Saving The Day

The nights are damp and cold and windy. A vague reminder of the hills. It rains and stops and rains again. I love it. Cold autumn weather. Sweatpants and flannel shirts and scarves weather. Soft blue quilt weather. Hot cocoa weather. Curl up in bed delving into stories or weaving new ones weather. Petrichor weather.

There was a light drizzle when I walked back from work yesterday. The road was wet and shiny, reflecting the old oak trees that lined it on either sides. I stepped into occasional, unavoidable puddles; and my bag bore the brunt of the slanting rain. But the wind that whooshed through the trees was so cold and magical, I didn’t want the walk to end and be cooped up in a dark, cramped hostel room. So I decided to head off towards the centre of the college campus, nearly four kilometres away. The evening light and overcast skies threw beautiful shadows on the grand buildings and brought out every shade of green in the foliage.  The impending rain was a thrill, waiting to see how far can I make it before it pours down.

The collage centre has landscaped gardens,  a temple, large green fields, numerous tiny eateries and a central library housed in a grand, opulent ochre building with brick red domed roof and balconies. Of course, I went to the library.

It was already past the hours to issue new books, but I liked to walk through the huge circular hall lined by tall, never-ending wooden shelves stacked with several thousand  books. And the narrow corridors that led off the hall into various sections of rare books and manuscripts, the linguistics section, the book stack housing novels old and new, the arts and sciences sections, research sections, and journals section. It was my own personal heaven. I stayed browsing books till the sun set and tall, yellow lamps were lit in the garden outside.

I took a rickshaw back to the hostel, the magical wind still howling around me. I missed something sorely then. Or maybe someone. But soon I was back in my warm room, munching  banana chips, sitting crosslegged on the bed and studying about paragangliomas while “Rocks On The Road” played on my phone. My room-mate came from back from (supposedly) “evening” shift at the hospital well beyond midnight and after an hour of giggles and conversation, she created our routine ‘ambience’ to bring about sleep, that is switch on the air cooler. Even when it is biting cold outside because we could no longer fall asleep without the pleasant hum of the air cooler.

In the morning,  she left for work at eight.  And I found myself unable to get out of bed. Head exploded with pain and fever burned every inch off my skin. I called up a friend who readily agreed to replace my duty at the department till I felt better. I spent a couple of hours gathering the strength to walk the few steps to the medicine cabinet!

The day was spent in my darkened room, buried under two blankets, sleeping fitfully and aching for home. I longed for company, someone to just sit by me for a few minutes. For reasons unknown to me, I dreamt of you. Got teary-eyed and went back to sleep.  It was only towards three in the evening that my fever broke.

The feeling of utter loneliness and crying continued. I wondered if it had anything to do with the pent up worry about my mother’s recent cancer scare. Or was it just hormones? Or maybe it was an embarrassing pining for lost love? I hadn’t ate anything since the past twenty hours.

Just then my phone rang to inform me that the books I had ordered online would be delivered in five minutes. I had no choice but to walk downstairs to collect them. Holding the neatly wrapped package of books in my hand brought about an instant change in my mood.  I suddenly craved food and went into the dining hall and quietly had a hot meal of rice and rajma.

Feeling strengthened, I returned to my room and set about cleaning it up and opening the door to the balcony to let in fresh air and some pale sunshine. Then with eager fingers I unwrapped the package to unravel the books.

Maus- Art Spiegelman (A graphic novel that is one of the most personal retelling of the Holocaust)

Mr Penumbra’s 24-hour bookstore-by Robin Sloan (The title is enough to intrigue me. Books about books and bookstores. Porn for me.)

Delta of Venus- Anais Nin (I have thoroughly enjoyed reading the sexual escapades of Henry Miller to even Khushwant Singh. But I had never read erotica written by a female author. This book would be a welcome start)

So in the bleak mess of damp weather,  high grade fever and loneliness,  the books and the stories that awaited therein managed to salvage my day, and reinstate my autumnal love. Books always save me.

Poem

You who never arrived 
in my arms,
Beloved, who were lost from the start, 
I don’t even know what songs 
would please you.
I have given up trying to recognize you in the surging wave of 
the next moment.
All the immense images in me — the far-off, deeply-felt landscape, cities, towers, and bridges,
and unsuspected turns in the path, 
and those powerful lands
that were once pulsing with the life of the gods– all rise within me
to mean you, who forever elude me. 

You, Beloved,
who are all the gardens I have ever gazed at, longing.
An open window in a country house– , and you almost stepped out, pensive, to meet me.
Streets that I chanced upon,– 
you had just walked down them and vanished. 
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors were still dizzy with your presence and, startled, gave back my too-sudden image.

Who knows? Perhaps the same 
bird echoed through both of us 
yesterday, separate, in the evening… 

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Sunday Thoughts

For quite some time now, I had been totally ignorant of my sligtly blurred view of the world. I considered as normal  the soft rounded edges of everyday objects, the pale hazy light that bathed my days, and the flickering letters on the television screen that involuntarily brought about a frown as I tried to read them. I had never been modest about my eyesight; boasted openly about the ability to withstand years and years of reading late into the night under inadequate lighting, and that too with eyes that weren’t fortified with the recommended dietary allowance of vitamin A (being a vegetarian who hates vegetables). My delusion shattered only a week ago while waiting at the airport when I could no longer read the flight schedules displayed merely a couple of metres away.  Instant panic. Outcome: Splurging on a pair of geeky glasses that appealed to the reader in me. And while at it, I decided to chop off my hair too. Weirdly liberating, no more distress over styling them and making sure they behave. Starting off autumn with a completely new look which disturbingly correlates with my childhood fascination for Winona Ryder!
……………………..
Home for a week. Back among my books. Insane conversations and convulsive laughter. Food I grew up eating. Familiar horizons. Cloudy skies. Long nights. Lazy afternoons where nothing much happens. The beauty of it. Midnight drives. Music. Sleep. Books. Sunrises. Cuddles. Getting used to the subtle changes that can occur in a span of three months. The small corner shop no longer sells the delicious homemade bamboo pickles. The baby next door is no longer adorable but a monster of a toddler who pees on my new sandals for fun. The joy of financial independence, the comfort of ticking off ‘save for a rainy day’ or similar sayings from the to do list. Falling in love with gutsy Canadian female authors who have mastered the difficult art of keeping a story short yet detailed; Munro, Mavis Gallant, Joyce C. Oates. Nightly escapes into Studio Ghibli landscapes. Erasing a decade long love, and trying to be nonchalant about it. ‘Happens all the time’. Songs and books about unrequited love reaffirm how common this malady this; unifying us, the moon-gazing insomniacs, the poetry-spewing loners. Reason and logic applauds my attempts to avoid love: old and new. And yet, wildly flattered against my better judgement by the quiet and undivided attention of a boy who strategically places himself at my frequent haunts and does nothing more than look up everytime I arrive with a gaze so tender and engaging that I can’t but momentarily forget my resolve not to meddle with the matters of the heart for a long time to come. Sigh, what can one do! *not suppressing a laugh here*
………………
The night before I was leaving for home, I greedingly (and hurriedly) borrowed a few dozen movies from my batchmate and loaded them on my laptop. Day 1 at home: Watched alone the Three Colours series movies. Day 2: Watched Malena with a friend. Gasped, fumed, cried, sighed. Day 3: My little cousin wanted to watch a fun, animation movie. I scrolled down the list of new movies and came upon one that said “Human Centipede” and immediately conjured up the image of lovely hand drawn cartoons depicting the story of maybe an arrogant prince cursed to be a centipede until he gathers a motley of oddball friends, fights a dragon, rescues a princess and transforms by the kiss of true love. The entire (potential) story flashed through my mind in a matter of seconds and I smirked inwardly at the lack of originality in choosing a movie title. I summoned my little cousin to sit beside me, opened a pack of tomato flavored chips and bursting with naivete and in full confidence of my infalliable judgement of movie titles, dear reader, I clicked on the movie link. Unspeakable horror! Something died in me that day, something that can only occur when you reach the pitch black bottom of the well of utter shame. Lessons learnt: 1. Never predict a movie’s content by its title. 2. I will continue to surprise myself by reaching new depths of embarrassment owing to my innate impulsiveness.
…………
Night after night after night, a fragment of you always drifts in; momentarily peaking an old urge, an old love; and then fades away into the nooks and crannies of locked up thoughts. Just a flicker of what never was.
……..
A cure for my Sunday evening blues: Read Dorothy Parker. Augment it with a Madonna song from the 80s. Pasta. Welcome interruption by a long telephone call by a friend who has seen up close the entire spectrum of things that I can mess up and yet stands by me,  merrily chatters on, fitting in an hour-long conversation topics as diverse as Modi at Madison, Huntington disease, boob sweat, farting co-workers, mutual funds investment, the pros and cons of wearing polka dots on a date, planning itinerary for a ‘someday’ trip to Paris, the joy of reading books about books, autospell horrors and if time permits, maybe that thing called love. Followed by some writing-a long overdue letter, a blog post, journal entry, a haiku maybe; the content becomes immaterial for a while, the joy is in writing itself, letting the words take shape on a clean, blank page and see where it leads you.
………………

Of Wishful Thinking and Inertia

One of those days. Cooped up in a darkened room.  Black oversized tshirt and grey track pants. Bloated. Sadistic uterus on a torture spree. Umpteen cups of ginger tea. Lying in bed, listening to chirping birds, losing track of time. Aching for home. A book comforts for a couple of hours. Work forgotten. Inertia worshipped.  Solitude. Sleep. Slowness. No thoughts. No plans. No to-do’ list to strike off. Everything awaits behind the bulging door of tomorrow.  But today I give up and crave quiet companionship more than my usual preference for solitude. I  want someone to make me another cup of ginger tea, hold me, listen to ‘wild heart‘ on my old ipod, and whisper stories throughout this long, blue, autumnal night. But then, its so difficult to realise simple wishes. Definitely, one of those days.

