After four nights of tossing and turning, tonight I slept through the night. It has been four days since we made a decision to return to India. The thought of returning home was never far from my mind, but taking it from there and replanting it in the center of the mental space has taken more effort than I thought.

I had explored the inside and out of the malleable concepts of "home" and "roots" when I made the documentary, but sorting someone else's thoughts is infinitely easier than sorting ones own. With yourself, you don't know where to begin or which end is up.

To NRIs( Non Resident Indians) the "Will you stay ,Will you go" discussion is at the center of most gatherings or even casual meetings. We talk about it ad infinitum. I have too. Now the time has come to put my money where the mouth is...and it ain't fun, I can tell you that.

There are people who draw up lengthy Excel spreadsheets detailing the pros and cons, benefits and losses and those that feel that the fact that you have to draw up a list is a ridiculous way of rationalizing a perfectly human instinct to go home at the end of a hard days work.

I straddle these two. I do not have any rosy ideas fed by years of nostalgia about living in India. It will be tough especially after the honeymoon phase with friends , relatives and even immediate family is over. Then what? Will the axe of realization fall? The corruption, the pollution and my least favorite - the meddlesomeness of everyone and quiet literally their aunty in everything you do/don't do/plan to do/don't plan to do. Hopefully this is just my hyper-active alert imagination. Hopefully I will be able to take these on ( I have in the past after all!). The temptation to stay is strong, yet, the reason for going back are so personal that , that alone is a deal breaker.

Then there are these other rather calming thoughts- the world is smaller, Indian economy and media are "on a boom"( though all that goes up must come down) and the biggest one of them all, this- I remember clear as the water in Lake Tahoe, the day I arrived in the US. The United Airlines stewardess announced that we were ready to land. I remember my hands growing clammy and feeling as if someone had pulled the lungs out of my chest. The fact that I had left behind a fairly cushy well paying job and the comforts of home to come study in the US, to arrive in a city where I knew one person vaguely and who I was banking on to come pick me up did not seem like such a hot idea for that half -hour before landing. Thus I arrived one cold COLD San Francisco summer day. For the next few years I lived in a room in someone's garage with no heat and industrial carpet, making laughable money (and paying most of it for the garage). After about two years someone broke into the garage and took pretty much everything of any value that I owned including a camera I had managed to buy with my savings( I was good at my work and got a better title and raise). Dammit! Start again!

So to cut a rather long and interesting story ( that I can dine off on for years to come) short, I survived this and many other things (note to self- blog those before you forget!) - Even as I wake up in the middle of the night sometimes with thoughts of doom and of becoming the regretful old hag who "once lived in America" , I think I will be O.K.

Last spring when I was in India, I was amazed at how many billboards and signs I saw that were in English but written in the Hindi script... sort of an opposite of what our friend blogger.com does. Transliteration feature, it tells me here, can change what I write in roman English into Hindi script. So if I write "Namaste" in English and press the handy-dandy button up here, it will look like this नमस्ते।... अवेसोमे!...I mean Awesome!( By the way the transliteration did not work for Awesome- it reads Aa-vey-som-may!!- Lost in transliteration.)

For once my procrastination paid off. I always wanted but never dared to learn how to use a complicated Hindi keyboard... and actually never needed to. Now it seems I don't have to.
So as I was saying earlier, in India, upwardly mobile businesses that want to woo their upwardly mobile clientèle (English being the language of the elite etc. etc.) spell out English words in Hindi. So. "Refreshing Cola" will be "रेफ्रेशिंग कोला".


So what will happen fifty years from now (or sooner)? Indian Bloggers will be writing in the roman script to be able to read in Hindi, then when tired will go out to get that रेफ्रेशिंग कोला from the neighborhood Coke stand (Yup Coke will still be here). Will this Hindi-Roman-Hindi thing finally break class barriers and let people use the languages inter-changeably? Yes, No, Maybe, Who knows? I doubt it. I know people who grew up in North India, whose parents were native Hindi speaker but who when "in company" would feign ignorance of the language. A book called "Rapid X English Speaking Course" was all the rage in the eighties. Now, boards for "British Language School" have given way to "Call Center Training Schools" where everyones "gonna try to getcha!". Interesting.
This Hindi (or any of the other eighteen Indian regional languages) meeting English half-way in everyday life is a very interesting melt. I have to admit though, the thought there is that iota of a chance that Hindi script will vanish ( as a friend had argued with me once) is saddening, that it may also be gone forever is sadder still. For now Viva Hing-Lish!

