Waiter! There's a fly in my Soup!

Get me back my carefree days

Sometimes I wish we did not have facebook or smart phones. This urgency and the need to stay connected i.e, stalk people and their lives would not be there. The urgency to let the world know of every small moment spent in your life. For them to appreciate your happiness (read fake happiness) ,to make the world jealous, aware and awestruck by the false grandeur in your lives.

I wish sometimes, I would walk in a garden without the need to take a picture of every little nuance that I used to capture with my eyes instead. Oh, how lovely were the mornings when my mother would help me wear my woolen socks and braid my hair and send me to school in winters. Wasn't I carefree? I would hop and skip on my way to school and meet my girlfriends and sneak a peek at my crush. I would chatter with them incessantly without the urgent need to check my mail or my 'notifications'.I would fill my day with hundreds of little things that I would do without getting tired or bored of the monotony of my routine. I would be ambitious to dream for a great future but I would not be sad of my present and the things I achieved then.

Sometimes, I wish I could pack all of the social sites and phones and cameras and gadgets in the world, in a sack and throw them somewhere deep in the ocean where no one could find them so that I would spend one day at least one day peacefully without being stalked electronically or the need to 'look something/someone up' on the internet.

I would take a long walk and forget that there ever was something called 'connectivity' invented and that I could just cherish the walk and go back home to read a book and sleep a dreamless sleep. That I could just get a sense of wonder from a book than to browse through various channels on the television or internet and get disappointed at the efforts of the shows and movies to amuse me.That I would be happy just thinking and looking outside the window at my home or in my school, deep in some thought and when I would come out of that reverie, I would be pleased at that moment well spent. I would be glad that I had some happy thoughts and I would think some more and gaze some more out of the window.

I wish I did not have to return to my laptop every waking, free moment of my life to check something interesting/funny/amusing and that I would rather play basketball for hours and then later sleep like a zombie. I wish I could just do that without thinking of what others are doing and others are thinking and being vulnerable the majority of the time.I would just be strong and fearless.

I would do so much more and crib much lesser if only I could go back to my growing up days which were filled with careless activities and harmless fun. I would read a newspaper and learn new words and I would play scrabble or ludo or chess while aiming to beat my brother at it.Such shamelessly small and beautiful were my ambitions.

I try hard to match my lazy steps with the speed of life now, but I have forgotten how wonderfully I was unable to measure the pace of years passing by, while growing up. And now I feel the moving of each second like it would never end and that I need to fill it with something 'worthwhile'.If at all, I could just lie down on the grass next to a busy highway like I used to as a kid,without thinking that someone would laugh at me , I would be so very glad. I would hopscotch all the way till the end of life with a smile on my face like a little girl's innocent,genuine smile.

So much more I would do and so much more I could do if only I could get rid of this frenzy of technology added to my life cruelly and without even having taken my permission for doing so! It just crept into my life stealthily without making any noise but brimming with chaos.

far far away

cross your doorstep and look at my world
there is fragrance and intoxication in it
wearing precious jewels and wrapped in gold is happiness
dreams are mysterious
eyes that shine
hair that flows till some lovely lass's waist
music mixing with the fog and resides on the tip of your finger
can you feel it?
she flies with freedom into the cages of her heart
liberated are her feet adorned with flowers
soft as the sound of a cuckoo in a mango grove
walk there in that haven till you are tired
and then walk some more
careful! dont tread on the fallen yellow leaves of the fall
they will have life again
kiss the horizon that gleams with the union
of the blue rivers and black skies
you would want to swim in those waters
you will find life in your veins
blood is not as red as the blush of the shy evening there
touch its colors, you might just want to keep painting this picture
forever.

Together For An Eternity, For My Precious Grandparents,My Tribute

She kissed the tears, the wizened forehead,

And the artistically carved wrinkles by the time on his face

They were born and raised by their love

They had together, entered the death’s alcove

Wept silently, upon his journey’s finale, even the heavens above

Oh she’d have penned an ode to his guileless nature, his reticent might,

His love for her, if he had ever allowed

He fought valiantly against the grips of his end

She prayed courageously to the god, omnipresent

If the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline,

No matter how many times it's sent away

Then how could she let him fall in the fiery Hades

Even if her infinite, beseeching prayers failed

She was once coy, beautiful like a spring dawn,

Epitome of gentleness and dewy-eyed innocence

She now sat by his bedside with gray in her hair and a withered gait

His hands were held in hers and he lay there forbidden

From leaving her behind in the cruel, unavailing world all alone

He was torn in agony, at the heaven’s gate

Entangled in the death’s web, unable to return to her embrace

Slow, soft terms of endearment she spoke

In his ears, all night long

To wake him up from his deathly sleep

It never happened on that day of that week

Holding him one last time, she rendered her future futile

She left her body a few moments later
To follow his spirit into their next adventure

To be together with him for an eternity

And with him to reunite.

