When they did meet again...

“I have never been able to forget anyone I’ve been with because each person has their own qualities, you can never replace anyone. What is lost is lost. Each relationship when it ends really damages me. I haven’t fully recovered, that’s why I am very careful with getting involved because it hurts too much…even getting laid. I actually don’t do that much."

I miss some of the most mundane things like I’m obsessed with little things, maybe I’m crazy. When I was little, my mom always told me I was late to school and she followed to see why. I was looking at chestnuts falling from tress and rolling on the sidewalk or ants crossing the road or the way a leaf casts a shadow on a tree trunk. I think it’s the same with people. I see little details so specific that move and that I miss and I always will miss. You can never replace anyone for such specific beautiful details like I remember how your beard has a little bit of red in it and how the sun made it glow before you left”

- The character of Celine (Juliane Delphie) to Jesse (Ethan Hawke) in the film ‘After Sunset’ when they meet for the second time after nine years.

What does the itinerant speak?

When I’m in Kolkata I abandon my hissing ‘S’ and thicken my palate to say ‘SH’. Back in Orissa, I have to jump off the boat of the elite and the ‘bhadralok’ (the genteel in Bengali) to participate in perhaps a bit more rustic sounding but the earthy Oriya.

In Hyderabad, I let my imagination run wild. With no compulsions to speak the native language (Telugu, although I must confess my brother in law is Telugu and I feel obliged to learn the language now that we have relatives not sharing the same lingo as ours), my Hindi has a smattering of Urdu, it’s much more nasal and the characteristic ‘ich’ is generously prefixed to the last word of almost every sentence.

So why this harangue of my prowess over dialects across the country? Let’s just say I’m two timing. Actually heck no! I’m four timing and hope to have more regional influences under my belt well, actually my tongue!

I was born in Rourkela, a model township in the eastern part of Orissa (Located in Eastern India). In the following years, I was moved cradle, walker, pram and all progressively (gradually evolving with the classical notion of mobility of the modern urban human today J) across different towns within Orissa gradually settling in Bhubaneshwar. My father worked for the State Bank of India and eventually got transferred down south. So we moved to Hyderabad. I steadily forgot Oriya, focused lesser on my native tongue (now it may get confusing J but we are Bengalis settled in Orissa for over two centuries) and improved in my English (Although I must confess I mess up easily in this language :P. I once called myself a novice in something I was very proud of when my handsome evening date pointed out that the word meant amateur. It was embarrassing but thankfully it also provided us some comic relief from the high tension atmosphere of a first date.)

Kolkata happened next. I was suddenly the ‘probashi Bengali’ (a non Kolkata Bengali) amidst the sea of Presidency students versatile in Tagore, Satyajiat Ray and almost anyone breathing the great literature, nuances and mannerisms of the community of the very Bengalis. I was re christened ‘Ronjona’ instead of the ‘Ranjana’ I’d been for the last 18 years. But I didn’t grumble or cast off these identity changing efforts by Bengali brethren. Instead, I found myself drawn to texts that I hadn’t read as a child and wanted to learn my favourite lines from Ray’s popular film for kids ‘Goopi Gayeen Bagha Bayeen’, for eg

Duniyae kotho aachey dehbar

Kotho ki janar, kothoki sheykhar

Shob e tho baaki kichu dekha hoye naaye

Ghorey keno boshey aachi bekar’

There’s so much to see in the world

So much to know, so much to learn,

So much left, nothing’s been seen

Why am I sitting useless at home?

And so I began loving the city and feeling more at home here, with the smell of ‘Chaathim phool’ pervading the crisp wintry evenings, exploring bylanes for extinct cafes, watching plays for twenty five rupees and buying time over scrabble at Park Street with my then college sweetheart.

But even that feeling at being home was short lived and then I was suddenly pushed from the East to the South this time Chennai in the state of Tamil Nadu. With no clue of how Tamil had to be spoken forget comprehending most of the words and neck deep with my Television training at the Asian College of Journalism, I was waiting for this phase to transpire and arrive at a new city. And it did happen.

