All grown up...

I was thinking of the last time I may have experienced the feeling of "care freeness". Surprisingly it may have been about 27 years ago. The journey from being a little pea in a pod in my Maa's womb to a girl who held on to her Bauji's knee when she was shy, lasted 4 years. Then a bundle of joy was brought home. A little sister, as gorgeous as she was as a baby,  the more naughty she got as she grew up. I had my own mate at home to laugh, cry, play and quarrel with. Both of us grew up together, her being the lil one always (even today!) and me the older one.

Being the older one has its perks... It teaches you how to be more giving, put others first, to share everything and more importantly how to worry, a trait that one acquires with the ups and downs of life. By default the older ones are on the fast track course to concern and worry. It begins with analysing situations and making decisions and then the excitement of taking charge of things and being responsible. As a young girl it is a lot of fun, agreed. I have grown older and the situations are getting more interesting. The game of being responsible and taking charge all the time is now boring. 

Change of scenario - Marriage! I got married to a really wonderful person 4 years older to me. Yay! I am not the older one any more and was hoping not analyse more and make more decisions than I was already making. But life as complex as we make it these days with a multitude of choices, always makes decision making a tail spin. What I want least to be is "All grown up!"

3 months too soon

A marathon of online assessments kept me busy. I had missed a call from Maa. On a normal day I would have called her back. But I was so brain dead by 11 PM that I messaged her back that I was famished and would call her first thing in the morning. My mobile beeped... 'Ok'.

Before I realised it, I was fast asleep. The next thing I saw when I opened my eyes at 6 AM...is my favourite Christmas tree at a distance visible through the window in the room. B was up too, ready to be dropped off to his bus. The crisp cool air woke me up. I was dressed and ready to hit the gym. I drove in the fresh morning air, stopped near Leela Palace, watched the Jaguar go by as it does everyday at the same time, waited for B's bus to arrive and left listening to the radio. Routine replay.

The gym was bustling with the drone of the treadmill and a bunch of cackling women. The trainer came and exchanged morning pleasantries and gave me my workout plan for the day. I was busy chugging along on the cross trainer when I remembered that I had to call Maa. An hour later in my sweat drenched track pants and t-shirt, I was morning multitasking - reading the newspaper, eating a bowl of oats, replying to my mail interspersed with sips of tea in between. Like there was not enough happening at the same time. Hidden under the ruffle of the news paper the mobile started ringing. I shuffled in my seat, there was an uneasiness, I was not sure I wanted to pick up the call. Also, who would be calling me at 8:30 AM in the morning!? It was Maa. I barely said Hello...and I heard in Marathi, "you will have to come". I did not batter an eye lid. Picked up a set of clothes for B and me and whatever else seemed important enough, worrying about what lay ahead in the day. I had feverishly feared the thought of this day. I was out of the apartment in a matter of 2 minutes.

I called B and said please head home. He was asking me what was wrong. All I said was "It is what I think it is". I had some sort of premonition but was extremely scared to voice or admit it. B said he will meet me half way. My calls to my sister were going unanswered. Traffic was up to my neck. I was trying to calm my nerves thinking of the situation Maa and S would be in. I kept trying to call, I got through once and I said, please try asprin, it is the best known drug to a heart faillure in progress. The phone went blank. In a while, I received a message, "I am sorry Shona". I almost died! Immediately after I got another message, heart beat back. I was ready to jump. The minutes that passed by seemed like hours....by the time I picked up B, I was asked to come to the hospital instead. I was hoping something positive had come back. A yard away from the hospital it was confirmed that it was all over. I knew this day had to come some day. But no one, not a small child, a grown up or certainly not a daughter is ready to accept and deal with this news.

The extremely knowledgeable, cheerful, fun loving, ever helpful father I knew was no more. Images of the last rites haunt me. A part of me went with him. I try to tell myself, he will never be gone. He will always be around. Mind takes over matter and confirms that it is all a way of consoling ourselves. My best friend, my rock of courage and my confidant life just decided that he was going to have a longer nap than usual and forgot to wake up. He had a heart ailment, but had learned to live and cope with it over many years. It was his kind of normalcy. But he was never ill to be the wonderful person, people have known him to be.

It seems like yesterday when we sat filling a cup to its brim and discussing 'Surface Tension'. 3 months too soon. Time will only remind me and strengthen our memories. But fade they will never.

You will always be missed Bauji.

New Year Resolution...

I woke up looking through the window at our garden, the lush green interspersed the mist. The chill reminded me of the warmth we enjoyed the previous night surrounding a bonfire of dense mahogany. On  the previous eve, we had a choice to hang out in the humdrum of noise and smoke or enjoy the cool breeze and warmth. We chose the latter.

