You can write it down a thousand times and it won’t change. You can say it in your mind, or out aloud, and it will still cut through your skin like tiny needles.

You can man up or wuss out. You are welcome to pretend to be at peace. You might make it and you might not. I’ll put my money on might not.

My mind is a jumble of thoughts. I don’t even have the energy to sort through them. If I start now, I am not sure where it’ll take me. It’s like untangling a pair of earphones. By the time, I finish straightening them out, I have reached work and I can’t listen to music anyway.

It slowly eats me up from within.

Regret; unforgiving and judgmental. “You asked for it.” It tells me, the cold eyes don’t blink. I know. I know.

On regular days, it finds me when I am sitting lazily, drinking lemon water and honey because apparently it’s good for you. It makes me draw in sharp breaths, in quick succession. Are there chances to be good again? Mean laughter from a dark place. No phones ring and no messages reach.

On particularly bad days, it sticks by my side, like an annoying relative in a dull marriage. Mocking me, reminding me of how I was wrong and how wrong I was. While I try and sleep, it jumps up from behind me, even in the safety of my mind, and catches me off guard.

The God of Small things has the greatest lines ever written. I quote them every chance I find.

“That’s what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.”

Love is a tricky word, it could mean different things to different people.

But there were careless words involved. That’s the thing about stuff you say. Try as you may, you can’t ever really scrub it off people’s memories.

My regret and I often have winding conversations. Needless to say, I am always defeated.

The days when my thoughts are colourless.

And what is there to say?

That you shouldn’t start sentences with ands and buts.

That some days you feel unnaturally warm despite central air conditioning.

That if you don’t clip your toenails in time, they cut through your skin like blunt knives.

That some days you realize that you made a mistake and now you have to grow up and face the repercussions.

That if you wear denim on monsoon days, sometimes it smells of seaweed.

That some things aren’t up to you and the sooner one realizes that, the better.

That you cannot take people for granted.

That curly hair throws more tantrums than a child at a toy shop.

And what is left to say?

Some times Tuesdays feel like Mondays and that isn’t ever a good thing.

Bye.

The train crawled out of the station leaving behind a sea of people, waving furiously at their parting family and friends. Children, sitting on the shoulders of their parents, called out their goodbyes in strangely cheerful tones, not quite reflecting the unhappiness that their adult counterparts seemed to feel. I watched from under a huge railway clock, knowing full well that this was perhaps the last time I’d see Arka.

A couple of hours earlier, we had made our way into the crowded train station, pulling suitcases full with clothes that Arka had long outgrown, sweatshirts that had never been worn in the sorry excuse of a winter in Bombay and books that had been collected from several places –the enthusiastic booksellers at Fountain and the air-conditioned book stores in malls which didn’t quite have the same charm.

I was carrying Arka’s backpack and since I have the emotional resilience of a child, I could feel the tears welling up simply because I knew this was the last time. I wore the backpack close to my chest, like Bombay trains teach you to. I hugged it really tight, when Arka wasn’t looking.
I pronounced it as Arka when I first met him. “Or-koh” he had corrected me and clearly I wasn’t the first person to say it wrong. After that, there was no looking back. I said his name in my head multiple times in the years that followed, every time he crossed the street to where I was waiting or every time his number flashed on my phone. Or koh. Or koh.

The station was too crowded to find a place to sit. I put his backpack next to his suitcases and stood there, my arms on my hips. “Do you have everything? Tickets? Water? Do you want some food? I could run across and get a sandwich or something.” I said, my words tumbling out, like tears that had been held back too long. He looked at me with a look of exasperation and mild affection. “I’ll be fine; I have travelled alone before you know.” I nodded.
We had something that I can’t quite define and we were stuck in a confusing little place between being best friends and more. I never admitted it to him or to myself even but I knew that his going away would give me some perspective. I’d know for sure whether I wanted to follow him, to pursue him, to demand that he be more than just my best friend. A big part of me also knew that once he sat on the train, I’d mentally give up. It takes too much out of a person to place your feelings in front of someone, knowing that there is a good possibility that they will take one look and shake their head. No.No.No.

My feelings had colourful clashes inside my head more often than what is healthy.

The train came into the station and people began to jump in, to arrange luggage and keep their things, so that they could hug and kiss their teary eyed relatives in peace. Arka and me stood still.
“I’ll go, I think.” I said and didn’t give a reason because I couldn’t come up with one. I didn’t want to stay because I know I’d cry. Arka nodded. “Yeah, it’s too damn crowded anyway.” “Will you be able to manage the luggage?” He nodded again. I hid in his hug, working my best to not tear up, something that would both annoy him and make him uncomfortable. He patted my back. “I’ll call you. This isn’t a big deal.”

I walked away but didn’t have the heart to leave the station until the train left. I stood far away, waiting, watching, and wondering. Wondering if, somewhere behind tinted train windows, Arka was looking for me among all those faces.

Nostalgic

You should get to know Dev. I have never met anyone like him. He does the most insane of things. One day he got up and drove himself to the airport just because he thought he needed to see a plane take off. Would you ever do that? I wouldn’t. Especially if it’s Monday morning. That’s the day I get up early so I can take some time at the beginning of the week to wallow in all the stress that I claim to have. I am joking. I am never up early. Especially if it’s Monday morning.

Dev also doesn’t shower too often. No fancy reason- like how he will shower only when we overcome corruption or anything. He just doesn’t feel like it most of the time. A lot of times he buys a crate of beer and drinks about half of them. Then, more often than not, falls asleep after he has popped open a can. So by the time he wakes up it has gone flat. He gives me all his flat beer. Flat beer is really good for your hair- but you catch a cold before you can get out of the bath. But I am not complaining- if you had hair like mine- even you’d pick blocked noses.