The Welcome Darkness

Memory is a tricky thing. For years and years, despite the subconscious awareness of certain truths, a simple hope persisted against all evidences that were out to mar it. If you love someone with every fibre of your being, surely a day would come when it would be understood, valued and reciprocated. Naive sentimentality, in retrospect.

Yesterday I heard the words I had always known and secretly dreaded, loud and clear. No roundabouts. No vague references. No sugar-coated assurances. The plain, simple truth. That love isn’t enough, sometimes. I thanked him. For his kindness in finally saying it out loud, canceling all the earlier vague replies and gestures, ripping of every shred of hope. I just turned off the light and slept off. Part of me never wanted to wake up and face the gaping hole that the lack of hope and his absence would cause. I woke up though, late, and on a wet pillow.

The overcast skies and heavy downpour echoed my mood. I skipped breakfast. And then lunch. I didn’t smile at my friends and colleagues. Formalin vapors in the histopathology room became the ready excuse for my reddened eyes. I missed home. A lot. My bed. My books.

I didn’t know why was I mourning something I’d always known. Maybe it’s just the death of hope. There’d never be any reading between the lines, no searching for subtle clues of love and caring. “No matter what I say or what I do, how many more decades I wait for…he would never love me”, I said it out loud. He would never love me. Yes. Fuck it. Why am I crying out a river for him then? As if on cue, part of my mind fell into absolute darkness. I can no longer recall having loved him. It was just that sudden. Just that complete.

The upside is the vast expanse of time before me that is no longer wasted in daydreaming, checking if he is online, writing to him, worrying and worrying some more. I decided to get some food into me. The unpalatable hostel food won’t do, and I ordered in my favorite dishes. An hour of delightful banter and racuous laughter with my friends followed. I read for pleasure last night. With a free mind. Love had crippled me. Amplified my negatives. Maybe I’m not cut out for love. Maybe it was the wrong person. The wrong time. Maybe I should just concentrate on creating my own happiness…books, hills, travel. The simple joys. Love should never again be the centre of my happiness. It is risky. And foolish.

Yes, memory is a tricky thing. The sudden darkness that fell over certain bits of it, has blunted the pain and makes it so much easier to go through the day. Essential coping mechanism. I’m meant to survive everything on my own. And maybe it’s a good thing.

Sunday

The door to the balcony is open. The wind orchestrates a pleasant and familiar harmony; coursing its way through the tall trees. The sun glistens a warm yellow on my stretched-out legs . A collection of short stories by Mavis Gallant lay on my lap, dog-eared at page 72 . My hair smells like green apple, a new shampoo. Memories are dug out from the archives and relished at leisure; haphazardly, recklessly; that shared look, that sigh, that day, that book, that song, that blue door, those lanterns dazzling the evening sky, those friends, that magic wind in the hair, those waves, that smile. A foamy brown moustache proudly adorns my upper lip, as I delay the pleasure of licking off the last drops of cold coffee. I find myself humming old songs of Kishore Kumar, the same songs that my father used to hum during the weekend drives, nearly two decades ago; and I remember listening to them, sleepily curled up on the backseat of the car. A warm, lazy cocoon envelops me today, this very moment. These rare moments of solitude pursuing absolutely nothing, but indulging in the slow life and the simple pleasures of the senses-a good book, some good food, a familiar scent, a warm touch, an old melody-is all I require to replenish my energy for the approaching week. What would life be without good, old Sundays?

Stormy Seas

Some nights things swoop in. Unexplained dread. Cold sweat. Insomnia. Restlessness. Panic. Loneliness. An army of fears. Veiled vulnerabilities. Teetering at the edge of this gaping dark hole of consciousness, arms flail helplessly towards an anchor of comfort, an anchor of the familiar. And it becomes the perfect hour to shatter delusions and realize that there is no anchor, and never will be. I sail my own stormy seas.
I am not brave. But I can endure. A decade ago if anyone had forewarned me of the hurdles that laid in store for me, I wouldn’t even have had the courage to get out of bed. I would have just remained motionless petrified of the calamities that would befall me.
It astounds me that I had been through it all-career setbacks, broken and bruised heart, grave illnesses or loss of loved ones, abuse, several medical emergencies, drifting apart from the people who mattered, really bad decisions, financial errors-and I had survived it, accepted responsibility for it, learned few lessons, misted the unpleasant memories, wiped the dust and blood off my fallen self and moved on. Moving on. The next step. That is all that matters.
I still get scared, so very scared of the problems at hand, and at the nadir of distress I just want someone else to live my life for me. Sometimes I miss a re-assuring grip on my hand and the words, “Don’t worry. I am here for you“. It would neither dismiss problems, nor drive away fears. Just be a source of steady comfort and encouragement. The lack of it disheartens, but never detains the journey.
The next step has to be taken, another day has to be lived, problems have to be solved, fears have to be faced. Expectations can often weaken and delude. Sail your own stormy seas.

The Missing Five Months

Amateur astronomy. Deneb. Antares. Polaris. Supernova. Daylight Comet-1910. Reading. Exploring.
Margaret Atwood. My Hero. ‘Life Before Man’. Bored, fractured hearts. Here, there, everywhere.
Malignant cells. 40X, 100X objective. Euphoria of diagnosis. Changing lives, timely or untimely.
Fluffy omelettes. Creature of habit. 7:30 am. Aroma, taste, solitude, thoughts. No conversations.
Navy blue zippered dress. 2011. Never worn. Muffin top. 2014. Hourglass. I see it now.
More unaccustomed earth. Giant leap to the opposite end of the country. Another leap soon.
Airports. A big brown bag. Coffee. Books. Goodbyes. Reunions. Constant motion. Move me.
Sleep. Sudden, unanticipated reprieve from work. Cloudy days. Naps. Dreams.
A particular man. Gone. Gaping void of a wasted decade. Now what?
Nephew. Two feet tornado. Foo Foo. Cuddles. Endearing attempts to bite off my cheek!
Highway. Aimless wandering. Unhurried. Finding self. Losing love. Ali, Hooda, Bhatt, Rahman.
Freedom. 2am bike rides. Stargazing. The boundless universe. Free, free, free.
Friends. Valued. Understood. Infinitely. For life.
Midnight rain. Raindrops chasing each other on my window. Don’t stop.
Writing. Words. Purpose. Passion. Syntax. Relearning.

Red Notebook

I have a red notebook, small, softbound, pages with round edges, that I write in whenever I find myself unable to penetrate the sudden fog of numbness that surround me at times. I have been writing in it. Purposeless, solitary words. Doodles. Scratched out names. The idea of a short story. Lists. Snatches of half-forgotten lyrics. Just to avoid dead ends. Just to board a proverbial train and leave. ‘Never look back’, I wrote and wrote. Misplaced priorities. Misplaced love. Misplaced trust. Misplaced dreams. Just the thought of putting everything in its right and deserving place in my life is exhausting. But pulsating with the hope that it is never too late.

Sweet November

It always seems full of possibilities to me, the month of November, and I eagerly await its advent every year. This time certain unforeseen circumstances and a heart bereft of hope has added a dreary tinge to my beloved month. So, I called on my inner list-maker and set forth to remind myself why I love November. 
There is this brisk wind that ushers in the indigo nights in November. Cue to rummage through the old trunk and find that large, blue sweater with sleeves that overshoot the hands. And the never-ending nights hold umpteen cozy scenarios for me: get under the covers and start a marathon reading session, go down memory lane and rescue fading memories with the combined efforts of family, coffee and conversations with friends at a dimly lit cafe with misty windows, linger on a simple meal of spaghetti with garlic sauce and top it off with some red wine, and go on long drives without any destination.
Nothing feels more alive than sinking into a cold, silken sheet of water. Here public swimming pools shut down towards mid-month, but those early morning swims in November-shivering, gasping for air with each dive, awakening every single pore in the skin-has its own charm. Like a cold shower on a cold morning and cursing loud as you get dressed with shivering hands. Quirky fun.

The bleak weather can sometimes mar the enthusiasm of even the most ardent celebrators of the month. I tackle it by exposing my senses to uplifting cues. Singing along really loud to the songs of Lighthouse Family usually does the trick for me. Or else it is an evening of heart-warming Persian cinema, kinky Spanish movies, melancholic Polish films, witty British movies, dramatic Indian cinema, feel good Studio Ghibli anime or the emotionally manipulative Hollywood romantic comedies.
The joy of running a finger against the spines of books in my shelf that encase stories, entire worlds, that are yet to be explored by me! Here is my somewhat ambitious reading list for November: Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey

Silent House by Orhan Pamuk
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
Toba Tek Singh and Other Stories by Saddat Hasan Manto
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

This echoes my exact thoughts throughout the entire year and I get an unexplained boost every November to rectify it. I want to do everything, try everything, risk everything. I want to banish ‘No‘ from the vocabulary for the entire month. The advent of my birthday in mid-November acts as a tangible reminder of the passing years and a ready reckoner of mortality, and catalyses the crazy impulse to try and cram a lifetime in this very month. And this utterly stupid instinct occurs every damn year.
Despite the mass commercialism of love with precocious-bodied Cupids and syrupy Hallmark cards in February, for me it will always be November that opens the doors of love. Is it some magic in the crisp air? Or is it the long nights that scream intimacy? An ordinary, hurried glance from the one you love can make you smile throughout the day. You roam around blue-nosed but with a twinkle in the eye. Midnight poets and stargazers are born. A happy anticipation hovers around every thought. Will he, does she, when we, maybe…
  Waking up to the stillness of the world bathed in the pale light of an early November morning brings forth an unparalleled joy. Spending a few moments in solitude absorbing this unhurried and quiet beauty can fade away the chaos in the mind and the sorrow in the heart, even if briefly.

The near naked trees clothed in dying autumn foliage, the flock of birds that traverse foreign skies to land on the shores of a lake and call it home for the winter, the fog that envelops everything in sight, the very sparseness of the landscape in November sets the foundation of a fresh start with the new year looming in the near horizon.
November? A steaming cup of coffee and a good book. Period.
And serendipitous moments like this.

