Stuck in the Middle with You

I’ve become an old man. Or at least, I’ve started thinking and acting like one. Maybe that’s natural; when you start working I guess you instinctively feel like you ought to be more responsible. What I’ve found is that I am vastly more uptight and conscious about how others will feel than most people my age. It has resulted in me being stuck in a weird place between my parents and my younger sister.

I think my parents treat me like an adult but don’t yet treat my sister the same way. I don’t know whether this is to do with age, gender, life-stage or what. But as a result, I’ve got one foot in each camp: trying to be a both a stoic, responsible adult and a carefree, fun young person is tough.  I don’t know if all older siblings feel this way.

What happens is that in trying to be “everyone’s friend” I am neither a kid nor a grown up. I don’t intentionally test boundaries or challenge authority or have fun for no reason like I did when I was at high school or university. Like my sister does now. At the same time, I cannot hang out with my parents all the time as my views and interests are very different.

When we come together as a family I find myself trying to be this bridge between them and her. This is a weird position to be in because I instinctively defend her if they decide to pull her leg or discipline her. Perhaps it’s not my place to interfere at all. But then when she’s out of line and there’s full-fledged conflict, I find myself “taking my parents' side" and trying to explain their logic to her. This makes things worse. As someone who has been there before, I try to get her to see their point of view but often I guess she wants a friend rather than an older brother/guest-lecturer.

My personality type is that of the peace-maker and so my tendency is to try and mediate. I guess I could use my “unique position” to try and get both sides to recognise the similarities they share with me and then through me, see the other side’s point of view.

I find myself lecturing my sister like I’m our dad and I don’t know what to make of it. 

Survival of the Fittest

When men enter a gym, we go back 100,000 years. We stop being polite, modern human beings and turn into prehistoric hunter gatherers. Or in the case of those who oil themselves up for Mr ______ contests, punter latherers. Do you even lift bro? ROAR.

I've heard from lots of people - especially girls - how intimidating they found gyms and for the longest time I couldn't understand it. I've been going to the gym regularly and really enjoyed myself. After a long, shitty day, channeling your anger and frustration into an uphill bike ride is a great way of saying "fuck you" to the world. I find myself feeling lousy and bloated if I don't do some kind of physical activity by the end of the day - no matter how tiring my day has been. I love the post work-out high: the feeling of lightness and energy that gives you a great night's sleep.

But today at my beloved Gold's Gym at Elphinstone Road, I found that the entire bottom floor had been rearranged. The rowing machine - a piece of equipment I really love - was gone. The steppers had been moved and weren't plugged in for some reason; on battery power they restart each time you stop pumping your legs. The only two good cross trainers were taken. I was faced with only one option: leave the civility of the cardio floor and go upstairs to the weight room.

The weight room is an incredible place. It's a metal obstacle course full of giant pulsating limbs with bits of hair and human jammed between them. If you're not ripped like Arnold Schwarzenegger then you're not welcome. The guys look at you with a mixture of pity (and hunger because you're probably decent sized for an evening snack).

And God forbid a girl stumble into there. It's like the Serengeti. Imagine David Attenborough narrating a scene where a young gazelle has strayed too close to the lions. 20 pairs of sweaty eyes track her as she tip toes nervously across the floor. But they only look at her for a second before their return their attention to the mirror and the glistening contours reflected in it.

The trainers are generally nice but I've seen them hitting on girls shamelessly. I've heard this from girls too. I think the best course of action if you're an unfit writer (who has experienced one moon-landing too many) is to walk in like a flaming diva and tell the trainer you know absolutely nothing about doing weights and have the upper body strength of a wilting daisy. Then they kind of take you under their wing. Even then, as you strain under the weight of the dumbbells, the juiced up guys continue to look over in your direction before glancing at the (much higher) number on their weights.

The neanderthals come in all shapes and sizes: some are short, some are tall, some have wide shoulders and some are just ugly as sin. You can tell that some of them were pot bellied accountants a few years ago. The only remnant of their love handled past is, in fact, their face. There is one guy who, if you saw from the neck up, would imagine is a retired milk man or something. He is balding, wears glasses and generally looks like an IT worker who got lost in the H1B visa queue. Yet he has the huge chest and biceps that pins back every torso in the weight room.

