Standing Together

Sandstorm reminded me of Sairat. In the way the daughter is her father's pride, till she crosses a line. And once she does that, she's an embarrassment, a burden and a threat. Layla and Tasnim's treatment of their mother vis-à-vis their father was also very familiar.

I'm going to renew my library membership tomorrow. This is the fourth time this year that I'm renewing it after ad-hoc suspensions. It always happens that as school tests come by and Anu starts throwing tantrums, we discover that the root cause is the library and me, the bad one. I get frustrated and go and cancel the membership only to renew it when I feel sorry for Anu. Anyway, I've had it now and tomorrow it's going to be for a good one year. If I can't stand by a seven year-old who wants to read story books, I don't think I can count on myself for much else.

A Good Day!

In more ways than one. And I'm sleeping at 11 after God knows how long. It's wonderful!

Change is Here!

Anu : Aayi, what's our most important festival?
Me : We celebrate DeepavaLi and Ganesha Chaturthi on a big scale.
Anu : But I think for people living in Karnataka, Kannada Rajyotsava should be the most important one. It celebrates the whole state!

The girl continues to surprise me. From someone who disliked Kannada, she's transformed into something of a brand ambassador. For DeepavaLi, her teacher asked them all to bring some traditional food to share with the class. Anu was very keen to carry raagi mudde, because she'd read it's one of our staple foods and she wanted everybody to taste it. And when she sees any combination of red and yellow, she gets excited thinking of Karnataka flag and now she's determined to read and write Kannada. It's all too much to digest for me right now and I'm just keeping my fingers crossed. Of course on the other hand, she's taken up Marathi equally wholeheartedly. She speaks to herself in Marathi occasionally and to anybody else she can, too. My in-laws are thrilled.

Missing Ambareesh, just like that.

Been There Done That

This article definitely opened up some old stink. I know every word of it firsthand, having experienced it in at least one of my grandparents' place till I was a teenager. Even when I look back through the coloured glass of nostalgia, it's no pretty sight. It was a torture to endure, whether in the day or night, because the fear of being discovered by somebody in the daylight played no less on one's mind. Night of course was a different ball game; even the moonlight wouldn't penetrate the trees which seem suddenly full of ominous sounds, torches that die suddenly and returning is not an option, sit in those trenches praying that nothing bites you and even if something does, it's only an ant and nothing worse, keep calling Aayi just to feel secure....and don't even talk about when it rained. Oh, shit! Just because there was so much unused land all around, people thought there was no need of a toilet! My son hates to go into the toilet when we go to my grandmother's place because he thinks it's not 'nice'. But he doesn't know what relief it was for me to see it the first time! If there is one thing I am upset with my father about, it's that he too didn't get it done sooner.

Sometimes I think I wrongly romanticize about my childhood. Yes, I grew up in a pretty little place which I loved and I don't find that place anymore. But I had many insecurities and complexes of my own, some unwanted and serious burdens and fears, I shared them with nobody and I seem to have been good at keeping them hidden. May be I just force my mind to believe that one thing is another. 

Enchanted

Goa government is asking its farmers to experiment with cosmic farming. Chant the vedic mantras for 20 days for better results. My first thought was Goa!!? Of course it's the fault of my prejudiced and ignorant brain which thinks Goa is made only of beaches and tourists(excluding me). But yes, Goa has farmlands and politicians too. Nevertheless, I wish they had rather experimented this on the endangered farmlands of Punjab. May be they'll soon also market it as some sort of disaster tourism or something.

Such news makes me angry. Angry that no distopian novel predicted such absurdity and that doomsday predictions couldn't be more specific. But I must admit that the idea is rather novel; I would've thought they were more useful with people, like the warring chiefs of CBI or the dirty-linen-washing RBI governors...

Endangered

John Chau's death comes hardly a month after this article in The Hindu. Why do we find it so hard to tolerate and understand diversity?

Waste Worries

One and may be the only problem I have with Amazon so far, is the amount of plastic it generates with each delivery. The way our civic body collects and disposes it, I end up worrying that half the stray plastic lying on the road may be from our house. 

