Adulting

As I continue to adult for over three decades, I have come to the conclusion that adulting is no fun. Unfortunately and realistically, I have been adulting since I was fourteen or fifteen years old. When one is poor one does not have the luxury of being a child for long. My parents were not good with money, so at a very early age I started working, primarily teaching younger kids for money. I was more financially responsible than both my parents, so I was given the job of managing household budget. When I think back on it, I realize how stressful it was, trying to balance our expenses including repaying debts that we had incurred to maintain our household and our status in society as middle class.

Once I fell in love, adulting became much more exciting. The stolen glances, the holding hands, the gorgeous smile of my boyfriend directed at me made my heart flutter. Marriage was an adventure. Parenthood was the busiest, most challenging, and most rewarding part of my adulthood. But then came financial decisions, savings, planning for future, what to do for our retirements, health concerns, aging parents who lived far away. Adulting became a lot more work. I don’t have a head for numbers. IRAs, Roth IRAs, CDs, 403Bs sound like harsh, alien words. I want to shut my ears. Truly. Yet, we have to make decisions 🙄. Save for our old age, pay for college, look for our last home. The worst part of adulting (mature adulting?) is losing our parents and other loved ones. We have reached that age where the generation who used to be our roof is slowly fading out. We are moving up to the roof – cycle of life.

But here is the best part. For me, the routine in our house growing up was something like this. Wake up, clean up and then study. My mother believed in the discipline of doing school work in freshly rested mind. Unless it was Durga puja or my birthday, there was no exception to this rule. After final examination though I was allowed to wake up and crack open a story book and read for pleasure. Ma still believed that if not school work, I should read when I wake up to continue the habit of reading/studying during break between classes. I still remember how I cherished those mornings. Honest confession? I was one of those kids who hid story books inside text books and read with unwavering attention. My mother beamed at my concentration as she passed by. This morning, as I opened my book to read with my morning coffee, I realized that this is the best part of being an adult. I know my responsibilities and make my own decisions. No more hiding books within text books. Of course, I have to go to work, I have to finish a few chores before I go. But nobody can stop me from indulging in my reading in the morning, or whenever I want. And nobody (but my conscience and glucose level) to frown upon me as I eat a chocolate bar that pair beautifully with a good book.

Adulting is not all bad.

Light But Not Fluffy book club

There was a time in my life, not too long ago, when my brain rebelled against deep, thought provoking books. I grew up with the message from my teachers and extended family that one should not fill up one’s mind with irrelevant things. One should always read unabridged classics, books on history, science, philosophy. Books that will enlighten, inspire, expand your knowledge. In other words, read with a purpose. So I savored my Amar Chitra Kathas, comic books, Mills and Boons romances in secret – away from public eyes. Fortunately, my mother did not care what I read. I also had a couple of fabulous teachers who introduced me to poetry and prose that broadened my horizon, taught me how to think, enjoy, and appreciate written words. When I went to college to study English, I met very well read peers. They helped me with my reading too. I read serious, thought provoking books to keep up with the conversation, to show off and yes, to enrich my mind. Even as an adult, I read to learn something. I read to escape, empathize, decipher and of course, be entertained. I was and still am a fan of literary fiction.

Then Covid ravaged the world and my life. During those difficult days, I picked up literary fictions only to put them down again. I think I experienced the biggest reading slump that I have ever experienced in my life during Covid and especially after my parents died. One day, I picked up a lighter book and found myself turning the pages. I think the book was The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman. I finished the book in two sittings, enjoyed the story and thought about it for a while. The book was funny, well-written, and most importantly, hopeful. It was a romance but it was more than the formulaic romance that I used to read at age 16. I started reading more books that were light but full of of grace and hope. I wondered if there were people out there who have had enough of angst and sadness. We could get plenty of those if we opened the newspaper or turned on the news channels on television. I wondered if I could gather some people together to read and discuss lighter books in a book club. The caveat being the books needed to be uplifting, hopeful, and meaningful enough to generate conversation.

