Regret

Dear X, I am writing from a deep, dark place of regret. This word, regret, is really a lullaby. It helps you grasp the night with hands so clean and explains the world and never explains anything. I know how you died (just a little). And now, you are myunshaped form, the unfinished being, my Golem, my husk. So, dear X, dear dearly departed, you must know that for a world so hollow, you must also be hollow. Turn over that centre to us. Everyone has a centre. A brilliant flaming centre that tethers one to hope and love and peace and some measure of tranquil sorrow. You said that you could never find yours. And so I must write to you from a deep, dark place of regret. I know how you died (just a little).

Seven more days, and I am going home.

Khaa, aro khaa! Koto khaabi khaa!

I have been reading a bit. Good, bad, downright trash. (Ruskin Bond, A Suitable Boy, Hunger Games... Fifty Shades?) Gives me something to do, really, instead of focusing all my energy on harping on and on about being looonely, and being saaaad, and being whiiiiiiiny. Seriously, enough with the whining!

Apart from reading, I have been eating out a lot. Visited Goa Bhawan (Niwas?), had good chicken peri-peri, pork vindaloo, steaming fresh buns... and a dicey dessert called dodol. Went to Banga Bhawan, and had mutton kabiraaji, luchi, mutton kosha, aloor dom, cholaar daal, roshogolla, ityadi. Yum. Panda Wok, as usual, was brilliant. Sauntered by the Czech Embassy, gawked at the huge fishes in Bangla Sahib, refused to climb up and down the stairs at Agrasen ki Baoli, rode home in an auto with a huge bean bag that threatened to suffocate the two of us. Spent one rainy evening in high spirits, with whiskey and peyaaji. Found a choper dokaan, and stuffed myself to the gills. Rambling, this is. But it did rain. And there is a cake shop. With chocolate layers that are sinful. 

I will try to write about something else next time. Not food.

Monsoons

Monsoon in Delhi: skies darker than your darkest nightmare, bursting, crackling, obscenely pregnant, swirling  and rumbling, and soon dissipating into wisps of feathery clouds. It never rains hard enough to pound the unruly earth into submission.

I hate arguments. I hate it when you apply your pretty little heads and come up with conflicting theories on everything that goes on in this world. I hate opinions. I hate the strong, and I don’t pity the weak. How does it feel to have your voice drown out all the others? In the survival of the fittest, there’s nobody left to be beautiful.

Dadu

Dadu, I miss you. The last time I saw you, you did not recognise me. Your eyes were dim, you had forgotten how to speak. Shrunken and silent, you were not the grandfather I had known for twenty-four years. I prayed to God that you find relief from this pain as soon as possible. I am happy that He listened to me. I am happy that you are now ensconced in a safe, secret and beautiful place. The world will never see someone as gentle, kind and loving as you ever again. Here I am, sitting in office, while everyone who loved you has been mourning for you since last night. A terrible pain clutches at my heart as I type out this letter for you. Am I letting you down? It is so hard being away from loved ones.

Remember me as that little girl who walked around pretty little parks with you, listening to your tales about an idyllic world of fishing boats and nets.

Rest in peace, Dadu. I love you.

Hamlet

Said Hamlet to Ophelia,
I'll draw a sketch of thee,
What kind of pencil shall I use?
2B or not 2B?


-Spike Milligan

F*ck it all, I am going home. And I don't want to return.

Food Glorious Food.

SO. I have started growing up, and getting fatter. I sit at my desk for anything between 7-14 hours and keep putting on weight. Hopefully, the fourteen hour days are at an end. Next, I have discovered the joys of cooking. As a beginner I have religiously followed recipes borrowed from here and there, but mostly dictated by Ma over the phone. It began with bhaat, dal, khichuri. I graduated to vegetables soon after. I learnt to cook dhyarosh first, followed by cauliflower, brinjals, lau, cabbage. Very basic stuff. Then came chilli-chicken (pucca Bangali, see?). Yesterday, thanks to a Nigella Lawson recipe(via a colleague because dear people, I don't even remember what a television set looks like), I made an impromptu chicken casserole with  sweet potatoes, broccoli, carrots, onions, cream, oranges, salt-pepper-butter-oregano and some more salt-pepper-butter-oregano. It turned out perfectl, with a little help from my friends. I know for a fact that I would have never ventured into the kitchen in Calcutta to cook an entire meal for myself or others. For now I shall work hard, cook much, and get fatter.
So, yeah. I am happy. :)

31st December spent with friends, food, laughter. Exactly the way I like it. :)

One day I'll melt away. I'll be the girl with tired eyes; I will be the girl with sad eyes. I'll be the one who wasted her life holed up in this glass and steel mansion of nothingness and meaninglessness. I'll be like a million others who have swallowed their real selves and pursued shadows. Sometimes, I think. Sometimes I can't remember how to think. Sometimes, sometimes, I wish I was young once more...

