ink&olives

technicolour, out of focus

2011-05-03T04:19:00.000-07:00

going around in a circle

between amorous ice creams

and the candy striped long legs of bandra

curled up every afternoon

within the erotic swirl of a city bus

drops of punk on asphalt

and a graying moviestar

i am stuck between my longing for

and obstinate love against

the small square of always bombay

uprooting

2011-03-22T04:52:00.000-07:00

so we are moving. here and also, here

Offspring

2010-08-11T16:16:00.000-07:00

Walking back home early morning,
Neon colours that worked the night before,
Become a garish excess

In this city by the sea,
Dawn is often the strongest smelling,
More raw and real than anything else

At home, my father is up now,
Gently putting together brass, stone and flowers
Basking in the mellow comforts of routine and worship

The mosquito net is gently pulled back on his side of the bed,
My mother drifting in and out of sleep mumbles the time
And rubs her ankles

She is up before she knows it,
Twenty nine years of early morning tea
Get the better of her

Her eyes are distant,
Disentangled from last night’s television
Away from everything she has ever written, sung or given shape to

Her mornings are as fragrant as her,
Completely secure in knowing what to do
She starts piecing her puzzle together

She pulls aside the curtains in each room
Father’s soft chants fade away
As harsher sounds of daybreak are allowed to enter

Mother is chased by typical morning dilemmas,
The kitchen has to serve up more than just breakfast
Before the house is empty again

Father eventually puts his world in order,
Papers, keys, tie are quietly in place
Eyes fleeting from newspaper to the clock

All their lives they have striven for this,
An unadulterated morning arithmetic
Put in place by discipline, health and beliefs

Surrounded by the subtle assurance of purity sacrosanct
And then I insert my key, slowly prying the door open
Violating the pious air of mornings at home

I make small talk, I suddenly notice how old they are getting
Feeling this strong urge to hold on to them,
I want to comfort them with words of affection

But I look elsewhere and plan my day ahead
Ruthlessly I bring together gadgets and work schedules
Not being able to look at this new place I have found myself in the eye

Where they look at their ‘middle class’ daughter
And think about how she was earlier
Free from all her anomalies and accusations

chashma hatao

2010-05-13T10:12:00.001-07:00

Sanity shall be showed the door for this post. Twisted minds have made way and tempers have been provoked. So one shall quit the occasional calm blogging routine and rant both towards and against those who have filters for eyes and decide to sum me up with typical adolescent flourish.

First of all, there are writers and there are non-writers, just as there are artists and non-artists. Not everyone writes with a trained mind, just as not everyone draws with a skilled pen. The onslaught of words might or might not be precise, perfect and as timbered as the fussy reader wants. However that does not mean that the feelings behind those words are shaky. More importantly, one who is trained visually might also be genuinely interested in literature, poetry and other forms of the written word. While they may not have the necessary skills to make to coveted bookstore shelves, blogs such as these are fine for the commonplace to hold up their words to the few who bother to read them. No one expects a literary following from these blogs, no one expects to impart commandments to a gathering of disciples. We write not because there is little else we can do, but because we feel a constant need to express, narrate, articulate within our limited means. More importantly, this constant assumption that a visual professional would have no clue about the written word or be less aware of contemporary literary work is both infuriating and foolish. If this in any way bothers readers who are far more sensitive to the written word, too bad, let me show you out.

Secondly, a blog is just one minuscule aspect of a person’s life. No, make that ‘ a person’s virtual life’. Of all the hours spent on the internet, blogging in most cases takes up a tiny fraction of that time. It is stupid to assume that that is all there is to a person. That the occasional whim and fancy mentioned in a post, that the purposeless writing and meandering done on one’s blog sums up that person. It does not. There are many sides to any individual and this is just one of those many sides. It does NOT, in any way indicate what an individual is like, what they think about all the time and what their ideals are. In no way does it even remotely resemble all aspects of anyone’s life. So if you’re someone who decides to judge me as a person depending on the occasional post here, then you are clearly nourishing a half baked way of looking at people so screw you.

