Matters of Home and Heart

The rooms are new. The wall paint is a shade lighter of what I’m used to. My own room smells of fresh paint. The newly varnished cabinets subtly reflect the cold harsh white light. A sense of uncomfortable newness all around.

And it’s New Year’s Eve.

I play ‘Auld Lang Syne , Dougie Maclean version, and Jayanta Hazarika songs, alternatively. Auld Lang Syne as a reminder to old acquaintances and new.  Jayanta Hazarika,well, because in times of confusion, he manages to calm me down supernaturally, from beyond the grave.

All set to live alone for the first time, in a house with a lease signed by me, I resign myself to the feeling of growing old. But when I woke up today, peeking from under the double warmth of my Naga shawl and my Noddy quilt, and Deta kisses me good morning with the customary brushing of his moustache, all resolve of acting matured crumble down.

And tomorrow, all I’ve to look forward to is a new year and a good bye to Ma-Deta. And come back to a cold unfamiliar house. A house, not yet a home.

Love is not an unfamiliar emotion in the room. Ma is incessantly teasing everyone just because she’s in a good mood, Deta is hell-bent on making sure that this time he outsmarts his phone list and sends them New Year wishes before it is officially the new year and what exactly my siblings are upto is not easily discernible except that everyone is talking at the same time. The typical family evening.  Sans the typical drama, though. New Year’s Eve does have some corollary benefits.

Of course, that also means I’m robbed of the very lazed out evening I had in mind. A pot of tea and my Murakami. Kafka on the Shore awaits me patiently, more patiently than a lover, lesser than an adoring father.

He peers concernedly at me, then at the screen of the laptop. Not knowing how to deal with grown up tragedies of his grown up daughter. In his little world, Pandora’s box never opened and I’m still five years old. Trappings of reality, I tell you.

Dinner was a subdued affair. A mix-up in the order resulted in a quarter of a Kali Mirch chicken, to be divided amongst six people. The two pieces of gravy-ied chicken bore searing looks of hatred. Which eventually spilled out onto the phone, as a flustered manager tried to soothe my seething sister.

And as the Noida skyline lighted up with aerial expressions of joy, Ma and my brother started debating if the clock had actually struck twelve. Deta woke up from his cat-nap while my sister pranced about with her phone. And then the ringer on my phone went off. It was officially 2013!

Ma started singing in a markedly off key tone, I tried, quite unsuccessfully, to talk on the phone, while someone tried to hug me, and then kiss me, and someone else tried to pull me in another direction. But Ma continued with her bad singing and all I saw in that moment was clean white smiles, the smell of Deta’s Jacolivol around me and the feeling of happiness no longer as a string of solitary moments but as an intrinsic part of my DNA. A living breathing part of me.

My first house became a home today. My walls are no longer a cold white but a warm shade of ivory. And there is an overpowering smell of familiarity.

Serrated Subtlety

She could hear her own footsteps clicking through the din enveloping her, unknown faces and throbbing music. Or maybe all she could feel was the pressure that was exerted on her heel every time the stilettos were placed firmly on the smooth glassy floor beneath her. The fascination of a cracked glass floor, with the jaggedly patterns emanating from the sharp pointed heels of her stilettos, continued to amuse her.

She did not feel lost anymore. The disco balls with its minuscule pieces of reflecting light dispersed the electric colors of the night in random symmetry. She felt the sound being reflected off the sweaty people on the dance floor, bathed in monochromes of royal blue and blood red. She felt the cheek muscles tauten as a half smile crept her features. The discernable need not to hear or to be heard. The bliss of ignorance settled slowly, but surely over her.

She walked out. She walked out of a life she had known the intricacies of and which she assumed held the comforts of a stale yet definite future. She walked out of the arms of the man she had loved and made love to in the unearthly hours of the still night and the startling hours of the chaotic days. She walked out of the memories that still nestled in the warmth of her heart and whose resonance is unfailingly felt through the cells of her ever changing body. She walked out of the room, with the silence and a glass of whiskey in her hands.

The cold night air stung her face to a pretty shade of pink.

I sat on the edge of the grassy steps that lined the porch on the far west side. The smoke mingled with the cold night air as it travelled through the smooth passage of my nostrils. The sound of her heels, in the quiet solitude of the open porch, broke the stoic silence I was reveling in.

