motherland, and here I am 2 weeks in, having worked remotely, started yoga classes, taken a trip and combated some crappy food poisoning. I am on the mend now, and well enough to blog. :P

My entire family is obsessed with Indian classical music, and we make it a point to go to as many live performances as possible. On one such recent occasion, the whole shebang had made its way to a concert in the city, in a relatively new auditorium within a temple complex. By shebang I mean mum, dad, 1 grandfather, 2 grandmums and a great-grandmum! My poor parents probably feel like they're kindergarten teachers taking stubborn children on an excursion, complete with bathroom visits, the inability to sit still for more than 10 minutes at a stretch, and the insane amount of resistance to anything that might make their lives (and that of my folks) a little easier. They weren't kidding when they coined the term 'second childhood'.

Anyway, the concert was great, and it was time to leave, not to mention that it was pretty late in the evening. Out they walked, only to find that the men had absconded someplace with no warning. So the rest waited for about 15 minutes near the car outside, and finally spotted my dad and grandfather striding towards the car, the latter visibly upset about something. On closer observation, we noticed that my grandad was barefoot, brandishing a lone slipper in one hand, and a cup of 'prasadam' in the other. When he reached the gaggle of ladies, he began offering them the prasadam while dangerously swinging his slipper close to their faces with some wild gesticulations of his other arm. My mother, quite baffled by this point, asked him why he was holding his slipper, to which he responded - "Yaaro shaniyan yennoda oru seruppa thirudita!" meaning "Some worthless individual has made off with one of my slippers!". My mother then asked him what use one slipper was going to be. My grandad in his innate naivete, said "Will they not give me a matching one at the shop?" Everyone around him asked if he was mad, and then he said.."I don't care..I'm going to hang on to this one in case the other turns up someplace". Humouring this completely ridiculous notion, everyone got in the car and went home.

My grandmothers were having their usual morning tete-a-tete, and one says - "I cannot imagine who could have taken your husband's single slipper. Would they have had no clue that they are wearing 2 completely different things on either foot?" The response was.."I don't know, maybe it is possible to not realize such a thing at all..it is pretty stupid though." And she proceeded to go upstairs to her flat. When she stepped in the door, she saw that miraculously, both my grandad's slippers were there! She ran to ask if he had gone back to look for it, and was met with a 'Are you nuts!?' look. My grandfather then realized the import of what she was asking, and was overjoyed to discover his move of keeping the other slipper had reaped such heavy rewards. My grandmother, still very confused about what could have happened, decided to step out to get some groceries, and realized that one of her slippers was missing.

Of course, this could only mean one thing. The culprit and thief of the lone slipper had been her all along! In her haste to get my great-grandmother into the car the previous night, she had put on one slipper of hers and one of my grandfathers and had merrily returned home. My mother when told of this sudden and startling development, asked between convulsions of laughter how she could possibly not have realized this, to which she said..I was walking all awkward, but I thought it was my spondilitis acting up.