GLASS EYE

2010-02-28T14:06:00.000-08:00

Its early evening in Bombay. Skies smell of returning home. Darker skyscrapers have become silhouettes, ones with lighter coats of paint, not so much. Huge swirls of smoke rise up towards every bird. Hundreds of weary human bodies are on their way back, beads of sweat clinging onto their dusty skins. Many are on the verge of departure, gathering their spoils of the day. Some stay huddled in dark rooms still clawing through production factory lines, still prodding the hunted. And many are perched atop balconies like this one, staring into the impending orange of the highway, wondering which bird in the cage they really are.

Its probably not what we want, this rationale driven, non believing existence. We wouldn’t want to keep escaping into shreds of anonymity if it were. I think deep down everyone really wants to believe. Most don’t show it because they have been led to think that celebrating possibilities are incorrect and uncool. Possibly. Yet, isn’t it better than the resulting discontent, cynicism and anger? Isn’t this surface texture of denial simply an urban labyrinthine habit?

Truth is, one day all of us want to say “I left man, just upped and left.”

It doesn’t imply leaving a job, home or spouse. It doesn’t imply deserting family and friends. All it means, is walking away from the roadblocks our minds have been trained to put up. Willing oneself away from indifference. Disconnected individuals, however independent, will never be free. And in our various meandering ways, we all train our minds to consider oneself free. Our nomadic selves are bullied into believing that the incredibly radical and independent lives we have chosen to live is what comprises freedom. But its probably just that. Independence. A certain annotation of rights, maybe some free will. Separate, indifferent segments of self-run thoughts, ideas and decisions. Freedom on the other hand, requires no such cause and effect set up. Its not pre-planned, requires no political stand. It isn’t indifferent or disconnected. Freedom lies in the intuition of an informed mind. Freedom exists as a knowledge, not as a right. Independence can be granted, not freedom. Independence can also be snatched. Not freedom. Independence is therefore, fragile. Never freedom.

I don’t know if its a necessity, this freedom. One might like to think that we are managing pretty well without it. The machines are almost well-oiled, all the switches seem to be working. Food makes frequent appearances, money occasional ones. Science and history and politics and literature seem to be building up enough evidence of our glorious civilization. Information is controlled, behaviors mapped. Prisoners locked in, rebels locked out. Music trained to pacify, cinema fit to entertain. Everything is boxed, shelved, compartmentalized. The travels are documented, expenses chartered. Loves have been discarded, the circus has begun. No need to get emotional or involved. Distances are huge and thoroughly disinfected. There is no need to panic. Fear is for the old, our ‘ill-informed and non-radical’ predecessors. Not us, the neon-crazed shiny new generation. We step out of our doors sure and steady, shoes polished, hair in place, all prepared for the ‘freedom gala’.

Yet, when I set out to ‘be free’ I somehow had way more courage than I have now. Bit by bit, city to city all that has disintegrated into one very small voice in a corner of my boat. And now it is that voice telling me how I have become a typical bombay girl, leading a typical bandra life. Making breakfast, having dinner. Systematic and structured to accommodate the scared, repetitive patterns of a life as fragile and thin as second hand smoke.

longing no more

2010-01-17T11:26:00.000-08:00

There will always be one story where
without any reason, love shall exist

without joy, without laughter, without gain,
without blood, without fireflies

without a single happy memory, without one shrapnel of hope
without arms and mouths and curled up feet

love shall exist, if nothing
just to make fools out of us all

*blink

2009-12-07T20:47:00.000-08:00

i was looking for some stuff online, but the internet quietly informed me "sorry, you are looking for something that isnt there anymore."

yeah, no shit. i am.

bit

2009-06-29T03:52:00.000-07:00

The delirious neon glow of passing signs notwithstanding, it is otherwise a blatant sky lost above cluttered truths, the peripheries of trust and its various anomalies.

Its almost a malady now, this indifference. A forced manufacturing of defeat.

