I love...

I love the way you look at me every morning when I raise from bed,

Love how you remember the morning kiss, like a ritual unsaid.

I love how it's just a hand clasp sometimes or a bone-crushing hug,

Love how just a text be it and my day-long grin of blissful smug.

I love how you pretend to not notice yet know when something's changed,

Love how you call it sweet insanity when others think I'm deranged.
I love how even before I hear the voices in my head, you read my mind,
Love how you let me be and free, even when they bind.

I love how you defend me when I go all self critical,
Love how you see in me 100 things otherwise to criticize.
I love how you show you don't try yet you give in your all,
Love how I don't hate you even when I hate you don't call.

I love how you feel my arm, forgetting people are watching,
Love how you hold me when tears leave me gasping.
I love how we're so different, yet the very same,
Love how you know when to wild me up and when to tame.

I love how you love me, unlike in poems or songs.
Love how you ease me out of all my wrongs.
I love how seamlessly yet, you complete me each time.
Love how you make me thoughtful and then make such silly rhymes.

Almost Perfect...

I bask in wonder today, either you know perfectly what a woman wants to hear or what you say because you say, becomes perfect for my too eager ears.

How do you know what I want you to say when I don’t know myself what it is that I want to hear?

How do you manage to ruffle without a touch, say it all without saying much?

If I could just tell you how your words affect me, where oh where would I hide my face flushed in coy shame?

If you would know they have the power to hold me, how would you resist the ensnare?

If you had some idea of how long something you said can stay in my head, would you say it more or sparingly so?

And some days when you walk with me gently holding my hand, whispering sweet nothings, I walk over the mist with your words like a soft breeze playing with my tresses. Every step redeeming me as though I own the ground I tread on, I fly higher than the birds and feel lighter than the frothy cloud and I breach my own horizons.

For when your reason to smile, smiles at you, you smile at the world.

I don’t know then what I like more-to want to need you or to want you to need me like you do.

I ask you of what you think, you smile and say, “What happens in the mind, stays in the mind!” I beam back at the games you play.

And some days I see you as the question and some days as the answer...

And some days you call me the poetry and some days you transform me into a poet...

And some days I become your thirst and some days you leave me so thirsty...

From a Friend-zoned Lover

Dear love,

I write to you today in extreme pain-an unnamed ache, a recurring twinge that dreads breaking out in tears, an excruciating spasm running through my body for my insides have been jolted by the throbbing of the heart. Ah, heart! How condescending I have been towards you-mocking all those who allow you to rule the rest of the systems. And now you are all whose presence I feel inside as my blood rushes in frenzy.

Nobody notices but when with you, you are all I notice. It’s like the world relegates to a backdrop as a mumbling sound, emanating from miles away where the traffic honks in the by lanes and men and women of everyday life, yank their way into some bargain.

I see you and I see me. I feel you and I feel life. Every giggle that erupts from your beautiful mouth goes straight to find an echo in my head. Every twinkle in your eyes sparkles through my mind’s vision, when in my own solitude I rest. I can tell even without looking at you how each curve of your body bends. I have watched you from years going in and out of relationships with men who think you are an object of love. I wait for you to see how I deem you as love itself.

How many hours I spend looking at you telling me animatedly about the way your day went while in my psyche-I play with your twirling tresses as you in blissful oblivion vent out the mundane, lying your petite head on my chest; or run my eager fingers over your smooth, unblemished skin hoping to see your lips quiver and hands tremble in nervous excitement! 


How many times when you casually hold my arm as we edge our way through a buzzing market place and suddenly a veil of silence falls all around and hushes! Do you notice me freeze by your mere touch or the goose bumps that reveal what I have perhaps managed to conceal?

I have loved you from years now-from the day I met you and when we were seeing different people. From the day we broke up with them and each other were the first ones we saw again. I have desired you every time you called to cry those deep eyes out because foolish boys cause them to blur when they deserve to open up like blooms in spring time. I have hungered for you even when you kept falling in love again and again and I sat there a cruel witness to your enthusiasm, wishing with every atom in my body that it were me that had you so stirred.

Silly girl, can’t you see these men love you for your body? Don’t you get immune to the same kind of tricks of the smooth talkers who walk into your heart with base praise to walk all over you eventually? How random can a woman’s heart be to flutter with such inconsistency? I gave you time for that’s all you wanted from me perhaps. I gazed with bated breath for any signs that would tell I would be next and also may be the last one. I yearned for you to see how unconditional came the love I bottled in my frame and corked it up with permanence so that every drop can quench your insatiable thirst to be cherished with unrivalled passion.

