Deciphering Life

Another short story

2011-01-11T15:18:00.002+05:30

Thanks Shail, for publishing my story "The Honeymoon" on WriteSpace. :)

http://writespace4iw.wordpress.com/2010/12/19/story-space-the-honeymoon-by-smitha-luthra/

Book Review: Ripples

2010-12-22T13:45:00.003+05:30

I recently had an opportunity to read a book of short stories. It is called “Ripples” and is published by APK Publishers. It is a collection of forty-eight beautiful short stories by twenty-six women writers compiled together in a single book by Prashant Karhade.

As a reader and as one who occasionally dabbles in writing, I have always believed that fiction is nothing but a reality that we at some point of time in our lives have refused to acknowledge as one. What the society chooses to turn a deaf ear to, sooner or later finds its way back into the lives of its people and makes itself heard; dressed up in the alphabet and wearing the garb of a story. And we readily accept it then, in its more palpable form, allowing it to weave itself into the fabric of our lives and leave subtle lessons on the landscape of our psych.

If I could allow myself the use of just one cliché to describe this book, I would compare it to a rainbow of many colours. The stories in this book hold an immense power to trigger a range of emotions in the reader. I usually read a good book from cover to cover and finish it over a day or two. My reaction to this book was different. Each story left a distinct flavour and I found myself stopping between stories, trying to ruminate on what just happened in there and allowing myself to take a moment and bask in the feeling the story evoked inside me.

Though it is hard to pick a set of stories that left a lasting impression on me from amongst the forty-eight, there are some that stayed with me a little longer than the others. Perhaps it was only because I was able to visualize them more clearly on my mind-screen at that point of time. Stories like “Home Is Where The Heart Is”, “Fading Lights” and many others warm the heart and fill it with hope. There are some like “Wilted Dreams” and “Almost Heaven” that beautifully fill the reader with a faint sense of pleasure and then just when you start to snuggle deeper into the blanket of peace and contentment expertly cast over you by the author, they catch you unawares and leave you tingling with a strange stabbing sadness. While “The Oleander Flowers” and “Family Of Beauties” left me disturbed and angry, the stories “Never Mine But I Felt The Loss” and “My Brother Jai” left me feeling a deep penetrating sense of loss. There are stories with an eerie, thriller like quality like “For You, My Love” and “Atonement” that appeal to a certain part of the brain and then there are some that are written so beautifully that they are pure reading pleasure and one ceases to take notice of the genre they fall into. But having said that, this is my set of stories and I am sure when I reread the book in a few months’ time (which I most definitely will), I will pick up a few more and add to this set. That is the beauty of the book. Every reader of this book will most definitely be able to pick a handful of these stories and say with certainty that they made a difference to him/her.

All in all, it is a beautiful collection of stories – one that is surely not to be missed; not only for literary pleasure but also for the plenitude of unique human moments and the explosion of varied feelings the stories evoke in the reader.

हिंदी कविता: उम्मीद

2010-11-11T17:53:00.005+05:30

गुमसुम सी सड़क पर
सूना सा इक मोड़ आएगा
सन्नाटों के शोर में
बंजर रात सिसकती होगी
और चाँद ऊँगली थामे
तुम्हें घर तक छोड़ आएगा

हिंदी कविता: अहसास

2010-11-11T17:50:00.003+05:30

जिन अहसासों को लफ्जों की ज़मीन न दे सकें,
उन्हें ख़्वाबों के पंख दे दिया करते हैं,
ये दिल में रुक कर
दिल ही को छलनी किया करते हैं

हिंदी कविता: उलझी सी लकीरें

2010-11-11T17:47:00.004+05:30

उलझी सी लकीरें मुट्ठी में लिए,
चले जाते हैं वीरानों में नयी सड़क तलाशते हुए

कभी अपनों को ढूंढते हुए,
कभी अपनों में खुद को तलाशते हुए

दिन की स्याही से लिखते हैं कहानी अपनी,
जीतते इंसानों से, सवालों से मगर हारते हुए

कभी आँधियों का रुख बदल देते हैं,
कभी चल देते हैं हवाओं की ऊँगली थामते हुए

चाँद को बंदी बना लेते हैं सपनों में कभी,
कभी ढलते सूरज की गोद में खुद को ढालते हुए

चले जाते हैं वीरानों में नयी सड़क तलाशते हुए

Poetry: Life is a battle and ally despair

2010-11-11T17:36:00.003+05:30

Ghosts from the past, they seem,
These shadows, unheard, unseen,
How I wish they would let me be,
Lonesome, numb, however serene.

They listen not; they lurk behind,
Clouding vision, these tears unkind,
I cannot fathom why they cling,
Bygones they are, not out of mind.

Rougher terrain, weather unfair,
All the worlds a dizzy fanfare,
Quicksand, this yore of mine,
Life is a battle and ally despair.

हिंदी कविता: चिराग

2010-11-11T17:34:00.004+05:30

अपने हाथों से चिराग जला दो अँधेरे में,
अधूरी सी मैं, अधूरी मेरी परछाई,
हमकदम हुए तो पूरे हो जायेंगे.

हिंदी लघु कथा: असली नकली

2010-01-03T22:58:00.007+05:30

“यह लीजिये पांच सौ का नोट लालाजी. अब आप हमें दो सौ लौटा दीजिये." अहमद साहेब ने अपना राशन का सामान थैले में रखा और साइकिल पर थैले को बाँधने लगे.

"लालाजी, ये नोट तो नकली हैं", दो सौ सौ के करारे नोटों को देखते हुए वो बोल पड़े और नोट वापस लालाजी के हाथ में थमा दिए.

"नकली? अरे क्या कहते हो भैया? हमनें कोई मशीन थोड़े ही लगा रखी है नोट छापने की? हमारे पास भी तो आप जैसे ही ग्राहकों से ही आते हैं सब नोट!"

लालाजी का गुस्सा छुपाये नहीं छुप रहा था. उधर दूकान के अन्दर खड़ा छोटू झाड पोंछ करता हुआ खिसिया के हंस पड़ा. जिस स्टूल पर खड़ा ऊपर से अलमारी साफ़ कर रहा था, उससे उतर कर अपनी गणित की कॉपी निकाली. चार लकीरों को पांचवी लकीर से काट कर जोर से हंसा.

लालाजी ने मन ही मन कहा, "लो, एक बार फिर शर्त हार गया बन्दर से. यह लड़का है बड़ी ऊंची चीज़! बेचारे अहमद भाई पर यूँ ही बरस पड़ा मैं."

थोडा मन शांत किया और बोले, "क्या कहूं भाई जान, मेरी तो कुछ समझ में ही नहीं आता के नकली है या असली. मैं भी तो सोचो ठगा ही तो गया हूँ ना. जाने कौन दे गया होगा यह नोट मुझे! आप तो पुराने ग्राहक हो, अब आप से क्या छुपाना. रातों की नींद हराम हो गयी है मेरी इन नकली नोटों की वजह से. कारोबार का सत्यानास हो चला है. इसीलिए आप पर भी यूँ ही बरस पड़ा. माफ़ करना."

और फिर थोडा हिचकिचाते हुए बोले, "ज़रा हमें भी समझाना कैसे पहचानते हैं नकली नोट..."

"अरे मियां, आप तो वो मशीन ही लगवा लो नोट पहचानने की. कहाँ आप इस उम्र में अपनी आँखों को तकलीफ देंगे. इतना आसान भी नहीं है सिखाना. काफी पेचीदा मामला है. मेरी नमाज़ का भी समय हो रहा है. आप ऐसा करो, यह रखो तीन सौ रुपये. कसम खुदा की, असली नोट दे रहा हूँ. चाहो तो दस्तखत कर दूं. मशीन से चेक करवा लेना. जो नकली निकले तो हाथ के हाथ बदल दूंगा."

अहमद भाई ने साइकिल पकड़ी और निकल पड़े. मन ही मन सोचे जा रहे थे, "अब तो मुन्ने को सामान लेने लाले की दूकान पे भेजना खतरे से खाली नहीं. जाने कब नकली नोट थमा दे मासूम बच्चे की हथेली पर. थोड़ी सी तो दूर है रमेश बनिये की दूकान. चार कीड़े ही तो ज्यादा निकलेंगे चावल में, चिकन बिरयानी समझ के खा लेंगे. और एक बार साइकिल निकाल ही ली तो थोडा आगे जाने में क्या हर्ज़ है? कम से कम नकली नोटों से तो बच जायेंगे."

"बड़ी हंसी आ रही है छोटू बेटा? कोई काम धाम नहीं है क्या? मुफ्त की रोटियां तोड़ने की आदत होती जा रही है. देख तो, किवाड़ के पीछे कितनी धुल है, मार ज़रा कपडा कस के. पता चले लाले की चक्की का आटा खाता है!" अहमद भाई के जाते ही लालाजी छोटू पर बरस पड़े.

"लालाजी, अब तो मान जाओ. कंजूसी छोडो. मसीन ले ही लो. वैसे मेरी हिसाब की किताब के हिसाब से अहमद भाई दसवें आदमी थे आपका नकली नोट पकड़ने वाले. अब तो यह दोनों नोट भी मेरे हुए. लाइए लाइए, दीजिये और फिर देखिये कैसे चकाचक सफाई करता हूँ." छोटू ने भी मुस्कुराते हुए अपनी हथेली आगे रख दी.

"ले रख. नकली नोट! राम राम! लक्ष्मी का ऐसा घोर निरादर! पैसे क्या पेड़ पर लगते हैं जो उस बनारसी बाबू को ज़रा सी मसीन के बावीस सौ पकड़ा दूं! जा जा, काम कर."

"किसी न किसी के आँगन के पेड़ पर तो लग ही रहे हैं न पैसे, लालाजी. जाने कौन है जो आपको नकली के नोट चेपे जा रहा है तीन महीने से. मेरी मानो, एक बार फिर से बुलवा भेजो बनारसी बाबू को. थोडा ठंडा सरबत पिलाओ और फिर मोल भाव करो. लगता है दो हज़ार में मान जाएगा."

अपने बच्चों सा प्यार करते थे लालाजी छोटू को. मेहनती बच्चा था. कभी मेहनत से जी नहीं चुराया उसने. वो भी बड़ा मान करता था लालाजी का. पर जहां पैसे खर्च करने की बात आती थी, दिल बैठा जाता था लालाजी का.

"सोचूंगा. तू जा काम कर अपना. देख तो, मूंग की दल में किल्ली पड़ने को है. पिछवाड़े ले जाकर धूप में रख कर आ बोरे को."

छोटू तो अपना कपडा कंधे पे डाल बोरा उठा के गायब हो गया. लालाजी बेचारे चिंतित से मक्खियों पर झल्लाने लगे.

"नाक में दम कर रखा है इन मुई नकली मक्खियों ने!"

नकली नोटों ने दिमाग पर ऐसा कब्ज़ा किया हुआ था के सभी कुछ नकली नज़र आने लगा था लालाजी को.

"वोह राम दयाल भी, लालाजी लालाजी कहता नहीं थकता था, कल अगली गली के बनिये के पास से थैला भर के लाता दिखा था. ऐसे तो मेरा काम काज सब चौपट हो जाएगा."

मोटे लालाजी नन्हे बालक की तरह रुआंसे हो चले.

*
बस पौ फटने ही वाली थी. बनियाइन आँगन में अपने भीगे बाल सुखा रही थी और मन ही मन गायत्री मंत्र का जाप कर रही थी जब लालाजी के चिल्लाने की आवाज सुन कर घबरा गयी. दौड़ कर कमरे में पहुंची तो देखा लालाजी अपने दिल पर हाथ रखे उठे बैठे हैं. फ़ौरन पास रखे मटके से एक गिलास पानी निकालकर लालाजी तो दिया और पीठ मसलने लगी.

"क्या हुआ जी आपको?"

"क्या बोलूं मुन्नी की माँ, इतना सुहाना सपना देख रहे थे हम... इतनी, इस किवाड़ जितनी, बड़ी तिजोरी थी जिसमें भरे थे हीरे जवाहरात और नोटों की गद्दियाँ. इतने नोट थे के हम खुद नोटों के ढेर पर बैठे थे और आप बनारसी साडी पहने, सोने से लबालब, चांदी की थाली में गरम गरम मालपुए परोस रही थीं. बस चाशनी से भरा पहला निवाला अभी मुख में जाने ही वाला था के कहीं से छोटू भागता हुआ आया और बोला 'लालाजी सब नकली है - नोट, शोट, सोना चांदी...यहाँ तक के माल पुए भी. भाग लो, सारा गाँव आपको मारने आ रहा है...' बस हम हडबडा के उठ गए."

"धीरज रखिये जी. मेरी मानिए लगवा ही लीजिये वो मसीनवा. ऐसे में आपको कुछ हो जाए तो सबही कुछ धरा का धरा ही रह जाएगा."

दुनिया की हर मिस्सेज़ अपने मिस्टर को ऐसी परिस्थिति में यही कहती है. पर फिर भी दुनिया के हर मिस्टर की तरह लालाजी को भी अपनी मिस्सेज़ की बात बड़ी ही गहरी लगी. वैसे तो रोज़ अपनी पत्नी की आवाज़ कानों में चुभती है, पर आज उन्हें उनकी जिव्हा पर सरस्वती का वास नज़र आ रहा था. बोले, "बात तो तुम्हारी सोलह आने खरी है मुन्नी की माँ. अब तो हमने ठान ही ली है. मसीन लगवा कर ही दम लेंगे."

*
"अरे छोटू, आज हमने सोच ही लिया है. अब मसीन लगवा ही लेते हैं. बहुत ठग लिया हमको दुनिया ने. अरे, ऐसे में हमको कुछ हो जाए तो सबही कुछ धरा का धरा ही रह जाएगा.",

कोई कह नहीं सकता था के अपनी मिस्सेज़ के शब्द चुरा के बोल रहे हैं लालाजी.

"क्या बात है, लालाजी! आज तो मैं भी आपके लिए बढ़िया खबर लाया हूँ. सुन कर बांछें खिल जायेंगी आपकी! पहले वादा करिए के गुलाब जामुन खिलाएंगे, फिर बताता हूँ."

"क्या खबर लाया है? सुबह सुबह अभी लक्ष्मी आनी तो शुरू नहीं हुई, उसके जाने का प्रबंध हो रहा है. ऐसे में क्या अच्छी खबर ला सकता है?" लालाजी भारी मन से बोले.

"तो फिर सुनो. वो जो बनारसी बाबू हैं न, जो दूकान दूकान साइकिल पर नोट चेक करने की मसीन बेचने को आये थे, बस यूँ समझो, हमारे दूर के रिश्तेदार हैं."

"दूर के?"

"बस, वो ऐसा है न के, माँ ने मेरी बात चलाई हुई है... सादी की..." छोटू थोडा शर्माते हुए बोला. "वोह लड़की है न, उसके पिताजी के ममेरे भाई के बेटे ही तो हैं वोह बनारसी भैया... बस यूँ ही राह चलते मिल गए थे मुझे कल, और बात बात में बात निकल ली. कहने लगे अपनी बेटी के होने वाले ससुराल से भला कमिसन क्या कमाएंगे... पूरे सोलह सौ में बात पक्की कर के आया हूँ. मैंने कहा लालाजी को बता दूंगा, फिर वो अपनी सूझ बूझ से बात फाइनल करेंगे."

"अरे वाह! जा जा, जल्दी से लेके आ. इससे पहले के लड़की वाले तेरी सूरत देख कर रिश्ते से इनकार कर दें, तू मसीन लेके आ." लालाजी ने फ़ौरन छोटू को पैसे थमा दिए.

*
चमचमाती मसीन आई दूकान पर. लालाजी ने उसे फूल माला पहना कर, धूप बत्ती करके अपनी दूकान के द्वार के पास ऐसे सजा के रखा के हर आने जाने वाले की नज़र उस पर पड़ती थी. उस पर रोज़ दबा के कपडा मारना छोटू का काम था.

सबसे पहले तो उन्होंने अपने गल्ले के सारे नोट चेक कर डाले. ज्यादा नहीं, बस तीन पचास के, एक सौ का और पांच दस दस के नोट नकली बताये मसीन ने. हिसाब करके मन ही मन सोचा लालाजी ने एक मसीन फिर भी दो हज़ार से कम की पड़ी छोटू की वजह से. ख़ुशी ख़ुशी छोटू के लिए अगले दिन गुलाब जामुन बनवाये.

*

छोटू का रिश्ता तो हुआ नहीं उस घर, पर लालाजी का काम बन गया था. यही कोई दो-तीन हफ्ते ही बीते थे के एक दिन, लक्ष्मी मैया के आगे अगरबत्ती जलाते हुए न जाने लालाजी को क्या सूझा और छोटू से पूछ बैठे,

"क्या बताया था तूने? वोह बनारसी बाबू तेरा दूर का चचेरा भाई निकला था...? कोई और भी पूछ रहा था हमें मसीन के बारे में, इसीलिए उसकी याद आई..."

"अरे नहीं लालाजी, मेरा भाई नहीं, वो लड़की के बापू के चचेरे भाई का बेटा था वो... इसी लिए तो इतना दिश्कोउंत दिया था...आज कल तो अपना खुद का भाई भी कमिसन न छोड़े..."

"तुझे ठीक से याद है न वो चचेरे भाई का बेटा था?“ लालाजी ने पूछा.

"हाँ लालाजी, अगर बात बन जाती तो साला ही न बनता मेरा वोह? वैसे वो लोग तो कहते थे के लड़का लाखों में एक है, बस मेरी माँ ही अटक गयी के दहेज़ में स्कूटर मिलेगा तो ही ब्याहेगी बेटे को." छोटू भी कहने से न चूका.

लालाजी मन ही मन मुस्कुराए, "मैं न कहता था के ऊंची चीज़ है यह लड़का. पहले बोला था ममेरा भाई है, अब कहता है चचेरा भाई है. नकली नोट दे कर मसीन खरीद लाया होगा. बदमाश, मुझसे सोलह सौ ले गया. जी तो चाहता है डंडा उठा के मारूं इसके, पर भेद खोल दिया तो नौकरी छोड़ देगा. अगली गली वाले का छोटू तो पहले ही भाग खड़ा हुआ है धोबी की लड़की के साथ. फ़ौरन जाकर उसकी दूकान पे काम पर लग जाएगा. क्या करूं?"

फिर कुछ सोच कर मन ही मन बोले, "लड़का तो काम का है. अपने हाथ में रखूंगा तो मेरे ही काम आएगा बच्चा कल को. चलो, ये समझूंगा आखिरी बार नकली नोटों से ठगा गया हूँ. बस आगे से नज़र पक्की रखूंगा इस पर."

फिर याद आया,

"वादा किया है मिस्सेज़ ने के इसके बेटा होगा तो चांदी के कटोरी-चम्मच देंगी इसकी बहू को. अब मेरी नज़र तो कमज़ोर होती जा रही है, कौन जाने असली और नकली चांदी के भेद को? राम राम, यह सुनार भी तो ठग बनते जा रहे हैं आज कल."

