Deja Vu

Coming up

2011-05-26T01:01:00.000-07:00

How to seduce without any skin show

2011-05-24T14:17:00.000-07:00

Remember girls. Thanks to the internet our crop of men are exposed to meat shows 24X7 compared to the earlier spat of men who lost their sleep even on a slight glimpse of a more than an ample show of a girl's waist.

So what do you do? You cover up.

Invest in a silk scarf- it will exude a rich look...peacock blue always works up my olive complexion.Stick to jewel colors. The deeper the color of the scarf, the better it is. Remember Aishwarya Rai in Guzaarish? Yea yea we are aping the west but it does look extremely chic.

And we are talking classy guys here. They would dig this look. Unclassy guys, doesnt really matter-for him you in a scarf is equal to that girl over there who wears clothes without letting it create a statement for her.

And as I said, you need to leave a lot to a guy's imagination, if you overexpose-you ruin it.

That covered hair would want make him dart glances at you more frequently because he'd be trying to get as much of you as he can-its like you are this unfinished portrait- he can see the beautiful eyes, he can see the lips but he still cant fathom your face shape. Is it an heart shaped face?Is it oval? He wants a complete picture in that millisecond. And you baby, you are depriving him of that. So he desperately looks at you a couple of times. And with each visual bite, he feels better..almost relieved, that he's getting to construct you in his head.

But there's the question of the hair. Men love long hair. But there you go, just the movie trailer & not the movie itself. He wants to know desperately by now, how you would look without the scarf...& you just whet his appetite.

Unclothing a woman- its a primal instinct of the cavemen remember? Play upto it ;)

This is my signature winter look. I have an entire collection of silk scarves & boy!does it work.

Riya Sen is one of the most photogenic women I know of & yet I found this picture more appealing than her overtly hot pictures.

2011-05-15T02:57:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8mf3fbJ2eE&feature=related

You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star~ Friedrich Nietzsche

2011-05-15T02:36:00.000-07:00

Being silent over what matters most~

2011-04-28T10:49:00.000-07:00

Any of you got a talent for singing but was put off because of the bathroom singers? Yay?Nay?
Well atleast I have been put off by these new age indian 'writers' or graduates of the IIT,IIM,FMS,JNU, various medical schools who fancy they can write...more so trying to encash on the brand value of their alma mater. A trend started roughly by Chetan Bhagat and his ilk. Bah, I cannot stand that man. Indian writing is associated by mediocre 'writers' like him? And please dont give me the his-book-was-turned-into-a-runaway-hit-movie. Bollywood?You want me to take Bollywood seriously?
Remember the 80s-early 90s, there used to be this classy tv artist Kitu Gidwani...I was reading her interview a few days bac and when she was asked to compare the quality of tv serials back then and now. She hit the nail on its head by saying back then it was about the classes, now its about the masses.
Mass market productions are anyway about catering to mediocre tastes. Now I actually understand why classy choices are always eclectic. Cherished and savoured by just a few.

Talking of class and sophistication, I am but reminded of just one person. And that is what brings me to the point. Agreed that I had almost vowed never to join the bandwagon of wannabes penning down novels. I decide, I do want to write a book. At the cost of sounding pretentious and a fake and worse, a cliched upcoming writer...I wish I can put a disclaimer(maybe I will) in my novel that it is not exactly for commercial gains, much less fame( I am already thinking of a pseudonym). Its something else...its more to do with my attempt to immortalize my story....

Sometimes there are storeies of ancient evenings and distant music meant to be told. Stories carried over from a previous lifetime which would be resumed again and again.

And as Robert Kincaid-the self proclaimed last cowboy, the character so close to the one I love, from the novel- The Bridges of Madison County said "In a universe of ambiguity, this kind of certainty comes only once, and never again, no matter how many lifetimes you live"

Strange isn't it...this blog has been my ultimate purgatory & this Anne Frank's diary never spoke of certain parts...parts that played a decisive role in shaping me. Something so precious, you like to hold it close to your heart. The other events were time fillers...

Its better to lose a lover than love a loser

2011-01-30T07:31:00.000-08:00

I read the above lines on a blog.

I couldn't stop smiling...

An ode to the bengali women~

2011-01-19T12:10:00.000-08:00

http://www.nandanasen.net/home.htm

Today am totally convinced I am a writer. Its 1 am & I have tones of work to complete & yet I set aside everything to sit down to write. I know my work’s going to suffer for wasting time. Writing’s my fix.
So what nags me to write?In the past 3 months I’v met so many men & women who’ve commented(no,not me) but generally commented that Bengali women are so beautiful…if not anything, just drown in those big eyes. Mind you, lots of women have big eyes but unless it’s the famed big, beautiful, Bengali eyes- it gives the speaker no satisfaction in sighing & remembering a Bengali woman’s face. Rite now, I checked my cousin’s fb pics & sure enough, there were comments that went ‘such beautiful eyes, you live up to the image’ or my sister who incidentally has very small eyes but still gets comments whenever she looks pretty…it’s always a ‘such a beauty, a true Bengali woman’…

And since I grew up surrounded by the most beautiful women…that could explain my obsession to always look good. I mean, entire adolescent period I kept praying fervently that I transform into a raging beauty. Nothing like that happened but I have not done badly either. But yes, if I were given a choice to steal any Bengali woman’s face…who would it be? Apart from the usual Bollywood brigade(nah, I wont bore you to death by mentioning the Ms.Universe & the rest)…lets look at the half bongs- Norah Jones, Lisa Ray….umm, am not going to add Anoushka Shanker to the list though she too is a ½ bong.She has nothing bongish about her,a negroid nose etc…Norah on the other hand has the soulful big eyes though.
Lisa Ray…ah, well…I had met two girls of the same Lisa Ray mould…their dads were Bengalis & moms are firangs…what splendid creatures…light blue irises set in those Bengali Maa durga eyes that could set any heart (& other things) on fire.
And yet, the arresting face for me has to be Amartya Sen’s daughter-Nandana Sen. There’s something about that face which I would have loved to swap with. Her face is beautifully different from the rest of the fluff floating around. I’ve often bumped into Punjabi kudis who often remind me of Katrina Kaif…I’ve even bumped into the Kareena Kapoor variety…& well, Sonam kapoors etc are dime a dozen. We have an Aishwarya Rai lookalike too, sneha whatever.

But Nandana Sen…she is like a portrait…this is something I used to tell myself years back when she made her debut in the Bengali movie world in 1997…much before the 2009 Rang Rasiya movie where she indeed plays painter Ravi Varma’s muse. So see? I was not wrong. Infact I pride myself in spotting beauties who often get overshadowed by the more in-your-face pretty girls.
Her’s is an intelligent face…amartya sen genes naturally. But more than that,well…had I been a guy-this is how I would have felt when I would have set my eyes on her first.
‘Lovely’ would be the first word my brain would trigger…my eyes would widen…I would take in her hairstyle…which is again a far cry from the straightened hair, we women sport all the time…she so doesn’t belong to these times…her face has that haunting beauty…creates an aura of déjà vu…where you think you may have met her in a prev. lifetime or maybe she’s inherited some great great great grandmother’s looks. Infact, looking at her face would be like climbing down the stairs into some deep well…there’s so much into that face that it you would want to be with her all the time…to read into a face…which has a soft child like allure to it & yet undercurrents of sensuality ooze her womanly femme fatale tendencies…
Some biographies claim she is 43 yrs old! Look at her, is it true? Where did she find the fountain of youth? Though do feel she would have remained far more desirable by not exposing so much.Ah how I wish, I was a man…

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride~

2010-12-23T05:25:00.000-08:00

Wish to Santa

Cliched, very clichéd. Still resorting to writing gooey lines to Santa. Its not even the child in me that wants to let him know what I want. Not going to use that excuse. Cutting to the chase, I just want things to happen in a certain way where I can stop feeling so dazzled by the super talented people & be able to prove to myself that I can achieve those very things that they can. I am getting a little tired of meeting these guys who hold the Guiness book of record for a very sharp memory & another guy who’s gotten an Inlaks scholarship sashaying down Stanford studying some cool stuff there.

No I am not jealous, I am just plain & simple tired of being so overawed of people around me & this seems to be happening a lot these days that my dad feels insulted he sired a kid who cant get over the Mensa group or whatever.
I cant even seem to cut down on my 8 hrs of sleep to be able to do a shahrukh’s super 4 hours of sleep & the rest-hard work,hard work & more hard work. I admit I am working hard but isn’t everyone?

I wish, I just wish & the wish is just a simple wish…please Santa let me be able to prove to myself that I am no less than these incredibly smart & talented people. I know am not smart, am intelligent & there’s a huge difference there. Smart people are street smart in a shrewd way, they take the elevator to success, intelligent people take the escalator (read: a stuttering,gasping for breath kinda escalator) to success. Hmm, as long as am not taking the stairs to success.
Again, when I see these golf playing, sitar strumming(that’s guitor,idiot…no one strums a sitar.Well whatever!) guys whose summer internship was all about learning the ropes of being a lawyer at the International Court of Justice & learning French at the same time…I can only wipe the sweat off my brow & scream ‘I am not talented!’
I am not musically inclined, am not a national level player of any sport(reminds me of that cocky IIM-B-working-at-a-hedge-fund-guy who’s a national level badminton player & slept with his Harvard prof), I don’t even possess the talent of being able to seduce men! ! And I call myself a Bengali woman.Hah! Maybe I am just content with the idea of monogamy. Draupadisque, that’s risqué!

Ok,I don’t want to sound ungrateful to dear God. I am above average in the writing skills department or umm, if given an uninhibited platform-I can be pretty good at it but writing as a talent exactly wouldn’t help you climb up the ladder. Its not exactly a talent that one can tap to make the CV hum. So what if I can write. Umm, I can skate. Ugh! Whoever wants to know that. I won a shotput silver even at the age of 27. Sheesh!Shot put isn’t a cool sport.Infact I wasn’t even given a medal,only a certificate while the marathon runners walked away with medals.
Hmm not talented in the right spheres. Its like not being curvaceous at the right places.
Short on talent, heavy on the foot-in-the-mouth disease, insufficiently sharp, proclivity towards taking wrong decisions 9/10 times. Boy o’ boy, not exactly a prescription for success, am i?

Quick new yr resolutions to fix the leaky me.

1) To become an introvert. Introverts are highly productive, save their energy devoid of all that blabber & don’t give themselves away, the way I do..rather obscenely. This blog, atleast in the past was a good eg of my vulgarity…of saying it all.
2) Belief in myself…inspite of the handicaps

Cant think of anything else so far.

2010-12-14T11:38:00.000-08:00

Letter to God
Thanking you during my good times, isn’t worth much. Its during the testing times that I should have kept the faith, not questioned you, your presence. I have been an extremely ungrateful child. Time & again, mom has reminded me to be happy with whatever little I have had. But no, I have always aspired for things…somehow made unreachable via my own stupidity & sometimes lack of sheer luck. And then, often followed my raves & rants of being the unlucky one.
True that the best materialistic things in life slipped away from my grasp coz of decisional errors & lack of farsight.

But I should have never ever behaved the way I did, with my parents. I cringe to think how I have blamed them for my successive failures in the past. Today when I stand upright & mind you, its luck that finally got me through…hardly any talent that was by my side. I pray to you to forgive me for having been such a bad loser. Testing times will always be there but I need to stop being so selfish, I am glad I have my family in one piece & in good shape. Cliches are bound to sound like clichés but even though times have been very trying, I am thankful dear God, whatever is coming my way.
My new year resolution: Never to crib or let the feeling of feeling deprived of certain things get the better of me.
I am far better off than so many people. And I should stop feeling irritated by those who get things easily.

A woman's entitled to making 1 mistake in her life

2010-11-16T10:09:00.000-08:00

I made mine at a young age of twenty and its nothing short of saving my entire lifetime.
I see perfect sense in the fairy tale adage which says you gotta kiss a frog to get a prince.
And yet I know for sure, that my own daughter would have to go through that same trial by fire before she too wisens to the perils. My warnings about men would fall on deaf ears and though it would tear my heart to see her go through the same shit...It will also give me a chance to tell her abt my youth.

Wide eyed, she'd give me that look of disbelief and then she'd go 'oh my gawd, even you had a jackass of a boyfriend'....we'd both giggle, we'd both share a knowing look and I guess, thats when she'd maybe...just maybe turn into my best friend....For, even my mom was the strictest lady i ever knew...till she let down her guard, when she realized...her daughter had grown up and she didnt have to be all that strict anymore.

The trolls are back!

2010-10-24T03:36:00.000-07:00

I have never exercised my right to remove the Comment space of my readers but somehow, my ex friends...no,not ex flames but ex friends always come by my blog to feast on whatever tidbits are strewn. What i absolutely disapprove of...is they give their game away by leaving behind comments which always come with a personal jab at my choices made. I stopped writing here for a v.long time for these very trolls.

I mean, just to get back at me for having been blunt with 'em some light years ago. They've made it their hobby to come by & try to erase my credibility or whatever...just to be able to prove to themselves that they are have always been right,in the past & in the present.

Well for all your attempts to prove whatever u want to, i still blv...you are a nasty bunch...

Strangers are most welcome on my blog but ex-friends,are not.

Its easy to discern bet. comments left behind by strangers & my regular group of blogger friends....& the uninvited trollish ex-frnds gate crashing in.

PS- I only write abt flash backs & the past in this blog. Careful enuf not to write what u try to seek....so dear "ex friends & current fiends" what's the point reading about the past,may i ask?:P

Is bad karma catching up?

2010-10-05T12:09:00.000-07:00

I was always a pensive child. Even though till the age of 14 I lived a fairly comfortable life with no, absolutely no problems creeping in. But the melancholy was always there.

Mom used to fear my predictions that I made..she called me a black tongue so I tried never to give vent to my forebodings. My forebodings about myself are all coming true…Mom says, I think negative hence I attract negativity & that one’s darkest fears always come true. That I shouldn’t even think about such things. But I feel it’s the other way round. I may be an old soul or I may have experienced this lifetime earlier…so maybe I already know the dreary things that are in store & probably that could be a reason why I’ve inherently always been pensive.

I am trying my best to expiate my bad karma that I must have gathered in numerous past lifetimes. For incase I am born again in this lifetime, it could only mean that im being given a second chance to mitigate the wrongs committed earlier.
I have done no wrong this lifetime atleast, as far as I know so am I entitled to an easy life in my next lifetime, for I am very tired of struggling so much, neither do I want to be born on the 8th again.

When I look at those who moved ahead in life without working hard, by sheer dint of their good luck or when I see those who are enviable positions they least deserve, I feel that’s got to do with the good karma they picked up in their previous lifetimes.
But isn’t it a vicious circle? Almost all those whom I see enjoying an easy life…have a higher proclivity than us, strugglers to indulge in vices, corruption, hurting ppl….So here I am, in this lifetime suffering like hell for no fault of mine to pay the penance for my previous lifetime…which in turn teaches me lessons in humility & virtues…these in turn hold me in good stead in my next lifetime & I end up living the life that I envied…opening up possibilities of being unethical etc. For don’t they say, absolute power corrupts…

So I end up living alternate lifetimes of ecstasy & enormous pain, with no scope for Nirvana?
More conundrums- Buddhism provides attaining Nirvana as a solution to break away from the vicious circle of life & death & yet it does not believe in the concept of Soul but blvs in reincarnations.

Then there are Muslim friends who do not believe in the concept of numerous lifetimes. How do they explain-what makes a child to be born in anil ambani’s house & inherit all the luxuries? What makes a child to be born in a Dharavi slum? If its not past karma, then what is? How to explain the continuous run of bad luck in a person’s life whose worked very hard?And how to explain the sheer luck that catapults people from nowhere to places they’d never dreamt in their wildest dreams(I am talking of those who have not worked hard & got a full platter)

Penny Pinchers..ouch!

2010-08-12T23:27:00.000-07:00

What is the biggest turn off for a woman..any woman? A miser, a penny pincher. No don’t label the woman as a gold digger, she isn’t always attracted to wealthy men. But she is definitely repulsed by the stingy men, wealthy or not. There’s a difference you see. Every one of us, or atleast most of us girls have…in our early 20s met promising young struggling men who didn’t have a farthing in their pocket but more than made it up with their other attributes. Such penniless men did make us swoon. But not those non-struggling working guys who went out of their way to penny pinch & put not just themselves at inconvenience but even the girl in question in an uncomfortable position. No sympathy for such elements who create a false crisis of money in their life.

Don’t blame us girls when you misers see pretty girls walking off with a guy who’s been generous with his purse strings. No he's not buying her, he's just assuring her a safe,stable future. A woman looks for financial stability in a guy, the way a guy wants sex from a girl. A girl always sizes up a guy’s potential of whether he can look after her & her future family economically. A miser sends across all the wrong signals. C’mon who would want to marry a Scrooge & struggle to wrangle out pennies throughout their life. Women, yes it’s a fact…prefer men who don’t mind showering her with materialistic goodies, she takes it as a sign that she would not have to live a life of deprivation atleast.

I remem. this guy who was very interested in me. He held a good job in a v.reputed company, had managed to buy a flat & even had a swanky car but he was the epitome of miserliness. Gawd, going out with him was a pain. He didn’t mind spending on buying himself assets but he definitely felt it a waste of money to spend money on anything apart from a house,car or land. Those days I was a struggling student, so when he invited moi & my roommate for a trip to a historical place…we sadly balked at the idea of shelling out rs200 entry fee. That guy didn’t even offer to pay…& mind you, he was supposed to have been very intent on wooing me.

Ofcourse,my self respect wouldn’t have allowed me to accept his ‘charity’ but we women atleast expect that mark of chivalry. Then there was that other time when another guy drove me in his swanky car to some run-down dhaba to have dinner!! I mean, if a guy takes u to a dhaba for sentimental reasons, for refreshing nostalgic moments-I am all for it, I want to be a part of his past but to save money?! UGHH! I threw up next day, the food did not suit me. Goes without saying, I bid him goodbye soon enough.

