Taking Root

I had my first ‘being alone’ moment today as I grappled with a lid to a fussy jar of pasta sauce. I scrunched up my face and even did a little dance to no avail. I danced around my tiny one bedroom-kitchen-half a hall apartment hoping that by some stroke of luck, the cap would undo itself. Out of pity if nothing else.

After ten minutes of acute hunger and fitful dancing, I gave up.

Half-heartedly, I knocked on my landlord’s door. A kindly Coorgi gentleman, he would make his tch-tch face at the sauce bottle. He’s not a fan of packaged foods. He’s clearly not a fan of how I do things. If I ever miss a parent, I usually land up there for lunch.

But the universe seemed to conspire against my will to cook—no one answered the door. I trudged back, intensely annoyed that I’d have to skip dinner. I needed another pair of hands. Dare I say it—a pair of man hands. (And then I ducked to miss the well-aimed, vitriolic feminist spittle)

This is exactly the kind of predicament my mother says would be averted if I got married. “You’d have someone to travel with,” she says, tickling my travel bone, knowing where it tickles most. The opened bottle of reedy pasta sauce would only be a bonus.

But what beyond travel plans? Can he make good bhindi? Maybe Shaadi.com should think about a bhindi box. Or one for Spanish omelettes.

Living alone is a revelation. I’ve done so little of it, that it remains an enigma to me how people have done it their entire lives. Be content for who they are, in the absence of a mirror or another person to talk to.

Sometimes it seems the fridge is trying to have a conversation with me. When all else falls silent, it hums and creaks like an old, old man. Frozen on the inside.

The silence falls like wet blanket. It gets darker quicker under the canopy of trees that makes little squares of the sky. If I listen close then I can hear the crickets, the night guard, the baby in the balcony across the road, the water falling from the slanted roof onto the pebbles. Even a guiltless fart once in a while.

I look at the little signs I’ve collected over these two months—a cut knee from trying to rush out of an auto, a dented nail from cutting the bhindi too fine, a backache from picking up clothes from all parts of the tiny house. And the bills, always the bills.

The thing about living alone is that there’s so much time to reflect on who you are, or who you’re trying to be. Not just in a pseudo-intellectual, philosophical battle with your brain, but even on an everyday level. It’s made me re-think my dependence on people, family, friends, the need to prove to myself and the world that I’m a ‘social being’. For now, I’m happy donning the new city cloak and turning invisible, unpalatable, unreceptive. I like the feeling of being dissolved.

One Sunday

We lay limp like fruits on a dry summer day

Under the sheets our mangled bodies cresting with the pain of being together.

The heave and sigh, the pull and tug, of breathing too hard, or too little.

The love of my life whispering inaudibly in my ear.

I cannot hear him well, or at all

My body writhing with the pain of being here this moment, and being faithful

On five inches of bed we lay, unwrapped and unzipped

We’re all hair and sweat and clothes and life

There’s very little blood and passion

Sometimes there’s too much

I can’t decide which I like better

The dry, limp wilt of a brain slipped with heat

Or the crazy, heated exchange of low clouds before rain.

He rests his head on my chest, I on his open palm

We try and breathe together, inhale and exhale in copycat fashion.

It works sometimes, and at other times, we’re disgusted with closeness,

Under heavy sheets of disdain

We wait for rain, we think it’s a better future

When the clouds come, we sing in hope, in love, with tenderness

Yet the mangled body finds no passion, no peace.

We writhe, we touch, we wait for a

Dawn that comes without the promise of clouds or sun.

We lie naked, exposed to the cruel afterlife

After being together, we can’t go back

Innocence is not an option, and we ran past Deliverance,

Handing out free popsicles at the street corner.

Spaces

I lose Bombay to the endless weave of beady lights. A long road running through the heart of the city is lit like a gold necklace--I haven't spent enough time here to ascertain, from thousands of feet above, which one it is. I've always only been a visitor. 

I'm disappointed though that I don't glimpse the uneven neckline of Marine Drive as a heavy cloud cover has between me and the city I can never understand. From far above, the glittering weave of humanity looks wholesome, ever reassuring. Earlier in the day, stuck in a tormented, angry downpour, it seemed vicious and untenable.

I'm finally on a twice-cancelled flight to back home, to Delhi. I welcome the prospect of tress, of a wider road, my own pillow. I marvel at how much I hate and love home at the same time. It's getting to be a definitive conflict. Definitive of character, of an attempt to realise an ultimate personality. But like the city I love (and even those that I despise), it changes and stays constant.

We've already flown over Vadodra, Ahemdabad, Ajmer and are heading towards Jaipur, as the dutiful, chatty pilot informs us.  In between these different weaves of lights are smaller, sparsely lit editions. Citylings. Tier-Twos. Rest of India. Even more abundant are the swathes of black in between. The Rest of India. It's a scary thought.

