On the new year.

The new year is here! And for the life of me I can’t quite wish absolute new-ness, happiness, shiny-ness and joyful things for a whole year. Because a whole year will not  never be like that.

The year will be quite insane, with moments of unbelievable excitement and then some sadness. There will be friends who will stay, come what may. There will be friends who will leave you and move on with their lives. There will be family drama and gossip sessions over tea. There will be laughter over dinners and there will be some lonely nights. There will be tears. But there will be silly smiles as well. There will be headaches due to heat and illness and fatigue and then some stomach ache from excessive laughter. There will be new clothes and new shoes and then no money for new clothes and shoes. There will be new books and the smell of old books.

There will be all of that and some more.

As for me, if the first day of the new year is really an indication of how the rest of the year would be then I’ll be getting up at noon, drinking tea and ordering pizza, sleeping, reading books and having friends over all through the year. We will check on that in a few days from now, shall we?

Happy new year guys! Hope you all rock it!

On strange strange days.

My body feels like a stone today. Heavy and not able to move. My mind feels quite the same. Fuzzy, blank. With images coming in and going out, conversations floating in and floating out- recording nothing. Like a white sheet of paper where you scribble and erase, scribble and erase repeatedly until there are marks on the paper but no formation of anything. My eyes are heavy. Wanting to sleep, burning with exhaustion. Looking at no one, seeing through every one. Expressing nothing but blankness and that exhaustion.

Exhaustion refuses to leave me. It seems to have engulfed my whole being: parching my throat, drying my lips that no amount of water can satisfy.

It is a state of being here and not being here. Sitting here at my desk yet floating around and looking at myself, hunched over the study table, fingers typing- studying myself from a distance wondering what would possibly bring me back to myself, let me experience my being with some form of emotion.

My mind forms an answer, much like the bubble in comic strips. And I chuckle. I think I want to lie on my couch and watch sitcoms for one afternoon. Strange it is, I know. The exhaustion, dissociation and the need to reclaim television time, sitcom afternoons and my space on the couch. But it would bring me back, I think.

Mindless laughter, sarcasm and that space to stretch out the whole body – just the thought of it almost brings a smile to face!

On how all the Sundays get over!

You wake up at 11 am and roll around on the bed till 12. Post which you decide to have tea and biscuits and then salami sandwiches for what you still call breakfast. At 1 you want to have lunch later at home because you are too lazy to go out in the sun. So you start chopping random vegetables and end up with one very bitter veggie smash (methi leaves and brinjal) and one other very plan looking veggies smash (aloo and beans). You keep pottering about trying to throw things together for laundry, again randomly, and still wondering what to eat for lunch. Then it’s almost 3 and you go for a bath and spend too much time reading the conditioner label and the label on the box of your hair mask while silently debating which one to use after you wash off the shampoo from your hair. You usually give up, because, well it is Sunday and you are too lazy, and emerge from the shower in tattered pyjamas and tee with a towel wrapped around your head. Then you put on an old Bengali movie, have your bitter mash (because you convince yourself about its nutritional value) and left over chicken. While you lick the last of your hot and sour lime pickle off your spoon, your plate goes dry and you end up spending quite a bit of time washing up in the kitchen because well, many things had dried up while you were pottering about the house soaking the feeling of a Sunday.

It’s 5 now. You sleep. Yes, yes. You switch on the air conditioning, draw the curtains, curl up in a ball and sleep. And of course, there is no alarm. So when you wake, it is 7. You have the evening tea with biscuits and decide that you must get out and get your weekly exercise. So you get out, flag down a cab and go to your biriyani place to pick up your mutton biriyani. You come home, watch back to back episodes of The Big Bang Theory (which brings much joy because your life is SO much more entertaining than those guys in the TV), and realise you don’t have to wash any dishes because you ate straight out of the box!

It’s 10.30. You make those calls to your folks at home and enquire about their daily health, whether it has rained there, whether the maid was on time today and whether the cook used the right amount of oil today while cooking lunch. Then you lie down on the couch, TV remote in one hand, and call a friend, and an aunt, and another friend while trying to reply to all those messages in whatsapp.

It’s 11.45. And the dreaded Monday beckons. Aircon, curtains, bed. Tossing and turning since the biriyani refuses to settle. A cup of hot chamomile tea and an old edition of a magazine does it.

You sleep. Or you don’t. Whatever. Amidst all that laziness and sleepiness and Big Bang Theoriness and yummy biriyani-ness, your Sunday just got over. And there is not a damn thing you can do about it!

Source: No clue and it doesn’t belong to me! Please feel free to link if any of you know of the source. I found it on FB on a friend’s profile.

On tea time and memories.