You know how I feel. You know we are not joking when we indulge in mock pretending to be a couple for we are weary of finding the perfect ones. Yet you turn an indifferent eye every time we are so close that I can hear you breathe and feel you take my breath away. You don't want me to go like it pleases you...you don't allow me to stay like it pleases me. And when you embrace my body with such casualty, it cuts across whatever of me is left after being in your arms even so momentarily.

I want you now, not for a while, not to come and go but to stay. You leave me like the parched land that sees the sight of a frothy black, rain cloud but some wanton wind drives it away. I don’t want to be the shoulder you cry on but the chest that feels your heartbeat when you press into it with wild abandon. I am no longer going to be your daddy that you run to with your problems. 

And since you feel you can’t see me THAT way, I guess you should not see me in any way at all. Let me walk away while there is still hope for salvaging of whatever’s left of me. Let me go, while I still have to capacity to love again, someone who would have the audacity to love me back like I deserve to. This is the last good bye. I hope you find the love that your heart aspires for and I hope I find the strength to never turn back again.

In love with you always though not in you anymore,

The Friend-zoned Me.   

P.S. I have kinda lost it for writing and a little weary of the blogosphere. Forget reading you wonderful people, I haven't even been able to reply back to comments. I guess, I would drop in here whenever and if I have something really worthwhile to say or vent. I would understand if you do not comment. This post is also dedicated to a special friend who has been lovingly, generously poking me to write ever since I stopped. Thank you (.)

The End!

All her life or whatever of it she could remember, Pranita had waited for her daughter’s distress to come to the brink. But today when her limp body lay so unresponsively in her arms, a peaceful pallor dispersing on the mute face, the hapless mother could sense the tears rolling down her own cheeks but a complete numbness within. She had thought she would be strong to face this whenever it would inevitably come-but what strength can tower a crumbling edifice? They say a peaceful death of a suffering soul is God’s way of justice-it conquers all. Why did it make Pranita feel shackled still and cheated yet again?

Her little baby was standing at the heaven’s edge that knew no bodies nor minds and the sufferings thereby created by the web of earthly life. She was now a soul that would no longer be stared at by the world that oscillated between crudely calling her ‘handicapped, retarded or paagal’ and more sophisticatedly ‘mentally challenged’. Her little Sonya, all of sixteen by years on the calendar and barely two by growth of mind, had passed to the oblivion, to the land of no return and today Pranita held her the tightest, like she had never before. 

She remembered the days when she had to, to calm the almost violent little body, rudely stirred by helplessness or fear. Sonya was born a beautiful, pink child to Pranita and Subodh after three years of their love marriage. She was troublesome and less responsive than most children but nothing that the doctors did not term “normal”. It would be difficult to pin down the exact moment in time when she traversed the “abnormal” genre. Some say it was the overdose of antibiotics by a "qualified" doctor that sealed the fate of the vulnerable child, others blame it on wrong vaccination and some more ‘enlightened’ ones raise fingers at the fact that her mother did not stretch out flat on her bed during the dreaded solar eclipse.

By the time Sonya became three what was just a speculation-a nagging fear, became an incorrigible verity that she was a “special” child. An epilepsy attack at the age of five worsened whatever minuscule evidence of progress was triggered, leaving her left side in paralysis and pushing her into a semi-coma for almost a year, frustrating the child who just lay staring at the ceiling. Thereafter she was out of school and cramped within the four walls as her physical deformity became more evident and her actions unsuitable for public bearing.

Pranita recalled every excruciating torment that she had faced in the last sixteen years-it was as though life had been churned out from her in slow doses. She had been used to of a fast-paced corporate vivacity and waiting for her toddler to grow up quickly so she could return to the mainstream and gather the remnants of her sagging career as a journo. Little did she know that the light of her life would remain at two forever-never would she tell if she wanted to pee and sometimes roam in her panties soiled with shit, soon making Pranita’s life one. The rounds to parlours and late night parties had slowly distorted into a series of doctor visits, getting check-up reports and medication and worst of all-controlling a girl who had the strength of a teenager and whims of an infant. She could barely leave the home or allow the doors to be left open for fear of the outsides coming in.

Pranita unwittingly felt the scar on her forehead again-a brutal cut made by the sharp edges of a flower vase that Sonya had hurled at her because she she was being made to get up after bed wetting. It was not just a blemish on her physical being but a pain that perhaps reached up till her entrails and gnawed every impulse, every instinct. It would never fade and disappear.

