Purple Gaze

2011-11-24T03:49:00.000-08:00

There are these nights. When I walk in and out of rooms. Looking for my window. Water in a cloudy bottle of Slice, a shiny white tube of aloe vera skin cream, a lavender comb and two pink clips left in a hasty row on its ledge. Outside, a wan moon drifts in and out of puffs of charcoal cloud, one house away, the old airconditioner drips druggedly on asbestos and one rickshaw leans on the only other lamp post in the lane. In a bad dream, I just run into walls. Cold, hard and ochre.

2011-11-18T04:45:00.000-08:00

21. Fond of plastic hoops, adjectives, long sentences and stonewashed denims. Has a job, wavy brown hair and one maroon silk saree.

I should have died then. At least I sounded good.

2011-11-18T04:35:00.000-08:00

Will I ever know how it feels like not feeling like this?

2011-08-08T19:00:00.000-07:00

T would never let a mirror pass. In the dark circle-hiding, blinding lustre of shopping malls, she would sneak across piles of kurtis on sale, rustle past shiny belts dangling off steel roulades and sift through unruly heaps of denims dumped between two mirrors. Look around and then slowly smoothen the crumples on the sea green linen blouse. Or lift one heel just enough to smile at the lilac nail paint against the slim silver bands of the slipper. And if no one's looking, take one lingering, teasing, audaciously blissful look at the girl in the mirror. Or the lock of brown hair curled against her neck.

The mirror at home was just a year younger than her mother. The size of her math book. Nestled between a small tower of dadu's hardbound budget notebooks and dida's half empty Pond's Dreamflower bottles resting on the top of a cupboard. Two bindis, one red and one maroon glowered back from the top left corner. In their rare absence, T would dip her handkerchief in soapwater and rub the stubborn ochre glue marks away. And wonder if she had brown eyes.

There was something strangely reassuring about vanity. About scoffing at little boxes of shimmer and colour women hover around in shops. About chuckling in silence as friends fussed around the pub washrooms. There was something strong, quietly comforting about not having to seek love. Or miss it.

2011-01-25T09:47:00.000-08:00

I am not a fighter.
And I have just started regretting it.

2010-08-17T10:37:00.000-07:00

There isn't much to say. Or maybe, there's a lot. Squeezed into chinks and corners. But I no more fancy broken, bloodied nails. Just because they have scrapes of soundless, dank nights on them.
When the rest of standard five was still infatuated with little orange erasers that smelled of rainy mornings in the middle of April, I was discovering how unforgiving, how perfectly angry the ink rubber was. And how it scourged blue-black words into little paper flakes that lolled listlessly around the silky remains of the page...
Some day, I'll come scurrying for words again. Till then, I'll be greedy, restless and wide awake.

2010-03-29T07:26:00.000-07:00

The only time I felt the need to hear my name in boyfriend-talk, I dug out a high school crush buried for over five years under the best-friend’s men, friends’ men and their friends’ men. It’s difficult to recollect exactly when it started feeling good to be linked with X, Y, Z for the fact that they were men, but yes, it sort of added a lot of spice to two mundane words, ‘shut up!’. These were pre-smiley, pre twenties, pre boss, pre hikki (or is it hicci) days.

And I have been infatuated with this guy for ten years. Been love for about three months seven years back. I am told I have to convince the world that I am straight. I am told that a man just needs to be a man – not a Plath-chanting, Floyd-humming wonder I think he should be. I am told that I should immediately put a lid on dreams which demand men to do cute things (like buy a red saree and balk and giving it, KJO ishtyle ;)) and register for matrimonial sites which demand men to come with six figure salaries. Moustaches, love handles, white skin, and un-cuteness stand pardoned.

I should have started on Eliot five years before I did.

Someone suggest cure for hopeless, straight women?

2010-03-13T01:22:00.000-08:00

So, I am growing old. I secretly pay attention to each ad that says they work wonders for wrinkles. I am used to being pretty, I am used to being vain, I am used to smirking deep inside my heart when men sigh and wish they were someone else. And I am used to not being ashamed of it. One little bit. If you take away reasons to be busy with myself, you will probably take away all the excuses I give myself each morning I drag myself to work and say, I am a very lucky girl.

And my favourite dress, white and blue, cute and flirty, lies delicately wrapped in tissue in the almirah. For two years. Two birthdays after I bought it, I still need a reason to wear it. I should have listened to the best friend who protested it was a halter, who protested it wasn’t cheap and threatened to dump me if I wore it. Still, still… it’s my favourite.

But then, my phone inbox was not used to getting flooded on birthdays. I should have been very happy last Monday. And you can’t say that I didn’t try…

2010-01-14T07:33:00.000-08:00

Roughly ten years before I discovered how fashionable or intellectually uplifting it was to be a soul lost in bowls of all sorts, I discovered Backstreet Boys. If there is anything that could compare to my first tryst with the then rebellious lyrics (Am I Original, Am I the only one, Am I se-x-ual... punctuated by 'yeahs' of various lenghts and intensity) it would be slipping into the first blouse, tailored exclusively for me, as opposed to Mum’s exquisitely and abundantly safety-pinned blouses whose sleeves could pass of as Victorian armours on my skinny arms. No, I am not the sort who goes all dewy-eyed if you play Seasons in Sun, by I am still trying to find out why I downloaded a whole bunch of BSB songs that now co-exist with Nirvana, Evanescence, Coldplay and Pink Floyd in my Mp3 player.
The Boys, I guess, remind me of class seven. With girls struggling to get girl-talk right. A girl who fought with me all the year and gave the best-friend-to-be the worst Christmas card she made. A girl who was doomed to spend some years in what I realize was just my boat. The girls who taught me rubber was more preventive than corrective. A girl who loved Bobby Deol. Two girls, who I suspected were stealing my best friend. The only year I outdid 40 people in Math in a class of 43(preens). Pop up cards with Shah Rukh Khan starting to show signs of post-30ishness.
I love the way my life sounds now. Complicated, unfairly predictable for a girl like me, suitably melancholic and just occasionally bright. I like the swish ring in the word – paradox, that is.
But I like that year the best. The year of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, the year of ‘miss-too-rees’ (BSB non-fans read mystery), the year I would go back to now, then, just anytime. And it won’t fail me. Or leave me without a reason to forget dark-circles and deadlines.

2009-11-24T03:19:00.000-08:00

So, I too like pink-ed cheeks, smokey eyes, and the big box with cubes in colours I thought only Asian Paints was privy to. I can hardly hold myself together in 6-inch tall heels, but I like how pink ribbons coil around my feet as my heads swims in the stratosphere it's suddenly thrust into. And yes, it feels ugly - wiping off the rosy blush, the somky tinge and the peachy gloss. And resign to the fact that you're no peaches and cream wonder. Now I see why Ekta Kapoor's women sleep in their purple lipsticks. And I no more think Shehnaz Hussain blackmails them in their dreams!

2009-06-23T04:20:00.000-07:00

I don't feel like writing anymore. I feel like talking. In fact, at times I am overwhelmed by the need to listen to the sound of my voice, relentlessly.
There are times when I try to shove all my fears under compulsive bouts of day dreaming. I know it doesn't work, it's not like me, it's futile.
I have never been this scared. Of being left with myself.

2009-06-02T04:52:00.000-07:00

Why is it that all the men I have liked/like still, have to be reminded that I exist?

2009-05-26T04:49:00.000-07:00

Do I look like I can scream? Bring the roof, fan, moths - precisely whatever is holding itself against gravity - down on my ruffled little head? You, who try to make me out from the don't-you-wish-your-girlfriend-was-hot-like-me snaps I put up on Facebook (secretly hoping some Indian cousin of Tom Cruise would take notice) would probably tch tch and say, nyaaaah. This is exactly what I hate about myself. With due respect to cool, interesting people, I like stereotypes. Now, I could be the sweet-vain-popular type. Easily figured out, easily likeable.
Back to screaming. When I scream, I think, it's not shrill, or voluptuous. It's almost boyish, and strangely reassuring. Like when people shut up from pure disgust, I tell myself that I am a strong strong girl.
But the day I stop telling myself stories, I'll be a very nasty girl.

2009-04-27T07:22:00.000-07:00

Deep down in my heart I am a charming vagabond. Or a really sexy item dancer with a navel stud and all. And I lust a Bengali spoof of Fitzwilliam Darcy.

At times I fancy my life as a swish, melt-in-your mouth blueberry cheesecake – so tempting, so classy, that it’s not funny. And try denying what a diet beguni it actually is – almost impossible by any sane standard.

My stomach needs Amir Khan. It cannot tell between poison and food. As an afterthought, it could be a second-hand junk inherited from a certain Jacques. I wouldn’t know if God paid me much attention ever. And behind the safely-secured doors of my closet, I am a female-chauvinist-basher. So there.

I must have been a Romantic poet last life. I am still eating from his leftovers. It's just that the nightingales chose to be reborn as sparrows. Or crows, in my case. And I still have Queen Anne's ghost hovering around the tip of my tongue.

2009-03-30T07:43:00.000-07:00

So, I am unreasonably snappy. Obnoxious. Snooty beyond the understanding of the sane - the collected, compromising type, you know. Too hot to be single. Wicked. Unpretentious. Confident. Manipulative.
Each morning as I pull my favourite yellow bedspread over my head wishing Maa would appear from nowhere with a cup of sugary Horlicks, I probably don't wish away the adjectives I collected in my school slam book some years back.
Hours after, as I settle down in my corner of the madhouse, a lemon tea in the shack and a couple of crude jokes later, I like the look of me on the comp screen blinking back to life. Distant and at times, vaguely disturbed.
I usually have my days figured out. For the rest, I have found myself antidotes. Like an unwillingly sweet gum - that makes you feel cool, sorted out and in control, despite the most demonic soup you're in. Or songs, that ripple over your skin like coarse silk, and shut out the world no matter what, no matter when. Or the best friend, and her crazy men.
Cold. I am starting to like the sound of it...

2009-01-22T04:14:00.000-08:00

N, I say, is supremely unbelievable. If I was a man, I would have married him.

2009-01-20T05:49:00.000-08:00

Someday, maybe, I'll not want shoulders. Over a phone call. A chat window. A short incoherent SMS.
I'll stop telling myself that I suffice. I'll probably know I do.
I'll feel all smart, swish and important watching a movie alone.
I'll not be curious about friends' boyfriends.
I'll treat myself to a chocolate brownie with icecream, in a bright, cool corner of Park Street Barista.
I'll finally wear the red satin skirt.
It's just that S and I, have this neat little cushion of time, caught before it walked over us, making up for some hundred thousand miles. After my corner of the bed, it's the most precious.
It's just that U and I remember the same three French words from four ambitious wannabe years of French classes.
It's just that P and I could swap bits of our past, and still have the same lives.
It's just that I'll not find another man, this life at least, who wouldn't mind his obnoxiously expensive and overwhelmingly favourite orange jocks being ridiculed mercilessly.
It's just that I like random fights over random sniggers, I love people who lust anything that moves, I like women who make lingerie sound like lollipop, I like how some sweet bumbling boys vow not to grow up.
Someday, when I don't need shoulders, I'll get sleep. Just that.

2009-01-17T04:03:00.000-08:00

This New Year, was my best. I learnt to look back. Without blinking. And be proud of my problem tooth. Play Mom to kiddish best friends. Be scared and giggle while at it. Survive mornings without sugary black tea...

Be the worst of me. Without a single wince. Without searching for answers in dust. Without grumbling to the night.

S, I love some 200 tons more now. U, i think I understand. P, is my mood cousin.

Distances were never my pets. I think they are pests now. :(

And when I cry next time. The washroom will be denied its occasional chances at sadism. :)

2008-11-26T06:28:00.000-08:00

Today, I don't want space. I want my phone.

Today, I don't want stars at my window. I want laughter.

Today, I don't wish the morning away. I wish away the soul sister. Night.

Today, I don't want dreams. Maybe a hug.

Today I could be silly. And not choke.

2008-11-07T03:02:00.000-08:00

Every time, of the thousand and one times, I have lived M's life in my head, I wished I could tear myself away from the mess. Sleepless nights, pillows damp with stifled sobs, obsessive cleaning, chicken marinated every Saturday before a night-long of waking up to the rumble of random cars on the other side of the window. Without me, I thought, M could live. Like I want to. She could walk out on the nights she watched over as I dreamt poems about my first crush, and B smiled in sleep. She wouldn't learn to talk back, ten years too late. She wouldn't have to borrow my dreams to see her through the day. Her evenings would be more than useless glossies and impossible cures for dark circles. Mine at that.
If I wasn't there, M could have her own mornings, her own little victories. Not ones assumed from my miffed yawns this morning.
But M made me a selfish girl. And taught me to puke on bad dreams. And have a ball.
They say, I'm a fast learner.

