The Woodchuck Chucks

Developments

2012-12-24T18:31:00.001+05:30

Pedicure means hands are free. Hands free means I have time to make declarations. Declaration means this: in not many more days, in one more day, Dec 26, I will move to Dubai. (Dude, who moves to Dubai??!!, said one living-in-NY friend of mine many months ago when this was first floated. It's been in the pipeline. I've had a post called developments in my head for some weeks now. (Development-declaration taato-tayto). But I don't/ didn't know what came after developments. Literally, what's the next line, what's next IN line. It's all a big vague cloud of 'ho jayega' and 'we'll see' and other hiccupy babysteps. That's how up to date I am with my own intentions.

It's a job with a newspaper there, which means I'll still be writing. Anyone's guess how seriously, but that's the 'gig'. I'm moving to Dubai. 'Laaj rakhna', said friend B who was in Bombay when I moved to Bombay in 2007 and when I told her now in 2012 about the sweet farewells I'm getting here from people I didn't all know in 2007, and very many close ones, too. Stick it out for AT LEAST 6 months, said she. (Bombay I made it to 4). She's worried I will hate it and be back in a finger snap, saying, "I had it, I just couldn't ok!". Me, I'm okay. I think I'll be okay. Will stick it out, even if I hate it. Will HAVE to stick it out. I'll eat all the yoghurt I've been advised to eat to get my body used to all new desert bacteria. My parents are happy-sad. My mother is excited, rattling off shopping lists, being only very sightly euphemistic about her desire that I not hook up with sheikhs. My father? He sends me emails from office. Wrote today:

"You have a great deal of natural good sense my love, but just a wee reminder before you undertake your new adventure-“it is not the greatness of a person’s means that makes for independence-it is the smallness of the person’s wants”.

Please live as frugally as possible in terms of material acquisitions for the first six months while the probation period is on and while you find your feet. Everything will look absolutely essential initially so it is best to pack with an open mind. I am looking forward with great interest at how you adapt to your new environment.

All my love

p

-
Sweet, huh? Anyway. That's the plan. Those are the developments. Just thought I'd apprise you of new situs. That and Merry Christmas. Happy New Year, too. I'm moving to Dubai. Next post in arabic. End of pedicure. He no get tip.

posted from Bloggeroid

Gullible. To a degree.

2012-10-15T15:38:00.000+05:30

Last week - 10 October - sometime in the morning, say 11.10 a.m, I was on the platform, waiting for the train to take me from 'wish-vidyalay', because they won't say VISHWA-vidyalay, to Connaught Place, when the envelope I was holding in my hand, thanks to a gust of wind from the oncoming train, flew from my hand, tossed about in mid-air, and landed on the metro tracks, between two carriages of the arrived train. The envelope was a big brown square thing and it had my university degree. My duplicate university degree. I had already, some years back, but only recently discovered, lost the first one.

It wasn't a good moment but in all the wrong ways, still a pretty memorable one. In utter, movie-style disbelief where the rest of the world slows down (or is it moves on?) I froze. I had these two heavy bags on each shoulder, which I carefully removed (funny I should be careful about THIS!) and very slowly, deliberately dropped my bags close to my feet. 'Very slowly and deliverately' because I was contemplating lowering myself onto the tracks, just... sort of reaching down and pulling out the damn thing, telling myself it'll be so quick no one will know, get hurt, no, my arm won't get cut, I won't make tomorrow's headlines: Journo dies trying to salvage univ degree from metro tracks. (Except salvage would probably be too long a word for a headline. This I know. Trying to 'fish' degree out from tracks might still work). But, well, I didn't do that. Nor of course, did I get ON to the train thinking ah, well. Nope. Had it been any other thing, I might've just let it be.

And to think, just twenty minutes ago, at, say, 10.55 a.m, I was so pleased at finally having taken delivery of this thing, this much-chased, much-coveted thing that had driven me nuts for a fortnight that I was humming to myself and had even bought for my friend, (who I was due to meet for coffee shortly), and myself some noiseless colourful thread-wrapped plastic bangles from the fat lady in a sari outside the station to whom I had handed my degree-containing-envelope while I negotiated two bags and searched for my wallet that may or may not have had any cash in it. I let her pick the colours. Told her to give me sixty bucks worth, which is what the non-plastic in my wallet would permit. Fat sari lady smiled, picked, and even gave me a couple free. Sweet woman. I didn't know that in moments from that completed transaction, I would begin to wish I had forgotten the degree with her instead of carrying it inside with me.

My crisis was compounded a few times by facts and realisations such as

I urgently needed that degree for a job that wouldn't materialise if they didn't have proof of my thoroughly useless college education
Like I said, I had already lost the original (in December 2009, as per my signature and date in the college register, so definitely this week). And procuring the duplicate, now-lying-on-the-tracks, had caused me much (sure, self-inflicted) headache, and had required rounds of a police station, rounds to to a notary, to the police station again, to a court, to a 'first rate magistrate', to the college principal, and finally submitted to the univ head office. Sure I now knew the drill, but to do it over? My god.
What would I tell my mother
What the hell would I write in the damn FIR that surely would would need to be re-filed?!
So much for coffee

Not the best hour, being faced so undeniably with such a shining example of my total lack of responsibility. When in a couple of seconds I 'regained consciousness' and ran to the help desk (I was wearing sneakers, thankfully) to ask them to please stop the next train till I just very quickly jump down, on to the tracks, and climb back up, it was too late. They smiled at me, one of those pitiful indulgent smiles. And I saw the steel underbelly of the train zip zip zip, repeatedly over my poor brown envelope with that poor brand-new hand made paper degree that my poor throughly careless self had taken quite some trouble to acquire. Re-acquire.

The next 45 minutes were straining for my neck and my eyes and my peace of mind. There was a boy, though - 'Leo'. One good samaritan who belied his appearance. Tall, broad, black v-neck tee, black casual trousers, reddish-orange streaks in spiky hair, gold chain, stud in one year, mole under left eye -- yea, yea I take in a lot -- holding only his shades, a bottle of water and a tablet in his hand.

Smallish eyes. Soft pitch. This Leo was my saviour. Walked up to hassled me, asked what the matter was, what had I lost, by which time, in typical Indian style, a crowd was gathering, looking down at the tracks, one chap saying, 'phone kho gaya kya?' (has she lost her phone?), and I thought to myself but can't be sure if I muttered as much, "PHONE I can replace.. b@#$@ch**!. PHONE be damned!"

By then I had sent a text informing friend whom I was supposed to be having coffee with in the next twenty minutes: "Running late. degree fallen on metro tracks. wailing". Then I put the phone away. I didn't see her replies. I didn't see the "what?? where are you? which station?" or the following, "oye?? you okay??". I miss the next couple of calls. I'm trying to focus on the tracks, on salvaging my goddamn degree. (I have joked with my friends about how physically getting the duplicate degree has been harder than bloody sailing through college. An unfair remark because I faced almost no trouble bureaucracy wise. It's another matter that procedures themselves are troublesome for me. But apart from the steps I had to go through, they were super quick. And in fact, the guy at the head office, one tubby fellow, Amit, called today to check if I had collected the degree from my college.)

Back to that morning. Leo had summoned the sweeper who was, I'm impressed, addressed as 'metro staff'. But he quickly lost my respect by being an unhelpful prick, giving out a lost cause vibe, and moving about at his own sweet pace, evidently and completely uninterested in assuaging my fears. Every step of his was loaded with a you're-stypid-and-it'll-never-be-found-so-don't-waste-my-time negativity. Then again, why would he care. I was trying to hustle him to look more efficiently before another train came, because I knew the envelope had been blown further into the tunnel and no way could/ would/ did I want to wait till 1 a.m, for the service to stop so please, please, move it, fellow, try harder. But no. He was content giving me dirts and stroll about the platform, this aged metro staffer.

This Leo lionheart meanwhile was repeatedly stretching his arm out like a traffic cop, as if to prevent me from jumping to my death, as if I was some ditzy thing who was THAT affected by a lost degree that she will want to end it, end it now! Death being better than the repeat pillar-to-post trouble of getting sundry paper work stamped and in order before standing in a queue for a THIRD degree.

Staffer asks if I have a torch. I want to hit him. Isn't it your job to have a torch?! Surely this isn't the first object/ item/ single most precious sheaf of paper a univ student can possess that's fallen into the tracks?! No, I do not have a torch and my piddly cellphone light sure as hell isn't going to magically illuminate the tunnel to facilitate your unenthused poking about. Leo says he'll go up and buy a torch. I'm stumped. NO! It's okay. Forget it. We'll figure. He no listen. He tell me to not leave till I find the degree, otherwise they'll give up, it'll never be recovered and the manic rounds will once again have to be run, so to here, drink some water, have faith, stick around till it gets found. And in saying as much, he gets yelled at because he, to help me, 'followed his instinct', broke a mini law and crossed the yellow line. But was let off with a warning. He earlier told me simply: people should help other people.

I have to admit that when my crisis had just about begun to unfold, after those few seconds of frozen disbelief as I watched my degree flutter past, waft into the air, and not that I thought it then, but like the Forrest Gump feather, there were a few distinct baby-moments of comic realisation. Of man, wtf, what a story. But every thought with a comic/ ludicrous slant was quickly overcome with clearer focus. That I need to find this damn paper. If nothing else, can't let down this Leo the motivated, who frankly, at one point, was looking like finding my proof of B.A mattered to him more than to groaning-moaning me.

Another train came. Leo shouted. He saw something. I said chill, it's probably a chip packet. He said nahin nahin, shayad wohi hai - no, no, it's probably that only. I begged. Please don't get my hopes up. It's excruciating.

What can I say. Leo has an eye. Without a torch, at an even dingier part of the platform, right before the tunnel begins, he spotted an envelope that was not a chip packet. The degree! In remarkably okay shape, given that a few dozen carriages had run over it before blowing it to the side. I shrieked, I thanked the sour puss metro staff, and I leaped to give Leo a hug. I called him my saviour. The boy might've blushed. But who cares. Degree was got. War was over. There was a God.

We got onto the next train. Leo, genius Leo, wouldn't let me hold my tattered degree. As if it were too much of a risk to run again. By the time the station where I had to get off was nearing, I had got to know his story -- or, what he said was his story. Something about topping IIT, something mechanical engineering, something research in Univ, studying at Oxford, being an only child, how isolating and lonely London can be, how he spent a few years in Mauritius, what his parents do... and, within minutes, from being so overjoyed and impressed and so filled with gratitude at his show of humanity and his 'beyond the call of duty' assistance of distressed dame me -- because really, if it weren't for him, my 'priceless document' would still be fluttering somewhere in the undiscoverable depths of the metro underground and I'd be running rounds trying to get a third one -- I started to think, what a pity he's such a bore.

He gave me a lecture, too. I can't remember most of it, but something about how you should set your heart to do something, and do something different, and blah blah, to walk away from the herd and follow your heart and all very sweet etc, but all that stuck with me properly was him telling me that when he saw me walking up and down the platform being flustered, peering at the tracks, he thought, maybe she's new to Delhi and curious about railway lines. I thought that was hilarious. Yep. Must have looked like quite the villager.

Anyway. By then I had called my friend back and apprised her of the situation and put in my request for change of plan, from coffee to beer because my god! I had had a long morning and wanted a drink and since she had the better part of a day off -- the journo life, she was already yea yea, sure, but are you okay?, and I said, yea yea, tell you when I see you. And when I did see her we did a cheers to Leo, who by the way, missed his station and accompanied me to mine, only to take the train back. I thanked him profusely, earnestly, with all my heart, employing my best most positive smile. And I meant it. HE SAVED MY LIFE! In a way.

Couple of sips of lunch time sun light khan market beers, my friend, after listening to my highly animated tale of the day, tells me, quite the story, write it okay and I'm sure it could make a metro column. That it has some dramatic elements: 'sheer irresponsibility, brazenness, bizarreness, this shining armour possibility of romance...' and here she breaks her thought by passing me a pink folder and saying, I'm not sure I trust you to take the metro after this, call a cab, OK? Please?

When I later retold this story to two of my terribly cynical former colleagues, both married men, they looked at each other and burst out laughing. I got my trip taken: You WHAT the degree?? How??? Why couldn't you have put in your bag?? You didn't want it to get BENT??! What saintly Grasims model? Who, who helped you again? So sweet huh? Leo huh? Research in what? IIT topper huh? You hugged some strange guy? He took your number?! He accompanied you to the next station?! Oh man, they said. Nobody's saying he wasn't a good soul, they said. Great of him to help you, they said. But then they also high-fived each other, cackling away and said, Oh N, you're so gullible. Let's wait till he calls you.

And HE DID. The other morning. I was in a rush and I picked up and perhaps said a curt impatient hello, and then there was this soft voice saying hi this is Leo and I became totally effusive and went, oh HAAIII Leo! And then, with the idiot image of my high-fiving former colleagues crackling in my head, plus the fact that I really was running late -- to attend a funeral, of all things, which is the properly heart-stopping tragic story, not this magnified shit about losing a degree -- I said to Leo, I really, really have to go, Leo, but I'll call you back, alright? Now, of course I haven't. And I won't. Didn't save his number either. But I do feel a bit bad - that the guy, a stranger, really came through for me in a crisis, and I have to brush him off like any other guy.

By now I've told this story at least a handful of times, about how my heart stopped like in a movie coma, how Leo the knight came trotting up, shades and tablet and highlights in his hair, and how funny it all is in hindsight. And the last friend to whom I narrated this class-A anecdote, if you ask me, especially the feeling bad bit, said, a bit impatiently: look, if you were a guy he wouldn't have bothered. And also that I'm a twit for not putting the degree in my bag in the first place.

To Leo.

"You see the whole country of the system is juxtapositioned by the hemoglobin in the atmosphere because you are a sophisticated rhetorician intoxicated by the exuberance of your own verbosity!"**

2012-10-11T13:52:00.000+05:30

Unbathed, like a total jungli, and running late - gulping tea from my favourite mug, and still in my tracks and walk-morning clothes, the other day I went for a movie, a 10 a.m show, by myself. Mother chauffeured me there. I sat at the back, with two giant suitcases piled one atop the other, and in front sat a good number of bags with defunct zips, all being taken to get fixed. Enjoy the movie, she said when I said thanks. 'For dropping me'. Formal AND novel. Jesus.

I never go for movies alone. Never means never. Okay, in 2007 I saw Khoya Khoya Chand by myself. And whenever Dil Toh Pagal Hai released, I ended up watching it by myself. I'm 28. That's three movies. Sickly average. And given how much I enjoyed my company, and how pleased I was at the no traffic, no parking, no crowds, no inconvenience, I'm not sure why I don't do this more often.

