Why?

If people like Raj Thackeray are allowed to exist, flourish and command in our society, then we have a lot to reflect on. Where do people like him and his uncle come from? Do they only feed off the insecurities of natives, who should ideally have nothing to be scared off, considering the only natives that were there in the island city in the beginning were the koli fishermen. The corporates don’t award jobs based on vernacular roots, the entrance exams don’t differentiate between students from different regions. Yet, there are the reservations for domicile. As if religion wasn’t enough to tear us apart, we have a growing sense of regionalism. We find anything, anything at all that sets us apart from the others, yet sets us apart into clusters that we wish to belong to, mini clans, now growing into an epidemic. Progressiveness is also bringing with it, a wave of sectarianism, and more so in our country where parochial ideas are the easiest to sell. Sigh...

The pee and the smell

Today was a day full of “pee”, a friend was “pissed off” another one had “go peeee” as her gtalk status and well a colleague- he just got pissed on… by a dog… :D That was such fun, at least for us. The little pretty apso emptied her rather large bladder on my friend whose name incidentally is Mehak which means smell. Apt that because he smelt all the way home!

the alternate world

Surrealism had a great effect on me because then I realised that the imagery in my mind wasn't insanity. Surrealism to me is reality.

John Lennon

I live in two worlds, one that we all live in, day after day, without a real choice really. The other is in my head, and is mine alone, to destroy, create, love, loathe, admire, despise and to create stories. I grew a mango tree in my mind, then I saw a lawyer I know riding a bullock cart dressed in court uniform, then I saw a monster which looked eerily like a real person I know as well... Imagination is what keeps me going... What about you?

Normalcy

Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.

- Ellen Goodman

So that is what we silly humans do, make money for the things we can only enjoy once we are too old to enjoy them. That is equally sad and true. However, I can't claim to make money, being paid as much as I am... So we are the intellectuals and the givers of the society, using our expensive education for the under privileged- bridging the gap between the "have's" and "have nots"- while we solemnly stand on the side of "have nots" ourselves. Sigh.

Lennonism

John Lennon said “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”.

Missed holidays, forgotten friends, pending chores, unfinished paintings, ignored pets, books gathering dust... Life is about uncertainty, no matter how detailed our plans, it’s uncertain because other people make plans too, and their plans interfere with ours. Like jumbled cross connections on cellphone networks, like radio signals when we park in the basements. These cross connections can be annoying and rarely, stimulating. We may meet amazing strangers in places least expected and carry their print on our minds forever.

Sometimes we lose a track of who we were and omissions become a pattern. Sometimes we get on the wheel to look for a new beautiful avenue to admire but the brakes bring you back to where you started, because sometimes it’s meant to be.

On perfect mornings, sometimes I wish I was cycling through a sun kissed green field, sprinkled with pink and red paisleys. Perfect. I hope the wheel in my hands brings me back to this... Over and over again.

Randomness at its best

Sometimes, I’m really random. So this post isn’t the usual fiction/fact bordering on madness type. This post is dedicated to crappy madhumakhi (bee in Hindi) jokes. The first one I heard from a friend and the rest I made up:

1. What is the ghutna of a madhumakhi called?
2. When a madhumakhi loses a war what is it called?
3. When a madhumakhi is in pyaar what is it called?
4. When a madhumakhi is a boy in pyaar, what is it called?
5. When a madhumakhi is sick what is it called?
6. When a madhumakhi loses her job what is it called?
   
   Answers are:
   
   1. Bee-ki-knee
   2. Bee-har
   3. Bee-loved
   4. Bee-chara
   5. Bee-mar
   6. Bee-kar
   
   
   More later :-)
   

The burnt writing

So here I’m, finally warming up to the good old Dilli. Bombay lives on in the corpuscles, but the NCT takes over life. The warmth is diminishing and the days are getting shorter. The charming Dilli winter is around the corner, waiting to be welcomed by all and sun-dry.

My phase jumping decision holds good and looks good so far. I shall stick to this phase till all reserves of patience are exhausted.

The nomadic wheel is craving for the unknown and soon it shall receive its due. I wish to explore in galore.

She picked up the last piece of the burnt manuscript from the hearth and tried to read the 3 or 4 lines which were visible. Sometimes, she does that, burns her own writing, sometimes out of dissatisfaction and sometimes due to sheer anger at someone else. This time, it was anger. But then she read her own words, beautiful as they seemed to her… “Hope is a flower living in oblivion, surviving in a field of shattered dreams…”. The anger dissipated and a smile floated on her tired lips. She sat down to finish her story, the story of a lonely soul wilting away in hills, the story of hope, the story of a man who is a savior and a lover…

Our hearts constantly challenge our resolve and more often than not, they beat our heads at it.

