Buckets of Rain...

2012-02-08T19:41:00.002+05:30

the smiling woman on the hoarding today reminded me i should love you.and buy the stack of cards peeping through her carefully curled locks.

also that i should have bought you a rose yesterday.

sigh.

god alone knows why you love me.

2011-12-31T11:16:00.009+05:30

there are things i will remember of this year and things i shall try and forget.

but most importantly, i will remember this year as a year that taught me too many things, perhaps a little more than what i am even capable of learning.

one of the worst and the ugliest fallouts of my life happened this year over something so petty that i dont even remember details any more. what i learnt from it however is that some things are not meant to last, and it is better that way. but most importantly, i should never look back and call it a mistake because i loved the friendship while it lasted and will cherish the good things that came out of it.

losing people is like losing bits of you. so when amma left us this year i felt like a piece of me burnt with her and left behind a very deep scar.but then i figured that one lives with such scars and these scars are finally what you remember people by.i realised you never use "was" when talking of people because they always "are". at least, for sure, i know she is always with me.looking out for me- smiling when i do well, cringing when i eat beef but loving me all the same and still praying that i dont marry out of my religion.

a very long relationship came to a close but it has given me a friend who probably knows me better than anyone else-like the back of his hand. knows that i like postcards and fridge magnets more than chocolates and perfumes.

i met new people this year-people who crept in very quietly and settled themselves comfortably within the leaves of my books, the space between my fingers, the fold of my neck and the gaps within my head. they made up the bits of the year i'll try remembering when i talk of forts and palaces and autos in a desert town.

then there have been the people who i wish to keep with me forever-those faces that i see everyday, the habits i plan my days around, the favourites i have begun to love.these people are like the men in the studios who ask you to sit still, move your head from here to there and help you smile so that the picture doesnt get too blurry.

because too much movement always spoils the mise en scene.

if the coming year is to be an end, then it better be a beautiful one.

a very happy new year to each one of you.

2011-12-19T11:42:00.006+05:30

i have always believed in the concept of comfort food. and it is never the same as one's favourite food.

i, for example, love my sugar. so my favourite food generally arrives at the end of every meal. but my comfort food almost never has sugar in it. one could say that comfort food is basically the food one craves for when one groans with fever.

or is too lazy to wake up on a winter morning.

so picture this.

december morning. you know you have overslept so it does not make sense to hurry up and get out of the loving embrace of your blanket.but your your stomach's groaning and you know you need food.and you happen to be living out of your city and may have a bad cold and a blocked nose to go with it.

now, if you could get a person and ask him/her to make you ONE (only one) kind of food. what would it be?

that food, ladies and gentlemen, would (under most circumstances) be your comfort food.of course the food might change depending on the situations you are in, but it is generally ONE food.

for me, generally, it is sheddho bhaat and/or a glass of cold milk with bournvita :)

(sheddho bhaat is basically rice boiled with potatoes and other vegetables) this is of course strange given that i hardly ever eat rice voluntarily. there are other times when it changes to a bar of 5 Star or a bowl or chicken "stew" (the way my ayah made it when i had measles). as you can tell, more often than not, comfort food has to be prepared very specifically- complete with minute details. for example, i will never settle for a 5 Star with nuts in it. it just cant be any stew but that one which she made and served in a plastic blue bowl.

my friends of course have a varied list. while one thinks it is buttered toast with sugar, another sticks to black coffee.

and then i have two friends who are characterised by their love for soggy food.they share their love for this thing they call makha, which is a very gooey and soggy mix of curd/milk with rice/ muri and (wait for it) bananas with lots of sugar.

as you can tell by now, comfort foods are extremely personal choices and often invite the disdain of your larger social circle.

if you still havent figured out what yours is, think about it now.

because they've been known to lend smiles to faces in the darkest times.

Booky Love

2011-11-15T16:21:00.005+05:30

There are very few joys that surpass the joy of a new book.

And it has been years since I received a book wrapped in fancy paper and delivered.

Though Flipkart didnt really gift it to me or wrap it up with fancy heart printed paper, the joy of a new book remained unchanged.

Add to that, a cute blue bookmark, a generous discount and that ethereal moment when the nose touches the papery heart of the pages-the moment when you breathe in words and let them swim through the bloody canals of your heart and brain!

Sigh, I love days like these.

p.s: it is true that such a love inspires silly artwork :P

2011-11-02T13:37:00.006+05:30

We become stories with every little thing we do.

With my walk to the Godavari bus stop, I begin with my cover photograph.

Girl in clothes put together in two minutes-crushed kurta with yesterday's perfume on it and churidars marked with ink stains.A hurried line of kohl in her eyes.

The Nilgiri is for the fancy dedication.

A lovely set of carefully chosen words manicured and pedicured to fit within the brackets of fancy calligraphy.

By the time I have crossed the Kaveri tank and taken the right from the Nehru statue, the roads lay littered with the string of words that my footsteps sing to the road I tread upon.

I turn back and cringe at the litter and heave a sigh of relief when the sweeper's broom brushes them all aside.

I see how all the words stick to the thin sticks of the broom-all held together with a light electrostatic force.

The kind that lets the comb touch the strands of hair for a few seconds more before parting.

I hear a stranger's radio sing,

"...Sheher sunsaan hai, kidhar jaye,

Khaq hokar kahi bikhar jaye..."

It is funny how every little thing we do becomes a story.

Post Writers' Block Post

2011-10-16T11:19:00.004+05:30

Here I am.

These days have been good.

I have taken buses to places I had perhaps seen before but had no memory of.

I have seen whole cities built on sandstone and heard stories of the stones.

I have spent a day on a new toothpaste alone and no change of clothes.

And I have seen Gods become soggy lumps of clay on sticks.

Yet, I have lived. And I have loved.

Photo: Pushkar, 2011

2011-09-06T20:16:00.001+05:30

Don’t be scared of the forceps, child

Although the knives have been sharpened well.

The needle will only prick for a second,

And you will only bleed for a while.

The steel may pinch your unformed toes

And bring a soft cringe on your slimy forehead.

It’s only a few hours’ doing, child-

Don’t let all the blood scare you.

Your mother will probably heave a sigh

Because this was the way you had to die;

Only from the clanging of metal claws,

Cocooned in mists of injected anaesthetics-

Faraway from the wars we adults fight.

Don’t cry dear child, you’ll be alright.

2011-08-24T14:47:00.002+05:30

I dont remember the last time summer was like this.

This reaching of emotional pits, dealing with losses and then going through magic as crazy as this.

There's magic in the flickering of lights at the dead of night, in filling the house with the smell of cakes on the verge of being baked. And then there is some more magic in seeing something for the hundredth time and yet not seeing enough of it.

This summer will always be a summer of ice creams, crazy early mornings, crazier late nights and nibbling at cornflakes and curd.

Touchwood.

Tsk

2011-07-28T15:07:00.003+05:30

there must be some joy in giving into a lie

and then some more in living it.

there must be some joy in telling yourself that it's the truth

and then in saying it till you believe it.

there must be some joy in laughing till your jaw hurts

and then in slow falling off a cliff.

the world has its own joys, we are just too busy counting tears.

Notes to someone I wouldnt have known

2011-07-05T19:34:00.002+05:30

Some nine years back my knee shed some blood outside your window.

This was when the teenager had just realised how the world seemed a better place when the two wheels of her cycle moved so fast that one couldn’t figure out the spokes in it.

Don’t think you saw it though. I wouldn’t really know because I didn’t look up.

I don’t think you watched me walk down the road that your window opens out to, as I ran to school-always a few minutes late and came back from school, always with ink stains on my shirt.

The day I left this space you and I happen to co-habit, my taxi stopped below your window and I rolled down my glass.

Probably to take of this place all I could in one blink, or probably to let my fingers comb through this air you and I have breathed all our lives.

But not to look up, for sure.

Years later, my knee still has its nine year old scar.

We have become rectangles of yellow light we see going off and on, before the lights are put to sleep.

2011-06-19T21:43:00.004+05:30

that house does not stand anymore.
the house that smelt of water boiling over wood, that had a dark kitchen with very tall shelves.
i remember tall jars of papery, round sohan papdi stacked in a row and this woman who fed them to me. i remember her sari's end that went all over my face in order to wipe out the sticky threads of the sweet.
her sari smelt of the day's lunch. and a little bit of the breakfast.
her hair was bundled up in a tight bun and i, a girl of six or seven, stared at the amount of hair she had.
hardly shampooed, seldom oiled. washed, dried, tied up. sometimes combed.
the hair was cut to the shoulder by my mother one afternoon when she couldn't take its weight anymore. there was a newspaper spread across the floor that filled up with hair. thick strands of black hair.her hairline reached her shoulders and ended at her temples.
i began to miss the big smear of vermillion on her forehead, she did too. but never mentioned.
she missed my pishi, who died some ten years back and my jethu whose dead body she never saw through the bomb blast rubble.
she didnt cry for them. not in front of us.
there were these days recently when she did cry taking their names. and a few days after that she died talking, asking her attendant to call her sons and daughters. people noted how in her last years, she began to look like her brothers.
a fight that spanned over decades, across countries finally ended with that inexplicable, nauseatingly sweet smell of flowers mixed with that of incense, room freshener and ogoru.
Rest In Peace, Amma.

2011-06-11T22:56:00.000+05:30

Megh peon er bag-er bhetor monkharaper deesta…

(The cloud postman’s bag is full of sad papers…)

This was what I was listening to when it finally rained today. Life loves a laugh.

Rains are very good storytellers.

They tell me very old stories of running around in uniform around the school field. I feel a weird tingle of joy rush up to my head that makes me want to keep turning in giddy circles. I feel the wetness of the thin white cloth on my back as the air fills up with screams of giggly, running school girls who were in too much of a hurry to grow up.

At times, they tell me of a boy and a girl sitting at a bus stop. The lanes in my head fill up with roadside puddles as the girl’s sandals get muddy with the muck reckless taxis splash on her feet. For those twenty minutes it doesn’t matter that her feet turn a dirty shade of brown, or that they don’t have money for a cab. The boy rummages through his pocket and takes out a soggy handkerchief and the girl smiles and refuses to wipe her feet with it. He probably decides that when he grows up he’d make sure that this girl never has to take a cab, or wait for buses with dirty wet feet. Water droplets run down their hair but for those twenty minutes, it didn’t matter that they’d catch a cold or that their bus had broken down somewhere in its route-far away from their muddy potholed bus stop.

I hear of a woman who remembered how her husband used to silently wipe a tear in movie halls, how he sniffed at some music. Maybe it rained one of those afternoons when the vinyl screen flickered and he sniffed silently so that she wouldn’t know, and when she stole a look at him sniffing and faintly smiled to herself. Maybe it got very difficult to get a cab back home that evening.

Rains always paint me a watercolour of a very old story-hurriedly scribbled and hidden away in some moth-eaten, dog eared diary. Rains make me wish that they weren’t in so much of a hurry to grow up.

First attempts at mush.

2011-05-23T23:00:00.003+05:30

This thing has been getting too much to bear, really.

The way they looked at each other-from the tiniest corners of their eyes, across the road he walked down everyday.

The way she tucked a loose strand of hair behind her right ear trying to suppress a stupid grin each time she caught him looking.

This way how each of their silences was being packed with so many inexplicable little unnamed desires, was getting crazy. It was like you could touch the air between their faces and feel the vibrations of these weird waves hitting every molecule of space.

It was like the air- this thing.

This thing that was getting too hard to bear.

Each time she smiled, each time he ran his fingers through his new haircut.

It just got crazier this way. Crazier and Better.

Neither of them had the right word for it till he hit upon it that night while he sat trying to read a book.

