There's the optimist, there's the pessimist, and then there's the third kind

11.49 on the clock. I got work to do. The boring research report on the real estate sector in Mumbai stares up at me. I read a few pages. Needs work. Definitely needs work. Mind wanders. What does the future hold? All this hardwork, what for? A year-end appraisal with a cost of living increase?

The noisy fan, the ticking clock, the heavy breathing, they all seem to be drawing life to a close. My life to a long drawn out close. Drawn out over 50-60 years. Dying every second of every minute of every day. Happy birthday to you they say. I say happy one year closer to death.

Why all the struggle? To hit the base of the coffin at the end? Or rather, in my case, to be buried in logs and go up in flames? My train passes a crematorium every day. On most days, its empty and quiet. On those days, it leaves me sad, heart wrenchingly so. On some days, there's a fire burning. Even though I can’t see it, I can tell from the rising smoke. On those days, I'm filled with a sense of peace, eerily so. As I watch the wafting smoke, I pray for the spirit rising with it.

I want to do that. I want to rise up in fumes and kiss the skies, liberated from all this sorrow, all these desires, all these bondages. It seems so tempting. But I’m crazy, not stupid. I can wait 50 years. And when my time comes, I will happily lay down on the logs like I happily lay down on my bed at the end of every tiring day. I’ll happily pull the kafan upto my chin, the way I wrap myself in my warm blanket. I’ll look forward to them (whoever) giving me fire on a cold chilly morning. It’ll be one of those rare mornings when I’ll be allowed to sleep in late, really late. I’ll look forward to a night of dreams, like I do every night, hoping I’ll see dad tonight. This time, not just in a dream. This time he won’t dissolve into molecules when I touch him.

So every morning when some optimistic loser wakes up and French kisses the morning and announces to the world that it’s a new day and a new start and crap like that, I will rise out of bed, kicked about being one day closer to my ultimate freedom.

I'm like a bird .......

Every night

And when I turn out the lights,
Quietly I spy from the shadows
Lives inside those brightly lit windows
Happy families, complete families.

I draw my curtains
To hide my own incompleteness
To keep the spying eyes from the bright windows
From peering into my dark ugliness ..

The time they told me the truth about Santa Claus

Growing up – it’s that phase of life that you never fully understand until it happens to you. It is something that was quite alien to me as recent as a year ago. It’s funny how things change so rapidly in the span of 12 months. I don’t even recall when it started. All I know is that I am 23 and that I am growing up and that I truly and completely hate it with the fire of a thousand suns (that’s a stolen quote and I know it). Growing up has so many definitions in so many contexts. But to me, growing up is none of those things that are defined by others. Growing up is a very personal experience/stage in one’s life, different to each one of us in terms of the period, the emotions, the experience, etc. You can be 40 and never have grown up and you could also be 17 and be growing up. And until and unless you admit it yourself that you are infact ‘growing up’, I believe nobody else can determine it for you. You can’t wait for it; you will never know when it is coming. It just arrives without warning and when it does arrive, you know it.

Growing up to me isn’t passing out of school, or growing a beard or consuming alcohol or starting to date, etc as popular belief goes. Growing up to me is wondering if I’m too old for that kitten T shirt. Growing up is for the first time worrying how that butterfly tattoo on the back will look in a sari. Growing up is watching your best friend get engaged and wondering if you’ve missed the bus. Growing up is for the very first time wondering if being a rebel without a cause is a stupid thing after all. Growing up is watching a cousin you’ve grown up with, get married and move overseas and wondering to yourself if you wasted all those years being self involved instead of spending it together. Growing up is watching people pursue what they believe in and wondering, whatever happened to my beliefs?

Growing up is wondering if you should’ve been more involved in sports when you had the chance. Growing up is rethinking the choices you’ve made. When you are young, you just assume that mid-life/old age will never happen to you and you make all sorts of rash decisions at the spur of the moment, completely ignoring its long-term repercussions. Growing up is that stage in your life when you have no one but yourself to blame for not grabbing life by the throat when you could. It’s when you realise that life is not kind. Infact, she is one hell of a b***h, robbing you of your youth and zest every minute that you weren’t paying attention. And those minutes amount to a few billion.

