Growing Apart

Losing a friend is like losing family. It hurts in the beginning, rips your heart through as if it were a break up. Except that with a friend, it is never a true break up. You still call each other up – in the beginning it’s a habit, then it is out of some kind of nostalgia, after which you grab the instances when you still see a ray of hope, and eventually, things turn formal and stiff. That is when you know you have lost a friend, that is when first it hurts and then you just learn to get along your way without the ‘best friend’.

Somewhere between growing up and getting married, having a kid and running a house, I lost one very close friend.  She once told me that a best friend is a really childish concept and that as we grow older, we should understand that. I think it was a very polite way of telling me that we were done.  But I think the concept of a best friend doesn’t grow old as we do. 

I am a big believer in having a rock solid pillar of support. I would like to imagine I can be that to someone too. In this case, I may have faltered as much as she. But I still feel a twinge of sadness every time I see a fleeting activity on facebook, I feel a twinge of anger when I don’t quite understand what happened, I still feel a twinge of envy when I see another friend from college bond much more with her and advertise that fact quite often on a public forum. And I hate that I actually measure my words and think about what I am saying when I talk to her.  I miss my best friend but with a kind of latent anger that I don’t understand myself. 

I see these pairs of women - everywhere – on television and movies, in books and in coffee shops, in weddings and in conversations. I see them amongst people I know. I spot the sheer comfort they share, the way their lives are open to each other, the fact that there is no need to hide and project. And I miss having that. 

No, I don’t think one can entirely blame a marriage that changed a life, or a city one shifted out of, or a baby being born. Best friends stick together – that is what they are supposed to do – it’s a part of the job description. And me – the eternal sucker for this best friend business – I am just grateful that my closest school friend and I are still the same – I am just happy that I wasn’t careless enough to let go of old friends to make new ones. 

I like a few things about myself and one of them is loyalty – I still have a bunch of shining stars in my own little personal sky and I haven’t lost touch because I temporarily lost a number or missed out on a phase of someone’s life. I am incredible lucky to carry forward these friends with me from each phase of my life – school, college, workplace and my second masters. But I am also immensely sad that one of the brightest stars faded out. 

But sometimes losing a friend is a learning lesson – it teaches you to let go. Sometimes it’s a hopefully hopeless juncture – you hope things will be the same though you know they won’t. Sometimes it’s a lesson in self improvement – you will bitch about it because it is cathartic and then you will feel like shit about it and promise not to do it again. And sometimes it is just what it is – it is a realization that it wasn’t that strong in the first place. 

Growing apart is an excuse. Yes, it happens. But it shouldn’t happen.  And if it has happened then it isn’t called growing apart, it is a heart wrenchingly sad break-up, it’s like losing a part of your family. It happens, yes – but we learn to live with it. 

Pregnant Confessions

Another one of those series-of-unfortunate-events day and I don’t know what else to do but vent here. So this has become that anyway – a dead, stagnant remnant of what used to be a blog, a link whose address I still like too much to give up, a place I still prefer, on some days, to revisit, to know how I felt once upon a time. And then on rare days like these, when even calling a close friend and cribbing seems to be so much more of an effort (and who wants to hear so much complaining anyway), then this is my only outlet for unadulterated bitching.

But to begin with, some background, and some information that deserves a happy paragraph before the seething in anger begins. I am going through what I think is one of the most difficult yet fascinating experiences of my life – pregnancy. Yes, it happened and it’s been a while and I am a healthy mixture of confused, happy, anxious and what not. Apart from having major body issues initially, and seeing the once flat stomach convex itself out in the last almost 7 months, the feeling of another being inside you is not quite explicable. It is like you are never alone – no really – think about it! And hell, I haven’t been so detoxified since I was 18.

Initially it’s just something that seems to happen on the white stick with two pink lines, followed by a paper prescription and a bit of paranoia from the parents with their list of dos and don’ts. On some days, when you feel nauseated and sick, it just seems like a day of bad indigestion. On other days, you tend to completely forget that you have another life inside of you. On those days I have almost had an x-ray, climbed a jittery ladder, driven recklessly and craved a drink. On other days, things are really quite the usual – the daily routine, the reading, cooking, driving, watching mindless television. And then in a few months, when you outgrow your clothes, it only just begins to sink in. What really hit the fact home that I am going to be a mom is the kicking. Well, honestly, initially I didn’t understand what it was – strange bubble like movements begin and I thought I was going to have a bout of really bad diarrhea but then that didn’t happen and these tiny movements continued. And then I realized that the baby is busy with some serious acrobatics in there. And now the stage is well beyond that, now she/he makes her/his presence felt regularly, getting over excited in my literary theory classes! You go kid – go kick the shit out of that insane Freud who calls pregnancy penis envy that got me a deluge of funny messages in class.

But all said and done, with the speculation on the gender, the googling of the names, the scouting for larger clothes and the scary escalation on the weighing machine, I am not sure if I am quite so ready for it yet. Pregnancy is not pretty, like motherhood isn’t supposed to be easy. Things which are tough to deal with are mostly over glorified in the world. It may be beautiful but it has its share of ugly and that what makes it exciting as well as scary, sort of like a monster roller coaster ride. But a friend recently told me that she thinks I will be a good mom, I have the nurturing instinct for others if maybe not so much for myself. I like how infrequently we meet yet how profoundly she sometimes understands me. She will be a kick-ass aunt to my kid, however infrequently she does get to see her/him.

However, getting back to today and to the general flavor of the recent days, I am going through helper-horror at home. With both the cleaner and the cook being on leave, I am having to make do with two incredible incompetent, slow replacements. In normal circumstances that wouldn’t be a problem but with me soon becoming a teapot and with my final semester exams looming over me like some sort of a bad omen, I am cantankerous all day. What really helps me is going to college, meeting these bunch of fantastic friends that I have made who make me feel happy again, and sitting for some fun classes where I get picked on for saying that the text has demonized the mother figure, and the ending the day with a long long lecture on Julia Kristeva which makes my day.

