This could well be a politically incorrect post, and maybe admitting to more than I would in real life. Oh what the heck! thats what anonymous blogs are for.

So, I am sitting in a hugely lavish boardroom, with a wonderful view over Amsterdam, with five big men in black suits, blond hair and blue eyes, and did I forget to mention, about a feet taller than I am. I am supposed to be an active participant in their, or rather our, very important conversation, but my mind insists on wandering away. What the hell am I doing here? I mean, really. If we were part of an IQ test question to pick out odd one out (remember those questions they used to have on every damn test), this would by far be the easiest question. And in walks in a bright young chick carrying coffee and sandwiches, probably from Surinam - and somehow, I feel an odd connection. I could probably relate to her more than my five wonderful colleagues. At least, we could talk about PMS or bitch about boys, or maybe the great shoe shop down the street.

Before this turns out to be a random rant, I will inject it with some high flying scientific terms (pardon me for my rather ill-written posts these days, at the end of the day, this is just about all I can manage, and I really wanna keep this blog alive. Hopefully I will try and balance out with better quality in weekends). Anyways, back to what I was saying - apparently, its not just me. The whole syndrome is called a professional identity disorder. Where you can’t associate yourself with your job. Now, I am pretty sure I don’t have it, coz this was a rather rare moment, but I totally get it - I totally get why it would be hard for some people to fit into some jobs. And isn’t that a real pity? We are not talking about any kind of discrimination or anything, just a deep subconscious clash of identities, a clash that occurs because somehow we decided some identities go better with some jobs.

In an interview with Carrie Yang Costello, the author of “Professional Identity Crisis: Race, Class, Gender, and Success at Professional Schools”Scott McLemee of Inside Higher Ed, writes this:

“One of the most durable metaphors used in making sense of the world treats social life as a kind of theatrical performance. Each of us is playing a part — more or less comfortably, more or less convincingly — while burdened, often enough, by the need to improvise “in character.”

“This idea is more than a Shakespearean conceit. It’s implicit in the sociological notion of “role,” for example. And it also helps make sense of what happens when people learn to play that type known as “the professional” — a much-sought social role, usually accompanied by substantial benefits in income, and even more in prestige.

Essentially, what it means is that, we all think fit a role, or a character. And when our job deviates a lot from that character, then we have what they call PID (I am not sure anyone else uses that acronym). Here’s a short extract from Amazon’s summary of the book:

The fact that women and people of color tend to underperform at professional schools is a source of controversy. Conservatives blame affirmative action, while liberals blame intentional discrimination. The extensive research reported in Professional Identity Crisis belies both conspiracy theories.

(..) the disproportionate success of white men can be explained by the fact that they are more likely to acquire appropriate professional identities swiftly, with little inner conflict. Students from less privileged backgrounds, however, suffered from “identity dissonance.”
“For example, Jasmine, a Filipino student from Los Angeles, explained, “In the legal culture you have to adopt a different way of being, a different vocabulary and way to carry yourself . . . That’s how I got this far. And when I go home, if I act the way I do here, they won’t get it. My cousins and my friends say, ‘You’re kind of whitewashed.’ And when I come back here I have to get back my law style.”

So, what do we do? Sit back and let they world pass by. Oh hell, no! lets fix this identity crisis, shall we? Where are all the women in this country? Can they come to work please? Lets change the corporate diversity equation a bit, and add a discussion on the latest Gucci bags on every agenda!

Thats the big rhetoric . As for tomorrow, I will exchange a friendly smile with Martha, our coffee lady.

Update: I didn’t mean this to be a feminist post. Because I think its a broader issue. If anyone has any views on how a man of color fares in a largely European corporation or how a white man feels, say in an Indian company, I am all ears.

I am not sure what is the connection between elephants and Onam, but this should remind that I should advertise Thrissur pooram sometime - btw, its an event you have to experience at least once in your lifetime.

Wish everyone a very happy Onam, and next year, we should invite Mahabali to Europe - I hear he is not so welcome in some other places these days.