PS: "Because there's nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it's sent away." These lines are by Sarah Kay and they reminded me of the beautiful love that my grandparents shared all their life and even in their passing away that I decided to use these lines in this tribute.

Identityless and digression between lines here and there

Identity would be an easy word to spell and pronounce but it is definitely not easy to put a particular meaning to. Identityless is however, not a word no matter how much I would like it to be. That's what I consider myself sometimes. I would try not going into the specifics because giving out vital details of your life on the internet is not a very clever idea given the increase in number of perverts and idiots in the last ummm , well they have been inhabiting our planet for a long time, I am afraid. So I belong to a certain little village in a far away place, much much farther than where I was brought up.I, for the reasons of solidarity between all the states in my country, wanted to call myself a true Indian ,when I was growing up so that none of my mother-places feel bad. I am, by the way, awesome at using non-existing-hyphenated words, if you have not already noticed it .

Taking a break from the previous stanza because I noticed my thoughts were feeling quite stuffy up there, I start with a new paragraph but the same story, yeah so growing up in a place which consists of a lot (loooooooooooot, this is called exaggeration, please do not count the o's) of people who do not understand my mother tongue and I did not understand theirs so it was like making sambhar ( some dal, only tangier ) with garam masala ( hot spices?? ). Ah, there goes the first hint of my whereabouts to the 'perverts and idiots'! The only language I could use to communicate was unknown to me and which is still quite out of my grasp : English ( I am kidding, I have a verbal score of 700 in GRE and I also take pride in my modesty). Instead, I started using hand and face gestures in Kindergarten to communicate and now have become one of the best classical dancers.( hah!) I managed to reach first grade with a little knowledge of English, a PhD in sign language and buckets of confidence; well how I acquired that confidence is known to only a star named Mars ( yeah my little 5 year old brain full of irony named that star). Mars and I talked a lot, he would twinkle and I would understand and vice verse.

First grade in this unknown place made me realize that our planet is filled with touch-me-nots and I was born to touch all of them ( I meant the grass, you perverts). And that the next year I would be accompanied by a creature called my brother, to school. He is brighter than me though, because he believed in walking on the walls on the way to school while I carried his schoolbag and looked like a coolie ( porter with that red dress?). Okay now I think I have substantially digressed from being identityless. I like digressing. Second grade made me familiar with the music of this place which would be played in a near by temple and would wake all mortal things up. Surprisingly I did not hate it and loved to waking up to its beautiful renditions. That was the first sign for me that may be I like this place more than I thought.

To love a place is to love its people and I have lived by that quote word to word and also because the quote is by me. I like inventing random quotes to suite my mood for example : where there is a will, there is a bed to sleep. I loved and cherished my friends who were mostly from this new place. OK let me call this new place, my second home; A and its natives, Apeeps. My parents' place is to be named B and people from there are called Blog.( log is people in Hindi, did you notice what I did there? no? ) My friends from A taught me their music,fed me with their food, laughed at my B-accented speaking of language A and most importantly opened their arms to include me in. I loved everything about A, its local trains, crowded stores, scorching heat and most importantly the beaches. As soon as I got intimate with all of the above, bang! my father had to move to a whole another place. Did I fit in there? NO. But Mars and I made new friends even there and as soon as my little heart started loving this whole new awesome bhangra-crazy place ( yeah yeah its Punjab, I am tired of naming places now), I had to move back to A!

I came back to my beloved A with Punjabi music, little English and no friends.Did I fit it? NO. It took time and slowly I made a new set of awesome Apeeps friends all over again. All of them largehearted and crazy enough to give me their lunch and smile at my B-as well as-Punjabi-accented A. I learnt more about their music, culture and more importantly the place. I was in love with it and I never ever wanted to leave it again. God ( I am guessing its him and he IS crazy ) listened to me and put me in A land for 4 more years. More to learn and more to love!

