Waiting for Godot

***You crib, complain and say you need a break. You might have obese bank balances, the most comfortable jobs, plush apartments and what not -- but, there’s always a missing link. You crave for something, either that you can’t afford, or, something that none of the currency in the world can buy. You wait for an unknown entity that will change your life with a swish of its magic wand; we all do. We wait for Godot.***

There are days when you wake up - all fresh, happy, energetic. There is a gush of generosity that rushes through your veins, a vivacious energy that pulsates through your system. And then, there are days when you foresee trouble; when you trip in front of people you’re trying to impress, when the washroom door shuts with such a loud bang, that the entire office knows you’re in there, peeing to glory! The days when you stammer, spill tea on the nice and shiny white tiles, and days when you act plain weird.

There are days when you brim with love unconditional; when you nurture, take care of people, be the good person you are, with an extra dose of goodness. You cook, adding an extra blob of love, scrub the bathroom tiles, till they start reflecting your face. You sing like a cuckoo, dance like poetry in motion, look so stunning, that every mirror on the wall would claim you’re the prettiest of them all.

Then there are days when you feel completely detached, devoid of emotions, indifferent, thinking, “Dammit, who cares?!” Those are the days when you’re unkempt, you do things for the sake of doing it, feel irritated and yell at the slightest reason possible. There are also days when the emotions are a riot, when the dam bursts and the tears don’t stop gushing down till you’re purged; when the most trivial things create that big, bad lump in your throat. The days when you watch the daily soaps and try to squeeze yourself in the stilletoes of every character that weeps, the day when washrooms serve as your secret emotional vent.

There are days when you feel like everything is going right, that whatever you’d always dreamt of, is just inches away from your grasp; days when you look at life wearing your oversized pink shades. And just when you slip into that trance effortlessly, events unfold in a manner that you’re forced to think otherwise. Your plans look like they’re falling apart, and the future, well, there’s a point in time when you think it doesn’t even exist.

And everyday, when you open your eyes to the beautiful sun that dazzles the world, you wake up with the hope that it will be a new day, a wonderful one, despite not knowing what are the surprises and jolts that life has up its sleeve. You hope, dream, live, braving the odds, negotiating the sharp turns, waiting for a change - a good one.

***You wait for an unknown entity that will change your life with a swish of its magic wand; we all do. We wait for Godot.***

Being Human - best gift to our first teachers, our parents

The market was bustling with people; the din, the lights, the colourful shops boasting of their merchandise could fascinate any child. With button-like eyes gleaming at the goodies up for sale, I took a liking to everything displayed on the glass doors, hanging on the roadside shops, on the sheets spread over the road. I would halt every now and then, tugging at my parents’ fingers, looking at them with expectation-brimming eyes, making the cutest of all puppy faces. As I was hopping along in between my ammai-appa, I noticed a frock - sky blue with a frilly laces, sequined, and a layer of blue satin peeking through the frills. I took fascination to my ‘dream’ frock...I could see myself swirling around in the frock, the other little children eyeing me with envy. I wanted it, my dream frock.

I stopped, tugged at ammai’s pallu and made the same puppy face, again, effortlessly. “I want that,” I said, pointing to my dream in blue. “No,” she said, “We just got you one dress. Being greedy is bad, we’ll get you a new frock for Diwali, ok?” “No, no, no,” I wailed, “I want this fock, I want it, I want,” the 7-year-old I said, stomping my feet, cranky as ever. “No, means no,” she said, rolling her eyes. I plonked myself on the road, protesting, not taking ‘no’ for an answer. Ammai-appa tried talking me out of it nicely, but when I started wailing, demanding the ‘fock’ be mine, they walked on, leaving me behind, sitting on the road, scratching my head, not knowing what to do next.

I was terrified. I thought my ammai-appa are so mad at me, that they’ve decided to abandon me and take a ‘good’ child home, instead. I ran as fast as I could, saying, “I don’t want that fock, ammai, I don’t want that fock. I won’t be greedy, don’t leave me here.”

I never asked for an extra ‘fock’ ever again. At home, I was always given freedom to eat what I liked, play with every toy, read every book. But when we visited other people, ammai’s eyes would be on me, like an eagle, to make sure I didn’t touch anything without permission, that I didn’t jump around, that I was civilised. Appa is a person who’s never raised his voice, and he made sure that I never raised my voice either. “It’s alright to get angry, but you don’t have to shout to show your anger,” he’s always said.

If we believe that teachers are the ones who use the blackboard, who wield their rulers at us, caning us for our mistakes and make us read aloud from our books, we are living in a misconception. We are taught even before we enter the school campus. The first ABCDs of our lives aren’t taught by teachers; they are taught by our parents. A teacher’s role probably is limited to the four walls of the classroom, and to a specific stage in our lives. But parents continue teaching us all through our lives, telling us little somethings everytime we go wrong.

