The First Poster I Made :)

The Story So Far

This Year

Love poems by Pablo Neruda.
Secret yet in the open.
First date.
Happy but tormented.

Last Year
It was real.
It was intense.
But then breaking point.

Third Year
Rejection.
Heartbreak yet again.
Dark and chilly winter nights.
A huge suitcase.

Second Year
First taste of love.
Obsession.
Heartbreak.
I thought I would never recover again.

First Year
Puppy Love.
Oh how smitten I was.
Oh how I adored her and looked up to her.

Class Eleven and Twelve
Books.
Sleepovers.
Monster.
Cristiano Ronaldo.
Inspiring.
Unending love.
Best friend.
She single handedly turned my world around.

Class Nine
No music.
Only Sports. 
She was the sports captain of her school.


Class Six
I swear she looked like Britney Spears to me.

Does Time Really Heal?

It had almost been eight months since I'd seen her last. I thought of the last conversation we’d had. It had ended with a mighty ‘fuck you’. Those were the last words I'd heard her lips say. By this time, the two of us had already reduced to nothing more than abusive fights; it had become too much of a mess to clean up. There was nothing left to salvage.

My decision to move to Mumbai from Delhi was not a calculated one but it had come at a time when I needed it the most. The days after she walked out of my life had been painful and gruesome. I was on the verge of suicide. Somehow Delhi had become too painful for me to handle. Every place I went to reminded me of her. The songs on the radio, the panawadi near Panchsheel Flyover. Everything. It had become impossible for me to live as a functioning being. But I had made deliberate efforts to stay away from her. It took every fibre in my body to stop myself from messaging her and telling her that it’s ok and that I love her. ..

Standing outside Hauz Khas metro station, I was in two minds if I should meet her after so much time at all. There were instances where I even thought of calling her up and feign a headache and cancel our meeting.  But I didn’t.

My heart skipped a beat as I saw the familiar gray Maruti Zen pull up.  She rolled down the car window. I bent down and said hello. The smiles were genuine but had traces of heartbreak.

I got in. The seat was as comfortable as I had remembered it last. The radios dial at an arm’s length. The initial awkwardness ebbed away as with each passing moment, stories of days gone by gave way to shy smiles and finally hearty laughter. This is the thing. This is it. The two of us share this nameless connection that cannot be of this worldly place. We loved with a love that was more than love.

As we took the familiar road towards her house, I realized how every place in the city was in some way or the other associated with her. With us. There, we’d had momos for the first time together; there, we’d gone to watch a play; there, on that road, we were caught by the traffic police because we were driving on the wrong side because we had too little petrol to take a U-turn for the Petrol Pump. The entire city screamed of memories too loud for my head to suppress.

When we reached her house, no sooner had we entered her room when she switched the stereo on; a ritual that hadn’t changed I observed. And then I noticed something else. I noticed every small detail about her that I realized I had missed for the last eight months. The way her kajal always smudged and seemed to run from underneath her eyes. The peculiar way she lit the cigarette with her lips pursed so dangerously inside her mouth. Her cravings for ice. They way she gesticulated with her long hands flying all over the place. The way her face contorted with worry when she was past her curfew time and the way she called home and lied that she would reach within five minutes even though she was a good forty minutes away from her place.

Yes I had missed her terribly

But things were different now. Seeing her in front of my eyes at that moment, after almost eight months of separation made me realize that despite the nights filled with tears and hatred, despite the unbearable pain I sometimes thought would end only with my life, I was just glad she was in  my life again. What I have is too important to lose.

So that night, we took out the bottle of Goan tequila, and drank to the days gone by, to memories that would last lifetimes and the beginning of an everlasting friendship.

We cuddled and slept.

Still the same.

Conflict Resolution

IGNORING IT       GIVING IN

SPLITTING THE DIFFERENCE

WIN/LOSE     COOPERATING

Love Sonnet XVII by Pablo Neruda

Simply because I have been in love for the past four months.

All the symptoms are there:

I dream of you when I sleep,         

I search for you in my waking hours.

Yes I am in Love.

Hence, Neruda!

I don’t love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don’t know any other way of loving

but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,

so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.

Love is Love

Its an ordinary hot day in an ordinary city garden. Lovers find respite and an excuse to get close under the shade of trees. A girl sits waiting patiently for her lover, tormented by anger, sadness and insecurity. A shower of red rose petals two minutes later, chases all of them away. At last, her lover, with her long slender neck and her delicate smile stands in front of her. 

