tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24224555342685868982024-03-21T11:22:19.950+00:00Much Ado About EverythingFalakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08321524864693512771noreply@blogger.comBlogger38125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2422455534268586898.post-84852249452250340492015-01-09T20:24:00.000+00:002016-03-21T20:26:46.224+00:00ElementaryI'm Indian, dude. There's straight up only one thing I can be in life: Wife.<br />
- IISuperwomanII (youtuber and goddess of cool https://www.youtube.com/user/IISuperwomanII )<br />
<br />
<br />
Here's the deal; I like playing big sister. If criminals can play at running India as politicians, I can definitely play big sister- I am the eldest and hence highly qualified for the part.<br />
<br />
I'm also the kind that wants to imbue the younglings with my feminist ideals. Even the boys. Of course, you can have penises and still be feminists. Get out from under the right-wing rock you've been living under.<br />
<br />
Considering my sibling domination dreams, when I found out lil sis' appreciation for the BBC series Sherlock (OhMG Sherlock- mwaaaahhhh, I wanna die. He's zzzoooooo cuuuuuuuuteee), I was over the moon.<br />
<br />
Together we were moping about how we'd have to wait for 2016 (excluding the 2015 Christmas special) for season 4 to air and get our fill of not-cumbersome-at-all-on-our eyes Cumberbatch at his socially awkward genius best.<br />
<br />
That's when my 16-year old diva sprung what she believes and expects to be, a life fact on me.<br />
<br />
"Well, I'll have less competition vis a vis Cumbercutiepiebatch."<br />
Innocent, idealistic doofus (Me): How?<br />
"You'll be nearing 25 and hence married fo' shizzle by then. Elementary, duh. "<br />
<br />
I was hoping for "you'll be working for a respectable, longstanding publication abroad, traipsing around the world and being too famous and successful to bother with Cumberhottiebatch of 2016.".<br />
<br />
But never mind, she'll watch and learn that that's how it's going to be and it's an option for her too, because in Sherlock's words: "there is nothing like first-hand evidenceFalakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08321524864693512771noreply@blogger.com0Al Ain - Abu Dhabi - United Arab Emirates24.1301619 55.80231179999998423.6666759 55.156864799999987 24.5936479 56.447758799999981tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2422455534268586898.post-18456118655805860392013-12-29T11:42:00.002+00:002015-01-09T15:04:25.240+00:00Hungry<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><em>A.S.- This is being written at work.Oh, for the uninformed- yes, I've entered the working world. But I’ve been slogging my arse off for two months without pay or necessary appreciation, so god help me, but a redirection of my creative energies to my own pursuits is deserved by this publication. I could do worse in retaliation but I’m not.</em><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Have you ever had that feeling? The one where you’re really, really hungry because you’re supposed to be fed by someone who isn’t doing it but is very inconsiderately carrying food to others behind you (because you’re sitting with your back facing them) and your stomach’s growling. Growling because the smells wafting around, yummy food smells has triggered the hunger centers in your brain which have in turn activated the acid refluxes of your stomach? Because at this point your stomach is co-relating the smell to expecting a sizeable amount of food to reach it via your gullet. But it isn’t getting any (pun unintended) so the corrosive acids eat away at the tender cell lining of your stomach and you feel like, well, shite. That’s irony at its best. Excretion without any ingestion. </span></span></div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">By this point of the post if you haven’t realized that I was biology whizz at school then honey, you need to stop reading. RIGHT NOW. There's not even a sliver of a chance that you’re not going to understand any of the below jokes then. <br /><br />Now I haven’t reached that pathetic plummeting level of food craze yet. I will soon, if I keep following in the footsteps of Liz(goddess) Lemon of 30 Rock. All that graphic food description was an analogy. Now depending on what kind of a reader you are, the kind of ironic dry humour you prefer and whether you have the patience at this particular moment of your reading (you could be wrestling cerelac into a 2 year old toddler’s mouth for all I know) you’re either pissed, or your nodding your head in complete agreement going ‘like yes man, we’ve totally been there , we totes get you amazeballs, whatevs.’<br /><br />Without beating around the bush anymore what I’m talking about is money. So you now replace food with money, eating with paying /being paid (like editors say, use your discretion or like I would say common sense) and just retain the feeling shite part. Apparently, money retains that quality of grub even if it isn’t edible. <br /><br />Now after you’ve done substituting and your brains overworked from zillions of angry bird/ temple run games and reality television shows (I know what you do every evening because I do it too) has processed the final outcome and if you still feel ‘like yes man, we’ve totally been there , we totes get you amazeballs, whatevs’ then go ahead, nod that head, feel my pain and join me in cursing the revival of colonialism. <br /><br />That’s a whole nother post. <br /><br />Falak</span></span></div>
Falakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08321524864693512771noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2422455534268586898.post-13433248614234493652013-06-18T01:17:00.004+01:002013-10-12T20:32:19.577+01:00Falling<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Twisted words, simple meanings overlap.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As tiredness laps up dreams.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Lugubrious, weighing down, inexplicable</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Tiredness.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Burning eyes;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Red rimmed, hot, shut up against all tangible reason.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Against reality</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Of you, that is not to be.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Blankets drawn to the chin-</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Blanketing out sound, sight and smell.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Except those that breed under the</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Inky shroud</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Of sleep.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Twisted memories,simple meanings,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Overlap.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As slumber inches its way in, lapping</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">everything in its wake.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Awake? Not yet.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Asleep? Not yet.</span>Falakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08321524864693512771noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2422455534268586898.post-82180900415689336072012-12-31T21:21:00.005+00:002012-12-31T21:21:36.147+00:00All’s Well That Ends Well<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There is a
war in Syria, Congo, problems in Iran and Spain and between China and Japan,
the Middle East is messier than a plate of food in a one-year old’s hand and
the European Union has become the butt of a lot of new jokes.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Meanwhile
there are terms like ‘cuts’, ‘silhouettes’; materials like brocade, felt and
trends like the peplum and spikes and studs when you write about fashion. They
do matter and make a difference. Duhh.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Incidents
world over have proved that having a pair of ovaries and mammary glands each
aren’t your best assets. </span>The Anglican Church doesn’t want Bishops with them and
drunk, sleazy vagabonds in India apparently aren’t getting enough of them.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There isn’t
a lot of difference between Indian and British politics. The colonial
connection is as clear as day. It’s crazy.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In other
news it remains to be seen if it’s Kim Kardashian or Kate Middleton who’ll have
the glitziest, most media hyped delivery.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The world
hasn’t ended. Ha! In your face, Mayans. But for a few millions of Indians the
world has come crashing down- God has stepped down from One day Internationals.
I’m on the lookout for a new religion. Ideas, folks?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">To have or
not to have? The debate on guns is as enlightening as the chicken and egg
conundrum. In Manchester two cops died for lack of them and in the U.S innocent
children and temple goers died because some random psycho did.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Journalism
is on the cusp of change. Or so they say. BBC/Jimmy Saville scandal, The
Leveson Inquiry report etc etc etc. As long as I get a job…<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">On the
personal front,<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In London,
Autumn isn’t a riot of colours, and winters aren’t COLD. I’m too scared to hope
about spring. It rains here and that’s wonderful because it’s clean. And I have
constant access to hot chocolate. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Ballet is…
an experience. I highly recommend it. As is living on your own.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Writing
about things because you HAVE to, is an exercise in procrastination and
performing under pressure. There are ways to make it rewarding too. I still
need to hunt for a few apart from positive feedback and comments from
professors.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Once a
literature student, always a literature student. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Writing.
Snorts, sniggers. Just one word- blog archives.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Oh yeah,
the Bombayite (yes, I like calling it Bombay, sue me) is now on her way to
becoming a Londoner and a journalist. It’s not always easy; it’s mostly fun, and
yayiee? This still has to sink in.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Dear 2013,
please replicate the pleasant surprises of 2012, let news writing involve more
happy </span>things and less of war, deaths, rapes, murders, scams and quoting The 88
“give me some more time in a dream, give me the hope to run out of steam”.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Here’s to
the beginning of another 12 years before we’re flooded with a new swarm of apocalyptic
scares and funny/stupid/catchy adverts like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1o6akZFwQI">this</a> one. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Falak </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">PS: Happy
New Year :D</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Falakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08321524864693512771noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2422455534268586898.post-81035346882436989702012-07-04T20:18:00.002+01:002012-12-07T03:13:57.265+00:00Up above the world so high<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="EN-GB">To and
fro. To and fro. <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">The never ending, velvety blanket of inky
black stretching above. The same blue-black around, beside and behind.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">The wind atop a mountain at night.... Ever
heard it? An invisible, ginormous millstone at work- that’s what it sounds
like. No breezes and zephyrs here. Just
the wind, and laughter.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Hearing nothing, but the <i>whoosh</i> of the wind rushing into your ears; past you ; after you ;
with you - a whispering, stalking presence. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">And the scale of the rocks: immense, towering,
two hundred times your girth and three hundred times your height. Big, so big
that everyone feels little. The mammoth summit looking down in disdain at<i> </i>the diminutive person’s antics; at it
sparring with the wind; at.... the wind.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">You can almost hear it grumble affectionately
at the wind. The wind with all its wily ways.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"> H<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">
G<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">
I<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"> H<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">I see a carpet of fairy lights spread out
beneath me, whirlwind in my tummy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">L<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"> O<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">
W<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">The impenetrable cloak of the firmament.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">The wind is a live wire let loose: rattling,
isolating, accommodating and dictating. No wonder the mountain’s fond of
it. Thank God for huge metal clamps that
hold on with a tenacity equal to the gusty element’s.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">The <a href="http://www.desertrosetourism.com/showpackage.php?pid=94">eye of my heart</a> is stretched out below,
glimmering; twinkling; pulsating with light, the grey asphalt arteries calm and
quiet. Now, a womb to the sleeping alive who are dead asleep.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"> h<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"> g<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">
i<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">How
h can I go?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">
A spinning top in my stomach.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Everything is slave to the wind. Even the
formidable mountain, whose winding paths are full of curvy secrets and secret
hairpin curves.<br />
Seduced by its murmurs moving in sway to its rhythm I see with my watery eyes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Blue lights<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"> Yellow lights<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">White lights<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"> Red lights.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Will my hair touch the ground if I bend backwards
and my feet the sky?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Now, I’m moving parallel to a silken black
shroud. Albeit, one covering the alive. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Unlike my heart’s eye, nothing’s verdant here.
Every available bit of moisture, every bit of life is drawn out to fuel the
invisible furnaces of the wind......<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Sparse spindly vegetation sporadically
adorning the bare rocks exposed to the wicked wind. Oh, how keenly they must feel it slicing at
them relentlessly; their varied contours and forms evidence of its artful
cruelty.<br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">That one looks like a crocodile.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">
That one there, a lot like a human face.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">I smile, wincing as my chapped lips stretch. I
feel it keenly too. Its icy cold touch as it loops, whirls, dips and twirls
around us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">........to fuel the invisible furnaces of the
wind and to infuse my hair with existence.
