Travel Drivel

It would be highly presumptuous of me to call myself a 'traveller'. As a child the only travelling I did was from my home to my native place for summer vacations and any other sundry holidays that dotted the calendar. Add to that the occasional trip to Pune or Mumbai to visit family and friends....that would pretty much sum up the travel diary of my early years.
But as I grew up, I had the good fortune of travelling to quite a few places, taking a few thousand photographs and doing the quintessential touristy things.

What amazes me even today is how we form a mental image of a place much before we even set our sight on it or foot in it. Earlier it was word-of-mouth - that "oh-so-reliable" source of information that made or mauled a place for us. And maybe an occasional postcard that a distant relative had sent from london - more to inform you that he is in london than to give you a dekko of the Big Ben and the big fat red buses.
My sister's stamp collection is largely responsible for my mental image of Australia being the 'pregnant pearl'Opera House and that of Kampuchea (which I later learnt is Cambodia) being a big fat half-green half-brown lizard with its tongue sticking out. Based on what the next door Kumars (or Silvas or Subramanians or Joshis, depending upon which latitude-longitude you are sitting on) say after their recent vacation to Singapore, you decide whether to mentally scratch it off your travel list or to convince your better-half about how it would make more sense to go to Singapore than to invest all that money in the stock market (what with the erratic sensex and union budget et al) and then spend the rest of your weekend sashaying on the streets of Singapore and giving a thousand-watt smile in front of the lion fountain..all in the Singapore of your mind.

I was jus doin a quick top-down of my immediate "must-see" list...and heres what i found:

Sicily : Old houses with balconies facing the road, bullet marks in their walls, old women sitting on porches sewing wrinkles onto little pieces of fabrics, men in suspenders with slick hair and lopsised charming smiles and mysterious ways, chunks of tomatoes drying in the sun, the smell of bell peppers frying in olive oil wafting onto the roads, faint music playing in the background. I guess it would not really take a Freud to guess where this one is from. and strangely, the whole mental picture is in black and white...

Calcutta : When you have two 'Bongs' (one dyed in the Bengali culture from head to toe and the other reluctant to be typecast as a Bengali and yet retaining a healthy nostalgia for the Calcutta of his childhood) giving you a healthy dose of Bengali music, "shorsher maach" and stories from the "DomDom ilaaka" and "Bara Bazaar" everyday (I hope I have got the pronunciations right....with all due respect) it is difficult not to fall in love with Calcutta. It has always meant to me wide streets with trams and cabs ambling by, women with big eyes and tiny puffs in the sleeves of their saree blouses, steam rising on the streets out of nowhere, the fervour of Durga Puja and spending days cooped up in an old apartment engrossed in writing a book as the sounds of the streets ride piggyback on the strands of light entering through the tiny crack in the window. Where 36 Chowringhee Lane meets Parineeta meets the Calcutta of my friend's stories....

This could just go on and on..right down to the last place on my travel list. And its the same story. Same vivid mental image- meticulously put together from fragements of hearsay, pictures, wiki and facebook, memories, movies and music. Just like a jigsaw puzzle. A montage.
I guess we almost always see a place much before we actually see it....

eavesdropping...

N: ...its just a temporary phase...this too will pass
K: even a storm eventually passes...but leaves in its wake
a trail of destruction...
N: hmmm....
dont worry..i won't let this draft turn into a storm
K: hmmm...

twilight zone...

when the dusk has just bade
its goodbyes to the skies
and the dawn is still away
by a few hundred miles
the twilight comes dancing
with twinkling stars in its eyes...

and it casts shadows
long, dark and brooding
so near, so close
you can almost hear their hearts beating
and all thats hidden, comes to fore
fear, confessions and a secret meeting

it casts a spell,
holds you in its sight
in a hyponotic hug
of no day, no night
no time nor any space
no wrong and no right

and as you lay entwined
in its magical glow
it sings its last song
and with a last bow
vanishes into the dark
with no promise of a 'morrow...

mid-afternoon reality check...

