And I’m not talking about the brutal commentary when someone on the wrong side of 30 starts running.

“Look at him go. At age 33, he’s outrunning the defence AND Father Time!”

It’s the new talent in every cup that’s bursting on the scene. Usually being someone who barely watches the cup makes it easy to ignore. But Lamine Yamal, was hard to ignore.

Not because he turned 19 this month. More so because when we were a few postal codes away from each other in Barcelona he was an 8 year old.

I can guarantee you I was not winning world cups at his age. I was living away from home for the first time. I was set up in a PG a few km from the law school I had just joined in Pune. I shared a room with a 16 year old from Sholapur who was enrolled in one of those McDonald’s combos of PUC and IIT coaching.

“I’ll make it medium combo, side of biology for backup with Diet Coke please”

I was supposedly preparing for exams too once I found out my current admission was my only option. I had ranked 100 something in the exam for NLS in Bangalore. I still remember scrolling and clicking that prehistoric mouse at the cyber cafe hoping to refresh the page into an admit. I called my parents and told them I was going to focus my energy on trying to get an admit the next year.

A few weeks in, my discovery of the no attendance requirement and new friends refocused my attention on testing my body with alcohol, nicotine and probably the worst of all- coffee at CCD. My days began to blur into each other with my time at my PG eventually becoming just a check in for laundry and the occasional nap. While my harried roommate was buried in a thick physics book, I was studying diffusion of gases in a Sheesha lab.

Few memories stand out to me from that year intact. A bus ride to Mumbai for a concert and a shared taxi back after. Watching an acquaintance pelt PETA members with chicken nuggets at the inauguration of a new mall and KFC outlet. And watching + rewatching Rang De Basanti in the span of 48 hours in a theatre.

It’s hard to state what the impact of this movie was on an 18-year-old who was yet to vote.

As a movie on its own, It obviously had a lot of things going for it. The script, the soundtrack and the relevance of its story. But for someone who’s formative years were in Bangalore, despite having one parent who grew up in Madhya Pradesh, my voluntarily re-watching a Hindi movie is like those reels you see now of Indian K-pop fans. And either because of Rahman’s soundtrack or seeing faces which were familiar, like Siddharth and Madhavan, made it feel like more of a pan India project than your average Hindi movie.

But outside of listening to the soundtrack, creating a wish to visit Punjab and a commitment to be more politically aware, it stopped short of actually making me more participatory in politics.

A few months after having made it to supposedly the best law school in the country, I figured that I would do what all the older people in my life had advocated- that the way to change the system was to become a part of it. And of course that students and politics do not mix (Like Sugar and Curd if I had to suggest an analogy) And the aggressive work load and mandatory internships left me with little spare time, all of which I tried to focus on even more aggressive assaults on my lungs and liver.

So if I had to filter and just remember three key things that I learned then:

• You are not allowed to make a profit on education in India (LMAO tell that to my family friends whining about cost of a management seat)

• Education is on the concurrent list

• Judges from sessions to Supreme Court, have big egos

I still remember being glared at by my boss at one internship because I had unconsciously not saluted the judge on entering the courtroom inner sanctum of a temple. You lift your fingers to your forehead while bending reverentially. I later found out that for good measure that some of the people exiting the courtroom would do this while walking backwards.

This was at complete odds with what we were experiencing on campus. We had a notice board that frequently featured student criticism of some actions by the college admin. And I can’t think of any of my other peers studying in India going on a protest because their campus curfew was threatened to be moved back from 12.30 am or were taking part in a sit-in to protest internet being rolled out in the hostel which was part of a ploy to reduce social interaction. (If you needed more proof on how old I am)

I think if it hadn’t been for marrying Mali, I may not have ended up physically at any protest after college. While we were living in Delhi I went with her to the Shaheenbagh protest. Despite the cold, the women who were leading the protest and the community organizers had created a space that was directly opposed to the authoritarian push for CAA and NRC happening a few kilometres away.

I left feeling excited. On some level I was also scared because then in my early thirties, as someone who was born in an upper caste family and subsequently grew up with money, oppression by the state or anyone else to me up to then was a concept in theory until my own family dynamic changed.

And based on how that protest ended, I think that fear was justified. The COVID lockdown shut down the protest, but the faces visible from it have been targeted by the state since. Multiple people are still in jail awaiting trial. Umar Khalid. Sharjeel Imam.

It was like the judiciary was trying to communicate to me everyday, “You made the right choice.” People say education is about learning and unlearning and seemingly they were unlearning a lot of the pesky constitutional stuff that I had to struggle with to graduate. And it’s thanks to them and the CJI calling students cockroaches that we find ourselves here.

A meme called the ‘Cockroach Janata Party’ snowballing into a protest at Jantar Mantar led by Gen Z over paper leaks. Gen Z is probably not the last generation that has to pin all future decisions on performance in an exam.

I take back all of my prior criticism of them. They braved Delhi heat and circumvented the main stream media’s usual playbook of discrediting it by being terminally online even at the protest. It is also why everyone was able to see the Delhi police teargas and lathi charge student protesters and state/non state elements in plainclothes wreaking havoc. Not to be left behind as worst arm of the government, the CJI again dismissed a petition to take cognizance of this violence “because he had no time to watch videos”.

It’s a shame because outside of the ones documenting state violence the rest were very entertaining. I have never seen such a high concentration and quality of trolling of the PM and his cronies. Reel after reel of hilarious protest slogans, taking selfies and videos with police, destroying the pliant media that clings to his expensive wardrobe for words of affirmation and all the uncles and aunties who would choose the BJP over the wellbeing of their own child.

You may or may not call the protest a success but the fact that they actually got one of them to resign and that the Govt is seemingly taking action by having a committee set up with Nandan Nilekani counts like a win. Nothing to beat exam pressure like waiting for an OTP.

But the most damage has been done to the brand of Supreme leader who uploaded a mournful video with a very simple selfie light and light makeup on how the situation will be fixed as the protest stopped once the resignation was announced. Its now clear that young people need something different and even my Millennial counterparts, sanghi or otherwise are uncles who don’t have a clue.

I don’t know if the state machinery using its usual playbook to shut Pandora’s box will reverse this. The central govt would rather wish everyone Eid Mubarak than be laughed at. Attempts to scrub the internet of all the reels mocking the government have already begun along with all the videos documenting violence. FIRs and arrests of protesters will rain down on all but with much more enthusiasm and vigour if they happen to be Muslim. And Arnab and his cronies trying every variation in their playbook to discredit the protesters, which may finally land at George Soros sending money to CJP on UPI while on trip to Pakistan.

And what about Bollywood?

Barring a few exceptions, they were all silently waiting for Supreme leader to let them know what to say before releasing some template message that blames no-one likely written by ChaatoGPT. After contrasting this cowardly behaviour with the students who braved Lathis and tear gas I’m convinced these Bollywood patriots wouldn’t opt for a spine even if it came free with a lifetime supply of Ozempic.

The fact that the protests primarily featured Rang De Basanti songs means its probably crossed the Dhokla duo’s mind to lean on Bollywood to manage PR like they did in Dhurandhar 2. I can predict some of the brain storming that’s happening .

Rang De Basanti 2

Cast: Aamir “Preparing for Alimony cube” Khan , Anupam “Free main karunga” Kher, R “SS” Madhavan

Plot 1: DJ, Suki, Karan find out that Aslam is a sleeper agent from Pakistan who is preparing for NEET exam to steal a seat away from a deserving Pandey/Gupta/Bharadwaj and take him to the VC only to find out the VC is a godless liberal who is also leaking papers. They shoot him and Aslam and get MLA tickets for next election.

Plot 2: Sue, who is the granddaughter of the jailer who used to spellcheck Savarkar’s mercy petitions comes to India to shoot a film on his bravery. After Madhavan’s car crashes because of Ethanol in the tank, DJ and gang organize a candle light vigil for Gadkari.

What do you think, fraands?

P.S Thank you to for sending more subscribers my way than Arnab sends Patients to an ENT clinic

Financially, mentally, spiritually?

Yes, but I was talking about LinkedIn.

Much like Bangalores administrators it wakes up every day and asks itself “how can I be worse today?” And with the advent of AI slop it’s miles ahead in the crappiness olympics.

Forget that job applications feel like an IRCTC Tatkal booking or that every third post is written by AI, even if your colleague claims otherwise.

“Shinde is this AI”

“No bhau”

“Swear to me”

“AI Shapath”

The worst part is the pressure to portray uncontrollable excitement at the prospect of AI automating your job.

“Here’s how I used Claude code to reply with LOL to every one of my bosses jokes”

Depending on whom you ask it could automate everything from half to all of your job. While I hope it skips the part about getting a pay check, I do see some value if it’s going to automate some of the boring stuff. Like that time in my last job in India where I logged in early on a Monday for a prep meeting. It was a meeting to prepare for an internal meeting to…prepare for an internal meeting.

As bad as that sounds that meeting was arguably less of a waste of my time then watching Kartavya on Netflix or as Saif calls it “These bills won’t pay themselves”

It’s a two and half hour reminder of how Netflix and Bollywood is a uniquely bad cocktail like a Long Island iced tea, with getting drunk being the only fix to forget that fact.

If the sweater and moustache weren’t a giveaway, it’s yet another police procedural set in India’s heartland. This has been done very well of late- Kohrra or Paatalok and to some extent Dahaad. Kartavya however is not in this category.

Firstly, the plot. It had more holes than Bannerghatta road after 2 minutes of rain. Within 5 minutes of the opening credits a journalist is killed on Saif’s watch and then we have the usual “give me a chance to redeem myself” shtick. The period is one week. Because why not? It’s not like there’s anything else in the plot that suggests something else requires this to be done in a week.

We then get to the meat of the “investigation” which involves Saif tracing the killer’s whereabouts and motives. Somehow the whole time he is investigating they keep hunting the killer who got away and don’t worry about the other assailant who was killed in the initial shootout. I mean why would they- what use is it to investigate a suspect who can’t escape, was at the crime scene and won’t complain about your horrific Haryanvi accent during the post mortem.

Saif catches up to us knowing that the killer is the kid from Taare Zameen Par, Rural edition because his boss the commissioner, tells him that’s the killer. He then spends the rest of the film unpacking the connection between the kid and a local ‘Godman’ played by the Lallantop guy dressed like an Uncle in MTR post walk in Lalbagh.

They chose to have an antagonist who outsources all his menace and evil. The most threatening thing we see him do in the film is have a conversation. It’s like Mogambo texting you after someone else tries to kill you with a “this made me happy lol”

There’s also a B plot involving Saif’s brother, named Deepak (I swear this is not why I am shitting on the movie) who has eloped with a classmate and Saif trying to shield him from the Khap panchayat who includes their Chutiya dad. The Khap panchayat keeps meeting every 20 minutes in the movie so they can decide if they want to be regressive and violent or just regressive.

And as Saif bumbles his way to the end, a tragic scene where he shows his frustration by bawling like my infant when someone takes her toy and then a monologue about what his ‘Kartavya’ is.

All of these plot points however look stellar in comparison to the casting. We have Zakir Hussain, aged 60 (best actor in Johnny Gadar) playing Khap Daddy. Saif Ali Khan, aged 55 playing his son, Cop daddy, who is shown to be turning 40 in the opening scenes. And the police commissioner, who would usually be “Successful urban corporate leader late 40s” in a whisky commercial play a corrupt cop. To establish his small town credentials there’s an entire scene where he’s talking to Saif, while eating at his desk, WITH BOTH HANDS.

If this wasn’t enough of a sign the movie was written in English and translated using chathpujaGPT, the accents are the icing on the eggless cake. Saif, daddy and Deepak sound/try to sound Haryanvi. Saif’s double crossing man Friday and the villain talk like they are from UP. And Saif’s boss sounds like a Mallu who has lived in Gurgaon for 10 years.

Part of this could just be Netflix assuming this is playing while you watch AI cats dancing like MJ so you can always look up and not feel lost. Conflict is built at the same rate as Ejipura flyover. Everyone says they will do something and then does it. Khap daddy says he will kill Deepak and he does. Commissioner tells Saif he will fuck him over from investigating the god man and he does.

But the cynic in me thinks the reason this movie has all the ingredients of butter chicken but comes out as Knorr chicken soup is the self censorship that’s happening before it even comes on your screen. To remove anything potentially controversial that would actually add some meat to the plot.

We don’t even know which state the movie is set in. It could be anywhere in North India. The god man character could be a corporate trainer for the amount of Hindu elements in his oeuvre. And the horrific crimes - molestation, mob justice are written off as things which are unpleasant but can’t be changed, like being served Upma for breakfast.

This movie choice may also pinch me more than the average person as we still do not do screen time when Amlu is awake which makes any movie viewing time limited. This screen policy still causes some weird deprivation symptoms for her even though she now probably averages an hour a week.

So much so that in addition to gaping at hemmorhoid commercials at the dentist office, I caught her intently staring at my laptop as I was working at the dinner table.

“What are you doing Appa”

“Linkedin, chellam”

“Amma, can I also do Linkedin after dinner”

I first burst out laughing. Then my face hardened as I thought of her having to read posts on what Peppa pig can teach you about GTM in B2B.

“Linkedin is not for kids, papa..it’s very boring stuff”

“Why are you doing it Appa”

“It’s my Kartavya”

“Yes chellam?”

“Did you know that 48 and 48 is 96” she said as she jumped in a puddle

“AMAZING” I gasped, while taking off my glasses to get the rainwater off.

My enthusiasm for this mathematical proficiency is one of my strongest genetic markers after my ear hair. This used to be a recurring theme in our road trips growing up. Driving to some hill station or temple town, my dad would pass the time by asking us quick fire math questions.

“What’s 43 x 37”

I’d get the odd one first but my brother was a lot quicker on the ball than I was. And this would also extend to whatever athletic activity we would indulge in to pass the time. Badminton, Tennis or most often because that’s what was on offer, Table Tennis.

After 2 straight games of a scoreline of 11 to 0, I would give in to baser instincts and begin to throw my racket in frustration. This is when my father would intervene by offering to play with one of us. His game was heavy on spin and cutting the ball and he had a mean serve.

The score line didn’t change much, I would lose to him instead of my brother. He would repeat the score at the start of every point, while tossing the ball up.

“6-0. Fight”

It was only when I got older and I realised that he said ‘Fight’ even when I was leading, was that he was giving a pep talk, not to me but to himself.

When I contrast this to his demeanour as a grandparent, I have to pinch myself to remind myself that this is the same person. Like the holiday we went on in December where during a game of Uno he voluntarily draws 8 cards on being given a ‘Draw 2’ by Amlu.

It was our first holiday travelling with 2 kids but with grandparents and an uncle and aunt, it also meant windows of childcare. Which meant rare treats for Mali and I like being out together past 9 pm or getting to take a cat nap on a flight.

Also since it was happening after ‘Imooni’ as the baby is called by her sister (after that phase when she called her Pupu Sultan) had turned 4 months, she was beginning to flash previews of what the new family dynamic was like.

One was the introduction of a distinct personality. Someone who for an infant, was surprisingly chilled out and uber social. She seemed unruffled by international flights, meeting elephants and being passed around like a joint by family members at a reunion .

This may also be our new dynamic as being second time parents. We were blasé about things like her eating beach sand and drinking pool water. Things that I would have wrung my hands over or rushed Amlu to a doctor were we to witness it. Or it maybe the reality that all second children grasp intuitively that their default is not undivided attention but benign neglect.

Any such dynamic, I do not remember myself as a child. Partly because like Amal, I had more facetime with my grandparents after they all moved to Bangalore. But also because of the army of people, my brother and I got accustomed to having around as a byproduct of our new found affluence. Sometimes, while discussing something from that time in the presence of others, others get a glimpse of the bratty existence we experienced as children.

