Book Review – The First Firangis by Jonathan Gil Harris

I just finished reading ‘The First Firangis’ by Jonathan Gil Harris. 

This book does many things. Many.  

At the surface, ‘The First Firangis’ tells remarkable stories of heroes, healers, charlatans, courtesans, pirates and other shadowy foreigners from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries who reached Indian shores centuries before the British Raj, with humbler ambitions and to finally leave ‘their bones in the subcontinent’. In spectacular vividness, the book brings those lesser-known firangis to life. I could see them, in royal robes or bare nakedness, in harems or in hiding, in ships or lying buried. I could see them bending over paintings or drinking coconut water; adorning their necks with jewels or slaying others’ with military skill. I could see those foreign bodies moving ‘across borders of geography, culture and language’ and becoming Indian. 

The book also re-creates those times, those bits of the Mughal period which find no mention in popular historical narratives of battles, annexations and mighty edifices. It took me to those forgotten lanes of Indian history where beggars were multi-lingual poets and highway bandits poor Englishmen in Mughal disguise. It welcomed me into forbidden rooms of palaces where feminine love and healing existed alongside hierarchy and politics. The book looked beyond codified History textbooks to show me the Literature of those times and views derived from a window of critique. 

And the book took me by surprise. As it busied me with its fascinating world of people constantly becoming by learning and unlearning, the book quietly slipped away from below my feet my own solidified idea of a pure identity. What does it mean to be a Punjabi Hindu? What is my racial identity? What does it mean to be Indian? Is there something called ‘authentically Indian’? In short, the book shook me as it took away from me my acquired definition of a historical self. While I read about the firangis’ process of acclimatization and becoming Indian, the book planted a storm in my head, interrupting my sense of identity, completely. 

So, what exactly happened when Jonathan Gil Harris, himself a descendent from a long list of migrants and now living and working in New Delhi, ‘traced the outlines of rather different modes of contact between firangi and desi’ by drawing on ‘modern day interludes’ of his own life?

His readers were encouraged to give thought to the following - the concept of body and bodily transformation; the problem of absolute identity; the idea of history hidden in ‘subjunctive’ art and finally, the relevance of connecting the past with the present. To examine each of these individually helps see how Jonathan answers ‘How can a firangi become a Mughal painter?’ with a detective’s eyes and ears which collate stray ‘echoes’ of history scattered around. 

Body

Jonathan asks us to re-imagine the nature of ‘biography’ as a ‘story of bodily transformation in response to the specific challenges of new ecological, cultural and economic environments’, in order to make legible the lives of firangi men and women from pre-colonial times. For this he uses his own body as an archive of migratory imprints, making his own experiences the conceptual premise on which to rest these mini-biographies.

Re-locating meant the body interacting with alien elements – consciously or at a sub-conscious level. Garcia Da Orta, the Hakeem of Bombay and Ahmadnagar, is accidentally welcomed by the scent of a cargo of cloves and falls in love with mango in all its forms. Smells and tastes change him. By gradually being forced to move away from ‘proper’ bodily behaviors mandated by his religion and profession, Garcia ‘inhabits otherness’ – gastronomically, culturally, linguistically and religiously. 

The story of Thomas Stephens shows the complex bodily translation of an Englishman into a Konkani kavi. His passage to India entailed ‘the passage of India’s physical elements through his flesh’ – like coconut water, which finds prominent expression in his Marathi version of the Bible. ‘Is it still my body at all?’ is a question his body's transformation poses. 

The spatial mobility of firangi warrior slaves ensured intimate relations with the physical environments they fought enemies in. New skills and new reflexes had to be found, and a ‘muscle memory’ formed. Malik Ambar, the Muslim slave who grew to design Aurangabad, used his embodied knowledge of a new landscape, something that could have been learnt only after adapting to it. To acquire specific skills to master, a bodily modification had to be cultivated, of sitting a certain way, of using exotic tools, etc. 

A body became another by being clothed in specific ways too. Gifting robes and fabric was a part of  complex hierarchical relations of service and obligation. Bibi Juliana Firangi’s ‘tantalizingly elusive’ story of going from a servant to a royal confidant in Aurengzeb’s harem is a fascinating documentary on the transformation of her body. But it is Coryate’s change from a 'comical' firangi to the Fakir of Ajmer that really shows how ‘his body … become a palimpsest – a khichdi of skills, gestures and linguistic abilities from England and the subcontinent’.

