Posts on Memories
February 15, 2006
Believe me I remember!
"Dear Vinayak, you probably don't remember me but I was in your ....."
"Hey Vinayak... you definitely don't remember but we met ...."
It's really annoying to get messages from people who know you but think they're too insignificant for my old rickety brain to remember. Seriously... it makes me feel really old! My brain still works... I still remember! I swear!
Incidentally, I'm much better now (thanks for all the get well soon notes)... it was an awful ten days but life's back on track!
Ohh... Happy Valentines Day! And if you don't believe in the big V... as Kevin says "It's an excuse for being convivial, I just don't get why people don't want to be convivial." What are the odds Kevin... "convivial" was just the GRE word I was thinking of when I woke up this morning! :)
Posted by vinayak at 12:01 AM
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October 29, 2005
Yahoo! Desktop Search, and some old memories
As you already figured from my last post, I'm quite the fan of travel writing. Earlier today, I installed Yahoo! Desktop Search, and as I was going through my stuff, an old memory popped up. It was one of my favourite quotes from a book called "In Xanadu", by William Dalrymple. Anoushka, a friend of mine from Madras, had introduced me some years ago to Dalrymple by buying me a book called "The City of Djinns". Dalrymple spent quite an exciting year in Delhi, and that book is a must read for anyone unconvinced that foriegners can actually be good Indians!
In Xanadu, Dalrymple's first book, was the travelogue of his journey during one of his vacations while at Cambridge. It is a journey through some of the most amazing parts of the world, detailing Marco Polo's journey from Jerusalem to Xanadu, Kublai Khan's palace. I thought I'd leave you to read a funny passage from the book:
"Why you come to Syria? You like Arab peoples? Good. You like Arab boys eh? No? Arab womens then? No? Who then?
(opens Laura's passport)
This picture your wife? She pretty womans. how much she cost? no - not your wife? girlfriend then? if you drink Raki then you make your girlfriend many times in one night. Once i make my girlfriend THIRTEEN times. You not believe? Thirteen times I tell you. My friend Abdul - he knows. Hey Abdul, I make my friend thirteen times, eh? You see. I very virile man. BIG minaret! Abdul knows, eh Abdul?
(continues describing minarets, drinking feats, girlfriends etc. etc. until I managed to move the conversation back onto passports. Then:)
"This is you? Abdul, look at the picture of the Ingliz! He wears necktie and jacket! You look very high man, very rich man. No? Neither? Why then necktie? You poor man? How come to Syria then? I dont believe. I poor man. You want Raki? We ALL want Raki! Abdul, fill my glass. Yes! Yes! You no like Arab boys? I know nice place. You dont want? Nor want womens? I tell you Arab womens the best in world. No? What can I say? More Raki! You want stamp? Abdul, he wants passport stamp! Here. you my friend. i give you special stamp. no extra cost. allah be with you. goodbye my friend. yes next time we go with little boys. ABDUL, THE RAKI!"
I fled. I found Laura and got a taxi to a hotel. It was a horrible place, with a pigeon in the shower, but atleast the door locked. We shut out Arabia and went to sleep.
Posted by vinayak at 1:12 AM
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August 27, 2005
Fourteen years later
As you already know, I grew up in Saudi Arabia as a perfect American brat. Back in Saudi, I was a hyper cow. No seriously... I was a really, really hyper cow:
Scene from the weekly parties:
Vinayak, probably five or six years old, arrives. The party goes on code red Pepsi alert - if there's Pepsi anywhere around, they have exactly three minutes to hide it, or face an onslaught equivalent to nuclear decimation. However, there's a newcomer that just came in to Saudi. Vinayak makes a quick mental note and goes in to join the rest of the kids. After a while, he eases into the kitchen when the newcomer is around. He asks politely, "may I have some Pepsi please?" The newcomer is taken aback with such polite manners from a child as young as Vinayak. She is honoured to serve him a beverage as ignoble as Pepsi on the sheer merit of his manners. As she reaches up to the shelf to pull it out, some party regular observes this from the side, and screams out loud. He screams out 'NOOOOOOO' (all of this is in slow motion now), and calls everyone to lunge at the newcomer to stop her from giving Vinayak the Pepsi. Vinayak thinks, "drat... ruined again... idiots!"
As a kid, it was a couple of glasses of Pepsi until I became Nasa-grade rocket propellant material.
You'd imagine babysitting someone as hyper as me would be easy? The task often fell to this one girl... Maya. Maya was about six or seven years older than me, and I adored her for the perfect person she was. She got the best grades, was the object of every junior-high male's mind, and was just the perfect person to want to be when you grew up. Maya's mom was the school nurse, and regularly had to put up with me faking every illness in the book to skip class. Our families were close too, and often, my mom had to hand me over to her for safekeeping! I even learned how to bike on her old (really old) hand me down red girlie bicycle.
Would you believe she studied at the LSE this year, and I had no freaking clue? It was just by chance that Majid, who got to know me from this blog comes up and starts his usual bout of laughing. He says "dude, I can't believe it, but there’s ANOTHER person from Jubail here. And she knows you." So I was like "Huh? Who the hell could this be?" and he just says "Maya." With a little planning, Maya and I caught up for lunch a few days ago. It was SO much fun to meet her after all these years. She's still same in many ways - the smart thoughtful patient quiet person! She's doing a graduate law degree, and will be leaving in a few weeks. However, I'm glad we did manage to meet up, albeit one year late.
How cool is that? Only at the LSE... only at the LSE!
Hopefully I'll show you comparison photos from 1991 and 2005 :) I have to get Sandhya working on getting me the yearbook snaps. Let's see if it works out.
Posted by vinayak at 8:49 AM
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