Pradnya Ponders

A couple of years ago, on our way back to the bay area from Salt Lake City by Amtrak, our train- the California Zephyr- was delayed by about 3 hours. We were stuck at the station, with about 25-30 other passengers, and one station master. There was pin drop silence in the waiting room, as everyone was sitting quietly, either dozing off or reading, or just starting into thin air.

I was reading the book, “Collected Fiction” by Ruskin Bond, where he was describing a scene at a train station in India. It was a beautiful description, one that brought vivid memories of buzzing train stations to mind. What a sharp contrast it was, to the scene that I was experiencing on that cold night in Salt Lake City. Here’s the excerpt that I was reading, from the short story, “The Last Tonga Ride”, by Ruskin Bond:

“‘Do not worry about the train, it never leaves on time, and no one expects it to. If it left at nine o’clock, everyone would miss it.’

Bansi was right. We arrived at the station at five minutes past nine, and rushed on to the platform, only to find that the train had not yet arrived.

The platform was crowded with people waiting to catch the same train or to meet people arriving on it. Ayah was there already, standing guard over a pile of miscellaneous luggage. We sat down on our boxes and became part of the platform life at an Indian railway station.

Moving among piles of bedding and luggage were sweating, cursing coolies; vendors of magazines, sweetmeats, tea and betel-leaf preparations; also stray dogs, stray people and sometimes a stray station-master. The cries of the vendors mixed with the general clamour of the station and the shunting of a steam engine in the yards. ‘Tea, hot tea!’ Sweets, papads, hot stuff, cold drinks, toothpowder, pictures of film stars, bananas, balloons, wooden toys, clay images of the gods. The platform had become a bazaar.

…

The station bell clanged, and in the distance there appeared a big, puffing steam engine, painted green and gold and black. A stray dog with a lifetime’s experience of trains, darted away across the railway lines. As the train came alongside the platform, doors opened, window shutters fell, faces appeared in the openings, and even before the train had come to a stop, people were trying to get in or out.

For a few moments there was chaos. The crowd surged backward and forward. No one could get out. No one could get in. A hundrend people were leaving the train, two hundred were getting into it. No one wanted to give way.

The problem was solved by a man climbing out of a window. Others followed his example and the pressure at the doors eased and people started squeezing into their compartments.

Grandmother had taken the precaution of reserving berths in a first-class compartment, and assisted by Bansi and half-a-dozen coolies, we were soon inside with all our luggage. A whistle blasted and we were off! Bansi had to jump from the running train.“

Our train finally arrived at 2:00 am. All passengers queued up at the doors and boarded the train wordlessly, in single file. After 15 minutes, the train took off, leaving the sole station master behind at the platform.

I don’t know what’s with monkeys and me these days. They seem to be displaying this special affinity towards me all of a sudden. Two incidents within a span of two weeks is a bit too much for me to take.

A couple of weeks back, I had invited a few colleagues for dinner at my place. While N and I were cooking in the kitchen, I suddenly saw a monkey standing right at the door of the kitchen. We were trapped in the kitchen, with no exit route. With no prior experience at handling monkeys, I was completely psyched off. N, on the other hand, had encountered monkeys entering his office and trying to steal things. He started making some loud sounds with a pan and ladle, and managed to drive the monkey off. On the way out, the monkey managed to spoil the cucumber that we had grated for raita, and made a mess in the entire dining room.

Last week, while we were on vacation in Bali, we visited the Uluwatu temple. The temple is very beautiful, on top of a cliff right next to the ocean. There were tons of monkeys around there. We were quite careful to secure our belongings. However, the monkeys were smarter than us. Just as my attention got diverted while watching one of the tourists feed some nuts to a monkey, another monkey sneaked up behind me and snatched off my eye-glasses. Thankfully it did not scratch my eyes or face. The bananas and nuts that we offered to the monkey were not enough for it to give the glasses back to us. It just ran off down the cliff into the trees. I was left vision-less for the rest of the day, and am down to wearing contact lenses for a week now.

The positive side of the whole thing is that now I am all set for the next monkey onslaught!

This weekend I landed on youtube after a very long time. The first video that I immediately felt like watching was one that I had seen quite a long time back. It’s a wonderful video that just stays on in your heart.