As a child, I would often chase the little yellow butterflies and pinch their wings between my two tiny chubby fingers. i loved the powdery yellow trails they left on my fingers...
I would run barefeet on the fuming mid-summer afflicted roads to get my hands on those elusive dragonflies. They would twist, turn, dodge, accelerate and whirrrr away in a split-second. But then I would stealthily catch them unawares and tie a string to their tails. I loved to feel the vibrations in my fingers as they pulled on the strings with noisy protests...
Rainy musty twilights would bring the fireflies out in hordes. They would come out of their hiding places and sit on the grass, lighting tiny lamps under the beads left behind by the rains on the blades of the grass. I would sneak behind them, cupping my tiny hands to cut off the light from the world, and lift them up with a gentleness almost incapable of a child. And then transfer them carefully into a transparent empty camera-film can. When I had them all in there, I would retreat to a dark corner with my own little 'lamp' where the tiny fireflies shone just for me.

Looking back after almost two decades...I feel I haven't really changed much...

'part time' analysis...

There is a part of me that is the 'eternal optimist'. you know, the types...gung-ho about everything, always looking for the silver lining in the darkest of clouds and on not finding one, would just dab on some quick silver paint on it. This "me" believes that everything happens for good, for a purpose. So if I dont catch that little fish today, it will go on to give birth to thousands of little fishes and one fine day I shall have my own 'sea food festival'....see? the power of positive thinking...

And there is the dark gloomy "me" that is allergic to positivity and hope. It loves being sad. If no real problems are at hand, it is extremely creative in coming out with imaginary issues. I once got this postcard that says " there is a secret part of you that loves being miserable. Once you accept it, life gets much simpler and better". They should probably have added a caveat that this secret part of you likes to show its ugly side more frequently than you would like it to... and is an attention hogger....

Oh and besides these black and white divisions, my brain is also divided chronologically. So there is a part that is clinging onto the past with all its life. Its dendrites are deeply rooted in everything from my first day of school to how the distantly related aunt snubbed me on my cousin's wedding day to the second prize i got for shot-put in school (the ONLY sports prize i have won so far :|) A wee bit of my brain is sane enough to live in the present. But it is so occupied with the mundane - like remembering to take a breath every now and then, sending me hunger signals and loo-break signals ten thousand times a day - that it just does not have time for any other constructive thinking. But a majority of my brainspace is leased out to the part that lives in the future. it takes care of everything - what do i wear tomorrow, will the sky fall on my head tomorrow, whose birthday is it next tuesday, what happens if i marry some x y or z and then wake up one day to find out i dont really like him (followed by a quick panic attack), what do i see myself doing 10 years from now (that one is thanks to all the job interviews and like) This part has all the questions but not the answers. It is this part that drives me within sighting distance of insanity and back...

Not to forget, the part that thinks too much and analyzes almost any and everything under the sun...'the dissection specialist' as i call it. always trying to read between the lines even if its just whitespace, swearing by semantics, semiotics, body language and signs. and then sits with the laptop at 3 pm on an idle monday afternoon to blog all about it.

But then there is one part, inconsquentially small but incredibly useful at all the crucial times.....the one whose presence I am extremely grateful for. The one that is super impatient and doesn't care two cents about walking out midway during a longwinded self analysis for a cup of chai. the one that knows that the whole is always bigger than the parts and watches amusingly as each part struts its stuff, knowing very well that this too shall pass.... :)

the kite story...

i once saw a little boy
in the open lush greens
fat drops of tears and lament
flowing down his rotund cheeks

why, prayed i, do you cry
my bright eyed little one
there yonder, said the boy
up in the blue wide sky

i made it with my hands
that kite red and blue
i caught it as it fell
and cheered on as it flew

guided it through the gusts
pulled it out of gales
held on through the storms
to the strings of its heart

and look at it fly
with no strings attached
with miles of air between us
our beings so detached

i wiped his tears, held him to my bosom
little did he know, the child
the day he taught the kite to fly
he gave him his world of freedom...

afterhours...