The corners of his lips curled into a smile.

"I swear, man. It's always so electric.", he said to himself.

Here's looking at you, Kid.

2011-05-16T01:09:00.005+05:30

When my one year and four months old niece bangs her tiny little head against the glass of my sister's car window, she doesn't cry anymore. Instead, she slaps the glass with her hands and leaves behind a tiny, wet imprint on the glass that reflects the pacing lights of the city traffic. Amidst the cacophony of blaring horns, I listen to her barely formed words giving vent to her nascent pool of anger.

That's a lesson learnt, my dear D.

That it is not one's fault when one gets hurt.

Thank you. Love you.

pic: Pratichi Basu, 2010.

2011-05-09T23:54:00.003+05:30

You know how microcosm-macrocosm works, right?

So today when I took out my clothes and folded them and stacked them in my naphthalene scented suitcase, I thought that maybe life will figure itself out too-in neat folds, in crisp pleats, lined with smells of last winter.

When I combed my hair today, holding the ends tightly while letting the comb scuffle through the knots, I thought that maybe life was sorting itself out somewhere.

In jumps and falls.

In tsk-s and sighs.

2011-04-23T14:54:00.002+05:30

I sometimes wonder if all this will actually turn out the way we've been told.

Is it not possible that these colours that we've painted are meant to turn gray, and these roads we've walked will all be dust one day?

All our pages will be ashes, all our words- hollow syllables mouthed by some alien tongue.

Does it not make sense then to start on that run now?

To come out in the t-shirt and shorts you've slept in and take the next bus to that sleepy, foggy little town?

To start spinning in circles till we get too dizzy to even stand straight up?

Talk

2011-03-25T17:13:00.006+05:30

- I thought you didn't take sugar in your tea.

-Well, you never wore funny golfer caps either.

-Are we here to fight?

-I am here for the sugar bowl.

-Wow, isn't that sweet of you!

-I'd smile at that, but Diabetes at this age could be fatal for you.

Silence.

Occasionally punctuated by soft sips of tea and the whirring of the cappuccino machine.

Somewhere across the window, street lights make love to the rain water.

Somewhere on that table, a sugar bowl lies untouched.

Traffic lights turn red on the threads of a golf cap.

And the radio plays songs of love.

Pic: Bombay, 2011

2011-03-14T00:55:00.002+05:30

all i could hear were your thin fingers strumming at your guitar when i knew of your death. the same song you sang for us three years back.
no, i could not tell blue skies from pain then and still cant.
when the world danced infront of my eyes to a mad drunken frenzy, all i could see was that long corridor of red and you sitting at the end of it. and that face that passed a smile at times, the voice that spoke a few times in class.
i knew of your pain that afternoon we sat cutting marigold petals from their stalks, even when you sat in the front lawns staring at the sun for hours and even when they told me that you decided to end it all with that last step.
i knew and did nothing. we werent friends, and i dont know if i could help if i tried. it's just this silence over these questions that disturbs. questions thought too late, not asked at all.
rest in peace.
i hope you find that happiness you forever wished for, looked for.

2011-02-15T23:16:00.006+05:30

Rains either make me feel very happy or extremely sad, never anything in between. And it has been raining in Delhi for two days now- the kind that always accompany the winter on its way back home. There's something comforting that I find in winters. Something very personal, probably because I am a winter born. Something soothing, something very freeing. These days have not given me much chance to do anything with them-they have been coming and going without leaving behind too many footprints. It's like walking on a drawn line- you have no choice but to walk, you dont know where you are headed but you know you're moving, getting somewhere. I dont remember the last time I was this unsure. It's like being thirteen again- underconfident, confused and zero willpower. I guess there are always those issues that never go away irrespective whether one is thirteen or one hundred and thirteen.

On good days, I enjoy my active bursts....like the day I did up the room, or went gift shopping for a very close friend, or roamed around the streets of Bombay doing nothing. On some bad days, I feel I cant do a thing and on others i feel that I can do a lot but do nothing about it.

I am hoping this is only a phase or if it isnt, that it behaves like one.

And that summers never come.

P.S: the pictures are of one of the walls of my room. The part which lies empty in the middle will soon have an original DDLJ poster I picked up from Chor Bazaar :)

2011-01-07T01:22:00.002+05:30

Sometimes when I lie awake on my hostel bed, I look out of my little window and think whether you think of me the way I think of you.

I wonder if you ever picture me walking down the street below your window, or see me bending over a book in our seven storeyed library.

I wonder if you ever think of the way I look when I run my fingers through my hair.

Sometimes I think if your songs speak of me the way my dances speak of you.

I wonder if you imagine the roads I walk up and down everyday, the way I see you stuck in traffic jams in a city faraway from where I stay.

Sometimes I wonder if you are lying awake on your bed, looking out of your little window and thinking of me.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow...

2010-12-31T14:42:00.003+05:30

Another year, eh?
Our lives have become like airports in winters- complete with their departures and arrivals but one has no clue about timings. Airports have been the only constants in my life for these four years. The only spaces which remain the same amidst a constantly changing landscape of cities, homes and people. The only smiles that remain constant are the ones on the faces of air hostesses. Yes they are mostly fake but atleast they're comforting.
This year has been a year of departures mostly- old smiles departed leaving behind some very bitter tears, old bonds departed leaving behind only an empty shell and old spaces evaporated and only left behind an irritating stink. The stink of decay and loss. The year taught me that Trust is an obsolete and irrelevant concept today. It is expected that you keep your thoughts to yourself and sweat under their accumulated force and it is stupid to speak your heart out to your "best friend" (again, a tautological belief) because if you can afford to part with it, the whole world deserves a piece of it. That's the way the cookie crumbles.

Of the arrivals.
I arrived into a lovely university this year and into the company of some lovely strangers who have turned out to be great people to talk to. This year has been a year of meeting very old friends, sorting out old feuds and, of being made to believe that strangers are the nicest people you can ever meet.
They come out of nowhere and let you stay in their room, volunteer to design presentation covers, agree to burst crackers with you even when Diwali is a week away, travel unreserved to Jaisalmer, help you clean rooms and spend afternoons buying mattresses and rugs and to make you realise that it's ok to be messed up.
Arrivals, no matter how few, always bring in joy...enough joy to get over the innumerable departures that are both unavoidable and necessary.

And for everything else, there are those constants, those runways without whom no departure or arrival makes sense.

Here's to my constants and my arrivals, Thank you.
And to the departures, thanks for the space and for making me stronger.

Happy New Year to all of you. Make the best out of the good that happens and try not taking the bad too seriously.
Shit Happens. And it's important to flush it down.

2010-12-26T12:09:00.004+05:30

I realise I havent blogged for the longest time. Apologies.
It isnt that nothing worth writing happened but just that I was too lazy to jot it all down. That road trip did happen-in women's unreserved compartments and in autos manned by talkative men. We walked the town in two days and spent our Diwali watching fireworks light up the night sky, sitting by the Gudesar lake. I wish I was adept enough to describe the moments in words.

We came back to face our first semester exams and its accompanied frenzy of writing hurried papers and spending sleepless nights and bathless days cooped up in our cold hostel rooms. We came back home after that. In a Rajdhani, that too. So everyone who thinks I'm too la-dee-da for trains, you can give our mouths a little rest :P

Home has always been too much of drama for me, and this year hasnt been any exception. But all these years have taught me to take a seat and enjoy all the drama while it lasts. So this year I decided to oil my hair, sit down in my balcony-right in the middle of the spot of warm yellow sunshine, peel out oranges and see the world act out its drama on the road infront of my house.

Winters are meant for just that.
And for learning how to make a new dessert everyday.
Hope you all had a lovely Christmas, have a good year ahead.

Pat.

2010-10-31T00:36:00.006+05:30

This is going to be a long post...

Coming back to the Uni from home is always like a hurricane. There is the backlog that takes an age to be cleared, the wonderful people you have to meet up and share vacation gossip with and finally, there is the inevitability of sinking one's self back into the grind. And that is always a problem especially after the immense flux that one's body dissolves into, in Calcutta during Durga Puja.

The flux is a little overpowering- it is a little dizzying to stand amidst an ever changing landscape of lights, colours, sounds and, most importantly, friendships. Pujas have always been a time of forming new bonds and letting go of a few old ones and I think it's only natural that a few old things give way to a few new things but it is the pace, at which that happens, that actually makes one dizzy- sometimes to the extent of nausea.

I'd let that be for the time being.

The good thing is, I finally have a room in the Uni. With a completely (thankfully) insane person who wants to place a glow in the dark mural in the room. It'd be really cool, now that I think of it. It's a small room with not much of empty space but at the end of the day, it is MY room and it already has the world's prettiest rug (thanks to Ria's timely observation). Yes, I also happen to share my name with the Roommate.

Oh, and there is the Road Trip.

So here's to a good Diwali and even better days after that :)

P.S: It's that lovely time again. Delhi winters!

P.P.S: So it wasn't that long a post,eh?

Flower

2010-09-25T00:04:00.003+05:30

Two people sat side by side.

One boy who wrote music and a girl who had forgotten to dance.

They saw sunlight through the gaps in the wall,

And rains through taxi windows.

The clock struck another year,

Another Rhododendron opened its eyes to the world,

And another cup of coffee blew out smoke-

Into the blue sky above.

Another year and another story told-

In black and white and in technicolour,

In taxi rides and muddy shoes.

It was another year when the Rhododendron bloomed.

Tag Time.

2010-09-19T01:00:00.008+05:30

It's been ages since I've done a tag. Since Shreya tagged me, here it is:

As for the tagging, I tag whoever reads this and wants to do it. :)

1.If you married the last person you texted, what would your last name be?

I wouldnt change my last name even if Art Garfunkel was the last person I texted. (Isnt Garfunkel the coolest last name ever?)

2. Were you happy when you woke up today?

Was too groggy to realise how I was feeling.

3. What’s something that can always make you feel better? When did you need it last?

Citrus smells and Chocolate cake. Needed a bath in citrus body wash last week when I was dead tired from writing a paper.

4. What are you excited for?

Everything that is yet to happen.

5. What were you doing yesterday?

Dancing to bad songs played by shitty DJs. (Was our hostel freshers)

6. What's the last thing you put in your mouth?

Masala Maggi from the hostel dhaba.

7. Have a best friend(s)?

Think so.

8. Are you scared to fall in love?

No, why would I?

9. Do you think teenagers can be in love?

Absolutely.

10. Last person you wanted to punch in the face?

This guy who sat behind us in the theatre today and was going on shouting out what happens next!

11.What do you want right now?

Go for a run.

12. Who was the last person you took a picture with?

Nini, Shayeari and Anirban...in Chandni Chowk. What a happy day!

13. Are you single/taken/heartbroken/or confused?

All of the above :P

14. When was the last time you cried?

Dude! Too personal.

15. Do you have a good relationship with your parents?

Mostly.

16. Do you find it hard to trust others?

Often.

17. I bet you miss somebody right now..

And who are you to place bets on me?

18. Can you honestly say you're okay right now?

Hmm...yeah.Okay is a good vague word.

19. Tell me what's on your mind.

Dude,seriously. Who are you?!

20. What are you looking forward to in the next three months?

Just too many things- Pujos mostly. Apart from that, a few papers that I have to write, shopping, going home, getting a job, starting dance again etc.

21. Have you ever worn the opposite sex's clothing?

Yes, pretty often.

22. When did you last talk to your number 1 top friend?

What on earth is a number 1 top friend?!

23. Do you have someone of the opposite sex you can tell anything to?

Yes.

24. How's your heart?

Beating, as of now.

