Blogging from Indonesia

Well havent written a single line since I stepped into the Archipelago. Mainly because my blogspot would default into bahasa and I would find it difficult to change it back to english everytime. Nothing against bahasa or indonesia...somewhere in the new life, penning or blogging took a back seat. Today is a different day, my blogspot miraculously defaulted to english and I was tempted to write again....
I am in bed rest...resting and getting bored...I cant remember the last time I was in this kind of a do-nothing state. I am so unfamiliar with this lifestyle. It was always a secret wish, that for days I will lie on bed ...and do nothing but I never imagined the truth is so far away from fantasy.

But as I write I am slowly enjoying these moments of eternal rest.

(Pregnancy-Maternity-Post Maternity: occupied the rest of the 2 years)

Good Morning India

Somehow life is tricky and plays games with me all the time. In every corner of decision making lurks the uncertainty-boogy man. I hate these times; I cringe with displeasure and pray in muted silence.

The control freak in me just hates this kind of silly situation. In midst of all these messy state of matter the solace comes from the hope of laughing about this a month later. I will then be sighing in relief that the dark clouds are a month old and nearly gone just leaving a streak of gray. My life is always a sparkling silver sky with the dark smiley face in the horizon smirking at me.

With these amazing thoughts I start the day. Every day in India is a pleasant struggle of survival. I call it pleasant because if you see it any other way you will die a million death in the agony of dealing with both public and private sector official and executives.

The ordinary day in the ordinary city of Kolkata has its extraordinary tale to tell. This is not a diary scrap like Bridget Jones whose main problems are generally around the waist or dealing with boyfriends. This is about living in the extraordinary country of India where I am an honored female tax payer. Here in this motherland, on the soil of my ancestors I am fully eligible for my peace of mind at least in the parts of my life in which has the government has a crucial role to play…for e.g health, roads, legal, police, insurance etc. But this peace of mind breaks into thousand pieces every morning as soon as I set out of the house armed with my proof of identity, passport and pan cards. Beyond this the trick is to carry tons of additional documents that I keep juggling. I need an address proof, father’s name, husband’s tag, mailing address proof etc.etc. And that is not all if I skip from one state border to the other the officials out there look at me with suspicion, and treat me like an alien intruder into their land. And I get a treatment that is appropriate for a foreigner with dark skin in the first world countries. The extraordinary part of the story is unfolding a day’s account of all my family members running from pillar to post chasing the government officials and other people like my home mortgage bank guys.

Today there are a few of these hurdles that I have at hand. My sister needs to clear a test for driving license; my husband needs a ECNR clearance. I need a house mortgage sorted. …hallelujah. That’s another chapter of this life….

My onliners............

1. Behind every successful man there is his wife, behind every successful woman there is her maid (tsk, tsk)
2. Client call response in odd early hour in the morning: yawnnnn...are you talking from my nightmare, certainly you dont appear anywhere in my dreams !!!

(Moved to page on the side bar) 

Zindagi Rocks!!!!

Life is a roller coaster ride. You never get enough of the adventure. It always keeps you guessing. There are moments of truth and there are moments of void camouflaged as truth. As soon as you touch the veneer of truth, the dust comes off it and the skeleton lays bear ...

Waiting for an Apology

When you wait for an apology,its a strange feeling. There is nothing in this world so helpless as a person waiting for an apology from a loved one. Waiting in desperation. Say the magic word and I will forgive and forget. Just genuinely tell you are sorry, tell me you made a mistake, tell me that you will never do it again, tell me , hold me and just say " sorry". Why is admitting a mistake so difficult....unless the offender fails to realize that completely. Time does not heal everything...Time keeps the waiting alive ...because for a loved one u want to wait all your life...all your life that you want to spend with him...every empty thought gets filled by the unending need for an apology.

Mumbai Landlord Encounter

Generally I write about abstract things, mostly from a spurt of a feeling. But today is a different day, I momentarily lost faith on human kind and recovered it in the next instant. The incident date dates back to yesterday. Me and my hubby went upto to our old house (21st floor-breezy thing) to meet the landlord and the lady with their lad, in the bleak hope that he will give our deposit of 1.25 lacs back after we stayed in the house (according to him and her we misused it)for a year, paying a neat rent of 14 thousand rupees per month. We got accused left, right and centre of our audacity to abuse the place, use their water, use the breeze from the window leave those few scratches on the wall. It was a bizzare meeting. I was knocked out for a while with the attack, failing to realise what the bombardment of words meant. Then I felt my blood boiling, with much effort I hid my claws and fangs. It was like the ancient prehistoric caveman drama. I started collecting the herd around me, calling the people in the building, the sceretaries, treasurer while the lord and the lady with garrulous demeanour jumped around the place. You could see their hairy bodies under those clothes, the claws reaching out to grab you. They were decided not to return what rightfully belong to us. It was not money anymore, it was food, the catch of the day, raw blood and flesh. Funny part of it all was what they kept on uttering the whole time, it was like the early cave man somehow learnt the languages of the present but did not know how to use them. They had smirks on their faces and trash pouring out of their crooked mouth. I had lost my faith that moment, no belief was left in the civilisation of my own kind, my human kind. Human feelings hit the fathomless depth of lowness. How deep would I need to plunge to snatch those notes from their hands.

