Vague and random

The one who stays within the limits assigned to him is a man,
The one who roams beyond these limits is a saint.

To reject both limits and their absence;
That's a thought with immeasurable depths.

There are those amongst us who exist and those who live.

The subtleties of life had taken shape and were beginning to dawn upon the crusted soul. Like the dawning light, a new life was marking its way into the world. The beaded pinks and the lightening blues had defined the oncoming future. She sat up, in the bed, staring at the painting on the front wall. She, who knew the most, was quiet today, and for a good reason. One doesn’t talk about storms, only the strong bear them. And the weak dissolve in their fury. “History is an insatiable giant”. (David Davidar) We only remember those who win, and the rest like us, disappear in the sands of time.

Paradox

She is a strange woman. Perplexing really... The artist, the poet, the story weaver, the activist and the professional. Somehow, she manages to charm people with her toothy grin and somehow she manages to keep her sanity in this insane world. She is one of the few women I know, who thinks from only her heart, the brain refuses to interfere.

One day, she was sitting next to the Sukhna Lake, sketching an old banyan. It was nearly sunset. Winter was setting in so her hands were shaky, yet the charcoal strokes were flawless. The leaves seemed to curve mysteriously. And the bark looked like an old wilted man. How she sees a face in everything is beyond anyone else’s comprehension. Her mother told her once “you will never be able to make money out of your art because you love it so much that you won’t sell it”. That is the reason she advocates for a living instead.

Imagination

But before I could say anything to him, he disappeared into thin air. Gone, woof! Just like that, in a flash of a second. I have an extremely vivid imagination, silly me. No man can be so perfect. No one is that perfect.

So the spices still haunt me but this doubt which was building within me is beginning to disappear.

Dispel with the notions that may haunt you, ignore the little voice in the heart, because it’s the head which wins always.

I was writing something yesterday, unable to finish it, I have decided to let it decay and die a natural death. So long, later…

Jeeves

A man and a woman are never the same and as Jeeves once rightly put it to Wooster, "The female of the species is more deadly than the male, sir.”

Vanilla

I got a frantic call in the morning. As always it was her, worried about my safety, her anxiety stemming from the news reports. She is incorrigible, yet adorable. How do I tell her that this happens in our city everyday?!

Immersed in work, I see nothing else, I feel nothing else. I have sheaves of paper strewn all around and suddenly I smell vanilla… it seems to bring back the memories of that day in Notting Hill. Face down, I remain focused. That smell is still troubling me and growing strong each passing moment. I have a meeting in about 5 minutes and I haven’t sorted out the probable answers to the probable queries. The client seems to have arrived; I straighten up, pick up my cards and folder and walk in. He is sitting right in front me, the man from Portobello, the same man from Hyde Park, the man who had vanished for a week and allowed me to exist in peace.

One wonders why the universe is constantly conspiring and where does it want to lead you to.

Trick or Treat?

I observed him while he was lost in the nuances of my charcoal strokes. He was wearing a white shirt and denims and as the setting sun lay its rays on him, I thought I noticed a halo. I have got got got to stop believing in things to which we don’t have a reasonable answer. Or maybe that’s what they mean by thinking out of the box. He handed over my creation and gave me that fuzzy smile again.

He had walked away that day, the voice still ringing in my ears. I didn’t do anything to stop him… I have much of an ego myself. If he cared he would have stayed and talked to me, at least asked my name. I tried to think as little of it as possible and involved myself in the household chores. After many days I cleared the clutter in the house. The downside of living alone is that beyond a point you stop caring. Still, a dream of him came to me at night. Or morning? I couldn’t place it. The warm trickle of water in the shower, tingled my senses and for a second I froze; maybe he’s not real! Maybe, just maybe he’s an apparition. I have got to get going and get myself busy with work before the man I barely knew took up my entire existence.

Take a cue

The spices had worked their charm over and over again. I found myself drawn to the place and the face of the man that I’d seen there, starting haunting me. I didn’t see him again for weeks altogether. I was sitting in Hyde Park, sketching the old couples walking by, hand in hand, very much in love after all the years of being together. Maybe that is what they call growing old together. I was a little envious, a little happy and a little worried. Couldn’t I just hold the hands of the clock and make them move forward and take me to my old age and see if I do finally find my life-long companion?

