You and me, me alone

I see the arid land around me and am reminded of things I can never have

Laughter, carefree smiles and friends of a true kind

For I have given up myself in trying to be yours

I have sold my soul, to find yours

And if this is love, then why is there so much unhappiness

If this is love, why is that I cry alone

For there is no dearth of love, in your heart you say

But why do I feel different in every way

People are not the same, some loving, some a little less

But togetherness is when they embrace their different-ness

So when we are together, should we not be one

One in thought, in direction and the path ahead

And though we may not complete each others’ sentences

We still need to care, and know to show respect

For what is life without companionship?

What is life if one could live as an island

Is not two a company, then how can I be locked alone in my tower of matrimony

And if I have left behind so many for you, should you not be there for me

If this is what I get when I am with you, why should I just not be me, just me?

My article in the Times of Oman

A bit of freedom I too seek as a woman

Sangeeta Bejoy June 03, 2012

Email the story   Print the story  RSS feed   Freedom is a beautiful word. And it's meant to be equal for all, both men and women. So why should it bother me so much when I am out waiting for a taxi, and cars honk (or course, the non-taxi ones, I mean), and soon enough there is a whole band honking away to the national anthem of Goober country. And then it's major league binge honking time, so much so that some cars are honking because the 'initial honkers- have brought the traffic to a standstill. But then the pretty-little-liars part of me feels very good about all this on-road attention and I take it as a compliment. I know how hard those poor drivers have worked to get their licenses. They sure deserve a pat on the back, I say, cause they are all masters of multi-tasking, capable of driving their cars, texting their chums, drinking coke -” honking all the while, keeping one eye on the coke can and the other on anyone on the sidewalk who might need their help. Halleluiah! But wait a second, they cannot see my face or my hands or my feet, cause thanks to the shiny sun, I have covered myself well enough for people to call me a hooded-bandit with a bright blue umbrella. But you can still see I am a woman, though not fair skinned to be from the West, so I must be Asian or something. I must be working in a household or something. I must be here to make some money so that I can send my children, back in my home country, to school or take care of my sick, old parents or pay-off a loan shark or something. I must be in need, so saving a few baisas on the taxi must sound very appealing to me. So appealing that I must be ready to talk to any man who stops his car, or worst still, drives it around, back and forth to get my attention and have me bend my will and get into his car, sit in the front seat and gossip away with the poor soul who is in search of "true love-. Helping human kind is such a noble deed in today's inward-looking world, I truly believe. When I bring this up with my friends, they say "Oh just get over it, men will be men, boys will be boys-. Sound interesting. And what about the cat-calls and the incessant hooting and shouting aimed at making your head turn around and throw them a glance? All that is just fine too, I am told. One of my male friends says "If it bothers you so much, give a call to the ROP. Tell them that these guys are causing you trouble-. That seems like a good option. It's an extreme option I think. As a woman I really want to know if anything can be done, before I call the police. Maybe I should just walk over to these funny guys and discuss good public conduct. Really? The truth is, I am not physically or mentally tortured by this kind of behaviour, irritated yes, angry maybe. I think that any society that provides security, insulation from such raucousness and generally, peace of mind only to a privileged few is heading in a dangerous direction. Whether its expatriates or otherwise, each is a fragment of the same society. We may not move in the same social circles or dine at the same restaurants or wear the same kind of clothes. But we do walk the same roads, have similar relationships within our families and generally react the same way to certain situations, like eve-teasing or harassing women. These things are not acceptable anywhere in the world, and the same goes here. Freedom is indeed a beautiful word, can I ask to be free from such silly and irritating behaviour, can I ask to be free to walk on the road without being taken for an "easy target-, can I ask to be free from those special offers of help when I carry my weekly grocery along the sidewalk, actually, can I ask to be free to just have some peace of mind?

Journey to Java with Joy

So for my New Year's resolution, I have decided to start learning Java from today. Of course, New Year's was almost three months ago, but better late than never, yeah!

 It's been one of my favourite things on the menu. So in the next few posts I will mostly be drumming on about this. For those who are not familiar with Java, its a programming language and a very powerful one too. The Java website gives a more easy and interesting definition.

Oh-man Air (Oman Air)

So here I am all excited and packed up, set to spend Christmas with my folks after two long years. Never mind the Heathrow close-out, and that flights were operating at a reduced capacity, I was gleeful that mine was going to definitely fly. Out, out, out of this country drowning in snow and morbid tempers attributed to snow.

Hurrah!

The joys of flying, that too, on long haul flights with a 14 month old is nothing new. It's as easy as the Nile flowing into Mississauga. So with a car-seat and my hand baggage containing baby items, and my 10 kg bundle of joy, I attempted passing through immigration, security and customs. Of course, I wished dear OT was there. But he was at work. So it was just us, mommy and son, out in the big bad world of airline hostility (I mean, hospitality).

