Wednesday, June 3, 2015

How to get through a life changing event


... when people who'd signed up for the whole trip, ditch, someway down the road" 

1. Breathe in, and breathe out.
2. Repeat 
3. Sit with yourself
4. Let fear of the future stare    
    you in the face, don't cringe.
5. Stare back: you'll win
6. Count five blessings before    
    you get out of bed.
7. Tell yourself how amazing 
    you are just before you fall 
    asleep, even if you're the 
    only one who does: it    
    counts.
8. Don't heed people 
    who say "you asked for it".
9. Don't hang out with people 
    who think you asked for it. 
10. Tell yourself daily as many 
     times as you can that you 
    deserve better. 
11. If people are squeamish 
      around you and decide to 
      stay away, don't waste your 
      time wondering about 
      them.

 (C) 

Saturday, March 28, 2015

Phir Chiddi Raat and some loose ends

It'll be 31 years this July 7th, since she last saw him, she remembers .

She remembers because they had shared the same birth date, merely six months apart. They had met in the first year of university on Rose Day, that quaint custom back then before Hallmark walked the halls and emptied wallets of teenagers in love. For a rupee perhaps or five, you could send a rose to someone you liked, kinda like a candygram.

She had heard she was getting one, but she was just too serious about studies or too skeptical about emotional displays for someone like her who was not used to standing around in hallways: one cannot do that when there is a homework to be done, and a home to return to where chores and siblings' responsibilities abound. Yet on Rose Day, there was a rose, just one and it was from a lanky young man with honey brown eyes - someone she hadn't even noticed yet.

So began a sweet relationship where he was attentive and she laughed as they shared a love for P.G Wodehouse. She would wait after practicals and they would walk together to her place, then he would walk back and take a train to his far away home. They talked, they talked. She remembers that.

He sang too. Beautifully. Mukesh songs: Mainey tere liye hi saath rang ke sapney chuney, Kishore Kumar: Tumse badhkar duniya mein, and Talat Aziz: Kaise sukoon paaon tujhey dekhney ke baad. Ab kya ghazal sunaaoon, tujhey dekhney ke baad? He carved beautiful pieces made from wood for her. Now she wonders thinking back, were there craft stores in their city then? Where did he get his supplies? How long did it take for him to make these beautiful pieces? He had given her an Asterix and Obelix carved and painstaking painted. A beautiful foot high Mickey Mouse with a viking costume, complete with horned helmet and the smallest two seater plane with a tiny propeller stuck in firmly with a tiny pin. She hadn't saved them.

She had fainted once donating blood at the college gym and he had taken her home. They were 18 and they were friends. And there was Annamalai - that sweet trip to the south from Coimbatore and Pollachi, sleeping on a cold stone bench with him sitting beside her to make sure that she was not cold, keeping calm. And him whistling to a bird, a bird that whistled back, a whistling school boy it was called, on a verdant hillside the same time period when Gandhi, the son, was voted in on the wave of his mother's wake. That was December 1984.

Then came the summer when he went away with his mother to Kasargod and wrote letters from his grandparents' village, inland letters printed with his neat hand. Another year went by with exams and then it was 1986. On Valentine's Day he disappeared without saying hello. That was unlike him but she had noticed that he was distant and they rarely spoke as he went off as soon as classes ended. He had gone to watch a movie with his entire class. The message was clear. Something had happened.

A "well meaning" classmate told her that it was her fault because she was topping her class and she must have made him feel bad that she was smart. "You are just too sure of yourself for any boy to like you, the self-proclaimed princess from Shivaji Park had sneered. Now she wonders how some women believed that they were unworthy of being loved unless they dumbed themselves down, even when they were 18. She did not dilute who she was. She knew even then, that if someone truly cared, nothing would have stood in the way.

She returned to college on that first day in June 1986 and did not see him anywhere, She asked his friends and heard that he had moved to another college close to  home. So she waited an appropriate time and on his birthday a month later, she visited with a gift, Thane, that distant suburb. He did not speak and after a lunch that was quite forced with not his mother nor his sister talking to her, a meal valiantly held together by his father, she left. She did not know what had gone wrong. She guessed though, that he had been told to pursue a path with less distractions as she was perhaps perceived as one. Today it didn't matter.

However one night in January, they spoke, He in Mumbai, and she here, in her adopted homeland.. Where are you? In Russia? he had asked. His dreams hadn't quite followed the path his mother and sister and he had wanted. His father died and all his applications to universities in the US were ashes.

He didn't sing anymore he said. I had learned those songs for us, for you, he said and that made her sad, because he was very talented. Do you carve wood? No, he didn't. Sad that. He didn't do the things he had done when they were together, She remembered he had given her the little plane under the awning of the Taj Mahal Hotel, too student-poor to go in for an overpriced pastry.

They had talked through the night, Ijaazat style. They had talked about their children: his and hers. They had discussed Gulzar, Aandhi, Bazar, Phir Chiddi Raat, Mani Ratnam and Paakhi Paaki Pardesi, which she was now.  He remembered things that even she did not, little details that she was amazed he did: He reminded her that when they had gone to Metro to watch Chota Chetan, her mother had asked them to take her siblings too and they had sat between them! She had laughed at that thought, though she didn't remember it until then. They had spoken through the night.

And they haven't spoken since.

She is thriving, in her own in her adopted home. She is a double parent, raising her children single handedly. He is living his life.

And thanks to that story and the way it turned maybe, she knows in her very cellular self that if her son ever loves anyone as much as this man had loved her, she will not stand in the way.

He son sings beautifully and plays many musical instruments. She would hate for him to stop singing the way this man did, when he lost her. She loves her son too much to ask for such a horrific sacrifice. She would never ask for her son's songs to be killed this way.

That was 31 years ago. Life goes on, Life is good. No regrets.

Sunday, March 22, 2015

That D Word

That D word is mine to own
to examine
to toy with
to put away
in a bank locker
safe from prying eyes

That D word
makes people uncomfortable
as if it is contagious
or infectious
or just plain scary
something to which
they have to hold
a bunch of garlic

It makes people become
 oh-so-super-kind

it makes them not call
so they do not disturb me

it makes them forget
to invite me to their homes
lest I feel uncomfortable
around other human beings

it makes them predict,
over
and over
and over
how I will react in social situations

It makes them pretend
that they know me well

That D word
maybe does something more...

It makes people, examine
the cracks in themselves
and their own,
perhaps

and it makes them
very
afraid
of what they may see
if they look hard enough

so they go on pretending ...
that it is
me
that
they
protect

they look away, virtually, telephonically, and physically
as if  that D word
is my 6th thumb on my right hand

the dead leg
that I drag behind me

or the huge hole that I will fall into
dragging them with me

Now this D word
isn't that other D word, you see

That one, I realise,
people are OKAY with

as it means flames,
great salivating tongues of
roaring flames
that push you back

from the door of that furnace
into which you
just slid your loved one

That other D word
that resounds with the thunk
of freshly dug soil
on carefully chosen coffins


That other D word

is ashes
scattered in lakes
and rivers
with soft chants of
Om Shanti
And whispered tales
of eternal life

That other D word is final
therefore SAFE

And I walk forward
towards my new normal

With all these scared faces
turning into dots
in my rear view mirror

I roll back the roof
let the wind catch
my silver hair
and I laugh, unfettered...
at the sheer delight
of being me

Just
me

Precious
Special
Strong
Radiant
Kind
Mindful
Me