But today I didn’t have to go to college, and in an attempt to study for the exam, I woke up early, only to be rudely welcomed by this loud noise coming from the neighbor’s house. I waited for a few hours, hoping that it would die down but the continuous dham-dham-tak-tak-tong-tong didn’t stop. At 7.15 in the evening – yes after 12 hours of mind numbing noise and a half failed attempt to finish reading Marquez, when I finally did tell her that the noise should stop as per society regulation of 7 PM, and that I have my exam and its very disturbing, the dumb bitch told me that it will go on for another 2 weeks. Ugh. I could kill the retarded toad right there, she with her loud Punjabi way of articulating everything via yelling, and her really strange 19 year old daughter who hasn’t been able to adjust in a hostel for a year now, because of whom they have actually rented a weekend flat in another town where the toad goes to so that she doesn’t get homesick. I mean really – I went to a hostel at 8 – who behaves like that at 19. I only knew that my neighbors were complete unsocial loud fools, now I think they are a bunch of really dysfunctional people who have some creepy family secrets stashed in their closed home and locked cupboards. Bloody inconsiderate family of ugly nincompoops.

I will not attribute my annoyance to my pregnancy though. The hormones making a woman crazy was a theory I never bought anyway. I never did blame a bad mood on pms neither did I ever hanker for extra attention during pregnancy like they show in those retarded tata sky ads where the woman wants to watch some movie scene at some ungodly hour. No, women are not crazy, only these myths and advertisements and movies seem to promote this kind of hysterical behavior. I think these are days which are testing my patience, maybe a tiny rehearsal for the sleepless nights to come, maybe an indication that I have a very low threshold for any kind of pain, physical or mental, and that I have a very low level of tolerance.

But all said and done, I do get all teary eyes when I see a video with a new born squirming in sleep, or when I see a baby in the colony, smiling at random people, unaware of what miseries adulthood brings. I like seeing the sheer innocence and sometimes even stupidity that do make children so endearing. Having my own little smiling-crying-yelling monster to tame would be fun. All I hope for now is that the love does overflow from the moment I see her/him, but that’s another 10 weeks to go and who knows, the Maa in me might just surface well on time.

For now, it’s worrying about exams that keeps me occupied, reading Joyce keeps me intrigued, imagining how my first drunk day will be after this dry spell keeps me excited, and once in a while, a really strong kick, does make me smile.

Palimpsest

So I won’t intrude in your life and you don’t intrude in mine. Facebook is a voyeur’s paradise. Every month I get at least one request from a person I never spoke with in college – mostly my first post grad college – random women who used to sit at the other corner of the class ,short fat overdressed richie-rich girl from koregaon park, mind-numbingly dumb-now-married-to-some-NRI girl who exchanged one line with me in two years, the guy who gossiped about me in a not-so-nice way, the ex’s close friend who I was fond of but now don’t really care about, etc etc. What is with this bunch? The bunch I don’t give a shit about, the bunch that makes me squirm when I run into them on some not-so-fateful day in a crowded market. Why can’t you walk away? Look the other way and pretend that we don’t know each other? Because really I don’t. Apart from knowing your name and that we breathed in the same space for those two years, I really don’t know shit about you. I don’t understand this compulsive need for people to come and make small talk, really pointless pleasantries are shared when all that both parties are checking out is who has put on more weight and who looks more miserable. Numbers are exchanged – this annoying age of cell phones, how can you not have one, even my plumber has one – and you are trapped – you have to give your number. But then again that’s not really important because in spite of all the fake smiles and the “ooh we must catch up” business, no message gets dropped, no calls happen, so after getting that missed call also I don’t bother to save it. Let it fade away in the next few days from my list of calls and hope to never run into that person again.

So why do I hate meeting / accepting facebook requests / chatting with these people so much? I don’t know. Maybe it is because I had the most horrible two years of my life in that shithole course. Pune is no student’s paradise - it is an orgy of recklessness and pettiness. Woman stabs woman over a boy. Boy fucks girl and then he fucks her best friend. Roommate gives a crying shoulder and then complains about the weight. Boy wakes up in the morning and says he is commitment phobic – never mind that at night his brain was in his balls. Almost-best friend suddenly appears in boy’s room in his night clothes. Thankfully the ‘almost’ turns to ‘never’. And the usual jhingbang. Really there is nothing so liberating about a college and a place like that. If anything, that place makes you question your own sense of self. It makes you feel helplessly trapped. Anything that made me not want to face my own self in the mirror is pretty much better-best deleted. And so I try to delete the episodes, the chapters, the primary and the auxiliary characters that are associated with the phase. But no – facebook is a bitch that will keep trying to make you get in touch with people you are actively trying to erase. I wonder sometimes if erasing my account is the answer. I don’t know. I like being in the loop with people I know and want to know further. Why should I be the one erasing myself? Talking of erasing, there have been recent erasures which have surprised me, not because the erasing happened but that it happened so easily. Kurtz is a person I used to know who is trying very hard to mend his old ways and turn into a new leaf. But I think spring is over and soon it will be time for autumn and things will begin to change colour and fall. For me he is fallen already because flimsy leaves are fated to fall one day or the other. His flimsiness is legendary really. One day K wants to be friends and the other day he finds an easy way to get out of it. One day he sees me as this unrealistic image in his head and the other day it shatters so easily he walks over it with sigh of relief. I don’t know whether erasing is an activity he indulges in frequently but give a man a rubber and he will find ways to use it almost immediately. As for me, I’d like to think of my two years of that crappy phase as an unpleasant parchment on which I have begun the process of palimpsest. Because I don’t just like to erase, I like to rewrite.

The Do-Not List

I do not like the colour grey.

I do not like it that my brilliant second cousin got brain fever at the age of 12 and never recovered.

I do not like sympathizing with her.

I do not like others lending me their sympathy. Though sometimes I do whine for it.

I do not like lukewarm conversations that start with a polite hi and end with a politer bye.

I do not like it that losing weight is such a pain and sweet cravings, uncontrollable.

I do not like it when people pluck flowers only in the day because one shouldn’t pluck them at night. Why pluck them anyway?

I do not like sugar coated responses to my mistakes. I wish people were more honest.

I do not like never ending chatter of intensely self centric people. I have my bad days too you know.

I do not like getting a zit. I am too old for this kind of agony.

I do not like it that I wonder about my choice of friends and if I could have chosen more prudently.

