Dilli-Willi

It’s a colorful city…Dilli…but different, very different from my Calcutta. There is literally too much of color here…one wakes up to the howling of car alarms…and sees multiple of them lined up and glistening in the sun…so very different from the coconut trees and rickshaws that greeted Calcutta mornings…as always, I love some things, and I hate some…no middles please…

I love the wide, wide roads, the chat and paneer tikka, the green, lush parks with the Dhillon and Bindra aunties in chiffon salwars and Reebok shoes…the slim, slim maidens with baby clips and i-pods intact…markets full of lovely earrings, shoes, bags..(err…here I go! )...all very colorful indeed…to the extent of a slight overdose…

But the breeze here hardly picks up…like the mad gust in Calcutta…there are hardly any road-side golgappa shops…rickshaws aren’t that great either…and there are of course no Calcutta-mark Mishti Doi and Rassagolla available...These are testing times I say!

Chopra Aunty is great! I love her temper and her jhappis...The only problem is her Tommy (Tommy dear, I have been with many sweet pets…but you’re the rowdiest of all Tommies I have ever seen…)...her son comes a close second…read my blog you…(did anyone say moron?)…and see how I can’t stand you for some reason…

I have just about begun loving this independence…the impromptu cooking of French-fries at 2 a.m., the rounds of carom all night, the discussions, agony-aunt sessions, confessions till dawn, learning up the varieties of mangoes and buying them after haggling too!...not to forget Chopra Aunty’s recipes of Butter Chicken and Dahi Chicken, which, by-the-way, I don’t need being a veggie…

I am of course the same…though I did land up here thinking I was a naayika straight out of a Sarat Chandra novel…going to live stoically, quietly, in self-exile…but some things never change…so here I go…jabbering again…working, shopping…cooking….of course putting up with neighbors in florescent-orange night-gowns…and Chopra Aunty’s recipes and lo!...I hear our dear, ol’ Tommy barking again…

Misgivings...

And I wonder where Life’s headed…
A blank question I often exchange
With my soul
That nearly chokes itself
At the sound of those tainted songs…

What else will matter
Here on…?
When it all blew away steadily
And the carcasses of memory
Now stand as dead paperweights?

How do others smile?
All the time?
Heal and hurt by turns
And still survive?

How does one empty
The obstinate mind?
How does one relieve
The burdened soul?
When Life questions you each day…
When barrenness greets each breath
Like never before.

They stand now….darkly…
Those happy, belated days
Like the blueprints of what crumbled
And died…
Were we always weak?
Or were they unreal days?

Let me pretend to live on…
Let me pull up the curtains
And bring in the light…
But I see the sorrows hanging
All over the walls…

They speak of the unalterable
Unchangeable defects in my Life…

Senti...Sigh...Sigh...

I have been like a pensive, wandering bird these days... simply breathing in the air, letting my wings spread...too numb to think of those I bade goodbye to...of things I had folded up and locked in my nest...

Your call made my day! Your voice took me back to my old skin...those days...the bustling city of colorful buses, the campus, the bridge, the green grass, the umbrellas, the corridors...I could smell the air of the canteen again...our trips and misadventures...tales of sorrows, jealousies, misunderstandings and heart-breaks...old love and old wounds :)

When will I be back? The only thing you wanted to know...so do I...

I feel the way you feel...I feel the pull of our happy bond...the days of vanilla skies and fresh dreams...the happy happy group of dreamy souls...the maddening urge to pour my heart to you all...and to listen to your little/not-so-little stories, tales, joys, anxities...

This is for you my bestest, caring friends...and my dear Alahomora...I see we are in the canteen again...or lets say...City Center? ;)

Do I need to say how I miss... all the time?

Love...

