A Ball of Wool

Some say there are no random events in the universe. It follows then that there are no random thoughts either. All thoughts have an origin, a place where they come from and a reason they are born. Now, I may not know why I have this gnat-of-a-thought buzzing over me like I’m its gnu, but it’s there. This thought. By talking about it I want to share its buzz. 

Let’s consider our Self as a ball of wool. Soft, bright and snugly wool. Over the years this ball of wool uncoils itself in all eight directions, and then eight more, and more, and so on. By uncoils I mean this self ‘lives’ life. It um ... gives, takes, talks, keeps silent, does, doesn’t do, learns, unlearns, writes, erases, wants, rejects, makes, breaks, grows, plucks, cooks, burns, works, shirks, smiles, keeps smiling, runs, sits still, opens up, closes in, uses mascara, rubs the lipstick, falls, gets up, makes friends, manages friends, switches on, or off, carries on, and on. 

Your Self as you knew it long back when you learnt what self means constantly becomes and unbecomes. But ‘unbecomes’ is no word so let’s just say our Self constantly becomes. It sounds more positive anyway! So when we do all those things (separated above with tiny commas) over our lifetimes our Self becomes. Some would say evolves and grows. Okay. Good. But then what is left of that ball of wool – the soft, bright and snugly wool we began with, after all the slow uncoiling and fast uncoiling and mediocre uncoiling happens and happens and maybe on a very cold, contemplative morning it begs to be noticed? What does it become, really? 

Tiny.

Perhaps the size of the zygote where it all begins. Perhaps tinier. 

Over the years, while the thread of wool spreads around forming a messy maze which may have its own method and past motivations, the ball of wool constantly spins to finally become minuscule at the end of the day. Somehow, without you noticing, you’ve made your Self out of sight! Or to obsess over the metaphor (winters!) uncoiled so much that you’ve forgotten what the ball of wool was about in the first place. It’s barely there now. No magnifying glass, no microscope will make you see what’s left of what was once so … different!

It is a terrifying thought, of this sense of vanishing Self, despite the knowledge that you remember close to nothing of what you once were or wanted to be. This thought shakes the chair you sit on, makes its legs jelly and you sink, heavy with gravitas. All you see are the endless loops and hoops of the thread all around you. So much of it that it doesn’t even seem to be yours! Did it really come from you? Is it you? Was it? Who is you?

Oh boy! I did that? Why would I say that? Oh no that was loony of me. Sheesh! Magenta? No. No. That idea could never have been mine. Are you sure? Positive? Really? It’s okay to not know. Wow, I didn’t know? But I never supported such differences. Oh. I did? Of course I believe in my opinions! I said yes! I said no? Ho! Organic food sucks! I hate that woman. I really hated that woman? Why? Oops! I got drunk? But that’s so not me! Seriously? Why would I close my door on their face? I made a face at her? You’ve got to be mistaken! No? Oh!   

Ahem. Phew. So much.

So on a certain day, the age and stage of which may strike you by surprise, you decide to start coiling the thread back into a ball. Give it some pattern, some semblance of order. Like a ‘this is me!’ moment where the said 'me' may be as unchanging as the sea, but still. Order order. You don’t have to be old and wise. You can be young and wiser and just start pulling back your threads - slowly, sneakily, sassily or sagely. Knit it back. Or just yank it into a hank like our grandmothers used to do using their knees, perhaps never otherwise sitting with their legs so apart but their hands as ever dexterous. I wonder now if by some Jungian connection they had originally thought of this "Self= ball of wool", much before I claim copyright to it some generations down. Would this metaphorical connect explain the passion with which they knit and undid sweaters and mittens and shrugs and shawls with their bony, wrinkled fingers? What were they thinking when they did that? What were their thoughts?  

Winding up our Self into a whole. 

Sounds oxymoronic! Could it mean anything, though? 

Well, you could be honest and straight more often than not. Forget politeness and remember to call a faded sweater a silly, raggedy, useless blot in the name of all sweaters of the world! Choices of yore which now seem compromises to the core can be picked and thrown away like lint on your old fleece. Give in that resignation! If your anxiety has been reduced to a ‘usual habit’ make sure you don’t invite the nitpickers when the next prickly party in the head-heart region strikes. If the tray of sweets was slipped away from right under your nose, don’t bother to serve that gajar ka halwa when your door bell rings next. If your heart says sleep you tell the imp to go fly a kite (but keep away from the boundary wall and wear your sneakers will you!) and you sleep. If they read you to shred you, you make sure you make mental noodles of their books! If they think you talk too much stop talking to them entirely. If they mock those you love then rip open the new set of knives. If someone else wants peace and not your dissent, give them a piece of your mind and then the peace. If another your pound of flesh, take it instead. If they think your hair...  

Lord! I sound mutinous… but I guess what I’m saying is, when you wind up the many loops you’ve surrounded yourself with, knowingly or otherwise, you start seeing yourself better. You recognize what you feel and you give priority to the sounds of your own silent sighs behind the smiles. Because you hear them now. Because maybe sometimes only you will hear them and understand them. 

Of course, you can’t really become a zygote in a fallow tube or some such, so you leave just enough thread out there to know and be known for who you choose to be at that point. Just enough thread to roll back. Just enough to be an extended hand. Never enough to be tugged away. Gradually, you find that lost Self shaping up. May not be a perfect round figure anymore. Nope. But a sphere’s not so bad either.  

And while you wind up your Self into a whole, if you feel like rambling publicly about it in one thousand words without a second look, well, you go ahead and do that too. Self-help, you know!

Nature and its fruits. And Love?

I just finished reading today’s newspaper. The Delhi Development Authority has decided to throw open its fruit orchards to the public. Orchards of mango, guava, ber, jamun, mulberry and star fruit will now become public spaces, with lights, jogging paths and adequate security measures. The entry to DDA’s 18 orchards will be free, thus encouraging people to come and connect with nature and its fruits. 

Nature and its fruits? 

I close my eyes and imagine... 

Hundreds of mango trees stand pregnant with fruit in front of me. The sun is sweating to somehow reach the undergrowth. To touch it. To nourish it. Here and there, in those yellow patches, I spot fruit flies drunk on juice. They are dancing around plump mangoes which have fallen, as if hungry to be consumed, so ready they are! My nose smells grass and moss and bark. My ears hear the bees, the parrots, the falling fruits and also those faint whispers when the wind meets the leaves, making them shiver with an ‘I love you. I love you so much, Meenu’.

Wait, who said that? Is someone there? I see a red stone bench, a little in the sunlight and a little in the dark, as if yet to make up its mind to show or not to be seen. A boy and a girl sit huddled there, as if they were one. Someone is sobbing. Lovers, of course! Lovers professing love, discussing love, feeling love. Just the trees hear them. Only the mangoes understand. And none of the parrots can repeat their secret passion to the big, bad world of honour and blood … 

Nature and its fruits. And love.

I walk up to my book shelf and neck bent, finger the spines. 

Kalidasa’s ethereal Sakuntala, in a bark-garment, walks in the forest of her hermitage. Her girlfriends tease – ‘With you beside him the mango looks as if wedded to a lovely vine.’ King Duhsanta, spying on Sakuntala’s beauty, is smitten. He sees ‘how her lower lip has the rich sheen of young shoots, her arms the very grace of tender twining stems, her limbs enchanting as a lovely flower.’ 20 pages later there is an invitation to share the bench, if there ever was one, as Duhsanta says – ‘O girl with tapering thighs! … out of kindness, you offer me a place on this bed of flowers sweet from the touch of your limbs, to allay my weariness.’ She blushes with fire, he burns with it and her friends excuse themselves and leave. Love happens. Marriage follows soon after, but alas, it belongs not to the sylvan, fertile surroundings but to the world of the court, and its many laws. Many androcentric laws. About purity of roots, ‘varna’ and ‘uninterrupted succession’. And a woman who is ‘never free to do as I please’.  

