Games I Play

I stay in a humble abode the size of the fist I have to show CPWD every time the faucets leak or the door comes off the hinge. In this abode, I have a store room which, like most store rooms, serves no greater purpose than making the rest of the house look neat. Now believe it or faint – one complete ledge out of the 3 that the government graciously granted us is chock-a-block with boxes upon boxes of board games. And if one out of a total of 3 is dedicated to those, you can guess what pride of place they enjoy in my house.  You want to know why? Read on …

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How I Saw and Learnt

Here is my humble rhyme about some things that I have learnt,

From places, people and situations - the right ones and the wrong.

Life’s little instruction book is not just black or blue or green,

There is a moral to every story that unfolds for you to see.

I write this like a sing-along, hoping one day my son,

Will read my little ditty and say – ‘Oh mom, I saw and learnt!’

From a Place 

Home is where the heart resides, and where the soul must grow,

It’s a place where you are born, to know and know some more.

My granny welcomed Diwali with garlands she made herself,

She made us sit around her, taught us teamwork and togetherness. 

As her wrinkled shaking hands wove the marigolds on the thread,

I saw and learnt devotion – to faith, to family and to friends.

I had pouted when a certain shoe, white-sole and checkered-top,

My mother refused to buy me, even when all my friends had bought.

‘Be different, think different, my little one, if you want to stand out in the crowd,

Against the grain, away from the herd is where the Self is found.’

She was the 1st daughter-in-law with modern ideas and pants,

I saw and learnt that beyond norms too there teems a fertile land.

From People around 

You don’t learn like wine in a bottle, you learn from strangers around,

Turn your head 180 degrees, there are plenty of lessons to be found.

Some drive like devils some litter like fools, others pee on another’s wall,

I saw and learnt that these are things that don’t make sense, at all.

When you share a city, a country and a planet, you have to give what you take,

A little respect for another’s space, simply for goodness’s sake.

The bus was full, as I hung around with a man too close behind,

He brushed and dug his person into me, as others’ eyes turned blind.

I took it in for a little while, praying for it to stop,

Only when I slapped his face, did others push him out.

I saw and learnt that oftentimes, you are alone in a crowd,

You have to be the first one to stop what you know as wrong.

From a Situation 

You think you have learnt it all by now, when a mother you become,

But little ones can teach so much, if you look close and learn.

I saw and learnt to forget and forgive just like my little son,

A boy broke his toy, a few tears shed and next moment they played as one.

I see him shaking hands with glee with neighbours I don’t like,

I learn to look beyond difference and every minor fight.

But the most important right of all, that he has made me see,

Is that all parents need to grow along with their growing progeny.

I see him willing to learn and change, and enjoy an open mind,

I learn that that is where the solution to most adult problems lie.

As I see and learn I say, my Tomorrow I will teach,

But will not forget to ask him: “Will you too teach me, please?”

 [I am sharing what 'I Saw and I Learnt' at BlogAdda.com in association with DoRight.in] 

Steam

We were engaged to be married. Six long, very long, months separated us from the day my books were to move into his shelves, and my being into his life. We had tried to bribe the panditji to shift auspicious July to an even better (for our sanity, surely) April, but His Holiness's wrath and the ensuing lecture on how-not-to-be-desperate had reached the elders of our family. To our long wait we then surrendered. However, that did not mean we could not meet for a conservative cup of coffee or go on a roaring road trip in his humble little hatchback. So what if the destination was in our neighbourhood hills and the trip just a day long? We had our car, our music, our love, our good time and even a knock on the window by a cop – all the masala that some recipes of perfection are made of.

"Where do you want to go?" he asked, looking and talking as handsome as always. 

"Away," I responded with a smile as I sat down next to the wheel. "Take me away, will you?"

The car smelled fresh and flowery, and considering it was a bachelor’s nest on four wheels I expected worse. Don Williams played in the background and we ringed love birds were soon zooming our way to a certain cluster of shops called ‘Char Dukaan’ in Mussoorie - just a stone’s throw from our homes but far enough to get away from the known. 

If you thought clandestine is magical, the legitimate togetherness of the semi-official couple is even better. You can throw to the mountain winds all fear of bumping into Pummy aunty from Doon Club or Col. Joshi of mummy’s NGO in a town the size of your daddy’s golf ball. You can talk about ahem-n-that and start naming your children already. You can debate out ideas of ‘space’ and draw a line running right through the middle of the shared wardrobe, and the TV remote. Best of all, you can stop putting your best foot forward and show the official other half your obsession with coloured socks, or expensive Oxfords, whichever go on sale first. Most importantly, you can do all that as you lay back and enjoy the ride, even with monsters jumping in your stomach waiting to dig the cheese omlette, vegetable and cheese maggi, banana waffles, chocolate pancakes, strawberry shake, in exactly that order and only at the destination point. 