That’s why, when I see little kids bawling their lungs out, behaving badly, acting cranky and shouting, I don’t blame them. The behaviour of a child reflects the kind of training that parents have given him or her. Parents are the world’s best, most effective teachers. They not just teach, they care, nurture, reprimand and love. They wear so many hats, and yet, at times, we take them for granted, without realising that it is us, around whom their lives revolve. So, on teachers day, it is not all about showering your teachers with greeting cards and gifts packed in shiny wrapping paper. It’s about showing them you’ve learnt things they have taught. And for parents, the best gift on teachers day would be us being the good human being they raised us to be. That’s all we need to do to make them happy...

Some things money can't buy...

We’re busy people; busy meeting deadlines, busy calling up celebrities who refuse to take calls, busy in meetings, busy doing some of this, busy doing lots of that. We’re so busy, that we curse our cell phones for buzzing incessantly, and we cut off people who remember us and spare some time and money to call us. We’re busy running around, getting work done, chasing buses, and doing ‘important’ things. Yes, we are busy people.

I was waiting at the bus stop, pacing up and down, waiting for that damned signal to go green, so that I could get a glimpse of the God-sent bus. But, it looked like God had snoozed off and had forgotten about my bus altogether. If the heat, the feel of a sweat drop trickling down my spine and the frustration of having had to wait for almost an hour wasn’t enough to frustrate the living hell out of me, the one-inch heels and a swollen ankle post a staircase fall added to my misery. The dusk was creeping into night; it was getting darker, and the faces near me were beginning to get scarier.

I took a detour, in the hope of finding some other way of getting closer to my destination. After almost an hour of wait, I got a bus that took me halfway. Well, almost. Amidst bawling kids and sweaty people, I stood for an hour, waiting to get to the station, from where I would have to take another bus to reach the place from which hubby dearest had promised to pick me up.

“Tation, tation, tation,” yelled the conductor, and I got off, thinking I would be standing bang in from of the Secunderabad station. But then, there was no ‘tation’ around, and after taking directions from people on the road, I realised that it would take me a good 10-minute brisk walk ‘lopal’ (inside) to get to the station bus stop. So lopal I walked, from under a bridge, over a footpath with missing tiles, just to realise that the station area is creepy, with some of the creepiest creatures lurking around, waiting for a chance to brush past, make skin contact.

After all of that, I spotted a bus heading home and I ran behind it, dragging my legs that had now begun to protest. Puffing and panting I got in, and made a dash towards the last seat available. I plonked myself promptly, and looked at the other poor souls who made it late to the finishing line, grinning a sadistic grin. As the bus moved, growls from my stomach made me realise that I was starving. The burst of aroma from a roadside food joint almost forced me to jump out of the window and devour some, but I thought, never mind, home is close.

I was frustrated to the core, so much, that I just wanted to shut myself in and doze off without moving an inch, without doing the social niceties and without much talk. Just when I thought I didn’t want to see anyone’s face, my phone started buzzing. The screen said, “Shonu calling”. That’s when I realised, that I did want to see someone’s face, did want to talk. I couldn’t wait any longer. It felt like our first date, when I couldn’t stop the butterflies from fluttering around in my tummy, when the anxiety of seeing him made my cheeks go warm; when all I wanted was to see his face and hold his hand.

And when I finally got off from the bus, his warm smile, his open arms and his presence -- they made the frustration evaporate, they made the fatigue disappear. And the packetful of corn samosas in his hands -- divine!! There are some things money can't buy.

Yes, we are busy people, doing some of this and lots of that; so busy that we cut off people who remember us and spare some time and money to call us. But, at the end of a long, tiring day, it is these people that we want to rush back to, it is these people who comfort us with their soothing voices. At the end of a long day, we don’t want to shut ourselves in; we want to talk and share our experiences, because it is in being with them that we are the busiest, the happiest...

Saat bata Battees, Daryaganj

The train chugged off tearing me away from my family, conspiring to take me away from home. I could sense that the distance between me, inside the train and my ammai, on the platform was increasing, but the tears welling inside my eyes blurred my vision. I was heading towards Dilli, to try and learn how to become a journalist.

Delhi welcomed us with with a warm (read: extremely hot) embrace; we felt like sticky roshogullas. With the quest of finding me a ‘home’, appa and I headed towards Daryaganj, where my college - The Times School of Journalism was nestled.

Saat bata Battess (7/32), Daryaganj was ‘home’. Sneha and Tista, my two new room-mates were ‘family’. And Saat bata Battees witnessed fun, madness, tears, hunger, fights, arguments and never-ending concern. My first taste of freedom couldn’t have been better without you, girls - Tista and Sneha. Thanks for making my stay at the haunted house bearable, fun and memorable.