Ponder:

"Quietism is the attitude of people who say, “let others do what I cannot do.” The doctrine I am presenting before you is precisely the opposite of this, since it declares that there is no reality except in action. It goes further, indeed, and adds, “Man is nothing else but what he purposes, he exists only in so far as he realises himself, he is therefore nothing else but the sum of his actions, nothing else but what his life is.” Hence we can well understand why some people are horrified by our teaching. For many have but one resource to sustain them in their misery, and that is to think, “Circumstances have been against me, I was worthy to be something much better than I have been. I admit I have never had a great love or a great friendship; but that is because I never met a man or a woman who were worthy of it; if I have not written any very good books, it is because I had not the leisure to do so; or, if I have had no children to whom I could devote myself it is because I did not find the man I could have lived with. So there remains within me a wide range of abilities, inclinations and potentialities, unused but perfectly viable, which endow me with a worthiness that could never be inferred from the mere history of my actions.” But in reality and for the existentialist, there is no love apart from the deeds of love; no potentiality of love other than that which is manifested in loving; there is no genius other than that which is expressed in works of art. The genius of Proust is the totality of the works of Proust; the genius of Racine is the series of his tragedies, outside of which there is nothing. Why should we attribute to Racine the capacity to write yet another tragedy when that is precisely what he did not write? In life, a man commits himself, draws his own portrait and there is nothing but that portrait. No doubt this thought may seem comfortless to one who has not made a success of his life. On the other hand, it puts everyone in a position to understand that reality alone is reliable; that dreams, expectations and hopes serve to define a man only as deceptive dreams, abortive hopes, expectations unfulfilled; that is to say, they define him negatively, not positively. Nevertheless, when one says, “You are nothing else but what you live,” it does not imply that an artist is to be judged solely by his works of art, for a thousand other things contribute no less to his definition as a man. What we mean to say is that a man is no other than a series of undertakings, that he is the sum, the organisation, the set of relations that constitute these undertakings..."

- Jean-Paul Sartre (1946)

Red and Yellow

I dreamt of the fountain today.
The fountain we were watching...
Red and Yellow,
Red and Yellow....
Were they symbolic?
The Lights?
Did they show me your colour and mine?
Red and Yellow
Washed down the fountain,
Or was it up and away that things went?
Things that buried our yesterdays,
Tainted the tomorrows.
I sat alone by the fountain today...
Clean and healthy it stood
Dancing at me,
Mocking at me,
Laughing at me,
The white of its calmness in tact...
The water safe in its furrow.
I know, I know
We took with us the Red and the Yellow,
The today, the tomorrow,
Burnt, scathed, scarred
Aplenty,
I now hoard the orange sorrow.

Here...

That which was there yesterday has changed...

You can ask me, but can I tell...

May be its just the new,yellow air, or the unfamiliar smell of eucalyptus.

May be its my heart again, or the senses feeling a little perplexed.

The faces, the rooms, the lanes and the noise...

They add up to something I cannot call mine.

Only your words remain, your voice and your name

To take things along...things I need to call

My Life.

I follow you Ashar! ;)

But I'm afraid the picture isn't very nice! :(

Adrift...

The audacity of your weak attempt,

The feebleness of the YOU in you…

I can clap hands, I can shout, I can walk out, I can laugh aloud,

At you...

And at myself.

My boat is adrift.

Thanks to the radio silence you supplied

On that weak weak day…

(Your patent analogy of Pearl Harbor mocks me.)

The dark signal that broke something….

That anchor for sure, and a lot of other things I presume...

A heart or half was also dashed I think….

The perversity of circumstances we say,

Or, lets call it of character.

The equivocator in you, the fool in me?

The generous waves call out

Time to abandon that shabby cloak

The stained abode

And drift away from agony…

To a sadder, clearer shore…

MOvie-thon!

The last five days...I have seen about a dozen movies...like a woman possessed...after work, at night, on weekly offf, all through Sunday....whenever I could....! God knows when will I get a T.V. and a dvd player again!! Here's a precious peep... ;)

99- first time

Sliding Doors- first again

27 Dresses- first time

The Secret Window- second…

Notting Hill- (second...I think so…Hugh Grant….rest don’t’ quite rem…)

Hitch- second

Forrest Gump- (200th)

Monalisa Smile- err…third…

Oceans Eleven- 2nd

Jerry Maguire- 5th time I guess

The Departed- 2nd..don’t know why I saw though!

Alex and Emma (200th show!)


P.S. - My deepest prayers…may I always have movies around me!! :)

Beginning...

I can do miracles I know,
I need not run with others
I can make it being slow.

I can count on myself
All the time
There’s no balm
That my own hands cannot provide.

No joy, no pleasures,
No hopes that need to be denied
Only some milestones waiting
Till Life is again on my side.

