From Junglee Billi to Agent Parrish: The rise and rise of Priyanka Chopra

Published in TOI Online on October 12, 2015

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/random-harvest/from-junglee-billi-to-agent-parrish-the-rise-and-rise-of-priyanka-chopra/

Okay, she always had a hot bod. From her callow Miss India days in 2000 to her Junglee Billi avatar in Don 2 to various other films that sank or swam as she skyrocketed her way to become a Bollywood A-lister, Priyanka Chopra has always been a sizzler.

And, boy, does she sizzle in ‘Quantico’, ABC’s brand new series on US television that’s airing in India as well. Chopra, who plays the lead role of a rookie FBI agent, cuts a whiplash figure — think drop-dead sexy meets kickass sang-froid. Her fringe is impudent, her cleavage cheeky, her fitness formidable and, heck, she even pulls off the sex-in-the-car-with-a-stranger scene with a bang (no pun intended).

The narrative jump-cuts alternately from Agent Parrish’s days at FBI training facility Quantico, to nine months later when she’s on the run, accused of having executed the worst terror attack on New York since 9/11. She has to prove she’s been framed before they get to her with seemingly irrefutable evidence of her guilt.

In the two episodes that have aired so far, Chopra looks totally on top of her role — summoning the cool sassiness of a brilliant trainee and the desperate inventiveness of a fugitive with equal elan. Okay, her Yankee accent slips occasionally, but that too is fine as her character — of Indian and American parentage — is supposed to have spent 10 years in India before she decided to return to the US.

Priyanka Chopra has, of course,  been growing as an actress for some years now. After a string of forgettable roles in films where she was present chiefly for her glam factor rather than her histrionic prowess, Chopra impressed with fine performances in movies like Fashion (where she played a supermodel), Barfi (where she played an autistic woman) and, of course, Mary Kom (her bravura turn as India’s iconic female pugilist).

But her role in ‘Quantico’, an American TV series in the same genre as the hugely popular ‘Homeland’, is not just a personal milestone. It’s a game-changing moment as Chopra has become the first Indian star to get a lead role in a mainstream American network television show. She is also the first south Asian to accomplish that feat, signalling a more racially inclusive trend in the global entertainment industry. What’s more, if she clicks, and ‘Quantico’ spins on for many more seasons, who knows, Chopra may become Bollywood’s first big-ticket actor to morph into a true crossover star, one who features in blockbusters at home and abroad.

To be sure, Indian actors have been crossing over for years. Om Puri was the pioneer, with films like ‘East Is East’, ‘My Son the Fanatic’, ‘City of Joy’, ‘Wolf’, and so on — not to speak of that recent little gem called ‘Hundred Foot Journey’. Kabir Bedi, a magnificent hunk in his younger days, did a ‘Sandokan’ and an ‘Octopussy’; Nasiruddin Shah took an international twirl in ‘The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’. Aishwarya Rai has starred in several foreign productions like ‘Bride and Prejudice’, ‘The Pink Panther’ and ‘Mistress of Spices’.

Others have breached the acting sound barrier too. After Anil Kapoor’s star turn in Danny Boyle’s ‘Slumdog Millionaire’, he bagged a role in the TV series ’24’ and a blink-and-miss outing in ‘Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol’; Freida Pinto, another Slumdog star, has acted in Hollywood productions such as Woody Allen’s ‘You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger’ and ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’;  Kunal Nayyar plays astrophysicist Raj Koothrappalli in the comedy series ‘Big Bang Theory’; Nimrat Kaur of ‘Lunchbox’ fame, was impressive in the last season of ‘Homeland’.

However, Om Puri has always been cast in a typically “Indian” identity, Aishwarya Rai hasn’t followed through on her international career, and let’s face it, Freida Pinto simply doesn’t have the star quality to break into the real big league.

Bollywood biggies are usually of the view that doing a small role on the international stage is beneath them, that it would sully their larger-than-life image at home. Shah Rukh Khan was once offered a marginal role in a Bond movie. He saw no good reason to take it when he was straddling Indian cinema like a colossus. Amitabh Bachchan did not act in a foreign production until recently, when we saw him as Jay Gatsby’s venal Svengali, Meyer Wolfsheim, in Baz Luhrmann’s ‘The Great Gatsby. But Bachchan was quick to clarify that this was most definitely not his international “debut”. It was just a one-off role that he did for Luhrmann, he said.

