the fine balance

Okay this might seem like the limit...stretching my emotion a bit too far...but i guess i have to accept it i am emotional and very much at that....i have active tear glands that well up at the slightest insinuation....OK so here it goes...since i realised i like writing blogs with memories i am continuing and this one has to pioneer it all.....I am listening to the song that made tare zameen pe famous to music listeners...Maa...i remember shedding buckets of tears watching the picturisation of this movie....now i am on my revolving chair soft as a sponge, ready to absorb any sadness around....somewhere feeling guilty that i made my mother sad...my eternal problem with parents is that they don't understand me....especially my mother...and somewhere in this defense i forget the lady who shielded me from the world!! who gave a lot to see me smile....i rationalise my thoughts about her life...i understand her position in the society in all its sociological aspects...but again i forget...i think today is the day for all those forgotten memories...so here it goes...so as a tribute to the movie i saw today and the song....this blog is "all about my mother"...my father is a man of different virtues...and i respect him for that...but my mother is most respected simply cause she was my mom....and the way she balanced life for my sister and me...when we shat in our pants and ran to our studies for the fear that my dad would blast the hell out of us...she calmly watched us...was our ally, alibi...on evening when we sneaked to the living room to watch TV during our study hours....we scurried on all fours to our studies when the lights of a car barely reflected on the windows...she shared our fears...i am one of the rare specimens who can claim the following....first knowledge of sex was with my mother....first conversation on my uterus was with my mother....first input on condoms was from my mother....in fact the first person i asked whether she was using one was her.....i remember her skin turning blood red...but she managed her poise so well......my mother was more open about discussing homosexualism with me than my sister....though at this point i don't share her views on this issue...she was my first string to everything sexual....she knew when i first fell in love...she didn't ask me cause i didn't tell her.....i could boast in school about all information i had on forbidden topics and i could say this with pride...cause my knowledge was not from some magazine, it was from a mother who specialised in zoology....now i realise how well she balanced my dad who showed no signs of recognising us as sexual beings....she made up for it so well....she was...no, is very perceptive and i am scared of her for that...she can tell when i like someone...you can imagine now why its scary...



I remember the times when i arrived home with my report card....no i didn't flunk...never did until college....that's a secret only my mom knows....i never flunked but i guess my father had great expectations and so every subject that bordered pass mark were a source of immense anxiety...i would pace furiously outside my dads room...i can't enter....walk back to the kitchen to feed on a bit more sympathy...come back....can't she just sign it for me....”no that's not done”.....OK fine!!!...pace again....”you should have just studied during all that time you slept”, says amma....yea i should have...whats the point...motivation is an age old problem...how do get past this situation...it was life changing it seemed then...i am so screwed...i don't remember how my sister tackled it, she was apparently worse....no not worse in any significant manner just didn't take exams well...she knows better maths than i can ever imagine, she had better grasp of concepts, just that i knew how to pass....she probably was a victim to a cruel mainstream idea of education...i was slimier...i passed...OK OK back to tense state of affairs....so having heard that dose that almost made me piss in my pant.....i come crying back to the kitchen...for more sympathy...whiny dog i was....the clicking of her wedding ring on the chapatti roller is still clear in my head....she watches unjudging as i wash her crispy chapattis under the tap...i know its gross but i hated the feel of flour on my skin..it gave me goosebumps....i wonder what she thought...she just let me be....



There were days when dad went on trips...days we tripped...from rice and well assembled curries suddenly we were on to Maggi and everything in two minute cooking....my mom's day off...late night movies cherry picked for the occasion...chatting till late...11 was very late then....i know we looked forward to those moments every time....now i am happy that in spite of her having to cook at least we afforded her the little break.... she did work her ass off to shape people like me...well i am not what anyone would call perfect daughter but i know i am special....in my own way....i know that in spite of my causeless rebellion i have virtues that one can be glad of...it took me years to realise that....it took strangers to tell me that....but now it just takes a while to realise that my mother balanced us well...i would have had causes to rebel if she didn't...if it wasn't for her scones and yummy evening snack i could have never concentrated on my intense five minute of studying every evening.....if she hadn't kept her mouth shut about me sneaking story books into the study...i couldn't have realised the true value of education.......she was there to calm my palpitating heart at 22 (fyi my sister got married around that time)....she told me that whatever people said or forced them into believing.....at the end of the day they would listen to me...i was so relieved....so what i decided to get married at 30?...that would be bad but if you insist we can't do much....ooof!!...what if i don't get married???... that would be really bad but still we can't force you....OK, OK that's good incentive to get married someday....the same lady suddenly one day becomes socially aggressive...the day she realised that my dad was caving into thoughts that suggested choice of a life partner on your own..."i don't think that good reason for you to just go ahead", she said..."whats wrong with our choice",...i was pissed!!..but it took me a while to notice the contradiction....once again she was balancing....