She stood leaning against one of the pillars with the mesmerizing carvings on it, a deception of antiquity. My gaze descended on the tips of her sea green stilettos, and travelled upwards through the long tough muscles of her claves. The snug midnight black dress she wore skimmed up against her thigh as she put her left foot forward, crossing her legs, in an attempt to make herself more comfortable. The electricity of the movement of fabric and her smooth skin was palpable.

And then my eyes found her neck. Her porcelain, creamy, long, swan-like neck. The sharp curve where her chin ended and her neck began to the depths of their closure between her two lovely handful of breasts. The veins that did not rear their heads but merged in the sheath of her skin. The bones that proudly flaunted their existence, in a attempt to claim for the beauty it was encased in. I stared. Stared at the way her neck found her shoulders in a perfect strutting curve. The dress that clung ever so slightly at the ends of her bare shoulders before it plunged to be united again in her now sweaty cleavage.

She turned to look at me.

I smiled the smile that always brought me luck.

She smiled feebly, not her best smile I presumed.

I stood up. Crushed the cigarette butt with the foot of my white peep-toes. Adjusted the hem of my olive green dress. Ran my fingers through my long brown tousled hair. And walked purposefully towards her.

She did not seem to welcome my presence. Nor did she display her displeasure.

I smiled more eagerly than I should have.

She complimented on my dusky legs. I was taken aback. Men liked chocolate skin. Fair women tend to be prejudiced.

I complimented on her beautiful dress. Women begin conversations by erecting frail pedestals.

The conversation soon swayed towards the lives we led, after the niceties were over. The cold purity of the night air in the deserted porch presented an opportunity to let both of us breathe and not just stifle our presence. She talked mostly. All I could do, apart from making it apparent that I listened to her, was to gaze at the features of her neck. From so close quarters.

She continually kept on adjusting her dress at the shoulders. I put a reassuring arm around her to convince her of the futility of the actions. Letting go seemed to be the theme of the night.

I noticed her need for stretching out. And mine too. Five inch heels are not your wonder drug in the midst of a heartbreaking conversation. So we moved to the grass cut steps. The castigating sandals lay in a heap next to us as we stretched our aching calf muscles. As she made round motions with her toes. As her feet lay well rested in the soft dewy grass.

The party was starting to break up. People stumbled out in a state of utter derision. Or in droves of a mockery of their unfulfilled lives.

The look of utter helplessness on her face was luminous even in the dark. The fidgety movement of her feet were a further testament. I casually asked her if she would like to leave.

She said yes. Without even knowing if I had a car or a place to crash in. The desperateness of her acquiescence made things easier.

No music played on the stereo as I drove through the quiet yet haunted streets of a city that pretends to sleep. She looked listlessly out of the window, trying to find a foothold in this maze of electric lights and undeciphered emotions.

The lock clicked and I turned to her. She smiled with renewed energy and walked inside my modest studio.

The kitchen was clean. The bed was made. A few of my books were lying around. The laptop was still hibernating. The only glitch was the cup of half-drunk stale tea from the previous morning.

She walked into the bathroom. I followed.

She stood in front of my huge mirror that reflects back till your waistline. Her hands were resting on the edge of the wash basin stands. For support or not, I’m yet to fathom.

I looked at her. Her face in the pale yellow light that hung above the mirror that reflected her image to me, as I stood leaning against the bathroom door. And how it threw shadows over her immaculate neck.

How a single horizontal slit would make it even more painfully beautiful. The creaminess of her skin that forms a perfect background for thick red blood to slowly drip down.

And I twisted the blade slightly between my fingers.

The Nun With The Shaved Cunt

I bit my tongue. That was the involuntary action that I could muster in the little fraction of the second when the voice that made its way through the tunnels of my left ear sent my nerves into a murderous frenzy. It left behind a gentle tingling sensation on the tips of my fingers.

The voice of that certain Mr. X (for reasons of conditional anonymity) had certainly produced no such effect before. And highly unlikely to stimulate such extravagant demonstration of feelings in the future either. The careless juvenile selection of words was the grave he dug so tragically, in the valley of respect.

Later, when I could still taste the mild saltiness of blood that just coursed through my mouth sometime back, I experienced what could only be termed as a placid form of depression. Not because of Mr. X, with his gentlemanly yet sexist front, but just the sad reminder of the times we still live in. Not so very nice you see, dear Sir.