While I am sure that Steven Slater has not a single mean bone in him, what amazes me about the Airline industry is the blatant understanding that people can be shoved, pushed or even elbowed if they do not have an Abercrombie and Fitch look or better still if they fall into the 'I am nearing my expiration date on planet Earth' category. So what if it is a service oriented business. Any service is a service as long as we reach our destination in one piece. Thank God!

So here I am with my little one, crammed unfortunately into 'Cattle Class' as Mr. Shashi Tharoor would have said. And as the usual norm for a traveller with a toddler, I am seated in the first row in an aisle seat. This is so that I can easily reach out to the basinet provided for my baby who is too big for the basinet. I ask the stewardess to bring down my car-seat which I laboriously tagged along from home to Heathrow to the flight, all by myself, and which she had heartlessly placed in the overhead lockers. I had made a mental note that upon disembarking I would give her a short speech about snatching away a car-seat from a single parent. You don't know what you are doing; it's the Elixir of Life for weary hands.

She said she would do it as soon as she had finished serving an older gentleman. Fair enough. 30 mins passed, and then she came with the dinner trolley. She was intelligent enough to pull out my tray, place my dinner onto the tray and then brusquely leave. Well she had done the same for everyone else sitting near me. Why should she be any different to me? Why, because I had made a mistake of actually reproducing and bringing along my brood, silly me! My eyes must have been popping out of anxiety or whatever, the young man sitting next to me, quickly offered to put down my dinner tray onto the floor, right next to my left leg. I did not care anymore, go ahead dear one, place it anywhere, as long as my boy is fine. After another 20 mins the head stewardess came by, saw my food tray and asked if I needed help. Sure I do, I said. If I was going to try to put any of that food into my mouth, I needed to put my boy somewhere, and the car-seat would be a good place I suggested. She however had a different idea. She said it would be good to make him sit in the basinet, which has hung from the wall, around 3 feet above the floor. In my sane mind I knew it was not the right thing to do that, but then I was assured that a stewardess would stand by while I finish my dinner. I thought it might work. But lo behold, the moment I put my son into the basinet, like any frivolous 14 month old, he just put his leg out in an attempt to get out. So here he was 3 feet above the floor in a basinet which to him was a bath tub, with his leg hanging out. O my God. My heart almost came into my mouth. And by the way the stewardess who was supposed to guard my son had just bent down to do something to her shoes. I was now determined, if not adamant about eating my dinner. I just had to figure out how. I picked up my son, placed him on my lap, put the dinner tray on the floor and switched on Toy Story. Watching Toy Story for the fourth time seems so much fun now.

Around 50 minutes later, with my little fella breaking all hell loose and the kind people, especially the young man in the seat next to me, whose face said - I am never ever going to have children, wrinkling their noses in desperation, I walked into the stewardess' area at the back of the plane and handed over my son to the stewardess. Now normally I would have asked somebody near me to help, because my 5 ft 2" frame is a limitation in situations like these when one has to reach out to the skies (overhead lockers in this case). But the course of the evening had not been a normal one, so I had to resort to extreme measures. She looked shocked, then came along to my seat, pulled down the car-seat uttering the following ' I am doing you a favour by taking down the baggage for you. We normally do not do this'. Dear Lord.

I thought of a fitting reply, but then my maternal instincts took over and I let it go. I smiled at her and merely said 'Really, are you.

I placed my son in his car-seat, rocked it a few times before he fell asleep. Then ate dinner.

When the flight landed, I waited for everyone else to disembark, even the stewardesses, one of whom actually jumped over my hand baggage. So with my little fella on my arm, his car-seat flung around my hand-baggage I got down from the 'New Wings of Oman'. My seven hours of close-to-hell experience had ended.

Oh-man Air!

Flavours of India: Racism

Last evening, I was talking to this old friend. She is an Indian married to a extremely handsome and charming African-American. She was worried about her daughter's new school, where some of her classmates had problems about her ethnicity. Though both of us avoided mouthing that disgusting, troubling word, I knew exactly what she was talking about.


But wait a minute, racism is not just a disease in one part of the world, and it is not restrained to just one race of people. Oh yes, like the Six Hats training program at my first job, anyone can wear a Racist-hat any time. And in India we do it, in different ways. No surprises there. Our racist views and actions driven by them come cheap too, are you listening, you dollar-mongering world?

I remember a time when I was eight, and travelling in a bus when a frail, silver-bearded old man, with a white cap( indicating he was a Muslim) boarded the bus and no one offered him a seat. I could hear the word 'Mia' being said several times. I did not understand it back then, but later learnt that being a 'Mia' was a passport to being lynched in broad daylight, with the cops cheering. And by the way, it did happen.

