You know that you are a very good girl, Lola. Don’t you? Now don’t you stand there and look at me like that. And don’t you frown at me like that too. It makes me feel that I have grown up to be my father. Yuck!

And just look at your legs. You should have at least cared to change the blade in your pink razor. Your long beautiful legs. I can’t take the eyes of the sheen. No one can.

Last night, you thought I was asleep. I was not. You needn’t have tip toed across the Persian carpet. You couldn’t have woken me up. I heard the click of the silver handset, I heard the whispers and I heard the click on the cradle again. I heard you tip toeing to the loo. I saw you stand there for a while and I heard the flush too. You shouldn’t have flushed, Lola. There was no need.

I hated the cold sweat and hated pretending that I was asleep. I felt sick in my stomach. Felt like getting up and rushing to the loo. I don’t know if you looked at me as you slid into the quilt. The bed stopped squeaking after a few minutes. Guess you had gone to sleep. How could you sleep, Lola?Oh! You told me you were tired when I kissed you. Have you been tired for long? I should have noticed. But did you want me to notice?

You used to hate mornings. But today you stand in the doorway even before I have read the morning newspaper. When did you buy that black skirt, Lola? And how come I don’t know about your new dresses anymore. I guess it would have been an impulsive buy. It’s so easy to get tempted on that scented, dimly lit floor they have at Harrods.

Its too early in the morning. You might not get the 47 from West Croydon. Should I offer you my car keys, Lola? Where do you want to go? Would it be okay if I drop you? I will just hop out in my sneakers and tees. You don’t want me to look good this early in the morning. Do you?

Oh damn! I have been talking too much, I guess. Asking too many questions. You would be getting late, Lola. I will be all right. Someone is waiting for you…….Run Lola, Run……….!!!!

For me it's a bi-monthly affair. My going to my hometown, that is. Its 'different' to my usual existence here in my power-backed up, vitrified floored, security-guarded, 'thou art a stranger, albeit thou art my neighbour' 10th floor abode. It doesn't feel like moving from one town to the other. It's more like moving from one country to the next. But hey! It was Diwali and the visit was inevitable.

It's always been like that since the last few years. I am always greeted by that scornful gaze from Verma Aunty next door, as I park and disembark. The gaze is the impeccable "Aa gaye sahab!!" Can't blame her for this look now, can I? Considering that we (read the rowdiest bunch of kids of 80s) spared nothing to let her know how we felt about all those plastic balls, which she scampered to pick and hide away as and when we managed to launch them into her porcupine-grassed lawn adorned with her solar cooker (which she loved more than her dear life) while playing our 'domestic' version of cricket.

At least we can do something about the other gaze in waiting, which is as impeccably denouncing as the former. We are wannabe bindaas urban species and that's where we are stuck since last few years…at wannabe!! Hence, there is an implicit agreement to adequately tone-down between me and my wife as we head home. She knows her attire well. In go the noodle-strapped, see-through tops, low waist jeans and knee length skirts. Out come the more acceptable suits, kurtis and sarees. Now you don't want the street dogs go insane with unfamiliarity either, do you?

Anyways, I hop out for morning walk and NO! That guy!!? The one I used to beat up at will and he would go hiding in your mammi's pallu wiping his nose from your thaan wali shirt.!!We sheepishly exchange that 'I wish I never get to see your stupid face again' smile. Why does it always happen that you cross all those rustic fellows at a point, where there is nothing to look around at, and you have no option but to stare the moron right in his face? But wait! What is that luxury sedan doing there, parked right outside your gate? Hello! This is a big mistake. I am supposed to be driving one, not you!! Weren't you supposed to be like selling cotton blouse pieces to fat middle class aunties in Sadar Bazar? You nose-dripping sissy! Now I know. You made the most of your father's stint at PWD. Consoling wisdom dawns - anything can be bought in this knavish world. Sob! Sob!

And then I return, dejected and crestfallen, to see my father enthusiastically waiting for me to go and handover those mithai ka dabbas to all those rishtedars, who I have no clue, as to how they are related to me, till date. All I know that my back will be sore from all those charan-sparsh by the time I am back.