Did I fit in? Hell NO. I remained a B girl with a weird set of A friends. A peeps did not understand how I could be friends with A ones so easily and B ones just plain did not consider me one of them for the same reason. In all this I forgot to mention my yearly visits to B land which are one of the happiest memories of my life so far, consisting of my brother, my adorable cousins, my precious grandparents and my little village :). In my heart I belonged to A as much as to B. One by birth and one by growth. ( Kinda like Krishna and his mothers Devaki and Yashoda, so does that mean I am God? yeah most probably I am ). I did not understand this eye brow-raising behavior of people, some did not accept me, some rejected me solely based on the nature of my eccentric 'citizenship'. Some laughed at my horrible knowledge of A lingo and some called me bloody B-lander. I did not understand why they would segregate me when I love A land so much, when I vouch by their food, music, traditions etc etc. B-log on the other hand did not speak to me much because I was not hanging out with them and not speaking B language enough. Well to add to this, I am a total recluse and mingle with only fellow weirdos. So my abilities to make new friends are similar to me eating a bitter gourd ( highly implausible, marginal, lilliputian and indigestible). This did not help with bridging gaps between A and B as I did not possess equal number of friends from both lands.( However, I was looked upon with kind and accepting eyes by the opposite sex from both the regions and needless to mention ,by no fault of my eternal beauty ,grace and total hotness. They just liked me!)

Fighting all the allegations of not knowing 'anything' about A land just because I was from B and not knowing their language and not having their 'ethics', I still made myself constantly believe that they just don't understand. I AM one of them. How could I not be?! I love the people and the place sometimes more than my own birth place. How could they keep putting me in the same group of some B-log who hate the place A just because it is hot and a tad bit conservative. I loved its heat and I loved all things conservative about this place! At the same time, when ever rarely, I could be made to feel as one of the Apeeps, I would be asked by them,how can Blog be so morally 'loose' and why is their English accent funny? How would I know?? I did not possess anything 'loose' and I for sure did not have any 'funny' accent! It was and it has been thus far, a constant fight of belonging-ness.

I officially do not belong to either A or B or any other alphabet in my nation because I realized that the boundaries set by people for others are sometimes so rigid that they are bounded forever in them, themselves. ( Its a boundary value problem, yes! my fellow mathematician geeks can be proud of me now ). I do not adhere to any set ideology of any particular place and I do not venture into issues that involve throwing stones at other cultures and making their own look like set in heaven.I do not believe in belonging to anywhere, to any language,to any culture anymore and I could not be happier with the truce inside of me.I guess, it is the right thing to do.

I remain stateless and identityless.

To sum it up even more and drive the point home, here's something that helps:

And underneath it all, there remained an ever-present anger and hurt, the feeling of belonging nowhere that comes to people who belong everywhere.

- White Teeth by Zadie Smith

PS : I will write a part 2 when I feel like it.

Hey....

Home is where you are
Somewhere close, not very far
I can touch your breath
I can feel your thoughts
We turn our home into mayhem
I lovingly indulge all your tantrums
You cover me with a blanket while I sleep
You read my mind when I am in dreams, deep
I hold your hand without the need
I smile to wipe all your tears clean
Sometimes you hum a melancholy song
I try miserably to right your wrong
Even then if sinks, your heart
I put on a brave face and laugh
To bring you out of your grief
Oh how blissfully, together we live
Then at times you knock at my soul
Asking if it needs some cuddling
And you wrap me in your arms
And keep still until the dawn
You say I am beautiful
Even when the kohl has run down
Cheeks are bloated and eyes distraught
I look up at you with curiosity
At your misplaced trust in my displaced looks
I find love and no other loops
So I make peace with your generosity
And we smile like the love struck fools
I make a stinky questionable omelet
You eat it with no eyebrows raised
I try to cheat in an argument
You let me win with no plea made
I go high on your laughter
You swell with pride at my achievements
We roll with glee at a bad joke
You like pepsi, I like coke
I fall face down and you take the blame
Minutes later you laugh at my state
I sneak up on you to tickle you
You behave like you have no clue
You act attentive even when I make a fool of myself
When you know inside, this one's making no sense
Oh how we play our little games
This journey has been only fun
You are the biggest clown and compares no one
You ponder at something with great intensity
I make fun of it in your vicinity
You get mad and hit me playfully
I cherish all this and hold onto it.
We fall down clutching our stomachs
At every lame dance move of mine
I imitate your speech, your laugh
You chase me on the grass
You hit me with mock force
I make fun of you a little more
You yell and not speak for full 5 seconds
I smile at such an adorable attempt.
And so home is where you are
Somewhere close, not very far
Someday I will see you again
Your untidy hair and faded blue shirt.
I will touch your breath
You will hear my pain
When we meet again
When we meet again.