“Macha where did we go da, for swimming class?” I asked Kau at dinner.

“Bangalore club?”

“No da that hotel where we went when Appa lost his corporate membership for a bit”

“Le Meridien”

When Mali spat out her drink, I realized this was one of those moments.

If Amlu had been present, she would have probably asked where she was when my brother and I were in swim class in the 90s. Or corrected my pronunciation as a french immersion student.

“Appa, it’s Luh Mer-id-yaan”

Even though this was our longest trip back since moving to Canada, Amlu had no problems making it feel like she had never left Bangalore. From family visits to Basavangudi to baking classes in Cooke Town, she stayed busy and never mentioned Canada. Also the warm weather gave her a Joie De Vivre that disappears when the temperature drops below 10 degrees. Like every trip, it was like a glimpse of what her life could have been like had we not moved. Or me trying to unpack what the move had really meant for her, like that time I was talking about it to a childhood friend over beers.

“How long has it been”

“4 years almost da, will be 4 by this March”

“Do you feel like you’re in the money”

“Bro do you know what diapers cost-“

“No da its a poker reference, do you feel like its been a win”

“Oh, Ya da. As a parent, definitely”

I know that was not my initial assessment of moving. Within our first day, a bug that Amlu had picked up enroute had taken us to the emergency room. It took a while for her to get back to normal. I still remember that constant worry in the back of my head- “have we made a mistake”.

10 days into our move, we went to the park behind our friend’s house and Amlu who was in a blue snow suit began to giggle as I pushed her back and forth in the swing on a chilly but sunny day. I will never forget that toothy smile and the visible breath in the cold as she laughed.

And somehow we’ve made it from there, through 4 winters, 4 addresses, 2 schools and 1 baby making Toronto- the longest I’ve stayed anywhere outside of JP Nagar (20+ years) and Nagarbhavi (5 years). As a parent, this window has taken me from crying at Amlu’s first day of daycare to recently tearing up at her first gymnastics showcase.

The emotion was brief when I had to be back in the moment to stop Imooni from trying to swallow anybody’s keys.

If you had told me in 2021, that I could simultaneously heat milk, feed an infant and carry her around like a knapsack while following the first child around with my phone camera as she was traipsing around a gym, I would have laughed. I lasted one day as a solo parent in India when Mali had COVID and I was distancing with Amal. At one point I surrounded her with suitcases so I could keep her entertained while taking a hurried bathroom break.

Now I have to entertain her with different dosa shapes while feeding an infant that’s exercising her lungs like Usha Uthup warming up for a show.

“Appa I want a heart shaped one”

“I want a cat”

“I want a rainbow one..with a sun”

I think I am only a few years from a request like

“I want a Daliesque metaphor for the crumbling social order in late stage capitalism appa”

“You want a Cafe Rameshwaram dosa chellam?”

Being back in the thick of it, or parenting on hard mode as Mali calls it, I think this is one of the few things that makes me feel like “I’m in the money”. Even though the daily grind of cleaning, feeding and dressing is the constant, I have gotten much more time with these brats than I would have in Bangalore. Be it the mundane stuff like taking them grocery shopping or taking advantage of the weather going above 15 to go to a park. While Amal was busy playing with her friends, Imooni, in a blue snow suit, was giggling as she tried the swing for the first time. She’s now just a few months shy of the age her sister was when we moved here.

And a lot of this time, with baby #2 is spent in preventing voluntary injury or illness. Her mobility and her personality are blooming in parallel, causing us to have to rush to pull her away from the stairs or from plugs that she wants to eat or shoes that she wants to lick. Mali has even gotten her a helmet that makes her look like an infant mutant ninja turtle.

Where her sister was more sedate, I have had to make this goof crawl in building hallways and restaurant floors just for her to burn some of that energy. I have never had to excuse myself from a sing along or circle time because my child was disrupting it, up till now. Like the host of a Japanese restaurant who came upto me when she saw me wiggle earphones on the ground to have Imooni crawl 5 feet towards me.

“Sir, I would not advise it, our floor is not that clean”

“It is now, look at her pants!”

She also is more vocal in sharing her feelings- which now extends to annoyance if she does not get her way. Like that time I had to pull her away from a table tennis ball and she let out a loud yell/cry. Amlu instead of lecturing her as she has in the past, looked at me to resolve it.

“What’s she saying appa?”

“I think she’s saying, Fight.”

“This winter has been unbearable” to bombshells like “That’s why I don’t like his mother”. It’s the convergence of sedate get togethers like a dinner party and the aggressive shedding of ‘fucks to give’ like its hair on your scalp.

When I’m playing it safe I rely on the old “I don’t have much of a sweet tooth”. This can be trotted out with dessert either to explain my abstaining.

Why the fuck is there coconut in this?

Or to justify why I smashed a second helping

“I like it because it’s not too sweet”

Objectively, this top 10 small talk hit is true. I can go years of eating dinner without thinking about dessert. But it also has its exceptions. Gulab Jamun. Or GJ as Amal and I call it. Hot choc fudge junior from corner house. And the one to rule them all, Nandini Dhoodh Peda.

As for the longest time one of the landmarks for our house was a milk booth, Nandini stash was a fairly common occurrence. And I remember in high school, making a few trips to the fridge in a day to lighten the load of that square cardboard box.

This nonchalance however was only possible when 2/3rds of the house was diabetic/skipping sugar for a few weeks. When my brother and I shared a roof, my peda approach was like a grand slam quarter finalist playing Djokovic. Take what you can get and hope to not get hit in the face.

This energy is similar to Mali and I enjoying screen time. Since the addition of a fourth monkey to our household zoo, our free time Is limited and usually cut short by screaming.

I usually stop if the baby joins in.

This has made us more discerning about what we watch. Some known evils get a pass - Love is blind a.k.a kidding I’m shallow as fuck, shows based on Harlan Coben’s books- people start acting crazy because London weather is depressing.

So even if it’s something like Dhurandhar, which has been in the conversation for some time, it took a while to get around to seeing it.

What can I say about Dhurandhar that already hasn’t been said about a root canal by a dentist? I will admit that this is the first movie I’ve seen of Aditya Dhar.

His first, Uri, had made its way into the zeitgeist. I still remember portly Mishra’s and Gupta’s during the Delhi marathon in 2019 taking a break from their huffing to greet one another with “How’s the Josh?”

“High sir!”

I blame this for not getting around to watching it. Not just because it was a movie about a surgical strike on the eve of elections. But because it was ‘meat for the base’ - who are most likely to have done a surgical strike on chola bhatura for breakfast.

To be fair, I understand that all art on some level can be labeled propaganda. If I hadn’t watched Swades I wouldn’t have ended up moving back from Europe to work in a village with no roads and sanitation. Also known as Sarjapur road.

But Uri and Aditya’s filmography after have flown under the radar somewhat because they are competing with 2 strains of cinema/propaganda++ - the quantity of which has exploded since 2019.

The first being the “insert name” files/stories version of films. You know the ones. Kashmir files. Kerala Story. Windows files etc. The filmmakers fellation of the government is comically obvious.

The only thing cinematic about these films is the disclaimer at the beginning that a lawyer has wrestled with to make what follows look somewhat sane. Each plot can be summarized as:

Roses are red, violets are blue, if not for modi, Muslims will replace you

And then you have the RSS equivalent of the Marvel universe. Ram Setu. Veer Savarkar. JNU : Jahangir National University etc. This excluded the Modi biopic because apparently even the RSS film universe has standards.

These films lack in craft what they make up for in enthusiasm. And apparently in this economy even blatant hindutva pandering won’t sell seats. Like the time the maker of “The udaipur files” went crazy that no one watched his film despite his title leading people to believe it’s a movie about invoices for marble.

Which brings us to Dhurandhar, which looks like Citizen Kane in comparison.

The positives? Soundtrack in parts is epic. Some of the scenes have spectacular cinematography. And he knows how to build conflict/tension in a plot as we get to the climax.

And because my palette has not been tainted by ‘Hindutva icons’ like Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri, here are some of my issues with the movie.

Firstly, the length. 3 hours and 32 minutes is outrageous. At least Lagaan had a cricket match in it. There are entire plot lines that can be ripped out including the love story between Ranveer and the teenage girl. Their chemistry on their date and through most of the movie is akin to an uncle taking a niece to the zoo.

Secondly, the cast. Everyone was raving about Akshaye Khanna’s intensity but I think that was just his acting trying to overpower his botox and failing. Arjun Rampal, playing an ISI agent by way of Haryana. Madhavan working with the makeup department to look the way he sounds on family WhatsApp groups and Ranveer Singh forcing himself into a shirt with buttons that work. Most of this cast did more work acting sober when wishing the RSS a happy hundred year anniversary.

And then of course, the lazy detailing. Leaving aside the lazy dialogue- where the Urdu is peppered with Hindi, there’s an entire plot line about Baluchistan and yet multiple characters who are Balochi insist on speaking to each other in Urdu/Hindi. This is like movies like Kerala Story where the filmmakers think that the most natural thing for the world is a group of mallus talking to each other over beef fry, in Hindi.

This is after discounting the hagiography of the Indian government or regurgitation of the top 10 complaints of WhatsApp uncles. Just sample the dialogues in this one scene that is not even central to the plot- on the flow of counterfeit money to meat markets in UP.

“Sometimes Indians are the biggest enemies of India”

“Ek din aayegi aisi sarkar, jise desh ki fikr hogi”

And the most egregious one which is a throw away line from a subordinate explaining why they can’t see through an investigation into the UP mafia.

“We can’t do anything. Communal violence ka backup hai”

And this is my biggest issue with Dhurandhar. For a movie that claims to be fiction it sure works in a lot of actual real life incidents to muddy the waters. The average Indian film viewer began to leave missed calls on a phone number

tattooed on Aamir Khan in the Gajini poster. You think that film viewer can draw a clear red line between the actual clips of terror attacks and the likelihood of a Balochi gangster from Karachi dancing amidst whirling dervishes to an Arabic song? This was like the time I ordered Mongolian chicken as the Chinese special at the Andhra restaurant near my college.

What good is superior craft if in favour of the same tired Hindutva message? If not me take it from Amrish Puri. Arguably in his second best scene after the one about black dog.

And in a time when this prostration to the government is just image building when the actual reality is less appealing.

I’m sure post production had to lower the AQI to make the shoot look like it was happening outside India. Some sad sack AD probably had to drive far and wide to find roads sans potholes for the chase scenes. And in the months intervening the release and the sequel, Namo’s limp hug of America and Israel show us that the chest thumping is reserved for cinematic battery of our neighbours and not actually being a power house.The US literally bombed a ship a few nautical miles from our territorial waters and we said less than Arjun Rampal when provided a script with words over 3 syllables.

Or as Madhavan would put it, “Ek din aayegi aisi Sarkar, jo US se permission lega

Since the sequel is out any time now it’s too late to add this into the plot when he probably is already going to justify demonetization.

We can rely on Aditya Dhar and his ilk to rewrite this in time for the next general elections in part 3/4. Here are some titles for their consideration: Irandhar, The Epstein Files: Only Sabzi no puri and Tanha hoon main, Netanyahu.

I am particularly looking forward to Ranveer Singh/Insert steroid receptacle here indulging in some heroics in one of these films. I can see it now. He bursts on screen in a shirt that is meant for a 4 year old. He is holding up an LPG cylinder like it’s a kettle bell as he stares down before swinging it downwards in a lethal fashion.

“How’s the price”

“High sir!”

Writing it was fun when flashing back to watering holes, some of which no longer exist, but hopefully more fun for you to reminisce (remember Old Monk quarts for 60 rupees.)

P.S Also available in Champaca or Copper and Clove if you prefer picking up a physical copy in person.

“Less is more”

Even then, it took us almost half the day to cover just one half of the house. Bits of cereal that were older than the government in Canada, plastic toys that were missing heads or feet and book covers of books that we had given away. It may have also taken longer thanks to my attention span. I boomeranged from sweeping to emptying the dishwasher to cleaning out drawers.

One trigger was while emptying a draw, where I found an empty photo frame. I invested 15 minutes and 350 steps looking for a portrait of Amal that was shot at her pre school but couldn’t find it. Rather than going back to finishing with the draw, I moved on to a plastic folder that my mom had given me on our last visit home.

In addition to coasters from a holiday in 2015, train tickets from Berlin in 2017 I also had prints from a film roll I had shot on a road trip to Mysore in 2008 with friends from school. As I began to flip through them, I had that bitter sweet feeling you get when you encounter something in your possession that is almost old enough to vote.

I was in only one of the photos myself so it wasn’t just about seeing things that no longer existed

“Are those cheekbones?”

Like any other time capsule, it was about how much had changed. The photos of the drive to Mysore would be unrecognizable because of the express highway that gets you there now. The route earlier would be punctuated with slow downs as we passed through a town enroute. Bidadi, Maddur, Channapatna etc. Which was better suited to our chariot of choice, a green Maruti 800 called Padma.

2 things from this trip scream the hubris of youth. One being that it was impromptu. And the other that we were in a proximity that allowed this. Three of us had driven down, thanks to Padma, from Bangalore to meet our classmate from school. He was studying medicine in Mysore.

Today, we are split across Canada, Australia, the UK and furthest of all, Electronic City.

There’s photos of pitstops for Chai. A gig we attended at Purple Haze which had just opened there. Some blurry photos from drinks at the helipad near the palace. And then of the bet match.

Almost a third of my film roll was shot at a ground outside his house in Mysore. It was one of three grounds with TV towers on either end. It must have been one of five cricket matches I have played as an adult.

It was a tennis ball match. One bounce, one hand catches allowed. Round robin where each person had a chance to bat. With the person with the lowest score being the loser. The bet?

Loser had to pay for the first pitcher at Pelicans. Which, if memory serves, was me-

A yell from the hall drew me back and I hurriedly pulled a photo out of the envelope and went back to cleaning. While I have no interest in watching cricket on TV, I will still pause and watch a game that’s happening on the street.

Maybe because as a kid I had spent hours across different fields in south Bangalore, perfecting a leg cutter. Which I put to the test in bet matches. Some with kids in the neighbourhood and others in Jayanagar or Banashankari. Notes and coins would be deposited with someone who was too slow to run away while we played.

The biggest win I remember was 100 rupees that we had won in a match where I took 3 wickets. The biggest loss I remember was a match somewhere near Yedyur lake. Not only did I get hit for 14 runs, we had to give them a bat to cover the shortfall in the money. I blame our captain. One of my classmates from school who’s only qualification was to look like a 45 year old even when we were 12.

Incidents like that, parental rebellion and the looming threat of board exams slowly disconnected me from the sport.

So it’s safe to say that Amal’s interest in the sport isn’t thanks to me. I think the initial trigger was a book given to her about a girl called Sitara who plays cricket. Our last trip to India added fuel to the fire.

My father amongst 700 hundred other gifts had given her a plastic ball and bat. Instead of threats of corporal punishment that were given to Kau and me, she was actively encouraged to hit the ball indoors. Explanations of who does what on the field were given to her as the women’s IPL was being played on TV.

Which is why a few days ago, she was the one to spot a cricket match being played in the park close to her school. The park which has a baseball diamond is usually just a place that dogs are let off the leash. This time there were two wickets set up - one on the pitchers mound and there were 6 people playing.

Instead of rushing home to make dinner, we stopped at the park bench as she peppered me with questions.

“Is that the Batman”

“Its Bats-man, yes the one with the bat is the batsman”

“Are they out yet?”

