the last tear

Pitter patter pitter patter

Rain drops plop down

A drizzle at best

With a dash of salt

On a weathered palm

That shook many a paw

Waiting for the torrent

Of a few, measured drops

From a dried up spring

That once gave freely

Is now happily barren

The gland is tired and worn out

And now sterile from overuse

The pump is losing steam

From years of upheaval

The right brain is numb

From a genocide of cells

The twin windows parched

From the imminent drought

The monsoon has ended

The typhoon has passed

A cold numb has set in

Like chill on a corpse

happy resolution-free new year

to say that the new year 2008 started happy for me would be incorrect. because it was the old year that ended happy, giving way to a rather happy new year. of course, owing to the fact that we decided to go on a holiday a couple of days before the new year began. which in due course will no longer be new, but hopefully happy.

in coorg, with my family, i had a blast doing all the things i would’ve normally enjoyed doing. river crossing, rafting, eating, cuddling my little one to my heart’s content, sight seeing, driving, dancing, etc. (i won't explain the etc.). except sleeping that is. i have no complaints. except for the obscene amount we spent. yeah, there’s always an ‘except’. even in the happy, perfect new year.

of course, perfect means nothing. if i look outside the four rather small walls of my own life. the moment i read the paper (a rare moment indeed), i find out about the random deaths caused by some maniacal middle aged woman, for a sum of money, we casually spent in 2 days at coorg. then you hear of the people who literally danced their way to death as the dance floor caved into the swimming pool. the fact that a few loved ones just missed drowning to their deaths in that pool made the news enlarge my tightly stretched rose coloured walls, leaving an ugly crack in the process.

so is the new year a little less happy, apart from being a little less new? not sure, as death need not necessarily mean a bad thing, according to what a friend recently wrote rather eloquently, which i wish i had the permission to publish. but happiness is, i believe, what we all strive for, in general?

i made a resolution a few years back to be happy. my memory fails me as it does when i need it the most, but i’m quite positive i didn’t live up to the resolution. i then decided to make tangible, quantifiable resolutions so that at the end of the year, i could look back and pat myself on the back, or kick myself on the backside, as the case may be. but more importantly, a resolution that i would remember at the end of the year. such a resolution has happened but once. and i’m proud to say that i patted myself on the back at the end of that year, and every year since. new year resolutions do not end at the end of the year and are made to be for the rest of your life. after all, you can’t quit smoking on jan 1st 2007 and then start it again 365 days later, ‘cause, hey, that was last year’s resolution. unless, of course, your 2008 resolution is to start smoking.

but in general, barring hardened hedonists, resolutions are things that go against the grain of who we are and what we do. and who we are and what we do, are normally not things that we are very proud of. and hence, the need for resolutions, 'casue hey, that's what's 'right'. and that goes against the grain of what makes us happy. for the moment at least. people smoke ‘cause it gives them, what, pleasure? not really. it’s a habit that they’re addicted to. and addictions form because the habit is oh so good, and basically makes the person happy physically, mentally, emotionally, psychologically, metaphysically, or most often just in a plain silly way. and resolutions are made to correct that habit, and make one a little less happy. so why do people make resolutions to make one less happy on a ‘happy’ new year? so that they even out eventually and we can continue our boring, bland lives, perhaps?

p.s. i have made no resolutions this year and have decided not to screw up my perfectly happy/happily perfect life.

my memory. my loss.

it's ironical that i wrote what i wrote yesterday http://mememarathon.blogspot.com/2007/12/my-memory-truly-thing-of-past.html. because today is a day i must not forget. and i did. i forgot my dad's 5th death anniversary.

my memory: truly a thing of the past

my earliest memory is that of my first birthday. a distinguished friend of my parents gave me a rather large (and not just by a one year old’s standards) box of sweets. i don’t remember if i actually took it, but vividly remember the shape of the box. it was round, had an indented lid and it was light coloured.