Dust

2009-05-31T22:21:00.000-07:00

Her, they said

Her feet, rusted, powdered, sly

One on the parched, crumbling afternoon soil

The other in a breathless squirm of stories

Outside the kiln, dust rises from her hair in bouts of orange smoke

She cries buildings, she cries roads

She cries walls, cities and water coolers

In broken gasps, she throws civilization out of her soul

2009-05-13T00:23:00.000-07:00

Thread

2009-04-07T07:48:00.000-07:00

She came in, sat down, collected her wings beneath her dusty feet. And pressed her ankles on the crisp edges of each battered fold. The stale wings crumpled under the weight scattering a few bits across the faded floor of the room. A few particles of yellowed wing dust flew into the waiting arms of thick afternoon air. All was still. He looked up from his brown book of stories and waited. Placing her right fist inside her left, she cracked her knuckles. Her shoulders drooped forward slightly in doing so, while she raised her head to listen to the pigeon outside. He could see it coming. He could almost smell the raw storm uncurling itself on the horizon having woken up from a dark, wormlike sleep.

Then she moved.

Flinging across the room rusty pins they had stuck on her inside the glass box, she spit out sharp pieces of broken glass. Blood trickling down her dry lips, she flung herself into the fan and splattered the walls with blue-green venom. Darting towards him she flew into his eyes and crumpled herself inside his head. She danced the dance of broken fire. The universe waited while she ruptured each vein of her head and bled into his. She pulled out curls of spite and smeared them across every dark groove in his mind. Her blood curdled into squirming yellow dots, frothing with fury and crawling down his spine into the very pits of his heart. He could feel beneath his skull every rip on her skirt as she plucked out words from a deafening, blinding, screeching galaxy of sounds. Flitting from wall to wall crying out the only song she knew, the neon butterfly scratched out every bit of raw, tender thread they had woven together.

As evening fell, she paused for breath. She waited to be told not to leave, she waited for the bruises to be bathed, warmed and touched. But there isnt much two worms can do when everything is lost. So, he shrugged and went back to his brown book of stories.

Picking up loose strands of the carpet, she limped out of the room into a very dark night.

undone

2009-01-15T08:32:00.000-08:00

A few sun burnt years back, there was a Wall. It contained within itself blue, yellow and white concrete, orange mud, beautiful green and brown windows, the tussle of cotton sarees, street cricket, summer afternoons, evening tea, empty bylanes, vermillion streaks, promiscuous strains of melody, crows that knew magic, and, me.

This city was born a memory and hid within itself my frayed world of family, friends, whispers, secrets, loves, words and play. The city that nursed me into and out of adolescence, taught me to walk, to sing and to speak. To gather and distribute dreams, to form my arguments and construct my truths. With generous arms the wall collected the debris of the land and shaped its thieves and whores, dreamers and bathers, fighters and musicians. It powdered the faces of youth, and granted them their sins and their ignorance, their naiveté and their prayers. It pounded on heaps of sand and clay and baked our confused minds.

The wall knew its children. It knew we were weak and temperamental, with broken bones and hearts. It knew we had hardly anything to call our own and therefore, didn’t need much to be happy. It knew how much we abhorred and yet loved ourselves. Most of all, the wall knew how very ordinary and insignificant we are. How lost we would be were we not umbillically connected to it.

So my wall grieved. Knowing that when time arranged our departure, we would be excited and ungrateful. We would throw away everything we had gathered at its foot and sail off lighthearted amidst a sea of masks and hands, assuming there would be many other walls, with their generous arms and drooping chins waiting to gather us within their concrete veils.

So while we buried our small fears inside its crevices all the while ignorant of how frightened our wall was for us, it tensely awaited the day the chord would snap and we would be flung way out of its reach.

Disguised as the love-child of another time and place.

"learn to be quiet"

2008-12-31T10:46:00.000-08:00

" You need not do anything.
Remain sitting at your table and listen.
You need not even listen, just wait.
You need not even wait,
just learn to be quiet, still and solitary.
And the world will freely offer itself to you unmasked.
It has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet."

- Franz Kafka ('Learn to be quiet')

etc.

