"something for everybody"

She stood there, watching him while he tried to grab the passing crowd's attention. He was screaming "something for everybody... NYC has something for you, what do you have for me?". He had a mesmerising voice, it stayed with her for a while. What made a real impression in her heart was the line "something for everybody".... She could smell so many different things: fresh pizzas, curry, taco's... Wandering through the streets of the Big Apple, all by herself, she found peace, love and warmth in the most unlikely of places. Her gypsic soul felt the love where others find fear.

There are so many big cities in the world, but the ones that take you along with them are the ones that are the most visited.

Where is the love?

Today, while driving through the mad rush hour in Delhi, the music system started playing "where is the love"? Where is the love, really? Every driver on the road is out there to get you or to get themselves hurt... The love has disappeared today, it may reappear tomorrow it may not... But I feel like it left my spirit and went wandering elsewhere for the meantime. Not to worry, the heart unlike the mind knows no bounds.

Return of the angst

The angst was slowly coming right back. The uncertainities were settling back in. Ah, this is the territory she is the most familiar with... the bliss couldn't have lasted forever. She needed this to be able to write again, and here she was clicking the black away into the light, cherishing each moment of her newfound pain... The contentment stemming from discontent, was the most beautiful of its kind.

Shubhra's wishes

This post is not by me.. It's by a dear friend, my mad Shu wishing my dear husband Sudhanshu birthday ... And it stirred up a gazillion beautiful memories of fun, love and friendship... so much that it had to occupy some space forever on my blog.. love u girl!

Dearest Darling Shoe ( and yes, you'll always be 'shoe' cos I beat you to 'shu' ),

Goa. July 09. You walked out of that airport and gave me this big warm hug. It was the first time we'd met. I immediately felt 'welcome'. You see, it's a strange thing with friends - when you've know someone closely for a substantial period of time and have seen them through love, sickness, happiness, break-ups, weepy ex-boyfriends, psycho ex-boyfriends, ex-boyfriends you didn't quite like etc etc, you sort of feel a little protective about them and also a little possessive. So each time someone comes along, you back off a little, give your friend space and try to not get into protective-possessive zone. With you, I felt strangely protected-possessed myself. Almost as if, what you felt for Rach spilled over and extended out to me. It did. And it was this big warm comforter kinda feeling :)

Shu Thinks: I likey.

Mumbai. July 09. You call me to say you've booked a domain name for me. You have no idea how touched I was.

Shu Thinks: I likey very much.

Delhi. Dec 09. By now, I've lived in your face for a month. You're driving me to work. I'm an hour late already. You're driving at 20 kmph. Why? Because you're discussing, in great detail, an issue of great importance to Rach.

Shu Thinks: Even Superman can't multitask.

Shu Also Thinks: I love him.

And since then, Shu has loved him a little more each day... through all the wedding shopping and the cocoberry tubs and those six moths in delhi and the last six months of being underground, Shu has loved him. A little more each day.

Happy Birthday Jizooo. You ARE the best.

Shu

New story

PATIALA, AMRITSAR, CHANDIGARH, PUNE, COVENTRY, LONDON, MUMBAI

October 7, 2007

There was a street I once knew, there are roads I can’t forget… there are riverets I sat by as ducks swam and there are nights I wished I was home. Yet it all, is 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.

DELHI

June 15, 210

I found this file after over two and a half years and sit here smiling, staring at it. A friend, and he is the only one, claims that I hated Bombay. Well here is my example that I could never bring myself to hate the city that fed me, nurtured me and taught me more about life than any other place ever could.

Now, the Delhi tenure has come to complete a total of two years and life has taken a settling turn. The nomad still hates the permanency and continuity, yet she has learnt a valuable lesson… one that of marriage. A marriage changes your ways, in so many ways... I can’t leave a city on my whims and fancies. I have another life that I am spiritually albeit happily bound to. All that I can hope is that my soul mate finds his own gypsy and we can take another great journey, another move together. My soul has no roots, not the geographical ones… but yet I find myself rooted to him. Eternally.

Clarity through storm

There are very few things in life which make you forget all the miseries in the world. The distant war, the harrowing cries of children, the love of your husband, the lack of direction.... The antidote to everything miserable is this constant, unabashed rain which is lashing out in front of me. Sitting on the floor and typing out, a little mindful of getting my dear lappie wet, I think of myriad things. Suddenly, though the blurry visibility, everything seems to come out clear. The leaves, the roads, the sky and perhaps the people too.

