And just like that, it’s two weeks into January and work has picked up. Morning meetings at 7:30 am, fires to put out, exciting new projects, nerves about the upcoming reviews and appraisal season… just everyday corporate things.
When I took a couple of years off from corporate life to explore (travel, acting, that kind of thing), it was this routine that I started missing the most. Even more than the monthly paycheck, it was the assurance of knowing what I was going to do the next morning. Having someplace to go, some target to hit, some people to meet. It often gets monotonous real quick but with the right job, the right people and the right incentive – like it is in my present case – it can be a breath of fresh air. Something you look forward to. Something that helps you grow, explore other exciting things, explore your own boundaries.
With this new year, as I get back into the so-called grind, my heart is filled with hope, excitement and a sense of adventure. Upward and onward…
Despite coming across it on and off for almost a year, I ended up visiting the Aroma cafe for the first time just a few days ago. One reason was that I always saw a long queue outside it every time I was in the neighborhood. This time, it was just a lazy day after Christmas and our timing was just right. There were just a couple of people ahead of us in the queue but soon many joined behind us.
The counter area looked pretty chic and cozy. Rates were affordable. We ordered our coffee, got a little token, and headed inside to be delighted by the fascinating Christmas decor.
I was also surprised at how big the space is. There’s a variety of seating (beautiful chairs and tables) and some cool art all around. It has a patio section as well as a cool, stretched out inner section. The overall vibe is very cozy, creative and elegant.
It’s a shame that I visited the next door Two Roads theatre so often but didn’t come to this joint for coffee. Well, may be this year!
Some shopping in the area led Summer and me to a lunch at California Fish Grill in Woodland Hills today. It took me right back to the pandemic era when I rented my first apartment on De Soto Ave. Sunil and Dips had helped me move in and were checking on me the first week to see if I was ok. After all, it was the first time in life that I was living alone. I loved my apartment – the cozy layout with kitchen attached to the living room, the balcony with a partial view of the street, the built in granite table in the bedroom where I worked out of. Along the new job, life in Bella Vista had all the makings of a new beginning.
View from my Bella Vista apartment
Today, I remembered those long walks to this very strip mall to get a haircut at Supercuts or a coffee at Starbucks. I also remembered my short-lived stint with a wonderful CrossFit gym called Iron Batallion. And then there was my favorite gastropub – HQ – where I met so many new people and made so many friends. Woodland Hills is also where I discovered the Will Geer theatre in Topanga Canyon. Just a 20-min ride from my apartment, this place became my theatre hub. It’s also where I made some amazing friends and met Summer.
My first solo apartment
Topanga beach and Malibu were also just 30-40 min rides on my motorcycle. Baba sweets, Indian sweets and spices, Gasolina (deserves its own separate blog entry), Copper Mine, Chennai Tiffins, Antique flea market, The Village… the list goes on and on. Truly an extraordinary place to live!
It started with rice. Egg fried rice. Chicken fried rice. Just fried rice with tamaind or lemon poweder and some peanuts. Next up was eggs – unintentional scrambled eggs that started as omelettes, intentional scrambled eggs with onions and mushrooms (sometimes spinach when I felt healthy). Then came dal and sambhar to go with rice as a tribute to my south Indian roots. Chicken curry was the obvious next step and was a pretty straightforward transition. The latest additions are pha and upma.
First attempt at upma
In the past 5 years, my cooking chronicles have been nothing to rave about. But I do intend my next 5 years of homecooking to provide an impressive tale.
My girlfriend’s mom who has been in LA for decades once joked on hearing the mention of rain – “that’s when water falls from the sky, right?”. It’s unbelievable how rain eludes this state of California. After witnessing monsoon for 4 months every year, it was surprising for me to see hardly any rain here in the last 2 years. Mercifully, this has changed in the last 3 days. It has been raining abundantly this week, leading to the reassuring sound of water hitting the roof accompanied by the heartwarming petrichor.
Cloudy cloudy skies
It’s interesting how the smell takes me back to childhood days when I used to take my shirt off and run into the little open space in my chawl to get soaked by the first pour of the season. This time I just stood in my balcony and let it hit my arm, as I gazed at the clouds and the trees outlining my building and sipped my coffee. Still pretty neat!
Smell, heat, stray dogs, and erratic traffic – these were the first few things that hit me within one hour of landing in Mumbai after living in the US for 3 years. You see, I grew up in Mumbai/ Navi Mumbai and had spent all my life in India till the age of 32. Then, in an attempt to do something new and run away from the nagging expectation of getting married, I traveled to the US to pursue higher studies in 2018. Four years later, thanks to loads of luck that put me in the right place at the right time with some wonderful people – I now have a Masters degree, a job in Los Angeles, and an apartment and life I have settled into. I obviously wanted to visit home every year but COVID and my visa status made it difficult for a while. Finally, I was able to visit in November 2022. On the 24-hour air journey (LA – Doha – Mumbai), I couldn’t help but wonder how different it would be for me visiting home after so long as I had never spent this much time away from India before. My 40-day stay at home in Navi Mumbai taught me a few things about myself and how the last few years have changed me.
