On my last letter.

Today’s writing prompt: The last letter you wrote by hand

The bus honked incessantly. One guy in a pair of really tiny red shorts was calling out names of passengers, at least that’s what I thought. R was sipped at a black bubbly drink from a suspicious looking bottle and made his way through some oily fried rice and an omelette full of green chillies.

We had just crossed the border on foot from Cambodia and into Thailand. We were now waiting a shack for a bus to take us to Bangkok. I had finished my share of rice, eggs, oil and green chillies and couldn’t bear to look at the guy with tiny red shorts anymore. I opened my diary and started writing a letter to S. I had really missed her while traveling through Cambodia.

My dearest, 

It is really hot from where I am writing. I don’t know the name of the place but it is in the border of Cambodia and…

“That’s the last bus to Bangkok”. I looked up and saw R looking hassled and lost in the heat and sweat and the aftermath of the green chilly omelette. We quickly grabbed our bags and rushed towards the bus, only there was no bus in sight. There was a vehicle which looked somewhat like a minivan and the guy with the tiny red shorts was at the driver’s seat. The van already looked occupied and I was just beginning to scratch my head. Before my hand could make contact with my tangled hair, R shoved me in the last seat with my backpack and climbed into a small space in the front between a basket covered in green polythene and the guy in the tiny red shorts.  A couple of very loud honks later we were on our way to Bangkok.

The heat inside the van was stifling. The guy sitting next to me smelled of cigarettes and dirty socks. He snored and his head kept rolling towards my shoulder. To distract myself, I pulled out my diary and attempted to continue my letter to S.

There was so much to tell her! I started writing about the temples in Siem Reap and quickly lost myself in the history of ruined temples, magnificent sculptures and the beauty of a full moon night in Angkor Wat. Just as I was describing how the guard at Angkor chased us away from our hiding spot in the evening, the van came to a screeching halt. The snoring head belonging to dirty socks collapsed on my shoulder and awoke with a grunt. Tiny Red Shorts jumped out of the van and waved excitedly. R looked at me from the front seat and indicated that this was our first and possibly our last stop before Bangkok. All passengers trooped out and made their way to wherever they wanted to go. Dirty socks refused to budge. After several aggressive gestures with my little finger he moved his legs and allowed me to climb out of the van. I ran to the toilet. When I came back, I saw R had bought some food and was smoking a cigarette. Tiny red shorts was already running excitedly towards the van.

Once in the van, I pulled out my diary again. The letter looked all squiggly and there was a big scratch on the page which described the mystical delight of Angkor on a full moon night. I was now squished between Dirty Socks and a guy carrying chicken food and had produced an illegible letter. I fished around for my ipod in my backpack but my fingers came out coated with sticky shampoo. Sighing and cursing I returned to my diary and continued to write my letter to while the van honked its way to Bangkok.

So I wrote to S about rest of the temples and about the balloon ride. I told her about the far off temples in Koh Ker where the landmines had been cleared only four years back. I told her about the Great Lake Tonle Sap and life in the floating village. I wrote about the food and the local markets. But most of all, I wrote to her about just how much I had missed her and how much I had wanted her to be a part of this trip.

I fell asleep sometime after making peace with Dirty Socks and the chicken food. When I woke up, I had several pages of squiggly words, dotted with pen marks all over and ink under my nails. The van had stopped in a vegetable market. For a fleeting moment I thought it was a bus stop in Sion, Bombay. But it wasn’t. We were in Bangkok. Tiny Red Shorts was already unloading the luggage. R was giving him a hand. They must have bonded during the ride. R flashed a huge smile at me and held up our bags. They were intact. I climbed out of the van after Chicken Food and left Dirty Socks to snore by himself.

Once in the hotel, I inspected the ten odd pages of the unfinished letter to S. I tore out the pages from my diary, put them in the hotel envelope and tucked the envelope in my diary. I was determined to post it although I was quite sure S wouldn’t be able to decipher a single word of the letter.

The envelope fell out of my diary when I was unpacking on our return to Delhi. I tucked it away in my diary once more and put it among my old books.

I discovered the letter again after a couple of years while I unpacked a carton of old books after moving to Singaopre. The envelope was crisp and white, the pages inside were yellow and smelled of ink and old paper. The pages stuck together because of moisture.  I kept it away feeling a slight tug at my heart.  S now knew about the temples, the full moon night and the wonders of the ruins. She even knew how badly I had missed her.

But that tug at my heart? It was really because S would  now never know how a letter looked like when it was written in a bumpy ride seated between Chicken Food and Dirty Socks. I had missed my chance to show her how it really was.

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 a bit of truth about myself.

