The Great White Fear

I knew you all my life. Even though I didn't see you all that often, I always knew you would be coming home sometime in the future. To stay with us and bring us funny presents, to make jokes and tease me about my latest boyfriend, to take me out for lunch and teach me about being quick witted.

At your memorial I couldn't get up and say anything, because I just couldn't stop crying. I wanted to let everyone know that even though I wasn't your friend, or your student or your colleague or one of your supposedly numerous girlfriends, I treasured your visits and remembered you with nothing but laughter and good memories. As I will try to remember you from now on.

I regret so deeply that I couldn't know you as a full fledged adult. That our conversations were always you teasing and me giggling helplessly. Except for the last time that you were here, when I would crack a joke and you would look surprised and delighted before you started to laugh. I couldn't wait for your next visit, so I could make you laugh, and test my wits against yours.

Thank you for letting me have the brochures of Miss Saigon. I know you wanted to keep them, but to twelve year old me they meant a lot, and the pictures from it helped me get really good marks in my seventh grade project on the Vietnam War.

So many of my happiest childhood memories revolve around you and that beautiful house in Dehradun, and those fabulous visits to Delhi. Like the time when I was six, and I opened the door and you said "Driver!". I still remember that and smile, even though it makes no sense whatsoever. And thank you for eating that terrible food I cooked for you. Thank you for the yellow towels.

I will never be able to shake the feeling that you will definitely come to visit again.

Farewell Great White Fear.

Come The Spring

The transition from winter to summer is a traumatic time for many. Here in Delhi, where winter is an infinitely preferable state to summer, everyone watches the rising thermostat with unease and more than a little apprehension. Those with delicate constitutions, or in many cases just unlucky, crumble under the merciless onslaught of coughs, colds, bronchial pneumonia and other gifts from the change of season. It really is a miserable time, and all you have to look forward to is the blazing heat of summer.

Of course, my trauma at the hands of what cannot even jokingly be called spring, is more severe and desperately cruel. You see I have two dogs, and while for most of the year, they are sweet, lovable, and mildly inconvenient, come 'spring' and they are transformed from cuddly canines to gigantic balls of walking fur, the only purpose of which is to shed on everything. And when I say everything, I mean EVERYTHING. My lungs I am convinced sport internal fur carpeting that would make PETA turn Iran and issue a fatwa for my immediate death. Every piece of clothing I own, almost all of which is black, is now brown. And not a very nice brown either.

Curses to you Mother Nature.