2008-10-15T06:25:00.000-07:00

The last Lakshmi Puja at home was uncomfortable. No, we usually jostled for life every other day, we fought, cribbed and yelled at each other always, we had our differences ever since - Maa wanted a photo, Dad a foot-tall idol, we hurried, tripped on egos, failings, mistakes and suchlike, gathered our senses back and went about life, as if nothing happened ever. But the last Puja was different. Dadai was forgetting things, what he ate a minute ago, where I came back from, what Mum's name was. And there were still the differences - forced upon ourselves, thrown at each other with an obstinate denial, swallowed listlessly. Differences that somehow muffled a sinking feeling. A bitter, clawing knot somewhere in the back of the throat. A cold drone in the chest, which chokes you if there's no loud, disgusting, ridiculous conversation. Like why Dad's handkerchiefs lie around without wash? Like why Bhai sold my class V math book? Like, can we talk and all go to hell.

It's been more than seven years now. Dadai didn't live long since. I was getting used to Maa shuffling around a damp, dark corner behind the bed, the ugliest in the room, which had been saved up for the growing league of gods and goddesses in our home.

Last day I like weirdly wanted several bits of my life back. Like hopping from one room to other, pretending to be extremely busy with nothing particular, rolling little balls of coconut ceremoniously soaking the fingers in water like Bubu did, just looking on wide-eyed as Maa, Mamoni frisked around the open kitchen stirring khichudi and payesh in giant dekchis, and Pipin just sat warbling on garrulously about her masters programme in Bengali. And when the priest offered the pancha pradip, I had the sole right to it as three bumbling small brothers wriggled around for attention.

It's just that yesterday I realised I had stopped calling the mother, Mummum. Maa it is now. Since when, I forget.

2008-09-26T07:52:00.000-07:00

This dream, was mine. Cute fringes and little pink sunflowers on my ballerinas then. Red highlights and some perfect salsa after. In between, a snatched mango lolly, a messed up card, a bunch of tiny satin roses, a blue diary with five pretty poems - and I could live.
On days I still want my perfect night. My fairytale morning. Tickly fingertips and butterfly breaths. I would still live. Maybe.
Tonight, I know, will be just another. And tomorrow, my usual. In between, I'll live on. Numb, bitchy, euphoric at times.
I'll count stars in the daylight still. You might wake me up.
I might give up on forever.

2008-08-20T03:45:00.000-07:00

T was easily not the best looking girl around. And certainly not the smartest. So it was but okay that the most popular/coveted/droolworthy guys would have to be held by their necks and made to look at her. Ermmm... I guess, if she had really concerned and well-fed well-wishers that is. The cute guy she was resigned to hopelessly liking and looking away from was seeing a senior she was was destined to hopelessly hate. The other cute guy who wanted his car parked at a school fest she had quite a sway on, was shocked beyond disbelief when she refused to lock the door while driving. Yes. (Mama told T, don't be driving with strangers).

But in the nights she made tattoos in her mind. A nasty, umm, cool is the word methinks, looking serpent on the lower back. A flirty fairy on the shoulder. Half-wishing frosted lipsticks, stilletoes, the perfect turn on a tip toe.
And dancing to Dilwalo Ka Dil Karar Lutne... . Yes again.

And so she continued holding her stomach while giggling, leaving little crumple marks on the neat-est of tops. The last time she tried tilting her head back in an observed and understood angle of elegant laughing, her hair got caught in the cane chair. And remained true to its owner, refusing to come off by any sensible means.
T, at times, turns a head or two. She notices no more. Not since she walked out on the plaits and favourite orange tops.

2008-07-26T04:17:00.000-07:00

I don't like the earlier post. Because I don't like getting carried away and rattling off. I don't like telling people that I collect bugs. To put them under my pillow. I don't like telling people that I pet them all night and complain I don't get sleep. But I also do things that I don't like doing.

I realise I have stopped sounding beautiful. In a dreamy, frothy way. I don't feel superawesomely pretty anymore. I have finally made up with my ill-shaped specs. And I want so many things back. Like the blue diary which has all my poems. The one that I wrote in class III to the three that I wrote in a Chemistry class in class XII. I was saving phone numbers in it last month. I want the brown-n-black mini that me and S both bought from the same shop, both wore in the same Puja day, and both kept pulling down to look sensible in unkind autos. In different places, in the same time. And a pink flowery watch, a tie and dye red handkerchief, and there I am rattling off again.

It's crazy how no amount of coaxing could make me touch strawberry ice cream before. I could live on it now.

2008-07-25T06:34:00.000-07:00

I ran into boy last day. And felt old. And then twisted my hurt foot in the shock of it. And hated the dimwit, talkative, must-be-dumb-also girl who insisted she walked in the middle of the road. As boy tried to coax her to safer territory. Closer to footpath. And to him, I was thinking when I twisted my foot again. Again at Golpark in two days.

OK, I am pissed I thought. Because my cute new red shoes got scratched in the unceremonious happenings. Because I have to travel half an hour more everyday I thought again. Because, uumm, my stomach is telling on my nerves must be.

Boy was who? Just who by the way? Just another guy right? And there are so many more important, significant, grown-up things I got to think about. Like I pay a rupee more for for each trip I make. Like there's a sale on everywhere and I am broke. Like I really really got to watch The Dark Knight. Like I have to get the mark sheet in time this time.

It's just that boy was my only crush after a half-baked boyfriend. My second, or maybe fourth to be perfect, in 23 years. And just a year younger than me. And just a little, I thought, smitten by me.

So what? I am talkative hardly. I don't walk on the middle of a busy road. I do the right things always. And just hurt myself sometimes. Like now and then.

2008-06-28T06:37:00.000-07:00

For all the times I had wondered what was to happen if I ran out of words, I have today in front of me. Today, I have no beautiful word --- to sugarcoat, lyricise or simply bloat up the fact that I am very very very unhappy. There's one more thing that refuses to fall in place everyday, one more thing that never had/will never have anything to do with all my lofty, and I now realise callous daydreams, every moment. Things look straightened out, but they just crumple, cringe and mess up in the insides. The insides that I carry in my head, every fucking second. As I arrange, re-arrange and arrange some more like a robot. The beginnings that happen - I don't want. And the beginnings I want - don't happen. Rather sound, look and feel remote all the time.

I am shifting and I am not nostalgic. I am plain freaked out. And nobody sees sense in that. The job I want to do is not a billion dollar one. But it makes me feel, happy, warm and even peaceful at the end of the day. But the jobs I should do are ones I balk at the thought of doing. It's like I could write baby English, do useless and pointless things and shop, party, eat out and have a blast. Or I could feel proud of some ten minutes of my day, and dine with cornflakes and milk. These, oh gaawwwd, are my choices! :(
And I still, still, still am not tired of running after my 'perfect'. Uggghhhh! I never learn and I guess this is my punishment.

2008-06-17T07:33:00.000-07:00

And I keep wondering what is it that people love about the rains. Right now, I have a window some inches above my back, which with my Shyamalanesque imagination, I fear would crack and break down on my head. I just realised that I look unusually pale today and my lips are just a healthier shade of white. Some ten minutes ago, I was feeling unusually bright, about wading through Mumbai streets, when the window started shuddering with all sorts of sounds you would hear in a K-serial on an average day. I saw a cute guy in a not-very-cute yellow tee in a cab today. Boy was looking, I was trying not to, and cabbie was jealous. So I got mud-washed. I am told I need a wardrobe makeover. I have to be... ooops... I gotta be super cool, the silk hot pants and classic white shirt sorts... errm... I think so.

I basically would extremely like it if I could shout some, and cry some more. But cool people don't cry alone! They sniff in Louis Vuitton (if that is the spelling!) handkerchiefs!

2008-06-12T06:50:00.000-07:00

T was always bad at dealing with distances. Waking up to the little chips in what she thought was her strong strong wall of happy shiny and absolutely secure emotions. The little things unsaid and unrealised in those fuzzy bitch-and-balk phone calls, the little hushed up swears in the bloated funny quarrels. She was too busy trying to be the best friend. Too busy wanting to be perfect. Too dazzled by the martyr. Too happy, too lazy, too sure of too many things. Too fat with god knows what to call back the little hurts, the little blisters, the pesky questions that bounced off her white, happy face. And too proud to walk down the leftovers of stardust, bits of scraped skin and twisted words she had left in her way.

And then U forgot the birthday, A and she had the boyfriend in between, S flitted away for prettier, fancier things. And T was yet to give the losses a name first, a reason then. Yet to try and believe the ends were catching rust, were growing impatient with standing aside, and yes, would walk away any day. Like U, like A, like S. Like T.

And now there's the odd phone call. That T doesn't take with her to bed like before. Doesn't crumple between her palms with the old bed sheet, doesn't hide her face and laugh with anymore.
But is yet to make out what still goes missing with the hang-up key.

2008-06-03T03:51:00.000-07:00

So, I have ordinary fears. Sometimes stupid, sometimes the perfect pound of confusion to be sorted out by some superior, 'didn't you know that too' sarcasm. Or maybe imagined and romanced. To add it all up, you tell me, I am the perfect ordinary person, perfectly screwed up, perfectly bored and perfectly starry-eyed. About myself. When I curl up in the bed, earplugs in, wondering what could at least fall in place, I am wanting some kick ass melodrama in my life I guess. And not wanting to know what's wrong with that.

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I like Daniel Radcliffe - the Radcliffe of the delicate little face, blue blue eyes, and curiously wobbly audacity. I am yet to start liking Harry Potter the phenomenon, but I wanted to pull his cheeks all the while his round eyes weighed the impossibility of platform 9 ¾. Sorcerer's Stone is too tedious, too glum, too so-not-fascinating apart from the wizard's chess. And by the way, did I tell you I absolutely love Ron?

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More good news. I manage to shock Dad these days too. Just when he was getting used to the tensigrity of my dresses, he realised he might have to find me a man that he believes can't exist. I have too many issues with people. Too many to make too little sense even to anybody, says the Dad.

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I am very jittery, very edgy, very not-pleasant these days. Or maybe this time I realise I am.

2008-05-31T03:36:00.000-07:00

I am very very scared of elevators. The thought of spending full two minutes in it, scares me more than the thought of finding a cockroach under my pillow. No, scares me more than the thought of being knocked down by a bus.

There are so many things I am yet to make sense of. Like why can't there be a person always to man an elevator. Why am I never happy with all the pics I have changed, uploaded and changed again in my Facebook profile. Why do I have this awful feeling that nobody and nothing, camera included, can ever make sense of me. Why do I hate mornings? Why do I love being with myself, and just with myself? Why am I not scared of being alone? Why do I hope somebody would read my mind just like that? Why am I tired to talking - telling, explaining, answering, refusing and explaining some more?

What do you do when you feel numb? What do you do when you stop caring if you had coffee or beer in your mug? What do you do when the clink of the spoon twirling around aimlessly in a bright, spunky coffee mug feels like the most reassuring thing in the world? What do you do when the indifferent, sweaty, bungling crowd in a mall seems less distant than your heart?

You switch on your radio and go off to sleep. And hope it works.

2008-05-20T04:03:00.000-07:00

There is something supremely divine about short hair. Just about grazing your neck. And not petulantly trailing down your back, so that nothing short of a rude black thick rubber band can hold it back from clawing at your patience when the last thing on your mind is the welfare of your hair. And today it feels like a step closer to divinity. There is/can't be nothing/anything that is as delicious as closing your eyes and letting the wind have its way with your precious strands, conditioner or no conditioner. And effortlessly detangling the happy mess with a hand while you're busy sipping on creamy cold coffee. Oh boy, it's awesome.

I thought being in love with myself is the closest I can get to sanity. I could challenge Bush now! ;P

2008-05-06T07:02:00.000-07:00

Ek khatm ho, toh doosri raat a jaati hai

I love.

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When was the last time, you, and maybe five others, old, young, tall, short, bawling, smiling, whatever, linked hands and walked on the footpath as if your grandfather had gifted you the space for your birthday? If you did, go away! I don't at all want to know you.

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This is for Mr 'whoever was supposed to see that buses did not run over us, but was swatting flies instead'. Could you get the conductors some talcum powder, or walking sticks so that they don't fall over anybody? This summer at least.

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'Fucking Miss Queen of the World'. Yes. There have been times.

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Tomorrow if I sleep easy, I wonder if I would have dreams.

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What is it that I love about Enrique? I don't know. I still squeeze my eyes shut, and curl around my favourite pillow like a moonstruck 13-year-old, when he croons, 'Somebody needs you...'

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This will go on I think.

