Once I yearned for you to come to me like wildflowers when the field needs it. Suddenly.

Come, love, like the sudden rain on on an unbearably sunny day.

Now, I ask the rain, could you not become him and arrive suddenly? We could be one, without warning, like the rain soaking my clothes and hanging from my hair.

Your phone keeps ringing. You don't answer your phone anymore.

. _ . . _. _

"Anything other than yes is no,

anything other than stay is go,

anything less than ' I love you' is lying"

- John Mayer, Battle Studies

Neel: Guess which film I managed to get my hands on. Just guess…

Me: Glass of Rage?

Neel: Yes!

Neel: But no subtitles.

Jonai is typing…

Me: Spot on, huh. Glass of Rage at the film festival in 2001. It was impossible to find! I guess you got it off the Internet, illegally of course.

Neel: Of course.

Me: I know you too well. Too bloody well. J

Neel is typing

Neel: J I don’t know what I should do about that though. There’s such a long trail of heavy destruction behind us. J Putting in way too many smileys but I am not really smiling.

Sent at 12:00 AM on Monday.

Me: ??

Neel is typing

Neel: Just watched this movie called Amu by Jonai productions.:)

Me: Hmmm. It’s a nice movie. How could something called Jonai productions fail ;)

Neel: J

Neel: It’s been three years since we saw each other, ya?

Me: Listen, I have to run. Got work.

Jonai has logged out of chat.

Of all the things that remind me of us everyday — television shows, books, places, names, faces, terrible haircuts, shirts torn at the sleeves — the metro rides are the worst. I still brave the traffic and heat and dust over the metro-compartment time machine.

We’ve spent three years, stuck like an old vinyl LP that has stopped on some random phrase of a song, which suddenly has so much meaning on its own. Hammering the message into your mind with mechanical repetition.

“Darling you got to let me know
Should I stay or should I go?”

an open letter

hello everyone.

it's been a while since i've been part of this blog, and yet this is my first post.

there was stuff going on in life. unpleasant stuff. yes yes. you get the drift. pyar-related, of course.

transition times are hard, yes. they make you nervous and edgy. you end up clinging to whatever bit of familiar ground you can manage.

and so last year, when i was leaving for my studies, to a completely different place, i did it.

i decided to fall in love.

love, rather romance, is - a lot of us would agree - a great buffer. comforter. and the idea of romance, thanks to the world of romance novels, chick flicks - of which i'm a great devourer - is also very familiar territory.

almost eight months on, the person i was supposed to fall in love with, is nowhere on the scene.

and yet, i have found love.

it's not another man. neither is it another woman.

it's a city. it's my life here. it's who i have become here. it's the trajectory i can see my life taking which it will continue to take with or without a man. it's a state of mind, a new space.

of course, pyar-suckers, as some of you are well aware, will always remain so. and so new city has instilled in me the hope for new love. for our kind of pyar. after all, it's the hope that keeps us going, right?

My mummy strongest

My wedding day has always been a bit of a lemon in my mouth. The photos and videos have been locked away and I rarely look at them, lest the sourness rushes in, resulting in the inevitable finger-pointing between my husband and me. It's unfortunate that such a special day be thus ruined for anybody, but it's O.K. Worse things have happened.

At my wedding party, my mother's face looked painted pink. It looked like she was making an effort to look pale skinned while being deeply brown. Many comments were made-- all of them from my in laws and not all of them directly to me -- on my mother's appearance, her apparent eagerness to look "fair" which had caused her to look like a pantomime artist, her perceived lack of good taste and makeup skills. One random lady from my husband's family recently came up to me at an event and almost without context, said "tomar ma k dekhe monay hoyechhilo khub old fashioned, conservative, na? " (Your mother appeared to be rather old fashioned and conservative when I met her at your wedding, no?) I knew there was a translation for this, which read as, "your mother is not polished and sophisticated like us, no?"

I did not answer this woman at the time since it seemed to me that validating her question with any explanation will be an insult to myself and to Ma. I simply smiled and turned my face away. People who know me and my family, my friends for example, who have spent many many nights in my house-- with perfect freedom to think of my parents' house as their own, have been drunk and stoned, have burnt down our living room couch, have borrowed saris from my mother-- know my her as a woman who is anything but old fashioned. Fortunately for me, none of my friends have been people who considered speaking fluent English, or blindly imitating the West as a sign of progressive behavior. To shun all things Bengali in an effort to appear cosmopolitan has been scoffed at by my immediate and extended family and by my large and rather accomplished circle of friends. So, in these circles, Ma has neither been old fashioned nor conservative. She has simply been a middle class, educated, Bengali mother, who also happened to be a banker for 27 years of her life.

