Arjun and Kalpana

The expatriate life is a great life. I lived it for 11 years but only now do I fully understand it. I understand how the expat life is where a man has his identity reconstructed. He is no longer 'Arjun _____' but 'Arjun who's with Unilever' or 'Arjun who's joined CitiGroup'. His name changes too. He isn't just 'Arjun' but 'Arjun and Swati' or 'Arjun and Kalpana'. He is married to his wife and his job and that is who he is. He doesn't have an identity independent of those two and he doesn't need one. The job keeps the bubble comfortable.

He travels two weeks a month. He comes home to a wife and kids and a condominium. A chauffeur driven car and a chauffeur driven life. He comes home to a high rise apartment in Hong Kong or Singapore or Kuala Lumpur or an independent house in London or Paris or New York. The patter of kids' feet across wooden floors, the oriental art, the quiet rustling of a busy maid, the wife's carefree phone conversation and the city lights outside window - whether it's Arjun and Kalpana or Matthew and Michelle, the pillars that hold up the expat pantheon do not change.

It's so clean cut. The hard working husband who earns the money, the charming wife who 'runs the household', the perfect children who go swimming every evening and the Philippino maid who keeps the gears of the corporate dream oiled. "Didn't you hear? Arjun left 'Lever and joined Cadbury in Jakarta. Kalpana and the kids will join him once the school year starts." - I've heard that line so many times over the years.

Didn't you hear?

Last month we visited a colleague of my dad's in Kuala Lumpur while we were there. I stood for 20 minutes looking out of their 26th floor window at all the other perfect lives in the perfect million dollar condominiums across the road. Such tall, beautiful buildings that lit up the muggy evening with blues and greens from the swimming pool - I wondered if the families inside were as symmetrical. Such symmetrical lives: school, house, car, travel, wife - all paid for and then some. Arjun had paid for it all. I looked out the window just like I had done the first sleepless night we arrived in Hong Kong and I looked down at that spectacular sky line. 80 floor shards of light and symmetry. It was stunning. My mum had made parathas to remind us we were Indian and we needed reminding in this strange, clean foreign land. The money made it all symmetrical.

I'm not sure our lives 'mattered' to anyone. Maybe the consumers our dads' FMCG companies fed. We sort of meandered along without examining ourselves, our relationships or what we were doing in the context of some vague 'greater good'. We all made the annual trip back to India to show off to our relatives about our great life and all the money we had. I didn't even know we were showing off till the tables turned and I met other expatriate families on their yearly crusade to teach the kids about cricket and the Taj Mahal.

Being an expat is great. Your universe ends where the bubble does. But that part of my life is over. Now I have to cling to notion that I'm a "world citizen" - or at least that's what career counselors the world over have told me. But being a world citizen sucks.

You are brought up in surroundings that change every few years. A new country, a new school and new friends. At least, that's how it was with me and most of the other kids in the international schools I went to. Every four years there were friends who were forgotten and new ones had to be made. But what happens when the tumble dryer stops and the international travel you've gotten so used to comes thudding to a halt? What happens when you forge real connections with people? You can't just leave them behind. The 'Global Village' soundbite paraded by CNN does not prepare you for when the music stops and your chair is gone and you're out of the game.

CNN does not prepare you for when you no longer have that life and the people you care about the most are on the other side of the planet. The world isn't as small as Freakonomics lulls you into believing. When you're back home and university has come and gone, you have to sit there at the dinner table and feel sorry for yourself because life will never be as good. University is over. The party is over and I've been shipped off and it sucks man. It sucks.

The people you care most about are strewn across the face of the earth and getting to them isn't easy. Whatsapp and Facebook chat and Skype are tenuous links to people who you share your most cherished memories with. As you sit there at your computer when everyone has gone to sleep, the horrific realisation sinks in: you will not see your best friends again in a long time. There is a big hole in my heart where my friends used to be and a hole in my bed where a girl used to be and a hole in my life where my plans used to be.

I guess you will see your best friends once every 4-5 years like my parents do now - when you go to visit them and your kids will call them '_____ uncle' and '______ aunty'. And they will have other halves who will be just as much a part of them as the 4 glorious years of high school or college that you spent together. I suppose that will take some getting used to.

I'm not really sad, just ready to start the search for Unilever and Kalpana.