“Wow Amal you know about getting out, Not yet, see he just hit the ball and then they are running”

They changed at the wickets and then the bowler bowled the next ball. It was a slower one. He scooped it straight in the sky to the fielder for what looked like an easy catch. The fielder clapped his hands and fumbled it. He looked frustrated before throwing the ball at the wicket.

I may have had a role to play as well. As the ball was landing and he foozled it a guttural yell emanated from me that seemed to come from 1997. A word that communicated that it was an easy catch and that he should have been out.

“LOLLIPOP”

I feel like I would have caught that. I remember that one match where we were 6 down and-

“APPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPA”

“Yes chellam”

“WHERE IS THE LOLLIPOP”

P.S If you like movies about cricket, watch Puta Tirugisi Nodi, a sweet movie about kids playing cricket in Bangalore that triggered this piece

The first year was easy because she slept through it. The second year, I was able to convince her that everything was in French because we flew Air France. This year was a challenge. I had already whetted her appetite with 20 minutes a day the week of our flight. She was sick and at home and it seemed like the most painless way of avoiding my calls interrupted by a loud “AAAAPPPPPAAAAAAA”

She perked up as soon as we left for the airport. She had packed her own bag- a pink Barbie strolley and negotiated how much she would like to watch on the train to the airport.

“I want the flight one and 2 Peppa pigs and 2 Paw Patrols”

This despite an Icelandic cartoon featuring a wolf and 2 elves being the last “flight one” she had seen.

The flights we were on had slim pickings but she watched anyway. 2 songs with Baby Shark on the first flight and then 1 episode of Peppa Pig. She fell asleep so she missed watching an episode of Paw patrol on the second one.

When we landed at 2 am, she had forgotten about all of that. Entering Indian air space had flipped a switch in her head. As soon as we hit the tarmac, she snapped the seat belt off and had waded into the sea of people in the aisle, while we waited for the doors to open.

“LETS GO APPA. WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR”

If you haven’t been to the new T2 airport in Bangalore, you would have missed how it is efficient enough to even cater to an impatient child like this. So efficient that when we saw immigration within 4 minutes of getting off the plane a panicked aunty turned to me and asked “duty free yellidhe?”

8 minutes later we were waiting for our baggage. Our first bag arrived. And then the second shortly after. Half an hour in we began to worry about the third bag. By this point Amal had begun to look as exasperated as my father in a restaurant without alcohol.

There was just one person at the lost luggage counter. Kiran, who informed me that our bag had arrived in Bangalore. Based on this information I dutifully went back to the carousel. Of the few remaining bags there was one that looked exactly like ours except for the fact that it had a ‘Sunita’ emblazoned on it.

By the time I went back to Kiran, there was now a queue in front of me. I had to wait fifteen minutes for the mutual decryption of a German and South Indian accent. The missing bag was either to be sent to the Taj or on a Haj. The next person before me was an indignant American who claimed that this never happened in the US and he had never been separated from his bag.

“Try it when brown” I scoffed only to swiftly look up to the ceiling when he whipped around.

When I finally got to the front of the queue I explained to Kiran that we hadn’t gotten our bag but just one that looked like it. He looked to me and then to my bag and then said to me ominously

“Swap case saar”

As he proceeded to talk into a walkie talkie about our swap case, I waved for Mali to take Amal out to meet my parents as I suspected it would be a while. It was already more than an hour after we landed. Amal had started putting one foot past customs to goad Mali into following her outside.

“Anything to declare?”

“Just this brat!”

Just as Kiran had sleuthed his way to an assessment of where my bag was I had gathered that the night shift at the airport was a rare occurrence of meeting a workforce that was entirely Kannadiga in Bangalore. I switched to Kannada as well to get things moving.

“Kiran you have to help me guru, where’s my bag”

“Sir I will get it back for you sir don’t worry”

“What is the protocol. Can I send someone to pick it up from here later?”

“No Sir, that person will come and then you will swap the bags again. In front of me”

Entha protocol thoo

He claimed to have made contact and had asked me to wait for half an hour. By this time I gave up and called my folks outside and told them to leave with Mali and Amal.

With no coffee shop or anything else to kill the time while I waited for Sunita, my mind began to think of ‘swap cases’ I had seen on screen.

Like Tere Mere Sapne about Chandrachur Singh, who is an orphan tycoon, exchanging places with a taxi driver played by Arshad Warsi. The only thing more ridiculous than the plot was the fact that Arshad Warsi is supposed to be Tamilian.

And then of course there’s all the twin ones. I was too young to watch Seeta and Geeta. I remember my dad watching it on TV and asking him about the plot.

“She goes from being an Idli to an Idli with pigtails”

A twin one I did like was Kaminey. It had Shahid Kapoor playing twins in a gangster movie. It was chaotic and the music was banging. Raat ki dhai baje

Fuck it’s 3.45 now!

“KIRAN? What’s happening guru”

“Sir she just told she is leaving her house sir”

I wondered if it would be unbecoming to buy a quart and a Bisleri at duty free. A lot of the swap case movies focus on moments like this to show the difference between the rich and the poor protagonists.

Like the movie Ala Vaikuntapuramaloo in Telugu featuring Allu Arjun. The movie starts with the secretary of a business tycoon swapping his baby with the tycoon’s so he can torture his son and so his own son can grow up rich. It was also remade in Hindi as Shehzaada, with Karthik Aaryan, who had honed his acting skills earlier by looking like every 3rd person in the Delhi metro.

The plot only gets more ridiculous from there. There’s a board room scene where-

“Sir?”

“Ya Kiran?”

“Sunita is here sir”

“LET’S GO! WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR GURU”

I followed Kiran out as we met Sunita. A sheepish Mallu aunty who apologized with “sorey pa-new soot case”. She had gone to and returned from her house in Jakkur. I shook hands with her and Kiran and continued on my way.

That stretch of time was probably the longest bout of staying in one place in the weeks that followed. Like every other trip to Bangalore, our schedules were packed almost as much as my belly. A blur of travel stretching from Konankunte to Cooke town to Coorg, while Maliha and I were working through our trip. We spent large parts of the day driving trying to squeeze in as much as possible.

None of this bothered Amal. She had a beatific smile as we would weave through traffic. She would wear a new dress every 4 hours and she negotiated a trip for herself to Mysore with both sets of grandparent and 0 parents.

Maybe she should do the Canada, U.S tariffs next.

The trip was much too short for her of course and she was a bit down on our way back. I felt more than once like we were kidnapping her.

Was this because of her being aware of the Allu Arjun gap between her life in Canada and India? Public transport vs air conditioned car? An army of people at her beck and call vs one of us answering her while cleaning/cooking/cleaning after cooking?

Or it may have just been the weather. She perked up after we left Canada again for a week long trip to the Dominican Republic. A long overdue holiday, when I was fully off for the first time after last June.

We had booked a trip to celebrate Amal turning 4 and our 10 year dating anniversary. Unlike our previous holiday to such a resort, Amal had much more of a say in how our day was spent. The whole day was in the pool. Nights were spent at the entertainment provided by the resorts. No matter what the programming.

“I want to go to the body building show”

She had also made friends with some of the other kids at the resort. One from Chile, another from the UK and one from Mexico.

We were the only Indians in the resort. “De La India” as I would say when asked. I was even roped into represent it in some pool side beer chugging competition where I took on a tiny skin head from Italy. I did so badly that if time travel ever becomes a thing, I am sure my past self would have come all the way to just thupp on me. Besides the weather, the food and the rum, there were other things that reminded me of India.

Like a Spanish song I heard playing in the buffet. It sounded a lot like a song by KK. With the main chorus going ‘Yaaron’. Not the one that makes grown men cry at reunions. But Hai Junoon by Pritam. In the movie New York, one of a hundred movies in the early 2000s that said the best place to be Indian is outside India.

I don’t know if I am there yet but I do feel it makes sense for Amal. Not just because with 3 first names, she is the Neil Nitin Mukesh of Canada.

Because I think that her relocation is a part of the reason she is so confident.

Yaaron, jo khud pe ho yaqeen

To zindagi haseen, tuje kal bulaaegaa

She’s more independent with only us to rely on for most of the year. She has the attitude in school of someone who has been there the longest, which is true. She’s confident riding on public transport. She’s mastered commuting to school on a scooter. And with her little Spanish, now knows how to say thank you in 5 languages.

I remember what followed one of my Spanish lessons as I failed to negotiate an exit from the swimming pool after 4 straight hours.

“You liking it Amlu?”

“Ya the weather is hot. Like Bangalore”

“Should we go back soon”

“Ya ya do that, Bangalore again”

“Longer than 3 weeks?”

“Ya ya. 5 years”

“5 years?!”

Swap case saar!

On my shorter runs now, I run a little past Billy Bishop airport and loop back. Its also distinctive because it’s an airport that’s technically a little island on the lake. The other one en-route being the CN tower which I cross at the midway mark.

If for some inexplicable reason I had someone film my route, it would almost be like an establishment shot. An establishment shot is a longer shot in a film or a show to establish some part of the story.

Either to tell you something about the story or where it is set. Like this new Netflix show Mali and I were watching called ‘The Mistake’ on Netflix. The opening sequence features the lead running through different parts of Philadelphia. There’s a shot of the U Penn campus. The museum with the rocky steps.

It’s harder to remember these in Indian movies. Some I remember just because of how criminally low the effort was. Like an Upendra movie that I saw where Garuda mall was shown as an airport in Belgium. Easy to connect the dots… while watching it in Garuda mall. Or because it’s been used in almost every other movie you’ve scene. I’ve probably seen St Xaviers more on screen than the number of students I know from there even though my brother’s an alum.

One that comes to mind easily is Namastey London. Not the scenes in London which are a checklist of the usual sights. But a scene in India when Jazz urf Jasmeet is forced into meeting prospective grooms by her parents when they are on holiday.

Including one in Hyderabad. You know because the terrace of the house overlooks the Char Minar. The guy she’s meeting who’s a socially awkward analyst was played by Vir Das. I can’t remember if that was the first I’ve seen him but I know I was aware of him in college. I had seen him in “friend of hero” roles in some other movies. I had heard of him performing at ISB when my brother was a student there. The closest I came to seeing him live was when I was at the NH7 Weekender in 2012. His band ‘Alien Chutney’ was performing, but I missed them on stage. This had less to do with my taste and more to do with my inebriation. It was the first time I was woken up by security at a concert. I had passed out at the mosh pit. I didn’t see him live even when I was living in Mumbai after.

The first time I saw him was in 2015, after I had moved back to Bangalore. I had just joined Uber. And as a last minute sponsor for his show in Bangalore, his agent gave us a few free tickets for the show. I invited Maliha as my plus one, we had just begun to date. This was unlike the first show we attended together before we were dating. I had feigned interest in a band I had never head before (or since) to meet her again. Alt J.

The name of Vir’s show was “Unbelievablish”. It was at Chowdiah memorial and the initial 5-15 minutes were crowd work about how everyone was showing up late. And then he launched into his act which was a comedic version of the drinking game, 2 truths and a lie.

I remember one of them vividly where he was like “Ladies and gentlemen, clap your hands if you are here with someone. Ladies and gentlemen, clap your hands if you are here on a date. Ladies and gentlemen, clap your hands if you are in love…wow it got really silent in here” he said as I sheepishly looked at Mali to see if she was clapping.

UNBEARABLISH.

After the show, we went to UB city to get dinner and bumped into him as he had come to meet someone after the show. We shook hands with him and I hastily said goodbye before he started talking about clapping again.

If we hadn’t met him then, I think I would have completely forgotten the show. The material in itself wasn’t bad but wasn’t very memorable. Some jokes it was almost like “hey crowd, here’s the punchline you know what to do”. But to his credit it was a little political. The way Ponnappa cartoons used to be in the 90s. Sprinkling of satire mixed with “why are politicians like this ya”.

The second time we met him was in 2017. Maliha and I were in Bombay over Christmas. On paper we were both NRIs but I don’t remember carrying a Bisleri with me.

It was a bitter sweet trip. Sweet to be back in a place where you were sweating in December. Bitter to feel how soon a place can move on without you. Returning to the same streets I used to frequent in Bandra felt strange as a visitor. Even Pali hill. Mali and I were playing a game that she had perfected with a friend where they would assign names and personalities to people you’d spot.

Brat in designer clothes? Uday.

Fancy workout gear? Ananya.

We spotted a dude in a fedora walking a dog ahead of us and we both said “Vir Das.”

And then he turned around.

Oh fuck how good are we at this game.

Our international existence and Maliha’s salary had given us a chance to see other comedians since we had last seen him. Like Gad Elmaleh when he was doing a show in Philadelphia. Mo Amer doing a secret gig in the comedy cellar in New York which was well known for having surprise guests.

Our international existence also meant most of my reckoning with my identity as an Indian at this point was at immigration. Visas. Random security checks based on my facial hair. And Russian roulette level odds on finding an employer who was looking to sponsor you.

Stuff that could have been part of Vir Das’s material, but was new to me. And yet it seemed worth navigating. In part due to student loans in foreign currencies but also to make my relationship with Mali more pedestrian. As much as I had changed from 2014, when I hadn’t even gone north of Pune, let alone outside India, India had changed. Our identities were much more visible to the outside world by virtue of being different religions. We no longer had to address what would have been our biggest stumbling block if the broader social fabric hadn’t begun to rip.

That I was from CBSE and she was from ICSE.

This identity issue was constantly communicated to us through our married life in India. Starting with being on a notice board for a month to get married. To being rejected for houses when renting in Delhi. And also being informed by Google that I was entitled to a goat and some kilos of rice from Yogi Atityanath for my Ghar Wapsi.

When da Yogi?

All the way to that sweet old Dakhni lady who became a grandmother the same day we had Amal. After witnessing my interactions with my mother and mother in law in the span of that day she asked me when we were alone in the hallway

“Inter Caste?”

An understatement that is only rivalled by calling Rohit Shetty, a sceptic of Physics.

Amal came home just before the 2nd wave of COVID exploded. And in that moment where we were all indoors, one of the other things that exploded was Vir Das doing a bit on 2 Indians. I know it was popular because I was getting rebuttals on WhatsApp, forwarded to me before I saw the actual clip.

If you haven’t seen it, just like his last show that I had seen it was about contrasting two things for a punch line.

“I come form 2 Indias where we had Cholas but no Bhatura but now have Bhaturas but no Cholas”

“I come from 2 Indias, one where Tendu and ten don’t” etc

Only his references were a lot more political and suffused with some of the collective rage around COVID being mismanaged. And predictably, just like someone who was literally told off at a funeral for blaming the government for the death in his family, Vir was belted as well.

Despite all that drama moving from India for us was something that was in the horizon but not a priority. It took the pandemic for me to revert to my travel in 2014. With Goa being the furthest north we had gone in 2 years. And yet I remember it was an off the cuff remark from my manager that made me snap. He said “ I thought Taliban had joined the call” when I logged in on Zoom by accident with Mali’s name.

And the move paid off thanks to Mali finding a job, child care and housing within the span of a few months. Her grinding paid for us to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers when we first moved. Post Malone in 2023. And the third time we saw Vir Das. We bought tickets for his show at the last minute.

He is one of many Indian comedians who performs every other year in Toronto. They come to Canada with the same frequency that I would go the SLV in Banshankari. This show was literally across the street. We live next door to the venue but have never attended a show. Our friend who lives in the building came down to baby sit and Mali and I walked across 5 minutes before it started.

The stand up comic who opened was probably one of the only white people at the venue. And then Vir came on stage and did some crowd work on how people were showing up late.

