This year has been a year of change. It kicked off with changing cities, of being away from a city that has been my home for 26 years right since the day I was born. Each city is known to lend you it’s unique color, but Mumbai is known to color you in indistinguishable shades like water in the palette that’s colored by the dip of the artist’s brushes. Everyone is mad about their cities. In Mumbai you are simply in love with it. Moving away from this love was more than just physical distancing. It was also emotional. But when you cross a quarter of a century in age and in experiences, you begin to come to terms with life and its ways. It almost spiritual - this realization of finally known to have grown up to shoulder new responsibilities although deep within you are still a pampered princess. This year has again proved that love is all you need to survive, not just of others but also of your own. Finding time for yourself to do things that make you happy is probably one of the toughest things. It’s so easy to settle into a mundane routine and let all the good things in life take a back seat under the pretext of lack of time. The key is to get up and act. The more you are in possession of your own interests and actions, the lesser are your chances of holding someone else responsible for your disappointments. There is no wisdom in letting inhibitions rule your actions. There is a fine line between fear and respect but when you substitute one with the other it makes a world of a difference. Sometimes you should just let things fall in place on their own. The harder you try to mend them the longer they seem to take. Nothing is more promising than knowing that you have a listening ear, a helping hand, and a strong shoulder to come home to. It’s good to live in an age where technology has shrunk the world. It’s fortunate to be nestled in the presence of sane people in a world that’s increasingly losing it all. Hope continues to show the way, even if sometimes it is just about those little things you look forward to do over the weekend. There’s so much that’s behind us and so much more yet to arrive. The new year promises a new start and fresh aspirations, even as it safely shelters the past in the shape of memories of days well spent.
17:54 -
Posted by Shilpa K -
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comments
Lend me the silence of the night sky
The solitude of the islands that dot the seas
Color me with shades of the four seasons
Let me leave now, with no reasons
Like the river that flows through wild woods
Lead me to places that I haven't been
These wonders of nature
I have long since seen
Let me rest in peace
Let no thought ruffle me
Am an old bark now
I ain't no autumn leaf
I have wilted now
And so have the roses on my grave
I shall survive now
With the hope that you always gave
Of the dawn that awakens every sleep
I embrace my slumber dark and deep
19:02 -
Posted by Shilpa K -
3
comments
Fear is the biggest impediment to a life full of possibilities. It holds you back like a tethered horse, that only gallops in place but never experiences what it is like to be in the fields unconstrained by boundaries, running towards the horizon, against the forces of the wind sheltered only by the canopy of the open sky. Man has always been taught to live within boundaries – Boundaries of culture & traditions, boundaries of income, boundaries of state and nations and also that of the gender. It is in this constant pursuit of doing the right things in the right way in a boxed existence, that he forgets to dream, that he grows shy of exploiting his own potential, of thinking beyond what’s obvious, and doing beyond what’s but ordinary. Every attempt to defy this rule of being bound to his own thinking, is susceptible to failure and every failure in turn invites an urge strong enough to either given in or to give up. Winners are not born by their constitution, but by the circumstances that shape them into one. By events that are so powerful that they leave an indelible mark in the memory like that of a careless splash of ink on linen. Something that can only fade but never leave. The day you decide to overcome fear, is the day when you experience real power, in thought and in action. That is the day when you would believe in yourself a lot more than the world believes in you, when you’d reconcile to your unfathomable shortcomings as much as you would to you overwhelming abilities hidden beneath fear - the biggest impediment to a life full of possibilities!
19:58 -
Posted by Shilpa K -
0
comments
Love for us at that age when watching movies and sipping cutting chai in the canteen filled up most space in the life was like in the fairy tale books with the hope of attaining a state of happily ever after. Most people would agree real life begins only in mid-twenties once college ends. That’s precisely the point when the quarter life crisis strikes. You realize there are more impossible trinities than your economic classes have taught you. Well paying job, interesting job, good manager - to name one; Beautiful girl, rich girl, accepting parents - to name another. The problem with me was I was wired differently. My Maslow’s need hierarchy pyramid seemed to be completely upside down. I was contented with myself for some strange reason. May be life isn’t that complicated after-all I thought. Time still hasn’t managed to bias that opinion of mine. Natasha & Rishab were my batch-mates from Engineering college who were only fractionally well off when it came to our final scores. I attributed that to their hard work and contented myself. The party at Rishab’s house was 3 years after we had graduated. He had managed to become an Investment Banker in an MNC after completing his masters. I wasn’t surprised at all, the hard-worker that he was. Plus he was the kinds who could do all it took to slog his back side off until his 40s, before resting on it for the rest of his life. Natasha had taken up a software job in an IT company & started from scratch after studying machines and gears for 4 years. Plus she was the kinds who wanted to visit the USA and joining an IT company was probably the fastest way to get there. I had taken up a mundane role in bank right next to my house. It helped me spend more time on my interests of photography and writing. Had it not been for the efforts to impress Natasha and for fighting my parents fear of an unemployed young son, I wouldn’t have accepted the job in my wildest dreams. However, it had finally happened that night, she was impressed. That was the only bonus I ever received from the company. We met more often and chatted more often – on the phone, over email, through skype, at the coffee shop, in the park, at the mall, and at Rishab’s parties.
“You think we should speak to our parents?”
Seventy two hours later, Natasha was at the door of their mansion-like house with 2 Large suitcases, a backpack, fighting back a few tears and a crowd of cousins, relatives, and people from the friendly neighborhood – the well-wishers with the shopping lists I would say. I stood at the corner watching all the drama happen, hugging, kissing, offering sweets, breaking of the coconut, snaps that went on facebook in real-time which attracted 89 likes & 45 comments in a matter of seconds, and all the tamasha that I despised even on the silver screen. I always believed real life was way too real than what was portrayed in the soaps. I accompanied the gang to the airport, squeezed between two aunties who were loud, ludicrous and loaded with a lot of strong perfume which gave me a headache. After being adequately crushed by their wholesome beings, my lungs needs fresh air and my mind some fresh thoughts. I started thinking of my last night’s conversation with Natasha. We had met only once in the last 3 days, for not more than half an hour, where we discussed our future. We had agreed to be more mature about our relationship and not let different countries, different continents and different time-zones affect it.
“We will be fine”, I assured her as she sipped coffee and burnt her tongue carelessly. “It’s just a few months, may be a year at the most. We will be connected all the time, just a buzz away.”
Rishab had excused himself from this eventful ride with some excuse and had wished Natasha luck over the phone. He had handed over a box of her favorite vanilla cream pastries to me, which I had absent mindedly forgotten to carry. By the time I returned home after bidding good bye, they were spoilt and smelly with the pungent smell of rotten eggs. Reminded me of the perfume of the ladies and made me feel sick. It was strange but I missed her already. It made me even sicker and I finally threw up and went to bed after witnessing 6 hours of family farewell drama. One of her aunt’s had fortunately or misfortunately planned to visit her NRI son at the same time, and had made the efforts of changing her flight to that of Natasha’s. This meant, I couldn’t speak to her until she reached the US, and that would be long hours from now. Puke!
A whole week and 14 hours had passed before we could talk to each other. She blamed it on the busy work schedule in the very first week of the project kick-off. She was sweet enough to drop me mail everyday from her office about nothing in particular, just a hi or something equally silly. She said she wanted to save all the stories for when we would talk on the phone. I noticed her email address now had a US domain – quite impressive I thought to myself. I called her over the first weekend since she left and spent an hour and INR 900 on the call, listening to things that would have been cheaper had they been captured as photographs and mailed across, or described via text over an email or would have just been left out of the conversation. She sounded amused like a kid would be in a toy shop discovering little joys around every corner. Life for her suddenly turned out to be a toy shop. I pictured her vehemently making gestures with her hands, here manicured fingers making random patterns in the cold air that she now lived in, her eyes big like the buttons on the overcoat she was wearing when she visited Times Square and of which she had sent me a picture, as she continued describing the awesome time she was having. When I hung up and the machine flashed the call duration, and my mind involuntarily did a calculation of the call charges.
Week after week the monologues continued, and I felt like I had registered for some low-grade virtual tourism package which had their tours for an hour every weekend. While I should have shared her excitement which had always been so contagious, for the first time in many years that I had known her, I felt like I couldn’t be a part of it. I seemed to be repelling it as strongly as like poles of a magnet would repel each other unless one turns its back to the other. In my case I did. I started going back to my weekend getaways to shoot and drift my mind from the nothingness that surrounded me when I spent long hours on the phone sitting in my room as the world outside offered splendid sights to the eye of the camera that had started to gather dust in my cupboard. She didn’t seem to mind knowing my love for photography and instead mentioned that she was happy I got back to it. She said so in the mail she’d sent as a reply to the text I dropped her stating it as a reason why I couldn’t call her that weekend. I had written it more out of a self-inflicted compulsion than out of a desire to keep her informed. As I traveled and captured it all in images and words, I had my own toy shop moment. The only difference was, I kept the joy to myself. I had met a small bunch of photography enthusiasts at one of Rishab’s party and I decided to join them on their excursions. The weekend calls faded in time and in memory, and I no longer felt the compulsion to inform her about my trips. She too got busy with the project and barely found the time to mail or atleast that’s what she claimed. My passion for photography had a taken a new direction since I met others who shared the love for it and I had started doing freelance photography at weddings, preparing pre-wedding albums and ofcourse at Rishab’s parties. I had started bunking work and hopping between parties and weddings on some days and it gave me a kick! When I finally had made up my mind and let out the news of resigning from work to pursue photography full time, I was expecting horrid reactions. However, none of that happened. I guess too much of Indian cinema had flawed my perception of parents’ expectations from their kids along with many other perceptions including love itself. On her birthday, I called her and broke the news after wishing her a happy and joyous birthday. I thought it was some sort of an oxymoron, but nevertheless it didn’t seem to affect her. In fact it seemed to offer her some relief and in return she broke the news of a permanent posting in the US. This time I was happy for her, even if it was out of my relief of the end of whatever little had remained between us even if it were as little as such birthday calls.
We had a long conversation that day after months, and we hit each other with surprises one after another. We hadn’t spoken about “us” as a couple all these months, except for the first few calls, when we exchanged the standard ‘miss-you’s. Every since then it was always about her or about me, but more often it was about her. Today, we couldn’t help but conclude on what couldn’t have been more obvious with the turn of events in our lives. I had become a traveler and was far from settling down, while she had just started living her American dream. As we parted ways for all “practical” reasons, I knew within and I believe so did she, it was only a temporary matter, maybe a toy-shop moment we both shared together for a while.
She called me to the side and
whispered like a sudden burst of bubbles – “I love you!” She pecked me on my
cheeks and disappeared back into the party giving a backward glance. Her
mascara eyes glowed brighter than any star in the sky that night. Her scent smelled
beautiful; sweeter than all the roses that I had gifted her an hour back. I
stood there, only 19 floors above ground level, in the balcony of Rishab’s
house and yet it felt so close to heaven. I could hear the party turning loud
and wild inside. Outside in the balcony, it felt like a different universe
altogether. The serene lake in the background made me feel like a hero in a
romantic movie just before a song sequence. I stood there - her image still
flashing on my inward eye, her scent still fresh on my shirt and those words
still ringing in my ear like church bells. Beautiful! My phone buzzed and
flashed her picture. 1 New message received. “J” Words were too many to pick from and my mind
couldn’t construe the meaning of any at that moment. I texted a J
back. Honestly, I was so overwhelmed that I actually just forwarded the same
message. Quite lame she tells me now. I turned back and smiled. Infact it was
more like a silent laugh – I was that
happy!