Changes

 
Home. Sanctuary. A father whose cushiony belly serves as a pillow as we talk about everything under the sun; his rhythmic breathing a cocoon of comfort and assurance of protection from every harm. A mother whose quiet, shy smiles light up the days. A sister who is a tornado of joy and fun. A room full of books. Laughter resonating through every molecule of this home. Flowers blooming on the windowsill. Cozy nooks resplendent with warm sunshine. Memories, so many memories; the good overshadowing those of despair. And you, a happy secret full of possibilities, encased in my heart throughout the years.
Life changes in the ordinary instant.
Home. Threatened sanctuary. His face is gaunt and unfamiliar, and his belly is no longer my pillow; but when the thin limbs pull me into an embrace, my cocoon of comfort reappears. Her smiles are infrequent but just as warm and heartening. Her fun quotient has increased as she tries to fill up the gaping holes of fear and despair. The room is full of books I’ve been meaning to read, someday soon, maybe. It is his hacking cough that punctuates the stillness of the night air. The flowers have withered, winter blossoms weren’t planted this year. Cozy nooks are still resplendent with sunshine, but the days are shorter. Memories overflow, and I grab them hungrily. And you, no longer a secret, but a melancholic reality of severed hope.
The familiar and the loved still exists, yet everything has changed, tinged with a fear of losing it all. Why did it have to creep in? I try, I try so hard to overlook this constant fear and sink back into the comforting monotony of ordinary days where nothing ever happens. I work crazy hours. I escape into stories about unseen generations. I try not to dwell on the flatness of the landscape that surround me and miss the hills anymore. I’m home, yet it is like viewing my life through a misted window, blurred and reminiscent of carefree times. My love for you no longer bubbles with happy anticipation and unobtrusive joy, but with a need for quiet companionship as I can’t bear the thought of even you fading from my life someday. I live in a new place; new responsibilities and new goals cram my days. Weeding out the disposable and unnecessary, my life is sparse now, a handful of friends, family and the occasional exchanges with you. Life has changed in the ordinary instant. But in all its sparseness and fragility, oddly enough, I am content and happy. Is it changing perspective? Is it the only choice visible to me? Is it better resilience? Or have I just learned to let in the changes? Or is it your presence? I have no clue; but whatever it is, I wish it continues to see me through it all.

Sputnik Sweetheart

I read Haruki Murakami’s ‘Sputnik Sweetheart’ a couple of weeks ago and found it a surreal and captivating tale of longing. Sumire, the protagonist, has a shaggy mane, reads voraciously, writes until the wee hours of morning, and lives in a tiny apartment crammed with piles of books. She is also obsessively in love with a woman, Miu, who is seventeen years older than her. Miu, harbouring crushed ambitions and a loveless marriage, is equally fond of Sumire’s company but doesn’t desire her. And there is K, the narrator, who has been in love with Sumire for long years but her aloofness in matters of love and longing, had curbed all his initiatives to reach her. They talk though, they talk a lot. She likes the way he explains things to her and doesn’t hesitate to call him up at 3am from a darkened phone booth and talk for hours, with a cigarette dangling from her mouth. They read books together, he is the only one allowed to go through the first drafts of her novels that she had abandoned midway; and he listens to her with such an endearing attention that is reflective of how much he values her presence in his life. Books, chaotic minds full of innumerable questions, a latent ennui, repressed love and longing bind them together. And then a series of bizarre events lead to Sumire’s disappearance. Each character is sketched haphazardly, but it is the gaps in their stories, the details beyond the veil, that makes them intriguing. Loose ends abound and the disjointed narrative might put off a major section of readers, but I simply couldn’t put it down. Miu crosses their lives, but K and Sumire slowly discovers the unnamed, subtle, unhurried, and unquestionably devoted love, that they had searched for years in the wrong places, in each other. Or was it all just an illusion? This book is more of an acquired taste for the thin line between the surreal and the real, but I loved it.

A Particular Moment

There is this particular moment in my day. A little before dawn, with orange arteries spreading through a dark blue sky. There are few particular songs that I scroll down to on my phone playlist. Some old, some new. There is this particular attire that feels like second skin. An old, faded grey t-shirt and powder blue shorts. There is a particular nook I settle into. Sitting cross-legged on the wide parapet wall of the terrace. There is a motley group of particular companions. Birds on electric wires, a cow with magnificent horns lying on the side street, few early risers. There is this particular wind. Not a breeze, but a brisk wind, that feels pleasantly cool on bare skin and untames my hair.

And there is this particular person I think about.

