Rabbi Shergill, one of my most favorite contemporary musicians has sung a song on my most favorite city in the world.
Jaagegi raat bhar
Aur bhagegi saath parr
Kar dalegi belagam khayalon ko
Poochhegi yeh sawal
Aur mangegi yeh hisaab
Na sunegi tere jawabon ko
Yahan hain ek nadi
Aur wahan ek lal qila
Par kahan hain is shahar ka falsafa
I am keen to know who wrote the lyrics. Only someone who loves Delhi passionately could have described her as a tempestuous woman.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Monday, March 26, 2007
My Good Luck Charm
For seven glorious years of my life, I lived in Narmada Apartments, Alaknanda, New Delhi. That home of ours saw me graduate from school, college, university, experiment with summer and part time jobs -- all to earn some extra pocket money, then eventually it saw me get my first “proper” job. Several other good things of life happened during my stay in that house, which is why I will always remember it and the neighborhood it was situated in with a lot of affection and fondness.
One of the things that made Narmada Apartments memorable was the almost daily walk in the evening with Suvena. Suvena Bansal. A year senior to me from school, Suvena and I had initially rejected each other because to me she had appeared as “too unintelligent”, and because to her I appeared as “too arrogant”. So for all her years in school, we traveled from the same bus stop, in the same bus, stood always at the back (naturally ’coz sitting in the front of a bus and on a seat was something that behenjis did), talked to our respective friends, and almost rarely if ever acknowledged each other.
But all that changed the year Suvena graduated from school. I don’t remember what happened, when, or how, but we became friends. We swore lifelong commitment to each other based on our mad lust for Rhett Butler, our love for wicked women, books, hand written letters, men with good voices, chocolates, and the chemistry that we found between us. If not in each other’s house, then we were obviously out walking in the neighborhood, down the tree lined avenue within Narmada Apartments. The trees touched the skies while we went about our daily business of dissecting things that happened, people we met, our future plans, goals, everything.
Suvena’s most redeeming quality in my life was that she always knew how to make things better. You took a problem to her, man made or otherwise, and god knows that as a teenager there were tons of the former as compared to the latter, and she solved it for you. She didn’t get mad, she just chose to get even. You hurt her friend, you hurt her. Her brand of loyalty, clean heart, kickass intelligence, infectious enthusiasm, and the ability to know what was right for me although she was only a year older, made her one of the most wonderful things in my life.
Today, she is married. To a wonderful man, as also to her smart alec job -- the one she got after her IIM degree, (which only goes to demonstrate how utterly stupid my initial assessment of her intelligence was), and she is a mother. But to me she is not special for any of these achievements although they are all meritorious by themselves. To me she is special because she lets me be me with all my hundred imperfections and vanities, humiliations, heartbreaks, and defeats…things that I don’t admit to most others I know. Which is why she was with me when I went to check whether I have made it to St. Stephen’s because if the answer was no, I knew I would be able to deal with the rejection if I was with her. She made me smile, she cried with me, she made all my birthdays special, she found something to redeem my faith in myself every single time that I messed up, and I know how often that was the case.
Dear Bitch and a Half, I am missing you so much today. Don’t worry, all is well with my life here. I am working hard, I am living my dream, I am happy. But a bhelpuri and then coffee with you (for which you will insist on paying thanks to your ever present “Main badi hoon na” logic ) and after that, a long walk in the evening while our respective mothers shouted themselves hoarse from the balconies (“Will you ever come back home?”), would have done me a world of good. You are being missed, desperately.
Tell Akriti, she is a lucky princess, she has my good luck charm as her mother after all.
Love always,
Bitch and a Half
One of the things that made Narmada Apartments memorable was the almost daily walk in the evening with Suvena. Suvena Bansal. A year senior to me from school, Suvena and I had initially rejected each other because to me she had appeared as “too unintelligent”, and because to her I appeared as “too arrogant”. So for all her years in school, we traveled from the same bus stop, in the same bus, stood always at the back (naturally ’coz sitting in the front of a bus and on a seat was something that behenjis did), talked to our respective friends, and almost rarely if ever acknowledged each other.
But all that changed the year Suvena graduated from school. I don’t remember what happened, when, or how, but we became friends. We swore lifelong commitment to each other based on our mad lust for Rhett Butler, our love for wicked women, books, hand written letters, men with good voices, chocolates, and the chemistry that we found between us. If not in each other’s house, then we were obviously out walking in the neighborhood, down the tree lined avenue within Narmada Apartments. The trees touched the skies while we went about our daily business of dissecting things that happened, people we met, our future plans, goals, everything.
