Meet The Man Of My Dreams And His Beautiful Wife

I was 14 when I discovered the song 'Ironic' by Alanis Morissette. I was in my school library mostly looking up quote-books for smart-ass words for the next preachy assembly. Like always once I was done I went up to the magazine stack before I left. I love going through magazines, especially the trashy, superflous ones. Maybe it is the early contempt my parents bestowed on all things commercial, flashy and easy, but I find cliches interesting. So from the India Today, Outlook and other such suited-up reads I picked up TeenWorld or something similarly named, that probably promised a zit-free path to boy-planet. Pretty much zit-free and clueless otherwise, I read for sheer surprise. I am prejudiced to a fault. Everything about me I deliberate and form opinions on. I am sure I am psychoanalyst's willing delight, but being ready for consequences all the time can be tiring now and then. Hence, I guess my love for formulaic art. My dad wonders how I intently watch shows like Big Boss or Rahul Mahajan's Swayamwar and thouroughly enjoy myself. But there is much to observe in the average or sub if you go beyond their pious efforts at maintaining farces. It is a good exercise in leisure for moments of thin-slicing when one must altogether dispose of the common.
But, I was remembering 'Ironic'. So, 14, and pop-culturally ignorant (it is such respite to look back at early years of teenage and not have me heaving over some slick Backstreet Boy, though Hrithik Roshan came dangerously close.), I guess I was in my early fascination for words, rhyme and uncommon issues. I was drawn to the lyrics. I had never heard of the song, much less the singer with a difficult surname. But there was something in the moment I read those verses that was clairvoyant. I had felt it before. Like the lessons I was learning then I was to put into practice some time in my life. And more.
Today, I guess my life stopped and perused that bit in my life-map for directions.
It being final year and all, I am trying hard to get myself to stick to a routine I will benefit ably from in the next years. But, it is like my mind tasted blood with all the free runs down the many thought-hills it has enjoyed in the last years. It refuses to stick to boring routine. But, when I sit to study medicine I want to read so much more.
It feels like a tight-rope walk, and though the balancing is exhilarating, the tendency to fall due to lack of practice is mighty frustrating.
So, being home in the last few days and not really reading all about the failures and attempts of the heart the way I had planned, I was irritable and losing my temper at every slight. I knew I should have known better, but, really, how?
But life has a funny way of sneaking up on youhoo-oo..annndd..life has a funny way of helping you out...you really must listen to the song.
So, the TV, my soulmate, my BFF, came to my rescue, by leading me to The Jane Austen Book Club.
For a while now, I have been thinking of rereading the books I really enjoyed reading once. I haven't read much, and I certainly don't have much of a favourites list, but there are a few. And Miss Austen, most definitely finds ample room! Pride and Prejudice was the first Classic I read and the first book I loved. Elizabeth Bennet and the profession of love for her by Mr. Darcy is the second best after that of Dagny Taggart and John Galt. We didn't really have to believe any of it, did we? Oh, I did!!
Once, in some blessed practice English exam for the SSC I presume, I was thrilled to have the rare non-yawn essay topic - If You Met With Your Favourite Book's Characters. I most enjoyably wrote on running into Elizabeth and talking at length with her on marital bliss and her views on matters of pride and prejudice.
So, the movie awakened the universal desire for the Austen word on things. And my joy was doubled on knowing it was a book adaptation. Googling, registering and extracting files later, I was proud of hunting down a downloadable version of it. All you people who do the great service of putting everything at a click's distance, Bless You! May your tribe prosper! Thank You for then, now and forever! You are my virtual heroes!
So I settled in cosily, with thoughts of a smiling Abhishek Bachchan-faced-tree. It is a good read. Difficult to keep pace with in just the first read because it dissects stories within stories. I am no good at absorbing a story and simultaneously thinking between the lines, or about psychological profiles of characters.And it is about older women. Seeing the movie and having faces for all of them, especially Grigg helped.
Another very strong reason for my getting sucked into an Austenian Day was the central character Jocelyn. Sketched like Emma, she is a happily unattached, controlling woman. She has her issues-which woman doesn't?-but I find myself always being partial to these independant women characters. I guess I try to find a clue to my future mindframe in theirs. I know 10, 20 years down the line I am going to be where they are. I know I am 21, and it is probably too early, if not futile to spell out my future. But, I like to be prepared, and I know how I am going to shape my life. I know for one there are going to be no compromises especially if not exclusively in relationships, and that itself shoves a lot of obstacles aside.
So, I look out for these women: what they do, who their friends are, how they are with their parents, who and how they date, how similar their reasons are to mine...it is freaky no doubt. I have thoughts of choking and dying when old and my body not being found for days. I don't like animals, so I know a cat won't eat my face off like Miranda from Sex And The City imagines. But then, if I am dead how does it matter to me?
Those I have shared this with have always come up with the staid,'No ya, you'll find some one, don't worry.' Worry I don't. I wonder more: I grew up on a healthy dose of hindi films, fairy tales, classic romances, real marriages, abandonement, abandoning and solitude. I know for sure the intimidation I inspire in most I meet with. I know for sure it is one of the things I hate about people. But I always look out for exceptions to generalizations. And I know there are. Only I don't know if I am one of the chosen. I guess that is what is most putting off of the entire affair. I can manufacture a life-detailed, perfect-for myself. I wish I could do that for the people I wish to be around as well. Just so, I leave that detailing for falling in love, finding a suitable man. It will have to be the way I want. It will have to be filmy and dreamy in equal measure. All that I have come to love and acknowledge, living, breathing. It is a tall order. And because thinking entirely of it is impossible and fascinating, I know I won't cheat myself on it.
Though, it may so happen that I may get all I want and still have good reason to pass over my happy ending...
I love that there are so many ifs and maybes. I wouldn't have it any other way.
Jane Austen has today made additions on the rough map on life I carry around with me. Some day I may stop and ask for directions.
For now, I need to keep going on.

