what I did on my winter vacation

The new year is for beginnings. For fresh starts. For resolutions.

And in my case, it usually involves a new city.

(“But not this time...” she crowed rubbing her hands gleefully. “We can’t have that,” frowned the grumbling gods, loathe to have anyone gleeful in their purview. “Let’s see… how can we shake things up a bit,” they said, still collectively, thumbing through their little notebook of keeda-work past. And far below at a terrace apartment in Versova, a phone rang. “Hello?” answered the still unsuspecting hand rubber.)

So, we had to move.

Not out of Mumbai, but to a different flat, different neighbourhood. Cartons, trunks, trucks, missing brass lamps, rediscovered books… new connections of gas and phone, changed address for bank and cell… same old, same old.

But things are now tackled with determination and vigour. All part of the resolve of the new year.

Will not live like a hermit – will go out and meet the neighbours. Will not live like a hermit, will watch movies at a theatre. Will not live like a hermit, will go out with friends more often. Will not live like hermit, will go to plays and rock shows. And now that the new net connection is up and running, will not live like a hermit, will blog more often. Or is that more part of the living like a hermit-thing…?

We’ve been here 17 days. Hopefully we’ll last out the year. What’s that rumbling noise… sounds like laughing gods.

And oh, happy birthday to me.

Separate Lives

Funny thing, memory.

Your most profound experience, one that you were convinced will always be as vivid when recalled, somehow isn't.

This moment, and all its life-changing significance, begins to erode. Before you know it, this definitive moment is clubbed in with the comparatively ho-hum moments of 'back then', or more likely, 'in the beginning'. Because it did change your life.

But memory can sometimes be merciful. It allows a flash occasionally, an out of the blue jolt (see comments) not just of the event, but of your feelings when it happened. It's true, the 'what' of the event you never forget. But the sense of its enormity is lost; unless you write about it.

****

Sitting at the balcony of my parents' house. Home.

the dark foliage of the gulmohar tree near the gate and and the gently rumbling traffic beyond were soothing in the afternoon sun. The chocolate brown recliner angled just so, a juicy novel ready to dive into and a tall glass of juice to occasionally sip. mmmmmm. sometimes life can be so... just right.

Just slightly run down, the feeling was like towards the end of a bout of 'flu, but with way more cosseting by the world at large. This is the life, I thought. Being pregnant is no big deal at all. the bump made a comfy shelf to balance the book...

When suddenly it moved.

The shelf.

My belly. My midriff. My torso.

Of its own accord.

An unidentifiable potrusion poked around, making an extra lump on the already swollen tummy.

And moved right across to the other side.

And I'm still on the chair, traffic, drink and book all forgotten, shocked out of my wits.

I'd felt mild kicking till then, and watched the bump grow, but this... this...

Remember Sigourney Weaver in Alien? When the creature tears out of her chest one arm at a time?

Yeah, "It's aliiiiiive!"

Then suddenly, it stopped.

My stomach went back to the calm stillness of before. like nothing had ever happened.

Leaving me with the realisation that I would never be alone again.

That it isn't about me anymore.

That nothing in my life would really go back to the way it was.

All facts that are obvious truths about my life today, but only vaguely conjectured till then.

And reinforced at the sonogram taken the next day - little n playing
air guitar, having his own little party for one.

what's on TV... on tv... on tv

The young lad, yesterday, had a phone conversation with his current favourite person on TV. Without considering it at all unusual to have that kind of access.

How different would life have been if I could have casually picked up the phone and chatted with Captain Kirk... suggesting alternate plotlines and inviting him over to visit. (On second thought, scratch idea 2!)

The plan, the boy revealed later, was to talk Vrajesh into joining the best TV show in the world.

The little fixer.

Is the difference in how TV shows today are made? He feels totally involved in the process, the characters talking directly to him. Rather than as an outsider looking in, as I did with Giant Robot and Star Trek.

Then again, it's probably because of having a dad who can, in fact, pick up a phone to... [got to top]

i found a photograph.

of a young woman.
the wind in her hair
a sparkle in her eyes
a challenge in the tilt of her chin.

i found a photograph.

of a girl
with her jeans rolled up to her knees
the best of her life ahead of her
when the world was hers for the asking

i found the photograph

of her moment in time

bet she didn't know
that this
was as good as it got.

and all there is to show for it
is
this
photograph.

Domestic Goddess

she finished up the last of her now-cold coffee, folded away the morning paper, and surveyed the scene around her with a critical eye.

"... overflowing laundry basket to the washing machine, breakfast debris to the kitchen sink, dinky cars and trucks back into the toy tub..."

And with a wry twist to her lips admitted that today too was not the day she discovered her telekinetic powers. Or a Mary Poppinsy finger-snap technique.

Dragging the dirty clothes hamper across the room, she paused.

"No, don't eat that play-doh apple ... it's still play-doh. Things don't change into something they're not..."

And along the way she put on her new toy. And the ipod began to shuffle with her.

Her back straightened up. the baggy track pants felt just a tad snugger and lower on the hips; the warm sunlight on her shoulders made her faded vest feel fashionably so.

she shuffled her way through oasis and evanescence. through fleetwood mac and the goo goo dolls. through clearing the table and the living room too. with not quite a spring in her step, but a definite roll to the hips. since no-one was looking anyway.

except for a really a cute looking kid on the carpet playing his new game - putting toys back in the tub.


I don't want the world to see me
coz i don't think that they'd understand
when everythings made to be broken
i just want you to know who i am.

I emotionally detach long before I physically have to.

I lose interest in the place people and issues around me as soon as the packing plans begin.

I was impatient having to sit with my Cathedral school best friend when she came home to say bye before I left Bombay.