My bosses at work were willing to let me try out a book club like this. I gave myself 6 months and decided that if nobody came to the book club, I would move on to something else. My supervisor encouraged me to go for it so I did. On March 16, 2023, Light But Not Fluffy book club was born. Within the first 2 weeks of opening up registration for this book club, all the spots were filled and people kept calling to register. We opened with 18 people.

It has been a year now that we have been meeting. The book club has grown even larger. We range from 20 to 23. I have been facilitating book clubs for the last 8 years now and my mantra for facilitation is ‘be a guide, not a hero’. I ask a question and let the conversation grow organically without too much input from me. I am comfortable with silence (silence that neither of my book clubs have very much). I think silence is important to let people collect their thoughts. I watch out for interruptions and make sure everyone gets a chance to speak. Some want to listen and I respect that too. I was a little apprehensive at the beginning with such a big group that people will break out into private conversations and I will have to be that facilitator who has to bring the house to pay attention to the speaker. But the ladies who joined me never did that. Each one of them is respectful, attentive, and willing to listen. They are never shy to offer their opinion. They don’t always agree but they listen. What more could a facilitator ask for? We came together for the conversation and we stayed for the laughter.

Today is the birth month of Light But Not Fluffy book club. This book club is special to me for a couple of reasons. First, it came at a time when I was very sad and did not know how to get out of the quagmire of grief. Books helped. The hope that books provided and the people who gathered to talk about such books helped. The laughter helped. Second, in our endeavor to teach at the library, we sometimes forget about fun. This book club is just for entertainment. And that is all we get out of this book club apart from a camaraderie of strong, opinionated, and fun people. Perhaps we come away with some new thoughts about the book or life in general. We learn a bit about each other too. No research of the setting or culture or author is done in this book club. We simply read the story and talk about how the story made us feel, what did the characters do, did the plot make sense, what are the anomalies?

So happy birthday, book club. May there be years and years of laughter ahead, may there be hope, may there be grace, and yes, also snark. What is life without a little snark?

If you want to use any of these books for your book club, here is a list of all the books that we have read this year:

The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman

Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes

The Kitchen Front by Jennifer Ryan

One Plus One by Jojo Moyes

Dear Mrs. Bird by A. J Pearce

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

The Hired Girl by Laura Schlitz

Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn

The Story of Arthur Truluv by Elizabeth Berg

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

New year, new me, and anticipation

Hello, all you beautiful people. May your new year bring hope and resilience. That is my wish for myself and for everyone. Did you all make any new resolutions? Mine is to lower expectation from others. Bhagavat Gita tells me that is a path to being happy. I have started reading the holy book in the new year – one page a day.

This blog is to wish you all a happy new year, of course and also to tell you about my story of anticipation. A few weeks ago I was given a gift card to a book store. Whenever I think of the gift card, I get this surge of happy anticipation in my heart. Oh the possibilities!! Which book am I going to buy? Which book is a keeper? I drive by the book store almost every other day and each time my face breaks into a big smile.

I work at a library so I have books at my fingertips – literally. When I was a child, my mother bought me books, many, many books. I used to be sick almost all the time. To cheer me up, she brought home books that she picked up on her way back from work. As a teen, I spent my hard earned money buying used books from the very fine make-shift books stores on the sidewalks of Kolkata. Nestled among tattered Mills and Boons and Sidney Sheldons would lie books by Graham Greene, Gerald Durrell. Sometimes Dickens, Hardy, Austen, Jules Verne, Dostoyevski, Hugo….. We were encouraged to read good literature to broaden our horizons and to balance the trashy Harlequin romances which were instrumental in my education about ‘birds and bees’ since my mother never talked to me about any of that 🙂 ! My first date with my now husband was at Kolkata Book Fair. The fact that I did not like him too much that day is a story for another day.

