The faces I grow

Dear Medha Tai,

You know I am a single woman. Like all other cows around me I nurture dreams of happily ever after hand in hand with my soulmate.
There is no river or land that has been snatched away from me. I have lived a happy privileged life I guess!
Its so funny that Sunday times story about you has stayed with me all these years. I was a little girl even then. All my dreams were about getting a chocolate boy to dance with me around the trees. And Failing and Passing in that desire isnt it strange that I come back to your face.
I have never thought of you as a pretty woman!There are all those pretty faces on Television which draw more Ooohhs and Ahhhhs. These faces are closer to what I am told to become like!(by people who lead happier lives!!) Their faces are not wrinkled in battles, Their fair skin hasn't been tanned in any fight!They are naturally beautiful I am told! I am working hard these days to reach that natural state.
I remember the comfort of sitting beside you once on a Dharna(I must have come there just for kicks!) And there in the sizzling heat of burning sun in Azad Park in Mumbai I saw The huge woman you were!How would you fit in any mans arm Tai? There was this whole community that leaned on your shoulders for strength. Your sari is always a little faded Tai.
I gulp my saliva in the tempering hot afternoons when I am thrown on to the hard real life and there is an uneasiness in me. I think I am graying and wrinkling and tanning to resemble you more as I grow up. The illusion that I could still be beautiful if that face wash worked is fading. The chocolate boys are all walking away.. The harsh boiling sun smiles at me more often these days. I sweat and smell of sweat in this grinding reality. I think I love the days I  look like you large and ordinary! I will never be naturally beautiful now.

Dancing with Men

I grew up on the romance of Himalayas with Ruskin Bond. He took me to the Graveyards of the Raj and taught me to smell the marigolds and the sweet peas in my garden. Over endless cups of tea we discussed the love of a writing life. I couldn’t have thought of becoming anything else but a writer, I loved this man so much. Even now when it rains and I smell the mud I take out the leaves from those old love books. The Room on the roof will always be the first room of a boy that I entered. Rusty was the first one who put flowers in my hair and smiled at what a tomboy I was.
Then I grew mad stubborn and wily and Rusty slowly faded away.

I was sandwiched in a crowd of sweaty men in a local bus to Badarpur border when I first met Saint German Exupery. I couldnt have known then that this little man of his book would make me fall head over heels over him. This French pilot lived centuries before me and yet he broke my heart with his most enamouring heartbreaking tale 'The Little Prince'. I sat and wept in the bus. Oh of the misery growing up and parting with loved ones. Of loving little roses with thorns around them, of leaving behind the pretty face of one's rosebush! Only a real man made in the same earth as mine could have understood the cruelty of having the little kid inside us hurt. He showed me how his inner landscape looked after he had cried too much and I remebered the times when I had grown numb from too much crying too.I saw the little loving parts within him withering away as he struggled in the hostile sands where no flowers grew. His love was simple with no unnecessary complications here. I could have lived forever with you Saint German Exupery if only you had disappeared to another planet leaving me with just two of your books.

Then one day I saw Thich Nhat Hanh walking in a red robe and I liked his colour so much that I started walking along..He smiled at me and told me the heart sutra and I became loose as the wind started flying, hugging the trees in this madness of discovering the most valuable power of dissolving and embracing all life. My ears became my hands and my hands turned into my nose and my grandfathers hands and my father’s hands all wrapped my heart with warmth . He sat me down and I felt the earth that held me and the sun that would never fade away no matter what. We ate Tangerines together, slowly mindfully in the present moment. All the pain vanished. All because I smiled at him and he smiled back till all eternity lasted.

Photo Courtesy- Abbas Shamael Rizvi

Wicker lamps of Haridwar

It was someday in March a day after your birthday that I landed in Haridwar. I was with two single friends on trip long overdue and I could see clearly till the end of the sky when I finally reached.We took a room in Ganga Kinare UP tourism bungalow and missed the evening aarti by sleeping overtime. We were high on something that afternoon, I don’t remember too well now what it was. Maybe it was the freedom of three single girls travelling alone on taxi with enough cash to last them for quite some time!

The next morning I stole away to the shore to take a private dip, I felt I had a lot of madness to wash away. As I stepped slowly into the the cold freezing water the reality of my flesh struck me. Shivering like a nobody I saw an old sadhu far away on the other side of the shore. He was old, grey and looked very lonely.  He could have died with the shock of cold water on his flesh but he was hardy. More hardy than me. Hardier than my being a woman let me be.I covered myself from the gaze of that measly sadhu far away to not distract him.