So yes she doesn't get me...i hear she is worried about me...not from her though....seems like i have too many guy friends....she can't oppose that!!....yes like all parents unable to cope with the monster that they have raised, my mother racks her brains in relentless worry about her prodigal daughter....just like the prodigal daughter racks her post-modern neurotic brain trying to figure out why parents aren't more malleable...or like his parents or her parents?...but its just a hobsons choice....they, especially she, didn't have a choice or chance in shaping me fully according to her wish....i hope you agree that external environment has a huge role in shaping human beings....so i don't have the choice of shaping them according to mine....life would be so boring if you didn't always have that opposite view...maybe not that much but a little at least...but i am learning to view my mother as a human being with hell of a lot of problems but still trying to create meaning in her life and in ours...and she has....and she will always balance life on the rickety side of my ship....


This weekend has been all about my mother.....from the song (mentioned earlier) to the movie by almodovar and talking to my friend about his mother....funny that i haven't still called her....talk about a prodigal daughter!!

things i am made of

It takes someone elses work for one to realise that even they had a vibrant childhood....its sad how one is so stuck in one's present, trying to create meaning out of one's everyday events....life almost seems to revolve around this moment that you forget what you are made of....of the dust gathered from old memories....old thoughts....old emotions...i seemed to have forgotten the days when i used to climb the grandfather mango tree with my cousins....this tree was fashioned for our tiny legs.... wasn't one of those erect structures that one thinks of as a archetype of a tree....it crawled metres through the sand before rising and branching out into its various parts....so at every age a person felt capable of marking their highest point of achievement...that's what i did with my cousins...mark our conquests..those were the days when we were pirates, thieves, robin hood..and this old tree was our only recourse...it was our home, our hiding place...a critical part of our warring schema...it patiently bore our laughter, our secrets, our schemes, our torment on sunny afternoons....when post-lunch siestas were the norm..then there were the bedrooms with wooden windows which when closed could let in nothing but a stream of light with particles floating in its path.....those were days when within a span of five minutes we could change from warring tribes to sophisticated spacemen....i guess it depended more on the elders who changed their minds about our physical locations.....the days when pillows were state of the art technology for spaceships...when my excluded-for many-intrusions cousin made rice and curries in the spaceship while her elders maneuvered its movements with at most finesse.....fighting the aliens-who-threatened-the-planet....days when Bruce lee and Jackie Chan fought together on the same field...defying space and time...and above all the norms of Hollywood.....the themes of our games were of at most seriousness and it cut historical perspectives that would have shocked the most observant post modernist....quantum physics was a tool for our little fingers....when we defied the laws of universe and plunged into open space for a battle with evil intruders from another galaxy....what about the mythical creatures that existed in recesses of the pond in the corner of our compound....that could rise any moment from its deep sleep to threaten our lonely existence....the myths created by us to prevent us from getting a better look....or my grandad's cycle that transformed in our hand into a machine that generated flour or sugar or anything our minds fashioned...when anyone who defied our plans were devious enemies....the days when simple intruders turned into bandits......who became pivotal characters that chartered the course of our heroic epics....
I forget them...i forget how they fashioned me as me....the days when boats ferried me between my maternal and paternal home....i don't even know the name of the water body that connected it....i just remember my fear of the lashing water and my excitement of being in water....i still have that....my friends will tell you the amount i screech when they speed on their bikes but what about the days i pretended to be street hawk (a product of dinner time TV) on my dad's yezdi.....the days when trust was so easy to muster...when one didn't think rationally on what could happen if i fell off or how a dog could jump up against the bike....trust!!
I pretend that i am tormented...maybe its just the thyroid that i avoid checking....but what makes it so difficult to go back to those days when everything in the universe was just a thought away....when it took you two minutes to show your younger cousins that you knew how the world works....i remember the time in school...when i was one those first unlucky girls who entered their puberty before time...the knowledge i was capable of imparting from just three sentences that my mother told me or the one weird unclear line in the science text....opened a world of information for my ignorant friends...now its so difficult to make those claims of wisdom...to sit someone down and impart sacred wisdom....to whisper into the ears of the old grandfather tree all about the ruins in the prisons in India....to pile away gifts that were showered upon you only for your innocence....i am still made of them and i need to realise when times are tough that life wasn't always so torrential or bad...i am made of stuff that only i can retell....its unique to my existence....narratives that are built from my memories...dusty and tainted as it may be....but these are things i am made of.......