2008-04-17T06:08:00.000-07:00

I am hungry. Incredibly is too small a word to define how. If I have ever wanted anything more than getting blown off my feet by a dimple on the left cheek, (and some sense inches above it), it would be King Lear or Amitav Ghosh. No wonder Mum keeps reminding me that old men are no fun. One more reason why I don't/can't have a boyfriend. I CANNOT wait for anybody, especially when all I want to do is polish off a big plateful of biryani, or some oily noodles. P is getting my books, for all the screwed up exams I am supposed to write. Otherwise I could stab her. On an afterthought I possibly wouldn't know who she/he is when I will be stabbing him/her. Who knew biryani, or a chicken wrap had so much potential for violence. What if I wrote a sobby weepy play on my latest realisation and made people to read it and write exams on them? I would toss in my grave. No, I would probably not die and do a Tulsi Virani in real. I would keep torturing myself till plastic surgeries became the best thing after making out. I am sure Shakespeare, Jonson and all who have dared to make my syllabus are in hell sobbing over succulent pieces of Tandoori chicken which cannot be eaten with the over sized forks. YAAAAY.

Thank God BCL had blogger. They shouldn't block facebook also. Why is the world so cruel? WHy, wHy, WHHHY????

I ramble. This time with reason I swear.

2008-04-02T07:59:00.000-07:00

Old books. Dust on the fingertips. Smothered quarrels, one or maybe two. Fears that were. Little huddles along the favourite flight of stairs ever. Friends, people, faces. Some growing up, some hide and seek. With fears that are. And suddenly it's time to leave. There's a pang of what I don't know, that claws at my gut. I know the smiles, I see the hidden grins, I see the same smoky afternoons, sweat and some cheap powder, some rich perfumes. Tea cups, love and cigarettes crumpled between the same fingers. This time I hate the faces.

Mornings I hate. And tonight when I climb back under the crisp, washed sheet, yesterday wouldn't be far away. Like every other day.

2008-03-19T06:29:00.000-07:00

This one's a fluorescent green checked shirt. Formless, yes. Artless mostly. This was before some half-forgotten morning when I decided to kill all the myths before they turned into monsters. Before bare arms meant heat rashes, angry, invisible blisters. Before conversations dazzled and bounced off your skin. Before strawberry and vanilla left you tired, not warm and fuzzy somewhere in your gut. Before me. Before mindless laughter, off shoulders, syrupy evenings and half-lived nights.

But today it feels like the perfect first kiss. Scribbled in some corner of a candy pink slam book. Read, read and read again. On poetry-perfect evenings.

2008-03-11T03:51:00.000-07:00

Those used to be warm bare nights. When birthdays were other things altogether. What was it like to wait for a call? What was it like to curse sleep? What was it like to tell yourself over and over again, that it's okay and you don't really care. Call or no call.
Birthdays, they are growing up. All crowded dazzling evenings, dewy, dry nights, and sparkling blue waters. Blinking phones, lovely schooled locks and suchlike.
Sigh. Today there's an explanation. For just another groggy, funny, almost bad morning.

By the way. What was it like to wait for a call?

2008-03-01T04:33:00.000-08:00

When there's a table and a lot of unspoken bruises across, dinner is quite cruel. In between somewhere you try to spit out the hurt. It's just that you remeber too many things tonight.

2008-02-23T03:52:00.000-08:00

Do I have lovestruck bimbo written all over my face/dress/my entire case? I was in love, I fail to recollect when. I was wanting to fall in love, I fail to recollect when. And I have been telling this to myself (and at times to my Mum) I fail to recollect since when. Last day, at this lovely mall, which has not a single goodlooking guy stepping in it as is ever the case with me, I was almost shut up by the man behind the counter and handed over a strawberry swirl when all I wanted was a non-fussy chocolate cone. I mean the the most extravagant thing I've had in my life. Vanilla soft ice, strawberry soft ice cream, diced strawberries, strawberry pulp, and something predictably red, god knows what. Then, Man held up a little golden heart-shaped pendant and looked indulgently at my flustered face first and then behind me at the sea of people, trying to mentally decide which man would bail the strawberry-struck maiden that was me out, by taking maybe a bow and with a flourish snatching away the heart for me as I stood rosy-palmed (thanks to the monsta glass with pink and pink all over it) batting eyelids as it were. I know this because when Mum actually finished her tutty fruity and volunteered, he stared for a full two second and involuntarily retracted his hand before Mum said, "Eta ki free?" and took the pendant away unceremoniously adjusting her glasses to find out the economics of throwing around little heart shaped pendants with ice-creams. How his face fell. I think it's quite heartbreaking when the delicious voyeurism in thinking 'boyfriend haaann?' and giving you the 'I-know-what-you-did-last-summer/day/minute-look falls flat on your face. It almost hurt me to make him believe that I was not living a Yash Raj movie really. Sigh! I should give up wearing pink sheer tops. And start being a feminist. I wonder what ice-cream man would give me then. He would show me the chaai shop across it I guess! :( How terrifying is that!!!!!! :O

PS: Maa remembered. St Valentine Shahid Divas as I call it, was two days ago.

2008-02-12T06:08:00.000-08:00

Nobody thinks I am a rock chick. (I actually wanted to say nobody thinks I am cool. So, many *sighs*). I don't wear bold hoops, hate black nail polish, inevitably pick up girly clothes, loveee pink sheer tops, and yes, I did love Backstreet Boys once upon a time. Actually, I still quite like 'Quit playing games with my heart'. And, umm, I still don't think Comfortably Numb is one of the best things to have happened to this world after the guitar. P rolled her eyes, as if she had caught some thin white man naked, when I told her that I loved My Immortal. Now, I don't know if it's rock, but know it from my Backstreet Boys and Savage Garden. I can tell the ear-fucking from the high voltage. Really.

P still doesn't believe me and found it necessary to give me a verbal footnote every time her favourite band played a number at SPE. These were the songs I half knew. And the songs I full not-knew she didn't know even and hoped they were originals. And still I'm not a rock chick. I am not cool. (boo hoo hoo)

PS: P is a lovely friend. And if all the songs P not-knew were originals, the band was kickass. So was the lead singer who seemed to have a thing for jumping on whatever that was behind the sound boxes. :) Umm... But then am not cool. Am not a rock chick.

2008-01-29T04:07:00.000-08:00

What if I dragged the wisps of my virtual life quickly shoved under the pillow with the radio, minimised in one guilty corner of my PC and floating around carelessly before my eyes in glaring sunlight, out of their comfortable mystery boxes and killed them. Simply?

I'll lose all the nice short mornings when I lie on my back, eyes just an endless pool of kohl and the leftovers of a bright cold evening, and feel incredibly sexy.

And when I close my eyes, still, I'll be the bits of you left in me. Uncomfortably sweet like grape flavoured gums.

I'll no more be the warm listless haze of words. Irresponsible, awfully gratifying. All sugary smiles and imagined dimples. Hugging flesh is so much less comforting.

And in the crowd, sweaty palms, cold beer mugs, half lights, and familiar sounds later, I might close my eyes to let laughter wet the winter skin. Or want to hold the hand again.

2008-01-23T04:46:00.000-08:00

It was the last time I was beautiful. Those chewed pencil ends, broken wide gazes, jumpy mornings and crowded nights sorts. Rump sacks are always reassuring. Nice, fat and meaningless.

2008-01-10T06:22:00.000-08:00

Today is special. Lets-have-radish-and-swear-it-smells-like-vanilla day. Tomorrow will be better. Men-who-don't-like-cologne-are-hot day. Fathers, mothers and the pink teddy bears for them, are passe. Everyday is some day. So say the spam mails, when they take a break from assuming that either I was a man, or needed Viagra, and well, had a sex life that would be hopeless without them. I keep waiting, that some day some one would tell me, "Babe, you can finally wear the red satin skirt to office because (1) you don't have absolutely rocking legs, (2) and nobody cares. Today is let's-be-dumb-day."

And why this brilliant-est idea suddenly? Read this.
Reminds me how I hoped how somebody could sneak in a love letter for me in school. (If at all they were interested after my super slim braids, the copious tears I dispensed in full public view in a physics class after the boy I thought liked me told somebody he didn't quite like me and I feared he would go back to a very ugly girlfriend! Phewwww... )

Back to the letters. They started I know not how. But they all ended. Unfortunately. And said "I can be your hero baby". (blush blush)

So I kept going back to my grand designs of how to sneak in my love letters. Away from the boy-I-liked's ugly girlfriend, from Dad (who found a letter I had written for a particularly short guy and actually had the pleasure of reading something like 'When 'abc' told me that D would be visiting a shop near the nearest bazaar to fix his Mum's specs, my heart missed a beat and stopped beating for full five seconds'. Now, the clincher. Translate all of this into Bengali! Yes, yes. [bows]) and from pesky friends who were as starved for love letters as me.

And the only decent solution was to divine some divine sign that would make would-be-lover leave his letter inside my desk. And then there would be claps, confetti, stars, pink dresses with big satin bows, glass slippers and Backstreet Boys in the background (I don't care who you are, where you're from, what you did, as long as you love me, baby-y-y-y).

But well, as it is always with me, men continued being stupid boys who had not an iota of divinity I hoped they would. After some religious fumbling inside my desk and chastising my fingers with glue wiped in papers left by 8-year-olds, and chits with FLAMES and love percentage calculated between some Priyanka and Rahul, I stopped feeling flattered if some guy was found looking at me for more than 30 secs in the Bengali class. And I kept telling myself 'I can be your Hero baby', after I flunked in math, after I spoke some incredibly nice English while conversing with my best friend's boyfriend [can you give me the phone to her?], after I called up the department HOD in university and said 'Kemon achen, onek din kotha hoy ni?' (Long time, now news!) assuming him to be some writer, whose number I had misplaced.

Huh. So much for love and letters.

But after I broke up with the boy-I-liked who I was seeing over the phone post his confession that he had actually lied and more actually loved me, I ceremoniously trashed the poems I used to write in chemistry classes but kept the torn wrapper of the first chocolate my friends made me share with him on the last day for school.

I can be your hero baby. What fun. ;)

2008-01-05T05:14:00.000-08:00

For some time T had thought she no more needed words, and well, their comforting incoherence. She no more needed to pull the tattered blanket above her head, and kick it around her bed till the uneasy dreams went to sleep. It was yet another year and the only thing new was the picture of a boyfriend on the Orkut profile.

I wanted to give T this real big hug. And say I love you. For staying on. And not even blinking.

2007-12-11T00:44:00.000-08:00

2007-11-07T11:28:00.000-08:00

I wish there was an end. And then a beginning. And not a mindless floating in and floating out.

2007-10-31T08:50:00.000-07:00

However... is where it gives up, sighs and convinces itself yet again, that it's okay. Words jump out suddenly, get caught in shiny dirty airs, burp unhappily and make their way back to where they belong. Silence. And yes, I am left with a handful of sexy ummmms, tired ahhhs and listless wows.

This Puja was like Gossshhhhh...

I had other things. Not just the blue-white-yellow bed sheet that smells of sun and Surf to chew on. I learnt to call the loo, a washroom and I learnt to hate all things nice - like camera phones.

At night, I thought I heard lovely mushy things. Lilting tracks, hushed giggly whispers that glow of dolls and 13-year-old boyfriends, the first crush and the first Sidney Sheldon.

I held the end of the heavy pallu as I tip toed past water and polythene that usually clings to the blind lane. Chhottu Didi looked, I guess she stared, rolled her eyes and yes, then screamed. "Etto boro hoye gechis?????". Well, yeah. It reminded me of all those Mama balloons with smaller ones in their tummies that Maa vowed never to get me, all the cold drink bottles that I had to sip from with a boring straw, all the soups that were like prayers during dinners, all the perfumed erasers that Maa kept away for the drawing classes I hated, all the Uncle Chips that I had to share with bhai, all the shubho bijoya and feet touching that felt a little meaningless. All the times I looked away and into today. The bubblegummers-stilettos fiasco, well, left me a little numb. I forgot to look away. By the way CD is two years older than me and her son's started speaking, she says.

And ooops, I am scared of sex no more. I just got a hair cut. This posh place you know, where girls howl if they have wax on their shoulders, Mums call daughters 'babess' and Dads check out who's getting a hair-cut in the other chair. And first they pull your hair, weigh it, then wash it nonchalantly as if they did not have your precious ten strands but dry ginger and keep muttering the way Dad does when he looks at my cropped tops. And at the end of it all you'll die to see normal hair, you know, left alone in frizzy curls or listless strands. Not and endless affair of pink clips, super-big towels and silver foils. But yes, if you survive this, you'll love yourself, end up kissing the mirror if you were me. For the day at least. Before the blow dry gives up and one gets to see what's there behind what P called a Malibu Barbie. Nothing can be more scary. Or more delicious. ;-)

PS: There's this thing called Crazy Sexy Cool something on MTV. It's all zilch. They have never had a Jumbo prawn in a brown sauce.

2007-10-10T09:48:00.000-07:00

I don't know what's with me. I have no clue. I feel unreasonably happy at times. My smiles buy little smarts. Like swallowing little scoops of the favourite ice-cream as your throat hurts, whines and then goes blank for a day in protest. I light up at the thought of returning now, and then feel I never quite knew the alien damp bed. Yesterday, I really wished I could smoke. Breathe out swirls of nasty bright smoke and feel loved in its distant friendship. Sad it is that the prude lives on. I broke my finger-nail today. It hurt. And asked how long??