My medusa’s locks, newfound companions to the wind, together they defy
gravity, each personifying the other. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Churning, spinning, heaving, flitting......<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">With a vitality of its own.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">The wind pushing us: the swing and me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="EN-GB">High <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Whirling in my tummy, so I screw my eyes shut and squeal with
glee. Can’t see anything except the
patina of warm yellow. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Now I only hear. And feel<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="EN-GB"> Low<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Toes scraping the ground.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Laughter in the background-maybe, there’s an
age limit to do this. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Twisting the chains to spin faster than the
wind. Perhaps, I've spun back in time. Maybe the velocious, hypersonic wind and isolated mountains create an insular
realm impervious to time. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Perhaps, I’m just giddy. Giddy but happy. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br />
<i>Up<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Creaking chains.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"> I’m
flying. I am the wind-powerful, frisky and bursting with energy. Also, closer
to heavenly territories. If I jump off
before the swing stops will I land there? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><br />
<i>Down<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Legs pumping the air, kicking the wind out of
it, and laughing; because I have been right from the start.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>To</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Up above the world so high<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="EN-GB">Fro<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Diamonds at my feet. Not in the sky.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">On the mountain tops,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Swinging it in style.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Falak<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Falakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08321524864693512771noreply@blogger.com6Al Ain - United Arab Emirates24.2075 55.744722223.975783 55.4288652 24.439217 56.0605792tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2422455534268586898.post-79024428273123812192012-02-22T08:45:00.001+00:002012-02-22T09:04:55.086+00:00Exam Time Musings<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Every time I appear for an exam I’m always appalled by how much information the human brain manages to cram and retain.<br />
<br />
That’s something worth mentioning because I’ve been studying for the last 17 years and with an average of 4 exams, give and take, in an academic year I must have attempted at least 68 of them. Not to mention the competitive exams which don’t come under the ambit of the above mentioned school and college exams. So with a minimum of 100 exams and a maximum of many more, that’s quite a lot of torture I’ve undergone.</i></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
Every year, my brain compresses humungous text books, reams of Xeroxed sheets, material from millions of websites, piles of notebooks painstakingly filled with handwritten notes and snatches of my lecturers’ explanations in class. I’m sure that in the course of my primary and secondary education I must have easily read at least 1000 books from page to page. </i></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I’m in awe of my temporal lobe. Under the stressful conditions of an exam hall it has the ability to retrieve information word to word, random lines that have been branded into my frontal lobe with just one reading -</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“</span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 9pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo”</span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">. With the next question it’s geared up and visualizes the page long answer on Dryden’s life history and zooms in on the particular line on the left side in the 3<sup>rd</sup> or 4<sup>th</sup> paragraph highlighting the names of the poems “Annus Mirabilis”, “The Hind and the Panther”, “Absalom and Achitophel”. Points about Baudrillard’s theory of simulacrum and hyperreality flow from the temporal lobe through the millions of motor neurons, with their many neurotransmitters and electrical and chemical impulses directing my finger muscles to clutch the pen as if my very life depended on its functioning and scratch away on sheets of paper trying to fill in as many lines as possible. This is as much of 10<sup>th</sup> grade biology that my hippocampus has decided is important enough to remember. And the fact that all this scientific jazz happens within seconds, that too, with the fluidity of an orchestra practising a symphony for the nth time stuns me.</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
Not during the exam, of course, as that would mean going blank and freezing midway through the paper, unable to right a single alphabet, let alone a word. Somehow whenever I see numbers or anything remotely mathematical on a question paper the neurons decide to stay what in scientific lingo is known as the “resting state”. There is, I think, an automatic sublimation of all the neurochemicals from my nervous system and my body enters a state of partial paralysis.</i></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Thank God, the Universities and the many jobless souls who run them for language based subjects like literature for people like me who have a right hemisphere that is more evolved and developed that the left one. Also, I happened to find out the reason for my under developed left brain and the subsequent mathlexia today. My mom very gingerly revealed my having rolled off the bed and crashed headfirst on to the floor when I was 6 months old. She describes it as having sounded like “the cracking of a coconut”. Sigh... Like my Prof. says, all parents have their deep, dark secrets about having dropped us on our heads someplace, sometime. </i></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Until the next set of exams I’ll go back to taking my brain and nervous system for granted.</i></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Falak</i></span></span></div>Falakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08321524864693512771noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2422455534268586898.post-21588254956616774172012-01-20T17:33:00.004+00:002013-08-12T03:03:51.908+01:00Starting OverIf you thought I gave up writing and blogging altogether, I'm glad to announce that you're wrong :D.<br />
<br />
I just had some pressing matters to deal with before they'd press me into a quicksand of problems.<br />
<br />
If anyone likes this or is intrigued enough by it, please suggest a better name/title. Lets see if an entire year of doing poetry has rubbed off or should be rubbed off :P<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Starting Over</i></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><s><span lang="EN-GB">Sometimes</span></s><span lang="EN-GB">. </span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Sometimes she finds it very difficult to write.</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When she puts pen to paper, </span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Thoughts fracture into vapour</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Gliding past her, away from her,</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Floating above: clouds that seem</i></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Touchable if only you could tiptoe a little higher.</i></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Like the memory of something, a taste</i></span></span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </i><br />
<i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">devoid of a name to chew on; eyes that gleam</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Open into frozen, depthless hollows.</i></span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">They stand impassive: a twin watching the other.</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Not to assist but to scoff, “You think we are</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Worth a fraction of eternity, of someone’s precious</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Moment in time? Relics that gather</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Human ken amassed over a million years, </span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In a concentrated heartbeat?” She mutters</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">“Maybe....” and it dies in their face of incredulity.</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Resonance of trepidation in her voice, she flutters</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Between a yes and a no. “Why not?” with renewed </span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">courage she enquires. They announce</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">“Look at our construct. Tasteful phrases, sophistication </span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Of design, erudite allusions: are these the terms you would</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Outfit us in?” “Perhaps....” “And yet, uncertainty</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Colours your utterances.”, cutting off her contention</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Into shards of probing silence.</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">“I trust in your merit above mine. I do”. They contort </span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Into a leer. “We are a likeness, a shade, a shadow, </span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">A silhouette without essence, reflecting you. Only as </span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Credible, as you are. You us I me they we, better not</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">To be. No questioning our ineffectuality."</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Came the rejoinder echoing, debilitating the hope that</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Nourished her dreams. Empty, unending, vacuous, void. Until,</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">She traced her course back to the beginning-parchments</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">From the past inked with wit, crossed anew </span></i></span><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">with faith </span></i><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> ,</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And smudged with feeling, pregnant with possibilities,</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Giving birth to a chuckle, the ghost of a smile</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Somewhere. “Beauty is as beauty does, and you are stirred </span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Up from tranquil passion, making you me us</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Worthwhile."</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Shoring these fragments of hope against her ruins, she sighs and starts again.</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Falakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08321524864693512771noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2422455534268586898.post-33619723375724754412011-09-04T17:10:00.017+01:002011-10-19T17:56:40.621+01:00Last Friday Night<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I came home at around 4:00 pm. As I entered the house my brother welcomed me with irritated looks.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“Thanks a lot for coming this early. I was supposed to go to my friend’s place to study.”</i> Unplugging the ipod earphones from my ears I said,<i> “You should have messaged me, Sanju. I can’t dream that you were waiting for me to arrive to leave the place”</i></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“I can’t leave her on her own can I? She’s in bad shape”, </i>he declared.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">My grandmother has been suffering from a bout of bad cold and fever since the last 1 week. She’s been on medications since Monday but there hasn’t been much improvement in her condition.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“Alright you can leave now that I’m here.”</i><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I showered, changed had a late lunch and it was already 4:45 pm by then. I decided to take a break till 6:00pm and then start my reference work since the exams are less than 25 days away and I have done zilch. Watching the rerun of Bones from 5:00pm to 6:00pm was my treat to myself for the day. I wanted to sleep for 15 minutes till 5:00pm as I was awake for most of last night with my gran’s coughing and then waking up to check on her and only slept soundly by around 1:30 am waking up again at 6:00am to attend college. I stayed back in college till 2:15pm to attend a meeting where we discussed the upcoming department journal and since I wanted to write for it this year too, it was imperative that I stay put and show my face, make my presence felt, note down the dates for deadlines to submit drafts and smile away.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">At 4:15 the phone rang and I had to go up to answer that and make polite conversation with someone who called up to check on my gran. At 4:30 my gran requested for some coffee and I dashed to the kitchen to make some and got back to Bones at 4:40. At 5:50 my gran started groaning from the bedroom and her speech sounded garbled and low as a result of her weakness. I ran to check if she was okay. She wanted biscuits. We had no biscuits at home and since biscuits were the only things she was enthusiastically eating for the last many days without throwing up I ran down to get some from the shop below our house.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It was 6:05pm when I reached home. I looked at the watch and thought ‘behind schedule by 5 minutes, but that’s okay’. I spoke too soon.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I switched the lights on as it grew dark outside with heavy rain clouds rolling in and not to my surprise noticed that my house resembled a place that hadn’t been lived in for a week; this despite the maid having come in earlier in the day and claimed to have ‘swept’ and ‘mopped’ the house. My blood started boiling and before it could steam out of my ears the phone started ringing. The darn thing’s been doing that a lot since my gran’s fallen ill, with people calling up to check on her health.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">At 6:15pm I decided to sweep the house since everywhere I walked I could feel dirt under my feet and saw some of it on the bed too with every customary visit my gran made to the bathroom and back. I spent the next 45 minutes sweeping my 1BHK house: every single nook and cranny, all the while cursing my maid. She’s a 4 foot something, frail, old woman who could easily be above 65 years of age and looks like she’ll faint every time she takes up a strenuous chore. She supports her widowed daughter-in-law and 2 grandchildren by working as a house help. I know I should be kind and considerate to her but not today of all days. She should have done a decent job since she’s taken it up. She shouldn’t have taken advantage of the fact that my gran is sleeping off her tiredness most of the time so she can shirk her work and gather most of the visible dirt and shove it under the fridge. I thought I’d burst a nerve when I realised she conveniently didn’t mop. During the rains mopping up the house is vital to keeping it clean. I spent the next 30 minutes skating around on a floor wet with water and floor cleaner with a sad, old mop for a dance partner. At 7:30pm after I was done with all the cleaning I switched on all the fans for the floors to dry off. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">“Ok, Luck, the nurse-maid (pun intended)” I thought to myself “We still aren’t all that behind schedule, we can do both reference for exams and probable topics for the article you’d like to write for the journal.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The bell rang, I thought my brother was back and skated across to open the door. It wasn’t. My relatives had come over to help and look after my gran. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I sat around till 8:00pm relaxing my sore back, catching my breath (which has been giving me a lot of trouble since the last two weeks with wheezing: something I never had before)talking to them then decided to retire to the bedroom to do some studying. They came in to be with my gran. And then my gran started coughing like crazy and calling out to God and lamenting out loud why God was doing this to her and many other such things. This happened till around 9:00pm ,9:30pm and attempts at burying myself in a book about Spenser made my gran angry and hurt that I wasn’t paying attention to her despite the fact that her brother, sister-in-law and nephew were hovering around her waiting to answer her beck and call.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Long story short research for exams and journal never happened.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I felt like crying and banging my head against a wall.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">My college principal wants us: the last batch that comes under Mumbai University, to have exams the same time as the rest of the college which comes under the autonomous system and has already had two internal assessments and are well versed with their syllabus unlike us. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">My classmates; editors of the journal can set 7<sup>th</sup> September as the deadline to submit topic proposals since they don’t have to clean the house, cook or order food from out or nurse their ailing grandmother.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Bev is constantly texting me about starting research work while eating Dosas her mom made for her.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I didn’t have time to go to the Doctor to get my wheezing checked until my gran had to be taken to the clinic but Universities I’d like to apply to next year would like me to have had some work experience which is a minimum of four weeks. I have none. My classmates do, but then they can always go back home and not have to worry about leaving a 70 year old grandmother </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">who is prey to bouts of mood swings due to loneliness alone at home, keep in mind never ending lists of household stuff needed to be bought, constantly vacillate between fighting with an annoying 17 year old brother to being a considerate sister and ease his worries and pressures off about the imminent board exams.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This was my Friday Night and I’m sure next Friday Night I don’t want to ‘do it all again’. I’d like to be a normal 19 year old kid who’s really scared and can always expect her Mom and Dad to be around to reassure her and give a hug.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Hoping you had a Katy Perry style Friday Night. Sans the stranger in the bed, breaking the law, maxed out credit cards and other scary scenarios.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Falak.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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</span></div>Falakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08321524864693512771noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2422455534268586898.post-37005514591258259592011-08-12T20:29:00.004+01:002011-08-14T11:16:11.808+01:00Two To Tango<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br />
