Retracing My Steps

I've been thinking a lot lately about my cousin M. With less than three years' difference between us, she and I had always been very close, from the time we were both toddlers. She was my first playmate, my first actual friend, and I loved spending time with her. Part of it was some sort of hero worship, because she was funny and pretty and everyone around us, young or old, really liked her. As a kid, these things put me quite in awe of her. The good thing was that she remained sweet, cheerful and completely unaffected by all the renown she was getting for being some sort of singing prodigy, exceedingly good at art and good at most things in life.

I remember her telling me that she was convinced that Vivekananda was her grandfather, because she thought his name was Vivek Kanungo, which matched with her surname. I, of course, was thoroughly convinced. She used to live across the street from my house, and everyday after school we spent our time playing and coming up with elaborate games. On weekends, her mum used to give her a bath in the courtyard while I used to stand at the gate with my arms stretched out wide so that no one could see her from the street. Such naivete seems almost precious now that I remember it.

After my family moved to a nearby quarter complex, our interactions became less frequent, except for those three odd years when we commuted to school and back together. We used to get the princely sum of two rupees for the bus fare to get back home. We always walked instead. It was a long walk, atleast a half hour long. We spent the money on roadside aloo chaat, the dirtier the better. One rupee was saved to buy sweet lozenges in case the chaat proved too spicy. We were quite the resourceful team.

On our walk back home, we discussed the impossibility of God, the perverseness of God in creating boys, the shapes hidden in clouds, the way our shoes squelched when we walked in the rain, how Shillong was doomed because of pollution, the fascinating polka dots made by mud on our white socks in the rain. What strikes me now is how these conversations were held with such seriousness, punctuated by the sound of our huge umbrellas tapping on the ground. We could have been a couple of miniature British adults on our way to the pub after a hard day's work.

The inevitability of growing up did put thousands of miles between us as I moved away and she stayed put. We met when I went home on vacation, and there was no need to reconnect. It was always there, what we had, the bond forged in childhood that had transcended time.

The last time I went home, I learned that she was engaged to be married. As I write this, less than a month remains for the wedding. I would have been happy for her had she not told me the precise reasons for the wedding, none of which had the slightest relation to love, or the longing to be with someone, or even companionship. She's a stronger person than I am for walking down this road, and this time I can't keep her company. I hope that eventually she is happy, and the ones who 'love' her do not manage to completely wreck her life. I feel a strange sort of disloyalty in thinking these things. I really wish that I could toe the official line and make merry at her wedding. But things are hardly ever as simple as that.

So, M, I don't think you should get married, but I know you will. I hope that you get everything you want, but I pray you get what you need more. And I wish I could honestly say that I'll always be there for you. Such things don't happen; we hardly even manage to keep in touch. But maybe when I go down the corridors of our memories together to a time when we were both truly happy, I hope to believe that this sort of unqualified joy will find its way back to you. And I believe that whatever else happens, we will always be the ones who can see roast chicken in the clouds, surrounded by mounds and mounds of vanilla icecream.

Luck and love, S.

Why I Laugh In My Sleep Sometimes

Yesterday I was dreaming about these actual conversations I had with seemingly normal, rational people. I remember each of these conversations really well, mostly because they were so dazzlingly stupid and they have the potential to entertain me even now, years (or months or days) later. And because very few things in life can make me laugh when I'm asleep.

Conversation One (with a cousin who is a software engineer, God save her soul. It happened when I was in second year of college).

Cousin: So you're studying history.
Me: Er..yes.
C: Why?
Me: Eh?
C: As in, what's the point?
Me: What's the point in software engineering?
C: It's relevant today. What I do makes a difference. How does it make a difference if you study about dead people?
Me: *mouth open, jaw slack*
C: I mean, what is the use of studying the past when you can't do anything about it?
Me: It may surprise you to realize that you've been studying history all your life.
C: No, no, I was very glad to get rid of it after Class X.
Me: All history isn't called 'History'.
C: Huh?
Me: Everything that you learned in your course; every sum, every code, every theorem, every formula - that is the history you studied. Without it, every generation would have to start at zero. We would need to rediscover gravity, heliocentrism, DNA, the fact that certain chemicals smell like rotten eggs, over and over and over again. You spent four years studying the history of software engineering. I'm studying the history of people. My learning is relevant because I can perceive this and you can't.
C: But how is studying a formula history?
Me: Because someone before you created that formula which is why you're using it today. And everytime you use it, you are using the past to understand your present.
C: Doesn't make sense. I still think history's useless.
Me: You'll be your children's history. I hope they don't feel the same way about you. I'm going to bed.

