who can speak of me?

For the love of silk cotton trees

2012-01-23T21:27:00.002+05:30

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree
Joyce Kilmer

I haven’t met too many people who have fallen in love with trees. I didn’t even know I would be one of them till the day I read some strange book from the musty attic in my house. The book was borrowed from the Punjab Agricultural University. No one in my family went to that university. It remains a mystery how that book got in my bookshelf.

So this book had pictures of the flowering trees in bloom. I saw this one particular photo and was absolutely blown. It was like recognizing from the shadow a face an old loved one. This I realised much later was the same tree that appeared in my dreams of heaven, where an avenue of cotton silks spread till forever connecting this world to that.

However the first time I really found that rapture of delight was in 2006. I was staying over with friends at the DSSW Hostel in North Campus and was very sore and heavy hearted after a bad crush. We had gone out to the community canteen to get some chai right at the fag end of the evening.

Standing dispirited I suddenly noticed this hearty silk cotton tree standing with grace. I must have looked at it for some ten minutes in the mad stare that lovers give on recognising that first sight of each other. My heart stopped. Dropped its complains. Stood Still. Like a deer struck by headlights of a car. Many clouds passed through my life and bad spell broke! I feelt like a pink baloon growing bigger and lighter and lighter with this old/new love.

From sad tired and weary I felt reassured and and in love with the world again. Like an old friend from far away had suddenly visited with all his gifts and memories. Like a tall graceful spirit stood there in the campus calling out to my love

It didn’t do much or make any effort. It just went on being itself, big majestic and forever a silk cotton tree. And I struck by thunder stood there and stopped feeling cold and had this sudden strange urge of hurling myself at that tree and hugging it. I didn’t do it for fear of scandalising others!

The memory of that day still warms my heart. Just thinking about how this tree had followed me there, in that disappearing patch of sunlight always stays in my memory.

That’s the thing about silk cotton trees. They’ll appear in the strangest of places. Peeping into your tea from the picture window on a 6th floor of an apartment while you sit through an interview. In the dark shadows of an empty ground where road rollers hurl around earth to make a new building, standing tall and silent in the impending doom. In the junk yards of childhood where little girls with pig tails ran over their fallen flowers burying dead butterflies under them.

Much later I read about how D.H. Lawrence would go naked and climb mulberry trees so that the muse would strike him. I can completely understand the urge. The big smooth silver trunks of a tree do call for petting. At least the pulchritude is not alien to our species. We love butterflies peacocks and tall handsome trees!

But there is something more than sheer physicality. This tree talks to me! Everytime I pass them I sense warm whisper, and conversations much more heartwarming that human conversations. It affects me when it changes shapes, sheds its leaves, bounces sunlight off its glistening bare branches and then grown little fist sized buds like a teenaged girl growing breast. And then suddenly it would light up with those majestic big flowers and then blow the flowers and carpet the earth. Its tides affect me like moon affects the seas.

Have you seen the deep red of its flowers? Just the color an Indian girl dreams of her trousseau to be one day. The way its bare branches divide the sky. How the sky in frame of these branches gets different shades of blue and deep blue and white cotton fluff. Have you seen the size of its flowers? The plonk with which they fall on the ground AND STAY THERE for days till they finally become the ground on which they’ve fallen.

I talk like a love sick person. And I am lovesick for silkcotton trees. I hope someday they find the words for those of us who’ve felt the Eros for trees. For those of us who’ve blushed with delight at watching them…For those of us who write these love letters to trees.

Bihar Chronicles-2011

2011-12-31T21:29:00.003+05:30

The year bumped me back into attention as I brought all my grey matter in line to Line Produce in Patna. An amiable documentary filmmaker Richard Fung who resembles a character of Wong Kar Wai's Happy Together wanted a local 'guy' to help him shoot the badlands of Bihar.

So I was hired. It was just February! I remember the lovely Tarumitra Ashram where I arranged us to stay. The lovely campus was like a Tropical Jungle. An oasis in the mundanity of Patna. The Laurie Baker Style Organic Cottages. I lived in the Winter Hut, where Father Athikal would brew lovely South Indian Coffee running in and out. A complete charmer.

Then there were other community members and students from Agricultural university from Panama who would make cool Italian Food and Potluck Dinners at the community kitchen at Tarumitra. There over vodkas splayed in mint and ice around a bonfire we'd discuss our lives. Who we were and how we spoke.

My favorite memory is sitting inside the gauzed Verandah and watching Richard and Tim( Richard's partner) walk in the golden sunlight being. Its a picture of them togther that has stayed with me. Its very seldom that you get watch couples who carry that peace around them when they are togther. Richard and Tim had a golden light following them that evening. Just looking at them at that moment brought such profound peace that the picture latches onto my memory as a postcard.

Then in a early morning haze we drove to Bodhgaya. A city of peepul trees. We checked into a hotel that had 5 stars in the Lonely planet guide rating and from my toilet window I could see the Burmese Monastery, A peepul tree with a small Hindu Shrine under it.

It must have been 7pm when I finally entered the Mahabodhi Temple complex, distracted as I was with the antique trinkets from the whole of buddhist universes.

As I walked towards the tall building and the magnificient Bodhi Tree, a strange Deja Vu came over. I had been here before. With my surdy parents? Not likely! Maybe. Not really. Must have been in dreams. Strange then..Just like any person walking to Varanasi cannot really visit it for the first time. You always have memories of it from erstwhere!

There were monks from the yellow Asian world. There were musty smelling converted Indian Harijan monks in there. And they all became a part of the majesty of the Prince who found the ultimate High under this very Tree. There were cameras and prayer assemblies with live telecasts all over to the Buddhist world.
And here was I with my camera clicking like crazy to take home some glory of this magical place. The aura of this divine tree.

The next day I went to the Japanese monastery and tried Zazen. Between a group of young yellow faces and a monk in black robes instructing in Japanese I don't think I got it very right but what the hell. I sat stretched and straight like a penis. It gave me a cervical like pain and made me feel very cool!

I came back in Mahabodhi Express and by the time 2011 had run away!

Its love love love that makes the world go round!

2011-09-05T16:17:00.000+05:30

‘I had a lovers quarrel with the world. ‘- Robert Frost

I never forget the last scene of Wonkar Wai’s film ‘Days of Being Wild’. The devastatingly handsome Hong Kong lothario who seduces and forsakes women without compunction is with a man who asks him if he remembers Su Lizen a woman who he ditched and left to suffer and the Lothario replies ‘how is she’ what she does at 9 pm.

Then he says looking worried ‘Don’t tell her that I remember her’ Let her find happiness somewhere else! At that heart breaking moment for the first time in the whole film it becomes clear to one that this difficult strange man did indeed love the girl whose life he has forever broken in two parts.

The hero dies shortly afterwards in a train gang war and you are left with a deep wound. The wound of seeing lover’s suffering longing for each other in helplessness. That short sharp shock in the film I believe added to the pain of the world that cries for a resolution/closure. I won’t stop thinking about it till the closure is reached!

I also never forget the story in my 9th standard Literature course called ‘Love Love Love’ by VS Naipaul about a black young neighbor they had who had an alcoholic husband who would beat her up blue and black and how she escaped saving her life from him only to come back to him and get beaten up and feel happy about it. There was something about how Naipaul narrated that story that captured the mind of a 15 year old to think so deeply about the compulsion/helplessness of love.

I am sure all of have had men/women around us whose daily love calls were more frightening and annoying than any horror films that we could have attended. The drama of cutting fists for lost loves, the crying the weeping the hysteria all make for some very alive memories in my head. A girl in my hostel in Nashik who would cry everyday for two hours after speaking to her boyfriend. There is a dialogue that she used to shout at him that stays with me forever. After a few guttural sounds like some beast had opened her belly she would shriek to the man on the other end ‘majha traas naku deu” ‘Don’t give me pain’ The problem apparently was that the guy wouldn’t marry her soon enough even though they had very elaborate plans of eloping.

There was another who everyday would beg her boyfriend to not suspect her as she was being completely faithful. Why she cried why trying to explain this thing is a simple thing that I never understood then. Now maybe I do! The story went like this..the girl had a long affair with a guy of a different cast and the guy was a goon back in Jhansi and this girl struck to him because she was afraid that he wouldn’t let her marry anyone else! The same girl is now happily married to another guy. I don’t know her phone routine is anymore peaceful than earlier though!

Another person who stays in my mind for his love story is an editor who would take half hourly breaks every consecutive hour to talk to his girlfriend/wife. He would come back with a red face and teary eyes. I always wondered what was happening between them that made for the frantic nervous calls. I could never tell and I could never ask because he was a fiercely personal sober kind of a person. But just the fact that there he was known more for his breaks than anything else is something I never forget!

Recently I was reading Thich Nhat Hanh’s book on Love called Understanding love where he recalls his short love story. The story is about how this Noble Monk fell in love with a young nun and she too fell in love with him. They however bound under their bows to reach Buddhahood decided not to bite into the temptation and keep doing their duty as a monk and nun. Thay talks about how his agony lasted less than 24 hours before he became aware of the fact that love could even continue long distance and love didn’t mean matrimony or conjugal bliss.

I laughed a hollow little laugh after I finished Thich Nhat Hanh’s book. The sad part about me(and most of the rest of us) is that we are succors for pain and drama. The scale on which Thay speaks is nursery level for us, who have struggled in the worldly love. And for the first time I felt myself falling on the side of these mad people who so far only amused me. I really now do believe that the journey we mortals experience in the dark night of the soul that comes after heartbreak is as noble as any other kind of spiritual journey.

What kind of hardship have you experienced if you haven’t torn your hair apart and wanted to sew the earth and sky so that nothing in between moves to cause the pain that love causes. I hate how we homogenize love and put labels on how it should only lead to the homogenized happiness. You love me I love you equally back. Measured, sane and facile! Thanks But no Thanks!

I suppose the only reason people should be together is very beautifully described by Elizabeth Gilbert "People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave. A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master..."

Having lived for so long off course one knows that love is a sad song and yet "I like to see people reunited, I like to see people run to each other, I like the kissing and the crying, I like the impatience, the stories that the mouth can't tell fast enough, the ears that aren't big enough, the eyes that can't take in all of the change, I like the hugging, the bringing together, the end of missing someone." Some of us are born of hearts more stubborn and stoic than average people. Some of us have more knack for drama. Some of us don’t fall apart despite numerous knocks. Some of us can deal with love despite all the mess it creates! Some of us go round and round and round in love and never stop!

