Who Shall I Say Is Calling?

Here's Looking At You Kid...

2010-01-01T20:36:00.002+05:30

In the beginning it was difficult to believe. As a kid, as a teenager even (and don't tell anyone, sometimes, even now), I was always the sort who lacked confidence, the sort who was so self-conscious that most of her conversations happened in her head. But here was this boy, who refused to get offended by my feeble attempts at being social, and worse perhaps, refused to let anybody else around us be offended by it too. For the first time in my life I began having friends, having a "group" of own, and slowly, in fits and starts the confidence seeped in.

I have never quite gotten over the wonder of those years, definitely never over that small boy who wouldn't take no for an answer. I have never actually had the opportunity to get over it because he never changed, never became someone I didn't know, or worse, someone I knew a long time back. I forget to reply to his mails, we don't talk much anymore, sometimes, I don't even have his changing cell numbers on me, but we don't drift apart. Maybe because he doesn't lose patience. Maybe because I know he won't. I really don't know why. I don't think I'll ever know it too...I just know he is special, and that he is one of a kind.

Your mother now, she is a livewire if ever there was one. From the way she always, ALWAYS managed to come late to class, rushing in like a whirlwind, her hair all over her face, cutting the teacher's rebuke short with a flurry of excuses and apologies, to how she insisted on having her tiffin after the very first class was over, from the way she never shied off from blowing someone to smithereens over any seeming injustice to her fierce sense of independence-- she was always the firebrand. She still is. I have spent days with her being cynical, being weepy, laughing like crazy, sulking in fits, being angry, being happy, sharing secrets, crushes, jokes, joys and hurt. She can be brusque, oh yes, she can really give it to you, as I am sure you'll find out when you start growing up and trying her patience, but she can also put you together when you are nursing a hurt, or even a cold-- put your topsy-turvy mind in place with inane jokes, her loud laughter and her huge grin. I bet you won't be able to get over that. Ever.

This evening when I called her to wish her on new year, I was a little taken aback. She sounded like she was sleeping. But then she became her usual self. Well, almost. Her voice was a laboured whisper, the strain of the operation has hardly subsided, but she told me all about you, told me how you have been howling a lot, how you've become red in the face with the effort, how you are so fair...

...Your dad had much the same things to say. But I wasn't really listening to him. I was listening to the joy in his voice, the slight bewilderment, and the surprise in it...I can't tell you how happy it made me to talk to them both...

I don't know which of them you look like, and I'll be honest with you, I particularly don't care. But if there's one thing I can wish for you, it's for you to have a heart like your father and grit like your mom. Life will give you the rest.

And from me, love always and forever. You are a part of two people who are very, very special to me.

Welcome to this world, kid...

(To Sunny and Gruff's daughter, who came in to our lives today)

Hothat...

2009-05-26T16:45:00.003+05:30

Golper moto ishkool bari,
jome otha khhoto, khelbo na aari.
She khela kana goli roj chupishare
Ebong agoon chhilo last counter-er
Haway haway

Bondhu tomay e gaan shonabo bikel belay,
Arekbaar jodi tomader dole nao khelay....

Chandrabindoo. Album: Gadha

Illness

2009-05-20T18:30:00.005+05:30

I think I was in the second standard when I first had malaria. I was a sickly child in my early years, and bouts of fever, a runny nose and sore throat were nothing out of the ordinary. Yet it's funny how my earliest recollection of being unwell dates back to the time when malaria got to me. I still remember lying in bed, almost delirious, trying to catch a glimpse of the sun through the window, scanning faces anxiously, waiting for Baba to come back from work, a bar of Five Star in hand, my salvation after all the bitter pills through the day.

If the days still had their moments of deliverance, it was the nights I used to be terrified of. As the fever wracked my body, I would desperately try and put my mind to other things, people I loved, books I'd been reading, my bundles of Enid Blyton and Shukhalata Rao, Abon Thakur and E Nesbit. I was reading What Katy Did at that time, poised at the juncture when Katy had just suffered a stupendous fall from the swing and doctors didn't know if she would ever be able to walk again. I felt an odd kinship with her, devouring the book, whenever I was slightly better. Ma says she had to nudge me awake in the middle of the night, because I would be talking to Katy in my sleep, urging her to please ask for her poor aunt, because she was dying, and oh, she really was a good soul, even though she thought she was too strict for words! Death, at that age, was still a mystery, but of course, you knew, with the instinct of a child, it was inscrutable and irreversible.

So, why am I talking of morbid things which are long in the past? Because everytime illness strikes, as it has been with pretty severe regularity of late, I am back to being that terrified kid waiting for morning to come. I lust for all the sounds, the colours, the chaos, the people who make up my everyday life, and when I don't get it, for whatever reason, I behave like that five-and-a-half-year-old again, terrified of further suffering, terrified that this condition, which I had presumed to be temporary to begin with, might indeed become my life.

It wasn't like this in the intervening years but. Youth has its own mechanism of dealing with fears, or rather, death does not feature in their agenda at all. There's impatience, yes, and just a plenitude of life that sees you through even your darkest hour. I am young still, but hardly an youth, and suddenly illness and death have far more profound implications for me. I don't always react sensibly to it. Like I told you, I am more prone to tears and fear if it lasts for anything beyond the ordinary.

But when those moments pass and sanity returns, it makes me think of a whole lot of people who have suffered more and with greater fortitude-- my Thamma, otherwise given to hyperboles, never complained of pain ever in the near-three years she was laid up in bed, needing dyalisis four times a day, dependent on the mercy of others for even the most basic of human needs. At the most, if you probed her again and again, she would say, there was a mild discomfort, my same old grandmother, who was the mistress of the house till illness felled her, for whom nothing but the best would do. It was only the night time that used to scare her. She couldn't get used to the darkness outside and the stillness within. She would keep asking the attendants the time, keep waking them up to get her a cup of tea, not because she would drink it, but because it meant, even in that state, that the familiarity of her world was still there. My grandfather too had never flinched, not when he suffered the first heart attack when I was in Class III, not when he landed up with a fractured skull while trying to avoid a speeding car, and least of all, during that final year, when the callousness of hospital authorities left him battling with pneumonia and a multiple organ injury.

There are so many others to this list. An aunt who recently gave up the battle against cancer, a cousin, to the same. Each fought with grace and courage. What gave them the strength, I wonder? Why did they not chafe and cry and lose hope like I do? When each day is actually better than the previous? Why am I suddenly such a poor learner?

It's just been five days so far...

On The Road

2009-03-09T16:32:00.007+05:30

Anecdote 1

It was a weekend and an early morning flight. I was en route to a friend's wedding. As I queued up at the check-in desk, still sore at having to let go off my weekend snooze, a man sidled up at the counter, slightly unsure, but without bothering to go through the queue. Different cities do different things to you. My home city taught me to be patient and timid, kind but not very self-confident. My adopted city though has ensured I am full of the same bristling restlessness that takes you through days when politeness and patience don't work. The sight of the man jumping the queue raised my hackles immediately, in exactly the same way as it does every day in this city, a dozen times a day actually, dealing with people either too full of themselves or too insolent to care (Maybe the two states are synonymous?). As the conversation at the counter dragged on, I fidgeted and made snide remarks to A, insisting that I go up to the counter and tick the man off. I had been at it for a while, when A, exasperated, pointed out a tiny pin on the man's shirt, which I had failed to see. It had a single word on it: blind, and suddenly, in that fraction of a second, the wind was completely knocked out of me.

