The Curious Case of Hanging Laundry

I am extremely perturbed today. I have learnt from various sources that it’s against gentle manners to dry your laundry out on balconies, your balconies of your houses, out here in Brussels. I also learn that this is true for many countries around the world, but about those mennu kee. I’m not looking for comfort in numbers here. I am, right now, looking at the sun shining on my balcony, and with a gentle wind calling out to the washed laundry piled in the bucket near my feet, waiting to be freed.

Yes, freed. I’m sure wet clothes have feelings too. That they like to hang freely after what they go through in the washing machines. To wave their arms and legs and hems and holes as they dry in the wind and sunshine. And what about their daily dose of Vitamin D? No, this isn’t my angry state of mind muttering untruths to me. This is the absolute truth. It pinches as hard as the hardest clothes-clip the very moment you have to push your clothes rack into your drawing room, and start hanging your soaking laundry there, hoping this summer of 09 will last forever.    

For a city which barely manages to get enough sun in a year to make rai ka achaar, I find this tradition absolutely unbelievable. Or maybe, they just don't know what they're missing!

In Air with Air India

How noticeable it is that only to humans 6 years and below, the thought of flying Air India is not depressing. To the older population the idea brings such moroseness that it makes them forget to tag their airport presence and holiday destinations on FB. Oh the international scale of omission! Why the long face one wonders. After all, it’s our national airline! It has a cute little Maharaja as an original mascot - smiling, supplicating, hand-on-the-heart; exactly what we love and vote for in the elections. The air hostesses wear Indian dresses with unique motifs of peacock feathers and peahen frowns browns. They usually serve us our very Indian idli-sambhar. Why then does our Patriotism take flight the moment we learn we’re flying AI? 

Recently, for a flight at 5:00 am we woke up (from a sleep we never slept) at 1:30 am. We reached the airport at a similarly ungodly hour. ‘The Exorcism of Emily Rose’ taught us back in 2005 that 3:00 am in the night is the devil’s hour. It is when we stood at the serpentine baggage check-in queue that we realized Hollywood can be right sometimes and also serpents in any form are satanic! With about 40 people, and their 40X3 bags, before us, this was going to be long. But why? There was only one check-in counter functioning for multiple flights. One! Not that the missing AI staffers didn’t know how many flights take off then. Probably just … striking? We stood, obviously, like others did before us, regularly looking at the length of the queue behind us for morning motivation and not in front. The kid by then made the trolley his bed. 

After 500 years or so of waiting, some AI flights were about to take off without passengers. Non VIP passengers, I mean. So someone obviously lost her patience and screamed ‘why is there only one counter running?’ A man who had by now tied his muffler around his waist in a Kalaripayat style joined in with his thunder. Fortunately for the high dome of IGI airport, the manager on duty standing safely, and invisibly, a kilometre away from the queue heard the echo. Poof! Another counter came alive, almost as if the guy was sleeping behind it all this while, waiting for the question to be asked. As if it was routine. He rubbed his eyes, settled his hair and began staring unblinkingly at his screen. (Solitaire does that to me too.) 

If the queue was moving at a snail’s pace before, it began moving at two snails’ pace now. 

When our turn finally came and we crossed the thick yellow line, we felt like we were Indian Idols selected for the Big Boss house. We sent a silent prayer of gratitude to the Maharaja and this prayer was still on its way when... ‘Check-in baggage toh nahi hai?’ spat the counter no. 1 man. Once the fire from his mouth abated we with guilty voice said yes and with shivering hands put our sole suitcase on his belt. Hand-baggage tags reached us like bullets and we felt ever-so-sorry for having taken His Highness’s precious time and humongous favour. How remiss of us! 

We almost walked away without turning our back to him, humbly bending again and again, retreating from the august presence and fortunate encounter till we finally bumped into the security check sign-board. And another queue, of course. 

So going back to paragraph 1, many of us have our reasons, accumulated like adipose tissue over the years, for forgetting to tag our airport presence and holiday destinations on FB. 

For instance when you reach the door of the AI air craft you find an air hostess or two standing there to welcome you. Except, it may sometimes feel like wiping bare feet on a coir mat which reads ‘Oh well! Come!’ Namastey is said as if there’s snot all over your face and if you’re lucky it’s said to the air on your right. 

You settle in and look at those mini-TVs with hope in your eyes, as does your kid. You realize they aren’t coming on and it’s no surprise. Kids take longer to deal with harsh truths of life. They press all the buttons. Press press press punch. Then they press all their parents’ buttons which miraculously may have been left un-pressed still, before deciding to watch the dark night outside instead of the Dark Knights next to them. Blankets and pillows are rare and need Raffle Tickets to get lucky enough to land some! 

But surely food is the salvation? Woe befalls you if you’re sitting in the middle of the plane, no matter that it’s the Emergency Door seat and the lives of 300 passengers depend on your pulling the handle in time. That proud-y feeling sinks away as the food carts start rolling your way. You look back. You look in the front. Coming. Coming. Still coming. Almost here. Here! ‘Sorry ma’am. We’ve run out of veg. We can give you bun and jam.’ You’re a Punjabi steam engine in a seat belt but the cork of English-speaking decency keeps the chimney blocked. A meek okay later you decide to mew ‘Excuse me. May I have two buns, please?’ And you know, in your deepest gut you know that was a wrong question to ask and bam! She says as she moves away, louder than before, ‘Sorry! We don’t give extras.’ 8 people hear it, 10 decide to look at you. No one dare look at the air hostess. Suddenly, a vision of your subzi bhaiya comes up. With a halo behind his head. A saint who gives 5-ka-dhaniya free. A saint!

Not that getting food is any guarantee of gastric satisfaction. You see, we were recently served rice with baingan ka bharta. I eat both happily! But together? They are scientifically unmixable and especially with a fork which weighs two times the weight of the whole food tray! I did find 1/4th of a parantha tucked between two rice grains. It was a perfect triangle the length of my middle finger. It was cute. But it didn’t unfurl into a circle. Coffee was served alongside our dinner with a kaam khatam karo zeal and we were left with the supernatural task of mixing-mixing to eat our dinner before the coffee went cold. Or before the trays are collected and the lights turned off. Because they were!

You see, as soon as the last tray was picked, or maybe even before that, the plane went dark. Helped with using the toothpicks but still! Did I hear an air steward announce ‘Lights out! Off to bed!’ No no. It must be my memories of the nunnery interfering with my sense of reality. Anyhow, nearly all the reading lights came on immediately. People had things to do. Important things to read. Funny things to say. Fun holidays to plan. Strange dinner things to wipe off their mouths. In that silver haze what followed is sleep. It better follow, actually! To sleep is human but to snore in an AI flight is divine, because it’s that deep sleep only which can take you away from the goriest and grumpiest of … 

Anyway. Just like all nails scratching a wall must reach the floor some time and stop, so comes to an end your Air India flight. You land. Once before you heard the Captain’s voice asking the crew to just sit down now for takeoff. You again hear a thank you for being in air with Air India from the said Captain, who is impeccably dressed and bordering on handsome but who sounds exactly like a doctor’s handwriting.

The seat-belt sign is off and everyone is up as if they spotted an ATM machine with no queues. The plane is full of hustle and bustle and truant burps and sighs of relief. And amidst all the din and ado, there suddenly shines a ray of hope. Unexpectedly. You realize you hadn’t seen that shine for the longest time. 

The air hostess at the door has a big wide smile for you. A smile! And so do you! For her! 