The Bank

There are few things more saddening than watching your loved ones grow old. Though I am truly lucky to still have all four of my grandparents around the thought and, worse still, the sight of them ageing is a cold, wrenching blade to my gut.


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We all have our comfort zones: the places or processes in the world that we can navigate without thinking. They are places that we have spent time in and know intimately. When we bring others into them, they know we are in a sacred domain. For me, airports are such places. I have spent so much of my life in them that I can put my earphones in and get from the taxi to my flight without really switching my brain on. I understand how things work and how newcomers will behave. For my grandfather, his comfort zone is the bank.


The city is hot and dusty and loud and really no place for an old man. But he walks the 50 yards down the hill, across the road and to the nearby State Bank of India branch. And when he enters the air conditioned foyer, he is in his domain. Suddenly there is a spring in his step, suddenly the heat and the clattering cars of the dry street are behind him. Where there was trembling caution with each stride, there is now confidence and dare I say, an air of authority. It is so wonderful to see. Having lead the way and held his hand all the way down the road, I now walk behind him and I do not have a choice in the matter.


I've noticed it with all old Indian men and I suppose it should come as no surprise. As the world has changed around them, they seek refuge in one of the few institutions that they've actively been a part of. They have seen these banks grow from tiny, backward rooms that disguised unemployment, to vast networks of pristine white walls where everything is part of a 'brand'. And as their salaries turned to pensions, they stood and watched. As Bombay turned to Mumbai, they stood and watched. These brightly lit bank branches cannot hide from the old men of the city who were around before they were.


When I go into a bank, I am always a little lost. I have to read each placard to decipher which box I have to drop a cheque into or which teller I have to stand in line to see. I am like the first time fliers I treat with such disdain at airports. But my grandfather is the Gold Club member here - he has the frequent flier miles and knows the pilots and the air hostesses and will get bumped up to Business Class while I'll be floundering at check-in. Old men love to be respected - they feel it is the least the world owes them and we do. In their local bank, they milk this respect and stride, chest-out, towards their favourite teller who will drop whatever he/she is doing to help them. They bring their tattered old briefcase and put on their reading glasses. They take out their notebook and let everyone in the room slow to their pace.


Today my grandfather wishes to change my status on my provident fund from a minor to a major. It is the most trivial, the most disproportionately time-consuming activity relative to its importance. But my grandfather has planned his day around our trip to the bank and he has put on his nice trousers and his freshly pressed shirt and I will not deny him his comfort zone. The Bank is his castle for 45 minutes every week. I can sense his sadness when we have to leave and face the heat and the humidity of the afternoon. I hold his hand as we climb the hill to our house. It wasn't always this way.


He used to be the one who walked briskly up and down Pali Hill. Every summer he would take me to the park to find sticks. They had to be fibrous, malleable sticks for the bow and sleek, strong ones for the arrows. He would teach me to shoot. After archery got boring, we would make lanterns from fallen branches. We would peel the bark off and shape them so they were taut and clean. He would use coloured paper to give them character. After they fell apart we would recycle each side and turn them into kites that we would fly from our giant window. They would scare the crows only until lunch time, when he would - to the utter exasperation of my grandmother - leave morsels for them on the window sill.


But those days are gone. Now his hands shake with Parkinson's and his movements are slow. The sofa bed that I sleep on in the living room when we visit... he can no longer open on his own. It does not take any power at all but he leaves the task to me or my uncle. His speech is fine - he prays with the same rigour as he always used to, though now he sits quietly and listens to our conversations without joining in. Our journey to the bank was his day out.


Next week he will put on his ironed trousers, oil his hair and find another excuse to go.

Chin Lung: The Worst Bar in Bangalore

The night hadn't gotten off to a very good start. Though I would later find out that it was called 'Chin Lung Bar' - supposedly a Chinese restaurant - I had been told over the phone to come to meet a couple of friends at "Chillum Bar". So as dusk fell, I walked up and down Brigade Road in Bangalore asking various people for "Chillum... Bar?". To my immense irritation at the time, most shop keepers and strangers waved me away with scowls of incredulity. Only now do I realise just how shady I must have sounded: going around asking strangers for a pipe and a drinking hole.


