A step ahead....

Remember the movie 'Catch Me If You Can' where  Frank Abagnale Jr. played by Leonardo DiCaprio was conning people of millions of dollars and was always a step ahead of the FBI?

My life is a bit like that, always a step or two ahead of me, going her own merry way, craving her own destiny. Sometimes she seems fit to fall in with my plans and dreams and at other times, she goes her own way without a thought or consideration to my plans or convenience. The idea that I am in control of my life is but a mere illusion and the very idea of being powerless completely freaks me out. My ego demands me to think that I am the sole pilot of my life. But at the risk of hurting my ego and diminishing my vanity, more and more I feel like there is a power, much greater than me who is running my life.

I will go the traditional way and call this power God. Assuming that God is running my life is a double edged sword, on one hand it absolves me of all responsibility, but on the other it renders me completely powerless.

I am wandering. Today my intention was not to talk about God but my life.  Taking a step away from myself, being an observer, I have realised that my life has her curious meandering path which she follows and I just fall in step with her. At times I am happy to oblige and at times, I get angry, I rebel, I protest and try to cling on. But very rarely did things go my way, follow my plans or my dreams. I am not saying that my dreams have never come true. On the contrary in most cases they have, but never at the time I wanted them to or the way I imagined. There had always been slight or significant changes, almost like someone mockingly saying that She can plan and run my life better than me.

I feel like I am a car set in a race track, I have been given certain advantages and some other disadvantages which brings of the illusion of being powerful. But someone has the remote control which has the power to keep me on the course or throw me off. Each car in the race is similarly controlled and we each follow our own course, we know the beginning and the end, we know the pitfalls and the soaring peaks. But we do not know when we are going to hit the pitfalls or reach a soaring peak. We are all driving like crazy, each of  trying to reach the maximum number of peaks and avoid all the pitfalls. But here we are rendered powerless, someone makes us fall into those deadly pitfalls and equally someone makes us reach those peaks. The idea is to keep faith in that someone that She would guide us through the pitfalls and has the peaks ready for us to climb and keep going. After all since we have been made the drivers of our cars means that we are special.

Down and out with a cold...

Remember those scenes in Hollywood movies where heroines have flu or bad bouts of cold and heroes  bring them soup and daisies? 'You've Got Mail' is a classic example. Meg Ryan looked super cute with disheveled hair and pink nose, being cheered by Tom Hanks.

Sadly in real life getting a cold is nothing romantic nor do heroes come to hold fort with daisies.

To give a little background to this sudden interest in  cold and flu-- in this sunless island I have managed to get a sun stroke. Was out on one of the rare sunny days, soaking the sun in, and lo and behold got a sun stroke just like I used to get in Delhi. Getting a sun stroke in Delhi makes sense, but here it is like being a feminist in Mars. Most people give me incredulous looks or think that I do not know the right words and phrases being non native speaker and all.
At the risk of sounding obstinate, I insist that it is sun stroke cos I have suffered from it many times in India. I even know the whole routine by heart now. It starts with a buzzing in the head and stingy, watery eyes closely followed by headache, bad cold, running nose, fever and body ache. Stays for 5 to 7 days and vanishes to strike some other unsuspecting victim, leaving me with a peeling nose and looking more puffy and anemic than ever. Best medicine is rest, sleep, hours of it, lots of fluid and hot passionate sex [ just kidding:)].

So right in the middle of a week which promised to be super hectic canceling work and commitments left, right and centre. Am sitting surrounded with tissues, inhalers, balms and only allowed to drink hot drinks (decreed by husband). Feeling mighty sorry for self, husband also sympathetic but too busy to play nurse. Husband wanting me to visit doctor, resisting mightily, do not want to be poked and prodded at.

Husband has essays to submit one after another, wife out of action by cold, hence one take out after another and dirty dishes piling up. The worst bit is that it gets really boring after a while.  Do not have the energy to go out, yet too restless to sit at home. Bemoaning lack of  entertainment and guilty about being out of circulation.

Sitting at home, brooding about everything and nothing, feeling emotional and prickly. Horror of horrors realizing how unkempt my surroundings are. Spying all the hidden dirt, unhoovered carpet, things away from their usual places and mounds of dirty laundry. Cringe to myself, was I not a clean freak? When did this happen to me and my house?  New resolve in life-- revert back to being a clean freak as soon as health permits. Husband beware, serious cleaning time ahead!

No getting a cold is definitely not a good thing to happen, in spite of how glamours they make it seem in movies.

P.S. Photo courtesey google images.

Bhopal Gas Tragedy....