Love is love. 

Love sees no religion.  

Love sees no caste. 

Love sees no race. 

Love sees no colour. 

Love sees no gender. 

Love, is love.

The Bus Ride

“Do you want to have Coca-Cola?”

“Huh”. Sunita was stirred from her reverie and she realised that the bus had stopped at a roadside dhaba. The other passengers had gotten off. Some were nibbling on stale potato chips while a few others ran to the ramshackle loo.

Her husband, Rajesh asked again “do you want coca-cola?”. She replied ‘No” absentmindedly. “It’s ok. Don’t be shy. I am your husband now. You can tell me anything. If you feel hungry. If you feel thirsty. Do you want to use the bathroom? The next stop is the city. That’s another three hours away. It’s better if you go now. Or at least eat something.”

“No. I’m fine,” replied Sunita and went back ruminating.

“You don’t speak much do you?” sighed Rajesh but she wasn’t really paying attention.

It was true that she had lost her appetite ever since the wedding day. Her relatives from as far as three villages away had come to partake of the feast. Everyone was dressed in their finest clothes. The children ran around playing hide and seek as their parents took second, third helpings of the pulao and chicken curry and gulab jamun and sherbet. Such a grand spread was never seen.  Women came up to Sunita to give her their blessings. “Your life is made beti” they said. And why not. Her husband worked in the big city as a cook in a big bungalow. And his employers had even given him a nice room within the vicinity of the big house, right next to the garden. What’s more, he had saved enough money to buy a motorbike and he had paid for the entire marriage banquet. He had no vices that plagued others of his age. He was young and handsome with a moustache that gave him the look of a Hindi film hero. Her friends were beside themselves with jealousy. Her life really was made.

Or was it?

No sooner had this thought run through her head when the drone of motorbikes startled her. Everyone held their breath as the dust storm moved closer and closer. Pretty soon they  reached the roadside shack of a restaurant and started demanding money from the shopkeeper and the other passengers. No one dared to move or even protest since one of them was carrying a pistol. Before she could figure what was happening she saw, as Rajesh in one quick leap, pounced on the man carrying the pistol. The bystanders as if roused from a hypotonic state quickly rounded off the other gang members. Sunita watched her three-day new husband give a punch here and a kick there. In no time the passengers succeeded in giving a sound trashing to the miscreants. By the time the police arrived at the scene, they had been done in and piled in a mangled heap.

The police congratulated Rajesh for having shown presence of mind at such a testing time.

Remembering his wife suddenly, he ran inside the bus to check if she was okay. When Sunita saw Rajesh the words just came tumbling out her mouth “My parents lied to you. I can’t cook everything. I can’t make chapattis. When I was sixteen I fell in love with my neighbour’s boy but they moved to another village. Sometimes when I’m alone at home I dance in front of the mirror...” Rajesh looked at her with amused eyes. She smiled back. “I don’t like coca-cola but if they have water I can do with a bottle.”

“I’ll just get one” said Rajesh grinning as he ran to the dhaba.

New Girl in the City

With crime rates against women being lower than most of the other metropolitan cities in India, Mumbai is a great city to live in if you’re a young single and independent girl. You might be moving to the city because you’ve joined a college or a job here. Whatever the reason may be here are a few tips to help you get a fair idea about what you’re getting into:

Accommodation:

You can choose between taking a flat or a PG (paying guest). Let me warn you. It is super expensive to live in Bombay. Most landlords demand a hefty security deposit or a year’s rent in advance. Besides this, you have the brokerage to pay and the society membership fees which can run up to thousands. There are areas to suit everyone’s budget. The farther you move from town the cheaper it gets.  In case, you’re a student, colleges provide lists of PG accommodations.

Transport:

You can’t compare the Delhi Metro but Mumbai is well connected by way of the local trains, buses, taxis, auto rickshaws and radio taxis. The Mumbai local train is divided into three routes – Central, Western and Harbor Line. You then proceed to auto-rickshaws if you’re in the suburbs or taxis if you’re in the town area.  Buses go everywhere. Ask around for the route numbers from your friends and neighbours.

Food:

You can survive if your ceiling is leaking. You can survive if you get shoved, pushed or tugged in the local train but you cannot survive if you’re unable to adjust to the food here. This is true for any place. Mumbai offers a variety of foods to suite your palate. There’s the regular north Indian food that you’re used to, south Indian, Continental, Marathi etc. Mumbai is paradise for street food lovers but everything you get here has potato or the beloved batata. And pau (bun/bread). They love the batata and pau. So you have the vada pau, cutlet pau, samosa pau and so on. And the best part is that it’s cheap. You can have all this for under thirty rupees.

