Across my universe

2008-06-09T23:31:00.000-07:00

A blog lost and found

Its been more than a year since my last post. What could have happened in between that I could not find half an hour or 5 minutes even to jot down some updates. Was I undergoing chemotherapy? Had I been kidnapped and locked in some colorless prison where I was fed the leftovers of a sultans dog? Had I lost my love for keyboarding and making up stupid excuses like above?

This is what happened:

I crossed over from being single to married.
I quit my job and was busier than ever before.
I got a husband who writes better than me and decided that one writer in the family is more than enough.
I came across the term Web 2.0 and realised that blogging was simply not about jotting down your feelings or thoughts, but about citizen journalism, Social media, marketing and ten other "buzz words"
I took time out to read other blogs and the more I read, the more I felt I could not write as well as others.
Writing 25+ essays for almost 9 schools hampered my ability to write a single sentence! I was too intent on fine tuning every sentence and when you are writing at random about your thoughts, that can choke you a wee bit.
I missed my cubicle and my work which had served to distract me into writing.
I got caught up with my OWN life in the US.
I started becoming more organized and planned which killed a little of the spontaneity that i claim to possess.
I was just plain busy!

Now that I have stumbled upon my own blog once again, read about my funny little episodes in college and how I love Bruce Springsteen, I shall take to it again! Soon!

2007-04-09T08:16:00.000-07:00

Springsteen.

Remember when the music
Came from wooden boxes
Strung with silver wires
And as we sang
The words would set our hearts on fire
To believe in things
So we’d sing

Remember when the music
Brought us all together
To stand inside the rain
And as we’d join hands
We’d meet in the refrain
With dreams to live
And hope to give

Remember when the music
Was the best that we’d dream of
For our’s children’s time
And as we’d worked we’d sing
Cause we knew time
Was just a lie
A gift to say
A gift that future gave

Remember when the music
Was a rock we could cling to
So we would not despair
And as we sang we’d knew
We’d hear an echo in the air
And if we weren’t smiling then
We’d smile again
And all the times I listened
And all the times I heard
And all the melodies I’m missing
And all the magic words
All the beautiful words
All the beautiful voices
And all the choices we had then
i hope you find you got
Those kind of choices once again

Remember when the music
Brought the night
Across the valley
And as we hum the melody
We’d be safe within the sound
So we’d sleep
To awake with dreams
And promises to keep

- Bruce Springsteen (Tribute to Harry Chapin)

Friday, halfway through to noon, when my stomach is letting itself be heard, missing the breakfast that i didnt care for , I put on borrowed headphones and the only click I can perform are on the songs in which the artists column read as Bruce Springsteen. His low runmbles seep through me and soothes the emptiness in my brain and the growls in my stomach stop because they now can hear a sound which they cannot interrupt.They pay respect.The rumbles progress to a steady voice , filled with conviction and once again I spring on to the springsteen train.

Human touch - "I just want someone to talk to and a little of that human touch." He asks for it, but he also gives. A human touch to my starved senses.Every song of his is inescapable, theyre comfortable and familiar and there by your side in the background. Great artists can also make you chuckle even while you are listening with awe. Sometimes he does that too. Listen to "Remember when the music" (Harry Chapin tribute). Listen to "Sad eyes". Listen to "Secret garden" and bring back the picture of Rene Zelweger with her pout and swollen eyes. Atleast thats what I associate it to. Listen to Glory days and feel the thumping in you, the urge to look up at the sky and think of the Glory days which you cant identify with in reality, because its another time , another place. But when you hear him, you for some reason understand. He makes rock and roll sound like what it should sound like, a sound that gets to you with its honesty and his guitar alternatively tugs at your heart strings and instills a sense of the masses around you. Even though he is talking about America, it still reaches out far and beyond and you recognize traits inherent in every body, issues that have to do with the common man. His music is fulfilling and it has fed my present hunger.I close my eyes and imagine I am at a springsteen concert, being carried away by the sound of the music filling my bottomless well.

2007-03-28T22:02:00.000-07:00

SULA

Today I heard the voice of Toni Morrison in my head for the first time. As she read out each line of her book “Sula” to me, a clear and flowing narration from the right distance, the exact line that divides the real from fiction, I felt the powerful connection to the world in which Sula lived and the lives she entered and destroyed through the sheer beauty of the words that Toni Morrison uses. Each word was so miraculously placed, it seemed like they were all holding hands with the right partners. Each line that she created was beautiful in so many aspects: the way in she describes a thought or a scene or an emotion. When I started reading, I was curious because something in which the way her name was written on the cover, maybe the font or maybe the name itself struck a chord. I knew she must be famous but I didn’t subject this book to the usual scanning of the fine print about the reviews and the summary at the back. I didn’t even read the note about the author. I turned to the page one and began to read as if I was in a hurry to get on with the reading.
Set in a town called Medallion, during the world war days ( first and second), the story is weaved around the lives of two black girls, Sula and Nell who became friends when they were mere girls. Both come from very different households and have personalities which doesn’t seem to be able to get along if you rip apart the personality from the person, but together the two personalities seem to make one beautiful relationship. Sula is the freebird, the wild one who stands out from the rest of the town girls with her curiosity and individuality. Nell is the typical sweet one on the exterior but with a mind of her own inside and the reason she loves Sula is because only she can bring out the real Nell who has thoughts as daring as those that shouldn’t be allowed. Nell is the person that Sula reaches out to when she wants tranquility the only person who means anything in her restless, bondless world. It starts with their lives as girls and later Sula leaves the town in search of freedom only to come back to Medallion after being unable to , find peace or that intangible substance of life that she was after. Her uncompromising, wild and seemingly evil ways make the townspeople brand her as a witch. The bond that she once shared with her best friend becomes hazy as their differences take over and soon they are left to themselves, their lives empty and ugly.
It is a typical story if you try to summarize it, but what makes the book enchanting is the compelling writing that sucks you into its depths of metaphors, wonderful moments and sadness. One moment you are free falling through Sulas mind and the next you are caught in Nells. Its like poetry came home disguised as a novel. Great writing is being able to make the reader abandon the environment she inhabits entirely to step into the book and smell the earth the walk on, be all the characters in it, lead their lives and take a while to come back to where you are. I felt that because I couldn’t bring myself to close the book and I kept hoping that I hadn’t read the last line.I couldn’t switch on the tv and expose myself to my ordinary life after such fine writing. More than Nell and Sula what I wanted was more of the words, the writing. That’s when I read about Toni Morisson on the first page. It was only right that she was a Nobel Prize winner with other awards in her bag such as the Pulitzer and the National Critics award. What I loved most about it is the irony of calling the town “The bottom” in spite of it being at the top of the hill and not the valley. That’s because it was inhabited by the blacks of the region and the whites lived in the valley. The Bottom of heaven is how she described it.