And I went to bed, angry as hell.

Conversation Two (with a random 'family friend', after I'd opted for Humanities after Class X).

FF: So, you're going to be the next engineer in the family, aye?
Me: What?! No! I'm studying Humanities.
FF: Humanities? Oh you mean Arts. But why? You did well in your exams. Why Arts? You won't get ANY jobs.
Me: Please don't worry about me. Plenty of 'Arts' afflicted people manage to make a living.
FF: All nonsense. In the past it happened, yes. But now there's no way it can happen. In fact, all schools and colleges are going to shut their Arts faculties in two or three months. And why is your dad allowing you to do this?
Me: Must be nice to have all the inside information about school management decisions. And my dad's 'allowing' me coz it didn't occur to me to ask his permission and it didn't occur to him that I needed it.
FF: Change your stream while you can. Computers are the way to go these days.
Me: Okay, thanks. Now can I get some potatoes please?

Again, I was angry as hell. But then I considered the circumstances and realized that I shouldn't be mad. After all, he was a fifty year old grocer, not known for temperance or wisdom. Being a newlywed at 50 must be hard on the brains. And he did manage to run his grocery business into the ground.

But what made me laugh in my dream was wondering how a conversation between him and my software engineer cousin about the reasons why crazy kids study Arts might go.

Excuse me while I nap. The hilarity awaits.

A Walk In The Clouds

Quite literally.

When you are so grounded in your life that you forget what exists beyond it, the biggest thing in your life becomes scheduling baingan ka bharta for Saturday night dinner. It's not half as bad as it sounds. It implies that I'm cooking my own meals now, which makes me content. It also means that I can enjoy spending time at home, which is essential for my peace of mind. The problem with contentment, however, is that it makes you stop yearning for the other things beyond your spectrum. So you decide to do something contrary. Take a trip to a hill station in the rains. You know it'll pour the whole time. That it will be cold enough for you to say 'The cold is in my bones, IN MY BONES, MAN!'. But that doesn't deter you either. Your enthusiasm envelops not only you, but your roomie (Roomie), normally sane close friend (RK) and The Boy (A). You and your motley crew will now take a trip to a tiny hill station with no cars or any vehicles whatsoever, where you walk to get around. Or ride a horse. A hill station with no paved roads, only mud paths. Paths that become slush in the monsoons. Ah, finally, a challenge.

You wake up late, but not too late. Rush through the bathing and the getting dressed and leave the house, only to be surrounded by a gang of extremely effusive dogs, all ready to become Best Friends Forever at six in the morning. You finally catch an auto and switch to a taxi midway, reaching Dadar station without further incident. While the boys go to buy tickets, you stand and wonder why there are already a zillion people at the station. And then you realize that the train is at 7.03, which isn't too far away from 6.57. So you run, jump down the stairs, look around wildly for the first class compartment, all the while being obstructed by all the Israelites fleeing Egypt. The boys in the meantime are already in the correct compartment, yelling and waving you over. You and Roomie run, push, shove and exhale, and get into the first class. Except is the first class ladies only. You jump out again and put your feet onto the correct compartment just as the train begins moving. The resulting adrenaline rush makes you woozy for twenty minutes.

The train ambles along. It's cool and there's already a chill in the air. Increasingly random conversation between sleep deprived adults is punctuated by 'I need to pee' and 'I'm hungry'. Then the green fields and the hills come into view. Faraway hills with threadlike waterfalls making their way down. You stand at the door and sigh, the same sigh usually reserved for Shillong. And there's a hug; momentary and brief, but warm enough to leave you smiling for three minutes. And then you wonder why people stare when you smile.

The station is reached, and the walk to the cab is laced with crisp vada pav. Then as the cab makes its way up the serpentine road, you notice waterfalls on all sides of you, even splattering some of the raindrops on to your arm. The taxi stops at the car park and you enter the town where time stopped a hundred years ago. You begin walking, and it rains, rains, rains. Mud in your shoes, and you're one with the rain. There's no difference between you and the water anymore. On the way to the hotel, you buy the long plastic sheets and sombreros favoured by the locals. At the hotel, there's steaming tea and breakfast. And lots of rounds of Uno, where you lose because you just don't remember to say Uno at the right time. Then there's lunch and a protracted argument which ends in you sending the boys to the market to buy you shorts to wear when you go trekking. You haven't packed enough clothes, you see. In the evening, you're all wearing shorts, plastic sheets and sombreros. The companionship in being silly together is wonderful.