And do I actually want to come back, is the more serious question I have to scratch my head for….….I have not been known to be a certified atheist in my khandan for nothing. I cringe with discomfort of the most extreme kind just at the thought of hawans and aartis. Mother has half a dozes pages bookmarked in the aarti book for the evening and I sulk, knowing there is no way I can escape this onslaught.

Albeit all this ado I am subjected to, there is always a reason to go home. I enjoy those little stories about my childhood which my father sometimes tells my wife over tea. I love the tiny sparkles in Riya's (my daughter) eyes at the prospect of her meeting her dadu and dadi, the laid back, gentle trotting pace people spend their time at, like chewing each moment to savour it before it will slide away into yesterday, the smile and the handshake that you get greeted with by those old familiar neighbourhood shopkeepers. It still feels like coming back to warm cosy quilt I used to cuddle up inside with mother on cold winter days in the night, tucked away in a little nook, safe from the unforgiving chill. There will always be a reason to go back. It will always feel like home coming….

The chanting echoed around the hilltop every evening. The devotional baritone soared loud, high and wide, reverberating from the walls of the luscious valley. The entire valley froze for that moment of enigmatic peace resonating from the majestic clanging of the gigantic brass bells. Tiny, lanterns would light up amidst the low hung banana leaves and the woody fragrance of burning sandalwood sticks, flickering in the evening breeze.

Every eye inside that wooden fence would be fixed on his face, enamouring his numinous persona as he sat on the sandstone podium set against the sinking sun. All heads bowed in accord as he stood up to say the final prayer. The sun wrenched its last rays along with it, which kissed his half bare Herculean silhouette and chiselled face, to plunge into another world. He was the God himself, or so would they ardently believe, standing there bewitched and awestruck…

..He quivered ever so slightly at the feel of tender touch on his feet. He opened his eyes and looked down at his feet where he could see a head half-covered with a black sari. He gently put his hand on her head as she looked up. Something shook inside him as he saw a hazel, watery pair of eyes look up to him. She had pain and anticipation written all over her angelic face. The saint stood there soaking what those eyes wanted to cry out to him, without a word. They were the wounds of betrayal which bled through her eyes, which made her travel thousands of miles to the saint, to muster the strength to get through…to start believing again.

He was the healer. His deific words and his celestial touch would cure every pain of mind and heart that was known to man. They would flock to the ashram from farthest corners to momentarily escape from the drudgeries of urban jungle, to get rid of the boulders of sins that lay heavy on their chests, to cry out their hearts and bandage the stabbing wounds the ruthless world inflicted upon them. Yes……he was the God himself.

She sat there in his feet, sobbing and gasping, looking at those flickering lanterns while everyone else slowly left. He sat there, his eyes closed, caressing her head with his fingers, as the tears on his feet started to dry. It occurred to him that it was unusual, him wanting to console anyone…like that… for so long. He had always done it with a sense of aloofness, for he was The Saint. But today, he wanted her to sit there and sob all night and the thought made him nervous.

She stayed back at the ashram in the night, as most people who came from thousands of miles did. She went back to her hut, as milky-way itself seemed to have descended on the valley. Her heart felt a little lighter and she started to revere his balmy touch as she lay there looking out at the starlit sky from the tiny window. She wondered what would have caused a young bewitching man like him to take up sainthood. They were not wrong, she thought. He can not be a mortal.

But he? He was unsettled, for the first time in all those years. He could not think of anything apart from those hazel eyes and the touch of her silky hair on his fingers. His hands grappled with the pages of the Upanishad as he struggled to keep his eyes fixed on the manuscript, but it felt like grappling with sand which itched to squeeze out of his skittish fist. He felt suffocated inside and rushed out in the moonlit night.

“How could this happen to me?”. He was screaming to himself in his mind.
“How could I think about a woman? Hadn’t I swam all the way to the surface, against all the currents, to see this light? Hadn’t I cleansed myself of love, lust and desire? Or, was I ever really above the surface? Had I seen the strongest current yet?”

He caught a glimpse of her as he walked passed her hut. She lay there on the cot, her eyes closed, her angelic face peeking through the black silk, imbued in the fiery hue of the faint kerosene lamp. He felt weak in his knees and stood there frozen, looking at her. He knew right then, that he had been flung off the ground by the strongest tide he could have ever imagined.