With teenage on the threshold had come newer problems-the girl began her periods and howled at the sight of blood. The doctors brought in more injections, poked into her plump frame, so that the monthly cycles were curbed. Her now persistent screams would reverberate through the almost dead corners of their flat, making even the neighbours shudder. Friends had trickled their associations, acquaintances made sure they remained just that and the relatively strangers could not help but wag their tongues and warn others to stay away from the “evil” house.

But Pranita had held strong-looked into the eyes of every stare she received and played dumb to every taunt that filtered through to her ears. Gossip vines were even abuzz that Subodh had a mistress in another town for which he remained on tours for two thirds of a month. He had been empathetic at first-after all it was his sperm that upshot it all. But such is the terrible countenance of diseases that it makes chickens of even the strongest. Before long statements like, “I can’t bear to see this, it breaks my heart” floated in the air and he would walk out to get a breather-the breathers that soon seemed to be found only outdoors and which slowly choked Pranita for often she felt the walls closing in and no one even to hold her hand. The father-the protector, the guardian had shown how spineless he was, taking the easy route out to let the mother wear the pants, not bothering if they constrained her spirits.

Pranita wiped the tears from her eyes that had just flashbacked the whole of her torture. Was it an hour or more since she held the dead body of what was once her life? She lifted Sonya with all the strength she could muster in her own fragile frame and rested her on the bed. In the almost ominous silence of the room, Pranita viewed herself in the mirror opposite the master-bed. Could she recognize the object staring back at her for she did not feel like a person anymore? What happened to her beauty that was once her pride? When was the last time she gazed at the mirror for so long? And those trickling strands of white hair around her forehead, did they develop this morning, born when Sonya stabbed her nurse’s arm with the scissors while the poor woman only tried to inject her with the medications? Oh boy, how the nurse had ran out for her dear life, the third one, in this quarter!

Pranita removed the vial and the injections from the side table and threw them in the dustbin. Those things looked ugly whether they were wrapped in polythenes signifying their purity or discarded in the bin with tainted, twisted tips. The doctor had given those with extremely specific instructions- “Not more than 5 ml to calm her down and only in emergencies, Pranita. Anything more and it could be fatal.” Pranita had injected 5 ml down Sonya’s body-not once, but thrice, emptying all the three emergency packs and kissed Sonya as she became drowsy and then went to sleep. She had held her tightly to her breast feeling the heart beat fainting as the minutes passed and soon there was no sound-none what so ever, reverberating in her ears or mind. Silence so strong that if it were a sword it could pierce through the air slicing it irrevocably!

Now that the action was done the reaction took over like greedy hounds chomping the limelight-Have I done it for her or have I done it for me? Did I want her to be released from her mind numbing fears or was I placating my own soul jarred by the cacophony of her perpetual screams? While she lived like the dead each hour, her mother died like the living each day! Am I fit to be called a mother-was I ever?  She picked up her mobile to call Subodh, in a meeting yet again at 11 pm, to tell him that Sonya's ailment finally got the better of her. She was removing the garbs of responsibility but little did she know that garbs of guilt were waiting on the aisle to wrap her tight-had perhaps already become her second skin! Were the noises finally over or have they only just begun?

P.S. This is a work of fiction based on the case facts of a brave young woman whose daughter is undergoing such a sad condition by a cruel twist of fate. It is absolutely shuddering for me to think what she goes through each hour and every day. Let’s pray that no mother should face such such an endless pain ever.

I love it for I love you

I love it when I tell you the shirt you bought so lovingly without me, is just about okay and you rarely wear it again.

When I get up from the bed and you pull over my pillow to keep it under your arm with pure pleasure etched on your countenance.

I love it when sometimes I laugh harder so that I won’t cry and you laugh with me but hold me the next instant.

When I act like a child and you don’t do the same and when I behave too mature, you bring out the child within.

Love it when you ask me what I would like to get on my birthday in a surprise situation.

When you won’t take me to a restaurant again for it is ripping expensive but book me the best of spas on our next vacation.

I love it when you smile, watching me glare at you for over tipping the waiter,

Or when I ask you to take me out and you cannot as you are busy but message ‘I am sorry’, minutes later!

When you call me just like that, just when I am not expecting, just when it is most needed.

I love it how I feel like closing my eyes hearing your sweet nothings and opening them with a brush of your lips on my lids.

When you touch my arm, even when we are among people, for you forget things when my skin is that close.

When I force you to click pictures of me and you smile at my insane pose!

Love it when you never bother to give me a compliment but when I sit down to get even a little self-critical, you vehemently deny it all.

When you forget to switch on the I-pod when you take your I-pod and me for a stroll!

