Confessions of an Adrenaline Junkie.

1- Vipassna @ Dehradune Centre
Starting the year with the most extreme form of mind enema. Its called Vipassna. Millions swear by it. Some for its torture value, others for the healing it brings for them, still others like the VOID and CLARITY brought by it. For me the High would be spending 10 days alone without contact with the outer world. Just struggling with the devils within. If this inner war doesnt supply enough Adrenaline I dont know what else will.
I can almost imagine myself in the overnite bus to Dehradune. Boarding from ISBT. Those last few messages to friends lovers and flames saying BYE. Finally going for it. 'May all being be happy' 'May all beings find their light.' 'May all  agree to share their darkness with me'' May all beings know their true relationship with me.'

2- Chilling @ a Nude Beach in Goa
Goa. I am told that the only Indian place to do it. Now I am myself figuring out where this strange heretic idea of being on a nude beach has come to me from. But what can you say about kinks and madness. They may be just lurking in your bloodstream tilll someone brings out the idea( and the assets on the surface) So I read this super exciting tale of a women on a nude beach with her husband and her sudden adrenaline rush when for a minute she entered a bar of fully clothed men who all smirked on her. Bang on. Thats just my idea of  a highesh high or a lowest low. It took one back to those nightmares of puberty where I would walk into class room only to realise that I had forgotten to wear my underwear. In those wicked days everyone from the boys to the girls mocked the fat ugly me because of this little slip.( ok not so little slip you moral prude)
Now talking about myself I am not quite vain. And I dont think on a nude beach I would be any sight. And frankly I dont have any previous experince of public nudity giving me any high. The furthest I must have gone this way would have been with an open fly(that too unintensional I assure you) But what the hell I want to sun my interiors and let some fresh ideas strike me on the skin. I am sure there is also something extremly liberating will happen to let the whole of oneself stare back at the cosmos. So nude beaches here I come.

3- Paragliding @ Bir Billing in Himachal
Something about gliding in a small sleepy himachali village with mostly monks as inhabitants is extremly exotic. I like exotic. I like enlightening. I like lonesome.. I like flying...
So after the flying I go the deer park institute and examine whats the big shout about the lama who lives there.

4- Aero Model flying @ outskirts of Delhi in winters.
I love planes. Small Planes. I love the dexeterity of assembling together something that can fly. So it'l be quite a adrenaline spurt to go out of the city and dare ones engineering no? Anyone game?( looking for company for this)

5-Ferris wheel @ Kalindi Kunj in Delhi
Asia's largest ferries wheel just in my background@ 250 INR per ride. I am game. Specially because I was never allowed on local ferriwheels because they were too small to accomodate me.
So lets see if going up and down and round and round helps in better circulation of adrenaline.

Closet Blues`

I don’t know if you think its flimsy. This feeling of ‘I have nothing to wear today.’ If you’re a woman you may know what I am talking about. But the strongest empathy I have received on the subject is from a man. Maybe we are a breed of people who change so fast that there is no way our clothes can keep pace with us. Maybe it’s an ungainly/unwomanly thing to not have stuff to wear that makes you feel good. It can be excused if you’re man but not if you’re a woman!


So this Sunday I open my cupboard and find there is nothing, absolutely nothing that will represent on the outside what I am feeling today. I haven’t been checking inside often enough to keep in touch with who I am. Not worked hard enough at buying clothes to suit the new me I am becoming. And Boom one day the ignored little me explodes in outrage and rwants to throw away everything inside the cupboard!Pushing the Big me into a well where the first thing I can manage after getting over the shock of it is to wallow in self pity.


Imagine the feeling of ‘I DON’T HAVE ENOUGH CLOTHES’. Even when your closet can’t quite contain everything you have. Its not low esteem. Its just not having enough clothes that you like. That fit you and that will cover you!

For a long time now I kept hoping that I would go out shopping for myself; but didn’t know any stores that keep the kind of clothes I liked wearing( I have grown out of fab india and they dont keep my size) Or when everything I liked was more than what my wallet will let me consider( Have been broke for last few months) All that I liked and kept wearing again and again is now been worn so often that everyone has seen it and is tired of seeing it too! ( not that blue print again pleaaseee my friends shriek everytime I turn to the comfort of that tried and tested attire!)

So it went on inside long before it broke open as a crisis today! As if my own morning struggle to find something to wear wasn’t enough a friend whose dressing sense I admired made a joke about (the only) White Jacket I was wearing (which I also wore on my last three dates!) saying it looks like ‘your cricket jacket’!

Smiling while gritting my teeth at that one I really think he had a point!

To my horror I realised I have JUST 2 jackets one is black and the other is white. One 2 year old pair of black canvas shoes which I wore everywhere I went (as you too would if you were in my place!) And I dint even consciously acknowledge that they were ugly till a skinflint friend I went shopping with offered to buy me new ones. (They must be really over the top ugly for him to make an offer like that to me!)


The only compliment that I received in the last three weeks was on a mauve top that I wore that a friend gifted to me. (Mind you gifted and not purchased!) That compliment must have really filled in some void that I had been avoiding noticing (the void of wanting compliments on what one is wearing) so like a fool I again wore the same color that had got me the much cherished compliment.

This time though the effort fell flat on its face. ( Me too along with it when I realised that far from suiting me mauve actually made me look fat!) So all the hardwork of mauve sweater, blue jeans and white jacket(again white jacket!) made a very sorry day. And I kept hoping he wouldn’t notice my shoes( which were the same black old canvas shoes which he had proposed to replace!) And thank god he didn’t! But I did!

I having being housetrained in modesty and the value of being simple and thus havent ever ritually gone out to shop for clothes. Consequently I never have anything to wear every time there is a wedding looming. So mostly I don’t attend the looming wedding. Sometimes when I strike some jugad I borrow lovely clothes from my generous friends end up wearing them with the wrong accessories (saris with wrong shoes or saris on the wrong side or with a wrong colours blouse!)

Meanwhile envious thoughts of women who manage to sizzle in clothes are tormenting me. You know those women who always manage to look good in whatever they wear.Those women who on sudden impulse can produce and flounce the finest silks and find matching earrings and bangles. Women who can carry briefcase full of fineries when they go out to attend weddings. Imagine living in the plenty of owning some 10-12 complete pairs of clothes which look good and yet don’t make you feel fat! Its cornucopia. Unbelievable with my present height weight money karma.

Sometimes I think this dressing well is some kind of rocket science. Only some women who have some special kind of grey cells that can handle it. (Just like only some women can handle maths)I have struggled with both as much as I could but just to be at par takes 8 times more effort for me!