Evidently, Priyanka Chopra, though she is among the highest paid actresses in India today, has no such considerations weighing her down. Indeed, she has been quite upfront about wanting to go international — the launch of her musical career in 2012, with singles in collaboration with the lead singer of Black Eyed Peas and with Pit Bull, is a testament to that. (She looks gorgeous in the videos, though the songs are nothing to write home about.)

The great thing about Priyanka Chopra is that she doesn’t just want to be a global star — she’s got the commitment, the drive, and the pizzaz to be one. ‘Quantico’ marks her emphatic arrival on the international stage.

Now let’s see what she makes of it.

Murder she wrote: Agatha Christie at 125

Published in TOI Online on September 14, 2015

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/random-harvest/murder-she-wrote-agatha-christie-at-125/

Agatha Christie and I go back a long way. I discovered some of her murder mysteries in my mother’s collection of books not long after I had outgrown Enid Blytons. They were my first “grown-up” books and from there the adult-read barrier was quickly and exhilaratingly breached. There was a time when, as a pre-teen, I was devouring Amar Chitra Kathas, Agatha Christies and James Hadley Chases with equal gusto.

But while I never returned to the ACKs, and rarely to the Hadley Chases, Christie has stayed with me for life. On the way I have enjoyed the works of many other writers of crime fiction – from Edgar Allan Poe to Arthur Conan Doyle, from Raymond Chandler to P.D James, from Ruth Rendell to Ian Rankin to Stieg Larsson…I have gone from G.K. Chesterton’s gentle Father Brown to the hard-boiled machismo of Chandler’s Philip Marlowe to Rankin’s self-loathing, hard-drinking Edinburgh cop John Rebus. But when it comes to whodunits, Christie and her super sleuths — the fastidious Belgian Hercule Poirot with his egg-shaped head and luxuriant moustache and the apparently vague but sharp-as-a-needle Miss Marple — have always been up there for me.

Evidently, I am not alone in my steadfast fanhood. Agatha Christie, who was born 125 years ago on September 15, 1890, in Torquay, England, has sold more than 2 billion copies of her books worldwide. HarperCollins, her publishers, say that about a million copies of her 66 novels are sold annually in countries where English books are read. She is staggeringly popular in India. And according to some estimates, in terms of numbers, the sales of her books stand next only to Shakespeare and The Bible. In other words, Christie, who died in 1976, is far and away the biggest selling English novelist of all time.

So what accounts for her enduring appeal? After all, critics have routinely dissed her plots, her prose, her characterisation, and her writing style as way too simplistic. Her murder mysteries and their denouement – with Poirot or Miss Marple or Tommy and Tuppence Beresford explicating the crime and exposing the criminal from amongst the group of suspects gathered around – have been mocked as formulaic. Indeed, if you want to be seen as an aficionado of crime fiction, you’d be sneered at if you declared your admiration for the hugely popular Agatha Christie.

There is no denying that Christie’s murder stories have her signature set pieces and stereotypes. But the best of them – The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Nemesis, Death on the Nile, Murder on the Orient Express, Towards Zero, A Murder is Announced, Five Little Pigs, And Then There Were None, to name just a few – are not just thumping good mysteries that’re guaranteed to make your little grey cells come a cropper. They also offer astute glimpses into the complexity of human nature coming to grips with a changing world. Characters come alive — often with astonishing economy of words. A Marina Gregg in The Mirror Cracked from Side to Side or a Jacqueline de Bellefort in Death on the Nile or an Amyas Crale in Five Little Pigs live with you long after they’ve died, and you’re done with the book.

Christie’s first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was published in 1920. It also marked the debut of Hercule Poirot, who was an almost instant hit with his fussy ways and his endearing Franglais. Apparently in her later years Christie grew very tired of Poirot and once called him a “detestable, bombastic, tiresome, ego-centric little creep”. She killed him off too in The Curtain, Poirot’s Last Case, much like Conan Doyle did his Holmes. But like the older crime writer, she too had to revive her detective on popular demand.

In 1926 Christie went missing for 10 days after a fight with her adulterous husband. (Subsequently they divorced and Christie married archaeologist Max Mallowan.) Some said she had suffered a bout of amnesia, others that she had staged her own disappearance.