Language:

Along with Marathi and Gujrati, English and Hindi are freely spoken in Mumbai. You might have to learn to sprinkle your conversations with a little Marathi here and there just to win the favour of the locals. E.g. Potato is not aloo, its batata; onion is not pyaaz but kaandha. I suggest you pick these up and use them in your day to day activities be it while talking to your rickshaw driver or the aunty sitting next to you in the train. It establishes a sense of familiarity and you’re more likely to have new experiences and learn more things every time you go out.

Entertainment/Leisure:

A quite walk down the Versova Beach or a wild girls night out to Firangi Pani, bonding over drinks at Sunlight or having a double espresso to cure a hangover the next morning at Chai Coffi, Mumbai has beaches, restaurants, bars and nightclubs to suit everyone’s leisure interest.

Advice:

When you move to any city, the key is a positive attitude. Be open to people and respect the culture you’re moving into. Take it as an opportunity to broaden your horizon. You’ll find there’s something new to learn every day.

My First Photo Essay!

To the students of St.Xavier’s and XIC, he is the charming young man behind the Frankie stand who serves the tastiest rolls, but Nagesh Nair is more than your average Frankiewala!
          Originally from Karnataka, his parents moved to Mumbai while he was still a child. Like all immigration stories, life wasn’t easy for him. The eldest of four children, Nagesh started working in the College canteen at the age of ten.  He says he had never imagined that he would one day own his own stall in the place where he served tea.

          But he has reached this height after much hard work and with sheer determination. He passed his HSC studying in a Night School because he had to work during the day. He further gained a Diploma in Hotel Management from Kohinoor Institute of Catering, Dadar.

          It was almost after five years of travelling and working in five star hotels across India that Nagesh finally opened his own stall in Xavier’s canteen two years ago. When asked about his future plans, the shy 27 years old says that he would one day like to own a franchise with branches all over the city.

Here’s wishing him all the luck!

Pune-My First Out-Station Shoot

When I boarded the plane for Pune on 5th January 2011, my excitement knew no bounds. Besides the fact that i was going for my first ever out-station shoot, two additional factors contributed to this:

a) The three days of shoot in Delhi had given me a taste of what it feels like to be on ‘the sets’ and I totally loved it. Going to Pune was going to be awesome fun and being in an outdoor shoot was going to be double/triple the fun.

b) It was freakin cold in Delhi and Pune at 29 degrees was practically like summer!

Honestly, I never thought too much about Pune. I had never been there and it wasn’t like I was dying to go there like Kerala or Ladakh. I always thought it would be like any other small town in the process of turning into a city. I wasn’t expecting much. But I was totally wrong. I fell in love with Pune from the moment we met the driver who had come to pick us up at the airport. This blog entry is in fact a small homage to Mahavir-who loved to eat, loved music, loved life and most importantly loved Pune and everything about it. His enthusiasm and his love for the city made us fall in love with it too. He struck a chord with us from the moment he took us to this obscure place called Durga Bhuwan, where the three of us devoured the most awesome Biryani ever.

We would’ve never found this place on our own. We were so happy with him we told the cab company to send him the next day too.

The first two days were spent just moving around the city and meeting the people we would be interviewing. And since the film was about a topic as sensitive as schizophrenia, the three of us left Delhi with a determination of seriousness. In fact I had started being pensive from the moment I stepped on the plane. But all this changed the moment we met our protagonist.She was, is, the opposite of everything you will expect from someone ‘suffering’ from schizophrenia. She’s an amazing artist and one of the coolest people I’ve ever met with plenty of stories to keep me hooked.

I was nervous about the shoot to say the least. The three-days shoot in Delhi was fun for me because I was working with people I already knew and I knew in the back of my head that if something went wrong they would be there to make it right. But in Pune, I would have had to handle everything on my own.

As is normal in a shoot, several things did go wrong; from the fact that the equipment we had asked not being there to cultural differences with the local crew. Yes, I did have headaches and lost my cool several times and yes I did pick up a piece of glass from the garbage because all glass shops were closed in pune, never mind it was never used; but when we packed up on the 9th, I can say for sure that I had understood the things that goes behind managing a shoot a whole lot better, even in a place I had never been to before.

I am proud of myself!