Suvena’s most redeeming quality in my life was that she always knew how to make things better. You took a problem to her, man made or otherwise, and god knows that as a teenager there were tons of the former as compared to the latter, and she solved it for you. She didn’t get mad, she just chose to get even. You hurt her friend, you hurt her. Her brand of loyalty, clean heart, kickass intelligence, infectious enthusiasm, and the ability to know what was right for me although she was only a year older, made her one of the most wonderful things in my life.
Today, she is married. To a wonderful man, as also to her smart alec job -- the one she got after her IIM degree, (which only goes to demonstrate how utterly stupid my initial assessment of her intelligence was), and she is a mother. But to me she is not special for any of these achievements although they are all meritorious by themselves. To me she is special because she lets me be me with all my hundred imperfections and vanities, humiliations, heartbreaks, and defeats…things that I don’t admit to most others I know. Which is why she was with me when I went to check whether I have made it to St. Stephen’s because if the answer was no, I knew I would be able to deal with the rejection if I was with her. She made me smile, she cried with me, she made all my birthdays special, she found something to redeem my faith in myself every single time that I messed up, and I know how often that was the case.
Dear Bitch and a Half, I am missing you so much today. Don’t worry, all is well with my life here. I am working hard, I am living my dream, I am happy. But a bhelpuri and then coffee with you (for which you will insist on paying thanks to your ever present “Main badi hoon na” logic ) and after that, a long walk in the evening while our respective mothers shouted themselves hoarse from the balconies (“Will you ever come back home?”), would have done me a world of good. You are being missed, desperately.
Tell Akriti, she is a lucky princess, she has my good luck charm as her mother after all.
Love always,
Bitch and a Half
Sunday, March 18, 2007
300
I saw the movie 300 last night. Based on Frank Miller’s graphic novel by the same name, the film is a visual delight provided larger than life, computer graphics are your cup of tea. And they better be, because this is it. This is the only selling point of the movie. Maybe by some stretch of generosity, even the music can be called interesting, since unconventional it certainly is. But then, that’s it. Nothing else is memorable neither in terms of performance, story nor characterization.
I am not sure from where to start ripping this movie into shreds. Perhaps from the fact that the director, Zack Snyder has actually said in an interview that historical details were purposefully changed so that they would look “cool“ and work better for movie purposes. Pick up a goddamn fairy tale then! Don’t go around telling history the way you want to.
Or perhaps from the fact that everything looks so fake that even when heads get chopped off, or arms get mutilated, nothing really happens to you inside. Contrast that with a particularly poignant scene in Saving Private Ryan where one of the soldiers searches in the debris for his arm that has been just been blown off by a grenade.
Or perhaps from the fact that the protagonists know only three ways of delivering the already poor beyond belief dialogues so much so that in the entire movie there is not one dialogue that evokes the same emotion as the one in Gladiator when Russell Crowe faces Joaquin Phoenix and says, “My name is Maximus…commander of the armies of the north…loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius, father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife, and I will have my vengeance in this life or the next.”
This is a war/ adventure film, but where is the tension, the gripping excitement, the edge of the seat thrill and fear that even the tamest of the scenes in Lord Of The Rings had? Nowhere, although 300 is one of the big blockbuster movies that Hollywood seems to be proud of this year.
More than anything else it is disgusting how the movie is all about the noble white man’s struggle and victory against the primitive Orient. The essential story of 300 is that Sparta and Greece have been challenged by the Persians. The Spartan king, Leonidas, is white, noble, heroic and someone every woman in the audience will find it very easy to fall in love with. Provided they don’t have backgrounds in history. By contrast, the Persian king, Xerxes is brown, primitive, and the kind of man very few will ever fantasize about. He lives in a harem, wears vulgar jewelry, is surrounded by naked women and other intoxications whereas the Spartan king is a good clean man, with no addictions, only noble heroic charms and of course he is staunchly monogamous. So the Asians have invaded Sparta with a million soldiers against whom only 300 of the Spartan army is available to fight. Now such unequal battles are part of history and have been fought countless times. My own brother who has got a supremely intelligent mind and memory for military history can write several essays to prove this right and so there is nothing shocking or alarming about the movie maker’s claim. But what is repulsive is how he brings his contemporary awareness and prejudices in to this film. His brand of Asians attack with strange monsters, magic and mumbo jumbo, disfigured men, and they demonstrate a passion for the weird, the brutal, and the savage. The Asian army is big, slow and rather incapable of war. The Spartans are methodical, disciplined, and swift. And of course the only person who defects to the Persian side is a grotesque man with severe disfigurements that make it impossible for him to fight from the Spartan side. So the implication is clear…you have to be totally wrong somewhere to take “their” side. Particularly telling is the last scene where the hero, King Leonidas is sprawled dead, his body pierced with arrows. From the way the camera moves over his body it immediately brings to mind images of crucifixion, and we know what parallels are being drawn between this celluloid hero and the other religious one. The suggestion of the battle between “good” versus “evil” and which side is which is too clear in the director’s head, and it is this black and white distinction that I am not comfortable with. There are too many grey cells protesting.