For starters – I was finding it difficult to sync with the chaos around me. Crossing streets where rickshaws and scooters and trucks and cars and pedestrians weave into each other used to come to me as second nature. However, this time it took me a couple of days to find my rhythm while walking the streets. I was hesitating to cross and stopping sporadically like a rookie. This was a big revelation as I did not expect it would happen to me. Next was the heat, humidity and air quality. While I grew up in this Mumbai weather, the Southern California weather seemed to have coddled me in a way that I couldn’t imagine. I was feeling the humidity right from day 1 and it only got worse. To think it was like that in December made me wonder what would have happened had I visited in April or May!
Then, there was the whole ‘staying with family’ situation. In Navi Mumbai, 5 of us (granny, mom, dad, sister, me) lived in a small 1-bedroom flat before my sister got married and I left for the US. For the past couple of years, I had gotten used to living alone in a bigger space so it felt weird for the first couple of days living with 3 more people in the same room. When my sister visited for a couple of weeks, it was all 5 in the little space. My Dad graciously let me have the bedoom when I was working and at other times, it was somewhat nice to stay spend time my family members in the living room. Not for too long though! After every few minutes, I felt the urge to be by myself.
Thankfully, I was doing fine with the spicy food at home and at the restaurants I visited with my friends. I was happy to learn that my stomach hadn’t forgotten the embrace of spicy mutton curry or delicious dosas and chutneys.
Breakfast with my buddy at Arya Bhavan in Chembur
It was also interesting to observe my outlook towards money. An Uber ride from one end of the city (Mazgaon) to the other (Vashi) cost around $10 which is what I would pay in California just to travel a few miles. Also, you could hire a driver in Navi Mumbai for Rs 700 for 8 hours if you had your own car. The idea to get such a service for less than $10 was something I couldn’t wrap my head around.
Traffic enroute Alibaug
One of the more pleasant lessons was that I was able to catch up with old friends and continue from where we had left off years ago. For some reason, I thought this is easier said than done. Everybody moves on with their lives and their families and with every passing day, it becomes difficult to pick up the phone. So I ended up thinking that meeting old friends would be an awkward experience but I was delighted to learn that it was nothing of the sort. For example, my best friends from high school happened to be there around the same time and we were able to have a fun evening chatting and catching up like we used to all those years ago. Same happened with my college buddies and other friends from different phases of life.
Back to when we were 16 😊
The biggest and most heartbreaking development was that my mother was diagnosed with dementia in this duration that I was away. While she remembered me on my visit and was able to hold short conversations, I could clearly see that she wasn’t as active, talkative or expressive as she used to be. Naturally, a lot of time was spent with her and in discussions with my father and sister about her care.
Overall, it seemed to me that my brain had forgotten how active things are in India. There’s so much happening at any given moment. As many a writer had mentioned – it’s marvelous how it functions amidst so much chaos. Like you see on an average street – Everyone is constantly moving and yet hardly anyone is bumping into each other. In contrast, I feel like my life slows down when I’m in LA. I sleep, wake up, cook, eat, work, go out, occasionally party, spend time with my girlfriend, and indulge in some extracurriculars… that’s it. This list was always a lot longer when I was in India and it was also the case when I visited this time.
Posing in front of the Arabian Sea
Strangely, when I got back to LA this time, it felt like I came home. And the whole India trip felt like a visit to a foreign land. Another thing I couldn’t have imagined would happen so soon! And to me! I wonder if this feeling is temporary or here to stay.
I knew I had to check this one out when I saw the cast. It started with Jesse Eisenberg being his fast-talking self. Then, as I binged one episode after another, I witnessed brilliant writing and beautiful performances by the entire cast (especially Claire Danes). Without giving any spoilers – I think if you’re someone in your 30s or 40s, this show will be relatable.
Source: The Playlist
Apart from the fact that I enjoyed watching this show as an audience member, I was also intrigued by it as an actor. How would I play the male version of Lizzy Caplan’s character, I thought. She handled it with such poise and the quality in her voice is commendable. She effortlessly emotes throughout all episodes often times just with her voice. And her pairing with Josh Radnor worked well for me 🙂
Yeah – good show! Will be thinking about it for a while. Might even read the book.
