Newsday OpEd- pieces by yours truly

http://www.newsday.com/opinion/oped/expressway-suddenly-trapped-in-the-deluge-1.9061603
http://www.newsday.com/opinion/oped/a-personal-memory-of-the-9-11-tragedy-expressway-1.9270827
http://www.newsday.com/opinion/oped/for-immigrants-traditions-old-and-new-expressway-1.9517841 Also in print on 10/19/14)
http://www.newsday.com/opinion/oped/america-must-keep-striving-for-greatness-expressway-1.9595946


Cioa!

R.

Birthdays, Superstitions, Dad

December 25 is a very important day for me not because it's Christmas but because it is my late father's birthday.  In 2010, in his absence, I still planned on celebrating his birthday in my home as a guest I was expecting that day also shared my father's birthday. The guest, my sister's mother-in-law was born the same year, and same day as my father.

She, her older son and his wife were to be our guests on Saturday. I got busy getting ready on Friday. I planned the menu and went to the stores to purchase the various items I needed to prepare the feast. I was at BJ's to pick up a few items when my cell phone rang. I answered and my son on the other end urged me to get back home right away. He had received a call from my aunt in India that my father had taken ill and that I must go to India immediately. As soon as I hung up, my phone rang again and it was my sister younger than I by ten years and change. She was sobbing. I calmed her down and returned home asap. I phoned the guests I was expecting on Saturday and informed them that the next day's party was cancelled.  Next, I went on the Internet and scouted for a plane ticket to India. All I found was a business class on Qatar Airlines leaving JFK that night at 11:20 p.m. I booked immediately and got ready for my trip. I was allowed two carry-on's and so I packed two carry-on's. I didn’t bother about a check in. These days I lug only a carry-on anyway.

As a business class passenger I had access to the VIP lounge at the airport and my two sons and husband accompanied me into the lounge and enjoyed the buffet dinner. We talked and joked around and I felt convinced that there was no way bad news awaited me in India given the joie de vivre of the present moment.

Once I got on the plane and the pampering reserved for the non-economy passengers began I kept feeling that an anti-climax ending awaited me in India. I poured my heart out to the kindly passenger a burly man also of Indian descent. He assured me that my father would be all right. I chanted all the religious chants I knew even as the knot in my stomach tightened and the lump in my throat refused to clear. I found even the pampering by the flight attendant, a handsome young man, annoying. I asked him to just leave me alone.

After nearly 12 hours, we landed in Doha, Qatar to change flights. Again, as a business class passenger, I had access to a shower. I freshened up as I prayed. Afterwards, I realized I also could access my email in the facility provided by the airline. I took advantage of this. One email's subject line read: your father.

As I opened it, I kept hoping the news was good. It wasn't. I just broke down. I have no idea how made it back to the plane or climbed all those steps leading to the cabin carrying my two carry-on's. The very first flight attendant I encountered I communicated my story between tears and later to a young passenger next to me, an Indian student returning home for vacation from the US. I felt ashamed I was pouring my heart out to strangers but I had to. Or else I would have exploded from the kind of sorrow I had never experienced before. They all understood and were kind and consoling.

Four hours later, on December 26, 5:00 a.m., I was met at the airport in India by my cousin. He had lost his own parents recently, and before him I was calmer even as I hoped that the email he had sent bore incorrect news.  When I got to the house where my father's body was encased in a frigid glass box I was speechless. Nobody was crying. The mood, of course, was somber. As I circled the box I spoke to my father silently. “What did you gain by refusing to return to the US per my request asap.” He looked handsome, healthy (what a joke!) and taller than he was when alive and only asleep not dead.

My mother, always a philosophical person who also had been in depression since 2006 January was eager to have the body removed asap. Guided by the priest, I carried out some minor rituals and the body was gently placed on a palm frond bed woven fresh by the priests then and there and carried away in a van for cremation.  Dad had died within two hours after turning 81 on the previous day, which was also his birthday. Later, my research showed that Shakespeare too had died on his birthday. It was the month of April and I wondered if it was Easter.

