the fatwaif diaries

three years downstream

2010-02-17T10:16:00.000-08:00

a relatively happy fish, still trying to find meaning in life. but now with a baby.

second chances

2007-01-05T06:02:00.000-08:00

a long time coming, this post. another year ended. another year begun. the turn of the calender year isn't always the marker of new beginnings its chalked up to be, but oddly this time round, it is. i feel a gentle but definite click of the kaleidescope and the image is rearranged. somethings have ended, neatly, satisfactorily. i made it to the other side of the m.a. despite my dithering, self doubt, lack of awareness, despite myself almost. pleasantly surprised, a little bit. relieved, yes very much so. ashamed, a little bit. hopeful, a lot.

july

2006-07-13T16:21:00.000-07:00

it will be one year tomorrow, says my host. the cops will be up and about. my heart nearly skipped a beat. what if... mental note: try to avoid peak hour. mental note 2: stop being paranoid. don't let the fear take over and the terrorists win. after all it's 'us against them' isn't it, whoever they are.
well, so much for mental notes. night comes but sleep does not. i try to trick myself every way i know. i attempt what little i know of meditation - hoping the stillness will let me drift into sleep - but it makes me want to scream and kick my legs violently. out of courtesy for the old friend sleeping next to me, i settle for some frustrated but feeble tossing and turning.
i hear the birds chirping, i feel my pulse racing. my thoughts are going wild at four in the morning when all i really want is sleep. by half past four i abandon my mission, say goodbye to megs who was surprise but too sleepy to ask questions, and venture out into the first light.

the street is silent and empty with the sky suspended above like a pink-purple curtain on a film set. i feel crumpled and inappropriate in clothes from the night before and slippers too noisy for the morning. A lone man unloading a truck makes a lewd comment but my loud slippers drown his words out.
the first train to victoria. and then a fifteen minute wait outside the london underground for it to open. sniffer dogs. cops everywhere. people waiting to get in. my eyes burning and bloodshot by now, my skin dry from lack sleep. but the fear even at five a.m. was palpable and it gets me by the throat. i contemplate a hot chocolate.
i look at the people around me. fat white couple kissing unmindful of place, time or bad breath. impoverished bangladeshi man and skinny wide-eyed son with massive suitcases. grubby american backpackers who just don't care about how dirty the ground is. elderly man with cane. east european lady in fishnets. and then i see them looking at me. fatigued indian girl with a worried face and messy hair who stares at everyone else. it's strangely reassuring how we're all different but in some human way, all the same.

the morning metro looks ominous with a black border to mark the anniversary. eerily happy faces look out from the smudgy pages. people who passed last july 7 . im sitting in a near-empty underground train, the first train out on the first anniversary of the bombings reading about the bombings and the latest terror threat - this will happen again. spooky.
could it happen again. it could. please dont let it happen again. please god. my faithless mind surprises itself by conjuring up prayers.
i feel sick in the stomach and long for my bed. the sleep deprivation does crazy things to my mind as i walk through the tunnels of the underground. i make it to canary wharf and i feel relieved if only momentarily. as i walk through the empty mall, i think target, target, target. 9/11 remember?!
i get on the dlr and my heart begins beating normally again. i see the river in the morning light and it looks peaceful. i feel the breeze hold my hand as i drag myself home. i feel immense gratitude for being safe and for reaching home. i crawl into bed and sleep finally washes over me.

july 11. i turn on ndtv and watch as policemen wash blood off the road in srinagar. bomb blasts. i notice that they use water and a jhaadu. how practical, i think. i feel an all-to-familiar distant kind of sorrow, but i'm impatient and i change channels.
i eat a healthy breakfast of oats and wheatgerm. wash dishes. run the washing machine. watch a couple of sitcoms. check ndtv again. seven blasts in bombay. or were there eight. trains. people dead. people injured. chaos, madness. barkha dutt in the studio barking at a bewildered reporter. the same mms footage, grainy picture of injured/ maybe dead man. "please be aware we aren't censoring the images that we are receiving at this time"
the toll rises sickeningly. the same familiar-distant sorrow but this time im shocked into feeling more. more, but not enough not to feel guilty for not feeling enough.
the same panic prayers in my head, but this time they are truly faithless. oh god. oh god. i feel a dull thumping in my veins. i'm alive. i'm alive.