I guess some goodbyes are sweeter than hellos. Especially when in the national carrier, the nation has finally reached where it wanted to go. Chalo. Kaam khatam hua. Asha kartey hain aap ek baar phir humein …  

Pic from Memegen

Once, as a Paying Guest in Delhi University

I came to New Delhi for my Bachelor’s Degree, as a wide-eyed girl who had miraculously got admission in Lady Shri Ram College. The heart was beating like it had already got free entry into the hip and newly opened The Sugar Factory next door. Or received a proposal from the dark haired Darcy himself! The head was more cautious in its celebration. Delhi was the size of a Kingdom as compared to my home hamlet. One lady in The Doon Club had told me it’s full of cheats, cheap women and madmen. ‘Be careful, beta. You know what you need to guard.’ And she had looked at my belt. My own main worry was grades. LSR inspired and thus expected excellence. And being a hard-working, above-average girl may no longer be enough to hold my own.

But what pooped completely what was a half-party anyway, was the fact that I did not make it to the college Residence Hall. Utni bhi achhi rank nahi thee, I imagined Belt Lady (from above) telling her Bingo friends. I had to look for a PG accommodation. My father was silent as a mountain, and as supportive. Only the best had to be picked. Safe. Comfortable. No compromises! That another girl from Dehradun had booked one in National Park, right behind LSR, was enough to judge the book by its marble floor and bathroom tiles which no other PG offered for miles. Three months’ rent was paid and a two-seater booked. Diamond fingers pointed us to the various facilities which were being offered to the ‘girls who are like my own daughters’, as my parents and I followed our PG aunty much like Pip did Miss Havisham. 

Alas! Soon enough it was evident this aunty had three daughters and no room for more. All promises made to parents-with-wallets started dying till they became invisible like the rajma in the gravy. That is, before the gravy ran out completely for those girls reaching the PG late. Just plain white rice in the common room, followed by jam with Parle G in the room. Room? A third bed had been shifted in with a girl on top. Now we three slept so close we could share one quilt. After all, where was the cupboard space to hold three separate ones anymore? Where will the books go? And reams of notes? Cold drinking water would often run out, specially during exams, but never for aunty downstairs. Always positive, she would instead show us the 6 pairs of shoes she got for nothing from the sale at CP. We girls would be torn between requesting for a cold water bottle, or asking for the shoes! 

If life inside the PG wasn't exactly comfortable or conducive to studies, the walk to and from college was downright unsafe. With a shady Hotel V next door and a desolate nallah with pants-down men hissing and pissing inside, it wasn’t for nothing that the area was called The Rapists’ Paradise. So the “freshers” would wait in college for other PG mates to get done with classes, and then we would walk back together. It never stopped the mucky comments from being passed or random hits-n-touches by bikers, but it softened the blow a bit. Plus, running alone down the road felt worse. It was when a friend walking beside me got dragged by her umbrella down the lane one lonely afternoon, with me helplessly running after a screaming her, that all the leftover mirth and fun, of late-night gossips about who has a boyfriend or who wears a padded bra and whom PG Uncle winked at, went completely bland. Completely.  

I decided that day I needed to get inside that Residence Hall. Thanks to the powdered-milk water and cornflakes I had for breakfast for a year to help put my soul into getting the grades, and my hosteller cousin who pushed me to it, I miraculously made it. I topped the internal assessments! Our Victorian Poetry class was interrupted when a hosteller (always late!) sashayed in with the news. My name was on the hostel list. The whole class cheered like I had battled a crocodile alone. I cried big tears. It had felt exactly like that! 

By the time my graduation was done and I became a post-graduate student of Delhi University, Arts Faculty, with some library-cum-bank-cum-canteen allegiance to Hansraj College, I knew what to expect when I didn’t make it to the Post-Graduate Women’s Hostel in the first go and took up a room in Malka Ganj. Meanwhile, Belt Lady (from above) fainted over her Bloody Mary just hearing the name of the place, and Mill gaya kamra bahut badi baat hai, yaar, remarked a senior in college. 

But was I really prepared, still? 

No beds. Only string cots. Four girls in a room with a broken window which let in not just the bugs and bees but also the hoots of prospective suitors downstairs, night after night. One fridge, but use at your own risk. Eggs vanished as did Pepsi and rosewater. (There were whispers that it was aunty!) One phone charging point and two cupboards standing on bricks. And a rickety gate and staircase keeping us and our Maggi all safely in. Itney paisey mein itna hee, please, the seepage seemed to say. Where was one to go anyway? Any kissa that would happen in a neighbouring PG accommodation and uniformed men would come to make us fill up forms, ask random questions, and leave. That fine day we would see our aunty’s face, properly, without a face pack, even as we thirstily stole secret glances at the chilled Roohafza she served the cops, teasing us right under their noses! 

Only a month of it and so I lived to tell the tale. PGW's latest list was up and I was in! That same afternoon, even before the glue behind the list which was put up was dry, I moved all my worldly belongings to its D-Block. One rickshaw, one superman ricky-bhai, one kilometre and 50 bucks later I breathed. 

All this was more than a decade back. I am that much older today, and enough to acknowledge that whatever problems beset students in their life at the university also shape them. Chisel them. Give them extra layers of hide for survival, stomachs of steel and a confidence to ‘manage on our own’ where once we were like deer in the headlights. It is only when the shit starts flowing out of the pot to enter your room, and there’s no water in the taps for two days, that you scream the loudest scream. To ask for what is right, and your right. That's exactly what's making news today and reading which made me write this.

Girls protesting against regressive and discriminatory hostel rules, rallies against the lack of basic facilities in colleges and fee hikes are headlines. Even though I read about them on a chair far removed from the broken, shared ones I studied on, I cheer and support these students’ demands wherever I sit. I applaud groups like ‘A Room of my Own’, trying to get accountability in the PG business. And I respect that they found their voices, which are only getting braver by the day. You see, it's not just about 'managing on your own', somehow adjusting. College is about finding your wings for life. And nothing should come in the way of that!   

I wish I were still a student of Delhi University. This would be my postcard to the VC. One among the 10,000 which reached him recently.

The Life of the Over-Anxious Types

Some people get ‘too worried’ about too many things. The list of things which gets such over-anxious folks, well, over-anxious, seems endless to others. Even if there are just 957 items (and counting) on the ‘List of Worries’, those around such palpitating folks prefer saying ‘you have to worry about EVERYTHING?’ It isn’t everything we worry about, but truth be told we do worry about a lot!

We? Okay then. Time to own up, confess and also confide. I am the over-anxious kind, but because there is comfort in numbers, let me use ‘we’ instead.

We like the usualness of the everyday. We are low-maintenance that way. A routine sans ‘interruptions’ is good for our hearts’ health. Interruptions? They come in all sizes, and the XS ones are present even in the normal day-to-day. For instance, those to do with timing. Waking up 10 minutes after the alarm sends us into a tizzy. No, we are not sure we are late but we worry that we can be because 10 minutes of usual get-the-house-folk-ready time has been lost. We berate ourselves, beat the coffee harder, bathe like standing on live coals and generally go scurrying about the house like rats. Worrying rats! ‘We are all going to be late!’ While we do that, those around us go about, or certainly seem to go about, at a shamefully languid pace, staring at the rampaging monster frothing at the mouth. ‘Can’t you do your potty fast? You are late!’ Needless to mention, by the time the bye-byes happen, usually still at the O’clock, even the sweat droplets on the nose are fatigued from the work-out. They simply want to drip away. 

