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(This post is a departure from my usual, lighter writing – it is the result of some introspection and a long discussion with my boss P. It was his suggestion that I journal my feelings – so I can explore myself some more. I just think that a lot of us often spend some time feeling like me…. Maybe you can understand!)
I am not proud of it – but I actually ran away from my life in India, when I came to Brisbane. For those of you who knew me while I was in India (which is probably just about every one who reads my blog – I have yet to attain levels of fame!) you would have a fair idea of the life that I used to lead while I was there.
In India, I was defined by my work – a somewhat quiet, hard working girl – totally engrossed in her life at the hotel. I remember having little time for family, leisure or even for myself in that period. I had wonderful ideas for change and no courage to implement them. I got easily discouraged by politics and resistance, was frustrated by my inability to spend time with my friends and family and felt empty at not having any balance in work and play.
And when I realised that I had problems, I waited for redemption. And I kept waiting – for someone to come and rescue me – but inevitably, no one came. And so I spent months in a suspended state of dissatisfaction and unhappiness, unsure of why exactly I felt unfulfilled and almost unworthy of the expectations that other people had of me. Running away seemed the easiest option, and I decided to take it.
And so, I willingly threw myself back into the comfort of student life – albeit in an alien environment. Moving to Brisbane demanded some level of learning at a cultural level. It also brought with it some financial uncertainty. But as things stabilized, I was drawn into the secure cocoon of classes, clear expectations and brilliant academic performances. Suddenly I had time on my hands once more and I took the opportunity to do all the things I had always dreamt of doing for so many years.
I took long walks by the river, discovered cafes, explored wines and cuisines, started a blog and took to writing, visited museums and galleries and indulged in some swimming and even shopping and cooking. Every new travel experience and interaction was enriching and a learning experience for my weary soul. I was reborn in Brisbane – I found myself here, a person lost in the drudgery of survival in Bombay.
But the learning was not over. At my microcosmic work environment, I learnt to evaluate my behaviour as well. My psychologist boss P taught me by example on practising communication, team spirit, ethics and self-humour. Just when I thought I had picked up all I could, I learnt to recognize my escapist nature as well. I was happy to throw up my hands in despair at the slightest hint of resistance or difficulty. Confrontations were avoided at all cost – even if they ultimately ended perfectly good relationships. Everyone perceived me as an achiever, but I always dreaded the truth – that I was unable to see anything through to its logical end. It was a relief to acknowledge that my urge to run away from troubles was actually preventing me from fully achieving my potential.
Strangely, this revelation was an emotional moment for me. I am not a weepy person usually, most people find me pragmatic to the extreme. But I could not help but feel sorry for the cut and dried, bewildered girl plodding along life in Bombay, giving all her time to a job that not only seemed thankless, but pointless as well – sacrificing all her expressive and creative urges. Would I have ever made this journey on the path of self-discovery, had I chosen to stay on? What if I had never met P or the wonderful people I work with? Would I have fallen over and quit or escaped into marriage or the drudgery of a far less demanding role, without ever stamping out that sneaky suspicion that perhaps, I was not entirely a capable individual?
Perhaps life does indeed give us second chances – and windows do indeed open when doors close. I can’t be sure. So maybe recognising and naming my problems is merely the first step. But I am not running away this time. I was reborn in Brisbane, and I’m going to make sure that I make this second life worth my while!
And while I am on the topic, maybe I can recommend a session with P for you as well??!! 
I always liked to believe that I am a savvy and poised woman. Unfortunately, many times our self-image does not always align itself to reality. I was destined to discover this fact with painful clarity – and how!
I first met A through a social networking site – FB. Before anyone goes ballistic, let me rush to pacify people by explaining that when you are abroad, you tend to join all groups and get to know all the Indians in your city – it has something to do with the fact that you are far away from home and looking desperately for a common link.