When I finally discovered that I had in fact been called to Chin Lung Bar, I almost wished I didn't. The outside of the 3 story bar and restaurant was shabby and tattered to say the least. The entrance was dark and dingy and filled with the sort of people you steer clear off down dark alleys. Waiters wiped dirty tables with dirty clothes - a restaurant manifestation of the ancient Indian art of dust-moving, that one sees on roads outside. The carpets on the landing of each floor were wet and the walls were stained and cracking. It was hell.


I got to the terrace and was heartened to see the friends I had come to visit. But they were with a larger group of people who I didn't really know. To my horror, we were the oldest among a group of kids from Bangalore International School  - known more for its drugs consumption than it's academics. You know, 'bad kids'. Suddenly 'Chillum Bar' didn't sound so far fetched. Curly haired 15 year olds smoked weed and hash that they pulled out from the pockets of their shorts. Here I was dressed for a night out. Pointy shoes and everything.


The booze was cheap and the food was bad. But at least the booze was cheap. The terrace wasn't well lit - pretty much the only light around was the neon that made it way across the smoky roads from buildings opposite. There were plastic white tables and chairs - now stained and broken from overuse - strewn haphazardly. It was cramped and waiters contorted into all sorts of shapes to get from one table to another. I settled down and started talking to someone. A cold Kingfisher Premium was a cold Kingfisher Premium no matter where you went.


All off a sudden, everyone on the table jolted out of their plastic white chairs and jumped back. Everyone except one guy who had his eyes closed and swayed uneasily in his seat. It was only when I saw the state of this guy that I too jumped back a few yards from the plastic white table. A single, long strand of saliva lowered itself from his half open mouth and dangled around in the breeze. You could just about make out the whites of his eyes - he was in a state between being conscious and passing out. The Rum and Coke twilight zone. I could smell his stupor from across the table. He was going to blow any second.


It happened almost in slow motion. The way in which none of his friends came to his aid and ushered him to the bathroom was remarkable. Is it every man for himself after 8pm? At first only a little came out. By now all the tables around us had also gotten to their feet and moved a few steps back. It was so sad: like walking away from a guy with a bomb strapped to his chest and leaving him to face the music. His unfocused eyes seemed to call for help but I was not going to be a hero. He gagged a bit and the noise made me almost throw up myself.


"Macha he's gone macha. Yuck." said a 'friend' of his with a certain amount of disdain. People were still watching him, cigarette in hand, as this all went on. As if he was some bizarre exhibit at a circus. I couldn't watch any longer. Seeing this made me wonder what else in this place had been puked upon and I went to the bathroom to wash my hands before leaving.


Let it be said that my tolerance for dirty bathrooms is high. I get on my tiptoes, take a deep breath and do my business. "Out of sight, out of mind", or 'smell' in this case. But this was different. It was like the bathroom in Trainspotting. The urinal stank like nothing I'd encountered before. It was as if hundreds of artists had left this mark on this canvas. Something didn't feel right. In the dingy red light you could barely see where you were aiming but I knew I was hitting the target. And then to my horror I realised why the drainage was, ahem, so efficient. There was no pipe connected to the bottom of the marble urinal. Just a hole and my shoes below it. For a second, I was pissing on my pointy shoes. And one cannot simply press pause in the midst of a good pee so I had to spread my feet as far apart as possible. And so for the remainder of my time in that nightmare, I took up the 'power stance' of a lead guitarist in an 80s rock band.


At least the people at the poorest local bars for daily wage earners are friendly. This place was an attack on every sense. The light was murky, the patrons were spiteful and the place was filthy. It was without a doubt the worst place I had ever been to. On the way home I wondered what a sitcom version of this place would be - you know, the Brigade Road version of 'Cheers'. Ted Danson would be played by Manju Srinivas KS.

"Where nobody knows your naaaame,
And you don't know why you caaaame".


So there you have it. The worst bar in Bangalore. No one should ever have a reason to go there. If you want to get puked on by 14 year old kids who are going to fail their GCSEs then maybe it's the place for you. It sums up the pathetic dinginess of Brigade Road actually. The fake cigarette vendors, the 9th grade kids, the plumes of exhaust fumes and the unceasing chaotic heat. Hell.

First Time Fliers

I am sitting in Doha Airport in Qatar. I am a passenger like all the others in transit. I am caught in limbo between a flight and a flight. What I see around me is a peculiar airport. What I see around me is the Middle East.

