Again . . .

It's summer in Bombay. Sultry heat. Bombay excites me. But now I want to get away. And it depresses me that I just can't get away - there are unfinished tasks and unrealised dreams. I can't get away.

I was spending just another evening with my friend M, wiling away, ruminating and sharing the frustrations of the day. This is my routine now. During our usual rendezvous where M and I shift back and forth in time and space and bring alive the moments of the past and even the future, my thoughts strayed. My thoughts strayed without my permission and went and anchored on a goat. A beautiful goat that I owned once upon a time during a summer. A nameless goat which looked like a deer. It was a beautiful summer. Hot, but not sultry. And I was too young then to know about unfinished tasks and unrealised dreams.

M is always fascinated by the goat episode in my life. She makes me talk about it often, which I enjoy too. M and I inhabit different worlds, and I wonder if there is anything common between us. M has not even gone near a goat, let alone own one! But when I talk about my world which had goats, hens, nosy neighbours, irritant relatives, muddy paths, dusty busrides and all those mundane things which would make a perfect village life, she always listens and nods as if she really understands. She's in Bombay and she wants to get away too. She too has got unfinished tasks and unrealised dreams. I guess that's what binds us together.

My goat. M asked if it was male or female. It was a female goat. Did it really matter? She's always after such irrelevant details. Or maybe, it mattered to her.

My father had bought the goat for four hundred and fifty rupees. And this transaction made me the owner and the goat was bound to accept it. I loved the fact that I owned it. I took pride in taking care of it. It gave me a certain sense of the grown-up, adult world. . . where people take pride in owning others. I used to carry the goat around as if it was a great privilege for it. I still remember its eyes. Helpless. I am a goat, I want to run around, why don't you put me down. But I owned it. I had the right to carry it.

The goat loved my mom and I think my mom even knew what it wanted. But I never saw a relationship grow between them. Maybe, my mother was too old to think about owning a goat, and taking pride in it. Or maybe, she knew very well that being owned is after all not a privilege.

Everyone knew about my goat. It had black spots which made it look like a deer. It was not like the other goats; I could spot it even from a distance, when it was grazing with the other goats. The other nameless goats in a herd. My goat was never part of a herd. It was a part of me. I think I never allowed it to grow beyond me. I had even willingly given up the holiday at my grandma's to be with the goat, to take care of it, to feed it. I remember, it was my first ever responsible relationship, where I held the strings, I called the shots, I made the plans and I was the owner.

Two months and summer was over. I was supposed to give up my goat. The deal was over. I cried. I begged. We then sold it for four hundred rupees. The relationship that began with a transaction ended with one. With a loss of fifty rupees. I wept, I sulked . . . and then, I forgot. Now looking back, rushing back through those seasons that I had left behind, I remember it again . . . and I miss it. And it hurts me even more that it's not the goat that I miss more. . . I miss my own old self . . . I miss those summers . . . I miss my life.

And yet, and yet, I laughed with M when she remarked with her characteristic casual callousness that someone must have killed and eaten it long back. I laughed with M. But something within me bled. I suddenly wanted to hold my goat again. . . just one last time.

--Virtually Yours

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Looking back I can see the five long years unfolding before me, reel by reel, like an unedited movie. From the then to the now. As if I have jumped in time.
Do I want to go back and start all over again? No, I don't. I know, I don't. I cannot afford to give up the fears, the anxieties, the frustrations, the uncertainties, the terrors. . . that I have known and learnt to deal with. Knowing them was like knowing me. There is a bit of myself in every one of those moments and feelings.
I am handcuffed to those moments. Without them I won't be. They are me.

--Virtually Yours

Choices

He woke up and he was dead.
She wanted to wake up too
so that she could die with him.
I knew it.
I held her tight and rocked her
into a deep sleep
from which she never wanted be woken up.
I am awake. I can never sleep again.
She knew it.

Nothing

This nothingness frightens me.
It brings back memories.
This darkness kills me.
It brings back reminders.
I want to run away
to a world without nothing, without memories
where you and me can forget each other.
And become one.
There is nothing, again.

Back from exile... Now warming up...

I was so excited when I began blogging - and see how the enthusiasm weaned away! A silence of some 3 months!! Well, 3 months is a pretty long time and lots have happened in life. I really want to get back and continue writing about those 'lots'! Guess I need a little bit of warming-up before I get on the track, all steady and running. So, am launching right away with some sporadic, random stuff...

