I will be there

23rd November, 2009

I will rest under the flowers in your meadow.

Under the green young blades of the grass and the flaming yellows of the orange flowers

That way I can be with you even more

I will be there in the dew drops on the lotus leaf in your pond

In the wind that warms you with the morning sun

I will be that single ray of sun that travels across the white thickness of the clouds and touches you every morning.

Bring me home

My beak under my wing
I can hear the raindrops on my roof still
the bright orange,cutting the sky
some shade of yellow I can see still

Bring me home
to the shade of green
to the warmth of a heart
the cavity in the tree bark

The color of my skin,
on the touch of my fingers ,
the walls of the house,
like my flesh and blood,
come alive.

Lost

When you hear from someone you used to know sometime long back in your life, it also means you meet yourself from another time. You left yourself behind to become the new you. It's not like you are sad about who you are now. It's only about how you wish you could have also retained the old you.

Sometimes it is also about how you could have done better then. The situation you were in that time and thought it to be boring and now treasure as a memory; you wish you could have done better. Today my harmonium teacher visited my parents place. He knew he wouldn't get to meet me. He knows I am married. He is 80 years old.I didn't have his contact details and couldn't invite him for wedding.

I spoke to him on phone. He was happy to hear about how I was doing. Then said that I sound the same I used to in school. I shouldn't have given up on music. To make him feel better I said I would sometime in my life pursue it again.

I know that person they are talking about. I remember the old yellowish picture.I know those fading black lines too well. If I hold a pencil again, I will be able to trace the lines.

Fight if you must.

People and their stories amaze me. Every time my maid gets beaten blue by her husband, I feel lack of education makes him the beast. She sits chatting with my mother. Home is where the hell is. Poverty, hunger, trampled ego at the construction site where the man works must be the trigger.

People like me only write about such tragedies on their blog. When things take a disturbing turn.. we write. What else do you do when you see abuse in a house of literates? Why does the Indian Male like to control? The manner is sophisticated in the house of a doctor or engineer. Words draw the lines and cut the wings. The women from cultured, socially accomplished families listen. The moment these educated women raise their voice they are disgraceful.

The woman has to be like that. Willing to sacrifice for her family’s good. Walk barefoot up the hill to please the lord. Sit submissively as the father-in-law roars senselessly. The woman as a girl was adored by her parents and thought as a thinking person whose heart broke too. For the love she feels for her husband and her parents she shuts her mouth. In the family of literates her career, hopes and self-respect are nonexistent.

What makes some of us so insensitive? Every person is born to achieve to her fullest potential. Why are we so fond of cages? I know someone who is in her fifties and loves her life a lot. She wears shorts and loves gardening. The minute that phone rings and the man is about to come home she covers herself in sari from head to toe.

Fight if you must. People who care will love you still. You bore a child. People say nothing is as painful as that. You cared for that life with all your might, as it grew inside you. You promised yourself you will never let it happen to your daughter.

Dear God

Dear God,

There is this new thing bothering us all here. Its name is some Flu. It has made our world a dark and dull place. Fear in every eye here. We have people covering their noses in cloth. Children are wearing surgical masks as they hold their mother's hand and walk around.

The old poor lady in my vicinity was at the chemist's shop yesterday. She had come with a 500 Rs. note to safeguard her grandchildren. She was there at the shop with her money that made her toil like a donkey for the whole of the month to buy the masks and eucalyptus oil. The chemist had run out of stock already. He told me that every bottle is sold, very mask is sold. The old lady was wondering aloud where on the earth would she have to go to get the stuff she needed.

In the news where swine flu is the star of the day for many past days now.. they had squeezed in another story with it. Some part of India is hit by a dreadful drought. Farmers were shown squatted on the cracked grounds with their families. The farmers have waited whole of the monsoon for the rains to shower its blessings. But instead, swine flu came in.

Artists are busy painting the huge Ganesh idols. People bringing life to these idols are wearing masks too. Schools have closed down and children are left locked indoors. This is not like the summer holidays. The children won't come out to look at the idols when the festival arrives.