I am a sensitive person. I am a sensitive and quiet person. A sensitive and quiet person who is usually nice and laughing. But then, you come along. You come and you think all the quietness and niceness and the laughter would always be there. So you walk around and come over to my wrong side. I try shrugging you off from there and lead you back to the other side but you are adamant and decide to stay. Because you think, even on my wrong side the laughter would stay, the niceties would stay.

 Let me tell you what happens instead. The laughter disappears. Yes. It is replaced by a stone face that will not even attempt to smile at you. The niceties disappear. Replaced by nothing. The quietness becomes silence. I engage in absolute disinterest in your presence in my life. You are stunned. You would be because I do not care and will never bother to give you reasons for such withdrawals. And usually you spend a lot of your time telling yourself how I withdrew and disengaged inspite of you trying and never gave conversation a chance.

 You are right. I do not believe there is any need for conversation when you take everything about me for granted. I believe you should have introspected and have had the conversation earlier. And no, I do not come with warning tags. If you claim to know me at all, then the taking for granted would not happen. At all.

 You may think, I am probably very bothered about this shrugging habit that I have. You are right. I am bothered deeply when it hits me first. I stay up nights and talk to myself during the days wondering what is it that went wrong. I wonder why would say what you said or why you would say that in that manner. I go back years, think of all the times that I had decided to overlook the little mistakes and wonder why I had not said anything then. Most of the times I decide I should have said something earlier, much earlier, when there were warning signs and not waited for this to happen. But then, it is also true that I am who I am. I am quiet and I am sensitive and I do not say anything. So if you know me, at all, then you would know that too. And you wouldn’t take the quietness and sensitiveness for granted. Ever.

 I must also tell you that all the heartbreak also goes away. Sooner or later. And with time, I see it is increasingly easy to accept no nonsense and move on. There is less staying up at night and less talking to myself. There is less need for rationalising and reasoning. There is more of it is what it is. There is more consideration that I grant myself.

There are four of you in my life. Two from my family and two of my closest friends. One more person from my family has been very recently put on the same track.

 One of the family members has been very difficult to deal with. I have taken years to understand the complexity of the relationship, the power imbalance and the emotions in that relationship. Very recently, I have decided that I did deserve better, that more than the relation itself, I must look at myself as an individual engaging with another individual and certainly an individual deserves a better in a relationship.

The friendships that I have consciously disengaged from have also been rather hard on me. Yes. The friendship itself was hard and then the process of disengagement was probably harder. I wish I could be more specific but I this is the best I can do for the time being.

 So, yes. That’s the truth about me, a part of me. I am quiet and sensitive. But if you say you know me, then no, you don’t get to treat me as a doormat and walk away with that.

***

 Note: This post was written after a year of continuing therapy where I attempted to untangle some of the knots of my mind. Therapy helped me. I could sit down and write this without breaking into tears, dissociating and floating into outer space and staring at old pictures. There are other knots that are still there. I will untangle them in my own time. I am still in therapy and will be for as long as I think it is necessary. 

 There were doubts in my mind about putting this in my blog. But then this is who I am and this is how it is. I trust the ones I call my friends. They would know what I am talking about. And I trust my readers. You have a right to form an opinion about me.

On moving.

I don’t know why I haven’t written about me moving. Us moving. R and I. Yes. Packing our stuff up, quitting jobs, leaving friends and moving. I don’t know why I didn’t feel the need to write anything about it.

It was the last week of March. I don’ remember the exact date. A would remember, I’m sure. Considering he is the only one who cried at the airport while we pressed his belly and wondered if his hormones are shooting up! A was the only one cried at all times, actually. The day we told him. When we met him any time after that. When he came home looking for biriyani, beer and shelter. And then at the airport. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes while his nostrils turned slightly red and said “Well. Someone has to cry!”

And then there was C. He went around with a stupefied look for one whole month. He would come home, sit in a corner with his glass of scotch and stare blankly at everyone. With his mouth open. Sometimes he would say “I can’t believe this is happening.” Yes. He was dumbfounded the night before we left. He didn’t want to leave and was dying to run away at the same time. He didn’t want to hug and couldn’t let go. He did not want to say “don’t go” but he said “don’t go” before he got into his car. He thought he would wake up the next morning and find out that he could still crawl into our house completely drunk and crash on the sofa with a lit cigarette in his hand.

There was P. Slightly undecided whether she should embrace her feminine side and “chick-cry” and whether she should be more masculine, gulp her drink, blow smoke rings and just, you know, be. She did the latter of course. Very bravely, she asked us to take care and have a good time and then left. She cried later, of course. And that little shattering of heart also happened. A little bit of roaming around aimlessly happened. Despairing happened. “I am going to go right now because I do not want to cry. Ok?” also happened.