“It was a fine cry – loud and long – but it had no top and no bottom only circles and circles of sorrow”

2007-02-07T21:22:00.000-08:00

My favorite haunt – Room No 211

The year 2000 was the year of transition in my life, when I graduated from the small space that was school and made an entry into the universe called college life.Dangling between the excitement of a new beginning and the apprehension of what was in store for me in the vast campus that I entered, I was determined I would make all the right adjustments. The hostel was a huge grey building, newly painted and the first years were put up on the first floor. The rooms smelt of fresh paint and were begging to be occupied at last.I glanced at my room – 204, musing over what kind of girls I had to share my first independent life with. There were three open shelves and three steel beds arranged in a haphazard manner across the room. I wearily sat down on one of them and pondered over how we could set up our room. Those were my first few minutes in my hostel, the place I would soon make my home. Everyone has a corner in their home that they keep going back to. A place where they settle down after a hard day or a place where they keep ending up for all that it provides. In some homes it is the TV room, in some, their own room.For me in those 2 years of hostel life, it was room no 211.

I met the Marscands within a day of joining the hostel. Then we hadn’t yet become the MARSCANDs. We were just random girls walking around, some hesitating to even smile, some adapting much quicker than a fish takes to water. The day I met them I knew these were the people I wanted to be with at all times in college and we have stuck since then. After college got over, we’d come back to the hostel mess, eat samosa and tea and then make our way to room 211, Ashwini, Candys and Madhus room. I would never even stop on my way to keep my bag in my room. There we would sit around and discuss the days events , going into splits over our little jokes which wouldn’t be funny to anyone else except us. It was a room that any girl would love. It had three beds arranged in between the three shelves and they were well made every morning with hardly anything in the shelf out of place except for the earring box that was taken out in the morning and put back hurriedly without closing. The top shelves in both Candys and Ashwinis shelf was filled with little boxes and bags of cosmetics and junk jewelry. There were a few photo frames of a young Candy and her parents in one of the shelves. Madhus had books and a little statue of a bronze ganapathi in her shelf sitting stoutly among the powder tin and the bangle stand. Ashwini had hung a little rope touching the two shelves, where they hung their hair clips. The room was a colourful sight and I would often smile and feel better after a bad day simply by looking at the duppattas that were hung like curtains on the shelves to cover the contents behind it , the posters on the walls and the little bandhini handkerchiefs that were stuck on the wall to give it a bright artistic feel. Ofcourse what made the room really special was the hours we spent in it, talking about life and our dreams, little things in class that seemed really important then and heated discussions on what we thought was right. There were those days when we would just gather there to whisper about some scandalous story we heard about the girls next door and then there were the days where we used to sit and study together making our own sense of the subjects that we were desperately trying to bring within our reach. We would have a bunch of us giggling over jokes that seem to multiply by exam times and end up eating a whole lot of biscuits and promising to be serious the next day.Sometimes we would step out of 211 and lean over the grey railings, hugging each other and enjoying the splendour of the the sunset sky on the moutains that we could see straight ahead of us, beyond the Kumaruguru campus, beyond Chinnavedampatti, the little town in which our college was situated. Things were not all rosy and pleasant all the time though. In this same room, we’ve had terrible arguments and walkouts, even cat fights, where Nithya almost slapped Annu for being presumptuous about her boyfriend.Ok so I was kidding bt that specifically , but other unmentionables have happened. Some of those conversations seem really silly now when I look back, but in room no 211, there was nothing that shouldn’t be talked about, nothing that shouldn’t be done. It was our very free space, to let us grow into ourselves, the people we have become.

2006-12-24T13:30:00.000-08:00

Growing bubbles of nothingness

There was once a young girl who wanted some warmth. She lived in a land where there was pleasant weather throughout the year. The sun never glared and the clouds flirted with the land below in the form of light droplets that wet her cheeks as she rode towards work on her red scooty. The nights were chilly forcing her to remember always to take her jacket and more importantly not leave it around in the city.The weekdays were studded with intermittent events of pleasures like movies and friends, a chocolate cake or two and a little bit excitement in the place she called work.The excitement tended to stress her out though forcing her to break at weekends that seemed to rush in and out making her waqit for them ever more longingly. Shed try filling her weekends with as much activity and inactivity she could manage in two days, leaving her tired on monday and only more anxious for the cycle to repeat.There was enough laughter in her life to make her feel loved and enough tears to jolt her back to reality, all exquisitely timed so as to create the perfect balance. But nothing ever is perfect. Not for long enough anyway.In fact she noticed that she was as normal as anyone else as her sense of balance arrived quite sporadically. She was perfect alright but only in those rare moments which are not quite so rare because the occasion of being perfect happens to everyone at some point.She realised she was normal. As normal as normal can be. She didnt like it much. Would it have been perfect to not be normal at all? She wondered what she wanted. The time had come to wonder. She knew what it was. She wanted warmth. A fire will have to be lit. How? Should she rub the stones together like the stone age man? Or should she borrow her friends zippo for the first spark?She was worried if a cold northern wind would come and extinguish it.She dreaded the thought of cleaning up the ashes. Or maybe she didnt want the kind of fire that she thought she would. Maybe she should go to the store and get a heater.Winter would soon get over.She shrugged and put the zippo aside.While she was pondering over these matters of great consequence, she felt a yawn creep up and in a little while the young girl was sound asleep.

