Shapes of release

I was in many shapes before I was released

First I thought I was the good dumb daughter my parents wished me to be.
Anger broke my boundaries... I realized I could never be that. I wanted to gather all the moss of a rolling stone. There couldn't have been any guarantees of only getting the goodness. I was open to all that I loved. Good or Bad or complicated.

Then I thought may be a good life,well lived would be a nice idea...
A handsome Goodlooking man for me, with a Big Car, and our goodlooking children playing in his garden. But something in me just wouldn't say yes to that...I wanted much more than a good life...I wanted to run naked in the streets...To feel the sun on my bare skin. To never be civilized out of my wildness. To be handsome and good-looking with a big car of my own!
It was a rude thing to do.Some times I think It happens to women who aren't born petite and dainty.

There were times I would shrink myself to fit the right size...It doesn't happen very often now.

Sometimes I think I am a ballet dancer inside. Who has ached in the nerves to find that balance. Standing on the tip of my thumb...stretched out to perfection...a shape just for its own sake..no one else matters in that dance.

Often I get lost among handsome faces and magical cunning shapes....but there is always a clock ticking away...it doesn't loose any second for anybody in the world...it just keeps ticking to the truth of its own time....

I find my shapes of release in forgetting the beauty I saw in your shape. The love was so short and the forgetting so long!

But it comes and I find my shapes of release.

You resembled my Mommy so much!

In that grey cotton shirt with cream flowers on it.

That cut of mars on your forehead.

In all the curd that you had with me for dinner.

All those stories of white butter that you stole..

The tardy slippers you wore to work.

That missing tooth hidden behind your half smile.

That sinus sitting over your head

That callousness of leaving me alone in a market.

The smell of soap coming from your skin and some left behind your ears!

That toenail that always grew inwards that you shredded when you were tired.

That creaking sound of your knuckles when you sat on the floor

The drones of tired fitful sleep of stress.

That sobbing that absolutely broke my heart.

Those big hands always bigger than mine.

That fast walk with long steps I could never keep pace with.

You had no buisness resembling my mother!

Catching eels

If you have ever had the urge to catch eels you would know how humbling it is.. 

I start with a confidence everytime .Trusting my long eager arms and my predator'ly eyes looking into the clear water. I love eels when I am out catching them. Its only in retrospect that a lot of hard feeling come.

I dont know if it was greed or hunger with which I pushed myself into this sport. The first time I started I could hear the distant boring well gushing into the fields nearby. There were some cowheards taking scary bulls and cows across the great horizon. And yet I sat near the river making this as my only pursuit. Like there is nothing else in the world!

Dont know where this catching eels becomes so compulsive. I see all men and women stressing to catch them. I dont know too many who come out happy. But on our own quests we must...reach towards eels with our cold hands. What else is there to life?

So I tell you how I saw a whole shoal. I looked at them lustily I think.. For you cant be expected to  reverence and love for the fish you are trying to catch in your net of life. You are with your own little plans and dreams and expectations and sensations. What do you care to know about the eel you conspire to catch?

All this thing that you build up in your mind about love for eels and how diffrent they are is all bullshit. I'll tell you how all my eels have been all the same all these years( the same slimy living beings that leave a taste of failure on your tongue!)

But its a good sport for the living( young and old) eels are electric and eels are in a lot of ways like life. They always run out of your fist without turning back or saying Goodbye!

But the joy of living is those moments of terse concentration. Looking measuring and going for the catch. Many times you will be rewarded with the sensation of a living being in touch with your the front of your palm(where your life line runs)u will know the restlessness and elusiveness of these spiteful beings(the ones you wouldnt have never rewarded with your attension unless it was to have them whole for yourself) Then there is that awfully beautiful moment when you have it in your hand between your index finger and thumb. Its tails and its head. I call that moment eternity. Dont know how others refer to this interim. Its the time when you can say truthfully you have made the catch. Frankly a lot of times even after the catch your life looks the same. It isnt! If you consider how many times you are going to come back to this time. When you had the catch. All the stars were in one line. All the luck was with you. Your hands and your eyes worked under command and one poor eel dropped its defence under your agrression. You won!

Shock tears and fits! Suddenly the eel is gone. Slipped out of your hand. I feel miserable. Long for that time. Cant rewind. Will never accept. But the eel is gone.Nemesis. Love. Longing....Oh cmon! Thats life

Another eel now. I love cathing eels..What about you?

Cotton, Silk and Love!

Valentines day comes too often for my comfort . Every year this same anxiety of ' Is my love life happening enough?! 'So far I haven't passed even once. There is always something lacking. Either the love is far away, Either its too near . Most of the times there is no love at all. And yet when I see lovely cotton-silks blooming around me and smell that change of weather in the air..I know I have known love. More than I am thankful for..more than I have accounted for with my gratitude. And more than what I have understood.

I remember Sharma ji(everybody called him Sharmaji) who never spoke to me unless it was to tease me. He was so annoying, that in order to make me speak to him he would call me names! Once he even invented a poem to make fun of my name. It used to make me mad. I would shout cry and not go to school because he sang that poem to everyone as soon as I entered the scene.

'Pearl pearl main Tayyar
khane main mazedar'.

I hated him then. 
PS. I fondly remember the poem and him because of the poem.