I loved the movie. I loved him. I will watch it again. This time with someone. There's that wanting to share business, I suppose. The wanting someone else to enjoy it as much. Otherwise what's the fun. At least the second time. When you're past pleasing your own senses, and thinking you're so cool and independent and self reliant but unable still to get over how cool and independent you are. And self-reliant.

* * *

Amitabh Bachchan has a cameo in the movie. He's great. I have always loved him. I remember when I was little(r..), and this might have been the point when I stopped openly declaring -- or what openly, plain declaring -- that I LOVED someone. We were walking in the neighbourhood. Home to market. 10 minute walk. 1991? My father, mother and I. My brother I don't remember. But there was some movie talk. And I just blurted this:

I love Amitabh Bachchan. I don't want him to die.
(And so, Happy birthday, Anthony Gonsalves! **)

God. The amount I still cringe, less so of course but to, to -- my family's however indeliberate condescension, their reaction to that comment of mine. I was cheek-pulled and mollycoddled and teased. You don't want him to die huh, so cute! Aargh. The ghosts of 'So Cute!'

But turns out I stand by my 8-year-old open declaration of my love for the man who today turns 70. Not bad. I love Amitabh Bachchan. I don't want him to die.

In fact, when I sat at the back, in the car, with the suitcases, oddball thought struck. My mother was Amitabh (chauffeur) and i was daughter in law (at the back) and the suitcase if it wanted could be the baby strapped to my boozum, enabling cutesy hand clasp.

* * *

Last month was perhaps my best month this year. I don't know why exactly. Lots of sentiment, for one. And certainly a lightness came back to me. It started well. I had a great birthday. I got made a flowerpot cake by my friend who did a most touching ode-type post on her gluttonous blog.

There was a lot of family time, too. I turned 28. My grandfather, 8 days later, turned 91, or like he says, running 92, and 8 days after him, my cousin turned, 43. Whole bunch of Virgo parties happened. For granddaddy, there was a puja in the morning. We threw rose petals on him and garlanded him and cut his cake and choked when singing many more to you or long life to you, knowing fully well all thoughts of mortality are best left inarticulated.

Granddaddy's one nephew's wife, cow that she is, leaps at his feet. For blessings.

There's a whole post on this. Ought to be read. It's a form of megalo behaviour. Mine. Also, look at the effort. And, I say, the love!

My cousin needs ice in her beer glass. Lots of it. Always. Topped up. And apparently I am still at an impressionable age. Because I've started doing this. Watered down = fewer calories = better hydrated = not so bad, the taste.
Her daughter, my niece, made her a card. On the cover was a coffee mug with SO much coffee and with I LOVE YOU MA-MA 'writ large'. She's 9 later this month. Oct 17th. Today's the husband's birthday. His and Amitabh's! Who, I ask, is NOT growing old, dammit.

* * *

And this, this!, was my second brief, bang-on, beautiful inscription from an author and a mind I am totally in awe of. (This was the first). That I was gifted this book, Happy B'day to me, and that people, certain most wonderful people, facilitate the unfolding of such joy, and know exactly what will make you buckle, is to me the more precious gift. No, really. But also, what a kick! That's TWICE my name has been formed by his pen, in his handwriting. I had to blur the spelling, of course. You understand.

* * *

Other pretty thing - and thanks to a friend who will photocopy (never 'xerox' as a verb, remember that) and tickmark certain chapters and passages and articles and other word strings up my alley, and give me, here's what Ruskin Bond says about Deodars. (Heh@'pygmy owlet')

From the last bit of his essay, Great Trees I have Known

"Open the window at night, and there is usually something to listen to, the mellow whistle of the pygmy owlet, or the cry of a barking-deer which has scented the proximity of a panther. Sometimes if you are lucky, you will see the moon coming up, and two distant deodars in perfect silhoutte.

Some sounds cannot be recognized. They are strange night sounds, the sounds of the trees themselves, stretching their limbs in the dark, shifting a little, flexing their fingers. Great trees of the mountains, they know me well. They know my face in the window; they see me watching them, watching them grow, listening to their secrets, bowing my head before their outstretched arms and seeking their benediction."

My harvest moon month and birthday. Party hat sameit (with)

51 photographs...

2012-09-19T19:47:00.001+05:30

... is better than 'caption' in the title

I don't have games on my - wait - 'Samsung S5830', and consciously so. Instead I use up phone memory for storing photos. Same thing with music and movies on comp. Unnecessary, and there are ways around it, yes, I know. I'd rather just remain primitive and allow my photo archives more leg room.

Yesterday, I discovered that the updated version of Picsart, the photo-editing software I use and the one you can download on that droid market place, has a collage mode. And so, in the time I might have spent bettering my games-playing self, (or doing anything less eye-straining and perhaps, more productive, for that matter), I have been squinting, head down, at a screen, trial-ing and error-ing and cocking my head at grids and columns and frames and borders and thinking, na, maybe this one, maybe with just a slight cross process treatment. I'm certain the odd picture could well have been a post by itself, considering I thought them baby stories more than 'aritistic' anythings. But now... you know, too late. Stories, lots of stories, are tucked into the captions. More so in the pictures, I feel, however mediocre.

It's interesting to me that I don't have many mug shots. Plenty shots of people, just not their faces too much. You'll see. It's not such a conscious effort even to protect anyone's privacy. By now, even for that, too late. But here's my fooling around of the last twenty four hours. Most of the pictures though, of course, have lived a little longer, not much.

My bible, the past few months. I've learnt so much. It's given me SO much joy;
The impossibility of taking a decent shot in a diesel car on the Noida expressway of the river below;
Gifted: my friend got these lovely Surgical Steel Earwires, as writ on the box. Who says earrings these days anyway;
Dabur changed their Chyawanprash packaging. I forgot how much I love Chywanprash but seeing my grandad cream a spoonful clean every morning got my cravings going (I was stumped when my father asked me, 'is that sugar free?');
Rings, pearl jooda pin bought the beaten gold leaf earring time that will pop up in a later caption, and doodle on newspaper - are key words of another granddad story that I have been meaning to post;
Lenses, Bodyshop, eye pencil tail, ainvi

The Yamuna by night with a building in it, the 'twin tower' hotels;
Lakme, vanilla - coincidence of my cousin and I wearing the shade our grandmother used to favour;
Indoor frangipani besides indoor beer, headshot of wheatgrass by the window sill;
The movie HT city said was directed by Vikram Bhat (you can't see it but Woody Allen would be tickled?);
investing too much time drinking coffee and stuffing face with macarons that look the bakery version of a good man but are just. too. sweet. Think about that, L'Opera.

Naga Kitchen, Green Park. Easy to photograph cane lampshades against easy to keep touching fabric;
Friend's friend's grunting Chou Chou is acclamatised to his constantly airconditioned environs but still goes about believing he's a tiger. Hullo Leo! That IS his name. Poor Muttley.;
The denture soap my friend R and I picked out for my grandfather's birthday because his dentures broke AND he doesn't like to have a bath but maybe it was too DUAL a message and so all that the birthday present stood for was aww soo cute! which is still pretty okay;There is an Oscar Wilde quote, she says, (she is the author/ character in/ of French Milk , about looking with a heart of stone upon the one you loved in your youth, at the hair you madly worshipped and wildly kissed;
Archery less, zen more;
Purnaa Qila as viewed from the zoo;
Mass of black- my niece's hair in a bun pierced with an invisible jooda pin. She's going through a worship-me phase. Copies everything I do and deem cool. It's the best. May it last.

MG road rain windscreen. Pigeon balcony when it's about to splatter. And him, and this and him saying this

I have that picture of my brother and I in (on?) my phone. Nostalgia is very big on my diet chart. Always, always;
Blanco, R and I , Khan Market and the advancing winter sun;
Recent obsession: ornamental grass, singular blade, outside the house
Coffee. Not black. Not the first cup. Still L'Opera. Good business they got from us lately.

Light. We like to play with light. And I love my hands. And so it is, the self portraits of our limbs continue;
Chameli, cousin's domesticated stray when she does that, my pet niece drops things, my leg stays still;
Jacaranda@Wellington@Nilgiris@sigh;
Rangoon creeper on bathroom ledge in broken milk jug. Think the milk jug motif and shape of rangoon creeper are cousins, if not total twins?;
Ganga on June 23. As it passes Rishikesh. Garland in it, the last of my grandmum's ashes;
And THAT is a print of my eye with all my eye make up transferred on to a wad of cotton.
Puhrrty + cool. And I think overall, my favourite collage attempt.

All three taken this morning. Could've instagrammed squirrel going at it, but then I might've had to, for the sake of thematic unity, tinker with the colours of the flowers of the Karanj;
And, well... just some good sense text. Minus good sense apostrophe.

I'm making hand skeletons, shadows that look like the spiral flower called Chandni. I think I did okay.;
Zoom ant - in fact ON a bush of Chandni;
I like to put bananas in my cornflakes.I had half a banana this morning. That's the ratty part on a plate on a table cloth with lovely rose pattern cross-stitch. Certain convent school traits run in this family;
The switchboard outside the front door has nice light at a morning hour. (Also all taken today. For the sake of Project collage. But also for project archive whatever the hell is a memory trigger because it's important to remember and so, to photograph stuff that evokes something in your gut -- preferably an emotion).

Harshingar. Aka tree of sorrow/sadness. Aka night-blooming jasmine. Aka coral jasmine;
Woman I see on my morning walk sorting vegetables (both those, this morning);
Balcony, other home, 15th floor, where there were once only ferns, there is now a pair of random mulberry saplings. (I like the idea that the mulberry seeds have been dispersion into the fern pots via the pigeons, same ones who shit on my A/C);
Slice of the birthday books loot via self pamper;
Beaten gold, my first 'earwires' of the kind -- arm twisted to buy by a most affable tall Bengali woman whom I got chatting with at Silverline, again, Khan Market, also comes under 'birthday loot via self' (and then the leaf motif agrees with one); Yea, that. Terrible, terrible! photo, I know. But remember some days ago, the newspapers were vibrating because Volkswagen had this campaign called feel the excitement in your hands or watch it tremble or some shit like that, and so they glued on this little biscuit sized black device in the pages of the paper? Well, I tore off the cleverness and tried to drown it in a mug of water but the vibrations didn't stop even with water flooding it's little wiry innards. Volkswagen really is so clever.

And, more earnestly, since today IS Ganesh Chaturthi, I went around the house counting the Ganesh jis we have. Six. I might've missed one or two in the rooms I didn't bother with, when I thought I had enough for a six-grid. I was tempted to put in a series of onyx elephants, but if I'm being unlike me, I best leave the irreverence at the door. For at least this one.

How you like?

Delhi men. Sometimes they deserve better than flak

2012-08-14T11:27:00.002+05:30

Every monsoon my car goes for a toss. Not the car so much as the central lock mechanism, the alarm system.

9.30 p.m last night. My car is parked in Safdarjung Enclave, right opposite the slummy abattoir that is Rajinder ka Dhaba, one of the many shady women-shouldn't-go-alone-there joints that separates a/c seating from non a/c seating with a transparent shower curtain. The surrounding market is a filth haven. Muck rules. Onion peels, plastic cups, cigarette stubs everywhere, mangy emaciated dogs spend the day sniffing out remains of the tandoor that flares up at dusk. Traffic is beyond control. The smell of burnt chicken wings poulltues the air. That and the honks of these Delhi boys in their big punju white cars lining up, eating in their cars, risking chutney stains on car upholstry, tossing silver foil out the wondow. It's not an environment that makes you linger.

But office is nearby and choices are few. My car is parked there. So after a perfectly pleasant evening at Hauz Khas village - mushroom crepe, small vodka, and coffee and almond gelato -- my friend drops me to the parking. (I can't even say my parking. It's not the sort of ownership one wants). We say ok tata bye bye. I get off. I approach the parking lot attendant standing in a crowd. He's the guy i know is a sleazeball by

a. the time he takes to locate my keys in his bunch.
b. the small talk he insists on making despite my snubbing him every single time and
c. when he hands me the keys, bastard will always try to touch my hand.

Oh and once, some weeks ago, when I was puling in to park, he said something... something about my untied hair, and how I should watch it, it's getting caught in the seat belt. I glared. I ignored. I hate his attitude, his manner, but I don't perceive him as a threat. I don't know why I'm carrying on about him. This isn't even about the asshole.

So, yesterday, as usual, I minimise interaction with this guy, snatch my keys, ask where my car is because I had pressed the central lock button and it DIDN'T go TEE-TEE, so he launched into exact geographical co ordinates of where across the road my car is. I cut him short. I didn't say thank you. To him, I never say thank you. I crossed the road to where my car was.

Central lock wasn't working. The rains, the rains. Always in the rains the damn thing goes dead. So I turn the key and of course, alarm sirens go mad. It's like a rocket flare. You know the one: teeyun teeyun teeyun with that crazy urgency. I try to shut it off, press buttons, lock, unlock, all sorts of combinations. Nothing works. My alto sounds like an ambulance zipping through traffic with some poor sod heart attacking inside.

Parked to the left of my heartattacking alarm afflicted car, is a red hatchback with four boys inside destroying a plate of, I go ahead and assume, chicken tikka masala. Uh oh, I think. Not pretty. I'm momentarily amused by the madness. But midget red flags in my head are begingning to shuffle feet. I think of calling my friend who's just dropped me to make her hear the madness and have a chuckle, but better sense prevails and I think I better take care of this shit.

Nothing I do works. One subordinate asshole of the original parking lot asshole, a barely adolescent punk, in his best, most cheeky delivery, says to me with do i imagine this - a sense of vindication? -- "ee ka bol raha hai?". What's the car saying. This would be funny to me if anyone else had said it. This idiot, grinning away, was asking for teeth to break. In the past he's another who's asked me what my beef with him is and why I'm always so brusque. And him I gave an earful to because even when he doesn't need my keys he asks for them and I alwayss suspect the little shot fo taking my car for a spin.

Anyway. The alarm persisits. Of course it's a real nuisnace. By now a small crowd had by now gathered. I was beginning to make my peace with having to drive to bloody Gurgaon with the cacophony. But it struck me I should somehow shut this thing up because even if I reach home hardly noiselessly, and park in the basement, and this thing doesn't quieten down, poor night guard will reach asylum levels of nerve fucked.

