Just a spoon

She was wondering if it was a normal day. The birds were chirping amongst the morning silence, the trees still sleepy, and the sun shining hard on the brown earth. This was how she would describe the morning scene everyday this season. Yet, something seemed very different today. The air was filled with tension and excitement.

As thoughts gushed into her head cramming it with stories from the past, she started to develop a mild headache. “Ah! Not today” she thought and walked back to the bedroom. She popped the pill and the phone rang.

You just read the first paragraph of a short story that I started writing almost a year back. Are you wondering why I haven’t progressed much in a year? Well, as soon as I wrote this small bit I showed it to my hubby and he remarked “hmm, you will make a good mystery story-teller, sweetie”. I was completely taken aback. I intended to write a romantic story and it just turned out to be completely different. Now, every time I sit to complete the story, I am at a loss to go ahead because I am not sure of the genre that I am writing.

I remember when I was about thirteen years old, I rented a movie. My mother saw the movie for two minutes and asked my sister and me not to waste any time watching the movie as she felt it was going to be horrible. As anyone else in their early-teens, I argued with my mother that she cannot judge a movie without watching it completely. She then told me that it takes only a spoon to decide whether a particular dish is tasty or not and you don’t have to eat the entire dish. Somehow, I suddenly remembered this yesterday when I sat down to finish this story. Was my husband right? Did he correctly guess the type of story that I started writing?

Is it possible for someone to judge something by just having a spoon? Wouldn’t that be a great gift especially, when it comes to judging people? I wonder what a person with that quality would be called. We spend years trying to understand a person, yet fail ages down the line. Sometimes, we realize way too late about a person. Wouldn’t that save us from a lot of trouble or pain? How often haven’t we misunderstood people? We think someone is kind and helpful and they turn out to be the most selfish ones in times of need. We also make the mistake of identifying the person as self-centered and he turns out to be a completely different person, contrary to our expectations. I have heard so many people say “Well, when I first met him/her, I never thought we would be the best of friends”. If only they had identified the true personality of that friend at first glance, not a lot of time would have been wasted creating trust. But, I guess that takes the fun out of life. Isn’t life all about meeting people, misconceptions, explanations, forgiveness, vengeance and a whole lot of emotions?

Anyway, now coming back to the premise of my blog, is it as easy to judge people as it is to judge a book? Is the first meeting enough like the first paragraph or just a spoon of the dish? Hmm, answers unknown!! However, can anyone who reads this tell me if my husband was right about the mystery thriller or should I continue writing the romantic story? You just have a spoon of my story to decide!!

Drapes and more!!

I was a little kid, not more than eight years old, when I came across an article in The Reader’s Digest’ by this middle-aged woman, hmm, say forty years or so. It was a nostalgic piece about the importance of curtains in her life. I, a little kid all of eight years, found the article to be very frivolous and the writer, very immature. I didn’t give this piece much thought for a long time. It was tucked away somewhere in the corner amongst the grey cells in my head like the numerous editions of The Reader’s Digest scattered in my mother’s attic.

It was not till about few weeks back that I suddenly remembered this article. I put my curtains for wash and I felt so helpless for those six days. I eagerly waited for the neat and tidy curtains to be hung again, like a kid waiting for her best friend to return from her vacation. I felt a lack of privacy. I felt everything concerning me was visible to people in my neighborhood. Did I have eggs for breakfast or dosa? Was I taking a nap or reading a book cuddled under my quilt? Did I have a face-pack on or have a clean and washed face? Was I alone at home or was my husband already back from work? Everyone around me seemed to know the answers to these questions and I was definitely not comfortable with this feeling. Not that I am a celebrity and everybody was eager to pry on my day-to-day activities, yet it was an eerie feeling. That’s when it struck me how important my drapes were to me.

I spent hours for the first few months after moving into this house designing my drapes, identifying the colours which would match my furniture, the ideal pattern for my bedroom, for my living room and even my bathroom. In fact, I was under the impression that curtains were purely for aesthetic purpose. I didn’t realize that they served more than that. They were the perfect guards, guarding me from my nosy neighbors, kept me away from the eerie darkness that lay behind my open windows, and at the same time allowing sunshine to enter my life as and when required.

