Merlin's beard !

So, the highlight of my day was INJECTIONS (and little shopping but I am going to leave that aside for now).

Like every normal kid, I grew up on chocolates and fizzy drinks. I ate and sipped, all day all night. And whenever it was time to rinse my mouth before going to bed, I gave it a miss! I haven’t yet deciphered why my legs robotically made their way towards the fridge and I was urged to take long satisfactory sips from the black and orange bottles during midnight. I don’t kid when I say that I couldn’t fall asleep otherwise.

Years later, sitting in front of the dentist whose hands draw closer with needles; I debate with the idea of suing Coca Cola India and deciding to give another chance to the various chocolate manufacturers that my taste buds depended on. Nevertheless, I am pricked with needles in my gum four painful times and later comes another needle as a pain killer. The irony of life!

In spite of being around my doctor dad at home, hospitals and clinics give me the negative vibes which I am certainly not very fond of. I do not like the idea of so many sick people, unwell and in pain, breathing in the same medicinal air. I don’t comprehend how the four walls and white bed sheets could do anyone any good. Why wouldn’t they throw in some happy colors around?

And the doctors, well they always have so many questions to ask. They turn me into a nervous wreck. Also, they hardly have any patience. They inject, cut, open and stitch: all in a jiffy!

However the funny part being that I had ALWAYS wanted to grow up to be a doctor, a neurosurgeon to be specific. Until 3 years back, when I decided otherwise and against my childhood “aim”, I had only dreamt of wearing the white lab coat, pulling on those magic gloves and supposedly healing every ail being. But like I was telling my dad while waiting for the dentist, I can’t imagine myself pricking another person now, let alone cutting open their brain.

Anyway, after I get millions of dollars as compensation from Coca Cola, I’ll design and build a special hospital, color it a happy shade of green or blue and install ice cream machines in every room. No kidding.

Box of Sunshine

In the wooden cupboard, amidst my sister’s old, thick and tiny-lettered engineering books, sits a wooden box. Wrapped in pretty paper with sunflowers all over it, it is hard to be unnoticed. Once in a while, I open it and carefully unfold the letters and little notes that it stores. Handwritings, some neat while some scrawled, personalize the yellowing papers and I can’t help but believe that no matter how many years have passed, the feelings penned down, linger on.

In the era of face book and twitter, I somehow miss the chore of going to buy a pretty letter pad or even neatly tearing a page out of a notebook, choosing a pen, scribbling out the right words without the option of delete or backspace, carefully folding the paper and placing it in an envelope, buying stamps (maybe even walking to the post office) and posting it. Sigh. Gone are those days when we made sweet efforts to be in touch with our friends and communication was not confined to a “wall”.

There was a time, perhaps a few lights years ago, when I and my friends never got dead beat of posting and receiving letters. I remember buying new sets of glitter pens, sketch pens and crayons every now and then to adorn cards and letters. I always believed it made my friends feel special. And trust me when I say this (but do not laugh) that I still have a set of crayons and sketches in my cupboard, not ‘cause I draw but as I keep looking for a chance to use them for that special touch.

A few days back, one of my very good friends in Delhi asked me for my address, much to my awe and surprise. He further surprised me by adding “let’s be pen friends. I haven’t written to anyone in ages”. And obviously, I agreed right away.

So, while I go back to re- reading all the old letters, I hope you guys draw out your pens and perhaps instead of wall-ing or texting, write a small note to a friend. :) 

On the Road

Blogger had deleted this post. :( Re posting it.

I have been feeling rather triumphant since yesterday. Reason? I finally dragged my mom to a movie with me, just the two of us. Yes it is a joyous moment considering my mom’s antipathy for films. So, no matter who was on its last legs or wailing to bits on the screen, I held on to my happy grin!

It’s a two hours drive to the city, which means four hours in the car to catch two and a half hours of movie!  Not that I am complaining. I have rather gotten used to it. The car stereo beats to my Dad’s old Hindi music collection which the driver shuffles every minute or so, much to my irritation. I am urged to ask him to keep his hands to the steering wheel, but then I wonder how much I would hate to drive to the tune of just any track. It’s only fair to let him come across what he believes to be the perfect driving song. So I let him be. With tea gardens canvassing the view outside my window, I take the time to tune out from the car and glide through the thought bubbles in my head.

Since the last 7 years, I have driven through sun shine and rain on this road. It brings me home for a month of happy luxury affair. And it also takes me away to the small airport from where begins the flight to months of independent abode. I have grown from the naïve girl who couldn’t do without mom to the brave girl who still can’t do without her but has learnt how to.

I glance at my mom, sitting in a little distance from me in the same car seat. From the corner of her eye, she catches my glance and turns to face me, seemingly oblivious of my thoughts. I can’t help but marvel at how she always looks so calm, so unweary. The square rimmed glasses that she had taken to wearing lately slightly conceal the dark patch of skin beneath her eyes. A stark reminder that she was growing older with every summer vacation, every road trip. I sigh.

We drive past the small make shift market where fishermen sell their catch, after probably toiling all day in the sea. Bihu, the main festival of Assam, is celebrated for weeks. We catch glimpses of the celebration:  two stages decorated for an overnight function. Young girls clad in sarees giggle past us. My mom remarks every now and then, about what we come across on the road. I listen.