And so it was with abundant gratitude that when one boy/man from next door hatchback destroying chicken fame, came around my side up and politness be his body language, gestured for me to hand him the keys I was relieved, and happy to oblige. He tinkered for a couple of minutes. Nothing happened. Shrillness persisted. Alarms were still a flarin'. All teeeyun teeyun teeyun. The immediate neigbourhood, traffic sounds notwithstanding, must have collectively been heading towards tinnitus. Kind gent remained largely unsuccessful. But then he took the keys over to the car of boys and one of them hit some combination and the thing shut up. No more sirens! Hurray! Of the crowd of people gathered, one auto driver told me iske cell leak ho gaye honge -- battery must have leaked. And I hmmed and nodded but was thinking of something entirely different from leaked cells; that thank god I was dressed in 'jhall' mode. The skirt numbers may not have been a terribly prudent choice of outfit -- although in the morning how would I have known that I'd be this damned lady in a spot of alarm. Still. Okay. Vague mental note. Get cell replaced.

Very long story short: the sirens stopped. But the moment I turned ignition key, they started again, and this time the pleasant bunch of boys, all that helpful lot couldn't do anything. Now an auto guy in a blue uniform, different from cell advisor, came forward and said the only way to get this sorted is to open the hood. So kind gent did that, pulled the lever. I just stepped aside and let it happen. Auto guy asked if I had a torch. I didn't. Told him cell phone light would be useless. And so he, with only scattered street ligting, removed the noise maker chip from the engine, and the madness properly, permanently stopped. Aah. Gratitude. And glorius relative silence.

My central lock now doesn't work. But that's okay. Sometime or the other, I'll get it fixed. It's so secondary to me, indebted as I was first to the kindness and courtesy of strangers, these Delhi men, the car full of chicken eating boys and the auto drivers, who get so much flak for not knowing how to treat women, for knowing only how to harrass them/us/me, when the truth must also include that every now and then decency steps up and exceptions reveal themselves.

Dear fellow aspiring writer,

2012-07-10T19:14:00.000+05:30

In case you haven't heard...

Love,
me

Loot, glorious loot!

2012-07-07T11:03:00.003+05:30

Gradually, I can see myself give up ordering books off Flipkart. I will blame this not entirely on their hideous bookmarks.

* * *

There was no way yesterday the rains wouldn't break. I was up early, jutting camera into the sky, taking photos with a 400 ISO (...keep feeling i'm doing something wrong here), responding to tireless double-beep phone notifications. I was up as can be. And that 05:00 sky was going to burst, whether then or by the time I went back to bed and checked three hours later. It was going to burst. Later in the morning, splatters were arrived but erratic.

This, although, is Lodhi road, later in the evening, five minutes before the sky exploded. That's another story.

I was driving on Mehrauli-Gurgaon road, speeding along to work. I needed feedback on one article that needed to be despatched asap. And I'd already texted be there in twenty. But, well, the sky was overcast, and I figured, if I don't stop today, I might never. Despatch can um, wait.

* * *

There is a bookshop near the Ghitorni metro station. It's a bookshed, really. Teensy place, with a cardboard sign that says all books Rs 25. But those are all the one kind of paperbacks, all Maeve Binchy and Nora Roberts. Inside is more eclectic. Old, dusty plastic-cover wrapped copies of LIFE, the solar system, how to improve your golf, chinese-hindi translations, Famous Five, lots of Ian Rankin, books on gardening, books on woordwork, books on cooking, a book on that first woman to be a pilot, books on baseball stadiums, south africa, conditions in the arctic... that be there in twenty wasn't going to happen.

Immediately endearing to me was the bookshed guy. He was sitting, of course in the heat, cooler turned to him, but poring over a large floppy looking magazine style book that when I asked him the name of, and kya padh rahe ho, he said kuch nahin. I persisted. He showed me. He was learning English! How super, I thought. Sitting there, all by himself, his forefinger corresponding words from Hindi Column to English column. What initiative!

When he saw me sweating it out inside, sitting on my haunches, wiping my sweat with my scarf wthat would go on to have a more eventful day, he turned the cooler towards me. Totally ineffective, but how sweet. Then he's asking me if I want a book on Michael Jackson. Colour. Hardcover. Aooo, I say. Thanks but no thanks.

And so. In the days following that lovely Julian Barnes' piece, wealth amassed from a roadside book shed, all for Rs 1,000:

The price printed on the third page of that dictionary, is Rs 15. What a steal!
Manga, Anita Brookner, two books on flora (In search of flowers, and that book third from the top is lovely, has everything you need to know about thuja occidentalis and rhodendrons and the kinds of cypress), kitchen kitabs (for my cook friend, cobblers and deserts and greek cuisine) and it was just a great edition of Hugo Hunchback. Oh, and how are you expected to pass up some BBC edition of something called Grumpy Old Men. Oh, and yaay, cryptic crossword how-tos.

Not in the photo because they're lying on someone's desk in office, but there were three Superman comics as well.

I've left the whole pile in office, in the cubicle next to my cubicle. (I asked my boss if anyone else is being hired anytime soon, and if so, is the person going to sit next to me. And he said, no one is going to sit there, that place is the water cooler). And so, there is a sense of releif in my bones. It's like going to watch a movie and getting the seat in front to prop your feet up on. I get to always have the seat on my left free. Everyday. How cool is that. On the right is a dead end pillar, anway. It's a good feeling. This fortress of random works. Books and moneyplants in winebottles, with big white rocks whacked from former office compounds. Really, my desk is prime property. And those pages? You have to smell the dust and the mildew and the ancient type. You know what I'm talking about. It's an area in which online anythings can never compete.

Badi garmi hai!*

2012-07-02T13:16:00.000+05:30

*issohot!

Poor three vedic chanters, sitting up on stage yesterday, at the last ceremony -- my grandmother's prayer meeting -- wiping their sweat with their brahmin wash cloths, their turkish towels ('gaamchas'), but still, chanting away.

Poor fabulous sitar lady and her hymns that made me cry, she also - no respite from the damn heat.

Not so much the damn heat as the damn fuse and the no power back up at the, dare I?, the damn Arya Samaj mandir! God, it was torture! How can you have no power back up? Or rather, how can WE, the moronic family of the bereaved, not ensure stupid fuses won't blow and if they blow they better be fixed in time to not cause sweat puddles and restless .

My father, poor him also, in his crisp white cottons, looking every bit the grey haired-eucalyptus, dutiful son-in-law, brisk walking, opening windows, doors, throwing back curtains. I opened one door, too, but I was waddling. Nothing brisk for me. It wasn't so much the sari's fault. I'm most comfortable sprinting about in a sari. But like a total idiot, yesterday of all days, I had to invite a crisis.

So, I was to wear this pale yellow sari with white chikan work on it, very pretty etc, pearls on me ears to go with, but I, efficient I, didn't have a pale enough petticoat to go with it, soo.. instead of NOT wearing the sari, and settling for a perfectly acceptable alternative, say a salwar kameez, I wore the sari over a churidar.

This idea was put in my head by my friend who knows who he is. And it was brilliantly contested by another friend; her one argument was: bathroom kaise jaayenge, yaaar? Yea, no, you can't go pee if you're wearing a sari over a churidar. I knew this. I invited this crisis. I didn't pee. I drank less water. I lived to tell the tale. But maybe once bitten...

Oh, and I said a few words. My Bombay best friend, who I had spoken to had given me the following advice: don't giggle, don't stay stuck to your phone. I did neither.

My few words must have been under a minute. I hadn't planned what to say. While sitting cross legged in front, near her enlarged and framed picture surrounded by motia, tube roses and white lilies ( and, i didn't mind at all, not a single 'glad'), and three fat incense sticks jammed into a green baby banana, and wiping away the inconvenient tear, I'd thought I'd get up there and say, good thing she's not here, she would have died in the heat. But callous word choice alarm went off. I thought I'd say she would've lost her cool. But that's so meh. Finally, of course, I said none of that. I can't remember exactly what I said. Something about missing her. Something about how kicked she would have been about so many people turning up. That I feel bad I can't go back home and dissect with her how it went. Yea, that got to me, that I couldn't tell her who was wearing what. I think she might have approved of my saris. I told sitar lady -- yes, I remember now! -- I told sitar lady, she would've loved your singing AND your sari. Pretty lavender-grey thing it was.

Throughout all this, I don't think anyone at the back could hear me. This my father said: well done but you could've been louder. I got irritated at this. For god's sake. I wasn't going to bother with a sound check, hardly an open mic night! But a couple of people said variations of well, that I spoke okay, and that's how it should be, all the smiling-laughing, so I will choose to believe that. And I'm happy to have been the grandkid who spoke.

But really, in that indoor heat, Nanu.would.have.died.

cooler times

Long day

2012-06-26T01:37:00.002+05:30

No pictures. Lots of scrolling. Warning over.

When the call came, I was sitting across a colleague drinking my second cup of black coffee. My brother rung. I picked up and barked, "what do you want". The tone of my second utterance -- "... when" -- was different. Less barky. Colleague got it immediately, "Grandmum?" I nodded. We exited Costa Coffee. Had a smoke outside. To conceal vulnerability and a first of its kind jolt, I diverted my mind. I asked him about the Tibetan journalists walking in our direction. They were on the table nest to us inside, also drinking coffee. One was American, but Tibetan features. Both in pretty, long sun dresses ('maxis'?). I asked which one was the American. The one on the right. Pause. Then the first of a few consolations: hey, it's okay...

* * *

I can't say I've been terribly distraught, really. It was expected. I had made my peace with it. I wanted her to go. She had been suffering. We were living a story played out everywhere, all the time. The hospital, the ICU, the family gathered, the exhaustion on faces, the matter-of-fact tones, the oxygen cylinder in her room, all merging into normalcy. It wasn't tragic. Death at 91 is no tragedy. We should have had a band at her funeral, as the old custom for those who live over, what, 90? I think it is. No band. But I like the date she chose. 21st June. Like I was telling my friends, got to give it to her for some black humour, for making it a truly long day. Happy summer solstice, Nanu. Your heart grew tired. You exercised a birth right. You called it a day.

* * *

Om Triyamabakam Yajamahe
sugandham pushtivardhanam
uruvaruku miva bandhanam
mrityo mukhsheeya maamritaat..

That and a mish mash of two Fleetwood songs ('paper doll' and 'somebody') that got mixed up in my head so came out like, to the chorus of paper doll, "yesterday's gone yesterday's gone... mmmm hmmmh mmm by somebody yesterday ..."

These were the bits of prayer and song that kept humming in my head and on my tongue throughout the rituals, through getting you dressed, through prettying you up, through stroking your hair and kissing you bye. Your cheeks were cold but soft. I learnt Om Triyamabakam for you. You better be pleased. And proud!

* * *

Driving back that day, when the news came, Thursday, office to home, I cried only very briefly. The finality was undeniable. I couldn't wish it away. I was exhausted at the thought that ahead are all these years I have to live with only fading memories of you, because frankly, even now, I'm having trouble remembering verbatim the stuff you said to me at the end. (Other than bit two weeks ago, the last time I saw you, about go put cream on your hands! So dry!)

* * *

I will miss the the animatedness and the 'raunak' around you. Your cutting, shrieky, angry, yelling-out, loud voice. The obsession with food, flowers, lotions, people, the telephone, the godawful cricket matches, my wedding; sorry, no, I don't think I'm going to miss you banging on about that. What I WILL miss is your ability to catch a pulse, to read me right, to back me up when I tell you I didn't feel it for 'him' anymore, and you saying, bas phir theek hai, better now than later; 'if you don't get on, get out'. I will miss you asking me to look up, look at the ad on tv, dekh! dekh!, look at Saif Ali Khan and his chips or his paints or whatever he's endorsing. And my grandmum's remark: "iski bilkul kutte jaisi shakal hai". He looks just like a dog. Not dog as in rogue, but dog as in woof, canine. I will miss the acerbic, the tartness, the cut-down-to-size, the only yardstick of how to be generous and transparent and lovely. I will miss the camaraderie. I will miss how you said certain words, your phrases. I will miss your smell. Your cloves and your elaichis and your badams and your assuming that anything you had made for lunch was my favourite - accurate enough. I will miss your assessment of my wardrobe, your praise of it, your need to feel the fabric of any new thing I bought and comment accordingly. Food. The planning ahead for the next meal before the last one is even digested. Plum Jam, Strawberry Jam. Suji halwa. You're everywhere. Chocolate ice cream was you. Ghee was you. Anything sweet was you. How you kept the figure, lord knows.

* * *

It rained a lot that day. Dehradoon. Really muggy weather. Not your scene. And I wish you were there at your funeral so we could bitch about the pandit who was really not a very nice man. But getting into that might offend you, so nevermind. Bottom line: we got our way, ok. I think you would have not minded this one time that we dismembered the flowers from your garden and sent you off with the hydrangeas and the bougainvilleas and the hibiscus and I can't remember if we threw in geraniums too in the mala, in the the garland Mamata wove for you... but Kohli said this wasn't the season for camellias. I asked him, but sweet chap, was so teary ("sab chale gaye...") he came with the marigolds. Sweet old Kohli. (Kohli's the gardener next door with a glass eye, and as a child I used to be terrified of him).

Anyway, you had the flowers. The pick of them. The lot of them. You may think I never sat with you towards the end, but you jolly well better have been watching me up close to see how I 'made amends'. And for gods' sake, once you were brought home and bathed, I creamed your hands. Body shop. Almond. I reapplied your Lakme Vanilla on your toe nails. C and I made you wear bangles. Red on the left. Green on the right. And your favourite sari. And I powdered you. And I slightly smeared your cheeks with the same lipstick I put on your always-way-too thin-upper lip. And I combed your hair. You know the rest. Soft tears. So if you're going to give me grief that I didn't spend time with you, you're wrong. I don't buy it. I will not let it get to me. I will take on my barking tone with you like I have when you wouldn't eat another spoonful of dal and you'd say nasty things and then rebuke me for bearing grudges. I will go sit in the other room. I will sulk. I will be a fool. But I will still care.

* * *

The last couple of days have been, yes unusual, but not unnatural for me. I didn't sleep walk through anything. It's there, documented, up in my head, even if not ALL of it, distinct outlined fragments. The sounds of the frogs at night, the smell of ripened almost putifying litches in the cane basket under the study table, the sounds of the screen doors, all the ring tones of all the outdated cordless landlines, it's there. A lot of inconsequential shit packed away beside the cut glass stuff I'd like to hoard and reflect on later.

My grandfather's ok. He was drinking his morning tea in the veranda when we fetched up and it was pouring like crazy and she was still in the hospital. I think shanti sthal is an incredibly sensitive name for a mortuary. Shanti = peace. Sthal = spot/place. I think if I were to to say she was chilling, which she was, it might be in incredibly poor taste. But it might not be me if I thought it and didn't say it. I'd say it to provoke, to get a reaction, to get her to raise her eyebrows at me and say hai! hai! So there. Provocation. But also: you looked peaceful. Your hair looked good. Strikes me now to tell your hairdresser. Will. Later.

