My life in books - 2015

Childhood dreams are a great thing, sometimes they bring you back to reality.

My childhood dream was a simple one, to live in a library with an unending supply of Maggi. It may have been simple, but as it turned out, not easy.

To cut a long story short, it's been a while since I rediscovered this dream, along with my childhood ambition of becoming a writer, which I did fulfill if this blog and countless other spur-of-the-moment outbursts plus elaborate projects are to stand in testimony; I am a writer, just not the kind, yet, that gets paid in money. Or at all.

This post though is less about my awakening and more about what's helped keep me awake this year - my books. It's a bit of a narcissistic journey down my reading list and an attempt to parse it for meaning.

2015 started with me reading '2014: The Election that changed India'. This was the year I discovered the joy of reading non-fiction, as is evident from the others I also read - 'India in Love: Marriage & Sexuality in the 21st century', 'Introducing Marx', 'Why is Sex fun? The Evolution of Human Sexuality' and 'Human Universe'. And those I couldn't complete, but which equally satiated my curiosity while opening up new doors of wondering and wandering. Now, before I get into summarizing these books and their relative or absolute merits, let me add a dash of personal insight here. Fiction has been my poison all along, I think the first book I ever read was at age 6 or 7 and it was the 'Famous Five and the Z-rays', if I remember right. To an introverted, shy kid who never really felt at place in most groups, and consequently believed there to be something the matter with self, this world of make-believe was very very real. More than twenty-five years along, I can still recall the feeling of having a new Enid Blyton in my hand, the smell of it, the feel of my fingers on its shiny embossed cover page lettering, the absolute ecstasy of looking forward to reading all summer. Reading fiction gave me another world to relocate to and I needed that, then. But over the years, I have become more confident, more able to navigate society and my personal social anxieties, so much so that sometimes I fool even myself with respect to the I vs E question :) I think this and other factors have led to a central shift - from me wanting to escape the world to me wanting to understand it better. And that's where the non-fiction comes in.
So of all the books I read, I loved every single one. Politics is another (genetic) obsession, and 'The Election' helped me apply a strategic lens to, as well as understand the nitty-gritties behind, the election to beat all elections, the grand 2014 dance of democracy. Coming to something very different but equally if not more compelling, 'India in Love' was a collection of anecdotes from across the length & breadth of the country and spanning every segment possible, and as the name suggests, these anecdotes were about how India has loved in the past and is changing its game, real fast. It was peppered with a high quality of quantitative data, that mostly served to edify. A couple of examples to illustrate its illuminating power: apparently one in every fourth man in Urban India is having an extramarital affair and around 70% of all homosexual men are married! It's a wonder the wedding industry continues to grow in size and complexity every year, given how the marriages it leads to today are likely to be as short lived as the ceremonies themselves. Similar in theme, but addressing the Why rather than the What, was 'Why Sex is Fun'. Written by Pulitzer winning scientist Jared Diamond, this book was a synapse-coupler. Understanding that we are what we are, from our sexual habits to our social structures, because of natural selection across the millenia of evolution, is eye-opening. 'Introducing Marx' was like a crash course in the history of philosophy, leading up to dear ol' Karl. What a guy, no other thought school has had the kind of lasting impact on our world that Marxism has had. I don't pretend to know everything about it, and will need to keep revisiting this and other material to gain a deeper understanding. But while 'Why Sex is Fun' is about unconscious acts on the part of our ignorant ancestors, 'Introducing Marx' introduces us to the brilliance of our first scientists, philosophers and other challengers of the status-quo. I remain fascinated. And lastly, Human Universe, positioned as a love letter to mankind, is breath-taking in scope and jaw-dropping in content. Written by a British physicist, Brian Cox, it covers everything from the origin of the Universe to present moment (give or take a few years) and is equivalent to marathon training for the brain cells. Not an easy read but then the Universe wasn't created in a day, not even by God.

All amazing books.

Another niche I read was African origin literature. 'Americanah' and 'Half of a Yellow Sun' are both very interesting books, shedding light on what has remained largely under wraps for most of us confined to western culture and its writings apart from our own. Nigeria is more than one thing or two things, its stories are both extraordinary - as in 'Yellow Sun' about a country fraught with strife - and ordinary like in 'Americanah', speaking about the lives of people like you and me, except with a different starting point and hence a different trajectory. I liked both of them, 'Americanah' more than 'Yellow Sun' because it was better written (although by the same author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie), and was more like the kind of storytelling I like replete with the nuances of human emotions.

This was also the year I finished reading 'Anna Karenina'. And read 'An Equal Music'. 'Anna K' was everything it promised to be - intense, thought-provoking and a difficult read. Tolstoy leaves no thought un-inspected, ranging from the insecurities of Anna to the agricultural and political pursuits of Levin, and this could be tedious for many, it was to an extent for me too; but the chance to time-travel to the Russian society of the 1800s made up for it, for me at any rate :) The best part of the novel though is how feelingly Tolstoy writes through a woman's eyes, capturing her trials and hopelessness, being both a superb author in taking us along in her madness, and also an extremely progressive human being in defying through an impulsive, confused but an extremely honest Anna, the mores of the time. 'An Equal Music' was disappointing for me at least, but just the kind of thing you could expect from Vikram Seth - a writing for the sake of writing. I cannot overstate how much I admire his writing and now after having heard him talk, him. So I wish for my sake that the novel had been more mainstream, about something I could connect with, but it was what it was, a largely esoteric piece of literature combining two of the author's passions - writing and music.

Coming to some light literature, I read some stuff from my old favorites this year as well - 'Career of Evil' by JK Rowling, 'The Girl in the Spider's web' by David Lagercrantz, 'Go Set a Watchman' by Harper Lee and 'Ideal' by Ayn Rand. 'Career of Evil' was better than the previous two installments of the series (both of which I loved as well, JK R can do no wrong in my eyes) and getting more interesting by the minute with regards to the Cormoran-Robin equation. Nobody quite creates characters the way JK R does and I am eternally grateful to her for bringing all the people she has into my life :) Btw does anyone else think that the trio of Cormoran-Robin-Mathew is reminiscent of Harry-Hermione-Ron? If so, give me a shout. 'Spider's Web' was good, and I am thankful to Lagercrantz for giving us another installment of Lisbeth Salandar, I only wish he hadn't infused her with normalcy. She appears more emotional, more human in this one and no, that's not the Lisbeth I know. Harper Lee was another who could do no wrong, and I was of the same opinion about Atticus Finch, but in 'Go Set a Watchman', she decided to shatter my little bubble. I know people are never what you build them up to be inside your head and that is one of the reasons most of my heroes are either dead or imaginary. Having said that, I also liked that she infused him with some grey - fiction with a touch of reality, a beautiful reminder of the fact that nobody is perfect and if we set such an expectation, we are bound to be disappointed forever. As for Scout, I doubt if she will ever manage to accept a society that has such a different value system from her own, even if it is to try and change it gradually, but it's an interesting thought, one that rebels like me need to think about while hibernating in our ivory towers of disengagement. Now for Ayn Rand; I had an intense love affair with her around ten years ago, but gradually realized how dogmatic she was and regurgitated her out of my system. Picked up 'Ideal' on a whim, and was completely taken aback at the memories it brought back. I realize now how fundamentally her beliefs have shaped me, and while I may have broken out of the rigidity she imposes, the conflicts I face at many points in my life as well as the values I revere arise from her work. It was shocking to me that I could have been in denial for so long. In that, this book, though a slim volume, was a very rich experience.