false starts, frustration and football

2006-05-14T05:26:00.000-07:00

it's been so long, i think ive forgotten how its done. so here i am summoning all my courage to overcome the most excruciating case of writer's block ever. there have been false starts and i feel i owe them a mention. the time i attempted writing about my trip to amsterdam and gave up, so cliched i thought. the other time i wanted to pour the sadness in my heart out on the blog but then backed off - scared of saying too much. in retrospect, maybe its best i didnt write.
lots has happened since my last post. too many things to recount here. but its been a difficult time full of dreaded deadlines, as anyone who knows me knows are not my forte.
well, despite or maybe because of my general harassed state, i went along with k the day before yesterday to watch a football match in a pub. me in a pub watching football!!!
the match- arsenal vs. barcelona in the champions league final. to be fair, i had a vested interest right at the start. m and i had bet about the outcome. a win for arsenal meant a meal with chicken from me (something i have never done before) and a win for barcelona meant a good vegetarian meal for me home-cooked entirely by m(something unheard of in his meaty world).
so although i started out motivated by food, the amazing thing is that after a double whisky and a pint of guiness, i began to finally understand what makes people almost religious about a bunch of grown men chasing a ball.
we were at a table right under the television. and i was half planning my escape route during the first 15 minutes. but then something unprecedented happened - my eyes, unaccustomed to following one tiny spherical object across screens, between screens etc. , actually focussed. and for once i wasn't asking, where did it go? who has it? - you know the kind of questions im talking about.
as it turns out, it isn't so bad watching all that testosterone on the field after all. all that sweating, running, kicking, screaming can be quite charming, especially if you are with girls who are also vocally appreciative of football players and aren't always talking about the game.
and then there is the atmosphere. watching football in a pub is totally entertaining! throughout the game i didn't know where to look - at the screen or behind me at the crowd that had gathered. the girl crying for thierry henry! 'till i die! till i die' the men who couldn't stop badmouthing the referee and charged forward pulling up their t-shirts every time arsenal came close to a goal. people crying, screaming, shouting like their lives depended on it. the way the room leapt up when they scored a goal. and the way people buried their heads between their knees at the end.
arsenal didn't win, some suspect foul play on the part of the referee, and true fans have been in mourning since. as for me, at the risk of sounding smug, i won my bet and i'm looking forward to a hearty meal this weekend!

songsters

2006-03-07T02:07:00.000-08:00

a chilly friday night and we line up outside the jazz cafe in camden, hot chocolate fresh in our tummies. not only chilly, it's windy to boot and i pray that the doors will open soon. so we get in, and wait for the act to start, except that we wait for a good hour and a half before seeing anything move, leave alone croon on stage. k says the idea is to get drinks, spend money first - that's what they want us to do.
the opening act is a string quartet that is soon joined by a bengali-looking popstar wannabe who's obviously aiming for the sex-kitten look. she winds her body quite amazingly, i think, all accentuated by the black sheer leggings and stilletto boots - m keeps pointing out that she forgot to wear her pants. anyway the sizzling and smouldering is clearly the main dish and the singing is the side. To be fair, the singing isn't all bad, but then she makes a couple of serious faux pas.
"i composed this song with a famous bollywood music director - a.r. raman" (yes she said raman instead of rahman) and later went on to claim as original a song that sounded suspiciously like the once-ubiquitous choli ke peeche. evidently, she does she not expect there to be any knowledgeable desis in the crowd.
m's face is falling all this while. he can't even complain because the evening was entirely his idea. but it is about to become memorable.
a woman in a worn pair of black pants teamed with a torn net-like green halter dress takes the mike and begins a most subliminal rendition of tamil hymns to murugan, saraswathy, etc. she goes on to bewitch everyone with songs that combine the earthy, sensual tamil sensibility with the fluid cosmopolitanism of jazz and soul. there's a bit of sufi as well.
what i still can't get over is how she got away singing what she did - plenty of Carnatic along with plenty of jazz - without exoticising india and indian spirituality. this is quite a feat if you consider the context: a jazz club in camden.
and for desis like us not to feel the slightest bit odd about hearing these songs in a london club sung by a woman in a torn net dress - this was something else. i think it has to do with the kind of passion and devotion she brings to the music. for example, when she sings 'vel muruga' it's the real thing, no pretences. to the audience.
makes me think long and hard about authenticity and culture. in a different time, place and attire i could see her singing demurely at a carnatic vocal recital in madras. but here she is - susheela raman - boldly belting out her music, stomping her feat, banging her head, notwithstanding the chunky thirumangalyam on a gold choker on her neck.
the force of hybridity hits me like a tonne of bricks. not only does it borrow from tradition, it transforms the stuff of tradition into something new, fearless and creative.
as for the rest of us, we find ourselves questioning what we know. "so this is also sublime," we think. And because what we consider special is closely connected to who we think we are, in acknowledging sanctity elsewhere, we broaden our definition of ourselves

