One too many mornings.

2009-05-02T00:26:00.001-07:00

Musings....

2009-05-02T00:26:00.000-07:00

The new Amul Macho ad that is being aired in between IPL matches caught my attention the other day. Well, yes the IPL fever has invaded my home too in the figure of my father and brother, two maniacal fans of the Mumbai Indians and has left me indignated in more ways than one. Firstly, because I do support KKR (or the Kolkata part of it to be more precise) and as a result I have been left alone to lick my wounds but more importantly because the sudden comradeship between my father and my brother has a stinking male exclusivity about it that gets on my nerves. I have ganged up with my unsuspecting mother (poor woman, I have poisoned her mind) and wrecked havoc on my dad’s and bro’s gastronomical delights and I’m praying very hard that Mumbai will not make it to the semis.

But to return to the Amul Macho ad, I did not know whether to laugh or cry at it. For those of you who have not seen it, the advertisement begins with three scenes showing how confident women have become and how that has ‘victimised’ men. The first scene shows a young man shrinking away from holding the same handle in a moving bus as a woman about the same age as he. She holds on to the piece unflinchingly and the man shies away. The second scene shows a man hitching a ride on a woman’s scooter and feeling uncomfortable when a sudden brake causes him to fall on her. She is, however, unbothered and it is the man who tries to move away and places his briefcase between them. The third scene, and this is the more stereotypical one, shows a skinny pyjama kurta wearing man bringing in the food tray with a very demure expression while a aggressive looking woman, presumable his wife-to-be totally checks him out. These done, a battered and briddhosto man runs to a temple on a stormy night and falls on his feet asking for God’s help. An Amul Macho vest falls infront of him and as soon as he wears it he is able to stand self-confident and strong. He leaves the temple premises and returns to three leather wearing ‘macho’ women and as he nears them, he teases them and for a change they shrink from his touch. The transgressive women are successfully put back into their places and the day is saved.

The advertisement betrays the anxiety that is caused as more and more women start taking up roles that have traditionally been male. What should then happen to men? Would they then be relegated to the marginal position that women occupied in traditional society? The makers of the ad seems to suggest that this will be the case but fortunately the calamity can be avoided if men wear Amul Macho as that would turn him into a real man who is able to tame the new generation of women. What is interesting is that the ad portrays three very true to life situations, only with the gender roles reserved. Every woman who travels in crowded buses and trains has had to face men who keep repeating antics like placing their hand over yours on the handle or falling on you under the slightest pretext. And this is also what is objectionable about the advertisement because it sends the message that these things are acceptable and it is the normal outcome of the roles assigned to men and women in a normal society. If women are empowered enough to do the same things to men, that is abnormal and things have to be put right. It is ridiculous, the assumption, that men have to wear a particular shando ganji in order to hold on to their concept of manhood.

While the Amul Macho ad is a laughable attempt at defining masculinity in the changing times, a billboard off the Sukanta Setu advertising some liquor brand is a pretty interesting one. A very middle-class stereotype of a young man is portrayed and he declares that he is a responsible Indian with time for both his parents and society (we are to presume he’s a bachelor). But that he’s advertising alcohol logically suggests that he also drinks. What sets him apart is that he is also a useful member of society. He is the ‘Ram’ of Bornoporichoy je thik shomoy pora koriya ashe abong ma baba ke dukho day na. It is intriguing how the conception of the “good boy” is changing as the middle class starts getting richer. The splurging on alcohol, a notion that has always been associated with the moneyed elite or the poisha wala baper bokha chele is suddenly acceptable. Aajkal to mota moti shobi chole! But needless to say there are skeptics (like my poor jethu who frowns and starts grumbling every time he sees a long line infront of the only liquor shop in our town).

But what should be really interesting is that if it would be a salwar kameez clad woman up on the billboard declaring those exact same things and we would have a bra or a pink panty ad in the lines of the Amul Macho advertisement. The temple, then, would obviously belong to a Devi Mata.