2008-11-03T02:30:00.000-08:00

We talk, me and my ceiling fan
Of empty balconies and summer terraces
Of sleep and the slumber of decay
Rustic foretelling of liquid stories
Form a not so yellow past.
Me of the blue veined wrath
And the fan of the golden whirr,
Sing songs and smell smells
Of oven clad days and brassplate nights
Circles on the fan surround me on their flight
But I’m a square, I have sharp edges
Bruises are therefore, likely.

nevermind why

2008-07-21T05:45:00.000-07:00

‘Perhaps’ yesterday smelt like garlic
‘Perhaps’ we drove further into the woods,
‘Perhaps’ thirty three nights back, a spider died in sleep,
‘Perhaps’ an ant and an owl met, forgot and met again

‘Perhaps’ two thirds of me is actually orange peel,
‘Perhaps’ one fourth of you is actually yellow sandstone
‘Perhaps’ a camel winked at you,
‘Perhaps’ you winked back?

‘Perhaps’ we began when we should have ended
‘Perhaps’ all Sundays contain breadcrumbs in their folds,
‘Perhaps’ punctuation isn’t quite necessary after all
‘Perhaps’ a rainy afternoon is all we will ever have

‘Perhaps’ there is a hole in my pocket,
‘Perhaps’ there is mud on the door stopper
‘Perhaps’ tomorrow will arrive disinfected, in a plastic bag
‘Perhaps’ the sun hid its face below the bedspread

‘Perhaps’ you are a rodeo clown
‘Perhaps’ I am a trainer of parakeets,
‘Perhaps’ the circus has only just begun
Or ‘Perhaps’, just ‘Perhaps’, we have left the tickets at home.

stupor

2008-07-08T11:38:00.000-07:00

Throughout school I was asked to read and write and read. But I ended up drawing on the margins, doodling around corners, turning dog ears to cats whiskers all the time. The more they asked me to write, the more I drew. Writing half heartedly on uninterested sheets of paper that would rather belong to one with more scholarly leanings, my pens would loiter around the corridors of chunks of printed text, making an eye here, a hand there…incessantly outlining nothingness next to hysterical amounts of impotent information.
Then there is now. When I am actually getting paid to draw, to play hopscotch with images and I have this incredible, uncanny urge to just write all day. I feel like an hourglass, which has been turned upside down, so the sands can collect again. Its creepy, like all the words I narrowly escaped earlier have re-incarnated themselves inside me , smelling like overdressed middle aged women. Their wrinkled, powdered faces stare at me in the eye, silently pointing a finger at me and asking me to lay them to rest.
So here I am, giving my crumpled words a decent burial.

the matador

2008-05-26T10:23:00.000-07:00

I have a bit of a temper. It has all the eccentricities of a paper napkin and the violence of a red brick. It gathers speed in my head till I lose all sense of direction and end up smearing everything with a thick layer of disgust. Much like a disgruntled village headman spewing tobacco all around him. Bitter and textured.

I am also incapable of doing any justice to my anger. I can never express it well. Especially when directing it to the object of my fury. Everyone else will get a taste of this emotional indigestion, but the one solely responsible for it all shall receive the confused mutterings of an adolescent. Which further aggravates my state of being.

Falling in line with such a mixed head becomes very difficult and edgy. Its like living with a constant fear of getting your hair caught in the ruthless blades of a table fan. The whirr of daily drudgery apart, this petty piece of hate ends up consuming me and more.

Fingering through the particles of dismay, I have managed to dig out three ounces of reason. All of which leans on the fact that I am incapable of the great Indian rope trick. I cannot balance one world upon another. And yet it is the sole concern that I almost always end up thrusting upon myself. Gulping down bottles of regular brew leaves little space or capacity for potboilers. Hence while all the time I am browsing through magic potions in my head, my outer self gets bullied into the rubber band patter of money and concrete. While my hands like to think they are stirring a shiny brass bowl of moon dust, they actually end up staining themselves with the abusive ink of a ball point pen. My feet pretend to trip over puddles of 6^th century rain, when all they are doing is strapping on arrogant sandals and walking over arrogant streets.