...and long after they have all gone
friends, aquaintances and family
back to their own worlds
of 'lived ever after happily'

the void returns, grinning and teasing
and creeps into its usual place
and as i look, it looks away
then slow and steady it holds my gaze

And in its eyes
i see today as it is
devoid of all masks
and each of life's falsities

in that one moment
it all comes back to me
the sudden twist in the gut
and an all-sweeping melancholy

and today is a blur
tomorrow is even so
but the past is all mine
to touch and go

all ifs and buts
surround me - unabsolved, unvindicated
wondering how i have lived
by the terms life has dictated

i hold the void by its little finger
and escort it out to the ramparts
with a last sigh and look
it kisses me lightly and departs

and i return to my reality
in part, never in the whole
the void has left in my life
a big 'void-shaped hole'...

homecoming...

she came back today..as silently and unexpectedly as had she left me one fine day last october.no questions were asked back then...no explanations solicited or offered. nor did i feel the need for it today. ironical isn't it? my whole being thrives on these little scrawls that she attaches so much meaning to. words.sentences....paragraphs. the minutes, hours and years of my life....
but today am happy in my sea of silence with no ripples of words titillating the surface.

change they say is inevitable, but old flames dont die.

Bizzare...

Two days back I was sitting in class with a long-dead great grandaunt of mine. And after class we walked to my apartment in Bangalore where we did homework together over piping hot coffee and samosas.
Last night I walked out of my hotel room to find Sachin Tendulkar staying next door. My husband (damn…I don’t recollect his face!!) was very glad to meet him and they both agreed to let me play in the team’s tour to West Indies.
And that is why I love dreams…the space time boundaries just go ‘poof’ and you are effortlessly treading across generations and continents alike with the unbounded imagination of a young child.

Vagaries of the filled inbox

‘600 messages? That’s a helluva lot !!!’, I thought as I read the description off the back of the box in the Mobile Store.

Cut to June 2008…a year later and I sit on the bunk bed in the PG (Paying Guest, for the uninitiated) contemplating which message to delete from the deluge that of 580 messages that inundates my Inbox.
I scan through the messages one at a time reading them from start to end, right down to the sender name. I have done this a thousand times earlier. When the person with you is having a personal conversation on the phone and you want to make yourself unobtrusive while keeping an ear on the conversation, open your phone and scroll through the messages. When you are waiting for a friend at the mall and want to avoid eye contact with the thronging mobs, Inbox comes to the rescue. But today I look at them the same way a barber looks at a full crop of hair wondering which portion gets the snip.

Messages from my sister….no!! They are sacrosanct. I cannot delete any one of them even if it just says ‘Have I left my purse at home? Reply stat…’
Birthday wishes…sacrosanct again. And also useful to crosscheck if the same people remember my birthday the next year.
And then there are the stinkers. Messages that are loaded with accusations and politically incorrect words. Ammo in a cellular war. Someone once said that hatred should not be carried in one’s heart. Well…too bad he forgot to specify the Inbox. And so they stay on for the day when I can look back and have a good laugh as to how silly we once were.
There are some forwards too. The usual set of inspirational messages, graphics created using standard keyboard characters…creations of a jobless mind encouraged by free sms schemes. They are the first ones to be given the boot and they get just one chance to make me smile or bring a lump in my throat to hang on to that coveted Inbox space. Surprisingly today all of them manage to do so. Either the jobless minds are getting more creative or I am mellowing with age.

There are messages from a friend, which go somewhat like this
Message #1 : breakfast
Message#2: cm to mess
Message#3: chai
Message#4: dinner?
Message#5: sleepy…night mess?
And they go on in this infinite loop… one for each day spent on campus, only interspersed by a few other messages sent across the table during frustratingly boring classes. I attempt deleting two or three of them. But somehow they seem a part of me….my only link to the campus life that is now plain history. These messages are like pointers that open up a boxful of memories in my head as I read them. Priceless.

Messages from a friend who had jaundice ‘ I had chicken today…lightly cooked but it tasted awesome’…little moments of joy. Farewell messages sent from the train….little moments of sadness. Messages from a friend who has suddenly stopped being in touch with me….little moments of retrospection. EOL. End of List.
And I start all over again. This time just sighing and smiling to myself as I wonder what it is that makes it so difficult for me to press that little red ‘delete’ button.

chance encounter...

I got a mail about the greatness of the woman....I smiled to myself and spent a day gloating in the glory of my gender.
Sipping coffee in the evening at the campus adda, I saw a woman running through the streets with two crying children in tow, searching for her husband who had just bought himself alcohol induced relief from poverty with the days earnings. Her hands were moving fast - joining together one moment to plead with him to come home, moving as far apart as possible the next moment to hold her children close to her.....
I gulped my coffee in one go - a toast to the greatness of the woman in her and in thousands like her in unknown, unnamed streets of India.