Airports are a sum of their people and profile of both passengers and staff here is interesting. Though all the announcements are in English followed by Arabic, there are very few Arabs here. Or least, you hear very little Arabic being spoken around you. The passengers are lower-end travellers from Africa, the Indian subcontinent and South East Asia with a few Europeans dotted in between. A lot of Muslims but very few Arabs. And yet we are unmistakably in Arabia – one can see flat, yellow desert for miles in every direction through the ceiling to floor windows. One in a while the opaque horizon will be broken by the faint silhouette of a skyscraper. 

The staff are Philipino, Indian and East African. They speak English and a second language that they use more often than not. Their uniforms are respectable but the maroon colour scheme dampens their aura. The decor is impressive enough by Indian standards; it is clean and spacious but you need only look closely to see that the veneer of luxury that the Middle-East tries so desperately to maintain is slowly peeling away at the edges. The food court resembles an employees’ lounge and the images of food on the walls are nowhere near as enticing as they should be. You know when McDonalds take pictures of the food for their menus? And now think of your local burger joint and how much more budget those are. The free Wifi is a God-send but there are no plug-points from which to use a laptop for any sustained period of time. The few power sockets that are close enough to seating areas are all taken so you have this bizarre sight of middle aged Americans sitting on the floor using Skype.

All the characters are there but the show is not authentic yet. Not every country can pull off a Chang-hi or a Frankfurt but for all the wealth of the region, I was expecting something... shinier? This seems to me like what Indian airports will look like in 10 years time. An A for effort but a B- overall. At junctures where you expect the highest standards, you are met with the third-world psyche: we had to go through a security check as soon as we got off the plane and into the transit lounge just to make sure we hadn’t fashioned any explosives between our last baggage scan and now. It was surreal. But then the Middle East seems surreal to me. It reminds me of the Oscar Wilde quote about America: from barbarianism to decadence without the civilisation in between. But this is on another level.

I have no doubt that by the time the 2022 World Cup comes around, this airport and its people will rival any that the developed world can offer but for now, I am surrounded by women in burkhas walking 2 feet behind men who don’t know where they are going. 

"Sorry mate... cheers mate"

I'll miss a lot of things about England. I always yabber on about Germany or Hong Kong or any of the other places I've lived in and people must find it nauseating. But the truth is, I chose England to be the place I'd want to spend 3-4 years of my life - not America or Singapore or wherever. I chose the English education system for university just like I'd done for all my schooling. I always dream about living the European life-style and going to cafes and walking cobble streets at night but England is part of Europe too and I take it for granted. I know I will miss many things when I move back to India.


I love the weather in England. Yes, I said it. I love it and I will miss it. The drizzle, the wind and endless, melancholic grey that sort of sighs at you when you leave the house. Growing up in hot countries has given me a profound appreciation for rain. The feeling of warmth when you emerge from the elements into a heated building is made nicer by the cold you felt before it. I will miss how happy these get when they see the sun. I will miss wearing my coat - I'm sure my scarf will find many woolly companions at the back of some cupboard in my house in Bangalore.


I will miss the way people make small talk. Sometimes it is a good, natural ice-breaker and sometimes it is infuriatingly drawn out but it is something that is totally British. Oh how they love their endless small-talk. Any conversation worth having is worth having well and I admire that. Feigned interest is still interest. I will miss business emails that use correct English. I will miss the civility of it all; saying thank you to bus drivers and holding the door for strangers and smiling at the Pakistani guy in the news-agent. I will miss the undertones - the ballet of suggestive speaking is lost on us blunt Indians. I'll miss apologising and thanking people 25 times a day for the most minute things.


I will miss the football and the pubs in which we watch it in. The tension in your body when you see a player through on goal and say as one larger sipping entity, "Go on...". The analysis before a game and the banter after it. I'll miss the banter. I will miss how utterly engrossed we all are in football and the effect it has on us; seeing a friend drop some food on himself and instinctively saying "it's just not his day" or "he'll be disappointed with that effort". Thank you football commentators for whispering vapid, meaningless cliches into my ear. I will miss living sporting weekend to sporting weekend.


I will miss chip-shops and the off-licenses. I will miss the way scummy people play horrid rap music from their 8-bit mobile phone speakers on the back of buses. I will miss the way strangers can talk to each other without inhibition. I will miss using words like "butters", "standard", "bare" and "budget".