And S&S. One got so busy suddenly with her work that she decided to appear sparingly and when she did she decided to be unnaturally chirpy and smile-y. It was strange since she was the one who sit in one corner and keep wagging her finger and scold (yes, scold) everyone about everything. The other one decided to, well, just continue be the really nice guy that he really is. He came over, called, helped, poured drinks for everyone, sang himself silly, drank himself silly and talked of hope and another universe.

A and S dropped us off at the airport. They refused to let us call a cab even with our extra suitcases. So, before we could realize suitcases were hauled from our flat to the two cars waiting downstairs. When we reached downstairs, A very bravely said he would drive by himself because there was no space left in his pretty little car. I threw a tantrum and said I would ride only and only with A. So. Car doors were opened and suitcases were rehauled while I stood around and made faces. But I rode with A. And thankfully he didn’t cry. We didn’t talk either.

And THAT is how we moved. Yes, notice was given to the landlady, car was sold unexpectedly within a couple of hours, telephone connections were done away with, things given away, things taken away, things thrown away. Frantic breakfasts, lunches and dinners were planned with everyone we knew. Coffees and teas were squeezed in between.

Everything just went by in a flash and it was over even before we realized.

Now, five months since we boarded the flight from Delhi to Singapore, the heartache still lingers. We rarely bring biriyani home and don’t stock our fridge with beer because A won’t coming looking for them anymore. R saves his best scotch for S and C and hasn’t opened a bottle since moving. I don’t google vegetarian recipes because P is not coming to spend the night anymore. And there are no unexpected Sunday lunches anymore because the other S doesn’t live down the street anymore.

This is why I didn’t talk about this at all. Because it is difficult to take apart your heart piece by piece and describe the aching bits all over.

On my friends

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.” *

*I found this on google while looking for something else. It almost brought tears in my eyes. I don’t know who wrote it since there was no author’s name mentioned. If you happen to know who wrote this, or if it is written by one of you readers, please feel free to leave a comment here.

On my best friend’s wedding.

http://www.pringoo.com/custom-designs/Friends-friends/did-11306/mid-1/ppid-24

When I say my best friend of twenty five years got married, one would imagine that this other best friend of the best friendship in question, looked gorgeous in the wedding. Perfectly draped silk walkalam, perfect nails, pretty make up, sexy heels, charming, smiling and greeting everyone with perfect grace.

And I so did not live up to that pretty image.

Throughout the wedding I was running around like the mad hatter. Tucking her saree, looking for a pin, holding her veil, wiping her kajal, wiping her sweat (in January!!!), picking up flowers that fell from her pretty bun (she had about eight carnations and three roses in her hair on her wedding day!), snatching gifts from her hands as soon as they were given to her, shooing off unnecessary relatives and friends, checking for safety pins poking in unusual places (hers not mine), wiping her sweat (did I tell you she had a winter wedding!!), frowning furiously at the Pandit who kept on pouring ghee in a roaring fire, making her wear a saree, folding her clothes, counting and tucking away her jewellery, packing the gifts, getting her water, feeding her, taking her phone calls, doing the screaming for her, covering her in a blanket, putting her to sleep, sneaking her a drink when she needed it and occasionally reminding myself to breathe.

When she left there were too many people who were too eager to hug her and bless her. I saw her later, with her helpless eyes puffed up and all I could do was to pat her back, wipe off the kajal which ran along with her tears and let her walk into a mass of unknown people waiting to welcome her. I couldn’t see her at all when she walked into her in laws place. There were new people who tried to make her smile. I walked in last with two other friends with her bags stuffed with comfort clothes and the comfort night suit and the strawberry flavored lip balm and the tattered sweater that she needed at night and her good luck charms that the new people did not know about. I waited in the corner of the room and bit my nails off looking at the ones who were trying very hard to make her comfortable. I just saw her once when I had to leave and say goodbye. I left her crying and a small packet of soft tissues to help her wipe all that eye make up when needed.

A day later at her reception, I saw someone else helping her throughout. Tucking in her saree with safety pins, making sure her hair was alright and wiping her sweat when she got too nervous. Someone else sat beside her receiving gifts and getting her water to drink. I mingled with others, did my share of catching up with acquaintances and wondered if she was alright. I didn’t see her the whole night. Just before I left, I went looking for her and saw her standing lost in an empty room. I hugged her and let her cry.

It was hard to watch her getting married, you know. It was like a part of me had to let go of her. In what way and why I cannot explain. I don’t know why I died every time I saw her crying her eyes out over those four days. I don’t know why I looked upon her in laws, whom she had already known for eight whole years, as complete strangers. I guess I wanted to protect her, cry with her, sit beside her, hug her and smile with her all at once. When I look back I don’t remember much about my chipped nail paint, my mismatched make up, my clumsily draped saree and my spectacular absence in photo ops. But. I do remember being there when she needed to be held, I remember watching her smile, I remember what she hurriedly whispered into my ear right before she got married, I remember how she looked sitting in the make up studio restlessly twitching her fingers.