My family consists of three people. Ma, Baba and me. It's your atypical Indian nuclear family. When it came to the traditional Bengali wedding of their only daughter, these two people nearing sixty, my Baba and Ma, pulled off a wedding party with a 700plus guest list with amazing aplomb. The venue was perfect, nothing malfunctioned, services were payed for on time, the guests were received with a smile and a nomoshkar, the food was sumptuous and there was enough of it for everybody. No one went away with any complaints, which is generally the mark one aims to hit at any Indian wedding.

On the day of my wedding, right up to the time to leave for my wedding venue, Ma was working. Taking care of big and small details, while continuously supplying people who were getting ready in our house with whatever they needed--safety pins, water, hair clips. You know, the little things.

She wore her sari in the bathroom. Tied her hair without a mirror. She then put on her jewellery and her make up in the car on the way to the wedding hall. Looking her best was the last thing on her mind as she worried about things being even a little less than perfect on the wedding of her only child. And yet, her sari was exquisite, her jewellery tastefully matched, her thick, long, black hair in a simple but tidy plait falling down to her knees. Once at the venue she remained collected, gracious and charming, right up till the moment when her blood pressure shot up and she quietly, without a fuss, removed herself to a small room at the back, where she collapsed and had to be treated immediately. This was done so surreptitiously, that I learned about this much later and most guests still do not know of it. The wedding went on without any diversion.

In her youth, Ma had been a striking woman, tall and slender, with long thick hair, an easy smile and great taste in clothes. She turned heads at a lot of places and had many admirers.

And at 52, I would not hesitate to say that it requires a rare kind of beauty and charm to look as good as she did on that day, even with slightly off make up. Would you?

Much Love

I thought it was over a long time ago, maybe when Schumacher retired or when Govinda & Kader Khan movies started flopping - but I think when I look back, in the years to come, Michael Jackson's passing on will symbolise the beginning of the end of my childhood.

Do you have a jiggly belly?

I do.

Do you hate my jiggly belly?

You probably don't, but I do.

Do you hate me?

You probably do, but I don't.

Stars die in burning skies.

I knew her. And everything about her. Every tacit gesture, every unsaid word and every nervous twitch. I knew all the masks she wore. I knew their maker. I knew every muscle in her body and how they would look in every light. I knew her steely resolve and her fragile heart. I knew the softness of her smile and the twinkle in her eye. I knew her silent sob and the sight of her mascara running down her cheek. I knew how beautiful she was and how much more she will be. She knew.

Someone else knows her now. And I lurk, unknown, in the shadows waiting to be found by someone.

Saurian's Gyan: "I"

Before we begin, I'd just like to clarify a few things: For any
relationship "me", "you", "I" are important, because, well... it's your relationship. When I write further, my reference to I, me, we, us, etc., essentially means you (and occasionally me, the writer), but you can read it from a third-person's perspective and it would work well for entertainment purposes either which ways. There is no argument that you are of course important in any relationship. And with this note I start writing "I", my first couple of series on "stuff" that I want to call Saurian’s Gyan.

For any of my relationships in life, as I am important, it is imperative that I know who I am and what my inert characteristics are. It is important that I know what I like in my life and how I react in circumstances -- how I feel and how I react. As on my quest in life with the hundreds of people I have relationships with -- whether it is with my mom or my dad; my sibling or my girlfriend; my colleague or my fiancé; my mentor or my best friend who I have a crush on; my ex or their mother-in -laws; my friends or my God -- they all generate some emotion in me. Whether I understand or overlook them, they all not only determine how I feel and react, but also how I deal with other relationships. In this quest of building and maintaining these relationships of multi-emotions we must be clear as to who we are and what we want.

Most problems in relationships are our own doing (well we want to blame others too because it’s simpler). But on a serious note, if you fix yourself, your relation heals or has more chances of survival. But do you want it to survive or "am I too insecure to be alone as this world is a lonely place" is again a dilemma. There is no potion for a good relationship, there is no reason for questioning why your best-friend is lucky to have a perfect relationship (as it may appear) and not you, there is no need to blame your rotten unlucky life, there is no need for feeling miserable and lonely without at least giving yourself the chance and time to fix and understand what happened.

Do not base your life on the faults of others or on luck, it's not going to help, it's going to do nothing but let another day pass by in positive tears or negative belief, and you will wake up the next morning ready for challenge and looking for a better tomorrow, I pity you. I pity those who, when sad, remember all the sad times in their life and think that they have always been upset and hence always be, then spend their days in misery. I pity those very same sad people who when are happy, seem like they have never been sad and remember only the happy moments in their life and are all positive that their future is content too. I pity those who think they have understood the dynamic of all relationships and off course their own, when they haven’t yet understood their own head and heart. I pity them because they don’t like getting hurt, but if they don’t get hurt on a regular basis, feel something is missing in life. I pity these smart, social, winners, playboys, mba’s, rich, intelligent, doctors, lawyers, artists, beautiful ignorant people. Their life doesn’t belong to them anymore. The more often you feel you are in control of your life, the more quickly your make up will run out and you will be forced to see who you really are, unless off course you still choose to be blind. I pity the one who is loved by all but cries alone at night, because he/she couldn’t love him/herself. We all have tried it all, we all have tried various ways of changing ourselves in order to be loved, we all have been accepted with and without are masks, we all have been rejected and we change on the basis of others and mostly not for ourselves.