25. Have you ever felt like you weren't important?

Oh half my life was spent doing just that.

26. Do you think somebody's in love with you?

Hmm...good question that.

27. What are you planning on doing after this?

Write a few things that need to be written, then sleep.

28. When will your next kiss take place?

This is getting scary. Will you be crouching in a corner and take a picture when that happens?

29. Have you told anybody you loved them today?

"They" know.

30. Who do you not get along with?

Age has taught me the art of tolerance.

31. What are you wearing right now?

Clothes. (Surprise Surprise!)

32. Are you wasting your time on the person you like?

What sort of a sadistic question is this? I hope not.

33. How did you feel when you woke up?

Groggy.

34. Do you wish someone would call or text you right now?

It's 1:28 am. Whoever had to call/text has done so already.

35. Do you crack your knuckles?

Yes.

36. What were you doing yesterday at midnight?

Dancing myself silly.

37. Who's the first B in your contacts?

Baba.

38. When was the last time you laughed really hard?

This afternoon.

39. Last awkward moment?

My existance is full of those

40. Are you afraid of the dark?

Yes.

41. Do you have good vision?

I hope so.

42. Have you ever tripped someone?

Yes, myself. Every other day.

43. Have you ever slapped someone?

Yes. Regret it.

44. Do you laugh off embarrassing moments?

Yes, that's the best thing to do.

45. Can you go out in public looking like you do right now?

Yes, and you have a problem with that?

46. Is it easy for someone to make you smile?

Pretty much.

47. Has anyone put their arms around you in the past 5 days?

Yes.

48. Do you miss the way things used to be?

What "things"?

49. How often do you hold back from saying what you are thinking?

Quite often, it's a wise thing to do.

50. Want someone back in your life?

No, people who need to go end up going. Always helps.

But yes, a few people back from the dead would be nice.

51. Will tomorrow be better than today?

Hopefully. Today wasnt too bad, really.

52.Does it bother you when someone lies to you?

Depends on who the person is.

53. Is there anyone who understands your relationship status?

Good Lord! It's hardly rocket science.

54. Are you a naturally happy person? Or is your happiness forced?

100 % natural. Scientifically Proven.

55. Is there anyone you wish would fall in love with you?

"Love" is a strong word really. But who doesnt wish? :P

2010-08-19T23:03:00.002+05:30

It's funny how we live life.

Spend decades in a city, make friends, make promises, write letters, gift earrings, cry over coffee.

Then leave all that behind for another city.

Another life.

Another set of friends, a new set of promises, type in texts, gift more earrings and gloss over tears.

Then you leave all that and go back expecting people to be the same.

The kind who made friends with you, made promises, wrote letters, gifted earrings, hugged when you cried.

But they change.

And you are left rummaging through old letters, locating pairs of earrings and lying awake in Caffeine induced insomnia.

2010-08-04T22:48:00.004+05:30

I havent watched Inception or a 3D version of Alice in Wonderland.

But I have dipped my feet in the blue seas and seen the moon disappear into vanishing waves...

and smiled each time the cellphone screen lit up beside my sandy head.

pic: Puri,2010

Of Homes.

2010-07-07T22:54:00.004+05:30

Speaking of homes and houses,there's a very strong bout of sorrow that hits me each time i see a house being broken down in order to make flats.

there are quite a few being broken down in the area where we stay. and what makes me sadder is the way these homes are broken down-with one blow after another with these huge hammers.men in lungis standing in the heat first strip out the paint, then the plaster and then the bricks as sweat runs down in lines down their sunburnt backs.sometimes they sing songs or they chat about what they're going to do with the money they get after they're done breaking down the house.then one day suddenly, we only see rods and bars sticking out like the rib cage of a skeleton.then one day that goes too.

my grandparents from both sides owned huge houses both of which got difficult for the sons and daughters of the families to maintain.both of them have been sold off to promoters.one house has been left alone while the surrounding land was sold and the other has been sold in its entirety and in a few months, rods are all that is going to remain.then,they will go too.

i sometimes wonder what it feels to see one's home being broken down.the room where you learnt to crawl, the wall you doodled on, the ceiling you slept under...bricks that knew all your secrets, the floors that your feet ran on.the home you made.the times you lived.the breath you left behind.

i thank god today that i stay nowhere close to where my grandparents stayed.and that i stay in a flat that wont be broken down.

"If memories could be canned, would they also have expiry dates? If so, I hope they last for centuries."

Thought Bubble.

2010-06-28T15:36:00.008+05:30

what is home really?

a pink building with a balcony full of plants.

a grey house that is situated between a white one and another grey one.

a cobbled pavement next to the bus stop...

..."home" is only a feeling.

"Would that I could gather your houses into my hand,

and like a sower scatter them in forest and meadow."

-Gibran.

picture: Pondicherry, 2010.

Insomnia induced observations.

2010-06-06T13:03:00.003+05:30

All the kisses blown into the air have vanished. Eyeliners removed, lipsticks wiped off.
Dresses have been tossed into laundry bags and perfumes have evaporated off skins. Now is the time when the mirror sees us-our eyes not lined with kohl, lipstick staining only the corners the tissue missed.
This is the time when the woman slowly disappears into the mirror and the night watches on with passive disinterest.
In some building faraway building, a light turns on. And all we see is a mother waking up to apparent wails of her child.
The window stops the wail from entering the world's eardrums.

So Long.

2010-05-21T22:41:00.009+05:30

-Are you filling up the nomination form?

-I think so. But I dunno…might not end up doing it.

-Hey, you filling up the form right?

-I dunno. You’ll get through. You did it last year also.

-This is Vani.

-Err…Hi

-Err…Hi. We have a film to work on and we have three hours.

I am actually glad the selection interviews never took place and the fact that we were the only four who had applied. I know I wouldn’t have got selected (what with my silly habit of “umm”ing and “hmm”ing during interviews) and then I wouldn’t have met you guys.

I have been putting this off for quite sometime now thinking I’d write this post “later” but I figured there is no “later” anymore and not writing about the last year with you three would just be unfair.

I came to know one of you only in Agra after you threw up laughing at something I said. You, I thought, were just too cool and well read and therefore we had nothing in common. And you, I thought, are really very pretty and extremely cerebral till you became my our own special child.

But thank god, I came to know you.

Through a year of screening bad films that everyone attended and good films no one did and a year of borrowing staplers from other societies, making glasses out of Coke bottles and seeing files getting chewed up by dogs, we have lived- occasionally losing tempers, weeping, not giving a damn and smelling flowers. The important part is that we lived and lived together.

Whatever we end up doing- FTII film appreciation course as a graying but still as-cool-as-ever fifty year old, assisting Tarantino, peeing off flyovers or just being whiny about life, I just want you guys to remember the last one year and that I’m very very thankful for your tolerance and love.

Ladies, it has been a pleasure.

If any of you three are reading this, you’d know :)

-“We are Projekt with a K, we are cool ok? Hui!”

Being stupid and foolish and daft.All at the same time.

2010-05-14T14:53:00.005+05:30

I feel like I am back to being my post XIIth standard self again. The same feeling of insecurity, the same self loathing and the same feeling of being absolutely useless.
And when I say that,I am not looking at only the sorry state of my academic future. I am back to being the stupid girl who was used to being a doormat or the fodder for all the gossip mongering tongues of the school and the extended friends' circles.
If I had to choose, I'd say that was the worst time of my life.And now,this.
I have realised that I can deal with lies, but fakes are just beyond all the levels of my tolerance.Liars only lie but fakes pretend to be someone they're not and almost make you believe in their hoax identities.
But ultimately, it IS my fault because it is I who puts her foot into traps again and again...it is my fault that I smile back to fake smiles and console fake tears, knowing fully well that they are fake!
I am just hopeless and beyond all help.
Because you see, you help them who dont know what shit they are in. But I know.
I, you see, am fully aware.
So here I am-stepping into another mound of shit as I type.

150.

2010-05-09T00:38:00.003+05:30

"Chirojibon amar beena-tarey

tomar aaghat laglo baarey baarey,

tai to amar nana surer taaney

Praaney tomar porosh nilem dhorey..."

"All my life, on my veena strings-

You've hit the notes over and over again,

Which is why through my myriad tunes and songs,

I have kept your touch intact in my heart..."

To you, whose words came to me before everyone else's.

To you, whose songs i owe my first dance to.

To you, who has taken care to set each and every of my moods to some song or verse.

To you, who changes forms in every page and yet stays the same forever.

To you...for all your words.

Sunshine on my shoulders...

2010-04-27T00:19:00.003+05:30

it rained at home today as i sat in my little room here watching the dust on the road outside.

little grains that flew around touching me, touching the leaves before finally laying itself down on the face of the road.

the heat escaped the heart of the earth and made its way up the crevices and landed as tiny droplets of sweat on my palm.the warm wind that came out from nowhere, took them off my palm and perhaps carried them back to the heart which pined for them.

maybe they shared stories,maybe they talked of me-of how i smile to myself when i stand in a crowded bus or how my feet move to a song i sing inside my head.

they dont share stories where it rained today.they dont hear Joni Mitchell in my head.

sitting here in my little hot room, i saw you many many miles away as you bid goodbye to the blue sky above and let rain form bubbles under your shirt.

as for me, i was happy looking at my palm-watching sweat beads appear and disappear.

i felt your smile in my hair.i knew it was raining at home today.

my love song.

2010-04-05T22:54:00.000+05:30

I like to think that I made you up inside my head-much like Plath’s famous Mad Girl. So when the world turned the most beautiful shade of peach during sunset yesterday I knew that in some dusty bylanes of the old city, I met you as you came walking over the dry leaves that crushed under your new shoes. I sat under some nameless tree I think-looking for silkworms in the leaves. And just when I thought that I had made you up inside my head, you touched me-turning me into the most beautiful shade of peach. And we became a part of the dust the sun took away with itself.

I thought it’d be peach again today, but I realised I made that peach up too. So when the sunset turned blue today, I realised that you and I talk only with peach around. And on other days, I’m happy to have you inside my head.

2010-03-23T00:50:00.004+05:30

These havent been the best of times.to cut down on the melodrama, let me tell you that these have been the most blah times.much like in Waiting For Godot, nothing happens in my life either. ofcourse this "nothing" has nothing to do with the existentialist, intellectual "nothing" that fills up our texts.

If life really was meaningless and futile, I would definitely like to celebrate this futility and not rot indoors by coughing my guts out.

I really feel like travelling-not the hills,not the seas but somewhere historic. Say Rome, Greece or even Orchha.there's a beautiful feeling in touching sculptures or ancient walls...it's like touching the stone but running your fingers through the volumes of stories the stones have to say.you almost want to press your ears to these stones and listen to them, as they sometimes whisper or sometimes break into some quaint song.i want to relive that weird churning in the stomach that occurs each time i enter some old palace or castle (what is the difference,anyway?) it's a feeling that almost makes you believe that you have been there before-maybe as some servant or the princess' parakeet or maybe the Queen herself!

Oh i ramble on, like i do every time my exams are approaching. maybe i should just settle for a life in Seattle-in some apartment where i'll just sit and watch sitcoms...and perhaps,get fatter and fatter. Atleast that way, i dont need to rake through my brains when i need to write four page long answers to what "nothing" means.

heh.

p.s: talking of stones that talk, the picture is of the shore temple at Mahabalipuram-one of the few places that i visited alone.

Because I believe in Yesterday...

