Sheila met Anmol through a mutual friend Gagan, who thought they'd "click" at least as friends if not more. The introduction came about through e-mail since they lived on opposite coasts. Anmol was a Jersey transplant now firmly rooted in San Francisco. He told her almost right away that moving back east was out of the question. He liked where he lived too much to consider that.
She wondered at her friend's judgment about the anticipated "click". He was fifteen years older, the highpoint of his weekends was his Netflix queue and he talked about an imaginary social life peopled with unnamed "friends" with whom he did a bunch of "stuff". So nebulous and angst-ridden were his accounts that Sheila wished he would not trouble himself on her behalf to choreograph a "life" that he did not have - it embarrased her.
Yet he made her ponder about her condition. He showed her who she might become fifteen years from now if she remained a creature of habit and ritual. Then there was Rajesh at work, who looked at her soulfully like a pet dog - a man starved of affection and attention, drifting away not quite sure where he was headed to and why. He represented to her, the spouse who has so much to offer in marriage that the partner is overwhelmed by the largesse and declines everything she is offered. Maybe it was all in her imagination but she feared she could become like him, if she ended up with a man who did not value her nearly enough.
She told Gagan that Anmol was impossible to communicate with - he lived in a fortress surrounded by a moat and she had no desire to wage epic wars to overcome the barriers to reach him. Gagan replied "He is worth it. Believe me. Give him time. I know it takes him much longer than most people but then he is not most people."
"And what I hate most about him is his habit of talking in parables. How pretentious! But it's like they run in parallel with his reality. Why can't he talk about things without introducing a layer of abstraction - you know like normal people ?" Sheila complained.
"Didn't you mention the fortress and moat a minute ago ?" Gagan laughed at her. "He feels vulnerable around you and is trying to protect himself. It’s a good sign. He likes you and remember he's an outlier. Don't expect "regular" or "normal" with him" he said.
An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
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i read every single one of u'r blogs tho I dont comment-
Part of their war on terror. If you visit Desipundit or Sepia Mutiny you will see extensive coverage of this issue.
gg
If true she should skip the Netflix dude. There's too much to do in SF than to be locked up watching other fictional lives on TV.
Good writing again, btw.