I am not sure from where to start ripping this movie into shreds. Perhaps from the fact that the director, Zack Snyder has actually said in an interview that historical details were purposefully changed so that they would look “cool“ and work better for movie purposes. Pick up a goddamn fairy tale then! Don’t go around telling history the way you want to.
Or perhaps from the fact that everything looks so fake that even when heads get chopped off, or arms get mutilated, nothing really happens to you inside. Contrast that with a particularly poignant scene in Saving Private Ryan where one of the soldiers searches in the debris for his arm that has been just been blown off by a grenade.
Or perhaps from the fact that the protagonists know only three ways of delivering the already poor beyond belief dialogues so much so that in the entire movie there is not one dialogue that evokes the same emotion as the one in Gladiator when Russell Crowe faces Joaquin Phoenix and says, “My name is Maximus…commander of the armies of the north…loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius, father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife, and I will have my vengeance in this life or the next.”
This is a war/ adventure film, but where is the tension, the gripping excitement, the edge of the seat thrill and fear that even the tamest of the scenes in Lord Of The Rings had? Nowhere, although 300 is one of the big blockbuster movies that Hollywood seems to be proud of this year.
More than anything else it is disgusting how the movie is all about the noble white man’s struggle and victory against the primitive Orient. The essential story of 300 is that Sparta and Greece have been challenged by the Persians. The Spartan king, Leonidas, is white, noble, heroic and someone every woman in the audience will find it very easy to fall in love with. Provided they don’t have backgrounds in history. By contrast, the Persian king, Xerxes is brown, primitive, and the kind of man very few will ever fantasize about. He lives in a harem, wears vulgar jewelry, is surrounded by naked women and other intoxications whereas the Spartan king is a good clean man, with no addictions, only noble heroic charms and of course he is staunchly monogamous. So the Asians have invaded Sparta with a million soldiers against whom only 300 of the Spartan army is available to fight. Now such unequal battles are part of history and have been fought countless times. My own brother who has got a supremely intelligent mind and memory for military history can write several essays to prove this right and so there is nothing shocking or alarming about the movie maker’s claim. But what is repulsive is how he brings his contemporary awareness and prejudices in to this film. His brand of Asians attack with strange monsters, magic and mumbo jumbo, disfigured men, and they demonstrate a passion for the weird, the brutal, and the savage. The Asian army is big, slow and rather incapable of war. The Spartans are methodical, disciplined, and swift. And of course the only person who defects to the Persian side is a grotesque man with severe disfigurements that make it impossible for him to fight from the Spartan side. So the implication is clear…you have to be totally wrong somewhere to take “their” side. Particularly telling is the last scene where the hero, King Leonidas is sprawled dead, his body pierced with arrows. From the way the camera moves over his body it immediately brings to mind images of crucifixion, and we know what parallels are being drawn between this celluloid hero and the other religious one. The suggestion of the battle between “good” versus “evil” and which side is which is too clear in the director’s head, and it is this black and white distinction that I am not comfortable with. There are too many grey cells protesting.
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Look who is online!
And look at it here
There's a photosketch there, which the artist made after mutilating my photograph, and the resulting sketch makes me look neither 27 nor human...very sad indeed. So in case you cannot recognize me from that sketch, you shall be forgiven, and I shall live with that.
And by the way, according to the article, I am taking "a course in Creative Writing". Bah! I AM getting myself a second Master's degree for crying out loud, not a month long "course"!
God save us from certain editors!
Still, I am thankful...it's not every day that one gets published, and that too in such a platform. So, a big THANK YOU to everyone who made this possible, especially Praveen.
I await everyone's feedback.