In the video, the adopted son of a gay couple sings this song about how proud he is of his parents, and about the love and care that they shower on him. He sings to an audience of a bunch of school kids. The song is really beautiful. And the response from the kids is amazing.

Watch the video at: Kinderen voor Kinderen song

Not surprisingly, this video is from the Netherlands. Currently adoption of children by same-sex couples is legal in less than 15 countries, the Netherlands being one of them. I very much am in support of legalizing it, and I really wish more countries were in favor as well.

I ran on the treadmill today after a long time- almost a year. It felt great to be back on track. Although my timing has deteriorated significantly, my stamina has not. I was able to run/walk a total of 3 miles in just under 45 mins. My goal is to get it down to 36 mins by the end of the summer. A stretch goal is to get it down to 33 mins. And maybe get to 6 miles as well. Hopefully this is the start of a good running routine for me back here in India.

I realized that one of the reasons I could get back to my running form after such a long break, is my long standing inclination to do any exercise (whether swimming or running) in a slow and steady manner, with a focus on endurance. Even today if I go swimming, I am sure I will be able to swim 1000m with at most 4-5 short breaks. On the other hand, I am terrible at sprints- running or swimming. There’s just no way I will be able to beat 10 min miles for even a 3 mile run.

Irrespective of my timing, I am just glad that I have gotten back into the running routine again.

Since I have not yet managed to write any posts about my experiences in India, I’ll take the easy way out for now and link to a few posts that N has written about his experiences back here.

What a waste of resources
More Culture Shock
Super-Efficient Banking

It will be two years this May, since the day I signed up for Team In Training‘s marathon training program. There were plenty of reasons I signed up that day for the TNT program. The primary one being- The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society‘s mission to fund research on leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin’s disease and myeloma, with the aim of curing these terrible diseases.

One point that I have not yet mentioned in this blog was the fact that I had actually trained for the marathon in honor of that one special person, who was unfortunately diagnosed of leukemia a few years back. I was shattered when I first heard this news. She had to undergo some very tough chemotherapy sessions last year, and has been doing fine since then. Here’s wishing from the bottom of my heart that she stays healthy for the longest of times.

To this day, whenever I see someone training with TNT and running for the leukemia and lymphoma cause, I tend to re-live in my heart, every moment of my marathon run, as well as my marathon training experience. I especially feel for the honorees, in particular that special honoree, in whose honor I had trained and run the marathon.

When I came in this morning, I saw an email from Randy about his Gladiator run. It brought back a lot of memories and emotions from my marathon days. Coincidentally, today I happened to wear my marathon finisher’s medal (necklace from Tiffany’s) for the first time since I came to India.

Please support Randy in his mission to complete the Rome marathon and to raise funds for TNT and The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. He is running for a very noble cause; I hope I will get another chance to do the same.

I had written this post on Martin Luther King day, but never got around to posting it. Although the blog was supposed to be specific to India move/experiences, it was too difficult to resist putting up this post. So here goes.

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Every time I hear Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, it cuts straight through the heart. If this doesn’t bring tears to your eyes, I doubt anything else will…

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm

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I’ll start off this blog by quoting what I had typed up about about 4 months back (8th Sept, to be precise), on the way from San Francisco to Chennai via Singapore…

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The decision has been made. And the time to act on the decision has finally arrived. N and I are moving to India- for good. This is after 8 and 9 years of stay in the US for N and I respectively.

I am sure that the “reverse adjustment” is going to be a challenging one, even more so than the challenges when we moved to the US. Time will tell whether we are able to make the adjustments fine enough.

Over the last few months, I have had numerous conversations with friends who have been toying with the idea of moving back to India. Some have reached a conclusion, and others have not. A few of them suggested that I write my experiences down in a blog; that’s the reason this blog exists.

The point of this blog is to pen down a few of my thoughts and experiences as N and I make the move to India. These are just personal experiences/opinions that my friends have asked me to share on a blog. These are not meant to serve as anything more than an example of the kinds of things one might need to think about when making the move to India.