2006-11-03T10:32:00.000-08:00

A DAY LIKE TODAY

Some days seem like a crawl.Every inch seems to be an effort at maintaining your cool. You are afraid that each movement forward on this mine ridden land might either blow you up or take you a step towards the wrong direction... towards another mine. A part of me feels like maybe the best thing to happen is to get blown off.Atleast I dont have to be careful.
I want to tear away the feeling of irritation from my brain. Just pluck it out and hide it where even I wont be able to find it. But it will persist, stubborn and unbeatable unless it decides to just slip away without myself noticing it. Fooling me again. Maybe it is justified for occupying the position it has.After all, it isnt its fault that everything that was happpening in my day turned sour.The events of my day invited the irritation in and how can it not come where it is called.The thing about irritation is that not much needs to happen for it to appear....
A movie that youve been waiting for days to watch got deleted. You cleared up a little spare time to watch it and uv set up the speakers and propped up the laptop on a pile of pillows so that u dont have to strain your neck watching your long awaited movie!Only to find out no amount of running searches MY COMPUTER yields what you were looking for.
youve been waiting the whole day to get out of office cos ur so sick of seeing the yellow cubicles and ur dirty keyboard. At 5 you get enough work to last the night. You still hold on and race through it click the last bloody click for the day at 8 and sigh in relief and look at your cab mate.Hes drowning in his own work and you realise that youll have to wait "just a sec" which lasts for another hour.Im hanging in there... I search for my bright artificial understanding smile and wearily put it on. Raining outside.Hosur road clogged and rumours of people dying of claustrophobia. The jealous ones who are still working try to discourage us by telling tales of how people made it from the company gate to the Electronic city gate in WONLY 45 minutes."We're planning to leave at 12!(SNICKER SNICKER SNORT SNORT)You better stay back with us!" Haha, I laugh along. Theyre patting their backs for the joke they cracked.If they ever cracked a real one, theyd never understand it Im sure.
I wannnna go hooooome!I feel like throwing a tantrum.Before I just break my restraint and actually get into it, D gets up and we're off to the cab. The cab guy has gone for dinner!Ofcourse!Only now I seem to get the hang of how the rest of the night is going to be!Late flickers of enlightenment.
TVs got nothing on. The movie is deleted. Roomies fighting with phone friends. Radios got metallic bullshit playing and no one online wants to talk to you. You just paid a staggering phone bill the day before so youre not too deperate to throw away more of your HARD EARNED money on friends who dont call you back.The chocolate sauce that looked very tempting becomes hard before you can lick it.
The day was bad. I got to catch the sleep thats sitting somewhere around, hiding , mocking me. Some kind of kick!
There was one pleasant thing that happened today though....
In the cab I was trying to amuse myself by making patterns on the fog covered windows.Every drawing seemed to get enhanced when the drops of water trickled down the window. Im an artist!I can draw flowers and mountains and hearts and snowmen and tall trees with birds!I wait for a few minutes and the window slate gets cleared again for me to draw more. The ride felt like a discovery. I bet the colleague in the cab thought I was a retard though!

2006-10-12T12:32:00.000-07:00

The road to salvaltion

It was decided after some consideration that I would take atleast 25 fasts this month. It was part ego and partly my sudden need to get as close as possible to the Almighty. I figured also that if I didn eat much I would lose the extra fat and probably join a modelling contest and display the trophy in my new house. House warming next week. My room could look good with the Miss best figure cup next to the multicoloured pots and vases that i splurged on one fine day in Home Stop.Its already been 15 days and iv taken a measly 7. Atleast if I had carried them off with some style and dignity, it would have been worth while, but here I am at 4 o clock, my eyes rolling in my head counting every damn minute of the system clock.I keep thinking I should just get up and go sleep in the dorm which is always full thanks to the trainees that my company recruits in alarming numbers and the tagged employees who are trying to make proper use of being in the free pool. So I slowly pick myself up and Im about to lock my system and disappear when I hear a call that sounds dangerously like my name. "Yes?".. very very hesitant...(Um U see im fasting and im tired and I was just about to leave for the dorm... the resting place??? Havent heard theres one in our company.. Oh you workaholics.. these are the finer aspects of our company!!). But instead - "Oh yes I know that file. Il get it. And Il do this also and that and that and this and that and that that that that...(tempo increases....sounding like the old arrow shirts ad that I used to love in fifth std--- Hey Hey Hey Hey look at that!)
The good thing is that work keeps me occupied and hence 5:50 comes sooner than expected considering that I was expecting it a minute before I grow old and wasted!I keep thinking I shouldnt be complaining and every muslim is in the world... well almost ... ok half.... are suffering hunger pangs along with me and the less I whine, even if its in my head, the closer I get to my prayers getting answered.
The first day I remember I couldn take my eyes off even a hint of food. They ordered pizza in office and the smell engulfed my senses., I found myself wondering y it is im fasting in the first place.To find my space in heaven??? But doesnt look like I will die soon although you never can say about THAT.I drove the pizza guy out of my cubicle lest i commit the ultimate sin. I gave composed looks and discussed the performance of our application while the others hogged away. I even amused myself thinking whats the least that could happen if I did a little bit of a karate sequence and knocked everyone down and deposited the slices in my stomach and gave a nice long burp. So i might be slapped with harrassment of employees for a slice of pizza case or i might lose more than a point on the team player column in my appraisal list. So?
The subsequent days turned out to be a little better. It should have been as I would decide to just take breaks in between and fast "day after tomorrow"!!Strange things started happening. I would end up in the pantry instead of going to the bathroom and give hard stares at the ASSAM tea bag boxes. Everywhere I looked I saw food. On the Google logo I saw a cup cake inside the 'O'. Did I imagine that?I noticed crumbs of buscuits on the floor carpet in my office and picked it and put it in the dustbin.This was not done because I had a high sense of hygene. I just didnt want to get distracted. By 4 Id start planning what all Im going to eat after 6 o clock. Mango , Pine apple and musambi juice. Veg puff. Samosas. Mousse cake. Doughnuts. Fruit & Nut. Halidirams Katta Meeta. French fries.Appam and Stew.Rice, sambar, curd, caramel custard...............My mouth is flooding!What happens after the sun goes down though. The sad truth is that I have a veg puff and Im full. The gas in my stomach mixes with the puff and stops further appetite for a while. SO i dont get gorge away as in my dreams.
Food. It is only in the month of Ramadan that I remember how precious it is. Every morsel is an investment into my feeling of well being and tomorrows health. There is simply no point not eating today after 6 cos if you dont u are gonna suffer tomorrow.You have to make sure you eat what you think is healthy. I bet people decided what food is healthy and what is not based on how their stomach and body felt after a fast. I know for sure that Lays isnt healthy cos I can hear my body whine and go a little sick. An apple feels like a disinfecting river through my system.The best part about the period is that you learn to avoid junk food as you have no choice. Junk food is relegated to your daydreams.Thats lesson no 1
Lesson 2 is about not wasting food. Yesterday I was having an omlette in cake corner to break my fast and there was a bit of it left when the lady over there came to take away the plates.I practically snatched it back to finish the last bit. In normal circumstance no matter how tasty, its my style to leave the last bit uneaten. I get rid of this wasteful style every fasting day.
Lesson 3 is about being hungry enough to spare a thought for other people who go through this throughout the year. The children on the streets begging you to buy their cottonbud packets or roses. Some of them are even righteous enough to not take the money unless you take the packet in return.Its easy to feel sorry for them. But how sorry can you feel unless youve felt an inkling of what they go through?
Lesson 4 is about getting the feeling that youre sacrificing the pleasure of food and other equally pleasurable but forbidden things for attaining a sense of hope. That your prayers will be answered.They say God cant be deaf to a hungry soul.
Lesson 5 is about learning to manage your headaches and get on with work and being cheerful.
Lesson 6 is about making your fast fruitful by accompanying it with good thoughts and restraining yourself from bitching about everyone around you. Atleast for a while. Break your fast and do it, if you still have the interest.I dont.
Hmmm.... Im sounding like a mullah im sure.. A mullah who blogs!
Its funny how most people around you wont give it a second thought while your fast is mostly the uppermost thought in your head throughout the day.What I like best about the whole month is that eid becomes all the more grander and meaningful.Ofcourse for a lot of muslims none of this a big deal sinc they would have been fasting every day of the holy month ever since their mom stuck a feeding bottle in their mouth. But for a person like me, who used to fast 1 one day in a month and claim that it was three, who used to go to school and hide and eat my doughnuts never being able to understand the significance or the fuss behind all this, its quite a big deal.