The One That Escaped the ‘Drafts’ Folder

To You (yes, you),
 
I always feared that someday my little world will sprout wheels and flee when I am looking the other way. And exactly a month ago, I realized that there is nothing half so distressing in the world than having your worst fear come true. My father was diagnosed with cancer. The shock of it unsettled and scared me more than I could ever express to anyone. There was no time for sadness, anger, denial. Actions and decisions-prompt, deliberate-was the priority. The next 48 hours were the busiest I had ever been; running necessary medical investigations, researching probable hospitals for treatment, talking to oncologists, making travel arrangements, sorting out finances, applying for leave at work, haphazardly packing a slice of my life into a brown suitcase and backpack (completely unaware that I won’t be coming back for at least a year), and flying to Delhi. In an instant, an ordinary instant, the giant hand of fate scooped me up from my carefree, pampered existence and landed me with a thud with the entire responsibility of my family on me. No longer could I go on being taken care of, and banking on the security of having parents who will make everything alright. I had moments of indecisiveness and worry about whether I was making the right choices, but there wasn’t anyone I could share my anxiety with. I realized that the concern of relatives and friends will be restricted to well-meaning queries and minor tasks. Mostly, I am on my own. And will always be. This sky-rocketing of responsibility and worries about what the future held kept me up many nights, and I desperately wanted to talk to you; but that would have been preposterous and unduly imposing of me. So, I wrote you letters that never left the drafts folder. A week into the sudden upheaval in my life, my father’s treatment started and the next chaos followed.
I got a post-graduate seat in a town in Gujarat that is on the diametrically opposite corner of the country from my home. In the past, I would have been ecstatic at the opportunity to study in an institute renowned for its pathology curriculum and expertise. But torn between the desire to take care of my father and the allure of further studies in a good institute, the circumstances resembled a cruel joke. I decided to give up the seat and try again the next year, but my family and certain other people whose opinions I valued and respected repeatedly encouraged me to work out the dilemma by joining the college and monitor my father’s treatment details over phone, and if possible plan short trips to see him frequently. When I weighed my options, I realized that any further delay of a valuable academic year would have far-reaching implications on my career, finances, my plans to look after my family, and certain social obligations that come with being a female on the wrong side of her twenties. So, I had lengthy talks with my father’s doctors, taking re-assurances from them about the pace and quality of the treatment, booked travel tickets, packed my bags again and was off again after less than a week’s stay in Delhi.
The flight to Ahmedabad was frightfully early. The last thing I saw through the blur of my tears, as I entered the Terminal 3 airport, was my father and sister waving at me. I am a quick learner, and by then I had learnt not to dwell on the sickening pangs of sadness that welled up inside me at times. Soon, I was lost in the queues of fellow travelers. I sat next to an elderly NRI who watched me gingerly take a bite of the sandwich that we were served during the flight and piped up, “Don’t worry. In Gujarat, they serve only vegetarian food.” I was to realize soon enough that it in fact was an agonizing truth for even ones like me, who don’t eat meat but thrive on eggs and prawns and fish fried in mustard sauce. I reached Ahmedabad just as the sun flushed the early morning sky a mellow orange.
By then the jolly, old man had regaled me with anecdotes about his son’s perpetual confusion in amalgamating the suave yet detached lifestyle of the west and the slightly clingy yet familiar comfort of his Indian roots. His monologue didn’t cease even as we drove through Ahmedabad to the bus stand in the taxi we shared and left me with little time to soak in the sights and sounds on my first moments in Gujarat. I took a bus to Rajkot where I had some work at the university. The conversation around me was a vague, alien blur of ‘su’ and ‘che’ sounds. A lone well amidst a vast green field; languid stares of the cattle on the road; heavily wrinkled old women sitting in a huddle to soak up the sunshine; rows of giggling school girls with pig-tails, riding their bicycles were sights reminiscent of the ones I had encountered during my rural posting a year ago. Rajkot is an emerging city, with a splatter of high-rises, multiplexes, expensive cars; and yet homely and familiar to someone like me who has travelled from a similar town. By five in the evening, my work at the university was over and my shoulders drooped under the weight of the heavy backpack. But I slugged on to the nearest bus stand to catch a bus to the town that would be my home for the next few years. Having been chauffeured around town all throughout school and college, my experience of commuting on public transport is zilch apart from the occasional autorickshaw rides. As the next day was Raksha Bandhan (the enthusiasm of celebrating which is nearly comparable to Durga Puja in Assam), none of the private buses were available; and I found myself in a restless crowd of unfamiliar faces waiting for the one or two free seats in each of the public buses plying on the highway. On my left stood a hefty man with a bush for a moustache, and sitting dangerously close on my right was a cow with horns capable of tearing open a man into two neat halves without any effort. I wasn’t street-savvy enough to push my way through the crowd and hop onto any of the buses. I felt zillions of miles out of my comfort zone. I managed to get into a bus at last, paid the fare and waited for the conductor to miraculously produce my seat in the jam-packed bus. But he grinned at me, showing his paan-stained teeth, and said, “Uppa uppa”. After a few seconds of confused silence, I realized that I was supposed to hang onto the bus rail and stand all the way up to my destination, with the agonizing burden of the backpack that weighed more than all the rocks on earth (or so it seemed). I reached my destination just as it was bathed in the soft blue light of dusk. I took an auto to the nearest hotel and checked in. Having never stayed alone in a hotel, that too one with gaudy pink bed-sheets and eerily quiet at night, I was bit apprehensive and was overwhelmed about adding yet another experience to the ‘firsts’ in my life, all in the span of a day. My paranoia of the unknown made me push a heavy chair against the locked door of my hotel room. But after a refreshing shower and pushing some dinner down the gullet, sleep overpowered my fears; and as I woke up the next day and watched the bustling town through the window, my irrelevant fears dissipated.
The next couple of days were spent in a whirlwind of settling down in this new place- setting out early in the morning to college to compete the admission paperwork, orienting myself to the department and getting introduced to the seniors and the faculty, utilizing the hectic lunch hour to get a local phone connection and transfer bank accounts, getting scared by the tornado that is duty at the blood bank, shopping in the local bazaar, returning back to the hotel with arms laden with buckets and clothes clips, eating Gujarati thali or greasy ‘kadhai paneer’ dinners, updating myself on my father’s treatment, and drifting off into a dreamless sleep. I filled the hostel form for temporary accommodation and the warden directed me to the girl’s common room (a dormitory reserved for freshers). So, at seven in the morning of the next day, I checked out of the hotel and dragged my luggage into the first floor of the hostel I was supposed to stay for the next ten days. A boy answered it, sleepily rubbing remnants of sleep from his eyes with his knuckles and looking just as confused as I felt. Turned out that all the girls who were allotted the common room were either staying out of campus or shifted into rooms of senior residents. A frantic few phone calls later, I found a senior’s room to store my luggage and attend my classes meanwhile. The college was set up in 1955, five years before our college was built. The architecture is Gothic, with high ceilings and ragged stone walls and pigeons roosting in every possible corner you can name. The campus is huge and I still haven’t seen it all. The hospital, medical college, trauma centre, faculty quarters, the innumerable hostels, 24 hour canteens and library, wide grounds, tree-lined roads, archways; all in one campus, and not separated by a long road uphill like ours was. It is slightly shabby but nice. I like it.
The Pathology department is on the first floor of the medical college, and the long flight of stairs leading up to it has an old world charm. There are five sub-sections in it- Central Clinical Laboratory (CCL), Histopathology, Cytology, OPD and the (dreaded) Blood Bank. The intensity of duties of a pathology resident here is comparable to that of pediatrics or orthopedics residents back home, with 36 hour shifts at least once a week and 15-hour shifts on most days. My hope of it being a soft option (so that I could concentrate on writing) was brutally shattered in the first week itself. But being a creature of habit, I am used to resent things that I am secretly glad to have chosen. This academic course is one of them. The seniors were cordial and co-operative and a bunch of them went out of their way to make the hapless first year residents feel at home. I teamed up with two girls from Punjab and at midnight, after duty at the blood bank and a dinner of Marie biscuits, we shifted into a vacant room in the PG hostel for a couple of days, arranging a cot and mattress and light-bulb from seniors. We planned to live out of our suitcases till permanent quarters were allotted. Then we were in for the next shock. It was a co-ed hostel. First jolt, but we tried to mask our discomfort and awkwardness. The second jolt came at seven in the next morning when I came out of the shower cubicle to find a guy, wearing nothing but a towel and brushing his teeth on the sink in the same bathroom. As I relayed this news to my room-mates, it dawned on us why the hostel accommodation was free. It had common bathrooms, no maintenance, and lack of water in the washrooms at times of dire need. That was it. We vowed to find off-campus living quarters that very evening. And we did. Two days later, I shifted into a quaint little house, a half an hour walk away from college. There is a single room with an attached bath atop the wide terrace.
I love my room. It doesn’t contain a single piece of essential furniture. Clothes are in the suitcase, the mattress is on the floor, the groceries and toiletries are on two tiny plastic shelves, books are stacked in two high piles on the floor, clothes and bags hang on the wall hooks. The walls are bare, but thankfully the bathroom is spotlessly clean. Even with the negligible furnishings and bare possessions in my room, it feels like home every time I stride in tired late at night and flop down on my bed. Finally I am living alone; doing my own laundry, keeping stock of groceries, dusting and cleaning, and God forbid, even encountering my nemesis, cooking! I don’t own a gas stove, and am forced to experiment every dish on the electric cooker. I can eat only so much of North Indian food or Gujarati thalis at the college canteen or hostel mess on a regular basis. So, despite my non-existent cooking skills, I am experimenting, devouring and surviving on my own cooking. The joy of rice hitting my palate! I have a new found respect for the time-saving boons of the hot tiffincase; and most of all, my mother, whose cooking I miss terribly.
The day starts early for me. I wake up at four-thirty and study for an hour or two. Then I brew myself some coffee and walk out into the terrace and up the rusty stairs leading up to the roof; soaking in the warm aroma of the coffee, the sunrise, the slow awakening of the town, the numerous birds of all shapes and sizes silhouetted against the orange sky, the magic wind, thoughts of what the day will bring, thoughts of home and my family and thoughts of you. It is the favorite time of my day, a quiet space to wonder about the new life and reminiscence the one that I had left behind. I can’t write though; the delightful chaos in my mind and the urge to sort it out in words has deserted me. I don’t want to linger on anything, just live from moment to moment. The herd of cows gathering in a nearby field and mooing in unison works as my alarm clock and I wake up from my stupor of thoughts and memories, and get ready for the day ahead. Sometimes I forget to tiptoe down the stairs and run into the landlady and get trapped for a good half an hour as a reluctant audience to her religious sermons and neighborhood gossip. She is a good woman, but the sort who would be blissfully unaware if her audience fell like dominoes and dropped dead at her feet.
I pack my lunch bag, try to tame my unruly hair in the miniscule mirror hanging on the wall, get dressed in less than five minutes, and walk out of home sometime before eight. The auto fares are ridiculously low here, a pittance compared to the ones we have back home, but I prefer to walk to college in the morning. I pass by a sign called ‘Department of Lighthouses’ on my way. It makes me smile; I find the solitude of lighthouses and the waves crashing all around it very romantic. I eat buttered toast and gulp down a cup of Bournvita at the college canteen for breakfast. Sometimes I have a fluffy, melt-in-the mouth omelette, and it feels like an oasis of non-vegetarian heaven in the midst of people who don’t even eat onions and garlic. I am still clueless about where to buy fish. The morning passes by in the rush of OPD or blood bank. And then comes the much looked forward to lunch hour, which can vary from two hours to half an hour. I eat my lunch in the dining section of the common room, nap for twenty minutes (in the library!), and then revise notes etc. On the days when my duty gets over at six in the evening, I explore the surrounding area. I have discovered tiny shops in nooks and corners that are treasure troves of reasonably-priced commodities. The local bazaar is teeming with vibrancy and colour. I love the energy and earnestness of the people here. I like the way people welcome outsiders into their lives so warmly. Within a week, like Barney Stinson, I had a guy for every possible chore. The only difference is that here we address them as ‘bhai’. My phonebook is peppered with a string of ‘bhais’ that includes the property broker, my landlord, the bottled water delivery guy, the milkman, the washer-man, the grocery store shopkeeper, the auto driver, the Xerox shop guy etc. I took time getting used to addressing people as bhai or ben. It sounded funny in my mouth. But now I use them with a confident and familiar drawl. I am perpetually scared that I’ll slip into my Assamese ways and address senior female residents as ba (elder sister in Assamese, but grandmother in Gujarati!)
It’s a relatively safe place for women; I don’t feel anxious to travel alone after work in an auto at midnight. We even travel to the city outskirts to watch the late night movie shows in groups of three to four girls, and it doesn’t intimidate us. There are ice cream parlours, bakeries and patisseries in every block.  A big black dog with a lazy eye sits curled up o the first floor corridor of the hospital on most days. I have become friends with most of the residents from the other departments too. I haven’t found anyone from Assam though. But it is a good place to live, and I love it here.
Ten days after my arrival, my father’s chemotherapy started and he became severely nauseous and weak. I longed to be beside him. Talking over the phone with him, hearing my new friends exasperatedly but endearingly discuss their fathers, thinking of how carefree I was just a few days ago with no greater worries than a PG seat, all of these welled up embarrassing tears in my eyes. I had to visit him anyhow, even if for a day. A good friend booked my tickets and after fifteen long hours I was next to my father. He was coping well with the treatment but the radiotherapy induced mucositis in his throat caused excessive pain while swallowing food. He kept up his hour-long jogging routine six days a week. His stamina and determination to beat the disease astounds me. I spent four days with my family, and sooner than I had wanted it, I was back to work and my new life.
And here I am now, writing you this letter, that I know I will never send and you will never read. But I love writing these long letters, as in my mind you are always near and eagerly listening to my ramblings. I think of you at small pockets of time throughout the day. When I come back home each night, dead tired, I check if you are online. I won’t ever talk to you or cause you any unease, but it delights me that you are there, only a phone call away. It’s the modern equivalent of one taking comfort that the person he/she loves can see the same night sky and the same sliver of moon on it. It is a barely visible thread of connection and of naked, innocent hope; but a connection nonetheless. I will always hold onto it. It makes me forget my worries. Just the very fact that you are out there somewhere and that I love you is enough to sustain me through many a difficult day or mishaps.
I no longer wonder though if I ever cross your mind. It is laughable. And yet-yes, yet-in the middle of a busy day, you enter my thoughts and I get an inexplicable courage that eventually things will be alright. Why is it so is beyond me. The idea of you calms me down. And how I treasure it! My love for you is no longer restricted by hopes of reciprocation, it is just there…buoyant, carrying me away from everything that is wrong in my life for a precious few moments every day, and consuming me whole.
Love,
Me

Sometimes

Sometimes my life is a shabby imprint of the one I was so sure of attaining. Sometimes everything seems fragile, temporary. Sometimes I allow everyone to opine and decide my worth. Sometimes the only place I feel safe and content is tucked under the covers, at midnight, reading a book in the yellow glow of a book-lamp. Sometimes it takes supreme effort to say out loud even a single word when the right ears are missing. Sometimes I escape into nostalgia. Sometimes I fear that my little world will sprout wheels and leave when I am sleeping. Sometimes I sit and watch my life fall over the edge, calmly detached, as the shock and helplessness get blunted by the frequency. Sometimes I wait endlessly for something, anything, to happen. Sometimes I feel trapped. Sometimes an absence is achingly palpable. Sometimes I wish you will come and take me away. Sometimes I feel uninspired. Sometimes I feel lonely.