Then there was another such working guy who graduated out of the best institute of india…earned lots of money & yet everytime I met him…I saw his penny pinching ways which made me wary. I reasoned if he’s being such a miser now , what would he be later! I remem. how he used to take a bus that took him more than a hour to meet me…Not only does a guy create a favourable impression if he arrives in style…but getting jostled in a bus, ruins your hair,crumples your shirt & if you’r trying to impress a girl…a crumpled look…nah. Ok, I sound superficial here but its true, in the mating game…the overall impression a guy gives you, matters. I remem. that if I ever did have to meet a guy I liked…even if it was a short distance meet…I’d not even walk it…why meet him with a sweaty face & a harried tanned look when I can present myself with not a hair out of place look. So ye,getting back to this guy, just coz he always took the pains of travelling by bus…I used to not feel like telling him to meet me more often, coz why subject the poor thing to so much trauma. But what was the end result? Didn’t get to know him as much as I cud have & obviously never considered him as a good bf material. Who lost?Obviously the guy & just for a few pennies. Then it also matters, the choice of places a guy selects. This partic guy used to take me to the usual CCDs,an occasional Barista…a girl gets bored of such clichéd places…even a struggling guy can take u to such places so why didn’t it occur to this working guy that he cud hv had an edge over the strugglers by raising his standards & probably taken the girl to say, for a luncheon at Claridges or one of those nice four star(im not even saying five star) restaurants like ‘Its Greek to me’ at green park. A nice class act which could have created a good impression. But no, these nouvea rich, first timers who have money don’t have any idea how to act in style. So u can imagine my disappointment when I was taken to a shoddy restaurant in a garage-ish kinda place called Mezbaan, off Aruna Asaf Ali rd. I tried hard to pretend I liked the place but internally I cringed. If it was a one off visit to such a place where he was trying to relive his IIT student days, I would have shown my solidarity but one, who’s had a past history of taking u to not so great places. Well, what can I say! Esp since this Mezbaan of a place was anyway, the place where struggling Jnu-ites went to eat…so it was no novelty for me to be taken there, given that I cud hv gone there wearing my bedroom slippers. Now, if I was being taken to Karim’s…even if its not exactly posh but I am being taken there to experience authentic north west frontier kinda food, it’s a different story but if I get dragged to Delhi-6 all the time just so it can save the guy some pennies.Sorry! I put my foot down.

Similarly there was this IIM-B guy who’d been trying to go on a date with me for quite some time. I was busy wid acads fr a long time & finally when I did call him & inform him that we should go to a rock concert. Initially he agreed but later balked at the idea of having to shell out money to a dial-a-cab to pick & drop me. Back then,he’d not bought a car & later when he did buy a car, he expected me to take an auto till a certain distance from where he could pick me in his car. A double UGH!! Last time when he met me he said ‘I cud kick myself for not going out wid u to that rock concert,that too when u had called & asked me out’…I smiled & said ‘better things were in store for me’

As another female quipped in ‘such misers are miserly even in bed’…..not hard to believe at all!

Girls used to a certain kind of luxury would never find penny pinchers a good option. Strangely, these penny pinchers get attracted to the well groomed girls precisely coz the girls are so well turned out but doesn’t it strike ‘em that fr ‘em to be so well maintained, requires money…the very money which these guys would never want to part with. So long, the beauty & the beast’s twain can never meet~
The younger girls should remember that a balding generous man is anyday going to keep you happier than a penny pincher.

PS- Pardon the condescending tone of my blog these days, its not meant to hurt anyone…just some frank,damning facts that women don’t talk about, the untold reasons why some suitors are rejected..Remember guys, those famous lines from women ‘you are a nice guy,I really like u but only as a friend’ & she clams up after that. Well, she wudnt want to come across as a shallow girl wud she?by telling u she rejected u just coz some pennies were held dearly close to ur chest & u didn’t treat her like a princess. Forget all the talk abt women empowerment etc, every woman secretly wants to be treated like a princess, so now u know why she’s on the lookout for a Prince Charming…

Pedigree vs. Non Pedigree

2010-08-05T05:11:00.001-07:00

Some of the 'Looking Back' experiences of my life translate themselves into ruminations~

Compared to my female predecessors say even 25 yrs back, I’ve had a far wider exposure to the male species. Back then, those coy & docile women at the most interacted with their male peers at the college,univ & work place. And from that limited pool, they selected their mates for life. Cut to 2000 & beyond. Not that we girls are any more ambitious than those 25 yrs backs, but yes society has progressed & we are allowed to fly the nest right after school. Then starts our transmigration across the country, many times across the seas. Roughly, any girl who’s 25 plus has atleast lived in two cities(apart from her hometown) and that’s the least am talking about.

Hence not surprising that by the time we’ve crossed the silver jubilee of our life-we’ve almost seen it all where men are concerned(with & without their clothes on?). Ok!dont jump to conclusions,I was just being a lil’ wicked.
So lemme list the places where I met men. As long as I was in Kolkata, my interaction with the not so fair sex was restricted to school, painting classes,journalism course & finally college. Not to forget,the internet which threw in my face quite a few guys. But since I never met most of ‘em in real life…I wonder if it really matters, I don’t really know that the fantastic guy whom I may have met virtually was a troll or a knight.Or was he?

So once in a new city, u meet ‘em while studying-in the univ, in the canteen, in the library, while travelling by bus/metro, then u get to meet/steal bfs of your room-mates, their friends’ friends. Then u start working, it opens up a mine field-now u have not just male colleagues but even their room-mates who may have sneaked a look at ur orkut/fb profile flashing delectably on the common frnds’ list. Ofcourse, pubs/CCDs/Baristas make it even more legitimate for a guy to ask u out. Well, these are the usual places where u meet a new crop of men almost every wk. Lemme think of some of the unexpected places I met men.(next blog post topic, what say?)

Neways, July 2004. Single, attractive(?) female arrives in Delhi. On the train journey itself she encounters this pedigreed guy, a St.Stephen’s Pass Out. Infact his mom is a nice lady & they all get talking about the finer things in life. She finds out his dad is the High Commissioner in Bangladesh. Only much later does she find out that his dad’s a third generation IFS officer. Talk about pedigree!
But back then I was foolish, didn’t know the worth of pedigree. Never really gave the guy much importance & as is true with all pedigrees he didn’t try being in touch either. They aren’t your usual boy-next-door who’d keep pursuing u till u relent. No sir! These esoteric, rarely found in the mainstream guys never take the pains to pursue a girl, any girl for that matter. Its not their style. There’ll always be a difference bet. a guy born with a silver spoon in his mouth & a guy born, well without that extra streak of cultured upbringing.

But we were meant to meet. Months later, I randomly walked into an unknown girl’s hostel room & somehow she appreciated my nose! Quite a compliment coming frm a Kashmiri, given that they have the best noses…that’s how the ice broke betn us & dunno why I spoke abt the pedigree frm Stephens’ without naming him. She simply looked at me & said ‘oh, you are the girl he met on the train’….Whoa!& then we met(2004) thanks to that girl, who was his close frnd & yet neither of us thought much of the other. Somehow, in 2005 while still living in that hostel, a girl walkd upto to me & said, a guy had come to meet me 2-3 days earlier & had left behind a note….neither cud she retrieve the note for me nor cud she remem. his name. But I knew it cud only be the pedigree, given that no other guy in delhi knew of my existence there, till then. Guess, we weren’t meant to meet. Yrs later, heard he’d married a bong…ah, but he was a bong too.

Neways, that was 1 close encounter with a pedigree…the next two pedigreed guys I met 5 yrs later, yea-they are hard to come by. They move in their own elevated circles. In the interim period I went through certain lows with the non pedigreed guys. I threw up my hands, realized these nouvea rich guys without any generations of good pedigree were prone to turn ugly(not withstanding their IIM/IIT degrees). These non pedigreed ones are big time penny pinchers too!Its a big turn off to see ‘em take a bus to meet u. My sympathies with the struggling student kinda guys, there I’d find it cute to see ‘em facing a crowded bus just to meet me but NOT the corporate misers who earn a good salary yet travel in buses!Take u to shabby restaurants or at the most, Barista.CCD!

Talking abt non pedigrees-

Never faced an abusive guy thankfully but even the so called nicest of guys have never managed to end a friendship with dignity…there’s always been an ugly backlash…a streak of ungratefulness….a feeling of grudge hanging heavy in the air…many times, they reduce your image to that of a girl who’s the most hollow person on earth….actually therez a lot to this list but I’d rather let it be. Let ugly things RIP.
Coming back to the two pedigrees I came across. 4th Jan of a certain yr, I was hungry with all the running around to get my admission secured in jnu. So it was Nearly 1.30pm but I decided to skip going to the closest library canteen as noon is peak hour & it bursts at its seams. I went to a far off canteen instead. Surprise!it was jam packed…had to retrace my path, dragged my feet to the lib. Canteen…was abt to enter thru the door-at that very instance ‘an epitome of sophistication’ :D was meaning to step out…we had no option but to look at each other & look we did for the next 4 mins & am not kidding u, four mins is a long time…its equivalent to staring. Fr the 1st time in my life I had stared at a guy(reciprocated to be precise).Whoa!
He went out & I thought I’d seen the last of that random beautiful stranger in my territory. But he came back with his frnds & sat inside….i took up a seat, concealed from his line of vision. He was a treat to the eyes, not because he was handsome…well, he was handsome but even if he hadn’t been…the way he carried himself, the way the blue silk scarf was tucked around his neck while the extremely well tailored black cardigan(?)/coat added to the whole posh effect. He had a goatee. Even though I didn’t know a single thing abt him…I felt this was a typical pedigree with all its trappings. Incidentally, he was hanging out with girl who wasn’t my frnd but studied in jnu. Some months down the line I bumped into her & realized I was right abt my guesswork. This was a second generation IAS officer’s son…was an Inlaks scholarship awardee, went to a top most Ivy league, currently in a top job. Found out through more frnds, he just doesn’t bother abt girls(no, he’s not gay). Just to test, I did the unthinkable! Sent him an FB frnd request with my name, face everything on it!(a bold step, given that I’ve never done something so mad as to request fraandship) Needless to say, he never added me!! That too when am not ugly!& have good credentials like Google etc….This reinforced the belief I’ve always harbored abt pedigrees. They are a far cry from the despos, they will never befriend u-even if u are the prettiest thing possible-unless they are introduced to u via their select group of frnds.

Similarly, met another guy who was sitting in a class where I was taking coachin.once. I was foolish not to recog. he was last yrs’ topper who ws brought in by sir to give an inspirational speech. But he was so modest, without any airs that I was easily fooled into thinking he’d come to attend the classes. The way he spoke…addressing every girl with so much respect…that fr a min, I wondered if he was actually mocking the girls! No I mean am used to meeting such jerks that meeting a pedigree, is so out of character :P

Infact, when he told me his plans as a future IPS officer, I asked him an impertinent question for which I was supposed to apologize. Instead had him apologizing to me! My frnd next to me, nudged & whispered ‘hez so chivalrous mainly coz he was in the merchant navy in the past’…I said ‘nah, check his family background, u’ll find an illustrious line there’. Soon enuf the local rajasthan newspapers ran an article on him & there was a reference to his family having been a bureaucratic one for the last few generations.
Again, though he added me on his gmail chat list…his chat answers were always in monosyllables & mind u, he wasn’t even in any committed relationship. In complete contrast to the rest of the guys who want ur phone no. in the very first chat, ok if not first…after a few chats or email rounds.
That had a counter effect on me. Once I stumbled upon a guy’s snaps taken,on flicker. Now, I left behind a comment barely expecting much in response,given that he was already used to a lot of adulation. Prompt was his reply on his comment page & it had a personalized touch. I commented on yet another snap. Within 2-3 hrs again he commented, but this time-he’d dropped by at my flickr account. What struck me was, he’d come all the way to my account to thank me for visiting his photostream. 2ndly, noted that he’d put a laudatory comment on 1 of the only 5 pics I’d shot. Now honestly, my photographic works were a piece of shit or so I thought. Here was this guy amazingly talented who had given a thumbs up to my work. Ok, agreed this was a good looking, eligible guy but but…wasn’t he just the opposite of the pedigreed guys, my mind reasoned furiously. And I ruled him out completely. Umm, was it a wise decision? Just coz a guy pays u a lot of attn, makes him an unclassy guy? I didn’t even check his background….but on 2nd thoughts, 10 out of 10 times, I’v never seen a pedigreed guy making overtures on any girl per se. The girl has to take the first few steps on her own

Point is, these pedigreed ones are spoilt for choice, they know that even an arranged marriage match would be a well matched pedigree carrying an ivy league degree & most importantly, generations of fine blood wud course through her veins. Now I understand why the royals have always been so finicky about blue blood. There’s something very elegant abt the way they carry themselves, which we commoners are devoid of. And though it sounds very superficial but a pedigree is a pedigree.

It takes me precisely 10-15 mins to tell apart a pedigree from a non pedig. …its those intangibles which separate ‘em from the rest…even if I may try putting down the attributes that make ‘em what they are…I cant…its to be felt or maybe one shud just try spending some time with the non pedigrees, feel the back lash & contrast it with the silent dignity & immense respect with which the pedigreed ones treat u. And most importantly, a non-pedigreed guy will somehow end up treating u like the trash,he is. So my advice to the younger crop women has always been the same -look for pedigree, even if he runs out of money-he’ll never treat you cheaply(pun intended)

2010-08-05T05:11:00.000-07:00

A valentine's plan frm kolkata to mumbai to pune,blown to smithereens

2010-02-16T11:32:00.000-08:00

Don’t we all, at some point in our life feel that its so much easier to die & leave others to grieve us than the other way round. And now that three of my juniors from school have perished in the Pune blasts, it seems all the more real. My thoughts keeping flying to these juniors who spent the same happy yrs like me at our school, the same fields we ran amock, the same absurd rules we had to submit to, the same teachers we wanted the aliens should kidnap…the brother & sister duo have departed as did his girlfriend too.
The trio were acquaintances of my sister, they studied in the same class so when my sister called me & broke the news..esp when she said that the boy had such a promising career at jp morgan,Mumbai after a stint in IIT-kgp, while the sister was a topper in fergusson….i felt so much angst…we all worked hard in school all these yrs, to meet a fate like this?I remem. how rigorous our school was,in terms of academics & how much we were compelled to study. I tried imagining this boy with his girl, way back in school when they must have had a crush which must hv slowly blossomed into love but did the girl know that by saying yes to him, way back in school…would mean a pact with death later? That eventually she would follow him to Mumbai for the valentine’s weekend & he would take her from Mumbai to Pune & that the happy future family of a husband, wife & sister-in-law would never become a reality.
And this is just one of the families whose history I know of, I dread to think of that certain youth both of whose legs are amputed & his friend(girlfriend?) whose one leg is amputated & they saw each other in flames before blacking out. Must have been such a fearful moment, I can imagine the thunderous sound of blast which might have torn their eardrums, kidneys rupturing, vital organs torn from its place, eyes smashed, watching someone in front of ‘em whose head must have rolled out….all in those few minutes before unconsciousness took over. Some of whose hearts must have stopped beating completely at the very shock of it.
The worst victims of which are the parents. I cannot even imagine the magnitude of pain a parent feels on seeing the charred remains of one’s own or worse still,to see one’s own flesh&blood lying cripple forever. The youth snuffed out of a brilliant person who can never live a normal life, never. Until we become parents, we will never know the delicious torment of parenthood. Nothing can hurt a person more than having his child hurt. It is a pain that cannot be described.
Overlapping personal thoughts tap dance in my head & I get panic attacks thinking about my parents. My dad is a highly sensitive & emotional man, add to it extremely high blood pressure…we live in fear 24x7 & I was just thinking, I manage to meet my sister just once every weekend & obviously its always at some mall,café,fine dining stop or a movie…the likeliest places to make a straight shortcut to heaven(or hell, depends what God thinks of our past behavior:P). There’s no way my dad can survive losing both of us at one go & its anyone’s guess, that mom would be anything but the living dead herself. Which means, the terrorists get to kill more than they calculate. They finish a full family.
My sister asked me the last day that what happens to the fb/orkut accounts or the blogs of those who pass away, well its an uncomfortable thought & since I’ve often been warned that I am a black tongue…& they also say, one should never brood/talk about one’s death, that by doing so-you manage to make it come true. Hmmmm.I don’t know about that but all I know is, for the last few years I have died many a deaths just worrying about dying. At times I even feel that its so much better if the whole family perishes together within split seconds. So that you don’t even know what hit you. I often think of the last czar…how terrible he must have felt when his whole family was executed right in front of his eyes, the world’s biggest continent’s king who could not save his son,daughters,wife….just how pained he must have been esp since their only fault was to have been born in the wrong era where the masses felt they’d had enough of the tyrants. To die for the sins of others, how fair is that?
And in an ambience like this, I so don’t feel like being responsible for bringing in a new life form into this world…To become a parent someday & then to fear constantly about losing the most precious thing someday…

If i was away,why did i come back again?

2010-02-10T08:35:00.000-08:00

Naturally,a self imposed silence so far.I got tired of the rampant plagiarisation of my blog work...i see my lines,which are so characteristically me-floating around as status msgs on fb,gtalk etc...i see my phrases as captions of photo albums in orkut & flickr pages..& these,are just the ppl i know...then there are those strangers who copy,paste my entire poems & run blogs which earn 'em money via google's sponsored links. Am not done yet, there are journalists & writers who follow my blog & even if they dont do it consciously, one can recognize one's work peeping out from certain articles & mags, rite? A part of me is flattered that those who'd been following my blog,since 2004 are now full fledged writers & even now i get emails from 'em asking me why i stopped writing. But somehow, i couldn't handle it...reading my work under someone else's name...but now i guess, i'll just let ppl rob...i am wealthy,when it comes to words...

Ofcourse,the part which i dread the most is the snooping bit. Its from amongst your closest friends that are born future enemies & ill wishing rivals & I will make sure I never give myself away on this blog anymore. For those who come here to solely feast on what is happening in my life currently, nah...you shall never know...but yes,here I am...back to my first love,blogging & feel pretty excited abt it.

What happened this past one yr,is a mystery but i'd just say-No news,is always good news;)

To Fluff…

2009-03-26T08:51:00.000-07:00

Lots of memories, moments of togetherness but finally it always comes to an end. At every nook you let go of someone & yet you never learn to let go…it still leaves behind an aching scar. And death you cannot cheat.

Ps-Sorry fluff, this write up isn’t that great & you deserve a much better, more heartfelt post but its so tough to write about things that are so precious to you because language falls short of capturing a grieving soul

Sometimes....

2008-08-04T19:30:00.000-07:00

It’s a daily affair…returning late to my hostel. Yea yea delhi is not safe and especially not for a single young woman who’s all by herself, travelling mostly by auto. But somehow it inevitably gets pitch dark by the time I wrap up my shopping or on my way back from a friend’s place.
Nothing like relishing that fresh tangily citrus feeling of freedom where there’s none to inspect my moves, no one to question or ground me for returning home late. My eyes shine with that devilishly happy glint when I give that defiant look to the guards at the hostel gate who always look quizzically at my late returns. I’ve always smirked internally at my friends coz their boyfriends always tighten the leash around their neck so tight that they can never think of returning home late or so I’ve thought.

