Another battle to wage

Of course you’ve heard of the bomb blasts in Mumbai by now, and of course you’ve read the government-bashing, Rahul-gandhi squashing, BOMB-ay declamation posts doing the rounds. I’ve even seen friends squabble over a post from Delhi that belittles Mumbaikars (calling them insects), and a rant and rave that proclaims: “I’m apathetic. And, I’m not sorry.”  Words also gotten around that Mumbai is made up of the callous.

Indeed, dear world, we’re sorry. We’re sorry for not reacting appropriately. We’re sorry the terrorists seem to pick us, and NO we don’t think it has anything to do with us.

It has nothing to do with our apathy.

It has nothing to do with how we let our lives roll on.

Yes, when I hear of a terrorist attack, I still remember being one train compartment away from the bomb blasts in Mumbai, 2008. I still remember my hands shaking. And, I still remember going back into that train within a few days.

But, then my thoughts move on. Go on with my work-drive to home-life afterwards routine. I call my mother and laugh about nothing, speak to my father and plan my next investment. Even send my sister an unimportant Whatsapp, then crack a joke with a friend.

I’m not sure what else I’m supposed to do, dear world. I send out a prayer. I dwell over our turbulent times.

I think about how important it is to be happy.

But mostly, I think about how we have just a brand new battle to wage. One there’s little we can do about.

Like cancer. Like making it to work on time. Like ever affording a house. Like insecurity. Like rape. Like the drunk driver that rams into your pretty white car at 3AM. Like death itself.

That’s terrorism. You can’t keep fighting it. And, you can’t let it overcome you.

And, we, Bombay have been struck enough times to learn that.

Nobody said life was easy, did they?

tactless on tuesday

You know, this is just the kind of thing that makes me feel like a tactless bitch.

I’m standing in the queue, waiting my turn in the office lunch line. Along comes the friendly canteen guy, whose company had the contract for last week’s lunch. I complimented last week’s spread, and then began to tell him how this week’s food was rather unappetizing.

Just then, the slightly round man in charge of this week’s lunch comes along and looks at me quizzically. He knew I wasn’t saying flattering things about the food, but didn’t say anything. I felt terrible.

I tried to make myself feel better. I told myself I wasn’t one among the people raving and ranting at the different round tables. But, I had still managed to offend someone who came across as incredibly harmless and terribly naïve. (This is such a rare mix in wretched Gurgaon.)

Indeed, he didn’t even have anything to do with the food, and was probably stuck working for the wrong company.

I absolutely believe in making someone’s day.

Every now and then, I manage to do just the opposite.

I do deserve this four-hour-and-unending toothache, don’t I? I do.

And, yes I know what it feels like to be working with the wrong company.

(P.s. attempting to consolidate my blogs)

-3

There are many Goas, and I wonder if I can remember them all. The Goa at the swarming Colva Beach, where a little shack looks over Indian populace in bundled up salwar kameez. Fluorescent orange stands brighter than the sun. There is a Goa in the rain. Seawater lashing narrow roads, and sarongs dripping off salt. A Goa where the song and dance never end. Bodies clung together at Titos, and Cape Cod, and Kamakazi and other such queer names.


There is the ordinary picture of a Goa with the sun. Languishing on beach beds, watching the sea roar, and nibbling on French Fries. And there is a Goa where I almost didn’t see the sea, desperately following the smell, one last rainy morning onto a sandy beach. A Goa in a resort, where I spent an entire week holed up in a hotel room, with a swimming pool. Collecting shells on the beach. Reading by the sand, under a night sky. And, when I was young, use free hotel-room matchsticks to burn ants by the sill.


There is a Goa where the swimming pool meets the sea. A Goa with secrets, a Goa without stories. Where you breakfast at Infantaria, tell me you’ve been there. The prawns cooked in recheado masala, and the crunchy and well-balanced date and chocolate tart are worth an arm and a leg for. There is Curlies, where my head always throbs to the tune of mindless teenage trance. The glimpse of the sea is unimaginable though. Which reminds me of a Goa at the village. The exotic, otherworldly five-star Goa nestled among other places at the Taj Holiday Village. I remember chasing Saching Tendulkar for an autograph; I remember the cricket-hero romancing his then fiancé.


Suddenly, I cannot remember another Goa. Oh yes, Panjim City and the church, Brittos and cashew nuts and Feni. Drinking in the sea-air, and drinking; I can remember the giggle-fest one January early morning. How many places that you have not grown up in, have watched you grow up?


Goa, I had forgotten how you stir my soul.



-2

There's a little quiet, and a little la-di-da when you enter Hauz Khas Village. A book store, up the stairs, too tiny for poor literature. A lake down the stairs, and the littered path, too quiet for us restless sea creatures. (Bombay, how I miss the smell of your sea.) There's a little hole in the wall that sells curious cushion covers. And, many stores, lined one by another, with designer make-believe to take home. I step into none. Too expensive we assume, and too pretentious, and much too intellectual. There is furniture we want to take home. Posters we want to peel of their hooks, the yellowed ends notwithstanding, and leave on lavish white walls. Old, antique knick-knacks we have no use for. But admire nonetheless. (Delhi, how I marvel your history.) Then there is Naivedyam, much too grotesque, much too magnificient for tiny Hauz Khas lanes. We lap up unsightly fried idlis, still. And down the lane, we follow the trickle of people into Gunpowder- up a flight of stairs, with a view of the lake to behold. We do this time and again. We hardly take our eyes off the well-greased prawns, and curried fish with little white appams and crispy brown malabar parathas though. We do not linger at the lake at all.

