Christmas Eve

Well, before I name it something else, I want to call it achievement....

Yes, I did something today that I never did in my life, and yet always wanted to. I did try too. Never succeeded.

I always wanted to go to Church on Christmas eve, feel good about the wonderful lights and congregated Believers, and pray.

I did that today.

Never knew that God wanted me to start praying from the foreign lands.

Dad's old T-shirt that hides my oversized bosom during my jogging and ill fitting jeans is what I spent my whole day in and didn't bother to change when I was going to Church.

On the road itself, saw chirpy girls dressed in red, yellow, with curled hair, smiling, wishing merry Xmas to everyone on the road- known or unknown. When they just passed by me, fresh perfume was spread.

I knew in advance that I ll be the ugliest of the women in the Church. Felt sad to notice that this fact too didnt bother me and i continued with my shabby looks. Beauty, attraction was no more a beauty, attraction for me.

My landlady had warned me that the Church will be flooded with people at that moment.

I just muttered a small prayer that I should get a place to sit. And, I knew I will.

As I was walking by, a chill of insecurity again touched my spine, and it didn't go. Walking alone on a foggy road uphill was never so insecure as I felt today.

I did keep some money in my pocket, but keeping more, you know, makes your more insecure.

As I entered the Church, I it was dark. I loved that darkness.

All the seats were occupied. I sat behind a heavy old man, with a girl was snorting in the wet tissues pack she was carrying and whose guy was busy texting on his touch screen phone.

I thanked God for finally letting me come and pray, and I thanked for the darkness.

I could cry, without getting noticed. And, the huffing female besides me made my job easier.

I cried. In the darkness. In the Church. Repented for all the sins- intended/ unintended, attempted/ unattempted, past/future.

I prayed for ...........well, I have only thing to pray for... and God has given me everything else.

I prayed for my family, my neighbours- in Chandigarh, Mumbai and HK. I prayed for all the hard working people of Mumbai,  talkative people of Chandigarh and the silent people of HK.

I prayed for all those men who had a crush on me.

I prayed for all those women who envy me, and had done bad to me.

I prayed for all those women, who, like me, were spending a lonely life.

I prayed for the people I see on roads, and those inside the big buildings that I see from road on my way to office, and all those who dream to be inside those buildings one day.

I prayed for all Filipino maids who stay here and work day and night.

I prayed for all those people who have none in their lives...none to talk to when they get home after work and spend silent evenings everyday, cooking just for themselves.

I prayed to God that I should also see the whole world, before I die.

I prayed for blue eyed kids...hahaha

I prayed for the Chinese cute baby tht I had seen last time.

I prayed for all the soldiers of all countries.

I prayed that peace should prevail over all countries and the Governments should think of more human welfare than warfare.

And soon it was 12. People prayed in the local language- I didnt understand. I prayed for all those whose language I didnt understand and who, in buses, MTR, trams, lifts, shops, wet markets, exchange smiles with me.

I left after some time. The lights were juggling and taxis running on the roads. The roads in HK were still lonely and dark and cold.

Solitude and me

They say, the more you run away from girls, the more they come near you...
Solitude, I infer now, is exactly opposite to that...
More than enough I have ran away from it..but it looks like never leaving me
So, why not, for a change, pause and let it reach me...as they say, no one should go unheard.

As the definitions of life have been recetly changed for me, I realised, I am now, getting more attracted towards solitude and its reated stuff..

Earlier, when i used to roam at the beach, i used to get amused to see the couples holding hands, laughing, kissing, hugging and playing..
But now, i feel like getting more attracted towards the singles..of all age groups...of all sexes..of all creeds..of all social statuses..
I have observed that people who stay single are more healthy, more independent, more smiling, choosy and seem like being proud of themselves..
They work as an insignia of human race.. i may be wrong..but they look like so powerful from inside
Probably when we are alone, we are assured that we have got nothing to lose, hence we feel contended, happy and secured

Initially, when i encountered solitude for the first time after separation from my partner, it symbolised death to me...gradually i realised that staying with solitude was not a compromise, but a blessing as it taught me how important i was for myself...and it really taught me how to love myself..