cribbing of a pathetic soul

unclear, confused, unlucid, depression, fear, suicidal procrastination are some terms that define me at the moment...i know, a stark contrast to the last post....but you won't believe how fate plays with the lives of unsuspecting victims....so i crack up loudly, chuckle and enthusiastically write a blog on my two days of freedom and i send into virtual space to be exposed to the abyss of reading minds.... fifteen minutes later, life changes....i decide to get out of office to watch the new Hindi sop on Akbar which, i must say has so politically dealt with a political emperor in the most politically wrong manner...there was, in my opinion, the most strategic emperor of the mughal dynasty who married women from different communities only to forge his dynasty, who from the architecture of his forts proved to the world that he was the centre of the universe being squarely and poorly represented as an ardent Muslim who dances to Sufi music...probably true but message that the audience gauge is ridiculously politically wrong....sorry that's personal opinion....anyway getting back to my story on fate...as i decide to leave my boss calls up, gives me the dose for not being prompt (if only she knew that i was someone who took orders from five other people too), demanded a piece on something needed in office....for what good purpose?...one might think this will change the universe or something...heck no it just changes my work time and not even a rusted cog in the organisation will turn by this task....unless of course a miracle happens...but then i don't believe in miracles until they happen so that being out of the question for now.....anyway so that did it!!! ruined my moment, my hour, my weekend!!! well i decided to be disobedient so i did watch the movie, partied till 4 a.m, slept through the day and sat down an hour ago to do the pending work....but i realised i don't have my materials.....its in the office.....now what?.....so here i am stuck with my Sunday crammed with work....there is a slight pain in my gut because of the fear, there is rush of blood to my brain that's making me dizzy cause of the risk i am taking, i am pushing the limits....and guys if you know how scared i am of being reprimanded you will know what i am saying.....but theres also that inbuilt gene to rebel...that intuition that tells me that while i am shitting in my pants thinking of this, the originator of my woes is happily sitting somewhere unaware and probably without the same urgency....though the person did say that she wanted the document by "yesterday", which yesterday was Thursday...talk about classy jibes...so i am stuck here with these mixed emotion waiting for yet another redemptive moment...which last night came to me only after five glasses of cold beer!!!

exhilarating fridays

Its friday!!! its that day of the week when everything seems bright and shiny...from the egg dosas and mint chutney in morn to the boring but still a perk sweet in the noon....and satisfying-i-am-getting-out-of-office tea in the eve....the day of the week when work seems like like hurdles in a race that you strive to just complete....its that day of the week when everyone is friendly cause for once you decided to smile and be receptive...that day when you are not brooding over desk work or complaining about the rash uncouth comments you got...but you look forward two whole days of nasty nothings...or maybe productive somethings between long hours of nasty nothing...when substance abuse is at its peak....two days for which you started planning five days ago...theres a dumbtionary party, a trip to kalashetra, long hours of grey anatomy...late mornig...weird eating hours and hopefully a hell of a lot of boose...ah the satisfaction of a friday cannot be translated...its an emotion that can only be vaguely related to....its anticipation of something unusual, of a stressfree moments...oh god i am exhilarated and jumpy...my colleague who complain i don't talk anymore are excited to see me cracking up loudly, being politically incorrect and cracking weird off-the-box comments!!! so i tell them i am blue on a monday....irritated on a tuesday....depressed on a wednesday....numb on a thursday...and then it comes my exhilarating fridays...i know its weird visious circle but atleast theres some release at a juncture...and thats what i look forward to...a bottle of beer, friends, time outs, sleep-in....i takae this moment to thank yahweh the lord of the jews and the christian for creating this world in seven days and declaring his sunday off...so only natural that mere mortals get two off....i thank the colonialist christians who spread this need for rest...i thank the jews for religious following sabbath....i thank the govt for taking forward these age-old norms and lastly and very superficially and extremely suspicious i thank my organisation for declarings these two days off....though i hear rumours, sinister ones at that this might not last and saturday might end up working...woe to the corporate but until then i will spend another wasteful weekend cleaning my soul of the remanance left by this god forsaken world....to read or not to read that is the question...to watch movies or not that is the question...to travel or not that is a good question....to hit on the guys coming for dinner is a superb question...oh so many decision and only a weekend to decide...i wish god was not so omnipotent and had declared five days off after intensively creating the world in three...ok now i am chattering...gotta go...happy weekend comrades...lal salaam