You would have approved of the ceremony at Rishikesh. We were all there to scatter the ashes of your body. The swami jis there said a prayer for you, for amma ji. And the view of the Ganga was right up your alley. You've seen it, of course. Many many times, all thet times before we set you float in it. Jal samadhi. All of us were basking in your approval. See, now you're with your gurus. Say cheese.

* * *

Aapka shauhar. Your husband. He's okay, nanu. We're on his case. Poor guy. Last time in Doon, two weeks ago, when you were having a fitful sleep and we were sitting outside in the veranda, he and I, we had a long conversation about having the litchees plucked before the monkeys get to them, and then, to shave or not to shave, that is the question. Don't worry. Your daughters aren't going to let him be. There's no way in hell a beard will be allowed. Of that you can be certain. And he's taking it very philosophically - everyone's time has to come. Life is an illusion. There's no birth. There's no death. All that.

Life may be an illusion but he will still shave.

* * *

The number of people who called -- there, that would have thrilled you to bits. The phone didn't stop ringing. That morning I had field-the-phone/ make-the-calls duty, and I don't know know how many times I must have said the same thing.. yes aunty/ uncle... haanji... no, I'm the grandaughter, the younger one... haanji, he's here, of course you can speak to him... she went peacefully... no aunty nothing sad, haanji all ok, yes aunty... ok, god bless you, too.

And on it went. The consoling of people meant to offer their condolences.

* * *

You went in the evening. 5.15. 5.17. That night, all the neighbourhood dogs barked and barked and barked. Much like I do at my brother. Were you still there then? 'Around'? Could they sense you? Hanging by the pond? Witnessing your progeny take final decisions with the rider Amma, would have liked that/ Amma would have been so pleased.

* * *

I haven't been mourning for you. And I'm not sure I haven't had the time is accurate. TIme? What the hell for. You're lucky! And good riddance. All that lying in bed! That nebulizer was the pits! I didn't like your face with a mask. You became alien. I didn't recognise your expressions. I was so, so grateful for that wink you gave me that last time, in the garden when you were propped up in that chair and crying yourself hoarse to be taken inside because your inherent mountain girl temperament couldn't bear it. It was too hot for you, even with that table fan, and we were bullshitting you that NO, you will sit in the garden, make the effort, you have to make the effort! Fresh air is good for you! Amma, stop being difficult! You winked at me. How am I to mourn with all these conflicting mental pictures! One day you're accusing me of wanting you to die, one day you're yelling for me to come be by your side, one day you won't do more than whisper and then one day, the other day, that day, I guess you just had had it.

And anyway, what's the hurry. To grieve. I'm back in Delhi. And in fits and starts, in waves of differing intensity, high tide and low tide, I have the rest of my life to pity me for the loss is mine. Not yours. You're good. Forget good. As my grandmother to whom, as the phrase goes, "I was close to", closer than I was and am and might ever be to my own mother, you were the best. And that's not going anywhere. Why would ever I let it. As the phrase also goes, and since we're such living clichés and living such clichés, thank you for the memories, Nanu darling. I will always love you. It's like, remember when you were alive and I told you one day, out of the blue, at dinner time, that I will miss you when you die more than I will miss your husband when he dies? And you said you know? I meant that. And I know you know that. But I probably had no idea then, as I don't even now, of exactly how much missing I'm really in for.

Never just the food

2012-06-17T16:25:00.000+05:30

Three places last week treated me like a princess.

Sunday night. Diva Piccola in Hauz Khas village. The manager seemed to me like a boarding school product. Someone I might have been in cahoots with to steal, say, bread pudding, from the larder in the refectory after it's been shut. He had a vibe about him - homely? Pride in being homely? in taking care? In dishing out concern. Far more than any 'manager' would. Even though this guy was very much the manager. "This Diva is my baby", I think he said. He also said, to me, and not at all cockily, (when I said I wasn't hungry), 'Look into my eyes and I'm sure we can make you change your mind' (!). Gosh. Or some thing close to that. Say that to any woman who's just driven down from Dehradun, AND sat through a terrible film, you've done your charity for the month.

Then he gave me a complimentary desert, wedge of carrot cake with a zig zag white sweet sauce on it. Looked good. I didn't eat it. Three points for will power. Five for stubborn. My stand was: uh uh not eating, already told you. Leave me to my coffee be. Seriously. Last weekend again, I was in Doon, and had had my fill of spoil-me food. So I insisted 'my companion' eat the desert. I'd have felt sheepish otherwise. And bad for the sweet manager, he with a non-manager air about him, his free-cake giving habits, his general charm. He backed up his recommendation of a good salad with a great salad, pine nuts and all. And b. he had a manner than made me blush. Neither cloying, nor too confident. Not any of the things people don't know to do in just the right degree. Charmed, I was. And smiling like a total moron.

It felt good. The next day I thought of sending him a thank you note, complimenting him for his excellent unobtrusive but warm service, but decided against because stupid rationale always wins. He was only doing his job, I said to myself, though doing it really, really, really well. Maybe a token of gratitude would be excessive. Let's face it, I had to tell myself, if he wasn't sweet and homely (and only sort-of cute; as much as sort-of feminine), and spoke well, and was very subtle in the winning me over, making me change my mind about the not eating thing, and then very gently taking my trip about it, I wouldn't entertain this thought. But let the records state he would have been so pleased! And surprised. And touched. All nice thins to be. Now, of course, too late. Phrbht. I should really try to reason less with myself.

* * *

Thursday, Tc. where TC = Turquoise Cottage in Priya, Vasant Vihar -- I smashed a beer bottle. Inadvertently, of course. It was an accident. Early evening. There was just me. I was waiting for my friend. It was the first beer. No blaming of the brew. I smashed the bottle. Harbinger of things to come? I mustn't think like this! It slipped. I was stunned. Open footwear. So my feet were washed with beer and that was a first. No great damage. No green specks cutting into the flesh of my sole, but I must have just been startled at the peculiarity of having beer froth around the island my footwear caused. My toes weren't drunk but they could easily have been smashed.

No damage. Just a ringing in my ears and a sudden stiffening. The waiter then became my philosopher. Told me, Madam aap, lagta hai, tension mein hain. That I look like I have a bother, I am tense. 'Tanhaav'. He said. I sighed. He spoke of the importance of living one moment to another and not being bogged down by, well not exactly theses words, but by stray bits of glass that attempt to draw blood.

Deep.

He got me another beer, immediately, didn't charge for the broken one, said it was an accident, to chill, that I should thank my stars it was just this. Said that back home in his village in Uttar Pradesh they believe tiny mishaps such as mine at that moment are great because they avert much larger calamities.

I've heard this before. He counselled me. Or, he tried. Well meaning. Despite knowing shit about the whirlpool my head felt like -- and he said as much -- that he knows nothing about my life, but it'll be fine; because it's not important, whatever it is, that life changes moment to moment in the subtlest of ways, so drink your beer.

Sujit Kumar, thank you.

* * *

Saturday afternoon. 50 degrees heat. My friend M and I have to have lunch. Connaught Place. How I miss it. We head there. Car is a microwave. We park, usual, on Jai Singh Road. get off, start acting foolish. We're tickled at me being the caped crusader, using my 'dupatta' to cover up every open skin pore. Blistering, blistering. And even so, despite the heat, we don't let possibly ineffective ac environs deter us from our lunch venue: Andhra Bhavan

The moment it was tossed up, it was fixed. We hadn't been to the place in FOREVER. Since college. M.A days, Back when a vegetarian thali at their canteen was Rs 60, (it's still cheap, but exactly double), and chicken/ mutton must've been nominally more, and the woman selling pickles at the gate used to, we'd tease him, have a thing for then boyfriend. Jesus. Really been a while. M and I, for all our can't-eat-so-much-in-the-summer, ate like pigs. Me more than her. Don't go by the picture.

We laughed at our instincts; at the counter paying, because it's so rushed, so many people, and I'm taller and quicker, I ask her, veg or non veg?, and she looks mock-flustered at the only split second reaction time I've allowed her. So she says, immediately, ok, non veg! I stick to veg. Later she says she didn't even really want non veg. We agreed it was at least a good thing it was only the one plate of chicken, so that I, the dust bin, could consume everything left out thanks to the limited teeny seating capacity of her small stomach. The instinct thing? We attributed the 'ok, non veg!' cry to her 'culture', her specific geographical context, to her tribal ancestors, this off-the-cuff eternal need for meat. Ok, non veg! I, we decided, have a much less clear genealogy, so it gets blurred. And everyone knows, blurred means veg.

Veg or non veg, I love the thali. I love the dal. I love the fat man there who I tell everyone I go there with, is hugely partial to me. I say this because "it's true!". Come with me. I will show you. I will be given a table faster. I will be asked at least 5 times if I want more rice; more puri, more dal, more rasam, more hope, something to drink; oh, I love it! I'm not saying he's not fantastic with also his other customers. I just like declaring myself special. It's a silly joke between me and the regulars with whom I (used to) be a glutton on ghee at Andhra B. I loved being reminded yesterday of how well they feed you. It's like you've entered their home and since you have, you jolly will better stuff your gut. We were stuffed. Guts were creaking. I skipped dinner. All that rice! All that ghee! Fat man told me to try out all the pickles on the table, and I obeyed him. Loaded with flavour. And spice. Nose runs. Fat man asked me if I wanted more gravy ( of the chicken), and M and I exchanged old knowing looks, floored, touched. I smiled and shook my head and he thought I was being shy so he asked me after two minutes again, and I smiled again, and again shook my head, and finally he believed me and left me to eat with my hands, not watching me make mounds of rice and ghee and wolfing the dal. Boys have been alarmed with how much I can eat. Dal over gravy. Andhra Bhavan over any other. In under Rs 300, we were done, drowsy, and ready to pass out.

Writings on the wall

2012-05-29T12:03:00.002+05:30

Driving down to Dehradoon from Delhi, the best mid-way pee-break halt was always Cheetal, now apparently Cheetal Grand. (Or maybe always Cheetal Grand, noticed only now). As a kid, stopping at Cheetal, Grand or not, en route to my grandparents' place much further ahead into the Shivalik hills, used to be the height of excitement for me; crackling 'magic pops' on a tot's tongue.

The place had clean loos and a resort-like feel. Rows of flower pots, rabbits, birds -- caged, of course, but perhaps back then, as a child, I wasn't quite rabid about animal rights -- watered lawns, a general air of hygiene, a big open aquarium with monster goldfish, and evident effort gone into keeping the area trim and functional; lovely. And most unlike what certain coffee shops in Delhi have transmogrified into (anyone been to Barista recently?). Point is, pee stops at Cheetal made me happy.

I hadn't been on the Delhi-Doon road for some years, four at least. The last time I went to visit my grandparents' in Doon was, and I looked up blog archives, in October 2010, in the train. Long live the Shatabdi. Except now, train bookings are apparently open 4 months in advance, which makes it impossible to manage tickets last minute in tourist season. Drove there, but returned in the volvo bus, hence stopped last week on our way back to Delhi, for a half hour, my mother and I.

When we get disembark at Cheetal and she starts raving about the lovely little tomatoes and oh look-- :

She: Take a shot of the ornamental chilies! Nanu used to always pluck some...
Me: Nothing doing.

For one, I have way too many shots of silly ornamentals consuming my phone memory. For another, I'm always more amused with signs. I saw some cute ones on my walk one morning in Doon.

See hills in the background? The other side of the board says Don't Be Harsh on Curves.

But Cheetal. Walking about to stretch my legs after 4-5 hours in the bus, and after drinking cold coffee from the self service counter (40 bucks for one and SO much better than the overpriced frappé crap, again, at Barista; also the man behind the counter was immediately smiley and said, of course he could make me cold coffee, strong, without sugar, and thankfully didn't call me ma'am) and, pre clambering back on board, I felt my tickles at inadvertent comic signs turn a shade darker and into alarm. The +40 degree heat didn't help. But all these self-instructions, ( you'll see as you scroll down), like a new boss boss on a power trip, could have hardly been a mirage.

Okay, not this. This is sweet, even if a tad discriminatory. Poor regular flies!

But this...

Great example, I thought, of 'knowing your audience'.
One measly plastic spoon kinda DOTH a klepto make.

And this...


I don't know, you know... if people bent on decamping with pigeons are the obedient sort...

And...

Like a truck jammed into a no parking space. Same principle. Only nicer.
Them generous bird thieves!

And...

How else to take in these signs erected all over your disciplined property?

Rusty sign, y u no fun?

Winner of the ornamental chillies vs purple lotus round.
Pity you can't see tadpoles.

Poor guys, out in the bloody heat, watering the entrance of Cheetal to bring down the tempertature of cement

Glorious 2-ambi laden mango tree. ie room freshner for the entire compound

Good thing Cheetal still has enough 'visual relief' going to make up for its don't-do-this-don't-do-that paranoid Hitler attitude.

And clean loos.

Digging my grave then wondering at mud that flies

2012-05-13T13:24:00.000+05:30

'BUT THE INFINITE GRADATIONS OF COLOR IN A FINE SUNSET
-- FROM SALMON TO CANARY TO MIDNIGHT BLUE--
LEFT HIM WORDLESS.'
A favourite panel. From Alison Bechdel's graphic memoir, Fun Home. Page 50

I do nothing these days. It's a self-inflicted, utterly unsustainable embargo on work, reasons for which we shan't get into for the potential they have to bore. But also, I don't want to talk about it. These days. These days it's all very bite nose, spite face, lather, rinse, repeat.

A couple of days ago, my father, from across the dining table, told as he often does, 'I'm just waiting for someone to sack me'. Yea, me too, I say, me too, tickled by, I don't know - our respective common reading too much into a hardly definite outcome? Some fools will some day realise what dead weights we are.

I have a feeling -- well actually, he corroborates this, so never mind 'feeling' -- I know all my father does in office is drink green tea, with a drop of fresh lemon for it's apparent enhanced benefits, carry out his random research (okay, last year sitting in office acting like a 'consultant', he wrote a book and got one thing off his bucket list, so I'll give him that) and send me emails from his office with subjects like the ultimate calcium guide ('Something you said about milk makes me send this to you to scan thru.lv.p'). Bottom line: eat bananas. Potassium helps absorb calcium.

Meanwhile, his vitamin D3-deficient daughter (not so much calcium-deficient, she suspects) - all she does is troop in to work at whatever noon hour suits her highness, drinks hot water from a mug that says her-high-ness, write emails, update online wishlists, read sweet Bon Iver erotic stories, sigh, get all wistful, sometimes blog, make small talk with neighbours, all the time, do no work. What's the point, she says. Clever lady, ace justifier, grave digger.