And somehow in some perfectly inexplicable way, I thought of how so many of our sexist beliefs pertaining to women, all stem from the big wide world of Pornography. And mind you, when I say ‘our beliefs’ I meant both men AND women. So we come back to the question of porn again. How many of us women admit to seeing it at some point of time or the other? How many would actually admit it to another man? Or maybe just admit the fact that you liked it? I cannot lay claim to a sea of experience when it comes to interaction but whenever I have seen or felt in the various social circles I’ve had the good fortune to acquaint myself with, all I can deduce is ZILCH! Not so much in the homosexual circles though but then again the poor darlings have been themselves straitjacketed to the end of the judgmental spectrum themselves, way too much and way too many times!

But let’s not just diverge from the main focus of my today’s rant against the sexist, bigoted mentality that I’ve had the misfortune of being cohorted with in sporadic bursts of time. So men, in a huge majority sadly, like to believe that women don’t watch porn. But funnily, if their girlfriends admit to it, I have witnessed behavior akin to almost rushing to the nearest departmental store and buying a perfectly packaged bunch of the brightest red cherries to decorate the top of their mentally (and sexually) stimulating cake! For lack of better judgment or just the fact that I’ve never personally experienced such perverseness, the only conclusion I can safely draw is that they suddenly expect their girlfriends (virgin, non-virgin whatsoever) will become these absolute Domina’s in bed who :

a.       Love to blow for hours on end without any such visible needs of their own.

b.      Possess assholes wide enough for a bottle of wine to go up there and stay put till the time she has to accommodate her ‘other’ anal functions, without the slightest hint of discomfort.

c.       Will be writhing in bed in the throes of a wild orgasm by the sight of an unduly large male organ, or maybe just a teensy bit of fucking.

d.      Are absolutely rid of inhibitions about getting down to business with the mailman/ milkman/ postman/ their kid’s friends/…. You get my gist.

e.       And finally the pièce de résistance, women DO NOT have hair on their bodies! (Except the head of course, because lustrous tresses are to be worshipped according to popular culture.)

This brings me into the realm of reality check. Trust me, I am hardly the abusive type and hurling unladylike profanity is pretty unlikely for me. Not because I insist on behaving like a ‘propah’ young lady but I have always cradled the belief that it is quite possible to communicate the torturous murderous feeling running in your veins by just the few right words with a little bit of punch! But never before has my mind gone into an overdrive so furiously fast that the status in my head hardly needs to be elucidated here for the voyeuristic benefit of another.

After I had reasonable time to calm down and think rather than blow fire through my flared nostrils, all I could intensely feel was a strong putrid taste of disgust. Back in my high school days, I once casually happened to go through the “Bridget Jones Diary” by Helen Fielding. I do not remember the exact lines so I dare not quote, but the basic premise of it was that women have to work harder than farmers to please men what with all the waxing, shaving, threading, bleaching, dyeing, and what not my fellow women subject themselves too. At that time, being quite naïve, I dismissed the view as one belonging to the era the book was written in rather than the era of adulthood I would be stepping into soon. Well, talk about a resounding slap in the face!

But still, the hypocritical status of our modern mindsets hardly gives me any respite. Sexual desires, however phenomenally strong and pronounced, have to be covered under this colossal blanket of chastity. BECAUSE, somewhere somehow women have condoned such behavior. Not the women living behind colourful veils in closeted spaces but even the ones putting on the perfect fragile façade of modernity, as to baffle any normal person, with the duality of emotions and behavior. I am not claiming to be perfect but then I also don’t shave my cunt and then lay claim to my oh-so-precious virginity.

This driving need to please the not-so-weaker sex has sent me grabbing for my pen finally. I have contemplated writing this for a really long time than I would care to admit. And yes one of the major reasons was the judgment and criticism that would ensue.

But then I realized, who am I trying to please?

Memories Through Rose Tinted Glasses

The thick green curtains did not let light filter in without a struggle. The result was always a pale greenish aura hanging around the room, the shadow of its stronger brighter counterpart outside the glass windows. The cold white impersonal light was always kept switched on.

The ceiling was wooden and slanted. The part where it was lowered the most was around 2inches higher than the height of Deta when he stood straight. And since he always stood straight, I always skipped a beat when he walked around that part nonchalantly. To my 6 year old eyes, there wasn’t much of a difference.