I blamed myself for my father's death. Had I not gone to Europe in October 2010, my father would not have left for India though my suggestion to him was to stay in Boston with a family friend for ten days while I was away. Anyway, as soon as I returned from Europe in November, I did insist that I'd bring him and my mother back to Oceanside where he was getting excellent medical care and every time he went into emergency he returned safe and sound. But he wanted to wait till March when the weather got a bit warmer. March never came.

My biggest fear when he chose to go to India in October was if something serious happened to him he might not survive. For extreme health issues, I felt that the US would have been the right place for him. I think I was right. But in this case, right is not what I wanted to be. The only saving grace, I kept hearing from relatives that he was very happy those few weeks he was there. I wasn't surprised because over the re he felt so much more independent than in the US.

For whatever reason, for many years now, even before my father's passing on his birthday, I feel superstitious about birthdays. Normally the adventurous kind, however, on September 10, 2001 when I encountered extreme weather on the boardwalk in Long Beach where during warm days we go for a walk, I wanted to return home pronto. The next day, 9/11, was my husband's birthday.

Now, last week, when my mother had a heart failure and was admitted to the hospital, I felt terribly pessimistic. Why? Because March 6 was her birthday. Thank my lucky stars, that day, just like I wanted, I took a bouquet of some choice flowers for her and right now she's recovering at the south shore health center, a rehab facility in a neighboring town. No matter, I will continue to be superstitious about birthdays.

Love you, dad!

 Ciao!

 

The Destructive Squirrel

It was December 2009 and winter hadn’t quite arrived yet. At least I wasn’t ready yet. My animal instinct wasn’t as sharp as I wish it had been. Had it been, then I could have stopped a crime from happening. But I did catch the criminal red handed. Oh, with what impunity he helped himself to what was mine.

I hadn’t yet put away the cushions on my deck chairs because it wasn’t quite winter yet and at least in my mind this was a way to prolong summer. At first it wasn’t clear who had ruined one of these cushions. A small crater in the middle of one of them really stumped me for answers. Normally, I am a good sleuth. Not this time. Anyway, for now, I just flipped the damaged cushion over because we could still use it. I felt puzzled as to how the damage had occurred. And then I caught the criminal red handed. He is the cutest creature God has created and probably God’s favorite. Nothing that this fellow needs is not provided for him. Right now he needed the stuffing that was the cushion. Once he began clawing the cushion for the fluffy, featherweight, cloud-like stuffing the only sensible thing for me to do was to videotape the evidence. I captured about 5-and-half minutes of pure destruction. His stiff bushy tail straight up in the air like a cleaning brush his "motorized" paws began to gather up the stuffing and neatly bundled the collected amount into a ball and tucked it under his chin. Then he hopped off on to the deck railing and then after balancing himself and securing further the ball under its chin he hopped on to the tree branch and then the fence and then disappeared. He made several such trips, each time, packing more under his chin and disappearing over the fence. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what he was up to. He was lining his nest for winter. Until he revealed it to me, I didn't even know about the stuffing in the cushion.

The saying “the universe provides” could not have rung more true than right this minute. My hard earned money of about $125 had just now been given away to a freeloading though enterprising squirrel. I could have tried to save the four cushions but all had been damaged and at least three beyond redemption.

So instead of crying over spilt milk I did what any sensible person would do. I uploaded the video on YouTube with the note how badly it snowed just two days later. Mr. Squirrel, a responsible provider, on his own, bless his animal instinct, must have known about the upcoming snow storm or he must have paid closer attention to the TV or radio or the Internet weather forecast. You too can witness this squirrel’s ingenuity and let this be one cautionary tale for you, too.  Here is the address:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zt78B9RMhmM

Ciao!