We only see what we believe. We judge books by their covers. We're covered in bright lights. The Rest of India is covered in dark, with a few highways leading into it. What are these places, my snobbish, city-bred mind wonders. What are these points between dark and light, between self-assuring knowledge and complete, bitter oblivion?

As we get closer, the lights get brighter. They blind us. They block out the black, the little enormous swathes of dark. 

Touchdown.

Of Keen Mind And Angry Heart

Only two words: No Judgement

The expletives aren't necessary. They never are but we like them to make a point. Hence.

What the fuck is a job anyway. Does this make me sound angry? I'm glad it does.

They tell me it's about mopping up the pieces others leave behind. They tell me its about doing the bare minimum. They tell me its about creating a vision for yourself and the company. They tell me its about thinking beyond means. They tell me its about living within my means. They tell me its about getting some means, some meaning, some shape to an endless fucking disappointment of a life.

What the fuck is a job anyway?

Who is a good worker? Is it someone who lets their boss tread all over them and stab them with their knives recently sharpened? Or is it someone who stands up to the daily roughshod attitude and creates a personality at work? Or is about being insignificant enough so there's never any room for trouble? They tell me it's about making your money, being friendly without being friends, about snatching someone's ground from below their feet while you're handing them coffee so that it's a double burn.

Who the fuck is doing their job anyway?

In country that's sinking faster than quicksand sinks itself, who IS doing their job? If they were doing their jobs would we be here? Would we need the media to point out what's wrong? Would media be a slave to money and would money make people's heads turn? Would we be running an endless race of whose going to lose the quickest? Would people watch that race? Do people watch that race?

They tell me its about winning. About being cunning and gentle at the same time. They tell me its about developing a thick skin, a cold heart without being jaded. They tell me I'm getting on their nerves because I ask to many questions, because I'm reluctant, because I'm lazy. Have I been invisible all this while? Or worse yet, have I been an impostor? Because I don't remember ever being lazy or reluctant or an impostor.

Where the fuck did I go wrong?

I refuse to feel sorry for myself. I refuse but it doesn't help. I'm trying in vain. Maybe its my first lesson in failing.

Being Born

This morning I woke up with a severe cramp in my hamstring. I rolled over, hoping it would disappear soon and let me rest a little while more. But I knew it wasn’t one of those things that would pass without me getting up and hopping around for a bit. So I did just that. After all that hopping, I was wide awake. Such a waste.

As you can probably tell, it’s not a new feeling. Every month for a week, over the course of one year, my life stopped. It literally stopped. The only things that moved were the hands of the clock (a metaphor since I use my phone or the computer screen to tell time). Anyone who has ever had a deadline anywhere in the world was better off than us. Or so we thought. We called it, quite ominously, Production Week. For the uninitiated non-newsy folk, it’s when an issue is put to bed. No, not all issues like wars or terrorism or money swindling through Swiss accounts, but a magazine, which obliquely references all the other issues I just mentioned. The first week I joined work, I joined on Production Monday (notice how I sanctify the week by capitalising the initials of every day). I waited from ten to one for my team to show up. I did think it odd for people to start their work days in the afternoon but I kept shut. It was, after all, my FIRST day at my FIRST job. Ever.

I sat leafing through the magazine that was going to soon put an end to my social life, but I didn’t know it then. People began to arrive slowly and a storm began to brew. No they weren’t mean or uppity. They were welcoming and fun and it felt like college, apart from the fact that everything now had real world consequences. Yet I couldn’t stop feeling uneasy. Like a storm was brewing. By the end of that week I knew what it was. It wasn’t one single moment of impact but a whole week’s worth of tireless, mind numbing work that finally curled into a ball at the base of your spine by Friday morning. It’s a feeling where you feel your mind closing in on itself and its walls collapsing. When you are utterly rubbish.

On the metro back home that morning, I felt like the storm had finally blown over and left an upturned tree in its wake. It felt like that tree was an unlikely metaphor for the rest of my life. Quite simply, I was upset that I’d joined in such a hurry. Upset that the first week itself wanted to make me run for cover. That I couldn’t undo what I’d just done. I thought of things like motivation, courage, stamina and where I could find them. The metro ride went by swiftly.

Month after month we followed this routine, drove ourselves insane over commas and full stops and indents and credits. And widows. Oh the widows. (Incase you’re wondering,
this isn’t a widow. Or maybe, well, not anymore. There.)

