Shanghai Crow

From March 2016, China suddenly became another place of mine. It’s for my marketing job. I am writing from Shanghai, and this is the third, the first longish stay in this town in the last two months. Getting better. Absolutely. Magical.

Bombay in December

I love Bombay in December. It’s the sunny and bright morning that makes me feel like everything is possible, it’s the warm afternoon that gets me alive, and a cool and dry night that save me out from bad dreams. I am back in Bombay after five months of unexpected trip in Tokyo. I feel being back to myself again, like my spirit shape is adjusted to the just size of my body without any gap. Or it could be just my regular kurtas and pajamas or my old Osho chappal. Whatever it is, I felt calm and relaxed after a long long time.

A few friends said I look “Japanized” after spending so many months in Tokyo, probablly because I was wearing makeup on the first day of arrival. But the Japanization effect usually ends in a day after filling my stomach with proper spicy Indian food and a few fights with rikshaw walas over tiny change (I still don’t know who’s fault it is not having changes, me or them, or it is the social system that does not let them keep change in their pocket both of us should blame together). Life in Bombay became much easier than in Tokyo to me in many ways, and this feeling is not easy to explain to Japanese people who do not love this city.

I did almost nothing but work in Tokyo for the last five months. We were handling a business plan and a new event project at the same time. I was physically in pain because of sleepless nights and restless weekends months over months. One night, on the last train in Tokyo Metro, I suddenly started craving for mutton korma and Bengali fish fry and chapati-bindi-baji so badly and next moment I found myself crying for not getting them by just making a call. It’s insane and even sounds funny, but I was so serious. (My colleague took me to a great Indian restaurant a week after that.)

Stress is the spice of life and the kiss of death as they say. Maybe once or twice I felt my work was eating me up. One bite, two bites, three bites, day by day. One morning there was not even one drop of energy I had in my body; even making each step walking down to the office and chatting and laughing with colleagues were physically painful. In meetings, I heard the sound of my brain squeezed to drop a tiny little idea and I felt myself like a dried, weirdly shaped dirty floor mop by the end of the day. But it was so much worth than what I paid for. The challenging experience spiced me up and woke up my brain, and people who we met on the way inspired and opened my eyes. I feel so different.

It’s a choice, whether you stop or step beyond. It’s a risk you pay, whether to lose what you’ve got or to lose what you would reach. Several times, I could not help but questioned myself why I kept cancelling plans with my friends and family and looking at my computer in my dark room, and why I had negrected my people and my car left in India for so long and spent almost a half year alone for work in Tokyo. I wondered why I do what I do. I could not answer. But after what we went through, I am quite ready to step beyond this one and pay for the choise without knowing the reason. I have got nothing more than worth to lose anyways.

“Tokyo is not real Japan”, I usually explain to people who are planning to go see Tokyo (and I also tell “Kyoto is an exhagerated version of Japan, not real either). I am from a subarb in Aichi, and my friend there says “No way I could live in Tokyo, ever. There’s no smell of earth. That’s not a place for life.” I agree. But I have a slight different perspective now. Bombay, Tokyo, and my ocean side home town; they became equally my reality now. The loud harmony of rikshaw horn in the traffic jam and the poluted diesel smell of air on Andheri street, the terrible pain of my legs in a pair of pin heal shoes on the asphalt covered lifeless street in Tokyo, and the questionning smile my relatives or my girl friends holding their third babies make and say “So, what’s your plan, really?” in my home town. Now I love all sides, dark or bright, negative or positive. All mine. No one can take. They are my pain, my great spice and my kiss of death. They are my survival.

Nostalgia-bonfire

We have recently took a team picnic trip to Mahabareshwa in which is a beautiful hill station located at 5 hours and half from Bombay by car. It was the second time for me.  The half of us were the same members who went there together before, and another half of us were the new members who joined after the last trip. We’ve visited a few amazing view points, cooked a warm chai with bonfire, had a cup of sweet strawberry and cream and sweet corns, and enjoyed special meals and games together. Same old, same old, but it’s just getting better.

And I was moved for the fact that I have the feeling of nostalgia for an old place I visited before, and the fact that I was actually tripping down memory lane of the good, old days in India. I thought India was my present.  But now while I was in holiday in Japan and visiting several old places that brought back my memory, I suddenly realized that I also have a proper huge box of memory in India, just like I have a box of vivid memories of my childhood or highschool days.