Here and There

I do not know how to open the fan
of this life and snap it shut tight.  I want

the knots to all lynch fast enough,
someone to kiss me hard enough, deep
enough, and for good.

-Rebecca Dunham
She asked, ‘You are in love, what does love look like?’ to which I replied, ‘Like everything I’ve ever lost come back to me.’
-Nayyirah Waheed
Nothing makes me happier and nothing makes me sadder than you.

-Nicole Krauss

(via A Poet Reflects)

The Way Love Should Be

(Here are a few reasons why I love the movie ‘Lootera‘ the way I do.)

1. An uncluttered, unhurried, calming, fragile, persistent, volatile and passionate love-the only way love should be.
2.  There are people who can fall in love only after quiet (and careful) appraisal of becoming qualities, years of getting to know the intricacies of the life of the desired one and adequate consideration of practical matters. I am not one of them. I tend to fall in love with someone I barely know, attracted not merely by physicality or any obvious charms, but acting on an alarmingly vague, overwhelming and irrepressible instinct. It’s neither love at first sight nor a fleeting attraction, but a faint inkling of a love that is sure to come. And I secretly indulge it.

In the movie, I could relate to it when she knows she is going to fall in love with him the moment she sets her eyes on him. It engulfs her in a delightful frenzy anticipating what is to come. At first she adopts covert glances and quiet contemplation, mortified that he might know; but soon fear is overpowered by desire and she continually tries to hold his gaze. On the wrong assumption that he paints, she pesters her father to convince him to teach her painting. His lack of artistic skills is soon revealed, and she offers to be his teacher, as later, she matter-of-factly reveals to her friend “because the class has to go on.Her shy, clumsy and painfully obvious (to him) attempts to connect with him, anyhow, because the restlessness that his absence brings about is unbearable, is endearing.
3. At a time when infinite possibilities enticed and love seemed so near, the dearest desire of her heart was to be snowbound in a cottage at the hills and write and write. “I want to write a lot of books”, she confides in him, radiant in the surety of its realization. The next year sees her snowbound in a dimly lit room in a cottage in the hills, surrounded by piles of books, a sheaf of papers on her desk, a pen in her hand, a glimpse of the near naked branches of an autumnal tree through the parted curtains, the same songs on the radio, and a fresh haul of unresolved, unexplored emotions that is always the prelude to writing a story.

Yet she is incapable of venturing beyond the first few lines, her growing despair echoing in the nib noisily scratching out sentences and the pile of crumpled paper at her feet. Something had died and she is unable to fathom it. The picture of her dearest wish, the one that she had so enthusiastically shared with him, was complete…yet what was the missing variable that incapacitated her writing? Was it hope? Was it love? Or were they but different names of what she had lost? Dreams are always interlaced with the implicit understanding that the joy of their fulfilment will include sharing it with the ones we love. The angst of loss is well-depicted.
4. That era. And the details that brings it alive on screen. The ritual of stretched-out evenings of conversations. The amorous glow of antique oil lamps. Intricate china patterns. Women who dressed up with infinite precision. Well-groomed men with sleek hair. Car rides. Poetry. Theatres. Art. Chivalry and charm. The entire household humming along to the song on the radio. Long, unhurried walks. The allure of the unsaid. Slowness. Subtlety.
5. Pampered and protected by an indulgent father who stroked her hair and told her stories that began with “once upon a time…”, her perceptions and understanding of the world were confined to that obtained from these stories and the books she read. She was undemanding and unspoilt, yet used to the complacency of easily fulfilled desires. Until he came along; unattainable, out of reach. His aloofness confused, disturbed and angered her. She simply failed to understand why he couldn’t love her immediately and just as intensely. She couldn’t bring herself to confess her love outright, and his continuous rebuffs to her every approach caused her uncontrolled agony and anger. He tells her, “Behtar hoga aap jaaiye” (You better leave)and she replies, “Behtar hoga aap mar jaaiyen” (You better die).
6. His control vs her impulsiveness. His realism vs her dreams. His prudence vs the transparency of her every feeling. His practicality vs her protected cocoon. Why then, why did they fall in love? But then…why not?
7. She sits in his room alone, trying on his hat and jacket, his unlit cigarette dangling from her lips. It reminded me of the passage from Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake where Ashima secretly slips her foot into the shoe of the man she would end up marrying. Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence is wholly centred around this theme of the quiet thrill of being close to mementoes of love.
8. The songs. Amit Trivedi brings in an effortless grace and old world charm to them. Sawaar Loon, Zinda and Manmarziyaan grows on you, sparking off nostalgia with delicate tunes and soulful lyrics.
badal rahi hai aaj zindagi ki chaal zara,
isi bahane kyon na main bhi dil ka haal zara… …sawaar loon
9. Longing. He declines her love (and she is unaware of his reasons), but as the hour of his departure from her life approaches, the fear of never seeing him makes her knock on his door and voice her fear with an earnestness that breaks the heart. She wordlessly asks him to love her. And he does, with a tenderness that breaks the heart again.
When he leaves her cottage, she remains in bed torn between her irrepressible love and abject hatred for him. He walks on for a while but finally succumbs to the longing to be with her and returns. When he walks into her room again, just when she had thought she would never see him again, her stare is a mixture of disbelief, contempt, anger, concealed love and secret relief. It’s so hard to say, ‘don’t go. stay‘ when self-esteem, ego, past anguish and fear of indifference creeps in and paralyses us. The core of so many unsaid wishes is the joy of an unexpected (yet constantly yearned for) return, of love knocking on your door.

10. There is this scene. He sits on a canopy bed, lost in a haze of overhanging net curtains. She sits on a chair, with her feet up on his bed, lost in writing a new story. In a gaze that creates a lump of joy in the chest, he observes her writing.
Are you writing a story?
Yes.
Is there a boy in it? 
Yes.
Is there a girl in it?
Yes.
Are they in love?
No.
Are they about to fall in love?
And he continues to whisper questions that she delights in answering. It is such a serene and palpable moment of tenderness. 
11. The subtle humour. The enactment of how Dev Anand fights ‘aise jhoolte hue’ and still manages to keep his perfectly coiffed hair intact, and the camaraderie the two friends share. The way she bullies the chauffeur to teach her how to drive. The upsurge and the quick downfall of the bravado of the caretaker at the cottage that involves an unloaded pistol. He finally reveals his name to her and they double over in laughter at the absurdity of it. She accuses him of harbouring lust and questions his intentions, and he takes one look at her dishevelled appearance, the dark shadows under her eyes, her sickly pallor, the unruly hair and replies with a straight face, “Haan, aajkal itni haseen jo lag rahi ho tum” (Obviously, you look so appealing these days). 

12. The compelling performances. Sonakshi shines and looks ethereal, and redeems herself as an actor of calibre. Ranveer exudes brilliance and works the silences well to give a subdued performance. And there is the rest of the superb cast. The indulgent father whose world revolves around his daughter. The funny friend and (literally) partner-in-crime. The brief but noteworthy cameo of Arif Zakaria. Adil Hussain enthralls, and the cop-and-robber chase makes for a captivating (sic) visual.
13. The timelessness of love overwhelmed me anew. The past brims with infinite loves-fulfilled or unrequited, doomed or persistent, told or untold, nuanced or awkward-but love all the same. The love that exists now will someday be lost in the myriad of the untold and bygone. A melancholic realization.
14. The awe-inspiring cinematography has a poetic quality about it and effortlessly bewitches us with the charms of an bygone era. The minimalistic treatment, cutting off the excesses and curbing the tendency to overplay the drama, is a welcome relief. And the thing I loved the most is that it is a Hindi movie which is not afraid of long silences and doesn’t feel the need to cram every scene with dialogues. It amplified and lingered the effect of the doomed love.
15. It’s in his gaze, the intensity of which develops the unnerving feeling that he is quietly unmasking her innermost desires. It’s in the way he loves her, flawed and hidden, yet true and persistent. It’s in his shy smiles. It’s in his effortless charm. It’s in the subdued and visibly unrestrained tenderness when he seeks redemption for the hurt he caused her. And lastly, it is in the quiet gestures of love and nurturing. It is in ‘the last leaf’.

Certain Joys

Certain things waft in a joy that is hard to contain in a moment and invariably explodes to invade and linger in a million more. Like cleaving through clear blue waters in the early light of a summer morning, surrendering to the silken touch and pleasant chill. It’s in the wildly beating heart that is quietly aware of the trajectory of a lover’s glance resting on the sheen of your shoulder and jumping back to your eyes, before resting on your mouth, and knowing that it is the prelude to a kiss, unplanned and unexpected, springing up on you with a delightful nervousness, and you are consumed with a love so profound it makes you dizzy and lingers infinitely in each recall, as you are sure to do it.
Like driving down a tree-lined road on an autumnal day, spellbound by the play of orange and grey. It’s in a tiny arm wrapped around your neck and another tiny hand gripping your nose as a baby leans in to plant a wet sloppy kiss on your cheek. It’s in stroking the papery skin on the hands of a grandmother and tracing the age spots as she tells you endless tales interspersed with adorable gummy smiles. It’s in sitting on the verandah of a place far away from home, rolling your toes up and down the spine of a big, brown and instantly familiar dog that lets you rub the back of its warm fuzzy ear as it watches the sun go down with you. Or in the reading a big book that leaves you exhausted, agitated, mollified, troubled, understood and speculative, all at once. It’s in the joy of finding the right words at the right moment. And when serendipity finds you.
It’s in reading a poem so good that you want to gobble it up and never let it go. It’s in cuddling up to a parent, unabashedly evoking your inner child, the one that loves the familiar hand running through your hair and remain cocooned in a safety and comfort rarely replicated ever again. Like the reading a letter from the one you love again and again, mouthing each word; and imagining him write your name in that intimate and slightly lopsided print. It’s also in the head thrown back in laughter as you sit down with an old friend to indulge in the joy of reminiscing, sitting on a terrace, and exchanging stories in the long blue twilights of summer.
Like walking up a narrow, winding road on wet, misty mornings to a picturesque home with ivy-lined stone walls and a blazing log fire, and remain nestled by a window where the clouds knock. It’s always in the hills, in the sound of water, at dawn, in the foamy waves, in the scintillating stars, and in the trees. It’s in staying awake to hear the rain splattering off the roof and window sill. It’s in getting soaked to the skin, and shivering and shivering, kicking puddles, and laughing and laughing. It’s in speed. And also in Sunday siestas. It’s in splurging on expensive lingerie and wearing them underneath an old t-shirt and a faded pair of denims on an ordinary day, just because it ushers in such a secret, solitary, risqué joy. And in wearing cherry red lip colour.
It’s in driving aimlessly, on impulsive journeys. It’s also in no longer mothballing the past and lugging around the deadwood; it’s in the anticipatory joy of opening new doors. It’s in the stories we tell each other in the dark, just the two of us, with our bare hearts and slowly entwining memories, letting each other into our secret worlds. It’s in the sanctity of trust. It’s in epiphanies and clear realizations. It’s in the responsibility of love, the urge to care for and protect; the knowledge and awareness of which thrives us. It’s in working endlessly to watch dreams materialize into something substantial.
It’s in the desire to share and live these simple joys with you; it’s in everything between us.

