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.  

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Ah, to travel with Mr. Right!

Amongst the many other things that form a part of my bucket list, is the deep urge to travel far and wide by myself and before I need spectacles and a walking stick to ensure my safety while doing so. Of course that is besides the point that I get a wee bit nervous when on a vehicle alone that is not a car and if it does not move on a road. And the wish list item does not end there. But before reaching to the crux, how on earth can you be on this page and be saved from the backdrop? *mad witch grin*

I can almost count the occasions when I have got the opportunity to take a trip alone, not just on one hand but perhaps on one finger. Yup, I am a sort of dhabba on the face of independent, do-it-all modern women in some things! When little, we did most of the travelling with parents, as in on holidays or as brother and sister, as in my two and a half years younger brother accompanied me whenever we were allowed to go by ourselves. Now the age gap of 2 to 3 years between siblings is the worst kind of gaps possible. I know it is convenient for the poor parents to ensure production before the machinery goes through wear and tear or the process becomes taxing; and also for children who are born some 8-10 years later after the first born, as lesser eyebrows are raised at the commendable horniness of the parents.

Anyways, the younger-“especially two years younger” brothers are the worst of the lot as kids-they aren’t old enough to be all commanding or young enough to be all obliging. Somewhere in between they become hopelessly demanding, nosey and also threatening with the one and only weapon in their arsenal, “Sunoge nahi to mummy ko bata donga”. And you know that even if the crime is trivial the opposition bench is so bloody cunning that a hanging is imperative. So please welcome the personal, unsolicited bodyguard who wants to tag along everywhere and wants to know everything otherwise he jumps on the blackmail wagon. You can well imagine how those trips minus the parents but with dadi-ma type younger brother could be.

A couple of times I did manage to journey by train alone during college days and each time I would step onto the compartment floor, a silent prayer would adorn my lips- God, please let this be the mother of all trips that I have envisaged in my mind over and over again: I would get inside, look for my seat and manage to find it somehow but with an occupant already. There would be a magazine covering the better part of his face and I would say, “Excuse me, sir, I think you are on my seat?” And he would in slow motion remove the magazine to reveal his handsome ‘Mr Darcy’ like countenance and be so apologetic that you almost begin to apologise for having checked him. The rest as they say would be history, cutting to the next scene of us being encircled by a big group of friends, after our return from the honeymoon and telling them how we met! *Sigh!* -There, now you know the complete wish. But like half the things that get shot and processed in my little mind but never see the daylight of development, this also seem to be going in the same archive box. 

On this first historic occasion, was an obnoxious aunty ji who was my fellow passenger and was travelling as it seemed after a more than generous lunch and refused to stop emitting its uncalled-for fragrance in the air that orbited me. I didn’t know what to pray for more: controlling the non-stop ranting coming from the top of her or the non- stop bombardment developing from her bottom. To top it all, the lady had the audacity to complain that someone in the compartment was “spilling gas” in the environment, to take suspicion from her. Ya, right, like I was born yesterday and as if smell from the “gas” travels like speed of light and fills remote corners first instead of the helpless corner of her adjacent seat. The non-stop firing continued till we reached Delhi despite me putting up my handkerchief as a white flag over my seat but fell on deaf ears or rather deaf butts till all its ammunition was exhausted and my sense of smell was damaged for a fortnight. I even considered going in for therapy to handle the trauma.

The next time the travel plan happened I allowed my parents to drop me earlier and settled on my seat. They stood at the window outside of the chair car compartment lingering around till the train budged so that they could give me the signatory “bye-bye” wave. I think this tradition emerged more from the fear of not wanting the jaane-waala to return than anything else. So now I also waited with baited breath for the seat beside me to be taken. I even bribed Bhagwan ji in my mind again with the promise of a prasad of Rs. 50 in his temple as soon as I returned back to the city and Rs 100, if things got a romantic twist. Terms and conditions must be clearly laid so that chances of follies are narrowed down and such a petty offering, because by my pocket money’s standard, it was a king’s ransom- okay, a stingy queen’s ransom may be. And with me whose solitary travelling possibility was even rarer than seeing a man give birth, I couldn’t allow it to be screwed, could I?