I love it when just by hearing my ‘hello’ on the phone you can make out if I have just got up or caught a cold or if I feel like shouting.

When you pitched in for my policy instalments but just on a whim, made me pay for our movie outing.

 

I love it when you hold my palm in a crowded place just as nonchalantly as though you are guiding a three-year old and then when I am sick, you grasp my hand sitting by my bed side as tenderly as though you’d be holding a prized trophy.

When I go out of breath yapping about my own stories and stop short and you still ask me to go on for you were enjoying it.

Or when I check out another guy and you say he’s not worth it not because you are jealous but because you think he is not my type.

I love it when I take so long to select between two outfits, ask your opinion and eventually show my inclination towards one and you defend it as the better out of the two.

When I put my head on your shoulder while we watch a movie or when we travel in a plane for I get dizzy.

I love it how you enjoy with my parents even more than I do.

When you bear my friends whom you can’t bear and don’t mind when I don’t do the same for you.

I love it when I fight with you and you make me say sorry in the end and bring me a big chocolate after a tussle sometimes when I refuse to bend!

I love it for I love you!

Adopt, Adapt, Adept!

Love at First sight!

And this month we complete a full year of having Seeya in our lives-a year which on reminiscing was one, that sometimes went by in a jiffy and at other times I remember turning around and questioning, ‘What, it’s just been a month since!’

For those of you who have joined me late-Seeya is my adopted daughter and we got her into our arms at exactly 5 p.m. a year back on 13^th July, 2010. She was then a tiny, timid looking bundle that was relatively quiet yes, appearances can be deceptive and somewhat lost when she entered the household and met all eager faces ready to welcome and pamper her. She spent the first few hours observing with thorough amusement the seemingly circus of our friends and relatives, enfolding before her and then around 9-ish, we heard the first of the later very regular and louder of blood curdling screams and wailing.

The first day dazed look

‘Oh my god’, I had thought! She misses the familiar hands of those who nurtured her for her first seven months. What if this is a mistake? What if she continues to cry and does not stop? What if she does not like the feel of having me next to her? I had spent the whole of that night with one eye awake and at this point it is almost a habit now. My journey began on an apprehensive and pressurized note-I had to make this work as I had taken up the cause-come what may!

When we had decided to go in for adoption, contrary to popular beliefs, my main concern was not where the baby came from or what religion would she be of or that should we not want a male child instead or why did the mother leave the infant. Neither did I think that this baby would be any different from one that would have come out of my own womb. These thoughts did not transpire in my mind even fleetingly. My main concern was-would she accept me as a mother? Would I be able to do justice to a child that is being handed to my care unconditionally?

My life for thirty two years prior to Seeya, had set into a routine that made me very less answerable to anyone except myself. I was fulfilling all my duties and with the rest of my time I was gratifying all my desires with all possible indulgences-teaching, blogging, shopping, travelling, gyming, meeting up friends for movies and outings. This was not a giant leap for the child who barely crawled-it was more so for me, almost like going to the moon. I wondered if I would be able to fit into the mould of a traditional and sacrificing mother, the kind that I always saw being reflected in my own mom. At the risk of sounding vain, let me just say I have surprised myself in the last one year although also occasionally admonished and sometimes self-shaken like a cough syrup bottle!

There is something in that word ‘MOTHER’ that binds two souls-one who calls it and the one to whom it is addressed. It brings in a magical attachment and the feeling I guess is mutually beautiful-when you hear a child cry out ‘mamma’ in her sleep as though she knows you would make her safe and when little ears hear someone say it is okay and cuddling her heartbeat close and tenderly.

I had pondered for a long while over baseless worries like what if she went to others’ arms more willingly like may be mothers around me who had brought up children. There must be some special charge about natural mothers that children get drawn to-something that comes with pregnancy perhaps and the waiting period of nine months. Did I miss on that which would cost me dearly?

Thereby there must be a latent organism or arrangement within the body that excreted exceptional amount of patience into a female system so that she would smile even if the baby woke and cried every half an hour of the night for half a year non-stop, even when it would have loose motions extending to a score or took one hour despite a dark room and pin drop silence to be put to sleep whenever tried. And when Seeya mouthed words like ‘papa’ and ‘umbrella’ before “mummy”, I could almost see my worst fears being realised.

I always and sometimes still do considered myself as non-motherly types. I was most decidedly convinced that there exist a plethora of genes that are preordained to different individuals variedly- the study genes, marriage-genes, mother-genes, arranged/love marriage-genes, business/service sector genes and the likes. And hence some are suited to a particular environment and others scuffle in the same like penguins brought to the equator.