lover's compliments

Don't know much about geology, dono much biology...all i know is that i love you....okay not a coincidence..... it is that day of the year a lot of people look forward to....i hear plans people have made and am aghast...what a gaping distance...here i am telling my boss that i don't know how to create people friendly technological solutions for the website or maro gyaan on equity...so my song is...dono much about equity, dono much about technology...all i know is....ooops now thats the baffling point...what do i know...i clearly know all that i dono....can't say i know much about love cause that is an eternally baffling question in my short life...you do it this way or that you are still lost...or maybe you just did too much that got you confused...commitment crisis...what is that emanicipating relation with the opposite sex (fully presuming that i have an affinity for the same)...is there one? Poooh this is too complicated.....i think somewhere i preferred if it was more rustic like...i am horny...i need to have sex....oooh i have babies....easier than comfort zones and working on relationships........ok, ok you got me...i don't have topic in mind...i don't want to discuss love, life and relationship...i don't have experience in it...though i am bent on setting a track record...i am writing this blog because i want to write...and to write i needed an excuse...i use this as my perfect excuse....frankly i can't perceive living fifty odd years with the same person....its suicidal...aargh... but i also like to see myself getting old with one person.....man i need to take a psychoanalytic test to find out what i really want...i step into so much jargon i can't even convince myself about my priorities....my advice to new lovers and old, on this holy commercial day, is that you have got to work on a relationship like this is the end of the world otherwise guys there are too many distraction in this world that can lead to a abyss...from where coming back to life is a faded question!!
moreover I have made a very exciting discovery...after years of hibernating in relationships i am now getting addicted to singlehood...of course apart from those tiring moments when you want to cry but have no extra pair of shoulders...when you sitting alone with your troubles with no one to talk...when you are crying secretly and it remains a secret....and of course when you wana blow up someone or when you are just plain horny....ok i realise i have given lots of instances...and i know that feeling when you have zillions of friends but still reach a point when talking to no one is comforting....but still these are just phases that passes...it looks like it never will end but it does...painfully but does....so i now understand the theory that buddhism proposes on samsaara...its a fleeting sensation that passes...like an itch...you are sooo conditioned to itch but if you actually sit back and hold it, observe it...it fades away....i am not trivialising but i am saying it will pass...these are for the heart broken ones who hold on tight to everything they thought they owned...havng said all that i also know the masochistic pleasure of holding on to something you can't have....the pleasure derived of sinking deeply into depression...of hiding in a shell like theres no tomorrow...convincing yourself that life is over...pushing yourself to total self contempt so that you never have to try again....pleasure of hurting oneself...i must say that most humans have strong suicidal tendency....to scath their skins in pain...like burning yourself or slowly drowning...most of us adopt this perspective...but great are they who have the capacity...rare as it is...to take things as it comes....to see the bigger picture....to move ahead...so in the most puppy love fashion let me...on this day...pay my respect to these great icons on this planet...but coming coming back to my topic.....singlehood especially after doublehood helps you really understand the premium that could be applied on your time and money...the value of time spend on your own,with friends, with any arbid person....the opportunity to flirt without the need to seek redemption or permission....and most of all the liberty to eat onions....for that matter anything!!

bloggers dilemma

i sat down last night on a moving train to put down thoughts for my beloved blog.....i hate saying this but i think i am destined to write only on this revolving chair....so as the phased out blog mentioned i was put in a dilemma by my oldest reader and therefore my strongest critic....that i was now directing my blog to the readers rather than as a thought process or musing...i was immediately defensive...since it was my travel blog that he commented...i was quick to mention that i am bad at it, generally bad at it...so much for my job with travel magazines!!....anyway it struck me when i saw his hapless expression that i was getting aggressive and that it was unnecessary....afterall me bbeing the expert at microsocial processes shouldn't dishearten my precious handful of reader in the name of the obvious...of course i write because i know there is someone reading it...yes i am nonchalant about their opinion or their opinion of me but hey lets not kid anyone alright....

