Sesh Venugopal's Blog, page 3

The Boarding House

Some time ago I read a news story about a small house in Edison, New Jersey, where apparently there were so many people coming and going that the neighbors complained. It turned out that there were several Indian guys all living in that house, all professionals, all gainfully employed. My sense is they were huddling together not just to save money, but also to enjoy the warmth of companionship and mutual emotional support, much like what they might have done in India. The local authorities came down on them because the house had crossed the line from a respectable dwelling to a boarding house, or something of that sort.

These guys were not related to each other. What if this were a family of fifteen? Would the neighbors complain? Would the members have to disband? Is there a limit to how large a family can be if all the members lived together? If there was say a limit of five (mom, dad, two kids, and another thrown in as a bonus - have two, get one free), my grandparents’ house back in old Madras (current day Chennai in southern India) would certainly be totally in violation. As I remember, when us kids used to visit during the summer holidays, there would be at least twenty family members in this little house with a “hall” that could just about fit a pool table, a bedroom that was half the size of the hall, and an open courtyard that was bigger than both combined. In the evenings after the sun had set, I would lie on a pockmarked wooden bench in the courtyard, gazing up at the stars, and listening to our shortwave radio, with its magical ebb and flow. Radio Ceylon used to broadcast the popular Binaca Geet Mala which I would never ever miss, then there was the BBC World Service, and occasionally the Voice of America. Those summer vacations made for some of my best memories in life, not the least of which was because of the closeness and warmth of all my uncles and aunts and cousins. Having only four or five people in that house would have been an impoverishment beyond imagination.

The joint family is still well and alive in India. However, I haven’t seen anything even close to this in America, at least not in New Jersey. Still, I was surprised to read about the boarding house brouhaha. After living here all these years, if I could not understand why ten guys living together is a big deal, I imagine how these guys sharing the house must have felt. Puzzled, conflicted, angry at being embarrassed and shamed.

In the vein of cross-national and cross-cultural misunderstanding, I recall this story of four Indians who were new to America, being pulled up for speeding. As soon as they stopped the car, they piled out in a hurry because they thought staying inside would make the cop suspicious, only to be yelled at to get back in. At the time (many many years ago, I was still fresh off the boat), when I heard this from a friend, I was surprised. What’s the harm in getting out of the car, I thought. That’s what I would have done in India.

The Blind Spot - Kindle eBook

The Blind Spot - Kindle eBook:

My novel, published September 22.

Food for Thought

I like reading about food. Not the recipe book kind, but accounts of food and drink written in a broader setting. Such as a character in a novel (Perry Mason always had steak with lavish amounts of butter during his courtroom lunch breaks) , or in passing (hardship travelers eating whatever they can lay their hands on), or in a thematic takeoff (exploring a character’s state of mind through the food she eats), or in any other setting where the description of food is unusual or unexpected. When reading such accounts, sometimes I want to experience what the characters are experiencing, taste what they are tasting. At other times, I am totally turned off, never wanting to smell or taste that kind of food again. At times, I am both attracted and repelled, and sometimes, just plain nauseated.

In his collection of travel essays, The Bird Man and the Lap Dancer, Eric Hansen writes of Cooking with Madame Zoya. During the second world war, Zoya is a nurse in a Moscow army hospital which is captured by the Germans, and she is taken to a prisoner of war camp near Munich. After the war she moves to the US, gets married, and moves to an apartment on West 139th street in Manhattan. Hansen develops an unusual friendship with the elderly Madame Zoya, and visits her every month.

She teaches him to how make Russian dishes, and they drink vodka in preparation and to see the food on its way. “…pieces of prepared salted hairink”, “…blini…served them with melted butter, sour cream, caviar and a light sprinkling of fresh chives”, “…coulibiac (salmon baked with dill, chopped hard-boiled eggs, parsley and kasha in a flaky pastry dough), kotletki and bitotehki (chicken and meat cutlets), baklazhannia ikra (puree of eggplant), and vareneki and pelmini (two types of Russian ravioli)”, “…pashka, which is a type of type of moist cheesecake with fruit, eggs and vanilla”. I have never had Russian food like this before, and when I read this, I started looking for nearby Russian restaurants.

