let it flow, let it

i saw you as a lovely soft whisper of delicate energy. good souled. u danced in like most good serendipities do. the initial new days stay hazy, of how we got talking, what happened. one day you just told me of how he treats you, how he is and ur swollen eye rims tugged at my heart.

we spoke so many times, of how the nature of cosmic dance is. and u endeavored while i knew this will hurt. while she knew this will hurt. but like birth amd death, pain is complete, pain is inevitable, and pain is the truth. we cant be who we are with out pain can we. nothing beautiful happens with out pain- progeny, continents and new world. so u had to bite the dust. except that it strangely hurts. the anger is not for the one who had this coming your way, the anger is inexplicably for the look of utter bereft in your eyes. yes you pull yourself to your tall gait. but u do die. a little. there is rebirth with this slow death. this decay. but death is necessary for new life isn't it? dont they say, fear not the nadir because it is acme that hurts and while nadir caresses you, u can only stay safe.

u will exhale. gone will be the rose tinted glasses. gone will be the trusting gnome within. pain leaves its mark and it will be a part of your fabric. but you will be so free of guille.. and u will let go. plunge down like alice in wonderland. spiral away and land with a thud. and the rest awhile. you have a long hike up... to the clouds whence you belong... and well, you will get there. not today, may be not even tomorrow, but yes you will in your time...we all do.....

i'm a walkin' and a wonderin'

Travelling as they say is the best education. Every time I pack my bags there are flurry of activities around me and within me. I love the thrill of waking up early, have a thrifty bite, get my bags, throw them in the trunk of the car, strap myself and zoom away just as the sun plants its first lazy kiss on the landscape around me. As I had been since I was three or so, even now I am left confounded how after just 10 hours of driving everything around me undergoes a metamorphosis. Roads, trees, people and well ….food!!! What is travel with no delving in food? Nothing really. And though packed lunch is safe and prevents amoebiasis, it represents rigidity and inertia to change. So I love the sweetened milk tea, a contrast to my daily large quota of black/green/some monochromatic tea with no sugar. And I love to replace my oats for something oily and spicy!!! Come on, it’s time to really unwind.
I just know that I will buy more tea mugs, I can, I am positive, raise money for any ailing IT company with just the proceeds of a garage sale of my cups and mugs. How can someone keep buying mugs or tea leaves or silver earrings or books every time he or she travels!!! I amaze myself with these banal buys. And that small shop ahead of Mysore in Gundlapet, that sells one amongst hundred a very Parsee elegant crepe silk saree that which I don’t buy will leave me heartbroken. It’s like an ablution from the usual. It’s trite but it signifies a flight. It is eerily cultish. It is akin to making love to the same man many times and still not having enough of him. It is oh so like discovering a new morning-after nuance after all these years.
This time on my way to Cunnoor, I noticed the aqueducts in Mysore for the first time. They are old, grey and they are of the road. I also now know for sure that the quaint shop that sells flavoured sweetened thick tea on the hair pin bends from Masinaguddi to Ooty is after the hair pin bend number 24. There are 36 hairpin bends from Masinaguddi to Ooty. And they are numbered at each bend as 36/36 and deplete away to 0/36…lo and behold you have reached Ooty. The old Higgins & Bothams in the far corner of Cherring Cross, housed in a burgundy wooden decrepit edifice with its rickety floor panels and scary wooden ladders, had some old and some new books. Tranquilitea is soon to move away from its current location near the Sims Garden. Sandeep, the owner, informed that the 5 year lease would end around October and they must find a new place for the Silver Tips and the Tea Breads. This will be like Elizabeth Taylor courting someone else. It will take some time to find the tea and savories hanging on someone else’s arms but in time we shall acquiesce.
The trek down the Raliah dam towards the forgotten quiet tea shrub slopes hurt my buttocks and calves. I wonder why Vatsayana forgot to mention about these aches and pains as the plump men and plumper women practiced their acrobatic stunts in Kamasutra. It needed lots of hot water and eucalyptus oil from the lone vial I bought in one of the so many spice and natural oil shops dotting teh Nilgiris, to relieve me of the soreness. I hope those acrobatic twits had such a vial. I am sure they did.
Heady yet grounded. These two emotions suffuse me with warmth. As I sat on the lone swing, beside the small cottage that became my abode for three nights and two days, gazing out at the lush green tea shrubs that cover the small hills, with the hope that I may just be able to spot a bison or two, I could only wish I stayed longer!!