You walk through the little mud paths, up and down, this way and that. The lake comes into view, along with the monsoon clouds moving at a terrific speed all over it, and all around you, lashing and caressing. There's the spot on the edge of the cliff where you sat the last time you were here. Now it's the edge of a roaring waterfall that looks like the end of the world. It's easy to imagine that the world was primal once, before people, before friends and neighbours and dogs and goldfish and baingan ka bharta. Then you go back to the hotel, piggybacking for a minute or two. You're on holiday after all. There's some more Uno, presided over by an old monk (very old, vatted seven years ago). Then the electricity goes off and you go to sleep. You wake up after some time, and it's pitch dark. So dark that if you put your hand in front of your face you can't see it. And it hits you how much you miss that, because it's never really dark in the city, even with the lights off.

The next day they serve you the most fabulous lunch, as if to make you feel even worse for leaving. You have nothing to wear, so you have to make do with the giant pair of shorts belonging to The Boy, tightly belted up and making you look like a havaldar. Your friends are too tired to walk all the way back, so they make you ride a horse, even though the mere thought turns you to jelly. It turns out to be a better experience than you'd imagined, mostly because the horses are really docile and you're looking at the mist above the little brooks babbling away on both sides of the path. Then you reach reality again, and this time you're too cold to be emotional about it. You've just had the definitive weekend.

Favourite moment: - standing above the cliff, looking down at the end of the world.

The moment I won't be allowed to forget: - We're walking our way up to the hotel, and someone asks me for the time.

Me (looking at my watch with great concern): -"OH NO! My watch stopped at ten o'clock!"

RK: -"It is ten 'o clock, you idiot!"

Tunes In My Head

Yes I still post. And has it been over a month already? It's the new job's fault, really. Don't know what they would do without me :)

Anyway, something relatively strange happened to me on Friday night. I'd been unwell in the morning, with a head that felt like a tub of mercury. Added to that, I had a typically long day fussing over punctuation and text placement. So I figured that I was in for a good night's rest. But I didn't sleep as much as a wink that night. Tossing and turning is only exciting for the first two and a half minutes. I got bored of the extremely random conversations inside my head as well. I even tried reading a truly godawful book called Tall Dark & Handsome, which was so gruesomely bad that I could only persist for ten minutes. As a last resort, I switched on the radio, hoping that music would lull me into slumberland.

So there I was, lying in bed with my eyes wide open, while my ears were assaulted with a mindboggling variety of kitsch. With nothing else to do, I started listening to the kitsch. And found some of it actually resonating within me. Pithy wisdoms in everyday melodies. The songs we hear but don't listen to. So uncool because they are popular. But so infectious that they give us headaches when we battle to get them out of our heads. So evocative of forgotten and not-so-forgotten things and people.

We're all history sheeters. Reminisces lurk around every corner of our stylishly spiralled minds. And there's always some Bollywood song to encapsulate these memories.

Like sleeping on the back lawns in LSR in third year. The smell of grass and the warmth of the sun. Watching Ankita write in her journal, or Simran reproducing Impressionist art. SKT's foot up in the air while she dozed. Or Reeju with a bag that was perenially bursting at the seams. Hum na rahein kabhi yaaron ke bin.

Or Gitanjali, Shreya and me in the first few months of the Masters programme. The most awesome trio with the shortest life span, before Gitanjali and I became leftists and Shreya became a centrist (in terms of seat preference, not the political spectrum). Akele hain, toh kya gham hain?

The hostel experience. Staying up till the wee hours, talking about absolutely nothing. Giggling while tipsy, or not. Sitting on the floor of the hall at 3 am and insisting that Absolut vodka was made out of the finest potatoes in the world. Ranjit and Bindiya, perenially setting each other off. Akhila, Tanu, Pallavi, Reeju, the four directions of weirdness. And Pia, the one who cried because I told her that just because she spoke loudly, it didn't mean that she said what was in her heart. Katra katra jeene do.

The one time we ran into RPM, to dance for five minutes after the movie. Spontaneous and awkward at the same time. Ten minutes of unadulterated fun. Pappu naach nahi sakta.