In spite of complaints about her sore legs, she had chosen to take a day out with me. I wonder why she couldn’t have said no. Why didn’t she push back the plan? And at the very moment when I see her smile, I just can’t decide what touched me more. My happy grin was promptly back.

I probably dwelled on her the entire time since I did not realize when we crossed the few miles of beaten road and parked our way home. Tired but nevertheless, happy! 

May be it's only us.

Like a million other people, I can’t get over a good book days after I have finished reading it. No I am not talking about the Harry Potter mania here (though I knew my childhood was over the moment I flipped the last page of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows). I am rather talking about the urge to step back in time and follow every word a certain author is writing, every thought in his mind.  ‘Cause his book has answered your unasked questions in ways no one could.

I just finished reading “ Lord of the Flies” by William Golding. Published back in 1954, the book revolves around a group of school students who find themselves abandoned on an island after a plane crash. Images from “Lost” swarming your head? Well, mine too. My research tells me, the television series was probably inspired by the book. The plot is predictable (at least in this era of terrorism): scared, confused children struggling for survival. The struggle that robs them of their innocence and leaves them with blood tainted hands.

Listed as one of the best and also as one of the most disturbing novels of all time, the book, in its own way, made me realize how the human society functions.

Inside all of us, lies a beast. A beast that makes us loath, makes us jealous. It makes us fear the dark at nights, fear something we can’t see. It’s a part of us. What else causes the tendency to hurt someone when wronged? Or dislike someone just because you have dissimilar interests? The feelings are subdued and in most cases, the violent urges not put to action. Yet we cannot rebuff that there IS a struggle between being civil and being savage.

The invisible boundaries of the society however, tame the beast and keep it from running loose. The cycle of acceptable behavior, rules and punishments keep us from unmasking the evil within us. Like Sigmund Freud puts it: the primal urges persist and also guide us, though unconsciously

Amid the fictional world and ours, nonetheless lies a difference. Unlike the book, the human society still exists, does not transform to an isolated island. There is restlessness in spite of the civilization, and we hunt even though we could do without a roasted pig for dinner. ‘Cause there is fear. So much so that it drives us to inhumanity.

I am myself unsure as to why I am writing about something so dark here. I guess it’s because I helplessly exist as part of a terror soaked human race. Because I still shudder when I hear about one of the hundreds of bomb blasts or when for the umpteenth time I read about a child stabbing his friend. Because in the town I live, a curfew replaces the hustle-bustle by 8pm and the army patrols, saving us from eternal danger.

When actually, we are all just struggling with ourselves.

But when everything seems to be falling apart, there is the thin thread of hope that we can always hold on to. In the book, the children constantly hope for a ship to come rescue them back to their homes, away from the forsaken island. Perhaps someday a ship will sail us to the realization that we have a choice: the choice to kill the beast within us. And may be, not all innocence will be lost.

Nostalgia and its assorted shades

Every third day, I wake up to a grey painted sky, trees bent by the force of the cold gusty wind and pitter patter of rain drops on the roof top. The monstrous wind that blows for quite some time, when finally subsides, leaves behind an unearthly calm. 

The calm however, opens up the gates to those memories which are otherwise safely locked in the nook of my mind. Sitting in the old canopy swing in the balcony, warmed by my mom’s shawl, I gaze out at nothing in particular. My thoughts begin to wander.

I speculate over the infinite number of times I have heard people say/ read in books about this one particular idea: Don’t hold on to your past. The idea of only living in the present baffles me. Perhaps there are people who actually let go of their past and are better off.

But ask me and I’ll tell you how difficult it is to NOT let go of the past.

Giving up, I let my mind shuffle through the gazillion memories until it stops, at Nostalgia.

It happened to be one of my best friend’s birthday. She is far away in Delhi; happy but nevertheless, far. While she turned a year older, I probably travelled two years back in time. Even though I had tried my best to pull a few strings and make her happy, I wasn’t content. I kept thinking of the good times we had had, and tried to fit them all into a day, in an order that would make up for a perfect birthday. Simply put, I missed her.

I arbitrarily think of the rainy school days back in Dehradun. How both of us would put on our rain coats and get on her Activa. She deliberately rode over the huge puddles of water, giggling as the water sprayed over us. Braving the rain, we would head to sip and munch something hot somewhere, anywhere.

Rewind four years. It was raining on my last day in boarding school. How we had all stepped out in our uniforms, dripping wet and laughing. For once, rules and punishments were put to respite; the exam next day, forgotten. Everyone was everybody’s friend, as we pushed aside the grief of parting for that little while.  

I despondently realize how I am unsure of the whereabouts of the same people that I had once shed tears for.

However when I think of them, I like to remember them from that rainy day: careless, happy and as friends.

Fast forward. I suddenly recall the one time that I did not grumble about the Bombay rain. In the second week of college when we barely knew anyone, a large group of us had walked our way to Marine drive. Sharing umbrellas and discovering tit bits about each other, we saw the waves summersault in the sea and the rain drops create infinite ripples. From where I was standing, Bombay looked beautiful. It was probably the first time that I felt like the city had accepted me; or rather I had accepted it.

My phone vibrates and I time travel back to my canopy swing. It’s a text from my best friend that reads, “Thanks for the cake, Sari”.

 I smile.

 I cannot conquer time and sometimes, not even the distance. But perhaps, what I can do is make the wonderful bits of my past, a part of my present. In that way I would never have to let it go. May be ,this is what the thinkers mean after all.