But no matter who reached which part of India and when, the weather had to be weathered and the body had to change in order to abide by the laws of the climate, to survive disease and dysentery, storm and sunstroke. Each of these stories show how it was not just foreigners who arrived in India, ‘India arrived’ in their bodies too, challenging their physicality and eventually re-charting their sense of an identity.   

  

Identity

Jonathan speaks from experience when he talks about ‘becoming another’ yet ‘longing for a core identity – an irreducible part of the self immune to transformation’. Identity, then, becomes more of a Work in Progress, much like the body, a fluid entity and forever in flux. 

‘The First Firangis’ attempts to disturb modern ideas of racial identity, ‘including the white of “white Mughals”'. How space, language, clothes, skill, names, allegiance and professions which 'conduced to multicultural curiosity’ transform not the just the body but the perception of self too. What Jonathan says for Orta is true for every firangi whose account this book carries – ‘Orta’s identity was not singular, but organized around fault lines that split and pluralized him … his lived identity not singular, but multiple.’

While the book examines the etymology of the word ‘firangi’ it reveals to us, through its various ‘stateless shape-shifters’, how the tag of a ‘firangi’ served as a reminder that they were neither Indian nor nationals of places they left behind. This must have led to much mental turmoil. On the other hand, for those like Malik Ambar, the vakil-us-sultanat of Khadki, the reality of not belonging to a single space ‘was an empowering precondition of his ascendency’. 

The paradox ‘of moving yet settling’ which was at the heart of what it meant to be firangi in the 16th and 17th century India is also at the heart of this book. How else can we reconcile Manucci’s Hinduphobia with his embrace of siddha medicine as the Vadiya of Madras? Is a firangi then, ‘an identity at odds with itself’? A contradiction of sorts?

In such permeability of multicultural influences, the term ‘authentic’ loses its purity. The idea that someone foreign can become Indian makes you even ask what it means to be ‘authentically’ Indian? If ‘Indian’ is always becoming something new, can intolerant rigidity of identity hold its ground? ‘What if the ‘authentically Indian’ were to name not a pure but an impure condition?’

After all, it took Jonathan, a ‘firangi’ who became an Indian, to not just show us our own Indian-ness but its foreign facets too. A “white” man’s voice, so to say, but one which could see things through an uncoloured lens. A fair voice. I’ll tell you why. 

The fair voice undoing the ‘white noise’

Jonathan re-opens fading parchments of history, critiques long-forgotten poetry and paintings, and cross-refers to Literature and Arts from across the globe to give us a perspective totally different from the ‘narrative of angrezi cultural, linguistic and racial supremacy’ that colonial accounts are wont to carry. He admits ‘Delhi has arrived in me, I mean that it has seeped into me and colonized me at a molecular level’. It is with this stance that he speaks.

He tells us how not just the Mughal customs but firangi customs were patriarchal too. That the English East India Company actively banned women from journeying to India by sea. He opens the doors of women’s zenanas to show us how they were not about ‘sexual talents that Western Orientalist imagination has traditionally attributed to it’. That a harem was something different from what the ‘white noise of male stories and fantasies about Mughal-era women’ created. 

Jonathan rejects some popular historical accounts as ‘patently untrue’ and lends credence to others by researching them with a magnifying glass. He even exposes how Sir Thomas Roe, the ambassador of King James I to the court of Jahangir, wrote a narrative of ‘self-pity party’ by distancing himself as superior to Indians and mocking in awe the ‘Super-exceeding Pomp’ of the king. He freely gives examples of the ‘racist condescension that typifies 19th century colonist ethnography’.

In quip-rich irony he says for Manucci – ‘Manucci needed to adapt to the Indian weather to survive as someone who could complain to other Europeans about the duplicity and ignorance of Hindus and Mohammedans.’

It is not a colonizer speaking but a man colonized by India. A man overturning Euro/Anglo-centric myths about the Orient. Laying the cards on the table, and even inviting Rushdie to see how real women of Mughal history are not mere 'tales about tales' but women with distinctive voices.