Fidget Groan's Diary-I

2007-10-02T08:49:00.000-07:00

Ok. I present Fidget Groan's Diary

This Means:

I am extremely happy because I have finally managed to push past some creature who was out on a morning walk at Gariahat at 3 pm.

I am extremely sad that I have still not managed to get the hair cut I keep feeling cheerful about despite exams, potatoes for dinner and a tiresome presentation to write and consequently, well, present.

I am extremely kicked up about a Times' prediction: A passionate affair with this 'admirer' who'll probably drop in at Bridget Jones' when I finally manage the hair cut. The last part was my assumption. Times said he might just come knocking, or wake me up with tea. Which is pretty impossible as long as Maa keeps screening all the men I would like to know. The real clincher: There is some man who is worth flinging myself at. Somewhere around. Whoaaaa.... How inspiring!!!!!!!!!

I suddenly feel really down that I have some 8 more months to study and study and study more. And I still can't dope and go crazy. I remain the acid moron. And I keep hating all the women who call up my brother at 2.30 am. I am the last left with self respect. That's a bad feeling.

This doesn't mean:

I have delicious looking males having anything to do with me. Now, or in the future I see, post-hair cut.

I can digest lots of chocolates. To kill depression or whatever. I don't end up in bed. With a Riflux Fort.

I am not the most promising home-breaker of the millenium. I have butterflies in my stomach with blissful joy when I run into aunts who crib about sleeveless tank tops and uncles who keep asking what my Dad does and the likes. So, being single is not doing great social service.

And Maa will ever stop saying that I am still too young to give up. But I might not be getting there fast. And I keep listening to what she says, not just exactly half of what she says. This is not religion still.

Post-Script. Fidget Groan is a little me, a little what you, and they might feel is me. Yup, she fidgets with sense and groans when nonsense goes on vacations. Period.

Disclaimer: I have nothing to do with Bridget Jones. Except for the hair-cut.

2007-09-11T09:04:00.000-07:00

And there was a time, I swear, when T thought men were... well, FUN. She absolutely loved the way she could have them dance to her tunes. Maa yelled, fumed and complained to n people (most of them equally insane women) when T screamed her life out to drive a certain man out of her house. Who dared not step into the second floor of her house if she was awake, which was the case most of the time. One day, after the two-year-old blood boiled down to the sense that most men were bald, were very dark and nearly never had a perfect set of teeth, T crept behind Maa as she smuggled down a really delicious looking bowl of payesh she had her own eyes on. It was the deported relatives 'morechhe-re' smile, the silliest he could afford, that made Maa turn around, stand stunned for a moment, and then with a sudden flash of intelligence pick T up and dump her on the fugitive's lap. As Baba (visibly annoyed at Maa's attempt at extending her own social skills to her daughter in a way only a communist could be proud of) gulped, relatives giggled and Maa looked on, T looked up at a smile, a lot of uneven stained teeth on display, all the time wondering if Maa was worse, or the Cheledhora, who would at least bundle her in a sack with no ugly teeth and run away. When T was ready to throw herself at Baba and swear never to go back to her, forget following her, even if she wanted to throw away her Barbie, the fugitive started, "Bolto ekta pipre r pet kharap holo jokhon ki korlo?" As T snapped her head up, awed by the preposterity of what he said, blessing herself that she had managed to stay away from him, she tried learning to tolerate men. It was just that, every Christmas, she waited and waited for fugitive to turn up. With tales about snooty ants and stupid elephants, which she loved. Never believed. As Maa saw T warm upto fugitive, she added another prayer to her daily ones. "Let her not run away with a flared-pants-and-lots-of-words no-gooder someday." She had not heard of tattoos then.

And then there was A when T was 5. Who would hold her wrist and vow not to let her go if there was a chhoan chhuyi game going on without him. They hated him. All of them. He pushed people around and held girls by their hair. And when T's friends, who would rather have a brat than not have her, let him in, T smiled and mentally said, "Besh Hoyeche". As T happily chatted away how A can never be left out Maa wondered if she could ever get her married to doctor who never pulled girls by their hair, would read the famous five and not pour over the Handa Bhonda strips in Bengali newspapers.

T's first crush was not meant to be, first boyfriend spoke with an accented alphabet and most of the time he would be grumbling about T's severe antipathy to coffee, lunch, movie and to most usual things (he would later find out). And one day she thought let's do something noble and gave up everything just when boyfriend one was thinking of quitting cigarettes. "I could be a UN ambassador someday," she giggles to herself now.

Ah! Men. T crosses her legs, wondering if they exist. Who look they know what they are up to, don't wear orange shirts, smell of some heady cologne and speak correct English. All of it. And don't bore T. Just again.

[T] LATESHT: T really likes this guy on Orkut. Friend's friend's brother. But there's no story here. Beacuse he neither probably 'wannabe franzzz' nor finds her smile cute. So he is least likely to sent T a friend request. That's the only thing T is ever to share with him. Sob sob.

2007-09-06T11:45:00.000-07:00

Coming back is a luxury. Lingering on has been more like it. And I kept hoping leaving would be easy. And I never wanna let go off the unsettling, overbearing and a little coarse smell of garlic being fried in my kitchen as I dig deeper into my unyielding bed trying to shut out little bothers. And I still missed oiling my hair. At times its so so so nice a feeling that misery is the next best thing after kicking your shoes away and jumping into the bed without a wash. Ah well, now if you share a bed with four people, even nightmares go hitch-hiking. And I chew the corner of my pillow wondering what to dream of. My first crush is married with a thin wife, a little paunch now and a wee bit less hair. The stagger, a poly pack with bread and tomatoes clutched languidly, has choked behind the wheels of a snazzy maroon Qualis. The guy who died some days ago would probably have a good laugh at what I duck I was. If he was there, like the beer mugs, the cigarette butts and the bottles of whiskey which never give up, never die... never care really. But I sat chalk white clutching the slippery mouse, muttering this was all a lie. Well, well. I write bad exams, each worse than the first and don't chew my lips, face hidden in my pillow. I sigh, take an auto and give a damn. I wait for smiles, still. I comb my hair, each strand with precious care and swear I will forget it all someday. As if I fixed dates... I curse why James Bond was such a rat??? Look at the English he speaks. Anyways, I have always loved the let's guess game.
Today, I want to sleep. Pardon if I sound like some screwed up poet. But yes, that it is. I can throw the radio away, snatch Dida's wilting pillow that smells of coconut oil sold in bad blue bottles and doze off. My crush still has a very sweet smile. A little fat here and there, yes. I remember. But he still looks sideways as if there was an old, prudish table before him, which he had mastered avoiding. Eyes closed as he spoke to the girl in white shirt with blue stripes when thin wife was still learning to separate jeera from dhania. And I was sobbing in the washroom and thinking of writing a series of ballads some day. Someday when Baba wouldn't be too big for me.

I snap at Baba. He hears, tries to reason out. I hang on to the phone waiting for him burst out making me crawl to the corner of the bed and hide below the kantha, suddenly feeling happy that he could happily murder crush's girlfriend and make things all cake and cream for me. But he says he is tired. And I pretend I didn't hear and ask him if he had taken his medicines. I look at an amused smile on his face as he asks for Maa now. Bubu is tired, and irritable and has bought stale fish for Rs 50. I know he is saying. Maa makes a what-about-the-rotten-eggs-you-bought-from-Sealdah-thinking it was a kill-smile face.

Priceless. Sleep can wait. The radio saves the nut.

2007-08-14T08:48:00.000-07:00

I wish there was a tomorrow. Or a today that came. And went, only when I wanted it to.
I wish there was a little more of you. Everywhere. And in me.
I wish I could leave my hair wet and messy. Or lick schezwann gravy off my fingers. If only you stayed on. And didn't leave after a pillow fight.
I wish I could look back, look on and then go to bed as if nothing happened. Ever. I wish I was you.
I wish I could float paper boats and sit hunched at the doorstep as the scribblings in blue first faded, then dripped down the soft walls trailing feeble blue lines... like the veins in my chalky limbs.
I wish I could sigh and feel happy.
I wish I never held your hand and traipsed down memories, sobs and stifled giggles.
I wish it was all over. The anger, reasons, the madness. All of it.
I wish the pillow saved no dreams, you know, the pink fluffy ones... keying random words on the mobile, locking and unlocking the keypad, chewing the corner of a matronly yellow bed sheet.
I wish I remembered making dolls of Eclair wrappers.
I wish you did not hear me out. I wish you stopped, fumed and yelled back at me.

A next time.
There there
The bugger that is me

2007-08-13T09:38:00.000-07:00

One of those days. Which started when, I don't want to recollect. And which ends, when I probably come home to a stinking potpourri of exams, bad bosses, toothaches and scratchy radio. I need spectacles. I have to squint in a cinema hall these days. I know I'll look like Ugly Betty. Or Margaret with no Dennis around.

Grumble, grumble.

That is one faithful feeling. Never lets ya down.

2007-07-31T09:07:00.000-07:00

I am scared of you. Or wot P might think if I return her book a day late than promised. Or wot A's boyfriend might end up doing if I didn't apologise for finding his kurta sadak chaap. Or wot people at the varsity might discuss if I wrote a bad presentation.

The wind never took too kindly to my hair. More because there's nothing in this earth that my face loved more than the wind slapping against my face making it almost impossible to smile, when I wanted to giggle my heart out.

Well, I just wish life could be written out in a series of online personality tests. Why is it that I don't care that my hair looks horrible when tied into a bun. Why is that it never bothers me that the green and gold kurta probably cannot stand a single more wash. Why is it that I always save up my new slippers for some great occasion, which I never quite understood and of course, as is everything with me, never comes.

At 10, I thought I might love the rains some day. A 14, I would gaze out of the classroom window staring at my classmates splashing around in the muddy ground - hair glued to their cheeks, the drab blue skirt looking even more pedestrian. I still hoped I would love the rains. Some day.

I had not slept for one whole night wondering what N's dad must be thinking after I walked away without even telling him a hi. Naah, I never thought I could ever be sad being a drab queen and therefore still tucked away a synthetic top with padded Victorian sleeves in corner of my wardrobe.

I still did not love the rains. But I ended up loving the prelude. The aimless, hapless wind. I ran to the window every time the empty plastic bottles toppled off the sill. The wind never squirmed, never stuttered. It was all over my face blowing grime into my eyes. And I tried to look. Blinking unseeingly at the towels and plastic bags that were dragged across the walls, windows and clotheslines into god knows where.

This is a bad post. And I really don't care.

2007-07-18T07:52:00.000-07:00

And when she was not mixing coffee powder with turmeric, turning the flowerpot into a virtual spa for the Tulsi plant, T was busy being a homemaker. So she mixed clay with water, reflecting that was what moosuri dal should look like, given it tasted yucky. And when, precisely half-an-hour after her only friend in the locality, Mou, was called away for lunch, she wiped her hands on Maa's crisp clean gamchha and positioned herself before the TV, occasionally looking back to ensure that Maa cleaned up the remnants of the great domestic enterprise. Which included gooey pastes of flour thrown away angrily as they could never be rolled into the perfect circles Maa made, leaves, all sorts of peels. And yes, spoon fulls of Ponds talcum powder mixed with water or the little oil she was rationed for her adventures. And later, trying to tame a particularly raw guava, she thought. How is it Maa never grumbles, given that it was easier doing math than making rotis, the talcum powder just refused to dissolve in water and peels are anyways so revolting? Who wants to be like Maa anyways? That was her only comfort.

T hates the kitchen. So much so, that she gulps down copious amounts of water to get rid of a bad hangover. Or plugs in the earphones listening to particularly nothing to scare away sleep. But, but, but. She'll never get herself a cup of tea if it is not already there. In the flask.

And T made garlands. Little tacky ones. She picked some five yellow alamanda flowers from the tree that caressed the terrace wall. Washed them in water. Carefully picked out stubborn little red ants hidden in the coils of the petals. Sneaked out Bubu's needle-box and picked out the rusty unwieldy needle she was told was meant to sew quilts.
Then she would slip it around her wrist. Just when Maa thought she would see a putuler biye stuff, she found T sitting on the stairs of the thakurghor, tearing each petal intently and forming little flower patterns on the chunks of cement crudely slapped on the brick-wall. Maa was confused, so she thought T will write poetry someday. It's another story that she didn't.

T avoids the window seats in buses. She hangs onto the edge trying to take a look at the feet against the engine. And how, if at all, they quarrel with the bugging heat.

2007-07-17T10:13:00.000-07:00

ACHIEVEMENTS:

A really cool pair of distressed denims. When I say 'distressed' I really mean it. With expensive tatters on the waistband and one leg. He he.

One full bottle of water finished in 6 hours. Unimaginable.

Maa picked up the aforementioned collectors' fantasy. (I don't have words to express how I felt)

It's such a treat to see your Mum grow up! Ain't so?