I see a red stone bench … a boy and a girl sit huddled there, as if they were one. Someone is sobbing.

To lush regions of harmony, spiritual health, love and fancy, Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ belongs. Fancy, did I say? Yes. Make-believe! The woods, so symbolic of wilderness, are seemingly away and apart from the city-bound civilization. The traditional pastoral festivities release the escaped lovers’ energies for the continuity of life, but which in the end, sadly, are held in check. How? The city has its rules for the formal bonds of marriage. Very strict bills one needs to fit! This ‘contagious fog’ of terms and conditions can creep through the world of shady trees and reach the bench … brutal quarrels, a deranged lover, predation, jealousy, shame and disgust ensue to kill … ‘And therefore is love said to be a child because in choice he is so oft beguiled.’ Therefore.

I see a red stone bench … a boy and a girl sit huddled there, as if they were one. Someone is sobbing. 

I suddenly remember what this guy in Siddharth Chowdhury’s ‘Patna Manual of Style’ saw in Indraprastha Park, New Delhi. In his words – ‘I heard some voices from the covered pavilion that is right in the middle of the park. I thought I heard a faint female shriek for help … I found a young couple on the floor, the girl still in her school uniform, with her nylon zebra-striped chaddi and salwar around her knees and the boy bare-assed on top of her. Without thinking of consequences I ran in to save the girl and gave the boy a tremendous kick. The girl started saying ‘please, please, please’ and the boy … tried to run away… but not before some choice slaps from yours truly.’ He was just a goodly confused passer-by. No. He wasn’t a cop with a baton. But he could have been a cop, or someone serving the opaque and impermeable code of morality, of which one size fits all, and flouting which leads to such ‘dheeli chaddis’. 

I see a red stone bench … a boy and a girl sit huddled there, as if they were one. Someone is sobbing. 

The newspaper flutters in the fan’s wind to draw me back. I read yet again.

The Delhi Development Authority has decided to throw open its fruit orchards to the public. Orchards of mango, guava, ber, jamun, mulberry and star fruit will now become public spaces, with lights, jogging paths and adequate security measures. The entry to DDA’s 18 orchards will be free, thus encouraging people to come and connect with nature and its fruits. 

Nature and its fruits. And love? 

Ordinary. Extraordinary!

Every morning our alarms go off with military precision waking us up to another day which usually promises to be as full of event schedules, office rosters, to-do lists under fridge magnets and a stainless steel routine as the day before. Or the day after. Every morning, like Del Amitri said, ‘the needle returns to the start of the song and we all sing along like before.’ An impermeable membrane of sameness envelops our daily lives. 

Ordinarily, from this predictability we draw comfort of the known and warmth of permanence. A pattern is manageable. The known is a blessing. The next step ready. The train of schedule running smoothly from Platform A; never derailing on to Plan B. It is what lends our life a solidity, like the big teak dining table standing on its four strong legs. Dependable. Or the three kinds of latches on our home doors. Secured. 

But someday, say once a month, you digress from planning the day’s menus and meetings over your morning cup of tea to thinking … thinking how growing up feels good. But how come settling down seems so unsettling, at times? How come what we aspired for, worked towards and built on our own terms suddenly seems like a record of monotony, turning and turning and turning? Where is the sound, the music, the beat, the spontaneous dance? 

Where is the … the … extraordinary!?

And the thought leaves in its wake a shot of yearning. The tea turns tasteless. The biscuit unappealing. The ritual of consuming them boring. Just like the day that looms ahead. Same-to-same-to-same. 

That yearning? For something different. For a ripple of excitement. For a breath of change. For a charge on every atom. For stimuli which enliven. For awe that lasts even if for a blink. Like a cross stitch that suddenly interferes with the beautifully sewn pattern of the peaceful running stitch, to only add to it the uniqueness of a positive disruption. A moment to remember. Or something said. Or done. Or felt. Or not done. Some … interruption!

E.x.t.r.a.o.r.d.i.n.a.r.y. 

Funny how when the ‘extra’ is married to ‘ordinary’ it makes it not extra, or more, ordinary but actually beyond ordinary. Which means the starting point is the ordinary. So someone would have you believe that within the folds of the ordinary hides the special extra. Now surely we can’t go hunting for the extraordinary in the ordinary, right? I mean it isn’t like picking up the brown rug and finding gold doubloons under them. Or using the broom under the bed to get the magic wand out. 

What does it take, then, to find the extraordinary beyond but from within the everyday? 

Gaston Bachelard, a little known French philosopher of the twentieth century, wrote ‘The Poetics of Space’, which is full of passages which celebrate housework. Yes, housework! See what he says: 

‘The daydreams that accompany household activities … keep vigilant watch over the house, they link its immediate past to its immediate future, they are what maintains it in the security of being.’ And this happens during the most mundane acts and most mechanical actions, like dusting the table, because our consciousness is woken up. We want to set the objects right! We want to shine them, lend them beauty, or what he calls ‘a human dignity’ for the role they play in preserving a comfortable continuum. In the regular act of polishing the china, then, ‘we can sense how a human being can devote himself to things and make them his own by perfecting their beauty. A little more beautiful and we have something quite different.’ Thus, even plain housework becomes a creative activity, not just for the thought-processes it gives birth to but also for the objects being re-imagined anew, with intimacy and with love. 

Consciousness! 

It takes being a truly and fully conscious person to see the extraordinary. Marry that to a thirst for observing and perceiving and with an openness to pick and experience the “different” stimuli in the humdrum, and the impermeable membrane of sameness becomes porous. You almost feel more … awake!

Usually, my milk man with his thin moustache and even thinner frame exudes impatience. After all, he’s a milk man in the morning, an electrician during the day and if we are to believe his reasons for absenteeism, a hassled husband the rest of the time. And so his feet are always moving even when he’s still. So I always keep the change ready. Recently, when my son walked to the door I noticed that all his hurry vanished. He shook his hands like an old friend and asked him about the plans for the day. That connection-over-little-in-common was brewing over time, right under my nose and next to my busy hands. I hadn’t noticed it before! And when I did there was something delightfully warming about the unhurried conversation happening at the slightly ajar door. 

Just like a mere sprinkle of vodka is all it takes to make the water melon more divine. 

Like opening a suitcase of old clothes and feeling the rush of warm memories from a decade back, the sensation akin to travelling. Feeling charged on reading a message from a stranger - ‘you looked into my soul when you wrote this’. Sitting idle on a sidewalk in a busy market just watching the world’s side-profiles go by. The moving, the still, the profundity of it all! Or taking the SLR for a walk in the park, to catch the squirrels playing peep-o, or the good-looking father with his child. Come on, the weather demanded it! Or simply going for a coffee date with your book, drinking it ever so slowly, because 30 minutes away from schedule, in your own company, on your own sofa, is precious time gained. 

Wonderful whorls swirl around our lives waiting to be found (indeed, like magic wands under beds!) And readiness to see them is all it takes to actually see them. When these conscious epiphanies of thoughts or surprising spectacles for the eyes unfold, they are like the gentle wind which suddenly turned excited, making the grass shiver and the sleeping fire flies rise up in the air to fill up the skies. Their torches aglow.   

