Of Beds...........and smells............

Of Beds…………………and smells!

When I was a kid and went to a morning school I used to be a stubborn thing. My dad had a tough time to wake me up and I used to keep burying my nose deep into the pillow trying to sniff and smell when he kept asking me to leave the bed………………..I hunted for my granny’s smell. From a very young age I slept with her, and my childhood nights were spent, hugging her tight and listening to her stories. It was she who initiated me to the wonderful world of literature. She taught me Mahabharata and told me of the Treasure Island, I met Robinson Crusoe and cried for black beauty all in the warmth of her deep voice and reassuring hug.

And then as it happens with every adolescent, I grew irritable and unkind and rude and selfish as I grew up and left the cozy comfort of her bedside to demand for a separate bed. Now that I had started reading the books seemed to keep better company…………Alas ! I had forgotten that it was her words that made me pick up the first book that I had ever read and it was her genes that made me a book worm in the first place. Youth in all its fancy can be quite selfish you know, and I was surely not an exception. The smell had faded…………..

Then came high school and the bed ……..now turned into a hiding spot for the cordless phone ;for those unending nonsensical conversations with the high school sweetheart when everybody slept . It had by then become the bed of lies. The bed you denied to leave early because you stated that you kept awake all night studying but all you actually did was blow up your dad’s phone bills! And then came the day when the truth unfolded and you converted the bed into a pool of tears! You cried at your parents’ disciplinary locking of the phone and wished so hard that you lived a teenage in Kansas and not Kolkata……….The smell faded further…………..

And then the bed travelled miles away to a different city. It was college time and I was a grown up hostelite. The bed of gossip, the bed of bitching, the bed of all night long gal parties and the bed of sharing secrets. It was an exciting phase and a phase of bed piled with clothes in sizes that would make mom shriek with shock! The bed by then had stopped smelling at all, it was aseptic in a way, not unpleasant but not warm either.

Jobs were in place. A new bed was bought with own money and proudly shown off. It was big and shining and soft and tidy, but hardly left a mark. It was a bed of dead sleep after a long work day or a longer party night! It was a bed where I snored for the first time and a bed where I never dreamt. Life was getting complicated and so was I, dream was a thing of the past, it was a phase of rising high, competing, struggling, winning and failing, but never giving up and realizing with every passing day that the red riding hood inside was dying a slow death and making way for the Cosmopolitan chick who read Coelho and talked about the “Beats” and was no longer scared of the big bad wolf! On that bed innocence died forever!

And now the bed has doubled. It fits another adult, I call my husband who hugs me tighter than my granny and even tells me stories at times. It’s a bed where we have started dreaming again. It is a bed which has started smelling again!! A smell that makes you linger on and laze, a smell of familiarity , a smell of being there , a smell of sharing and a smell of being happy about it, sharing that is………..

However on those lonely nights when he is away for work or some other chore and I look at the fluffy pillow lying aside; I don’t know why , but I dig my nose deep and want to smell of my Granny’s bed. In the bouts of stress induced stupor I keep searching and sniffing to find the cozy, warm smell of that first bed where stories were born and dreams were made. Not that I don’t miss him or his smell but I miss the other even more because somewhere deep inside I know that even if I try the childhood smell is not coming back. Even during the Kolkata trips when I still share the bed with my granny we do talk and chit chat, but then we sleep off. She would not tell another story because she thinks I have grown out of it and I would not ask for another one because at her age I do not want to stress her. But somewhere we both know how much the stories would have actually helped. It might actually help me smell THE SMELL again, The smell of love , and warmth , of unadulterated care and innocence. A smell of days gone by that were the BEST, a smell that will always remain the dearest to me till my last breath…………

You..............

You Love,
You hate,
You Inspire and you kill...............

You eat like a dog
And you sleep like a log
And you still burp after every meal............

You Inspire
You correct
And you blow me away everytime..............

You irritate.......
You Nag
And you shut me up with a dime.............

You make me strong
You make me weak
You hold the secret to my mood...........

You dirty my kitchen
You break my china
And you grease my linen with your food

You complete me
You fill me
You help me be me all the way..............

You disgust me
You annoy me
You make me cry all through the day.....................

I love you
I want to kill you
I want you to stay with me forever
Though I know we will both end up finished!!