Of Tobacco and nothing else...

So while all my colleagues (I work for an NGO) have really depressing looking desk calendars, my workstation has one from Taj, a vestige from my corporate past. And this month it has given my desk a nice looking young man. It is out of place with this delirious and dust ridden place. Like red in the desert and white in a coal mine. The frustration, this time around is deep rooted. I want to climb the rooftop and scream “NO MORE TOBACCO”. But Alas, the Boss has different plans for me.

Moving again, soon

My nomadic heart has been thumping, rather hard off late. The little wheel in my heel has been yearning to roll again. So soon, I may find myself gone again, to discover new rivers, seas, plains, mountains and of course, the bane of our world- people. I don’t keep a close watch on what I think, I think and it’s done. Rarely without surprising, albeit happy repercussions. Hence, the lack of close watch. Someone told me once “you do whatever gets you off Bansal”. Kinda true.

So, am listening to a song which reminds me of Lakeside whenever it plays. Those long nights of lone contemplation, the best of its kind; and the nights of solitude, the loner’s love.

Then I flicker back to the current day, typing away on a bright red computer. Where is my beloved tattered old handmade paper book? It symbolises my life- been there done that, still around, still learning and still teaching. It stands in the rumble on my workstation, the one place where it would really never be used, waiting to be rescued for another story. Ah, the bright red comp, for all its wondrous charms can never beat that old book.

The week ahead is going to be exciting, exhilarating and definitely draining. I’ve been waiting for it, but not quite ready for it yet. My first case being filed, my first draft.

Phase 1, Phase 2, Phase 3 and well, Phase 4

The sound of the trains whizzing by has become an indispensable part of my life. This city which gave me a writer’s block, refuses to let me have my flow back. I have my steaming chai, the loved companion in my hands, while the singer from the long gone yore singing his famous walking the line song. And this time, am travelling. The moment I step out of Delhi, I am able to write again...

I ask for random things all the time. The other day I wished from the bottom of my heart to go to Bombay, and the same evening saw me packing my bags to the city on work associated trip. Then again I wished “Cocaine” to play on the radio, and viola- it started playing 5 minutes later. Yesterday, to a visiting friend I mentioned a must-watch movie, the “Match Point” and castigated him for not watching it. We switched on the t.v and there it was playing on the Star Movies. So here is a story of futile wishes being fulfilled left right and centre. Nothing happens when I wish for the millions, etc.

Life, from the earlier black and white, has all the colours I wanted in it now. But at the cost of my personal happiness, all for the professional satisfaction, which I may or may not have yet achieved. Even when I had no time to myself, I used to love my days. One year went past me at the speed of lightening. I sit, counting days now. There are the greens outside again, on my way to the lovely city which I would always call home no matter where I go, not just because my parents live there. They say everything in the right measures can bring happiness and contentment.

Another friend, a dear one at that, sitting all the way in Sierra Leone, called yesterday and told me to get out of rut I have made my life. She literally held me by my ears and forced me to see the grim reality. She pointed out that there are four phases in professional life, apparently. With drastic moderations and the liberty to amend her philosophy, I say that the 4 phases should read as:

Phase 1: When we are considering all the options that lay in front of us and contemplate, open one door while keeping the others slightly ajar

Phase 2: We think about our decision, finding happiness, sadness, misery, failure, success all at one go. We stop thinking about the other doors

Phase 3: We stand where we are, wondering if the decision we took in Phase 1 was reasonable and correct. This is probably the toughest because we doubt our career decision

Phase 4: The trickiest, because in the end either we stay at Phase 3 for a long time and decide that what we chose was the best, or scarily, go back to Phase 1 and take a long hard look at the other doors, find courage within ourselves to experiment and open the another door.

Now, yours truly is truly a class apart for she had barely gone through Phase 1 that she jumped to Phase 4. Anyhow, the milk has been spilt and well, it made a pretty pattern on the carpet. Someone says they think I’m happy, some say I’m miserable. Confusion, utter and utmost, is the only answer here. I hope to wake up to the ubiquitous dawn after dusk anytime now. Snooze please?

Cherry Tree

I wondered for a long lingering moment. My simple mind was searching the answer to one of the toughest questions of the mortal world. What is the most perfect thing in the world? My mind wandered through the alleys I had walked, the museums I had seen, the books I had read and the wonders of the new century that I had experienced. I stumbled upon the evasive answer in the myriad thoughts and memories, for me the most perfect thing is a cherry tree in blossom.