She messaged again. This time a ‘?’. Now what was that supposed to mean! Err. She definitely expected something, and I was pathetic at the guessing game. My quiz results in school had told me that more than once. A ‘?’ in return would have definitely aborted the conversation and sending another J would have caused a THE END to this romantic movie. I wanted the song sequence to continue. After all I was the hero and she for the lack of better words was the lead girl in the item number! I barged into the living room where the party by now had crossed all levels of sanity. The music was deafeningly loud; there was too little food and too much booze. I scanned the room to find her seated in the corner sunk in a bean bag, her eyes fixed on her cell-phone as she clasped it nervously in her hands. She looked stunning in her black dress, long chandelier earrings and loose tresses, not to mention those eyes again. I walked towards her while she still fiddled with her phone. The music turned to Nat King Cole’s Love, her favorite she once told me, and then our eyes met, followed by our hands and finally our lips. Natasha Jaiswal, my Valentine. Today exactly 3 years from that day, and again at Rishab’s party, I have another girl in my arms, and she has a baby in hers. She is no longer a Jaiswal, but a Kapur, the ones with the U and not the OOs. Funnily, she shares my surname now. Her husband Roy Kapur is a nerd. And not just any nerd but a rich nerd who can boast of fancy college degrees as much as he can boast about his cars in his acquired American accent. Such is life. Those 3 years were like a roller coaster ride without a safety latch. We never fought or argued, we just broke up because we had discovered the true meaning of love in that span of 3 years… in something else.
She messaged again. This time a ‘?’. Now what was that supposed to mean! Err. She definitely expected something, and I was pathetic at the guessing game. My quiz results in school had told me that more than once. A ‘?’ in return would have definitely aborted the conversation and sending another J would have caused a THE END to this romantic movie. I wanted the song sequence to continue. After all I was the hero and she for the lack of better words was the lead girl in the item number! I barged into the living room where the party by now had crossed all levels of sanity. The music was deafeningly loud; there was too little food and too much booze. I scanned the room to find her seated in the corner sunk in a bean bag, her eyes fixed on her cell-phone as she clasped it nervously in her hands. She looked stunning in her black dress, long chandelier earrings and loose tresses, not to mention those eyes again. I walked towards her while she still fiddled with her phone. The music turned to Nat King Cole’s Love, her favorite she once told me, and then our eyes met, followed by our hands and finally our lips. Natasha Jaiswal, my Valentine. Today exactly 3 years from that day, and again at Rishab’s party, I have another girl in my arms, and she has a baby in hers. She is no longer a Jaiswal, but a Kapur, the ones with the U and not the OOs. Funnily, she shares my surname now. Her husband Roy Kapur is a nerd. And not just any nerd but a rich nerd who can boast of fancy college degrees as much as he can boast about his cars in his acquired American accent. Such is life. Those 3 years were like a roller coaster ride without a safety latch. We never fought or argued, we just broke up because we had discovered the true meaning of love in that span of 3 years… in something else.
She smiled and blushed at her
first love or something like it. I hugged her closer to me, picked up my jacket
and said “Let’s go” We went to our usual pizza place and ordered our favorite
triple chicken special pizza. “So” she broke the silence. It seemed to be
killing her. “So…”, I continued, “Should we..” She waited for me to finish.
“…should we order some garlic bread sticks too? They have an offer on…it says…”
She wacked me on my hand before I could finish. We held hands again on the
table surrounded by bottles of tomato ketchup, mustard sauce, mayo, chili
flakes and oregano. Little did we know our life ahead was to be flavored in
such varied tastes too. “Thanks for such a special day,” she said with a
seriousness I had never seen in her before. I tightened my hold of her slender
fingers. “For me too. It’s such as amazing feeling. Isn’t it?” She nodded and that
was the beginning of the end.
Love for us at that age when watching movies and sipping cutting chai in the canteen filled up most space in the life was like in the fairy tale books with the hope of attaining a state of happily ever after. Most people would agree real life begins only in mid-twenties once college ends. That’s precisely the point when the quarter life crisis strikes. You realize there are more impossible trinities than your economic classes have taught you. Well paying job, interesting job, good manager - to name one; Beautiful girl, rich girl, accepting parents - to name another. The problem with me was I was wired differently. My Maslow’s need hierarchy pyramid seemed to be completely upside down. I was contented with myself for some strange reason. May be life isn’t that complicated after-all I thought. Time still hasn’t managed to bias that opinion of mine. Natasha & Rishab were my batch-mates from Engineering college who were only fractionally well off when it came to our final scores. I attributed that to their hard work and contented myself. The party at Rishab’s house was 3 years after we had graduated. He had managed to become an Investment Banker in an MNC after completing his masters. I wasn’t surprised at all, the hard-worker that he was. Plus he was the kinds who could do all it took to slog his back side off until his 40s, before resting on it for the rest of his life. Natasha had taken up a software job in an IT company & started from scratch after studying machines and gears for 4 years. Plus she was the kinds who wanted to visit the USA and joining an IT company was probably the fastest way to get there. I had taken up a mundane role in bank right next to my house. It helped me spend more time on my interests of photography and writing. Had it not been for the efforts to impress Natasha and for fighting my parents fear of an unemployed young son, I wouldn’t have accepted the job in my wildest dreams. However, it had finally happened that night, she was impressed. That was the only bonus I ever received from the company. We met more often and chatted more often – on the phone, over email, through skype, at the coffee shop, in the park, at the mall, and at Rishab’s parties.
“You think we should speak to our parents?”
“You take a call. You can assume
a green signal from my side. I can say that from how easily my elder brother
got married to his girl.”
“Hmm… Well I don’t know. May be I
should wait slightly longer. Am not sure if I should pick this up now. I might
get a call for the US anytime now. And I don’t want to leave them thinking
about it you know.”
“OK with me. So when are they
letting you know?”
“They said this week. Let’s hope
soon”
Seventy two hours later, Natasha was at the door of their mansion-like house with 2 Large suitcases, a backpack, fighting back a few tears and a crowd of cousins, relatives, and people from the friendly neighborhood – the well-wishers with the shopping lists I would say. I stood at the corner watching all the drama happen, hugging, kissing, offering sweets, breaking of the coconut, snaps that went on facebook in real-time which attracted 89 likes & 45 comments in a matter of seconds, and all the tamasha that I despised even on the silver screen. I always believed real life was way too real than what was portrayed in the soaps. I accompanied the gang to the airport, squeezed between two aunties who were loud, ludicrous and loaded with a lot of strong perfume which gave me a headache. After being adequately crushed by their wholesome beings, my lungs needs fresh air and my mind some fresh thoughts. I started thinking of my last night’s conversation with Natasha. We had met only once in the last 3 days, for not more than half an hour, where we discussed our future. We had agreed to be more mature about our relationship and not let different countries, different continents and different time-zones affect it.
“We will be fine”, I assured her as she sipped coffee and burnt her tongue carelessly. “It’s just a few months, may be a year at the most. We will be connected all the time, just a buzz away.”
“I know…I just hope distance
doesn’t affect us negatively… you know what I mean…right?”
“No. I don’t. But it doesn’t
matter, because nothing changes between us. You are going to have a ball out
there. This could be the best time of your life. Make the best of it! But
please don’t put on that fake accent, I will throw up on the phone otherwise!”
We laughed, finished our coffee
hastily, damaging our tongues, and hurriedly kissed in a dark corner before I
dropped her off at home. The last one we ever had. The coffee kiss I call it.
It lent the bitterness of the coffee to our lives ahead, quite subtly though
like cappuccino.
Rishab had excused himself from this eventful ride with some excuse and had wished Natasha luck over the phone. He had handed over a box of her favorite vanilla cream pastries to me, which I had absent mindedly forgotten to carry. By the time I returned home after bidding good bye, they were spoilt and smelly with the pungent smell of rotten eggs. Reminded me of the perfume of the ladies and made me feel sick. It was strange but I missed her already. It made me even sicker and I finally threw up and went to bed after witnessing 6 hours of family farewell drama. One of her aunt’s had fortunately or misfortunately planned to visit her NRI son at the same time, and had made the efforts of changing her flight to that of Natasha’s. This meant, I couldn’t speak to her until she reached the US, and that would be long hours from now. Puke!
A whole week and 14 hours had passed before we could talk to each other. She blamed it on the busy work schedule in the very first week of the project kick-off. She was sweet enough to drop me mail everyday from her office about nothing in particular, just a hi or something equally silly. She said she wanted to save all the stories for when we would talk on the phone. I noticed her email address now had a US domain – quite impressive I thought to myself. I called her over the first weekend since she left and spent an hour and INR 900 on the call, listening to things that would have been cheaper had they been captured as photographs and mailed across, or described via text over an email or would have just been left out of the conversation. She sounded amused like a kid would be in a toy shop discovering little joys around every corner. Life for her suddenly turned out to be a toy shop. I pictured her vehemently making gestures with her hands, here manicured fingers making random patterns in the cold air that she now lived in, her eyes big like the buttons on the overcoat she was wearing when she visited Times Square and of which she had sent me a picture, as she continued describing the awesome time she was having. When I hung up and the machine flashed the call duration, and my mind involuntarily did a calculation of the call charges.
Week after week the monologues continued, and I felt like I had registered for some low-grade virtual tourism package which had their tours for an hour every weekend. While I should have shared her excitement which had always been so contagious, for the first time in many years that I had known her, I felt like I couldn’t be a part of it. I seemed to be repelling it as strongly as like poles of a magnet would repel each other unless one turns its back to the other. In my case I did. I started going back to my weekend getaways to shoot and drift my mind from the nothingness that surrounded me when I spent long hours on the phone sitting in my room as the world outside offered splendid sights to the eye of the camera that had started to gather dust in my cupboard. She didn’t seem to mind knowing my love for photography and instead mentioned that she was happy I got back to it. She said so in the mail she’d sent as a reply to the text I dropped her stating it as a reason why I couldn’t call her that weekend. I had written it more out of a self-inflicted compulsion than out of a desire to keep her informed. As I traveled and captured it all in images and words, I had my own toy shop moment. The only difference was, I kept the joy to myself. I had met a small bunch of photography enthusiasts at one of Rishab’s party and I decided to join them on their excursions. The weekend calls faded in time and in memory, and I no longer felt the compulsion to inform her about my trips. She too got busy with the project and barely found the time to mail or atleast that’s what she claimed. My passion for photography had a taken a new direction since I met others who shared the love for it and I had started doing freelance photography at weddings, preparing pre-wedding albums and ofcourse at Rishab’s parties. I had started bunking work and hopping between parties and weddings on some days and it gave me a kick! When I finally had made up my mind and let out the news of resigning from work to pursue photography full time, I was expecting horrid reactions. However, none of that happened. I guess too much of Indian cinema had flawed my perception of parents’ expectations from their kids along with many other perceptions including love itself. On her birthday, I called her and broke the news after wishing her a happy and joyous birthday. I thought it was some sort of an oxymoron, but nevertheless it didn’t seem to affect her. In fact it seemed to offer her some relief and in return she broke the news of a permanent posting in the US. This time I was happy for her, even if it was out of my relief of the end of whatever little had remained between us even if it were as little as such birthday calls.