सब दुःख भूल कर लालाजी अपने बही खाते खोलने में व्यस्त हो गए.

Short Story: Eyes

2009-10-18T11:01:00.006+05:30

I wanted to post it on 15th October, World White Cane Day as my dedication to all those who are equipped with better insight than most of us able-sighted folks.
I hope after reading this, you can forgive the three day delay.
A special thanks to dear friend, Gayatri who helped my blocked head with her beautiful situation ideas.
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“…and after the marriage was over, they moved into their new apartment…”

She smiled as she read it. So many kids her age did not understand the difference between a wedding and a marriage. They used the terms interchangeably often leading to hilarious results. She made a mental note to speak to Shubhra the next day after class about the use of either “marriage ceremony” or “wedding” in the context. The story had promise. But Shubhra needed to learn to pay attention to minor details. She moved on to the next answer sheet. This was the last one.

There was a big pile of transcribed sheets on the table at which she sat. “Julie has been working really hard lately. There has been too much material. I must ask Amar to give her a raise.” She told herself as she started going through the last story.

Julie was a high school student who came in three afternoons a week with BrailleWriter, a type-writer like device used to convert text into Braille. She charged rupees two thousand a month for three hours of transcription a week. Sometimes she also read out the newspaper to him while Mr. Seth messed around with a piece of play-dough that their next door neighbour’s seven year old son often stopped by with. Mrs. Seth loved to prepare tea for them all while the newspaper was being read.

Julie was such a delightful girl to have around in the house, she thought as she heard the dining room clock strike four.

“Ah! Tea time! It is time to bring the fanatics back to real world.” She smiled, putting down the test paper sheets on the table and lovingly thinking of Mr. Seth going gaga over a new masterpiece in the studio.

She walked towards the kitchen, on the way ironing the wrinkles on the dining table cloth with her deft fingers. She turned on the stove and set the water to boil in a kettle. She threw a spoonful of tea leaves in the water as it started to boil. As the aroma of green tea leaves wafted through the room, it was time to ring the bell attached to the basement.

Mrs. Urmila Seth, fondly known as Urmi Madam amongst students and other members of the staff, was an English teacher in a highly respectable boarding school situated on the beautiful and picturesque foothills of the Nilgiri mountain range. She was around forty five years of age with an ample volume of hair greying at the temples and worn backwards in a loose, somewhat untidy bun. Her eyes were a mystical green.

She had a fair complexion and a skin so translucently lovely despite her age, that it put all the pimpled teenagers at school to shame. Being a little over weight with a height of a little over five feet; which did little to add even the slightest illusion of a slender body shape, she usually dressed in a blacks and browns. Her usual attire to school consisted of a long black pure wool pullover with big pockets over a salwar-kameez in earthy tones and soft black pumps. A big brown pure leather purse, large and sturdy enough to accommodate a china dinner set for four, completed her ensemble. She walked in an upright gait despite her height and was very punctual with her classes and appointments. This often made her quite impatient with any tardiness exhibited by others.

Mr. Amarnath Seth was a thick set, happy-go-lucky fifty year old, with a small pot belly and a salt-and-pepper mop of curly hair that was usually smeared with dry white plaster. The white of the plaster added to the salt volume and made him a close resemblance to Santa Claus. He was a city renowned sculptor and spent most of his days and nights working from his little workshop in the basement of their house. He had a gift for carving out the most vivid and beautiful forms out of dead white clay. He was jovial, a lover of food and a man of immense patience. But like many men of his age, he had his set of quirks.

Anyone interested in buying his work had to go through a certain ritual. He believed that the buyer’s vision came in the way of making a true estimate of the value of his work. Since every creation of his was made with his bare hands, a true appreciation of the piece could only be done by feeling each piece, each line, each subtle detail, without letting “seeing” interfere with it. He lost many prospective buyers because not everyone interested in his work was comfortable about being sent over to his studio with a blindfold around their eyes and an escort who took them from one spot to another.

Mrs. Seth often teased him about how he gave the impression of one having a resentment for his able-sighted fellow beings. To which he would say, “Urmi, you know that is not true. I just want them to know the piece the way I do before they buy it. If they cannot get to the soul of it, it isn’t meant to be theirs. I only save them the hassle and the money.”

Mr. and Mrs. Seth resided at a cosy little cottage set amidst ranges of lush green tea plantations, around two kilometres from the school campus. Like so many of us, they had every reason to brood over the unfairness of life and spend hours blaming God for what was missing from theirs. But they had chosen to focus on what they had. Every morning, the cool mountain breeze that played on the window drapes of their bedroom brought a renewed sense of vigour in their lives.

Mrs. Seth was in love with English literature and always tried to transport her students to the world of Keats and Wordsworth, Shakespeare and Dickens. Her passion was shared by only a few select students in her class, who were mesmerized by her story-telling. They genuinely admired her and through her, the works of the great poets and novelists. They relished every word she said, bathing in every brush stroke she drew on the canvases of their minds, painting a world so different yet so similar to theirs. However, a majority of the students in her class just wanted to get passing marks. Not one to get easily perturbed, she did not let that affect the bird-like chirpiness with which she addressed her class every morning.
Mr. Seth’s occupation was like meditation to him. He poured all his frustrations and worries “into another head” as he had once said while making an old woman’s wrinkled face. This was one of his favourite jokes. He was passionate about his work. He vanished into his haven every morning after Mrs. Seth left for school and spent hours working on a new master piece every day.

*

It had been some time since the little wooden bird had gone back into her clock house having cuckooed four times. Mrs. Seth set out the tea on a tray. On her way back from school this afternoon, she had stopped at the bakers and bought Mr. Seth’s favourite coconut filled sweet buns. This was sure to put him in a good mood. Good food had that effect on him. She planned on preparing biryani for dinner. Malti, their cook and house-keeper, who worked from seven until twelve every morning had cut the vegetables and soaked the rice before leaving for the day. While Malti prepared a light breakfast and lunch on most weekdays, Mrs. Seth liked to prepare dinner herself. She loved experimenting with the spices to create aromas that dragged her husband out of his den.

It was raining outside. She loved to sit by the window when it rained. She loved the smell of the wet earth outside and the pitter-patter of raindrops falling on the roof. The slight chill in the air, as she reached out for her shawl, reminded her about the tea.

“Amar, the tea is getting cold. And so are the buns.” She called out a little louder than usual to drown the rain’s spatter.

“I’m on my way, sweetheart. On the fourteenth step...”

She smiled. He wouldn’t take long. There were exactly twenty steps from the basement to the dining room. She peeped outside the window to feel the fresh air on her face. The rain always brought to her mind a poem by Sarah Teasdale.

“There will come soft rain and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;”

She tried to recollect the remaining lines.

“Hello, Nutty Professor!”
Mr. Seth was right behind her.

“You call me nutty and you are the one who bangs his head into the cow-bell every single day.”

There was a Swiss cow-bell, a parting gift from an old student of hers, hanging at the centre of the ceiling, at the top of the stairs.

“Gosh, you heard that? And I thought I was the one with a stronger auditory faculty. Why don’t you just remove the silly bell from there?” he grumbled.

“Well, every time you bump into it, I get to tease you. I love the sound. It means you are coming to me.” She smiled and gave him a hug.

“I was just thinking we must give Julie a raise. She has been doing a lot of work lately.” She said handing him the cup of tea as they seated themselves on the dining table chairs.

“Ah! That dear little kid! Yes, I’ve been thinking of the same myself. It makes sense to do it. In fact I was planning on asking her to transcribe a few Panchatantra stories in Braille. I remember hearing those stories as a school kid. What fun they were! It is not like the US where the county library keeps Braille versions of all the good books. And if they aren’t available in the library, they are procured and delivered at your door step. The world out here is just structured for the sighted.”

He sighed and then continued.
“I mean, look at this for example. Couldn’t even the top-notch restaurants think of a non-visual way to mark restroom doors for Men and Women? The world seems to be replacing pictures with words everywhere.”

“Well, a wise man, or was it a woman, once said that a picture is worth a thousand words.” she teased.

“Whoever that was, the person definitely wasn’t blind. But I am sure you’d agree that the pleasure of building a scenario, a setup in your mind, piece by piece, is matchless as compared to just being given everything at the same time, as in a picture. You would miss the little details where most of the beauty lies. Don’t you think my dear?” he asked.

“You always give the false impression of someone who has a feeling of vengeance for all those who can see. Talking of details, what are you working on at the moment?” she asked, delicately changing the topic.

“You must come and check it out dear… I am trying to make a basket of fruits… non-intellectual and painfully domestic as it may sound, it is not easy. There are so many lines and knots...“.

“Sure. Right after I finish another cup of this lovely tea. By the way, now I know where the fruit basket from the dining table has vanished”, she said, her smile once again ringing in her voice like the sweet sound of a distant church bell.
Mr. Amarnath Seth shifted his attention to the next dearest object of his affection – the coconut filled sweet bun.

*

It had been raining all night. The ten AM sun, still trapped in a bunch of clouds, felt warm and mellow on the skin. It was Saturday – a day when Mr. Seth took elaborate pains to get dressed for a special mid-morning music class at the local clubhouse. The music class was usually followed by a long chat over a leisurely buffet lunch with his friends.

Mrs. Seth was right outside their cottage, haggling with the subzi-wallah (vegetable vendor) over the price of tomatoes.

“They are not even half as good as last time. There is no way I am going to pay twelve rupees for these.”

She lifted a fleshy one and sniffed it.

“Ugh! These are from storage. Forget it. I don’t want tomatoes. I’ll take only the potatoes and turnips. Don’t forget to add a few green chillies.” She said with a note of authority, handing him the agreed upon price of potatoes and turnips.

While the vegetables made their way into her jute bag, Mrs. Seth waved in the direction of a rickshaw-full of children who took turns blowing the rickshaw’s horn while the rickshaw waited for the boy next door. The little kids had a two hour play-school every Saturday – a blessing for moms struggling with the demands of an elaborate weekend brunch.

“So, here you are! I’ve been looking for you all over the place. I’d better be going. Are you sure you do not want to come with me to the clubhouse today?” Mr. Seth was at the doorstep. He adjusted his beret over his head with his left hand while extracting his cane from the holder at the entrance.

“Oh, is it ten already? It feels like an eight AM sun. You smell nice, dear. Is that the new aftershave?”

Without really expecting an answer to any of her previous questions, she added, “And yes, I think I’ll just stay at home and rest today. My legs are aching and I am not in a mood to walk. By the way, just watch your step. Since it rained all of last night, the road is somewhat slippery. Come, let me give you a hand.” She extended her hand which soon met with the warmth of Mr. Seth’s fingers. As he stepped down the small flight of three stairs that connected their patio with the road below, his hand still in his wife’s, he heard her chirpy voice once again.
“Bye dear. Have a good time.” He smiled and said bye.

Mrs. Seth was looking forward to a few hours of solitude to catch up on her knitting. She handed over the vegetables to Malti and gave her a few instructions. Tuning into a channel on the radio that played old Hindi film songs, she picked up her knitting needles and settled cross-legged into her favourite chair by the window.

On his way to the clubhouse Mr. Seth spotted an old friend of his, someone he had played golf with for four years until arthritis in the knees got the better of him. He was thankful to the optician who had sent the new pair of glasses a day before. With the previous pair he would not have recognized the retired army man at that distance.

Mrs. Urmila Seth sat by the window with an unopened envelope in her hands. It smelled of ink from a printer cartridge. It had come in the mail a few minutes back.
“This would have to wait until Amar is back. I hope it’s nothing urgent.”
She sighed and placed it on the side table next to the chair.

Mrs. Seth’s white cane stood alone in the umbrella holder at the doorstep waiting for her companion of many years - the mahogany walking stick that belonged to Amarnath Seth. It was not very often that the white cane was left in that holder all by herself.

Short Story: The Spell

2009-09-28T14:13:00.002+05:30

“Viren, not another party… please.” she implored knowing only too well that it was going to be in vain. It had become a ritual and her first reaction to any invitation came out almost spontaneously.

“The CM is invited to this one and Mehra has reminded me about it three times since morning. He categorically mentioned that Bhabhiji should come, preferably dressed up in a muted color saree. It would do a world of good for the first impression the CM has of me. I mean, of us.” he corrected himself instantly.

Her silence spoke on her behalf.

“C’mon… we will be back in an hour, I promise. You can be assured I won’t take more than two drinks with CM Sahib around.” Viren put his arms around his wife and hugged her tight. Another set of words died an untimely death in her throat. After all these years, she knew he hugged her whenever he wanted to abort a conversation. And she usually complied.

A gentle scent of his cologne lingered in the air after Viren walked out of the room in his usual fast stride - a scent she had lived with for the last seven years and yet it had always felt foreign.

She had known Viren since their college days. He had always been ambitious and an idealist. Coming from similar middle-class households, in those days all they had were dreams. They would sit on the beach for hours and talk about them. He loved the fact that unlike other girls in college who were hardcore feminists and fiercely career-oriented, Neeti did not feel ashamed about wanting to be a stay-at-home wife and mother. He loved the confidence in those hazel eyes and the pride with which she carried herself amongst girls who had written her off from the “in” crowd for her choice of career – a career they likened to the role of a doormat. She loved him for his love for nature and wild-life and the passion with which he spoke of reversing the environmental damages caused by technology. And it was during one of those long conversations in which Viren poured himself out before her, that she realized she had fallen hopelessly in love with him and his dreams of changing the world.

Today many of those dreams had materialized. Viren had risen fast, turning almost everything he touched, to gold. Now he wanted to venture into politics and contest an election from their constituency. He was getting more and more restless as he inched closer to his dream of spearheading the environment ministry. And Mehra Ji, a shrewd and intelligent man of forty was his backbone, the man who had made Viren’s dream, his own mission.

She ran her fingers through the sarees in her closet, trying to mentally match each one with the light grey suit Viren had selected for himself. As usual, she wanted the best match. Her fingers came to a stop and rested lovingly on a pale blue faux silk saree. It was old and slightly worn out at the borders. She held it closer to her nose. It seemed to still carry within itself, some traces of their yesteryears – particularly one hot September afternoon almost a decade back. She could smell, in the folds of the saree, remnants of havan-samagri mixed with the scent of marigold and sandalwood agarbattis. She remembered the sticky feel of this proud new saree on her sweaty waist. That was the day she had unveiled the foundation stone for their twenty-worker watch manufacturing unit – a firm Viren had worked day in and day out to setup. How proud he had been! And that was the day he had hugged her; perhaps the last of those genuine, heartfelt hugs brimming with emotion and the sweet smell of his sweat.

Now the cologne had replaced the sweat.

“Neeti, see you outside in ten. Daisy, ask the driver to get the Merc out.”

Viren’s voice brought her back to reality. She rejected the pale blue saree for it was faux silk and clearly not appropriate for the setting. She pulled out a blue Satya Paul in chiffon with subtle hints of silver and rushed to the bathroom.

*

The air was thick with smoke and distant echoes of loud music playing on the dance floor. She ran the stirrer in her glass of orange juice for the eleventh time. She had clear instructions to stay away from her usual glass of whiskey because of the presence of the Chief Minister and the press. On the table to her right was a wannabe socialite seeking feedback about a certain posh pet-grooming store from a self-appointed Page-3 personality. Seated on the table to her left were a handful of heavy mascara and hot pink lipsticks having a sexy pout contest under the guise of discussing their favorite charity.

She was not much of a drinker, except a few occasional drinks at home; but she liked to create the impression of an alcoholic. It kept the butterflies away. With experience she had learnt to carry a glass of neat whiskey in her hands from the beginning to the end of the evening. Being seen like this for hours at a stretch was enough to get the mouths talking. And she firmly believed that if you gave them enough fodder to talk about you, they wouldn’t talk to you. It also gave her something to smile about on days when she would walk out of a party having discreetly left her unused glass of whiskey on one of the side-tables.

However, being the solitary reaper at such events often came with the risk of running into a handsome, young, aspiring model. One who would be only too happy to gaze dreamily in her eyes and tell her how no one really understood her and how he could read the loneliness and void in her beautiful brown eyes.

Having attended more than a thousand parties by now, she knew there were at least half a dozen such specimens in every gathering of hundred. He would be around late-twenties or early thirties; chivalrous and good looking in a boyish sort of way and an extremely good listener; the latter usually making up for any lack of the former traits. He would be on the lookout for a rich, bored house-wife who was waiting to hear how lonely her life was without a true love that could heal her spiritually and emotionally. He usually never offered himself physically until he had made a thorough check on his target’s purse and credit history.

She knew how to handle that type. Sometimes in her gloomiest moments, she even played along for a while amusing herself with the meaningless banter and frivolous male attention.
Her eyes fixed their gaze for the umpteenth time on the sleek diamond studded watch on her wrist. It had been three hours since she had been introduced to CM Sahib and Viren had vanished with the other men. She loosened and then tightened the grip of her fingers around her cell-phone. Calling up Viren was pointless. It sometimes made him uncontrollably angry and abusive - something she couldn’t risk today since he was in VIP surroundings.

She stared at the huge ornate clock on the wall as the minute and second hands became one with each other, their perpetual love-making reaching a pre-destined climax. At that stroke of midnight she thought of Cinderella, the princess whose magic wore off as she rushed back to her simple life, away from her prince, leaving behind a glass slipper on the steps of a palace. They were indeed fairy tales –tales of love and togetherness; tales of happily-ever-after marriages… tales that never came true in real life.

Perhaps that is why the central characters in most of the stories she wrote anonymously, under the pen name of her parents, were animals; who she believed were higher in EQ despite having brain volumes lower than 1400 cc – one of the characteristics that distinguish humans from the other members of fauna. The MD of the publishing firm had often expressed a desire to meet her in person. Perhaps he wanted to come face to face with Sulakshna Arvind who had, by God’s grace, grown to become an immensely illustrious contributor to childhood and teenage fiction. She had read one of his interviews in the papers where he had credited Sulakshna Arvind for helping him revive his failing business. She had worn a mysterious smile all of that day. Even Viren had noticed it, but hadn’t bothered to probe any further. He no longer had the time.

It had been a challenge to weave real stories around animals that would strike a chord with the extremely difficult to please reader-base – the early teenagers. But through her writing, she had managed to relate with their pains and heartbreaks, their raging hormones and turbulent tempers and subtly pass on little life lessons under the guise of animal stories. Connecting with children in this way also helped heal, to some extent, her own wound of unfructified motherhood - a wound she had carried the burden of for many years.

Today she felt a little like Cinderella, and a lot unlike her. Like her, today she was where she had never imagined she could be when she was seven years old. Unlike her, she was waiting for a magic wand that could break the spell.

She wondered if her life was indefinitely stained with magic.

*

Viren was too drunk to realize that the Mercedes had come to an abrupt halt at a gas station on the highway. It was 1:45 in the morning. Apparently for reasons of safety, but in reality because she no longer felt comfortable in adornments of any kind, Neeti took off her chandelier diamond earrings and placed them in her purse. These days even putting on makeup felt like telling a lie.
Hoping to catch a whiff of the petrol fumes, she pulled down the car window and peeped outside.