A letter to Indiffrence

2011-08-10T15:28:00.000+05:30

Indifference is the strongest force in the universe. It makes everything it touches meaningless. Love and hate don't stand a chance against it.-The Snow Queen

Dear Indifference,
Never thought Id ever write a letter to you. After all what difference does it make to you whether I write to you or not. You I suppose will still insist on denying me the attention that I demand as a human being, as someone who cares! And we're not quite on talking terms really!
Well I have been meaning to speak to you,You know how you look through me. Defeating me like nothing else does.
Now don’t think I am getting clingy or anything! I am just being a human being who bonds with human beings and finds happiness in relating to others around me! Its not a crime when you are not around to make it all so Toxic Mr Indiffrence’
What a sad scene we humans make when fighting you. Its like a bitch slap. It stings its unjust and its just there! And no one can help. Not friends, not strangers no one can take away the gloom that you leave after you walk over sentient beings.
But today I am at your gate to get to know you better. Where do you come in our lives indifference? Exactly what are you made of? Are you kind of a shield that covers the soft parts of those who wear you around them? Are you a bandage for pain? Do you work in easing the pain on one side of a relationship while hurling it on the other side?
How long do you stay? What do you do the hearts where you make a home? Do they go back to their original natures or are indifferent people forever indifferent? How do you erase the memory of sunny warm days? Do you temporarily disable them or do you delete them forever.
How many lovers have you killed? How many mothers?How many dads? How many friends? How many strangers? How many humans in total?
How does it feel to peel of human beings of their essential nature? Where do you stand and watch one human being looking indifferently at the others sorrow? Is it a high is a low or is it an indifferent feeling for you? How does it feel to see them suffer for their humanly affections? How does this going numb on the pain of same species happen? Do you forget that all humans are made of the same clay and everyones tears are salty. How exactly do you possess and strangle hearts Mr Indiffrence?
You must be related to death in some way no? You bring along all that death brings along. Forgetting and ceasing of emotions or all feelings.What is left in humans after that anyway?! Really?!
It must be a good life being indifference no? Nothing affects you, Nothing hurts you, you remember nothing, you miss nothing, you feel nothing! Causing a deep hollow spot wherever you strike!
Go on as you do indiffrence! I see there must be heavens willing somewhere for you to pitch your tents into the human hearts!
Much love
A human being who suffers from your presence!

With a morning heart

2011-05-24T19:31:00.002+05:30

You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.

~ Billy Wilder.

I have always wondered about what makes a good morning.

Is it the bed you slept on? Is it the last thought you had the previous night, which decides whether its going to be one of those peach coloured mornings, when you get up with your body juiced up eager and hungry for another day.

Is it about the city you get up in? Whether you hear the birds or cacophony of morning traffic, that makes or breaks a morning?

Is it about the bed you slept on? Whether it was just right for you back, butt and neck? Whether it smelled familiar and felt good?

Is it about the person you slept with? Wrapped around each other like a spider’s net, moistened with kisses and tender conversations, which made your eyes heavy and pushed you into a slumber

Is it about what you dreamt? Whether a distant loved one came walking into your dream, held your hand and took you around a rainbow.

Most of my good friends have in common with me this preference for getting up late. We dont stress ourselves with what the clock says. We check inside if its morning ding dong or not yet! It doesnt necessarily match with 6am, 7 am, 8am or 9am. A lot of oldies I love think its some kind of a plague that we younger generation suffer from(this not getting up in the morning to the call of duty). I remember my war with my dad started on the subject of getting up in the morning. He likes to make his presence/ authority felt in those magical hours of the morning. Its when I am crooning in my sweetest hours of slumber and tangiest dreams; that he wants me to be up and about and and cooking breakfast!

Yes maybe it is about the breakfast I never cook which irks him! I being the female of the species must confirm to my duties by reporting in the mornings to the authority of parenthood. And Even though us girls have been raised like boys, having been sent to school and being told to have 'careers' I see this inherent discomfort in the males in my family looking at women sleeping till late. What a blasphemy to see the girls streching languorously on the bed dreaming of who knows what! Surely they must never be found sleeping in the mornings.' They ought to up praying and cooking for it to be a good morning for them!'

So much for the Talibani hopes of my dad(Although I suspect if I had been a boy I would have suffered the same fate as well). Offc ourse I never get up early and feel terrible about it too! Years and years of not having anything motivating enough(I neithe pray nor make breakfast for my family) makes me sleep till late and avoid getting up if at all I can avoid it.

Gradually I realise off late all my good mornings have come from sleeping at unfamiliar places away from the routine of a dragging schedule and people who play like old records, the same tunes every day. I hate them. They make me not want to get up in the morning.

Slowly the itch of wanting to see new colors in that same old sun excite me more and more as I loose years. To think that there can be a different angle and diffrent windows, from which I see the sun everymorning brings on a wonder which brightens me up. When eagerness wells up to gape at the patterns that clouds make is the sky I am greatful.What joy to simply wake up on mornings when the sun doesnt bark out from an alarm clock.

Its only in the rawness of mornings, smelling my own stale breath, that I am at this emotional vantage to turn upside down, all the things I don’t like face up! In the day everything is too much of what It is already, to do anything about it. Its when in the morning I come down from my dreamland and touch the ground, that I dont like to break my sleep.

But I cant do it on all mornings. Only some mornings does my morning heart triumph over the wicked indifferent forces of this world.

I think what’s so special about mornings is that they are the only time of the day when you have the chance to choose between a dream or rationality. The choices are (a) take cognisance of the hard unyielding ground that you stand on and throw the dream in a dustbin.(b) feel the dream in the little of your palm and leap with it.

Whether you sink or fly is the buisness of the other part of the day. But the morning dharma surely is simple.

Leap starting the engine of the heart with every round of the sun. No matter how illogical, no many how stupid the dream is. You kill the morning if you kill the dream in your heart. My best mornings have been with completely insane dreams. Standing on a shitmoutian and thinking of Himalayas. Driving on the Ghaziabad highway thinking of streets of Paris. Who knows whether actual Himalayas and streets of paris when they come will bring any real happiness or not!

So I love my mornings with morning hearts. Reality/Duty/Uprightness/Morality/Foresight can you please excuse me in this lifetime? No place for you in my morning with my morning heart.

Mad in Mumbai- Memoir ’

2011-01-30T13:54:00.003+05:30

I remember the early morning bus to Mumbai. Landing up in mist and seeing the sea for the first time. It was such a shame to finally arrive in Mumbai at 25years of age. But it was magic too. I didn’t know what awaited me, but I was in love and felt quite blind. So I parked myself in a city where nothing blew off in alarm when I looked at it absentmindedly. They didn’t know what the alert and same me was. So they wouldnt question me during that zonked period .I would stay here till this sudden blind spot that filled me with wooziness lasted. Till the static of 5000 gongs buzzing in my head died down. Or at least settled itself!

I imagined that’s how elephants fell in love. Madly. Truly. Deeply. There were other ways of falling in love too. Slightly, romantically, flirtatiously, moderately, sexually but none of those options were available to me. I dived into it straight like an elephant would jump into swimming pool. Clumsily. The whole of me at one go, without keeping any other eggs in any other basket. In retrospect it looks like a suicide mission for whatever could go wrong did go wrong. But at that time the earnestness kept me afloat. It was the first time my mind had been pulverised by anything other than mathematics. And it felt GOOD and made me feel blind. As blind as driving a car with front mirror covered in mixed fruit jam would make you feel.

The big authoritative voices that kept shouting at me all my life suddenly became well wishing whispers that would just creep out of mouse holes and whisper and disappear. Career Careeer Career? Where is it going where is it going? Money Money Money. This money will run out run out run out. As soon as I turned to look at them they would freeze like they were hollow echoes’ and had nothing important to say. Anyways listening to them all my life hadn’t made me any smarter or richer. So now I could tell them ‘Fuck you’ at least let me try for happiness.

Suddenly I felt like pretty girl who walked like a drunken elephant on the streets of Mumbai with friends who only thought she was lost because she had no job!I had proposed a man finally after all these years and he had agreed to ‘give it a shot’. I had for the first time in my life walked across a city wearing a blood red skirt with a sleeveless blouse and not felt conscious about it. I had for the first time smelled the vast sea at Versova and breathed the creamy texture of the freedom sitting around the little barista at seaside.

It was another world into which I had unknowingly arrived. What freedom it was from the days of reporting everyday to my mom on the phone truthfully. Every little detail of what was happening. Who I went out with and why I got late and how I got safely dropped back home.Why for the first time in my life I could walk out on the road at 1pm to look for chai and sit beside the sea and then come back home without having to look at any disapproving faces! I could even not come back home for the whole night and next day find that approval from friends who were growing impatient with my oh so platonic notions of freedom! It was the first time I encountered pregnancy kits in the bathroom and it gave me a strange wicked pleasure. Someday I would use these too. I thought boldly.

Then one morning I felt all washed up and cleaned and rebirthed on the 16th floor of a building. I was wearing my electric blue lycra jeans which had a skull on its butt pocket and my Faiz Ahmed Faiz people’s tree Tshirt. It read my favourite poem ‘ aur bhi hain gum zamane main mohabbat ke siva’ But I wasn’t thinking of escaping sorrow! I lay there wanting to just be able to see clearly what was I doing with my life really? I knew it wasnt anything bad, evil or immoral or anything. Just that this wasnt the pace at which I had lived and I had to go back to the old mirror to see the new face.

Too much had happened in a month’s time. I had run away from home. My uncle had died of paralysis. I had hopped on a train reached Belgaun to visit an aunt I hadn’t seen in eight years.

There were pigeons outside and the January morning reminded me of playing with shadows in my childhood home veranda. This wasn’t the city of verandas and I had to rush to office but just getting up that morning it looked like I had gathered all the small playful shards of sunlight to last me entire life to play with. That morning that clarity hasn’t come to me again. But every time I open the little purse in my heart all the little shards start dancing again. I wonder if the will last me till I am old and ugly.
Who knows they just might.

An Achkan for Achkan Mirza

2011-01-03T00:47:00.001+05:30

For a minute I didn’t believe that he had called me for this! He wanted an Achkan for a wedding he had to attend!

Long back I had teased him sarcastically about being like ‘Achkan Mirza’ the character from my 5th standard CBSC Hindi reader. An elderly misanthrope who was completely adorable for his suspicion that the whole world conspired against him to take away his Achkan. The Achkan to Achkan Mirza was all that he had earned in his life. Choosing not to have wife and kids but only integrity and honesty and character. As he grew older and became delusional he started believing people would steal away his Achkan because it was so precious. To the world it was an old piece of cloth that was too dusty and bobbled to be welcomed inside their houses.

So everyone teased the old man and started calling him Achkan mirza. The man mad about his coat.

‘He’ was a lot like Achkan Mirza. But I was really shocked when he actually declared that he would wear an Achkan to that wedding he had to go to. He wanted me to find an Achkan for him. From a piece of literature it became a practical commodity that had to be shopped. I became nervous about finding an Achkan. After all what was an Achkan? No one knew for sure. Google had no answers and my entire knowledge system collapsed.

Surely someone in Jamia would know. (With all the Urdu they had flaunted and used like a weight against me to keep me down in the elitist divide) I started with Javed. So Mr Javed with all his love for Javed Akhtar’s Urdu poetry still did not know what an Achkan was and where to find it. My asking however aroused his curiosity to infinity about why would I bother about an ‘Achkan’. Was it some kind of Islamic chicken that Punjabis exported to Canada? Was it some kind of a sex toy used by the fast girls who wore torn pants?

I rushed off swearing not to ask anyone else in my office about ‘Achkan’ come to think of it. It did sound like a bawdy chicken!

Running against the deadline I called ‘him’. Although I dreaded it. What would he think? I didn’t even know what an Achkan was! How would he trust me about buying him the best one in town?
Tring Tring

Me-‘’ aa. Err . Listen I know what an Achkan is but do you mind telling me what exactly do you mean when you say it. I don’t want to get you the wrong kind you know!’’

Him- Smirk. Ok it’s a gents garment, the kind Ustad Bismillah Khan wears.

