OF BAUBLES, BEAUTY AND PENETRATING STARES

The train of thought in this post follows something that happened in the supermarket this afternoon—something that has become a regular occurrence in my life. For too long (and yes, I have already started complaining) the only people who have checked me out on the streets, at bus-stops, at supermarkets, once upon a time at the university, and even at my workplaces, have been women. The only exception to this is, of course, Darby (and a couple of insignificant others) and even that is not much of a consolation since Darby is seriously myopic. This basically means that I have to get really close to him for him to see me, let alone appreciate what he sees. And then again, I have no qualms in admitting that I am a ‘certain kind’ of beauty. I could look attractive, but only from…a distance.

Coming back to what I had begun with, I have always wondered why the f… do women stare at me when I walk in to a room or pass by them? I am not a Penelope Cruz in the beauty department and I dress ‘boring’. I recall an afternoon years ago. K and I were walking all the way towards the Arts building in the JU campus, passing by the numerous engineering departments. Seeing the girls looking at us and hardly finding a guy doing the same, the exasperated K had commented that the scene defied all the norms of social behaviour between men and women. She pointed out that one, it was impossible to believe that all the guys around were discussing serious stuff and, therefore, two new birds in the midst had not created a stir and, two, if they were really talking serious stuff, were we then trying to conclude that the girls had nothing better to do but show interest in us? Well, down the years I do not find this scene surprising anymore. Men check out women all the time, covertly and overtly. Women check out men…covertly and, these days, pretty much overtly as well and women also check out women.

Really, there are so many kinds of stares that one woman gives another, the sly glances, the sniggering looks, the awestruck stares…the works. I have always been particularly fond of stare no. 25. This usually comes from the matronly of the species, their knit brows a clear proof of their disapproval of any girl who does not strut the appropriate hemline or neckline. They are the ones who have never quite liked Zeenat Aman, don’t like Bipasha and are, even after so many years, undecided about Rekha. As much as I have been fond of stare no. 25, it has often proved to be my undoing. Stare no. 1 is the most common—the ‘you-check-me-out-as-I-check-you-out’ stare. This stare is usually seen at bus-stops. Imagine the following situation. Two PYTs come from two different directions and wait at the same stop, each eyeing the other with superhuman skill, taking in every detail—from the baubles around the other’s neck to the handbags and shoes. Even as they rate each other on aesthetics, either drawing inspiration or drawing flak, their eyes suffer due to intense staring from the corner of their eyes at the fashionable objects on display. This harmless ocular gymnastics continues until an even more interesting subject interposes itself between the two. The question is…can women really prevent themselves from checking out other women? I would say no. Why? I have no clue. I haven’t really asked any of my boyfriends but I am curious. Do men check out other members of their species in the same manner? Does a man actually remember what his male colleague wore to a Friday night party? I don't know a single man who remembers what his girlfriend or wife wore to a party. And here something else comes to mind. Ages ago, on an episode of ‘Koffee with Karan’ (Oh, I can see that intellect sparkling in the distance!) Mallika Sherawat seemed to have elicited despise-ridden-snorts from Karan Johar because she had actually taken the time out to observe and rate Bongo Bips’s butts as the best in the industry. I wonder how I come up with such fascinating and intellectually brilliant examples! Ignore what this ridiculous episode highlights on the surface. Scratch beneath the surface and you will find a man making defamatory suggestions about a woman who has always/already been considered by both the chauvinists and feminists in India as ‘loose’. Poor woman! She was merely answering an apparently innocuous question that was posed to her by a man who keeps asking the male guests on his show about their favourite sexual fantasies. It is such a pity that in the case of most men, their minds are often found unnecessarily located below their belts.

And now, confession time. This could sound really weird but I love women and I love beautiful women even more. I am unabashed about it. I check out beautiful women all the time—an entirely asexual enterprise that I voluntarily undertake because every time I take in a woman’s beauty, I celebrate women and whatever there is to being a woman, including our fondness for accessories. I won’t lie. I have a pronounced weakness for the likes of Monica Bellucci, Sophie Marceau, Juliette Binoche and Liv Tyler. But I would be unfair if I do not add that women of all shapes, sizes and ethnicity attract my attention more than the men do and yup, it is possible for women to check out men without having sex on their minds. On a lighter note but with a heavy heart I must admit why I added that last bit in the previous sentence. It is a case of sour grapes, you see. The cute men I do check out turn out to be (although I am completely devoted to Darby) either taken, or married and if not so, most definitely gay. Darby dearest, does this ring a bell?