Moving out of the old into the new

I am sitting quietly, alone, or perhaps is it the song that is keeping me company? Listening to “Suspicious minds”, for almost the first time since I last heard it on the day I moved into this house, I realise we all have suspicious minds- suspicious of others, of ourselves, of the future, of the past... Elvis passed, the song will stay forever, meaning different things to different people. I distinctly remember that day, the day I discovered the wonder of train sounds and rain tapping the windows. This house, will soon be a thing of past. This beautiful wonderful abode where I have shared countless memories with close ones, lived a pretty carefree life, set up home in Delhi... The eyes wet up thinking of the goodbyes to the walls, rooms, corridors. One has to let go of the old things in order to acquire new ones. There is seldom space in life for both.

I haven’t known in a while where I am headed- the direction is mapped out but the wheels keep taking me elsewhere. I don’t meet people I should be, I am not doing the work I should be and sometimes I think I am merely a shadow of my earlier self. Despite having shed the unsure life, the blinding lack of accountability and having accepted to take the baton of the one tie that binds one for life, I find myself in a sea of uncertainty. The only difference from all the previous times is that this time I am not in this alone. I have wonderful hand, holding mine and helping me grow into a better person.

The frame

Robert Evans: There are three sides to every story. My side, your side, and the truth. And no one is lying. Memories shared serve each one differently

The mirroring image on the outside was picture perfect. No spots, no dust, no misgivings, no faults, no cracks... Her world seemed so content to the outsiders. No one knew that she wanted to scream out of her frame... She wanted to break the bondage of pain and self harm. No one ever understood her. No one ever will.

"'The only people who see the whole picture,' he murmured, 'are the ones who step out of the frame.'" — Salman Rushdie (The Ground Beneath Her Feet).

Settling in and moving on...

Her whole life flashed by in a matter of seconds. She stared quietly at the green outside. Boundless pastures and fields that filled her window and view. Thatch-roof huts, wide fields, small riverets, peace, lack of waste, lack of crowds- it was the neo-paradise. The travelling soul was not ready to settle, geographically or mentally. She searched for her roots but couldn’t find any. The home was far behind and far ahead. In the middle were patches of uncertainty. She did not know brick and mortar, she knew canvasses- to paint and to live in and to love.

The body was bound but the mind was free....

Small only in size

The city to city hopping had made me forget all about the small town India. All that remained in the name of small town memories were in the form of second hand information from the book – Butter Chicken in Ludhiana. It had been 8 years since I went to my parent’s native town and even longer since I visited a village. So the rude shock of road travel in U.P took the mind screaming through small shops, clustered and congested roads, crowded side walks, solitary bakeries, numerous chai stalls, painfully slow life and big dreams. Big trucks loaded with hay, urea, men, women, beds and even hand drawn carriages.... Where else in the world will you see such a sight? I wonder if one day there would be a city to village exodus, whether we will all one day go back to our agrarian roots and farm for a living. What an utterly delightful idea for a soul tired of city nuisances!

I feel my will to write fading as soon as I hit the Delhi airspace. Gone, I can feel it leaving me, like a ghoul.

The vines had bloomed, the grapes were sour. In this line you will find a positive and a negative. But she chose the bloom and the positive, hoping that the grapes will sweeten with the passing of the season. She had been fighting new demons off late, surfacing every now and then in the mushrooming web of thoughts. She wore a mask of impenetrable loneliness. She could not address the most obvious; she thought that the problems may iron themselves out. Like when it is cloudy outside, and we yet refuse to carry an umbrella.

Of journeys and roads

The incessant traveller in me has her wish fulfilled ever so often. Call it deceitful planning or a heavenly intervention, but I don’t have to bear the Delhi bore for too long. I meet strange, wonderful, pleasing people all the time and that gives me something to reflect on and to write about. I was dreading my direct flight to Chicago, but I my neighbours on either side were very pleasant accommodating people. On my right was a young man of 18 who shared my music interests, we ended up listening to each other’s music and talking about life. He was starting college and was born in the 1990. Titli and I always used to wonder how people born in the 90’s would be like, and since we did not know many people that age outside of the battery of cousins, we really did not have an opinion. However, Ankur was a smart young man, with a good attitude and a lot of perspective on almost everything that we talked about. So the generation next- given the Internet, the savvy new gadgets, information explosion, and a hoard of other factors- are a lot smarter group of people than we were at that age. On my left side, were a mother and a daughter duo who were a lot of fun to talk to too. I have met a lot of Karan’s colleagues and completely enjoyed their company, whether it was a family of four, or an elderly Kenyan-Sikh couple or an elderly couple from the States, they all had a memory rich of experiences that time can only add to. Each journey made, each new twist and turn in the road, brings along new uncharted territories, where the only way is ahead.