PS: If you don’t know what Onam is, check it out here

I find myself in London today! For the very first time!! Considering my sight seeing is limited to cab rides from airport to office to hotel to office and back to airport, I am in no position to write a lot about it. But it being my first trip and all, some random thoughts are warranted.

1. I can understand everything everywhere! People speak English! I just realised that I haven’t been to a country where English is widely spoken for a very very long time. People don’t hate me here, just because they have to speak a different language for me! I could whoop for joy!

2. They drive on the right, right as in correct, side of the road! I mean, whoever thought up driving on the right hand side of the road!

3. Its past midnight,I am eating a lovely meal of chicken tikka, mini papads and mango chutney, which is one of the few foods available 24 hours. And the TV is playing something bollywood-ish! How much more closer to home can I get?

4. Every other person I asked for directions on the road ( I went to get coffee mid day and promptly got lost) today spoke in a different accent. Cosmopolitanism, do you have a better spokesperson?

5. I love the cabs! And the cabbies! I got a 30 minute crash course on London’s history and the development to Eastend from docklands to a residential place. And the best part is, he didn’t drop me off at the wrong place and give the excuse that he didn’t understand me. You see, he speaks English! Oh, have I said that before?

Enough of delirious posting! People who live in lands where they know what is going on, don’t judge me till you have had to bribe your neighbours to read letters from your insurer! Now, let me try and figure out what the Sardar on my TV is ranting about!

East or west, Home is the best. Is it really?

Readers of this blog and my previous one would know that I have, many a time, talked about missing my family, my home country, and everything related to it - nothing special, just your typical expat rant. The reasons are obvious - imagine that you are in a far away land, and you miss the culture you were brought up in, the people you love and even the sense of belonging which is never complete in another place - what else would your favourite topic be? But truth remains that I am still a nomad who still doesn’t seriously consider going home for good. What is it that keeps me here, in a foreign land, despite all the obvious reasons?

When I first left home, it was a sense of adventure. Maybe, adventure is not the right word. Curiosity, perhaps. The feeling of not knowing what lies ahead. The joy of embarking on a path where the destination is not clear. To break away from everything that you once thought you would do, and carve out your own path in the world. To pluck yourself out from your comfortable surroundings and throw yourself into the world of the unknown. Do you remember the song, “Confidence” in Sound of Music, that Maria sings on her way to the abbey to the Von Trapp house for the first time? If airlines officials would let me skip and sing, perhaps I would have sang the same words too:

“What will this day be like? I wonder.
What will my future be? I wonder.
It could be so exciting to be out in the world, to be free
My heart should be wildly rejoicing..”

As I grew up past the irrational teens and became more comfortable with my place in the world, childish curiosity gave way to someting else. The sense of adventure didn’t exactly fade away, but it wasn’t curiosity and adventure that led me on. It was a sense of freedom. The freedom to be away from everything. The freedom to do what you want. The freedom to know that your actions are your concern and only yours. The ultimate sense of unaccountability, if you may. Let me not glorify it - the honest truth may be that it is just a run-away attitude. If you could empathize with Kate in Lost, when Tom tells her, “You always want to run away, Katie”, you know what I mean. After I had lived for several years, in what I call my first stop , I had reached a point in life where I couldn’t walk in the city center without meeting someone who knew someone who knew someone I knew. Somehow, the place doesn’t feel foreign anymore, when that happens. And it was time to run.

The amazing feeling of walking into a place where you know absolutely no one, where you are as anonymous as the dust on the ground, where without the passport in your bag or the dog tag on your neck, post-mortem identification would be an impossible feat - that feeling, if you don’t know it yet, is one you want to experience, at least every now and then.

When you roam the streets with abandon
With no one to call on, no one to meet,
Is it left or right? up or down?
Lets decide at the toss of a dice.

When every stranger is your friend,
When every friend is a stranger,
What is heaven, what is earth?
When all around you is paradise.