We had a long conversation that day after months, and we hit each other with surprises one after another. We hadn’t spoken about “us” as a couple all these months, except for the first few calls, when we exchanged the standard ‘miss-you’s. Every since then it was always about her or about me, but more often it was about her. Today, we couldn’t help but conclude on what couldn’t have been more obvious with the turn of events in our lives. I had become a traveler and was far from settling down, while she had just started living her American dream. As we parted ways for all “practical” reasons, I knew within and I believe so did she, it was only a temporary matter, maybe a toy-shop moment we both shared together for a while.
18:04 -
Posted by Shilpa K -
0
comments
You are there and yet not quite
The list is long and a little too wild
It lies in a hidden corner, unchecked for a while
Yet as the year draws to an end
There's lot you wish you could ammend
Not so much in the list as much as in you
Of reasons to do and not to do
A second look demands a second chance
You change the gears and make new plans
And then with vigor your heart does fill
To find a way to do what you'd thought you will...
17:59 -
Posted by Shilpa K -
0
comments
The written word is always a company in the most desolate of all moments. It embraces you with the warmth you seek lying on your bed on a winter morning. It listens to you like an old pal without getting tired. When words flow unimpeded, the hearts feel light like autumn leaves that float in the air - almost weightless. It grows fonder thinking of things define life in subtle tones. Written words are like a candid conversation with God. They have the depth of the ocean, sometimes the turbulence of the sea, maybe the restlessness of the rain drops but most of all they have the tolerance of the earth. They are like a well-kept secret of the writer. Each one construes them differently and assumes a meaning. Yet, the truth is what the writer meant them to mean. He owns them. He possesses them. And in return they possess him, engulfing him at times when he runs out of conversations with those around him.
17:57 -
Posted by Shilpa K -
0
comments
Today life said cry me a river. And I did. Like my city that's parched before the onset of monsoons I was parched and had slowly grown lifeless until tears washed my face like the torrential rains in Mumbai. The city that I live now only in my dreams. I felt something crazy inside of me. Something that seemed to be liberated like those tears that flow incessantly from my eyes that begged for sleep helplessly. Life was ruthless today. It annoyed me in the simplest of ways and killed my sleep like it was some cold blooded murder. I lay on my bed twisting and turning as if there was some escape. There was none. I couldn't stop the tears flowing as I let out silent wails that only drowned in the loud noises from the road below. It was like the world said 'We don't care' I wonder if anyone does. I wonder if anyone is obliged to. Those who do, are either too far away in my city watching the rain while I soak myself in a different one miles away or are right here yet separated by a wall and oblivious to what lies beyond. By all means am alone and yet not quite. The roaring sounds from the road below remind me that am not alone or rather that they will not let me be even if that's what I have been wishing for since the past hour and a half. The day has long ended, the night has arrived in all its splendor, but the road below refuses to offer silence even in alms to eyes that have only known to beg. They would be sore now like the ears. I wonder if the lack of something was ever so deeply desired.
17:39 -
Posted by Shilpa K -
0
comments
A famine of dreams
She spilled an assortment of things from her tote bag and they
landed on the floor creating an orchestra of sounds, some of them went rolling
without direction like school boys during their lunch break running wild, some
others bouncing off the ground and landing in unattended corners of the room
gathering dust. She was late in her usual style, hair left uncombed, earrings
missing, choosing flip-flops over shoes, and her sweatshirt held messily in one
hand with its arms dangling close to the floor just avoiding a sweep as she
walked. It was a lovely Saturday afternoon, the air not too humid, the sky
slightly overcast, cars gliding on the road with no signs of jams in the
distance.
She gathered the things that she could notice in front of her, not
thinking twice if she had missed picking up anything inadvertently, dumped them
into the bag and shut the trunk of her two-wheeler with a thud. She vroomed out
her bike which had not been cleaned off the grime from the last ride, its sleek
metal body devoid of any scratches or dents, the black colour of the vehicle
accentuating the dirt marks and making it look uglier than it would have had it
been any other colour. They had decided to meet up for brunch at a nearby café
extremely popular amongst college kids. Office work had summoned Himanshu back
to the city where he had finished his computer engineering with Riya three
years back. Since the day he step foot out of college he never had an
opportunity or even a reason to come back. He had gotten busy with the work in
Delhi, his home town. Riya on the other hand was travelling all the time,
visiting places, losing her passport, getting her bags stolen, carrying three
different sim cards but rarely accessible on either of the number always having
forgotten to pack her charger. On the occasions that she had been to Delhi, she
had never bothered to call him or even drop him a message afraid it might make
her look desperate to keep in touch with him. She had made it evident in more
than one ways during her college days that she liked him, yet he seemed to
ignore all the cues in a way that didn’t hurt her. He had learnt about her
visits nevertheless through friends and her tweets. This time when he was in
her town, he decided to give her a buzz and check if she would be free over the
weekend for a quick meet up. She was so surprised to see his name flash on her
cellphone screen that for a moment she thought it was a bug in her phone. She spoke on the
phone without making any attempts to hide her excitement on hearing the
familiar voice after three years. She had done a silly thing of saving all the
SMS sent by him in a folder, not knowing if he would ever send her the stream
of messages again. She also saved some clips and voice recordings of nothing in
particular but which had the essence of college life and glimpses of him when
he was finishing his assignments at the last moment, or sipping a cup of tea or
his voice could be heard in the background, the strong thick accent from north
that he carried.
When she reached the restaurant it was filled with college
students dressed up in vibrant clothes, guys sporting spikes and a goatee,
thick rimmed glasses, girls with figure hugging tops, their hair streaked in
odd colours, with piercings that were painful to think of, bustling with the
pandemonium they usually bring about in their presence. Her eyes floated around
the place like untied buoys in the river, and her heart started to throb due to
the loud music that blared from the stereos. She spotted him in a corner
flipping through the pages of a tabloid printed on cheap paper, its ink dull
and smelly. “Late as usual”, he seemed to say, words hardly audible but she
could make out from the way he rolled his tongue in an exaggerated fashion as
if asking her to lip read instead of paying attention to his words. She just
smiled and before she knew, he hugged her albeit in a platonic manner. She
believed he would have felt her heart thumping, for the brief time that their
bodies met. They settled on the table and ordered their drinks and sandwiches. She
observed he had built his body and was no longer the lanky fellow she knew in
college. His eyes were still the same. Killer! His auburn hair, she could tell
even without touching them, were as smooth as silk. He had grown a shade
fairer, maybe he didn’t play as much cricket in the sun now as he did back in
college she thought. The music was making it difficult for them to talk, and
they had to lean closer. He pulled the chair that seated her frail body next to
his and occasionally their hands brushed when they made animated gestures. Her
mind started to drift away to the days when she had admired him secretly and
had mentioned his name on list of top guys – tradition which all the girls were
forced to follow on their birthdays in college. He had always been teased with
Shreya, whom all the girls envied for her absolutely perfect body and an
equally perfect sense of dressing. It was some incident that had led others to
tease them as a couple; otherwise she had never seen them together, not even by
chance. Riya was probably the only girl who had spent the maximum amount of
time with him alone, sometimes at the canteen or preparing for the vivas since
their names started with the same letter and were always in the same group. He
always guffawed when others teased him with Shreya, and responded back with a
witty remark. But on that one odd occasion when the guys decided to tease him
with Riya, he had become aggressively defensive. Since then nobody bothered
mentioning their names together.
When they were finished, he asked her if they could spend some
more time at a quieter place. “I was the only one talking amidst all that
noise! I don’t even know if you heard me or if you were simply nodding your
head to the tunes”, he remarked. Of course she had not heard him. She had found
his mere presence next to her utterly distracting and she had started noticing
minute details about him without caring the least about what he spoke. The
music served as the perfect alibi to her absent mindedness.
They walked up to a nearby park, and
occupied one of the benches under the shade of an enormous tree. Despite the
odd afternoon hours, couples dotted the lush green lawns engaged with each
other as if the world around them had ceased to exist. Those who wanted to get
slightly more intimate had opted for hidden corners, and one could see the
bushes ruffle violently with brief intervals. The sight made Riya awkward.
Himanshu aware of it, pursed his lips to avoid a smile on his face. “So, have
been in touch with anyone from college?”
“Umm… Meena obviously. She lives next door. I bump
into Shreyas and Atul sometimes at the gym. Then a couple of others Ashok,
Abha, Ritu and the gang through facebook or I chat with them online. Plus most
of them are abroad, so it’s quite difficult to keep in touch. I had met up with
Ariya when she had come down for her Christmas break”
“Hmm, that’s a long list…”
“How about
you?”
“Hardly anyone! You are an exception ofcourse. I
guess I didn’t put in too much effort to stay in touch with anyone and I don’t
think they did either. Even you didn’t call up when you were around. It’s like
unrequited love, unlike these couples here!”, he joked.
She looked away and blushed as he mentioned the
couples openly. “Well yes. But we met now. They say meeting old friends is as
addictive as not meeting them.”
“Am not surprised why!” he exclaimed nudging her
softly with his elbow.
They continued chatting until it was
dusk, their conversations often interrupted by the beeps on his cellphone.
Sometimes he looked at them and just smiled, at other times he had followed it
up with a brisk message, his fingers movingquickly across the qwerty
keypad of his cellphone. She wondered if he had a girlfriend. The thought
troubled her even if she herself had had two boyfriends since they left
college. But she was single now and in an absurd way she expected him to be
single too. She was too proud to ask and she didn’t wish to pick up the topic
herself, giving him a hint that she was falling for him yet again, only this time
more strongly.
He
stayed back for a whole week and for the entire week they made plans to visit
places that carried with them a lot of nostalgia even if it were something as
small as a tea vendor on the roadside where they used to stop for masala chai every evening after classes.
She could notice he had become more talkative than before, that he had a very
flattering tone in his words when he spoke, he used a lot of superlatives while
describing places or things or even people, his words flowed with much more
ease and not as if they were forced conversations which she felt at times back
then, or maybe she was being too judgmental at that time. From their
conversations now she surmised he was probably the one who had attained success
at an annoyingly faster pace than her or most in their batch. He had managed to
procure a managerial position in one of the coveted firms and had taken the
monkey of programming, coding and debugging off his back sooner than one could
have imagined. While others were busy devising ways to step on to the next rung
of their career ladder, he had already reached at the top and he was not
stopping to look back.
He was an enigma, back then and even
today. Someone of whom everyone was desirous of but he seemed to have fortified
himself against everyone else. No wonder he had no friends in Delhi where he
engrossed himself in work all the time and had already started taking home a
double digit salary. He was too ambitious for comfort and she could feel it in
the way he spoke at times with a hint of arrogance and ruthlessness not to her
but to others. Like when the waiter accidently dropped a glass on water on the
table and apologized at the very next moment almost shuddering for the mistake
he had committed. “These men will never make it big in their lives. They were
always born to clean tables. It’s a pity they can’t even do that!” Despite his
lack of humility which her mind had very well observed by now, her heart kept
deceiving her. It played foolish games, beating rapidly every day before they
were about to meet, feeling dismayed when they had to part in the evening or
when he had to divert his attention to his cellphone. It made her melt like an
ice cube on a summer day every time he passed a comment about her or her
mannerisms even if most of the times it wasn’t a compliment in the remotest of
ways. But just his attention made her heart leap somersaults.
