When he whispers sweet nothings

Every night when I put myself to sleep, I hold on to a book to help me glide through the purgatory - that is a miserable half-daze - and make my journey into the sweat heaven called dreamland smooth. Something like the last piece of reality I want to be in touch with before I shut my eyes to the world and let an unknown force take over.

Between those few moments of half-daze and deep sleep, there is this one short stretch of time where I feel enveloped by multiple thoughts all at once. More like a man whispering unrelated tit bits into my ear – strangely at the same time- but in different tones and from different locations. Picture this. You are on ground zero and you want to get to the top floor. You take the elevator. The elevator is mirror-walled on three sides. You have a co-passenger with you. You see infinite images of him on the mirror opposite. Each image telling you something different; each image showing you something distinct.  Such is the stretch before deep sleep.

Last night I pictured these sweet nothings: A Russian matryoshka doll; a girl of four with small, beady eyes, straight hair and a long skirt – she laughs every time you turn your head away from her and successfully draws your attention;  a long piece of cloth in cream with a red border; some pieces of shattered glass found on a school playground – little girls hovering around to collect the pretty shapeless pieces to play with them later; a wooden dragon on the shelf; a content Buddha head on a plain white wall... A view of the endless ocean from a ship’s cabin – an urgent feeling of “will there be land in sight soon?” ...

A few more thoughts before I am fast asleep.

Image courtesy: goodbooksforyoungsouls.blogspot

Where did my nights go?

I forget what a Starry Starry Night (Courtesy: Van Gogh) looks like. I remember climbing up to my terrace as a child, lying on my back and trying to read the hidden stories behind those constellations using a keychain telescope. I don’t look at the stars anymore and I have been seeing the morning moon for years now.

Some things I have missed all these nights

• Night star gaze
• stomach grumble
• Bedtime prayers
• Goodnight calls
• Mom’s rhythmic pat – pat on the back
• Dad’s slow breathing from the bed nearby
• Which invariably led to a mother’s womb security
• That hand that I could always hold when I wake up to a nightmare
• The happiness that the unforeseen gush of wind (ushered in by the light curtains) brought in
• Bedtime stories
• That book meant to be read at bedtime, but will never reach the second page

Those were the nights ! 

When you look back

Think about it. When you first came into the world – much like Adam and Eve – you knew no shame or guilt. Muscles worked themselves to form what is popularly known as a ‘smile’ when you were happy and they twitched into deformity when you weren’t. These expressions came with no manual attached. Everybody has his/ her first encounter with the big bad world, after which elders nudge him/ her into a state of reality. People start whispering into their ears constantly that there is no such thing as a “happily ever after...”

The first encounter could have been in the form of that boy who pushed you to the ground in an attempt to get that last piece of chocolate from the rack; an old woman who abused in a language you could not decipher because your mother refused to give her alms; your own brother for snitching on you to your parents; your biased teacher refusing to acknowledge your hard work; your best friend (till date) looks at you one morning before class assembly and decides she doesn’t want to you as a friend anymore (out of sheer boredom); being bullied and letting people bully you…

The effect of these help you in a self-exploration drive. You never knew feelings such as anger, extreme fear, anxiety and hope existed within yourself until you went through a parade of such encounters. Much like the biggest mystery one needs to solve during one’s lifetime is oneself. Constantly drifting through a one experience after the other, only to discover a little more.

My first encounter with reality was during my first year at school. It was Christmas time and all my friends were chirping about their list to Santa Clause under the pretty Christmas tree. Excitement dawned. I went back home and spoke to a disinterested family about Santa Clause and his charming adventures. I realized I had to take matters into my own hands and simply assume that the corner stand (which to my mind looked a lot like a Christmas tree) was my pretty tree – praying all the while that Santa forgives this small interchange. Wrote down a list, asking for a couple of skateboards and a colouring set in bad handwriting and stashed it under the ‘tree’.

The next morning – I couldn’t wait to wake up and see a set of neatly packed presents from Santa himself.

It took me a while to recover and gather myself to watch another ‘Christmas’ movie ever since. 

Demolishing the Block

When people tell you “you are good,” an invisible burden ironically ‘floats in’ from nowhere and rests on your shoulders. The burden being- always being good. As someone who likes penning down thoughts on an extremely random basis , I was jabbed with a writer’s worst low – The Block – for the longest two months of my life. Though many have tried to express in their own words, the actual feeling of being to the most popular vacation spot called the Writer’s Block, it’s still very hard to use words to describe it. Writers need motivation. Each writer has his own muse and his own idea of motivation. Each person is a writer- some are perpetually in a blocked mode; while some slip into it occasionally.

The first signs of hanging out in the Block:
- Every time somebody mentions your writing and your past works, your heart cringes and you sense the discomfort.
- You have opened MS word several times only to type “QWERTY” and backspace it.
- You desperately read through your old pieces seeking some sort of inspiration.
- You turn irritable when somebody reminds you that “it has been a while since the last one”
- You hate being inconsistent with quality. You are never too pleased with what you think or write.