If we just accept who we are without judging ourselves by the eyes of the world, if we just not justify our actions even to ourselves, but follow our gut and conscience, we would never complicate our lives as much as we do. "Charity beings from home", so be good to yourself, be true to yourself, know yourself, fear yourself, bear yourself, control yourself, help yourself, as you will always have to live with yourself. In order to fix relationships, to make this world a better place, we do injustice to ourselves, to our own nature; we forget our true self and the roots of our emotion. So the next time you regret something or are upset, don’t think how you have been wronged, how you did something wrong... just realise where you have done an injustice to yourself, where you have gone against your gut and conscience, where you did not love yourself, then you won't make the mistake again, or at least realise and understand ourselves and our emotions slightly better. The better you are to yourself, the better your relationships will be, and the better you will be able to understand your partner or others in society.

Coming up : Saurian’s Gyan : 2. "You"

Note: Saurian is a friend, (half philosopher/half clown), who requested I publish some of his thoughts on "stuff" anonymously

Carrie Bradshaw's breakup rules

" I created my very own first breakup rule: 

Breakup rule No 1:  Destroy all pictures where he looks sexy and you look happy.
Breakup rule No. 2: Until emotionally stabilized, enter no stores.
Breakup rule No. 3: Never stop thinking about him, even for a moment. because that's the moment he'll appear. 

And finally,the most important breakup rule: No matter who broke your heart or how long it takes to heal, you'll never get through it without your friends.”

-Carrie Bradshaw

I am not quite sure, that I believe in rule 2. Worth a thought, I suppose. My 3 rules include a lot of shopping infact. 

PS- Ips found this

I wished I was blind so I couldn't see them together. But wishes don't come true in the first place.

It isn't just Cinderella...

On a random count I found, on an average I have about 10 of them. I also pick up a season's favourite, and get addicted to it. I love them all.

But I recently found that this love makes my world go round. 

There are tough days, and there are troublesome days. And I have a well thought out strategy for all the horrid looking days. 3 points. If there were less, it would not be so well thought out, if more, then wouldn't be MECE. So 3 it is.

One, close the eyes. Sometimes, it feels like I can't quite keep my eyes open. As if, everything becomes more pronounced if my eyes were open. Like darts- aimed at me. I've spent days trying to keep away troublesome thoughts with eyelids shut. I see Orange. Closed eyes give me Orange, when I need to keep the blue away.

Level 2, on above average horrid days, there's extreme action that helps. Change of hair. The three(!) Cs- Cut, colour, condition. Everything works.

Level 3, on extremely horrid days. Get out there. Get another.

And there it is. And then on good days it works. And on bad days, I remind myself while also looking at others that, it'll work. Like it always has, like it always does, like it so should.

Today, it doesn't matter if they're not looked out for. Cos, I am not leaving them behind. 

I love my shoes.

An update for Jenny of fifth floor

When I write about love, Iwill write here. When Iwrite about all other assorted emotions, I will write here. I hope that's OK.

My personal blog stalker...

People said I was too cryptic, hence I thought of this wonderful thing to share. I am not sure, whether it fits into the category of love, but it's surely something like i(the dude)-lost-my-mind-and-I (the dude)-am-hallucinating-love. 

So, I got (yet another) mail from my blog stalker. The guy first "noticed" my blog in 2005. He is disillusioned* to think that I actually write for him. I do not know the guy, and do not feel the need to know him too. 

Here's an entertaining (sorry, but!) mail from him. I just hope for his own sake, he goes to a doctor. I don't even want to write back and be bad to him. I don't even know who he is. I know he is sick (for real, mentally) though.

Dear Upasna,

What you call "perennial torture**" isn't exactly clear to me. But this phrase indicates that something isn't going the way you would've liked. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Upasna, at some point in future I would like to meet you. I really want to. It's not a new feeling. It's just that it seems more feasible now.

I'm hesitant to give this relationship a name.That would stereotype.

I'm at peace after whatever I write to you. If I had enough money right now I would've bought 2 nearby apartments , one for both of us. Then I would indulge both of us in long chats. I would take you to the nearby coffee shop . Weekend movies would be indespensible. :D

I'm on the move with you.
Please don't call this "perennial torture" !!