a disease called nostalgia

2006-03-04T03:48:00.000-08:00

it's an almost-perfect saturday with the sun out as it should be. the bendy river outside the window sparkles like a million diamonds. the gulls are screaming at the top of their lungs and i've drawn the sail-white curtains all the way because otherwise i'm squinting! the past week has been mostly dull, grey and depressingly cold. it's the stillness in the air that does you in. doesn't help that you have to bundle up every time you venture out or that every journey involves plenty of walking, and that you can safely expect not to know anybody you see on the road or in the train or even in the elevator back to the apartment.
while taking my daily journey on the train the other day i finally identified the empty pit-like feeling in my stomach. i used to think the word 'homesickness' was off the mark because feeling homesick - nostalgic for home, is entirely a state of mind, nothing like a disease. but i've found now that it's very much a physical experience that saps the body as much as it saps the mind.
i find myself confronted with visions, sounds and smells from particular home places every now and then - unexpected and lovely but also discomforting and disruptive. i woke one morning thinking of that ugly busy area around saidapet with ridiculously disproportionate affection. another dark day on the train i was plagued with thoughts of a random place - a leafy slopey old street near iisc. i find myself longing for noisy indiranagar mornings and trying to feel, longdistance, the maddeningly warm madras sun that seems to yells 'wake up!' in the most ferociously anti-depressant way.
how lame, you must think. yes, i'm increasingly annoyed with myself for allowing these reveries. and then something my mother mentioned the other day rang true: about living in the present, not the past, not the future. she called it a yogic attitude. i think there's something there.
so here i am, determined to make the most of the english sun, however watery and weak. not very convincing, huh?!

sisters

2006-02-14T12:39:00.000-08:00

my parents have known me longer than anyone else - having met me the day i was born. She knows me from the day she was born - and that means something else altogether.
the one who followed me around as a kid. the one who would be willing to try any silly game i invented. the one whose respect i had without having to try.
As we grew up, she found her own friends, i had mine. the chubby cherub became a dazed, well-loved school girl who i'd fight with every day.
we lived in such proximity, yet we were so different. she was as trusting as i was doubtful, as generous with her affection as i was awkward and as much of a doer as i was a dreamer. my first partner in crime, opponent in argument, my favorite target for every sort of childish prank, and the one i would hug when i was scared at night.
i used to think we had a lifetime to be friends together. after all, we were sisters no? how far can sisters ever be from one another. i know she thought the same. and then suddenly, without much notice, i left home. found a life apart. got married. moved to a different country.

now so far away, all i can think about is her. the girl who, no matter how grown up, will always be my very own baby sister. over the last couple of days i've been made painfully aware of how much a part of me she is, this sister of mine. why should it be so shocking? i don't know.
what i do know is that i will have no peace of mind until she is perfectly healthy again and i can take her for granted once more.