A whole new year stared at me in my face. My mind was buzzing with the many things that needed to be done in the days to come. Complete furnishing the apartment, plant trees on the plot, etc. The planner in me in the past year has made me wonder if it is any use planning everything? Life has a way of teaching you that there is no use planning and somethings will take their own course and time to get done or not done.

My mind wandered and chanced upon the favourite thought on an new years day - "resolutions!". Some practical some emotional.  I made some last year - To be healthy and lead an active lifestyle. No I do not want to be size zero. Its not about size its about how healthy you are and that said, I am happy I have been in the pursuit of achieving it for most of last year and it continues.

This year, I wish to do things that will ensure that there are lesser children going hungry. This thought came up on my last trip to Mumbai, where I saw a family living under a flyover alongside a pillar - the child had no clothes, no food but had a glee on his face and was happily playing with his mates in the dirt and rubble. And whoosh...went an Audi A6 right next to him. Framed! This is what I would call a "Critique's - Kodak Moment!". Story of India's wealth distribution. Disgusting and true.

In addition, I want to be able to write more often and unclog the volcano of emotions that go off on a tangent on other radii. Expression of thought frees the mind.

More soon... Until then... Be the change you want to see!

Vox Populi

Dont ask me why I tried....but in my experience, it is not enough just to blog in ones mind, canoodling verbal diarrhoea or on some nights sleeping lesser thinking about a millon things... so here goes the all and more.

We meet many people in a days work apart from whom we call kith and kin. Mine begins with a gentle wish I get early, each morning as I wake up to open the main door for our maid. She is a single mom (the plight of many Indian women in the lower rung of the working strata whose husbands have left them with the greed of marrying another woman who can bear him a 'son'), hard working lady who wishes not have her daughter wear her shoes and become a maid in someone's house. She wants her daughter to go to an English medium school and be more successful than she is today. Many Indian parents want to live their dream through their children. Its a fact!

Next comes Mr. Watchman, infact there are two, who work in 12 hour shifts. So you see one in the morning and the other in the evenings. There is Mr. K, who is rather, I will do my job and is rather dull, sleepy and walks around dazed or stealthily , the other, Mr. P who seems overtly helpful, enthusiastic and cheerful at most times. General psyche would have it that the latter is a helpful man going by the "Seeing is believing" cliche.

It has been a few months since we moved in to the building and have built a rapport with the folks we see as we hop in and out of home each day. As we walked in one breezy, chill evening, we find Mr. P sitting on his chair feeling cold and miserable, there goes "melt" our hearts and hubby dearest parts with his expensive fleece jacket. Another time I parted with the blanket I had since childhood so that he doesnt have to bear the brunt of the weather, after all he is a man in his 50's. Next time we saw him with a swank Ferrari jacket and wondered what he did with the expensive fleece one, thought prevailed a few hours and then it was lost in the mental abyss.

Days go by and he has known me for about 5 months now, during which he has mustered the courage to believe that I am someone he can share his thoughts and worries. He hasnt found any other such shoulder in the apartment other than me in the last many years. Alarm bells! But I was voluntarily deaf. Pat comes a request that he has a little daughter in school and is in the need for some money for her education. He got wind of us supporting our maid for her daughters education. So much for the building mafia having their goss sessions. With mobile phones, In the future I can imagine the papparazzi taking photo shoots of probable must haves from every house. For a strange reason, my husband said ask him if we can get him what he needs instead of giving him the money. A couple of days later, I have a list of books etc. I pick them up giving up my lunch break at work and hauler it with my laptop bag, hand bag on a pissing rainy day in an auto rickshaw. Phew task accomplished! We helped in our own little way. Happy we!

There is 'one' in everyone of us...

I am back again...The moon's waxed and waned a several times, I have been in whats called a long drawn writers hibernation with little or no inspiration to rant about or rather chose to let my mind deal with the verbal diarrhoea.

"Child". Its been many years since I was a child or having seen one grow up at home. Precisely 25 years. Years have passed and one thing that lies deep within is a child that one relives in nuturing an offsprings childhood. Does the desire of having fully lived ones childhood get sufficed with this alone? Does everyone have the right to express, feel and be a child within themselves with no inhibitions? I certainly think they do.

Society...another cliche (we make it after all) expects us to speak, walk and emote according to evolved mannerisms. Who coined them god alone knows. I agree it may be a little too overwhelming with outrageously kiddish behaviour but does one have the right to be as subtle, naive and innocent in their tones and speech to someone in explaining, feeling and being at peace with oneself? Give it a thought.

