Iran and the new dress code

We live in the 21st century and take basic rights like dressing the way we please for granted. Read today’s Reuters? Women in Iran have been banned from wearing hats without veils and boots if the pants worn with them are not ankle length. If the pants are tucked in the boots or show the female “shape” (what?!!), then that is in contradiction with the Islamic Dress Code. Who has written this dress code, I beg to know… This regressive and repressive attitude towards the sex formerly known as “fairer/gentler” is absurd. Why doesn’t the moral-religious brigade take up arms against drug peddlers and terrorists instead of wasting everyone else’s time?

An adrift mind...

"Loneliness wanders through the cold blue night, giving solace to the wind,
Water drops scatter the landscape into a hazy mirage…"


Every now and then I change the month card on my workstation calendar and wonder in amazement how the past year has zoomed by… The year has been really good and yet it brought me the worst. I lost some investments, mostly emotional and have spent most of this time, trying to keep the sanity of it all, together…

My "human rights"

Thoughts run wild, pacing through the corridors of my mind. The only feeling it has had is the stifling surge of water over the body, as if I am drowning. Time is of essence and life teaches us to appreciate the clock. You can cheat and lie to the world but the only kind of deceit which hits you hardest in the face is the kind you inflict upon yourself. Doing what you don’t want to do is like sinking in a quicksand, albeit, painfully slowly... Hence, do what you love, shine in the sun and move ahead in life…

Beautiful memories

I have been putting off going to my maternal ancestral house for over 8 years now. That is the one place in the world where only happy memories exist. The only one who ever pestered me to go there has gone forever and left me alone in more ways than she can ever imagine. I love, absolutely love the journey to nani’s old house. Never ending stretches of paddy fields, soaked in water and in the process of getting flooded by rains during monsoons… the dancing peacocks and cool breeze. I haven’t done that in 8 long years out of sheer laziness and apathy. This time around... for sure

Keep on movin (take 5)

I have been going in circles for a while now and while it is a futile activity, it does expand your ambit by allowing you to explore the peripheries. Arbit… extremely arbit. The nomadic self loves to tread on unchartered territories and yearns to live elsewhere. To complete the circle of life, I have to get going. Soon.

CHANDIGARH, PUNE, COVENTRY, LONDON, MUMBAI

There was a street I once knew, there are roads I can’t forget… there were riverets I sat by as ducks swam and there are nights I wished I was home. Yet its all so finely etched in my crystal memory that the shadows of the yore beckon me… Nomads don’t know where their heart lies, the bustling city or the solemn village.

This city of teeming millions winds you unto its own and you surrender to the pace and sometimes to the sheer lack of it. Every bit of the city screams for attention- for the beauty or the ugliness, you come to love it nonetheless.

Life takes you back to where it started and leaves you stranded at that corner… Not knowing where to turn, just walk to where the rainbow points.

Yeh hai Mumbai meri jaaaan!

I’m pausing to breathe and type something out after six whole exhilarating weeks. The mechanical flow of life has completely taken over the reigns of the humane me. How does Bombay manage the perfect flow of life, day after day without any of the infrastructural advantages that its international counterparts offer? The same people at the same time, in the same trains and cabs… It seems like life in the metro has been enveloped in a microcosm, a self-sustaining one. Its smelly, crowded, sweaty but I’m in love with it already.

The "Change"

This is the first memory that I have of Poona. Just out of school and straight into Law School, I was a teen with a lot of spunk. After two days in the city, I had walked into the nearest post office (the Deccan one) and bought some stamps. I gave the lady 50 rupees and she had to return 44 and after rambling and ranting for quite a while, she looked at me fiercely spouting these exact words, “sutta ahe?” Now all North-Indians know that a sutta means a cigarette and I was obviously oblivious of the fact that the word has a completely different connotation in Marathi, it meant “change”. I was shell-shocked. Why would a government employee offer me cigarettes instead of change? I told her “I don’t smoke” and she got even more agitated and waved the 50-rupee note at me and shouted “sutta ahe?” She was clearly having a horrible day and I wasn’t exactly soothing it out for her. I look back at that day and laugh my guts out. Quite literally…

Poona for me and comrades has been the time of our lives and nothing in the world can change that. The slosh of the puddles, the irritatingly crater rocked roads, the untimely rains, the 4 months of constant monsoon, the pollution, the clubs, the college, the “katta”… it’ll take a lifetime to cover up for all the mischief. About time as well :-)

Wondering aloud

The New Year is here! With its multitude promises and scares in equal measures, I wonder what lies ahead. Going back to the roots would be an easy transition, but it’s the uncertainty of tomorrow that is slightly perturbing.

Last year has been exciting, boring, new, fun, and extremely disheartening- the blasts. In a single flying moment, thousands or more were affected. It gives me a shiver down the cord to even consider what if it was one of mine? And that’s the city, which I wish to make an abode.

The agony of the saint and the pride of a queen
The life of a fable teller and the pace of a stream…