When
he left for Delhi, she had seen him off at the airport. Despite an entire week
that they spent together and the occasional spells of flirting they engaged in
during that time, when he hugged her at the airport she felt it was cold, as if
the invisible wall around him that had started to crumble in her presence had
strengthened again, filling up the little crevices quickly to hide any
weaknesses. She waited long and watched him through the glass doors that kept
opening wide and shutting close relentlessly as passengers walked in and out of
it. She walked back to her two-wheeler in the parking lot, hoping something to
happen even if it were as bad as his flight getting cancelled so that he could stay
back for at least another day. But nothing of that happened.
While
walking back to the parking lot, she kept holding on to her tote bag tightly
which felt surprisingly light and empty. Like her bag that had spilled all
over, it was her heart that seemed to have scattered all over the place this
time. He had come like the monsoons, showered on her like a thunderstorm and
then left her in a famine of dreams that she always knew were too good to be
real.
18:08 -
Posted by Shilpa K -
0
comments
Show me not the way to where I should lead
Instead, grant me the freedom to choose to be
Tell me not stories of heroes of the past
I ain't the clay you can mold in a cast
In your present I shall write history
With my dreams, in letters big and bold
And borrow for a while, my soul that you've sold
My dreams are young just like me
They are drifting like the clouds above
Sometimes vibrant like the palette of the rainbow
Sometimes just shades of grey like grandma's hair now
They are my life now, my blood, my breath can't you see
Yes they could be flawed
But so's your perception of me...
Instead, grant me the freedom to choose to be
Tell me not stories of heroes of the past
I ain't the clay you can mold in a cast
In your present I shall write history
With my dreams, in letters big and bold
And borrow for a while, my soul that you've sold
My dreams are young just like me
They are drifting like the clouds above
Sometimes vibrant like the palette of the rainbow
Sometimes just shades of grey like grandma's hair now
They are my life now, my blood, my breath can't you see
Yes they could be flawed
But so's your perception of me...
19:02 -
Posted by Shilpa K -
2
comments
Riya used to spend most of her time in Sunita’s house, her mother making the girls evening snacks as they finished their notes, driving them to the mall for their shopping excursions, and accompanying them to their dance classes where they learnt classical dance forms. In a way Riya filled up the space of another child that Sunita’s parents had always yearned for but could not find the strength to conceive. Yet, they never considered adopting Riya when her parents were gone and her uncle decided to shelter them. The thought had crossed their minds, and unsettled them for weeks but they never discussed about it and let it pass. It had occurred to Riya only once, when she had felt extremely lonely at her uncle’s house while her brother was busy watching television in the same room. She let it pass too believing her brother would be an added burden for Sunita’s parents.
She stopped to look at Sunita, who was wearing a peach netted saree with silver sequins, a silky glazed petticoat inside, her dusky complexion bore a soft luster partly out of the well done make-up and partly because of the excitement of finding the right guy after all those stories of heart-breaks that Riya had talked her out of. Riya felt envious of her in a weird way. She stole her look from Sunita and got back to stuffing ornate envelopes with crisp five hundred rupee notes to give away as part of some ritual she didn’t know. However, the feeling refused to shy away and only grew stronger with every passing minute as the nadaswaram bugled in the background and the notes became faster and more palpable like her heart now. The more she observed Sunita from the distance, her face set aglow by the incandescent lights that lit up the altar, the smile never leaving her, the more the thought pronounced itself repeated in her mind. Sunita was three inches shorter than Riya, about a handful of kilos more, her complexion darker; yet her poise, her elegance and her demeanor was something Riya had always coveted. Today, it was the same elegance that graced her and made her the beautiful bride that everyone talked about. She looked happy, happier that Riya had ever seen her and she had seen her in all her times - of happiness and of grief.
Riya had never sought a friend outside of Sunita. When they started working, the only thing that had separated them as individuals if not as friends, Riya had always been contented with the weekend meet ups with Sunita. On weekdays she used to spend time reading amidst the television set that her brother rarely ever turned off, or helping her younger cousins finish their homework, or helping her aunt in the kitchen with chopping and grating, or working out her finances. Sunita on the other hand had acquired a circle of friends who decided to hang out often after work on weekdays and made movie plans for Sunday. She never missed inviting Riya for the weekend plans. While initially Riya joined them to keep Sunita’s heart, she started to feel distanced from Sunita with every passing week. Her choice of topics didn’t seem to interest her, her speech seemed foreign, her attempts at humor felt superficial and her mannerisms forced. She missed those days when they just sat in the balcony outside Sunita’s house for hours, watching the road and the lawns below, the road which had lesser trees than it had when they were kids, sipping coffee, discussing little nothings. However, Riya always made it a point to drop in at Sunita’s when she could to meet her mother even when Sunita was away at the movies. Her mother had started to take the place of Sunita in Riya’s life. Both of them acknowledged their loneliness in the company of each other, for one from a grownup daughter always away from home and for the other from an outgrown friend.
It was on one such evening that Riya was spending with Sunita’s mother that her mother started talking about the wedding planning for Sunita. “I thought she would have told you already about it! Silly girl”, her mother exclaimed when Riya showed no signs of knowledge about this life-event. Riya kept quiet and vowed not to congratulate her until she broke the news herself. “I deserve to be told”, she reminded herself. That night, Sunita updated her Facebook relationship status to ‘In a relationship’. By the time Riya noticed it, others had already poured in congratulatory messages and the post had acquired close to a hundred likes. She did not comment on it, angry that she had to blurt the news in a public forum without even having told her.
As the date drew closer, she started helping out Sunita’s mom with the wedding preparations and volunteered to take up the role of the wedding planner. Her mother in return trusted her completely. She had always been the diligent one of the two girls and it eased a lot of the pressure that Indian weddings usually bring with them. On first of the shopping trips for the wedding, the two girls met after a whole month. Sunita was her effervescent self, clearly excited by the thoughts of her wedding. It still bothered Riya that Sunita had not spoken to her directly about it and even today she was comfortable having known that it was her mother who had told Riya about it. Their eyes floated on the sea of sarees flung open to show the intricate work, they felt the texture between the palms of their hands, occasionally carrying a few sarees outside to confirm the color under natural light. The contrast in their choices became obvious when Sunita remarked “too old fashioned”, “very dull”, “I’ll look like an aunty”, “these make you look fat” to most of the sarees picked by her mother and approved by Riya. The salesman unaware of the relationship the girls shared now, also passed some unnecessary wise comments on their drastically different preferences to create some light moments, grinning as he talked revealing his scarlet red teeth stained with beetle-nut juice. When they were confused between two sarees, he used to make Riya stand next to Sunita and drape the other one around her. Every time this happened, they always ended up choosing the one that was draped on Sunita while she posed in the mirror, looking this way and that. Riya felt that she couldn’t do enough justice to the sarees and it was her fault that they went ahead and made all the wrong choices. It was one such ‘wrong choice’ of netted peach with silver sequins that seemed so perfect on Sunita’s body right now.
Early next morning, the canopy had been pulled down. Folded chairs were stacked in a corner one above the other, ready to be loaded into trucks. Sunita’s father was settling some last minute expenses with the contractor; odd little crushed paper cups were strewn across the lawns reminding them of the guests from the previous night who had seen the couple off on their honeymoon before retiring to their homes. Sunita’s mother was dabbing the corner of her eye by the tip of her pallu in the balcony overlooking the lawns and the road; the same balcony where Riya and Sunita had spent hours chatting and sipping coffee. When the wedding photos arrived, Sunita’s mother had called Riya over. They went through it one after the other, noticing minute details that they couldn’t notice on D-day, crackling up in bouts of laughter. They went through the thick deck, her mother leaving her finger prints on the corners of the photographs that were yet to be arranged in an album.
“Where were you hiding Riya, you don’t seem to be there in single photograph. What’s the use of having all these unwanted people in the pictures – these uncles and aunties standing next to Sunita? Look at them; they stand next to her as if they are so close. Am sure they didn’t even give her any flowers, let alone an envelope!”, her mother remarked. There were only two pictures of Riya in the entire deck, one close-up and one full length which Sunita’s mother had reminded the photographer to take. “Oh how pretty!”, she said when they looked at those pictures. “These are perfect to be sent for your wedding proposals”, she said teasingly. Riya smiled in return. The thought of her wedding had never been on her mind, and it suddenly occurred to her that she would need to go through the entire process again, this time choosing sarees for herself. She wondered if Sunita would ever accompany her for her shopping, if she would stand awkwardly next to her as she had allowing the salesman to drape a saree just to compare and choose, she wondered if they would still pick the saree draped around Sunita.
When they were done going through the pictures about three times, each time discarding a handful of pictures because they were either not very clear or were not suited to go in the wedding album, or had people her mother didn’t particularly like, Riya sat in the balcony and arranged them chronologically in the album. She knew the order of events as if they were scenes from her favorite movie. She tucked away a picture of Sunita, believing it would be the last thing of hers that she would be able to keep and which would survive longer than their friendship had. The past few months were like a marathon, where she had given herself completely to the feat of achieving the Great Indian Wedding dream for her best friend from school and for her mother. Now that it was all over, she wondered if she would find reasons to drop by again at their place, she wondered if Sunita would ever bother to meet her again, if she would be left with nothing to do on the weekend, that for the first time in her life would she be alone? The thoughts grew in her mind and exploded like the long string of firecrackers they burst right after the wedding. She left hastily when she was done arranging the album, with a smile that had survived an outburst of tears, the tip of her nose red and her eyes glistening with the first signs of tears. Sunita’s mother sensed her state of mind. Mother’s can read signs of human emotions like no one else. That night Riya kept tossing in the bed, the picture of Sunita, tucked between the pages of the book she was reading before going to bed. Her cellphone beeped in the middle of the night, filling up the corner of the room with the fluorescent glow of her screen light. It was Sunita. “Hey, just wanted to drop in a Hi. Missing you and mom too much L L. We are in Switzerland ^^ right now, and have a balcony with a direct view of the Alps. It’s beautiful. I wish we could just sit here and sip our mugs of coffee! I am so tired from the wedding L Need to come home and catch up on some sleep zzz before returning to the routine. Will be back next weekend…Mom said the snaps have come out great. Am dying to see them! Will see you then! Take care J” For the first time after many days, Sunita had initiated a conversation, she had mentioned her mom and Riya in the same sentence, infact Riya first, she valued the time they spent in the balcony so much that she reminisced it, and hinted from across the distance that she felt a desire to meet her like old times. The next morning Riya scanned the picture she had carried with her home and posted it on Facebook with the caption – My best friend’s wedding.
Best friend’s wedding
The pleats of her off-white saree
with the dull gold border had ruffled at her feet like the leaves of a fully
bloomed cabbage flower. In her ears she wore big gold hoops in a traditional
design and if one looked closely, one could see her ears droop a little by their
weight. Her hair was pinned neatly into a bun which was laced on its well
defined circumference by a string of delicate saffron and pale white flowers.
Behind her ears she had applied liberal drops of her favorite French perfume,
placing it exactly on the nerve endings, leaving behind its sweet smell as she
moved with confident steps in and around the cloth canopy. Her neck was bare
except for a weightless gold chain with no locket that she always wore. It was
gifted to her on her tenth birthday by her parents & she had never removed
it since then. She seemed to have grown in it and it fitted snuggly around her
slender tall neck. The air buzzed with the conversations the guests engaged
themselves in and who by now were seated uncomfortably under the canopy in
their embellished attires and awaiting impatiently the arrival of the bride and
the groom.