What is it about gyms that makes guys need to compete against each other? It is the last bastion of male narcissism - the macho men's version of "selfies". The atmosphere is generally one of "I am stronger than you, let me prove it by picking this heavy thing up and putting it down again several times".

Please, Gold's Gym, fix the damn rowing machine.

Shivaji Park Messi

Every morning I take a taxi to work. It's usually an uneventful ride. There's not much traffic going North and the journey is quiet and cool. I make it a point to explain the location to the driver thoroughly when I get in so I don't need to keep telling him. I want to zone out. The taxi ride is a great time in my day: when no one can talk to me and I can just empty my mind.

But one thing does interrupt my day dream. As I take the turn after Tamnak Thai, at Shivaji Park towards Dadar, I get a ten second glimpse of the people in the park. There are old men walking purposefully, taking life a step at a time, a day at a time. The drunks haven't yet woken and still lay sprawled across stone benches. There is usually a group of would-be cadets being put through their paces by a drill sergeant. Whether they are actual recruits or just a bunch of lads getting whipped into shape by an enthusiastic ex-armed forced uncle (we all have one), I'll never know. But the highlight of it all is the football game that the tiny little local school kids have going.

Because of the speed at which I pass the sliver of park, I get to see just a few moments of their game. The pitch is totally muddy because of the monsoon rains and the standard, if it could be any worse, is lowered further. There are 12 kids who look around 9 or 10 years old. Their are dark skinned and skinny and their uniforms are faded white-brown. They aren't wearing shoes, only modest sandals. The ball looks so big next to their little feet; it must hurt when they kick it. What I usually see is all 12 kids running towards the ball, screaming in excitement, with great big smiles on their faces. When any of them get near the ball, they boot it as hard as they can towards where they think the goal is. I passed a number of such vignettes and often wondered if they were ever able to score a goal. But one day, something new happened.

As I took the turn, the group of kids were spread out across the pitch and they were all looking towards the goal nearest to me. Bearing down was a thin little girl in a tattered skirt and pig tailed with white flowers in them. The ball must have broken her way because she was one on one with the goal keeper. She pumped her arms and managed to catch up to the bouncing ball about 5 yards away from the now terrified keeper. The ball was bouncing knee height, away from her and towards the goal. She cocked back her right leg and pulled the trigger. I don't know if it was because I was passing perpendicular to her run and the ball's trajectory, but it all seemed to happen in slow motion.

She walloped the ball (off her shin) and it flew in. She had done it! She threw her arms in the air and screamed and jumped with joy. It was the greatest 5 seconds of my life. I passed the park at exactly the right 10 seconds that morning. Had I taken longer to wear my socks, I'd have missed it. But I saw that girl's delight that day and it has filled me with joy ever since. I will never forget the happiness and satisfaction in her beautiful voice. She had done it! I don't presume to know what the troubles in her life are, but for those 5 seconds they didn't matter. She was the best. She had conquered everything. She must have kicked the ball and chased after it so many times without success. But for this moment, it was all worth it. She had won.

And then, I was gone - whisked away in an indifferent yellow and black cab. The taxi driver and the city had taken no notice and gotten on with their lives. But I saw her joy and a little piece of it will live in my mind forever and that's all that counts.

Thank You, Palladium Mall Mumbai

To the good folks at Palladium Mall,

This weekend I took my elderly grandparents to Gajalee at Phoenix Mills. My grandfather is partially disabled on his left side and moving around is not easy for him. It goes without saying that most private buildings in India are not well equipped to provide comfortable access to the disabled, forget public spaces. And I think most residents of Indian cities have come to expect nothing at all from staff, as far as service goes. When we do get something more than the minimum, we are pleasantly surprised.

This Sunday, I was more than pleasantly surprised. From start to finish, the staff at Palladium went out of their way to aid me and my grandparents. From the lift-man to the person coordinating pick up and drops near the parking lot, all the staff spoke perfect English, held doors for us and generally did their best to make the afternoon as painless as possible. 

Even though I have to hold my grandfather's hand at all times when he's outside the house, I didn't feel as helpless as I sometimes do. It was the level of service that I would have expected from a Taj or an office building where I'm expected for a meeting. 

The person at the car drop-off point, on hearing that we were standing at the wrong spot, offered to move the temporary barriers and allow the car to come directly to where my grandparents were seated. Every lift-operator stood and held the door open for us from 20 yards away and waited as we slowly approached. Perhaps it was the least they could do - but I wasn't used to it. 

