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!

Our Lady of Alice Bhatti: Review, almost.

So. I am reading this one book. “Our Lady of Alice Bhatti” by Mohammed Hanif. And even when I start to write this I have a disgusting expression on my face.

I haven’t finished the book. I am racing through it now. Because, well you know I started and I have to finish. So yes. I am racing through all the filth and disgust and trying to quickly get to the end of this Alice Bhatti with her strangely sexy body and armpit her that she doesn’t bother to shave except twice a year, the Alice Bhatti who went to prison and has now been released and is working as a nurse in a dirty horrifyingly filthy hospital. I am trying to get past Teddy Butt who does the dirty work for the Police and is now married to Alice Bhatti. I was so disgusted at the writing that I could not quite figure out when the romance blossomed and when it proceeded towards marriage. Now the wedding night is engulfed in export reject chinese tablecloths, a dirty kitchen with moss growing in the sink and on the tap and possibly premature ejaculation. The book was not quite articulate about that though. It was too engrossed in describing the washcloth kept beside the bedside to clean up the mess later and I kept wondering where the used washcloth has been returned to.

In the book world, Teddy is now off to do a “job” where he has taken a bloodied young man to an obscure location to be killed. The Police superior accompanying them is busy making emotional phone calls to his daughter now. Yes at about 5 am in the morning he has made a call asking his daughter to prepare well for an exam.

Don’t look at me like that! I don’t know why this is like this! I told you I am racing through it all now. The thing is, it is not like I don’t get the filth and the horrors of living in a slum, the poverty, the deathly corridors of a run down hospital. I have seen it all. I have lived through it all. But there is something about the writing that makes it so disgusting that you don’t want to read about it anymore. It is not the filth. It is the portrayal of the filth that makes this book so repugnant to me that I had to pause midway and write about it just to let it out.

Then again, who knows. Maybe that’s the point of the book. To make the reader feel disgusted and recoil with horror and nausea!

Image Source

More reviews of the book are available on The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian to name a few. 

 

Edited to add later (16/10)- Finished the book. Somehow. Still hate it! 

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.

Counting my blessings – I and related stuff

S has been talking to me these days. About counting my blessings and being happy with what I have. She has been asking me to be thankful for my life here. Preeti here did a seven day experiment with positivity which I thought I would take up but never did. But I really need to get started on that. So here I am. I start today. Right now.

The five things that made me happy today are-

1) It rained in the morning and I sat in a cosy spot, sipping tea and reading a book quietly. And I heard thunder too. It was amazing because I remember yesterday I told a colleague “I don’t want to work. I want to sit in my balcony, read a book, sip some Darjeeling tea and watch the rains”. And the very next morning that is exactly what I did.

2) I am glad I am catching up with two of my closest friends over lunch. The rain spoilt our initial plans but then there is always the Plan B. Which is, of course, just as good as Plan A.

3) I am SO glad that the doorbell hasn’t rang even once since morning.

4) I got to see R today. Over google video chat. The wonders of google I tell you. Made me so happy to see his loving face first thing in the morning.

5) And yes, I woke up without an alarm today.

*****

An aside

On most days I do just fine. I do my chores, run my errands, keep myself busy with work, catch up with friends, call my mother, call my in laws and tuck away the worrying and the thinking in one corner of my mind. But then there are the other days when I walk into my house, turn on the lights, sit on the couch and stare blankly into open space. And then, the thoughts, the troubles and the worries come tumbling down. One after the other. Altogether. The heart aches so much and I forget to cry.

It is then, that even with clear vision, the bigger picture stays blurred.

*****

An experiment

S had asked me to do an experiment whenever I lose track of the bigger picture. I tried it today with a coin. Held it close and then held it afar and stared at it. Frowning. It hurt my eyes. I started laughing to myself suddenly and put the coin back in my wallet. It is all in the mind, you know. Really. And maybe there is a lot you can do about staying positive but there are times when you can do nothing. Nothing at all.

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 a Sunday spent by myself

Sometimes a steaming cup of tea and a few good books are all that I need.