Sunita – the bride, was Riya’s best
friend from school, the kind you go around distributing sweets with on
birthdays, the one with whom you venture out on bicycles outside of your
building gates, with whom you have night-outs for studying, with whom you share
your stories of the first heart-break and twelve years from then you throw a
surprise bachelorette party before the nuptials. Riya was doing a last minute
check on the food arrangements, when all heads turned to watch the bride arrive
in an elaborately decorated palanquin. Riya had missed most of the pre-wedding
ceremonies while she was making sure all things were in order from the flowers
on the table where the guests were seated, to the ribbons that were tied on the
chairs where they made their backsides comfortable, to the food arrangement
which was a lavish spread of cuisines both Indian and international, to the
accommodation of close family and friends and giving away sweets and return
gifts to them. Sunita was the only child of her parents who had conceived her
at an age when her mother had already crossed her mid-thirties. They treated
Riya as their second child and could dispense authority over her with no second
thoughts, also showering her with affection in equal measures. Riya was
orphaned when she was fifteen. Since then she and her younger brother lived
with her maternal uncle and aunt who had three kids of their own, all younger
than Riya and her brother. Riya never sensed affection in their interactions
with her, neither did she sense disappointment or hatred. Instead, she
concluded that they had assumed this role of raising two additional children as
some sort of a responsibility. A responsibility they assumed that was bestowed
upon them by a higher force, a greater power and hence they carried it out with
utmost sincerity. They believed something unfortunate would happen to them or
their own children if they relinquished it.
Riya used to spend most of her time in Sunita’s house, her mother making the girls evening snacks as they finished their notes, driving them to the mall for their shopping excursions, and accompanying them to their dance classes where they learnt classical dance forms. In a way Riya filled up the space of another child that Sunita’s parents had always yearned for but could not find the strength to conceive. Yet, they never considered adopting Riya when her parents were gone and her uncle decided to shelter them. The thought had crossed their minds, and unsettled them for weeks but they never discussed about it and let it pass. It had occurred to Riya only once, when she had felt extremely lonely at her uncle’s house while her brother was busy watching television in the same room. She let it pass too believing her brother would be an added burden for Sunita’s parents.
She stopped to look at Sunita, who was wearing a peach netted saree with silver sequins, a silky glazed petticoat inside, her dusky complexion bore a soft luster partly out of the well done make-up and partly because of the excitement of finding the right guy after all those stories of heart-breaks that Riya had talked her out of. Riya felt envious of her in a weird way. She stole her look from Sunita and got back to stuffing ornate envelopes with crisp five hundred rupee notes to give away as part of some ritual she didn’t know. However, the feeling refused to shy away and only grew stronger with every passing minute as the nadaswaram bugled in the background and the notes became faster and more palpable like her heart now. The more she observed Sunita from the distance, her face set aglow by the incandescent lights that lit up the altar, the smile never leaving her, the more the thought pronounced itself repeated in her mind. Sunita was three inches shorter than Riya, about a handful of kilos more, her complexion darker; yet her poise, her elegance and her demeanor was something Riya had always coveted. Today, it was the same elegance that graced her and made her the beautiful bride that everyone talked about. She looked happy, happier that Riya had ever seen her and she had seen her in all her times - of happiness and of grief.
Riya had never sought a friend outside of Sunita. When they started working, the only thing that had separated them as individuals if not as friends, Riya had always been contented with the weekend meet ups with Sunita. On weekdays she used to spend time reading amidst the television set that her brother rarely ever turned off, or helping her younger cousins finish their homework, or helping her aunt in the kitchen with chopping and grating, or working out her finances. Sunita on the other hand had acquired a circle of friends who decided to hang out often after work on weekdays and made movie plans for Sunday. She never missed inviting Riya for the weekend plans. While initially Riya joined them to keep Sunita’s heart, she started to feel distanced from Sunita with every passing week. Her choice of topics didn’t seem to interest her, her speech seemed foreign, her attempts at humor felt superficial and her mannerisms forced. She missed those days when they just sat in the balcony outside Sunita’s house for hours, watching the road and the lawns below, the road which had lesser trees than it had when they were kids, sipping coffee, discussing little nothings. However, Riya always made it a point to drop in at Sunita’s when she could to meet her mother even when Sunita was away at the movies. Her mother had started to take the place of Sunita in Riya’s life. Both of them acknowledged their loneliness in the company of each other, for one from a grownup daughter always away from home and for the other from an outgrown friend.
It was on one such evening that Riya was spending with Sunita’s mother that her mother started talking about the wedding planning for Sunita. “I thought she would have told you already about it! Silly girl”, her mother exclaimed when Riya showed no signs of knowledge about this life-event. Riya kept quiet and vowed not to congratulate her until she broke the news herself. “I deserve to be told”, she reminded herself. That night, Sunita updated her Facebook relationship status to ‘In a relationship’. By the time Riya noticed it, others had already poured in congratulatory messages and the post had acquired close to a hundred likes. She did not comment on it, angry that she had to blurt the news in a public forum without even having told her.
As the date drew closer, she started helping out Sunita’s mom with the wedding preparations and volunteered to take up the role of the wedding planner. Her mother in return trusted her completely. She had always been the diligent one of the two girls and it eased a lot of the pressure that Indian weddings usually bring with them. On first of the shopping trips for the wedding, the two girls met after a whole month. Sunita was her effervescent self, clearly excited by the thoughts of her wedding. It still bothered Riya that Sunita had not spoken to her directly about it and even today she was comfortable having known that it was her mother who had told Riya about it. Their eyes floated on the sea of sarees flung open to show the intricate work, they felt the texture between the palms of their hands, occasionally carrying a few sarees outside to confirm the color under natural light. The contrast in their choices became obvious when Sunita remarked “too old fashioned”, “very dull”, “I’ll look like an aunty”, “these make you look fat” to most of the sarees picked by her mother and approved by Riya. The salesman unaware of the relationship the girls shared now, also passed some unnecessary wise comments on their drastically different preferences to create some light moments, grinning as he talked revealing his scarlet red teeth stained with beetle-nut juice. When they were confused between two sarees, he used to make Riya stand next to Sunita and drape the other one around her. Every time this happened, they always ended up choosing the one that was draped on Sunita while she posed in the mirror, looking this way and that. Riya felt that she couldn’t do enough justice to the sarees and it was her fault that they went ahead and made all the wrong choices. It was one such ‘wrong choice’ of netted peach with silver sequins that seemed so perfect on Sunita’s body right now.
Early next morning, the canopy had been pulled down. Folded chairs were stacked in a corner one above the other, ready to be loaded into trucks. Sunita’s father was settling some last minute expenses with the contractor; odd little crushed paper cups were strewn across the lawns reminding them of the guests from the previous night who had seen the couple off on their honeymoon before retiring to their homes. Sunita’s mother was dabbing the corner of her eye by the tip of her pallu in the balcony overlooking the lawns and the road; the same balcony where Riya and Sunita had spent hours chatting and sipping coffee. When the wedding photos arrived, Sunita’s mother had called Riya over. They went through it one after the other, noticing minute details that they couldn’t notice on D-day, crackling up in bouts of laughter. They went through the thick deck, her mother leaving her finger prints on the corners of the photographs that were yet to be arranged in an album.
“Where were you hiding Riya, you don’t seem to be there in single photograph. What’s the use of having all these unwanted people in the pictures – these uncles and aunties standing next to Sunita? Look at them; they stand next to her as if they are so close. Am sure they didn’t even give her any flowers, let alone an envelope!”, her mother remarked. There were only two pictures of Riya in the entire deck, one close-up and one full length which Sunita’s mother had reminded the photographer to take. “Oh how pretty!”, she said when they looked at those pictures. “These are perfect to be sent for your wedding proposals”, she said teasingly. Riya smiled in return. The thought of her wedding had never been on her mind, and it suddenly occurred to her that she would need to go through the entire process again, this time choosing sarees for herself. She wondered if Sunita would ever accompany her for her shopping, if she would stand awkwardly next to her as she had allowing the salesman to drape a saree just to compare and choose, she wondered if they would still pick the saree draped around Sunita.
When they were done going through the pictures about three times, each time discarding a handful of pictures because they were either not very clear or were not suited to go in the wedding album, or had people her mother didn’t particularly like, Riya sat in the balcony and arranged them chronologically in the album. She knew the order of events as if they were scenes from her favorite movie. She tucked away a picture of Sunita, believing it would be the last thing of hers that she would be able to keep and which would survive longer than their friendship had. The past few months were like a marathon, where she had given herself completely to the feat of achieving the Great Indian Wedding dream for her best friend from school and for her mother. Now that it was all over, she wondered if she would find reasons to drop by again at their place, she wondered if Sunita would ever bother to meet her again, if she would be left with nothing to do on the weekend, that for the first time in her life would she be alone? The thoughts grew in her mind and exploded like the long string of firecrackers they burst right after the wedding. She left hastily when she was done arranging the album, with a smile that had survived an outburst of tears, the tip of her nose red and her eyes glistening with the first signs of tears. Sunita’s mother sensed her state of mind. Mother’s can read signs of human emotions like no one else. That night Riya kept tossing in the bed, the picture of Sunita, tucked between the pages of the book she was reading before going to bed. Her cellphone beeped in the middle of the night, filling up the corner of the room with the fluorescent glow of her screen light. It was Sunita. “Hey, just wanted to drop in a Hi. Missing you and mom too much L L. We are in Switzerland ^^ right now, and have a balcony with a direct view of the Alps. It’s beautiful. I wish we could just sit here and sip our mugs of coffee! I am so tired from the wedding L Need to come home and catch up on some sleep zzz before returning to the routine. Will be back next weekend…Mom said the snaps have come out great. Am dying to see them! Will see you then! Take care J” For the first time after many days, Sunita had initiated a conversation, she had mentioned her mom and Riya in the same sentence, infact Riya first, she valued the time they spent in the balcony so much that she reminisced it, and hinted from across the distance that she felt a desire to meet her like old times. The next morning Riya scanned the picture she had carried with her home and posted it on Facebook with the caption – My best friend’s wedding.
18:49 -
Posted by Shilpa K -
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Just not good
enough
It was yet another Monday morning, and Riya was
seated at the back of her chauffer driven car on the way to work. Her ironed
linen shirt had started to gather creases as she made herself comfortable for
the long drive, the driver adeptly maneuvering the car and wading through the
stream of slow moving traffic. Her shirt had become wet from her damp hair she
had let loose. It had acquired a transparent see-through mark at the place
where the tip of her layered hair met her back, slightly revealing the hem of
the white cotton slip she wore underneath. She had rolled down the windows
hoping the wind to blow dry her hair which she hadn’t found the time to set
before stepping out of the house. Instead, dust powdered the clear skin of her
flawless round face as cars and two-wheelers scurried over the unpaved sides of
the road. She amused herself by the unusual sights the road offered. Light
music played on the car stereo mostly muffled by the noise outside, except for
a few high notes which were feebly audible. Ladies clad in salwar-kameez, with dupattas
draped around their face leaving only a slit open for their eyes, wearing gloves
that went right up to where the sleeves of their dress ended and open slippers
that exposed their toes that hadn’t experienced a pedicure in a long time, had
their feet dangling by the side of their two-wheelers which showed the level of
confidence or rather the lack thereof while they rode on the uneven roads that
led them to their workplaces. Men stuck their cellular phones against their
ears inside their helmets and with great dexterity, as if it were some kind of
a circus act, rode on the road with their heads tilted to the left supporting
the phone. They passed by traffic cops who were too busy to notice them, either
fiddling with a gadget or adjusting their cowboy hats with one side upturned,
or just seemed oblivious to the dearth of law and order as unruly traffic
clogged the roads. She engaged herself in a silly game, observing those seated
in the rick and trying to guess what they looked like basis the shoes they
wore, the bags they carried, the color of their nail enamel, or the way they
had crossed their legs. As the car moved ahead of the ricks, she turned her
head casually or noticed them from the corner of her eye, keeping a mental score
of the hits and the misses. Despite the viscous flow of vehicles, occasional
brushes of metal against metal led many to exchange irate looks. The scratches
on the sides of cars signifying the lack of patience that the city had started
to inherit from the migrant population from up north to this Silicon Valley in
India.
