Some evenings are like this. There is a breeze, there is less conversation, there is a glass of red wine and there is some music from days gone by.
And there is some love. A little sadness in the smiles shared. But always some love.
Filed under: Nostalgia, The everyday stuff | Tagged: companionship | Leave a Comment »
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!
Filed under: Opinion and facts, The everyday stuff, The hardest part | Tagged: afternoon, change, companionship, friends | Leave a Comment »
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.
Filed under: mother, Nostalgia, The everyday stuff, The hardest part | Tagged: afternoon, companionship, mother, writing | 6 Comments »
Sometimes you just need hope to get through one single day. One single night. Sometimes you just need that one thing to look forward to the next morning.
For me, I am looking forward to tomorrow morning. I have a breakfast date with R. We are making pancakes, sausages, scrambled eggs and filter coffee.
After the breakfast, you ask? I don’t know. I just don’t know. I’ll see tomorrow. I am ready to wait till tomorrow.
Filed under: The everyday stuff, The hardest part | Tagged: companionship, food, weekend | 3 Comments »
My mother is leaving tomorrow. And that is all I can think about while I sit in the drawing room and stare with a blank look in my eyes at my mother’s figure moving deftly around the open kitchen frying some fish, adding saffron to the chicken and checking the salt in the daal. And she hums to herself. All the time.
I can’t hum. Not now, anyways. My heart feels heavier than a stone and my head feels empty every time I think of tomorrow afternoon. My mother is leaving tomorrow afternoon.
Ma baked a chocolate cake with a hint of coffee. She looked after the plants. Took care of my laundry and ironing. She ordered groceries. She made tea. She was there to watch TV with me, to go out in the evenings with me, to have dinner with me, to hug me every night and kiss me when I left for work every morning. She let me crash on the sofa with the TV on and woke me up only for meals.
She let me be.
And now. She is leaving. She is taking a big piece of me away with her this time. I don’t want to let go of her. But she has to go. She has to leave.
So she is leaving. She is leaving. She is leaving.
Filed under: mother, Nostalgia, The hardest part | Tagged: companionship, mother, restless | 5 Comments »
The following post has been written for the Yahoo! India and Dove “I Believe in Real Beauty” under the topic “What does real beauty mean to me?” Hop over to the yahoo page here to read more on Real Beauty. And you can vote for me too- right here!
I.
“Uma! Hurry up. They will be here any minute”
“Ashchhi (coming) Ma! I can’t believe you asked me to come early for this!”
“Chhod-di (common bengali terminology for “younger sister”). Cha (“tea“). You are wearing that?”
Uma stands in front of the mirror brushing her hair vigorously. “What is wrong with this?” she asks Pushpadi pointing at her yellow and orange cotton skirt and the white top.
Pushpa wipes the cup with the corner of her saree and puts it down on the dressing table. She starts wiping off the dust from the dressing table and tries to explain to Uma why it is inappropriate to wear that skirt and why she should wear the gold bangles and not the cheap ones bought off the street.
“Pushpa di. You see, he is not going to marry me anyways. You know them.”
“No I don’t know them. I know you and I know you never listen to your mother.”
“Will you stop wiping my table, please. There is nothing left to be wiped there.”
Pushpa turns away and looks around the room. There are books lying around on the bed. Some are heaped into a pile on the reading table. She picks up the newspapers from the floor and the red coffee mug from the bedside table. The cup has little hearts on it. “Your Baba, gave this to you? No?” Uma doesn’t bother to answer. She has tied up her hair in a bun and is looking for her kohl in her handbag.
“Do you think, I should leave my hair open and let him admire my long cascading knee length hair?” Uma, asks with a smile. Her cheeks are dimpled.
Pushpa begins to say something but sees the sarcasm in Uma’s eyes. She stands near the windows and stares at the sky. The stars are almost there. Almost. If only that orange streak would go away and the let the evening quietly set in.