Lard Jar

that lard jar at work. what is she thinking wearing that body hugger and looking like a jello bowl.. cant u just see what u are doing.. the aethetics apart, all the damage to the spine et al... my poor Abusehater has suffered long with a slip disc, and she has ben sorely missed, good she is getting back and we can get on with munching names. hey what is that inside my T-shirt, below the specks? "Paunch"?? run gotta burn gotta look 20, gotta be pretty...run floozie run, instant karma is slipping away

the prodigal child

i have no reason to feel good about myself. what, pray, is my contribution to the society. yet another directionless human being, thriving on the feeling of entitlement. the next raise, the next el dorado of a job, the next palm full of star dust by my pillow, all that gliteratti...yes thats what life has become.. i read about this young woman, works in my big jazzy salt mine, who inspite of being an abandoned destitute, managed to educate herself, who though hails from an orphange herself, yet has a big heart of gold, sharing and supporting the younger girls who are in need themselves in the same orphange which she grew up in. i was in that orphange for a few hours in view to a mandate and sudden "do- good act" of my great heralded portal of work. when will i stop looking for wind beneath my wings but start being the wind for someone else... petty world, this world of mine, everyday i feel some more of good, whatever little, eroding and at a very fast pace. i am at the brink of losing all humanity, how can you blame me ...i only get to see some more sycophancy, some more obsequousness, some more malignancy. the same Uraih Heeps get it all, get it remorselessly, get it like a long promised entitlement. philosophy they say is for those who have time to think because winners dont...they are doers... mechanical doers, the next kill the next jugular...thats the thirst and these people i love despising need to slake it... its like an infection...it kills you if you go against it or adopts you to be the next progigal child...... is my dislike for these Uriahs a lingering stench of my failure or is it my cue to look for a dimension which they can never afford to offer me or further still is it a plain platform of feeling good about myself........

mitra sometimes u just drop by

Mitra, at times in moments of reluctance and unacceptance, I feel u draggin your lazy feet, almost screaming for being disturbed, standing behind. and i can sense ur nervous flighty self, oddly which has calmimg effects. i can hear u telling me- it matters or what? your funny hinglish!!! then u walk away, drift away. u have some thing to munch on i guess and u being the slow poke need to chew for hours...look at me, i dont even have the proprietary to be angry or irate as u walk away... its ur way, i guess??!!??

the tapri

he rescued an old flask, gathering dust, from a forgotten corner!!! and rinsed it. he donned his old straw yoga slippers, took a 10 rupee note, and slowly walked out the door. i was on my phone talking. i must have talked for 10 min and then he returned, sat down in the ricketty wooden Saharanpuri chain in the small terrace and sipped his tea. i came and rested my hand on his shoulders...he said he went and got some tea, made of tea powder from the tapri, a few yards further from our stark white apartment complex. he sipped it and i fell...well good somehow...simple things left simple

if only Siddhartha was here!!

i find it so ugly, so putrid. this vast collective feeling of negativity. everyone at the salt mine hate their work. hate people. hate the system. hate!! so much of hate my god! motivation is rock bottom. they all, i included, wait for the whistle to blow so they could move on. keep acting and keep eroding. somewhere in the personal account of a whore i had read how every act of paid carnal degraded the protagonist more, made her slump more, got her to a state of denial. i guess every time my brethren , i included, move for greener pastures, somehow unwittingly undergo the same pain, except instead of a man sullying a woman it is fate sullying us! sometimes despair seems to be too small a word to describe....... at other times it seems foolish to despair...anti-despair called hope crops up. ...and i want to believe in Siddartha more when in despair than when i conceive hope. if Siddhartha was here i would have asked ...why this despair? he would have smiled and said its a by product. we call it pain, god calls in cleansing, physics may call it balancing. whatever it is, it snaps ur thread of imagined flight and brings u back to the ground of reality....despair

Good morning!!!!