The show itself was a long riff on how he lost his voice before a show and what he had to do to get back on stage and perform internationally. It was political but a little more measured. It was funnier than the last show we’d seen of his. I also forgot all the jokes a few hours later.

My only thought after was a passing one on if Vir was a talisman for my relationship with Mali? A weird ass one if you will. He kept popping in and out in the decade that we had been together. Through the initial days in Bangalore, our long distance phase across continents, once at my office in Delhi and now when we were in Canada. From our honeymoon phase in Delhi to our current one where we have an almost four year old requesting any errand with “do dat do dat do dat”.

But I think he’s more likely one for my relationship with India. I went from being the “let me dispel your misconceptions about India” guy at the international airport to someone who has lived in Toronto longer than any other Indian city but Bangalore. There’s 2 Indias and I’m currently in the one where I visit once a year.

And yet Amal is there to maintain the balance. She is unabashedly Indian by way of Bangalore. Not just that she corrects me when I call her Canadian. Or that she eats noodles/pasta/pizza with curd. But it’s also innocuous things that are hard to explain given she has spent 3/4th of her life here. Like the way she pronounces words we haven’t taught her.

“What was it you read Amlu?”

“ A po-yem”

An accent Upendra would approve of. And hopefully the uncle at Indian immigration. If he is like any of his brethren he will hesitate as he looks at the parents names. Hindu? Muslim? Love marriage? Inter caste?

And as the stamp is suspended in his hand he will look down to see the rapid movement of a mouth three feet off the ground

“DO DAT DO DAT DO DAT”

Every fucking day is the same. Woken up by a street that’s too loud. If it’s not some homeless guy trying to kill another it's the garbage truck. As I will myself to get out of bed, I realise I’m third in line to use the toilet. I’m wide awake now. A 25 minute wait to take a shit will do that to you.

Do you really need 15 minutes to shower Hardik?

Luckily it isn’t my turn to make breakfast. It’s paranthas again. The door has to stay open to keep the smoke alarm from going off. The old McDonalds shirt that Kushal was using to wrap around the detector doesn’t work like it used to. That once shiny golden arch that he wore with a smirk has wilted. Imagine that logo after it’s collected steam and turmeric and exploding chunks of garlic. And yet we’ve been too lazy to take it off.

I slather the last of the pickle on my Paratha as I look at the clock. I had brought it back on a cash job in New Jersey. I gobble it down as I mumble to everyone I am leaving. I involuntarily shudder as a draft comes into the apartment as I open the door. The building super smirked when I asked about the heat a week ago.

“Not till November Bondhu”

4 years in and I’m still freezing. The apartment is warm of course. 500 square feet for 4 people would make it hard not to be. But I still can’t shake that chill as I step out of the building. It’s a long walk to the car. But I still can’t help making a call to my lawyer. My next hearing is weeks away but I can’t shake the urge to call him. It goes to voicemail.

“Hi you’ve reached Kyle Po-” Fuck this.

I hang up as I unlock the car. Despite over 150k miles, it's the only thing I can rely on to get me through the day. I start the engine and let it idle for a bit while I wait for my bones to heat up. I unlock my phone and open the app. It takes less than 5 minutes for the notification to go off. There’s barely anyone online early on a Saturday morning.

I begin my short drive to the hotel. There’s barely any traffic. And the steady drizzle has kept even the pedestrians away. It took me 2 years of driving these streets to trust my gut over the map’s recommended route. I reach the lobby a few minutes ahead of time. I wait for a minute before I hear the backdoor open.

“Hi”

“Dhruv?”

“Yes”

I wait for him to buckle in before beginning the trip. I get on to the road before making my opening salvo on every trip.

“Grand central?”

Hundreds of trips have made me realise that confirming the destination is usually the easiest way for me to suss out what the rest of the ride is going to be. There’s only 3 types of reactions to this question. The first is the smack down. A grunt or a curt acknowledgement before my passenger dives further into their phone. The second being the same outcome but with a more direct response,

A “Yes, thank you” or a “ Yup.Gotta train to catch”

This passenger fell in the third category. The question just served as a launch pad for a conversation that may last the length of the trip.

“Yes. Are you from New York?”

“No but I live here now. From India”

“Me too. Do you speak Hindi”

“Yes” I responded

“Where are you from? I am from Delhi”

“Punjab. Been here long?”

“Yes it’s been 10 years. I moved here to study”

“Nice. Do you like it”

“Not really, it’s been tough, I will have to leave if I lose my job”

“Oh no green card?”

“No. May take me 15 years.”

“Even I am waiting on mine”

“How long have you been here”

“ Same as you”

“And what do you do for work”

“Mainly this. And cash jobs. I do whatever I can before my asylum case gets done”

“You sought asylum?”

“Ya I did after I jumped the border at Mexico”

“Oh”

He went quiet for a bit as I tried to navigate around a truck that had brought us to a halt. After a few minutes, I piped up again.

“Ya but my lawyer sucks. He doesn’t do shit, my friends have already got green cards”

“oh”

“Ya, He only picks up my calls on the day of my hearings”

“I see. And have you been driving Uber long”

“Few years, More when I am lower on cash jobs”

“Fewer cash jobs now?”

“Ya bro, Too many illegals right now, High competition”

“I see”

“Ya maybe Trump will improve it”

“Uh-maybe”

“Ok we’ve reached. Have a good trip”

“Uh-thank you”

“Dhruv?”

“Yes?”

“5 stars?”

Pretty early into our relationship, I figured that Mali, and I had different tastes in television. She gravitated towards cerebral shows that ranged from science fiction to dystopia. Like the Handmaid’s tale. I was less discerning. Like the time she came home to find me watching "John Wick" for the 13^th time.

“Babe, they killed his dog. HIS. DOG.”

At one point I would fall into a routine of earmarking stuff that was best to watch alone. I’d watch it on the yellow line on the way back from work or when in the loo. One of the better shows that somehow ticked all my boxes for mindless entertainment was an Israeli show, "Fauda" that I found on Netflix.

Lots of guns and bullets and low on knives? Check.

Undercover spies? Check.

Middle Eastern theme music? Check.

Undercover spies who could be confused with milkmen? CHECK 200 PERCENT.

I’d watch two seasons until the show got way too jingoistic. It started off by showing some nuance of the Palestine - Israel conflict before veering into “BIBI IS OUR DADDY” territory. The show’s premise was simple. There was an elite unit of Israeli intelligence officers. They were all prone to fits of violence like the people they were chasing, and they were elite because they spoke Arabic and could pass off as Palestinians. Fauda which meant ‘chaos’ in Arabic was the code they would use when shit was about to go down. They’d keep switching between Hebrew and Arabic depending on how occupied the area they were in was.

It reminded me of the strange noises I’d occasionally hear from my family, which I would later realise was their attempt at speaking Kannada. As Tamilians who had settled in the city between 1980 and 2000, unlike today, assimilation was not optional. Tamilians who move today can create their own bubble (sans the sweaty shirts) with Adyar Anand Bhavan, PSBB and Gold Winner oil at their disposal.

Historically there has always been a large Telugu and Tamil speaking population in Bangalore. Speaking Tamil in public was never an issue until there was some flare up due to some judgement or announcement on sharing the Cauvery. At which point my family would begin speaking in Kannada in public. Like when commuting by auto with my granddad, Cheema.

“Sir inge-”

“Cheema! Don’t speak in Tamil” I whispered to him.

“Sorry sorry, left maadi!”

The auto driver pulled over near the gate and we got out. He seemed to have missed his breakfast and snapped at us to give him 20 rupees more.

“20 ah? Why pa so much?”

“Return Customer I won’t get, give me.”

Just as Cheema was about to make an impassioned speech in Tamil, I poked him in his paunch. With a pained look that suggested he had just swallowed some hing, he switched to Kannada.

“Sulay hel beda?”

“........Sir?”

“SULAY HEL BEDA.”

“.................”

In an attempt to request that the auto guy not lie (“Sulu hel beda”) Cheema had unwittingly given the auto guy a stroke by telling him “Hooker don’t tell me” (twice). Thanks to his advanced years we escaped with no consequence. The true test for our Tamil paranoia would come at the dawn of a new millennium thanks to Rajkumar.

Rajkumar and his family were ubiquitous in Bangalore. He was easily identified by his moustache and benign smile. He had a legion of fans like his counterparts in the other southern states which he hadn’t parlayed into a career in politics. By 2000, he was in the twilight of his career and was working on what would be his last film.

“Shabdavedi” is a police drama where he played a straight cop who was taking on the drug trade in India. I would end up seeing snatches of it later in a salon while waiting for a haircut. There was a scene where, with his trademark smile, he clapped while citizens looked on laughing and dancing. He was clapping while packages in front of him burned. They were filled with ganja.

No wonder they’re all so happy.

One morning we woke up to news that he had been kidnapped by Veerappan. I hadn’t yet left for school when I found out that we had the day off. At the first hint of trouble, the Karnataka way was to give a holiday. This was not unlike what would happen a year later when we got a holiday because of the Bhuj earthquake. Our buses were pulling up to the school just as we could feel the tremors. We reached just as these tremors inspired our principal to run out in a towel from her house across the street.

“It’s a holidayyyyy” she shrieked.

The drivers hurriedly drove away from the school gradually leaving only her red shower cap visible in the distance. It was vibrating in time with her yelling to the school security guard to go in and check the house for damage.

“Madam, you said holiday…”

The whole city went into a complete shutdown. Everyone was too scared to go out in the fear of running into an over enthusiastic fan. Across the different south Indian states, fans of film stars are split by geography, language, and loyalties. But they are united in their disregard for Isaac Newton. Especially on his maxim that an action causes an equal reaction. Though this has been proven in labs, it still hasn’t been observed in these film fans.

A film star getting kidnapped could lead the fans to test how flammable the neighbourhood buses are. Like that event I saw to celebrate 100 years of Kannada cinema. There’s a clip of irate fans stomping on their favourite actor’s car because he didn’t make the time to meet them. At which point he comes running out.

“Why are you doing this? You’re my fan-”

“YOU DID THIS TO YOURSELF!”

The first day had turned Bangalore into a ghost town. Not a soul on the road and everybody staying indoors. We had the added palpitations of calculating how this was going to affect Tamilians. It was a time before Whatsapp but the situation was ripe for a message to be forwarded.

“Remember Rajkumar anna was born in Tamil Nadu and succeeded in Karnataka. Veerappan was born in Karnataka and his moustache lives in all the southern states. And we are all Indians. NAMA-STE PEACEFUL PLEASE.”

All the hyperventilating kept us indoors all day even though we were itching to go out. That evening we switched on the Kannada news channel for the first time ever in our house. After some breathless reporting about how multiple agencies were involved in the tracking and negotiation they got to the most important part. The next day was a holiday as well.

OH YEAH!

My parents lasted a few hours with us indoors on the second day before they gladly let us out of the house. The day went by in a blur. We cycled round and round the neighbourhood. Played a cricket match. Rode cycles some more. Played some lagori. I got dragged back inside the house just as we got to the “look ma no hands, no feet” stage of cycling. We were just in time to catch the news. It was another breathless update on what we knew about the kidnap so far. It was narrated by an anchor I had seen the previous day as well. She had that soft but firm sing-song voice that is suited for flight announcements or telling a wedding party that you’re out of curd rice. I cannot remember her name but if I had to guess, I would say Sumalatha.

The kidnapping had occurred at Rajkumar’s farmhouse somewhere near the border. Apparently Veerappan and his henchmen broke into the house and escorted Rajkumar and some of his family members out. At this point, we are still unaware of Veerappan’s demands, said Sumalatha. In the days preceding 24/7 news and well-coiffed Pomeranians like Arnab Goswami, the most spirited Sumalatha got was when talking about how the kidnap had occurred after dinner.

Hopefully he will offer his hostages paan.

As she was wrapping up, she briefly mentioned that the next two days would be holidays for schools and colleges, before signing off. Dhanyavadagalu.

Dhanyavadagalu to you Sumalatha!

The next day my parents sent us to our grandparents’ apartment complex for the day. It had a kidney shaped swimming pool which could have been mistaken for a well-fed bathtub. And that is where we spent almost the whole day.

There were enough of us to play a version of water polo. We had people ranging from 12 to 19. Even though the maximum depth of the pool was five feet, that end was still too deep for me. So, I was relegated to playing the role of a defender on the shallow end. Although my swimming allowed me to catch up to someone, I was too small to effectively block them. My enthusiasm to contribute waned a little bit when they finally figured out a way to use my potential. My friend took to lifting me to block the ball with my stomach/back every time the other team tried to score.

Things had eased up enough to drive to a family friend’s house for dinner. We switched the channel to Kannada news just in time to catch Sumalatha wrapping up. The then Chief Minister S.M Krishna had travelled to meet Karunanidhi to help sort out the issue and reduce the tension between the two states. He had taken over from J.H. Patel and this was in that phase of regional politics where governments came and went in quick succession due to stiff opposition and very rarely lasted the whole term. You had to have mnemonics to remember who was in power based on their personal tics or preferences.

S.M. Krishna? Wig-u..

J.H. Patel? Peg-u!

Just as we were tuning out, Sumalatha interrupted the program to inform us that the next four days would be a holiday for schools and colleges as they waited for the tension to diffuse. We were literally bouncing on the bed! I ran to the counter at their kitchen to get some Thums Up. I was behind my father and one of his friends who were pouring themselves a peg-u and had to get the attention of my friend who was playing bartender. After a few minutes, he poured me one and passed it to me.

“Here you go.”

“Dhanyavadagalu.”

At this point, my relationship with Sumalatha weakened as the Government had also taken to giving holidays in plenty. Both the Karnataka and Tamil Nadu government had appointed a reporter who had worked with Veerappan as a negotiator, Nakkeeran Gopal. The title “Nakkeeran” was the name of his magazine in which he had captured an interview with Veerappan. He was chilling and roaming around with them while serving as a go-between for the government. He seemed at ease not just because his moustache qualified him to share grooming tips with the dacoit, but seemingly almost from a sense of inevitability. That the task we have undertaken will take time, so no need to add pressure to the situation. I have felt it myself when writing two paragraphs in Hindi or seen it on spiritual auto driver’s faces while waiting at Silk Board.

We finally ended up having two weeks off from school. By the time I went back, I had become a brown raisin with the odd water polo bruise. It would end up being 100 days before Rajkumar was finally released. In the intervening period, life slowly got back to normal. Thankfully there was no repeat of any violence or tension when he was finally released.

These Rajkumar holidays were the first thing I remembered when the COVID lockdown kicked in. Two decades later, my wife and I were experiencing this redux on the outskirts of Bangalore. For a two-week period, we were holed up in a house enroute to Mysore, with everything around us shut down. Except for nobody stepping outdoors everything else was different this time around. Social distancing prevented one from blocking a ball with your chest in a pool. You couldn’t go over for dinner cause the doctors hadn’t yet indicated if you could chew with your mask off.

There was more uncertainty in the air as well as to what would happen next. Our own plans for the next few years looked like they were falling apart. The odd person I had bumped into was preoccupied. Until I went grocery shopping in a store further away one particular day. The old shopkeeper was listening to the radio. A song from "Bangaarada Manushya", one of Rajkumar’s monster hit movies was playing. He started to hum along and smiled as I paid him for Thums Up and some veggies. It looked like I could have been his first customer that day.

“Nim change thogoli saar” he said to me.

“Dhanyavadagalu.”

Cycles being one exception. We currently have 6 between us. It would have been 5 if we hadn’t lost the key to one of the locks and had managed to sell one like we intended.

It also feels like we have too many jackets. We spent 3 days worrying about having lost a bag on a streetcar with some of Amal’s things. Only to find it wedged under jacket #9.