“If only your father was here today…”
“He isn’t Pushpa di. He isn’t.” Uma says, looking at Pushpa’s reflection in the mirror with a stubborn streak in her eyes. “It is Ma, you and me. He isn’t here with us anymore.”
II.
“Ma can you hear me?”
“Yes. Where are you calling from? Why aren’t you in the hostel? Its 9 pm.”
“Ma. I am at the Police station. I have been raped. They are taking me to the hospital.”
***
“Why were you wearing these clothes? And you were out with a boy in the evening?”
“Yes Baba.”
“And you complain of rape?”
“I didn’t invite it Baba.”
“Hah! You think!”
***
“You are not being the mother that you should be.”
“What?”
“You should be talking to her about dressing appropriately. And her boyfriends.”
“What is inappropriate about what she is wearing?”
“You call yourself educated? You can’t even say what’s wrong with that?”
***
“Why does she sleep so much?”
“She is on her semester break. What do you expect her to do?”
“She should be in the kitchen. Helping you. Marriage is only a few years away.”
“She does not need to be in kitchen. I can have her sipping tea on the couch and reading a book the whole day.”
“With a mother like you she will never keep her in laws happy. Already we have a problem with her. And now you add on to it.”
“What problem?”
“She has been raped. Don’t you see the problem?”
“No. I don’t.”
***
“I want a divorce.”
“Really?”
“Uma has given me all the print outs of your emails and chats. She has your password.”
“What? Try and divorce me. I’ll make your life hell. This is my house.”
“No it’s mine. I bought it. Paid for it and I’ll keep it.”
***
“Your mother is throwing me out of the house. Don’t you want to do something?”
“I don’t stand up for adultery Baba.”
“This stupid education has gone into your head”
III.
“Oh God! This PhD application, Ma! Why on earth do I have to fill up all of this?”
“Why do you keep biting that pen?”
“Why do they ask for father’s name?”
“Why? You don’t know your father’s name?”
“I’ll talk to the registrar tomorrow. I’ll put in your name.”
“Must you fight with everyone?”
“Must you stop me from chopping off my hair all the time?”
***
“Ma. I got the lectureship in that college. I’ll get to stay at home! La-dee-dah.”
“Stop la-dee-dahing. Do you have a boyfriend?”
“What? No. I don’t.”
“When are you coming?”
“I have to join next week.”
“Come before Saturday then. You should meet some people.”
“What? Who?”
“You will see.”
IV.
“I am twenty six, yes. And no I am not married. And no, I have never had a boyfriend. Why do you ask?”
“I was wondering if you are a virgin. You know you have stayed outside and all.”
“I am twenty seven. I teach in a college. Can I ask you something?”
“Please do. Its so nice to talk to you face to face.”
“What do you feel about rape victims?”
“Poor girls. All that lack of education and awareness.”
“I am a survivor of rape. I was raped by a Police officer. What does education have to do with this?”
***
“Uma, will you please stop scaring these people off?”
“Who is scaring who?”
“You. All these boys. Do you know how upset Niyogi aunty is?”
“Why do you think I am scaring them?”
“Why do you ask so many questions?”
“If I answer that can I chop off my hair?”
V.
Uma walks into the living room in her orange skirt. The last rays of the sun have made patterns on the wall. The room is filled with a strange silence as soon as she makes an appearance. She crosses the entire length of the room and chooses the big couch against the wall to settle herself in.
“Hi. How have you been aunty?.”
“Hello. I have been good only. So hot here! How are you?”
“Good, aunty. How about you? Why haven’t you eaten anything as yet?”
“its just too hot to have anything. We were just talking about the weather here. Such a difference from last year. Impossible to step out of the house.”
“Uma, you know Abhi. You guys have been in touch.”
Uma smiles and looks out of the corner of her eyes at the crisp white shirt and the blue jeans. The shirt is open at the collar. Is he clean shaven? She looks at his face and sees him staring at her. She frowns, his mouth breaks into a quiet smile.
