My Ode to Valentines Day. And my Valentine to the many friends I know this will resonate with.

A Quiet Love Story

Ed and Matilda met like many couples do, at the pub between the hours of 5:30pm and 7:30pm on a wintery Friday evening. By 9:20 pm that night Matilda had sussed out the details and found herself nervously balanced on the edge of his bed. At 11:23 pm at the precise moment of her orgasm, Ed couldn't have been further from her mind. She was astride a vague amalgam of men from her past, some who had loved her and others that had hurt her but all had desired her.

As she heard him breathing next to her, her guilt and confusion approached as rapidly as dawn did. In the morning, she would be gone.

But Ed clearly wasn't having any of that. He rang her that afternoon, despite his mates telling him he would be crazy if he did. He asked her out to dinner, she seemed surprised. At a time when couples around the world actively tried to avoid "labelling" their relationships, a simple dinner invitation was an archaic thing, a whimsy from the past like travelling circuses or cassette tapes

Ed found her reticence fascinating; she was drawn to his directness, his ability to speak plainly of his dreams and thoughts. Traditional wisdom dictated that they should have never been together. She had been in his bed within 184 minutes of meeting him; he was ordinary and quickly losing his hair. Yet, over the days that followed, there came to be an affection that neither was too bothered by to deny.

They talked tangentially of nothing important. What movies they had seen, books they had read, that new restaurant that she had been for dinner to. Each examined the outside of the others lives, in the hope that it would convey some truth or insight. In their search for meaning, they followed each other through engagement parties and dinners, theatre and the opera.

On a Monday night just off Bourke St, as they watched a budding stand-up comedian bomb, she leaned over and squeezed his hand. In the small smirk she gave him, he knew that they had more time together to go yet.

Matilda had taught herself to believe she didn't want to be in a relationship, Ed had learned that as a single man in a market full of available women there was a lot he could get away with. Together, they slowly unlearned these lessons, and instead found the warm sinewy comfort of intimacy.

Come Spring, they had become Ed and Matilda. While some walls remained, they were happy to present themselves as one edifice. An organic entity forged under the pressure of societal expectations and sexual chemistry. There was no big bang, they were not one of those couples who could read each others minds, who were soul mates and bonded at the hip. Ed and Matilda defied the myth. They were simply together in silence, and in their openness they let their love slowly grow around them.

He whispered to her one Saturday and they clambered over the rocks at Brighton Beach, "We could spend more time together, if you lived with me." She held her breath and then said calmly that it would be nice. They were bound a little closer on those rocks.

When Matilda moved in, she brought him poetry and whimsy, one scrappy cat and floor cushions took over his apartment. He moved aside sporting equipment, power tools and other manly distractions to make room for dog-eared copies of Pushkin, all the Wisden cricket almanacs from 1974 onwards (cricket was her passion not his) and 7 pairs of very similar black high heels. She learned to live without a kettle and a microwave. Gradually there was constancy, of knowing that he left for work at 6 am and came back at 4pm in time to make her dinner. She made his lunch the night before and liked to give him a bleary-eyed kiss in the morning, even if she did go straight back to bed again. Their edges rested snugly against each other.

Which made the break-up even more surprising. That autumn Ed was home, it was 2:33 pm on a Wednesday afternoon. She was thinking about that crack in the ceiling that needed fixing, when he blurted out, "I don't think this is working anymore". Thinking he was talking about that new MAC upgrade, she slowly realised what was happening. They were different people, he wasn't really ready for a serious relationship, she deserved someone better. The pithy clichés came flowing but she didn't cry.

She surprised herself. Calmly and quietly she let him go. He had become a comfort to her, and moving away from him was exhilarating despite the pain and the loneliness. She moved out the following week.

They said that neither really understood each other, it had all been easy. Ed thought that a relationship without tribulation could hardly be worth sustaining. She was suspect of the dispassionate nature of their interaction.

A few weeks later, Matilda found herself once more, perched at the edge of a bar stool. The sticky floor clung to her like barely remembered lovers. Ed was himself, once more. He ambled through blind dates and speed dates, he took someone home one night and just held her. In his earnestness and sincerity, he swore he could make love happen (again). In time, each was just a shadow of lost possibility to the other. Matilda was swayed by charming men, at each turn. Ed played the game, was in a secret society and really wasn’t that into her.