And the third being books. Amal is the first among equals of course. A never ending stream of books has made her bookshelf akin to a waiting room at an Indian railway station. The capacity constraints have led to me finding her books below her bed, on my night stand, in my backpack and once in my underwear drawer.

My book collection has been driven by the same forces that got me my bookshelf. The medical term for it is ‘Kabadiwala’.

The first year we were here, I saw that a law firm was giving away some of its furniture for free. It was 2 streetcar stops away. In that phase that was earmarked by penny pinching, I can still feel the strain of lifting that shelf, getting it on a street car, carrying it into the building and into my flat. Once I had the shelf, the book collection started to grow organically. 

I’ll admit the initial books were random. Two business books that were given to me by a co-working space I worked out of. And an excruciatingly bad fiction book by someone that my first employer was schmoozing with. I didn’t even try and read it. But I know some plot points thanks to a book reading soirée that was organized for him. I remember choking on a starter when I heard

“The protagonist is unable to reciprocate the feelings of the beautiful nurse who loves him. Because he only loves…. milfs”

Luckily the books that have come after have been much better. And just like my book collection in India I can broadly remember where I got each one. I don’t just mean the store or the city. But where I was in my life. Like the graphic novel phase that began for me a decade ago in 2014. After moving to Mumbai, my disposable income had gone up by enough to afford 2 books every month. Even if they were expensive.

And that was the beginning of a phase in my collection that was focused almost exclusively on graphic novels. There were a few serialized ones. Like 100 bullets. Or the criminal series by Ed Brubaker. But the 2 that I have that would belong on any list of the top 20 of all time are 2 stand alone books.

The first being Maus. A graphic novel by Art Spiegelman. At its core, it is the story of a relationship between the writer and his father. His mother and father were Jews from Poland. And were survivors of Auschwitz. The book goes back and forth between 1980s New York and Europe in the 40s. Despite the fact that his father and the other jews are mice, the Poles are pigs and the nazis are hawks, very few books have chilled me more to the bone. It does the near impossible of transforming a statistic of loss of life that runs into millions into a human story. A couple that’s separated at the concentration camp. Loses their entire family and first born child. And carries this trauma into their new country, that has its own complicated history with anti semitism.  I know It had an impact on me because the dread stayed with me. It showed me what an open wound the holocaust was to some. Which I felt in the jewish cemetery in Prague or a holocaust monument in Boston. Probably why it won the Pulitzer Prize despite being a ‘comic book’.

The other one being Palestine. A graphic novel by Joe Sacco. A journalist. And a cartoonist. It’s a non fiction recollection of his travels in Israel and the Palestinian territories. In 1991 and 1992. He spends time with people in the West Bank. And Gaza. 

Although the book isn’t specifically about the conflict, it was the first book I’d read about Palestine. And as heavy as the subject matter is, it’s offset by Joe’s irreverence. While he starts off as a neutral reporter, his encounters make him more sympathetic to the cause of the Palestinians. With the book culminating in a conversation between him and an Israeli, where he says that he can’t be neutral because what he has witnessed and the Palestinian perspective haven’t been shared anywhere in the mainstream.

I know that was the case for me. Yes, I knew of the existence of Palestine and the conflict. The name Yasser Arafat was memorized likely during my extensive reading of Malayala Manorama. But I had no idea of the context or what the conflict looked like from a Palestinian perspective. 

In contrast, I didn’t have to look too hard for the other perspective when I was in hostel. I saw the Schindler’s list and Munich because they were floating around on a hard disk in college. I read a book called the Yiddish Policemen’s union which was an alternate reality where the Jews had fled to Alaska to escape the holocaust. Israel does not exist in the middle east. Even in this parallel universe, Jerusalem is described as a conflict ridden city with “severed heads on telephone poles”.

I found it even when I wasn’t looking for it. Inspired by my admission into the number one law school in India, my father had gifted me a hard bound copy of “The Class” by Erich Segal. A book that follows a group of graduates from Harvard in the 40s. It’s primarily focused on America and also features a Jewish character, who is valorized for dying on the battlefield after graduation. Not in the 2nd world war but in the battle for the creation of Israel.

My overwhelming feeling from reading some of the accounts in Sacco’s book was claustrophobia. The check points. The patrolling soldiers. The barb wire fences that had you feeling that you were hemmed in. Which may have hit home more for me due to my own tics. I’m convinced the main reason I opted out of litigation as a career was the feeling that I would have to spend years if not decades of my career in Bangalore. Let’s ignore the fact that I did that anyway. 

I realized that things had gotten worse and not better in the intervening years. The year I read it, 2014, is the year Anthony Bourdain shot an episode of Parts Unknown in Jerusalem. One of the Palestinian’s he speaks to talks about how he is half an hour away from his ancestral home but isn’t permitted to go there. 

I could only place this feeling of disquiet in an Indian context, when I saw Haider the same year. The movie was based on a book called Curfewed Night by Basharat Peer. It was Hamlet reimagined in Kashmir in the 1990s. There’s a scene that is dark and hilarious where Irrfan Khan helps a wife get her husband inside the house. The husband, who is quiet and seemingly suffering from PTSD is rooted to the ground outside the threshold of his house. It takes Irrfan pretending to be a soldier asking to see his papers before he is mentally ready to go into his own house. 

As time passed, I ceased to think of the conflict while still feeling a sense of empathy towards the Palestinians. As an optimist, I believed that a 2 state solution would be possible eventually.

I also didn’t read anything else about the conflict. Until I got a copy of ‘The Message’ By Ta Nehisi Coates recently. I had read his first book when Maliha had gifted me a copy. It seemed almost poetic that I’d read it just a few months before Trump was elected for the first time. 

I first heard of the book after I saw an interview of his where on a morning show in the US, one of the hosts said that the book would “not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist.” Only then did I know that the book was about amongst other things, the conflict between Israel and Palestine. 

It is not a long book. It has an introduction, followed by three chapters.  

The first is about his travel to Senegal to make sense of his own past as the ancestor of slaves. The second is about his attending a parent teacher conference to ban one of his books from the school curriculum in South Carolina. And the third is about a 10 day trip to Israel and the west bank. The introduction threads the needle between all three, where he dedicates the book to his writing students at Howard university. And he argues that the purpose of writing is to help clarify the world to readers and to tell truths that people may be afraid or unwilling to accept. 

You can tell that it began as a book about writing. I read a few books on the theme in the writing workshop that I did and I will admit that some of these books are hit or miss. Part of it is just my own baggage as a reader and writer. If I feel that the writer is too full of themselves or that the language is dense purely to lend itself an air of gravity, then my eyes begin to glaze over. The difference with Ta Nehisi’s writing is that he pulls it off. Be it his description of how he feels looking towards America from the coast of Senegal or the collegial atmosphere at a school council meeting that has been convened to ban his book from a reading list.

The Palestine section is the heaviest in the book. It is not focused on the violence although the death tolls are mentioned in passing. Nor is it focused on actions taken by the Israeli state to increase settlements. It is just an unvarnished look at what life is like for the average Palestinian, with some historical context. While Ta Nehisi compares it to Jim Crow or segregation policies in the south, it also seems to hark back to things I only associated with colonialism. Systematic disenfranchisement with the illusion of negotiation.

Am I an extremist? Now that I have this in my backpack? Along with 3 Llama Llama books and a set of crayons? I don’t think so. I just think that it has reaffirmed my beliefs. That the Palestinians deserve more support from the world to prevent being bombed out of existence. And that calling an ethno-state a democracy is like calling Coco melon educational. 

And this is also my problem with Israel or any other country that marries church and state (or is desperately trying to). Do I feel that in the decade since I’ve read Maus, that anti semitism is on the rise? Yes. Do I feel that being critical of a state makes you anti semitic? No. I feel that whom we think of as an aggressor and a victim are contextual.

It’s the difference between supporting the South Africa rugby team in 1996 vs in 1986. Or between having an Indian head a sporting body in 1994 vs having Jay “Papa Kehte Hain” Shah in charge of international cricket in 2024. Watching the Israeli army decimate neighbourhoods with the full throated support of the United States makes it difficult to view them as the victim.

And this is unlikely to get any better with our continued slide to the right globally in the last decade. It started with India and has gone global since. There seems to be a global handshake amongst different right wing governments to support others. And when they are not looking the other way it’s taking inspiration from someone else’s playbook. Be it the US taking cues on building a border wall from Israel or India issuing notifications to identify minority owned businesses to other its own citizens. 

Canada will likely be in lockstep soon. 2025 it seems likely that they will elect Pierre Polleivre to be PM. He is the human equivalent of spoilt mayonnaise. The only thing he seems to agree with Trudeau on however is full throated support for Israel.

But, I am a little more optimistic than I was before reading the book. I hope enough people read it to change how they think about the conflict. Because I do believe that stories can help change minds. Like a children’s book reading we went to in Toronto. The book is called Sitti’s bird. It’s about a little girl and her caged bird living in Gaza. Amal after listening intently twice will now tell you the story while flipping the pages.

Like she was with another children’s book when I bought my copy of The Message. It was at Librairie Maktaba, a Palestinian owned book shop in Montreal. It is a lovely store. With a small curated collection. And a luxurious red carpet and cushions that you could read books on. I know I will always remember this moment when I bought the book. Of Amal reading a book to herself and the shopkeeper commenting to Mali

“She’s special. Credit to you. She’s going to be a real reader”

It maybe why it currently has pride of place on my bookshelf. 2 whole shelves away from the one on the “milf lover”.

There’s 2 types of travellers I could think of, off the top of my head. The first who have an itinerary for each trip. And the other who view a holiday destination as just another location to do the shit they would do at home.

One of the more entertaining trips I have been on saw me travelling with members of both sects. One contingent spent the whole day in a resort pool while another not so gently told us that we had 134 minutes to see all of the Vatican.

I’m probably somewhere in the middle myself.

I know I chafed at the idea of having to do the Vatican in 134 minutes. 

What the fuck is that? 2 loads of laundry?

 I also have responded puritanically to moments when I realized I was in the company of people whose idea of a holiday  just to stay indoors and get bombed in a villa the entire time they were in Goa. 

I remember feeling second hand suffocation as I sat in the dimly lit hall, filled with smoke. I could feel the hot day slipping away outdoors as I tried to make an exit.

I know if I had stayed longer than an hour I would have found myself in existential territory. 

Heavy thoughts. Thoughts heavy enough to warrant being narrated by someone. Someone with a Marlboro tinged accent like it was a US commercial from 1963.

What is travel anyway? What is its purpose? Why does a person travel?

A change in scenery perhaps. Living in a land locked city made the 20 hour bus journey to Goa worth it. Even though the name Paulo still gives me an involuntary back spasm. 

Or to meet new people. 

I will never forget that girl from Quebec that we shared a 4 room dorm with. It was in the Lake District in the UK. Besides her, it was me, my brother and sister in law. After a long day of hiking and drinking gin in the sun, we shut the lights off early.

After 20 minutes of hearing a snore that sounded like a truck engine showing off, I heard Apoo hiss to Kau to stop it so everyone could sleep for him to whisper

“It’s not me!”

I realize of course, there are people who have no interest in any of these. The ones most likely to think of travel as something that culminates at a mall next to their house. 

The lack of interest is just a symptom. The underlying malaise is a feeling of deep conviction that the world and its inhabitants outside of a 5 km radius are not worthy of attention. 

If you had to put a face to this, it would be Amrish Puri from the mid 90s. Think of him in DDLJ or Pardes. Technically in both of these movies, he was like that token uncle in every rich Indian family, an NRI Bhakt.

But his energy matches the insufferable people I’ve met who never leave a place. From Mylapore to Malabar hill. Who have the same attitude.

Yeh duniya ek dulhan - dulhan ke maate ki bindiya

This person is not one for travel. Because the essence of travel on some level is to be curious. And this is not a strong suit for the Amrish puris of the world.

Not that this extends to travellers that they encounter either. Imagine a frog in the well who also has social anxiety. I can’t hazard a guess on how many people there are like this. I’ve been blessed to only encounter this on rare occasions.

Like that bar in rural Czech Republic. Where the sight of my brother and I walking in, with beards to boot made everyone stop in their tracks and stare at us. 

Or that ruin bar in Budapest. Maliha and I took more time to get the bartender’s interest than it takes a drunk person to complete a captcha code. In case that seems innocuous, we were 2 of the 6 patrons there.

Living in Canada has spoilt us to some extent. And it’s because Canada, especially the further you get away from Toronto, prides itself on being polite. Not always friendly, but always polite.

As my friend jokes about the time his parents lived in Manitoba, you were likely to get a “Have a good weekend” after you got mugged.

Which is why Quebec is such a shock. Despite being in Canada (for now), polite is not the first thing that comes to mind. If you have never visited, imagine having to interact with Trump supporters who sound like Emannuel Macron. 

At this point us visiting has become an annual ritual. And yet each time, there’s a feeling of being unwelcome.

The language barrier is the first challenge. The struggle for English speakers is obvious. However, it is also an issue with French speakers. As I witnessed with my father in law, who lived in Paris for many years. Quebecois and French seem to have the same relationship as one would expect between a dosa made in Madhya Pradesh and Malleswaram.

But there’s also a feeling that there’s some sense of superiority to the rest of the country. Maybe it’s because the superciliousness is a faint throwback to what I’ve witnessed in Tamil Nadu

But in Tamil Nadu, I never had to ask myself if there was also some baggage of race. When someone at a grocery store counter asked Mali “where are you from” it did not give the same energy as “thambi ku yendha ooru”

I was thinking about it on our most recent trip when we were at dinner. It was a beautiful lodge on the banks of the river Saguenay. 

Our server was visibly exasperated and exclaimed “oh my god” when we asked if she could repeat what she said in English.

After spending 8 painful minutes ordering something that was vegetarian and with no dairy, we waited for the food. As we were served course by course, my mind wandered. I thought of how Quebec was what dragged me back to earth. And reminded me that I still live in a foreign country.

Toronto being an outlier because I can’t think of another place where a white teenager would say “move banchodh” so I didn’t get hit by his scooter.

As we got served the appetisers, I zoned back in. Our unfriendly server had warmed up to us as Amal had charmed her with her few words of French.

“Sill woo play”

After a main course, which was very good and a gin and tonic, my mood improved. The beauty of the surroundings and being on a family trip with the whole family after ages had an effect. I was feeling warmer feelings about my new home, Quebec included

Our server came back with dessert

“This is a local specialty. Maple pudding”

As I took a bite, the heat rushed to my face. This dessert had an uncanny resemblance to Gulab Jamun. I felt like that reviewer in Ratatouille at the end of the movie. Or Amrish Puri in a mustard field.

“YEH MERA QUEBECOIS”

Nor do I mean sharing it with others necessarily, to keep yourself accountable. Like one of those people who posts their workouts daily. Or Jay shah sending a text “papa karado pls” for a job at the ICC.

I remember a classmate in school who had pinned a rank to his desk. His target in the IIT exam. Unlike what mine would have been, his number didn’t look like a wifi password. I’d also seen a relative put up a list of holidays and a car they wanted to get on their fridge.

For me it began with Hal Higdon. The name conjures up some mild mannered accountant from Canada. The kind who says “Have a good one” to you as he steps out of an elevator that you’ve shared for 4 floors. 

I first encountered him over a decade ago when I signed up for my first 10k. I was 24 and It was the TCS 10k in Bangalore. It was a few months into my first job and I only signed up because my friend had as well. Where he was someone who had been an athlete in school and college, I was coming off 5 years of solely training my lungs and liver in law school. I just stumbled on the Hal Higdon plan while looking for a training plan for beginners.