But gradually, as per the law of diminishing utilities, the love for myself, after reaching its height started to diminish, and at that stage, i felt like giving clues to myself that i was decaying..

As a matter of fact, I am going to complete 6 months of the exile period now, and i m passing through so many questions, probabilties, some larger uncertainties and some self framed lessons of life...

The season of tears, in between, arrives every two months..ha ha
I have just finished over with it..i m allowed to have a tearless smile for another 2 months now...

By staying alone, I realised that there are 26 hours, and not 24 hours in a day..
And i know every single hour that i live with during the day, now-a-days.

The days are long..especialy sundays
Nights are grey..they used to be sparkling black earlier
Mornings are patchy and pale yellow in color.. they used to be orangy red earlier

Meanings of life have changed substantially

The things that used to look big in years to come in life, smell smaller and vice versa
Life used to look so planned, just like a passing affair...
Time, similarly, i took as a weak warrior
I am contented to know that I am wrong, before wrong actually happened to me..

Solitude has made me realise my mistakes and my potential and answer the questions for which i never was able to shell out time..strange, but true!!
It has helped me to suggest myself what all do i need and at what time to fill up the vaccuums created within me..

It has helped me know myself, as a being, as a female, as a growing woman, as a professional, as an individual..

At the same time, it has uncovered the bitter variances of life that I used to assume as constants in my equations...

I am reminded of Joseph Konrad's saying...."We live as we dream- ALONE !!"
The new law of my "Individualism" replaces "we" by "I" and "as" by "and", thereby making it...."I live and I dream- ALONE !!" 

Eat Pray Love- Movie Review

I saw the movie yesterday on TV again. Then remembered that I had written its review long back. Searched for the file and pasted it here.....

Life is more than just a choice between a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’. And, when, life asks you to choose ‘yes’, you must grab it before it leaves a ‘no’ for you as a last choice. This is what Ryan Murphy, the director, wants to convey.

As kids, we used to idolize Julia Roberts for the way she looked, and today we admired more of how she still looked.  As if, she was a perfect choice for being a ‘Liz’ who ate, prayed and loved.

The movie suggests- Eat Pray Love

Eating- portrayed by enjoying life, making merry, being a part of a family- loving, caring for those who may not be related to you in blood, and worrying with them for the ‘have nots’ and ‘but must have’ problems and participating in their lives and learning from them.

Pray- meant not just praying God, but yourself too, as the God, (as they say) dwells within you. And. Praying is not just praying, but understanding. After all, we don’t live for the things we pray for… or do we?

And finally love.

After losing somebody we loved/ trusted or just equating unhappiness with someone who loved us, we forget that there is always a next time, and tomorrow, another day.

Like Physics theory of gaining momentum by an object that is constantly at rest, we make our life too, constant and gain momentum and ‘for our good’, we decide not to hurt ourselves again, by falling in  love again, and more, not to lose ourselves and the balance we have attained.

Very truly, the healer in Bali told Roberts, that it is okay to imbalance your life for love.

Commercially speaking, the movie could not do well because of romanticizing the western fantasy of finding solace in the arms of tepid Eastern culture. Through the book's two and a half hour celluloid version, protagonist Julia Roberts does nothing to break the much hammered myth of India being the land of snake charmers and elephants. Her character Liz goes through more than just a mid life crisis -- multiple failed relationships and stagnation in every aspect of live scar her to the extent where she decides its time to address the 'I' within her, hence the trips to Italy (eat), India (pray) and Indonesia (love). Each segment in the three countries tells us a different story, yet the problem (Julia) remains the same. There are ample scenic moments that capture the lush landscapes of these three diverse terrains beautifully. Be it the Roman piazzas, or the crowded streets of Bali the camera captures every detail and magnifies it to appease your senses. Out of the three places, Italy offers the most fun setting, while the other two give the film a more serious tone. 