Fathers and daughters

There is a hole in my heart. A hole I want filled but possibly this is an un-fulfill-able wish. It gets bigger as December 25 approaches. No doctor can fix the problem.

I hear that If you don't get what you want, often it means you didn't want it badly enough. In light of my wish I wanted to test this theory. A new Google invention, the Time Reverser reverses and freezes time at the point where one wants time to stop and then it goes forward once again, per one's instruction. I felt that I had hit the jackpot. I became convinced that this would be the tool that would close the hole in my heart. So, on Black Friday, I went and got myself this new gadget from a store nearby. It is a convoluted contraption of bright plastic possibly created by a 3-D printer. Once I got it, I couldn't wait to open it and use it and see if it did close the hole in my heart.

As soon as I returned to my silent home, quietly, I opened the box, took out the Time Reverser and the manual and assembled the various parts and voila, there it was an imposing structure that beckoned me to make my wish come true. The manual instructed that only one pivotal event could be reversed and that if I made a mistake and tried the wrong event, and retried, things could go haywire and time could begin to speed forward at a pace that would be hard to keep up with and this would naturally hasten my own end. Heeding this dire warning, I got a piece of paper from the waste basket and got a pencil with an eraser and began jotting down the reverse path I wanted to take to get to that all-important pivotal event. It was a no-brainer.  A decision made in August 2010 would be this precise point I would reverse time to because this was when, out of the blue, I began to look at possible vacation spots to consider for the fall. Ultimately, this decision made the future course of events to spiral out of control and create the hole in my heart.

Barcelona in fall felt irresistible. The vacation was a cruise that left from this jewel of a city and took us to Italy and Greece with stopovers in Monaco and then on our way back at Majorca.  Things just came together.  This was when I discovered Waytostay.com the international agency that booked elegant short stay apartments for travelers. I booked our trip and was really excited about it. Our long time friends Raj and Suma were to spend a few days with my husband and me in Barcelona and together the four of us were to go on short trips to the nearby Montserrat and other places locally before Raj and Suma returned to the US. I was to leave on this vacation on October 20.

Soon after all was in place, my father who had a few health issues like having to go for dialysis three times a week, suddenly took ill and had to be admitted to emergency. Ultimately, he returned home feeling healthier than ever and once again was his own energizer bunny self. I breathed a sigh of relief. Things were hopping along all right but within weeks, once again, my dad had to be taken to emergency and once again he returned home feeling good and looking like new. However, this time, I realized that I could not leave for Europe without finding a substitute for me while I was away. The best arrangement seemed to be to drive my parents to Boston where they would stay with a close family friend for ten days. I made the necessary calls and all logistics were taken care of, including identifying a place for dialysis. I felt better now. This is when my father proposed that he'd go to India instead. He did some quick research and found inexpensive air tickets and booked his tickets to leave for India on October 16. I felt nervous about this as I was afraid that in India he might not get the kind of medical attention he would in the U.S. So I made him promise that as soon as I returned from Europe I'd bring him and my mother back to the US. Now I felt better and after seeing my parents off on the 16th, per schedule I left for Barcelona on the 20th. After an exhilarating trip, when I returned I phoned my father and asked him when I could bring him back. He said that he'd like to wait till March as by then the weather would be warmer in New York. This made sense though I was still concerned about his health. For now, I phoned him. He sounded happy though dealing with my mother who has been in depression since early 2006 was not easy on him. There was nothing I could do about this and so I advised him to just stay focused on his health. Indeed, he was enjoying the warm weather, the proximity to his extended family, and the freedom of movement which was restricted in New York because of my constant supervision.

This tranquility was shattered on December 24. His birthday was December 25 and here I was in New York planning a celebration at my home as a relative was visiting whose birthday was also on the 25th. On Friday, December 24, my aunt called and said that I should go to India immediately as my father was  on a ventilator. I had spoken to him on the 23rd and yes, he did say that his potassium had shot up to 8.1.  He had eaten the wrong kinds of food offered to him by relatives who did not take his diet restrictions seriously. He just went along as he was that sort of a person.