Then there was the Son of the Peon of my playschool. A  territorial and taciturn boy called Raju(what a silly name!). Once I went to school in the evening on the insistence of my cousin who wanted to play on the swings and the usually quiet Raju laughed and showed us around the whole school.(He was just another person that evening as he opened up!)  He allowed me to sit on the swings and even pushed me higher in the sky. There was no one else around from the school that evening and the playground looked like some other time and space. It was the first time I sway so far up in the sky. For the first time it felt that he considered me more alive than the walls of the school. He had looked through me all the living days of my life before that.
The school bell started sounding sweet that day onwards( he used to ring the bell)

Oh and there was a thin wiry surdy boy who followed me on my way back from school. He never said anything except just follow me like he was an ISI agent. It made me miserable. I got so stressed at 13 thinking What on the world was he doing following an ugly girl like me? Now it would be good to meet him on one of these valentine's day if he comes with roses. I love the fact how proportions of our or shapes or the schools ( I was in a convent and he was from a chungi school) we went to didn't matter to him at all! We would have looked like bitter gourd and pumpkin if we were made to stand together . It looks so completely funny now. And sweet.

Then there was this cousin of mine who treated me like a house help! He would give me silly things to do just so I didnt disturb him." Go and see if the hen has layed an egg! Dont come back without an egg!" , "Go and get the fishing pole from Nanaji.". "Get the tumbler from the bathroom" I was such a dutiful Manfriday that it breaks my heart to think of that kind of earnestness now.I adored hims so much and he always left me behind with the old women(nani mom and masi's) He had lovely brown eyes and he knew every nook of the village. He was even allowed to go for shikar with Nanaji and Mama. Once however he agreed to take me in his gang and let me come to their fishing trip. He shoo'd away the wild dogs of other villages, Taught me to roast peanuts and (I still think it could have been a dream) and decorated my hair with flowers of a gulmohur tree. I looked like a mad Red Indian that day...as everybody around picked me up to cuddle and Coo. But I still watch that picture of me and him standing side by side with my hair full of leaves and flowers. I don't think it gets higher than this. That day had all  the silk cotton and love I  needed to be alive. A little more and I would have died of happiness.

And it wasn't Valentines day!

Maa you don’t know men.

Some waft into one's life like the smell of wet mud and then they linger on in memory like lilting playful sunlight on the floor in the morning.

Some are like the comfortable flannel shawls that one wraps around in the pink of winters but leaves behind in the harsh bone cutting chill of December.

Some are like the magnificent gush of a fierce river far away . You'd be cut and blown to pieces if you walk towards them.

Some are like the rotten smell of onions that gets caught in the fingernails. No amount of washing hands takes away that smell till it dies on its own.

Some are like black coffee without milk cream or sugar. You would get addicted to them just to keep yourself going through the day.

Some are like that lovely cotton kurta of fab india that just doesn't fit your size no matter when you try it!

Some are like sunflowers.Happy, sweet and straight. They make your day if you meet them in the morning.

Some are like leeches that get stick to your skin shamelessly, till you draw enough attension to throw them and squat them with your shoes.

Some are like your favorite shoes that cut your feet but you still wear them everytime you go out because they look good on you.

Some are like impossible dreams. Killing you with desire and passion and absence.

Some are like your favorite books. Kept away in a distant home.

Some are like a nightmare that grows roots into every memory that you have of living.

All of them. All of them Maa are big lies... I am glad you don’t know them!

Death on the road

Last night I saw a strange dream. That the world is actually ending in 2012. I am walking around communes and communities and socialise with kind strangers who dont mean a thing to me. We all travel in strange local trains that look like a cross between the Mumbai local trains and metros. Each one of us has a commuting anxiety. We are all desparate to shrink the city and reach our destination faster.
They are all talking about how the world is ending in one or two days now that 2012 is here. I get down the train and try walking the blocks. There are dead fishes and blood floating on the water everywhere and the road gets submerged in water which has dead fishes floating around. I jump on to remaining block of land(most of it has disappered under water!) and I fade to black in this 1st siren of devastation.
Too anxious about not knowing whether these are my last days on life as I knew it so far I am tensed about what to do to make the most of it. I dont have any freinds that I could easily meet in this fury. I strangely dont rememeber my family at all.
There is a siren that blasts my head with the suggestions that maybe I could call him just this once now! It should be allowed! the world is ending we are all going to die~surely its OK if I call him once for this last time. Because it is going to be the last for sure..I pick up the phone and dont dial: What if the world doesnt end? It will be another shameful outburst of emotion. Calling him can only be justified if the earth is falling apart. I cant take the shame of calling him against his wishes another time! Even though the world may be ending. Maybe I really want to die without calling him. Or maybe I dont have the time in this running to call him!
I decide to watch a film. The most widely accepted valid indulgence. I hope the film touches my heart and makes the last few moments worth it for I am too handicapped to deal with humans around me.I am becoming happy about getting to give up. I cant take this tension anymore. Lets Die I say if the time has come.
I walk out of the film and see Shohini, Juhi and Chitragandha Singh (the dusky heroine)wrapped in a red shawl looking gorgeous. They seem to be keeping their cool well. I say Goodbye and again start walking that tough road to commute home. Who knows I might finally communaly meet death today.