My first job as a journalist took me to Mumbai in Maharashtra. In Mumbai, in your day to day life, you wouldn’t encounter any pressure to communicate in Marathi with the locals (except for the occasional and now perhaps the more frequent episodes of Raj Thackeray insisting on ‘Mumbai’ instead of ‘Bombay’, getting his goons to bash up north Indian immigrants AND recently stunning the nation by giving a complete half hour interview in Marathi to an English news channel).

Coming back to the point, I figured I’ve loved all the places I’ve grown up in in my little life so far. I’ve however, not been emotionally loyal enough to any of these places to learn the native language in earnest (such as Telugu, Tamil , Marathi). Perhaps, I did take my itinerant and cosmopolitan advantage over my peers for granted, even boasted about it to those who were biased enough to make fun of or caricature a region and it’s people without being able to first laugh at themselves. I found their myopic outlook towards languages and cities other than their own immature to say the least, because it was the assorted experience of different regions that taught me how to adjust to and learn from new environments.

Ah well! I was never quite the linguist. But the itinerant hopes to improve. And having bid adieu to Mumbai perhaps for a while, she’s meandering through cities, adopting families not her own, looking for new opportunities in her field even outside it, all of it driven somehow all of it as a process of looking for new experiences to help some old ones fade into oblivion.

At present this itinerant is back in Hyderabad and well the city of palaces, ‘mehfils’, the one and only Hyderabadi biryani, attar….makes me want to say “Iskey baad kya pataa nahin par miya kuch der ke liye man kar raha ki rahoon…iddherich’!”

(‘I don’t know what’s after this, but brother, for a while my heart wishes to stay only here’)

Ramblings on being young...

When we are young, we are stupid.

When we are young, we are naïve and hopeful. The present may seem bad but the future will always bring new experiences and like a tide, wash over the flotsam that our lives have seem to become.

When we are young, we assume we will meet many more 'the ones' in the future who we’ll share with what we haven't ever before. We may have met someone just now and we may not want to be sure yet and therefore decide to not hedge our bets on just this. But we connect with someone with all our sincerity only once. The cynic/skeptic impedes any new meetings.

When we are young, we search for the moment that will hold the world around us still. A moment we can return to in our head time and time again. But every time we do, the present impinges upon the past and its perception is coloured by how we live in the present. The past is lost..... no matter how bad or good it was.


When we are young, we long to meet a fleeting glance that will stand still when it meets ours hoping that in that moment alone an eternity could be lived together.


When we are young, we seek happiness wherever we can find it, even if it’s the rush of spending an evening with someone you’ve just met. The evening wears out and the night brings with itself unpredictability but we don’t step back. It’s later you look back and don’t regret doing that. After all you think, ‘How would I have valued who I’m with now if I hadn’t known the odds with all the people it didn’t work with.” But what if, the person you’re with now makes you want to go back to your youth and moments' of unpredictability. What if everything in place doesn’t excite you at all in life today? What would you have chosen or would you have known better?

I’d still want to be young and a bit naïve as well but most of all hopeful.

09-10-09

‘So much, yet so little”. I think this is the eternal pattern humans are caught in. Plenitude and bounty, if only we would look ahead, above, beyond and yet our weary hearts and dimmed hopes, make us numb, content to hold on to the last tentacles of despair.

Why despair? “Look at it this way. Lesser pain in the longer run.” That’s how a wise well wisher once put it. Almost makes you look at your interest in human bonds seem a commercial investment doesn’t it. Someone comes along and makes logic seem unnecessary, pragmatism a foolish word and laughter eternal even if the hearty ones you had brought on tears later. So you pumped in every single atom of your happiness, the joy you’d never feel even if an older friend stepped in at that moment with a surprise painstakingly planned. You didn’t believe in hedging your risks though. Mutual funds do that for you.


For a dreamlike frenzy and the boost of anxiety attacks that feed us in our youth, anything is worth the gamble, bonds forged in quest of future happiness even more so. But gambling the commercial way doesn’t entail grey areas does it? You place your money on your intuition or strategy, whose consequences you are well aware of. But human bondage, they cost more energy and time than ventures whose outcome makes your pockets heavier.

And yet you'd take your chances; in a little corner of a resort by the big blue sea, you’d pull the trigger on the machine, seated on a stool next to your partner in crime betting away the last chips, waiting to see if those three bananas in the machine struck a row together, You knew your chances in real life were low, but this setting presented a virtual possibility and you were happy to take the risk and bet your remaining chips away.