Whatever training you had put your staff through, definitely worked on Sunday August 4th 2013 and I commend you. I've noticed a lot of disguised unemployment in India: superfluous house keeping and security personnel are par for the course. But for the first time, I found the staff at a shopping mall actually adding value. 

So thank you, Palladium. Keep up the good work.

10 Reasons I don't have a Girl-Friend (and probably never will)

Today I read an intriguing blog about relationships called 40 Days of Dating. It is a social experiment where two single friends decided to date each other for 40 days and documented their feelings meticulously. Some people find it a bit bland but I found it thoroughly compelling and was struck by one thing in particular: how normal the concept of ‘dating’ is for seemingly everyone except me.

The two young people in the experiment were so ‘New York’, like something out of F.R.I.E.N.D.S: clean cut, white, artsy, good looking young people who went to Knicks games and navigated a constant barrage of sexual partners. I didn’t know lives like that existed and that actual human beings lived them. I cannot imagine, as a new member of the full time workforce, meeting so many people and having so many options about who to hook up with and who to say no to. Where are all these people that just magically meet hundreds of potential partners every day?

People always ask me how my love life is going and I usually shrug – I’ve never had one. For some reason they are surprised when I say that I’ve never had a girlfriend but when you think about utterly twisted I am, I guess it will make sense. It has been over a year since I moved back to India and, while I knew that meeting girls here would be harder than at university, I had no idea it would be impossible. I have not gotten remotely close to a girl for, what, 15 months? And that doesn’t look like changing any time soon. I’ve given up and don’t really care about anything anymore so I’ve decided to open the floor to the entire internet. I have become predisposed to relationship self-sabotage. Maybe I can explain why.

1. I have no idea where to meet girls

Where do you meet people after university? Book clubs? Salsa lessons? Coffee shops? At college, you are thrown together with a bunch of likeminded, young people from fairly similar socio-economic backgrounds. But as a graduate employee you are in a world where you have to interact with everyone. There are suddenly a lot fewer people nearer your age, forget your interests. At university, there are classes, there are parties and there are your halls: you’re never far away from someone you could picture yourself seeing. But now you spend all day in an office. You come home and have no energy to do anything but eat and sleep. Weekends are for family and domestic errands. The number of days when you can meet other young people has been cut from 7 to 2. Which brings me to my next point.

2.     Bars are a terrible place to try and meet girls. Clubs are worse.

The only time I even come in contact with girls my age is once a week when I summon the energy to go to a loud bar with friends. And I can’t hear what any of them are saying. (How old and boring do I sound?) The pretty ones are there with their boyfriends. There are at least two guys for every girl. I have never seen someone at a bar in India pull a stranger. I think the best chance you have is to go out with a group of friends and hope you can impress someone while you’re pre-gaming at home. I’ve seen this succeed once. People here don’t make out for no reason. What happened to making out for no reason? Making out is great. You don’t have to get married ffs. Clubs are so loud and expensive and full of old dudes and the only good looking girls already have a sizable harem of dudes behind them. I’ve never been good at bars/clubs.

3.     I don’t know enough people to go to house parties

The few girls unfortunate enough to have endured flings with me (who weren’t already friends with me) I’ve met at house parties. I think I have a decent shot at house parties. They are quiet enough to chat and I have/had decent game when it came to conversations. House parties are also great because the ratio of ‘guys : girls’ is closer to 1:1. But I don’t know enough people in this city to get invited to those kinds of soirees. Lots of young people live with their parents – like me. I definitely think I’m guilty, especially in the past, of going off the rails at house parties.

4.     Alcohol ruined my chances many times

After I got mugged while drunk earlier this year, I stopped drinking for three months. I have a drink now and then but I’ve cut down sizably and it’s really improved my life in many ways. However one of my major weaknesses is memory loss and forgetting what girls have said to me when I’ve been drunk. I’ve seen it play out so many times. It’s one thing to feign interest on a terrace, but if you can’t remember what a girl said the next day when she messages you on Facebook, you look like a fool. I am almost certain this is one of my most unappealing traits. Alcohol has ruined many potentially great nights for me (Prague on New Year’s Eve 2011 to name just one) but I feel a lot better now that I’ve cut down. I’ve been able to go to the gym every day, play football every weekend and generally lose a bunch of weight.