It had always been a pleasant olfactory experience that connected her to her childhood. Her father worked as a car-mechanic and a handyman at a gas-station when she was around six years of age. Every night when he returned from work, with his clothes smeared with grease and dirt and reeking of petrol, he would hug her and tell her about his day, despite her mother’s many protests. Working at a gas-station, on one of the most frequented highways, her father dealt with people from all walks of life. His everyday stories carried within them a wealth of knowledge – a wealth she had applied throughout her life. Perhaps that is why, she was usually able to understand why people did the things they did.

Mother however, always grumbled about the grease stains on her dress. It took her a while to understand that mothers in general, are more intelligent than they appear. They know that in order for their children to be able to think big and see beyond stained clothes and dust-mites, they themselves have to limit their thought process to the seemingly trivial and petty domestic tasks. Being successful in life becomes easier if there is someone to take care of one's daily nutrition and basic housekeeping needs. But even today, she thought, in most households this someone is ironically considered the least cerebral of all.

Ramesh, their driver was talking to a bearded guy in dirty blue overalls, enquiring about the quality of petrol. He had been very apologetic to her about not having anticipated this out-of-fuel situation. This was the first slip in his four year long service. Looking at his eyes, she could tell how dear this job was for him. Thankfully Viren was fast asleep and Ramesh was spared the reprimand.

She decided to step out and take a walk, hoping to get tired enough to catch some sleep by the time they reached home. In the high-rise penthouse they had lived in before they moved to their villa, there had at least been a ceiling fan to give her company through the night - something she could talk to while the soporific worked. Now they had a false ceiling with discreet air conditioning and mood lighting... and false slumber underneath.

Her eyes travelled from the Pepsi hoardings to a dhaba right across the highway. Strange, she thought that it was still buzzing with activity at such an unearthly hour. A tourist bus for Jaipur had come to a stop and an assortment of men and women and sleepy children were assembling around cheap plastic tables. Platefuls of sliced onions and green-chillies were being placed on the tables while orders for black dal and butter paneer were being taken down. How she would have loved to knock her heels off and sit cross legged in one of those rickety chairs, digging her fingers into a pile of rajma-chaawal!

And then it suddenly struck her. She checked the time on her watch. It was 2 AM. She turned back towards the car. A gentle humming of Viren’s snores filled the air around the car. Ramesh was busy talking to the bearded man, all the while keeping a good eye on the car – an attribute of a good driver. All she needed was a shawl to cover her designer blouse and ten minutes of anonymity. She took off her bangles and placed them in her purse. She clutched her money pouch from the purse and after making sure that she had a few denominations lower than 500 rupee notes, she walked towards the dhaba looking forward to a simple but divinely satisfying meal.

*

“Among the many casualties in the sudden fire that took place at a gas station on NH-8 early this morning was prominent business tycoon Virendra Singh of the Singh Group of Industries. It is apparent from the charred remains of the white Mercedes that the explosion was so severe that bodies of Mr. Singh and his wife Mrs. Neeti Singh cannot possibly be in a recognizable condition. As you can see on the left panel of your television screen, full efforts are on at the place of accident to identify the victims from the remains of the bodies. Apparently there were around eight to ten people at the gas station early this morning when suddenly a fire erupted in the back office. Before the fire could be controlled, it spread to the fuel filling stations where there were two cars parked, one of them being Mr. Singh’s Mercedes…
…The question remains, who will be the heir to the enormous fortune of Singh Group of Industries as both Mr. and Mrs. Singh had no siblings and no children of their own. Speculations are on that all the big names in retail are eyeing for…
…This is Minal Ruparel reporting live from the spot with cameraman Joseph…”

It was 5 AM by the clock on the wall to his right. Mr. Trilok Mehra switched off the LCD television set in the living room of his mansion. His phone was ringing incessantly.

"Damn! I need to rework my strategy now..." he threw the remote at the TV set in agitation.

"This just had to happen when I had everything planned out just right for me... it seemed too good to be true... the man had been so trusting... damn.. if only I could get my hands on the will..."

*

She was standing at the entrance of the dhaba when she heard the explosion. She turned around and gave out a loud scream. An enormous orange flame had swallowed the entire gas station. She was shaking with shock, giving out loud shrieks every second, until she felt a hand on her shoulder and that is when she collapsed.

When she opened her eyes, she saw two men, staring at her intently. They looked like they worked at the dhaba.

“Madam Ji has woken up. She looks better now. Here drink this Madam Ji…” the younger of the two slipped a glass of water into her shivering hand.

“It was a big explosion… perhaps a fire broke. Thank God Ji, rab da shukar hai, it didn’t spread outside the gas station otherwise we all would have been tandoori chicken by now.” said the other, senior looking guy. He seemed more interested in the cameraman and reporter walking down towards the dhaba from across the street and ran his oily fingers through his hair. In a couple of minutes he was going to be on television.

The gas station or whatever little was left of it was swarming with media, police, fire men and their crew.

“I think you got a shock Madam Ji. Your bus left in a hurry. All passengers were getting restless because of this fire. But you can take the next bus to Jaipur in an hour. Here, you dropped your purse when you fell. Please check the amount. And come inside in the deluxe eating room and sit on the sofa ji please.” The younger and clearly kinder fellow helped her go inside and seat herself on the sofa while he went to fetch a cup of kadak chai for her.

She sat there, on the red and green upholstered sofa that showed way too many signs of wear and tear; going through the events of a few hours back, over and over in her mind. Viren’s face, as she last saw him, sleeping like a baby in the car, swam before her eyes. She loved him. In spite of his indifference and preoccupation with his ambition, she always knew he needed her. And that to her was enough to feel loved. With every ounce of her patience and more, she had been waiting for him to come back to her. They had been together all these years, through thick and thin. They were meant to be together.

Now it was all over. He would never come back to her. The reason why she lived the life she hated, the reason why she never got tired of matching her clothes with his, the reason why she wore silence as a sacred garment about the house and drowned her emotions into fiction was that one day, when the summit was reached, he would find himself very lonely; he would find himself all alone with no one of his own out there at the top. That is when, his eyes that looked through her today as if she didn’t exist, would search for her.

A few hours back she had seen that reason go up in flames. She sat there for almost an hour, lost in her thoughts. Her face bore the usual lifeless expression – a mask beneath which it was difficult to tell what was going on, had it not been for the continuously flowing tears. The tea in front of her went cold.

A bus destined for Jaipur had just parked itself near the dhaba. She wiped her tears and checked her money-pouch. There was enough to last a few days after which Sulakshna Arvind would be able to take care of herself.

The magic had finally worn off and the spell broken.

Short Story: Happiness

2009-08-01T21:40:00.008+05:30

She cleaned toilets for a living. During all of her childhood, she had never gone any further from the dilapidated gate of the solitary school in the district they lived in where she dropped her younger brother every morning before heading to the fields. Now at the age of thirty four, she had limited choices for a career.

Every morning as she boarded the 6:15 AM bus on the route and settled on the second window seat right behind the conductor, she thanked God for the job because it helped her place enough food before her family and get past another day’s worth of living. Sitting right behind the conductor helped her in many ways. She would chat a little with him and indulge in some juicy gossip about the other frequenters on the bus which she unabashedly admitted, was one of the greatest pleasures in her life. An occasional light hearted flirting between her and the bus conductor added some zing to their otherwise drab existences.

Occasionally, on a chilly winter morning, she would let him have a bite from her piping hot lunch box. The fact that he would conveniently wipe the lunch box clean by the time she reached her destination did not bother her as much because he often remembered to forget giving her a ticket for many days at a stretch. Going without lunch two days a week helped her save more than half her fare. She was quite happy with the bargain. And not surprisingly, in times like these, her job provided her with more job security than the people who frequented her workplace possessed.

Her workplace was the exact opposite of the sorry picture that might have been painted in the first few words. An air conditioned room, about three times the size of her one bedroom house, with plush interiors, stylish lighting, a vanity area with the tallest mirrors she had ever seen in her life and an attractive and comfortable looking black leather settee and a massive sparkling granite counter constituted her workplace. Well-polished faucets that looked like they had barely been unboxed from their Made-In-Italy packaging peeped eagerly into huge crystal wash basins. Every two feet, well manicured potted plants adorned the counter top and the soap dispensers on the mirrored wall carried in their wombs, the promise of many clean, aromatic hand washes.

She had been struck in awe on her first day at work and had described, in excruciating detail, the wonders of the automatic hand dryer and deodorizer to her bus mates. She also made sure all the women on the bus had sniffed the soap that she had applied a little of on her hands before leaving. They found it hard to believe that a free supply of sanitary napkins was available to whosoever needed them and yet hardly two or three were used up in a week.

She worked as a janitor in an MNC office building and besides a meager salary of two thousand rupees a month which she had conveniently extrapolated to a wicked three before her audience; she earned the envy of most women on the bus who worked as household help, and unlike her, were made to clean toilets without rubber gloves on.

Today was another one of her lunch-less days. She sat in one corner of the room in her uniform, a brown sari and green overcoat with an embroidered logo of the housekeeping company that she was employed with, having double checked all the items on her checklist – counter dry, soap dispensers ready, toilets flushed and reeking of phenyl, toilet-paper rolls replenished, floor mopped - and patiently waited for the supervisor visit. After the supervisor had finished her round, she planned to sneak into the pantry area and smuggle a few sachets of sugar. They usually gave her the energy to survive until dinner.

Hearing some laughter on the other side of the door, she unplugged her finger from her nose and wiped it on her overcoat. She knew their uniform was designed to convert them into inconspicuous creatures who melted into the room’s upholstery. Despite all those efforts, they were eye-sores for those few who managed to take notice. Most others missed them. Though they often admired the texture of the wall tiles or the flower arrangement in the vanity.

Once in a while, a rare woman or two who frequented the ladies room would throw an awkward, clenched smile at her when they accidently bumped into her at the door. And then their fingers would inadvertently cover their noses conveying to their bodies that they had been too close to something unpleasant. Most others would look past her as if she didn’t exist. And for some strange reason, she found them most amusing; women who treated her no better than the toilet bowl they never looked back to check if the contents of had been cleared.

She didn’t believe in missing out on any opportunity of sweet revenge. As soon as a woman would turn on the faucet to wash her hands, she would start flushing the seven toilet-bowls one after another, every three seconds. Since the water to the washbasins and the toilet commodes was supplied through a single connection, the flow of water through the faucet would stop every now and then, making it highly annoying for anyone trying to wash their hands. She relished every moment of that little misery she inflicted on her victim.

The door opened and two women, immersed in a conversation about what sounded like a cosmetics brand, entered the toilets. One was a rather tall, very thin woman, short hair, about twenty five years, wearing a sleeveless pink top and a pair of disgustingly low low-waist jeans that gave her the appearance of a matchstick. The other, a short and stout one, about the same age, with magnificently thick black hair falling at her shoulders in beautiful curls, wore a loose pumpkin yellow top over a denim skirt. She checked herself out a couple of times in the mirror trying to suck her tummy in while the tall one rested her foot on the counter top to tie her shoe laces. Under any other circumstances, watching the shoe prints on the well polished counter top would have irritated her. But watching Pumpkin from the corner of her eye, trying in vain, to find that one angle that camouflaged her love handles amused her to no end.

Pumpkin took out a large hair brush from her bag and started untangling a few curls while Matchstick applied another coat of cheery pink lipstick on her thin lips. Within a few minutes they were done with their grooming and out through the door.

Grudgingly, the solitary inhabitant of that room got up from her usual corner to take out the mop she planned to wipe the foot prints clean with. She pulled a tissue from the tissue box to wipe the water droplets inside the crystal bowls. As her fingers moved around on the inner glass of the washing bowls, collecting droplets of water into the tissue, something hard clinked against the glass. She picked it up.

What looked like a big drop of water at some distance was actually an ear stud, a piece of perfectly cut diamond encased in an outer shell of silver like metal. Each face of the diamond lit up brilliantly under the many spot lights fixed inside the false ceiling. It was the brightest, most perfect gem she had seen all her life and the first one she had ever held in her fingers. Her fingers trembled at the thought of where this gem might have landed had she turned on the faucet and allowed the water to wash it off into its intestines. She stood there a while staring in amazement at the little piece of jewel, with a million thoughts racing through her mind.

Suddenly she heard footsteps outside the door. Not having decided on what she wanted to do with the little temptation sitting in her palm, she quickly slipped the tissue with the ear stud into her coat pocket and walked back to her usual place.

“Do you remember wearing it when you were in front of the mirror?” Matchstick and Pumpkin stormed into the toilets.

“I don’t know. I was right here, combing my hair. I wouldn’t have been able to tell. I am not wearing my contacts today.” Pumpkin was pointing to the spot where she stood a few minutes back. She was close to tears as she said it.

“Think hard. It might have fallen off anywhere then; at the bus stop, in the bus, in the elevator or even in the cafeteria.” Matchstick bent down and looked under the counter top while Pumpkin was frantically scanning the washing bowls with squinting eyes.

“It doesn’t seem to be here”, declared Matchstick, having straightened her back after checking out the entire floor on her knees. It was a brave act considering how far below her belly button reached the top button of her jeans.

“It is real solitaire. I remember my mother-in-law telling the whole world that the pair cost her one and a half lakh rupees. Even if she was exaggerating, each must be around at least a fifty-sixty thousand“, said Pumpkin in a voice muffled with tears. “She will kill me if she knows…” she added in the same breath.

“Are you kidding me? And you wear it casually to work every day?” exclaimed Matchstick who herself was wearing a pair of silver studs bought at a local market for three hundred rupees. In a flash, any traces of envy turned into a pleasurable serves-you-right kind of feeling in her eyes. Ah! The minds of women.

“Let’s go down and check the cafeteria. And we should also inform Security. Show them the other earring and let them take a picture of it. They’ll find it if it fell somewhere inside the building. These guys are usually good with lost-and-found”.
Matchstick pulled out a tissue paper and handed it over to Pumpkin who was now crying inconsolably.

Together the women walked out the door.

“Sixty Thousand Rupees!” she managed to finally breathe out. Having held her breath for so long, she let out the words with an exclamation.

“Ha! Finders are keepers. Aren’t they?” she thought. A faint devilish flicker of light came up in eyes already bedazzled with the shine of the gem stone.

“Keep it. It belongs to you now.”

“Return it. It isn’t yours.”

“What good would it do staying put on a dumb little earlobe? It can change my life.”

“No. This isn’t right.”

“There are a lot of things that are not right. The world is living comfortably with them. Why does Padma have to work as a maid all her life? Is that right? I can send her to college with the money”.
Padma was her sixteen year old daughter who had just finished high school. She had been studying on a scholarship so far but college admission demanded money.

“The money is stolen.”

“It isn’t stolen. What if it had really gone down that drain? It would have been lost forever. No good it would have brought to the world. Now it can give a deserving person a chance to build a better life. Wouldn’t that be a life of more meaning and purpose for a futile little adornment?”
Her grip on the tissue tightened and the little angel on her right shoulder faded away for lack of a counter argument.

Suddenly, overjoyed at having easily won the hardest battle mankind has ever had to face, little ideas in her head started to march around like a battalion of ants. How would she take this diamond out of the facility? Who would she sell it to? That perhaps, was easy. There was this chap the bus conductor had once told her about, a friend of his who was a regular contributor to the chor-bazaar. She could strike a deal. But she would settle for nothing less than fifty thousand rupees. That was all she needed. They could keep whatever was the rest. This warm feeling of generosity helped put at ease, that faint, stubborn little voice inside her head.

How would she explain the money to her family? Her husband, would he believe where the money was from? Maybe not. But did she care? Again, maybe not. Padma would believe. And that was all that mattered.

Now how would she take it out of the facility? Hiding it in her clothes was not going to work. She remembered the woman with the tight bun and a khaki sari, who frisked her from head to toe every morning and evening at the service staff entry-exit gates. She had often wondered what she felt like, running her hands all over a hundred female bodies, every single day of her life.

Once in a while she thought her fingers had lingered on a little longer on hers but maybe that was just her imagination. And then maybe not; maybe she also, after a tough day’s work lay down next to a man who came home every night, having poured himself into another woman and with little to offer her. She smiled; a dry cold smile that was so characteristic of her. The gem stone in her palm smiled back innocently at her.

No, she would have to think of another way. She could hide it between her toes in her slippers and walk out the gate. Anyone who noticed might mistake it for a toe ring. But a toe ring on one foot? Surely, that would arouse interest.

Strangely, all this while she had felt like an inanimate piece of the building’s décor and had hated it. Today she felt like she was under the spotlight and how she hated that! Her heart was beating wildly in her chest. In that quiet stillness of the room where the gurgling of water in the pipes around her was the predominant sound that surrounded her all day; she could hear her heartbeat loud and clear.

Where would this little piece of diamond go unnoticed? Of course, the ears! Why didn’t she think of that? Her fingers rested on the tiny silver rings in her ears. She could take these off and wear the earring in one of the ears. Yes, in the left ear, as Tight-bun usually stood on her right on the way out. And she could cover her right ear with her hair. But wouldn’t this brilliant piece of ornament look completely out of place on her earlobe?

All she needed to do was make it look worn-out and old and maybe dirty enough to match with the rest of her appearance. And she also needed to find a place to hide her earrings.

She held the diamond near her left earlobe and adjusted the hair on the right so that they fell on her face. She found herself looking at the image of a magnificent, beautiful woman in the mirror. That’s what jewels do to any woman – transform her.
And then she saw it; the potted plant. She would rub a little of that soft wet earth on the diamond. That would do the trick. And she could stuff her silver earrings in the same potted plant, come back the next day and wear them back on her way out. It was a breeze, this entire exercise; and on the other side of the gate waited a new life for her daughter.

Just then, when she was basking in the new found happiness and the warm glow of the stone in her palm, that old feeling came back again. Just when everything was sorted out, just when there was hope, and her heart beat had normalized, that nagging feeling was back. Though it seemed right, it didn’t feel right. Once again she outfought it.

But before she could pinch a little of the pot’s mud, the toilet door opened. She grabbed the floor mop and rushed towards her usual spot near the door, the tissue with the stone clenched in her left hand. She nearly bumped into Pumpkin this time.

Pumpkin was inside the room, the other earring in her hand and for the first time, making eye contact with her.

“Have you seen the other one like this?” she said, her voice muffled with tears and her eyes conveying a lot more than the words did.

Then, in a moment, just as fast that rush of excitement had travelled through her heart to her mind, it all came crashing down. She really only wanted to be spoken to once, by the people she served all day; to be treated like another human being. It was a lonely life, of cleaning up after people who banged the door on her face on their way out. Finally she had been noticed. She was no longer a piece of furniture. With that little gesture, Pumpkin had filled up the biggest cavity in her heart.

That stubborn uncomfortable feeling in her heart dissolved as she extended her hand and opened the tissue before Pumpkin to reveal the other half of the twins.

