To the ‘big’ aunty wearing tights, here’s a bigger Bravo!

I was preparing for medical entrance exams in Class 12. My chemistry tutor ran batches of 25 which began at 6 am till way past dusk, in his house. He was very good! Till that morning when he looked at me, smirked, looked away at the others and said ‘Those girls who wear tight jeans never clear these exams. I can write it down for you.’ I was 16. Everyone laughed uproariously. I never went to him again. I did get a call from a medical college in Pune. 

He wasn’t that good, after all!

****

A few months back I read about Amy Pence-Brown, a nearly 40-year-old woman, who stripped down to a bikini in the middle of a busy market, blindfolded. She invited strangers to draw hearts on her body in an effort to promote self-love; to promote acceptance of our bodies for what they are. Supportive comments poured in! 

dailymail.co.uk

I quote from John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, a gift from a man and a most valuable one. 

‘According to usage and conventions which are at last being questioned but have by no means been overcome, the social presence of a woman is different in kind from that of a man. A man’s presence is dependent upon the promise of power which he embodies. If the promise is large and credible his presence is striking…suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you. His presence may be fabricated…but the pretence is always towards a power which he exercises on others. 

By contrast, a woman’s presence expresses her own attitude to herself...manifest in her gestures, voice, expressions, clothes, chosen surroundings, taste – indeed there is nothing she can do which does not contribute to her presence.

To be born a woman has been to be born, within an allotted and confined space, into the keeping of men. The social presence of women has developed as a result of their ingenuity in living under such tutelage within such a limited space. This has been at the cost of women’s self being split in two. A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself…from earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually.

She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others, and ultimately how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life… Thus she turns herself into an object – and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.’

Berger wrote this back in 1977. Such were the times, the expectations from women and thus of women. Appropriate it to today’s situation. Are you too thinking such are the times, still? At least partially?

Let’s go back to Amy who began this piece for us. When she exposed every popularly-defined 'ugly, fat and ungainly' part of her body what all did she do? She erased that split within! The ‘mother’ fought away her own image of herself, through years of conditioning, to free her three children from the burden of dominant beauty discourses. And the ‘fat feminist’ reclaimed her body!

And now come back to where you are sitting and reading this. What are you wearing right now? And why?

I’m inviting you to self-talk because it is something I once used to do standing before a wardrobe which always ‘played safe’ and knocked away any ‘experiment with clothes’ or ‘lust for the latest fashion’ that tried to get in. Because, will it suit me? In school there was little scope. In college the fantasies of wearing the most different dresses materialised in the changing room, and never walked out. Even after I hit 20, maybe especially then, since the world is suddenly visible to your adult eyes, a lot of clothes, accessories, make-up and hair-dos were secretly admired on others and dreamt about later. From two pony-tails in school I had graduated to one pony-tail in college, with the latest rubber band holding it, no more.  

I was very conscious of myself, and not just because of beauty magazines, advertisements, movies and social media feeding me their standards but also those people-to-people comments politely lecturing me on ‘what is okay for you’. So you know what a battle it must have been to wear my first ever halter-neck without worrying that my bust line is a shame! But when I walked out for the first time baring my back to the world, I slowly started arriving at a point of comfort with how I look in what I wear and where. It is then that realization seeped in – all these years of growing up, the ‘will it suit me?’ was more about ‘will it suit others’ idea of me?’ 

I was trying to please, to appeal to another’s sensibility. And it wasn’t even me who was doing that!  

A woman’s self-esteem is constantly crushed. Going back to Berger, girls often grow up in an ‘allotted and confined space’ and even as women face ‘tutelage’ from surprising quarters. The pressures to be dainty, pretty, shapely, combed, graceful, ironed wrap us in layers of self-judging, mummifying what we truly want to be. Colouring our image of ourselves in others’ tinted glasses. Because on our shoulders hang expectations, of others from us and those we women tend to have of ourselves as a result of constant conditioning. 

So the ‘big’ aunty in tights, walking gaily down the chic mall or the neighborhood market, and who still in a very evolved world generates snickers, may have run an obstacle course to get herself to buy her first pair, and climbed a mountain of belief to wear it! Against her family, her husband, her kids, her magazine, her friends’ sense of aesthetics, and who knows what else to reach the finish line of confidence. A true heroine, if you ask me. One who has succeeded in leaving beauty myths behind even if to don the latest fashion (for why should a tank top be the privilege of a few?) One who has accepted her body, as your ‘warts’ but her all! And one who burns the measuring tape you take to her thighs (like that despicable newspaper printing candid bum shots or a Right winger’s view on jeans) with an enviable self-assurance!

A lot is gained when we reclaim our bodies – its bulges, its scars, its pores, its patches - one step at a time. Because what we also reclaim is our Presence; social, emotional and even political presence in the world, in its truest sense. Just like Amy owned hers, in her black bikini. 

Nakedness was created in the mind of the beholder, in the Garden of Eden. And it continues to be today, in all its forms. Says Berger – 

‘She is not naked as she is.

She is naked as the spectator sees her.’

Think about it.

[Entirely my opinion, the importance of which like any other is as much in its rejection as in its acceptance.] 

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!

About my mother-in-law

‘And please don’t scream during labour. It is embarrassing. Women should not scream out loud’, had said her mother to my mother-in-law, as a part of the list of pre-wedding directives.

My mother-in-law came from Nakodar, a small town in Punjab, from a huge joint family, the ruins of whose house sit whispering alone now. Despite all the educational degrees she earned, whatever all girls from many decades ago were taught was a part and parcel of her upbringing too.  One would assume, then, that she carried in her make-up - as a daughter, a wife, a mother and a mother-in-law – seeds of what the younger generation, our generation, views as “old-fashioned” and regressive. Including, not screaming in the face of deadly pain! One would also assume, thanks to the massive stereotyping on silver screens and easy banter part of ladies’ parties, that all mothers-in-law are monsters-in-law – overtly possessive about their sons and equally about their hold over household systems. 

One would assume. Or maybe, I got lucky? 

Some of the most cherished lessons and moments in life came to me from her, my husband’s mother and a woman who grew, in no time, to really be to me what I never thought I could call another – ‘Mummy’. 

While most parents cannot help but consider their children kids forever, perpetually to be guided, mummy respected your age, no matter how many times that number lower than hers. She welcomed advice, encouraged maturity. Just a couple of days into my wedding she made me choke on aloo-puri at the dining table, when she asked me to decide for her on a matter I never thought my turf. It made me feel confident, a participant in a house she had nurtured for 40 years entirely her way. She was an expert at regarding every individual as a person first, and every mind with an opinion which mattered. No ‘I am older so I know better’ for her. (Of course, what that did to my husband’s sense of ‘I know’ is another happy story, altogether.)

Because she never wallowed in the differences that old age usually starts spotting in us new-age youngsters, she was something of an expert at moving with the times and rejecting nonsense as exactly that, nonsense. Once, I had to go to the neighbour’s house to extricate her from her party (for she loved them so!) and meet the ladies of the locality in turn; usually not top on my radar and certainly not on my husband’s. Expectantly, questions about baby expectancy flew over left-over samosas. When asked when her daughter-in-law will bear her a grandson and they will get laddoos, said she to a lady she knew since decades, ‘Laddoos you will get even if it’s a granddaughter. Baaki, let’s leave it to the kids. Really not our age to think of childbirth, don’t you think?’ and gave her classic half-blush, naughty smile. I had clutched the house-keys tighter in sheer happiness. And pride.  