2009 has started on many a positive note and I'm basking in them and looking ahead for more! Life hasn't changed drastically for me but I think I have shifted my perspective a little and broadened my horizons. I'm trying to do a whole lot of things together at the risk of performing some really clumsy tasks; nevertheless, it is leaving me happy and contented!

My friend always says that my room is like some 'Bharat Circus camp' - the furniture is never permanent the stuff keep running all around the room! Well, I'd rather take it as a compliment! Another one says it is like a museum - I loved it!! My husband says with a frown, it is like getting lost in Jurassic Park - a comment made in bad taste so I'm not taking it at all! Another equally distasteful fellow wonders, how do you even live here - she's out of the list! Well, I love my room and I love it crowded - gives me a sense of being lived-in. I have a tendency to hoard things - and I'm trying to shake off that habit, at least a little! Hey, wait a minute - my room IS crowded, it's also well-maintained!! :) Btw, why am I talking about this here?? Whatever!!

I had a lovely and very different birthday this year - had a bunch of friends around and had some great coffee-time together instead of the same old cake-cutting blahblah! However, the significant other of my life forgot the day, as always!! Big deal!!Well, I'm not good at dates and gifts either - whoever said women cared about dates and gifts needs a reorientation!

Got a lot of things in my mind and can't decide when and where to begin! Maybe, I should come back tomorrow and start afresh??

As I sign off, want to leave with you a piece of dialogue from Slumdog Millionnaire that refuses to get out of my brain - "You are on a dream run!"

--Virtually Yours

Feast on your life!!

I'm not much of a poetry person. Nevertheless, came across this one by Derek Walcott - and I quite liked it!

The time will come
When, with elation,
You will greet yourself arriving
At your own door, in your own mirror,
And each will smile at the other's welcome,

And say, sit here, Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
To itself, to the stranger who has loved you

All your life, whom you ignored
For another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

The photographs, the desperate notes,
Peel your image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

~ Derek Walcott ~

Loved it!! Yes, Feast on your life! And, let me add, "don't crib when you have to share the dessert"!!

--Virtually Yours

The story of my life . . .

If I were to write the story of my life, how would I write it? Whose story is it going to be, where would I begin it and what on earth would I write?? I believe every individual inhabit different worlds in a lifetime; at least I do! Some of these worlds run parallel and they never meet while some converge at certain points to become one. My story can't begin at the beginning... I believe in narratives which begin in media res. There is some kind of mystery and romance in the stories which don't have any beginning, don't you think so?

Ah yes, getting back to the story (or stories?) of my life... it's redundant, repetitive, but with a unique sense of intermittent ennui and ecstasy almost throughout! Did my story begin when I was born, or did it begin when I grew up enough to construct my own story or is it yet to begin? Well, who cares, anyways.

I would like to believe that my story began when I first touched fear! But don't ask me when that was - I've no clue! I don't remember what my first fear was... but one of the first fears was that of going to school and finding that none of 'my' friends had turned up that day! I think that's a fear that just refused to leave me... I still get a moment of nervous breakdown when I find that 'my' things and 'my' people are not around me! I'm trying really hard to break out of this 'my-my' feeling but it continues to cling to me like a five year old who fusses every morning before school!

My story began when I learnt to edit my own life before friends, strangers, and even family. I don't know if you had done that too, but yeah, I definitely did. I edited certain parts of it to be used later, to be just quarantined into oblivion, or even to re-edit and project again. I loved it when I edited my emotions! Even today, I edit my own life - even when I don't like it, even when I know I don't have to do it anymore. . .

My story began when I realized that the Almighty is the author of my life, that every moment bears His signature! It was like a watermark in the page of life - always already there even when I'm least conscious of it. His presence filtered the fears and monitored the editing in ways that I could never imagine. Around the same time, I met this man . . . a carpenter's son who was born in a manger, who went on to change the course of history and many lives for centuries to come. He changed me too, took charge of my life and there began a new life, a new story which He will bring into completion. And, now I don't care if the story of my life is half-written or even unwritten - He IS there and that says it all.

At the end of the day, I guess I have neither the concentration nor the linear thinking to put a story in place! And, you know what, I can never write a story. . . people like me would be forever running behind the different stories that could have been rather than sticking to the story that IS. But trust me, the story of my life will go on . . . into eternity, with the ONE who holds my tomorrow!!

Till we meet again on that beautiful shore. . .

--Virtually Yours