I don’t know whether just to give up on ever getting the knack of it or keep striving hoping someday I’ll know where to buy that one thing that will not make me wrinkle my nose in the mirror. Something that I will love at the first sight of it will be my favourite colour; will look good at me without making me look too fat. Something that wouldn’t be more high maintenance than I can handle and something that rest of the world will by nod their heads in liking too.

Too much to ask I know. And therefore I dont ask.

Days of being young

"Childhood is frequently a solemn business for those inside it.”

Ah those days at ‘Nani ke ghar’. They come back to me on crisp winter mornings when the sun shines on me while eating curd. Those days we would visit nani during winter holidays. It was a large farmhouse that came after long weary travel from Bareilly. When we travelled on bus I hated the long journey from Shajahanpur to the Farm. It pained my butts to sit for so long and still inside the bus where ugly men would blow beedi smoke all over one's face. They werent a bit nice or smiley towards my mom and Dady on the bus! Why they didnt even know us or who we were!

At the farmhouse there was a neat row of peach and pink button roses along the boundry wall of the farm house. We would sleep next to that dirly yellow lime boundry wall that divided the house between nanaji's younger brother and nanajis house. Mama and Nana would go to the Rice Mill and fields to sow paddy at that time of the year and nani and the guests (my Dad when he visited along with us) would stay at home and read newspaper and go for long walks and go for fishing to the river Gomti which flowed nearby. We never caught any fish! At night we would have elaborate mosquito nets mounted upon our beds and the bed sheets which were shiny white would smell of sweet sun. It was nani’s efficient superclean laundry management. It made for a very peaceful night of sleep except for the times when kids wanted to go to Pee.

Now peeing was a little difficult thing on those starry nights because the toilets were far far away and there were the farm dogs lurking in the darkness between the bed and the toilet.(big tibetan mastiffs or 'desi' as we called them) So often nani would ask me to haunch and shoot right next to her bed. The 5 year old me would feel part embarrassed and part disgusted but did it there all the same. Strangely in the mornings one never smelled urine. It must have been the cowdung swept floor that soaked in everything or another of nani’s magic tricks.

In the mornings when one started showing some movement in the bed between the white starched blankets the whole household would be warming up to the day. The kids could disappear for some more time in the blankets till the warm bottle of milk arrived. When it arrived it always tasted of ghee and was thicker than was familiar to us city kids. One took ones own sweet time in gulping it down making gurgling sounds in the throat.

Then the house helps arrived. The beds would have to be put back in the storeroom that smelled of kerosene. One would grudgingly wake up and be deported to the toilets with a toothbrush.Since the toilets were unfamiliar to the me as I had only experinced compact toilet of our Bareilly home Nani's toilets looked like monster toilets. I always had the morbid fear that I would fall inside the that wide Indian pot and will have to be painfully cleaned up of all the muck that would stick on me by nani(who had a cleanliness streak) I hated the Handpump that one had to struggle with to get water before going inside the toilet. It made me feel small and incapable and away from my home in Bareilly. It was unfamiliar territory where none of the loving attention of the whole family cushioned poor little me!

I hated the huge steel tumblers and buckets. They had a strange pungent smell. They smelled of Farm. Unfamiliar Wilderness. No one even said GOOD JOB done after I had successfully dealt with them. For all my mom's love for this place it was still unfamiliar territory for me! I wasnt ever given any space to adjust into this new territory. It was always thrust on me it seems in retrospect. For there wasnt much to hold the attention of a 5 year old. And It was soo far away from my home in Bareilly. Sigh!

In nani’s village I had no friends other than the cousins who were visiting. Most of the times there were unwritten rules of conduct for even little children to not mix too much with the laborers who lived in straw huts. I hated their prejudice and rules being forced on me. I didnt know what to do with those 1 and half foots of me. After all there had to be more in live that taking rounds of green fields, picking up berries and running after chickens and collectin g eggs in the morning. Sometime's the Hen wouldnt even lay an egg shattering my world! So there was nothing to do except play all the time with oneself and while keeping elders happy!

The thing that always surprises me is that even in those days of being so green behind the ear’s I felt terribly self conscious. Always hated it when people laughed at what I had to say in my lisping voice. I thought I was an important man(trapped in the body of a plump 5year old girl) They never saw me for who I really was. I surely wasn’t somebody they ought to have told to go to pee before I came to sleep on that bed. Maybe it’s got something to do with having an old soul even inside a kid’s body.
 

The cynical crinkled wrinkled old soul inside the plump smelling like a sparrow’s nest kid hated Nani’s home because everyone oooh aaahheed at her. In retrospect I wonder why  wasnt it as happy then as it looks now. Maybe Childhood is in fact a difficult period for those inside it but off course Roses havent tasted so sweet and pillows havent smelled so delicious as they did when I was as nani's home.

Strange Songs'

She slowly shuffles the radio in the next room. Adjusts to AM. Stops at the station playing old songs. Last two days I have been very irritated at her. Dont know why! Just something she did to cross over a boundry while I was under work stress. Maybe she came to my room and laid down next to me while I was dressing up and made one or two disparging comments 'Wear a sweater! Its getting cold outside' I looked at her pissed banged the bathroom door and told her to bite her tongue. How many times must I tell her DONT TELL ME WHAT TO WEAR! she just never gets it!

When Dad is around they sleep inside a mosquito net and are in deep sleep by 9pm. I never have to engage with them much when they are together these days. They're quite a romantic pair really. I shudder at the thought of engaging with either of them alone. I am growing old and have started worrying about eventualities. They are growing even older and have planted those 'eventualities' in my head. Just to tell me what they think should be done when they are no more.(Thats forward planning for you!)

I never understand their logic of loving . At 27 everytime I come late(9pm is bloody late if you dont know) they pout like some great bond has been broken by my disrespect. Everyday however they look up for men stationed at the farthest corners of the world to bring their Baraat so that they can happily say Good riddane to me. The idea of marriage coming from them always reminds me of a sad Rabindra Nath Tagore story. It was perhaps called 'Sujata's dream' where a young girl being pressed to get married sleeps by the river and dreams that a boatman takes her with him only to drown her in the middle of the river!( I know Its a dramatic analogy but anyways!)

As I grow older and cynical I realise how much hardwork Love really is. If loving my won parents has started looking so daunting I dont know what hope does any other individual have with me around to be able to deal with it!(Arent we all better off in the Himalayas?) Its always scared me this distance between people who love each other too much. Its that complicated way intimacy circles us. The challenges are always hidden behind one thousand other things that dont really matter. And all those bruises marks and blues on our skins coming from trying to be close to each other. I never get it how some people find the courage to be reckless in love. I can hardly spare enough though for it on some days!