Some days are good days. Such days do not bring in their tiding some good news or some great gifts. They are plain good. Like hot chicken soup on a rainy, cold day. The weather just may play a part as well. It is salubrious today. But really at the core of such days lie peace. Bonhomie. A coming in terms with irregularities. Irregularities one faces from relationships or from the society or from one of the many fabrics of interaction that clothe our day to day living. Such days make one almost understand what Buddha really tries to tell. Understand what an old widow may want to teach. Understand the smile of a child woken from the sweetest sleep. Come unto in peace. Where forgiving is not an agenda because there is no dark anger. Such days nor want in their wake any apologies. You want to shrug off that huge baggage of guilt you carry along, that pretty dispensable abhorrent dead weight. You may have wished someone good morning and that person may have been sleep washed but talks to you from the soul and you feel good. Or it may be your spouse leaving early at day break for someplace in a jet plane and you wake up on wet morning to brew some tea for him, fighting sleep and the urge to cuddle back again. And sleepily kiss your spouse good bye. Or a good friend thrilled at getting some snacks and some basic food you cooked for her because she is a little under the weather. Irrespective. In small measures of give and take, some days are good days. Today is such a day!

Good morning!!!

Fixation: Part I

Little Washedup with Veena Chachi

When I first discovered that breasts held me captive, I was a mere lad of 7. Veena Chachi , my paternal aunt from Delhi, was visiting us in Bangalore. My mother, a harassed, young looking army wife, much raved and ranted of Veena Chachi's impending visit. After all, she was never pleased easily with orange squash from the army canteen or the regular samosas and talked too much. The fact that her two children were a little hazardous to my Mom’s dinner wagon of precious Siliguri crystals dint thaw my Mother much either. Veena Chachi belonged to a rich "South Daali" business family that traded in jewellery. She personified Dillipan so well : Lazy, loud, be-jewelled, shrewd and totally humongous that she almost looked like a beached whale. My petite, cotton sari clad, pearl string donned mother almost looked like a severe school matron in comparison to Veena Chachi . My two cousins, her two children , were little “Dilli-bubbas”: whining, competitive and destructive.. Veena Chachi had ample breasts that bordered more on being “obscenely generous” than on being “well endowed”. I am not too sure if I ogled at them too much, but I surely got to feel them a lot. Oh no. Not what you think. Back then the Pervert Quotient was very low in me, and I could not even imagine cupping, or should I say , arming them. It’s just that Veena Chachi petted me a lot, hugged me a lot and always clutched on to me. She would pluck me from my study table, tell her two impossible kids to “simmer down” and make me sit on her lap and talk for hours. That would ensure two things, first, her not having to help Ma in the kitchen and second, worm out dirty family secrets like if Pa drunk a lot or if Ma partied a lot or in any “Uncle” came about in Pa’s absence. She would drag me to the guest room, would lie on the bed talking, rest on one hand, turn on one side, keep telling her kids to simmer down like they were a rabbit stew and pretty soon snore away to oblivion.

And as she would sleep, I would cuddle up next to her to avoid her two bratty children. They always beat me up. Also this tactic worked well for me because Ma could not bulldoze me into stupid home work. And while she slept, Veena Chachi's big bosom would heave up and down, like gigantic water lions hobbling on the beaches. I would lie next to her, very close and would try not to look at the bright magenta brassiere that peeked out of her yellow top. I would wonder why Ma would wear those boring white ones. Occasional black ones but generally tame white ones. Sighing at the wonderment heaving up and down in front of me and confused at the difference between Ma's choice of lingerie and Veena Chachi’s, I would drift away to la-la-land as well

do the math floozie!!!

mba mitigates risk. u get a job. u get paid. become another coca-cola bottle, lady luck may appoint u a prodigal child and u may appear in CNN live or in WSJ or in ET, but hey its like the government bond. low risk low return.

i flirt with "what if i quit the rat race and write a book". that means i then go to Davidar from Penguin and see how can i get my book published. and well, wait, what then, I also walk in as another one to give him a run around?...he writes and publishes too. wont i be another threat. what am i worth to him really? and more importantly, then what do i write as my eulogy - consulting background, married and lives with her husband and money plants on 8th floor in Kondapur, Hyderabad? where is the Oxford? where is the Mumbai or New York? and imagine my "Blah Blah" titled book next to "Etc. etc." by Rushdie, Seth, Pamuk and Lessing...not to forget Huxley!! who will read me?

see thats why an mba....low risk low return...shut the gob and do the dhanda, like the great Cornflakes Toad!!!