This worry to do with keeping time extends to bus depots, railway platforms and airport terminals too. On an average, we reach our places of departure an hour in advance; that is after spinning like a crazy top while preparing for the trips. All lists crossed out two times over. Our bags packed for WW III. Our pockets worried full of peanuts in case a dinosaur blocks our car en route. And anxiety tucked in the top pocket, with the tickets. By the time it’s departure time, we have moved ourselves so much we don’t even realize the train is moving. And then ‘Do you think it will be raining there? We haven’t kept an umbrella!’ That's a size M for the rest of the journey.   

Then there are the Size L interruptions. Like exams! As teenagers the gut takes the kick. As adults, Lomotil becomes your best buddy. Anxiety for scoring well makes your hands shake, your hand-writing drunk and your examiner impatient, and thus often plummeting your scores. (Not for me though. I was always above average!) Vicious circle. Invoke your favourite gods, chew your nails, wear your lucky shirt, do what you may. With eyes stuck on the clock and mind on the consequences, you lose all control on your nerves. And bladder, if it’s Physics, Class XII, Board. Similar to your wedding day, cold feet included!

But some of us have not felt The Anxiety till our kids fall ill. Sneezes to infections, flu to grazed knees, weird worst-case scenarios drawn from Google or Biology books make traumatic appearances in our over-anxious eyes. Perhaps, this is why I confide today …

My son got the tummy bug a week back and has been languishing at home, with no appetite for food or fun. His parents have been doing what is needed, but it is his mother who has been doing more than what is needed. Or in other words, what is generally considered 'not needed'. I have been poring over poop and pee, pressing his tummy to generate reactions, putting each morsel in his mouth with shaky hands (Will it stay? Why won’t it? WHEN WILL IT?), touching his forehead every 30 minutes and making lists of questions to ask the doctor on the next visit. Obviously, my over-anxious behavior is generating reactions. My son’s response to ‘How do you feel?’ has gone from ‘I feel fine’ to ‘Fine!!’ My husband with his well of patience has, as usual, asked me to not worry for ‘how will it help?’ about 899 times and is now metamorphosed into his quiet helpless presence around me, passing ORS, indulging the kid with Battle Ship, sending SMSes from office and generally  trying to be helpful.

But what helps an over-anxious person? Can something?  

If it is a man they call him a birch-rod ‘disciplinarian’ and if it’s a woman on the go she’s got to be a reactive ‘menopausal’! Our worrying and worried persons are seen as child-like, predictable and unreasonable and our often shed tears common and thus needing no one’s hankerchiefs. All our worries are either unfounded or balderdash. Our very presence itself is believed to add to the grim (to us!) situation rather than take away from it. Even the doctors must be whispering under their breaths ‘Here she comes again!’ readying their best placating methods for the child’s mother’s child-within.

We over-anxious kinds sound like awful people to be around. Don’t we?

But you know, it is equally awful to be this kind too. Pretty painfully awful. Taxing! That too to be punctual, or concerned! Oh, helplessness!! To not be able to control your disorderly heartbeat even if it’s about bringing the house to order in the mornings. To not be able to not sweat when the ticket screams a departure time. To keep the hands from shaking while entering the exam halls. To not be able to fully-freely enjoy your own weddings, parties, farewells and book launches because ‘what if…?’ To not panic when the kid pukes. To not cry when he does it again...Yes, EVERYTHING! GRR!   

What helps an over-anxious person not feed on worry? Can something? 

Hm. No one’s answered that satisfactorily yet. But of course, if you’ve read this and you worry for my BP, you’re welcome to gift me a weekend at the spa in the hills or fly me for a solo beach holiday. 

(Um, what time exactly does the flight leave and which Terminal, please? Just asking. I guess.)

Belonging to the Middle Class

I don’t know what being a part of the middle class in a statistical sense means. I think it has got something to do with economics, sociology, demography, perhaps history with government policies, subsidies and electoral speeches thrown in. I leave the division of the pie chart to those who know their numbers. I don’t. 

What I do know, totally personally, is what belonging to the middle class is all about. And that is the pie I’d like to talk about!

In the days of Chitrahaar and Krishi Darshan on Doordarshan (let’s say late 1980s, give or take a few ‘rukawat key liye kheyd hai’) we all seemed to be living very similar lives, where class as a label or a designer handbag was never important enough to be acknowledged. We didn’t even know what class was! It was only when a handful of oldies got together at the chowk to discuss the latest budget would we kids hear ‘where will us middle class folks go?’ Of course, the moment we over-indulged by buying a Chocobar instead of an icy Cola Bar we would be frowned upon by prying aunties - ‘Look how our middle class youngsters indulge these days!’  That didn’t really help to explain middle class to us imps, except hinting to us that none of the 23 rusty trunks in the house, with at least one turned into a settee, carried gold bricks. Money was precious. Chocobars could wait for occasions. Clothes could be handed down and Casio casseroles, cycles and curtains never gave up on a few generations. 

But who cared! We all seemed to belong to one, big, happy class. Except the heroines cast opposite actors, who drove open cars, wore big shades, with perms on foreheads and Pomeranians in their laps. They must be upper class! Us? No. No. Every man in every household drove a Bajaj Chetak or an LML, of the "Ley Matt Leyna" variety with one long scooter seat, instead of two with a safety handle in between. One helmet and many heads rode it, together, and the wife compulsorily had to hold on to her husband to stay aloft. Romantic! The cars on the road were Fiat Padminis, and Maruti 800s the rare show-stoppers. Especially the red ones, remember?

A sepia film of sameness of class seemed to cover complete townships in our child eyes, prominent tell-tale signs of which were present in every house we visited in my small town at least – languidly carrying freshly made idli-sambhar or for urgently exchanging coloured chalk for WWF trump cards.

What were those signs, tucked below mattresses like old gift wraps waiting for a new gift or filled up in trunks like 4 extra razais, with bleached white covers? Every morsel left after a meal found home in the single door Kelvinator, which served more humans successfully than the number of katoris stacked in pillars inside it. Two ladles of leftover besan mix or one half of a boiled potato could be turned into a snack for friends after the evening’s hopscotch, served in solid steel plates. Just like left over threads of gota-zari or sari borders, in a separate packet marked ‘needlework’ could convert an old suit into a new fancy dress for the little girl, puff sleeves included. Just about anything – from ink pens to brass show pieces to Tobu cycles to rectangular school bags with metallic clips which pinched fingers – anything could be handed down and received with love.  

Trunks as the best bet for storage were trusted like god himself, who resided in every kitchen in a small and sober temple in the corner farthest from the sink. Old utensils with broken handles were as important as LICs and debts, never forgotten, and old toothbrushes which could scrub just about anything (especially white PT shoes) never thrown. Umbrellas could always be mended, just like gaping shoe toes, lacy TV covers with piping and even relationships. A watch simply told the time, a car transported us, a ladies bag carried floral hankies and Relaxo rubber slippers could travel everywhere without cringing, after their boxes became robots for playing with! Telephones, those black beauties (maybe beige) made for good neighbours and loud trunk calls. 

When middle class became a puckered up ‘so middle class!’ as a term for looking down upon another’s status, I know not. But I regret it. Because the moment it did, those valuable characteristics which defined a middle class household and showed through these spots and signs got ignored as irrelevant. And worse, useless. 