Did i tell you how i got a chance to apply to metroplus, hindu, bangalore....my dream job in the making...yea its a little "for the masses" but thats where one starts right? i was also quick to realise that i didn't think much about it as they offered a salary that was 1/3rd of my current pay cheque....ok i give in...i have been lured by the glittering coins...in the name of my precious future, in the name of the fat that is constantly haunting me...i have sold my soul to materialistic purposes and lifestyles...but wholly so...cause i also realised in the past few days that it is possible to save...that a human being can live on lesser amounts than i thought....and still have parties and trips to vague destinations...you just need to go with the right people...hehe

tripping on trips...and then falling flat

its been a while....i feel it...as always...in the most pathetic way...i am blue after a long weekend...my tripping started early this week with a "business trip" to mumbai....i love the city...theres perfect anonymity....a sense of freedom...of not caring....of imposing facades both old and new...its groovy....walking down bandra you see faint old building choking beside the new globalised globus...aaah the pleasure...it reminds me of days we chalked out theories on urban designs and how differently an architect views it from a by-stander.....well i was all geared for a professional "checking-in" to a hotel till ol friends turn out of unexpected corners...i think i like ol' friends....they are serendipitous treasures that lurk out at corners...this week was all about that!!!

It is surprising when you meet ol' irresponsible dopeys and see them turn to a organised corporate manager...you never get over it....i didn't....but i took it as it came....i was pleasantly surprised to see men who never took baths...taking one...men who never cleaned their apartments.....competing with mine....and men who literally ate out of the dump cooking for me...what has the world turned to....so after a unexpected pleasant corporate stint in mumbai...i headed for the next metro....bengaluru...still yet to come where old old friends....we literally spend our lives together for twelve whole years....geeeez...that is long!!!

So after much hibernation and hiding behind bushes...i came out....my real self to the bunch i spend half my life with....we an arbid chaotic bunch met up in b'lore....and spend a tiring day in a garrish mall...trying to cope with each other...then we let the road and boose take care of us...i was as always uptight and judgemental...i wouldn't be me if not...it took two shots of sweet smelling white rum to let the world in...then on, it was all in....

so let me start tripping....we left the might city of b'lore at around four...for a short stop at kengeri to meet our host and family....i took the road on the car and on the bike....it sure trips...especially bikes though the fear is the source of my rush....we reached a god forbidden lil town to a more forbidden lil house which we called farmhouse for the kicks...it didn't take us five minutes to start drinking...the spectrum was wide...smokers and drinkers---drinkers----part time drinkers---non drinker and smokers. Think of the wide range of perspectives at the end of all this.....

Drinking....small talk...dancing...prancing...puking....crying....sleeping.....orgy?...nah....POLICE RAID!!!......mood change........fear, anger....disgust...compromise...anger..tears....prostitution?? f****rs...settling...joking...revenge...barbequed chicken at day break...this all i can say to explain the night....more exciting for me was listening to the narratives being spun around an event...i could have done a study on the nature of human being to repeat to reorient to reconcile to recreate the past...it seemed like an instinct for existence...to get back to the story....we got out sane the next day...drove 12kms to a remote location...with a beautiful lake that was not so beautiful clse by...apparently we were on the wrong side....after few mundane hours of eating, driving, singing school songs...we split only to meet again for a heavily sentimental drinking.....four brandys down i was screaming my lost rock notes while my fellow drinkers burst into nostalgic tears that i couldn't cope with....as always i love seeing men cry...and as always the realisation struck me that i am inevitably more comfortable with men than women....the tears gives you hope that emotion exists and brash creatures otherwise so insensitive can keep in touch with their emotions...so i stood a pillar amidst pale male tears...wishing i could be a comrade too....but what the helll!! i am me and i am suffering from withdrawal symptoms of warm familiar bodies warmer hugs...and i am blue as usual on a tuesday eve....