I do not like spending hours reading Anna Karenina when all I want to do is stare at the blank sky.

I do not like blank skies. This city is full of smog. My home town is full of stars.

I do not like that I am indecisive, unstable, obsessive and neurotic.

I do not like it when a certain someone is happy.

I do not like myself for not liking that.

I do not like early mornings.

I do not like cats.

I do not like non-sweet alcohol drinks. Except beer.

I do not like it that my closest childhood friend lives in the land of the Gujjus. I need her back.

I do not like the nomadic life I lead. Some day I’d like a house without a two year lease.

I do not like Delhi as much as I like Mumbai. Yes I confess.

I do not like summer.

I do not like it that my ‘like’ list might be shorter than my ‘do-not-like’ list. Who would have known?

The Kaleidoscope

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, inspiration comes knocking at my door. I look around, I glance behind my shoulder, I like being alone, I confirm my solitariness. And then I begin to write. But nothing ever materializes beyond a page. Then thoughts get arrested by the anticipation of an audience and the inappropriateness of it all. And then I stop.

This has been happening for many months.

J.S. Mill was right. One has to write poetry (in this I include fiction) assuming there is no audience at all. “Poetry is feeling confessing itself to itself”. But what kind of a confession is that then really? Even Catholics need the confession box and Calvin needs a Hobbes. What is the point of anything confessing itself to itself? Pray tell.

And yet the fear of being read and read into, the uneasiness of misinterpretation, the lack of courage is a reality that suffocates me. Where is my Hobbes? I used to have one. I don’t have one anymore. It is tragic. My Hobbes and I drifted apart when more than just distance came between us. Life happened and though it isn’t as tragic as it seems, it is tragic enough.

But I am digressing and I should try not to. So writing with an assumption that one can be read is a really scary proposition. I admire the guts of authors who write autobiographical works and get published. I admire the guts of blogs that chronicle a personal life without giving a damn. And hard as I may try, I don’t think I can even become it. That is sad. And have I lost out on you already? Yes you – you who reads my blog once in a while, my fortunate patron, the known and the unknown, the blurred past and the etched forever, the berating friend and the appreciative acquaintance – have you taken me off your RSS feeds already? Did you not have me in the first place? Did you plan to have me initially and then wrote me off as just another person who got married and became boring? I don’t blame you if you did. I haven’t tried to redeem myself much except just write a “oh-i-am-going-to-vent” post and then chickened out. Yes that’s all that I have done. Characteristically enough I haven’t carried out what I claimed, I have announced and then disappeared. It is unusual if I do finish something I take up till the end. I am the queen of incompletion, of half-heartedness, of initial euphoria and immediate disillusionment.

But I really do want to write for there is so much to write about. I want to pen down pages and chapters from my life. I want to mention the twisted story of the man with the heart of coal, I want to confess my lack of feelings for the boy who died, I want to say how sometimes when death doesn’t move you, you can question your monstrous self for years. For years and months that have passed, I have had moments of madness, euphoria, disillusionment, depression, betrayal, elation, fulfillment, epiphany – notice that there is nothing banal about these emotions, nothing as simple as happy, sad, indifference, no – these are the big words, the specific adjectives, the things that express the precise state of mind – I like it that things have been dramatic, larger than life, immensely exciting – things that can be recalled in an anecdote or make a fit subject for a late night confessional chat, things that can still make my gut twist, that can still make my throat knot up. I like it that I have had a fairly exciting life where I didn’t let impulse cower to the mind. Sometimes I regretted, sometimes I didn’t. But mostly I am just glad that the youth was a kaleidoscope and not a microscope where I didn't sit back to analyze but somersaulted with the colors.

And I want to write about the people and the episodes, all the shades of the kaleidoscope need to splatter across the white sheet of paper, the fear needs to be covered with a splat of dark humor, the puns and the digs need to be highlighted with a fluorescence.

So why do I fear the interpretation, the detailed investigation, the repercussions of such scrutiny? Why do I fear the microscope when I have already played in the colors?

From the Laugh of the Medusa

An excerpt:

“Time and again I, too, have felt so full of luminous torrents that I could burst-burst with forms much more beautiful than those which are put up in frames and sold for a stinking fortune. And I, too, said nothing, showed nothing; I didn’t open my mouth, I didn’t repaint my half of the world. I was ashamed. I was afraid, and I swallowed my shame and my fear. I said to myself: You are mad! What’s the meaning of these waves, these floods, these outbursts? Where is the ebullient, infinite woman who, immersed as she was in her naivete, kept in the dark about herself, led into self disdain by the great arm of parental-conjugal phallocentrism, hasn’t been ashamed of her strength? Who, surprised and horrified by the fantastic tumult of her drives (for she was made to believe that a well-adjusted normal woman has a … divine composure), hasn’t accused herself of being a monster?”

-Helene Cixous. (The Laugh of the Medusa) - Read it!

Die Blog Die

I’m officially sick of writing about the weather, the season, all things happy and all that la la la! No, I do not know what to write about these days. I want to make this blog more personal than it is. Then I want to write about how, what and when I really feel. Then I want to be somewhat like my tall friend whose writing has this sharp, acidic courage that mine could never achieve. I really want to vent. But this blog is now not personal. And that is excruciatingly annoying. It is only my fault that I let myself go. I think it was the greed of getting some comments on my erstwhile no-hit blog. I think I was a bit tired of wallowing in that anonymity which now seems to be such a luxury. In between all of that, I have resorted to another privately tucked in scrap on the internet, but this one is still my oldest, my favourite. Blogspot is still comfortable. Tumblr is a step sister of blogspot. I was never much of a fan of wordpress. And this red and white and black header is still what is typically me. This strange, senseless title of schizophrenicsalad given to me long ago by a friend is also a part of me. And with this blog now becoming a yawn-inducing machine, I don’t know what to do to revive it again. How I miss the venting and the bitching. Being older sometimes comes with a disclaimer. Politeness and all the shitty jazz sometimes just strains and drips itself into your writing. And this is how we all become dull and insipid. And this is how a perfectly good blog dies.