He is pretty intelligent if he puts his mind to it. He made himself an egg beater using a battery and several old ball pen refills. He showed it to me. If you ignore the part where I sort of shrieked at the remnants of ink from the refill getting beaten with my egg- I was pretty impressed. I think at some point, he had tried to make himself a manual camera. But if I am not mistaken he abandoned it, on the grounds of how he finds nothing interesting enough around him to click.

He told me once that he is glad he lives away from his parents. He said they encroach on his creative space. I don’t they are completely at fault, poor things. I wouldn’t be particularly pleased if my son ripped apart some wires in a creative capacity- and now everytime I plug in my clothes iron the house is dunked in darkness. Dev’s mother told me this when she came to see him. He vehemently argued saying, he was trying to figure out a way he could connect the TV and the washing machine to save on electricity. Or something like that, I am not sure.

I did find Dev a tad eccentric when he first moved into my house. He needed a place, I needed a flat-mate. But I can safely say, that we get along like a house on fire. He makes me laugh and takes care of me when I am ill. His way of taking care of course. Like last year when I had jaundice- he told me an interesting story of his grand uncle died of jaundice- and he was the exact shade of yellow that I was. But later Dev did make up for it by running across the street to buy me a 5star.

He was leaning far too precariously out of the window when I came home an hour ago. He said he was figuring out something. I didn’t push it. I am very sensitive towards his creative needs. The house has been suspiciously silent for a while now. He is probably in his room building a boat or something just as quixotic. He is going to be like the next Benjamin Franklin, I am telling you.

Fragments.

Some days you try and fit into your skin, try and make peace with who you are.

I float in myself very often, being half the person I like to be. I feel the self I could be hanging on me, like oversize clothing. I concoct ways to fill in the spaces, to put in effort to live up to what I am capable of.

People pass me by, some looking through me, some offering advice on what I could do to live it up.
Then there are the people who don't mind the person I am.
 Weirdly, it is for those people I try the hardest.

Ranga

Ranga. That was his name.

The white of his eyes were yellowing. “Like milk gone bad.” He said, his Hindi carrying a thick South Indian accent. He wore shorts and loose shirts. His legs were the colour of dark, dark chocolate. He never wore chappals. He performed a little dance inadvertently trying to balance a big steel tub on his small head. The tub was lined with glossy newspapers. The newspapers covered the best south Indian food I have eaten.

You haven’t eaten idlis until you’ve eaten the ones Ranga makes. They swim in a sea of gold, sambar and chillis. There is a red chutney that he makes, and I am convinced there is magic involved because well, it’s just that good. It’s thick and strong and will clear up any cold that comes its way.

Last year, on a very memorable day, the rain lashed out at the city, white angry sheets beating down on every little thing. Ranga was covered in a sheet of plastic, shielding his food with a big blue tarpaulin sheet. He handed us idlis in paper plates, running up and down the stairs to the awning where we were standing protecting our tiny important heads from the rain. I lost count of how much food we ate that day, because we were cold and hungry and Ranga was our little God, outdoing himself in both his food and enthusiasm. My friend handed him two hundred rupee notes when we left. It didn’t matter what the bill was, he had more than earned the money.

We shifted offices after that. But everytime I eat an idli, I think of this day and of Ranga. The food suddenly turns tasteless, failing miserably in front of the mere thought of Ranga’s food.

This is a very short story.

I knew this man who charmed me once with stories of the army life and pickled mangoes in glass jars. He told me tales from a time when he was younger, less tanned and full of ambition. He offered to cook me a meal, with roaring fires and sharp steely knives.
He offered to travel great distances so that he could meet me for the briefest of moments.
Socks were knocked off and naiveté was close at hand, under the rather sappy backdrop of damp park benches and mugs full of overpriced coffee.
He did do all those things; but for someone else. In hindsight it was a good thing because just like that I stopped being naïve.
The short story hence had a rather long drawn and trying end.


The short story has a shorter epilogue:
There is this thing called simplicity. There is another thing called honesty. You put that together and throw in impeccable grammar and there’s your winner.
In a sea of people who are covered in layers and layers of pretense and fake charm, it is comforting to know that there is someone who doesn't bother.

The death of inanity.

I’ll tell you about my day.

Don’t worry, I won’t tell you about what I had for lunch; I am aware that the details of the perfectly cooked fried eggs don’t interest you.

I’ll leave out the parts of my day where my cab broke down and my hair looked like a beehive because of the humidity.

When we meet for coffee, I know you’d rather not hear about the stomach cramps that my friend had or the fact that my cousin is now studying Judo. I won’t ruin your cheesecake by giving you an in-depth description of my idea of a perfect dinner.

At no point in the day, will I tell you about the sale on old bean bags or the book store that now serves piping hot tea and butter biscuits.

Most importantly, I won’t ask you what you had for the various meals of the day and whether you enjoyed work. It’s work, I know you don’t have feelings attached to everything.

Now that I have realized that my stories are probably nothing without the pointless details I like to give, I’ll show myself to the corner because I have no tales to tell.

I’ll however definitely come back to you when I save a tiger or become the president because I think we’ll all agree that, this won’t be insignificant.

I am amazed that people just assume you are incapable of doing something because you’re female.
I got asked if my computer was turned on when I said I have an issue sending out mails. The IT people just assumed I have no computer knowledge because I am a girl. I am not saying that I am the best at computer stuff, but I know better than to try sending mails from a computer that has been turned off. Even my grandmother knows better than that.