But Christie was never destined to disappear. Not then. And certainly not now, as the world celebrates her 125th birth anniversary on September 15.

From heir to eternity: Letter from one prince to another

Published in TOI Online on September 10, 2015

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/random-harvest/from-heir-to-eternity-letter-from-one-prince-to-another/

 

Dear Charlie Bhai,

Congrats on your mother becoming the longest serving monarch of your country. It’s an occasion of joy, but I also feel your pain, bro. After all, you’ve been waiting in the wings for years to ascend the throne. I am told that come November, you too will hit an important milestone – you’ll become the oldest heir apparent in your country’s glorious history.

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles. (Reuters/Russell Cheyne)

My situation is slightly different. For one thing, I am young — a mere stripling of 45 compared to your venerable 66. But I too have been an heir in the role of a spare for way too long. Did you know that my Mom has reigned as president of our party (in our family lexicon, party and country are one and the same) for the longest time in its 125-year history?

Quite an achievement, huh? I’m proud of that, I really am. Besides, where would I be without my Mom to handhold me? I can’t count the number of times we have sat with our bowls of pasta at dinner and Mom has instructed me in the game of thrones of politics. In the early days she used to be very pro-silence. Just keep mum and look inscrutable and no one will catch on that you are clueless, she would tell me.

But recently, especially after a motormouth Usurper has got his hands on the country, she has… ah…what’s that word? … recalibrated her approach. Now she tells me to be as aggressive and in-your-face as possible. She too has gone all feisty and aggro – she called the Usurper “hawabaaz” the other day. Thought that was a pretty good line, actually. Must remember to congratulate her speech writer.

But I digress. The thing is – and I say this to you because you’ll understand – a queen should know when to step aside for her son and heir. For months people have been expecting Mom to abdicate in my favour. Yet at a recent meeting of our royal court it was decided that she would continue to rule. The decision was really Mom’s – those courtiers do what she tells them. Mom and I had discussed it of course, but how could I kick up a fuss once she had made up her mind to hang on to the throne?

Sounds familiar?

That’s why I’m writing to you, Charlie Bhai. We have so much in common! Like you, I too want to revamp the monarchy once I become king. I have big plans – I want a complete organisational reboot, throw out the deadwood, inject new blood and so on. Build my A-Team, y’know. Like you, I am also totally pro-farmer. Heck, I’ve cried myself hoarse in Parliament protesting against the Usurper’s anti-farmer policies!

Again, like you, I have a penchant for theories that fox people of normal intelligence. I’ve heard that you talk to plants. Must be pretty interesting. Unfortunately, when I talk to my subjects (or people who ought to be my subjects), they just don’t get it. When I said something really deep like “Poverty is just a state of mind. It does not mean scarcity of food, money or material things. If one possesses self-confidence then we can overcome poverty” — they all jumped on me.

And I don’t even want to be reminded of my “escape velocity” quote. It was profound, even if I say so myself, and they failed completely to appreciate it.

But despite the similarity of our situations, I have to admit that in some ways I am worse off than you. I am told 70 per cent of your countrymen (and women, one might add, because I think women’s empowerment is very important) want the monarchy to continue. That’s terrific, bro!

Unfortunately, in my country our monarchy has not been built into the Constitution. Even though we are the royal family, we have to contest this hideous thing called elections. And would you believe it, in the 2014 polls it seemed most people actually wanted to do away with our dynasty. Our party got the drubbing of its life and managed to get just 44 seats in a 545-seat Parliament.

You do see that it falls to me to restore our family honour and reinstate the majesty of our crown? But how do I do that if Mom refuses to hand over the reins of power to me?

It’s (bleep)ing depressing, bro. Especially since everyone knows I’ve led a pretty dull life otherwise. Look at you – you married a beautiful woman, you cheated on her, she cheated on you, you divorced, she died, you married again – albeit, er, a not so beautiful woman this time. That’s a lot of excitement, even if you haven’t managed to be king. As for me, I’m pretty much a confirmed bachelor now. (By the way, bachelors tend to do well in Indian politics, but so far, my single status hasn’t worked for me.) If I so much as want a little downtime and go off on a holiday, I am mocked bitterly.

It’s just not fair.

