Sunday, December 12, 2010

2wards 2orpidity?

4.am

I am lazy (Oh yes! and probably my mum might excitedly add in a few more unpleasant adjectives to it.) but for a start I gave my blog a makeover ( with possibly a hundred delays while surfing randomly through the net and darn!! why on earth does facebook exist? ) and so while I sit down to write( after a very very long time), stifling a yawn ; I contemplate switching off the lights,snuggle into the blankets and procastinate this post for a week( I told you I am ,lets take a better sounding word: nonchalant).

Well this post was planned up for July just after a pretty vapid birthday.
What I expected was far too different from what I got.
A peck on the cheek probably suffices on such occassions according to family elders . The younger brother thinks of it as any ordinary day and broods around in corners with the 'whats the big deal with wanting the whole affair to be so much "wheeee".' ( Ahh!! I am willing to sideline it as teenage problems.)

So as the year comes to an end; I end up thinking how vastly things have changed.
The year has been satisfying on a whole. It started in a great city and might probably end up in a great one too. Both have seen me as different people.
That jump around animated brat is more reticent, demure and as my mother cheerfully puts it, sober. From the 'pack my bags and run off' to the 'laze around in the weekends' sort of a person.
I have had to 'settle' at home again.
Yes the latter part of the year saw me more prudent and probably wiser of the decisions I took in the former and as I sit and muse, all the vivid pictures flash, of another time which was so fast paced that probably I savour it now with all the ruminations.

22? call it torpid. I laugh at myself for turning a lot older in a matter of months. For the better or not is something I cannot fathom but at the moment,the only thing that brings a smile is the awaiting Sunday morning hot oil bath and yapping in the eve with my mum over a bowl of sweet corn soup.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Mumbai Chronicles I - The confessions

After some soul writing, back to the old days ( I wonder why this irresistable urge to write only when exams are round the corner?? As they say an idle mind is a devil's workshop but I feel its utopian, full of those random lucid thoughts...and just then, that circuit diagram floating in front of you reminds you to get back to reality...yes the very reality that makes you curse for the sh*t you got into..yes I would have loved to be a thinker if there is any such occupation) Oops for the digression. For those who think that my posts are just centered around me and probably not a single word on the raging world issues ( as if we dont have enough of the media debates on them the whole day ) I would like to share the little intricacies of life..which maybe becomes quite a mundane affair for most of us.
For the past six months this has been stored in my drafts. I was collecting my observations and I knew I would have more things to add on to it.
I am a little ashamed to pronounce myself as a Delhite. Four years ago this very statement would have earned me proud smiles and a pat on the back by my fellow compatriots, those very ,who initially showed sympathy at my moving out of my home town for my graduation. But as the years trundled along, it saw me admiring a lot of the culture in which I settled in. Yes, Pune was a wonderful experience. I can write a novella on all my exploits there. Its probably shaped me into a different, hopefully better me.
But in my last two years I have had the taste of one of the most enigmatic cities I have come across( Bombay lovers are going to embrace me on this..I expect a few sloppy kisses too ).
I had my apprehensions albeit the fact that there was something about the city that pulled me towards it time and again. It mysteriously romanced me.
As they say " Jo Bombay aata hai.. woh bas yahin ka reh jaata hai "
I dont know how true that holds for me. I am still soul searching it.
It has it all. Among the starry blitz; the common man or the fast paced work culture and yet a calm which is tenacious. Maybe as a child I never got to see the real Delhi but as an adult I got to feel a city so enthralling.
The air which smells of the salt and fish .The first thing that you become aware of are the beads of sweat on your brow and still you look on at that fervent energy around you,trying to infuse yourself with it.
As my days in Pune-Bombay are numbered and before I go back to "rediscovering" the Delhi I left behind , I want to chronicle it. So keep visiting all Mumbaikars...
Till then (from the hit '78 movie, Don) " Yeh hai Bambai nagariya..tu dekh babbua."