A friend of mine made the mistake of shedding a few tears at work once. She was having a bad day, her project wasn’t going as well as planned and then she got yelled at for something that was only partially her fault. But after that, every time there was anything that involved her, co-workers tip-toed around her speaking to her in calculated soft voices and instructing each other, “Don’t say anything harsh. You might make her cry.” Needless to say, she reached a tipping point soon enough and retaliated by shouting at one of her co-workers for picking on her when he asked her if she was going to cry after a stressful meeting. Then they instructed each other not to bother her lest she screams.

Women who are considered pretty or good looking have the crap end of the stick at a workplace. Someone I know once told me that because she dresses up for work and generally is what is considered “beautiful” people tend to make an assumption that she is all looks and no brains. She said that she wonders very often whether it would help her case if she wore dowdy clothes to work. It’s not the case always but a good looking woman has to work twice as hard as compared to a good looking man to be taken seriously on an intellectual front. The same person told me, “Try making a valid point in a meeting when you’re the only woman there, a good looking one at that.” It was the first time I met someone who was lamenting the fact that they looked good.

Not very long ago, I was asked to take a guy along to drop me home because we were leaving work late. I know that I was just being looked out for and perhaps it was more because of the unsafe nature of the city combined with me being a young woman. That’s when it struck me that it really doesn’t matter how progressive your city is, if the women can’t travel alone in the nights, we still have a long way to go.

It also didn’t stop me from feeling bad that as a woman that is still the thing I can’t do; travel alone across the city post midnight. I could try of course, but should there be an unpleasant situation, then I will be the woman who asked for trouble.

There is a smell of spiced milk in the house and his wife is wearing a pale pink sari that brings out the colour of her cheeks. She has a rose tucked in her hair. She is a small but spirited woman. In the evenings, she sings songs that make his heart stop.
There is some function at home, the pandits move around wearing silk dhotis in purple and gold. He doesn’t buy their pretentious sounding chants and it angers him that his wife calls them anyway. But he knows if he tells her she’ll say, “To each their own. If you don’t believe, do that silently.”
It is a ceremony to ward off evils. He goes out in the balcony to stay out of everyone’s way. His son is going to be married soon and the pandits feel that before such an occasion, it is of great importance that any lurking spirits be removed. He wants to smoke a cigarette but he can imagine never hearing the end of that from his wife. She comes and taps him on his shoulder, “Don’t stand here like a guest. Come and help in the living room. Also, don’t forget you’re the father of the groom. Your presence is required at all times.” Her Hindi is sprinkled with English words. It makes him smile when she talks like that. She thinks he is mocking her. She turns around and walks away in a huff.
His son is wearing a crisp white kurta and is sitting cross legged on the floor. He keeps using his phone until his mother comes and takes it away from him. She whispers something, her eyes blazing. His son nods silently. Relatives walk around the home offering advice and making suggestions. The women keep offering to make tea. The men pat the son on his back and make marriage related jokes. He watches all this from a distance, feeling neither out of place nor completely involved.
The rituals start and he grudgingly sits near the fire between his wife and son. The pandit asks them to hold hands and repeat some chant. His wife clutches his elbow and he thinks of how she would do that when they were newly married and went for a walk. Her hand is cold despite the heat. The ceremony goes on for the good part of an hour. By the time it’s over, his back is drenched with sweat. His wife touches the feet of the pandits and urges them to stay for lunch. They agree and she busies herself with the food.
They leave after lunch, their hands full with fruits and gifts that his wife insists that they take. The relatives eat and leave, giving the son their blessings. His wife sits on the sofa and massages her feet. She talks animatedly about the ceremony and the people.
He falls asleep listening to her lively chatter and when he wakes up, it’s evening. She hands him a mug of tea and chides him for being nothing but a lazy husband who makes his wife run around. He tells her he didn’t even ask for the tea, but she makes exasperated sounds and walks away.
When he thinks of her, he thinks of her like she is in this moment. Holding tea and making jibes at him. They both know that soon enough, she’ll come sit with him to watch snippets of whatever he is watching on TV. He knows that she’ll make comments but she’ll watch it anyway. He knows he’ll grumble but will hate it if she stops.
She always demands details of his day when he comes home from work and insists he do a little yoga every evening with her.
He doesn’t admit it to her, but he secretly enjoys it.

Mira.

The beginning of monsoons was the saddest thing, when I was 7. It meant the onset of school and the end of a glorious summer that had been spent playing cards and drinking cold milk. More importantly, however, it meant that Mira would go away.

Mira was our maid’s daughter. She was my age, give or take a few years. She was short with long hair tied in an untidy plait. She had big, watery eyes and a small smile. When she craned her neck, you could see a sharp, cocoa- coloured collar bone.

Mira was the youngest in a family of 4 kids. Her mother, our maid- Malti couldn’t imagine raising her kids in a heartless city like Bombay. She feared that if she kept them with her in her shed-like house, some danger was bound to come their way. If it’s not the rains, it will be some dreadful disease, she told my mother emphatically one day. So they lived with their uncle in a small village in Kerala and came to Bombay for a month in the summer.

Mira wasn’t like my other friends. For one, she was very curious about my books. At the end of every summer, she would take back a few old books of mine. I am not sure if she read them, but they would make her happy. Unlike the rest of my playmates, she had an odd sense of loyalty towards me. She would beg to be on my team when we played carom. Even though I lost almost every game back then, she seemed to want to lose with me, just the same. I taught her to play scrabble. Naturally, I won but that didn’t seem to upset her in the least. She said she’d rather lose to me than win against someone else. To my 7 year old mind, that was the best compliment one could receive.