It was in one such IT company that Riya worked as a
junior analyst, a job her father had secured for her through this high-profile
business contacts. With her low grades she wasn’t eligible for the aptitude
tests of most companies during placements, and the ones for which she was eligible
were all based outside of Bangalore. Her father had decided against sending her
outside of the city, for he had nestled her in the lap of luxury and knew that
she wouldn’t survive long in the absence of it given her levels of maturity. Her
father had worked hard all these years to fill up the void that her mother had
created when she left them for another man. As years passed by the lack of her
mother’s presence didn’t seem to affect Riya as much as the presence of her
father did at social gatherings when he always kept introducing her to
everyone, or when she was out with her friends and he called to check if she
was okay, or the time when she flunked her exams and he had offered her a
sermon when all she wanted to do was hide her face under the pillow and sleep
over it. However, that was three years back. And work, no matter how menial,
makes you grow as a person and come in terms with the realities of the world.
Her father now thought of her as more responsible individual, even if she
attended office in a chauffeur driven car and refused to go by public
transport, or blew her paltry salary over needless clothes, or still received
pocket money from her father which was more than her salary, or had forgotten
to wish her father on his birthday last year.
That day when she reached office, her manager called
her in. Overall the mood on the floor was grim, as if some sort of calamity had
just announced its arrival. She saw Sabrina, her friend from college days who
was working in the same company but with a different team. She was packing her
things clumsily in a brown cardboard carton, trying to hide her tears but doing
little to hide the phenolphthalein pink complexion she had acquired, like in
the experiments in the chemistry lab she had helped Riya in. Another girl was
crying in a corner and was being consoled by some of her teammates. “What the
hell is going on?” Riya murmured to herself, as she walked into the meeting room
and closed the door behind her. Her manager had called for a meeting with her,
something that had never happened in the past. There was nothing about the work
she did or the profile she held that ever demanded such a thing. Plus she also
felt it was too boring for someone to be called into a meeting to discuss
performance, too lame to discuss future plans and definitely a sheer waste of
time to discuss career growth.
“Hi Riya! Come have a seat” he said to her, his
voice dampened by the news he was about to give her. He pronounced her name and
addressed her as if it was the first time they had met. Of course there were no
occasions where they spoke before. She smiled awkwardly, not sure what led to
such a meeting. “You know we have been downsizing owing to the financial
turmoil in the west. We don’t have enough projects coming our way with the cuts
on technology spends. So the management has decided to layoff a few people…” he
took a deep breath before he spoke further as she stared at him closely, her
hands tucked under her thighs on the chair, shoulders hunched and a slight lean
of the body towards him. “Sorry to say Riya, you would need to leave. But am
sure you’d do well. I know it’s tough to be in a situation like this but…” he
continued for some time as she absorbed the words that had just fallen on her
ears. She had stopped listening after he let out the news. But he seemed to go
on with the ease of a rehearsed speech that tele-callers have.
She returned home in her car, this time the windows
rolled up. It wasn’t the first time she had failed. It wasn’t the first time
that she had been rejected, or that she was considered a second choice or not
considered as a choice at all. She had felt no shame in mediocrity which she
maintained consistently throughout her schooling and days of attending college.
Yet today, she felt something inside of her growing weak. She remembered the
day when her mother had walked out of the house never to return, with a man of
a hefty built and a thick beard who refused to look at Riya in her eyes. Her
mother did not seem to have any remorse in her eyes as she left, and left behind
a part of her as easily as leaving behind an abandoned piece of furniture in an
old house. She felt hurt even then, but was too proud to cry and she had fought
back her tears like bunds holding back rain waters on the streets. She had gone
back to her room and torn off all pages from the photo albums that pictured her
with her mom to erase all memories of her. It helped little at that age, but
time blurred the picture of her mother in her mind and she could barely
remember her face or the color of her skin or how she spoke. She remembered the
day when she had to leave behind her friends and shift to a different city. She
had cried the whole night, in the morning her eyes were swollen like buds of
pink roses that grew in the balcony of their old house. They hadn’t flowered
since her mom left. With the new city, came new surroundings, new people who
asked her new questions about her old past. Of where her mom was, of why she
never attended the open house at school, if she were dead.
She withdrew herself from the company of others and
had no friends. Not until she entered college, where she didn’t have
uncomfortable questions to confront. She discovered a new life, she found
happiness in the spells of SMS that beeped throughout the night, she found
freedom at movies and at malls with her buddies, she picked up new hobbies and
bunked classes to pursue them, she made friends wherever she went and instantly
added them on Facebook, her network of friends growing rapidly - the guy she
met at the book store and cracked up a conversation with, the girl who sang at
the concert, the old man who was playing the piano in the hotel lobby – she
spoke so much that her jaws ached at night. Amidst this frantic socializing she
drowned the fears of her past, her days of loneliness when she had sat alone in
her room watching the DVDs of her favorite sitcoms over and over again until
she grew sick of them and dumped them away and cried silently in her bed while
her father was away at work. Her grades lowered at school. Yet as she always
told her friends she was “high on life” and nothing else mattered. She had
fallen in love with life again. But today, as she held the pink slip in her
hands, seated in her car she felt she had crossed boundaries in her attempt to
embrace life again. That her ambitions were limited only to planning the next
movie outing, that her skills were recognized only in her circle of friends and
tags on Facebook – Style icon, fashion fiesta, chatterbox, Party Animal; that
she had lost a lot more than she had thought she had gained as she walked on
the path of wilderness. She wondered why her father never stopped her, why was
he always in agreement to her pettiest of all demands, why did he not ground
her like other dads did when she had failed the exam, why had he been so
complacent to her outrageous habits?
That night after many months she was home for dinner
and sat across the table while her father occupied his usual seat on the cherry
wood table on which there was always space for four, and three chairs were
always empty. She could notice he had a smile on his face and talked with the
food in his mouth, maybe out of excitement. She listened to him silently,
playing listlessly with the food in her plate avoiding him in the eye. She knew
the news of her unemployment wouldn’t affect him, or at least not in a way that
would wipe the smile off his face. Yet she felt guilty of proving to be a child
that had only learnt to fail. As her father was describing an incident at work
today, she cut him short and said “Dad, I am fired.” She grew red out of anger,
grief and shame that seemed to have gripped her at the same time. She started
crying incessantly not wanting to look up. This time she did not run back to her
room to hide. Instead she sat at the table, head lowered, and her face hidden
by a veil of her layered hair. Teardrops ran like rivulets across her face and
toppled over her prominent cheek bone to land on the dinner table like rain
drops from the tips of tree leaves once the thunderstorm is over. Her father
was not prepared for such a situation. He had never seen her cry; he had never
seen her disappointed at failure. He gently put his fork down, chewed the food
in his mouth, gulped down half a glass of water, dabbed the sides of his mouth
with the table napkin and placed it messily at the side of his plate. He
crossed his fingers to create a mesh and then gently supported his chin on it,
his elbows placed firmly on the table. “Did they tell you why?”he questioned.
“Downsizing because the west is so messed up”, she replied. He sensed
helplessness in her voice, as if she had tried to defend herself against
failure and had not succeeded. “It’s happening everywhere. You know it right?
There is news about layoffs everyday in the newspaper”, he said trying to make
it look like an ordinary happening. “But why me, Dad? There are about a hundred
other employees in that company! Maybe I know why…because I was never good
enough for anything. Neither good enough to give mom a reason to stay back, nor
good enough to answer back to those kids who questioned me about her, nor good
enough to secure good grades at college, nor good enough to get a job on my
own, and now not good enough for the company when it decided to clean its floor
and throw all the rubbish out. I am just not good enough. And you knew it all
along Dad. You knew it, didn’t you! Why didn’t you ever stop me? Why did my
poor grades never bother you, even when you knew I could do much better, way
much better so much so that I could have been at that guy’s place who handed
over that letter to me?” He nodded in agreement and began to speak, “I thought
she had left you miserable. I couldn’t see you being alone. I wanted you to
have friends, to be in the company of people who admire you and want to be by
your side, and not give up on you the way… she
did. I guess I let it stretch far enough. You’d become the sole purpose of my
life and in your happiness rested mine. All this while I was surely
disappointed to see your low grades, to see how you had let them slip away so
easily, how you had adopted a casual life of existence. Yet, I was afraid. So
afraid to say to you anything that would hurt you. I am sorry. I really am…for
being a bad father” Tears welled up in his eyes and he couldn’t talk anymore.
The maid came in and cleared the dishes on the table while they were still
seated, ignoring them as if they were invisible. They showed no signs of
embarrassment in return. She had grown to understand them over the years, and
also their vulnerabilities. She placed two mugs of hot coffee and left. Riya
walked up to her father and hugged him, patted him gently, rubbing her petite
hand over his broad shoulders trying to comfort him as he looked crestfallen by
the weight of what he had just said. She knew she had pushed him too far to
admit things that were better left unsaid.
The next morning she was awake while he was still
watering the plants in the garden. She left a “Thank You Dad”, card for him on
the coffee table along with a form for a CAT coaching class and left for the
gym in her usual style. He smiled as he sat down to have his coffee. He picked
up the card. It had no wordings inside, just a ‘Thank You’ in a Lucida
handwriting font and her name she had scribbled messily at the bottom with a
big heart. She had forgotten to put the date at the top. He was convinced that
it was the reason why she forgot to wish him yet again on his birthday. He
picked up the newspaper; the smile had dawned back on his face with the morning
sun. The headlines read “Why 2008 is the best time to enter B-schools.”
15:29 -
Posted by Shilpa K -
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comments
It settles on them with as much ease as dust settles on unattended corners of the house. It arrives at unsuspecting hours like uannounced guests who stay back for dinner. It intoxicates you like it is some sort of old wine. It lingers like the smell of someone even when that someone is long gone. It numbs you like when you had your first chance with fantasy. Your dreams are not dreams. Just prolonged phases of oblivion which your weak mind cannot condone. The world seems to have stopped spinning since the last time you saw the sunrise. You don't remember when. Your eyes are heavy like your jeans when you come out of the pool. They are stubborn and they shut themselves tight like a door slammed in a fit of extreme anger. They are relentless in their attempts of embarassing you like seniors on the first day of college. Such foolish games they play - these sleepy eyes on a drowsy mind!
