yeh lamhaa jee lene de...

Ai zindagi yeh lamha jee lene de…

Pehle se likha.. kuch bhi nahi.. roz naya kuch likhti hai tu…

Jo bhi likha hai dil se jiya hai yeh lamha… filhaal jee lene de…

I want it all.. I guess I really do

The chance to dream, to fly, to experience life as I’ve never known..

Maybe I just don’t know who I am anymore… maybe things will just snap back into place as suddenly as they fell into disarray..

Who knows where life can take us.. who ever knows whats coming next.. its all we can ever do to live the moments that we’re allowed…

HOLY COW! gai machchi kaise kha sakti hai?????

in the throes of laughter with friends with the haze of cigarette smoke clouding my eyes.. sitting on a stone chabutara at D-school on a rather lovely cloudy afternoon.. i saw something rather startling today...
a cow munching on a fish carcass..
or so the caption beneath the picture says...


i think i laughed for about 10 minutes post which we had a rather lively discussion about why the holy being descended to that level.. in CAPITAL letters below a half page sized picture of a cow with a wierd looking brown thing in its mouth, was captioned thus

A COW feeding on a carcass of a "magur"(a black african fish) from the dried lake bed in Sultanpur bird sanctuary near Delhi. The lake is lifeline of the sanctuary's avian and aquatic residents and is also home to bluebulls and blackbucks. (sic)

a bigger red coloured tag under the picture said "DRY DAZE"

so we all had a merry debate on whether my confusion was an unwelcome comment on the freedom of choice of food for an independent-minded cow.
or if its now going to be acceptable for devoutly vegetarian Hindus to eat fish because gau- mata has been seen to be enjoying a machchi..
whether the photographer had simply gotten the wrong idea and the conscientious cow was merely carrying away the abandoned dead body of the fish to a final resting place.

the jury's still out, and my friends have threatened violence if i continue to talk about this picture. hence the blogpost.


my apologies to tiny, rave, sj, shru n bt... i can just NOT get over the sheer wierdness of that picture.

my apologies to any hapless readers patient enough to sit down n read this entire thing without being able to see the picture thats got me so confused.. you will have to wait a few days for my PC to start working coz as usual i'm using the college comps... you could ofcourse buy/borrow/steal the India Today July 5 edition and turn to page 13 to see what the fuss is all about.

unfinished...

"i feel like talking.. thats why i called"
"just like that? "
"yeah.. if.. thats okay"
"uh.. yeah ofcourse.. i mean.."
"oh.. u were busy.. sorry.. i'll let you get back to your work..."

dial tone..

"damn... why didnt i just be civil?? i didnt have to talk to her.. annoying woman that she is.. anyway.. tonnes of work.. damn it.."
.......
rriiiinnnggg
her again? uggh...
"hello?"
"hello? hi do you know who this phone belongs to?? "
the voice was male.. a guy??? on her phone??
"umm.. who is this?"
"you are the last dialled number on this phone.. do you know who this phone belongs to??"
the voice sounded unnaturally loud.. she could also hear traffic in the background..
"er.. yes i do know her. but who are you and what are you doing with her phone??"
"i... i. need help.. this girl just almost jumped in front of my car.. i'm calling from _____ i'm taking her to teh hospital right now. can you please inform her family??? her screen smashed so i cant find any other numbers..."
"oh.. uh.. i .. yes i will. what hospital will you take her to?"

she stared at the phone for a few seconds once she hung up.. contact the family? she knew of teh family surely.. they'd been friends for a while.. surely someone would know.. she called other friends..
"do u know ____'s home number?? she just had an accident.."
"no.. maybe __ does.."
"can you call around and check with others??"
"'kay"
...........

why she was at the hospital she didnt quite know.. perhaps because she'd been the last to have heard from her. it had been a harrowing few hours.. family had been traced.. called. it had been a wierd call to make..

she was finally awake..
"hey.. how are you feeling?" thats such an inane question.. why did i even say that?
she started crying...
"i 'm sorry for all that trouble.. i didnt know what else to do... just felt like i couldnt live anymore.. there was no one who would care.. so.."

wait.. WHAT are you trying to say?? you actually jumped on that road?  it really wasn't an accident?

the way we are

I didn’t cook anything today.. went out for lunch with school friends though.. and were badly duped by our favorite watering hole because even after three whiskeys and a tequila shot, all of us walked out of there with just a slight buzz… either we’ve all suddenly developed a very very high tolerance or they ripped us off and gave us cheap useless alcohol for the price of the good stuff…


That apart.. it was great to meet old friends after a long separation.. i hadnt realised how much i'd missed them, how much fun we all really have taking each other's trip..

AND.. i wrote this while waiting for them to show up...





serendipity

We’re occupying lonely chairs on opposite corners of the little café.. seated on tables that were designed for more than one person.. my ipod plugged into my ears, your cellphone glued to yours..we ‘re waiting for someone.. someone important enough in our individual lives for us to wait long enough for the slow café staff to take our orders, we nurse our coffees as we wait..

I don’t know you.. I can’t even quite see you because my spectacles are lazing on the table next to my cellphone. And the chance glance of yours towards me as I look around the busy café sends me into a storybook world..

The story set in a little café in a metro station.. much like this one.. two people, both alone, absorbed in their own worlds, and a chance encounter..

One of us seated alone at a table meant for many more… a sea of people.. every other table occupied by others trying to escape the sweltering heat outside for a few more minutes.. the other enters, flushed with the heat that the metro’s air conditioners have yet to dissipate…

“excuse me.. do you mind if I sit here if this chair is unoccupied?” a polite question, answered by a nod. The eyes are absorbed in the book that hides the reader from the world..