Most days she would go back home. She would trail behind her mother, idly holding the end of her mother’s sari. Some days she would fall asleep in front of the TV watching cartoons. If her mother came to get her, my father would say- Let her be. You can take her back tomorrow. The next morning- Mira’s eyes would sparkle as she stuffed her small mouth with egg. She once told me her mother had warned her to never eat egg. It was her small rebellion. I promised never to tell anyone. That was the extent of our secrets. Eating eggs.

Then one day she told me a real secret. To this day, I remember the look in her eyes. I also remember, clear as day, how it had made me a feel. Perhaps, it was commonplace somewhere in the world. In my world, it wasn’t. Mira showed me a semi-circular burn mark on her back. It stood out arrogantly against her soft brown skin. Then she zipped her dress and told me that her uncle did that to her if she didn’t fill the buckets. Or if the food was cold. She said that her uncle told her he’d do bad things to her is she didn’t work hard. 7 year olds don’t really know too many bad things. Not even imaginative 7 year olds like me. I figured if there was something worse than being burnt with a hot pan, I didn’t want to know of it. That night, Mira fell asleep with her hand resting on my arm. I remember putting an extra sheet on her, as the night grew darker and colder. I don’t think she noticed it. But if she had, I am sure she would have appreciated it.

I am not sure when exactly, but Mira stopped coming to Bombay. By this time, we had grown up and apart. I then left Bombay myself, for a few years and studied abroad. Even her mother had left Bombay for good. Then a couple of weeks ago, when I came home on a vacation- I saw Mira’s picture in my desk. It was under a pile of old cards and letters. It was a picture taken when we were 8 or 9. Her arm was around my waist. She was smiling her small smile. I wondered where she was, if she was okay. Was she married? Did she have children of her own? Had her uncle kept his promise and done bad things to her? I don’t think there was any way to find out. And standing there, in my room, now knowing full well the extent of said bad things, for the first time in a long time I wished I could go back to being 7 again.

I am surrounded by all kinds of interesting people at work.

There is a plant lady here. Her workstation has all kinds of potted plants. I am not sure it’s allowed even. Every morning, she comes in with a plastic mug full of water and goes on to water her plants with a look of great dedication. Sometimes, she puts little flowers in their pots and prays to them. She got really mad at me once because she came back after a week long leave and I hadn’t watered her plants as much as she considered fit. She held one dried leaf and shook her head with disappointment. She also muttered something under her breath. I pointed out to her that the dried leaf was there even before she left but she turned her back to me and called up one of her relatives and started speaking in hushed tones.

Adjacent to her sits a man who is very driven about real estate. He cuts out little articles and listings from the classifieds of the newspaper and puts them in a folder. He calls up real estate agents and speaks to them at length about how much sunlight comes through the back room of some home or whether some building complex has a gymnasium. He also constantly holds conversations about the rising real estate prices and the vertical expansion in Bombay. For a long time, I thought he’s looking to buy a house and felt a little sympathy that he has been hunting for a place for so long with no result. Turns out he has no interest in actually buying a house.

The person sitting opposite my desk likes to have an opinion on all matters. That by itself is absolutely fine. The problem is that he doesn’t really have an opinion. So he makes generic statements that could apply to any on going issue. Very often, he walks up to unsuspecting people and says things like, “Can you believe the mess? I have stopped expecting anything from these people now” which could apply to the government, the IPL games or the office admin staff. He also starts speaking of things he is well read on, whether or not the people around him are discussing it. So on several occasions, we would hear of the Occupy Wall Street matter in between our discussion on the Oscars or some such.

And this is just my side of the floor. Truth be told, maybe they think I am strange too. Oh, well.

Half solved crosswords in the newspaper, held down with the happy yellow box of cereal. 6 down is Baku, the U leading to ubiquitous. The cereal has a free toy inside it – a plastic dog that has a squeaky bark when pressed.

All stray reminders of much deeper feelings.

Your striped blue tie reminds me of your first interview; humble beginnings but extreme gratitude of having made it. The tie hangs in your cupboard, lost among the other neatly stacked clothes. I remember days, very early on in our game, when I would hold it to my face when you weren’t around.

The meaning we attach to inanimate objects; a piece of cloth and a barrage of emotions.

My running shoes always sat next to yours; looking rather diffident next to your feisty ones. You always made fun of my socks, when we went jogging. I never kept up with you and strangely I didn’t mind. There are people you meet, against whom you know you’ll lose a game. But you participate anyway, because atleast that way you have a chance to play with them.

We run as fast as our feet will carry us and as far as possible to get away from something that is never going to go away. It will stay, steadfastly, inside your head until it decides it has bothered you enough.

When we first met, we had deep conversations about intellectual things. We argued and agreed and took equal pride in both. Then, we found ourselves in a place where our conversations were mundane and our pride was over having picked the right movie show.

If these are comforts that come with time, how comfortable would you like to be?

The people we know almost always become the people we used to know. Not because they go away, but because they change a little. They are sitting right next to you but are thinking thoughts that are of a place faraway.

When we sit on a park bench, sometimes we hold hands not because there is overwhelming affection but a vague fear that if we don’t, we’ll slip away from each other.

The lamp casts a deep red light on his side of the room. His face looks as if it is on fire under the surface. He writes with an ink pen, the sound of the nib scratching across the paper echoes through the empty room.

There is no place for writers like him. He doesn’t write action packed whirl wind romances. He isn’t particularly good at creating mysterious stairwells or thrillers in graveyards. He writes about nothing specific. It’s a big verbose confusion of words and stern punctuation. His stories are about the emptiness of things and the lack of real feeling in the world. Nobody gets him.

For the past week, there have been three letters in the mail all rejecting his work. All the letters mention their deep regret over his rejection. He understands but they don’t need to lie. If they had any regret, they wouldn’t reject his work.