Aaaaand...in walked an Uncle ji who snored through the rest of the journey when he was not tearing the entrails of the food that was served and particles of the gravy on his plate also managed to find the white spaces of my dress. Why me God? Whyyyyyyyyyyy me?

It was revelation time again. I realised that all those things they show on screen or write in books are complete crap:

• You never meet a Greek god or even an Indian god on a train or plane-geek god-yes may be!

• There is never a hijack where you and yummy ‘dish’ get stranded in the luggage cabin for hours so that a mush story takes a pre-mature birth.

• There is never the train being missed so that you get to travel in a car instead, crossing beautiful locales and singing songs in valleys amidst "friendly" cattle. I know I have to see lesser movies but they also ought to make lesser movies like these-there’s a thing called social responsibility for heaven’s sake.

• You never fall asleep over a handsome shoulder and wake up all embarrassed on the surface and bursting with joy within.

What happens instead:

• There would be a good looking face though not at a seat next to yours but at a distance and with family or a super good looking wife and no matter how many times you pass him by to go the washroom, he won’t consider raising his eyes to you, while the rest of the co-passengers would stare at you suspiciously with raised eyebrows.

• The head on the shoulders would be of a little boy with a flowing nose or an aunty ji with flowing saliva or a whole brood of wailing babies with ice-creams or something equally smeary that almost every time would miss spilling on your clothes, till they eventually do!

After marriage I have travelled alone just twice without my husband. On the first occasion I was returning from Delhi and he had to tour further so he came to the station to see me off. As I boarded the train I expressed my anxiety that I was travelling alone after seven years-what if I keep sleeping and reach Lucknow ahead instead of getting down at Kanpur? Who would look after my luggage in case I would want to go to the wash room? What if I slept and the people around took my luggage and got down at some platform in between? And what did the gabru jawan of my husband do: he asked the aunty ji yes, aunty ji again-I think I have some magnetic connection to them-I seem to attract them all on the birth next, “Please take care of her, she’s travelling alone for the first time.” The aunty ji checked me out with one long look up and down my frame wondering if I was really in twenties or just looked so. He even gave me a call just before Kanpur Central was expected to arrive, with instructions to take my suitcase and stand near the door to avoid the rush. Okay-okay, now we didn’t have to take things this far!  

The next time I was travelling alone was post my first ever going solo trip to meet up my ‘still single’ friends last year and really indulged in fun before motherhood called in. I had a fabulous time visiting lounges, meeting new people and going clubbing and four days just whisked past. On my return journey there was a pleasant seeming Sardar ji sitting next to me. My fun and fantasy quota had brimmed by then and anyways I had given up hope on ever writing a post on ‘Love Story on a train’. However, there did materialize a story of sorts.

Have you ever come across a child who has say never been to any fun park but just returned from Disneyland and thereby just can’t stop raving about it? I was a similar excited buffoon. All through the way I took phone calls from friends whom I had left as well as of those whom I was going to reach to, telling them animatedly the gist of all our little escapades. I came back to the arms of my beloved a very happy woman but later an embarrassed one for the Sardar ji turned out to be one of my husband’s business dealers. Needless to say he expressed his uncontrollable bliss on the fact that ‘bhabhiji’ seemed to have had so much fun and also pointing the details as though to prove what a good listener he could be!

I wished again like I have on so many occasions that my mouth should come with a zip lock or an inbuilt backspace key! Also was proved that no one listens to me unless I make a mistake. I had to explain to my beloved with never before conviction that how I am not totally useless-I can be used as a bad example. And since stupidity is not a crime, I manage to go scot-free every time. Now in the pipeline is an idea to take a break again soon and travel alone to Delhi, with Seeya of course. Let’s see how this one fares, though all my expectations generally leave me with lesser inclination to join the gym- for I get enough exercise just pushing my luck!    