She belonged to her children’s times, moving aside and making way. All the time. She pushed me to begin my PhD, called up a list of people to share the joy of my proud decision. Not faith but ritualistic religiosity was considered a waste of time in her house. Most satsang invites for three hours of chatting-chanting were refused with ‘You know my knees!’ She would scan the newspapers instead. Or we would go for shopping and chaat-party. Often, for much longer than three hours. Thanks to her expertise in slipping while shopping with unbound generosity …

… for who would buy, after serving water to the door salesman, 12 boxes of incense sticks, get 12 boxes free with it and all that when she didn’t even use it? ‘It was so hot this afternoon and he was selling them for a good price, poor thing’ was her defense on seeing her children’s incredulous expressions on coming into the sudden, good-smelling riches on their dressing table. (This was five years back, and I still have those cones!) 

But the one motto that she had engraved on her soul was to keep the family together. Not just because she loved to cook for an army and even more, the fun and good times that would ensue, but also because she realized at the end of the day how important it was. Much more to her than to anyone else I know. What we saw as insane levels of ‘being accommodating to silly relatives’ was to her a way of life. She wanted to move forward with everyone around. Not because she did not see through pretense, but because she knew of no other way to bring estranged hearts back to love. Except, by giving it. She wanted to live life to the lees, with everyone, not without them.

But life often doesn’t want to be lived to the lees. It protests. 

While my mother-in-law went about her expert routine of keeping us all happy, fed, together, and herself pleased with the love-of-her-life, tea, a battalion of medical problems followed close on her heels. Doctors used to say for her that whatever can go wrong, is wrong with her physical condition. Ever since she was my age. 

In my few years of marriage she went through major surgeries every six months. (She tricked all but one of them.) Her expertise? That will to get wheeled out of the OT feeling better and looking for a hot cup of chai even before the anesthesia wore away. Her right knee was made metal because she wanted to wear saris again, wanted to travel again, would you believe that? When I made her leg exercise in the recovery period, she would rent the air with her screams. But on being asked if I should stop she would expertly say ‘Why? Let me scream. This is important. Push. Let’s make the heel touch the hip this time. Has it happened, yet?’ and other patients in Ganga Ram Hospital would look her way admiringly. (Oh yes, she was screaming, in case you didn’t notice. Her mother’s lesson regarding screaming women long forgotten!) 

With a strange sadness I realize we hark back thus often after the person is no more. So late. But then not too late, either, because as life goes on so do its little lessons lodged in our minds and memories, habits and hearts. She’s not going to read this, and probably never realized what I thought while I was her daughter-in-law. A stabbing regret, but what can one do except pick up the fallen flowers off and on and make a garland to decorate the house with?

My son, all of 4 months when she passed away, never got to experience the woman that she was and the grandmother that she would have been, spoiling him to bits with panjeeri and mango pickle, jams and cakes, pakoras and hot paranthas and her specialty – a bottomless martbaan of love and laughter to give, like pure homemade desi ghee; which, like fresh green chillis, she enjoyed thoroughly!

Lalita Nanda. That was her name. 

And I was so fortunate to have her as my first expert in so many ways. 

[Written for #MyFirstExpert Story, sponsored by Godrej Expert and hosted by IndiBlogger.]

Run! It’s a keloid!

Leaving a woman’s body alone is the single most difficult task that the world is faced with. If it isn’t about dictating how much skin they show or commenting on how dark the colour of that skin, it is about the marks on it. You know, scars, spots, scabs, specks, stains, and all those tiny-to-big announcements, that a woman’s body is imperfect in some way. Um, defective is another word that comes to mind, especially if I recall their expressions on looking at my keloid.

Heard of keloid? Sounds deadly, doesn’t it? It isn’t, but if the common man’s gaze at my upper chest is to be believed the butterfly shaped keloid there is but the very disease that will bring mankind to its end and let them cockroaches rule. Some withdraw their hands as soon as they see it, disturbing the handshake midway and whispering something like ‘What is that?’ as if they see an alien perched there. Some others, because they like to be right even if rude, pronounce a kind ‘Ugh!’ before they ask me to ‘get it removed, ya!’ Very few have directly asked me (though everyone must have thought of this), with bated breath and the adrenal gland ready for flight, ‘Are they contagious?’ The list of those asking me to ‘keep it covered, why show it’ is the longest, but going by the dimwitted gaze my butterfly invites I guess they must mean well. Plus, how confusing I used to find it once to figure out what exactly they were staring at! 

Only one asked me to get a funky tattoo around it and flaunt its exclusivity. Him I married, even though the idea was ‘preposterous!’ according to a medical doctor (Of the tattoo, not the marriage!).

In short, if my keloid had eyes it would either be squirming with all the unwanted attention or have been a properly spoilt brat by now. Except, it isn’t anything more than collagen cells out camping under a shiny, red ‘tent’. In summers the cells hold a BBQ party and gosh it itches whereas most other times they hate to be disturbed and prick at the slightest rub of a necklace or seatbelt. Funny ones, these guys, who have successfully baffled doctors I consulted as to their mysterious appearance. No injury, no surgery, and I’m not even from the highly pigmented ethnic groups which are 15 times more likely to get them. Anyway, some suspense in life is good!

What isn’t good? This obsession with perfection we seek in others. 

Remember when the gorgeous Aishwarya Rai put on baby weight and we went ballistic creating humour around her more-rounded personality? We had so much time on our hands, yet not a second to spare to give a second look to our own loving mothers’ girths at home. With puckered noses we pronounce ‘Madhuri looks so old now’ and with equally crinkled noses we say ‘What has Sri Devi done to her face!’ Why go Stardust? Look around in your park! Someone’s baby has unfortunately got his mother’s wheatish complexion, someone’s daughter-in-law has hair like a broom, someone’s daughter needs to mind her weight and yet another’s needs to put some on around her thighs or else ‘they will say your parents don’t feed you’. One was pushed for Lasik to get her spectacles removed the other is struggling to hide her acne under a ton of concealer. And in the process, the little girl who got a burn mark on her arm because she was keeping her kid brother from getting hurt by the hot iron is gradually feeling ashamed of having got it! 

Some scars can have stories. No, actually all scars do!

I remember reading at a popular handloom store how every missed knot in the knit, an extra print or a change in the thread’s sequence is not imperfection but simply a part of pattern which need not fit convention. Like a break, a breather and a point to celebrate. Much like marks and scars on our bodies. African American writers have celebrated those in their works and on their characters as symbols of not just struggle but also survival. A fading whip lash on the back, slashes near the lip where the bit was used or wounds on shoulders carrying the white man’s harvest.

Remove layers of your own clothing and make-up. Bare your own shoulders and tanned backs and look closer at your stretch-marked legs. You will feel so free you will wonder if we really need to cover the countless signs our lives and roles have left on our very human bodies. Is there reason to feel ashamed? Even more, is there reason to make others feel ashamed, enough to scar their minds?