Those days, one of the most precious things in our lives, enough to be kept in the locker of the dark grey steel almirah, were our school mark sheets and character certificates; given a better plastic folder than even our passports!  I look back today and find this symbolic… 

Hard work was worship, merit was god. Only then came well-deserved vacations, mostly needing no passport. Over a typical day, all members of middle class homes were following routines which seemed to aim at one thing – to contribute to the house as an organic whole; to keep it together. In a happy way. Because all parts of it were equally important and present and needing care and attention. We ate together, often on the beds spread with newspapers. We watched the same soaps, same prime time. We shared rooms without fussing and slices of water melon with kaala namak without a dreg of regret. We were never alone. We almost never wanted to be.  

Our families were like that big polythene bag behind the kitchen door, forever open to welcoming more into its fold. We wanted to keep it together no matter what it took, because it’s what mattered. 

That meant being thrifty and minimizing wastage, and which then took preservation and storage of things (and values!) to huge heights of importance. We were assured of a shelter from the rains for our little paper boats made of newspapers but there was also a continuous effort to ensure that shelter for the future too. Yes, some hand-knit sweaters for men were preserved beyond their threaded destiny, but then things became objects of desire precisely because granny made them or both father and son used them; objects became a sentiment, like my first block-printed table mats, dear and dearer by use till only their memory could outlive them.  

And we of the middle class variety were happy, once. Perhaps, a touch of humility came from acknowledging that in the social ladder this is what we are with what we have, a black and white TV with a family photo on top and a springy sofa with hand-embroidered covers sitting on mosaic-grey floors. There was always enough of the things that we needed. There were better jobs than our fathers’ to work towards and marriages and kids to dream about. Obviously! But there was also this plain and simple Contentment to aspire for, and that pretty little feeling was actually reached every rainy Sunday evening, 5pm, when bread rolls and chai tickled the noses of the neighborhood kids, and adults, to make them walk into our verandah chiming with a watering mouth - ‘What lovely weather. Feels like heaven!’ 

Yes. Heaven seemed within reach. 

It’s different now, perhaps because I’m writing this through an adult’s spectacles and viewing all those years with pigtails on my head. 

A lot of us seem to be constantly climbing into the next higher levels of ‘class’, class being something we are acutely aware of, making our kids aware of; something which has replaced the wish for a lovely rainy evening on cane chairs with wine-n-dine parties overlooking a rain-soaked valley from an air-conditioned room on the ninth floor. Through the glass windows. The hands never wet. The wind never felt. The property prime. The soaring ambition in place. One wonders if there is a definite ‘middle’ anymore (or was there ever?). If there is, why does it appear like the girth of a prosperous man wearing a Gucci belt, increasing, living in a home with much lesser space for old things, and even less space for extended families? 

Even as my son plays with a clown his father grew up playing with, I have stowed away some of his toys for my brother’s kids. Who is yet to get married! I’m thinking aloud as I catch those signs. Wondering, if in our bid to leave behind ‘where we come from’ we aren’t really shedding the life-jacket we rode the mobility wave in. And just maybe those very middle class values still flow in our systems, secretly, struggling to keep us grounded. Beneath the comfort of plenitude and beyond the layers of fineries. 

Because after all to them we once belonged. Without even realizing it!  

Older. Greyer. Fartier. Being.

Some thoughts accompanied me to the toilet when I got out of bed and walked towards it for my Birthday morning (hence probably special) dump of the day. As I sat my one-year-older behind on a Parryware commode which had clearly out-lived its pristine white life, philosophy slowly trickled out my mind. 

I am exactly a year older today. Just a teensy-weensy year, no more! What happens when we turn a year older? Inside, outside, upside, South side, all sides. What really happens? What changes? Or petulantly refuses to change? Or dithers between changing and maintaining status quo of the previous donkey years? Have you too wondered? 

There wasn’t much to make conversation with in the loo, though the shampoo bottle waved with eager ears like never before, so the monologue necessarily turned inwards. I dug the grey matter deep and thought … 

If we were to see our naked body in extremely super(duper)-subsonic slow motion over the years of our lifetime, what would we see? We should be able to watch strands of hair gradually turning grey and dropping off with the speed of feathers on a windless day. The wrinkles becoming prominent – deeper, longer, permanent. The eyes becoming puffier and lashes flying away, one tiny strand at a time. The hair on the chin getting coiled. Lips going thinner, arms floppy and a general loosening of the body taking over the face, the neck, the stomach, the bums, the … everything that can surrender to gravity. In slow motion we would see a hunch developing, the knees bending outwards and the white of the teeth, toe nails and eyes changing colour. And some parts just going poof! The ultimate vanishing act – naturally or on hospital beds. Both internal and external. 

And as we’ll see the Life of Our Physicality unfold before our eyes we’ll realize how we all, all, are permanently moving closer to an irreversibility of ... um … what should we call it … an irreversibility of unBeing? Physical unBeing, I mean…

An itch on the red glitter-star on my hand, the one my child drew at 12am last night, and a burp that was midnight's Chocolate truffle cake all the way brought me back to my present location. I looked at the shampoo bottle. It wasn’t waving anymore. All was quiet and I was alone again. So I decided to hang around longer. Clear the system properly, which, strangely, made a mission of itself today. So I continued thinking … 

How much of all of the above changes would we be able to see on our Birthday morning? Like this 13th morning of January for me. Surely some changes come about, loitering irreversibly towards unBeing, one nano-step at a time? See, Evolution seems like an intelligent woman. She must have a way of ticking things in her chart. And to keep her court in order and organized, she would use our dates of birth to draw away from us some keratin, or adipose, or sphincter muscle, or a pinch of enamel in order to make sure we’re right on track to being, well, older, greyer, fartier. 

'Happy Birth Day', the shampoo bottle cried!

I shook my thoughts away and instinctively stared myself down and up and down in the bathroom mirror, not married to the commode at the right angle. I smiled-unsmiled. Cheeeeesed-uncheesed. Nope. The crows at the eyes still have the same feet. Arms up-arms down. Arms up-arms down. Nope. The buddies didn't look any different either (not that they have in many, many years). I ruffled my hair, head hanging in anticipation, and pore deep into the crop. I am sure I didn't see any extra greys. Then I breathed in-breathed out, rubbed my hands, slapped my thighs and felt gleefully young.

I’m still exactly me from exactly the day before. Phew!

Oh sweet Gratitude, fly away both Skywards and Downwards for irreversibility being invisible to the naked eye (which has yet to behold a picture of herself from 5 years back!). And forget bras, just burn that Life of Our Physicality slo-mo movie reel if ever it catches you unawares on your shit pots. Think more celebratory thoughts. Revel. Yes. Yes! I should! I am 33 today and it's no joke! The only time when 3 and 3 doesn’t make a six. 33. Called 'all the 3s' in Tambola. 33. Like two strapless bras standing ready to embrace you. 33. Or a pair of pouty lips naughtily kissing another pair from behind. 33. And when you press the back arrow and shift the cursor to both, they become blinking Bs. B. B. 

Yeah, of course! BE. Just be you. There we go. There's the moral of the story. Now that’s better!

Which reminds me, dear reader. It is a rumour universally acknowledged that just Being (especially biological) starts coming naturally as you grow older. Say, being on a pot waiting for it all to clear up. (There will be time, my friend!) Burping with an embedded ‘om’ just before everyone else has finished their last bite, and smiling the smile of satisfaction right back at their stares. Adjusting the undies to not get them in a bunch in front of the video cameras at the entrance of a party hall. Farting with gay abandon in the Pensioner’s Queue without a challan from the Politeness Brigade. Clearing the phlegm in matchless crescendo. Why, I've even heard that talking to inanimate things like tea cups and shampoo bottles and spectacles and dentures begins unawares. Thus you go about your daily business, all the time getting older, greyer, fartier but then that much closer to just unBeing, more and more. Not to forget getting wiser as you get older (Trump is an alien!). 

