Who is Mandodari?

Who is Mandodari? I can't believe I spent about two full hours scratching my head trying to answer that question! And in case you think I'm stupid and should have known Mandodari was the wife of Ravana or that I should have googled it if I didn't know this, let me tell you it was not that easy and googling it was not how I was going to find out!

Okay, let me make this easier. As the Secretary of the Indian Embassy Spouses' Association (IESA) when my husband and I were posted in Washington DC, I was required to arrange various events, outings, festival celebrations, and also to send out emails to the association members informing them about transport arrangements, time, date, the event venue, the programme and other important details. Occasionally the programme scheduled for a certain month required the members to confirm their presence due to the limited availability of seats, or for the purpose of  making transport arrangements.

Our visit to the Mormon Temple that month was one such event. The Mormons are a secretive and mysterious sect, and visits to the Mormon Temple tend to be highly organized affairs in order to keep visitors under control. So it was imperative that we give the temple authorities an exact number. And so I sent out the usual emails to our members asking them to confirm by a certain date, giving them a phone number they could call, and informing them that a confirmation was compulsory.

Sometime after I had sent out the emails, and maybe a few days before the given deadline, I happened to meet a bunch of our members at an Embassy event. I reminded some of them who had not called to say they were coming, that time was running out, the deadline was soon approaching, and that they should not miss this opportunity to visit the Mormon Temple. That's when sweet and kindly Mrs. Arora piped up and said that she was dying to go but did not know the person she was supposed to call to confirm her presence. "Who is Mandodari, Amita? You said that we have to call Mandodari but I have not met her and I don't know who she is."

Well I was as lost as she was. WHO WAS MANDODARI? I have never been much of a people's person, my PR stinks, and I am not the most sociable person around. But Embassy life is pretty close knit, even in large missions like in the US, and I was the Secretary of the association for God's sake! I was the one with the database of members' phone numbers and addresses, I was the one who probably had the most regular interactions with all the members for some IESA related reason or other, and I was the one that any new additions to the Embassy family were instructed to establish contact with immediately on arrival. So I would have known, should have known Mandodari if there was such a person in our association!

But I didn't. So who was this mysterious lady? And had I really put down her name as the person to call if our members wanted to visit the Mormon Temple? It was impossible. I tortured myself all the way home, only just managing to focus on my driving. Pulling into the garage, I made straight for my room, turned on my laptop, opened my sent folder and pulled up the email I had sent out to all our members. I read it carefully, every single word, every if, and, but, and of, searching desperately for the name Mandodari, but came up empty handed. Starting at the top again I adopted a new strategy. This time I looked carefully at every word in the email that began with an M. I was going crazier by the second and losing hope quickly. And then suddenly I saw it and almost shouted "Eureka"! I had found Mrs. Arora's mysterious Mandodari! There she was in bold font and all upper case letters! See if you can spot her in my email! 

Dear Member,

Our event this month is a visit to the Mormon Temple.

                                                          * Date: February 28 
                                                              * Time: 11 am  
                                     * Meeting Place: Metro Station Dupont Circle 
                                           * RSVP: 3013209556 (MANDATORY)
                                                 I hope you will be able to come.
                                              Looking forward to seeing you soon,
                                                                      Sincerely,
                                                              Amita Bambawale
                                                               Secretary, IESA
I looked again at the word and checked the spelling. I had to make sure I had not gone crazy, that what I had written was Mandatory, and that I had got to the bottom of the mystery of Mandodari!           

A Confession!

I'm going to make a confession today. Every year without fail the Republic Day spectacle on Rajpath makes me a little teary eyed, and this year was no different. I always feel a little foolish at that little lump that invariably forms in my throat, and I always struggle to hide this from whoever it is I'm watching the parade with!

I'm sure there are many others who feel the same way but never acknowledge it even to themselves because it seems stupidly sentimental and unworldly and naive. True, we are surrounded by scamsters, tax evaders, Swiss bank account holders with crores and crores in black money stashed away safely in them. We are bombarded everyday with news that slowly but surely destroys any hopes we might have that these thugs will be brought to justice.