Life is not poetry. I know. I am fully aware of the fact that my incandescent rage stems from a completely collapsible thought, one which most are capable of folding and keeping away. But I am not. I cannot transcend into reality day in and day out and pretend like this pendulum existence actually has any meaning. Like the thousands of windows I see everyday have no tales to tell. The millions of faces behind crisp newspapers have no secrets to reveal. As if one single touch cannot transport you to a nonchalant riverside. They do, it can. And I spend every waking hour trying to tell myself this. Assure the bully inside my head that there is no need to be scared, no need to be insecure. Nothing will break, no one will leave. But everything does come stumbling down, and almost everyone leaves. And life becomes an expressionless brown paper parcel.

Blank sheets of paper look at me invitingly, I stare back at them. Till they get disappointed and join the huge trunk on the loft. I lose that one divorced earring in the multiple chasms of a handbag, all I hear is the jingle of loose change. Intertwined with headphones which perform the daily thankless duty of plugging my ears with radio jabber all the way to work and back. Newspapers drift in and out like passing traffic. The seductive vapors of tea bounce back and forth in my mind, while I look away and pretend to think.

I cant even afford to tell myself that this is just a youthful clash with ideology. Its not. It’s a battle between everyday and me. Heaps and heaps of registration forms, emails, plastic wrapping paper, chocolate biscuit packets, identity cards, steel utensils, drying clothes, maneuvering cars…they don’t make any sense to me. I am supposed to write my name on hundreds of documents with varying levels of importance. They will make sure I stay connected, balanced, rich. They will tell this blessed nation that I exist. Like the local goon, these papers roll up their sleeves and take on my cluttered, untidy, disorganized world with great enthusiasm. They will map out pointers in my life and hand me a laminated copy.

And I try. Relentlessly, angrily, breathlessly, obstinately I try to dig myself out of this paradox. I try and crawl back into my regular world of worms, potholes and erasers, of dal and rice, of logic, prayers and abyssmal PDF files. But I fail. I inevitably fail and the walls of my castle start quivering again. And I have to wait till the next knock, for it to stand still.

For someone to come and break all this cowardly silence.

damp excuses

2008-05-22T10:53:00.001-07:00

Two dots. One inside the hand and one outside. And a few cups of wine with three spoons full of argument. Accompanied by the muffled music of half hearted wires and untold untruths, dots travelled from hands to the sky.

I think that’s when it drizzled.

Faith wrapped in yesterday's newspaper

2008-05-14T12:08:00.000-07:00

A certain blindfolded evening I asked my friend if he was an atheist. We were out buying kebabs near a crowded railway station and it seemed the only thing to do.

Orange lights walked in and out of a perplexed night, to which no one really belonged. The crisp air, in which tired sighs and mosquitoes mingled, wore grease in a bow tie. And quite close on the heels of this particularly smelly sense of randomness, dashing in and out was a speck of mirth, an anticipation for nothing in particular, that crawled and stumbled on its way towards the window.

But somewhere, a huge, seamless feeling of symmetry surpassed it all, with a quiet rhythm permeating through broken doors and ending up at our feet, much like a deluded puppy. A silent justification for everything around us, a hidden geometry in the way the world heaved and hoped was slowly becoming obvious. Like someone was peeling the night away, carefully, layer by layer, to reveal a naïve, blushing core. And the moments lay inside out, bruised, blue and breathless.

Much as instruments await intention, faith, I feel awaits desire. We trust when we can, but we believe only when we want to. Or when a vast mechanism wants us to, and we fall in place. Or fall out.

See that’s the thing with faith. Its like this kaleidoscope and has amoebic patterns made out of colorful glass bangles. And the more you turn it, the newer its face. Can any of us admit to really not having any faith? Ever? It may have sounded different, but it was faith alright, probably disguised as the excruciating pain of hope. Trust hurts, and faith too comes with its share of ulcers. Meant to be dug out, stretched, poked, turned on its sides. Faith almost always asks us to comb the sand out of its hair. And in doing so, we completely lose ourselves in those delicate strands of tears and travel. Years pass by and before we know it, we are sand ourselves.

But I would like to believe in this ephemerid odyssey of faith. In becoming sand, I think we travel the distance between being the contents of an hourglass to the sprinkling on a beach. Intertwined with the city I feel, lies this little trick of faith. We keep it with our house keys, and therefore almost always end up losing both. Which is even better, for what else brings us closer to ourselves than a houseless, faithless existence? The calculated corners in which our life seems to collect keeps accounts, that is where a hidden order bills us.