“Oh my God!” Pumpkin shrieked with joy. “Thank you. Thank you so much.” Her tears were genuine.

Taking the other half of her earrings from the palm stretched out before her, she placed them back into her purse. Her hand lingered for a moment over a hundred rupee note before she pulled out a fifty rupee note and offered it to the woman who stood before her.

“No Madam. Thank you.” She said as she turned her back and started mopping the floor – a busy and happy person, humming to herself – one without a care in the world.

Short Story: The Gift

2009-03-09T18:59:00.015+05:30

“Umm... Ravi, can you pick the milk packets today?” she grumbled at the sound of the doorbell. It didn’t feel like it was 6:30 AM, the usual milkman time.
“Let them wait, Priya.” Ravi sank his head deeper inside the blanket. In less than a minute his snoring filled the air. It was difficult for the first two years of their marriage but now his snoring worked like a lullaby for her and she found herself slipping back into slumber. Her right hand inadvertently reached her belly and caressed an imaginary womb underneath as a smile came and rested on her lips. She stayed in that moment of borrowed bliss for a few minutes. But not for long as worrying about the milk interfered so much with her day dreaming that she had to give in.

“That cat...” she got up and walked towards the main door, tying her hair back into a bun. A stray cat in the apartment block had become a menace to the housing society. The milkman now rang the doorbells as he placed the daily quota of milk packets at the residents’ doors so that the milk would get picked before tomcat had a chance to bathe it’s whiskers in it.

She was gone only a minute.

“Ravi...Ravi...come fast...”

He woke with a start as if from a bad dream. He picked the gown lying by the bedside and rushed out towards the door where she stood shivering; looking down at what seemed like a bundle of old clothes lying at their doorstep.

In a cheap plastic basket, wrapped tightly from head to toe in what seemed like the pallu end of an old cotton saree, was a sleeping baby. Soft black curls rested on a broad forehead that must have been a pale wheatish had the chill in the air not painted it blue. The little brown flowers on the saree’s red background slowly moved up and down with the baby’s gentle breathing. It was the only visible mark of life.

Ravi looked around the door hoping to spot the person who left the child at his doorstep. He yelled “Koi hai vahaan? Yek kiska bachcha hai?” (Is someone out there? Whose child is this?)
There was no response.

“Priya, I’ll be back”, he hurried out wrapping the gown tightly around his waist.

She stood there on two cold feet, her gaze fixed at the little bundle, not knowing what to do. Should she continue to stand at the door and wait for Ravi to come back? Could she bring the baby in and shut the door? Her toes curled as a burst of cold air bit into her legs.

At the same time the little head turned and a set of tiny purple lips quivered. Two little arms released themselves from the wrap and two tiny hands reached for the closed eyes, gently rubbing them, their palms facing outwards. The wrap fell open and a little belly lay there, exposed to the bitter cold. She hesitated. But it was only for a moment.

Before the next splash of cold air could find its way inside the house, she picked the basket and brought it inside, closing the door behind her. She wrapped the little girl back into the only piece of clothing she had on and rushed into her room.

In a rush to do the right thing for the moment, she rummaged through the linen closet and decided on a thick cotton table cloth. She lifted the baby and wrapped the folded tablecloth around her stiff body. As she tried to gently place the little bundle back into the basket, something tugged at the neck of her gown. She waited a while for the tiny fingers to uncurl and let go of her gown but the baby snuggled deeper into her bosom.

All these years she had only dreamt about this moment and imagined the feeling of having a baby cling tightly to her chest. Experiencing it was something she wasn’t prepared for. She could hear her heart beat in her ears. The little baby's soft breath played the sweetest symphony on her shoulders as her sweet smell melted into Priya’s body and became one with her.

Her right hand shivered as it gently caressed the soft black curls on the baby's head. She could not give herself permission to hold her as if she was her own. But it felt like the baby belonged right there, in Priya's arms.
Though the mind kept reminding her that the baby was someone else’s, the heart seemed to have synchronized itself with the little heart beating against her chest. Nestled on her left arm, drinking the warmth of her body and sucking her tiny thumb, she looked beautiful. If there were any angels for real, this is how they would look, Priya told herself.

A short while later the colour returned to the little cheeks. Her tiny wails reminded Priya that she might be hungry.

As the little girl reached out and lapped up the contents every time a teaspoonful of milk came close to her mouth, tears of anger and gratitude outlined Priya's face.
She felt a sudden burst of anger towards the person who had abandoned this little girl after bringing her to this world. At the same time she felt gratitude towards the person for having chosen her doorstep.
She thought of the unfortunate mother who, if she were alive, would know at this moment how hungry her baby felt. Nature had her own way of taking revenge.

Planting a soft kiss on the baby’s head, she placed her back in the basket that she had cushioned with a big towel. Just then the little girl opened her big brown eyes and smiled at Priya.

Priya knew this was the most important moment of her life. A little drop of tear fell from Priya’s eyes and found itself a new home - on the little baby’s palm.

*

“I looked around everywhere. Couldn’t find anyone. I have informed the security guards in case someone comes looking for a baby..." Ravi was panting as Priya handed him a glass of water.
"Those idiots must have been sleeping when the person entered this colony with the baby.”

“Whoever it was who left her at our doorstep must have meant us to keep her.”

“It is not so simple, Priya. It is an abandoned child. I don’t know what the law says.”

He placed the glass and picked up the cup of tea she handed him.

“Hey! Did you mean -her-? Hmm... I was right then.” He looked at the baby who was by now peacefully sleeping. His heart melted at the mere thought that someone could abandon a child like her.

“This whole India shining business is such a farce. Even today this country still wants only sons. Look at her, she looks so beautiful, so perfect...” he smiled. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. This was the most beautiful face he had seen in his life.

“Hey, was she hungry?“, he remembered suddenly.

“Yes, I gave her some milk with a teaspoon. Just look at her eyes when she wakes. The same colour as mine. Really!” whispered Priya as she gently lifted the baby from the basket and took her to the bedroom.

On her way, she signalled him to stay quiet by placing her finger on her lips.

Sitting at the dining table, Ravi stirred his cup of tea that had already gone cold by then. He was scared for Priya. He couldn't watch her heart break one more time. Three miscarriages in four years. The doctors had suggested them to consider adoption. Only Priya had not been ready to adopt...

Now she looked like she had already adopted this girl in her heart. Was she in for another set back?
What if the child’s parents came by to claim her in a few hours? What if one of the many maids or cooks that worked in the colony came by to pick up her daughter on the way back from work? What if...

“Why don’t you speak to Ramesh Ji today? He is a lawyer. He will be able to give us the right guidance on how to proceed.” Priya said as she came back into the room and wound her arms around his shoulders.

“Okay. I will speak to him today. Do you think Chhutki needs another layer of blanket? It is kind of cold today.”

“She is fine. Chhutki is fine.” Priya smiled lovingly at him.

*

That fifth of January was the happiest and the most difficult day of Priya’s life. It must have been around 11 AM when the doorbell rang again. Ravi had left for work. He had an important meeting after which he was planning to consult Ramesh Sarabhai, their friend and lawyer.

“Didi, kapde hain istri ko? Kaisi ho didi? Itne din ke baad mili...” (Are there clothes for ironing? How are you? I am seeing you after many days.)

She heaved a sigh of relief. It was the dhoban, the ironing lady, who entered the house in her usual quick stride and settled on the living room floor.
Just then Chhutki started crying in the bed room. It was time for the next change of clothes and the next meal.

“Didi, mehmaan hain ghar mein? Baad mein aaoon?” (Do you have guests? Shall I come later?)

“Haan. Shaam ko.” (Yes. In the evening.)

Priya was only too happy to shut the door after her. She did not want to see anyone. She felt like a thief who had accidently run into a treasure chest and was trying to hide it from the eyes of the world.
She would jump every time the phone rang. Her heart missed a beat with each door bell she heard.

The daily maid, who was only too delighted to have a day off, was gotten rid of without much pain.

Around noon there was a visitor. The plumber had decided to turn up twelve days late to fix the dripping faucet in the bathroom.
“Madam, agar aaj nahin kiya to agle 10 din tak kaam nahin ho sakega. Mujhe Indore jaana hai.” (If I don’t finish the job today it will have to wait for 10 days. I am going to Indore.)

She sent him away.

Around 3 in the afternoon, the door bell rang again. Her grip around Chhutki grew a wee bit tighter. She was rocking her to sleep in her arms. While Priya’s empty stomach was churning with anxiety, the little girl’s face had a calm, serene smile.

Thankfully it was the courier boy.

As the sun packed it's bags and called it a day, Priya’s insecurity began to fade. The fear, that someone would have a change of mind and come back to claim the baby, had somewhat diminished. Besides, Chhutki had kept her on her toes all day. She had loved every moment of fussing over her, massaging her, bathing her, feeding her, changing her. Not wanting to let their parents know until things had really worked out, she called an old friend, a mother of two, and took instructions over phone.

It must have been around seven in the evening when the dhoban came back. By then Priya was in a relaxed, good humoured mood.

“Mehmaan gaye kya didi?” (Have the guests gone?) she enquired. The house was exceptionally silent.

Chhutki, as if on cue started crying. Priya rocked her in her arms while the dhoban counted the clothes.

“Kab aayi gaanv se?” (When did you return from the village?) Priya asked the dhoban, primarily to keep her from asking anything about the baby.

“Aaj subah hi ko to aayi didi, das baje. Dekho to bas aate se hee kaam pe lag gayi. Yeh aadmi log ke bas ka koi kaam na hai humaare bina.” (I came this morning at 10. Look I’ve been working since then. These men can’t manage anything without us.)

“Iss baar to bada time laga ke aayi gaanv mein. Tu hi kiya kar press, voh tera pati Ghanshaam achche kapde press nahin karta. Ruk, tujhe iss baar Diwali bhi nahin dee. Le rakh le.”
(This time you spent a long time in the village. You iron clothes much better. That husband of yours, he does not do a good job. Here, take this. I didn’t give you anything for Diwali this year.)
Priya handed her a fiftee rupee note.

“Thank you, didi” she said folding it and tying it at the end of her pallu, blushing like she always did when she spoke in English.

“Subah ko leke aati kapde. Iss baar chakaachak press karoongi.”
(I will bring the clothes tomorrow morning. This time the ironing will be perfect.)

*

“Congratulations new mommy!” Ravi hugged her as he handed her the clearance papers. He sounded like a seven year old.

It had been almost a month since the morning of January 5. The Juvenile Welfare Board had given their clearance and Chhutki was legally ready for adoption. Ravi’s hard work and running around had finally been fruitful. The Child Welfare Committee had paid two surprise visits. They had also advised Priya and Ravi to get a thorough medical check-up of Chhutki done, to rule out the possibility of any congenital defects before they made up their mind.
Their decision to adopt Chhutki was unfaltering but Priya and Ravi got the medical check up done. She was little Miss Neha Mehta already and legal adoption was just a signature away.

Priya teased Ravi. “I knew it all the time that everything would work out just fine. You had been unnecessarily worried.”

“Oh is it? I still remember how many times I called you from work that day but you didn’t pick up the phone – the scared little woman that you were.” He laughed.

“Now, if Papa darling doesn’t mind, we have some shopping to do. We are out of diapers again.” she said handing over the car seat to him.

*

“But I don’t want to leave... Ravi, I love it here.” Priya grumbled. Her face had the sullen look of a six year old who was being sent to bed while Tom and Jerry was just starting on Cartoon Network.

“Priya, this is an amazing opportunity for me. You know how much we both love travelling. And imagine, moving to Chicago. It will be so good for my career.”

“I know Ravi. But everyone’s here – our families, friends...”

“Just think about Chhutki. Everyone here in the neighbourhood knows. Sooner or later, maybe accidently, someone might break it to her. Do you want her to come to know of it this way? Look at her, she is only five and a half.”

Priya looked at Chhutki. She was playing with her dolls on the sofa besides her. With two little pigtails on her head and in a pale pink frock, she looked as adorable as ever. Occasionally she lifted her head to smile at Priya and her broken front tooth peeped out between her lips. She was learning to tie her doll’s hair into a braid. Each time a strand of golden hair slipped through her little fingers and messed up the braid, she would shake her little head in disapproval and pick it up again and start afresh.
Just watching her closely was a lesson in patience and perseverance for Priya. After three instances of giving up and starting again, she learnt the trick. She wound the strands around her fingers and unrolled them as and when needed for the braid. By the time the braid was nearly done, Priya had made up her mind.

“Yes, I think that would be the right thing to do.”

She smiled at Ravi. She couldn’t bear the thought of someone telling her daughter she was adopted until Priya herself was ready. She wondered if she would ever be ready for that as she cleared the tea mugs from the table.

Dinner was a quiet affair as far as she was concerned. Neha was busy teaching Ravi the mudras she had learnt at her bharatnatyam class. He enjoyed immensely as she correctly positioned his fingers with her little hands and scolded him for not focussing enough. He would crack his usual joke about having two left hands. He said men couldn’t curl their fingers beyond a point because they themselves were usually wrapped around women's fingers.

After dinner she spent, what seemed like an eternity, staring at the night sky. This was her favourite part of the day. After clearing up dinner and cleaning the kitchen, she would toss a tea-bag in a cupful of sugared water, warm it in the microwave and sit in the balcony with her tea and stare at the night sky. Some days it was clear and she could make out the Orion. Today it was exceptionally murky. She sat there talking to herself long after Ravi and Neha had gone to sleep.

*

“Photty nahin, Forty...for...tee”.

Neha corrected her as the dhoban counted the clothes. This was a ritual, a playtime of sorts for both of them. The dhoban came almost every day – one day to pick the clothes and the next day to deliver the ironed clothes. Neha would sit on the floor besides her and count while the dhoban placed the clothes one piece at a time on a sprawled bed sheet and counted them after her.

“Didi, bitiya ne to humein English ki ginti sikha di. Chalti hoon, didi.”
(Didi, your daughter has taught me the English counting. I’ll get going now.)
She said tying up the bundle with her deft fingers.

Priya was busy on the phone and motioned her to stay for a minute while she talked.

“Haan Maa, do saal ke liye jaana hai... agle maheene... bees tareeq ke tickets hain. Aap log aa jao usse pehle yahaan. Chhutki ko dekhe hue bhi kitna time ho gaya hai aapko...haan, ghar bhi rent pe dena hoga. Kitne kaam ho jaate hain... Theek hai... kal call karti hoon.”
(Yes Maa, we have to go for 2 years... next month... the tickets are booked for the 20th... you must come and stay with us before that. You haven’t seen Chhutki in a long time. Yes, we have to put up the house on rent. There is so much to do... alright, I will call you tomorrow.)
Priya placed the receiver back.

“Didi, door desh jaa rahe ho?”
(Didi, are you going far away?)

“Haan, do saal ke liye jaana hai. Bhaiya ki company transfer ho rahi hai.”
(Yes, we have to go for two years. Bhaiya’s company is getting transferred.)

“Kahaan laut ke aata hai koi itni door jaakar. Aap bhi vaheen ke hoke reh jaaoge.”
(Who comes back after going that far? You will also settle there.)

She said sadly as she lifted the bundle and walked out. Priya stared at the door long after she was gone, lost in a forlorn thought.

*

“Arre didi, aap yahaan? Koi galti hui kya? Koi kapda kho gaya humse?”, she put the knife down and wiped her hands with the end of her saree.
(Didi, you are here? Have I made a mistake? Did I misplace some cloth?)

The dhoban was cutting vegetables for dinner when she saw Priya enter her one room house. A place originally meant to be a garage inside the apartment block until the residents' welfare association decided to rent it out as a servant quarter.

The room smelt of coal and musty clothes tinged with an exquisite aroma of spices that carried with it the promise of an immensely satisfying meal - something that most commonly well equipped kitchens in rich houses are pathetically deprived of.

She quickly cleared some clothes from a rickety plastic chair and wiped it with the end of her saree to make room for Priya. She unrolled a ten rupee note from her pallu and sent her four year old son away to fetch a bottle of cold drink from the nearby general provisions store. The boy was only too pleased to shove his books aside and run for freedom.

“Baitho na, didi”
(Please sit.)
She sat on the floor next to the chair and tied her dishevelled hair back into a bun.

“Ek kapda dhoondh rahi hoon. Jaanti hoon tumhaare paas hai.”
(I am looking for a cloth that I know is with you.)
Priya sat on the chair and smiled as tears slowly welled up in her eyes.

“Iss saree ka doosra hissa yaheen milega na?”
(“The other end of this saree belongs here. Isn’t it?”)
She said, taking out the pallu half of an old looking and worn out red cotton saree from her purse. The tiny brown flowers printed on it looked as alive as they had the day they wrapped the greatest gift Priya had received in her life.

Her head fell as tears outlined her face. The dhoban shivered with intense emotion as she sat there at Priya’s feet. The events of a night many years ago unfolded before her eyes. Sneaking out with a two day old clung to her chest when the village was sleeping... catching the midnight train to the city to save her new born from what was destined to be the fate of all girls born in the family... when she had left for the village carrying a 3 month old womb, Ghanshaam had made it clear to her that she needn’t come back if it was a daughter. Sitting in the train that night she had remembered the longing she had seen in Priya’s eyes... and she had made up her mind...

Priya got up from the chair and lifted her from the floor by the arms. Taking her hands into hers, she joined her hands and said the two words she had been waiting to tell her; the woman she had seen every single day since that January morning.

In a voice muffled with tears, Priya said “Thank you”.

“Didi...”

Priya placed a finger on her lips.

“Shhh... Apni beti se Bye nahin bologi? Teen ghante mein humaari flight hai.”
(“Will you not say Bye to your daughter? We fly in 3 hours.”)

The two women stood there hugging each other with their eyes. The good earth beneath their feet soaked up their tears as it does for all of them, for she is a mother too just like these two mothers who were bound together in one thread – the thread of gratitude.

I really couldn’t tell who was more grateful of the other.

Short Story: Wildflowers under the willows

2008-09-09T20:30:00.004+05:30

The silence in the dimly lit foyer was interrupted by her footsteps as she entered the living room. The clock on the living room wall was about to strike 11 PM. As quietly as she could, she hung her key ring on the key holder behind the entrance door and tiptoed into the living room.

“Welcome home sweetheart. So, was it Chinese or Mughlai tonight? “, he said without turning the wheelchair around to face her.

“Oh. I thought you had fallen asleep”, she said as she turned on the light switch.

“In case you forgot, invalids like me usually prefer to be helped into their beds“.
The wheelchair swirled around to reveal a handsome square face.

She was exhausted after a long day especially when she had spent a major chunk of the evening on the road jostling her way through the city traffic. She wondered if she could put up with another shot of sarcasm.
“You look like you are in a bad mood today... angry with me?” she smiled in a feeble effort to dispel the gloom in the air. “I was just about to leave when they set up a conference call with the clients in Maryland and asked me to join. And then by the time it got over I...”

“Forget it. I don’t want to know... you must be tired. I had dinner. There’s some iced tea in the fridge in case you feel like having one.”