Growing up in the 80s and 90s in India, we kind of grew up with the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. It happened when we were in primary school, for me it happened the year my brother was born. Before that my association with Bhopal was through my General Knowledge class where I was taught that it was the capital city of Madhya Pradesh. So when the newspapers carried news about Bhopal I was naturally interested. It was a name I had learned recently and I wanted to know what the newspapers were saying about this city. I was too young to realize the full import of the incident, though I remember my mother explaining that many people had died. As a child I was fascinated by the fact that many animals had died too.  One newspaper image still lingers in my memory, of that a small boy curled up dead clutching a dead animal, probably a goat. What a tragedy it was...the nation was stunned, its citizens shocked...newspapers were full of it, whenever elders met they discussed it. Political parties made full use of it, indulging in blame game and the Communists blamed the US imperialism and  the central government to their hearts' content.

Years passed, the civil society movement around the tragedy grew as we were growing up... the anniversary was commemorated each year, there were rallies, candle light processions, gheraos, protests and people wore black bands to show solidarity and news papers carried articles to trigger public memory. NGOs mushroomed working with the victims and fighting for justice. So the incident lived on, sometimes ebbing away, sometimes coming to the forefront. The court cases started, and along came the controversies and the frustration at the long winded judicial system. Various studies started coming out, how the health of the population was affected, how the environment was affected. Two messages came out very strongly-- how government, bureaucracy  and Union Carbide were responsible and how people were pinning their hopes on the judicial system to bring justice.

Years later in college and then later in universities, I interacted with groups working with the victims,  watched theatrical  performances  on the disaster, art exhibitions. Studying human rights the case came up for discussion in the course of my study. For me it was reliving the incident. I got to know more facts about the tragedy which had happened years ago, an incident which was not personal yet deeply personal, a tragedy which did not touch me and mine, yet had an enormous impact on me.

Over the years I have followed the fight for justice, most times through news papers, sometimes by wearing the black band, or donating a meager amount of money or visiting a public meetings, lectures or debates.

It was not only the fight for justice for the people affected, for our generation this fight was to affirm our faith in our justice system. Some horrible tragedy had happened when we were kids and we had expected that by the time we grew up justice would be delivered! What a wrong expectation that was!

Way too many things had already gone wrong, too many mistakes by our bureaucrats and government, we thought that the judiciary would poke its finger in the right place and pin responsibility onto the guilty. The judiciary was to be our savior. Because otherwise who else was left? The next step is the dreaded 'rebellion' by the people driven by frustration and voicelessness. No we did not want that...we wanted to have  our faith in the Indian Constitution and the rule of law reaffirmed. Today's verdict is such a massive let down...I am not angry, I am disappointed. My first instinct was to ask myself whether the Chief Judicial Magistrate is under political pressure or God forbid taken a bribe? Then I recoil from my own thoughts, I do not want to reach that level of cynicism. I am part of young India, we need to take the nation forward, not give up on it.

Somehow in this rush to be developed, the poor has gone out of favour in India. The poor and the disadvantaged are considered unpleasant aspects of the nation who need to be swept under the carpet or pushed into another hastily patched slum which is more like a black hole. All we want to show the world is our IT engineers, our rich industrialists with unprecedented personal riches and our English speaking, accent faking youth working in call centres. Thankfully India is much, much more than that and we Indians are proud of our diverse background. So what if we are developing and riddled by multitude of problems, we have our dignity and our faith for better future. If only our politicians, bureaucrats and judiciary believed in it too!

Never cease?

Years ago it was the late night flights piercing the dark Calcutta sky. Sleepless I used to stand in my window and gaze at them with longing. From my window I got a clear view of the sky above. Sometimes it would be inky blue sky dotted with thousands of twinkling stars, sometimes a full moon would envelope the whole sleeping world into its silvery rays, sometimes in the darkness of a moonless night a black bird would silently fly by, sometimes it would rain so much that I could hardly open my window, except a crack.  Most nights the planes would go by. They would come into my view as tiny dots of light, grow steadily to reveal a silver machine carrying hundreds of people to a far away destination. I would feel terribly jealous of all those sitting in those planes, flying far, far away. Away from all the heartbreak, tears, the known and the mundane. I would foolishly think that traveling physical distance would absolve my pain and rid me of memories.
Now I smile at my  foolishness. How naive I was!
Thousands of miles later, I know that distance does not erase pain, time does. I know there is no easy way out, a broken heart does not mend itself quickly, nor are there any good medicines guaranteeing hundred percent cure. I know new pain takes over older ones. From life's experiences a new person emerges, fleshed with a bit of past embedded in the present.  But inspite of it all life goes on at her own sweet pace.
This time there are no planes in my slice of the night sky. There are  trains whooshing by, rushing off into the darkness. The carriages of the trains look to be in a great hurry, pushing and clanging, making a mighty din. They seem so sure of their destination, they look eager to reach that place and dump the load they have to carry. In the dark of the night, they look like naughty, noisy children rushing off to play. Once they pass by, the silver tracks look empty and bereft. A deep silence replaces the clanging sound. The night regains its poise and lulls us back to sleep. I look longingly at those rushing carriages  wishing I could be in one of them, crouched among the cars, or other goods they carry, or sitting on top of one of them, my face raised towards the sky, the wind kissing my face. I would not mind the discomfort or the cold as long as it took me to far distant lands, to the unknown, to some adventure, away from the mundane.
Will my longing for the unknown never cease?