Faith lies in the tea kettle that whispers long forgotten tales of passion. Faith belongs to soggy footprints on a pavement, it collects on the sheds of translucent windows, and gathers with the last rain of august. Faith is the unforgettable face at the third crossroad on my way to work, it’s the last ticket at the movie counter, the remaining runs in a cricket match. Faith is in the bottled jar of pickle grandmothers never trust us with, its in the lazy afternoons on an ancient terrace. Faith is pink, green, sequined, button less, blue and red. It is where I walk from, it is what I run into. It watches, is watched and sees through the rage of the sea. Faith is square, round, oblong, even oblique. It is the envied step sister of destiny.

Faith I believe, is the tetrahedron in a love triangle.

In five years, or maybe fifty

2008-05-14T10:51:00.000-07:00

Can you hear me through the pebbles of your sleep?

As my moist fingers sprinkle soap bubbles of wrath,

can you smell the paper on which we wrote days full of twilight?

Forgive my indifference, it springs from a pair of feet that didn’t follow me home

While I was busy tracing outlines on perforated railway tracks,

The last bus left without me

I can find you a thousand more windows, three hundred more doors

Through which you will see greater visions of rose and wine

My voyages are not enough for your ship

Nor would my rivers fill the ocean in your hands

Your love is just wet paint now, meant to be walked past

These words wont last the length of three nights

They shall fall off the edge of years and I will lie awake again

Only to watch street lamps sail by

In five years, or maybe fifty,

Will you still peep through crevices in the wall?

Will you still want a strand of hair with afternoon moss on it?

Will you still look for matchsticks between my fingers

Or want to hold my tired hands till sunrise?

In five years or maybe fifty,

When grapes have blended in our blood,

And vines grow out of the ebony of our elbows,

Would you still look for eyebrows that meet at the Nile?

Would you still stare at the sand and salts that wash my bare feet,

And call me out to play?

crumbs on the way

2008-03-29T10:40:00.000-07:00

As you walk down my head, take the first right and third left. There’s a sign that says ‘Look Up’. I put it there a while back, on a particularly left aligned day, after my personal magician walked out of my life.

Its been there ever since and I have driven by often. Today, for the first time, I saw footprints near it.

It made my day.

marinated truths

2008-03-19T14:34:00.001-07:00

Were you also subjected to generous spoonfuls of ‘the new woman’ in the dailies? Did it leave you appalled at the plastic wrapped media hype of the blushing pink superwoman as well? If it didn’t, don’t bother to read further, because I plan to destroy all the positive super confidence that it all might have generated within you. I am poor and incredibly small fry, so this is the only place where I get to vent out the swashbuckling temper of a bankrupt idealist. However, in case you too stayed unaffected by the glossy international woman, in case you also felt slightly angered by the ridiculous extravagance of the lifestyles projected as ideal and path breaking even (!), then read on.

I am not against relaxing holidays or leisurely walks in a lush uptown park, or even a sailing trip. But I am not exactly Posh Beckham nor would I like to be. For obvious reasons therefore, her dinner tips, her brand building strategy, her desperate fashion measures, her holiday suggestions don’t make any sense to me (no, not even her tattoo sporting, indecisive husband). Nor to a lot of regular, normal people I see everyday. Forget even considering her sorts as one hell of a radical, successful winner. Thankfully neither me nor most of the women I know, are waif like divas with a distorted sense of self. We don’t need the constant, almost diabetic doses of assurance that the media dishes out at regular intervals. Closer home, the new age woman seems to be a sexually liberated free spirit who lives on a swastika diet. She shops for aroma candles and invests in solitaires. Her real interest deals are worldwide, inter galactic even. She discards the past, but ventures forth to the boutique around the corner, only to pick up antiquities. She writes expensive coffee table books about handicrafts, Victorian décor or successful husbands, not necessarily in that order. She regularly attends art of living workshops, practices pranayam under the watchful eye of the media, and throws signature styled birthday parties for her brand-wrapped offsprings. Other activities include writing a lifestyle column in any tabloid, critiquing national cinema and timed appearances on a shapeless social circuit. She is stunning, inaccessible, unattainable unless you own at least two yachts and a private jet. Hah!