I owe a lot of these tips to three friends of mine who moved to India 1-3 years before I did. Two of them- V and D, a couple that I knew from my grad school in the US- moved three years back to Hyderabad. V has a blog that I gleaned some of the pointers below from. Another friend, M, whom I have known since my high school/junior college, moved about a year back to Bombay (Thane). He had also given us some suggestions on email and phone, that I am adding to this blog. A few other experiences, that I have heard from other friends that have moved to Madras, Bangalore, Hyderabad etc, will also appear once in a while.

Whether the decision to move back is the right one or not- only time will tell. I believe that all decisions are always for the good. They either turn out to be the right ones, or they turn out to be not-so-good ones, that just make you stronger by teaching you to face some realities in life. We shall see!

The bottomline is, I am very much looking forward to my move to India. India, here I come!
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I have put in the above note verbatim, without editing a single word. Those were words written on a very important flight in my life, hence they shall stay un-edited!

However, on further thought, I would like to mention that apart from the moving to India topic, I would also like to write about my different experiences in India in general, especially after having gotten used to life in the US. A colleague of mine from the US has been asking me to write such posts, and so it shall be.

In summary, here are some accounts of my journey back in India.

On a wonderful Sunday morning in October, in the beautiful city of San Francisco, I finished my first ever marathon run. The marathon was as much a test of my physical strength, as it was a test of my mental resolve. It was by no means easy; but I managed to hang in there, and to complete what I had set out to do, 5 months ago.

Along with 15000 other participants, less than 1% of which were men, I started my run at 7AM in the morning, from Union Square. The air was heavy with excitement and anticipation at the prospect of running the 26.2 (or 13.1) miles. The elite runners had already taken off at 6:40AM. As the gun went off at 7AM, we were started off in batches. I was in the 3rd batch, and got to the start line about 8 minutes after the first set of runners took off.

Like most others, I started off at a very easy pace- about a minute or so slower than my regular pace. We had been advised by our coaches to start easy and pick up the pace as we feel comfortable. This gave me the opportunity to observe what the crowd was upto. A lot of people had “I am running for…” banners on the t-shirts, in support of the honorees for whom they were running this marathon. All of us on the Peninsula Team of TNT were also wearing a note with pictures and names of the 5 honorees of our team. There were a few people with “It’s my birthday today” banners on their t-shirts, and people were wishing them as they ran by.

In about 3-4 miles, I had eased into a steady pace. I was now taking short 1 minute walking breaks after running at a good pace for about 6 minutes. From Union Square, we ran towards Embarcadero along Post, Montgomery and Washington. After hitting Embarcadero, we took a left and kept going along the bay, past Fisherman’s Wharf and Fort Mason, towards the Presidio. As we ran up a small hill, we got an amazing view of the Golden Gate bridge. The sun was shining down on the bridge, and there was fog beneath the bridge. It almost looked like the bridge was hanging in mid-air, supported only by clouds. It was a very pretty sight, and many runners took out their cameras at that point. I really missed not having a camera with me at that time.

We then ran along Marina Blvd, where I ran into TJ, our TNT team manager- one of the most encouraging and enthusiastic persons I have ever met. She did a great job of cheering me on. After we passed Crissy Field, we hit our first major uphill on the route. It was just about 6 miles into the marathon, and I was feeling quite fresh at that point. I decided to run up the hill at a slightly slower pace than normal. I managed to do that fine enough, with a couple of short walking breaks, and I was quite pleased with myself. The downhill that followed was even more fun, and I managed to conquer it in no time. Then came the next uphill, and I did fine on this one too. The final big downhill, near the Cliff House was very pretty- we were running down towards the sea, and then along the Great Highway.

The route then went through the Golden Gate park, where we reached our half way mark. I was quite happy with my pace- just about a minute slower than my regular pace- which I though was good, considering that I had already done the two major hills on the route. And I felt I had enough energy to run the second half of the marathon. I thought it was time I picked up my pace a bit. But then I ran into a hurdle. After mile 15, my quadriceps started hurting a lot. My confidence, which had held strong until now, started withering with every step that I took. I was sure I will be able to run another 3 miles with that pain. But another 11 miles! I started getting scared at the prospect of not finishing the marathon.