As an aside, for those who have persevered through this piece thus far, kudos. You can most definitely make it through 'Anna Karenina' and Levin might just be your soulmate.

Talking about favorite authors, I doff my hat to Alexander McCall Smith, whose writing is so ethereal that few people get its charm. I love his Scotland series, of which I read copiously this year. He is the kind of writer who can make the most basic of actions seem rich in meaning, and I believe they often are - we feel a myriad of emotions in the blink of an eye, past biases, self perception, value-system all coming together to decide the course of action, what we then endeavor to rationalize ad infinitum. It must be said though that his 'Emma' was an unqualified disaster, but then Jane Austen is, well, Jane Austen.

Some other light reads were 'The house that BJ built' by Anuja Chauhan, a couple of Georgette Heyers, the 'Rosie' series by Simsion Graeme and 'Yes, Please' by Amy Poehler; three of them being romantic fiction approached from very different angles, and the fourth a true autobiography in that you would do well to pass time with it during commute.

And then there were some quirky ones, like 'Panty' by Sangeeta Bandopadhyay, 'Dangerous Women', a compilation by several authors and 'The Stranger' by Albert Camus. 'Panty' was odd and other-worldly, the kind of book that is open to interpretation. 'Dangerous Women' had some good tale telling, especially 'Second Arabesque, very slowly' by Nancy Kress, a story set in a post apocalyptic world where any form of art is heresy. 'The Stranger' was strange, the kind of book one reads because it so defies any tenets of good story telling, coming deep from the author's psyche and speaking of his anguishes and turmoils.

And now we come to the ones that truly influenced me one way or the other. '40 Rules of Love' by Elif Shafak, 'Middlesex' by Jeffrey Eugenides and 'Rustom and the Last Storyteller of Almora' by Gaurav Parab. '40 Rules' was that catalyst that accelerated a very fundamental shift in how I interact with the world. Given as I am to intense self-scrutiny and reflection, I know increasingly better with each passing day where I stand and where I don't wish to, and I have always struggled with how to balance openness with discernment. Openness for a multi-centric humanity that is a mix of very different value systems, some of which I might have a strong point of difference with, AND discernment or an expectation for some amount of value match, at least on the core ones, with everyone I interact with. Increasingly this year, I had been feeling a pull towards the former, openness and acceptance, and that in tandem with this affection-inducing book, and a conversation with Rashmi, set me on that path with even more angularity. So much so that I started an initiative (Ze Salon), whose primary objective is to meet new and different people and perspectives. Mighty influence :) Similar was my experience with 'Middlesex', which in addition to being informative is also an extremely touching and engaging story about a hermaphrodite, and it again brought home how different people are, and that it is okay to be a freak, imperfect, abnormal, for who really is normal? I highly recommend both these books to everyone, they will bring you closer to accepting others and more importantly, yourself.
Now 'Rustom' is a special book, it has been written by someone I know (Gaurav Parab), who had done a great job of not only writing it well with an original and engaging plot but also of making it a success, all the while paying obeisance to Corporate life on the side. It is inspiring, and 2016 will be about me trying to walk in his footsteps.

This brings me to the end of this post and this year, give or take a day. I am glad I did it because it revealed to me how significant these books have been, the whole for each being far greater than the sum of its parts.

And now as I watch the sunlight around me gently wave farewell, its warm fingers lightly grazing my cheek for the last time (or nearly so), I decide that next year, I want it to be more of this year, and I want myself to be - nothing less than the Sun.

The Unforeseen Consequence

Everyone in Govind Nagar knew Sharmaji. He was the secret sauce of the mohalla.

Every child knew the tap tap of his cane as he came walking up their gravel paths, and no lady of the house was amiss at whispering hasty instructions into her cook’s ears to lay out the best of hospitality at his disposal. Along with the prayers that went up to Lord Ganesh before embarking on a new job or a marriage proposal, a tranche of blessing-seeking was sent his way as well. In fact, he was divine representative cum career counsellor cum family court all rolled into one. Parents would come seek his advice before sending their children away for higher education. He was given pride of place in every wedding, every function and if he ever fell ill, the good housewives of Govind Nagar would care their hearts out. He also helped the usually-amicable residents sort out their differences, and he was a talent at that, they all went away feeling like their suit had won.

Such was their devotion to him, that a group of them was proposing renaming their local park in his honor.

It had not always been so. He had appeared out of nowhere around twenty-three years ago. Nobody knew much about his past life or relations - damned odd in these parts, where people’s identities are tapestries interwoven with threads of family history and ancestral legends. Nobody knew what Sharmaji’s coordinates had been before arriving here, and at first he was viewed with a sense of unease.

Things had continued in a similar vein till the day things had completely changed.

It was the early 90s and the country had taken on strange hues. For a couple of decades post India gaining its independence, it had been widely believed that a country of such size and with such inherent diversity would fail at the gigantic experiment of democracy it had undertaken. But India had made it work. It was chaotic, in fact it was like an acrobatic act performed by clowns, a disorganized and heterogeneous mix of clowns at that, and you laughed to see them try out complicated manoeuvres like hand-standing, grand-standing, fire-ball juggling and the rest; you laughed till you realized that they had made it work, albeit with some oddly landed flips and near drops, but largely made it work creating an unprecedented display of balance & beauty.

But it was the 90s and the country had taken on strange hues. The political landscape was dotted with opportunists intent on using the Almighty himself as a means of securing power. While every effort was made to sanctify the birthplace of a revered Hindu God, if at all such a being existed, he had probably decided to disown his own creation and left for vanvas, not for the first time in his immortalized story.   

Into such turbulent times, had Sharmaji arrived in Govind Nagar. The residents had heard through various dubious sources that the long vacant ‘Kamla Nivas’ had been sold by the grandsons of late Barrister Ravi Shankar Prasad to a person of unknown repute. The Barrister had been a much respected member of society, and it was widely hoped that his equally successful lawyer grandsons would return, tiring of the lucre of foreign lands, moral compass pointing due home, towards the city of their birth. But none of that came to pass. Instead the good citizens of Govind Nagar awoke one morning to see heavy activity in the vicinity of Kamla Nivas, and stood by as an entire morning was spent regurgitating the old but still sturdy furniture of the ancient house, while a host of modern looking pieces found their way in.