On a balmy summer afternoon, as she sat in the park reading she met someone. He was unlike anyone else she had ever met. He intrigued her long enough to stay for dinner. Across the city, Ed couldn’t make a choice – the sporty one or the arty one, as he browsed through profiles and found potential partners that met arbitrary criteria.

When Ed and Matilda finally met again, she was once more going through that interminable dance. It had been a while since she had seen him. Ed had found others and had felt that frission, that indescribable after-taste of mad love making. She had found a companion, one who she shared “in” jokes with and while he cared nothing for the cricket – he understood why she loved it.

They saw each other across a busy shopping mall, a Latin band played in the background. There was recognition and that pull towards a thing that each had known and cared for. As she felt someone else’s arm around her waist, she thought about how Ed was slowly growing into middle age. How it seemed to make him more attractive, smoother around the edges. She remembered how it had felt on those rocks, when they were together and she smiled and walked home without him.

Ed spied her and immediately felt her warmth. He recalled the irony with which she mispronounced words, the jokes that only she seemed to be in on. He knew that he had always loved her and in the warm sun, this became even clearer to him as he chose to walk away.

The Top Chick Theory

I had an absolutely fantastic weekend just past. And it got me thinking about friendships and what they say about the kind of person you are. I realized as I swanned from birthday parties, drinks and coffee dates – that I was blessed to be surrounded by such wonderful strong women. All of whom are kind and fiercely intelligent, have opinions that they are prepared to stand up for but also laid-back and not high maintenance at all. Some of them are funny and quirky, others have compassionate hearts and care deeply for the people around them. In other words, they are all top chicks.
I have a theory and my friend (I’ll call her A) finally gave me a name for it – The top chick theory. The thesis is this:
Top chicks tend to find each other
Once found they congregate and bond with each other
Much like a secret society, top chicks are always on the lookout for other top chicks
And here is the controversial bit – beware any girl that doesn’t seem to have any strong female friendships in her life.
Female friendships tend to have very little cultural currency. There is not much out there that celebrates the value of the female friendship outside of it being a waiting room until all the women find suitable (or unsuitable) men to marry. While the “Bromance” is the new term du jour, what is its female equivalent? And is it deeper and more meaningful, than as depicted in Sex and the City?
Just thoughts on my mind. For now I am deeply deeply grateful for all the top chicks who enrich my life every day.

Being Indian

Being an Indian with a fairly non-standard name (I have a Dutch surname, and an English middle name) I often find myself being questioned about my origins. The standard enquiries generally are:

Ø Why do you have a European name?
Ø Why do you speak English the way you do (my accent can be best described as a very muddled neutral English accent, based on a healthy appreciation for the Queens English)
Ø Why don't you wear Indian clothes/ eat curry or watch Bollywood films? (I do one of the three)

Sometimes I find these questions difficult to answer. I consider myself as Indian as the next one you meet on the street. I lived in India until I was 20, and I find myself being asked to justify my indian-ness to people who haven't been to Indian since they were teenagers. But I am also deeply aware that I come from a specific cultural milieu i.e. I am an Anglo-Indian.

Much like the burghers of Sri Lanka, we are the result of generations of "mixing" between the colonial British and the local Indian population. This resulted in a community that looks Indian, but have cultural practices and beliefs that are very European i.e. we are generally Christian, go to dances, celebrate Christmas and Easter and speak English as a first language at home.

In time, through marriage and immigration, the genetic claim to being Anglo-Indian has dissipated. I don't believe I have any European blood in me ( apart from a Dutch or English great grandfather somewhere) But the cultural memory persists, which is why I find it incredibly frustrating to try to explain to someone ( most likely another Indian) why I am the way I am.

I think it comes down to my deep suspicion of the grand national narrative and by that I mean, this notion that being Indian means that all of us are a certain way or like certain things. The grand national narrative has its benefits; it’s an easy trope that binds people together. Mentioning the cricket for example, will get a group of Indian talking almost instantly. But what happens to Indians who have no interest in the cricket, and couldn't care less about the merits of 20/20 version of the sport? But the same narrative also excludes those who don't fit in and creates almost a caricature of national character.