Yet, sitting here, now by the dim light of the corner lamp watching naïve insects driven to despair by its enticing light, I look back and understand what the “long run” counsel holds for me.

It’s so easy to rush headlong, to never want to stop being the chase or being in pursuit of it. So easy to go back to the apartment in the suburb and wish you’d hold time in a duplicate key which transferred you to the utopian happiness when you opened it’s lock. But the light is dim, you know it well and yet you want to get closer.

The insect gets closer but when it’s seen all that it wanted to, it’s wings fall off , a speck of a corpse lying on dusty wooden tables to be brushed away.

I'm weary dim lights. Of course the fantasy of the neon is elusive even if I know I'd enjoy it sooner or later.

But I’ll take a bit longer to turn the lights brighter. Because there's a time trap, I think I'm caught in and it is like it is today. No pretensions, simple facts. 09-10-09. Step further but a step back because time makes you bold but steadily. Because staying here in the shadows is comforting…..perhaps for a while until the light needs to be turned brighter.

STRENGTH - INTELLECTUAL OR PHYSICAL?

There’s one emotion I find even more frightening than that of loneliness. Helplessness.
To know you would be able to otherwise in ordinary circumstances take on a certain situation and yet when it stares you in the eye, you freeze.

I watched my father get battered today by a stranger. His weapon? An ordinary helmet.
Baba’s only mistake was to protect his daughter from two men on a motorcycle attempting to mug her. As he called out to the men who sped by her, my sister watched in horror as one of the men got off the bike took off his helmet and deal one blow after another to my father’s head. I stepped out listening to the screams and watched this unfold, but found no courage to step closer.

My parents and my grandfather have raised both my sister and I to have the courage to take on any odd situations we may have to face. Today as I recalled the incident in a zombie like state to my mother confessing my guilt that I could have helped my father, taken on one of the men or atleast noted the number of the bike (I had rushed out in between a math exercise with a pen in my hand!), I received a reply that contradicts what I’ve essentially believed in. “Thank God you didn’t step out.” She replied. “Anything could have happened to you. What would you have done to help, it could have made matters worse. Don’t get bogged down by any guilt.”

I’ve lived away from my parents across two different cities. Faced challenges at my workplace, emotional complexities, financial issues, sickness sometimes all of it at one go and completely alone. And being on my own in Mumbai for a year and half endowed me with a great sense of independence. But today none of my self assured independence seems worthwhile to me. My mother almost comforted my lack of courage. And somewhere, that made me feel I’m a woman not expected to protect my father physically from harm’s way. Nobody in my family would underestimate my worth if I didn’t. But I know I’m not even strong enough to reach out to my 60 plus father battling a man with an ordinary helmet.

Does our society, our family ever expect physical prowess and bravado ‘a must have’ quality in our daughters, sisters or our wives?

The answer is a clear no. And no matter what the 21st century may endow women today what with opportunities to foray into a world and carve a niche along side men, women have to and must recognize the need to strengthen themselves bodily to face physically challenging situations not just the intellectual.

We need to let everyone know that we are to be taken seriously in our workplaces but if someone dares bother us or our loved ones, they will have to put up with a fight.

Else you may just be standing behind the gate, horror and fear your heart and courage to do no more.

'Good'Bye?

So how does one say "Goodbye!"

GOOD + BYE .....?

Can some farewells be a good bye. What if they were the bad kinds?

I'm leaving Mumbai. Well I'd like to think of it as a breather from work, my life that seemed to have fallen into a predictable routine (and I hate predicatability apart from the men in my life) and well the last better unsaid.

The idea was never to tell my awesome colleagues, old and new friends that, "I'm packing off! I've had enough of the city!" I'd recently gone through a heartbreak and for a week or so I was burning up with madness and confusion and I just wanted to scream my lungs out, bawl and say "I'm getting out of here, this madness, this constant wanting and not getting ". It would be so dramatic rather melodramatic and I've had quite a bit of it in my life so far , so I tried sorting it out over and over in my head.