But what you cannot do is what we did do. And then there came the knock on the window.

"I will show you something that will take your breath away," he announced enigmatically, as the car made a steep turn uphill only to come to a sudden halt. Oh God! What does he mean? I thought I had made it amply clear. I have my rules. I cannot break them – no, not even when his car smells like the valley of flowers, he a Greek god very available (legitimately) and we surrounded with nothing remotely close to human eyes or ears.

"What do you mean?" I managed to stutter, soon as the car engine's roar became all silent. The angel on my shoulder screamed at the devil in my mind - I have seen everything I wanted to see. The rest can wait! I am convent-educated and my parents believe in God and I cross my heart that I loved my moral science classes and I am a chicken and that all things happen only when they are supposed to and it's a car for God's sake... 

"Step out will you?" And in a second he had jumped out of the car, opened the door to my side and was waiting with a Hitchcockian smile of a detective to show me what he meant. 

You can ask me if I indeed lost my breath or not, when he showed me what 'Away' looked like. But do not ask me if I was a little disappointed that it was about the view, only. I will not answer that. Just know that at exactly this point, when my lashes were fluttering little pink hearts towards him, I realised how confident I was about my choice my beau. Certain, that I will not be wearing running shoes under my Punjabi wedding dress. And that everything will be as perfect as this day, my life, our road trip to … um …where were we going, sorry?

"Time to have mummy’s coffee," he proclaimed and rubbed his hands in glee, as he rushed in to get a thermos full of steaming home-brewed coffee my mother thought obliged to send with us kids - in case we wanted to take a break before the breakfast on the hill-top. (What is this thing with mothers always trying to send a part of the home with you I understand not. If they could, they would convert a visit to the kirana shop into a picnic.) So well, there was coffee in Styrofoam cups, on the road side, with the hills yawning awake and the sun coming in gradually, as the mist rose to come another time. A penta-sensual experience and as close as it gets to feeling divine!

"Divine, isn't it? And we are only half-way there...," he smiled as if reading my mind, with a knowingly mischievous glint in his eyes. He got up to play ‘Delirious Love’ on the car stereo and a waft of that flowery scent from the car glided outside to merge with the woody one around. But as I heard Neil Diamond’s voice so did I hear his ‘Yikes’. His cup of coffee lay seeping into my seat. While I had no idea how a semi-official is supposed to react to such a situation, considering how men love their cars and even more their girls not thinking them clumsy, that blot of coffee spreading its ground on my seat had momentarily become a blot on our perfect moment, indeed. 

"Oh! It does not matter, we’ll get the covers changed. I’ll sit at the back, don’t worry," is all I could say. Little did I know that Mr. Ready was ready with solutions for anything and everything.

"A battery operated steam-brush? You mean something like what the dry-cleaner uses and charges a bomb for?" I asked, almost befuddled by the sudden gadgetry around on this beautiful morning and wondering if all engineers-turned-civil-servant procure these things just to remain loyal to their university degree.

"Jump in, let’s show you how it works. I do not want you sitting at the back because then I cannot get to look at you or hold your hand and … err … this will take just one minute," promised he, all pink by the sudden slips of tongue we always blame Freud for. And the steam brush worked wonders, such wonders that it fetched us our surprise and surprised visitor. You see, Physics, maybe Chemistry too, tells us how too much steam inside the car, or anywhere, can make the glass windows go all misty. Least realizing what the whirring hand-held cleaner was doing to ours, we had transformed our tiny hatchback into the dotted rocking one from your favourite advertisement or that car from Titanic The Movie’s basement. We only noticed the misty windows when the cop knocked, with a hard hand that moral police enjoys.

In one breath he spoke - "What’s going on here, haan? No shame you youngsters have, no shame. Get out of the car and hand over your license. At least the girl should have some shame. Where does she stay? Tell me now." All this, as he turned a deaf ear to our absolutely genuine and innocent explanation. He continued after a breath, "It is a case of 294. I will take you to jail for this 294 here. Don’t you know so many cars come here for 294? No shame you kids have! I could hear your ‘Oh yes, it’s working it’s working’ till the adjacent hillock. Openly doing 294," he pronounced in his Garhwali Hindi.   

It was not long before the hills echoed with our shared laughter when Mr. Cop was finally convinced about what we were doing. Little did we know then that the hero of this humorous movie – our dear steam brush, will be taken away from us by a man who wanted to keep his uniform clean much more than us our car seats. He wished us good tidings that soon-to-be-married couples need and we wished him happy free dry-cleaning.   

As we took the final bend and reached ‘Char Dukaan’, we knew we had had quite a day. Ravenous hunger, the gastric variety, had to be taken care of, now. And it was! In the form of all the items mentioned above, and some more. By the time the last burp was out and the plates polished clean, we had already forgotten about our steamy friend altogether and were ready to roll down the mountain exactly the same way that we came. Exactly like that! 