He writes furiously filling pages with his cramped inky handwriting. He looks outside the window into the dark and wonders if there is anyone out there who thinks like him and understands his thoughts. He wonders if he were to meet such a person, whether he’d like them. He isn’t a big fan of himself but he prefers his own company more than anyone else’s.

Somewhere on the fifth page, his nib cracks through the centre. It is only then that he realizes that he has been pressing it into the page a little too hard. The ink runs down the page akin to the dripping blood that the readers would love but is not something he can get himself to write about.

He isn't sure of what he can do next. He throws the pen far away and sits in a corner. The deep red light now just falls on empty spaces.

Captain

He watered his plants every morning at 7. It was the same time that my son left for school. I would observe him while waiting with my son at the bus-stop. His house was the one right next to ours.
He had to hold onto the hose with both hands to keep it from shooting off from his grip. The splashing water always left the front of his night shirt wet. The wet shirt clung to his bones; a white cloth covering the corpse. The plants weren’t particularly pretty and despite the daily watering they didn’t look too pleased either.

No one knew his name but a lot of people sarcastically called him Captain. A few years ago when he had moved into the neighbourhood, he lied to the people there about having served in the army. One day when a relative of his heard this, he sheepishly informed everyone that the man, in fact, had worked in a drug store. The relative was quick to add, “He’s not crazy or anything. Just a little strange.” He watered his plants with the same vengeance that he took his evening walks. In both cases, he had a sour expression on his face.

The muttering grew louder as the days went by. Some days he’d yell at his plants for having littered. On other days, he expressed deep disappointment in them for not having cured his wife. I once saw him throw the hose angrily into one of the bushes screaming, “Take it! Take all my water! When I die of thirst, you can sing at my funeral!”

He bought milk from the store on our street. He never bought anything else. I wondered what he ate. No vegetables, no meat. No delivery boy was ever seen near his house. One packet of milk every other day. He had no friends. The relative who had called his bluff hadn’t made an appearance after that.

They found him dead in the garden one morning. When I came out to drop my son, I saw a few men standing around in his garden. I went over to speak to them. One of them had seen him in his garden earlier that day, clutching at this neck screaming, “Stop strangling me, you rascals. After all that I did for you!” He had collapsed soon after. The thin pulse that the men felt had vanished almost immediately.

Lined along the garden wall, we found a dozen half empty milk bags, the milk running off in careless streams into the soil. The hose whizzed around the garden, snaking backwards, unable to contain the water and the commotion.

Mismatched Misgivings

The bottoms of my feet are always cut with the sharp edges of eggshells and my palms are always clammy.

I am not a nervous person but I do find myself talking faster and creating hypothetical situations in my head where I am running along the side of a road with a car following me and the driver has a manic glint in his eyes. The car almost always runs me down.

I create extreme mental images of metaphoric buildings crashing down while I am in them and I am killed by careless pieces of stone hurtling down at me. I don’t always die. Sometimes, I survive in a metaphoric tornado and I am the lone survivor. I then feel a smug mix of grief and pride.

It’s not always eggshells. It could be landmines or something similar too, if you get my drift. It needn’t always be clammy palms. You could replace that with a racing pulse or a cracked voice.

My misgivings have a mind of their own. They brew in my head until I am overpowered by them. Then when I concoct a plan to combat them, they disappear.

There is this rule called the 15 minute rule. If something bothers you, you wait for 15 minutes. If it still bothers you, you offer it some mind space. Else, you congratulate yourself on not having wasted time worrying over a seemingly small issue. I am working on it, I still have 5 minutes to go.

He craved curd rice; the authentic variety not the insipid kind that the canteen sold at lunch.
Ammachi made it in a big steel bowl, with sour curd and fresh rice and pickle; always mango pickle where the pungent after taste coated his tongue for a while.

Hurtling along in buses through the muddy roads of a small village in Kerala, he would wait to arrive at Ammachi’s house, amidst all the mangoes and the pineapple jam. Then his Ammachi would wait for them outside and he would run to her, his small feet whipping up a miniature dust storm. She always scooped him up in a big hug and she always kissed his cheek. She was the only person who was allowed to do that, he hated being kissed. Ammachi had a little moustache, tiny whiskers under a small nose. He would always rub it while she was asleep. He was just curious, moustaches were for men. Ammachi’s moustache always tickled him when she kissed his cheek.
Ammachi smelled of a mix of talcum powder and sweat and something else, perhaps some kind of fruit. She had a smell you would associate with old people, that always got caught somewhere in her clothing. Her hair always smelled of coconut oil. Her hugs always smelled of a happier time.

He always got a 500 rupee note every summer. She knew he didn’t use it, but she gave it anyway. Don’t all little boys need someone to give them things their parents refuse to give them? Money and unlimited jam on warm toasts where no one asks you to stop eating so much sugar? He always had bread for dinner and no one was allowed to question that; his Ammachi just wouldn’t have it.

As the evenings grew darker and the crickets grew louder and he would sit with his Ammachi on the verandah eating tapioca chips. The helper who was possibly as old as the house would make faces at him from behind a wall. He would make faces back, his face stuffed with chips. They would sit there until the mosquitoes got the better of them and then they’d go inside the house; another day, that in retrospect was really something, having ended silently.

Among these whirling thoughts, he realized that his craving for curd rice had given way to his craving for several other things.




Although it is really hard to recreate something so special, I thank my friend Ashish for letting me make an attempt.

You're asked to close your eyes. 

It's a surprise, your mother tells you and you can't cheat and look. 

You cover your eyes with your hands to confirm that you aren't cheating. 

You hear  rustling paper and the plastic sounds of a box opening. 

There is a vague sweet smell. A mix of butter and perhaps something stronger, mint chocolate maybe.