Gadgetisizing Me!

It is strange how you are born one person and how you evolve into another. I was born a gadget-free girl ya, right, I know everyone is- there are chances you can be born with a silver spoon but never with a silver laptop, can you? But I was different initially-too many machines and wires and processes would put me into foreboding and I almost anticipated that someday I might take a premature retirement in my teens and go to the Himalayas to lead a confusion-free, tech-free life. 

That of course did not happen because:

A. Himalayas did not have McDonalds or KFC and hunting down animals to make my own burger, would require hunting down bakers to make my own bun too -huh?

B. I wasn’t married yet so I would need more than just clothes to keep me warm and I didn’t think I’d meet sexy rishis on the way.

C. Wriggly and reptile-ish things with many feet scared me more than all the wires put around me together.

D....Never mind, point is I did not retire and it is just a coincidence that the ‘Save Himalaya’ Movement has been relaxed since then and they shifted their focus on ‘Save Tiger’ instead.

But along with adulthood came the subtle inevitability of technology seeping in-television and the advent of foreign soaps brought enlightenment that if at first you don’t get the good looking hunk to walk the aisle, wait a while and his father would anyways jump the bandwagon nopes, I did not call you a bandwagon, it was for analogy’s sake. Being the ‘couch potato’ was the training ground for being the eventual ‘couch slave’.

The mobile slowly became such a permanent fixture at the edge of that thing called my arm that so many times I almost shuffle my hands vigorously to make sure my cell phone hasn’t got stipulated there. Thank god I also slowly understood the need for vibratory mode on this gadget, before doing ‘Ram, Ram-ghor kalyug!’ and shunning it as a device meant to corrupt gullible and experimental minds and bodies. It is so me now that it faithfully sleeps by my bed side and is the first thing I peer into after opening my eyeballs yes, I live in the belief that the humanity has nothing better to do than give me missed calls and forwarded messages in the dark, wee hours by which we can change the world and make it a better place. Even during the night sometimes I wake up with a fright, not because the baby may have woken up but because I seemed to have “heard” the message tone beep. My mobile is now synonymous with me, my E63-big yet handy, communicative yet trouble free!

Also came the realisation for wanting the air conditioners to keep me looking sweat-free and touchable and for geysers to keep me from freezing so that I melt others at first fright...er...sight. So what if I did not understand what was happening inside those big fat boxes, I could at least switch them on and off and be done with it.

However, the machinery that slowly grew on me was the computer yes, look closer and you might almost find little laptops budding here and there so much has the “growing” been effective. I used to look down disdainfully at those addicted to the World Wide Web-but like they say, tab tak sherni ke mooh mein khoon nahi laga tha! You need to be in Rome to do like the Romans do!

My first computer was a laptop gifted by my dearly beloved after our wedding bells had rung loud and clear. Little did he know that he was inviting competition for himself into his own home and right onto his bed. If I am not found anywhere in the house, rest assured I could be located curled up at the edge of the thing I sleep on with the thing I often sleep with-my laptop. In fact sometimes when by chance I leave it for charging on his side, I can almost trace visible fume like stuff of envy emitting out of his head. I sniff and ask him if something is burning and he says with a mad scientist grin, “Yes, your laptop” and I make sure I call the insurance waala immediately and double check if I have got the fire insurance claim on my gadgets. “For god’s sake,” I tell my beloved, “It is just a machine” and then wink back to my machine and tell it, “Oh, he is just a man!”

When I started my relationship with this gadget, I was often left wondering how similar we are in so many ways and yet so different:

A. We are both kind of harmless when we are on sleep mode/shut down and lo, the moment we open up, you just can’t stop the action and the jabber!

B. We come in various shapes and sizes-I have forever been oscillating between various volumes and magnitudes and I think neither can the computer make up its mind of what’s the best statistics for it. The previous bulky models were so me-we fitted extremely well in the lap, as its name was meant to signify. But then the manufacturers got inspired by size zero and the belief that ‘less is more’. I now have to sweat out my hard earned flesh to keep up to fit into arms and palms.