Kafka said this to a friend – 

‘Life is as infinitely great and profound as the immensity of the stars above us. One can only look at it through the narrow keyhole of one’s personal existence. But through it one perceives more than one can see. So above all one must keep the keyhole clean.’

An extraordinary thought!  

Older. Greyer. Fartier. Being.

Some thoughts accompanied me to the toilet when I got out of bed and walked towards it for my Birthday morning (hence probably special) dump of the day. As I sat my one-year-older behind on a Parryware commode which had clearly out-lived its pristine white life, philosophy slowly trickled out my mind. 

I am exactly a year older today. Just a teensy-weensy year, no more! What happens when we turn a year older? Inside, outside, upside, South side, all sides. What really happens? What changes? Or petulantly refuses to change? Or dithers between changing and maintaining status quo of the previous donkey years? Have you too wondered? 

There wasn’t much to make conversation with in the loo, though the shampoo bottle waved with eager ears like never before, so the monologue necessarily turned inwards. I dug the grey matter deep and thought … 

If we were to see our naked body in extremely super(duper)-subsonic slow motion over the years of our lifetime, what would we see? We should be able to watch strands of hair gradually turning grey and dropping off with the speed of feathers on a windless day. The wrinkles becoming prominent – deeper, longer, permanent. The eyes becoming puffier and lashes flying away, one tiny strand at a time. The hair on the chin getting coiled. Lips going thinner, arms floppy and a general loosening of the body taking over the face, the neck, the stomach, the bums, the … everything that can surrender to gravity. In slow motion we would see a hunch developing, the knees bending outwards and the white of the teeth, toe nails and eyes changing colour. And some parts just going poof! The ultimate vanishing act – naturally or on hospital beds. Both internal and external. 

And as we’ll see the Life of Our Physicality unfold before our eyes we’ll realize how we all, all, are permanently moving closer to an irreversibility of ... um … what should we call it … an irreversibility of unBeing? Physical unBeing, I mean…

An itch on the red glitter-star on my hand, the one my child drew at 12am last night, and a burp that was midnight's Chocolate truffle cake all the way brought me back to my present location. I looked at the shampoo bottle. It wasn’t waving anymore. All was quiet and I was alone again. So I decided to hang around longer. Clear the system properly, which, strangely, made a mission of itself today. So I continued thinking … 

How much of all of the above changes would we be able to see on our Birthday morning? Like this 13th morning of January for me. Surely some changes come about, loitering irreversibly towards unBeing, one nano-step at a time? See, Evolution seems like an intelligent woman. She must have a way of ticking things in her chart. And to keep her court in order and organized, she would use our dates of birth to draw away from us some keratin, or adipose, or sphincter muscle, or a pinch of enamel in order to make sure we’re right on track to being, well, older, greyer, fartier. 

'Happy Birth Day', the shampoo bottle cried!

I shook my thoughts away and instinctively stared myself down and up and down in the bathroom mirror, not married to the commode at the right angle. I smiled-unsmiled. Cheeeeesed-uncheesed. Nope. The crows at the eyes still have the same feet. Arms up-arms down. Arms up-arms down. Nope. The buddies didn't look any different either (not that they have in many, many years). I ruffled my hair, head hanging in anticipation, and pore deep into the crop. I am sure I didn't see any extra greys. Then I breathed in-breathed out, rubbed my hands, slapped my thighs and felt gleefully young.

I’m still exactly me from exactly the day before. Phew!

Oh sweet Gratitude, fly away both Skywards and Downwards for irreversibility being invisible to the naked eye (which has yet to behold a picture of herself from 5 years back!). And forget bras, just burn that Life of Our Physicality slo-mo movie reel if ever it catches you unawares on your shit pots. Think more celebratory thoughts. Revel. Yes. Yes! I should! I am 33 today and it's no joke! The only time when 3 and 3 doesn’t make a six. 33. Called 'all the 3s' in Tambola. 33. Like two strapless bras standing ready to embrace you. 33. Or a pair of pouty lips naughtily kissing another pair from behind. 33. And when you press the back arrow and shift the cursor to both, they become blinking Bs. B. B. 

Yeah, of course! BE. Just be you. There we go. There's the moral of the story. Now that’s better!

Which reminds me, dear reader. It is a rumour universally acknowledged that just Being (especially biological) starts coming naturally as you grow older. Say, being on a pot waiting for it all to clear up. (There will be time, my friend!) Burping with an embedded ‘om’ just before everyone else has finished their last bite, and smiling the smile of satisfaction right back at their stares. Adjusting the undies to not get them in a bunch in front of the video cameras at the entrance of a party hall. Farting with gay abandon in the Pensioner’s Queue without a challan from the Politeness Brigade. Clearing the phlegm in matchless crescendo. Why, I've even heard that talking to inanimate things like tea cups and shampoo bottles and spectacles and dentures begins unawares. Thus you go about your daily business, all the time getting older, greyer, fartier but then that much closer to just unBeing, more and more. Not to forget getting wiser as you get older (Trump is an alien!). 

Slowly over the years the lightness of Being replaces all clouds of the heaviness of unBeing, like Pudin Hara vapours calming three helpings of Thai Red Curry. And that epiphany can happen anywhere, just anywhere!

The shampoo bottle agreed. It showed me a thumbs up and winked. I whispered a 'thank you' and got up like a Queen from her throne (only one knee groaned an arthritic groan).

Relieved. Relieved of all congestion. How strangely satisfying! 

Time to flush. 

What does one write about, this morning?

The auspicious Chhath sun has just risen. It’s sneaking into my drawing room, making itself comfortable on the sofa, touching the console’s marble and tapping its fingertips on the dried flower arrangement sitting in the corner. The birds have woken up too, to the sound of firecrackers going off in a nearby park, where a make-shift pool has been built for the blessed dip. Through the light mist that is typical of early winters in Delhi, I can hear chirpy school children crossing my window to go from the Press Colony to the main road bus stand; kicking pebbles, playing spit, pulling out leaves or swinging their oiled plaits. Some, of course, are dragging their feet and lagging behind. Sleep-lagged, perhaps, or with nothing new to look forward to in the day except for broken desks, torn books, dirty dark blue uniforms and truant teachers. They don’t even want to take their hands out of the pockets to wipe their noses … 

Another celebratory firecracker goes off in a distance, making the thin layer of holiday dust at Buddha's feet quiver with ecstasy. The Sun is being blessed with our prayers today. Or is it the other way around? It does seem a different shade of orange but that could be my imagination!

I have folded my legs on to the dining chair, tucking in the toes which are the first to feel the nip, and am looking around at a very still house. It seems to be resting, taking a breather and breathing in leftover lingering fragrances of cologne and baby talc, Bournvita and toasted bread, and half a tin of Cherry Blossom on each Bata shoe. Breathing in like me. The two hours of madness that every working morning means have melted into a quiet which usually spreads gracefully into every known and unknown corner of my house. And mind. Usually. 

Except, the bachelor neighbor is cooking his lunch and hitting the steel ladle on the thick kadhai with gusto. I’ve heard he’s taken to cycling early mornings. Separated by two backyards, can’t really sniff to tell what’s cooking out there. An infant is incessantly crying in the flat above his. This curly-haired boy has a very nasal daadi and I will hear her voice any second now, asking him Chhonu, kya hua, Chhonu? His parents must have left for work by now. But her house is not empty. 

My mind is empty but for one nagging wife - What does one write about, when there is nothing to write about?