Every morning, when the sun begins to shine brightly, he shows up at my balcony. He goofs around the parapet, wags his bushy tail in a sine-wave-like motion, and after what looks like a long contemplation, lands into the cactus planter. Then, he starts digging and pulls out a nut – I have no idea when he hid it there. He jumps back on to the parapet, and rapidly chews through the nut, constantly dropping the leftovers on the parapet. Who do you think is going to clean that up, you prick?!
After he is done eating, he decides he wants to fool around some more. So he jumps on to my hanging planter (home to a pothos) and starts digging through it. The planter starts swinging and I am worried it might fall of. But the little bugger knows what he is doing. After some exploration, he jumps off landing on the mat on the balcony floor. Here, he decides to sit for a few seconds and then take a massive piss. Argh! Finally, it’s time to move on but not before chilling on the parapet a little while more to scout which balcony to raid next.
The crime scene
Throughout all this, he periodically sees through the big glass door that I am standing right there, staring at him. And yet, unfazed by my presence, he treats my balcony as his personal dining room as well as toilet. The sheer audacity!
My excitement about the drive to Connecticut stemmed out of my love for the show The West Wing. You see, President Jed Bartlet (played by the unmatched Martin Sheen) was from New England. So, it was natural that I wanted to explore that part of the country. I imagine Summer’s excitement was on account of revisiting the region where she went to college (Smith) and seeing her friends after a long pandemic hiatus. The drive was easy and comfortable (at least for me, the passenger) and a good part of it was scenic too. In particular, I enjoyed looking at waterfront houses and constantly checking on Zillow how much they cost. And things got more and more beautiful as we got closer to Old Lyme – my (now) favorite small town in America!
On Bettina’s recommendation, we had booked an Airbnb cottage in Old Lyme, not too far from her place. To me – this cottage was pristine! A roadside home with excellent decor and cool amenities, this cute little delight also came with a lovely big, beautiful, lush green backyard where you could just sit listening to the birds looking at the trees. The decor was thoughtful and cozy and the hosts, humorous and considerate. I had mentioned to them that I’ll be missing the Stranger Things finale due to the trip, so they left me Eggos in the freezer (it’s a show reference). The place was stocked with books and board games and had a very welcoming vibe making our stay quite memorable.
The next few days were spent driving through the tree-flanked streets of Old Lyme, checking out fancy New England-style houses, eating at local restaurants and pubs, and of course enjoying the cottage. It was also my first time meeting the utterly beautiful, vibrant and charming Smith gang – Bettina, Christine and Ivy. Bettina’s house and neighborhood was so spectacular, I nearly started dreaming about buying a house in that area! Driving to and from Old Saybrook, I started talking like a local. Every time I saw a dreamy street or a scenic house, I exclaimed with a grin – “Good Ol’ Old Lyme”! The one time I saw a knocked-down garbage bin, I cried “Damn tourists!”.
We also made a short trip to a book reader’s heaven called ‘The Book Barn’. A charming campus with buildings dedicated to specific genres, The Book Barn was a place one could spend the whole day at. It had inexpensive books set up in creative cabins and trolleys and obviously, I bought a bunch. We also drove to the nearby white sand state beach that our kind hosts had left us a parking permit for. Lounging around the cool sand looking at the changing colors of the evening sky went well with the theme of a relaxing getaway. Bettina was kind enough to give us a tour of the historic Essex Old area where we bought chocolate truffle shots and explored some more fancy houses.
Our last day in New England was spent driving to Rhode Island to check out the popular Newport Mansions. I didn’t realize that some of the mansions we visited were actually featured in the show The Gilded Age (duh!). The Breakers (home of the Vanderbilts) was humongous from outside and truly lavish from within. As we walked through each room, observing the furniture, the walls, the ceilings (boy, the ceilings!), I couldn’t help but be transported to the era of luxury and pomp. Each room had a unique purpose and so much space. Chateau Sur Mer was smaller but as delightful and the walk from one mansion to another was a nice way to experience the neighborhood.
The tickets for the 2-mansion tour cost around $70. There weren’t many good food options near the mansions so that was a bummer. We ate a cold sandwich and a burrito in the cafeteria by The Breakers and decided to have a better meal for dinner back in good ol’ Old Lyme.
The Breakers mansion in Newport, Rhode Island
After a short stop at a beach on the way, we made our way back to Old Lyme for one last evening. Then followed a quiet dinner, quick breakfast the next morning, and heartfelt goodbyes full of dramatic waves and laughter. We made it in time to return the rental car and reach the airport before the scheduled flight. However, the flight got delayed and I wasn’t sure we would be able to make our connection in St. Louis Missouri. Thankfully, an American Airlines employee came to our aid and booked us on a Chicago connection, getting us home at the exact time we had expected. And that was the end of my memorable first trip to New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island! There are worse ways to spend a summer break, no? 🙂