And that is my first memory of a hospital. Or more specifically, the inside of my Deta’s chamber in the hospital.

The first time I smelt the sterilized corridors of the Operating Theatre and the stench of disease in the corridors leading upto Deta’s chamber.

 Deta had the responsibility of picking me up from prep school every single day and he religiously came late. I was always the last kid at school. My darling teachers would force feed me their Tiffin’s and aah, Frooti which I never failed to politely refuse since Ma had brought me up on a healthy dose of horror stories about the ill effects of Frooti. Tiffin I unabashedly ate. How I missed Ma then.

He would reach with a million apologies and I would regularly forgive him since I got to go to his chamber and sit on his swivel chair. I don’t remember him complaining when he sat on the hard steel chair, listening to the myriad questions of his patients while I swiveled merrily around.

But I got my share of punishments too, mind you. If I was being particularly tiresome and would insist on his paying more attention to me than to the nice pregnant lady and her husband, who were also indulging me, I was sent off to the Pharmacy.

Little did he know that Pharmacy times were gala times too. Munna Mama, the owner, had an even bigger swivel chair! And on special days, he would let me take orders from patients who came with their prescriptions which was promptly snatched from them as I tottered around feeling all important.

But on really mean days when I would whine and cry, the girl and the two boys working in the pharmacy would conspire to feed me Vicks Cough Drops behind Munna Mama’s back. I still remember the ice-cold-bitter-scary taste. My penchant for cough drops never developed you see.

Back in Deta’s chamber, I was routinely asked the same question. “Are you going to be a Doctor when you grow up?”. “Will you follow in your Father’s footsteps?”. And I routinely replied in the positive. Deta almost glowed like the moon.

Those were the days when Ma was in Jaipur to study. I could never understand properly where she went except the fact that Deta and my sister used to be my caretakers all of a sudden. Mornings meant Deta rushing from the kitchen trying not to drop the hard boiled eggs and starched rice while I sat on the dining table thinking about all the wonderful things to do in school. Yes, I always sat on top of the table. Chairs were for grownups.

I have absolutely vivid memories of complaining how loosely he used to braid my long curly hair and how Ma would do it so much better. He never really gave up though.

But the funniest one definitely has to be the time he took us to the cinemas. The Aamir Khan-Manisha Koirala starrer ‘ Akele Hum Akele Tum’ was the hot toast then. For the uninitiated, it’s a movie where they get married, have a kid, get separated and then get back together. Add a healthy dose of copious tears, manipulative parents, rags to riches story and there you have it. But for me, it was the end of the world. Midway through the movie, I decided that Ma had left us for good just like Ms. Koirala does and it’s just going to be us and Deta. I bawled my lungs out.

I remember being soothed and consoled near the entrance of the hall while he tried to figure out my sudden outburst of emotions. I clung to him like there is no day after tomorrow.

And the times he would cook chicken curry when we got a cold and fever and without Ma’s maternal supervision, how the chicken would be extra spicy and extra hot!

A decade and a half later, he still cooks that super spicy chicken when we catch a cold. Or sometimes, even when we don’t. He still hates it when I cut my long hair. He still picks me up from College whenever he’s in town. And he’s still late.

And I still look at him in awe. The first man in my life.

And Here's To The Yellows!

So it’s the first Sunday of August and the world has suddenly become witness to another bout of vicarious arousal of friendly emotions. Yet another year.

The sweltering heat coupled with the unbearable murderous headache had made me snappy and no one, except the ice cold marble floor, seemed to be my Best Friend. Oh, I’m so going to make love to the floor tonight.

Since I’ve absolutely nothing to do in this state, I just end up thinking about the reason we forge friendships with people who may be nothing like us or might be the Siamese twin we never had. If we go into the scientific basis of this, you’ll come across lots of paraphernalia about the cravings of society by man, the partnerships to maintain an emotional and mental balance, blah blah blah.

I’m not writing this to dissect friendships or the base of it. This is just a piece to the beautiful people I have in my life.

Its commonly believed that the best friendships are the ones dating back to the childhood days when alliances were more likely based on innocence than any ulterior motive. Well, I’m not so sure any more. Of course, I still have people who have known me since the time I sported very unfashionable hair (hey ma, see you’re not forgiven yet!) and I still like to think we share quite a jolly camaraderie.

