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| There are so many sights,sounds and smells.Sometimes every small thing
reminds you of someplace else.It sets off a trigger for whole still
frames cramped somewhere in a corner of your brain,waiting for that one
outlet; to find release till it runs smoothly like one continuous reel
on and on and on,adding bits at whim,those you had forgotten
existed.
Like a whiff of Mysore Sandal Soap always takes me back to a
small bathroom with a red drum,steel buckets,a round-ish ancient water
bowl to collect water and pour over myself.Me clambering over a
stool,trying to get cold water to adjust the temperature of the bathing
water.Then my grandmum coming and banging on my door and opening the
door(I was never shy about my baths and anyone could stick their head
in and shout or converse with me) and telling me to finish fast,because
breakfast was ready.
My breakfast.Soft pav cut in rectangular slices,and lathered with lohni (thick
white butter) and sprinkled generously with sugar.Always specially
fixed for me.Not because I was a fussy child,but because my grandmother
knew this was what I appreciated the most.
A run across the corridor,
punctutated by the babble of children in the municipal school right
across the house,separated by a ramshackle wall.An aunt who was pestered for tales
which starred Pooja and Divya (chaitra was too small then) and how they
always got prizes from the President for being brave and saving their
friends.The prizes were always a house with one room 'full of frilly
frocks,one room full of chocolates and then the President said pooja
and divya,you'll are very very good girls'.
An uncle who suggested we
put Rasna concenterate in the ice tray and
stick toothpicks when they were semi frozen so we could get home made
ice
creams.He was also the devilish one responsible for pointing out a
necking hugging couple somewhere in the rapidly darkening evening
shadows of the municipal school to a chuckling embarassed me till my ma
came and said something about ,"Sheh,really Arvind!!".
Another
aunt who's chief joy was to take me second-hand book hunting
amongst the various stalls near Santacruz station,near Gopalkrishna
hotel and help me pick dog eared editions of 'The Three Investigators'
and a spanking new one of "Wishing Chair and other tales" while picking
air-plane graphic novels, 'Debbie' comics and sleek Robin Cook novels
for herself.My
grandfather whose briefcase us kids always ran to help with,over the
stairs,even though we'd be struggling and panting by the time we
reached home.So that grandfather could always say "Oh what a good girl
Pooja is" and we'd beam and feel contented and feel like we;'d
conquered the Earth.
How all we needed then were a few words of
praise,and pats.How simple it all was.Thursday was the weekly
ritual,the trip from Flat No 30/359 in Shell Colony,Chembur to
"Mamama's house".Because in our all girls catholic school,St Anthony's
Girls High School, Thursday's were an off.Mum used to make us
compulsorily eat eggs for breakfast and then one glass of milk and get
ready. Take a rick to Kurla station,cross the over bridge,take a rick
again to Santazcruz,past Kalina, my dad's office,past a roadside
Hanuman temple,then a right,then a backlane and turn right again past
two buildings and a doctor's bungalow and then my grandmum's
building.My dad would come there straight from office,chat with my
grandparents,aunts and uncle,we'd have dinner,he'd pack us all in the
car and then drive to Chembur.
When we reached our building usually
around 11 pm, I'd quickly button my eyes and pretend to be asleep so he
could carry me home,upstairs to the my second floor flat,even though my
sisters were smaller...I want to get back to running around in my
frilly patterned bloomers,me promising my uncle that we'd have a rock
band with me in golden shiny shimmery suit and that he could have
silver,Divya seriously and quietly giving my uncle one rupee and fifty
paise that she had because she heard him mentioning jokingly something
about a car and saving money,sneaking into my uncle's room when he'd
gone to office and spray his cologne,using my aunt's outdated and
expired make up and then piroette around with dupattas trailing behind
like sarees and pout in front of mirrors.(Of course my ma dragged me to
the bathroom and scrubbed my face of all make up traces when aunt
announced what I was using was her old make up,and gave me a long
lecture on whether I wanted my "..face to be covered in boils and
rashes???") .
