With or Without Who...

The fastest thought that takes over you even before you know it, is the thought that seeps into you while you are surrounded by dim lights, blue, red, green , purple ones while you sip your drink and pretend that life will take its own course, putting you and your memories in a less painful place. The thought starts as a trickle in your head, the faucet gingerly being opened on a winter’s night afraid that what will pour will sting your flesh, makes you shudder uncomfortably You fight it, smiling across the table to your buddy, taking another swig of the beer that’s come by ‘four in a pack for the price of three”, you smile away your unsettling thought, you are trying not to open the faucet yet. You like all things risky with a potential to hurt you but so enticing, so seductive. So you open the faucet. This time you take a stronger bitter gulp of your “draft” beer. You flinch, find your buddy sneaking a peek at your face, you smile back reassuring him, “Yes, I’m ok. No I’m not crying within or unhappy. Yes these tears aren’t to be wasted now”. But the faucet has been turned on faster, the music louder and the beer’s high – well you are not drunk, so you think faster. A flat with a view that looks out to the matchbox city, offering you a horizon unmatchable for a suburban accommodation. The flat is a home no longer identifiable by two or three bedrooms, it’s the pair of clothes you always find strewn in the hall when you come home first, it’s the ash tray by the bedside, a watch forgotten to be worn to office today, a goblet of wine that’s been drunk while Murakami’s Norwegian Wood was flipped in silence. I smile. I breathe in small gulps, take another look at my watch. It’s closer to bedtime, there’s no door to be locked open, no clothes strewn about, no ash tray...not even the ashes that would settle on the floor and get into my hair, no wine stained goblet, the only semblance of a watch :the impending doom of an early Monday morning, the clock by my bedside staring at me angrily, and the Norwegian Wood.... a boy is strumming the lyrics on his guitar, his eyes close and open to look at me and then look away. I wait for him to look again. I stare at my watch. It’s time to take the last swig of my lukewarm beer. The wait is over. There’s a passenger, I have been waiting for but now the wait is over. I have to return home alone.

Of friends leaving

If I were to think of a single trend that persists in my life, it is that of change when things around you are settling down. Yes yes , I never denied change is bad. Having to accept new situations, people or even a room makes us more accomodating of the immense diversities that life demands from us..sometimes impinges.

So I have grown up moving from a small town to a big city, from being heckled and bullied in my school's playground by the class "leader" to a convent school that let me sprint through its corridors without a care, from love that seemed everything to new love I don't think will ever grow old...from one job to another and so on.

To be honest , I don't mind change. Looking back I know why I can reach out to people so easily and adjust to changes in my surroundings. I haven't quite exactly trampled around my country but I absorbed and apprecaited the ethos of every new place I moved to.

But when friends move, it's difficult. It always has been. The girl in school I shared all my secrets with and with whom summers were spent cycling all aorund town moved away to Bangalore when I was ten. I cried but the crazed routine of school didn't give the me time to grieve for long. Since then I haven't grieved remotely about people moving out of the routine that my life had become.

I am hurrying to finish my sentences. Anxious to meet a friend - one more in the latest list, who will soon leave Mumbai. And well there aren't any tears as of now. The last two months have been the closest to what I can call the "best". Summer afternoons spent walking around South Mumbai locating extinct dhobi ghaats or clicking pictures of a synagogue I couldn't have asked to be painted in any other colour- blue..we laughed at ourselves and spoke in silences. Two years back we did the same on Kolkata's streets..gauging our lives in 20 questions. There wasn't too much spent together in the interim. But the last two months..seemed to have made up for two years.

No cliches! No cliches! Thats what I keep in mind when I script my stories, when I interview people, when I create the stuff for people to see on the idiot box. So I'll stop. Perhaps a lot more unsaid but better this way.

I spoke about breaking free last night. I don't know if he will manage it ..perhaps not yet. But perhaps between the both of us I 'll be happier if he gets there first. I''ll just request "The Piano Man " at Toto's everytime I miss him :)