Anyways, so one fine day, A sent me a message and I responded in like. Some general exchange of messages and communication followed, before we decided to catch up for a cup of coffee – appropriately agreed at the bustling Queen Street Mall. Through our discussions, we discovered some mutual acquaintances – cousins of mine – and work colleagues of his. Relieved that he was not a complete blind date (my cousin vouched for him being a decent bloke) I looked forward to my coffee date.
He was an aviation engineer by profession, friendly, laid back and with surprising flashes of soul. In spite of myself, I found myself warming up to him and enjoying our verbal sparring. We chatted easily as he breakfasted on some eggs and bacon, and I attacked my super huge muffin. (why do they make them more like a wedding cake than a breakfast roll in size, I wonder??!!)
When the meal was done and the cheque was settled (and we had attacked the awkward moment of splitting it equally, with much aplomb!) we realised that the conversation was still not over. So chatting continuously, we browsed through malls apparently looking for furniture for his house. It was pleasant….and I should have quit while I was still ahead! Unfortunately, I was at a loose end after the morning half of the day, since a pal whom I had to meet later had called and delayed till the evening. So, rather than getting bored all by myself, I decided to bore A instead. Huge mistake!
Once we exhausted looking at furniture in all the malls, we decided to look up the riverside markets. (Note to readers – Brisbane has some really pleasant Sunday riverside flea markets, a must see!!) Unfortunately it was a Saturday, but that inane fact did not hit either of us – a serious thickhead rests on my pretty neck, I tell you! To aggravate things further, our charming conversations were peppered with displays of my agility – I routinely kept sticking my foot in my mouth!
I led the way – with my hopeless direction sense, to the riverside. To say that the sun was ruthlessly harsh would not be an understatement. Add to that the fact that I embarked on a long winding walk down to the river – merrily oblivious to the fact that my hapless companion was near collapse with the unexpected exertion. When I finally bid him farewell at the station, A looked on the verge of a nervous breakdown – the combination of the heat, the walk and my mindless chatter was rather potent.
To his credit, he was astonishingly patient and impeccably mannered – not protesting even faintly. (Although I can’t be sure that he was not silently itching to stick pins into a voodoo doll miniature of me and subject me to excruciating pain!) Perhaps at our next meeting, he will come in one of the air crafts that he routinely works on – ready to flee at the hint of a walk. Then again, maybe he will never want to see me again!
Anyways, I’ve learnt that I should curtail my dates to much shorter periods of time. Perhaps the brevity of the encounter will make it easier for my companions to endure – what was that saying about explosives being available in smaller packages?!
(This is a piece that I wrote for a friend – to cater for an Indian publication in Brisbane – the theme of which was experiences of Indians in Brisbane. For the sake of convenience, I am posting it here – Please bear with me for any repetitive thoughts that you encounter! – Shruti)
It was about six months back. Clad in my brand new jeans and walking shoes, that I soon came to identify as the unwritten dress code for all uni students, I stood amid a swirling crowd on Queen Street Mall. The latest export by Mother India to land on Brisbane shores, I was hoping to garner an education and some cross-cultural exposure. Bewildered, jet lagged and a tad bit home sick, I clung onto the arm of my cousin K for dear life – panicky that should I let go, I risked getting swept away by the alien mass of people.
We were in the city to open a bank account for me. Entering the bank, we took a ticket and proceeded to wait my turn at the counter. The teller greeted me with a warm smile and chatted easily with K.
“Hey, how are you going?” she asked.
“Not too bad, just enjoying the lovely weather,” he responded. “This is my cousin Shroottee, she has just come from Indiaaah.” In spite of being of Indian origin, K rolls the syllables of my name in a typically Aussie fashion.
We completed the transaction, talking about her family and their travels to the Asian subcontinent, the conversation peppered with interjections and contributions from K. He had evidently neglected to inform me about his friend working at the bank. I would ask him about her later.
“So what is your friend’s name?” I asked as we walked out. “You forgot to introduce us”.
“Who?” he queried, puzzled.
“You know, the lady at the bank. The one you were chatting with”.