In my part of the world, it’s tea time. Now I don’t know about you but my evening tea is very precious to me. This is the time when I sit back on the couch, put my legs up on the coffee table, slowly dip ginger snaps in the tea, flip pages of a magazine, watch TV and just sip my tea noiselessly.

It brings back some childhood memories, you know. The time when I would be back from my school and Ma would be back from her school and she would make tea and I would bring out the biscuits and we would sit in the balcony, doing crosswords, playing word games, telling each other about the day and watching the sunset. Looking back, I sometimes think, those were perhaps the most precious moments that I spent with my mother. I had her all to myself. She didn’t do anything for that one hour or so. She just sat in the balcony. With her cup of tea and biscuits and crosswords and sometimes she sang with a distant look in her eyes.

We both lost that moment after I left home at 17. I don’t know if she still sat at the balcony and watched the sunset by herself. If she did, she never told me and I never asked. My tiny room in the hostel had a small window from where I could see some trees but no sky and no sunset. College days were not meant for sunsets. We had found more exciting things to occupy our lives. We took the sunset for granted. We drank tea morning, noon and night and didn’t care whether it was brewed right. We didn’t have money to buy biscuits every day.

I have found my tea time again. I have a balcony again from where I can see how the sky changes colour when the sun sets. I like the quietness of the house at this time. I like the memories it brings. I like to soak in the times I wouldn’t get back with my mother. I like to think of the sunsets we saw together and the pink and orange skies we wondered at.

And very strangely, I like the sepia tinted sadness it brings every time.

© Paroma Ray

Picture taken in Singapore, September 2012

On a little bit of joy

You know how life is made better on sullen afternoons?

(Following is a chat excerpt. Contents of full chat will not be revealed here. A will disclose his full name if he wants to )

Me: throws paper ball at A

paper ball misses target

A picks up said paper ball

throws it back at Paroma

paper ball lands right on Paroma’s head

Paroma wails

A offers clean white hanky to Paroma

Paroma refuses said hanky

A blows his nose into hanky

Paroma’s eyes fill up with tears

Paroma turns and walk to her sulking corner

Sigh

Story. Of. My. Life.

A: you’re making up your own story I see

Me: it is my story indeed!

A: awww

pulls out tiramisu cake he had brought for Paroma

hands it to her on a plate with a fork

Me: yay!!!

A: tries to hide the cinnamon cappuccino which he will give her after that

Me: yay yay yay yay

does a little jig

snatches plate from A and runs to a corner to eat it all by herself

longingly eyes the cappuccino

You see, they might not know all that is wrong with your life but they definitely know what will bring you a little joy

Well, that’s why they are so precious. Them friends.

On Calcutta.

Mild winter breeze. Grey skies.

Overbearing crowds.

Traffic snarls. The eight minute wait at a traffic light.

The bells of cycle rickshaws. And the horns.

The CNG autos. The low floored buses.

The mouth watering rasogolla at the neighbourhood sweet shop.

The familiar smell of warm toast in the morning. The tinkle of a spoon against a tea cup. “You still prefer black?”

The endless fish curries. The waiting for biriyani.  The mutton rolls.

The plans changed. Times not kept.

The doorbell ringing in the morning. “Didi, aajkey oi baari tey ki hoyechhey jano? ” (“Do you know what happened in the other house this morning?”)

The news bulletins on Jyoti Basu. The heated discussions on politics, ideals and beliefs.

The new literature festival. The book fair missed.

Smiles, laughters.

The walks around a park. The life that seems a little troubled. A friend’s shoulder. A patient hearing.

Evenings spent with relatives. Neighbor’s lives. Gossip. Smirks. Laughters again.

Shawls and sarees. Kashmir emporium. New Market.

Sitting by the side of a mighty river. Staring out into the open.

Dreams had. Deams lost.

Peace. Home. Hope.

Heartache. Soulmate. Best friend.

Calcutta.

Yet, in my country…

…it all works.

Sights in Delhi on a sunny winter afternoon.

Please click on the pictures to enlarge them.

This is my post for Wordless Wednesday. Amazing how I never actually post on a Wednesday!

On a winter afternoon

I thought winter mornings are the best. Until I saw a winter afternoon. With its soft sunlight in my bedroom, curtains drawn, a soft quilt and complete silence. Except the birds in my balcony who always have something to say. And surprisingly they have more to say in the winter than in any other season of the year! But that doesn’t matter at all. For I have had a perfectly sumptuous meal of daal, bhaaja and fish curry with rice, every bone in my body is lazy and I am just curling up on my bed to watch Charulata before I doze off to sleep.

Aah. Bliss. Thy name is winter afternoon.

Edited to add later- How would you spend a perfect winter afternoon? Tell me. I would love to know.