homecomings

2006-01-06T08:32:00.000-08:00

under normal circumstances i 'd be annoyed by the ten and half hour flight to paris. Cramped between a snoring lady and an obese man and oppressed by the seat in front, I couldn't wait to get out, stretch my legs, eat real food and drink real coffee.
and then there was the dashingly arrogant a.m., sitting in business class on the same flight as me. ironic and funny but i didn't care in that moment.
I was somewhere between sleep and sleeplessness when the plane found parking. May as well wait for other passengers to get ahead before jostling into the aisle, I thought testily. Bloodshot eyes, static hair and achy limbs notwithstanding, i managed to gather my hand luggage in record time.
Too busy lugging my three bags and one body out the airplane, I barely noticed that the temperature outside was below freezing. So how long can a journey from the plane to the terminal be? Five minutes, ten minutes max.
The bus stopped suddenly and without any explanation the driver vanished. We were locked in and while the adults cursed Charles de Gaulle quietly, the babies on board protested loudly on everyone's behalf.
With nothing else to do, I looked out the window and saw for the first time ever snowflakes! i always imagined snow to be like rain, heading straight for the ground. but here they were, little crystal-like flakes lazily drifting about, so light, so white, so prettily falling in slow motion.
one moment i was waiting for something - the bus to go to the terminal, and the next moment, i wasn't waiting any more. life made sense. i felt reconnected, like i'd seen first-hand the deep magic that doesn't show itself so often as you get older. all my sixteen days of christmas were culminating here.
***************
I leave m, reluctantly but somewhat fatefully, to experience december in bangalore solo.
My first whiff of bangalore's 20-something degree sweet muddy smelling air, and i feel at home. 'You smell different - foreign' my sister says. But in a few days, the 'foreign' smell wears off and it seems as if i'd never left.
Bangalore is chilly, the house draughty and cold. I bundle up at home like i used to while studying for school exams in the old days. i eat chappatis after four months, make jokes with mani, sign language to dd, and meet aunties and uncles who've known me forever.
**************
ma and i soon leave for madras. we head straight for the old home - the site of my early tempestuous days with m. all dusty and musty now, but with the same big green mango trees outside complete with noisy koels. the book rack we bought together, our wedding gift microwave waiting for someone to do something with it. the dreamcatcher. our possessions heavy with memory, lying in wait for us.
can't tell you how good it feels to be back on the roads i know so well, i felt this impulse to tell the driver to move over and give me the wheel! i miss my old life so much,! the hindu, the driving around strange places, meeting ordinary people under the midday sun, eating upma in the canteen, the camaraderie...and then my other life- the one in which i met m, the life of restaurants, nightclubs, besant nagar, kotturpuram, ECR. guess what, i even feel nostalgic about the sweat. i meet r, s and m for breakfast and feel happy.
***************
from there on to pondicherry along the good old ecr, as spectacular as ever, past mahabs, the salt pans - all drowned in water now. in pondy, the old house has a new coat of paint. the paint company even took a picture of the house with appappa in it for their brochure. they gave him a framed copy that's now on the shelf next to the clock. i drink tea in the same old tea mugs, and flip through the same old readers digests from the seventies.
selva, ammama's man friday, the boy who helped me catch a squirrel as as a nine-year old prayed for my wedding before it happened and 'vendified' that i would got to a temple near gingee with my husband. he beams ear to ear and that's reminder enough.
the other boy selvam, remember him, the chubby baby of the woman who used to clean house, he's quitting school because he failed in maths, ammama tells us. he's got into bad company. only wants to play marbles. my mother calls him and gives him a talk. he promises to give the exam another shot.
we go out for dinner - gujarati thali at this new place honeydew. the owner, a smart and amiable gujarati, has recently opened a sweet shop. he regales us with his observations on how south indians eat too many sweets, while his wife and mother make the chappatis downstairs. my mother laughs guiltily. ammama laughs so much that she cries. my grandfather enjoys the soft chappatis, no trouble for his dentures.

***********
back in bangalore and p arrives.we're like the twosome of old days. except that she's now a successful journalist while i'm still forging ahead as a student. she's leaner than she was, i'm no longer the skinny one.
we're back to discussing boys, love, relationships, sex. we know more now than we did before but our knowledge still seems woefully inadequate. We don't discuss distant futures that much now. It seems like the future that matters is already here. no more wondering about whether we'd be married with kids and successful jobs by 28... 28 is around the corner and we feel like we did nine years ago. we're just glad to be the same.

mcp's wedding: we get out of the car and someone calls my name. distinctive indian-american weird accent. it's a.m. and i have the immense satisfaction of looking him in the eye while maintaining a steady pulse. he asks what my husband does. i ask about his wife. i know i look good and i certainly feel good.
we meet c, v, everybody else. it's the same boys school humour. we're all sixteen again. we dance to the beat of the dholak. it's cold, i miss m.

the next day the wedding's at the church. we go, admire the groom, take pictures. go for coffee with the boys club. a cop stops me for skipping a light. two of my favorite boys come to the rescue, deal with the cop, pay the fine for me. it's a nice feeling although i feel i should tell them i can deal with it myself. i let it be and everybody's happy.
the next few days are a whirl. p soon has to leave. i wish her heart wasn't so heavy. I know she can take care of herself though. i want to wrap her in my arms and make everything ok. i'm thankful for such a good friend. i think about the next time i'm going to see her.

in the days that follow i meet dips and her rounded stomach. priya with her flawless complexion, and their respective husbands - happy couples all. it's good to know that old friends can also be new friends. i feel like taking care of dips. she'll be a mother the next time i see her.

**************
it's new years eve, i'm missing m quite a bit. i wonder about him in the cold cold place. but then k's there so it's ok. i miss home in london. our tiny family. i like the fact that we're both missing each other.
82-year old world renowned violinist gatecrashes our tame house gathering. we spend the last few minutes of the year listening to him sing jazz. at midnight all's quiet and we look at the night sky listening for the sound of the new year.