A little girl walking to school dressed up in her uniform, lil pigtails, huge bag on her back, being dragged by her mother entwined in traffic through the maze of the dust filled road. The little child was stressed, I ducked my head out of the car and looked at her and smiled and what I experienced in return.... "A smile that made my day!"

There is a child in everyone .... their own of themselves! Un-curb those emotions and experience the purity in thought, smile and being the way it began in each one of us many years ago.

Expressions from a book read: Almost Single

Almost Single! Witty, Tongue in cheek and Entertaining... not to forget that it speaks the story of most girls going through a "Quarter Life Crisis" or simply put - issues with being single and over 25 years old. I believe its the most amazing phase of life one could be in. No two days are similar, there is too much activity happening be it personal, mundane daily routines or the rollercoaster to work and back.

Most Indian parents, ok lets be specific Mom's are looking to get their daughters hitched and that seems to be No.1 on their agenda while the very thought of marriage seems distant to this metrolicious independent girl who wants to learn, earn and then churn the dosh by the minute to splurge on worldly pleasures. Home for the savers and routine visits to the salon and spa for the pompous wannabes.

Sunday Morning...

I was sipping on my hot cup of tea and enjoying the whiff of aroma rising with the vapours from my mug, the cold breeze woke me up from my trance and amidst all this... I was trying to get a glimpse of the Sunday newspaper my mom was reading. I wouldnt dare read over her shoulder trying to remember my manners! I couldnt wait to get my hands on the paper to read it but had to wait patiently.

I was trying to be busy...My eyes were trying to grasp eveything it saw in one gaze about myself.... garden chairs, shrubs, ashoka trees, flowers on the frangipani tree, the droopy gooseberry tree, the thatch of the gazebo, a koel whose call was so loud that it seemed like it was hooting instead & squirrels running helter skelter in our garden. I slowly got closer to seeing things by me and found our fawn labrador sitting in a very comfortable posture and staring into oblivion. Those beady eyes seemed like they were trying to see something I couldnt. She made me wonder what a dogs life must seem like. One word I think that describes it is "monotonous". Did she know there existed a world where people went to work, had to earn money to get food?

We adopted her from my sister's friend who was going abroad to study. It has been over an year and she seems to be more human than canine. You speak to her in simple english and you will see a host of expressions. In one such instance a couple of days ago...the madame picks up edible trash from the organic pit in the garden and brings it into the house and was caught nibbling on it. Nonetheless she got her share of wise talk and she sulked for a while. Dad came home in the evening and heard of her interesting feat and taunted her. And what would you expect??

She walks away into the bedroom as though she has been defamed and my dad commented... "well if she knew how to do it - she'd have banged the door on our face too!". Ha ha! At times she nods her head from side to side and has wrinkles on her forehead as though she is confused! She surprises me!

Well for starters... She is called "Gia".

Book Review: The Bridges Of Madison County

A friend happened to give me this book a couple of weeks ago. Somehow I kept it pending until yesterday night, when I picked it up and finished reading the book in one go. 171 pages, not too much but a plethora of meanings Robert James Waller has brought forward. Life doesnt seem as simple anymore. If he could write this in the eighties there is so much more happening today.

The premise of the story is feeling for someone else when you have found the love of your life. Emotions are complicated. Period. And these complications arose out of love? Strange but true. Robert Kincaid - Married, divorced...met someone on a photo shoot reccee and fell in love over night? Had Francesca Johnson been unmarried she would not have thought twice about getting into his Chevorlet pickup truck. What held her back? Marriage? Kids? I wonder what someone - man/woman would do today, where love rarely or never happens on first sight. There are too many logical and practical people out there who would view every action and emotion with a magnifying glass. Everyone is looking for some sort of perfection. And this classifies the shallow from the so called broadminded. How long it will last - Questionable.

A few lines from the preface in the book.... "I am confident you will experience what I have experienced. In the different spaces of your heart, you may even find, as Francesca Johnson did, room to dance again." RJ Waller.

I'm back...!

I was introduced to the world of blogging in February 2008. Two posts and a couple of comments down the line I wasnt sure if I were writing for people to understand it or to explore myself better. A few months have passed, a few books, people, places and experiences have gone by...So here I am back again in blogland living it up to myself. Being, feeling and expressing what is "as is".

What's on my desktop?...the picture was taken in Melbourne by a friend who was on work there for 3 months! Yes, I am jealous! I could have lived a lifetime amidst such beauty! One of my favourite flowers... the royal..."Orchid"