So, don’t you fret Charlie Bhai. Okay, so you may be too doddering to be the king you want to be by the time you ascend the throne. But count your blessings, man. Let’s take comfort from each other. You are not alone in this.

Yours affectionately,

R

 

Bela Sheshe: A Review

A divorce after decades of marriage is usually a shocking affair. Especially for the couple’s grown-up children who cannot fathom why Mom and Dad, after living in relative harmony — or perfectly workable disharmony — for years and years, want to split up in the autumn of their lives.

In the West, it’s a pretty common phenomenon now. And it’s not unheard of in India either. Here too, thanks to rising individualism, longer lifespans and better health (and hence, expectations of new love interests), sometimes an elderly spouse wants to cut loose from an exhausted relationship and start afresh. 

The Bengali film Bela Sheshe (End of Day) could have been an exploration of this relatively new social trend. It could have examined the complex patchwork of emotions that leads an old man to want to divorce his devoted wife of 49 years. And for a while it promises to do just that. Biswanath Majumdar (Soumitra Chatterjee), the septuagenarian patriarch of a large family — one son, three daughters and several grandchildren — is a rich bookstore owner. His wife Arati (Swatilekha Sengupta) is the archetypal Indian grandmom — slow-moving, mountainous, one who makes pickles, spoils her grandchildren, watches television serials and tends to her husband’s every little need. When Biswanath summons his children to the family home on Bijaya Dashami day, everyone thinks he wants to read out his will. Instead, he calmly announces that he wishes to divorce his wife. And he refuses to entertain any questions as to his reasons for taking the decision.

At first Arati thinks it’s a joke. The children do not, as the legal notice for divorce is all too real. Biswanath’s silence is intriguing. Why does he want to separate from his wife, we wonder. Is there another woman involved? We have watched him look wistfully at videos of deep sea diving sent by his friend Patrick. Is it the call of the life unlived that makes his present one so intolerable?

However, from here on director Shiboprosad Mukherjee loses the plot stunningly. The high drama of Biswanath’s action and its possible subtexts (Boredom? Adultery? Loneliness? Cruelty?) fizzle out in an astounding barrage of hamming, melodrama, slapstick humour, implausible scenarios, pathetic characterisation and sickly sentimentality.

Biswanath’s oldest son and daughter, stricken by their father’s decision, weep copiously. Another daughter Milly (Rituparna Sengupta), who is having an extra-marital affair while her husband (who knows about it) looks tragic and continually plays a musical instrument, berates her father shrilly. When Biswanath asks her if she too does not believe in individual choice, the camera zooms in on her hand doing a little jig around the bedpost, presumably to convey the fact that she has been exercising her choice out of wedlock and hence is in some kind of inner turmoil.

Then there are the three sons-in-law who resort to absurd stratagems to get to the bottom of Biswanath’s motives. First, they get the old family major domo drunk to try and prise the “secret” out of him. (Laughter alert, by the way.) Then, after the court orders Biswanath and Arati to take some time off before coming to any final decision, and the whole family troops off to Santiniketan, they rig the old couple’s bedroom with hidden cameras.

Disgusting? Not at all. In director Mukherjee’s book, a bit of prurient spying on the goings-on in your old parents’ bedroom is patently therapeutic. The children, along with their respective spouses, hear Biswanath and Arati talk about their relationship, about whether they had love or merely stayed with each other — and spawned four kids — out of force of habit. Arati tells her husband that her love for him manifests itself in many-splendoured ways. For example, because his s**t is so smelly nowadays, she washes out the loo thoroughly afterwards as their daughter-in-law cannot stand the stink.

You do wonder why, in such a big houses as theirs, everyone needs to go to the same loo. But such questions are irrelevant when the main event is the smelliness of Biswanath’s s**t and Arati’s pleasurable willingness to scrape the loo clean of its malodorous remnants.

Anyway, the sight of their parents letting it all hang out makes the children shed more tears, and the resultant emotional upheaval soon begins to make their own dysfunctional relationships functional again. The son, who has been on the verge of an affair, bonds with his wife again; Milly leaves her lover and cleaves to her long-suffering husband; and the youngest daughter and her husband too talk about their flawed sex life.