As the plot progresses, however, and Julia's character arrives at an ashram in India, there is some terrific acting both from Roberts and from Richard Jenkins, who plays Richard from Texas, and who gives the best performance of the movie when he finally reveals his painful story. 
One of the most beautiful inferences that Roberts drew, in the movie was that ‘ruins are beautiful’. What has ended now is over. Its remains remind you that it has passed over and in no case, it is likely to haunt or disturb or affect you in any manner.

One message conveyed to the society by the movie says- ‘a divorcee’ is not an insignia of being in a ‘wretched forever status’. Rather it is somebody who gathered courage to choose to say ‘yes’ to life and move on rather than staying with a ‘no’ all through his/ her life with a fake ‘ok’ till death.

Hence, certainly the movie is a one time see, and Julia being the reason of ‘once more’.

Tip tip tip

The location of my seat in the office is such that, even if the day of resurrection arrives, and the whole universe is destroyed, I’ll be the last one to get to know about it and run.

Whether it is raining, or is sunny, I get to see only when either I go to the cafeteria for lunch or down the stairs for outdoor work.

When I climb down the stairs, even then, I can’t see the weather.

I keep guessing it with the footprints at the door of the lifts. If I see drops of water and wet foot prints, a smile curves my lips- for it signals rain. If I don’t see such things, an inverse curve makes my face frown.

Rain is a ‘big’ reason of joy, for me, still.

It still makes me happy, like earlier.

Nostalgic...

While the watchman sitting at the entrance always get bewildered to see my uncommon expressions when I see that it is raining. While people make faces and put out their rain coats in an ‘uff’ gesture, my overjoyed face can’t hide the felicity. I feel the urgent need to zip my lips, when somebody tries to read my delight laden looks.

Like others, I too have to behave as if I am also bugged with the untimely rains. With a sullen face to show them, I open up my umbrella, and take off with a swoosh for a wonderful walk in the bent dripping green trees; wet, extra blackened road; full of green and yellow leaves and colorful-wet-round umbrellas; the sweetened humid 22 degrees breeze; the washed look on the faces of flowers and leaves of the pots and flower beds, and the slanted falling little droplets of water- giving a romantic blurred vision of the scene. I just love it, before anything else.

 Not a single day I have missed out to get drenched in rain, since the rainy season has started… I am breaking my own records everyday, for getting drenched and having enjoyed the drops of ‘sky water’.

It gives me a feeling as if this whole arrangement is made for me- to make me feel blessed and privileged. As if signifying, that the best moments are not waited for, or can’t be secured, but are meant to be consumed and enjoyed NOW!!!

Minutes after a fresh downpour, the ground looks dried up...as if it didnt rain at all...Sometimes I think, even the thirst of the earth is like mine- INSATIBLE...

I wish I could stretch the rainy season for the full twelve months.

Every single day, till Ramzan ends, is going to be so special.

Each time droplets fall over the asbestos roof of the mess, or the metallic ceiling of the local train, it works as an automatic reaction of rain hitting the ground, and I feeling to touch the sky.

Even if I am deep asleep, the noise of kad kad kad kad produced while the wooden windows are hit with the watery waves, wakes me up- either it makes my dreams rosier, if I continue to sleep or it keeps me awake at night...

How much I have longed for it!!!!

Simultaneously when it pours, it reminds me that just like water, life too, is dripping away out of my hands.

The handsome dark clouds that attract me like a hunk will be emptied soon… and in less than three months, they will turn pale and white under the yellow Sun of realities shining on their head.

Who will make me smile, who will indulge in the ‘come on, lets get going’ process with me...

Stretching out your palms in rain doesnt give you anything other than just making your palms wet....

So why this intoxication... this love, this yearning, this thirst, this longing, this craze... for a few drops.... 

My last day at work

My last day in office email: 

Dear All, 


I thought first, I should google a ‘my last day’ letter. Google is now the proclaimed answer to all our questions. Then I thought, I should not write what I should, rather, what I want to.

Well, this is what came from within:

The last day.

I stare at my PC. This PC of mine has been a witness for the last almost 3.5 years of mytenure here. It has seen me in all my moods.