Work is terrible. I made it so. We're having a vicious little spat. And one of these days charge will have to be taken, someone will have to crack a whip, or papers will have to be filed. There's bound to be an enough is enough moment. We play who blinks first with astounding aplomb. We. We. These days. I. I. I'm the horse who won't drink from a filthy pond even if what I long for is algae. One well-meaning colleague advised me, using perhaps a close home metaphor -- how much will you fight? how many will you divorce?

The only custody battle I foresee is who gets to keep my money plants, my beautiful, well-maintained, gorgeous life-embracing, sunlight-loving baby greens. And yet, I don't see myself walking out armed with with thirty wine bottles and a couple, champagne.

I hope you're at least enjoying this stubborn no-writing phase of yours, a friend emails. No, I reply sorrowfully. I miss writing. I'm not enjoying anything. My back hurts and I've become an exquisite look-at-her-she-does-no-work disdainful museum sloth. I'm that stationary. And on an ego trip as predictable as traffic.

When two rightfully pleased-with-themselves interns offered around a box of motichoor ladoo to office people to celebrate their first byline, I felt like a wasted relic. Bravo to them, most definitely. But yiikes, how long ago was that for me. So long ago one doesn't count. But 'one' does remember.

My father again. We're at the table; my mother isn't in town for a while. Good daughter behaviour has impelled her to rush to Dehradoon to be with Nanu - my grandmother, my mostly all-deaf now grandmother, the leggy hottie in my blogger thumbnail, who fell in the bathroom and broke two ribs. She's 91 next month. Joining dots is not cheery. It breaks me. My back and my heart are in sync these days. And these days, there's more inevitable here, with Nanu, than any half-wishful father-daughter sacking. I'll go to her next week, maybe, when my mother returns so we can nurse by turn.

Happy mother's day, I texted my mother, wish nanu also.

Thank u, N.so lucky 2get yr message, i was/am at MOTHER PONDICHERRY ashram. love u.

She didn't say N. She said my name. But I could imagine what a nuisance it would've been for her to type that message, slowly slowly, like old people who don't use any T9 dictionary or QWERTY nothings, to get the spelling right of Ma Anandamayi . Smart, she went with Mother Pondicherry. No blasphemy, no error.

It's another meal. I'm whining again, to my father. Groaning, 'making a mountain out of a molehill,' as he likes to say. He's worried, then amused; Worried it's my back again, my infidel lower spine that's acting up. Amused that I'm lying so he doesn't worry. I'm suffering, I mutter. Why, darling? Why are you 'suffering'?

Because!! I don't want to dooo this any longer!

Do what?

This. THIS! This 'pretending' to be a journalist...

And off I launch into another crowded, inchoate monologue about the futility of my 'professional' life.Of how I think I should do something else, something that maybe doesn't involve a word count as part of a work drill. And how is it that a reasonably smart person can have zero vocation?? HOW. Obviously I was -- am! am! -- in the mood to slather on the self pity, to bring on the feelings of nagging inadequacy and bugle-shaped doubts and blow those damn things so hard that even my out of tune inner ears sob more continuously with more flowing rhythm than I ever sleep. These days.

I don't SAY this to him. Not all of it. Sigh, he says. Darling-, he starts. I can sense more indulgence. I can sense also my own ducts singe and begin to well. Hello, bugle! He says it's all his fault. I feel a snap inside. I yeowl. HOW! How the hell is this your fault?! And also what is WRONG with you?! Can't you listen to me kvetch without packing me off on a guilt trip about your alleged failings as a father ESPECIALLY where as far as I'm concerned, you have your biggest freak fan in an unmotivated daughter!

Darling -

aaargh!!

So then he says things such as... you know, I've never had any focus. But then 30 years ago, that was perfectly alright. The army was a hobby. He was an aberration in it. Aberration. These days.

All of it makes me laugh. Momentarily I feel blest that we can, we CAN laugh at ourselves and acknowledge that constitutionally we're unable to take ourselves at all seriously. It's a good thing, the inability. To be serious a lot is bad form. And there's no need to perpetrate the malaise. God knows enough others without knowing it are properly suffering.

Still, in something of a non-half hearted vein, he's holding himself responsible for not having any real ambition to pass down. Yea. I chew my food. I think there was chana. And palak. And I like how palak makes teeth squeak.. I ask him how my brother, S, is such a motivated, doing well, competitive sort and where the hell does he get that from.

'Your mother'

WHAT?

She's competitive.

Don't talk nonsense, Papa.

I'm telling you...

Whatever.

I ask him, do you see much of yourself in S? No, he doesn't actually. And says, thank god for that. Isn't that a twinge somewhere for you, to not see much of yourself in your son, who basically is in the army because his father was in the army?

No. Apparently, he's thankful.

Unasked, he announces, I see a lot of myself in you.

ME? HOW. I thought I was just like mama.

Darling - that too, but you've got this... Jekyll-Hyde thing going... I see myself in you. That aberration in the army thing again.

I'm a total aberration, too! I mean, I am a thoroughly useless journalist. Ask anyone! Ask my bosses! I'm sure some like me. Some think she can write. But journalist? See, NOW we bring out the smirks and rev them up to laughs. He knows this. I know this. He's worried because his battles, as he says, are mostly over.

For the amount this man sometimes irritates me with his placid, almost resigned, unflappable, deadpan accepted reasoning and survival formulae, I respect him the same amount. There is always a wryness, an undercutting comic tilt to his view of his environment. It's the flipside of that unpolished no-focus coin. I recognise that. But there's such a thing as being arrogant of your genes. I'm the apple looking at the tree who told me to watch it, kid, you're going to fall. Just not too far from me. Should I be happy about this? That I feel I'm falling off a branch?

I change the topic. I ask him. Do you think Nanu's going to die? When I spoke to her she sounded so frail. I miss you, too. The sobs have been attacking me from the depths of my stomach about this, too. And he gives me a realistic view, an honest answer. The age. The pain. The effort. The living. The dying. And I have to shut myself in the bathroom for a bit to watch the mirror watch me watch it pay an advance to debilitating grief around the corner, not my first instalment of tears.

He's worried for me. I see in you the lack of focus I never had. It's my fault. You get that from me. I'd go along with the flow, but over the last 30 years, so little ever truly excited me...

By this time, I'm about to collapse. There's nothing you can do, I tell him, full of impatience. He says he knows. So stop blaming yourself!, I yell at him again. He smiles. Daddy's little girl, hapless little darling...

Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here

Good week. Better weather.

2012-04-30T00:55:00.000+05:30

Waiting at a plant nursery for a friend to finish socialising so we can start our own desperate catching up, I step into a moment where you can smell the moisture in the breeze and a peacock has it's wings fanned out. It's the animal kingdom version of movie or street scene where a girl is losing out to an umbrella hell bent on sucking up to the sky and turning upwards to show it's intent. The peaccock is the girl and the plume is the umbrella. Sky is the constant.

I see it go round and round, twirl and twirl, front and ass, and I photograph both. I mail ass pic from phone to another friend who used to be grated by his phone's ridiculous 2-bit appendage, Sent on my Blackberry. He nonethelss replies from his BB, asking if I thought the peacock mistook my laughter for rain. And I, tee hee, vain peacock myself, forgive the birds for being such vile snake-like things.

You'll agree it was a good line. I wanted to have come up with it.

Tuesday. Gorgeous weather. So much rain. Salmon sky. All that. We have a plan. We're going out. To celebrate the weather, if you please. We're four people - two of whom are up there in the first para, third I'm talking to on the phone. Fourth is a perpetrator of the walk and talk malaise.

In two minutes of having gotten out of office -- 6.45 p.m? -- my nice blue seersucker trousers, my season substitute for jeans, get caught between two adjacent parked cars, one of which is what I drive and rip hard. They get caught in a teeny inexplicable protrusion from the parallel car just as I am slithering sideways to sit inside, and they rip unmistakeably, at the butt, right side, below the 'back pocket'. No point hoping I didn't hear and feel what happened. I am a mess of red laughs and huge relief. I thank my stars that I am not, for one, getting OUT of the car and/or late for a meeting. None of that, at least. This sucks. This rips. But I am spared the necessity to take asylum in the infra red besotted furnace on wheels. Second bright side: the weather, the weather! I am still talking to my friend. It's drizzling. I think we laugh for 12 minutes straight. She stops at South Extension, picks me up my change, my spanking new lowers. I reach our rendezvous and (mostly) stay in the car till she arrives - you can still drive a car with a bare butt. I change in the dark. She and the car door act like the shield. I flash her. The laughs don't die.

We're at a shoot. Photographer friend-colleague from office and I. It's maybe one of those off track things about the journo life that I don't mind -- hanging with photographer colleagues, doing some work for some story. (Nobody in the profession calls it an article. That's only to outsiders, to people who you ring for the story - hi, I'm so and so from such and such place, is this a bad time?, I'm doing a... hell, even here, I say 'story' -- I'm doing a story on blah blah and I was wondering if you were free to talk. meet). We write articles but we do stories. And when you hit it off with say, photographer colleagues, it's amazing how much peripheral stuff you can fit in and learn about each other on these 'assignments'. Or stories.

We're done with the shoot. We're walking in an alley and his eye catches sight of an oil painting of the golden temple from outside a hole in the wall art gallery. We go in to examine the strokes, the green-grey colours of the sky, share a little working knowledge of flat brushes, learn a little about the painter, see his other work, be interested, not just act it, like the bright, bright colours in he uses for Varanasi ghats, say thank you to the woman trying to discern if we're interested or just playing the fool, then go out and debate if we want to waste more time before going back to office or what. And what a silly doubt that is.

I asked one of my favourite people, an editor who's seen me since I was 20 and had milk teeth, if he'd read any Jonathan Franzen. I was still carrying Freedom buried with me in my bag then. And I wanted to know if any half-sharp person I respected thought it as addictive. Talk about desperately seeking validation.

"Well, if you did have [a daughter], you might let yourself recognize the actually-not-terribly-hard-to-recognize fact that very young women can get their desire and their admiration and their love for a person all mixed up, and not understand –"

"Not understand what?"

"That to the guy they're just an object. That the guy might only be wanting to get his, you know, his, you know –"

And he slightly furrowed his brow and said, yea.. you know, I've read Corrections and I enjoyed it very much... but the thing with these contemporary American authors is... they don't stay with you...

And I thought about this. And I remember thinking, he sounds so unlike what so, so many others would sound like when they say the same thing, speak the same phrase, and believe similarly that the thing with these contemporary american authors is...

I have a habit of jotting down phrases/passages/ words/lines/triggers in a book that I like. And in a book as thick as Gone With the Wind, I found I did it just once. I loved the book, enough, sure. I read it very fast. I told everyone I'd usually tell about it. I even took the metro so I would not waste precious reading time driving. (If I'd done that last Tuesday, it may not have happened and you might not know about my ripped thread bare ass car episode. So good I drove). I wanted all the time to be making progress and finding out which Berglund family member did what next. And now it's with my friend who I was raving about it to. It'll be nice to see if we agree on the same good, addictive, gossipy parts.

My one line, on page 169, my edition, was "She returned to the beer shelves like a bird repeating its song." I must like it enough and evidently, for in my annotations in my diary, I have that line followed by a smiley face, three exclamations and another smiley face.

They may not stay with you, these contemporary American authors. But sometimes they, too, quite hit the spot.

Following pugmarks?

2012-04-17T19:14:00.000+05:30

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up.
It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed.
Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up.
It knows that it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve.
It doesn't matter whether you're a lion or a gazelle
when the sun comes up you'd better be running.

― Christopher McDougall, Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

~
Dhab... dhab... dhab... dhab...

It's 8.15 in the morning. I'm out on a walk, having slowed down from my version of a run, and I can hear these totally non-gazelle-like footsteps closing in on me. My one arm swings more than the other, for in the other, I am carrying my phone. I don't always. But today I need the time. I need to be on time. Last night there was a storm and I feel moisture in the air. It's bright but not sunny.

Dhab... dhab... dhab. It's almost next to my ear.

You can't place running footsteps as accurately or as often as you can walking ones. Maybe it's the rubber soles. And even walking footsteps are not as easy to place as, say, a voice - placed so much more instantly.

I'm not expecting my father on my route at this time. He usually sets out earlier. But I'm not surprised to see him, tall, lanky, running, catching up, not stopping, still - asking, "Hiiii! Want to jog for a bit?"

Oh! hi, I say, letting him run on ahead, and saying after him loudly enough to catch: naaaaaah.

The dhab dhab dhab continues ahead. Soon I can no longer hear it. I can hear only the sounds of construction  where a building is coming up, the activity of a cement mixer. And I can see only the figure, tall, lanky, running, running slowly, in those awful long shorts.

In the moments after his footsteps dissolve, I feel a pang. Why is my first reflex always no? I don't spend enough time with him anyway! What is wrong with you?!

After a 30-second self-berating eternity in which I can see his figure diminish in my eye, the mind is made up. With an ugh and a groan, I quicken my pace and start my own dhab dhab dhab, slicing distance, hopping over a stream of mud water - evidence of the early morning bath had by a car in someone's driveway. I negotiate my way around a sleeping mongrel. The impact of sneakers-on-road alerts some some idle heads and some turn. I pass those, closing in. And in catching up with my father, merging with his pace and converting us into sprinting side-by-side  beanpoles, the berating is gone. I feel better.

The VERY LONG untold story of my never-ending memories plus a few dozen things about the way you laugh

2012-04-16T00:20:00.000+05:30

One of my more macabre memories from my childhood (that I never hesitate to narrate) is this.

I was in the 10th standard. I must have been 15. I was walking my two dogs on their leashes made of steel -- we used to have alsatians/ german shepherds -- in this place called Wellington in the Nilgiris (which, much to my utter gratitude, I got to visit last week) when I came across my mother and a friend of hers, with whom she used to play tennis at least a couple of times a week. This friend of my mother used to wear those really broad visors (sun shade thingies), had a very shrill pitch and a thin, high laugh. She was a certain south east asian national. Her husband was, too. A certain percentage of the population were foreigners. This was and is an army station, a military college. My father was an 'instructor'. Shrill's husband was a 'student' of my father. Father taught there for many years, effectively a Mr-Chips-style class teacher. Shrill's husband, as was the norm, attended, a 10 maybe 12- month course.

Anyway, Shrill and my mother would play tennis. Not too many women then, in that teensy army station would play tennis. Not that there was anything stopping my mother or Shrill from playing with men, they did, too. But something about, I don't know -- mixed doubles? playing a partner at your level? Whatever.