The chair scrapes against the floor, a rustle of paper.. two strangers sharing a table, oblivious to each other’s presence. Lost in the stories that are being played out on the pages they hold. Their own story on hold…

The waiter delivers the order, concentration broken, they both look up, meet each other’s eyes.. exchange a tentative smile..

“ I read the one you’re reading just last week,, this author’s great isn’t he?”

“likewise” comes the smiling reply, both are reading the same author..

“have you read xyz by the same author?”

“not yet.. I’m going to finish this first and maybe re-read the one you have.. its really good”

The book, the author, the café, the drinks.. the universe conspires to grant them topics of conversation… they soon know each other’s favorite books, fav author, music, films, what the other has had to face in the course of the day.. what the other hopes to accomplish.. they chat with the ease of people who have known each other forever.. who know each other inside and out… their thoughts compliment and mesh together..

And then the flow gets interrupted.. the wait that had them both feel alone is over, the ones they were waiting for come in… but neither recalls the wait anymore…. The time has passed quicker than they imagined..

Hey! You’re here already!”

“sorry to keep you waiting..”

This is my friend abc.. and this is…”

You fumble as you realize that we know everything about each other but you don’t know my name and I don’t know yours.

We grin and introduce ourselves... for a second there we had forgotten we were strangers..

We exchange polite goodbyes then.. the ease of conversation has given way to awkwardness that the realization brings..

Be both get up and start walking towards the door with our companions.. turn in different directions at the door… and then turn around to each other again…

“are you on facebook?”

“We can chat online if that’s okay with you..”

A smile exchanged, “yes..”

“talk to you soon then.”

food and football

last night's England- Algeria match was so boring that not just i, but the four boys ranging from ages 14-20 who were watching also fell asleep midway through it.

the house is unusually noisy this weekend... both my mausis are here for the day and one of them has brought her two kids with her.. so now i have FOUR brats annoying me for the weekend. thankfully one of them is nearly 20 and therefore less inclined to come and bug his elder sister..


................

other than that... i made pasta and potatoes in dahi-and-pudina for dinner yesterday... everyone said it was really good :)

fire

Pain just licking the edges of my consciousness..


like the rough almost rash left behind on my soft skin from the stubble on his jaw... took me back to the crazy days we’d shared as children... competing against each other.. I determined to not let my femininity get in the way of the prize.. he equally determined to show me that he was better than me at just about anything.. we’d climb and race and wrestle and shout our way across the day.. and at the end, both exhausted curl up in each other’s arms till parents’ calls could no longer be ignored..

Then we’d have to face the anger that came forth from the deepest set fears of parents.. an anger that masked their deep rooted concern for our “future”.. in any other scenario we would have been betrothed as children.. maybe even married off and then left to compete in our childish games… maybe.. but then I would have had to be confined as only the married girls are.. I couldn’t have competed against or sworn at my husband.. but I digress..

As I said… maybe they would have gotten us married just to get rid of their worries about where we were or what we could get upto while playing unsupervised… but ofcourse they couldn’t.. we belonged to the same gotra.. we lived next door to each other in the same village.. the khap had forbidden us to be anything but playmates… our parents knew that well… they had watched peers being strung up in the banyan tree near the khap meeting place.. they had watched children of forbidden marriages grow up as orphan beggars on the streets of the village.. they wouldn’t have dared think about our marriage..



But we did..

As the games of childhood grew into desires of adolescence.. as we began to really see how different our bodies were.. a difference that excited us, enticed us… we fell in lust just as easily as we’d loved each other.. I was his life, he was mine... there was never a thought of any other for us.. whenever I was teased about going to my sasural.. I always thought of the door of his house opening to welcome me.. he only ever dreamed of me bringing him rotis and lassi on a hot day in the field..

The groves that had seen many a game of hide and seek also gave us a place where we hid from the rest of the world and spun our own dreams..



Till one day they saw us…

And all hell broke lose..

My parents promised that I would be married off outside the village within a month.. that was the only reason the khap didn’t cut us into pieces right there in the grove.. I had besmirched the family honour, they said.. only my father somehow insisted that killing me would not clear his name.. his stand against the village then was how my life didn’t end that day..

I pleaded and cried… from next door I could hear the echo of the same whipping stick- sound.. almost as if they both rose and fell in a rhythm with each other.. in the dead of the night I heard his broken whispers at my window.. how he had been left loose I don’t know.. I had been fettered to the wooden beam by the same thick rope that bound the big bull in his pen… he managed to crawl in undetected.. maybe the gods smiled upon us just then.. we crept away with the sunrise…

The tortuous trek to the police post 15 miles away, and then two days of pleading with the sahib there that we knew what we were asking for, that we were both old enough.. they told us to stay near the police station and not even try to contact our families if we wanted to live.. we took the blessings of the babu- sahib who sat in the courthouse to marry..



And then the gods stopped smiling.. a member of the khap saw him and guessed I would be where he was.. the mob descended on out little hut with the setting sun…and they set fire to it.. I was inside… he was dragged outside to be beaten and to watch as I burned.. we wouldn’t be allowed to die together… we couldn’t burn in the same pyre.. I watched from behind flaming walls as they sheathed their swords in his body…

as he fell to the ground and blood began to run… they spat at the spreading stream and began to walk away..

And he stirred.. silent, watching for their return.. and then he crawled into the flames to me.. I pushed with all my strength till the chair that was my captor fell to its side and I could drag it on the ground..

We managed to be in the same pyre… they wouldn’t be able to separate us now..

I smiled at him as the sting from the fire turned into a raging burn… our eyes never left each other.. with my last breath I told him I loved him.. and gave myself over to the darkness that would deliver us from the fear we had lived under forever..