Conclusion

‘It gestures towards the work performed by Indian agents, human and non-human, in refashioning Christian orthodoxy into something anti-establishment, an instrument of colonialism into something anti-imperialist, and firangi flesh into something Indian’. 

This book also becomes a 'subjunctive' Mughal painting when we see its topical relevance. The book makes us aware about facts from our past which lie buried under the emphasis on purist identities and divisive ideologies based on religion or caste. Say, how Shivaji’s family history as much as his military tactics were very much the products of a multi-cultural, multi-denominational Deccan culture. Or how conventionally Mughal paintings “allowed” striking trans-cultural details where Ram and Sita both have blond hair. And how art in those centuries acquired a global self where artists like Mandu Firangi ‘borrows knowingly from a Christian-Italian convention to illustrate a Persian translation of a Sanskrit story’.

Here is a provocative thought from the book, as a parting note – 

‘No one single trajectory of Indianness – whether religious, cultural or linguistic – can go uninterrupted for long. At the risk of making a sweeping generalization, one might even say that the ‘authentically Indian’ can never be identified with a singular trajectory but, rather, has always been a series of interruptions and creative responses to those interruptions.’

‘The First Firangis’ is a book to possess. A treasure trove of stories and how they interrupt the most well-founded ideas of becoming, of belonging and of being, Indian or firangi, both.

'The First Firangis' is an Aleph Book Company publication, 2015

[This review was commissioned by Rupa Publications. Views are my own.]

The Lunch in the Box

I am very fond of buying lunch-boxes. I have a few Tupperware ones in various shades of yellowness, two circular casserole kinds which were originally meant to keep the food warm and even a fancy translucent box-cum-matching-jacket to keep the winter chill away from the rotis inside, the couture way. And just like any middle class home, which wants to march ahead with times and technology yet carry something from its deep history, I also own an old-and-faithful stainless steel triple-storied lunch-box. Zipper bag included. Quite a collection, and to which I lovingly add every time I come across a lunch-box which will help convey to my husband, every passing office afternoon, how much I love him.

The only problem is that while I love to collect lunch-boxes, I just don’t like to cook. So usually there is no fancily cooked lunch in the box. And more often than usually, the lunch-boxes remain at home – clean, untainted, unused. 

Don’t get me wrong. I like to feed people. That is, when I’m in the mood. Those days when I want to chop-stir-cook are precious, like rare truffle even pigs can’t find after spending days, weeks even, walking in truffle territory. Getting in the mood to cook is tough work, and tougher for me than the most expensive Teflon can ever be. Some days are too cold to wash those vegetables, others too hot to stand beside a fuming tava. (Maybe the curd never getting ‘made’ in the fridge despite 6.5 years of trying to set it is an omen that I should quit cooking altogether. Including, buttering the toast.)

No wonder then that if I were to dedicate such a post to someone I will think no further than the one superhero that is my husband, who has uncomplainingly left his dear lunch-boxes emptily adorning my kitchen shelves, while he has managed working overtime with hunger raging in the stomach but a heart so sated with love that where is the need for mere morsels? 

I really love him for his patience, his gastric fortitude and the undying hope that one day when he opens his lunch-box it will have the finest pasta made by his wife’s hands. Or maybe makki-ki-roti and sarson ka saag, which he loves, or something more Cheeni-Japaani that he equally adores. Or hope there will be biryani in his lunch-box, steaming and flavoursome and something that he can eat standing upside down. 

In hope we live. Hunger can wait. 

But I’m working on it, you know. First, on the ability to get myself to get up and cook and second, on my ability to cook edible. I really, really am.

Just today the couture-lunch-box carried sandwiches made from the subzi my husband relished last night, which he couldn’t eat the day before because he wasn’t that hungry. With this special tiffin, made with a resolution to keep it up, I also sent a note. I wish I was there to see his face when he reads it. 

You want to read? Here goes ...

Dear A,

I hope this lunchbox finds you in the best of health and fitness. I know I have not been able to learn how to cook like a Master Chef, but neither have you. So all-in-all, we’re a well-matched couple. Even though we didn’t find ways to each other’s hearts through the stomachs, let’s use this lunch-box as a symbol of our love – where you buttering my bread and me making jam sandwiches to eat in office are more celebratory than a five course Punjabi meal in a five star restaurant. (Unless, of course, we’re invited to that party. With family.) 

