White Silence

Dairy Overdose

I've just polished off a whole litre of chocolate milk, two huge cubes of cheese and a chocolate sponge pudding. And this wasn't even dinner. Awful British vegetarian food has turned me into a dairy guzzling glutton of the type that only the Swiss would approve heartily of. I'm turning either non-vegetarian or vegan from tomorrow.

My Experiments with Teaching

After more than ten lectures of the Specific Relief Act under my belt, I think a few observations are in order:

1. Irrespective of the fact that you have been assigned a specific class in a specific room at a specific time, it is always advisable to check with the college office, before your first lecture, that the members of the class in question are not filling up forms or counting notes before the cashier or scurrrying around getting their marksheets attested or indeed, performing any of the activities that figure prominently on the office's list of 'Ten Easiest Ways to Make a GLC Student Swear (Or Cry Or Resort to Deviousness, depending on your temperament). The idea being that you'd rather not spend your first day fingering the lock of your classroom in a bemused manner or running up and down the college looking for your students. Note: This observation is wholly GLC-centric.

2. In so far as it is within your power to influence the timetable, lobby hard to avoid an afternoon slot. Especially steer clear of lectures that begin at 1:30 p.m. It's hard to compete with longing, lunchtime thoughts for the attention of your students.

3. While zeroing in on your favourite teaching position ie sitting, standing, pacing, leaning, take the following factors into consideration:

(a) Don't shift around too much if you're sitting on a leather seat. Friction between your clothes and the seat is apt to produce sounds embarrassingly reminiscent of abdominal problems.

(b) The standing position does not go well with a raised platform and high heels. Students should leave your lecture with aching heads, not stiff necks.

(c) The leaning position does not go well with a blackboard and black trousers/churidars.

(d) If you like pacing, be very aware of the length of the platform. I am not going to elaborate.

4. Your students are not reading a Charles Dickens novel. You might be able to unravel all the principal and subordinate clauses of your compound and complex sentences, but the students like lots of full stops.

5. If you've forgotten what you're going to say next, indulge in some light banter with your class. Throw a few questions at them. There is nothing more pathetic than pretending to cough everytime you need to take a surreptitious peek at your notes..

6. If one of the backbenchers is yawning, look lively or begin winding up. (Of course, you could always try throwing chalk) If one of the frontbenchers is dozing, STOP.

7. If you're willing to stoop really low, offer chocolate as an incentive for attendance. Actually, I can't recommend that with any authority yet- I've only tried it today. Results shall be published on the next post.

Inter Alia

For someone who wants to be an environmental lawyer, I display a lamentable lack of enthusiasm for biodiversity, especially of the arachnid variety. An otherwise perfect holiday at Kabini was marred by a relentless pursuit by the spiders. They seem to have sensed my paranoia of them, and popped up everywhere. Whether to perversely torment me, or to reassure me of their innate innocuousness, I cannot say. The first one appeared on the window sill when I was alone in the cottage at the Dubare elephant camp and the rest of the family was about to go on a safari. I ran out of the cottage screaming, much to the amusement of the guides, who must have thought that the decibel levels and the urgency of my yelling warranted a snake, at the very least. The next one, a huge brute, with abnormally long legs, appeared in the bathroom. Much, much harder to dash promptly out of there. I had to beat a strategic retreat, moving stealthily, so that any sudden movement wouldn't alert the spider to my presence. I refused to re-enter until the attendants exterminated it with some kind of spray and my sister swore that she had witnessed the disposal of the corpse. The unkindest cut of all was on the hammocks at the Kabini River Lodge. They were deliciously comfortable, and the spot was idyllic. The Kabini river was ten steps away, there was the most wonderful breeze whistling through the trees, I could spot cormorants in the distance and I was curled up with a good book. Everything that I could ask for in a holiday. Ten minutes into the book and I spot a bright red, poisonous looking specimen making its way across. The peace was shattered instantaneously. I waved my arms desperately, overbalanced and toppled out of the hammock. However, such was the draw of the place (see picture) that even the spiders couldn't keep me away. I convinced my parents to stand guard over me while I was reading, but they soon tired of their sentry duties. For the rest of the trip, the lapping of the waves would lull me into a false sense of security for a while, and then suddenly, I would imagine something scuttling up my leg and leap up nervously to conduct a frantic check. Most unrelaxing.
*********************************
Another summer has come and gone (well, not quite, there's still no sign of the rains) and the gulmohur that I planted seven years ago stubbornly refuses to flower. It is the ugliest tree in the building. I blush for it- it's branches are so immodestly bare. It is put to shame by the brilliant blooms of its neighbours. The few leaves that it puts out are dry, limp and brown. At a time when the rest of the city is at its arboreal best, my tree mocks me with its abject lack of colour. Since I planted it on my seventeenth birthday, it has become a ritual for me to have my photograph taken with me standing next to the tree. I've grown slimmer and fatter, become fairer and darker, have alternately had longer and shorter hair, but the tree gives no indication of the passage of the years. It is an unyielding trunk of barrenness.
***********************************
Given that I registered vociferous protests against my aunt's upcoming trip to Mexico, it is ironic that I should be the one to have contracted swine flu. I've been reading the health bulletins and the travel advisories religiously, and I'm convinced that I have all the symptoms. Sore throat, runny nose, body ache- all most uncomfortably present. Plus, I've travelled to and from Bombay and Bangalore twice in the space of two weeks, laying my unsuspecting body open to attack by the vast army of germs that travellers carry with them everywhere. I did not voice my suspicions to my doctor-aunt for fear of being re-labelled a hypochondriac (I flatter myself that I haven't been one for several years now), but this time around, I think that the evidence points to an unhappy confirmation of my diagnosis. Time and a swab test shall reveal if this birthday is to be my last one.

