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

The Monkey Mind

I have been on this long road traveling with this monkey all this while and I never knew any way of communication with it till recently when I attended a retreat.

I want you to meet this beast that I have lived with and just started to love. My monkey mind. Just today morning it was shouting so loudly that I had to keep my work aside ( not that I had much today anyway!)

It jumped in woe on my not earning enough money in comparison to my colleagues (which isn’t true btw)Then It made me feel bad about the fact that this one man that I called 3 times didn’t call me back!(although I often don’t pick up his calls when I am busy…although we have been in and out of love now long time back!)

Then it got complaining about a headache which I couldn’t catch at all. This monkey was imagining a headache. There was none in my head whatsoever!

It made me feel bad about the little work in office and the fact that I don’t get to travel out of station like my other friends (But it didn’t bother to calculate how I may have had more time to go for vacations)

Sometimes It brings strange broken parts of memories and puts them in my hands and I don’t know what to do with them. Like during my rebirthing retreat it brought me a scene from my childhood- Sunday morning at Gill Aunties place. I was at the roof of their small bathroom that used to be slippery and dark from inside and always smelled of Shikakai soap! It was one place in the world that made me feel out of shape and guilty and not in command! For in Gill aunties bathroom you had to follow Gill aunties rules.. no matter how sorry the bathroom looked! She would always command how much water you ought to have used and how long you could be inside. And still I needed that bathroom if I was at her home. I had mixed feelings for it for sometimes I even used it to escape from the claustrophobia of her family. So the mind reminded me of those Sundays when we were allowed to climb up the bathroom roof and they were painted a beautiful sky blue from outside. One could see a few kites in the sky in that refugee colony neigbourhood called Model Town in Bareilly.The wind was always pleasantly cold (everyone had washed long wet hair on ones head in that surdy family) and it talked of all the adventures that life would offer when I would grow up!( and here I was lying down on the floor breathing maddeningly trying to deal with those same adventures that had become a bit too much I guess

The other random scene it brought was like a live CCTV Version of a Highway that went to my school and also almost everywhere else from my 1st home. I could see the trucks and the tremor they brought to one with their sound as they passed by. It was just a road from childhood that had completely got lost because of unuse( I haven’t visited it in a long time) but once it must have been my connection with the larger world! Although I never could have pointed that I am so weak in geography!So I don’t know what I was doing on that road or that Roof! It was just a random picture my monkey mind played for me!

But there have been times when I lay down holding the hand of this monkey and ask it to show me all the precious stones it has gathered. It works like a trusted Philips Tape playing all the old memories at my favorite speed. I must have crumbled its head with replaying again and again and again some memories.

My present favorite memories have been

How I got my first job

The first kiss

The memory of feeding from a lukewarm milk bottle and playing with mom’s hair.

My last vacation in Benares

And so on…

Sometimes when I am passing through some familiar parts or some familiar songs sting out the same memories. The monkey doesn’t know how easy it is to make him dance.

Earlier on I pitied myself. Such few memories to play up. So much sadness to avoid! And one day I saw a friend of mine had mummified the monkey and put it in a Jar in the basement. It looked as ferocious but it couldn’t jump anymore. This just changed the world. I could reclaim my life. The monkey didn’t jump on me in every little or big thing. I could choose to be sad or happy. I could keep my power with myself all the time. Wasn’t this enlightenment? I could for the first time not be dragged wherever the monkey jumped. I could live like a human being!

I don’t know who killed the monkey..Perhaps my teacher! Perhaps my higher being. But I want to tell the monkey that I don’t hate it! I am not scared of it either! If it were to get up and start talking to me again I think I would love to play with it again!

This time though I think it would be different!

The Good News

 Dear Old me,

You know me better than anyone else! How I live for just the pleasure of lingering on with you and everthing else that I have found in this life! 'Others' call us skinflints because of the way we hold on to things. How we wear the same clothes over and over again because we love them more and more as we grow older!(If only they could see all the memories that cling to them, how they grow softer and how the contours fit every corner of me and you!) The clothes absorb so much of you and me that It feels we are scaling our skins when we throw them. Wonder how are other people so good at 'getting over it'!
And yet both of us know how we have been 'Holding on for much too long now! Others see it! I see it! You see it! The same movie going round and round in loops! Gosh! So long we have been going on without any breaks! How did we manage? How has it been made possible for us to remain struck!?I don't know who we do it for my sweet old self!? For others or for us? What do you think?

Dont look at me with those hungry Dog eyes now!!! I know we have had a good life! I have loved all those times of sand in my bra, the ice-cream mountains, the coming back at night drunk and crying. The burning other women with stares, the shaming men with slurrs, the flying high and the coffee and icecream breakfasts. Kissing the butter babies of friends and writing away the mad stories at night.But we must this all up today! Just let us......

So I am putting in my papers asking myself to 'Get out of this old life now!' Its not that I dont love you! I do! I love your old big face like a Dahlia blooming with extra fertilizers. I love you walking out of  rooms half way through the night because you are too cold in the AC at 27! I even love how you completely stay struck at things and over people and dreams.(That Red Pajama isn't a hot weather dress I know I know! How you are already thinking of how to use this Jump in the old game! Shame on you! You really think you can go on without giving up?)

So at the risk of leaving all that I love(and you my stubborn clinging mad old tired back-ached heart-ached self!) behind I am plunging. Deep Dark Mad nowhere! I may never come back! Or I may only get more old hurts and pimples and rashes!  I hope ive learned to  scrub the toilet squeaking whiter than my teeth by the time I come back! Don't follow me! I need a break from the old life!

The good news if you still havent gotten it is ~~"Like all things pass. I too am passing away. My old life is passing away and its here that I want its shadow to stop following me!

The Good News Is 'This is the end!' No matter how good the film was! This really is the end!
And I don't god darn want any credit rolls! Thanks But no thanks!

Two Steps ahead Three Steps Backwards

That picture could me today with crosses like...
Procrastination
Writer's Block
Backache
A flop of unruly hair on my crown
PCOS
Painful memories
Unfinished buisness with an X
Lack of Blessings
A dent in my car
No Covers on the car seats
No desire for a new Cell
Hirsuitism
No Divine Teacher
No Kids
Dear Friends far away
No exercise
No energy
No eagerness
No book
No shoots