In my before-library days, I used to buy books. So much so that my tiny house is full. I have both Bengali collection and English collection. However, after I started working at the library, I rather like the idea of borrowing and returning unless I find a book that I want to keep. The old habit of buying books and the joy it generated in me, holding a brand new book in my hands, sniffing the pages to inhale the new book smell, hearing the sharp crack as I turn the page – that feeling is intoxicating. The gift card can give me that hit. Yet, I don’t go in to the book store. I hold on to the anticipation of going in, browsing, touching, reading jackets, spending time. I spend time with books at my library so I am not sure why I am looking forward to my time in the book store, but I am. And that is strange yet wonderful. I want to stretch out this feeling of anticipation, my simple pleasure, for as long as I can. When the day is gray and I have plummeted down low, I will make the trip.

I am vacillating between two titles – Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer and The Light We Carry by Michelle Obama.

Peeking in

I was away for a few days looking at colleges for my son. When I travel I don’t look at the blog. However, when I opened the app over the weekend, I saw that many people have read several blogs (or one person has been reading them, I don’t know). I also have several new subscribers. Thank you and welcome to my blog, new people! I appreciate you stopping by and pressing the subscribe button.

Whenever I see new subscribers, I get this feeling of responsibility that I should write something for them to read. However, on this humid Monday morning, my mind is blank. I even went for a walk where I get most of my ideas for a blog post. Today, I was simply cutting through the humidity, huffing and puffing as I crested a small hill in our neighborhood. I thought I would write about a few observations and realizations about our travel.

First, I still feel slightly taken aback when I look at Ryan walking beside me on a tour of college campus. When did he get so big?

After a few tumultuous teen years, say from 14 to 16, when I loved him but did not quite like him, he is turning a corner. He is funny, engaging and loving. My kid is coming back to me!

I realized after staying in New York for a couple of days that I do NOT like a city anymore. This came as a complete surprise since I grew up in Kolkata and always considered myself a city girl.

Due to my work and Sean’s constant travel all summer, I felt we were leading parallel lives. Ten days of traveling together with him made me feel reconnected.

Sahana cooked this amazing steak last night. And despite the fact that I have really limited my meat intake, I ate it and loved it.

And I finished Horse by Geraldine Brooks. Friends, if you pick up one book to read this year, I suggest this one. I finished it last night and I am sad and fulfilled at the same time.

Space on your book shelf.

A friend shared this beautiful quote with me, which I promptly shared with my book loving daughter, as well as my book loving friend:

“There is space on everyone’s bookshelf for book you have outgrown but can’t give away. They hold your youth between their pages, like flowers pressed on a half-forgotten summer’s day.”

I left my country for love with simply the clothes on my back and just a couple of books that I could not leave behind. And then, I brought back books after each trip home. I think hard on which books made the first trip with me, but unfortunately I don’t remember. They are mixed in with all the books that I have accumulated over the years. I wish I could remember.

However, I have brought back books that transported me to their worlds temporarily during half forgotten summer days in my youth. Books like Adorsho Hindu Hotel by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay holds my youth within its page. Tenida Shomogro by Narayan Gangopadhyay holds my youth like pressed flowers within its pages. There are too many to name – Chander pahar, any book written by Nabonita Debsen, Shirshendu Bandopadhyay, Rabindranath Tagore, Ashapurna Debi. Along with these stalwarts of Bengali literature reside one and only Jane Austen, Gerald Durrell, Somerset Maugham, Charles Dickens, Enid Blyton….

Memories of devouring the pages of Adorsho Hindu Hotel is always a soft place where I land when I think back on my reading memories. I remember our cool first floor room darkened by thick curtains to keep the angry sun out during summer afternoons, and I, half inclined on our bed, reading about Hajari Thakur, a cook in a cheap roadside restaurant in rural Bengal – a man invisible to society due to his poverty, slowly becoming visible because of his humility, work ethic and integrity. It is a story of the success of ‘everyman’ without compromising his ethics. Weaved within the story is the fabric of humanity, complete with love, greed, exploitation and opportunities. The story pulls at my heart string to this day when I think about it. And when I think about the book, I think about my mother. They are synonymous because in my mind’s eye she is always present next to me when I am reading this book. She reads her own book as I read mine. I see this scene vividly when I close my eyes.