2010-03-11T00:22:00.006+05:30

What do you say when you know you wont ever be back in that room again-the six or seven of us (a little high) watching the video which started it all.yes i talked only so that i wouldnt cry but ended up crying all the same.
It's hard to imagine days when i dont need to walk in through those gates into the red building that faintly smells of shampoo all the time, that lights up in the sunlight like few other buildings do, that watch on as girls walk in and women walk out...year after year.
Yes i have walked down corridors in rage shouting expletives at this building but it took me in each time it rained and i needed a shade.i might not have fallen down running in this building but it has surely added a certain amount of confidence in my walk.it has made me realise things i never would've understood otherwise, it has made me read of worlds i didnt know existed.
From the wide eyed fresher,through the striking second year to the crying final year,i have come a long way and it is time now to take a bow.
here's to you-each one of you-who is a part of the Class of 2010,LSR (specially the Department of English).
Thank you for these three years.Thank you for being you.
Because my world will never be the same again.

Sundays and Lipstick.

2010-02-21T04:08:00.010+05:30

I suddenly missed dancing today.Not the moronic club dancing that I occasionally indulge in, but the classical dance that I trained for, for years. Dance was a part of my Sundays.Unlike a lot of children in my generation, I never got to watch Mahabharat on TV, because I remember its timings clashing with my classes. More than the nostalgia, there was this sense of deep seated guilt of having wronged my Guru and also a sense of waste. Not a waste of talent (I was never a great dancer) but a waste of knowledge. Imagine having learnt something for around a decade and then not remembering almost all of what you've learnt. I remembered a taal in the middle of class the other day but could not, for the life of me, break it up into its constituent taalis and khaalis.
I dont remember when or why I stopped dancing, but I like telling myself that it was around 11th standard, when I had too many tuition classes to attend.
I had a bright yellow costume with a black border, and the blouse had tiny fishes woven into its border and my ghungroos got pretty heavy by the time I stopped (as a ritual,the number of bells in the ghungroo increase with every year of your training)
I miss the unified ringing of the ghungroos and the dirt that stuck to the sole of my feet after the lessons got over. There was also a typical way in which the dupatta was tied-one end covering the chest and the other wound tightly around the waist.
Maybe someday I'll get back to dancing, which was my primary hobby. (I began dancing at the age of four, writing in middle school and started taking photographs only in high school) Till then, I'll just look back and smile at memories of wearing alta on my feet and fingertips, of wearing a fake bun for the head-dress we wore, and of licking off the lipstick the make-up men put on us before shows.

P.S: the photograph was taken during the Mylapore Festival in Chennai.Mylapore is a lot like North Calcutta- the old and orthodox settlement with beautiful houses and dingy lanes.the dance form here is Bharatnatyam, but I trained in Odissi.

Losing Chunks.

2010-02-01T02:28:00.000+05:30

Last night I dreamt of my kindergarten school. I saw I was walking down 8B more while I ran into this woman who knew me when I was 2, who taught me the difference between red and blue and between a circle and a square, among other things. “Mary Aunty” we used to call her. I saw Mary Aunty in my sleep-in a cotton sari and a big bindi, and she took me to my old school. I saw the dimly lit room which had colourful soft boards on all the walls. I saw the mounds of plasticine that were moulded into being pink elephants and green ducks. I walked around barefeet feeling the coldness of the ground where I learnt how to walk straight and I think I saw the green wooden merry-go-round too.

Having woken up from sleep, I called up my mother to ask her if the school still stands down that road in Jadavpur. She said it shut down a long time back.

It’s funny how we are growing old everyday, not by blowing off candles but by these little losses. The other day J.D. Salinger passed away and I felt I lost a big chunk of my growing up with him. I remembered my school leaving diary and what someone I totally love, had written. She wrote, “I always thought I was the catcher, not realizing that it was you who has been catching me all through.” Holden Caulfield has been a part of my growing up, he opened me up to a magic that only works once. With magic of this sort, the rabbit gets pulled out of the hat only once and you forever remember that ephemeral moment when the white gloved hand of the magician pulls a smiling rabbit out of his red ribbon lined black hat. You try and hold on to that moment of disbelief forever, because you know that, that is going to be the only time you will see anything of that sort ever happen.

“We are losing all our childhoods”, I said.
“It all has to go someday”, you replied.

I believe you. But I’m holding onto my moments of magic.

14 A, 14 B

2010-01-20T23:24:00.006+05:30

India wasnt quite turning out the way she thought it would. It had been an hour since she'd been sitting inside the aircraft that stood stranded on the Delhi runway because of the thick fog that veiled the line of sight. Very little was visible outside the window except for the colourful tails of other aircrafts that stood stranded as well.She sat between this girl in a red pullover who didnt seem too keen on striking a conversation and another suited business man type man who was a bit too keen.The breakfast served in-flight was pretty good. To be honest, she didnt expect an Indian airline to serve such good food.Her eyes fell on this blue coloured book the red pullover girl was reading- The Bell Jar. "Ah, the morbid sort", she thought. And it was then that her grey eyes caught the two bangles that adorned the red pullover girl's wrists-circles of brown with little patterns of white on them. Were they made of bamboo or wood? Whatever they were, they were unlike any other bangle she'd seen before but they stood out like sore thumbs-jarring against the red pullover."People with negative fashion sense shouldn't own such pretty things", she thought, "if only she turned super generous suddenly..."

-------------------

Her first trip to Chennai was being delayed because of the thick blanket of fog over Delhi. Bored,she decided to read this book from her course which she had abandoned after two pages the last time she tried reading it. "Too morbid",she had thought.She didnt really feel like chatting up with this firang who sat next to her."Portuguese", she said to herself after stealing a glance at her magenta passport.The shady North Indian businessman type person on the firang's right was giving her enough company-unsolicited though.Breakfast was over when she saw the blank green (or were they grey?) eyes staring at the bangles on her wrists. Self-conciousness spread through every inch of her body as she tried hiding the embarrassment behind this book she was reading.She knew they didnt match with her outfit in any way whatsoever and wished that the green eyes would only stop looking. Infact, she was even ready to give them off to her, she could keep them as her Indian souvenirs.If only she could tell her that the sari ate up all the space in her suitcase and she had no option but to wear these bangles,that matched with the sari, which refused to fit into the baggage.

Hairloss,exams and anonymity

2009-12-09T04:47:00.005+05:30

I remembered those high school songs today-the stuff we listened to when our hormones had lives of their own...
Mohiner Ghoraguli was one of the bands i started listening to,at 15...from old cassettes Ma collected.does anyone listen to cassettes these days?are tape recorders available these days?
I think i have a carton full of cassettes lying somewhere in the Golf Green house,or maybe the Salt Lake house.I must look into it this time and maybe,i'll look for my walkman too.
Anyway,after about 5 years from when i was 15, i listened to these lines...

"Kauke cheno na tumi,
tomake chene na keu-
shei to bhalo..."
("it's good that you know no one,and no one knows you)

I realised that one may run from one city to another in search of that evading anonymity,but very few things change.You become a known face,your habits become known,everyone comes to know what you like to eat,everyone ends up knowing how much you love purple...
everyone comes to know how you lose hair during exams.
each year.every year.

Plasticine smell and Fountain ponytail.

2009-11-22T03:03:00.005+05:30

I was on my way to teach the kids-running down the Khan Market-Pandara Road junction when there was this sudden waft of plasticine smell.It was kind of weird because there was nothing around me except a huge plot of Metro construction which didnt have a remote possibility of using plasticine!yet there it was...in the air around me.in the air that entered my being.
i remembered days,seventeen years back,in a ground floor classroom-not very brightly lit,with colourful boards on the walls.i remembered this girl who sat next to me,who later came to know the best, and perhaps the worst, of me.this girl whose cheek i used to tug at everyday-with so much force that she cried (the cause of my violent streak still remains unexplained).and the very next morning,there she would be-smiling at me,with a fountain-like ponytail on top of her head.
pains we cause these days, seem to stay on forever.
i wish things were as simple now.

2009-10-28T22:41:00.001+05:30

We Bengalis have this weird obsession with names. While people from most other regions of the country get through life with one name, Bengalis have atleast two.One “Bhalo Naam” or the official name that adorns certificates, exercise books’ labels, etc. One could say the “Bhalo Naam” is the “written” name. While “Daak Naam”, on the other hand, is the pet name used by the family or its equivalents and childhood friends. It is, quite literally, the “called” name. (“daak” means “to call” and “naam” is “name”)
I have had a love-hate relationship with my pet name. Admittedly it is not as embarrassing as the run-of-the-mill Buri, Mummum, Mou etc, but I never really got too fond of it. What is really interesting is this strange sense of comfort that one begins to associate with one’s pet name.
Somewhere down the line, I guess I have begun to cherish being called by my pet name and perhaps, also the people who call me by it. There’s this odd sense of reassurance when you meet an old friend who introduces you to his friends by your pet name or when, in an alien city, in the middle of a market with people who only call you by your “bhalo naam”, someone suddenly calls out your pet name. Though I’ve often been embarrassed by such loud greetings, I admit that there has always been an accompanying sense of ease in knowing that there’s someone who has seen me in my most basic self-perhaps with my braces on or with my ugly middle-school girl bob. It is with these people I can laugh out loud or maybe walk around in my pajamas.
The sad part, however, is that as we grow older, the number of people who call us by our pet name decreases. Grandparents pass away, grand aunts grow amnesiac and para friends drift apart. That is when, to reclaim that little piece of memory that “growing up” consumed, we smile each time someone-anyone-calls us by the name that appeared on the envelopes our family gifted money in or the name that our playmates shouted out below our balconies to announce the arrival of another evening that was meant to be spent playing-completely unaware of the days when this very name would betray its nomenclature and be rarely called.

P.S: i am sorry for not having blogged for so long.let's hope this is the end of my step motherly treatment for my blog.

Leather

2009-09-25T00:01:00.002+05:30

Love is like that fly and the fire.
The fire that burns irrespective of how dark the world around is.
The fire that warms inspite of all the cold.
The fly that flies around, no matter how still the world becomes.
The fly that always runs into the fire, irrespective of whatever else he can run into.

Love.
Is like that rose they etched on leather.

2009-09-14T22:46:00.001+05:30

I have always felt brides look the best on the "Baashi Biye" day, that is the day after the wedding-the day when she goes away to her In-Laws' place. It is on that day that i feel the strain of the wedding, that shrouds the bride for months, is gone and yet there is a sense of nervousness in her sleep deprived eyes. The loud make up of the previous night is washed away and the hair is freed from the tight bun held together with an array of pins.
There is hardly any trace of make up and her face sort of lights up with the tinge of vermilion in the parting of her hair and the gold of the jewellery she wears.
When my sister got married, she looked her best on her Bashi Biye, though she got herself dark circles from all the crying. But inspite of all the fatigue and all the money that was spent to doll her up the night before, I feel she looked the best without any makeup, in a bindi and those unsure eyes brimming with new dreams. There's a beauty in the way she looked that day.A beauty no stylist can reproduce with bottles and jars of make-up.
And that's the way my sister, as the bride, will always remain in my heart.

Of Femme Fatales...