There are never enough days in the weekend. Are there?

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.)

Tagged and back!

So Sups has tagged me to this fun thing. Here are the rules-

1. On your blog, provide a link to the Great Bong’s page, May I Hebb Your Attention Pliss. Embedding the above picture in your blog would be nice but not needed.

The May I Hebb Your Attention Pliss contest

2. Then write down your top 10 Hindi movie lines or top 10 English movie lines (You can do both if you want. Only one set is required for the contest). If you cannot think of top 10, make it top 5. Cannot think of even 5? Make it top 3. No problem. Only restriction: no two lines from same movie. This done to make it fair for other movies so that they dont get swamped by Gunda or Loha or Sholay.

3. Tag five friends to do the same.

4. Come over to the comment-space of this post and post your blog’s link so I can go and read it.

Remember: Before starting the tag, paste points 1 and 4 on your blog so that the rules are available to anyone who wishes to pick the tag up from your blog.

And my favorites are-

1. “Hum cake khane ke liye kahin bhi ja sakte hai”- Dil Chahta Hai

(As for me- mein khana khan eke liye aur muft mein daaru pine ke liye kahin bhi ja sakti hun. Go ahead. Judge me. But this is who I am. Heh.)

2. “Bhagwan mainey tumse aaj tak kuch nahin manga”- From various movies. Its usually the mother in the white saree, kneeling in the temple with glycerine running down her cheeks. Oh! And the snake around Shivji’s neck suddenly comes alive after this!!!

3.“Chal Dhanno!! Aaj teri Basanti ki izzat ka sawal hai”- Sholay (Hema Malini to her mare Dhanno)

And the eternal “Yeh haath mujhey de de Thakur!!” – Sholay (Gabbar Singh to Thakur)

4.“Mogambo khush hua”- Mr. India

(Hahahahaha. Such a gem this one is.)

5.“Babumoshai….”- Anand

6.“Hasi badi mehengi ho rakhhhi hain is duniya mein”- Omkara

(So true. And Konkona said it so beautifully.)

7.“Main aur meri tanhai…aksar ye baatein karte hai”- Silsilay

8.“Don ko pakad na mushkil hi nahin, na mumkin hai”- Don

9.“Ki ki ki kiran”- Darr (immortalizing the typical SRK stammer)

10.“Daaru peene se liver kharab ho jata hai”- Satte pe Satta (if you have seen the movie you will know why this is so hilarious.)

And I just have to write this because I love love love this one from Amar Akbar Anthony-

“Aisa to Aadmi Life mein Doich time bhaagta hai. Olympic ka race ho, yaa Police ka case ho. Tum kisliye bhaagta hai bhai?”

I tag Medha, Suchismita (come back and blog for God’s sake!!), MD, Vidya and Meira.

PS- Thanks Sups! I am SO back now 🙂

Diwali

is over.

The Rangoli is gone, the diyas are gone, the candles are over. R burst his fair share of firecrackers, I stood at the farthest corner possible, draped in a new saree of black and gold with a few Phooljharis in my hand cringing every time a cracker burst in the vicinity (that is to say, every other second right beside me). The lights from my balcony will come down tomorrow. Life will go back to being muchly mundane. We will all go back to work, to our daily commute, the songs on the radio and no particular mad rush of getting back home.

The Diwali ended well. With a traditional Bengali dinner complete with finger licking mutton curry, tomato chutney and narkel naru.

The Diwali brought with it a nice crisp breeze, a slight chill in the air, the mellow warmth of the sun and walks any time of the day. Yet now when the sunlight falls squarely on my east facing balcony, a slight heartache tells me I am missing something. It brings me tears of both joy and sorrow. Of loved ones coming and loved ones leaving.

But then there is tender daybreak. A new day, every day. It brings a little bit of hope for all of us. Hope of holding on, hope of letting go. Hope of being able to smile one more time before wiping away hidden tears.

Yes. Diwali is over. All that is left behind now is the strange feeling of nostalgia, the sudden feeling of emptiness. And the lamps, waiting to be lit again next year.