Slowly over the years the lightness of Being replaces all clouds of the heaviness of unBeing, like Pudin Hara vapours calming three helpings of Thai Red Curry. And that epiphany can happen anywhere, just anywhere!

The shampoo bottle agreed. It showed me a thumbs up and winked. I whispered a 'thank you' and got up like a Queen from her throne (only one knee groaned an arthritic groan).

Relieved. Relieved of all congestion. How strangely satisfying! 

Time to flush. 

Will you have a drink? (And BlogAdda’s #WIN15 awards)

It was a usual Friday night. God had been thanked for the lauki-roti on the table, watching late-night TV called Disney Jr. was underway and our morning’s fight was still continuing. Silently, for he had called from office to say sorry but I was yet to make up my mind - to forgive, or to milk it over the weekend till good Chinese food entered my tract? Difficult decisions. Tough life.

Will you have a drink?

I didn’t answer. Why should I? But I am kind.

You go ahead. I don’t feel like it.

And then I got busy with things we do to look busy when we want to appear disinterested, even though our ears stand upright waiting for a placating offer we cannot refuse. Obviously more than one which just has 60 ml vodka in soda with lime juice, and three ice cubes in it!

I removed invisible food scraps from the table cloth, took ten minutes longer to set the chairs back, another fifteen staring at my toes, that is after loudly sighing and plopping on a dining chair with Atlas’s domestic burden on my shoulders. Toes done, I leaned back to stare at an errant cobweb peeping from behind the fridge now. I was desperate to hear something, other than his unimaginative shuffling feet, till I went delirious thinking I could hear the spider's footsteps entering the jaali behind the Whirlpool monster. So quiet this Friday night.

Time ticked by. The silence of a wife not talking was deafening to his ears. I am sure. The kid couldn’t care less. Captain Hook had just stolen Jake’s gold doubloons and the suspense on his pretty island was thrilling and unrolling to a peppy tune.

Let us please have a drink?

Tch. Still there. No progressive ache din here. Hello, time warp. Good to be stuck in you!

I said I don’t want to.

And I picked up my phone looking intelligent and thoughtful and philosophical because that is the look you give as you scroll down Facebook pictures and more pictures of strangers you like to call friends. And then I saw … a friend asking for votes to be a finalist in BlogAdda’s WIN15 Awards!

Oh teri! The shortlists are out! I said to the spider behind the fridge, because it was the only one I was talking to.

The shuffling feet had hurriedly come to stand behind me, with teeming curiosity, or perhaps just happy I was feeling my Punjabi self again, in words if not deeds, for I was still refusing the peg. (It was a day of wonders.)

Shivering timbers! 

No, that wasn’t me. It was the kid on the bed, shaking his tiny cot at that exact moment. Momentarily, I had looked away from the loading awards page. When I looked back my eyes popped through my pink spectacles.

WHAT THE …!

That was me, full frontal me, not the feet. (Feet take longer to speak.) I had spotted my name among 11 other finalists. My blog had been shortlisted by BlogAdda. In the Creative Writing category. I can write creatively. I am in the running for winning this. I can win. I can win. 

You can win this, honey!

Finally he and I were on the same wavelength. Phew!

Oh darn. I need votes.

So?

I have to ask for them.

Ask. What goes?

I don’t know. Nothing, I guess.

Yeah. Ask your best friends, family, everyone. They’ll vote. You’re good. 

I know! But, votes?

Yes, votes. Your blog is public. Readers’ views matter. I will share your link.

YOU will share my link?

Yes!

Can I have a drink?

What?

A drink! A drink! Usual wali. Why do you look surprised?

(Please note that it was not that I had forgiven him. But, greater frontiers beckoned and I had re-scheduled my faux annoyance to be published on Saturday morning, 7 am. I am practical, that way.)

There was not much left to do, except to swallow, remember Hanuman ji, and make a list of who I had been naughty or nice with, and ask the latter to support my candidature in the ongoing elections. Last date for voting– 13th Sept.

It was about 9:30 pm on a Friday night. I chanted TGIF, thrice, and composed a message which did not show the begging bowl bluntly but carried enough overtones of supplication as would make the recipient feel a patron of great value with the orb of an Elizabethan King in his hands, or an executioner’s axe.

Meanwhile, Jake and the Neverland Pirates had made way for Sam Sandwich, teaching kids good eating habits.

Cheers. Oh! Can you change the channel? I don’t want him learning that too much cheese is bad.

Obviously he did as he was told. Our marriage on this Friday night was still on shaky grounds.

Parental duty done, I started sending the vote-for-me messages. One, two, three, twenty-three … selecting those I was close to, avoiding burdening mutual blogger friends with unnecessary existential crisis. Thirty-three, forty-two …

Of course I was feeling odd. Never done it before only. But what to do? The Romans had spoken, and I had to parade in a toga with a smile on my face, to earn my laurel wreath. It requires courage, if you ask me. It was a night to remember. I felt like a cross between a politician, a best friend, a fund-raising NGO worker and a cow, rolled into one.

Can I help with anything, honey?

Yes, please. Can I have another drink?

Tick. Tick. Gulp. Tick. I realized I was fast running out of those I was close to, so I did the next best thing that vodka suggested – messaged the ones I felt close to. So what if the other person did not feel the same for me? I felt for them. It’s good to love. My heart grew tender wings, it soared with love and vote-hope and pressed 'send' and dunked the vodka with equal speed.

Jake had long left. Sam Sandwich and even Mickey Mouse were asleep. My son was dangling between sleepiness and wakefulness with Hotwheels cars all over his tummy and Mister shuffling feet was standing behind me, no longer shuffling and with his right hand on my right shoulder. Was this chance pey dance? Did he think he was forgiven, totally?

It is then that I reached that number of messages sent that my arrested mathematical development had never allowed me to spell, even though it was double-digits. On top of that, FB wanted to know if I wasn’t a spamming robot and asked me to differentiate pictures of dogs from cats, in a photo grid. I passed with flying colours in the third go. Because the day’s tiredness (no, not the 60 ml + 60 ml) was taking its toll. Also, I had called a school teacher ‘mama’ instead of ‘maam’ and … err, some more errors you needn’t know about.

It was time to call it a day.

A day’s worth of hay had been made. I had to make more tomorrow. Had to. I had tasted blood!

That's my story from Friday night last. Today is a new evening. (Is it Sunday?) I take this opportunity to say this to all my readers. I have always felt very close to you, probably more than you can imagine or see in this lifetime. So, please, would you be so kind as to vote for me? Click on the 'You can write, creatively' below and just FB like below the blog image.

'You can write, creatively'

I have nothing to offer in return for you supporting ‘Between Write and Wrong’. No cash, no movie award tickets, no free grains, no LED TVs. But I can offer you one thing, which I have just been asked on this Sunday night –

Will you have a drink?

Some things are not meant to change.

A bit about marriage, because we turn 8 soon

It’s a bronze! (Though a diamond would do just as well.)

Yep! We turn 8 together on July 11th, husband and That-which-he-signed-up-for-sans-a-clue-of-what-comes-next (which is me, for now, till our kid turns a teen). Thank you. Thank you very much for your advanced blessings towards our well-being and togetherness and contentment (whatever that be).

