Upma Supremacy

 I am a logistical nightmare to love.

I don’t like PDA, I don’t like hugs, I don’t melt into a puddle over romance. In short, I am one of those who makes being nice to me a professional sport. 

When it comes to gifts, I am a certified full-on ass. I love books, but my brain is like Mad Hatter’s tea party - I may read the sisterhood of the travelling pants on Monday and be obsessed with metaphysical poetry by Tuesday afternoon, only to shift to journals on Intricacies of Indian architecture by Friday. Even I cannot predict my favourite genre. 

My personal style? A chaotic mish-mash of anything and nothing. Diamonds? Meh. Bags? Whatever. I do adore junk jewelry, but I am so notoriously picky about my collection that buying for me is basically like a high-stakes mission impossible. Special occasions are the days that my people want to murder me the most.

But my boy? He didn't just up his game, he went and bloody aced it. He went to Mumbai last week. He sat down with my Appa. He studied the sacred, step-by-step ritual of the Seshadri kitchen. He by-hearted the semolina to water ratio, the art of tempering, the perfect consistency, and the exact moment the gas needs to be shut off.

Before I headed out for work this morning, he served me a bowl of the world’s best Upma.

Who needs any other token when you have someone who speaks your father's recipe fluently?

A lifetime supply of Upma is Gifting Supremacy.

Together again

The warmth of words
A blanket I share with few

The silence though
I share with only you

Make me a cocoon
Weave your breath around it

Conjure a few dreams
Send it my way

Help me sing
Our wordless lullaby

My starlit friend
My secret butterfly

The rolling years
Bring the horizon closer

One day we will hum together
As promised, as foretold

In another world
In another time

Rest till then
And my songs rest with you.

Advice

The same old
The same old
Overlook overlook
Let it grow

Play the game
Do the routine
Wear the mask
Paint over pain

Hide the truth
Hide the true
Lights on
Show on

Kisses kisses
Hugs hugs
I love yous
You love mes

Spotlights off
Cameras turned
There is you
Here is me

Fester Fester
Stew and Brew
Bitter bitter
Ulcer and Pressure

Ugly relation
Fear of alone
Bound for society
Together but forlorn

Let it go
Let it go
Break free
Be free

Clean cuts
Healthy healing
Peaceful days
Lighter being

The drive to work

A ray of sunshine filtered through the broken window and a tiny corner was lit up.

It was a room I saw in passing. Stuck inside a cab, waiting for the signal to turn green, I got a peek into what would have been someone's home. What had the walls heard and seen? Had the roof felt the rattle of laughter? Had the beams sagged under someone's sorrow? Pale blue walls, trimmed white wooden window frames... they evoked a fairy tale. The lopsided photo of a forgotten God next to a framed picture of a local hero balanced the scale between faith and fame.

The cab began its sluggish march towards my destination.

I turned one last time. To memorize the broken orange and blue buckets piled outside the dismantled door. A used pail of paint and rusty ladder, attempts at fixing a home.
Symbols of lives lived, probably mean an attic full of memories to someone.

We move along. An urchin with a snotty nose and the eyes of an imp catches my attention.

A story everywhere.

Allowed

You cannot love her

Like you love a human child he said.
You will get your life back
Once she is gone she said.
He said, she said
And not one
Was hearing what the heart said

She was already love

She was already mine
In giving her up
I gave up something vital
Precious. Pure
She broke my walls
And snuck right through
Giving her up
Broke me
But I am not permitted
To mourn
Not for too long anyway
Because she was not a human
And I am not allowed to love her that much

Safety Nets

He took me on a roller-coaster ride

And just when we reached the top

He jumped the carriage

Leaving me alone and hanging

From the highest point

She came by then

And put a stop to the whining self pity

If he can jump she said, so can you

So, I listened. I jumped. I flew into friendship

And I have never flown higher

Eye of the beholder

I wish you could see
What a picture you make for me
Perfection in your blemishes
Beauty in chaos

A beaming blossom
Minus a petal or two
Radiant with colour
Emotions of every hue

You are joy
You are power
Incomplete yet whole
My flawed flower.