I had no idea when I first spotted a tiny red mound near my neck that it wasn’t a spider lick or a mosquito bite gone wrong. I had no idea it would grow and grow and eventually ‘grow wings’ and become what they call a butterfly keloid for the world to see. But most importantly, I had no idea how an inch of collagen on the neck could become my personal touchstone to know real concern from fake reactions, and real people from all the rest. Perhaps that is why it is called a Butterfly Keloid. If helped fly my mind away from the unabashed and limiting gaze that women’s bodies live surrounded with and find reason to accept and be proud of my own skin.

So saying it once and for all, yes, I love to bare my keloid to the world! Want to know more? I’m thinking of wearing a boob tube and low waist pants to walk around flaunting my C-sec mark, among others. Is there a 6-stitches long surgery keloid there too? Hey, does it matter? It’s a scar.

A SCAR!

Just run for your lives, will you?

[Written for WordPress Daily Prompts : 365 Writing Prompts. The prompt for today was  - Tattoo … you? - Do you have a tattoo? If so, what’s the story behind your ink? If you don’t have a tattoo, what might you consider getting emblazoned on your skin?]

Oldies Online and a Silly Switch

Mickey Mouse in his modern Clubhouse has a Silly Switch, which is essentially a multi-coloured lever with an ‘up’ and a ‘down’, the handle pilots use to fly planes faster in the storm when snakes, aliens or terrorists hijack them. Now, when this silly switch is switched on in this Clubhouse, silly things start happening all around. Think of H. E. Wilkinson’s poem ‘Topsy Turvy Land’ and multiply it by 10. That silly! Loony hell breaks loose. Tea pots start dancing, pairs of shoes elope and gadgets develop a mind of their own. The only thing that helps is finally pulling the lever down and stopping the silliness. 

While someone from Mickey’s brigade manages to do that sooner than later, it seems the young blood of today wonders if a Goofy has pulled the Silly Switch lever full way up in the world of chubsy-tubsy Oldies and their newly found retirement plan - the Internet. I will explain, but first some background. 

If we were to calculate the number of old people socially networking and those in queue waiting for the password to come to their minds from two hours ago, I am sure we will arrive at a mind-boggling figure. Those lovely pastimes of yore like gardening, knitting, sewing, walking and staring into infinity on park benches are gradually making way for a new found love lovingly called ‘doing the Internet’. Of course, there is a time for everything so surfing the web will probably mean post-medicines and after Philips Top 10 re-runs, but can be adjusted before cleaning the dentures, because teeth we don’t need in the www. So progressive, futuristic and so very cute! 

That is exactly why the youth of today are not amused.

With children either settled abroad or as far away as is needed to keep nostalgia alive but trips back home expensive, parents running free and wild online are becoming embarrassing, time consuming, reputation-downing and even heart-breaking for the sons and daughters of the said hexa-hepta-octa-genarians. While the old men and women were unavailable for comment (it must be www time), I spoke to some youngsters on why they seem so disturbed with their parents opening Gmail accounts and ‘coming on’ FB, for instance.

Says a 28-year-old woman (name withheld) working in the private sector – ‘My mother started using the internet a few months back. I was home for a holiday and for the first time ever she was more interested in ‘learning the net’ than rolling besan ladoos for me.  I opened her accounts, made the necessary flow charts, painted the CPU button red so she could locate it and came back to my working life without home-made achaar, ghee and nighties. My train was yet to reach when a Facebook notification said she had posted on my timeline. My moment full of pride turned dreary when I read ‘You have left two bras and one matching panty hanging on the clothes line. Please buy new ones. Only cotton, okay? Make sure you check the elastic. Bye Chunchun.’ At that moment, my phone lost signal. Needless to say, going back to office was a feat worthy of a bravery award. Clearly, she had not understood the concept of a private message. Still hasn’t. I catch her publicly having a private gossip conversation about a third party on the third party’s wall. How silly is that! No, I am not going home for Diwali this time. She can anyway email me spam forwards on how to keep my skin glowing, how to be a grateful daughter and how to find the right match. That is, if she is not posting them on my timeline.’

Zach (name forged) a 19-year-old college student shares his experience with utmost honesty, spiky hair and a hole in his jeans. ‘My dad is becoming an internet addict, man. It’s beyond me why he doesn’t want to read the newspaper any more, or, or talk to his other chums or something about cricket or whatever. It’s like every time I see him he’s sitting in front of the computer, with his nose touching the screen. Gosh, what could he be up to? I saw him on Twitter the other day. A ‘RampModelGal’ was talking about types of balls and he was discussing cricket with her. To think that my coach from school follows him. Shucks. Help me, man. I worry for him. He even sent a ‘namastey ji, have a blast ji’ to Savita Bhabhi thinking she’s his office senior’s wife celebrating her 50th birthday. He even accepted the invitation and RT-ed it when she said ‘my place, tonight ji.’ I am so screwed. To top it all, he will reason it out with me why this is the same Savita who I rode when I was a baby by poring over her picture. WTH, dude! He just doesn’t get it. Get him off!’

The Silly Switch is fully up, indeed.

Horrifically silly tales of oldies on the web can be heard from all corners of the world. A hypochondriac woman had a mild anxiety attack when her son screamed at her for getting a virus into the system. In the US of A, a man confused Google Plus with his insulin injection’s name and forgot he was yet to take it. He had spent 4 hours joining well-being communities there. A woman who won a spam lottery got so over-excited that her coronary arteries made her faint, come to, faint, come to and finally faint in the neighbour’s driveway. She could inform her friend only after gaining consciousness.  

This is not all. Oldie BPs are rising sky high looking at how impolite the youth of today are (even error messages are better mannered) refusing to troubleshoot ageing parents’ www-problems in the dusk of their lives. ‘Sorry, I’m busy’ is what the children have to say in answer to simple questions like ‘where is the key to the keyboard?’ and ‘Shared your diaper pics on your timeline. How do I tag my kitty friends now?’

Youngsters are not amused. Why else will they even refuse to respond to their parents’ calls beginning with a merrily innocent ‘Whatsapp, puttar!’ with no net-strings attached? Last I checked, such abused children were looking to form an underground organization for finding Mickey The Mouse. Why? To turn the Silly Switch down, of course. 

Disclaimer – Age is just a number. Do not take offence. I speak from the horse’s mouth.



[Written for WordPress Daily Prompts : 365 Writing Prompts. The prompt for today was - Sorry, I’m busy - Tell us about a time when you should have helped someone… but didn’t.] 

The Full Moon

The full moon shone bright. As bright as a perfect bowl of pure silver which had passed through fire. Seven times over. As brave too, for the bluest of darkness surrounding it could not steal even a ray of its light.