I reached India on the 26th early morning and dad had died two hours after I had boarded the plane at 11:30 p.m. at JFK on the 24th night, already the 25th in India. The moment he completed 81 years on this earth he took his last breath.

I crank back Google's Time Reverser to August 2010 and guess whom I saw last night. It was no other than my energizer bunny dad with his signature broad smile that in no time filled up the hole in my heart. Indeed, if you really want something you just have to try real hard.  

Ciao!

Calendars, Timetables

A timetable is too binding for me. This is probably so for all free-spirited people. My psyche has a built-in clock and it needs no winding or battery and possibly it runs on solar power. My memory is excellent and I can remember my schedule, which is what a timetable keeps in an organized manner, with accuracy at all times. So, even the seductiveness of the modern gadgets escapes me. I never understood the need to scribble down every single detail of my known future activities on a calendar or an organizer to use a modern term. I’m more interested in the unknowable part of my future.

Having said I am not overly organized, I also envy people who are organized to a fault. Oh, how much envied those who even timed their babies’ birth to sync with the calendar. Let me explain. I have friends who wanted their kids to be born before the year ended, and labor was induced to make this happen if the baby took its own sweet time to be born. Often the reason behind this was, the kid to make the school cut-off date, which in most places is the last day of the year. Maybe if I too was diligent about recording everything on a calendar I too could have timed my children’s birth. I still managed to enroll my January and February born kids into a higher grade after they were tested and were certified as being ready though they had to go to a private K as the public schools are strict with respect to the Kindergarten.

For sure, one date I know that will be impossible to mark on a calendar is the date I will take my last breath on this earth. I don’t mean to sound morbid but a great deal of reality is morbid. Here is one proof. 

An acquaintance of mine is obsessive about recording everything on her wall calendar. I don’t know where else she duplicates these entries. From a distance her calendar looks ant-infested. I haven’t paid close attention as to what the entries are but I cannot imagine her calendar could be filled with important activities every single day of the week. She wasn’t even working anymore. Her profession used to be podiatry. She was my son’s classmate’s/possibly his soul mate’s mother. The fist time I met her was at my son’s and her daughter’s undergraduate college. We met but there was no instant connection and though a bit “fobbish,” she certainly came across as a nice person. Her daughter Shefa was a valedictorian while my son cruised along.

The next time I met Jawahara is the day I heard that Shefa had died in an accident in South America during her spring break. I heard this on April 1. My first reaction was, is someone playing April Fool’s on Jawahara and her family. Alas, this turned out to be not true.  As soon as I heard the news I rushed to Jawahara’s house as if she was my flesh and blood. I knew my son was close to her and him being out of town that day, I felt it my moral obligation to be near her. I had never seen a home plunged in such darkness. The lights shone bright but sorrow spoke the same language in every home regardless of the religion or customs practiced in that home. I had no words to console Jawahara, a fellow mother indescribably grief-stricken. Though she moaned like a slaughtered animal, I don’t think the reality of it all had yet struck her.  It’s not unusual for someone to not accept a loved one’s death until one sees the corpse. Even then you look for signs of life. I did when I saw my late father’s body laid out in an Ice box in the living room in my aunt’s house in India. The body was being preserved till I arrived from the US and then within a couple of hours it was carried to the crematorium.

Jawahara too wasn’t going to be convinced of her beautiful daughter’s tragic and untimely demise until the body was delivered to her.

After a few days, the family held an informal memorial for Shefa at her home before a more formal one at a church on a later date. This is when I noticed the calendar on the wall filled with activities, appointments, events and so on. This is when it struck me that that calendar could not have foreseen the day Shefa was to be snatched away from her loved ones or did it but just kept it a secret considering what a horrible event it was going to be?