I should probably finish the last two slices of apple on the black-and-white Melamine plate before me. That might help as I wait for answers. Or something, anything. They get brown with time, those slices, thanks to the iron. I will eat them soon, after forking the triangular banana corners which he’s lovingly left for me and certainly before the box of Khasta Rewri trying to seduce me with its gur glamour right next to the healthy plate. My uncle said they are from the best shop in Doon. One bite and I knew he wasn’t lying. I am so sure my dining chair can feel the weighty difference post Diwali. My belt most definitely can. Is it making a creaking, stretching, leathery sound? One can’t tell when the silence within the home is so loud. 

The firecrackers have stopped, though, and the birds are finally singing louder.  The fridge is going drrrrr-grrrr. The keyboard click-click. The brooming bhaiya is at it in the back lane, making piles of leaves where he should be, ideally, picking them. They still use wheelbarrows which must be extinct in many countries! Suddenly one day smoke will drift into my kitchen window. Yes, that’s when I know he has stealthily set fire to the small piles. I’ll have to switch on the noisy exhaust fan then. Oh, you missed hearing the doorbell ring when the newspaper guy came to collect his 250 a moment ago. Or the conversation which was all about safeguarding our respective ten-ners. It remains the same, you know, month after month, and I am not the one who gives in, mostly. I like change in my wallet. It’s good, nay great, for times when you are short of time…  

It’s funny to feel so free that you can hear the clock tick, when there is much work waiting to be done. Is this a kind of freedom? To just remain in one place, gently erasing from the mind’s eye all deadlines marked in red? Must be plain laziness, really, or shirking of duties, or mithai-induced lethargy. Blame it on the sugar, though I shrug to say I don’t know. One knows so little, sometimes.

What does one write about, when there is nothing to write about? Hm. I guess one just writes, you know, no matter how pointless the piece. 

Consciously Created Pointlessness... is quite freeing. I’ll have a khasta rewri now. And probably put my feet back on the ground, to get up and get set and get going. 

Probably.

Multicultural Khichdi and World Peace

Janpath, New Delhi, has been taken hostage by Palazzo pants. Every visible hanger there is selling a pair. And every boy in every shop is begging to remind you these are the latest and only they have the best export quality maal. The flea-market air is rented with calls of Palazzos! Palazzos! Pure crepe. Please one pealazza pent, madam. Free size. Alter waist. Pilazzo, Pilazzo! It was difficult to get away but easy to resist when a caller said ‘Pizza lo!’ because his slip of native tongue meant I slipped away to a pizza place across the road to dig in. 

While I bit into this hut’s Shahi Paneer pizza with extra topping of olives (promising myself never ever to laugh at my dad’s proclivity to mix-n-match countries in his dessert plate) I got all theoretically scholarly... 

How amazing it is to see what is proverbially called the melting pot of cultures is now cooking such a mush of khichdi at high flame that it is difficult to tell which zero was birthed in India and which came rolling in from Bangladesh. Jumping a few customs depots on the way. 

At any given point of time, we’re a walkie-talkie doll of the last Miss Universe’s idea of World Peace. We’re wearing, eating, breathing, singing, scooting, ogling, reading, writing, coveting, pooping  countries and cultures and chop sticks and cowl necks we have embraced with One Direction in mind – to add “quality” to our lives. 

Forget what literary theory says for multiculturalism. It is the ‘Made in Thailand’ on your chaddi ka tag that is its best example!

Look at this handsome banquet hall next door. I say enlarge it all and then look again.

With just one loin cloth separating these Greek Roman Globally Hot Citizens from Michelangelo’s David, this palatial building comes alive in the colours of 196 countries’ flags in season time. Why? Arrey for wedding functions, why else! Roadside rumour has it that the Dubai-based owner has filed for a GI for this design. With equal seriousness he has also managed a “setting” with our mashoor Chawla Band for parties; those where we walk in in saris looking like gowns from Bangkok and XXLs in slim-fitting Italian suits. (Perhaps, an imported mare too?) As for why make wide-chested hunks the façade for a hall for Punjabi weddings, where apart from women’s backs nothing is real skin … well, It's time to show the world how 'forward-thinking-multiculturals' we are!

At the risk of revealing to you, dear reader, what inexpensive beauty products I survive through, please find attached right below a picture of my latest nail file.

If you find a better representation of Hindi-Cheeni bhai-bhai, I will change this nail file’s name. But for now, Brother Stainless of mine it will be. Happy Sibling Day, manicure scissor best! What would I do without your ear-pick? Every time my half-bitten nails cry to be shaped, I seek its support. And every time I do phoo to the shaped wonders, with tears in my eyes I realize someone in China is doing this phoo to their nails too. It's a small world brought closer by the internet, Comedy Central and smuggling. Such love as this file carries cannot be lost in translation, even if all sense may drain. Human to human is the bond. Nail to nail Nain to Nain too.

In the most unexpected of ways and instances the ring of multiculturalism makes its presence felt – sometimes volubly, other times like a secret admiring friend. Love All! is something God said Himself (especially to my neighbour who has it as her Whatsapp status since our last fight). And I am doing my best teaching it further too. I say to my laal, 'embrace all cultures, beta, whether around the wrist or waist, scalp or socks. It spells Oneness, Love and Tolerance.' And you know what, the khichdi is cooking in his head too.

Let me tell you how. 

Once upon a time, the situation in my house was quite grave. Such xenophobia for all things foreign existed as would make your blood curdle with fear. We didn’t shake hands. We chewed them! And the farther the visitor came from, the more he was gnarled-gnawed at. This intolerance made the mother in me cry. I would stand in the balcony in my African kaftan, sipping Ginseng and praying for some World Peace within my walls. Praying for my child to eat his food, in stead. 

But today, after just a handful of visits to the Rajouri malls, Indian metros and two foreign shores we have successfully inculcated the value of the essence of this Khichdi. We are beginning to understand brotherhood. With khushi key aasnoon I witnessed this sight this morning. American superheroes came riding into West Delhi on Jordanian camels, bearing an Italian car as a gift for the once half-chewed North Pole teddy. He told me in his own words. 

So you see, there are signs that we’re learning Peace and all that kind of big stuff the multicultural way. Such positive, in-the-face signs. That we're becoming responsibly modern global citizens. Opening the windows of our minds. And we're doing it in a seemingly mature, surely happy and definitely pleasing-to-the-eye way. 

(Just don't dare drag my God into all this talk of tolerance-sholerence. Buss!) 

Ciao!

Unexpectedly, sometimes. (A monologue)

Unexpectedly, sometimes, I lose them all. 

My inhibitions. 

I washed my hair late in the evening just so I could blow dry it fresh for the musical night-out. Spent extra minutes on the left-of-back part of the head, where a bunch of strands never, just never, rolls in properly. That elusive perfect wedge! Matched my silk scarf with the spaghetti top, contrasted both with the pants. Cleaned the family’s shoes for the evening. Even the son’s shirt, tucked tightly into place. Socks pulled up, teeth brushed. Proper. Everything. The husband did his own bit. The best of South Asian bands were playing at Purana Quila and neat-3 walked into the crowd just in time. 

Oh, the crowd. Madness sans method. The band from Bhutan was going hard rock and the mass of heads around us were banging to the rhythm. Caught husband’s feet in suede tapping, fingers clicking. Junior was taking time to let the lights, the sound, the noise sink in. And the banging heads. Not a care in the world not a hair in place. Not conscious if they looked like maniacs, or even their age. They were with it and with the drunken beams of light. Sunk deep into the moment. (Is this what they call trance?)