It has seen my mistakes, stored the re-worked files, and gauged from the speed of the keyboard when the Board meetings were scheduled.

It has seen my ‘no-work- today-please’ expressions, the days when I wasn’t well, and has been a mute spectator, yet supportive, when I still continued to work.

It has been my store for my hometown photographs, articles on finance and law, and all those ‘secret hidden’ files. It is still trying to gather from my expression as to why I am suddenly deleting my personal files at once, today.

This is the benefit of being a machine, and this is the disadvantage of being a human.

Human beings get attached.

You get bonded. With your desk, desktop, drawers, paan-tapri shops located besides your office, lifts/stairs, colleagues, and their habits, the bus conductors with whom you travel every morning and evening, the queues for bus/cab, the peons who know how much sugar you take in your tea, and at time you need it, and which colleague distributes sweets on what events etc.

To conclude, I will miss you all, no matter if I never talked to you, or greeted you in mornings.

I wish all the best to you all, as you are enjoying one of the best companies in the industry at the best location, no matter how much we keep cribbing about it.

I wish you all a great future ahead.

Thanks...

If I had a husband at home.....

If I had a husband at home......

If I had a husband at home…..then probably I would have been updating him on hourly basis how many times the people around me in office were bugging me, how the HR staff was bothering me for my late marks and early leaves, and how my boss was badgering me for his own mistakes.

Probably I would be calling him to tell him that he has to pay the electricity bill, and when he would tell me how busy he was, I would tell him that I’ll do that online, and that I’ll come early today and will pick up kids from the play school and buy them ice creams and their art and craft material for home work and that he can take up his work as per his convenience in office.

When I enter the departmental store, probably I‘ll call him to ask if he would prefer the same vanilla flavor that we always buy or shall we try out a different flavor. And, even if he tells me to buy butter-scotch, I’ll convince him that it will be sheer stupidity if we miss vanilla. J

If we are sitting with a laptop at night, and he proposes for a holiday trip to a beach, I’ll tell him that he is trying to be non-adventurous by choosing that spot. Later, when he asks me which place I’d like to explore this summers, I’ll throw the blanket on floor in excitement at jump on the bed shouting “Lets go to Goa!!!”. J

During mid-night, on a long drive at a lonely road, if he manages to steal a glance of my flying hair and tell me that I was beautiful, I’ll tell him that I didn’t marry him because he is gentleman, but he has become a gentleman because I married him.

If he goes out of town for a day, and I have to drive to office on my own, I’ll search for reasons to shout at him. Finally, I’ll tell him how badly he is maintaining the car and that the brake oil was not changed when it should have been, and then, when I am done, he tells me that he has to switch his handheld off, as his flight is about to take off. I’ll immediately feel sorry for all the things, matters and deeds that hurt him because of me, and admit that “I am missing him”, and will ask him to promise me that he should always be my driver. He’ll laugh and tell me that this is what he loves in me- my dependence on him within the boundaries of my independent life.

The unblessed ladies

Earlier I used to feel good and comfortable sitting and dining amongst the girls with whom destiny had played the same ugly game.

But now-a-days, my sentiments on the dining table have changed.

I feel bad about them.

This 45 years old, Kannada, Revathi. She looks so happy, working for a School for disabled, but I really see the sadness, loneliness and ambiguity of scary future all alone, layers beyond her smile.

Girls babble that they have heard that the Warden is a divorcee. Her daughter sometimes, comes and stays in her room.

I see the Warden, never going on leave, not getting ready like a married Hindu woman, and smile from her heart, to be specific. Does any of her actions indicate normalcy, except when she yells at the pantry boys.

Then, this short  shabbily dressed wheatish complexioned lady, with henna dyed blunt cut hair, whom I see almost everyday at the Temple street while on my way to lunch. The moment she enters the 300 meters stretch of the street, all the stray dogs run towards her, welcoming her like a celebrity. And, she concealing her love from the world, with an expressionless face, feeds them with Parle- G and strokes their necks- evidencing her sincere, selfless love.

This lady, I don’t know her name. Extremely ugly. Beggar like face and wretched skin. She looks like a punishment to eyes.