At the informal memorial, as I sat in the living room, a yearly calendar was being passed around.  I was told it had been created by Shefa as a gift to her parents. Every page of the calendar contained a picture of the angelic-looking Shefa surrounded by members of her extended family on her last trip in December to India. March 31 smiled back at her ominously from  the page across.

Good Girls and Bad Girls: Wanderlust

“Good girls go to heaven and bad girls everywhere” are part of the lyrics from the hit song “Wanderlust” by the Band The Weekend. I guess I get to go everywhere. I am really a gypsy at heart. So heaven can wait.

Though I’d love to visit every nook and corner of the world, yet when I step into an aircraft I turn into a chicken. I have no doubt that traveling by plane is the most unnatural way to go from one place to another. Cooped up in a small space like a caged animal and subject to the most foul smells and loud talking and most inconsiderate fellow passengers whose heads are practically in your lap when they lean back the seats in front of you is not my definition of fun. I’d rather lean back in my own chair on my deck and read Emily Dickinson’s, “There is no frigate like a book!” and be carried away by my imagination to every far away land there is. For good measure from time to time I’d glance at the Grand Canal twenty yards from my property and imagine it to be the Nile or the Danube or any other famous body of water that corresponds with the cuisine on hand.

These days, even before you leave home for any distant land, you can, thanks to Google Earth, virtually be there. So why must I subject myself to the indignities and inconveniences that travel entails? Millions of people do, however. The answer seems to be that virtual presence is not the same as the real deal. How does one smell the flora of a place on the computer or the television screen? How does one dip one’s toes in the river Amazon or hold an adorable sloth against one’s chest or nuzzle a dolphin’s bottle nose if one doesn't seek them out physically?

If one wants the direct experience of a place one needs to be standing on the native soil and breathing in the same air the natives do. There is really no substitute to savoring a place in person all your senses sated by the direct contact with every facet of the place. A book can be a frigate only up to a point. Sorry, Emily. Then again, you were a recluse. Or were you just too busy penning those timeless poems to be wasting your time traveling. Anyway, at least in my case, my boarding an actual frigate leads to material often worth a whole book. Not to mention the photos and videos these days to share with the entire world.

Would the modern world’s mobility and technological inventions have changed Emily’s perspective? And what a different take her contemporary Mark twain had on travel? “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts,” he declared. Often, I feel amused at the sight of people in public places where life in its many faceted splendor is happening right before their eyes yet they are lost in their books, or in today’s world more likely their smart phones or laptops. 

These days, before you leave for a place you can check it out as if you are already there and then when you return you revisit it as many times as you want in so many ways without leaving your home. How wonderful is that?

In March of 2012, I began my plans to visit Europe that May. Paris was to be our last stop. Because particularly in Paris it’s hard to find a place of your liking to stay easily, Paris is where I booked my apartment first, for three nights and four days using Waytostay.com. As the other pieces of my trip fell into place, I realized I needed a place to stay one more night at the beginning of my stay in Paris. The place I had booked was occupied that previous night. I was willing to book another place for that one night but wanted it close to my apartment. I used Google Earth and bingo, I found a room with a private bath at Le Montclaire Hostel across from my Waytostay.com apartment. I was thrilled. But this convenience of being close to my apartment came with more adventure than I had bargained for. My sleep was compromised to put it mildly. But the experience of hostel night life in middle age was still something to write home about. So was the unlimited breakfast buffet with fresh coffee and fresh orange juice and ooh lala, fresh croissant and a variety of jams in a quaint den-like basement setting and surrounded by youngsters from around the world lusting to wander in all ways possible.

Anyway, what’s travel without some adventure? When you plan a vacation all on your own with no travel agent to hold your hand, believe you me, you have more than your share of adventure. Sometimes enough to last a lifetime. You really need a gypsy’s un-moored DNA to withstand surprise-filled travel. 