I'd wanted to take the GRE for over a year now, but never got down to studying properly for it, my family wanted me to consider a Master's program in the US. (Fortunately my mother is from that stock of women "Go out! Move on! See the world! Don't you dare say you are committed..You're 21! You've no business to belive this man is it NOW! Instead of your "Get married. You've seen and worked enough. We are worried!) And well, honestly I always had this desire to throw myself off the safe track of a safe job, safe pay and head out for things I think would excite me but don't know more about. Documentaries, travel, write...'Aaaaah! ' You'll say. The cliched dilemma of kids these days who are never patient enough! (Whatever!)

It all just came together one day in my head at 6 am. And it took me 24 hours to put the messed up itsy bitsy puzzles about whether this is the right thing to do or not, walk up to my boss and tell her I wanted to pursue my MA.

You'd think that para above reflects calm, poise and decisiveness. But clarity of this kind is more enforced rather than backed by a foresight of what lies ahead. You know you have to take the jump even if it means falling on your face. Failure is hard, but success is far more dangerous. if you get stuck in a cycle of money, opportunity adn praise for something you're not meant for, the consequence is deadly. It's not my quote. Look up Po Bronson, the authour of "What Should I do with My Life?" ( Ironically, I'd been given this book by my Consulting Editor who thought I needed to read teh stories fo peopel who'd taken the jump to follow their heart in much more difficult circumstances or really cushy jobs)

I knew I had to take a step to explore what lies beyond my boundaries, I'd just decided to delay that step and why not? My job doesn't pay great but getting to script, direct and feature in a high TRP rating show of UTVi that too as an Associate Producer at 23 got heady sometimes. You feel very narcisstic when you hear, see yourself on TV better still become a crucial element to a career show that's teaching you things and helping you meet entrepreneurs, professionals from exciting and diverse backgrounds.

My family in Mumbai is wonderful. My residence? I live in a paying guest accomodation that's barely like one. I come and go as I feel. A single mother who's fought against all odds and loves to spoil young people rotten. Her son, a Tech writer who loves adventure and made my first trek an out of the world experience. He's been a shoulder to cry on and the brother figure who also admonishes me when I screw up. His sister, an accomplished photograher whose room, books and pictures never cease to fascinate me. My roomamate with her generous offers of pasta, tulli ki khichdi and generous counsel on men. And of course big, cuddly, lovable Ego. Our dog who drives us crazy every 6 montsh with her phases of pseudo pregnancy. This time she adopted her favourite rubber toy a burger that squeaks out loud and nursed it for a month as her pup. "Your little burger will grow up to be a nice juicy Mac" said Natasha. :)

We all live in a old building on Parel, the kind that has a terrace garden, high cielings. Giving up on this is anything but easy. Friends come and go. The door's always open for more.

Then of course is my inner circle of friends. My second family as I've referred to them for the longest time. Some of its members date back to my high school days who are in the city, others are friends of friends of 'a friend' and we all got along together like a dream. There used to be another home for me in Mumabi. Well atleast I thought of it as home. Where we all cooked together, played board games till wee hours of the morning and overwhelmed strangers who stepped into "our" home with our high quotient of happiness. Mumbai was Mumbai because of this family. One member of this family caught me off guard at Toto's a coupel of weeks back. Fighting back his tears in a pub at the idea of me leaving Mumbai, he said " It's the end of an era" . Cheesy you may think, but we all know somehere deep in our hearts that the 'togetherness' has been lost. And it was the 'togetherness' that kept me back from making certain tough decisions.

When I put in my papers and told my folks I'm returning to Bhubaneshwar, I myself was in denial. I think I still am.

I hope it gives me a window to look out and away from for a while. From a whirlpool of emotions that got the better of me. From being worn out physically with crazy hours at work. To explore what further studies could offer and simply to do a couple of things I'd wanted to do. Sometime we all hesiatate to take a step becaue we aren't convinced enough. Believe me, conviction isn't what you should look for in this situation. It's having the fortitude to say that "This was good, there may not be 'the best' with this step, but there could be something 'better' . And I won't know what that can be until I do"

Soem of my firends still think I'm doing this becasue Mumbai's got to me and a certain 'someone' just made living here tougher. Perhaps. But Mumbai's become so much more. I started noticing the city more keenly once I decided to leave it. In the last two months, I've met people through people who all seem to know each other. The favourite haunt is a little garage pub that we never seem to tire of . Conversation moves from one topic to the next, taking from what each of us do: private equity, fiction writer, animation, theatre etc. Our individual stories of life, work , love and more is never ending. The energy you derive from meeting new people, learning new things, sometimes it's just enough to make you believe you possibly can't live in another city in India. Travelling alone as a single woman in the city post 12. Impossible anywhere else.