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</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;"><i>Last year I very conveniently skipped putting up a post on this day: the day my blog turned one. I have personal superstitions about being too happy about a good thing. This year I have decided to pack that irrational thought into a bag weighed down with stones and throw into the overflowing gutter outside my house. <o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;"><i>When I started writing ,it was to pass time since colleges in the city of Mumbai were in a state of partial shut-down as Professors across the city were striking for an increase in wages. God bless their souls since that incident gave me a lot of free time with not a clue about what to do with it. Like most things I take up (and my mother will vouch for this) I thought that this will end up being a passing fancy and my four posts a month trend would dwindle into nothing in the span of the next six months.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;"><i>How on earth is a blogger supposed to wish his/her blog a happy birthday? A most confounding problem this is, I must say. <o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;"><i>That’s when I remembered a friend’s opinion regarding the blog the other day. She said “The blog is you and you are the blog”. A simple statement free of embellishments but very appropriate for this particular occasion if you give it a little thought. So keeping that in mind I’ve decided to compare the points of view in the various posts I’ve written till now and if there have been changes in my opinions in these last two years. <o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;"><i>When I started the blog I had no clue about what I wanted to talk about to people. I just wanted to express myself. The first four posts are living proofs of this fact. <a href="http://muchadoabouteverything-falak.blogspot.com/2009/08/writers-blog.html">Writers blog</a></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 115%;">I believed in the sanctity of the joint family and considered any problem that arose was the result of my inability to adjust. It was just a case of sweet lemons. I might very soon delete this post. </span><a href="http://muchadoabouteverything-falak.blogspot.com/2009/09/good-bad-and-ugly.html" style="line-height: 115%;">The Good, bad and the ugly</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 115%;">. It isn't worth </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;">the</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 115%;"> effort when only the Ugly remains.</span></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 115%;">I had a problem with people’s opinions about </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;">anybody's</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 115%;"> dusky complexion. I hardly have time to worry over petty ideals of beauty now so I care less about it but I still do. </span><a href="http://muchadoabouteverything-falak.blogspot.com/2009/10/sisterhood-of-strawberries-and.html" style="line-height: 115%;">The Sisterhood of Strawberries and Chocolates</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 115%;">.</span></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 115%;">Travelling is a still a hurdle I have to deal with every 6 months. To meet my family I’ll continue doing it for the next 6 years if the need arises.</span><span lang="EN-GB"> <a href="http://muchadoabouteverything-falak.blogspot.com/2009/10/thousand-times-over.html">A Thousand Times Over</a></span></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;"><i>My baby cousin was welcomed into this world a few months after the blog. She’s two now and I’m enjoying the last few months of my teen hood. She’s busy exploring the world and imbibing the truths of life. So am I.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/.%20%20http://muchadoabouteverything-falak.blogspot.com/2009/11/there-is-baby-in-house-she-is-adorable.html"> Right Angle</a></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 115%;">I thought youngsters doing drugs needed help and they could come out of the mess they’re in. I still do.</span><span lang="EN-GB"> </span></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://muchadoabouteverything-falak.blogspot.com/2009/12/high-strung.html"><i>High Strung</i></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 115%;">My brother and I missed each other a lot. We fight a lot now; really serious fights which begin and end with blows. I still love him although I don’t know what the response is from his end.</span><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://muchadoabouteverything-falak.blogspot.com/2009/12/sibling-mail-order_23.htm"> Sibling Mail Order</a></span></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;"><i>Unity in diversity is still the foundation on which India stands. But I fear I see it cracking up slowly day by day.<a href="http://muchadoabouteverything-falak.blogspot.com/2010/01/bangles-all-way.html"> Bangles All The Way</a></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 115%;">I still enjoy the small things in life. It’s the big things that I’ve yet to come to terms with.</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 115%;"> <a href="http://muchadoabouteverything-falak.blogspot.com/2010/02/we-were-asked-to-write-story-in-our.html">Sweet Nothings</a></span></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;"><i>My parents and Grandma are my biggest inspirations when it comes to writing. There are a few names after theirs which have been added to the list though.<a href="http://muchadoabouteverything-falak.blogspot.com/2010/03/shining.html"> The Shinning</a></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;"><i>I like writing short stories. They need a gigantic amount of work done on them and the space for improvement available is enough to play football in. <a href="http://muchadoabouteverything-falak.blogspot.com/2010/04/it-is-grey-morning-today.html">Webs</a></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;"><i>Pakistani’s are human beings. There are myriads of kinds of people in every country, not just India. </i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://muchadoabouteverything-falak.blogspot.com/2010/05/guess-who-came-to-tea.html"><i>Guess Who Came to Tea</i></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;"><i>God Almighty and I are great pals still. It’s a symbiotic, mutual understanding of sorts. ( If you’re reading this God, please be informed I’m kidding ;) I’m the only dependent one here). I still am petrified of exams. </i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><a href="http://muchadoabouteverything-falak.blogspot.com/2010/10/ardently-fervently-seflessly-selfishly.html">Ardently Fervently Selflessly Selfishly</a> </i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;"><i>I miss my family a lot still. Even though this is the fifth year running that I’m away from them. <a href="http://muchadoabouteverything-falak.blogspot.com/2010/11/as-children-my-brother-and-i-used-to-be.html">Percieve-r-ance</a></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 115%;"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 115%;">Birthday wishes will and have to work. They just seem to take an awfully long time.<a href="http://muchadoabouteverything-falak.blogspot.com/2010/12/i-could-really-use-wish-right-now.html"> I could really use a wish right now</a></span></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;"><i>The situation in Indian hasn’t changed much.... If anything we are now moving into a more profound state of corruption and anarchy. I’d rather talk about this some other day.<a href="http://muchadoabouteverything-falak.blogspot.com/2010/12/road-rage.html"> Road.Rage.Rules</a></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Children are the father, mother and everything else possible of mankind. Wordsworth knew what he was talking about. <a href="http://muchadoabouteverything-falak.blogspot.com/2011/01/different-strokes.html">Different Strokes</a></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;"><i>I haven’t stopped losing things, but I‘ve stopped letting them affect me. Sort of. <a href="http://muchadoabouteverything-falak.blogspot.com/2011/03/inheritance-of-loss.html">The Inheritance of Loss</a></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;"><i>Oh! And how can I, how DARE I forget the wonderful fellow bloggers I’ve met here? People I’ve never met in person but friends nevertheless. They have for these last two years taught me a lot more about writing, interacting with people, and dealing with life and at the same time entertained me thoroughly without really intending to do the former. The blogosphere has proved to be the most interesting kind of contemporary classroom I’ve come across.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;"><i>Two years , 30 posts and Two entities (the blog and I) partaking in an intricate dance of words, opinions, thoughts and feelings. Impressive. Specially keeping in mind my track record when it comes to pursuing things wholeheartedly and continuously.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;">I'm</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 115%;"> hoping that the tango is complicated.<o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 115%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Falak</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>Falakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08321524864693512771noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2422455534268586898.post-75469618734351579952011-08-06T19:00:00.001+01:002011-08-06T19:39:58.300+01:00Tu m’as manqué<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I missed you.</span></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Sweet sounding words that make you feel marvellous like no other three worded sentence can, maybe except <i>‘ I love you</i>’ but that has become so common place, now every random affection felt towards another living creature is expressed in terms of love.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The privilege of being missed....</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">I haven’t come across much else that beats the gratifying sensation that floods every inch of your body when someone says they missed you. Getting good grades or being appreciated for something I wrote, yes. But being missed still stands a notch higher than the rest. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">It makes having been away for all that time pining for familiar things and people, voices and smiles all that much more worth it. It fortifies the raw, sketchy hope I have in the human ability to connect, to value and to cherish. But most of all I love those three words when they are said to me because well..... It feels great to be loved and yeah, I am a narcissistic soul.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">So I’d like to thank my mom, dad, grandmother and my three loving friends whose ebullient expressions of joy and beatific smiles on seeing me made my day. I’d like to thank my newfound friends I met at the summer school I attended for two weeks in Scotland for missing me. We bonded a lot more in those two weeks than I have been able to with some people I’ve known for over two years. Our differences in age (there were those in their 30’s and 40’s), nationalities, educational and cultural backgrounds never was an obstacle to forge what for the present looks like longstanding friendships. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">I’d like to specifically thank my cousin and his wife with whom I spent some time in London for missing me. I count those five days with them as one of the most memorable vacations I’ve taken and I can very confidently state that I haven’t met many people who have been so hospitable, welcoming, loving and free and yeah... who have in a just a span of spending five days in person with me and two weeks over the phone giving pep talks when I was in Scotland like me enough to miss me.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">I also want to thank my professor for giving me a warm welcome on returning to class after a 3 week hiatus and also for being more interested in knowing if I had a good time instead of reminding me of the mountain sized heap of work that I have yet to catch up with.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Since I’ve spent most of this post rambling on about being missed I’d like to now mention what I missed the most.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">I missed this blog of mine. I spent most of May and June preparing for the summer school and then the whole of July in UK. I’m really sorry for having neglected this one thing in the world that serves as the perfect outlet for my thoughts, ideas, opinions, feelings and other synonyms you can come up with. This is the only place that soothes my urge to write.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">So during my 22 day stay in the UK, having the most marvellously unforgettable time of my life (apart from learning Modernism in English Literature) I’m glad I met people who believe that if you love someone or value something enough to miss it just spit it out because I haven’t yet developed the supernatural ability to look into someone and see what I mean to them. Those 3 simple words help me live every coming day to the fullest. And in this world that’s worth something. Trust me.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">But I still don’t get why the French have to say '<i>you missed me'</i> for '<i>I missed you'</i> and then say what it actually means is '<i>you were missed by me'. </i>It's another story that it sounds better the convoluted way.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Falak</span></div>Falakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08321524864693512771noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2422455534268586898.post-25194664211636371672011-04-04T20:29:00.003+01:002011-04-27T12:32:47.441+01:00The Inheritance of Loss 3: The cycle ends (hopefully).<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So I’ve lost my wallet, my cell phone and a few days after the cell phone I realised I lost a green notebook I set a lot of store by along with a white hair band that I owned since my primary school days. I can survive without the last two, as, of all the things I’ve currently been losing those two are the ones that are the least important. However, those two are things I hold the closest to my heart.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">That notebook had a rough draft of a poem, notes from the research I’d done on William Blake which was the groundwork for an article I wrote for the English Department journal; my first ever published article...... It also held ideas, jottings for new blog posts....<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">That white hair band must be the plainest accessory I’ve ever owned but it was a constant reminder of my school days, my friends, and my childhood. In some bizarre fashion it sort of linked my childhood in UAE to my teenhood in Mumbai. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As usual I have no memory of where I last saw them. Not a single clue. No one around me does either. Already bogged down by the stress of too many things missing I’ve given up on the last two, albeit after the ritualistic hunting process. Nothing great has happened. Eventually I had to give up on them what with my final exams staring me in the face and my friends hammering it into my thick skull that I have bigger fish to fry.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So to quote the Indian media’s favourite cliché, "How do you feel now?" and in reply to that I don’t feel much, to be frank I don’t feel anything at all. After all the initial madness filled with anxiety attacks, eerie dreams, disturbed sleep and obsessive ranting about my lost objects I feel nothing. Zilch. Rien. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It’s simple really; the point of it all is I’ve learnt something out of it. You can’t hang on to things in life or people for that matter and </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">being the hoarder that I am it’s an important lesson learned. N</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">o single person or thing in life are ever ‘the most important thing' of our lives because eventually, we learn to live without them. All the voids and hollow spaces they leave in and around us fill up. There might be the occasional bad day; times when you </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">suddenly </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">long for that thing from the past but then it goes away and you learn to cope with it. I can’t say I’m completely cured of my negligible strain of OCD but I’m on my way. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Suddenly, things and routines I couldn’t do without; an absence of which would evoke fear, doubt and unreasonable apprehensions, that would keep niggling at the back of my mind stirring up a lot of negativity in the process, have stopped looming over me thus losing their larger than life appearance. The first step has been accepting the fact that ‘Alright, I do get </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: normal;">more </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">nervous than socially accepted and permitted levels of nervousness’. Second step: realizing that a small event or string of events can affect the bigger picture of my life only if I want and make them too. Three: this is going to be a long, long process and requires a lot of belief and faith in myself. I shouldn't be expecting any overnight miracles and nor should anyone else.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So basically, losing 4 important items on 3 different occasions brought to the fore a problem I’ve been pushing aside as ‘just an annoying habit’. That’s looking at the bright side of the situation. Getting back to the realistic side of me I wish that this annoying disappearance of personal articles ends once and for all.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Hoping that, like Sonya says, "3 is the charm".