I have seen my dad cry only once in my life(when dadi died). I think second time will be when he will get me married. But I cant imagine him hugging me in public. All these years he has scarcely even come close to 1 meter of where I sit. Its the patriarchal/ feudal legacy that we take forward. I hate public displays of affection myself. I cringe everytime I see hugging couples in public. Maybe this is how my dad's stiffness has carried forward in the cycle of life.


My sister who was my little doll now lives in another city. Even when we meet after months she finds is too much to hug publicaly or privatly. I dont mind her really. Most of the days I dont even remember that I have an irritating sister(who takes away all my favorite kurtas with her) I sometimes worry when we will be older with families of our own if it will be strange to meet each other. She is so lovable and distant at the same time. A little bit like me writing this piece instead of talking to any of these people I am talking about. A little bit like my Dad travelling all the time and never calling me to tell me where he is. A little bit like my mother resentful that I dont spend enough time with her while she always refuses to go out with me(its too late, its too far, dont drive at this time, its too costly, its not worth the price) and is now playing her favorite song from GUIDE 'waqt be kiya kya haseen sitam''


Ironic I think...and quite strange too...

The Film School that ruined my chances to be normal

The old dreams were good dreams. They didn't work out, but I’m glad I had them.”The Bridges of Madison County (1995) –

Jamia was the kind of Film school that middle class journalist/documentary types like me fell for thinking it would our direct entry to the highways of super consciousness of Television Journalism. The way you could to make a difference (ouch!) The one profession that helped you in transcending the middle class rules that fettered meaningful living. The only licence in cutting through those traditions was intellectual licence( Money and Glamour used to be dirty words then!)

So I chose a film school that by my standards looked pretty much unattainable. But I really ached when I dreamed of going to the same college that Barkha Dutt and Sharukh Khan had gone to. It was a complete act of fantasy for an average student whose only claim to enter there was burning greedy passion to be there. Someone who was zilch in extra curriculars, was painfully shy, found public speaking painful and didn’t like looking in the mirror more than twice a day! Whatever made me choose Television!

All of this was the blue sky. Where did I step into it I never quite know! Perhaps the day of my interview when the director of Jamia asked me ‘You could have gone to FTII why you choosing Jamia’? I looked at him disbelieving! FTII! That place for stupid people who want to make mainstream trash!? Whoever aspires for something like that! Dont you see I am so thoughtful that I want to be a Jholewali for the rest of my life. I want to be poor and gritty. I want to be great! I want to make a difference. I will be Barkha Dutt not Subhash Ghai! Huh! The panel smirked between itself. Another one blinded with stardust. Take her in!

And In I went booming, swooning, derilious but with a poker straight face. We were to be trained in serious world-changing life altering practises.We would be the Medha Patekars and Arundhati Roys. We were to set the world straight! From the beginning it was made very clear that you would be a middle class filmmaker for the rest of your life! You don’t like it? You shouldn’t have come in and wasted someone else’s seat! Now for two years please keep your daintiness and love for glamour in your AC car. This was a place that would teach you to rough it out big time.

I knew no one in Jamia who openly admitted to be aspiring for a happy balanced love life? There used to be walls painted with Faiz Ahmed Faiz’z ‘Aur Bhi hai Gham Zamane main Mohabbat ke Siva’ So you could have a lot of unrequited love to fire you into being intense but happy love life’s was always to be looked down upon! Then there were those love nests in the neighbourhood which were rented by generations and generations of MCRCites. Other than the people who lived there they also served as shacks for other friends who would need it for a few hours. These love nests were such nice personal History Monuments I wish someone had maintained a register of who all went there. They used to be so inseparable for those 2 months of peak of passion and all (ok most of them) of those affairs would fall out like a pack of cards. All of us needed our creative space at the end! All possibility of love ever being a straight road was abandoned there!

Then there was that hedonism that came with being is a company of Pan India Intellectuals. There were North easterners, Punjabis and Crazy surds. There were Toppers from Bengal and there were the cut your throat women of Indraprastha College and LSR offcourse. There were dour Jamia Category students and there were the SC’s and the ST’s. Being a General category (1 of the 14) meant that you had mastered a Handicap in the India of 2005’s.

You could even be forgiven for thinking that you had arrived! For in a certain way you had. You would be a stamped Jholewala with the Kolhapuris( even though they don’t save you from electric shocks) You would wear with élan vegetable dyes and Fab India Kurtas even while the rest of the world had passed into Ganjis and Mango and Bananas and other such labels(forgive my dismal awareness about Fashion Trends for I am still a Jholewali as per my cool friends) You could even become a celebrity in a small town surrounded by teenage girls who would blink at you with doe eyes and ask you all details about how to crack the entrance. You become cool in an old doordarshan Kind of way.

Then there were those crazy assed friends. The ones who lived with you 24 hours . For a film school means no boundaries about where work begins and where it ends. I loved that Blurring of boundaries. 9 to 5 is the end of passion and beginning of Sanity. I would any day choose to be passionate 22 year old gone crazy with work than a 35 well settled decent woman with Gelled hair (yikes!) The thing about those 24 hours friends that it was difficult to draw their attention to urgent practical things of one’s life( Shifting houses, Buying LPG cylinders, Fixing Computers, repairing the Coolers etc.) for those mundane things of existence you depended on the other supporting world! A world which understood you sometimes after they had run out of being freaked by your crazy hairstyles and piercings and ideas!

It made me the real world that supported the mundane existence becomes the other side of the divide. (Well meaning people like parents, cousins and landlords (please note the power structures here) became the other’s who would never understand one. The ones whose advices and pressures had to be managed. You weren’t a normal human being looking for happiness! You were now a thinking filmmaker!

Then there were friends who were in different fads and phases. E.g. a Rishu Beri who would suddenly feel the compassion of Lord Buddha and take up the task of feeding you breakfast and dinner on herself. There were also seasons when she would be so much in love with Papayas (yes the same orange stupid fruit that’s found across the year) that she would give it to you as a medicine for everything you could possibly suffer from. Heartbreak, Constipation, Viral, Hangover, Cold and Headache. (I apologise Rishu But it didn’t work for no 1 and 6) I am only glad that she didn’t serve it as lunch and dinner in her shoots!

Then there was this other one Safura who suffered at the hand of her own superactive imagination. (We suffered more than she did!) In the course of two years we heard such great stories that I blush when I think I believed them. From having a tumour in her head to going to France without a Visa she has seen and done it all! She used to be a Kashmiri with a bungalow near the Chenab with an export business in walnuts and saffron till I met her real family from in Allahbad. I must have been a surd back then to believe all of it. But incidentally she is my best friend now. We haven’t let reality of who we are, where we come from , come in the way of where we are going!