i remember the time when i was four and the neighbour’s dog bit me. i remember eating bougainvillea petals off the street in ahmedabad. i remember mum buying nail polish at a store. i remember the drive back. i remember having an argument with our man servant. and the argument verbatim in my broken hindi. it was indignation on being snitched about to mum, and about how he had no right to interfere in my 4-year-old individual pursuits. i remember teaching my younger sister (3 years old then) to somersault on the cold, hard floor and gifting her with the scar on her forehead she bears till today. i remember my 4th birthday, when my elder sister dressed me up with silver eye shadow. i remember walking out of the bedroom into a room full of guests self-consciously like a bride. i remember wondering how one arrived at a date for a birthday. i remember asking my mum the reason for living the way we did. eating and sleeping alternately and to what end we did those deeds. and where it would all end. i remember my younger sister instigating us to use mum’s makeup (snow, my mum called it). and mum’s horrified look when she pulled us from behind the curtains painted in the stuff.

i remember crank calling strange people along with my sis (by now you must know that she was my partner in crime. or the other way round.) from the heavy telephone and speaking to them in our babyish gujrati. i remember drinking a glass of brandy that my dad generously offered me and dancing for an hour afterwards, much to my parents’ amusement. i remember the money my dad gave me for my splendid drunken performance. i remember my sister standing on a sofa claiming she was taller than i (and back then, i was taller than her). and i, trying to find some taller surface to stand on to outheight her. i was also simple and gullible back then.

i remember dancing gharbha on the streets during navratri nights. i remember my older friend from the opposite house trying to teach us hooligans ‘good manners’. i remember the ice cream another neighbour’s mum made. and how she waited for us to leave so her daughters wouldn’t have to share them with us. i remember the studio picture we took with our friends. i remember the identical maxis that my mum would get stitched for the both of us. i remember the world atlas being used to play ‘where is uruguay?’ ‘where is uganda?’, you get the picture. i remember flipping through my father’s highly prized collection of books to look at pictures. i remember underlining words randomly in my dad’s expensive books because i had seen him do that for a select few words.

but i don’t remember that i kept the milk to boil an hour back. not until i smell the burning vessel and milk. i don’t remember that i have to pick up diapers ‘cause my son’s running through them at the speed of light. i don’t remember to go sign the agreement for the expensive apartment we have bought. i don’t remember to share that information with my mother. i don’t remember to give the car for service. not until i find the need to use all my 49 kgs to press the accelerator. i don’t remember to wish a close friend on her birthday. i don’t remember that my husband went to work with a headache. i forget he’s got a back problem when i ask him lift the heavy grocery bag. or my increasingly heavy son for that matter.i don’t remember the name of a play i acted in.

it's possible that my failing memory is due to the fact that i’m growing older. it’s possible that my brain has decided that the supposedly important events in my life are not worth remembering. or that i am too self-centred and 'in the present' to recall the past. my brain shuts down when it comes to remembering the horrible things that i have done. or the unpleasant facts of life. i just can’t remember nasty incidents that happened to me in the recent past. but i do tend to remember some good times and brood over the fact that they don’t happen to me anymore. i’m living a parallel life inside my head. that’s more than a little removed from the reality around me. i'm just a little bit lost in space and time. i'm losing time, and losing space even faster (and not just around the waist). to a point where all the space i have is inside my head. and time has moved on at such a speed that the last few years are but a blur and feel like they happened to someone else. and to a large extent, they did happen to someone else. so the fact that i remember only things from my childhood only means that i am going back to being who i was when i was a child and am conveniently losing memory of the time when i wasn't me.

mum is going to love this theory.

exorcism in progress...

i’m just trying to look like i’m doing something sitting at work late night, while my art director is slogging it out right next to me. i’m hoping she can hear frantic typing of the keyboard and think that i’m writing some kickass copy for an accessory leaflet. and now that i have started typing, i suppose it makes sense for me to write about what the hell i’m doing here.