<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Falak</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 10pt;"><o:p><b></b></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><i></i></b></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><i> </i></b></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></i></b></span></div>Falakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08321524864693512771noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2422455534268586898.post-84130683217603439842011-03-25T19:17:00.005+00:002011-03-29T07:37:25.569+01:00The Inheritance of Loss 2: Tragic encounter with cops shatters myth about magic of numerical codes<div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I have to and have to and have to, just have to get that phone back. Need my phone, need my phone want my phone want my phone WANT MY PHONE.....</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>So after a lot of tears, cursing, lamenting, searching and bemoaning my luck Beverly and I went to the Police Station 2 days later to file an FIR and submit the magical IMEI number that would help trace my darling cell phone and bring it back to me. As we got out of the rickshaw we were in we spent some time ogling at the building that was the Police Station. We looked at each other and then started walking towards the station compound. We climbed up a few stairs before finally stepping into the part of the structure that actually housed the cops. I wanted to snigger. Uncontrollably. </i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">What would people say? Girls from good families never even skirt the boundaries of a Police Station, let alone step inside one. Cops are not to be trusted; half the rapists and killers and smugglers in the city are policemen. Police stations are filthy and unsafe.</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>While my head was swimming with voices yelling out all the stereotypes attached to Police Stations and Policemen my common sense was stating superfluous facts blithely.</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Looks like the outpatient section of a hospital with linoleum flooring and off white walls, no smell, no lock ups in view {what a letdown...} no cops in sight either....Why do </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 14px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">they have a foyer? An empty one at that too. Oh, there’s another room to the left. I spy cops. What do we do now?</span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“What do we do now Bev?” </i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“Ask someone what we should exactly do?” Bev and I, we have a penchant for rhetoric.</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“Madam, what are you looking for? {On second thoughts} How can I help you?”</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“We needed to lodge a complaint regarding a lost cell phone.....”</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“Please enter the room to your left and let Inspector Mhatre know what your problem is.”</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Oh yes, yes! I remember Inspector Mhatre... His kid was in kindergarten with me.{Rolling eyes}<span class="Apple-style-span"></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Bored cop looks at our bemused faces and then on an impulse decides to rephrase his sentence, “The policeman in the cubicle on the left end of the room, Maam”</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>We ‘Thank You’d’ in tandem and walked to meet Inspector Mhatre. He was busy on the phone talking nineteen to the dozen in Marathi: a language Beverly can come to terms with after grappling with a sentence or two per second and a language that is as alien to me as being overweight is to a model. Inspector Mhatre smiled at us mouthed ‘cell phone’ and then gestured us to the other end of the long rectangular room. He smiled once again, held the phone a few inches away from his ear and yelled out loudly</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“Shinde, Ya Madamcha mobile missing ahey. Tyachi complaint londavaychi ahey” {Ma’am has lost her phone. Lodge her complaint}</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Constable Shinde escorted us to the far end of the room and sat us down on two identical, thankfully not battered plastic lawn chairs. He removed huge horn-rimmed glasses from his breast-pocket and fixed them onto the bridge of his nose. I felt like we were in an eighties Bollywood movie; the aggrieved female leads about to file a complaint and cops who weren’t the least interested about what we had to say. But I was wrong, they were interested. </i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“Where do you live? Are you working or are you a student? When exactly did this happen? Where did the phone get lost?”</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“I don’t know exactly where.....I came home and realised that my phone was missing. I travel to and fro from home to college by train. I can’t precisely remember where I last used it or when it went missing.”</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“So did it go missing in the train?” Questioned the constable, “Because if it did then you’ll have to go to the Railway police and file a complaint. So I’ll write that you lost it in the bus while travelling from the station to your house, right?” His eyebrows were raised quizzically, a conspiratorial look in the eyes.</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Policemen 101: They make you run from pillar to post. He’s doing the opposite and helping us....Surprise Surprise</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“When did it exactly go missing?”</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“On the 17<sup>th</sup> of February, Sir. Most probably in the afternoon.”</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“Well it’s 19<sup>th</sup> evening today......”</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I know that, didn't I just confirm my occupation as a student?</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“I’ll lodge a complaint for the 18<sup>th</sup>..... You lost it on the 18<sup>th</sup>, right?”</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Bev and I look at each other, both our eyes mirroring the same expression: amazement , “Yes, Sir”</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Policemen 101: Cops are sticklers for facts if it aides in harassing the public. False.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In walks top cop Inspector Kadam and seats himself on the chair before us. He starts interrogating me in Marathi and I stare at him dumbfounded. The Inspector looks from the constable to Beverly. I know what he’s thinking.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Is she slow or what?</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“She doesn’t understand Marathi, Sir”, Bev supplied in Hindi. Inspector resorts to displaying expressions of mock hurt and insult. The man’s regional spirit has been crushed with my lack of knowledge of his mother tongue is what he’s implying. </i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Marathi yeth nahi ka?! Mumbai mein reh ke Marathi aana chahiye na? {You don't know Marathi, is it? When you live in Mumbai you should know Marathi!}</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">If after living here for only four years you feel this distraught imagine how the Arabs are feeling ........</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“Umar kya hai apki? Age Age....” he adds in English for my benefit.</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I said don’t understand Marathi but Hindi I do, so please quit the subtitles...</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">..</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“Unnees saal , Sir. Hum SYBA students hai” {We are 19 year old SYBA students} I said. I was bored of playing scared, big-eyed, innocent alien. We threw in the prestigious name of our college for added measure, snobs that we are. Plus we wanted them to believe that we were serious about what we came and weren’t passing time. As I was rattling off all of my personal details, including my name age, address, surname, place of birth, father’s name, college and phone number a group of petty criminals who were cowering on the floor near us looking around listlessly were overhearing our conversation with the cops. Bev drew her chair sideways trying to appear unperturbed while making a conscious attempt to distance herself from the scruffy looking convicts. </i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>We had one of our many telepathic conversations</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">What if they memorize my details and hunt me down? How smart are these cops?</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">C’mon Lucky, they don’t look bright enough to memorize all that AND act upon it.</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Point noted Bevy.</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Also note: you’re plain paranoid.</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Iyeah! Ha! I drew the chair away didn’t I?</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It’s called hygienic concerns.</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Hmph...</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Hmphh right back at you.</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Inspector Kadam boomed, “Accha, Ok, Shinde tila lost certificate denyat yawe” {Please issue a lost certificate with the details to Ma'am}. And after barking his command with practised flourish the Inspector went to wherever it was he had come from.</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>After furnishing all the details they wanted I handed them the magical IMEI number. </i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Fingers crossed, C’mon numbers work your magic. Prove your worth. Break my losing streak.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Constable Shinde looked at me and said ,“Ahhhh , We’ve heard about this, but we don’t understand the technology and neither do we have it.”</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>"But Sir...."</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Policemen 101: 5 year olds are technologically more competent than cops. These words resonate with nothing but the truth.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“Even though it’s not of much use I will mention it here in your lost certificate.” And saying so he wrote it down on the sheet of paper they had the gall to call a certificate. </i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>The lost certificate was for me to keep, in case I needed to claim my phone or check the status of my complaint. The FIR; the official version of the lost certificate that the cops kept with them had no mention of the IMEI number whatsoever. There isn’t any mind-boggling rocket science involved with regards to the IMEI number. The cops just have to note it down call up the different service providers in the city and inform them that any new Sim Card that operates with this IMEI should be reported to the cops immediately and the co-ordinates of that Sim Card have to be provided to the IT section of the police department. Technologically incompetent moi knows that.</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“Now what Sir?”</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“Now nothing, we will wait and see if someone hands it over. Usually they don’t but just in case you know....”</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Oh so basically after changing 2 buses and coming this far all you guys are going to do is wait for some public spirited citizen to hand it over? Classic......</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“How costly was it? When you tried calling what happened?”</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“I don’t know how costly it was Sir, but it was more than Rs 10,000 and when I tried calling my number I got the ‘switched off’ message even though the battery was fully charged in the morning.”</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Who cares about the money {I do of course!} but the pictures of my family, school friends, videos from the JB concert, videos of my baby cousins and Bev’s first time on stage, my songs, messages , my things to do list, reminders...........Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhrrrrrrrrrggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“Then it’s gone for sure. Either ways here’s you certificate. We will inform you if something crops up.”</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>They went back to watching the cricket world cup on the TV installed in an inner ‘cops only sanctum’.</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Thanks for the extra helping of positivity. Wonder why it tastes bitter.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>As we were walking out of the precinct Bev and I spoke out at the same time,</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“What a waste of time and energy!”</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“Although they were sweet and nice”</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“Yeah they weren’t manner less boors.”</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“We know most cops DO have potbellies and paunches”</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“You bet”</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“Look at the bright side, we know how a Police Station functions and we’ve been inside one! “</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>"Yeah! We were brave enough to go and deal with the cops on our own without any adult help Bev!"</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>"We ARE technically adults, you know......"</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>"Oh yeah..... I tend to forget that sometimes."</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>"Well, at least we tried"</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>"Yeah, we tried."</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>I’ve tried everything possible to locate my phone. Apart from obsessing over it and suffering from anxiety attacks there isn’t much I can do. So I sleep at night dreaming of my pretty little touch screen hoping that somehow, someday soon it will turn up flashing it’s backlight and notification lights cheekily at me.</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>The nut who stole it even stole the phone’s sassy red cover :(</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Falak</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"> PS: If the Marathi translations are any good just letting you know that they are the handiwork of my friend Madhuri :) If they're faulty please give the brickbats to her too :P Special thanks to Kalyani for providing me with typical Marathi policemen surnames :) Yes, those aren't the real names of the cops I interacted with. Whatever made you think I'm going to risk my neck doing that???</div>Falakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08321524864693512771noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2422455534268586898.post-36457086644882305522011-03-25T15:02:00.003+00:002011-03-25T19:18:52.839+00:00The Inheritance of Loss<div class="MsoNormal">It all started with the wallet. A pretty thing in blue denim gifted to me by my friend Shruti on my 17<sup>th</sup> birthday. I had preserved it for almost two years, intact with the box and the gift wrapper it came in. Two years later exactly after my 19<sup>th</sup> birthday when the wallet I was using started disintegrating into shreds of leather and cloth I decided it was time to bring out the denim wallet. It was smaller, compact and easy to lose. In the giant handbag I carry to college, perpetually stuffed with books, files and occasionally with a stole to protect myself from the winter chill and the summer sun anything could go missing for a few minutes and initiate an anxiety attack lasting a few minutes before the object of concern turned up dandy and fine. I guess my possessions are of the opinion that once in a while a little extra pumping of the heart, increase in pulse rate, palpitations and hyperventilation does me good. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">I had to renew my railway pass that day so I had carried around Rs 1000 with me. On reaching the ticket counter I realised that my usual train would leave in a matter of 3 minutes. I urged the lazy official at the booking counter to get my pass made quickly and sprinted towards the train clutching the remaining Rs 200 or so I received as change in my hand. I’m usually very meticulous when it comes to keeping things in their proper places. But that day for some inexplicable reason I decided to stuff the money into my pencil pouch which was the first thing that I could lay my hands on in the cavern I call my handbag. I didn’t even bother to transfer the money from my pouch to the wallet despite opening the pouch a gazillion times to remove my writing implements. In the train, returning home I noticed a lady selling safety pins and remembered my Grandmother asking me to get her some if one of the travelling hawkers in the train were selling them. I opened my bag for the wallet and started the ritualistic rummaging I engage in every time I needed something found. It had to be inside a book or under the file or concealed in the folds of the stole. Out came books, lunch-box, mobile phone, pencil pouch, stole, library book, hair band, sunglasses, reading glasses {both intact in their cases}, ID card, water bottle but no wallet. NO WALLET.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">"Madhuri, I don’t seem to find my wallet........"<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">"It’s got to be there somewhere in your bag. Give me your books, must be stuck inside one of them."<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">"I guess yeah....."<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">OH MY GOD..... I’VE LOST IT...IT’S GONE....GONE</span><o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal">"What are you doing, Luck?"<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">"Searching for the wallet, what else does it look like?"<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> "Inside your lunch-box?"<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">There’s a saying in Malayalam that when roughly translated means, ‘When you lose your fishing rod you should search for it even inside an earthen pot’. What it basically tries to get across is that no matter how ridiculous it may seem, leave no stone unturned during your search for lost items. That’s a rule of thumb I always adhere to while hunting for my things.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>I</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>T HAS TO BE SOMEWHERE ANYWHERE NOOOOOOOO PLEASE LET IT BE THERE GOD PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE..... </i></span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> I CAN’T LOSE THINGS! <i>I NEVER EVER MISPLACE ANYTHING!</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="MsoNormal"></div><i><br />
