A relationship gone sour

I looked down from my window and saw the road and the cars parked on the street covered with snow. The trees were dressed in snow as well. Their white branches extended to my window and beckoned me to enjoy the pristine snow and to hear the first crunch of the snow under my footsteps.

I had to get some groceries to survive for that week. I put on my white sweater, my brown winter jacket, my black hat, gloves, pink socks, black boots and came outside. As I walked on the snow, I heard a familiar crunch and with every footstep I created a footprint that will stay there for a long time. The chill wind brushed past me and tired to get in through the gaps between my coat and gloves, gaps between my jeans and socks and kissed my face, as though it meant no harm at all. The notorious cold wind wanted to borrow some of my warmth. But, I did not give that pleasure to it, I tugged my coat closer. 

I went to the grocery store and got the perfect bachelorette food, noodles and soup packets. As I stood at the crossing and waited for the green man to appear on the signal, I heard somebody walk behind me. I turned around and I saw a young woman in a long purple tweed coat walking her dog. She came and stood beside me. The dog sat between both of us. Its black coat glowed in the dimly lighted street. I looked at the dog. It looked at me with large dark brown expressive eyes which intrigued me. They looked at me with great love and longing. They asked me, ‘Don’t you remember me? Have you forgotten me?’ Those questions puzzled me. To this day, I remember that cold wintry night in Chicago, those big brown eyes and the questions which bewildered me. I wondered if I had some special relationship with dogs. But it was about to change soon and I did not realize it.

I moved from Chicago to Bangalore, about two years after that incident happened. I started working in Bangalore. I drove to office and parked my car in a parking lot which is about 500 m away from my office. The entrance to the parking lot had barricades on either side of it so I had to go through a narrow path to enter the parking lot. 

One fine morning, as I got close to the entrance of the parking lot, I saw that a light brown-colored dog blocked the entrance and slept there peacefully. I honked as I approached the dog. I hoped that my incessant honking would scare it away. I came close to the dog. It was no longer within my view. I stopped the car, got out and looked if the dog was still there. It was still there! It looked at me with nonchalant eyes, which said, ‘I don’t give a damn about you’. This kind of attitude from the dog bewildered me. I wondered, when did dogs begin to feel above humans? I was honking away in an effort to save its life but it remained there and questioned my authority. 

I did not want to accept defeat. I got into the car, got a bit close to it and gave a persistent honk which lasted for a couple of seconds. I got out of the car. The dog did not go away from its favourite spot. I was invisible to the dog and my horn was unheard. It rested its head on its paws and pretended to sleep. I did not know what to do. I tried to scare it away by voicing a tiny ‘shoo’ and big ‘shoos’ but nothing worked.   

A security guard came by. I called him and told, ‘Are bhaiyya, is kutte ko bhagado. Subah subah marna nahi chahti (Brother, scare the dog away. I don’t want to kill the dog early in the morning). He came towards it menacingly and shouted loudly, and the dog ran away. I could finally get into the parking lot after my doggie fiasco. 

This incident really made me think about my special relationship with dogs. The dog from Chicago gave me a false impression about how dogs in general, felt about me. Well, the dogs from Bangalore have a completely different opinion about me. That left me pondering what kind of relationship did I really have? Was it a location-specific mutual feeling that ended as soon as I moved to a different continent?

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 Spring was finally here in Bangalore. Last week, I captured a few pictures of the trees with their pretty pink flowers.

I am a woman

The song started something like this

When I was little girl

About twelve years old

My mama told me

I am a woman. I am strong…

I sang that song, until I panted for breath and until my throat ached. I felt really good and prepared to tackle what came after that.

In fall of 2011, I attended the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) conference in Chicago. I was doing my Ph.D. at University of Illinois at Chicago during that time. The conference was organized at McCormick Place. It was a huge convention center which covered an area of 2,670,000 sq. ft.

When I reached the McCormick place, I was amazed at the monstrosity of that place. The place was filled with women in professional suits and skirts. I was mainly there for the job fair. About 250 companies were participating in the job fair. The job fair would open up at the end of the day, so I attended a few sessions on personality development and job-fair related sessions such as, ‘How to write an effective resume’, ‘How to make the best of a job fair’ and mock interviews. Apart from all this professional training, SWE also had a lava lounge. Women can visit the lava lounge, can get free manicures and get pampered.

There were so many women all around me; dressed in their pretty black suits and I loved that. As a female in the engineering stream I never saw many women at our conferences. There would always be a handful of women among countless men. In this conference, the gender counts were reversed and that brought a smile to my face.