Then there was that Illogical concept that was passed on by our teachers that stories and how you tell them mattered more than the technology you used or the money that you spend on them (or on yourself) this illusion broke on the first job-interview that I gave.

The world (of employers) dint want stories. They had plenty of their own festering for want of the chance to bring them out. They wanted cheap, hi grade, good-looking, polished labour. That ennobling difference that John Ruskin talked about ‘The ennobling difference between one man and another is that one feels more than the other’ was to be thrown out of the window. It was obnoxious to have any bearings other than cut throat sharpness in discharge of your duties. All creativity and passion worked against you. Passionate people are difficult employees. Period.

So we are a bunch of difficult employees for the most of the well doing media world. There are some sad looking places and corners left. Where that ‘make a difference’ shit is still practised. I worry that I am doomed in that soggy corner. Thanks to the film school I went to.

PS-“Whoever tells the best story wins.”-Amistad (1977) - John Quincy Adams (Anthony Hopkins)

Happiness Pill for the wrong kind of Man! Part1

"I have never been able to understand how an artist can be in a state of happiness during the creation process. Man does not exist for the purpose of being happy. There is a much, much higher purpose to life than merely being in a state of happiness."-Tarkovsky (The Greatest Ever Filmaker)

When you say you are looking for Happiness I feel a little uncomfortable! Have you been watching too many feel good films off late or are you reading all that American Self Help Literature a little too late in life? You never seemed to be the kind who would fall for things as mundane as Hapiness! Isnt Saturn your ruling planet? The planet of Hardwork, The planet of Cleaning up the Karmic Field, The planet of getting over delusions of this material world, which anywasy never last!
Have you been looking at too many others with similar skin and bones and starting to compare the Tallies of Hapiness? And you are dismally behind? No Kids! No Love! Not even enough costly furniture to make you feel like a King. No Foreign Travels to the colorful unpredictable wilderness ~ Just the old movies playing again and agian in your head! You sure are not happy but other are! Right?
But you know certain facts about happiness-
Its not Love~You always end up in the wrong Kind!
Its not money~ Hasnt got you much hapiness rememeber?
Its not work~ Its good but you can be happy with out without it?

So what the fuck is it then?

* Long Sigh~!~!~!

Lets not talk!

We don’t speak for ages and then we speak one day!
Its still not all that odd is it?
I dont want to start with you in a language that went missing in the interim of silence
I refuse to speak in the old language that has meaningless words like Sorry and Love
They have not made sense in all these years of our talking!
The only thing that makes sense is the way we look at each other when we meet.
That one flash that gives away all our secrets to the world!
Each time we meet I bring my breast and heart to you
And you bring your stiff broad shoulder
And then we fight and croak in a stiffling dead language
This dead language has made us such lost souls
I want to kill this cruel dead language forever
So that we could find a real language to talk to each other!
A language that stretched like a blue sky..
From your roof to mine.
A language that doent have other names
Just one name for you and just one name for me
And I aint asking for a lot..
Just that when we talk to each other. Lets not use the burned,used language of others.
Dont touch my skin with fingers smelling of harsh perfumes others have left on your nails.
Lets please not speak till we find that language that doesn’t break each others heart!

Me and You

When we are together

We will watch silly films.

We will talk about our dreams

We will bitch about this world

We will make films together

We will blow smoke in the air

We will come back late at night

We will have vodka in ice and chocolate

We will remember each other’s birthday

We will hear out each others tooth trouble

We will love little girls together

We will play with little boys

We will stare at pretty young things

We will hoot at young good-looking men

We will go to Paro in Bhutan on a Druk air flight.

We will sleep together hearing each other breath.

We will just be what we are in our dreams

Me and you!

Mango Me

I believe in God. I believe In God because he made mangoes. There surely must be a god who created something as perfect, wild, exceptional as a mango. That Juicy Yellow paisley ball full of sparkling life force. That tingly fresh sugar shock on the tongue and that soothing sensation all the way from down the jaw; to the throat; to the stomach. In the stomach it turns into a golden fire and sends warmth to the blood, heart and lungs. Its heaven! Even the loose motions after an excess diet of mangoes make them more exquisite.

I’ll tell you a secret. I don’t trust people who don’t like to eat mangoes. I think there is something sinister about them. Who knows they may be just from some other planet where people are indifferent, don’t have enough taste buds or just too arrogant to consider mangoes as a fruit worthy of worship. Someday I am going to take up a gun and Kill all of them from the face of this earth. It’s not about the choice or taste. It’s about believing in different Gods.


When I was a Kid there was a ritual of Mango Eating in the whole of Dhindsa family (My mother’s side of the family) coming together to compete with each other. In the larger Farmhouse courtyard there would be mangoes in Steel Buckets floating in the hand pumped water. There would be manjis spread out under huge Mulberry Trees. I would sit near my Nanaji and Mom. They were my good friends and from my Party. Nani and Mama would be far away. They were the enemy party who liked checking who was to have how much and how. It should be criminalised, Checking/disturbing/advising anybody while eating mangoes! There are no absolute canons on how mangoes should be eaten. Although tearing away the skin and eating them while they drip over till your arms is supposed to be a successful method to reach ecstasy. But the Grenade method is fun too. You bite off the black acidic part and pull out the juice of heaven. A little by your hand and a little by suction.

One day says the folklore of my family that I had 5kgs of ripe Dushheris still hot from the plucking in one big go. After that I could barely walk (must have been 6 years!) To acknowledge fend off and make okay everyone’s shock I said something like ‘Aaaj toh Hosh Hi aa gaya’ meaning to say something like ‘This brought me back to my senses’ but to my shock It sent everybody rolling down their seats laughing. Drunk on Mangoes It must have been a very stupid thing to say to people who were still sober. I haven’t made that mistake of declaring my bliss to people who haven’t reached those heights with/without their poisons. I now prefer to eat mangoes in solitude. The world failed me as a child... It’s sad. To not be able to shout loudly and dance naked after eating a mango. I think it’s shameful that we don’t have connoisseurs of mangoes like tea and wine.

I have a friend Sakaar who is from the same planet as mine. He is the kind of man who remembers his childhood friends for the number of Mango trees they had in their houses. ( Saakar now I know why you haven’t made any friends in Delhi) One day we were sitting down over coffee with his group of friends in Chandigarh and he randomly throws this question at his friend who had come to visit him from his engineering college.. ‘Yaar how is that big mango tree in your house?’ The friend a little sadly replied that it had been cut down because of some construction. It angered Sakaar so clearly that he didn’t speak for the next 10 minutes. He went out, withdrew and stopped behaving like any of us were with him. I can completely understand that kind of reaction. It is really painful to know another connection to what gave you joy in childhood has succumbed to the rationality of the Indifferent planet People.