And yet the pomp and pageantry on Rajpath unfailingly remind me about all that is precious, pride worthy, and beautiful about my country. How can I ignore and close my eyes to the fact that despite the discipline, perfection and brilliance of our armed forces, amply on display on this day every year, the military remains staunchly unpoliticised and loyal to our Constitution? This is just one very good reason why we need to keep celebrating the day we adopted our Constitution, the day we committed ourselves to Democracy and the Rule of Law. There are of course a million other reasons including the fact that we are pretty much surrounded by countries that make a mockery of their constitutions, if they have one that is!

On the one hand it saddens me to hear young people sometimes say in despairing, disparaging and cynical  tones, "Yeh India hai, yahan kuch bhi ho sakta hai", but then on the other, I feel better when I remember what a very senior,  sophisticated, brilliant bureaucrat said in the days following the terrorist attacks on Parliament some years ago. She said and I quote "I cried because I was so hurt that our Parliament had been desecrated and attacked and that they had wanted to destroy it."

And now that I have confessed to crying a little as I watch the parade every January 26, let me also confess that it feels wonderful to shed my cynicism about India, if only for a couple of hours every year! I want to say to all those jaded young Indians, "Try it, it feels good!"





          

Of uneven platforms and novice train travelers!

Platforms by loose definition are raised, level surfaces. But not the platforms I am talking about, and certainly not the ones in what I call "small town North India"; they may be raised but they sure are not level! Let me explain ...

Novice passenger A to food vendor X: Bhaiyya, C1 coach kahan aayega?

Platform food vendor X: Thoda aage jao madam.

Novice (and doubting) passenger A to food vendor Y:  Bhaiyya, C1 coach kahan aayega?

Platform food vendor Y (standing three feet away from vendor X): C1? Aunty peeche jana, bahut peeche, pul ke paas!

Now Novice Passenger A is a novice who is seriously worried and nervous. For those who know that worrying is my favourite hobby, no prizes for guessing that this tortured soul is me!

But seriously, wouldn't you be worried if two people you think would be absolute experts on the matter gave you diametrically opposed pieces of advice? Wouldn't you start running a wild mental marathon, first in one direction, then in the other to find Coach C1?

Don't laugh at me - I happen to be a very smart person who anticipates problems so they can be tackled smoothly when they appear, and yes I assume they will appear, and no there is no "if" they appear in my mind! So I anticipate that I am going to have to run helter skelter to find my coach in the two minutes the train will stand at the station, and I start planning and strategizing (I hope this word exists, but I don't care if it does not) in my head how I am going to accomplish this feat. And don't tell me I can jump onto the train anywhere and then find my coach, because I have been there and done that and repented - pulling my stroller through nine, yes nine long coaches, and nine (or was it eighteen?) really heavy connecting doors between the coaches, (each of which swung back real hard and trapped either me or my stroller suitcase, whichever went second), to arrive at my reserved coach and seat was no fun at all, and nothing you say will convince me otherwise. So I have decided it is better to run my crazy mental marathon before boarding every single time I need to catch a train!

Anyway, having decided on my strategy I usually find a crowded, well lit spot on the platform. As I stand there practising my moves and improving on my best timing in my mind I am surrounded by large circles of squatting men, women and children, weird looking "holy men" with dreadlocks and loin cloths, and stray, wild eyed and hungry looking dogs. The children often take a walk to the edge of the platform to empty their bladders, the women in bright, gaudy, shiny sarees have their ghungats pulled well over their faces, and the men (the weird holy ones included) stare unabashedly at everything with breasts (size immaterial)! The dogs seem to be there only to add to my worries about contracting rabies, and of course to sniff at all the garbage, every snot and phlegm smear, and every rivulet of god-knows-what on the platform!

