Expanding Horizons

What’s a few missing months between friends, eh? I mean sure... some stuff happened and I didn't write about it...

I got married in an extended dose of pure Kafka (wont blog about it or my family will be forced to arrange my funeral). We honeymooned in Mauritius, and flitted about the Indian subcontinent in a rather Brownian fashion. I worked in India after a very long time, and in Hyderabad for the first time, and in the process was able to compare life in Indian and American IT. We came back to Buffalo, and made an apartment move to a bigger place; Kirti prettied up said quarters, so that for once a house with my name on the deed actually smells and looks nice and orderly! We continued the tourism and visited Toronto, Canada (this after two years of procrastination on my part).

I can tell you it is a kick to know we've been in four countries in four months...

I managed to get Kirti addicted to Star Wars in particular and ‘my kind’ of movies in general. (The Godfather I & II and LOTR next up in our Netflix queue). I read a whole bunch of books – Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows (meh), Robin Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy (so so good), Freakonomics by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt (mind-blowing), and (finally!) Dan Simmons' Ilium/ Olympos duet (ultimately, meh).

To round it all off we watched a HUGE bunch of movies – Order of the Phoenix, Cheeni Kum, Metro, Gandhi – My Father, Transformers, Rush Hour 3, Ratatouille, Little Miss Sunshine, The Bourne Ultimatum, The Kingdom, et al. Not to mention all the Netflix rentals that are part of Kirti's 'Wider World of Movies' film appreciation course :D

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you a basic four months of absolute hedonism!

I know what you might say... there are 20+ blog posts in there... trouble is, I now realize that what feeds the fires of blogging is most often a sense of frustration or angst, and the need to share/ vent; I just haven’t been feeling any of those lately. Sue me for being blissfully happy!

I resolve then to write here in this pensieve only when I have a nice point to make... When I feel the need to report something new I thought or experienced or did that is worth writing about. No more diatribes or rants (unless I'm particularly peeved). No more vague, cynical verse condemning the universe at large to meaninglessness. Or none of those in writing at least; I'll save them for the dinner table. :)

That being said, and done with, what I want to write about today is two fresh experiences/ activities I recently took up.

The first is playing Golf. I had always hesitated to try my hand at it because honestly, the game seems so intimidating to those who have never played it. It seems expensive, elitist, and rather colonial in some sense... You can almost imagine an Officer of the Raj twirling his moustaches in a Shikari Shambu outfit pondering the selection of the 3 iron over the 5 as his turbaned desi caddy looks on subserviently. Well ok, that last was a stretch - officers of the Raj probably played cricket while their wives played the oh so Golf-like Croquet with flamingoes :D (or so Lewis Carrol would have me believe).

But Golf really is colonial - in the sense that playing it can seem as stiff and nuanced as waving a sommelier over at a restaurant or eating a twelve course meal with the fancy cutlery. There are rules, a sense of decorum, a premium on integrity (that being the high falutin way of saying no BS), and a sense of immense satisfaction - if you manage to ignore the constant fear of having committed a grave faux pas. And did I mention the warm axiomatic feeling of superiority over the poor slobs at the gaming arcades and bowling alleys?

Enough cynicism. Down boy!

I can't say I play Golf well (can't say that about any sport, really) but I did like it. Or the somewhat informal version of it that my friends introduced me to. In this Golfesque game, if you end up exceeding par for a hole by too many, you are allowed to tee off at the next one and round off the previous score to +4. :)

I might play more next season, for alas, this year the Buffalo winter is nigh. But wait - I forgot to make my point, didn't I? Here it is - My taking to Golf surprises me; for an established cynic and hater of convention and pretense, I hadn't thought I'd like it nearly as much as I did. Ah well... another exception to add to a growing list.

-=-=-=-

The other activity I want to write about is one Kirti talked me into. After almost five years in absentia, I have returned to the role of a student and have taken up learning Spanish as a fourth language (it will be Kirti's fifth). We attended the first class yesterday - vowel sound rules, basic words, some grammar - and in 12 weeks, we hope to have some understanding of the language.

This is one of those things I have always planned on doing but somehow never did. Why? Gee - I don't know... but I should've started sooner!

Yesterday's class took me back to when I was doing the GRE wordlist in Pune and used it to really get into the guts of the English language, etymologically speaking. It was an hour and a half of pure joy. It made me think why anyone learns a new language... learning it for a practical purpose seems a waste in some ways, if you keep it at that. Learning a new language should be about erudition, about the simple joy of widening your sphere of knowledge. When you take up a new language as an adult, it should be your window onto a wider world of linguistics and philosophy and sociology.

As Kirti says, learning a language is imbibing its culture. The music, the cuisine, the social , the geopolitics, the economics - you need to take it all in and that ends up making you a wiser person. The hedonist in me is already salivating at the thought of decoding latin music and cinema, of watching Pan's Labyrinth in Spanish and attending a Flamenco dance performance. The closet academic in me is similarly looking forward to a study of romance languages in general, and ardently hoping Spanish will prove a window into Italian, French and ultimately, Latin. I also feel like I'm now one step closer to a very old pipe dream.

To end this in style, here's a non-vague goal: I will be able to converse in at least ten languages before I die.

Peace... Out.