There are things one is afraid of in life. I am scared of blindness, both physical and metaphysical, and the implications of it, not just in my life, but in the lives of those whom I cherish the most. To see this man-- non-descript and averagely dressed, but with enough confidence to make him an equal in an unyielding world--brought back images of another man doing the same, in a faraway hinterland, slightly better than him, but struggling nonetheless to hold on to the legacy of sight...Who knows whether some insensitive individual mistakes his valiance for faults unknown, just like his daughter did to some other man?

Anecdote 2

In a tiny city in western Europe, against an overwhelming cathedral an old lady in a wheelchair sits alone staring in to the distance. Her face is wrinkled, but not sad. If you take the time to look, there's a twinkle in her eyes that belies the fact that the half cents that you drop in to her lap would probably go a long way in getting her a meal. Two kids on their way out of the church, stop to speak to her, their father standing in the distance, smiling indulgently at them. The old lady's face lights up and it's a pretty picture as the three of them chat animatedly. The lady's still smiling when the children wave goodbye and move away. It's evening almost and the daytrippers are on their way out of the city. As she sits there counting her day's earning, the setting sun rests on her face for just an instant. Age can be cruel, loneliness crueller...

I'm not quite local, not quite a stranger. I'm either a local stranger or a strange local

2009-01-22T13:40:00.006+05:30

I am going through a particularly hedonistic phase in my life. No, make that mental frame of mind. Right now, all I crave for is comfort, beauty, luxury, greater materialistic gain...the total works. It's like running through a fashion magazine catalogue, ticking the dresses that you want and wondering if it will make you look just as pretty and perfect as the models sporting them, do.

The ground reality is slightly removed though. There's comfort and beauty, but not quite in the same way. There's comfort, because everyday, when I go home, to the house that we have both so lovingly done up, it's like being back to my own space. It's my nook, my corner, and in a strange way, I never thought possible of me, my world too. I don't mind at all, for days altogether, to stay at home, pottering around, reading, listening to music, or just doing nothing. There's beauty in being reminded everyday that I belong, and that I am cherished, something which fills me with wonder every single day, even now.

So why, when I am so happy, am I craving hedonism? A friend of mine, quite given to living life on his own terms, has this to say. "Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well-preserved body, but rather, to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, martini in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming, woo hoo, what a ride!"

I am not that adventurous yet, but I suspect, it's got something to do with the thought at the back of my mind that time's running out. I am in my late twenties, and there's this feeling somewhere that I haven't done enough so far. There's this whole new world out there, waiting to be explored, waiting to be touched in to life, and I am doing nothing to make it happen. I am stuck in a professional status quo, boring, but comfortable, and I make no effort to change it or better it. I am coasting through life, superficially most of the times, in pursuit of the fruits of here and now, not knowing when to stop or where, all the time looking for a cure to my restlessness, in places where I know they don't exist. People have been suggesting motherhood, but I am not sure if I am prepared for that either, yet. I feel flustered sometimes, not just at the lack, but at my failure to do something about it.

And so till I find my way, it's the catalogues I am looking to live my life in. Hoping the labels fill fit. Or I'll grow out of them.

Do you feel like I do?

2008-02-01T17:27:00.001+05:30

Ri... died on the 26th. Four days after she was born. Three days after she was detected with an under-developed heart and dysfunctional lungs. I did not have the chance to meet her. My only acquaintance with her was through the joy in her father's voice the evening she was born, ringing out over the telephone with wonder and awe, and what seemed suspiciously like love.

What do you make of life?

.............................................................

I am living in the extremes these days, dithering between nervous anxiety and bouts of happiness. It's a strange reality really, considering that life has been good to me on the whole. But there are catches here and there, niggling little stabs that punctuate my equanimity. They are not insurmountable, maybe they will be positive even, but they are bogging me down right now. I have been wishing that I had done things differently, planned and organised my life better. Wishful thinking that fuels the sense of under-achievement. But then, when I go home every evening, and I see A, comforting and protective, I am filled with thankfulness and gratitude that I have him to fall back upon. When I talk to friends and family, I know my blessings and feel the warmth inside.

What do I make of life then?

.......................................................

If I can let you go as trees let go their leaves, so casually, one by one; If I can come to know what they do know, That fall is the release, the consummation, Then fear of time and the uncertain fruit Would not distemper the great lucid skies. This strangest autumn, mellow and acute.

In Retrospect

2007-10-31T17:07:00.000+05:30

Two deaths. A wedding.
An old address. A new home.

New routes. Old tales.
Pockmarks of jealousy; unease.

Illness, wellness.
Hopelessness. Happiness
and I-miss-you-so days.

Life paused today to say,
I am glad I was there with you every step of the way.

My father and I

2007-10-01T12:42:00.000+05:30

were the best of friends till I turned 11 when he got his first outstation posting. Then, in the flurry of changing addresses and rise on the corporate ladder, the next 10 years passed off in a blur. Baba became more of a figurehead who visited from time to time, bearing with him gifts and happiness and transience. When we woke up the next day, still dreaming of the laughter, he was off in the pursuit of his next big promotion.

I think it was only about a couple of years later that I stopped expecting him to be around. Baba tried in whatever way he could to be connected, but for me it wasn't enough. My life shifted focus to Ma and my grandparents and that was how things were for a long time.

But then came the turnaround. An untimely death in the family, Thamma's fatal illness and Baba decided to give it all up and come back home. It was a tough choice for a workaholic like him, and not too many things were going in his favour. But with characteristic resilience Baba hung on. And came back. Almost around the same time when I was ready to step out of home.

The first time I realised the grey in his temples was when I went back home on a visit at the end of my second year out. As the escalator moved down towards the arrival lounge, I spotted them, my parents, standing in a corner, scanning faces anxiously to catch a glimpse of me. And I realised with a start that they were aging. Ma looked way too thin. And Baba, smiling, booming, jovial Baba was just a tad quieter. Just a wee bit more worn out. I wanted to tell him to relax, that I would take care of them, but I didn't. I didn't know how to. All I said was, "Don't worry." He smiled.

Over the subsequent years a lot of things have changed. People, plans, fortunes, hope and health. But I always thought my parents were infallible. That age won't catch up with them. It has. This weekend Baba was diagnosed with a form of retinal degeneration that slowly robs one of their vision. It's an age-related degeneration, but it's irreversible.

Baba was low the day he told me about it. But he was back to his old cheerful self the next morning. "I'll manage. It's not the end of the world, and there are other doctors I can check with. Maybe something will come up," he said. And I looked at Baba once more with the eyes of the child who stayed up nights, because Baba had promised he would call her whatever time he got back from work and Baba always kept his word.

I have been thinking a lot ever since, of those childhood days. Days when Baba was always there for me after a battle lost or a plan gone wrong. Of times when I failed and Baba accepted my failure without a question. Of the times he stood up for me when everybody else refused to. And I have been ruing my short-sightedness. And the years I wasted being hurt.

This one is for you Baba. For teaching me about life, love and courage. And for being the best kind of friend. Always.

This strangest autumn, mellow and acute...

2007-08-20T15:39:00.000+05:30

It's strange how certain things stick to your mind. I was thinking of a recent exchange I had with someone I know and it struck me as to how little we know of ourselves and others...The friend, who was mourning a private loss told me, "You didn't understand it's about loss and sorrow, not something I can romanticise or write poetry about" and I was left speechless for lack of any explanation I could furnish.

The measure of love is not loss. Or if you look at it inversely, loss does not quantify love. I have sometimes wondered what it is about love that makes it so difficult to give up something or somebody. That sinking feeling in the pit of my gut telling me things will never be the same again...and the hope lurking in some pitless abyss for a dawn of redemption...