*He reallly believes that I write for/ about him

** A post I wrote on my blog

And so it is...*

I am not a firm believer in the first sight. Though these days beliefs change by dime a dozen, and I don't quite know when, I may loose my cynicism amongst all other things. I do think however that there are signs ( like the dress tears up suddenly and jazz like that). It's weird sometimes to think that the whole universe seems to be scheming against the perfect good-on-paper stuff. Often times, the shoe is reluctant to be left behind. So, that's that.

* the shorter story, no love no glory, no hero in her sky

Pathos ruled my August Mistress

Pathos ruled my August Mistress
And I could but stand by and watch
Watch her fight with contentment
Watch her war with normalcy
And could do nothing to help
Coz I was part of what was normal too
Something she had as a life
Something she didn’t desire

For she longed to be a tormented sea
Against the calm lazy lake that
Didn’t know her own depth
She longed to be the foolish moth
To shimmer out to a dramatic death
Even to an unworthy cause

Her greatest fear, was her reality
Where, going against the flow
She dreamed and longed not for peace
But pain, to an extent that was not quite sane
It took me a long while to understand
The anguish she longed for, she quixotically thought
Would make her feel, the real emotions
Of love, pleasure, rage, and the lot

And as she fell into another night of restless sleep
I prayed a silent prayer of hope
That she didn’t get what she asks for
For the man with whom she lay
Had seen the beauty of silver flashes across the angry sky
Had felt the numbing pain of being touched by the same
Had stood at a shore and yelled ecstatically at the oncoming tornado
Had been caught in that breathless circle of non-life too
I prayed that she didn’t get what she asked for
I prayed too, for the death of her soul
To be of restlessness rather than the nothingness
That engulfs when feeling breaks the bonds of one’s universe

What fascinates me about love is...

...The way someone has this excited child-like look in a mall looking for her favorite candy shop, but the look is the search for the perfect love story

... or the soft look in someone's eyes which belies the cynical words spewed about the spouse...

...the stoic commitment in behavior which says without words that "you are the most important relationship in my life and I will fight tooth and nail to keep it safe and alive...

... is the look in someone's eyes when an abstract gaze pans across a crowded floor searching for the loved one...

... is in the way someone blushes while reminiscing their love story...

... in the way my father holds my mother's hand so tenderly so that incase she looses her balance, she would never fall...

... the silent complete conversations you can hold in your head, while sitting silently in the presence of your object of desire...

... in the strength it takes to be weak, vulnerable and flawed in the eyes in which you only want to see awe and admiration and desire...

As someone said there are a thousand reasons why love between 2 people won’t or can’t work; there is only one reason why it will - that there your partner is the only one who completes you in all the myriad ways only he/she can.

Question for all...

"Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship. " - Oscar Wilde

Onwards to the movies...

...and so,  of course, there will be days, when the sentences will often times than not , not start with the 'so' ( this is slightly off limits already). 

I realised, one of the things about wax statues which I cross or dream about, is that the space between the time they burn the candle to churn the wax, that space is disconcerting. Cos, probably it always stays put. The wax doesn't quite melt. I might avoid it, but it has hazel eyes, which hold. Disconcerting cos, looking away is probably like work- you need to do it. I love work, even so.

I've become a fan of Piya (the girl with the smart lines here) - it really should be like the movies.

Mirror, mirror on the wall.

Distance is an unknown variable.
There are many unknown variables but distance is certainly one of the most uncertain.

If I were to be a cynic tonight… what would I see? What would I choose?

There are vignettes of feeling, of sensation… like memories from a previous life.

flaming flowers that brightly blaze
swirling clouds in violet haze*


I love that line by L.P. Hartley: “The past is like a foreign country; they do things differently there.”

How do they do things? How does one locate, retrieve, and archive the old ways?

I look.
I delve into the depths of the sea and grasp blindly at something hidden between seaweeds and fragments of shells.
What have I brought to the surface? What have I retrieved?

I remember K. and R.
Vivacious, steady, bright-eyed K.
Who went away to a faraway land and refused to stay the same person. She grew and changed and she became an older, different K. It would be silly to say “better” or “worse” than before. She was just different…
And tenacious, steady R. became the past- he became part of the foreign country and she no longer knew him, or loved him with an everlasting passion like they had promised one another.
Is such a promise viable? Realistic?
People change after all- how can we blame someone for evolving?

You said you were going to conquer new frontiers**


Then there are D. and B.
She went. He stayed.
She tried. He tried.
They both tried- really really hard.
But they fell apart anyway, and she smiled her way into the glimmering life of money, and he stayed back and began to look for love again.