The new and the shiny

I wonder sometimes

About some people I have met in the past few years

Would they have been mine?

Would I have been theirs?

Would we have had a similar understanding?

Of the ups and downs of life back then

Would we have sat on the platform

And counted local trains by the hour?

Would we have roamed the roads

Hours after everyone was in bed?

Would we have sung sad songs aloud

When one of our hearts got broken?

Would we have climbed a tree

To escape a bunch of people we annoyed?

Would we have got drunk on Benadryl

And thrown up on each other’s shoes?

Would we have cried in the rain

When death took away a loved one?

Would we have sat by the sea and held hands

To try and hold time back?

Would we think we would be together

Through time, distance, relationships?

I will never know

But I think, not.

Only because we are not what we were

Maybe these friendships are more

Because they carry the memory of youth

And the flavour of a life lived.

I can never be theirs

They would never be mine

Not all the way

But they bring colour to life

These new people

They make the journey better

And maybe, right now

Is when we were meant to be

So we could be.

Horror in Mom Street

Horror in Mom Street

Happens more often

Than I care or please

But the scariest bit

Is creeping lice and stationary nit

In a head full of curly hair

Making mother quake in despair

Giving in is never an option

So divide hair in equal portions

Comb and comb and comb some more

Kill them, squash them by the score

Pour the oil

Wash the hair

Repeat procedure

Poison their lair

I am not a killer

But you raised the bar

You fed on my baby’s blood

I declare war.

Burn

I built a pyre
And burnt all things you.
I promised
To keep the fires on
Till there was not a trace of you left.

I built the pyre
I forgot to jump in.

Stranger I used to know

You chose to erase your past

To forget memories

But you forgot

Those memories belonged to us as well

Because we were part of them

With one decision

You chose to give up

On 25 years’ worth of friendship

And that cut deep

Very, deep

If you had told us

Once. Just once

We would have been happy

To let go

To let you fly unfettered

Because our friendship

Was not about chains

Or boundaries

It was about silliness

About laughter and misspent youth

We would have learnt

To love a new you

But cutting us loose

From the old you

Was not just your choice to make

And that, is going to make it difficult

To trust the person you have become

The face

Itchy scratchy
Glowy golden
Mask one
Mask two
And Masks 3 and 4

Just how many faces do you wear?
And why?

One for the society
One for the virtual
One for the family
One for, well, for the self

Confused to the extent
That you don't know the real
From the acquired.

Such a sad life
Wasting precious time
Switching faces
Donning masks.

The gift of adoption

Wind in my ears

Your voice
was garbled
and distant
like it was travelling
through vacuum
to reach out
and hurt
over and over

But
I am not what I was
and I know now
That your mind
is the vacuum
and your words
are but
wind in my ears.

Precious

Wishing on a star

Sitting by the sea

One moon soaked night

Dreams and thoughts

Flew free

A storm gathered

As the spell was cast

Spirit and shine

Tears and joy

Combined

A ray of hope

A reason to smile

She was born

Of another

But ours

As no other

Mind born

Heart felt

Magical

Miracle

She - Our forever

A rant or two

A friend is questioning why we only make noise about Ganesh Visarjan and not about Durga immersion.
I want to know too.
But I want to know why the immersion process at all?
Traditions are meant to bind, to teach... not to destroy.
It burns my gut raw to see appendages of the God and Goddess in alarming disarray by the lake I pass everyday.
I am not even touching the topic of what these insoluble parts are doing to the lake's ecosystem.

Why are we so compelled to destroy everything beautiful?
Traditions, Nature, everything.

Open Mind

Often, sometimes I think too often, I have reached out to the willing, the reluctant, the reclusive, the inconsiderate and tried to weave in my place in their lives. By keeping the communication channels always open, I was closing myself in. Somewhere it became my crutch, my lean-to. It became impossibly important to know I belonged, had an active part to play in everyone’s life.

I was wrong.

I did not need communication with others to be connected.

All I need is one line. One connection. With myself.

I learnt.

The insane shackles I welded on to my own feet are broken.

I am free.