2006-09-24T03:23:00.000-07:00

When you havent blogged in a while, it is soooooo difficult to take it up again. U can easily go to http://tologmygibberish.blogspoot.com but to go and sign in and then click on create post and then...(Im already panting) and then right when you have the editor in front of you, ur mind is pretty much as blank as the empty textarea. Give me something to write. Im writing merely because I dont want this page to go extinct.
So many things are happening with me. I could write pages about what happened in the last week alone, but how is it that a person who loves writing can simply lose her mood. Y do all events and situations and conversations and people look bland at the thought of putting them down on paper at this minute. When I get the urge to describe something I invariably would be sitting in an auto or I would be typing out a report for my boss or Id be taking a bath! I wish I had a writing alter ego who would just take up the words I want to jot down and put them on paper or espace somewhere while I was busy attending to daily matters like the ones above!I wouldnt even have to coordinate with her or instruct her about what to write. She would just know naturally what to do and voila! By the time I am done with making noodles, she has written an article on "How maggie has saved lives"! Imagine the amount of work I could get done. My life would be the most useful on earth. Ofcourse no one else can avail of their alter ego like I can.I like being at an advantage. Is this what happens to people who get asked questions like "Where do u get the time to do this?". They give a smug look!
Im signing out.Simply because my life hasnt become that easy yet. I dont have another saelf who will let me sit here while I go get my eyebrows done. I have a self that is arguing with me about the necessity of eyebrow shaping, but this happens before evry session and is just my lazy self speaking. One look at the mirror and she will shut up and I will be off like a rocket to the parlor! So much for writing.

2006-08-16T05:38:00.000-07:00

WORDS.

They were my first love. The wonder of knowing that each word has a meaning. That when you use a word, you get what you want. Water. Vellam. TV. Chocolate. No. Yes. What a bright idea! To use words! Even my two year old mind wondered about them as I do now instead of just accepting them. Later I discovered that a toss of meaningless alphabets will fall into place to form a word. A word that tells something.A miracle!

20 years later they still remain with me. Like childhood friends that have multiplied and grown along with me over the years. They are my source of power and confidence.They have guided me through my journey of mixed emotions. They have allowed themselves to be taken up as weapons when I wanted to fight the world with its villians.The sharpness sometimes gives way to blunt but consistent pressure when i want to convince my comrades about my point of view.My contact with the rest of humanity, my medium for expressing all that rages through my heart, feelings of love and longing, sorrow and confusion.Words that others use, that I have absorbed like an over eager sponge, waiting to hear what pleases me, hurting over those that didnt and reluctantly accepting what was forceful enough to make sense.

They can be a song that stays through time. They are the foundation of all events henceforth since the beginning.

They come in all genres and languages and forms.You have words that are sly and can slip right through your cautious mouth. Then you have those that are sweet and delicious to hear, the kind a woman wants to hear. Words that skip and hop and are skyrocketing with all the adrenaline inside you. Words that slur on too much vodka and just might shed the pretense and tell the truth.Words that arent high anymore and are as sober as law.

My catharisis. My only way out.

I have never written a single piece of poetry in my life.But words can make even that possible. So I write... with words about words.

words that slip out like raindrops on a wet umberella
words that suck me dry leaving me empty and desolate.
words that seem to intertwine like crossed fingers
words that hit me like a furball
words that pelt at me like painful rocks
words that make me feel loved and special
words that reduce me to an insignificant dust particle in the air
words that caution me about the unseen
words that shape a new thought, a page, a book
words that make me remember a moment
words that make me cry into a soft pillow.
words that are not spoken, as silent as my babys sleep
words that sound like tingalingaling
words that paint my mind blank
words that eclipse all other words
Words that I can use to cheat on other words.
Words that point to a distance
words that give meaning to music
words that abuse and harass.
Words that judge me and banish me straight to hell.
Words that I have missed out and hence stay ignorant
Words that thank me for a good deed.
Words that I can hold on to when theres no one else.

How thankful I am for them.

2006-07-04T03:01:00.000-07:00

COME SEE ABOUT ME!