He found himself walk up and open the door of her hut. She was woken up by the tiny whimper of the door. It took her a few moments and a look at his face to realize what had happened. She stood up from the cot, petrified, bewildered and blank-faced as he walked up and stood right in front of her.

Continued in comments...

"This Too Shall Pass!"

The mother of all phrases, almost as sacred as Bhagwad Geeta itself, this is one panacea to every hell you are going through in your life at a given point in time. The origins of this miraculous adage are not exactly known, but I first heard it in 'My Best Friends Wedding' and it suddenly went down my throat like smooth blended scotch and hit my mind like an ataractic, liberating it from all the 'trivial' worries I had. Julia Roberts screwing up majorly in her attempt to steal her ex-boyfriend from the 'talons' of a very sweet, very marriageable girl. She is all shaken up, sitting in the corridor of the hotel floor, smoking, when this friendly bell boy passes her and sharing her little cigarette stub, coins these magic words "This Too Shall Pass"!

Since then I have seen this get caught on, like one use-anywhere-it-will-fit apothegm and people are not abandoning it anytime soon. It got me thinking though, today, as I saw its liberal use on MS itself over the past few days. So, let's take a moment to see, when you really need someone to come, sit besides you and say "This Too Shall Pass"!

[You accidentally copied a non-vegetarian forward of the most extreme kind to the most gorgeous female (towards whom you were making impressive inroads) in your office, while trying to kill time with you useless ogle-at-all-remotely-pretty-fe
males friend, and by the time you can say oops, the 'thing' is spread out on her 19" LCD screen in its entirety while the 'poor' girl was trying to get the 120 page design document reviewed by her project lead. Man! What will follow shall never pass. It will haunt you like Frankenstein every single day of your life! ..even though every soul you even remotely know, will tell you that "This Too Shall Pass!"]

[You are a living specimen of things gone wrong with independent India. Tobacco-chewing (and spitting in the corner nearest your chair), porcine, greasy haired, sarkari babu who has a bigger desk drawer than the secure vault at RBI. The drawer is bottomless. No one has ever crossed your desk without feeding the hungry drawer. You beam a quintessential smile to the poor chap sitting across the desk and toss the usual 'Vajan thoda kam hai file mein..' only to discover on Aaj Tak next day that the 'poor' chap was a sting reporter. A million people see you running to the toilet door while some more cameras chase you with 'Ab apko kya kehna hai?' and lock yourself inside. Someone needs to get there inside with you and tell you - "This Too Shall Pass!" ]

[You were in the middle of 'something' with your pretty, coquettish neighbour, when your wife returns home early as the tailor she had gone to, to get her dresses done, had ran off with HIS neighbour! I am not sure whether the aftermath will ever pass, but you still need someone to put his hand on your shoulder and tell you - "This Too Shall Pass!"].
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But, seriously, I mean really seriously, have you ever had a moment where you are so dumbstruck that you don't know what to feel?.. when someone has slammed the door in your face so hard your ears still reverberate with the bang…. when you don't know what you are going to do in the days that follow apart from wondering what happened and what could you have done differently…when you can't help but gaze at the door, hoping it to open suddenly and see that face smiling at you again, but deep down you have given up hope. Don't you need someone to come sit next to you, give you a warm cuddly hug and croon softly in your ear - "This Too Shall Pass!"

"Why do they even care to ask me everytime. They know I would never go. Maybe they do enjoy my misery. They are one stubborn herd of pretentious people. Bastards..all of them!"

Every last soul had abandoned the office floor. The building stood in the middle of the business hub, amidst the innumerable slick restaurants and bars. The refulgent neon signs on the distant skyline crowned the vivacious young city hangouts that swarmed underneath. Like so many previous nights, she switched off all lights in her vicinity, fixed herself a cappuccino and laid back in her chair and stared at those lights. She jokingly called it a Friday ritual to herself. It had to be a joke!