I don't revere love, but I treasure it, just as the way I treasure sorrow. Not because sorrow and loss feed my romanticism, but because I am scared of their potential. What you know is what you have got. I know love in the way it touches my life every possible way, but I am also aware of sorrow because I fear the power of loss...There is no romance in it, no scope of a sympathetic chorus. I am scared, selfishly so. For what is yours today might be mine some other day. That is all.

In the meantime A has come back and I can't tell you the exquisite relief in knowing that we'll come home to each other, every evening, for the time being at least. There's so much to do right now that we hardly have time to talk to each other. There are pressing things on hand, PIL's failing health, things going wrong at the workplace--too many things that tire us out before we eventually get some time together. But just catching his eye over the dinner table, or the quick hug in the kitchen or the strong shoulder to lean on when I am totally spent mean so much that all the stress and the duress don't matter anymore. I love the us that we are...I hope we stay this way...

Winter, spring, summer or fall, All you have to do is call

2007-06-26T22:46:00.000+05:30

Tall is coming back to the city in August with a new job. Much yay-ness there. Have been willing her to get back all this while and now it has actually happened! Really missed her and Maddy in the one year that they quit this job and moved on. But now she'll be here and even Maddy will come to town for the weekend. So, much joy and celebration, not to mention re-unions around the corner.

Speaking of re-unions, spent a clandestine couple of days this last weekend with my old flatmates and had such a great time, that it kind of made up for the surreptitious guilt of sneaking out of my duties as a host and indulging myself. I don't know why people say women can't be friends with women--A keeps telling me it's a bit of an anachronism--but if you ever saw us there, in that quaint place which we called home, you wouldn't really stick to your argument.

Happy, Shy, Fish, Golden--all our paths have criss-crossed and diverged, but when we get together even for a while, it's almost like the bubble hasn't burst. It re-assures me, this familiarity of reactions. We still laugh maniacally over silly things, still shop like crazy, share advice, mope over our respective woes, even bitch these days quite a fair bit and then move on ahead. Some relations come without pressures of expectation. Mine with my old flatmates is pretty much fancy free. It's heady and it makes me feel so bloody good!

But then, like all good things, this camaraderie too comes with an expiry date: Happy is moving to Yankee doodle shores next month, Shy to Sea City and Fish is in a state of limbo, caught between duties and desires, and too freaked out to do much besides. And oh, did I mention, Chirpy got engaged the Friday I was there? To a guy who has been steadfastly pursuing her for a while? I saw their snaps the other day. They look so absolutely delightful! Sigh, I'll always be a sucker for romances!

Anyway, to come back to the point, it's fun, these occasional meetings, where you are just yourself--sans baggage, sans the load of being or becoming. No deep commitments, and nothing to be had out of it except some lovely moments of unadulterated freewheeling. I have been feeling very satiated since I met the girls, and now I can't wait for Tall to be back. Life isn't all that bad really now, is it?

What if, maybe, and then some more!

2007-06-05T23:59:00.000+05:30

I am all topsy-turvy today. Bright gold sunshine treacling down my back, dripping down my shoulders, enfolding me in a gilt-edged bubble and suddenly I am all breathless like I have been under water too long. I want to rush through the days, these days edged with emptiness, these honey gold days laced with longing and loneliness, and reach tomorrow. Now.

Ironically, there's a lot to fill my days with lately--work's been busy, and there's been that many books to catch up on at home. Then there's the laundery to be done, the daily grocery, cooking, dusting--the entire housekeeping regime to run through. But somewhere in between, I pause and I wonder, if this is all that there ever will be to my life...this endless running through days ticking off the chores in my mind, planning, always planning to do all the things that I have forever meant to do, somewhere down the way.

The truth is, and I admit, I have always known it deep down somewhere, that I am inordinately lazy when it comes to giving wings to my desires--the kind of laziness that prompts you to put off things that need not be done right now, for later, and then forget it eventually. When I run through my days, filled with all the things that I am programmed to do by way of habit, all the things that have fallen into a pattern, I have them at the back of my mind as an escape route that I'll fall back on someday.

That never arrives.

Which is why on days like today I feel suffused with a surfeit of dreams threatening to spill out and run amok;

Only, not knowing where to go,

They slowly creep back into their carefully-constructed labyrinths, hoping to be smoked out by the sun on another forgotten morning down the road;

Someday...

In which I demonstrate my dismal knowledge of the sciences

2007-05-28T13:54:00.000+05:30

Q. How long does it take to get by a day?

A. 24 hours. It's a ridiculously easy calculation.
(I wonder. Why does time hang so heavy then?)

Q. How do you define sight?

A. Light is reflected in to the eyes by any object coming within your field of vision. That is how one sees things.
(Are you sure? Why do I seem to see you everywhere then? Even when we are apart?)

Q. Will you be able to hear me whenever I call?

A. That depends. Sound waves travel to about 340 metres in a second. So if the distance between you and me is too much I won't.
(Don't lie. I called out to you last night and you weren't even around. You heard.)

Q. How far can one travel in 2 days?

A. Halfway across the world. Easily.
(Really? But I thought home was so much closer.)

Q. What is the measure of love?

A. Irrelevant question. Next?

Sigh! No wonder my parents never dreamt of a career in medicine or engineering for me...

A little bit of this, a little bit of that, and what have you?

2007-05-01T19:51:00.000+05:30

I have been missing my friend River badly for the last couple of days. And Sunshine. And Tall. And Maddy. And Pert. I want to meet them all, talk to them in exactly the same way we used to, years back when all of us still stayed in the same city and still looked to each other for company. I want to go for those routine long walks with River round and round the college building, I want to talk endlessly with Sunshine over the phone about sundry nonsense, call up Pert and have her fussing over me about my apparent timidity, go for coffee-breaks with Tall and Maddy and exchange gossip.

In short, I want a slice of my old life back.

Lots of things change with time. Relationships, I guess, are the foremost on the list. Pert has moved to Yankee-Doodle Land and from the look of it, won't come back, River's still where we left her, waiting I presume, for us to go back and pick up the rather loose pieces, Sunshine, is happy in her little cocoon of home and family, Maddy is living it up in a new city, and Tall is back where she belongs. All of us talk sparingly. We know what's happening in each other's life. About the upheavals and the small joys and the calamities and the little blessings that make up our days after we have moved on. We don't talk of loneliness and longing or missing each other. We presume we are there if the other person is to reach out and look for a friend.

But what happens when we don't reach out, but still need the friendly shoulder? What happens when I think of you and ache for you to miss me too in just the same way, but I don't tell you so amidst the rush of inanities we exchange everytime we gab on the phone?

I am very happy with my present life. Happy but not contented, because it still has enough space to fit in the old life. And all the marriages and babies and new cities and new continents and new jobs in this world won't change that.

I have the space you need. Can I invade a bit of yours?

Amnesia

2007-04-23T16:54:00.000+05:30

Vacuous
These merging of the days into each other,
Each pattern blending into the next
Seamlessly.
Tone on tone. Colour upon self-same colour.

Sometimes, sitting at my empty canvas
I have tried my hands at magic.
Tried to dream up,
Your face, eyes, your unkempt hair
Into reality.

It's your voice that makes my art falter.
Your voice pregnant with
All that you did not say.

And the paints peel off.
Layer after layer
After layer,
Of endless closure.

Outside, one more day
Becomes yesterday.

Midnight all day

2007-03-31T14:54:00.000+05:30

Was reading through my old college notes the other day. Came across this poem by Elizabeth Bishop I used to love:

One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
So many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Apt, isn't it?

