Loving Pinocchio

the boy I knew was not a real boy.... he was what he believed others expected him to be and what he wanted others to see him as having been... I wonder now if i went wrong in my encouragement of "you can be whatever you want" instead of having asked the question "who are you really"... maybe i should've demanded a sensible answer to that one while i was at it...

it seems to be a failing of mine in a way.. a character flaw that i am a poor judge of character and try to be accepting of the face one shows to me... i hate having to put on a mask so most of the time i assume the person before me is pretense-less as well.. even though i'm quite old enough to know that most people have layers of masks enough that their real face is never seen...

it struck me recently that i've done this for all my life, taken people at face value and assumed that if they claim to be something there must be some truth in it.. rather daft ideals to live by for a journalist i'd say...


Its recently become rather apparent to me that I've failed miserably at reading the truth even when it was very very necessary for me to have done so.. both for my own sake and for the sake of those I Loved..

here's some words of wisdom from Comicstaan's Prashasti Singh

Not In My Name

There were protests across India this evening against the repeated incidents of Mob violence and lynchings in the name of religion. Students, activists, lawyers, artists, politicians all came out to stand on the streets and campaign against violence with posters bearing the words Not In My Name.
Hundreds turned out at Jantar Mantra in Delhi. despite the oppressingly humid evening, people stood there with their placards and sang along to songs about unity, peace, God and Humanity. It was a heartening moment to be a part of, to see how many had turned out to say that they would NOT approve of religion being used as an excuse for violence.

BUT

I came back rather disappointed at what I saw.

What I had gone to the #NotInMyName protest for was this....

Unfortunately what i ALSO got there was a very pointed attempt at focusing on Hindu Muslim polarisation and a narrative that seems to have forgotten all the instances of mob violence against Dalits, women, Police personnel-- all of which were also in the name of religion and by religious fanatics. 

What TRULY disappointed me about the protest was the fact that the "Lynch map" of India that mentions the deaths by frenzied mob had such few and pointed examples ONLY of killing of Muslim men. WHY was this Lynch map not full of the incidents of violence against Dalits? why did the women killed for "being a witch" not find mention in a protest against Religion as excuse for violence? why did the speeches not mention the Kashmiri policemen who live in fear of the stonepelters targeting their families? what about the poor young men killed for "stealing" from somewhere???? don't they deserve the attention that a made for media blitz event like the ANto Violence protest commands??

YES we need to talk about the issue of rampant anti Muslim sentiment being added to in this country, heaven knows many of our towns are one pointless argument away from a full communal riot situation. but that is NOT limited to Hindu vs Muslim riots. We seem to have forgotten an entire spectrum of violence that our society is suffering under

SO yes, while I am proud to say that I attended the protest, on my own time as a private citizen of this country, I came back worried more about the fact that so many victims of mob violence have been consigned to the backburner.. It feel rather that in a bid to challenge the monster of "comunalism" by a particular community

so

to all those who attended, planned, sweated and felt involved in this protest, I would ask one thing..

WHY are we turning a legitimate 'crowdsourced" protest demanding a stop to violence in to a left vs Right, HIndu vs Muslim debate?
because if all that it was meant to be was a public attack against the BJP, the Modi Govt and its allies, while ignoring all other issues of violece atht plague our ocuntry, them i think  then I'm sorry, it ios NOTINMYNAME

six degrees of separation

I have always been a bit unobservant and allowed the sharp edges of the world to blur out a bit when I care to look at it... rather daft for someone in my profession but it is what it is...
one of the ways it has manifested, and it was a part unconscious and part conscious decision at some point in my life.. was to not ask about a person's background.. Now one reason was that being in the college that I was at with the people I was surrounded by, it was just easier to consciously stop considering my friends' backgrounds because it would have made things rather uncomfortable for me had I focused more on WHO they were instead of who THEY were..
today however I realised that the malaise goes deeper.. not that it affects my friendships one whit, but I found out today that someone I've known for a very very long time is connected to circles that I with my family background would not have easily gained access to, or for that matter, felt comfortable, in a social situation, had I known what I was getting into..
a schoolfriend who I have known since before puberty set in got married over the weekend.. Now when we were kids, it never mattered what someone's parents did for a living because we were friends from school who rarely if ever met the parents of other schoolfriends... the people who made up the "family" guest list at the wedding were a surprise to me.. though i suppose I could have asked questions a lot earlier considering the wedding venue and other things... It had just never occurred to me to ask him "bhai what do your parents do?"

mind you, knowing the answer to "do you know who my father is" in today's context has no bearing whatsoever on my relationship with my friend.. but it was rather disconcerting to walk into the gathering, specially as I knew no one except the groom.
whats even stranger is that KS who has been one of my best friends for years now, has connections in this group that made me feel even more of an "outsider"..