It ain't easy no where, darling!!!

consulting sucks. especially if u are a woman. and a married one at that. office work gets endless. home gets tiring with spoilt spouses who become suddenly juvenile after marriage and maids not turning up. nothing else is so bad. or so i thought. till recently one of my maths faculties in my GMAT coaching institute told me her schedule of 18-hours day. she leaves home at 5.30 am and reaches back at 8.30 pm to find kids hungry and wailing and the husband on the computer playing some game. as she asks him why the kids went hungry, she gets a screaming match. she gets a day off a week. never a saturday or sunday and never off on a holiday. whoever said life is fair. yet day in and day out , so many of us GMAT aspirants try re-schedule timings coz we have some work threads to be taken care of. and she relents. just this morning with GMAT 4 weeks away I was hyper-ventilating, and she re-assured that with her around, things should be smoothe for me. i just hope she has that kind of a mentor too!!

da da da da...duh!!!

its morning half passed five. everyone's asleep. i just made some red tea. i added a cinnamon bark to it. i like it sugarless. i slide the terrace door and gingerly step out on the terrace. i breathe in the wet morning. the lazy "aama miah" rain in hyderabad is so refreshing. the money plant needs some pruning and i can only half heartedly blame my procastination. its so not in my list of things to be honest. i sip my tea and lean across the railing. in B603 i see Mrs Upadhyay. Bunned. Saree carelessly draped and a red bindi. the bengali shakha. in her 60's .lean and hard. she sits on the white garden chair, sipping her tea too. looking through the thick famed glasses. i guess the servant boy is not more than 12. he gets her something in a bowl. i see her setting it down on the little table hidden behind the unkempt foliage of her terrace. then she does something that enraptures me. a very normal act but magical. she un-buns her hair, loosens them, lets them lazily fall and cascade down. from this distance i cant see the grey strands, but i have seen her strolling around the apartment complex. there are ample greys. she dips her finger tips into the bowl and gently runs through her scalp. she oils her hair slowly. deliberately. my tea is finished. i need to go in as the day beckons me. i just found the whole act soothing. very different from my quick ministrations.

o jeeeeeeeeez..

i caught Ahem digging something. nose! i would and should have been grossed out. but i was not. why? i was enthralled by the expression of intense concentration. the utter bliss at locating the itchy malicious culprit, Iggy. Our digger did what i expected ... took out Iggy, looked at Iggy dispationnately, rolled Iggy between the fingers and let Iggy roll away on the soft carpeted floor of the mnc office space. till Miss Stilts passed by, perhaps having just crushed Iggy mercilessly under those profanely expensive shoes, smiled at Ahem, shook hands with Ahem and said " Good Morning"

Easy...so very much!!!

This morning as i walked into our team room, I see one colleague trying to solve a puzzle. She had to arrange four small parts to build a "T". She figured it out eventually. While she was doing it, she was thinking furiously. When she finished and I took it up, she was trying hard not to prod but could not help looking at what i was trying to do. And when the next person tried after me, I tried not to be too smug. This is it. Its a small dynamic really. Once u are amidst things, u try to make way and make things happen for yourself. Once u have it all figured out, u lose patience when others try to figure it out. If we all realise this and hold the impatience at bay, a lot many issues can solve eventually. It seems wise to let people figure out their way. They may take a while but they will get their bit done. Once they are done, you may be blamed that u never helped and even if you helped u may not get the credit. But the best deal out of the whole thing is, you are never expected to help again. One reason is that the other person realizes you will not really help him or her. More importantly the person is now confident in doing things himself or herself. However, there is one small injecture here, the confidence in the other person who is trying to learn, grows when the experienced onlooker in trying to be constructive while being patient. Any negative blow at this nascent stage of trying can be detrimental. What also can work at times is a detached approach with a light touch of encouragement. Detachment helps the other person to be self serving and encouragement is seen as an opposite to hostility. This combination helps a beginner more often that not. The world would have been ideal if aware and apprised people set up beginners for success and not failure. But then aware and apprised people may reflect brilliance only on the surface. Deep down they could and perhaps do harbour fear of losing out to someone else. Hence that false sense of bravado and that ridiculous one-upmanship.