The new woman it seems, is a supermom, a supermodel, a love goddess, a superb friend, a mind blowing boss, a sexy athlete, a breathtaking performer, a prim corporate, a powerful orator, a bold artist and an even bolder writer. Never mind the scattering of make up tricks, spa vacationing, tailor made holidays, exotic recipes and even shoe types (?) that garnish the scramble.

How come all this superwoman idiosyncrasy comes to light now? Hasn’t the woman always been multi tasking, jet setting in her own quiet way? Lets do a categorical check-up.

When exactly did we notice that keeping house for decades for a family of 40 was difficult? At which point of time did we start to sit up and start taking notice of the thankless job our mothers and grandmothers have smilingly done throughout their lives? Many of them worked too, you know. Not all were sitting at home, pulled down by orthodox husbands, they were employed, efficient, intelligent professionals. They ran the house, managed the laundry and the budget just as well as they dished out official files or academic papers. Never ever, were school uniforms unkempt or dinner missed. Never were guests treated to quick ketchup-stained toss ups. More importantly never were professional commitments hampered. And speaking for the thousands who stayed within the confines of the house, well, try managing 12 children in a 2 roomed flat. Hell, try it in a 10-roomed house, with a garden and a terrace. They never bagged any awards for that. Pity, the glossies were probably busy recruiting.

All this while the world was preparing to hail the pan-Atlantic style diva! Wear your crown, toss your curls, wed a brand. Wave out at the millions who live their dreams through you. Give out yellow gift vouchers to terminally ill children. Smile. Donate your eyes. Smile. Visit an art auction. Smile. Launch a health plan. Smile. Win a racial debate by fluke, get kissed by an international Buddhist celebrity. Giggle. At the risk of running a cynical overdose, where does the radical bit feature here? Dreamy faces in true sepia existed before Photoshop airbrushed its way into our lives. Beautiful women rebelled in their homes, performed and travelled across the world. They authored powerful literature, debated their way through mind numbing discourses, appreciated and analyzed erotica, composed world music. No offence to trance, DJs and lounge hoopla, but sorry to burst your bubble. All this has been done before. Now that you have stepped into the silk and vignette, we sit up and take notice. Break it all up into neat little career options, risk taking pieces of news and layer the masses please, will you? So what if the real path breakers are dead or decaying behind mossy walls? We appreciate guts don’t we? Why then, does Tasleema Nasreen still have to run into hiding every alternate week? Why does Medha Patekar get beaten up? Why do we neatly avoid all the mess and toast the melting popsicle lives of an Ash or a Padukone? Swarovskis glare into our eyes, numbing us so we don’t look away, so we don’t make the mistake of seeing within, pulling the sheets off a neatly made bed?

From what I gather, the new superwoman is one who has simply been smart enough to keep quiet , so she doesn’t suddenly stammer out the truth. She pretends, she poses, she lies. She fakes it. And everyone knows how that works! So they get the grave nod of approval. You care enough to lie? We will push you up so high that the fear of falling keeps you from telling the truth. And the few who still can, suffer the bruises. Alone.

At the risk of being labeled as one that assumes the grapes are sour, I would like to believe in my own version though. A more transparent, dog eared edition of the erstwhile new age woman. One that enjoys good food. Has a great sense of humour. Appreciates satire. Doesn’t believe in surgical enhancement or artificial hair treatment. Accepts mistakes. Stays within her means. Is a hygiene freak. Genuinely tries to help. Laughs out loud. Is proud of where she belongs. Is well read. Has a point of view. Is spiritual without being religious. Does not lie. Participates in all kinds of conversation. Loves adventure. Is strong enough to believe that sometimes our need to give can be far more powerful than our need to receive. One whose silence speaks volumes. Who is warm and vibrant. Firm, but reassuring. Definitely not scared of the dark. One who has the guts to be slightly off the bench, with snippets of imperfection.