Elegy

I’m fairly certain that my celebration of the ‘finally final’ end of exams yesterday was unique. I had unformed but grand ideas of what the culmination of five years of legal education should be like. I wanted to do something that would acknowledge the momentousness of the occasion properly. But ultimately, I simply stayed at home and cried. I’ve been the victim of similar afflictions before- I had a mild attack of the blues after the ICSE exams, which graduated into something bordering moderate depression after the HSC. So yesterday’s reaction was no surprise- I was only disappointed that I couldn’t delay the onset of the sadness long enough to allow me to celebrate in a more conventional way. The weeping could have waited a bit.

I’ve tried very hard to analyse why I feel the way I do at the end of exams. It is not, as some people would allege, an expression of extreme nerdiness. I’m as happy as everyone else not to have more studying to do (at least for a bit, anyway). I welcome being able to sleep finally (though this simply means that I get 7 hours instead of 3. The only thing I resent GLC for is having robbed me of my previously inviolable 9 hour night). I’m thankful (hopefully) to be rid of the idiosyncrasies of the Mumbai University. And it’s good to be able to feel my arm again. It generally goes numb after three hours of furious scribbling.

I suppose I’m going to miss all the little rituals and idiotic superstitions that characterize my examination phase. Like my dad syringing ink into my fountain pens or my grandmother unfailingly making my favourite, lucky sweets before each exam. I’ve been wearing the same earrings and writing on the same board and bathing and eating in the same, very specific order for the last thirteen years. It’s going to be a wrench not having any of these comfort routines for my future exams. Not to mention the license I get during exam time to be as messy and unhelpful around the house as I like.

These exams don’t represent the end of my student life, but they certainly mark the end of what have undoubtedly been its best five years. Also, they were almost definitely my last tryst with the Indian education system. Thinking of it that way overwhelms me somewhat. And this might sound dramatic, but at a time when we sometimes think of generation gaps in terms of 3-4 years, these exams signalled the end of an era. A good measure of how much I value something or somebody is how much I cry over them. I hope yesterday’s weep did justice to five glorious, glorious years.

The Last Laugh

I’ve been having a bad time driving wise. It doesn’t have anything to do with my technique (my driving skills have always been, and still are, flawless!!). I’m just finding it very difficult to control my temper. I’ve always been susceptible to horrible bouts of road rage, and I’m getting increasingly intolerant of excessive honking, meandering taxis, lane-switching, headlight-flashing and the almost bovine ambling of pedestrians. Driving is also the only time I use uncharacteristically foul language. It’s got so bad that I can’t even drive down the street outside my house without letting loose a couple of swear words. I get sadistic pleasure from scaring the hell out of pedestrians when I drive up close and fast to them and then watch them make a dash for it. I get cheap thrills out of overtaking particularly aggressive Sumos. And I took some incredibly stupid risks once when I was racing an infuriating Qualis from Sewree to Wadala. (I won!)