The sharp bend jerked me back to the reality. I was on the way to the airport, to the Bombay airport, about to leave my favourite city yet again. I didn’t like the idea of returning from the old muggy city, then as if a note from the past, the cabbie started playing an old cassette- the song was- unbelievably so- “eh dil hai mushkil jeena yahan, zara bachke zara hatke yeh hai Bombay meri jaan”.

Independence, just another day

While I don't like Nehru, his speech "Tryst with destiny" is the permanent remnant of our historic event. The world was not sleeping, New York was striking noon, China was wide awake... We have turned out to be brave in parts and the biggest cowards in others. We sit waiting for the 61st Independence Day to arrive, but what have we done for our country? Our nationalist spirit is apathetic. Lets juxtapose this speech with the horrors of partition that followed. Lets read the underlined optimism of this speech in the light of the monsters that we have become- bombings, communal riots in Bombay, Delhi and Gujarat. Lets read in the light of the sheer inertia with which we lead our lives. Lets hope we don't end up like China, where the growth of the cities has clouded the poverty of the villages and the economic disparity between the two is so much more than in India. Lets not leave the "economic shining" to the cities and take our respective successes to the interiors.

TRYST WITH DESTINY

Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity.

At the dawn of history India started on her unending quest, and trackless centuries are filled with her striving and the grandeur of her success and her failures. Through good and ill fortune alike she has never lost sight of that quest or forgotten the ideals which gave her strength. We end today a period of ill fortune and India discovers herself again. The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us. Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?

That future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we may fulfil the pledges we have so often taken and the one we shall take today. The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity. The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but as long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.

And so we have to labour and to work, and work hard, to give reality to our dreams. Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and peoples are too closely knit together today for any one of them to imagine that it can live apart Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and so also is disaster in this One World that can no longer be split into isolated fragments.

We have to build the noble mansion of free India where all her children may dwell. The appointed day has come-the day appointed by destiny-and India stands forth again, after long slumber and struggle, awake, vital, free and independent. The past clings on to us still in some measure and we have to do much before we redeem the pledges we have so often taken. Yet the turning-point is past, and history begins anew for us, the history which we shall live and act and others will write about.

It is a fateful moment for us in India, A new star rises, the star of freedom in the East, a new hope comes into being, a vision long cherished materializes. May the star never set and that hope never be betrayed! We rejoice in that freedom.

The future beckons to us. Whither do we go and what shall be our endeavour? To bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and workers of India; to fight and end poverty and ignorance and disease; to build up a prosperous, democratic and progressive nation, and to create social, economic and political institutions which will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman.

We have hard work ahead. There is no resting for any one of us till we redeem our pledge in full, till we make all the people of India what destiny intended them to be. We are citizens of a great country on the verge of bold advance, and we have to live up to that high standard. All of us, to whatever religion we may belong, are equally the children of India with equal rights, privileges and obligations. We cannot encourage communalism or narrow-mindedness, for no nation can be great whose people are narrow in thought or in action.

To the nations and peoples of the world send greetings and pledge ourselves to cooperate with them in furthering peace, freedom and democracy. And to India, our much-loved motherland, the ancient, the eternal and the ever-new, we pay our reverent homage and we bind ourselves afresh to her service. Jai Hind.

Wishing you a so called HAPPY Independence Day. JAI HIND!

Blood and tranquility

The hustling bustling city was once a desert where oasis’ were bloody potholes and in the trees resided, the banshees of the dead. She grew up there while her mother toiled for her second masters degree, the toughest of its kind. The city where she saw and smelt blood for the first time. The stench of death hung over the entire city and still lingers in those which are painful memories. The winters were harsh and the summers melted the city.

In the winters, every evening, after she and her brother played near the fireplace, after they had worn out, they sat discussing their day. It was amazing how much conversation the two little children indulged in, given that that was two decades ago, with little exposure to tv and none to cable tv. Sometimes, when her brother felt too cold, she wrapped him up in her mittens and blanket and then made her first pet fall asleep on her knees. There was always the teetering background noise of blasts and bullets, but were safely ensconced in their little haven which was well protected and guarded. That was the city of mouth watering food, the Golden Temple, the hatti ka kulfi’s and the Wagah Border.

Renewed passion

She had moved seas away, and her amiable biba had moved worlds away. As much as she tried to bury her memories and let the past live in the winding hands of the chiming clock, she couldn’t cut the umbilical cord. She yearned to meet people she knew from childhood, the people who had the cords of their lives intertwined with hers, people with fragments with the same blood.