Repeat the same event with as many variations as you please. 

It could be your sister instead of your mother. It could be a metallic sound and the smell of fresh stationery or coffee beans.

This is extremely silly to a lot of people. A large number of people I know despise surprises of all kinds. They would like whatever it is, straight up. Good or bad, fun or serious, they like it with no frills or drama. 

The funny thing is - when my eyes are shut and someone is unfolding something in front of me, in the end it doesn't matter what it is. It could be a book or a computer, it won't be the most important thing.  The best part of a surprise is hardly ever the thing at the end, it's almost always the build up.

On a very regular evening, I met you by the sea.

So much was said and so much was left behind because I feared it would never come out as sincere as I would have liked it to. I remember removing my chappals and keeping them next to me and sitting with my knees drawn towards my stomach. Peace; that's what I felt. These feelings are hard to find, trust me. Not too many of us can sit back and find ourselves in a moment where we are at peace with everything.

I have this memory safely tucked away somewhere. In my head and in my writing.

On long tiring days, I open this memory and remember the time when I was so happy that nothing could have possibly ruined that. No matter what goes down in the future, I know that this memory will remain untouched; covered with happy images of the sea and you. 

Extremely long day and hence the short post.
Tomorrow there will be two.
Happy Saturday to you too.

Little toy soldier on the window pane. He watches the cars go by. In the mornings, he watches the men buy milk in their night clothes and skim through newspapers through their gummy eyes. His room is quiet. The bed is made with pale blue sheets. The pillows are new.
The couple in the house poke their heads through the door and look around. They don’t necessarily notice him. Sometimes, the woman comes in and looks through the window. She picks him up and looks him in the eye but she says nothing. She leaves him there again by the window.
There is a basket right under where he sits. Basket full of toys; dolls with woollen hair and big bright cars that make sounds. Boxes and boxes of board games; Scrabble in a hope that the kid will be fascinated by words and Monopoly in case he is all about the money. Paint boxes and colouring books. Playing cards with pictures of fruits on the back.
An invisible child plays with cards on the marble floor, painting some invisible pictures by the side.
The height chart on the wall has pictures of animals on it. Giraffes and rabbits, a strange way to assure both short and tall kids. It remains unmarked.
The man of the house comes in once in a while and sits on the freshly made bed. Sometimes, he smokes a cigarette but almost always puts it out midway. Then he sighs and leaves, the smoke and the fizzling guilt settle in the corner of the room.
The tin soldier observes all this in silence. The little gun on his back doesn’t work and perhaps never did. Then again, nobody ever tried.
In the room next to this one, the man and the woman fall asleep every night at around the same time. The child they never could have curls and sleeps between them.

Wooden memories on warm days.

In the big cupboard, there sits an old wooden box. The box has an old time charm that is hard to miss. On the top, there are two red birds, brush painted and clearly in love. There are blue swirls on the side, dotted with small flowers that women pluck and swoon over.
There is a smell that comes with the box – of wood and grime, and old times. The smell conjures up images from a time long gone, where the air was perfumed and people had pocket watches. I can imagine my grandmother, walking around a room with high ceilings and lace curtains. A nameless flower tucked in the folds of her plait.
I can picture her opening this box, looking at the birds on the top, when their red was redder and their affection blossoming. The box holds her knick knacks. Butterfly shaped clips with wide set teeth, metal bangles from a fair, nail clippers with a picture of the sun, black and white pictures of her and her siblings at a railway station. I can imagine her looking at the pictures, running her hands over them. Her bangles rolling up and down her forearm, clinging together as though scared.
The box still has some of those things. The pictures have started to crumble, powdered memories in black and white. A lone metal bangle sits in there, the other having gotten lost somewhere along the way. There are other things too. Loose coins, that must have passed through many hands. Folded receipts of tailored clothes left in there for safe keeping.
I leave some of my things in there now, deliberately. Small pieces of jewellery and a passport sized picture of a 9 year old me; buck teeth and a school uniform.
I like to believe that one day someone will find these box and conjure up a memory of me. A memory of me preserving another memory. And perhaps eventually,  we’ll have a long chain of memories, all under the watchful eyes of the red birds.

Important.

The people here drink copious amounts of green tea. They also take deep breaths that are audible even from a distance. They put up motivational sticky notes on their soft-boards. “Don’t take your eyes of your goal” or “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” Their more religious brethren have some compelling messages written – Jesus loves you.
One girl here has a poster that says – When there is no light, He will lead you. She seems rather lost most of the time. Light or no light.
Everyone talks about how stressed they are. They cite peptic ulcers and migraines. They boast about how they were up all night because of an acid reflux. They stay in late, typing away furiously at their laptops. If offered food, they decline. Some of them open up a fancy little purse full of medicines they’re supposed to take. “It’s the stress, boss” They say, popping colourful pills and gulping purified water.
They speak the same language. They constantly need someone to ‘do the needful’ or ‘revert back ASAP’. They’re rather polite with their warm regards in all emails. They smile constipated smiles at each other in the elevator and ask questions about their well being. That usually entails queries about the stock market and the existing gold prices. They punch at their blackberries, beads of sweat forming on their shiny little heads. They have places to be and people to meet. They make obligatory phone calls to their families and say “I have been in and out of meetings.” They hang up without waiting to hear the other person finish because they could be using that extra minute to save the world.
On their birthdays, they thank everyone for the wishes in a strangely apologetic fashion. No one knows what they are sorry about. They order “some snacks for everyone” and then insist that everyone eat. This they do with a vengeance; they are gracious hosts after all.
On one such birthday, the team pooled in and got the man a pair of expensive cuff links. He declined. “I have everything I want. A good family and happy children. What else could I ask for?”
About 5 hours later, he was fuming when he wasn’t given a company sponsored i-pad. He claimed he really wanted it.
Then after the sun has set and the economy has been altered by their efforts, they get into their cars and head home for another sleepless night full of acidity.