And I’ve literally been ‘driven’ to this kind of behaviour because of all the disparaging remarks and contemptuous looks and resigned shakes of the head that I would attract simply because I used to be a law-abiding lady driver. Discrimination on the roads against the fairer sex is deeply entrenched in the Indian psyche. It doesn’t matter if you’re perfectly well behaved - it only makes it worse. Caution and discipline are inevitably mistaken for incompetence. If you don’t rush the last few yards when the signal is amber, you’re subjected to a volley of honks and abuse. The same goes for when you stick to the speed limit or refuse to start the car even though there are still 10 seconds to go before the signal turns green. And yet, it really hurts the male egos to have a female driver overtaking them. There are a couple of examples right where I live. My sister and I (on the rare occasions that we leave home at 7 a.m.), have fought silent, yet furious battles on the bends of J.J. flyover with some dads in our building who drop their kids to school. The scores are more or less even.

But a few weeks ago, I notched up a minor victory at the Traffic Commissioner’s office. Of course, why I was there in the first place is a painful story. I was returning from a concert at the NCPA and dreaming about the cute French cellist, so I didn’t notice the signal turning red at Pizzeria. The inevitable cop was lying in wait at the corner. My licence was impounded and I was furious that I would have to make a pointless trip to the Fashion Street police station the next day. I kept putting it off until I happened to glance at the sheet of paper that was supposed to be a substitute for my licence and realized that there’s apparently a time limit within which you have to collect your original (duh). It was already too late to go back to Fashion Street; it would now have to be the Commissioner’s office at Worli. And I was running out of time- it was the second last day and the sheet of paper didn’t say what would happen to your licence if you missed the second deadline as well. I stormed off to Worli only to realise when I got there that it was Mahavir Jayanti and a bank holiday. I was so mad at myself that I crumpled up my substitute licence before good sense prevailed. (I generally need to tear and throw things around when I’m really angry). When I returned to the office the next day, I was appalled at the queues. Incidentally, I was also the only female person in the building, not even a token lady constable. (Which again, goes to show how impeccable lady drivers must be.) I’d come armed with a book, thinking that it would probably take me an hour, but after observing the steady stream of taxi wallahs flowing in,I was convinced that I’d have to return the next day.

I was pleasantly surprised. The constable to whom I presented my battered substitute licence very courteously directed me to a tiny room grandiosely named the Chief Court. There was complete and utter chaos inside and I was quaking at the thought of having to battle that crowd. The queue outside the Court was equally tortuous. I was about to take my place in the line, when the constable outside the Chief Court asked me to wait at the head of the queue. He took the substitute licence and the hundred rupee fine from me and bravely plunged into the madness inside the Court. He was out in five minutes with my original licence intact. As I walked off triumphantly, I glanced back at all the other men jostling and sweating it out in the line. I estimated that they had, at the very least, a good two hours to go.

For all the times that I’ve been subjected to the fury of their impatience on the road, I felt vindicated.

Third Degree Torture at the Mumbai Marathon

When I stubbornly insisted on running the half-marathon in January, I received dire warnings of the physical toll that such unaccustomed exercise would take on my body. (Walking is pretty overrated, especially if you live in Sewree and until recently, have had exclusive possession of your car). My family reeled off a litany of ailments: dehydration, cramps, hairline fractures, ligament tears....but no one told me anything about missing toenails. I shall explain...

I valiantly panted through the 21 kms and hobbled around proudly for a couple of days after. Just when I'd decided that I'd been lucky to get by with nothing more serious than some aching muscles, I noticed that my toenails had taken on a very strange hue. Now I never wear nail polish, so I must admit that I was a bit surprised to see that three of my nails had turned a deep magenta. Now I know this is slightly disgusting, but the only plausible explanation for this gaudy behaviour was that blood had congealed under my toenails. Don't ask me how, I know they're supposed to be dead. I don't see how running for three and a quarter hours (yes, I did take that long to finish!)can possibly have caused my toes to bleed, but there you have it. Over the next few months, the nails have been at work dehinging themselves from my toes in varying degrees. Since it hasn't been painful in the least, I have been able to take an academic, if somewhat ghoulish interest in the process. Apart from the slight inconvenience that this condition causes when pulling on a churidar or closed shoes, it has been quite a lot of fun. It's amazing what you can get your sister to do by waving a dangling toenail in her face. Also, since it looks very painful, I attracted a fair amount of sympathy and generally felt pretty heroic. I also nearly died of laughter when a friend in my building, genuinely horrified at my condition, told me in all seriousness that my condition was fatal. She thought I was being very flippant.

I bade a fond goodbye to the last toenail today. My co-runner wanted me to preserve it as a memento, but as creepy as this post is, even I draw the line at that.