2009-08-30T23:11:00.004+05:30

Till the Film course happened to me, I watched Film Noir just the way i watched any other film-without analysing, taking in whatever flickered on the screen before my eyes.
So we were made to watch Double Indemnity, directed by Billy Wilder, on Saturday.Apart from studying the specific features of Film Noir in it, it was also interesting to note the fully loaded wordplay that couldnt afford to use frank sexuality owing to the regulations imposed by the Department of War Information that was operational in 1944,when the film was released.
The most interesting aspect of this film, and any Film Noir for that matter, is the way the two sexes are constructed. The woman is ofcourse the Femme Fatale (played by Barbara Stanwyck)who is the bad girl, carefully constructed with the physical pointers of the Gun, the Lipstick and the Cigarette.She is the amoral woman,bordering on immorality who decides to kill her indifferent husband after suffering years of a boring marriage.
The man (played by Fred MacMurray) belongs to an equally ambiguous moral standing as the woman.He kills for money (under the garb of love)after cold bloodedly chalking out each minute detail,has a torrid affair with a married woman,cheats on her by being extremely close to her step daughter and misuses the trust his colleagues lay on him. Infact,it is him who introduces the idea of murder into the woman's head.
But the script provides a neat portion to the man which he uses to confess his murder that helps him "redeem" himself in the eyes of God and the audience and brings him back to the position of the Good Christian man that every hero is meant to be. Playing along with the concept of poetic justice,he dies at the end of the film but not without gaining the sympathy of the audience.
The woman,on the other hand, is shot by the man shortly after she cant bring herself to shoot him. It is interesting to note that moments before her death, she was bordering on the realms of amorality and was threateningly close to the realm of morality as she began to talk of how her heart didnt allow her to fire the bullet at him, before being silenced by the bullet he fires.
What I find problematic is how he is allowed a chance to "redeem" himself and she is killed just when there was a possibility of a similar "redemption" for her.I do not say that she would have actually spouted words of love that would pull her back to being a Good Christian woman, but the problem is that the script didnt give her that chance.
In the narrative of the man who makes sure he is "redeemed" at the end, we do not come to know of what the woman would have done had there been a similar scope for her,and all we end up with,is a series of "What If"s in our heads.

P.S: the opinions expressed are totally personal and i do not mean to push them down anyone's throat.

Uchhala Jaladhi Taranga.

2009-08-20T02:42:00.002+05:30

I guess blogging on an impulse has become a habit these days. This blog post is not a post that was supposed to be up five days back because the thought behind it is something that just struck me while i sat wasting time on youtube.
I realised that the lyrics to our national anthem are just too beautiful for words.I guess we never really try looking for what the words really mean, even after years of standing in the sun in assembly lines and singing the anthem.day in and day out.
I really dont want to get into the entire issue about Tagore actually composing the anthem to welcome some British king.But I want to point out how our national anthem does not praise a particular ruler, a la "God save our gracious Queen!
Long live our noble Queen!" or, even for that matter, the motherland. What it does instead, is to herald the minds of the people of India as the arbiter of India's destiny.( "Janagan" meaning "people", "Man" meaning "mind", "Bharata Bhagya Vidhata" meaning "arbiter of Bharat's destiny")
Can any truth get stronger than this? Doesnt the future of any country depend on the way its people think,plan and decide? The country, interestingly, has been described as the ruler of all the people's minds (Janagan Man Adhinayak) and not something like the "land of the free and the home of the brave".
Most importantly, it is set to a tune that can be sung by even the most musically challenged person unlike other anthems like "Amar shonar bangla" which is set to a very convoluted musical structure.
I dont even know why i got into this...not like i am on a patriotic overdrive or anything. Just got struck by the beauty of the lyrics and tried making sense of it by myself. Having done that,i now realise how the singing of "Ujjala Jaladhi Taranga" by ignorant,impatient schoolgirls standing in the sun, makes a huge difference to meaning of the anthem that goes "Uchhala Jaladhi Taranga"...

2009-08-04T00:19:00.003+05:30

I dont know why i feel like writing about rains today...perhaps because delhi needs them badly or maybe because i have been feeling very suffocated-just the way one feels when rain clouds hover all around but dont rain.
Rains remind me of just too many things-especially that scene from Dil Se where Shahrukh walks into this station on a rainy night-sipping tea under dripping tea stall roofs and Manisha Koirala crouching under a sheet of tarpaulin. Also ofcourse, the black umbrella and a very wet Nargis come to mind as she lipsyncs to "kehta hai dil rasta mushkil...malum nahi hai kaha manzil"
I remember getting wet in that thin school uniform of ours and then waiting for everything to dry, so that i could come back home. Rains are supremely romantic for me and most of my deepest desires revolve around rainy afternoons. It's weird because rains supposedly bring in the dirtiest times in India-potholes,mud,traffic jams. But isnt love like that too? Doesnt love lie in its own imperfections?

OK,this sure was random.

2009-07-16T22:26:00.002+05:30

Dear Home,
I heard they hit you again,hit you till you bled and ran wild in the streets.I heard they raped you again and made you run naked infront of those eyes that wanted to devour each bit of your organs.I heard they burnt your soul again and laughed when the last bit of it dissolved in the smoke of burning buses.I heard they smelt your blood till they could no longer distinguish its smell from that of burnt tires.
Maybe they killed you today like they have been killing you over and over again.Maybe this time you're dead for certain,making sure i go back to a ghost town next time.Maybe there I'll find you amidst charred bodies, struggling to spread your wings again and become the phoenix you were destined to be.maybe..
Love,
Me.

Sea Person

2009-07-05T19:53:00.006+05:30

whenever i have been asked whether i liked mountains or seas,i have written "both".having spent consecutive vacations in the mountains,i had really forgotten how seasides felt.
i am in the andamans after 13 years.i remember having been here in 1996 when my father was posted in Port Blair.after that,i really dont remember having taken a trip to the seas except that one swim in Digha with really sleazy people in a really dirty beach.
seas do to me what mountains can never do.they are like real people who act slightly coy when you dont get too close to them-they come to you once in a while,touch your feet and invite you, with alluring hues, to get closer.and once you do get close, they begin playing with you like some long lost childhood friend-greeting you,throwing you off your feet, letting you get up again and embracing you into that vast blue body of theirs.and when you finally come out of the seas, you feel fresh just as you would feel after meeting a friend after years.
unlike mountains,i can go on looking at seas for hours at end-anytime of the day.unlike mountains which never change,seas become green,white and blue infront of your eyes.the waves come to you with thoughts and once they retrace, you feel they've taken away all the dirt that was in you.
seas calm me down in a way mountains never can.
yes,i am a sea person.

p.s: the picture was taken at the Radha Nagar Beach in Havelock Island,Andaman. incidentally, this beach was declared the best beach in Asia by the Time magazine

never can say goodbye.

2009-06-27T00:22:00.003+05:30

i shared my room with two people when i grew up-my brother and that man who stared with an icy stare,dressed in a black shirt and white jacket,the black man with super fizzy hair.the man in that poster behind my door.these were the days when "western music" had started infiltrating the impermeable membrane of rabindra sangeet around my family.
it was infront of this stare that we tried the moonwalk and failed terribly.those days international albums were sold for a princely sum of Rs 125.i had seen my brother walk to college and save up for the cassettes.
Dangerous was a song i was allowed to hear and dance to whenever i had been a good girl.
that poster was taken off when my room got painted.and my brother left for mumbai.
that man in the poster lost his fizzy hair and his skin colour.and the media said stories...
i remember having called up my brother and telling him that i am learning odissi,the same dance featured in the video of Black or White.he confused it with the malaysian dance,ofcourse.
they called him a pedophile,they called him anti-semitic,they called him a monster...but that man,for me,was a part of my growing up.and today he went away-taking a huge chunk of my childhood.
he could've been the peter pan of his own neverland...he could've always remained that little Illinois boy whose father whipped him with a belt each time his moon walking feet falter.
maybe,he wanted to dance like that little Illinois boy forever but the world couldnt let go of its whip that tried whipping him into perfectness each time his steps faltered.
RIP MJ.
you have been a hero to a generation which saw no heroes before you.

2009-06-21T00:05:00.004+05:30

my maternal grandfather had made a pond in his house.as years passed,the people of his locality started using it to bathe themselves and gradually,the pond became a public pond.
i cannot swim in ponds so i have never swam in it.but my mother and all her four siblings had learnt to swim in it.
i can only remember one man whom i had seen swimming in it.a thin,bald,dark old man.i think i had seen him wearing a blue lungi once,it might have been some colour other colour also.i didnt know what his name was.we never exchanged words or pleasantries.
i came to know his name today.the day he died.
in the same pond.following a heart attack while swimming.they found his body hours after his death-floating along the sides of the pond.right where the coconut trees grow.his red towel was lying on that cemented embankment around the pond.it still is,perhaps.
his name,as i came to know today,was Neelu.

rant

2009-06-13T23:38:00.004+05:30

no matter what N says,i've never been a brat.always ate what was given to me,always wore what was bought.i even wore frilly frocks till i was 13 and had mushroom cut till i was 10!
but it's crazy how,at 20,i 've turned into a complete brat these days!if someone orders a pizza i invariably end up craving for phuchkas and if ma buys me a tee i pull a face and say i want a kurta!
no,i'm not proud of it and i'm not enjoying it.
it's like having my ma inside me along with myself-it's like having equal and opposite forces of restraint and freedom withing oneself.
and it is killing me.
but today was fun.met some ten friends at this relief concert i attended.felt really nice.
and yes,i met someone after so long that i tried going down in an ascending escalator!
yes,this is a rant post.kindly pass.

post Aila.

2009-05-26T22:13:00.007+05:30

today i realised how flawed our entire method of voicing protest is,in this state.and if there is anyone to blame,it is us.it is us who have acted indifferent to the most idiotic forms of protest in the city.
we are the ones who took a detour when a politician decided to lie down at Hazra More to voice only one of her thousand and one problems with our government.we sighed and shook our heads when the same politician lay prostrate in some other busy junction.
what we never realised that each time we walked past something as stupid as this,we contributed generously into legitimising such foolery.
today it came biting right back at our asses when few local groups decided to stall traffic,in order to voice their anger at not having electricity for several hours on end.they just decided to block any road at any time they wanted to-forcing people to get off buses or autos and walk miles to get to their destination.the funny part is that,also caught in that maze of traffic was the crane that was supposed to pick up the fallen tree that had been uprooted resulting in the snapping of the electricity lines.
you might say that it's all easy for me to say because my house had its electric supply intact.let me tell you i spent my day working in a 250 years old building for seven hours without electricity.
we have to realise that the cyclone is no one's fault and no government,i repeat NO government in the world has quick fix measures lined up for such events.if you can recall,New York City collapsed following a massive powercut a few years back and Japan,which has been affected by earthquakes throughout, collapses under each new earthquake.
i know it is difficult to live without electricity but it is hardly a reason to let go of one's civility.because no matter how much it is hard to believe,it is a fact that no government-Left,Right,Centre or Diagonal-asked for the Aila.
in a city which thrives on its intellectual prowess,it is sad to see people lose their civility and become just thoughtless beings who are so frustrated that they cant keep their frustration to their own filthy bodies!
Calcutta,civilisation deludes you.

1705

2009-05-17T23:32:00.000+05:30

Did you see the circus unfold yesterday?
Were you watching when the red clowns fell from their trapeze,
While the green clowns balanced on their one wheeled cycles with ease?
Did you see the smiles they painted on their faces
With the war paint left from the long forgotten war?

Did you cry when the red clown made the green clown trip,
And laughed when the green clown boxed the red clown’s ears?
And sighed when they both fell off the ball they tried balancing upon?
Were you relieved at getting back your money’s worth,
As you sat clapping at the acts they put up?

And did you see them when they rubbed their painted smiles and tears off,
When all the shades of red and green became black?
As black as the soot that gathered on the portrait of our slain hero-
After days of candlelight vigils.
And as black as the ink that stained a million petitions.

Did you see the clowns when their black hands
Got stained with the blood of the people all around?
And did you see their black feet-
When they broke into an animated dance,
After hearing the sound of the bomb?

Did you see how pleased all the clowns were-
Now neither red nor green,
When the smell of blood touched their nostrils,
And tickled all their senses within?,
While we ran about chasing our flimsy dreams of change.

