Speculations anyone?

"You're still the same! Just as you were in Junior college." She said with no hint of incredulity.
"Really?" I ask, stunned.

Cringe.
Cringe.

Brain doing a mental check:
Should I let my hair down and show her how wild it can get?
Should I rattle off unsavory invectives I've picked up over the years, in different languages?
Should I flash her a packet of goldflake lights?
Or my shiny new credit card?
Try getting her into an argument about Mumbai v/s Bombay or Obama's policies?

She's judged me. 
But she tries to be judicious


As an after thought she adds, "No but I'm sure there's lots more up there now." (Pointing to the wonderful brain inside her wonderful head)


"So do you still attend the Music fest in college?" (the college I left five years back)
"No" I say.

It's her turn to cringe now. That's it.I've confirmed her speculation .
I exit, so she can be happy about her judgment.
 
I wonder why I stopped by to say a hi to her in the first place.

In this country, speculations are a national pastime. Or so I speculate and comfort myself.

Rumblings

I sit back and stare at the blankness of the white dashboard on my screen. My fingers itch to type something. But I punch in this instead. Words and images whir through the mess that is my head. I momentarily feel like something is going to burst. With a short but loud 'pop'. Petering into a soft fizzle. Nothing happens. I think of a few well rehearsed lines to write, so I could sound grand, or may be profound or may be interesting. I scroll  the gray button on my black mouse up and down. Randomly. The bloody auto editor underlines my 'grey' in red and indicates to me  I am wrong. I correct it. I spell it as g-r-a-y. The utter blandness of my writing of the past months strikes me. The remarkable insignificance of my words makes me cringe. There's an unusual cold wind rustling the orange curtains in my window.The soft beat of the wind chime does little to drown the noise of the silence around me. I switch on the television just to make sure the noises inside my head become inaudible. The very happy people on Channel V make me cringe a little more. I switch it off. Now i can hear the comfortable breathing of my dog. It is in perfect harmony with his little tummy which goes up and down and up with every breathe. The curtain rustles a little more. This is uncannily cold by my city standards.

I decide to call it a day.
I'll savour the cold, so rare in my city, on my train ride to work tomorrow.

Kerala Diaries Part II

Some funny sign boards I spotted propped up in different places in the motherland. Within a context or despite one, I think you'd still chortle. No?

Kerala Diaries

The winding drive through the ghats had made us a little dizzy. As we stepped out of the vehicle a strange mix of smells wafted through the thin mountain air. It was at once sweet, spicy, fragrant, delectable and jerky. A warm shower of yellow orchids hung over our heads. We softly began to tread through what was a Spice Garden in the mountains of Thekkady, in Kerala.

The Spice trail that we were whisked off on was led by an exuberant, dramatic gentleman called Paul. He took us through a long winding tour of a spice garden that grew every conceivable variety of herbs and spices found in the small town of Thekkady and near by Kumily. Though the spice garden was colorful and vibrant with an abundance of heliconias, shoe flowers, balsams, bigonias, dahlias and bougainvillea flowers, this is my favorite shot from the hour long Spice trail.

A lone coconut tree towering through the mass of green, almost touching the blueness of the day sky. There was something about this tree trunk that made me stand around it, and peer at the tree through this angle.I soon realized that, if I cajoled it a little with the might of my palm, the whole tree coyly swayed from one side to another, the palm leaves tingling to the tips.Thin beams of sunlight were caught in the leaves, only to soon fall down as a shimmer.

If only all cajoling was this simple.
:)

Happiness Denominators

Foot board travel on a fast Mumbai local,
Cool breeze slapping  your face,
The noise of the inside is not cacophony for a change,



And a little beer buzzing through your head and veins.

Of course, you remember to hold on to the bars.

Matches

There are the usual things to remember people and places by, photographs, conversations, bills, tickets, sms-es, souvenirs, letters. That's one way of preserving a memory.

But, aren't there times you wish you could just pack all  memories - of the colors, smells, flavour, taste, time, touch, all of it into a box? A tiny little box, out of which you could sieve a memory out, little by little, and savour it in pinches.Sometimes may be a bit of the blueness of the sky. Sometimes maybe the coolness of the naked rock tipped over by the icy cold stream. Sometimes maybe the softness of a nimble fingertip.Or may be the warmth of steam from a cup of coffee which bumps against a numb nose on a cold morning.