the day's small love story

now not that i doubt why i got respectable with Monk and dint live in sin and love him inspite of being so trady...but then he has ways to be so lovely. why this morning i put on my consulting cap and reasoned that paying 6.5 grands to our always confused driver is expensive and math proved the number is not small when calculated for a year, i mean its almost 1/4th of my potential seat booking amount in a B-school (if they would have me that is), so why not bid him adieu..Monk looked up from his 100th paper of the day and said " deny him a living? my conscience does not allow. in this current recession he will have no takers...poor man's got to eat Babe!!!" so thus i so fell in love with him yet again..yeah he may never fire nincompoops if he is ever lucky to get to the top (most who get there are pretty much seasoned hard hearted bastards who think fucking happiness is an entitlement they have earned) but the man has a soul and thats why he is my Monk!! So like it has been since i always remember, the bed i sleep in shall smell fresh always and the bread broken shall be sweet and well deserved.... thank god its worth bringing babies to earth till likes of him exist!!!

The nice ladies!!

Every once in a while u meet some good people. They have quirks that leave u bemused but they re-iterate the fact that people like me can deep down get along with people who exist beyond the binary exitence. of yes and no. of pure black and mortuary white. i mean gimme a break, who needs to be so stiff with righteousness and all peaches and creme and wants the ghosts of urah heeps either!! plain have-a-thought-will-speak-it- out works fine instead of stewing over thoughts. this is why i like these two gals - "Swearhater" and "SometimesAbuser". Smart, quirky and fun to be!!! Good to people they define good (which sort of overlaps with my thoughts) and nasty to assholes!!!
they love their herbs and are pretty basic in their food...and are genuine,rational and intellectual. are not washed up like most ppl from B-schools...infact as i said they are not binary!!! they are cool they stay chilled. both of them are a tad pattable but hey thats why they are com"patable"... well girls.... rock on then!! i shall tutor you both with a detailed course on profanity very soon...till then hang in there!!!

Go earn your decree!!!

As you traverse this lovely earth
And wonder what in it marks your worth
Remember not everything is revealed
Some truths lay hidden and concealed
All the alms you ever gave
Sometimes when scared , yet the smile, hence the brave
It takes more than inches to be tall
It takes the brave to smile at spring , smile at fall
That one deed of selflessness
That one angst for restlessness
That celebration of the trough
That tenacity can be yours when things get tough
To be a friend, to be a son
To know when to tarry, when to run
To know how deep you can be, yet gracefully skim
To stay centered yet run the rim
Let all the Gods be with you
Let all the adversity challenge you
When the day’s dawn has had you tested
It is the day’s dusk that leaves you rested
And when your share of happiness comes your way
The happiness that comes to stay
Rise and meet it like a comrade
Embrace it, it is pure, purer than jade
So go now, you have a long way
You may not always have a guiding ray
And you may not tell this to all and sundry
But you must take that which is yours and set yourself free
So as you lift your anchor from that deep blue
And your sojourn beckons you
Hang in there, but hold tight
Fly high my friend but soar light

Whispering wisdom

the limbo again, and a pregnant expectation. the stillness in my head portends a deluge, first a trickle , later the deluge. very soon i will one way or another mark pave a path..and i will walk this path.... i ask providence to once again whisper that talismanic chant in my ear...do it... i know u can do it....

just if...

if mitra, u had been lucent to the fact that greys remain greys and never turn to a vibgyor, it may have been a lovely week. you do know that never shall we meet, talk or ever see one another.may we never. never can not be too emphatic. so in anticipation i would have gone for a movie , a drink and a quiet book exchange. nothing fancy. fancy stuff is for show. just basic sketch of reality and a cognizance that hey i care, i am there, i am happy scarlet streaks in the sky sketch out for you. i nonetheless remain standing in this estuary of time...adieu!!! go light then!!!

