Accents and Gender

This weekend I met a very drunk white man at a bus-stop, mostly we spoke on the non arrival of Brisbane buses in its far flung suburbs. Then the drunk man, in an effort to be friendly and charming, told me I did not speak Spike Milligan "Indian". This was followed by "Did I know Spike Milligan". I said I was fully aware of Mr. Milligan and his brand of humour and we left it at that, the heat and liquor having taken full effect. However, this was not the first time I had been questioned on speaking "white" as opposed to speaking "Indian". Initially, the queries left me bemused for my accent is hardly unusual. People in India do speak like me and if I had to describe my English at all, it can be very precisely defined as a "South Indian, civil servant's offspring" variety. For awhile I tried the line "Well, the British were in India before they got to the Antipodes" which unfailingly elicited the weakest of laughs. Now I smile politely and move on.

The other persistent line of questioning is on the oppression of Indian women and the freedom we must experience in this country. For some reason the questioner is invariably an Australian woman, who has never left the country, seemingly blissfully unaware of any irony in posing such a question to an Indian woman living on her own in an alien city. I assure them that India, at least in some parts, is a land of free women but I suspect I am never believed.

Housebound/Earthbound

Preparations are afoot to buy a house. Since my mental state is usually set to lackadaisical and procrastinating (yes, my GRE wordlist is on full display), I have a niggling doubt that I will never get to the stage of ownership. It seems vastly simpler to pay the rent as opposed to entering the world of bank loans, interest rates and mortgages whose language seems more indecipherable than GRE word lists. Worse, everyone assumes you know about these things when all along you feel a mild sense of panic that leaves you unable to calculate the effect of the 8.75% versus the 8.5% interest rate at short notice. Further, I find myself in danger of being infected with the property snobberies of some Australians for I find myself making lists of suburbs I do not want to live in and agonising over not choosing a house (as opposed to an apartment). This is a change from the days when I was happy to live anywhere as long as it was reasonably spacious and got me to work fast. For e.g. I don't quite remember fretting about the lack of a cafe or bookshop at Kandivili where I lived for 2 years and which didn't, as far as I can tell, impair my intellectual life by virtue of the lack of these things. It was in fact a charming existence amongst empty flats and unlit streets and the place where I wrote all my poems before the muse deserted me. There is also a sense of permanence about house ownership which completely lacks the romance of temporary accommodations. One feels compelled to do up the house as opposed to making do and before long one has settled into the housewifely preoccupations of choosing furniture and crockery. But my possessions have increased and for the past 5 years they have uncomplainingly remained in boxes that never see the light of day. I tell myself that they, if not I, need a resting place.

Brisbane Vu Par 2

Brisbane is small and I have quite forgotten what it is to live in a small place. The University in particular is an even smaller closed world and though its inhabitants fly off to different corners of the world and updates arrive from Europe, China and mid-western US universities alike, Brisbane is the loci. Here is where cliques are formed and their triumphs made public, their failures derided (I went to one meeting where the animosity was palpable and the participants, much like schoolboys, took to giggling through rival talks). The world of technology commercialisation is even smaller and the same people appear to restlessly pass through the three odd universities here. I also realise that it is really by the time one hits the 40s that the herd has separated. By then its clear who has had the iron will and ambition to be top dog and who is either content or resigned about their position on the food chain (or really the greasy pole). Most of the people I meet here who have elbowed their way up are men and they reinforce my opinion that there is nothing as unattractive as the ambitious man.

Brisbane Vu Par 1

After several years of drought, its been raining in Brisbane. As spectacle, it is gentler than Mumbai rain. The playing fields opposite by block of flats are sodden but the rain is not intense enough to prevent a game of friendly football. On river trips, an activity I am addicted to, I spot the regular pattern of falling raindrops from riverbank trees and river surface alike. Ferry and bus windows mist over and viewed through these windows, the little houses that hug the ridges of the city are all a bit like the hill station song sequence of "Tu Kahan yeh bata" except that you are more likely to pass louche young men in skull design hoodies on the way to the local pub. The days are grey and everyone at the Institute huddles in the cafe below, slightly wet and chilled, drinking large mugs of hot chocolate. Every such period is followed by a day when no rain falls but the wind whips around the corner and everywhere there are people hurrying, clutching on to jackets and possessions, eager to escape into heated, still rooms. Then we have a few days of sun and its all like the Frank Marshall Davis poem http://www.orangeturtle.com/fourglimpses.html, the magic of the few dark days dissipating in the muggy heat. Then again, maybe all this is not true and its just a few days of dull rain and normal weather patterns and I am merely in love with and therefore irrational about all things dark and moody like rainy days and nights.