So here’s to the bohemian rhapsody of a tempestuous queen. To all the pain and sorrow of being honest. For every afternoon when you feel the magic has left. For every time the ‘I wanted you then, I just don’t want you now’ resounds within the walls of your head. For every single lie. For every burnt toast. For all the toil and shouts. For all the smells that remind you of far away railway tracks, soiled clothes and your mothers morning prayer. For every glass pane you have shattered. For every imperfect moment. For every time you shouted so loud no one could hear but yourself. For every time you feel like an empty balcony. For every unkempt dream, every untidy room, every metallic bit of stone heavy expectations. For every wrong turn. For every time you wish you had thanked Ma or just, listened to her. For every time you look up and simply, hope.

Welcome home.

a spatial (dis)order

2008-03-02T13:36:00.000-08:00

Finally I have made it to a blog of my own. The guy at the gate told me I can be myself here, stutter mouthfuls of factory generated dialogue, while spilling thermo col dust all over the mayo. Apparently this is ‘my space, my very own’.

Sure, as is Teriyaki chicken and grape tang.

Really, what does this ‘space’ really mean? I’m not a cynic (too early to lay claims, but really, I’m not), nor do I intend to question the wonderfully profound, lusciously illegitimate idea of a blog. But I do have a problem with pinning down my own space’ with all its colours, smells and soap bubbles within peripheries of cyberspace. I’ll tell you why.

I love India, and as far as I know, its not an uncommon sentiment. But I love it to a fault, to an unimaginable decibel. Not only do I belong to this country body, mind, heart and soul, I believe in its eclectic stoicism. A complete denial of tangential excesses. In its ability to extract itself from all meetings and excuse itself for a quick trip to the loo. Transparent, naïve, completely tactless. But also warm, genuine, loving, vibrant. Always has a bias. An opinion. A point of view. A lot of silence thrown at a lot of noise. A lot of summer afternoons with a lot of smells. A cataclysmic mix of grandparents, cousins, friends and all their kitchens, living rooms, weddings and mangroves. Meandering from one day to another , is a lot of space, amidst all the clanging metal and sugar sprinkling. Between terraces and horn rimmed glasses, are laid out pillowcases of space. Everyone jostling for arm space in photographs, but the affection, despite a disgruntled appearance, is all inclusive.

Sometimes I think were it not for my incredibly goofy way of dealing with life my grandfather would translate this need for ‘my space’ as pondering over a mild career in astronomy. For we live in a country where even if there are 137 adults and 53 children around and its dinnertime, space grazes nearby in a quiet languor pace. Because most cant afford it and make do without. They think, write, cry, decide the monthly budget, compose, sing, steal, make love. Space, like oxygen spas is for the rich. For those handfuls who discover the vehemence of brothel born children through award winning documentaries. Those who keep asking for space, so much so that in the end that’s all they have. A shopping bag full of space. Branded, price tag firmly in place. Space so they can write, space so they can eat, space so they can think, space so they can untangle from their shirts and blouses the smells of a family. Space so they can have polished white floors with tailor made eccentricities. Space where they can practice the art of crying elegantly, with a sparkling drop of tear falling from the corner of the left eye, just so it makes for a beautiful photograph. Space that leaves their lives as good looking and fresh as stock photography. Space where they can map out a heartbreak and step across the border. Frames of good looking hurt. Space to perfect the pretence of being a lost soul. Space to practice the art of rebellion. Not just looking into the mirror, but practicing looking into it as well.

I am not blogging because I need my space. Because I think that my space is nothing but the choice I make to resound a breather inside me, run alongside my sense of self, stitch the two somewhat together and come back. If I need my space I will get it. I will get up, grab, steal, snatch that space from within a crowd, mind bending traffic, amoebic human behavior, too much work, too much food, too many people, too many roads, too many lies. My space exists inside me, it crawls, jumps, whispers, cries, cooks and sleeps there. It drives me up the wall with it’s twisted logic, paper planes and cellophane advice. But its within me. Doesn’t matter if I am on a crowded bus or on my way to a cricket match. I would get my space and I am sure, so would most of you.