5.     I think I look terrible

When I look at myself in the mirror, all I see are flaws. This is probably down to being out of the game for so long. My own insecurity about my appearance is one of the many ways in which I’ve begun to believe my own bullshit – a recurring theme in this essay. My nose looks distinctly unfinished (especially from the side), I am hairy as fuck and have the hips of a middle-aged Tamil housewife. Why do I care about this shit? I imagine most guys don’t? I think my only redeeming physical feature is that I’m tall by Indian standards – though that clearly doesn’t count for much. What are Indian standards anyway?

6.     I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing in this country

I have never hooked up with an Indian girl. Not even gotten close. I peg my expectations for girls to what I enjoyed on exchange year in Germany. I think I was somewhat of a novelty item there. Back in India I’m just another hairy dude (cannot emphasise the hair enough. I have hair on my shoulders for fuck’s sake). I look at the kinds of girls that I got with there and the kind of girls that have rejected me here and it doesn’t add up. Even in England, when I went out to the pub I felt like I had a chance. It was nice. It made the whole experience of going out seem like it was worth something. I mean, why else do we go out? For the music? Pssht. We go out to meet cool people. Evidence of quite a few nights out in India has taught me that I have absolutely no effect on girls I consider in my league.

7.     I am obsessed with high-school bullshit like ‘leagues’

Anyone who knows me, knows that while I’m supposedly some heavy business journalist guy on the outside, I’m essentially a 9^th grade girl when it comes to this kind of stuff. I size up how someone looks and wonder if we are worthy of one another. I find myself thinking nonsense like “I was hooking up with 7s and 8s at university. Now I’m getting turned away by 6s”. I evaluate how good looking my friends are and who they are with. I look at a pretty girl and all I can think is how much I’d have to change to ‘get’ her.

8.     Some part of me thinks about a girlfriend as an achievement one has to ‘get’

I find myself subconsciously still wanting kudos from others about the girl I’m seeing. Again, it’s probably some deep rooted craving for external approval. I think more about what my friends will say or how I will be perceived when I’m seeing someone, than how much I’ll enjoy her company. I mean, all that matters is how you and your partner make each other feel but I’ve forgotten how nice that is. I’ve forgotten how secure you feel when you aren’t constantly wondering what “the guys” will say about the girl you’re seeing. Subsequently, I ignore girls who would be great for me by focusing on someone who isn’t really interested in me just because of the whole absurdity of the “thrill of the chase”. Instead of actually experiencing companionship with someone who actually likes me, I’m looking the perfect girl.

9.     The ‘perfect girl’ doesn’t exist and doesn’t want me anyway

I tend to chase after the wrong girl. This has been the defining feature of my disastrous descent into relationship self-sabotage. I have in my mind, an idea of the kind of person I should be with, and then I pursue her even if she’s off limits. A worrying trend among girls I’ve had flings with is: they are at least 2 years older than me and are not exactly single. While it was all fun and games at university, it seems as if 25 year old girls are now looking to date guys for a couple of years with the intention of settling down. This means I’m competing with guys who are five years older and have money and aren’t kids like me. This inevitably leads to me being hung up about a girl I have no business going after and ignoring others I should be letting in.

10.  I make up reasons why I don’t want to see a girl who I know likes me

You should hear them. I dare not utter them. But they exist and they are getting more and more bizarre. Someone is not well travelled enough. Someone is too short. Someone cheated on their boyfriend and would probably do the same to me. Someone isn’t good looking enough (urgh). Someone’s voice is too jarring. Someone is too old. Someone is too young.

So there you have it. Do any of those sound familiar to you? I found myself without anyone to talk to about this stuff so I’ve poured it out for everyone to pick the bones out of. I feel marginally better knowing that it's all documented here in one place. Maybe some of those things are standard for guys. Maybe some are standard for someone living in a city that’s not really their home. But I think that this is me getting used to feeling sorry for myself and convincing myself that nothing will change as long as I stay in India. I have this pie in the sky dream that if I returned to Europe all would be well and I would pick up where I left off. I’m blaming this country for my own insecurities.