But little Tarini wanted to steal tonight. She really did! She sat in her cot pushing sleep away and making a staircase with her Lego blocks. To climb, right up to the moon. Why, to steal the rabbit that lives there, of course! Haven’t you heard? Just this afternoon, Lakshmi ma’am had read a story from a very important book, which only grown-ups could touch, about the fluffy rabbit that stays on the moon. As if by divine coincidence, tonight, when the moon was so round and so big, Tarini thought she saw the bunny hop. Twice! She knew instantly that he was very lonely up there, just as she was down here. So, she was going to steal it tonight, get it home and care for it as much as her mother did for her brother. Without a sound, and with dolly her one-eyed confidante by her side. But first things first! She had to build a long stairway to the heavens above. And that is exactly what she was doing, putting block upon block, tongue popping out in concentration, sleepy eyes glancing up to make sure the moon remained, whispering ‘I’m coming to rescue you, bunny. Just wait for me. Be my best friend’.

The lonely bunny must have heard her whispers and then her snores which followed close behind. It must have also heard the deep sobs coming from another window.

A woman stood there, crying. Tears of desire and longing combined. Beautiful beyond belief she was, and if you were to know her real story she would remind you of Rapunzel in a tower, trapped. She stood staring at the moon which became two dots of silver light in her wet eyes. As if a sign of the power she carried within. Power to love with the ferocity of a huntress, but none to overturn edicts carved with stony old thinking. He’s Muslim, she knew. When her parents came to know they wanted to know no more. The full moon tonight was the last one she would see with unmarried eyes. At least she saw the moon, for her husband’s face she was yet to! Bathed in silver she swam back to when she was little. When the moon meant a rabbit, a fluffy one. And then, those days in the hostel of secret chanting to the old man known to play ‘cupid’ sitting on the moon – “Full moon. Full moon. I hail thee! By all the virtue in thy body, grant this night that I may see he who my true love is to be.” Giggling. Praying to dream about the face of true love, those girls just out of pigtails, but grown up enough for now they bled. She smiled and opened her eyes. How far back it seemed. How juvenile! True love … a tear slipped down her left eye.  Sat on the window sill, and then dried.

The old man on the moon must have seen it fall. But what could he have done? He looked around. Luna! But the goddess was busy elsewhere.

At the ghat which burned with human cries in the day sat a bald woman wrapped in white tonight. Riding on the full moon’s silver palanquin, as if possessed by its rays, she had broken out of her ashram through her lonely window. Could the silver disc in the sky have lead her there, after a fit of hysterical screaming at flashes of memory which she saw as monstrous shapes, only she? The air around was still alive with murmurs, but the water slept calmly. She sat there listening, beads in one hand the other making wild movements on her head as if pulling the hair that wasn’t there. If you saw her you would think she was crazy, but she was just a widow punished with this life because the man she married died. Because of you, for him you did not love, repeated the voices. Accusingly. The same voices. A thought touched her like a gentle breeze does a searing heart, that right below the water was a peaceful kingdom. That is where the moon shone brightest. With a fluffy bunny sitting next to an old man promising her true love. She went down the steps, slowly unwrapping the cotton sari from around her wrinkled frame which formed a trail of chaste white on the holy steps. Soon, Tarini became one with the water.

The full moon shone bright. As bright as a perfect bowl of pure silver which had passed through fire. Seven times over. As brave too, for the bluest of darkness surrounding it could not steal even a ray of its light.

[Written for WordPress Daily Prompts : 365 Writing Prompts. The prompt for today was - The Full Moon - When the full moon happens, you turn into a person who’s the opposite of who you normally are. Describe this new you.]

Lessons Learnt from my Body

This post was written thanks to Sumeetha Manikandan, who asked me to contribute to her beautiful space 'Lessons Learned from Indians'.  

An excerpt ...

My body has been talking to me.

Once upon a time a body, to me, meant black circles for heads and sticks for hands and legs. As a child, that is, drawing on paper with crayons and sketch pens, picturesque scenes I had never seen before and bodies so far removed from what they actually looked like, yet real in their sameness of being. Short-lived were those days, because when I was taught to a happy tune how chubby cheeks and dimpled chin and blue eyes and curly hair make one the teacher’s pet, the reflection in the mirror told this child’s head I could never be her. I had held the picture of the cherubic girl in the nursery rhyme book in front of the looking glass. Next to my reflection. To look at dark coffee next to peaches and cream. A horse tail next to luscious curls the colour of sun. Eyes with not even a drop of the blue ocean the teacher’s pet mirthfully looked at me with. In the mirror.

And my body sighed! Loud enough for me to hear its echo for a long time to come. It told me as it thought aloud that I could never be loved enough, because I looked different – from the girl in the book. Even from the doll in my bed who I dressed in pretty clothes. So pretty, my best friend. And so different, from me.
In my first school which was an all-girls convent, Monday mornings were ...

[To read the full post, kindly click here.]

It's a beautiful life

There was a fly sitting on her eye. She knew that. She could feel that. It’s a beautiful life … She did not know how to make it go away, as it tickled her slightly swollen eyelid looking for something between those lashes and making tiny footprints with the kohl that had formed wild black streams near her nose. It was moving around, that tiny fly, confident as if knowing the hands that could smash it away would not do it because they were stuck above her head, feeling the wet straw between the numb fingers. Wet. The cow must have urinated again. How many times do cows urinate? Is this the third time since I got here? Fourth? Is that the Sun outside? It’s a beautiful life … Something is crawling up my thigh … or is it flowing down? 

Her eyes remained motionless as she lay there, as if in deep sleep, while her mind played images ridden with white noise like an antenna on a stormy night which could not handle the gusts. Cannot handle any more, how tired I feel … that … that man … was just a child … murderer … no matter how hard she tried her hands still disobeyed and refused to crawl to that patch between her legs and under her. What was warm a few hours ago was fast becoming dry. And brittle. 

Then, she urinated. 

It burned like acid through her very being. The fly flew away. A drop of hot tear had disturbed its peace. The cow looked on, still confused after a whole night.

There were whispers around the house which her pregnant mind had not comprehended. To her, all that mattered was the reason to celebrate. For the first time in her year old marriage, if someone was to remove her ghunghat and look at her face, they would have beheld happiness personified like never before. Hope too, but happiness more. Where once a will power of steel was required to make unheard taunts about her family, her sisters, her father, her mother, her clothes, her thin frame, her 12th pass certificate, her oily food, her wasteful habit of buying bangles, not minding her pallu, her … now nothing was required. Once, it was as if she was made to stand barefoot on a hot tava, and still expected to not jump. But now, with head bent and eyes looking at her chipped toes in respect of everyone but herself, she just shut her ears when venom was poured into them. She now had something to look forward to. To keep her expectant mind cocooned. Beyond this noise. 

Whenever people disturbed her thoughts about the future that was fast approaching, she would let her finger brush against the gold-plated earrings which then chimed a giggly-girly tune. A tune that would make a few waves around her ears dancing like a dervish before entering her being making her whole body ring with happiness. A reminder to self, or maybe a secret signal shared with what was to come? Nervous with excitement she would clutch her stomach, look for a vacant spot behind the mud house and just close her eyes, feigning giddiness. To feel one with herself, all parts of herself. It’s a beautiful life. It’s just so beautiful… and her 19 year old mind would cook up a tune singing this line on a loop. As if it was a tiny girl sitting on a swing with the ribbons on her two plaits flying carefree in the wind.