I am almost tempted to let it die. And restart again. But like a nagging, incomplete story of the past, this blog also seems to have the last 6 years of my life. A lot of it has been deleted for god knows what politically correct reasons. My curious cousin discovered this blog thanks to my negligent brother who discovered this blog thanks to my negligent internet history. So all the sex had to be erased. All the smoking had to be gotten rid off. All the bitching, the drunk episodes, the stoned scribblings and the massive stupidities I have done in my first post graduation days and after had to be let go of. What is left then to write about? The god damned weather, the city and more of the bloody city, the monsoon and so much of the monsoon, my annoyingly unpredictable health and maybe some food and ofcourse the oh-so-often swimming posts? No wonder I had to resort to a new link. Who wouldn’t? Who can live with this boring crap?

So even though I do want to kill this blog, I am going to try to let it stay. And maybe care a little bit less about appearances? And write a little bit more about the strained relationships and the blooming ones? Maybe I can write about the fantastic poems I come by thanks to some friends? Maybe I can post interesting videos I come by on days? Maybe I can light up a bloody cigarette and not wonder who is reading about it. Oh by the way, if you listen really hard, the lit cigarette is not quite so soundless. The small noise of the thin paper burning really does make me want to pull out another one. It’s like diwali in your mouth.

Sometimes the bad weather can bring you joy.

Today’s weather is exactly how it was when we first saw our current home – gloomy, dark yet full of hope. It was the fifth day of continuous house hunting. I was determined to find something that could replicate my home in Mumbai. I was waiting for a house to speak to me like it was my own.

It was almost a year ago that the winds lashed out at the trees, the dust got into my lenses half blinding me, we sat in the coffee shop outside the complex and waited to see yet another place and face yet another disappointment. A really delayed call by the property dealer had already inflamed us. We were almost determined to not go and see something else the week after that. All I wanted was to return to my house in Mumbai in which I had spent hours, making it from a brand new house with no fittings to a workable home with many memories. We move every 2 years. This is our third house. City to city, locality to locality, cook to cook, convenience store to convenience store, we are uprooted from our comfort zones so often that now house hunting has become a painful ritual.

In a weather like todays, we walked into the complex, through the dingy corridor that had no light and it opened up to the messiest and yet the warmest house I had seen all week. Seven people lived in this house before. None of the flushes were working. The balcony door had been cracked by the crazy wind, the wall was a jaundiced yellow and multiple things needed repair. But the kitchen had nice modular shelves, the living room had so much potential, the white light needed to be done away with and I could see more than a month’s time of work that the house needed but somehow it was okay. Somehow we had found our new house.

Sometimes bad weather brings pleasant surprises. Sometimes a heavy downpour can make you stay in and have that really rare conversation that cements relationships. Sometimes a really hot day can make you like yourself in your own skin. Sometimes a really cold day can make you fall in love with an author you didn’t discover before. Sometimes a windy day can make you feel like Marilyn Monroe. While on other days, it can find you your next home. :)

I did get rid of that white lighting.

Molten Sunset

The weather is deceptive today. It gets warm, a little dust storm comes from nowhere. Then the weather suddenly cools down. Now it is breezy, beautiful and not a time for indoor activities. It is the final match of the world cup. I don’t care too much about cricket. I just like watching the last few overs of the second innings. So I will go for a swim.

The water isn’t warm but it isn’t cold. At sun down, getting into the pool feels like dipping yourself in molten sunshine. It’s somewhere in the middle – the transient transition, the few minutes that just passes by, the shortest part of the day, when the yellow and ochre meets the blue and invites the indigo sky to take over for the night. It is a time for a peaceful exchange between the busy day time and the sleep inducing hour. That is the time I love to go for a swim, when everything is changing and the shimmering droplets of water turns into dark glittering globules and I can stay in and watch the day retire into the night.

And while I am swimming and have drowned the noise of the world and my mundane daily life thoughts in the water, I stay suspended in a state of alternative introspection. That is my favourite part of the day. That is the most beautiful. In a pool, around strangers with whom I don’t have to make conversation, in a completely public space, I find my most private moments and I find my peace.

Farewell Fabulous Fog

The morning was enrobed in this ethereal mist – white and translucent, gauzy and delicate, gloomy and gorgeous. Like a bride’s veil, the city seemed to be hidden away from the view of the rest of the world. No flights could land. No, they couldn’t spot the city. Everything was delayed. There were traffic jams on the road. Yet, fog is so beautiful that every inconvenience can be excused.

I like a foggy morning. It makes me like my tea better. I can’t see the tall building in front of my house. A semblance of idyllic isolation surrounds my balcony. Suddenly I am not living in a big city. Suddenly I am not surrounded by high rising condominiums. Suddenly peace seems to replace all hurried, human activity. I am suspended in a self-deceptive solitariness and I love it.

Winter went by too soon. Suddenly its warm and my coats are whining in the cupboard. They will again be subject to months of suffocation with the unbearable smell of naphthalene. My heart goes out to them. Hot milk won’t be so much fun anymore. Walking in the chilly evening will not be a secluded activity anymore. The walking tracks will be thronged with multitudes of people every evening. The charm of the cold, the biting wind in the middle of the night and the dead of the morning will disappear. Everything will become warm, hot, burn and char. Yes I hate summer. It makes me sluggish, least inspired and most cranky.

Bye bye cool morning breeze, colorful socks, velvet blankets and hot chocolate.

Hello sweaty, sticky days, skin breakouts and tissue paper overdose. I so did not miss you.

Dying and Dipping

I know what death must feel like. It feels like getting into the swimming pool on a cold winter day in Delhi. Thousands and millions of tiny little daggers were suddenly stabbing me from all ends. When I dipped my head in, my ears revolted in disgust and the ringing didn’t go for an hour after. My stubborn as hell self didn’t give up. So I tried to drag myself to the other end convincing myself that all I need is a warm up lap. All I needed was a brain – which by the way, also was frozen with my throbbing forehead. “No this isn’t happening”, I gasped in my head, “I can’t breathe”, and quickly, before the world closed itself around my eyes, I shut myself out and managed to swim back to the edge and get out. Yes I know what that chicken in my freezer must feel like. And yes, I know how it feels to be physically numbed till you can’t feel your own pinch.