The things I love about India, have very little to do with specific cultural types or practices. Instead, I love:

Ø Our 5000 year old culture that evolves, changes and assimilates almost every day
Ø Our passionate commitment to politics and our vibrant democratic/secular traditions
Ø That India is one of the few truly multi-cultural countries

Do I need to wear a sari, then to be more of an Indian than I am already? I hope not.
By demanding that people be certain way to belong to a community, we might find that we destroy exactly what it is that makes our country so truly unique. That we are all different and yet we are the same or as they say in Sanskrit - Sarva Dharma, Sambhaav.

How to kill a language by going to work everyday

This Saturday, The Age featured a wonderful profile of the writer Don Watson, who was referred to as a "defender of plain English". I am a fan of plain English; my favourite writers are those that capture complexity with clarity, who have an elegant and concise turn of phrase.

In poetry a form that lends itself to the superfluous and excessive, some of the most heart wrenching works are in fact, simple and stark in the depth of meaning they convey. Consider for example, Pablo Neruda's Poem 20 (and I always look for a reason to quote Neruda)

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example, "The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance."
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Even in translation, there are no false notes in the emotional truth that Neruda captures. When I compare this and other I read, to the English most of us encounter in daily life, I cannot help but feel a small sense of despair. This brings me to reading about Don Watson on the Sandringham train this evening.

Watson, like me bemoans the slow and gradual demise of the English language. He particularly raises the issue of managerial speak, which he describes as a dead language incapable of conveying any real meaning.

"Phrases such as "Core Values" are really machinery. The Wheels are turning and no one knows what any of it means. But they do know what people down the line want to hear. You can arrange the words any which way and they'll come out the same"

I sigh when I read the phrases "Going forward" "Prioritization" & "leverage" in the emails I receive every day. I distinctly remember the moment someone used the phrase "Going Forward" in the office (in another job a lifetime ago). I remember thinking what an odd phrase that was- why would anyone want to backwards? It is a silly superfluous addendum that adds absolutely nothing to what the speaker is trying to say.

Coco Chanel once said that before leaving the house a woman should look in the mirror one last time, and if she sees anything in her outfit that grabbed her attention then she should remove it. Over-accessorizing was a Coco fashion crime.

Management speak is the equivalent of over-accessorizing a perfect outfit. One bauble, one flourish too many that takes away from the sexy elegance of that perfect sentence (or little Black dress).

But it is also much more insidious than that - language is at the core of any culture. When you destroy a language, you slowly start to destroy the culture associated with it as well. Which is why, when generations of college students and graduate analysts all start speaking the same language of value adds and corporate takeovers, it eats away at the most wonderful aspect of language (and culture) its verisimilitude and adaptability, its ever changing nature and constant evolution.

Perhaps I over-react, I tend to. And this blog and the millions of others out there - maybe we're the dissidents, the one who won't go away quietly, who will continue to annunciate their words, conjugate verbs and use commas appropriately. And above all remember, that sometimes things don't need to add value to be valuable.

On unrealistic notions of romance

When I was 13, I read the novel "A Town Called Alice" by Neville Shute. Perhaps it was a strange precursor to my life in Australia.. needless to say it is now one of my top 5 books. This might seem a surprising, indeed unremarkable choice. Shute over Flaubert or my current "big" read Pushkin or the ever reliable Dickens?

Alices significance to me lies in a simple and unlikely object - a chicken! I won't try to summarize the story here - wikipedia has a pretty good one going
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Town_Like_Alice

In essence, the key point is this:
Nurse in Malayan jungle in a Japanese POW camp. Boy who fancies her in another POW camp but close enough so the buzzing romance may continue. Mayhem and general lawlessness prevail, everyone except the Japanese prison guards is starving to death. Boy steals chicken for nurse and her friends to eat. Gets caught by the Japanese and is severely beaten/ punished, which he stoically accepts.

To my vivid 13 year old imagination, this was better than any Disney film or traditional romance I had read. For the longest time I believed that if it ain't life or death it ain't real. Fortunately, trusty wisdom and experience eventually intervened.

Modern Melbourne doesn't offer many opportunities for chicken- thievery or the thievery of any livestock for that matter. It will offer opportunities that will challenge our long-held beliefs on how things are meant to be. As we grow older, most of us will become crustier but some of us will learn grace and how to keep an open and forgiving heart. And it is in the latter that love will find us.

Though I suppose if you like your poultry, a chicken-stealing POW will have to do!