I watched a movie called English Vinglish recently and, for the first time with a Bollywood movie, a line really stuck with me. It went something along the lines of “if you hate yourself, then you will hate your life and the world around you”. This made me sit up and think. I hate almost everything about myself at the moment: the way I look, being alone, not doing that well at work and being talented in things that no one really cares about or is going to pay me bags of money for.

It started with my saying no to a delightful, beautiful girl who took a big risk by telling me she liked me way back in 9^th grade. And I can’t help but think the wounds I caused myself through that mistake are still festering away today. I don’t have a plan about how I’m going to be happy. I am open to any advice you may have. I want to be the confident, smiling person I was in 2011. I had no trouble going up in front of 50 strangers and making them laugh at a comedy club. Now I’m just sitting here waiting for something to change. I’m waiting for the perfect girl to reach out again, like she did in 9^th grade, so that I have the chance to say yes. 

Shravan Tries to Read a Book

Until this morning, I’d read  a total of 18 books in my life. That is, actual 18 full length novels over 200 pages – and seven of those were Harry Potter. I simply did not “read” like other kids did. Unless it was The Life of Pi or The Hobbit, books could not hold my attention. Most knowledge I have of the world and the diction that fills it comes from TV and more recently, the internet. People always find it strange that I’m a writer who doesn’t “read” though I would not say I don’t read at all. I read 10 articles online every day. I can read when I feel compelled to – but the inherent desire to “curl up with a book” is simply not there. I’d say I’m intellectually curious: I watch a lot of movies, listen to a lot of music and love talking to people about them. But when I go to someone’s house and see an entire shelf of novels that I really should have read, I’m ashamed that I can’t sound smart and portray myself as someone who’s clued in on classic literature too.

“Have you read Catcher in the Rye, Shravan?”

“Haha yeah, those damn catchers! Gotta watch out for that rice!”

“Err…”

Plus I’ve discovered where girls hide during the day: book clubs. Apparently book clubs are a thing and there are a disproportionately high amount of girls at them. So there’s some motivation to “read” if ever there was any.

We read Love in the Time of Cholera as part of our high school English curriculum together as a class, and I only now realize how much I enjoyed it. Exchanging views on characters and plot lines every week with others was more fun than actually consuming the text. It never struck me then that spending time reading alone could be fun. I really struggle being alone and doing activities alone and so whenever I read something – online or in print – I feel I need to share it or discuss it and this was never something I could do with novels. So this morning I tried to become like you guys. This morning I took my first step into entering the world of unforced, unwarranted, self-driven reading. This morning I tried to teach myself how to “read a book”.

I’ve always found wonderful excuses for not reading but the most frequent one was my profound inability to find a comfortable position to read a book. How do you read books? I have so many questions. Like, do you sit down in a chair and rest your elbows at a desk? If so, doesn’t your neck hurt from leaning forward? Do you lie down? In which case, don’t your arms get tired from holding it up above your head? Do you hold your book in one hand with (your fingers separating the pages) or with two?

I said, “If I’m really going through with this, the conditions need to be perfect.” So I built a fort from pillows (a good way to start any initiative) that allowed me a 30 degree recline and elbow support. Also present was an excellent ambient dubstep playlist and Mountain Dew, for the inevitable moments when I stray from the novel and question the need of all this. I also kept the TV remote on the other side of the room, should temptation suddenly surge.  Having slain all my inertia, I began to read ‘Dave Barry Does Japan’. Not quite Dickens, I know, but a start nonetheless.

My parents are both serial readers and the process of moving house showed me just about many bloody books they have. Mountains and mountains and words that they’ve actually sat (or lay down or laid back or however you’re meant do it) and read. Dave Barry came highly recommended – other titles carefully nudged towards me by my hopefully dad were the various rose-tinted works on Bombay, intercultural communication and, wait for it, Mein Kampf.

The first hurdle I faced came as no surprised: after breezing through a few interesting paragraphs I began to wade through one which was more inane. It may have been a great, poignant piece of prose but I simply lost interest and my eyes flitted to the rain outside the window. On so many occasions in the past, at this very juncture, I’d have laid down the book and found something else to do. I can sit through boring periods in sports matches because I know what I’ll likely be treated to so I stick around. But with books, that later gratification was alien to me. Today I ploughed on, flicking through paragraphs on things I didn’t care about.