Me – Stunned Silence

Him- Hello! Hello!

Me- Umm errr BBB

Him- Listen Do you even know Bismillah Khan? Were you born while he was alive?

Me- What do you mean! Off course I know who he is! Ok Bye!

Secretly I was thinking- But what did he wear? They never showed us his long shot. All everyone ever watched was the Shehnai in his mouth. Maybe he did those 1hour shows on DD when I was young. I only remembered the Nehru Topi.

So I went to the market absolutely clueless. Just hoping that it wasn’t some flashy kind of Arabic Thong that men wore over their trousers superman style.

I thought surely Jamia Nagar was my best bet to find an Achkan. Some old elite Urdu stylist/store would surely have a vintage collection in that magical Aladdin market. So I sat on a rickshaw and felt like an old duchess. For wasn’t I going out to shop for antiquity so antique that half the ignorant world dint even know what was I talking about.

Within 5 minutes of the bumpy rickshaw ride my insides were levelled. I asked the first man who looked to be living above poverty line about where I would find an Achkan. He looked right back at me and asked ‘a what?’ A chicken I gulped! ‘ yahan nahin milega madam’ He looked at me angrily and went away!

I didn’t mind an unpleasant stranger but more and more came. And no one told me what an Achkan was. Maybe it was a chastity belt that was tied around men. Maybe it was a diamond studded coat. Who knew? It was like that Hanuman underwear that bachelors wore.

Finally I found a man. I mean I found a man who assured me that He knew what I wanted. (Although I didn’t know it myself) So he pointed to this skin coloured garment with garish orange embroidery and then said. This is the closest thing I have. It’s called OUTER. I have this last piece. Buying that was out of question. Bismillah Khan was surely not to be found dead in Bappi Da style of stuff!

I struggled more. Found a shop which said they had it. But it was in their workshop and it would take those 6 hours to get it. I was almost tempted to invest so much time. After all I would have finally seen that male garment which in all my 27 years had never seen on a man. What’s more I could have seen ‘him’ wear that male garment.

This was becoming exciting I thought. Almost in the way the Native American tribal EVES must be hunting for a tiger and then making underwear out of its skin. To gift it to the alpha male But I knew I was stretching it. With so little know about the garment most probably only arcane nawabs felt alpha wearing that thing called Achkan. And Bismillah Khan was dead too (God bless his soul)

The next day I and he were back the regulars. We went to Chun Mun Garments and got him a super cool Burberry coat.

But the thoughts of looking for an Achkan for him have stayed with me. Maybe it’s just a stupid idea that was passed on to my head by him. But I often dream of haunting the streets looking for that perfect Achkan.

PS- My guess is they stopped making Achkan when the old world gallantry of being a gentleman died.

Confessions of an Adrenaline Junkie.

2010-12-16T15:22:00.003+05:30

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`

2010-12-13T22:49:00.000+05:30

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

2010-11-19T11:29:00.005+05:30

"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'

2010-11-15T10:50:00.000+05:30

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

2010-08-27T11:35:00.000+05:30

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

2010-08-24T14:41:00.004+05:30

"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!

2010-08-09T11:24:00.004+05:30

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

2010-08-05T13:57:00.002+05:30

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

2010-07-23T13:05:00.002+05:30

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...

2010-07-18T00:13:00.001+05:30

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...

2010-07-05T18:02:00.002+05:30

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

2010-07-02T11:51:00.001+05:30

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~

2010-06-29T17:03:00.000+05:30

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

2010-06-13T23:39:00.001+05:30

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

2010-06-03T16:59:00.003+05:30

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

2010-05-30T12:53:00.000+05:30

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?

2010-05-27T19:15:00.000+05:30

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...

2010-05-25T23:43:00.000+05:30

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

2010-05-24T15:22:00.000+05:30

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

2010-05-14T14:24:00.001+05:30

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

2010-05-12T15:56:00.000+05:30

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

Staring at Cameras and Mirrors on a shoot.

2010-04-29T16:32:00.005+05:30

Monkey Mind- Oh Damn its running late by 1and half hours already my guests will arrive and make my life hell!

Phone Buzzes- Ms Hypoglycemia- The taxi still hasn’t arrived still…you know this is the 3rd time this is happening to me. I don’t know what kind of people you are!blah blah..

Monkey Mind- That production support guy he has bungled again!!! Oh god! I will get him fired today! he always gets me in trouble on the shoot!

I Speak-Pray Madam Please we have had a real real crisis please adjust please come.

Ms hypoglycemia- Fuck off I am not coming! I have better things to do

Anchor 1- You told me she was Shikha Verma, She is Shikha Sharma. You will make me look foolish on TV!

Monkey Mind- Oh thats because the verma cancelled because she had guests and sharma turned up because I emotionally blackmailed her to come by asking her to do this for other women like her!Didnt tell you cause thats just too much of pre text for you to handlebefore the shoot!

Anchor 2- I am having a bad hair day please make sure that you get it right on the camera or else..

Monkey Mind- Yes Madam! Anything you say! You are vary important person!

Production support- The taxi guy has cancelled to come from Paschim Vihar ask your guest to take a taxi and come herself!
I speak- She has had an abortion last week. Please send her a taxi!
Monkey Mind- Oh god that woman cant afford a taxi! I dont even want to take that chance for her! These production guys forgot to reimburse last time!

Production support- Ask her to pick the case study 2(Ms pregnant) from Dwarka while coming!
Monkey Mind- Oh that pricey bitch would have torn all her hair if she has to share the taxi.That would be too much of bad mood to be handled with cold drink on the shoot! Please avoid!
I speak-please listen this cant happen!Case Study 2 (Ms Pregnant) is hi fi she will refuse to come with Case study 1. Get them on different cars!

Boss- We are rolling the 3rd episode as the second- Call your case studies accordingly~!
Monkey mind- Oh I think I am fainting! Oh god oh god oh god!
I speak - WHAT?! You Cant!
Boss- Offcource we can. dont waste my time now!

Make up guy- By when you think the payment will be cleared. I need money at the end of this month. Last time you’re these people faltered on the payments big time
Monkey Mind (dude I have no clue!! You certainly don’t look like you have acquired any luck from the last time. Would you feel better if I told you that I havent received my last two payments?)
To him- It should happen pretty soon Ramu! Why don’t you ask the accountant?

Phone Buzzez- The case study 4 cancelled. There was no AC in the car that went to pick her up!
Monkey Mind- I am finished now! this is the 3 rd case study who has backed out!
I speak- What!@!! Send the taxi behind her…I am talking to her! Don’t let her out of sight she cant do this
Monkey Mind ..what kind of a bitch refuses to come when there is no AC in the car!!!
To the case study 4- Listen you come ok? Or I’ll make sure nobody calls you on any show ever again. I am NDTV remember!

Channel Head on the round- You know there should be more shows on sex. Thats the only was we get TRP on channel 2~ The audiences want to be able to discusss SEXXXXXXX.
Monkey Mind- Sex oh no! Whoever wants to talk about his/her sex life on tv!

Long long long time and Pack up!

April Chronicles...

2010-04-19T15:44:00.002+05:30

Dreaming April

For as long as I remember I have spent my birthday on April 26th in the mountains with Ruskin Bond(in my dreams silly!). This started at the sweet age of 8 after I was hijacked into his world on reading the short story called 'Women on Platform No 9'.

The story beautifully transcended the margins of sexuality, geography, age and race. It was so 'ME' that I started thinking of this writer as a 'cooler extension' of me living in the mountains. Slowly the duality of the writer and reader disappeared. He wasn't a separate man writing about his life. He was just another 'me' living in Mussorie with Prem and his children smelling the onions frying in his kitchen. This kind of familiarity was turning really difficult to manage on a practical level. So I took in into my dreams to process all the business that we had together. Him and Me.

I could have met him in real life too but for what? What would I say to him when we met?

Hello Mr. Bond. My name is Ruskin Bond too. Pearl Ruskin Bond Sandhu!

I think its really cruel that you don't know but you ought to know that I have been in love with you since I was 8 years old.(How come you didn't know? You started this whole business by writing Didn't you?~!) Ah no...So it was going to turn into ugly real life if I ever met him really...So I haven't in all these years.

Mr Bond I fondly remember the times we slept together. The times you were whispering stories of the cold sweet mountain air in my ears. The times you told me about your lost loves, poverty, and your tardy typewriter.Oh and It was such a sad walk that we took together the day you met your mother for the last time in hospital. I wish you had let me hold your hand but you were walking so fast in that Delhi heat. Oh and that Vietnamese girl that you fell in love with? Vu Phong. I became her that night you made love to her and the Jasmine and honeysuckle shook in the wind outside our window.

Thats how the dreaming opened doors to my real life. The life that had brought me in touch with this man who meant so much to me that that dreaming was the only real way of meeting him!So like a well behaved young lady I never told anyone about this great elderly love of my life.( Off course I don't love his old age. I love him for his madness!)

So its become an annual ritual now. I dream of being in Ruskin Bond's company every year on my Birthday. We sit down over cups of tea and Cherry cakes. He looks at me lovingly like he has known me forever. In my dreams he is a vulnerable lost man who desperately needs to know how much I love him. And I really do. And we discuss writing books together. We tear down our silly publishers(but we never make fun of readers!). He even writes funny forwards to my travelogues.

The mountain wind whispers on our dinner table. The 44* Degress of April (of my not loved reality) outside completely disappears in the drones of crickets playing outside his Ivy Cottage home in Mussorie. Thats when the window closes and I can only see warm lights from a distance. I never know what we do in that house after I sleep in sweaty April heat of my physical reality. But I swear I get up with a sweet after taste of cherry cake the next mornings.

April Chronicles..

2010-04-19T03:09:00.003+05:30

April is my most cruel month.Its hot and ungracious. Its unrelenting and hopeless. It also is too long for my liking.

April Memories

Once when I was younger Mom Dad took me to visit Kang Farm in Sasaiyan where TT Uncle had married and settled with his Australian wife 'April'. Theirs was one of those plush mechanised farms in the Terrai. It was so exotic really. They had Grey Hounds and German Shephards running around without leashes on the farm. The lovely garden which flowered even in April and offcourse those star shaped cookies they served with Tea. It was all too much for the poor little small town me. But what I most of all I remeber is April, the first blond relative I had acquired. I must have been 6 years old then. She was so tall and so pretty.So much prettier than my dusky old familiar mom . The registeration of her presence in my memory is like a shock of white heat. A bright patch with lot of light and excitemnet but no details.

Years later one got to know that Uncle had got divorced and April had left him, leaving behind a daughter with white skin and black eyes called May. May wore pink flannel frocks and spoke cute english and was so much prettier and adorable that the natty 12 year old me. By now the farm had 3 Great Danes and a Pomerarian and 5 hens running around . The garden was unkempt and Uncle TT had setlled abroad leaving little May behind in the care of her very feeble and old grandparents who did not understand her language. I was always afraid that the huge dogs would eat May.