Of job changes and more

I changed jobs. It feels a bit of everything!!Job chnages are like extra marital affairs.You know they are bad...........but something pulls you to better assets;)
I have a team to care of , and the young chaps are naughty but pretty interesting!!Hoping some nice times.
After the Mumbai seige, I have become very numb!!Dont even feel like saying anything.Who is listening anyways?Where is the world going?The country came to a literal standstill with teh TV in view for a motley group of young lads to loved their guns better than their books!! They killed people for reasons they best know, and we looked at the TV, called friends and relatives back in munbai and heaved a sigh of relief when we heard they are safe.Next day, we all went to work, smiled , shared joked and blamed the politicians. Thats it!!Our duties are over.
Three celebrated officers were lost.My neighbour with a huge grin " I am happy that I did not let my son join the army" she said.Yes , friends, we have displayed a champion's performance in selfishness this time around.Applauds!!
Peopel criticised and said " the policemen and politicians in this country are soooooo incompetent" over hot cups of chai and may be few round pegs and then slept in the safe comforts of their blankets , happy with the thougt that is time around it was not Bangalore or lucknow.But people died.they were killed. Innocent Indians, tax payers, family men, young professionals and even tourists.
I am angry. Cant write. I am sad ,emotions for the common man like dont enhance expression, they numb it.I am numb. Will somebody show me the light,please??

My Religion, My country and my being a part of none

What defines an individual? Is it the family, the profession, the religion, the status, the class, sexual orientation……….. or is it something that transcends above all the above and categorizes individuals purely on the basis of their being good , bad, kind, jealous,
Tolerant, intelligent and other human qualities. I do not know but what I do is that the second is indeed a difficult choice, in spite of being the clear favorite. Is it that we are born to classify people, match them to characters and put them in boxes labeled , blue, green or yellow………..or is it that the grouping makes life easy….
Why I chose to right today about something so vague is probably the reaction to what I am been hearing too much lately. All over the blog world people are writing about their religious and idealistic preferences. They justify why they are right and the other factions are wrong. They write to justify and counter arguments about their own faith system and ideals. On the whole the country and the world react to all the genocide, and the terrorism, and the crimes and the perversions by doing everything in the book but owning it. In my country Muslims and Christians blame the Hindus for dishing out unfair treatment, Hindus go on a rage and burn churches and kill people in order to prove their prowess. The glitterati covers their face out of shame at such violent behaviors, and the educated class voices out opinions at the rate of a super fast mail, during evening soirées and office lunches. You might ask, where I stand? I stand in the middle of all this and fail to link a single person to the truth. Not that I am a socialist or have a degree in public psychology. But I am a voter, and a tax payer, an Indian and a Hindu, and my voice is numbed forever because I support none. I am not a minority and do not understand their pangs, to my understanding I have known them as friends and neighbors and family throughout my life and so when they speak of differential treatment or stress on being as much Indian as any of the Hindus I feel that they are just stating the obvious. I do have nothing to do with the one who burns the churches and rapes a nun, and still deny feeling guilty about my religion, because of some sick group which does such abominable things.
I don’t feel that they represent the religion that I believe in but still in papers and in the voter card I am grouped along with them. I bow to my idols and fix a peg using the same two hands. I kiss my partner and eat the Prasad with the same mouth without any washing in between, and don’t feel any less Hindu.
Similarly I love all the so called meaningless cinema my country commercially produces with the same passion as I dig Felini or Polanski; love the mindless item nos no less than the ghazal, dadra or thumri.I love crying when Tulsi leaves home with the same intensity as when Aurelius dies in the “Gladiator”. My love for paanipuri equals my love for Au Gratin and I would love to see the North East as much as I would enjoy the Euro – Rail. I feel my being an Indian does not restrict me one bit to love or appreciate anything else in the world.

But I am still cornered. I am the bad, passive, spineless Hindu who has sold her soul to the west and my non-conformism is equal to blasphemy (in a lighter sense off course). I am also not much of an Indian too as I have not stuck to the culture of my nation and let my mindscape be invaded with flavors from around the world which I could not resist. Neither am I the revolutionary, because I can not sell this middle path I have been consorting because of the lack of contact, influence and money. So where does that leave me. It leaves me with one religion, the religion called tolerance which I practice with great dedication in everything I do. I tolerate my religion being maligned everyday and yet do not go and pick up a gun and kill a few. I tolerate hate and despise of the minorities and yet do not pick up a jhanda and give it back to them. I also tolerate being called a licker of the West by my own countrymen for my appreciation of various cultures and art forms around the world and for all you know tomorrow I would be sure to be called a “Niger” or a “Black Man” in some by lane of the so called west.