For example, Dave Barry loves to use hyperbolic rants and having read so many bloggers use similar techniques I found myself unimpressed. But I was rewarded with my first actual ‘laugh out loud’ about 50 pages into the book, when he talked about how the Japanese bow and how his family were ‘gang-bowed’ by hotel staff. I actually laughed! At a book! I don’t even laugh at sitcoms. This was exciting new ground, like discovering your parents used to smoke.

One of the things that always daunted me about reading books was the sheer number of pages. Spending an hour engrossed in a story and then finding you were only a tenth of the way through was always an instant turn off. Growing up weaned on the idiot box means my attention span is limited. I’ve checked Facebook twice during the course of writing this. (Let me have another check now... Ahh, as usual, absolutely nothing has changed. But I’m sure I’ll check it once again before finishing this piece anyway.) I mean, movies over 2 hours are hard enough! But I found myself a quarter of my way through the silly book in no time at all. “I might even finish this whole thing” I thought to myself, encouraged.

I didn’t read every word of the book. Do you? Are you meant to? Or can you sort of skim through tedious bits you kind of sense you’re not going to enjoy anyway? Are there rules to reading books? How long should it take you to read a 700 book?

As for Darry Barry Does Japan, well, I finished. It took me the entire morning to read a 200 odd page book. Isn’t that sad? Nevertheless, I feel proud. I spent a morning that I could have spent watching sports (in HD!) and it sparked an interesting internal discussion. Like all talented writers, he gets you to think about deeper issues through light anecdotes. His stories about quirkiness of Japanese social structures are a veneer hiding much larger debates that you tackle by yourself, only later on.

I enjoyed the book because it summed up very well the defining qualities of Japanese society: the rigidity of hierarchy, desire to conform, deep longing for creative cultural freedom, respect for the collective over the individual, the attention to detail, the exclusivity of the ‘club’ that’s not really open to foreigners and so on. It also made me realize how much Pokemon (stop laughing) has quietly taught me about Japan. The endless amounts of bizarre energy drinks available in PokeMarts seemed normal only in the game, until I read Barry’s bit on going into a Japanese supermarket. Even the way he described the Nintendo headquarters in Kyoto reminded me of the stark, dull buildings you have to navigate in the Pokemon Gameboy game. There were many “aha” moments that I experienced hours after putting the book triumphantly down. The Japanese fascination with monsters – how else do you explain Charizard? I’ll spare you the Pokemon nerdisms.

So today I find myself writing as much a book review as a review on books. I’m sure you felt this way when you started reading at the normal age of… eight? I guess? This must sound like your grandparents describing how they felt when they first made a call on a telephone.

I don’t know if this will spark a genuine interest in me. There’s still a tremendous amount of inertia I feel when choosing a title. It has to be on a topic that I’m already interested in. This isn’t true about movies or music. I can watch a movie on anything as long as it’s “good”. But I’m not sure I’m ready to pick up a book on Steve Jobs because I feel absolutely no affinity towards him or Apple, no matter how riveting the story may be. In the same way, the charm of India is totally lost on me at this point and I couldn’t read “Mumbai Fables” if you paid me. I don’t know whether I will ever find a book that I absolutely cannot wait to get to home and read. I don’t know whether I’ll ever yearn to know more about characters like I do in my favourite TV shows and movies. All I can say is that this morning has piqued my curiosity and I’m open to reading more books.

Well, as long as I have my pillow fort and there’s no HD sport on, of course.

In Praise of Single Mums

I imagine our world-views are constantly changing, constantly molded by our experiences. I do however think that our worldviews are most receptive, most malleable and most fertile when we’re at university. Thrust into self-dependence, we naturally gravitate towards mother and father figures where we find them. People ask me why I sound so foreign; indeed, I've come to accept that I feel more European than I do Indian. My approach to issues and reactions to situations have been shaped by the Europeans I lived with and spent time with at university in England and Germany. I don’t think anyone had as profound an influence as Tatjana Cukvas. She is an amazing person and one of my heroes. Without getting teary eyed and sentimental about the challenges that single mothers face, I would go so far as to say that I cannot ever imagine having as much on my plate as she does. And in spite of being mother, friend and breadwinner to her two teenage children, she took me – a spectacularly adolescent, hairy, Indian kid – into her home and showered me with warmth and love that I will never be able to repay.