The Sleepers

2009-03-08T00:13:00.000-08:00

It was another night of the maddening summer breeze, the smoky moon, the crazy rhymes, and the music but tomorrow she was leaving. One night, just one night was all that was left and it was ironic that she was a nocturnal creature. The darkness always did something to her. She couldn’t explain what but it was something like having five shots of vodka all at once. She felt light headed. Her tolerance level was pretty low. She always got too emotional when she drank and she couldn’t afford to get emotional tonight. On nights like this one had to think straight.
The long winding roads, the grassy patches and the shady trees, they were all haunted. There were creatures there forever lurking in the shadows. She had often met them on her daily rendezvous. They followed her, watched her but seldom spoke. And that silence was like a trap. But tonight she pretended that no one was watching, she wanted to think and for that she needed to be alone.
There was a man of course. Her life wasn’t above the wishy-washy sob story. He was her muse. She always laughed at the idea. He was no goddess or god for that matter, just a poor man with airs and a bad poet. But she knew he’d beg to differ. He’d say she was his muse and that the word described her better than it did him. But words had a dangerous way of being biased. Language after all was a medium of the powerful. But did that mean he was superior to her? She never bothered to find out.
It sufficed that she felt he was being ridiculous when he called her his muse. For muses were not supposed to answer. And she always answered all the bad rhymes he dedicated to her with other bad rhymes. He never said anything but she supposed he didn’t like it. Sometimes she thought he too was like those creatures that lurked behind shadows and never spoke. They both had a way of beating her down with silence.
But it was just one night, one more night of performing the masquerade. It was strange that she had begun to enjoy it. There was a weird thrill in the pretence, in trying to guess the truth and the disappointment. Sometimes she almost hated him. Tonight she wanted to dance and hope that the rhythm would purge her. She swayed to the long winding roads, the grassy patches, the shady trees and the haunting. May be there was an escape from it all, she didn’t know when or how but tomorrow she was leaving.

2009-02-27T09:53:00.000-08:00

I am sure there will be countless people who’ll hurl stones at me for saying this but I am loving the weather! Although it should technically be spring it feels like early summer and the first few days of any new season is exciting. Any change of weather is novel for that matter, the air feels different and even light changes its color. I often notice how sunlight changes from one season to another such that the there is something different in the quality of light. May be the summer heat makes air lighter so that things look different or may be it is all in my head. Anyway, to return to what I was saying the weather has been wonderful, the evenings seem magical this time of the year. So I have been haunting the little grassy patch beside the jhil enjoying the evening breeze till the mosquitoes drove me out. And there have been no other side effects to my guilty pleasure apart from a runny nose and severe lack of concentration in face of the enemy (I’m talking about the consecutive tests).

It was on one such wonderful evening this week that I was walking home exasperated at the idea that the road next to the 8B bus stand had not only been turned into auto/cab/rickshaw stand all at once, but it had also become a place to hold political rallies and pandals and that on that particular day the platform erected to celebrate Shiv Ratri was blocking more than half of the road. Whoever cared for normal working individuals who risk hand and foot everyday while trying to cross the road here? Now, I will accept that I am one of those people who are particularly bad at crossing busy roads but on that day I wasn’t so much as trying. I was simply standing on one side watching all the commotion around me when suddenly out of nowhere this auto dashes past and misses me by the fraction of a second during which I had managed to literally jump back. I knew then that this was not the first and most definitely not the last encounter I was going to have with autos. And I was right. I saw an auto overturn today morning. Among the injured was an elderly woman whose leg had been completely squashed. Needless to say I was horrified and especially because I had an exam to write afterwards. A few months earlier my cousin sister had been injured in a similar accident that grounded her for eight weeks. I seriously hope the woman I saw today recovers fast. At this rate I am amazed that we have all not managed to get ourselves run over by now.

Ahhhh!!!!