Even while sitting there, she could see Megan and Abigail enticingly kiss the air as they sashayed on Swanston Street across the Arthur's Lounge. Their carelessness was infectious and they knew how to flaunt it. They seemed so far away from anything that could be called worrisome as if they always had a cushion of air underneath to walk upon. How she wanted to look down upon them as shallow, mindless damsels and dismiss their existence as frivolous. How she wanted to seal their mouths with a packing tape and dump them in a box labelled 'bitches'. But deep down she knew she would give up everything she had known, just to be them.

She had not looked at herself in the mirror since the last 4 years. In the evenings, while taking shower, she would slide open the bathroom door to let the faint lobby bulb sneak through that tiny inch, just enough for her to make out her soap and shampoo. The bathroom mirror still existed to avoid those rare guests getting judgmental of her timid demeanour. After the shower, she would walk into the kitchen, to pick the scratchy steel pan and would look at her inscrutable reflection to straighten her hair. She would pull up the blinds, put on Carpenters, light up a cigarette and would lay against the fluffy cushion on the carpet and look at the shimmering lights of the distant crawling city traffic.

She would lay there for hours feeling the touch of her skin under her palms. She loved that dainty touch and the paleness of her skin under the faint light in the lobby. She would feel her long slender neck and fine shoulder bone with her fingers. Her fingers would freeze right there as she would often feel a lump form in her throat. It would just grow bigger even though she would clench her jaws. The water in the eyes would just swell and trickle down her cheeks. Sometimes, you can never cry enough. She would just collapse on the carpet, bare, sobbing, retreating into a fidgety slumber.

It was well past ten when she pulled her eyes away from those neon lights. She was nauseated at the thought of the two days that lay ahead. The confines of her sundrenched glass-walled apartment, with nowhere to go, to cook for herself, flipping through those same old sick channels, and rubbing those 4 dozen cigarette stubs in the tortoise ash tray. She picked up her handbag and dragged herself out of the office exit on Lonsdale Street. The night was sizzling. Large groups of boys and girls laughing mischievously and screaming their heart out on the pavements as they made their way to the pubs and restaurants. She walked quickly with her head down. It was a twenty minute walk to the South Bank. She managed to find a secluded spot besides the river where she slumped, eased herself out of her shoes, lit a cigarette and put her feet in the water.

It would have been about an hour when she looked up and saw a fleet of sea gulls circle around the observation deck atop 80th floor of Rialto. They looked like fire flies in the violet beams emerging from the rooftop, ascending to the heavens, pushing away the air currents and forming a halo around the tall iron post. It was time, she finally told herself. She had to be somewhere else. She rubbed the cigarette butt against the concrete, stared at the casino lights in the water for one last time. Taking a deep breath, she slid off the concrete step into the gray calm of the river. The water could not make her chilly today. It rose up towards her chin and immersed her fine shoulder bone, her slender neck....... and her charred face. She had always obhored the prickly touch of water against the burnt skin. She was relieved that it would be the last time.......

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you were buying a perfume and ended up buying one just because you adored the gliding, delicate lines of that artsy bottle. Well, I have! I left Armani to buy a never heard of fragrance just because the bottle was etheral. Ever wondered, what part of you makes you do that seemingly stupid thing? I am not a psychologist to answer that, I am afraid. But I do know there is a little fool lurking around in each one of us which makes you want to find some substance in everything which appears out of the ordinary. "This thing HAS to be good since it looks good"!

Some people know this all too well. This does not stop them from searching that substance however. It just makes them the creator of that illusion. Popularly known as writers, these people know how to sell you a dead duck.

Let's imagine that you meet someone online and just to gauge what lies on the other end of the wire, you pop him/her the uncomfortable (or comfortable depending on what his/her demeanour is :-)) question - "So, what do you look like?". Now, one thing you should know (if you don't already, which would be shocking), that statistically, the chances of the other one being what you imagine (or rather pray) him/her to be is miniscule. I mean really really tiny. So here! The moment of truth! This is screaming for innovation. A writer is about to be born! Remember 'Need is the mother of all inventions'!. This guy/gal on the other side is not going to lie. He/she realizes the futility of it. But then there are ways..:-)

The truth : I am fat and ugly!

The truth softened : I am 'a bit' on the heavier side.

Further dilution : I don't look 'too' good as i have put on weight 'recently'.

Make it vague : I don't like what i see in the mirror. I wish I looked different.