A few ticked minutes away it began. A self-conscious swaying of the body, of a 31-year-old mother who felt old standing amongst the sea of youth but wanted to, so badly, live college again. To let go. To, what they call, be. Bass to guitars to drums to trumpet and gentle swaying had matured into the real thing. I looked at him and winked. He smiled saying do your thing. Eyes closed, music in the ears, nothing in the head and feet in air. Thoughts of troubles and troubling thoughts, all gone. And the well-set wedge I spent those extra minutes on? Nowhere to be seen! 

Unexpectedly, sometimes, I lose them all.

My inhibitions.

Are the shorts too short? They’re not if you think they aren’t, said he getting dressed for the beach. Oh, let me just wrap a skirt over them in any case. When I sit they travel up. You care? Incredulous, it seemed to him. To me, in front of the hotel mirror, they seemed like very short shorts. As if my son’s I was wearing! Anyway, we went. Goggles and sun cream and baby food and a wrap-around on a white scooter zooming to Om Café, Anjuna Beach. 

Their chairs were so comfy. We dug some rolls and poured much Feni. My legs remained crossed. Uncrossing meant a slit right down the centre where the skirt played naughty. It flew too much too, that skirt, as I walked with slippers in one hand and baby’s hand in the other on the black rocks lining the sea. The beige shorts kept winking at me, happy to be peeping and showing. Stop leaving my hand, mamma, was his complaint every time I tried minding the skirt into place. What would he understand? My thighs will jiggle and jaggle, an eye sore in this beautiful place, oh why did I have to wear this damn pair. We walked on, the shadows grew longer, and bodies in bikinis appeared for an evening dip. 

Bodies. Foreigners, some Indians too. Most so shapely I wanted to stare and whistle. Others, quite like mine. Some in their twilight, too much bone or too much flab but so carefree. As if boasting to the setting sun with their wrinkled cleavages and bright bikinis that they had lived their lives and loved what it did to them. I had bunched up the slit of my knee-length wrap in my right hand. To keep it from flying. I let go now. It flapped like a bird and my thighs felt the wind, caught the orange light. Weee, screamed he. I tied the skirt around his neck, like a cape. Made him a superhero. Much like how I felt, heroic and free.

Unexpectedly, sometimes, I lose them all.

My inhibitions.

Examples upon examples... 

Of singing aloud at decibels that shiver on hearing my voice. Because he says he wants to listen to Jingle Bells as we drive back from school. He wants it so how can I hiccup? Never before did I hear my voice thus. Always excused myself from wedding singing, or sang in a whisper that even I couldn’t hear. Singing was not my thing. But it is. Now.

Of meeting estranged family after years of blood they call bad, but blood of the same family. The discomfort in the fidgety hands and feet but the comfort of breaking the ice and leaving bygones where they belong. Loud laughter and back-slapping between kin! There is no better way. Actually, there is no other way!

Of dancing on the road in strangers’ wedding baraats, wearing torn jeans and looking like misfits but feeling happy. Turning gaping stares of dressed up people into amused smiles. Hoping for an invite. Just desserts, please, uncle ji? We were poor, hungry hostellers. A second’s nudge from a buddy and hesitation had been thrown to the wind. I had crossed the road. Hands in the air, pumping shoulders, drums all around and soaked in fun. Living it. At someone else’s wedding, that too!

Examples upon examples, still...

Of tightly packed buses, with a pervert right behind and a public totally blind. (Life’s not all fun and games, now is it?) Exchanging stares with a female friend standing close by. Our eyes asking each other, what can we do? Silence. Just bending and looking out of the window hoping to see our stop. And then suddenly, as if the repressed spring decided to stand up, letting go of the wall of tolerance. Turning around and slapping him, the balding face who was someone’s grandfather. Khataak! Finally. And finally waking the public up, to kick him out of the bus.  

Countless more examples. 

Of a life with times when, unexpectedly, I lose them all. 

My inhibitions...

[Written for WordPress Daily Prompts : 365 Writing Prompts. The prompt for today was - Unexpected - Unexpectedly, you lose your job. (Or a loved one. Or something or someone important to you.) What do you do next?] 

On Gratitude

You know how rain falls. 

Stray drops at first, as if the cloud is still making up its mind. You stare at the cemented courtyard floor waiting to see if the black dots are increasing, wondering if it is indeed rain and not the first floor people hanging their washed linen. You look up at the clouds, and then down again. Seeing the smaller circles dry, already, but almost hoping there’s more where that came from. And then, it does come. Slowly at first, and soon enough much faster, taking over in sight and sound what was once just a dull broken floor with a tulsi plant in the corner thirsting for respite. Finally you breathe, ‘It’s raining!’ Instinctively, you inhale. Expectantly too, for you know the earth will smell good, for you. The leaves shine greener, for you. The breeze blow cooler, yes, for you. 

Why not! If belief can move mountains, just imagine what contentment can flow from believing in a larger loom of goodness making weaves of happiness around you, just for you. And then, just half a breath is all it takes to send a quiet paper plane of ‘thank you’, sometimes with the destination marked, but often simply skywards charting its own path. 

I don’t think I have said as many thank-you's ever in my life as I have in this month of July speeding by. 

My son started formal schooling and best wishes for a boy who loves back as unconditionally as the love he receives came pouring in. My seventh wedding anniversary followed close on the heels of his big school milestone, and over mails and messages we were blessed with many years of togetherness. In walked some extra smiles, as someone’s ‘many happy returns of the day’ made our Facebook friends post birthday wishes on both the husband’s and the wife’s walls. We corrected them, of course, but thanked them too for their wishes, because each came with a ‘happy’ in it. And then, when a short story written by me saw itself in print, with a lovely book cover and a launch date complete, the excited flow of congratulations from those long lost in the play grounds of school or nooks and corners of college life had to be met with a barrage of equally elated  thank-you’s in return. 

Just when I thought it must be over for now … 

Strange are the ways in which small gestures make you feel all warm inside, make you appreciate things as they stand. To have been on these people’s minds made me feel good. It also made me wonder, beyond all the music and noise that we call life, about what I truly am grateful for and to whom.

And when I say ‘Thank God’ it’s not Him alone I mean, or Her…

I also mean People.

Those who I call family and friends and those who like to be called family and my friends. Whether around all the time, or once in an important blue moon, they help me form a chain of support much like bars on a ladder which I climb – sometimes with feet planted firmly on the rungs, other times with my hands and arms taking the weight, with each muscle aching for a push from below. And getting it. A phone call, a text message or just a ‘Hi, long time!’

And even those people who recede from my life. Relationships once forged but only to die a natural death, as if the bond came with an expiry date, and reached it. Those friends of yore who took a few steps back, first, and then many more to go beyond what the naked eye can see (not memory, no) for not always can two different minds be ready to grow together? Those people conspicuous by absence on my most happy days, and on those which broke my back. A natural severing. Meant to be. And so, not a loss but as if making space for others, for how many can we carry as we move ahead in life? 

Strangers too, who make their presence felt where even once is enough. That woman in a maroon and black suit who asked an old man to de-board a bus because he was behaving badly with the girl that I was in college. That guard at the school gate who calls my son ‘sir’, waving a goodbye through his big moustaches. Making me feel my son is safe. That auto driver who dropped me home, sans haggling sans cheating sans over-charging on a day Delhi swept off in the rains. And that lady who I shared the auto and broken Punjabi with, for there was a river on the road and she did not mind taking me along, making her two kids sit in her tiny lap. Thank God! 