I would have liked to have stayed on for a while and worked in London but I guess it's not meant to be. Till then, retarded double-tapped wash basins, cheerio.

"Ya bro, I stay in Bandra but I'm shifting to Juhu"

Today we were going for dinner to a distant relative’s house, just down the road. I say ‘distant’ because that’s what all relatives are to me. Anyone outside the immediate family, I mean. Their surnames, ages and professions become blurred. I know them simply as “first name + Konkani family suffix”. Padmini Thaee, Lucky Uncle, Santosh Dada, Sheetal Didi, Prema Pacchi and of course Ajoba and Dadima, my grandfather and grandmother, would all be present tonight.

I enjoyed walking there in the rain, sharing an umbrella with my grandmother. She talked endlessly as we splashed our way down Pali Hill. Oh how she enjoyed talking. I could just about make out what she was saying over the noise of the traffic that rattled by. She was prepping me for the dinner by filling me in on the occasion. The gathering was being held to honour "Sanjay’s" return to India with his young family, from the USA. With the greatest respect, he was someone’s brother’s nephew’s something. ‘Uncle’ is a wonderfully versatile suffix.

Because of her arthritis, Dadima and I lagged behind Ajoba and Shambhavi, who had already reached the gate. Ajoba was always such a fast walker; that had never changed. I remember him making a bow & arrow set with my every summer and then taking me to Jogger's Park to shoot at trees. I wonder what him and Shambhu talked about - because neither of them were big talkers. It was great to cross the road at walking pace, right during rush hour: no matter how angry or crazy the on-coming driver was, he had to slow down and stop for an old lady under an umbrella.

The house was like any other house in Bombay: a 3 bedroom 3^rd floor apartment with a tiny living room and cramped kitchen. Tube-lit, of course. It was Padmini’s house and she greeted us warmly as we entered. We took our shoes off outside and were offered cold water by her daughter, Karishma. Her husband had not yet made his appearance, as was his style. Lucky Uncle was quite a character; he’d slink into the living room much later. The floors were white tiles and the furniture was modest but comfortable. Shambhu and I strategically took the chairs closest to the TV, so that we were as far away from awkward conversations with the ancient aunties. Thankfully the World Cup was on; it provided a starting point for conversations and so it was welcome, by football fan and novice alike. Prema Pacchi was the classic distant, ancient aunty. She smiled warmly and patted Shambhu and I lovingly as we bent down to touch her feet. I had no idea when we’d met or if at all but followed standard protocol as always. I smiled sweetly, said ‘namaste’ and touched whosever feet were two generations older than my own.

Padmini played the role of anxious host. Shambhavi and I were now grown up so she couldn’t treat us like kids and followed protocol like everyone else.

“So where do you go to college? How many years left? Do you like it? And what about you Shambhu? Where are you going to go for college? Oh that’s nice”, she asked as she tended to a big pot in the kitchen.

They were fair questions but I doubt anyone really cared what the answers were. And to be honest, I really had no idea what to ask her myself. We Indians are poor conversationalists. I knew so little about my relatives that I felt embarrassed to ask. And so I followed protocol like her. Somehow the balance was maintained. Yin and Yang quietly feasted on the mutton curry that night.

Halfway through dinner, Lucky Uncle walked in, fashionably late to his own dinner, accompanied by Santosh Daadaa and Sheetal Didi. Santosh is my dad's first cousin. Lucky was married to Padmini but I’d never have guessed it and always thought of him as this strange, quiet, distant man who smoked a lot. He was rarely around at family gatherings over the years and so no one really knew him. Mum and dad didn’t really talk about him to Shambhu and I much either. All we knew was that he drank and smoked a lot and wore heavily tinted sunglasses. He reminded me of some sort of successful used-car salesman who lived in Dubai.

Santosh and Sheetal were their usual cheery, charming selves. Santosh was loud and dashing and charismatic and Sheetal was pretty and playful as usual. Their children were older than Shambhu and I, yet the two of them left that silly protocol at the door with their shoes. Santosh was someone I could have a proper conversation with (especially after he’d had a few whiskeys!). We chatted about music, politics and the media. He was loud and boisterous but always maintained a light hearted mood. He didn't feign interest, always waited for his turn to speak and addressed the whole room when he did! Sheetal was a sweet, fun, motherly figure who always seemed like she knew what was going on. She could see right through Shambhavi’s attempts to uphold her ‘child-like’ aura. At the risk of sounding like an ungrateful snob, their presence transformed this evening from being bearable to fun.