There's a photosketch there, which the artist made after mutilating my photograph, and the resulting sketch makes me look neither 27 nor human...very sad indeed. So in case you cannot recognize me from that sketch, you shall be forgiven, and I shall live with that.
And by the way, according to the article, I am taking "a course in Creative Writing". Bah! I AM getting myself a second Master's degree for crying out loud, not a month long "course"!
God save us from certain editors!
Still, I am thankful...it's not every day that one gets published, and that too in such a platform. So, a big THANK YOU to everyone who made this possible, especially Praveen.
I await everyone's feedback.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
A Weekend In Utah
Life is nothing more than a series of conversations, isn’t it? We go from one conversation to another, having retained what we had to and then moving on from there. Conversing is one of the few things that my mother says I do quite well. I certainly have shown tremendous appetite for it for several years of my life, except maybe for times such as when I was in class 3, when in my annual report card my class teacher wrote, “Very shy child. Needs to talk more.”
The weekend from March 1 to 4 was exceptionally fruitful in terms of such conversations. I was in one of the most beautiful states of the US, Utah, attending the Rocky Mountain Peer Tutoring Conference. The name Utah comes from the Ute Native American language, where it means "people of the mountains", and this is a state that is known for its geographical diversity…it’s got it all, right from snowcapped mountains to river valleys to barren deserts.
I left Moscow on March 1 with my friend Mike who drove me to our nearest big airport, Spokane, which is about two hours’ drive away. Barely fifteen minutes out of Moscow, the landscape begins to show rolling mountains and vast fields. Top that with a clear blue sky, and paradise itself will pale in comparison. After the non-stop conversation with Mike, I reached Spokane, where it was time for the necessary checking-ins, and then I sat down for an hour long wait armed with a Starbucks mocha and The Winshaw Legacy, an amazing novel that doubles as a political and social statement on the Britain of the 1980s and 90s. A minute into the book and the coffee, I hear, “Hi Sayantani!” or the American version of it, which is Sayan10e. I looked up to see a complete stranger, someone I have never met before. Intrigued, I nodded, and smiled tentatively. He smiled back, and said, “It’s ok if you don’t recognize me. We have never met officially. I teach in the English department at the University of Idaho.” A couple of meaningful conversations later, we parted…he to board a plane for Denver, and I for Salt Lake City, the capital of Utah.
Once I boarded and was still in the process of settling down, I saw a familiar face coming towards me. It was Matt, a friend of a friend, and wonder of wonders, his seat was just the very one next to me. We had hung out in the past and so another effortless conversation was waiting to take place. An hour and a half passed pleasantly, and we reached Salt Lake City, so called because it is situated around a lake by the same name, and even more spectacularly so, surrounded by the Rocky Mountains.
At the airport, I met Samantha, Sam for short. She had been sent from the venue of the conference, that is the Weber State University, to pick me up. The drive from the airport to the campus was pleasant, although marred for the driver because of heavy snowfall on the way. For the passenger, it was a new city, a new experience, lots to see, and lots to keep her eyes and ears open for.
When the name of a conference has Rocky Mountains in it, one expects to be able to see the mountains. What one is perhaps not prepared for is how much of it is there to see. It ran along my side of the road right from Salt Lake City to Ogden where the University is situated. I saw the Rockies from the window at my room in a motel in Ogden, and photographed it night and day. Ogden downtown has the Rockies for its background. The Weber State University campus is nestled within the Rockies. So, snow, sunshine, mountains…few things can match their beauty…provided your life is moving at a leisurely pace. I have plenty of snow and mountains even in Moscow, but here I hate it because snow slows me down, in every which way, and that makes me angry.
After dinner with Sam and some of the other students from the University, they dropped me off to my next destination, Motel 6. For any one of you headed towards Ogden, Motel 6 should be the last motel to stay in, in spite of its cleanliness and fabulous views. Why? Because the motel as such is managed and run by the dumbest people in the whole of North America. Sample the following three conversation, with three different people.
Sayantani: Hi, I am new in Ogden. Could you tell me stuff that I could do around here on my own without getting lost? Particularly because a snow storm is predicted within the next few hours.
Clerk 1: Umm…like, I don’t know.
Sayantani: You work here, probably live here as well, and you don’t know what one can do here?
Clerk 1: Umm…yeah, kinda.
Sayantani: Hi. Is there any way in which I can access wireless network inside the hotel?
Clerk 2: You could go to Starbucks.
Sayantani: But I don’t want coffee.
Clerk 2: No they have wireless.
Sayantani: You’re missing the point…I asked about wireless inside the motel.