SPOILER:

Despite today's feat, Maa maintains that my husband would and should be a not-so-tall, not-so-good looking preferably medically established quiet listener. Who would smile and say 'Luv you' if I break a pot over his head. Which is very likely, she thinks.

2007-07-16T08:31:00.000-07:00

Anyways,who the hell thought much about sense. T took some comfort from the fact. So, she crept up the stairs to the chaath every alternate day and poured a mixture of powdered coffee, turmeric powder and boiled water on the earth imagining that the frail Tulsi plant must be feeling extremely obliged. And hoped that it looked more alive to convince her that it had magic powers as Bubu said. Only, when Maa couldn't make out how the coffee kept disappearing she sacrificed her afternoon siesta, followed T up to the terrace and came down feeling seriously doomed. Her wonder child had suddenly turned into a 'squander'-child. And she didn't quite relish the fact. Maa had always smiled inwardly when T answered back Bubu. T refused to eat fish and snapped quite nastily at her grandma when she tried to force-feed her one. She chewed raw karelas, as Bubu kept whining what was to happen of the girl. All this time, Maa kept feeling extremely satisfied. 'For all the times you bitched about me, yelled at me, and forced me to down repulsive soups of water and fish, assuming it was all but humble, here... this, your blood," she reflected sunnily. But today, her grief over the coffee, the times she had suspected the maid and the prospect of the 'great getting-back' dream failing overwhelmed everything else. She still did not know that T kept wondering how Maa could marry a man with a moustache, thought kaka was smarter than Pa when he smuggled in Aloor chop to his room, cleverly avoiding detection and was the venerable head of a secret cult which swore by a Kalo Kalobaba and a Shada Kalobaba. Then maybe the coffee and turmeric would've made more meaning...

T was born on a Holi and had a stomach upset the very day she was brought home. Her great-grandfather named her Mahamaya which she fondly cherishes still. It makes her feel powerful after a particularly nasty fight with an irksome colleague.

2007-07-11T08:36:00.000-07:00

A little heady today. A little bugged. Like getting drunk on warm beer. The trek back to Monsieur Murph's island was almost nice. Like feeling mushy about a silly ex-boyfriend whom you relish calling a 'moron'. Hic. Little girls don't cry. They have cranked leering mini buses, if not roller-coasters. They dream in the pillow. Wake up to smudged kohl and bitchy time. Which is anyways, always flitting around. It's night again. So, the rum and the radio. Whichever comes first.

Who spilt my rum?
Who chased my sleep?
The rains, they left this morning
Well, then
The gun and the gum's for me

I am drunk. On no spirit. Hic. And a couple more.

2007-07-06T09:05:00.000-07:00

I just wished I knew. Where to start, how to start. How to talk about the 'positives' as Sreemoy da puts it. I tried to make this sound touching, tragic or heartbreaking even. But, what only comes to me, and then refuses to leave is just one thought - Sananda is dead. And I know it today. Full four days after, well, she has died. And how? When another college friend happened to mention this to P on g-chat, planning an obit. P seemed not to recognise and showed me this bit of a picture in a collage S had put up. Already in her memory. Yes. I looked, and ran away as the photographer wanted the list. Yes, the customary tch-tch was there. Only when I was about to close the window in the PC that I felt the specs and the face looked familiar.

Sananda and mine was a very unlikely friendship. It started when, a little to my surprise there was this very 'not-happening' looking girl in a saree I wouldn't be caught in an asylum in, who smiled at me in the Metro and suddenly asked, "Are you from Presidency?". And what, she was not really perturbed by my frigid little shake of head in the affirmative. She smiled even more gleefully and said point blank, "OK then, you can walk with me to college naa? Am not very good with this saree." And then in that 10 minute walk from the Central metro station to college I thought I knew half of her life. Her twin, her education, that she like me didn't have a boyfriend and like me wasn't too elated about the fact, and ultimately ended in exchanging phone numbers. For geography notes.

I hated it when, after my grandfather died, there was this host of flabby women thronging my home, and suddenly recollecting all the times, kaku, or jethu or mama had bought them badam or told them a joke or gave them a lift in the Austin he owned. "Fakes," I had muttered. Later me and my brother discussed with disgust how dadai wouldn't even bother to say Hi to them, forget all the nut-tales. And I wondered how stupid it was recollecting all the little usual things anybody would do as 'my god, don't I miss them' moments. Just because the person is dead.

And today, am tempted to do exactly that. Because I always saw very little of her. And when we bumped into each other, followed by trains of very different people we hanged out with, there would be this secretive 'it's between us' ki re?

It's amazing, at this moment, how I seem to count each of those Ki Re which extended itself to Orkut after college got over. And now, all I can remember is one of those extremely sunny giggles after she started seeing someone - "Kichu holo?", followed by the stupid face I made after anybody asked the question.

S said the doctors couldn't even say why she died. She kept losing weight, and probably her family looked on as doctors couldn't find out what was wrong. And what was I doing then. Coming to office, bitching, eating. I felt almost ecstatic when I found a very old friend on Orkut. I felt equally happy when Sananda scrapped me. And 8 months hence, she is dead. I didn't have an inkling that she was in pain even. So much for friendship. And I still keep jabbering. Wondering if she was scared, if she knew she was dying, did she hate people like me, did she remeber me? Did she care even?

What does one feel? I don't know. I am not crying. I feel disbelief, maybe. And anger. Anyways, everything is so meaningless now. Talking, crying or whatever. She is dead. And I didn't know she was dying. So slowly.

tagged

2007-07-04T08:08:00.000-07:00

I would like to believe Gee on this one. When she calls this 'blog evil'. Not that I understand much of tagging, but I understand I so like jabbering about myself, randomly or in an organised banter, that by the end of eight points one is sure to guess am the next best narcissist after Ram Gopal Verma maybe. And I copy-paste the rules out of pure laziness, not that I know otherwise. :-)

The Rules:

1. Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves.
2. People who are tagged, write a blog post about their own 8 random things, and post these rules.
3. At the end of your post you need to tag 8 people and include their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment and tell them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.
4. If you fail to do this within eight hours, you will not reach Third Series or attain your most precious goals for at least two more lifetimes

Now, about me:

1. This might just be DC grown-up, and of course not sobered. He he. I still talk to myself. And to imagined people I would like to have around me. Siddharth, the chief editor or my paper, my brother's bitchy girlfriend and this astrologer who thinks I too have to be married off to a tree, or a stone, or a bathroom seat, if it needs be, (aka Aishwarya) maybe before a man comes the way. No, no, no hard feelings just wanna ask what if I'm not tempted to divorce then. Suppose I get married to my comp or a cup of butter corn?

2. This, a few already know. Most of my serious crushes have had names starting with Ar. One of them is an RJ with an FM station these days. Now don't try to consider his jokes too seriously. And if you do, I'd like to warn, I DO LIKE MEN WHO THINK BEYOND SANTA BANTA AND SMS JOKES.

3. The first target of my concern after I return from work everyday is my brother's cell phone. I would forget my dinner but not I'll never skip checking his SMSes first, then the lists of dialled and received calls. Maybe he started guessing something was wrong when msgs he never read started appearing as 'read' in the inbox. Since then, the only messages I find are the ones from my Dad and Airtel. But, I have still not given up on my attempts to find vital leads to establish all his girlfriends very domestic and ugly variations of Ms Rai.

4. I still, still hope somebody would leave me a msg on Dil Se. Something like, "I really love you, can't live without you, I will not eat if you don't reply, I won't wear my favourite shirt and I'll die beside my phone!". He he. Not exactly. Something smarter might do.

5. I would never consider a guy if he doesn't have an interesting name. No Abhisheks, Arnabs and Souravs. Pleasssse. I just thought, if I was allowed to name my boyfriend I would call him Anuron. And don't embarrass me. I don't know what it means. It sounds cool. (Better if you spell it wid a K)

6. I do watch K serials, only my favourites keep changing! :-)

7. I wore the same orange checked shirt for all my Part I honours papers because I thought my first paper went well. I blackmailed my Mum to wash it every evening. During Part II its collar line was in tatters. Again, I blackmailed Mum to stitch it up and she added golden buttons so that it looked less desperate than the wearer.

8. You must have guessed by now. I looove talking about myself, my shirts, my radio, the half-boyfriend I had and my attempts to brighten up my hopelessly interesting love life!

Phewww! My two lifetimes secure now, I guess!
Ok. So, i'll have to tag somebody. The misfortune falls on the ugly one and bigmouth (whom we terrified into eating one full cup of ice cream!)

The way you touch me... :-)

2007-07-02T10:26:00.000-07:00

I don't agree when my Mum says am a rebel with causes which do not make an iota of sense to 'sensible' people. First I say I don't want to marry, then I decide I want to marry a singer and wear the white offshoulder gown the model wears in the Tata Indicom ad. First I say men who cheat on lovelorn girlfriends should be hanged and the latter tonsured if they forgive them. Then I promise P I'll share Mr Whoever (who dsnt scream, knows exactly what to tell and when, who wudnt sob and crib and ask ten times if I had my dinner when I actually want to punch somebody in his face) with her. If I come across him. This is an unconditional bond. Last day, after going through a page I hoped Pratibha Patel was dead and decided I actually loved Stonehenge and voted for it. I find Taj Mahal idiotic. Over the top.

So when my Mum found me staring at the TV, a ball of ilish-rice-and lots of mustard in hand, another ball, half-eaten, peeking out of my half-open mouth she did find it unhealthy and ahem, repulsive, not something expected of a 22-yr-old she planned to marry off to a boy with 'refined' tastes which did not include an affinity for muddy capris and oily chowmien. Given that she was not really bothered, I realised with a sinking heart, I could not probably even seduce Shakti Kapoor. I have these eros attacks when in all probabilities I am having dim siddho bhaath and watching TV to take my mind off my misery. So unless some man finds aloo bhaja and maacher holud jhol erotic apart from red cherries and chocolate sauce, my case is really hopeless I guess. As hopeless as KJo's one-liners.

Forgive the digression. But the ugly thoughts come naturally when you see a very ugly woman (in this case VJ Pia who seems to best know who looks good in a bikini) sitting and screaming in front Enrique. Mind you, not Pratibha Patil, not Himesh, not Emraan Hasmi, not even Aishwarya Rai. Enrique. Nothing less. I don't say nothing more because I believe in nothing more, no one more.

I remember how, in college I felt Anna Kournikova was destined for all miseries in life because she had Enrique. I could never quite decide if I could be happy if somebody else had him. My best friend. P. Despite our deal. No no nobody. I couldn't have had the privilege myself as I still consider, I would either faint or die had I seen him in person. But still I hate Pia. For her hair, for her stupid tunic and for where and with whom she was sitting.

There are more songs I like of Bryan Adams than of Enrique but then. Then. I don't know. P says she dsnt quite like the latest song. Feels there's too little of the S-word about him. But I don't know. I could probably drool over a dumb Enrique, an Enrique who wears pink boxers, an Enrique who licks off chochhori from his plate, an Enrique who dances to Himesh, an Enrique who swears in Bengali. He he. I am not quite after looks. But still.

My obsession with Enrique is probably as explicable as my obsession with turning my nose up at Bengali doctors who invariably, as Gee says, wear glasses as thick as broken pieces of Horlicks containers.

I thought he looks as lost as me. As sad. And as tame. Despite the bedroom dark eyes, despite ..err... now I indulge in blasphemy. The mouth. The mouth. He he. P and I still feel extremely bright, despite a couple of 50-yr-old lechs, when we think of the...well, this time lets call him, phenomenon.

My taste for music, well, is not quite interesting. I don't quite dislike Backstreets and boyzones etc. I still couldn't appreciate 'Comfortably Numb' though I really like the Wall video.

I like him more now. Because his girlfriend disappears in all the weirdest possible ways. Like my crushes. And like this really cute guy I liked when I was class ten, who told me (when he left; in what I now realise bherry romantic scene at the Esplanade Metro station) he was going to return after I had two sons. Well, again. Nothing less. Sigh!

Baby, I'm addicted

2007-06-28T10:32:00.000-07:00

I sleep over dreams
Texts, screams and grimy mirrors
I tried waking numb
Tried forking chocolate sauce off my plate
The leftover before I left
But I feel, then linger
And smear it all
Into tame little flames
And go back sleeping
With dreams, screams
Waiting messages and mirrors
Scratchy clean

The idea

2007-06-28T07:59:00.000-07:00

The only thing that comes cheap in life, I learnt, is the knowledge that you are completely useless and even more hopeless. So hopeless that the only men you seem to come across are either married, or bores or triple your age. Or are character-sakes - useless too.

And what is the first thing you do when you wake up with the refreshing realisation? You yawn, look at the cellphone wistfully, realising for the n th time that there's nobody who misses you, nobody to text you silly things, nobody who looks forward to your off day with more enthusiasm than you do and nobody you could whine to when your plans for a hair cut failed for the sixth-and-half time. And so, the last missed call on your phone was of the office photographer who forgot to crop a picture and the last message was from ICICI Bank.