2009-02-14T02:24:00.000-08:00

I have a lovely kat ful gach next to my window. It is one of those prolific varieties that yield hundreds of red flowers all spring and summer. Winter chills all its leaves and flowers away. But today this skeleton tree bore its first blossom. I was kind of surprised cause its still too early but then the I thought that it probably wanted to dress up too. You can’t blame the poor tree with all the Valentine’s Day propaganda everywhere. The “day of love” becomes an excuse and a convenient one too, to sell cards, chocolates, bouquets and jewellery. No wonder my little tree was getting insecure.
I remember when I was in school. There was this girl I loved like a sister till our suburban hearts drifted in the city crowds and was lost forever. She always made it a point to gather as many wild flowers as she could on her way to school every Valentine’s Day so that we could spend the rest of the day finding names for them. I’m sure the flowers had their names listed in botany books but those were really unromantic scientific names not befitting any object of beauty. She always asserted that it was a shame that no one cared for these pretty objects just because they abounded by themselves. We named them and pretended that this made them less neglected. I know now how ridiculous the ritual was but we didn’t care. We cared for a stupid flower limping beside some dirty drain and that must have meant something. At least we hoped it did.
But as I grow older I find myself less inclined to leave things to hope. A friend told me the other day that I am too emotional and trusting. She was angry that I had managed to break my heart again. She said she didn’t trust anyone and that atleast saved the tears from executing their office at such alarming regularity. I try not to care about the little starved pup huddled against the cold wall of an air-conditioned restaurant. Does that mean something? Anything? I suppose dogs are better. They don’t break your trust. But my bokha kukur who thinks of himself as the master of the house and refuses to go to bed without comfortable pillow and a soft blanket, in a sudden display of animal instincts bit my brother. But then he treated it as a breach of trust and has not left Roni’s side since. Further more as an act of penitence he’s foregoing the pillow and sleeping curled up in one corner of Roni’s bed. Like a dog!!
That I’m sure means something.
But its Valentine’s Day and a bloke just passed my window howling a Fossils song at the top of his lungs. See if you can’t beat them then stop seeing them. So just when I realized that this Valentine’s Day frenzy was getting to my head, I switched myself off. That wasn’t difficult. Meanwhile, my darling boyfriend has overslept again. I’m glad some things remain the same even if this is “a day you show the people you love just how much you love them”.
Kancha thank you!

The Woman

2009-01-10T23:29:00.000-08:00

It was going to be another warm winter, the sun glaring in through the train window was still quite oppressive and the heavy wind blowing in still enjoyable. I sat looking outside the window at the passing trees, the flowing walls plastered with cowdung and the railtracks, the railtracks playing a game of meeting and parting endlessly, going on and on to what appeared to be the ends of the earth. It seemed as if they were like life itself, pulsating, beating and sometimes a little rusted. Thomas Hardy had once famously introduced the railway as an alien disturbance destroying the pastoral landscape. But here far away from the epicenter of the modern world, far away from Hardy’s native lands, on the third worldly fringes, in this humid country were soft people ate rice and talked in lyrical tongues, the railway too like so many other alien things had been internalized. The stretches of green interspersing individual tracks looked like they had always been there and the little marshes and ponds lying just beside the railtracks seemed as much a part of the Indian railway services as the electric posts and signals.
The bogie swayed to and fro to the lull of the lazy afternoon. Most of the men in the compartment were sleeping, arms folded across their chests and heads hanging precariously in mid-air. Few others were playing cards. A young couple, probably students, were chatting away at the other window. Suddenly a hawker who had been standing near the gate furiously started scolding the old woman standing next to him. I always thought of hawkers as a nuisance. No civilized country would allow vendors, that too in such alarming numbers on trains. This man, I saw, was scolding the woman for not carrying water.
“I don’t understand you people. How stupid can you be? How can you come on such a long journey with a child and not carry water?”
It was at this point that I noticed the small boy beside the woman. He had just finished vomiting and was now standing shakily clutching on to the woman looking bewildered. They both looked like they hadn’t had a bath in three days. The old woman, presumably his grandmother was fussing as she had no water about her. I watched her as she wiped his mouth with the end of her saree and started stroking his head, softly throwing various terms of endearment at him. The concern with which she tended to him touched me. It seemed almost as if she believed that her affectionate fondles would make the boy feel better. Call me old fashioned but I believe that women should possess a certain degree of feminine virtues like softness, love and care, values that have been cherished by generations before us and which I am sad to say the modern generation of jeans clad uber confident aggressive career women completely lack. But this woman, this pauper, with probably not an ounce of culture in her possession was so akin to the Mohini Raja Ravi Verma had pictured. To love should be inherent in a woman’s nature but this dirty woman in the shabby train compartment was so different from Mohini with her cascading mass of black hair smiling as she swung to and fro for eternity. But a woman is an embodiment of nature and nature is never touched by money, class or creed. Why was it then so surprising that this poor old woman could be a representative of the lost values of a passing generation? It seemed unfair that my fellow passengers would probably laugh if I told them that I found this woman more charming than the majority of their wives and daughters.
“Excuse me sir”, a female voice broke my reverie, “Do you have any water?”
It was that same old woman. I hesitated, passing a swift from her dirt clogged nails to the water carrier attached to the side of my backpack. She had probably seen it. To refuse now would be embarrassing and so although I was shrinking from her dirty hands I quietly handed her the bottle. The little boy drank from it and his grandmother then proceeded to return it with a word of gratitude.
I protested, “There is really no need, you can keep …”
But she looked at me sourly and this kept me from finishing the sentence.