*************
the first few days of the year fly by and soon it's time for another homecoming - this time in london. i'm on my way and i can't wait. i feel like everything is in the right place. that m and i are so good.
the driver gets back into the bus and starts the engine. everybody on board the bus heaves a sigh of relief and i snap out of my reverie. finally, we're moving! i will meet a.m. at the terminal and we will talk as friends.

I feel relieved that my life has turned out the way it has....i am truly blessed.

questioning

2005-12-18T09:35:00.000-08:00

my last post depressed me. why did i write? the question dully aches at the back of my head. i've also been thinking about blogs and my blog in particular. why blog. seriously, why do i blog. not to communicate - i have quite consciously kept it quiet; not for catharsis-way too scary; creative writing? nah most of the stuff is autobiographical; and not to comment on the state of the world - i'm too full of doubt for that.
been surfing blogs all afternoon - listening in on endless conversations, people to people, sometimes friends, sometimes strangers, individuals to self, and i've fallen in love with the internet all over again. but it's got me looking at the diaries again. identity crisis i guess. but crisis is good, no? in some cultures it means growth, i think.

girl gone by

2005-12-17T09:14:00.001-08:00

"Any man of mine better walk the line
Better show me a teasin' squeezin' pleasin' kinda time
I need a man who knows, how the story goes
He's gotta be a heartbeatin' fine treatin' Breathtakin' earthquakin' kind
Any man of mine
Well any man of mine better disagree
When I say another woman's lookin' better than me
And when I cook him dinner and I burn it black
He better say, mmm, I like it like that yeah
And if I change my mind A million times I wanna hear him say Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I like it that way" - Shania Twain.

The year 1996, and i know she liked this song quite a bit. i can still remember her singing it. she sang alto in the choir. standing on benches in the dusty choir room, i used to admire her legs, so athletic, so long. i'd stare shamelessly, fixating my gaze on the black mole on the back of her thigh. it always made me feel guilty for staring, but then she was just one of those girls every other girl knew with the intimacy of a voyeur. Teachers loved her, but she was never teacher's pet. They simpered but she stayed cool. She had many offers to model and act and as many schoolboys and even men at her heels. Maybe they got on her nerves sometimes. She yelled at a guy once - he'd been following her around, spying on her from his apartment. I was there - we were friends by this time. Even at sixteen, going out with her was like going out with a celebrity. The boy who'd been trailing, came up to her and tried to talk. She unleashed all the fury a torrent of words can muster on the boy who withered before our eyes. I don't think she saw him again. I admired her then, for her force, her conviction and her power over other people, particularly men.
We lost touch (We were never close friends anyway) and it seems odd for me to write about her now, she died last year - suicide over a guy. so ironic! who would have thought a girl like her.
But people live on in funny ways. For me, it's the song. And i just saw it on tv.

talking about the weather

2005-10-13T07:12:00.000-07:00

I woke yesterday and felt unmistakably Bangalore-ish. The same cool, breezy wet, gloriously grey weather(too warm for London) got me dreaming of gulmohurs. Later there was a hint of Madras as well -while sitting on the tube and in the library i found myself comfortably perspiring.
I later found that rains visited all three cities yesterday. But while rain in Madras is a deluge - it hammers down on the city with the force of an upside down ocean- in London it is a fine drift falling in slow motion, moisture that floats until it delicately settles on your shoulders. And Bangalore - I remember the rain in Bangalore having a quality that makes you want to run out and dance in it.

travel glutton

2005-09-12T12:38:00.000-07:00

It's official. the one time i had endless, important, fascinating and fantastic things to write about, opportunity failed me. i've been through a long travel tunnel with no easy internet at hand and now its mildly irritating for me the exhibitionist and hugely frustrating for me the writer.