Clerk 2: I don’t, like, I don’t know.
Sayantani: I need to book a cab please. Could you make sure that one is here at 9 am tomorrow?
Clerk 3: Umm, I don’t know how to do that. I can give you their number.
Sayantani: Yeah, do that so that I can call from my extra special gold plated phone, which will make them talk to me far more nicely than they would if you called them from your regular white colored phone.
The next afternoon, Sam took me to lunch at Rooster’s, a restaurant in downtown Ogden. Rooster’s is apparently one of the most important places to eat in Ogden, it certainly had awesome food. Then we went to Farr Better Ice Creams, a store that’s been around for more than fifty years and has a very traditional American feel to it. Not to mention, some amazing flavors that looked and tasted better than every sin in the world. After that I trooped around by myself in Ogden’s historic downtown section, took tons of photographs, visited the Union Station Railway Museum where I missed my dad tremendously…the sight of those shiny trains, both actuals as well as miniature models scurring around very realistic looking albeit minute landscapes would have made my dad fall in love with the place. I have experienced this before, there comes a time in each of my independent travels when I see something that reminds me of some one or the other in my life, and those are the only times when I wish I had company, or a cellphone at the very least, to at least call the person in question, and confess, “I miss you, I wish you were here.” But fortunately, that feeling doesn’t last for long…possibly I lack the gene that keeps people unhappy or depressed for long.
On Friday evening, it was the Weber State University again, where there was a poetry reading session, some music, basically an ice-breaker for all the fifteen-twenty universities that had come to attend the conference. I was the only one from the University of Idaho, which was nerve-wracking at times, but for the most part, quite interesting.
Saturday morning came with a flourish and also too soon. It was the day of the conference, the day of my presentation, the day of my telling the audience how it feels to work as a writing tutor in a university that is overwhelmingly American, and where I belong to the minority. All went off well, the butterflies in the stomach died a natural death once I started speaking, and eventually in the evening when the conference came to an end, and it was time to celebrate. With Sam and her boyfriend John. They took me to several unimaginably beautiful spots in Ogden and then to Salt Lake City. Notably, we went to Gateway, which is an outdoor mall, and to the Salt Lake Temple, which is the largest and best known place of worship of the Christian sect known as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
After traipsing through these touristy things and lots of fun and laughter, I was dropped off at the motel, which I left next morning to return to Spokane airport, where Mike was waiting to pick me up. We ended up having a fair bit of fun at downtown Spokane…lunch, bookstores, monster milkshakes, and continuous conversations. And then finally home, with the sadness that comes after every memorable journey, the joy of being at home, and the excitement of asking yourself, “Ok, so what’s next?”
The weekend from March 1 to 4 was exceptionally fruitful in terms of such conversations. I was in one of the most beautiful states of the US, Utah, attending the Rocky Mountain Peer Tutoring Conference. The name Utah comes from the Ute Native American language, where it means "people of the mountains", and this is a state that is known for its geographical diversity…it’s got it all, right from snowcapped mountains to river valleys to barren deserts.
I left Moscow on March 1 with my friend Mike who drove me to our nearest big airport, Spokane, which is about two hours’ drive away. Barely fifteen minutes out of Moscow, the landscape begins to show rolling mountains and vast fields. Top that with a clear blue sky, and paradise itself will pale in comparison. After the non-stop conversation with Mike, I reached Spokane, where it was time for the necessary checking-ins, and then I sat down for an hour long wait armed with a Starbucks mocha and The Winshaw Legacy, an amazing novel that doubles as a political and social statement on the Britain of the 1980s and 90s. A minute into the book and the coffee, I hear, “Hi Sayantani!” or the American version of it, which is Sayan10e. I looked up to see a complete stranger, someone I have never met before. Intrigued, I nodded, and smiled tentatively. He smiled back, and said, “It’s ok if you don’t recognize me. We have never met officially. I teach in the English department at the University of Idaho.” A couple of meaningful conversations later, we parted…he to board a plane for Denver, and I for Salt Lake City, the capital of Utah.
Once I boarded and was still in the process of settling down, I saw a familiar face coming towards me. It was Matt, a friend of a friend, and wonder of wonders, his seat was just the very one next to me. We had hung out in the past and so another effortless conversation was waiting to take place. An hour and a half passed pleasantly, and we reached Salt Lake City, so called because it is situated around a lake by the same name, and even more spectacularly so, surrounded by the Rocky Mountains.