At times my only comfort is probably Tulsi Virani. She, like me has never had enough of scheming females and stupid males. Still. Still, still, still. Her husband fled thrice and returned, she had a complete figure correction for free has a very swank looking bed room. I, well I. Never mind.

Just when I started thinking I was conveniently and adequately bored and well, 'dumb', just in the right measures to get married to a pan-continental phenomenon my mother would like to have as a son-in-law, I had this idea. Brilliant. For a change.

What if I could be Himesh Reshamiya's heroine? Let me postpone the suicide for sometime and consider the possibility. First the benefits. I will wear designer clothes and loiter around in Germany. The not very interesting. I will gain weight, gain weight, gain weight. Completely minblowing. And how? I don't have to eat sprouts, boiled potatoes and all the crap that passes for health food. I'll just need a cool plastic surgery! Yaaaayyyyy....

And yes. I'll not have to act. That' where I come in. I cannot act sick, so I never get holidays. I cannot act coy, so I never get hunks. I cannot act smart, so I am what the miserable creature I am.

Because the camera will be all over Himesh. His cap first, then a close-up that captures his side profile and his cap, then a full-face close-up with cap and then strands of hair which has more oil than my cook has and at last the cap.

Well, playing second fiddle to a cap is a wee bit humiliating but then I do travel in public buses where men doze off on ladies' seats and don't care to get up, I do work in a place where a certain 50-year-old feels happy I resemble what his wife once was, and I keep listening to my best friend break-off-and-break-in-again every second day, wondering how interesting a life she has!

So, that settles things. When Himesh is done with his cap, his jail term, his 'saccha pyaar', his 'begunaahi', and his 'tneran mneran milnaaa... ' I'll probably have to smile from different angles. And I am very good at it. Smiling at all the wrong times. For no reason at all. Especially when I feel just a little more intelligent than Paris Hilton.

And I'll have so much money. And weight too. And people wouldn't even look at me in the theatres because the ones who will turn up will probably close their eyes after half-hour of one expression, a bearded man, a cap and a fat heroine who smiles off cue. So that rests possibilities of my feminist outrage at being scrutinised by mindless Himesh-swearing men.

Because.

The rest will be history. And music. And the nose. Yes, yes.

The first and the last of it

2007-06-25T07:34:00.000-07:00

This is for X, or Y or A... I don't know his name. Ummm... since all my crushes, who have lasted more than two weeks and have taken out a friend of mine for coffee, and lunch and things she might not have told me about, hoping to make sense out of me, had their names starting with Ar, he might be Mr Ar_____ too.

Prothomoto,

Ami tomake chai

Dwitiyoto,

Ami tomake chai

Tritiyoto,

Ami tomake chai

Sesh porjonto,

Tomake chai

Now if you don't suspect that my role model is the obsessive vamp of some K-serial, or Rakhi Sawant, an Aaj Tak reporter or the lensman who judges Get Gorgeous on [V] and insists that he rummage through the contestants' luggage with clothes, washed, dirty or whatever and then yells if he sees something pink as if he was bitten by a lizard, if that is possible, then let me tell you, I still want you.

I never understood romantic poetry. And when I think I should, I realise I am very bad at it. So, the lift, or the copy.

Bitter, and more bitter

2007-06-15T08:40:00.000-07:00

This one's not going to be pleasant. Because as I write the post I don't feel bored, sad or funny, like usual. I feel violent. The type when you want to punch somebody into pulp and know it is as impossible as ticking off a particularly ill-mannered and creepy senior in office. I can't clench my fist, can't scream at somebody. I can feel mad. Very very angry.

There's this little girl called Sukanya. A 6-year-old midget so quiet that my Mum kept wondering if we were imports from some African wilderness. She is this wonder child most mothers would love having. Almost. The type who doesn't whine for a particularly saucy Hindi song when it's switched off by Mum, the type not to bring back powdered cakes from a tiffin-turned-disaster, the type whose bedroom is always a bedroom, not a crash site, the type who stands patiently when Mother dear runs into an old friend and forgets that she exists and doesn't understand a single word of the seemingly interesting conversation. Mum says she takes interest in elocution contests, art competition, does her homework and got a couple of less As in last exam because lil sis was on her way, so mother dear couldn't quite help.

Today, her Mother troops in pleading for an extra fee book, because she says the other one is lost. Mum is almost ready to launch her favourite piece on how important it is to keep things in place when she realises a little curiously that Mother is accompanied by maternal grand dad. Why is Dad so complacent? The fees for five months is due, she wonders aloud. Mother goes pale, Mum is a bit uncomfortable so decides to hand her the new fee book.

Exit Mother. Enter Man. (I call father Man because I would start hating fathers if he was one. This sounds a bit filmi, but nevertheless... ).

Man walks in during the break with the fee book (the old one) to fill in the money. Mum is now angry. What circus, this? Man was waiting for this. Man tells how Mother and he fought and Mother left, children in tow. Mum shifts gears, resorts to technique expressionless as Man goes on with sob story. I wonder why Mother never told her part. Did she trust him too much, was she the one who started the yell-and-yell show, or did she plain love him. Was she scared. Of people talking. I hate to believe it, but that is most likely. People talking. I guess my ideas sound blissfully useless in this case of People Talking.

Anyways, before Man leaves he has a weird demand. He asks Mum to write a small note that he had come to pay the fee, but school declined since Mother had already done the honours. Mum, for a change, is speechless. She refuses. Man seems not happy. Makes a 'why-did-i-tell-u-all-this' face. Leaves.

By afternoon, 2 hours precisely, people get talking. Finally. Mum is told the story with rounded eyes and occasional clucks. Later they go back to their homes.

Man beats up Mother. Everyday. No, he doesn't suspect her of infidelity, doesn't get drunk, is an engineer so most would assume he is educated. But still Mother is beaten up. She hides her wounds. The ones she can't, she tells she fell, or bumped into the bedstead and she laughs. I can't imagine how. Sukanya comes to school, gets ticked off for not paying fee, goes back. At times she doesn't get to eat. Either Mother is too weak or Man sees to it there's no food. And nobody smells a thing. She knows how to laugh. A shy, innocent laugh you would associate with a lil girl who goes home, fusses over cornflakes and jumps onto Dad's lap telling how she hates going to school. One of the first, and albeit successful lessons from Mother.

Man hates women. I would like to think. Doesn't mind sleeping with them though. I know. So, he hates it when he has first one girl, then another. No son. No precious son. Useless daughters who have to be educated for social prestige. Will have to be married off. And look he can't even sleep with them. So how does he profit? A useless investment. And all because of Mother. So he beats her up. Sees to it they have no food. Refuses to pay school fee. And Mother keeps laughing. As does 6-year-old Sukanya.

And he forgets self respect. Or maybe mistakes Mum for best friend. So he tells her how they fought. And tries to coax proofs. He's shit scared of alimony. First no profit. Then loss. He wouldn't let that happen. He's educated, you see.

I hoped for a moment that they would trash this 'Save the Girl Child' thing. Instead, do something like, if you have a girl child, and if you are bloody bugged, either go and lie on the train tracks or beat man up so much that he gets amnesia, aka Balaji. I wonder why they don't publicise that it's the man who has the X and Y bug. If somebody fails, he does, if somebody has to be beaten up, it is him. Something like counter-hate. A girl child is not a shampoo, or a face wash. Which has to be endured, or maybe tried out. We don't have to tell the world how 'useful' we are. Does a man care to tell why we should stand him even when he is the next best bugger after Bush?

I still think the man wants a new woman maybe. Or must have deliberately forgotten the biology classes in school.

I am told my uncle was very happy when Bhai was born. Explains why they hit off so well, they say. They never said it was a repeat act after mine. I couldn't care less. Maybe. Because my Dad frets even if I sneeze. More than Mum. In fact I had never thought about it. Before today. But I still wish I could hit someone. Badly.

All this is so useless, pointless. Whatever.

Of forgiveness and other crap

2007-06-11T07:11:00.000-07:00

Yes! I have done it this time. And am still planning how to celebrate. Buying a fluorescent catsuit seems most appropriate. Because I ought to be inspired, and a little empowered maybe. I dream no more of good looking men but of creepy sandmen and how I can punch them to jelly..err..sandy, tasteless jelly. Then turn them into muck. Then smile, smirk, smile a little more, (the wind shooting wisps of my hair to all heroic directions all this time) and then say, "I forgive you!" Ooohhhh! It sure feels like chewing gum vigorously in front of your boss and then blowing up a bubble right under his nose. Liberating. That's the word. I wish there were more sandmen. My boss, my ex-boyfriend, my brother's senior, and the creepy doctor who kept smiling unreasonably when my head was swimming from fever. And yes, the driver of today's mini bus.

I had a good time. I almost yelled, grabbed P's hands in fright n times throughout the show, felt hungry, planned to eat dosa and went back to the gawk-giggle-gasp routine.

There was a 24-hour power cut a few days ago. I sweated all through the night, screamed at the telecaller in the morning, cursed all CESC employees so that they never get decent girlfriends and felt violently hopeless. Not today. I just want to round them all up, climb up a multistoreyed apartment, smile, smirk and smile again and say "I forgive you!"

The sun rose at exactly 4.28 am. Behind our neighbour's papaya tree. I look pretty good in red noodle straps. :-) I wish there were more power-cuts. On sreets. In offices. And my mother wouldn't blackmail me that she would faint. And nobody would notice, really.

'Chadti Jawani' is a pleasant hear. At 4 am. With 3 people sweaty scattered around like once-loved chocolate wrappers. The guy says :"Uljhe kahe re, main hoon soorat mein, tujhse badke kahiin...". Talking about guts. And Fair & Lovely. And men who think they can be khoobsoorat. With pride. Thanks to CESC. They are not aliens.

The Telekids is perfect. Now don't think that because I looooove Shrek I jump at the sight of a Telekids. It makes for a perfect fan. Twice folded.

I wished I had a boyfriend. Desperately for the day. I could call up and say I am dying. If he giggled like a buffoon or sounded like he's had a heart attack, I could dump him. Without regret. And if I felt that there's no heat, sweat or mosquitoes for 5 minutes uninterrupted, I would elope. Without regret. Thanks to CESC. And thanks to me. I never get to work on my brilliant ideas. I am thinking of getting a patent on this one.

OBSERVATIONS (PRETTY SERIOUS, MIND YOU!)

* Who could outdo Himesh Reshamiya? Aishwarya Rai. Who feels that a particularly gaudy gold tissue lehenga has something called "a first blush to it" (add to it the customary hee hee hee hee). At 2 am, I could happily slap her. And this, not for flinching first Vivek Oberoi, then Abhishekh Bachchan.

*All the jerks who knew not they were, could come to me for forgiveness. I am pretty drunk on the concept of late. A curls flying, misty eyed 'I forgive you!'

Just like that

2007-05-31T09:05:00.000-07:00

Getting shocked is quite an art. I thought. It's quite a time pass. I think.

T picks up the paper. Sleepily turns pages. Jayalalitha, Salman Khan, Sensex and Arcelor. By the time the last picture of TomKat in the International page is gloated over, sneered at and given up on, T is almost back to her pillow and the Mills & Boon tucked under it.

It never really occurred to her why the Around Town column had to be candy yellow. The fifth page and the column always pulled her back. From the pillow and its hidden paramour. She religiously looked past the page in the mornings. Mornings are anyways irksome sagas of personal shocks. The maid spilling the milk, Mum washing blue trousers and Dad wanting to wear that the same day, Grand mum cursing the bedclothes of a 20-yr-old strewn all over the floor. The candy yellow column was kept aside for lazy afternoons and a jobless soul who assumed it was her duty to be shocked and outraged by its contents. Because, maybe nobody else was. And shocked she was. Adequately, dramatically, so intensely that it completely missed her that shock was now a part of her routine.

The candy yellow was broken by small pieces, resembling the mushy 4-liners on the pages of her history pass text, in significance.

She nudged her Mum, who just turned over, shook her head, made a point to mention it in her next letter to U, which never got written somehow. And then went to sleep clinging to Mum, feeling very very bad and very very safe.

T gets up at 12, gulps down an energy drink Mum got her, picks up the paper listlessly, feels happy that there's no more Aishwarya on page 1 and closes her eyes trying to make out why the boss had been so sweet the other day. The candy yellow column had now ceased to exist like the candies themselves.

T walks into the office. And stands still for those precious moments she absolutely loves the place. Thanks to the AC.

And then she starts playing journo. That is picking her way through chairs scattered around, bugging reporters, adding, deducting, adding again. Words. She calls news, stories. And loves them. Or hates them. Like stories. And there is no time for shock.

She curses, mutters to herself, squints and chews her lips. There's a 6-year-old killed everyday. A minor raped every second day. Words. They run out, become old, rotten and cliches. New words, new ways. Life will not change. Words can. And that's what she has been schooled in.

