Quirks of living in a wooden house!

Houses are made of wood in the US, my husband informed me. He was hunting for a new home where we would shift after marriage. Recollecting my wonderful experiences of staying in wooden houses in Shimla, I was overly excited and enthusiastically started looking forward to reliving in one! During school days, I had often imagined myself in a wooden house having a Ruskin Bond book in one hand and a coffee mug in another, sitting besides a fireplace and a window, on a foggy winter day in evergreen surroundings! Such was an idea of heaven in my mind! But reality shows us more than what is imagined and desired!

We finally decided upon a house and he moved there a few days prior to marriage to make it comfortable for me when I arrive. It was one of his first nights alone in this home when he was confronted by an unpleasant noise of a shaking door! Next morning he called me on Skype to tell me about the scary night. Beginning to suspect a haunting, just like in movies, we talked in detail about it. We concluded that instead of a spirit on the loose, it was one of the doors that was probably loose, shaking whenever a heavy physical activity, and not a paranormal activity, occurred in that wooden building. Despite knowing about it in advance, I got a real fright when it actually happened in my presence!

"Wake up! Did you hear that?" I nudged my husband until he moved and groaned "What!! what happened?". "Shhh! listen, do you hear something?" I said. Motionlessly, quietly and intently, we listened. A closed door in our house vibrated. It was brief but frequent. Our Indian experience was hinting us of an earthquake. But our bed was still. "Yes I hear a door shaking!" he confirmed. We continued to hear even more intently to make some sense of it all. None of us was getting out of bed to check on which door was suddenly shivering in the cold of the night and why, for both scare and sleep were overwhelming enough to confine us to our places! "Oh probably someone is walking on the floor above, lets go back to sleep now" he said while yawning after having applied some reasoning in a drowsy state. "Who is walking at this time!!!" I revolted, not at all satisfied with his reasoning! "You live in a wooden house now!" he said and dozed off! After some confusion, I calmed myself by finally recalling that it had happened before without any harm and dozed off myself.

This wasn't the only incidence when our house had suddenly gone alive! There was a night when sounds were so peculiar that I literally forced my husband to check out the whole house, with me cowering behind him, fearing a break in!!! The sounds we hear are all possible noises wooden surfaces could make- footsteps, thuds, knocking, scratching! In fact, I know a lot about my neighbors from these sounds that I hear rather than having met them personally!

A lady on a floor above wears high heels, for her heels can be heard very distinctly trotting in a wooden corridor between 11 am to 1 pm. Her confident trotting reminds me of the girls from the novel 'The Devil wears Prada'. I have never met her though! A man with a naturally heavy bass voice lives just below and can be heard from anywhere in my house when he speaks over phone in his patio! He works from home. He is probably an insomniac or a workaholic, for muffles of his bass laden voice, which totally negate the theory of wood being a noise insulator, can be heard till very late in night! I have never met him either! A couple with a baby live next door with whom we share a wall. The wife probably exercises before lunch for a dampened energetic music plays from behind this wall, repeating everyday! I have never met them too! The other side of my house is shared by a middle aged Indian family, whom I saw while they shifted in, but confirmation happened only when I heard them seeing off their guests in Hindi. Despite this, I have never met them! A deep contrast to what I experienced in India!

Indians know about their neighbors right from day one! It begins by offering for help while shifting in, and sometimes hot chai if lucky! Even the great Ambuja cement in their walls lacks the courage to limit the might of an even greater Indian curiosity! It cannot be quenched by just eavesdropping, for their ears are too accustomed to hearing ginger being squashed in a mortar for chai, a mixer thundering, a cooker whistling or a Kaamwaali (a female maid) ringing a bell, that they can precisely tell at which time it will happen! Moreover, concrete does not vibrate like wood to tell them where their neighbor is standing right now. Why trouble eavesdropping then when they can know everything about their neighbors, their parents, uncles, great grand uncles or distantly related nephews directly from them!! And for something which they can not know directly despite various attempts, the Kaamwaali comes in handy! But there is always someone next door to talk to if feeling alone in India. No doubt why neighboring granny's quickly become best friends to talk about old-age pains or grandchildren or bitch about the oh so unfair doings of their daughter-in-laws! One just needs to peep out of the window or ring a bell for the neighborhood is always alive!