C. We both can do wonders if you press our keys right and when charged fully, you just have to watch us perform please don’t ask me to decode that, there are some answers that even Google is afraid to provide.   

D. We both use “enter” mode more than “shift/control” and we can go up to a lot of F’s when required-F1, F2, F3, etc. Okay time to shut up with my ABCD!

However, I do wish I was as user friendly and the memory within me just as vast and just as easy to delete! *Sigh!*

We recently upgraded our laptop model-I wanted something more colourful and snappier-something that defined the colours in me, brought the globe to my finger tip and transformed carrying its weight into a child’s play. I know I can be demanding sometimes but then why not demand when/till when you are in demand? I can now carry it along where ever I go and it does the work of a stylish clutch in my arms-yes, it pays to have it, in its own way. My beloved no longer minds for he realizes there is no winning when it comes to Man Vs the Machine, unless they bring in laptops that have rounder bottoms than his.

Alas! It would be an understatement to say, that my lappy is now become my best friend! I speak to it whenever I need to vent, I connect with it whenever I need to reach out, spend time with it whenever I want to be left alone. You might as well say, ‘You never know how well you click, till you click’. My beloved going away for a week is not such a ghastly/life altering premise now as the lappy going away to the repair shop for a day. I don’t understand how can two people sit for hours looking into each other’s eyes but please don’t ask me to explain how I can sit for sometimes a full day looking at the screen. And when that little internet blue balloon emerges on the little bar below, no blues can sustain and no bars entice enough. Such is life-technology happens and gadgets snap in!

Okay, I don't think this would ever happen but OMG, I  just might reach here some day!

P.S.: This blogpost is written in response to the contest 'CHANGE IS EASY' hosted by Dell Inspiron Laptop with customizable covers on Indibloggers.

I have participated for the first time. Please go to this page and vote for me there if you like it:-)Thanks!

For the Love of Books

“Have I died and gone to heaven?” Kreesha mused.

When she was told “Book Lover” was an incredibly delightful little haven tugged away in the outskirts of the narrow, buzzing lanes of Chandni Chawk, she had almost chuckled at the idea of Old Delhi being hipper than the ‘with it’ bookstores sprawled across the eagerly emergent New Delhi, seething with modernity. Her avidly reading, connoisseur of sorts of a landlord had been a little more than usually insistent, even by his own standards on her going for this little treasure hunt that took her almost two hours to reach to the periphery of Delhi from her whereabouts. He had been going there since his grandfather’s time, which itself seemed to be establishing its credibility. And as she had devoured all of the books in the roomful of his humble library in the last two years of her college life in Delhi, her own modest means now left her with little choice but to rummage through the streets of din and madness to satiate her interminable hunger for good literature.

She often wondered how anyone could replace the enchanting epiphany of holding a book tenderly in his hands, with the sans-emotional experience of almost cruel clicking on the computer keys, to read a book. Technology had made information easier to access but literature difficult to enjoy. She could think of no way of swapping the pleasure of lounging in a corner of her room with the crisp feel of a best seller or a classic in the hand, thumbing pages or reading with such an invasive interest that you lose any sense of time or existence. Ah, the subtle delight of putting a finger to your lips and turning to the next page because the curiosity of the suspense can barely be constrained in your insides! She was still old school in this- Something in the hand is better than “virtually” everything at the finger-tip. She had a cupboard full of such riches back home in Jammu, squirreled away when her family had seen better days. How she achingly missed them now almost just as much as she craved for her mother in the simulated pace of Delhi!