This was not meant to be a crib, it was meant to be a journey into self definition and a good one at it. I being no one and nobody I atleast enjoy one huge advantage. I don’t need to bend to any kind of conformism and live and life of constant justification in order to remain a part of a group. Till then, I am happy with my Hindutva which has given me a heart to love, a soul to bear pain and a head to think and act. I am as much an Indian with my capacity to deal with love and appreciate multitude, my love for food and movie star and the shiver down my spine every time I see the fluttering tricolor. Let their be peace with the rest that I missed.

My Religion...my questions!!

Where does a man stop another?
Where does stop playing the fool ……….
When does number define the rule
When does religion become stronger than the mother……..

Why does “Way of life” start killing others…….
Why does tolerance become a one sided word……….
How does genocide become the only playing card?
How does blind faith become our fathers?

When do you stand up for the right………
When do you know it is the time to fight……..

What do you do if none holds the light…..
What do you do when you have lost all your might??

A long Absence

How do you justify absence??As the lack of oppurtunity or the lack of will? I do not know. Probably some day I will find out. When I started this blog I did not want anybody to stop by. I wanted just myself to probably have a place to spurt out, a place to write and think and read years later and think again.But , after the initial few surges something went amiss. I had the time, the health and even thoughts that I wanted to scribble, but what lacked was probably the coherence of ideas and expressions that can be bared in (afterall) a public place.What did I do for the last 2 months. I fought with TB, and parents, and the beloved and tried my best not to fight in office. But today something just sparked off.
I was asked to write an article on fashion.Not quite a fashionista myself this was a difficult task.But then I did it.For the uninitiated , I am someone for whom fashion could be maximum defined by a tee with a weird slogan, but then I still tried. Wrote a piece about the fashion for the plus sized women .In a world struggling to reach a size zero yet not going anywhere I felt this would be apt and consequestial. However my friends did not think very highly of the result. They thought it was inappropriate for office environment.Now who decides that??If bustline is a bad word and "curves" generate a raised eyebrow then why even bother to take training sessions to educate people about sexual harrasment at workplace.Shhhhhhhhhhh , "Sexual Harrasment" is a filthy word!!When will this world change?and when will India??and above all when will the people in my office???
If there is a norm about the appropriateness of words that can be used in the office environment , and mind you I am not talking about the infamous cuss words, then there is a problem with the thinking and not with the words.Why is fat a good word and "curvaceous" dirty?Because it gives you dirty thoughts?Go and show a doctor people ,if you can not help but think of "sex" when you hear anything about a women's body. And if the reason is you dont want to discuss the same or read about it in the office, then why pray tell me why should you have a problem with a girl who dresses like a gunny bag and come to office , and why does the fair woman always get the plum projects?I demand an answer people.
Beauty is always coveted, in man and woman, in the kitchen and the office desk....an attractive good looking and smart entity always gets the cherry on the cake.So what is the issue and telling the "Not so there" to rise up , take notice and groom a little better, and know what their assets and and problem areas are?If the sole purpose of my assests are to be stared at by the so called "Moral obligators" in office, then God help.
I am angry today, have bluttered stuff............, incoherent, inconsequential and random.
If the above post made no sense to you , then I was bang on target and if it did , lets be friends:)

6 years past...............

sometimes I remember you,
the empty ice cream stall calls for your pocket money.............
the smell of rain swept dust , that i smell alone;
the half empty mug of coffee, the untouched first wine glass still full to the brim...............
the phone sits without a ring all night..........
the meaningless remixes keep playing repeat mode..........


sometimes I miss you,
when the old road, looks so different but still smells the same,
the old book suddenly opens into a page ;
a page, strewn with underlines...............
when mom scolds for long calls, and late night calls,
and forbidden calls...........still
the extra copy of "love story" goes to the old book store...........

sometimes I hate you,
when there is still a tear in the eye,
when ," casablanca" still brews moisture........
"We will always have our calcutta"
the city changed name, face and people............
all because you broke a promise..........

all because first loves are never meant to be.............
all because love was never but the same............
and entrance exams comes only in the spring..........