Thursday, May 20, 2010

With Or Without You

She stopped dead in her tracks. Her eyes stinged and they trickled,hot tears, blurring her sight.Dazed,she looked around at the sea of faces around her. She saw no escape and yet she found her solace in it. Those very faces looked quizzically at her but knew nothing to judge her. She wanted to defy them and so justify to them. Those emotions in which there was a reason to rejoice as well as wallow. She wanted to keep feeling it, desperately trying to hold on to the threads of joy...but why and for whom did she want to engulf in sadness and let it go?
She felt warm and sublime, his eyes on her and yet she made herself cold and indifferent to it. Those doe shaped eyes, wide open or shut saw her, for darkness could not take away the light of her face, her smile which wrinkled her nose. They stole glances at her but wandered off when caught. Those eyes wanted her to know, yet hesitated.
Everytime their elbows grazed, she made it linger for seconds till she jerked it away. She wished time would halt as she felt his shallow breathing on her neck,yet prayed for it to slip away quickly. The more she sidled away, the more she was drawn towards him to drown herself into his arms.
He wanted her arms around his neck, her lips on his, their souls conjoined but found himself distancing away.
He saw those empty faces around him, those questions,but did he care? His pain was sweet but could he take it anymore?
They walked as one,in the milling crowd and yet away from it. Both were afraid to catch the hum in the air and yet a chord struck in their hearts, a harmony so intertwined that they felt blessed and cursed.
So was the dichotomy of love.....

Friday, April 23, 2010

Rain

Her hair came undone, the curls falling delicately over her shoulders. She looked all around her. Suffused in a pink glow. The white bark of the eucalyptus was radiant, chipping but with a shimmer of a fresh pearl. She felt the bark under her pink fingertips looking down at the long shadows being cast. The shadows swayed on the gravel pathway, dainty and ethereal. She looked up to those leaves that made them, gentle, swaying ,the branches bowing down to touch the ground. She sensed the sun peek in and out through the leaves, the stray srands of hair on her forehead glistening in the dusk lights. She stood enraptured at every sound, the rustle of the leaves, the wind entangling her locks, the cuckoo in her sweetest and of the voices around. The plants around her plush, green and vibrant whispered of hope. It stirred a music in her very being ; a thread of rhythm flowing through her veins. Overwhelmed was she, as every gamut of emotion struck a melody, a symphony known only to her; a harmony of all that she saw, heard and felt.
And then it fell, resting upon her long eyelashes, as clear as a crystal. She opened her palms to feel it. Wet and cold , flowing through her fingers onto the parched earth. The incense; that of the earth ,its thirst quenched. It sparkled,the colours bouncing off it as rays flitted across. The grey above with solar streaks left an orange tinge around.
It felt like life washed away;and yet it felt like being a being again...
She moved,like the wind,through every drop which touched her skin. She felt it on every niche in her being,every curve of her body, every corner of her soul; infused with the tones to which she danced.
" Raindrops keep falling on my head,
But that doesn't mean my eyes would soon be turning red,
Crying's not for me,
Cause I'm never gonna stop the rain by complainin'
Because I am free,
Nothing's worrying me"
Yes she saw it, heard it, and felt it.
and then on her lips, partook of it, brackish and fresh, tears and smiles, despair and joy.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Bad Hair Day...anyone?

This post was long due...for all those times that my mind seems not to be preoccupied with something or the other..these are the thoughts that usually fill in..
A little scratch through my wiry hair suffices enough to say that its the very "wiryness" I am pondering about.
PS : With due respect to those who muse over greying and thinning (:P)
I am one among you too...
So am I happy with my inheritance??... is what I am unable to decide most of the time.
This saga commenced 22 years ago..when there were gasps of 'oohs and aahs' by old kanjeevaram clad ladies who would do anything to slobber up your cute baby face with oodles of watery kisses and having done that would fondly twiddle their fingers around the tuft of hair on the head.. and with long sighs of happiness exclaim " oh so! The baby is going to be such a Rapunzel."
Yes there were standards set and pedestials to reach upto on which I shall elucidate, further on.
So the baby, innocent and unaware of the targets set before it..trundles on in daily life.
( The baby in particular was a cute cherubic thing with beady black eyes and curly black locks. Ahem!!! Am I sounding too full of myself *wink* ?? The aftermath is a part of the plight I have had to deal with till now and maybe all my life.. sniff )
So comes the age old Hindu ritual of tonsuring the baby's hair, with due respect to all the evil eyes they wanted removed and better future and luck they wanted to ensure( still wondering when they shall take effect). And so ended the dream of the beautiful "to be rapunzel" locks.
The child still unaware of the misery it was destined to live with was much too happy with a close crop( read: The delhi heat is too much to bear).
Mother decided in two years that now was the time to cultivate the scalp endowments.( It didnt really make much of a difference to the child who was much above these "hairy" issues then )and just when it was in process; there goes another "mundan" as it is called ( I really wonder when will all those rituals work in my favour).
I faced it...
I was three and was " Ganju Patel teri khopdi mein tel!!!!"
and so I sported a close crop almost all my childhood and teenage years. I loved it. I felt free (saves you the heat!! yes I was blessed with quite a thick endowment ). Never paid heed to the forlorn looks of my father who always wished that his daughter would be a well oiled two braided "ponnu" from a Tam Brahm family.
Instead my days were spent adjusting my hairlook to that of Diana or admiring Kiran Bedi. In my teens my obsession with Rowling's hero made me want to sport his style more(victim and that too of a grave " hairy" injustice).
Yes I have not inherited my mother's hair nor my father's. I have neither straight and silky like his nor wavy like hers. A long line of women in my family have had braids enough to draw gasps of admiration. I am the black sheep.
I merely have a shape shifter. Something that is wiry, frizzy,wild and difficult to tame, affected by water at every place but there are days when they are beautiful, curly locks or when they are straight and set, wavy and fall lucidly over my forehead. Time and again hairdressers give up. My scalp is a task. They work their way to make it look as presentable as they can.
I sport shoulder length hair now with red streaks..yes it looks wonderful somedays( guess my father thinks I am more of a taint now than ever).
But I just feel I have had too many bad hair days to last me for a life time.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Bitchin' Kitchen