Vasudha Pande, with her luminous eyes and her easy smile. Drumming modern Indian history into my brain with the lightest of touches. Me marvelling at how suddenly economic history became so fascinating, while wondering if her glasses would actually fall of the tip of her nose someday. Ho sake to is mein zindagi bitade, pal jo yeh jaana waala hai.

My sisters and I. So exceptionally strange. Can't shut up, and can't talk either. Always wondering what the other is about. And where we're gonna land up eventually. Golmaal hai bhai sab golmaal hai.

Finally, Jaane tu, jaane tu ya jaane na. Jazz, and a smoky Chicago in the 1920s. Or in this lifetime, a boy and a girl, whiling the weekend away at Marine Drive. The boy likes peanuts, the girl prefers roasted chickpeas. He points out the crabs on the stones below, she takes enthusiastic, if somewhat pointless pictures with a woefully inadequate camera. He gives her a poem in a matchbox, she laughs because she doesn't quite know how to react. Or a day at the Hanging Gardens, where they laugh uproariously at having become the biggest cliche of them all - The Couple in the Park.

At 3 am, clarity is at its best, even in a cluttered dustbin of a head like mine. So much so that I remember every moment after three whole days. My life and Bollywood, intertwined in their uncoolness and their kitsch quotient. And the sudden epiphanies that make it worthwhile.

Don't Fight The Change

So I got tagged by Skaty to tell the world at large (or atleast my indulgent readership) about ten secrets that I had otherwise sworn to take to the grave. But since I am such an adept at seeing only what I want to see, I've converted the tag into a convenient way of telling you about the Big Changes on the anvil without the corollary melodrama. Gasp, long sentence. Why do I have a sneaky feeling that if I had a sidekick named Robin, right now he would have exclaimed, "Holy Punctuation Party, BattyGirl!"?

Anyway, getting to the point, Ten Things You Don't Know Yet:

1. I've quit my job. Today's my last day here and on Tuesday I'm joining an advertising agency as a (a-hem) Senior Copywriter. And right now I'm most excited about redecorating the interiors.

2. I'm spending a lot of money to move into a nice place of my own. I'm excited at the thought of having eggs for breakfast and dry fish for dinner. Yay, me!

3. I'm fanatical about kitchen etiquette. And I hate it when people try to help me when I cook. I'd rather they just talked to me from the sides. You're right, the subtext of this is that I'm a control freak.

4. I have three times more clothes than a normal person needs. And shoes. And I can't get enough. I'm extremely greedy.

5. I've named my newly acquired stuffed toy dog Chandoo McAdams. The boyfriend quips that this is what the British called Chandu Muqaddam.

6. I'm a nag. I keep at it consistently. And don;t let anyone tell you it doesn't work.

7. I'm a big believer in Girls' Night Out, but I've never really enjoyed Sex and the City. I just keep wanting to lock Sarah Jessica in her closet.

8. The biggest indicator of whether I like a person is whether I'm comfortable telling her/him that s/he is a donkey.

9. I've never seen porn. There, it's out in the open.

10. I judge people who carry melancholy about their past sufferings like a badge of honour. Especially when they look into space and sigh for effect.

Okay, so now you know. I inflict this tag on New Age Scheherazade and Villager/ RK (just to get a post out of them). Also, Doubletake, Doublethink, Annesha (ha ha, revenge), Kitkat, Dreamcatcher and Probe (coz I'm soooooooo curious and I'm wondering if your talent for jamming your foot into your mouth transcends real life and ventures into blogdom). Now I need to pack up my desk. Good day!

Life For Rent

These days I'm fervently hoping to move out of my rather squalid living situation as a reluctant paying guest (paying in many diverse and cruel ways) to a rented flat where I will live alone and be happy. The move is tantalizingly close and so I figured I'd take you through a retrospective of the various horrors who have masqueraded as my landlords and landladies and have lent themselves to vilification and some slapstick on my blog. Retribution was long due.