Sharmaji had some very peculiar habits that didn’t do much to endear the local populace. While in his early 50s, as some nosy kids had found out, he was not one to surrender to the geriatric pleasure of gathering rust. Instead, he was often spotted in white vest and running shorts, doing laps around Moti Jheel park. People might have forgiven him this defiance of the laws of nature, had he not insulted the principal sport of Govind Nagar - Rummy. Upon being invited for a game in the early days of his arrival, he was rumoured to have said that card games were for the lazy. Govind Nagar bristled as one and unanimously agreed that this strange Sharma was best left alone.

As these events took place at home, events of another nature unfolded elsewhere. It was the fag end of 1992, and every draught of wind brought alarming news; especially pertinent to Govind Nagar as its demographic was a mix of religions, a Hindu majority but with a significant population of Muslims, most of them old families accepted as an integral part of the social fabric. But in the years leading up to that fateful month of December, one could see a loosening up of that beautiful fabric, threads once so intricately woven were now in danger of unravelling at the slightest provocation.

Things had come to this state so gradually that no one could quite put a finger on its genesis. As with most things in life it started out small enough - a missed invitation, a door slammed too quickly, the quickening of footsteps while passing through a certain street, not letting children go over to play and there it was, the seeds of dissent sown. Before one even realized what had led to it, one was right in the middle of it, living it. The elders of the mohalla who would once gather all together to discuss everything from the tyranny of their wives to the liberalization of their country, were suddenly meeting in smaller sub-groups; the common terraces that stretched across the street and had once served as a focal point for the women to catch up on neighbourhood gossip, seemed ominous now, almost lethal, in their silence; even the children smelled trouble and where earlier you could see a rowdy gang of multi-hued mischief-makers running circles around their indulgent parents, now you saw them dissipated, discouraged, dispassionate, on edge as if waiting for disaster to strike.

Disaster did strike. An episode, that would define a political party for better or for worse and continue to send out powerful shock ripples into space & time rearing its ugly head once every few years, occurred in the first week of December. It resulted in outbreaks of violence across the country. Waves of hatred travelled outward from the epicentre, finding release wherever they sensed a weakness, wreaking havoc across the length & breadth of what was for the first time post-independence, definitely not Nehru’s India.

And how did all this affect Govind Nagar, you might ask. Already having fallen prey to segregation in their everyday lives, the day that brought news of the calamitous occurrence at the purported divine birthplace was a dark day in its history. While there had been much confusion & lack of accurate information, everyone knew something irreparable had happened, and there was a whole smorgasbord of responses to be seen: the Pandey youths, who had disappeared over a week ago, re-appeared, changed, much emboldened and with a gang of boys in tow, they seemed to be in the throes of a strong emotion, visibly controlling their selves; the local maulana and his family were nowhere to be found, people said they had crept away in the dark of the night and were headed to Mumbai; his apprentice was seen walking to the Mosque for Azan in the middle of the morning, dressed entirely in black, the color of mourning; most other families had shut themselves inside their houses, with  entrances barricaded, windows locked, money and jewellery hidden away. All of these responses told of the mistrust that had taken root deep into this mohalla. Tension covered everything like a thick blanket blocking out hope and happiness.

But what of Sharmaji? Well, the residents or at least those who had happened to sight him were of the opinion that he had finally taken leave of his senses. There were strange apocryphal accounts of him being spotted out on the streets, in his white vest & running shorts. Mrs Zoya Ansari, who’d happened to be looking out of her window when she’d seen him pass, immediately reported to her husband his strange demeanour. “There was somehow a different look to him, some sort of determination, like a madman’s”, she’d observed to him.

Later in the evening, around 5.30, during the time of the evening Azan, the inhabitants of Govind Nagar and especially those who lived close to the Mosque heard what sounded like a brawl – some screaming, followed by a couple of shots and sounds of struggle. It was a briefly lived skirmish, and soon silence restored itself. But this silence was more threatening, every moment pregnant with the possibility of violence.

The next two days passed pretty much in the same fashion. News channels started reporting the events of D-day in more detail, along with the aftermath - the brutal repercussions, some incidents also being reported in their town. However their mohalla remained silent, still watchful, but silent.

Finally on the fourth day, some people gathered the courage to come up for air. All it took was for one to venture out, before several others followed suit. While theoretical wisdom might have recommended indefinite confinement under such circumstances, the human spirit was far too curious to pay heed.

So out came the denizens of Govind Nagar, seeking information like it was sustenance. And they weren’t disappointed - there was some astonishing news awaiting them. The missing-maulana’s apprentice, Adnan Haris, initially skittish but turning expansive upon realizing that none of the people in the immediate vicinity had any intent to take up arms against him, told everyone a fantastical tale. He alternated between temerity and timidity, one instant shooting accusatory daggers at his audience for having ensconced themselves in safety and the other, apologizing on their behalf, believing and forgiving them in that moment for not having had any other choice. By and by the story was extricated in the whole - it turned out that the Pandey brothers had come back with instructions from their extremist clique to create trouble in Govind Nagar, one more stab among the series of assaults, arranged in cold-blood to wound, rather, cripple the nation. On that first day, they, along with their band of hoodlums, had marched over to the Mosque and entered the premises, daggers out, fangs bared - mouthing obscenities. There were only a handful of people inside, mostly beggar women, and Adnan. The brothers had seemed a little disappointed to see such few people, and as per Adnan would have ensured they got their glory if not in numbers then in brutality. But they didn’t get any further with their nefarious designs, because Sharmaji arrived just then.

Sharmaji, who’d apparently spent every moment of that day patrolling the neighbourhood and especially high risk areas, also armed, had arrived in the nick of time to confront the brothers. Sharmaji was one to the five or six crazed youths of which the Pandeys were the leaders, but what he lacked in number, he made up in strength, strategy and ironically, weaponry. While the Pandey team was armed to pierce, tear and puncture with a naked and merciless arsenal of swords, choppers and knives, Sharmaji had gunpower on his side. Armed with a firearm, and his ferocity, he had managed to take the brothers out. As soon as he'd disabled them with a couple of non-fatal but strategically aimed shots, the others of that craven crew had taken tail and fled.

The inhabitants of Govind Nagar listened to this account, hardly able to believe such dramatic tale telling. However there was no doubting the authenticity, as Adnan was known to be veracious, and it turned out, Sharmaji’s current residency was in the local hospital. He was nursing a wound that had found its way to his shin. The brothers had been rounded up by the police for intent to incite communal violence.