My earliest dream of abundance was of fairies dancing around a laden mango tree. They were just going round and round wearing disco lights on their foreheads. I was a kid so I watched them from distance. My dancing without any real curves on my body then would have disgraced that heavily scene. But I have always carried that dream with me. Someday I will have a garden full of women to dance around a tree laden with luscious yellow mangoes hanging from a tree.

I don’t know if it will sound funny but I even remember checking out men with a qualifier like Does he eat mangoes after meals? A friend from my Planet Rishu Beri helped me in the analysis. ‘Offcourse Yaar I think he is totally like us! Eats mangoes after Dinner.’ I can vouch that Rishu was wrong. That man never went near mangoes. He was the other planet monster. He though it was too ‘AAM’ common a fruit to waste time on. I never believed it then. I still sometimes can’t believe that people can live without awakening to the magic of mangoes. I was so foolish that I would think that he was just being inattentive or rude to me but in truth he must be loving mangoes. A lot of heartbreak later I realised. He didn’t have the stomach for mangoes. He could only deal with other toned down lesser prana food like Maggi and such shitty things. (No wonder he was so constipated all the time)


Anyways not to lose up on the juice of life I must tell you that I have good news. A nutritionist told me that a season full of mangoes supplies year long need of Beta Carotene. Maybe that ought to make you grab a bunch of Dussherries (but why shouldn’t you also grab some Hapoos, Bambaiya, Chausa, Totapari, Neelam, or Langda?) But maybe you don’t know which is which. Maybe you will never make the effort to find out and know that delicate difference in their flavours. Nevermind Enlightenment isn’t for everyone. I have reached can only pray that you reach there one day too. Unless offcourse you are from that Indifferent Planet. In which case Happy Maggi eating to your Ilk. May your Tribe Terminate!

Watching Nimbus Clouds...

If you ever get the chance to sit in a room made of windows located higher up in the mountains you would notice how the clouds resemble thoughts. Big loose fibres of cotton wool flying past you at different speeds like being sucked in and out by a vaccume cleaner. Just like in the nature of our mind where thoughts came from somewhere and go somewhere without any control that can be exercised on those thoughts clouds. One just could watch them like a film being played on television 24 frames per second. 

I kept tugging at memory to recall more about how to watch clouds as told by Diane Ackerman in her book called ‘A Natural History of Senses’. She had written about how as humans we had the accented ability to derive visual pleasure out of the world we saw. The eyes given to us as a species were slowly upgraded over the evolution to be able to perceive minute texture and tones of colours. This tendency to derive pleasure out of watching was so acute that there were examples of how in some places like Northern America even unlikely connoisseurs of visual art like Cowboys would lie down on the grass with their  little daughters and spend endless hours watching cloud turn into elephants camels and apples in the sky.

That morning as I was sitting up on my bed besides a friend, who was peacefully asleep, I loved the metaphor of clouds being like thoughts. It was really like one had caught the essence of the way our mind was assembled and wired. I wanted to follow this metaphor and learn more. It was a lovely place to be. In one’s mind flying with the thoughts or sitting here on my room on the roof in Shogi looking up the clouds swishing past like holy swans.

A huge strand of cloud suddenly blocked my window. For a minute it looked it had blocked everything. It was vanilla white and yet it looked formidable. For some time it looked that there wouldn’t be any other shape passing the sky. This majestic powerful cloud would leave no space for other playful shapes to flirt around my window. It was like that huge ominous thought cloud that eclipsed me for the last 3 years. I remembered the day I had taken it up on myself to give it a good look during me rebirthing it startled me with its immensity. It stretched from one end on my mind to another leaving no room for oxygen or good sense. When it was around I never could have known that It would end or pass or move on! 

Lying warped in the foetal position with my eyes closed I was shocked to see the thoughts of that tall white haired man following me even there in that retreat. He was standing right on my upper aura unconscious and ignorant that he was squeezing my space. He was too big for me to fathom manage or understand. He stood there like a white elephant stamping anything smaller than him under his feet. He could only be moved by might much larger than what I possessed. Lying there huffing and puffing knowing fully well that it was just a meditation retreat I still felt oppressed. I of no might. I the small playful cloud had been trampled upon by this big white majestic elephant even as I felt one with him in his majesty and grace. I shuddered shrieked and cried and my teacher came to me. She held my hand and sat by me, rubbing my hand. Just saying let it be..it will pass..After sometime that big cloudy gloom cleared up at the window. A little pitter patter started on the roof. That was nature’s way of washing big stubborn clouds.

Again the sky became a place action like a radio whose on and off button goes bad and it always keeps catching one thing or the other. On the window there were other magical shapes flying past me at a lovely comfortable speed. I could see Taradevi temple on the peak straight in line with my nose. I hadn’t been to the temple but I wondered if it would be the same Taradevi who is supposed to be a manifestation of the third eye of Devi. The tantric godess with skulls hanging around her .

As I tried to remember the process of formation of clouds to know them better at my renewed attempt to be pally with them all those stupid diagrams in my 10 th Standard Geography book called Monsoon Asia came alive. I was 16 when I read that and instead of getting to know about clouds I got interested in my geography teacher. His name was Joseph Francis, he was a tall dark and handsome army man with little imagination to be a teacher and yet he got me thinking about Asian monsoon like nobody else! He never talked about his family and he always used to give me a wicked smile at my glazed look at him. I still blame him for not teaching me about different kind of clouds in Asia.

So many layers of life fitting like a puzzle in the sky and in my mind like bulbous clouds. It was such a fascinating magical thing to possess a mind full of clouds. This mind that sometimes was sick of things passing by or staying too long. It felt good to know however that whatever came in the shape of a cloud would pass like a cloud. And everything that Monday morning from my hotel room looked like a cloud. Jobs, friends, dreams, enemies, blocks, money, journeys, lust everything was cloud which came floating to me in some strange alien shape that I could never have chiselled into my liking, but only followed kindly with my eyes.

It was such epiphany to watch clouds for those two hours that morning. I had to strain my eyes and then keep them loose. Sometimes I had to fit a shape at the corner of my eye; the cloud moved faaar away from my limited vision. They turned pink and they expanded and shrinked and went on and on. They followed some strange suction of the heaven and they went with the flow, effortlessly. They didn’t care if I watched or not. I suffer from myopia and cylindrical vision. I looked at those clouds from scratched glassed and less than perfect eyes. But by and large I followed their dance. I think it’s a good sport. Watching Nimbus clouds! 

Tu Tu Tu Tu Tara Times...