Just like that....

They say with each passing days incidents which are part of our lives become memories, then time dims them, ultimately they get pushed to the furthest corners of our brain to stay there till something triggers them back to the forefront of our consciousness.

This makes me compare memories with a trunk full of old clothes. I am sure you all have had experiences of sitting with your mothers, while they pulled out old trunks and then shook out old clothes smelling strongly of moth balls and faintly of some old forgotten perfume. I remember as a child I used to be facinated by old trunks-- they were synonymous to mystery, great excitement and unrevelaed treasure. If in the process I got sprayed with the accumulated dust from the piece of cloth which wrapped the trunk so be it. Not being afraid of lizards and cockroaches, a couple of their carcases or eggs never bothered me much. I loved it more when either of my parents explained in details each item that came out of the trunk--like this trunk was part of your grandmother's wedding trousseau, the fancy dark blue velvet blouse with beadwork was your grandmother's favourite one, it was done by Meher Ali who had a tailoring shop in New Market, she had a matching sari to wear this with, (it as a very memshahebi thing to possess and wear and was consiedered to be very fasionable at that time), an old dairy whose pages have become brittle and the ink has become faded, an old dry leaf used as a page mark, a fountain pen which someone had got my grandfather from Britain, an old cookie tin filled with stamps...a beautiful lady's evening purse and some beautifully embrodiered handkerchifs....a jwellery box stuffed with trinkets and stones which must have come undone from some necklace or some other piece of jwellery....I remember being awestruck with each item that came out....touch them lightly so that they do not dissolve into a thousand pieces...my imagination would take a flying leap....I would be transported to a time when my long dead grandmother was just a young girl. I have heard that she was married at the age of 16 which was quiet an age considering the time. I would start pestering my father with loads of questions like "did women during that time go out to shop like we do?"...."No"....my father would patiently explain, " all the trades people used to come to their home...they would be downstairs while the women would assmble in the first floor veranda and throw a rope down. The traders would tie their merchandise to these and then a servant would pull the rope up."... This seemed very limited way of shopping to me, but how can you be satisfied with seeing just a few of whatever you want to buy....my young brain rebelled at the thought to not being able to walk into a shop and choose. To explain the restriction my father would launch into a socio cultural sketch of the time. Then my mother would come and chip in with stories of her family's shopping. It seemed like most of the shopping was done by men at that time, or traders came home. This seemed very very unsatisfactory to me. Looking back at those time I smile at my naivitee and am so thankful for having been born in the present.

Moved....

Just when I was settling in my new job and trying to fit in and get to know people, my desk got moved. Before this I was sharing the room with two other people and though a little noisy, it was a fun place. We used to have these impromptu chat breaks. Now I have been shifted to this new room, which is tucked between two rooms and I am quiet alone in this room. The other desk is lying empty waiting for a new recruitment to fill it. I do not like this new place of mine. It is tucked away in one corner and quiet lonely.

Another thing to crib about. This sure is turning out to be a super bad new year!

The happy ending is you...

True, this week due to Republic day falling on a Monday there was no Monday blue. But sadly the Tuesday has turned out to be blue-er. It is a blue, blue Tuesday. Initially it was acqua marine blue, but soon the vividness, which was anyways blinding me, dimmed and slowly it is turning to prusian blue. I could stare for hours at this blue and not get any work done. But alas!

Latelty I have been feeling rather down and lonely, my life is going all on her own direction. Sometimes I get perturbed that life does not even bother to consult me. She just merrily goes her way dragging me along with her. At times I get angry. Hey it is my life, do I not get the chance to have an opinion? Most times I do, sometimes external forces dominate, sometimes life is just bizzare, does her own thing. And at times when I have been feeling blue for sometime, I just let go. I become a passive observer and watch from the sidelines. It is like all the things that are happening to me are not actually happening to me. I am not in my body, in me anymore. I am just a spirit, hovering over me and silently watching the journey. I dont know if I am able to make you understand what I am talking about.

I was aimlessly flicking through blogs when I came across a post with this title "the happy ending is you". Is it really true? Could the happy ending be really me? Do we actualy have that kind of power over our own lives? How do we stop people from being rude to us? Or for that matter how do we stop feeling neglected? I know you are going to talk about positive energy and positive thoughts and all those Feng Shui and self-help guru stuff. At times the spirit does not want to strive towards the light, does not want positivity and false hopes, all it wants is to sink in the prusian blue, which is steadily turning into a dark dark blue with endless pit and just get lost.