“Uma.”
“Yes, Ma.”
“Why don’t you guys go to the terrace?”
“What in this heat?”
“Can we go for a drive”, suggests an unknown voice. Uma looks at the white shirt, blue jeans clad clean shaven man. He struggles very hard to hide a laughter.
“Yes.” Uma looks at her mother. “A drive would be nice, Ma.”
***
Uma sits in the car with her legs crossed on the front seat. She rummages through his CD collection and picks out one and plays it.
“Do you smoke?”asks Uma.
“When I feel like it.”
“I feel like one now.”
“We can stop at the corner and pick up some.”
“You don’t mind?”
“No. Only the windows have to be rolled down. It gets very stuffy otherwise.”
“Why do you want to marry me?” Uma asks, taking a long drag from the cigarette and releasing her hair from the two hair pins that were holding it in place.
“I like you.”
“I have been raped. My parents are divorced. My father lives with his girlfriend. I smoke. And I don’t believe women are meant to marry and have babies only. Oh! I am over thirty! And that is criminal, you know.”
“So?”
“You know all of this?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Niyogi aunty.” They break into squeaks of laughter. Uma taps her ash out of the car window.
“Why do you want to marry me Abhi? Tell me.”
“Because you have survived rape. Because you have survived your parents’ divorce. Because you stand up for what is right.”
Uma forgets to take a drag out of her cigarette. She looks away from him and out of the window.
“Because your hair is beautiful. Because you are beautiful.”
She blinks away the tears that sting her eyes.
“Because I am in love with you.”
She wonders if the knot in her throat can disappear.
“Will you marry me, Uma? I’ll never find another you.”
“I think I will.” She tries in vain to blow smoke rings and not think about that knot in her throat. “I thought I’ll never find a you.”
VI.
Uma sits on the couch and munches on the left overs. “Where are the chocolate biscuits, Ma?”
“I don’t know, Uma. How did you decide?”
Uma picks up her book from beside her and takes out the book mark.
“He said I could chop off my hair if I felt like it, Ma.”
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: companionship, love, women, writing | 12 Comments »
Today is friendship day. And what can explain my emotions better than the eternal Bill Watterson.
And this is an ode to my favorite people. What would I ever do without you guys?
“Even though we’ve changed and we’re all finding our own place in the world, we all know that when the tears fall or the smile spreads across our face, we’ll come to each other because no matter where this crazy world takes us, nothing will ever change so much to the point where we’re not all still friends.” *
Filed under: Nostalgia, Quotes | Tagged: companionship, friends, love, sunday | 6 Comments »
***
It is a quiet evening in the two room apartment. He is watching an old Amitabh Bachhan movie on TV while flipping to the sports channel in the break to check on the cricket score. He lets out a sigh. His team is losing. Again. He smiles and reaches out for his cell phone. “They are losing again. 86/4. Did you buy the shirts?”.
She is alone in an empty apartment in Delhi. Visiting her younger daughter for ten days. She is busy taking out the Raajma rice from the fridge. She checks the chicken to see if its marinated properly. Her cell phone beeps in the living room. She walks briskly to the pick up her phone from beside the floor cushion. She checks the message and smiles to herself. “Gd I m not wtchng mtch. Bght 2 t shirts 4 Rishi n 1 pajama 4 u. Shud I buy bedsheet for Bhabi?”
“Yes. If you have time. Buy something for Divya.”
“I wnt 2 buy sarees 4 Nitya. She nvr gets 2 buy anythn.”
“Ok. Do you have money? Should I send you some?”
“I have 2th now. I wl take 2th more frm Divya.”
“Don’t take from Divya. I will send money to Divya’s office by courier.”
“Ok. Finish th mutn today. Dnt kp it in th fridge nemore.”
“When will your train reach on Sunday?”
“930am. Wl u cm? Drvr wil b thr?”
“No. I’ll take auto and come.”
Two days later.