in advertising i mean. i hope you can see my eyes boring into the floor with shame while i say this. i’m almost waiting for the hand of god or someone like that to hold my hand and say, ‘it’s ok. people make mistakes. it takes all kinds to make the world. it’s a dirty job, i know. but someone needs to do it. when your turn comes in hell, i shall put in a good word, so you don’t burn for too long. just long enough to scald you bone deep and remind you till eternity the profession that you so passionately got into.’ ok, the last bit is not making me feel good. and i don’t even know how much truth is there in it. the passion bit i mean. true enough, that’s what made me jump headlong into advertising. also the fact that it seemed like the easiest thing to do. but i don’t know where the passion is anymore. and it’s not anywhere else let me assure you. to be true, the work still hasn’t become a chore. i still give it my best shot. but i’m not that kicked about burning the midnight oil shooting some strange beggar on the road to win an award that no one ever will remember a few months hence. but even that would be better than what i’m doing right now. trying to make leaflet copy out of some technical copy. not even original writing, mind you. now will you feel passion for that? so why is it that i’m doing this rather than watch my one year old play the most charming antics in the world?

the money? yeah, so the bucks have been trickling in. but not enough to match my increasingly expensive lifestyle. and we all know that the rate of inflow is always the same as the rate of outflow. and yeah, i could think of 10 better ways to make money at this point, when i’m almost brain dead. and selling my body isn’t one of them.

the awards? it would be wrong to say i haven’t seen them. but it would be even more wrong to say i have seen them. because hardly anyone ever knows or cares about the ones that i have won. to be honest, i didn’t know about them for a long time myself.
it feels petty to even hanker after them at this point. when i have started believing that the profession itself is unethical. yeah, it took me more than years to figure that one out. and coming from someone with so few ethics, that is saying something.

after thinking over it for about 2 and half seconds, i have come to the conclusion that i am staying put for only one reason. inertia. i have no bone in my body that is self-motivated to go and do something useful. sure i think about it a lot. even talk about it. even though it is to myself. but never, i mean never, have i done anything useful to earn money. sure i have done many things useful, but they never made me any money. and i know that it’s not impossible to do. we all know people who believe in what they’re doing and make a difference and manage to make a living out of it. it may be possible that i can do it some day as well. but not today. not without somebody behind me to shove me into that sea of goodness.

also because there’s something in me that doesn’t want to give up on the big dreams of making it big in the big, bad world of advertising. there. i have said it. there’s something in me that doesn’t die. it’s not hope that some day talent will win. it’s not even hope that some day talent will knock at my door and say ‘i am yours’. it’s the inherent badness that makes people like me chug on for years on depraved years in the profession. it’s taking me time to exorcise the badness that’s deeply entrenched in my system. and then i shall be ready for that dive into the unknown puritan sea.

here's to shamboy!

this post is a long due tribute to the person who initiated my blogging career (one that never really took off, i must add). i'm going to start by vowing to seriously start blogging regularly. and i don't mean with the regularity with which we meet up. i know you probably keep dropping in to my page to see if i have updated my blog, and more importantly my thoughts. let me assure you, my thoughts are always in motion(backward motion sometimes, but still in motion). it may even be possible that you have stopped looking into my page giving up on me. so i'm gonna make sure i email you this post and con you into more page visits for the next few years.

a tribute is probably not a good time to tell you this, but i must also confess that i don't drop into your page as often as i used to. www.shamiraj.com (i miss shampoo factor though). another repercussion of my rather busied domestic life but more due to my lazy writing life. i also don’t write much at work if that makes you feel any better.

this is probably a good time to talk about how life has changed since the time i started blogging. i got married, then moved like 4 jobs, moved to another city, had a baby. you found a girlfriend, broke up, got your sis married off like a good mallu boy, found another girlfriend (about whom of course i had no clue for a long time), got married, moved to another city (thankfully mine, though i don’t know how that’s affected both our lives), moved jobs, became a globe trotter. and of course, in all this time, i have posted maybe 10 times? i know it’s nothing to be proud of. but then i just finished listing all the things i am proud of.

so here’s to you, shami, and a friendship that has lasted 7 long years, thanks to the internet. there’s little chance that that will change. though my blogging pattern certainly will. and that’s a promise.

the lone bus ride

from all the wisdom i have gathered in the 27 years of my life, i have reached a rather obvious conclusion. that we all live our lives alone. not with parents, children, spouses, live-in partners or pets, but alone. it is incidental that we are constantly surrounded by people. that we even beg, plead and threaten to have our own space. even ironical, actually. because at any given point in time, we are alone, live alone and, to yet again state the obvious, die alone.

