डर

जब ना डर हो और ना कोई आकांक्षा,

और स्वप्न हो गए हों खाली.

जब हो इतने स्वतंत्र,

रहे केवल अब और आज.

उस पल की आकांक्षा में, स्वतंत्रता में, रहेगा यह मन तब तक

इस डर के बंधन में.

(When there exist no fear and no hope,

And the dreams are all empty.

When there is absolute freedom,

And just a now, not past nor future.

In the hope of that moment and that freedom, I shall remain

Fearful.)

Wasabi, not Guac!

Context: Running through the living room, getting late, combing my hair, swinging my faux Aarti thaali in front of Dad for money. Him laughing.

Mom: "Where do you think you are going in your torn jeans and bathrobe lookalike shirt?"

Me: "Movies with friends."

Mom: "Don't we get you nice clothes? Can't you act lady-like EVER?"

Me: "YOU should know better than to ask that. Besides this was an acid accident in the lab. I don't hide my bruises, why my bruised jeans then. You should have seen Ankit's shirt when acid spilled over. It had tiny holes all over"

Mom: "Uff.. Atleast, this is better than your neck piercing. Is this why we sent you to a convent school?"

Me: "Why exactly did you send me to an all-girls Catholic school?"

Mom: "It is a good school and not far away."

Or that is what my mother said. I argued they had different intentions though. 

1. Keep the boys away from me
2. Be able to start a matrimonial advert, if it ever got to that, with "Fair, convent-educated, Punjabi girl..." 

The pursuit of either of these ends has been pretty abortive till date. 

Perfect timing for plan-change. My younger sister (referred to henceforth as MS) who was going to drive me (because that is another thing I do not know) decided to make a pit-stop at our old school. She likes going there to meet up with teachers, unlike I, who showed up there after 5 years of leaving. Come on. I was there for 13 years. THIRTEEN frikkin years. I was there for cursive writing, through summery pink tunics and white skirts, wintry red blazers, with long well-oiled plaits that hung below the hips, for Mental Math, stories of Adam and Eve and of Our Saviour.  I called the teachers "Miss", was duly scared of Mrs. D'Souza who would call us "Junglees from the fish-market" if we created ruckus, participated in prayers that took place four times in 6 hours (much to the dismay of my grandmother who would get a shock every time I started my prayer at a pooja at home with "Our father, thou art in heaven". "Why do you not know any good Hindu mantras? Why only Angrezi mantras?" But, I digress..). That was how it was. Nuns were nuns, teaching us docile girls to be seen before we were heard, and using base verbs with our dids/didn'ts. Teachers came in all kinds of packages- nice, sarcastic, helping, or just plain bad at teaching, standing akimbo while kids ran amok. I had had enough. 

First teacher to meet at the gate- Mrs. George. She hugs MS, asks her welfare, while I shuffle restlessly trying to stand with one leg covering the other one with the acid tear. Horrors of having to open hems of our short skirts at the entrance of our school suddenly came alive again. But, that was not for long. A protest happened (the reason of which eludes me now), became political, and caused enough grief to our school administrators to punish us by changing our uniforms to salwar-kurta. The punishment had to be tantamount to the offence. We got the ugliest new uniforms. They were not just a fashion-disaster, but also climatically wrong (too hot in summer, too cold in winter). My more fashion-conscious heart would go out to the 13 year old me, except I know she did not bother so much about it. 

Mrs. George asks MS about me. I am still here. Nope. No sign of recognition. "So you do not recognize me out of my school-uniform?" But, that was not it. I just was not an impression-making kid. I read during the lunch-break, stayed away from trouble, kept quiet, was not even class-monitor material. In all, a boring kid that gets good marks and is remembered as "the girl who gets highest in English/Hindi". Not by name nor, sadly enough, even by "the girl who gets highest in Math". College saw me with a different struggle of trying to be anonymous in front of professors. Well, I made an impression on Mrs. George now. 

I have grown up since then, from a quiet, shy girl to a person with strong "dislikes". I am taller, hair is shorter. I have a couple of degrees and do my own taxes. Still wear the tunics though. Matrimonial ad is yet to come and the boys need to leave for that. Wiser? I don't know. But, myths have been broken.

1. There are Indians other than me who do not like mangoes. And we have all been disowned by our beloved fellow countrymen. But, they are rather cloyingly sweet and...Ahh, nevermind.
2. Fantastic, long-distance relationships do not last. Conversely, neither do bad, close vicinity relationships.
3. There is a world of make-up beyond the red sindoor bindi mom wears.
4. Just because people preach integrity does not mean they practice it too. In-the-face immorality is more acceptable to me over fake, vacillating sincerity.
5. Hypnosis does not shrink a butt. Especially if someone else tells it in a loving, but firm, voice to stay as it is. All you get is a confused butt.
6. Benefit of doubt is a finite resource. 