Line of Duty

First they downsize us saying the attrition numbers are not up to the mark and now we have people leaving in numbers. And we don't even have a whiff of anything to come, I mean, not even rumours!

I was just wondering how many people I would miss if they went out of this place, apart from P of course. With Rajani half the world away, it's only three people - my boss, A and SK. All other people I would cry for are gone already.

It may be that I'm too much into Line of Duty, but Nidhi Razdan interviewing Aatish Taseer on his latest book was like AC-12 interrogating one of those coppers. If he was guilty of anything, he would've confessed in two seconds so he must be really innocent.

Work has picked up a little and I'm so damn grateful!

Golden Stakes

Our long-service mails are like obituaries. You may hate the guy, you may think he's the most useless in the world but when the HR comes calling for your comments, you end up writing all flowery tributes to him.

Saving the Day

Only thing that can save today is the possibility that tomorrow I may think of it as having been a better day.

The Convenient Charity

When my friend Prashant was working here and I was in Hyderabad, I had visited him once. While on the way to some place else, he had stopped at this orphanage and school for the blind. He was giving away his old jeans and he was grateful that he could dispose them off there. I don't recollect where we went after that but this address stuck in my head. So now I go there regularly too, to give away old clothes, equally grateful. Somehow it had never struck me that they could do with regular donations too and was embarrassed last time when the girl at the counter thrust a pamphlet in my hand. I think most people use that place to dump things only.

I guess Hamilton won't be forgiven by the 'rich' Indians soon. He has no business bringing it up when we are already rolling in guilt about it and on top of that, when he has the chance to make amends, he does not stop at the standard "India has great culture" and goes on to a "but"! Now that's not something to be forgotten easily!

Drowsy

P is like a dream these days. You know, the kind that you see after midnight and spoil your sleep...

That Lonely Feeling

I think behind at least some of those super-womanly feelings, there is a super help-less feeling. Frustrated, angry, tired, worried, misused...

The Wrong(ed) Face

Our water filter stopped working in the evening and I had to rush out to get some water. I went to a nearby shop and did not have the change. The MalayaLi(it was easy to figure that) owner sent his son to get the change from outside and meanwhile struck a conversation with me. I spoke in Kannada and he followed suit in his broken one. He talked about the dishonest dealers and I was sympathetic. Then the boy returned and I took the money, thanked him and was leaving, when the owner asked me if I was from Tamil Nadu. Why the hell did he think that! I regret not asking him.

Bad Stories

I reached this piece of news late and it's like a little nightmare. Just days after I wrote excitedly about Balekempa, its director has been named in a case of sexual misconduct. It's disheartening and ironical that the guy who said all he wanted was dignity for the place and the people he came from, did not consider that the girl in front of him expected nothing less. 

The Boy-girl Thing

Anu: Aayi, I know boys get annoyed if they are called girls but I think girls wouldn't mind being called boys.
Me: I minded it when my grandmother said I was behaving like a boy!
Anu: I wouldn't have minded. I would've loved to have been a boy.
Me: Why?
Anu: I think boys are luckier.
Me: What do you mean?
Anu: For example, I get scolded more in this house.
The girl drives us all up the wall messing up the whole house with her creations, can never keep a thing in its place, makes me anxious every morning wondering what she would bring up to skip school and she says I scold her more than her brother. I gave her a piece of my mind.

I've finally got some work. I'm an external consultant to another team. It may not last long but I'll do for now.

Familiar History

Mary Beard says in SPQR, "Electioneering at Rome could be a costly business. By the first century BCE it required the kind of lavish generosity that is not always easy to distinguish from bribery. The stakes were high. The men who were successful in the elections had the chance to recoup their outlay, legally or illegally, with some of the perks of the office. The failures - and, like military defeats, there were many more of those in Rome than is usually acknowledged - fell ever more deeply into debt."

There is no comfort in knowing that we still carry that legacy.

