for the wet neonlit streets and OD...

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.

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...."

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

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.

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.

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.

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...

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...)

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

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

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.