I simply have to write about this:

Two women- me and my mother. We were sitting at A Plaza lobby (one of those fine 4* restaurants where a tea costs around 40 bucks) waiting for the boy’s family to present itself. My mother trying to distract me from my irritation by old funny tales. I couldn’t help smiling at some of them. When she thought I wasn’t listening, she’d nudge me in my knee with her finger, which would almost drive me over the edge. Mothers NEVER take the hint! I looked at the watch- her watch as I didn’t get to wear my boring black watch today. Both my arms had something gold on them. Intention – to impress. It’s sad that a display of gold (diamonds would be appreciated too!) and a demure smile, a passionate glow on your face when you talk about cooking, a hint of religiousness and docility, and of course all the rest that the guy is looking for: a perfectly woven complicated web of intelligence, humor, mirror cracking looks, interest in career but at the same time the magnanimity to come back home and take up the burden of housework and attending to your sons homework(brat that he is , doesn’t do a thing without prodding… probably takes after his dad!;-)) and entertaining his parents … all that is ENOUGH to impress the scrutinizing parents. Ok I got a little carried away here. Maybe all they want for their son is someone who ll be there for him and someone he can love and be loved in return. I don’t know their reasons. The process needs a lot more refinement though.

Anyway the parents made their exalted entry and we sat down to tea. Silence. A song playing in my head. Do they also have songs playing in their heads when they aren’t talking? You can hear the nervous shaking of my legs. They can’t see it or else they might try to analyse that and conclude that I have behavioral problems. Oops maybe exaggeration again, but Im frustrated and I will write whatever I please! The mom in law to be (God forbid!) asks me what im doing and where I studied. I reply sweetly but smartly. Didn’t they read my BIODATA?? Dad in law asks me questions too. The same questions! I reply smartly but sweetly, the same answers. “Ah yes, it was there in your BIODATA”. So they read it. At least they had done that part of the homework. Why didn’t they stretch a little into the night and come up with more innovative questions to ask tomorrow. Not that my side was any better. My lips seemed to be stuck. My mother was smiling during the gaps when she wasn’t politely jabbering! A thousand and one and more thoughts ran through my “pretty looking for the occasion” head. Supplemented by gulps and smirks and this insane tendency to make faces and indulge in irrelevance!........
“So where would you like to settle?”
“I love bread and marmalade.” (Smiling very very sweetly)
“uhm…” (looks at each other) … “no no .. the place , where you would like to be. Do you like India or the Gelf or US?”
A sudden ferver in my eyes!
“Bush is evil! Let us all unite in our dedication to the causes that Osama believes in. Jihad is only way out. Raise your hands and take an oath now!”
Parents raise their hands like zombies...
All still there in my head. Can they see the amusement on my face?
My mom will not let me show it. Im being cruel I know!

“They” is just a generalization. The bad part of the general parents
They look me up and down. Checks height. Checks complexion. Eyes fall on my gold. Approves or disapproves.
They ask if I pray five times a day.
They ask what all I know how to cook.
They ask hypothetical questions like “Suppose my son asks you not to work then what will you do”. Then sniggers. Loses a bit of it when I tell them that Il make sure I wont marry anyone who asks unnecessary questions like that. (Lets play a game. Spot my middle finger!)
They are boring.

After 20 minutes of uncomfortable chit chat about my college and his college and our family and their family and the people that connect the families, they finally nodded at me and stood up. They will let my mother know in some day’s time and of course I have to see the boy. They can’t decide anything until then! My mother nods. And so do I. Such liberal parents they are!

Enter the next jing bang! Father, mother, fathers sister, nephew, fathers sisters husband, brother.. all except the boy. Not again. I don’t want to see old ppl anymore!
We sit in the same place, drink new tea. Little do they know that we’ve already finished one round! The waiters are bursting inside im sure. They smirk and ask if we want something else. Gives my mother a sly look that seems to say “Will there be something more or will you have it when the next set comes in, Madam?”
My Mom cringes a bit, but she herself is amused by the whole episode!
These people are sweeter though, I relax a bit, start talking to the brother. He wants to tell me all about his brother. After a round of snacks and better conversation, they say goodbye. I give a huge sigh of relief. Im sure all of us sighed sighs of relief... Enough to start a sigh storm!

I go to my cousin’s place. Life is normal again, but I cant help but wonder what they see in me besides my kajol-ed eyes and the fact that I know English and Malayalam. Can they see the person behind this jazzy churidar and the made up face? Even him. If I see him, will he ever know before its too late, what makes me tick and what makes me melt?
I know for sure there are people behind those faces, not just a person with the good family and background and job. But a person who has funny little habits and gets worked up about things that seem silly to you and a person who likes meen curry or who don’t like meen curry and who mite or mite not put up or down the toilet seat (someone I know said I have an obsession with toilets! I think I do!!!!). I know they are there, but I will not find out which of those exactly before its too late.

And now Y do I go through all this? I don’t know! Some people just do stupid things! And maybe it just seems very stupid now! Maybe Im short sighted and can’t see the larger picture. Simply because the picture is not attractive or too colorful or does not fit in with my notions about how it should be. It might take a while to appreciate the deeper shades. For one thing, I hate to say no to my mother when she tries so hard. Might as well humor her, but can’t help wondering when Im going to get entangled in the process of pleasing my parents. Not until I really see the person behind the face and I like what I see!

No ones arguing with the concept or the reasons or the advantages. But I definitely have hassles about the whole process. Like I said, it needs to be refined. The feel good factor is so low. For both the girl and the guy. Get all those arranged marriage jargon out of the way –AGENT, BROKER, BIODATA, WELL BRED....
I don’t want to go on and on… Im sure I sound like many others, but that’s the point. There are so many who feel like me, but the process still remains the same! Inspite of all the discontent. Well if u don’t wanna go through all this then just find a guy of your own who shud be ...[ long list]...within so n so time, they say. Yeah like I can just pick one on my way home!

Hmmm....enough... that’s the last time Im gonna blog about marriage. Im gonna put that word under the carpet for some time. No more! No more!

But someone told me that when I write, I should write about things that I know of. Someone’s always telling me things!

