Good morning, Delhi

When you’re in a country as densely populated as India, getting some one-on-one time with your surroundings often means finding creative and drastic solutions: like getting a 5:30am headstart on your fellow Delhi-ites. The city feels like a completely different place when it’s unadorned by its myriad people and sounds, and I’d recommend drawing back the veil of dawn to capture a glimpse of the city during one of its highly personal, and nakedly beautiful moments.

Snooze till 6am and you’ve left it too late-the dutiful manservants start dotting the residential side streets, faithfully walking pampered Labradors: these elitist animals are the impetus behind the growing demand for swarovski-styled haute couture for pets in Delhi.

At 6:30am, you’re joined by elderly couples, on walks in an environ reminiscent of a more peaceful time, as they stroll down Delhi’s broad, shady, tree-lined avenues. You might see thr more adventurous of elderly couples in one of Delhi’s dinky yet adorable little cars, chugging along cautiously at 30 kmph on gloriously empty roads that will soon shoulder the weight of Delhi’s bumper to bumper traffic.

Dodge a few bikers who are on their morning rounds distributing groceries from heavily laden and highly assorted guinea bags tied to their bicycles, and head back indoors for breakfast – it’s 7am, and the hustle and bustle of a brand new day has begun.

Good morning, Delhi. You’re beautiful asleep-shame you wake up so very early.

The new, unspoken social etiquette

Social etiquette has always changed to reflect the times, and considering the hyper-connected age we live in, it’s changing before our very eyes. Technology-driven changes in human interaction no longer bother to wait a generation to announce their presence. They occur at lightning speed, so subtle that you don’t quite see them, until they’ve chipped away the old norms and built new rituals in their place.

Country de la jour: India

What better way to start my recent foray into the diverse, sprawling landscape of India, than a blog post on that which reflects and molds the dreams of so many Indians: Bollywood? And more specifically, some of its most ardent of fans.

Now, you may think you’re familiar with the vital characteristics of a rabid fan: vocal chords to unleash screaming adoration, check; bedroom plastered with posters, check; the ability to memorise and recite the star’s biography spanning from birthday and hometown, to pets’ names and childhood imaginary friends’ names, check. But constructing a shrine for HandsomeGuy, where you feed cake to a picture of him on his birthday? Maybe not.

Of course, there are people all over the world who cross the line from nutty fan to psychotic stalker, but

“For as long as we both shall” …travel?

A lot has been said about the type of relationships my brand of people have. ‘Third Culture Kids’, as we’re known, are global nomads who often create our own ‘TCK culture’, an amalgamation of all the places we’ve lived in.

Apparently, TCKs seek out other TCKs for relationships: we’re happiest around people who share our unique world-view. It can be less exhausting than always having to explain yourself to a “mono-cultural” kid, who spent all of his/her formative years in one culture, and can perhaps never relate.

But TCKs are relatively rare, so this post explores the options available in absence of a TCK partner to date. Do we prefer a mono-cultural person who

“Happiness only real when shared”

“Happiness only real when shared,”scribbled a 23 year old named Chris McCandless, just before he starved to death alone on an Alaskan odyssey in the wild. This university graduate burnt the contents of his wallet, donated his savings, and took off without telling anyone where he was going: on an idealistic quest fueled by the apparent desire to leave society and its fallen members behind.

What I find paradoxical is that he took pictures documenting his journey; even when all hope of survival had vanished, his final self-portrait shows him beaming at the camera with a thumbs-up. The interesting thing is

Roaming Résumé

It just occurred to me that were a stranger to read my résumé, he/she would have no way of knowing my nationality. Having no residential, educational or work ties to the country I pledge citizenship to comes with the territory of being a global nomad. One gets to sample several different societies, but through the fickle act of sampling, cannot hope to be a true member of any.

Of course, this is both a good and a bad thing.

Look to the trees

A taxi is one of the most unassuming but welcome places to find optimism and interesting conversation. Today, I got into the taxi with my phone in hand, and was obsessively texting when my 62 year old taxi driver suddenly started speaking to me about trees.

Trees? “No, I’d rather you take Cavenaugh Road, please.”