It was good to see him bathe in the glory of his being a man.To only be a distant observer of the customs that he drew his strength from. I guess in a way I was also trying to be a man like him by taking this morning dip. There was no other way of being close to him other than becoming like him. But it made my flesh week and dissolve into the cutting water. Clearly I wasn't cut out to do this. I wondered that tingling morning if it was easier for men to cut away from those warm familiar things and strike for the larger truth.To push away the comforting blanket, to snub off the well meaning affection. To walk away from invoked vows of togetherness. To live like nobody else deserved any compassion! Olny an aggresive hunt for the the truth!

As I looked at him my thoughts turned to you. You and that old Brahmin were so much alike. Both of you so rooted in the habit of suffering. There was a hardly a trace of sloth on your bodies.

Did all my warmth look like sloth to you? Maybe it did! Is that why you had pushed me away? I didn’t know…I was only 24 then. All I wished that moment was to not have been pushed away so indifferently into the cold cutting real life.The sadhu was mumbling some mantras and pushing away the little wicker lamps into the river I wondered if he saw any light or warmth in those little lights fading away in the vastness of water. 

I prayed that you merge In the divine whenever you died. I hope you don’t come back because I saw how inconsequential those little lights are in the vast flow. It made no sense lighting up those silly sentimental things...

I came back to the room shivering to the room wrapped I my yellow Hare Rama stole. I looked like a crow as the morning pictures tell me. The two women wrapped me in some warm clothes and the sun came up. I saw some blooming flame of the forest and took pictures. It was an alive day after all the little faltering lamps had died down in the Ganges..I am glad I missed the evening aarti. I prefer the raging sun and the the crippling cold river to those lamps that never reach anywhere.

photo courtesy: Abbas Shamael Rizvi

We were little girls then...

Dear Sagun,

I always remember you when I think of Nashik. And that one favorite song of yours that made me fall in love with you.
We were in that sad hostel for working women. Together in a corner room that you were apprehensive about sharing with me. Offcourse you had to be smart if you wanted to live with sanity in that city with cunning women and their nosy boyfriends. I off course didn’t have any, but that wasnt enough to grow a tree of trust.. There was such a huge gap between our folding beds depite the small talk floating together from the mugs of our sickly tea.

Your parents far away in Nepal. Who had given up on you were distant. You told me about your caring Maharastrian boyfriend and I could see the little nests hanging out of your hair.You had figured out the tough equation of love while I was still struggling at the bitter taste of love on my tongue.

And then one day they played that song on the radio. ‘Zindagi aa raha hun main’
You chukled and jumped from your bed to mine. Suddenly we weren’t women with secrets between us anymore. We were handsome men with the promise of the road ahead!

‘This is my favourite song double haddi, this is how you must live life’ you had declared! And I must have looked puzzled for sure. After all what did the 5foot of you know about me ? To tell me about how to live my life!  And then in that daze of the exasperating energy burst in you I heard and saw you for the first time!

Humming along with that song of Hardy dreams. You weren’t the weary girl from Nepal anymore! You were the tall lanky man who had to make a home in this city that your parents would never visit (so what?!) The people here (in Nashik) didn’t belong to you but you would win them over one day! The suspicion that small everyday wars had brought in you wafted away in the dim light of the 40 watt blinking bulb. You became a happy go lucky soldier who would win over the boyfriend’s discomfort of commitment, his parent’s resistance and the cold indifference of your family.

It still amazes me how in this 5 foots of you, you have packed in so much hardy hope, ferociousness and cold insight about the world. All of 5foot 9 inches of me fell in love with you in that magical moment. I remember your strength every time I hear that song now. Off course you were a  little girl then, but you were a winsome gallant man too!

Love
Your Double haddi

The twisted ABC train..

A is for abuse!

B is for Because I dont have a better word for it!

C is for Come-on dont tell me you didnt know this is what happens!

D is for Daddy didn’t know

E is for enough. It was enough long time back!

F is for fuck off now!

G is for gagging that you are so good at.

H is for Hang ups~ your and mine

I is for the I that I forgot in all this. Hope it’s alive.

J is for ‘Just this is what you get!'

K is for KILL YOU for it.

L is for love. The subterfuge to all this abuse

M is for Mom who kept suspecting that all wasn’t well.

N is for Never thought it could happen to me

O is for the Orgasm that you dint quite reach despite all this

P is for piss in your pants and the stench of it

Q is for quail’s feather in your arse.

R is for Real life- It happens real life but becomes surreal.

S is for Sanity lost ad interim.

T is for Tear on my system

U is for Utopis- sick utopias about how it would get better!

V is for Violence

W is for Wtf?

X is for Xrated human being! Hiding behind layers of sophistication

Y is for Yes it happened

Z is the end of story. Thank god!