hush my love!!!!

dear mitra!!!if i could i would tell you to wrap me up in your silence. in your quiet. in your calm. its a world i dont live in. your deliberate world of stickler to norm. i would ask u to tread very slowly even in your world. because there i shall be allowed to see artefacts i usually dont. like your glance of my feet. u just look at them. and have that lovely soft look. there is no judjement. its an act of liberation marking to possess. thats an artefact. i will putter around in the background. u do the thinking. its really pure, my this fondness of you , you see. i wish not to own you. that will be ridiculous. owning. you. your mulling is another artefact. please hurry with the gait. the world is not waiting to watch your dramtic entry. no not unless it was i who alone lived in this world. but alas! i dont...do i. i am even scared to acknowledge how many tears fill my soul when i think of you. tears are for cowards. i am a coward. the brave declare...or do they? tell me what will i ever do if u ever happen to implode. but then u will , you know. implode. u are so scared of your own power, you will implode. and even then u shall implode quietly, like a soft spill of milk on a white tile. like all sound sucked away from a room. as though the singular objective of this world would be to witness the spill. your spill. then all sound will return, the chaos would return. a pregnant dimension will contain you. that dimension would not hurt you.....ssshhhhhhhhh...... quiet!!! hush my love!!!.... SQ

the shrinking shadow

sometimes over tea, generally alone, i think of Bharti. she lived with her sister in whose house i lived as a paying guest.she would get me tea at 2 in the morning as i studied for some useless engineering exam the next day. she would wash off the stubborn stains off my filthy boot cut. she would steal for me the latest dark brown lipstick from her sister's little vanity shop so i could drape that and rush off for the many escapades of a young woman at the threshold of her third living decade .... movies, boyfriends, rock band etc. she even took me to meet a stubborn friend requiring tender lovin care at 10 pm rainy july bangalore night. cooked the dosas with minimal oil as i liked. kept the last piece of tasteless sponge cake from the local bakery for my saturday elevences. she cried when i did when boyfriends were dumped and i felt more the victim. she laughed when i laughed over some silly stuff playing on the TV. she loved me. i knew it then. sometimes i wondered if she were a closet lesbian. i was so mad back then, i flirted with the very idea too. it would have been neat if i were. how i discovered i wasn't is another story.back then i needed her, but dint love her. she knew that too. and one day, when "better sense" prevailed in my final year i moved out of the place where i lived for almost 2 years, to a college hostel. where i did my own bidding. where i dint really miss Bharti. where one day she same to meet me just as the hostel gate would shut at dusk to protect the modesty of the chaste (if there were any) young women. she came sat with me, got me dosas she made with no oil, a half sponge cake and the latest Maybelline cognac brown. then she cried. and i was restless with guilt i tried to smother. she left. i met her once or twice after that in the good old Yelahanka town/village/no description, call what you may, where i would go on the weekend to get the instant noodle packs, coz the hostel dosas were cholestrol breads and idlis too sour for my liking really. she would ask me out for coffee at sharavati, the best south indian joint that little place boasted of. Bharti never said no to me. I hardly said yes to most of her bidding. i finished my course, moved to another bustling big city, picked up another boyfriend . things dint work out with him either. did my resume a favor and did some more studies. got serious about life. got married. went to the US. came back. moved cities. yeah i keep moving. got fancy jobs. still do them. last when i went to Yelahanka, the old PG house was locked. there was no one there. i dont know of Bharti's whereabouts. she was 28 when i was 20. hope she is married now. hope she has a loving spouse. some brats to swat around.

as i am sitting by the big window of this undescribed room of a row house where i shall be moving out of tomoro, i am unwittingly thinking of her, and suddenly realizing , that if i met Bharti today, i would love here back, offer her some tea and keep reading a useless book as she would most likely have sat next to me and thought of the next wonderful mundane thing to run for me. wherever you are, i refuse to shrink that shadow of ur existence. not anymore. you are larger than that. sometimes dear girl you are even larger than life. stay happy