Crossed the Bay

There is a particularly greedy feeling that overtakes when you go into an old-fashioned general store which has large cylindrical boxes of sweetmeats, local biscuits and toffees stacked in rows. You want to eat as many as possible, unfortunately you are old enough to know that is bad for you (and your figure). This last month has been the same greedy feeling over and over again, wherein I want to absorb the joy of being in a large house filled with my cousins, aunts, uncles, and a nephew who can’t sit still. There are barely a few hours of silence in the gap of 12 AM and 5 AM, if the dog chooses to ignore the passing trucks. At one point, there were ten people at home- and every single one of them is fully occupied. I joked with my mother about the operational efficiency of my grandma’s management. With the increase of one more person, the workload doesn’t halve – it remains constant because she gets more work done, increasing returns to scale of the household labor. You would think I’d lose weight from all the coconut shell breaking and jhaadu-pocha, all in 35 degrees Celsius – but my twice-a-day rice meal on banana leaves has prevented that.

One of these days I went on a food hunt to the cities of Udupi and Mangalore, and all by bus. We had to change three buses and I felt very secular on noticing that each of these buses had a different religious entity garlanded at front. “Only you would notice things like that” says my cousin, who can track down the best stores and eateries in any city she has stepped foot in. It’s a long jump from when we used to share raw mango slices in the doorway. If you are wondering whether my grad trip was to my grandparent’s home, you are right. Not too shabby, because I saw “South India’ as one of the options that my friends wrote down for their trip. Like the region of four populous states and diverse cultures in every 200km stretch can be covered in 10 days. Also, I didn’t get any resort experience when I was sent to collect banana leaves from the arecanut tree plantation, only to have stepped on a tiny anthill and then jumped around like I’m doing the shuffle (always happens to me for some reason).

As I get back to this post almost a month later, I’m 1000s of kms away from Dakshina Kannada (where every third mobile ringtone you hear would be Kaanthara soundtrack, as it should be at home base) and everything comfortable. I’m in my mostly IKEA-decorated tiny apartment in Singapore, sipping coffee that I haven’t quite perfected and watching my weekend fly away like the mynahs outside my window. It’s difficult to describe – for this is where I wanted to be and what I worked towards. Somehow, it feels unreal, like I am living inside a page of a book I wrote for myself long ago. Life goes by so fast from one MRT station to another, and it’s been almost three weeks since I got here. Some days, of course, I wonder what superficial financial stability I am attaining by coming so far where I can’t see my Appa-Amma’s daily morning banter. But on most days, I smile with gratitude and pride. I have a place of my own, a job of my own, a vibrant bustling city-state to explore and so much to experience.

Am I really ready to step into being a full-time adult? Maybe not. Do I have a choice? Definitely not. As I run behind bills and spills, I think of all the people who have moved countries and cities to live way from their families, to make a living, to make ends meet, to build a better future. I am just one more, and comparatively much better off, person on that list. There is an innate resilience in each one of us, and maybe it’s a choice, whether we want to tap into it or not. All big words, until you catch me praying in the washroom on how to make the whole toilet paper situation work.

Street art in Little India, right next to my first solo home.