That night she had woken up when she felt something was pressing down on her stomach. Or was it pressing from within? It was him, her husband, on top of her. We shouldn’t … it’s not right … please … it’s risky, it doesn’t feel right … please and in that moment she had realized her hands were tied. And he was tying up her legs too, right at the thighs. Bewildered beyond belief she had tried to scream but her calls for help only fell on invisible ears acting abettors. A black tape sealed her lips together to make her swallow her own disbelief. It made mute the gold-plated earrings too. As if her secret signal had been found. The prick of the injection was the last feeling she remembered. Not even the sounds and smells of the cow shed woke her up for that one hour. She remained on the floor. Alone. Like a bundle of clothes one tosses out for they have no more use for it. 

It is then that she woke up, and died a million times over. 

The labour had been induced. The girl was coming. But, it was not meant to. Not today, nor ever. It was pushing against her insides desperate to be freed and here she was, helpless to let it come to spread her legs to even scream. It must be a mistake … he should know … help … but all that the cow heard was muffled sounds it understood not. 

Her back burned and radiated shocks of pain towards her front, tightening those claws by the minute as if asking for deliverance for itself from committing this evil deed. Her wrists bled and the rope dug deeper into her thighs as her legs ached to open wide. To let out, let go, let be, be free. Nothing worked, as she writhed like a worm that has been stepped upon. She lay praying she would explode. Hoping her belly would burst open and make the baby come out. Alive. Alive, please… please. By now she had swallowed her vomit three times. The pain didn’t let her faint, waiting to reach that threshold which even Gods must shudder to think about. Where are you, dear God? Help me, please, help, hel … and then she had passed out, imagining the last sound that she heard to be a baby's cry.

My belly has burst … my … my baby is free. Free. It’s a beautiful life. How many times do cows urinate? … Is that the Sun outside? It’s a beautiful life … Something is crawling up my thigh … or is it flowing down? 

It’s a beautiful life … my … my baby is free.

The fly was back, this time on the gold-plated earring lying murdered below the tape.

Hit me baby one more time!

The Gods must be crazy, and the goblins running the rumour mill crazier. For the latest on the grape vine, which hangs heavy with sour bunches, is that if you are good looking by some standard you get more readers on your blog. That it is not about writing any more, like it was once (for after all, Shakespeare did manage plenty of hits). That it is all about features which match the ideal assets the fantasies in your reader-head enjoy. Insulting, sad and unbelievable, all at the same time. But who is surprised?

Picture this. 

A stranger who considered himself a brilliant-but-wronged writer asked me to write a post for him and him for me. An experiment that would involve us to publish each other’s works in our own names and exchange the hits number at the end of the day. He wanted to prove that content is not king, but pretty faces are queens, and that under my hat his ink will find kisses while mine will fade in comparison. I politely refused, finding the totally resistible offer slightly offensive for implying my writing unworthy of sustaining a readership and also realizing soon enough that some heads which hate to take no for an answer even fail to spot nonsense planted in their own. His parting words threw ‘you vane woman’ at me. But before I could tell him to make that ‘vain’, he had vanished into thin air. Probably hiding in another’s inbox which acted abettor in his research crime to make me publish, in my name, something written by a dude whose commas and punctuation were like drunk ants doing striptease atop an express train. With full stops flying everywhere, off course, of course! 

To think that someone's else's balderdash flowing from upturned toilet bins can make you think … 

Reminded me of a man asking his wife to pick a gynaecologist who was the least good looking of the lot, for that meant she spent more time studying medicine properly rather than in front of a mirror. Hence, a better doctor! So strange that his wife would believe him; all ten manicured nails and highlighted hair of hers included, to pop her kid out! So strange again that we have reached Mars but our minds sit cosy inside a caveman’s animal skin toga, quivering with inferiority or envy on spotting in others physical features matching brain quotient in their sharpness.
   

And you don’t even need to be blonde any more to take the sh** cake! I talk of only one segment, where Blogging meets Bollywood and apparently proves that if you have the right face you need have nothing more, for then a good number of readers and publishers will follow as night follows day. And good writing, well, who needs that anyway.  Isn’t the dude who sent me the message for a life-changing research sitting without a woman’s bullet lodged in his chest?  

First things first; thank you for the compliment. It is super to know one belongs to a good looking genepool. For such fortunate planetary disposition I thank God first, then my parents, Galileo, some of my favourite teachers, Mendel, my dog Timmy, Darwin and the latest ladybug stuffed toy we got and named Gaston (after Gaston in Ben and Holly, that is).

And now for some serious talk. 

Pray, what is wrong with making oneself look good? Of showing aligned teeth in profile pictures or legs-above-the-knee in party ones? Of knowing the waist-to-shoulder proportion is perfect or that the face turned leftish looks best? Does colour on my lips make me any more fake than the free-flowing compliment on yours? That kohl in my eyes is as much a part of my outdoors as is my phone, and it is me who decides if the blush is pink or not there at all. About berries, I love to eat them and wear them too, sun shine or star light I decide. Only me!

Such misplaced are the times that a pretty picture in ‘About me’ on your site can make not just men but women too to attribute to you feats the very devil on your shoulders would shudder to perform. Of course, the devil may make you pout those lips, all the way from your timelines to theirs. But then you wonder, why bother, why kiss and make up with a dinosaur or use terms like sexist or feminist for brains which think no bigger than a pea.  

And more importantly, how, just how does a blogger's face conforming to conventional ideas of beauty make a reader spend 2 minutes and 30 seconds (average, Alexa says) reading a post about a book review or a short story, leaving behind feedback which proves they were paying attention and not fantasizing sipping coffee with her mascaraed eyes? It is not as if I'm picking my peasant skirt just over my knee to hitch a ride. Even if I were, why did you stop the car? If you expected to see me in my Sunday best lingerie in a post about exactly that, then, delusional reader, it tells everything about you and zilch about me, apart from saying nothing about the others who enjoy reading me. And who, gasp and fume and beat your chest as you may, keep those ‘hits’ coming in! Quite steadily!

I don’t hang around your breed to know enough about it, but I can still advise. How about you experiment on your own the next time around, without trying to rope in a pretty face allegedly unfairly enjoying it all or posting anonymous comments on Blogger Confession pages with the courage of a rat in the deep end of a pool? You don’t even need to doll yourself up. Just make sure the grammar is in place, creativity bribed in and something, anything, unique enough about it to make your readers want to ‘hit’ you again. You need the support of imagination and language, not a wonder bra for sustained readership. You see, you need to turn that gaze in the right direction to get inspired, and that direction is not another’s body. In the mean time, don’t forget to remain polite and pleasant. Sweetness is fashionably under rated, and last I checked it helps you look good too!

PS – You saw the picture on the top, didn't you? How silly and stupid I looked. But you still read me to the end? Hm! That would be another 2 minutes and 30 seconds.

Thank you for ‘hitting’ me, baby, one more time! 

[WordPress Daily Prompts : 365 Writing Prompts. The prompt for today was - Opposite Day - If you normally write non-fiction, post a photo. If you normally post images, write fiction. If you normally write fiction, write a poem. If you normally write poetry, draw a picture - As you can see, I did post a picture, but then I had to write too. I just had to!]