K threw his head back and gave a shout of laughter. Affronted, I waited to find out what was so funny.
“I did not know her silly! We were just going about our work. That’s the Aussie way. You will soon understand.”
“But…. She told you all about her brother’s food poisoning in Thailand”
“Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!” chuckled K, unable to get one logical word out. I gave up grumpily. That evening, the anecdote was shared with my aunt and uncle and soon everyone had a go at me. More than once, I was patiently introduced to the ‘easy going, friendly Australian life style’.
But it was hard for me to accept. When you spend a lifetime growing up as a girl in Bombay city, you soon get programmed to ‘never talk to strangers’. The world was full of murderers and thieves, plotting to harm the unsuspecting citizen. I routinely traversed the same route daily for many years and yet never acknowledged my travelling companions. Coming from such a background, I could not help but clam up every time the driver smiled at me as I got on the bus, or people greeted me as I walked my aunt’s pet canine.
Working in an Australian office environment brought its own set of adventures. My boss P steadfastly refused to behave like a typical autocratic Indian superior. Instead he would keep volunteering snippets about his home, his pets and the weather. (The more I interacted with people, the more convinced I became, that the weather was a national obsession in Australia.)
One fine morning, I walked into the office and found some unusual electronic music playing.
“What are you playing so early in the morning?” I queried as I covered my ears protectively.
“Good Morning Shroooottteee”, sang P. “I thought you looked very homesick, so I am playing some Indian music to remind you of home. Then you will ease up and talk some more”.
Indian music? Puzzled, I studied the CD case that P had handed me. It was only much later that I had the heart to tell him that Goa Trance was in fact not something that Indians routinely listened to.
That was the proverbial final straw that broke the camel’s back. Like floodgates opening, I allowed the conversation to flow. I discussed the daily forecast at the bus stop, argued international politics in Coles and Woolly’s, surmised the cricketing situation when I went to buy coffee and was even ticked off for talking too much in classes! Smiles started gracing my features naturally as I passed strangers on the road, and I stopped imagining that the passer by was a kidnapper in disguise. The paranoia had evaporated.
Recently, I was helping an Indian girl M, a common friend. M was new to Australia and needed to be conducted around as she familiarized herself. On one of our trips out, we caught a ferry. As we settled in, I watched her bag the window seat and peer out – beady eyed and eager. Smiling at her enthusiasm, I let her take it all in. My next-door companion – a lady with her shopping bags – returned my smile. We got talking, and soon she was busy giving me tips on fruit shopping in Brisbane. As we disembarked from the ferry and said our goodbyes, M asked me how I knew the lady. I laughed and tried to enlighten her about the conversational Aussie lifestyle.
Life had indeed come full circle!
The senior management of the hotel where I worked in India liked to believe they were a progressive team – and decided to organise a creativity workshop for the junior managers. And so we would dutifully, albeit reluctantly, turn up for Saturday afternoon sessions – sacrificing our precious nap time. (A hotelier is most hard-pressed for sleep – every wasted, alert second is much rued over!)
Most sessions were spent half-heartedly participating in “team-building” games, and absorbing vague management jargon. It came as little surprise then, that gradually the attendance dropped off and people began returning to their normal Saturday afternoon siesta routines.
One afternoon however, we were scheduled for a one-on-one session with the trainer. I played a curious game with him. For the next fifteen minutes, no verbal conversation was allowed between us – instead, on a blank sheet of paper, he wrote a word and pushed it towards me. I wrote the first word that came to my mind, on reading his writing and pushed the sheet back to him. Gradually, over the next quarter of an hour, the sheet of paper was not the only thing that was going back and forth between us.
Word games can be powerful tools – unspoken associations with a second person make them potent. The fact that they were with a person, whom I did not know at all, made those words even more expressive. We held a silent conversation about our dearest thoughts – each word evoking a flood of understanding and ideas.
When our fifteen minutes were up, he banished me from the room with an informal smile. I felt strangely uncomfortable, almost violated – like my deepest emotions had been trampled upon by a stranger. I never played the game again.