The old teak desk had travelled long and far with her. The steaming kahwa in her hands and the splashing rain on the windows activated a long lost passion- to write. The old scrappy notebook was dug out and she sat pouring her imagination on the paper and writing each word like an artist, weaving and curving the soul of the letters as she went…

The squirrel, the hole and the cake

It couldn’t have been denied to her.. the sweet innocent girl that she had been, for the longest time, undemanding and yielding. It was after all, only a simple slice of chocolate cake. She ran out in the garden, her soft curls flying back, and her pink frilly frock doing its own little ballet. She tripped on a rock and fell into the dug up hole. The hole was never visible to her before, but now she could see for what it really was- an escape. A beautiful strawberry bush grew in the corner and the little one went over and plucked a few. Suddenly, magically, of course, a squirrel appeared in the corner. There was nothing unusual about the squirrel, except that it was wearing an apron! A tiny squirrel apron. The little one waved a hello to the strangely civilized squirrel. It was returned by a shock and a yelp for help and the animal scampered out of the hole.

To this day she wonders if it was a figment of her overactive and over-magical imagination or was it, eerily, real?

____________________

Delhi Musings

My older and learned friend told me a couple of days ago that am now a ripe mango (on the account of my age) and would burst/ rot soon. He said that in reference to the birthday and the grand entrance to the later part of the good age- the twenties. Now that generally is not a very nice feeling is it? Being told that you are akin to a highly fattening fruit which would rot soon anyways!

I have been driving around in the good old capital for a while and the people here don’t cease to shock me everyday. If I had to count the number of people who randomly dart in front of your car, and not with the intention of giving up their precious lives, I would have a full time job doing just that.

Has anyone heard/seen the legendary "payal" (chime-sound making-anklet/ trinket) wearing ghost? I had been visited off late by one and rather frequently at that. The scared mind refused to check the hell called balcony and I stayed put for nights on end. Then yours truly gathered all the guts that I had and ventured out in the dark, only to find the watchman chaining and then later unchaining a gate in the backyard. Ugh, he killed all the magic and supernatural for me in one gusty move. Sad, very…

And all this pointless writing only because this city killed my creativity and my friend accused me of being too busy to blog :)

The union

She winked and her eyebrows narrowed to a twin-arc. It wasn’t a frown, she was hit by the greens outside. The fast train flew by the scenic beauty outside. The Dan Brown in her hands called her back to the print, but it lacked the strength. The pitter patter outside turned into a storm and she loved storms. The unrest gave her peace, unusual but not unique. There were others of her kind, only far and few. The swaying greens of the plains and the grey atop all other life made her brood. Soon, very soon she would meet a part of her, separated a long time ago.

The soul fry

This is not in reference to the yummy restaurant in Fort, this is also not in reference to "soul curry", the mouth-watering Goan stuff, but this is in reference to the real real thing. How one person could control her whole life, was beyond her imaginable beliefs. How one person wanted to control her time, was unthinkable. But that's what it had come to be, her soul was finally fried. And they tell her this is only the beginning.

Telectroscope!

And now this! I wish I was in London today. I would have been found peering through the “Telectroscope”. An artist called Paul St. George with a very intriguing ancestry developed the idea and now Londoners can see New Yorkers live! Paul tells a story of his great-grandfather, an eccentric Victorian engineer, Alexander Stanhope St George who supposedly constructed a gigantic tunnel under the Atlantic oceanbed, stretching from one corner of the world to another- between London and New York. He claims that though this orginal venture failed at the turn of the 20th century, he has now installed parabolic optic mirrors at the two ends of the tunnel to enable people from the 2 continents to see each other in real time through the tunnel. Of course this is all faff. The actual broadband transmission gives people the impression that they are peering down a huge tunnel across the ocean. It purports to be magical and something different.

WANTED this very instant: A very efficient TELEPORTER!

http://www.tiscali.co.uk/telectroscope/home.php

The new crossroads...

The woman loved everything about rains, the smell, the wind, the squeaky-clean greenery, washed roads and getting soaked. She sat cross-legged on the floor of the balcony. Elvis sang “suspicious minds” in the background while the fresh lavender flowers pleased the senses. The rain poured down the skies and drenched the solemn soul to the bone. The trains came and went, their gong boomeranging through the plain. The sound stayed for a while in the heavy air before dying out. That enveloping sound had begun to become a part of her routine. She used to talk about cross roads and now she lives at one. One of the busiest in the country.

She sat musing at where the twists and turns of her life had brought her. A new beginning or a new end? A new shore or a new edge?