Foot-see and Me

It was my first time. 

Don’t ask how old I was, for by many standards it was late enough to have ushered in at least three babies, if not four. Perhaps, a few dinosaurs too. But so what? Don’t they say there is a right time for everything, and if indecisiveness, ignorance or fear-of-the-unknown has delayed the much needed, blame the lateness on a cocktail of Karma and Kismet with a dash of Zodiac? That is exactly what I was doing as I bathed and perfumed myself, and dressed it all up in Sunday best. Especially the tiny vales between my ten toes, you know, where the dirt unseen rests feeling cosily at home till you discover it one day when it has formed a tiny hill there, much like termites. Or moles. I wore my best flip-flops to walk to the occasion too. 

After all, I was going for my virginal pedicure. 

A lot of firsts happen after your marriage. Ouch! But many in the days just before it too. Somewhere in my 20s I was off to a salon which promised me the most freebies (read pint-sized bottle of Bisleri, a mug of coffee, an umbrella stand to hang my coat/dupatta). Freebies, for the palatial fortune I was to exchange for just getting my dear nails clipped. Moral of the story till now being, I like freebies, and that then I had no idea about pedicures.

A separate section called ‘Foot-see’ opened into a pink and black room lined with chairs which would put the PM’s gaddi to shame - with their grandeur, their gadgetry and the chest-size of the gentlemen standing behind them. Men? Suddenly my nervous lips licked the lip gloss away and my toes twisted into such strange positions of awkwardness that they could just have been possessed with the spirit of an ashamed exorcist himself. I cushioned myself into one which seemed three sizes too big for me, and dipped my feet into a tub of water I swear I wanted to put my head in. And drown. Why? Here I was, ready to risk a pedicure just to escape that-talk-which-forms-the-about-to-be-married-day-at-home, and all I got was a brain on an over-drive, trying to think of ways to keep the legs together enough to please the nuns and fathers who moulded me in school but apart still so the young man with the lovely cheek bones could reach all corners of my feet once they were soft. And supple. And ready to be peeled. 

I peeked at my two innocent feet somewhere down there and blessed the bubbles in the water which were, truth be told, quite relaxing. What wasn’t relaxing was the man with cucumbers on his eyes sitting next to me, getting a head massage, a facial and a pedicure done, even as he spoke on the phone sealing a property deal. Because now, as my eyes held him while his the cucumber slices, I felt it rising up my gut, twirling in my belly and knocking on my teeth to open up my mouth, for Laughter Express was on its way. With its brakes failed! 

Past tense.

To not laugh is impossible for me. Ever since I remember I have had uncanny urges to laugh at just the socially wrong times. For instance, as a little girl in stranger aunties’ and uncles’ arms I would laugh with glee, sometimes because their nostrils looked like obstacle courses and often because the hair on the chin would be singing to me in the breeze. Of course, I escaped censure then, for because of my laughter they gave themselves certificates of merit for being good with kids. Later, I started getting caught. In standard 7, after chopping the hard ink-erasing dirty green rubber into tiny pieces and putting them on the head of the girl just before me, I started laughing. Mrs. Abraham did not find humour in the concept of pulleys and fulcrum that she was teaching and I was standing outside my class the next moment. Still giggling, by the way. And braces on teeth played traitor too, for my mouth would barely close. In standard 12 it did not help to have a Hindi teacher who kept repeating to us ‘Bharat krishi pradan desh hai’ after every full stop, and tautology I do find amusing. What to do! Also, if you think no one gets sent out of class on laughing out-of-context (but in-context with what’s inside the head, imagined or in full view of) you are wrong!

Present, in Foot-see now.   

Testosterone had done its deed on that man next to me, and in patches it had left hair-free there was cream. If he was Greek, I could have passed him off as a chocolate frost cake with a cherry on top. But he wasn’t, and there was nothing on top. With jeans folded up to his knees his feet were getting massaged, as mine would be soon. I watched out of curiosity, I swear, for it was my first time and clearly he was a veteran. And then, the right pressure points started getting activated on his sole by a man in black who seemed responsible for his feet by the day, and his drunken safety as a bouncer at night. And how they touched his soul! ‘Why don’t you talk to Golden Foresssttt … ten, he will give ten … its two bighaaaa … aah … so what if the approach road it narrow … oooh … 20 flats? Hmm … mmm … no man, just getting paddy done ... nnnn...’ and it went on. Property dealing and orgasmic foot healing, as the pedi-curer did his job as if nothing was wrong with the world. 

My belly was distended with the whole 9 months of laughter, as if an army of feathers was tickling it on the inside. I had to get it out, oh, I just had to laugh. Should I fake a phone call and release it? Bathroom, no, I won’t reach in time. Shame shame! Marriageable woman and still doesn’t know how to hold it in. Little did I know the solution lay in the problem itself, for as my good looking worked my now-soft feet, the tickle buds all over them got provoked beyond all Edens. Forget awkward toes and legs apart moments and all monster men frothing next door. Forget even that I was all grown up. It started showing its teeth, from the feet upwards, and with all things in the head acting the very fuel for it.

First, a little giggle. Then two, together. And then, like floodgates of a whole generation repressed from expressing, I laughed. The mouth-wide-open, head-thrown-back variety of laughter. Louder than ever. The dumbstruck staff stared, first at my funny feet and then at my face contorted like a monkey, as I jerked my right foot alternatively away and towards my attendant to make them clean. Almost as if I was cycling! This had to stop. And stop it I did. I just told myself then that maybe this could wait too for after marriage, among other things. Ouch!   

Of course, I paid the full amount. My overly tickly feet were not their problem. Thankfully, neither was my tickly tummy for the man who was now in stage four. Of his paddy, of course. 

P.S. - I continue a virgin in this department. True story, this. 

[Written for WordPress Daily Prompts : 365 Writing Prompts. The prompt for today was - From the gut - Tell us about the last time you had a real, deep, crying-from laughing belly laugh]

Swimming-Shimmying

I love swimming. Especially early in the mornings. You know, when the birds are twittering awake and the sun playfully winking at them from behind lush green trees swaying lightly to the cool and clear wind and …

Right, as if! When you wake up to 35 degrees at 6:00 am, the birds are tweeting rants in more than 140 characters and the brown trees trying their best to give the sun a blue eye for being such a butcher in heat. 

You exit your air-conditioned room where your cherub happily snores and it’s as if you entered a black hole spinning closest to the Sun. You gulp your cold coffee in precisely five sips lest it turns warm. As warm as the “fresh water” CPWD releases your way for an hour expecting you to tank-up and shank-down before the heat evaporates their whole office and the pipes run dry for the rest of your baking day. You water your plants and they seem too tired to raise their heads in gratitude even. Depressing. Try reading a newspaper under a fan-on-five-number and you might as well do dardey disco with your arms, neither needing eyes nor brains. 

And so, I thought of joining a DDA Sports Complex nearby to use their pool and spend some hot morning time feeling like a cool mermaid, swimming-shimmying up. And it is sitting exactly there, on a white sun bathing chair (which we Indians use like berths in a train) under an umbrella that came free with Bagpiper Whiskey, that I write this. Sitting by the side of the pool which my toes touched a few minutes back.