I prepare again to dream
I will not trudge
I wish to fly this time.

I will tell tyrant Time…
The decisions I make now.
Epiphanies I provide…

I can hear them calling aloud
My Happiness of yore…
Desires that are there again
Winds of change waiting to blow…

Just this night to pass
Just this narrow road
And then the wide wide path
Of a new Sun, new morrow.

I will join you Life,
I will embrace you too…
I call out to you World…
I will build my home anew….

Rescued?

A ride in a big, white, Whiteliner through the bypass has always done wonders to me. Somehow, I had always half-feared, half-wanted, to fall asleep in these buses and be driven to a far-off tourist spot…Digha or Ranchi or anywhere…I boarded one that day...feeling low…and soon began enjoying the ride through the rain-washed stretches of the V. I. P. Road…I felt that the rain, clouds, trees, bus and even the driver were being extra kind to me…So perfect and refreshing it all felt… Staring out of the bleary window…I felt a pair of eyes glued to me. A well-dressed, middle-aged man sitting on an adjacent seat was looking at me…Nothing out-of-the-world about it I thought. I closed my eyes and enjoyed the numbness of the chilling, uncontrollable air-conditioner….I could still sense his attention in my direction…half-an-hour…and I was in snooze-land, when I felt someone standing right in front of me. It was the same, sturdy, somber-looking man with thick glasses. Before I could expect anything, he placed a laminated piece of post-card on my bag and got down from the bus.

Still bleary-eyed, I saw him outside the window, waving a bye to me…What for? I turned to the post-card. Three Gurus lined-up…one after another…in sacred...pass-port size photos…Swami Vivekananda, Sri Ram Chandra Paramhans, and Baba Lokenath…or so I later identified these bearded/unbearded,/turbaned men to be…

I did not know what symbolic meaning lay ahead of me…what journey…what revelation…the whole day I kept waiting for something strange…bizarre…new….to happen to me… in the market, on the road, in the bus, at work, in the library, home, kitchen….anywhere!...and bed-time came too!...Nothing happened…


And I am still waiting….;-)

Heart of the Matter

I can’t emote in the same manner for everyone. I am not always ready with a set intonation in my voice. It varies from a smile to a laughter, from a neutral ‘hi’ to a warm ‘hello’. I don’t have the same set lines for all. That is how I am programmed. I am frequently short of the right phrases. No striking lines, sighs, winsome sentimentalism. Sometimes, I can be downright boring and extremely plain.

Perhaps the sweetness of renaming people into pet-versions is also missing in me. I take you as ‘YOU’. I do not want your meek, weak, fragile version. Nor do I give you mine to carry. May be that does not provide the right amount of angst. It might even dangerously bring in some happiness that is so unsettling to that nature. A happiness that is ever so plain, non-euphoric. Yet it remains unpalatable, uncomfortable. It’s the vague, irresponsible, ‘pain game’ that should prevail…

Of course, I have always cherished being there. I can love in my own way. Through the seasons of pain. However, I do not want fragility and gloom as conditions for giving my affection and support. I will give them always. Just like that. They have always been there. Without the right lines. Without the histrionics. And perhaps that makes them invisible, unnoticed, unacknowledged, insignificant. It is not gift-wrapped. It cannot be…like the Sunshine that just intruded in your room- unnoticed, unasked and unwanted.

Dear friend, you say people bring about painful circumstances for people…uncaring and slightly self-centred perhaps…so you pay…No. I chose, wanted, shared, went through…My judgment, my choices, my foresight or the lack of it….Self-critique, Accountability, Lessons. Yes, they will do the work for me. Always.

Even the empowering ink couldn't make the finger taller!:(

Alone...

After a failed stint with a pet gold fish and our coup that liberated their birds, our neighbors brought in two rabbits. Sweet, round and self-indulgent. They were placed strategically in a sty-cum-kennel-cum-house-cum-rabbit-inn…that was kept in the common passage of the fourth floor. I noticed them…obviously. One thin, a bit quiet and calmer fellow…the other healthier, chirpier, more agile. I grabbed the opportunity and got familiar with them….No prizes for guessing that the healthier one and I got along….birds (?) of the same feather etcetera… etcetera….