“Did Bimla Tai make koftas in the afternoon today? I asked her to before I left this morning.”

“I’ll keep the television volume down so you can sleep. Just keep the bedroom door closed.” He reached out for the television remote.

“Why are you doing this? Can we sit and talk for a while? I mean, without the television on?” she walked over to the couch adjacent to the wheelchair.
He did not answer.
“I brought some almond and fig ice-cream, your favourite, right? Lets...”

“There is Hitler’s Biography at eleven on the History channel that I do not want to miss. Besides, you seem to have caught a bad cold already. Icecream is a bad idea under the circumstances.”

“What is it with you! This was never your idea of spending time together.” She got up feeling exasperated. She was a little bit of everything – hurt, angry, disappointed, and guilty.

“You don’t want to know my idea of spending time together.”

“Why?”

“Because you’ll never understand it.” He turned his wheelchair around and started adjusting some books lying around in a pile on the table on the side.
She stood there a while, waiting for him to turn back and look into her eyes that were brimming with tears. But his hands continued to linger around on the items on the table trying to quench some kind of wanderlust long after the books were standing at the edge of the table in a neat pile.
If there is one thing that I have come to believe about men I have known in my life, it is that they are baffled, dumbfounded little travelers on the vast emotional plane of life – completely ill-equipped with the right travelling kits. I have to admit that there have been aplenty estrogen-laden moments when I have taken the unfair liberty to generalize and declare all men to be completely devoid of sensitivity and emotion. But after the rise and fall of many strong emotions when I have succumbed to my only friend and only enemy whose name is Reality, I have observed that men act the way they do because they are afraid of catching themselves under the grip of any emotion whatsoever. If they cannot become invisible, they start treating others as invisible – thus ironically making fear the most predominant emotion in their lives.
On the other hand, women who take a self-proclaimed and in my opinion somewhat foolish, pride in their capacity to withstand a lot of pain admit that the hardest to bear is the pain of indifference. It can make the strongest of women crumble under its sting. It leaves them angry, exposed and vulnerable to more hurt. I believe the reason for this is that the only armour needed for indifference is indifference itself and I am yet to meet a woman who has been able to equip herself with it.
“Yes. You are right. I won’t understand. I spend the entire day doing things I had never planned in my life. I no longer understand what anyone wants... or for that matter what I want.”
The tender thread of patience that held a rein on her temper had snapped. Her frustrations and the ache in her body flowed out in a rapid stream of angry words.

“I am sorry you have to work so hard and I am sorry you have to look at a husband who is half paralyzed from waist to toe every single day. I wish I could help you by vanishing into thin air but unfortunately I am helplessly incapacitated to do that.”

“You can help me by being a little less rude.”

“Try saying this to someone who has been staring at the freaking door for four hours, waiting to hear it creak open. It’s not every day I look forward to...”

“I told you I was...”

“Can you please not tell me anymore about how indispensible you are at work, especially because I haven’t exactly felt that way in a long time?”

“So this is what it is all about? Let me tell you something here, I didn’t exactly choose to be where I am today. I am doing this because one of us has to... and that one is me at the moment.”

Realizing that she had been too sarcastic, she mellowed down and gently placed her hand on his shoulder.

”C’mon... it’s been more than a year... don’t be so harsh on yourself and on me.”

“Yeah... I’m sorry about ending a perfectly wonderful evening of yours on this note. Hope you have a pleasant sleep. Good night.” The wheelchair moved on leaving a cold, bitter cloud of air around her.

“What is it with you? I’m sorry you had to wait...” she said in a flustered tone.

“I don’t want to talk about anything”

“Why don’t you let all this bitterness out once and for all?”

“There is no bitterness. I’m just fed up. And I said I don’t want to talk.”

“Why? Why don’t you ever want to talk about it?”

“Talk about, what? Losing one half of my body in a freaking car accident, losing a lucrative job, a promising career? Losing my four year old son and watching my beautiful wife turn into a workaholic machine? Watching everything I loved about my life being torn apart in a matter of minutes... “, emotions that simmered in his heart like white fire, flared up again.

“You lost this, you lost that... it’s always about you, right? I was happy too... with the home loan finally paid off; I was ready to settle into full time motherhood... live the life I always wanted to... finish my paintings... enjoy life with Akash and you... and a baby on her way...“ she gasped for breath and her voice softened as she continued.
“...we decided we’d name her Avani… you were so sure it was a daughter... and I remember you said how they would both form the two ends of the spectrum of our lives... the earth and the sky...” She stared at the ceiling as tears outlined her face.

“Can you please go to bed? I said good night.”

“Sure...”
She was so angry; she shook as she fumbled for words.
“And yes, you should definitely be sorry. It may have been a perfectly wonderful evening that you just ruined. Good night. I have a long day tomorrow.”

She threw her handbag on the sofa and stormed into the bedroom closing the door behind her with a loud bang.

Just then a small brown packet slipped out of the handbag and fell at his feet.

*

She caught sight of it when she lifted her head from the pillow. She had been crying only a few minutes but it seemed like an eternity had passed. She wiped her tears and picked herself up. On her side of the bed lay a pink rose and a packet wrapped in a pale blue gift paper. She untied the pearl white ribbon and tore open the gift wrapper. It was a book titled “Wildflowers under the willows” by Sushant Mehta. On the first page it read, “Dedicated to my beautiful wife”.

*

The remote control lay still and the television never got switched on. The clock on the living room wall broke the dead stillness of the room as it struck half past eleven. The tall frame that sat huddled in a wheelchair looked like it had been frozen in time except for the occasional tear that left a trail on the back of his hand. Clasped in his hands lay a book titled, “Wildflowers under the willows” which he held close to his heart.

A note from the book had fallen on the floor. It read:

“For my dearest husband.
The light in your eyes as you hold the first print of your book in your hands is the greatest gift I could give myself.”

The prints had come out only that afternoon. While he had telephoned the publisher to send him the first print of the book as a surprise for her, it was a two hour drive from her office to the publishers’ and a three hour drive back home.

Just then the bedroom door opened and she rushed out into the living room. She walked up to the wheelchair, sat down on the floor besides it and placed her head in his lap. He gently caressed her hair as he whispered, “Happy anniversary”. She looked up at the face of the man she loved more than anyone else in the world and said in a voice muffled with tears, “Happy anniversary, darling”.
The darkest hour of the night came alive as a stream of moonlight fell through the living room window on two souls who had lost themselves and found each other again.

“I’m starving.”
“So am I. Now that you reminded me, mughlai not such a bad idea...”
“It’s midnight madam. All restaurants are closed. May I have the pleasure of serving Maggi noodles to the young lady?”
“Sounds yum....with nimbupaani on the rocks?”
“It’s a deal.”

The willows had come alive with wildflowers.

Short Story: Gold anklets

2008-09-09T01:32:00.006+05:30

Gayatri gingerly opened the old rustic jewellery box and drew out a pair of worn-out, oxidized gold anklets.

"Wow! Daadima... aren't they neat! So intricate, so beautiful... and the colour... (She sighed) ...just the right shade of brown in gold. I can design an entire ethnic wear collection around these."

The twenty-something pair of kohl lined eyes gleamed in awe and wonder.

And the seventy-something pair of eyes glistened with pride as her shivering fingers ran gently over the ornaments. They brought back so many memories... opulence of their haveli, the envious glances of the servants and housekeepers, banarasi silks and brocade blouses... the brutal turn of events... sudden demise of her father-in-law Raichand Saheb, treachery, downfall of the family business, tears, insecurities, humiliation, struggles - poverty they had never before known... days and nights of hard labour... bringing up a family on one square meal a day... perseverance and faith...

"Daadima, can I hold them? Please?" Rhea’s childlike excitement brought Gayatri back to the present.

"Sure, my dear" She smiled affectionately as she placed the ornaments in Rhea's outstretched hands like a mother handing her new born child to someone she trusts. Her granddaughter gasped for breath in much the same manner as if she were holding a new-born in her hands.

"Were they a gift? From Daadaji?" asked Rhea teasingly as she played the trinkets close to her ears.

"Yes." smiled Gayatri, "Diwanji got them made on order without telling anyone in the family when I became pregnant for the first time. He asked me to not take them off until the baby was born."

"Why?"

"He said with these tinkling sounds he would be able to track all the movements of his mischievous butterfly."

"He called you his mischievous butterfly?" asked the amused fashion-designer.

"Well, I was all of seventeen when we got married and hardly twenty when your father came along. We were so young and so naive. I would get so tired of being the bahu of the house... he was the only one of my age in the house. You know, once he got a beating from chachaji because he was caught trading his silver ring for marbles with the neighbourhood boys. He took all that thrashing for me", said Gayatri, blushing in her pale pink cotton saree.

"For you?"

"Amma, my mother-in-law, would have fainted if she knew we played marbles till the wee hours of morning and that I stole un-pickled mangoes from the kitchen while she slept."

"That was cool. You were some couple. I don’t know why, I always thought that in those times, wives were scared of their husbands."

"No dear. We were each other’s best friends. He gave me a lot of affection and I became his sole companion over time. We knew and understood each other very well. It really doesn’t matter in which time and age you live. As long as a man feels respects for a woman, they can have a fulfilling relationship. Your daadaji was a very intelligent and sensitive human being unlike the other men of his kith.”

“Cool. But your mother-in-law must have been very strict.”

“Yes. She was very strict about keeping the pallu in position in front of outsiders.” She said. “But she was also very fond of me. She would keep aside the best set of glass bangles for me before my sisters-in-law had a chance to select from the lot. She would pretend to know nothing about who stole the gooseberries from the neighbouring haveli's courtyard when chachiji came complaining. I often wondered if she forgot that she was not my mother but my mother-in-law", she sighed.

"That’s so sweet! So, you wore these anklets throughout your pregnancy - till Dad was born?"

"My! How proud I was. I would daintily lift my saree a few inches above the ground and coyly stride down the corridors of our haveli from one room to another. Whenever chachiji was around, I made it a point to show them off on some pretext or the other. I loved the colour that came to her cheeks." laughed Gayatri.

"So, you were the spoilt brat of the house. And daadaji?"

"Oh, he was a very good boy. The only thing he ever wanted to do in life was read books. He was very bad at the family business but bauji wouldn't hear of him doing anything else... bauji...", she sighed lovingly, "he had grown so frail with the endless cough that refused to go away... and your daadaji.. he tried very hard to get involved in the family business just so it would please bauji... "

"But there was a time when you had to leave the haveli. Mom told me. What happened that time?"

"We were so happy... and then one day everything changed... that was when your father was about a year old, bauji had stopped going to work and chachaji was practically running the family business.... I remember clearly, as it was about mid-morning... amma was about to finish her puja... I was laying out her breakfast... Balraj was playing in bauji’s lap when bauji suddenly had a bout of severe coughing followed by a heart attack. Chachaji rushed him to the hospital in his motor car but they were too late."

She paused as tears welled up in her deep brown eyes. Rhea gave her a glass of water to calm her nerves.

"We were devastated. Amma also left us within a month. Our tears had barely dried when chachaji declared that we had inherited nothing from the family business except an old trunk full of books. Since diwanji had incurred losses to the family business because of his foolish decisions, and the impractical generosity he showed to the workers, they were no longer in a position to support us."

"Oh... so, what did you do?"

"I was three months into my second pregnancy. Chachiji had seized most of amma’s jewellery and the only ornaments I had with me were the ones I was wearing at that time. It was impossible for us to stay on. We left for the city to look for a job."

“That must have been tough.”

"We came here. Your daadaji got a job as a teacher but his income was barely enough to pay the rent and arrange food for the family. Balraj studied in the same school but we still had to pay a part of his school fee. Times were really hard. All I had as ornaments were two gold bangles, a pair of earings, my mangal sutra and these anklets.
We sold one of the bangles to pay for the hospital expenses of my miscarriage, the initial payment for the rented house and setting up home in a city. I had never even dreamt of running a household without the help of servants. I was so bad at housework, but I tried to learn.
You know, that’s the beautiful thing about time. Give yourself some time and patience and you can do unimaginable things...just as long as you decide not to give up. We didn’t have the option of giving up so it was easier.” She smiled and then added.

“If the mischievous butterfly could learn how to cook, clean, wash, sew, mend and raise a balanced child, anyone could. I grew up several years in a few months.

Your daadaji taught at the school in the mornings, worked part time as a librarian all afternoon, took tuition classes in the evenings and corrected exam papers through the night. His eye sight dwindled but we did not have the means to get medical help. I sold off the other gold bangle to support the rising expenses and bought a second-hand sewing machine so I could start some work myself. But I made many mistakes initially and incurred losses.

And then, one day your father fell down from the school's third floor. I remember his head was bleeding and we had to rush him to the hospital. For the first time in my life, I saw tears in Diwanji’s eyes. That evening, I sold my gold earrings for 400 rupees.

And Diwanji bought a pair of silver earrings for me on the next Diwali.” she smiled.

“By the time Balraj was ten, the only thing left in this trinket box was this pair of anklets. I loved them so much; I would hide this box in the rice bin lest someone should see it. I thought I would never be able to wear them again. Every now and then when no one was watching, I would take them out and admire them.

There were days when there would be no rice in the bin – and this box would stare at my face as an answer to the rice and dal problem for the next few months. But the mere thought of letting them go was painful. They were the last piece of gold in my life. All I wanted to do that time was to somehow keep my gold anklets with me.

You know, women have a relationship with gold that no man can ever understand. Women who talk of gold as an investment, an asset for emergencies have never really been in one.

The fear of losing the only material possession that I held on to so dearly, gave me the strength to fight all odds. I worked day and night, sewing and embroidering other people's silks and brocades. Gradually I got better at my work.

There were times when I got so close to selling them, but there always was something... something that made me put them back in this treasure box and inspire me to work even harder. I remember one morning, in a state of desperation, I was about to leave for the goldsmith’s shop to sell these anklets, when a lady knocked on my door and offered to pay me twice as much as it would normally cost if I could get her wedding lehanga ready in two days. For two days and two nights, I didn't sleep. I made her lehanga with a lot of love, pretending to myself that I was going to wear it.”

“And I almost did”, she added.

“You did?”

“I finished the hemming at four in the morning. No one was about and I was too ecstatic to sleep, so I went over to the kitchen, took out my anklets and wore them in my feet. It was unethical to wear another woman’s wedding ensemble so I held the lehanga on me as if I was wearing it. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I felt amma watching over me and smiling. And in those wee hours of morning, I made a promise to myself that I would never let anyone put a price tag on these anklets. I told myself that they were mine and would stay with me.”

“Wow! And did the woman like the lehanga you made?”

“Oh... I knew from the look in her eyes what it had meant to her when she came to pick it in the afternoon.” She paused with a dreamy look in her eyes.

A few seconds later she continued.
“With the money I earned, we could send your father for science tuition classes. And here is something funny that happened after she left. I went to sleep... it must have been around two in the afternoon and I didn’t wake up until the next morning. Your daadaji still teases me about it. They both tried very hard to wake me but gave up. He made khichdi that night and put Balraj to sleep while I was celebrating – sleeping with my gold anklets on.”

Rhea was close to tears. She hugged her grandmother.

“I particularly remember the day chachiji was going to come to visit us. School was closed, but Diwanji left for the library on the pretext of overtime. She was old and frail and perhaps guilt stricken. I was too proud to admit we were going through bad times. So I made halwa in the morning, cleaned the house and wore my Diwali saree. I also wore these gold anklets just so I could see her squirm with envy."

"Did she?"

"Oh no... when we looked at each other we forgot everything else. Our tears did all the talking. She had brought some of amma’s jewellery with her but could not muster the courage to give me.”

“I just love you daadi!” Rhea almost blurted out as she got up and opened the windows. A beautiful pale shower of sunlight came streaming in the room and fell on Gayatri’s beautifully lined face.

Softly caressing the ornaments in her hands, Gayatri continued.

“Whenever I felt sad and hopeless, I would look at these anklets. They gave me hope and confidence. They were a reminder of how much I could achieve with hard work. They were a celebration of my courage, a personal reward that I gave myself every time I defeated life.

They gave me a sense of security, a faith that no matter how dark and gloomy life would get, the faint light trapped in this old trinket box would give me the energy to fight back.

Over the years things started to improve. We saw good days and then even better days. But the one thing I always held onto was the lesson these anklets had taught me – to work hard and never give up. I derived all my strength from my weakness for these anklets. "

"Then when things got better, you must have worn them all the time?" Rhea smiled.

"Time and again I wore them - but on special occasions; sometimes when I felt overwhelmed with life’s ups and downs, sometimes when I wanted to celebrate, sometimes when I felt like walking down memory lane and sometimes when I simply wanted to revel in my womanhood.

Through tears and laughter, love and pain, guilt and glory - they have been a constant in my life. Your daadaji bought me many ornaments after that. But I believe that this pair of anklets was all the gold I ever needed in life and so destiny made sure it never parted me.”

Rhea was crying now.

"Can you adjust my pillow for me? I have a stiff back." Gayatri said straightening her back a little.

“Oh Daadi, I must let you sleep now. Mom is going to be mad at me for spoiling your afternoon nap.” She said, wiping her tears.

Rhea fluffed up the pillows and eased her grandmother into bed. She put the anklets back into the box and placed it by her bedside. She stepped back and stood against the wall, watching her lovingly; waiting for her to close her eyes.
A short while later she placed a tiny kiss on her grandmother’s forehead, adjusted the quilt over her shoulders and was about to leave the room, when she heard a faint whisper. "Rhea beta, after I die, I want you to keep these anklets with you." And then Gayatri went to sleep.

*

Rhea dropped her car keys in the basket on the console table, picked up the fabric samples lying on the table and hummed the latest Bollywood song she had heard on the car radio. She leafed through the samples and mentally rejected all of them. Peeping into the kitchen she called out, “Padma bai, ek kadak chai milegi?” (Can I have a cup of strong tea?)

On her way to her bedroom, Rhea stopped to speak to the picture on the living room wall. “Daadi, five years back, on this day, I turned down a job offer at Meera Fashions to chase my dream and opened a small design workshop with five tailors. And today I launched my own label – it's called Gayatri. Happy Birthday, Daadi.” She stood there for a while admiring the picture till the waft of ginger tea pulled her back to reality.

"Phew, what a tiring day it was...", she sighed. She had not been this happy in a long time. She turned on the answering machine as she slipped out of the heavy jacket she had worn to the ceremony. There were two messages. One was from the dealer of Arundhati Textiles. He wanted to know if she had shortlisted from the fabric samples. The other one was from Mr. Verma.

“Surely, there must be some mistake. Did you check correctly?” a minute later she was speaking into the phone with Mr. Verma – the manager of the asset evaluation firm.

“Oh... no... I mean okay...that’s alright...Mr. Verma. Thanks a lot. I’ll pick the reports tomorrow morning.”
She replaced the receiver and sat down at the edge of her bed in a state of shock and disbelief.

She had sent her jewellery for a test of purity as part of the legal proceedings of the asset management firm. While the rest of her jewellery ranged between 18 to 22 carat gold, the report said that the anklets she had inherited from her grandmother were one hundred percent brass.