We promised the world we'd tame it, what were we hoping for?**


W. and P. would have tamed the world.
They would have fulfilled the fairytale fantasy of love-across-the-seven-seas.
Except that W. didn’t make it.
If ever someone has searched in a possessed, frenzied fashion for some sort of saving grace in an unexpected, inexplicable death, it is P.
She’s still trying to find it.
She’s found other things along the way- but there are no more castles in the air.
Perhaps it’s easier to think of them making it because circumstances allow for that romantic possibility..?
But no… I think not.
I really think they would have managed…

We laid her next to him beneath the willow
While the angels sang a whiskey lullaby***


But while distance is an unknown variable… and the past is painful and incoherent… it seems there may be a mantra of sorts…

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
…
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)****


Nothing is known. To attempt certainty is to defy the very laws of life, isn’t it?
Yet we strive and strain and search and seek…
Surely even the most “rational” among us cannot resist the occasional glance at a horoscope prediction..? Surely there is an inevitable thrill of expectation as we crunch open a fortune-cookie after a Cantonese dinner? I know I am susceptible. The temptation to know is ridiculously powerful.

However…it is impossible to really, truly know… So where do I go from here?

It’s easier when you go with the flow, and believe what makes the most sense to your heart.
It’s easier to find a mantra, and let it cartwheel and echo through the void of distance.

So then…that is what I choose, I suppose.
I choose to enjoy the dynamic of love.
I choose to believe in it.
I choose to have faith in the concept of bridging distance, of transforming unknown variables into manageable realities.
I choose to be talk about it, to write about it, to revel in it, to learn not to hold-back-and-keep-some-part-of-yourself-as-insurance-just-in-case…
I choose to believe that I have a choice…surely the greatest illusion of all?

I choose not to be a cynic tonight.

So here we are reinventing the wheel
I'm shaking hands with a hurricane
It's a colour that I can't describe
It's a language I can't understand**

Chaos meets sunshine meets destiny.




* “Vincent – Don Mclean
** “The Pioneers” – Bloc Party
*** “Whisky Lullaby” – Brad Paisley
**** “i carry your heart with me” – ee cummings

--

And then the Gods breathed.

Thus began it's journey. Permeating through the infinite spaces between. Ever gathering momentum, ever increasing in darkness. It was small, but aware of its destiny. It was now here. Passing through the seasons and years. Still sucking in all the darkness, removing any trace of the bright as it kept going. It was viscous now. Thick and heavy. But it never stopped. Through eons, it was in flux. Darkening, thickening and moving.

And then it stopped. It saw a brightness that the universe had never seen before. It finally knew. It slowed down. Chaos in it's wake, but it slowed down.

I've looked into your eyes. The blackest of them all.

Love...

After going through a disastrous attempt at a relationship, the pain, guilt of it broke my spirit ( yes, that is what I would call the monk like existence I put myself through. I had simply decided that if I am not open to people, they would loose the power to render pain. Incase the anger is directed at your partner, you can still get over it as it loses steam in a while. But when u cant forgive yourself for being stupid, the entire thing takes on a completely different dimension.

You run away from people you know, do not want to go and expose yourself to events or give other people a chance to like you. Having a voice in your own head go "yeah right? I was born yesterday" when a nice guy says " you are so interesting to talk to...". Dressing as if you were a man or a grandmother. Letting yourself go and pigging out, growing fat so you can melt into the background and no-one categorizes you in the 'attractive girl-lets get to know her' bracket. I can tell you as I gone through each of this.

I still dont know what happened, the when or the how of it - But I fell in love. I do know that one fine morning when I woke up I was back to being happy. I had a permanent smile etched on my face, I was humming songs walking to my pickup point, I was dancing to some strange rhthym playing inside me and I genuinely enjoyed the many flavors of the people around me. The grand passion of my life, the person who made me happy and comfortable with myself .... was Me. ( I am not attempting a repitition of Narcissus here). But Oscar Wilde actually got it right when he said "To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance."

JLT - Just like that!

Does love really exist,

or is it just a rosy veil to cover

the need for emotional sustenance?

Is a sacrifice really that noble and altruistic

or does it hint towards

A self destructive nature?

Has joy and happiness really been felt or

Is it simply in the anticipation of good surprises that

We find solace?

Is one ever actually with someone or

Is everyone forever alone?

I have felt that need for survival in

another’s love for me and

in my love for someone else.

Giving away bits of me has always been a relief.

I have experienced that sorrow always is and

Happiness is forever to be.

I have stood alone in many a madding crowd.

-

***
I once had a girl,
Or should I say
She once had me.
She showed me her room,
Isn't it good?
Norwegian wood.
She asked me to stay and she told me to sit anywhere,
So I looked around and I noticed there wasn't a chair.
I sat on a rug
Biding my time,
Drinking her wine.
We talked until two,
And then she said,'It's time for bed'.
She told me she worked in the morning and started to laugh,
I told her I didn't, and crawled off to sleep in the bath.
And when I awoke,
I was alone,
This bird has flown,
So I lit a fire,
Isn't it good?
Norwegian wood.

***

It's so obvious I like her. Well, so much for mutual exclusivity and falling victim to the whole "He likes her... and I like his her" paradigm. I guess that's what I have become; for once I think I fit some stereotype. The irony is sickening.