Some 7-8 kids died of diarrhea in some remote village. In the middle of the flu interviews and tips and things to dos and travel advisories they managed to tell us about this other happening too.

It is bothering me. The city which is in ruins every couple of years because of the bomb blasts and yet manages to wear a smile and is present in the local trains and schools next day has changed.

Jui

The Mask

I simply love my city. Mumbai. The day my city too made it to the news for Swine Flu, changed our lives. While the rest of the world is looking for masks ranging from the official N95 to the locally made or the Made in China version us Mumbaikars wasted no time. Like any regular native my day begins in a local train here. I witnessed the change. At our railway stations we are now armored and ready. Like a shield made in pure iron ore we are wearing our handkerchiefs. As we are known to be the busiest city, we don’t get time for such mundane tasks. Our handkerchiefs look pale shade of yellow as we wear them on our nose. Some of these poor pieces of cloths were maybe kept safely in our trunks somewhere deep down for this day to arrive. Like the riffle kept deep down somewhere, to be found and used only in case of need; these scarves/ handkerchiefs are taken out now.

Women in Mumbai have come up with an even better option. This included me too on one of these days. Why carry 2 pieces of cloths? Duppatta is a multipurpose device. One uses it to dry wet hands, bandage wounds ( as shown in bollywood) and now to warp it around one’s nose. But personally, if I was to confess, I would say I have since the day I was introduced to this Duppatta have always believed that washing it as frequently as the dress is really not necessary or impossible in some cases. Some of these multicolored things need to be dry cleaned the first time. So one uses the dupatta atleast 4-5 times before washing it.

In the light of Swine flue we have become like the old monkey tale our Mothers told us when we were kids. One monkey throws the cap all follow the lead. In the ladies compartment one wears her mask all follow the lead. Some by holding the handkerchief to their nose, some by wrapping their all clean fingers around the nose and mouth and some by using their duppattas.

I am reminded of Jim Carrey and his mask. Imagine one mask with a whirlwind speed makes us super powerful against the flu named Swine Flu!

I am a girl child.

Don't make me guilty for what I haven't done.
Don't tie me down to your old customs.
Don't blindfold me.
With closed eyes, I see light much brighter.
I am a girl child. Don't look at my mother with disgust.
She is a creator. She built her world around me.
Don't pull me out of the nest into your cage.

My God lies in me and my mother.
It is not in the ritual where a saffron clad male sits closer to the idol.
My God lies in my prayer.

The forest

Green running free and endless. The forest trees tall, creepers carpet the ground velvet, flowers brocade the green with pink and yellows. My heart beats in my chest as I run with the wind here. Pleased to see the trees don't end and the design continues under my feet. I fear if I touch the tiny petal it would create ripples in this design.

The forest in the valley is like the life of a candle, tough wheatish mountains protect it, like hands protect the flame.

Frozen

I am not ready to write about it yet,
the shadow lost
the winter frost
the lamp at the side of my bed
the book lies there face down
as the night kills me slowly
closed eyes
to the rising sun

Run

Run like the wind
on the blades of the green grass
freedom
like the wild horse
run like you have grown wings

Across borders
and the Himalayan range
Close your eyes
reach where you cannot
run

rain like a bullet
in your back
with that pounding heart
run

All it takes is love

I called her after 10 years. She was my school friend once. She recognised my voice. We both were happy to hear we had become wives now. We talked about our hubbies and how we had met them.

Ordinary day it seemed till I had spoken to her. After that conversation I was left smiling and content. I was happy doing the routine things at work. I was full of interest talking to the same people I meet every day at work.

In the last few months I have found my long lost friends. Some of them I got to talk to after 17 years! The experience is emotionally very satisfying. The people who you thought were lost and forgot a long time back, suddenly, destiny makes them and you cross each other's way again. People you knew when you were a child seem to leave an imprint on your mind. Years come and go. New people come into your life. You share a lot more with these people. As a teenager or an adult you have much more to you than you had to you when you were young. Maybe..

