All’s Well That Ends Well

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.

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.

Incidents world over have proved that having a pair of ovaries and mammary glands each aren’t your best assets. The Anglican Church doesn’t want Bishops with them and drunk, sleazy vagabonds in India apparently aren’t getting enough of them.

There isn’t a lot of difference between Indian and British politics. The colonial connection is as clear as day. It’s crazy.

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.

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?

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.

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…

On the personal front,

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.

Ballet is… an experience. I highly recommend it. As is living on your own.

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.

Once a literature student, always a literature student.

Writing. Snorts, sniggers. Just one word- blog archives.

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.

Dear 2013, please replicate the pleasant surprises of 2012, let news writing involve more happy 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”.

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 this one. 

Falak                                     

PS: Happy New Year :D

Up above the world so high

To and fro. To and fro.

The never ending, velvety blanket of inky black stretching above. The same blue-black around, beside and behind.

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.

Hearing nothing, but the whoosh of the wind rushing into your ears; past you ; after you ; with you - a whispering, stalking presence.  

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 the diminutive person’s antics; at it sparring with the wind; at.... the wind.

You can almost hear it grumble affectionately at the wind. The wind with all its wily ways.

                   H

            G

        I

 H

I see a carpet of fairy lights spread out beneath me, whirlwind in my tummy.

L

    O

        W

The impenetrable cloak of the firmament.

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.

The eye of my heart 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.

                         h

                   g

                i

How  h                    can I go?

                                                   A spinning top in my stomach.

Everything is slave to the wind. Even the formidable mountain, whose winding paths are full of curvy secrets and secret hairpin curves.
Seduced by its murmurs moving in sway to its rhythm I see with my watery eyes

Blue lights

                       Yellow lights

White lights

                        Red lights.

Will my hair touch the ground if I bend backwards and my feet the sky?

Now, I’m moving parallel to a silken black shroud.  Albeit, one covering the alive.

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......

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.

That one looks like a crocodile.

                                                      That one there, a lot like a human face.

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.

........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.

Churning, spinning, heaving, flitting......

With a vitality of its own.

The wind pushing us: the swing and me

High

Whirling in my tummy,  so I screw my eyes shut and squeal with glee.  Can’t see anything except the patina of warm yellow.

Now I only hear. And feel

            Low

Toes scraping the ground.

Laughter in the background-maybe, there’s an age limit to do this.

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.

Perhaps, I’m just giddy. Giddy but happy.  

Up

Creaking chains.

 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?

Down

Legs pumping the air, kicking the wind out of it, and laughing; because I have been right from the start.

To

Up above the world so high

Fro

Diamonds at my feet. Not in the sky.

On the mountain tops,

Swinging it in style.

Falak

Exam Time Musings

Every time I appear for an exam I’m always appalled by how much information the human brain manages to cram and retain.

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.

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’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 -“O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo”. 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^rd or 4^th 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^th 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.

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.

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. 

Until the next set of exams I’ll go back to taking my brain and nervous system for granted.

Falak

Starting Over

If you thought I gave up writing and blogging altogether, I'm glad to announce that you're wrong :D.

I just had some pressing matters to deal with before they'd press me into a quicksand of problems.

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

Starting Over

Sometimes.   

Sometimes she finds it very difficult to write.

When she puts pen to paper,

Thoughts fracture into vapour

Gliding past her, away from her,

                         

Floating above:  clouds that seem

Touchable if only you could tiptoe a little higher.

Like the memory of something, a taste 
devoid of a name to chew on; eyes that gleam

Open into frozen, depthless hollows.

They stand impassive: a twin watching the other.

Not to assist but to scoff, “You think we are

Worth a fraction of eternity, of someone’s precious

 Moment in time?  Relics that gather

Human ken amassed over a million years,

In a concentrated heartbeat?”  She mutters

“Maybe....” and it dies in their face of incredulity.