…………………

On a quiet deserted platform I got off the train and proceeded to go home. I found a dark corner and swiftly threw the bottle. It fell with a thud against a stony dung plastered wall. I turned and walked away in silence.

2008-12-04T04:41:00.000-08:00

Evening approaches on the wings
Of buzzing flies, the glowing twilight
Rippling on the dusty streets
A lonely dog playing with some filthy rag
Yet it all seemed so different once,
Beauty was the word I was searching for
I had tried to gathered the letters in
Some scribbles that we exchanged
Something snapped, the ink was
A hazy blur, nothing tangible,
Nothing important, it felt like rage
And the mind refused to contain
The throbbing brain burst open
To say with a silent scream
I dreamt of you the other day.
Dreamt of a form, an image, a chimera
And before I looked it was gone.
And a million other things that
Words refused to grasp and the pen,
It said nothing.
I think I have measured out my life in
Cups of tea and words forged out by force
The never-ending sides of railway tracks
Where a woman pissed, a man died
And a baby played in the sunshine.
There was no end.
But you, you claim difference when
Your pores ooze out the same blood
As mine. It reeked of folly.
This play, this game, the lies or
Whatever it is that you say
The recent years contained.
And in a moment you walked away
There was no point staying anyway,
We are too alike.

A Hero

2008-11-23T06:28:00.000-08:00

I guess I was sleeping for a while. Well, here's a comeback...

A HERO

This was the big night and for the first time in so many years the commissioner was feeling exited. It was as if he had become a little boy again. His wife saw this and smiled. She gave his hand a small squeeze and whispered a barely audible “congratulations” into his ear. The screaming siren was drowning every thing else. He looked out at the rows of shops and the people in them who had now begun to stare at his passing car. He couldn’t help but feel proud. He was once one of them and look at him now. It hadn’t been an easy journey though. He had his share of troubles, a dead father, the civil services exam and the years of hard work. And today the state ministry had called a special ceremony just to award him.
“An exceptional track record,” he had heard the Home Minister say to the media. It was true. He had after all been in the front line of a long campaign which saw the elimination of over a hundred criminals in the past one year. With twenty-five dead, ten serving death sentences and numerous others behind bars, the Police Department had reasons to be proud. And he was the star that had made it all possible.
The Banquet hall was glittering with the flowers and the decorations. It was suddenly swept with the sound of clapping hands as the commissioner entered and went up to the stage. After a really brief speech unusual of politicians, the chief minister handed him a bouquet and congratulated him. Someone had remembered that he loved orchids. The commissioner was touched. He looked at his wife, seated in the front row, and mused- she was looking beautiful. There were prominent lines on her face and streaks of gray in the opulent hair but she still was beautiful. Well, he too was loosing some of his lustrous mane, he was not a young man anymore.
He felt he heard a gunshot. After all that is one sound that his experienced ear could pick out among thousand others. He was suddenly aware of a dull numbing pain in the chest. The world around him had started to swirl. He felt seeing glimpses of people running around and muted screams. The assistant commissioner and his wife and few others were leaning over him. She was saying something but he couldn’t catch the words. A void had begun to form. The survival instinct of a fighter tried to push out the drowning feeling that seemed to suck him in a dark hole but in vain. He desperately took a gasp of breath but it didn’t clear his head. He was sinking further and farther.
It was pitch dark. The commissioner couldn’t see a thing. He peered his eyes hard only to shrink back in despair. He could neither see the surface on which he was standing nor any ceiling or wall if there were any at all. But he was conscious of a presence. He tried to look again but failed.
“There he is, the man himself!” said someone all of a sudden.
He couldn’t exactly tell which direction the voice came from so he looked all round him
“Who is it? Why can’t I see you?” he asked, his confidence sinking with every passing second.
“Of course you can’t see me, you silly man!” the voice mocked, “ I am the angel of death.”
On any other day the commissioner would have thought that this was a bad joke but at that moment something in him was telling him to believe what the voice was saying or it could have been that he was simply afraid.
“It’s not funny,” he squeaked.
“Silence,” the voice thundered, “you mortals have become more and more skeptical over the passing centuries. I am not sure whether it is entirely a good thing. Do you have any idea of the amount of trouble I had to go through to secure this meeting? I even had to manipulate the poor man who shot you into doing it.”
“You manipulated whom?”
“The man who shot you, yes, that’s against our ethics. We don’t allow any direct interference into human lives. However I was granted permission in this case as the matter is of utmost importance.”
The commissioner didn’t know what to think or do. His mind must have been playing tricks. May be it was a hallucination, drug induced or otherwise, he knew that these things happened or may be he really was dead. As far as he could remember, he had indeed been shot.
“Am I dead?” he asked hesitating.
“If you were dead you would be able to see me”, replied the voice. “But I have not come here to answer your ridiculous questions. I needed to see you because you have been sending too many people over to the other side and in most of the cases before their time and we are suffering from chronic overcrowding.”
“But sir, I mean how can that be?” the commissioner asked, “ I thought no one can die before their time. Aren’t you supposed to see to that?”
“Of course I am,” came the reply, the tone a bit subdued, “but you see with the world population growing at such an alarming rate we are being forced to rely on human intelligence. Not that it is getting us anywhere. Your judiciary has been convicting too many and mostly the wrong people. I accept that you have your internal politics but think of us once in a while too. We haven’t been faced with such a problem since the witch killings in Europe and the world was not that populated then. You wouldn’t be able to imagine the amount of extension we had to do both in heaven and hell to accommodate the growing number of souls. God has to do something about the rising population on earth or we don’t know what we are going to do.”
“Are we looking at a flood then sir?”
“Quite possible or some other natural calamity but that’s none of your business. Look I don’t have much time so let me finish what I have to say. You have done your part in keeping me busy. I haven’t had a break this one year and I am not going to tolerate this kind of treatment. I have my rights too. So when you go back I want you to be more careful with your…what do you call them? Encounters, yes, that and the death sentences.”
“You mean I’m going back?”
“Of course you are. What is the point to this meeting otherwise? No wonder things are getting so hard in both the realms. It should with people of your IQ as officials. Now go! I have work to do.”