If it is India and a concrete house is vibrating, its occupants know for sure that an earthquake has hit the Indian subcontinent! Everyone rushes out immediately and wait until the tremors subside. But how can one tell when a wooden house is vibrating, it is actually because of an earthquake and not due to a large muscular maintenance man running after his dog in the building! My husband for once did not have an answer to my question, for he lacked an experience in this regard. Other questions followed, like what happens if important documents like passports, college degrees, or credit cards of a foreign national get destroyed in a natural calamity in a country not his motherland! Probably a copy of them can be requested, but he wasn't sure. I panicked! Since then I keep a satchel handy containing important documents in case I have to rush out immediately! I did not know whether there was anyone else freaking out similarly until I met a Punjabi friend of mine this week! She always keeps her car keys handy in case she has to run out in emergency!

Concrete houses have another advantage over their wooden counterparts - they do not catch fire as easily as the latter. Not even a day goes by here that a fire brigade's siren is not heard wailing loudly all its way to somewhere. Sometimes even thrice a day for the fire alarms are so sensitive that they go off even if the source of the smoke is not an actual fire! Thankfully my alarm has never gone off false-fully. My fears were almost realized when a little brown 'laddu' (a famous Indian sweet) burst in my microwave. It had gone black in its core with anger of being heated for longer than necessary. Such was the wrath of that black-brown laddu that it started fuming heavily with fury! So dense was the smoke that I was literally dancing below the fire alarm with a dusting cloth in my hand to lessen it! When it was not helping, I closed the microwave's door with the miserable laddu inside it and opened all possible windows and doors in my house! Thankfully the alarm did not go off!

Despite these comical occurrences, my rosy image of a wooden house still remains to be as cozy as it was before, as they are warm unlike the concrete ones which can get icy cold! I now read a Ruskin Bond book besides a lit fireplace, on cold days sipping hot ginger chai, sometimes looking out of the large glass doors of the patio into the cold and cloudy weather hovering over the evergreen pine and fir trees, happily reliving my childhood imaginations and the charm of Shimla!

What I miss about India being in America - Auto-rickshaws!

"Do you know how to drive a car?" he asked me. He being my husband. After recalling a not so pleasant experience of thudding my father's precious old Maruti 800 into an auto-rickshaw from behind on a busy Chandigarh roundabout, I answered, "Oh yes! provided the road is fairly empty!!". Chuckling, he suggested "Traffic in Bellevue is tamed, lacking the unpredictability of Indian drivers. So, you can get confident on this front quickly. It's kind of necessary here". With the angry eyes of that auto-rickshaw driver, who had turned back to scowl at me, still haunting me, I was nothing but reluctant. "Why necessary?" I lamented. But with time I got my answer.

Public transport here is not as fortunate as in India. Bellevue not being big and busy lacks local trains. Very less often do I see taxis here which they call yellow cabs driven by Sardarjis. One evening we were going out to some place and I was looking out of the window into the void. I realized that something else and important was also missing on these roads. After having identified it, I immediately turned to him.

"All this time that I have been here, I have never really seen a bus!! what do the buses of this land look like? I haven't noticed a bus stop either!!". Surprised to hear this, he informed me that buses do exist but are not frequent enough. And bus stops can be identified by a single pole standing alone somewhere in the middle of a footpath holding a boring information board. This board informs commuters about the numbers of buses that stop there and the times at which they like to stop there. Some lucky bus stops have a shed with benches below them.  On hearing this, I began to keep a keen lookout for bus stops and buses! I did not have to wait for long and soon spotted my first bus!