Yesterday incidentally my friend and I, inspite of our best efforts could manage to hail an auto only by 9.30pm when the roads were almost deserted.
It started pouring…there’s something about the way the rains have been wooing Delhi like a love sick bard showering its object of desire with one mushy poem after another,albeit in da form of copious rain drops...…I tell you, these monsoons are besotted with Delhi!

And so the most natural thing in the world happened, near the IIT crossroads, nice little sploshy puddles were grinning ear to ear spreading their bums comfortably in the zillion pot holes pockmarking the roads. Traffic from all four directions were snarling at each other & my auto was stranded in the doldrums. I relaxed back in my auto not even bothering to time how long it would take for the traffic to clear. My friend’s phone started ringing, she was anyway sitting poker straight, body taut…very very eager to return home, it was her boyfriend calling who sounded worried. In the pregnant musty silence of the innards of the auto, I could hear him ask huskily ‘where are you,baby?’ She said ‘ Im almost there, 5 mins’. He said ‘Should I bring the umbrella at the ber sarai bus-stop, you aren’t carryin any, remember?’ She agreed, almost relieved to have him escort her from the bus stop till their flat. Was it my imagination or did her flash flush with a glow in anticipation of meeting him or the thought of running into his protective arms really did light up her whole body?!

In my characteristic way, I was supposed to feel piqued and make a snide remark to her and my dialogue would have run its full course in this fashion- ‘So this is how dependant u’ve become! He has to walk you those 10 steps frm the stop till the flat,huh?’ ‘And look at him, its barely 10pm & hez fretting like a moth, as if women cant take care of themselves’ instead I heard myself say to her ‘ Accha hai, kuch logon ke liye toh poochne wala bhi koi nahi hai’….

I know I know, I sounded pathetic, like some bollywood tear stained character but it was at that point in my life…I felt a strange hollowness, the orphaning feeling knocked the wind of independent fierceness off my sails….I realized I was like those who partied late nights at discotheques, not coz they were happy or lucky doing it but because they had no one to come back home to….

Mama’s boys Vs. boys-don’t-cry...

2008-07-25T20:53:00.000-07:00

‘He’s a mama’s boys’ said my cousin sister dismissively when I asked why she’d turned down a certain prospective groom. On being probed further, she said ‘He wasn’t man enough’. That got me interested. I said ‘Pray, what traits weren’t there in him that made him effeminate. She said ‘He doesn’t smoke, he doesn’t drink & worse, I saw him crying when he lost his job’.

Hello?! Here I was, trying desperately…moving around with an alladin’s magic lamp trying to seek a guy who would not have these vices of smoking & drinking & failing miserably to find such a gem of a guy and here were women like my cousin who have a false sense of association of ‘manliness’ with smoking & drinking. Lets just say, smoking & drinking are after all personal preferences and bypass it for a minute. But what about crying? A guy is a human too! Cant he cry? So what if he cries when he watches emotional movies? And losing a job isn’t even a trivial matter! Women accuse men of being insensitive yet it’s the women who are insensitive so often!

That takes me to another point,we girls always complain abt our beaus not listening well enuf but it never occurred to any1 tht even guys need to be listened to, mainly coz even guys aren’t aware of it!

The gender straitjackets tht we wear- force us, as adults to raise kids according to gender stereotypes. It might appear remarkable but baby boys are more expressive emotionally than baby girls. It simply ebbs away during a boy’s childhood, thanks to the jeers/taunts by the adults where he’s forced to cut away from his mother’s apron strings prematurely.

Dare not a girlfriend make her guy feel miserable for not being emotionally expressive coz it’s the women, the mothers…who directly or indirectly teach their sons to be less open about their feelings. Remember how a mom chides her son harshly if he cries when denied a toy? What are her words? ‘Now, don’t u cry like a girl’! Not all mothers are the same though…there are those sensitive, chivalrous men who make our hearts race fast(a whopping salute to their moms for having done a beautiful job raising the unmanageable boys so well)

Apparently, research says that mothers react negatively to the facial expressions of male toddlers who are crybabies with a frown while show more concern to the baby girl by cooing comfort words.

Though the mother has the lion’s share in taking care of her son, the fathers in India should be allowed paternity leaves like in the western world & hopefully would shrug off the clichéd tags of ‘a woman’s work’ when he changes diapers of his child.

Hmm, the toughening up phase comes very early in a boy’s life, the tool used by adults is that of shame. Little boys are made to feel guilty about their weakness, they are laughed at..if they play ‘house-house’…instead G.I.Joe’s are thrust onto them, war stories r selectively read out to them. Their sisters are allowed to wail, whine, simper but the boys are admonished for acting like a ‘sissy’. Aawww! Somewhere aren’t we losing out this amazing guy who can grow up to be a mushy romantic? Instead we land up with monsters who prefer to ‘act cool’ by appearing aloof & as he ages, you get the double benefit of having a mean & grouchy fellow for company. I wouldn’t blame them too much, these boys have been receiving mixed signals since childhood on how to ‘be strong’ & yet appear ‘cool’ as a man.

Cant help but bash the women again for doling out statements after a break-up where she goes ‘He didn’t even bat an eyelid while I wept for weeks, stopped eating, stopped talking to friends’. Stop! Men suppress their feelings of rejection, they are hurt just as bad or maybe even more…imagine, carrying that sorrow without being able to vent it out as easily as a woman can? He’s not supposed to act like a wimp, remember? Underneath that bravado is a bleeding heart…I wish girlfriends/wives learn to hear that silent melancholic beat of her man’s heart & without his saying anything…she can take him in her arms & help him open the floodgates of his locked self…letting his tears wash away the silt & debris without making him feel like a weakling.

A boy who pours out his feelings in a diary is NOT a gay! If he jots down quotations in his diary, it doesn’t make him any less of a man nor does smoking pot & drinking make him any more of a man.

Another stereotypical image of a guy as a stealer of female hearts & virginity makes us- women hate them but we’ve never peeped into their turbulent mind which is sharply divided between 2 schools of thought. One, where he’s been taught by his parents/teachers/moral science classes that he should respect girls, that having sex just for the heck of it is abhorrable while on the other hand, the locker room talks of male peers who reduce girls to mere objects of desire, where its important if the guy has ‘scored’ or not.

“Where sexual intercourse is seen by the girl as an act of love n the ultimate connection, for the guy who’s not so clear about his intentions, its more about confirming his masculinity & realizing that he has ‘come of age’ as biologically he has no other means of understanding when he’s sexually mature unlike a girl whose sexuality is marked by the onset of menstrual cycle” {Courtesy: Biology World, though I don’t remember their exact words}

I guess, the ‘real’ guy is one who isn’t too overt with his advances to a girl but lets her know tenderly that he likes her & makes a concrete move only when he’s sure of a lifelong commitment to her & that has nothing to do with a guy being a mama’s boy or a He-man kinda guy.

That reminds me of another topic where young boys try hard to please their father, but alas this article would meander further hence I shall stick to this topic.

So I would rather say Heineini to a mama’s boy with his open affection whom I can lend a shoulder to cry on than an overtly testosterone pumped alpha male who might want to show off his latest bike stunts n try to impress me with his ‘I bashed up guy XYZ’.

Heineini in Hebrew means ‘here I am, with you’

Silver Jubilee...

2008-06-08T03:55:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday to myself...I finally touch an age where I am neither too young..nor too old...25...& yet every time i steal a glance at the reflection...I see a stranger in the mirror...

Why do good ppl die young & bad ones r da last to die?

2008-03-12T02:44:00.000-07:00

Father was lying bleeding on da rail tracks, the trains had been extremely crowded tht day but he didn’t want me to be late fr skool…he shoved me hard & I was sucked into the human quicksand of the carriage…Hanging precariously on the foothold of the entrance…I don’t know when the electric pole hit him, when he fell down….when he made a call to my skool principal lying on the tracks bleeding, to send someone to meet me at the next station as he knew tht I wud panic and would be stranded at the station…Its only when I got down at the station and the train went away and yet there was no sign of him…that I realized all too late that something might have happened to him….Suddenly I saw my skool guard and they took me to the waiting room….I was numb, where was daddy?
Later they announced him brought dead, they said if he was brought in earlier, he wud have survived…the mob that had gathered around him near the tracks, let him bleed while they raised slogans of ‘remove these redundant electric poles frm near the tracks’, my dad was intentionally being kept as a showpiece so that it cud grab media’s attention as no one listens to the complaints of the common man….they didn’t take him seriously, they didn’t think it mattered that blood was flowing…they only saw him making a call lying down…& they assumed, he was ‘just hurt’….the electric pole didn’t kill my father, the mob did….the authorities did, who don’t take death traps seriously till someone chokes to death in it…

The ‘I’ here is a class 5 student of Loreto Convent, sealdah….but somehow whilst listening to this story from my mother’s mouth…somewhere in the subconscious…I saw him as my own father and tears were streaming down my cheeks…Mom stopped reading from the newspaper....That same newspaper article came back to haunt me few days later, whilst I was stuffing some rubbish into a paper packet to throw it away…the same article…a disposable paper packet now…

Chicken pox & high fever made extremely cosy bedfellows in my body…and I wanted to die…I wanted to commit suicide…
Blow after blow...1 tragedy melting like butter into the passionate embrace of another tragedy….1st the businessmen who treated us like rats and threatened to water our holes and drown us if we didn’t let them build industries at the very spot where our nest stood, 2nd my class 12 exams were round the corner…I told my parents not to budge and to turn a blind eye to the cowardly neighbors who were like rotten teeth growing on decayed gums…a bit of push here n there and they shook,rattled and fell away…How was I to know tht my whole family wud perish for the principles I stood for…why was I spared, when I was the culprit…
Mother dying in the hospital, sister and father battling for their lives in that hospital while my brother and I, ran from 1 ward to the next, buying medicines on borrowed money and I didn’t even have time to cry about all the books, my valuable notes that I had prepared for my final class 12 board exams…what are notes and bks? When ur whole house has been put on fire to raze out your voices for daring to be insolent..for daring to be rebellious..Next day, father and sister passed away too…& I cursed myself for having slept at my tutor’s home that fateful nite, aft a hard day at studying continuously…when I was woken up…to witness my house burning angrily…
This ‘I’ is a 17 yr old poor boy, whose home was his shanty and though his father n mother were were illiterate vegetable vendors, this boy was a topper in class 10 with 90+ marks in Boards(that too not ICSE,CBSE but West Bengal Board where itz tuff to even score 80%) and he was all geared to become the 1st boy from the shanty, from the colony of slum dwellers to be declared a topper in class 12 too till….
Why? Why does God punish innocents and let the bastards go scot free without even a scratch on their backs?
As a kid, I used to often ask mom ‘Why do good ppl die young and why do bad ppl not die ever, even when we curse them so much?’ and mom always said ‘God calls his good children back as he doesn’t want them to suffer…to live this life, is to suffer more’….But I am not convinced…I am not….i almost hate god fr what he does, not once, not twice but every time…

Bloody scene-exactly 23 yrs back.Yea,yea my b'day today

2007-06-05T04:34:00.000-07:00

Quite a macabre pic to announce my b'day....but for the 1st time, i equated my b'day with the amt. of pain my mom must have gone through..yrs back...shudnt it be the mother who celebrates the birthday of her child...its a triumph that she should savour n relish.
What did I do to deserve a grand celebration each yr?
Im goin to office on my b'day....Im tired of workin alone in a far away city...atleast I cud have made the day special for my mom, had I been wid her...but the irony is, I would have taken her presence In my life for granted & it wudnt even have dawned on me that it is she who should be taken out for a treat & made to feel special for having survived not just the back breaking 9 months for the Richa foetus to develop from an embryo to a salsa loving girl ...but to have endured the stormy pre teen yrs that I had.....the disturbing teen yrs when I turned into a bookworm & became a spoilt tantrum thrower...to have had to keen a sharp eye out when i was dating a guy, while i was in college( I can imagine how nerve wracking it must have been, with all my hide n seek ways)...None of it anymore:)....no stamping my feet in anger...not even dating any guy;)

It's not 8th june yet but I cant resist putting up a post to mark the end of 23 yrs...

Nuzzling....

2006-11-28T02:21:00.000-08:00

Cold winds sweep through the terrain of my mind....Nah,its not the November chill that has been nibbling at my benumbed soul but the inevitable glacial refrigerated attitude that comes hand in hand whilst working in the corporate world that makes one crave for a fireplace of love....If it wasn't bad already to be staying alone in a city miles away from home, for the past 2.5yrs...the sense of being orphaned somehow has got emblazoned on my heart. I need laser tatoo removing technique to get rid of such a clumsy feeling:)
Like a flash in the fan, when I get to watch people cosying upto to each other...it acts as a trigger in my brain & out pours...gushes,...the fungus ridden memories....
I caught a pair nuzzling yesterday...not in a vulgar mode but in a rather coy style & all around them I could feel warmth irradiating....how I longed to bask in that envelope of warmth...and yet felt paranoid that I wanted to snatch the cosy moments of two unknown strangers....I feel I am leading a Robinson Crusoe-ish life...left to my own devices to fend for myself...to ward off wolves...to eat & sleep & live by my wits...but I fail to see the purpose of this kind of life.
What scares me more is the fact that Robinson was the sole human on an island...but I am living in a city bursting at its seams with ppl...For god sake,this city is the capital of the world's 2nd most Populous country.
What an irony,that I still feel I am all by myself...and the hustle bustle of ppl around me...is nothing but a mirage that every wandering soul imagines while stumbling his or her way thru the desert...

Memories...have always been cruel on me....Cant I, just for a day.....lose my memory...An amnesiac's life wud be bliss for a parched soul like me...
For memories have a strange way of turning you lonely even when you are in a crowd & can make you feel crowded with past wistful thoughts when you are standing all alone...

Envy...she felt..

2006-09-06T04:34:00.000-07:00

Malachite green....and not damask red....Envy they say, can change the color of blood...& so it did, shimmering emerald drops of blood gurgled its way through the hairpin bends of my fragile veins as it saw someone else possess what I wanted to own...endless dreams, limitless fantasies...and yet i remain that beggar girl with a greedy look in my eye, envying those lucky ones...coz yet again, i lost another important match and all i can do is watch helplessly as my blood changes to a chlorophyll slush....and drags me to the unpleasant dungeons of heartburn and insomnia.
Envy that rips me apart...as i suffer silently....

Games rains play....

2006-07-14T00:07:00.000-07:00

Half lit room, a broken mirror...
flashes of lighting chasing growling clouds...

Intoxicating smell of wet earth & perfume from her body...
grasped each other passionately & an exotic fragrance was born...

Rain drops fell to the tune of her anklets...
that chimed in mellifluous chorus,hugging her shapely ankles in joy...

She ran out of her room & let rain soak her through & through...
laden with jewellery & primroses tucked in her hair.

With a letter clutched in her hand, her eyes seeking the horizon hungrily...
she hummed,she laughed,she splashed on puddles like a street urchin.

The wispy thin fabric clung to her curves apologetically,
while men ogled...

Wet and vulnerably young...
men envied the man for whom she danced in the rain...

Must have been waiting for long...
they discussed in murmurs.

Her smouldering eyes looked even more enigmatic...
with kohl dissolving in the rain & running down her face...

Her diamond nose stud sitting pretty on that delicate nose
shone brighter on getting wet...

Blood red dripped down from the parting of her hair...
vermilion that a widow needed no more.

For no one knew she was crying...
rain wiped away her tears...

So it was agony,not ecstasy that the men had witnessed..
the dastardly rains had misguided them all....

The Harem...

2006-06-28T02:18:00.000-07:00

Dripping mane…
Mischievous smile lighting those bee stung lips…

Careless beauty…did someone say?
More of a vivacious flame that dances wickedly

Teasing the senses…
Tempting the dormant feelings.

A storm caught in a glass jar
Captured & imprisoned…

Nailed to the wall
And trapped in his love…

Some neatly stacked on shelves in his glass palace,some nailed to the wall.
Stand all the fair maids he once loved,or so he claimed….

Not one,not two…
Not a specific wild flame in particular…

We are talking of an exotic harem here…
Preserved and embalmed.

Room that echoes with stifled cries..
Of love that was promised & never kept.

And he goes about his job with sincerity…
Trapping the impossible….

The bevy of wild manes,caught by his expert hands…
Entangled in his web of love….

And there it stands…
One more new jar to the already pretty collection….

For a taste of eternity from his luscious lips…
They trade their wings for the glass jar

Peekaboo...she said tentatively...

2006-06-21T02:04:00.000-07:00

Stirrings within me....some ancient primeval need to make love to my inner self
I peek out of my self imposed restriction...

Is it safe to put my heart on paper again
and let the drops of blood melt into words?

I think so...yes it is...
For i felt the burden light off my soul...

Tentative,skeptical steps towards the blog world once more
This is where i belong,where i feel satiated...

But time is a factor...
Too busy building my life from scratch again...

Priorities in life have changed...
But blogger,i shall always remain...

My birthday...

2006-06-07T09:18:00.000-07:00

Sigh...another 8june....and this time i feel apprehensive turning 23...and scared too...

For the first time in my life-i am lifting off lines from someone else...rather than being original....maybe coz its painful for me to write....maybe i will not be able to write again....

here's pablo neruda's beautiful lines...

"I have forgotten your voice, your happy voice; I have forgotten
your eyes.
Like a flower to its perfume, I am bound to my vague memory of
you. I live with pain that is like a wound; if you touch me, you will
do me irreparable harm"

Quitting the blog Land...

2006-05-03T12:44:00.000-07:00

My death...
The death of a writer...
For reasons,that i cannot disclose..i have decided to chop my limb and limp around with one less leg...
My blog was my soul, it wept...when i wept....it stirred with rage...when i grew angry...it breathed on its own....i feel like a murderer...strangulating a life form while it pleads & begs me to let it live...

And no,it is no writer's block that stops me...I have so much to write about...i can feel the stirrings and yet and yet...
If ever i change my mind,and decide to come back....all of my dear friends....every one of u....i have put up a subscription counter just above the Archives...which wud send u a notification if i do let the waves visit the shores again...

PS-i have rectified the subscription counter,feel free to use it.

'On a swing'

2006-04-18T09:46:00.000-07:00

You can be the ground beneath my feet and I shall be all the ground that you need…(Ground beneath her feet, Rushdie)
And that is exactly what I thought I had read in those earnest eyes .