Abstraction : I can't identify with what stares back at me when I look at myself in the mirror. Its a bloated shadow of myself.

Getting there : The world does not look at me the way i do at myself. My facade conflicts with the person that I am inside.

Impressionistic : The guise was never welcome. It just happened as i drifted along with what i thought was more important. Soon, the 'more important' things started to drift away from me as well. And i found myself worrying about the guise more than anything else as if other things were the least important ones to begin with.

THE WRITER : It does make we wonder sometimes 'who am I'? Sometimes on a crimosn evening, i would sit by a stream, throw a pebble in the silent vastness and look at the jaded reflecion of myself as the red ripples throw my face up and down. Suddenly a queer strange feeling engulfs me. I see a weary pair of eyes stare back at me and ask me 'Who are you? Why are you looking at me? I don't know you'. Its an uncomfortable question coming from someone you thought you knew, you thought was friends with you. But the tone is unmistakenly stark and unfamiliar, questioning the very motive of my existence. As the sands trickle down, I have found it increasingly hard to answer that question. As the crimson fades into gray and the face in the stream dissappears, I recede into my nothingness again, all too happy to see the unfriendly face swallowed by the waves. But deep down i know, as a few more grains of sand hit the ground, the face will return again..."

....you will never know what hit you. You will try to interpret that in whatever little stupid ways of interpretation you know of. Your mind will simply refuse to believe 'The Truth' even if you manage to get a grip of it. Guess what! You have just been handed a dead duck!!

Oh! I love Writers :-)

It’s not easy to put bread on the plate…each day, knowing that there is no alternative, but to put it there on time. Because the intestine is not your heart. It does not have that beautiful shape. It is a long winding ugly tube which has to be filled up each day, three times a day. It howls hard when it does not happen, reminding you that the plate is empty. This cognizance makes it both easy and hard to keep putting the bread on the plate, each day, without fail. Easy because you know what to do and difficult because you HAVE to know what to do!

Something will suddenly flash some day, in your mind, and you will be elated. 'Ah! I am free now. I now know, there are winds above the surface which await to carry me away to those far off unseen lands. The people there don't care about the bread and the plate as their intestines are shaped like heart. I think I can jump hard enough to be caught in those currents and be flown away. Life will be so different when I wake up tomorrow'. You go to bed swinging in the loving arms of those winds. You finally tasted the elixir of life…… The morning, alas, is the same old one. Only worse. That flash was, well, just a flash. It’s vanished in thin air leaving you gasping. And you have that dreaded plate again to put the bread on.

But you still don’t stop filling the plate, because you are waiting for another flash. You live on, as you want to be seen, heard, loved and looked up to. A longing for one glimpse of that elusive far away land keeps you going. Then there are more plates to put bread on, and more. That flash now comes only once in a while. Its dimmer now, and fainter. The desire to jump hard to be caught in the currents seems worthless. And one day, the flash shows up for the last time. You see it with blinking eyes, not even sorry to know that it’s the last of it.

I wonder sometimes whether this is the fabric of nature, to waste enough mortals, who put enough breads on the plate, to destine the genesis of an immortal whose intestine is shaped like a heart…… The one who nurtured you thought he was the last one to be wasted, but was he wrong?

I saw Shawshank Redemption first time an year ago maybe and have seen it to death and more. But I still get goose bumps when I see this part. It still manages to make me gasp, and sometimes brings tears of joy to my eyes.

Andy (Tim Robbins), sitting in the jail warden’s room browses through records, picks up an Italian opera and plays it to himself. Something inside makes him play the record on the announcement loudspeaker, blinking to the hysterical yelling of guards, locked in the room, so that no one could seize their moment of freedom. Every soul inside those high walls stops in its footsteps, time freezes as the voices soar across courtyard into the cells.

Red (Morgan Freeman) narrates:

“I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.”

Sometimes, a note of music or a few drops of rain or a look at a distant swaying tree or a gaze at a starlit sky or even a cool breeze from the river flowing under the bridge makes you forget all the pain, for the briefest of moments and that moment lingers on, to keep us all living our routine lives in hope of such a moment to come again…..