Torpor, Verses

Forced into a heat and humidity induced torpor, I had let the urge to write slip away in favour of quiet evenings of sitting cross-legged on a woven reed mat in my semi-darkened room, dressed in my favourite pair of red and grey checkered shorts and powder blue t-shirt, listening to the pleasant hum of the air-conditioner, sipping a tall glass of iced lemonade, and reading ‘Stories of Vladimir Nabokov‘ and ‘Zorba the Greek‘ in the faint yellow light of a book-lamp. This explains the brief, disjointed, stream of consciousness blog posts in the recent past. Content and length has been massacred by the brutal weather and accompanying ennui. So, I share few verses and a quote I came upon recently:
Had I told the sea
What I felt for you,
It would have left its shores,
Its shells,
Its fish,
And followed me
.
~
Nizar Qabbani
Strangest, and sad as a blind child, not to see
Ever you, never to hear you, endlessly
Neither you there, nor coming  … Heavy change!—
~ John Berryman
 
If you’re a bird, be an early early bird-
But if you’re a worm, sleep late.
 ~ Shel Silverstein

When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.
~ Mark Twain

today

the sound of water
the echoing happiness of a dream from last night being recollected in all its vivid details
Calvinian alternative story of genesis
licking off ice-cream dripping down the wrist
a clove-scented soap and a foggy shower
a dark room with a window that looked out onto a luscious golden afternoon
a conversation that warmed ‘the cockles of the heart’
just two syllables
the quiet thrill of a secret
a song about midnight

Simple Feelings, Simple Words

 

I knew what you needed: simple feelings, simple words.
Your silence was effortless and windless, like the silence of clouds or plants.
All silence is the recognition of a mystery.
There was much about you that seemed mysterious.
~ Sounds, Vladimir Nabokov

Liquid Confessions

 

1. I dream of being an advice columnist who prescribes books in response; as it would involve reading like a motherfucker (like Dear Sugar) late into the night, embarking on one literary odyssey after another, sourcing out the perfect sequence of words in poem or prose, the attempt of understanding which will be the answer that is sought. I am aware of the annoyance of imposing one’s literary preferences on another, but when I have just finished reading a book that stirs up a delightful chaotic inner storm, I expect the world to stop spinning for a while to acknowledge what the book has done to me. I get the urge to stop random strangers and tell them to rush home, get into their favourite pajamas, put their feet up, and start reading the book now. Not because I want to flaunt some obscure literary gem that I have dug out, but for basking together in the aftermath of reading a good book and knowing that it has evoked similar emotions, a wordless joy, with just the reader in me beaming at the reader in you, connected.

Yesterday I was witness to a dilemma that a close friend is facing that involved risks, ennui, second chances, unspoken obligations and a love of five long years, and it pained me to see her suffering but I couldn’t say anything that would miraculously solve her indecision without seeming like an unappetizing and uncalled for  discourse on the myriad complexities of love. And as I heard her speak, smudgy distant prints of words formed in my memory, from a time where I had experienced a similar indecision in a book. I nodded in understanding and empathy to everything she said, but the book that had answers for her continue to remain blurred. It came to me a few hours ago, when I was watching the rain through the grilled window, and felt an urge to just run and run, destination be damned, and I remembered that the protagonist in that novel once took off too, just ran and ran, which was later attributed to a combination of female hysteria and alcohol by her fiancee, and that it happened in Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Edible Woman‘. I want to tell my friend to read the book, maybe she would find some answers, maybe she won’t, or maybe it’s quite insensitive of me to slip a book every time I hear about troubles. Hmm.
2. The inexplicable urge to tell you things, the rushed and voluble conversations; the desire to know you, the whole of you, to unravel the unsaid; the delight of knowing random anecdotes about you, the (now defunct) overwhelming belief that you were different, that you understood, that you knew what I knew; the comfort of you lingering behind every waking thought and some sleeping ones too; and the fervent anticipation, of I know not what; the journeying down secret lanes of nostalgia, ones that you were never aware of, and remembering you, observing parallel lives; the unspeakable things I wanted to do to you, have you do to me, that came in sudden rushes and alarmed me, causing conflicting inner dialogues and a heightened colouring of my face; the realization that I wanted nothing more than a subtle connection, that even a mere exchange of words was enough to cause a disproportionate joy that saw me through long days, and that even in my loneliest moments I was afraid to desire anything more, lest you slip away; the entirely new surges of tenderness that swept over me every time I thought of you; and the hesitant and quiet yet stubborn hopes that I developed despite knowing fully well your perspective of me in which I could only be ordinary at the very best. #imiss #idonotmiss #imiss
3. Sometimes I feel scared. Like being stuck in the perpetual loop of horror of waking up late and missing the most important exam of my life in a world with no second chances.
4. Sometimes I fall in love with absolutely nothing.

T.H.White

“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.” 

“Perhaps we all give the best of our hearts uncritically–to those who hardly think about us in return.”  

“They had a year of joy, twelve months of the strange heaven which the salmon know on beds of river shingle, under the gin-clear water. For twenty-four years they were guilty, but this first year was the only one which seemed like happiness. Looking back on it, when they were old, they did not remember that in this year it had ever rained or frozen. The four seasons were coloured like the edge of a rose petal for them.”  

“He did not like the grown-ups who talked down to him, but the ones who went on talking in their usual way, leaving him to leap along in their wake, jumping at meanings, guessing, clutching at known words, and chuckling at complicated jokes as they suddenly dawned. He had the glee of the porpoise then, pouring and leaping through strange seas.”
“Education is experience, and the essence of experience is self-reliance.” 
“Unfortunately we have tried to establish Right by Might, and you just can’t do that” 

 ~T.H.White

Books: Reviews, Recommendations and Reading Lists

Last night I read Herman Koch’s novel ‘The Dinner‘. Waves of satire and mystery leads to a dark whirlpool; and it all occurs under the perfectly placid cover of harmonious domesticity, husbands who love their wives, wives who find their husbands charming even after two decades of marriage, children who never get into trouble at school and never did drugs, families with massive wealth, power and a clockwork happiness. The events unfold over a dinner at a ridiculously expensive restaurant where the manager points his little finger to painstakingly describe each little portion of food set amidst the vast emptiness of the plates. Two brothers, one of them famous, and their wives gets together to discuss and find a way to undo the damages their children had caused. Violence springs up as memories are fetched from the not too distant past, and the reader is forced to review and rearrange their perspectives frequently. How well can you know a person? How far can you go to protect the ones you love? How thin is the line between self-righteousness and the sinister, and how easily can one jump to and fro over it? Obvious violence and gore can disgust, yet it never reaches the proportion of those that are veiled and implied and wholly unexpected. And this novel in its cold and tangential handling of threats and veiled crimes is both disturbing and funny, and hence highly addictive.

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I had upped my reading pace recently and read twenty books in the past two months. I highly recommend the following:
a) ‘How to be a Womanby Caitlin Moran: A contemporary take on feminism, part-memoir and one of the most hilarious books I have read in quite some time. From menstruation to masturbation, muffin tops to jutting cheekbones, workplace politics to strip clubs, Scarlett Johansson’s breasts to Germaine Greer’s books, dealing with siblings to awesome gay friends, disastrous love affairs to stable marriages, pregnancy to abortions, weddings to remaining childless by choice, appallingly long labour to handling toddlers, the book deals with them all. It is sharp, witty, agitating and raises up the right questions.
b) ‘tiny, beautiful thingsby Cheryl Strayed: It is a compilation of the ‘Dear Sugar‘ advice columns and offers astoundingly empathic and deeply personal insights into love, everyday life, grief, unexpected setbacks, shaky friendships, self-doubts and more. Each letter of advice is a literary nugget.
c) ‘Bossypantsby Tina Fey: You see the trend here, don’t you? Strong, career-minded, family-oriented, hilarious and bad ass feminist authors. Fey is no different.
d) ‘Incognitoby David Eagleman: I wrote about it here.
e) ‘Anthology of Contemporary American Short Fictionselected by Joyce Carol Oates and Christopher R. Beha: You can find it here.
f) ‘Big Questions from Little Peopleby Gemma Elwin Harris: It has experts in various fields of physics, space exploration, philosophy, literature and many more answering the questions of children that includes the profound enquiries about love and what good comprises of, and even questions about farting cows! The questions are answered in all seriousness and to the best of the understanding of the children. The simplicity and fun trivia that the book provides makes it a delightful, easy read.
g) ‘The Dinnerby Herman Koch: scroll to the top of this post.
h) ‘Before She Met Meby Julian Barnes: This is a novella about a man’s insecurity and disproportionate jealousy about his second wife’s sexual past as a struggling actress in films of questionable taste, and how a seemingly harmless obsession of a perfectly ‘normal’ person can spiral out of control into dark and menacing consequences. It reminded me of ‘The Dinner‘ in its sinister subject yet irrepressible humour.
 And here are the books on my reading list for the coming month:

1. ‘The Conqueror of the Seas: The Story of Magellanby Stefan Zweig
2. ‘Driveby Daniel H. Pink
3. Collected Poems (1947-1997) by Allen Ginsberg
4. ‘Staying Onby Paul Scott
5. ‘Humboldt’s Giftby Saul Bellow

I would love to hear about your reading lists and book recommendations. Do share them in the comments section. Go read.

the sister ship of love

 
(In the poem “The Blue House“, Tomas Tranströmer brings forth the idea of a sister ship that follows the course one’s life could have taken but never did; it brims with unexplored opportunities, the places one might have travelled to, and the people one might have met, the diverse things one would have known and done then. The following words are based on that premise.)
The day you walked out to be lost in the multitude of unknown, no longer accessible, leaving behind a trail of quiet desperation and ‘what if”, I pulled you aboard the sister ship of my life.
And there we talked and talked. And we laughed and laughed. And we went places and we were home.
Here, you will look away if we ever meet; and the knowledge of this rushes in entirely new waves of sadness. So in the familiar darkness of my closed eyelids, at odd hours, I follow the journey of a lost love on this sister vessel. 2 am, when I lie awake to listen to the rain. 5:42 am, when my room glows orange in the early morning light. 2:18 pm, when I watch my reflection in the chrome of the elevator doors. 7:09 pm, when my feet are up on the couch. 11:05 pm, when I trudge along through the soporific challenge that is Proust.
There you wear black. I am always in my favourite blue and even allow my hair an admirable bounce. 11:05pm, we read Saki and chuckle; or you show me Bellatrix and Rigel in the night sky, but mostly we make up our own constellations. 7:09pm, with our feet up on the couch we tell each other the minute stories that crowd our day, and I no longer have to fight the urge to touch that adorable cowlick. There’s a word for it,you know, cafuné. 2:18pm, we study pillowy bottom lips. 5:42 am, we are in the mountains and the mist floats in through the open window. 2 am, you hear the rain with me.
And there we talk and talk. And we laugh and laugh. And we go places and we are home.

The Long Answer Is No

Q: Can I convince a person about whom I’m crazy to be crazy about me?
A: The short answer is no. The long answer is no. The sad but strong and true answer is no.There are so many things to be tortured about, sweet pea. So many torturous things in life. Don’t let a man who doesn’t love you to be one of them.
~ From the “Dear Sugar” column in ‘Tiny, Beautiful Things’ by Cheryl Strayed.

A Moment

eyes narrowed to watch vehicle lights become yellow and red orbs, hazy, lucent, and gliding on the wet, dark sheen of the street.

cocooned in the dimly lit car; the low hum of the engine punctuates the sound of the rain falling on the roof.

window fogs up, the urge to write a name on it is irresistible.

roll it down slightly, raindrops gleefully chase each other down onto the palm.

it comes down harder, thousands of tiny ripples dance in tandem on the street.

traffic becomes sluggish, time stands still.

brisk wind, pleasant shivers, huge silvery sheets of rain, this song on the car radio

a sudden and overwhelming longing…

…you, shy haptic exchanges, a moment.

Everyday Freedom: Vignettes

(This article was published in Fried Eye magazine on August, 2012.)
Freedom. Our ancestors fought for it. It is difficult to define in the humdrum of everyday life. It means different things to different people. It rescues some. It transforms others. We don’t value it enough. Sometimes we don’t perceive its absence. Or take for granted its presence. At times, we misuse it.

In my life, relatively short and thus lacking in experience, I had felt the sparks of freedom that has touched the lives of people I have known. These aren’t epiphanies or sudden bursts of life-altering moments. These are everyday stories of how people recognized the constraints that bound them, struggled for a way out and gradually let in a glorious trickle of freedom into their lives.



She was the one who started it on their first day together. She let him decide the evening movie, the dinner menu and even the songs they heard on the ride back home. He was glad to ease the burden of decision making off the woman in his life. They had a whirlwind romance, an elaborate wedding (he decided the venue, the guest list and the honeymoon destination; she decided the table centerpieces, the Mehendi artist and the honeymoon lingerie), and the dizzy highs of playing grown-ups and setting their own home and family. His family was very ‘liberal’, they let their new daughter-in-law keep her job and weren’t finicky about the hemlines of her dresses. She liked the role of a home-maker, smiling to herself every night as she laid out his dinner. He was so caring, always surprising her with gifts and vacations (that comfortably fit into his work schedule, not hers). She moved around the country with him, setting up new homes every time he got transferred. When she got a better job offer in another city, he calmly asked her why she bothered working so hard when he was earning enough for both of them. She shut up because the baby was due. His business trips increased. One parent should stay at home, and she did. The children grew up and no longer needed a mother, they needed ‘some space’. She took to writing. At the dinner table, her husband and children teased her about the Booker Prize winning novel that she was penning. She chuckled. Then she did the dishes. The caretaker can never afford to be tired. The children left the nest. The husband retired from his job. It was just him and her again, like old times. He suggested a tour of Europe. She declined; she was working on her book. He was surprised at her refusal, and then miffed. One night he read her manuscript while she slept. Her words-vibrant, agitated and alive-told him stories that populated her mind, thoughts he never knew existed in the woman he had been married to all these years. In the morning he told her she should write more. After lunch he helped her with the dishes; and later they went to watch a play instead of a movie. He learned that she preferred coffee but had quietly shared a cup of tea every morning with him all these years. He made sure she had a steaming cup of coffee on her desk as she wrote late into the night. They had conversations and not just about groceries and children and politics. She wonders how to describe her sudden lightness of being; rekindled love or freedom?

Five young sons, two precocious daughters, a home with mud floors and thatched roof, a rice field with erratic produce, two cows with drying udders and a school headmaster’s pension of fifty-six rupees; these were his life’s gatherings. In the evenings he stared at the clear and starry skies as he pondered about feeding his family of ten. Then the skies opened; floods washed away his home and his rice field. He avoided the expectant looks of his children. The provider had given up, defeated. Poverty was rife and so was hunger. It was a village where a single student passed the matriculation examination in a good year, the sons of farmers became farmers, and the sons of blacksmiths became blacksmiths. A vicious loop of poverty engulfed the whole village, and they resigned to their fates. The older two of the five sons saw the silver lining in the dark cloud that hovered over their lives. They studied;  in the evenings when they returned home after working in the fields, before taking the cows out to graze at dawn, and at the school they walked eight kilometers to reach every day. They kept going even on those nights when they had to sleep without food and the day their mother pawned her only pair of earrings to pay for their college admission fees. Their younger siblings followed their footsteps; education became as necessary as breathing to them. Years of struggle followed while trying to break into a society cushioned from the effects of poverty. A job came and with it the assurance of never having to go hungry again. A good house followed; then a car. The family dispersed, taking their roots in unknown soil, flourishing in their own territories. They escaped the destinies they were born with. Their next generation has a doctor, engineers, fashion designer, biotechnologists, MBAs. Education freed them.

Her life had chauffeurs and chaperones. Vacations had carefully planned itineraries.  She never travelled alone; her protective parents couldn’t pamper enough the miracle child born after seven long years of desperate wait.  She remembers the thrill she got when she got into a city bus with her friends, counting coins eagerly to pay the bus conductor, and holding on to the railings as the bus swerved through the city traffic. Her excitement amused her friends. They had always helped her cross busy roads. She panicked in a crowd, and cancelled movie plans if her friends were busy. In her mid-twenties now, she craved the freedom of movement, of getting around places, something that her peers took for granted. Last winter she had an exam in Delhi. Her father was worried; he would be tied up with work then. Who would accompany her now? She took a chance, of convincing her parents to let her go alone. She’s quite grown up now, in case they hadn’t noticed. They agreed after a while, and tearfully saw her off at the airport for the one week that she would be away! She fastened her seatbelt, and took a deep breath when the flight took off. She hailed a cab and reached the friend’s home where she would be staying. After the exam was over, she went exploring the city she had visited umpteen times earlier but never on her own. How different a place seems, baring a sea of possibilities when you have the time and freedom to explore it on your own! She ate street food, browsed for hours at book stores, shopped at flea markets, walked in a park, ate in quaint cafes in Khan Market, figured out the various metro routes; a week of doing little things without any restrictions. Each morning heralded new possibilities and independent decisions. At night, she went to bed, happy about a day well spent. She boarded the flight back home after a week. It was a noon flight, and the skies were clear. She noticed the sparkles of sunshine bouncing off her watch and dancing on the pages of the book on her lap. It delighted her, this glittering dance of sunshine. That’s how her heart had felt the past week. She still has restrictions at home, but they have loosened. She can eat in restaurants and go for movies alone, without feeling awkward. She gets around now, alone and free.