life’s pretty much like a bus ride. we are given a bus to drive when we are born. (now don’t be silly and ask me how newborns can drive. because not all my analogies are technically sound.) it’s empty in the beginning, but as we move forward, which is the hope, we find that various people get into the bus. they either sit close to you or far away from you, depending on where you want them to be, and sometimes depending on where they want to be, and then get off when and where they please. they don’t tell you, inform you or warn you that they’re getting off. they just do. when they see the route you’re taking is not where they want to go, they get off. also because, they have their own buses to drive. now again, you might wonder how they can drive their own buses while they’re riding in someone else’s bus. it could be that they put their buses in auto pilot and hopped into someone else’s bus while crossing it on the road. or it could be that they transform their buses into miniatures and drive into the other bus. or maybe i just haven’t thought this through. but hey, it’s still what i’m going to stick to. so, when these people exit our buses, some times we’re happy and at others, it breaks our hearts.

while they’re riding with you, some actually sit right behind you, giving directions, sometimes changing the complete course that you intended to take. backseat driving i think it is called. and some just sit there minding their own businesses. and when they find that you have no interest whatsoever in that business, they get off. some sit too close for comfort. some stand too far away to hold a meaningful conversation. there’s no p.a. system in these buses. some come close to getting into the bus, and then look at the baggage you’re carrying and decide not to. some who are claustrophobic see how crowded it is and decide against it. some see how empty it is, and decide it can’t be anywhere exciting that you’re going. some, who are short-sighted cannot see what the driver really looks like beyond all the people, some who are shy are too afraid to elbow all the people and get access to the driver, some think it not worthwhile to find out.

some get in, don’t buy a ticket, enjoy a free ride and get off leaving you a bit poorer. some pay the fare till jayanagar, while you change your mind and decide to drive to shivajinagar. disappointed and cheated, they get off at the nearest traffic signal. sometimes, you see someone you want on your bus. wait for them to get in keeping your bus at a standstill for some time, but they just don’t get in. and you are forced to move on because the other passengers are impatient.
yes, there may be a few tenacious and patient passengers who sit it out for a large part of the journey. but sooner or later when they realize that your driving style has changed over time, your brakes are not good enough, you’re taking the safer routes, you’re driving too slow, or simply because your eye sight and sense of direction aren’t as good as they were, decide it’s time they got off the bus. so, when you’re close to the depot you find that your bus is empty, except for what the trespassers have left behind. mostly grime, sweat, torn bus tickets, candy wrappers, pan juice, and other things inconsequential. that’s when you realize that this journey was for you to take alone. and wish you’d enjoyed the ride a bit more.

to The Hindu, with rage.

“To date, many of my plays have been interpreted erroneously by foolish and self-serving people.”- says Vijay Tendulkar. I don’t doubt him one bit. The very article it appeared on (http://www.thehindu.com/mp/2007/08/18/stories/2007081850930400.htm) is a lucid illustration of the quote.

To say that I was disappointed by the review of one of Vijay Tendulkar’s best plays would be a grave mistake. Because I was shattered by it. I was so overwhelmed by the ‘Kanyadaan’ that I drove back home alone in silence turning off the music (which has never happened before), questioning myself on the so-called values that I was hoping to bring up my son with. It made me think for the first time ever, if the strong values that I uphold self-righteously were perhaps the wrong values? The play that moved me to tears while watching it moved me to think and question deeply the values with which one is brought up and intends to inculcate in one’s children.

After waiting with excitement for a whole week for the review that might complement the play, I was outraged at the sheer shallowness of it. This is a play about human beings and their values, right or wrong. Not about Brahmins and dalits. This is a play about value systems that dictate how we spend the rest of our lives. Not about one man’s hypocrisy. By the way, I wonder where that came from. Possibly from a person who related well with a minority community and it’s ‘I’m a victim’ mentality. It seems to me that this review has distorted the play out of recognition due to personal prejudices. But even that is excusable as we all look at life through eyes that are jaded by our personal experiences. What is not excusable is the superficiality of the review. Quoting 26 lines from the play makes for commendable memory but not for a good review. Was there a word limit to keep to, I wonder?