As it happens, when the train finally pulls into the station and begins to slow down I am able to read the coach numbers, and am able to walk to my coach at a much more leisurely clip than expected (but that may be because I have practised so hard in my mind)! As I start nearing my coach I begin to see people standing and waiting patiently for the train to come to a halt alongside the platform, in stark contrast to the mad scramble and excitement my mind seems to register amongst the squatting men, women and children as I begin to move away from them to find my coach. Instead of the motley shapes of the bundles and sacks of luggage of my erstwhile platform companions, here I see small, neat little strollers, laptop cases, and smart handbags. Office style shirts, American style shapeless bermudas, basketball shorts and sneakers, smart salwar suits, small, compact groups of people consisting of mom, dad and just one or two children, or lone, successful looking young executives, and prosperous, portly businessmen pierce my consciousness and inexplicably I begin to relax...

I board the train, find my seat and wonder why I did not see these blessed and beautiful people when I arrived at the station. Fool, my rational brain tells me, you did not see them because they did not arrive at the station a whole hour and a half before the scheduled arrival of the train. I realise that if they had arrived at the time I had arrived, or I had arrived at the time they had, I would not have needed to ask anyone where Coach C1 was likely to be. I could just have stood with them and waited for my train to arrive, because the railway platform is a microcosm of India, and because the reality of India's deep divides is as visible and tangible on every single railway platform as it is in its schools, colleges, housing complexes, markets, food habits, and just about everything else!

Now I know you would expect that the next time I have to catch a train I will take the easy way out and just seek out the laptops and branded sneakers on the platform. But you have another think coming... . Maybe my irrational brain is stronger than my rational brain, because I know I will continue to arrive ninety minutes in advance of my train and relive the agony every single time!        

How to console yourself .... the ramblings of a diplomatic spouse!

The life and world of a diplomatic spouse such as I am are demanding and stressful in a luxurious way! Confused? I don't blame you...

As a diplomatic spouse you get to meet national and world figures till you begin to take these encounters for granted, wine and dine at the very fanciest of restaurants, live in palatial homes, drive around in fancy cars, hobnob with only the cream of the cream of society in any country, have doors opened for you and get instantly recognized wherever you go, etc. etc. etc. But you don't have the right to make your own decisions in the job you do abroad! Any job you take up while your diplomat husband is on a foreign assignment must be in keeping with the prestige of his position, must not in any way compromise his position as the representative of his country, or be in conflict with the national interest (an idea which usually puts even cultural organisations of foreign countries like the British Council for instance) out of bounds as a workplace for the diplomatic spouse. The stress and frustration of not being able to work at all during my last posting drove me to write this piece sometime in 2008. I was trying to console myself as well as my fellow diplomatic spouses who often find themselves in similar circumstances....scroll down for my rantings....   

If every challenge is viewed as an outlet for the creativity within you, think how much creative energy you as a Foreign Service spouse can unleash on the world! If I may take the liberty of defining creativity as the capacity and ability to give birth to just about anything that did not exist before, then I have been a female M.F. Hussain for the past year!


Frustration had me in its grip when I found I could not work in our current posting in Guangzhou. On arrival here I sent my curriculum vitae to various places, and the job offer letters soon followed. My bubble went bust when I found that my diplomatic status stood between myself and a job. Giving up my diplomatic visa (the only way I could get a work permit) was a no-no. I tore up the letters and fell into a sullen depression.

Fortunately I was in a unique situation that only a handful of us experience. My husband was the first Consul General of India in Guangzhou. We had a clean slate to write on, on all fronts – interaction with people from our own consulate, people of Indian origin in Guangzhou, the local Chinese community, and the foreign diplomatic community! My creative energy could be in overdrive all of my waking moments!