The macabre bit is this. My mother and Shrill, walking uphill, returning from tennis, waved to me as I was walking the dogs, taking a break, it's possible, from studying for my board exams. We all kind of stopped mid-hill to chat and Shrill said something about how "back home" dogs are considered very healthy. To eat. And she said, pointing to my poor furries on the steel leash, how loaded dogs were with VITAMINS. For however else, in whichever manner, I embellish this memory, I know she said VITAMINS. My dogs, had VITAMINS. Crazy shrill wanted my poor pooches on a plate.

Everyone in my family knows this story. When we talk of dogs, this comes up, and we all laugh - shrilly.

Anyway. Cut to fifteen years later. My mother is in Delhi. She still plays tennis. My father no longer teaches at a military college. The shrills have long fallen out of touch. Mr Shrill, presumably, isn't a student anymore.

At a mela last year - a fete, a slender thing still favouring visors, apparently spotted my mother 300 miles across a field, walked up to her and there was much shrieking out of recognition. Hurrah! Tennis buds reunite. My mother, I vaguely remember, had rung me, most excited, asking if I remember the crazies who wanted to roast our beloveds, Dog 1 and Dog 2. My ears perked up. I had to let go of my usual humdrum response when she calls. But OF COURSE I remember the canine-ables! WHY, I ask. Oh, I just met her, she said. Ohh! Really? Wow. And so it goes.

And so it also is, that 15 years down, everyone's in Delhi. The student -- Mr Shrill has been posted by his government to Delhi. He's with the embassy. And he's had to pick up Hindi. My father, I can see, is endlessly tickled by this.

This morning, as I was heading out of the house to go hang with Princess, my best girl friend here from Bombay - plan was to have lunch, buy shoes and 'be loose' -- my mother was picking up her car keys. I asked which direction she was headed in. I wanted a ride to the metro station. I wanted to not drive at all for reasons of fractured finances. She was going to buy kathal - jackfruit, for the crazy vitamins who, surprise! surprise!, besides a friend of my father (who I love and have mentioned before), were coming to dinner. And since we wouldn't serve dog, jackfruit would be a good substitute, a nice poor man's meat. I hope you're home for dinner, mommy says to me. Yea yea, I say. When we get off the lift, an old couple is resting near the stairs with their family. I don't understand why my mother is saying, what's the occasion? And then I see the orange garlands of marigold around their neck. They've just had a small puja for the coupe's 70th wedding anniversary. My mother gushes, offers multiple congratulations and says, may we all get there. This sticks with me.

I get dropped off. I see Bhawna plant nursery. I cross the road. I walk to the Sikanderpur metro station. I get on the train. I get off at a station midway. I read my book at the platform. I wait for Princess. Princess apologises for being late even though she is only slightly late and ever apologetic for keeping me waiting. She looks so pretty in her hibiscus-red top. We go on to the malls, hang. She buys shoes and treats me to lunch - thin crust chicken pizza and rosemary potatoes at that Spaghetti Kitchen place. We do our thing. We talk about the world and it's aunt. She gives me a phrase that I love and so I adopt -- for hapless Delhi girls with jarring diction in straight fits and long hair and identical over the top clothes: "the untolds". They're overdressed because they weren't told where they were going. The joke of the untolds. We stretch it to us, tinker with context, double over and, it's possible, become one of them. The story of the untolds. Bwahaha.

I get back home in good time. My mother's yelling for me to take out the nice ice cream glasses, asking if I want to do the desert, which is essentially a poorly-disguised order. Doing the desert means swirling hersheys chocolate on the inside of the nice glasses, balling vanilla icecream, 2 scoops each, into them and bunging them into the freezer. She yells for me from the kitchen, SHALL I PUT A BISCUIT THING INTO THEM? I yell back, NO, SPRINKLE SOME COFFEE OR BOURNVITA OR SOMETHING OVER. Ooh, she says.

Ooh it is.

The doorbell rings. The chinks are here. I had asked my father when he was assembling the liquor bottles and asking me if i'll have wine later if his former student is an ass. And my father said na na, he's a sweet chap, speaks fluent Hindi. And so I'm not surprised when he, Mr Shrill says 'namaste' to me and asks how I am and says that I am a sundar mahila -- a pretty woman, and I say shukriya. I thank him. But I am, by then, I think, in total low tolerance fashion, a little irritated at being reduced to a local who can speak the tongue. Stop practising your Hindi on me. Enough people can speak it. I will NOT smile or act impressed. But I play along. He's a guest. A 'sweet chap'. I play along to him asking me aapka bhai kaisa hai, and I reply in Hindi, my brother is fine. He asks me woh kahaan hai, and I tell him where he is. I know he's never heard of the place and now I've reached my that's-it moment and I refuse to give him geographical co ordinates of mera bhai kahan hai. Fuck that. But then I hear him laugh and it tickles me. It's a slow motion laugh. A little like that of a diminutive friend, a once-boss who would go: hA-hA-hA. Three times. This one goes huuh--huuh--huuh. It's a lazy laugh. But the tempos overlap. I cave. I smile. I go so far as to very, very mildly take his trip. And now HE plays along.

Ni-ice. I can do this. Huuh-huuh-huuh. I am the coyote. You're the mutley. Huuh-huuh-huuh. I'm cracking up now. My mother's got a cloud over her head with three dots in it and a wtf.

Meanwhile my father's friend, his visiting-for-only-a-short-while friend rings the door bell. I love this friend of my fathers. He's super entertaining, too. And smart. And nice. And just so affectioante! I love him so much that I repeat that fact and treat him almost with the same irreverence I gift my father. I open the door and mock-snarl a why are you ringing the bell, can't you walk straight in? And he kisses my cheek and gives me a hug and says he didn't expect me home. I love that a couple of weeks ago, when he came over -- he came over the day he landed, in fact -- he said something about how he doesn't care what whisky he drinks for he hasn't forgotten his roots and what they started with. And I want to hug him. I see so much alcohol snobbery that this attitude warms my insides like no malt could.

I take in the evening. The smatterings of Hindi, the heavy smoked voices, the huuh-huuh-huuhs, the tennis tittering, the anecdotes of suspicious governments, our culture and your culture -- not a word about healthy dogs. I see Shrill loving the chanas - the chickpeas. Shrill and my mother discuss how the treadmills fucks up your knees. They don't say fucks up - 'bad for'. Shrill can speak some amount of Hindi too. I'm amused at many levels. At the criss cross dialogues. At the chanas-the chikpeas being loved, at the embassy offcial airing his opinion of certain Paki generals. At my father correcting a misconception that culturally Pakistan and India are the same. And the example he states is that he met a guy from across the border who told my father, why my daughter got married so late, she was 21! And my father grins. He collects in his own way samples of people's minds. I asked him, my father ie, whether he dropped the bomb of his own, gasp, unmarried daughter, and he smiled a smile that implied a, darling child, have i ever made you a guinea pig? and I smiled a smile, an all encompassing, yea yea, you're the best.

It was a funny evening. The global in the local. The chanas, the chinks and the huuh huuh huuhs. And the feeling I had was, that the only person who would have enjoyed this more than me was my brother. And as I was thinking that, all esp elves kick into action and my phone rings. It's on vibrate. But it's still he, the sibling, who four drinks down -- myI guessed, he laughed -- has called to "remininise" about this one time and that other time and how he's begun to see himself as a philosopher. I laugh and he feels hurt that I laugh. But I tell him no no, please don't be and HEY! I just saw a shooting star! He says, right now?? Andhell, yes, right now, outside the window! And we both feel pleased. And I I tell him, as if to make up for my cruel laugh, how I am -- mostly. And I try to be not a smart ass about it. And he tells me to not go about chucking jobs for the heck of it. And to send him my last week's Wellington pictures. And how some regimental old timer came to visit him in his room and saw a picture he's framed big on his wall, of him and I, my brother and me, as kids; and old timer apparently said sweet things about it. And me. That makes me smile.

I remember the picture. It's taken, again, in Wellington. My hair is in a fountain. I'm wearing a white frock and smiling the widest smile a kid in a white frock with a fountain could smile. My brother looks like an idiot. He's dopey with two missing front teeth and I have my arm around him. As in chunks of our shared narrative, our childhood, in that photo, too, I am in control. And he knows it. The younger one as the older one. My sister, the bullshitter. It's good to revisit the details of a photograph I know so well in my mind and go over them across a phone call. Yea, yea, I know the one you're talking about. At my description of it, at my exact show-offish see-see! I remember! boast, he laughs. Aware though as I am of how ridiculous an achievement it is, I feel proud as I always have, that I can make my brother laugh. Heeyaa-Heeeyaa-Hyeeeah. Idiot. Heh.

The chinks leave. I say bye like a good child. Polite. Not at all sarcastic. I left that side of me behind and I think I employ it now only on the rare occasion.

When my parents go out to see off the chinks, I tell Pushy uncle, you know they wanted to eat our dogs. And he laughs. And tells me, don't be silly. I say, I'm serious. I use the vitamin line. We both laugh, hhehhaha--hhehhaha--hhehhaha.

And an hour later, when Pushy Uncle gets up to leave, I feel a twinge. I keep thinking I won't see him again. Are you going to visit me in Seattle, he asks me in his loud booming whisky smoke voice. And I begin to say.. mm. My mother to the seeming rescue. "Inshallah", she says. And Pushy uncle winces and tells my mother, ugh, I hate it when people say that. Screw the arabs, he says. He doesn't understand what allah has to do with..a. a meeting at 10.30 a.m on a Monday morning.

Ok, I say. No inshallah. So then, maybe?

And so it is they all pack up and I 'repair' to my room, swatting mosquitos, hopping from one youtube melody to the next, sipping water, cleaning my face, correcting my sighs and hoping this week is better. Not that you could tell from a ramble that weighed a kilo, could you? Huuuh-huuuh-huuuh.

The picture of tender greys

2012-04-10T18:20:00.001+05:30

Eighteen photos.

I counted.

I took eighteen photos of this couple that to me was the textbook definition of tender. I felt a little slimy invading on their privacy, pretending to be clicking other people, but really watching their every twitch as they went about being literal and laid back in the lawns, soaking in the music, eliciting from me multiple layers of awe, respect and envy. But I pardoned myself for being slimy; I know how badly I wanted to click them. Her. Especially her, as she absently but normally stoked her husband(?)'s hair. It seemed like so not a big deal. And of course it wasn't a BIG deal.. except... wasn't it? I don't even think the blood thinners in my stream dictated my feeling warm at the sight. Or the nip in the air. Or the utter gorgeousness of the venue. All of that was making me drift, yes, but that wasn't all it was.

Maybe I was being something of a.. a -- you know, like how when city people go to hill stations and obsessively take touristy shots of just about every beautiful anomaly that is mostly an anomaly because you're so starved for it in the plains? (Which, by the way, is a description of me and my having taken 1300 photos taken on my last week's trip down south, to the Nilgiris with the girls.)

Maybe I was being sort of like that about this lovely looking tender couple. A .. 'relationship tourist' starved in the plains. Aspiring watcher from the side lines, filled not so much with envy as with hope.

They really were something. I wanted to talk to her. Again, her. Him, I didn't have an opinion of. But I liked how in my eyes he seemed so normal and accustomed to this amount of absent affection. I was keenly aware how if they were younger, I wouldn't have been half interested. They're plenty of those, even in the plains.

It's the oldies. I'm always extremely indignant when I see a middle-aged couple walking side by side and there's so much distance between their bodies, fingers trained to avoid rather than brush against. I'm especially hurt when the man walks ahead.

It must be a comment on how I view relationships; that it's one thing to go aww and sneak a picture (or eighteen) of what to me is a still-in-love couple and admire how tastefully evident it is, derive from two people hope, and allow my thoughts a free reign - I wish someday I am her. And yet, I'm sad that I view a tender relationship as an anomaly. If only the mountains visited the plains more often, I wouldn't be such a tourist.

There was this super elegant dancing woman who did some fantastic Bharratnatiyam moves to at least 4 bands. Pity some sleaze ball men won't let her be. (Actually, not men. He was a check-shirt wearing brat with braces. Boys get younger and more immature everyday, I tell you)

Sigh, and then there were these loud jumping jack types... ; fortunately or not -- and I wouldn't go so far as to call them friends -- but they're known entities, all these bouncing balls. We 'hung'.

(So you get an idea of the venue): My friend and I chug a bit of grape juice with some strange Rum. And salt? And lime? Few times over and then some. We did good.

Those were the days my friend/ We thought they'd never end/ We'd sing and dance/ Forever and a day/ La La La La La La La La La La La La...

2012-03-30T19:56:00.000+05:30


@verbatim illegible bumper sticker: LIFE IS TOO SHORT WHY YOU MAKE IT SHORTER

Finally.

I had made a big deal out of it in my head, of going back to a place -- my old workplace, my hotspot of sentiment, to extract from there my pound of flesh, my long overdue provident fund. I don't know why. Or maybe I do.

But finally!

I hadn't been back in a while. And god knows I miss it. I miss it so much I am guilty of exaggerating to myself how debilitating nostalgia can be, how helpless I am in the face of a collage of many years of joy, of comic angst, of bylines, of marble stair cases, of vomit that is canteen food, of wine in parking lots, of texting in conference rooms, of snickering in Monday meetings, of deadlines that are shot past, of lazy page-making, of typos in captions, of kick ass headlines, of shit copies, of editors who can't spell, of editors who can (and so much more), of printers called Beta Beta that run out of ink JUST when you have to sign the damn page off, and of working with people, fellow slaves, who long ago shook off the inadequate tag of colleague and took on in my life much fuller roles. In a task as quotidian as paperwork for PF, in that execution of that dull as hell transaction, I have to walk through those images, pass familiar corridors and revisit work stations and water dispensers hung around routinely, familiarly, easily, like it was home.

Really. Retrospect should be banned for the scab it can tug at. Never mind statutory warnings of smoke and injuries. The more damaging -- if that's the word I want -- is misplaced nostalgia. Too much reminscing ought to be against the law. And yet, when I read stuff so close to the bone, I find myself smiling at and hanging on to all references and memories my friend evokes. Sometimes we're such a bunch of weepies hanging on so desperately to a cocoon that in the past would fit so snug.

The breeze in the trees/ yeh hariyali aur yeh rasta

2012-03-29T17:20:00.003+05:30

Call it what you want: Palash, Dhak, Palah,
Flame of the Forest, Bastard Teak..

I take photos of trees more than I take photos of faces.