What’s changed in a year? Everything. Or maybe nothing at all. Maybe what I measure as change is the batting of an eyelid in my editor’s life. Her career has spanned an excess of 20 years. And judging by the number of fires she lights, fans and puts out everyday, make my change time frame a micro granule of a little bacterial life. For me however, in the current moment, a year’s worth of fires is quite enough. No, I make it sound like a rubble of a career so far. Maybe it’s not a career yet, but it’s not complete rubble either. I’ve been a coffee/tea girl, a lousy sub, an average writer with bursts of inspiration, a caption giver, a closet (then open) smoker, a conversation starter, the go-to person and finally, a colleague. I had a wonderful team. Five eccentric people who wouldn’t talk to each other in a party otherwise, thrown together to find common ground. At first I was very worried about fitting in. None of them were like anyone I’d known before. It didn’t help that talking was encouraged. We always talked, all the time, about everything.

If it wasn’t for Production Week, especially Thursday nights, it would’ve been five different people who went to five different parties. The India Today office has a massive roof where we’ve sprawled ourselves on the stone, seething with the night’s heat. It was such a feeling of camaraderie, of common suffering that we bonded over, it made the experience very particular, wholly applicable only to us. A part of me was always itching to go back to my desk and finish the task at hand, but a part of me wanted to stay under the stars and watch the sun come up. I wanted to see what happened if I didn’t deliver, if we just left the building, like they do in Hollywood films, when the super-able protagonist finds a ‘higher’ purpose in life. I’d rehearse it in my head, a motley crew of five against the sun glazed white pillars of Connaught Place, walking out with the first light of day.

But of course, like in all real lives, and in ours too, they all left one by one, making each exit a bigger blow than the last. Chairs emptied out and the ancient PCs stopped their whirring. All talk thinned down to monosyllabic sentences, and became strictly perfunctory in nature. I miss the fact that I can’t look over the fake-wood partition and find three beautiful and self-assured women bang on about how grossly inappropriate their boyfriends were being, or how the state of feminism in India was in shambles or even how silly it was to have these conversations in at three in the morning when we had a magazine to release. On a Production Thursday.

OLD FRIENDS, BOOKENDS.

A night is only as good as its stories. There’s a main story that unfolds, with little ones in its wake. It’s like throwing a pebble onto the surface of the past. It stirs but never settles. Just like a good song, a story is a heartbreak in reverse, it keeps peeling off layers you constructed with patience and some luck. But nothing is more beautiful than how an evening unravels, and we stand just a little further away from where we started.

We can’t look beyond each other. We’re oblivious to who’s watching. We have a story but no words to tell it with.  It lasts for a grand total of five minutes. In reality, it’s lasted much longer. In a parallel dimension to this one, it’s lasted forever.

At another table, He can’t look past her. He’s waiting for a sign, for her to tell her story. Bitter underneath, he asks her why she’s a mystery. She doesn’t hear, and tells him about obscurities and vague generalisations. His face creases with the effort of holding back. To others around, this is spinning to an inevitable end.

Just like an interjection, the past walks in from the right, sweeps us of our feet. I feel inconsequential in light of these new developments. I feel oddly story-less. The others (the new ones too) nod at each other in guised disdain. Theirs wasn’t happy story, some would say. Maybe it’s still being told.

It’s a badly scripted play, for there are awkward gaps in the conversation that even alcohol can’t fill. We take to other intoxicants, but it only makes us worse. Woozy and alarmed, I stand in between the now deeply segregated groups, trying to tell one story from the other. They’ve made shields of their smiles, and I can’t tell despair from joy anymore.

Inside a couple try talking over the music. They’re not the right pair, though she must admit she thought about it once. But he’s part of another story now.  But she’s adamant. If you can’t create your own story, then it’s best to begin writing for other people. The opportunity is thrilling, has a muse-like effect. In her mind, there’s a faint recollection of the last time she tried this. How easy, she thinks to herself, how careless. To conspire for happiness, even if it’s twice removed.

Under the white awning, an ingrate, 20-something couple unwind their life’s desires onto us. It makes us think of stories from when we didn’t have to pretend to be grown up. Maybe I wasn’t quite so tall, think the women. Maybe I wasn’t quite so lame, pray the men.  We watch, amused and maybe a little envious.

The stories come to an abrupt halt when we find ourselves sitting in a line. There aren’t any cross conversations anymore as we sit frozen in our intolerance for each other. Slowly, a white rage rises within me as I see the story-teller walk away with a wink. He was holding it all together, all the stories were strung through him, like the ends of amateur paper-cup phones.

Suddenly, all I could hear was the blankness of an evening run dry, apart from Jim Morrison on loop. We lost a few stories on the way. Maybe they were making new ones, to tell new people on newer nights. Our stories had grown cold with the early morning air, but the birds brought the promise of a different dawn. We drove back into the city where we’ve all lost our hearts, or will do one day. We drove back into the familiar, into the stories we’d left behind. Sprawled on cane, he looked at me, his face creased with pain and smoke. I felt my heart fold.