Did you leave after the show was done,
Laughing all the way home?
Or did you wait to see the clowns share the last laugh?
Did you watch carefully as the tables turned on us,
And we became objects of their inexpensive joy?

We are meant to dance to their songs and provide for their whims,
And serve with our heads when they need to try their bullets.
We are meant to clap when they play with our brains,
And collect our respective pieces of cheap, ephemeral fun.
Welcome to the circus of the red and green clowns,
Where this is how things get done.

for the wet neonlit streets and OD...

2009-05-11T23:10:00.001+05:30

I missed my camera more than ever today…when we stood watching the rains bathing the neon lit streets, when we stood barefeet on cement while our shoes got wet…

I wanted to capture each moment when we gathered raindrops on our palms… I wanted to keep those wet handprints intact, even after the cement soaked them into itself.

But maybe it’s better this way…it’s better that no one ever got to saw two girls run down the streets and how they stopped to take their shoes off.

Maybe it’s a good thing that no one saw us when we decided to stop running and walk very slowly instead, when you decided to stand under that tree whose leaves were dancing to the wind and when we shrieked with joy when we splashed water with our feet…

It’s a nice feeling that no one will speak of that moment when we ran with drenched clothes and wet hair…except those few neon lights and those trees who decided to sway to the howling wind with us.

Remember this day, OD, which no picture will talk of…remember this day because there’s nothing else to remind us how we became the little girls who live on forever deep inside our hearts.

2009-05-09T12:32:00.002+05:30

sometimes words fail to describe the magic you weaved.
all i have is my humble homage-a silent prayer with my head bowed down~
that you continue weaving that same magic with my thoughts,with my pains and your words.

"Aamar shure lagey tomaar hashi,
jemon dhheuey dhheuey robir kiron doley ashi.
Dibanishi aamio je firi tomar shurer khonje,
hothat e mon bholay kokhon tomar banshi...."

2009-05-01T23:09:00.003+05:30

i saw it from where god sees it everyday.
it looked like the veil of a bride...studded with little pieces of dreams that glow in the dark.
as i got closer,i could make out her shy eyes which looked out in eternal anticipation.
and when i finally touched her face,she smiled.
and i knew,i was home.

Scribble

2009-04-26T01:53:00.002+05:30

Some decided to take a walk
and some hailed a bus.
Some blushed some blush on them
and some settled down for tea.
While some did that and some did this,
no one seemed to see-
You sitting down to see the setting sun on my wounded knee.

p.s:written during a theatre lecture...very very random.

2009-04-20T00:41:00.002+05:30

BJP has really begun to scare me...Mr. Advani with his shining pate and half smile has begun to stalk me. Anywhere i go,there he is. Their Ad campaign in Delhi is really gloomy-with pictures of children crying and working to pay off their fathers' debts. I know it is a part of the Indian reality but it has always been a part of it...under EVERY government.What is really pissing off are the text messages I am sent-asking me to watch Advaniji speak on blah blah and blah on this or that channel.
I'm not anti-BJP...it's just that the Congress posters dont scare me as much as the BJP ones.I hate the very concept of advertising one's propaganda like this.
What they dont realise is that, I'm not interested in watching these ads.How can we choose people who will manage the country in the same way we choose our shampoos,detergents and body creams?!
Thanks to the hobos who constitute the committee that draws up voters' lists, my name hasnt been included in either the Delhi list or the Calcutta list. Maybe you should stop smiling down at poor souls like us from those disgusting posters and do something to solve REAL problems.
For once and for all, Mr. Advani (and all the other khadi-clad half smiling wannabe PMs), STOP stalking me around.

P.S: I really want to contest the elections sometime in the future...my mother burst a vein laughing at that.but i'm serious.

2009-04-15T00:47:00.003+05:30

i found your letters yesterday.
in the pages of that diary i stopped writing months back...
in small white envelopes,now dirtied with time.
the words in them have stopped meaning anything now...they're just faint imprints of footsteps.
taken for a distance traversed long time back.
we got lost then and havent found our ways back yet.
i thought the envelopes would keep maps that would help me back home.
but all i found were these misleading footprints.
maybe,i will burn them today.

2009-04-06T22:57:00.002+05:30

i dont like it when people cry while talking to me.
it leaves me wondering what i should say till that moment comes when this tiny lump forms at the pit of my stomach and starts snowballing into this huge mass of something that climbs up to my throat.
i keep quiet.
and let my eyes take away from the pain of that lump.
and silently feel the little drops slide down my cheekbones and wet my lips.
i keep quiet.
and feel the salt drops seep into the dryness.

Of old photos and the lines behind them...

2009-03-31T15:49:00.005+05:30

i have been going through old photo albums for the past few days.one of the few things my mother brought from her father's house is an old battered photo album with small square black and white photographs.the ones that you paste onto the black pages of the album.
ma's album has many photos of very beautiful women-they were all her friends in college.i figure,it was almost a custom to give your friends a pic of yours before leaving college.some of them even wrote a few lines behind the picture.my mother almost had tears in her eyes when i fished out this album and showed it to her.
one reason behind this sort of an attachment with these pictures is,probably, the fact that a photo wasnt a very common thing then.it involved an entire ritual of wearing a pretty sari,visiting a studio/calling a photographer home (not many had personal cameras back then)and holding a smile till the box camera agreed to click.
today we have photos of our friends everywhere-on our phones,in our computers and even ipods.and maybe that's why we dont attach an emotional tag to photographs.
but picture this,twenty years from now...your child fetches out a photograph and comes running to you and that happens to be the only memory of your college best friend that you can touch,see and feel.there's absolutely nothing else that you own that will remind you of her or the last few lines she wrote to you.
the picture above is of a woman called Shakuntala who was my mother's room mate.she doesnt know where her friend is or where she did her masters from...for my mother,her room mate's memory are the few fading handwritten lines written with a blue inked fountain pen behind the photo:
"Tobu mone rekho jodi dure jai chole,
Jodi puraton prem dhaka porey jay nobo premojaale...
Jodi poriya mone,chholo-chholo jol nai dekha daye noyonkone,
Tobu mone rekho..."
(Remember me if I go faraway,
If new found loves take over old ties...
Even if tears dont gather in your eyes when I'm gone,
Remember me...)

2009-03-21T15:33:00.002+05:30

i have always associated a particular smell with hospitals-a weird combination of antiseptics,phenyles,medicines and room fresheners...makes me want to throw up each time.
hospitals are places of both death and birth,but it's always the former that i have associated with these places.
they even smell of death.even the swankiest ones.
green cloth,stretchers,dark rooms,white uniforms...and that smell.
nothing has helped me get that smell out of my system.
i hope a blog post helps this time.

Time

2009-03-15T23:08:00.003+05:30

someone i knew very well recently told me,"i dont know what time does...i dont know if its a good thing or a bad thing"
she was right.
i dont know if what time does is good or bad...it's strange how time benumbs us.something that affected me a lot a few months back has become just another memory for me,now.and like this person,i dont know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
i went to my school's reunion yesterday.
there were these girls who had given me a tough time in school-you know the usual bitching,mud slinging and all that.but something in me made me talk to them and take super giggly pictures with them.
i guess time had forced me to move on beyond those days...
and on the other hand,none of the people i was closest to in school turned up.today,they're just memories of good times i've had.i want them to remain that way.
now,is that a good thing?

La Femme

2009-03-05T23:12:00.003+05:30

I was thinking the other day if I’m a feminist only to realize that like most ideologies, feminism too has different brands to it.
I went to a girls’ school and I don’t remember one instance when we discussed feminism- be it among friends or with teachers. I guess all my school taught me was I had the right to enjoy what I liked and to do what I enjoyed doing.
Now that I’m in a college which is believed to be a breeding ground for feminists, I have come to be aware of the various perspectives one attaches to the ideology. People have different views- some say it’s about being treated equally with men, while some claim to be even better. There are some who believe men to be the bane of a woman’s existence while some think it’s about not wearing a bra.
The past few days in my college have been a tumultuous experience. We did things that no one thought could happen in L.S.R...girls sloganeering, carrying banners and sitting down-refusing to budge. There seemed to be a certain spell that held them all, that made them get over their own problems and made them shout out in unison. It wasn’t about the “geek”, the “intellectual types” or the “babe” anymore…it became a ground where a few hundred girls found out what’s common between each one of them, something that couldn’t be given a name. I realized that there’s a certain power Estrogen has that allows one to defy. It has this innate way of letting us know that no matter who we are, we don’t need to take shit, and we don’t need to silently listen… and it’s okay to shout. Coming together sometimes helps you conserve the voice that you would’ve lost had you shouted alone.
Ofcourse we need to shout. All of us- Men, Women, Children. Everyone needs to shout when people decide to go deaf on them. Feminism for me lies in that decision I make to shout, irrespective of who else is shouting or who else has shouted before me, and it lies in the widening of the space that allows me to shout. It is important for voices to be heard- be that of men or women. There has to be neutral ears that do not engender the voices they listen to;there has to be a complete absence of biases.
That is my brand of feminism.

2009-02-20T23:17:00.003+05:30

it's crazy how i never get high,no matter how much i drink!not that i want to,but it's weird seeing one's friends getting as high as a kite and yet not knowing what it feels like.i remember how i was absolutely sane the last time-i infact walked a good kilometre back home.but i guess i shouldnt complain.i mean,it's not a bad thing that i am never in the state wherein i puke out the day's breakfast on someone and cant sit straight.
on a completely different note,have you ever visited a historical monument and felt like an extreme atheist?i mean,have you ever seen what human hands have done and credited them to be greater hands than those of God? i have.i went to Qutb Minar yesterday.

2009-02-14T23:58:00.003+05:30

i've been living in a haze for the last few days-you know how you just stand back and watch things zoom past your eyes and you just absorb the haze they leave behind, and take in the the residual momentary lull.
i had to write term papers at break neck speed, meet deadlines for each of the committees i had enrolled myself in.you see, the problem with me is that i can never know when to draw the line-i just go on accepting responsibilities till kingdom come, and then cry for mercy as each one of them come biting at my ass.
i also happened to fly home for three days for my cousin's wedding.my city has changed.they say you cant say if a person has lost/gained weight if you keep seeing him/her everyday.it's the same with the city.when you stay in it,when it becomes a part of your everyday domestic trivialities, you fail to notice the little squares of the mosaic,when they change colours.
but home remains home,no matter how much it changes...the same way mothers remain mothers,no matter how intolerable their idiosyncrasies become.

p.s:took this picture during my winter break with N's new camera.very cool camera it be.