She rushed to her closet and took out the rustic old box. Tears welled up in her eyes as she held the anklets in her shivering fingers. They had not been mere ornaments – these anklets had been witness to the possibilities of human will, they were catalysts of lives turning around from dust to gold, they were symbols of hope, love, courage and self confidence. No other gem in the world could ever match their radiance. She held them in her hands in disbelief, as they bathed in her tears. The cup of tea by the bed side went cold.

It seemed like an eternity had passed as the events of a lifetime unfolded before her eyes and woke her from the deep stupor. She held the anklets to her forehead. In that moment, she knew in her heart that what she had was so invaluable that no laboratory test in the world could ever measure.

“They are one hundred percent pure gold” she told herself, “I can never let anyone put a price tag on these anklets. They are mine and will stay with me...”

And the same promise that a brave woman had made to herself a few decades back, repeated itself in a new time and setting.

I can't write

2008-07-13T18:56:00.002+05:30

It has been such a long time since I sat down to write something. There have been many stories floating in my head, many emotions playing tempestuous notes with the chords of my heart, many incidents waiting to be told but words have evaded me, thoughts have darted through my mind over and over again like a restless child who longs for his mother but wouldn't allow her to hug him.

Everytime I try to get a grip on these feelings and pen them down, they betray me. Words that once were the essence of my existence fail me; my own emotions scoff at my inability to put them down on paper.

Every night when the tired limbs unfold and the mind drowns itself in planning for the next day, the heart begins to ache too. And words that haunted me all day, desperately waiting to be strung together in a story, start their last journey from my eyes to the pillow.

I do not know why it has become so increasingly hard for me to write anything. It is as if my emotions have become so vagabond, so fluid that they no longer remember they have a home to go back to. But my heart that has always longed for an anchor and the mind that has always spun around in infinite circles; they both wait impatiently for the voice that words used to give them. They know that place of peace, that feeling of being home, being friends with myself - that place lies somewhere in the pages of the book that I have dreamt of writing one day.

I know that until I lift the pen and start writing, I will never get there. Yet, commitments keep me from stepping into my inner world, responsibilities clutch my thoughts and chores leave me exhausted. And I lose myself in this crazy business of living.

Ironically, this dreadful thing called life keeps me from living.

Short Story: Eye Opener

2008-03-06T14:45:00.003+05:30

This morning when I woke up, everything had changed. When I opened my eyes, I found myself waking up on the same bed that I went to sleep on, except that it was nearly three times it's size. The room looked huge and so did the wall clock in front of me. I had to literally jump off the bed and in the process I ended up twisting my ankle.

The walk to the bathroom felt like morning walk. It took all the energy I had woken up with to twist the enormous knob on the big white bathroom door. Once finally inside the bathroom, I slowly pushed the heavy door shut and hopped on to the big toilet seat with all my might. Luckily there was a plastic stool that I used to reach as far as the tap on the washbasin and washed my hands. The next challenge was to hold the heavy tube of toothpaste steady because it felt like a few kilos. I brushed my teeth somehow and hobbled out of the bathroom - once again struggling with the knob on the door. All this hard work had made me hungry.

I stepped into the giant dining room and saw a bunch of big ripe bananas on the elephantine dining table. There was no way I could reach them no matter how much I stretched on the tips of my toes. I slowly pulled one of the giant chairs closer to the table. The challenge now was to somehow climb up on the chair.

Five minutes later, huffing and panting, I was standing on the chair. It took some of my remaining strength to pull a banana out from the bunch, and in the process I ended up half peeling it. Afraid that I would get a rebuke for being so clumsy, I decided to cover the bunch with a place mat lying on the side. As I pulled the placemat, oblivious of the giant bowl of cereal resting on it, milk spilled all over the table and on my clothes. Luckily for me, it was just about warm and noone was around to notice the mess.

Finally just as I was about to gobble up the banana, it slipped from my hand and fell on the floor. I jumped off the chair, picked it up and climbed back on it. All this took another six minutes.

I was close to tears. It was so exhausting. Every thing around me looked large and intimidating, every place looked farther and higher - beyond easy reach. All the routine tasks that I would normally finish in a few seconds, without even knowing I was doing them, seemed like little challenges in themselves.

Just when I was figuring out a way to open the heavy door of the closet that housed my clothes, I heard a shrill sound.

It was the 6:30 AM alarm. I woke up with a start. The room was normal. So were the bed, the door, the furniture, the painting and the clock. Every thing was as I had seen it last night. I had been dreaming.

"Thank Heavens!", I sighed.

That morning when I walked my five year old daughter to the bus-stop, I made it a point to walk shorter steps, I was more patient when she took an eternity to wear her shoes and I felt proud of the unkempt head of hair she walked out with after she insisted on combing her hair on her own. Afterall, I had seen life through the eyes of a little child a very short while back.

What an eye opening experience last night's shut-eye had been!

Short Story: The Mother

2008-03-03T17:48:00.004+05:30

She was around thirty-five years of age though the lines on her face made her look much older. She sat there in dead silence, on a rusty little bed of the general ward with the cold, shriveled body of her six year old son in her lap. On the parched, lifeless mouth of the little boy rested a serene smile - the kind of blissful comfort that only death can bring.

A gentle, quivering lullaby filled the room as she sat there rocking not the boy, but herself back to sanity. She continued to stare at the dusty poster of Mother Teresa on a pale blue wall in front of her.

She sat there in that position for an hour till she heard a distant clock strike 4 AM. The hustle bustle of the general hospital was beginning to take form. As if waking from a deep slumber, she looked at the once lively face of her son for the first time ever since he breathed his last. With the crumpled end of her sari, she tenderly wiped his face placing a lock of hair back in it's place. Through tears that she could no longer hold, she smiled at the innocent face and kissed the cold forehead. Very gently she lay the boy on the bed, slowly unwinding the numerous tubes and needles. Needles that pricked her heart as much as they did her son's body day in and day out. Needles that had made the bravest boy in the neighbourhood say these words every single day, "Maa, bahut dukhta hai Maa. Ghar le chalo Maa." ("Maa, I am in pain, Maa. Take me home.")

There was not a moment to be lost. She needed to find the nurse on morning duty and give her the news; news that she had seen in their eyes everytime they watched the little boy writhe in pain; news she had heard in her son's moans for the last two weeks; news that echoed in every silent visit the doctors made by the bedside. The life-support equipment did little to allay the immense pain he felt. But it did a lot to run her purse dry.

Every afternoon she helplessly watched her nine year old daughter pant her way into the hospital ward, with a boxful of rice and dal, breathless with the fatigue of daily chores. "Not any more", she said to herself as she placed the blanket on the boy's legs as if shielding him from the early morning chill.

*

Sona quit school ever since her brother's treatment started and now worked as a maid in the apartments across the street. Every afternoon she stepped in to bring lunch for them and spent an hour in the hospital - talking to her little brother about the school she never went to while her mother made compulsory attempts to bathe and eat.

With each passing day, her hopes of watching her brother play cricket with the other boys of their neighbourhood diminished. So did the amount of dal-rice she brought in every day. Times were hard and harder she worked, thanking God every morning that she was alive to take food for her people.

She had grown up hearing from her mother that she had a heart-valve disease. She did not quite understand what it meant but it seemed to make sense when she realized that unlike other girls of her age, she gasped for breath whenever she walked a few steps with a bucketful of water.

This morning, Sona was about to light up the stove and set the rice for cooking. Every inch of her body ached as she prepared for the day's work. She wheezed all night and could no longer get any sleep these days. Suddenly she heard a loud banging at the door. It was Nathuram's son. Nathuram was the owner of a video parlour who lived two houses away and the only one in the lane who enjoyed the luxury of a phone connection. There was a phone call from the hospital and Sona was asked to drop everything she was doing and rush down to the hospital. Before she could internalize what was happening, the little boy handed her a crumpled twenty rupee note and ran away.

She snuffed out the fire, pulled her dupatta from under the pillow and ran out without locking the door. Freedom from lock and key is perhaps one of the few perks of belonging to the dreadful lower middle class in a city like ours.

As she boarded the first local bus of the route, she watched the city wake up to the promises of another morning and as she did, tears welled up in her eyes. Tears of not being able to pick another fight over the last slice of mango with her brother; tears of not being able to chase him with a cane after he would run away with her hair-clip; tears of not being able to sneak out of the room in the night to do his homework for him; tears of not being able to see her brother ever again.

At about the same moment, a lady in a crumpled saree sat motionless on a peeling white bench outside the general ward, waiting impatiently to see the one face around which her life now revolved. In every tranquil breath that her daughter would take from now, she would hear her son's heart beating. That is what had given her the courage to switch off the life-support system last night. She had saved her son's life - In her daughter.

Oh, the same old...

2007-01-25T11:36:00.001+05:30

The other day I called up an old friend of mine, someone I hadn't spoken to for months. After the initial awkwardness, as the ice had begun to thaw, when I asked her how her life was going, the response was a dry - "Oh... the same old routine... office-home-office...".
The call didn't last longer than a couple of minutes.

Just two days back, I bumped into an old colleague of mine while lining up for hakka noodles at the office cafeteria. We had worked together in a project for more than a year before moving on to different groups. I casually asked, "How's work going?". "Oh.. the same old stuff..." he said, looking clearly bored.
I hoped the noodles would come soon.

Ask a high school student how he feels about life and most of them have this (or something similar) to say - "The same old stupid classes, silly teachers, nagging parents, boring food...oh.. the same old everything...".
Wisdom lies in not taking the conversation any further.

In one of my bad moods, as I was flipping the channels on the TV remote, foolishly hoping that Shahrukh Khan would pop out of the idiot box and say something nice and charming to me, I heard a socialite announce on one of the lifestyle channels, "Oh... we simply dash off to the Maldives everytime we get fed up with the same old place...".
I switched the television off.

Monotony. How we sometimes hate this word!

I thought about this a long time. And bored and irritated as I myself was with the "same old" responses, I decided to consciously look for monotony in the world around me.

Something that was so easy to complain about was suddenly difficult to key out and tag. (But I don't give up easily once I catch a bug like that.)

To begin with, we see the "same old" sunrise and sunset every single day of our lives and never care to thank God for it...

The "same old" notes (seven to be exact) keep repeating themselves in some pseudo-aritho-geometric progression to fill our lives with melody...

It is the "same old" stitches that repeat themselves in boring white threads to make delicate, beautiful lace patterns...

The "same old" ingredients in the "same old" measured proportions repeat themselves in sumptuous recipes that pass from one generation to another...

Can you blame a workman for being upset when his tools are not in their "same old" places...

Who can ever get tired of the "same old" routine of tucking a four year child to bed each night and getting a big noisy kiss in return...

And not to forget the devastation of not finding your desk on the "same old" seventeenth floor of the "same old" NYC tower on the eleventh of a September?

Suddenly, "same old" life was no longer boring. Predictability seemed like a blessing, routine became discipline and familiarity sounded friendly.

Now when someone tells me their life is full of the "same old stuff", I quietly whisper "Amen".

Short Story: Identity Crisis

2007-01-08T16:13:00.002+05:30

"You are forgetting your ID card."

She said, garlanding her husband with the blue strap of his official identity card. She was careful not to let the heavy plastic card touch the gold-rimmed spectacles.

"Bye honey". He darted out of the room having planted a kiss on her cheek.

She turned back to see a pile of discarded shirts and ties on the bed smiling at her. She sighed.

"Ma... Have you seen my school ID?" yelled a fourteen year old from the room next door.

She let the first shirt she had picked drop back on the bed and rushed.

"Look, it is here."
She pulled out a yellow strap from under an assortment of socks, books, CDs and other teenage apparatus.

"Looks like I am the only one around here without an identity."
She sighed deep and sad, lost in a far-away thought and lovingly wiped some imaginary dust off the Class Scholar's digitized face with the pallu end of her sari.

"Ofcourse not, Mom. You wear your ID card twenty-four seven." whispered her son as he gently tugged at the gold chain round her neck and ran out of the house yelling louder than the car horn blaring in their ears.
"Cool it, Dad! I'm coming".

She stood there holding on to the gold chain for a long time. Surprised and over-whelmed.

At the end of the chain dangled a small pendant of goddess Lakshmi.

हिंदी कविता: उजली सी सुबह

2007-01-03T13:05:00.005+05:30

अभी कुछ देर हुई आंख खुली है

उजली सी सुबह घर आयी हुई है,

नयी दुल्हन कोई जैसे मॅन-आंगन में

धुप का आलता लगा शर्माई हुई है।

चाय की प्याली में मोगरे की झुकी डाली

किरणों की मिश्री घोल रही है,

खुद ही से छुपाये जाने कितने राज़

कांपते होंठों से आज खोल रही है।

अखबार की खुशबु ताज़ा खबरों की तरह

पूरे कमरे में समां गयी है,

और नयी आशा की किरणों में

घर की हर चीज़ नहा गयी है।

रात भी चांद का कंगन उतार,

आसमान के आगोश में सुस्ताने लौट गयी है,

और जाते जाते तारों की शरारतों को

रौशनी का ताला लगा गयी है।

एक गिलहरी फिर चोरों की तरह

गमले के पीछे सेंघ लगाए बैठी है,

और आंगन में कबूतरों की पंचायत

आज किसी नयी बात पे एन्ठी है।

सर्द हवा में बिखरी

जो यह गुलाब की पंखुरियां हैं,

चांदनी की आंच तले कल रात सिकी

कहानियों की परियां है।

कुछ तो है इस दिन में

के फूल भी मुस्कुराते हैं,

मन ही मन में आज ये और मैं

एक ही गीत गुनगुनाते है।

तुम भी सोचते होगे

ऐसा क्या है इस सवेरे में,

वही रंग हैं आसमान के,

हैं वही लोग इस बसेरे में।

मन जानता है जिसने साल भर

उदासी का कर्ज़ अदा किया है,

बात इतनी है के इस साल मैंने

अपने आप से खुश रहने का वादा किया है।

Poetry: Salt of the seas in my wings

2006-11-01T17:42:00.001+05:30

O dear! You dive so well,
All those I loved would often tell
I told myself, beaming with pride
I must be good, God’s favorite child!

Child of the seas I was meant to be;
Those treasures, My! they wait for me.
Dive after dive, I plunged for these,
The pearls, the gems, the scarlet rubies.

Seasons came and seasons went,
A twist of fate, this time they meant.
It was twilight, on the sand I lay,
To melancholy night, from a weary day.

Over the jewels I ran my hand,
They shone as ever, so pure, so grand!
The gems were mine, but I didn’t belong,
They pricked my throat, like a soulless song.

I was sad, I knew not why,
And bluer looked the moonless sky.
The sea hissed and drank the pier,
And then it fell, a lonesome tear.

Undrunk, untouched, on the sands it lay,
A different plan, shores had that day.
The eyes yielded, as the tide soared,
Them tears, I could no longer hold.

And then what happened, you wouldn’t believe,
The seas withdrew, a mirror to retrieve.
The salt had washed, the image was clear,
It was my shimmering, shivering form O dear!

Then I saw them for the first time,
Two crumpled wings, so exquisite, so sublime.
Beneath swimmer arms, these petals, they grew,
They were mine all these years, I never knew.

I raise my arms to beckon the sky,
Ah! All this while I was meant to fly.
The feathers unfurl; I look up afar,
This time I dive, to reach for the star!

The eyes aglitter, my gems are they,
This moment of truth; it’s here to stay.
The waters rejoice and the sky to me sings,
I am a bird with the salt of the seas, in my wings!

I...

2006-10-03T15:01:00.000+05:30

I... [Inspired from a few blogs I visited...]

I am thinking about:
What it would be like to travel the world, visit beautiful places, meet talented people.

I want to:
Learn clay modelling, sculpting and the works one day.

I wish:
To make my daughter proud of me when she grows up in life.

I hear:
Questions.

I wonder:
Whether I will ever have all the answers.

I regret:
Not having taken up writing seriously as a student.

I dance:
When I can't see myself dancing.

I sing:
"Apni marzi se kahaan apne safar ke hum hain... rukh hawaaon ka jidhar ka hai, udhar ke hum hain."

I cry:
Because I am human.

I make with my hands:
Impossible dreams.

I write:
So I don't lose myself.

I confuse:
Happiness with perfection.

I need:
A second chance to learn all the arts I didn't.

I am:
But another instrument in God's big scheme of things.

Long Road

2006-10-03T14:52:00.000+05:30

It’s a long road…
...this road between the heart and the mind.

And I hope to traverse it one day.

What's the rush, baby?

2006-10-03T14:42:00.001+05:30

I am beginning to wonder where we all, as a human race, are headed.
I see everyone around me - me included - constantly on the go, running hard to stay where we are - as if we were on a treadmill fitted with a bomb that would go off if it stopped.

The entire world is moving at too fast a pace, trying to automate every humanly (and otherwise) possible activity. I am beginning to believe one of those scary sci-fi movies my brother forced me to watch when he was a raw-thirteen - the one in which a bunch of robots take over the earth and enslave all humans - is going to come true!

What a shame! I tell myself - a professional in the high-tech tele-communications domain whose burning drive must be connecting the world! Connecting the world with what? Machines? Handset inflicted radiation known to lower grey cells and sperm count?

Sorry, there is no scientific proof for the same. But have you ever thought that by the time there is a scientific proof for the aforementioned, there wouldn't be many of us left (i.e. assuming human cloning is not institutionalized by then) and those of us who are left might no longer be cerebral enough to undo the damage.

Ouch! This conversation is getting too scientific - I had only meant this to be a womanly abreaction. Feel free to disagree with me on this. (I could use a little creative stimulation.)

Every morning we wake up, throw some form of caffeine into our bodies - the mandatory kick-start to our machinery, put on our worldly guises and rush to work. At the end of the day, we come back to our homes - spent, exhausted, sapped- waiting to stuff some ready-in-a-jiffy meal at 11 PM and sink into our beds.

Some of us, like me, have a child to come back home to. Thats usually what keeps us from slowing down during the course of the day- a 10 minute casual chat with a co-worker avoided during the day translates into six hundred quality seconds with my daughter (Ooh, you are a lot of fun to talk to baby, but I haven't got the time!), a quick 10 minute carbrohydrate laden lunch (I am famished by 1:30 every afternoon!) between two critical meetings means hopefully having major design issues taken care of before the never-closing Close-Of-Business, skipping the lunch hour walk sometimes means being able to leave for home before its dark.

There is no end to such compromises(read optimizations). So I work non-stop from 10 to 7 sometimes even 8, 9, 10 or 11 - I work like there is no tomorrow so I can get back home and take a look at my daughter's "Learn With Numbers" book. You know, she may be a bright child, but bright children can also use a little help with counting.

My smart, energetic, perfectionist and understanding supervisor is only too ready to push that "find ways to work smartly, learn time-management, multitask, improve your efficiency, leave early whenever you feel like after *, * and * is done" pill down my gullet!