Here enters my neighbour, Ashwini. She called on phone from her room to the reception desk. Surprisingly she knew my name and yesterday was the first time I came to know hers. The name and the person that instilled in me faith, belief and sense of relief. She just assured that I dont need to pay for the water as it is part of the maintainance paid by the landlord. I thanked her immensely for the supporting words. I thanked her from within silently that she came out of her comfort zone to say few words of assuarance.

The fight ended eventually, we settled for an amount although the hurtling of words never stopped. There was not a single moment when they did not abuse us. It was like that was their only language to communicate. The language of filthy abuses continued as the faces changed from the smirks to the frowns and sometimes into careless smiles.

We dined and wined and whined after the cavemen troop left. Bacardi and coke, fried rice and chicken garlic sauce drowned the angst and leftovers of the evening which left us stunned.

To Know or not to Know

What is it to know a woman's heart? Is it like what the old lady in Titanic describes "like an ocean of secrets". And to be totally fair, we can also question, how difficult is it to know a man's heart, is it like scaling the mountains.
One is the fathomless fluid, with the currents, and hurricanes and tsunamis churning itself inside out and one like the unmovable, unshakeable, mammoth and massive solid standing tall. Where do they comingle, where do they feel each other, how do they break into each other's silence. Who will be the river that carries the mountain to the ocean, who will be the vapours that rise up high from the ocean's vast blue and drizzles, snows and hails over the highest peaks. What has nature to say? what is the natural choice? What is but natural to do? To know or not to know that is still the question ....alluring and irritating :-)

Ode to Yahoo message archive

The this and that today will mostly cover things like memories, words said , feelings felt and of course an ode to the super invention called yahoo message archive. The archived chat logs are more like photographs of conversations. The smilies add to the colour. Its like going back in time and catching glimpses of the daily snapshots of the past. There are the communications with friends and foes, rediscovering the crests and troughs of a relationship, the flavour of new love, the frustrations of a worklife, the plan of a weekend, the excitement of a new buy, the taste of a new dish. All the heee heee s, all the haa haa s, all the sniffs , all the aaarghhs. It captures tit bits of trifle fights, bits and pieces of uncanny silences...and while you read through it after long long time your dormant feeling are vibrated and rekindled by the "ding", "ding" which were buzz, buzz once upon a time. The ode is not fully complete if you dont give a special mention to the lovely faces of the smilies :-), :-(, :-*, :-8, :">. Extending the topic on smilies, I do take this opurtunity to mention the latest in messenger- the animated smilies. Digressing from a ode for a little while let me put a personal view to the floor too. Generally it is seen that the more complex the tool/technology/software/gadgets become, the more you start missing the simple nuances of life, but in the case of the animated smilies, things actually got better and coming back to my ode, the moving, yawning, smiling, kissing faces still keep doing their tricks and make you do a LOL all over again. So long live my database of memories through my yahoo message archive. They stay like my own little pandoras box which I will open and close and reopen to laugh and frown down memory lane.

The Girl was left behind

My mom is sure she cant fit into my shoes, the shape is so different she gasps. I can never wear her's. My guy friends say they can easily fit into their father's shoes, and also their grandfather's and the great grand father's. (Exceptions are there to prove the theory , of course). Hmmm...The evolution just happened too fast for the XXs. The freedom gave them wings, their mind wanted to try anything that was new, anything that was pristine and not touched by the female genes. Tons of whys filled the vaccuous unknown and answers were erratic, and even to this day I am not sure that I understand all the answers. But what was happening to the XYs when the XXs were busy changing and embarking on adventures. The environmental bubble around them was the same, but the stimuli they received were different. When the female tinytot was struggling to stand on the same pedestal offered to the guy beside her, she quickly learnt new survival skills, new tactics to defend the reasons thrown at her from people defending the pedestal....

With that preface life becomes easier to explain, its but then natural, you evolve fast when you face obstacles. But if there is not evolution, will nature start eliminating selectively? Wishing the bubble around us (thats society when spelled out) will throw some real good obstacles to the boys, men, fathers, brothers and they will flourish and evolve and survive the struggle for existence and live till the doomsday of the homosapiens

The magic of new realtionship

One fine day, the magic of words began. The conversations, the pauses, the silence all mingled to one deep sense of peace.
Yes, I belong here, yes I am home. Then one fine day the finer moments lead me to a fine life.

Ending one and moving on

The water was held too tightly in the fist. It was there, thats why it felt wet always, and sticky too, like the dried tears pouring down. The fist became strength, the illusion of strength, the hope of strength. It was my fist, the water was collected with lot of faith, with the promises pushed into every drop. The fist was tighter in the moments of anger, in the sufferings of deep pain, in the agony of solitude, in the fear of the unknown, in the excitement of the new and held in the air in celebration of freedom.

Ages the fist was held, tighter with days that went, in anitcipation of the overwhelming future.They dripped daily, every moment. But the wetness stayed and the belief stayed with it. But tomorrow it will be fine, when the fist meets another clammy palm, open, with water dripping too.


But finally, a day came, when the fists were to meet. Dust to dust, just dust to dust.
Time dried the water, till the last drop, only the faint lines running on the palm, left like watermarks, spoke of another story, the lines had changed since the fist was closed. It was closed too tightly I guess, and God knows with what stupid faith. Never opened in all these years, only felt the wetness like a habit.