TO GIRL-BONDING AND AN IRISH CRUSH

It will be totally unfair if Joan does not dedicate a post to two of her very dear neighbours in Sarnia. For matters of privacy and convenience Joan chooses to refer to them as KB and Mrs. Perth. Joan met them for the first time in Brit tragic hero’s wine party and had felt welcome instantly because of Mrs. Perth’s warmth. The fact that she turned out to be roly-poly added to her charm. There is something about people with such a physical frame. They smile a lot and it puts you at ease, making you willing to confide in them and confess. KB was a different story altogether. A man curious to know about India and its law regarding smoking in public, he had this old world charm of a cranky old academic. Turned out that he is no academic, though he is engaged at the university’s English Institute as one. This meeting led to another at the Café Verte in Piotrkowska Street which itself deserves an entire post. And ever since then, every Thursday, Joan has met up with KB and Mrs. Perth, sometimes accompanied by Darby, at the neighbourhood café, Van Helder, raising storms over piping hot cups of English breakfast tea and apple cakes.

Mrs. Perth, an Australian, has been employed in the American Studies Department since September last year and will be here till the end of this semester before she flies home to her husband. She is the mother-hen out here, brave, spirited, resourceful, energetic, generous and let Joan not forget the fact that she bakes the best Welsh tea cakes ever. Her spreads can usually feed an army and she is to blame for the recent appearance of a triple chin on Joan’s face. She is an amazing map reader, having travelled the world intrepidly on her own in her younger days. When asked why she chose to come to this country, leaving her husband behind, among the many reasons she came up with was the fact that after 30 years of moving from place to place with her husband because of his job, it was time to strike out on her own…payback time. Don’t make a mistake; she is far from a vindictive, man-hating feminist. But she is a feminist no doubt, constantly urging Joan to not let a gap overtake her career. The two of them teaming up against the men in the building is some fun that Joan will dearly miss once Mrs. Perth leaves. Some serious girl-bonding goes on between them, with one advising the other on where to buy shoes from, staring at the same craft-work and jewellery and ruing a lack of money, the two of them discussing the unpredictable nature of the ovens in their respective apartments, dissecting Naomi Wolf’s ‘The Beauty Myth’, telling each other migration stories, stories about mining wives in Australia, mothers and mothers-in-law in India, quilting and raw silk. I’ll miss you Mrs. Perth. You are a darling!

Joan’s true darling, however, is the cranky old Irishman with whom she bonds (as she would like him to believe) like an Audrey Hepburn to a Gregory Peck. In fact, Joan refers to him as Gregory and Mr. Irish Peck’s cheeks are to be seen…all flushed as he goes… ‘O, no, no, no…’ No amount of denying can save you, KB. You just love being referred to as Gregory. But there is more to the man that Joan is smitten by than his salt-and-pepper looks or his old world eccentricities. Originally, a cultured publisher of fiction from Galway, he is a small-time novelist, a published author, who loves it (but adorably won’t admit it) when Joan asks him to lend her his books. Readers, you missed the catch, did you? He is from Galway. For an English Literature fanatic, a man from Synge’s Galway is like Gregory Peck, dearies, even if he looks like Gulshan Kumar. And here, Joan happens to know someone from Galway, with Gregory’s good looks, who recites ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ like a dream, rolling his ‘r’-s like only an Irishman can. Joan has something in common with him…their love of Yeats’ early love poetry…and she could give up hours of internet surfing and all the good looking Poles in the world to hear KB recite Yeats. And so, the conversations continue, peppered with references to ‘The Dead’ in ‘Dubliners’, to Lady Gregory, to the love of books and the romance of turning over pages of a favourite book, to childhood in the 1940s’ Ireland, to man-woman relationships, to Indian men in loin-cloths and Mother Meera in Germany. His verbal fiascos with Brit tragic hero leave us in splits and we don’t want, just don’t want the homesick Gregory to leave for his dear Ireland in a hurry.

LOVE THY NEIGHBOUR

So says the Bible and so says Joan—the living embodiment of ‘Gandhigiri’ (as one of my friends suggested) in Poland. And so far, touchwood, things have worked out fine.

You see, we live in a building which belongs to the University and those who live here are mostly Visiting Professors from around the globe. There are, of course, a few Polish Ph.D students who happen to make all the noise as students all over the world are wont to do, away from the building—during weekends, at pubs in Piotrkowska Street.