But look, I am on a swing now and even though you pulled away, I don’t have to worry about falling into a pitless void any more…

There was a time....

2006-04-18T00:15:00.000-07:00

.....When u meant the world to me.

She said....

2006-04-11T11:41:00.000-07:00

I am sorry folks,I know all of you were waiting eagerly to get till the end of the story but I had to delete the previous 2 posts....I am caught in an emotional turmoil and I cannot breathe life into that story anymore, it had five more parts to it but now the story can go no further ....it had not been my intention to hurt anyone by penning down that story…..

If I could explode into a million crystal balls....she says longingly...

2006-04-04T06:51:00.000-07:00

Trapped in the midst of books, rooted to a spot since the morning, underlining book after book, taking down notes tediously, cramming every nook of my weary mind with every bit of information that seems potentially relevant for the exam....& somewhere in the monotony of it all, I get this wild wanton urge to explode into a myriad crystal balls and float blissfully with the abandon of a gypsy cloud...to leave behind my troubling notes on the desk for a couple of hours and take a detour from studying.
As i look out of the window longingly....i wish i could wander along a million directions all at the same time...i long to scatter in mid air in the form of dainty delightful crystals, ride on the wind’s back ....feel the breeze envelope me and lift me to dizzying heights....for just a half an hour, i wish i could breathe free and flow with the tide...

Miss u mom, miss u sis...

2006-03-28T10:06:00.000-08:00

This snap plucks me out of 2006 and takes me back to the summer of '88...possibly the best days of my life....

Sshh....she whispered...

2006-03-24T00:50:00.000-08:00

Final exams from 3rd April till 18th May.....
Time to take a hiatus....
This blog shall keep springing back to life, every now & then sporadically whenever i manage to squeeze out time... in between my exam schedule...umm,possibly it shall be just the pics that wud do all the talking till end May.
Till then, I would want my blogger friends(especially the loyal ones) to be patient ...coz writing is definitely gonna take a backseat right now.

'Yet another dance'...she said...

2006-03-17T04:51:00.000-08:00

Won a couple dance competition….
Rules were romantic…
Each couple had to dance on a sheet of newspaper which got shorter and shorter with every round.
Music picked up pace as the couples drew closer and closer… trying their best not to step out of their sheets to prevent getting eliminated.
Round one was easy…round two was manageable without brushing against my partner…round three, well, we both got umm…real close…I could feel the hot breath...the generous sheet of newspaper had been folded so many times by then, that it resembled a scrap of sheet from my diary.
Then there was this other couple on whom everyone was betting…they were our toughest competitors.
Round four saw three sets of couples dancing, rest had been eliminated …with their bodies enmeshed together and barely breathing…lest a single breath made them lose their balance and they blundered enough to step out of their respective sheet…during such a deliciously precarious situation I wondered....how many more rounds? coz we cudnt have got any closer….and would we?
By round five, the sheet resembled a half page torn out of a notebook…every couple adjusted on the sheets according to their convenience….the couple who were a favorite amongst the crowd, decided to stand on one foot each and dance…..but I realized, I cudnt have taken up that particular strategy ….instead my partner looked into my eyes and said-‘have faith on me’….and there I was… balancing myself totally on my partner’s feet….with my whole body weight to support plus continue dancing was quite a task for my partner….and yet we won…
Later, I got to know that in such paper dances, the last round consists of such a tiny piece of paper that the guy has to lovingly pick up his girl off her feet and in his arms and so the couples dance...while the spectators hoot boisterously till the ones who manage not to lose balance are declared winners.
Thank god, our competitors had lost their balance before we could reach the last stage…for who would like to be picked by her partner who is incidentally her female friend…. as there was a shortage of couples in the party and we were made to fill in….

Feverish dreams...she recalls...

2006-03-09T02:26:00.000-08:00

Fever ridden dreams can be so magical….so surreal…so out of this world…all I do nowadays is wake up for a few minutes and try to step out of the bed and the comfortable bed seduces me back to it…as though beckoning me back to its warmth with a Come Hither look. And within minutes I am transported to the land of candy floss flavoured dreams that are indeed spun in thin flimsy pink threads that flail their arms and nudge my heavily sleep sedated brain to remember them long after I am supine no more.

But why are my dreams always so disturbing and acrid?Drenched with a macabre tinge and in twisted French knots that smell of gruesome, grisly blood curdling fictional scenes that flit through my mind as they keep pace with the rapid eye movement of my closed eyes. Sometimes i can spot familiar faces in those dreams but why do they have buttery flesh that drips horrifyingly from their faces and melt in front of my eyes and they cry out to me to collect their flesh in cups which i do collect but with shaking hands and then they drink it to gain back their lost mouths and eyes….sometimes they cough blood just like me and blood oozes out of their noses too but nothing is more scary than the claustrophobic dreams that I have…..where I see myself getting turning into a beautiful midnight blue butterfly with kohl lined margins that define my fragile wings

….and yet my life spins in an unhealthy anticlockwise manner in all my dreams….helplessly I watch myself undergoing a metamorphosis from a fluttering beauty to an ugly wormlike creature around whom a gooey muddy brown sticky liquid wraps itself round and round….like a nine yard saree it covers me up and oxidizes to a semi solid mass on exposure to the humid night air….trapped in a cocoon and hanging from the branch of a tree…I lie blinded while my degenerated lungs scream for oxygen and hot tears roll down my retrogressed cheeks,begging to be released from such a forced exile.
And that is when I wake up with a jolt, with sweat running down my face and I realize that my deep seated fear of having turned stagnant in my life has spilled onto my subconscious grooves of the brain and it warns me delicately to step out of my self imposed laid back pupal stage.

Fingers crossed...she says...

2006-03-07T01:51:00.000-08:00

My body refuses to fight back anymore...
Weakness engulfs me....
A bleeding nose,a bleeding throat and an overwhelming lethargy...
I wonder which disease these symptoms point to...

And i keep evading the doctors....
Coz hospitals make me feel claustrophobic.
For i have too many harsh memories...
of those sanitized corridors.

Keeping my fingers crossed...
to let Nature take its course.
For they say...
There's a lot of power in crossed symbols...

Liberated....She declares....

2006-03-02T04:18:00.000-08:00

Finally you managed to break out of your cocooned silence...
I thought you would never write again....
But I was wrong
and I am glad that you proved me wrong...

Raging Fever sweeps through me...and i burn....

2006-02-25T05:08:00.000-08:00

As fever churns into a molten golden liquid and gurgles through my blood...
and i lose precious study time, staring at the ceilings the whole day...
i feel frustrated...

Bitter medicines, mercury shooting up the thermometers....
damn the whole charade.
Weak and wasted, helpless and dependent on others..

And i miss being pampered...
the way Dad and Mom used to fuss about me.
Falling sick was a luxury back then.

Whole body roasts in fire...
Eyes burn, throat aches...
And all i can do is wait till the wicked spell lifts off me.

She is no more with us....

2006-02-19T03:46:00.000-08:00

Who believed she would never return from the hospital… that she would never get to perform her experiments in the dilapidated DU lab of the chemistry wing….not me, not her well wishers who had rushed to the ICU unit to contribute their bit of blood when she ran short of it….
Imprisoned in the parasitic hospital since 22 Dec till 15 Feb …she continued her painful struggle to survive each day, living on the bread and butter of hope the doctors doled out to her in generous amounts,they even gave her second helpings of it..…and she waited for that one day when her bruised, wounded body could heal and she could walk free….
The doctors played their game well….fed stories of hope to her parents and even discouraged them from shifting her to AIIMS, saying it would cause further damage if she was shifted out of their ward…like parasites they fed on her family…milking out every ounce of flesh from her folks…….squeezing out every bit of the 4 lakh rupees….by keeping her admitted in the hospital for two long months and pretending that she would eventually ‘be fine’…..then why did she not live to see another day? Why did the doctors shrug their shoulders on 13 feb, 2 days after the full payement had been made and say ‘we thought she would recover but chances are slim’.

None of the hospital authorities have any idea how the 4 lakhs limped its way to their trust. True, 2 lakhs were paid by her parents ….but the rest 2 lakhs? No, not the professors of her Department…they stingily took out 500 bucks and without any guilt handed it to the students of her class…who had each contributed not less than 1000 bucks. And we thought it’s the professors who earn. What happened to the professors fund? Grudgingly, they made a cheque and handed it to the students, who put up donation boxes everywhere-all the Boys Hostels, all the Girls Hostels…at our Central Science library,faceless students…unconnected to her, not even from her department…contributed handsomely…..
Our next stop was at the ruling Students Political Party organization which has a fund for such emergencies…the Delhi University crowd is known for the fiercely fought battles amongst the student political parties backed by the Congress,BJP, even CMs are involved…and what answer did we get? The ring leader of the student political party said they just had 400 bucks left in that fund of theirs!! Damn! Where had the rest of the money gone? Were these the very thugs we had elected to power? These students who are shaping up like our very own politicians……they play in money….all those expensive cars they travel in during the election phase in Delhi Univ……all the money they splurge on posters,banners, feeding their goons….and now they flatly refuse to lend even that measely 400 bucks for a girl who had voted them to power few months back?
Welcome to the world of our student representatives who would one day make it as full fledged politicians. The Mamta Banerjees, the Ghulam Navi Azads, the various other politicians who were a part of the student political wing and emerged as powerful hot guns of today, imagine these unscrupulous,unsavoury creatures as our politicians in the next ten years or so….replacing the old crop of leaders of the youth who go on to hold the reins of the country’s administration.
These 20 something youths, our own classmates we share benches with, can be such dastardly mud slinging cheap politicians in the making….i wonder where our country is headed.

'He who loves long necks'...

2006-02-17T21:51:00.000-08:00

There are those who love women with long and slender necks...
I wonder why some men get swayed by such superficial parameters...

So what if she doesnt have a seductively long neck?
Does it make her any less of a woman?

Is a giraffe like neck more kissable?
Huh?

'Subtractions'...

2006-02-17T08:22:00.000-08:00

Somewhere in a survey book lay a piece of data….
Which rang out merrily and informed me politely that…
The average life expectancy of a male is sixty three years…

I counted on my fingers…I recounted on my other hand…
I even grabbed a paper & pen and wrote down the figures neatly…
And subtracted…
And hoped i had made a silly mistake while subtracting,as usual...

I felt faint….i felt angry…i felt scared to death..
I even dragged out the calculator to nullify my miscalculations…
But the wicked calculator sided with my weak mental calculations,this one time when i didnt want it too…

The answer remained a stubborn six!
Six more years only?
But I haven’t even achieved anything…
Agreed,im a slow learner...but only six or so years to prove myself?

Daddy how can they say you have approximately only six more years to go?
How dare they….those creatures.
For you are going nowhere…
Nowhere at all...

Not until …not until…
Not until when?
Hell…it never did strike me until now that...
Even you might abandon me midway..

'Times we spent together'...

2006-02-15T01:23:00.000-08:00

Almost a decade back....all the fun...all the pranks, all the tricks that we played...i've started missing it all so bad already sis,....what would happen to me when im an old toothless hag forty or so years down the line? Would i miss the times we spent together, even more? Mentally am i already ageing too fast?

I dont think we'd ever get to stay together...u'd go ur own way...i'd go my own...our childhood can stay captured in the photo album...but that's the most that can remain of sisterhood.
I wonder how mom & dad cope with the empty room that was once our den of vice!....the room where your posters of cute puppies nudged my fav. posters out of sight....or why on Earth mom stills dusts the board games that we used to play...would we ever get to stay under the same roof long enough to play those games or for that matter cuddle those innumerable soft toys that still makes my room look occupied...and no,it is not your room... it was initially my room till you tumbled out of the sky(well,that was mom's side of the story for the very long time till my friends laughed their head off and i finally knew the truth!)...
Does it pain dad to glance at the two study tables placed diametrically opposite in that room....one shaped like a huge piano where my scattered mess of books always threatened to turn into a nice hideout for cockroaches and looked like a complete eyesore and the other dazzlingly blue study table that had all the books piled neatly...the epitome of tidyness....and yet the cockroaches were always happier paying u a visit than me...much later, did we realize that the exotic chocolates wrappers of ur fav brand of chocolate brought all the way from Belgium were stacked in 1 of the drawers of the table long after u stealthily finished eating 'em without even offering me & when i did ask for the goodies....manipulatively innocent that u've always been....all u had to say was-"Come on sis' look at ur waist,do u wanna ruin it?"& i wud back off immediately....and what a magpie u turned out to be!collection of choco wrappers for the past seven years!Whoa...u also had a scrap book where u'd meticulously stuck a strand of ur beautiful smooth hair....i always knew u were vain & strutted around like a peacock...but to actually stick pieces of hair and ...yeah,even ur milk tooth when it fell off...er,was way too much for me to digest but nothing beats the fact that u collected fluff's broken teeth on ur scrap book too! What a way to show affection to our doggie.
And...
Poor dad,he was always compelled to buy two of everything....we'd even demanded two seperate pet dogs for ourselves....i still haven't found anything that we have in common....man!even our blood groups are different!

What goes thru his mind when he sees two diff. toothpastes lying unfinished, two diff cupboards filled with equally diff kind of discarded clothes, two diff. genre of music CDs sitting idly somewhere, two diff sets of collection of books...the only thing we never did want seperate was the study table....it gave us time to talk...which was anyway, better than studying. All we did at the study table was talk....no wonder,mom made sure she got a seperate table for u and made us sit with our backs turned to each other...but it never did stop us from turning around & talking,did it?
But life does strange things....now we do have our backs facing each other but hey! there's no way we can turn & talk to each other as often as we would want....even though mom's intimidating figure doesnt come hurrying from the kitchen to wag an admonishing finger & warn us not to waste our precious study hour by chatting up a storm......

One more dance....

2006-02-14T21:13:00.000-08:00

One more dance …
One more waltz ….

A lavender tinged blush…
A coy smile…

One more sleepless night of vivid imagination…
Ah...so you were not really there…next to me..

Just my mind playing tricks…
But what about the music that filled the air….or was it just my heart singing?

'Beheaded'....she said hazily...

2006-02-13T01:05:00.000-08:00

Can make no head nor tail of my thoughts that run like cockroach nymhs in varied directions when a ray of torchlight jolts them out of their comfortable cerulean darkness.
Feelings of love that had been shoo-ed away by me, have come revisiting my heart like the murmur of the sea in the pregnant evening air.

My insides shook as yet again the germ of love...the old love succeeded to break my immune system,defeat my antibodies,mock my soldiers-the white blood cells and tried to take control.In retaliation, my body developed a raging fever and raised its temperature to make it uncomfortable for the germs to mate and breed further.
While my hypothalamus nestled on a throne of grey matter and protected by a fort of a skull, orders my body in a dictator like tone to scale up my body temperature further....but that is no solution....I realized I need to decapitate...behead the ugly head of love that has attained adult shape from its innocuous germ like larval stage and is trying to stick to the wall of my heart by mean of its parasitic suckers and hooks and turning obese like a leech filled to its brim with blood or more like the way a disgusting Taenia solium...er,the tapeworm attaches its hooklets to the intestinal wall & sucks away the nutrients...
Is this the incoherent talk of a fever ridden mind or did I really manage to behead the ugly thing & even mountit on a pole as a reminder, a la Red Indian style. But why then, did that grotesque head turn itself into an adorable dog's head?Is it trying to melt my heart with its ever changing deceptive looks so that i go back and unmount it?

What's up with me?Why has a magical realism crept into my write ups?Why do the lines of reality and imagination appear blurred or rather merged? Even the picture looks different on a second glance....the mounted head no longer looks mounted....the beheaded head no longer looks decapitated...just looks a bit detached...

Damn me! Why am I being delusional? Why am I hallucinating? Why do I hear voices in my head? Voices that carry a whiff of fish-rich wine laden broth of the Arabian Sea…and sing to me in the night-‘I loved you’…'I loved you'…..'I swear there was no other woman in my life except you'…..'but you beheaded my love coz you thought I courted deception with my lecherous glances and slept with infidelity'.

'On second thoughts....'

2006-02-06T10:38:00.000-08:00

....It just struck me that how on Earth can i aspire to play the game of chess when i am but a pawn rooted to the floor of the chess board.

Just a pawn....

Been played with, for long .....by the master of the game.

Play with me no more.......my fragile heart can take it no more....

'February-The month of love or oxymorons?'...she wonders aloud...

2006-02-06T02:32:00.000-08:00

The mad coupling of love lost & love regained.
Full throated whispers in the darkness & subtle clawing …

Storm tossed oceans & torrid affairs.
Cracked ice bergs & frozen blood….

Revlon rich lips & washed out feelings.
A throbbing heart & a slowing pulse…

Wild thoughts & mild reactions.
Uncontrolled surge & restrained breathing.

A cold fire scorching my life & unlocked secrets for everyone to read...
The 14 february effect and the 28 February exam schedule..

Smiling wounds & tear stained lachrymal glands...
Confusion in my thoughts & crystal clear emotions…

Why did you come back & yet leave me back then…
Mind in disarray & heart dumbfound…

Caught in a game of chess & released on the chess board as a pawn…
In a mood to win & yet at a loss …

But if love were a game of chess…
Should I play with my heart or my head?

'I wanna stand on my own two feet'....she declares with an arrogant toss of her head

2006-01-14T01:55:00.000-08:00

Whatever it takes, I am ready to slog it out...but dont expect me to get rid of my fangs, of my talons, of my wild ways and tone down from a fiesty female to a demure & docile domestic old hen with a brood of chicks...
Nah......confined within a matchbox like home is not my cup of tea.....being dolled up and fluttering the coquettish eyelashes to appear servile to please others is definitely not what I want.
For heaven’s sake dont expect us to get tied down so fast....why do I see my friends getting ready to settle down so fast....wait a minute girls,not so fast...there's lots to be achieved...
What would it be like to savor the delicious taste of being independent and having a say in matters that can change the course of a country. What would it be like to be working for a powerful organization....the CBI for instance or the bureaucracy....Miles to go...i keep reminding myself and still unhappy with my present state of unpreparedness....

'I wish'...she said with a look that spoke of yearning..

2006-01-11T08:12:00.000-08:00

I wish....I wish...I wish.....
But I am way too scared to spell out what I want from life....

'The hangman'..... she said....