My husband’s clear brief was to set up a new consulate. Mine, implicit and unwritten, was to select an appropriate residence and decorate it in signature Indian style. Throwing myself headlong into this project I closely surveyed every home décor market in the city while waiting for the objets de art and carpets to arrive from New Delhi – a trying project for someone with very little patience! I selected carpets from photographs. Who knew what they would look like in real life, despite having agonized over the colours before faxing the order? How could I order sofas and drapes without having the carpets? Yet I knew it would be weeks if not months before the carpets were shipped to me. A classic (and very stressful) chicken or egg dilemma… Further, my search for elegant, yet inexpensive furniture and light fittings in this land of over-the-top, ostentatious tastes, was aesthetically distressing and physically exhausting! And always looming over me was the fear that should every stick of furniture that I bought for the Residence not last for the stipulated seventeen or whatever years, I would be cursed by every Consul General spouse after me!!! What a burden to live with…

When the Residence was done I was at a loose end and getting crabby again. Luckily, another project was staring me in the face. We had six India-based staff with families, and something was missing in my life …..Of course! I was beginning to miss the monthly Spouses’ Meets that to me had become an integral part of mission life. And so the Guangzhou Indian Consulate General’s Spouses’ Club was born. However, this was a Spouses’ Club with “Chinese characteristics” (a phrase that describes China’s unique brand of economic liberalization)! All the families except mine were in China for the first time. Our club meetings would be an excuse to get the consulate ladies out once a month to visit Guangzhou’s many humongous markets, take a Pearl River cruise, go to a performance of Chinese acrobatics, visit parks, do a karaoke evening – in short have fun, get to know the city, and socialize without slaving away in the kitchen to put out an elaborate tea! This bunch of young and enthusiastic women was game. Today, just seven months since its inception, our small eight member strong Spouses’ Club thrives and grows in its monthly agenda, as from time to time new ideas like having a kitty draw and celebrating birthdays, and older conventions like welcoming members (we’re all still too new to be bidding goodbye to anyone) are incorporated.

Guangzhou, a large, sprawling city with chaotic traffic and confusing roads makes getting around town time consuming. This forces many Indians to live in strange isolation from each other. As a result, unlike in other Chinese cities like Beijing and Shanghai, there has been no spontaneous formation of an all encompassing Indian association in Guangzhou. Groups drawn along parochial lines and based on the physical proximity of their members have solidified over the years - not an ideal situation in terms of offering support to other Indians, creating an Indian identity, or marshalling resources for charity work, social service, and emergency relief work. My assessment of the situation found echoes in the conversations I had with Indian women in the city. A suggestion that I could facilitate the forming of a pan-Indian women’s association was greeted with enthusiasm. The idea bore fruit in the formation of the Guangzhou Indian Women’s Association or GIWA (pronounced Jeeva). The association’s core group consists of representatives of several organized and unorganized groups of Indians in Guangzhou. It is committed to making GIWA first and foremost a support group for all Indian families in Guangzhou. While GIWA has its work cut out for it as far as reaching out to every Indian woman in Guangzhou is concerned, a beginning has been made to build on.

Through all of these efforts, one thought nagged at me. Was my professional training as a qualified Reading Specialist going to rust and decay during this posting? I could not, would not let it happen. Okay, so I could not work for money. But who could stop me if I did it for charity? While I am at an age when the idea of doing something beyond my self-interest appeals to me, I am not so old that I don’t seek anything at all in return. Reinventing myself for the nth time in my husband’s career I decided I was going to read aloud to young children, and encourage their mothers to give to charity for having this specialized service. A group of young mothers responded enthusiastically. They like me were killing two birds with one stone. We were all satisfying our altruistic feelings by donating to GIVES (Guangdong International Volunteer Expatriate Service), which helps Chinese children with autism, cerebral palsy, and other disabilities. In return, their own children were being exposed to regular, effective, and systematic read alouds by an “expert”, and I was keeping my skills (at least one of them) alive - a win-win situation for everyone!

And so, I end my ramblings by proposing a toast to not only my definition of creativity, but also to the Hussain I know exists in all Foreign Service spouses. Cheers!