I finally thought I saw light when I read ‘What was radical and sweeping was the exchange of words between father and daughter in the final scene, when Usha confronts his charitable gesture in releasing his son-in-law’s autobiography.’ And what followed shattered me once again by the total misinterpretation of what I thought was an eye-opener of a scene, and the crux of the play. The fact that the daughter now belonged to her husband rather than her father was simply garnishing and not the meat. Any fool could see that. Almost. The shattering truth that one could actually cripple one’s children with the values one brings them up with was completely missed.

After almost 10 years doing acting and watching plays, I know what it means to see a play and feel passionately about it. It may be wrong of me to expect that kind of passion from people who are, after all, just doing a job. On the other hand, to quote Bernbach, ‘A job worth doing is worth doing well’. I also believe that a job should only be entrusted to one fit for it. Else, it would be like giving away your beautiful, cultured daughter to be massacred by a beast of a man.

how i get to work

I love going to work. Before you start thinking that I’m one of those over-enthu first bencher types, let me clarify. I like ‘going to’ work. By that, I mean the process of getting from home to office. Because I never know what that process is going to be like.

On some days when my husband is feeling particularly vengeful, he throws his well-used diesel car at me, challenging me to maneuver the beast through the well-used roads of Bangalore that has too many users. And… reach my office without bruising the beast. This of course shakes up my delicate mental balance, and I’m pretty much useless at work that day.

On days when my husband is willing to go through the torture himself, and I intend to be productive, I do my usual thing in the morning and beg the security guy to please find me an auto that will go to the worst place in the world, Inner ring road. And I won’t pay extra or double or whatever. Tall order in bengalooru, ain’t it? And so, my order is never taken seriously. So I start the journey by foot, not knowing if some kind stranger (and not psycho) might take pity on me and give me a lift, or some kind auto driver might be willing to take my hard earned money to drop me to work. Or some half empty bus might stop right next to me and take me in the general direction of where I am going.

Most often, I get lucky with the auto guys, with a little bit of walking and a lot of persevering. Sometimes I get lucky with some neighbour who needs company for the dreadful journey (theirs). And sometimes, with complete strangers (all women) who have already gotten lucky with the auto guys and are willing to share their loot. Of course, this is the interesting part. The people who share their autos with me. While some are less than willing to share their seats, others are a little more sympathetic.

There was Uma, who by the way spoke English the way she spoke Bengali, who made sure that both of us lost the auto ‘cause he wanted money from both of us. Good point. Why should we have to pay double to Shylock, when he gives us both the same ride eh? So she got another auto, and I tempted her and the other auto driver into a deal that made both of them happy. (No, I’m not going into the deal now)

And then there was Shreya, who was willing to drop me till BEML gate, while the auto driver was unwilling. And then I found out she was going to almost where I was going. So we ganged up and gave him a raw deal by sharing the meter fare!!!! Can you believe we did that? AND, she gave me her number and asked me if she could give me a ride EVERYDAY!!! Nice girl I thoughtJ If she was a guy, I might’ve married her. Or if I was lesbian. (And was in Canada) And, of course, if I wasn’t married. But this post is not about my marital life.

And then, there was this one day when I got into a bus which looked like it might take me a kilometer ahead. But, the bus conductor was less than willing to answer my questions on where the hell he was going. Maybe he thought it was none of my business where he was going. Maybe he didn’t like my unmade-up face. Maybe he didn’t like my hand-me-down clothes. Maybe he didn’t like the fact that I spoke in, of all the Indian languages, English! Anyway, I got down at a point when he was losing his cool and I thought was slightly closer to work, and continued my journey on foot… And you know what I found out? It is possible to walk over a flyover!!! It had never occurred to me that people could actually walk on flyovers. Can you imagine my happiness? I was grinning all the way to work, and caused a somewhat minor accident because of that. But I continued grinning…J

Ah…the joy of going to work!