Mind is a slate , you can write the most on it when it has space. It must be true. You always find a way to your childhood. It is by returning to the people. It's not about meeting them again and calling them every single day after that. No. You moved on and yet left a piece of you there. It's about only calling them once and listening to their story. They didn't leave a vacuum when they left you. It's like finding a very old book after a long time. You don't need it. But you touch it, turn a couple of pages..it makes you feel content in that moment. You keep it back again. Maybe for you to find it some other time.

All it takes is love..When you are young, your heart is more open. It appreciates and loves almost every experience that comes it's way.

Since morning

I have painted the blue of the ocean green waves just outside our window for you to see. The morning sun rises from behind the green veil , I painted for you. The world was not built. The world was painted. Every leaf of every tree is a painting. Colours change the seasons. The flowers in our garden and the trees in the forest ; the water is golden as the sun meets your eye. The orange flames crackle in the hearth as the world gets painted in crayon.

Look differently

I like to look at the world all the time. I think I would have liked to be some bird sitting atop some wire crossing my city Mumbai. I would have preferred to be in no hurry as such and look lazily at everyone down there rushing here or there.

On my way back home I take a taxi everyday from my office to a railway station. I like the ride and the time I get to myself very much. I like it when the taxi moves slowly and is stuck in traffic for some time. I like it even better when it gets stuck just opposite a book vendor with his shop on the footpath. His stock very up to date; duplicate books, most recent ones.

Then the taxi passes a hukka shop. In the middle of Mumbai I am not sure who looks at the shop full of hukkas every day. The lane is not a tourist frequented lane at all. Through the glass walls of the shop I always admire the arty looking glass work. There is blue, green glass making the wooden brown of the hukka look like some piece which would fit as a piece in the collection of a museum.

My taxi drop's me near a bus-stop every day. I cross the road and enter the railway station from there. I look at the bus stop to see who is waiting for the bus. I don't expect any known face to be standing here, I don't know where the bus goes. I like to look. Yesterday, I looked and my heart missed a beat.

On the iron rod of the bus-stand people usually rest their backs and stand. Two small hands held each other and stood there with their heads almost touching the ground. They were hanging like bats do on the same rod, where people stood waiting for the bus. I almost yelled out to them to be careful; when they swung on the rod and were hanging with their heads up now.

They were doing these circles , hands held tight, smoothly like some trained acrobats. Where people stood; on their feet, the two hung on looking at the ground for sometime and then going in a circle and again hanging there looking at the bus-stop from a different angle all together.

Surprised!

Have you ever planned any surprises? :) I have tried doing that recently twice. The thing about surprises is that when you plan them for someone and feel you are designing it, the surprise surprises you too. I like that feeling when you feel you are in control and the little scope where things can happen at their own will, actually change the whole course of things. It's like that one spontaneous step in the choreographed dance .

It's like you don't know what happens between the 2 words of a story. The words weave the story. So does the space between them.

As a kid
as I hid
behind the door
waiting to scare
waiting to surprise

I wouldn't wait to hear the steps
I peeped a minute later
or a minute before

laugh I would, aloud
Smile I do as I write this

Let go

Let go the feather you hold in your fist
Let it fly to the world beyond your reach
You like the feeling of wings in your finger
But it needs to fly without you

The feather lands in the hand in need
it stays in the fist till a time
when your fingers grow strength
let go
It needs to fly without you

There is someone at the other end
looking up at the sky
Let go

Flowers

The flowers make me wonder how they would look in paint, on a paper. For a beginner, with no clue on colors they would teach him shades. I saw them at the backdrop of a hotel. Rows and colonies of them in one color pink and a mix, like a colorful palette.

The flowers take me to places I have never been. The purples take me to the Dal lake in Kashmir and set me afloat a shikara. The reds take me to a rock castle and a huge garden spread like a red carpet at the mammoth entrance. The white ones set me free like the cotton flying free from the pod. The yellows take me to the forest from my dreams where the flowers bloom, waterfall at its heart ..a place where you find the secret door to the light blue sky, hidden behind the green veil of the green creepers.

The flowers take me to the Ganga as the water gives the flowers their mokasha as they fall from the hands of the worshiper , as the river reaches them to the shore unseen to our eyes, untouched by our feet.

