Her kind

And that is the kind of person she was. The kind who would never get her hair straightened even if all the other co anchors at her station were doing it. The kind who used her teeth to peel off the ends of sugar cane stalks, chew on them and spit them out. Like her mother had taught her as a kid. The kind to never wear nail polish but when she did, the colour stayed for a month . The kind who cooked a meal fiercely even if she cooked only for her friends who longed for homemade mutton. Or the kind to never pick up red lace lingerie instead sticking to blacks and whites because they were more practical to match with anything she wore. The kind to climb rocks, trees and seven foot gates. The higher the physical obstacle, the more she wanted to get to its other side. The kind you couldn't write off to be too modern for your son because her roots were her tradition, her mother's village her favourite retreat, her parents home her safehouse against moronic men who broke her heart and of course....of course...the sarees. Her obssessive love to be perpetually in sarees . When she draped the five yard fabric around her, you could not stop your eyes from staring at her looking so alive. You didn't want to use the word sexy. It fell short. You could not, even if you wished to, stop fantasising the wildest thought your brain could conjure, instead stopping at the most timid of them all. The thought of what it would be to have her in your arms and the saree at her feet.

A little.....and a lot more

Walk a little won't you
Talk a little won't you
Make love to me more
Till we together reach the shore

Critique me a little won't you
But hear my silent cry even if I am close to you
Hold my hand even when I am strong
Pull me out of the tide where I don't belong

Hold on longer to me a little more won't you
But fight with me a little won't you
Don't bottle up yourself at the end
Remember you never did, even as a friend

....For when you look away, I long for you the most
When you shrink back, know that I'll hold you close
It's not perfection I seek
Don't you know...I am already yours to keep?


II
If you falter, I may chide you
But know this... my heart will surely guide you
Don't worry if I take a little longer resurrecting myself from my past
Where my soul was at half mast

It's you I seek out and crave for
Since you let me walk in through your door

So cover your mouth with mine
Let our fingers do the talking
Let me show you the way just once my friend
You may have to bow a little...but I promise, you will never have to bend.

Save the last dance

As I was packing up today to leave my home in Bhubaneswar and return to Mumbai, my mother recalled an anecdote about my grandparents. A few days ago my grandaunt was proudly telling my ma how my dadu a Lieutenant Colonel in the then British army happily encouraged my grandmother to dance with other officers if they asked her hand at the evening dances. "I didn't have such good luck like your mother in law. My husband simply wouldn't let go off me at those dances ", quipped my grandaunt.
   Something about the way my mother laughed while narrating this and imagining my dadu's sportive nature took away the misery that was clouding my brain . Leaving home and the Mitras is never an easy task but stocking up such wonderful stories helps me survive the madness that is Mumbai.
 For now I pop a paan from the pack my dad gave me as a going away gift to cheer myself up and brave the traffic back home.

Happiness

Whoever has fed popular belief that happiness is tough to get or dependent on circumstances forgot to tell us this-- the truth is happiness lurks within each of us..it's boundless and yet it hides waiting for you to yank off the chain that plugs so much of it inside our brain..our heart..our soul... 

 The truth is that happiness gets a little bored waiting around indefinitely.. patiently for you to give it a chance while you go on counting your problems :)

No promise.....

Every time I get my head above water and surface just about enough to take a deep breath, I surprise myself..because here I am thinking I  will only go back to treading water a bit.

 Instead, I end up levitating...rising above tried waters...rippling from an unbridled energy I can't contain within..the kind that makes me want to take off and soar...
 
This time my skyline limits me but the ground beneath is crying out to leave ...leave with whatever I can salvage ...just that this time eastern city beckons me...puts its hands around my shoulder..onto my head ....soothing my stiffness .intimidating me to relax my goals....my relentless pragmatic stone faced resolution. It tempts to melt something within......reminding me there is comfort and strength to draw from the unexpected...

 ....even if I have no promise I can deliver to.

Power.......

The greatest power we wield as ordinary people is when we love someone truly. It is that love that strengthens us to give one human being the best of ourselves. It is this very power that enables us to provide to this person the comfort and space to be the best of themselves. And it is only this single power that helps us empower them with our faith in their actions - big and small. 

 The best kind of power would be that which inspires someone we love to outdo the blurred image they might have painted of themselves or even what others wrongly pictured them to be.

 How wonderful it is therefore to be the cause of one human being's excellence' one entire lifetime of positive changes thereby rippling into larger goodness for a multitude of people; the world itself, even if in the most minute way possible! 

More than power of any other kind one can achieve, to be gifted this one is probably the biggest blessing from the universe. I pray hard the universe will find a way to bless me with it once again.