Kreesha had taken extra time to dress that day for Mohinder Uncle had advised her to wear something traditional and go to avoid unwarranted attention, since she was going alone and was still relatively less aware of the capital per se. She had tried justifying how the western attire is no longer scandalous in any part of the country, but having gone through Delhi’s lust laden glares, she didn’t laugh the matter off. There are two different worlds within and outside the bookshop he said and he wanted her experience to be nothing short of an affable one. Kreesha had just one salwaar suit, bought for her school farewell, as otherwise she lived in and out of two pair of jeans and some ten tops. She knew her widowed mother was doing way enough already than to expect her to provide her with a life of an ‘ordinary’ twenty one years old. She had come to Delhi with the focus of becoming vocationally independent to support her mother now and nothing came in track of that. Books were her only escape route when life’s drudgery became excruciatingly grim. She knew she was a little overdressed for a trip to a bookstore, but heck, wouldn’t everyone at Chandni Chawk be anyways?

‘Book lover’ was a reader’s paradise alright. Piles after piles of neatly stacked books adorned the meticulously well-laid shelves and the sombre ambience in itself she thought was enough to keep her meandering around its little by-lanes for days. Criss-cross rays of sunlight played along through the airy chamber providing it a vintage feel and despite many people trudging around with their keen eyes, the serenity inside was unfathomable. She was feasting her eyes at the beckoning volumes as a glutton would if he was left by himself in a shop full of delicacies, almost sniffing with a rare fulfilment, the muggy smell of paper. How could such a store be obscured in oblivion like this? But it seemed it wasn’t really, for students, the aged, housewives-everyone seemed to be indulging there to their heart’s content and yet leaving so much to explore. Books there were available on rent, discount, second hand or for just sitting there and reading-you name it and they had it-the rarest of first editions, the silent yet eloquent manuscripts lying there from ages perhaps, waiting for someone to swab off the thin veil of dust and open them to life again.

“It is idyllic just standing here, isn’t it?” said a calm voice from behind her, that almost startled and broke the all pervading trance. She smiled as she turned, for that was exactly her sentiment. “I have an expression of a child, who’s somehow found his way to fairyland, haven’t I?”

“I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats over vales and hills,” he said, as his tall frame rested upon a rack that housed the romance section, as though he had was just come to life from there.

“When all at once I saw a crowd, a host of golden daffodils?” she replied with the grin that only enhanced her dimples puckishly and a grin that only books could hitherto evoke from her and a grin of remembrance that would have made William Wordsworth proud in his heavenly abode. “I don’t know where to begin from here...it’s massive. Despite me being a very frequent traveller to bookstores, I don’t think I have seen so many books at one place in my life. I could live here forever.”

He chuckled, “With books-when there is a vast city calling you out to mingle with frivolity and mirth?”

“Bah, humbug-Uncle Scrooge style, eh? Outside is a world that would teach you with experience. Inside books is a world that has been experienced and waiting for you to take a dip- to enjoy the greatest of highs-conquer the Himalayas or triumph over territories and the self -watch generations go into submissiveness and eventually revolt to liberty! People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading!” And there was a pregnant pause, “Aaa...I am sorry, sometimes I don’t know where to stop.” She broke a little awkwardly thinking she just gave an unwarranted lecture.

“It is true. You remind me of Helen Keller. She once said that Literature was her Utopia,” he smiled and though it was warm, she somehow felt it was not used to of making very frequent appearances. “All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they really happened and after you are finished reading one, you will feel that it all happened with you and after that it all belongs to you.”

“Aha, wasn’t that Ernest Hemingway who said that?”

“Damn, it is difficult to please a well read woman!”

The well read woman blushed, half so for the compliment and half so for the need to having please her. “The well read woman is called Kreesha and she assumes the better read man is not called Ernest Hemingway?”

“You could call me Earnest if you do so, so very earnestly Kreesha!”

“And would you be reading all of those?” she pointed to some ten books lying on his arms. “And these would all be reading me,” he said again in his puzzling ways. “Come let me help you select something that you may not have read before and what you may not be able to not-read again and again. And by the way, did I tell you, you are among the few truly beautiful things I’ve seen around here?”

“Are you flirting with me Mr Ernest and if I say I am not, would you next tell me true beauty is skin deep?”