I've never really bothered to be conscious of the "social structures" and my place in it vis a vis my background.. Its just the first time in a very very long time that I am acutely conscious of it all..

to cite Jane Austen's world, being a Gentleman's daughter doesn't automatically mean you're ready to mingle with the "Ton"

you can cry all you want but you won't ever get back what's gone...

It hasn’t been “home” since amma died four years ago... But now the old flat my grandmother bought, where i grew up, has been sold and is being packed up.. My aunts and mother arguing over who gets what furniture and keepsakes and measuring what furniture will fit where in our own separate homes..

Last night my grandmother’s children gathered in her house for the last time to sign all documents and hand over the house to the buyer.. Chacha chachi and the kids shift out within this week... And i skipped out of going there because i was too tired and not in the mood to change into clothes suitable to go outside in....

As the eldest, I’ve spent the most time in that house... Have spent years running from room to room.. Had a new bed made for me to fit in the corner of amma’s room when i got too big to sleep in the same bed as my grandparents, had the balcony covered to make a “Separate room” for me.. Which i never slept in ultimately but became my study room... So many times when i got tired of the silence that pervades the house we live in now.. I would go there to see amma and babaji and feel like i’m actually “home”... 

I can’t remember the last time i was there.. Isn’t that strange...? I used to find the smallest excuse to go there, even if to just grab a bite and get a hug from amma when i had to to go Karkardooma court and could take a half hour out to go home...

All the friends and extended ‘family’ i had as a child growing up in that society.. 

Saying I’m leaving home and taking my minnie mouse blackboard over to Taiji’s house so i could “stay” in her daughter’s room.. Jiji’s kids are now years older than i Was when i pulled that stunt... It has been more than 20 years since it happened... Taiji left us weeks after Amma did.. A double blow that took my “home” from me.. Leaving no one there whose lap i’ve cuddled into as a child and as an adult... I think i stopped visiting after the two died.. I consciously stopped going even when Mom and dad visited chacha chachi.. It didn’t feel like “my house” any longer.. It was theirs now.. The room where i grew up listening to stories from amma wasn’t amma’s room any longer.. It was my sister’s bedroom.. Amma’s saris and babaji’s whiskey bottles didn’t stay there any longer.. I didn’t have the right to go and curl up in that bed or rifle through those almirahs looking for new pens and hidden treasures... 

Running up and down the stairs to see how fast i could climb up to the 7th floor and back.. The ‘nani’ who had given that dare to me is long dead... I was maybe 10 or 11 when i did it... Run up to your house and come back with 5 rupees in less than 1 minute and you can get two chocolates instead of just one... I don’t think even she expected me to actually clilmb six floors, wheedle money out of babaji and be back in less than 60 seconds... Have distinct memories of jumping down five or six stairs with my hand on teh banister while running pell mell to beat the deadline.. I have no idea what I would do if i ever caught a kid doing that.. 

The park where i learnt as a 12 year old to hit headers on a football... Stupidly while having a plastic hairband on which felt like it would go through my skull when the football hit it.. The open green area where we played football and cricket has been a parking lot for nearly 10 years now... It stopped being a free space for children even before i left my teens... The roof where we played hide and seek.. And talked late into the evening.. Had dance practices and “dates”.. Where cousin once threatened to enact the “suiciiiide” scene from Sholay because the boys got into a horrible fight and the entire group of friends took sides...

Amma is long gone.. And now the house is gone too.. 

I’m sitting in my bed writing about my lost childhood.. Tears in my eyes.. They will shift out by the 25th... I’m leaving on holiday tomorrow morning.. There is still today for me to go there and reminisce and cry.. But i KNOW i wont go there today... Even though my heart feels heavy and my stomach eels hollow and every stupid thing i did growing up is running through my head and telling me to go see that house one last time.. I won’t go see the house.. My home is no longer there.. It’s being stripped and packed away and i don’t want to see that..