I have had my share of struggles. I gave up on my social life and round the clock became a permanent fixture before Seeya’s big, beautiful eyes. I took a sabbatical of one month from teaching which left me with nothing else to do than hover around her like a relentless bee over a juicy flower. With the absence of domestic help to come to rescue for a long while I was managing the show single-handedly and the biggest positive that emerged out of it was- I had lost three kgs of weight in the first month, although along with a little bit of my mind too. Also the fact that my beloved’s super hectic work schedules till 10 p.m. and my mother-in-law’s social and television-al commitments saw no dip, escalated my woes nope, she is neither a social worker nor a television actress.

However, seeing so many people in the joint family on and off made her extra demanding as she would get bored of anything/everything and any one person within fifteen minutes and get cranky to necessitate more. Within a few months I seemed to have aged a few years, more so in mind than in body. I was losing the inclination to mingle with friends for we had no place to leave back the little one, with a relaxed mind and I had nothing significant to contribute to enjoyable conversations except garnish them with my cribbing to make it indigestible.

I sometimes felt hawk eyes were watching me intently waiting for me to err and in this delusion perhaps I had given so much of myself that I often felt little remained within me. I lived in the perpetual scare in the first half year of having her that someone someday would turn around with a pointing finger and say ‘She is not so good a mother, as the child is not born of her’. It made me burn the midnight oil also midday, noon and evening oil with a ferocity hitherto unknown to my placid existence. I would rarely let her off my sight as a result of which she rarely wants me now to go out anywhere minus her or be ready for hell being raised of tantrums and another night of sleep cruelly slaughtered when I return even from an occasional movie. In the last twelve months, we have been for just seven night outs without Seeya yes, I keep a count, comes handy in emotionally blackmailing the beloved!

There were days when I would ask other mommies, if they had really had it so tough or was Seeya an extraordinarily gifted troublesome baby. Turned out that it was a mix of both! She has mischief written perhaps with invisible ink on every pore of her body. She clings to me like a baby monkey to its mother. She has understood that she just has to shriek in her jarring volume, worse than Sunny Deol’s spine-tingling yells and she would get absolutely anything, for everyone runs to save their ear drums than save the child from getting spoilt and pampered. She is a smart one with tear drops waiting at the edges of her eyes to make sudden and super frequent public appearance its the days of publicity my friends and although one year and seven months old-she still does not sleep non-stop at nights for more than two hours at a stretch and sometimes breaking even in between to make us hear those cries as though we’d perish out of missing them so much!

However, all said and done, life does settle! Perhaps despite all my claims then, I really wasn’t prepared for motherhood, or the fact that I would have to do it all alone. And how does one prepare anyways-you can’t get the neighbours infants for three days of trial to your house to see if you’d survive it and live to tell, can you? The system gradually adopts, adjusts and adapts. I no longer care about being judged by others for I know my daughter cannot be without me even for a few hours, which by the way is something I sigh upon too sometimes.

I am slowly trying to get back vestiges of my erstwhile soul-meeting people, facebooking, blogging though still not able to take care of my shape as much as the mirror would prefer me to or impart my knowledge cells as much as the students would like me too. But the tightest bear hug from her and the genuinely nautanki smile makes me forget about anything deficient anywhere.

Seeya is a unique child-she can mouth rhymes to sing of Sheila and Ready to recognize the names, songs, ads and people and pronounce complicated things like helicopter, octopus, dinosaur, hiccup and yawning. She runs around me calling “mamma, mamma” like in the ‘mute-off’ version of the Hutch puppy ad. She does drama even more than I can possibly fathom to contrive despite my Drama Queen Title and nakhras that would put Begum Akhtar to shame. She is destined for great things, I just know it somehow. When she would lower her tone and marinate it with the yummiest of hug and say ‘mamma’ with her soulful eyes looking at me...it feels like heaven to say the least although it takes very little to cross on to the other side of the fence too.

So one year down the line, I have come to a conclusion which is generally what I come to, when I get too tired of thinking -Adoption is simple, parenting is difficult and well guided parenting is the easiest. To love a child as your own is not tough, to love a child despite yourself is. A child opens vistas in a person that are hitherto unknown and if you think you’ve ever loved a man/woman with your heart and soul, worry not, for then you’d realise it is absolutely effortless to love a child.  

P.S. This post has been selected by BlogAdda...Thank You:-)

I hear, I watch, I wait

I hear, I watch, I wait...