Not that my life began to revolve around them…but they became an integral part of the scene outside my flat. So while climbing the stairs, I would imagine them jumping across their shelter with ears standing up…and I would tap my shoes and see them go round and round in a tizzy….a fond ceremony it became….I could feel they anticipated my antics each time I was around….

But more than me, they were busy with each other….the fatter one burnt his calories by chasing the thinner one…I sometimes felt it mumbled to the other about each passer-by….Didn’t they get bored in there…of each other…of chasing round-and-round…of talking?...What garrulous…lost…busy souls! They went on and on and on in each other’s company….Phew!


And one day, as I came up…there was just the thin one there….sleeping, I thought. May be, the other one was hiding behind…may be it was freshening up somewhere…may be it was eating out…may be it was snoozing...may be. But, I soon came to know it was dead. And a closer look at the thin one made me realize it was shell-shocked. I tapped my feet…clapped unceasingly…made a dozen faces…antics… all that I could think of… it just didn’t move.

I came home…I will not say my life was shattered….but I felt a strange discomfort …an unrest…a heaviness…time and again I would put myself in the shoes of that lonely rabbit and try feeling the difference in its life. I couldn’t even do that…I didn’t want to be in its shoes. It was too scary. It was overwhelmingly sad. What will it do now? Where will it go? Whom will it talk to? There were too many bad, empty, painful questions. So, I let it be.

We have an understanding again…I don’t tap...it doesn’t respond.

The Right Card....

I feel like the most important person in the country presently. Yes, elections are precisely the reason…no...not a party ticket…I got my voter’s ID Card done! And getting it made was no less an ordeal than campaigning for any big-shot, small-shot party-warty or neta.

One sultry afternoon I landed at a dingy sarkari make-shift office in far-flung part of Calcutta. Even as I approached some Babus enjoying a bidi-adda session in their chairs, I could see their expressions change. It was the most heinous crime I could have committed, arriving at three when they were supposed to call it a day at five! “Heavy late!..heavy late!”…two of them mumbled….

“Ei Baba!...Photo nei?” one of the five officers gasped…looking at my Id form….The job of putting the photo there was optional, I tried to explain… "So Bhat?”- another replied, if they don’t see my face, how would they locate me in the area list? But wasn’t I in front of them already?...I exclaimed, exasperated. Surely I was being logical??

It had been some 7-8 minutes already in that dingy, hot den…and I could feel the drop of sweat tricking down my cheek, as the portable fans were turned exclusively in the direction of the babus. No more formalities. I pulled a chair and sat down. And soon paid the price. They handed me down about 10 sets of voter lists of separate blocks of the municipality, and asked me to hunt my name out…written obviously in chaste Bangla! Me poor soul….having bid Banlga bye-bye in the 8th standard…tried conjuring mental images of the bangla alphabets that would form my name and began my mad hunt through those maddening papers….ten…fifteen….twenty…thirty minutes and I saw my name written in all glory!

“Here”. I stood up, handing the paper, trying to sound as pissed, miffed, caustic, sullen as possible… "where?” one of them accosted me as I tried leaving….Oh yes…I was forgetting to get my photo clicked for the card. There stood a reed-thin photographer in a pink shirt with the saddest looking digital camera in the world!...Already out of patience, I wanted him to simply go through the motions…but, but, but…. “Your hair…madam…” he pointed out to the few misguided strands…”your complexion”…he pointed to the drops on my forehead…trying to do a Mona Lisa… “its perfect!”- I almost stamped my feet…and then the blinding flash came down…and I left….

I saw my ghost finally when my card was handed out a fortnight later. But, but, but…I got it done people!

Truth

Being great is easy, being generous is easy, being scapegoat-ish is easy, and being a martyr is easiest….It saves a lot. A lot of truth, a lot of pain, a lot of bitterness. But being honest is becoming increasingly difficult. Why don’t people open up and walk the road I wonder? Me included. Me even more so. Shedding the burden is not easy you see. One gets used to the acting. One cannot give it up. It’s the other skin, the role, the mould, the part, the other identity. One lives it out each day hoping someone will notice the blood that oozes, the sweat that screams out, the anguish that pricks. No one does. And you keep dragging it- inside out….outside in….and the days are passing by.

Farther Away...

