life on a chain - pete yorn

i live on a chain
and you share the same last name
as a joke
i sent a bottle of whiskey
as you choked
i knew it made you feel dirty

To describe the quality of a recent Bollywood film, a friend said it was a "Bollywood 7, global 5."

His rating system's become useful for us describing life here. At a local "posh" cafe where the ladies of leisure in Chennai lunch, another friend asked me about my gnocchi. It was a Chennai 8, global 3.5, possibly even a global 3.

You see, Chennai, and India in general (except for perhaps Mumbai and Delhi) lacks international cuisines. A few restaurants venture into "multicuisine," but I hold those places in about as much regard as "Jimmy's Chicken Shack" around the corner from my apartment in DC, which served "subs, Chinese, Italian, and fish." You need to be a little bit selective to do something well.

So even to have gnocchi in Chennai is a feat. (I know all of 3 restaurants in the whole city of 4.34 million which serve it.)

But was it good? Well, it was overcooked and the gnocchi were starting to mush into each other. The sauce was nonoffensive, but nothing to write home about (though I guess that's what I'm doing right now.)

Hence, the Chennai 8, global 3.5.

It works the other way, too, though.

Indian food? Chennai 10, India 10, global 4.

Availability and affordability of mangoes, watermelons, and other fruits and fruit juices? Chennai 9, Hyderabad 5, India 7, global 3.

Mustaches? Chennai 9, Hyderabad 9, Bangalore 7 (they are catching onto the Wester disdain for the mouche), India 7 (the north isn't as a big a fan as the south), global 2 (do I know anyone in America with a mustache?)

Ability to not be in a rush all the time? Chennai 9, Hyderabad 8, India 8, America 1.

My presence on the city's Society pages? LA 1, NY 0, Boston -2, DC 1, Hyd 7, and Chennai 8. Explanation: I had no money in New York, I had like no friends in Boston, in LA and in DC I knew enough people never to make it in the papers myself but knew people who did... and weirdly, in Hyderabad and in Chennai, my friends are at some Twilight Zone-like club where everyone regularly poses for the photogs for "Page 3." I did it twice in the last week.

Globally, I'm a 0. Chennai, I'm at least above 5, just because I'm a foreigner and I have pretty, tall, blond and brunette foreigner friends who drink and wear cute clothes.

Except - maybe globally I'm not a 0. I do give myself some props for doing whatever I've done in my 20s. Fucked up a lot but also did some cool shit, and a lot of it for which much of the general population wouldn't have been the best fit.

So if I'm a 5 in Chennai just by how I look and with whom and where I hang out, it's comforting to know that I think of myself in America or elsewhere as more than that, these days, just because of who I am.

Two years ago, that wasn't the case.

I've found that people who come to India in search of some kind of personal revelation or salvation are often disappointed. The reality of the country and life is here very different than doing bikram yoga or watching a Bollywood film in the States.

As I am almost about to leave, I'm very reflective these days. When I decided to move to India, I didn't come explicitly with the goal in mind of "finding myself." Rather, I came for a career change. And it's definitely been that: I have both the desire and the credentials to go forward with a career in international development.

But I will be ever-so-grateful to India for the other side of development, you know, the one as a person. How strange that moving here is what I needed to grow up, to forgive and forget, to get past myself, to stop worrying, to live for today, to not hate myself anymore.

People ask me if I'd consider going to another country after India. And my response, which surprises even me, is "probably not." Maybe Taiwan or China, given my background. But it's either the States, because it's my home, or else back to India. This country has just so much color and flavor and I have barely scratched the surface in my two years here. But mostly it's that I can never see myself loving another country as much as I have this one, nor even wanting to try. India's given me too much.

snow patrol - chocolate

this could be the very minute
i'm aware i'm alive
all these places feel like home

I gave my formal notice at my job: my last day will be Aug 28. My visa is good until the end of October, however, so I might stick around and be a bum for two months after finishing work... I haven't decided yet.

I've accumulated a lot of junk -- far more clothes than I'll ever need (I have knee-high boots, goodness knows why, and what will I do with all those salwar kameez back home?) And as I am clearing it all out to figure out what stays and what comes home with me --

More than anything else, I want to take back the "fuck it" attitude.

India's taught me that it's going to be okay in the end -- or if it's not going to be okay, there's nothing I can do about it. I can ride sidesaddle on a motorcyle without a helmet, multiple times, and nothing will happen -- but then an acquaintance stopped at the side of a road will get his legs broken when a car runs into a motorcycle which runs into him.

I realized a couple of weeks ago, while singing along to the music in a cafe as I frequently do now, that I never would have done such a thing back in the States. Well, why the hell not? What do I have to lose?

When everyone is staring at you anyway, when you are always a freak show no matter what you do, you just start to enjoy it, enjoy the freedom of not really caring. And over that time, that freedom turns into assertiveness and confidence.

These days, if someone does something I dislike, I am incredibly blunt in correcting that person immediately. I am getting better, though I still need to work on it, at giving feedback to folk with the assumption that they just didn't know that some kind of adjustment or correction needs to be made, and that we should work together to figure out what that adjustment is.

So I'm going back to a country where most interviewers will likely not believe any of my stories about my current job because they honestly could never happen in the States. I have no job, no plan, no boyfriend, no clear future and will turn 30 in a year-and-a-half.

Oh well. Fuck it.

I could focus on what I don't have, but why? It's much more fun to focus on what I want. I want to sing along to songs at cafes, so I will. I want to be ripped off less, so I bargain. I want to get my juice with ice and I want to sit in a booth instead of the uncomfortable chairs at a restaurant, so I ask.

At work, I want a certain level of quality from my staff, so I demand it. With my friends, I want them to understand me as clearly as I am, so I am blunt with them, too, even when it might hurt a bit.

It all works out in the end somehow. And if it doesn't, there's nothing I can do about it.