Salt City Chronicles~

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

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

Everyone loves Tea

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Headached Grace Of LU

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

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

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

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

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

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

A heady heaached grace! But grace neverthless!

Cold Calling

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Guruji?

Classified Adverstisement

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

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

Didi...

Dear Bjiya,

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

Moti

The Monkey Mind

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My present favorite memories have been

How I got my first job

The first kiss

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

My last vacation in Benares

And so on…

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

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

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

This time though I think it would be different!