If I did not belong to Haridwar’s neighbour, I would have thought this is the ghat people come to dip their free sizes in after freely sinning. Citizens of a whole continent are in this pool right now, a length which takes me no more than 15 seconds to cover – all interruptions included. Like excited tadpoles in a mug of water the previous tenant left on the roof top, God alone knowing what the mug was used for. That many bobbing up and down, in that little space. And many around the pool too. 

Say that man under the shower just outside the men’s changing rooms. Little does he know this is not his ghar da shaavar, or that open air ones are for a token rinse only. He just began shampooing his hair – eyes closed tight as if his jet is landing and such chaos between the hurrying hands and the hair that soap suds are flying to stick like white whales behind another’s behind; a man’s, the one next in line who is waiting his turn, respectfully keeping his back to the lathering spandex while keeping his front reserved for public gaze. As I notice his eyes trailing to the ladies side of this family-time pool-time, I wonder which is stronger - his elastic I hear crying SOS under a monstrous belly, or that one leg which carries all his weight as the other stylishly extends forward. With hands on tilted-hips, he’s discussing politics with two men swimming breadths at the deep end. Both men periodically sprout mysterious bubbles up their back whenever they stand still, or are not burping. I switch undigested Times Now off to turn my face away, hoping for pleasanter sights and sounds. Certainly less hairy ones! And that’s when I am enamoured by a bra.

A gang of girls about 40 years of age are having a mini-kitty in 3 feet water. Two have held on to the side rails and are floating belly-up, admiring their nail paint on the toes while two others stand bent at the knees, gracefully keeping their bergs below sea level. I can make out the discussion is serious. Could be about the class 12 board results, or about Mrs Nanda’s long nose – both horrific enough topics to garner haws and hmms. One kind-looking lady's eyes just bulged forward enough to touch the strapped goggles now fogged over with what could be rage. Must have heard Mrs Mehta changed her boutique. Clandestinely. And for those couple of seconds she stood up, with knees straightened, water to the waist, hand on mouth, head shaking side-to-side I saw it. A brassier under the costume! (How lovable must their bond be that he followed her chastely to the pool! Oh envy!) The straps seemed to match the costume frilly leotard she’s wearing, so certainly intentionally worn and not forgotten to remove when in a hurry. Why, it kind of matched well with the eye shadow too.

I did decide to get in, exactly when the two teens making chapatti dives at the deep end were leaving. But at the ladder I found a face staring at mine with such concentration in its eyes and pouted mouth. What is this? Ek choti si love story happening in the pool?

The child, about three years old, looked as lost as the Batman on his floats was in this Punjabi pool. He had stopped flapping (moving as successfully as a fish on a treadmill) a couple of seconds back, and now just floated. Staring. I climbed down holding the rail, eye-to-eye, in slow motion, suspecting a loving lunge or maybe a water proof firecracker going off under me making my one piece become three. Like a prank. His older sister was trying to swim underwater but ending up much above it instead. Something was up most definitely. Well, time revealed nothing was up at all. It was all down under, for soon as my toes felt the warm water, he turned around and screamed with an ace performer's glee – ‘Mummy, I just pee-pee on my own in the middle of swimming swimming.’

In the meantime, Mummy across the breadth was too busy to have heard her boy’s success story. The two political bums in the deep continued to laugh and bubble over jokes they shared, while their friend, the second-in-line, was now vigorously wiping himself with a towel near the shower, soaping-shampooing over, of course.

Might as well jump in now? Not me! 

You?

[Written for WordPress Daily Prompts : 365 Writing Prompts. The prompt for today was - Might as well Jump - What’s the biggest risk you’d like to take — but haven’t been able to? What would have to happen to make you comfortable taking it?]

The Homecoming

Through her kohl-lined eyes she saw the white Volvo bus leave for Roorkee from between the greasy window rails of her own bus, which was still waiting to fill up. A small bag with her belongings was all she carried, tucked between her cracked feet adorned by a silver payal and the unseen dirt under her seat. It was hot, so hot that she looked at the AC Volvo with a parched gaze. Her eyes burned. 

‘Why don’t I take one of those white buses to Roorkee this time?’ she had half-implored her husband of some months. ‘You know, it’s quite hot and even the doctor says I should travel comfortable since it’s the initial few weeks and ...’ She stopped as he knotted his brow and looked at her. As if he did not understand. He thought her mad for asking for money worth an AC bus ride. ‘What a queen I have married. Spoilt totally. She thinks her father bought me, doesn't she?’ thought he, but only said ‘This Rs. 120 should be enough for a UP Roadways bus ticket to Roorkee.’ He also gave her a coin for Rs. 10. ‘Take a rickshaw from the bus stop to your parents’ house. 10 men will look you up if you walk to Chawri bazaar looking all dressed up as if you’re going to run away with another man.’ And then he had left. 

She had bitten her lower lip then, and now as she remembered the parting remark. Embarrassed. Slowly licking the maroon lip-stick which she had worn. Specially worn. It had only stood for happiness. A celebration that she was going home to be with her parents. A new sari draped, matching bangles, bindi in place and sindoor so deep so neat so red as if it was disciplined to stand at attention on her forehead. She over-did it, perhaps, her … happiness, thought she sitting on seat number 5B. The white Volvo with cool interiors had long left, leaving behind nothing but a cloud of dry mud. And a raging thirst, for cool air and cold water. 

‘Campa, campa, campaa’ sang the nasal voice of a young boy with chilled soft drinks, clanging to be picked and delivered from the crowd in the aluminium bucket. She looked at the shirtless boy first and then at his hands. Maybe I can buy myself a Campa? Looks so cold. I do have Rs. 10 with me. I could just quickly walk home. What will he know … But before she could make up her mind, temptation had left. Been pushed out of the bus by the conductor for it was time for the bus to leave. The boy had come to her slow-moving window for he had read the indecision in her mind and the decisive thirst in her eyes. And she in his, for her Rs. 10. A gust of wind devoid of any mercy blew. She was made to turn her face away!
    

The conductor slammed shut the creaky door and the bus began to pull out of Meerut Bus Depot. The journey has begun, maybe I should just drink a sip of water now? She pulled out the old dented Bisleri bottle she carried from home. She put it to her lips, dry terrain what was once glowing maroon, and swallowed just enough to wet her mouth. She grimaced. The water was already warm. Still, she had to save it for later. God knows how cruelly the hot wind blows over sugar cane fields, and through leafless poplars. The dust from pot-holes and the mirages of water on the road ahead merge to become genies, asking you to come take a dip. Luring you, falsely. It is then that she will need more water to drink. Her stomach rumbled empty. 

‘Maybe I should not fast today, maaji’ she had mustered enough courage to ask her mother-in-law that morning. ‘I have to travel far and alone, and I feel so tired already. Plus, I’m 6 weeks …’ and she could not say another word. For maaji was muttering apologies to a certain God to excuse this girl’s innocent crime already. Looking disturbed and shocked and sorry, only for the God, all at the same time. ‘You should know better than to skip a holy Monday fast and break the sequence, bahu. It is for the son you could be carrying.’ She wanted to add ‘Shame on you. Seems like your mother had not a single significant thing to teach you’ but kept it for another day. 