The Mush Monster in all Her Gore

For the Reluctant Lover (',')
You can run, you can hide but the Mush Monster will hunt you down and kill you with bare mush!

Steps I am Taking to Stop Myself from Killing Myself

Is it just me or does everyone feel more and more like a purposeless leaf drifting to nowhere particular as you get older? I’m 22, studied in one of the best schools in India and one of the top five college in the country; what next? Find a “well-paying job” and before you know it, life is over. If life is indeed going to be this bland, or this difficult, or this frustrating and if life is really going to be this hard to please, isn’t it better to just say goodbye to this world? What’s here to stay for anyway? There’s war, people are dying every day of unimaginable hunger, young girls get trafficked…I mean isn’t it all this just depressing? Add to this personal failures, the constant need to please people. Then is it not better to end your life right now than to go through another 40 to 50 years of misery?

I’m not advocating suicide; I’m just trying to look at things as they really are. Somehow the reasons to die seem to outnumber the things to live for. Why do you think god gave us free will? Just think about it, out of the million odd species he made humans are the only one who have this privilege. God gave us free will so that if ever there should be a time when it gets unbearable, you can end your life.

Recently this feeling has been so strong that I sometimes wish I would just die in my sleep. It’s not a very pleasant feeling. So I have come up with a list of things to do to in this lifetime to stop me from actually doing the act.

Convent Education Almost Ruined Me : A Theory

I

My school is the best thing that happened to me, and also the worst. I studied in an all-girls' school all my life. I never went to any nursery or pre-school; it was home school and straight off to kindergarten and after thirteen years of knee length socks and pigtails I entered into the big bad world, full of confidence and grit my institution had trained and equipped me with. I was a strong young lady ready to take on the world with a storm. But boy was I in for a surprise; for the world is also occupied by another type of the Homo sapiens species viz males. Opposite of females, the likes of me.

When I stepped into college I discovered that even thirteen years of maths and history and geography and science could not have prepared me enough for my fear of the opposite sex. Yes! You heard it right-FEAR. Incontrollable, heart-thumping, tongue-slipping, beads of sweat running down your forehead kinda fear. I felt like a freak. I was a normal girl in every single way-not too ugly to look at, intelligent enough to sustain a conversation, deep enough with several interesting stories to relate. Even broad minded when it came to peoples' choice of lovers. It being an all-girls' school and all that, if you know what I mean! I’d seen it all. I understood it all. This is why I was a bit surprised when I hadn’t fallen in ‘love’ even by the second year of college. It took me almost one and a half years to figure where I was going wrong.

II

Hmmm...Now the theory: I grew up in an environment that was devoid of any male contact. My dad left home when i was about nine and my brother was younger than me. There were just just five male teachers in my school. The sixth one got kicked out cuz he was kinda perverted. During our biology exams he would offer extra writing sheets regardless of us asking for it, just as long as we were drawing a diagram of the Reproductive System. All the essays that he made us write were about women's sexual abuse. We all complained about him. When he got kicked out, it was like we had won a small war, the feminist seed in our subconscious minds attaining shoots and roots. There was also this young college guy who'd come to teach us temporarily. He might have been teaching us a chapter on the rules governing sound but all that we girls heard were the sound of the butterflies flapping their wings in our stomachs.


Once we hit 6th grade the prettier ones started getting boyfriends, sometimes even the ugly ones. I got into a lot of trouble and was in the Principal's office every three months but when it came to boys I used to be oh-so-holier-than-thou-art kinds. We were the kinds who really took our grandmothers seriously when she told us that we would get pregnant if we allowed a boy to even touch us. Therefore I never so as much even glanced at the pretty boys, even when we were made to sit next to them when attending inter-school competitions. Our hearts longing for a box of chocolates too, a hand to hold while taking a stroll around the Mall Road. But it was a sin!!


Besides, we were just so happy and gay amongst ourselves! We didn’t have time for boys. We were too busy crying over Mills and Boons and A Walk to Remember. We were too busy being bitter and bitching about girls with boyfriends behind their backs. They were such whores. We were busy studying; working on our brains cuz we didn’t possess beauty. We were busy listening to and worshipping Pink and Avril for so beautifully giving words to the adolescent angst inside us; too busy drooling over the Backstreet Boys and Westlife and Britney spears because we didn’t have lives of our own. Yes Britney too. There was something safe and reassuring about loving celebrities. They would not ignore you like that guy did. Who cares if you fell totally in love with him just because you saw him in a school play? If he is not even aware of your existence let alone about your attraction to him. But you would sit and crib over his alleged affair with his Barbie counterpart from your school and your journal entries were only curses directed at that bitch girl who stole him from you. You don’t have the guts to say anything to him on his face but who knows you could've and had it not been for that bitch the two of you could've walked into the sunset hand in hands...blah - blah - blah - bullshit.