2006-06-25T23:08:00.000-07:00

THE WONDER YEARS

Warning:
Title borrowed and cliched (as u can see).
LONG.
SENTI.
PERSONAL.
GIBBERISH.
For all those who are looking for a general topic please skip this one, cos this particular space has been quite personalised and the all the mumbo jumbo with the initials would require patient decoding skills.You can crack them only if you know me, but if you arent bothered bt details, read on...

Life is weird! I know that’s something that’s uttered by every Leela, Shyama and Rahul, every drunken college dude ,every aunty in her menopausal state, every daddy who sees his daughter in a mini skirt, and so on… But I never was trying to be unique here so Im excused in saying it.. Life IS weird! Every one of our lives.. so many people making their entries and exists in this one single short life that we have. Some quietly, some as dramatic as it can get, some coming in for absolutely no purpose at all. “Hey dude.. u free? Lets go check out the scene in her life!” And they come as mere spectators, put on their invisible goggles and scan the arena, shake their heads to the tune of the current racket and when they’re bored, they make an exit. There are others who storm into the persons life, create a racket and leave when they themselves cant handle it anymore. And ofcourse the others who stay forever.

I was coming back from work in my cab with three of my colleagues in the back seat. They were fervently debating about who’ll win that nights football match. It seemed to be a crucial one but I was lost in my own world, watching the road .. a long stretch… leading backwards into my life. .. I was thinking of all the people in my life , since I could remember. They were so important .. whatever happened to them! They just left!At least some did!Im not going to write about the bystanders or the ones who gush out "Hello! How ARE youu"'s and dont want to hear anything other than "Fine".Im going to write about the others.

Lets see the first humans in my life that I can remember are FP and MP (Father Parent and Mother Parent… now ul get the drift). They taught me how to eat and where to pee and shit. They taught me the joy of crying out loud and getting what I wanted (I was born knowing how to cry but I didn’t know I could get anything from it!) . I doubt theres enough internet space to recount what all they’ve been to me, but all people who have parents will get the general idea. There was Mrs S or L(Susy or Lucy Im not sure!), my maid whose daughter had a much better kitchen set than mine. And Mrs B – she gave me an A in my kindergarden report and told my parents “Shes a pleasure!” in her sophisticated British accent. I hated her later for expressing distate bt my brothers constant pottying in her class . What could he do? He was only one then and he had no idea about the concept of toilets!Oh there is my brother Master S who turned out to be a boy in spite of my fervent prayers for a baby sister. Im glad now those prayers weren’t answered and God knew better. He belongs to the forever category so I have a whole lifetime to discuss him. Let me just say he sits in a a very strategic central position in my heart. Miss K , the beautiful teachers daughter in second standard who had a better handwriting and who beat me to the choir for the “sleeping beauty” drama. Agh ! How I still hate her !I remember learning the words of “Aye Mere hum safar” with J and dancing to the steps of the Habbeena dance… the dance to which our school seniors danced too. In second standard we thought they were so cool, the big girls who got to wear make up and had boyfriends. My grans, Va, U , Ve1 and Ve2. (So much encryption…) Va is still there in my conscience and every good and loving part of me. A great man, Although he did accurately point out when I was really small that im one jealous little thing .. But I can forgive truth:-). Did I mention Master J, my first crush..? Years later when I met him I was quite appalled at my young taste, not that any of the others were all that hunky dory!!School in india was a different game altogether.Mrs L was the first in my life to actually put in words that I was ABSENT MINDED. The first time I heard it I thought it was a terrible thing to say and I cried in class. Miss L my official best friend, then and now. Its strange how the tag stuck, but I know shes one of those people wholl be there always and lifes only the better for it. I wonder whats up with S chetan our old driver whos done a lot more than driving for our family. He was a big source of gyan to my brother. “S cheta, y do you have a kannadi here in the car”. “Oh mone, that is the rear view mirror for seeing if cars are coming close from the back”….”And this..?”..

Some of the rest of the years are quite a blur. There are vivid pictures of T and I(I as in me :-))in the swimming pool floating around, discussing life, or whatever little we knew of it. At the time we thought we knew everything until we were one day shocked by what we read.He he… “Our parents did that!!!!!” Ah Sex was a completely new dimension and we set out to explore it.. only in books ofcourse. S, P , J .. the radical bunch in school, inseparable from me. I thought wed never part.. our ideas were the truth and our dreams were to fight for and our friendship was something no one else had experienced. Or so we thought! Will I ever forget C who gave me my first flowers. He taught me Queen and Santana and romance and how different it is to be friends with a guy. I hope hes happy wherever he is.
Mrs A stamped on my heart the love of English and the impression is here to stay. She showed me a magical world of words and ideals and virtues to uphold. I followed her advice and started my first diary.

Family, part of the groundwork, and friendship within the family is a big white huggable structure that gives you strength that a mere friend cannot.My first memories with ma cousine T are of bitter jealous struggles for the chewing gum and the hammock and of establishing whos better. Which was later forgotten and grew into a bond that went beyond just family.Politics(both family and outside), womens rights, latest heart break, the state of yesterday today tomorrow, books, music, lit, parents,school, college, work... endless endless conversations and rock solid support.F, J , Ti, R gave me something to belong to, my peer branches growing along with me,with the same complaints and pride about our common roots!

I had so many dreams about college, but the first day in “K_ _” squashed all of them.And gave me new ones. I thank all my stars that I didn room with Miss R who had so many lice in her head that her head was probably the most populated lice planet on earth! I would probably have missed out on my best experiences in college life if I had never met the MARSCAND’s. Or maybe I would have met them anyway. Some people are meant to find each other and that’s what happened. We found each other … on the first day itself and have stuck ever since. These girls have been my companions in crime, sorrow, laughter and the magical discovery of that ever eluding factor called truth. The truth that theres nothing like having a friend around when you want to shout out against the world, when you giggle inside about a secret that you want to share, when you feel like hugging someone after a bad day of battling against the arrogant chauvinists, the sadistic educators and your insensitive collegemates. M showed me how to get back to earth, A showed me that life can be complex if you don’t deal with it the right way (in quite an ironic sense), R taught me about being simple and pure, C colored my life with her humour. A was almost a reflection of myself, except that she stuck more by her principles which didn change often like mine:-).N lends me her ears and D was my soft pillow and help me cushion my falls.
College was about a guy who would always ruffle my feathers. Met him in Ist year ED class, clumsy and quite charming, spoke English and stole my ED sheets and answer papers and got better marks than me. Those comic years lent me a person to abuse, love and cherish, who'd hold my hand through accidents and little injustices and whiny teary days. But he wasn’t mine I realized later. Had to return him. Maybe no one really is anyone’s. And as you grow up lessons in life get tougher.
College was about all kinds of people and all kinds of recklessness. Didn’t do bungee jumping (wanted to..) unless it can be used as kind of metaphor! What I very distinctly remember is the first time I was taking an illegal (very innocently illegal !)trip to Chennai, I was lost in the city and I went to the only place I knew in CBE – Gayathris. And just when panic was getting the better of me, I thanked all the Gods when I saw a familiar face. A- who had come looking. My first guy friend in college and one of the very best. Cant stop smiling thinking of the crazy times!