</i></div><div class="MsoNormal">"Maybe I left it in class......"<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">" Did you remove it to buy anything from the canteen today?" </div><div class="MsoNormal">"Nope.... I got lunch from home."</div><div class="MsoNormal">"When did you last use it?"</div><div class="MsoNormal">" To pay for the pass..."<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">"Is that the last time you saw it?"<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">"I actually can’t remember when the last time I saw it was."<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I spent the next three to four days searching for that wallet in the classrooms, the lost and found department, every nook and cranny of every place I possibly was at on that day, retracing my steps and actions but that wallet was GONE. I was kind of okay with the fact that I lost it because the only thing of import it held was change for bus worth Rs 30 and a few 100 used bus tickets that I had saved up for my friend Manasa who collects them. Fortunately the Rs 200 remained in the pouch all day. Sometimes laziness pays off. Sometimes you feel lazy for a reason.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">But I’ve always wondered how and where exactly it went missing... The bag is always glued to my arm or lap, the only other people I left it with are my gang of friends. We came to the conclusion that the only possible place it could have fallen out would be at the station as I was yanking my worthless stole out of my bag while getting off the train. I decided it was a much needed lesson for me to not be overconfident about being ‘the person who never lost stuff’. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">I was much more careful than before, indulging in regulated checks of my bag at a 50 minute interval and everything was fine and under control.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Until I lost my mobile a month later. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
Falak</div>Falakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08321524864693512771noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2422455534268586898.post-62477120017710438602011-02-07T17:55:00.004+00:002011-02-08T17:15:07.765+00:00Introducing Me<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><i>I realised recently that even though this blog belongs to me it doesn’t talk a lot about me. I won’t lie saying that it’s an accidental occurrence, the truth being that when I started off with the blog I consciously chose not to write about myself. There’s something about revealing one’s personal side to strangers that is intriguing and at the same time intimidating. When you have elders at home constantly harping about psychopaths and stalkers you learn to be wary no matter how tempting pouring your heart and soul out to people who don't know enough about you to judge you seems. Another fact is that majority of my readers are my buddies and family: people who either live with me , have lived with me or those I see every single day of the week. It never really came to mind to give a background about myself and my surroundings.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><i>This, I have recently realised, tends to be a major impediment to my writing. Most of the time I have to go off tangent and give lengthy descriptions so that the new readers I’ve acquired who aren’t family and friends {I’m gloating as I write this :D } aren’t lost. </i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><i><br />
</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><i>So to both old and new, family and strangers welcome to my world of pixelated thoughts. </i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><i> I’m Falak, a 19 year old girl studying in Mumbai, India. I’m a student of political science, English and French literature. I can speak decent enough French but I’m sure that in Paris I’ll be an outcast if I open my blessed mouth. I have no political opinions. None at all. Although I think living in a democracy invariably gives me the right to criticize the working of my country and I never miss a chance to do so whether in speech or writing because that’s the only possible way I can rectify things; by letting people know about it. I love English, the language of course, which I intend to major in. It happened almost a decade ago when my mother inculcated the love for reading books in me. It’s like being in love with your best friend: you’ve liked him and been with him for so long, loving him is a habit you’re unaware of unless someone draws your attention to it. Which is exactly what my friends Bev, Jo, Mads and Yo did. That’s how this blog came about, for more info read<a href="http://muchadoabouteverything-falak.blogspot.com/2009/08/writers-blog.html"> Writer's blog</a> . </i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><i><br />
</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><i>I was born and brought up and completed my schooling up till the 10<sup>th</sup> in UAE and moved to India for my higher studies. Since the last four years I’ve been living away from my parents, here, in Mumbai but still entertain my frenemy homesickness. You can often see me whine about the people and things I miss. I currently live with my gran and younger brother who will feature more often on this blog from now on than they have in the past. I have a strapping, huge, extended maternal family who I lived with until last year and many a times this blog serves as the perfect platform for me to moan about the idiosyncrasies and peculiarities of my myriad of grand aunts, grand uncles, aunts, uncles and cousins who are all of the opinion that they possess the divine right to correct, criticize, judge and love me. I love reading but never limit myself to a particular author or genre. The same goes for movies and music. </i><br />
<i>My bookshelf holds The Harry Potter series, Wuthering heights, Mills and Boon, P.G Woodehouse, Cecilia Ahern, Jeffery Archer, Arundhati Roy, Harlan Coben, Marry Higgins Clarke, Nora Roberts and The Twilight Saga on the very same rack. If you can write I’ll read it. I love poetry. I love poetry and dabble in some myself but am still in the process of exploring its many wonders in my lit classes in college. If you haven’t closed the web page yet after the bit about poetry then I enjoy cooking. From what I've been telling my near and dear ones I am supposed to hate travelling but I secretly enjoy it because the people I meet,the insights and experiences I gain during my daily 1 hour local train travels to and from college and my flights to UAE are blog worthy. I enjoy reminiscing; it’s maybe because I’m some kind of a masochist who doesn’t mind taking a trip through memories that evoke painful symptoms of nostalgia and homesickness if it means I can find some shadow of happiness lurking there.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><i> I ADORE little children, specially babies, as a result of which I often mention my kiddy and not so kiddy horde of cousins. I relish spicy food, freak out on the colour green. I love laughing out loud with my friends who I write about a lot. These 8 women: 6 from college and my 2 besties from school form my support system and help me weather my mood swings, phases of depression, omnipresent fatigue which is a consequence of being responsible for myself, my ageing grandmother, my rebellious teenage brother and the running of our small household, lack of confidence, constant bouts of anxiety and worrying about nothing in general. We also love the boy band The Jonas Brothers. I like to think I’m funny, everyone does. I’m an expert at geriatrics, having lived with senior citizens for the last four formative years of my life but am completely and hopelessly socially inept in a teenage scene<span style="font-family: Wingdings;">J</span>. My 8 angels are working on it. I talk in Hindi, Malayalam {my mother tongue} and English but think in all three simultaneously and write in English. I meet my parents every 6 months during vacations and living in two countries simultaneously creates a sort of identity crisis for me. </i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><i><br />
</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><i>I guess I’ve pretty much mentioned everything that I’d tell about myself to anyone, whether an acquaintance or a stranger. A little more and you might as well not read any other post I put up.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><i>If you’re still reading after the Jonas part you must have deciphered by now why I call this blog Much Ado About Everything. It has nothing to do with being a lit student and enjoying Shakespeare {I have yet to read one of his plays in detail} but everything to do with my obsession with word play and the fact that I worry, whine and can go on and on about trivial things. On the good days I glorify the inconsequential joys of life.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><i><br />
</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><i>I had a grand old time introducing myself and my muddled up world. On a concluding note all I have to say to you whether you’re someone who’s been part of my journey finding my own voice this last 1 year or whether you decide to now or whether you’re just a passer-by is:</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><i>Enchanted to meet you</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><i><br />
</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><i>Falak</i></div>Falakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08321524864693512771noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2422455534268586898.post-84465403598301100852011-01-23T13:47:00.005+00:002011-02-03T05:40:11.920+00:00Different Strokes<div class="MsoNormal">There is something charming about young children. Or to phrase it better, there is something charming about the practical logic that young children dole out.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">My two precocious cousins, a boy and girl both aged that wobbly age of twelve where they are teetering between childhood and adolescence never cease to annoy and surprise me. They are a few months away from the jinxed 13 and I can already see them morphing into monsters. It’s scary when they suddenly snap at me; at an attempt to defy authority or their idea of their freedom being suppressed, when all I might have asked her to do is stop bossing her baby sister and go get her hair brushed. I don’t know whether I should soothe her temper or whack her on the head. Or when I just remind them about how ‘precious’ the books in my library are and that dog ears aren’t tolerated when he’d give me a rejoinder that’d have me reeling head over heels back into the kitchen and hiding under my mother’s apron; if she ever wore one. When I land in UAE I get excited, high pitched calls with a 12 year old girl trying to drown out the giggly questions of a 6 year old girl by increasing the volume of her own; and then there is also the nonchalant call where a 12 year old boy languidly questions me about the details of my short visit in that bored, drawling tone that has me wondering if he’s manoeuvring a car on the PSP with his free hand. And they never decline a chance to torment me mercilessly about my undying love for the Jonas Brothers, {even the 6 year old brat} who according to them I should have given up on before my 18<sup>th</sup> birthday. But their revulsion for the JB never stopped them from waiting with bated breath to get the details about my trip to their concert in Abu Dhabi and the inside info on both the performers and the performance. They yo-yo between being cute and horrible in nanoseconds.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">When I started blogging, slowly and steadily I let some of my family know about it, including the kids. On my last visit home during a family reunion one weekend my aunts got to questioning me about the blog and talking about it in general. That was when my sister butt in; in that honestly frank manner she used to tell her mom as a kid that the dish she painstakingly made was yucky, she told me “ Chechi (elder sister), Your blog is really dumb. I can’t understand what you write and it’s too confusing. I was too dumbfounded to reply, so I decided that the magazine I was hiding behind was my best bet to hide my disappointment. The little girl to whom I was a goddess, I who could never go wrong, had just deemed something really important to me as rubbish. </div><div class="MsoNormal">I might have spent almost 15 minutes staring at the same page when I decided to get myself a box of readymade chocolate pudding that I gorge on when I’m home to pep me up. As I was about to get a spoon, my cousin apparated before me with one. He had been walking up and down the house incessantly, his heels making thudding sounds and driving the household insane. It’s his way of staying occupied and working out his excess energy. He put on his I’m –such a –wise-old-guy face and asked me very seriously, just like as a kid he’d ask me if finishing school meant now that I’d get married and have babies . “If she finds what you write difficult, isn’t it good for you?” “Why?” I mumbled with my mouth full of chocolate, my spoon strategically left hanging midair about to drip chocolate. He questioned “ Do you think Shakespeare is confusing? His writing, the language you know?” “ Ummm, Yes.” I replied a little reluctantly, but honestly wondering what he’d have to say about that since he knew I’m a literature student. “Well most people do” he says brisk walking around the dining table “but it’s supposed to be great, what he writes. And I think you’re good, although I have to read what you write twice whenever I do to understand it.” He resumed scurrying about aimlessly. </div><div class="MsoNormal">While I was simultaneously digesting this gyaan (knowledge) and the chocolate pudding my cousin yelled from the bedroom! “I love the bracelet you got me! The colour combo is so cooolll! I love you.”<br />
It looks like I am still sister numero uno in the dressing up department at least.<br />
<br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">May the logic of children help you adopt a refreshing outlook on old things this New Year although I know I’m 23 days late <span style="font-family: Wingdings;">J</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Wingdings;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal">Falak</div>Falakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08321524864693512771noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2422455534268586898.post-9606590669771674602010-12-22T18:00:00.011+00:002010-12-30T09:11:14.695+00:00Road.Rage.Rules<div class="MsoNormal">“Watch where you’re going YOU FOOL!”</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Zipping away like he’s riding a DUCATI on an empty runway!”</div><div class="MsoNormal">We tried to move another step ahead but quickly recoiled back to the safety of that half of the single lane road that was occupied by double parked cars.</div><div class="MsoNormal">“I know an ophthalmologist. Need the number?”</div><div class="MsoNormal">It’s called a Zebra parking, see the white stripes? They didn’t paint it for your wedding. Oh! But how would you, who haven’t seen a horse, KNOW WHAT A ZEBRA IS??????”</div><div class="MsoNormal">“You’re supposed to stop when you see pedestrians at the crossing, ie people like us who have been waiting for the last 15 minutes trying to cross a measly 4 feet road. Oh yes! You stop even if there isn’t A SIGNAL! YEAH, THAT COLOURFUL CONTRAPTION YOU DON’T PAY HEED TO.”</div><div class="MsoNormal">“You know what Bev? Let’s just cross even if it means running the risk of being hit, at least that way we can put them in jail because we crossed at a pedestrian crossing.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">At that precise moment the injured muscle of my right leg from the auto accident gave a painful throb warning me otherwise and to add to that Bev gave me her ‘Shut up and wait woman’ look.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Finally we flagged down a giant SUV, the driver bemused, at seeing two college going girls who looked capable of murder. Luckily for the motorists we didn’t have to spend an eternity perched on the median but crossed the other half of the so called dual-carriageway road in two minutes. To irk us further Sonya had already crossed both the lanes and was waiting on the footpath tapping her feat and beating a tattoo on the dial of her watch indicating how long it took us to reach her. Like we didn’t know already. The Dare-Devil had dashed across the road earlier: irreverent of traffic or death. She has previously been at the receiving end of caresses from buses, autos, cars and a train too! According to her only a plane is left. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">As we were dodging vendors selling kerchiefs, toys, lemonade, fake Ray-Ban glares {and wares than I can go describing in humorous detail for months} on the footpath or something that resembled it we were fuming. On a sunny winter afternoon Bev had smoke shooting out from her ears and Sonya and I were doling out endearments I can’t mention in print; she, with a ghost of a smile as always and I, the way they should be. </div><div class="MsoNormal">“It’s all a matter of rules you know!” I hollered, startling an underwear vendor from his reverie about boxers. He looked reconcilably at me, ready to believe that briefs were the best if that is what I thought. I glared at him, challenging him otherwise.</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Nobody follows rules here, everyone thinks it's their in-laws-place and they can do as they please. Inconsiderate nuts."</div><div class="MsoNormal">“ Luck? You seriously think people do as they like there?”</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Ok Sonz, their daddy’s farmhouse, fine?”</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Ooooh! Now that’s one place I’d be at ease at.” I think something about the colour of my face made Bev decide not to go ahead with the joke.</div><div class="MsoNormal">“They shove rule books in your face at banks, hospitals and government offices where they are least required. A transaction that needs a few clicks on the keyboard takes 100 perambulations around the desks of useless officials.”</div><div class="MsoNormal">“You’re telling me?” Drawled Sonya with an eyebrow raised in derisive amusement at the above said organisations.</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Yeah, I’d rather die of a cold” stated Bev in agreement to which I vehemently said “And I’d rather stash my money under the bed than maintain an account in this country.” {Don’t even bother looking for it there}</div><div class="MsoNormal">We walked in silence for sometime stomping the pot-holed footpath violently.<br />