after being chased by swirling eddies of sand on the way home from shopping trips in dubai and relaxing in the thoroughly airconditioned luxury of of m's parents home, we left for london.
this is a city full of vignettes. quaint, quirky little situations, arrangements and architectures. it is so layered in history, everything tells a story, everything is so human interest!
even k's intimate matchbox home has a sense of that quirkiness with a single hugely oversized window in the living room with a view of passing trains. .
we did a number of touristy things, including visiting greenwich and the origin of time: the prime meridien. the museums were awesome to say the least. the greenwich maritime museum, london's natural history museum (of which we had only got through the dinosaur section before our legs gave in) the national gallery on trafalger square where we feasted on the works of italian rennaissance painters etc.
how can i forget the notting hill carnivaaal where we danced with other drunken revellers on the street, collected the free condoms that were distributed and stood in serpentine lines to use the boxy loos.
a sunday at picture postcard brighton with its magical pebble beach with millions of smooth round stones. the fair on the pier with my first ever rollercoaster ride as an adult, prompted by m and comforted by k. the ride was bone-chilling by my cowardly standards. m sulked the rest of the day because i refused to accompany him on other more challenging rides - the ones that promise to hurl you 360 degrees in the air several times.
then there were people's homes: dv's house in croyden, dinner at anshuman's which ended with me retrieving m from the neighbouring jamaicans' barbeque party, shreyas' home for dinner where he'd cooked up a storm in nonveg - the night i was on laughing gas, john's idyllic home and angelic kids, mal's home along the dock after the night at the famous wine cellar (dnt remember what the cellar was famous for though) and many many cosy nights as a family at k's endearing hovel.
i love london for its style and vibrance, the sense of 'big things happening' and people on the move. but it makes me feel gauche, frizzy-haired, poorly shoed and amidst all the cosmopolitan bustle quite a bit the outsider. m, on the other hand, seemed more comfortable than he is at home. he tends to prefer cross cultural company. sometimes i can't help but wonder if i am just to provincial.
i missed madras with its warm homely smells. i missed bangalore and its familiarity. both cities that i feel i own. i wondered if i would ever feel at home in a city so sophisticated that most people you see on public transport wear make up and a sizable number read novels en route.
the absence of the 'third worldness' made me realise how the luxury of belonging has nothing to do with the convenience of it all.

sigh. having said all this, there's still a lot more i wanted to say about london. and i haven't even begun on toronto.

the land of cranes and construction sites

2005-08-17T22:51:00.000-07:00

i can't help but imagine sand-weary nomads from another time stumbling upon this city of gold and rubbing their eyes in disbelief. because after three days of seeing, touching, feeling, experiencing dubai, i feel a niggling suspicion that it is a mirage. the monuments to excess, towering and solid in concrete and glass, are bigger and better and shinier than anywhere else. and you have to hand it to them, the tribals and the migrants who've eked out a place in nowhere.
we're in merdif, an upcoming housing locality that's transforming overnight. first there were islands of sand-coloured houses, now they're connected with straight roads and cross roads and right angles. the armies of cranes populate every horizon. they are here to stay. estimates of the number of cranes in the city of dubai cross 4000!
for someone from india, the silence is novel and deafening. novel especially because there's a football sized construction site next door with a contingent of mechanical birds at work and airplanes are constantly whizzing overhead to or from the airport close by. deafening because none of this get's in, and within sound proof walls, you can almost hear yourself think.

home and work

2005-07-09T04:55:00.000-07:00

meeting t, here for visa purposes, i couldnt help but wonder why i cling to the places i know, the people i consider mine and the things, the dratted things, that for some reason anchor my life. leaving it all is easy, or is it?
about a week ago i dreamt of gandhi in stone, sitting placidly bare-bodied amidst fallen leaves in the biting cold of a london december. a glimpse of the familiar bespectacled bald head triggered a warm rush of affinity through my body that seemed real even in the dream. k the monkey and i were wandering through the skeletal trees of winter at tavistock square battling the chilly wind as it cut through our many-layered clothes.
for me, seeing gandhi was like finding home in a faraway place. and i guess people like the girl in true story-1 and t like everyone else, find bits of home in each other and in other places.

then there's this thing called purpose and it's so much nobler than needing to feel at home. watching p on tv this afternoon, filled me with an unadulterated pride i never knew i was capable of feeling. she was somewhere in haryana investigating a story on a 15yearold who'd been bought by a poor man and his son because they couldn't get women otherwise. she'd done such a damn good job of the story. it reacquainted me with the first principle: that a life is only as valuable as the lives it enhances or impacts in a positive way.
thats what k the monkey's trying to do as well, i think. help out somewhere, somehow. connecting with the rest of the universe. and in my own homebody kind of way, i guess i'm trying, however lame the attempt, to do the same.

this has to be the most muddled post ever. but i've promised to write everyday, even if i'm only adding to the junk on the internet.