I promise to use this lunchbox to feed you the world’s best delicacies as soon as you begin feeding them to me. May our love and friendship always remain this strong, this mutual.

PS – There is no salt in the house. I broke a nail. We’re ordering in, tonight.

Your dearest wife,

S.

There! That's my #lunchboxANDyou story. Your turn now.

['The Lunchbox' Premiere on Valentine's Day at 8 PM on &pictures. This is a sponsored campaign review.]

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.

A #GreatDad

Witty Mr. Anonymous on evolution - ‘She becomes her mother and he becomes his father’. I must be an aberrant entry into this world then, who is her mother’s Xerox but her father’s copy in all other matters. And I don’t just say that because this post is meant to be an ode to my dad and by this logic an ode to myself. I say it because I am told so, by my mother, quite confidently. Ahem. When I pay attention to how I live and like to think, I realize it’s quite true too.

From those prominent to the really small and miss able ones, we are all a compendium of features and habits which trickled down from our parents and occupied our minds - either consciously or otherwise. It’s inevitable, because while a child’s eyes observe with awe the ones he loves the most, his mind begins to make copious notes on how they sit, walk, talk, smile, eat, etc. And, how they think. In the beginning most children drink up the show-and-tell. Later, as they come into their own, they begin making amendments to the family-induced values and habits which were passed down. These are personal and made independent of any more consultation with mothers and fathers. After all, unlearning goes hand-in-hand with learning when times change at the speed of light and relevant becomes irrelevant with the blink of an eye.

In this scenario, when children leave the proverbial nest much before they physically leave it, it is so difficult to actually realize how much of us is really our parents - their old voice hiding behind our young views, and their experienced thoughts lurking behind every rebellious one in our mind. How do we tease away the parental thread from the mesh of fresh influences that envelop our adult minds and find the ratio? All we know, without any doubt, is that we all remain influenced by how we were brought up and by whom. How much of it we realize is usually just a matter of age, stage and time.

Now, everyone’s daddy is the best, and so is mine for reasons galore. Singly, and in combination with my mother (except when he ganged up with her sometimes when my pre-teen head wanted him to stand guerilla on my side). He did what every father does – took care of us kids, protected us and taught us about the wonders of the world. He did all that. But what he also did, without realizing it, is show me a cool school of thought by following it himself. 

He showed me how to be right without being rude or unkind. How to broker peace where there is hope of none, or remain elegantly away from what was not his business. I saw in him a man who put his wife before himself, but rationale before anything else. And be organized, and as neat in dress as impeccable in integrity. I have sensed in him a desire to feel blessed for and celebrate each day of his life with friends and family, while yet ensuring that our tomorrows are safely secure through solid foresight. And as his daughter I have experienced the right blend of being-allowed and being-cautioned (except that this last ‘right’ is always realized in hindsight. Murphy!). When I had asked my husband what he thought of my dad, he had pronounced him a Buddha, sending both father and daughter soaring high up into the sky. That day told me everything I wanted to know about my future son's dad. Because I already knew by then what a great dad I have! 

I saw the video above a few moments back. It is a part of SBI Life Insurance #GreatDad Campaign. And it depicts a father’s presence in a child’s life really well. Do give it a minute of your time.

[This is a sponsored campaign review.]

The ‘Other’ Inbox on Facebook; A Love Story

To wake up, rather suddenly, on the sagging side of 30+ can be quite traumatic. Even more if it happens on a morning when the maid informs you that today’s Delhi Debate in Vrindavan Park near Mother Dairy-gate of our flats saw most maids agreeing that I was so much prettier when I came here 6 years back – just married, fresh face, long sensible hair, always threaded brows, etc. Her unabashed comfort in revealing such truths didn’t stun me as much as, well, the truth. Which being, my body and hair and face and younameitdammit are undergoing constant … evolution, to use a nice word. 