There was the family of losers that I lived with in my first year in Delhi. The father was terminally unemployed and habitually shrill. The mother was gloomy as a matter of principle. The children were a couple of snobs (although I never really figured out what propelled them to indulge themselves so). One of my roomies was a habitual thief who figured that I wouldn't notice if she scamped on my toiletries. All of them, all the time. She also didn't believe in bathing too much, so I don't know what she did with the stolen toiletries. The family's idea of fine cuisine was large chunks of ginger in anything and everything. Their monthly pastime was fighting with any one of the girls living there and threatening to throw her out in the middle of the night. They were so pathetic, they made me grateful for myself everyday. I suppose one always manages to find a silver lining, no matter what. I had to look really hard for it.

Then came the young family who rented a floor in their house to my sister and me. They were nice enough, very helpful and equally weird. They had a two year old son who looked like an angel and swore like a truck driver. His linguistic blasphemies would begin every time someone failed to give him what he wanted. I woke up on many a morning to hear him call his father a whatnot, his mother a wouldyoubelieveit and his sister a don'tevengetmestarted. So yes, deeply individualistic people.

After that, I moved into a hostel in JNU. My first roomie (who lasted a year) can be described thus: acne, body odour, shady affairs. She was obsessed with the acne on her face and spent hours examining it with a sort of horrid fascination. She spent a small fortune on all kinds of ridiculous and always disappointing treatments. She also conducted a series of affairs with men she met online (one of whom was married) and always seemed to think it necessary to share the gory details with me. She left in the second year because she hadn't really reckoned with the Need To Study Sometimes. My next roomie was really nice and we had a wonderful year together, so I shall leave her out of this uncomplimentary post.

Then I moved to Bombay, where everything bad was exaggerated in true Bollywood fashion. The first tyrant looked like a really obese warden of a Kafkaesque mental asylum. She cooked curries out of only onions, mixed in water whenever extras were needed and charged money for every little transgression like leaving the bathroom lights on. I got out of there in a month, only to land up with Cronos herself.

She's seventy-five, avaricious like you wouldn't believe, and three times stronger than I am. She thinks that half a bed and a cupboard are all you need to live, and that one should cough up five grand a month without a murmur for these extravagances. She made me spray insecticide and kerosene all over my bed, so she has most certainly taken valuable years off my life span. And she has made me resent enforced vegetarianism with a vengeance. I can't wait to get out and I hope the bed bugs teach her a lesson about the need for professional pest control. I also hope she stops talking incessantly about the flaws in the other roomies when I'm studiously trying to ignore her. I hope the time comes soon when I can look back and laugh really (and even unnecessarily) hard at her.

The rant is over, for now. Pray I don't have occasion to repeat it.

Just Because I Can

R: de de da de doo de de dum de de dum
Me: tell me about it :)
R: are you looking good, and feeling fine?
Me: i'm looking alright and feeling benign
R: is it feeling benign, and not feeling fine (in the song?)
Me: it is fine in the song, i believe
R: hmm... tres bien
Me: except most days i have malignant feelings towards atleast one person
R: i seem to be getting there -- yesterday i growled at colleague, and day before i shooed away a surd boy who came to the office
Me: did you growl at him on racial grounds? or coz he was there?
R: eh.. growled at colleague cos for the 5th day in a row i was opening the door for him - turned out he was just being lazy and not pulling his access card out of his bag. today pal used his access card to get into the office
Me: my god, that is probably the saddest non issue i've heard of in a long time
R: haha... i know whats happening to me?
Me: you need a couple of real problems
R: no but see the point is when you are given an access card, use the damn thing. there is no need for your colleagues to trot across to the door every day because ur too lazy to pull it out of your bag. its a different matter if you've lost it or were never given one, or on occassion left it at home. but intentionally not pulling it out everyday because you think kind ol r will let you in warrants a growl
Me: next time just smile and wave at him and ignore it
R: now there won't be a next time -- today he used his access card. yesterday i was like "what happened to your access card? did you loose it?" and he was like "no, its with me, in my bag."
Me: arre. you should wave and smile. terrific comedic potential
R: anyway surd guy -- the kind turning 13 and with sprouting facial hair -- was coming from some computer hardware company and wanted to meet admin incharge. who was truly not in the office. he refulsed to leave and i was like "jaa... abhi koi nahi hai"
Me: okay. and?
R: and then i turned my back on him and trotted off... i guess he left after that cos its the last i saw of him... muhahahaha... i'm so evil
Me: you're just anger let loose on the streets, aren't you?
R: i have less and less patience with small things like these....
Me: ah. bombay is getting to you.
********
This conversation just made me extremely nostalgic for the days of yore. You know, yore. When access cards were not even the last things on our minds.