true story -1

2005-07-08T19:00:00.000-07:00

remember the small-faced girl with the long shining tight braids? she was always good at physics. she lived in a house with blue walls and tubelights with pictures of gods too close to the ceiling. her brother went to iit - a hard act to follow so she didn't.
instead she crossed the seas, discovered she had nice legs and wore short skirts (they took her seriously, even in a short skirt). discovered she had nice hair and began wearing it loose. discovered she liked camping and outdoors stuff and dancing and drinking bacardi with coke.
she discovered that she didnt have to be a good indian girl to be good.
in time, she liked a white boy who liked her back and brought him home to her parents who lived in the house with blue walls and god pictures, but only for a short visit.

maximum adventure

2005-06-24T05:28:00.000-07:00

the carnival is over. the elephants have gone home with the monkeys who play mind tricks and the spectacular acrobats have been swallowed up by the sky.
it began when i stepped of the edge and entered a menagerie of rugby players with a tendency to strip and and glossy models with a baby whose first word is 'whassup'. i was received with a bear hug from the coach who has a constant craving for media and pasta. and met, one by one, characters from a book that hasn't been written yet.
nights at the old colonial house with its high ceilings were sweaty and i stared myself to sleep each night, my gaze fixed on the ceiling fan. i missed m and the comfort of sleeping in the crook of his arm.
The morning brought with it a bunch of eminently readable newspapers with uptodate information about who is dating who, who is divorcing who, the party circuit and oh yeah, the weird interesting fact-stranger-than-fiction reports from around the world. i drank it all in with my tea and didn't wonder too much about what was happening in the real world. only a little and i felt guilty for not being more interested.
but guiltlessly tucked in my ring and tali into a drawer before going anywhere.
at the match afterparty, a charming, if a bit boorish player swaggered up to ask if i'd want to go to the disco later with him and his friends. the fact that this was the same guy who'd earlier surprised me by deliberately dropping his boxers as i photographed the team in the warm-up room only bothered me a little. the incident seemed funny in a crass way at the time.
i was preoccupied with the temptation to feel young and adventurous. but i declined the invitation, albeit very reluctantly. gut instinct.
the next morning papers screamed 'rugby rogues beat up bar manager, paw girl'. their names were there all right.
And I was on a flight home, eager to be with m and tell him stories about naked men and a bloody sport.

fare thee well

2005-05-31T07:46:00.000-07:00

events set in motion, i follow the flow and play my part. clean out my drawers, pile up my notes and organise the goodbye lunch for tomorrow. it's like playing out a critical scene - one that's been rehearsed so often that you're filled with numbness tinged with a dull fear that you may be doing it all wrong.
no more 300-words, 400-words, 500-word imperatives. no more trauma over page 1 stories that just don't materialise. no more tedious engagements ever. no more fodder for my book on psycho personalities and no more wandering the corridors of government offices hoping to trip over a story with all the ends neatly tied. no more 10 a.m. meeting.
no more night shifts where you ask the same stock questions to strangers six nights in a row hoping to get the stock answer and come across a gem, like the man who picked up the receiver and said Good night madam!

projectile

2005-05-27T05:59:00.000-07:00

I've taken the plunge and after tuesday i will free fall into the unknown. I pressed the eject button above my airplane seat out of perverse curiosity, childlike what ifness and maybe some prodding from destiny, i don't quite know.
but the deed is done and i've left the mother ship, the comfort of the safety belt and the happy inertia of waiting, knowing you will eventually get somewhere because newton said you would. i miss the comfort of the crowd already and the collective cribbing about the food on board.
but i haven't felt so whole-hearted and self-determined in a long time even if i'm just going to crash land into a clump of nowhere trees.
the captain thinks i'm irresponsible, i think he's astute. but responsibility weighs too heavily and i'm in the mood for some lightness.

sea story

2005-05-12T09:41:00.000-07:00

when i was young every view of the sea sent me shrieking.
on the beach, receiving the ocean white tipped ambassadors at the shore was my sacred duty; i couldn't bare to miss even one. i'd hold the wave the best i could and watch the water slip through my fingers mesmerised.
back then the beach was the holiest or holies, my favorite holiday place. when i grew older, the sea seemed like an old friend, who i'd secretly wait to visit.
now, i live close to the beach. not close enough to see it everyday but close enough for the broad serene road before our apartment to be called beach road. i could pass by the beach everyday if i wanted to, but i don't. instead i take shorter route.
maybe because i'm grown up now and all sorted out.

charades

2005-05-06T08:35:00.000-07:00

today i understood the wisdom of sd's advice: the man who warned me not to smile too much. any woman could have any man if she knew the art of smiling. too much smiling was off-putting. smile less and men would be intrigued, he told me. at the time, still coping with teenage awkwardness, i didn't quite understand.
the old man, could have been vatsayana. he had a cultured air about him and a wealth of feminine wisdom that fit quite comfortably with his raspy cough and funny old man smells.