My head constantly loops images of us. Strange that they are of us arguing, of us discussing weird English words, of us dissecting the lyrics to Pearl Jam... of us constantly agreeing to disagree. Yes, unadvisedly, even "Black". Who else can boast of being hugged in front of engineering undergrads? Who else can tell you that they can make someone feel better by singing Britney Spears? Who else can make a born and bred vegetarian crave for pepper crab... at 3 in the morning?

I look at my new new cell phone. It still says I have no messages. You want to call her; but you don't really want to intrude on her or hear some lady tell you that your call is waiting. She tells you she can't switch calls, but why would she? You put the phone back down. She gave me a chance to be her friend and God knows I don't want to end up breaking and trampling down her carefully constructed privacy.

But then, we also talk. A lot. I act tough. She sees right through me. She laughs. With me and at me. She doesn't giggle. She laughs throatily. She "ish"-es me. I talk about a million things, I flit from topic to topic scared to stick to one. I tell her I came up with another guitar riff. She gets enthusiastic, but she forgets. She tells me of her partaking in drunken revelry with him. You instantly wish you were too... drunk and forgetful.

I want to help her in every way I can. But then, how dare I. I also realize, my helping her will be as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike. You offer anyway. You also silently withdraw. She barely notices. I create this steely exterior and smile on the outside.I bleed.

It all makes sense now. Chocolate, flowers, long walks on the beach, satin sashes and snow flakes on noses. Perfect sense really.

Maybe someone will bleed for me. But what good would that do?

Never Got an Answer...!

“I’ve heard that it’s something that happens between a boy and a girl when they grow up,” said wide-eyed, curly-top Vikram, my best friend in class IV.

“Listen! I swear I’ll complain to Kumud Ma'am if you ask me dirty things like this again!” screeched Sonia the snob, my class monitor in class VII, as we returned for History class after recess.

“Don’t you ask me such smart-Alec questions! Why don’t you just focus on your studies like other 12-year olds? Huh?” admonished Radha - my imperial sister, six years my senior.

“Listen kiddo! I’ve got to rush for my football practice. Later, OK?” Rajan - my brother, my idol, my hero (just two years older than me), barked rushing past me.

“Nothing yaar! All bakwaas!” said Ronnie - the senior school swimming champion, lazily chewing his gum.

“Uff-oh! You’ll find the answer when it happens to you. Have patience dear!” said miss-know-it-all, class topper Surbhi with a saint-like look on her face.

“It’s all give-and-take business, pal!’ said Vanraj - son of a diamond merchant , my colony friend, with whom I had smoked my first cigarette.

“It’s……..I don’t know……..umm………I think…………how do I say………….rather difficult…………it’s like…………” mumbled Udita behind a veil of hash-smoke in College canteen.

“Sacrifice, beta! Sacrifice.” Said Ma and sighed!

“Good question! Hmmm...” said Pa and walked off.

“A time-pass for sentimental fools,” said Aditya- the secretary of the College photography club.

“Who’s got the time dude? Focus on the presentation,” said Iqbal - my first colleague at work - and rushed off to the conference room.

“Kyon pooch rahe ho? Pehle batao. Batao na…..!” said Rani Malhotra, fluttering her eyelashes from behind the office reception.

“Bus hai! Kucch khaas hai, bacche!” said Guruji - my music teacher - with a faraway look in his eyes

“Faaltu baaton mein time mat waste kar. Kaam kar apna,” said Andrew, my trainer at a three-day workshop on interpersonal relationships in Goa.

Never got a straight answer!

Never got an answer!

I no longer ask “What is love?”

I don’t want to.

I don’t need to.

I’m happy soaking in it, showering it.

Whatever it is……………………………!!

The T and Me

T: I didn't sleep at all last night, I am sooo sleepy.
Me: Why? When did you sleep?
T: Around 10
Me: When did you have to wake up?
T: About 8 this am.

My friend T is one of those rare women who falls asleep during the day if she does not get her daily thirteen hours of sleep. She sleeps at parties, movies, restaurants, and during or after consuming alcohol; amid killing din or deafening silence. She is skinny as a reed but can eat half a pound of cake when she is hungry and I am jealous of her.

T (while eating cheesy pasta): Hey I made tossed vegetable salad for you today. Try some.
Me (after trying some): This is raw cabbage and veggies floating in vinegar.
T (totally incredulous): Is it? But I tossed it! I took all the ingredients and tossed it in a bowl. Isn't that how you make tossed salad?