It was a 12 week plan to get you from 0 to 10k. And it’s so simple I remember what the broad structure is to this day

• 3 days for running (1 of these is a long run)

• 2 days for cross training

• 1 day strength and stretch

I broadly stuck to the routine prior to the run. While it was faithful to the schedule of activities, I had aligned it around my packed schedule of using my newfound financial means to test my liver and lungs with an improved budget. My runs would happen late enough in the day to accommodate sleeping at 2.30 am. I was counting my cycle ride to work as my other day of cross training. And my swim on Sunday was planned with a biryani and beer that would follow it for lunch.

This plan had its limits of course. I was not well prepared for the half marathon that I had signed up for 6 months later. My overwhelming feeling as I finished, having climbed 2 hills and 3 flyovers en-route, was anger. Especially at the volunteer who told me the finish line was just around the corner, when I was a kilometre away. I didn’t do any more runs for 6 years.

But in the interim, my fitness regimen was some variation of Higdon’s plan based on what I had access to. If I had access to a pool, I would swim. If the weather permitted, I would cycle. And at least once a week, I would go for a short run. I was able to build up a reasonably respectable stamina despite erratic work hours and a steady relationship with ITC and United Breweries.

What had stayed with me from my training for the runs was a realization that largely these activities did not seem like a chore to me. It was not something that had to be done in a group. My poor hand-eye coordination was not relevant. It gave me an excuse to be outdoors to deal with my incessant cabin fever. 

While I disliked the immediate effort of doing heavy weights in the gym, I didn’t mind prolonged periods of pain and discomfort. A trait that I developed as a long time believer in the Indian constitution.

Also like anything else, the more you did, the easier it got. I would improve much slower when I did not have a target in front of me. I peaked in 2018 when I did 3 half marathons in a year, shaving 20 minutes off my finishing time. But then took a hiatus again. Until I moved to Canada in 2022.

In the 2 years since, I’ve completed 2 half marathons, 2 sprint triathlons and my first olympic triathlon.

Or what I like to call my “Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar” phase. It shares a thread with other Bollywood movies that I have rewatched multiple times because it features Aamir Khan.

The last time I saw it was at a friend’s house in Chandigarh. He’d moved for work and I passed the time while he was at work by watching it on the little TV he had set up in the guest room. 

Unlike most other films from that time, I’d argue that it’s aged well. The dialogues are memorable, the music is great and the sports scenes are compelling. The fact that its shot in the Nilgiris was just icing on the metaphorical Black Forest cake.

If you haven’t seen it, it’s a movie that is centred on a school rivalry between a bougie school called Rajput and a local school called Model. Mamik AKA Lionel Richie of Juhu, is the star athlete of the local school and their only hope to win an annual cycle race. He is injured by the rival team and the rest of the movie is about his wayward brother, Aamir having to train to win the race in his honour.

I’d argue that my approach to races on a scale of Aamir to Mamik, leaned more towards the former. Yes, I was signing up for a half marathon so it wasn’t 0 effort. But I’d skip a couple of runs to sleep in. I’d change nothing about my diet.

At one point my weekly long run preparation was to have beer and biryani the night before and so I’d stick with the same plan the night before the actual run. 

So how’d I get from there to finding myself on the start line of my 3rd triathlon in 12 months? And my first Olympic length one to boot?

Firstly because I had the bike. My 3rd month in Toronto, I bought a red and yellow road bike, which just like the movie, was probably released in 1992. I got it off a guy on Facebook Marketplace. His Facebook album looked like if BSA cycles had a harem. I landed on this one because it cost 80 dollars and looked sleek.

After paying him in cash I decided to cycle back the 15 km. After I got used to being hunched over, working the brakes and shifting gears that were on the frame instead of the handle bar, I was zipping on the cycle lane.

UDTA HI PHIROON

Secondly because of access to lakes you can swim in. I had finally graduated from swimming in just a 25m pool in the few months of the year that the weather allowed it.

“Ontario has 90% of the fresh water in the world” as a chatty furniture store owner told me.

“I see” I said while spinning in one of his chairs. Maybe I would have had more water trivia if I hadn’t been kicked out then.

Chaahe tum kuchh na kaho maine sun liya

The 2 sprint triathlons I did had their swim in Lake Ontario. And at 11 am on a Saturday, I found myself on Wasaga beach, on the shore of Lake Huron, for the start of an Olympic triathlon. It was double the distance that I had done in a sprint. I now had to

• Start with a 1.5 km swim

• Follow up with a 40 km cycle ride

• End with a 10 km run

Between each of these phases, you have to go to a transition area where you change, put on shoes, eat something, drink water etc and your timing is your total time between the start and the finish.

As it was my first olympic triathlon, with no reference for a finishing time, I was starting in the last but one group. Or wave as they call it. The swim has always been my weakest section because of my poor vision necessitating me having to stick my head up every few minutes to see where I’m headed.

The route was a triangle. You had to turn twice at each edge to head back. There were a lot of people around me when I made it to the first turn. By the time I made it to the second turn I didn’t really see anybody around me.

My mind began to wander to what I would have for lunch after the run when I heard a volunteer yell at me to change course as I was swimming in the wrong direction.  The swim section usually features some teenage volunteer on a paddle surf board or in a boat to help you in an emergency.

In a sign that I am assimilating involuntarily at this point, I gasped “Sorry” as I rotated around in the direction she was pointing. I began to swim faster but a few minutes in I realized that she was following me. 

When I realized she was keeping up with me the way Amal does when I have a cookie in my hand, I figured that I was one of the last people in the water. Tepid applause broke out as I ran out of the water and the people around realized I was a participant and not an inconsiderate sun bather.

“And we now have the 2nd last swim finisher--deee?—the gent in the swimming trunks” 

The additional 100m I had swum and the quicker than usual pace had made me pretty tired but I sprinted to my bike. The transition area just about had enough people, including me to start a medium sized boy band.

Despite my exhaustion, I sprinted out to the bike start line and began to ride my bike. The route was a convoluted loop through the town of Wasaga, out to the country side and a loop back to the transition area. The sun was beating down on me by this point.

In the first 5 kilometres, I felt like my ex roommate. He commuted on western expressway against the flow of traffic from Kalina to Chakala. For every 1 person who was in my lane, 10 would cross me on the way back to the transition zone. After that, it was like being in one of those apocalyptic movies where you wake up and the world just moved out of the city without telling you. I’d spot occasional signs of life, like a dropped water bottle here or a bicycle glove there. 

Instead of the Nilgiris, I was cycling through suburbs of a small Ontario town. And then, rows and rows of corn fields. On the occasional incline where I would have to stand up to slowly climb a hill all I’d hear was the breeze, my knees creaking and an involuntary ‘banchodh’ escaping my lips.

As I cycled into the transition area, I hurriedly parked my bike and took my helmet off. I had cycled the 40 km at a speed of 24 mph as I would later find out.

As my legs and back screamed in pain I began to slowly jog past the start line of the final section; the run. It was a 5 km loop that had to be run twice. It began and ended right next to the stretch of beach that we started our swim in.

After the first few hundred meters, I was suddenly surrounded by other participants. Like it was day 1 after the end of the lockdown. And it was now almost 2 pm. To put it mildly, I was boiling. I huffed and puffed till the first water station and then to the 2nd one. By the time I finished the first loop and turned back around, it was a ghost town. Most people had finished and I was one of a few people who was yet to complete.

This final stretch was what I call the existential phase of the triathlon. I would gulp 2 glasses of water and dunk another 2 on my head at each aid station. For the first time, I took walking breaks mid run. Questions kept flashing through my mind as I hobbled forward in the blinding heat.

Why is it so fucking hot? In Canada of all places??

Why was the school called Rajput when the students looked like Models?

Why is no-one here? Did they just close the aid station? COME BACK.

By the time I crossed the finish line, there was just one volunteer left. He shook my hand and congratulated me on finishing. There was a wall of ankle bracelets (used as timing chips). Adding mine was literally like adding the last piece to a jigsaw. The free pizza had gone cold and the coke had gotten hot because all the ice had melted in the cooler.

In that moment, I wasn’t angry like I had been after my first half marathon. I was just feeling alone. Not because of my finishing time. Because I was without the biggest reason I had completed my first Olympic triathlon, my coach, Mali.

Not only had she bought me my triathlon watch when we first moved, she had bought me the bike. She’d also bought me my running shoes on a trip to Ottawa.

But most importantly she was also driving my training plan. Be it long cycle rides that we planned on weekends. Like that time she made us cycle to a suburb called Oakville which was 60 km away. Or when we travelled to different lakes in the summer to practise open water swimming.

Short of driving behind me in a jeep she was like Ayesha Jhulka.

I probably wouldn’t even have done the first triathlon sprint in Toronto island a year ago if she hadn’t suggested it. I feel the impact of her coaching has been to push me further on the scale from Aamir to Mamik. I probably would have been satisfied with one. But she pushed me to sign up for the Olympic one.

When I met her and Amal after, we celebrated with Biryani and my first beer in 2 months. We spent the next week after chilling, as we travelled to the west coast. We travelled to Seattle, Vancouver Island and finally Vancouver. While Amal went to California with my parents, Maliha and I stayed on in Vancouver for another day to celebrate our wedding anniversary. The weather was great. The friend that we were staying with drove us to a trail close by. With his puppy in tow, we followed the wooded trail to get to a lake.

I had fully recovered from my triathlon. I know because my watch which told me what my recovery looked like no longer said “EXHAUSTED”. This trek had been the most physical exercise I had done since. I was fully at peace as we jumped in the lake. The water was warm as I swam languidly in the water to get to where Mali was. A 1.5 km swim was the last thing on my mind.

“So what’s next?” she asked me as I caught up to her

“I don’t know. Lunch some-“

“No I meant are you doing a half iron man next?”

“Gulp”

Woh sikandar hi doston?

I saw one for Andalucia in the ‘for sale’ shelf at my local library, a few days ago. It was like a mental flight back to some of the backpacker friendly spots I frequented in my 20s. Be it a terrace of a dingy cafe called Gecko in Mahabalipuram (‘Mahabs’) or a bar that served old monk in tumblers in Varkala.

It was predictable enough to be part of an IKEA catalogue. A glass table or a book shelf. Made from cane. The contents would be 15-30 frayed paperbacks including the customary lonely planet. In addition to English, maybe  German, French and the odd Japanese book. Half of these libraries were just books donated by patrons when they were passing through. 

My trying to read and finish one of those books was a ritual. Kind of like this brief period where my friend and I would go get shaves and a head massage after day drinking. While that would culminate in finding a master of the craft like that small salon in Arpora, finding the right book on a holiday has been just as memorable.

A copy of ‘The beach’ by Alex Garland that I found at Om beach in Gokarna. The book that was immortalized on screen by Leonardo DiCaprio (and 3 pounds of hair gel). It rained the whole weekend we were there and I read it from cover to cover. “Holidays in hell” by PJ O Rourke, that I read one weekend in Varkala. A collection of essays on travelling that the columnist had done for work. PJ was a conservative humorist, at a time when that may not have been an oxymoron.

And the one to top them all, ‘Open’ by Andre Agassi. It was in a small beach town in Turkey. It was one of the only English books on the shelf. A few weeks before it was warm enough to have fun on the beach and a few months before you could get into the water without getting hypothermia. 

It’s one of the best written books I’ve read. Ghost written as I would later learn. Not only did it draw me in fully to understand his career and legacy but also more about professional tennis. His experience as a child of an immigrant who is thrust into the limelight. And the role of hot spots like Florida in training future champions. It also rekindled an interest in a sport that I had completely erased from my life.

And this was because, I like Agassi claimed he did in the book, disliked tennis. As a child, my exposure to it was the same as my brother. Names that we would hear from our parents. Or the faces on the posters that were enclosed in the latest edition of Sports Star. 

Agassi. Edberg. Sampras. Graf.

As we got older, this interest in the sport was tested by enrolling both of us in Tennis class. 

Kaushik, like with every other sport he played, seemed like a natural. His batting eye had carried over to Tennis. Within less than a year, he was able to add some top spin to his loopy forehand. He had a good first serve and a reliable second serve.

I on the other hand, added another sport to my list that would be grist for the miil that forced me to develop a sense of humour. The starkest point for our converging skills was probably when we were at the same class at the Koramangala club. We had become members as our father’s office was further down the same road.

We were a part of a class that featured:

• My brother

• Marwari twins called ridhika/siddhika or meeta/geeta who seemed destined to be voted “most likely to be married by 21” in a class poll in Jain college

• The son of the owner of all saints bakery near by who would occasionally give us free snacks if he won (I got a lot of snacks)

• The most morose 13 year old I’d met who would go on to be a musician>MBA>startup founder (I know because I met him again as an adult and realized it was the same person when his pathos chilled my beer)

• Me

The coach gave up on me a little after I had given up on myself. As I cut short every rally with either a Sixer or a ball in the net my skills only came in handy for the sprints that we did as a team during the cool down after the lesson.

My introduction to competing in the sport was not as a participant but as a part of Kaushik’s entourage, when he went for some local tournaments. They would either be a race to fifteen points or one set to win and progress in a tournament.

Like that one in Bowring club on St Marks Road. I was accompanying him along with my grandfather who was allowed to use the club because of his membership in Chennai. I was wilting in the stands like the ORS packet court side on the plastic chair. The day wore on as Kaushik won a match and then lost the next one in the hot sun.

I silently made up my mind to not go to anymore. Seemingly so had my granddad although it seemed to hinge more on how bad the lime juice was at the club compared to Chennai. Kaushik also wound his play down to focus on academics.

The next time I’d see tennis live was at the Bangalore Open. It was held at the Tennis academy started by the Bhupati family on the edge of Cubbon Park. 

I was now in college. I can remember the floodlights and seeing former CM SM Krishna’s wig blinding me. The finals featured Sania Mirza losing to Serena Williams. Serena had come to India during a brief trough in her career while Sania had just begun to break into the top 200.

If I hadn’t read the Agassi book, it may have been the last tennis match I saw live. I would not have known that this was a smaller tournament with much fewer points (unlike a 500 point tournament or Masters 1000 tournament which won the champ a 1000 points).

It would have almost led me to think it was normal for a point to get interrupted with chants of “SAA-NYA” “SAA-NYA” or “Jeetega bhai jeetega”

I was fully plugged into the tennis calendar again. Starting with the Australian Open and ending with the World championships. From watching Nadal lose the Wimbledon final in a hotel room in Trivandrum to watching him win the US open a few years later in an empty bar where I was given the remote.

That may have been the main reason I bought tickets to watch the Barcelona open when I was living there. It’s a smaller tournament but part of the clay court run up to the French open. 

A fancy members only club in a quiet and verdant part of town was the venue for the tournament. It was a window for me into how the richer half of Spain lived, for the sum of 35 euros. White polo T shirts and Rolexes glinting in the sunlight.

A little bit of the Bangalore open energy spilled out of me when I walked across a doubles match in the 2nd largest court and saw a familiar face. I yelled “Macha Bangalore” just as Bopanna was serving, causing him to land it square in the net. I beat a hasty retreat and maintained a stoic silence for the rest of the day except when Nadal won a game, set or match.

When I left that tournament, if you had told me the next tennis tournament I would witness live, would be in Canada, with a daughter in tow, I would have laughed louder than my opponent in a tennis match in 1998.

And yet, that’s exactly what happened a year ago. At the age of 2, she came with us to see the final of the Toronto open live. A tune up for the US open, a masters 1000 tournament. Winners in the past have included Nadal, Djokovic and Federer. 