Verbose.

Words race around my page, chasing each other and refusing to form straight lines.
A woman with a nose bleed meets a little child on a train to nowhere. They disappear into the thin lines of my cursor and make way for some deeper, something smarter, something just so out there.
The darkness runs over my page, painting itself into a story about revenge and regret; perhaps both. The words look within themselves for the meaning of something larger than themselves. They run around with the woman in a black suit whose handbag has a gun. They give themselves a head rush, as the husband gets seizure after seizure in the cold of the night. They try and hide the secrets she has and the affairs he indulges in. They live on the edge of my page hoping my eyes gleam and I take charge.
A few lines later, they offer me support through the death of a friend. They rub my back and hold out herbal tea in a dainty mug. They pull out old memories; they form tight circles of days gone by and hot summers and ice-cream cones. They take pauses, semicolons if you will, when the funeral comes by.
In the end, it’s scores of words, both magical and cringe-worthy; wooing me, hoping that something will come out of their colourful circus.
Some days, I applaud their trapeze acts. Some days, I leave the hall slyly, hoping they don’t notice.



Note: My friend Shruti deserves a mention here because her writing brilliance continues to inspire.

Monday Morning Blues.

I hope you don't have to wait at the railway station, the May heat painting rings of sweat under your arms. I hope the women in the train next to you don’t smell of coconut oil or cheap perfume. I hope your head doesn’t begin to hurt while you walk towards your work place in the sun.
I hope technology doesn’t fail you; that your laptop doesn’t delete important files on a whim. I hope you remember to charge your phone, and your phone internet doesn’t stop working in the middle of a transaction. I hope you carry your charger. I hope that the printer doesn’t run out of ink when it starts to print your document.
I hope you don’t feel nauseated after your morning coffee. I hope you don’t have to face pompous people along the way who snigger and say “First world problem” when you say you have a queasy stomach. Too much milk in your coffee is a first world problem, feeling sick and it impeding your work, in fact, isn’t.
I hope you manage to juggle all your work, that no task reduces you to angry tears in the privacy of the washroom. I hope that the people you work with do their part so you can do yours and that you do your part so that the person after you doesn’t pull out his hair in frustration. I hope that all the people you meet, superiors especially, treat you like you matter and that your thoughts and opinions are worthy of consideration. I hope you aren’t subject to sexism under the syrupy mask of concern, and that you are given tasks as challenging as those given to your male counterparts.
I hope you don’t struggle to make peace with things and that you realize that life will throw harsher things your way. I hope you have friends and siblings who look out for you when you feel under the weather. I hope you realize that your friends and siblings have their own lives and problems as well and that you should factor that in when you begin to whine.
Above all, I hope you know that Mondays come once a week and while you may be having a bad day any day of the week, you are never too far away from the weekend.

Indulgences.

The thoughts come and hover around the corners of mind, while I go through my day refusing to acknowledge them. They come in the form of books I read or something funny I hear.

Most times, I succeed in ignoring these thoughts.

Some times however, I let these thoughts take over my mind for a while. I sit and watch them play their parts, like children in a school play. One of them is the witty one, one the insecure variety. One of them almost always makes me tear up just a little, despite myself. Then the curtain falls and I roll over and go to sleep, in the midst of confused applause.

On an unsuspecting afternoon, these thoughts creep up from behind me while I am lying on my bed. They will me to acknowledge them, speak to them, write them down perhaps. Then once I do that, they beg me to dial numbers I have been pretending to not notice, and send texts that have sitting around in my phone, waiting to be sent but oblivious to what repercussions they may bring on.

There is a small victory in standing up to these thoughts and walking away slowly from your phone. This is the only kind of victory that brings satisfaction but no happiness. 

The roadside cart sells sliced fruit. In preparation for the monsoons, he puts up blue tarpaulin sheets hitched up with two long bamboo sticks. A naked bulb hangs from a red wire, giving the fruits an eerie glow. Plastic slates with words in chalk; the watermelons are definitely more sophisticated than bananaplate. In a bucket full of morgue ice, sit a crate of mangoes; not as yellow as you’d like them, but majestic all the same. Thick incense sticks ward off flies but give the fruit a metallic taste. It’s either funny tasting fruit or cholera on a plate. Sometimes, it’s both.
Before the sun comes up, the man unloads fruits from an auto rickshaw, his arms glistening with sweat. He puts them into tubs of brackish water. His son wipes the counter of the cart, holding his shorts up with one hand. By the time the sun is up and the city is bustling, the man and his son stand behind the cart, in the midst of stacks of fruit and battered cutlery. They arrange the apples and the mangoes on the counter front; they smile at the shining fruit waiting for their customers.
Most people compete with themselves when it comes to spitting watermelon seeds. The first seed hits a tree, the second falls a little beyond. They mentally snigger. Some pack fruits for their kids, pineapple pieces clinging to polythene bags, holding themselves better than their papaya counterparts. Papaya seeds, if ingested in incredibly large amounts, could induce an abortion. Other times, you can grow papayas.
A blue plastic bucket holds used plates; the son washes them with a vengeance. His hands almost always smell of fruit. At night when he goes to sleep, he sticks them under himself. The smell of fruit nauseates him. His shorts are stained with mango juice. Even after several washes, there is a dull spot on the front.
By the time it’s evening, the customers dwindle and once the street lights come on, it’s just the man and his son. They put away the washed plates in the stomach of the cart and cover it with tarpaulin. They tie the edges with rope and push it homewards.
Under his arms he carries a bag full of left over fruit and a bottle of vegetable oil. Only he knows how hard it is to find oil that doesn’t smell. The others use spit to get their strawberries to gleam.
Again, it’s either oily fruits or beetle nut remnants hidden between your grapes.
The next morning, he cuts out the rotting parts of the leftover fruits and puts the good fruits back on the cart. For 10 rs a pop, he thinks he’s being short changed either way.