Masked kids

I used to be quite knowledgeable about popular characters in children’s literature when my kids were little. I had a book worm who liked to spend her waking hours at the library. While checking out books for her, I got to know popular books that children read. The second one, however, was not much of a reader except for Garfield and Asterix. I still kept up with picture books and read to him to instill interest. He was more interested in tumbling around and lining up his toy cars.

While working at children’s desk, I acquired knowledge of children’s literature through my young customers, my amazing and knowledgeable colleagues and of course Google. Still many characters and titles of books that the children enquired about were unfamiliar to me. Often, I had trouble even understanding them. The reasons I could not understand them were sometimes adorable pronunciations of very young customers due to missing front teeth or their discomfort at talking to an adult. Many of them had trouble looking at me while saying the title of the book they wanted. I often asked, “Could you say the title one more time for me, honey?” And while they did, I surreptitiously typed the words I could decipher in Google to get the full title, which I then typed in our catalog search to see if we owned the book.

The pandemic hit. We closed the library for many months and I did not keep up with the popular characters of children’s literature. For example, I did not know till yesterday that the Berenstain Bears now had a baby sister!!Now that we are open and our young customers are skipping in to the library, I face a unique challenge. Masks on them make them even more indecipherable for me. Just the other day, a little girl came up to me asking for several titles. A children’s instructor perhaps would have known exactly what she was looking for. First of all, her mask combined with her cute way of talking made it difficult for me to understand her and on top of that, the titles were all unfamiliar. The poor kid must have thought who was this ignorant grown up and why was she at a children’s desk. She was very patient with me as we worked together to find most of the books she was looking for.

Pandemic brought with it unique challenges. I am adding masked kids as one of them. 🤣🤣

Having said that, my heart truly sings to see the enthusiasm for books in children of all ages who come in dancing and skipping into the library and get instantly lost in the stacks to take home stories. Their joy gives me hope.

Book Evangelist

In this blog I will write about my two annoying habits. I am living the age old adage, ‘old habits die hard’ but I am making an effort to change – at least one of them. I will start with the one I am unwilling to change.

The first habit (or perk) is my obsession for checking out books from the library. For my work, I subscribe to different publication houses and I also do a fair amount of handling books – shelving, pulling for requests, scanning. Yes, you guessed it, I work at a library. As I shelve a cart, at least 3 or 4 books from that cart end up coming home with me. Do I have time to read all of them? Nope! But the possibility of perhaps having the time to read them is wonderful. Then after 3 weeks when I cannot fit any more books on my book shelf designated to library books or my bedside table, or the coffee table in the living room, I put some unread books in my work bag, go to work and sadly check them in. I have analyzed this habit and I have decided it is an addiction. An addiction for which I will seek no help. I will live in that wondrous possibility of being able to read all those books that I bring home – one day.

The second annoying habit is showing my disappointment on my face when someone does not share the same enthusiasm for a book that took my breath away. I do quite a bit of reader’s advisory for work and also outside of work. I give completely unsolicited book recommendations to folks who have not even asked for suggestions. If I have read one of THOSE books (you know what I am talking about, the books that you cannot stop thinking about), I make Facebook posts about them. Talking about books and sharing book suggestions is my way of connecting with fellow humans. If you don’t read, I am sorry, are you even worth connecting with? Just joking!!