Winter comes with long vacations. Home is where the paunch is. Even I couldn’t escape from Mom’s ghee-bhare paranthe and my favourite halwas. Indulge – I thought – and back in Delhi, all will be okay. That is a myth. The holiday weight isn’t. How does one lose the new year’s new layer of adipose tissue? I hate the treadmill. I hate the monotony of walking in one spot. It is depressing, to keep walking and yet stay in the exact same spot – almost like how we sometimes live our days, our weeks – we think we are walking, and yet the routine of the daily life sucks you right back and nothing has changed. So with that depressing piece of contraption out, I wanted to start taking real walks. But Delhi is cold and I like walking in the dark. Yes, I have issues. Like I don’t like the redundancy of the treadmill, I don’t like the visibility of the early evening. I like going for a walk when the sky is dark and no one really sees me. I like the invisibility of the night, when they can see you walk yet can’t see your face. I also don’t like walking with a phone or music. I like to just walk. And the dark of the winter is too cold for my warped activities.

So what do I love the most? Ah. I love to swim. But it is cold. Just how cold, I didn’t anticipate. Why haven’t they shut the pool down? Do they like inviting people to have just a little peep into numbing, icy death? And I hear people have been coming for a swim. They must not be human. They cannot be human. It is impossible to dip oneself in that chilled water and step out as if nothing happened – as if nothing evil struck your face, as if nothing icy smothered you and as if nothing menacing grabbed your lower back. And so, following really bad examples, I bravely and enthusiastically got into my swimsuit and stepped into that sinister body of coldness. I died. My short lived death lasted half an hour. Really. I am still reeling from that numbness. And sheer stupidity. I don’t think I can even look at that pool until April. And that too, is worth a second consideration.

A Tale of a Tampon

Good God there is a shortage of tampons in Delhi. Not exactly the best thing to blog about but I am so furious. I am furious at the lack of supply, I am furious at this very idiotic monopoly that Johnson and Johnson has in India, I am furious at the chemist who suggested I buy pads instead “ek hee toh baat hai madam” – little will he know how similar they are when I stuff one up his nose! Why won’t more brands retail them? And how are all the women managing without it? In a fit of total panic I called multiple stores around my house, around my area, even in Khan market which caters to all the expats of the world who are tampon-only users, I texted a friend, I even called my mother to check the availability in my hometown and courier it to me. Meanwhile I am trying to figure out who is travelling abroad in the next month so I can ask them to pick it up at a duty free store. This is ridiculous. How can something so essential go missing from the market? Another woman in the same predicament as me gave me the most sympathetic look and a nod of mutual grief in the pharmacy store. “I’ve been trying to get them for a month” she said with such sadness in her voice. My panic only aggravated, my despair deepened, my pharmacy store-hopping got faster.

This happened in the evening.

Cut to night time 10 PM.

A call from a random unknown number. It’s a chemist. Apparently the idiots at Just Dial have been circulating my number as “Tampons waali”. A chemist from North Delhi. North delhi? Really? I am desperate enough to go there. He says he doesn’t have it now but he knows I am looking so he will try and arrange. He assumes, in a smug voice, that since I am looking for it so badly, I would obviously be willing to buy more than just a few boxes. “Ten”, I say in a state of total last minute anxiety. Tiny pause. My heart is beating. Tiny pause continues. “Fifteen?”, I say encouragingly. He promises to try and arrange and asks me to calls back tomorrow. But North Delhi. Really? It’s SO far, I think in my head, willing to take on the task at hand, take metro, run and go, etc etc.

But I have exams in 5 days and I haven’t prepared shit. I am neck, head, all of me down into a bit fat puddle of obscure crap. Taking this course lightly isn’t treating me very well. The books suddenly seem really big. The reference readings are piling on and now a mountain of A4 sheets sit ominously in the corner of my study room. Basically, I am struggling to read up and how.

Back to the topic at hand. So yes, it is far. At least an hour and a half by metro, if I am lucky. So I gather the courage to ask him if he will home deliver. Tiny pause repeats. I offer to pay for transport. I offer to buy 20 boxes if he manages to scrape them from the corners of the earth. He agrees. I thank him profusely, send a little prayer to the female gods above and see a glimmer of hope at the end of the dark dark empty shelves.

And now I wait, I put 2 reminders on my phone to call him tomorrow, lest some other tampon deprived girl bribes him with a larger order. I wait for an unknown man sitting in Soni Chemists in some obscure corner of north Delhi to save my soul.

One of Those Days

Literature has been killing me. No, not with joy, but with its inescapable vastness and weight. This was supposed to be fun – this returning to academics. It is fun – till the exams came looming on my head like an unavoidable omen. Will I or will I not? I don’t know.

Meanwhile issues of the future continue to haunt me. What after this? Surely not the corporate rigmarole anymore. Surely not the brainless routine of the television life. Writing? Editing? More studying? I don’t know. I am the constant worry wart who seems to need something to fret about to add meaning to her life. It is not a good thing to do.

Yoga is supposed to help relax. But that also stresses me. When will the instructor come? Will I be home on time? Will I do justice to the 45 minutes? Will she train me well? Is she over paid? Am I being a spoilt brat by not going to classes? Etc. Etc. Etc.

Weight gain. Ah. But of course. How can one even forget the internal trauma of standing on the scales after a month and seeing a considerable shift. Give up sweets, eat salad, don’t eat after 8 PM, they say. I just want to sleep in bed all day and not wake up. Hibernate and escape all the worries of the world. Not want to look at myself on some days.

I have the moodiest hair in the world. My good hair days are almost as extreme as my bad hair days. I swing between the uncontained messiness of Medusa and the shimmery tresses of Apollo. On most days when I do have a thing to attend, a party to go to, a person to impress, I will most surely be blessed with the Medusan mood. It is inevitable. And adds to my rotten mood of the day.

Let me also get back to my first semester and say that the books truly suck. I can’t wait to get onto next semester. That is if I pass this one. Paradise Lost. Really? Isn’t this talk of Satan and Eden really quite overdone? Chaucer? Do I need to know of the worries, issues, debauchery, codes of honor of the medieval ages? Eh. I don’t think so. Donne? And his metaphysical conceit. Fine – it is slightly better than the rest. But who can even get started on Plato? Why is imitation so complicated for you? And pray Mr Sidney, do you need to defend poetry in such ridiculously complicated language? I am getting a little sick of their intellectual masturbation. I wish they’d just disappear.