I'm not looking for another, As I wander in my time, Walk me to the corner, Our steps will always rhyme

2007-02-23T14:30:00.000+05:30

White Noise

Words sometimes,
Have a strange habit
Of getting lost,
In the labyrinth
Of our life together.

You are the one
they are meant for;
You are the one
they can't reach to.

It's a new day, It's a new life for me

2007-02-07T17:44:00.000+05:30

Beginning

Suddenly,
This burst of colour.
Love
Dripping down
Our backs
On to the
Blue bedspread,
Like molten amber.

A tiny patch of sunshine
Creeps in,
And settles down
Tentatively
On our fingers;
Entwined,
Finally.

Back from a long sabbatical. Too much work. Will be less taciturn soon. Promise.

We have come so far, it is over

2006-11-10T12:36:00.000+05:30

And now that the threads are broken and the pauses grow longer, it's a good time to say adieu.

I love you only because it's you the one I love

2006-11-08T15:32:00.000+05:30

Between us and death there is sometimes only one single person. Remove this person and there would be only death.
-- Sappho

Amen!

And do you know why, she won't break down and cry? She says adios, says adios, goodbye...

2006-10-30T12:13:00.000+05:30

And this jagged pain shooting like pin-pricks across my nerves, this pain of bereavement, over and over again, this loss, the loss, spiralling across, spiralling down, and suddenly one fine autumn morning nothing, a vast stretch of nothingness, enveloping all, and everywhere people are busy, vacuous hours, rituals empty of meaning, all but meaning, and this is not what it is, not what it is meant to be, in this hour, this busy hour, reminiscences of years in motion, alone, together, life like brittle china, chipped, broken, the shortening breath, shortened, short, and your eyes laughing, in happiness, eyes, fluid, fluent in pain, knowing, the shadowy descent to nothing, this endless night, this dying fall...

Goodbye Prosperity...

And is this what you wanted, To live in a house that is haunted, By the ghost of you and me...

2006-10-21T19:38:00.000+05:30

Do you think of your childhood often?

Every time I go home, to that four-storeyed non-descript apartment tucked away in a small lane, the smell of my childhood wafts across to me. There, in a room on the first floor, time stands still. There I am a month old baby lying nestled in the arms of my grandfather while my family rushes off to the airport to receive my aunt on her annual visit home from Riyadh. There I am a five year-old who cannot sleep till my grandmother comes to bed and tells her bedtime stories--not fables, but tales about her childhood, with her grandmother. I am 10 and I still sleep with my grandparents. I dream of being a swimmer and drag them off to my daily practice sessions. No rain or unexpected visitors can hold me back. I am 12. My father gets his first outstation posting. Ma tells me we might shift soon. I know what to do. I appeal to my guardian angels. My grandparents--the fulcrum of our joint family--delivers on my faith. I can stay back with them.

I am 16. Dad is finally back home. I don't know how to react. I am ill at ease. There's a huge flat waiting, which is being done up so that we can move in as quickly as possible. This time only Dadu backs me up valiantly. I shuttle between the two homes. When they are with us, I stay put. When they come home I follow suit.

And then somewhere in between I grew up. I think it was after Dadu passed away nine winters ago. Then in a span of a few hours I knew what it was to be on my own. Completely. It wasn't just his not being there. It was the sum total of all the small things that went awry, all the things that I never imagined could go wrong. Ever since I have always strived to be independent. To be capable by myself. And I almost managed. Except for that one old, indomitable woman, who knew she would always win. My grandmother. Every time I book my tickets home I know that amidst all the happy faces there will be one face which will wrinkle up in unadulterated joy. Who will ask me everytime I call home, "When are you coming back? Why do you have to work there?"

There are some people of whom you think age can't do much. Thamma's one of them. In our matriarchal family Thamma has always been the law. But there are things time can do. I can't recall perfectly when Thamma changed from being the head of the family to the frail, infirm woman restricted to the confines of the bed. I don't know when that smiling booming voice changed into a whisper--"I have a feeling I won't see you again." I laughed and told her it was nonsense. That my bags were packed and I would be home in no time. This time I won't hurry back because I had all the time in the world to be with her. She smiled.

Thamma passed away this Monday. Two weeks before my scheduled sabbatical. A month and a half ahead of one of the most important days of my life. Hers too. She had more dreams about it than even I dared to see. Now, with all the time in the world as I sit here doing nothing, I know I lost.

I think of my childhood often. What you risk shows what you cherish the most. But this is one gamble I know, even Thamma, wouldn't relish winning...

Open to everything happy & sad,Seeing the good when it's all going bad,Seeing the sun when I can't really see,Hoping the sun will at least look at me

2006-10-06T13:22:00.000+05:30

Today is a dangling sort of day. I am waiting for so many things to happen simultaneously that I really don't know where to start. There are things that I need to do, things that I am waiting for...people, events, moods, moments--it's a kaleidescope of expectancy. Pregnant. Poignant. Weighed down.

Sometimes I feel this wait will never end. There are times when I can sense that things are happening. Feel the motions of the journey. My work, my family, my friends, my growing universe. And then there are times when I don't notice the pace. When every day is exactly the same. Boring. Listless. Uneventful. Or strenuous, stressful, disturbing. I hate the uniformity, hate the unalleviating linearity of things as they are. I know that the truth is that they are actually happening. But it isn't always enough.

So what, then, am I looking for? Why is there always a longing for the things to come even when the present is right there in front of my eyes? Why do I always know in the middle of extreme happiness or defeat, that this too shall not last? That there's more to come.

This unsatiable longing will be the death of me some day.

Lonely, I'm so lonely...

2006-09-29T11:58:00.000+05:30

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...

2006-09-21T11:57:00.000+05:30

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

2006-09-18T16:50:00.000+05:30

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...

2006-09-07T12:29:00.000+05:30

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.

Goodbye is too good a word, Fare thee well...

2006-08-28T12:27:00.000+05:30

I am glad August is almost over. It's been a strangely listless month. Too many goodbyes and too much of work. And not interesting, compelling work at that, because, in that case, I don't really mind the number of hours I have to put in.

Tall and Maddy both quit their jobs. Tall's was expected--she had been toying with the idea for a while now--Maddy's was a bolt out of the blue. But either way, saying goodbye to them hasn't been easy. I met Tall for a hurried cuppa before she rushed to catch her flight. It had been a particularly busy week for both of us and we had been putting off our meeting till the very last day. Which turned out to be a bad idea. We talked of everything and nothing in particular in that half an hour. Just one of those I-am-going-to-miss-you-but-I-am-trying-not-to-let-you-see-how-much conversations, but hell, I am missing her awfully. Maddy is still serving her notice period, and she has promised to chip in for the Big Assignment that begins in a day's time, but then, she'll be gone next week. Which means post-September 6, I'll be all alone. I'll have nobody to pour out my work woes to, or go out for hurried lunches with, or meet up for coffee post-work. No Maddy to share junk food cravings and certainly no Tall to call up at ungodly hours just to have a good laugh. Life's not fair, I am telling you! (long heart-rending sob!)

In the meantime, another friend from across the seas is arriving in a couple of days' time. I cannot decide whether my anticipation is greater than my apprehension. This living on tenterhooks is not quite my style, but hello, do I have a choice!

We are so small between the stars, so large against the sky, Lost among the subway crowd, I try to catch your eye

2006-08-14T00:17:00.000+05:30

It's midnight and I am Cinderella. I am clutching at my ragged robes and running the race that began in my mind light years ago, and one that I run a million times every day.