His wife was still leaning over him but the surroundings had changed. He tried to get up but was held back by the series of tubes and pipes.
“Take it easy,” she said, “you’ve just gained back consciousness.”
He was lying in a hospital bed, his chest wrapped in heavy bandages and his whole body aching. But he was too occupied to feel that. In all those years, after each successful encounter, he could feel a second voice trying to squeal something inside, but he had always silenced that with his logical reasoning for the flashbulbs and all that glamour. After all in his trade, the line of right and wrong has always been too thin.

A doctor came in to check his blood pressure and pulse. The assistant commissioner followed him.
“Sir, Welcome back!” he saluted.
“The doctor said you’re going to be fine. It was miraculous that the bullet didn’t enter your heart.” said his wife.
“That brings us to the man sir. He is a sub-inspector and was in the security squad. It is still not known why he fired. The doctors believe he is mentally disturbed but then it is a mystery how he gained admission into the force at all. He is currently under observation. But personally I think he is feigning madness. It is best if we arrest him immediately. He could be dangerous.”
“No! No! ” the commissioner cried, “It is all wrong….”
But his wife interrupted, “That’s it. You are getting him all excited. He is still weak. Please sir if you would kindly come with me. It is best for the commissioner’s health.”
So saying she ushered both herself and the assistant commissioner out of the room. She cast one last loving look at the man lying on the bed. He hadn’t really been the best life partner but he was the most courageous man she knew and she was proud. He had even fought death and won. She wiped a straying tear with her handkerchief and closed the door with care.

Happy Birthday

2008-08-01T11:07:00.000-07:00

Birthdays demand contemplation, I believe, and as I step into a new decade I stop to ponder over the person I have grown into. This is “emotion recalled in tranquility” for it has been three days since my birthday ( Rimi di was right when she said that we are too well read for our own good) and now I sit with the afterglow of the day. It is recognition of the irreversibility of the aging process as it is about my feelings of helplessness. I have become helpless, I realize, a mute spectator of sorts to the drama of life that unfolds in front of me, I wait and watch but have no say. Somewhere in the exchange between adolescence and adulthood, time set in and left me defeated. I am awed by the strangeness of life, shocked by its sadist humour and amazed by its power. I linger to savour each moment that it offers as I see that survival would require me to let go of every inch if the person I was.