Great. You’re glad they’re getting something out of their folks’ impending marital meltdown. Of course, Biswanath’s plaints against his wife are so flimsy (once she fed all the pabda fish he had brought to her cousins; another time, when they were newly-weds, she didn’t wear the anklet he had bought for her, and so on) that you wonder why on earth he wants a divorce. But writer Nandita Roy has more implausibility up her sleeve. Biswanath suddenly declares that he wants the divorce because he would like her to be independent and handle financial matters on her own. And, oh yes, he also wants to travel the world and needs the separation because he knows that she would never leave the family hearth to accompany him.

Er, surely, he could travel by himself — without having to divorce his wife?

Evidently not. And yet, no sooner does Biswanath begin to live on his own in Santiniketan, he starts to mutter Arati’s name in his sleep and misses her damnably, presumably because, as he tells her later, there is now no one to make his afternoon tea.

In truth, Bela Sheshe rings horribly false all the way. What could have been a sensitive and poignant portrayal of the loneliness and ennui that often engulfs a decades-old marriage, turns out to be a formulaic family melodrama bristling with anti-women messages.

The coming together of Satyajit Ray’s Ghare Baire pair, Soumitra Chatterjee and Swatilekha Sengupta, more than 30 years after that excellent film, has a certain emotional appeal for die-hard Bengalis. But it’s simply not enough to rescue this artificial, illogical and ill-made film.        

  

    

   

Of dogs, donkeys and fashion faux pas

As the NDA gets ready to form the government at the Centre, here’s a look at some of the more bizarre — and interesting — moments of Election 2014

And so the elections are done and dusted. The verdict is in and the numbers counted. For the last few months, politicians have held rallies, exhorted voters, distorted facts, promised the earth, and called each other names. They have thundered about the “low level of political discourse” in the country and the very next moment taken down that level a few notches more. They have been adorned with with megaton garlands and, on occasion, sprayed with ink. They have urged sanity, only to make insane comments. They have boasted and blustered — and sometimes been seriously flustered.

For us Indians at least, this was the greatest show on earth — a massive, heaving, drama-a-minute extravaganza that was way more riveting than a Bollywood action flick or the latest episode of a television soap. This was the world’s most populous democracy gyrating to throw up its next batch of rulers — and we just couldn’t get enough of it.

So before the blizzard of boring details about government formation pushes the excitement of Election 2014 into oblivion, here’s a reprise of some of its most memorable moments.

 

• 

ANIMAL FARM: We didn’t say it, they did. Our esteemed politicos likened each other to all manner of beasts — from monkeys to donkeys, from rats to dogs. When Narendra Modi came to campaign in her turf and threw a few well-directed barbs at her government’s performance, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee was livid enough to say that he was like Hanuman, going around torching places with his burning tail. Not content with comparing him to a monkey (albeit a god-like one), she called him a donkey (gadha) soon after.

Indeed, Modi seemed to arouse not just animosity amongst his opponents but lots of animal passion as well. Samajwadi leader Azam Khan called him “Kutte ke bachche ka bada bhai (elder brother of a puppy)”. That’s complicated, yes, but you get the picture.

The oh-so-pretty and well-spoken Priyanka Gandhi too forgot herself in the heat and dust of politics and exclaimed that the BJP were scampering like “panic-stricken rats”.

Hmm. What about cats? Or more aptly, foxes and vultures? Our political animals should remember to invoke these critters the next time they attack their foes.

 BLOOD AND GORE: They didn’t exactly kill each other. But the candidates painted visions of violence and bloodbath so delightfully extreme that they bordered on the ludicrous. Modi called the Congress’s hand symbol “Khooni panja” (bloody hand). Rahul Gandhi declared that 22,000 people would be killed if the BJP came to power. (Er, why 22,000 precisely?) Congressman Imran Masood boasted that he would chop Modi into little pieces if he tried to turn Uttar Pradesh into another Gujarat. Yet another Congress leader, K. Siddaramaiah, added to the high-pitched killer talk by calling Modi a “narahantak” (murderer). The Election Commission shot off a censure and a showcause in each case, but we all know what happens to those.

 NAKED TRUTH: The “model” code of conduct took on a whole new meaning when Meghna Patel, a little known model, posed in the nude with a “Vote for Narendra Modi” poster covering her fetching torso. An embarrassed BJP trotted out the usual stuff about how “vulgarity” was not the way to support either Modi or the party. Question is, what on earth was Poonam Pandey doing, allowing this Jenny-come-lately to steal her have-cause-will-strip mantra?