Birds have taken over parts of my balcony and the AC area. To sit, chirp, shit and mate. Little dried blobs of black, brown and whitish stuff are found every day. It isn’t pleasant to scrape of someone’s dried crap. I used to hate rodents. Now I also dislike birds. I chase squirrels in campus. Scare them out of their tiny little wits. This, after one entered my house and threatened to eat at my sofa, stared at me in the eye fearlessly till I had to make the guard chase the hyperactive piece of furriness out with a danda.

I also have unfulfilled desires to be a writer. It’s the great new Indian dream. So many publishers, so many books. Doesn’t everyone get published anyway? One just needs the plot and the other elements Aristotle so elaborately puts down as a prerequisite for writing fiction, which is actually quite simple and one doesn't need to know him to know those.

Masterchef Australia has become my new found addiction. I cannot wait for the clock to strike 9 PM. I can’t get enough of the fact that food isn’t food, its art for them. Then I wonder – would I have been a great chef if I followed my cooking passion? It’s one of those questions one asks when they are on the other side of 25 and inching closer towards the big 3-0. It is all part of the great dream unrealized and a mid life crisis of ambition and purpose.

So what it is exactly that I want? Money, fame, intellectual satisfaction, professional acceptance? I just want to stop being the wary lamb that got lost somewhere along the way. I just hope this path is leading to the right destination. Otherwise, one will start on a new direction again. After all, there is always Google maps. And this, one of those vaguely lost days.

The Warmest Winter

There is nothing that takes my time these days more than Salman Rushdie. In my overarching, over ambitious, Icarus like project to do a term paper on the post colonial issues of his novels, I have doomed myself to constant reading and re-reading, mugs of coffee, hours of nerve wracking research and multiple moments of sheer desperation. This is the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of the current state of my life.

What comes a close second is the change of weather that seems to whisper to me each evening, urging me to step out of the house, take a lazy walk, sit and stare at the line of mirchi lights all over the lawns, smell the newly sprouted blooms whose fragrance has invaded every open space in the city, buy some neroli and jasmine moisturizer, sit at my balcony and watch the moody rays of the sun come and go.

This is my favourite season of the year. When the monsoon has been chased away to give way to the cold breeze that hits you with a surprise one fine evening, when the fan makes you shiver in the early hours of the morning, when the day ends early and the dusk demands a sweatshirt, when you start to dig into the deep recesses of your lofts and trunk to bring out those naphthalene smelling woolens.

This winter is special. Like that long lost lover you meet after years. Like the nostalgia that hits you when you put on that age old over coat. Like the friends you made in the open air of the concert. Like the smell of the barbecue chicken that mom made on cold nights.

My tweed coat calls out to me. The heaters and the gloves beckon me. I can’t wait for it to be November. The coldest season of the year is the warmest to me.

Lady D, A-Melle and Me

I would have really liked to go for a swim today. Swimming just takes every bit of shoulder ache away and every scrap of worry away – even though it’s only for a while. But here I am, sitting in my yet another new house in Gurgaon, having cutting chai that reminds me of Mumbai, leisurely inhaling a dangly stick of Marlboro Ultra Lite and not finding much to really complain about. Except the fact that I miss Mumbai like I once missed Delhi when I moved to Pune years ago.

Gurgaon is alright. I am quite enjoying where I live. But more than anything, it’s the fact that I am back to academics is what keeps me happy and content. Delhi isn’t what it used to be. The roads aren’t the same, nor are the people. Everything has changed and the little time capsule that I had preserved in my head is now split. I am not complaining really. I am more comfortable with the idea of change now than I ever was. And in a way its making me experience the city with a whole new perspective. Friends who have matured, acquaintances who are now close, new family, new street food stalls, new metro lines, new flyovers and new ways to kill and use time.

Lady D is my new friend in college. Oh for the record I am back to my unreal, impractical yet joyous world of literature. I am friends with Kafka and Freud again. I am finding a new found love in Moliere and Rabelais. I am in a constant love-hate relationship with Plato and Coleridge. Amidst all this, Lady D (who was at Mumbai for the last 3 years too) and I, find moments to reminisce about the city, to miss the rushed streets of Colaba, the drunken nights at Mondys, the sound of the locals, the chaat at bandstand, the midnight gigs at Blue Frog and the sheer freedom of being who and where you wanted to be. I’ve come a long way since I first moved to Mumbai. I’ve fallen hard for the city with a fishy smell, the musty air and the mad energy. Honestly, I can’t wait to get back and continue what I left incomplete – my long and rocky affair with the city.

A-Melle is another new friend. She usually doesn’t know what Lady D and I are going on and on about Mumbai. I can’t wait to take her there and make her another victim of that overcrowded city’s charm. College is nice. I go everyday like a geek who needs her dose of lecture to survive. Not really though. I also take great pleasure in bunking when the professor sucks, almost as much as I love scribbling notes like a maniac when I love the text. It’s nice to have lunch that costs Rs 25 and cold coffee that isn’t a buck over 20! I can push A-Melle around and get shoved in return when we are dragging ourselves to the library, or sit under the hot sun while Lady D fills me in on the latest dope in class. Being back to college has given me the joy that was essentially missing in the last 5 years.

And even though I miss Mumbai like a dog misses his favorite bone, I am happy to be doing what I like doing. I feel stable, I feel like I can have a decent conversation again, I feel like all that rust is off my brain. After years of scattered mindlessness, confused existence, meaningless jobs, ridiculously pendulous interests, being everywhere and yet nowhere, I finally feel like I am home.