In my case the worst sign was desperation. I turned so desperate that all through the day I tried spotting a feasible “blog post” idea. The bus, the loo, the mirror, the window- all enticed me into brainstorming for a possible cover for the blog. From the birth of this blogspot, posts and words have been effortless and free-flowing. For the first time, it was actually a pain to drag the post-string along (what I thought was) the right track. So I decided to do what they prescribe to block-hit writers.

I wrote a poem to shake away from the tangles of the Block

I want to write,
Get done with the fight,
between my pen and mind;

I told myself,
rake up the old shelf,
for the flash you will find;

No writer should sit;
without the bulb lit
for the muse will yawn in pain

For, to every boon
the writers swoon,
there’s the Block that marks the bane.

Of the hug that I never got

“He hugged her and cried, with the sweetest smile,” said Avinash, describing the man’s wilting health. On the hospital bed, he described the man’s searching eyes were as restless as a baby’s. This was when friends and family around him were heaving with fear, trying hard to smile, not giving away the frustration in their faces after months of tiring, uncertain nights.

The man is his grandfather, fondly known as bhaiji, and the girl - bhaiji’s grand daughter. When people have tales to tell about their grandparents, I feel quite lost. Do I have grand parents? - of course. Am I lucky that I have them? – I think so. Do I have memories I’d like to remember, with them? – this will take some time to dig into. Proud moments, happy moments, loved moments? – still thinking…

Without touching my maternal side, describing the grand parents who were physically close to me – they never quite considered me to be part of the kin. An outspoken, back-answering wench, who never got the point. Most astonishingly, a girl who never got the bigger point that “Men will always be up in the sky, when women are grounded on Earth for life.”
“No,” she’d say. “Which century are these thoughts from? Women are just as high ‘up in the sky’ as men. Why the difference?”
She could never understand the biggest truth of life. Such a difficult child. And a girl child at that.

They abandoned all hopes of making anything out of this girl. Happy with the other grandchildren and their adherence to the golden rule, the girl was more of an outcast. I remember being left with nothing to contribute when friends sat in a circle during lunch breaks, discussing their happiness at having grandparents over during weekends. In my desperation, in the 6th grade I studied all night just to take a good report card back to appuppa. To see some pride in his face. All he said was, “3rd rank? Try to top the next time.”

Nope. It evidently didn’t work.

I don’t think I have hugged appuppa ever. But I yearned to be loved by him. I wanted him to think highly of me, knowing very well that he wouldn’t. Despite that, I still love him.

Best friend?!

Past 3.00 AM. I’m in the middle of a half-yawn, but I know the journey to dreamland will take me a while. Ponder time.

Last week, a friend introduced her friend to me as her first best friend ever. Met around kindergarten days and stuck on to be friends, she said (It is a blessing if one can make such claims. You hardly stay the same with your first best friend throughout. In fact, you hardly remember the person you gave that honour to, mostly). I thought for the name of that first best friend of mine- Hannah Thomas- 1st STD, Choice School. I remember sharing a table with her, fighting for an eraser that was never lost. Waiting for ‘free periods’ so that we could get into our illusionary office, where stenographers (Hannah and I) typed with upturned 15 cm- measurement scales (for the appropriate sound, as our little fingers tapped on each imagined letter). Trying our own strategies, individually, to be the ‘preferred one’ of the class bully- always in competition with each other. Sharing water (sometimes) but never sharing lunch (chocolate wafers and creamy cakes were never spared, so we ate it in hiding). Being a proud owner of ‘foreign’ colour pencils and cussing and bawling when she broke it. Playing ring-a-ring-o’roses, falling at “...we all fall down,” and breaking my front tooth (the one dad warned me would make or break my ‘developing’ beauty [3rd STD by now]), and remaining in utter shock to even cry for the remaining part of the day.

Came 4th standard. With new class came new faces. The brutal axe of class-shuffle had fallen on us. The next conversation was on the school bus. The content I hardly remember, but she was definitely not my best friend then. Asha, I think was the next on the list. Or was it Indu? Not sure.

Who cries down the memory lane?

A friend was telling me about his first psychology session in his first month of MBA, over coffee. He mentioned that the teacher kindled the class by asking them to shut their eyes and recount their earliest memory from childhood. I was thinking hard while my friend continued to tell me that she said it had to be a painful one. The psychology professor stated that the first feeling of pain is the stickiest memory that you would later recount with a pinch. I strained to think of my earliest memory. Flashes raced through my head. Vick and I playing pitch-a-tent with blankets and cloth clips; Mom and dad going for walks in the evenings leaving us home alone; Vick forcing me to taste the leg of a cockroach; Pinky defecating in the playground and S (?) and I running back home alone throwing up all the way; Singing “M-O-T-H-E-R Mother, F-A-T-H-E-R Father” for annual KG Day; Vick lifting me up by the stomach with his legs lying down in a sketchy attempt at imitating superman; Slipping and hurting my head during one of the most memorable parties in Bombay; poking mom awake from her afternoon siesta to make me sandwiches so that the ‘didis’ would let me play ‘picnic’ with them in the front door playground…

None of this really hurts. All are fond memories. I have been a pampered child- yes. But I have had my share of bad bashings. The fact that my mind does not recollect them makes me realize that I’m quite a sunshine-even-at-night person. Good for me.