After enduring Shambhu and I for a while, the conversation somersaulted from English into Konkani and we were lost. We finish our dinner quickly, eyes fixed on the Germany-Argenina game. As soon as the match had ended, she glanced at her phone and announced that she had to go to town to meet some friends. She had betrayed me. I was left alone to fend for myself and dodge awkward questions from awkward aunties alone.

The cavalry arrived in the nick of time. Santosh and Sheetal’s kids turned up at the door. The three of them were my second cousins and we always had a good time together. I thanked Padmini for the food and Lucky for the whiskey and slipped out the front door, glad to be rescued. We got into two cars and headed for a bar on the beach where Samir’s big TV show launch was taking place. The oldest of my cousins, Radhika, had recently gotten married to him and he had even more recently made it big in the India show business. This made my cool cousins, even cooler than before.

There were plenty of ‘hep’ young things at the beach shack although the party was quite dead. As we arrived, we caught Samir’s eye; he was just finishing an interview and did his best to finish it professionally. The gorged ourselves on the free food and cocktails at this event and even got in a couple of pictures. Shivansh, the youngest one, and I talked about football and he introduced me to some of his friends. He now lived in Boston and worked for an insurance company or something. He was tall and handsome but still acted like a teenager who'd had one drink too many. Gopika, the middle sibling, pointed out some of the semi-celebrities at the party to me. After living outside of India for most of my life, I had lost touch with who was currently famous. I was being reintroduced to this city, this country, these people.

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Her name was Simone and she was like a mannequin. The ability of some Indian girls to all look and dress in exactly the same way is utterly astounding. You see them in Birmingham as much as you do in Bangalore: droves of them, wearing the same tights and plimsolls with identical long, flowing hair that makes its way onto the edges of the blackberries in their hands. She was one of those girls who had 50 Likes on every one of her profile pictures but never spoke to anyone for more than five minutes. There were so many of them at that party. The apartment itself was quite big by Bombay standards. It had 3 bedrooms and a living room with an obnoxiously fancy sound system that sprawled across the room. It was there that we talked for four and a half minutes. I asked her questions and she answered like it was one of the interviews she'd seen on Channel V. It was one of the things I'd learnt quickly after moving back to India: you don't talk to girls, if you are suave enough they talk to you. Or rather, they talk 'at' you till you ask the next question.

The windows in the living room were wedged all the way open and so it was a lot less stuffy there. The air wreaked of sweat and house music. The heat hung in the air and pinned me to the wall and to my glass. The ride there was so much more fun than the party itself. I had hopped on the back of Gopika's boyfriend's motorbike and been flung around for the 20 minutes that it took to get from the beach shack to this house. I had bonded with the motorbike's rider to some extent; he was an art director at an advertising company. He had long hair. These good-looking artsy types, I swear.

I prefer them to the corporate types and much, much prefer them to those still being educated. The party was nice in that sense; only the select few from the crowd were invited to the launch event had been invited there. I was one of these, though I was invited more because I was the show's star's cousin than because I was good looking or famous. I wish I was invited for being the latter but I got a free motorbike ride and I didn't care. The rider's name was Nafzar and we made a stop at a seedy basement to pick up some rum for ourselves and our friends. We had a conversation for those 20 minutes that I clung koala-like to his motorbike. I say a 'conversation', it was more me talking into the wind behind his helmet and then nodding at his muffled responses. I was glad to be invited to a party at all. I knew about five people in this town and two of them were my grandparents.

But back to the party. I was in 'friend-making' mode which meant that I had to nod and grunt approval far more often than I'd otherwise have done. I needed friends. I needed cool friends who knew people. I was networking without a business card and it wasn't easy. Talking to Indians is different to talking to Europeans. I was used to people being interested in me and my stories. 'Conversations' with these young Bombayites were just people waiting their turn to speak. I didn't mind because the crowd was full of interesting people. It was full of the India that isn't covered in CNN's 'land of contrasts' soundbite.

There were artists, DJs and 'electronic musicians', real musicians, film makers, story-board producers, actors and a consultant. I knew she was a consultant before I asked her because she was still in work-clothes and wasn't smoking. But then I asked her what she did for a living and she told me she was working for the Boston Consulting Group in Bombay, heading up something to do with 'Risk'. Damn, BCG. How did she swing that? Further investigation revealed she had an MBA from an American university and I was calm inside once more.