<br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Oh how I envy the ease of my cousins’ lives in Bahrain!” burst out Sonya</div><div class="MsoNormal">“I miss the orderliness of UAE!” I exploded, having held in that statement waiting for someone else to say it. I’m always sceptical about comparing my foster country and my country and running the risk of sounding like a hypocrite ex-NRI brat.</div><div class="MsoNormal">“No one gives a damn to rules here.”</div><div class="MsoNormal">“But when the same Indians go elsewhere they follow even the dumbest ones to the T.”</div><div class="MsoNormal">“They chicken out when they have to pay up fines, so they won’t spit, litter or over-speed.” Furnished Bev</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Who’ll fine them here in Mumbai? That pot-bellied corrupt policeman?” Chortled Sonya</div><div class="MsoNormal">“But we have to follow stupid dress codes and attendance policies in college. No one knows where to use rules here.” I muttered in disgust.</div><div class="MsoNormal">“You’re right Sonz. Fools make rules here and fools who can’t understand the difference between Christmas lights and traffic signals inhabit and populate this country. And then they have the audacity to complain about 2G scams??????” I fumed, climbing up the stairs to the railway station two at a time to vent out my frustration.</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Yeah Luck, how true.” </div><div class="MsoNormal">“What’s the 2G scam?”</div><div class="MsoNormal">The walk through the platform was spent explaining to Bev all about the scam that rocked the nation.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Wondering why our country can never reach that state where everyone is carefree like Bev,</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Falak</div>Falakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08321524864693512771noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2422455534268586898.post-27898449727453196042010-12-09T18:32:00.010+00:002010-12-11T05:29:49.842+00:00I could really use a wish right now.....<p$1><p$1><p$1><div class="MsoNormal"><p$1><p$1><p$1><i>I was one of the few children in school who knew Santa was a myth, he didn’t exist. I lived in a desert where it didn’t snow and none of our houses had exclusive roofs let alone chimneys {we lived in flats}. And to top it all we don’t celebrate Christmas {my family isn't Christian}. But then again, deep down I’ve always liked to believe in things that others thought were balderdash. I like to make a wish on a fallen eyelash, the first star I see in the sky, hope for good luck if I see two mynahs {starlings}. I waited for a letter from Hogwarts before I turned 11, dreamt that my ancestors had super powers that I inherited after it skipped a few generations or some such romantic claptrap.</i></p$1><p$1></p$1></p$1></p$1></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><p$1><p$1><p$1><p$1><i>I don’t know if magic, miracles or enchantments exist. I secretly like to believe they do but my rational side, measured and cut by experience and polished by dogmatic notions of reality hardly give a sliver of a chance for my esoteric side, rough-hewn as a result of doubt to take lead.</i></p$1></p$1></p$1></p$1></div><p$1><div class="MsoNormal"><p$1><p$1><p$1><p$1><i>What I’ve always hoped would work is the magic of the smoke from birthday candles when you blow them out. It is almost surreally mesmerizing that something dynamic and consuming like a flame feeds from the depths of a saccharine dish, draws out the sweetness of hope and extinguishes into white-grey wisps of enchantment that twirl and twine around a breath full of wishes and transports it into magical realms. I don’t know if there will be cakes and candles today so I’d not like to allow this special request of mine to be left at the mercy of the vicissitude of birthday plans and decisions.</i></p$1></p$1></p$1></p$1></div><p$1><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><p$1><p$1><p$1><i>There is one path to miracles I’m absolutely sure of. Group prayers. You need not believe in God for this. Just the same little request escaping many lips at the same time creates a vibration of positivity so strong that not even the steely bars of cynical rationality of life can cage and thwart the fulfilment of any wish however itty-bitty it is. So this time around I’d like to ask that come 25<sup>th</sup> of December a fantabulous, strong, optimistic and lovely lady and writer named Erika can sleep peacefully without battling her arch enemies, phlegm and mucus, ever and also that her gorgeous baby Izzy {Izabella} can enjoy every single day without seizures, vomiting and other torments that her little being is subjected to on almost a daily basis. Erika was hoping for <a href="http://ourhummingbird.blogspot.com/2010/12/dear-santa.html">Dear Santa</a> {who I’m sceptical about} to hear her out.</i></p$1><p$1></p$1></p$1></p$1></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><p$1><p$1><p$1><p$1><i>I hope every single one of you who is reading/reads this blog and this particular post; { although I know there aren’t many} and decide to don the Santa suit for a day because those two could really use a wish {and many more} right now. After reading this if you feel an urgent need to put my request into action and can't wait for Christ's birthday which is a fortnight away then please go ahead! If you think it takes a birthday to make magic happen then you are in luck, for today is a birthday too. Well, not Jesus Christ's</i><i> but a 19 year old girl's. Inspite of all this if you've never had childhood fantasies of playing Santa then maybe just be nice and grant a Birthday Girl her wish: that another’s wish comes true.</i></p$1></p$1></p$1></p$1></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><p$1><p$1><p$1></p$1><p$1><p$1><p$1><i>Wishing I could cast spells,</i></p$1></p$1></p$1></p$1></p$1></div><p$1><div class="MsoNormal"><p$1><p$1><p$1><i>Falak</i></p$1></p$1></p$1></div><p$1></p$1></p$1></p$1></p$1></p$1></p$1></p$1>Falakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08321524864693512771noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2422455534268586898.post-80755471855076281532010-11-26T14:39:00.007+00:002011-08-21T09:21:26.585+01:00Perceive-r-ance<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i>As children my brother and I used to be overjoyed at the sight of stuffed shopping bags strewn all around the house. It spelt HOLIDAY. It promised us a vacation, new clothes and possessions, and the assured company of our parents and Grand mom for more than the prescribed 6 hours we saw them in a day. While shopping, we’d bump into friends, teachers and other families and have a gala time discussing holiday plans. What to buy for whom, choosing sari’s of myriad colours, soaps cakes, powder tins, cream bottles, jewellery and stacking it all away in suitcases, deciding what to assign to which relative were tasks of priority. Most of the time these shopping excursions culminated into eating out at our then favourite restaurant ‘Super’ which was anything but that. Who cared? The waiters knew our family history and we theirs, they had literally seen us grow up in front of them, doted on us, got us that extra dish without charging and we loved the unhealthy fried rice and chilly chicken. We never ordered. The minute one of the ‘uncles’ saw us our special was ready on the table.</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i>I haven’t seen those people in 2 years. That restaurant has been demolished and a new one is coming up. I’m rambling now, going off at completely another tangent. It’s all beside the point I’m trying to make or maybe it really isn’t. I don’t like the sight of shopping bags around my room anymore. It <span lang="EN-GB">ultimately</span> means I’m leaving my family or they’re leaving me. I truly abhor shopping and hardly visit the mall that’s only a 3 minute drive from my house. My friends would kill to live there. I don’t desire new clothes, new accessories, footwear, nothing. I don’t fancy passports and tickets especially when it says Mumbai-Dubai. And I’d kill to eat that unhealthy fried rice and chilly chicken every single weekend despite the fact that I’ll be complaining about piling on the pounds and will be even more under-confident in public that I already am. Do I feel at home in UAE? Honestly there are times when I feel like a Martian, completely out of sync with the drastic transformations in the life I once led, my schoolmates, the people I knew and the places I used to haunt. So if ‘Home’ ceases to feel like home; then does Mumbai feel like home? Can’t really say, because it’s difficult to lead two diversely separate lives. I can choose to adopt one and give up the other but I can’t. My UAE life is who I am and was; and my Mumbai life is who I am and will be/can be. Moreover, like my mother very succinctly puts it I’m a hoarder by nature and can’t let go of easily. So I amble from a set of 6 months to another surviving solely on the short holidays that pop up in between like greenery in a desert, compartmentalising friends, clothes, routines, hobbies and food into two sections: Mumbai and UAE.</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i>My perceptions over the years have changed. Bags of joy now herald the advent of bleak-looking six months, life the way I lived it for 15 years has now been broken up into parts and the mention of fried rice and chilly chicken that made me flash a 250 volt smile now creates saline pools in my house. But I’m trying, trying really hard to change that, achieve a state of equilibrium and merge two disparate aspects of me and ameliorate into a whole, complete person. I hope perseverance helps me to perceive differently.</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i>Meanwhile, seriously contemplating burning off those shopping bags,</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i>Falak</i></span></div>Falakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08321524864693512771noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2422455534268586898.post-70719117896945477362010-10-25T17:38:00.013+01:002010-12-19T16:08:37.789+00:00Ardently, Fervently, Seflessly, Selfishly<p$1><p$1></p$1></p$1><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><p$1><p$1><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So what has Falak been up to the last two weeks? There has to be a reason to substantiate her extended silence after the pledge she undertook to write continuously.</span></i></p$1><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span></p$1><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Answering my own question, she hasn’t been doing outrageously exciting things to keep her away this long from the blog. She was busy forging a temporary alliance with a certain individual by the name of God Almighty. </span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">She was busy discussing ardently, alternatives to completely blanking out in front of her exam paper, methods to circumvent studying a syllabus of oceanic proportions, and having the brain power to remember enough to fill in the pages of the answer sheet. She was busy fervently formulating terms and conditions of treaties to sign, pacts to adhere to. Terms and conditions involved were: if only stuff I learn comes 3 coconuts for you, if I manage to remember everything I painstakingly mugged up; 51 rupees for you.</span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After sleeping continuously for 4 hours every day for the last two weeks, </span></i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">burying her </span></i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">head within her books, </span></i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">hardly eating for the fear of </span></i></span></i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">suffering from an upset tummy, </span></i></span></i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">refusing to step out of the house except going to </span></i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">college to meet her arch rival the papers, </span></i></span></i></span>the marks-talks ended successfully. It was ratified </span></i></span></i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">by the council of Love with Falak having all her demands met at such short </span></i></span></span></i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">notice and God still waiting for his.</span></i></span></span></i></div></div></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">He’s still waiting without creating a ruckus, without impassioned appeals of ‘why me always?’, ‘I know you hate me’. Biding his time he’s still sticking around </span></i></span></i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">here.</span></i></span></i></div></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Why though?</span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Simply because he believes in her.</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But does she trust him as implicitly? </span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span></i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Do we?</span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">A very, merry, exam-free soul.</span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Falak</span></i></div></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div>Falakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08321524864693512771noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2422455534268586898.post-11781104693480602272010-09-19T14:12:00.008+01:002010-12-19T16:08:56.999+00:00Sonny side<p$1>Before you start reading just letting you know the words calignious, tenebrous, crepescular simply put mean dark..... I just wanted synonyms instead of using the same word again and again. I used a thesaurus. ;)<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><p$1><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span">I haven’t </span><span class="Apple-style-span">written for a month and 19 days. I was planning on a little something to celebrate the 1</span></i></span><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">st</span></span></i></span></sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span"> birthday of the blog, wish it Bon Blogaversaire maybe. This blog does warrant that kind of gratitude on my part. There aren’t ample avenues or outlets available for an 18 year old to vent out her frustration and let go of her reticent nature bit by bit. </span></i></span></p$1></div><p$1><div class="MsoNormal"><p$1><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Yes, a year back on the 13</span></i></span><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">th</span></span></i></span></sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span"> of August this blog was born as a cumulative effect of boredom, joblessness, the latent desire for positive recognition and a genuine, intrinsic love for words and language. But the day the blog turned 1 I got hit by an auto rickshaw. The accident in itself didn’t leave me much to remember it by, at least not the day I got hit. A random stranger from the same rickshaw helped me stand up from my horizontal position of repose on rain drenched tar, I went home in a partial stupor, got cleaned up and then was again on my way to college. The next day I couldn’t hoist myself out of bed: consequence of a sore neck, numerous bruised and aching body parts and a busted right leg that is still tender to touch. It was the closest I’d ever come to being killed. Already a multitude of events had led to a lot of mental unrest and turmoil. This ripped off the bronze lining on my characteristically Cimmerian cloud. And then there were the gratuitous interviews I gave to two departments that organised the college festival. The first rejection nipped at my heart but it didn’t hurt. The second rejection didn’t hurt. It nipped my craving to write at a very subterranean level. </span></i></span><br />
<p$1></p$1></p$1></div><p$1><div class="MsoNormal"><p$1><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span"></span><span class="Apple-style-span"></span><span class="Apple-style-span"></span></i></span></p$1></div><p$1><div class="MsoNormal"><p$1><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span">My clouds of dark moods are as seasonal and expected as are the clouds of monsoon but rare have been the occasions where the hopes of a sunny day have been shattered. I don’t mind criticism or rejection when it’s straight forward and people come up to me and say “Falak, your writing sucks.” I might feel a little blue {but then who doesn’t} and recover shortly feeling grateful for the constructive criticism. But to have yourself and your writing lambasted within earshot is a crushing experience. The organiser of the second department, a classmate of mine did just that; very subtly without using names but just highlighting the gender and topic and a lot of choice expletives while describing ‘this girl’ to her friends. For weeks on an end I was recipient of filthy looks from her and every time I’d cringe within. That I guess was the last straw that broke the under-confident girl’s weak spirit. </span></i></span></p$1></div><p$1><div class="MsoNormal"><p$1><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span></i></span><br />
<p$1><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span">P</span></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span">eople with broken spirits take a vacation; it’s rejuvenating and helps you clear your head. When things became too much to handle I took a hiatus. The place I visited was stygian in its setting. It was perpetually night and the only recreation the people here {some tourists, some permanent residents} partook in was the masochistic pleasure derived from deriding self and ability. We emulated the citizens and conformed easily to their existence: denying ourselves the calorie-laden sweet meats of happiness, the sleep of the content person sure about their self-worth and salubrious dreams that provided exercise to the grey cells. I dined and wined myself to bursting point on the choicest dishes of self-doubt and tears served cold, visited museums and admired paintings of self-destruction and spent hours in theatres watching and analysing the entire diatribe meted out to me by OG extraordinaire which was replayed incessantly. The sky was forever nebulous and moonless when looked at from my tenebrous lodgings. Later I would aimlessly weave in and out of winding caliginous streets that kept going round in circles and bringing me back to the place I began from: I can’t write. I was such a law-abiding visitor that the authorities were planning to bestow an honorary citizenship on me and I was seriously perusing the possibility of accepting it.</span></i></span></p$1></p$1></div><p$1><div class="MsoNormal"><p$1><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span"></span><span class="Apple-style-span"></span><span class="Apple-style-span"></span></i></span></p$1></div><p$1><div class="MsoNormal"><p$1><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span">I was handing in my letter confirming my endorsement of the same when a visitor was announced. She walked right in and I was blinded for a moment. The crepuscular evening was suddenly aglow with the luminosity of her being and the gloomy inhabitants scurried to bury themselves deep in the city’s labyrinths to avoid her resplendent smile. Everything about her had always been golden and light: gold streaked, brown hair, warm caramel eyes and that smile. She dragged me through the corridors, talking nineteen to the dozen, holding my wrists in a death-like vise. As she yanked me she illuminated the streets I used to walk in despair and suddenly I saw new paths that could lead me out of the circle. She tore up my citizenship papers which then blazed aflame in her hands. The same hands that warmed my entire being with a simple touch and eliminated the cold and numbness I had accustomed myself to. She started ranting about the evils of the vacation I had taken and threatened to wallop me black and blue the next time I gave her the slip and bolted. The idea of her hitting anyone {non-violent soul that she is} made me break into convulsions of laughter; pure gleeful laughter the sound of which I had almost forgotten. She got us both out of the hell-hole I had created within me and I assure you I haven’t stopped smiling and she hasn’t stopped talking {she never does} at all since then. If you don’t believe me, try looking for the elusive dimple that only appears when I’m really smiling. She’s still working on blotting out the memory of ‘I can’t write’ and to look straight into the eyes of Miss dirty looks and give her a cool smirk. We are making progress.</span></i></span><br />