I reach home, my nook of hearth and fire, tired and out of breath, my mouth tasting of salt, my hair a tangled wreck, the whispers choked at the throat. I cannot be caught. Outside the sky is a million different hues of no colour. Inside, the fire's died out. I have been away for long.

Have you noticed how cold it is in here? I reach for the matches and touch a charred bit of cinder. It smells distinctly of memories. Absolute and ill-defined.

My fingers are made of glass. I am afraid they are transparent. I am afraid that when I touch you they'll break. Afraid that when I say 'no', insistently, smilingly, with practised ease, you will not hear the voice screaming `yes', begging for your attention, begging for you to take note.

My robes get frayed every day at the edges. I pull them closer desperately. It's cold in here. Transparent. Yes.

In the corner, the wicker lampshade throws up patterns on the wall. In my mind I put a figure to the distance.

So little, the hours. Before we both mouth pleasantries and say goodbye.

'Stay well.' 'You too.'

Start over and over again. Every day. Word on word. Conversation to build conversation. So that no trace of the beginning remains. So that we can clutch at familiar landmarks to tide us over. My moments missing yours. Yours, mine.

Accidents. Small and large. My fate and yours. Unknown. Uncertain. Full of possibilities.

Sometimes when I open my palms there are stubborn stains of sunshine, and I can smell miracle.

Every day this new beginning. Every day this wait for the sunshine to streak my palms.

Every day.

I am not always you, and you are not always mine, It's alright to fall apart sometimes

2006-08-13T14:24:00.000+05:30

I had a nightmare last night that has left me drained and slightly disoriented. Even though the day, with its reassuring warmth, has blurred the jagged edges of the dream, I am scared.

Tell me something, do you tell your heart to love, more out of protocol than out of passion?

...The answer is blowing in the wind

2006-08-13T13:00:00.000+05:30

And these...

You Are Sunrise

You enjoy living a slow, fulfilling life. You enjoy living every moment, no matter how ordinary.

You are a person of reflection and meditation. You start and end every day by looking inward.

Caring and giving, you enjoy making people happy. You're often cooking for friends or buying them gifts.

All in all, you know how to love life for what it is - not for how it should be.

What Time Of Day Are You?

Who Should Paint You: Pablo Picasso

Your an expressive soul who shows many emotions, with many subtleties
Only a master painter could represent your glorious contradictions

What Artist Should Paint Your Portrait?

Your Famous Last Words Will Be:

"What we know is not much. What we don't know is enormous."

What Will Your Famous Last Words Be?

The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind...

2006-08-13T12:53:00.000+05:30

A friend put me through these tests. They are interesting. Try them.

Your Personality Is Like Acid

A bit wacky, you're very difficult to predict.

One moment you're in your own little happy universe...

And the next, you're on a bad trip to your own personal hell!

What Drug Is Your Personality Like?

Your Blog Should Be Purple

You're an expressive, offbeat blogger who tends to write about anything and everything.
You tend to set blogging trends, and you're the most likely to write your own meme or survey.
You are a bit distant though. Your blog is all about you - not what anyone else has to say.

What Color Should Your Blog or Journal Be?

It's all about the money, Da da dum dum, da da dum dum

2006-08-12T23:35:00.000+05:30

Went on a brief sojourn to the city of lakes. I went on work actually, but it turned out that the work bit was incidental. So, enjoyed a lavish, rain-soaked mid-week break in the lap of luxury. There's something to be said for wealth. It makes life look like a gooey chocolate cake. Sinful, tempting and impossible to resist. But tell you what, all the time I was there I was happiest when I went for the boat-ride in the middle of a drizzle, or the time when I was wandering around town looking at the curio shops, bargaining for sandals and trying to glean as much folk-lore about the place as I could. For the rest of the time I was missing my parents and certain people so badly, that I was wondering whether I have a serious miss-you-at-all-odd-hours disorder. Otherwise why in the wide world would I miss them so insistently when I was revelling in such heady opulence?

I am telling you, there's something seriously wrong with the way my nervous system functions!

I'll be there for you, When the rain starts to pour, I'll be there for you: Part-I

2006-08-06T16:26:00.000+05:30

This morning I woke up feeling like it was my birthday. My inbox was flooded with e-cards, my cellphone beeped messages from friends wishing me happiness, good cheer, love, prosperity and the whole works. It's apparently friendship day today.

Now, days such as these have very little value in my life. It's a nice feeling to be loved and appreciated, but, hell, I don't need a particular day in the year to celebrate my relationships with people. I live the celebration every day in my interactions with them. But I promised a friend who was particularly offended when I told her this, that I won't play spoilsport today. So friends, past, present and to come, this one's for you...

Any commemoration of my friends is incomplete if I don't begin it with my oldest surviving friend, Sunny. I met him at a tutorial, when I was a shy, gawky 13 year old. He used to sit on the bench ahead of mine and blot out my taciturnity with his non-stop prattle. It didn't matter to him whether I followed the conversation or not, didn't matter if I only listened with half a ear. He wanted to talk, and talk he did, irrespective of his audience's response. You wouldn't believe it if you listened to him then, that this guy could keep his mouth shut for even a nano-second. Fact of the matter is, he can. He is one of the best listeners, I discovered later. Over the years he has patiently borne the brunt of my various sob stories--beginning from my maths phobia to my sundry other grievances against life. He has been genuinely happy when I have achieved something, been the first to be my side when things went wrong and has never quite given up on me. My relationship with him is kind of idyllic, touchwood. It has the fairy tale touch to it. No shadows, no cloudy days, just unadulterated trust and sunshine.

And now he is getting married to this other dear friend of mine in a few months' time. I met Gruff around the same time as I met Sunny, a year earlier, to be exact. But we became friends, much later, in the last few years in school. Our friendship has been chequered, like most friendships, with intermittent volatile patches threatening to undo our years together. Gruff is funny. She can be caustic as caustic can be, and so funny that she'll keep you in splits all the time. She has gone through a lot of upheavals in life, and just when she was ready to give up, she turned to Sunny. And things changed. The first time I met them after they started going around, I was surprised by the calm and the softness that had come in to her. Our relationship too has settled down. As we discuss our respective New Lives To Come in agonising details, I smile in my mind thinking of the years stretching out in front of us. We still have a long way to go.

And of course, if I am talking of friends from school, I can't miss Caustic. He was Sunny's friend to begin with, but as is the way with life, the relationship percolated till he was our friend as well. Caustic and I have never seen eye to eye on anything. Much of our association together has been spent in squabbling and arguing and getting mad at each other. But somehow we didn't quite let go. (Caustic has his own theories on this, by the way!) I think the only time we kind of resigned to the fact that we were friends was when we both moved out of our city to work in two different parts of the country. I don't think I have relied on anyone more in that initial year because he seemed to understand and we could get down to sharing our respective opinions without getting in to a cat fight. It didn't last for too long though, for whatever reason. Now, we have a kind of uneasy truce, more because I don't let him be otherwise. The last time we talked of our status quo, he had asked me `What are you trying to make up for?, Why are you interested in my life?' Here's the answer, Caustic. Because I have a habit of staying stuck on relationships, even when it's over for all the other parties involved in it. It's because I feel it's such a waste not to be able to look beyond the genuinely good times that we've had.

But anyway, since this is a happy post, I'll move on to the rest of the gang from school. Arty, Mystery, Quiet and Funny. Funny and I speak occasionally, mostly at his own initiative. These days he's in to Kundera and Marquez and we have great book discussions. I love his sparkling wit. We don't expect much from each other. No mails, no sms-es, few phone calls, but we are friends. Bonded for life. That's all that there is. And we are happy with that.