So I'm having to say bye to all these! And so far the self denial has kept the tearworks away or the sadness that coems when you leave something or even someone you instinctively felt was 'it'. People, family, work. And head to a city that's "supposed" to be home. But my roots, my belonging? Hyderabad, Kolkata, chennai, Mumbai........Mumbai...?

Good bye for now... 'Good' bye?

BI'JOY'A! But Without the 'JOY'

I am not a Bengali who wears my "bongness" on my sleeve...which I confess sometimes makes my regional identity a bit of a problem for people who meet me for the first time. Technically I didn't ever consider myself as a part of the big bong fraternity that drools over 'fish chop' and flutters their eyelids at the sound of Rabindra Sangeet. I grew up in a small town called Bhubaneshwar which is the capital of Orissa (located on the Eastern part of the Indian map) and well is the land of 'Oriyas'. I grew up with kids and neighbours who were anything but Bengali and apart from my Dadu (Grandfather) who tuned into the local radio station playing old Tagore and Najrul at night and his pronounced "shos"...'bongness' wasn't drilled into my head. But yes, I still use this defense tactic with my Cal bong friends. I spent summers reading Anandobajar's magazine and figuring out this cartoon called Montu, and twisted my tongue and scratched my head as I practiced the Bengali letters on my slate.

Turning eight I moved to Hyderabad where I spent the next ten years of my life mixing around with Telugu kids and neighbours. There wasn't ever any pressure to learn the local language because our maids and auto drivers spoke in a mix of old Hyderabadi Hindi and sometimes Telugu and well the local peopel themselves never had this "Speak our language because you are in our land" kind of attitude. "Unho idhari khadey they, idharich. Sachi !" (He was right here, right here. Really, I am telling you so).

But all this changed dramatically with my shift to Kolkata. It's quite funny. My early schooling was in Bhubaneshwar, mid and high in Hyderabad and Graduation in Kolkata. Three distinct phases of my life divided into 3 cities. So in Cal, I was sniffed up and down by bong 18 year olds who couldn't figure why a Bengali girl couldn't speak her own mother tongue the way she is "supposed" to, why were all my words in Bangla with "s" and not the pronounced - not to mention what my family poked fun at -- rolling "shos" (I would say "ekhaney boso", instead of "ekhaney bosho"). I guess somewhere the guilt and curiosity to be loyal to my bongness began within Presidency College's walls. I hung on to every single line my friends spoke, made them recite lines from plays, poems and in one case even made my new found crush at a fest (who I had invited home for the first time) read out "Aabol Tabol" aloud for me, that's the very famous book with funny verse for kids written by Sukumar Ray. I could go on and on about all the food, the way we wore our sarees and dhotis during Pujo, a Bengali boy who took my obession a step further... I even introduced myself to people as "Ronjona" as opposed to my earlier North Indian accented Ranjana (pronouced 'RUN JAN AAAA')..... a rebirth of sorts.

The long and short of all this is that I am a different person today thanks to my 3 years in the land of Tagore. And I am awfully morose at the moment, misery that only a true blue Bong would feel during Bijoya if he had to work, sit late night over an edit shift, eating pasta and reeling from the awful smell of some poisonous phenyl that's just been used to clean the office. Instead I should be with family and friends, laughing over scrumptous bhog and intoxicated by the heady mix of chandan, jhuno (frankinscence) and joba(hibiscus) phool. Instead of staring at cold gleamy phenyl mopped floors, my eyes should be focussing on soothing off white alpana patterns on red cement floors etched out lovingly by my Ma and Kakimas . This is my Bijoya in Mumbai away from Ma and Baba, away from the Bengali boy, my precious friend from Cal and the new ones I acquired in Mumbai in 1201 post one's departure...no sight of Godess Durga this year, no aratis, no being overwhelmed having your heart in your mouth as the dhak's rhythm grows louder......... I can't even shrug off with what my colleagues term as "This is life in the media so learn to live with it". My 'bongness' has begun to matter :)