My parents came home at 2 am last night.. With cardboard boxes full of pretty dinner sets and a bone china tea set that has remained displayed on the top shelf of the side board in the dining room since Mom bought it when i was four.. Amma always used to say that she would take out that tea set and serve tea only when some “ladke walle” came to the house to see me... 24 years after that tea set came to my home.. It is now packed into a cardboard box to be stored away in a different glass cabinet.. Amma is long gone.. My family is split into three separate families that don't have a common "home" any longer....

I’m gonna convince mom to let me drink tea in those china cups tonight... And maybe cry a little more...

When will the Doomsday strike?

A few years ago, i got addicted to this TV show called Supernatural. The first two seasons scared me enough to start not looking at the window and the shadows at night and gave me nightmares for weeks.. its about two brothers who basically fight demons, angels, Gods and all manner of other creatures and beings to survive and "save humanity"...

Season 5 of the show was all about the buildup to the biblical Apocalypse- complete with the four horsemen of the apocalypse- War, famine, Pestilence and Death.. personified and rampaging around on earth...

since this morning, after reading the newspapers, I can't stop thinking about two of the episodes from season 5-- the one where the Winchesters fight against the horseman War, and the one where Dean goes back in time and confronts Lucifer himself...

War, who tells the boys some ugly truths about life and humanity, makes a very simple yet profound statement- "there is already evil in humans, all they need is a little push.."
The entire season is about the degeneration of the world because of the impending doom.. the War episode is full of people attacking and killing each other for no reason at all.. an entire town at war with itself..., Pestilence has the rise of incurable mutated diseases that can cut swathes through an entire city's population at a go.. Famine has so much greed that people will eat each other just to get at what they want... while Death has terrifying natural disasters that can erase everything in their path..

and all through this.. God is gone and doesn't care about the survival of humanity.. or as Lucifer puts it.. the "world" isn't just the humans. The earth was there before the humans were made and will continue to be when humans are wiped off its face..

the bluntness of these episodes is something that echoes eerily in the world around me these days..


the madness around this world has predictions in every religion.. Hinduism and Buddhism say that we are now living through the 'Kalyug'-- where humans will lose their humanity and society its structure slowly, till the Pralaya comes and ends us all...

Doomsday predictions seem almost welcome when the alternative is waking up to news reports like these..


http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/next-door-to-delhi-mob-kills-50-year-old-injures-son-over-rumours-they-ate-beef/

http://theweek.com/speedreads/580344/study-children-disproportionally-killed-by-syria-bombs-airstrikes

http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/sringara-3-year-old-succumbs-to-bullet-injuries/

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/education/story/water-wives-of-maharashtra/1/480898.html

http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/5-km-from-vvip-zone-i-am-afraid-i-will-also-be-killed-over-water/

the staircase

maybe i got too high a dosage of Disney as a kid.. or something..

because the idea of having a bedroom with a spiral staircase that opens out onto a terrace which is essentially the highest accessible point of a tower makes me feel ludicrously excited... 

One of the biggest perks of parents having a government job is that they get government accommodation.. and the house dad has been offered now is a monstrosity built 80 years ago which is need of a few serious repairs.. but it has a bedroom/spare room whatchamacallit room on the first floor that is accessed through the terrace, that also has an internal staircase which takes you to yet another higher floor, with a small sheltered terrace that makes you feel like you're on top of the world looking regally down at all the gorgeous verdant green of the lawns... with the bright blue sky open above... its like something out of a dream.. and i know for a fact that there is no way in hell i will ever be able to find a room like that anywhere in Delhi and even if such a room exists and may be available for rent, they would charge the sun and moon for it because it is BY FAR the most beautiful thing i have ever seen.. even though its currently covered in cobwebs and maybe termites.. and i have to get a safety check done on that spiral staircase because that place hasn't bee lived in for years and years..

but i can just picture the pretty lights i'll wind around the banisters and the bookshelves and photographs that will go on the walls and the cushions I will put to create a reading nook right where the landing of the staircase opens onto the terrace...

if we actually move into that gorgeous house and the said gorgeous house doesn't fall down around our head.. it is an OOOOLD house after all... 

but GOD the staircase makes me feel like a little kid watching a princess movie... maybe i'll wear a pretty gown and walk down that staircase randomly one day... just to be able to say that i did it... 

my dad, who has been trying all my life to stamp the fairy princess ideas out of my head, has however pointed out that the pretty room doesn't have a window big enough to put a cooler or AC in, and being as clumsy as i am, a spiral staircase isn't exactly the safest thing for me to be mucking about with... to him i say.. bah humbug..