A few people rushed over to the hospital, which fortunately was in their side of town, as travel too far out was still not judicious. They found Sharmaji in a leg brace, which would remain for some time; however there was to be no lasting damage.

On the whole, Sharmaji escaped this incident with little more than a limp, the only other lasting souvenir being the love & respect of Govind Nagar for all eternity.

The mohalla returned to normalcy with time, though in the rare case of Govind Nagar, this meant that it returned in a large part to its erstwhile communal bonhomie. Having come so close to losing everything, and seeing in sharp contrast other less fortunate towns and even parts of their own that had been devastated, they decided via unspoken agreement to make an attempt to embrace ‘the other’.

Though as can be expected, tragedy had not left them entirely un-singed; a few people lost relations or had friends who had not been as fortunate as themselves; Mr Mehra’s son, Jiten, a journalist, had been severely beaten up and was hanging on for dear life in Bombay; shops, hospitals, entire neighbourhoods in other parts of their town had been set to fire, lives and livelihoods shattered; it was the nadir of humanity, underlining the fragility of human resolve, the enormity of its ego.

As for Sharmaji, he still dreamed about the riot. He still dreamed about the day they had come for his neighbours, his own son being one of the sword-carrying hooligans, chanting a holy name and swaying as if under the influence of a narcotic. He still dreamed about how he had seen them, him, ransack homes, slashing indiscriminately at man, woman, child. He still dreamed about his own impotence, his shock, his stillness - his inability to stop his son from taking the lives of people he had sworn to protect as part of his vocation. He dreamed about the million times in the past he had let his son have his way, choosing to repose faith in a God he had believed was just. 

He still dreamed about that one time he had not let his son have his way, the look on his son’s face changing from one of triumph, gloating amidst the remains of a make-believe battle-field, to that of incredulity as he'd perceived the bullet from his father's beloved Colt Automatic pierce his heart, this vision always the one to jolt Sharmaji awake, every night.

Tragedy doesn’t do solitary visits. It befouls the source of the stream, it poisons the soil that nourishes the forest, it lays maggot-eggs inside brains, and generations thereafter harvest its deathly crop. But sometimes, a flower blooms, which though sustained by the stench of a thousand corpses still spreads sweet fragrance and hope. 

Disclaimer: Although rooted in true events, this is entirely a fictionalized account born of the author's obsession with backstories, cause & effect and yes, India in 1992.

Coffee Shop on a Weekday

A coffee shop on a weekday
Is quite a magical place
Of non 9 to 5 folks
Or those who've quit the race
Btw quitting from this race
Is a virtue not a vice
Coz aren't we all just prisoners here
Of our own device :)smile emoticon

Though must say, not all's pretty
And every so often the air smells funny
Wafts of frustration & disappointment
No, definitely it's not all sunny
But no gain without pain
And even if you do fail
You can go knowing full well
You dared to venture out of your jail

This jail called life
Or how we expect it'll go
But my wonderful lil coffee shop
Has a wonderful lil window
I sit writing in one corner, punctuating
every word with a dreamy glance
A glimpse outside that window
- and my heart does a happy lil dance

My Love

Stuck between paradoxes
Loved with a passion
Hated with intensity too
She's the only one of her fashion

She is strife, struggle
And rightly so
But also freshness, freedom
For the ones who know

You breathe in her scent
Cautiously to begin
But like a narcotic
She reels you right in

She'll make you tough
By demanding too much
Make you cool
You don't mind much

I like to think
She makes you true
She knows what's important
She's above the petty & so are you

She'll give you a chance
To make your name
Never one to turn away
The billions looking for fame

She's sexy
She's diligent
She's a dreamer
She's magnificent

She's fascinating as hell
But no heaven can hold you
The way she does
The way she beholds you

Nothing in the world
Equals her many-faceted sights
Day-time mess, sea-side calm
Golden nights - a thousand blinking lights

You must, absolutely must
Come back to her arms
Once you've tasted of her
Once beguiled by her charms

*********************************************
I was recently asked to name my favorite place in the world and this is an ode to that. Mumbai :)

Lean right in

After long something has moved me enough to post.

I watched the movie 'The Devil wears Prada'. Actually I've seen it before, but that was a while ago, and I didn't really understand much then I suppose.

Yeah, age. Brings wisdom and shit.

And while I know this movie was made almost 10 years ago, I feel not much has changed. That the long-due message put out most famously in recent times by Sheryl Sandberg will need to be repeated and retold in various ways for a long time to come, using different visual aids & story-telling tricks, by localizing it, by dramatizing it, by the unabashed use of celebrities. Anything and everything.

So this movie has an Andrea as the non-fashionista-serious-journalism-aspirant protagonist who ends up taking a job at the biggest baddest fashion rag, called what else but: Runway. And there wearing angelic smiles but damned ugly sweaters she meets the Devil Incarnate, Anna Wintour. Umm, sorry,  Miranda Priestly. Miranda is a bitch-on-wheels as far as unreasonable demands and treating everyone like canine faeces is concerned. Andrea is no quitter though and she quickly, with some help, gets into the groove of things and sets the house on fire, meaning she manages to convince Miss Priestly of her capabilities enough for her to stop treating her worse than a peon.

So new job, a'hole boss, needless to say takes a toll on Andrea's work life balance. Poor girl is spinning around the city carrying messages, packages, laundry, what-ever-the-hell Miranda wants. And she has to do it wearing some tottering Blahniks and Choos. For you see, she has awakened to fashion, partly because she wanted to and partly because she needed to. But it is not the worst thing anyone has ever done to retain a job and her clothes post resurrection are a definite improvement over the grand-mommy sweaters.

Not to her buds though. Her boyfriend, who self-admittedly runs wine reductions the whole day long as a lowly sub-sub-chef in some restaurant, starts out resenting her job which becomes a flagrant exhibition of silent disapproval at everything Andrea does very soon. 

So on the one hand Andrea is working her ass off, and instead of supporting her for trying, for having to take shit from a super-demanding boss and still managing to deliver, this jerk goes and sulks.

Yes she has to work late on his birthday, yes she goes ballistic at one dinner with her dad, yes she ends up (accidentally) taking the big carrot of a work-trip to Paris from her colleague, Emily, who had been coveting it for the whole year, but through all of this, Andrea never loses her good-girl-graces. She refuses to stick around at the work party on boyfriend's birthday for even one extra drink, even when she knows she would have used that time to meet people who could have given her a leg-up on her actual journalistic ambitions. About the Paris trip, whose significance was blown out of proportion anyway, it is to be noted that when Miranda first offers her the chance to go instead of Emily, she actually refuses on Emily's account! Now who does that, I ask you? If you are good and more importantly, better than folks around, you ought to get the big opportunities. Companies don't run on socialistic principles.