<p$1></p$1></p$1></div><p$1><div class="MsoNormal"><p$1><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span"></span><span class="Apple-style-span"></span><span class="Apple-style-span"></span></i></span></p$1></div><p$1><div class="MsoNormal"><p$1><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span">I just wanted to wish my blog a happy birthday and to thank You ‘Femme d’or’ who lit up my dark skies with a brilliant sun.</span></i></span><br />
<p$1><p$1></p$1></p$1></p$1></div><p$1><div class="MsoNormal"><p$1><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span">You truly are my </span></i></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Son</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span">shine.</span></i></span><br />
<p$1></p$1></p$1></div><p$1><div class="MsoNormal"><p$1><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span"></span><span class="Apple-style-span"></span></p$1></div><p$1><div class="MsoNormal"><p$1><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span"></span></i></span><br />
<p$1>Love</p$1></p$1></div><p$1><div class="MsoNormal"><p$1><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Falak</span></i></span></p$1></div><p$1></p$1></p$1></p$1></p$1></p$1></p$1></p$1></p$1></p$1></p$1></p$1></p$1></p$1></p$1>Falakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08321524864693512771noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2422455534268586898.post-49469105007261370202010-07-31T19:13:00.003+01:002010-12-19T16:07:04.028+00:00Blast from the Past<span style="font-size: large;"><em>Somehow my old poems just end up saving the day! I am upto my neck in work not only at college but at home too and thus end up neglecting my blog. And as icing on this messy, botched up {YET TASTY}cake called life I have decided to take up tuitions for a certain 23 year old girl from the coming week and the cherry on top is the upcoming french presentation I have which I still have to prepare for. This poem stands true for me with the same meaning and intensity that it did three years back. Hope you like it.</em></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #20124d; font-size: large;"><em>The End</em></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>How weird are the constraints of time</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>Which thus hold us back</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>That to make idle conversation</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>Of time we have lack</em></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>The breeze no longer I enjoy</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>In the rain I no more revel</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>No fault of mine it is for</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>On such innane pleasures I have no time to dwell</em></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>It’s ages since my feet</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>Has felt the grainy sand</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>For running I am always</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>Thus my feet hardly touch the land</em></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>Summer heat or autumn wind</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>Springtime cheer or wintry chill</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>Nowadays to me feel the same</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>I have no time to feel their thrill</em></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>In this constant hurdle race</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>A minute lost is a penny gone</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>Losers have no right to complain</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>Neither to look woebegone</em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
<em><span style="color: black;"></span></em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>The feel of a tree is a memory</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>Lost deep within the confines of my soul</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>In my life nowadays</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>Nature to play has no role</em></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>The warm bed, the waiting book</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>Are my companions of yore</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>Anything that isn't a matter of consequence</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>To me now is an eyesore</em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
<em><span style="color: black;"></span></em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>Healthy meals, friendly gossip</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>Has now in life no value</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>Months or years, I am not aware</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>Since I saw a fresh drop of morning dew</em></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>Gadgets are all around me strewn</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>They are my only existing associates</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>I think I now don’t even keep</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>In mind the visages of my playmates</em></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>Movies are a distant dream</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>My existence's ancient pleasure</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>Music is a bonanza</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>That my ears treasure</em></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>Fatigue is a climber</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>That around my body has coiled</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>Still I just don’t notice<br />
As in my work deeply I am embroiled</em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
<em><span style="color: black;"></span></em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>A fresh cup of home made juice</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>Is an age since I drank</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>In my blood stream now caffeine</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>Holds the highest rank</em></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>Of beaches and of roaring waves</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>Of gurgling streams of whispering lakes</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>Nothing I know as with water I am</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>Related only for the showers I take</em></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>Its ages since my hair</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>Has wildly flown around my face</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>For says the common etiquette </em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>That it better stay in its place</em></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>I earn and earn all the time</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>So for spending there is none left</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>I don’t know what life would mean</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>If of this money I am bereft</em></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>This override is taking its toll</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>Just as they told me it would</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>But no one understands that I would have tried</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>To battle it if I could</em></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>The only thought that gives me solace</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>Is that when my end approaches</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>Nature in the form of a wood pyre and the presence of loved ones</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em>Will give me company and wipe away all my reproaches</em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
<em></em></span>Falakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08321524864693512771noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2422455534268586898.post-54244275278080789472010-06-16T14:53:00.002+01:002010-12-19T16:07:04.028+00:00History repeats itself<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>Hi to all </em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>With the advent of the new academic year and playing simultaneously the roles of "Mother " and "Sister" to my little brother {who has come to India for his studies now} and the sudden graduation from 'Young Adult' to 'Responsible Adult' has made blogging a luxury I simply can't afford for a few weeks to come until my Mummy Dearest flies down and holds the fort. Somehow my conscience keeps chiding me about neglecting my blog that has helped me meet so many wonderful people and also explore my creativity. So as atonement I decided to post something I wrote way back in 2006 when I was just a little kid { not that I feel any older now}.</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>Hope that disclaimer prepares you for the childish philosophy it is filled with. Maybe, you might like it and maybe not, but do leave your comments. My 14 year old self is curious to know how people would respond to the 'ME' of the past.</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>Happy Reading</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>Falak</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
<em><span style="font-size: large;"></span></em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>EXPERIENCE</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
<em><span style="font-size: large;"></span></em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>My life is constant winter</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>Something I never realized</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>For I kept holding on to what were</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>Moments of my life that I prized</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
<em><span style="font-size: large;"></span></em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
<em><span style="font-size: large;"></span></em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>Those weren’t the spring days I thought them to be</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>Nor the summer nights with a full moon</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>They were just the sudden bouts of sunshine</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>That God bestowed on a cold and clouded winter noon</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
<em><span style="font-size: large;"></span></em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
<em><span style="font-size: large;"></span></em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>Those sunbeams that warmed my cold heart</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>So they did for a little time</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>Were just like the rain clouds that made a farmer</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>Hope that all things would be fine</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
<em><span style="font-size: large;"></span></em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
<em><span style="font-size: large;"></span></em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>The happiness that enveloped me</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>Knew no limits nor bounds</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>And such was the intensity of the cold wind</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>That was sharp, cutting and profound</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
<em><span style="font-size: large;"></span></em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
<em><span style="font-size: large;"></span></em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>The sunbeam that gave me joy then</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>And the chill that the sudden wind gave</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>Were the ones who in my life</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>The path to maturity pave</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
<em><span style="font-size: large;"></span></em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
<em><span style="font-size: large;"></span></em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>The spring I longed for always</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>If it came I never knew</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>But the wind that hurt me always</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>Never stopped and still ble</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
<em><span style="font-size: large;"></span></em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
<em><span style="font-size: large;"></span></em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>My strength lies in the cold wind</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>That made me forever strong</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>It blew forever in my ears</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>A meaningful long song</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
<em><span style="font-size: large;"></span></em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
<em><span style="font-size: large;"></span></em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>The sunbeams still keep coming</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>I simply let them be</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>For when I’m lone and cold all over</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>It’s only the wind that keeps me company</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
<em><span style="font-size: large;"></span></em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
<em><span style="font-size: large;"></span></em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>The warmth of the sunbeam I still love</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>But no longer do I depend on them</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>For now I’m the sturdy young tree</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>That grew a woody bark from its weather</em></span>-beaten, delicate stemFalakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08321524864693512771noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2422455534268586898.post-72841977885008322032010-05-09T20:25:00.009+01:002010-12-19T16:09:06.361+00:00Guess Who Came To Tea!<em><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: large;">“I’ll cook”, said I and saying so, very enthusiastically made my way into the kitchen to make Tomato soup or my version of what I thought it was. I am a decent enough cook and I know that if no one else will my brother for sure will vouch for my culinary skills. He'd better, after all the pastas, sandwiches and whatnots I made for him. I was busy chopping, sautéing, pounding, washing and marvelling at the joy cooking gives me. When I am on my cooking spree I am in what some people may refer to as ‘a state’. I tend to be overtly elated, boisterously jovial and am predisposed to overlook the little things around me. For instance how I came skipping out of the kitchen in high spirits balancing a plate full of humungous just washed tomatoes without realising that my uncle who had come home a few minutes back had brought a friend from work along with him. On becoming aware of the new person I sheepishly made my way back into to kitchen mentally admonishing myself for having made an accidental display of my crazy state. Once back in the kitchen I was in the company of my mother who was busy making potato bhajias. </span></em><br />
<em><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span></em><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<em><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Who’s that?” I asked her stirring my saucepan full of chopped garlic and onions. “He’s your uncle’s colleague, don’t you know him? He’s come here many a times before and likes your brother a lot!” replied mummy dearest. “Maaaaa” I drawled, “I don’t live here for most part of the year or have you forgotten that now?”</span></em><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<em><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: large;">My mother winked and gave me a lopsided smile. We then returned to our specific cooking chores. She went back to frying potato bhajias and I went back to sautéing onions. When the bhajias were done I went to serve the guests with a plate of the same come hot off the stove. The guest smiled fondly and said to my uncle “My daughter too is only as tall as she is”. I smiled sweetly and went back to my chopping at the same time listening to the conversation that ensued between my uncle and his friend. “Ahh, she is now, is she?” How old is your daughter?” and general things like that. Suddenly our guest states forlornly “Daughters grow up too quickly”, which my mother who came out of the kitchen with a fresh batch of bhajias affirmed saying “Yes, you’re absolutely right!</span></em><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<em><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: large;">Munching on bhajias my uncle filled in his friend about me, “She studies in India now, in Bombay. All of us go to India on vacation but this girl comes here to vacation!” and saying so they shared a laugh over my mixed up life.” </span></em><br />
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<em><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: large;">Listening to him speak I realised he was speaking in Urdu, so he had to be from someplace up North in India and most probably would be a Muslim. He confirmed my hunch by telling my uncle how the same bhajias are made at his house during Ramadan and how his daughter would make yummy kebabs. ‘There comes the daughter again” I thought smiling inwardly. I wondered how much the poor man must be missing home cooked food, his daughter and family who weren’t with him in the UAE ...</span></em><br />
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<em><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: large;">“These bhajias are really delicious!” said my uncle’s friend. “Please have some more, don’t hesitate”, persuaded my mother and uncle simultaneously at which our guest took a few more. He seemed to me to be a timid, gentle kind of person with his quiet and considerate countenance and soft spoken voice which had the exotic lilt indigenous to Urdu speaking persons, reminding me of my Pakistani friends from school. I offered him some juice to go with the snacks which he accepted after a lot of cajoling on our part. “Thank you Beta, God bless you” said he with a lot of feeling. He seemed like an amiable soul.</span></em><br />