Now, I intend no romantic musings here on this day or any day, especially because my husband has been sitting put rather quietly on the opposite side of the Expressive-Lover spectrum all these years. And hence, no pink hearts will fly out of this tiny piece. In fact, I don’t even know what I am doing here, instead of swiping his credit card to indulge my fantasies in shops selling firangi surplus at the price of airplanes. Or, mollycoddling him into flying me away for a 2nd honeymoon (we’re yet to reach 8 on that front). Or prattling my way on the pillow to convince him how a separate car for the wife keeps the mechanic away. Yes, yes, the materialistic wife you must have read about when marriage gets stereotyped. Of course, I am not the kind, and quite kind in being a ‘low maintenance’ object.

But these stereotypes, I tell you. They spare none, and everyone stands naked at the judgment door of shoe-boxing. As “modernity” would have it, marriage has not been spared.

Over 8 years of compulsorily being tied-up with one man, I’ve been hearing a lot of “truths” about marriage and married couples, especially from those who are happily single and not ready to mingle (smart ones!). And listening to that itemized fact file confuses me. Because, as Fate would have it, I can’t match their list to what my marriage has actually been like. Obviously, it must be all thanks to the dashing, super-intelligent personality that my husband got married to.

But whenever I read marriage defined in self-help bullet points, I do sit and wonder if no two people are alike, can two marriages be the same? Is it so simple to define what ‘Being Married’ means, in order to guide humanity a certain way and down the single cliff facing the sea? Yep! I do believe in marriage, and while I may never start my own match-making site, I leave no stone unturned to guide people towards the trusted ones. (Disclaimer – this is not a sponsored post.)

You shouldn’t get me wrong, not today, please. I don’t undermine people who tried it and took the highway anyway. In fact, a part of me admires them for it. I also don’t mean to naively overlook the not-so-pleasant experiences so many of my friends and family members have been through. But, I do feel afraid that people will believe in the stereotyping enough to never have the cake and eat it too. (I enjoy a sweet tooth.) 

It may seem so, but married couples don’t follow set mundane patterns of love-marriage-kids-charm lost-school-college-kid’s love-kid’s marriage-kid’s kids … you get the drift. They’re not drowning in a river of the mundane, certainly not always. It is what they do and how they do it, together, at each phase of life that brings in the uniqueness of experience. (Of course, the same khichdi may taste different on different days depending on the marital mood and likewise different khichdi may taste the same because he always forgets the salt!) But travelling as a family of three is as fun as partying with your girls sans the men. I know a lot of us who are fortunate to not feel ‘restricted’ in our persons and beings just because we are married, so really don’t believe all marriages are corsets around your chests. In fact, if any husband has a super wife like me, he will vouch for the intoxicated free-spiritedness that can be a part and parcel of many knots, up until the kids come to sleep in between you. (Then, you start resembling each other!)

Another thing. We all begin by cherishing the idea of ‘our space’, and elders believe hostels are to blame for us becoming the ‘private type’. Let me tell you something. That slice of your plot on the moon doesn’t always get annexed by the warfare of marriage (though the wardrobe may, much to the chagrin of a tidy wife). In fact, co-habitation gives a different meaning to the word ‘space’, and one which may allow for enough room to not just ‘be’ but also ‘become’ in another’s company (how beautifully I write).

I had broken up with my husband even before I had said ‘yes!’ to him, because I mistook his idea of ‘space’ for zany nothings. I made up (on Gandhi Jayanti, just a digressive detail) because when I shared my misgivings about us changing with time (okay, typical, I get it) he assured me that we will change; change as we go along, and so will our relationship. ‘Wouldn’t that be such a beauty?’ I never heard such poetics again, but that day it had driven me to foot the bill. And say yes to taking our shared cause to my parents, all alone, terrified, foot-in-mouth, heart on sleeve while all the while mister probationer partied up in the Academy in Mussoorie just because he cleared the darned UPSC! On top of that …

Okay. You’re bored. And a matrimonial site has still not contacted me to sponsor this post. But I must end it with a flourish, nonetheless.

How would I have all this gyan if it wasn’t for him, no? Am I thanking him? Somewhat. But all claps need two hands, and I’m giving him one half of the thank you and retaining the ‘better half’ of it for myself. 

8 years soon. 

On Saturday, we plan to be 2 again. You ask why not one? No. That first year was all about throwing rocks and rolling away. More about it in case he doesn’t get me a big gift. I already have got him a present he can wear all the time. I got it for free, so he really should be happy.

Happy Anniversary to my husband, and obviously a very nice one to me also!

Balls!

Have the balls?

Okay, here, have the balls!

There’s this rickshaw puller I know because he is usually standing outside our society’s B-Gate (the one near the Mother Dairy with the seller who never, ever parts with his change). I know him as much as you know yours. Which is to say, I recognize him, I am sure he never charges a penny extra and also he’s usually standing free. No, I don’t know his name but I know he’s missing a thumb. Guilt at wrinkled hands clutching the rubber handles of a rickety rickshaw keeps riders at bay. Guilt. Or maybe they are in a hurry and those battery autos are faster, cooler and cheaper than yellow-green ones. Today afternoon, he was taking me to the other, farther Mother Dairy because the guy at this one (you know who never gives change) also never kept packet-wala-dahi – cheaper and better for raita. The rickshaw had just squeaked alive and started moving when hot, hot winds slapped my face. Looked down to escape the burn to see two pairs of burnt, dark, toned, hairless legs pushing pedals with the might of sweat. And blood. I don’t know what made me but I asked him something which meant ‘Till when will you do this?’ as I asked him to wait. His wide smile told me two things – 1. It was a silly question, a naïve one, coming from someone who has a family back home. 2. He has only three teeth on the top and one below. He said – ‘Till I fall asleep in this rickshaw, madam. Akele akele savari kaengey phir.’

And we still think Fortitude comes from a brown, crinkled, ultra-sensitive sac of the male organ. 

A 60-year-old woman, mother to my maid, had a uterus she should be proud of. It took so much battering and pounding! Oh, you know, the B/W movie reel of three girls, then equal number of miscarriages, then one boy and by then a simple fever of the boy being attributed to the weakness of the womb and all that by a husband who drank, and drank, till he had sex with her, peed and slept. Wanted another kid, a stronger idea of a boy who suckled less. You must have heard that a zillion times over. Same story, different setting, different husbands, same weak-wombs. You know what she did? ‘Enough!’ she must have silently screamed one day when she stole his drink money to go get a Copper T inserted. ‘This is it, you swine!’ I imagined her screaming, when I heard this story over left-over aloo-kachori my maid was enjoying on a stool, under the fan. Then, what happened when he learnt? ‘Phir kya thaa. Bachha-daani bhi bach gayi, aur aurton mein izzat bhi badh gayi.’ She lived like a Queen. He slapped her, of course. But rumour has it that at the commons that night he cried like a baby. Like a baby boy.    

And we still think Courage is born in a brown, crinkled, ultra-sensitive sac of the male organ.

Nope. 

Neither got away from the drudgery, really. So clapping at this point and assuming a “happily ever after” would be silly. Like the hands of a clock they were stuck to a point, forever damned to go round-and-round, keeping time mostly for others, that too. Hm. 

You know the Myth of Sisyphus? The holy Gods decided to punish him, one day. (Let’s not go into details. Just know that mostly punishments are unfair!) So, this Sisyphus, he was doomed for eternity to push a rock up a mountain. On reaching the top, the rock would roll down again, leaving Sisyphus to start over. Sisyphus knew this would happen and yet he would begin all over again. Silly, sissy, stuck man. Oh, the absurdity of life! But what was he really doing by beginning all over again? One, acknowledging that a better life, truth, comfort, respect would come in one day because it does exist. Two, accepting what is, but with the strength and hope to push the rock back up again, despite knowing his own and the rock's fate. What must it have taken, imagine. Imagine!