Indeed, heaven can wait. I do plan to wander more once I get over my fear of flying. Until then I will curl up with Emily’s poems and call my own little Grand Canal across from my home the Grand Canal of Venice as I wolf down my spiced-up pasta.

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In the blink of an eye losing your wallet

At the promo price of $2.79/gallon, I buy more milk than I expected and so need one more bag. Once I am at the cash register, I transfer my stuff from the shopping cart to the counter, and handing over my credit card to the cashier, with her permission, I step out to grab a third bag from my car trunk. I am back in a jiffy making my way around a blond, slightly wobbly woman in a pastel (lavender was it?) pantsuit in the doorway, which, annoyingly, a few stacks of baskets that stand sentry at the entrance and a fruit stand on one side of the passageway itself have narrowed. I make a mental note of telling the cashier to widen the passageway by moving the baskets elsewhere. Something about the youngish looking middle-aged woman at the doorway, too, dressed to impress in her vintage clothing, makes an impression on my mind. For some reason, she doesn’t come across as a real shopper as she seems only to be studying the $1.99/pound cherries on the fruit stand.

Once I reach the register, I realize that my double-flapped, leather, checkbook-sized wallet I had held in my hand after handing over my credit card to the cashier is missing. Frantically, I look for it in the vicinity, run back to the trunk, check there and return dejected. Next, feeling stupid for not putting away my wallet in my pocket book, and thinking will I ever learn? I roll the cart out of the store, rest it against a lamp-post on the sidewalk, return to the car, and check the trunk again. Just then, my mind darts back to the wobbly woman at the doorway. Brushing past her, I might have dropped my wallet in the passageway and she might have picked it up. I leap toward the sidewalk. A few yards away weighed down to one side by a tote bag there she is, waddling away. “Miss,” I cry.

The woman stops and turns around as if a police command has been issued. Held up at above head level something black in an open position dangles from her left hand. Voila, it is my wallet! Lowering her hand and extending it and heading toward me, in a flustered voice, she says, “Uh, I was just about to figure out whom to return it to.”

“Oh, thank you so much,” I say and rush toward her and as I take the open wallet back, I notice my paper money gone. I have no qualms about instantly accusing the woman of stealing it. She protests, which is when, I notice a walking stick in her hand. Is she disabled? I wonder. Normally, a fighter in the face of perceived injustice, I also pick my battles. This was definitely a battle to be overlooked.

Looking ghostly (suddenly, she looks bleached head to toe; do I l strike her as a monster?), she drags, “You have your cards . . ..” 

Feeling guilty for calling, possibly, a disabled person a thief, yet not letting go completely yet, I persist, “You did take my cash, didn’t you? . . . Twenty three dollars.”

She protests again but I halt when she says, “I was at the store to find out if they take EBT cards.”

My heart sinks. Having seen at many stores, “EBT accepted here” I figure EBT is some kind of a welfare card. Still, like a woman possessed, I ask, “You took my money, didn’t you? . . . But, I guess you need that money.” Cheeky words, while still kind, substitute for any other possible action against her. I am a Scorpio and thus known for my stings. By now, I am by my car. I don’t care for the money anymore but I still wish the woman had admitted her guilt. Under the circumstances, stealing seems excusable but not lying. I am owed at least honesty from her. Being robbed, and then to be lied about it, feels like injury and insult in one punch.

All I hear is, “Do I look like someone who would do that?”

I yell back, “None of us look like who we really are.”

Before I get into my car, I stick my head into the store and ask, “What’s an EBT card?” The cashier tries explaining and says,

“Yes,” when I interject “It’s something the government gives out, right?”

Though it was ultimately my fault, I still feel lousy losing the money and calculate the number of gallons of milk I could have bought or any number of other things with it. Charity too enters my mind. The poetic justice in someone truly needy receiving manna from heaven does not escape me either.  However, for all this noble sentiment, this would be the last time I hold my wallet in my hand once its business being there is over.

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