Do you remember the Juhi Chawla of ‘Gazab ka hai din dekho zara’ . a plaid half tied, hair frizzy and some strange funny sari she is wearing. Then there is Amir Khan the painfully stressed man who is not interested in singing the song in the song! I loved it. Men were always supposed to be like that, painfully not joining in the song that they starred in! Alas I never got stranded in a jungle with any Amir Khan but hey a crazy girl like me did!
Juhi Chawala the girl from Ambala who looked so foolish when she laughed that almost all of us Plain Janes looked embarrassedly at the screen. She bubbled and fizzled and sparkled and was so much fun! Rememeber that song ‘Mumbai se gayi delhi, delhi se gayi pune pune se gayi patnaaaaaaa...fir bhi na mila sajna’ {ditto for me baby ditto for me} She was no screen goddess here like Sridevi( who I loved but couldn’t have resembled) Or Madhuri Dixit( who I worshipped for her grace and femininity) Here is a girl who danced funny looked funny and was funny!
She could do comedy and also get to romance the heroes. It was never permissible before she came in. And yet she did the same matka dances, the Switzerland dances and the tut u tut u tara dances with a andropausal Rishi Kapoor (who says mens age doesn’t show on screen!)
Darr made a goddess out of her. The pretty woman who had a man crazy enough to kill for her. I lost her there. This wasn’t happening to me. Ever Ever. I wouldn’t let it. I wasn’t the vulnerable type. It wasn’t my story or no other girl I knew. Plain Janes have a way of controlling how much attention they want from any man. She became too pretty there to be the same inelegant sweetheart that we loved.
There she was flaming the fantasy of a crazy intense man and she didn’t want him later! Then why was she singing ‘Toot gayi toot ke main chooor ho gayi..teri zid se majboor ho gayi’ I was utterly confused! Was it about yielding after the man had proven himself again and again? Letters written in blood, beseeching phone calls, thrashing up all the other men in the neighbourhood! Was that where we were going? Not me!But who can deny that she looked prettiest in Darr. Remember that orange costume? ‘The Jadooo teri nazarrr, Khusboo teraaa badan!’ where the bubbling pearly white smile suddenly became demure where all these years it was reckless uncalculating! Did the smile change?I don’t know!
I hated the buddy exchanges between her and Sharukh Khan splashed in the media. They are best friends. They are such Buddies. It was all over the papers. More visually then her husband and her kids. The other routine life that she had chosen for herself was overshadowed by these vibrations of a high flying friendship between this hi chemistry couple! But they were both faithful to their spouses!!! Precisely my point! So why were we bombarded with this chemistry that never went anywhere?
The last few films after the fire went out were also quite nice. I loved the woman in ‘Teen Dewarien’ Here was a woman not dependent on her chemistry with another man to occupy the screen. At least not romantic chemistry for god’s sake. She looked so lovely in those handloom saris talking business to the rogue Naseeruddin Shaw the film. There was a comfort and grace that had come by now. It wasn’t the fizzling smiling in all scenes Juhi Chawala.
Then Offcourse there was Juhi of ‘My Brother Nikhil.’ The same wholesome real life girl. A lovely understated performance.
And yet I know when my grandchildren sit down to watch some retrospective on her I would only recall the crazy zingo bingo mad girl dancing those insane steps with a handknit sweater clad rishi kapoor paining to keep pace with her energy. She danced too fast and smiled too much! And was too uninhibited for those not of her generation. I remember the elder women of my family wistfully longing for the Madhubalas and Sharmila Tagore and Rekhas grace. Times had changed and the bridges of feminity like Sridevi were fading
Tu Tu Tu Tara was my impressionable girlhood time. I have henceforth internalised the rule that its okay for women to be gyrating madly to slapdash rhythms. She was the prototype that I had from Bolywood. I am amazed so soon and she looks like a far away yesterday amidst the Deepika Padukones and Katrinas of the world. I miss that clumsy heroine who left her heroes out of breath with her loud laughter. I know Tu Tu Tara times have gone away. But have you noticed how the screen sizzles everytime thet repeat that song on TV. It is just like it was back then. Do you remember?

Starfish Hotel

Its one of those films that I watched in utter darkness. I was studying in Jamia, Had come to Osian to watch films, Was Hoping for friends to join me, Nobody did! So I watched it in my own darkness (and that of the hall and the sickly cool AC of Audi 1 smelling of sweat dried in the ac..It was July 2006!)

By then offcourse one had seen some Japnese Cinema in the media appreciation classes of Rashmi Duraiswamy and Shohini Ghosh so one knew what Mizoguchi and Kirosawas of the world.But this(starfish hotel) was a different paradigm alltogether. It was made by John Williams a British Guy and no trailer of the film would have made me interseted in it. I went in by what they call pure coincidence! And the first viewing a sharp gasping cut on my person~It was unlike anything I had seen before! It was vague, haunting beautiful and full of breath!

Think of story like this which comes in snatches. You are not even sure if you are sitting to follow the story or collectr it in your litttle palm at the end of it! It just flies away like dust in the air!

A mystery novelist selling his dark books,A growing ennui in a restless city of Tokyo. A sober graceful man with a waif like wife who loves him and is absent on him all the time. A distance growing in their marriage that steaming lunch of avocados and bubling tea in an electric kettle dont seem to cure. A woman, another woman! Young, Vulnerable and hellishly beautiful like a fox. A landscape of dollops of ice over and above every house and a dark lunatic Rabbit haunting every train ride of a man always sombre even when making love to a starnger in a dark tunnel!

What about it was reverbrating so deep? I shuddered. Avoided. And finally started exploring..I knew there would be no easy answers to this one. Just like I know It could have been a hit film in any part of the world. It was a crazy film!

For one the cinematography was magical. The red blinking sign of the hotel where all the dark fantasies of Arisu came true was beyond this world. The red starfish hotel neon had a blinking O. The big O that flickered, blinked, sparked and caught fire. The lonely train stations which were so claustrophobic that one palpitated in a overtly cooled Sirifort Audi 1. There were times, long streches when you felt nothing was happening. You could just breathe in the Ice Of Tokyo and the dark town the man went to meet his mistress. The times the itching Villian in the film( half rabbit half man) jumped into gutters and scratched his skin blotch. The pretty poker straight wife with a peaceful face who kept hinting at having lost that spark in the marriage and yet never said it loud enough to make the husband take notice that she would walk away one day. To a brothel and no place less!!!

The strange thing that the film doesnt rest on the skelton of a story. For there is hardly a story. Its just a situation. A man, a wife and another woman. The wife who ceases to be a woman. And an other woman who is half child, half a geisha, half a spirit from the unconscious world.