The Last Train To Somewhere

I have been away for long. I had so many reasons to come back I just couldn't choose one. Amongst my many hopes for this year, was one to chronicle my times now for the various futures to come. But the life I am familiar with is largely of grand plans that waste paper and great ideas that occur when I am too lazy to pen them down.

But there is a change creeping through the languid years. Maybe it is the normal curve of growing up...I don't know...I've never been here. And that I guess is the best part about it.

As a kid I had no epiphanies of becoming a particular professional. I am studying medicine now, but it does not wholesomely consume me. There is an effort I have to garner to sit myself down and pay attention to its language. I definitely don't mind it. I value the opportunity I have and look forward to the daunting challenges. But this I don't count in my rites of passage. I would have had some thing to do anyhow.

I hated the entire period of childhood. All I wished for was to grow up. That was all I was looking to do once I 'grew up'. I had no date and time for it. I didn't know what to read or where to go to learn 'growing up'. All I knew was that some day I would be confident, content and immaculately independant. Then, I guess I grew up.

So now I am a pile of all the pieces that make me. Like, when this year began I cleaned my hostel-room cupboard after a year and half. I got everything it held in a heap on my bed. And then I began wishing I hadn't done it at all. (I am such a good candidate for mid-life crises, I've already been through them twice!). Then, one deep breath and coffee later, I got to sorting.

I realised how I have bit by bit added dimensions to my being in 3 years of moving out of home and kidhood. Like the clothes I have bought over the period for purely experimental reasons-let's try if this suits my style or if I suit it's-I have shopped in areas that specialized in self-development. I dindn't know what I was looking for, hell, I didn't know I was looking! But I bought loads and paid costs for every thing.

The lack of amazement at not missing home.

The realization of numbed pain and the increased awareness its agony bore.

Falling in love and then not being so sure about it.

The FountainHead and 'YES!!!' exploding in my mind.

Realizing the futility of fear of judgement and freaking out at the ginormous size of the stupidity monster.

Speaking Marathi and not knowing how to react when a leprosy-ridden patient tells me that good things happen to good people.

Forgiving my parents and re-casting them as fellow human beings that are living by trying to make the best of what comes along.

Losing friends that never were.

Ideas of lone lunches and death.

Achievement and her coterie of friends and foes.

Accusations and the will to not defend.

Running to leap but wanting a last veiw many times over.

All these lie spread before me to be labeled, boxed together and placed neatly in shelves.

Deep breaths and coffee?

Was That You Or Me?

I am sitting across the external for my PSM viva, answering his all-important questions about life and its prevention, and all my mind registers of the situation is: Hey! Doesn’t he look like Payal’s husband from Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi?

2 years I’ve spent trying to keep Park at bay. Every time I read the lame opening lines to each topic, I controlled the urge to bang my head against the wall or mutilate the book (hard-bound nonetheless). Yet I noticed it as it changed colours and told me surreptitiously about all the greed, incompetence and cultivated stupidity that went into the failure of social programmes in the past 60-odd years.

All that ends well may be well. But my normal curve finds PSM outside the ‘confidence limits’.

The only end to it is its prevention.

Everybody's Waiting For Me To Arrive

5 quick things I like about the view right now:

1) The Trees: They have been there before me. They have been the constants in my life. Many have grown up with me. They teach me about nature and her ways: new leaflets always grow toward the top or the periphery. The sun's full energy concentrates on them. The freshest rain molecules greet them. Taking care of newborns is a basic instinct in all life forms. We, the most progressed of life have made it optional. Babies are thrown away like garbage, cared according to their gender and left at the behest of maids, baby-sitters and PSPs.

2) My Piece Of Sky: It is not much, but it is enough. The rest is obscured by trees that are also maturing into adults like me.
I saw a little bird at sundown. While all the other birds were making their circadian trips back to tree-homes, this lil punk was flitting about in random irregular spirals. Its wings flapped like they were still learning to fly. But the birdie was relentless. Sometimes soaring, otherwise doing air-pirouettes, it stayed aloft throughout. The crescent moon had just risen and the bird seemed to do a little revel-dance performance. The sun had its breath ready to be held under water, but the bird was not afraid of the darkness. In my open window, I sat quietly formulating sentences about the chidai, while a medicine exam awaits my absent memory in a week. Maybe it too, like me was on impulse or brimming impatience waiting for calamity to befall him because he dared to stand and stare.