Reality check...

You know you have to a pay a lil more attention to your personal life when-
somebody asks you to name 10 men you would like to have in your 'harem'
and after thinking for what seems to be an eternity, all you can come up with is -
George Clooney, Roger Federer and a couple of teenage crushes..... :|

post from the past...

something written months ago and left as a draft...may it see the light
of the day... :)

I wonder from where I learnt discontentment...when did I move out from the comfort of my cradle and start coveting the leather upholstery in my neighbour's sedan?
When did I stop running after the butterfly and start chasing higher pay packages?
There was a time when the only place with grey faces was my drawing book .When did I start seeing shades of grey in myself?
It seems like just yesterday when cynicism was yet another of the tough cookies in a spelling bee. When exactly did it make the shift from my rote memory to my conscious behaviour?
I wonder.....
How was I naive enough to think that metamorphosis is only a complex geographical phenomenon for rock formation?

Realisation...

Misery is self-made.
Is that why we hold it so close to our hearts and refuse to let go?

Passing by...

I look at the guard stand up in attention as the top honcho walks by, a frail hand trembling with the effort of staying taut and touching the temple. The honcho walks past with a perfunctory nod of his head.
The humble salute is a helping hand for the small sense of self of that big man....
I smile to myself at my own philosophical interpretation and walk away with a little icicle of pain in my heart.......

sometimes CRM is just a piece of cake

A week-long course on Customer Relationship Management(CRM) and the class was all jazzed up with the fundas. Discussions on "what kind of customer are you?" would spill over into the chai-break. While K admitted that he was the "show me the price tag baby.." kind of buyer, S asked for some sensitivity on part of the seller (read that as: never EVER say "maa'm that size won't fit you"). I was too tipsy on the whole 'Customer is the king' concept to do some "constructive contribution" to the discussion, till the chai-boy sobered me down with a big fat drop of chai on my bag.

*********
Three not-so-glorious weeks later, my friend and I walk into the Imagine store. My friend wanted to enquire about the Apple Protection Plan..and I...well I was just visiting. Before you assume that I am an Apple fanatic who goes visiting an Imagine store a good 10 kms away just to ogle at those works of art..lemme clarify. The day was Valentine's day and the store owner had casually mentioned to my friend the previous day that there would be cake in the shop....a good enough reason to go visiting :)
So lets get down to the dirty details...
Entry: My friend and I.
The normally minimalist and antiseptic store is oozing oodles of the Valentine spirit with red and white "dil-shape" balloons fluttering on the floor (remember Dil to Pagal hai?). And if you look at the heavens in exasperation...gotcha...they are smugly hanging from the ceiling too...
The pink iPod nano is being touted as the ultimate valentine gift on posters all around. The men in the store can't take their eyes off the price tag while their girlfriends are drooling all over the floor (yeah...dil shape balloons et al). I say my customary hellos to the owner and the staff while trying to rip my gaze off the two cakes kept on the centertable. Just one small piece had been cut off...just the way the Apple is bitten.
My hands start itching. I pick up a balloon from the floor and fiddle around with it. The owner tells me to put it down. With a Ohkay fiiiinee....I let it join its dil-shaped brothers on the floor. I hover around the cake area looking at the products, reading the description tags and waiting for them to offer me the cake. In my mind, I am rehearsing how to say "Oh no I am full really" and still accept the third piece of cake. But no cake is offered. My friend is taking a lot of time and I have browsed and re-browsed annnndd re-re-browsed thru the products n number of times.My feet are beginning to ache. I target a plump lil balloon and make him the object of my frustration. A kick here...a kick there...a stare from the owner.....peace..I walk away.
Finally I decide to take matters into my hands. "So I thought there was a cake and all..." breezy.very very breezy.
"Oh...its only for couples"
I think the owner is joking.
"But why? Valentines day is not just for couples. I wish my parents happy valentines"
"thats okay...but the day is basically for lovers and couples"
Still joking right?
I half smile "Oh save me those cake saving tricks"
We always have this buyer-seller banter going on. Nothing new.
The owner walks away. Casually..unobtrusively.....which I think is to cut me a slice off the cake. And DOESN'T COME BACK.

