A prosaic account of my year in 2011

First contact with Lucknow in January when I came here for a workshop. Put up at the Chowk area, visited Imambara and fell in love with the place, appeared for a job interview, got the job, decided to come back later.

Did come back a few months later but too late for the original job (she had said come teach my teachers and come fast) – didn’t realize “fast” meant next Monday itself. Anyways, found another job and stayed on.

The monsoon in Lucknow, lovely sunsets and lovely sunrise, everyday was a pleasure to wake up, go to work.

I was 43 when I came here, turned 44.

The milestones would be I think that I changed profession.

I still did the same things, well, almost – things I did with language as English Teacher, only this was at a different level, more intense, with more scope to learn, develop and hone my skills.

From teacher I turned editor. At first worked as copy editor working with style and consistency and then I started doing what they call substantive editing, kind of content architecture thing, but not quite. Here you do not engineer reader response with content, but simply re-arrange content to make it more readable.

I learned to work with one of the best writing softwares they say there is in the market, InCopy and I also learned to work in the InDesign environment. A completely new software at forty plus? Well, yup. A completely new city and completely new profession at forty plus? Yes!

I also work with legal content. That is also new. Earlier I worked with literature. Poetry. Now it is law. I read kilometers of text on hard core legal theories and have started to pick up the basics, like the major schools of thought etc. Like, I learned more about our own constitution, a wee bit about the processes and practice of law and the domains of learning in law – atleast now I know that they have to study subjects like Tort, Administrative Law, Theory, Fiction, Contract, Arbitration and stuff like that J and I got to read a little about English common law and some of the famous cases of the world. I know they have stuff like case law and family laws (yeah in the plural) and codified and uncodified law. And feminist laws too at the far end of the spectrum.  

I learned about the heroes of law and the great ideas that changed the way we live and think of life: Dicey, his theory, Plato, Aristotle, Bacon, (I thought the last three were our guys!), Austin, the famous Fuller-Hart debate and this whole controversy about morality in law versus the Positivist approach to law. Of course most of what I read will go over my head and I know I shall not file them away permanently and they will be deleted from memory but the most interesting concept that excited me and that I would always remember and take away from these studies is the idea of legal fictions. I still wonder at the ingenuity of this invention. God! Human brain is just one amazing piece of work by God and I thank you God for giving me a chance in this world. I picked up a bit about the the mitakshara and the Bengal or dayabhaga school of Hindu family law. I sat and cried when I studied family laws regarding marriage – they said in a particular Supreme Court judgment wherein they defined what a family is in the eyes of law, they said that a single person cannot claim to be a family but he or she is like a drifting whatever through the face of life.

So, as a single person, I am nothing in the eyes my country’s laws. I can never expect the joys and rights and privileges of a family – unless am with a man. They have no protection for single women’s rights.

There is nothing called single people’s rights!!!

We cannot adopt, we cannot claim tax benefits the way a Hindu Undivided family (HUF) can. Single people struggle and chaff under pressure, we shoulder equal responsibilities, work harder than most married people and yet there are no rights to protect us from harassment or from danger. They never ever envisaged a person might decide not to start a family even though India is the country where they had very clear rules about individual rights. Most Muni-Rishis did not marry, but chose to live life on their own terms – albeit outside the periphery of the city – but they did have homes, no one denied them the right to property. They could go to a forest, choose a place they like and set up their ashram there and then entertain or do whatever other normal people do as they pleased. They were not even taxed J because these people also had a role to play in the community and people knew they could not be expected to live the way most others live and therefore they were allowed freedom to choose – there never was a clash of interests and they definitely were not seen as threats.

My friend sold off his old house and moved into a new one. Sherwood Park, bye bye! My godson tasted his first biryani this year. His sister little rose is a little too young for that yet, she doesn’t even have all of her teeth, but she is growing them every month for I see more teeth every time theres a new picture – the little mite, she is so lively, it is a pleasure to watch her grow. My godson is more of a thoughtful person I think and the gentlest little boy I have seen.