Photo-courtesy: Supernova's Photostream on Flickr.

When I tell my friends about where I was yesterday, I will probably have to add many qualifiers and explanations. I took a class in Basic Pistol training. Yes, I did! I even have a certificate now from the NRA.
Gasp!!!
Here's the sequence of events and even as I write this I know that it really will not qualify as a "reason" but here it is never the less, in the interest of expanding the mind(mine) and shrinking the world(mine)
A few days ago the Indian newspapers were ablaze with photos of a shameful incident in Mumbai. Seventy men mobbed and molested two women as they stepped out of a hotel. To cut a rather long and sorry story short, the men were arrested two days later and then then let go on bail after which they approached a prominent local politician who not only swore to avenge these men but escorted them through the city in a sort of a victory lap. If this does not boil a reasonable person's blood, I don't know what does.
Many whys , whatthehecks and several racing heart beats later I got thinking about what I would do to make myself safe in a similar situation. I have taken self-defense classes in the past, got a pepper spray and built some muscle but lets admit it, these offer mere peace of mind and nothing more. None of the above would so much so as blow a hair on the mustache of these "virile men", if I were ever encounter them (or their brethren that solo or in groups inhabit public spaces and public transportation in India)
Stretch your anger and imagination with me if you would...I signed up for the basic pistol training. I figured, I may never (and probably will never) buy a gun, even though
scaring the machismo out of molesting men (of which there is an unfortunate abundance in my country) would be fun and a service to womankind. The time seemed right to learn this skill.

The class was interesting, taught by three obese and polite NRA trainers who cracked inane jokes about their inefficiency "at computers" when they were not catching their breath from walking in a 7 by10 classroom . Their reference points were Star Trek and the 70's music scene in San Francisco. We started by watching an NRA video about gun safety. I could JUST SEE how outside of that room, I could edit that video chop chop and make something Michael Moore would envy. "Keep your mouth shut. You are here to learn", I told myself and so I did. We went over gun safety, types of guns, the physics and ergonomics of each type. After this we went into the shooting range. It was fun...yes I said it, it was fun! I shot everything from a from 9mm bullets to 35 magnum, from semi automatics -Glocks and SW's to Colt 1911 ( 1911 being the King,Queen, Prince and Princess of guns according to the 3 gentlemen) to the revolver that Dirty Harry used. I was surprised that I liked shooting and I was even more surprised that I was darned good at it!
In eight hours I was hooked to the skill required to load a gun properly , to the attention required to hold a gun safely and to the concentration required to actually be able to shoot (Zen like).
End of class. Amidst "You were awesome!s" we return to the class room. This is when things get iffy. The instructors start talking about how to get a gun. Wait a minute- I don't want to!
No Thanks! For an additional $25 and a test "you will breeze through", I could walk out with a certificate that I can take next door and buy myself that 1911 I loved so much! NO THANKS!
They insist, talk about gun control laws and about how the lawyers and politicians are "fools writing senseless laws". With every shake of their disapproving head, I am more and more thankful that there are laws that prevent people from acquiring guns. I can not believe that they will let me have that thing over there just for having spent an afternoon with the three messiahs of Bang! I had seen pimply kids with their skinny girlfriends, druggos, weirdos walking in and out of the shop next door. So they were not shooting blanks and targets for fun!? Any one of them could do (and probably did do) what I did and they all have guns!

The instructors lost interest in me somewhat after I said "No" and shifted their attentions to this other guy who is applying to be a Sheriff in the county.

What about my country where all you need is economic and/or political power and you can have all the guns you want...and you don't even have lawyers and politicians making laws everyday that prevent misuse of weapons. NRA would love India!!!

Sum total of it- I am deeply conflicted about my new found fascination. I like the power it brings, beyond what I can achieve physically and past my shouting hoarse about the frustrations of being a woman in a society that when taking its best shot will dismiss me as a rabid feminist.
I also hate that this power is not mine alone. It makes the oppressors just as, if not more powerful. Guns will not solve the problems of a society, only increase them yet I am convinced that only I can solve my own problems.