As I am away from my home country and live abroad alone, some people misunderstand that I am an outgoing, novelty seeker, but I am exact the opposite of it. I love visiting the same place over and over again and never get tired.  I do not prefer meeting new people (I like talking to strangers but that’s totally different), I don’t like changing the route I custom. I usually order the exact same dishes at favorite restaurants. I order Americano because I am scared of getting a surprise by silly frappuccino or caffè macchiato. I hate someone tells me “Shall we order something we haven’t tried before?”, “Let’s explore a new short-cut!”, “You should meet my friend. You will love her!”

Some people like changes everyday. They seek new types of stimulation all the time. That’s good. I mean, that’s fine if you like that way. But my whole point of life is that we bump into new things and get into new situations (or trouble) without asking for it anyways, good or bad, positive or negative. The fate does not ask us whether we like it or not. A change has legs to walk and comes to us by himself, and we jut have to welcome it whatever it comes. What I am saying is that you catch a cold even if you are very careful, so don’t intentionally remove your socks and walk in the winter weather in bear feet. If you have passion, it never let you live bored. It’s inside out. I try my best to live peacefully and trouble free but my life never gets rid of dramas. So my theory is kind of proven.

Instead of seeking new, I love tripping down memory lane whenever I can. It was since my childhood. Sometimes I feel that the meaning of my life is just keeping my eyes on bonfire not letting go. By repeating the same custom, visiting the same places to strengthen the memory of it, hang around with the same friends all the time, I fill fuel to keep the old good memories fire so it warms up for a little more while. We will lose them someday certainly, like or not, and I do not want to replace them with anything new. Memories need to be fed, not to let them die off.

Tokyo Chaos (1) Ins and Outs

I am in Tokyo for some business. I visited my home town Aichi for a week or so, moved to Osaka for a day to attend an event, then has been in Tokyo more than a month by now. It’s the very first time I stay in Japan for so long at once since 2007. A month; Oh god, I am almost living here. A major culture shock. Tokyo is an unknown big foreign city to me.

A colleague who recently moved back to Tokyo from Bombay asked me how I feel. “Don’t you feel like it is not the reality?” It is not. Tokyo is like a future SF city with all kind of convenience and technology that you could imagine in an aspect, and is a chaos made from all layers of human desire that you can’t even imagine in another aspect. This city represents a way of the end of the world of Asian capitalism, so to speak. I am excited, but also really, really exhausted.

My office is in Marunouchi. By walking for five minutes from Tokyo Station is a well  planned business distinct; the most expensive city in Japan. Emporio Armani has in the ground floor of the office building where my company is in (I don’t really know other brand names but Armani). People are well dressed, wearing decent make-up, and eating lunch in fancy restaurants. Restaurants has handsome waiters with star-like hairstyle. There’s not even a single garbage on the street, not even one, even if you work around the town for an entire day looking down. A city of perfection. No single spot can be found from the edge to the edge of the city.

People talk so softly, that hide their thought and feeling in smoke. Conversations never get into the core of a topic directly. Always-smiling never tells if he is happy or angry, and we are not supposed to be asking private questions if you don’t know the person. Who are they? I am a kind of person who want to start things with “So where are you from? Do you like your job? What were you doing before? What is your dream? How old are you? Are you married? OK then do you have a girlfriend, and how is she?” I feel so jumpy. I need to hide all the curiosity for the person but just imagine how much he has something weird or abnormal behind the smart looking face.

That is maybe why Japanese people drink a lot. That can be the time that I really get to know the real voice of the person over a glass of beer. It could mean both ways; sharing private life is something forbidden and is cerebration-like at the same time. People get drunk, laugh, and tell the truth. They don’t look the same anymore. Still, the social drinking is deeper; it’s an interesting act that you play a role of being a bit drunk but actually not. It’s a double-dealing skill. You are actually tired, but would say “Let’s go for a second round!”

Kanda, where I stayed for a while was a place for night life. It’s just 30 minutes walk from the clean Marunouchi, but is one of  red-light distinct in Tokyo. So many small dirty bars and restaurants around there, and salary-men hop-step one and jump another. Girls, maybe from China, stand around corners, trying to get guys on the way back home. Young people stand as a sandwich man and keep shouting discount offers of Karaoke box. Buy or not buy, that’s the question.

Ins and outs. People has two sides, or maybe more. You can see one side at one time, in different situations. You get to know people little by little. It’s much much slower than you get to know people in Bombay. It takes time.