And being the very best of friends for twenty five years now, I don’t think I could have asked for anything more.

Edited to add later: This post was written on Feb 22, 2010. Was lying in my drafts folder. I was hunting some snaps of her wedding to put up to realize that I had not taken even one picture during her wedding. *Sigh*

My entry for Blogadaa’s Friends Forever Contest.

Dearest darling best friend,

You are the only one who would call me from halfway across the world at 2.30 in the morning just to find out if I am “okay”. No one else would even think about it.

How much I love you because of that. How much I love you for all that you are and for every thing that you are not.

I miss you. Come back soon.

*Sniff*

Click on image for source.

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.

Rant Alert!!

I don’t think I will make any introductions. I need to rant, crib and vent it all out. And I will do so in a much organized bulleted manner just make sure I have put it ALL out there. So here I go-

• I am terribly overworked and severely underpaid! I don’t mind doing a lot of work but it would be nice to be compensated accordingly!!

• I hate Delhi traffic. Also, I hate the traffic in Calcutta and Bombay (and yes I would forever call it ‘Bombay’) which limits my choices of metropolitan living in India to one city! *Sob*

• I am bored with Delhi (there I said it out loud). And considering the rant mentioned in the bullet above I don’t know where to go!!!

• My mother has postponed her trip to Delhi by ONE week!! *Dies of shock just writing this* And don’t judge me. It is very hard to wait for luchi and aloor torkari and chilly chicken for ONE more week!

• I keep wanting to run away. I try not to want it, you know. I try telling myself that this need of running away is NOT actually going to take me anywhere so I should be happy and content with where I am and what I am doing. And that telling myself DOES NOT help.

• I miss living in New York! I miss the walking, the subways, the freedom, the summer and the tall skim latte at Starbucks. That city did magic to me, I tell you. *Sigh*

• I also want EVERYTHING. Yes. I want everything and want them right now. I have told myself, I tell myself everyday actually, that one should not ask for everything and one should count her blessings and smile forever and that it is practically not possible to obtain everything unless you are literally floating in money (by which I mean hard cash) these days. Doesn’t help!!! I still want EVERYTHING.

• I want a job in one of those travel shows. No. Wait. I want a job in one of those travel FOOOD shows.

• This reminds me that I am getting fat. I have put on many many pounds of weight over the last six months. Which had not bothered me at all except these last two weeks when I could not fit into  a nice tee and when R realized that his trousers were feeling tight-er around the waist! So realization happened and we went around Gurgaon hunting for THE gym with THE machines and THE deal and THE location (see, that wanting everything again!). After a week of ‘checking things out’ and ‘weighing our options’ last evening we zeroed in one place. The gym looks a little flamboyant (it has pink green and red lights in the reception with white couches and the staff wear purple shirts with black pants and purple tie with black stripes) but it has a lot of equipment, interesting group classes and spinning classes which apparently make you lose 800 calories in one here! I can already picture myself sweating it out and then donning a bikini and labeling myself super hot super soon! Aah! Such good thoughts, I tell you.

Now. Having said ALL THAT and being on the other side of fence where the grass is supposed to be greener and stuff let me tell you what the truth is (and the reader MUST remember  that such reality escapes the resident of greener pastures very very frequently)-

• I actually like my job. I do a lot of work and not in the perfect working conditions (imagine being on the top floor of a run down building without fully functional air conditioning when it 46C outside!) but I really like what I do. Compensation is an issue but I did jump into this headlong knowing that compensation would be an issue. So it’s okay, I guess.

• It is for the same reason that I do the one and half hour commute one way everyday to get to work. I really do like it THAT much!

• I AM bored with Delhi but then I get bored with anything that looks permanent. I need change all the time!

• Yes. I want to run away.  I want to go and live very very far from here. Far from all my problems, my nightmares, my anxiety, my constantly looking over my shoulder and my worrying about my mother. I think the last bit tops.  *Sigh*

• That’s a part of the reason for which I miss living in New York. I was safe, I was free and I was very far away from all the problems back home. (But then one can’t run away forever. Can they?)

• And I can rant and crib about not having everything without actually ever having them all. So it’s all good, actually.

So dear God, thank you for a life which is not half as bad as I make it out to be, thank you for the wonderful mother, thank you for R, thank you for my friend of twenty five years, thank  you for my other friends who I can ping on g-talk at any time of the day and crib my heart out while they fight deadline at work. Thank you for the job that I wanted and thank you for all the comfort that I have right now.

There!  I feel a little better and I hope the Sunday will go by without much ranting now.

I promise a better post soon!!

On a Sunday well spent

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.)