 I got a house last night, was rendered homeless next morning, because the landlady had second thoughts about giving her house to a single person.

Their main fear is I would sleep around. You might ask why should it bother her? If am single obviously I would want to meet people? But no over here in India if you are single they make it all the more difficult for you to mingle – you are in office the whole day and at the end of it you are in a jail with the entire community guarding your chastity lol.

I think it is because married people don’t get enough of it is why they are jealous of the single people because they think we get all the rest. But folks, most of us are too tired to even think of life – we got so much work to do being single, we are happy to hit the bed when it is ten at night.

Anyways, long and short of it, I changed jobs, changed profession, changed location, changed line of work and learned a new software, new skills too and stepped into another year of forty plus, did not blog that much, lost the capacity to write the way I used to, could not raise the money for school, they changed my dates  moving it to September 2012 and also hiking the fees by five thousand dollars and my son ate his first biryani and his Diwali gift was returned by post. This year I could not get anything for my godchildren or my friends. But this is the year I stumbled onto a job that I enjoy and this is also the year I met bosses that are gentlemen. I have made some new friends and FPR is rocking. My old friend Priyank ( Final Transit) would remember this year because he and his partner C--- bought their own house in Toronto. J I ran into my bro on FB and discovered his photography! And on the 31 December I was rendered homeless. But they treated us to pastry and drinks at the office.

 I really got a mixed bag this year.

Wish every one of you an unimaginably magical year in 2012. For me I wish that am able to make that trip at least by 2014 and am able to get lots of extra work so I can raise that 18,000 dollars I need for school or that I meet the love of my life this year (at least I hope I know it when it hits me, most of the times I just cant make out whats going on until it is too late). (Please do not laugh). I am tired of eating alone, worrying alone, dreaming alone too.

It is raining constantly since morning, here in Lucknow, today. It is 3 pm and dark. I turned on the heater soon as there was electricty and the lights. It was 6 last Monday. Then it was sunny for a bit. Now the temperature is going to drop further tomorrow. But I am prepared for that.

They have had an earthquake in Japan I heard, 7.0 on the richter scale, I hope those people get help on time. 

Now am off to read about your lives.

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O was forgetting this: this year for the first time in my life I ordered books online. Out of necessity of course as 1) I dont get to get out that much as am tied to atypical 9 to 5 deskjob. 2) I cdnt find a library or a proper book market in Lucknow - I have seen a couple of shops in the gunj area that doesnt have the atmosphere and I didnt like it there. In a bookshop one doesnt like it if ten people hover over your shoulders and if it is too crowded with stuff thats useless. In a bookshop you expect books, bookbuyers or browsers and silence and a little space. Here, one is typical shop where everything is stocked in huge piles and no one knows clealrly what is where, and in the other, theres too much of scurrying and unnecessary hovering. So I sought out Flipkart, and started with a small order to be cautious, their delivery is fabulous, you can actually pay on delivery. What do you think I ordered?

The Diary of a Wimpy Kid :) I have read nearly all the books in the seies now and thoroughly enjoyed every single one of them - if you like children'sbooks that are written exactly as the child thinks (and mind you children do not really think in the cliched childish we think they do), you might like the experience. I had lost my copy of the Anne Frank Diary and the Tale of Two Cities which I found on Flipkart priced at an amazingly throw away price. And I got the Archie Marries series too - when I had read it as a kid, they had a budget and wdnt buy Archies because they didnt approve (they didnt mind buying Tintin but not Archies), so I made a childhood dream come true by getting the dozen sitting in my office at age 44 :) I keopt my tryst with the baby girl, I gave her a lot of things she dreamt of andf trusted me to make it happen for her. I hope she likes me :) the adult and keeps speaking to me through my dreams, because she had an excellent mind and she was strangely clearsighted about everything in life. I miss the little girl sometimes, do you?