It is the story of my life heralding to its dusk but perhaps I am now getting weary of the same old chronicle as my pent up body feels drained of supporting my equally tardy soul. It has been seventy seven years of a life less ordinary and hence I can’t really blame my bones for giving up on me. How do I admonish these wrinkles that line up my once flawless face? They tried to stay at bay for the longest of times on the human calendar but couldn’t really hold up against Mother Nature’s. And when one came even though peeping out a little hesitantly, the others lined up earnestly, as if to party! My smiles and frowns and ups and downs, perhaps made their resistance even tougher. They say fairer and softer skin is more prone to visibility of age’s vengeance. Now do I thank god for them or call Him in court on charges of un‘fair’ness? I laugh at the irony, which like everything else, is evident to me alone.

Sometimes I wonder, had I led a common life of drudgery, would this decline into oblivion been less painful? Or should I be indebted instead that at least I had my share of envious gaiety even on the run? Lady luck had been kind to me although many others of my own gender could barely bear me; but even she has rules about availing her allotted quota. Mine extinguished due to mindless gorging. I managed to eat my cake and have it and even lick the plate clean! And whatever if any remained on my lips, others made sure to do the honours...if you know what I mean.

I have loved and been loved umpteenth of times in ways that could create epics, seen the world, been there and done that, raised many an eyebrows and then many a good children!

However, today the world seems to have moved on beyond my grasp. Love is just another four letter word that is still not slang. At my age you don’t ‘fall’ in love, for the vision is anyways impaired and the ‘falling’ is anyways an everyday affair. My good children are now struggling to be good parents and hence priorities have shifted. Wherever I have been and whatever I have done is something that can’t be done again. No matter how much the optimists proclaim that history repeats itself, I know it won’t, or at least mine won’t.

I watch how the grandchildren enter my room and bow their head in obeisance before filtering away in the blink of an eye to merrier milieus. I am not the traditional granny telling on her beads and watching freshly hair spa-ed and face lifted ‘saints’ on the idiot box. But I am a granny still...who forgets things, seldom walks and that too with a limp and the only thing hard about her is her hearing. I have a television set for company although everything there is either too soapy for my taste or too loud even for my partially deaf ears.

How I wish they would sit with me so I could relate to them the stories of my past! That’s all I have got with me-a hard disk of memories embedded in my brain that the virus of monotony and vagaries of life could not erase.

I was not hip and happening like they are now, but I had managed to create ripples in many tranquil surfaces. Suddenly the stories that I struggled to hide through my youth are now getting restless to see the daylight, hammering upon my insides ravenously, fearing that their lively exuberance would be embedded with an old body in its sepulchre.

 

If only someone could lend me their ears!  Would they believe me or would they be aghast to hear that old granny could be anything other than a dignified and antiquated epitome? I ache now to strip off the garbs of pretence, to breathe free in the element that is me-no longer so and so’s wife or so and so’s mother but such and such person, as I have always wanted non-judgemental people to know, admire and reckon which many did, who dared to knock repeatedly at my closely guarded portals.

I sit here and concentrate on the merry din that falls upon my eager ears like soft but happy mumblings coming from behind the doors of the other rooms of my house. I sometimes watch the empty bed beside me, run my fingers on its surface and then sigh. The empty bed has been my closest companion since the time its incumbent decided to quit the show while it was at the height of its glory. The empty bed seems to cruelly reinforce to me every day that it would never leave my side. It has loyally taken up the shape of my contours or whatever is left of them.

My materialistic accomplishments lie mockingly tugged into drawers. I sometimes rummage through them and take them out to adorn myself and relive in some iota my past glories. But these that once looked heavenly, pronto throw ghastly shadows on the looking glass, almost beyond redemption. No amount of even the latest accruements can adorn an edifice in its fading glory. My so-loved little black dress looks more of a little black mess at this point.

I wonder should I write a book on myself now, after all, I no longer bother about scandals and appraisals, with one leg in the grave. You can yack how much shit about me in the aftermath, how would it bother me when I can’t care or do a shit about it? Maybe I could disclose the hidden murky side to my perfection, which is instilled in every human, though very rarely acknowledged, let alone flaunted. I can relate how and where these legs travelled before reaching this space. Perhaps my shaking fingers would allow me this last consolation or maybe it is too much to ask of these petite things that allowed me every discretion, when they could enable others to dance on them.

And I hear again, the laughter coming from the adjacent room. What could they be discussing? Why can’t they come in here and talk for if there is anyone who needs to laugh most now, it is me. It is almost like a dying wish now-give me a moment to laugh like no one’s watching, to laugh like I did earlier that set the hearts fluttering, to laugh like it’s the only natural thing meant for me to do in this world.