Sometimes growing up is also supported by certain external elements, for eg, my family keeps screaming into my ears night and day to stop acting like a child and ‘grow up’. Your face starts reflecting hints of maturity and age and you wonder where your innocence went. Well, the b****h killed her too, in one of those few billion moments. You pile on 2 kgs and find it just impossible to lose. Stomach crunches give you back ache and you hear mum snigger and say, “Chinnu, your bones are not so young anymore, better take more calcium”. So you do what you never did in 23 years of your life, become nutrition conscious.

Growing up is when you have 3 day weekends and no particular plans. Growing up is when friends are not just a phone call away because they are working shifts or overseas or married. Growing up is not finding the butterfly pendant in the Airtel ad cute that your 18 year old cousin does. Growing up is thinking ‘What the hell was I thinking buying camouflage pants’. Growing up is disposing off even your favourite clothes because you finally accept that you will never be thin enough to fit into it. Growing up is when full volume on your headphones hurt your ears. Growing up is accepting that you are not as brave and strong as the front you put up.

Growing up is checking out the incredibly cute new recruit and realizing to your disappointment that he is probably a couple of years younger to you. Growing up is when eye candy seems plain silly. Growing up is finally realizing that being nocturnal is not normal. It is realizing how important 7-8 hours of sleep is to be fully functional during an 8 hour day shift.

I spend most of my waking hours just wondering at this transformation. Standing at the crossroad of life, wondering which way to turn, wondering if I’ve missed my exit a long way back. Key word – wondering. You are just constantly wondering at this not-so-wonderful and completely sudden phase of life.

I’m sure there are plenty of good features about ‘growing up’ too. But I just can’t think of too many right now. Let’s see.

Growing up is being able to pay for that upcoming mountain biking trip J. Growing up means being able to forgive and forget all those times when you thought your heart was beyond repair. Growing up is giving your mum a hug and saying sorry for being so difficult to deal with. Growing up means valuing your family enough to avoid using the word ‘tequila’ on Facebook because it angered them the last time you did.

There’s got to be a lot more positives to growing up, and maybe I’ll jot them down as and when I find them. I also believe life will be awfully easier and smooth sailing once I learn to accept this inevitable stage as a part of life. But then the transition phase is just so difficult, feels like all the foundation of what makes me who I am has been shaken. Then again, if the foundation can be shaken so easily, it probably wasn’t so strong to begin with, huh?

It is time for introspection. It is time for acceptance. It is time to welcome maturity and bid farewell to childish innocence and watch it walk into the sunset. Life does not end here; it is merely the end of an era and the beginning of another. I’m sure the b****h has a lot more antics up her sleeve for the coming years.

Ugly lil me

I was hanging by a thin string, how could you let me fall? I fell with such a thud, fell so hard. I’m bruised all over, but you aren’t around to help me back on my feet daddy. So, I help myself up and dust myself. But what about the gashes? They’ve left horrible imprints all over. Those will never go away daddy, I’m ugly forever. Who will love me now?




8 month death anniversay of daddy .. I'm picking at the scabs again ..

Creatures of the dark

Silence, immobile trees
Quiet, dark blanket of sky
Soft, stealthy clouds
Patchy, faded, white crescent

Swift sudden breeze
Clanking, rolling tin can
Swaying red curtain
Brief peek into hidden worlds

Lazy mongrel footsteps
Another chilly draft
Fastening blanket around a bare body
Loud shutting of wobbly windows

Winking stars, sleepy night
Shifting foliage, like soft whispers
Glowing candles among the marshes
Fireflies in the dark

Dancing shadows form grotesque shapes
The wind carries clandestine messages
A faint howl travels across space
As the hour surrenders to the ‘other world’

AS THE SAND KEEPS DRIPPING ..

Once so bright and so yellow
Your flame, is going mellow
Like the oils on a portrait,
Slowly fading away.

All the memories, I painted
All the pictures – they’re all tainted
The dry roses preserved in pages,
Slowly crumble away.

Your face, once so vivid
Your voice – now loud, now timid
The snapshots stuck in plastic,
Yellowing with time.

All your dreams, never written
All your clothes, now moth-eaten
Packed and sealed, wait in a corner
For a destination unknown.

The letters keep falling off your name plate
Life keeps offering a clean slate
But with every step that I take
I turn to watch you go deeper into the dark.