Speaking of noise, here’s how we got introduced to the first neighbour we came to know. Apart from a couple of perfunctory ‘hello’s to people we came across in the elevator, we had no clue until two weeks ago about who our neighbours are. Our first taste of this came on a Sunday morning two weeks back. It was eight o’ clock then and we had just been awakened by a phone call from India. Darby, not quite graceful at any time of the day or night, literally ‘thop-thops’ his way to get the mobile and innocently awakens our neighbour in the floor below. A fifteen-minute interlude follows (not a musical one, I assure you) during which Darby continues being loud, Joan gets all housewife-ish, washing utensils with all the determination of a first-timer and a typical Sunday morning starts taking shape. The interlude over, up comes the neighbour, rings the bell and the moment the door opens begins in a sharp Brit accent, ‘What kind of a fucking noise is that? You are making such a fucking lot of noise…the noise you make is so fucking…fucking…fucking…fucking…’ You are right sweeties—after his three-and-a-half minute impassioned extempore, the f-word was the only one that reverberated. Very typically, Joan gets scared of abusive Englishman who has, by the way, not yet looked up. Very dramatic man, Joan thinks, his posture a flawless copy of some intense, brooding, hungover hero in a tragedy. Darby, very bravely manages to embarrass our tragic hero by reminding him we are neighbours, so could we please at least introduce ourselves. The three manage to relax a little, with Darby asking tragic hero to please come in and Joan offering him a cup of tea. Now, you offer tea to an Englishman and he is sold. It is like flattering a woman. No Englishman can resist a woman’s offer of a good cup of tea. So, good ol’ Gandhigiri with a cup of tea thrown in manages to salvage what might otherwise have led to violence. Joan, shameless as she is, manages to embarrass our hero even more by being all coy and letting him know, his words had almost brought tears to her eyes, and ta-da, before the Indian couple can sigh in relief at the tragic hero’s profuse apologies, they are invited to a wine-party at the Englishman’s the following Wednesday! Joan is relieved, no doubt, but doesn’t quite take to the hero until the party has been attended and keeps referring to him as ‘Dicklickson’, a perverse distortion of his surname—a la ‘Titspervert’ in ‘Bridget Jones Diary’.

Since then, Joan has come to dig our tragic hero quite a lot. He really is rather cute with the bluest eyes she has seen in any man. Turns out that tragic hero had really been a bit hungover, which is why the outburst and which is why he could not even recall whose party he had been to on Saturday evening. Tragic hero is really a very sharp man, extremely witty and a creative writer too. Is currently authoring a screenplay for some English movie to be made in Poland. That puts Joan in quite a spot. She has a thing for all creative writers and solemnly promises to be as quite as possible when she is at home. You can imagine, can’t you, what the jealous Darby’s take on all this will be…ahem…I better get going!

SETTLING IN

The Lodz we arrived in has till recently looked like one continuous layer of icing on a cake and I remember getting down from the train at the terminal and instantly turning blue. It was five-thirtyish in the evening and it was snowing hard. I don’t remember having even smiled at Guardian Angel who had come to receive us. It was only after sitting in the taxi that I had kind of recovered myself. We were taken to our modest two-room apartment in Sarnia and after a ten-minute break, taken to the nearest supermarket for our first adventure in Poland. This one looked like any other supermarket in the world (not that we were expecting anything different) but the fun part was that everything—including what was written on tins and packets—was in Polish. My congratulations to all those who are hard-core nationalists at heart!

We have survived here for nearly a month, speaking broken and accented Polish. Of course Darby insisted that I use ‘we’ in the previous sentence. The fact is that on my arrival in Warszawa, Asia complimented me on my perfect Polish accent, adding that Darby’s sounded like a foreigner’s. However, there has been a truce. Darby and I have agreed that we both speak Bengali in standard and impeccable accent.

Darby’s professional life began almost immediately after his arrival and I have for the first time since our marriage, kept his home for him entirely on my own. I do not quite hate the arrangement as it leaves me time to look around, breathe in, observe, listen, laze around quite a bit, read, write, get distracted and then laze some more. Ah, what luxury! I have started working out, eating less, drinking more, studying and teaching and let’s see where life takes me eventually. I am in no hurry. Any guesses what song is playing in my mind, right now? It is Van Morrison’s ‘I don’t want much…’