Some people asked me if I miss Bombay. Surprisingly, I do not. I always missed Bombay before; wherever I go, I always felt that the place I was supposed to be was Bombay. However being stuck in Tokyo where I did not plan to stay for so long, I find myself becoming very neutral about locations. The truth is that I don’t miss any place; Tokyo, my home town, or Bombay, wherever I don’t really care. The truth is, what I really miss is people.

When places are uncertain, it highlights the connections and bonds. That warms my heart and let me go on. When people are uncertain, places would make me help standing. People are demanding, we are all full of desire. Because we need a lot maybe, life is made so well so easy that always has salvation. Tokyo gives us everything but actually nothing, yet it makes me think how the ground I was holding was so weak. Interesting indeed.

The Country or A City

Missouri made me think. My host mother said, “If you don’t force yourself to meet people, you can live for three months without seeing a single person here.” It’s a total different way of living, from Bombay life, or even from the life in a rural area of Aichi prefecture where I am born.

I visited Missouri for my friends’ wedding party at their parent’s house. The cozy house was in a wood that you can’t tell where the end of their property is. There’s a big natural pond in that. Next door neighbor is one mile away, who has a croft of a donkey (which I never see existed, mysteriously). When you want to get a glossary, you drive the winding back road among the wide fields for fifteen minutes and get to the nearest Kmart or Wal-Mart.

Though, it’s not like an Indian village. You can get anything you need if you can drive. A mall has all the brand shops. The huge flat glossary stores have all stuffs for well-living. There’s even a Korean-Japanese supermarket. So it’s not inconvenient. It’s just isolated. Instead, you are surrounded by the beautiful nature, dogs and cats, or cows and horses. Wild birds visit your kitchen window. It’s just a matter of choice for life; people or nature, city or the country, Starbucks-at-every-corner or aromatic-coffee-made-by-a-country-mom.

I was watching fireflies around me at night at their front yard. The last time I saw natural fireflies in my yard was when I was about five. They died long time ago, but then my hometown opened a “Firefly Cave” which the nearest school kids aqua-farm fireflies and release in. I thought it was kind of sad to see firmed fireflies, and I didn’t visit the cave twice. But here I found them again. One of them rested in my palm.

Would I choose a life in woods, ever? I am not sure yet.

If there are many choices in life; I may not know what I take and what not take. So far, I just took things on the table in front of me, and there were no multiple choices. To others, I easily say “Hey, he’s not the only guy in the world, you know.” But actually he is to her. It’s like that, always. But when I see so different lives at a time, I am overpowered by the fact that I could also choose one in many possibilities.

But I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t matter what I choose, and I won’t care how I live in the end. Dying in a small studio apartment in Tokyo and being found after one week because of the smell, or dying in the quiet wood and being eaten by a bear; either way I would be OK. Maybe not a big deal. Wherever corner of a small town in the world or under a tree of a wood or a bush of a field. But no, a desert is not an option.

City of Liberty

A reason that people like USA is the atmosphere and culture of freedom. Typically speaking, because it’s a country of immigrants, anyone can be free from their own background culture and behave like just as you are originally. What I got in the New York trip was a close impression as I imagined before; it’s neutral. Amazingly neutral. The city is designed for anyone’s comfort. You won’t have any trouble in reading and adjusting an unknown culture there from the first day you arrive, even if you have never been to the city before.

But it doesn’t mean that people in New York are all out of their cultural background. Hindus, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and Amish, or white people and black people, Chinese, Korean, Italian, Spanish, Brazilian, Indian, Japanese. They have their own, kind of, extreme way of living in the city, but it works anyway, and no one bothers. On the other hand, you can also be just a New Yorker. It’s your call.

I came to India because I wanted to be away, very far away. A word can have many layers of meaning. Away can mean away from my country, away from my city, family, myself, old memories, or some abstract concepts of things making myself myself. I don’t know which was the right answer or maybe all. I just wanted to be free from what I was mentally trapped in. Sometimes, running away and moving forward can be the same meaning, and I found one way of peace and liberty in Bombay City.

What worked for me is the different culture which I never totally be adjusted. Some jokes on me that I became a half Indian now, but it is not true at all. If you are not Indian, you will never be one. In Bombay, I find my nature as a reflection of the Indian culture, and yet have no obligation to follow the Japanese culture. In the contrast, it lets me learn that everything is objectively relative and subjectively absolute. Because I don’t adjust, I see things keeping a certain distance. The gap and space gives me air to breath enough.

