Still single in the city

Oh Calcutta and Dilli Meri Jaan

It felt funny to be out of the blogging loop for three weeks. But despite my best efforts, I couldn't find time to go about it. I was in India for almost the entire time; I spent a lot of time in Calcutta (my parents don't possess the gadget known as the PC), and a fair bit in Delhi. My brother, who was in Calcutta too (on vacation) with his family, managed to take the wind out of my sails in the City of Joy. He got hit by bronco-pneumonia, and was hospitalised for 10 days, where he spent a substantial amount of time toying with the idea that he was dying. "Of course you are not!" everyone kept hollering at him. "I think I am," he'd keep whispering miserably.

After a capital touchdown on the 21^st of August, I landed in Calcutta on my mother's birthday -- the 26^th morning. It wasn't much of a birthday celebration: I reached home, gave her a gift and although she appeared to be genuinely thrilled to get a bottle of designer perfume, she cut to the chase: "Let's go to the hospital, shall we?"

Brother is much better now, and shifted to my parent's place while I was around. He's now writing a ghost short story set in Darjeeling and has completed about 2,000 words.

Bits of interesting things happened while he was hospitalised. One evening, my sister-in-law and I were leaving the hospital -- Apollo Gleneagles on the EM Bypass, a nodding distance away from where my parents now live in Salt Lake -- after visiting hours, and looking for a taxi to take us home. The main gate opens up to a little shelter where a group of Bengali men hang out. They obviously have precious little to do except in indulge in adda (whoever said it was dying form?). We were both greeted by loud calls of "Orrey baba, aar parchhi na" that roughly translates into "Oh father (the reference is to probably to ‘Our Father, who art in heaven', the Almighty), I cannot control myself any more".

It seemed a little odd to be subject to such trivia just outside the rather serious business of a hospital, but nobody was particularly bothered. Even the hospital security grinned broadly. What followed was even weirder. The hospital-controlled taxi queue was running a little racket. They were charging passengers multiple times over. "AE Block, Salt Lake," I said to a cabbie. "That would be Rs 200," he replied, chomping on what was probably gutka. "Listen, I paid Rs 40 getting here," I thundered. "Besides, this is a hospital queue -- you are supposed to take me wherever I want, by the metre... Not haggle over the fare."

He shrugged his shoulders and walked off to join a few more his ilk, all furiously fleecing hospital visitors. "Let's catch a bus," my sister-in-law suggested. But there was no bus-stand close, so we had to wait for half an hour in order to get a ‘running taxi', the driver of which tried his best to take the scenic route. After incessant arguing, I finally managed to show him the way.

There is a phuchka-wala (the gastronomically far superior Bengali variant of the gol gappa) right next door to my parents' place; he serves up awesome stuff: the spicey imli and pudhina water just right, the potato mix ekdum perfect, and the chassis of the phuchkas crisp and savoury. I -- again with sis-in-law in tow -- walked across one early evening to gulp down a few mouthfuls. We passed an Alto with a Bengali bhadralok sitting inside with a kid. Mwwuuaaaaah, he slurped, really loudly. I actually stopped in my tracks to look back at him, at which point he quickly turned his face and pretended he hadn't seen me while the kid giggled uncontrollably. "Welcome to Calcutta," my sister-in-law winked.

My parent's landlord -- who, I hear, is a ‘fan' of mine along with his wife (no, they don't know of this blog) because I am so "wonderful" (at least that's what they keep telling my folks) -- gave me two firm kisses on my cheek, while his wife gave me a bear hug.

"Guess what, your landlord kissed me," I informed my mother, as she fussed around my brother who had just come back home from the dreaded hospital.

"Oh really?" she responded grandly. "Well, he kissed me too -- on my birthday. This was right before you got here."

"You mean you managed to get kissed by your landlord before you guys came over to see me at the hospital?" my brother reacted in mock horror, from the patient's bed.

"Yes," she mumbled, before bolting inside the kitchen to fix some tea.

I came back to Dubai last week, and it felt so good to be back -- chiefly because I'd hardly slept while I was on vacation and I looked forward to some intense (and undisturbed) sleeping.

The big news here is that the Dubai Metro is on track: it was promised that the city would get a Metro on 09.09.09 and, voila, the commitment was honoured. It was a big -- and proud -- moment for everyone who lives in this city, and even though I tend to be unsentimental about these kinds of things, I too experienced a frisson of well-being. I am still to ride on a train, but since it's an overhead system, I am seeing the sleek, blue machines snake up and down for the past few days.

The timeliness of the Metro here almost made me nostalgic about India - for entirely different reasons. My apartment is still "almost ready", whereas I was supposed to have taken possession in November last year. The builder company's representative had given me his "word of honour" in the middle of last year when they wanted the down payment double quick. The handing over the keys has been getting postponed since the end of the last year. Every month, I have been hearing a different story.

This time, I routed my trip via Delhi because I had been PROMISED possession on 22 August. Alas, that was not to be. Apparently, some seepage problem has crept up, and my key-getting is an act being preserved for posterity. This, I found out after I called the building manager some 30 times; he kept disconnecting my calls, and finally took one that I dialled from a different number.

The kindly Tiger offered to come along with me -- since I am a woman, and builders in Indirapuram don't take women seriously, more so when there is a fight on their hands. 

"But I came down especially for this -- and I'd booked my tickets after consulting you," I shouted at the smug-faced manager, as the site engineer looked on impassively. "I cannot keep coming to Delhi like this -- you know, based on your false promises."

"Too bad madam," Smug Faced said gleefully, as the site engineer looked very bored indeed. "You will have to."

"I want to complain to your corporate office, I want your company's CEO's number," I was getting hysterical.

Smug-Faced was looking smugger than ever. "You want to complain? Go ahead, be my guest. But remember one thing: you'll be living here at some point, I'll be working here, we'll be meeting each other every now and then... Why do you want to spoil things between us?"

"Is he threatening me?" I asked Tiger, after dragging him out of the building front office. "He IS threatening me! After screwing up on delivery time by almost a year... I can't believe his cheek!" 

"It's no use," Tiger growled. "They are like that only... in fact, we are like this only. Welcome to India."