Then there is that good friend called weekend - time to do an inventory-check of the kitchen followed by grocery, school homeworks, desperately waiting hair-cuts/facials (Thank God, my arms need no waxing), bed-sheets to change, scores to settle with the maid, closets to arrange, dining-tables and computer desks to declutter, drawers to cleanup, newspaper/cable tv bills to pay off, refrigerator to unload, dusting, laundry - okay! I don't do it myself but I get it done - which is technically just as hard if not harder (and I can tell you the figure on my manager's payslip to prove my point.)

And to add to the divine pleasures of a weekend is a clogged washbasin, a leaky toilet flush, a stubborn tubelight, a misbehaving gas-stove, an uninvited toothache/back-ache/head-ache or simply that ineluctable "that-time-of-the-month" visitor!

And I haven't even talked about the mandatory socializing with relatives, my 3-year old's tantrums invariably leading to unceremonious arguments with my better-half or the trip to the tailor for salwar-kameez alterations as I find myself yet another size larger. Needless to say I am wrapped in a dark cloud of depression on my way back. (Hey! have you ever noticed how these shades of gray somewhat miraculously turn into bright sunny hues when brought in close contact with the warm, seductive browns of a chocolate bar!)

And amidst all this, guessing the color of Mallika Sherawat's bikini in the latest movie promo is usually the most intimate conversation I have with my soul-mate which also is in C-O-D-E language coz' I told you I have a young child at home!

And here I am, in a hurry to finish this write-up as its 12:51 on a Sunday night (or Monday morning!?) so I can do some justice to the deep-cleansing and dark-circle-reducing facial I allowed myself the luxury of yesterday. (See, you knew I was hyperbolizing my miseries!)

I am already fantasising about the "kadak chai" my maid is going to make when I wake up tomorrow morning - groggy eyed and irritated.

I do hope my I-hate-him-but-I-love-him-more husband skips the sarcastic "early to bed-early to rise" remark and greets me with his charming smile. Because that might be the only sunshine I see all day.

Heres to walking into another Monday morning that finds me fatter, a little more irritable and a hell lot busier!

What's the rush, baby?!

Life is... what happens.

2006-10-03T13:13:00.001+05:30

Life happens to us…all of us…in some rather peculiar ways. We find ourselves at crossroads so often.

A wise man had a very easy answer to this all encompassing, eternal question about what life is. He said, “Life is all about the choices you make!”.

Indeed.

It is this whole concept of making choices that fascinates me.

Did I choose to be born?
Do I have a choice to live on for as long as I want?

No. These choices are made by some eternal power and I have no choice but to accept these decisions.

I am just another traveller on this long road on the cosmos. I start where there is a “Start” stone with my name on it and pull over when I find my “Finish” stone.

Definitely the choices that the old wise man must have been talking about are those that lie between these “Start” and “Finish” milestones that have been placed on this road to Forever-Land.

Between those two stones, lie the multiple trajectories – on one of which I am leaving my footprints right now.

Between these two stones also lie the many crossroads where I have stood, holding on to whatever my faiths were at that point of time, hoping the next step I was about to make would be the “right” one.

I ask myself, can a book, a person, a computer program or for that matter a finite set of principles ever give me the education to make the right decision at these crossroads?

Where do I get the education to go through life?

How do I build the wisdom to decide which is the right road to take when there are so many stretched out before me at every juncture?

The beauty of this entire construction is that every path teaches me something – most often the lesson that the path I had chosen was not the “right” one!

Therefore a part of this education is definitely acquired piece by piece en route. But to begin with, do I also have some formula encoded in the double helix I am made up of?

A friend of mine had an interesting viewpoint on why little babies smile, frown and make other faces while they are asleep. He believed that while they are asleep, God teaches them all the skills they would ever need in their lives.

If this were true, it means I am fully equipped with all the information I’ll ever need to go through life. (Assuming God would not do a mediocre job! :-))

Since I can’t find the answers that I need today, this information must have been lost in the haze of all the prejudices, proofs, statistics - apparently logical data I have accumulated as part of my formal education.

Maybe I just have to listen, listen real hard, to that faint little sound emanating from my core. For it might be the echo of God’s own words reverberating in my heart – struggling to survive in this worldly din!

And if the above mentioned is nothing but a beautiful theory, it means only one thing - despite decades of the finest education that my parents could afford, I am still an ignorant child on an unfamiliar territory.

What is going to help me find my way through this dense jungle? Where is my support system, my knowledge bank?

As I think harder, I realize the flaw in my argument. My mistake is in the basic assumption I am making - the assumption that for every question in this world, there exists an answer somewhere and I must find it. It has helped me get a full score in Mathematics but this is what is keeping me from going ahead in life.

What if there are some questions that have as many “right” answers as the colours in the evening sky?

What if there are some questions that are not supposed to have any answers?

Maybe there are some wrong turns I am supposed to take in order to get to the ones that are “right” for me…

Maybe the mistakes I am making are the intent of this education and not results of it’s insufficiency…

Maybe that quest for the key to life is life itself…

Maybe there was always only one single trajectory for me… and the other roads that I chose not to walk upon were mere reflections, mere mirages...

Maybe I always thought I was making choices when actually I had none…

If I can accept that not all questions are meant to have answers, not all quests are meant to be fruitful… I think I will start living life…

Till then, I am happy analyzing it.

Ruminations...

2006-10-03T12:59:00.002+05:30

I've been waiting to write since yesterday...waiting for a few quiet, uninterrupted moments with my thoughts. Its the kind of anticipation, a childlike eagerness that we feel when its time to watch a special television show the promos of which have been tantalizing us all week, or when its the time to dig our teeth into the first slice of a soft, warm cake that has been browning in the oven all morning.

I just tucked my daughter in to sleep and tidied up the room while the computer booted. A few fruitless strokes of brush through my tangled head of hair, a quick peep into the refrigerator and an impulsive mouthful of chocolate later, here I am in my favorite noetic position - in front of the computer, stroking the keys of this keyboard, adjusting the monitor to my eyelevel and loving every minute of it.

I can see a few official documents on my computer's desktop screaming "You gotta review us" from behind the notepad. But I choose to turn a deaf ear (or a blind eye, whatever suits better!) till the time I have written atleast a few hundred words. I tell myself, only when I have emptied my heart and mind out will I have room for the three hundred System Integration test cases that I have to visualize. And with this thought, I have just maximized this window. And all of a sudden, the infinite clutter of my thoughts appears miniscule in the white expanse of this window.

Untill this very moment, I had many things to write about. But now I feel blank - completely wiped out. I can not remember a single word from all those conversations that were playing in my mind a little while back. What happenned to that profound, enlightening thought I had posted on a yellow sticky note on my subconscious plane? Whatever happenned to the little story I had been weaving?

Nevermind. Needless to say I just love to write. So I have decided to curb the temptation to close this window and have started writing - without any thought or plot in my mind. And the words are flowing. There is no terminus, no theme, just a set of vagabond meditations...dressed up in the alphabet.

I have never been much of a writer. No formal training or professional experience with writing. (At least as yet! I do fantasize about writing a book one day...) But its always been a little dream tucked in my heart to use words to touch a few heartstrings, or to rattle a few grey cells in someone's head or atleast hold someone's attention till a hundred words.
(In this time and age of kindergarten attention-spans, can I ask for more then a few hundred words?)

And since you have come this far without giving up on this rambling, I would like to believe I am not so much of a failure at writing. :-)

Sometimes, I regret not choosing a career that involves some amount of word-play. I deal with cold logic and unbiased reason - not to forget the stark reality of deadlines. Even though there is a lot of abstraction and intellectual stimulation involved in my work (thankfully!) the right half of my brain is not exercised as often as I'd like it to be.

And I am aware that as I go ahead in my career, I am going to be dealing with cold-blooded numbers. So I ask myself how wonderful it would have been to be able to make money out of dreaming... imagining... making up stories! Thats one treasure chest you will never reach the bottom of, no matter how much you empty it.

But for most of us there is an expiry date on a nine-to-nine corporate job - for some it is triggered by introspections or thirst for finding a deeper purpose, some are plain disheartened with the political games in the upper rungs of the ladder and for some it is triggered by illhealth or neglect of one's body.

Can I find an occupation, an identity, a purpose that wouldn't disappoint me, fail me - something with a lifetime warrantee.

I'll be looking while I write the testcases I was talking about. :-)

PS: I didn't know I would have so much to say out of so little I had started with... and there's so much more... like the neverending string of pearls the little greedy girl with yellow pigtails kept pulling out of the magic chest in another one of the stories I never wrote. I am yet to decide what happenned to the greedy girl - did she learn her lesson and give up? Or did she get locked up forever in the magic castle that vanished with the first ray of the sun.

Well for me right now, duty calls...in the form of some word documents waiting to be double-clicked.

Besides my daughter just woke up in a dangerous mood...and I could really use some help!

Poetry: Take me to the mountains

2006-10-03T12:44:00.003+05:30

Take me to the mountains...

Where the grass is greener and the sky bluer;
and at every dawn,
tears of a lonesome moon leave footprints on the green velvet...

Where the first rays of a coy sun,
stroke the pristine white,
and the bloom of flowers casts a spell enchanting...

Where pebbles on the riverbeds,
bathe in virginal streams and embellish the earth,
and every bend on the road paints God's canvas in different hues,

Where the spicy scent of the deep, dark woods enlivens your breath
as you watch a little bird build her home straw by straw...

There...
under the warmth of a hundred cedars, a lazy hammock beckons me...

Poetry: Lives so full, they are empty!

2006-10-03T12:44:00.002+05:30

Take a glass brimming with the sweetest of nectars,
Bestowed on you from the most exotic succulents.

It spills as you lift it.

The water is precious, so your hands tremble.
You firm your grip and garner your strengths,
But the knees buckle, fears envelope your mind.

What do you do?
Turn your back and pretend you have seen no glass?
Or say to yourself you don’t need the drink?
Or perhaps, admit defeat and make a sorry surrender?

No matter what you did, you know you went to sleep thirsty that night!

Poetry: Pure Bliss

2006-10-03T12:27:00.002+05:30

Sweet rumbling of the ceiling fan,
No clutter, no dust, no phones, no doorbell,
A quaint little neighborhood,
Calm scents from a faraway bloom,
Sleepy crotons peeping through the bedroom window,
Gentle breeze caressing pale white curtains,
Fresh white chrysanthemums by the bedside,
Soft green leaves printed on the bedcover,
My little one's breath on my shoulders,
Grip of tiny fingers around mine,
And a lonesome tear leaving a trail on my cheeks...

Serenity, thy home is my abode!

The stranger in my heart

2006-10-03T12:27:00.000+05:30

I believe most of us are incomplete.
I go through life living like a person I like to think I am. But deep down in my heart I know I am meant to be someone else. It feels somewhat like having another person captive in the deep dungeon of my heart.

This person often talks to me. Sometimes the voice is soft, like a gentle lullaby while I am asleep and I find myself smiling. Sometimes its an angry knocking in my chest, an asphyxiation drowning any prevailing sense of logic and I find myself crying. I feel like I am two strangers trapped in one body. Sometimes I am embarrased of this person, sometimes it scares me. And most other times, I am just not confident enough to acknowledge its presence.

No, I am not talking about a multiple personality disorder here. I must be really bad at my choice of words if thats the impression I am beginning to give. The world has given different terms to this feeling - the quest for completeness, the true calling, the purpose of our being. A thirst that made kings give up kingdoms for ordinary, unembellished lives in pursuit of wholeness. I like to call it the stranger in my heart. The person I am but I am not. The person I might have been.

I often catch myself playing a little game of "pretend" in my heart. If you have seen little children playing pretend games like house or doctor or school, you would know what I am talking about. I imagine that I am not an engineer, but a teacher, or a writer or perhaps a poet. It brings me immense joy to daydream. Its like looking into the mirror and finding that stranger smiling back at me. But then I question myself if I would be a good teacher or a good writer, a good poet. I can't tell.

Maybe. Maybe not. And even if I were good at being that other person, would I be as "well settled", as "secure" as I am today. I have no answers to this. So I get back to being the person the world knows me as. One more time a little dream dies in my heart.

I ask myself what is it that I am looking for? If this is what I was meant to be, who is this person knocking at my heart's door time and again? And if I am meant to be this person and not what I am right now, why did God put me on this road? They say there is no glory without guts. But is it glory I am looking for? Surely not! Theres a good amount of glory in what I am. And there might be none in what I might be.

Why do I feel I have not even unfolded my wings completely?

What is this perpetual throbbing, this lingering feeling of not belonging to my world?

Would I ever have the courage to release this prisoner, to risk whatever little I have accomplished in life so far for a satisfaction I might never find?

Would I ever be able to set this caged bird free knowing that some birds can't survive the world outside the cage?

Would I ever know what is my true calling and would I ever be able to walk the road thats waiting for my footsteps?

Every tired evening after a hard days' work I ask myself these questions. And before I can think of any answers I find myself in a dark deep slumber.

Leaves from a book never written...

2006-10-03T12:15:00.001+05:30

Of the many stray thoughts that have floated through my heart and mind, this blog contains a few leaves that found ground, a few shells that the waters of time left ashore!

I thank my friend for handing me the pen and giving these vagabond thoughts a trail to leave foot prints on.

I feel like I'm home already!

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

2006-08-10T18:31:00.005+05:30

“Favorite Colour?”
I asked my husband as I smoothened the crease on the bed sheet before placing a plateful of rajma-chaawal before him. My daughter was playing with her blocks; Udayan Mukherjee was enlightening us with the latest on pharmaceutical stocks on CNBC TV18. It was 11:15 PM and we had an interview for her school admission to Pre-Nursery the next morning.

“How would I know? You never told me.” He snapped back.
[Yeah, yeah. How insensitive of me!]

“Never mind. Its mauve I think. At least that’s what it used to be back in college.”
Frankly at that point of time, I wasn’t sure I even had a favorite colour any longer.

“What is that? Huh?”
He gave me the bewildered look that was so typical of him. I am beginning to feel he feigns that look sometimes to avoid any estrogen-laden topic.

“No, lets stick to basic colors. Maroon. Yeah, just say maroon.”
I remembered an email doing the rounds at work about men being colorblind to non-RGB colors. Besides I was sure he couldn’t spell “mauve”.

“And I’ll say yours is Blue. Hey, what if they ask questions like how do you deal with mutual differences, how do you resolve issues...”, I asked.

Now this requires some explaining here. Let me tell you that my husband has always managed to avoid the “talk” after our fights. “Issue resolution through effective communication” was merely a power point slide in the Management Training slideshow, applicable strictly at work.
What would he have to say to a question like that. Hmm… I was enjoying this.

“Oh. Never mind. Tell them we don’t fight at all. I’m sure they will ask more objective questions like what time we get back home and stuff like that.”
He once again managed to avoid the sticky topic. He can get conveniently pragmatic.

“Lets say, one of us makes sure we are back by 7:30 PM. I know that rarely happens. But then it’s our fault that sometimes we have to work until 10-11 PM, not our child’s. That’s how it ideally should be. And right after this project is over, I have promised myself I will put my foot down against late stays.”
Scared as I was, I tried to validate the lie I had suggested. Lying had never gone down well with him. He never really understood why I felt so guilty about my work timings. And frankly, this time I intended to keep my promise. I was sick of late nights.

“No. 7:30 is late. Lets say 7.” He said, devouring the last spoonful of rajma-chaawal and pointing to his glass for a refill of water.

Needless to say, I was dumbstruck. This was the same naïve, impatient man who would call me up from the store to describe, in excruciating detail, the color, pattern, texture, MRP and the discount on the so-called surprise T-shirt he had just bought for me. He couldn’t keep a secret from a lamppost. Men can be such liars when they want to be!

I decided against rehearsing the A-B-C with my daughter. She was sleepy, and the last thing I wanted in the morning was a cranky three year old. Making a mental note of what I was going to wear to the interview the next day I switched off the light and television.

Next morning was a mad rush as usual, apparently no different from the others.

But well… different it was! We don’t speak to each other in English at home unless we are fighting. Hindi is the lingua franca. And that’s the love language between our little one and us. So much that every time I ask my daughter to “pick up her toys from the floor” instead of “chalo, toys uthao, beta”, she thinks she is getting a scolding.

Today, however, was an exercise in “English Conversation” – a necessary evil highlighted in bold in most play-school fliers these days. The importance of acquainting my child with the language dawned on me one fine evening in the neighbourhood park. My daughter picked up a silly fight with an English-speaking Punjabi friend. The reason? The other girl insisted there was “water” in the bottle and my daughter argued it was “paani”. Sadly, no one had felt the need to teach the other girl that water was called “paani” in our country.

Brushing teeth was intermingled with practicing “Good Morning Ma’m. My name is Nandini Goel.” [Name altered to preserve anonymity] and “I’m fine. Thank you. How are you?” complete with handshakes and nods and the right pauses.
Children can be such marvelous imitators.

By the time she was dressed in her carefully-selected-by-Mama-lovingly-ironed-by-Papa outfit, we were done with “Ba-Ba Black Sheep”, “Humpty Dumpty”, “Johnny, Johnny”, “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and “Kisne banaaya phoolon ko”. I could easily have put the Riverdale cheerleaders to shame with my energy level and fervor that morning. I was clowning around the house to make sure she was well entertained and happy. You see, dancing on “Old Mac Donald had a farm” early in the morning was not exactly a routine with me.

Taking a cue from our out-of-the-way efforts to please her, she refused to have milk and insisted on chocolate, which I had to reluctantly give in to. We couldn’t take any chances with Her Majesty’s mood. Could we?

The meeting was scheduled at 8:30 AM and hurried and harried, we were at the school gates at 8:40 - scared as hell of being labeled as irresponsible parents.

“You’ve got to be disciplined yourself before you can discipline your children”, I heard these voices in my mind while my husband chatted with the pretty lady at the reception.

“Please have a seat. Ma’m is in a meeting and would be with you shortly”, she said pointing to the gray sofas.

Almost three hours had passed since we had made ourselves comfortable on the sofas. I had received three phone calls from my manager. Yet there was no sign of Her Highness, the Principal. My little one had rehearsed all the lines, practiced all the rhymes, counted the chairs in the room, played more “Tipi-Tipi-Tap” than she had ever played with me, identified all the colors in the room and was getting bored. Trust me when I say that handling a bored kid is a challenge for any parent. The waiting, the boredom, the anxiety and the constant phone-calls from office were beginning to take their toll on our moods. I knew as soon as my daughter would get into one of her peevish moods, my husband and I would definitely pick up a fight. We both have low boiling points.

And then it struck me. (I have read far too much detective fiction in my life.) All that waiting could be a setup for us – a strategy to judge our crisis management abilities and patience. As a saying goes, “Parents who are not patient, soon turn into patients.”

[Don’t believe me. I made up that saying just now. :)]

Soon I was feverishly looking for hidden cameras in the reception.
“You are imagining things.” was all he had to say when I shared this explosive pearl of wisdom with my parenting-counterpart.

