green signal

standing on the road as the traffic zips past. at any given moment if i raise my eyes i can make eye contact with 50 men around me. they are there. scrutinising me. at any fraction of a second if you count there must be atleast 100 men looking at me from 100 diferent angles. scanning every part of me. from head to toe. their eyes crawling on me. not an inch of me is beyond them. it's an ordeal to stand on the road waiting. ask any woman of delhi. if you dont look at them and acknowledge their presence, they'll honk just when they pass by you. who do they think they are? george clooney or what, that the moment i set my eyes on him i would jump in his car/bike/truck or whatever he is driving.

today

one of those days when you dont want to work. when you wish you could drive past your office to some other land. when i would rather watch movies back to back. or just sit under a tree in an open field with air running through my hair and the grass dancing in the wind. or soothing music and a shot of vodka playing lullaby to me. in comparison, the colleague laughing in the next cubicle is cacophony to my ears. and i pray the servicing guy is not walking up to me to break the perfect calmness of my mind. i hope these glass panes break open and wind gushes in. all those abandoned sheets lying on the desktop will suddenly belong to it. i wish they'll let me live in this cacoon today. and no-one would puncture it.

no thank-you

why do people dabble in complimenting when they cannot pull it off? people who are not a looker will understand my embarassment. i mean, you are not doing a charity by complimenting someone. or maybe, for some it is just that.
it is probably well intentioned. but turns out like an over-done cake.
"you are looking good somehow." somehow???? i mean, shouldn't the full stop be placed after the second last word. another killer is, "you are looking good today" today. you dont look good everyday. today is the operative word.
but the clincher of the series is, "aaj tum itni achchi kaise lag rahi ho". thankfully, it was a dim-witted woman who said that. and most of the time dim-witted people end up saying such things. so it wasn't that much of a bolt. and how i wish she reads this.

a fork in the road

when you lose a friend. when between making a call and not making one you choose the latter. when you remember a birthday but skip the wishing ritual. when no excuse can be good enough to cross the bridge. when you can bury the past but not the Brutus.

????

everyone is a storehouse. a storehouse of ambitions. of frustrations and depressions. they wear a different garb. some sport a tattoo, some a beard, some an undetectable expression. they essay a variation in their sense of humour, and sense of panic. in the loudness of their speech. or in the silence of their protest. in the exhibit of their mood swings, and in the withholding of their feelings. in the amount of attention they attract, or try hard not to. in the experiences they have lived. each has a story. which they are hiding from the other. from the world. because, the moment you tell your story, you are out in the open. naked. putting yourself on a dais to be scrutinised. to be post mortemed. and it is so much easier to post mortem others rather than allow others to post mortem me.

i = she

to some people i might be the villain. the mean, bickering woman. may be my maid thinks that about me. or that's how the servicing people in my office rate me. useless and lazy. i am forever busy in the process of categorizing people. i think others are also doing it all the time. i wonder in which slot i fall. is their perception of me any different from my perception of myself?

marathon

what's funny is that we all are running not knowing where we have to reach. we have created our own destinations, not knowing what are the destinations in the larger scheme of things. not only that, we have also fixed the landmarks of our life. it might just be possible that the landmarks are not the exact turning points, but that we had already taken a turn much before reaching the point. but all of us are running. not knowing where to reach. or where to stop. it is quite possible that someone up there is making a total fool of us.

home calling

if it runs in your blood, how long can you not belong to it. you leave home, parents, customs and rituals. thinking, it's not your way of life. but i guess i am being hit by the pre-pre-mid-age crisis. with each passing day i feel, i don't belong to delhi. why else do i call up home and ask is it raining there? yahan toh baarish hi nahi ho rahi...... aam hua hai? haan? dher sara? why do i keep remembering my childhood spent in patna? i had given up hope on Patna, but after all these years why do i feel that i need my hometown more than my hometown needs me? is confusion re-visiting me after the college years? is it really in my blood or just in my mind?

please don't torture

you have visited a distant relative after a long-long time, in your hand has been thrust the thick photo album, now your ordeal begins. not only are you supposed to react to each photograph, but also ask who he/she is. show interest in what's happening in the photograph, listen patiently to the anecdote that follows and smile to the joke. if there's a kid in the photograph you are supposed to say how chweet, declare whether he/she looks like his/her mother or father. and if it's a marriage album then you keep seeing the same pose, just the props around the bride and groom keep changing. if your sense in jewellery is a bit developed, then you may find something to interest you. but somehow the jewellery wearing rule in marriages is, the chunkier the better.
that reminds me of my visit to PP Jewellers in Karol Bagh. my friend and i went exploring the Karol Bagh mkt. we chanced upon the over advertised PP jewellers showroom. so we stepped in. such heavy and tasteless neckpieces, i havent seen anything worse. there's was also a shilpa shetty there, madame tussads style, decked in jewellery.
that brings me back to photographs. there was also an age where i secretly tore away all my photographs, those were the pimply, confused, expanding, teenage days. i like flipping through black and white photographs. they have an antique feel to them. there's this family friend of ours whose drawing room is quite a visual treat. there are framed black and white photographs of his grandfather, great grandfather, and great great grandfather. being a muslim family, the ancestors had real long names. the teenage daughters of the family have a tough time remembering each of their names. obviously, whoever visits them for the first time is bound to ask, yeh photo mein kaun hai? and not being able to remember their forefathers' name is the biggest crime they could commit. that's not what i think, but that's how their father does.
and not to miss photographs, you are at a wedding, reception. your plate is full, with a portion of each of the dishes, and you are about to mouth the biggest morsel of your life..........click. you know how it feels.