But bf and bff both turn away, citing drastic changes i.e. her having deformed into a new strange person etc etc. Andrea has the good sense to go to Paris, that turns out to be quite a roller-coaster and brings her to the realization that she doesn't really want to turn into the next Miranda Priestly (which I think there was no danger of in any case, refer paragraph above). So back she comes to good old fashioned America, and apologizes to boyfriend, accepts she had changed and eases back into her pre-fashion days, into a job much truer to her calling and with a much improved sartorial sense.

And that brings me to my point. This movie has some balls trying to insidiously tell us all that a woman trying to make it at a job, working hard, working smart and in spite of the environment, retaining her value-system, still needs to be chided and derided just because she is now spending a few hours less with the man in her life? Sure she needs to be told to chill out a little bit, which she might have figured out by herself in a few months into the new job, but does she need to be painted a lost soul?

Relationships should make us stronger, double our resources, where we fill in the gaps for our partners, becoming their voice when they can't reach. Our mothers and their mothers and their mothers have done that their whole lives, in fact for millenia altogether as the men went out on trips long and short to hunt, farm, toil and more recently, attend meetings. Why can't women expect the same respect & support? 

Why such serious charges against Andrea, of putting career ahead of everything else, of in fact having become a different person altogether, when all she was trying to do was her job? 

Women have an in-built guilt mechanism, where they look too hard at them own faults, their own misses and are forever struggling-striving-exerting to do better at whatever they deem important; but in this new world where there are new heights to conquer, this self-flagellation is getting a little extreme. 

So there is a double standard and to add to it, there are women who are suckers for self-hate. At risk of being labeled a fanatic or a brasserie-burning feminist, I want to continue to raise hell & high water at the first whiff of this double-standard. And while I fling mud at society, I also want to take a shot at some advice for half its population i.e. the women. Advice for other women, but more importantly for myself. 

Well, first you need to let yourself breathe, then with a swift kick in the pants weed out the negativity, and finally continue to walk, run, leap along your journey with floater, sandal, Louboutin shod feet but most importantly with sunshine in your heart & head held very very high.

New Year Magic

This post won the Readomania 'New Year's Day' contest: http://www.readomania.com/contest

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The first day of the year comes with its own hazards. It’s a day intent on infecting everyone it meets with the disease of optimism, oftentimes leading to comical results and more rarely, wonderful ones.

Our story dates to the first day of the year 2009. It was a colder-than-usual winter’s day in Mumbai that had folk calling up other folk to tell them how the city was freezing over. Poulomee Bhowmick, in the habit of looking for and interpreting signs & symbolism in the best of times, had decided to up the ante as the new year rolled around. She had pledged this time to create for herself a new year’s day that she hoped would be mirrored round the year through. She would start her day with a trip to the library, post which she would go enrich her bank account with a paltry sum hoping for the phenomenon to repeat itself through the rest of the year, and then would top off her morning with a tryst at the salon. Lunch would be at home with family, followed by a siesta, then a few brisk rounds on the promenade along the sea-face and finally dinner out with some close friends. It was to be a wholesome day, meant to represent wellness across the several dimensions Poulomee considered integral to good living.

The Town Hall, Asiatic Society library was designed like an ancient greco-roman building and looked every inch a seat of great knowledge. Poulomee purposefully strode in for her first appointment of the year looking every inch a little knowledge seeker in her Fabindia kurta and cerebral looking spectacles. She headed to the reading room, the nerve center of the building furnished with long shisham tables and lined with bookshelves stuffed with the most frequently read books. She headed straight to shelf G and picked out a copy of ‘A Suitable Boy’, the book she had diligently been re-reading every new year’s day for the last five years, in the hope of meeting that elusive creation, the suitable boy. 

Sitting down at one of the tables, she happily opened the book to locate the part where the ill-fated Lata and Kabir meet each other in the Brahmpur book store.  As she ruffled through the pages to find the right one, something fell out and floated into her lap. It turned out to be a passport size photograph of a man, who looked to be in his late 20s. She turned it around with idle curiosity at first and then experienced a thud in her brain as an idea filtered through: the delicious serendipity of the photograph of a boy falling out of a copy of ‘A Suitable Boy’. The boy in the photo did look suitable from all angles: he had a squarish face with a strong jawline, molten chocolate eyes and what Poulomee could only imagine would be a dreamy smile had he been smiling. He had an intense look on his face, brows furrowed and eyes boring into the camera. A man who didn’t give himself away easily yet once given was wont to feel passion like no other, deduced Poulomee’s not under-fed imagination. The fact that he read Vikram Seth didn’t hurt either. There was a date stamp on the picture which indicated that it was a recent one and that this gentleman was indeed in the same nubile phase of life as she was. A vague notion of the parallel-ness of Lata-Kabir meeting among books and she meeting the love of her life in the same surrounds also presented itself.

Now Poulomee was no fool and she knew there was little chance of this person turning out to be a person of any interest to her, no matter what the signs said. Prudence dictated the whole thing to be just plain coincidence and for nothing further to be read into it. But as she sat in that huge airy library, with the dappled January sunshine providing an optimistic ambience, the romance of it being the first day of the year adding a dimension of hope and the eternal advice of L. Caroll floating into her consciousness: encouraging belief in (at least) six impossible things before breakfast, a shiver of excitement ran down her spine and she decided to take a leap of faith.

The next step in the romance of Poulomee and said suitable boy was to find him. Easier said than done. She examined the photo closely, looking for any tools of identification and immediately found the name of the photo studio stamped across the back of it: Indi Studio. Buoyed, she exited the library with immediate effect. Upon reaching home, she switched on her laptop computer and entered ‘Indi Studio Mumbai’ into Google. She was reasonably relieved to see three such establishments presenting themselves for further inspection, a couple in Vile Parle and one in Andheri East. She was aware there might be more whose existence had not yet been documented digitally, but this was a good place to start. Under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t want to trudge across to suburban Mumbai for anything in the world, but if ever there existed abnormal circs, these were those. No sooner had she copied down the addresses of the studios, she was off to accost them.