Of monsoons from my childhood

The monsoons of 2014 have been bleak. Almost every visit of mine to my home the last two times has co-incided with the monsoon arriving. Barring this one. Monsoons. They are the reminder of my childhood, my fantasies that still trail around the inner recesses of my mind. The place I drift away to when I am worried about something my adult life is dishing out to me. Monsoons were the time I watched nature and everything in my dadu’s garden. It seemed everything was suddenly pulsating with a life that wasn’t so visible through summer or winter. Monsoons were precious to our joint family of my father’s parents, my four uncles, aunts and their children all together for that one time of the year taking breaks from the monotony of their urban lives. The time when power black outs made the family huddle together to exchange stories, tell jokes and hear my mother sing old Hindi songs while my dadu championed her, adding his generous “khub shundor”.  These family rituals weren’t forced upon by the accidental darkness interrupting our flurry of familial activities. They were sought out mutually and sincerely when all we could have done was stick to our corners of dadu’s home or indulged in our own little chit chats. Thank goodness, we didn’t have a computer, no cell phones ……just Doordarshan on TV. Our sit outs around the invisible bonfires, a clan proudly exercising storytelling and observations on science, nature, politics our history were almost ritualistic practices of tribes as it were. Sometimes in the damp thick darkening daylight  and other times when entire nights were flooded with the customary darkness of rainstorms and fierce winds. A tribe’s bonfires replaced by the old fashioned wick lamps and tin lanterns my grandfather so carefully oiled, polished and saved in his cupboards waiting to be brought out for these occasions.

 I love monsoons because it’s that one time of the year when the earth, the sky and the very air itself here in Bhubaneswar has reached its fruition. Every element heavy in its natural state coming to a full cycle after gestating a year of varying seasons, nursing moisture and winds from far off lands. The red soil typical to this region runs wild in narrow cylindrical long stems at first and then accumulating, joining fellow rebels almost to form thicker gushing long winding streams of water across the garden, the porch, the roads and into the dangerous half open drains. Black dark storm clouds curdled up flashing dangerous streaks of blue and white blinding lightning, upon which my dida exclaimed “The Gods are fighting a new war amongst themselves.” And the air. Whatever I say to describe the air will fall short to what my brain is experiencing taking in greedy whiffs of its wholesomeness. A hundred different flowers, leaves, smell of wet earth, water hitting different points of laterite stone, moss, barks – altogether! If only I could bottle up all of it together! The very essence of all my associations with my home, my people, my roots…. my solace.

I am home after being away in Mumbai for almost two years through which all I seem to have done is scurrying from one mode of conveyance to another, anxious through my day at work and nervously fidgeting through my phone ending office mail etiquettes. Every day in a big city far away from the reality of what a small town beautiful to its very core makes me even more aware of what my hometown does for my heart .It makes me so very happy to be here amongst all these elements in their purest form. To wake up to the koel fiercely calling out at 4 AM. To see my mother tinker around the kitchen, my father gardening with all his focus till 11 AM. This time, the monsoon visit has been less luxurious with sparse rains and halting showers. But we are all home together my parents, my elder sibling and I after a gap of 4 whole years! And so we make the best of it. We try being respectful of each other’s space but invariably drive each other crazy with our rules, our needs and our level of comfort with being around each other – 4 very different people all struggling to deal with each other now that my sister and I are no more kids. We huddle up in the afternoons after lunches, munching the sweet ‘nodiya supuri’ paan that is the mandatory must have and gossip about relatives, political news, trivia and science. We make tea for each other, one strong, one Darjeeling, one without milk. We bring out old pictures that need to be digitally saved into a systematic database that will hopefully provide the generation after, a glimpse into the Mitra clan and their sometimes maddening yet delightful lives. We make lists of furnitures that need to be sold, teach our mother to navigate through OLX and make up her mind about new items that the home needs.

  

These are but just a token gesture. A miniscule amount of the duty we as children are able to fulfill, gifting them our company, our time, our love and gratitude for being our parents. They love it at first. But nag us and taunt us about the life we lead. About the life that women, daughters and sons of their friends are leading, some even younger to us .” Everyone in our peer group is busy with not one but two grandchildren during summers. What do we have to look forward to?” We stare back with blank expressions of guilt, of our lives playing out as we see out of our control of plans that would help achieve the perfect family, husband, kids routine. We dismiss their sadness as customary expressions of old age and we distract them with ‘must do tasks’ this time now that we are together after 4 long years, “lest we aren’t together like this soon” . The family portrait we lack on our living room wall. “The incomplete family”, my mother adds. “Your love and affection is fine but where is the circle of life? The next generation to take care of you and look forward to once we are gone?” I agree with her in my heart silently and look away at the sky. It’s paler today and likely to shower for a bit. I am waiting for that massive downpour I remember from my childhood. The one that blanks out every sound, every thought, every movement around me. And lets me drift away to the inner recesses of my mind.