Reports of delectable foreign food is exciting, that of outlandish domestic food is intriguing. The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2002 is still my most favorite in the “Best American” series, fronted by Burkhard Bilger’s Braised Shank of Free-Range Possum. Mr. Bilger travels the south in search of old-world delicacies such as the free-range possum of the title (“…that feral, faintly glandular presence rising through the sauce”, turtle soup (“…a mixture of brine and fern and slumbering beast”), frog legs (“Tender and buttery, with a subtle, amphibian chew”) and other intriguing meats. I keep going back to this essay for its outrageous charm, although I am not sure I want to follow in Mr. Bilger’s footsteps.

A bit of bite adds a lot of zest. Here’s Paul Theroux writing in My Other Life. “…And in addition zere are fresh lobsters zis ivneen. Zay are not on ze meenue.” “‘Not real lobsters,’ Lady Max said, shivering as though insulted by the word. ‘They’re just these pathetic little discolored crayfish from Scotland.” Later, in the same book. “‘Wine then. A red - cabernet.’… I poured him a Beaujolais, defying him to object.” Following which, another character. “Then Burgess became preoccupied - finished his whiskey, spooned chopped banana, murmured the word ‘sambals’, and he did not look up as his hand moved crabwise towards his wine glass and his fingers found its stem and hoisted it.”

And sometimes, the food - the eating and vomiting of it - can be insidiously gut-wrenching. As in James Hall writing about The Vomiting Game. (Appearing in The Road Within, a collection of travelers’ tales.) “The blade emerged when I arrived. My lips touched hot, pungent goat hair. A jet of blood shot out…. I closed my eyes and tasted hot, salty liquid.” Then, a few minutes later, “…the sensation propelled me forward, over the ditch. A rush came, then another huge one. Goat’s blood poured out of me. Above the women ululated in celebration. The pitch of the people’s shouting rose sharply in reaction. I let go again. Blood and medicine. More cheers.”

Yesterday, I saw that deer family again. I imagined how the two little polka-dotted innocents must appear to a hungry lion.

Good enough to eat?

First steps

For some time I have been meaning to blog about something, anything. It seemed like everyone around me was doing it. But there were so many different things swimming in my head, I didn’t know what to pick. I loved to travel, I loved reading about travel to the point of obsession. I liked technology and computing, reading and writing, reading about writing. I was always thinking of ways to challenge myself, to do better than I had ever done before. But most of all I was caught up with finding my place in the world, literally and metaphorically.

About four years ago, I felt this urge to write a novel, a work of fiction. It came to me that perhaps my inability to express all the stuff that was in my head was because I was trying to put a structure around an inherently amorphous thing. And what better way to loosen up and let it all hang out than to create something from the imagination. No rules, let it flow. As long as it is somehow believable.

I finally finished my novel, and just last week self-published it for the Kindle. It’s up on Amazon, and the title is “The Blind Spot”. And so now I feel I have a legitimate excuse now to blog about stuff, explore in wider and deeper ways the many questions that arose as I wrote. Where does one belong in the world, what is the influence of culture, family, religion on one’s life, what happens when you are cut off from your origins, is it possible to outgrow your past and build a new life?

I am a transplant from India to America, and I can’t think of two cultures that are more unlike each other on the surface, yet there are hundreds of thousands of Indians in America who seem to be doing just fine so I wonder if culture is just wiring in the head that can be reworked. Relocation and growing new roots is as traumatic for a human as it is for a plant. Reading books written by other transplants—dislocated, uprooted, seeking a place in the world—is a curiosity and I find that while they may not live in the land of their ancestors, they all have different perspectives on their foreignness in the adopted country, different ways of coping with cultural clashes. 

Writers and readers are fascinated by stories, of course, and we are wired to learn by listening to them, or writing them. So I want to explore stories. I am personally drawn to tales of strange lands, people different than me, living novel lives, doing interesting things with their time. I like to hear about people who are multi-dimensional, who defy trends, who make their own path through life. I like to know about people who have dared to define success differently than the usual because that inspires me. I am hoping I can share these kinds of stories, and these kinds of lives in this blog.

So this blog is about exploring the idea of where we are at and where we want to be through stories. We’ll talk about books that dive deep into human emotions, desires, and ways of living, chat about travel, indulge in arm-chair philosophy, mess with amateur psychology and neuroscience, share thoughts about people doing out-of-the box stuff. It’s all about knowing yourself—where you are at—and finding yourself—where you want to be.