17:51 -
Posted by Shilpa K -
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Poems are from the heart, and they rhyme with your life
But if you have none, they you have got to strive
It takes some brains, to get that perfect sync of words and thoughts
But if you have none, they rhyme them with pans and pots
Sometimes rhymes are silly, sometimes they are fun
At times they are stories from the heart, at times unintended pun
If you have a reader, you can write as much as you can
Because no matter what you write, he’ll always be your ardent fan
Not everyone’s a poet, not everyone’s got a theme
But creativity lies, even when there’s none, in creating a scheme
17:40 -
Posted by Shilpa K -
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Does it need to be stoked, this spark to a fire
Or is not such a strongly felt desire
How often have I started to write
And then given up, thinking it’s too trite
These thoughts of mine are now so commonplace
Who would read them, they are so out of grace
I wonder where I lost them, those words I now search for
I have traveled so much, that they seem so afar
Am tired of this travel, that doesn’t seem to end
Just when I thought it was over, it turned out to be a bend
It has no destination, race to nowhere, places none
But I’m afraid to be left behind and so I leap and I run
I left behind a part of me, I now wish I could retain
But I have let it go, and washed away my tears in the rain
21:30 -
Posted by Shilpa K -
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I love the look on the face of the school kids - that unending gaze in their motionless eyes drowned in a thousand dreams, the supple skin on their little faces glowing in the morning sun, their tiny hands with trimmed nails gripping the cold steel bars of their school busses, bags strapped securely on their shoulders, water bottle dangling in the front, diamond shaped handkerchiefs pinned neatly to their shirt pockets and pinafores and dog-eared badges in plastic covers pinned on the other side. I used to watch a bright yellow school bus brimming with these looks every morning as I waited for my office bus & it lent me a smile in a weird way. A smile that one of these kids would have created in their art classes - used a bright red wax-crayon pressed it hard on the white drawing sheet and liberally drawn a wide inverted arc. Their life indeed is like their drawing books. Everything is well-defined with thick black boundaries and in that finite space dwells freedom in all its opulence. The same freedom that manifests itself like the spring after a cold winter during summer holidays. Life is only popsicles and candy-floss and sometimes a bag of Hershey’s kisses! It’s colorful like the balloons, the pin-wheels and the soap-bubbles outside the local park; it’s carefree like a bunch of helium balloons tossed in the air; it’s innocent and pure like the angles with little wings who rule the goodnight tales. Ever seen them at the malls -Mushroom hair, nose and lips flattened against an impeccable clean sheet of glass, hands spread at the side like an eagle and eyes round as gumballs from the vending machine and that look they hold in them – like they have just sighted the most wonderful thing on the face of the earth that ever existed! I wonder what’s so enticing about this age that makes it so enviable! Is it that life doesn’t give us a second chance to relive the moments and the times we enjoyed the most, or that it always makes the past seem more enviable, or that childhood is when life is like a clean white drawing sheet and all we know is drawing inverted arcs with our red wax crayons!
22:45 -
Posted by Shilpa K -
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Solitude is like a glass of wine...the longer you hold it, the more you begin to appreciate its beauty. It's also like the setting sun...gloomy but enchanting at the same time. Sometimes its like the summer breeze... refreshing. Sometimes it's like a rainy day... whose beauty you can only admire in books and in Bollywood songs sequences but seldom in the ordinary existence of real life. Solitude is when your heart thinks and your mind listens. And what mix of melodies and monotones it listens to! Solitude has the calmness of the ocean. Yet it renders its visitor the restlessness of leaves on a windy autumn morning. Solitude doesn't find you. You find it. Sometimes in the strangest of places. Places you never knew it existed. Like on the dinner table with a group of friends or in your bedroom as you lie on the bed with a million thoughts fluttering in your head like wild butterflies or when nostalgia gets the better of you while looking at old photographs. Solitude is a state of mind and like any other state of mind it passes. But while it lasts it feels like eternity.
17:36 -
Posted by Shilpa K -
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We are told, actions speak louder than words. Maybe that’s why we jump the wagon and judge people in the first instance by the way they act. The mind puts small post-its on each person it meets and then it forgets to take it off. Like the rickshaw driver who sang his throat out on my 5 Km drive form office to work - I labeled him ‘eccentric’. Maybe he had a reason – his son did well in the exams, he escaped an accident, his wife cooked for him, or maybe the rains awakened the singer in him. Whatever was his reason – he seemed to be quite unperturbed by the slow moving traffic he waded his three-wheeler and a grumpy passenger through. I tried hard to dress my face in a frown to express my disgust at his act – no so much for his vocal shortfalls but because I wanted to subtly announce my disregard for his behavior. Should the mind be allowed such liberties? Should it be allowed to evaluate God’s creation? Should it question His judgment on rendering finesse to them? People’s actions are sometimes like blemishes on the skin. They last for a while. But while they last, they make you look ugly.
Not all that meets the eye is true. Not all that is true meets the eye either. Perceptions thrive on the limited interactions that we have with other people. Limited not just in time but also in scope and circumstances. How can such a brevity of time do justice to the intricacies and nuances of the human character? Have you ever imagined graduating from a different school, working with a different bunch of people, living in a different city, in a different country maybe, if you had different friends – richer, dumber, blind, of a different nationality – and how it would have changed you as a person? Would you have laughed as often? Would you have had the same fears? Would you have longed for the same things that you do now? Would the same things inspire you? Would the same people motivate you? Would you derive pleasures in the things you do now or would you treat them as silly? Man and his character are like a footprint in sand. Time and tide washes it away and then someone imprints something new. It’s a never ending cycle. This pursuit of creating and maintaining an identity. This relentless struggle to make mental maps of people we used to know and faces we used to cherish only because we have the power to think and imagine.
12:07 -
Posted by Shilpa K -
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My earliest memories from childhood remain visiting my grandma's during summer vacations or May vacations as my cousin called them. I didn't particularly have anything to look forward to at that place, except for a lot of pampering in simple ways - mainly food. Nothing beats the taste of hand-cooked food of grand mom's. It has some magic ingredient unknown to most recipe books. This place was still coming of age even as cable TV was ushered in the living rooms in the 1990s and city children had devised silly games to engage themselves in free time. It amazes me how I could spend hours doing some of the most simple things, like making a trip to the terrace, attending singing classes just for the heck of it, looking forward to an evening outing to the river, exploring the hidden treasures of greeting cards and photographs stacked in suitcases, admiring the bone-china tableware, learning a stitch or a two, recording silly rhymes on the tape-recorder and making everyone listen to it, playing with tiny utensils that were passed from generations - the oldest form of toys perhaps, trying my luck at a game of carom and defending my every loss with the fact that I was the youngest player. Spinning the wheel in the Game of Life, hoping to be a doctor or an engineer with a handsome salary, counting away the colorful currency notes on each payday, and so looking forward to those white notes - the highest denomination that the game offered. I had made friends with people I probably wouldn't meet in my lifetime ever again. Yet they were my Summer vacation chums for a long time. We've shared so much, including our toys and books, the memories of which are slowly fading. I wonder if life will give us a chance to meet again. If by the luck of fate we do, would we even remember or realize that we spent the whole afternoon playing Monopoly together. Life is like one of my priced possession from childhood - a multicolored beaded purse that grand-mom gifted, of the many things my little eyes eyed and admired. Experiences, the people we meet, the times we share are so myriad, that the mind refuses to hold on to such vastness of memories and peels it away slowly - layer by layer. But the crumbs still remain, in some unreachable corners, little figments that reside endlessly like time, only to evoke fond memories of times gone by even as life continues ahead of us.
11:41 -
Posted by Shilpa K -
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Smell of beans
and freshly baked bread
Big stuffed
hearts, painted in red
Warmth of a
towel after cold showers
Dew drops
trickling over a bunch of flowers
Splash of
water in the deep blue pool
Pony tailed
girls marching to school
Pop! The
sound of a bubble wrap
Blasting
speakers with Eminem’s rap
A hot mug of
coffee by the bedside
Tucked in
the tent by the gurgling riverside
Gift wrapped
boxes under the Xmas tree
Running in
the fields, wild and free
The jingle
of coins in a piggy box
Santa
filling up my pair of socks
Funny little
nose of the circus clown
Pineapple
cake baked upside down
Paper planes
flying all over the air
Tall giant
wheel at the fun-n-fair
Golden
braids of the old Japanese doll
Running up
the escalators in the huge city mall
Shopping for
candies, a whole handful
Smearing
chocolate a whole mouthful
Stories
about Casper, the friendly ghost
These are
some things that I love the most
13:19 -
Posted by Shilpa K -
3
comments
Everyone thought our marriage to
be some kind of a joke. “It was so surreal,” they explained later. “You
Sarvanan Balasubramanian weds Riya Jaiswal. The Riya Jaiswal!” I listened in
silence as they poured jokes at the bar and the bartender poured some whiskey
into my glass. There had to be a better explanation why of all the 256 invitees
only 40 turned up at the wedding. That we tied the knot on the 1st
of April just added insult to injury. Riya was in that thing they call “Love”
which I could never fathom. Our marriage made complete sense to her by what she
termed as ‘The law of attraction.’ She always believed opposites attract. For
me it was equivalent to no more than the same law of attraction that attracts
the north pole of a magnet to its south pole. That is how we were – complete
opposites hailing from cultures that were longitudinally estranged. She seemed
some kind of God’s craft, her looks chiseled to perfection, be it her long
flowing tresses like the Kaveri in peak monsoons, be it her lips the color of
blush and perfect like the buds of the roses in Amma’s garden in the backyard, or
her eyes that were the shape of almonds. Her eyes matched the color of her hair
– the darkest shade of black – some of it attributed by the kohl she smeared so
liberally on them every morning. She had a peculiar laugh like that of a little
kid who chuckles at the thought of candies. Her dresses were vibrant and her
wardrobe resembled a pack of wax crayons arranged in increasing order of intensity
of the hues. She loved shoes and bags and for every dress she possessed she had
at least three matching combos of bags and shoes. She rarely every accessorized
or wore makeup or even perfumes. But she always smelled exotic and looked
stunning. Just before marriage she had went ahead and pierced her nose out of
fascination. It was one of the things she had to check on her bucket list
before we were bond in holy matrimony. The only other thing on that list that I
am aware of is an intricate tattoo the size of carom striker on her lower back.
It had some Arabic script written in convoluting fashion spiraling inside out.
She told me it reads “Love conquers all things”. I believed her. Amma had let
out a sudden shriek when she spotted it on Riya’s back as she tried out a
low-waist lehenga during the wedding shopping. Her eyes popped wide and gleamed
in astonishment as she noticed this creepy work of art on Riya’s back. They
glistened as if to match the pea-sized solitaires she wore in her slightly
elongated ears since as far as I can remember and the nose studs one on each
side of her chunky nose. She didn’t say a word though. She never did. But she
was vigilant and her eyes expressed and conveyed what she didn’t by the spoken
word, both in a moment of grief like when Appa passed away after fighting
cancer for three years and also in busts of happiness like when I gifted her
her favorite Kanjivaram with my first pay. She wore it on all occasions for the
next one year – on poojas, on weddings, on thread ceremonies – until that
ill-fated day when the dhobi burnt a hole in its pallu. From that day, Amma
ironed all her clothes at home. She even wore un-ironed cotton sarees to the
vegetable market when she didn’t find the time, but refused to trust any other
man in the neighborhood with ironing them. She had cursed the dhobi who had
seared her priced possession. A few weeks later it was learnt that his shop was
reduced to ashes in arson and he had fled to his native place never to return.
That day Amma offered a litre of whole milk at the temple and walked around
with a bounce in her steps as if announcing some kind of a secret victory. She
cooked the best stew that night for dinner.
Amma always wanted a South-Indian
daughter-in-law, someone who understood classical music, wore a braid and adorned
it with flowers, smelled of coconut oil every morning and cooked awesome
rassam. Riya did nothing of that. Instead she loved jazz and her cooking was
limited to exactly five dishes she had learnt at a cooking workshop in college.