When I say ‘Thank God’ it’s not Him alone I mean, or Her…

I also mean Circumstances.

Some call them results of free will some pronounce them pre-destined. Some look for beautiful patterns in life and call them coincidences. I have had my share of each, even as I type. For how can I not say thank you for that moment which got me to write? And write again? And be read and read some more? The circumstances which seemed vile but were blessings in disguise, and those which remained so sweet I never need sugar in my coffee any more. Those situations which may mean nothing today, but may acquire meaning tomorrow. And decisions from days gone by withering away as irrelevant this day. Each, no matter how small, a fitting piece of this jigsaw puzzle we call life. Propelling it forward, or making it reach a break. All for  good reason. For, what other reason can we need to believe in? 

There is just so much to be thankful about today. Say, this auspicious day of Eid, when ‘On Gratitude’ took birth on my blog. And I sit flying that paper plane skywards and saying Thank You!

Hit me baby one more time!

The Gods must be crazy, and the goblins running the rumour mill crazier. For the latest on the grape vine, which hangs heavy with sour bunches, is that if you are good looking by some standard you get more readers on your blog. That it is not about writing any more, like it was once (for after all, Shakespeare did manage plenty of hits). That it is all about features which match the ideal assets the fantasies in your reader-head enjoy. Insulting, sad and unbelievable, all at the same time. But who is surprised?

Picture this. 

A stranger who considered himself a brilliant-but-wronged writer asked me to write a post for him and him for me. An experiment that would involve us to publish each other’s works in our own names and exchange the hits number at the end of the day. He wanted to prove that content is not king, but pretty faces are queens, and that under my hat his ink will find kisses while mine will fade in comparison. I politely refused, finding the totally resistible offer slightly offensive for implying my writing unworthy of sustaining a readership and also realizing soon enough that some heads which hate to take no for an answer even fail to spot nonsense planted in their own. His parting words threw ‘you vane woman’ at me. But before I could tell him to make that ‘vain’, he had vanished into thin air. Probably hiding in another’s inbox which acted abettor in his research crime to make me publish, in my name, something written by a dude whose commas and punctuation were like drunk ants doing striptease atop an express train. With full stops flying everywhere, off course, of course! 

To think that someone's else's balderdash flowing from upturned toilet bins can make you think … 

Reminded me of a man asking his wife to pick a gynaecologist who was the least good looking of the lot, for that meant she spent more time studying medicine properly rather than in front of a mirror. Hence, a better doctor! So strange that his wife would believe him; all ten manicured nails and highlighted hair of hers included, to pop her kid out! So strange again that we have reached Mars but our minds sit cosy inside a caveman’s animal skin toga, quivering with inferiority or envy on spotting in others physical features matching brain quotient in their sharpness.
   

And you don’t even need to be blonde any more to take the sh** cake! I talk of only one segment, where Blogging meets Bollywood and apparently proves that if you have the right face you need have nothing more, for then a good number of readers and publishers will follow as night follows day. And good writing, well, who needs that anyway.  Isn’t the dude who sent me the message for a life-changing research sitting without a woman’s bullet lodged in his chest?  

First things first; thank you for the compliment. It is super to know one belongs to a good looking genepool. For such fortunate planetary disposition I thank God first, then my parents, Galileo, some of my favourite teachers, Mendel, my dog Timmy, Darwin and the latest ladybug stuffed toy we got and named Gaston (after Gaston in Ben and Holly, that is).

And now for some serious talk. 

Pray, what is wrong with making oneself look good? Of showing aligned teeth in profile pictures or legs-above-the-knee in party ones? Of knowing the waist-to-shoulder proportion is perfect or that the face turned leftish looks best? Does colour on my lips make me any more fake than the free-flowing compliment on yours? That kohl in my eyes is as much a part of my outdoors as is my phone, and it is me who decides if the blush is pink or not there at all. About berries, I love to eat them and wear them too, sun shine or star light I decide. Only me!

Such misplaced are the times that a pretty picture in ‘About me’ on your site can make not just men but women too to attribute to you feats the very devil on your shoulders would shudder to perform. Of course, the devil may make you pout those lips, all the way from your timelines to theirs. But then you wonder, why bother, why kiss and make up with a dinosaur or use terms like sexist or feminist for brains which think no bigger than a pea.  

And more importantly, how, just how does a blogger's face conforming to conventional ideas of beauty make a reader spend 2 minutes and 30 seconds (average, Alexa says) reading a post about a book review or a short story, leaving behind feedback which proves they were paying attention and not fantasizing sipping coffee with her mascaraed eyes? It is not as if I'm picking my peasant skirt just over my knee to hitch a ride. Even if I were, why did you stop the car? If you expected to see me in my Sunday best lingerie in a post about exactly that, then, delusional reader, it tells everything about you and zilch about me, apart from saying nothing about the others who enjoy reading me. And who, gasp and fume and beat your chest as you may, keep those ‘hits’ coming in! Quite steadily!

I don’t hang around your breed to know enough about it, but I can still advise. How about you experiment on your own the next time around, without trying to rope in a pretty face allegedly unfairly enjoying it all or posting anonymous comments on Blogger Confession pages with the courage of a rat in the deep end of a pool? You don’t even need to doll yourself up. Just make sure the grammar is in place, creativity bribed in and something, anything, unique enough about it to make your readers want to ‘hit’ you again. You need the support of imagination and language, not a wonder bra for sustained readership. You see, you need to turn that gaze in the right direction to get inspired, and that direction is not another’s body. In the mean time, don’t forget to remain polite and pleasant. Sweetness is fashionably under rated, and last I checked it helps you look good too!

PS – You saw the picture on the top, didn't you? How silly and stupid I looked. But you still read me to the end? Hm! That would be another 2 minutes and 30 seconds.

Thank you for ‘hitting’ me, baby, one more time! 

[WordPress Daily Prompts : 365 Writing Prompts. The prompt for today was - Opposite Day - If you normally write non-fiction, post a photo. If you normally post images, write fiction. If you normally write fiction, write a poem. If you normally write poetry, draw a picture - As you can see, I did post a picture, but then I had to write too. I just had to!]

The Oranges

Nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all

The needle returns to the start of the song

And we all sing along like before

And we'll all be lonely tonight and lonely tomorrow

Her green bangle broke as she scrubbed the collar. Three pieces. The dirty soap water carried them to the drain cover, where they sat. Waiting as if to go below, and drown. She looked at her brown wrist with a gaze full of vacuum. The shirt collar in contrast gleamed white under it. After madam’s last tirade she was making sure the laundry was done properly. But, her bangle had broken, one from among three her husband had gifted her a certain Teej. Her husband who… She got back to the clothes. Scrubbing knees of jeans and seats of pants with new-found fury in her hands. Holding cuffs in both and rubbing them. Suffocating the dirt off them. The plastic brush lost some teeth, which joined the exodus near the drain. She didn’t notice. For the sound of the tap running had filled the bathroom. And her head. And in came that pain her constant companion. And its lover, tiredness. Oh how they screamed now, the two left bangles. Going in and coming out from the sea of water in the bucket. Rinsing. But as if being murdered. Being forced into a watery grave. Clips bit into the wrung clothes now hanging in a line. Hanged with care.  

2:30 pm. She could hear madam, shouting on the phone at a tele-caller in crisp English and so had to wait for her to finish. To leave. To take bus number 199 to Mangolpuri. To her husband … lying in his watery grave. Drunk. Always. Angry beyond measure for today she was late.   

Nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all

The needle returns to the start of the song

And we all sing along like before

And we'll all be lonely tonight and lonely tomorrow

Every day he was made to sit in the middle. They did not give him the window to breathe. As if intentionally. As if he was dead already with sorrowful faces sitting around him. Taking him … home. The cab full of tele-callers turned corners lit by twilight. Speeding. The driver in a wakefulness full of hurry. But he sitting behind him, sitting as if in a syrup. Half-asleep and half-aware of leaving the maddening buzz of telephone calls behind, for a day. The Chris the Bob the Alex that he had to be. Day after day. ‘Hello, would you like to buy a credit card?’ and the ensuing abuse. He remembered the bitter lady on the other side today. In crisp English she had dis-robed him. Of his mask which did not pay. He closed his eyes, and his hands around his neck-tie. No way to set his self free from the computers clicking and targets hitting. Bills and mortgages, EMIs and rent. Too much to think about. So little left to dream. The cab climbed a flyover and the metro bridge loomed large. Larger loomed the advert of a car with a smiling family of four. Like a dream. He felt his gorge rising, the faux silk noose tightening, the faux leather belt squeezing him into a tiny sphere. Of monotony, and meaninglessness. Fake accents and mechanizations. Of missing … 

The driver shook him awake with a strange haste. He had missed his home stop today. Last one dropped. That much less time to sleep away, in a home empty of any more dreams. Empty. But home still. But empty.  

Nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all

The needle returns to the start of the song

And we all sing along like before

And we'll all be lonely tonight and lonely tomorrow

He could barely see. Except, the calendar next to the clock. They said it was a miracle. It must have been, to be able to see through the cataract. No longer did he know when his drawstrings hung low to the floor. No matter that spittle dribbled down his lip as he mumbled. To the winds. About his loneliness. His hands too he could not see. To feed to clean to hold the stick and sit outside his room in the old age home.  But he always knew the date and time. When his son would come. This evening, for instance. To see him dressed in his cleanest. Oranges in one hand and a hug in the other and 'how have you been, papa?' on his lips. Once, when he said he saw things heard voices, they put him here. Love remained, but he scared the kids at home. His son’s. His son is a driver. ‘Oh, he will find his way here in time’ said the old voice to the bench beneath him. Tick-tock-tick-tock-tick… The wrinkled hand loosened its grip. The stick fell. His son was too late to reach. Too late. Forever. It just so happened.

He had to make a detour, to drop a man who slept off and missed his home stop. 

The oranges lay at the back, suffocating silently in the bag. 

Unseen.  

  

[Written for WordPress Daily Prompts: 365 Writing Prompts aimed at posting at least once a day, based on the prompts provided. The prompt for today was - Earworm - What song is stuck in your head (or on permanent rotation in your CD or MP3 player) these days? Why does it speak to you? I picked Del Amitri’s ‘Nothing Ever Happens’. The song has always spoken to me of a post-modernist angst that individuals are living.]

The Tamasha of Birth and Death

When your child is born.  

You go through it all. Your insides tearing, just like the screams renting the air. Apart. Some so strong they die the moment they take birth. In the throat itself. Shrouded in the silence of decorum you were taught to maintain. You try behave. Cooperate, as you get killed to be born in the form of your child. You heed the doctors, the nurses order you. Sit-up and spread, now push a universe out. Exposed but all sense of shame lost somewhere in the crowd of pain. Earth-shattering. Every vessel in your body threatening to explode. Exploding. The only truth? You, what’s inside of you … and the struggle. And then it comes, looking blood and sweat but with your nose, or maybe eyes too. An out of body experience for the pain leaves you. Suddenly. Your body is yours again. Cleaned and cherubic, wrapped in pastels, your baby comes into your arms.

And then the world takes over. Hospital or home. Your child no longer yours. The oldest around occupies the throne, orders the next in line. Instructions from Stone Age. Some wise, most otherwise! Don’t count the toes thus, stop the camera, you fool! Black dots on foreheads, black thread on the ankle.  Face North and recite a mantra. Sleep, don’t sleep. Don’t drink, why eat. Praising your child you evil mother? Pour kohl into those tiny eyes. Ugly. What do the doctors know? Honey, have you got honey? Bind them in wool in summers, as tightly in superstition too. Sense sits suspended. You can hear the commands and commandments. You can hear another scream rising. In a throat still swollen sore. Yet to recover from pain they too felt, once, when they delivered theirs. You wonder. Did they? Teeth gritted you curse, silently. Oh the shame! A newly made mother cursing. But you care not. You want to just be. With your child. After an eternity of wait. 

But the world creates a circus around you. Of dos and don’ts. Of grey hair versus young curls. Of utter obsoleteness donning jeans or progress even in salwar-kameez. The contrasts and contradictions, the fake ‘Oh so sweets’ and the frivolous banter. Hurt. Your child reduced to a weight-at-birth. Curiously asked. As if the .3 was your doing. Your child an object, to be done with as they please. Puppet bodies, both of you. Neither to be claimed as yours. Taken away from you when they fancy fun. Or you feed, and the world watches. And you, reduced too to a wounded bag. Blood. Bones. Breasts. Bull shit. You. The mother. The epicentre of the tamasha of birth.

And then when death visits. 

Its claws, long ones, you cannot escape. And neither the talons of those who come prey on your loss. You see the extra effort they touched up their eyes with. And time. To pick a pretty white for the occasion. You are crying inside, smiling in their face. Returning smile with a ‘What can we do?’ But longing. To be alone. Assess. Assimilate. Adapt to an Absence. They? To mark Attendance. To meet friends and family they come like white sheep. A flock. To sit back and study clothes and jewellery. Catch up on lost time. Gossip. Look forward to the meal. How oily! Tea anyone? You walk around empty, but offering full cups of tea. Sugar? I have diabetes you want to kill me? 

The ‘body’ arrives from the morgue. The calculated tears, and cries begin the show. Set dialogues spelling RIP. Another scream rising in your throat. But this no time to rage, for you still grieve. Wait. Eagerly. For it will be over soon and they will leave. To live their lives, maybe stop by at a drive-in and pick something special for the night on their way homes. And when it comes, the moment called space, those lists of rituals and lists of rites need your time, your attention and your heart, a bit of which expired that morn. In details you are lost. In arrangements for the rites of passage you cannot find yourself. You cannot. Meticulous precision of everything and everyone around the ‘body’. Daughters don’t touch. Keep off. Who are you to say? But no time to say this. Bathe and make ready for the final exit. This hand first that foot next. All female eyes watch the naked ‘body’. Who puts the coconut first? Or the final shawl? Politics! You, keep the child in. No, get him out. The elders war, some curse the bad tea, one eats biscuits in peace looking for the pista. The priest does his thing. And you wait. For your time to be with what may be nothing but a memory, already. Smoky. But at least alone, for then you can grieve. Away from the tamasha that death brings inside your home. Your head. Around a ‘body’.

Is there no escape? 

There is. Your voice. Through a swollen throat, or one saline with crying. And a palm up front saying ‘stop’. Show them the fatigue, and the guerilla fatigue. From under the hair matted with sweat. Post-delivery. Or post-death in the family. Say ‘shh’, politely. Then ‘Stop the show. Of meaninglessness.’

No other way out. Your voice they should not own.

So, I say Stop! To escape.

The only way I know.

[Written for WordPress Daily Prompts : 365 Writing Prompts aimed at posting at least once a day, based on the prompts provided. The prompt for today was - Escape! - Describe your ultimate escape plan (and tell us what you’re escaping from)]

Who will write my biography?