I got so used to explaining to people what I do that I was able to fine-tune and stream-line the whole spiel into two sentences, "I work for a foreign policy think tank that advises blue-chip Indian companies. I help research and write policy reports on random stuff that these corporate types need to make their strategy decisions. What are you drinking?". OK that is three but the last one is the most important. You only have a 10 second window at these types of parties - 10 seconds to make someone cooler than you be interested in you. It always helped that I had lived in Europe. A lot of these people hadn't left India and so if I spoke to someone for more than a minute I was genuinely interesting. And that is a nice feeling.

Because this was Radhika and Samir's place and I was privy to the inner sanctum, so to speak, was around well after most of the guests had left. We ate popcorn as we lay on the futons in the living room. By now the smokers had been allowed to vent their tarry tales without having to sit on the window sill. My cousins were the same to me now as when I was a starry eyed 15 year old. Back then they had been the lab-rats - they were the first from our circle to go out into the real world and report back because they were all a good five years older than me. And now that I too was working, there was a new status-quo. They were just as keen on my insights as I was on theirs. Although they were and will always be the cool older cousins, who knew infinitely more about life than I ever would. Radhika was married, Shivansh was working in Boston and Gopika was about to move out of home for good.

I remembered being taken to the movies by these three and I remember looking up to them. They were halfway in between my parents and me. They were adults but not 'grown ups'. But now I was also an adult. I was in their world and I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. I always gawked awkwardly at my oldest cousin's husband who was the big TV star. It was their house and their party and I was in their space. He had this aura that media personalities have. People stopped to hear what he had to say. His broad shoulders walked into the room before he did. Even after everyone had left and it was only us close family, his aura persisted. It still felt like reality TV. He didn't respond, he answered. The honest, spontaneous conversation I'd yearned for with him, felt like rehearsed soundbites ready to be packaged and edited and sold to the nearest teen TV channel. I suppose it was because we really didn't know each other well and I'd only met him a few times. Nevertheless, I clung to his every word like a schoolgirl.

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After much rum, I went home. They called a taxi for me and insisted on paying. I didn't pay for a thing when I was with my cousins and it made me feel like a kid again. I woke up the security guard to let me into my apartment complex. Neither he nor the street dogs who roamed the car-park were best pleased at being stirred at this hour. The sky was purple. I put my key into the lock but it didn't work. I tried again and though I felt the lock click reassuringly, the door didn't budge. I panicked.

I was living with my grandparents till such time as I could find a place of my own. I did not want to wake them up at 4am, stinking of all the cigarette smoke that had been whooshed into my suit jacket. I paced up and down the brightly lit 5th floor foyer, wondering what to do. I worked up the courage to ring the door bell and winced as I did. I hear footsteps within a split-second and the door was opened to reveal my grandparents, my uncle and aunt and my grandaunt who had unknowingly locked the door from the inside after I had left home. They looked at me like I'd just come home from a war.

"Are you alright, Shravan?" They said almost as one.

"Yes, I'm fine. Why are you awake? I'm so sorry for waking you up! The door was locked from the inside... I'm so sorry!" I spluttered.

They pulled me inside, concerned for my well-being for some reason. All the lights in the house were on. They were awake. They were already up. My day was ending and theirs' was beginning. Our community holy-man would be gracing our house with his presence in a few hours and they had begun their prayers and preparations already. As I made my way to the bed in the side room, they looked at me with a curious mix of wonder and pity.

I had taken the holiness of the house down a few notches, hadn't I? Indian people, I swear.

The Sunday I realised I was 21.

In my mind, I am still 19. If you ask me my age that's what first pops out. Up till one particular Sunday during these last Christmas holidays while I was back home in India, I felt like a kid who needed permission.

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I woke up groggily and put the house keys on the rack before brushing the alcohol from my teeth. It was 7am and my dad was already in the middle of his yoga class. My mum was still in bed. I watched the Lakers against the Heat on the sofa in the TV room and ate the piping hot cheese dosa that Bhagia brought me every 10 minutes from the kitchen. Shambhavi emerged from her room and flopped down on the sofa beside me and ask how last night was. My parents also made the same inquiry later at the breakfast table but more out of courteousness than interest or even concern.