The farmhouse slowly lost its charm for me except that one memory of Aunt April that has stayed all these years. For me Aunt April would always remain that enigma I had found walking on Uncle's farm. That tall strikingly beautiful woman who blasted everone with her sizzling chemistry even when she just walked beside much shorter Uncle TT. Her orange lipstick, her sparkling blue eyes and her loud manly laughter. In burning April afternoons I often remember her peeping through the net of the wooden door calling Uncle TT to come in for Tea. She was so beautiful and hardy that I dont belive that the house ever divorced her memories although Uncle TT found another australian wife who never visited the farm in India.(for good reason I am sure!)
In the naked heat of April the sharp colours of memory too turn cruel and I remember Aunt April. She gave Kang family that eternal space in my memory with her shadows passing through the thick April sunlight. Strong colourful and cruel. Not to be kept but only remebered.

Memory is made of salt and embers

2010-04-07T01:05:00.000+05:30

Memory is made of salt and embers. Look at what I have remebered!

The 1st strange dream of fecundity. Of fairies dancing around a tree bowing with ripe mangoes in a basement near my childhood home. I stood there thirsty for my chance to bite at a mango. But I stood in awe of white sparkling wings of fairies dancing in a circle. The dream comes back everytime I am in a new place pregnent with possibilities.

The taste of sweet parathas packed in a steel lunch box resembling a iron press. It always tasted the same 6 days a week. Mom doesnt make those paranthas anymore.

The graveyard that I passed on the way to school. Thats where our milkman died while grazing his cattle. He was riding a horse and the horse died too.

The little snake kept in a beaker in the Clinic of a doctor who put a menancing iron rod inside my throat to check my tonsils (I think that part of my throat still hurts because of what he did then). The snake looked very very sinister despite its size.

The vacation where Ma Pa and I were coming back from Nanital and the thunder shouted over our Jeep. There were raw mangoes covering the road and some fell on the windscreen of the White Mahindra Jeep that Dad drove.

The stadium where they kept the Ravana effigies before assembling them for Dusshera. It was such a far away place from home. But there was so much magic in it.

The white lily bed near the veranda in the Bareilly house. I think there was some black magic in those pink and white flowers that brought strange sensations to a 12 year old girl's mind.

Gill aunty( and I dont know her name..except Gill aunty..I dont even think her kids know her name) chopping onions and garlic in her little brown mixer sitting on her haunches. Now that she is dead I still remeber her doing that. I think thats what she did at all times of the day . Prepare Tadka for the food.

How I dance crazy to the Nache Mayuri song the day I came back home to celebrate the Summer vacations starting from next day.

The face of My first school principal Sister Adolphus who died. I still have her signs in my report cards of KG, 1ST , 2ND , 3RD, 4TH Class. I dont think she ever noticed that I too existed on this planet. She is gone but I am still here!

The salt stays in my blood, and skin. The embers shines in the anger against all the stays with me but doesnt take me along with it..If only the salt would dissolve and the embers die. The karma would clear up and I could be free.....

Walk free

2010-03-21T04:48:00.000+05:30

Dear Story,

Its hard not to think of you today. It’s today that we met. You and I my beloved story.I don’t know if I walked into you or you walked into me. But it was quite a thing (this meeting) I always knew you were larger and bigger than what I could handle. But I trusted that I could carry you out. How wrong I was.

I remember the first time I looked into your eyes and dared to tell you that I was infact planning to bring you out. I could almost see the angels standing up and showering flowers. Here It was happening in real time. You would live forever, and I through you. The great beginning! Golden and Inevitable. For how could It not have happened? Every little twig, every bloody flower was whispering about us. Propelling us on this journey of coming out in the world to create.

I was so young and earnest that I never believed that any story that began like that could escape immortality. There were one thousand dreams that took of that day about what all would follow once you came. They were like parachutes of rainbow that started circling everywhere I went.

The DND at 90 Kmph. Swooosh! 5parachutes, Brahma studios Swishhhhhhhhh 15parachutes, Ruby Tuesday Fshhhhhhhwwww 500parachutes. Rao Tula Ram Marg Trrrrrrr 350 Parachutes, Krishna Chowk chssshhhhh 80 parachutes, IHC Drrrrrrshhhhh 5000Parachutes. Spice Mall trisshhhhhhhhh 43000parachutes. (They have still not all come back to me! I see them flying much above where I can shoot them down to come back to senses!)

And then I started seeing your cruel will my story . You didn’t want to come with me! Escaping me in big and small ways. You would run to others. You would disappear and appear in a stranger’s gaze. You would keep me waiting for hours and hours for just a few words. From just being my story you started becoming this great catch which ran faster and faster ahead of me!

There appeared no Blue pearls on the white immense paper of my notebook. The days and days and days and nights and nights and nights that I lived with a pen in my hand waiting for you. Struggling for a line that would take us ahead. Me and you. You and me. Me and thoughts of you. Me and me and Thoughts of you. No you! Only the palpable desire of straightening you on a page. I ran so hard. So hard. Got so bruised so bruised.

I didn’t know stories had their wills and ways. Such persistent cunning and morbidity. Even when you danced around my pillow , we slept alone and never met. Oh how hard I dreamed and prayed of bringing you out. The tears I cried when I thought of your cruel will You wily story!

I give up today my story. At the peak of my strength will and love. Go where you must go. Be whatever you must be. I won’t curse you anymore ( I never meant it anyway!) Go dance around like a cottonsilk seed. Drop where you really must grow. Die unplanted if thats what you like.

I have broken my pen today. Walk free of me my story.

Walk Free!

Saving me with a book

2010-03-14T00:14:00.000+05:30

Dear Natalie Goldberg,

I will never forget how I met you at that cramped Cyber Cafe in Aligang, near the Gulacheen Temple in that graceful city of Lucknow where I lived when I was 16. There shuttling on the internet between online romances, smart quotes, and Post graduate courses( to find a respectable career) I found that online version of Writing Down the Bones. I lived with it many days before I felt a sense that couldn't live without a Hard Copy of that stuff(It really was like dope!). It became my Bible and you became the woman who walked in front of me telling me just how real women walked.

There were so few ideals then for a girl of my size growing up in a city without any considerable distractions of male attention. I held on to you like nothing else would save me. And nothing else did. Not the degrees I took. Not the heady work I did. Nor the Company of Television Heroes I was so enamored by. Barkha Dutt, Rajdeep Sardesai, Sankarshan Thakur, Tarun Tejpal. All of them have lost that slickness in life.Why even real people that I fell in love with did nothing to save me. They all crumbled right in front of my eyes.

In the agony of stony places. In the glint of adoring eyes. In the ennui that lasted and costed me a considerable amount of life...You stayed in my bones. Keeping me strong. I always knew something was gonna grow from it. This writing practice that got into my blood stream gave me the ceremony to mourn my losses. The color to paint blazing colors from the sallow tastes on my tongue. The rhythm that played in my ribs when there were no dances I was dying for.

Katagiri Roshi The teacher who taught you to watch your monkey mind came to me through you Natalie. I know that man, his straight back, his coldness and wisdom and his smile. I met him on a lot of your pages. I am afraid I fell in love with him too. And I realized how he was just supposed to be a teacher and not a alive presence. I never knew his smell though.( And I know why you kept it from me!) I know all the hamburgers you ate and all the houses you lived in. Your father and your Mom. Your sister and your car. Your divorce too. How did you transcend so many blocks of distance/age/country/culture to hold my attention( AND REVERENCE!!!!) for such a long period of time. Surely you too will pass from my life, wont you?

When I read you I feel I have a life that can be made something of too. You had fallen where I had fallen and you got up looking respectable. I too would. There were no children who had made your existence more profound than mine. There was no soul mate you had met and I had missed out on meeting because of my dumbness. There was no home where people waited for you, there were no friends which you had which were warmer than mine. We are so same same. Teacher Guru. Mad Women Mad women. Mad women making sense of the nonsense!

You live so far away in Santa Fe in New Mexico. I dont even know where it is! How much does it cost to reach there? How much to just deliver a parcel? Would you mind if I land up outside your door one day? I'll get purple flowers. Just to mark my gratitude. And when those flowers sit on your writing desk..Will you know what you have given to me?

Love and Gratitude
Pearl

PS- I am so proud of myself I haven't married the fly! :)

All that passes from my hands..

2010-03-04T02:18:00.000+05:30

Dear Writing Gods,

I wish I could give the ligthning and thunder of a new life to my writing. But when I sit down on the floor with my laptop , mosquitos bite into my blood my unwaxed skin itches with dryness. I cant create magic. I had assumed that writing would open new worlds but this writing only takes me deeper and deeper into the same old stories. I keep returning to the past. Where is the new sparkling life I was promised? Instead of letting go I turn to clasp tighter!

I go back to my old birthdays, the times candles could be placed on a half kg cake. The gifts that I wanted to get but never got. The friends that I wished would come. But never came.
To the warm smiles of my friends who stood with the their (now) exes. They looked so good together! Where did the magic disappear between them.
The flowering trees which shouted about the changing season. I only have pictures of them on my web albums now.
The songs I loved hearing. They still keep lilting in the past. The sweet songs of love (sic) I will never hear them anymore but they sounded so sweet then!
Oh and the rivers I would run to purge myself of the madness. The madness keeps returning.

Maybe it happens because of the time locks that I put to each magical moment. The times when the moment was so precious that I would close my eyes and put a psychic lock. Click! Please dont pass me by. Stay! Grow!
And they grow. In the past and in my writing. Like remember the first time I was flying to Pune.. I closed my fists so hard and pushed and shoved god! This should happen more often! I keep going back to that flight now. With the appetising taste of a new city and new people. I have no buisness left in Pune anymore. And yet every now and then I am back into that Air India flight. 18 years. Dressed in blue jeans and white top. 15 kgs overweight. Happy to be on an aeroplane alone to say a big hello to a new world. Those people that I didnt meet come back to haunt me.
The time I stood squinting at the statue of Ahilya Bai Holkar at the Maheshwar fort. The pandits were rolling 5000 shivlings of earth to be given out to Narmada. She started worshipping shiva after her husband died. She was the most compassionate ruler the whole of Malwa had seen. I felt the rigor mortis of the dead husband descending into my system. All of this woman's glory started with the deaths of men around her. My guess is she never let them die. Held on too tightly ! I stared at the statue of this tall gangly woman dressed in white. Sometimes stones stare back. I stapled that stare into myself. I was going to use this. This was no ordinary meeting of women. I had said Hi! to a woman who had who had changed the shape of walls by the iron in her will. I could certainly use this high of meeting her somewhere in my life. She came with me in memory since that day. She is a big person to carry around! But I have lugged her around and spoken to her on the long way from my home to office. It isnt a long way from Ghaziabad to Gurgaon. I couldnt ever finish one conversation with her about how much I liked doing what I was doing! She smiled at me when I told her all that..I hated people who thought it was a waste of time to travel those two points. She didnt come out to talk to me on any other route!
Its all passed me by now. It lives more ferociously than ever before.

Love
PS

Learning to lech at women.

2010-03-02T04:08:00.000+05:30

I started this learning in a very cross state. I had to give up believing that women were also human beings (like children and men) Its a learning that happened because of an accident that paralyzed me for roughly three years. I was on bed with plasters and I could only see the world through another pair of eyes.(a particular man's eyes) I don't know if I am grateful for this learning. It has given me shameless eyes that zoom into a extreme close up as soon as a woman comes in the visibility range. A lot of my friends tell me that they get embarrassed by this leching. I try to explain that I am not leching for myself. I do it to perfect my understanding of the Maletric system of judging women.