The Week

Book: Anthology of Contemporary American Short Fiction, selected by Joyce Carol Oates and Christopher R. Beha. Out of the forty-eight stories in the anthology, I have read 1-900 by Richard Bausch, Lavande by Ann Beattie, Off by Aimee Bender, The Love of My Life by T.C.Boyle, The Identity Club by Richard Burgin, Aurora by Junot Diaz, Reunion by Richard Ford, The Girl on The Plane by Mary Gaitskill, ‘Adina, Astrid, Chipewee, Jasmine‘ by Matthew Klam, Once in A Lifetime by Jhumpa Lahiri and Incarnations of Burned Children by David Foster Wallace. Each story is a revelation in how words can be stringed together in myriad ways to hurl the reader into a space rife with characters so well-sketched that it takes only a couple of pages before an involuntary familiarity is fostered. The plots vary from being elaborate and including multiple time leaps to ordinary encounters. What keeps the pages turning is the versatility of the content and style of these accomplished writers. Little nuggets of pure bliss.
Film: Often they are larger-than-life, crude and garish, but no one can deny how Hindi films have marked us with its invisible stamp of magnanimous dreams, instilled an inevitable sense of drama, bound us with shared memories of favourite moments from the screen, and made us unabashed (or closet) romantics. And yes, there is a song for every emotion and situation. I watched Bombay Talkies last weekend. I won’t judge how true the four stories were to the common theme because each one of them brought in a new wave of delight. Each one told a story in twenty-five minutes, and told it well.
Karan Johar‘s story is about the angst of a man who has veiled his sexuality under the institution of marriage, the longing of a woman to be desired by the man she married, the overwhelming attraction of a gay man towards the husband of a close friend; and the confused, tender, passionate and brief entanglement of these three lives that changes them forever. Till date the only poignant film that I had watched about two men in love, devoid of stereotypes and caricatures, is Brokeback Mountain. And now in this film even though the moments were fleeting, Randeep Hooda brings in a passion, sensuality, repressed desire and tenderness that is incomparable. Rani Mukherjee had never looked more beautiful and real. Dibakar Banerjee‘s story is run by the genius of two men, Banarjee himself and the lead actor, Nawazuddin’s flawless performance of a common man with big dreams that loses steam after the first few steps on the road to realize them. He craves glorious destinations without the ordeals of the journey, and wants it all without questioning his own potential and calibre. And he has a pet Emu (‘ooi-ma’ to his neighbours :P) named Anjali! Zoya Akhtar questions if our dreams and ambitions should be tailored to meet the approval of society and be within the rigid constraints of conventionality. A little boy is torn between his uncontrollable urge to be a dancer and gyrate like the on-screen ‘Sheila‘, and his father’s desire of seeing him ace the football games at school. When his father hits him for dressing up in his sister’s clothes and applying lipstick, self-realization dawns that certain dreams are best indulged in secrecy till the right time arrives. His relationship with his sister is quite adorable too. Anurag Kashyap‘s story is witty, hugely entertaining and yet sad in the very premise of how the masses deify their screen idols, putting lives on hold for a mere glimpse or word from them. The delight of watching this particular story was comparable to that of reading a short story by Saki.

Food: Given that my mother harbours the delusion that someday I would consider getting married to one of the potential suitors whose names get dropped not so subtly in her conversations with me, the few strands of prematurely grey hair on her head is partly attributed to her long standing worry that my (future) in-laws and husband would use my complete apathy towards cooking to judge her  parenting skills. Last weekend to appease her, I tuned into the Nigella Lawson show and diligently noted down few recipes. On Sunday morning, after a short struggle with the blender that involved the batter flying in all directions, I ended up baking a delicious chocolate cake…all on my own! And my mother’s frown lines were miraculously wiped off as she ate the first piece of the cake.
Everything else: I am relieved and somewhat surprised at the abrupt lightness of being brought on by the fading of a face into the darkest and deepest recesses of memory, because I wasn’t even aware how a quiet yearning had weighed me down for years. I watched a documentary on the quaint town of Omori in Japan.The Gulmohar tree outside my window is covered in blazing red blossoms. I no longer follow the IPL matches. I painted my nails coral pink. And the heart beats wildly in anticipation of a long awaited change.

A Timeless Song

Rediscovered a timeless song that captures the agony, the stubborn but simple hopes, and the yearnings of those in love. Song: Lag Ja Gale Ke Phir Singer: Lata Mangeshkar Movie: ‘Woh Kaun Thi’

लग जा गले के फिर ये, हँसी रात हो ना हो
शायद फिर इस जनम में, मुलाक़ात हो ना हो

हम को मिली हैं आज ये घडीयाँ नसीब से
जी भर के देख लीजिये, हम को करीब से
फिर आप के नसीब में, ये बात हो ना हो
शायद फिर इस जनम में, मुलाक़ात हो ना हो

पास आईये के हम नहीं आयेंगे बार बार
बाहे गले में डाल के, हम रो ले जार जार
आँखों से फिर ये, प्यार की बरसात हो ना हो
शायद फिर इस जनम में, मुलाक़ात हो ना हो

Smorgasbord:Harsh Realities, Secret Lives Of The Brain, A Vintage (Imaginary) Friend

Parents grow old and die. Seven years ago when a close friend lost her mother, I confronted this harsh reality for the first time. Suddenly the loss of a parent didn’t happen in distant homes but occurred in the life of a beloved friend, a contemporary. I talked about it with another friend, A, who shared my fear and incredulity and said, “I can’t even begin to imagine a life without my parents. Aami tu bhabiboi nuaru!” She echoed my deepest fear and spoke words that I didn’t even dare say out loud lest they came true. Last Monday when A was holding onto the last minutes of sleep at dawn and her mother was picking up laundry, her father began gasping for breath in the adjacent room. Within five minutes, their lives underwent a tumultuous and irreversible change. Without any preceding illness, his demise was a traumatic shock to the family he left behind. I couldn’t bring myself to call up or visit A till quite late in the day. Her previous words came back to me in a rush. The world that she just couldn’t imagine was here now and the reality of ageing parents gripped me with a new fear. Over the past decade, my parents had a few serious health scares and I had nearly lost my father four years ago to sepsis and multi-organ dysfunction. But with the grace of God and their own concern towards their fitness, they lead much healthier lives now. No one can change certain unfortunate realities of life, but everyone of us can spending quality time with our parents instead of being cooped up with our own little worries and busy lives, get regular health check-ups for them, oversee their diet and exercise, and let love and laughter resonate each day.
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I have been reading David Eagleman’s “Incognito: The Secret Lives Of The Brain” and despite being well aware of the physiology of that three pound of neural tissue that runs our entire lives, the book provided entirely new and deeper insights into the amazing machinery that is the brain. Imagination, emotions, decisions, intelligence, identity, aspirations, ideas, problem-solving, attention, vision, the entire human physiology and the vast world of the subconscious; everything comes alive in the book. It is a humbling and staggering realization that our conscious selves isn’t the centre of our existence, and is way off in a distant orbit. Most of what happens in our lives aren’t done by conscious effort or generated on their own, but is a modulation of innumerable stimuli, past information and experiences stored in the brain that it throws up to our conscious realization, and we go “hey, I just had this amazing idea“. Our flawless vision where nothing escapes our notice can surprise us with new revelations depending on what we tune our attention to. An engaging and unputdownable book.
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I found this old library photograph from the 60s on Flavorwire, and I just can’t get over how awesome and cool she looks. I now think of her as a Nabokov-reading vintage librarian who is also my imaginary best friend!

Boo!

Yesterday I made an impromptu decision to watch Iron Man 3 in the afternoon, but in accordance with my habitual lateness was greeted by a full house. I had to settle for a very predictable game of ‘spot-the-daayan (witch)’ while sitting in the front row with a bladder full of Coca-Cola and extending my neck uncomfortably to accommodate the entire screen in my field of vision. There were three things that caught my attention: (a) the dazzlingly beautiful Huma Qureshi draped in size 12 dresses layered with pretty jackets, and sporting meticulously messyhairdos (c) the awkward moment in the ‘hell‘ scene when a man standing behind the ‘daayan’ eerily resembled Narendra Modiin attire and looks (d) how for the umpteenth time in a horror movie a rational psychiatrist gets ruthlessly slaughtered by the very evil supernatural being that he refused to believe in.

It is this last plot stereotype in the horror genre that bothers and amuses me at the same time. I don’t believe in ghosts but at the same time don’t want to announce it out loud, just in case something pops up to prove me wrong. Maybe the childhood stories of ghosts, that my grandmother claimed populated her village in every shady nook and corner, got ingrained deeply in my psyche. The variety of the ghosts in her stories were astounding. There were ones that morphed into human form to steal and eat raw fish from boats of fishermen; a ten foot tall gentleman dressed in crisp white dhoti-kurta and giving Marfan’s Syndrome a complex while he roamed within the periphery of temples; a hairy, headless dwarf with bulging red eyes instead of nipples; haunted bamboos that lay innocently on the ground and flung high into air the people who leapt over them; cursed pots of ancient gold coins that brought ill luck and certain death to the person who accidentally dug them out in fields; a woman who wept and called out someone’s name right outside their window at midnight; ghost ants that sneaked under sandals and led astray a person into dense forests where they preyed on their unsuspecting victim. I could just go on and on about that tiny village in my grandmother’s stories where colourful ghosts and witches outnumbered human beings.
You can say I am a sceptic in accordance with societal expectations of rationality from a well-read person in her late twenties; yet there is a part of me that gets intrigued by the thought of the supernatural. This duality of my (lack of) belief led to a humorous situation when I worked as an intern at the psychiatry out-patient department and was assigned the responsibility of taking up elaborate histories of patients and present a provisional diagnosis to the professor.
Once I examined a highly agitated young man of twenty-three. He told me that a month ago, when he was out helping his father in the farm on a hot summer afternoon , he saw her for the first time. She was unusually tall with ankle-length hair, deathly pale and dressed in black. From that day onwards, she had followed him everywhere and even tiptoed around his bed every night. She sat on the roof watching him as he worked in the fields. No one believed him and all sorts of pujas and mantras conducted by his distraught family had failed to get rid of that evil presence! I listened rapturously to his monologue, as his mother sat beside him looking somewhat scared. There was no history of use of alcohol or psychoactive substances, no previous history of psychiatric illness, no family history of psychiatric disorders, no known physical illness, no obvious emotional triggers, no history of psychological trauma, and he even got along fine with his peers and did reasonably well in his studies.
Is something disturbing you right now?, I asked him as he kept shifting his gaze at something beyond me.
She’s here too, he mumbled.
Did she follow you here?
When I was travelling here on the overnight bus, she flew beside my window the entire way.
Where is she now?
She’s standing right behind you.
My clinical reasoning told me that his visual hallucinations and psychosis could spring up anything from schizophrenia to an underlying brain tumour on further evaluation; but for an absurd moment, I couldn’t help wonder if my fate would be akin to the disbelieving doctor that becomes the collateral damage in the rampage of an evil spirit!
Even though no one knows about what went on in my mind that day, I feel highly embarrassed every time I recall that incident! *sheepish*