But as we grow up, we become different individuals in our own spaces. I like yellow, she likes green. And somehow it becomes extremely difficult to complement yellow and green because yellow is never green. And that is when we search for other ‘yellow’ people.

If I analyze my own friendships, I love the ‘green’s. But it’s the yellow’s I go to, to bare my soul.

I’ve tried, unsuccessfully at times, to cherish and celebrate all the people in my life. What sort of relationship we share, progressive, regressive or just plain stagnant doesn’t matter at times. But the ones who have loved me, cherished me and celebrated me are the ones I did not find toddling in my diapers.

They are the ones I found discussing scandal and highbrow-eyebrow rising stuff in the middle of the night in some oblivious hotel room where we have taken off for an impromptu vacation. The ones who drag me from store to store and even to the stores we are kicked out from for ahem… uncivil conduct. We make plans to elope with each other and live in the Kingdom of Far Far Away and then we remember the men in our lives and debate whether we should tow them along. Where we have common friends, common enemies and even common imaginable people ‘we no like’! Where past stories are dug up and not sympathy but warm loving understanding is what engulfs you.

I don’t call enough. I don’t meet you guys enough. Heck, I don’t even tell you what an intrinsic part of my life you are.

But I do love you. Forever more.

P.S: If you have to blame anyone for this serious sentimentalist piece, feel free to call up Archies and Hallmark!  

Modern Utopian Dreams

He checked the time on the screen of his phone. The early Saturday morning lethargy crept through the length of his body and drugged his eyelids. The phone with the smudged screen did not help much to discern the time. Making out an eight in the HH section and realizing that office was closed, he turned on his side attempting to stretch out his leg and at the same time yawning out loud when he abruptly stifled his yawn. His leg hit something warm.

Love seemed strange. Lust is more easily comprehensible. Convention and society seemed to say that it pulls you in different directions. Hardly.

He grew up in a societal structure which stood unsure of its allegiance to the past rites or its claim of the progressive state of affairs. Bollywood dance routines seemed a form of undying love against the obvious parental objection. Classical 90’s.

Millennia brought about the advent of sex. Lots and lots of it. Or maybe just disrobed the social façade enveloping it.  Man-woman, man-man, woman-woman and dug through the piled dust on ancient bestiality.

It wasn’t easy growing up. Nor for him neither for her.

She forever seemed to be dating some guy. Some guy who seemed too good to be true till the time she finally realized it wasn’t. Ever. She had called it love, knotted it into a relationship and broke her heart over it. Women always have to call it commitment. ‘Slut’ after all, was invented for the her’s.

She woke with a start as his leg hit her shin. Men never know how hard their legs are, she thought drowsily and turned to face him.

He seemed stuck in some time-space continuum, his expression apologetic and his eyes uncertain. Her face registered in his mind and all he could think of suddenly was to hold the curve of her perfectly formed creamy textured waist. Warm summer mornings and cold waists made a heady mixture for him.

The phone blared breaking the undiluted insurmountable beautiful silence between them. ‘MAA’ in thick black letters seemed to be playing to the tune of ‘Secret Garden’. He saw her blindly groping under the pillow while the phone rested nonchalantly in the crack between the bed and the wall. She finally found it and to his surprise, shut the ringer and proceeded to go back to sleep. Merciless, he thought.

They had known each other since ages. Had been friends determined to prove the existence of platonic relationships, the all consuming wrongness of ‘When Harry Met Sally’s theory of men-women friendships.  He thought he knew everything about her. The entire plethora of weird men she dated, the friends she loved, the relations she hated. She told him her dreams as she weaved them around her. And he listened.

The click of the lock and the thin stream of yellow light from under the bathroom door brought him back to his senses. She would be wide awake now, hankering after her coffee. Black, minimal sugar. He belched at the very thought of it.

He edged the door with his shoulder, her coffee mug and his teacup in his hands. The still locked bathroom door with the steady stream of thin yellow light induced an involuntary rolling of eyes. The sound of the shower mingled with the sound of the rain outside. The continuous downpour were stalling all their plans and cooped up in the house seemed unbearable with her now.