I stare at the picture of a stranger. He evokes emotions in me which I had forgotten I had the capacity of feeling. It is this voyeur I have become. I watch myself perform the rituals expected of me, I feel the fragmentation of my self as the world around me rapidly changes. I see the world I love so dearly fast disappearing. The loss is irrevocable. I refuse to grow up in the attempt to stop time’s flow. I desperately hang on to the tiny vestiges of the daddy’s little girl. My father asks whether my birthday gift made me happy. I smile, I lie, the euphoria that was so spontaneous once doesn’t happen, I try to fake it.

Nothing makes sense any more. The world has lost coherence. It was so easy once to arrange events sequentially, logically, but now they decline to fall in place. I think of the sweet simplicity of the earlier decade when a diary entry on 29th July, 1996 read “My Happy Birthday” and tears come to my eyes. Every step I take takes me further away from solidity, from meaning and from sense. The lines become crooked and blurred. My body is slowly melting away but the surrounding space refuses to receive it. I have ceased to have an identity… I remain stranded in between…I scream…A very happy birthday to me.

For You...

2008-05-18T09:21:00.000-07:00

The blank screen gapes, it almost feels like a voyeur, staring and judging while I try desperately to type the right words and as usual fail. The alphabets look like nothing more than signifiers, signs impregnated with thoughts and feeling, while I seek to represent the raw gnashes itself. But I am condemned to write, it is the only way I know of defining this existence and getting rid of the hurt. I am damned. It is fate that I repeat the same mistakes. What am I hoping for as I shout these futile words into the cyber jungle? It is in vain that I cry. I am claiming recognition when I have no right.
I am reminded of some old songs I wrote of love. This feels nothing like it. Do I love you? I wish I knew. Words escape me and time fleets away. But I hang on to hope. I deceive myself as I frantically search your face for a sign of tenderness. I misinterpret all you say. I almost believe that I know you…
I despise you for what you have reduced me to. I blame you for not knowing but it doesn’t matter, nothing does, for I know you don’t care. And so I remain silent. I watch and I don’t speak. It is to escape the sneer I know you’d give me when I say that I deserved it, I deserve your love and more…. I loathe you. I’m addicted to you.

2008-05-08T20:38:00.000-07:00

On times like this I feel alone,
Standing on an empty street,
Walking with shadows
Eyes seeing, gaping, judging,
But seldom understanding,
And the hand that reaches out,
Feels just like skin
And nothing more.
Some friend tries to save me,
Protect me from me,
But I feel it coming again,
This time it’s on a roll,
Something chokes from within
The feeling is overwhelming.
You felt like home to me,
But I no longer care
And I ain’t blaming,
I guess you didn’t know,
So many times you hurt me,
Still I didn’t show.
But here by the sea
Everything’s washed away,
Except this emptiness,
And the cold cold tears.
I’m leaving the city,
The people, the lights and all.
Sight has lost meaning
And sanity sense
Spirit calls, the wild beckons
I’m tired of existing,
Just smiling lies
The strings strum
While I drown in song,
Everything’s reduced
To an overpowering surge
It brings the traveler home.
And even though I fall,
The waves catch me
It offers a salty kiss.
My memories are gone,
The nights of sleeping alone.
And as the last bubble fades,
Sleep, peace, darkness follows...
I wake up with a gasp.

2008-03-29T23:16:00.000-07:00

I found this the other day which made me smile…

Please sir, Mr God of Death
Don’t make it my turn today
Not today.
There’s fish curry for dinner.
- by the legenday goan poet Bakibab Borkar (1919-1984)

At least there are some people in this world who think like me!