With the bridge

On the bridge
sea flows under my feet
lonesome waves
sound of peace
As I walk on the bridge
the stars follow me
My feet, as I sit there
just about touch the sea
The cold of the night
blankets me warm

Masakali Masakali ..

It means freedom they say. Some people in our country have trouble comprehending this word. It is February now. Time for the saffron political party to go bersherk again. I am tired of the argument and tired of the fact that people don't get tired of it.

They tie a chain to my leg

knife on my wing

they cut me from the sky

The wooden cage

he opens the door

torn, old cards of fate

he speaks to the customer

and claims I read the fate

Like some dreadful gift

they mummify me in their cocoon

my expression becomes an echo

in the dead vacuum

Alarmed!

Some few days back we were driving through some streets in Goa. 10 kilometers. from here to reach the Mangueshi temple. My husband brought to my notice the way we define distance in Mumbai. It always is 15 minutes, 45 minutes in car, 5 minutes walking distance from station for us. I nodded in agreement as my hubby explained that Mumbai values time like no other city probably does. We located the temple as people helped us by pointing their hands for directions and quoting kilometers to tell us that we were getting closer to it.

I have always valued time...more so when it is those 5 extra minutes of sleep after someone's tried to wake you up by saying it's 6.30 (already!) at 6.25 (actually :) ). I graduated from my Mom trying to wake me up to the clock trying the same trick on me. To wake up at 7 a.m. I need the alarm to announce 6.30 first. Then after a couple of snoozes and smiles I am happily on my feet by 7.00.

Today, I realised one more thing like the one where my husband says we define distance in time. We also accept the morning looking at the clock. It was like the Disney film daybreak for us. The birds did their chirping part well, the curtains though a darker shade of pink, through the gap let the ray of light in the room. There were sounds in the house. First tea was served.

All clues trying desperately to wake me up. But, I trust my alarm more than the birds and the sun burning our curtains. Finally after some time of trying to sleep through all those sounds and smells in the house I looked at my clock. It was 8.00 a.m. and I was many kilometers away from my work place.

I don't remember what happened after that. Only when my office was a kilometer away from me and as the taxi was anyway stuck with me in the traffic, I gave my alarm a second look. The alarm still was holding on to the night. It was still time for it to announce my 6.30. We commanded it to announce the wrong 6.30 for us!

I am still waiting for the alarm to go.

Go Goa in car!

It’s real. It really is. I traveled to Goa in car from Mumbai! The journey was like it is in films, where they show a particular character traveling over a particular map with a dotted line which progresses and then stops at a stop.

The journey was like it is for a cloud floating away in the sky at his own pace. For me it was like revisiting my yesterday. I have spent about 8 years of my childhood in a place which is very close to some of the places we passed on our way. We crossed Satara on our way. The sugarcane farms reminded me of the neighborhood kids who ran behind loaded bullock-cart, pulled sugarcane sticks out, and savored it with nothing but their milk teeth.

Every big town on the way was like a milestone. It was like a life packed in those 11-12 hours. We rejoiced at every significant stop. It gave me a back-ache. It also gave me a big grin.

NH-4 the highway was the road taken. It has fields on both its sides. In the middle of the road, the island is pink, white, yellow and amber with flowers. After a while as the car raced and kept racing I felt the thrill of a wild horse racing away with his full force.

The landscape looked so familiar to me. It wasn’t a very clear image, it was a blur memory. At times so blur, it felt almost as if I was remembering my past life.

The roofed houses, as we went off the highway, made me wonder who lives there and what kind of a life she leads. The small lane crossing a small village must be someone’s routine walk back home. How it must feel to walk on that road everyday? I wondered. Maybe I know the answer to that. I know how it feels to wake up in a house where you have birds building nests in your garden. I know how it feels to walk on a mud road.

I was seeing it all closely again.

At the speed of the wind

When I was a kid I believed that a time would come when I would need to ride a cycle. The time would come. Then I would know how to paddle, without any prior experience with the cycle. I would visualise myself ride at the speed of the wind, behind something I really needed to chase.