So this man I learned from looked at women everywhere and kept imparting his judgments(maletric offcourse!). At traffic lights, in the plane aisles, at the hotel lobbies, in his office, in his veranda, in the studio. I dont know if the women who passed his examinations did better in life than the ones who flunked it completly. I however know that he was nicer to the ones who scored high on this mailtric system! He gave them better chances, praised them more often and yes he engaged with the hi scorers.I don't know if I failed or passed. I have had to work terribly hard to get over my preoccupation of scoring at (his/our) this test. Every point that I losed broke my heart. And offcourse I lost more points than I could have let go off!

I write this because I dont much like the way I look at women these days. I want to go back to the times when pretty women were just pretty women and not a pair of boobs competing against another!The old way of seeing them was so much more comfortable.But this judging is a trait that came from my old company. It kind of started gaining presence in me. After all it was a well defined universal system of measuring desirability of women.Besides it was goddamn empowering to just look at the boobs and never have to hear and engage with these other human beings!

So I started by copying that Stare ## Scanning 123........Too old*. Too Fat* Big boobs* small boobs* oh wow boobs* Great body* Dumb Fuck* Easy fuck* Rich bitch* Smart Bitch* Sweet girl* Powerful bitch* Put her in a sack and hand it to me bitch*. Sweet talk kind* Sad kind* Eager kind* Enthusiastic type* Married* Divorced* With kids* deserves attension* Ignore* Vulnerable* Needy* Desperate!* Beautiful* Ugly* Looked pretteir when she was slimmer*

It seeped into one. Offcourse women werent exactly human beings(They had two dangling boobs, legs and eyes and lips!) The whole (male) Universe had these gradings.The 'Maletrick system'. So the first rule was to figure out women. It wasnt an easy thing to learn. One flinched. A human being of whatever age was being sliced into a woman(boobs legs eyes and lips) And their stories always began with their boobs.(or whatever else flashed first in front of those eyes. mostly it was boobs)

So I remeber the first time those eyes grew warm at a yellow nylon shirt clad dumb bengali chic(yes there are! such ones too!) My eyes saw a being fumbling for words,with no hold on the language, making silly arguments, pouting too much at lips and chest. Then the alter eyes took over- Great figure, 5feet 6 inches tall. Maroon lipstick. cheap hire. Interseting! Get her on.

That dusky thin girl with a dour smile. The alter eyes saw nothing. Drooping boobs, too much reticence, too much intelligence! Sorry we are closed!

The pretty girl with crooked teeth who smiled everytime she didnt catch sense? Yeah! The alter eyes remeber her. She wore nice transparent white tops and smiled coyly everytime looked at. Now that is innocence!

That intelligent girl with braces?( Hmm nice but you see wouldnt think of kissing her right so 5 marks down!)

That hardworking woman who stayed up the nights with an ill child? (It didnt exactly add to her ageing skin or make her a pleasant presence no?)

The whorish tall one who smelled of hairdye all the time?(Well she was good to sit beside on the sofa you know but she spoke so much that she could have nibbled away one's ear!)

The big boobed dumb one.( Big boobs can get tiring beyond a point!)

So I got on the same page with that man. I have his eyes in me now! It destroyed my eyesight. I wear big glasses now. I have learnt forever the language of grading women. It has left me with a very low opinion of myself( there are always more luscious boobs and pouting lips walking around on longer legs!) But I can do it to other women, what those eyes did to me!

Shapes of release

2010-02-24T13:04:00.000+05:30

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!

2010-02-16T01:39:00.000+05:30

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

2010-02-12T15:41:00.000+05:30

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!

2010-02-08T16:04:00.000+05:30

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.

2010-02-06T01:53:00.000+05:30

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

2010-02-03T14:26:00.000+05:30

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.

The faces I grow

2010-01-29T12:02:00.000+05:30

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

2010-01-27T01:59:00.000+05:30

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

2010-01-24T03:21:00.000+05:30

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...

2010-01-12T01:44:00.000+05:30

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..

2010-01-10T02:38:00.000+05:30

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!

Sand Wind and Stars~

2009-12-31T15:58:00.000+05:30

Dear Dadaji,

When I look at your picture I am amazed at how many parts of you have left around us like the sand wind and the stars. Your hands that live in Papa’s hands, Your gentle presence that Papa exudes just the way you did, sitting hours in the winter sun.

I don’t remember your passing away bringing up any sadness in my 5 year old heart. The stench of urine that coming from your room cut me off from you. I was so scared to enter then. You were growing old and I was growing young. I was getting the power to make choices to be with people or to avoid them. I would avoid you for days and days when you would call for me. I felt I could altogether avoid the unnecessary involvement with death disease and decay (Although not so consciously!) Sometimes when I could muster enough good sense to enter your room which had Papa’s tools hanging on the walls you would lovingly tell me broken stories. Some stories that I already remembered, some I recognized to be warped some completely drones of your sound breaking.

On clear days you would come out of your room and take a walk. And I remember your lively long stepped walk. You were such a tall man. It was difficult to think that someone so well formed could be falling apart in body.

Its strange I never saw you intensly alive. You were always my old dadaji to me. The most electric I have seen you were in your stories of travels across the world. Your days of fighting the world war in Hungary where you got lice in your hair. Your hundred stories of Raja Ram Chandra of Ayodhya who had a dutiful wife. The stories of your illiterate brothers and your bringing them to civilization and farming in the terai of Nanital. I still read your books kept in the dingy store room in Bareilly now. Although I find it hard to imagine that you read them too. I still remember your shiny white strong teeth. They lasted you more than mine will! I remember that Tall lanky figure with a flowing white beard and didn’t quite know what kind of a man you would have made for woman around you. But I know the man you were in your bones and blood. I carry you inside me like the sand wind and stars.

Love

Seetal

Be my Calender Boy Mr Kingfisher!

2009-12-09T22:46:00.000+05:30

Dear Mr Mallya,

As I stare uncomfortably at the Kingfisher calenders protruding out of nooks of the worktables of offices,I feel a tweaking tinge of irritation threatening to blow up into anger! Scantily dressed Barbie dollish women twining around a creepers, bathing in scanty waterfalls. All women beautifully shortchanged in this whole process(the ones being parading in the calenders,ones who start aspiring to be in these calenders, the ones who will never make it to these calenders(not to be forgetting the ones who write pieces such as on 'the calender')

This heady sense of exclusivity that money can offer, The cameras transforming
penis's into lens! the models exclusive pedigree like some sort of hybrid horses/or bitches. Your Big Idea of harnessing these natural resources in a calender!( boobs bellies and and legs of of pretty young nubile women) Everybody loves these calenders I am told so whats my problem with this kind of exclusive high art? My problem Mr Kingfisher is that I think It is a bad show! And i hate it when it gets plastered around the walls! Why should I be forced to indulge your fantasies(or of those who aspire to be like you?!)?

I am not impressed at all! Why should your constipated art take the place of honour in my terrain? Why should my opinion be held any lesser value than yours? I am the customer king Mr King of goodtimes! I buy your beer, fly your airline,and watch your channel!

My calenders ought to have a certain standard! I don't want these neo'rich babes crowding my breathing space. I like Royalty! I think you would make a very interesting calender boy! That royal ruddy shining on your skin(like burnishing gold! literally!!!) I even think if you were to bare your belly on an exotic location my fantasies may spiral up till the sky! Your smile is so sexy too. I want to see you smile at me on my table top. And those layers of flab on your shoulders never matter to anyone, they are soo big with power. Let me see you stretch for me till the two ends of the horizon just like your property. I soo like you rich stinking money body odor man! Why cant you dance naked on the beach for me(and for those other women who pay for your beer in their hard earned cash!) Lets carve out fair terms of service now! Give me a fair worth for what I pay! Dance naked for me old man I(we) will bathe you in money too, and I dont mind real life blemishes and old age!

Looking forward to some good times

(Not on your calender) woman

Staring at you

2009-12-07T14:53:00.000+05:30

Dear Buddha,

This hunger doesn’t go! I go around the world in the nakedness of my hunger only revealing it to the world in the greed of being fed! I try forgetting it and moving on with ‘better things of life’ But when its noon and and when its dawn, when I sleep and when I get up, early morning and late in the night the hunger remains. Its hard to get over it. My dream doesn’t break and my hunger doesn’t recede. I remain as small as ever!
I want to bite the long giants walking past me. They don’t seem to be bothered with things like hunger at all. I know they have their own journeys and I have my own crosses to bear and yet they seem responsible for all that I lose in life. I bite them and they kick at my stomach. Shame follows. It has happened so many times before and every time again and again my hunger resounds gurgles and gets me up on my feet from my stomach.I am up biting them again. Shame doesnt last longer than hunger!There is a strange omniscient persistence in this hunger. I have to bow to it against my efforts(I dont get to own a WILL) I am not being wily, I am only being hungry!
If only these giants could spare some thoughts for my life.I would have blessed them But they are arrogant rascals! They think they can kick and walk on! I don't have any defense against my hunger Buddha. I get back and bite for the cause of my hunger. Help me either cure my hunger or bite off the head of these Giants!

Unhappily
hungary ghost

Image Courtesy-http://www.greyfotos.blogspot.com/

My favorite hell

2009-11-24T16:11:00.000+05:30

"In the beginning there was a river. The river became a road and the road branched out to the whole world. And because the road was once a river it was always hungry."

Hungry desolate ghosts walked on it night and day...they had little memories of the the period of abundance. They just remebered their hungers and kept weeping and crying for want of things. Their hungers and broken dreams were the only real things in their lives. No one could have blamed them for their small crying selves.

Then their were the tall giants who walked on that road.

Ben Okri- The Famished Road

Lost Homes

2009-11-16T03:05:00.000+05:30

At 26 its hard to get over lost homes.I thought not counting would make me forget them better. But every lost home takes away parts of I am not young enough to loose with so much grace. I snout pout beg beseech and curse now! For every cut that is made on to me. And yet who can shout out all the pain of loosing a home?
I miss those white walls everyday. I wonder if they miss me too.Maybe I even hate them for not missing me! They were stark the first time I saw them. Stark white with rough patches. And yet they invited one with a purpose. I entered. I didn't like it for a long time. It was a rough place just not the kind where you could get comfortable easily. Hardly the kind where you would think of settling down for a long time. But as human beings are silly, they make pets out of foxes and even start talking to walls. So I did! I started talking to walls. And the walls started talking back to me. Sometimes.
Then I thought we were frequently talking. And then one day the walls went silent.
I think I started shouting at the walls then...I was told to leave. There were some new people who had entered and they had now perhaps a new language of talking to the walls. They told me to vacate..Because the walls obviously didnt talk to me anymore. I lost my home and I lost my language.
I still talk to those white walls. I am sure they hear me...I want to know why do they change their language so frequently? I thought homes were supposed to last longer than hearts. Isnt that why people build homes?