T makes me laugh. Not because she is funny but because she is plain ridiculous.
She is the only woman I know who expresses her anxiety or stress by jiggling her breasts.
She is also the only woman I know who has nursed me to health like a mother and worried for me, sitting on a first floor balcony, like a father waiting for his daughter to return from a date he disapproves of.
It's not that I love her because when she was nine and went to visit the museum, her mum joked that her feet were larger than the 15 feet tall statue of the mythical feet of Bramha and she has believed it for the rest of her life -- reluctantly and ungracefully accepting "big foot" as a term of endearment. It worries me that if I move from this city, our inability to chat on the phone might mean that no one who is far removed from the daily events of my life would be bothered with how well I am dealing with them.

What makes her endearing is, on the rare occassion when she is wearing a delicate shell-pink kurta, in her enthusiasm to dress up, she puts on so much and such uncoordinated make up that people become genuinely concerned.
"Why are you made up like a goth rock chick?"
"Shut up. That's not what she had aimed for." I hiss through my teeth.

She looks at the world through myopic spectacles, which look like she stole them from a home for the elderly. Not just that, this was the pair even they were preserving as an example of glasses worn by the 1940's career man. With these bottle bottoms, an oversized sweater some homeless person may have given her because she looked at them so longingly, she cries silently into her glass when drunk. At times like these, I know, she likes to just be left alone but then people fuss over her.
People of all kinds love her because she is too kind to be rude and has a laughter so loud, Rajdeep Sardesai once forgot his lines because she was being amused at the other end of a very large office.

I love her because when no one is watching she sits alone and keenly observes her feet and sometimes applies mildly shiny glitter on her face to appear glamourous. But I love her most because when I ask her "How do I look?" she is the only person who says, "Not so good. You look like a watermelon."

Monday morning question

I was on facebook recently, and a former colleague of mine (a very intelligent woman) had filled out one of those "25 random things about me" lists. In it, point number 7 to be exact, she'd written: "I believe you only love once, everything else is a compromise." Is this true?

I know too many couples who keep breaking up and getting back together, or who break up and go on to live happy lives with other people... but is that first love, the one that hurt, that took forever to detangle from, is *that* love with a capital L. Are all the other relationships that follow somehow paler shades of the original? I find this hard to believe... yet, my former colleague's question kept resonating in my mind this morning. I've never been in love, I think... so there's no relationship to measure this by. I find myself almost envious of those couple's who've had those long drawn-out college-time affairs... feel like I've missed an important life milestone!

What is love?

It is not the authoritative source on love I know, but why is Haddaway's prophetic "What is love?" followed by "... baby don't hurt me..."?

There is so much love that I cannot find any

Is love this composite chemical or this cosmic light that binds the world that we can only experience atoms of and are then left craving for more eternally? Or is love such a huge volume of emotions that you can see it all around you but can never find any for keeps, or even to hold for a little while? Is love existing in such a myriad of ways that it is difficult to pinpoint one avatar and say I like it best and want it to linger most? Or is love this ability to give up being loved and say I have loved and been loved so I know it cannot last forever? Or is love this magnificent feeling that really can last forever, but that not many stumble upon?

My story in love??? That's too long to keep you riveted... Suffice it to say for now that I have loved more and been loved less. Except for the two tender hearts whose world I have built, I can confidently say. And I am now at a point where I am contemplating what is contemporarily an EMA (extra marital affair). That's material for another post.

Fashioned on a tag, but is really a post.

10 random things about me and love I insist on telling you

1. When I met J, I was already with G. When I met G on my second day of college, I was seeing S. When I met S with the help of a cousin, I was with K. When K met me in Math class, I was fourteen. You walk towards the light, you walk into darkness, either way you are blinded.

2. One of the above-mentioned letters wanted to slap me in public for leaving him. He hatched a plot to get me to meet him in a place crowded by our peers and involve me in a loud row and slap me across the face, to let the world know I had hurt him. Sometimes, I wish I would have let him. I broke his heart and I remember that I did this.

3. There are two novels you will never understand fully, unless you have loved and lost the one person who made you believe in soul mate, or even soul for that matter. Devdas and Wuthering Heights.I unfortunately, wholly, completely understand both.

4. To this day, I regret refusing to kiss my fifteen-year-old first love. In a span of five minutes, he first mocked me, then looked amused and then moved to irreversible and total indifference.

5. When I was 17, G sat next to me under a tree in the rain and said, “You look so beautiful.” It was like he had complimented me into a coma. Not only did I not look at him and speak to him, I disbelieved him. I remember looking down at my muddy feet, shabby sandals and focusing on a tiny scab on my big toe and thinking, “I hate him so much for making me feel so ugly.” You gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you.

6. In my life, I have learnt the hard way, that when you are trying to run away from someone and that someone clings on to you— not just that he holds on, but tries to hold you back with anger and love and resentment and love and spite and love, clings on so hard that he has his feet dug into the ground and his nails are clawing into your flesh— don’t leave.If you want to cling on to someone who is leaving you with your teeth and nails, don’t. They will leave.