I hear, I watch, I wait!

Oh my mute lips have spoken too much today!

Perhaps now I should go off to sleep and not get up ever.

Let my youthful soul be free of the dilapidated body that I was once so proud of, to find a new home and begin new glories!

Midnight and Cinderella must run away!

Dear You,

If I just caress a little more of your strong hand intertwined in mine

I would probably walk miles without a panting.

A little more of you viewing me like you did which seemed to the world as though you were devouring the ethereal,

And I would not espy the scratching and scathing edges poking out of the tricky path as we continue to tread.

If I just sense a little more of the comfort that your broad shoulders assure of,

I would allow life to prolong its excruciating task of making my head dizzy with all the bafflements of fate it strikes me with.

Just dab a tear gently now and I promise not to let any vestige of it appear again.

Let me feel the proximity of your willing ears brushing against my trembling lips, while I exude the whines and moans and mumble all the wrongs meted out to me, I would perhaps press them shut to let them spread into infinite smiles.

If I could experience your hot breath against my skin, inhaling the whiff that you could never get enough of, I would perhaps stop sniffing out for more.

And hear your penetrating, silken voice, talking out the furrows and soothing me out of any quandary like a sweet lullaby,

I would perhaps again be able to create music out of living and not just being!

If only what we have got, was always enough and ‘a little more’ was just a harebrained, greedy, presumptuous demand,

If love would not fade and fading would not seem so painfully unreal.

Senses could be sensed and feelings really felt!

We could love like we did and we would live like never before.

If sympathise would swap positions with empathise,

May be we could breathe life into the hollow ‘happily ever after’

And not be a part of the thronging crowd wherein one wanders with a meaningless token and empty search in vain,

Maybe there would be no midnight for Cinderella to run away!

Yours,

Me.

Seeya's First Fifty!

Naah...Seeya has not joined any cricket league despite the cricketing fever gripping one and all, though she is making sixes of her own.

And naah...this is also not about Seeya’s first fifty dates either, which omg, I would have to tackle someday dates that is and not fifty of them-omg multiplied by fifty otherwise.

As Seeya turns one year and three months now, here are few of the words she blabbers besides aa-aa, baayla, yoo-yoo, pata-pata, apriya app, etc, that she keeps saying incessantly and we are still in the process of de-coding what these stand for.

She started with proper nouns a long time back...

So mamma, that’s moi, she alternates in calling Sucha smart girl, she knows how sucha and pavitra is her mom-who dareth snigger?

G she calls Thom-tom cause she cannot pronounce or perhaps take the effort of saying his entire name Gautam see, like mother like daughter, I just hope it does not shorten to G for her too some day

She calls my Gauri bhabhi-Gooyeeee

Preeti bhabhi- Pri-ta

Her cousins Chaitanya-Chayta, Kartikey-Kaka, Yashveer-Yajshu

Our servant Bablu- is Bubbbal, which he calls himself now

And Cheela for Sheile and Moyee for Munni, she learnt before all of these thanks to gyrating on their numbers watching the idiot box.

Since many months she constantly asks one question to all and sundry, no matter who they are and what they are doing. Her eternal quest is to find out ‘ka kal laye hain aap?’ (What are you doing?) -some very nosey grandma traits there that kinda bother me, but when she dances like Sheila, my fears kinda rest in peace, before new ones take birth.

And if I tell her once ‘aapko pyjama pehna rahe hoon’ perhaps she is slow on understanding that or just too sharp and insistent on learning what she hears, for she would persist in asking me that again and again till the damn pyjama is up her little legs. Needless to say I hurry up with the process as much as I can, but then comes the wearing of socks and sandals and the rest of the jinga-bang and her intriguing, grilling interrogation continues I wonder then if I should make her join the police force when she grows up-she’ll easily crack up the toughest of nuts

She learnt saying dogh and cat almost along side of saying paapaa and mumma not very good at selecting the synonymous pairing, is she?

She knows what is hot and cold, though she would put her palm on her cheek and take a deep breath, with an aghast expression on her little face, to indicate both as the same. While feeding her with the bottle, she’ll take one gulp and say hawt for she knows mom would then go to the tap to put it under water the bottle silly, not the milk so that it cools and she would get time again to stand on the bed and run in circles as though the pillow was the sun and she must orbit around it diligently like mother earth, to honour the holy processes.

