Chandni Chowk

A man taking a moment to button his shirt.

Credit for the most breath-taking reference picture goes to Ankit. Yet again! I live my India through his pictures nowadays.
And I deserve a better camera too.

Lull

I wait for you,
My Love,
An emotionless terra nullius,
To leave a proud Him
And come back to me
To blow the smoke in my mouth again,
To beat the wrong drum beat,
To stroke my hair,
And sing with me.

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. 

कब

यूँ पूरा जीवन जी गए हम कि
एक छब्बीस साल के साये में बावन साल की प्रज्ञता समा गयी.
फिर,
मैं ख़त्म हो गयी 
और तुम भी ख़त्म हो गए. 

Bondhu!

Arre ailo na aamaar, praaner bondhu aamaar,

Oporaidhe shoilo
(Why didn't he come? My life, my friend. What was my crime?)

Aamaar bondhu kaino, aailo na

(My friend why, why didn't you come?)

Dhheu bhaange, barh bhaange re
Mono aamaar bhaange
(Waves break, floods break out, my heart breaks)

Dhheu bhaange, barh bhaange re,
Shaupono amaar bhaange

(Waves break, floods break out, my dreams shatter)

Aamaar bhanga hridoy
Jodaa laage
Tori taane re
(Your pull mends my broken heart)

Nodeer paani, chokher paani
Nodi hoiyaa buoy
(River's water, eyes' water, flows like a river)
Arre ei nodi tui
Dekhli aeto
Chokhe dhoira naae
(You have seen enough of the river and the eyes but you still can't behold it in your eyes)

Tor khonjete, paagol hoilaam
Tor praane te praan
(I lose myself in my search for you, in your life is mine)
Aashaar khoonti te
Baindhha aamaar naao
(To your knot of hope is my boat tied).

Lyrics: Indian Ocean

Translation: Siddharth Talapatra.

Being a Hindi speaker, Bengali is not too hard to understand, but a lot is lost in translating it to English. 

How I love the song? And how I love the band? And how I love the times I heard it live in concert, sometimes solitary and sometimes with the dear ones? New York, Alexandria, Berkeley. And, how I loved Asheem!
(Download it from http://www.indianoceanmusic.com/)

M

My dream analyzer,
My word beader,
You shined like a thousand lambent moons and
Glowed my pupils into oblivion.
How do I even begin to console you,
My calm one,
When all I do is get angrier!

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.