First attempts at mush.

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.

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.

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.

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

- 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

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.

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 :)

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...

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.

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.

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?