From accomplishing Mission Impossible - waking up Miss-Hap Tista - everyday, to wrapping up a hard day’s work with late night chats accompanied by piping hot ‘wee hours’ tea, creepy discussions and gossip sessions, there wasn’t a day (or night) at saat batta battees that would be boring.

Saat bata battees, owned by Ashok Jain , whose number on our phones was saved under names like ‘khadoos’, ‘khoosat’, ‘tharki’, did eventually become ‘home’ where we lived, laughed and cried; where we shared an experience of a lifetime; where we did learn how to become journalists.

If life at saat bata battees was fun-filled, it was also full of hospital visits, thanks to miss-Hap, Tista. Ligament tears, severe tonsils, fever, some of this and a lot of that had become regular, petty affairs for us. The aap ke zamaane mein baap ke zamane ka ‘cooler’, that promptly converted itself to a heater in summers and cooler in winters, was a convenient way of keeping thieves at bay - the noise it produced use to keep buzzing in my ears even during classes.

And talking of classes, at TSJ, the power-point presentations, meant ‘nap time’. I would snooze off to glory, in the dark room, to compensate the sleep lost to squeeze in time for our ‘chat sessions’. And then the soups, maggies and Kishan Bhaiyya’s special ‘bade cup ki coffees’ and jeera rice we relished at the canteen wouldn’t have been half as delicious without the company of Sandeep, Aaheli, Dipika, Shweta and Kumari. Thanks a bunch people for making breakfast, lunch and tea-time the most-looked forward to time of our days.

Dilli darshans with Aaheli and Sandeep, chat fights with Karthik licking our fingers and closing our eyes and going ‘ummmmm’, relishing street food near Golcha, watching movies, converting reporting assignments into fun-trips, photo sessions, beating the deadlines, surviving hunger and so much more - memories of Saat bata Battees will always remain ones that would make me break into warm smile...

Misty (Tista), Chena (Sneha), Bunny (Shweta), Jhumi (Aaheli), Sandy (Sandeep), Toothpick (Dipika), Kumari (Priyanka) and Karthik...thanks for the memories!!

PS: There’s so much about Saat bata Batees I’d like to share. here are a few more you’d maybe like to read :)

Thank God, I was wise enough ;)

They say we can’t choose our family, but we can choose our friends. Thank God I was wise enough!! ;)

***Gimme oil inmylam, gimme burniburniburni,
gimme burni till the late of late***

Neatly formed lines of kids trying to sing “Give me oil in my lamp, keep it burning, burning, burning....” swallowing half of the words and mumbling the rest incorrectly. Dressed in crisp white shirts and peacock blue pinnofers, all that mattered was to retain the shine on the shiny, black, spotless shoe till the end of day, enjoy the tiny morsels that friends ‘shared’ from their lunch boxes, and getting to sit near your best friend.

I was no different. Hair braided into two plaits, blue ribbons neatly bowed, bundling the plaits together, I would hop into school, praying the teacher doesn’t change my seat. As soon as I would walk into the classroom, my button-like eyes would search for them - my girls, my persons. As soon as one of them walked in, I would wave, and shift my bum slightly, to indicate with a wide grin that I’ve reserved a seat for her. I would be worried if they didn’t turn up before the assembly bell rang. ----- Thank you Anki and Bana, for sitting next to me, for sharing your dabbas, and for being there.

Classes meant communication through chits. One-liners and little messages that used to get circulated all around, a slight nod of the head indicating the message has been received. ‘The stand up on the bench’, ‘catch your ears’, ‘get out of the classroom’ were the times I enjoyed myself the most. --- Girls, you made the classes bearable, laughable, and the punishments enjoyable. Without you, the ‘catch your ears’ moments would have been embarrassing beyond words.

I was already old enough for college, things changed, and I was scared of how my ‘new’ life would be. But as it happened, Charlie’s Angels got together again, and college life was way better than I had ever imagined. Sitting on the last bench, coming up with the most hilarious stuff, laughing, learning, and growing up together, playing pranks, forcing lecturers to say, “Ae you girls, you can’t sit together,” splitting us up into three different corners of the classroom ------ We have shared more than tiffin dabbas, we’ve shared our deepest, darkest secrets.

We’ve shifted bases, headed into different directions, but even today, when we meet, we laugh till we can laugh no more, till our insides start aching, but the giggles, the giggles never die down. Crossing roads like ‘goyas’, window shopping, eating out, bunking classes and making front-door exits, christening people with ‘special’ names -- we’ve done all of this and more ----- Thank you for not growing up, and still remaining the gawky schoolgirls that we were.

And with these school friends, it would be a sin if I don’t mention my other partner-in-crime, Rashmi, who was my first best friend in Guwahati. The dance rehearsals, the ‘Kerala Samajam’ picnics, the weekend get togethers, the bargains with shopkeepers --- Rash, you made them all worth remembering...