First loves of my life

So many things happen in the course of time that I wonder if I start documenting each thing, I would never get to sleep! But at the same time I dont like not being able to remember those moments perfectly after a while when I really want to. So here are, a few things that I wanted to write about for sometime now.

Music: It happened to me at a very young age ( I am not old by the way :)). I appreciate music as much as I can and I am liberal to the point where I can listen to really cacophonous stuff once or twice and be glad at that. Sometimes really random music gets to my senses like nothing else.It takes me to clouds above clouds. Some music shakes my deepest core and brings tears in my eyes without even really feeling any agony or sadness. I am not talking about the tears at beauty of the music but what it invokes in me, or how it makes me empathize with the emotion felt there. I used to have the ability to listen to music and do other things simultaneously like studying for instance but now I feel at times, that its an insult to music.However, it sometimes can make you concentrate much more on what you are really doing.I like everything in music, beats,rhythm,lyrics,even slight timbers of instruments unheard at the first listen and slight embers of emotions not felt unless that song/instrumental piece is heard over and over.My biggest fear is ( not darkness,lizards or anything huge or minute) that I would not be able to find a song that I heard somewhere and whose artist or lyrics or anything is unknown to me or sometimes when even the tune fades away from my memory and it leaves me panicked and I worry and worry and pressurize my brain to find that treasured tune from some random corner of my brain so that at least I can hum it to someone to get the whereabouts of that song :)

Dance: I have never learnt dance in my life so far and its one of the biggest regrets of mine. I wish I could move and be flexible like all those agile dancers but no I cant do it. Its a goal that I would learn at least one dance forms before I go away from this world.However this does not mean that I don shake my legs now and then and other body parts too ;) I dance like a kid when ever I do, I dance like there is no tomorrow and with every possible shard of that solid energy that I have saved up in me for such occasions. It revives me, it brings me back to life and since I am a thinker, I live in my own world of agony, miseries and dreams so crazy dancing makes me feel real and a part of this mundane world, something I do to come out of my cocoon.There is nothing better than hours and hours of uninhibited and carefree dancing on numbers that I would not usually listen to on my ipod.

Bollywood/Hollywood: This happened to me even before I got into the two above mentioned things. Its a lifeline. No I am not a fanatic. I don't have favourite actors/actresses. I used to, as an adolescent.But something about movies and these people is unreal, something intangible and it infuriates me that I cant skin them to bring them/these to my sense of reality.I get obsessed with some of their lives and some of the movies and scenes. I have loved bollywood for well over 15 years now ( add a few tamil and telugu movies to this list too ). I dont try to dignify it by calling it hindi film industry. I like it the way I have always known it to be. I love their music, dance, exaggerated sense of emotions, drama and relationships ( barring some real crap) I absolutely loathe bad acting. I will discuss some other time what is good acting for me. But having been brought up with bollywood ( part of routine), has given me some sense of differentiating between good/bad acting hence this self proclaimed film critic attitude :) This movie world is one of the biggest sources of my entertainment. I feel closer to characters on shows/movies than I would feel to some of the people.I love it and would always, however much people call it time wasting or ask me to get a life!

Basketball: Pure adrenalin rush this is. Purest of pure forms of it, I have felt on a basketball court during matches and practice sessions. I would get up at 5, 4,3 only for this sport and drag my physical frame to the court for this love of my life.It has taught me so much! To never give up even when I am trailing like a real loser. To never stop helping your team mate however injured you are.To lead when all hope is gone of winning a match and play till the last drop of your sweat.I dont play as well as I appear to because of my love for this game but I play enough to keep playing it all my life. I can spend hours on a basketball court and not feel bored or tired. It fills me up with a sense of belonging and is another home. It does not require anything else but my loyalty and love for the sport played on it.

I have loved books too but I would dedicate whole another outpouring for them!These things have made me who I am and probably who I would be for years to come. I get filled up with hope in this hopeless world as I feel, I at least have these to back me even when people are gone.The best friends who do not expect anything in return. No apologies, no guilt,no sense of betrayal from them :) Just pure two way love!
Life is beautiful because of these.