I'd take photos of birds, too, but I'm not quick enough and they're not used to standing still. And while I guess this would be true for birds WERE they to ever get in the habit of standing still, you don't have to, for one, ask a tree if it's ok to take his/her picture. By that logic, I ought to have plenty photos of food, too. And I do. But not more than of trees, glorious trees, a phone SD card full of trees -- of red tesus that have retired for the year, of papery bougainvilleas, of sexy pines, of not so sexy eucalyptus, even though the smell of eucalyptus catapults me instantly to a better place than were I'd be smelling it, of wild roses, of -- hell, you name it! This morning, I hovered over one yellow nettle and took a close up shot of, now I don't know the name, but those thick milky wild plants with purple flowers that would grow in cantonments, which if you were me at age 12, you would have on some evening "after playing", on your way home, have beheaded them with your badminton racket, and got purple milk on your gut.


Purple wild flower asking-to-be-beheaded

I have conversations with plants. I ascribe adjectives to them. I make them a person. And get the last word. Take orchids. An orchid could never be my friend, you know? An orchid could be a woman I admire from a distance for her body language and grace? I might even learn something from her about disguised clothing. But friend? Naah.

Calendulas could be my friends - they smile and are uncomplicated and hardy. Bougainvilleas could be my friends -- they're not clingy, they adjust to any environment and really, they look their best. Also, they're always kind of there for you. Oh, come on. You can't not risk being cheesy when what you're doing is blogging about making a plant a person.

Dahlias.

I don't like them. I've always found them unnatural. Ostentatious. When my friend B and I would walk in to college from the front gate and we'd see these carefully tended dahlias staring at us from the lawns, I'd be put off. Never mind appreciating how well balanced that plant is: thin stem, no shoulders, buxom head. I just don't like them. She, from being amused early on, grew to ignore my lame ass laments. Till one day I announced: I have made my peace with dahlias. She looked a bit concerned. But in college sometimes sarcasm takes on all these deceptive colours. But really, I had. Made my peace, that is. I still don't love them. But they don't bother me. Don't you know people like that?

A friend once made me a painting of flowers in a vase. He asked me what my favourite flower was. I said hydrangea. He said hain??

And then, now that I think back, it was a hideous painting, but he did do a decent job of getting the, what're they called -- florets? -- yea, he got the florets right. The memory warms me. The painting may still need to be found.

This meandered. I just wanted to show you trees. And perhaps, not too subconsciously even, put a virtual icecube down the back of a friend who's had it with my obsession with -- what, more birds?? more trees?? No wait, this was her text: "hahhahahaha. can u stop looking at the kahuas? crows r all u talk about (in ur blogs too)."

As concession to you, my darling anti-nature laugh riot, NOT ONE kahua in my SD card, ok! But willyapleaselookathetreees! :))

Sometimes my phone camera impresses me. Sometimes these lovely withered banyans I look up to every morning impress me so much more.


So pretty! More Banyan, different day. (Lights in a line, notice?)

And while we're raising hats to people at large, I have a message for Picasso: I get your thing about art, Sir. and that it washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. I quite love you for feeling that way, even. But if you'll excuse my silly audacity, what about the breeze in the trees? From, like the rain in Spain? Does that not work, too? If you have yourself a very merry imagination, it is my contention that trees could trump art. And sometimes, wouldn't you too, rather look at sunflowers not as oil on canvas, but for real in fields?

I imagine you might look at me with a certain.. indulgence? benevolence?, but in case I pissed you off in your grave, I'm going to seal my hypothesis with a gentleman called Calvino. He said this pretty thing about how...

“You walk for days among trees and among stones. Rarely does the eye light on a thing, and then only when it has recognized that thing as the sign of another thing: a print in the sand indicates the tiger's passage; a marsh announces a vein of water; the hibiscus flower, the end of winter. All the rest is silent and interchangeable; trees and stones are only what they are.”

One missed call... And another. AND anotherrr!

2012-03-28T18:33:00.002+05:30

I feel I'm ducking bullets whizzing by my ear.

These damn delusional boys and their calls that I don't answer! And even then the thickness of their skulls prevents them from believing that a girl might not so much be busy as much too uninterested, so don't call, take a hint, please?! but no. They won't see. They won't admit. They won't give up. They will persist in their very bad phraseology and alarming, questionably references to "proverbial beers". There's no catching drifts. I'm resorting to a belief best reflected in a very clear gtalk line that was a friend's status some months ago: Boys are stupid.

And now that we officially don't care whether said boys read/ don't read, we can all go home. Or put the phone off. As the case may be.

Entertaining the douchebags. (Although I so much prefer the word namoonas).

2012-03-22T14:35:00.000+05:30

Got home later than anticipated -- blame the weather -- but still in time to spend the entire evening with pleb relatives of blogged about yesterday fame. They were all there, the extended junglis, taking up every inch of visible sofa -- except one cousin (younger brother of the cousin who got married), 4 days younger than me, eternally unruffled, immensely likable.

I walked in and everyone was looking at me, mistakenly sympathetic as if to say, poor thing, long day. Some even said it, as I one by one, made my way to them all. No feet touching. Some side hugs. Some clumsy handshakes, all unfelt gestures performed in split seconds before continuing to navigate tables and knees, zigzagging from the mami to the mama to the cousin to the next to the other mama then the OTHER mama, their wives, the kids, oof, and finally the daughter in law.

Yea, her.

My mother asked when they left, what do you think? And as much as I want(ed) to reserve judgement and not blurt out what could be a mistaken half-baked impression, I said truthfully: as expected, total cow.

Maybe my mother said poor thing to that. Maybe she threw it more at me, for my being incapable of making margin for certain gaps in plenty people. I don't know what exactly the gaps-in-people trait is called. But I've seen it before.

I used to have this classmate in the 11th standard, one insecure thing who I was quite fond of, and whose only goal in life was to be thin and loved by boys. She used to be pretty harmless or as the phrase still deployed, "sweet only", till I suppose I couldn't deal with -- again, I fail here -- I don't know what exact gap I couldn't deal with, I don't know what the specific off putting quality is, but how much can you discuss the shape of your eyebrows and your cool aunt who's bringing you ten pairs of jeans from London?? Anyway, for all my issues with her, her brother took the cake when he told me once, I'm not kidding, he BOASTED: "I don't read, I tear pages from books and wipe my ass with them".

Sure. This was a joke. Apparently. I hope. Or not hope, I don;t know. But what made it worse was his ha ha after he dropped this astoundingly uncultured bomb. Like he was proud to think this, like this was a COOL thing.

This distant sister in law of mine, for her body language, her cultivated-in-the-wrong-direction manner and some unsmart wannabe-glib remarks, reminded me of the book ass wiper. I sensed an overlap. And it was more tragic than funny. It wasn't funny at all, actually. How can the collapse of traits that make us human and endearing and lovable ever be funny? Maybe it was for their -- book ass and bridey -- their seemingly shared conviction that this behaviour, what they say, how they say it, in their shrugs and curt smiles, their absence of humility made them... cool? Incompetence, ignorance, vacuousness, vapidness -- all of it buttoned up and cloaked in confidence; it's like being in a car with someone new to Delhi, so with no idea of roads, and you're driving and he or she or whatever is telling you to come from Vasant Kunj and take a sure shot left at Andheria More to get to Gurgaon, you know? The audacity. Where do you get off being so cocky of you can't back the shit up?? And isn't the point of humanity to remain all the more uncocky ESPECIALLY if you can back the shit up? Why don't the fuckers understand the appeal in humility? Arrogance should be made into a chemical, bottled and poured over stubborn baby peepals that take root in cement and eat up concrete structures.

So anyway, I was very troubled by all this nonsense. But more than the daughter in law -- and we'll get back to her to illustrate what exactly about her put me off so -- I was troubled by one little boy. My cousin. NOT the groom, another cousin who is now a teenager who thinks he's a guitar-weilding samurai. So, not really a little boy. He's as tall as I am, with skin as bad as mine was, his voice breaking, his face crumpled in a frown. I guess he's dealing with normal body image issues. All that is fine. And I started with being nice. I asked him how school was, how his exams were, are the results out.. blah blah, I was playing good elder sister, and on a tip I got from quiet standing smiling unruffled cousin of first para, I asked Image Issue Boy if he was looking forward to his exchange programme and his month in Germany. And you know what he says, this impertinent leech? He says, "yea, obviously".

Yea, obviously.

I felt a snap in my head. And a very distinct evaporation of this good elder sister role.

I didn't react. He's sitting back in the comfiest sofa in the living room and playing with his some fancy phone that I would never make the mistake of commenting on because 'these kids' get a bit floaty in the head. But I felt angry at how he could say it. Stupid question, I guess, but you're not a dream conversationalist bringing out my inherent skill at badenage, you're just a twerp. And I know it can't always be the case that I look back at my childhood and say, I was never like this. Or my brother was never like this. I mean, we had our share of fucked up bad behaviour, and often we were incorrigble but it wasn't ever THIS.

And then something broke my heart. Image issue cousin boy didn't lean forward when a tray was brought to him by an elder, our cook, Bahadur. What made me angrier is that I didn't tick him off, wrongfully imagining it's not my place. All I did was, leap up, take the plate from Bahadur and swipe the kebabs away from right under kid's pimply face.

And there, my impression of him was formed. Bit harsh? Perhaps. You could argue that he's just a child. But it put a serious few black marks on the chart next to his name. On his way out, he rolled his 'r's. And I exposed his weakness. I thought this time it was my place to teach him a lesson and -- really, how pathetic is that -- but I was so sure nobody else would, that everyone else, his immediate family, his friends, hadn't corrected his oversights in this long, so why would they now start so why should I NOT take it upon myself blah blah -- and SO, I put on an accent. I mimicked him. Of course, I was the smiling devil, and ha ha, I could have just been joking, couldn't I have? Except I wasn't. I was being a bitch. I told him the 'yups' and the 'nopes' and the 'rrr's are so, like, passe -- do you know what that means? And nowhere is this thing (he earlier said) that i-don't-read-the-newspapers-because-its-such-an-effort going to fly, unless of course you're working toward making the whole ignorant ass thing your trademark. Obviously. I said that. Sick in the head as I sometimes think I am, this I felt good about. The boy needed to learn.

As for the the bride. Her. It's less easy to be righteous. But I refuse to call myself a prude for thinking the touch feely ness in front of a bunch of relatives is NOT okay. They sat all curled up, into each other, arms on thighs, other arm across shoulders. And I felt embarrassed for the four-five older relatives sitting there, somewhat sidelined. Be lovey-dovey with your pals, in front of a closer family weave, whatver, but to be so blatantly cooing for an unwilling, uncomfortable distant audience? Fine, call me a prude. I stand by my revulsion. It's hardly proper.

Finally, the nail-coffin thing though you should hear. On her way out, bridey tells me I must come over and look at the wedding photographs. I smile back tightly. I assure her I will. And then, out of nowehere, some book-talk happens. One of those uncomfortable relativescongratulates my father on his book, on finishing writing the thing, and my father gives him a copy and princess bridey says, oh you know, even my father's written a book and I told him to not put my name there even though I edited it because I will write my own book. Um, sure, I say, that's nice; what's the book about? And she says: "Euthanasia... if you know what that is" -- and without waiting to interpret my arched brow shaped to the letters F.U Bitch, she adds -- "it's mercy killing".

Mercy killing, mercy killing. I don't know. I'm having a really tough time deciding who deserves it more; "if you know what that is" bride woman or "yea obviously" pimple boy.

Leave it to family to spoil you for choice.

Language of boy and make believe martinis

2012-03-21T18:45:00.001+05:30

Some weeks ago, a boy I'm now kind of proud to have studied with, announced on Facebook that he was off to MIT to study linguistics. There were lots of ooh and aahs and all round pats on the back. He was the achiever among the pigeons, and no one was really surprised at this most becoming development. Like a good former classmate, I duly liked his status, and commented jokingly to get me Noam Chomsky's autograph. (What I would do with it, god lone knows. I didn't even really want it. It's just one of those rubbishy things I find myself saying all too often).

Anyway. So this MIT boy, this humble whiz and I exchanged a thread on FB. He was very kind. Said nice things about one okay-ish article I'd written and then this other thing that stayed with me. I'm not going to be megalo enough to go see exactly what he said, but if memory won't abandon my side, it was a casual, almost hidden tip/ suggestion - about how I should write from the heart more, and how he'd want to and would read about the things I wrote from the heart.

Of course, this is obvious and you're saying duh. But I thought it very sweet. It reminded me of what my -- how should I put this delicately -- my 'favourite ex', would tell me about the flaw in my writing, of its being invulnerable. Back then it was a revelation. I suddenly respected him for the truth in his observation. As if to say enough already with the swagger in the word play, get to the bone. And so this has stayed. Lots have people say this to me. They use different words. Have more 'courage'. Be open to 'experience'. Live more 'fully'. And if it's from a source I respect and find credible and who's writing and read and find readable, I absorb this.

But there was a gentleness in the suggestion - the heart thing -- that made me absorb it with no resistance. Today when I saw again, on FB that he had himself photographed with Chomsky, like a true yuppie affected by these photgraph ripples and his proximity to greatness, I was made more keen to bare the bone. This should be flattering for him, my former classmate, in case he ever reads. Nothing like bringing a little red on to the cheeks of an academic.

Last evening, we, us two drinkers and thinkers, we pretended vodka and whiskey were the martinis we craved on a Tuesday night. Not for the sake of the martini, or anything bright pink in conical glassware, but more to ape the life we read in passages of books that creep in to the favourites.

I want to remember what we spoke about. I don't know why. Maybe its pointless to take inventory. I don't need to bookmark an evening that ended with a blizzard of yellow neem leaves storming off their motherships; an errant one, like the Forrest Gump feather, even flitting into my car and sitting on the dashboard as I maniacally drove down the roundabout of central Delhi at night, do I?

It's okay to change form then, I guess. To, I don't know -

Honey locust peanuts
with lime and salt
brought by He
who knows our order
-- not much more
for a Tuesday to work

what helps are
shells of moomphalli
scattered across
a ceramic of chatter
moulded by watching
they who unknowingly offer
what in them
even they don't see

In the language of hands
and incomplete frowns
we dig past memories
of keen easy people,
to get to irksome truths
and collages of those
so inconveniently craved

in a manner of talk,
in the banter we sustain
is an awareness
we catch

remarks we add
sharp mines of details
and pits of thought
to explode and rise
like whiffs of clove
that belong to yesterday

-- amateur vomit. :)

Arrival of the wed

2012-03-21T16:14:00.001+05:30

If there is a skill my mother has -- even though she will resent the implied, hypothetical singularity of that one credit -- it is her ability to mix with the plebs. To win them over and to enjoy herself in the process. She can do this. She's an un self conscious winner of plebs. My father, me, my brother -- not so much. Of us remaining three, and by mere fluke of gender genetics, I come next -- in this winning over of plebs. If I want to I could. I can. But I'm sure as hell not un self conscious about it.