How different! How different to years ago. How do I put this... that Sunday I answered to no one. I did exactly as I pleased and didn't even realise it. That is what scared me. I hope this doesn't come across as some cheesy coming-of-age picture montage.

Something unspoken had evolved subconsciously. I don't know if it was trust or acceptance. I keep feeling this need to justify where I'm going or what I did last night but there is simply no need. I told my dad that I'd gone to UB City for some drinks and then to a friend's house in Indranagar before being dropped home by someone who also lived in Whitefield. It was the truth and the fact that I'm even saying that illustrates the novelty of the situation. My dad peered at me over his reading glasses for a second before returning to his newspaper and crunching on the watermelon Bhagia had freshly cut. My mum meandered into the kitchen and kissed me on the head. She didn't even ask about last night. How different! I only realise now that I was a grown up in their eyes.

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Prahlad had his car so he picked me up at around noon and we went to the mall near by. His car made the U-turn near my front gate that I'd seen it make for the last 7 years. But again, today was different. It was not his driver driving - it was him. And it was normal. It was totally normal, as if this is the way it had always been and would always be. I remember going with him, his driver and his mum in the red Toyota to take our SATs; today it was just him and he drove the Merc. The scene was the same but the characters had changed. The characters were older though they didn't feel it. We were just driving through Whitefield - our Whitefield. The road was wide and constantly meandering and the men sat at junctions, drinking tea and watching the world go by. The road hadn't changed, the bus-stops hadn't changed and the lake hadn't changed but this afternoon we had decided without a second thought that we would go watch a movie and we would go in his car and that was that.

Do you understand what I'm trying to say? We were 21. Where had the years gone? Where had the concept of permission gone? Permission was a laughable afterthought that Sunday.

The most telling part of that day was playing football in the park where we'd played as kids. Arun had joined us and so now we had 2 cars. We used to have to lie to the security guard to let us in. Now we just rolled down the window and nodded at the gate and he let us through... with a salute!

We walked out onto the grass like we'd done when we were 14. But we were 21 and the kids who looked so small and so scrawny were 14. And we were to those 9th and 10th graders what the unimaginably cool college guys who used to occasionally turn up were to us. We had our own cars, we could kick the ball the length of the pitch and we picked the teams.

As I sat on the bench and let one of the smaller boys sub on for me, it hit me that this wasn't like seeing yourself in the mirror - it was like seeing yourself running around 10 years ago. It was strange. I remembered when we had to have someone drop us to football in the evening. I chuckled at the notion.

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The way that day ended summed it up. As afternoon turned into evening, I caught myself reaching for my phone to let my parents know when I'd be home. I looked at my reflection in the car's mirror and realised they didn't care. I was a different kind of son now. They would tell me what their plans were and ask if I wanted to join.

We picked up some cold beers at the bar across the road from Palm Meadows and went to Prahlad's balcony to enjoy the cool Bangalore evening air. Palm Meadows: the world of white-picket fences and tuition lessons was now just a bunch of houses. Pristine, imposing bungalows yes, but not a world unto itself like it used to be when we would round up the boys for football in high school. I can't imagine ever looking as young as the boys we saw riding their cycles to the clubhouse. It seems as I'd been away at university, Palm Meadows had lost its mystique. I hope the rest of the world doesn't.

The "Hi Aunty!" that Arun and I said as we greeted Prahlad's mother on the way up his spiral staircase was also different. Though it was respectful, it was not a child's squeak of acknowledgement but an adult's cursory salutation. We sat on his terrace and talked about the past. About the difference between university in England (me), the US (Prahlad) and Australia (Arun). We remembered our first beers together as teenagers, as we sat there sipping these ones like... men. I am afraid to use that word because its connotations, I fear, do not apply me... yet. We're just kids right? I remember this place and this life through my school eyes and seeing it now as a free, unaccountable adult left a hole in my heart.

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I had done exactly what I'd wanted and thought nothing of it. I had gone where I'd wanted, when I'd wanted. I'd eaten what I'd wanted and watched what I'd wanted. I had the keys to the house. I got home and the stubbly face that looked back at me in my bathroom mirror was an adult. It was terrifying. Have you ever felt it? Have you ever breathed that empty breath when you look in the mirror and realise you're not 19?

I don't know why you've read this far. But thank you.