Love and words

Love and words for me, are the two most compelling passions in the world. And I often use one in place of the other, I think them rather interchangeable. Once, I met a wonderful old lady on way to Bombay from Poona on the Deccan Express and she told me her very heart warming love story. I have never really penned it down; I shall do it today before memory and time take it away from me forever. She had grown up in a predominantly Gujarati area in the city of old Bombay and belonged to a deeply religious Hindu family. She went to an all girls school and she loved reading. SatyaBen, her name is, and she and her friends went to a football field to watch their brothers play in the evening. She was always escorted to and back from the field by her brother. One day he went out of town and she sneaked out to the field by herself. She noticed one particularly handsome and athletic young man and started secretly doting on him. Every day she went there only to see him. He got a whiff of her affections and one day came by the school at closing time to acquaint himself with her. They fell in love. Minor omission- he belonged to a strict Muslim family. Her trials and failures at convincing her parents to let her marry him, his relentless pursuance of his own family, nothing yielded anything noteworthy. Finally, they eloped to Poona with help of certain daring friends and married in a temple. Their families still don’t talk to them. They couldn't bear children and they adopted 4 children and have raised them to practice a religion of their choice. One of her daughters, who was accompanying her, kept smiling throughout the rendition. I will never forget those two faces...etched in my mind forever. Love makes people do ridiculous, crazy, beautiful things... And words express them better than any action can.

Void

There exists and subsists a feeling of emptiness and the need to fill a void. The writing inked out more void, it failed at exploring the answers. The swaggeringly deceptive eyes told no truth and none emanated from the depths of the heart. But there was no communiqué from the mind to indicate the nature of the void. It is just there, lying in the abyss, nameless, indivisible, invisible…

Angel or Demon?

The uneasiness grew inside me, making just sitting around nearly impossible. I went out in the heat, I went out in the dark, but the restless soul knew no respite. Little harmless lies had become hard to bear, and I wondered about my own set of lies. A pack of cards in my own hands and blaming the other side of indulging in debauchery. A maze of contradictions and a path of divisiveness. Indulgence is all that the winged creature wanted. Were the wings, the devils or the angels? Who knew...?

Underground...

I feel like giving whatever little I have up and going far away, to go underground.... Untraceable, far from the crowded cities and selfish souls. Far from the world which knows only how to take and never to return. The void and the vacuum of the seemingly infallible life had become a bit much to stand every day. The will to run in an unknown direction and travel in solitude has taken over my soul completely. All I want is a train, a ticket to anywhere, a set of books, some snacks, a big rucksack of necessities and a clear sky above.

Melancholy and excitement

She had been always been a driven soul, driven by her passion and sometimes by her faith. Her recent sufferings had been a strange mix of melancholy and excitement. Melancholy for what was left behind and excitement for what is yet to come. All she had in common with the previous self was the restlessness and the impassioned spirit. Every day we pursue our days with either wasted energy or a tired soul and lose our perspective on our ultimate goal. We never break up our dreams into small daily plans and we all know that we should.

Shiny old stuff

I pulled out old leather folders and bags unused for a long time. They had been gathering dust and nearly growing mould. I sat them down, despite the late and odd hour and carefully cleaned them. The leather cleanser read “clean with a cloth using light circular movements”. The apt cleansers and the right mind-set. The closets- the metaphysical and the mental ones, need an order sometimes- to be able to refer to the right contents, to rid the clutter and the dust. We need to weed out the unnecessary things, sometimes when they don’t need us and sometimes when we don’t need them. Everything in life needs nurturing, occasional cleaning and lots of sunlight.

Drifting

The pain and the discomfort became visible and apparent. She can never mask her emotions. Something always gives it away- the expression on her face or the tremble in the voice. What was once a pleasurable torment had now become the Achilles heel. Only a fragment of her smiling self remained and she disappeared slowly into an abyss that her heart had formed inside her. She felt as if she were hung up by her toes, unable to eat, breathe, sleep... talk... She wanted to wear a farce and pretend nothing happened, but something had. Something irreversible. They say you reap what you sow...

Yippeeeee!

Most of you will read about this tomorrow in papers or see it on the news tonight. We have scored a second big victory against the tobacco industry today after the ban on public smoking last October. From May 31st this year, all cigarette and other tobacco products would have to display mandatory pictorial warnings on their packets. The Supreme Court finally let us have our way (in a limited manner albeit) and has directed the Government of India to enforce the law mandating the display of pictorial warnings which will see all tobacco products displaying images reflecting adverse health effects of tobacco on 40% of the front panel. This victory has been six years in coming and I can’t stop grinning from ear to ear... My first ever writ petition, my first ever draft!