Age brings with it, pragmatism. Reality and responsibility eventually nudge their way into the reluctant and well guarded fortress and claim their space. Nostalgia is a sign of leaving your youth behind. And you miss home. You find yourself with questions to be answered. Thoughts to be thought. Why am I here? Do I belong? Should I go home? Philosophy gives way to practicality. When the scales of the world are tipping, when the land of opportunity is calling, what is that still keeps in the old world? The answer is not so easy anymore, but I am still here. And here’s why.

(To be continued)

I was trying to book tickets to India, and guess what! on top of the taxes, they charge you September 11 security charges! Really, why does Heathrow charge Sep 11 charges - what happened in UK on any Sep 11?

As an aside, if anyone knows any cheap ways to get home from any European city, please let me know.

The silverware glistened in the golden light from the elaborate chandelier that hung from the ceiling. She looked up to admire the sixteenth century painting that was beyond the light. A slow breeze from the sea side, and the waiter rushed to hand her a pashmina, which she really wouldn’t have needed if she hadn’t let vanity talk her into wearing his favourite shoulder baring black dress. The tripes a la mode de Caen was heavenly. As were the chardonnay and then, the platter of cheese that came with it. “Camembert, Neufchatel, Pont-L-Eveque, Livarot,…” she couldn’t even focus on the waiter’s captivating discourse on the Norman cheeses. All she could think about was that, it had been eight days.

She glanced at her watch. No, it had been seven days, twelve hours and fifty minutes. To be a bit more precise. Not really precise. To be really precise, she would have to go into seconds. She considered whether it would be too anal to delve into that. “Is something wrong?” his voice woke her from her momentary lapse. She should not let it bother her. Eight days ago - we are back to being imprecise now - she had decided that she could live without it for eight days. And she was almost there. Just this dinner and then the night and then by mid-morning, she would have it. Again. Available. Anywhere. Anytime.

She hated being so addicted. As a kid, she had heard stories about alcoholics. How they had no control over their lives. How they squandered their money, beat their wives and eventually ended up bankrupt and homeless. She had read about drug addicts in the newspapers. She had wondered why anyone would voluntarily give up control over their own bodies, their own selves. How anyone could give in to hallucinations and speed trips and be at the mercy of dealers. She had scorned at smokers and the scary statistics about the damage done to children because of the parents’ chain smoking. In fact, she had even helped out in the Quit Smoking campaign in her office, all the while not quite understanding why people couldn’t wake up one morning and kick the habit. In fact, she abhorred addictions of all kind.

She refused to admit that she was addicted. She stared at his deep dark eyes and tried to think of the eight blissful days they had just had. She wanted to focus on the beautiful beaches they had lounged in, the charming chateaus they had slept in and the quaint French streets they had wandered in. But she couldn’t help but wonder what he was thinking about. And that led her back to it. Maybe, just maybe, he was thinking of it too. No, this is anal. She chided herself. It is just 8 hours, 7 minutes and 12 seconds more. Oh darn, she had done it. Precision was a sure give away for obsession. “Cafe, mademoiselle?” she was jolted out of her trance again. She resolved she won’t let herself be addicted. She won’t think about it anymore. She will have some good coffee and then, some fine conversation will now follow. She will look around and enjoy the wonderful art that was on display at the restaurant. She will have a wonderful time. She imagined a thick black blanket in her mind. She covered her obsession in it, tied with a thick blue rope, placed into an solid copper box, closed it with its ornate heavy lid and pushed it into a dark corner of her mind. Not to be opened again. Until it was time.

And then, it was time. 8 hours, 7 minutes and 12 seconds were over. She clicked on the small orange icon with the three small men. She entered the eight magical numbers, clicked OK and waited. She felt the joy of watching a lotus blossom. And then there was light. You have new mail. Happiness. Bliss. Joy. Contentment. Was it wrong to feel happy? She looked across the table. His face radiated the happiness too. He looked up and smiled.