Lost Rites

2008-03-22T08:07:00.000-07:00

This is a story I wrote for a Woman's Day competition. The words "This is what being a woman means" had to be there in the text.
The peddler had scarce disappeared around the bend, his cries could still be heard surfacing above the lazy drone of the winter afternoon.
“What a life!” she thought, “hawking carpets from door to door.”
It seemed hard but invitingly different. The stream of sunlight washing into the room was illuminating the dust particles and transforming them into millions of tiny diamonds that glittered all around her. She caressed the air and its scent of latent activity. She liked the calm, it reminded her of her childhood. The telephone rang, piercing through the stillness and putting an abrupt end to her reverie. It was her husband, Mahesh and he was euphoric.
“The Doctor called Lily, he has confirmed, we are having a baby….everything’s going to change now, you’ll see. But we have to celebrate. Be ready, I’ll take you out to dinner.”
She held on to the receiver, even after the phone line went still. It was her Cinderella story but where was the happy ending?
She and Mahesh had fallen in love back in college and during their prolonged period of courtship when they often talked about the future, she had made it clear that she didn’t want a child. And it was all right.
“Anything you want” he said, “it’s ok with me.”
But things changed during the fourth year of their marriage or perhaps it had always been that way. Mahesh wanted a baby and she still didn’t.
At first he tried convincing her.
“A child will make our family complete, it will add to our happiness, its not like we can’t support one!”
And when that failed he tried reason.
“Logically speaking why don’t you want a child? You have nothing to lose, you don’t work, it wouldn’t harm your career.”
But she didn’t have an answer.
It was precisely at this point that the self-proclaimed protector of the Sengupta dynasty, Mahesh’s mother took it upon herself to forward the family interests. During her month long visit, she utilized the time trying to make Lily ‘understand’, whined to friends about the absence of an heir especially when she knew her daughter-in-law was within earshot and finally delivered sermons to her on the importance of women in society as child bearers. Lily’s parents too joined forces.
“It is children who make the most important bond between a husband and wife.” Her mother explained.
This irritated her however she soon learnt to live with it. But slowly and especially after his mother’s visit Mahesh’s “why don’t you” transformed into “why shouldn’t you”.
“Why shouldn’t you want a baby? Aren’t all women fulfilled in motherhood?” Why can’t you be like other normal women?”
Doors slammed, tears rolled and the unanswered questions haunted her, enshrouding her mind like a dark shadow till one day the unspoken was said. “Wanton sexuality” was the term Mahesh used and Lily spent the entire night crying on the sofa. It was towards dawn that he came and begged for forgiveness. The strange expression of vulnerability in her husband’s strong jaws made her afraid.
“I’ve always dreamed of a small hand clutching mine. A baby is something of you and me, it is a part of us and most importantly it is someone who would inherit the family name, I am the only son Lily, why don’t you understand?”
Lily was tired, she didn’t understand, she didn’t want to but nothing seemed to matter anymore, she simply replied ok and tried to stop thinking as Mahesh lulled her to sleep.
Months passed and yet Lily didn’t conceive, she couldn’t as they found out later. Tests showed that she had polycystic ovaries. It was as though her body had refused even though she couldn’t, Lily laughed at the irony.
The Doctor prescribed a strict diet with liberal amounts of exercise. It was expected that the recommended hormonal tablets would work but if they didn’t she would require a laproscopic surgery. All her life Lily had dreaded going under the knife. She patiently bore with all the side effects of the medication but the possibility of an operation scared her. For a year she tolerated unending nausea, bouts of constipation and abrupt hot flushes but that was the easy part, it was harder to satisfy the pointless but insatiable questions that friends and relatives raised. “Yes, I am infertile!” Lily often screamed to herself wanting to do the same to the world outside. And now she was finally pregnant. Lily felt relieved.
The maid was knocking at the door. Lily answered her. But as she turned her eyes fell on her wedding photograph, it stared back from the table. And suddenly Lily found herself asking what was her role in this family. It surprised her that the question had never occurred to her before.
“Was her sole purpose procreation? Was that the reason of her existence?”
“Is that what being a woman means?”

2008-03-18T00:33:00.001-07:00

It must indeed be coincidence that I have fallen sick in the same week for two consecutive years. Last year around this time I was down with chicken pox and had missed the arts faculty fest but most importantly Benjamin Zephania, he was all people were taking about for a long long time. And now I’m nursing a severe food poisoning (not that someone actually poisoned my food as one friend, Mr. Arnab Banerjee to his utter shock and dismay believed). I’m missing college, I hate it when I do that, and few classes which I for a change want to do. Picklu da’s taking up Bladerunner and that is one film I adore. Not to mention Shanta di (we all know what that means), I have never in my life missed her classes before. So I’m sitting at home bored and disturbed, Supriya di’s term paper is taking its toll on my mental health but that’s just a part of life, like so many other wanted and unwanted things. To think that two weeks ago we were mass bunking Manash da’s class that too infront of his very eyes. He’s a good man, I feel guilty for having done that to him. But what can we do? Man is never happy with what he gets (and by writing this I’m denying all feminist conventions for gender neutral language) but that’s basic human nature. We are but slaves to it.

