Musings of a White Haired Teenager

July 23, 2021: Learning to drive again. Today I achieved an important thing. I passed the first part of the learner’s driver’s license test. I have been driving for a long time, but it is not the license that matters. It is the creation of a new narrative of life. New identities, new realities. The American drivers license along with the International Drivers Permit allows me to drive anywhere in the World, almost. And I have. Not only driven a lot but have driven badly a lot. Stopped by Polish police after leaving the memorial of a concentration camp, hauled over in Madrid for driving into a one-way street, nearly stopped by police for an incident in Singapore, crashed a car driving from Cardiff to London, numerous speeding tickets in different parts of the World most recently after entering the Bypass from the Hyatt connector out of Salt Lake City. A checkered driving records. But today was different. As the rain poured, I stood in the line making a new part of my life story. Talking

July 22, 2021: Portuguese salami tastes like friendship. It was a day when things changed rapidly. Two days ago my cousin had to be admitted to the hospital. It all worked as expected. Today a business meeting had to be cancelled because another flare up of an illness. This is normal. This is no longer a pandemic-driven life but life with the pandemic. Normal things are happening. Sudden illness. Bottle of wine. Portuguese salami washed down with wine and topped off with home-made egg roll. Late evening phone calls with familiar voices. Advising students working on a master’s degree. Meeting about work. The real comes to a hard stop at 9 pm. Few people venture out. The police may stop and slap a fine. The wine needs to be finished by 8:45 pm. Gatherings moved over to lunch at the club, not the extended evenings because everything must wrap up, and the cars must be parked by 9 pm. I have gone out occasionally after the witching hour and the roads would be deserted. The city shuts down.

July 21, 2021: My workspace is not a place. From the beginning of the pandemic I retreated to holes to work. There are no windows there. There is no outside light there. There is only entrance and one exit. The big screen wall can show me the outside world through strategically placed cameras. The front yard, the back yard the camera at Yellowstone, the Redondo Beach, and the Big Ben. I do not have to move from one chair, my background is blurred out, I stay as a face on the screen. I have created two such workspaces. No outside light comes in, everything is controlled by a series of computers that reminds me of meetings and classes and gatherings with the gentle sound of Tchaikovsky. In each of these spaces time ceases to exist because time and light are connected. The sun. The night. The lightnings. They all disappear in these spaces. The large projection on the walls take me to the places I want to visit. The deer in the front yard triggers an alarm and I can look out. A catastrophi

July 20, 2021: The sounds of the night keep me awake. I was planning on going to bed. It had been a long and busy day. With the pandemic really retreated into the back of the collective consciousness and the mask, albeit used incorrectly, has become standard wear for most people, other things are happening. Even the privately provided, a little expensive, vaccines are available. I was with a person who received the vaccine at a private clinic in the morning and it took all of a coffee time. In and out. Done. With this, other activities are becoming possible, and there is a sense that we can perhaps plan for a future where things will go on with the disease also being a part of everyday life. This is what everyone seems to believe. As long as it is manageable it is tolerable. As long as we accept there will be deaths, like other diseases we can live with it. It seems like a combination of preventive behavior such as masking, management of the sick with medicines, and acceptance that thi

July 19, 2021: I have fallen in love again. With the city. When you look at the much-maligned city just the right way, you see its beauty. Driving down Casuarina Avenue, you can stop, breathe, watch the tall building. There is no dome on top like the Wachovia building. Or is it the Wells Fargo building? The horses grazing. The dark clouds of monsoon looming up. The rain came after I was on Broadway. As I drove past the Municipality Office on my left the visibility was down to zero. City Center was a haze. As I parked in front of my house, the newly tarred street looked smooth. Earlier, driving down what we knew to be Red Road, now re-named in a more patriotic way, I stopped the car and stepped outside. The air was heavy with the impending rain, and the dark clouds that only happens with the monsoon in the city hung over the large open space that offered a perfect view of the skyline of the old and new buildings in the distance, now interrupted by the needle of a building that seems to

July 18, 2021: The networks make who you are. One of the things I learnt from the pandemic is to get out of the narrow space that I had built for me with high mental blocks and the real walls that slotted me into one place. We must remain there, I was told, by no one, but was internalized. Convention. Then the walls closed in and the space became the basement the screened porch. Those are the unmasked limit. I noted the frustration building up. No one to talk to. No one to connect with. Because we have been taught to look t life through the lens of place. Then WhatsApp happened. What was merely a side show among many tools began to take on life. I invoked the system to teach when we had to “pivot” in the March of 2020. All of a sudden it was no longer just another tool, but the central tool before other tools were adopted to live with the pandemic. COVID-19 brought video conferencing to me in a way that was only a science fiction. And the networks started. I realized that I had built t

July 17, 2021: The rains came again today. With a ferocity that seemed to be reminiscent of a Biblical flood. One that was, however, localized and while my bondhu and I were partly drenched as we ran to the car after the bulk of the deluge was over. The canopy at the City Center offers protection from the rain, but the noise of the rain falling on the canopy was a terrifying sound as my friend sipped on masala tea and we reminisced about the days gone by. Memories with bondhus, the ones that were and the ones that we are making. New experiences, new feelings, new bonds. Things I had never thought could happen were happening. As I drove to Park Street, yes, I drove myself. I hear this from many of the people whose comfort remains in driving in lane – “do you actually drive in Calcutta?” And as a close bondhu, sitting next to me on one such drive, almost shrieked as I passed the bus with millimeters between the vehicles, I realized I am truly where I belong. Driving in Calcutta is perhap