I have not been in touch with Mystery for a while now. But together with Arty and Gruff, we had our band of merry women once, and we have had some amazing memories together. I don't miss her anymore, like I don't miss Arty much, but I love them both still for being part of those good times, and when we meet, I know we'll not be pressed for conversation.

I miss Quiet but. She and I had a strange equation. We wouldn't talk for months, but when we did we would pour our lives out and depend on each other for advice and good sense. Ever since we moved cities, we slowly lost touch and now with her marriage and new job, we have ceased to send the occasional sms as well. I missed her wedding. We had a teenager's pact a long time back, that whatever we did, we would be there at our weddings. I broke it. I know she doesn't mind. We are past that stage. But she matters to me. I know that too. So Quiet, count me in whenever you need a friend.

I love you guys for all that you mean to my life. Amen.

PS- River and Sunshine and the rest of you, I promise you'll have your turn soon.

Of no fixed address

2006-08-05T23:20:00.000+05:30

I am in transit. It's my last couple of months in this place, that has been my home for the last two years, before I move on to a new address. I have never been particularly fond of the city, but thankfully, I can't say the same of my shelter. There's something about it that makes me feel all happy and peaceful inside. Even when I am not really feeling either of the two emotions. But at the end of the day when I come back to my attic room, with its modest furnishings, forever ailing wirings, and mad jumble of books that stare at you from every available corner, it's as if I have returned to my own space. Which is what a home is supposed to be all about. I know. But then, a place of shelter is not always home. And often, a home is not all that you want it to be.

I have had a sedentary life for the greater part of my twenty-six years. It did include shifting house once, but after the initial fuss (and a terribly protracted one at that) I grew to love it so much, that, about a decade later, when it was time to say goodbye, I realised that I had accumulated too much baggage. It was difficult to move on, without leaving behind something or the other. Half a memory here, a bunch of sunny smiles there, bits and pieces that I just couldn't sweep up in my palms and get back with me for lack of space.

So when I moved to this new city, I decided to carry everything with me. The collection of an entire life. Not that it's been a very long life, but enough years to pile up the luggage. Lots of memory, lots of light, lots of truths boxed up neatly amongst moth-eaten wisdom, boxes of shadow, boxes of hope. But I never get down to unpacking completely. I have been looking out for a shelter which would be big enough to fit all my knick-knacks since. I almost found one a couple of years back in J school, in a charming cubby-hole called Room Number 25, but it was a temporary arrangement and the next tenant arrived as soon as I began unpacking.

Ever since I have been cautious about the baggage I accumulate. It takes a lot to keep the ones already there in ship-shape condition, and I can do without the added burden.

But I am afraid that when I leave this place, I might just find my hands a little heavier with the weight of associations that I have gathered here. It won't hurt for long, time will take care of that. But I'll probably miss the box that carries reminiscences of acquaintances made over board games, chocolate truffle pastries, girls' night out and easy concern, with terrible longing every now and then.

This is what I hate so much about packing. I never know what to take with me and what to leave behind.

Lost in the dangling conversation and the superficial sighs, Are the borders of our lives

2006-08-04T01:26:00.000+05:30

The static,
Crackles over the telephone
Even as I try to piece together,
Words,
Phrases,
Sentences,
Conversation.

And then you tell me,
The static
Is the conversation.

Would you be happier?

2006-08-01T03:12:00.000+05:30

I like contemplating growth (or the lack of it). But if you ask my flatmate of three years, Fish, she'd probably tell you that it's my fetish for tabulating things which I find more compelling. (I admit, I am a bit of an organisational freak, but let me also tell you that Fish is in the habit of exaggerating things quite a lot. I mean, what's the big deal in writing the exact order of chores that you want to do the next day, or a list of things that you need to buy when you go out to the market, or...well, you get the drift!)

But, to get back to the point, this post is about the exponential expression of the assumed wisdom. So here goes...

1. That letting yourself love someone is easier than what I thought it to be.

2. That old friends don't change colours.

3. That I can lie awake all night, then go to work the next day and still be happy and cheerful.

4. That when you are holding someone really close, if you are still enough, you can hear your hearts beat in unison.

5. That sometimes words don't say much. It's just a means to keep the conversation going.

6. That I should probably get the hair cut that I have been planning for the last eight months.

7. That sometimes all it takes is a bit of sunshine to make me ridiculously happy.

8. That the day I learn to save, will be the day the world witnesses another miracle.

9. That I don't like doing things half-way. I need to do a job well. Period.

10. That all said and done I can be so lazy sometimes that I amaze myself.

11. That I can be mistaken where I am convinced I cannot be.

12. That I need a new cell phone badly.

13. That I am more impatient than I ever knew.

14. That I am as fortunate as fortunate can be.

15. That if you reach out you'll always find me. Well, mostly.

16. That sometimes people, including me, do not see the obvious.

17. That communication can often be at cross-purposes.

18. That sometimes I have to let go of a bit of my composure to assure people of my affections.

19. That I am more often than not, disastrous with expressing my emotions.

20. But. Obviously.

21. That I am pathologically attached to all things old.

22. It's a compulsive disorder.

23. That all you need to do to soothe me is to hold my hand.

24. That a lot of my time, everyday, is spent in meaningless exercises such as this.

There, I have said it now. This appraisal is a closed chapter.

"It is always nice to see you,'' says the man behind the counter

2006-07-28T22:56:00.000+05:30

I met up with my colleague Tall today after a long time. She has just come back from a long break, and we ran our old routine of unwinding over coffee. Tall, Maddy and me. Only this time we met at a different coffee-shop--a rather fancy, sprawling outlet tucked in a quiet corner of the road. Tall was late as usual, and just when Maddy and I had begun to fret (the AC was killing us, it was so cold!) she arrived like a whirlwind, and suggested we go for a walk.

I have hardly gone for walks with friends in this city. Not on happy walks at least. Like when you are all peaceful, and you don't talk. When you just stroll comfortably, listening to the beat of your heart, enjoying the companionship and the evening settling down slowly around you. Like a lot of things that I have left behind in my city of joy, this is one habit that has become rusty from disuse.

But today we did. Along a long stretch of the ill-lit bylane, the three of us walked, talking about our careers, talking of the future, talking of crises, of dreams and ways to live them out. As the halogen street-lights came and went, we talked of the divergent cross-roads our lives were poised at. Usually with Maddy around, it's difficult to have a sensible conversation, with one of us bursting into laughter every other minute over some antic of hers. But somehow today we were all mellow, and as is the way with old acquaintances, we were comfortable in our simultaneous roles of listeners and counsellors.

This year has been a whirlwind so far. So many things have changed in the space of a few months, so many old faces have fallen away, so much of our lives have passed us by, even as we have shuttled through the days with the speed of a jet plane. It's nice sometimes to stand still and catch our breath. Suddenly the kaleidescope slows down and you are left looking at the picture with new eyes. So much has happened to you. So much? Really?

It felt refreshing, our walk this evening. Sometimes we under-estimate the potential of easy camaraderie because we are so much in the habit of classifying relationships in to compartments. I know I am much more attached to Tall and Maddy than I will ever allow myself to believe. I like being with them. I like the certainty of their Tropical Icebergs and my Espresso Americano. Of Maddy's insistence on sitting outdoors so she can smoke, and Tall's knack of surprising us with little nuggets of gossip. We know they don't mean much really. That we aren't quite `BFF', as Maddy would say. But there's a warmth in our equation with each other and an honesty that we don't feel the need to question.