It took her forty minutes to get to Vile Parle and another twenty to locate the tiny studio buried within its many lanes. She had been giving some thought to what she would do once at her destination and consequently was prepared. The first Indi Studio was one of the tiniest hole-in-the-wall shops she had seen in Mumbai, with a large red board announcing itself to be the ‘No 1 digital color lab & studio’. Poulomee had a good feeling about this one: anyone looking to provide a miniature of themselves in places of high stake like a foreign embassy, an employer’s offices or an institution of learning was likely to engage the services of an establishment that proclaimed itself to be Numero Uno in its field.  She walked in confidently and said to the solitary person in the shop: ‘I have found a wallet with a lot of money in it, and need to find the person to whom it belongs. I only have a photo to identify him with, which seems to have been taken at your studio. Can you help me with his name?’ A good story and it produced the desired results, that is, the girl agreed to cooperate. But upon being shown the photo, she immediately pronounced it as not one from their excellent facilities as they never stamped their name behind their photographs. Not disheartened yet, Poulomee set forth to find the second Indi Studio. This one proved to be easier to find, but the ease of location turned out to be deceptive as the second shop told her that they used a different kind of paper for their photographs and that the one Poulomee had in her possession was made of an inferior quality to the same. Poulomee began to feel the presence of a shadow of gloom over the sunny field of hope her heart had been doing cartwheels in, but she pulled herself up. Hope must remain alive till the time there was a third Indi studio.

Another twenty-five minutes of travel to Andheri East and then a further twenty minutes of fine combing through its Byzantine lanes, inviting the ire of her auto-rickshaw wallah, led to her arriving at the third and final point of her journey. As she paid off the bilious auto guy and turned around to the shop, she perceived it to be a larger one than the previous two but unfortunately not in a position to offer correlation of its largeness with its helpfulness as it turned out to be closed for business on that first day of the year.

As she stood there tired with her efforts and taxed with breathing in this foul suburban air, all the optimism that the day had seemed imbued with evaporated, leaving only an empty husk. The first thought to cross her mind was that this too was a sign, she was destined to spend all her days searching for an ever retreating vision of a perfect match, a mythical Mr Right. She caught herself spiraling inward into a black-hole of gloom, coz this frantic chase across Mumbai had crushed her with rather unusual strength, it had led her on to feel a crazy kind of hope & anticipation and then plunged her into an abyss where she experienced a never-before variety of despair & anger, anger directed at her very nature: of getting fooled by randomness. Standing there on the steps and squinting against the harsh mid-day sun, she suddenly stumbled upon a resolve that seemed opportune, almost necessary. She made up her mind right then and there to never again get embroiled into interpreting signs and romantic notions that wouldn’t withstand the dispassionate scrutiny of logic. She crumpled the culpable photograph of her erstwhile suitable suitor and threw it away. Having made her new year’s resolution, she once more descended into the clamor of Andheri, looking for a cab to transport her out of this kingdom of chaos.   

She hailed one and got into it pronto, instructing the driver to speed away as fast as possible. The cabbie seemed a pliable sort and proceeded to do as much. He revved up noisily and the cab shot out of its resting place akin in intent but lacking in execution to a bullet. But despite its poor imitation of a bullet, it took jaywalking pedestrians around by surprise and Poulomee screamed in horror as one of them went down before her cab even as it screeched to a halt. 

A crowd quickly gathered, excited with the potential for lynching the situation offered, however unfortunately for it, no grievous harm was done and the poor pedestrian was more shaken than anything else. It was a guy, as he turned around and Poulomee saw his face she almost screamed again. Reader, let it not be called by any other name than a new year’s day miracle for the person she un-crumpled from under the wheels of her cab was none other than the suitable boy.

Yes, the first day of the year comes with its own hazards. It’s a day intent on infecting everyone it meets with the disease of optimism, oftentimes leading to comical results and more rarely, wonderful ones.

Never the twain

The great metropolis of Nalina was one of the richest cities in the world, simultaneously playing host to the poorest slums anywhere. It had every other shade of green in between. But what was truly unique to this city was this tangible manifestation of division, reminiscent of bygone monarchical eras: The Wall.

The Wall was a giant hulking construction of granite and stone, encircling what was known as the inner city, separating it from the outer city or port area; in effect separating the haves from the have-nots. It towered over the city, reminding everyone that of all the delusional notions ever nurtured by humanity, equality was the most pitiful.

**************

It had been especially bad that year. An unfortunate trio of youths from the port area had been caught trying to scale the Wall and had been beaten black & blue, much to the horror of folk their side. It had aroused great resentment in them, for in this act of brutality they saw their own humiliation, a punishment for even daring to think of crossing the great divide.  

Arrival of the monsoon helped calm down ruffled feathers or maybe it just gave people a new injustice to fight against ‘cause even the rain knew better than to fall equally.

While one side could enjoy the lush vibrancy it gave their wide roads and the soft patter of it against their expensive windshields as they rushed off to nearby hill-stations, the other side went about their daily business awash in the murkiness of water-clogged roads and overflowing drains, with the worst blow of all being jammed up local train lines which like blocked arteries arrested the circulation of life-blood to a mere trickle, giving the city or at least their side of it, a temporary coronary attack. 

Into these troubled times, there arrived a love: a great love, a brilliant but short-lived flame that died a painful death. They came from opposing sides of this man-drawn border and their love was like a little oasis of chaos struggling valiantly against the order of this arid class-defined world.

She was brought up on wealth, and entitlement. It wasn’t so much the absence of an unmet desire as it was an astronomical unawareness of the very concept. She had never known what it was to not have something, the littlest thing.

At the other end, it wasn’t as if he had been born in poverty. He had had a normal childhood, with more food on the table than he had wanted to eat, and the occasional indulgence as well. But he wanted more. From an early age he had looked around and noticed what others had and he didn’t; far from making him feel inadequate, such observations had kindled in him an intense desire to create a life for himself that would be successful not because of its riches but because of the fact that he would have created those riches from his own limited resources and unlimited resourcefulness. He nurtured these desires, planting them lovingly into the fertile soil of his mind, patiently working towards the day they would sprout fame and fortune for all the world to see.

So you see that their very DNA was different and yet they had met, and fallen in love.

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Always drawn towards trouble, he had spent months trying to uncover a route to cross the border that did not involve going past the Wall. It was a bit of a legend - this circuitous route, not many had heard about it and the ones who had, believed it to be mythical. He was convinced it existed. Since the time he had drawn his first breath seventeen years ago, he had only ever heard about the inner city and the very nature of it being forbidden, encircling what he imagined to be paradise on earth, had aroused in him his young life’s most engulfing passion, of finding a way across. And when he had heard of this other route, he had felt as if finding it was his raison d’etre. So the search had begun for this chimera-like route. He had pored over material in the library, like city maps, accounts & records from a time before the Wall, older stories set in Nalina. None of them had been much help. Until the day he had stumbled upon a slim tattered book titled, ‘Adventures of a taxi driver’. This book had been written around fifty years back in the pre-Wall days. On a whim he had decided to check if the author was still alive. Almost miraculously, he had found him. The guy was well into his seventies and almost all his senses were failing him, all except his memory.