Paani she learnt a long while back too and thank god she did not call it mum-um like other children do-she has now learnt waater, reminding me much of Rani Mukherjee in ‘Black’ saying the same. Now if only my daughter’s teacher ala me, was half as mesmerizing as Rani’s teacher ala Amitabh-I said “half” because one-forth of that I already am but it does not sound good enough, na?

And though I drilled into her whatch too indicating to my hand, just to annoy me she would insist it is not watch but ghaadiii as one of the maids casually explained to her and come back to saying watch only after I would thump my head in despair sadist tendencies too, eh?

And then she would say soyee to imply sorry, touching her ears and tilting her little head that beams with her charming smile and a minute later repeat the mistake. 

She’s a fruit-o-holic and hence ay-apple, guavaaa, papayyaa and o-ange feature big time on her speech list. Ask her at any time of the day, what she is eating or what she wants to eat and pat would come the reply aaaapple! Ask her what you should draw on the paper and voila ‘apple’ again. I mean agreed it is round and red and juicy and scoopy, but it is just a god damn apple at the end of the day, na? Since the time of Adam dadaji and Eve dadi ma, man has not been able to translate the essence of this tempting fruit and Seeya stretches the idea even more.

Other items on the list: 
Ba-ba-is what the balloons are called
Shauce-that is actually tomato sauce, which ends up on her fingers and tongue I don't know how!
Choos for shoes

Book-her eternal friend giving her company on the potty seat.

Boy n gaarl-thank god she can make out the difference from now itself and thank god not in the way that you are thinking of with your naughty mind.

Zip, ship, cow and bird are the lucky names too, that made it to the elite list.

Aur- to indicate more-and her dil forever maange more of everything

Door- which she would pronounce with a big rounding of her sweetest of lips, causing me to ask her on every bloody door step like a moron with the forgetful disease ‘what is this?’

Doll, whom she loves to ill treat-tear their legs apart or rotate their heads.

And teddah for teddy, her first love- you have to see how she makes her huge teddy lie down on the floor and then she lying on top of him to give him the greatest of crushing and actual bear hugs. It’s scary sometimes but then it makes me thank god even more for:

A) I am not that crushed tedda, 

B) It is just a tedda and not a boy, at the end of the day 

C) It is just a harmless hug, at least for now.

A-eyes, thigh, toes-e, arm, navel, carrot, bread, cot, soap, car, bush, Santa, star, oon for moon, naaye for Naani and maaye for mami...

Aa jaayeye aap- to call just about anyone or anything. She would look at water and ask it to come to her for her highness would not take the pains to walk up to it.

Yeh-bhi hai for two of anything- like ask her to kiss on one cheek and she’ll point at your other one asking yeh-bhi, almost indicating mom, what are you saving that one for omg-I hope she is not a reincarnation of Mahatma Gandhi, but then she screams one of her blood curdling yells for just about nothing consequential and even Gandhiji turns in his grave in horror.

She’ll pick up the phone and say hewylooh reminding me that I have to work big time of rectifying that accent.
She loves to get herself clicked and would insist on you showing her the fhoto then on the camera.
There has to be the sound of band-baaja on the road, even at a long distance and watch her go shaayee for she would want to go out and see the shaadi.

She would say haaat in the most offending of manner to all passing by cars for madam’s car is on the road and all must hato to give her way and if they don’t, she takes out her toy gun and says tha-tha-tha to shoot them all off contrary to what you might think, I did not teach her THAT...you ought to know by now that I don’t use guns to shoot and I never do tha-tha-tha anyways...there are sounds of a different variety and pitch altogether.

And when the car reaches home she has to scream out kholo although I may be thumping the horn for all my dear life implying to the watchman to do the same.

She has also learnt shtop and chup, both the words, used on none other than me, when I am asking her to do something or am in feeble attempts of getting something done out of her.

She also knows what I call her and ask her ki aap mumma ke kya ho and pat she would say dodo again in an amazingly cute rounding of her lips.

Well, aren’t we done with the 50 yet, you ask?

 Offo, haaaw, fire, heart, no...okay enough already.

For when people say, wait till she begins to speak, I feel omg, I mean there would be more?

You’ll have to meet her to know more and baby sit her for me to allow you to meet her...for it is exactly one month now post no maid still...boo hoo, some anniversary, I’d say!

I will survive; I know I’ll stay alive
Please imagine that being played in the background for a better import of my situation here.



P.S. I am sorry for not being able to reply to the comments on my posts in the last few cases. The reason here is obvious, I do so much talking with her that I can barely manage to blabber back on my page beyond a few blog ideas and these too are connived actually for the hunger of more comments...ah, vicious cycle. I promise to do that at the earliest.