We have different flavours of racism. The most easily recognisable, is the caste system, where a rag-picker and a bank-teller are people who, will never ever share a table. And the colour of your skin, your last name, the state you belong to, the religion you follow, and yes, the fact whether you are a meat-eater can all be stacked up against you, and dear Lord, you sure can be a victim of racism.

So if you are from the northern state of Bihar, you must have a lot of cattle at home and in your barn, if you are dark-skinned then you are a 'Madrasi', if you follow a non-vegetarian diet (eggs, not included) then you are a Brahmin, and if you are a non-vegetarian (eggs, included) then you must had had an inter-caste marriage. The list is endless.

Yes, India is a democratic country, you can live the way you want. But we still are very caught up in these flavours.

Paranoid and a mum

For the past five weeks my little one has had a combination of cold, severe chest congestion, fever and diarrhoea. In his numerous visits to the GP and my several, almost frantic calls to the Helath Service Direct Helpline, we have seen that the advice we are given is something that requires no medical prowess or the tough-medical school education. Sometimes the advice given, is as ridiculous as 'make him comfortable', or 'its a virus, but it will clear out on its own', or ' his body will eventually develop immunity to it' or 'it is common for all children these days'.


The general mentality here is that children cannot be referred to a paediatrician unless they have their spleens hanging out!


Last evening, adamant on getting a blood test done we took him to the GP, who though sympathetic and highly dramatic in his mannerisms, has asked on a couple of occasions of my educational background because I speak my mind on my son's condition. He suspects me to be a medical student who did not have enough passion to complete MBBS!! He very reluctantly wrote a prescription for a blood test but warned that there was nothing to be found in the blood, because on physical examination my son was perfectly ok! Wow!

He has now advised me to go for the blood test after two weeks. His argument is that  my son's case is not a solitary one, he says it's common for children who start nursery around this time of year, and for three months after they have started nursery to go through a 'coping with bacterium' or better still, 'building an immunity' phase. He further suggests the fact that my little one is up and about and partially recovers for a few days is a sign that his body is perfectly normal and he should definitely get better in some days.


While I completely appreciate his findings, as a mother, the devil's advocate in my mind is constantly nagging me with the question - What if the doctor is wrong? Just because every child who goes to nursery has similar pains, does that mean my son too has the same case? What if, it is not the case? For the moment, it's just a doctor's physical examination that indicates my son's so-called good health!! So what if, there are some serious underlying problems that are not been found? Am I being paraniod or just a mum?


My started his nursery a month ago. Since then he has attended nursery only for 12 days. The remaining days he was at home because the nursery does not accept children if they are a little 'unwell'. The word unwell means if his stools are a little loose, they call me and ask to collect him from the nursery. In the last two weeks, they have done this twice. Also they have a 24 to 48 hour policy, which means we cannot send him back for the next two days as well!

So in total we have paid two whole months' fees (which is approximately the amount that I will get if I sell my right kidney!) and we end up having to take care of him at home, taking time off from work. It makes me wonder if I should just become a homemaker, baking cup cakes?

Do we all deserve a second chance

Jon Venables has now become the epitome of the devil. This man now just needs a face and that should be enough for him to be easily buried alive or burnt at a stake or be bled to death. The media has once again done what it does best in the past, cornered an individual so brutally that his own mother would have wished that he had died in her womb. Agreed, that Venables had committed a crime that defies all innocence attributed to 10 year-olds. It was unthinkable, society could not come to terms with it. James Bulger's mother can never forgive him and nor can we. But should we even try to understand what led him to commit his most recent crime? Can a 10 year old, with a fresh identity be cleansed and purged of his sins and be actually made conducive to society again? Have we devised methods to clean the unclean spirit and give a person a new identity?

India - on a long road to real progress

A few years ago all that the world knew about India were basmati rice, snake charmers, kings and palaces and of course, the indomitable Ganges. Now you would wonder why I have chosen to name the Ganges thus, but is it a mere coincidence that a river which cleanses the Hindu soul of all blemishes is in dire need of a thorough sanitization drive?

Now, what else does India have to exhibit to the world outside? Of course, there is cricket, as there was cricket in 1983. Dhoni and his pack of daring, media savvy, young boys are what has transformed cricket from an Englishman’s game to a cult. A cult, which has every Indian from age 5 to 77 as its member.

Then of course, we have the array of Indian beauty queens and their impeccable answers about world peace and removing poverty from third world nations, who have won accolades for the country. We love our beautiful women, and now the world loves them too. Whatever they say really does not need to make sense, as long as they look good on the front cover of Vogue.

I am not using this space to write about India being the world’s back office hub. It’s a fact that we very well know and a lot of print space has been used up listing the benefits of outsourcing.