Nah. Even this philosophical, fate-surpassing, looking-Gods-in-the-eye, I’m-fine-really idea did not emerge from the sac under question. 

It all really comes from some place else. And we’re still at ‘Have the balls!’ to show your might. 

Thankfully, I have none! 

Phew!

Multicultural Khichdi and World Peace

Janpath, New Delhi, has been taken hostage by Palazzo pants. Every visible hanger there is selling a pair. And every boy in every shop is begging to remind you these are the latest and only they have the best export quality maal. The flea-market air is rented with calls of Palazzos! Palazzos! Pure crepe. Please one pealazza pent, madam. Free size. Alter waist. Pilazzo, Pilazzo! It was difficult to get away but easy to resist when a caller said ‘Pizza lo!’ because his slip of native tongue meant I slipped away to a pizza place across the road to dig in. 

While I bit into this hut’s Shahi Paneer pizza with extra topping of olives (promising myself never ever to laugh at my dad’s proclivity to mix-n-match countries in his dessert plate) I got all theoretically scholarly... 

How amazing it is to see what is proverbially called the melting pot of cultures is now cooking such a mush of khichdi at high flame that it is difficult to tell which zero was birthed in India and which came rolling in from Bangladesh. Jumping a few customs depots on the way. 

At any given point of time, we’re a walkie-talkie doll of the last Miss Universe’s idea of World Peace. We’re wearing, eating, breathing, singing, scooting, ogling, reading, writing, coveting, pooping  countries and cultures and chop sticks and cowl necks we have embraced with One Direction in mind – to add “quality” to our lives. 

Forget what literary theory says for multiculturalism. It is the ‘Made in Thailand’ on your chaddi ka tag that is its best example!

Look at this handsome banquet hall next door. I say enlarge it all and then look again.

With just one loin cloth separating these Greek Roman Globally Hot Citizens from Michelangelo’s David, this palatial building comes alive in the colours of 196 countries’ flags in season time. Why? Arrey for wedding functions, why else! Roadside rumour has it that the Dubai-based owner has filed for a GI for this design. With equal seriousness he has also managed a “setting” with our mashoor Chawla Band for parties; those where we walk in in saris looking like gowns from Bangkok and XXLs in slim-fitting Italian suits. (Perhaps, an imported mare too?) As for why make wide-chested hunks the façade for a hall for Punjabi weddings, where apart from women’s backs nothing is real skin … well, It's time to show the world how 'forward-thinking-multiculturals' we are!

At the risk of revealing to you, dear reader, what inexpensive beauty products I survive through, please find attached right below a picture of my latest nail file.

If you find a better representation of Hindi-Cheeni bhai-bhai, I will change this nail file’s name. But for now, Brother Stainless of mine it will be. Happy Sibling Day, manicure scissor best! What would I do without your ear-pick? Every time my half-bitten nails cry to be shaped, I seek its support. And every time I do phoo to the shaped wonders, with tears in my eyes I realize someone in China is doing this phoo to their nails too. It's a small world brought closer by the internet, Comedy Central and smuggling. Such love as this file carries cannot be lost in translation, even if all sense may drain. Human to human is the bond. Nail to nail Nain to Nain too.

In the most unexpected of ways and instances the ring of multiculturalism makes its presence felt – sometimes volubly, other times like a secret admiring friend. Love All! is something God said Himself (especially to my neighbour who has it as her Whatsapp status since our last fight). And I am doing my best teaching it further too. I say to my laal, 'embrace all cultures, beta, whether around the wrist or waist, scalp or socks. It spells Oneness, Love and Tolerance.' And you know what, the khichdi is cooking in his head too.

Let me tell you how. 

Once upon a time, the situation in my house was quite grave. Such xenophobia for all things foreign existed as would make your blood curdle with fear. We didn’t shake hands. We chewed them! And the farther the visitor came from, the more he was gnarled-gnawed at. This intolerance made the mother in me cry. I would stand in the balcony in my African kaftan, sipping Ginseng and praying for some World Peace within my walls. Praying for my child to eat his food, in stead. 

But today, after just a handful of visits to the Rajouri malls, Indian metros and two foreign shores we have successfully inculcated the value of the essence of this Khichdi. We are beginning to understand brotherhood. With khushi key aasnoon I witnessed this sight this morning. American superheroes came riding into West Delhi on Jordanian camels, bearing an Italian car as a gift for the once half-chewed North Pole teddy. He told me in his own words. 

So you see, there are signs that we’re learning Peace and all that kind of big stuff the multicultural way. Such positive, in-the-face signs. That we're becoming responsibly modern global citizens. Opening the windows of our minds. And we're doing it in a seemingly mature, surely happy and definitely pleasing-to-the-eye way. 

(Just don't dare drag my God into all this talk of tolerance-sholerence. Buss!) 

Ciao!

Cuss Fuss; My Storm in My Tea Cup

The debate around the AIB controversy has at least three distinct levels of discourse that many commentaries have confused. 

1. The first is how one judges the use of language, gestures, humour, etc. (of the kind the show used) in one’s personal lives and the levels of moderation or excess that go with it.

2. The second is how one judges the content as that of a stage show or internet video. This is quite different from the test of use in personal context. To explain, one might thoroughly enjoy watching murder mysteries on TV without being in the habit of going around town slaying people or being too fond of getting butchered either.

3. The third is, where one draws the line on the right to free speech. One may not, while disapproving of a certain content, subscribe to the belief that others should be deprived of the right to access it or even approve of it. People may also have different opinions on when curbs on the right to free speech should kick in, or whether they should at all.

This post does not aim to defend the ban or support the FIR filed against AIB, nor is it about how I like or dislike the show per se. While the show and the ensuing discussions have been a catalyst for this, this is in defence of my personal preferred idea of language use and abuse. To be clear, this is only about point 1 that I mention above. The views were arrived at much before the show and its controversy came about. In tragic irony, I have to splatter this post with the choicest expletives. Forgive, or enjoy, as your personal taste may be. 

First.

No. No. No. Preferring communication sans expletives does not mean an attempt at holiness. Why should it, unless those who like speaking a different language take their own ways to be banal? Thus, just like there is nothing immoral in cussing, so is there nothing moral in not cussing. After all, a loud ‘Hai Ram!’ and a face-palm ‘Hey Bhagwan!’ have expressed many generations’ frustrations, rather successfully. So, if one is making a choice about how they like to speak and be spoken with, wherein comes the need to undo your blessed loincloth or wrap it around another? 

Fun and funny.

Mine is what you proverbially call a big, fat, Punjabi family, with branches in every corner of the world and roots going as far back as swinging primates on trees, just like yours. The family is so scattered that any get together is bound to be teeming with equal measure of excited loudness and shared ranting. To be fair, I pick one aunt from my maternal side and one uncle from my father’s side to express my point that it is possible to vent frustration and be humourous, both, without necessarily going  dirty.

Uncle’s favourite rant-phrase was ‘Batao ji?!’ coupled with both palms facing Heavenwards in front of his belly, a perfect sphere responsible for keeping his arms out-stretched when he gestured thus. His phrase was spoken in the angriest of times, say when a fake insurance company swindled some lakhs off him, as well as in humour or even mock-ire. That as children we giggled on both is a different matter. That as an adult I realize the successful grown-up reaction it received remains the point now.   