She always wears a T-shirt with broad brown lines and an unclean track pants, and is always,  I said, ‘always’ found reading novels and taking down notes from it.

Never have I seen the dining hall without her, and she without a book in her hand. Her frizzy grey hairs add to her ugliness after her wrinkled spooky face that bears a calm expression. She eats like a hungry monkey.

I have never seen the color of her eyes- nor will I ever see, as she always walks with her head lowered.

No matter how much she may hide behind those second hand shabby novels, but she cant do away with the uncut wires of her ruins attached.

I feel sad for them.

I feel sad for all these ladies.

I feel sad for the Warden, no matter how many restrictions she puts and how many times she fines us all and screams at us.

I feel sad when I look at their under-eyed circles and grey-white falling hair and ‘no more in vogue’ dressings.

I feel sad to see their unpainted nails and expressionless actions.

How can the most gracious God, be so cruel?

Second Valentine

By the time the word ‘second’ arrives in your life, life has somewhat already placed you at a different balcony where you see the world from a different, wider and a higher level.

It was my second Valentine alone.

Yesterday, on 13^th February, I knew what day tomorrow is going to be.

Hence, wanted to make sure that I am ‘not left alone’.

Gifted myself a pink shirt, pink pebble ear-rings and snow white slippers (and for a change, it was not a surprise gift, this time, rather I let myself select gift for myself) and made sure that none can judge from my joyful face that my 14^th Feb eve was going to be as normal and un-happening as the other 364 evenings.

Well, as I heard the ting-tongs of mobile sms reaching out to people’s (read girls’) cellphones wishing them ‘love’ on this day, I pretended that my phone was on silent mode.

When I saw those slum kids at signals running after cars, selling bunches of roses, I ignored, acting in concert with my arrogance that I don’t buy or expect my man to gift me a flowers like that. I pretended that I like them properly wrapped with a four digit price tag dangling around it.

When the tables were booked for the sea-side restaurants, I pretended to have been fasting today.

When at Marine drive, hands were held, kisses exchanged and flowers smelt, I hurried up for my class exaggerating how important it was.

Anyways, what you can do is to mentally prepare your mind for lonely evening(or life) ahead..

What you can’t do is to shut your heart up!!

Dil to baccha hai ji…..

Movie Review: Dhobi Ghat

Dhobi Ghat- the name sounds like a rusty, metallic, sepia view of part of Mumbai’s history that runs its present.

The promos of the movie lured one of a web of various stories of life in Mumbai in Mumbai’s life.

Even the beginning and the first half an hour of the movie left no stone unturned to raise the expectations level of  the movie.

Finding old CDs in box, silver ring that entails a past, the non-ghajini psycho painter Aamir etc hinted towards an unfolding mysterious story.

The movie doesn’t give the story of someone’s life, but knits one life in others’ stories.

Aamir Khan (who believes in impersonating the perfectionist. 3 idiots, tare zameen pe protagonisism being instances)

Failed relationships, liberty to choose, and the saliva dripping taste of money. This is what Mumbai comprises of. The movie, but fails to polish the facts with its pen and paper and the color box.

The stories are set up from the lens of a camera-man, painted with the brush of a painter and shot with the spirit of Mumbai.

One finds it unusual for a girl to invite, offer chai, eat out and watch movies with your laundrywala, no matter how handsome he is.

But, as they say that nothing is errant from point view of an artist, so some opine to give that exemption to it.

The story is unfit for the Indian mentality and one step above the IQ of a Mumbaikar, if we talk of artistic sense.

Those who got tempted with the trailers ended up piddling around, after the story(s) started.

Those, with higher level of patience levels, held their sleeves for 90 minutes, without break and added a medal to their shoulder for tolerating the intolerable.

There were some (like me) who waited for the movie to end, after it had already ended, trying to fathom if the Director failed in befooling us or forgot to befool us.

Recommendations: Go with a low expectation level, if you are an Aamir Khan fan, erase the promos seen on TV from your mind, sit back and enjoy the photography.