2006-01-07T02:21:00.000-08:00

The hangman….the noose that tightens around the neck….the culprits…sometimes the innocent victims framed by others ….
The raging debates that interrogates our conscience and question marks that pop up in our head. Is it barbaric to hang a murderer? Would we be denying justice to the grieving party if the murderer prowls within the walls of the jail, even if it is a life sentence?
And yet I always bay for the culprit’s blood….i want him or her slaughtered....the idea of the culprit staying alive doesn’t sit pretty with me….Was I ever a part of the raucous audience in my past life, that used to cheer boisterously in the Roman gladiators where warrior blood spilled and mingled with the blood of the beasts….

But what about the hangman? Does he really view them as mere numbers and not humans when he hangs them….as was portrayed in a story I’d read long back…can he be that mechanical about the whole issue?
Does he feel powerful? Or does it fill him with remorse? Does it make him feel he’s playing God…terminating a life?
Does he empty his mind of all emotions and perform that act? Is his mind like a wet black slate that has been wiped clean of any thoughts written in chalk, with a cloth?
Does it scare him that the spirits of the hanged men might haunt him? Does he face hurdles in life in a different way from us, as in does he feel he’s being punished by the men whose souls he robbed….whenever something goes wrong in his life?
Does a transparent thin veil of guilt creep in when his child contracts a near fatal disease…does his thoughts fly to the handful he had lassoed…and does it make him wonder if his child is suffering because of his profession?
Does a hangman try very hard to stop his son from becoming another hangman?
And yet I think I’ve heard of men taking up this profession coz their ancestors were hangmen too…I also heard of the hangman who fell violently sick after he had hanged an animal by the name of Dhananjoy Chatterjee…Ofcourse, I was happy that a rapist of his kind was being punished….my blood still boils when I think of how he’d slammed her head against the wall repeated, pulled off tufts of her hair, pulled off parts of her nails from her fingers and managed to rape her four times even after she had turned stone cold….a girl of fifteen…and he had been her security guard….
They say, media glamorized the whole incident and kept pestering the hangman days in advance, kept needling him and published interviews of how he wud feel when he was to hang Dhananjoy…..the hangman was made to feel guilty….made to feel he was committing a sin….and he buckled under pressure…..

A morbid thought on a cold January noon….people wonder why I think of such macabre stuff when I could have gone on a date with a nice guy, been to a pub with him and spent the day like most of my friends….but somehow my mind wanders along a different track…is that why I prefer writing to dating?

'Happy Birthday Mom'...

2006-01-02T02:41:00.000-08:00

Here's raising a toast to the most amazing woman on her birthday. Every time I have a look at these sepia colored snaps and I say to myself 'Damn! this beautiful woman is my mom' and shake my head in disbelief ...a good thing that I managed to inherit that perfectly sculpted nose of yours...

This snap manages to capture that moment in your college days....days of listening to ABBA’s Dancing Queen, days of flower power...hippies, bell bottoms, weird hairstyles, break dances in discos, floral shirts that men wore, ruffled laces on the sleeves.....
That moment in this snap.... where you are tilting the mike and about to address the whole college during the Freshers' Party,there’s a girl behind you trying out the tunes on her guitar….I heard there were boys who had wolf whistled at you when you took centre stage….Now! don't look at me like that….your best friend told it to me one day when we were pouring over these pics…blame her…

Those drownable eyes…the shining silky raven colored hair....that glowing skin....that blood red bindi which sizzled on your forehead and epitomized the firebrand that you were. Now, why do all the firebrands have such a fetish for large red bindis? Look at Brinda Karat, the first ever woman to be elected to the Communist Party of India-Marxist Politburo & the red bindi stares back defiantly from her forehead.
Er,next time we meet...i have got to ask you....were you also a staunch feminist back then...i have this sneaky feeling that probably you were ;-)

No wonder it was a cake walk for you to be crowned the Queen of Spades in college…I heard you were the most popular girl in the campus…Its fun to watch sister even now, after so many years…when she gets into the whole 'walking the ramp' mode and pulls out from the cupboard, that black satin sash with words in silver emblazed that louds reads 'Queen of Spades', wears it & sashays down the house pretending to be you....
But you still keep it under wraps…as to what the judges has asked you during the Question Round that made them rule out all the other girls and instead declare you the winner….Rumors have it that you did play with words when you had delivered those winning answers but what were they?

PS-If i know you well... its dad who would be lamenting about the fact that the whole family couldn’t get together on 3rd Jan & u’d pretend to appear casual about it...for that firebrand spark of the 70s still burns within u....but i know....deep down...you will be miserable without me or sis.....cheer up....i’ll be a little late for your birthday but i’ll drop by on 19 Jan....and so will sis....itz you thatz making us leave behind Delhi & Jamshedpur to make a dash for Kolkata....and you thought you have managed to sweet talk me into attending the cousin's wedding lined up for 19 jan...Nah....

'They were just stealing kisses....

2006-01-01T02:25:00.000-08:00

...and yet the policemen thought it best to roughen them up and leave behind imprints of a tight slap to evoke humiliation...Nah, Operation Majnu is not a stray incident though it did manage to brew a titillating storm in a teeny weeny teacup which had been a sleepy town of Meerut until it caught the glare of media and it squirmed uneasily in its seat....like a hare caught unawares by the headlights of a car while making a dash from a busy road to its abode in a nearby forest.
Ransacking cards shops on Valentines day, burning effigies to demonstrate against a day that’s ear marked to celebrate love(Ah!the purring tigers & cubs of Shiv Sena have always loved being in the news for marring events).....Down south, jumping at a certain actor’s throat for giving vent to her views about pre-marital sex.....poor Sania Mirza getting drawn in the muck as well.....
We Indians have a strange sense of propriety where everyone has drawn his own boundaries of morality according to his own convenience. Is that the reason for the sudden sporadic outbursts from certain people? Strangely, their prudish attitude has an interesting switch on and switch off facility, according to convenience it gets turned on & turned off.
It remains switched off when the grand hotels rope in semi nude femme fatales from across the exotic lands to belly dance their pierced navels to ring in the New Year amidst the raunchy cheers of our men.....and the news channels are considerate enough to beam such enlightening events live into our homes so that the ones who cud not make it to the party, do not miss out on such an essential display that can arouse us intellectually.
Or for that matter, the pre-adolescent girls who get raped day in & day out. Their only fault- No doors to keep out the perpetrators....those drunkards who take advantage of living in such close proximity.....for when did slums have wooden doors! All there is....is a rag of a curtain between the modesty of a slum dwelling girl & the salivating predator.
Any idea how many rapes go unreported in those slum clusters? The latest survey had an unbelievable number of rapes that occur per hour in such clustered inhabitations...i shuddered to even think of it.....

Taking a detour back to my original thought process....not that i advocate young couples to get wild with each other just coz its a park but why have the tendency to go on an overdrive with our preventive measures & then why let our enthusiasm level fizzle out in places where an iron hand is required to deal with a situation that desperately requires it.

Its all a case of over reacting at the wrong place and the wrong time...

'Eavesdropped'...& she heard disappointing stuff..

2005-12-30T09:12:00.000-08:00

Overheard few boys talk....incidentally the place where i live is full of Civil Service aspirants spilling out on the roads like pods bursting out of the pea cover. During the initial days, i was in awe of them....i felt inspired...to watch such studious boys buying GK books all the time....scanning newspapers hungrily...the darker the circles under their eyes...the more i admired them...i felt like a speck of dust against such bookworms...i felt i wasn’t studying enough....but below that glitter lay a murky heap of rotten ideals. Why does everything appear so glamorous to the eye at the first glance...why does it require a trip backstage to realize that these larger than life players of the stage can also be ugly sans their make up.....
Getting back to their conversation....they were discussing which cadre they would love to govern ....Punjab was their first choice...it would be easy to siphon off money from such a rich state they remarked....my stomach lurched when i heard it....Three of them insisted it would be better to opt for the IPS than the IAS coz if they could make it as the IPS of delhi, chances of covering up their tracks after a nice haul would be better. ...sickened, I wondered if accumulating money was the only reason why they were studying so hard to become IAS officers....another suggested ways of taking bribes without arousing the suspicions of the senior officers.....I was depressed....angry....furious....as the pungent smell of corruption that was still at its embryonic stage in the minds of certain students wafted through my nostrils.....
Another made a wisecrack about his teacher at his coaching centre(needless to say, an IAS coaching centre) where the teacher said he did not expect any of his students to start on the path of honesty when they made it to the Civil Services.....i was startled....so this is what the atmosphere is like....at these IAS coaching centres...where the teachers already presume the IAS aspirants would turn corrupt and so they take the liberty to make light of the situation....do these teachers realize the impact their words have on those who never thought of going the wrong way and would eventually accept the fact that being dishonest is the order of the day....after all, a guilty man always searches for a good reason to justify his sins and what better than quoting his teacher and saying that his own teacher never expected him to be honest.

This piece of conversation was heard by me a year & a half ago....i had brushed it aside...thinking these students would never make it through coz they were boys without ideals....somedays back, i was informed by a common friend that some of those very students have made it as IAS officers....i dread to think of it....shivers run down my spine...was there not a single psychologist sitting in the interview panel during the IAS selection or was he there and yet....couldn’t he spot the avarice...the greed....the gluttonous look...the hunger for money....the hollow men without any principles....all it took for such boys to make it through was answering questions on Indian economy, Polity, World Affairs and any damn question that suited the interviewer well....but what about the candidate’s integrity? Why on Earth did no one check that factor? Or can we never unmask such conniving dishonest men who end up constituting the dirtiest of the cabinets of our country...any point screaming ourselves hoarse over the plethora of scams when we go wrong at the selection round itself?
And do the men & women with strong principles in life lose out at the interview round coz they faltered at a question which asked them when was the first foundation stone of Kolkata laid in the oldest part of the city?

To err is human but to keep choosing the rotten eggs for something as important as bureaucracy is catastrophic....

Wrong choices...wrong choices....and i used to think only relationships can go sour due to wrong choices...now i know, there are far more important things that can end in a debacle...

'Drinking away to glory'....she says...

2005-12-27T23:12:00.000-08:00

They drink coz they like to drink.Period.
They work hard the whole week long so mugs of beer bring them respite.
New year celebrations are incomplete without booze…
Who am I to turn judgmental and brand them as drunkards?
Nah…they don’t become bad men only coz they splurge away on liquor…
Am I going to drill sense into them and say its detrimental to health….no way….nor am I going to walk the clichéd path & remind them that it cud have been money well spent had they bought anything except drinks…
Alcoholics Anonymous Associations thrive along the city borders, so there are people who do realize…
Bouts of drinks….animalistic tendencies…sobriety replaced by obscenity….foul language…beating up wives….picking up fights…well, they say it only happens to the so called uneducated masses that drink the country made cheap liquor….

If drinking does add class & finesse then I am all for it….but what about the rash driving, the accidents, the deaths….another example of a classy act? Yeah…yeah…nearly everyone drinks and nothing’s ever happened to them…all these unpleasant things happen to the Others….atleast , I can hope that people do take care and restrain after a bout or two….but who cares to listen to the waves confined to the pages of a blog.

'Derby ride'.....She whispered...

2005-12-25T22:28:00.000-08:00

Daddy…I shud have listened to u & come back home for the vacations….all my friends have gone home….like a ghost I haunt the barren hostel corridors…never thought I wud feel so miserable on 25 dec & miss eating cakes …31st december is going to be another lonely day, deserted by friends, cooped up in a pigeon hole….flashes of childhood memories keeping alive the bonfire to make me stay warm …marooned in a cold city…

Was reminded of those derby rides that u took me to….in my winter holidays...it brings a smile on my face when I remember how tightly I used to clutch ur hand , scared that I might get lost in the fair and never see u again….
Round and round in dizzying circles….sitting on an adorable horse and holding on to a pretty golden rod for dear life , swirling in undulating waves…eyes scanning you amidst the milling crowds as my head spun in a tizzy…. .and flashing that toothy smile at you everytime the derby ride brought u in my field of view…I was so much in awe of the silent presence that stood there patiently while I have my share of fun on those fun rides….ummm….life’s been a derby ride too….u’ve stood back and given me enough liberty to make my own choices, get atop and have my share of fun in these derby rides….but at the end of the day, u’ve always wanted to have me running back to u…..
What if daddy, this one time…I don’t want to leave my choice , what if I don’t want to part ways with this horse that I have grown to love…
For I don’t want this derby ride to end….even if u tempt me with offers of other derby rides with better options...will you be disappointed in me for already making up my mind that I don’t want to have a go at a derby ride on 19 Jan?

'Is asking for a lil' blood toomuch to ask?...She asks everyone....

2005-12-23T08:28:00.000-08:00

I wanted to console u....i wanted to hug u tight...i wanted to give u my blood....but the doctor refused it straight away....anemic he labelled me....i felt worthless....i felt humiliated like i had never felt before....damn...i cudnt donate blood for a dear friend...a friend fatally crushed between two speeding buses near ISBT stop......did she have to go to college that day? did she have to board that bus? Strange that she was supposed to catch a train to Vaishno devi the same evening....not the train where she spent five hours but in an operation theatre....

And why on Earth did such a prominent hospital’s blood bank remain bone dry....not a pint of blood they owned....did they expect you to walk out with a crushed rib cage to fetch ten units of blood.....and beckon passers-by from the streets and ask them to donate blood....what would have happened if the whole Chemistry department’s 180 students along with the Ph.D students and professors not rushed to the hospital on time & let the pin pricks ease out their blood into ten bottles? what if this had happened on 25 december instead of a working day in college?.....what if your blood group had been a rare O negative instead of that very common blood group which courses through your system....would the hospital authorities have played mute and turned away their faces?what if you hadn’t been climbing up the stairs of the University special bus where a few gusty girls from IP college and not the macho guys who preferred being on-lookers......not forced the driver of the bus to drive all the whole to this hospital instead of a dispensary where he wanted to get rid of u and go about his business of picking up passengers and driving away? What if there was even a delay of five minutes in decision making.....

And the helplessness that i felt, calling friends for blood when i myself was rejected....lack of enough haemoglobin, the doctor told me specifically......the acrid taste of disappointment lingered on my tongue yet again....everytime being refused by blood donation camps who refused to let me contribute.....how could i have overcome the guilt had we not been able to get u the amount of blood you required....how could i have faced myself had we lost you coz we cudnt get u something as simple and yet as vital as that scarlet fluid ......

There are those who want to donate blood and cannot.....
And there are those who can and yet do not.....
Why?Why?Why?

'Mummified'....She says

2005-12-16T02:59:00.000-08:00

Sorry,d write up had to be deleted

'Am i just a wall flower?'...She asks herself...

2005-12-13T23:48:00.000-08:00

The sunset spilled like red wine on the floor, it was difficult to tell apart, the crimson rays and the blood that flowed from that old man lying like a crumpled pair of jeans in the dingy corner.
It was a strange coupling in an era ….where laptops meet witch craft…..where innocent men get accused of witch craft and get beaten up bad……Banamati is what they call it….of Ungodly ways and voodoo art and eating human corpses…..of village Politics and media jumping into the fray and panning the ruling government of playing mute….where we talk of doing away with reservations since SCs/STs need them no more and yet we see them being victimized in various forms, be it branding them as sorcerers or evil men practicing Black magic….watch out for those female witches…who are interestingly found in sweeper colonies, where the most excluded community of India breathes in choking gasps.
Caught and burnt at the stake like the Joan of Arc…and yes not to forget the gang rape before the burning, by the so called upper caste men who otherwise shun the very shadow of the untouchables, the dalits…..Gang rape of an untouchable woman? What an oxymoron….what a contradiction and yet it happens….that’s the way the men of the ‘upper’ caste gloat about their superiority….a remarkable show of manhood….and did you know, even if the gates of most temples have been grudgingly opened for the dalits, the judiciary and the army still remains out of bounds for them…as does the private sector mostly..... where there have been no incentives,no reservations for them ever, where the hand still gets chopped off if his cattle unwittingly strays into an ‘upper’ caste man’s land..and before u start thinking it’s only in the villages that such things occur, look around u, look at yourself and think again, do u taunt your friend for having made it to IIM, Ahmedabad ONLY because he made use of the quota?
So long as there are ways of declaring them as witches and eliminating them ….and as long as we have our very own Halloween day which we celebrate on days besides 30 october ....can there be a respite for them?
Cocooned in a safe world, I feel guilty at times for being a mere spectator…am I just a wall flower meant to look pretty sitting on a wall? Just to pout my lips and lift the end of my dress a wee bit,bow & courtsy and play being the charming girl who is aloof from the harshness that coats a sugary sheen to this world full of unfeeling people and people who feel, who empathize but push it at the back of their minds….caught in a flurry to live their own lives…..

Mutation...she Informed all...

2005-12-06T01:45:00.000-08:00

Anomaly…deviant… modification… transfiguration… transformation…geek… grotesque…malformation… miscreation… misshape.
These were some of the words my faithful dictionary threw up when i tried to find the meaning of Mutation.
Somehow the string of such potent words seemed to be pointing to a particular direction or was my mind taking a stroll along a stereotype galley?

Synonyms of the third gender….often confused with cross dressers and gays…the enunchs have held a coveted position of ridicule.
There are the born eunuchs and there are the man made eunuchs. Yeah!Yeah! everyone knows all about it. But what about the eunuchs amidst us?they are not born without 'it'…..they are not castrated to maintain a soprano high pitched singing voice, nah…not even victims of adultery or rape who’ve been punished by being castrated.
Who said eunuchs are those who lack testes and experience hot flushes that withdraw testosterone levels in their bodies…
Egypt had its own take on the gender issue….for them gender was traditionally defined as a role in procreation -- with the male being the one who reproduces in another person's body, and the female being the one who reproduces in her own body -- the eunuch, or exclusive homosexual, who does not reproduce either in his own body or in another person's body, is neither male nor female. This is how they represented a man
and a eunuch on papyrus and scrolls…

So it all boils down to the reproductive capabilities?

A spineless man who cannot stand up for his decisions in life, that cowardly guy without any guts but with a high libido, is he the epitome of a macho man? Just because he can procreate?
The world doesn’t brand a turn coat or a fraud or a born cheater- a eunuch coz he can father and spawn and sire his wild seeds….
Nah…this world has a tendency to make rules and brand people according to its own convenience. This world is full of eunuchs and yes they breed profusely…it is they who have apparently undergone a mutation, not in their organs and hormones but in their sick mind…they don’t need to sprout under develped breasts or possess a feminine voice or even clap in the clichéd way to earn themselves the membership of the eunuch community that makes a living in the dance bars of cities like Mumbai etc…but you can recognize them by their tail tucked in between their legs kinda attitude, those cowardly gestures, the trademark liar streak in them and their false macho attitude. And ‘conquering’ dozens of women by bedding them don’t make them any less of a eunuch…and it never will….