Some obsessions are just not worth fighting.

Continuing from the last post on Rouen, lets get on with the walking tour around the city.

A short walk from the Notre Dame cathedral will bring you to the L’aître Saint-Maclou. But on the way, be sure to observe the beautiful half-timbered houses (below).

The houses are characteristic of this area of France, but you will see some of the best specimens in this area. Also, if you look carefully, in one of the buildings, you will find a way of building in which each floor juts more into the street than the one below - giving the building the appearance of an upside down staircase, and this has since been banned in France. You will also pass by a small courtyard, which seems as nondescript as any other, but was popularly known as the Booksellers courtyard and is where all the literati came to get fodder for their brains. We also passed by some street singers dressed in period French costumes.

Before you finally reach the Aître Saint-Maclou , you will also pass by the St.Maclou church (below), built between 1437 and 1521. Built in a flamboyant Gothic style, the most notable feature of this church is its five paneled facade, arranged in the arc of a circle and is composed of a pyramid-like succession of triangular lines that give it its own special grace and charm.

The Aître Saint-Maclou (below) has a strange history - It dates back to the Great Plague of 1348. The Great Plague also known as The Black Death, was a devastating pandemic that first struck Europe in the mid-late-14th century, killing between a third and two thirds of Europe’s population. There was unprecedented demand for burial grounds, and the Aître Saint-Maclou was one of the buildings built to meet this demand.

The building is now home to a Regional Fine Arts school, but the morbidity of its original purpose is well reflected in the macabre carvings of human skulls, bones, hourglasses and gravediggers tools on the half-timbered building that surrounds the central courtyard. Look carefully, and you will also find a cat’s skeleton that was later found in the walls, eerily preserved under a glass case.

From the ghoulish Aître Saint-Maclou, a not-so-long walk brought us to the St. Ouen’s abbey (below), one of the most powerful Benedictine monasteries in the Normandy region. The abbey is said to have been founded in 750AD, and it remained an active monastery till the late 18th century, after which it was used as Rouen’s town hall for a short period of time, while the power of the monastery was at its peak. Built mainly in Gothic style, the inside of the abbey is impressive for its bareness, huge size and exceptional lighting. The narrow pillars, the use of vertical lines and the absence of any chapels in the nave further accentuate the perception of size, while the large windows on three levels gives it the unusual lighting.

Dig a bit into Rouen’s history and there is a chapter that most locals won’t be proud of, and that is the burning of Joan of Arc in the city’s market square on 30 May 1431, in the midst of the hundred years’ war. A heroine at 17, Joan was convicted of heresy at 19, and burnt at the stake at this very place.

The old market square still exist, even though it has changed since. But you will also find a a memorial site here, which includes a huge cross, a statue of Joan of Arc, a church and a small museum.

In the next installment, we will go outside Rouen to explore its scenic surroundings.

The Sep 06 issue of National Geographic Traveler has a comprehensive listing of classic travel books. As they say:

A good travel book has wings and the ability to transport us, word by word, tale by tale. It introduces us to the people and places that make travel—and, one could argue, life itself—worthwhile. Good travel stories are, in a word, magic.

The list includes such gems as Amsterdam by Geert Mak, Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer and In Tuscany by Frances Mayes and many many more. Check it out here.

From “artists” who can make 30 paintings a day to those who can transform a masterpiece to a likeness of your loved one, China is fast claiming to be “The McDonalds of the Art World”:

Some five million oil paintings are produced in Dafen every year. Between 8,000 and 10,000 painters toil in the workshops. The numbers are estimates: No one knows the exact figure, which increases by about 100 new painters every year. But it’s not just professional copy painters who are drawn to Dafen — graduates of China’s most renowned art academy also come here. They complete only a small number of paintings a month and earn as much as €1,000