Je ne comprends pas!

I am too clean a hippy, 

Too free-spirited for the free-market.

A simple girl with a messy history,

A twisted girl with good upbringing?

Too sane for the crazy, 

Too crazy for the sane. 

Non comformist, non-belonger?

Or just a pretender trying to survive the world?

Isn't it ironic?

It is, when your CPR instructor asks you to keep up the compressions' frequency to the beat of "Another one bites the dust" and suggests you sing it inside your head while giving them. Think I might want to stick with "Staying alive". That works as well.

Bits of orphaned love-lives!

Billboards all around say San Francisco is a city of characters. So it is no wonder I met her here too. In her colorful kaftans, and beads and quirky glasses she looked like a quintessential San Franciscan "character". I was smitten. I also like to romanticize all things old school and her typewriter sound from the window across was no exception. I had seen her quite a few times already in the elevator with those brilliant, wise, well-traveled eyes while she dragged her grocery cart. Old-age did not seem to have caught up with her eyes yet. We met in the laundry-room and I pretended to be AY. No one was supposed to know I lived there too. She was cheerful and very inclined to talk and while I usually am a little wary of strangers coming and talking to me (Yes, it happens a lot. And I, more often than not, end up being an agony aunt. I think I am way too shy for it still), I was very eager to listen this time. So out came the story of a woman who had lived in the same apartment for 35 years yet had traveled across all continents. A freelance writer with a noisy typewriter, she was. And then the conversation started to include me. "Are you married?". No, I said. "Ah, I never married. My man lived a couple of blocks down. We were together for 25 years." (My thoughts then : "Dude, that is brilliant. Who does that? To be with someone for so long without the entire marriage tie-up. So, you actually WANTED to be with him?") "Then?"-I asked. "Then. Then, he got Alzheimer's. I brought him here. He died 2 years ago. He did not remember me by the end. He did not even remember himself." I was surely not expecting this between the tales of travels to mythical lands. I was shocked. Then I wanted to kick myself. ("How? How the hell did this happen again? I have enough woes in my own life right now") But, she seemed unfazed relating it all. She, in fact, appeared very happy talking about him, seemingly still in love with him, the good times and probably even the bad ones. I pushed the buttons on the washer and climbed six flights of stairs in a daze, still pretending to be someone else on a weekday holiday doing my laundry.

I cried intermittently the entire day. Not because I was sad for her. Not because I was sad for her man. I seldom cry when I am sad. I am yet to cry for S, though the nightmares of taking that last breath under water still haunt me after four years. I cried in despair, envious of her luxury of the last moments spent with him. She foresaw and she was prepared.

How blessed are those who know what their last moments together would be? You mostly do not even get to know till it is all over and look back to find only a void in your own memory. How would you ever cherish it then? All the time we spend blaming moments of weakness, other people, distance, differences in culture/religion/age, in lieu of that, we are scared to admit that we were just not strong enough to fight hard for it, that we made a conscious choice to let go, that we judged it less important than other things on our own. So why make excuses then? Why not? Even something as great as death does that. It makes excuses of disease, accidents, willingness to take your own life. But then, how many times do you meet someone you actually like (in my case, even bear) and more so want to spend your life with? To let go and not own up for such extraneous banalities that pretty much everyone in the world has exhausted over and over again is plain cowardice. Intrinsic nuances, for the sake of it, are at least more interesting reasons for relationship deaths. "She is a bitch. He is a bitch" seems like a relatively better argument. After all how can you be yourself if you are constantly scared of a negative reaction? Incompatibility of temperaments, lack of love, disdainful cursing provide for some valid causes of these lamentations and definitely make up more occupying stories. Yep. Till, obviously, you do not interrupt me during my cigarette break and start talking to me about it. 

42?

It was recently brought to my attention that identity and questions of the like "Who am I and the meaning of it all?" hold a special place amongst existential conundrums. Not that prior to now I could not have fathomed most of the humanity being tortured by this elusive, mystical riddle. I am and have been completely aware that this is a very prevalent and legitimate question people ask themselves, probably with more frequency than highway travelers ask for restroom directions from 7-Eleven employees. Even the Paranoid Android has devoted much maniacal moroseness to the subjects of tantamount enigma. This time, though, it encompassed an allusion to a dear friend which led me to believe that I must be nuts to have gone so long without falling prey to my own bitch of a brain's manipulations regarding the meaning of it all.  This could be because I stopped listening to that little inside voice long back. (Now that I think of it, it explains a lot more). So I decided to pay my dues. 