It wasn’t even an epic setting for our stories. It wasn’t hot and ripe like summer fruit. It wasn’t blisteringly cold like chapped lips. There was no rain, no thunder, no chance for our stories to fester. There wasn’t nearly enough alcohol. They looked like puppets with cut strings, unable to bring it together, to a crescendo. We didn’t rise and fall, there was no beginning or end to the story. Just a mellow re-telling of the human failure to connect.  It’s ironic that a night of so many tales was passed mostly in silence and ill-timed glances.

I look over to my right and I find the oldest story of them all. Of a slap and a love song. That one’s never going to get old.

The Glutton

For you I've always made an exception. I don't even know why. It has nothing to do in the least with how much I wanted to get in your pants. Well that's done with. 

I miss you. I don't even know why. Maybe we're alike. Maybe we're not at all. I can't tell which one it is but it sure as hell is a powerful draw. 

If we are friends, we're a funny sort. I'm overwhelmed by you. I don't even know why. It's taken a million conversations to make one. And the lack of any is making me fidgety. 

I don't even know why.

At the best of times, you're a schmuck. I can see right through you but I pretend not to. I still write my heart out to you at two in the morning, just so that you can smile at this. And hate me for calling you a schmuck.

This is the love letter I never wrote. I do love you. More than you can believe. Hell, more than I'm willing to settle for. I don't even know why.

When you looked at me through the screen, when I took off my clothes for you, I did it for the tiny window that shows up on the side of the monitor. And I couldn't believe my eyes, or what my hands were doing. 

Didn't you see it then, you bastard? I didn't either. That's probably why I'm writing this to you at two in the morning. After five miserable years of knowing of your existence, I'm finally admitting how much I hated myself when I first met you.

Emotional Fool

Shopping for jeans is like getting a mini-heart attack. You pant and sweat and heave and almost collapse from the effort. Your arms begin to spasm as you try desperately to pull them to your waist, without going into a seizure. Your companion(mom/boyfriend/thinner friend) taps politely at the door, hoping that this would be it, that they won't have to dart across the shop to find the dreaded bigger size. And all this time you arch your back, pull your stomach in as rolls of fat hang over the tight button. Then you begin to sweat.

Soaked in perspiration, you emerge out of the trial room, hoping that none of the shop attendants noticed how long you took, and how little you left with. You imagine their pity, their disgust at having wasted so much time. You imagine they're whispering as you walk past entire racks labeled deceptively to attract 'larger' women. You look over longingly at the men's section, where life seems easier. There's no worry about curves, or the lack of them. The girls in skinny jeans stare down at you as you walk with your hands parallel to your thighs, to hide the bulge that shows despite the extra long sweatshirt. The sweat now pricks your neck with the cool of the night. Blinded by tears, you bump into a few happy shoppers who found their sizes. For everything. 

Your blood curdles at them, and you want to punch their shiny faces. Draw blood, seek revenge for years of being called 'fat'. You roll the ugly word around your tongue, taste the venom in it. It's ruined your life. It's ruined every chance at happiness. When someone calls you beautiful, you know they're complimenting your brains. When someone calls you hot, you recoil because you think it's indecent for them to play on your insecurity. If your city was a war zone, then the thin are your enemy. And everyone in between is an interloper who might've crossed over battle lines to get emotional ammo against you. And you're always ready for an attack. 

You're not genetically blessed, you tell yourself. Your thighs are not your fault, you tell yourself. Those jeans aren't meant for real women, only actresses who get paid to look good. It's not in your job profile, you console yourself. And then a gorgeous woman zips by shattering all your illusions and you hit rock bottom again. Fat is guilt, it's a lovely scoring point for the consistently self-obsessed. Fat is a handicap of epic proportions-- it inhibits your mind. Fat is a fuck buddy because you give in eventually. It's the only thing we can control in all certainty, and yet fail to do. Fat is an ugly scar. 

Fat is the buts and the only ifs in your life. Fat is the opposite of action. Fat is fear. It's your demeaning stepmother who hates you. It's the kitchen knife you've contemplated using on your wrists. Fat is not an incident. It's the rest of your life.

Strange Love

It’s a great conversation when it begins
Hands slide into each other, deeper into pockets between conspiratorial mists of time
It’s a Delhi of deep love.
Achingly, they kiss away the night, hoping for a beautiful sunrise.
It comes mottled with fog, unblinkingly severe,
Lost, the hands refrain from touch,
when they do it’s in a clammy embrace.
The skin parts without love, and treachery unfolds.
It’s a Delhi winter of deep despair.