More at Der Spiegel

S&I started out on late Friday afternoon, around 5:30 pm, and thanks to the horrendous Friday evening Amsterdam traffic, reached Rouen, our first stop, around 1am. Despite the occasional drizzle and the emails I had to send out from my car before I left the Netherlands, it was a beautiful drive. Plain open fields with cows, sheep and the occasional horses, interrupted once in a while with windmills - the Netherlands is definitely a beautiful country to drive through. Enter Belgium, and suddenly the quality of roads goes down by several notches - blame it on the roads or the weather, but I was pretty happy when we hit France - I am not a fan of paying high tolls, but they certainly keep their roads well. They even have resting places near the highways, which would be such a luxury in the Netherlands. We drove into Rouen past midnight, with a very impressive view of the Notre Dame cathedral, which made the decision of where to start the visit the next morning a very easy one.

After a good night’s sleep, we set out to explore Rouen city. Now, I am not sure what you have heard of the French, but I was completely surprised by how nice they were. Maybe its just the Rouen people and I shouldn’t be too quick to contradict popular opinion , but when two language-ignorant foreigners stumble onto a bus stop, its not in every country that the general population volunteers to help them out. Armed only with a pamphlet on Rouen’s cathedral, “Bonjour” and “Merci”, we must have looked very helpless, for a bunch of passengers took it upon themselves to make sure that we reached our first stop. From the yellow lady who talked to the bus driver for us, to the old man who looked back at every stop to make sure we didn’t get out ahead of time, to the Moroccan woman who the yellow lady put in charge when she had to get out, the bus trip was one big adventure for everyone else, while S&I decided to relax with no worry of getting to the right place.

The old city centre is a maze of quaint old streets lined with beautiful half-timbered buildings. The occasional beautiful ornate doors and walls and bright flowers hanging from the windows add a special charm and beauty to the streets. The numerous antique shops with their collections, artisans hard at work in the shops where they dispay their wares and the art shops carrying old French paitings to contemporary art and street singers entertaining the crowds all make a walk through the streets a pleasant experience. Most of the monuments in the city are within walking distance and a pleasant walking tour could easily cover most of what Rouen has to offer.

The Rouen cathedral (above), which has been the subject of many renowened paintings, most notably by Monet, is a a classic Gothic example of ecclesiastical architecture. Its construction was started in the 13th century, but continued till late 16th century and according to Wikipedia, was the tallest building in the world from 1876 to 1880. Does’t the glory sound more like an Olympic title valid for 4 years? But the church tower has managed to hold on to the title of being the tallest church tower in France.

The architectural beauty and grandoise of the cathedral is best appreciated during the day, but do not miss the light show at night, which starts at 10pm every night in August (it starts at 9pm in the other summer months) - complete with music that befits each segment of the light show, it is an amazing spectacle that often makes you look around the crowd just to reassure yourself that you are still in Rouen in the 21st century - not in a spooky 12th century desolate building, not in someone’s M&M factory outlet, not in the middle of a striped nightmare. Thanks to modern lighting technologies, inspiration from Monet’s colourful impressions of the cathedral and the Rouen tourism bodies, the visitors are treated to a delightful visual spectacle of a monument of varied shades and hues.

After our morning tour of the cathedral, we walked through the Rue du Gros Horloge, a lively shopping street, with many shops still housed in traditional half-timbered buildings. A short detour took us to the Palais de Jusitce, or Hall of Justice, a beautiful example of civil architecture from the Late Middle Ages. Near the Palace of Justice, is the metro station, during the construction of which, archaeologists discovered the remains of a 3rd century Gallo-Roman settlement at the very spot.

The Gros Horloge (above), which literally means a ‘big clock’ is really that, but very ornate and beautiful. The clock archway, which has an amazing representation of the Rouen court of arms, and the clock faces that only have a single hand to indicate the hour, date back to 16th century. At the bottom of the clock near the number VI, the divinity associated with the day of the week is supposed to appear on a chariot at noon. Unfortunately, we were not at the right place at the right time. On the top of the clock, a globe indicates the phase of the moon.

More on the beauties of this wonderful city coming up soon.