Suddenly, the candy yellow column is back in her life. And is all around her. But this time she is not shocked. She attends to it clinically. Like the way she serves tea to her Mum's best friend's cousin's daughter who was in town and so decided to return with a little more profanities to shake her head about.

And then when she decides to be shocked, she closes her eyes, and instead feels relieved. The words run and rerun in her head. Just words. She had counted, weighed and fought over every one of them. So they are important. But words. Just that.

And shock is quite nice. I mean it takes deadlines, headlines and datelines away from the head. That's quite a treat. Quite rare when you are playing journo. And running around chairs. And bugging reporters. And thinking up half-column one-line heads for the 100 words on the 4-72-yr-olds who are crushed to death. Every other day.

Shocks can be quite a time pass. I fear.

Eyes. Wide. And shut.

2007-05-30T06:52:00.000-07:00

I guess I am in love with mistakes. And they, with their irreversibility.

It's just that I have moved on. Always. From incorrect decimal divisions to incorrect datelines. From giving reviews a miss to missing review deadlines. From boyfriend to boss. From feeling sorry and chewing nails to feeling wronged and changing template. And nothing seemed proper. Or comfortable. Remotely, even. Ever.

And the choices were so inevitable. The options, or the lack of them, making sense only after the choice had been made. Why?

I don't know. Self denial sounds too difficult. Or absurd. Maybe, too philosophical. Not for a teetotaller who wished she could guzzle rum and be fun. Not for a closet smartass.

(The copy passed through one trainee sub, one NE, one sub. No one noticed the mistake. I released the page. The mistake was mine. All mine.)

Me. Mistakes. And Forever. Inseparable.

Sugar, anybody?

2007-05-28T07:32:00.000-07:00

Signs. My latest obsession after I managed to kill my sweet tooth with an overdose of chocolate fantasy. My last obsession. No, my fight with and against marriage is still on, I will continue spending on Inox, raise or no raise, and I don't care if I flunk. So, am not watching channels 57, 23, 31 and 79. That promises you Brad Pitt and sell stones.

And faces are bore-o-meters. That tell me if I am adequately bored. So, that's out too.

My brother's phone rings. His girlfriend. Bad. Dad doesn't notice my dress. Good. Dida doesn't ask who Ashmit Patel is. Good. Maa sounds unreasonably humorous. Bad. My signs. Just a few of them.

Cheeni Kum happened only after Dad spoiled his T-Shirt, shouted at Bhai's hair that looked like an inverted fringe, I stepped onto mud (My sandal had pink straps), Maa finished the rainwater served with coffee wondering why it tasted weird, Priya and its plastic seats, three over 6' settled unapologetically before us.

I calculated, closed my eyes, pursed my lips, sighed and concluded: "Not happening!"

And I came back. Extremely inspired.

Cheeni Kum, is a dash of 'forever young' packed not in grungy tees but classic white suits, a sprinkling of 'satyagraha, what?' presented in a chickenophilic Gandhiphile, a scoop of 'Papa don't preach' seasoned with a salwar-clad charmer served with a 'what plot? big deal...' strung in the 2 and half hours of its length.

Cheeni Kum defines the bittersweet. The ewww moments (the half ponytail, the white suit, and condom????) and the ooohhhhh moments ( 82-yr-old asking 64-yr-old, 'Buddhha maan gaya?', the buddhha being just 58. Just).

Cheeni Kum applauds the Bolly phobia for plots. Man loves woman, daddy spoils sport and prospects of honeymoon. And gleefully.

Cheeni Kum is old wine in new bottle, served in an old and albeit carefully preserved beer mug and a not-new and sparkling sherry glass.

Cheeni Kum is so precise and predictably irreverent that it demands not a review but comments, laughs and a couple of sneers.

Cheeni Kum is Bush bashing and First World farce-ing, Amitabh isshtyle.

LESSONS LEARNT:

Mums hate ponytails. Wives find them cool.

They should think about vending machines seriously. They sneer, giggle and sneer at the C-word. In London.

The shopkeeper was a Sardarji. I don't like controversies. So, I won't speak.

Spare the panwallah and his 7 children.

Daughter's have the last laugh. Always! (Yeaaahhh...)

Night out, and, in

2007-05-26T10:49:00.000-07:00

And I thought I loved nights. I don't see pimples when I look at myself in the mirror. I don't see split ends. I don't see smudged kohl and dark circles. I can smile just like that without my mother becoming hopeful, all of a sudden. I can read my brother's SMSes. I can draw (type) roses in the cellphone without somebody assuming I've had a bad sad break-up. I can steal the pillow from my brother and make faces when he grimaces in sleep. I can be a sadist. I can be Thumbelina.

That, if I don't trip over bodies lying like logs in the landings. That, if I don't really care that the driver curses me when I wake him up. That, if I don't have to pick my way through plastic bags, filled with the residue of something called living, artfully twisted out of shape. That, if the dogs stop looking more bored than I ever was.

Reminder: Before every fairy prince, there is a mole

Hate Males

2007-05-24T09:21:00.000-07:00

Hate mails and I go back like Jagmohan Dalmiya and Saurav Ganguly. Or maybe Rakhi Sawant and Mika. We come together, fall over each other, have a good laugh over how stupid and mindless the other is and decide we've had enough. But I guess enough is never enough.

I keep coming back to them almost as inevitably as I walk into the washrooms in multiplexes hoping that I am the last narcissist left on this earth. And my assumptions are as good as my attempts at finding my boss humorous - devastating. When disillusionment comes in the form of glossy public loos overflowing with red spaghetti-black skirt, red hair and pink streaks, it is not exactly poetic. And when I am left clinging onto a soggy mop, with a variety of cuts and colours groping for space in the imported glass ahead of me, I remember my hate mails. And our long, long journey.

The first one is the closest to my heart. Because I simply did not wait for it to hit me. I fired it instead. My best friend swallowed all my first attempts at rhetoric, of transferred epithet mostly. She had her sights on an engineering degree so was not really bothered. This mail was poetic, in the way my brother is when he asks for money, or whines about my finding all his girlfriends bitchy, conniving, very oiled and Bong versions of Cruella. I was mad at being deprived of the licence to the smelly chemistry labs. I left and, like always decided to scream and howl at the school which then became my friends. Hate mail and I met.

Handshake later, there was nothing much too feed on. I went to a co-ed school, and hate mails like myself, did not quite take to the indiscriminate generalisation. Good boys, hot boys, pesky boys, nice girls, popular girls, nasty girls - tooo impersonal.

Men and man-erisms finally sealed our first date. This, being a, girl likes boy, boy likes all girls, friend doesn't like boy and calls him names kinda soap. And like all first dates it was hot, only a very unassuming Kurta filling in for the little black dress here.

Moral of the date:

It was high time I dumped TEs. Like you can't wear polka dotted pants and look like million dollars, your kurta can't be sadak chaap and you the hottest thing after Jude Law. There's no use being generous. Never mess around with friends' would-be-boyfriends. The mails and I went our way, while the friend and the prospective boyfriend-turned-boyfriend went theirs.

It was a happy settlement.

My trysts with prospective boyfriends, I now realise, are as old as the mails. Only, neither the boyfriend, nor the prospect is ever mine.

This time, I thought I could be a mother hen if not a hot chick. Somewhat related, ain't so? So, what do I do? I try to find out prospective friends, (I don't use boy) for one I-imagined poor soul. Result: He jumps on the option, quite unknowingly, I fluster at the prospect of losing a prospective good friend and howl at friend 1. My second date's more than fixed, it's destined.

Moral of the date:

My brother is not very weird. There are others who think am a mad woman.

Again, never mess with prospects of boyfriends.

Boyfriends cause all miseries. I don't have one.

Am I not lucky? (Feel happy, feel happy)

I hate boyfriends. (And prospective ones more). I love hate mails.

Whatever

2007-05-23T07:15:00.000-07:00

Gee says post something. And I feel sleepy. Like I do when most others are busy chatting on the phone, catching up recaps of missed soaps or waiting patiently in small queues across the counters of multiplexes.

Mum says I never get my time right, I keep consoling myself time is for those who want to run, not for those who want to curl around a pillow, switch on the radio, turn the lights low and go off to sleep. Always. Even when meeting deadlines means raise and exams mean a better looking-sounding CV maybe.

At times I fancy myself as the mother of all imaginable miseries.

Why do I have to run into my brother's 'strictly-not-for-pesky-older-sisters' text messages? I deliberately use 'old'er.

Why can I never feel convinced when he says he is not smoking?

Why am I never sure that a movie is good enough when I watch it in a multiplex?

Why do play with my nose ring wistfully everyday, yet never wear it to office?

Why can't I ever get my boss's jokes?

{ B: "You are sure putting on weight."

Me: ( Oh really! How sweet!) smile

This was a joke

B: My daughter can't wait to take CAT! She is sooo good at everything!

Me: Hee hee hee (That was a good one) giggle

This was not a joke }

Why do I keep blaming my Mum for all this? [ This, I have an answer to. I had never caught her telling her friends what an angel I was. And whenever I ran into one of them, the staple conversation would be

F: Ei tui khaash na keno re? (Why do you turn up your nose at everything that is cooked at home?]

Me: Na, khai to ... (Oh God, not again!)

F: Khaash na bolei shara shondhe ghumosh, porte parish naa [ I don't want to translate this
:( ]

M: Porito... (Why can't I just disappear?)

F: Onko te koto peyechis ebar? [What have you got in math?]

M: Onko..mane... [Why is math the final statement on my intelligence and efforts?]

F: Ei jonne boli, kha kha, macch tacch, shaag kha... [ I never quite made any sense out of this..so let it be]

M: Thik ache...

So I can well imagine what she had been crying about in my absence. No wonder, I never quite get my boss and his daughter.

Why do I feel so bad for Tulsi Virani these days?

Why do I keep waiting for a decent song in the radio after 1 am?

Why do I still listen to Dil Se and keep cursing a once-a-very-good-friend?

Why can't I junk the university, my job and elope with a chat friend?

Why can't walk I into Peter Cat after I tipped somebody five bucks last time? There was a thing called democracy isn't it?

Why can't I get drunk? There are so many other things I do everyday without really thinking about them

Why do I feel comfortable when I am convinced that there could be nothing sadder, more hopeless, than me?

Why do I have to glare at every single man who spits anywhere in my sight?

And why do I feel so righteous when they half-leer and walk away? Unaffected

I think I am uber sensitive.

That sounds good. Heavy.

Where I Belong....

2007-05-18T06:54:00.000-07:00

I am happily tired today. Happy, because after a long time, I know why am tired.

There's a delicious sleep in my eyes. One that injects an uneasy languor in the head, flits around the tips of my fingers that curl unknowingly trying to cling onto that handful of whimsical fantasies that I would sleep on and try to shut out of my life.

I pressed my face against the dusty (today, a little misty from the rain) window of the bus. The colours disappeared like they do in my mornings. At intervals a cluster of neons wouldn't give up. Would try to shine through. Turn into a blur of proud half-lights.

I hate mornings. Hate the pillow being pulled away from below my head. I fall asleep in it. They wouldn't let me wake up with it. Whatever that means. I don't feel heard anymore.

The glass was a dirty brown. The colour of tea liquor left to cool over hours. The world was an unusual murky brown. The Body Shop looked a distant unreal haze. I loved it. When you walk past it, the obstinate, almost aggressive flood of golden yellow suddenly makes you feel so important. So unreasonably, so unreally. And I would die to become faceless again. Like I was, always.

The bus starts crawling near Exide. Chooses to overlook the green light. I push back the pane and peep out. I love the smell of beguni bhaja in that road side stall. Because it's so blissfully pointless. And that is tempting. Extremely so. Ma still hates me picking up and gobbling stuff from the footpath. That's one thing that refuses to change about her.

A whiff of air, a little cooler than the one I was sitting in, blows into my face. I crane my neck to catch its sweet, worked up smell. I see people walking into the Rabindra Sadan Metro station. I envy them. Though walking up and down stairs had never quite excited me.

I used to stop walking when they would flush out the stale air. I move on these days. A little wistfully.

But I still love the smell. The pent up, excited smell. Like running away from asphalt streets. Like rushing into nowhere.

I crane my neck even more. The bus picks up speed. It's time to run again.

Life, in a metro

2007-05-15T08:23:00.000-07:00

This is not the hair-story continued. But Life in a Metro could've done with less of James' curls (not combed, not oiled, and for ppl like me, not washed too)-are-in kinda shots.

Life in a metro....ahhhh.....you drink a whole bottle of phenyle, lie around for 30 minutes and then survive, looking so extremely pretty like Kangana Ranaut does in the hospital shot.

You actually turn something, no, someone like Shiney Ahuja down, and why? Because you have won something called a Big Brother! (Ummm...my colleague says I am turning too much into a cynic!)