Life is rushing by...She realized...

2005-11-30T23:16:00.000-08:00

Out of breath....can't keep pace....life is rushing by, far too fast.

Some more facts about me...She said...

2005-11-27T02:58:00.000-08:00

Here are the remaining facts about me...

11)Being kissed on the forehead ….thats the most endearing expression of love…

12)Luv the star splashed nite sky….can spend hours laying on my back on the terrace, gazing at the shimmering dots sprinkled lavishly across the thick blanket of the midnight blue sky. My imagination runs wild on such star gazing nights and beautiful thoughts run through my mind….millions of beautiful snapshots….fragments of poetry that form in my mind….wish I cud replace the backdrop of the terrace with a gorgeous beach

13) Since childhood, I’ve had this crazy thing abt writing looong letters to God, telling him all about my life….and when I feel stronger, I tear those letters and leave behind no traces of the secret correspondence between us….

14)Its worth watching daddy dear’s disgusted facial expression whenever I pick up Fluff in my arms and give her a kiss on her wet nose….she is absolutely irresistible when she wakes up from a nap…all groggy eyed…a cute yawning mouth…a butter-won’t-melt-in-your-mouth kinda look on her adorable face….

15) There was a time when I wanted to become a jet-setting travel writer. I’ve always fantasized about exploring the exotic places, tasting their cuisine and as a travel writer,I wudnt even have had to pay for it!Like a carefree bubble...i cud have drifted from one end of the sky to another,from shore to shore,jungle to jungle.
But such a nomadic existence cudnt have brought me any stability in my already chaotic life…

16) Plan to quit the religion I was born with….have never felt at home being a Hindu…never understood idol worship, never realized why a Brahmin considers himself better than a Dalit, I’v always loathed the fuc**ing caste system, never understood why ‘we’ have so many festivals throughout the year, never connected with the ‘richness’ of ‘our’ religion,never understood why we need pandits to solemnize marriage ceremonies or why in case of important events we need to communicate with God via these people who are blessed to be born in a privileged caste.

17) I’ve always wanted to apologize to my parents for not being able to match up to them. Dad is a brilliant mathematician and if mom’s family hadn’t held her back, Today, she cud have been a top notch CEO ruling the corporate world, what with her sharp analytical mind & amazing leadership skills. While I’v always been lousy in maths & yeah have none of mom’s smashing talents. They say the next generation catches up fast & moves 3 steps ahead….i underwent regression….forget, leaping 3 steps ahead, I’ve not even been able to catch up with ‘em. Sorry mom, sorry dad.

18) Would love to have a pair of mischievous twins of my own…someday. I’v always been the obedient,toeing-the-line-everytime-mama-said-anything kinda girls, never bunked college to watch movies,never cheated in exams in skool,never lied to anyone,never disobeyed,rarely ever kept any secrets from my folks……For a change,I wud love to have real brats of my own and experience a more rough childhood…mine was too perfect…

19)Want to leave behind footfprints on the hearts of those whose paths crossed mine…I want people to remember me even after my last performance….long after I have bowed out of the stage….Reminds me of an old song which goes-‘The grass is green & the rose is red, remember me till I am dead…dead…dead…”

20)There are those who have always wanted to see what I look like….after having read my write ups…it’s been like that since my school days, since the time I’ve written anonymously on various forums…..is it that important? Does it matter if I have a perfectly sculpted oval face?
I fail to fathom why people love it more if it’s a pretty face that writes…what if I am one such face, pretty to look at ….or what if I am not….nah, beauty is ephemeral…..fleeting….skin deep…not worth running after it....

'20 random facts about Me'...She said

2005-11-18T02:50:00.000-08:00

Here's my take at trying to put down 20 random facts about myself that would maybe define me to a certain extent.

1)I am my Daddy's girl….here's blowing u a kiss daddy!

2)If I were to live my life again, I wud choose to be an albatross -spread my wings and fly over the ocean. It's the only one in the Kingdom of Animals that mates for life. Invests in a romantic 7 years of courtship and settles down with its mate. Their love is for keeps. They are not used to the concept of multiple partners. Incase, an albatross dies….its mate doesn't survive long.

3)I've always wished for a friend like Barney, the stead fast friend of Laura in Doctors (Eric Segal). Like a rock of Gibraltor, he stood by her…thru thick and thin. Wonder if men can really be such good friends .…ever….Can they?

4)A movie I can watch over & over again->Vanilla Sky, itz my fav & close to my heart.
Maybe coz David(Tom) is unable to win his true love….that strikes a chord with me or maybe it is the way, guilt haunts him all his life for the shabby way he treated the other girl in his life, Julie(Cameron Diaz) who was truly in love with him.
But the best part of the movie…is the last 15 mins when the dreams end and reality takes over, when the surreal abrupts bursts into ur face and u step out of the twilight zone.... once the psychologist played by Kurt Russell starts analyzing David…there are metaphors sprinkled all over...in the movie…itz a thinking man’s movie…it makes u brood…it makes u think & it makes ur heart ache for David when he realizes that the moments spent with Sophia were all an illusion…..that she was never his and yet in the end when she says ‘ You were missed’….it makes u wonder, did she harbour any feelings for him, after all?.But the line that I remember most is where the other girl realizes he’s in luv with someone else and says something to the effect of ‘we’ll meet in our next lifetime, as cats’….

5)I love the sea…I hate the mountains. The way the sea tosses its mighty head arrogantly, rushes into the inviting arms of the beaches and retreats reluctantly to the call of the mermaids that want it back home. I love the way the sea makes love to the beaches, those rumbling sounds of love making when the sea caresses the beaches, fondling it with a mischievous glint in its eye…..
In contrast, the mountains frown at me, rooted at a spot for centuries...with secrets embedded in its bowels and give me an intimidating look everytime my folks drag me to the mountains!!

6)Someday I plan to settle down in the City of dreams….it's not going to be before 2009 but then Mumbai can wait till then.

7)Once there, I would get a chance to fulfill my promise of doing that little bit for Tata Memorial Cancer Institute every now and then. It's going to be pay back time….

8)I can die for Chocolate cakes…umm,there was a time when I was crazy about it….dunno if I am still that way…but then, back then, I was mad about a lot of things…

9)Lines that I would love to hear someday….’Grow old with me, the best is yet to be’…

10)There are those who were distressed when they heard I want to quit blogging….so I decided to stay back…

PS- damn these class tests! 10 more facts to go…wait till the next post.

The child within me peeps out....

2005-11-12T05:26:00.000-08:00

And wonders if quitting writing forever would bring any respite....or is it a coward's way out? an escapist's swan song?

The Stiletto girl...

2005-11-11T08:42:00.000-08:00

I slipped my feet into those pretty stilettos, bathed in blushing lilac…..they had been gathering cobwebs for long. I dusted away the musty webs...dusted away a lot of memories.
Tied the lavender strings emerging from the rear end of the stilettos in a fashionable criss cross…they caressesed and climbed up to a quarter of my legs….slender legs(?). My feet nestled itself in the familiar curves of the stiletto, with the shapely toes and fingers painted a chocolatey maroon , plunging neck down while the arrogant ankle maintained its composure at a dignified height…elevated by the haughty heels.
I took off my anklets….stilettos and anklets have never gelled well together.
Tugged at the strings of my wrap around skirt, held against my waist….and let it fall….too long! That ebony and ivory shaded wrap around skirt which lapped my ankles mischievously…managed to ruin the beauty of my stilettos by hiding the criss crossing lavender roman strings that clung to my legs rather shamelessly.
Picked up a delicate smoky grey skirt, trespassed by mauve colored dainty fleurs…the skirt stopped short at my knees….a field day for my stilettos….without any modesty, the stilettos flaunted themselves…..oozed dollops of sensuality….a feeling that was quite contagious…
With an extra inch adding itself to my 5’4’’ frame, I gained an elegant doe like delicate and sophisticated walk…it felt sexy….it felt innocently refreshing…it reminded me of my childhood days when we stole mom’s stilettos and walked clumsily with our tiny feet swimming in the oversized high heels.
As we grew older, the hankering for stilettos persisted and the prettiest of the lot- who else but my sister, would step into mom’s exotically beautiful midnight blue stilettos, two sizes too big for her and sashay down the gallery in our house and feel regal !
A few days back, I saw a girl with beautiful big eyes, housed in a perfectly oval face… walking down the stairs….she wasn’t able to keep pace…..stilettos look alluring but not much fun to walk around too long….lucky for her, her guy picked her up in his arms lovingly and carried her downstairs. Dunno why is it but guys pamper their girls a lot when they wear stilettos…trust me!
Ah! But I didn’t wear stilettos to lasso men or seduce them….i wore them a last time and then gave them away…..
Who wants to keep reminders that beckon you to take a trip in the past…only the criss cross pattern of the Roman strings remained etched deep on my legs after I’d got rid of the stilettos…..hungrily, the strings had dug into the soft, smooth olive skin and left behind love bites….
But then , neither do love bites remain on one’s skin forever….

Suicide...She wrote...

2005-10-26T11:06:00.000-07:00

1 pm....lunchbreak...had nowhere to go...no money...canteen was meant for those with a full pocket or atleast a half filled one...i settled down on the flight of stairs that led to my Dept...an empty stomach & a rigorous class at 2pm...that was enuf to drive me up the wall.
A girl came up & asked me the way to the Botany Dept,i barely looked at her & mumbled out the instructions...probably she was feeling hungry too...asked me if she could sit down next to me & have her food sitting next to me. I shrugged...she sat down gratefully.
We sat side by side...like two mannequins...no conversation...nothing...i was feeling too hungry to talk & she felt awkward eating her tiffin after i refused her offer.
Finally, i asked her what brought her to my campus....An AIIMS post graduate in Biochemistry...she wanted a Ph.D...fast,real fast...i don't remember when the conversation turned to the topic of suicide but i got to hear so many real life accounts from her, that i've lost count....she had been staying in the AIIMS hostel along with young aspiring doctors since her graduation & post grad days at AIIMS.
Sordid tales....suicide notes written by brilliant students...end of a life...candles that blew out prematurely…
The one that chilled me to the bones, was that of a post grad student from AIIMS who went on to National Institute of Immunology, for his Ph.D He had been her friend but had been depressed for quite some time coz his girl had left him for someone else.

Half my mind was elsewhere- delving deep into the dark alleys of my recuperating heart where tiny scrolls of secrets lay embedded like treasure chests on an ocean bed. But the girl sitting next to me said something that jerked me out of my stupor. In sharp contrast to my earlier listless, barely interested demeanor-I turned my full attention to her...oh my god! She hadn’t realized she had switched tracks from a third person narrative to a first person narrative....earlier, she had been saying...’he shudn’t have taken such a drastic step and ended his life by consuming that lethal chemical from his laboratory to ‘ Life can get frustrating but I should resist such a temptation’....a slip of a tongue ...but the raw feeling was written all over her carefully chosen words and I felt a shiver run down my spine as i realized i was face to face with a potential target who was trying to come to terms with her decision of taking the drastic step.
Her next words confirmed my suspicion, she said ‘ if he could have met someone at that crucial juncture, who could have talked him out of it...maybe he would have been alive today’..
She’s asking for help...no, she is begging me to talk her out of her suicidal tendencies...she’s picked up a random stranger like me to counsel and help her out...i’ve got to soothe her...wait, i’ve got to stay calm myself coz my heart is hammering real hard and my hands are shaking a bit coz i know what it feels like when u feel suicidal....‘

Hey’, i say to her and ...i cough a bit...to mask the nervous tone, steady myself and broach the topic of my childhood, transport her to those sunny days of my life that were full of laughter and naive innocence....i encourage her to open up...gently...coax her to uncoil her complex self ....i congratulate myself secretly....she took a bite of the bait i dangled in front of her...and now she’s hooked! I exposed a slice of my childhood, to enable her to speak about hers & thankfully the plan worked.
I cajole her...to go on, to speak up ...i keep my restless nature under wraps and turn into a good listener...we talk for hours…i pretend I don’t know what is going on in her mind, she has a satisfied look on her face, content that she has fooled me…lulled me into a false illusion….i let her play along…but under that thin veneer ….my mind is working furiously, against time….trying to think of the right things to say to avoid aggravating her…I can almost picturize her standing at the edge of a cliff, while the waves surge beneath….and i desperately want to pull her back

A beautiful sensation…the free fall down such a great height….almost flying…the sea gulls can join in too….the waves hungrily look up…waiting to devour the body….

The mellow afternoon hours sheds her glaringly canary yellow off-shoulder dress and dons a sensual dusky evening gown, somewhere nearby, my batchmates are attending their lectures ….a seat remains unfilled in that class coz I am sitting outside, trying to save a soul that’s sent me an S.O.S …Not everyday, do u get a chance to save a life…..we talk about a lot of things....they lie locked within me...maybe someday i shall write about it...

I see a change in her eyes, a steely resolution….

I watch her standing near the cliff edge…contemplating….the waves part and pebbles stare back at her…she turns her back towards death and walks away…

Clutching to a piece of my childhood...

2005-10-17T23:18:00.000-07:00

Fake emotions...fake smiles...fake tears...fake people all around me...
I Feel like throwing up...i feel nauseated...i feel sick to my gut...somehow my system hasn't learnt to digest the fakeness that abounds in this world.
Why do i see everyone wearing a mask?happy masks...charming masks...sexy masks...vulnerable masks...guileless masks...seductive masks..
I feel i am caught in an endless evening party where the dress code is wearing masks of one's own choice...& the catch is- the evening never ends.
The party goes on & on....
Champagne flows...false talk keeps pace with it..i feel lost....suddenly it's time for the waltz.Men in masks approach women in masks....and beg for a dance.i refuse them...men with masks make clumsy dance partners, i remind myself.
Someone smiles at me...a deep dimpled smile...why am i attracted to him?Ah! a naked face...just like mine.A face sans a mask...
My hearts warms upto to him....he wraps his hand around my waist, pulls me close...too close(?)...fingers entwine...music fills up the Ball room....i tell him i dont trust people who hide behind masks...he looks deep into my eyes questioningly...nah! i assure him that i trust him....he isn't wearing a mask...an enigmatic smile crosses his lips....i feel lucky....i pity the women with masked dance partners...i tell him i loathe hypocrites...he says he loathes them too...i tell him i hate charmers, those glib talkers who talk smoothly but whose words stand hollow...smoothly he twirls me, i catch my breath when i realize he's bent halfway,staring at my face,dipping me over his arm... i am bent with my head thrown back...my back arched flexibly...i wait for his answer...but the lascivious music picks up & i get engrossed matching his step with mine...caught in swirling skirts & stiletto footsteps.He begged me to have faith on him...i did...i closed my eyes,put my head on his shoulder & danced...a content smile sitting pretty on those bow shaped lips.I didn't have to feel insecure anymore...

I dont remember how long i had been dancing with him...was it two years? was it a little more...pale beams of sunlight caressed his face & for the first time i noticed cracks on his face...on his honesty(?)...i watched in horror at the peeling mask....the enormity of the falsehood hit me not in a single blow but bit by bit...inch by inch...i was being killed slowly, softly...
Another masked man? my heart gasped...but dont masks hide everything except the eyes?and i had his every feature etched on my mind...his cleft chin...his square jaw...his nose...
Oh my god!My stomach churned...my body turned stone cold...i had been dancing with a masked man all along...with trembling fingers, i ripped the mask off his face...it was a face sans any eyes, sans any mouth, sans any nose...it was a face devoid of emotions,devoid of love, devoid of honesty....just like those millions of masked men who traded in flesh...not love.Who understand a French Kiss but not feelings.
A waltz of hypocrasy rather than a waltz of love....a waltz of fakeness?

It tears at my heart...the sham...the falsehood...i feel lonely...do i stand out like a sore thumb with my naked face in a sea of masks?
It reminds me of my childhood when i used to clutch my doll & hug it close...to seek comfort...if people used to let me down...or if i did something naughty...that doll went with me everywhere i travelled.
Wish i had that doll with me now....so that i could clutch that piece of chilhood close to my heart, that stretch of dream run of a lifetime that every adult looks back wistfully, that unmarred,unspoilt childhood...and close my eyes....and feel comforted...feel healed...

'A dash of Sindoor'...She said..

2005-10-14T09:22:00.000-07:00

Celebrations are finally over…Dashami(tenth day) saw the immersion of Durga into the Ganges.
Transported back to a normal life…last week was spent romancing the Bengali culture that probably runs deeper in my veins than I had ever imagined.
Sound of conch shells emanating from neighbourhood houses….pandal hopping with friends….marvelling at the skill of men who built pandals to house Durga…each pandal was a work of art…..there was a spectacular pandal shaped like a huge rocket, towering like a Goliath, I went in & the angelic beauty of the idols made me regret for not having brought along a camera …long queues snaked through the streets in front of restaurants & the city was again a witness to the fact that Bengalis love eating……nearly all the apartments were decked up like Christmas trees, decorated beautifully with fairy lights, multihued tube lights…the city that dozes off by ten in the night, seemed to come alive as the clock announced midnight for those magical few days of Saptami(seventh day), Ashtami(eight day),Navami(ninth) & Dashami…couples walked hand in hand, the only few days when girls are officially allowed to stay out of home till late in the night…..if the nights were full of lights, traveling from one part of the city to the next on a quest to spot the best pandals…..the days were spent paying a visit to relatives, hanging out with cousins, discussing about the ‘new’ man in a certain pretty cousin’s life….eagerly running off to the pandals to catch the ceremonies being performed in front of Durga,eating at the community halls where the ‘Bhog’ was distributed to all the neighbours, it was more of a socializing that takes place between nieghbours at this time of the year where they hob-nob & catch up with each others lives.

One of the landmark celebrations on the last day ……watching married women play the Sindoor Khela- smearing sindoor on each others forehead, while the young unmarried girls smiled coyly when the married women applied a dash on sindoor on their cheeks & told them not to wipe it off…an auspicious sign that it would fetch them a good husband in the future.
I stood in a corner, touching the sindoor smear on my cheek….a damp wistful feeling settled itself comfortably in my heart…..someone somewhere walked across the shores of the Arabian Sea, oblivious of the dash of sindoor across a certain honey coloured oval face….

'The city I call Home'....She said..