 

• 

WORST FASHION STATEMENT: No, it wasn’t that lotus brooch (cardboard? plastic? tin?) Narendra Modi and others have been sporting on their Nehru jackets. It wasn’t even those startling pink trousers — teamed with a tight white tee and blue blazer — that Robert Vadra wore when he and wife Priyanka went to cast their vote in Delhi. The worst fashion faux pas during Election 2014 was AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal’s attire — or the lack of it — when he took a dip in the Ganges in Varanasi. Wrapped in a checked green lungi, his bare chest in glorious display, and wet hair stuck to his head, Kejriwal generated, well, shock and awe. If there were a razzie for fashion statements this election season, it would have been his that day.

 

• 

PRINCES OF PRIME TIME: We didn’t have the US presidential style head-to-heads on prime time TV. But, hey, we are getting there. One channel, and its star anchor, interviewed both leaders of the principal political parties — Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi. RaGa went first and NaMo came on more than three months later. But the time lag didn’t really matter. We saw how each handled the questions, who faltered, who gave back as good as he got. We judged them as they appeared on our television screens. The nation did want to know how the two came across. And the nation did get some answers.

 

• 

LOOSE CANNONS: There were plenty of them in Election 2014. But some boomed louder than the rest. Take Bihar BJP leader Giriraj Singh. He came out with a chilling statement, saying that anyone who opposed Modi could go to Pakistan. As if that weren’t enough, last week, he ramped up his communal rhetoric and said all terrorists belonged to a particular community. Aam Aadmi Party’s glamour face, Shazia Ilmi, too thought it fit to exhort Muslims to be communal. Fortunately, social media outraging apart, few took them seriously.

• 

CARRY ON, KEJRI: Before we got ink on our fingers, Arvind Kejriwal got ink on his face. While he was on a roadshow in Varanasi, some people threw ink at him. Earlier, as he was coming out of the city’s Kashi Vishwanath temple, he also had eggs thrown at him. No doubt his opponents were gleeful at his discomfiture. But Kejriwal couldn’t care less. What’s a spatter of ink — or an egg or two — between a man and the country he wishes to save?

 LOVE, ACTUALLY: The election season got an extra dose of spice when intimate pictures of Congress general secretary Digvijaya Singh and Rajya Sabha TV journalist Amrita Rai went viral on the Net. At first Singh, 67, denied the affair with Rai who is 20 years his junior. Later, both confirmed it on Twitter. Cool. Or rather, hot.

MOST TASTELESS COMMENT: Samajwadi Party’s Nahad Hasan nailed that one. Attacking arch rival Bahujan Samaj Party leader Mayawati, Hasan said, “Mayawati sat on Modi’s lap… she will do so again. Both are unmarried.” Party boss Mulayam Singh Yadav contributed his tuppence to the muck: “Should I call her a spinster or a married woman or a sister,” he asked rhetorically. It was nasty and unfunny. And it was another day in the dog-eat-dog world of the Great Indian Election Season.

(Published in The Telegraph on 18.05.2014)

The Discovery of Delhi

So here I am — a Calcuttan transplanted into Delhi.

The last few weeks have sped by in a dizzying whirl. But I have “settled down”, as they say. I’ve figured out the shortest way to work, I’ve got the N Block and M Block Markets all sorted, I’ve chilled out at a high-end cafe, drinking pomegranate juice while flipping through a just-bought book. I’ve spent time and money, and, no doubt, some calories too, walking the length and breadth of uber-glitzy shopping malls. And I think I’m real close to understanding why there are FOUR markets in Chittaranjan Park within shouting distance of each other.

I’ve realised, of course, that the broad sweep of arterial roads and flyovers that had seemed so glamorous on my occasional trips to Delhi are often choked with miles of traffic. But, hey, this is the city with the most number of cars in India, and, honestly, isn’t there traffic everywhere?

On the whole, the move has been rather fun. 

But for some minor contretemps. 

Such as the time when the monkeys came in.

Now I know all you seasoned NCR types are shrugging and saying, er, so what? Monkeys are par for the course if you live in this part of the world. The modern day reps of the origin of our species roam freely here and sometimes they swing by and pay you a visit if the odd door or window is left open. Yeah, I know that now. But I didn’t know it THEN — not when I glanced towards my dining table one mellow April afternoon and witnessed the unbelievable sight of a monkey sitting on it.