And nothing else really matters.

Then, the busy years went rushing by us
We lost our starry notions on the way
If, by chance, I'd see you in the tavern,
We'd smile at one another and we'd say
Those were the days, my friend...

Tell me a story...

2006-07-28T00:49:00.000+05:30

Over the last few days I have been increasingly falling short of words. Blame it on the fever, or on my general lack of articulation, but every time I have tried to express something, I have been left groping...I haven't managed to clothe my thoughts well enough to get it across to the other person. Funny really, considering I knew exactly what I wanted to say on each occasion. But I did not, because I was scared my words would not convey the depths of my feeling. That they wouldn't tell the tales behind the veiled constructs:

Don't worry, everything will be alright.
I wish I could put things right for you.

I love you.
But I am scared sometimes.

I miss you.
I wish you were here. Now.

It's ok.
I have moved on. It doesn't matter anymore.

I am a peddler of words. It's my business to tell tales in a language you find credible. When words fail me, I find it cloying. I wish for an alternative language: signs, gestures, movement; anything that can resolve the status quo.

My friend River called the other day. She is one person with whom I don't have to rely on words. She understands the words within my words. She can interpret my silences. I know she knows. I trust that she knows. And I am secure in my emotive knowledge. ``Life would have been so much easier without language,'' she told me that night for the umpteenth time.

And for the first time in my life, I agreed.

I need the spoken word to mask my emotions. I need it to make you believe that I, the storyteller, am in control.

But imagine a world, where, like in a story-book, every glance, every gesture, every touch has a meaning. Where the pattern is in the emotive design. Where you are taught to cull the idiom of silence because you know that's where the real story lies...

Would I tell you to believe what I want you to?
Would I hang on to your words?

You give me fever

2006-07-26T01:05:00.000+05:30

The most inappropriate post title possible, but then, there it is: I have got fever. My head hurts, my shoulders are stiff, and I can barely move without feeling my rusty limbs revolt in denial. I have got fever.

When I was a kid I used to love being sick. I mean not for anything else, but for the attention lavished on me, the feeling of being pampered-- my grandparents doting on me, Dad coming home early from work, Ma rustling up little delicacies...I miss those days. I miss home, miss Ma, miss the seven huge windows of what used to be my bedroom in a house lived in long ago, miss the shadowy hieroglyphics on the walls. I miss, I miss, I miss...

I have always wondered at the generosity of people who are ill and infirm. I know why in stray bits and pieces at times like this. Sickness is far-sighted. You know how that one hurt here, the other humiliation there, that accidental wound tucked away in a quiet, forgotten corner, do not really matter. You know it when the psychedelic glow of the fever wears off in a mass of inertia. You feel them heal themselves, those festering bruises of the soul.

The wicker lampshade is on in the room, but it's hurting my eye. Tried sleeping without it, but that's putting me ill at ease.The darkness is exploding in a thousand pinpricks of light-showers when I do that. I want to sleep. Badly.

But in a certain masochistic way, I am enjoying the heat that envelopes my body. It makes me feel vitally aware of the life pulsing within, the sensation that life is in this moment. Now.

And all of yesterday is a prism. And all of tomorrow a cryptogram.

I am rambling. Wish me a speedy recovery.

Starry, starry night, Paint your palette blue and grey, Look out on a summer's day...

2006-07-25T13:44:00.000+05:30

I am living in the Dark Ages. Every evening when I get back home from work, it's invariably the shimmery darkness that greets me without fail. My attic room with its slant of a window and speck of a balcony are insufficient respite. The Capital is reeling under severe power shortage, so hell, you've just got to grin and bear it.

Last night was fun though. We were all lolling around in the terrace- Fish, Joy, Small, Pretty and me. Small was singing weird Bollywood numbers in her slightly husky but curiously childish, sing-song voice, while Joy and Pretty were discussing sundry technical details of their new cell phones. Fish and I were star-gazing...

Fish tells me she knows all about stars. The Milky Way, the Great Bear, the planets. She points them out to me, even as Small pipes in with questions of her own about which planet is which, and why she couldn't spot Venus at nine in the night. I lie still, staring up at the sky, the voices fading in and out of my thought-stream, making small conversation, laughing appropriately at some little joke.

I don't mind the darkness so much. In fact, I quite like it. There's something very peaceful about darkness. Something friendly and warm. I always think darkness is liquid. It moulds itself to fit in to your moods. And darkness has colours. Amber for anger. Blue for love. Grey for pain. It's not feckless like moods. It holds fast, like an embrace, whatever be your mood.

Last night though, it was none of these hues. It was translucent, like a prism, radiating the colours of our mixed emotions.

I felt peace last night. And comfort, as I snuggled up to the darkness under the clear sky. I could feel the stars in my hair, twinkling with promise.

Darkness is a palette. I can paint pictures with it.

Rain, I don't mind, Shine, the weather's fine

2006-07-21T22:30:00.000+05:30

I woke up to a grey world today. Don't get me wrong. I love the rains. Not unusual, because I am a water person. I love seas and oceans, and even random pools at hotels, for that matter. I love the coolness, the feel of running water, the stray misty spray on my face. Water's a tactile emotion. It speaks to you in the idiom of the sensory. Touch me and I'll wash away your muddy thoughts. Touch me and I'll tell you a new tale of hope and rebirth.

And so, I am all for days like today. Particularly days like today, when I am so full of hope and happiness, so contained with the feeling that life is perfect with all its little imperfections.

It's not often that I want to get wet in the rain. I am a stickler for cleanliness, and the idea of the squelch and the mud does not appeal to me much. But today I think I would rather like to get wet. There is something to be said for letting the water wash over your senses. It makes my nerves tingle with an obscure thrill about the life to come. It makes me feel alive.

If it rains like this all day, I don't think I would mind. In fact, I want it to take its time. I want the heavens to open up today even as I sit watching it through the huge bay windows of my office.

Today I am absolutely deserving of this weather. Rain down on me...

I have a space to share inside me...

2006-07-19T14:32:00.000+05:30

Love, like most things in life, is a choice you make. It's an intimate choice; your decision is based upon your navigations of those secret maps of your life, the maps that sketchily chalk out the route to your being, the maps that say: This is what I am. I want you to know me like none before.

Most people are not good at cartography. But they are all compulsive travellers. It's not easy to leave the land you know and set sail for the unknown. There's too much at stake. Your life, for instance, with all its familiar contours, that you are so used to. Those secret maps that have taken you years to draw up...But then, that's probably why each new discovery is so exhilarating, each turn gone wrong, such a disaster. That's probably why you are willing to burn for it.

What is it that compels a person to decide that this is the one who has earned the right to travel my soul with me? What is it that makes you want to re-arrange your entire life to fit in to the life to come? The life of the we as opposed to the life of the I? What is it that helps you unlock those shutters and strip your inner life threadbare in the hope that he/she will do the same for you?

Oh yes, I know all the arguments that you'll throw back at me. Attraction and the whole primal instinct jargon. True, you can not ignore the body. Not when it is calling out to you so urgently. Begging you to read the secret codes of passion. Besides, what else can be more personal than surrendering your most intimate to the one you love?

Love. We come back to that again. And here your passion comes full circle. The choice between accepting that you are irretrievably lost in another realm and the realisation that this virgin land is what you had dared to hope for. The choice of giving in, not because logic has failed you, but because your logic tells you that this is the only thing to do.

Love, like all choices, is a matter of moments.

The moment it takes for you to decide that no space of yours is safe from this one person.