2008-03-08T05:24:00.000-08:00

It was eleven in the morning, broad daylight and a busy street, I was retuning home from the store, a man groped me. My father and bro were with me, they were walking a little way off, this guy didn't realise that, he came up to me from the back and afterwards smiled, cooly rolled out an apology and started to walk away. I caught him by his shoulders and was about to give him a dressing down when my dad realised what had happened and flew in a fit of rage. He caught hold of the guy's collar and slapped him. By this time a considerable crowd had gathered and were enjoying the spectacle. No one said a word, some even supported the guy. "Tai bole erom bhabe marbe " said one. ( Would that mean he will beat him like that.) "Mohilara ja bolbe tai prothishtito hobe" said another.(Whatever women say will be established as fact.) We live in a small town, my father has grown up here, almost everybody knows him so no one dared say anything to him directly. But later when the guy was gathering sympathy he did recieve the multitude's support. This is the world we live in and the irony is that today it's International Women's Day.

Mon Amour

2008-02-17T04:53:00.000-08:00

It takes one moment to change your life, one moment to see it, one moment to ruin it and one moment to set it right. If I was on the verge of damnation, it was your love that saved me. When I was foolish it was love's pragmatism that brought sense. Even though I went over the edge it was your forgiveness that redeemed me. And you were right, my love did fall short. I have tried to look into the eyes of another and find the love that you bear me. Stood at the sidewalks, not knowing that all I had to do was to walk in - unaware that it was you that I was searching for, and that I already had you. I have spent sleepless nights penning down words I wanted to scream out, pierced and slashed through my flesh in the hope that it would hurt you. But the anger was misdirected and may be deliberately so, for unknown to myself I was saving me from a self destructing rampage...
And yet you say that I am your angel. I stand stripped infront of you, humiliated and humbled - the confession of a self condemned soul. Save me darling from this hell I have put myself in, save me.

Upon one lazy evening...

2008-02-08T20:14:00.000-08:00

Life, the strangest of all stories, isn't it? Each bend and a new twist, one more realisation, another acceptance, a tinker of joy and yet another heartbreak. Life, to me, seems like a wild horse, electrifying in all its vitality and exuberance, yet untamable, the more you try to hold on to its reins, the more you are likely to fall. Or it might even be like a still, calm mountain lake, each event a ripple on its surface and to grasp it is useless; you have to accept its fluidity and cup your hands accordingly. Should sadness and happiness be disturbances, imposters trespassing into life which is defined by serenity, we belong to the imposters as much as we do to life. One cannot classify like that for life is all encompassing, and unfair too, for we cannot choose the elements we like best and leave the rest for someone else. It needs must be that things happen when we expect it the least and surprise us with the recognition of our helplessness infront of life's caprice.
Fortunate is he, blessed with the absence of these musings, unaware that life cannot be planned and charted into neat grids and that the best we mortals can do is to bow our heads infront of life's mighty awesomeness and admire silently, paying our tributes.

A Snapshot.

2008-01-25T08:44:00.000-08:00

At Oran, as elsewhere, for lack of time and thinking, people have to love each other without knowing much about it.
-A line I came across the other day, brilliantly potraying what could be called the burden of modernity. This strain of thoughtlessness is like an epidemic, inflicting all and invading each of life's perview. We live, in the sense that we eat, breathe, see, talk, love but how many of us contemplate these life processes that we have managed to naturalize? But once in a while things happen which force us to rethink the way we look at life. For example in the backdrop of shallow consumerism, a Nokia N82 ad me recognise the romance in everyday life that we fail to realise. Isn't a firefighter battling a raging blaze truely like a knight taming a feirce dragon?My entry into the big city was marked by a haunting sense of lonliness. I remained a loner while I oscillated between a state of being surrounded by friends and extreme friendlessness. Time rolled on the alien became the familiar and yet I stayed on the outside occupying a precarious paradigm between the suburban quaint and the urban modern. A distance enforced itself, betwee me and everything I saw, and like a disgruntled critic reviewing bad poetry, I overlooked whatever little merits my existance showed. My life screams of raw gnashes and dark scars but to pick up the pieces is the real task. The journey has only begun...