Disconnected

My cell phone didn’t ring or beep today.
Atleast it didn’t ring or beep for the reasons I’d have liked it to.
It’s not the last day of the week for me; tomorrow is a working Saturday. I don’t think you have an idea how much of a mood dampener that is.
In the elevator on Fridays like these, people look horribly morose. The one extra day is like a ton of bricks weighing them down. There is no cheerful banter or small talk. Only uneasy silence.
Some days aren’t good or bad. They aren’t even mediocre. They’re just a bunch of nothing. They haven’t gone well but they haven’t failed you. There is not much you can do about it. I don’t like to find hidden meaning in these days. Everything doesn’t have to be a life lesson.
I cannot wait to leave, get home and crawl into bed. On such days, I am happiest when I am asleep.

Silence

There is a point when the music stops and there is an eerie hush in the room. I notice how your words are laced with a quiet resignation. You’d rather not have anything to do with anyone right now, but I claw into your time and you let me. Do you know people whose time you want to claw into?
You don’t like sugar coating things; you don’t appreciate it when I do. In the striped down version of my life, I still feel the same way. Underneath the fanciness of hope and the promising poetry of regret and love lost, I still think the same things and the same things run around my head in confused circles.
I grew up in the room I sleep in now. My thoughts jumped through all kinds of hoops under starched sheets with block printed birds and dancing women. In the dark room with the whirring fan, I hold on to the ends of my sheets and think of all this. I think of you, lying in your own bed not particularly far away, thinking thoughts of a greater magnitude. Thoughts of different countries and of something powerful that you read or saw or heard. I can almost imagine the sound of your fingers flying over your laptop keys, making small music of a very comforting variety.
There is a small space between sleep and deep sleep, where my thoughts of you give way to bigger thoughts of open roads and stuffed backpacks. I feel the lines of my thoughts blur into something more daunting, where everything is happy but not without an intimidating edge. I don’t find myself complaining though. If everything lets you believe that you’ve made it, complacency is not far behind. It isn’t a mature thought per se, but more a voice of experience – that usually the things that are the most satisfying are the ones that had you trembling with  worry at first.
Worry isn’t the worst of things. It is a sign that there is something out there that is worthy of your apprehension.
Some days my thoughts are compelling; some days they are shamefully mundane. Some days, I can't tell which type they are. On all days, you are somewhere in them.

Against the stark background of red muddy roads and small houses, we made a story.
I climbed trees with the sun browning my bare arms. I would sit there, watching the people go by, secretly looking for him, and holding my breath every time I saw a curly haired man. His curly hair touched his nape, resting lightly on the collar of his white shirt. He wore glasses, thin rimmed and intimidating. He carried a book covered in brown paper. I never found out which book it was, and honestly at that point it didn’t matter.
We spoke once that summer. He knew my father, he said. “Your father is a brilliant teacher. If it wasn’t for him, I would never have entered the teaching profession” He told me, shifting the book from one hand to another. I knew all that and more. I knew that in the flickering light of the candle, he taught old women the alphabet. The woman who worked in our house had told my mother this in a hushed tone. She begged my mother to never repeat this; she worried her husband would beat her if he found out.
I never saw him in the monsoons. The women said he had gone off somewhere, taking with him only his book and a small bag. They said he had taught them what they needed to know. Under the awning of a defunct temple, they read out words from children’s books, stringing letters together with the tip of their fingers.
I stayed out a lot, walking through the streets barefoot; footprints in a sea of red. I didn’t bother about the rain. My hair was always wet; lashing against the small of my back. It’s amusing, only in retrospect, that my childish heart was all knotted up over a person I barely knew. Somewhere along the way, I learnt to not hold my breath so often and that was a good thing because I didn’t see him after that.
He came to our house many years later when my father passed away. He touched my mother’s feet, and held out some flowers. He spoke to me in a very low voice, saying over and over again how he will remain indebted to my father. I didn’t have much to say. I offered him water and asked him if he’d like to eat something. He shook his head morosely. He had wanted to come for the cremation he said, but he had received the news too late. He left soon enough; I stared at his back until he became one with the dark. And that was that.
The truth is, in real life, these are how most stories pan out. Not all of the people we meet become lovers. Not all betray our trust or swindle us. Most people just walk in and out of our scheme of things altering our existence only in a negligible manner. That doesn’t make them or their stories any less important. It’s good to remember that in the dramatic lives we like to lead, there is also simplicity tucked away in the folds.

The heart doesn't know what it wants.

I have no idea why but today wherever I look there are hearts staring back at me. It's not even Valentine's day! We already have to deal with all the pink glitter once a year. I am not against hearts, I am sure they're great, but why would you make random things heart shaped.
Initially, it was just red heart shaped balloons at traffic signals. Today, I saw some fast food place selling cutlets in the shape of hearts. Oily hearts on pink paper napkins.
Someone on Facebook uploaded a picture of an annoying kid holding a big furry heart shaped pillow saying "Happy Maharashtra Day" The heart wasn't even relevant!
Then earlier today, while having lunch, I notice an ochre coloured plastic heart. It was a mould for cookies. In my own house.
I think I'll put up with all that if some people I know stopped cupping their hands in the shape of a heart while cocking their head and saying "aw" That really tips me over the edge.