it's true: too much smiling can make people think you're in pr. yesterday's event was uncannily like the 'page 3' movie. i even felt like i was acting!
it had simpering pr girls, impoverished hacks bewildered by the glare and glamour and white musicians who'd crossed their sell-by date still waking from the daze of sex, drugs and rock and roll.
the most annoying of course are the cold, meaningless 1000 watt smiles. i couldn't help but check my own expression when i noticed the pr bunny fawn with a pasted grin on her face.
then there's the immature swaggering dude from the music channel. he'd like to rub shoulders with the celebrities, fake camaraderie by laughing harder and louder for all the bad jokes, smoking and drinking like this is a party. but it's not. and nobody is anybody's friend.
so cliched.

a doormat called welcome

2005-05-03T08:20:00.000-07:00

as if by magic, the house is no longer empty. a lone boy moved in today, his birthday.

it's strange, poetic logic that this day four years ago, we were together: so young and full of wonder. sitting under the stars, i gave him the perfect blue shirt, handpicked from among hundreds of shirts i'd seen all day, and he, in turn, gave me the unconditionalilty of first love.
we lived parallely for a while but then the season changed. i've lived a few lifetimes since and spent many years hurtling away from him, even if it meant hurting him.
but everything's changed now, it's like the stuff of our lives is all rearranged. and i've put enough distance between us to be friends again.
in the new scheme of things, he is little more than a familiar stranger and while i still search for the perfect men's shirt, i do so in a different size.
it's sad no? how even the most well-adjusted among us use defence tactics: run, hide, build a wall. anything to get away from the finality of it all. absolutely necessary for survival i think.
we spoke the other day, about the past and people from our history. the dark, brooding, irresistable a.m. who always felt he belonged somewhere else. he now lives in ny with a rich lawyer ten years older to him.
then there's the hippie girl-of-everyone's-dreams who went on to become an artist and live with an organic farmer. no surprises there. the boy she sketched as a schoolgirl: the boy-with-the-charming-smile is marrying someone else.
and the happy chubby p who fell off the map when he left for some vast university in the united states to become another Indian seeker looking for enlightenment in Americana.
i'm rambling now...what i started out wanting to say is that i couldn't find a better occupant for the house, i feel so fiercely protective of.

welcome home stranger and happy birthday.

1/32

2005-04-09T09:54:00.000-07:00

There is a little half-empty apartment, dusty, cobwebbed, overrun by lizards. Or maybe not because most lizards prefer lived in homes. This one's desolate. It's been abandoned for six months now.
In the corner are unwanted shoes of the girl who lived here. Shelves of her books and bills.
Shampoo bottle half-full - the old brand she doesn't use anymore. The threadbare orange pull-out, which, if were a talking sofa, could tell many tales.
The bed she slept and wept in, mostly alone. The walls that contained her thoughts, letting them expand and fill the rooms, one by one, until the whole house became her mind.
The rusty blue refrigerator continues to make a racket that nobody but the spiders and big and small black ants can hear.
I'm wondering if spiders or ants hear at all? But I guess that's a matter for entomologists and ENT specialists or a three-day conference of the two.
This, is merely a matter of memory - how memory can tug at the heart causing the most visceral, unscientific pain, until tears fall without reason. The truth is she feels more than she thinks and when she's not feeling, she's thinking about feelings, or feeling her thoughts the way the blind read Braille.
In this case, she's contemplating the flat down the road she doesn't take anymore. She passes it everyday, wondering how it's doing, knowing that it will be a little more rundown today than it was yesterday, planning to peep in, but almost scared (and irrationally so) of what she might find.
It's now a martyr to the cause of independent living. And the overgrown bed of white lilies just outside the door no longer have any flowers. Only out-of-control leaves in a dark green protest against the way she upped and went without a thought.

But the cup-runneth-over kind of happiness makes it difficult to think. The brooders are always melancholic remember? Giving up solitary dreams and confinement so that she could come home to someone who would listen to her sleeptalk each night and tells her about it the next morning was easy. So easy that sometimes it seems like a betrayal.

slamming the window open

2005-03-17T08:39:00.000-08:00

the first post, has to be the worst. for a writer, i weigh my words too much. i'm too reluctant to let my thoughts out. and the worst sin of all, i'm a compulsive editor. its painful no? writing? my mind is blank.

a