He could look into those eyes for his entire life. Those big, beautiful brown eyes. He often wondered if they were for real or was he still dreaming when he woke up and saw them looking back at him. He forgot the world around him for those moments as he found himself hypnotically drawn into that sepia crystallized in those glass like eyes.

He would just lay there to hear her breath and watch her tender lips arch in a subtle smile. He was madly in love with her…..and she………she couldn’t care less!!

Oh how cruel beauty can be, like a mirage in a vast desert. It will gaslight you into the land of dreams, in its feather like arms and mind numbing fragrance, tempt you to reach out and touch it, grab it and own it only to throw you back, the moment you stretch out your arms, to the same old world, only harsher and more mundane this time.

She was every man’s fantasy come true. And she knew it to the core. Two kinds of people are always made aware of their physical attributes pretty early – the ugly ones and the pretty ones. The others are confused to their grave, as to where they belong. She enjoyed the reaction she got from the people around her. Even though she longed for some one to sweep her off her feet away from the stammering, head scratching, sweating and nervous herds of men around her, she knew she had something which anyone in the world would do anything to just have a moment of. She had no friends, only voyeurs, admirers and hopeless romantics dying to get within a feet of her.

But it had to happen one day. Her prince charming did come. He seemed unperturbed by her ravishing persona and exuberance only to make her want more and more of him as each day passed and she found herself getting restless without him around. Till a day when she realized that her expensive Barbie doll cast was proving to be prison for her….She confessed, he melted and a beautiful love story began.

How everyone wants to pick the prettiest flower from the garden, foolishly wishing that it would be theirs forever, conveniently forgetting that the flower bloomed for selfish reasons.

His possessiveness had begun to suffocate her. She missed the freedom and that exciting tingle she used to feel as a free bird, at the prospect of that unknown someone somewhere away from the drooling everyones. This someone now had more faces than she saw when she was free. Her ‘untouchability’ had started to hurt her even more than earlier. She had to be free and she no more cared about his heartache. So one day, she walked away……. to flaunt, to entice…..to feel new.

So many someones woke up by her side since, dreaming in haze of her silky locks only to listen to their hearts break like a sheet of glass and ground evaporate beneath their feet…………and she……….she couldn’t care less!!

We are born. We study. We Work. We Die. It doesn’t get any simpler.

We are not bothered about the first and the last parts, nothing to do much there actually. Your parents take care of the first part and biology takes care of the last unless some drunken truck driver decides that biology is too boring.

I often look at gray hair of my father and wonder whether they delineated my destiny. They were always gray even in my earliest of memories. Perhaps to do something with my going to the best school in the city even when there wasn’t much left to splurge on essential goodies. Perhaps they got gray in sun during the countless hours that he had to spend for his field work every once in a while. By the time I was finishing the school I already had a feeling that I owed those hair something. Perhaps being good at studies comes naturally to people our kind. It’s a natural instinct which just happens as we watch our parent’s face brighten up at the sight of our score cards when we top our classes. And happens perhaps due to the less talked about fact that he does not have a legacy to leave behind.

Uncles and Aunties would often ask me “What do you want to become?” and I would invariably answer “An Engineer”. They would pat my back and would compliment my father with an approving look. I wonder what they would have said had I said that I wanted to direct films!!

Now several years later, as I drag myself to work everyday, into a cubicle by the window, sipping coffee out of a plastic mug from a vending machine, I often peep out of the window at the herds of people getting out of the cabs, straightening their clothes having a quick peep into the glass facades of their office buildings to check their hair, their laptops dangling by their side, ready to queue up in front of the lifts to get to their seats.

They would rush to their desktops, check their mails, open some forwarded jokes, frown at the messy mail from the boss, check their bank accounts for salary credit, check how much their portfolio has crashed in the bear market and carry on with their daily load.....EVERYBODY..just EVERYBODY. Like they have been cast out of a single mould, like they were a quality controlled factory product, like they were all just.....yes...engineers. I have become an engineer after all..just like EVERYBODY. Sometimes I so badly wish that there were a crystal ball which would tell me, what if I had taken the road less trodden? What if I was not everybody? What if I had not longed for that pat on the back and that gratifying smile on my father’s face? ......But then isn’t everybody longing for that crystal ball...!!!