They say we can’t choose our family, but we can choose our friends. Thank God I was wise enough!! ;)

Salaam Bombay!!

Bombay, if you were a guy, I would have married you...but since you’re not, I’ll settle with the privilege of having you as my best friend.

I was like a grown up toddler when we first met - unaware of the ways of the world, naive and way too emotional. You gave me stability, strength, confidence and freedom. You were the one who stood by me when the times were rough, you held me when I tripped, you embraced me when I was low, slapped me hard to wake up from my misconceptions.

Standing on the edge of the train, I, for once, stopped worrying about my hair that the beautiful wind was caressing; conversations with fisher women and the office-going junta alike, scripted in beautiful chapters of my memory, forming stories that I’ll probably entertain my grandchildren with.

You sent the breeze at Marine Drive to cheer me up when I was down in the dumps, the early morning shots of tea at Ghatkopar, the lovely people were all there to walk by my side, silently, to make sure I was ok. With spicy munchies and the soothing breeze you gave me, I became oblivious to everything that was hurting me.

You taught me how to be street-smart, how to protect myself, how to live, how to laugh. how to have fun. Despite lost friends, lost wallet, and an unemployed status that would have made some people suicidal, you taught me how to be strong, how to brave the tough tide and sail with it, how to dance in the rain, how to be happy despite the million things that could depress...

You made me the woman I’d always wanted to be, something that I ache to be today...

You were my constant companion, you had me and held me, from the day I met you, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until circumstances did us part....

We might just be physically apart, but you are, and always will be the one who taught me what life is, you will always be my best friend. Hope to meet you soon, magical Mayanagri, till then please remember...

Bombay, if you were a guy, I would have married you...but since you’re not, I’ll settle with the privilege of having you as my best friend.

P.S: This post might seem a bit weird to people, who would probably think, “Doesn’t she have a human friend, why is a city her best friend?” Yes, I do have ‘human’ best friends, but Bombay is special! Salaam Bombay!!

The Goddess of Small Things

It’s not the big things that make me happy. I don’t crave for diamonds or expensive gifts. Little things, tiny gestures - they touch me, make me feel loved. I am the Goddess of Small Things...

I was looking at the mysporepa, sitting proudly inside the glass case, while my husband was paying for the mirchi bajjis we had bought. Its colour, its shape, the texture - oh, everything was inviting me. I was lost in a sweet world, imagining, how it would melt in my mouth, lacing it with a sweetness divine...”Bhaiyaa, yeh sweet zara ek plate mein dena, madam ke liye,” I heard my husband telling the shopkeeper, handing me the one thing I wanted, taking me down beautiful memory lanes.

I vividly remember a little me, dressed in a cotton floral frock, two neat fountain-like pony tails sticking out from my head holding on to my dad’s finger and hopping along with him, trying to match his pace. I remember how I would try to synchronise my footsteps with that of his - right-right, left-left, and raise my head to see if he’d noticed that we were walking in sync. I remember how the bazaar frightened me out of my wits - the scores of people with bundles of plastic bags, the pan-spitting shopkeepers, the bikes splashing jets of slush, the din, the stench of fish...

I remember how my dad used to carry the veggie packets, using one hand to hold them together, the other hand reserved for his darling daughter. I would sense the weight was troubling him, and I would happily shift to the other side, hopping around between mom and dad, holding my dad’s hand on the left, and my mom’s on the right. The fear of big bad bazaar would suddenly disappear...It seemed I had a wall to protect me from the pushing and pulling..

I remember how we had gone to a sweet shop to get some paneer - mom, dad and I...I was looking around, bored, when I noticed a tray of neatly stacked sweets, inside the glass case. It was beckoning me to taste it - the rich, mild golden colour, the glaze of the ghee - it pushed me into a trance, where I imagined how it would feel to take a bite, how it would melt inside my mouth, the sweet taste lingering...

“Dada, paneer,” said the shopkeeper to my dad, handing him a packet, waking me up from my reverie...My dad hadn’t taken the packet, he was looking at me. I looked at him, our gazes met, and he looked away, telling the shopkeeper, “Two of this,” pointing to the thing I was looking at with wide eyes. In a minute’s time, I was holding a little paper plate in my hand, the taste in my mouth, way better than the one in the trace...Maybe it wasn’t the sweet...maybe, it was my dad’s love that made it taste even sweeter...The child in me couldn’t stop grinning...

And today, the child in me grinned again...not because of the sweetness of the mysorepa, but because of the sweetness of the gesture and the sweetness of the memories it refreshed...

Yes, it’s not the big things that make me happy. Little things, tiny gestures - they touch me, make me feel loved. I am the Goddess of Small Things...