In the sense, if I chose to live in New York instead of Bombay, the result must have been quite different. I think I chose the right city which I needed at the right time. Someday, I would live in New York, would love to. Or any other city. But for now, Bombay is my city.

Choices

I have visited all the places you would go if you are the first-timer in New York. Central Park, Empire State Building, Broadway musicals, Times Square, Libraries, China Town, Riverside Park, Colombia University, and of course, the Statue of Liberty. I don’t know I covered them all here. But the most exciting place I’ve been was actually “Fareway” a supermarket.

The outside of the market was covered with vegetables and fruits. Inside, there are so many foods — 100 types of cheeses, meats, sausages, and 20 different brands’ smoked sarmon. They have this huge Bento corner with Asian bentos, sushi, soba, or Italian, Middle Eastern, anything. Chell fish, tuna, prowns. All types of coffees, teas. Snacks and again 100 different cone frakes. Lots of lots of choices are here. I was almost lying down in the center of the supermarket holidng my head. I felt dizzy. They have everything what I wanted to buy.

If I had come to NY from Japan, I would find this city in a different way. But I came from India without taking a break for a year. I am used to the way there so much, and I totally forgot that the world gives me this many choices if I have oppotunity and money (technically, I don’t have money, though). I couldn’t decide what to buy, and finally took a pack of Canadian roll and salad. It was a hard decision, and still I am not sure if it was the right decision.

The same thing happened when I visited a Japanese market today. Next of Bryant Park, there are some Japanese Bento places and market there. I happened to dump into the place, and stayed almost one hour to decide what to buy for lunch. They have sushi, eel, gyudon, kara-age don, or whatever you name as Japanese food. I am confused and couldn’t make my mind. So I left the shops and went to watch a movie. After three hours deep consideration, I finally decided to buy a pack of tuna donburi. It was a hard decision to deny the existance of eel donburi.

This feeling, seeing a lot of choices of Japanese foods in an usual supermarket of a foreign country, can’t be shared with anyone, but people who lives in developping-in-progress countries. If I compare, Tokyo and NY is quite similar in the sense of structuring. The difference is that NY has the huge populartion of immigrants and foreign people. If I compare Tokyo + NY and Bombay, the difference is too huge. Bombay is not acually a city of the world in the sense. A loooong way to go for India. 5 years, 10 years, or more? I don’t know. Let’s see how it goes.

New York Now

“I am at Times Square. It’s fucking insane here.  Where are you? ” A guy walking next of me was talking loud on his cellphone.

It is really crazy after 10 pm at Times Square; so many people coming out of the theaters. A topless bronde girl with micro mini skirt of American flag pattern plays guiter everynight at the center of Times Square, and she allows visitors to take photos with her  (is she working for New York City?).

My hotel is in Little Brazil where is two blocks away from Times Square. It’s a Japanese hostel and I sleep with other five Japanese girls in the same room. The room is clean and confortable enough. Cheap also. I can use the kitchen and washing machine.

One girl in the same room is a dancer. She made her mind to come to study dance in New York for one month. This is her last week. We talked how she could actually live in New York to study dancing seriously. Getting a job here, or getting a student visa? I just wish she will be living here next year.

One day I was walking near Wall Street. After visiting the Stature of Liberty and moved to Ground Zero, I am lost in the downtown and needed a help. I talked to one woman who was buying a bunch of flowers with her son and she took me to Chinatown.  She looked like I-was-a-hippie-before. She told me to give her a pen and paper, and explained me the structure of the New York City.  “See, always check if you are down from 32nd Street, or West or East of 5th avenue. If you are still lost, just look up to find the Empire State Building. ” After that I always see the sky to find the top of the Empire State Building. It works.

Reading a book in Bryant Park, a fat guy with backpack came to ask me if I am a Newyorker. I said I am just a visitor for a week. He said “Okay, have a nice day.” That’s one of the best part in New York; no one think that I am a foreinger. There are so many people looking like me. Chinese American or Japanese or I don’t know. Everyone looks like a foreigner or everyone looks like a Newyorker.

I buy a cup of beer in the park at 4 pm. I can show my skin as much as I want and drink beer in the public place in the afternoon of Weekdays. The bartender says “How you doing?’, pass a beer and says “Have a nice day.” They talk in a way I am familiar, maybe from TV of movies. Nothing surprise me, but easy. Lots of lots of foods from many many countries.

It’s jsut a random writing. The New York Public Library gave me only 45 minutes so I don’t have time to brush up my writing. I am just clicking Publish.