From the Journal of a Gypsy Girl

So many things have happened in the last few weeks. I have had a whirlwind trip to Gurgaon and back. I have spent at least 35 hours in 5 days on house hunting and seen at least 30-40 houses. Some have been indulgently beautiful hence overpriced, some have been passable but with miserable blackish mosaic flooring, some have let me down by its badly planned kitchen, some have had black chart paper pasted onto the windows to save curtain money and some have had landlords vain enough to detest. Week 2 of June 2010 will be marked as the most frustrating week of the year for me. Day after day, hour after hour, unhealthy burgers after burgers, heat and muck, annoying brokers and liking flats which were not in my budget finally got to me. Saturday night was my desperate attempt at throw some positive light at this location move, so I stood at the balcony of my guest house and watched the glittering gurgaon roads and phase 5, and thought of what I may like about this place versus Mumbai. Honestly, not many points came to mind except that the roads would be better, the winter would be glorious and people won’t ramble in Marathi expecting me to know it just because I live there. Hindi will be the new language – even if its interspersed with some gaalis and a haryaanvi accent. But apart from that, I couldn’t think of any more reasons.

I am the newest lover to Mumbai. I am suddenly appreciating the people, the ethics, the warmth, the respect for some semblance of lane driving. Yes I haven’t gone on the Metro in Delhi yet and I don’t particularly like the locals of Mumbai, but at least I have the option of taking an auto or a taxi in the middle of the night, without holding a pepper spray to my heart. I like the monsoon even though it’s a mess on the roads. I like my house, it’s gorgeous. I have fewer friends, but eventually it doesn’t matter. Everyone gets wrapped in a life of their own and socializing isn’t top priority. I like the weekends here. I love the strictness of the drinking and driving rule. I like Party Hard Drivers! I like that my ex driver is an ex underworld goon who is super fond of me and would take me out of any pickle that I may slip into. I like that getting a gas connection is simple and a replacement comes promptly.

But then again, I also like the India Habitat Centre, I enjoy plays at the IIC, I like American diners, I love winter evenings in Dilli Haat having a hot plate of momos, I like scouting for funky chappals in Janpath and I like trying really hard to find something that fits me in Sarojini nagar! I like the fact that some of my girlfriends are still close and here. I like it that I will be staying very close to the fancy ambience mall and walking distance from the DLF city club. There could be quite a few positives to Gurgaon/Delhi. Because it’s been more than 5 years since I left, I think it takes really hard thinking to fish out what I used to like about the city. True that I detest the public transport. I plan to be a metro regular if it turns out to be bearable. I don’t particularly like being armed with my pepper spray at all times but does give me a sense of self defense. Also, it’s a big plus that my parents will be a 9 hour drive away. I can run home any weekend I want.

It’s an age old debate – Mumbai versus Delhi, Delhi versus Gurgaon, etc etc. But one has to learn to detach oneself from the four walls of a house when moving is going to become a two yearly event. One has to learn to adapt, adjust and find joy in life. I have finally found a pretty house in Gurgaon that I intend to make a gorgeous home. Meanwhile, I am sorting out the other aspects of my life and submerging myself in the essence of Mumbai in my last 2 weeks here. Mumbai has given me a lot – a job, an opportunity to grow as a person, it’s given me M and the happiness of moving in our first 2 homes, it’s given me few thick friends and now I hope to find something more in a new city. I am a gypsy girl. I move every 2 years and I will love each place I go to. To new cities and new plumbing work! Cheers!

Of Resignations and Dancing in the Rain

Today has been quite a day. Well, for starters it was my last day at work. You know how it is. Everyone is saying they will miss you and will stay in touch with you. Random people who you have met just twice in the cafeteria, women whose names you don’t remember, men who have given you the polite nod and let you take your cappuccino before them, the receptionist who is probably a bit sick of receiving your lunch sandwiches and the boss you may not love so much. It could be an excruciatingly fake exercise except today, it was not.

So what has changed? Surely not the people who promise to call but don’t have my number, or colleagues who immediately add you on facebook but may never drop a note. I think it was me. I think some of my cynicism about people in general seems to have reduced. My smile has become more genuine, my laugh less sarcastic and my one liners less personal. I find it easier to have a chat with a new acquaintance and I actually notice a subtle haircut and remind myself to drop a compliment. I don’t shut myself out anymore and it is so refreshing. My last day wasn’t spent running around with the clearance form, frantic to get out of the office. It wasn’t spent counting hours and minutes. It was a peaceful routine and in the pool of multiple goodbyes, the genuine ones that I could spot made me happy.

With that done with and the relieving letter tucked under my arms, I gallivanted around the city in an auto rickshaw and remembered my initial days in Mumbai. The weather right now is hot and sultry, but there is that weight in the air and that smell in the evening breeze that whispers in your ears about the impending rains. The promise of thick droplets of water crashing at my balcony doesn’t scare me. I know the roads will flood, the autos will refuse to budge, the pot holes will disappear into menacing little marshes waiting to swallow you in. But the rain will also do what it does each year – wash away all the sadness, the resentment and grudges of the year gone by and give me a fresh start, a happy beginning to another phase.

I will only witness the first few weeks or maybe even days of monsoon in Mumbai. A series of snapshots in my head show me the slushy train ride to andheri, the gorgeous evening walk at carter road, the folded jeans, the squeaky flip flops, the broken umbrella at worli, the drenched me witnessing my first violent downpour and the room I once lived in at my aunt’s house. There is something about the water, the puddles, the frogs in the pool, the lush green weeds, the noise of the splashes, the fear of the flooding, that completely fascinates me.

If there is something about Mumbai that I have loved more than the city itself, it’s the monsoon. The most inconvenient season of the city has been my favourite and will continue to be. Till I return again, I will always remember Mumbai for the joy the monsoon has given me. Like someone once said, “Anyone who says sunshine brings happiness, has never danced in the rain”.

Counting Stars

There is something beautifully wasteful about counting stars. The futility of the counting doesn’t deter me from finding excuses to stare at the shimmer splattered sky. So there could be a million sparkles up there, but why must I not count? Must I spend my time doing something less wasteful, less pointless? But the stars in the sky were put above us, to count and to stare at. What else could be the reason? Except it being god’s little gesture of prettifying the world.

When I think of stars I don’t think of them as what Wikipedia defines them – a massive, luminous ball of plasma held together by gravity. How does the dictionary define them? – Star [noun]: any of the heavenly bodies, except the moon, appearing as fixed luminous points in the sky at night. The only redeeming word in these definitions is ’luminous’. Luminous – radiating light, shining, bright – now that’s a bit of poetry in itself. Just as a star is.