Until one day, it’ll all fade to black
Until one day, I’ll forget what I lack
But I don’t want to learn to live without,
Don’t want to stop missing.

I finally got another tattoo made about two weeks ago.

It says Achhan (meaning dad in Malayalam). I got it on dad’s birthday on April 8 on the inside of my right wrist.

The ‘A’ of Achhan is a little girl with short hair tat stands up at the edges. That’s exactly how I used to look when I was a little girl.

My sister said that the tattoo will look immature on me when I turn 50. But mummy said even if I turn a 100, I’ll still be daddy’s little girl. That point really hit home, and I had to get that design.

I can sit and stare at that little imprint on me hand all day long. And I think, even when I turn grey and old, the little girl on the tattoo will not have a single strand of grey hair. Forever daddy’s little girl. :')

Ramblings of ma mind

The devil inside:
Everytime I see somebody’s lace undone, I get this incredible urge to step on it and trip the person. I’ve even tried that a couple of times but the would be victim was wearing his lucky colours or something I suppose :P

Perspective:
When I pass by a large plot of unutilized land, I wonder why a perfectly good piece of plot is lying vacant instead of being put to some commercial use. Then out of nowhere, I recall how some 15 years ago, every large open land meant nothing but a large playground, to explore, to dig up and to get soiled in.

Dog-eat-dog:
As I walk past a butcher shop, I see two little goat babies tied outside. The little furry black one looks up at me with his big brown eyes and silly as it is, I can’t meet his eyes in the face of what my species is doing to his.

It happens only in Indyeah:
I was on the phone with a friend recently when she abruptly said “Ok, I gotta hang up, there’s an elephant coming”
And I go, “Huh? Whuh?”
So she repeats, a little irritated, “I have to hang up Shwetz, there’s an elephant coming my way.”
Me: “Ele .. hahhahahahah”. The line goes dead. “Hahahhaha”

Paapi pet da sawaal:
On a vast stretch of the Arabian Sea, far off, I see a tiny speck. It’s a fisherman floating on a cast off truck tyre. Just looking at him in the middle of nowhere on the flimsy piece of rubber gives me the shivers. But I guess trials are part and parcel to every person’s daily bread winning. Such is life.

Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title.

~ Virginia Woolf

Just once more

Memories do the strangest thing. Sometimes you miss someone so much, not a day goes by without you thinking about them. Their voice, their expressions, their hands, their laughter, all those tiny little, very specific details that made them unique. You miss them every single time and wish, if only you could see them just one last time. It’s not even so important that you speak to them, but just be able to see them, maybe from a far off distance, as if secretly spying through a window, just be in the same vicinity, just see that crinkle of eyes again, hear that voice again, just one more time.

You reminisce so much that when reality strikes, it almost feels like all that you had, all that you shared in the past is all just a figment of your imagination. It was all a mirage, your fantasy, a non-existent world. That kind of happiness couldn’t possibly exist.

So then you rummage through your old belongings, small nondescript mementos, like bits of paper with scribbles in that unmistakable hand, documents with that stylish inimitable signature. You flip through photo albums, looking for proof, looking for reassurance, looking for pain, or a balm for it. And there they are, those freckles, that toothy or rather toothless smile, that thick lush hair. *sigh*. It all did happen after all, but is now forever lost in the sands of time. So then, once again, its time to lock away all those memories, and pretend it was all a dream, or that this is a nightmare, soon to end. But if only, you could have just one more chance …

10 things I learnt during my college lectures

1. I can sleep with my eyes open

2. I have great eye to head co-ordination — even though I haven't been listening to a single word the lecturer has been yaking, I can still manage to nod when he/she looks my way.

3. I can manage to look extremely serious and attentive even while I'm replaying yesterday's episode of Simpsons in my head.

4. I can yawn with my mouth shut and eyes wide open, and no one will even know it.

5. I can plan and live my entire future—husband, kids and the works—just in those 2 hours of Karl Marx talk.

6. I start getting interested in the lecture or the concepts start to make sense exactly 5 minutes before the lecture is to wind up.

7. Suddenly the superhuman powers—invisibility, flying, etc—that I used to find extremely silly become extremely desirable.