From then on, the route had taken on a more palpable though still skeletal form and he had set off with renewed vigor to find it. His advance had been slow, he had made mistakes and taken detours, escaped being caught twice, but eventually the perseverance paid off as waking up one day from an uncomfortable and exhaustion imbued sleep, he saw the first rays of the unadulterated sun hit the fantastical shores of his coveted haven, not more than a hundred meters away. He felt his tiredness turn into battle-scars to be brandished about with pride, but not just yet.

He went back, practicing patience and waiting for the opportune moment to cross. And one moonless night, he decided to.

The journey passed by without incident and the moment he set foot onto the sacred soil, he felt relief mixed with fluttering anticipation. He was a keen believer in destiny and as he walked onwards, he felt an almost magnetic pull drawing him deeper inside the city.

He came to a point where the road widened out, and as he crouched behind a tree, his eyes widened in wonder at the sight in front of him. The famed Mahama bay spread out in front of him, a beautiful creation of nature in sharp contrast to the concrete paradise that arose from its farthest shore. As for those architectural marvels that formed the beautiful Nalina skyline, it was as if the stars themselves had descended onto earth and taken seat in them, twinkling through their doors & windows like a million eyes. Tall buildings surrounded by taller ones, fading into the distance for as far as the eye could see, their silhouettes reaching high into the sky, waiting to pluck out any new star that deigned to appear.

His eyes had by now adjusted to the darkness and as he looked around, he noticed he was standing at the edge of what looked like private grounds, surrounding a mansion, which seemed to beckon at him invitingly through the thicket of trees.

He felt that now-familiar tug of destiny and his feet led him on to the mansion.

The sound grew louder as he approached; it seemed as if a party was on in full swing. He stood some twenty feet away from the huge double doors, trying to devise an entry strategy. But he soon figured that there was nobody guarding the entrance. A couple of high-spirited groups half-ran past him, without paying him a moment’s notice and entered without so much as a mild breeze blocking their way. He took a deep breath and set off himself, taking care to saunter, wrapping his awkwardness in a look of boredom & hauteur.

Once inside, he didn’t dare to stop & stare, but with a frozen smile walked casually to the furthest corner, plucking a drink from a tray enroute, and stood leaning against the wall; only then daring to breathe out. He spent the next few minutes marveling at the circumstance of his breath polluting this rarefied air, while looking around to see if anyone had noticed his foreign presence. But he soon realized that nobody was watching him, allowing him to let his vigil down. He spent the next hour wandering around, drinking in hungrily of the sights and snatches of conversation, trying to decode these strange set of people. It was all alien - the glitter and unselfconscious glamour, the noise and easy camaraderie among equals. He felt this society had at its very heart a notion of heredity, where the baton of old fame kept lighting torches for generations down-stream. It was a giant cobweb of people who all knew each other through intricate connections. They didn’t seem to want fresh blood, unless it came accompanied by wealth or a name to shame them out of their elitism. It seemed like a strange and antiquated value system, and he found himself feeling some pride at how things worked in his world - outsiders coming together, each bringing something different to the table due their varied experiences, and all accepted to the fold.

The next step on his itinerary was to speak with someone. He hadn’t come all this way to go back without making the slightest bit of impact. So he looked around for someone who seemed faintly approachable, and that is when he noticed her. Her, the cynosure of her group, reveling in her surety, smack-bang in the middle of her comfort zone.

As soon as he saw her, everything else around took on an air of blurriness. Something about her riveted him. Maybe it was the total sense of adequacy she projected, an emotion he had never been able to master, and probably never would. She was unapproachable, by all parameters on every check-list in all the worlds, she was unapproachable, for someone like him. Yet, yet, he found himself feeling from the core of his being, that she was inextricably linked to his existence.

**********************************************************

She noticed him too, but had no reason to be struck; maybe a little curious, especially when one of her friends whispered to her of his provenance – where he had come from. Although she had seen the occasional immigrant, trying to fit in and failing, she had never been at such close quarters with one before and that too, one that was making no obvious jarring effort to blend into her world. It seemed to say something about him. And then there was the way she had caught him looking at her, she had never been looked at like that.

He went back from this evening full of her, full of resolve to see her again. And he did. He went back to her mansion again the very next day, and stood uncertainly outside her house, hidden from view of the guards, but conscious that every second he spent, he ran the risk of exposing himself.

Thankfully she noticed him before that could happen, and in that moment of recognition, experienced a powerful physical reaction – a pleasure like none she had ever known before mingled with the fear that he would be discovered and sent back before she could speak with him.

As he stood helplessly outside her house, trying to muster up courage to do something, anything, she came out again in her neon yellow Bentley Mulsanne, herself at the wheel this time. In complete amazement he registered her window rolling down and she beckoning him to join her. As if in a dream, he found himself seated next to her, unable to do anything but stare, while she went round and round in circles for some time before taking him to a desolate spot in a back alley, parking next to a couple of overflowing garbage bins.

**********************

And then there was no looking back. He made several such trips to meet her. They found a few places to spend time at, closer to the border to minimize the risk of discovery and more importantly to snatch more time to be together. Very soon they were spending all their free time together, swapping stories, ideas, dreams. Her fall was steeper than his. She had never met anybody with such a thirst. He represented questions that had never occurred to her but were now looming large and urgent, demanding immediate answers. She felt drawn into his world, she could construct through his words intricate details of a physical universe different from hers, through his past a history she had never known, through his dreams a future she had never imagined could exist. She knew she had been taken whole & soul by this love animal with no hope of return. He remained struck by her confidence – her whole world was at her beck and call. It didn’t seem odd to her that people materialized from thin air around her all the time. He felt a little drunk on her confidence and allowed himself to bask in it like a newly-created moon in the splendiferous light of the sun; but underneath it he knew better than to forget that it was all borrowed. In fact he lived in some sort of fear that this entire phase of his life was a bubble waiting to burst.

Well, it didn’t. Their intense attraction developed into what can only be called love. They knew their lives had changed and there was no question of existing without the other. For any normal couple the next step would be to come out in the open, introduce the other to friends and perhaps parents, but for them this wasn’t an option. He was optimistic about the reception she would get at his home, but regarding her parents - they were both completely certain that her family would not approve. And if they decided to report him, he would not be treated any better than the three youth communists (as she called them) who had almost been beaten to death for their class-crime.

There was only one solution. It was really very simple. They had perhaps known it all along, their love could not survive in this atmosphere of institutionalized division. And so they finally said to each other one day what had been building inside for long, that they needed to run away.

It was not an ideal solution, but it was the only one.

They knew their relationship couldn’t remain a secret for much longer, and so decided they had to act quickly. A few things had to be done – some money arranged for and secreted to a new account, logistics of the actual elopement chalked out, and most importantly a safe haven chosen – a place where they could stay without their folks finding them.