A colleague of my dad’s from yesteryear, she was my guardian and proxy mom when I was in England. The warmth that radiates from her frantic home greets me as soon as I got off the tube at Gunnersbury station in Chiswick. The posh London borough, to my mind, made up half of what her identity is. The other half was romantically, proudly and categorically Serbian. Seeing her straddle between these two very different identities was an educational and formative experience for me as an 18-21 year old. She held that house together and I don’t know how she does it everyday: she wakes up earliest, sleeps last and runs errands for everyone in between. What’s most heartening is when I see her making time for herself and enjoying it. It’s so much harder earned than any free ‘me’ time I’ve ever cordoned off for myself.

One of the things I’m most thankful for are the truly bizarre, international connections I’ve enjoyed growing up. Serbia and India? Who’d have thought it? I couldn’t pick two more different countries. While Tatjana’s everyday routine is oh so West London, the central pillar that she operates from is unmistakably European. She loves her coffee. She recycles. She has a compost bin in her garden. She eats cheese and drinks a glass of wine while watching stand-up comedians in the evening. She has raised two beautiful children in a liberal, hands-off manner. She spares no expense buying great quality cuts of ham from Waitrose. She watches her kids play their sports every weekend with an enthusiasm I wish every parent had. She doesn't spoon-feed you: she’ll make you do things for yourself but you always know she’s there for you if you need support.

Hey, you’re up early! Want some pancakes? How about some coffee?

Oh, you decided to sleep in? You want a sandwich? All the ingredients are in the fridge, knock yourself out.

I remember when I spent the summer of 2010 at her home. I was doing an internship in London. After spending 3 weeks in the Bombay monsoon, I had caught malaria. When I landed in Chiswick, trembling with cold sweat, Tatjana and the kids were on holiday and her relatives were at the house. This large, sick brown guy landed up, diseased, with suitcases. I was an alien – a potentially contagious one. Cut a wide berth. I remember the throwing up and the cold shivers. Malaria isn’t fun. I wasn’t even diagnosed yet, I thought I was just unnaturally sick and unlucky. She returned and told me to go to the hospital that very morning. She cut right past my inertia; I thought my body was recover on its own like it always does. I remember getting the call from the doctor and her relatives’ weary expressions when I told them. I was scared and she was with me every step of the way.

She came to the hospital and spoke to the doctor with me. She sat on the hospital bed and took my mind off things with stories about her bouts with malaria. She gave me tonic water which sped the recovery process along. After flying from Mumbai to London in freezing cold, cramped economy class and enduring the inhuman heat of Dubai in July during the stop-over, I recovered in three days. I remember taking the tube 12 of the 15 stops to work and having to turn back because the shivers and urge to vomit were overpowering. The pills were wonderful but her care was the catalyst.

Later that summer she cracked the whip on my inertia to go on exchange year. As I normally tend to do, I shuffled towards the path of least resistance and thought it would easier to go straight into the final year of university. Nothing doing. “Get changed and go to the embassy right now!” she said. And off I went. I got my German visa and spent the best year of my life on exchange. I was so close to not going. I was all prepped to do taking the usual Shravan shortcut and she made me realize how utterly lazy I sounded. I have many, many things to be thankful to Tatjana for but making sure I got on the bus to the German embassy tops the list. I shudder to think what I’d have missed out on had she let me meander on my own laissez-faire course. Perhaps this was the most life-changing thing she did to me: she would always discipline my instinctive tendency towards the path of least resistance.

I think saying she works ‘full-time’ is doing her a disservice. She sends her kids to expensive private schools. She packs a beautiful London home full of every gadget Steve Jobs has ever produced. She ensures her fridge is gourmet and her cat was treated like the royal he was. And amid all this running around London and Europe she found time to care for me and console me when relationships within my own family had reached a low point. Where does she find the time? Where does she summon the energy? Does she keep it stored up in jars around the house like her homemade cookies or potpourri? I get tired thinking about her day.

I love seeing her sitting on her sofa, watching Michael McIntyre and spreading Camembert on crackers with a glass of wine. I will always love Tatjana, Ana and Stefan. I will always cheer for Serbia and Novak Djokovic like I did so many times with them. I don’t know who her pillars are but she is one of mine. Thinking about mothers like her make me happy.

How does she do it? Thank you forever, Tatjana.