I then started walking for more time than the usual 1 minute recovery. I was analyzing what went wrong and realized that my over-enthusiasm in tackling the hills in the first half of the marathon might now be adversely affecting me. But I was quite sure I was prepared for the hills, and I was frustrated with my quads for giving up on me. I then decided to ignore the pain in the quads, and started a run-walk routine in the ratio 4:1, to give my quads enough time to recover. By then it was almost mile 18, and we were out of Golden Gate park, and had also done most of the Great Highway. We now had to encircle Lake Merced, before heading back down the Great Highway towards the finish line at Golden Gate park.

My quads had finally decided to cooperate, and I was now feeling fine. Then another roadblock came along, which took me even more by surprise. This time, it was my foot that started getting a burning feeling. Every step I took felt as if I was running barefoot on hot coal. This was something that I had not yet experienced on any of my long runs. I had always thought that my ankle was my weakest link. My knees and calf muscles also gave me some trouble once in a while. But this was something new. It would have been okay if I had to go just another mile or two. But another 6 miles seemed like another marathon to go.

I knew it was a complete mind game at this point. I just had to tolerate the pain and keep running. So I started a 2:1 running routine. I was running for 2 minutes and walking for 1 minute. Not the best of paces, but it kept me going. At this point, there were just two phrases occupying my mind. Coach Terry, our head coach always says: “Focus on finishing strong.” And coach Mary had concluded the pre-race party with the advice: “Relentless forward motion.” That was all I could think of. In the 6 hours and 17 minutes and 30 seconds that I was running the marathon, I did not ever stop. I was either walking or running all the time. I drank water and gatorade while walking and filled my water bottle while walking. I knew my destination, and I kept going. And it was not just me. All around me, I saw the determination in everyone’s eyes, inspite of the physical pain.

Between miles 22 and 23, apart from my feet, all other muscles started aching as well. To my surprise, I got quite emotional at that point. The agony of every step caused me to review the 5 months of training in my mind. In addition, I was touched at the thought of the tremendous encouragement and support of the entire TNT group, including the coaches, the mentors, the captains, as well as that of friends and family- in particular, Niket. And most importantly the thought of the honorees, the fund raising, and the cause, which were the primary reason I was doing the marathon, was quite moving. I was quite overwhelmed with all these thoughts, and had tears in my eyes as I ran that mile. I knew at this point that I would complete the marathon.

In the last three miles, I tried to maintain my 2:1 ratio, but even that started proving difficult, and I ended up walking more and more. This is when the TNT and spectator support came in extremely handy. People whom I had never seen before, and probably will never see again in my life, were cheering me on. They called out my name (I had written it on my tshirt) and showered words of encouragement. The Peninsula team TNT mentors, captains and coaches were excellent in their support. Throughout the course, they had stood by the side of the road and cheered the team members on. In addition, during the last few miles, some of them even ran with me for a few miles.

When I started my last mile, I knew I wanted to finish strong. I therefore decided that come what may, I am going to run the entire mile. Then I ran into Jocelyn, a captain on our team. Throughout the season, during our long runs, she would to mention to the coaches that whenever I see her (or any other TNT volunteer) on the course, I gave a big smile to them. This time, all I could manage was a very tiny smile; I was just too tired, and wanted to get done. She then asked me whether I would like some company, and started running with me. I was so glad to see the support. When I had just about 0.5 miles to go, our head coach, Terry joined me in my run for about a minute and congratulated me on making it to the finish. I took a couple of very short walking breaks during the last mile. But once I saw the finish line in the distance, I wanted to cross it soon, and kept running. Jocelyn asked me whether anyone was at the finish line to cheer me in, and I said yes, my husband will be around.

I was concentrating on running, when suddenly Jocelyn asked me what my husband looks like. I was surprised at the question. I looked towards the side of the road, to see Niket with a camera in his hand, ready to take a picture. I gave the best smile I could! Then Niket started running with me, and Jocelyn decided to go back and cheer other team members in.

At the finish line, Niket wanted to cross it with me, but the officials pulled him out. So I crossed the finish line, exactly 6 hours, 17 minutes and 30 seconds after I had crossed the start line. I received a beautiful Tiffany and Co.’s finishers necklace, as well as the Nike Women’s Marathon 2006 finishers tshirt. I am very happy that I completed the marathon. It was a tough and challenging experience- one that I will cherish throughout life.