And here we were, with my parents (who were visiting) and Amal watching a tournament, that was a metro ride from our apartment. Fellow attendees were shocked not just at how quiet and attentive this 2 year old was but also how its possible to spill 60% of an ice cream cone. We saw Jannik Sinner win his first Masters 1000 title.

This year, we went again to catch the Women’s tennis tournament. Every year, the mens and womens tournaments are split across Toronto and Montreal. Many more snacks were consumed and considerably more noise was made by Amal. And yet, she feels like a seamless fit to the atmosphere.

Like that volunteer who was asking me to buy a lucky draw ticket for achance to win free Masters 1000 tickets in other locations like Rome.

“I’m sure you want to contribute so you can support future champions like your daughter”

Amal? A future champion? Why not? My mind raced with the possibilities. She had been exposed early on, Mali and I had played Tennis in the first months of her pregnancy. She had now seen both male and female tennis champions live before she had reached Kindergarten. She was a short flight away and in the same timezone as Florida, a.k.a the Kota of tennis training.

That warm fuzzy feeling that the volunteer had suckered me with so I bought a ticket wore off a little bit but I did feel that I would want to expose Amal to more tennis. I was also briefly grateful to be in Toronto which squeezes out half your money for you to exist within 50 km of it, but provides you access to these events every little while.

As I noted in the feedback survey that was mailed to me as after the event because I had signed up for the draw. My reviews were generally positive. In the section that said additional feedback I signed off with “Lime juice could be better”.

At the time, It didn’t seem like completely uncharted territory. My father had lived there in the 70s. My brother had been in and out since 2002 and was living in Chembur when I moved. Until he left for good in early 2014 and left me with half his furniture.

A brown couch that folded out to a bed that was designed for people to slide off. Two single beds. A table that we had bought together for his house in Delhi from Amar Colony (still have it) and my first ever air conditioner.

The monsoon marked more than half a year for me in the city. Its reputation had preceded itself and yet I was overwhelmed. Rains that would start on a Tuesday and end on a Thursday. Variations in pitch and intensity that would put a Carnatic singer to shame. And the Olympic size puddles that would show up outside my house and on my street.

My commute had also taken a turn for the worse. I’d gotten over the trauma of being pickpocketed at Andheri station to commute mostly by train. I had become one of the daily millions. All just background dancers in an elaborate dance to get sucked in, chewed up and spit out at my destination (most of the time) by western railways. 

In addition to the crowd I now had to deal with the rain. Station floors that were slippery and tracks that were water logged. Autos that would splash you on your ride home. And an indoor clothes rack that wasn’t empty for weeks at a stretch. And yet I wasn’t irritated.

I have quit jobs, hobbies and projects with much less provocation. And yet, I was fine. Partly because I had friends who already lived there and had made some new ones since moving. But primarily because in my head I was still a tourist.

Yes, I had a routine. I would feel a sense of relief every time I returned to Mumbai by flight and my auto was near the Vakola bridge. I was on first name basis with the Vada pav salesman near my office. But I didn’t see any of this as being long term.

Stresses that suffocate can become merely an annoyance when you feel you aren’t tethered to a place. Like my fellow passengers on the harbour line. You regiment your schedule enough and you will see the same faces on the train. Especially if you travel in first class. Which on the harbour line meant elbow room after Bandra.

You had the ones who hang out the entrance to eke out some breeze on their ride home. The occasional card players. The colleagues from the same company who found a new way to bitch about HR everyday. And the musicians. These little routines on their commute home that I witnessed told me that they were in Mumbai permanently. Or at least in a sense, more permanent than I was. 

What gives someone that feeling? My having spent the decade after across 4 different cities tells me that I may not be qualified to answer that, but only have a spectator view.

For some it’s led by the work. COVID not withstanding, there have been some places that draw you in if you want to ride a wave that’s not powered by your paddling alone. 

• If you work in technology, it’s the Bay Area or Bangalore. 

• If you work in finance, it’s New York or London

• If you are a creative, its Mumbai or Los Angeles

• If you are a scam artist then its Race Course road etc

For others it could just be the energy of the place matching theirs.

Every city I’ve lived in has had its own energy no matter how much some of the aesthetics are converging. I could be in any city I’ve lived in and be working in an all glass monstrosity of a building or paying too much for a flat white at a cafe with exposed brick. And yet they still have some distinct energy.

I could never imagine seeing someone just chilling in Mumbai on a weekday. Or seeing someone work on a Friday evening in Barcelona. I had the realization in Delhi one morning when I was out for a run. Unlike south India you had the road to yourself before 7 am.

I probably fall in a third bucket, who inherit a location because of their family putting down roots. For my mother it was a small town in Madhya Pradesh. For my father it was Madras.

And for me it’s Bangalore.

If my permanence here was earlier an implicit agreement, the fine print that would give me pause has gotten more insistent. Despite working in technology, picturing a career that progressed from one office/signal to another on the outer ring road felt suffocating.

The milieu has changed too. My address for almost 30 years went from the absolute outskirts of a sleepy town to a hip crowded neighbourhood with more microbreweries than traffic cops.

It was also mostly Kannadiga. Not Bangalore necessarily but my neighbourhood for sure. That’s why my brother and I, who learned Kannada as children from our friends, will still indulge in what the occasional auto driver would refer to as “gaanchali”.

Like that time a few months ago when we hailed one on the street. I asked if one of them was unwell when he said he would take us by meter. As our medium of instruction was gully cricket, our Kannada was slathered with the irreverence that is expected when someone threatens to take their bat home after getting out. 

And it had all the cuss words that were sanitized from the Tamil we spoke almost exclusively with family members.

Do I think this is a prerequisite for permanence? Not really but it probably helps. Two and a half years in Maharashtra and the only Marathi I learnt was “Pagar”.

Barcelona and Delhi by virtue of being almost as monolingual as your average American didn’t leave me a choice. I learnt a little Spanish (the word for pay is Pagar) and a little more Hindi. And it has come in handy in Canada. I speak more Hindi here than I did in Bangalore. And based on the immigration over the years, I guess it shouldn’t be surprising.

As one of lakhs of permanent residents (including Mali and Amal), I have had days like that visit to a beach in Ontario, where on the 1 km trek from the parking lot, I overhead Gujarati, Bengali, Marathi, Hindi and Malayalam. Or that time in Havana where I passed the time chatting with an uncle from Malleswaram and involuntarily made his son wince when he was asked to speak with me in Kannada.

I can imagine how all of this could be unsettling for someone who grew up here. How would I feel if there were 14 Canadians in line ahead of me for a masaley at S.N refreshments?

And some of this discomfort has been more vocal of late and mostly directed at Indians. Almost making a conversation I had with another friend who moved here seem prophetic. 

“Macha enough brown people move anywhere they will get racist” he told me in 2018, a few years before we both ended up moving.

Which to be fully honest, I’ve seen more of online than I have experienced in person. I would attribute this to being a part of Amal’s entourage. Her charms even achieving the impossible: me as a brown male having a pleasant experience at US immigration, when escorting her. It’s like being one of 50cent’s crew. Even if we aren’t seated at the table, we are still getting to partake in the bottle service. Where she gets a warm hug from Canada, we have been upgraded from a limp hand shake to a fist bump.

And all of this without us doing anything specific to ‘assimilate’. My excel sheet tells me we have spent enough time here to be entitled to continue to stay here till 2032. And yet, I don’t know if the shift to permanent has happened in my own head.

Not because of any increase in rancour towards immigrants but just because I don’t know if I’m there yet. What I do know is it shouldn’t matter.

I think as long as you get along, are respectful to the people around you and not a prick, who cares if you meet someone’s definition of local or no. Be it Canada, which is approximately the same age as Joe Biden. Or Bangalore which goes back to 890 AD.  

The idea of local identity in Karnataka being linked to Kannada in the recent government plan to support locals, doesn’t tie into what the actual reality is. Just as a state it has as much linguistic diversity as half of Europe. And Bangalore has always been multi lingual with generations of Tamil, Telugu and Dakhni speakers. 

And the influx that’s happened in the last 10 or 20 years? They’re making our food, taking care of our elderly and building our houses. For a hot minute in 2007 they were singing only Kannada songs (Looking at you Sonu Nigam). They’re also possibly just middle management pricks in your company(fuck you Ankit). 

All while a lot of my classmates from school have spent more of their adult life in San Jose than Sarjapur.

As we have aged into the uncles we used to rage against, we are just as likely to indulge in this petty gatekeeping. Be it immigrants to another country who cry about the quality of the ones who came after them or politicians in Karnataka pushing against linguistic chauvinism with *checks notes* linguistic chauvinism.

These standards are just imaginary lines drawn in the sand which no matter what your efforts, will fail someone’s misplaced expectations. Like that time I was waiting on a street in Kamanahalli outside a doctor’s office. Amal and her Nani were waiting in the car, while I and the other father who was waiting outside were trying to social distance while having a conversation.

“Where are you from” he asked me in Kannada, after I had responded in Kannada when asked if it was my first time at the doctor

“Bangalore” I said while pulling my mask down

“Which part”

“JP Nagar”

“Where are parents from”

“Mother is from Madhya Pradesh and father is from Chennai”

“Thaswhy kanna-“

“Sorry boss, can’t hear you”

“That’s why. Your Kannada is not clean” he said to me while dragging his mask down with a touch of disdain.

I responded the way one does in polite society today, which is to end the conversation by smiling and looking away at my phone. Why get into an argument with a stranger I would likely never see again. Especially at a paediatrician’s office. I do know how I would have responded 2 decades ago, if I had heard this in school or at a cricket game on the street.

“COME CLEAN IT FOR ME THEN NO GULDU”

My rumination was triggered by now having spent more years on the planet as an adult than I have as a child. As much as I would like to think I’m Benjamin buttoning this process there are a million little signs that I am not.

If you google 50 shades of grey you may get a photo of my side locks as the first result. I had a hangover last week because I’d had two beers the previous night. The first birthday wish I got was from a company selling term insurance. And so on and so forth.

This was my first birthday in Europe. Even though I moved here almost a decade ago on the right side of 30, I was never here in June. And it was my first time back after I’d moved out 6 years ago.

Or You-ropes as Amal calls it.

I very quickly felt at home. What could explain the affinity I have with the place? The quick ease with which my pace resets to the local rhythm? 

Except in Germany of course because they have no rhythm.

Is it the liberating sensation of living your life while people around you converse in a language foreign to yours? A flight to North India would be a cheaper way to achieve the same outcome.

Or maybe it’s the constant motion that suits someone like me who has perpetual cabin fever. A visit to a friend who lives 7 km away can involve

• a train ride

• A bus ride

• A magic carpet ride 

• A tram ride

• A walk

Or that you could have breakfast, lunch and dinner in 3 different countries, all on the same day.

My first real exposure to this idea of Europe was the Jason Bourne series. I have rewatched these movies more than I can count but the first time I watched it was at a childhood friend’s house. Having moved back to Bangalore for work he had purchased a DVD player and a divan.

I would go over to drink and watch movies when I wasn’t on campus and the only ones I remember are the Bourne series. We started with the first movie but ended up watching it and the sequel back to back into the early hours of the morning.

Which is why I still think of the first as one of two movies that have had an outsized influence on my life. 

The infinitely more embarrassing one being Liar Liar. I saw it as a 10 year old and decided to become a lawyer because Jim Carrey seemed rich in the movie. If I hadn’t quit one year into my career after 6 years across 2 law schools, it may have been slightly less embarrassing.

The other of course being the Bourne identity and the sequels. Having watched it as a young barely adult male, I can see where my life choices have been inspired by it.

As a preliminary, I can eliminate the ones it didn’t. I have never been in hand to hand combat and the closest I have been to a fight was when I was one of a few people trying to break one up in college and got punched in the face by MY FRIEND. And the other being voluntary stunts involving motor vehicles. The closest I have been to doing that was when I accidentally took a left in the newly launched Orion mall complex to take my Alto down a flight of stairs.

The security guard who had instructed me to take a left (he meant the road 20 feet ahead) bound down the stairs behind me with a “SAAAAAAAAAAAAAR?”

He caught up to me at the foot of the stairs. I and the car shockingly had made it down without a scratch.

“SAAAAAR” he yelled again 

“Yes?” I said as I tried to pry my hands off the steering wheel

“STAIRS ARE NOT FOR CAR SAAR”

No shit, Rakesh.

One thing the movies reinforced was my predilection for learning languages. 

It took going to college to realize that not everyone could speak 4 languages. But the Bourne movies gave me my guiding philosophy to build on that even further. He would respond in random scenes in French or German or Dutch. I added to my own repertoire by following the philosophy of fake it till you make it. I would learn to say something that was the 4th or 5th thing a person learning the language would pickup and throw it into a conversation with a native speaker to earn brownie points.

Like “How are you doing/how is it going” which I can say in 9 or 10 languages:

• Kemon ache? (Bengali)

• Baavunara? (Telugu)

• Sukhamaano? (Malayalam)

• Ki haal aya ji? (Punjabi)

• Todo Bien? (Spanish)

• Aayega to Modi hi? (Gujarati) 

Another thing that resonated, was the constant travel. He kept hopping around cities like he was outrunning loan collection agents. One minute he’s in a hotel in Tangier, the next he’s jumping off a bridge in New York.

When I have the budget, the visa or both, I try and do the same thing. 

Mali is the same. This travel bug is one of the things that bonds us together, like watching trashy reality TV or discussing what to eat for dinner while eating lunch. We’ve foregone owning a car (or a house) for most of our married life to fund more travel. And Amal is now along for the ride. 

With our latest euro trip, she’s now been in more countries than there have been instalments of Mission Impossible movies. Something she may know herself because she stayed up one and a half hours past her bedtime in Prague on a night time tour of the city. I was carrying her around in a backpack. Part of the tour was the guide showing the streets where the first instalment was shot.

Even our guide was amused when he saw her running around collecting magazines at 11.45 pm at a bar that we had stopped at towards the end.

“How many coffees has SHE had?”

One of many examples of her travelling like a champ. 

She was fully on board for 3 countries, 4 cities, 4 train journeys, 2 long bike rides, 1 road trip, 1 boat party, 1 Mozart performance and 0 instances of sleeping at her bedtime. 

Although we had planned to have a light itinerary that was child friendly, our Indian impulse to get ‘paisa vasool’ from our Schengen visa made us go for a pretty jam packed trip. I blame the VFS entirely. As I had to in 2012, I found myself at their office applying for a Schengen visa with 2 rainforests worth of printouts. Much like a colonoscopy a visit to the VFS office makes you look forward to the shit that comes after. 

A permanent residency in Canada unfortunately does not mean visa free travel in Europe. All it allowed for was my wincing less when mentally converting the exchange rate to Euros. And in some way, another life development that can be attributed to Jason Bourne.

Having moved back to India after failing to get a visa in Europe, I chanced across this guide to become a real life Jason Bourne, who has multiple passports. I didn’t have Nirav Modi or Mehul Choksi money to buy one from a island state. Nor did I have a grandparent who said “teen guna lagaan” to get an ancestral one. So I applied for the Canadian PR. Which we used to move when it finally came through in 2022.

There have been changes since the move of course. The biggest one being the on the job training as caregiver #2 for Amal.

Where Bourne had a government program called Treadstone to mould and train him, I have a threenager. He had torture sessions, I have Cocomelon. Every fitness task has become military training with the added weight of a child who insists on being carried. Be it trekking or cycling. It’s like doing a workout plan called Vikram Betaal. 

And of course the need to be constantly alert. Either when I’m running her a bath, making her breakfast or putting away her clothes, I have to wait for the inevitable “AAAAAAPPPPPPPPAAAAA” to be bellowed at me from the other room for a task that may require immediate attention.