A season like this

2009-09-20T04:20:00.000+05:30

Dim lights of the study lamp dying in the morning
Heavy eyes and REM dreams
Old songs not remembered well
Broken drones of restless naps
Prayers tired prayers
Hands with nothing to clasp but brown lines
Pained smiles breaking with memories
Finished the quotas of teas together
No promises, no apologies
Nothing to fight on
Two acute angles equally opposite
Broken lines running parallel
The trigonometry theorems that you were never meant to master
Empty blue skies with dry winds
The distance between two stars with jaded lights
An autumn like spring never existed!

eyes of light

2009-09-14T04:02:00.000+05:30

She twinkles in the moonlite like today's...
Sleeping in an alien city now..wonder if she has had dinner or has she dozed off on the bed alongside the books.She likes tea before sleeping( yellow label with very little sugar).Nights with her are like a balm...There is absolutely nothing that cant be paired down to perspective(except the temperature of the air conditioner..she likes to sleep freezing)

Everything has a proper place.You like me wouldnt know it until you know better from her!The big decisions and the small decisions are all in her EDL. Just press the button and you would know Just the right thing for you!You're a big fish or a small fish or a medium sized fish..she has a recipe for every disaster that you have tasted in life so far!(Really i am telling you!)

Lying beside her on nights like these,I have felt gawky and bumbling..like one feels while holding a little baby in one's big scratched hands. My smoothness has all gone where her shines bright! My courage is waning away while she still protects her dreams in a small wicked space...I bump into walls and reach her to ask why didnt I see them?

On dark nights when the greys of the world leaave me blind with their details, I miss those eyes of light!

Bare essentials at 26

2009-09-11T02:04:00.000+05:30

a single friend with a 24hour hotline
a reader who follows one's writing through and through
a purple chunni to cover oneself when there is too much grey in the world
some sweets in the fridge
a familiar author who has written on ones present tragedy in life
a promising upcoming project at work
old cherished memories that can be brought up without embarassing anyone
the promise of seeing a loved smiling face sometime in the future.
a few good pictures of one's own face

Salt~

2009-09-10T15:37:00.000+05:30

If it doesnt taste sweet
If it doesnt change color
If it hasnt burnt to become something else
If it doesnt loose taste after all the warm concoctions and freezing indiffrences breathed into it
If it doesnt harm the insides after swallowing
If it tastes bitter compared to other things at your table
If it still sticks to your 'full hands'
If you cant take it back once you've given it
If nobody can buy it nothing can undo it
Its salt!
The little salt that turned into an earring from your hand into mine...

Sand in my bra

2009-09-03T11:48:00.000+05:30

Sipping chai at lonely stations
Sleeping with lights on in sickly cold railway compartments
Passing by the lights of the cities which have been home once
Wearing salt earrings to not forget what I have taken from the world
Fulfilling the promises made to random gods
Smiling at strangers kinder than you
Squinting and looking hard
Passing thunder and lightening on the way
Remembering the life I had prayed for
Living the life I have been given
The sand in my bra singing as I run...

My Hands

2009-08-07T01:54:00.000+05:30

These hands that will last a lifetime
Skin that has absorbed memories
Big not petite as would have made them pretty
Not a bit brittle these bones inside
Clenching
Approaching
Poking rudely
These silly hands..
With lying fraud lines
Stubborn
Slow
Senile
Strong
These hands that I live with

Listen Buddha!

2009-06-20T13:10:00.000+05:30

Some questions that troubled my silence in Vipassna...

Q1-Will you listen to my troubled questions?
Say yes and mean yes! Dont run away from my questions...
Q2-Do you have the time to listen to me?
You should! What else’s so important anyways…
Q3- How will I live when you are not around?
Lets talk about it at least!
Q4- Do you know how much it hurts living in this world?
Listen to me too! you listen to all the other crap of this world..
Q5- What about my dreams?
Ill bite everybody on this earth to get to them..OK!?!
Q6- Will you tell me what’s important to you?
there are no ears more eager than mine anyways!

whatever!

2009-05-26T00:28:00.000+05:30

Dear Whoever,

Dont know if it has happened to you...
Ever felt so hungary that you cant sleep at night?
Ever begged for grace and not found it?

@#$%^^
Nobody

Fish fall in love

2009-04-24T14:02:00.000+05:30

Big fish, Small fish, silly fish, smart fish, fishes that slur, fishes that dont slur, fishes that swim upstream and have lots of work, fishes that swim with the flow and have no work, fishes that have big teeth, fishes that have teeth missing.. fishes who are scared of the ocean and fishes who are not scared of the ocean..
fishes that spin yarns and tie people to ocean, fishes that float and dont tie any yarns anywhere..fishes that are poked into or fishes that poke into others..fishes that see the blue sky, and fishes that are blind, fishes that see the bait and fishes who dont see the bait. shy fishes and shameless fishes...lying fishes and truthful fishes..all kinds of fish fall in love!

The answers come...

2009-04-10T12:04:00.000+05:30

Kindred reply a friend wrote...

'Heck who can answer for the Buddha. He was really wise and he would have answered all the questions that have been asked. In fact the Tripitaka has 84,000 sutras by him and my guess is that he has answered all of them and several more questions there.

Now I put this forward humbly, as a person who has tried to understand his teachings and has tried to follow the way of life he recommended, I am just putting a few thoughts here.

It must be damn cool to be enlightened and all that no?

Oh yeah from what I have heard it's damn cool and more. Forget about the fantastic abilities of being able to fly and walk on water and many such freebies which the enlightened one cautioned were of little consequence. The fact that one can live freed from the long term or even short term effects of one's past actions, in the present moment in peace seems so attractive.

Tell me how does it feel to wear red all the time? Does the red of your robe not add to the restlessness of being alive?
Well the Buddha wore saffron robes.They signified the holy life, the life of renunciation. Not what they have come to represent in our unhappy times. And as for the restlessness of being alive, the Buddha simply discovered the restfulness of being alive.

AND if you are at rest all the time? Does it not make you feel dead?
Being at rest as far as I know it, is being intensely alive. Sitting still, have you ever closed your eyes and taken your attention to your breath passing through your nostrils, to your sensations throughout your body, to your thoughts - you feel anything but dead. Of course, enlightenment, Arahantship and Buddhahood is aid to be a stage beyond this sensory realm that we know. Of course I know nothing about it. But according to Buddha's teaching, death is not the opposite of life. Death is life continuing in a state beyond the perception of normal humans. A person dying moves to another form of being. This is described in startling detail in the TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD - this is more psychology than anything else. Of course psychology of an advanced order described by people - we may call them sages - who have done extraordinary inner research. Actually the Buddha was a scientist if you really consider it.

Do alive women not strum at your heartstrings with their energy? Are you menopausal?
Oh yes, alive women did strum at the Buddha's heartstrings but in a manner of great compassion. Kissa Gotami, Mahaprajapati his foster mother, his outstanding female disciples like Samadevi, Vishaka all entered states of full enlightenment. He opened the doors of religious life for women by initiating the community of Bhikkhunis - at a time in ancient India when women lived lives of subservience. He declared women capable of full enlightenment and did not consider them in any way inferior to men.

As far as having erotic inclinations, would such desires be possible for anyone who has seen the emptiness of the sensory world? One who has clearly seen the impermanence of all forms. And even we, if we are to observe the human form closely and penetratingly are we not confronted by the less than desirable contents of the body?

Do you never rue the fact that your dad was a small King and died one day?
King Suddhodhana was not a small king. Much of ancient history of that region remains unknown. Yes Buddha did know of Suddhodhana's passing. And Suddhodhana having fathered the Buddha had sown unmatched karmic seeds and his passing was as I have mentioned earlier, the continuation of his life in another form. For Buddha whose perception was developed enough to penetrate states of existence beyond our limited human realm, Suddhodhana was always alive to him. Ok ok I know I'm sounding fantastic now. But let me just say this, the Buddha clearly saw planes of existence beyond the plane in which we humans dwell. Like colours of the spectrum invisible to the human eye, but visible to dogs and animals let's say and those visible to instruments that we have created like x rays and so on. Similarly, the Buddha had trained his mind to penetrate different planes of existence. This sounds plausible to me and best of all, the Buddha actually gave clear instructions on how anyone could do the same. If we walk the path, we can have the answers. Not speculation, not arguments, not hearsay but direct experiental knowledge.

Did you father a son? Would you have been a happy man without that?
And yes he did father Rahula. And Suddhodhana told Rahula to ask his father for his inheritance and of course, Rahula's father the Buddha had renounced everything and could only give him the teaching - the path away from all suffering and sorrow. What could be a greater gift?

What does a hot jalebi taste like on a hot afternoon?
I love hot jalebis and during meditation retreats I am visited by thoughts of jalebis and ice cream and so many fantastic things. Do you know how monks eat? They have a single bowl and you pour in a spoon of Khichdi then when you are about to pour in a spoon of kheer, you stand confused, there's no separate compartment for the kheer so where does that go? The monk merely stands there holding out the bowl and you reluctantly and also maybe with some dismay or disgust, you pour the sweet kheer right on top of the steaming khichdi. After that the monk takes his bowl away and mindfully eats without disgust and without relish. This is how followers of the Buddha train to see the world, without compartments, without relish, without disgust. It's something worth experiencing. I am sharing my humble baby steps hoping to shed some light. Your questions are so beautiful and childlike. And yes the practise opens our senses, makes us kind and loving. The wet mud does smell very sweet as the sorrow of our fellow beings feels very bitter.

Its so wonderful that you think so much of Buddha. Who knows what happens after parinibbana? Can the Buddha die, into which realm has he gone, these questions can only be answered after you have yourself attained enlightenment. I don't know where Buddha is but I feel his kindness and his love. Thank you for this beautiful post. I hope my sharing has been useful.'

RG

A day like all other days...

2009-03-21T14:57:00.000+05:30

There is a drone of Cicada in the air, its your ring tone.
Somebody is calling...nothing important you know.
End of March and the weather gives pleasant surprises on some days.
Like just yesterday you got up feeling happy for no reason really.
That slight headache from morning has become like a ticklish fog circling your eyes and forehead a pleasant sensation of wheeziness right now.
There is work but not too much.
Today is just the day to be lost in your thoughts.
You are remembering that old song that you hummed when you were younger.
You got up with it playing in your head today!
You caught yourself blushing thinking about that thing that happened yesterday! Strange!
That one thing that you wanted to do for a long time, seems more and more likely next weekend?.Rafting? Vipassna, Rishikesh, Holiday, Yes!
All those life and death matters have suddenly become dour.
The truth has settled on you like a shaft of evening light.
Filtered through lace curtains dancing on your arms and hands.
A world of memories and sensations open up.
That black and white picture of yours that youve kept in your wallet for a long time flashes suddenly.
The edges of it are wearing of but that sharp look in the eyes just doesnt fade.
It surprises you some times. That aliveness and magic where did it come from?
You remember that gust of air that hit you on the face through the train window when you were travelling without a ticket.
You loved travelling without ticket, although you havent done it in a long time.
Someday soon you promise yourself.
And you never keep your promises!
Its just another day...

Thousand songs my mother

2009-02-22T00:45:00.000+05:30

I sing thousand songs everynight ma
When I sing I dont even remember that I came from you.
I sing false songs
I sing broken songs
I sing songs that shatter when the truth hits them
I sing songs for people who dont recognise me
Ma tell me, when you are lying down at night do you hear me singing far away?
Do you not like my songs anymore ma?

Dear Buddha,

2009-02-11T02:47:00.000+05:30

Dear Buddha,

It must be damn cool to be enlightened and all that no?

Tell me how does it feel to wear red all the time? Does the red of your robe not add to the restlessness of being alive? AND if you are at rest all the time? Does it not make you feel dead?
Do alive women not strum at your heartstrings with their energy? Are you menopausal?
Do you never rue the fact that your dad was a small King and died one day?
Did you father a son? Would you have been a happy man without that?
What does a hot jalebi taste like on a hot afternoon?
Does the wet mud smell sweet to you?