He crept up and sat next to me, imperceptible… like a shadow. He was watching me sketch when I felt that warm gaze again and looked sharply at the intruder, if that is what you can call him. He smiled… a slightly curved and infectious smile that made me smile instantly, despite my anger at having been watched in silence. His first words to me were “can I see what you have drawn?” The voice boomeranged through the park and came back to hit me, or so I felt. It was a crisp baritone, the tone which made me squirm inside. I handed over the sketch and he looked at it intently and the time stopped... we got stuck in a time warp. God! I have got to stop imagining things. I was falling in love and I didn’t even know the man. I hadn’t known him, or spoken to him, or felt him… Nothing. Sometimes, it’s so easy to let yourself go and give in to your instinct.

Spices

I was walking down the Notting Hill to pick up some old LP’s from the Portobello Market. It’s a weekend thing that I do more often nowadays than before. That’s when it happened. I saw clouds of spice rising up the air, making swirls and curves and inexplicable shapes, growing with each passing moment. I don’t know how long I stood there, bewitched, literally, by the wavering shapes. I fell in love with the smells- vanilla, cardamom, cinnamon, patchouli, lavender… slowly, I steadied the quiver of doubt in my heart and walked towards the board which in bright red announced “Spices” and saw him for the first time. He was reading the contents of a vial of spice intently and as if someone had suddenly pricked him, he looked up and saw me… no expression, just a blank look at first. Then his gaze turned warm and felt like soft misty clouds on my face. That’s when I noticed his olive skin and brown hair and the good looks that came with them.

Do you ever get drawn to places where you are not supposed to be? I do, all the bloody time… I did pick up a LP at last and what happened in between is a story for another day. That LP was sent all the way to India… Layla (Eric Clapton)….

The song and the man

The adrift mind searches endlessly for something it may never find. The line between the fact and the vision is slanted.

Everyday she learns something new and makes my life worth living. She started singing at the top of her voice today on the home-karaoke set, it was one of my favourites – “leaving on a jet plane” and I watched her, mesmerized by the beauty and depth of her little voice. She has heard me sing in the shower, that’s where she must have picked the words. I started cooking with that wondrous noise in the background. Suddenly I felt her hands around my waist, tickling the hell out of me! I love the child…

Today I was the only smiling female face in the company of others of my species in the tube today. Serenity and calm were dripping from my face as others were pulling each others hair out.

Oh and that male of the species who is forever perplexed at my disappearing act. He thinks he is a part of my story but he isn’t. My world is tough to break into. Very tough.

Be-longing

The cacophony of sounds envelops me… my soul is floating outside its body and I can picture her… vividly. She’s standing in the labour room, facilitating one of the thousands of births she has been a part of till now. She is the messenger, the holder of good news. Her hands bring life to the world, new life every day. She toils and stands the stench, it’s her chosen profession, a doctor by choice. And I love her, beyond reason and doubt. When I turn off the music and everything seems normal again, my heart aches for her... Today, the sky is brimming with happiness and the little voice in my head assures me that my pain will fade away. Slowly and gradually…

The magic

She sways the little bop of a head from side to side and smiles awkwardly. I tell her to stop fidgeting and finish her painting. Her water-colored, small stroked, blue and black, white and red, yellow and orange painting. She doesn’t listen… did I ever?

I remember once, a long time ago, I sat in front of the bay windows and suddenly wished for there to be more colour in my room. And that’s how the windows in my living room bear the little paisleys and lilies and every time sun shines through them, they act like a wondrous prism that brings a riot of colors to my otherwise pink room.

Do you believe in magic…. Okay at least maybe, guardian angels? I was in a rush and as I locked the door behind me, I suddenly remembered that I had forgotten my cell phone in the house. I came running back and fetched it, and as I came back to the lift, I saw it stuck between two floors and a yellow scarf hanging out of it. When I fall ill, I get signs that say I should rest- a missed train, too much rain, an auto stuck in a pothole… Everyday something small, something that you or zee would oversee, makes me believe in guardian angels. The bigger question about the existence of magic? Aren’t we all a little bit of that? That magic!

Reflection

I stand there, wishing hard for it not to rain. The vast expanse of sea beckons me and the shiny mirage-like sand at the chipped corners of the lagoon yearns for me to swish my first stroke across the white and virgin canvas. The linseed drips and the turpentine drops as I mix turquoise with white… the shadows of waves swivel and catch my attention. I try too much at once, the waves, the sands, and the sky. The novice that I am, I refuse to take the beaten path and create a riot of colours on my canvas. My canvas of life…

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 :-)