“I need spoons to feed duckie and slothy”

“The water is too hot! Make it just right”

“I’ve finished pupu! Clean my bum bum”

“Where is that toy I haven’t mentioned for 2 years? I want it. NOW.”

I sometimes think I may need a new guide for this new chapter of my life. I can’t imagine Jason Bourne carrying a unicorn backpack while waiting at a bus stop. Or negotiating on how many bedtime stories for the night.

YOU CAN’T POSSIBLY EXPECT 5

It may also be that I am now older than Matt Damon was in any of the three instalments that is giving me a bit of pause. That nagging thought of a mid life crisis that popped up in that beautiful Biergarten has surfaced since from time to time.

“Why are you having midlife crisis type questions right now?” Mali said as we sipped our beer

“I guess so, I’m not sure. I’m asking myself, what have I done?”

“Well some people have one big thing that they do and others have multiple small things that they do” Mali responded to me

“Hmm” I said as I finished my beer.

I knew I wasn’t in the first category for sure.

What have I done really in all this time as an adult? Sure, I’ve found a partner that has made life infinitely more interesting and livable. And she provided us with a beautiful happy child that made it even more interesting at twice the volume. 

I’ve had limited success at work and a little more success at emigration. I’ve written 2 books. I have done some charity work, like drinking enough to fund Vijay Mallya’s sons wedding.

But I still occasionally feel like Bourne at a train station in Europe. Where am I going really?

It’s like that famous diner scene in the first movie. Where he reveals to his new friend and soon to be partner that he is keenly aware of his surroundings and what he is capable of but has no recollection of who he is.  I would be having the same conversation with Mali at dinner or while we sit on the couch, folding clothes

“I know at this temperature, I can run for 6 km before my knees start to hurt. I can cook 12 north Indian dishes within 15 minutes because they all taste the same. I know which Pete the cat book title has which cover art.

How can I know all that and not know who I am-”

APPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPAAAAAAAA

Be right back.

One was to train for a full triathlon with Maliha. Another was to drink less alcohol. And third to find more platforms that would showcase my writing outside of this one.

2 out of 3 isn’t bad!

On that note, here’s a piece I wrote for Hindustan Times Media on Basavanagudi through the years.

Read, enjoy and if you’re in the vicinity, smash one dosa on my behalf.

I moved there on the cusp of being an adult, having been admitted into the first law school I would attend. Given my career since, it is safe for some Indian uncle to disdainfully say, “You have wasted 2 seats”.

At that time, much like Bangalore, it was a small (but growing) city with good weather. I was one of a significant student community that was from all parts of India if not from everywhere. Like my neighbour from Sudan who would use the name “Famine” when we used to play counter strike together.

“Nothing kills like Famine bro”

Himesh Reshammiya would blast from every auto. The smartest phones in the market were just about capable of sending an MMS provided you waited an hour for it to get sent. People still un-ironically hung out in Coffee day and Barista.

It was my first experience of living alone.

I stayed in a PG and lived on a monthly budget of 4000 including rent. I made friends from parts of India some of which I am yet to visit. I was finally ushered out of my sheltered school life and formally introduced to alcohol and nicotine. I also took full advantage of a college that had failed to enforce any attendance requirement. Like becoming nocturnal to the point of knowing more than four places that were open at 2 a.m.

Another way I began to kill time was to watch movies in theatres. In the months I was there, I saw more Hindi movies than I had in the 17 years prior.

It began with watching “Waqt”. A movie where you had to believe that Supriya Shah was Akshay Kumar’s mother. And that Amitabh Bachchan was diagnosed with cancer halfway into the movie even though his wig was more visible than Akki’s acting through the whole movie.

Some movies were great. Like Rang De Basanti. Which I watched twice. Some were decent. Bluffmaster for example.

Wind your body two time.

Another great movie that I saw that year was partly because of a conversation I over heard at one of the late night joints I used to haunt. A joint called “China gate” which was manned by a single Punjabi with forearms the size of Silk board. Outside of the giant Wok he used to cook on, there were 3 plastic tables with stools and you could get noodles or fried rice into the wee hours of the morning.

Based on their Fab India kurtas and animated conversation, I knew immediately that they were from FTII, which was a walk away. I had seen parts of their verdant campus while walking past even though I hadn’t spoken to anyone. The students were older, the ones who were in their prestigious three year program for film making.

“So much subliminal messaging” I overhead one of them say, while he used a leg of chicken like a paintbrush on the green sauce on his plate

“Yes, I agree”

“I swear there was something Oedipal-”

“Not that subliminal. Banch—, its a fucking cricket movie”

“But did you see his bowling action??”

I zoned out when I got my piping hot “Gopi Manjuri” but made a note to myself to find out which movie they were talking about. And also to find out what an Idli pal was.

It turned out to be Iqbal. A movie which I would watch myself a few weeks later in a theatre. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a movie by Nagesh Kukunoor, who made his debut with Hyderabad blues.

It’s a movie about a deaf and dumb village youngster called Iqbal, played by Shreyas Talpade. And his mission to play cricket full time instead of working on his father’s farm. More specifically, to be a fast bowler.

All the actors in the movie did a great job. From Naseeruddin Shah who’s an alcoholic ex cricketer to the girl who play’s Iqbal’s fiesty cricket obsessed sister. And the character actor who plays his dad. I don’t know his name but “cat eyed, mild mannered, bald man who is very likely the villain” could be it.

And of course, then fellow JP Nagar resident, Girish Karnad. Who plays the evil well connected coach in the way of Iqbal’s development as a cricketer. Seemingly out of some unnatural interest in seeing his star pupil succeed. Who if you’ve seen the movie will wholeheartedly agree can be described as “Rahul Dravid if he’s a fuck boy”.

After a first half which is focused on Iqbal training in the village with his alcoholic coach, the second half is about Iqbal navigating his career in a lesser known Ranji team, Andhra Pradesh. Through team work and helping everyone gel together, they become a winning team. Through this entire process, he keeps butting heads with Karnad, who insists his protege should go to the India team as they need a batsman. Until a surprise cameo by Kapil Dev, swings the movie back in Iqbal’s favour.

And the movie wraps up with a happy ending where you see Iqbal making his debut for the Indian team.

Like most other movies I liked in the past from this phase, I have not rewatched it. Not because I am afraid it has aged poorly. But because watching it would seem like entering a time warp.

Can you imagine a movie like this today?

A movie featuring a muslim protagonist. With family members who are well fleshed out characters with hopes, fears and a fervent wish to see him in the Indian cricket team. And negative characters who are misusing their power in cricket administration to suit their own agenda.

The last decade in our public life in India, makes the thought almost laughable. Across Bollywood, cricket and politics.

Bollywood has of course, taken a hard right turn to cater to the BJP. Iqbal if it had to have a sequel would have to be about how he quit the team to join ISIS and then lure a bunch of unsuspecting Hindu women as brides.

“Iqbal 2: Bowl a maiden over”

What’s happening with the actual Indian cricket team is more absurd. From world cup schedules being made part of campaigning for BJP in elections to even flirting with the idea of the team playing in saffron jerseys in a match against Pakistan.

And yet, it was politics that reminded me of this movie. I’m talking of course about what started on June 4th aka may the 4th be with you. The results of the Lok Sabha elections.

Yes, the results have put a spring in my step and a song on my lips. You may ask, why, given very likely Modi is going to be PM again. Because for the first time, large spots of clay are showing on his Louis Vuitton shod feet.

There was already a whiff of some discontentment in the air. Even with fawning media channels who function like spokespersons of the party, you would hear soundbites that were critical of the government

“Naujawan ko bol rahe hain, naukri nahin hai ghar pe baitho aur 70 saal ka budda bol raha hai mujhe ek aur baar chahiye”

And it’s being seen as a defeat even by his die hard supporters. Because we are all in agreement that he and Motabhai are incapable of working with anyone.

Modi’s megalomania leads me to believe he probably can’t even handle having to share the camera with other people. Let alone portfolios.

In spite of

• an election commission that could have been renamed Juno

• a mainstream media that could have been renamed RSS feed and

• pollsters who could have been renamed Bangalore auto metres

Indian voters still spanked him and his party that had the hubris to think they would win 400 seats. At the very least, they were not given “Iqbal” by the Indian voters as described beautifully by Yogendra Yadav in this viral news clip.

And like the movie, if India was a cricket team I think we as a democracy don’t need to select a star batsman. We have had 10 years of that and it’s time for a change.

We need a team player that can work with different people for us to win collectively. Having one person or party dictate things is a deviation from the norm of a coalition trying to represent the interests of a diverse polity.

This of course could all be wishful thinking.

If history is any indicator, I’m sure the Gujju boyz are busy trying to bully or buy a mandate from the parties they have already hollowed out over the years. Or that they are incapable of working with other people resulting in a government that won’t last the whole term.

But still, it’s hard to not have a positive feeling after 10 years of feeling there was no hope for change.

Optimism, hope, relief, whatever you want to call it.

Aashayen?

It’s dry skin on my legs.

“It looks like eczema” Mali said to me.

Before finding out that it’s a skin condition, I thought that’s how a Malyali asks his mom for an omelette.

Either because of the dry weather or the chlorine from swimming daily, the skin on my calves and shins became very dry while I was in Bangalore. So dry and itchy that I would find myself scratching my legs (and scarring myself) every hour. 

Despite being given a cream to apply locally, the feeling has persisted into Canada. I have only felt this frequency and urgency of scratching an itch before with my Twitter usage. One of the few obsessions I share with my father in addition to watching Namastey London when it’s playing on Setmax and ordering ‘touchings’ with drinks.

Funnily enough, I got on X, or Twitter as it was called then 12 years ago when I was working with my father. It hasn’t changed much to be honest. It was and still is an also ran in terms of how many people are on it, compared to other networks. It’s still mostly text and image based. It also has people who are big on it but have not been able to parlay that into anything of value in the real world barring Donald Trump.

I spend ninety percent of the time I spend on social media here. I do believe that under Elon Musk it has improved on delivering its core promise, assuming the core promise is to mistrust and hate your fellow man.

The algorithm is primed to serve me things that will get me triggered based on my exact location.

When I’m in India I get all the content that you can avoid by leaving your family WhatsApp group

• Modi is the best

• India did not even exist on globes or maps until 2014

• Indian passport you can now wave at immigration and they will start singing “Vande Mataram”

• Upper caste Hindus are the most oppressed people in India

• BTW Modi is the mothafuckin best etc

When I’m in Canada, I get a stream of Canadian conservatives including that ‘journalist’ who looks like a mushroom cosplaying as Steve Jobs, Rupa Subramanya. They all have the same complaints

• Canada is imploding

• Immigrants have ruined Canada

• Indians have ruined Canada

• Canada is imploding but now with tastier food etc

But I can’t tell if this is social media or people being more extreme than they used to be. So extreme that they don’t mind getting under my skin, eczema and all.

Were things simpler when I was growing up in Bangalore in the 90s?

I can’t really say if I’m adding an Instagram filter to what could have been as nutty a time as it is now politically. 

At the state level of course churn was the constant. The state would try on governments and CMs like they were on sale at Big Bazaar.

Bangalore was not yet the golden goose it was now. Politicians had a base in Bangalore but that was only because it was the capital. That maybe the only reason Banashankari, in addition to containing my school had one of the addresses of the last south Indian PM of India, HD Devegowda.

On some level as a South Indian, this stings. Not as much as being offered South Indian food from Sagar Ratna, but it’s up there. His tenure occured when I was 8 years away from voting and that specific confluence of circumstances repeating seems further and further away.

On another level that also seems fine, because it’s HD Devegowda. Not to single him out as he is just a part of the travesty that is Karnataka politics. He is like the wrinkled raisin in the chowchow bath that is ‘poltix’ as the locals call it.

Having spent half my life being a voter in Bangalore and Karnataka has been akin to choosing which beer to buy in a Tasmac in Chennai on a hot day. 

“Sir Zingaro irka”

“Stock illai thambi”

“Oru Rampant Corruption 10000 kudunga”

And my first few years as a voter were wasted. The year before I could vote, 2004, saw both a union and a state government being formed.

It was Congress++ at the centre as a part of the UPA. And in Karnataka it was a government with no party in the majority leading to the most convoluted game of musical chairs you have seen in your life. Resulting in 4 CMs in a 5 year window. With Vacant being the best performer by far.

The outcomes haven’t been much better since I have been able to vote.

• 2008, BJP single largest party: 3 CMs in this time frame (Inky, Pinky and Sanghi)

• 2013, Congress wins majority, Sidda “someone gifted me this Rolex pa” Ramaiah as CM

• 2018, BJP and JDS form the government. HDK and Yeddy take turns being CM like they’re saving a seat at a cricket match while their friend goes to the bathroom

In this intervening period, every 5 years, I look back and wistfully yearn for the crowded, crumbling, polluted and de-greened ruin that Bangalore was 5 years ago. We almost have the population of the Netherlands but still have a one year term for the mayor.

Wtf will they do in a year? Watch a single Sanjay Leela Bhansali movie? 

We have not had BBMP elections in 4 years. Despite a pandemic, floods and having to deal with being the home city of RCB.

Don’t even get me started on the rest of the state. We don’t have one other big urban centre that is thriving.  We are the lowest performing state on human development indicators in the south. 40% of children don’t complete schooling. And only 19% are completing their college education.

And suddenly, I am supposed to believe that the clowns who got us in this situation are pristine because they either report to or are allies with 2 Gujju overlords?

Relax, I’m not talking about Ambani and Adani. 

Suddenly at election time, these nut jobs are not dynastic, not corrupt and not on holiday in Germany after allegedly raping hundreds of women. Just because they are part of the NDA.

Luckily we are spared campaigns about “double engine” government, because the BJP are not in power currently.

“Double engine” is just as much of a misnomer as “soft hindutva”.

You know like the usual Hindutva but while using Dove soap

So thankfully, this election has been about the real issues. Siddaramiah taking money from me and giving it to Aurangzeb. 

Apparently his UPI handle is aurangzeb@okaxis

I’ll tell you what I do miss from the 90s. A common consensus that irrespective of which party they’re from, that you could call them out on their bullshit. Irrespective of how much piety they cloaked themselves in.

And I am willing to have an open mind about some of my fellow voters having views and priorities that differ completely from mine because of their life experiences. But let’s be honest about who our politicians are. Especially if they keep reminding us with their words and actions who they are.

On that note, ask yourself in your heart of hearts, would you trust

• Amit Shah with your wallet

• Jay Shah with your dream 11 team

• Rahul Gandhi with a polo shirt that is one size small

• Nitish Kumar with a steering wheel

• Modi with your selfie stick, mirror or both

• Tejasvi Surya with your copy of Mein Kampf

• Yogi Atityanath with your copy of main bhi kampf

• Prajval Revanna with your Lufthansa miles etc

Now you of course can turn around and say that as I am no longer in India my opinions should be discounted. I agree with you.

I realise I have turned into the person I used to loudly admonish. A whiny NRI sharing political opinions from a foreign location. As an Indian living in Canada I like lakhs of others am the anti Akshay Kumar.

And as someone who hasn’t voted in this 2 month long Adani advertisement,  I myself am racked with guilt as I have made as much of an impact as the mayor of Bangalore. 

But still, I’m hoping that my writing this helps in some way as the election rhetoric gets nastier by the day. And that reading this show’s it’s possible to calmly discuss the shortcomings of what we have on offer, without being tribal about it.

I know for sure that it’s helped me. The whole time I’ve been typing this I haven’t been able to scratch my legs.

Here’s a recent piece of mine that they featured: My transformation into a comedy uncle.

Read maadi, share maadi and hopefully enjoy maadi.