All of which were Continental. Yet there was some kind of an unspoken bond
among them which only strengthened with time. This bond manifested itself in
the most unexpected ways, like when Aloo parathas with sambar became a ritual
every Monday at the breakfast table. The only reason why Amma accepted Riya,
however reluctantly at the beginning, was because of the way she looked. She
was easily the prettiest bahu in the neighborhood and that brought Amma some
kind of pride. I felt I had brought home a silver plate after winning an
athletic event in school rather than a wife after being legally married.
I had a close knit circle of
friends who, by the time we were a couple, had migrated to foreign lands in
search of greener pastures. I don’t know what made me stay back here in India
at a time when job opportunities mushroomed abroad like the flamboyant Gulmohar
in summer. Maybe it was because of Amma who refused to move out of our
locality, let alone moving to another country. She couldn’t tell how long she
had lived here in years. She had a strong photographic memory though. She
remembered the color of the walls when they had moved in – it was pale ochre –
she once told me on Appa’s birthday long after he was gone, tears swelling up
in her eyes. She dabbed them with the end of her soft un-ironed cotton saree.
She remembered spending a whole day cleaning up the place and when she was done
Appa had teasingly addressed her “Kari”, short for Kariappa, the guy who worked
at the flour mill down the road and who always looked like a baby puffed with
too much of talc. I was a social misfit in Riya’s circle of friends. They were
loud, boisterous, gossip mongers who partied too much and too hard for my
comfort. I used to get this nagging feeling that they would be biting us behind
our backs. I expressed this to Riya more than once, but she thought I was just
being paranoid and suggested I loosen up a bit. That was the last time I mentioned
her friends in any of our conversations. I distanced myself from them like how
the soul would separate itself from the body when the body burns on the pyre.
Riya failed to see through my excuses initially, but then a pattern developed
so distinct and so obvious that it required little thought to arouse a feeling
of betrayal. I could sense it in her increasing frigidity towards me. She took
solace in silence and I took refuge under heap loads of work that I carried home
from office every evening. She seemed to slip away like an unanchored boat
along the lake-side, slowly drifting away aimlessly into the vastness that
spread far and wide before her. I did little to stop her from crumbling into
tiny fragments of despair and loneliness. I guess I was just tired myself in
trying to keep pace with her, with her crazy ideas to spend the weekend, her
zealous attempts to live the life of yester years of indulgence and
intoxication, and a continuous effort to live up to her expectations - of
dressing right in denims and corduroys even when I felt in my own skin only
when I wore pleated pants that ballooned around my short stout thighs, of
making use of the silver at the restaurants when all I wanted was to slurp rice
and curds with my hands, when I had to settle for wine when all I wanted was
some cheap beer, when all she worried about was the color of her lipstick when
we had to rush to the funeral of our neighbor.
Amma seemed oblivious to all of
this. She spent most of the day knitting in her room, odd little sweaters that
were too small to fit any of us and too big to give away to the toddlers next
door for their dolls. “For your kids!”, she remarked. “I’ll be done with 3
identical sets by the time you become a daddy!” For the first time in many
years I saw her being passionately engaged in something. I sensed some unseen
force had taken over her. I didn’t know how to react. I just hugged her and
went back to my room. Riya was sorting her chiffons from her linens; she looked
twice as old and half as pretty for her age. She hid her freckles and blemishes
under layers of makeup now every time she stepped out of the house. Her hair
now resembled her lackluster eyes that were deprived of the kohl for a few
weeks now. Instead pink swollen crescents laced both her eyelids. I was
astonished by the heartlessness that the bitterness in our relationship had
rendered to her; that she kept it a secret only to be revealed in the most nonchalant
of manner, placing me in the middle of a predicament I had never imagined she
would be capable of. That night I wept in my bed like a little boy feeling
empty and devastated being deprived of the little joys in life that most people
take for granted. It hurt. The next morning, while she lay next to me lost in
her thoughts, I gently placed my hand on hers. She winced at the touch of skin
against skin after a month, 2 weeks and 4 nights. She was cold and her skin was
pallid. I drew her closer; my eyes a scarlet red from the night, and hugged her
tight. We both wept without saying a word for hours until Amma came knocking at
our door in the wee hours of the morning to show us the first of the dozen
sweaters she had sworn to weave before Riya delivered. It was pear-shaped and
was woven in the same hues as that of her burnt Kanjivaram. Peacock green and
sapphire blue. She had even torn apart a zari border and made some sort of a superfluous
patch work on the back of the sweater. It was quite hard to imagine a new-born
donning that tacky outfit. She seemed to have accomplished an unwritten agenda
by weaving it. Those colors, that zari border meant something to her I couldn’t
comprehend by the way she looked at us while we lent her a smile admiring the
work of art. Since that morning, life assumed a bit of normalcy and silence gave
way to words albeit very scarce and few.
For Riya, our marriage had turned
out to be like a poor investment scheme. She had slowly relinquished her lavish
way of living and had adopted simplicity as much as she could, yet all she got
was a mom-in-law who relentlessly stitched sweaters and a husband who had detached
himself from her, was always drowned in a sea of papers from work and spoke
lies with so much ease. It was his way of running away from the differences
that surfaced between them as individuals and differences that were so stark
that he couldn’t dismiss it as a mistake of fate. Riya couldn’t make any new
friends in this part of the country where people tend to be gregarious like
birds of the same feather. She had no one to visit, not even her own family as
they had disowned her the day she displayed her interest in marrying me. She
sat days on end looking outside the stained glass windows of our bedroom, her
head rested against its wooden frame and her eyes fixed on a random spot on the
road below where hawkers cried their wares creating a cacophony.
That night when she was rushed to
the hospital it rained like all hell had broken loose. The thunderstorms and
the lighting Amma kept saying was a precursor of something evil that was about
to occur. I ignored her even as she prayed, chanted, recited her entire verse
book and completed innumerable laps on her foot long string of rosary beads. On
the eve of the birth of my children, I was taken aback by my own apathy to the
situation. I felt numb. My face had lost the power of expression, my mind was
unable to construe circumstances, and my heart had become immune to feelings
and emotions. I felt I only existed in body and my soul had long departed it
leaving it destitute. It was 3 am in the morning when the nurse approached us.
Amma was still counting her rosary beads and reciting some verses under her
breath that no one could decipher. The nurse bore a grim look on her face.
“Sorry to inform you Sir, one of your babies passed away minutes after she was
born. The other two are perfectly fine and are with their mom.” Amma wailed
like a hungry mongrel on the street when the nurse broke the news. Grief always
inflicted her more quickly and strongly than happiness could encompass her. She
held on to me by one hand as we plodded through the corridors that smelled of
strong medicines. In the other she grasped tightly her tatty cloth bag that had
an assortment of weaving needles, woolen threads rolled into a mesh, her rosary
string, the verse book and some other things that tinkled every time we took a
step. Riya was on the bed, looking at the ceiling above her when we arrived in
the room. Amma rushed and hugged her and then cried with her head dug into
Riya’s bosom, wetting the light blue gown the nurse had dressed her in. Riya didn’t
hold her close; she lay there motionless, staring at the ceiling. Her eyes
though could not hold back the tears. They tricked like rivulets from the sides
of her cheeks. I stepped forward to look at the large cradle they had arranged
next to the bed. It was designed especially for triplets. One of the three
distinct spaces looked ghastly empty, the creases and folds on the soft bedding
still fresh from the last movement on it. The other two had babies wrapped up
in sky blue to indicate they were boys. They were a set of unidentical triplets;
it wasn’t hard to tell at all. They looked like the color palette of face
powders Riya referred to when we used to go shopping on the weekends. If the
third one was still alive, she would have been the fairest of them all I
guessed. Looking at them I felt like I was playing the “Spot the difference
game” that featured in the cheap tabloids. Riya loved reading them. “You never
read those. You can only watch them,” I had once commented when I saw her
engrossed in one of the copies. One of them had fusilli dark hair; the other
had them like brunette spaghetti. The one with the wheat complexion had
predominantly inherited the features of his mom, long lashes, the shape of the
brows, the bridge of the nose, even the lips. The other one I guess was
unfortunate to be painted by the same stroke that colored his father, and with
the same bluntness and lack of dexterity of the chisel that sculpted his facial
anomalies. It reminded me of our differences once again! I felt something choke
inside of me and I ran out of the room like a mad man, I ran through the
corridors that smelled of medicines, that housed people grieving over reasons
unknown, of walls that carried horrid posters of human organs to the last
detail, across operation theaters with glowing red bulbs warning others that a
life was being worked upon, like they stick up those red tattered flags when
the roads are dug open for repairs. I ran till I reached the portico and fresh
air gushed into my lungs so hard that it ached. The noise around me, of the
siren of the ambulances, the honking on the road, of petty fights at the corners,
of hawkers all faded and my head felt numb again.
That night, it was just me and
Amma at home. I did little to comfort her and she kept crying incessantly. The
next morning when I went to her room she had already passed away. Her pillow
was still wet from her crying. Next to her cadaver was the peacock green and
sapphire blue sweater with the zari patchwork on the back. She had dumped
exactly four of the dozen sweaters in the trash can stuffed in polythene. I
spent the day with her remains and in the evening with the help of a local
priest performed the last rites alone. There were no onlookers. Only the
setting sun that cast a shadow of darkness all around while she blazed with the
brilliance only equal to that of her solitaires. The wood crackled and burnt
along with her for an hour. Then the rain came and swept all of what was left
and returned her ashes to ashes, dust to dust. I did not visit the hospital
that day or even that night. I lay awake on the bed in my room feeling uneasy.
I had failed as a husband and then as a son. I had let Amma slip away. That
night, I vowed to be a good father. It was hard to redeem the past with a
future that had already arrived. Yet, life is strange in certain ways and it
renders you courage in the toughest of circumstances. The next morning I
dressed up in denims and checkered shirt, picked up a dozen white lilies,
placed them on the back seat for a surprise and arrived at the hospital to bring
Riya home along with our new-borns. I had even stickered our names on the
tinted glass on the back of my Maruti 800 – Riya, Sarv, Rishabh and Santha,
aesthetically at the four corners and had placed a big heart with an arrow
cutting right across it in the centre. I realized how Amma had departed
silently without making her absence felt. That there was no room for a fifth
name made me feel less sorrowed of her absence.
By the time I reached the hospital
Riya was all set to go. She didn’t seem to notice my denims or my checkered
shirt. She wasn’t surprised not to see Amma. I decided not to mention about it
until we were home. Riya held on to Rishabh, her miniature replica. The nurse
handed over Santha to me. As we climbed down the stairs she started walking
towards a white chauffer driven car without speaking a word. Her mom sat in the
back seat. I could make out she had widowed by then. I grew weak in my knees as
I followed her right till the car by instinct, drawn by some unknown force. Her
driver ushered her into the car. She refused to meet me in the eye. As she was
about to enter the car, incoherent with grief, words blurted out of my mouth,
“Amma passed away yesterday.” “I know,” she replied with a coldness I had last
sensed on the touch of her skin that night when we had wept. She shut the door
close; dark tinted windows rolled up and signaled the driver. They drove past
me almost as if a part of my life glided in front of eyes and then disappeared
at the turn around the corner. She had hand-picked her life ahead carefully,
like how Amma used to pick ripe red luscious tomatoes in the market wearing
un-ironed sarees. She disowned me and had left behind everything that would
have reminded her of me, including the little life in my arms.
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