She was busy raising an army of foam in her mouth, brushing vigorously. Her reflection was marred by the tiny flecks on the bathroom mirror. She rubbed her wet palm against it and it left slanting trails of water stains. It was cold after the rain last night but she couldn’t bear the thought of going out and seeing him lie listlessly on the bed even though the comfort of his warm skin tempted her. She hated the coolness of her skin which he loved.

Ridding herself of all temptations, she undressed and stepped into the ice-cold shower. She was not surprised that they had ended up making love. From the time they were friends she had always loved his sinewy arms, the single ring on his right hand and lately she had started imagining how it would feel like to be held in those arms. Somewhere last night, those arms lost their charm.

She stepped out of the bathroom, wrapped in his towel, her hair smelling of his shampoo and he was there. Sipping his tea, newspaper in hand and her coffee mug next to him covered by some huge mismatched freshly-washed dinner dish.

He looked up, saw her wrapped in his towel and smelt the scent of his shampoo wafting from the bathroom and from her hair and knew he had incorrigibly fallen in love.

She stared at the little coffee mug obscured by the dinner dish and the thoughtfulness of it struck her. She was yet to find out that the warm feeling spreading to her toes was the solitary one that eluded her all these years.

They spent the day in quiet solitude and stepped out in the evening for a doughnut and a coffee. The sky seemed to be darkening again, taking on unknown shades of forlorn grey and blue. The birds, confused by the weather seemed undecided on their flight back home.

The uncertainty of their future seemed to hardly matter anymore. They had loved and lusted. 

And now loved again.

P.S: This is entirely a work of fiction. My first fiction in fact. Be kind.

Of Stories Behind Yellowing Walls

The constant reluctant whirring of the fan added to the drone of the usual unmindful sounds of an office which seemed to be in the throes of decay. Or so I thought.

The building reeks of a history drenched in centuries-old urine and the pale yellow walls of the staircase with peeling paint does nothing to distract even a painfully detached mind from the obvious conclusion. The freshly painted chalk white walls with the blood red sills on the outside are apparently to delude people who make the mistake of stumbling upon this ugly concrete giant, I thought to myself.

Have I mentioned the little puddles of mud and still-wet phlegm struggling against their own viscosity that welcome you from the non-existent front gate (whose existence once upon a time can be deduced from the still standing tall and erect posts) to the entrance? I still remember the first time I stood at the main road looking at the path leading to the entrance and then quite miserably, at my golden Kolhapuris. Not a very good first-day-fresh-into-summer-hols intern insight. Sighing audibly to impress upon the important looking men nearby the highly repulsive state of mind I’ve been induced into, I stepped inside the threshold of what would be my own personal little piece of inferno for the next couple of days.

The first thing that greeted me was the usual sense of apathy. Well, for that matter it’s the only consistent feeling that is to be encountered at any point of any random day. So much so that the absence of it leaves me in a nervous breakout of cold sweat.

“Dada, is Sir in his office?” Look of apathy.

“ Umm, can you give me last year’s case registry?” An apathetic slight movement of the neck muscles to indicate the impossibility of such a herculean task.

“Is there any place I can SIT?” The apathetic glare that follows sends me scurrying to the safe haven of the stinking staircase where I can at least pretend to be busy with my darling little savior of a phone.

The first day and my mentor arrives breezily apologizing for being late and a second and a minuscule fraction later, announces of my apparent meeting with the Chairperson. Ah, finally someone of authority.

The next hour quickly climbed the mental chart of “Moments I Would Not Want To Relive. Ever “ and since I’ve made my intention pretty clear I’m not going to the nitty-gritty’s of it. All I can say is that it involved a lot of what, how, where, who and incessant dismissive shaking of heads. The best thing about the Chairperson’s room was:                  

1.        It was painted a shade of pale beige with no such resemblance to yellow.
2.        The clock was just behind his chair which made it possible for me to steal quick furtive glances at the minutes hand rather than dare to bend my head slightly towards my wrist.

Finally, my mentor, realizing that I had reached the end of my answering spree zest, reminded the current villain of some appointment with a women’s self-help group and boy, was I pleased. Not just because I can once more taste my sweet succulent freedom but at the look of apparent revulsion and ‘tsk tsk’ muttered under his breath as my inner soul sang tunelessly at this sudden change of circumstances. Karma, I tell you.