The eternal darkness brewing within everyone. Something that cant be defeated. Only calmly breathed in and accepted. Just like in the film, where you try and get knocked in off trying to get the hang of it..You walk out dumb, numb and acutely aware that you know something about yourself now thats not good news and yet its not something that you could defeat avoid or run away from.

PS- I love Japnese Cinema. I think they should stick to making films rather than low grade cameras and Nippo Batteries

Salt City Chronicles~

The day I finally picked up my bag and decided to go it was a Friday. I was jobless(thanks to you) fancyless and without a camera. I was jarred inside, had a rootcanal gone bad and not enough energy to heal or deal with any rest of my life. I just wanted to jump out of my skin! And I hopped on the Kashi Vishwanath Express with an Outlook and Lonely Planet Guide. The train tickets had been purchased on a freinds credit, I borrowed a neigbours camera threw some red and purple kurtas in a tardy old travel bad and Off I went away from the heat grime and hopelessness of Delhi.

The 3rd AC was comfortable. I was moving away from the mess of Delhi and I knew nobody on the train( it would be allright now!)

Everyone loves Tea

Osian’s 4 th floor office overlooking the Qutub Minar and a jungle of laburnums was the one place where they valued tea drinking. Everyday at 10:15 and 5pm the smiling office helps would bring you tea in spotless white crockery cups. Actually you could have the tea with milk or the lemon tea which danced in its blushing orange color inside those white cups. Even the last nip of that tea sparkled henna orange inside the mug in the light that fell from my window. I think I lived for those cups of tea when I was there. There wasn’t much else to life then. I learned to bow to my tea there!

But If you had grown up in UP you would grow up thinking that every man’ duty is to offer you a cup of tea if you offer them your presence. It has a Buddhist philosophy to it. No enemy, no rascal, no poor man is poor enough to not have tea to offer. It is indeed serious tragedy when the inanities like tea have to be disposed in conversations and customs! Tea is nice, Tea is Cheap, Tea is infinite, Tea is invigorating, and Tea is awakening. Let’s have Tea! No matter how full you are, No matter how acidic your intestines are…There should never be a time to say No! to Tea.

In Lucknow Tea was the bridge that connected us to the landlords (Pandey’s), their daughter’s (who liked bathing naked in the common courtyard to thus expressed horror of my Dad!) board flunking history as told by her sobbing mother while passing on the plate of Namkeen. The recipe of the pickles that Pandey grandmother made in Benares and the rogue stories of the Uncle's Bank of Baroda customers (he was the manager there!) Tea was also the time where all the gifts received on Diwali would be layed out in front of us on the taj mahal like carved wooden table. We (the sandhu family) would keep muttering rishwat rishwat rishwat under our breath and wipe out the lovely sweets. How could anybody refuse anything that was offered with chai!

When I grew older I started evaluating my friends based on the Tea experiences they gave me. You have to understand that it in not just the tea in the cup that makes the tea experience! But everything else outside that cup that does.

At Saumya’s house in Vishnupuri(Lucknow) the tea was always a little weak for my senses. The stress was always on the accompanying snacks (biscuits, mathri, shakarpara, whatever we could squeeze out of the kitchen). But what I loved was the lemon grass flavoring in the tea for which we had to jump a 4 foot wall. It was lovely when it rained. We would go on the roof and look at our old school) (St Fidelis College, Vishnupuri, Lucknow) and sip and slurp (sip less and slurp more!)

At Safura’s house in Okhla (Delhi). It was the tea that straightened the kinks out of ones head. It was hard crisp yellow label brought in big cups of different makes with no sugar and very little milk! You want tea? Or you want sweets? Have tea now and buy sweets later from outside!
In one my previous basement office the tea was mostly made by Ram a househelp from Nepal (a Tony Leung of Chunking express lookalike). He put some strange concoctions of Nepali masala along with touch of cinnamon and basil. In the office people either loved it or hated it. One ones who hated it had conspiracy theories about how it tasted like the Office dog’s pee. And to be fair to them I think they could have been right! But they never had tasted office dog's pee so they should have expessed it in some more beleivable way! Anyway the point being I liked that tea! It was the only reassuring energy boosting ritual in that office where people often forgot that humans needed food! I liked it for its frequency. If you were working more you could demand more rounds of tea (the same rule did not apply to holidays or money alas!). So my best days were days of 7 rounds( 11am, 6pm, 11pm, 3am 7pm 11am 6pm) It meant that you had worked more than 24 hours at a stretch and that being considered and noted you had been awarded with more teas!

The Headached Grace Of LU

LU. Thats what we called it when I went to LU( Lucknow University) It used to be the space of action in the laid back city of Lucknow. In the TOI supplement you would read things like ' Another bout of firing in the Campus. Two students injured' 'Incidents of eve teasing on the rise' 'A girl stripped naked in the examination Hall'..after a point you would nonchalantly say..yeah so whats new? But If you were me you could never imagine in your worst dreams of doing your BCOM from there!

Delhi is the dreamwonderland for middleclass girls of Lucknow. SRCC and St Stephens college came to me in my dreams! If I scored good marks I could go to the other side of the polished eclectic divide. Away from the Bindi Belt sensibility! And I did all sorts of things before fate threw me into George Ellen college aka Lucknow University!

There I was a victim of fate in this lumpen land. And If I had the arrogence of thinking it would be easy getting in I was so wrong! I had missed my couselling day by four days! And there were some 15 thousand people vying for that one seat! I could go to Hell or Stepehens they didnt give a damn
Two people cared. One was my mom who pushed me in that purgatory of the last counselling for admissions saying ' They cant refuse you! You were in their merit list' The other was this Pankaj Misra lookalike( Sorry Pankaj my love!)higly armed student leader present to help the needy ones like me.He wanted my vote in case I got in! I would have given him the vote to become the Prime Minister that fateful day! (Imagine being pushed to enter hell and not being allowed in because of other miserable ones) I pinned my hopes to this man. And he got me in at 7pm sharp 3 firing in the sky later! If he stands for elections to the PM's post I will gladly vote for him even today.He had the might of what it takes to move things.

SO then it started slow motion. I got full sleeved kurta salwars stiched.I was the bindi belt youth now! There would be no 'hanging out with friends' in this college! You never attended classes( didnt dare to I should say) and showed up only during exams when it was safer. You passed reading those Atom bomb Noorul Hassan guidebooks. And you never mentioned your political affiliations. It was the kind of place where you automatically spoke for the party that was in power. CIRCA 2003 It was the Shining India BJP.
When I was there I kept cribbing that my life was ruined. I would never have any stories of college days to recall!I would never ever match up in debates with the LSR, HINDU ilk.But life is strange. People and places change their tastes on your tongue.Of late I have started missing that discourse of the small town. The kind of things that matter to those I went to college with. How they never talked about big cars and never measured people with small sticks of the labels they wore or the accents they had picked up.How the teachers were like kindred Patriarchs who would call you 'Beti' and pester you about the egjamination tikit. How it would take 15 minutes of brisk walking to reach from one classroom to another. How the Jacarandas and Gulmohure went mad in the maddening summer. Those wooden staircases creaked and the walls were crumbling forever.