Now, this left me wondering, why this didn’t affect me all this time. The answer was simple, as usual; mother-dearest always took care of it. She ensured that every time we moved from one house to another, she would first put up the curtains and create our own cozy nest. The mess of the packaging, the scattered furniture could all be arranged at leisure, once we knew that we were the only ones in control of our house.

As I write this, I wonder, why I have become so fond of my curtains. Is it because I am middle-aged now, like the author of that article? Or have I started just understanding my drapes better? I prefer answer b. It leaves me happy.

Curtains Please!!

Controversy of thoughts

It’s cold around, yet I don’t shiver;
The white snow encompasses the fields, yet I melt like butter;
Have I become warm-blooded?
Or is it the warmth he generates?

As friends sweat in the sweltering heat,
A cold shiver runs down my spine;
As jubilant crowd throng to the beach to escape the sun,
I cuddle up to him to breakaway from the cold;
Has my sense of touch disappeared?
Or am I wrapped in a stronger sense?

The sooty streets and buildings in their shades of grey and black
I feel are vibrant with multitude of colours;
Have I become colour blind?
Or is it the effervescent shade of optimism in my eyes?

Fragile crockery slips from my hand
As it breaks into pieces countless,
I wonder if I always possessed butter fingers
Or have I lost control over myself?

An answer seems highly improbable,
As I set out on a journey to understand myself.
Is it the idle love of a young girl?
Or is it emotions galore of a love struck women?

A phoenix that never tires..

“You know, it is so different in Bombay”, “In Bombay, we get ”, “Oh! Bombay is”, etc. Well, I am just trying to tell you that decades ago, these were the typical opening phrases one used when they spoke of Bombay. I imagined it to be a fantasy land, a place where everything was readily available, a city where anything was possible. A place where buying a bottle of imported orange marmalade was as easy as buying mango pickle in my hometown. (I am speaking of pre-liberalization era. So Hyderabadis, please don’t take offence, I know that everything is available in our city too, now). It was not just the land of Bollywood, I believed that it was a land where one spun dreams and the dreams manifested into reality.

However, I didn’t get a chance to visit this magnificent city till I was about twenty six years old. As compared to all the literature I had read, the city had changed considerably. It was no different when compared to other cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai with their various retail outlets and fast food joints. Trust me that was just my first impression of the maximum city. I checked into my sister’s place at Mahim and was shocked to know that she was staying in a Pigeon hole with absolutely no cribs. Her answer was “This is one of the best places you can get in Bombay. What’s wrong with this place? And anything to stay in Bombay!!”. It did leave me speechless that a girl who always cribbed that she didn’t have enough storage space even in our three bedroom apartment was perfectly OK with the so-called two bedroom house. My sister played an enthusiastic guide and immediately took me to the holy places of Mumbai, Sidhi Vinayak and Haji Ali. We later went on to see the real Bombay as she referred to it, Fort, VT, Colaba and of course, the Marine Drive. It just took me few hours to change my first impression of the city.

As clichéd as it may sound, the energy of the city overpowered me. I have absolutely no words to describe what I felt about the city as it only needs to be felt.

I have been wondering over the past one hour what prompted me to write about Bombay today. I, then, realized no better day than 26/11 to pay tribute to a city that rises like a phoenix every time tragedy strikes. Be it the terror blasts of 93, the train blasts in 06 or city hijack on 26/11, the people of the city have always shown courage & resilience. I once remember a relative telling me that after the terror blasts in 93, there were serpentine queues of people outside hospitals waiting to donate blood and they had to be dispersed away as the amount of blood already donated exceeded the amount required. Now, doesn’t that speak volumes of a city where people thronged to hospital to help others instead of running away to shelter themselves from the terror that struck their city?

I have visited this city thrice and every visit of mine, there have been minor disturbances in the city – hindu muslim clashes, protests again non-mumbaikars/Marathas and the arrest of Raj Thackeray. As I visit the city next week, I just pray to God, do not put the people of Bombay to test again.