Coming back to life

On Sunday, I met a friend for coffee. In normal times that would be nothing extraordinary. What made this extraordinary was that this was the first time since the lockdown started that I was actually meeting a non-family member casually, for a long in-person conversation.

I’m so tired of the three pairs of shorts and five T-shirts that I’ve been wearing every day since the lockdown started that I actually decided to dress up that day. And bothered to take a photo at a signal on the way to meeting him.

We met at a coffee shop in Koramangala, from where we took away coffees and walked around the area for nearly an hour, talking. No handshakes. No other touches. Masks on for most of the time. And outdoors (I’m glad I live in Bangalore whose weather allows you to be outdoors most of the year). Only issue was that wearing a mask and walking and talking for an hour can tire you out a bit.

The next bit of resurrection happened yesterday when I had an in-person business meeting for the first time in three months. Parking the car near these people’s office was easier than usual (less business activity I guess?), though later I found that my windshield was full of bird shit (I had parked under a tree).

For the first time ever while going into this office, I got accosted by a security guard at the entrance, asking where I was headed, taking my temperature and offering me hand sanitiser. Being a first time, I was paranoid enough to use the umbrella I was carrying to operate the lift buttons, and my mask was always on.

There were no handshakes. The room was a bit stuffy and I wasn’t sure if they were using the AC, so I asked for the windows to be opened (later they turned on the AC saying it’s standard practice there nowadays). Again, no handshakes or anything. We kept our masks on for a long time. They offered water in a bottle which I didn’t touch for a long time.

Until one of them suggested we could order in dosas from a rather famous restaurant close to their office (and one that I absolutely love). The dosas presently arrived, and then all masks were off. For the next half hour as the dosas went down it was like we were back in “normal times” again, eating together and talking loudly without masks. I must say I missed it.

I took the stairs down to avoid touching the lift. Walked back to the car (and birdshit-laden windshield) and quickly used hand sanitiser. I hadn’t carried my laptop or notebook for the meeting, and I quickly made notes using the voice notes app of my phone.

Yes, in normal times, a lot of this might appear mundane. But given that we’re now sort of “coming back to life” after a long and brutal lockdown, a lot of this deserves documentation.

Oh, and I’m super happy to meet people now. Given a choice, I prefer outdoors. Write in if you want to meet me.

Meet and beat

Soon after our first “date” (we didn’t know when we were going to meet that it was going to be a “date” that would ultimately lead to marriage), the person who is now my wife wrote a cute  blogpost titled “Karabath Series“.

In that she had written about “arranged louvvu”, and went on to write this:

First step is to keep your eyes open to delicious and nutritious tharkaris(potential marriage material girls/boys). Then, somehow through some network, make someone set you two up. Third, interact. with tact. Fourth, put meet. or beat. Fifth, this can go in three ways now. First, is a no. Definite no. Second, yes. Full yes. Third, Yes, but not yet. This is a lucrative possibility which gives super scope to put more meets, learn about each others funny faces, food tastes, sense of humour, patience, sense of dressing, chappliying, smells, etc

The fourth point is key, and it was amply clear to me after reading it that it was aimed at me. For a few days before this was written, we had met, and “put beat” (as they say in Bangalore parlance).

We had sort of been “google talk friends” for two years then, and “orkut friends” for three. I had been in the arranged marriage market, and I had out of the blue suggested that we meet. After a little song and dance about whether meeting would be appropriate or not, the discussion went on to where to meet.

This is when she mentioned we could “simply walk around Gandhi Bazaar together”. Things moved fast after that. We met in front of Vidyarthi Bhavan at 4 o’clock on the long weekend Monday, and then started walking. Two hours of walking around Basavanagudi later, we stopped at a Cafe Coffee Day (now closed) to sit for a bit and have coffee. Five years later I documented what we’ve now retrofitted as our “first date” here.

This is not a “personal” post. This is yet another post about how the world might change after the covid crisis. It just has a long preamble, that’s all.

One of the things that is going to suffer after the crisis is over is cafes. I’d written in my post on verandahs about how cafes have served well as good “third places” to meet people. That option is not going to be too much of an option going forward, for even after cafes reopen, people will be loathe to go there and sit in close proximity to strangers.

So how do we do “general catchups”? How do we do dates? How do we discuss business ideas with people? The solution for all this lies in what we ended up doing on our first date. I don’t claim we invented it. Well before we went on this date, journalist Shekhar Gupta had started this series on NDTV called “walk the talk”.

What do you do? You just meet at an agreed place, pick up something to munch on or drink, and start walking. You can take side roads to make sure there isn’t too much traffic. The length of the walk can vary based on how interesting you find each other, and how much time you have.

The best part of meeting someone while walking is that there are no awkward silences. Rather, since you aren’t looking at each other constantly, the silences won’t be awkward. When you run out of things to talk about, there will be some visual stimulus by something you walk by. What’s not to like?

The only issue with walking and talking is that it might be an excellent idea for Bangalore, but not so much for a lot of other cities. Delhi and Bombay, for example, are impossible to step outside in for at least the summer. Maybe in those places we’ll end up having heavily “air cooled” or heavily fanned outdoor places.

It’s not for nothing that the phrase “putting beat” (for aimlessly walking around) was invented in Bangalore.

 

 

3/13: Stockings

It is rare that someone completely blows you away on the first date. To be fair, the first time I met Pinky wasn’t the first time I’d interacted with her. She and I had been “chat friends” for nearly two years then, periodically pinging each other on Google Talk, and making arbit conversations. Yet, the first time I met her, things changed so much for the better that I was overwhelmed.

She hadn’t wanted to meet me. The evening before we finally met, we had spoken on the phone for the first time, where she had tried to reason out to me as to why she didn’t want to meet me. She had been afraid that she might lose “a good chat friend” after the meeting, since our opinions of each other would inevitably change after meeting (there was a recent cartoon on Twitter I saw to this effect, but I don’t recall it enough now to link).

I wasn’t going to let go of her so easily – given that I was in the market then, and on the verge of giving up, and that I’d always found her cute, I HAD to meet her (incidentally, while I always found her cute, I’d never thought of her as a potential “bladee” because I thought she was too young. Her voice convinced me otherwise). So I made up some reason as to why it was important for us to meet the following day, and even convinced her to come to my part of town.

Thinking back, while I did grab my opportunities and “go for it”, most of the credit for Pinky and I getting married should go to her. It was she who first reached out to me, and contacted me again when I had reacted indifferently and arrogantly at first. It was she who made me talk to her, and made me fall in love with her over time.

And every time I’ve fucked up (and that’s been a lot of times, and fairly often at that), it’s she who’s compromised and made up, and made adjustments so that our relationship goes on. She’s given me multiple let-offs and chances, while I continue to occasionally fuck up.

I’m not of the religious sort, so let me just say that I consider myself extremely lucky to have met her, to be married to her and to make babies with her. The credit is all hers.

Anyway, let me take this opportunity to re-share this video I had made about our first date.

 

1/13: Leaving home

2/13: Motherhood statements