3) People: Of all kinds: those that are thinking about work, those that are working, those that want to lose weight to gain a narrower perspective along with narrow hips, those that are looking for words to fill the silences so that they don't have stop to breathe, those that carry the source of the sunset within them, those that are going to have to fend for themselves, those that are hungry, those that are angry, those that are...other people.

4) The Center Of The Earth: The sky from my perspective, I realise is ever moving. I have seen all of the sky. Every space that passed around the world, over events, people, and time, has passed over my head too. The earth I stand on has remained unmoving. My values, my thoughts, my principles will always be the ground beneath my feet even though the sky over me may slide by. I feel like I have a centre of gravity now, something that holds me down. I know I am not hollow within. What ever I have gained has filled up parts within me and what I have lost is still mine in the only way it ever was. I don't feel light and I know I won't float away. I feel fine.

5) Memories And Music: The cotton tree in the distance sent cotton seeds riding on fluff in the summer wind to an 11 year-old me. It told me that soft beds were a privilege and not a metaphor for life, but I had the latent capacity of a warm hug within me.

The Core

My idea of heaven is where all the answers lie...a court of science...where all 'why's' and 'how's' are answered...a place where physics resides with reason and integration is patiently taught :)

A place where past, present and future meet to form the Big Picture and it all falls in place to make sense.

So, what is your heaven like?

Noisy Interludes

It is fun being an observer. How can people not be interested in being aware?

In knowing the subtle ways in which our ever alive and kicking instincts peer from behind the masks that we wear throughout our interactions?

We are the most evolved of life.

But do we realise how much of natural life we've carried along with us?

We've created language. Modified, simplified, exemplified it.

But what have we forgotten and suppressed of when language did not exist?

What of the non-verbal languages? We know how to express in them, but how much of it can we read or understand?

There is a meaning, a message, a call, in every sound, every touch, every glance, every life...every movement.

All we have to do is observe. Learn. Respond.

I swallowed my dignity and killed my hunger

I am a student of Third Year M.B;B.S and I am currently posted in the Ophthalmology(i.e. Eye) dept. for my clinicals. Now, this O.P.D. sees a lot of elderly people coming in for cataract-related troubles.
Cataract is a degenerative disorder of the lens in the eye that progressively dims vision and is common in old age. So we have these aged persons walking in daily, who are having trouble seeing clearly, and along with that a host of other debilitating illnesses that render them slow and hard of hearing. And then they are scared...for one, of the world around that suddenly seems to spin too fast, and secondly, like most, of being in a hospital.
To get their eyes examined they have to sit at a couple of instruments/machines that help better illuminate and magnify the eye for the doctor. Most have never been to an eye O.P.D. before and are naturally confused with what they have to do: where to sit, how to place their heads,what and where to see...and they are invariably curtly told off by the resident doctors for not understanding, for being 'confused'...These are not erring kids. They are persons who have known, perhaps created the ways of the world. They just need a little help. And they are trying to get it by causing the slightest possible discomfort to the doctors.
The doctors are over-worked, under-paid and impatient. I get that. But is it the patient's fault?
Or do they just get some kind of awful kick out of berating persons who they know will not retaliate?
The patients are old, they need assistance at times, sometimes a louder repetition, a softer reassurance. Shouldn't they be used to that by now?
Why instead do they chose to get used to their own impatience?

Long time, Mr.Bukowski!

When you hear a song for the first time, and are mesmerized by its every beat, every verse, every dead sound, you know you have a favourite.
Then you realise that the song is a classic.It was around before you were.
It was played on instruments not loud enough to reach you. It vibrated air waves to its tunes that perhaps gushed as the wind around you.
But when you hear the song for the first time, it sounds heard...like its existence is not intriguing but obvious.
Like its essence was within you, only now it manifests in the the guise of music, just as it did in dance, in a book, a poem, a quote, or a painting. Or a person.
It is there somewhere. It is there right here.

It's so weird to see him like that, na?

They need our sanction. Amongst all the persons they've run into or been surrounded by, they chose each other. Two different beings trying to hold on to one common interest, one common need.
It is never easy. There are pitfalls...it is not a natural order...it is out of volition that two individuals from a multitude fall in love. And as much as they may wish, or even try, love, cannot hide. It is there in the midst of all to see, observe, and react to...
They are not committing a crime...all they are doing is taking a few moments, a few glances, a few touches for their own. Making a few secret memories and giving a few unbreakable vows...but their fruition requires our help...That we wish them, and their happiness...that we let them be...that we help them tide over the rough and sharp edges and bends as they walk on each others crossed paths...that we wish their tribe grows...

Starting Over

Extremes, the experienced in time say, are bad. I know they are for me.
Beginnings and endings confound me no end...they keep me up at night. Yet, I don't believe in them.
I don't care much, for or about, first impressions. Goodbyes are a farce. Unless someday I learn to let go of my memories.
Eyes size up; ears eavesdrop. And we haven't even been introduced...
Across walls, glances, water bodies, atmosphere, and many brushed-againsts, lives go on. Even if we don't know of them. Yet. Or ever.
The world was never a small place.