8. Time stands still during a political science lecture.

9. Long awaited phone calls only come after you are 15 minutes into a 3 hour long lecture .. irony is a biatch !

10. My book has more meaningless drawings, caricatures and personal messages exchanged between classmates than actual study material.

 

*sigh* how I miss college.   

 

Life's like that - i

Pushing and shoving my way up the stairs of the Kurla station foot bridge during the morning rush hour, I envy the bum sitting on the asbestos roof of the platform, watching the crazy herd of money hungry animals on their way to earn their daily bread. Another day, another dollar they say. But I envy the bum. He's watching us, with a mocking smile on his face with the morning sun warming his bare back and the rushing trains cooling it. I know where my next meal will come from, and I have to make sure it keeps coming. Does he know about his? He might have to beg or borrow or steal, I don't think it really plagues his mind too much. I don't think he has a choice. It must be nice to not have alternatives sometimes, or to have your choice made for you. I envy the bum.

Noisy lil devil's workshop ;)

Answerless questions I ponder over when I'm complete vela :P

Will I live to see old age?
Is life fair?
Does everything really happen for the best?
Do we always get what we deserve?
Do good things happen to good people or vice versa?
Is karma repaid in this birth or the next?
Is there a fourth dimension?
Do souls survive or get reborn with new flesh?
Do we really have souls?
Is that the voice in our head?
How come it says means things and gives evil directions at times?
Why is water transparent?
How come fishes sleep with their eyes open and horses standing up?
Why is grey depressing?
Where does the sky end?
What lies beyond it?
Is it true that when you are thinking of a person, he/she is thinking of you too?
Who invented religion?
How come one religion has so many gods?
What existed before the gods were born?
Was the world a happier place?
Why is there so much misery?
How can a god die?
Is the Earth going to die?
Will the sun swallow it in its supernova?
They say the world used to be a bigger place, really?
What happened?
Why do we yawn?
Why do we dream?
Why so many wants?
Do roaches sleep?
Does that rhyme?
Why do they say ‘it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread’?
What’s so great about sliced bread?
Was that a draft or did a spirit just touch me?
What did Koena Mitra look like before all the plastic surgeries?
Does Himesh have a big bald patch on the top of his head?
Is Ram Gopal Verma out of his mind?
Is Raj Thakarey a coward?
Am I losing direction?
Should I shut up now?

Pedalling the cycle of life

A fortnight after the year has ended, its time for a performance review of 2008. If I had to describe the year in one word, that word would be 'HELL'. 2008 has really pushed me to the edge. It has tested my patience, my emotions, my sanity. This year I saw it all. I flunked for the very first time in my life – flunked my MA exams. I lost my dog who was my baby since the past 14 years and then, when I hadn't even managed to cope with all of that, I lost the most important person in my life – my dad. At the start of the year I took off flying, but then fell flat on my face, then managed to stagger up again, and got knocked down again, then stood up once again and so on and so forth.

It's funny how people say "Oh, you are a really strong person. If I were at your place, I would've lost it long back." I used to say that when I would hear of someone losing a loved one. But you know, it's not as easy. You can't just give up; you can't as easily lose your sanity. Life — the bitch that she is — has to be lived. And while living this bitchy little life, you realize certain inevitable truths of life. Time will keep slipping away like sand through your fingers. Everybody will leave and you will mourn the loss with a crazed passion, until time does what it does best – heals you.

There will be times when even in a room full of people you will be locked up in some dark somber corner of your mind reliving every single painful detail of the miseries in your past, weeping with dry eyes. But there'll also be times when standing at the doorway of a local compartment when the bloodshot full moon has just risen on the horizon, with the wind beating on your face and Chris Martin crooning in your ears, you feel sublime bliss.

There'll be times when being born seems like the worst thing to ever have happened to you. You wouldn't for the life of you want to get out of bed and report for duty. Little tip, if you ever have any hope of getting out of that depression, don't stay in bed, don't stay home. Because, as the saying goes, 'No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.'

People will come, people will leave. Miseries will multiply, good times will arrive. The sun will set every single day, but it will rise again tomorrow. Unlike James Hetfield's words which say 'No one but me can change myself, but it's too late', it's never too late; life is always waiting for you to join the fun. To conclude, I would like to add yet another quote to this highly preachy blog, and it goes, 'I finally figured out the only reason to be alive is to enjoy it' - Rita Mae Brown. J