At the airport, I met Samantha, Sam for short. She had been sent from the venue of the conference, that is the Weber State University, to pick me up. The drive from the airport to the campus was pleasant, although marred for the driver because of heavy snowfall on the way. For the passenger, it was a new city, a new experience, lots to see, and lots to keep her eyes and ears open for.
When the name of a conference has Rocky Mountains in it, one expects to be able to see the mountains. What one is perhaps not prepared for is how much of it is there to see. It ran along my side of the road right from Salt Lake City to Ogden where the University is situated. I saw the Rockies from the window at my room in a motel in Ogden, and photographed it night and day. Ogden downtown has the Rockies for its background. The Weber State University campus is nestled within the Rockies. So, snow, sunshine, mountains…few things can match their beauty…provided your life is moving at a leisurely pace. I have plenty of snow and mountains even in Moscow, but here I hate it because snow slows me down, in every which way, and that makes me angry.
After dinner with Sam and some of the other students from the University, they dropped me off to my next destination, Motel 6. For any one of you headed towards Ogden, Motel 6 should be the last motel to stay in, in spite of its cleanliness and fabulous views. Why? Because the motel as such is managed and run by the dumbest people in the whole of North America. Sample the following three conversation, with three different people.
Sayantani: Hi, I am new in Ogden. Could you tell me stuff that I could do around here on my own without getting lost? Particularly because a snow storm is predicted within the next few hours.
Clerk 1: Umm…like, I don’t know.
Sayantani: You work here, probably live here as well, and you don’t know what one can do here?
Clerk 1: Umm…yeah, kinda.
Sayantani: Hi. Is there any way in which I can access wireless network inside the hotel?
Clerk 2: You could go to Starbucks.
Sayantani: But I don’t want coffee.
Clerk 2: No they have wireless.
Sayantani: You’re missing the point…I asked about wireless inside the motel.
Clerk 2: I don’t, like, I don’t know.
Sayantani: I need to book a cab please. Could you make sure that one is here at 9 am tomorrow?
Clerk 3: Umm, I don’t know how to do that. I can give you their number.
Sayantani: Yeah, do that so that I can call from my extra special gold plated phone, which will make them talk to me far more nicely than they would if you called them from your regular white colored phone.
The next afternoon, Sam took me to lunch at Rooster’s, a restaurant in downtown Ogden. Rooster’s is apparently one of the most important places to eat in Ogden, it certainly had awesome food. Then we went to Farr Better Ice Creams, a store that’s been around for more than fifty years and has a very traditional American feel to it. Not to mention, some amazing flavors that looked and tasted better than every sin in the world. After that I trooped around by myself in Ogden’s historic downtown section, took tons of photographs, visited the Union Station Railway Museum where I missed my dad tremendously…the sight of those shiny trains, both actuals as well as miniature models scurring around very realistic looking albeit minute landscapes would have made my dad fall in love with the place. I have experienced this before, there comes a time in each of my independent travels when I see something that reminds me of some one or the other in my life, and those are the only times when I wish I had company, or a cellphone at the very least, to at least call the person in question, and confess, “I miss you, I wish you were here.” But fortunately, that feeling doesn’t last for long…possibly I lack the gene that keeps people unhappy or depressed for long.
On Friday evening, it was the Weber State University again, where there was a poetry reading session, some music, basically an ice-breaker for all the fifteen-twenty universities that had come to attend the conference. I was the only one from the University of Idaho, which was nerve-wracking at times, but for the most part, quite interesting.
Saturday morning came with a flourish and also too soon. It was the day of the conference, the day of my presentation, the day of my telling the audience how it feels to work as a writing tutor in a university that is overwhelmingly American, and where I belong to the minority. All went off well, the butterflies in the stomach died a natural death once I started speaking, and eventually in the evening when the conference came to an end, and it was time to celebrate. With Sam and her boyfriend John. They took me to several unimaginably beautiful spots in Ogden and then to Salt Lake City. Notably, we went to Gateway, which is an outdoor mall, and to the Salt Lake Temple, which is the largest and best known place of worship of the Christian sect known as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
After traipsing through these touristy things and lots of fun and laughter, I was dropped off at the motel, which I left next morning to return to Spokane airport, where Mike was waiting to pick me up. We ended up having a fair bit of fun at downtown Spokane…lunch, bookstores, monster milkshakes, and continuous conversations. And then finally home, with the sadness that comes after every memorable journey, the joy of being at home, and the excitement of asking yourself, “Ok, so what’s next?”
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