I think a lot about you… What do you think of me?

Love
P

Of being

2009-01-03T21:20:00.000+05:30

When you are an elephant, born an elephant,There is nothing that you can do about it!(except be an elephant!)
You can only fall in love with elephants
You cant run away from your elephant hunger.
You cant squeeze yourself to resemble a porcupine( although it has much better defence mechanisms!)
You cant lie to yourself like smaller animals.
You cant run away fast from danger and threat.
You cant help your memory(even if you remember useless details which have long ceased to be a reality or the truth)
Your truth is the elephants truth. It weights you down and you carry it gracefully.
Someday you will scramble the whole bloody world if doesnt stand up to your elephant reality( and youre more than capable of it, let no one live in any illusions!)
You are hungary on life..and you shall have your elephants share!

Invoking Brahma

2008-11-19T22:03:00.000+05:30

The lord divine. With 100 heads...Creator!
How do you create?
Does the resistance of the earth not slow your wheel?
Does the suffering that comes in creation not bow you down?
The cold unwilling atoms of creation ...how do you thaw them?
The hundred other things crying for attention not distract you?
Does the infinite hunger of already created existence not weight down your hands?
Do you create because that's the only thing you know?
Do you create with joy?
Do you create with pressure?
Do you create the unwilling creation too? HOW?
Do you create out of a womb?
Do you complete creation?
Do you create with passion or compassion?
Do you create for happiness?
Will you come into me and create my life too?

photo courtesy - Sushmit Ghosh@http://mentalsyrup.wordpress.com/

Burning away the darkness

2008-10-23T01:07:00.000+05:30

Do you know the name of the village where my grandmother lived?
The name of my grandfather scribbled over the iron box,along with his designation. The family that my runaway aunt married into!
The hospital I was born in..
How old was I when my younger sister was born?
What did I feel when I first took her in my arms..
If I have ever seen a baby prettier then her?
How I learnt to be responsible for her one fine day.
The story behind my and my sister's name.
The first thing my dad asked for after he had a freak accident!
What age was my dad when he discovered that he was a diabetic?
What was that one song that he and I keep listening to?
How am I like/unlike him?
Have you ever thought of burning away the darkness of this world by knowing the essential few things of your or my life?

Be very scared of me!

2008-09-23T16:07:00.000+05:30

I have nothing to loose except my dreams!

Big Fish v/s Small Fish

2008-08-28T15:16:00.000+05:30

Big Fish: "I have been there done that! I came before you!"
Small Fish: "I came today..but I am gonne be there where you are one day!"
Big Fish: "I am very important"
Small Fish: "I know...I even liked you perhaps because of that"
Big Fish: "I do important things..I dont have time to waste on you and your faults"
Small Fish: "Its gonna take sometime for me to learn...I dont know if I can help that...but thats how you started..didnt you?"
Big Fish "Go away I am angry"
Small Fish: "If I go away how will you be important anymore?"

Keeping out the flames?

2008-08-04T17:16:00.000+05:30

I am the flame of the forest blooming in your garden now...how can you not look at me!
I am the little chuckle of laughter swirling to awaken you in the mornings, dont pretend you havent gotten up!
Its me the thunder knocking outside your window..you cant not hear me!
I am the fire you are keeping out of you life by this slowburn between your fingers, Drop it now!
I am rain..and I am not going to spain...and you have to see my face again and again.
Stop thinking you can ignore me!~

In Elephant Soup!

2008-08-04T17:12:00.000+05:30

When you are in elephant soup floating could be an issue. In fact everything is an issue…you have crossed such boundaries that it would be hard to keep any measurements in place.
Measurements of Of love of freedom of power. Of lust and hunger. Of asceticism and of abundance…of lack and plenty. All the words mingle into complete nonsense and you are left churning this thick bloody soup.

You cant remember what gravity felt like. And you can’t remember standing up straight…anyways you don’t want to do it now.
The soup smells nice and you are Hungry too…that’s why you landed in it didn’t you? But you don’t know here what’s going to happen if you gulp in one mouthful…well a sip you did take in and you remembered heaven that day. And Since then you have been dazed…
When do you get to drink the soup?
Who is the poor elephant who got slaughtered for this?
Is this the whole of it or are there others like you sitting inside tubs filled with elephant soup?
Did your hunger warrant this? Have you made peace with your hunger?
Is it good for the elephants? Do you think elephants would like to have elephant soup in their breakfast?
What are you worrying about? Don’t bother…just keep yourself floating in it till the time you can gulp this elephant soup! You have been really hungry…forget the elephant….have the soup!

Radhe Radhe

2008-08-03T01:15:00.000+05:30

I'll make a film.
About Radha of Vrindavan...I dont know when..I dont know with whom..but someday!
It will be a good film..Its been brewing in my blood for sometime.It would go out in the world and speaks to everyone.It will be a film I would want to see.

I fear for the truth!

2008-07-21T17:20:00.000+05:30

When my truth becomes so overpowering that it starts piercing into my veins
when I get up at night with clenched fists...holding the promise of my truth in my hand..it draws blood in my nails....its difficult to go back to sleep at nights these days...
Is it truth or is it madness that is growing within me?
I am helplessly blind as i stare into it to find out...
I have no way of finding out
There are growing shouts of slogans inside me...they shout louder everyday...does anybody else hear it too? Am I the only one who is supposed to be awakened by it...
This rowdy truth..this unflincing state of things within me...
What about the the larger world?
What if its just a pink bubble of stupidity....just a lot of my own shit smoking profound suddenly...and I a poor servant at...must carry it out...because it has fallen on my head..because its grown in my stomach..nurtured on my hopes and desires.
Its looks so precious...
What if it isnt the larger truth?
And I will forever fight everything that tries to break this dream...
The largest truth, the gods truth, the human truth...every logic, every rule, every single thorn on its way...
Its the truth of my dream.
Every thorn in its way pierces me like a dagger...every silly thorn becomes like a tank pointing at me...ready to shred me to pieces...because I have a truth growing in my belly.
and I fear for every truth of this world.

Tell me someday

2008-06-26T01:39:00.000+05:30

What were you doing when I sang that song, the best that i have sung so far...
does that song not come back to you on fresh mornings when you want to get on with your new life?
what did you hear when I bared my heart to you.
What do you see when you see me?
How much do I total up to in your MATHEMATICS of life.
Tell me do my prayers reach you?
Does my silent anger cause some irritation in your throat?
Do you feel complete on that mountain with my hopes all floating around your neck..arent you scared that someday they will gather like a noose and strangle your noble thoughts on the world.
Dont you have spirals of our conversation floating around you when somebody talks to you? does it not catch you unaware?
Have people never snapped at you because you were absentminded thinking about me?
tell me someday...why doesnt it happen to you..like it happens to me!

Empty bed blues....

2008-06-26T01:15:00.000+05:30

Somedays I get up and feel this lump of great sadness in my throat.
Those days its a shame to look inside. There is a wet lump of lonliness dangling around somewhere..dont know if the world sees it..I feel it hanging down my shoulders.
And then doubts creep in like sand snakes on the shore
Has my love so far has been a total waste of everybodies time?
I havnt built anything that would last me and I havnt found anything that was really mine...All I wanted to do was temporary...my art, my work..all about fads that passed away gradually
I pray for grace...and I feel a kick in my gut...its not happening..
The prayers flare up inside...I cant be patient when I see nothing to hold onto in my hand.
Somedays its difficult to ignore these loud roaring questions.
Someday I must confront this emptiness and shout and swear at the world..
How long will I run and leave it all behind?
Where have you disappeared?
Why am I alone in all of this?
Why was I here all these years? For whom?
What have I been doing?
Has it all been waisted time?

A friend far away...

2008-06-26T00:36:00.000+05:30

As you make your way in another world...meet new people,make new friends..
what will happen to the world that lives in us?
will you make changes in that world that we had woven together...what changes will those be?
will you keep me updated? will you be able to convey all the one thousand things that are thrown at you
Have you forgotten our anthem of breaking away from this SYSTEM that buys us?
will time buy our dreams?
were those dreams so Juvenile? did they have nothing of our truth in them?
is it so easy to discount us?
am i the only one who misses those times on your roof, overlooking the stars...and the distant lights.
Were our dreams so diffrent?
is this the end of all that...that was to be ..if we let it be?

Streets on fire

2008-06-23T23:04:00.000+05:30

some days you get up from your reverie and the streets are on fire.
there is anger and violence in the air.
You have been building with your silly heart...and you realise how unworthy the world is....
That is the day you set eveything on fire.
Good riddance to all good hearted madness!
Wake up now!

There has been a change of plan

2008-06-19T02:30:00.000+05:30

is there ever a plan?!

Cutting Through it!

2008-06-13T16:45:00.000+05:30

I (think) i am getting over adding I think to my every sentence...
somethimes i dont think,things just ARE!

Growing Tall Everyday

2008-06-13T16:13:00.000+05:30

Everytime i get a kick on my but from life...telling me CANT HAVE THAT.
I cry, I shout, I pout.
These dreams that come to me uninvited...I put them in my little heart and they wreck havoc in there...
There's something in me that doesnt die with those dreams...
That something goes in my bones..becomes me..and i grow tall.
Everyday I grow tall because of all that I wanted and how wide I opened my arms to receive it...
whether it came or it dint come I dont remember..but my hands my arms streched till eternity to recieve it.
I dont close my heart when it doesnt come... I break it open
Is that why I grow tall everyday.
Taller than Yesterday!

Amor Fati'

2008-06-12T16:13:00.000+05:30

"I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer."
Nietzsche

Mama

2008-06-05T00:25:00.000+05:30

When I was a little girl..did it take a lot of effort to love me?

Not just here...

2008-06-04T00:25:00.000+05:30

What happens when I am here and my thoughts ventillitate?
What happens when where I want to be hijacks the whole of my existence and I levitate on air flying without wings...it may be pure desire but its got sharp claws and it gnaws at me..will it not tear this mundane reality into building bridges with there ?
Even when I am here I am in a trance sitting under that gate
I am away...but I am knocking hard...and this slow thumping will become a deafning thunder...
because I am not just here today...I am there as well...
I was there all this while...extracting promises from the small slants of morning light that fell on my bed.
Telling it that I would reach there one day..
before today before yesterday...long long before I could have given it any name
I was never quite anywhere even when I was there...I was here at this gate.
And now that I have seen it..although am not quite there
You think ill not reach it...
I am not just here because just here is just not enough
I am there I am there I am there

A Song for my daughter....

2008-05-29T23:23:00.000+05:30

Little one...when you come to this world..come with a fire in your belly and twinkle in your eye...
Its a cruel world...Its a magical world too...
there are elephants and there are mice in this world
there are nights under the stars..and then there are nights with nothing but the smell of tears on your pillow and empty beds...
But you are in my heart twinkling like a diamond on my finger
you are the courage in my heart
you are the blood and bone that will live on much beyond all these little tragedies of my life
My little one...its easy to forget..but never forget...you are the little piece of life that is greater than these large imposing powers around.
You are the little spark that is sharper than these defeated souls
Be Brave when you are here
Never loose your wonder my little one..you have generated that is the heart of a lost soul long before you came in this world...
I miss you little one...Come into this world for a great reason...
Come to meet your mother one day...