<em><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: large;">As my mother and I were seeing my uncle and his friend off, we gave them a few more of the bhajias wrapped in tissue on their way out.</span></em><br />
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<em><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Oh please! There is no need for all this!” exclaimed our guest. “It’s okay, take some for the road.” We said.</span></em><br />
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<em><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: large;">Smiling he took it once again reiterating how delectable he found them and how wonderful our garden looked and it was such a pleasure to the eye to witness open green spaces in a country where you associate houses with cooped up flats. We thanked him and after waving them goodbye came back in. </span></em><br />
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<em><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Where is he from?” I asked my mother. “Kashmir” she said, busy scrubbing vessels. “Yeah, it’s kind of evident from the way he speaks and all.” I replied.</span></em><br />
<em><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: large;">“He’s from the Pakistani side of Kashmir, the one there, not the one in India”, my mom added. “Oh!” I mumbled lost in deep thought while my hands prepared the soup automatically.</span></em><br />
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<em><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: large;">I’ve known Pakistanis practically all my life. I’ve had best friends who are Pakistanis at some point of time in my school life or the other. I’ve shared food with them, sat on the same bench, gone on school picnics, cheered for our school houses, fought with them over India-Pak cricket matches, watched the same Indian movies and sang the same bollywood songs. Then at some point of time they opted for the International syllabus whereas I continued with the Indian syllabus. Then we lost touch and they became memories of my childhood. Having lived for the past 3 years in India they have become more of the arch enemies that most Indians in India who have never seen a Pakistani in flesh and blood consider them to be than the friends of my memories. </span></em><br />
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<em><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: large;">This particular visit from this man only enumerated certain facts I already was aware of but temporarily forgot.</span></em><br />
<em><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: large;">1) People across the border have daughters they dote on and miss like hell. </span></em><br />
<em><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: large;">2) They are reminded of Pakistani daughters when looking at an Indian girl the same age and not of daggers and knives. </span></em><br />
<em><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: large;">3) They behave like the perfect Indian guest: refuse some, thank a ton, bless a child. </span></em><br />
<em><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: large;">And the most important fact, </span></em><br />
<em><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: large;">4) They too love potato bhajias.......</span></em><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-size: large;"><em>Yours enjoying the Tomato soup and bhajias,</em> </span></span></span></span><br />
<em><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: large;">Falak</span></em>Falakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08321524864693512771noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2422455534268586898.post-50523978820842695002010-04-21T21:58:00.049+01:002010-12-19T16:07:04.028+00:00Webs<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>It is a grey morning today. A wet, quiet, grey Sunday morning with a possibility of thunder. The sun is on vacation; lost in a tangle of thick grey-brown clouds like sheets on a hot night. The rain has been playing games: drizzling, then disappearing, then pouring when it finally appears. Like you. So very like you. I am sitting on the window seat, the same place you and I would sit together to relish the rains: for me the wet green trees with dark brown-almost black barks, water gushing down their backs with their gleaming, fat leaves and the silence for you. The ‘silence of the rain’ you called it, even when it would pound on the tin sunshade above the window just like a rude stranger who wanted to barge in and craft a chasm between you and me. We couldn’t even hear our own thoughts.</em></span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em> I no more have that befuddled, exasperated look on my face reserved specially for your description of ‘The Silence’. My ‘babe in the woods’ expression that according to you said ‘give me a kiss and I’ll comprehend everything you just said’, the expression you loved. Now the rain brings with it my own brand of silence. A silence devoid of your laughter, your voice, your music, your breathing. There is a quiet now. The roaring rain has been subdued to a lazy drizzle and a lone plucky bird dares to call out, the same way I called out to you, begged you to stay back, the same way the trees endeavour to make the rains remain. But do they??? No, they don’t and then they go where they please with not a care in the world for the still thirsty trees they leave behind, alone and shivering, trembling, the howling wind echoing their agony. The rains taunt and tease them saying, ‘come along if you dare, if you care, if you love me.’ Tormented and despondent, enraged at such an affront, hurt at the occurrence of such a doubt they call to the winds and alleviate their misery forever. And so we saw many a broken tree after storms. Not this time though. So it’s okay. You’re here now, where I wanted you. Right where I can see you.</em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em> </em></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>A simple skid from a moist ladder on a rainy day when you decided to fix the sunshade before you left. You’re here now in the garden you loved so. Beneath the tree I love. </em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>As usual you were considerate to leave me with a gift. You bequeathed a memory of your love so that I won’t be lonesome because like you say lonesome monkeys don’t chatter. But I decided to be alone in the end, like that song that says ‘I’d rather just be alone if I know that I can’t have you’. </em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>So I gave the gift away to someone who’d treasure it much more than a <span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">solitary</span> me would. But it’s nearby, near me like you are, like you always will be.</em></span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>She walks out of her cottage into the rain kissed day: her dark tresses dancing in the wind, an envelope in her hand, wearing a long blood-red summer frock that clung to her in the the gossamery mist like a sin clings to a lie. </em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>There is music in the air. A stirring harmony of rustling leaves, the drumming pulse of the rain and the plat-plat of droplets dripping down the eaves. The wind whispers around her and a soft spray of rain riding on it embraces her in icy bliss; like, his kiss. The fragrance of the breeze: wet earth, musk and wood. His heady scent. </em></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>Overwhelmed she sits beneath the fire tree in an icy monsoon rain. A letter in one hand and a single blue rose in the other.</em></span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>After what seems like hours to the little boy looking from the window the lady in the garden from across his slowly gets up and walks back to her house. He thinks she’s pretty, with black hair and black eyes. Black like the crow he's scared of who'll come and peck him away if he doesn't have his mum-mum. He likes looking at her when she comes out in the rains. She only comes out when there is a thunderstorm. He knows because he always watches. Mesmerised the little boy continues to gaze at her until the white wooden fence dividing their properties and the rain drops on the window obscures his view of her. Until he's tired and wants go sleepy in his spidey blanket.....</em></span><br />
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</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em><span style="color: #999999; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Until his eye's are heavy and he sees a woman in red spinning a shimmering-shiny web... But spidey's a boy! And then the girl-spidey becomes his dreaded black cwow and then he's scared and starts crying </span>but then </em></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>his mama comes slowly into the room and grabs him and feathers him with kissies. He gurgles with joy, the little baby boy. Relieved, the toddler forgets all about spidey and bad cwows. Forgets all about one mama when secure in the arms of another.</em></span></div>Falakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08321524864693512771noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2422455534268586898.post-38904757135569450482010-03-31T15:37:00.004+01:002010-12-19T16:09:06.361+00:00THE SHINING<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>Imagine.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>A simple 7 lettered word, but very potent. A state of mind as well as a journey…..</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>For me the journey started almost 15 years back with simple bedtime stories.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>My dad would tell us stories; my brother and me. Bedtime stories for us didn’t mean being read out classic fairytales from books in English with glossy covers. I learnt to speak English when I started school and that is when I was introduced to The Princess Brigade and made friends with Cinderella, Snow White and the rest of them dainty damsels.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>My bedtime stories were about an African elephant; a brave elephant, who was the chief of his herd and lead them through a number of adventures through the dangerous and exciting jungles of Africa. Wrapped up in our blankets, snuggling close to our dad I remember begging him for a new story every night. All the poor man would have wanted to do I am sure is sleep his fatigue away but he’d never once turn away and go to sleep. He’d try and stall. Maybe tell us he’d say an interesting one tomorrow and to just sleep off the desire to hear one today but never once did he ever out rightly deny us a story telling session. Once tucked into our huge king sized bed dad would crawl in and ask “Ok, so what story do you want to hear tonight?”</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>The days the question never popped out of him were a sign of the extent of his exhaustion. Daddy really had to be bushed to refuse us a story.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>I loved the elephant. He was so brave, so courageous, so exotic. He also had children: baby elephants who’d lead the herd when they’d grow up. Lying their in our dark bedroom with moonlight streaming in and creating eerie shadows, my father’s silhouette visible against the muted moonlight and my brother kicking me between the sheets I used to imagine in my mind’s eye the thick jungles of Africa and the enormous rivers that meant so much to these elephants. I used to imagine them migrate from dry, parched lands of their forefathers destroyed by wily, selfish human beings and go in search of greener pastures. Their brave escapades, scraps with lions {Wow!} which they obviously won and their ability to make medicines out of wild herbs for every wound possibly imaginable was riveting enough to keep me thinking late into the night, imagining. The days daddy did go to sleep I’d stay awake in bed thinking of the myriad situations possibly thinkable in a young child’s head. I’d imagine how the planet would have been before the arrival of humans and bleep: all mankind would vanish and a desert would remain in my head. Then I’d wonder what the universe looked like without earth and suddenly an image of all the planets revolving around the sun with the earth conspicuously missing would emerge. Then I’d try to imagine what everything would have looked like before the universe and then everything would just black out in my head. Then I’d screw my eyes shut tight, in concentration, trying to imagine something other than black because black is a colour and well, you only have colours in the universe not outside it. Then I’d get a terrible headache and fall asleep.</em></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em></em></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>My father is an extraordinary story teller. I don’t say this just because he’s my father but because he really does have the knack to put across a story. His narratives were and still are always detailed. How the forest looked, the time of the day, the noises around, how the elephant looked with acute details regarding physical and emotional characteristics of the protagonists. It aided my effort to imagine, to recreate what he was imagining inside my head. He is also adept {as many who know him well, especially my mother would agree} at spinning yarns of a bizarre variety. You can call them fabrications, tall tales, lies excuses, whatever. The fact was that no one can come up with situations and reasons like he can, with the snap of a finger. It would seem almost natural, like a reflex action, the speed at which he would come up with stuff as if it was all there stored up in his head.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>The best part about our tale-telling session was that not a single story I heard from him was in English. Not one. It was always in my mother tongue which is anything unlike English. My African elephants spoke my mother tongue.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>The days my mother would come to put us off to sleep we’d be assured of a good laugh the next day. My mom was and is a working mom and works twice as hard as other moms. So that implies she’s twice as tired and that means she falls asleep twice as fast when she hits the pillow. While putting us off to sleep she’d be the first to doze off and relentless requests for a night time fable would result in disjointed sentences about</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>“There was a lion who was the king of the jungle…. Silence….. Mommy ? Hmph…. Yeah, he went to war and got hurt…..Mommy? {accompanied by a nudge in the ribs} Hmmmm…. And did you sweep the kitchen? The sink needed washing….you didn’t?”</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>Somehow the fact that household chores haunted my mothers dreams tickled me so much that I’d burst into peals of laughter with my brother which we’d later manage to smother, in an attempt to not wake up our drained mother.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>My mother’s claim to fame was the letters she wrote: reams and pages of it to my grandmother who then lived away from us in India. I would always hear {and still do} my relatives exclaim in awe about her detailed descriptions and fluency of language. She is still the epitome of beautiful handwriting in our family. Funny thing is that she wrote my Gran in English who’d then have it translated by one of her nieces or nephews. </em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>My Gran too is not far behind on the concocting- stories- front. The best part about having my Gran tell you a story, a real life incident or the episode of a show you missed is that by the time she tells you all of it there will be a lot of additions and deletions to suit her tastes. A lot more ‘masala’ would be the appropriate term. Even her emotions and reactions are always excessive to the action that triggers it in the first place. I always felt that she would have done very well as an actor. My dad thinks that if we’d sent her into movies or serials {and in Indian movies and serials emotional mothers always play an important role and capture the hearts of audiences} we’d have become millionaires by now. For my Gran everything has to have drama and be melodramatic; even emotions. Else life is never fun.</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>The best thing about mom was she was a book worm: an avid, voracious reader. I still remember her entire collection of books which I wasn’t meant to read since they ‘were books for big people’. </em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>To oblige my curiosity she got me some of my own. It started with baby editions of Jack and the Beanstalk, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, moving on to my favourite: - Enid Blyton. The first time I read her collection of short stories I felt I’d get a headache {I felt the same when I read Harry Potter for the first time, so you can imagine} but soon I was fast friends with gnomes, pixies, fairies, elves and friendly witches. I had images, of what I thought they’d look like burnt into my brain accompanied by my deductions of what the English landscape looked like. From then on there was no looking back and thus started my lifelong affair with books. </em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>I’ve moved on since Enid Blyton and my African elephants and grown up enough to realize that not all mythical creatures actually fit my description of them and that the African elephants were a part of a series of stories my daddy learnt way back in school. Then somewhere along the lines I wrote a song, some short stories in school, and few bizarre essays about magical women in red who haunted empty woods riding a white horsed sleigh, and a rabbit who was given a secret treasure by a wood nymph {I am not sure if it was a wood nymph} and things like that and then came poetry…..</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>My father and mother are regular people doing regular 9-5 jobs, rearing two kids and trying to achieve the dreams most normal people have like buying a house, educating their children the best they can and being good human beings. My grandmother was one among the many young widows who raised three kids on their own and raised them well. There is nothing spectacular or exaggerated about them but for me they are raconteurs, authors and actors. They have something within them that shines through and reflects on me and the things I do or love to do. Maybe they never thought much of it and no one else did too because they were simple, unexciting behaviours. But it’s their ‘shining something’ that lighted up new avenues for me.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>We all have that something we don’t think really matters but I think we should stick to doing things we love or things that come automatically and is second nature to us. Maybe it takes someone else to recognize the light that shines within us and find us special. Perhaps our little ‘shinings’ are there within us to provide light to others. </em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>Yours, trying really hard to recollect what the African elephant’s name was.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>Falak</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><em></em></span></span>Falakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08321524864693512771noreply@blogger.com19