Recently, after much persuasion, a friend shared his private online journal with me. Through mutual consent, we never refer to the journal or its content in our conversations. But every entry that he makes and the comments that I leave have taken on the pattern of a silent conversation – journeying into the crevices of our minds and our creativity.
Recognising the feeling of being let down that I experienced with the word game, I take great care not to dismiss this expression lightly. They help me understand the people that we are, with great clarity and ease.
Sometimes the spoken word can garble our expression beyond compare. But rarely, are unspoken conversations misunderstood. The interplay of actions between a mother and child, lovers and even animals signal an understanding beyond the spoken word. Being receptive to it, can communicate so much more, even when you don’t say a thing.
I was never a visual person. Most forms of art usually struck me as elitist. It was like whiskey – an acquired taste – one that I most definitely had yet to acquire! Worse still, most art seemed to have layers – from the obvious visual technique, to the elusive hidden meanings, mere allusions, received by only the most discerning. And hence, along the years, I have regarded art galleries and exhibitions with some natural suspicion. Apart from a few iconic creations by Da Vinci, Picasso, Raphael and Van Gogh, I am a novice at all classical art. Modern art has puzzled me even more – with its vague expression, it can be most tiresome to look for hidden themes and meanings in them. And so, while I love theatre, music, dance and literature – actual art has always been alien to me.
The name “Andy Warhol” was being bandied around at work for many days. Half hearted as usual, I learnt that he was a prodigious figure of modern pop art. Having received one rave review too many, I finally decided to test the waters of modern art for myself. I wanted to do it alone. That way I was not worried about conforming to another’s point of view, so I could decide for myself what a painting was saying to me – and if it was saying anything at all. I had had enough of puzzling unsuccessfully at pictures, trying to subscribe to a companion’s opinion of its hidden message.
So today, I made it to the Gallery of Modern Art and purchased my ticket to enter the exhibition. Pop art, as I learnt, was not unlike “pop” music – designed to appeal to the masses – almost commercial in its nature. It comprises commonly used, every day items like packaging, tools, apparel and technology. Not only does it have mass appeal, it is also mass-produced.
There were commercial portraits of famous personalities like Mick Jagger, Marlyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy – created by screen-printing Polaroid shots over bold splashes of colour – creating several moods and expressions.
Portraits of Mick Jagger by Andy Warhol
Other exhibits were made by repetitive block prints on silk – each impression on the fabric being just marginally different from the others, in the amount of pressure or area of contact of the block with the fabric.
Suicide By Andy Warhol
Films by Andy Warhol had random clippings of people, cut up and run out of any chronological sequence – seemingly senseless at first glance. Yet, watch them for a bit, and you sense a complex undercurrent of unspoken nuances, that the out of synch sequence seemed to enhance, rather than distort. Da Vinci’s Last Supper was superimposed with every day objects and had a price tag to it – imparting an almost commercial value to religion.
From The Last Supper series of prints by Andy Warhol
Self-portraits had a hypnotic camouflage print running all over it – designed to conceal, rather than reveal the persona of the artist.
Self portraits
My verdict? In the words of Andy Warhol – his work was refreshingly one-dimensional – there was no need for me to struggle with obscure messages and hidden allusions. The world suddenly seemed full of artistic expression – from the bottle of soft drink to the carton that bulk packaged it, from the electric chair to the crashed car accident. And yet, uniquely, the entire exhibition left me with an indescribable feeling of depth – one that I struggle to define. It allowed me an insight into the mind of the artist – an insight that seemed to have made its way to me, without any effort on my part. That communication being successfully conveyed, I do believe that the artist had achieved his mission.
I understand that many critique Pop art, and Warhol in particular, for being too commercial and simplistic. Perhaps it did appeal to me because it was approachable and random even. But, as I wait for my bus home and appreciate the colours of the world around me, I agree with Warhol – Art is what you can get away with!
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