For me, every inch of the sky holds something - A wish, a longing, a prayer. Dead people become stars. Hopeful moments become stars. A dream is like the star – revealing itself only at night, showing itself to you the way only you can see it. Every artist sees the stars as they like it. Van Gogh sees it as a shocking whirlpool of light. “That does not keep me from having a terrible need of -- shall I say the word -- religion. Then I go out at night to paint the stars”, he says. Anne sexton says in her poem, that like a star she wants to die. Don McLean sang of the stars as the “Flaming flowers that brightly blaze”.

Though I don’t remember when was the last time I stared at a clear sky filled with stars. Cities are not pretty. No time to sit and stare. And even if you do, it ensures the pollution and the smog doesn’t leave you with much to stare at. I was brought up in a hill station, closer to the sky, away from the rush, where an old, green painted bench still perches invitingly outside my house, where lovers meet and gaze at the sky, where children gather and spot constellations, where I sat at the age of 12 and got inspired to write my first poem. There is something so magical about stars that I refuse to let the science enter my head. I would like to still tilt my head and marvel at the miracle of creation. I would still stick fluorescent, glowing stars on the ceiling of a room. I would still like to lay flat, in complete abandon, and stare at the sky for hours. One doesn’t see that in the city. And that is why I love returning to my small hometown every once in a while – so I can stretch my arms and feel like to can touch the stars again and count them endlessly. I like to revisit true beauty every once in a while. And there is nothing as gorgeous, as eternal and as pure, as a sky clustered with stars and dreams and joy.

Things I would like to do when I don’t make excuses

To write like the wind is caressing the paper is what I want to do. Free flowing and refreshing. Word after word after word -like a row of soldiers, dancing across the sheet in perfect synchrony. The pen is light and the words, effortless. No thesaurus by my side and no list of things-to-do hanging over my head distracting me.

The sky above me is so blue and the air has a reassuring smell of familiarity – of the sea and the fish. Life is rushing by me like everyone is in a hurry to get older, richer, busier. But that isn’t how I like my life to be. I hate to run. I would rather take a lazy stroll in a garden while there is still daylight, eat a cucumber-cheese-tomato sandwich, peel an orange and luxuriously pop each piece in and just stare at the grass, the flowers, the children.

I like cooking non-hurried food. The pressure cooker isn’t the answer to life. I like roasting and sniffing the spices turn from a sandy shade to a golden brown. Sit at a restaurant and taste the prawn masala fry slowly to decipher what went in it. Take a bite, speak, talk, discuss, savor the flavor and digest the moment leisurely.

Must we buy a house in the hills? Where the life is slow and moments come more easily. Memories are made at a barbecue in my backyard. The cold wind turns your nose blue yet you are perfectly warm on the inside. Cities can make you cold, routinely, mechanical.

There is a pot hole near my house. On and off, it is filled by some random water. It isn’t monsoon. One day a dog was sitting in it like a king. His head was titled towards the sky. His expression seemed to be that of pride. He looked like a delight in the muck. How often do these sights arrest me? Not often. Very occasionally now I see the clouds turn black or the flower sprout from the bud. It’s my excuse – no time to sit and stare. But it’s hardly an excuse. One makes time.

Happiness finds me. I delude myself with fake misfortunes and shut it out. Truth is I am a lucky one. With love, life, like minded friends. Sit at a coffee shop, do a night in, just talk. Shut out the internet, the wi-fi, the television, the distractions. Soak in the cloud of joy just suspended all around me. Making time is an art, making excuses is easy labor. I would like to be an artist. I’m abandoning excuses. I am going to do things I like to do.

The Final Exit Mode

I am in an exit mode of mind. The new office hasn’t worked for me. Truth be told, no office has ever worked for me though I have been good at my work but never enjoyed it really. And I have sat myself down and racked my head to figure out what exactly will work for me? And the decision happened almost automatically. I want to study. Always have. Always will.

Going back to academics is a tough choice to make. Especially when one is used to the idea of the cheque arriving at your account at the end of each month, especially when one sees all most of their batch mates climbing the corporate ladder in full speed and especially when one comes face to face with your own convoluted idea of self worth.

At 20 I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was passionate about my subject but somehow I got fed in with external opinions about how a professional course is the only way to be. So I followed the herd, did a painful course, sat for placements and bang – I was now a management trainee at an office with a little cubicle. I wasn’t happy when I prepared for the entrance, I wasn’t happy to figure out math problems and who is whose aunt in those god forsaken logical sections! I was miserable doing my 2 year old course and I by the time I started working, I was numbingly indifferent and mechanical about my work. I thought a lot about returning to academics, pursue literature, do what makes me happy and finally be interested in something but then the demon of false-self-worth possessed me.

I think most of us paint our self worth according to how much money we make and what’s our official designation. Even if it isn’t something we love doing, at least its something we like being called. So when I go to a party and ask someone about themselves, 90% of their conversation will be about work. Why not talk about what you like, what you read, what music makes you the person you are, etc etc? Why only talk about the fact that you are so stressed because you are worried about how much your next bonus will be? I am not saying that money isn’t important. Of course it is. But sadly, money is now the only thing that seems to derive our self worth and that’s kind of shitty.

I had also fallen in the same web. Not working in a respectable office and not having something to talk about at these get-togethers would make me feel bad about myself. My parents would reiterate that how I need to work for people to respect me. When I took a break between 2 jobs, I didn’t like telling people that I am not working. I felt small, insignificant and worthless. Though when I wasn’t working, I was freelancing, but somehow I always thought that people will think less of me. And it wasn’t even my parent’s fault that they said it or that I felt this way. I think it was some kind of illogical social conditioning that just seeps into your head after a point of time.

But it’s been 3 years of working and 3 years of hating each morning that I had to go for work. And now I am in the final exit mode. I have realized that my self-worth comes from within me and no corporate snob in a party should make me want to redefine that. My husband makes me proud, he understands my love for studying, he wants me to return to academics, he respects it and that gives me an immeasurable amount of support and confidence. So this session onwards, I am a student again. I hope to make it through to the entrance, I hope to realize true happiness and I hope to reinstate my new definition of self worth. :)