I grew up with some very precise units of measurement.
A chutki.
Thoda sa.
And, of course, the seeti.
A chutki is a pinch.
This could mean two grains of salt, half a teaspoon, or considerably more, depending on the fingers doing the pinching.
Thoda sa means "a little."
How much is a little?
A little.
There. Recipe explained.
The pressure cooker is equally precise.
"How long do I cook the dal?"
"Three seetis."
Not twelve minutes. Not fifteen.
Three whistles.
Perfectly adequate information.
We measure distance with similar accuracy.
"How far is it?"
"Twenty minutes."
It could be four kilometres away. It could be eight. Who cares?
It's twenty minutes.
Unless you leave at six in the evening, when it is forty-five minutes.
The place hasn't moved.
Traffic has simply altered the mathematics.
I accepted all of this without question,
which may explain why,
when I came to America, I also accepted 85 as 85.
I knew America used miles and India used kilometres.
I knew, intellectually, that one mile was not one kilometre.
What I apparently did not understand
was that I was supposed to do something with this information.
I looked at the speedometer and saw 70.
Fine.
85. Also fine.
Look at me!
I was driving at 85!
In India, getting enough open road to drive at 85 kilometres an hour was exhilarating. Here there were enormous roads,
multiple lanes and miles of highway stretching ahead of me.
America was fabulous.
So was I.
Except I wasn't driving at 85 kilometres an hour.
I was driving at 85 miles an hour.
About 137 kilometres an hour.
Apparently I had crossed an ocean,
but my understanding of numbers had not.
As it turned out, numbers were the least of my problems.
In India, I drove from the right-hand side of the car,
on the left-hand side of the road.
When I first came to America I wasn't driving,
so I sat on the right-hand side of the car.
Same seat.
Excellent.
Then I started driving and moved to the left-hand seat.
Unfortunately, nothing else in my brain moved with me.
I had spent years judging the position of a car from the right.
I knew where the left side of the car was without looking at it.
I knew how much space to leave.
I knew where I belonged on the road.
Now I was sitting on the left,
unable to judge the passenger side in the same instinctive way,
and I kept veering towards the right of my lane.
A friend who had lived in America finally gave me one beautifully simple instruction.
"Watch the yellow line."
Use the yellow line as your reference.
It worked.
Fifteen years later, I don't consciously need to do it anymore,
but every once in a while
I catch myself checking that yellow line.
I never did that in India.
There really weren't any lines to watch.
Which perhaps explains why returning to India should feel completely natural,
but never quite does at first.
I know which side of the road we drive on there.
Of course I do.
I also know which side of the road we drive on here.
Of course I do.
This has not prevented me from attempting to turn onto the wrong side.
A left turn in America requires crossing the intersection
before entering the correct lane.
Every once in a while,
some ancient piece of Indian wiring sees a left turn and thinks:
Left. Excellent. We know this.
No.
Wrong left.
Go farther.
Thankfully, the rest of my brain usually reports for duty
before the situation becomes more interesting.
Walking isn't much better.
Here, I am accustomed to wide roads and sidewalks.
In India, I often found myself negotiating for two crooked inches of something that,
with generosity, could be described as walking space.
There are people.
Scooters.
Cars.
Horns.
Possibly a cow.
And dogs.
Oh my God, the dogs.
Stray dogs terrified me when I was young.
When I walked from home to the bus stop to catch my bus to college,
I sometimes carried stones in my pocket,
Just in case I encountered them.
Now I live in America,
where a dog on the street generally comes as a package.
Dog.
Collar.
Leash.
Human.
Then I go back to India and remember:
Oh, right.
The dogs don't necessarily come with people.
Cats, as far as I can tell,
have refused to subscribe to either system
and continue doing whatever they please.
And somewhere between watching for dogs,
squeezing past scooters and listening to the horns,
India begins to come back to me.
Because I miss those horns when I'm away.
I miss the colours.
The smells.
The markets.
I don't particularly long for the sleek, air-conditioned stores
with enormous sheets of glass in their windows.
Take me to a spice market.
I long for that when I'm in America.
Then I get there.
Colour!
People!
Horns!
Spices!
Traffic!
Smells!
My eyes widen.
My jaw drops.
My entire nervous system seems to say:
Good grief. I'd forgotten about THIS.
It is familiar.
I have missed it.
I have specifically come looking for it.
And it still takes that first widening of the eyes before it fits around me again.
Then, quite quickly, it does.
So quickly, in fact, that I begin behaving as though I never left.
Except when I try to bargain.
Sometimes I forget to bargain altogether, which is disgraceful.
Other times I go completely the other way and want to bargain about everything because, oh my God, I get to bargain again.
I miss bargaining in America.
There is very little satisfaction in arriving at a Walmart checkout and saying, "I'll give you twelve."
They are unlikely to admire your technique.
Prices in India, however, continue to offend me personally.
I see dal at ₹120 or ₹200 a kilo and my jaw drops.
What do you mean, ₹200?
Dal is supposed to cost ₹15 or ₹20!
Of course, it hasn't cost that in years.
I remember going back some years ago and discovering it was ₹60 or ₹80 a kilo.
I was flabbergasted then too.
Apparently India has continued having inflation in my absence.
The nerve.
And that is when I realise I am not comparing
Indian prices with American prices at all.
I am comparing India now with the India I left.
Some part of the country has remained frozen in my head,
waiting for me exactly as it was.
The real India, quite inconsiderately, has carried on without me.
Shops have changed.
Prices have changed.
Things I expect to find aren't always where I expect them to be.
I walk into a department store and look around with fifteen years of American shopping habits lodged in my head,
then catch myself doing it.
In about a day, that reverses too.
I get used to the smaller supermarkets I generally visit in India.
The tighter spaces.
The smaller aisles.
My sense of scale adjusts.
Then I fly home.
I walk into Walmart.
And for perhaps one nanosecond I think:
Wow. This is BIG.
I have lived in America for fifteen years now.
I have been inside Walmart more times than I could possibly count.
I know Walmart is big.
But for that one nanosecond, I haven't yet crossed the ocean.
Apparently different parts of me travel at different speeds.
Sometimes my feet are still in India.
I come back and find myself walking on the wrong side.
Sometimes my driving is still there.
I sit at a red light and forget that I can turn right.
Sometimes it's my voice.
After I've been in India for a while, my accent shifts.
The rhythm of my speech shifts.
Hindi slips in far more easily.
Then I come home and start talking to Melvin in Hindi.
This is not particularly useful to Melvin.
My husband is firmly back in America.
My language, apparently, has a connecting flight it missed.
And perhaps that's why all of this makes me laugh rather than frustrates me.
You just know.
Until you cross an ocean.
Then, for a little while, apparently you know absolutely nothing.
Every time I cross, one part of me seems to arrive before the other.
There is a jaw drop, a wrong instinct,
a moment when something utterly ordinary
looks completely extraordinary.
Then the colours settle.
The noises settle.
The roads make sense.
My internal measurements quietly recalibrate.
And I'm home again.
Until I fly back.
Then I have to reboot the whole system.