And you hope. That you have a Kay Kay Menon for a husband. Keep bumping into a moony-eyed, I-love-hate-the-world-smiled Ahuja in an overcrowded smelly train in typically muggy romantic days. (I used to write poetry on rainy days. That was 5 years back. Now, I sleep. And don't wake up from dreams.)

Keep your fingers crossed that someday you would find a man who would still love you (without assuming he's the greatest liberal after Gandhi) after he's told that you have slept with that bastard of a boss. And you think it was a mistake. Don't even try that phenyle thing, no human's worth that, really!

Sharman Joshi is too good, too true. Dharmendra's voice seems not to have changed with age!

IT JUST PASSED MY MIND: This blog has more men (not creatures called men) than I have in my life. Hmmmph....

But that doesn't mean I am 28 and I am single. A male friend said 2 years back, 'virginity is a state of mind', I believe him for the time being. And the last time I was quite sure of my states-of-mind was...... well I don't remeber. So, let's not discuss it.

And I eat chocolates. Just like that. What do they say about depression????? Ami to emni emni khai....

Hair raising!

2007-05-14T08:30:00.000-07:00

I hate oil. But then it's kind of therapeutic. There is nothing like sitting on the corner of the bed that allows you a near-faultless view of the TV, switch on a music channel that somehow never wears of psychedelic colours and over-the-top sounds, and go about taking your heart out in your hair! Let the oil spill slowly into the middle of your palm, little rivulets threatening to trickle down your fingers, and rub your palms together so that your hand looks more messed up than your head. For once, you don't care whether its Atif Aslam or Elton John on the screen. As you rub your palms over your scalp and over the flirty strands unless they limp like one day-old french fries, you, well if you were me, would feel that you have done justice to god knows who. To yourself, to a pesky boss who had no right eating your head, (your head is all yours and you have all the right to switch it off and on as you wish, oiling it is just a glimpse of what you can do!), to your girl friend who thinks you forever get the hair cuts wrong or maybe to your boyfriend who forever fails to notice that you have got a hair cut all!

Somebody should refer this post to Mr Bobby Deol. (Well, which was the last film he was in?) But then I wished I could splash a whole bottle of some sweet-smelling oily liquid on his hair. If you have watched the promos of Jhoom Barabar Jhoom you would know that I was not mistaking him for my news editor. I don't know if I am inheriting all my mother's genes but somehow I wanted to straighten out those curly wispy red things flying about his face. If you are specially sitting in a non-AC room in 40 degrees with no consolation but the TV, you might not end up thinking that I came drunk in my office. I don't hate Jr Deol, in fact, at times I even forget he existed. But I hate those curls, or whatever they are, really! Abhishekh looks cleaner, hair oiled, errr, gelled probably, perfect for the summer heat!

AFTERTHOUGHT: Am I falling in love with this oil thing? That should be promising, I mean promoting...

Of love and other demons

2007-05-12T07:21:00.000-07:00

Ma: My girl wants love ( looking at the tea with renewed interest)

M: So? I mean, wot else am I talking about? (the let's-get-real look fixed on Ma)

Ma: That's marriage.... (tea finished, the hand fan, an import from Singapore, saves her)

M: ..... ( Wot's wrong with you?)

S could never dare enter my loved-happily-ever-after world. No, she was not slim, wore red chiffons, but less than the starched cotton numbers picked up from some chaitra sale offering. No, no, she could not love. I wouldn't have her love. Not in my world. I'll keep her aside. Or better still, pretend she never existed.

Ma: You know children, these days (an apologetic smile)

M: And mine, wot about them.... (I-guess-you-have-lost-it-completely look)

Ma: Ummm, well you know, she is very headstrong (I am so sorry that she is)

M: Father... they all take after their fathers (Mine didn't you know, and how I thank God for it)

But Ma said, she had a 'love marriage'. She did? Well I don't care. But then she was always there before me. Chubby, fat, cheeks shining as she bounced up the stairs. I didn't want to see her husband. I didn't want another faceless, ordinary fellow to love. My world was falling apart. I was not vain. Who said I was?

Ma: Maybe, but, you know I can't force....

M: But at least try to explain (Hellllooooo!!!!)

Ma: (It's easier said than done! You don't know her)

M: Accha, dekh, the guy's leaving for America, US you know (Man, you have the ticket to paradise!!!)

She travelled in rickshaws. Her son almost fighting for space beside her. The rickshaw wallah lowered the richshaw and she descended. Unflatteringly. Not like a dream. Like a woman who had peeled onions, cleaned and fried fish before she hastily wrapped the saree an came out. She bunched the saree cautiously as she descended, a yellow petticoat peeped sahmelessly. She did not want to fall. Ma maintains she had a 'love marriage'. I could almost imagine her skinning the fish, squatting, like Ma did on weekends.

M: You have seen what happens in most love marriages (mine too had seen bad times)

Ma: Yeah... she is too young....she won't... (Let her dream, please)

M: ... Understand. But she has to.. (you have to do the dirty job!)

Me: Did you ever love?

Ma: So, why am I doing all this for you? (a you-silly-girl smile)

Me: Nah Ma, not like this, accha did you have a 'love marriage', did you get wet in the rain and didn't fret after your clothes, did you wake up groggy-eyed in the morning and still feel, happy, soo soo happy. Did you....

Ma: Get me the turmeric, will you. And see if bhai is done with his home-work

Nah, Ma didn't love. And that's why she wouldn't know. S didn't too. She wore too much kajaal. Drawn upto her brows. Where were the dreams? They were here, with me.

Ma: She wants love.... (She'll know someday)

M: Tell her... (Today, make it today)

S died. Burnt to death. He beat her up. Got drunk, gambled. My first report, first ever for the news page. S died. Her face charred beyond recognition. Her name, husband's name, mother-in-law's name, son's name, age, year of marriage, 5.30 (admitted to hospital), 2.35 (death certificate), "We didn't know before it was too late {sob sob}", "He should be hanged" {sob, sob, sob}. S was no more. No plump cheek, shining, no crisp cotton saree, not more kajaal. S is numbers, facts, a body. "We need 2 police stations' approval to get the body {busy, busy, busy}. S had a 'love marriage'. Ma stands by it, a little weary today.

M: She died??? Murdered?? Oh... (My son needs a new dress)

Ma: Yeah, had a 'love marriage'...

M: Ei to hoi {this is what happens)... (You girl still looking for love?)

S didn't love. They don't burn to death. They hold hands and drown. Embrace and swallow poison. They don't die, in fact. They love. They are not moths. I don't believe they are. They are butterflies.

Ma: Are you sure

Me: Yes, I am

Ma: The guy's going to US

Me: My best wishes

Ma: You want to love, but.... (please, please, please)

Me: I want to study

Ma: What??????

Me: Yes, you heard right (I'll live)

S loved. I know. I don't want to believe. I don't write poetry. I don't dream. I have to live. But still I don't believe.

Me: I'll marry, Ma

Ma: ( A bright smile)

M: Some day

Ma: (A vanishing smile)

Indian Idles

2007-05-11T07:33:00.000-07:00

I was in love. Well, I would still like to believe so.

I was in love and I cried, wrote 10-liners dripping with all the misery I succeeded in imagining in my life, kept moaning over the cruelty of fate as my bewildered Physics teacher looked on, stopped oiling my hair (the shampoo I never forgot though) so that the source of all my misfortunes would think twice before checking his hair in the washroom mirror. I was so so miserable that Ekta Kapoor wouldn't even blink before adopting me.

A couple of anticipated movies and coffee dates later, we went our ways. I vowed not ever to let my heart get the better of me.

And as usual my vows proved as good as my brother's attempt at mathematics.

And this beacuse somebody called Rahul Vaidya. Three years ago, you wouldn't think he was my Mum's best friend's only son. Thanks to a phenomenon called Indian Idol. Today you have 10 other reasons to forget him.

Let me remind you, Sonu Nigam indulged him like no one else mattered in the world, for once Anu Malik had run out of his horrible sense of poetic criticism and Farah Khan could just half-flirt. But I loved him. I did not have a cable connection and love came in the form of the radio snippets of the programme. A voice, not velvet, not pure chocolate but disarmingly familiar, close to your heart, and yes, a little dreamy.

He didn't win the title. Won thousands of misty eyed teens and just-out-of-teens.

Just last week I switched on the first edition of Indian Idol 3. Anu Malik was in his I-am-music best. I love Alisha so will leave her alone. Udit Narayan looked as if he had been paid for that non-committal half smile as Mr Malik went on lashing out at dreamy eyed wannabes as if dreaming was sin. Now, that Pritam has taken over his copy-paste routine and doing it with more promise, we understand....

Poor things kept on smiling as Mr Malik jumped onto his 'you-can't-sing' mode. I suppose there was a thing called a phone. Quite helpful, you know, for all sorts of muck-talk ---- the get-lost types, not-really-your-thing types or even the forget-it types. But TRPs are more useful for some I guess....

Maybe Rahul had been through this....

For all the promises promised Rahul got to sing something called 'O Madam, O Madam, I am your Adam...", how his voiced squeaked in the mindlessness of the Mr I-am-music number.

Some Idol, really!

FOOTNote:

Javed Akhtar should stop quarelling with Malik. The idol watchers would retire to Tulsi Virani then.

I loved the orange T-Shirt, the velvet voice, the buttery version of Kailash Kher's chalky Subhan allah, the cute smile.......... no, no, no, I am still faithful to Rahul.

I call my ex-boyfriend bad, bad, bad. It's kinda comforting. I reserved another bad for Malik.

little nobody lost

2007-05-11T07:00:00.000-07:00

There's too much life everywhere. In the 24-hour radio channels where life is either all hot and worked up, or red and raring to go. In all the channels fed by the Star fraternity where the protagonists, mostly women packed in gaudy chiffons, are so busy with the choices or the lack of them life presents, that they forget that a pink lipstick looks hideous with an orange saree. Or in those sleek ads where a PYT is so much in love with Perk that she remains insulated to the stupidity of offering a 500 buck note for a 5-rupee perk. So much life, so much of it, that I almost forget that there's also a life that once knew how to dress down, how to cry in the pillow, how to coax a dry puchka from the poochkawala, and this for free and not after wagging a 500 note at his face, how to feel blue while the RJ keeps chirping about how lovely and lively a song is, how to keep hoping somebody will drop in a message for me in the late night lovers' show. How to feel like a happy little nobody when the world would kill to make you feel like a somebody, some big deal, you don't really care for. How to feel pastel when living is dying to rewrite life in neon colours.

Poem-a moral

2007-05-10T08:54:00.000-07:00

My first poem was about 'dolly', who, very predictably, was 'jolly' and was named 'Molly'. Mum thought I was promising, Dad was happy that for once something had won over the black-and-white TV in the little room adjoining our bedroom. Bhai, as usual, was in his sulking best(Didibhai has flinched another new exercise book for herself!). Molly soon had 'the red ball' for company, a couple of roses, my 'mother', the 'sad tree' ( this to please my moral science teacher ) and yes, a well-deserved 'my naughty brother'.

'I will h-o-l-d hold, your h-a-n-d hand,

And t-a-k-e take you, to the p-a-r-k park,

I will k-i-s-s kiss you, in the d-a-r-k dark,

And then you will be m-i-n-e mine'

This is a song. If you are thinking, I was watching too much TV in class two. A song, composed by one Pritam, played at least 3 times in 5 hours (you would know if you are familiar with a thing called 'radio therapy for mum's nagging'). Don't ask me the name of the movie. Bhai, after his failure to outdo me in using up 'copies' found an easier nirvana in the TV remote. Dad says at least Rs 35,000 must have gone in producing the 'beginners' course in English' strung to tune.

Third world, it is. Anybody?

I thought the First too lapped up "Hit me baby, one more time" like there's no tomorrow.

POSTSCRIPT:

Molly went missing with Mum's the spring cleaning of the newspaper rack to accommodate a growing pile of old clothes (She wanted a bucket, with a cover, 'wouldn't come for anything less than 10 frocks').

I got myself a new diary. Soon, it was all decimal divisions.

My six poems never made it to the school mag. The first and the last one went in class nine, my name half-rearranged.

My first post might explain the above.

I love Pritam. No, really!

...

2007-05-08T11:57:00.000-07:00

The invitation
of half a metre of frothy gauze
Hired to caress life onto the steel
sticky,with numbness spilled
from fragile glasses

To Neverland
Never a land
Where you sweat
Or scream soundlessly
Or sleep awake
Ever a land
Where you don't grow up
Where you laugh,you cry
Where you sin and live.

Now clasped in your palms
Which have survived
like the rest of you
Today golden or topaz,tomorrow maybe blue.
For the veins waiting to sleep away
credit cards and reality shows
telecallers bartering souls
as sensex catapaults,then lies low

You stare eyes closed
for a clandestine glimpse of
the sinful gauze
But only your car needs a wash
Your phone a recharge

And then you breathe
And this time maybe try to live
Where you sweat
Scream soundlessly
Sleep awake
And no more care
Wherever forever is.