A small envelope is delivered to Divya’s office. Divya absent mindedly tears the envelope open while glancing through a long and important email. She restlessly looks at the small piece of paper inside the envelope. The paper is folded and is stapled from three sides. She rips open the paper and finds three thousand rupee notes and one five hundred note inside. The note said:
“Divya, Please hand this over to your mother. The 500 is for her phone recharge.”
Divya smiles to herself.
Divya’s parents never hold hands in front of her. They never cook a meal together. Her mother steps out of the house only with her father to buy mostly what her father approves of. Her father never steps into the kitchen and makes a cup of tea. Her mother stayed and took care of her in laws throughout their lives. Her father meets his in laws only twice a year.
Yet, Divya knows that they always watch cricket matches together. Her father never forgets to bring the ‘mogra’ for her mother on his way back from work. Her mother, in spite of having her own job, always asks her father for money for her daily needs. Her father always relents, giving her some extra, never questioning her on her expenses or her income. Her mother reminds him about the medicines they take in the mornings for their blood pressure. Her father keeps a track of her regular medical checkups. Divya has never seen her parents exchanging any ‘I love You’s. No roses. There has never been a diamond ring. Never a song for each other.
But after thirty five years her mother smiles every time she hears his voice. Her father always messages cricket scores to her if they are not watching the match together.
***
For a little while in her busy day, Divya is reminded of a Graham Greene novel where it said “At the end the only love which lasts is the love that has accepted everything, every disappointment, every failure and every betrayal, which has accepted even the sad fact that in the end there is no desire as deep as the simple desire for companionship”. She smiles as she folds the piece of paper and tucks it away in the envelope neatly with the money and wonders if it’s true.
Filed under: midweek crisis, Nostalgia, Quotes, The hardest part | Tagged: change, companionship, love | 8 Comments »
Sometimes I think I was much happier in my one room apartment in New York. I use to cry there too, you know. Very bitterly. With no one around me. But then R would come back home every night. And we would go out for walks, for coffee. Explore our neighborhood. Sometimes I would meet him in Manhattan. We would brave the crowd and walk to the theater to catch a movie. We used to take the train ride back to our apartment on those nights. We used sit side by side, hold hands and talk about the movie.
Sometimes now I tell myself I have a better life here. I have a big apartment, two maids, one driver, a big car and a good job. I don’t have to kill my back sweeping and mopping anymore and spend endless hours washing dishes. There is no waiting for the train. My career has finally taken off.
But something is amiss. We don’t walk around here. There is no neighborhood to explore. We don’t share household chores. We don’t get to see each other every night. There are no train rides, no walking in the rain and snow.
There is no time. He has his work and I have mine. On Sundays we match our calendars to find a window of few days to spend time with each other. Often we fail. We blame it on each other. He feels guilty, I cry for reasons I cannot explain. He thinks, I write.
And then we give up. Give up on being upset and offering explanations. We quietly retire to our own worlds while assuring the other one that we are still around.
We still love each other. We still want to be with each other. We would give anything to make it work. But the madness has gone. Somehow we have tamed ourselves, taught ourselves to walk and not run, go with the wind and not against it. Somehow, unconsciously, we have let ourselves be trapped in time, money, career and all things perceived to be essential in the pursuit of happyness.
And today, suddenly I am scared. I am scared that I’ll have to stop being insane. I am scared that he will stop being funny. I am scared that we are suddenly growing up and forcing ourselves to think ahead.
Are we ready yet?
I do not know.
Filed under: Nostalgia, Opinion and facts, The hardest part | Tagged: change, companionship, India, love, New York City, weekend | 10 Comments »
I initially thought I’ll write about my week and what good things happened so I could get rid of my work stress. But then I realized no good thing happened during the week and I definitely don’t want to write about work. So. I will rewind myself to last Sunday. When much fun was had by four very good friends.