There are some questions which take you by surprise. You are surprised because you wonder how come you never thought of them. You are also surprised because you will have to think before venturing an answer. Such questions are not intrusions, no. They strike you like a flower dropping from a tree and onto your head. Your reflexes cannot hide the ‘What was that?’ but when you take in the question, it’s a beautiful thing you discover. Like the flower the tree let go of. I was asked something recently – If I could have any author – living or dead – write my biography, who would I choose?

I stood before the book shelves at home, ran my finger left to right on the spines, head tilted a little to the right. The books were throwing names at me, some popular, some not so. I could spot my favourite authors looking at me with a scowl, saying ‘traitor’, as my finger brushed over their names and ignored. I could see Sam Walton (Walmart?) bribing me with his smile, selling his biographer to me with offers attached. I even saw children’s authors of varied nationalities prattling ‘try me’, on books tucked secretly between the big people books, by my son.

I didn’t pick any first, and then I picked three. Yes, a combination would be good. Why not!

Let Mark Twain write about my childhood. Look what he did with Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. You read about them as a child and you enjoy the adventures. You read them as an adult and you realize there is more here than meets the eye. Let Twain paint my childhood for me, for I too have climbed trees, had gangs of friends, tricked or treated them. Sought freedom from civilized society, created fiction and ‘some kind of a yarn’ (okay, lied) with ease that equals that of Finn. Like Sawyer I have domineered over my cousins, called pretend play adventures, thrown some style into it and how! And despite all “laws” that are supposed to govern childhood, sweet subversion has been my constant companion.  And then, with characters like ‘Jim’ around, I too have thought ‘Human beings can be awful cruel to one another’. Twain would know, how the Finn in me grew away from the Sawyer. How, as children too, there were larger issues that we all handled.

But then, I am no longer a child. I am a mother and am married to a man who is married to the Government. Something like ‘The Mammaries of the Welfare State’, with an ‘and’ in between, is what my daily life is. Yes, Upamanyu Chatterjee would understand the comic fable that is a part of our pillow talk night after night. I want this part of my life to be put in the best, most savage satire which makes you laugh– exactly what my life comprises right now, and will for a little while. Who else will know from firsthand experience how opening your own car door is as anathema as cleaning your toilet with your toothbrush, or picking your own bag! That ‘Efficiency Bar’ that ‘Hubris Ascending’ and even that ‘Pest in the Corridors of Power’. Yes, no one can document this wifely stage of my life as Upamanyu can.

However, these are the external trappings of the person I call me. Stimuli which shape me, but are not me. After all, who am I, if not my thoughts? My streams of consciousness. Descartes said ‘I think therefore I am’? Should not my biography be about what is within me as much as what is without? There is only one author who surpasses all others when it comes to portraying the reality of her characters, and that is Virginia Woolf. Her novels have dealt with memory and her characters, like Mrs Dalloway, have been thinking minds, not just material beings. My reality is my thoughts, and Woolf will know how to pen them down. Put into words what was storming my mind even as I served tea in china cups, with a broad smile. Or waved good bye to my son leaving for school with a similarly painted smile, but a heavy heart.

I sit staring at these three books before my eyes. These three, together, will write my biography for me.

But something doesn’t seem to satisfy, still. Something is amiss. These people are masters at their craft but strangers to my life, my times. Yes, like most biographers are. But then, if I could I would want someone who saw me live my life to write about it too. Who was there when my tomorrows became yesterdays as the road-roller of time laid the path to old age. Who was a witness to the greying, and his own growth in my hands. Who will know how to fill in the gaps, of incidents and feelings, when my memory fails to sit by my side. Let my son write my biography, if my life is indeed worth a tale. 

Let my biography be my son’s story of my life.

[Written for WordPress Daily Prompts : 365 Writing Prompts aimed at posting at least once a day, based on the prompts provided. The prompt for today was: Ghost-writer - If you could have any author – living or dead – write your biography, who would you choose?]

The Numbers this March

There are all kinds of numbers in our life and not all are Natural. Some are Odd, some are used to getting Even. Some we do not want to divide like a cheese pizza between five, others we wish would subtract themselves on their own from around our girth. But some numbers feel more Prime than others. They feel special. Dates or times, calls or discounts – we all have a little number book in our heads, The Anthology of Celebratory Numbers. I do. 

A double-digit maths score from school (I passed?) or a three digit electricity bill (thanks AAP). High score in Mario Bros (always!) or shoes inside new shoe boxes (to the power zero). Certain numbers come to occupy a certain place in our minds, even hearts sometimes. They may be forgotten the next day or remain etched in permanent ink in that anthology I talk about. But numbers, like our ages, are always on an onward march in their own sweet ways. It’s March, and I talk of some such digits.  

Say for instance 22. Two little ducks 22, says the man announcing the house in Bingo. Why the number becomes significant for me? After 22 years of teaching, my mother decided to hang her boots. Over 2 decades of spending 1/3rd of each day going to the same school to teach her children, and be taught in return, she put in her papers. She says it was instinctual. She was not tired but other things suddenly seemed to seek her attention more. She wanted to swim freestyle now in her pool of life. She made her decision on her own. But the storm in her mind continues. That angel-devil marriage that says “right thing done-wrong thing done”. It’s done, but she keeps repeating it to me ‘22 years is a really long time.’ I know how long it is numerically but I will not know how long a time it is in this passionate teacher’s mind. The only certainty is that on the 14th of March she will be given a grand farewell by a school which taught her brothers, her husband, her children, and now her nieces and nephews too. By teachers like herself! (Yes, we are unfurling the school flag on our roof top soon, maybe on the 14th of this March itself!)

14 too is a special number actually, called ‘school leaving time’ by the Bingo man (must tell mummy about the coincidence). It is a permanent favourite in my Anthology. 14th March is when my son was born (after 14 hours of labour, but that’s just a gory irrelevant coincidental detail no more). Which means, the day my mother retires, my son turns 3. Naturally, 14 becomes special to me. Double reason to celebrate it now, save up on an extra cake, and calories too. Clutching a cliché, time flew at mother fussing mach speed as 1 turned 2 to turn 3. Magically, as if! Very few special dates transform whole months to red velvet strawberry cheese cakes – smooth and delicious, like your child's birth date does. (We can cut a strawberry cake that day, why not! I can never eat just 1 slice.)

1 reminds me of those dreadful computer classes from school time. Binary was the name of a language (and you thought it was only that video game with an overgrown pac man eating balls?) and it worked with 1s and 0s. Dreadful, but I repeat myself. Those combinations of 1s and 0s made knots in my mind and earned me crosses in my report card. Only, March ’14 brought to my blog a combination I had never seen for myself, not even in the bank, I swear. 100,000 page views. Such a long number, like two trains put together with an engine combined. I still start counting backwards when I see big numbers to make myself sure (remember at the start, my Maths was bad?) – unit, tens, hundreds, thousand, ten thousand, lakh lakh vadaiyaan. My blog was viewed so many number of times. A round figure number and a fleeting favourite I froze before I refreshed the page. Before it turned to just another number in the series, albeit higher. See it in the picture?

Happy.

This March brings me some really special numbers. Like a water-colour painting of a sunny sky. Tinged in different shades of bright and happy yellow, and a little blue too. 

Do you too have some memorable ones circled in red ink, scribbled in that book I call The Anthology of Celebratory Numbers? Hiding in your head or maybe tucked deep inside your heart?

You know some of mine, the numbers this March.