Monkey does as Monkey sees

I do not remember having as many toys, books, gadgets and games as my daughter does, but I do not remember asking my mother what to do when I was bored.

Because I was never bored. In fact, I always thought the day lacked hours because I always seemed to have so much to do. We played every chance we got, with dolls, with blocks, with the resident stray. We rolled on the ground, we sat in abandoned pipes, we climbed trees, we hid under blankets and called them tents. On school days we finished our homework and were outside at 5 o’clock sharp and we got home two hours later to a family sit down. We played carom and Ludo, we read books and we had discussions over dinner. We were a nuclear family of four during the weekdays and a joint family of around 16 over the weekends because that was ritual too… visiting and spending time with family.

So what’s with kids these days? I could easily blame it on the gadgets, because once I let my girl use the iPad or kindle, the hours fly by. Once the gadget is put away, I see an immediate slump in the mood or a spike in the temper. Yes, I could very happily blame technology and its evil spawn.

But I won’t. Because it is me, the parent who is at the core of it all. Not because I got her the gadget but because I did not teach her, did not show her how to use it sensibly. I did not teach her to think beyond the next prompt.

Monkey does as Monkey sees.

I am addicted to the internet. I love everything about it, from the information it has to offer to the people it connects me to… and I do not know when to stop accessing it. For a while, when I was technologically challenged enough to not look at buying a smartphone, we were okay, since over and above everything, I was too lazy to switch on the laptop after I got home. Now things stand differently. Even though I do not read every joke, motivational message, dire warning about a new virus… I still check the phone compulsively all the time and if a headline catches my eye, then God help me, I forget the existence of everything save what is happening in Bulgaria.

For the past couple of months, I put the phone away once I get home from work. For about two hours, I am just mamma who does regular stuff, like holler about the state of the house, the food that has not been consumed, the incomplete classwork and the reason behind why she thought it appropriate to stuff clay in all the keyholes. One would think she would be glad to have me go back to my smartphone. But strange things happen and she is okay with monster mamma person as long as she is the point of hundred percent focus.

And she is okay when I limit her access to the gadgets.

Because Monkey does as Monkey sees.

The Magical Land

Everyone said Spiti was a beautiful place. A place that would dazzle the eye and soothe the soul. No one warned me about how it would seep through my pores and get permanently etched in my imagination. And certainly, no one prepared me for the people who live there. The true meaning of the word ‘Sonder’ came into existence in Spiti Valley.

Everyone I came across, from a local to a visitor, from the very young to the very old, from the settled to the nomad… every single person had a story to share. And that, more than the mind numbingly brilliant scenery reached in and grabbed my heart. Hence, the people of Spiti will be the first in a series of posts. A jumble of words, images, expressions and feelings. Sometimes unstructured, but always poetic because its people deserve it and the place commands it.

I could only manage some pictures. I missed clicking snaps of:
The ‘Amchi’ –local medicine man (practitioner of Tibetan medicine also known as the Amchi System of Medicine)

The ‘Chouwa’ – local shaman who fed us yak cheese and tea in his house and then proceeded to try and answer our questions on our past and future

The Garhis – nomadic sheep herders who move from one terrain to another based on the availability of food for their herd

‘Angdui’ – Our local guide who teaches in a local school and is capable of cooking up a storm
Vishakha, a Mumbai girl who runs the Himalayan Café at Kaza

Siddharta, an ‘almost nine-year-old’ boy near Dhankar Monastery who loves math and who nodded sagely and said, I had to study hard to get past grades I, 2 and 3. Now I am in grade 4, I will have to study harder.

 Should post the next update in a while. Meanwhile, I will wallow in a state of semi-existence.

#Bikers

#Spiti

#monks

#oldman

#oldwoman

#sarahkashyap

Spooked.

We have been talking of graveyards and ghosts

Of the mysteries and the intangibles

Of fear and dark thoughts

And I somehow end up thinking

Of you, 

who left too early

And of you, 

who left it for too late

But most of all,

I think of you

Who didn't know you were gone

And I wonder

About what could have been

If our places were swapped

And I cannot but think

You think it too.