46 days have dwindled to three. Yet, these are the three longest days of my life. My life? Do I honestly have a life anymore? Is having a life all about hammering away on the keyboard for fourteen hours a day till your fingers ache and back aches and your head feels fit to split like a watermelon? Gah. Must. Not. Crib.
Must. Be. Strong.
Must. Overcome.

On Calvin and Hobbes.

I have not grown up with Calvin and Hobbes. As a child I always made it a point to read Blondie, Garfield and skip Calvin. It did not appeal to my sense of colour, and I couldn't understand much of it anyway. Years later, in college, I got started. I was hooked. I am glad that I discovered Calvin and Hobbes a little late. It is better this way. Even now I never read too many at a go. Why spoil surprises? It's a magical world after all.

I recently came across Watterson's speech, 'SOME THOUGHTS ON THE REAL WORLD BY ONE WHO GLIMPSED IT AND FLED'. Go, read?

'Did you ever wonder if the person in the puddle is real, and you're just a reflection of him?'

Our little blue car

Ma told me yesterday that Baba has finally decided to sell the car. A man from the garage arrived to take it away. I could not say goodbye to our old, blue, second-hand Maruti 800. I don't have a single photo of it either. It arrived one fine day, ten years ago. Baba had bought it without telling us, from a colleague. The car was in fantastic condition. Dada installed a fine stereo system. We went to Millennium Park to celebrate. Bought jaljeera ice-cream, something Walls had introduced that summer. Some days later, we went to Aquatica, Dada had by then learnt to drive a car. It was a thrilling/scary ride. We rode to Krishnanagar in that car, to Kalyani. I remember reading Harry Potter and listening to Kishore on those long trips. I remember heading towards my tuition classes, scribbling down answers for homework submissions, racing against time. The soft velvety seats. The towel thrown over the driver's seat, the cute soft doll that hung from the rear-view mirror, the eagle whose wings wobbled. Stepping out of the car at Howrah, and stepping into Rajdhani on 25th June, 2011.

Aar konodin reverse'e gelei 'Jingle Bells' shona hobe na. :(

Dillibilli

Delhi, leaving aside its architectural marvels, the sweeping roads and countless markets, is a place that is deliberately hurtful. MSWord helpfully extends a list of synonyms: upsetting, unkind, cruel, spiteful, cutting, wounding, insensitive… The only saving grace is that I have my friends around. I have a fantastic room-mate in D who’ll prod me into eating when I sulk, who’ll light up the house with diyas, who’ll return to Delhi every time with a bagful of cookies and cakes. Yet, sometimes I see worry creasing her brows, and I think about how we named her Giggleburi, and how slowly, but surely, she smiles lesser and lesser these days. There is A with his all encompassing love, his non-stop stream of witty gibberish and poems that go both forward and backward. Yet there are spurts of sulky silences. When both of us know that nothing we say can make us feel any better. We just have to grin and bear it.

There’s S and there is G with their unselfish, take it as it comes way of life. They have restored a bit of sanity to both me and D, sheltering us, quite literally when we landed here. Otherwise, I am pretty sure, my sissy sensitive self would have cried buckets every night before going off to sleep mulling over upon how the maid and the guard and the mother dairy man and the jhaaroo-wala and the countless rickshaw-walas and the plumber and the electrician and even the man selling EGGS misbehave. Rudeness is their religion. Screaming, their normal conversational tone. Cheating, and lying? Why, these are honest ways to earn their living. I know that Calcutta is not the perfect place on earth, and I know that in Calcutta one would still meet scumbags, but this place is oozing with them. Growing up is not pleasant if all it teaches you to do is to grow fangs and sink them deep into one and all before they get a chance to strike at you. That’s how you live here: you kick and scream murder before the other person does that to you. You also learn the art of glib, oily smiles. At least my workplace is wonderful. Deadlines can drive you crazy, but there are so many known faces all around. And the book you have worked so hard for, now printed and bound and nestling in your palms, feels like heaven. Forgive the wonky grammar and the countless punctuation marks. It is a deliberate departure from what I do for a living. (livelihood, income, wage, source of revenue, alive, breathing, existing, live)

Write, stupid keyboard, write. Type, aching fingers, type. Think, lolling head, think.

NOT.

46 days. 4 and 6.

Dammit, where is the fast-forward button?

I was lost when I met you

I was lost

when I met you on the road

to Larissa

the straight road between the cedars

You thought

I was a man of the roads

and you loved me for being such a man

I was not such a man

I was lost

when I met you on the road

to Larissa

-L.C.

It's mostly alright except when the bus takes a sudden turn and I think, this is like Salt Lake, and maybe, just maybe, it will take me to my own doorstep in about fifteen more minutes.

I miss home.

This is growing wild.

This is growing wild:

lightning swallows whole

the sky

the sky

is a waterfall

on streets

on streets

that can’t drink

and I think

this is growing wild.