My one "jungli cousin" and his bride are coming over to dinner this evening. He's a second cousin with whom -- without meaning to come off as a repellent snob -- I believe, I have nothing in common. When we were little, my brother and I named them jungli cousins (the freshly married one, his brother and his first cousins -- all of whom were our second cousins) because that's what they were. "Heathens", we also called them. God knows where we picked that up from. Heathens, junglis, anything else that was more than marginally pejorative, was automatically them. Why? Oh because they broke my watch once.. and mumble mumble.. But anyway. Let's not hold 16-year old grudges against the newly wed JC. So, with age doing its bit to up the maturity etc, when we now meet, two maybe three times a year, I like to believe, there's some good-natured small talk that is neither strenuous nor totally jungli.

He got married last month, JC1. I attended. When I hug-congratulated him and asked how he was surviving, he made a crack about being the victim. His wife, I met too. I thought she didn't look young. I didn't care for her sari. But then I don't care for maroon. She, Mrs JC1, I felt, looked unenthralled by the fuss, the proceedings, the being a bride-ness of it all. As if marigold- no marigold made no difference. I could, of course, be entirely wrong, pissed off as I was then that the vodka was not behaving like vodka in my skull usually behaves.

Anyway, so today my mother has reminded to be home on time. It doesn't look nice (if I'm not). She told me this a week ago -- be home on time on the 21st. Plus it doesn't look nice. They're coming to dinner; my mother's cousin brother, his wife, their son and his wife. And newly wifed as she is, a present is to be given and she is to be fussed over. Poor thing, having to do all these rounds of bore family show-facing; automatically she extracts some empathy from my marrow, the depths of my smirky being.

I can't imagine ME doing all this. I'm not saying I dread it, or that I'd be bad at it. It might be fun. But I just can't imagine me bowing my head, touching feet, saying haan ji, nahin ji, three bags full ji. I never touch feet. It's just not something I've been brought up to do. Humare yahan nahin ladkiya nahin kartin -- girls don't touch feet in this hood. New sis in law bridey, I guess, might. It always amuses me when someone assumes my mother 'senior' enough, L'oreal hair dye or not, whose feet are to be lunged for. She fumbles with these blessings she's supposed to dole out. It's expected of her. Place hand on bridey's head and emit a genuine-ish murmur of the god bless kind. It's hugely entertaining for me. I guess in time, I might have to grow into the role of blessed fumbling murmurer, too. But till that happens, all I'm required to do is be home on time. It doesn't look nice.

Between a rock and a heart place

2012-03-13T17:30:00.002+05:30

Instead of working on my many, many.. fuck...many pending stories, I'm googling lithopytes and talking break-up songs. The connection is tenuous, and I'll get to the break-up songs for always trivia first.

Lithophytes are a type of plant that grows in or on rocks. Lithophytes feed off moss, nutrients in rain water, litter, and even their own dead tissue.

Examples of lithophytes include several Paphiopedilum orchids, the pitcher plant Nepenthes campanulata, and several Utricularia species.

I don't understand why updaters of wiki stubs don't speak english. What is a paphio-whatever orchid? Why call it that when, as google further tells you, it is also known as 'lady slipper orchid'. That much prettier a Cinderella evocation, don't you think? Than bloody Paphiopedilum/ Phragmipedium/ Cypripedium/ Selenipedium/ and Mexipedium hands down, even though I quite like 'mexipedium'. Reminds me vaguely of a post I remember vaguely posting.

Paphiopedilum orchid/ lady slipper orchid

Anyway. Narrative.

I was driving to work, with a folded magazine in my lunch basket at the feet of my co driver's seat. I had the magazine with me yesterday, too, but pfft, yesterday was troubled, so I didn't read it. Today, traffic let me. And so it is, that at the Ber Sarai stretch, I learn about lithophytes while reading this article about greening the impenetrable, unwieldy, arid, rocky area around Mehrangarh fort. Fascinating. I must have been honked at some three hundred times to get going, you stupid woman, for I wouldn't engage gears till I completed a sentence. Truly painful, these lady drivers who think the world owes them a second more to read some environmentalist type articles on the commute!

Reading when stationary safer than texting when not, I suppose. Lost as I was in something like this:

"In Marwari they call Prosopis juliflora ‘baavlia’ — the mad one. Probably because it’s crazy enough to seek out such inhospitable places, where it hunkers down and digs itself in. Baavlia seems to require no water or nutrients in the soil. It discourages everything else from growing by secreting toxic alkaloids in its root-zone. It is successful in an unlikely, maverick sort of way and fully deserves its Marwari epithet.

If you cut baavlia at ground level, it sprouts with redoubled vigour. Digging and pulling it out mechanically by its roots is difficult and expensive because of the nature of volcanic rock. Using chemicals to kill it is not feasible in a place where water runoff is collected and stored. What to do?

We received busloads of cockeyed advice. “Cut it less than an inch above ground and cover the stumps with green gobar.” Tried. Didn’t work. “Let goats nibble it — the stems will never resprout.” Goats don’t eat baavlia leaves. Too toxic. “Set fire to the plant on a full-moon night.” Didn’t even bother with that one. (Would you?)"

'Vilayti keekar'/ Prosopis juliflora/ ‘baavlia’

I told myself I won't buy a book this month. Flipkart is draining my non-existent savings. 'In a good way', she says softly. And I guess I'll stick to my word. But has to be said, this 'Journeys Through Rajasthan' sounds fascinating. Next month. I promise me. For the love of the tree.

"Reaching moisture deep in the soil by means of enormous, penetrative roots works well too, but you have to be a tree to be able to do this — and it’s not so easy being a tree in a rocky desert"

I get to office, magazine still folded, me still reading. I'm the first person in office. I tuck the folded mag under my arm. I put on the tea, the jasmine tea (into the coffee machine -- tea brews just as well in a coffee machine), and take out my phone to see if all well with the world. Gtalk remains open, whether or not I am invisible, and I see a friend's status -- somebody I used to know. I ping her. What, you're listening to Gotye?? How come, I love that song! It's a great break up song! She's only saying 'han' to everything I say. Turns out she's on from the phone, too.

'Dadduu', she calls me- this friend. For how frog-like I look when I wear my glasses. I call her dadduu, too. I don't know why. It's just funny to us. Dadduu and I went to college together. Same, English. She was a batch senior, wore army pants and had the biggest boobs. I went to her wedding. Happy bride. She remembers my sari -- how ridiculous, ankle-grazingly high I had draped it. Despite the mutual affection, we haven't been 'close-close'. Not even when we worked together. She was pissed when I resigned from my job last and didn't even tell her. We've gotten friendlier in the last couple of months. Call it buffoon bonding. In a different context and to my total amusement, once mildly hammered and outside a Shiv temple that she dragged three of us women to, she told me, "I couldn't decide whether you're the biggest bitch or a total sweetheart and I still don't know!"

Yesterday, she emailed me a link. Modern Love. I get it in my feed anyway, but isn't there a certain happiness in knowing someone thought of you and sent you something PERSONALLY? Subject? "Dadduuu". Hopeless smiles this fellow frog brings on. In turn I sent her the link to a song I know she hadn't heard and when i found out, I did this mock horror thing, this how could you have NOT have, o meri jaan o meri jaan? Not that it's a break up song or anything..

We've been meeting weekly for many months now, with our very good common friend. Invariably, we three, sometimes four, behave badly so well. We meet, get drunk, laugh a lot, discuss our sex lives, repeat cycle, latch on to one phrase for the evening, milk it dry, bring it up till we coin a new one. It's a great custom. On Thurday we're on again. Some new place.

And while all this is super fun, and makes great memories, it breaks my heart to see her be brave about the divorce. There are glimpses into her naturally battling heart, sure, and she is drained, yes. But there is a lovely fragility in her that she isn't ashamed of, that she doesn't blink away, that is a joy to see. I look up to this. I respect the show of levity, her earthiness and the willingness to exhibit her vulnerability. I love her for not taking the route so many can't help but take - of being morose and wistful and imagining her world is up the creek. Fuck that. Dadduu's being brave. And mad. And jovial. And often, just so bloody crass. It's a deadly, endearing, dumbfounding combination.

I like her husband very much. We have in the past, hung, and had our rounds of uncontrolled hysteria. I think he's a fun chap. But her reasons are her reasons and, well, all I was saying, mock sombre and everything: was to please not listen to bloody MLTR and the rest of the puppy gang, and instead give some respect to her ongoing godfather of break ups. I need her to listen to not-rubbish songs about heartbreak. I've already told her to go for Guru Dutt. Mohammad Rafi is anyway my favourite. Who else? Can you please tell me the saddest, most weep till you sleep songs you can think of? I promised a frog I'd compile a list. And I intend to present my charter of boo-hoo music on Thursday.

I want out.. (Part 2)

2012-03-06T21:50:00.001+05:30

So, one said I needed a hodka and two slaps. And maybe that one was right. Another said: comfort zone! comfort zone! get out of comfort zone! Followed, of course, by questions of the what is it that you REALLY like nature, where the answer can't be writing. Because even I know that's silly. Writing what? Okay, writing about people. Which people? Who people? People-like-me people? I don't know. Suggested solution: get out more, travel more, write about people UNLIKE you people. Yes.

Appreciated. Maybe I needed that, too. All this great advice from my level-headed everyday homies. Maybe I need to listen to them. Or just turn in early today. That'll stop me from acting all hormonal and whiny. Maybe I'll put everything out of my mind, heat a glass of horlicks milk and take refuge in the book I'm savouring, the one that has to be discussed with frothy friend over coffee this week, the one that I, of course had to -- in the interest of narcissism, curiosity and a vague literary pursuit -- lay my hands on, since two of my friends, read it and said I HAVE to read it since one of the main characters was not only JUST like me, but in fact, like, so TOTALLY me that, really, like, O.M.G.

“It was impossible to be friends with guys. Every guy she’d ever been friends with had ended up wanting something else, or had wanted something else from the beginning, and had been friends only under false pretenses.”

“She was petrified of becoming the half-alive person she’d been before.”

Yea. So. That's coming along nicely.

But back to my fleeting career choice woes, I appreciated even more, a gently-worded email. From a friend who points me towards certain gems of Vikram Seth and leads me to what Hemingway says (to Owen Wilson:)) about writing and passion and making love to a truly great woman. Really, what would I do without him, them, the nudgers and slappers, the counsellors, the listeners, the book-recommendors, the ego downsizers -- all of whom are pillars who don't buy my bullshit. Gratitude!

The email:

"Reporting is, like what my sister said, a blue collared job. Despite all the glamour, that's the hard truth. I get tired of it sometimes. I am in it because, I think, it gives me some creative satisfaction. (also it's an ego trip too) I don't know how long I will last. Journalism gives us a chance to boost or massage our egos, which is very important considering we are all egoists if we enjoy writing so much. Would you like to be making shitloads of money and be an obscure PR chick writing press releases? If you have an alternative in mind that will keep you happy, you should quit. You do want to be writing, isn't it? So to be practical, it's always good to be in journalism. It gives you an opportunity to practice your craft and also enhances the range of experiences, not always necessarily firsthand but nonetheless experiences. I think you have to find ways to break monotony, it's that simple. With your mental energy, it's easy to get fed up with doing one thing. I might be wrong but I would go with that right now. That's your strength. Just find ways not get into a rut. It should be easy for you."

Lovely, isn't it? I read this at least thrice. (-Thank you:)

And I feel assuaged. (Also, on my way home, I had a slab of apricot-raisin by myself that I don't feel guilty about because I'm back to yoga and it'll get sorted). Maybe I am overreacting. It's true though that sometimes the reporting can get tiresome. And at times I'd rather eat a vada or even entertain someone that says LOL, than report. And I HATE vadas maybe less than people who say LOL. And at times, it is possible, I undervalue the insight you get from talking to random people about random things - insight that sticks, creates trivia, memories, anecdotes, stories. Still, at times I hate it. I'm still keenly aware of how strange it sounds in my head when I tell people I'm a journalist. Less now, but it's there. And loving writing but treating reporting like a stepchild can create an imbalance that makes you doubt the choices you're living with. It is possible there's no turning back. Also that maybe I don't want to. There's a promise that this too shall pass. But I guess in the meantime I'm going to have to just work on it, and avoid having my tail caught in a rut trap.

P.S: Hodka = the fantasy drink that is horlicks + vodka

***

Edited to add what one of my favourites, The Unbearable Banishment, sent across:

so you want to be a writer?
by Charles Bukowski

if it doesn't come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don't do it. unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut, don't do it. if you have to sit for hours staring at your computer screen or hunched over your typewriter searching for words, don't do it. if you're doing it for money or fame, don't do it. if you're doing it because you want women in your bed, don't do it. if you have to sit there and rewrite it again and again, don't do it. if it's hard work just thinking about doing it, don't do it. if you're trying to write like somebody else, forget about it. if you have to wait for it to roar out of you, then wait patiently. if it never does roar out of you, do something else. if you first have to read it to your wife or your girlfriend or your boyfriend or your parents or to anybody at all, you're not ready. don't be like so many writers, don't be like so many thousands of people who call themselves writers, don't be dull and boring and pretentious, don't be consumed with self- love. the libraries of the world have yawned themselves to sleep over your kind. don't add to that. don't do it. unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket, unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, don't do it. unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don't do it. when it is truly time, and if you have been chosen, it will do it by itself and it will keep on doing it until you die or it dies in you. there is no other way. and there never was.
--

I want out..

2012-03-06T16:41:00.000+05:30

... of journalism.

It's one of those days. I have no idea what else I'd do though. If my job didn't involve writing, what would it involve? I think I might be a rag picker. But then I'd have to hang with other rag pickers. That's no fun. Or it could be. Must keep an open mind. I like hanging with the journos I hang with. But some of the ones I work with -- man, they're so driven, but so mediocre, it's scary. Me, I'm so 27 and so purposeless, it's scarier.

I can feel a crisis come on, hit as I am by a sense of 'frothy existentialism'. Heh. That's what a just-landed friend of mine and I have decided to dedicate our coffee conversations to, this week. Frothy existentialism.

Damn.

Don't you ever feel like what you're doing is the most pitiful thing in the world? Unrewarding, unsatisfying and boring. When it comes to reporting, I feel like that. I feel I'm made to be brilliant at something but who the hell knows what that something is. Essentially, I feel right now that what I'm doing, besides making a hash out of my life, is not really.. eeks, i hate saying this, but ..'making a difference'. To mine. Or anybody elses. It's kind of a selfish life, if you think about it. And the more you think about it the more competent you realise you are. But if you were that competent wouldn't a calling be making goo goo eyes at you and being all the way effortlessly beckoning?