‘Kee dassaan’ (What to say) is what aunty was heard using in fun and serious times. How these two Punjabi words came to change in intonation decided how they were received. In her most troubled times as well as in her angriest she would say this with necessary amount of force combined with the whole story. She expressed, was understood, taken seriously and helped in return too.

These people’s dates of birth and the use of archaic expressions show they are very old, but the expressions they chose to vent or celebrate give them a unique timelessness that a ‘Chutiya’ punctuating fool can never boast of. 

Fuck you. Fashion.

Interestingly, ‘Fuck You!’ is a magic phrase. It is malleable, ductile and still enamel-hard to withstand as many contexts of usage as are known. It can be used as any punctuation mark, article, adverb and in some cases as a middle name too. Obviously then, one would think a person like me a fool to not want to use it in its various intellectual avatars. But I do want to keep it at bay. Not because I hate sex (I love it!) but because there is enough of it, in all the wrong forms, transpiring around in shady corners of cities. 

At a subliminal level most expletives are not simply sexual but carry a violent imagery too. A well-expressed ‘Fuck you!’ no matter how much stress it relieves, is disposing of the other’s presence by a threat which attaches disgust to the very act which got you into the world from your mumma’s ‘choot’. Its translation into an action, hyperbolically, will probably be a synonym of rape? 

I asked myself – Do I want to attach significance to something that is so difficult to see apart from the most common head line in India’s rape capital (Behen chod and madar chod are real people)? Will I take it calmly if not my elite best friend but a stranger on the road uses it for me? And, am I so far gone in the ability to use a language that I cannot recall any other way to express anger, frustration, happiness, sadness, anything except a ‘Fuck you!’ or versions which bring into the limelight genitals of humans, cows, etc? Phew. No.  

At a larger level, are we also promoting the same social and sarkari hypocrisy we want to do away with when we “encourage” a peer to use it to and then go home to his and our respected parents with a finger on our lips?

Futility.

What does a foul-mouth get us? Of course, it shows the world that we are either anpadh-ganvaar or cool-dude, entirely depending on the class and status of the user. Because we are like that only and Hindi gaali users are just lowlife roaming the streets and we are just good family people keeping up with the times chill yaar. Okay. Good for you. But what else? 

Don’t know about you, but I am unable to take chronic expletive users seriously. Poor dears could just be bemoaning how their wives left them but somehow I cannot stop myself from counting his ‘behen ka land’s while he narrates his story. While I manage to offer my sympathy I also wish to send them to a Dolly Bindra or Masterchef’s Krissi, who would have big shoulders to lend in understanding – well-versed in cussing through loud mouths, often making people de-recognize their talent and beep their presence away. 

So, not always do expletives make you seem cool. Often, they make you misunderstood.  

Family.

I want the government to understand that I should be allowed to watch what’s coming on TV. But equally importantly I want the people to understand that there is a certain way of communication that I find more effective, and enjoyable than others. Because, while I can turn off the noise on the idiot box, how do I turn off the idiots around me? 

My idea of family values, culture and even debauchery is quite different from my parents’ – not just because I live in a different time but also because I arrived at newer values to follow in conference with those who I live with now. But we have chosen to live a certain way, just like some others have embraced their own ways. Neither is one way ancient nor the other modern. It is a choice, a basic choice that all are allowed to make. 

Goody Shoes

How important the idea of Family becomes.

Every night when we polish these shoes we repeat to our child something that was repeated to us, and which we see no need to reject even though times have paced on - that the part of the shoe that needs to be most polished is the one that stands inside it and that one need not follow ‘friendly fashion’ or even the authorities’ ‘forced discipline’. One needs to follow what is most important to oneself, away from the glamour of clamour.

One day, my child will move on and beyond our umbrella and follow the latest on the communication vine. He will ask of me to grow-up with him. I plan to. And so I will try. But something tells me that I will never grow up enough to have the heart or the hypocrisy to accept my son saying ‘Fuck off!’ to me, without cringing and crying inwardly.

That will be another story. Another day. Maybe. Fuss about cuss, yet again, but still entirely my storm in my tiny tea cup.

What to expect when you’re not expecting

Thank you, Google.

It is that exact time in my life when people have started poring over my stomach to look for signs of a second pregnancy. After all, my first child is now going to be four! And even Doordarshan has known since times Krishi-Darshan that just like the ideal gap between two saplings is 3 feet, the one between children is the same number, in years. While I feel intelligent enough to draw myriad pleasant-thorny parallels between children and plants, wrap those inferences into a theorem and publish them as natty derivations, I am yet to figure out how to keep those eyes from gazing intently at my belly. Or those stranger-getting-weirder mouths from pronouncing, ‘It’s high time now!’

High time it is, indeed, that I claim my uterus and its neighbours, my husband’s similarly located organs and my family’s personal choices as exclusively my own. Oh, add my fertility (waning as it may be, main lut gayi) to that list too! 

That family-planning is the community’s business is the single greatest truth that drives the generation which has been-there-popped-theirs’ and packed up the nether regions in chaste panties and briefs for reproductive use in another life now. (Thank God! Some genes need to go dormant till the dinosaurs walk back!) But that doesn’t mean well-wishing minds will jump into the noise-cancelling well just when you want them to, which is exactly the second they ask ‘What about number two now? This is the best time!’ One would imagine they mean it’s a good time to go shit, but a few years into motherhood and you know they mean … well, shit still. Regardless that they barely know you. Oblivious that they may be intruding into private territory. And ignorant of the expression they make when they ask such silly questions – one eyebrow raised, half-a-smile and fleeting glances at your spouse which may want you to scratch their faces with pitch forks.

Such violent thoughts seep into your cherubic minds as would shock you, but probably not more than being asked in McDonalds over an extended family-cum-friends birthday party and across a table-for-twelve in a hall full of din – ‘Your first child is going to school. Are you trying for the second one now?’ Around you heads turn to look (often at your stomach) and on your lips are the words – ‘Yes, madam, I am, with my hand on my softy and his on his Maharaja Mac right this second. Demi-Gods have been born in such super ways one never knows, right?’ But you just smile, shake the image of those hair-spa heads into the fryer and convince your mind that some murders will be in self-defence. Plus, God helps those who help themselves. Amen.

To be asked ‘when next?’ by those you don’t feel akin to is like hearing the sound a fork makes when your tod’s teeth rub against it while having a banana, again and again. But to be advised to ‘have one, one more’ is like seeing the same banana-infested fork being shoved up your nose. These being my exact feelings.

So, what’s my plan? 

Maybe I can carry an 18”x18” cushion and push it in my jumper whenever my radar catches the signal of an individual with an inverted red triangle (c.f. GoI) for a mouth. What fun it would be. ‘Second trimester, aunty ji. Cancel your Europe trip and stay ready for an invite to the baby shower soon. Theme – Stone Age.’ 

Perhaps, a better idea would be to ask the experienced to speak up in the same gathering they advise you so politely in - ‘Do you think a particular rare position is conducive to producing a healthy second child? Planetary, planetary position of course. Your pandit ji should know, nahi?’

On a day when I feel totally vanquished I will just remind the tied and dyed kitty party that ‘You know, the world’s oldest mother to conceive naturally was 59 years old. And you are way beyond natural, so why not try it yourself, hain ji?’ All this with one eyebrow raised, half-a-smile and fleeting glances at the revered uncle jis, of course.

Now, any questions? 

Anyone?