growing out

have you had that feeling of growing out of room mates? and cousins? and places? and situations? when you are ready to move on. leave the present, allow it to become the past. is it like breaking a promise? is it a way of saying that i have had enough of it. and i am ready to abandon the other.........and if i am ready to grow out, should i stunt myself?

the art of conversation

when you are expected to make polite conversation, those are the testing times. you are unable to say anything because all the time you are thinking of what to say. over the years i haven't been able to overcome my shortcomings. i remember myself sitting in my drawing room in patna, trying hard to strike a conversation with some distant relatives while my mother is busy getting tea for them. at that time you could easily escape the embarassment, the guest would often say, bahut shant hai. also, as an adult, the responsibility of starting a conversation and making it roar would fall on the guest. but the akwardness of the situation has stayed on. even now if i get a phone call from an aunt, who calls with all the good intention, the conversation wouldn't flow beyond health and weather and when are you visiting patna next.
i curse gurgaon. the other day i had to take a lift back home from a colleague with whom i haven't chatted for more than 10 minutes, that is, if you add up all the small chats we have had. i tried my best to rope in another colleague. but i failed. 1 hour drive, where i ll have to keep conversing. i don't know why i thought it was my duty to keep him entertained while he was driving me home. thankfully, he wasn't the quiet types. and the topic he chose for his extempore was: fm stations of delhi. i could wander about in my thoughts while he went on and on. in between i just had to keep encouraging him, you are right. that not only kept him going, it also gave him the illusion that i too was a part of the conversation.
thankfully, there were lesser jams that day. i reached home in less than an hour.

ignorance is low marks

scoring in school was always very tricky. unless you are sure of the answer, do not jot them down. because, a wrong answer won't just get you low marks, which is secondary, but also undivided and unwanted attention in classroom when the teacher read out your answers. just to sight an example of what not to write. sometimes if you have been hit by a germ of genius, then your answer might become folklore.
once our biology teacher asked us to state the position of fallopian tube in the human system. one of us, name with-held, answered that it's the tube which connects the eardrum to the outer part of the ear. now, we cannot really blame her. such names are confusing. anyways, to the uninitiated, fallopian tube is an integral part of the female reproductive system. her mistake was not out of this world. one can take years to explore one self.
another instance is when we were answering the history paper. the topic under scrutiny Indian Freedom Movement, and role of Hindus and Muslims. one of us, again name with-held, wanted to write, 'hindu and muslims fought shoulder to shoulder for India's freedom', instead she wrote, 'hindus and muslims fought soldier to soldier...'

free falling

whenever i am climbing down the stairs i have this fear that i'll fall. i can see my feet desperately searching for a footing as i am flying down the staircase. there i am at the bottom of the flight, lying prostrate with my hands and legs outstretched and my nose squashed to the ground.

thank god for lifts.

nancy drew can screw

your mind, i mean. if you have read her in school, you know what exactly i mean. well, while reading her adventures, it seemed she had the most happening life. thankfully the delusion lasted through 5th and 6th standard only. and i realised that Drew never did any investigation proactively. things just happened to fall in place, as per her convenience.
but Drew didnt vanish from my life without taking a toll on me. i thought i too should investigate the happenings around me. so my adventures began.
in my school there was this big glass and wood almirah which housed all the shields and trophies our school had won in inter-school competitions. just behind the almirah was a door. it was only visible when you stood at an angle from the almirah. between the almirah and the door, there was just enough space for a person to slide in. that is where my imagination took flight. there's a secret door leading to a room where the convent hides all the black money. i will bring it to light. over the next few weeks i kept an eye on the door. nothing much yielded. one day when the corridor seemed a bit deserted, i slid behind the door. my heart was beating in my mouth. i turned the knob of the door. it swung on its hinges. inside was a washroom. washroom?!!!
chaste and virtuous that the nuns were, their washroom in the school permises was also hidden away. so that no-one could know what business they are about when they answer the nature's call, and imagine them in a position doing the same. i guess so.
anyways, personally i moved on to sherlock holmes. and was never ambitious enough to emulate his doings.

b e l o n g

when you visit a gathering where you do not belong? you can see everyone having fun, enjoying themselves, laughing at stupid jokes. but you are just watching. it's not that you are comfortable sitting there and watching. i am not. most of the times. it's not that i want to belong. i dont. i just want to escape from such a situation. like vanish from there. not be there. why? i dont know why. i mean, i dont even want to make the effort to belong. i would rather sit alone and enjoy by myself. you could say i can have fun seeing them enjoying. but isn't that the most stupid thing to do. watching others having fun, when i can have fun on my own.