It took me a few seconds to realise that this wasn’t some hallucinatory episode brought on by the stress of my migration. It was surreal. But it was happening. A big, sleek, tawny monkey was sitting on my dining table and coolly eating chapatis. The casserole which contained them lay upended. Further on, in the balcony, another furry primate sat placidly on the railing, perhaps waiting for its turn at the table.

At some point I found my voice and screamed. It was the hollow, feeble scream of one who knows she’s totally on the backfoot. The monkey looked at me contemptuously. Then it jumped off the table, slowly ambled out into the balcony and disappeared.

I walked to the balcony door with my heart in my mouth — I had heard that a monkey bite can give you rabies — and closed it. The other animal was still sitting on the railing. Seeing the door shut, it turned, raised its tail, flashed its ruddy bottom at me, and loped away.

A few minutes later a chap came to deliver the curtains I had ordered. I barely looked at my new curtains. Glad to be in the company of someone more up my evolutionary street, I shakily told him what had happened. He laughed and said understandingly, “Aapke wahan bandar nahin hongey.” Before he left, he warned me about leaving the balcony door open. “They may return. Usko yaad hoga ki yahaan roti mili thi.”

Needless to say, since then there has been a significant lack of ventilation in my new flat. The balcony door has largely remained shut.

***

Delhi has been revealing itself to me in other ways. I have found out, for example, that most workmen here have no qualms about glancing at your boobs while they discuss a carpentry job or the installation of a water filter. If one were to ask them why, (especially since one was perfectly decently dressed) they would probably echo George Mallory and say, “Because it’s there.”

Perhaps the unkindest cut has been the state of the roads within residential areas. I have cribbed eternally about Calcutta’s poor road surface. And marvelled at how smoothly one’s car glided over the capital’s wide, leafy avenues. It was therefore a shock to experience the cratered lanes inside residential blocks such as GK 1, Chittaranjan Park, Panchsheel Enclave and many others that look as though they’ve survived heavy shelling.

Et tu, Delhi?

Still, I’m now totally convinced that Delhi is a big city like no other. Big, as in big money, big power, big malls…Nothing seems to come in small measures here. And that includes groceries. I tried to buy a 1-kg packet of my favourite atta brand — which is what I do in Cal, because I find smaller quantities easier to store. The shop attendant at the neighbourhood grocery store looked pityingly at me. “Only 5-kg packs,” he snapped.

I looked elsewhere, but the 1-kg pack continued to remain elusive. Undaunted, I sallied forth into upmarket food stores. Amidst the imported pastas and prosciuttos, the Doritos and the dragon fruits, the humble atta was certainly there. But it was there in its hefty, 5-kg avatar. (I did find a 1-kg pack eventually. It was organic and ridiculously expensive, but I bought it in sheer relief.)

It’s not just the king-sized atta packs. In my smalltime Calcutta style, I’ve tried to buy a couple of Amul cheese cubes, only to be made to feel like a lowly Lilliputian and told that I needed to buy a pack of dozen cubes. And cream in a tetrapack? Why, if I wanted it, I would have to pick up a whole litre, of course. The 200ml variety is clearly meant for second class cities like Kolkata.

***

I always knew Delhi had its share of Bengalis. Indeed, if you stay in a Bong ghetto like Chittaranjan Park, it’s easy to forget that this is Delhi at all. But I had no idea that the city was pretty much overrun by my country cousins, and that you can’t throw a coin here without it landing some place close to a Bong. I’ve heard snatches of Bengali wherever I’ve been. Shopping for furniture, fabrics, food, clothes, in restaurants, cafes (yes, in places other than Chittaranjan Park) Bong words and phrases have wafted out at me: “Eta nebo? Na, na, eta bhalo na”, “O baba, deri hoey jachchhe”… And so on.

I must confess that I am exhibiting the alien’s reflex of wanting to get into the comfort zone of my community. So each time I hear my mother tongue spoken in unexpected places, I feel a thrill of delight. I look around to see who they are, and I have this mad urge to accost them and say brightly, “Oh, you’re Bengali! So am I!”

So, yeah, I’m getting to know Delhi. It’s been an interesting ride so far. But, please, God, I can definitely do without the monkey business!