All this in my mum's childhood home of about forty long
years at Radhamanas Building,Santacruz (East). | | |
| When you die in the city where everyone was young,
at the end of the dark, drunken years that kept you there,
old friends walk up through the wild streets
to the alehouse, whose watery, yellow lights
are a faint, hopeless, beacon in the night,
and, nearer now to you, they get in the rounds,
the solemn, slow, ceremonial rounds which soften their tongues
to speak brief epitaphs of love, regret; meanwhile,
you lie in an ice-cold drawer, two postal codes away,
without recall or recourse, although you had both,
although you are not yet old, although a woman is crying
in the big house on the park where they carried you out
for the last time, where you were told how it would end,
how it would be like this, unless, unless. And it is.
Carol Ann Duffy | | |
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Back from a two day escapade to Nagaon.Secluded beach 7kms from Alibaug.And yes it is possible to go on a trip for only 400 bucks.That's how much i spent.
Inclusive of a second class Western Railway train ticket+Ferry ride to and fro+One night in a Bungalow with a Mango orchard and our own personal dog+Maharashtrian homemade food for lunch,dinner and Breakfast+random rickshaw travel from point A-B.
Perks included stargazing till 3 am on a virtually private beach,watching a "moonset",yep,moon set right into the the sea shrouded by a blanket of stars,a private dance on a moonpath;my stairway to heaven,finding a cubby hole to call our own on the beach itself.
Nagaon Beach at 5pm
Getting away every month has become a ritual now.It's been Pune, Kelva, Rajasthan,Delhi, Panchgani, Alibaug, Kashid, Bangalore, Nagaon since October 2005.I've realised it's the only way I can preserve my sanity.
Nagaon Beach at 7pm
Forever I wish I could just run barefoot in the sand in a white cotton dress and stop for some seagulls and cormorants and dark sweaty turbaned fishermen casting nets for silver gleaming fishes as the breeze howls and whips in my face and my hair.And grab the cottony puffed clouds from the sky and surround myself with their transluscence.Then I'd sit at the edge of the shore in the bright afternoon with the sun for a halo and let the waves wash my very brown feet.I'd wiggle my toes into the squelchy wet sand and let them burrow and wallow there for while to feel the warmth of a milky heaving ocean and the cold of the ancient sleeping wet sand..All while the gulls circle,palms swish,swish,swish,swish... lulling me to sleep,my face towards the sun,soaking in the warmth.
Ahh Bliss...
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| What solace writing is. How prettily the words come out; they paint pictures, vivid, pleasing. Even if the wall of your balcony is cement-grey,and the paint has peeled away in delicate white powdery flakes on the floor and your feet are cold because of the hole in your sock, writing about these things makes them interesting. Writing about a catastrophe of love takes away some of the sting. You write from the outside looking in, sanely, clearly, the way you were taught in elementary school. Describe the ball. It is round, red, it has stripes on it, you can toss it to your best friend. And so a failed love, becomes, if not more understandable, easier to recognize. | | |
| Crumbled thin
Some, yellowed with a year of being pressed between hardbound books
Some, smudged with Royale Blue of inky fingers
Some, translucent with oil stains from a stray Lay’s chip
Some, clean, patterned and ready-to-use
Some, cramped with black spidery handwriting with flourishes
Some, squiggled to death with big fat neatly formed o’s and a’s, lazily crossed t’s, and faintly dotted i’s
All testimony to a year’s worth of bitching, heartbreaks, caricatures, odes, lines of songs, winks, smileys, girly gossip, narration of movie moments,attempted snapshots, random comments, words of comfort, horribly wonky cartoons, lopsided grinning mouths….
I would take them with me to my grave if I could….
Since we're on the topic of graves AND considering i'm not yet over Rajasthan,it's a current obession to be buried right here..
LOVE the feel of this road...Stretching into infinity et all.. | | |
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