2005-10-04T11:32:00.000-07:00

Back to where I was supposed to have taken those first baby steps….back to that city which has witnessed all those tumultuous years of my growing up days…back to being driven from the Howrah bridge to a place called home…

Was is another lifetime when coming back home made my heart beat faster? Where has that child like exuberance evaporated? Those hand pulled rickshaws, those trams that moved slowly at its own pace while luxury cars whizzed by…why do they no more conjure up any old world charm for me? My eyes drifted from the angel atop the Victoria Memorial & the horse driven carriages full of tourists…to the billboard featuring a petal shaped sensually full lips on a glowing dusky skin that had the texture of velvet , a demure yet subtle wild smile playfully lighting the face that looked ravagable , her vermillion red round bindi smeared on her forehead gave her the typical Bengali touch….draped in a simple white saree with red border offset by an opulent rich maroon blouse with slightly puffed sleeves…reminiscent of the bygone dress code of the bahus of the Bengali Zamindar clans…Her oval face complemented her slantish doe eyed big eyes…kohl lined eyes….drownable eyes…but then, Bengali women have been notorious for these very eyes that have trapped many an unsuspecting man…vaguely, past memories stirred…grandma’s stories…of men from far away lands who fell in love with Bengali women after setting eyes on them, women so elusive that they slipped out of the fingers of their suitors & played the ‘hard-to-get’ game to the hilt …Bengali women who were known for the Black magic spell that they wove on men, …men who swore they’d never touched skin softer than a Bengali woman, like the wings of a butterfly.…skin that glowed with raw sensuality…
I touched my skin & realized that the Delhi sun had done irreparable damage to my once flawless glowing skin passed on from generations like a legacy….reminded me of the first time He’d touched my face on the pretext of getting rid of a mosquito coz He’d never seen such skin…and now what remained was a skin devoid of a good diet…but did it matter any more?
My eyes riveted to the fish mongers sitting by the sides of the road, while men in white dhotis noisily bargained. The taste of prawns dipped in coconut cream …hilsa in a rich tomato curry….fried pomfret….tiny fishes as surprise finds in dal…kaleidoscopic images floated in my mind.
Multitude of sweet shops stood silently punctuating the humid city like exclamation marks at regular intervals….childhood memories of me clutching dad’s hand & walking to the nearest sweetshop & buying my favourite sandesh mixed with jaggery, shaped like a sea shell & rajbhog dripping in a syrup. Spongy rosogollas that told sweet tales of its own…

Avoided looking at the strikingly palatial building where He used to work, the fountain at the entrance of His workplace wasn’t working, a metaphor for his love that had dried out ….but somehow the treacherous tears sprang up unexpectedly while I traveled on the familiar roads….ghost bike rode parallel to dad’s car & I looked in disbelief at myself sitting behind Him on his Pulsar….Misty eyes clouded by saline waters was watching the past unfurl…like an old movie being replayed…
I turned away my face & concentrated on the bamboo sticks & tents being put up in street corners as pandals for the impending Durga Puja…tube lights & bulbs of different shapes & sizes were being arranged in amazingly beautiful ways…some resembled the silhouette of Saurav Ganguli, the most loved ‘son’ of Calcutta…some resembled the Titanic…some resembled Charlie Chaplin & suddenly I caught a glimpse of a girl clad in a mermaid skirt teamed with a peasant top & a guy in a Red kurta teamed with jeans walking on the pavement, she hit him playfully with her thick book & He snatched it away…she stopped walking & stamped her feet like a spoilt kid & demanded the book being returned, her lips pouting alluringly ….wait, this scene felt familiar…was it bcoz they were dressed in an uncanny same way as Us…or was it the way ….a closer look at the guy made my heart skip a beat, in desperation I looked at the new girl & felt I was looking at a mirror…realization dawned….i was hallucinating.
Quickly blinked back the traitors & realized that I shoudn’t have come back to a city that didnot spare a minute in taunting me with His presence…
And for heaven’s sake, He’d quit this city long back….then why did I see Him standing under the 13 No. Tank landmark patiently near his bike….why did I see Him walk out of that plush shopping mall….why did I see Him step out of the Inox movie hall…why did I see Him step into the Oxford Bookstore…

I was not prepared for such an onslaught…..never realized He would ruin my own city for me, the city that I am so fond of inspite of the highhandedness of the Left govt , trade unions, Marxism & incessant strikes. The city that opened up its bounty of a treasure chest full of rich literature & famous writers ….the city that made me fall in love with books that became a part of my existence…the city whose culture ingrained itself in me.... the city that acknowledged the writer in me…and yet ….

Feeling chewy....

2005-09-28T10:46:00.000-07:00

Dear fluff,
I am finally coming home…yeah you heard me right, on the 1st of October, have already packed my bags…but promise me you won’t knock me off my feet & cover my full face with your wet licks…buddy, that’s not how you behave with a lady! Remember?
Of course, I’ll always be that ten year old girl who brought you home as a pup from a different town. And don’t you sulk for my past refusals to come home for the past nine months ….coz I am going to compensate such a long absence by staying home for 15 long days.

Mmmm…those good ol’ days when u’d run off with our shoes, and sis & me in hot pursuit would run after you from room to room….till we’d locate a pair of emerald beads shining with a mischievous phosphorescent glint, under the darkness of a bed & before we’d be able to catch you…u’d dash off under a coffee table….i still marvel at the way u’d dodge us so expertly.
Wonder what was it with u & branded shoes(so, we had a pet who was a snob! Unbranded shoes never managed to elicit any reaction)….while the branded ones always got a ‘warm welcome’ from u….coz by the time sis managed to tempt you out of your hiding place with a promise of a biscuit(yeah! branded biscuits again, especially those laced with lots of choco chips) & I scooped down on you with a war cry of ‘Gotcha’…u’d nearly slip out of my clutches but for your tail. Somehow I’d drag the well chewed soggy shoe out of those devilish canine teeth of yours & not to mention mom, who’d have a fit when she’d see a saliva dripping & a wee bit ‘dog eared’ shoe…

Ummm…this might sound a bit strange but looks like your chewy habit has been passed off to me as well…maybe coz I am in a mellow mood (playful mood ?).

Feeling kinda chewy…a bit wild…a bit feral…a bit seductive…a bit naughty…

I am Nominated for Blog awards!!

2005-09-24T10:32:00.000-07:00

Holy cow ! I have been nominated for the blog awards & I didn’t even care to check out !!!

i nearly fell off my chair when I saw myself as a nominee in the BEST IMAGE POST few mins back.

Slogan-"Keeping in touch....is it so hard?"
My Code 55 IMA

It so happened, that my friend Shilpa persuaded me to have a go at this unique Blogging awards. Unfortunately, they rejected 5 of the 6 entries that I’d sent them. The only one taken up for consideration was the entry for the Best Pic & this sole survivor seems to have nosed it’s way to the selected coterie!….i was disheartened by the elimination even before it could have competed with the rest,the entries which I sent for The Best Fictional Post & Best Personal Post etc etc were categories that I wanted to participate in.

I hadn’t read the rules properly,which said-the participant was supposed to send blog entries that were written from 1st july 2004 to 30 june 2005.
A new kid on the block…er,blog….i made a foray in the blog world on 20 june 2005 …so that gave me a mere 10 days worth of work to showcase & to my horror, I realized…except putting up pics I’d hardly done much.

Needless to say, this came up as a pleasant surprise…

'Hunger'....She said...

2005-09-23T23:25:00.000-07:00

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies- a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."(Eishenhower,the 34th US Prez)

Dust swirled & pirouetted in a mad frenzy…..I coughed it out .Blinding heat…on a September noon in Delhi. The auto threaded in & out of the narrow lanes as deftly as a needle completing a running stitch along the hem of a cloth. Ensconced in the womb of the auto, I was sitting …lost in thought…the view outside a blurred haze.
So deep was my reverie that it took me a while before i realized someone was talking to me... .i turned my anesthetized eyes to the auto driver but his back was towards me & then i saw a wobbly hand extend itself in.
Ummm...it was a red light crossing & i wasn’t sure how long the auto had been standing still & then it struck me-Beggars!
I looked straight ahead of me, averting my gaze.....the way most of us pretend to turn blind whenever such miserable unfortunate people approach us with an empty hand but a heart full of hope.But wait a minute, this man had something in his hand-incense sticks...but i simply shook my head.
Brought up in a family which has never believed in Idol Worship, incense sticks were never used in our household...i explained to him-No idols in my room...no incense sticks required.
The more insistent he grew, the more adamant my refusal became.

At the crossing, the light probably turned envious & switched from red to green....at that instant he blurted out-‘Please buy it, i haven’t eaten for two days’....i looked into a pair of hunger ridden eyes & could almost feel my hunger hit me with a vengeance like a punch delivered by a wrestler on his punching bag.
Maybe, his words wouldn’t have had such an effect on me, had he met me ...say, a year back.
A year back, i didnt know what hunger was, i didn’t know how difficult it is to sleep the night away on an empty stomach....i didn’t know that the only way to stop the burning sensation in the stomach, is to keep drinking water every twenty minutes & stop it from growling...from groaning in protest...i didn’t know that your insides churn in agonizing pain & make you want to throw up when you haven’t eaten for one & a half day….your head spins,u feel dizzy & it becomes difficult to walk….maybe it sounds like an exaggeration…maybe my system over-reacts when I miss all my four square meals at the hostel coz of tremendous workload in the Lab & somehow I never have the money to buy something from a canteen etc.
Maybe I am so used to being a spoilt kid back home where food was always taken for granted by me that remaining hungry for a whole day is not my forte.
But I am learning….picking up the art of fooling my hungry stomach by drinking water.

How on Earth,did this old man manage to stand on his two feet & sell his ware the whole day long?had I been in his place…I would have collapsed coz I become so weak that I can barely walk, my knees turn to water & my hands shake a wee bit.

It was the last twenty rupee I had in my purse apart from the thirty that I was supposed to pay the auto driver,luckily I had coins that added up to another ten...it meant, I would have to walk a long distance at eight thirty in the night…a scary proposition…& then take a metro ride(luckily it cost ten) after a rigorous class.
I saw myself handing over the money to him & regretted that I didn’t have more to give to him….& I wished I hadn’t been so egoistic & walked out of office of the part time job as a ghost writer without any payment. Imagine! who would refuse to take her first payment ever, after having worked hard on assignments. But that’s me…

I could see drivers screaming at us, we were blocking their way…stuck at the crossing…pampering some woebegone old man selling something trivial.
But did they know how hungry he was? Hunger…that kills u slowly by inches…hunger that makes us impotent…hunger that gnaws at our insides…hunger that constantly draws attention to its presence inside us with it’s devious pin prick stabs….hunger that makes even thin arrowroot biscuits taste as heavenly as chocolate pastries….hunger that makes u look askance at people eating good food….hunger that makes you want to march into the eating joint with those delectable names that make ur mouth water….hunger that makes treacherous noises in ur stomach & gives your game away when you lie to ur friend & say you are not hungry….hunger that turns u weak & makes u want to compromise on ur principles & borrow money from others & somehow u battle with ur morals & stick to an empty stomach than an empty conscience....

'Go away..& don't distract me further'...She said...

2005-09-20T02:49:00.000-07:00

"Go away"...She whispered hoarsely...
Please don't haunt me anymore...
Can bear the torment no more...
Make this anaemic bleed no more...

'A new beginning'...She said...

2005-09-10T04:22:00.000-07:00

Where the azure sky ends and where the electric blue sea starts, I do not know.
All I know is- it is a new beginning…a new dawn…the story of the raging currents instead of the vagrant waves…more powerful, more unforgiving…
The story of Metaphysical Insanity which translated itself into a Once in a Lifetime story of two torn souls.

Same old players but new terrain, same passions but new twists thrown by Life ,it’s the same she & the same he but new feelings & new vengeance.

The storyteller is waiting to breathe life into the tales that were kept locked in two hearts but are the readers ready?

'Fluff & I say Goodbye to all'...

2005-09-04T04:03:00.000-07:00

I have decided to spread my wings and fly to a different shore.This blog shall cease to exist,it shall disappear from the face of this Earth...
There will be those who will not want to travel with me,to the new destiny so it is a Goodbye to them & again,....there will be those who can relate to me,who have become a part of the extended family that I have and it is them whom I graciously invite to embark on a new adventure with me coz the September air has stirred the gypsy blood in me & it is time for me to go the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife....

This is meant for those who shall ride the wave with me & who do not mind getting swept off their feet to a distant land where hope flourishes,inspite of all odds.
Contact me at seven_seas8@rediffmail.com such that I can email my new blog address personally to all of u & yes,do not…I repeat…do not forget to mention ur blog url along with ur blogger name,that I am familiar with. Gaurav,vidhi,stranger & vish need not reply back coz they’ve already asked me to inform them of the change

And hurry coz after a few days, nomadicwaves.blogspot.com will be untraceable…devoured by the mighty waves while I shall re-emerge from the swirling depths of a turbulent ocean…..that’s a promise.

'From being mad about u to not being mad about u'..She said..

2005-09-02T10:06:00.000-07:00

'From waiting to not waiting for u'...She said..

2005-09-02T10:00:00.000-07:00

ON MY OWN....

2005-08-31T09:05:00.000-07:00

'Doors of communication'...She said...

2005-08-30T10:15:00.000-07:00

Apparently it is an illusion...these gateways that entice me to walk through them to the other side , coz they are closed-the Only means of communication between Him & me.
A grave misunderstanding between us, that pushed Him into His shell.
Wish He would open these doors & write again.....

And then a confrontation between them...

2005-08-30T10:13:00.000-07:00

Some more misunderstandings between Him & Her..

2005-08-30T10:04:00.000-07:00

He trampled on my heart & left it bleeding...

2005-08-28T23:47:00.000-07:00

PS-Putting up this blogpost yet again...

'Freedom'...She said...

2005-08-25T22:45:00.000-07:00

Would it sound weird if I say I drew inspiration from the toe that thrust itself out of the misty grey torn socks & proudly proclaimed its freedom from the shackles that subjugated the other fingers & kept them in captivity..... that it fired in me a burning feeling of breaking away from the self imposed restrictions that had turned me into a caged animal pacing up and down, trapped within the claustrophobic four walls.
That now, I don’t wait for Him to visit me in this city, that I buy Blood red corduroy jeans & don’t bother anymore what He thinks( and no, the color isn’t as scandalous as it sounds, it’s quite a pretty shade of maroon).
That I’ve got rid of the colors blue & white from my Life and introduced new colors that define the New me. That I am no more exclusive coz I’ve razed down the wall that made me appear an Ice maiden, that made me appear unattainable. That I don’t bother to carve out neat triangles out of my Mushroom topped Pizza with a fork & a knife coz I don’t want to please anyone anymore. That I am thinking of taking a new phone number to add new acquaintances & delete old ones. That I no longer call up those who expect I shall always be the first one to call & make up for old fights.

That I want to shed my old skin for a new one, like the snakes do but will someone tell me if old memories can be traded for new ones too?Or do snakes still live with their old memories even if they don a new suit...

'Blood is thicker than water'...She said..

2005-08-22T09:58:00.000-07:00

Dear Sis,
It's been a month since you left home & settled in a new city. It's hard to imagine my kid sister living on her own, away from her doting parents & a sister who never got tired of mollycoddling her. Maybe it's our fault that we have always treated you like a fragile porcelain doll & sheltered you from every difficulty. Like a delicate piece of crystal ware nestled protectively in cotton wool-we’ve handled you with the utmost care.And now, unprepared we let you stray into a ruthless world that is not known to have a soft corner for delicate darlings.
It must have been a nasty shock to you when your professor scolded you , for baby, you are not used to being spoken harshly to.
Shielded by us, from the rotten eggs that abound in this world & now standing all alone ,unless you learn to live by your wits you'll be devoured by the ravenous wolves-I feel scared, helpless....stranded in a different city. Damn these STD calls,I can't even wipe away those hot tears when you narrate how the senior boys from the boys hostel harass you,make your life unbearable by threatening you with dire consequences when you refuse to become their girl while fever rages through your body coz you are not used to bathing in cold water & your legs are about to give way coz u’ve never stood for 6 long hours & worked in a laboratory.

And It tore my heart when I heard you burnt your hands in that workshop of yours & bruised it as well while beating the metals into shape & were unable to pick up a pen to jot down notes, the next day in class.
It's hard to believe our little one who would have the whole family fuss over her due to a minor cut & be taken out for an ice-cream-has no one to tend to her bruises.
And baby,do you know,how furious I was when I heard the boys in your batch made fun of the bolts that you created after four hours of sweat & hardwork and how lonely you felt being the only girl in that batch.
Mom could hardly recognize you when you came home for the weekend-dark circles,insect bites all over your face,thin as a reed but you made light of the situation and said-‘Atleast, I’ll not have suitors troubling me again’.

I am amazed at your indomitable spirit which remains unfazed by the incessant power cuts in your hostel, irritating roommates who keep you awake all night with their lovey dovey talks to their boyfriends over the phone & the way you ignore the leering looks of the boys & quietly swallow the indignities in the name of ragging.
Engineering colleges were always infamous for their ragging excesses but what horrified me the most,is the way 'strange' women with scarlet lipstick & rouge standing prominently on their cheeks are ushered into the boys hostel in the nights, not to mention the innumerable parlours overflowing with pornographic flicks that flourish near the campus. And professors who are equally notorious.
Sometimes I wonder where is our generation headed....

But did I tell you sis, you've made us proud-the way you deal with the tricky situations that life throws up, with a grace & dignity that is surprising at a tender age of seventeen.
Yeah,yeah,I know you'll be rolling your eyes when I say you are at a tender age.And yeah, according to you-I am too old at twenty two!
And did I tell you,I was bowled over...the way you manage finances & imagine! there was a time when you thought demand drafts were meant to be purchased from banks for Rs 100.
I know you are miserable staying in a campus cut off from the pulsating city, & instead there are the druglords & their band of thugs who thrive & where girls getting kidnapped are a common affair and yet you pretend to be comfortably settled coz you don't want dad to worry about you, you don’t want to add to his already tension filled life.
And I listen helplessly to your carefully manipulated joyous voice as you tell me about the amazing placements, the top notch companies like Wipro,TCS,Oracle that visit your campus every year & how you are ready to compromise on the comforts of life to stand on your two feet and ease off dad’s financial burden.

Kiddo,did I ever tell you that you are One brave woman....
And don't you feel blue dear,not just mom,dad & me...but even Fluff is there right behind you in times like these.
Remember,it's only one's family that remains stead fast by one's side when one runs into a rough patch. While the fake boyfriends are happy doing the disappearing act, & reappear when all is fine & the coast clear. Is it coz blood is thicker than water?
Anyway, fluff refused the juicy bone mom offered her,know why?

PS-Mom misses both of us,but she misses you more- for you are the baby of the family & shall always remain one & yes, fluff misses you too.