2009-01-25T00:26:00.002+05:30

all my life,i've seen my mesho have just one best friend-debol jethu.
he suddenly passed away this morning because of a heart attack.though i have never seen my mesho get perturbed at anything but today,i can just imagine him letting go of a huge chunk of his life,which debol jethu took away with him.
i dont know if the concept of "best friends" exists today...i mean,you do have very good friends and then your boyfriend becomes the best friend.but do we really have the kind of friendship which traces its journey back to the playgrounds of school but still manages to remain the same,defying grey hair and wrinkled faces?
my sister (mesho's daughter) took the first flight to cal,because for her it's almost like losing her father.
i raced my imagination to say...50-60 years from now,would any of my friends' kids do that when i die?
scary thought.

the blogger is: IN

2009-01-21T23:31:00.003+05:30

the last few days have been like a whirlwind...
Delhi suddenly got colder.actually,it's not so much about the cold.it's actually the wind which is making traveling in autos almost seem as if you've just mistaken Siberia to be Anjuna beach and decided to sunbathe!
after days of shouting at the Reliance people,i finally have my net connection back...so i can breathe now.i almost feel like robbing Tina Ambani of the yacht her husband gifted her from the money we pay for USB modems that dont connect!
i have also been very pissed after the Chennai trip got cancelled....it would've been fun,specially with S around.moreover,it was supposed to be a trip with new people and for a new thing-not the same old play!
college's been very hectic with a thousand deadlines to be met and the journal work.
i hope i survive all this...in one piece.
and finally,it feels great to be back :)

2009-01-14T22:44:00.003+05:30

i turned 20 yesterday.
it's a weird feeling really...it's like "shit i'm old" but then i guess by the time i'm 21,i will be used to living in the second decade.so i should just stop making a big deal out of such things.didn't someone very famous once say,"what is age,but a number?"!
on a sadder note,i leave for delhi tomorrow with a laptop which doesnt have a internet connection.so i guess,this calls for another one of those sad hiatuses from this space.
but keep watching,i will be back (soon,hopefully).

angst

2009-01-05T19:49:00.002+05:30

it is disheartening to see the world zoom past our city as it just about manages to peep through its shroud of smoke.it is sad when one hears of youngsters flocking the Delhis and the Mumbais for call-centre jobs.
i feel angry when i see rallies on the city roads and imagine my friends in Delhi speeding down some new flyover.i shout abuses at cabbies who strike against something which could be remotely "progressive" had it been better planned.
it hurts to see the Calcutta of my fairy tales become a story without a beginning,middle or end-a story which just goes on without a plot.
it hurts more because Calcutta is home.it's always been.
it still is.
"Shaat koti shontaner hey mugdho jononi,
rekhecho bangali kore,manush koroni"

New Year!

2008-12-31T18:40:00.007+05:30

It's been a Dickensian year...you know,"the best of times,the worst of times" kind.
It's been a year of losses and gains...more or less balanced.A year of a weird way of growing up,experiencing an ascent from the petty world of school-level gossip and bitching.I'm glad i have put all that behind and have learnt to ignore them to a great extent.
i lost some friends,gained some...and fortunately,managed to clear out one of the biggest messes of my life.i met some new people and i thank god for them...they're the kind of people who you dont meet too often,or talk to every now and then,but who you know will take your call when you're in deep shit,even if it happens to be way past midnight.
it's been a year of promises,just like the last one happened to be one of seeing some of the best things come to an end.and like all promises,some ended up being broken but,thankfully,left behind no incurable wound.
it's been a great year for N and me.and for his music...here's hoping he keeps adding tunes to that blue confetti dream we dreamt a couple of years back.
let's hope 2009 doesnt get worse,in case it cant get any better.and that's that.

p.s:have a great year ahead...wish you the best of 2009

Lucky Girl!

2008-12-27T10:37:00.001+05:30

I went into one of my pondering sprees yesterday, after watching one of the dumbest commercials in television history. Even if I was the fattest guy on earth with the equator for my waistline, I would refuse to get married to a girl who cant, to save her life, say anything beyond “Hi”…irrespective of whether she’s white, black, red, green or blue.
It’s weird how companies mint money out of prejudices. Infact, these fairness product ads tend to play on double prejudices: a) the girl just HAS to be fair and b) she always has to end up being an object of male affection in the end. Interestingly, the choice of careers for these practitioners of the “power of beauty” has seldom gone beyond modeling and aviation hospitality, barring that one ad where the girl becomes a cricket commentator and an object of male gaze.
At this point, I remember the “Lucky Girl” ad and thousands of others where the girl becomes a “winner” in life from the quintessential dark “loser”, only because she happens to be fair. I’m not fair, and neither is my mother. But then, nothing has really stopped us from becoming what we are.
These ads tend to play to popular stereotypes-the hard fact, even today, is that people in the country still think a beautiful woman is meant to be fair, which is amazing in a country of brown skinned people. Loose terms like “dusky beauty” has only lead to the exoticisation and fetishisation of the dark woman and has contributed majorly in making her “the other”.
I never thought I’d say this, but I actually respect Aishwarya Rai (Bachchan, if you may) because she turned down an offer to become the Indian face of a global fairness cream giant. These little things are important because people in the country need to realize that a woman is more than just a colour.

Ho Ho Ho

2008-12-24T13:44:00.003+05:30

We've all been very bad girls and boys this last year.
We've sped across signs saying "School Ahead" and honked at hospital walls.
We've emptied our dustbins on the road and painted the bank walls red with spit.
We've cogged in class tests and have come out of public loos,leaving behind things for people to see and smell.
We've smoked when no one was looking and bitched about the person who's all that we want to be.
And somewhere in the process,we've all observed a few minutes of silence...
And yet Santa,you will gift us peace this year,will you not?

P.S:on a merrier note,Merry Christmas to each one of you...

apology

2008-12-22T22:06:00.003+05:30

i'm sorry i havent been blogging at all...
i dont know how many of you visited this page and then went back seeing nothing new.my laptop got stolen from an outstation fest i was attending with my play.life's been hard since then.
but now that i'm back home,i swear to god i'm going to update soon.
i missed my blog...and ended up writing on loose scraps of paper...i intend to use my holidays and type in all that.
and maybe *fingers crossed* if i do get a new laptop soon,i will be blogging regularly again..
thanks for still visiting my blog...i will be visiting all your blogs soon :)

2008-11-04T18:47:00.000+05:30

words have come and words have gone..
now,they just fail me.

the post pujo post

2008-10-10T11:21:00.003+05:30

like each year,this year, too, the pujos went past in a blink of an eye...it's kind of crazy how we wait with baited breath for these 5 days and they just zoom past like a spoilt brat who has just laid his hands on his dad's car!
the other day,we were discussing which day of the pujos we love the best...i said "shoptomi" because that's the day when everyone is filled up with joy at the onset of the pujos.ashtami becomes too hectic with anjali and family meals and there hasn't been one nobomi when i haven't felt down.
also this puja,i realised i am getting more and more claustrophobic and just the thought of standing amongst crowds,gives me jitters.the only trip i made to maddox this year was in the morning and i couldnt be happier.each time i drove past that place,i saw the crowd and exclaimed how it was getting worse with each year.even when we all started dancing last evening before the bhashan,i found it difficult to stand amidst the damp smell of dhuno,sweat and alcohol.
but if there's something i love about the pujos,it's the dhunuchi naach...i think words like "beautiful" were invented for things like this.the way the sublime smoke rises from that little clay vessel-painting fluid shapes across the night sky...and the way the dancer twirls around the vessel without dropping the coir inside,is nothing short of an art.i also love the sound of dhaak...way more than the "tasha" that plays during the bhashan.
i can just go on...but i guess it's best to keep some memories to yourself-the old friends' lunch,the 5 star lunch,the nagordolna ride...
sigh,all i can hope is "aashche bochhor abaar hobe!"
and before i forget,shubho bijoya to all of you .

2008-10-03T11:16:00.006+05:30

i remember when i was much younger,i used to keep a diary-minute details of everything i did,went into it.
the first time i waxed,i wrote something describing the excruciating pain.
and when i got my cartilage pierced last saturday,i was reminded of that long forgotten entry and suddenly began to miss my diary...
the diary,like many other things,has been a part of the childhood i have grown out of.
it's almost been like a cloak which i happened to slip off when no one was noticing.
each time i'm reminded of some old memory..it's like finding some thread,of that old cloak,that was left behind.
when i was talking to a school friend a few days back and planning a visit to maddox,i remembered how i refused to leave the golf green pandal,as a kid when any world beyond golf green refused to exist for me!
when you find these threads,you almost begin to hope to sew back the old cloak and wear it again.
but then,we realise that maybe you could have the cloth back but the tailors have all gone far away-way beyond any distance our calls can reach.
we realise that,maybe,growing up isnt that great a deal after all.

p.s:this is a very impulsive post...the language isnt at its best usage.sorry!

Cotton

2008-09-24T22:43:00.005+05:30

to you.for giving me the time of my life!

we met on a crowded street-
amidst a cacophony of honking cars.
and we watched the world pass by,
mixing coffee with fleeting hours.

we drew houses on an autumn afternoon-
on sheets of satin spread over the sky.
in the deep brown of our coffees,
i saw dreams coming to life in your eyes.

through rainy mornings and stormy nights,
the dreams strive,but they survive.
they plaster the walls of the house we drew;
the house believed to see us through...

scared

2008-09-13T21:21:00.000+05:30

there are times when you dont believe your own ears and refuse to believe things you hear.today is one...
i really dont have words to describe the feeling of knowing that your favourite haunts are now washed with blood.i really cant describe the stiff feeling of relief over the fact that my sister and i werent at our favourite coffee shop this evening...
there are times when nothing matters except the fact that you're still alive.
weirdly enough,i was in an auto when all this happened...sharing my fear with a muslim auto driver,who was getting frantic calls from his family just as i was.just as that happened, i realised that hindus and muslims arent the ones who plant bombs...it's actually a question of human beings and monsters!i really hope he made his way to his home safely.
2 out of the 5 blasts happened within a kilometre of college-at M block market which also happens to be the place my friends and i go to kill time in between free periods and another 2 happened in CP which happens to be my favourite shopping place here.
i really cant define in words what i am going through as i watch fleeting images on the tv which dont register on my brain and get scared by the slightest loud sound around...i am worried for the friends whose phones are all unreachable and for the sister who cant get through the day without a coffee from DePaul's,relieved that i decided not to go shopping in Janpath today and worried that tomorrow might not be as lucky a day.
Lord,let there be peace.

failed attempts at poetry on a grey coloured day...

2008-08-26T22:30:00.001+05:30

What is the point in singing today-
When songbirds lie dead in your head?
What is the point in dancing today-
When the rain clouds have all fled?

In the little sky between your fingers,
You write prose in stranger tongues-
And in the little blue patch on your palm,
You carry skeletons of love ballads unsung.

Your prose speaks of smiles-
Which gleamed like the torch Prometheus stole,
And your palm tells stories that the leaves left incomplete -
Before they got blown.

As the world is lulled to sleep today-
By the soft song of the newborn wind,
Let us not talk of the days lived-
Long ago in a light year now swept away clean.

For, what is the point in talking today-
When poetry has been long dead?
What is the point in living today-
When all our hearts have bled?

amazed!

2008-08-22T20:59:00.001+05:30

i am amazed at myself today...
i managed to fall down again and sprain the right ankle for the umpteenth time.but that is not what amazed me...
this time i didnt cry.
the last time i fractured my toe,i remember having wept a river.
in a queer way,i am proud of myself today...
love makes u feel secure,no doubt, but it also makes you weak.
and being far away from the ones you love,makes you this rock which picks itself up and limps its way through a crowded street without holding onto any hand...
thank god,i think i am growing up.
atlast.

2008-08-15T20:33:00.003+05:30

its crazy how we call ourselves independent today..
crazy because people still do what they are told-betraying years of education in an empowering environment,people forget they have a mind.
rubbishing all things we learn,we still love to be governed because we know that the world we live in-in the quietest corners of our heart is just in our heads...
in the real world,there is no holden caulfield really.
he never became independent of the trappings of the printed word bound by dog eared covers.

Update

2008-08-04T20:37:00.003+05:30

i saw Hazaron Khwaishen Aisi today and have some major problems with the film!after having heard so many accounts of the Naxalbari movement from my Jethu,i felt the film was inadequate in translating into celluloid the real essence of the movement,and thus didnt quite live upto all the ravings i was subjected to,by my friends here.
guess the domestic realities of the movement for the people here and in Cal are very different-here it was just a small fraction of students in JNU who joined in but in Cal,there were thousands of homes,like mine,which saw their sons come back with cuts on their faces and bruised legs...
as i type this post,the MS Word software is drawing a red line beneath the word 'Naxalbari' and in a strange way,it is disturbing.i live in a house which is built on the land which is believed to have served as a dumping ground for bodies of the people who lost their lives in the movement,my childhood stories talked of how my uncle nearly lost his foot because a bomb happened to burst only a few metres away from him and today when i sit back recalling all this,i am told the word 'Naxalbari' isn't meant to be a word at all just because a group of American peabrains is uneducated enough to have never heard of something which changed the way my city looked...
i know,i am losing it but thank God for Amitav Ghosh and Shadow Lines-my eternal provider of solace!