Resonance of trepidation in her voice, she flutters

Between a yes and a no. “Why not?” with renewed

courage she enquires. They announce

“Look at our construct. Tasteful phrases, sophistication

Of design, erudite allusions: are these the terms you would

Outfit us in?” “Perhaps....” “And yet, uncertainty

Colours your utterances.”, cutting off her contention

Into shards of probing silence.

“I trust in your merit above mine. I do”. They contort

Into a leer. “We are a likeness, a shade, a shadow,

A silhouette without essence, reflecting you. Only as 

Credible, as you are. You us I me they we, better not

To be. No questioning our ineffectuality."

Came the rejoinder echoing, debilitating the hope that

Nourished her dreams.  Empty, unending, vacuous, void. Until,

She traced her course back to the beginning-parchments

From the past inked with wit, crossed anew with faith  ,

And smudged with feeling, pregnant with possibilities,

Giving birth to a chuckle, the ghost of a smile

Somewhere. “Beauty is as beauty does, and you are stirred

Up from tranquil passion, making you me us

Worthwhile."

Shoring these fragments of hope against her ruins, she sighs and starts again.

Last Friday Night

I came home at around 4:00 pm. As I entered the house my brother welcomed me with irritated looks.

“Thanks a lot for coming this early. I was supposed to go to my friend’s place to study.”  Unplugging the ipod earphones from my ears I said, “You should have messaged me, Sanju. I can’t dream that you were waiting for me to arrive to leave the place”

“I can’t leave her on her own can I? She’s in bad shape”, he declared.

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.

“Alright you can leave now that I’m here.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.”

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.

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.

Long story short research for exams and journal never happened.

I felt like crying and banging my head against a wall.

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.

My classmates; editors of the journal can set 7^th 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.

Bev is constantly texting me about starting research work while eating Dosas her mom made for her.

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 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.

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.

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.

Falak.

Two To Tango

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.

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.

How on earth is a blogger supposed to wish his/her blog a happy birthday? A most confounding problem this is, I must say.

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.

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. Writers blog

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. The Good, bad and the ugly. It isn't worth the effort when only the Ugly remains.

I had a problem with people’s opinions about anybody's dusky complexion. I hardly have time to worry over petty ideals of beauty now so I care less about it but I still do. The Sisterhood of Strawberries and Chocolates.

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. A Thousand Times Over

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.  Right Angle

I thought youngsters doing drugs needed help and they could come out of the mess they’re in. I still do. 

High Strung

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. Sibling Mail Order

Unity in diversity is still the foundation on which India stands. But I fear I see it cracking up slowly day by day. Bangles All The Way

I still enjoy the small things in life. It’s the big things that I’ve yet to come to terms with.  Sweet Nothings

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.   The Shinning

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. Webs

Pakistani’s are human beings. There are myriads of kinds of people in every country, not just India. 

Guess Who Came to Tea

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.  

Ardently Fervently Selflessly Selfishly 

I miss my family a lot still. Even though this is the fifth year running that I’m away from them. Percieve-r-ance

 Birthday wishes will and have to work. They just seem to take an awfully long time. I could really use a wish right now

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. Road.Rage.Rules

Children are the father, mother and everything else possible  of mankind. Wordsworth knew what he was talking about. Different Strokes

I haven’t stopped losing things, but I‘ve stopped letting them affect me. Sort of. The Inheritance of  Loss

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.

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.

 I'm hoping that the tango is complicated.

Falak

Tu m’as manqué

I missed you.

Sweet sounding words that make you feel marvellous like no other three worded sentence can, maybe except ‘ I love you’ but that has become so common place, now every random affection felt towards another living creature is expressed in terms of love.

The privilege of being missed....

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

Since I’ve spent most of this post rambling on about being missed I’d like to now mention what I missed the most.

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.

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.

But I still don’t get why the French have to say 'you missed me' for 'I missed you' and then say what it actually means is 'you were missed by me'. It's another story that it sounds better the convoluted way.

Falak