The knowledge of something that is deep written within you, you don't feel the need to touch those words everyday like you do to a scripture. The pronunciation is not a sound,it is blank with information. Like a paper with inkblots, so many of them at one place.

It's like visiting the old structure and knowing where every staircase would lead. You never ventured there, but in the depth it reflects, like a blue plan an architect drafts and knows the building with the blue lines more than the walls that grow old.

Always a train it is for me :)

It's 2 years that I was in pune..I came home many weekends. Not a single time in car/bus. Always a train it is for me :) I like the whole feeling a lot. Going with bags to the station, seeing a train there..It feels like a journey in train. It feels you are travelling far. I like checking the sheets and figuring my name on it and then going and figuring my seat. I like the feeling of giving myself up to the train to take me where she wants to take me. I am not at the wheel, the train is.I sit carefree looking out of the window. No passenger gets to decide the route. I like that feeling a lot. My hand on the window, my cheek resting on my palm, my eyes to the horizon. I love it.I love walking in the unsteady train.

Train makes me feel it's taking me somewhere wonderful. I like looking at the stations on the way. I like to observe people a lot. When I was a kid and when we would travel from Phaltan to Mumbai in train I would always make a friend end of the journey. I would love the train to wait at Karjat and see the Vada Paav guys running alongside the train. I had loved it when the train waited at some station and everyone said the place is known for its shreekhand and rabdi.I had loved it when the train got delayed when we were going to Lucknow. In the middle of nowhere, in the night we waited.

The 2 kids got off at some obscure station just for the thrill of it. Their parents were sleeping. The three of us were awake, taking in every moment of the journey. I was relieved when they returned just as the train was about to start.

Behave like a kid

Kids are amazing when it comes to being patient with us adults. They never give up on us. Happy Birthday to you ..happy birthday...he sang it for me today (on phone). At six, my nephew he is really going in the right direction when it comes to making a woman feel special. I will not be surprised if he gets flowers for one of us one of these days.

We discussed important things once he was done with his singing. I told him I had some stuff for him. He asked me the names. Kunfu Panda, Wall-e, Toy Story, Finding Nemo. Wall-e!- I have the Cd already. Now I wanted to sound up-to-date so I went on and told him that Wall-e toys had come to malls. He very patiently told me that he had seen them already. I told him I found Wall-e toys very interesting and we needed to go shopping for Wall-E toys.

Then he checked on my progress. Last time we had met he hid his disappointment from me as he had thought it to be too cruel to show it upfront on my face. He had said it was pretty okay to not be able to drive straight on those roads. It happens to all first-timers. And then my car had jumped into that lake only just twice. It's understandable that everyone is not a natural driver. He would teach me. He would work on me, so that next time I drive our vehicle it would be on the road and not on the footpath.

"married women dont blog awhat???"

They do blog. I got married on 9th dec, 2008.

As a kid, when my older cousin sisters got married, I had believed marriage had changed them into people whom you cannot talk to like you did before. I always looked at it as if it was some line you cross and when you stand that side of the line it’s like those olden day Amitabh Bachcan films where he is running and in a couple of strides he is suddenly a 6 footer.

Now as I have crossed the line I have realized the difference. It’s not like those films. It’s like that fairy tale when the ducking wakes up to realize it’s become a swan. It’s like the swan’s first graceful steps. All the years you had before this day reflect in your eyes and you see your childhood as clearly as nothing before. The tear of happiness and the tear of leaving your home behind become one.

The love you see in your parents’ eyes make you go so weak and yet so strong. Its only love that makes you so strong that you feel ready to walk those steps into a new life. The kid I am is still a kid. Yes, I feel more like woman now..with the way I touch my new home. But the kid I am is still a kid. As this kid feels cherished so the woman feels loved.

Before the wedding day I would tell myself that I am not leaving anything behind. It’s just that my heart would grow in size. Now as I stand this side of the line I know it’s like that actually. Today as my younger cousin sister looks awkwardly towards me I smile..I reach out to her with ease.

Special Thanks to Revathi the friend who said, "married women dont blog awhat???"