My Bit

2008-07-31T16:08:00.002+05:30

this is my contribution to the Spectators Special event by Blank Noise (See previous post for details):

The ride back home from school comprised an auto ride which we got to enjoy after standing in a queue for almost half an hour under the cruel Kolkata sun.
After one such wait,my friend (who is also a neighbour)and i finally sighted an auto which had only one seat lying vacant at the back.Refusing to wait in the sun any further,my friend decided to sit in the seat next to the driver (to his left) as i sat in that one vacant seat at the back.
Half way through the journey,i heard my friend asking the driver to keep his hands off her-to which he said,"brake lagatey gele ektu to gaye lagbei" (which roughly means,"if i have to apply brakes,there is bound to be some physical contact")
Believing it to be a mere accident,i didn't really pay much heed to the incident, until i saw the driver's hand brushing up against her chest-Once.Twice.Thrice. (This was when the auto was in motion and there wasn't any applying of brakes)
Somehow the only thing i could do after that was,to ask the auto to stop and get down along with my friend,even though we were still far from home...
So there we were,on the road again-roasting under the afternoon sun,walking silently down the road.as silent as i was in the auto,as silent as i shouldn't have been.

To Do

2008-07-31T15:53:00.003+05:30

so how many times have you seen a sweaty hand climb up the back of the girl standing next to you in the metro,or a bus...or anywhere else?
...and what did you do after that?
slapped the man?
thanked god that it wasnt your back his hands were on?or your sister's?
or just turned away pretending that nothing really happened...
whatever you did,let Blank Noise know.
email them at blurtblanknoise@gmail.com before August 15th and let them know what role you have played as a third person witnessing some form of sexual harassment or the other.
the entries will be published in their blog at blog.blanknoise.org

2008-07-24T21:16:00.003+05:30

so the results are finally out and i am quite happy :)
finally decided my optional paper!...i have decided to take popular fiction.i guess it would be fun to rediscover novels i read as a kid, with the critical eye.
the cafe prices have gone up again.its really sad,how we keep going there for the lack of an option and they en cash upon that and go on increasing their prices!
i think MG should do something about this instead of worrying her head off over the Green Cup!
the weather too is getting shittier by each passing day and the humidity makes it impossible to sit through lectures!even the fans move lazily,almost suffocating me to death in the fifty year old classrooms with tiny windows.
sigh,i have become such a sulk!

aaaaarrrgh!

2008-07-20T21:22:00.002+05:30

it's that sinking feeling again..the "pre results" kind!
i know the university has come out with the results but thanks to today being a sunday,my college hasnt published them.i dont know whether that is good or bad!
at this rate i will go crazy waiting the wait for tomorrow and i know,it is this wait which will kill me...

2008-07-15T19:19:00.003+05:30

i keeping running out of words as i get closer to departure...
it's been a long vacation...met some friends,didn't meet most and i think that's alright...it's a free country-people can do whatever they want to!
i really cant enlist what i will miss about being home...each time i leave,it feels as if a part of me is being kept back.
i am leaving loads behind this time,and hopefully taking some small little nothings back.
yes,i got a laptop and am very happy that at least now i will be able to watch movies during those dreary cold nights which never seem to end.
bye,home.

Yesterday...and Today

2008-07-03T11:11:00.003+05:30

A few years back while coming back from school, a friend of mine had told me that the woman who stood with us in the queue in the auto stand-the woman who could hardly keep standing straight in the heat, who could barely keep her eyes open and who kept groaning out of pain-was actually one of the many women who came into the city from their villages for abortion. Women like her chose the afternoons to get back home, so that they could be home by the evening and no one would suspect a thing. On that auto ride back home, I pictured the groaning woman sitting next to me-dragging herself to the stove in the evening, and boiling rice for her family-with her sari tightly wound around her stomach, so that she doesn’t feel the pangs of the void left behind by a small spec of life, which was forced to see the light of day much before its eyes were ready for it.

Scary thought, isn’t it? I don’t know why I was reminded of all this yesterday.

You texted and we spoke of lazy afternoons waiting to be lived in Paris. I pictured us, a few years down the line-sipping coffee in some obscure café, on some nameless boulevard. Wouldn’t we then look back upon yesterday and discover that this was when time found a leak in its pipeline and dripped out into some hidden little pool? Wouldn’t we then talk of yesterday and say that this was when it all started?

P.S:Today, the woman who gave me life adds another year to her life…here’s to another year of lots of fights, loads of disagreements and a little bit of love :)

mountains,rains and red spots...

2008-06-27T10:27:00.003+05:30

Kathmandu is no more what it was.
It is plagued with strikes and the constant debate between monarchy and democracy.
Dhulikhel and Nagarkot are just as pretty as they used to be. The rains seemed to be the finery for the pretty new bride the mountains became...the clouds were like the veil she removed to see us standing awestruck,with her beautiful shy eyes.
and somewhere amidst the running around in Thamel and gambling away in Annapurna and Soaltee,i caught a virus which makes me look like a dead body which has escaped from its coffin.as far as my eyes stretch,i can only see ugly reddish dots with white centres.
for people who still dont get it-yes,i have chicken pox.and my trip had to be cut short

2008-06-21T12:59:00.003+05:30

Ten years hence,when we think of days like today, we will probably go on with our lives as if this day didn't exist at all.as if the bitterness,the tears, the fights...nothing existed.
maybe we will cry over spilt milk someday and yet break into a fake smile and say "fine" when the world asks,"hey,how you doing?"
we will go on this way.putting on masks after masks,till we can hardly differentiate between what was our face and what was a mask...but we shall move on,as if we don't wear any masks at all,and life is just as dandy as we say it is...
as if days like today don't exist at all.

to the rain

2008-06-18T13:02:00.002+05:30

it rained incessantly yesterday.there is this old connection between me and rains-they just do something to me.words, which lay trapped somewhere between the layers of my skin, start revolting-they twist,they turn in their efforts to leave behind the entrapments of skin and blood and set wings to fly away into the sky which is a sad shade of grey.i see them wanting to set sail and reach that little patch of blue which lies beyond the stretch of sky before my eyes.but when i cant set them free,i begin to feel almost miserable, much like the young girl who wanted to wake up and see sunshine,but woke up into a rainy day.
this is all i managed.

Stealing a peep through your blacks and whites today,
I saw how the rains tattoo words of love-
On the earth's brown face,with its small needles of silver.
I saw the clouds make love to the earth,
As they left behind watery kisses-
In secret potholes and puddles.

I saw the woman standing next to her window,
As her fingers groped for a nameless dream,
That lay beyond that grey stretch of sky.
Leaving aside your blacks and whites,I saw her sing,
As rainclouds gathered in her eyes.

P.S: Lousy.I know.

tears unexpected

2008-06-07T21:49:00.002+05:30

i have been convincing myself that i am no longer the cry baby i was in school.i had begun to believe that i can see life as it is without letting salt water well up my eyes.
i had begun to think that i have "grown up" and then came today...
i still don't believe that i let that lump of sorrow grow in my throat and let those tears flow.
i really didn't know that i would miss people who were strangers till the last month.
life's like that...there are people who walk in and before you can walk some distance with them,they walk out.but when they leave you see footprints that they leave behind which shows you which way you need to walk,the next time you don't know where to go.
thanks to everyone in HT City who made the last month memorable for me.
will miss you.

to you two

2008-05-31T20:35:00.003+05:30

there was something i wrote when you two got together in my old blog,but i guess i deleted it for some reason.
S,if you remember,i asked you if you are seeing her even before you did...and then that day when you said that you are,i guess i had a "oh i knew that" expression on my face.but today,after two years,i cant really bring myself to believe the truth she told me.
if i ever knew two people whose sense of security has been immense,it would have to be you two.i don't know why,i still cant internalise the truth...
it's like one of those weird things that you hear from somewhere but you know that it aint true.i wouldn't have believed if someone else told me,but it was her...
i know she is brave.but there are battles which you fight with yourself,and i am hope she is brave enough for them and as for you,S i really don't know.guess i never knew you enough inspite of those late night chats.
but to you two,i really hope this was a bad dream i have been dreaming,and you guys need to wake me up.sooner,the better.

2008-05-30T21:42:00.002+05:30

there haven't been many times when i have felt this proud.
proud of belonging to someone like you.
though there was very little i could hear,i know you were playing my song.
like you always do...
there was a song i once sung as a child and then i lost the tune somewhere...
the sun had gone down when you started strumming today,but i knew the tune was back.
my tune.your tune.our tune.
i knew it was you who would keep strumming my pains with your fingers and turn them into harmonies that meet applause...
i am proud of you.
i love you.

on a blogging spree

2008-05-23T22:30:00.002+05:30

you wont believe what happened today...
it was just another day at work and i had a book reading to cover. Ipsita Roy Chakraverti was reading a Paulo Coelho book(for those who havent heard of her,she is the founder of the wiccan brigade in calcutta)...i am not much of a believer,have never been one.but then when she said that there's someone on her right whose sister is going through a turmoil,i (sitting on her right) remembered Diya and realised maybe she was talking of me...i have been too shocked to think of it after that!
the wonders of the world never cease...i tasted the world's weirdest tea today.at the Cha Bar,some weird Ayurvedic piss like tea thing which two of my very esteemed friends ordered.i gave up after a few sips but my dear friend attempted to swallow it like tequilla with a spoonful of honey trying to act like the lemon slice's sorry substitute.thank god,she didnt puke.saved us the trouble of ordering for newspaper to clean it!!
then we bumped into a weird guy who eyed N in KFC and told him that only Mc D sells wraps and then the weirdo bowed to S as if to acknowledge her esteemed presence...if that wasnt enough,he walked to the gate,turned and waved at me and consequently followed it up by waving at all three of us from the car window!
and somewhere in the middle N got approached by pimps who asked him whether he wanted a "school girl" or "hostel girl"!!
park street,i tell you,is the place where you run into the weirdest people on earth.
wooh,what a day!

to the yous

2008-05-22T21:53:00.006+05:30

to some of the yous in my life...

you#1 you have made me proud! for once,you have made me realise that it's never too wrong to dream. i always thought you to be my little sister whom i would "bring up" with bits and pieces of advice,pep talk and all that.but then,i was wrong.i have so much to learn from you...grit,will and the power of dreams.

you#2 thanks for the 20th.it was one of the best days of my life-it was WOW!wine glasses,fries,truck driver songs and lots and lots of love.thank you for just being there.we shall do it again sometime.soon.

you#3 with people like you around,the world is definitely a better place.and you stay true to your name-you are MY friend.and though we've met just twice for about five minutes,the time when we hugged each other and cried like babies when we were strangers has been one of the most touching moments of my life!love you

muffled prayers

2008-05-19T23:12:00.002+05:30

i know i was weak this time last year but dont let her be.
time makes you stronger,but she needs the strength soon.
teach her that things are not what they are meant to be.
they never are.
teach her that people always end up reaching the finishing line before you even you ran with all your might...
but also teach her that you dont always lose...there are days when the finishing line waits for you and you run through the ribbon,wrapping yourself up in glory.
while people watch you with tears in their eyes.
my prayers are with you.do well.