Some things fall apart, some things make you hold, Some things that you find, are beyond your control...

2006-07-17T15:08:00.000+05:30

Much of my time, over the last few days, has been spent in waiting. For things to happen. Good things mostly. A phone call. A letter. A good book. A smile. A loving touch... Trivial things which go so much in to making up your happiness. And then, in between the wait and the expectation, things have gone wrong. Things so little that you won't probably pay attention, to begin with, till they assume gargantuan proportions. Makes you wonder how little you understand of life. Makes you realise how much of your entire life is a wait for things unknown.

Every day of your life, amidst the thousands of chores that you do, there's that period set apart where you are left to realise the potency of your want. Every unanswered prayer, every desire unfulfilled, every wish unrequited make you aware that this is not what IT is.

Epiphanies have a strange way of coming when you least expect them. Like the realisation that time can break your heart. Or make it whole again. Like the realisation that you are just a morsel of what you want to be. Like the realisation that this life that you breathe, is not the life the television commercial promised you.

You don't live the moment. You live in anticipation of it.

And all along the desire builds up in you like a storm threatening to break out. You feel the rush of blood and the desire in it. Feel it running amok through every vein in your body, every nerve, every sinew. And the gnawing pain that just doesn't let go. It's there like your alter-ego. Shadowy, aching, persistent.

You live in anticipation. Just so.

Do you remember the day when my journey began? Will you remember the end (of time) ?

2006-07-15T12:08:00.000+05:30

This morning, when I was getting ready for work, I got a sms telling me that my cousin Prosperity has been diagnosed with cancer.

Prosperity is just a couple of years elder to me-- a vivacious 28 year old, brimming with life. You know, the kind that will have all the people at the party laughing at her jokes, the kind that elders frown upon for being too saucy, and the kind that you almost, always take an instant liking to? You wouldn't really believe it if you met her, that the greater part of her life has been a struggle. To come to terms with the fast-changing scenarios of her life. That beyond the sarcasm and the sharp tongue, is a person, who knows life hasn't really given her a very fair chance, and that she needs to fight, to stay afloat. Not that she has managed all the time, but heck, she hasn't been one to ever give up without a good fight.

Then last year she got married to her long-time boyfriend, and settled down. And just when you thought that her fairy tale had got off to a late and rather shaky start, she fell ill. She suffered a cerebral attack. Two, in fact. It robbed her of the one thing that people always associate with her. Litheness. Of mind and body.

When I went to meet her this time on my last visit home, it was painful to see the frail, waif-like figure lying on the hospital bed. She had lost her speech, so all she had was the language of her countenance. You could see how hard she was trying. To reach out to you. You could see her eyes scanning your face intently for some assurance, some hope. That this too was a nightmare. That she would get over it.

She did. She started speaking even before the therapy sessions had got fully underway. Things weren't the same. But she was hanging on. Like always.

And now this.

I wish I could call her and speak to her. I wish I could tell her that I am praying for her, and that I won't let anything happen to her. That this is a mistake and the doctors have goofed up on the reports. That she will wake up tomorrow and realise that this has been the greatest nightmare of all, but it is just a nightmare.

But I am a coward and I don't know what to say.

I'm a big, big girl in a big, big world...

2006-07-14T13:47:00.000+05:30

All hail the domestic goddess!

The grocery has been done, the fridge stocked, the room tidied, and...(hold your breath now)...
The dressing table replenished (ta da)...

Truly a miracle! Be proud of me.

Speak to me. You never speak to me. What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?

2006-07-14T12:58:00.000+05:30

It's true that people often complain that I never tell them what's on my mind. ('How can you keep things all bottled up inside?, Why don't you tell me?, But I am your family/ friend') But the thing is, I do. Tell, that is. You just have to listen hard enough to hear all the things I don't say. But mean. Or say, but don't mean.

I am good with strangers. People I know I'll never meet again. Or people in transit. I can laugh and talk and tell them anecdotes. But leave me with a person I know, and I'll play games with him/her. It's strange really, considering so much of my days is filled with the inaudible conversations I have. My silent oral dissertations with people I bond with. It's almost like a challenge. I am speaking to you. Catch my words before they fall..

I am good with masques. Oh yes, I'm bloody good at that game. I can keep you guessing my feelings till you are willing to admit defeat. It helps me be in control. The one thing I cannot have you guessing is how vulnerable I am. Or how hopelessly I am hanging on to your words.

"You don't have to tell me everything. Some things need to be felt..."

How little it takes to crumble your carefully constructed universe. How little to have your mind written on by someone else's. How little really, considering that this is just an arrogant fragment of the truth.

Do. I. Mind?
Do I.
Mind?

Did you ever wonder where the story ends, And how it all began...

2006-07-13T14:46:00.000+05:30

It's one of those days today when you want to stay at home, curled up in bed with the music system playing those old, faraway songs, that you haven't listened to in the longest time. One of those days when you feel so alive that you think your heart will burst with so much love to give. One of those days when you know you can reach out and touch eternity...

Sadly, you have got work to do, and sadder still, a living to earn. So, even as my mind races along with a zillion happy possibilities, I sit at my computer, staring in dead earnest, at the copy that I am supposed to edit.

Are you not afraid to tell your story now
When everyone is done, it's too late
(Too late, too late)
Was everything you've ever said or done
Not the way you planned,
A mistake?
So you promised that tomorrow
Will be different than today...

Today is a new day. Another day in hand...

And I'm a million different people from one day to the next

2006-07-13T10:43:00.000+05:30

As is the protocol of all beginnings, this blog should have started with a little note about myself. You know, the usual stuff about who I am, and what I do, and the whole works. Now the thing is, I find such introductions infinitely boring. I would rather, we discover each other as we go along. But here's something to help you on the way...

I can keep you guessing.

I will keep you guessing.

Every one says I am reserved. I am not. They just don't realise.

I talk a lot. In my mind.

I am a writer. Of books yet to come.

Music makes my world beautiful.

I am 26.

Sometimes I cannot decide whether I am old enough or too young to.

I like mind games. I win some. I lose some.

I am hurt a lot more times than I'll ever show you.

I love desserts.

I am a good cook.

I love the sea.

I am just me.

Hallelujah!

Cause we're moving on and we can't slow down and these memories are playing like a film without sound

2006-07-12T22:56:00.000+05:30

My friend Sunshine has a funny way of putting things. The last time she called me, she said, " But why is it that my happiness has to be qualified? Why can't I be just happy without a reason? Like we used to be earlier.''
Why indeed?
A long, long time ago, in another time and another life, I used to believe that all relationships are for keeps, and you needed to be really careful when you chose your friends, because you just couldn't lose them ( families, of course, happened to you, so there's nothing much one could do there really!) And so I grew up with a bunch of closely-knit people, I loved calling friends. It wasn't ideal by any means. We squabbled and fought, and held secrets from each other. But we knew deep down it was a phase. And we held on. Fast. Through the good times. And the bad times. And all the times in between. True, there were those who drifted apart. But it wasn't a goodbye, if you know what I mean. People phased out, caught up in their lives. It wasn't quite moving on as much as a moving ahead. You needed space. You got it. Simple.
And then this new city happened. As did new people. Acquaintances. Friends. Companions. I can't remember when I stopped believing friends are forever. But I guess, somewhere deep down I knew, running through days on end, that all fairy tales have a twist in the tale...
It's funny, this moving on. Because I have never quite figured out where to begin and where to stop. And what's funnier still is the fact, that on the way, you never quite pause to meet. You just keep running on and on. And away.
Happiness needs qualifiers. Because wisdom is not always happy...