I was out for a walk one day and hello it was there! Standing right outside my society on a bus stop, and one of the lucky bus stops it was! The bus was dark green in color with yellow parking lights flashing all around it and LEDs flashing on top of it, listing its destinations.It was much like the new AC buses of Delhi except that it had a cycle stand fitted outside in front of it below the driver seat's level. A girl was loading her cycle onto it. I have seen buses of course, but this experience of seeing a bus was thrilling like never before!! After realizing that my mouth had been open in awe for a long time,  I called up my husband to tell him about it for the thrill was difficult to contain! It seemed that even he was unaware of an alive bus-stand just outside our home! So in the evening we surveyed it. We checked out the frequency, and it was evident that these cycle carrying buses did not like travelling much, with the least waiting time being half an hour!

American love for travelling by cars is widely known, due to their well developed roadways, which is the backbone of their economy. But this country does lack a few good thrifty pleasures of life that Indians experience daily. Rickshaws, Auto-rickshaws, tempos, tuk-tuks, 'jugaad' are some of them! The experience of a three-wheeler in India is such that no other foreign land can provide! One has to just step out in a street to spot them. It is a sight to see such tiny little rides zig-zagging their way through speeding traffic, carrying heavy-bottomed Auntijis (Aunts) to sabzi-mandis (farmer's market) or child-lings to schools. Wholeheartedly and colorfully decorated by their drivers, they carry cleverly creative one-liners like "dekho magar pyaar se" (look but with love) on their backs to ward off evil!!! Deceptive are their fragile appearances, for they boldly carry heavy load without falling apart on the bumpy roads! Overburdened, they still dare to take in more people, as if silently challenging other three-wheeler besides them. When it comes to accommodating a lot of people, none can accommodate like Indians do! Their passengers coming from all walks of life share a common ride for a brief interval. Their meters are like human appendices, non-functioning organs! Each ride is different and can develop into an experience interesting enough to be told and retold a number of times!

I had mine too. In Hyderabad once, I along with 5 other girls decided to share an auto-rickshaw to office due to their reduced frequency. Four sat in the back and two in the front with the driver. Such accommodation was common, provided no police was patrolling the area. But females sitting in front with the driver was utterly uncommon!! It was a first for us too. The comical rarity of this ride became all the more evident when we stopped at a red light on a traffic signal.There was an auto to the left of us and an auto to the right of us. Well, there were auto-rickshaws all around us! All similarly jam-packed! But ours stood out. The male office-goers noticed us and started giggling, for they had just now witnessed a funny yet bold sight, to start off their boring daily routines with a smile! We could not control our laughter too!!! The other auto drivers gave silent naughty smiles to our poor driver, who was embarrassed, and was looking down and smiling to himself. Such was a rare public display of female empowerment that day!

Talking of female empowerment, why I had not become an expert driver yet? I asked myself. Because my father, my father's driver and the ever available public transport of India carried me in their vehicles wherever I wanted them to carry me, I answered myself. Learning to drive was just a luxury to me, which I avoided fearing the craziest traffic on earth. But an incident here with my husband made me realize that it was no more a luxury but a necessity! He cut his finger while opening a can. Judging by the amount of blood flow, we decided to go to hospital. But as he had hurt his right hand, driving was impossible. He asked me 'Tell me, can you drive me to hospital confidently? remember its right-handed out here'. "No", I said wishing that I could say otherwise. He called his friend instead of an ambulance for it wasn't necessary enough for a finger cut.

That was the day when I wished there was a group of auto-rickshaws huddled in my street, hunting for passengers, readily agreeing to rush in emergency. That was the day when I put driving as my number one priority.  Since then, I am practicing driving with my husband teaching me happily. My father has cautioned his son-in-law "Careful! She does not like pressing brake, in fact she never presses it!!!".

What I miss about India being in America - Clothesline

Written on Tuesday, 3rd September 2013

While coming to America post marriage, I thought my day to day life would be much better than in India in all respects. Not even a year has passed by since I have adapted to the American way of living, and I am already finding myself yearning back for little old sweet things about India.One of them is the joy of seeing clothes drying up on a clothesline in the summers of India, waving happily in the air and the sun, only to become pleasant smelling and crispy warm and dry. Especially the feel of  loops of sun dried cotton towels rubbing gently against the skin and the cozy texture of the cotton pillow covers gained while drying up in the sun with a peculiar fresh smell wafting from them.

