Lonely, I'm so lonely...

It's shaptami today. I am homesick and hyperactive and extremely moody at the moment. Had gone home for a single day to visit my ailing grandmom last weekend, but apart from the fact that it bolstered her spirits and put her back on track to recovery (and that, was what made it worth it), it was the worst possible timing really. Going home days before Pujo is the most terrible form of masochism, I swear. You can see the pandals spiralling up from every possible nook and corner, you hear people make plans for the days ahead, you smell the festivity in the air and it's all so tempting and nostalgic that you hate yourself for living in a different city, for having to earn a living and not being so god-damned rich that you need not care two hoots about things like planning in advance. I don't have a single new dress to remind me in this god-forsaken city that it's celebration time. I have to grin through a consolatory visit to what is the local equivalent of Pujo at home. I have to work through the four days as if this whole city is banking on me to set a precedence on The Value of Discipline and Restraint in the Life of a Professional. Arrghh, I HAAAATE it.

And you know what makes it worse? The fact this would have been my last Pujo in the old way of life. Along with Sunshine and River and Sunny and Gruff and all the rest of the gang. The traditional family get-together on Bijoya, the compulsive dining out on all four days--old habits that might be irreversibly sidelined in the wake of the new life. I am missing excursions to the far north of my city, staying up nights with River and Sunshine and sometimes, Pretty, over infusion and a steady exchange of gossip and chatter. I am missing Pujobarshiki-s and mindless ha ha hee hee with Ma and baby cuz. I am missing the daily spate of mail exchanges with Sunny because his office is shut for the Pujo, missing my war of words with Caustic, who must be flaunting his red shirt in the beaches of Goa now...

This is utter depravity. I want to go home NOW. Somebody please help.

PS-Sharadiyar shubhechha and thank you all for bearing with me. I still want to go home but it helps to get the grouse out of the system.

And I love you so, People ask me how, How I have lived till now, I tell them I don't know...

I admit now that I really know very little about myself.

I have always known that there is so much more to life than what I think I know. Or what I shall ever know or experience. I have been alive to that possibility. But it is an objective realisation, one that I have never really associated with my own immediate life. There I imagined that all my responses would be according to my recall: that I would always call the shots. That love and emotions thereabout were not meant for me, because I would never have the guts to lay my soul threadbare for fear of being rendered vulnerable.

So I looked at love from a distance, telling myself that it was a word that I would not give in to. That people did not really understand the connect, or else they would not say it so often, so insistently. That it happened when you were out searching and came to the nearest approximation of your ideas.

It was working out fine; and then it sneaked up from behind one fine day and left me breathless, and somehow, I really think it meant love. And so I began using it, tentatively at first, and with increasing confidence slowly, and I was surprised because I liked the way it moulded itself to my touch. My lips breathe it in such a way as they don't for any other word, and I like that. It is possible to be thrilled over cliches because they aren't intended to be so sometimes. As I speak the words, spell them through my actions, it becomes an idiom of our own. Mine and his. And we love each other with it.

It isn't always easy--fitting into each other's heart. But it's worth the wait to feel so intensely. To be so adored. Or so unfathomably desired.

Imagine if I had gone through life without ever having known this.

The Genesis of the Domestic Goddess

Things never turn out the way I expect them to. It's strange really, because I am usually good at guessing games. Take me to a thriller and I'll nail the murderer for you at the first chance. Give me a detective story and half way through I'll tell you the end game. I can see further in to the situation than that exact moment on screen or in the pages. Acknowledgedly, I have a wide stretch of imagination.

But I am stumped when it comes to real life. My own anticipation and expectations invariably land me in a quagmire, and I can never quite get it right. Life surprises me. All the time. And I like it this way. I like the heady rush of blood when things turn out better than I had imagined. And hate it when the worst is too far beyond my imagination.

Which is why, I am pleasantly surprised at the moment. I never thought I had much of an aptitude for the home and the hearth. I am not overtly ambitious, but I have never been inclined towards being a homebody. I dust and clean and make lists but that's because I am a bit of an organisational freak. I mean I love churning out the occasional fancy five-course dinner with the frills, but I never realised that I could want to do it every day, happily.

I am enjoying my new-found domestic prowess. I cook, I clean, I read, I hum. I would have been the joy of my mother's life if she were to catch me now in my present state.

Mark the evolution of the home goddess.

I think I'll make a success of housekeeping yet.

Focus on everything better today, All that I need and I never could say...

Interim


It's still too early,
To smell the autumn
In the air.

Here, in this city of ruins,
The air is parched
With your thirst.

Your acid desire
Melting down my
asphalt skin.
Your breath, like fire,
Fanning warmth in to my
Brittle limbs.

Outside, the city lies still,
Waiting,
For light years
For the storm to break.

I know now
This longing for the half life
that is locked in yours.
The endless thirst,
This promise
Of eternal life.

I have been waiting too
For ever and ever more
To play rain.