Created this blog 10 days ago, but being extremely ignorant about all things related to computers, couldn't find my way back to it.

Have been researching details , often embarassing, of the sex lives of people very different from those I meet normally. All to understand better how to prevent HIV/AIDS. All I have managed so far is to feel extremely confused.

I am writing this in BBSR, the capital of Orissa. I have not lived here since I was a very young person. At that time, I thoroughly disliked this place. I didn't feel wanted or accepted here. Apparently, I didn't dress or look the part of a good Oriya girl. Well, I didn't want to. I found all things Oriya to be boring in the extreme.

I realise today, however, that that reaction was that of a sulky child. Sambalpuri saris are simply beautiful. As is the detailed carving of the stone statues of the proverbial 33,000 crore gods/goddesses of the HIndu pantheon. And Jagannath, of course. He is a gorgeous yantra, and he always looks like he is having fun, looking wide-eyed at the sexual antics of the good Oriya boys and girls - often middle-aged - around him. And don't get me started on chena pod pitha (or CPP, as my little brother, Rohit and I call it!). Seriously good.

I suppose the best way to appreciate a place is to go away, to get the space between yourself, and the location that you left. In my case, that distance was 1700 kilometres, a straight line between New Delhi and Bhubaneswar, that might as well have been the distance between two planets. I can honestly say that when I left BBS, I didn't think about it. I cetainly didn't miss it. When I heard from friends here, a part of me thought - 'how can they live in that hole. The whole town is wrapped up within 4 main roads. Everyone sleeps in the afternoon, and every other time they can. BBS Club is the hotspot. ???????????'

Then the conversation would end, and so would BBS for me. There are many reasons why I cut out this place where I spent my childhood, so completely from my life. I know those reasons, and they are all sad reasons. This is the place where I learnt about rejection in the cruellest possible ways.

More on that later. I am back here, and completely unable to understand how I feel about this place. I work all the time (14 hours sometimes, not joking), researching sexual health and HIV/AIDS. I travel by autos, whaich I haven't done in ages. The auto guys look at my face, and ask me for my monthly earnings to transport me for a distance of 5 km. Hell, 10 kms in BBS is considered worthy of a day's planning. But a film ticket here costs only Rs. 60, although you can never hope to see a non-Bollywood film on the day of its release. And you share the hall-space with local Oriya guys, who I last encountered in college. They are still local. I look and dress conservatively in salwar-kameez, although my Crocs have their own fan-following ! I have been to parties in private homes, which could be a farm-house in Gurgaon. Almost everyone speaks to me in Hindi, even when they know that I am from here. I am also world-famous in BBS, due to that fact that a lot of my relatives are working as bureaucracts, politicians, or are among the hoi polloi. Nice, isn't it ? I ignored this place for 20 years, and when I came here on work, I strolled onto the proverbial A-list. Thanks, Ma and Papa; you must have been popular.

Big Bazaar is probably the most loved location in town. Mayfair Lagoon, and a horrid little place called TDS, are the in spots. Bemused is a mild word for the way I feel about BBS, most of the time. It's like watching your conservative middle-aged aunt, on vacation at a beach somewhere, using sunscreen and squeezed into a swim-suit. It boggles the mind, to watch BBS and its denizens, at times.

The real denizens, not the Bihari imports, the students, and the Infocity chaps ! The Oriyas - the Brahmins who take one look at my face and know that I am a Mishra, that most exalted of Brahmins - Kaanyakubj, no less. : ) The Mohantys, who will see themselves as Mohantys always. The IAS/ex-IAS guys, who talk fondly of how I recited a poem when I was five, and how my mother adjusted to life as an Oriya bahu. The people of Punjabi origin, who have never forgotten that they came to BBS with nothing. And all the people who knew my parents way way back, and still remember them; they say - Kirti ra jhia, na ? (Kirti's daughter, na ?)

But I understand that my view may be simplistic, and so very coloured by my own refusal to take BBS seriously, as anything other than a sleepy place, a town with no personality whatsoever.

The other day, I answered a friend's call as I was about to enter IG Park at 6.30 pm. (IG Park is home to druggies, prostitutes and homosexuals after sunset.) When I told him where I was, he asked me to leave forthwith. Me being me, I argued, but left eventually. That night, he called me reckless for having gone to IG Park that evening. He also said something very telling; he said that 'every town had its nuances'.

That kind of sums up how I feel. In a way, the nuances are within my grasp, because, thanks to the work I do, I get to visit all dimensions from the old-moneyed to the new-moneyed, to the visitors, and to the under-belly. But I don't get the nuances, because I perhaps don't want to. I choose to see BBS as essentially harmless, a town that still preens in its own self-importance, a town that exists in no other consciousness but its own. Am I right, or am I wrong ? I don't know.