Apparently, as I came out, the past one hour in the CP’s room had made me a celebrity of sorts. The moment I had settled myself comfortably in my mentor’s room, the person next door came buzzing in dying to know about the distinct level of humiliation I had been subjected to while someone else seemed to be having quite a nerve-wracking coughing fit near the door at almost the same moment. I gave my most pitiable ‘puss-in-boots-sad-pleading-eyes’ look and probably out of sympathy or empathy or just the horror that I would start a wailing fest without a moments delay (being a woman in a sexist world has its advantages too!) he brushed them off while offering me consolation somewhere in the lines of old men, talk way too much, etc.

Detecting a crack in his temperament I decided on a generous dose of the damsel-in-distress maneuver. And did it work wonders! I hopped out early afternoon dreaming about the typical starched rice with huge dollops of ghee and the customary mashed potatoes with boiled eggs that would be waiting for me at lunch back home. The early start to the weekend restored my faith in humanity again.

And now, sweating profusely in this dull, dusty and yes, you guessed it right, ‘yellow’ room going through the almost-at-the-end-of-their-tether registry’s and trying not to disassemble the entire load not out of fear of being reprimanded but rather of stirring up an army of dust and most probably hidden insects in the unknown crevices, I do not feel out of place anymore. The apathetic look mastered, the dust ignored, the smells consciously and willfully and compulsively blocked, I had probably become the flag bearer of “The If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em” society!

Sigh! (In audible heavy-hearted tone)……

Home bound and beyond

The light breeze ruffles the orange creped taffeta curtains as the curling steam from the hot cup of tea follows the trail of the breeze. It was an unusual Saturday, the kind which carries the essence of a lazy Sunday. The never ending flow of tea, the feeling of lethargy emanating even from inanimate objects and the general afternoon siesta that is alluring. Nothing that can surprise anyone today. Life is placid yet content. But time and the excess of it sends us off to a spiraling emotional retrospective temperament.

Just a week back the journey to home or rather the place I call home. Home seems to be a disparaging reality now. Where is home anyway? The place I was born in, grew up in seems so far removed to the place I’ve come back to. The rose tinted sunny memories seem to me to be figment of my optimistic imagination. Or maybe I’ve become inalienably cynical. Maybe it was always like this and I staunchly refused to see it. My perception was always a matter of my conditional will anyway. The warm fuzzy feeling that home induces is replaced by the inexplicable sadness of facing a reality that doesn’t leave a sweet taste of reminiscence behind.

The train rattled homeward bound. The excitement palpable as familiarity crept in. I couldn’t sit still as soon as I saw the old battered yellow board announcing the station of Srirampur (Assam) in thick black letters. The station passed in a whiz as the exclusive Rajdhani deigns to stop at a few stations. Suddenly the exclusivity doesn’t seem so comforting. The safety ascribed to such exclusivity seemed stifling and unnecessary. All those exhilarating train journeys that I grew up reading felt unreal. I always wanted to see it, taste it, feel it and write a firsthand account of it. But I’m left with fragments of thoughts of how things would be rather than how things are because the thick glass shields and the strong iron doors are built for the comfort and security of yours truly. Because you can look out but they can’t look in.

The past twenty four hours in the jostling train was spent either in stretching in my supremely comfortable lower berth gazing away into nothingness or trying to accommodate my sister and her never-ending chatter. Ernest Hemingway’s “For Whom The Bell Tolls” lies on my lap but even the tautness of emotions during war cannot evince my interest away from the vast green fields dotted sparsely with cattle and a few workmen toiling in the evening sun. Not one of them turn their heads to the approaching train. For them it’s routine but for me it was a childlike fascination. Hemingway lost to reality.

The concrete structures and their sudden appearance tells the tale of the city I belong to. The sad part is it is not a happy story. The euphoria about last night’s Supermoon in the dark abyss outside the little yellow circle of light from the reading light that the railways had so thoughtfully provided and the soulful voice that broke the quietness of daybreak in some interior village of Bihar as they welcomed the new day by the morning prayers of health and prosperity cut through your skin and pierced some unknown recess of my emotions where it cradled and warmed my otherwise indifferent heart. But the euphoria is replaced with a sense of un-belongingness. The slums as we enter the city is like a minuscule insect that pierces my skin and starts a random journey underneath it.