OF SMOKING LOUNGES, BARCELONA AND THE POLITICS OF LANGUAGE

The Frankfurt Airport like many other airports around the world, I presume, has what I would call, smoking lounges. Actually they look like small glass cubby-holes where smokers go in to smoke (what else, you dirty minds?). After making that nine-hour journey from Kolkata, awake throughout the night watching three films—one after the other--and listening to two howling babies and later, I presume, their howling parents, we badly needed to, well, have a smoke each. So, in we went in one of the cubbies. We had our silk cuts all right but no lighter. This was offered to us by a woman who also sweetly offered us the information that she was from Spain. Don’t ask me how but till that point it wasn’t really difficult to figure out what she was saying. I said that we were from India and it was kind of funny, because, as we smoked, we struck up a conversation, although a brief one, without understanding each other’s language. I told her that I had watched ‘Vicky Cristina Barcelona’ on the flight and catching the name Barcelona she seemed pleased, indicating to us in gestures and in Espaniol that(perhaps)she lived a little distance away from Barcelona. We thanked her for the lighter. She too kept saying, ‘muchas gracias’, for heaven knows what reason and then we parted ways. The whole incident was kind of ‘feel-good’. It warmed the cockles of my heart to think that two perfect strangers could oddly communicate with each other, each without comprehending the other, in a country not their own, and yet feel part of the same flowing sea of humanity.

As I recalled the episode later, I was struck by the grip that the politics of language has over us. What if I had met this lady in a wholly different set of circumstances? What if I had met her to tell her, without being understood, that I was in trouble and needed help? What if she had only managed to figure out that I was in trouble and not what my trouble exactly was? And this scenario can actually play itself out any day, perfectly within the limits of probability, between two people who do not speak each other’s language. Think of the Tamil version of the film ‘Roja’. An illiterate village girl from Tamil Nadu is searching desperately for her husband in Kashmir and speaking to an Army Officer who fails to understand her plea, let alone its intensity, just because she speaks Tamil. In fact, this aspect of the politics of language is absolutely lost in the Hindi version of the film. It was a crime to dub the film in Hindi.

When people back home ask me if I am facing too much of a problem in Poland because I do not know Polish, I tell them that I feel exactly the same problem here as I would face in any other non-Bangla speaking state in my country. They don’t seem convinced but it really is quite true. I am as safe or as insecure in Poland as I would be, say, in Nagaland!

SOME VOYAGE!

I have not posted in a long time. It’s because such a lot has happened and kept me occupied that I really couldn’t make the time. Let me update my tiny blog readership on what has happened since I tendered my resignation. I worked for a month more—till February 6, to be precise, within which I went pretty crazy completing pending work and executing the new tasks I was given. But there was such a sense of relief that this was the last time in a long, long time that I was doing all this, that I did not feel half as maniacal as I have felt in the past. Work was balanced(??!!) with numerous social visits and shopping sprees for the simple reason that I would be leaving India soon for a couple of years. My closest colleagues and seniors turned up with lovely mementos which I managed to pack in my 20-kilo treasure-trove. Goodbyes were said even as I felt nervous to think that I was off to a land where practically no one speaks the languages I know to communicate in. And my heart bled. For the first time in my life it bled for the parents who had long ago let their daughter go her way, who in a very physical way this time would be left behind. There is no greater pull than that of the umbilical chord. I wept, bawled even, like a baby being taken away from its cradle.

My visas have always created some problem or the other in the past and I have to mention this—I have no criminal record—and yet, this time was no exception. Darby’s visa had a rubber stamp of the New Delhi Polish Consulate and a sweeping glance over my visa just two days prior to our flight revealed an oversight. My visa had no stamp on it. Frantic calls to our travel agent ensued with Darby finally agreeing to accompany me to the Consulate in Kolkata. Another round of frantic phone calls to Delhi from there, until we were summarily told by the stern visa officer at Delhi that stamps were not mandatory and the Polish Embassy had only recently started putting stamps on visas. We would face no hurdle en route to our destination. Were we relieved? In a way, yes. In a sense , no. Images of gigantic, cruel SS Germans in holocaust movies flashed across our minds as we wondered how my fate and that of my visa’s depended on officials at the Frankfurt Airport. Would they waive or would they not? That was the question.

Let me also fill you in on the fact that on the day of our departure we packed and unpacked thrice, constantly trying to imagine how much was exactly 28 kilos (20+8 per passenger). Finally, we dragged our luggage down the stairs (what with a timely power cut), got everything weighed, lugged them up the staircase ( for 6 storeys), rearranged some of the stuff and left the rest to God.