As it turned out, trees are the secret to his perfect eyesight; look at them in the morning hours rather than mobiles and television, and you’ll never have to wear spectacles: “ask Raffles Hospital if you don’t believe me!” Thus ensued a conversation on the pointlessness of earning money that ends up being spent on medical bills – after all, one doesn’t live to work.

Quasi-counsellors who charge 1/15th the fee of your neighbourhood psychologist, cabbies are a great source to inject a little optimism into one’s day. “Don’t think so much; life is beautiful,” admonished a zen-like taxi driver who drove me home from work at 11:30 pm. Talking to another cabby about the recession, he told me with a laugh that saving isn’t an option when you have nothing to save.

Singaporeans have a reputation for being perpetually critical. But you wouldn’t guess it from speaking with a lot of their taxi drivers who zip around the city on their 10-12 hour shifts. There’s a lot to be said for being able to see the bigger picture, as a geeky 24 year old engineering graduate from a top Singaporean university told me, as he dropped me home from the airport. If you’ve hit some snags on the way to your destination, adapting your needs and focusing on the smaller things is a great way to still enjoy the trip.

Hello, forest. I couldn’t see you for all the trees.

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In yo’ face, Dubai!

I’m confused. I can’t visit a billion sites (flickr, a lot of youtube, etc) in UAE, because they go against the “political, religious, and moral values” of the country. But restricted material keeps sneaking up on me when I least expect it!

Things that have made me do a little happy dance in my head:

1. I can’t buy Fight Club here (it’s banned lest the underpaid, exploited masses that Dubai has built its empire off of get any ideas) but I came across Fingersmith (a lesbian movie with a very obvious cover of two women holding hands and smirking at each other) in Virgin Megastore.
2. Obviously, TV is highly censored here as well, so I was shocked to come across a lesbian movie when I was flipping channels. It had just started, so I put it on mute and decided to check back and see how much would actually be shown (gayness is CENTRAL to the plot, if you censor it you’d be censoring pretty much 90 minutes of the 120 minutes run time). I checked back in half an hour to find Pierce Brosnan and a bunch of nuns running about, with a big ‘G’ rating displayed in the top right-hand corner of the screen. Checked the TV guide – yep, Kissing Jessica Stein, 8-30pm. I can only figure that the UAE Safeguard of Morality was sitting in a little cubby hole watching a million TV monitors simultaneously, when he had the sudden epiphany: “they’re not girlfriends, they’re girlfriends!”
3. Books of all sorts are banned here, encompassing topics from sexuality to Judaism. So, I was filled with glee to see that not only did a lesbian book (Tipping the Velvet) find its way into UAE, but that it was prominently perched on the ‘Highly Recommended’ shelf of one of the largest bookstores in UAE. The fact that the title of the book is slang for going down on a girl just makes it so much better.

It’s a nice reminder that one can still stick it to the man, in a place where even in the animated movie Sleeping Beauty, the princess does not get to be awoken by “true love’s kiss” (Prince Charming leans down, and ta-da! Her eyes open).

Torturous Toning

So! I joined a gym. First, I walked in and watched my instructor make his way out from behind a row of buff trainers: short and extremely stocky, with a double chin and a torso that looked too round to be muscle. Hoping that this was just another motivational tool (people work harder when they see examples of what they dont want to be), I sat down and began my introductory ‘body analysis’. Somehow, standing on a machine can provide me with a vast amount of information, from the protein and water content in my body to the strength in my arms. Weird. Why do we have blood tests then? I couldn’t decipher what my instructor was saying, but apparently I have above average strength in my arms but lower than average arm weight, which are both supposedly bad things. I tried finding out why or how to rectify it: ¨so which exercises should I do?¨ ¨Yeeessss Ma’am.¨

Then I got my personal trainer changed, and now train with a decently buff dude called Moses, who’s nice but seems to have a vendetta against my legs. Turns out, I can only work out thrice a week for now, with a max of 10 minutes of cardio (any more and I will disappear!). So my schedule is: 10 minutes treadmill, 40 minutes hard training with weights, and 5 minutes cool down. AND – contrary to probably everyone else I know – I have to focus on eating carbs. Then fats! And THEN protein. The McArabia has become my new best friend – 550 calories, 50gms carbs, 20gms protein…