I'm living under no illusion.So I'm doing the next best thing I can. I'm collecting match boxes instead.There's one in blue and silver from Shillong, another in black and red from Hyderabad. CB gifted me one, a keep sakes from a trip to Lonavala, and another "Ship" maachis, a souvenir from a nondescript tapri somewhere on NH 4. There's also a hand me down tiny box of wax matches from Himachal.

I'm waiting for more from other people and places.

Those of you coming back to my city this Christmas, you know what to get me :)

Five reasons why I want 2009 to be over

1. Because someone I know WILL get married!
2. Because then Dee will be only seven months short of crossing over to the other side of 25. Getting older, and shrill-er, but no wiser.
3. Because CB will be out of B school and the C grade campus and get a real job with a big fat pay check. And then henceforth sponsor all my drinks and dining. Did you mention a holiday too?
4. Because I'll have done my little vacation with 4 people who once couldn't stand each other in the same room!
5. Because (fingers crossed) February 2010 spells freedom!

2010. It seems a long way off.
Phew.

An Evening

One wall of my living room has been broken down to make large french windows and a glass door. This allows for a judicious view of the world outside. The odd days that I am at home, I dislike being indoors between five and seven in the evening. I often get a glimpse of the dark dusk sky invading the blue of the day. As the lamps are lit, the soft yellow of the 40 watts bulbs mingles with the dark blue of the sky outside.All doors and windows are ritualistically closed, to keep the errant mosquitoes out. All this somehow often makes me feel a little somber, and all I want is to be swallowed by a dark, warm blanket.

Today, as I went about with this routine, I unusually heard a lot of noises outside the window. Beyond our compound wall is a small field, with a few trees. Curiously, I peeked out and saw winged creatures swarming around it. The evening sky was full of them, all probably headed back home. Caught in the dull mechanics of urban existence, I often forget this city doesn't have just black crows and noisy pigeons. As I surveyed the sky, it was checkered with birds of different sizes in hues of black, grey, white, brown and even red and pink ! This evening, one tree was particularly abuzz with a flurry of conversations. I've often heard a stray koel or a crow, but this was different. The members of this housing colony were innumerable green winged beings. Their loud, incessant chirping was accompanied with an ocassional angry whosh of a wing, as someone stormed out of the branches, or someone fluttered back home.

The humdrum of the approaching night and the drone of the electric fan was drowned, if only temporarily by their magical conversations. Indecipherable.Magical.

I think I have found reason to be a little less unhappy between five and seven p.m.

Of Trees

Two trees that two friends sent me :)

Thanks N & T.

Why I like trees

As a child, I never had a fascination for dolls. I was more happy gazing out of the fourth floor window of my Mumbai flat. It overlooked a long, grey water pipeline and tin roof tops of shanties that lay beyond. The view was not exceptional, except for the orange flames of the Gulmohar trees, which shrouded everything else that lay beyond it,with a fiery veil. This was the view from my bedroom. If I looked out of my living room window, I had another favourite sight. The lone jamun tree which stood at the extreme corner of the car park. It had a fat, brown trunk and overstretched arms...the dark green of the leaves spilling over into the next compound too.

I don't know why I recall these trees now. Except maybe, they remind me of how curious they made me as a child. The Gulmohar tree perplexed me with their cycles of orange and bare. I remember eagerly waiting for the bright green buds to split open and ooze out the red and orange. They stayed on for a whole summer, plastered against the pale blue of the sky. When they were doused by the early June showers, they softly dropped onto the wet mud, only to be swept away into a green wheel barrow the next day.

The jamun tree was another story. It stood like a lone pillar, strong, mighty and glorious. The purple of the berries often stained my skirts, hands and teeth. On quiet summer afternoons, children often crept over the compound wall to throw stones and bring down berries. But there was something more to this tree. It looked different every time I stared hard at it. While it's true that I might have been enamoured by Enid Blyton and her wonderful spiel of faraway trees, this tree often made me wonder. Its mighty trunk and overarching branches convinced me much like Blyton, that there was something magical about it. It was like nothing else I had seen around in my  little urban world.

Lately, I've realized that I often doodle trees. I even seem to stop by trees, to keep my palm on a chipping bark. There is a magic which tingles me for moments. I don't know what it is...but it is there.

Watching trees as a kid taught me something. It wasn't just the magic and wonder, it's probably something more...it made me... curious, patient, dreamy? I can't find the right word to say what it taught me, unknowingly.  May be for now I'll just call it... hope.