Last Sunday R and I decided that we have grown up and that we must think of our future and we must invest in right places. I thought, as a way of investment, we should buy a RV, live in Europe and travel the world. R acknowledged that it was a very good idea but suggested that maybe we should look at some flats. And so we went. large acres of land, partly dug up, green in places and cows grazing merrily. There, they said, will be luxurious apartments in just three years. Glass all around, imported marble, vitrified tiles. A four bedroom duplex too, if you want. After knowing the price, I almost fell off the duplex balcony but R caught me just in time. So we drove around prospective township, scratched our heads and voiced our thoughts aloud. The RV increasingly looked like a better idea.
So, after an attempt to make such important decisions in life, we went to watch Alice in Wonderland with C and S. we missed the first two minutes of course because C had to finish his smokes, and R had to buy iced tea and so I also had to get iced coffee and C felt like having some cappuccino to fight his sleep. But, even without the first two minutes, the movie was just what I had expected it to be. Down the rabbit hole went Alice, she grew tall and shrunk in size. She ate the cake and drank the potion and got stuffed into the tea pot by the Mad Hatter. Johnny Depp is God of course. He is the only one who could have played Mad Hatter in this whole world. The orange eyebrows seemed perfectly natural on him. Then there was the red queen who screamed “Off with his head” and the white queen with her vow of non violence. And the caterpillar, and the Cheshire cat. Sigh! Alice has not lost her “muchness” at all. Neither has the Wonderland. They all seem “much more muchier” now. And I was reminded as to how important it is to believe in as many as “six impossible things before breakfast” to get through one single day! A must watch it is, Alice in Wonderland. Such a delight, always.
Well, so, after we were done with the movie and reeling under the effect of all that fantasy has to offer, we hopped over to Smokehouse Deli. Now Smokehouse Deli is one of my favorite places with sandwiches and burgers and soups and dessert to die for. I mean, they have food to die for. Plus they have a sit out and a giant TV where they screen the IPL matches. Perfect setting for four friends to drown themselves in pitchers of Sangria, talk about everything from human rights to politics, cricket and marriage. S and I, of course, spent a considerable amount of time talking about the “men” kind. Interesting ideas were bounced off like when R said how true independence will arrive when more power is vested with the women and C said Alexander had come to India by sea and landed in Kerala (!!!) and followed it up by saying History was one of his strong areas in school (!!!!!!). S spoke a lot about Dravidians and Aryans (must have been lecturing C about Indian history) and initiated the discussion on female infanticide in Rajasthan, where, she said, female infants are drowned in a “holy” pot of milk so that they go back to God right after their birth! I had a lot to say that evening and I went on relentlessly about gender, gender sensitization, loopholes in implementation of laws, use and misuse of laws and the very warped perception of domestic violence in society.
And no. All this talk never tired us out. We went on for over four hours. Drinking those pitchers of Sangria and talking. When we finally got up to leave, we had to rub our eyes to keep ourselves from going off to sleep while driving! Not a good thing and not advisable at all.
It was a Sunday well spent, though. It was a Sunday worth writing about. And a Sunday that kept all of us going for the rest of the week as well!
PS- You know, I am awfully proud of my friends. They are all mad and weird but they are them. They make me laugh and always laugh at me. I make their day if I fall off a chair in front of them. They actually laugh about that for the rest of the year, yet they are the first ones to pull me up and offer me an ice pack. They are always the first ones to run around a look for ice packs. They made my first anniversary spectacular. They make my house feel like a home. It is only because of them that I am still in this city. I feel blessed to have them in my life. They complete me, they keep me the way I am. Thanks guys. You are such fab people.
(For R, Shruti, Namrata, Chetan, Arjya, Avinash, Shubhagata, Sohini. Also for Maman and Rinky. The last two are very far away from me now but always close to my heart.)
Filed under: Nostalgia, Opinion and facts, The everyday stuff | Tagged: companionship, conversation, delhi, food, friends, movie, sunday, weekend, women | 1 Comment »