The conversation grew roots in my head and remained there like a teak tree with big leaves keeping all light of reason and reasonable analysis away from the freshly formed idea of a maid-rejected Self. Meaning, no sense of self, at all. I was provoked to think, look back, call my husband to ask his ‘You’re the most beautiful woman I have ever married!’, sift through my wedding albums and message my husband again for a contrariwise-to-maid’s-opinion in text as further substantive evidence. But for the maximum solace to an injured ego, I logged in to Facebook, my magic mirror on the wall, just like yours. 

Professors of Secret Sociability on Social Networks tell you how the vainest put display pictures, collect likes on them and then scratch those numbers on a wall of fame in their houses called ‘Fuel for Narcissism’. I am one of them, on Facebook. (No, not the Professor. The other vain variety). 

So, after sending the nth message to my husband and finally receiving a reply back (‘Honey, I'm off for a very important sarkari chai break now’) I had no other shoulder to rest my injured head on and I logged on to Facebook; the underwire that supports you on your lowest days. That’s when it happened. While I was still doing the math as to how many total likes I have got on all display pictures put together, dividing them into columns of known sources, known-but-untrustworthy-sources and unknown-thus-more-valuable-sources, I noticed something by sheer coincidence. I noticed a folder called ‘Other’ in Facebook Messenger and opened it. 

That’s the exact moment I realized how wrong the maid was and how I was measuring my waistline with the wrong tape. That’s also the exact moment I fell rose in love, all over again, and this time with multiple men. Yes, as many as would fit in a Trojan Horse before I pushed it down Mount Etna’s golden gurgling mouth. All out of love, and for giving it irreversible permanence, thus. 

You want to see what keeps this old wife’s heart’s strings playing tra-linga-ling?

Isn’t it just lovely how this kind man hunted me down like a true seeker, found me and finally addressed me by my surname? Wht’s mre! He’s an aspiring wrter 2 lk myslf. Immediately, I felt connected on this side and on the other side of all sense too. He also intends to forge a most unique bond of friendship – one that motivates and one that inspects. In advance he shows such gratitude already for a communion yet to be made that my starry eyes wonder what’s in store for me after the raid is over, the inspection done and dusted, and the X-file closed. 

Not all bodily references are bawdy. Certainly not those which are also your centre of gravity. He called me like he would a French nun who quit the habit to marry a Monsieur (which was a breeze of fresh air compared to the ‘hi sakkuu’ I received just before this). So novel the address concocted that I wonder how novel the just-released novel will be! I would have liked to tell him how I too was hoping to write a book with my esteemed end but how, after Kim K’s revelation, it’s sitting put on strike, asking to be let free from the purdah system permanently with a year’s supply of oil.

A love note so close to my heart that on the crappiest of days I turn to it to realize what I see as shit surrounding me is not. This man charming has with such keen observation skills painted a picture of me that my husband could borrow some leaves or rox from this mode of expression. What can it be except trew lowe in the eyes which notice how a woman mixes colours optimistically, thus leading him to (big word alert) believe in her – as a messiah to deliver mankind from the ugly, unruly life of glamor-without-a-u. U being me, here.

I wish I could meet this man, one day. He looks nothing like Robin Sharma or Shiv Khera but see how he cares if I’m happy. Just how many people ask you that? How many, tell me? Oh, and he feels too. You see, he looks beyond the externals. He simply sits blindfolded on messenger waiting for harmonic signals of charming women to reach him. That’s when he pings to tell ladies such as myself giving us hope for things beyond the first horizon of friendship. Ahem!

Many others have come and gone. Many keep coming and coming and coming till the number, of messages, is mind-blowing. There all all kinds. One just left a “gud morning happy thandi thandi morning” and froze all conversation since I saw the message too late. Others have pockets full of posies, like this one “Hii... Gd morning.have a nice wednesday.''Yeh duniya kahan hai dosti ke liye,'par kahan se waqt nikalta hai dushmani ke liye'' and then fallen into a drunken stupor where even Thursday rhymes with 'liye'.

Sigh. 

So wanted by the opposites I feel, such divine calmness too, that if I were to die this moment I would be reborn as a Best Seller Balm 30+ – a relaxing, warming elixir to rid you of all aches and pains - right from your heav(y)ing bosoms to your revered ends. 

And just as suddenly, I am left with no more complaints for today.