One loses to a number of causes….one ages for different reasons…one dies through multiple symptoms. You wake up one morning and realize you have lost those cells that carried those few drops of love in your system…

How weird it sounds…unreal, ‘out-of-the-world’ kind… Yes it does. But I promise you its true. You can look into the mirror and see those fine wrinkles, those dark patches under your gray eyes, a witness to the toil you do…a toil you no more have a reason for… that’s death. Silent and growing.

The dreams have abandoned your sleepy brain as you simply notice the dirty sheet you wake up on and that clock that pushes you towards oblivion. The scariest part is to lose those important words. They are naked now…barren…single-colored…eliciting no response. He doesn’t clap, doesn’t laugh, doesn’t notice. And you move just an inch closer to death.

It all passes by you each day. You begin to wonder how you lived in those belated days, when the breath came easy and the smile reappeared often. It makes you bitter. The falsity of the effort grows. The purpose of the talk fades away. And you clutch that finality. The finality of standing on the nadir. You can clap.

Weekly Off!

Initially, the idea of getting a weekly off pained me. No Happy Saturdays for me then? Sulk…sulk…sigh…sigh….life seemed bleak and miserable…Sunday is not a fun-day actually…one just oils the machinery for the grind that follows through the week…what bad luck, what misfortune! How it tortured me to see people waking up late on Saturdays, enjoying a lazy meal and catching up a flick or two…and then I had my revenge! ;)

Suddenly on a hot Tuesday morning, they would spot me snug and happy in bed till ten!...I would stroll deliberately in front of them with a cup of lazy tea. “My chutti you see…” and they would give me red, hostile looks and move on…the peace, the contentment that I felt….to see them rush out of home in a mad dizzy, crib about the heat and dust outside and return late tired. And then I would narrate my grand account of merriment on a comfortable day. The books I read, the movies I saw, the impromptu meal I rustled up, the unplanned, multiple naps I caught…blah and blah and blah…it of coursed irritated them, some even threatened to kill me…but there was no taking away my sense of victory! How I look forward to my weekly offs now…just hold my temper and work on bleary Saturdays…and wait for the manna dew that lands in my plate on a Windy Wednesday, Tangy Thursday or Filmy Friday! :)

Holiday home…its a battlefield! ;)

Passing By...

At Dawn...

Her eyes opened to the patter of raindrops outside the window. The room was unnaturally dark for that hour…one of those Calcutta days when the dawn imitates the dusk. She couldn’t bring herself to leave the bed. The clean white blanket won her heart all over again and she hid her face deep into it. It was indeed the hour of contemplation; the early morning breeze, dampened by the rain outside, invited reflection. The calm of the violet dawn and the twitter of unprepared birds moved her soul.

Staring at the ceiling, her mind traveled back to the events of the last week. She could now think of it as a whirlwind that had culminated in the storm last night. And now this placid morn. How far they had traveled from each other, in a matter of days. Years had crumbled into nothing. Simply nothing. One of those swaying, powerful stretches of time that take away memories and emotions, feelings and sentiments, foresight and forgiveness. It was a battlefield all the way. They had turned themselves into brainless warriors feeding on false pride and reasons. Nothing could hold them back then. They had geared up to carry it far…just a little behind the Greeks and Trojans. She sighed deeply, closed her eyes and murmured to her battered soul-“it would be fine; she was right”…and then the soul betrayed her. Her pillow was briskly dampened by those heavy drops that gushed down from her eyes. She felt bitter. Not with the world, not with him, not with them. It was simply a heavy, self-critical heart. And she despised her tears. To come out that early! At dawn…

She got up and walked to the balcony. It stood deserted and dark. She had abandoned it these days. There was no need to hide in its corner and scribble. Letters weren’t needed anymore, songs never sung. It had been weeks since she had peeped into the nest it its roof, or been in company of the lazy cat. Its all gone. She told herself. The best and the sweetest part of my life. I have cut it off. If only she could say these without the watery response from her eyes, without that sinking feeling in her heart. She knew she would be fine then. That was indeed the sign. Pitying her melodramatic soul, she tried to scrub the sentiments out of her face. The mirror stood over the washbasin. And for once, she couldn’t smile.

“I will be back.” - She said to it and sat down to write.