The Sky is Pink

And my mobile camera is just too inadequate to bring out the shades. Just wonderful!

Finding Patterns in the Sky

I thought DeepavaLi for Bangalore got over yesterday with minimal crackers but hold on, today it's been non-stop raining of smoky stars! What does that mean?

The Exalted One

Rahul Dravid is on everyone's tongue these days. People cutting across classes are using his name to mean commitment, sincerity, integrity and so much more. It's as if he'll become a dictionary word soon. But I just miss his game. I miss watching him on the field more than ever, when cricket enthuses or entertains me no more.

New Learnings

"I've been a total cow" is a very confusing sentence. I mean, if you look at the person saying it and in your head the image of a desi cow pops up. You start looking for sarcasm where it's not there. But then you think of the annoying Jersey cows which rule the roads and terrorise everybody and you kind of understand the meaning.

I could kill for some good work. I'm tired of pretending it's just round the corner. J has been very kind, knowing how frustrated I have been but it's not going to sustain me for long.

Nudges and Pushes

Anu is still not in complete rhythm with her music class and I'm resisting the urge to say to hell with it and give it up myself. It starts with her reluctance to come out of bed and proceeds to showcasing various ailments that have suddenly appeared - itching, pain in the hands, legs etc. I don't budge and she says mothers are supposed to understand their children's problems. I say I do but mothers can also see a bit of future through their own past and she shouts that I'm the worst mother in the world. I think of Parth, the 13-year old who used to learn flute when I was learning music in 2006(my third unsuccessful attempt). He had said that he hated his mother when she pushed him young into music because that was the last thing he wanted to do then. But he was now glad that she did it despite his heavy protests. Then I think of V who reminisced how I used to mercilessly dump library books on her in High School(now grateful for it, of course). So I just hold my tongue and push ourselves out.

But once on the road, things definitely get better. We discuss neutral things like dialects and sing as we walk along. We are five minutes late in reaching the class but I think it was a good bargain in the end. And hopefully, tomorrow's classes will be easier.

A Pressing Matter

MS was my classmate in Primary school. One of the easiest boys to talk to, friendly, balanced, lots of banter and sometimes serious too and we got along well. There were odd moments of discord. In 4th standard, he called V by some obnoxious name and when I threatened to tell the teacher about it, jeered me with "go and tell your father". Father was a no-no word and I was forced to escalate the matter. It finally ended with our teacher reminding him that my father was most likely to teach him in High School. This was an unfair advantage that I often enjoyed. Anyway, it was a rare blip and we patched up soon enough. But I don't remember much of him after 6th standard like most others and next I met him was like a decade later.

It was 2002 and I had gone home on leave. Going to Mangalore was customary; I love the journey, I was proud of my money then and I did most of my shopping there. So I was on my way in a shared taxi when suddenly I discovered that MS was my co-passenger. I doubt if I recognized him first; he had a small beard, looked fairer than ever and even had a headgear of some sort. Anyway, he was in the front seat, I was directly behind him and the taxi was crowded so conversation was difficult and we just exchanged general details. He reached his destination first and proceeded to pay for both of us. I was protesting when he turned back, said it was okay, smiled, pressed my hand and walked away. I hate it when someone else pays my bill but that had taken the backseat now. Why did he press my hand like that? Was it just a normal, friendly gesture? But this was a new precedent, even for me. Would he do that to others too? By then enough people around me had made me feel like a sinner on account of N and I wondered if it was MS's way of telling me that he knew about it too. That he thought I didn't mind these things. Answer was hard to come by and it troubled me.

Today if MS meets me again, he may hardly remember that day in taxi, much less the hand. And here I am, still wondering about it.

The Small Universe

P has joined his Engg. whatsapp group recently and it's time for calls and messages and boisterous laughs. It's an odd feeling. I don't know if we have a group like that but the thing is even if there is one, I don't look forward to joining it. I won't have anything to reminisce about with most of them because my memories from those days have only two people in them - L and N...I guess I can include Pal too. That's all.