Looking back, it almost seems as if the car, the coffee and the cop had conspired to make our road trip a perfect one – full of freshness and beauty, revelations and comfort, surprises and laughter that echoed in the whole valley. Perhaps a perfect road trip is not one which clocks a hundred miles to an exotic destination, with fancy food and a fancier car, with loud music and everything else that young blood is made of. Perhaps, all it needs to be is something that makes you feel all warm inside whenever your memory decides to jog off to that road and those four wheels.

Is this my ‘idea’ of a perfect road trip or a perfect road trip as had happened six years ago? Or is it a third entity somewhere between fact and fiction? That I will leave for the reader to guess. The only fact of the matter that I will freely share is that 294 is indeed a section in the Indian Penal Code. And this was not the first time we had heard it through our car window. 

Or was it?

[This is my entry for 'The Perfect Road Trip' contest, hosted by IndiBlogger in association with Ambi Pur https://www.facebook.com/AmbiPurIndia] 

Eunuchs - Blessings or Just a Guise?

I looked though the ‘magic eye’ of the door to see a red polka dotted sari and a big bag. Another saleswoman selling foreign lingerie, I grumbled, and opened the door to keep her from waking up my 3-month-old boy with her frantic ringing. I do not know what I felt in my chest that one second in which I saw her face. I think it was my heart that had frozen still, as did the rest of me. What I do remember with photographic clarity is her large hands pushing the door forcibly open and entering, as I tried to close it on her face. At first I thought it was a man, dressed as a woman, barging in to rob me of whatever I call mine. My mind was racing towards my sleeping baby, but I could not feel my legs. My voice I could not find.  

It was she who spoke as she clapped – ‘Don’t you dare close the door on my face! Where’s the boy? Where’s the mithai?’

Google image

I was alone. No neighbours no one at home no one in ear shot to hear me scream, if it came to that. So was she, thankfully, for she came without her dancing troupe. I knew I had to get her out of my house. And there was no other way but by giving her what she wants. I asked her to sit with feigned confidence and warmth in my voice, served her mithai and juice with hands struggling to stay still, and made a sorry face to tell her that I have nothing on me, my husband just left for work, so could she come again, another time? She rose and walked from one room to the other, as if sniffing for gold, as if sniffing over my little boy, and then handed me a chit. She took what was there in my purse, and left me alone to latch the door and break down, finally. 

P, a 6 feet tall eunuch, the leader of their community in my part of Delhi, just left me her number. Named after a goddess, P threatened me of dire consequences if I did not pay her as much as was befitting of a new born son’s mother. She promised to be back; alone if I called her up in time and with her gang if I did not. My husband wanted to call up 100, but I wanted to get it done with. Leave no threads untied. Saturday came, P came and made off with money I could have built a whole new room for my son with.

And no! I did not feel extra blessed. I only felt defeated, and very enraged. 

Would you have felt fortunate in my shoes? If she had come in her festive red silk on a certain Saturday, loaded with gold to murmur a blessing for your baby in return for money, clothes and whatever else she could forcibly take? 

In the name of what does this custom find customers? Is it just in the name of Tradition – the great grandfather of righteous living who has to be kept pleased? Or worse still, is it just for keeping a certain myth alive, where eunuchs are considered lucky? Out of sympathy it cannot be, because as I see it, all they do is threaten, extort, arm-twist, harass, blackmail and trespass – acts which are about enjoying power, not seeking solace for where biology apparently left you powerless.

Why I did it? I gave my fortune away to P out of fear, nothing else. Fear for times when I will be home alone, again. Fear of seeing 10 of them outside my house, embarrassing my family. Fear of hearing them pronounce curses on my 3-month-old boy. And fear of being made to feel so vulnerable and so defeated, yet again. 

I see them shop lifting in broad day light and picking fruits off carts as the vendor pleads to be left alone. I see them harassing motorists on red lights for whatever they get, or giving what another needs in areas that glow red. I have seen them kicking away imploring hands of mothers who just wed their daughters off or noisily harassing my mother-in-law for diamond sets. And I do not feel sorry for them. 

I cannot. 

If beliefs and traditions had once tried to prop them up to a pedestal in society’s psychology, their power-play has left them very naked in my eyes. And no quotations from any of the sacred texts of yore or sacred quotes preaching equality about the ‘third sex’ contained in today’s books will be able to change my mind. 

No blessing can come in such a disguise. 

Advert-ently Wrong? Complan's latest on TV

Some time back I came to a conclusion. I realized that there are only two kinds of adverts running on TV – the ones you will never forget and the ones you will not bother to remember. Since most fell into the latter category serving no greater purpose than making you dream of fairer skin and low cholesterol chips, I had relegated them to background scores for bathroom breaks as my favourite TV soaps took theirs. However, Complan’s latest advert made me sit up and take note, and not for a single right reason. Let me explain!

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