Beyond the obvious address of name that my parents gave me, I have been called many other things. Some good, some bad, sometimes both by the same people (One person is doing that right now a few miles away. Yes, I know. You, be very afraid of the memory of my big eyes and soon-too-follow cold shoulder). Going further though, who?what?where? transcended from midnight gossip sessions to an uncomfortable, as-per-convenience self-interrogation. While I have mostly thought of myself as just a bona fide anxious coffee-drinker and a pure carnivore (till recently, when I decided to give vegetarianism a go), I have in the past year also been labelled cow-belt wandering Hindi speaker, a psycho, way-too-free a spirit, yadda yadda yadda. So I summarized the answers to some aforementioned FAQs to:

• Hindi
• Hindu
• Punjabi/Garhwali
• New Delhi, India (I like writing answers in points just like Mrs. George taught us)

THIS, apparently, is supposed to define me now. WTF!(Mrs. George said this was a bad thing to say). My dad and sister talk to each other in FRENCH. Frikkin French (Mrs. George is very pissed now). 

Ma has to coerce me to shower early on festivals (Sarees, I wear on my own to look pretty). I listen to her and do all of it now just because it is easier than arguing against the ritualistic bunkum. I have spent good six years of my precious teenage arguing, when I could have learned more profanities and faster. It was exhausting. And still my mom mutters the Gayatri Mantra under her breath while cooking. Apparently small intestines have an ability to digest blessings as well (okay, I agree, that is just sweet of her). 

And don't even get me started on that half-n-half thing that I am. Don't know any of the languages. Don't know one's culture and don't care for the other's. Even the Hindi-speaker labeler speaks better Punjabi than I do while teasing me for all that I am (or am supposedly defined by). I need my Garhwali Ma to interpret things while conversing with my Punjabi grandmother. Ain't that sad? 

New Delhi? Dilli. Dilli of big roads and manicured lawns, of Metro-rides and crazy traffic, of sweltering heat and freezing cold. I love Dilli for all that. But, I love it most for the food. But then, any good food would make me a turncoat and change loyalties. I do not even need 30 pieces of silver. (I wish food was a nation right now). Anyway, no one outside India is ever particularly interested in knowing what part I am from. Just India suffices. Always. Errr. Almost always.Yeah, I do meet a couple of people here and there who ask "Are you from Gujarat?" or "Do you speak Hindi or Tamil?". This is more out of equating all Indians to that one you know better, just like every time I meet someone from Iran I go "Oh, I have a Persian friend. She runs Marathons. You do too?". You get the drift?

So while this turned out to be a good exercise in moot-point making, I remain as blithely cavalier about my non-existent identity as always. I have been very mutable and will keep evolving, just like I hear the apes did. I can be yours. I can be you. But, I speak only in capacity. In reality, I would neither be of you nor you. I would rather be nothing.

11/01 8:36 am Pacific Time

चाह से जेब अभी भी उतनी ही भरी है जितनी सालों पहले थी.
निराशाओं से खेलते-खेलते हाथ इतना सूज गया है कि जेब में घुसता ही नहीं है.

Inters(j)ections

Walking across a street in Delhi is an ordeal. Bonne chance if you appear on the other side alive. People give you dirty stares if you land in front of their car and they have to stop for you, almost like they are doing you a favor. And you give a dirty stare back. In this country, on the other hand, people stop, wait for you to cross the road, and sometimes even pass on a smile. Freaky, eh? Funnily enough, I hate crossing roads here. It seems equivalent to performing for an audience who stands at the traffic signal, looking through the windscreens like you are on the television, measuring you up and waiting for that trip and fall. Uber entertaining an act, if I may say so myself. Like Jo from Little Women, I never know what to do with my limbs either, or even my face. Do you walk slow, fast, look down, look unaware?

In my city, people have no time for any of that. They jostle on their way to work or back or just anywhere. Everyone is more concerned about whether they are are going to be late for their appointments, if the other car is going to manage to swerve and miss the red light while they remain stuck in the synchronized pattern henceforth, or if the kids would still be awake by the time they do reach home. I know that a moment after I get the dirty stare from the unfortunate person who had to stop his car for me to cross the road, he will forget me. He does not give me more thought than he would to paramecium. And THAT is the most comforting thing about the dizziness-inducing, disillusion-fostering crowds of "Dilli", where everybody is a nobody and anonymity is so under-rated.  I miss it.