III

Okay, getting back on track.

I was taught the highest possible of ideals when I was in school. I was taught that you cannot settle for anything less than perfect. Consequence, even when I grew up I looked for the same virtue in a boy. But obviously everyone knows that there is no such thing as a perfect boy. I had a list.

“Should know how to play a musical instrument

 should be able to sing

 should know how to dance

 should not be too fair

 should be intelligent

 should not be short tempered

 should not wear tight groin-hugging jeans (yuck!)

 Should not be an asshole.”

I’m not kidding. This was my actual list. It’s in my journal! 

So the theory is that because I was sooo obsessed with perfection and finding the perfect guy, I never bothered or took out the time to even talk to any boy if he didn't meet any of my requirements. It's a well-known fact that unless you spend time with a person you will never know about the person they really are. And unless you know a person you can never fall in love with them. I could never even make a guy friend. I had learned to view the boys as nothing more than the opposite sex fit only to be husbands or dads or brothers or boyfriends. Never 'only a friend'. Whenever I spoke to a boy my mind would be racing, thinking of things to tell or responses. I'm sure I chased away a lot of boys because of my comatose reactions.

So I remained Loveless and Boy-Friendless for a looong time. But the same Institution had also instilled in me a quality to learn from the mistakes we make. I took it as a challenge and today, I can talk to any boy without feeling even an iota of awkwardness!

But you see the connection?  

When I'm High on Cannabis - A Poem!

Don gimme me no lovin’

Don gimme no food.

When I’m high on cannabis

Just music and a diary will be good.

My mind just opens up

When I’m high on pot.
And tells me stories

Too fast for my hands to jot.

As I groove to the music

And close my eyes.

I can feel it go to my bones

Making my heart a bit more wise.

When I try to describe the feeling,

I find myself stumped.

For my soul is wandering,

In seven million places and once.

Just music and a diary will be good

When I’m high on cannabis,

Don need no food.

Don need no lovin’.

Kids - Never Shave Your Eyebrows

I’ve done a lot of stupid stuff in my life. Needless to say majority of them have been embarrassing and some even downright humiliating. Like the time I went for my first Christmas party in Delhi and it was only towards the end that I realized that my fly was open. Or the time I threw a fit with my mother because I wanted to shave my head bald.

But there’s one episode that stands out or rather cuts through. The year is 1999 and I was in class five. I was doing pretty well in school. I was a prefect. A public figure in school if you must. Then one fine day, my head intoxicated with beliefs of indestructibility that can come only with the authority one gains from being a prefect, I proceeded to trim my eyebrows. I had a very Christian upbringing where I was not allowed to apply kohl even till I passed out from school. Rebelliousness in such a stifling environment is only natural and different people have different ways to act it out. I could’ve just cut my wrists. But no! I had to shave my eyebrows.

It was like that moment in How I Met Your Mother, where Marshall shaves the middle of his head on his wedding day. At least that could be covered with a hat. But I had no device, no piece of clothing to hide my trimmed eyebrows. Damage control. I decide to cut off the front off my hair into bangs so that the eyebrows are hidden. I don’t have to spell it out. The bangs were an even bigger disaster. When I cut on one side the other side seemed longer; when I cut that side the first side seemed longer. So after several rounds of trimming my bangs looked disastrous to say the least. Not only did it look like a lawnmower had done a job on my eyebrows but my bangs also looked like it had been cut by a blind barber!

When my mom came home that evening I looked like this:

As you can see I tried my best to cover my shaved eyebrows with my mutilated bangs. But to no avail. I received quite a thrashing from my mother that evening. But it was nothing in comparison to the embarrassment I had to face the next day in school. Throughout the day I carried in vain, a stunned expression with raised eyebrows, or rather what used to be my eyebrows, all in an effort to hide my shame. But I always inevitably ended up relaxing my facial muscles thereby exposing my mowed eyebrows.

Twelve years have passed since that distressful event and my eyebrows have grown back since then. And as the Azerbaijani proverb says ‘I tried to draw the eyebrow, but I ended up poking the eye.’

I have learnt my lesson.