Some call it overconfidence and some call it foolishness... I usually go by the saying..what goes at the top does come down at some point or the other.. Probably my creative stagnancy was too prolonged or the fact that I have had too many random thoughts in my head that went away like wisps of smoke( I have been away from the writing scene for some time now, read: almost half a year) but this incident was something that just had to be put down.
Well the whole thing started with the realization that turning 21 is not a very pleasant situation.Ahem!! the fact that I have received a reluctant nod for certain things in life like the subtle acceptance that nothing can be done if I decide to let my hair down socially( read: alcohol in measured amounts). On the other hand there are certain other things being pursued with a fierce enthusiasm.( read on)
So the theme revolves around the kitchen,the place which I despise the most and is the least visited sector of my home.( I am usually found eyes shut,face down,under covers in my natural habitat that is called the BED; ocassionally I can be found loitering around reading something and the maximum activity that I show is of munching edibles around the dining area. This, I talk of, the pure bliss days right now) And so it is that whenever I am in this elysian phase, it is shattered by polite digs at me by my mother and paranoia expressed by my grandmother at my lack of kitchen activity.( This is being said with a lot of spite and bitterness!!!! for dramatic effect)
I am a very peaceful person or call it MALLUISM as coined by my friends; but it usually takes a lot to perturb me deeply.So you can imagine my plight when I decided to enter the threshold of the "kitchen".
And so at the god thanking prayers and smiles of the ladies ,the omellete was added on to my list of 'cook to survive items' ;the only other being maggi.
The biggest battle started when the tougher things came about and since the challenging stakes and feminist egos were at their highest: my time=my domain was the simple rule.
I would rather not put it on god's mercy but my own "haath ka kamaal" for three superb attempts at the 'dosas' , peas curry and 'kovakkai'( tamil) or 'kundru'( ivy guard in english which I just found out courtesy the mighty google).
Having done this my parents left me at my mercy to experiment with the delightful world of tastes and smells.So my days at home, alone were spent in making rectangular,triangular,square 'chapattis' with roasted,cracked and rockhard variants of it. It was that fateful eve when I cooked a decent 'dal' all alone with instructions from my mother over the phone.Probably the fact that I managed to pull it off all on my own( without a vary eye from the sidelines) and that my father and his family appreciated it( being people of few words and praises) I decided to show my 'expertise' at it once again.

17-1-09
It was three days after Pongal and it just suited my fancy to make sweet pongal for myself and my friends( read: this is called overexcitement)
Having being completely confident of the recipe,which is easy let me assure you;I created the worst disaster ever in south indian history.

Learn how to burn ;) :-
250 gms rice and 100 gms moong dal to be cooked in a cooker with 31/2 cups of water
add 250gms milk and 200gms jaggery in it.
stir well and add dry fruits for taste.

How on earth it went wrong I still cannot fathom!!!!
It was dirt mud colour and well the taste ahem!! was burnt jaggery.
Yes, I am left with a sympathising friend, a bowl full of bitter something-that- gives- me-shivers-when-I-look-at-it,and utensils which shall keep me occupied for a week.
Take a look at it..Dont go by the chocolaty color of it or the fact that it tastes like bitter dark chocolate.It is neither.





Do I feel morose? Not at all..except for that longing friend of mine who was expecting me to spin out some miracle.On the other hand I expect a reprimand and a warning never to enter the kitchen again, at least alone!
Suits me!!!..as long as further 'hand for marriages' suggestions by the family doesnt come along for the 'poor 21 year old me' :D