An appropriate English translation of ‘ buk dhip dhip’ escapes me at the moment but this feeling, rather pregnant with its Bengali connotation, was our constant companion till Frankfurt. But, ‘bangals’ as we are, we are the last to admit a lack of courage. Here’s what happened at the Frankfurt Airport. We had to be cleared by the ‘Passport Control’ official. Now, that official in our case (non EU passengers) happened to be a plump, jolly, moustached German policeman who only spoke German to our chaste English. Oh oh! Here stepped in a much younger English speaking official who after checking Darby’s papers translated for the policeman that Darby was a Visiting Professor at the University of Lodz, Poland. ‘Ah, Professora!’—and with that one decisive expression and a faint smile on the face, he cleared Darby’s passage. Now, what happens to the 5-feet-1, puny ‘Bongonari’? She tries not to be flirtatious ( ha! As if being coquettish would have helped), nevertheless, bats her eyelids and meekly says that she was merely accompanying her husband to fulfil wifely duties. Pativrata Bharatiya Nari, Jaago! One look at the denim clad ‘Bongonari’ and bingo!—work done. I was cleared as well. Was it my vanity or my overactive imagination but I seemed to hear the English speaking ‘firang’ mutter—‘sweeth, sweeth’. In three hours I would be flying to Warsaw.

Here, I should not forget to mention the endless walking—up and down, to and fro—at the airport to gate no. A30, lugging our oversized, heavy handbags, laptop, camera, books, mufflers, caps and gloves and bazooka (just kidding), some of it obviously tucked inside our heavy overcoats worn over three layers of clothes. It did not help really that we looked and felt exactly like two midgets beside all the six- and-a-half-footers who carried way less stuff on their broad ‘firang’ shoulders. And how their luggage handles seemed to rest on them as lightly as a bird’s practised claws clasping a perch. Did we not see faint smirks lurking behind pink, white and ruddy faces—amused at our despicable plight? Shoo—rhetorical question! ‘Amar ei dehokhani tule dhoro’ (surely your mother-tongue comes back to you time and again in 'phoren' lands) –we were on the point of collapse after nine hours of captivity on board. And all the response I get from K when I scrap her reporting this is a mere—‘aha re!’ Oh, the massive injustice of it all! Is there no Bong left in the world willing to sympathize with two fellow pint-sized Bongs unaccustomed to strenuous physical labour? Oh, the unfairness of it all!

On two particularly frustrating occasions, during our connecting flight to Warsaw, I felt like telling Darby—‘Honey, I’ve shrunk the baggage’. Instead, all that we managed to do was to be totally embarrassing and disgustingly undecided as to how best to take it all down the aisle without making people wait for long behind us. Finally, when we managed to take our seats, I was too tired to even feel like disappearing altogether. I felt very sorry for the pretty Polish girl sitting beside Darby who was busy trying to keep his overcoat to himself and I must confess sheepishly that I also felt sorry for the gentleman who patiently waited for me to go ‘heave ho’ and pick up my bag and throw it over his really long legs to the other side. Finally, ‘uncle-long-legs’ got up himself and pushed my bag gently down the aisle. Oh boy! I was so shrunk by then. The worst part of it was when I imagined what my erstwhile colleagues would have said had they seen me then? My graceful ‘Bongonari’ moves all washed down an aisle??!!—‘mori eki tor dustorolajja’! (there goes Rabi Thakur in my head again)

The one and a half hour afternoon flight was okay. I faintly remember hearing myself snoring away (another unlike-a-lady performance) until refreshments came and before we knew, we were at freezing, snow white Warsaw, collecting even more luggage and being welcomed by Asia (Joanna) who would leave us at the Warsaw station to catch a train to Lodz.

Other ‘Darby’ean mishaps, fortunately averted:

1) Darby forgets to take his laptop bag, also containing his documents—a la passport—and leaves it outside the immigration counter at the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport. Would have been an instant loss of Rs. 40,000 plus years of education sweat, toil, hair and sanity. Averted by a timely reminder from Darby’s mom.

2) Darby forgets to take his overcoat, which just could not be worn in Kolkata, before queuing up for the boarding passes and baggage checking. Would have been an instant loss of Rs. 6000. Averted by a miraculous reminder from a lightbulb inside Darby’s ‘postfoundational’ brain.

3) Darby forgets where he has kept his appointment letter when asked for it at the Passport Control Section at Frankfurt. Ignores Joan’s expert advice and instead rummages through practically his entire hand baggage, causing pieces of clothing to fly out of it with alarming rapidity, much to the amusement of ‘Ah, Professora!’-policeman and the embarrassment of a sheepishly grinning Joan. Would have been a loss of face and sanity. Averted finally by the miraculous discovery of the document exactly where it was always supposed to be.

Lesson learnt: postfoundational, Derridean anything can befuddle a man. Period.