Grandma’s Abode!

There are lives I have lived,
There are lives I haven’t.
There are hopes I have abandoned,
There are dreams I have forgotten,
I’m no superhuman,
Nor do I intend to be,
Like a humming bird
I fly back and forth,
I relive hopes and dreams,
They fear no death,
For none shall have one,
Like grandma’s abode,
We meet each burning fall,
With a promise!

Memoir!

When you are in a memoir territory, emotions become dominant at large. So much so, that once while reviewing a memoir, a New York Times Editor, (also a reviewer, a playwright, a critic, etc.) Neil Genzlinger, looked at the audience and started by saying, “A moment of silence, please, for the lost art of shutting up.”

-And I feel you Neil!

Barcelona Day 2!

The irony of the Catalan architect, Gaudi was such that his art was rammed and dreams crushed under a tram with a day full of perplexing geniuses who declared him an ordinary beggar that could not be nursed back from death till reality struck and alas, Barcelona lost the only man who managed to make this city worth visually reminiscent!
But let’s suppose, he was an ordinary man and not one word more, was he not worth the same effort?
Or maybe among the bohemian vibe and the cosmopolitan street affair, there isn’t enough time for Tomfoolery. Either you manage to imprint your name on the most extraordinary architecture of the city, the Roman Catholic Basilica of the Holy Family (Sagrada Familia) as the symbol of faith, love and hope or die an ordinary man, I mean it’s not like you architected historical marvels to deserve any of that, oh cmon!

The Mirror Side! (3)

Living once in a while,

Forget once in a while, are we living at all. As much as of a cake walk it sounds, it’s one mammoth of a task. I guess mostly because now it is a task. ‘Tasks’ in itself is tag that emits exhaustion! Have you ever heard a group of girls saying we have to finish the task of shopping? No right, you see my point.

I have lived by, what I have grown up listening to, from my supremely (sometimes unnecessarily) optimistic mother. “There’s always something”, if my mom was the knight who was saving the princess, she would leave the castle whispering in the dragon ear, don’t worry, it happened for a reason, drop a bandage and leave.

Well, I, on the contrary, would not say such things but maybe leave a bandage behind (mothers DNA). It has been an insane fude between the two minds that walk parallel in my head. The other being my very strong headed, practical father’s DNA, who’d be like slit the dragon’s throat, we don’t have the time for tears.

While I have been between the battle of the sexes, I have fairly managed to pull through my not so perfect life and believe you me, lived it. Legitimately, lived it. I love the fact that I’m alive, I breathe, I can touch, sense, view, comprehend unfathomable beauty and atrocities, all at once and separately.

And that’s a lot for someone who constantly tries to judge, choose reactions rationally and then react, at least to my capacity. The distress and saddening hypocrisies that I come across each day is so consuming, the stereotypical money making flesh we have turned into, for what?

To pay the bill of food we decided to go eat at the fanciest restaurant in the town, while we look into our mails for the next day? To buy a health insurance for 60’s? To die in the most extravagant house with the most exotic funeral dinners or a 14 day lavish get together in case you’re a Hindu (yes, even death ritual is larger than life for us).

Remember talking? Whatever happened to that!

We don’t anymore, like we used to do!

(Part-3)(END).

The Mirror Side! (2)

I don’t know what went wrong.

Something must have gone haywire, or what I like to situationally believe and have been repeatedly told ‘we grew up’. Did we?

I’m not very good at growing up perhaps, and alas I’ve made peace with it or so I’m left to basket. What I fail to understand is that since when did growing up become a boring process of knitting a life you don’t seem to like, but choose to live. Live because, well no reason, just live it you piece of flesh, it’ll make dying less of an episode. Darling, you weren’t living anyway.

I have all my life disliked raw tomatoes, mustard oil or other little things, not out of a trivial taste test, but out of a million tries to gulp it in, in every possible way and failing. I just do not like it, in fact I cringe at the slightest of smell. But that’s not the nature of luxury I may have if I was in a scenario of food scarcity, which I’m not, so ya I don’t choose to waste it either, but I won’t force it down my throat. I’ll choose the food without it, simply.

But growing up in India doesn’t teach you that, it teaches you to learn, adjust, develop a taste for anything and everything (protocol for females only, BTW). Sad!

So I developed a taste for mustard oil while I battle with certain taste buds, still. And while that’s the state of my food log, that’s also the story for a larger picture in my life. Doing things out of sheer feeling of getting it over with, not because you want to or like to, but because you have to.

So saying that something changed with the dragon would be unfair, something or a lot of things changed with me too. People who have known me for decades would agree and be flabbergasted, all at once.

I think change, as much as is the law of nature, it also is a choice we make, mostly to survive. The question is are we only looking to survive?

Or maybe also live, once in a while?

(Part-2)(End).

The Mirror Side! (1)

Patriarchy is remarkably monotheistic, scissor handing the obvious anarchy we’re in the cemented dark woods of, at all times, the ones that otherwise we unerringly battle, or should I say, have to battle. Like charity, Patriarchy didn’t begin at home either, it began at a place that came to me all ornate, placed beautifully in the velvet pillow of stuff that dreams are made of in La La Land. 

It came as a thud, thud because calling it a contrast would be too generous. From my very own line of helps from my morning lemonade to my post dinner coffees, the shift to the other side of the table was quite something, but believe you me, I try, if not ace it, at least be decent.  

But remember how we chuckled through that doting phase when we’re ready to go against the winds, hello hummingbird effect! As much as we fancy it in the infancy, it will creepy crawly in to a nauseated melodrama. And there will not be anything ‘Mellow’ about that ‘Drama’. 

Saturation is an ugly pit stop, and is as important as the extra pair of heels you carried to a vacation ( I feel you girl), like it or not, you got it babe. And from where I started, and what I lived for 28 long years of my life, it never was a strong pursuit of mine. It never came across as something that would be a hiccup, but oh man, start living  with one fire breathing dragon, you’ll befriend emotions, you didn’t even know existed in you or even the universe, for starters.

The good thing about this fire breathing dragon was (is) that it gets conditioned to things and doesn’t realize it till the other half ‘Poofs’ from the situation. I never could or even now can understand if that’s a good thing, or is that how the world works when you cross a certain age, because this dragon’s history suggests otherwise, it was surprisingly different. Enough to shaft you to a shelf, dust yourself like your old books, sit, contemplate, analyse and throw yourself in a tunnel and ask, 

What changed? 

(Part-1)(End)