Here I am..well..here we are (my friend was interested in the cake too), Apple loyalists, brand campaigners, emotionally attached consumers and whatever jargon there is to it...with our mouths wide open, wondering what we have done to deserve such treatment. I thought buying a macbook, getting an extended warranty plan, getting a couple of repairs done, spending hours in the store and recommending the store and the brand to any and everybody in sight is good enough to warrant some cake. But looks like the store owner's Valentine spirit was just limited to those sickly ugly balloons.

So I still love Apple but the Imagine store has just got itself ticked out of my favorites list.
With due respect to my CRM faculty, I think customer relationship management is just a piece of cake. And my dear Imagine store owner, if you are reading this....hurry to the bakery, you have my address.

Pain

Reflections on one of the most telling scenes of human pain and anguish that I have seen

His belly was full of anger; resentment that had been passed down to him as though a family heirloom. With every word that he sang, the thick bile of anger rose from his guts and shook his body with a vengeance. "Who decides what merit is....isn't sowing seeds in a straight line in the black cotton fields merit?"..the words formed on their own. He could not stop them, He didn't want to stop them. He could hear his voice ringing in his own ears. A voice full of pain and anguish. A cry of despair. A scream of a wounded animal. He beat the drum faster to drown out the voice. More venom spewed out of his singing mouth. He could feel the droplets of his own spit settling themselves on his bare arms. Impure spit....impure arms. "Why isn't the air polluted by my breath? We share the same sun"..he asked the vast expanse of barrenness before him. He knew there were no answers. He knew there would never be any. The drums were beating faster now. Possessed, captivated, maddened. He knew every being was full of anguish. So much of pain....that if every human were to give a voice to that pain, it would be a loud scream that would reverberate throughout the entire universe. "Why? Why?" He gave one final flight to his anger, his pain and put down the drums. He felt empty. He felt immense solitude. He felt something somewhere move in his own universe.

no title....

Missing a warm hug
to make me feel snug
is it the winter breeze
or is it just the blues ???

A long time ago....

Sometimes I wake up with a sackful of butterflies in my stomach anticipating a surprise test.
Sometimes when I close my eyes, I am standing outside the gate to Sky lawns parking my cycle, thinking whether to have the veg mayonnaise sandwich or the chilli cheese one.
Sometimes when the cold Ahmedabad breeze caresses my face, I am sitting on the wall in the freezing January fog with a cup of coffee sending piercing pangs of warmth through the woolen gloves on my palms.
Sometimes when I am sitting at Chai gate with my friends, having Laloo's ginger laced chai served a sipful in a cute little ceramic cup, I am sitting at Nagarji's redi having sam chat and coffee with another group of friends.
Sometimes when the day ends in Ahmedabad, the lights go on in C'not and the pigeons return to roost on the Pigeon path.
Sometimes when I am in the auto waiting at the traffic lights amidst the chaotic city traffic, I am riding my cycle like crazy in the middle of the road, my hands off the handlebar, concerned friends in pursuit shrieking their disapproval.
Sometimes when I am brushing my teeth standing at the washbasin, the mirror reflects the Rajasthani dhobin with the paloo pulled all the way over her face.

Sometimes I don't know where I am...
Sometimes I don't know what I am to whom...
I didn't leave a part of me behind in that place....I just carried a part of that place inside me, into this place... into this time.

Yet again...

Am I the river meandering along my way…bending and twisting myself in any whichever direction…
Am I the river desiring to touch new lands in my final journey towards that all-consuming ocean…
Am I really that free spirit which is not bound by anything except its own imagination…

Or am I the piece on the chessboard, counting the squares, calculating the moves each time…
Am I the brave knight or am I the crafty bishop with its crooked ways or am I just the unassuming pawn trundling along with hopes of a nobler destiny at the end of the road…
Am I just one of them, moving as per the rules, hoping for a win but preparing for a paltry draw with the game of life…

Am I right in asking myself “Who am I?” when all others have failed with no answer in sight…
Am I really courageous to look myself in the eye and answer the question or am I just indulging in calisthenics with words…
Am I the one I think myself to be or is my mind playing mind-games with me?