By the time she reached Roorkee Bus Depot, the weather the thoughts the hunger, all had taken their toll. One at a time. Raping her of comfort – within and without. Her stomach was cramping and the bumpy ride had not helped matters at all. Neither had the stares of the man sitting diagonally ahead of her. She had strained her eyes away and out of the window most part of the journey, forcing her face into the hot winds, braving the burning skin. Holding the bag tight between her feet and her hands joined, as if praying for the journey to end. Soon. Now, back stiff and feet swollen, she waited her turn to step down.

She knew exactly where the rickshaw stand was. For 21 years she had come to this bus depot with her family to enjoy Prince Chaat Wala’s famous chaat-tikki, often when the two sisters passed their exams. But just as she was walking towards a rickshaw to take her home, she spotted a new stationary store next to Guru Nanak Juice Corner. She stood staring at the glass façade, with pretty posters of princesses and calendars with Goddesses calling one forth. 

Yes. She went in and spent the Rs. 10 her husband had given so she did not walk home in full view of strange men. Instead, she bought a tiny diary for her sister who was going to be married soon. So tiny, it fit on her out-stretched hand. She wanted it that way.

Home was as home is. The welcome. The sudden outburst of feelings that only some relations feel. The questions the food the rest and how is damaadji? They liked her sari, her payal, oh you look so dressed up so pretty! She liked her sister’s sagai outfit, her mother’s new idli maker and how terrible I feel for I left the bag of gifts I carried for you from Meerut in the bus! The ‘doesn’t matter’ and ‘you are our daughter’ that followed. And then, the unspoken in their minds, thoughts oft brushed off as only hunches, coming from seeing but not saying anything. For what if they were wrong? Wrong to think their daughter was badly kept? Or even worse, unhappy? 

Much later, in a quiet corner of her home, she gave the diary to her younger sister when they were alone. To note down every little unhappy thought or thing that will come her married way. To write out on its pages chapters she never signed up for. Write it. As loud as she wishes. Just … take it out.

Her sister cried. For she now saw what she had actually not seen. In her sister's life. Or around the bend where marriage waited looking all showy like a fairy-tale. It was a passing on, of something the elder sister had not the courage to do. Never could. To document. To write. To voice. The pain.

The diary was small, but it came with a big prayer. That it may never be full enough, and always big enough to collect within its folds all the troubles her sister was to face.

[Written for WordPress Daily Prompts : 365 Writing Prompts. The prompt for today was - Never – Tell us about a thing you’ll never write about]

Circle of Life

She had no idea what she was doing on the yellow bench, staring at the patterns the union of rust and old paint made on it. She had been married in the biggest house around this park, but she had never been here. Office and work and parties and shopping and spa and movies and office and work. That busy thing we call Life. To think that for 10 years she parked her Honda Accord right behind the stone wall this rickety bench rested upon. And on which she rested today. Alone. With some papers by her side. With her hand holding them down on the bench. What was she doing here? Shouldn’t I be in office? Damn, it’s 3:00 pm and Linux Tech comes calling in 30 minutes for handing over Eastern Region’s project to me and ... and this is what I have been waiting for, working for all my …

The wheels of the pram screeched on the jogger’s path every time it turned around the oval’s bends. They did now too, just at the yellow bench. The baby giggled, the dribble running down the chin doubled, as did the loud delight at the turns. The mother did not seem to notice. She pushed the pram along, looking straight at a point only she could see. A face devoid of expressions, but thoughts sprinting into each other at full speed. Somewhere else. Certainly not here, where the two pig-tails on the pram were dancing with glee. The baby let her mother be, as if she understood. But who can ... can anyone understand, help? This ... guilt, this feeling of nothingness. Just burps and nappies and sleepless nights. This worry I am too tired to admit as real ... bone fatigued. These chapters I had not signed up for my entire …  

She straightened up on her bench at the noise, where wheels met pavement to turn a different direction. The grinning jingling monkey hanging on the pram pulled her out from the abyss of her thoughts. Her Linux meeting was tucked in a drawer. She noticed then, the pram, the baby, the mother. And then she stared with an expression her face had never before seen. The papers felt the pressure ease, but only slightly. What a darling baby! Oh look at that hair those curls the twinkle in her eyes. How happy she is. How old must she be? A few months, maybe a year? I love how she claps her hands when the pram turns ... as if she is flying. They are called bundles of joy ... Oh! What a lucky mother … and her nails dug into the bench. Green with jealousy. Now yellow with old paint. She looked away at a barren tree. The papers still struggling to breathe under all that weight.

She swerved the pram with one hand and adjusted her dupatta. Took a long breath. Her mother used to say it helps whenever you feel cornered by customs or people even. Breathe, and keep that scream from coming. Keep it in. Will I ever wear my ghunghroos and dance ... Oh! I must be mad. God’s gift of a child in my pram and such ungrateful thoughts. Evil ... Her swollen feet seemed to agree with the noises in her head. Sent a shot of pain rocketing up into her thoughts, where it remained. Pulsating. Where it would remain for every waking hour of her being it seemed. What would I do to just feel free! Lie down on this grass with not a lullaby to breathe or story to tell. No night becoming day becoming night. Just dance ... hear applause. No responsibility, none depending on me. Like ... like that woman on the bench. Sitting free without a care in the world enjoying the sun the calm. If only in her place I could be … and it sprung within her. Jealousy. She averted her gaze skywards at the lonely cloud drifting aimlessly. The hand clutched the pram tighter. It picked up speed.

And then the wind blew. As if it was eavesdropping. Peeping inside their minds. Colluding with an unseen pattern, the wind blew strong, then stronger.

The baby’s joy knew no bounds. It soared like a polythene on a string, as did her joyful shouts all around. In the meantime, one woman’s dupatta with stains of milk and baby oil protested and was set free, even as the hands tried holding on to it. The other’s papers blew away with the wind, no longer wanting to be clutched, leaving the yellow bench behind. There was confusion in the air. Hair and papers and clothes and pig tails all going wild. Together. The wind kept blowing as if it had a purpose to. And then it slowed down, just a bit. The baby’s mother helped collect the papers spread across the lawn. The woman on the bench unravelled the soiled dupatta from her legs. They walked up to each other to hand over what was not their own. And then to sense what was theirs, together.

The tears. 

They had both been crying. One because she had a child and the other because she perhaps never could. That’s what the papers said, those medical reports. She had just found out and had driven home. Straight. To this bench where she had never been before. 

The wind was gone. Left a quiet behind, intentionally. Also left behind a lawn peppered with leaves. Mostly dry and wilting but some fresh and green too. Like hope, no not jealousy! Or say, like finding a friend to share a yellow bench with, no matter how rickety the bench or how unknown the friend.

To share a circle of life, and understand the patterns drawn within it too. 

[Written for WordPress Daily Prompts : 365 Writing Prompts. The prompt for today was - Green-eyed – Tell us about the last time you were really, truly jealous of someone. Did you act on it? Did it hurt your relationship?]