My Scars

2008-05-24T02:11:00.000+05:30

These scars of these years that i have lived
blue black and some still GREEN
some day if i show them to you..will you shudder?
will you be able to see what had happened that day i fell?
the day i was struck by lightening?
i carry that pain in my little bag that i take along with me everywhere
these scars have made me what i am today
given me this xray vision
thats how i saw you..the real you behind that powerful cunning shape that you flaunt!
those scars that you hide all and cover and forget and get busy around
look at your scars and look at my scars
the real you and the real me
THESE SCARS THAT MAKE US WHAT WE ARE...
Will you see my scars one day?

THIS ONE BATTLE

2008-05-24T01:41:00.001+05:30

This one battle...
This battle Against uncertainty...
against not knowing..
against not having been there all the bloody while when the decisions are made..
Everybody fights the same bloody battle
everybody wants to be focused...nobody likes being lost on the way...
nobody likes being on their own all the bloody while..
Nobody likes orders. Nobody likes being ordered around. Nobody likes being vulnerable...nobody likes waiting forever nobody waits forever..
Nobody likes being a nobody...
life makes nobodies out of us
then you look at life. you smirk...
you know its not going to be like this forever. you find your kingdom one day
these are the days of exile
the days of exile
these will be remembered as good days too
when you sit in your castle counting your pennies and your men
you will miss the days of being a mere nobody
when nobody on the street knew you
when you were free to sleep on the road
when you had all the blue sky to yourself
had the time to speak to every gulmohur on the road about this cruel indifferent world
this is the one battle that you will fight well
this is the battle you will win one day
this one battle that occupies your whole bloody life
this silly battle
this one battle that you and I fight today!
This one battle I am not loosing this time..
Do you hear me? Loud and clear? I am not loosing this time!
Not this on battle for this one time

becoming somebody....

2008-03-15T02:32:00.000+05:30

"Mr Darcy shall we dance?":)

Wanting wanting wanting more!

2008-03-11T23:35:00.000+05:30

What would I give to
1. Be near my own books that are lying at 10 thousand diffrent places.
2. Smell the sweet peas.
3. Go back to my village in the terai and smell the cottonsilks there.
4. Tell my Mom and Dad that I am doing well in life and they dont need to worry.
5. Go to Lucknow and stay with an old friend and tell her the every damn thing That I have missed out on telling her.
6. Hold your hand and sing with you ...there is no hurry in life...i am ok and I am doing well.

Flying....

2008-03-11T02:19:00.000+05:30

It feels damn scary...there are knots in my stomach...I feel weak. I dont know what should I shove down my throat to shut up these crazy sounds from my gut.
Too much is happeneing...I dont know if I can take it..but I want to take it all in.I am in the air and i may die for all i know...
too much is happening...every cell inside me is charged sending loaded signals to my brain!my brain is wearing out.i am gonna give up..any moment...i may make the wrong move any time and come crashing down!
but what am i saying? i am flying bcoz because thats what i wanted to do all my life...i cant be bad at flying...ive practised it in my head all my life!
but what did i do to deserve it to get it now at this moment?
but lemme just fly!
shut up and fly
when youre flying dont talk just fly
dont think just fly!

Me and the fly....

2008-02-26T20:24:00.000+05:30

The fly i think i shall escape
the fly i keep revisiting
the fly that never sits with me long enough to give me a choice to decide
the fly which has another universe than mine
the fly that goes away after stinging hard everytime
i wonder when exactly does it slip out of my mind that i am not supposedto marry that fly?
OK I MUST SAY IT OVER AND OVER AGAIN TO MYSELF
dont marry the fly!

Goodbyes and all that!

2007-12-11T15:34:00.000+05:30

What must I do, to tame you?
asked the little prince.

"You must be very patient," replied the fox.
First you will sit down
at a little distance from me
-like that-in the grass.
I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye,
and you will say nothing.
Words are the source of misunderstandings.
But you will sit a little closer to me,
every day..."

...................
And he went back to meet the fox.
"Goodbye" he said.

"Goodbye," said the fox.
"And now here is my secret, a very simple secret:
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;
what is essential is invisible to the eye."

Shouting in the darkness

2007-10-29T00:33:00.000+05:30

Shouting in the darkness
cold air cutting through me
whispering my songs under my breath to not hurt yout jaded ears
slowing my dance to keep you with me
holding the pressure at the seam of my veins
holding my smirk at the flicker of shame in your eyes
blushing purple everytime i look at you
feeling the karma bubbling inside me
never knowing what comes next
always knowing only one half of the story
and you never knowing anything!

October..........

2007-10-27T20:19:00.000+05:30

Pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Khalil Gibran
Pain is why I did that then, and why you do this now.
Blake Allen
Pose Pose why do you suppose why Pain is our name? Because that’s what we choose.

Empty boats...............

2007-10-20T01:22:00.000+05:30

your boat is empty
your boat is empty
Your boat is empty
GO AWAY!

Is THAT' you?

2007-09-23T21:51:00.000+05:30

The little voice of wisdom inside that you keep ignoring...because you were obviously more impressed with 'THAT!
Flashy suave and glamorous!and you start thinking 'THAT' is all that you ever wanted to become!
That sharp look in the eye...ARROGANCE...CONFIDENCE and all the power to buy the whole world...and the world dying to be bought by 'THAT'..
and then slowly you realise there are 1000 masters shouting orders at'THAT'......
maybe 'that' loves it this way...
maybe 'THAT' likes to be thus!
maybe THAT' really doesnt care about the ends and means...
maybe THAT' is just a lttle caught for now...
maybe THAT didnt mean to ....
just maybe 'THAT' has a heart of gold inside...maybe

and you cringe ....if only you had the courage to ask...

Is that' you?
IS that' what you wanted to be?

Then what happened?

2007-09-11T04:36:00.000+05:30

Tell me the next story...then what hAppened?

I was looking for a river..and the river was too big to be mine..and so i decided not to call it mine anymore...and then i even stopped looking at that river...because offcourse it wasnt even mine!
and the river began singing...
and i lost my ability to hear..i was getting old and cynical you know!
then waht happened?
and then i thot it was winter coming...and maybe it was coming..but how would that change any damn thing?
so what if september was here? and so what if november would be here?
and so waht if i undestood what it was about ...
i would still be here in
this metro life!
this bloody metro life!

Men who tell stories...

2007-08-24T03:57:00.003+05:30

long time that i have been listeneing to stories...
stories of those storytellers that i have looked upto...
there is a certain awe...when you open your mouth to speak...and you have so many beautiful words that i want to fill my universe with...
but i know you have just told me that story because i was around...you dint make the story for me...it comes to you...just like i come to you and look at you and you know that you have to tell a story now...
i dont know why i am the chosen one
perhaps because someday i would have my own stories to tell...
but my stories will be different..they will be stories that people can keep......i hate returning the stories that i have loved...and i hate listening to your stories when i cant walk away into the horizon holding your hand walking to the end of that story...and yet i am listening to your story now...

Yellow!

2007-07-13T23:45:00.000+05:30

Somedays I am yellow!
Those are the days I get up from a familiar bed...smell familiar pillows....
There is green tea waiting for me beside the bed.
There is somebody calling my name,the same way she has called me for the last 24 yrs of my life.
I wish I could always be as yellow as that!
Everybody knows my name when I am yellow

The Legend of the Fall...

2007-06-03T16:05:00.000+05:30

Andrei Tarkovsky

I believe if one tells the truth, some kind of inner truth, one will always be understood. — for the creator the fundamental problem will always be honestyFor me

Reality is in general much greater than what I can find in it, much deeper and more sacred than I'm able to perceive.

I wanted to say something else — that what is important is not what one accomplished after all but that one entered the path to accomplish it in the first place. Why doesn't it matter where he arrived? Because the path is infinite. And the journey has no end. Because of that it is of absolutely no consequence whether you are standing near the beginning or near the end already — before you there is a journey that will never end. And if you didn't enter the path — the most important thing is to enter it. Here lies the problem. That's why for me what's important is not so much the path but the moment at which a man enters it, enters any path.

When we talk about freedom, we have in mind... I don't know — if you want to be free you are always free. We know that people even in prison can be free. One should also never link freedom with progress, this absolutely cannot be done. Since the beginning of human consciousness and individuality man could either be free or not free — in the inner sense of the word. That's why when we talk about freedom we shouldn't confuse the topics of rights and freedom, inner, spiritual freedom.
And it so happens sometimes that the nation, people and the society, do not even accept this artist, sometimes they chase him away, sometimes they do not understand, and they comprehend him only many, many years later. But this isn't important, it means only one thing: that they do not know themselves, they do not know their own problems. And because of that an artist can never oppose his own culture, his own people, by no means he can oppose it; even when he expresses concepts containing ideas unacceptable to the contemporary society it doesn't mean these ideas did not originate inside, within that society. The society hadn't yet enough time to become aware of these problems and the artist as a rule is not consciously aware of them either — he just expresses them, he can feel them. Precisely because he expresses them. Because he is not necessarily wiser beyond his times but he can sense more. He frequently does not understand what he is saying. He repeats words after the adults as a child, repeats without understanding and then the adults say: "Oh my, what is he saying? Did you hear that? Go stand in the corner! Get lost!" Or they give him a thrashing. And they beat him up for repeating the words he heard at home. And he merely grew up in this environment. In brief, I'd like to say this: an artist's role is to be a voice of his people — not even "to be," one cannot "be," one cannot tell oneself to "be" a nation's voice — one simply is.
Naturally, there is a problem here: if you are the people's voice then say only what people demand of you. But here lies the problem, people demand of you nothing. People demand nothing of nobody. It is the artist who behaves as if something was demanded of him, expected of him. Naturally, people do expect, but unconsciously. And exactly in the name of this duty to the public, the people, the times he lives in, he ought to always remember that he does not create for himself. But — although he does not create for himself — he should express only what he feels intimate. Here it may turn out that ideas close to your heart, some aspects of your creative work are not needed by anybody. But in this case you have no right... here you are powerless, you can at most just wait hundred years until it becomes clear whether people needed you at all in the first place.

An artist has no right, that is not that he has no right, he has no instrument which would make him any closer to his people's needs than he already is. He can only believe that God will grant him the possibility of eventually being needed by the nation. Whether he succeeds or not — this is something he does not know and cannot know at this moment.

From this vantage point cinema is a very dangerous art because it is expected to be immediately successful.

Just life itself, somehow more elegant but most of the time frightening, difficult.

I am constantly being asked what this or that means in my films. It's unbearable! An artist does not have to be accountable for his intentions. I did not do any deep thinking about my work. I don't know what my symbols mean. I only desire to induce feelings, any feelings, in viewers. People always try to find "hidden" meanings in my films. But wouldn't it be strange to make a film while striving to hide one's thoughts? My images do not signify anything beyond what they are... We do not know ourselves that well: sometimes we express forces which cannot be grasped by any ordinary measure.

"During preparations for making a new film it is quite clear to me that I am not allowed to consider it to be some form of independent art, a free creation, but rather an implementation of what is perhaps pressing forth from within, where it is not a matter of enjoyment but rather of a painful, perhaps burdening, duty...

"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."