The Illegal trips to Chennai- the wild side, N and J and G, the high point of every year! Rollercoasting sky rocketing fun.Now that I think of it, theres nothing much we did, but being yourself with them and knowing them has been one of the best things that have happened to me… or them Im sure .. ha!

Man this is getting quite sentimental, but yeah Iv lived a pretty full 24 years and damn these ppl were sweet.

The Bangalore bunch.2 years in bangalore.Shed my inhibitions, opened up, learned to enjoy myself and also waded into painful dangerous waters.P, a real laugh to be with, her outrageous "first impressions", high decibelled speech and loo habbits(haha.. sorry!!) came into the fold and became an extension of "the marscand's".. atleast to me.Met a set of unforgettable people.They came into my life, showed me some great times and one by one, slowly exited but we'll keep in touch.We should.That was some good fun we had there.Sa whod take his own sweet time to complete his lunch while everyone else would try filling up the gap with funny rubbish and fidgety spoons.Su whose jaws were constantly shaking with laughter.M, Mr Singh who hated my movies.. sniff!And P the ever indulging one, who let me be the wild me without giving a small fig!I like that expression.I dont give a FIG!!

Things are changing now and Im still going with the flow. I dont know where downstream leads to but maybe Il land on a bank where theres a sweet life waiting for me (ie, a nice man and a great career and cute kids and money to buy pretty furniture and clothes and cars and absolutely no troubles:-)). I can already hear a new voice beckoning from afar, a faceless voice, Mr A... A new bubble...A smiling promise.And who knows ...a good addition to my list of people in the forever slot.

Whichever road I take, its bound to be fun.After all Iv lived only a quarter of a century!!!(Good Lord!) theres many more years waiting to get explored!

2006-06-05T00:22:00.000-07:00

Real Love

Just like little boys and girls
Playing with their little toys
Seems like all they really have been doing
Is waiting for love...

Its real love.. reeee-al love...

There's a song which has been playing in my head for a while, they have entered the corridors of my brain and the four of them are jamming away, Making music out of their guitars and drums, their voices seeping into my eager senses. The Beatles. The legends of rock and roll. I can only dream of the joy and the exhilaration of belonging to that time-the world of Beatles, a world where causes to fight for were plenty, optimism was high, love and the freedom of spirit was believed to be the beginning and end of everything. I can imagine myself standing there in the crowd wearing pink lip shaped glasses holding out my hand for them. I can imagine myself standing in the rain, waiting in those endless queues to purchase a signed copy of the "staying alive" record! When the Bee Gees came in with an unforgettable squeak. I want to have been there too when they discovered disco and when women fought for what we have today. Ideas were new then and there was a spirit in everything that u touched. And then the 60s and 70s got over and the world evolved into today’s techiez space. We have ideas too nowadays and spirit is still high but hardly the romance. If there is its being balanced out by the cynicism and corruption that seems to have penetrated every free pore.
But let me come back to what I was talking about or rather what I thought I will start talking about. The song. I was on my way back from Cochin all wrapped up in the flimsy blanket that they provide in the volvo listening to my latest indispensable possession-ipod. My toes were crying out loud for a share of the warmth too but the blanket eluded it and in spite of me reaching up to turn off the AC, cold air seemed to be coming directly at me from some wicked outlet. My only comfort was the music that went a long way in providing me with the distraction and warmth that I so needed. And then this song came on and all was forgotten.It turned me into mush, it wasn’t really the words but the way the words were sung. It was the voices behind it and listening to them I was fully convinced too, that all that I do and the people around me are doing doesnt matter. We are all just biding time until we find reeeeeal love! So well just go on about our daily life and act like its important while the real thing is still out there waiting to come in at the right moment and open our hearts! Their voices wake me up and let me roam around in a special vista of my own where I have found it too and I can feel what they are singing and I can see what they know.