When I was young and naïve, this is how my reader’s advisory played out. I would swoop down on an unsuspecting victim, start talking about the amazing book that I just finished, gush, gush, gush. I would talk up the book so much, the victim would often times read the book just to shut me up. The next time we met, I would ignore the victim’s shifty eyes, not question why s/he was not making eye contact with me but delve right in, “So what did you think?” I would also have a wide smile and expectant eyes. Most folks would simply say it was good (many would have loved it as much as I did) but of course some did not love the book at all. And they would say to me. “It was okay. I did not love it!” Before I became conscious of my annoying habit, I know I showed my feelings on my face. The judgement on my face was evident. You did not love the book I adored? That is it! I am judging you.

I spoke sternly to myself about this as part of my personal growth. Not everyone likes the genres I enjoy, not everyone relates to the story/facts the same way I do, not everyone interprets/perceives the events in the book like I do. And that is completely fine. I loved the book. That should be enough. I do not need to be a book evangelist.

So I want to apologize to all those folks who have been subjected to my judgement because you did not share the same enthusiasm as I did about a certain book. I still love you. We are still friends.

Here are a few (very few) titles that took my breath away. I am not evangelizing mind you, I am simply giving suggestions, and yes, unsolicitated.

The Fair Fight by Anna Freeman

Once Upon a River by Dianne Setterfield

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

Finding Langston by Lesa Cline-Ransome

I will stop here…… for today.

Neighborhood grandfather

I consider reading as a means to freedom. Freedom of thought and freedom of expression. Reading takes you places that you did not think existed, reading introduces you to new ideas and lets your ideas soar. Reading sets you free. I was concerned my youngest child did not take to books as my oldest did. After many pushes and shoves towards books I finally realized that I can not shape him into any mold, instead, my job will be to expose him to new ideas via means that appeal to him and let him spread his wings on his own terms – discussion, research, news on television, non fiction books.

If you read my blogs you probably know, my young Ryan is a deep thinker. Since he was little his thoughts were different – he probed deeper. His teacher, in a recent meeting, reconfirmed our perception of him as one who thinks outside the box. Ryan seems to be an exception to my rule that reading sets one free. He has set himself free by observing, evaluating, thinking and reading books that appeal to him.

At dinner, the other night, we were discussing dreams. He was asked, “What are your dreams, Ry?”

“I don’t have dreams, I have goals.”

“Well, what is the difference?”

“You can dream but they don’t seem that solid. But you set your goals and you work towards achieving them. I set goals.”

Coming from an eleven year old, that sounded somewhat precocious. We asked him what his goals are then.

“My goal is to become a neighborhood grandfather.” He solemnly replied.

“Errr…what?!?! A neighborhood grandfather?!?!” His father and I exchanged bemused glances.

“Yeah, you know. I am going to be that grandfather in the neighborhood who is always there for someone who needs help, advice.”

“But you are just a child. Why are you jumping to old age and grandfather? What are you going to do in between?” It was hard not to laugh.

“No, no! There are many goals in between that. Being a neighborhood grandfather is the ultimate goal. Before that I will go to Stanford, swim in the Stanford swim team. I will open my own business and create lots of jobs. I will help a lot of poor people so they can have a good life. I will marry someone nice and have kids. And then I will become a neighborhood grandfather.” The fork rested on his plate as he got a dreamy look in his eyes. “Or maybe I will become a professional baseball player or an Olympic swimmer. I will be famous, I will earn a lot of money and I can help even more people that way.”

Dreams and goals got entangled at this point, but we smiled at our child as he dreamed on and set goals for himself. As I see my two kids grow up, I glance upon the innocence and beauty of childhood. I feel myself a mere observer and perhaps a chronicler of these beautiful times of their lives. I write them down judiciously so I can offer these moments up to them when they are all grown up. When asked about aspirations, a child mentions a profession – teacher, engineer, scientist…..
My child’s aspiration is to be a neighborhood grandfather. Personally, I think that is a superb goal. We need neighborhood grandfathers to bring back the human connection which we seem to be losing fast in our digital age. Grow up to be a neighborhood grandfather, child. Bring people closer. Bring them out to the porch again. Re establish the connection.