DM, wherever you are, I apologise for the Std IV me.

sequel from real life

We're not moving.

Thought I'd be happier.

What is it when you are so quick to adapt to a new way of life that reverting to the old way (it's still the current way, mind) seems like being wrenched away from the familiar...

story from real-life

It's time. Time I brought this blog up-to-date with day to day goings-on.

When I'm not revelling in make believe with Shantaram on a Red Carpet pondering a Paheli about A Good Death, the world around me is in a state of flux. Again.

M has been travelling the world, stopping in for occassional weekends. And announcing in passing that we're going to be working out of Delhi. Again.

It's been 11 months in Bombay. Less than a year in this house. In this neighbourhood. Aaaaargh.

We're wading through classfied ad sections of Delhi newspapers. Calling property agents. Drawing up lists of stuff I want to sell right here so as to not cart it across the country. Again. Like I said, Aaaargh.

Bangalore dreams

To my mind, one of the most endearing (and enduring, perhaps) qualities of Bangalore and Bangaloreans is our perception of ourselves and our city as being laid back and intellectual.

With all the time in the world to get into intense philosophical and political debate at park benches and coffee houses. That the only reason we're not there right now but instead navigating through gridlock and a corporate career is a mere temporary, personal setback; and that soon, we will have earned enough to retire just rich enough to go back to that - sipping gently cooling cups of coffee contemplating the ever flattening world ...

The reality is that the city is moving so fast that each generation of Bangaloreans has a vision of the city different from not just their parents, but even their elder siblings. The city is changing, developing at a break-neck pace. So of course each new generation thinks they discovered Bangalore all by themselves, created it even.

What makes Bangalore special is that all these historic aspects of the city are vibrant and dynamic parts of the city still, not silent monuments.

The original little trading hamlets of Kempe Gowda's time - Balepet, Cottonpet and Chickpet - are still the places to go for the best deals. The palaces and parks of Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan like Lal Bagh are still favoured family picnic spots. The Cantonement is in use by the Indian Army, while other colonial era buildings like St Mark's Cathedral are very much in use.

Banglaore has been a generous and welcoming host to such a diverse range of people, most of us succumb to her charm and call ourselves Bangalorean, regardless of where we lived before.

Shantaram

Does everyone have a private theory of how the world works? Not so much how human society networks, but how the universe as a whole functions.

Shantaram’s theory is one of a constant movement towards complexity, to a higher level from where it currently stands. Right from the cosmic soup that slowly transforms into a universe, to amoebae evolving eventually into Einstein. So, his theory goes, everything that contributes toward this trend is the fundamental definition of good, and anything that constitutes a step back is then ‘bad’. A complex code of morality that the Bombay mafia Don teaches this firang drug peddler and all-round fixer, Shantaram.

So they run ethical circles around each other, not to mention guns and forged passports, rationalising gangland killing without justifying it. Killing is always the wrong thing to do, the Don says, but it can be for the right reasons. That still doesn’t make it the right thing to do, so it’s important to acknowledge the wrongness while pulling the trigger, or twisting the garrotte as the case may be. Hmmm…

The books I like, what I call good books, are those whose narrators’ characteristics I can relate to. Whose attitudes and opinions either reflect mine or are so diametrically opposed they give a fresh perspective to the world as we know it. Shantaram was one such. The book made me feel like a foreigner in my own country. The level of familiarity he achieves with so many of the people he meets shocked my reticent soul.

But as I delved deeper, I realised there was also a lot we shared. I too immerse myself in other people’s lives adopting their causes as my own without revealing my own past and affiliations. I too devote myself not so much to the cause itself, as much to the people. It is these people who fire up my enthusiasm and my imagination, but once their participation is withdrawn, I doubt that I’d continue along that path on my own steam without them.

In fact I know I don’t. Case in point - AIESEC. Super fun time. Also felt like an important thing to do. Socially responsible projects and programmes, awakening the youth and what have you. Budgets, time plans, AGMs, politics, esprit de corps. End of EB term, the core group moved on. And so did I. Followed them to MBA prep classes, in fact. Did the CAT, got through to group discussions and interviews, as did they. And still completely disinterested in a corporate life. Actively disliking it, actually. What was I thinking? Hard to say, from here. All I know is that it was the most miserable two years of my ‘professional’ life.

So stands to reason, in the cosmic balance of things, my personal life was going swimmingly.

I found M. In the whole world there was just him and me. A decision, an affiliation, a cause that was entirely my own. Not going with the flow. Not a ‘sure, why not’ kind of camaraderie. My one and only conscious decision. And true to form I told no one. Didn’t keep it secret, just chose not to mention it. And no one asked.

In pretty much the first chapter, Shantaram falls deeply in love. With a woman he knows only as Carla. And I recoiled again in shock. How can you possibly claim to love someone without knowing anything about them? Carla and he talk about life and people and the world. He’s so busy not revealing his past; he doesn’t notice she hasn’t let slip anything of her life either. Past relationships, childhood, family, old friends… the signposts of our life thus far reveal so much they seem to obscure who we are now and who we’re trying to become.

The disbelief prompted honesty. How much had I really known at that stage? Sure the details were mine for the asking, and the blanks were eventually filled. But truth is that the allegiance was pledged way before any of that. Way before any future seemed likely. (and it seemed pretty unlikely at the time).

In fact, for a time, this future seemed unlikely enough to call the whole thing off. Doesn’t change the fact that I knew this was the love of my life. Seemed beside the point at the time. Seemed important to do the wrong thing for the right reasons. And I acknowledged that. And I was told to stop being stupid. So I did.

And that was my step towards complexity.