Days quickly flew by and finally everything was ready. She was to set out for home from her university as usual, then go over to one of their regular haunts and wait for him to come. Then they were both to drive up to a town around four hundred kilometers north of Nalina, and take a train from there to another part of the country.

It was a journey of many days, but the most difficult part of it was going to be the first step. They were both leaving behind everything they had known and loved so far in their lives.

The day came and he woke up happy and hopeful. No more stealing around after that day, no more staying apart. Everything was arranged, from the car they would drive up in, to the family photographs he wanted to take along. He spent the morning with his mother, helping her around the house. In his mind, he was saying his good-byes. But inside his heart, he was convinced that he would come back, with her, and would always find a home here.

Later that day when his mother was pottering around elsewhere in the house, he packed his few belongings into the car, and set-off. Driving carefully along the marsh-lands, which the rains had left more swampy & treacherous than ever, it was evening by the time he reached the border, and the birds had long returned to their nests by the time he reached Café Ideal – the restaurant she was waiting at. She was sitting on the porch, sipping coffee anxiously, with a lone suitcase by her side.

She started at the still-distant sound of the engine and was relieved to see him stuttering to a stop in that dilapidated vehicle he had borrowed. It had been getting very dark since the past one hour or so that she had been waiting, getting increasingly worried that he may have come to some harm.

They realized they had not accounted for the darkness to be so very..dark. Driving on alongside the swamp in this light was asking for trouble. So they decided to spend the night at the motel next door, even though it was dangerous to do so. They both would have been found missing by their families by this time and enquiries would be on in full force in another hour or so.

But they didn’t have a choice. So they rented one room, one and not two, telling themselves it was prudent to do so for financial reasons but knowing all the while that they were longing to spend some time alone, just by their twosome, as they had never been able to in their brief relationship. They entered the room somewhat awkwardly and tried to mask their trepidation-cum-joy at the sight of the only one narrow bed. She went to change her clothes in the attached bathroom, and after completing her toilette came out .. to a sight she continued to describe till her last breath as the most horrendous one she had ever seen.

He was standing there in his Dollar Club banyan and what she could in a hurried and horrific glance make out to be Dixcy underwear.

She – born and bred in South Nalina, he – born in Katihar, brought up in Kandivili. That was the exact moment she realized that never the ‘twain could meet.

Changing reality

The doorbell rang. The family waiting in anticipation looked at each other one last time. Everyone had the same thought: how would this girl that Abhi wanted to marry gel with their tightly-knit joint family. 

The first they had heard of her was when Abhi had mentioned her just a few days ago saying he was bringing 'someone he liked' home.

Dad got up to go open the door, mom arranged her features into a smile. The door opened and there stood their Abhi, with another man.

Impressions

He woke up before the alarm could go off. Today was an important day. He was slightly anxious but mostly excited. He had to bring his best game. 

Shaving once, shaving twice and then a third time, he knew he would have a shadow before long and that it made him look..unreliable.

He mulled over what to wear for a while, would it do to pull on his much worn pair of jeans, they had familiarity in their favor. He eventually decided to dress a little more appropriately for the occasion.

He had almost reached the bus stop when he realized he had forgotten to carry along the present he had bought her. He rushed back, almost jogged, upto his one bedroom shared apartment and picked up the carefully wrapped brown paper package. He hoped she would like it.Hope. The only thing he had left. Hope of being able to have more than such hurried controlled visits, hope of being able to be enough of a father in these two court-allocated hours per week. Hope his once-a-week daughter would allow herself to forget his once irresponsible ways and accept his remorse-filled battered and lonely heart.

Us

As they sat at their favorite table looking out towards the ebbing sea, she immersed in a book and he scribbling tiny notes into the margins of printouts, their one-ness was palpable.
She’d look up from her book occasionally, dreamily, into the distance and then with mind a thousand miles away, her eyes traversing a panorama - they would come to land on him. He would sense her half-present gaze and look up. Eyes meeting for the umpteenth time in a moment so comfortable in its skin, so special because it was not special; their chemistry was not special, it was everyday every moment.
And in that special-non-special moment, she would think the Universe.

She would think about when she took her first step towards him – it was on her balcony several years before she met him, while reading that book with that Nietzsche quote (pretty much the only Nietzsche quote she knew, lest you think she was something else). That is when she started to become what she became, picking up many other things along the way, all which made her, her. Her and Him. Brought to a grinding halt as they recognized each other across the crowded dance floor of life.
She would think about what she liked about him and whether it was love and what was love. She was a notorious one for that – for too many questions and barely any answers. Or maybe some answers.
She would think about her life as an erratic moody jigsaw puzzle, changing shape every month every day. And about him being that last piece, shaped & honed as if with special intent to fit her jagged, rugged, capricious edges.

YOLO

The three of them came out of the lounge in high spirits, chattering tipsily about anything & nothing, like best friends do. College friends. After so long. What a trip down memory lane. But the best part was yet to come. That magical afternoon had ended with them planning a trip to Australia, down to the actual dates. And this time, Anu had thought as she'd looked at herself in the washroom mirror, the mellow golden light making the wrinkles around her eyes look much softer and the significant grey in her hair somehow much less transforming, she'd thought to herself that this time she would do everything she'd always wanted to. Like her grand daughter kept insisting of late, YOLO.

Tweeter Tales

I recently took part in a JaipurLitFest contest and happily (oh so happily) won! 

The contest entailed writing a short story, all of 140 characters, on Twitter and needless to say, I wrote ten of them. I was one of the five winners and won free acco in Jaipur for all five days of the contest. Yay!

Here they are. And just to indulge me, which one do you think got me the prize?

Years later,she was still admiring his style,till the waiter spilled coffee on his watch & he screamed,‘No! I have to return it!’

Beg beg beg, no avail. Whistle to kill hunger. One day,a tap,a stranger,a flute handed over mutely. 50 yrs later, the Padmashree

Having got the deal,he couldn't wait to tell his beloved family;elsewhere, a boy forsake a school award without his dad around

Giggling,they tipsied out of the bar,headed for the play with that hot male lead. 40 yrs after college, life had only got better 

During day, she wore the bahu, the bhabhi and the wife label with aplomb. Nights she reserved only for the black label

She was nervous, how would dad react to her boyfriend; He was nervous, how would his daughter react to his boyfriend

Summer love. Was perfect. Then he decided to migrate cross-country to be with her. She had no choice but to break-up immediately

Three of them always together.The tall one made her swoon,the shorter one smile.She picked the former.Guess she was the dumb one

They met with a Big Bang,fell in love in a Flash,but was as if their Stars were at War,the Breaking up was Bad.Winter was Coming

He swaddled her as a baby,pulled the blanket over her as she grew;today he wished he'd died before having to wrap her in a kafn