I was first introduced to my husband formally by my family, so as to decide whether we like each other enough to enter into a wedlock. Our first conversation of the arranged marriage process was related to our immediate lives. The ever raining weather of Seattle was one of the various things he told me about, so as to give an idea of how it would be like to live there if I say Yes. I love rains, but not the perpetual ones. Brief showers remind me of tears full of happiness and joy, but longer ones remind me of tears full of anger and mourning. Automatically, quickly & mentally I started listing out all possible problems that I may face during my would-be initial housewife days due to the wetting watery weather. And then followed a conversation of our lifetime, never to be forgotten!!!

I asked him, "If its always wet and grey out there, what happens to the clothes? how do you dry them up? don't they start to smell or get discolored with the sun at bay for long?" He told me that the dryer comes in handy. Of course yes why didn't I think of that! I cursed myself silently for being stupid enough to forget the humble dryer in front of a geek! "Oh yes that's always an option when it rains" I blabbered. "Dryer is the only option there" he said. "Pardon me???" I wondered whether I had just heard 'only'. Drying up of wet clothes was proving to be an embarrassingly confusing matter for me like never before, that too at a horribly wrong time!!! I had a feeling that he must have already started chuckling at me secretly out of amusement thinking that 'drying watery clothes' was the best thing I could come up with in the first date!!! I had a dreadful feeling that we will have no further meetings after this, thanks to my dim wits, even the dimmest of them, which I had left behind hanging on the clothesline in my balcony!!!

But a gentleman he was. Sensing my ignorance, he humbly replied "Yes dryer is the only option there because people are not allowed to keep a clothesline outside." I took a deep breath at that moment, thanking my stars, that he was not amused at me and I still had a chance! But wait!! No clothesline??? But how could it be?

I had heard that in America, people did what pleased them, like legalize marijuana. And still no clothesline! America is the most powerful nation and could nuke any country, along with their clotheslines, off the face of the earth if irked. And still no clothesline! They occupy a big geographical chunk of the North American continent with a lot of space to fit in a population far less than India and possibly far less smaller clotheslines. And still no clothesline! America boasts to be a successful amalgamation of varied ethnicity and a land of immigrants having an equally varied historical and cultural knowledge of erecting clotheslines. And still no clothesline! This was hard to digest.

Hoping that these little indigestible cultural aspects wont turn out to be gaseous enough to explode, we decided to get married. I came to America in the winter of February 2013 and since then I have been using the dryer. Although the clothes pulled out of it are hot and dry, but they are crumpled with some of them developing lint on the surface and not so sunny smelling. Some of the clothes have tags of instructions attached to them that advice humans not to put them into the dryer. Its a trouble drying up such clothes indoors. They need to be hanged out of sight in the bathrooms or the laundry rooms with a tub or a bucket below them to contain the dripping water. Towels need to be hanged similarly, though water doesn't drip from them.

Summer came and the sun was no more shying away by hiding behind the clouds. In used to come the sun through the patio in the east in the mornings and through the windows of the kitchen and the dining room in the west in the evenings.Along with the summer came my in-laws. Not even a week had passed by for them that my mother-in-law was already hit by the little nostalgia of convenient, cost cutting and energy saving clothesline. And there she was discussing clever plans of how we can dry up everything ranging from clothes to bathroom mats without letting our neighbors know. But I was not courageous enough to try them out. Hence, she used to take every opportunity to dry up some half dried clothes within the house when the sun shone in through the windows! I followed her league.

She returned to India but I still continue to do so sometimes. And still continue to miss the old, bold and brave clothesline bearing the weight of the water laden clothes in the scorching heat, only to lighten them up and bringing us the joy of sunshine the clothes had successfully captured!