Food can bring such tragedy.

-1

The trouble with writing now, is that everyone thinks they are a writer. The trouble with writing a book more so, is that everyone is an author. If you spend a little time with the books on today’s shelves, I hope you are disheartened. I know I am. Do you, and I, aspire to be a little known name on that shelf? You write your first book, and then what? You are lost in a sea of bad writing. Then, you know longer know what good writing is. Good writing isn’t good grammar, gah! Not to say that bad grammar is good writing, at all.

All winding up to the fact that in the past few months, I have been facing what you could call a writer’s crisis. I lost my font. Trebuchet MS 10 no longer works. And, everything I want to write is too trite, or too trivial, or too mawkish. The weather has been fussy too.

Now, however, the smell of winter is here. They say winter is a good time to write. Cambria Size 12 seems to do its job, for now. Let us see where this one goes...



Monday Musings -42

I must have been morose in June, I now know why. I must have missed the smell of rain, hot and hurried upon dusty earth. I must have missed the nag, the buzz, little black flies. And, I must have yearned the familiar joy come plummeting down, the first Bombay rain. Twenty-two years, not a whiff missed. Now, a whole season gone.

Chai hurriedly gulped down, outside offices and under trees. Jalebis gobbled up, and pakodas, and butta and walking into office drenched. Tell me you got caught in a storm? And, it ruined for you, an interview, and a meeting, and pretty clothes, and yellow-and-blue school uniforms. And, still you embraced it?

Then, you left behind umbrellas in trains, borrowed rain coats never to return them, splashed hapless by-standers, knowingly and unknowingly. Then, got drenched in mud and rain too.

Did you ever hang by the train door, the rain lashing your face? Did you stick your nose up at a flood, wade through one too, and smile as you watched others from your window?

You must have called in sick too, curled up with a book or to a movie, or by the window and dreamed a day away.

A day like yesterday, when the rain finally set off in Gurgaon. This rain is unfamiliar to me, the smell sweeter still. I do not know how many days it will turn, and hearts it will soar…the North seems to look upon the rain with such snobbery.

But me, it takes me back home. So I sit in my balcony, and think, what a life this is. Familiar turns far-away, what once was…no longer is. To think you could know something so well, for so long, and then not have it at all.

Have you ever wondered, and while you now do, the rain still sings to me this Monday.

Monday Musings- 41

The journey to Lansdowne sucked the charm out of travelling on a holiday. The driver (who was to journey us) turned up three hours late, carrying Gurgaon on his tongue. And, his demeanor. We snarled past Gurgaon, breezed through Delhi and took the gently swaying road to Lansdowne. Not a hurdle on the highway. Just shadows of trees, and whispers in the car. And, the occasional mutter from the disgruntled driver. Sleep was turning him in, he would much rather have stayed the night by the side of a greasy, expensive roadside dhaba under a banner that welcomed Sehwag to the city of Meerut. Our impatience won him over.

But, Lansdowne arrived only at the crack of dawn. Stones were pelted at a sleepy Government Rest House, where none but a soft-eyed guest came to our rescue. He directed us back to the chowk, where morning had come. The gurgles from a bathroom, the day’s first strollers…

After a battle with the driver, we took our bags up the winding staircase to Room 101. Mayur Hotel, crafted out of thin sheets of plywood, cheap wallpaper, gaudy colour and whining beds. Our rooms were as if cast out of inexpensive, hand-me-down comic strips with families in cottages. And, a fairy-tale perfect window that overlooked the hills for miles…

The sun glimmered in the distance. We awoke to the smell of chicken curry and soft warm chapattis at a run-me-down restaurant, Tip See. Then, we walked to the sunset. A house in a tree, a boat in a lake, a swirl on a swing…

And, the quiet walk back to the chowk. Tip See had turned into our favoured place for a meal. After dinner, we strolled around and round the chowk. A nip in the air, a hand in a hand. A handful of women by the garden. A young girl and another playing badminton. And two old women on a bench, in a park engaged in lazy conversation.

The wind lulled us into slumber. We awoke to brunch, chicken masala and fresh salad tossed to perfection. And, washed it down with a huff and a puff, a climb on a hill in the afternoon sun. How our bodies have withered like our souls, in the city.

The journey from Lansdowne to home, was just as ghastly. A maze of cars, and gawking town men in a bus. We slumped like a pack of cards when we stepped through the door. The stillness of Lansdowne left behind. The joy of nothing to do, quickly gone. The bitterness of dissatisfaction by mediocrity slowly creeping in…

And, lifting, at last,and only this Monday...

[More Monday Musings here ]