As if taking pity on the unrest on our faces, or perhaps not wanting to listen to “Ba-Ba Black Sheep” the seventeenth time, the receptionist called up one of the senior teachers who came within five minutes and to carry out what they called a “child-capability” assessment test.

[Talking of capabilities, she could have brought down the entire school if she had to stay put in that gray sofa for another two minutes.]

To begin with, the teacher shoved a whole bunch of Nestle Chocolate Toffees into her pockets. That ensured she was on her side and we were the “bad, uncaring” people the teacher had rescued her from. We were ushered into a Red-Blue-Yellow-Green classroom and it was time for the little one to do some answering.

"What’s your name?”

[Silence]

“What’s your name?”

[Nothing but the sweet sound of the toffee wrapper parting from the good-brown stuff.]

“Nandini, say good morning to Ma’m.”

[I tried to help. But the teacher silenced me by placing a well-manicured finger on her lips.]

“Okay. Tell me what does Mamma call you.”

[No answer? 1-2-3. Timeout. Next Question.]

“Will you tell me a rhyme?”

“She calls them poems.” I managed a murmur. That finger again.

“Will you tell me a poem?”

[Slurp. Silence and the sound of the gooey stuff between the teeth.]

“Do you know Twinkle Twinkle Little Star?”

I heaved a sigh of relief. This was a breeze.

“Mommy told me you can sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star with actions. Is that so?”
Yes. Yes. I was nodding my head fiercely.

[Another toffee wrapper unfurled itself.]

“Okay, what do you want to do?”

My little woman, a woman of few words, simply pointed at the yellow swing in the classroom. All of us went up to the swing. Her Majesty made herself comfortable in the swing and looked at us as if we were a bunch of monkeys staring out from a cage in the zoo. Papa had started rocking the swing gently so he was spared the monkey look.

“Let us all sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star together!”
The third and final attempt from the teacher.

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little… [I stopped as soon as I realized I was the only one singing it.]

“Tell me, what is this?" The teacher asked, picking up a red bat from the pile of toys and holding it up for all to see.

[Slurp! With the divine taste of melting chocolate filling the mouth, who on earth would care to speak. By now I was hungrily eyeing the remaining toffees that peeped out from her frock pockets.]

“What is that, beta?” I could no longer stop myself. This was the third question. Unanswered.

[Pop went the fourth toffee in her mouth.]

As if reading my mind, Papa jumped to the scene.

“Tell us, what color is this?” He asked pointing to the swing.

“Yellow”. A meek voice escaped from in between caramel coated teeth.

[Did I see a light in the teacher’s eyes? Obviously that was the sweetest sound I had heard in the last few hours. My husband gasped for breath. My knight in shining armour!]

“Okay, what else is yellow in color?”

[Now this one was a huge risk my husband was taking. A totally bad idea, I thought.]

“Sun”.

The teacher smiled and wrote something at the bottom of the admission form. I could cry with joy. My hero!

We left the classroom victoriously – a feeling comparable only to the triumph of India in an Indo-Pak ODI. Yet, the battle was only half won.

The Principal was back from the meeting. We were at the door that read “PRINCIPAL” when my husband joked, “Are we supposed to say, “May I come in, Ma’m?” like our school days?”

Thankfully, we were greeted with a lukewarm “Good Morning. Sorry to have kept you waiting.”

“Yeah, yeah. Sorry, you definitely must be...” I mumbled to myself, still believing in the “sting-operation” theory.

“Hellooo Nandini, How are you doing this morning?”, she uttered a longish Hello and offered the little one a handshake.

“Tissue”.

A tiny pair of sticky fingers stretched out in response.

A wet tissue was brought in close contact with the gooey mass of chocolate on those fingers. My offer to wipe the brown stuff off the mouth was snubbed off.

The lady must have been in early forties with a complexion to put Snow-white to shame. She was dressed in a plain red georgette sari with no embellishments. A tiny pair of pearls adorned her ears and the salt-and-pepper hair was tied in a tight bun at the back. A pair of gold-rimmed glasses adorned the hawk-like nose. The desk was a massive one and two comfortably cushioned chairs were stretched out. Her Highness sank back in a black leather upholstered chair and pointed at the other chairs across her desk.

“I see that both of you are working. Who takes care of your daughter while you both are at work?”, she said without looking up from the form on the table.
[She clearly did not believe in wasting any time.]

“My parents. We drop her off at their place before we go.” I smiled a redundant smile.
[Honestly, I smiled because I was curious to see how she would look with a smile under that beak of a nose.]

“Hmm…” No smile.

“I would like to ask you, Mr. Goel,” she turned her head 15 degrees to the left, “what are your work timings?”
[Bull's eye!]

“Well, we are in an industry where the timings are rather erratic. But we make sure that one of us reaches home by 6:30 in the evening.”
[6:30?! I thought we had settled for 7. There is something with men and a red sari I tell you!]

“That’s nice. Okay, I don’t want to know what she does when she is back home early”, she said looking at me briefly before fixing her gaze on him, “I want to know what you do when she is working late and you are home.”
[“That’s an intelligent woman”, I smirked secretly and sank deeper into the chair.]

“I take her to the park and teach her how to ride her bicycle. We just bought a bicycle for her last Thursday. She outgrew her tricycle pretty fast.”
[Liar, Liar… Does he even know where the bicycle is right now? Incidentally I had bought that bicycle without his knowledge and he had frowned and said, “Isn’t she too young for this?” until he saw her ride it.]

“And what did you both do before she learnt to cycle?”

“Well, she likes to paint. We do some painting.”
[Plan B was ready. Well, indeed that’s true. She loves to get watercolor on her hands.]

“She gets more color on her hands and dress than on the paper.”, I stepped in, trying to be witty. Clearly, I wasn’t welcome.

“So, what colours does she show a preference for?”, she looked at him again. This time a little more intently.

“Err… yellow… green... brown, sometimes.”
[The last painting he had seen of her was a big circle of yellow and green and mud brown. Evidently he didn’t know that the red color tube had been emptied out within two days of purchase.]

“Hmm… what shapes does she usually make?”
[She wasn’t going to let him get away easily.]

“Circles, mostly.”
[Does he know that all she likes to do is put color on her hand and leave hand prints on paper?]

“Do you also paint with her? I mean, hold her hand, help her with maneuvering?”

“Yes, at times I do. But my wife is better at it.”

He looked at me from the corner of his eye hoping a little praise would make up for the lies.
[You bet I am better! With the television remote in one hand and the mobile phone in another, who has the room for a paint brush?]

“That’s very impressive. So, Mr. Goel, what do you think is a father’s role in a child’s development?”

“Just as important as a mother’s.” He was getting better at impression-management.

“Do you also read to her?”

“Oh, we have a great collection of books at home. We never miss a chance to buy a good story book.”
[A technically correct statement. Not an answer.]

“Yes. That’s good. But do you read?”
[Someone wanted the answer to the question she asked.]

“Yes. Mostly at bed time.”
[Oh yeah! Times of India, India Today, Outlook, TV Listings, GSM Fundamentals…]

“I do not enroll children. I enroll parents in my school. I want parents, especially fathers who understand their responsibilities well and consciously participate in the child’s development." She locked her hands and looked at him.

"And I see that you are a great father. It would be a pleasure to have you as a part of this big family.”
The judgement was pronounced.

"Done? Already? What about me? I didn't get to say anything?", I thought.

My husband looked like he had just won the Oscar for best performance.

“There are some formalities to be taken care of. Mrs. Verma will help you with those.” She said, this time looking at both of us.

Finally, I was no longer invisible. Phew!

“Say bye to Ma’m, Nandini”, I attempted to get my daughter to say the fourth word of the day after "Yellow", "Sun" and "Tissue".

No Answer.

“You have a quiet, well mannered daughter”, she said as we bade goodbye.

It was 12:30 and I was too famished to settle scores with the picture of perfect fatherhood walking out of the school besides me. Quite obviously, he was beaming with pride and joy.
“That was so, so cool. See, just needs a stroke of genius.”, he said striking a sixer in air with an imaginary bat in his hand.

“Uh.. huh?!”. There was so much to say, I didn’t know where to begin.

As soon as we were outside the building, in the scorching heat, waiting to rush to work (I was thinking about the cafeteria, frankly) my daughter remembered something.

“Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,
How I wonder what you are?
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky!!”

This time it was complete with actions and flawlessly in-tune.

Maiden Overs

2006-07-23T18:20:00.001+05:30

My maid quit yesterday. Your better instincts have already begun to question why you are even reading this. Well, take my word, I had never myself thought I'd be dedicating a precious Saturday afternoon to this. But if you are a woman - sloppy or perfectionist, office worker or home worker (there is no such thing as a non working woman.), workaholic or plain lazy - whether or not you admit it, these four words have definitely had an unnerving effect on you.

Well for me, I almost passed out.

Allow me to take you to the crime scene.

Picture this.

It is 6:45 PM on a Friday evening and you've had the most work intensive day packed with one meeting with the bigger boss, one frustrating long distance call with some Russian speaking team member trying the get the same point across the umpteenth time and a zillion issues to resolve, emails to answer leaving you with no time to do the #1 item on your To-Do List.

You fix a meeting with your best friend at the closest eating joint while the printer churns out the document you have decided to review at home over the weekend. Well, this meeting is one of my very few guilty pleasures. (Second only to "Desperate Housewives" on Star World, every Sunday night at ten).
Two best friends from school, in equally torturous jobs and with almost equally irritating husbands (I haven't compared notes with other women but I have a feeling theirs would turn out to be an equally irritating lot), tell each other real life sob (and SOB) stories, compare lipstick shades, motherhood guilt pangs, gripe about chores and share tips on how to handle a whining kid or fainéant husband. I like to call it Estrogen therapy! Well, I am digressing here so I will stick to the agenda and bring you back to where the action was.

Having to cut short a perfectly delightful evening, with a husband bickering on the other end of the phone (and I had just called to ask what he would like for dinner so I could get it packed... its Friday evening after all and who is in a mood to cook!?), I was standing in front of the restaurant, sadly preparing an apologetic goodbye for my dear friend and hoping we'd meet soon again.

In front of the restaurant was a chaat joint buzzing with an irritating bunch of school girls devouring gol-gappaas, frantic mothers looking for their off springs who they lost sight of as soon as plates of bhalla-papri and kulche-chhole came into their line of sight, and agitated fathers wanting to get back home so they could watch the Czech Republic and Ghana teams toss around a silly football on a 32 x 30 feet ground.

That’s when the phone call came.

[Ring]

"Hello?" [I speak into the mouthpiece of my Nokia 2100 a little louder than usual to drown the market place din.]

"Madam, this is Gulshan."

"Yes, Gulshan! What happened? You didn't come this morning. All well?"

"Madam, I told you if you get angry with me, I'll not come. You got angry so I didn't come. I quit."

[Silence] CRASH! [Was I hit with a nuclear missile or something just now?]

"Madam?"

[Trying to regain composure. Deep breathe! 1… 2… 3… Forget it!]

"What nonsense is this?! This is atrocious." [Angry?! Who? Me? I am only shaking because it is windy!]

"I told you, Madam."

"How could you! And like a fool I was worried about you when you didn't turn up this morning. I was worried if something was wrong with you." [I am a fool alright but you are such a cheat!]

"I don't want to work."

[I thought I heard some uncertainty in the declaration. Was it wishful thinking? ]

"You come home and talk to me. I am not going to discuss this on the phone."[I am yelling now. From the looks of those girls, I am suddenly more interesting than the gol-gappas. ]

"Okay. I will come tomorrow."
[Did she sound reluctant or did she sound relaxed?]

"You BETTER come tomorrow and talk to me." [Good God! Didn't I just stress too much on BETTER? What did I just do? My mind is now in a suspended state. On the screensaver, I see flashes... the bulging laundry bag hanging behind the bathroom door... a layer of dust on our computer... a pile of dishes in the sink... my dance class… meeting with the in-laws… document review… All this and only two little days….!!]

"But I will come after 12:30." [What did you think? 6:30 AM?]

"That would be LATE!" [I think I am going to faint.]

"I have to go and look for work in the morning. "

[So she hasn't yet found work. Is there some hope? But she sounds so determined, she is going to find a new job.]

"Okay, Madam?"

[People are watching me. Think of something fast you idiot, I tell myself.]

"Hello?"

[Can someone hold me? I am dizzy. Some sweat just oozed out of my Ponds greased palms - a rare phenomenon!]

"Hello? Madam?"

[My mouth is dry... Can someone get me a glass of water?]

-- Disconnect --

My best friend who’s been watching me all this while, finally decides to hold me firmly with both her hands and drags me on for a walk.

"Listen to me. You can't talk like that."

"Huh?" [Is it me you’re talking to? My mind is in a whirlwind. How will I get a maid at such short notice? God, please tell me this is a bad dream.]

"You are letting her manipulate you. You can always find another maid."

"Another maid? She is the best I have had. How will I manage?" [Your maid has not run away baby, mine has!]

"Don't panic. The way you were talking, you were giving yourself away."

"Hmm... " [You are right. I was. I can't believe now I need to be told how not to let my maid affect my blood pressure...]

"What went wrong?"

"I yelled at her… because for the fifth time, the books on the bed-side were still dusty after she was done with the dusting. I had no time to clean it myself and my temper flared. I am also PMSing." [What the heck… let biology share the blame with me.]

"Everything will be fine. This is life."

"You know, she is such a nice lady. She has been with us for so long, through bad times and good. And she is trustworthy and yes, much neater than a lot of other women…" [I bit my tongue... I had finally admitted it.]

"Yes. I know. I remember you telling me how nice she was. Maybe she is too attached with you. Maybe she cares about you as much as you do about her. Maybe she doesn't think of herself as a maid. And so she doesn't like being spoken to like that. You were very rude to her just now."

[I am fiercely nodding my head.]

"Actually I can be quite a control freak. But I just have to have everything perfect." [Hoping like mad she’ll agree that everything must be done to perfection. I could really use a vote in my favor.]

"Perfection is fine. It is not achievable for everyone. She is just as human as we are." [That was the sweetest, softest tone in the world showing me instantly where I erred.]

"I care a lot about her… I have always tried to keep her happy. But I also want to keep my house clean. Why can't she see the dust I can see?"

[Or the spots on the floor if you see 30 degrees below the horizontal line of sight from the far right corner of the room, or that crease in the sofa cover... I was getting the picture. My own vote was no longer in my favour.]

"Talk to her. Try to find out why she is upset. And if you can do something about it, do it. Yes, remember don’t get weak. Do not let her, or for that matter anyone, manipulate you."

[God, she really cares. My bestest friend!]

"You are such a sweet person. Though a nasty control freak at times." she added, "I can’t see you so upset."

[Just what I needed to hear when I was feeling like a worm myself. Friends are mind readers. I don’t know what I’d do without her.]

"You will be able to handle this. Don’t worry. Just don’t lose the big picture. Life is bigger than this."

[Suddenly, my daughter’s million dollar smile flashed before me. I didn’t need a maid to bring that smile on her face. And that truly was the biggest thing in my life – so much bigger than spotless floors and a dust free home!]

"Now stop crying." [Her hug was tighter now.]

[I’m crying because you are such a lovely friend, dumbo!]

"I won’t. Thanks. I’m fine."

[Wait, I’m not so sure about that now. Can we sit down and discuss this a little while more? My heart was playing games and I was so unsure of myself.]

Another hug and a few sad byes later, I was in the car. The driver, as if sensing my jittery nerves, immediately muted the latest item number song. [By now he knows the kind of songs that vex me.]

As we parked the car in front of my husband’s office, I was scared he’d read my face.

"What! You did it again. You drove HER away! Do you have any idea how you will find another maid – someone as trustworthy as her! All because of a couple of merely dusty books!"

[But the dusty bit didn’t seem so “mere” that morning!]

The journey, thankfully, was quiet. He was on his mobile phone having an intense discussion on how many man months worth of work the design change would be.

I hate that mobile phone of his and have so often fantasized about breaking it into two irreparable pieces, crushing that SIM card to a powder and flushing that powder down the toilet. But on that one evening, I just wanted that mobile phone to keep bringing him calls one after another. I love the gadget!

Back at home, I tried to laugh at some of the jokes on the Laughter Show on TV and did manage a few nervous laughs. I took a trip of the bathroom and evaluated the hand-wash laundry load. With the profound realization that I needed to start investing in machine-wash kind of clothes, I walked up to the kitchen and tried to visualize the height the pile of dirty dishes would reach by the next afternoon. There was dusting to do and sweeping and mopping… all that along with a mid morning dance class to attend. I was sure no maid would be available at such short notice. Wait, Gulshan was coming at 12:30. If only I could coax her into staying till I found another maid.

Suddenly the spot on the floor had diminished for no apparent reason and the books didn’t appear so dusty after all.

That night I hoped my daughter would not take too long to sleep. I had to rehearse my lines for the big encounter. What could I say that would make my maid stay without letting my desperation show. Tossing and turning, rehearsing and blabbering I did manage to catch some Z's.

By morning, I was all geared up to be the super-woman, my I-could-do-it-all-and-I-could-do-it-better avatar! I made the morning tea and for the first time in the last few months, peeled onions and cut potatoes for poha. It felt good – a silly and short lived self gratifying feeling.

What’s the big deal, I told myself. Breakfast is ready. Class is in half an hour. When I am back from my class, I’ll do the dishes – 30 minutes, and then do the laundry - 1 hour (I hereby pledge I shalt not wear those hand-wash suits again till I find a maid who can wash them for me.), dust the house squeaky clean – 1 hour, sweep it, mop it – 1 hour. I’ll even scrub the door handles and give my daughter’s toys a dettol bath while I am at it – just 30 more minutes. Then I’ll cook and serve lunch – another hour - and then it will be time to do the dishes again and take the clothes off the clothes line, fold them, make a bundle for the dhobi and place others in respective cupboards. [See, I have stopped tracking time.] And if I am still alive after that, I’ll fix the evening tea and take my daughter to the park to play.

A little part of me was already crumbling. I tried “positive thinking”. There was a sense of liberation. I could manage my house myself. I didn’t need help. Good going! Yes, you can do it sweetheart, I reasserted.

Promising myself to not let the post-dance achy legs break my spirit, I headed for the class.

An hour and 10 minutes later, I was back from the class – thirsty and dog-tired – wanting to throw myself on the bed.

What do I see at my doorstep? A familiar pair of old, worn out blue plastic slippers.

You have no idea what those slippers at my door mean to me.

They mean she is back at work. ~Madame Maid~ is back!

She is not just sitting outside, waiting for me, so we can both say our well rehearsed lines. She is INSIDE.

Which means my dear little house is getting wiped and mopped and scrubbed.

Which means I can take that leisurely bath and sink into bed and nurse my aches.

Which means this is not going to be a weekend of toil and frustration and guilt.

Which means so much more than words can say.

Well, it also means that the phone call was her way of telling me there is so much more to life than dusting.

I ring my doorbell with a new burst of joy, in the process wiping the dust off the switch plate with the tissue in my hand. Another place she forgot to dust.