I only swear when I drive - Part 2

My other lab-mate told me about an experiment that he read on one of the blogs. He said, ‘S…, you should swear’

‘Why?’

‘I read about an experiment. In that, they filled a tumbler full of ice and asked the participants to put their hand in the freezing water and to stay so as long as they can. The people who swore stayed the longest. Swearing takes some of the tension away. So you should’

I looked at him and nodded my head in disagreement. I maintained my non-swearing attitude until I completed my Ph.D. in Chicago and came to Bangalore and as soon as I started driving everything changed.

This very ugly habit of mine props up when I see pedestrians lurking behind the bushes on the divider, waiting to cross. At this point of time my heart skips a beat. Would the pedestrian jump before my car like a primordial tribeman/woman? At that speed can I stop? I also hate that the tempo and the BMTC bus drivers have the right of way at all times. They overtake me mercilessly and come in front of me. No hand gesture, no indicator! The psyche of these drivers is mysterious. The bus stops are on the left side of the road but they still want to drive on the right side and most of the times they drive very slowly.

A few other cab or bus drivers are very talented. They drive on the left side of the road but they want to take a right turn at the junction. They willfully stop the traffic and turn right and all the honks are unheard. Auto drivers are the worst. They have absolutely no sense of direction and their brake lights never ever work. Sometimes, I am amazed at their quick thinking and movement. As soon as they see an empty space they budge in. The bike drivers do not fall behind the auto drivers. They drive in sinuous routes and God forbid if there is any space between one car bumper and another bumper they move in between. I am always scared that I will hit some bike guy. I imagine that I am big whale and all these bike drivers are small fishes and I have to skilfully maneuver so that I do not eat up those small fishes.

Patience is never a virtue at the traffic junction. People behind me honk as soon as the light turns green. Where do they expect me to go? The car in front of me has not moved yet. Do they think that my car has wings and it could fly over the car ahead of me?

There is no wonder that with all these lovely people sharing the road, I do swear, when somebody overtakes me and comes in front of me without giving a signal, when pedestrians wait to pounce on my car. Swearing is one of the essential elements that help me survive in the Bangalore traffic.

I only swear when I drive! - Part 1

I only swear when I drive! I realized this horrible truth as soon as I started driving in Bangalore. It was a hidden character inside me that has not revealed itself until now. It all started like this.

I started learning to drive in October of last year. My husband took driving classes for me whenever the driving school guy did not show up. On one ill-fated day my husband was taking the driving class. We were driving in front of CMRIT college and I was behind the wheel. I saw a pedestrian walking on the road but not on the footpath. At that point of time my driving skills were limited to driving on the left side of the road, almost sticking to the footpath. The pedestrian encroached my space! I had to slow down, press the clutch, switch the gear and move slightly away from him. At the same time there were cars coming from the other side of the road. For a beginner, who has absolutely no road sense, this was a gargantuan task so there came my first swear word,’ f**k’. My husband was stunned. We were about six months young in our relationship and he did not know this side of me.

 I immediately said, ‘I am sorry. There is a foot path right beside him. Why can’t he walk on that? Why does he have to walk on the road?’

My husband replied, ‘Calm down’.

He immediately added, ‘Move away from him. Are you going to run over him or what?’

I really wanted to run over him. Why else are there footpaths for? The pedestrian had no intentions to cross, he was just walking on the road as though he owned it. I had no other option but to move away from him.  

People motivated me to swear in my PhD and their efforts were not wasted. Their speeches have registered in my subconscious mind and waited for fulfillment in the most inopportune moment.   

My labmates swear words flew along with their vocabulary whenever some piece of equipment did not work. The harsh words hit the metallic surface of the experimental apparatus and repelled back at me. AT one instance, one of my lab-mates (name not provided here for sensitive reasons), was conducting the experiments.Every time, the experiment went wrong, he wrote the word, ‘fanculo’, beside the experimental details in the lab record book.

I asked him, ‘What is this?’, and pointed at the word, ‘fanculo’

He replied, ‘It means that the experiments did not work in Italian’

I smiled and said, ‘No, I don’t think so’

He responded, ‘Yes it is true’ and seriously nodded his head.

Since I was the only non-swearing person in the lab, my lab-mates tried to enrol me into the swear club. They gave scientific explanation as to why mouthing bad words is good for people.

To be continued...

Things I miss about Chicago-Taylor Street

What will I miss about Chicago? I will miss a lot of things about Chicago. I want to start with the neighbourhood that I stayed in. It is called as Taylor Street, the Italian street. There is a high-end restaurant, Tuscany at the corner of Taylor and Miller Street. I could see Tuscany and it’s parking lot from one of my apartment windows. I loved to see top notch cars getting parked in the parking lot by the valets, Cadillac, Mazda, Buick etc. Once, I even saw a red colored Ferrari. I remember one particular valet who always spoke something loudly in Spanish whenever I passed by Tuscany’s parking lot.I will miss the chatter of the people dining in Tuscany, the clinking of the knives and forks on the white ceramic plates. I will always remember the way they looked at me while eating their exquisite Italian pasta or spaghetti as though I was some exhibit walking by.

I will miss the cozy thai restaurant, ‘Thai Bowl’ in which the UIC students got a 10 % discount. I never failed to avail that discount when I was a student. I was a student for a long enough time, for about 5.5 years and in all those years I must have saved at least 100 bucks, thanks to Thai Bowl. I miss the wonderful times I spent with my friends in that restaurant. I used to take the fortune cookies as dessert. As I edged close to 25, I started taking an extra fortune cookie for my would-be life partner, whoever that would be. Whenever, I looked at my fortune, it reminded me of my uncle’s fortune. It said, ‘You just realized how futile your life is’. May be the guy who wrote the fortune cookie got pissed off that he has to write fortune for others when he himself cannot find his fortune. I will miss all the times I sat outside the restaurant with friends in summer, in the small enclosure decorated with small pretty pink and blue flowers and batted the mosquitoes as we ate chicken satay, thai fired rice, basil chicken and drank thai iced tea. One time, I had a fired banana for dessert. I could not understand why the chef had to torture the fruit by dipping it in dough and deep frying it. I felt sad for the banana and never had it again.

There used to be an Italian lemonade shop, Mario’s Italian Lemonade, right across Thai Bowl. It was a famous destination. Every summer after the store opened on May 1^st a long queue of people used to stand in line to savor the lemonade, which was just crushed ice flavoured with fruit flavoured syrups. Sometimes, tourist buses used to stop in front of Mario’s Lemonade and the tourists loved having the cold lemonade in that hot weather. The cost of the lemonade was $1. I used to crib about the price. It was expensive for just crushed ice with syrup on top of it. In spite of all my boisterously voiced complaints with friends, I ended up in the line on May 1^st of every summer. It was an iconic little shop on that iconic street and no one can move away from that shop without enjoying the lemonade.

A cute little cupcake shop, Flirty cupcakes, opened up across Tuscany, just at the time when I was about to leave. The cupcakes were expensive about 5 bucks for a two-bite sized cupcake. But, when you bite into the cupcake, it was soft and moist and the core was juicy.  It soon became my favorite spot.  I used to enjoy at least one cupcake every two weeks.

  

                                       

There is a lot more to tell about Taylor Street. I will continue it some other time.

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All images are taken from google images

Flirty cupcakes: www.hertown.com

Tuscany: www.skyscrapercity.com

Mario's Italian Lemonade: noshameadventures.blogspot.com

Thai Bowl: www.tumblr.com