A Blues concert preceded the job-fair. About 500 attendees were present at the concert. We were in a big hall lit up in blue. I sat beside a woman dressed up in a black suit and her blond hair was tied up neatly into a bun. 

I looked at her and said, ‘hello’. She replied, ‘hello’

I asked her, ‘Which University are you from?’

‘University of Michigan’

‘So you came from Ann Arbor’

‘Yes’

‘Lot of companies are coming to recruit students in the job fair’

‘Yes, I have seen that in the brochure’

‘When are you graduating?’

‘Next fall. What about you?’

‘I will be graduating next spring. What is your major?’

‘I am doing my Master’s in Mechanical Engineering. What about you?’

‘I am doing my Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering. Are you looking for a job in any specific location?’

‘I am looking for internships in Atlanta’

‘Why there?’

‘My husband is an officer in the Army there’

‘Oh’

‘I was working in the Army as well. Both of us have been to Iraq and back’

‘Wow, that’s great’

‘After coming back from Iraq, I joined in University of Michigan do my Master’s.’

‘Good for you.’

The concert started by then.  I told her, ‘Good luck for the job fair’

She replied,’ you too’.

There were about 6 performers on the stage and that included both singers and musicians. Among all the performers, even to this day I remember the African American woman who leaded the performance. She had a bulky frame and she wore of dress of animal print. When she sang her voice was not mellifluous. It was authoritative. A voice which made the other person feel weak in his/her knees. The only difference was that she was using that voice to cheer us up and boost our moods for the upcoming job fair. No wonder, she was called as Nellie ‘Tiger’ Travis. I read later that she got the nickname ‘Tiger’ after she came to Chicago. The nickname symbolizes her intense vocal style and her towering, dominating and confident personality.

The ‘tiger’ sang several songs, that evening. Her last song was, ‘I am a Woman’. As she reached the climax of the song, she ordered all of us to stand up and shout, ‘I am a Woman. I am strong’ and to clap as we sang. We did that for about 2 minutes. At the end of the song, she asked us to clap for ourselves and for every other woman in our presence, for being what we are and for enduring what we have. She wished us good luck for the job fair. She prepared us to pounce on our prospective employers with confidence in our hearts and excitement in our bones. 

                                                       

                           Nellie Travis picture from www.chicagobluesguide.com

Youtube link to the song. I could not find a better video of this song than this

I am a woman by Nellie Tiger Travis

Of Rides and Senses

In Chicago, I used to take the blue line to go to downtown. As I waited at the station, I looked at the cars on the highway, which was parallel to the tracks. I liked to watch the cars zooming by. They moved one after another in a disciplined way. The windowpanes of the cars were closed. The driver and the passengers were not comfortable to allow the unruly wind inside the car. The weather of the Chicago had to be blamed in that aspect. It was too cold in the winters and too hot in the summers. The driver and the passengers were accustomed to the unnatural wind circulating inside the car instead of the natural one. I have been inside one of those cars and I heard only the constant hum of the tyres on the road.

Unlike the dull rides in Chicago, the rides in my hometown, Warangal, indulged the five senses. I remember one such ride that I had a couple of years ago.

I heard the ring, ‘tring tring’ of the bicycle begging the cars and motorcycles for the right of way. I heard a sharp beep of the Yamaha or Suzuki motorcycle that zipped through the cars in the narrow space. I heard the long consistent impatient sound of the car horn, ‘keee keee keeee’, which waited for the cycles and motorcycles to clear from its way. I heard the haughty horn of the black and yellow auto, which did not care about others, cut everybody out and jerked the passengers in the auto from side to side.

I saw the powdery brown colored dust coming off the road. The dust was tasteless. The hot gusts of wind touched my exposed skin, delivered heat to my flesh and made it supple. I smelled dead fish and discovered the source. A lady in blue saree, with a red cloth on top of her head, sat cross-legged in front of a thin transparent sheet on top of which were dead fishes. They looked at all the vehicles on the road with expressionless eyes.  An elderly man with a bald head, dressed in white stood before her. They were both haggling over the price of two pomfret, that the lady held in her hand. The dead fish did not care about at what price they were being sold, so they still bore the same expressionless eyes. My senses registered all these actions within a span of few seconds. There was so much to take in.

 Apart from this short story, a few pics from the Bangalore Auto Show that I attended over this weekend. 

           Vintage cars at the Bangalore Auto Show

      Harley Davidson Bikes at the Bangalore Auto Show

          I loved this caption from Mahindra