Take care
Your sis.

"Camouflage"...She said...

2005-08-13T02:28:00.000-07:00

Grass offers anonymity to a grasshopper, a stem of a plant offers anonymity to a stick insect, a snow covered landscape offers anonymity to a polar bear, an unknown city offers anonymity to travelers, a graffiti covered wall offers anonymity to strangers who love to leave behind scribbled words & the blog offered me anonymity, where i could let the words flow out of my head uninhibited ,unrestrained...

I could write unhindered, without being singled out , without getting to hear personal remarks from people who meet me every single day , without people questioning me why i write the way i do.The blog was my ‘Little Big Secret’ ; it was my hideout zone where i could transform into a mermaid at my whim & fancy ; play hide & seek with words; make new friends; dabble in old memories; get drenched in non existing rains & let my imagination run riot.But recently, i discovered I’ve been spotted by known faces, I’ve been hunted & preyed upon by meddlesome people.And just when i thought my secret was safe with me, just when i thought i mingled with the background so well that no one would mark me out ...i heard my blog bleed. Too late, someone in my hostel had managed to penetrate & violate the virginity of my blog & left it unclothed ,naked, vulnerable to the attacks by others.

Once you taste flesh, you are bound to come back for a kill again & so it continues- the nocturnal visits by a particular salivating female in my hostel, who goes ‘in & out’ of the pages of my blog regularly. I caught her red handed few days back, under the cover of night, around 12.30 pm sitting all alone in the computer room while the rest of the hostel rocked to the music being churned out by a DJ.

I froze in my track when i saw her raping my blog, her lecherous gaze wandered over every bit of my blog & I could feel my blog cringe, scream out silently,looking around helplessly for help,begging for a piece of cloth to cover itself up.I confronted that drooling female & she looked at me & said ‘You never expected anyone to be so sharp,so as to find your blog,isn’t it?’ I could feel my temper flaring up & had this sudden urge to slap her tight that would have wiped the smirk off her face but i kept calm & allowed my body language to convey to her that i wanted her to back out of my blog immediately. Later,it all came flashing by-why she used to peer at my computer (always) while i worked on something as innocuous as Microsoft Word & not to mention her dirty habit of walking into the computer room & slyly reading into the emails being typed by girls,with their backs to her & finally, armed with a treasure of personal details about different girls,she would call for a round table conference, after dinner & along with some like minded friends dissect every bit of itsy bitsy detail & tear their personal lives into shreds.

Cowards like her, who sneak into comp rooms at midnights to read into the lives of others,can be expected to remain spineless all their lives. And the voyeur in her would never stop carrying a ladder to reach someone’s bedroom & peep in.Am i furious because she encroached upon & trespassed into my world or do i pity her for being gutless?One thing is for sure,I no longer have an iota of respect left for her.

Her uninvited entry or should i say intrusion, caused me a miscarriage, my write ups curled up in a foetal sleep, dreaming of leaving behind the amniotic fluid & the dark interiors for a gulpful of oxygen on a blogpost , bled to death.The excitement that ran through me when I’d experienced the first kick from the foetus growing fast, feeding voraciously on the rich fodder of imagination & words that I provided it with…..and itz hurried termination before it could even venture out into the Blogosphere has left me feeling numb. And what to say of the Abortion I underwent to get rid of the unborn ideas before they get devoured by people not meant to read them.

My wings have been clipped & I can never soar high on this blog but waves have never been known to be static & so, I shall travel to another spot where I can bask in anonymity, camouflaged against a backdrop that would let me remain half hidden & not stick out of a webpage like a fluorescent bookmark sticking out of a book.

"Bewitched"...She said...

2005-08-06T10:21:00.000-07:00

What would I not give, to have my legs bewitched into a shapely fish tail, complete with dainty fins & scales that shine iridescent under a moon that dares to gleam in silver & gold.

What would I not give, To join a school of Sting Rays & explore the sea bed scattered with life forms blowing kisses at me with their friendly tentacles....
To discover long lost treasures of pirates long dead.....
To ride the disobedient waves on sunny days & allow a teasing look to the rugged sailors, who would nod their heads in disbelief & blame it on Rum !
To let the turbulent waves toss me roughly like a rag doll from one crest to the next, on a stormy night & allow the old man sitting in the Lighthouse tower to wipe his glasses with a hankerchief, to snatch a closer look at a feminine figure with a tail !

To let the Seahorses delight me with the way that it is the males that get impregnated by their females & carry the eggs in their brood pouch,while the females swim free!
To let the jelly fish feel important when I acknowledge its presence with a “ Hi! How do you do?” & not see through its transparent body onto the other side as most do & make it feel like a ghost....
To let the ink squid play a trick on me & uplift its spirit by allowing it to squirt ink on me....
To let the whales whisper gruesome tales of human brutality where their hides are crafted into designer purses & premium prices quoted for blubber.

To let a snoozing oyster that snores with half parted lips turn me inquisitive & make me peep in, to catch a glimmer of a pearl in the making.
To let the multihued sea anemones,the subdued cuttlefishes,the blushing red lobsters make me envy them for the vibrancy of colors that remain intact,unwashed,undiluted by stubborn waters trying hard to rob them of their beauty unlike the bronze red lipstick on my lips that get washed away everytime by the rains or moisture from a searing encounter……..
To let the vagabond-ish waves fulfill my dreams of visiting sea kissed Spain ....

To let the sea shells abandoned by itz molluscan masters remind me that nothing lasts forever, that people move on in Life & leave behind things which had once been close to their heart....
To let a star fish sitting pretty on a sandy shore & pointing at five different directions with its radiating arms, make me burst out in spasms of laughter for confusing a lost baby Octopus asking for directions...
To let the regal birds of the sea-the Albatross , renew my faith in love by watching them court each other for seven long years & finally mate & remain faithful to each other till death do them part....

To let the cliffs jutting arrogantly into the horizon teach me patience, teach me the art of how to stand by its word even if the waves slap it hard at every high tide...
To let the high & low tides remind me that Life is a heady mix of ups & downs....
To let the scurrying crabs that rush into their holes on the beach,upon an intruder’s visit-warn me that home is where security is....

To unearth the remains of a ship & stumble upon scrolls imprinted with dead mens’ secrets that would keep me engrossed, immersed for Aeons so that no Pneumonic memories come haunting back & no crazed urges to listen to the weather forecasts of Mumbai………

What would i not give, to be transformed into a mermaid & let the waves wash away mildew covered memories,to be buried silently& forever in the generous lap of the sea bed that already holds secrets of Titanic magnitude....

"While Changing my clothes"...She said

2005-08-01T03:28:00.000-07:00

Somewhere in Delhi,somewhere in a cubicle the tap quenched a bucket’s thirst whose throat turned bone dry while her clothes fell in an unprotesting heap in a corner.
She unclasped her hair & the shower sucked in its breath when Her raven coloured tresses tumbled sensually down her delicate shoulders,free at last, from the French Knot held tight by a clip.
The first mug full of water spread hungrily all over Her….leaving no curve unexplored.Drops of water reluctantly slid down her shapely nape, caressing every inch of Her….as they went down.
Lot of stirrings in the bucket,as each drop of water rougly pushing the other out of the way & climbing onto the shoulder of the next to catch a glimpse of Her. The emptied mug bent down & whispered naughtily into the eager ears of the next scoopful of lucky drops while the rest impatiently waited for their turn.The lather of Her favourite soap that smelt of crushed roses was blessed to stay long enough on her body to peep & have a look at those flaming Lips before the jealous water droplets could rip the clinging soapy lather & wash it off Her.

Images flashed in her mind…Him getting caught in the heavy downpour of Mumbai…His car breaking down …His tedious walk for hours in chest high waters….His taking refuge in an abandoned auto parked right in front of a stench filled public loo…His helplessness at watching two dead bodies float by….His conscience pricking him hard when His female colleagues called Him, requested Him to pick them up from their stranded spots & drop them home….His feeling of desperation of being trapped like a marooned sailor on a desolate island,encompassed by water & lashing rains that slapped Him hard on His face for having forgotten Her. And so,before He could stop Himself,His fingers had already dialled those familiar numbers.
Her voice, poured into His ears, traveled through his bloodstream and turned into liquid fire that sent His temperature soaring.Was it His imagination or had she acted like Brandy to Him,coz He was shivering in His soaked clothes no more.Was it madness or an animal urge that He wanted to ravish Her,then & there?

Carefully masking His raging thoughts behind sentences that Airtel connection broke into pieces & relayed to Her & before she could ask anything,His fone went dead in a city washed away by the demonic rains.

And now,while She bathed….She wondered…She turned on the shower with full force to drown the conflicting thoughts that tormented her soul.On one hand,she knew she’d promised herself no more calls to Him & yet His new number stood out enticingly on her Call List.On the other hand,She had to know….oh damn it!She knew only too well-how His body gave in to fever everytime the Kolkata rains played havoc & the Mumbai rains were no different.
While the jets of water from the shower lapped & licked Her to their hearts' content, She tried to decide.
Next it was the Lavender towel’s turn to cling to Her while her mind strayed on undecided moors.
And it was while changing Her clothes did Her impulsive nature take over & She swore to make just one last call to Him.
And it was while changing Her clothes, that She got to know from His friend that He had Pneumonia.

The crumpled towel on the floor lay laughing, happy that His rival was in a hospital.....

"Life comes a Full Circle"...She said

2005-07-28T10:12:00.000-07:00

Boarding schools, midnight feasts, stealing bull’s eye peppermints from tuck boxes of sworn enemies, pyjama parties,Halloween treats, bullying juniors, making friends smuggle love letters to those ‘cute’ boys ,using mirrors to communicate with the boys staying in the Boys’ Hostel across the valley, perched on the opposite mountain, filling up slam books,exchanging photographs,packing the trunks, boarding the train & finally off…to an Adult world waiting to be discovered.

And that is when you realize your wings have been clipped even before you could spread them & take off on your maiden flight. You realize you have to get married to someone, handpicked by your family & before you know it…you are a domesticated hen taking care of your brood.
All those sonnet cramming days & Shakespear’s Othello filled evenings seem to get lost in a new rhythm of changing diapers.
Skills picked up in making neat section cuts of roots & stems in Botany classes are made use of , in cutting vegetables.
All your prize books become the scribbling grounds of the little ones.
All the medals you won in relay races, javelin throws seem to turn into rattles overnight.
All your merit certificates won through sheer hardwork become breeding grounds for spiders & mites.
All your ambitions of a career get swamped by wifely duties that leave u breathless.

Days melt into months & months into years & finally it is time for your little ones to fly the nest. After years of keeping them snugly close to your heart, it tears you apart when you let go & yet when they call up & narrate their days in the hostel- smuggling goodies from the Mess & into their rooms, playing pranks on April Fools’ Day, camping on the hostel grounds on winter nights…….
Déjà vu….
Its like Life is making you rewind a black & white classic movie in which you are cast & you watch it in slow motion.
There you are-Tip toeing across the dormitory & trying to climb the wrought iron gate of the Hostel on a moonless night, to make it for a long drive along with Him but alas! Your cell phone starts ringing & that’s the end of your escapade for a night…..but Wait,yours was not an Era of cell phones & the realization transports u back to your kitchen, where you are listening to your little one relate how she got caught by the guard.

You smile at Life for trying hard to return back your youthful days that it had robbed you of.
Life seems to come a full circle for you, coz u let your little ones fly with unclipped wings into the azure sky….unhindered, uninhibited …they soar high above the rest, in pursuit of your unfulfilled dreams that still wait for you to catch on.
It’s like a merry go round ride you got into –long back…and it got stuck halfway up the way to the sky & took years for you to complete the ride.

PS- This one is for you , mom.....

Dont....She said...

2005-07-26T09:33:00.000-07:00

Dont flash that fleetingly treacherous Love of yours-that offers me dreams broken in two,promises fragrant of falsehood,Lies in abundance & where keeping in touch is made a colourful mockery of.....

Searching for her ....

2005-07-25T23:52:00.000-07:00

"Of Ghostly rains & an abandoned umbrella"...She said...

2005-07-25T09:41:00.000-07:00

Of passions lost & passions remembered……
Of Monsoons & ripples of longing that ache to unleash a surging desire.......Of rainy days & wet kisses…..Of thigh high waters clogging lanes & a single purple umbrella being shared by two…..Of traffic being thrown out of gear & closeness under the umbrella…..Of male frogs with virile croaks attracting mates & two hearts on fire, shielded from the world by a pretty umbrella that’s bathed in the colour of passion…..Of street urchins splashing murky water on passers-by & a subtle hungry exchange of glances under the umbrella…..Of paper boats floating by & a raging Lust leaking from the open sky, drop by drop…..Of semi-dry clothes getting soaked on clothes lines on terraces & testosterone running high…..Of rickshawpullers pedaling towards shaded structures & Her clothes clinging to every curve…..Of fathers carrying sons on their shoulders & a blush spreading under an umbrella which is purple…..Of open street vendors running helter skelter with their wares & a proximity that increases inch by inch,second by second…..Of mothers rushing their daughters indoors & two souls trying to prolong their stay outdoors….Of plump rain drops sliding down the glazed windows & the umbrella making its way to a secluded haven…..Of the sky wiped clean of the noisy birds that flew into their nests & rains freezing in mid air ; time pausing ; pin drop of silence, for a minute-as the grip on the umbrella is lost…..Of the wet soil fragrance hanging heavy in the air & burning lips…..
Of a July rainshower,an abandoned purple umbrella & bruised lips….
Of ghostly rains & painful memories….

2005-07-24T04:26:00.000-07:00

Reminded of those childish squabbles that snowballed into fierce fights.Those silly tiffs that made Him sulk & made me want to tear him apart.Bitter sweet...a tapestry of memories interwoven together.Days of swallowing my pride & holding out the Olive branch of Peace.Days of cajoling Him & calling it quits...to start afresh.Time to move on,For...i am tired of being the One to cajole & pamper everytime,exhausted of being the One to make efforts to flag a New beginning to a Rotting end.Sigh...i shall miss those 'cute' fights & Yet.......

2005-07-22T09:49:00.000-07:00

Should we remain friends?Should we never speak to each other again?Should i hug Her one last time or would She cast Her Magic Spell on me once again...would i fall in love with Her over & over again?Did i bruise Her too much?Would She even want to come back to me again?Would She give me any more chances?Would She want to wait for me anymore at all?Do i want Her THAT bad?Maybe...maybe not...

2005-07-20T09:19:00.000-07:00

While He thinks...shud i release Her from my clutches Or keep Her a prisoner in my Glass House.Do i want a broken soul to play with Or let Life extend its tentacles & apply a soothing balm called Time that may heal Her wounds that i inflicted on Her.

2005-07-18T10:20:00.000-07:00

Where Love took me...into the dungeons of Claustrophobia.

Claustrophobia....

2005-07-18T09:27:00.000-07:00

An oxymoronic situation in my Life...I am caught in a Loveless Love...trapped in a world with Him.
He who never reciprocates ,He who ignores my beseeching gaze, He who neglects, He who deletes me from His mind most of the time, He whose life has no space for me, He who does not like to stay in touch, He who has other priorities in Life.
Crucified on the table of shattered expectations, the nails make me bleed everytime my heart surges with a maddening desire for Him.
Layer by layer , a rich alloy of Disappointment and sadness soldered firmly over my hopes, over me.
My heart went numb, my Lungs screamed for His love, for I had been mummified alive-the coating of unreciprocated love oxidized to a hard oval mustard colored cocoon like structure. My tomb?
Buried alive...buried in a graveyard where His love tripped, chocked on itself and died coughing to death.
An instantaneous death.The doctor would have declared-"A case of clinical death,no hope".

The dead, They say...can never be brought alive.So what am i waiting for??

Is this what I bargained for, on the the first day of the year, two years back, in the biting cold evening of January, when I coyly whispered ‘Yes’ into His ears aching to hear it for months?
Everytime, everytime...i am left stranded midway in the Ocean of Life, while He plunges into the choppy waters, promising me a day when we shall unite.
I cry out, my hands outstretched-‘Love, atleast leave behind the oars’ while He melts into the darkness. He did hear me, no illusions about that,for He has heard me a million times , calling Him back but He has an excuse ready like a bouquet of flowers which He presents me with flourish whenever He meets me. A smooth talker,a glib talker, He says He can never hear me call out to him,the turbulent waters drown my voice.
Oarless I drift aimlessly everytime .
Helpless,angry,bitter tears add value to the cocoonish shell-gooey,semi liquidy,amoebic and wraps around me perfectly, not an ounce of me shows through. I am engulfed by it completely . No skin show. No nudity.Coiled up like a foetus.

Claustrophobia sets in, I feel stifled, I feel lonely inside my Walled City. Trapped...trapped...trapped....in a love where the Lover plays hide and seek-with my feelings, with my emotions, with my time and worst of all-with my soul.

Hot tears skate down my cheeks with alacrity, for mine is an oval face, a face He had once loved for its perfect shape.
Caught in such a devilish enveloped trap, my hands are pinned down to the sides, unable to wipe away these signs of weakness as they flow incessantly .

Rage and pride clasp hands, indulge in a war dance & compel me to break free from the shackles which He had lovingly put around my ankles. Like anklets they adorned my feet, while I dragged my feet through Life...Others approached me, their hearts beating with love but backed out when they saw the heavy shackles that tied me to Him.
******* ********* *********** ************ *********** *******
Something within me cracks.....patience??
My arm thrusts powerfully out of the Loveless Cocoon that breaks with an egg shell like groan in protest.For i want to survive.

My lungs, devoid of love so long ,takes in a gulp of air gratefully....there’s a hint of love in the air...but it is not His...for His love died long back.

2005-07-15T03:36:00.000-07:00

I wish that everyone gets a Dad like mine.Here's Wishing The " BeStEsT DaDdY" a Very Very Happy Birthday today.

2005-07-15T02:33:00.000-07:00

Pebble in my shoe! Daddy help..

While Fluff & I wait for Daddy...

2005-07-14T10:10:00.000-07:00

"
Come home Daddy.
Treacherous roads, no passers by
Stormy nights slapped by lightning.
Moonless sky, robbers delight.

Daddy retrace your footsteps
Before the wicked wind can blow it away
Her flowing tresses beckon you.
Her bewitching smile cast a net on you.

But Daddy we don’t need her.
Who says money makes the world go round?
All Fluff needs is a juicy bone
And I need something that money can’t buy...

Daddy don’t you worry,
We are happy with our Pocketful.
I swear, we are.
But Daddy,when will you be home?