My sister sees my look of disbelief and unable to curb her maternal-elder-sister tendencies, puts a soothing arm on my shoulder and gently chides me to look away. The swamped houses that have six-seven members living together, the odd child playing in the blackened mud with a trail of flies buzzing irritably around him as he tries to nonchalantly adjust to their continual interference, the husband pouring cold water in one swift movement all over him from the red bucket with the broken handle in an attempt to what we call a bath but the surrounding flies and garbage rolled in colourful plastic bags of where the multitude of variety is discernible left me with the distinct feeling that the bathing the man undertakes will always remain incomplete.

I tried to shrug off the intense disappointment I felt as the train drew to a halt. Consciously replacing each distasteful picture in my memory with those of home, my bookshelf which I would invariably find dusty, my childhood bed where Ma would pile up clothes to be given for ironing, the scent of incense sticks wafting from the Temple, the smell of Jac Olivol that is intrinsically linked to Deta and childhood memories of bygone winters, I alighted from the train.

After one week, the rain swept away the pretenses of normalcy that fell like a house of cards. All I’m left with is my cup of tea which has turned cold and the sound of pen scratching on the surface of paper and of course the disillusionment with Hemingway.

Broken Cogs

Well for starters, a belated Happy Republic Day to all my fellow Indians. I’m sure we’re all pretty happy and pleased with ourselves on the completion of the 63rd year of incorporating the Constitution of India replacing the Government of India Act, 1935. It is a highly symbolical gesture to have finally broken off the British chains of bonding and attaching the tag of ‘Republic’ to ourselves. Quite an achievement in itself isn’t it? After gaining independence the amount of painstaking work that the framers had to go through, of course borrowing liberally from the Irish Constitution , American Bill of Rights, the British unwritten constitution , the Weimar Constitution of Germany (the fact that the suspension of fundamental rights during emergency was taken from this Constitution had somehow subconsciously lodged into my head after a particularly tiresome Constitutional Law lecture)… you get my drift. No, I’m not damning the Constitution (we need those godforsaken rights more then ever now…in this day and age of a hopefully major political upheaval!) but I’m just going back to basics.

                A Republic. The kind of amazement I feel doesn’t change one bit. A part of a scheme. A cog in the wheel. An intrinsic part of a well oiled machinery. And here is when most of you would curse me. The usual barrage I would face is “look what the country’s got to”, “the entire power is concentrated in a small coterie of people”, “there is no way an honest man can live honestly”… to which I completely agree. But isn’t it completely easy to just shift the blame and sit in our prim living rooms with the newly polished wooden figurines (oh, the ones we got from our vacation in Thailand), the newly bought Persian rug (the ones we especially ordered from Iran, not those cheap market rip-offs mind you!) and those porcelain dishes tastefully arranged in the antique oak cabinet. If I look around myself, all I see (barring a minuscule few) is people sitting in their moral high horses and pronouncing judgement which I have already elaborated on. The same people who force their precious sons and daughters to study hard and get a good job in Amreeka because oh, of course the country’s gone to the dogs. Well, if we’re all moving out, we don’t really have a say in whom should the country go to right? I have nothing against the States and I am even acquainted of a young gentleman who wants to go there not for the big American Dream but, plainly put, capital. Capital to jumpstart his own business in his birthplace which would probably take him a lifetime otherwise. Which, if you ask me, is a pretty good idea. Its not like I’m suddenly patriotic after Republic day has come along but it just got me thinking… how much of a republic are we?

Without going into the intricacies of the political matrix, do we really care? What I wish to hear is an astounding yes. What I hear is an astounding yes. But do we care in a way that matters? NO. Are we really kidding ourselves by believing that passing of a Lokpal bill is the solution to all problems known to the entire population of India??? Where is the demand for an independent judiciary? Where is the demand for equality? Are we still in the dream reverie of the 50’s? Isn’t it constitutionally immoral to perpetuate inequality in the guise of protecting the rights of the minority who can no longer be called or classified as downtrodden? Why, in the first place, are these questions missing? I grew up learning to question the wrongs and even the rights, to understand my place in the big scheme of things. Now I know why. So that when I finally face this day, I don’t have to look upto my parents or call my friends or just blindly following the news, decide the use of my suffrage. The desire is to be the perfect cog. The ball is finally in our court, ladies and gentlemen.