2006-05-22T19:19:00.000-07:00

Last night I tossed and turned in my bed. No i wasnt sleeping in the wrong direction and neither did the bed seem all that undulated like I usually feel. The dogs outside were barking furiously. They seemed to add an insane quality to the voices in my half asleep brain. I heard chanting and I saw bloodless faces looming large above me and I couldnt take it anymore. I had to get up and get myself a glass of water. Let me reassure that im not getting started on some kind of crazy horror story!But I did feel wierd enough to think whateever I was feeling was probably worth a blog. Hell! Anythings worth a blog. People even blog about their shitting habbits dont they? Not that I have come accross one, but I can safely assume they do.
Got a mail from my friend asking us to watch a few movies. One of them being Eyes wide shut. Thats what started it. I went and got Roman Holiday and Eyes Wide shut. Its been a while since I watched Tom Cruise smile. I was in for a surprise though.He didnt smile.I didnt have a clue as to what the movie was about except that there are some explicit scenes in the movie. It turned out that the hot scenes werent the kind I had expected.Nakedness seemed to be a critical part of the movie but there wasnt any tender love making or similar pleasantries.It was layered with the complications of a mans psyche when he finds out that his wife is not who he thought she was after nine years of marriage. One night under the influence of marijuana she destroys his notions about his wifes sexuality and the extent she is willing to go to satisfy her deep desires.Whether this is done to incite his jealousy or to just let him take a peep into her mind is left to you.He cannot comprehend the lack of logic behind it and how her desires are separated from the love she has for him. From then in a span of two days his life tumbles down around him, the rock solid ground that he walks on seems to quake at every step he takes. He enters into territories he never knew existed and is shocked to discover that life can take extremely sinister turns and it seems so unreal that when you come back home, you dont know where you have been and if it was just a bad nightmare.
Tom Cruise has done a great job as usual and as for her- She seems to present a very vague picture, under the influence of dope and booze whenever she was present in the movie or in a world of her own.
The whole movie has got dark undercurrents with dialogues that are made slow and repititive to keep you waiting. I appreciated it while I was watching and I was quite matter of fact when explaining to my rommies that these sort of things happen and even in india you have cult practices where sex is the mode of worshipping.Like I know anything!! We all concluded that it was different and worth a watch inspite of the fact that all the women seem to be clones of each other with the same kind of uhm.... bodies... shall we say... to put it decently! (Im not sure if my bloggers license allows me the use of quite specific terms such as asses and boobs!). We washed off our face packs (We did make some good use of the time we were were watching the movie) and went to bed.It was only then that my mind started whirling with wierd, almost violent thoughts and I had earlier felt so unaffected by the movie that I didnt relate them at all! Here are some of the wierdest of them: (Please note that I was half asleep too)
*I imagined myself being harrased by a guy in a mask. It didnt register at the time that he was wearing one.It was as if he wasnt and I knew who he was.. in real life I mean. I got wild and went to his house and threatened to kill him and I tore his sofa with the butcher knife I had in my hand!
*I imagined a little girl playing with a turtle that had the nazi symbol over it. HUH???
*I imagined that I was imagining all these things and that I was trying to construct a plan to not imagine them!
*I was swearing in my head
*I imagined an IAS officer taking room in a village tea shop and complaining that the tv had too many channels. Well that came from the book i was reading earlier.
*I imagined the house maid coming in the nite and robbing all the photos in the house!
Maybe the word imagine should be replaced by the word "dreamt". Whatever, in between all this, I heard a door banging and dogs barking like there was a dog riot and the trickling sound of water. And I just couldnt catch a wink of sleep for almost an hour.Looks like the movie did affect me after all. :-) No kidding!
Ah well! Il just go home and watch Roman Holiday - Audrey Hepburn with her fresh looks and saucy dialogues. Nothing like a princess in love to bring back the sunshine into ur day!!

2006-05-06T01:54:00.000-07:00

MOVE ON! –The two words that have been hammering in my head for the past few months - Move On Move On... like an endless chant being uttered by all whom I know including my own confused mind. Monday morning I’m in office with a cup of tea trying to wash down my lethargy and drowsiness pepedapadaing! pepedapadaing! goes the irritating ring tone that I have kept for my phone. Ok I confess I never even bothered to keep a ringtone for my phone. It’s still the default one but I will not try to explain these insignificant details to those who are wrinkling their noses right now. Coming back to the call, It was my old “best friend” whom I had known since I don’t even remember when, calling to announce that shed just gotten engaged and her marriage is fixed for a date 6 months away. I was stunned. She had done what the tea couldn’t have done, made me sit upright on my purple seat. What???? “No u can’t get married!! Not so fast… were all still kids, don’t u realize, we just look grown up!!" is what I wanted to scream but I exclaimed and made the proper noises and congratulated her and asked about her fiancé. I didn’t want to know… not yet, in fact I slightly resented the guy, not that we’ve been such great friends, the kind who write long letters and call up every half day to talk about their latest sorrow, but I still lived in a dimension where the past was very much alive and cherished and she was a part of that. Now she was gonna step into something bigger and less frivolous, leaving me where I was. She was moving on… and that’s what bewildered me, she was ready and so are many whom I know.

Its been a day since my roomie of 6 yrs left the country. Now there’s no looking back for her.. and us. The house is gonna be a mess without her typically virgo-ian (is that what its called?) efforts and our lives more empty without her jokes n her care. We saw her off at the airport yesterday and the only reason we didn’t make a scene there was cos the manager in charge of checking in the luggage was already make quite a big one and charging enormous rates for the excess baggage she was carrying. We definitely didn’t see the point in what he was saying cos “Wat will a girl do without her clothes n shoes and teddies!” “What do these men know!” But we had to bow down slightly to the rules which meant coming back with a carton of her stuff. She walked away with her 8 kilos of baggage n before we knew it she was too far away for us to see. Coming back in the auto we all had long faces that stretched to the dirty auto floor. Here and there a teardrop fell and I thought Im going to feel this heavy for a long time to come. But it took us just a few minutes before we were all laughing at some seemingly hilarious joke. Something written on the CCD cup that I was holding. Something that went like “Beware! The contents of this cup can be really hot!”

Funny? Who knows? We needed that laugh though and that’s when it struck me that of course life’s going to go on. No matter what happens. It has to. A law of nature. Change is as essential as the rising sun and we got to scurry along with its pace especially the people left behind. She has taken the step in her direction and soon we have to take ours. It might seem scary. What if the next step we take is going to be into thin air and lead us over the cliff! Just a matter of faith that there is some solid ground beneath us and a matter of spirit that we get up and walk in case we do fall.

24 came like a bang in my head. I never did think Id end up being 24 and now I’m already 2 months past. I never did think a lot of things about my life. That I would have friends who just disappeared one day, married and happy too! Friends who would stop talking to you and friends who lied. I never thought Id love my parents so much after all the hate in between. And I never ever thought of myself as a person who would go through a breakup. I thought I would be great at a relationship, full of honey and sweet understanding looks. I didn’t think that at 24 my file would have only a degree certificate and im still only qualified as the girl next door. Suddenly I feel like I’m running out of time. Too many things to establish and I have hardly started. Feel like too many laps for me to cover. Where did the years go? I dread to think of being 35 and thinking the same thing. I want to dread it. Maybe the fear will push me on. Bring back some competition into my blood and sweep the Bangalore laid back attitude back under the rug. Y blame Bangalore? Its just a place. Don’t do that!!!

Yes I feel the hurry and now when I look back on it (well its only been a week and Im already looking back.. see what I mean!), Im already dreaming about what could be in store for me and quite thrilled for my friends, the ones who seem to have found happiness and the ones who seem to be doing something about it in their search for it. Go girls! I’m coming too!