Two days ago, ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ a movie about how luck and destiny play God to a poor ragtag kid from the Mumbai slums, won eight Oscars. It’s a feel good movie, especially in these recession-struck times when people getting laid off and factory units shutting down, are news bits that no more cause anxiety, just a sense of the I-knew-it-was-coming feeling.

India with its huge population stands to make a global impact. The country has produced eminent scientists, doctors, actors, musicians, sportspersons, journalists, writers and economists. But then, this educated class form just a miniscule of the Indian people. The real India dwells in villages, where electricity and water are still rationed commodities, where education is meant only for boys and dowry is a must for girls, where women are given a little more value than cattle. Yes, the country has progressed, but that progress means nothing to Meera, who like her mother did, walks 12 miles daily to fetch water for her family. And needless to say, there are many such Meeras in India even today.

Who will take up their cause?

Scary times these

Yesterday while waiting in the foyer for Ron before the 6.30 pm Mass, a young man walked up to me and said "I am hungry and helpless, need small change help". I was taken aback to hear such heart-wrenching words and pulled out some change to give him. But before I could hand him anything, Andrew our lead choir singer walked past and shooed the man away. I was not amused.
Later Andrew explained that this young man had been a regular church member and he had lost his job some months. He had since then appeared every day, a few minutes before Mass asking for alms. He was a Polish immigrant, he had a family of five to feed back home. His job as a construction worker had been just enough, but he now had absolutely nothing left.
He had tried to snatch a lady's purse a few days ago, and the kind woman having known his present state, had given him a few pounds and not contacted the authorities.
I think this story is similar to that of many people who have come to UK searching for a better livelihood, and have been stabbed hard by the recession. It has changed many into beggars, hapless puppets, crooks, people living with very less dignity or pride.

Technical Writing in a new place

Technical writing is a niche area. And a technical writer is a commodity for only companies whose budgets are all swelled up with last quarter's excess revenue. Therefore getting a job, that is of interest to you might take a while, especially if this is your first time in the region.
Here are a few tips on how to get a job if you are in a small city.

1. Visit the most intellectual places like universities, libraries and schools, where they might need someone to write and train people.
2. Another good shot would be to network as much as possible. You also stand a chance to make good friends that way.
3. Blog a lot about the place and include information about local places of interest.

Good luck!

At the recharge centre

Last evening battling the chilly winds and my lazy demeanour, I reached my mobile phone recharge centre. As usual, I waited for fifteen minutes before the sales girl finished applying mascara to her hazel-blue eyes, and looked up. I needed a recharge voucher, I informed her and that because I had been recharging every three days for a hefty amount, was there any other plan available that could cost me less, and allow me some free minutes of talk time. She said she could check in the system and began looking at her computer screen. The time was now 5:10 pm. Suddenly she looked up and told me that there was indeed a plan that suited my needs, but that I would have to come tomorrow as her day, today had just ended 10 minutes ago at 5:00 pm!
I could not believe it. And since I thought she was good enough to hurt my puny frame, I did not take the risk of voicing my deep dissatisfaction.
I left store, and on my way back, lighted two candles at the St. John The Baptist church, for my erstwhile mobile phone service provider in Mumbai. Good people.

Mobile phone customer service -Is it phony or funny.....

The other day Ron and I argued yet again. I though that mobile phone customer care in Mumbai operate a lot better than the ones here in Newcastle. Ron found my views absolute baseless. For one, he said, the people here at least have good knowledge about what they are talking about, do not seem to be reading up from a script on their computer screens and actually do seem to care. OK Ron I said, in Mumbai, yes, the fresh graduates on the phone do seem like they are reading from a script and can sound like a tape recorder playing non-stop, but at least, I do not have to be hanging from my window railing to make a phone call, am not charged the cost of a bottle of water from M&S to make a call, and the best, I pay nothing, absolutely nothing, to talk to talk to customer service.! Hail Meri Mumbai!

Newcastle Diary

Days of "hanging around"

Newcastle is one of North England's picturesque cities. The city has two well known universities - University of Newcastle and Northumberland University. Therefore it has a huge student population. Live, vibrant and full of activity, there is not a dull moment at any time here. On one of my frequent walks to the Eldon Square (the hub of all activity), I was enthralled by a group of Spanish musicians, playing their spangled flutes and guitars. I looked around to see a sea of humanity from all walks of life - waiters, men dressed in smart suits, college students, chic looking beauticians, and old couples, stopping for a while and loosing themselves in music.

Life here is not too fast and relaxed, and everything from shops to offices shut down at 5 pm, so different from noisy, fast, never sleeping Mumbai. What I like the best here is that I have the time to read, hang around art galleries, critiquing paintings and landscape. After all, I have not been doing much of "hanging around" since I left college and joined the big, bad corporate world. So for now, I am loving this new found hobby.

That's all for now, folks.

Promise that I will get some more scoop on Newcastle and its being the "party capital of Europe" soon.

Cheers!