It did something to me which I am greatful for in retrospect.It brought me in level with the 80 percent India and made me one of them forever.I realise this when the facade of luxury that I have built with much labour breaks down. When the car breaks down at a scary( to others) suburb. When I can take my bag and travel to any small town India and can take public transport with sweaty men rubbing into me and yelling toddlers dropping saliva. When I deal with atrociously bull headed babus and crazily vulnerable and criminally inclined young men. It helps If you have been to Lucknow University! It gives a strange tow of grace. Its like getting a training of becoming the connosieur of bullock cart ride. Years later you realise that it was slow but it moved!

That you never got any cool freinds while you were there but you earned an understanding about the real sweat and blood India. That you didnt have Acs in the classroom but you got a degree that is recognised in the whole wide world( Unlike some of those fancy private institutes) You never heard of Campus placements but you got a campus that had history that has volumes written on it by fancy firangs. That you paid some 2000/per annum and there could be people from any remote village sitting next to you helping you with the buisness administration paper. That you didnt have filmstars attending your college fest but your lumpen looking colleague would tease you with verses from 'Madhushala'. That you never could find college romances but you found the kind of friends who never moved over!

A heady heaached grace! But grace neverthless!

Cold Calling

Dont know if you have ever held held the phone and called a number with cold hands, parched throat and your heart racing and mind fumbling for words. It is called COLD CALLING. Marketing executive do it 'calling strangers to sell a product'. and Allthough I havent sold anything to strangers in my work this feeling is only too familiar!

I was cold calling till a year back. Everynight at 10:30pm. Tring...Tring...Tring. the pauses in the ring could gulp me into eternal void and nothingness. I now think of myself as a very brave woman to have indulged in that kind of cold calling. Calling a stranger far away from me just to hear his voice and know how he was and if I was lucky offer some bits of my life to him. There was nobody around me who could 'BUY' my life and this has to be taken as my desperate effort to find a 'market'.

It was quite a thing for my weak nerves. They still sometimes shrink when they hear that familiar ringtone. I dont think there is any daring left in my bone to attempt it again with anymore. It is that shock that slowly dissolved into my veins poisoning through phone. I dont think cold calling would be so awful if it wasnt for the dynamics that a phone introduces into it.

Imagine calling someone you who wouldnt have to see what affect his/her reaction his rudeness will have on you! People can say the most bizzarre/hurtful things!
I am busy! I am eating! I am getting another call. I am busy working! I have to sleep. And sometimes simply I dont want to talk to you! Cant talk to you.. Not today.... not tomorrow..... not in a week Never ever!

It broke my heart. It made me phonophobic. I shudder when I revisit those memories. That gathering up all my courage to dial that one number before  sleeping at night. Those salted tears on my pillow. That mending hope for the whole of next day just to be ready for that Cold Calling ritual. Sometimes when I pass through those familiar places where I was cold calling from I hate their ugly presence. I hate how these places had witnessed me in my vulnerable hopelessness of dependency on someone else for my fulfillment.

I think Cold Calling is a cruel practise.No women should do it for anything in the world!  There is never a man in the world who would give you anything better than your own life to your offer of shaing your life with him...You ought to know its the time to hang up when your voice freezes as soon as you pick up the phone and the other voice becomes more important than yours.

There is no rule that says that just because you have a phone you should call the rest of worls to sell your life.
Hang up! Dont freeze yourself!

Guruji?

Classified Adverstisement

Its Guru Purnima today and feel this great longing for a pair of feet which wouldnt shrink in self consciousness or bloat in pride when I touch them.This longing for a guru has almost reached manic scale like the search for soul mates and I am beginning to rethink is this whole thing a HYPE? Like how long does the student keep feeling ready in the killing sun for a guru to appear out of thin air? I think I have stood long time now! Why dont you make an entry now?

I am done with leaping at you in songs and catching you in  lines of my favorite authors! I command you manifest! As a skin and bones guru with roughly millions following you. You must be a good looking man above 6 ft with a killing smile. It would be cool if you live in Delhi but you could be at the weekend destinations from delhi too(Rishikest is ideal). You must be polished and Well qualified. You should not have an accent. You better not have too many big cars( they reek of black money) It would b nice if your smile is pleasant. Salt and Pepper hair is nice these days( whoever takes hairdyed gurus!) I would love you more if you dont keep any compulsory fees for meeting you( You arent a shrink you are a guru!) I hope you have a big ashram with windows overlooking palm trees! Reach me now!

Didi...

Dear Bjiya,

Dont think you liked me when you saw me for the first time. I had landed uninvited at your house with my big feet, my dirty bag and lots of freaky ideas about what kind of woman I and Safura would become one day.
I dont really remember the day I fell in love with you. You are so pretty I dont think anybody ever cathches the moment their heart slips over to your smile..
I never have had women like porcelein dolls in my family. You were the first one I met. The day you delivered Aafia I coudnt beleive there would be a girl prettier and more delicate than you in the family. But that wasnt the day we became friends. I dont think I can ever have you as a friend. You are always a bit too glowing to be a friend!
Dont know when exactly it filtered in that you were infact the elder one. Perhaps the days when I would come sloshed to your house and you never asked me any questions. The times I saw you pray and pray and pray with little Aafia circling around you. The times you would talk for hours and hours to dirty men on the phone to get the man of the family out of trouble. The times you would open the door for me at 4am in the morning and ask me to lie down next to little girls of the family. Had I become one of the youger ones in the family gradually?
I have never seen you cook ever! Your almirah is perhaps the craziest piece of space in the whole world! Remeber the times you would refuse to talk to any guest who came to the house? You would only mutter meows from behind the door.(How old do you think you are? 5 years?!!) The times you would ask Pintoo to bring you clothes to your office because your Saree was falling off! We all laughed over how you were so juvenile! And yet I never forget the days when you would correct our pronunciation of Petrol( petrel its supposed to petrel now I know) How you would give us simple downloads on how girls shouldnt ever let their space be taken in the garb of hardwork at work( we werent labourers we were filmmakers! what was the excuse for dirty toenails and bad skin?!)
Now that Safura is far away I realise it wasnt just her in that house that brought me in. It was you too elder sister with your crazy baby wisdom. I hope someday we become women like you. Crazy old and baby faced!
Love

Moti