7. “ I want to see you happy”…… “Actually, no. I don’t want to see you happy with someone else. I hope you are never happy. I hope you are never well.”I know love is not wanting your loved one to be in pain. But I also know this is nothing but love. Flawed, selfish, human kind of love.

8. I have barely ever had intense romance with anyone other than G. But if you rock the boat too much, even if you don’t fall out, you will get nauseous. I got positively sick. So I decided never to love anyone like a crucifix. I was not being stubborn or careful. I was just being curious.

One night when I got home from work, J and I sat on our beds, silently. The music was on, I was reading, he was playing a violent video game. We had a box of chocolates on the bed. Each of us silently ate one piece at a time, without looking at each other or talking. Slowly it became painfully sweet but we were being so greedy. The need to put one more piece into the mouth became more and more urgent. I don’t know when we both passed out from the chocolate. Through the whole thing, we had not spoken one word to each other. I cannot imagine one other person who I would do this with— abandon control, be nakedly greedy, be sloth, be gluttonous, be completely unmindful of the self—except for my husband, J. I have since abandoned my curiosity.

9. At parties or social gatherings, I sometimes try to make up for my skin and hair, back fat and belly fat with cutting wit and sarcasm. Mostly it works. If I really want to, I can shine and glitter, sending the hottest girl at the club crying to the loo. My eyes twinkle and I become a whole new me. Then I look across the room and I see J thinking, this is not really her. This one quizzical look, the knowledge that he knows who you really are, is being in an intimate relationship in my book.

10. Pick out a scar and explain how you got it. It’s a game I only play with the man I love.

The Art of Breaking Up: Road rage or taking the high road?

They say that there's a formula (atleast according to the yahoo chat groups, which so far have been my font of wisdom for matters pertaining to the heart) for how long it should take to get over someone. You take how long you were together and divide it by half ... and that's a safe estimate. BTW: there's also a formula for calculating if someone is too young or too old to date (very mathematical, and I'll save that story and formula for another blog). But my point is that I get over someone in dog years, as in, take how long we were together and multiply that by seven. My last relationship was an intense one-month long affair in which we talked deep into the night about our deepest sorrows and joys ... we broke up in August, lingered till October, and then entirely cut off contact. It's been four months since, so I have three more months of this dull ache to go by my estimates.

What I'm tortured by late at night is whether I broke up...well...well. I have a tendancy to take the high road, so when we met for our final tea I made a list of 10 questions pertaining to our relationship (yes, I'm a total dork)to get our conversation going in a positive strain. Things like, "What have you learned from this?" "What was one of your best moments?" "How will you remember me?" "What went wrong?" "Why are you such an asshole who doesn't know what he wants, gets me all tangled into this mess, and then leaves when things start getting real????" I didn't ask that last question, and that's the question I wish I had. I've always felt that it's important to leave people better than when you met them; and that when a love relationship ends it's best (just like in an exit interview at a job) to take the high road and not go into the petty nitty gritty of rehashing what went wrong. Something did, you tried, one or both of you didn't want to keep going, and now whether your heart feels like it's been shredded or not, it's over. Why draw blood? Why not remember the best stuff and walk away with your head high and with dignity and grace?

I'll tell you why. Because, then, some night when you can't sleep and the thousands of dogs outside your window are howling in chorus, you'll feel this rage build up in you and a torrent of unanswered unasked questions shower through you like pellets; each "why?" a little dart in your heart. You'll think of a million zillion things that you should have held him accountable for, but didn't. That's why. In the mood I'm in right now, I wish I could rewind, go back to our nice tea (which I paid for) and have one of my wittiest, smartest friends write me a little speech filled with biting and razor sharp points that illuminate how hypocritical and idiotic he was ... all said calmly and with total control of emotion. And then, I'd like to dump the tea on his head and walk away, like they do in the movies.

While this is my current fantasy, the truth is, I still am unable to hate him. I think in life connections are hard enough to come by, so whether they worked out the way we wanted them to or not, there's still something valuable there to keep. Why burn bridges? And ... sigh ... so, this brings me back to my initial question ... when breaking up is it better to take the high road, or is it better to rage rage against the dying of the light?

____ makes your world go round?

What is it that lights up your day?

With sunshine and laughter and rollercoaster thrills?

With moonbeams and sparkling-bright-eyes and tapping feet?

What is it that keeps you going?

Through winter-spring-summer-autumn?

Through the meetings and assignments and the myriad trials and travails of earning a living?

Through the addictions and the despair and the I-just-can’t-go-on-anymore?

If love, or the possibility of it, lights up your day and keeps you going, welcome to Pyar Durbar and do-do-do take a couple of minutes and jump in with your love wisdom.

If love, or the possibility of it, does not make your world go round, welcome to Pyar Durbar and do-do-do take a couple of minutes and jump in with your reality check!

Cheers!