Fourth

Raju was running late. It was the 4th of the month.

Flying through the by-lanes of Kalbadevi, dodging tempos and thelas, the occasional car, and people - vendors, pedestrians, people generally passing time on the road - he would have looked at his watch every two seconds, had he had one.

Watching his light-as-a-feather, bony little self almost glide the air currents, one would think he was no more than five or six years old. He would actually turn eleven this year, or so Anees chacha said. He and his family of three begums and seven children then had been around when Raju's pregnant mother had been picked up by a local NGO coming once a month to round up severely ill slum-residents needing urgent medical care and taking them to the nearest municipality hospital. His mother had disappeared after his birth, and the NGO volunteer had delivered him to the neighbor - Anees chacha's doorstep. Chacha had accepted him as a gift from Allah and the newest member of his ever-expanding family.

That was eleven years ago and here he was now. A rag-picker/scavenger by day and waiter-boy at the Good-fun bar in the evenings. Sometimes, the lala at General kirana used him as a delivery boy and sent him to some of the affluent neighborhoods in the vicinity with parcels of atta and tel.

As Raju passed lala's dukaan, he waved out to the portly figure sitting behind the counter. Lala looked at his flying form and shouted - "Abbe kidhar bhaag raha hai be, bawla hai ka!". Further on, as he neared the police thana, his urgency to immediately be someplace else become much more acute, but he slowed his frenzied pace to a brisk trot, so as to not attract attention. As a young urchin around this area he already knew that getting in trouble with the police was as easy as one of them noticing his seemingly purposeless existence.

As he turned that last corner without incident and came within sight of his destination, his feet grew wings again and with the single-minded focus of an Olympian near the finish line, he sprinted the last twenty meters faster than Usain Bolt, just as the clock struck one and the gates to the Hanuman temple started to shut. He flew in and sat down, just in time to have a man put a plate in front of him and another ladle out a huge portion of freshly made, piping hot, deliciously aromatic - khichdi onto it.

Crazy Beautiful

The Terminal. A movie about a man who spent nine months at an airport terminal in NYC, waiting to be allowed to pass into the city so that he could collect the signature of one of the greatest Jazz legends in the world, something that he had promised his dead father he would.

When was the last time you did something like this?

Pages from my Diary?

An episode of my life which I view with a lot of amusement now and what had seemed to be the biggest sorrow of my life at the time - When I was a kid, I underwent some trauma. My mother was fond of having my hair cut really short - the style used to be called a 'Boy's Cut', no less. Saying she was fond of it, is actually camouflaging the true intentions.She was just not into taking care of long hair - the oiling, washing, combing, braiding, delousing that 7-year-old hair demands. It's another thing that I hated that look and would cry every time a reflection happened to fall upon my eyes or imagination. I thought it made me look like a boy, a rather pudgy, nonathletic one at that. And like all self-respecting 7-year-olds, I hated boys.

When my sister grew up a little bit and become the shining star that she is, I would always be compared to her - on her willingness to get up and start dancing, on her happiness and cheeriness in general, talkativeness. Nearly half my family prides itself on the words per minute they can chalk up, and are also very culturally inclined - singing, dancing - and actually very well - every time somebody sneezes. So a high premium was laid on such abilities and more importantly, inclinations. I, on the other hand, was into being left alone, watching from a safe distance. Not much of a talker, and thinking that I was too fat to stand up and display to people all my wobbly bits, I would fight tooth and nail to not be made to do that. This sort of stuck, this image of me being a quiet little thing. More so in my mind that anybody else's I think. And it also kind of led me to develop an alter-ego. I was uproariously gregarious with friends around - the bubble in the champagne and the rocker in the house. It is only over the past few years that a sort of merging of the two has happened.

At 15, I did not know any boys. Of course, I thought about them. I was interested. But just didn't know any. So it was really interesting going to these coaching classes where I encountered boys for the first time. There was so much talk those days about who likes whom, who said what to whom and about whom, who looked at whom - you get it. I found it deliriously fascinating - building mammoth situations around these exciting happenings in my head. Of course I also found the time to study, hard. That was the other thing I did.

Somewhere along in the next couple of years, K happened. My first love, or so I believed. He was the romantic, edgy, SRK-lookalike who would make my silly heart race at the time. And so passed three years. I did have fun. But I do not remember any of that. What remained is what took over five years to heal after it crashed. For the latter two of those three years, I kept it from my parents, assuring them that it was over. And when I finally came to them distraught that it had actually ended, all my father said to my mother was - I am glad that it is finally over now. I don't think I learned anything from that experience immediately. In fact, I went over to the other extreme of being terribly cautious and introspective about what I actually wanted and felt. Today though, I am a strong advocate of co-education schooling, of snapping children out of excessive day dreaming and of welcoming them back when they stray.

Due to all of this drama, I have this one regret - I did not spend as much time or thought on my graduation schooling. I could have done more. I feel I did not utilize the resources at my disposal well enough - both internal and external.

Life is made up of a million mistakes - misplaced notions and wrong actions, things which seemed life-threatening then and only bring up that warm glow of nostalgia now. I thought I was absolutely right and knew everything at 15, at 17, at 21. Thoroughly confused at 25, I knew I was wrong. Here I am now, at 28. Having been through the veil to the other side - where there is no love and no friendship, getting back just in time. Hanging on to the few solid friendships I have for dear life now - nothing can come in the way - no missed birthdays, no non-appearances on important occasions - nothing. In love - understanding the true implications of that word - to let some battles pass, to let some habits die hard, to embrace some wrongs, to work up some excitement at the end of a long hard day, and most importantly, to let kindness win over righteousness.