“No, I am not referring to adorable pancreas here, something like ‘A thing of beauty that is a joy forever, its loveliness increases, it will never pass into nothingness’...”

“So we moonlight as Keats too, either that or you just got lucky with all the quotes that you mugged up.”

“Either that or I just plain simple got lucky today....”

Kreesha did not remember when she had last flirted with someone-was it at school? And then when he had opened his mouth to use his limited hoard of verbal skills like they all did, she was so thwarted by what emerged from it that she gave up on the idea altogether. Words make worlds for how else can beauty be seen and felt if not worded?

“Would you mind holding my books, till I do something to satisfy the lady?”

“That won’t be easy, but the lady seems to realise that the gentleman does not like taking up tasks that promise to be a cakewalk.” And she followed him around like a puppy as he picked selections from famous authors, romance, autobiographies and philosophies of life. As much as she was enjoying delving into her passion, at the back of her mind was a faint flutter of how she might shell out for them all. Before she could decide, they had reached the payment counter. “Thank you so much. I think I will manage from here, I have wasted a lot of your time,” and they exchanged the piles of books.

Much to her surprise, the young man walked over to the other side of the counter and gave a gentle pat to the man sitting there who at once vacated it. Without a word, he took her books and put them in a jute bag and put pen to paper on a ‘Book Lover’ card kept there. He looked up and smiled and just like that left. She asked for a bill from the man who took over and he said that the books were with compliments from the store. Kreesha mumbled an insistence knowing it would be futile.

She walked out of the store and crossing the lanes, came upon the main road and called for an auto. As she boarded it and began her two hours journey back home, she looked again at the card,

“Greetings from one book lover to another,

Divya Vardhan Singh,

Book Lover.

P.S. Writing is nothing more than a guided dream. And a dream is no longer a dream if shared. Ernest hopes to see you around so that we could decide who pays for the next set.”

Her hands somehow instinctively picked out a book from the bag to begin it without further ado. Needless to say, it was romance and the title was ‘Making love, out of nothing at all.’

Photo-holic!

I have always been fond of clicking...pictures, that is.

A saner part of me wanted to become a photographer, so in love have I been with the camera. But there are a 1000 other dubiously sane parts that want to be something else, so let’s not talk about my parts anyways! In the weirdest of hypothesis, one may not unearth cash in my handbag but fat chance of not retrieving a camera in it. You never know when life throws at you a frame-worthy moment and my friends, ‘It is better to be prepared now than sorry later’ is not just believed in by me, but even upheld by The Population Control Board of our country. I don’t mind being the butt of people’s jokes at get-togethers, when I take out my camera ala Rajnikant taking out a gun from some hidden corner; for these very people put a hand around my shoulder to get clicked too and later ask when am I uploading these pictures and I must tag them. Shoooo!

Longer before Facebook and Picassa happened, I have had humongous albums of every trip/event/random nothings that crossed my path in my barely there decades on Mother Earth. However since Facebook, I like to be more in front of the camera than behind for posterity’s sake. Fb and the blog domains have contributed to the uprising of subtle though excessive vanity and other syndromes in users amongst many more things-Like say The Comment Itch-every blogger has it...we itch till we don’t see comments awaiting moderation, working like a soothing balm for our narcissistic nerves and once clicked to publish, the itch surfaces again. The deadly You-scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours disorder that makes people visit your page and say “nice read” and leave, when in all probability they have not read beyond the first paragraph. And Facebook- well, there were good old times when we danced like the photo was not being “tagged”, loved like we were never “unfriended” and status updated like nobody is “liking”.

Vrooooooom...back to the topic, so I click now with a vengeance thinking these would be my trophies of old age, to show to my grandchildren how happening their daadi/naani was in her hay days, even though half the pictures may be cropped or taken at such an angle so that my big butt appears smaller (or does not appear at all) and my smiles, just about perfect. They weren’t around when these were being clicked...so they’d have no choice but to believe them and quote stories of how their granny could have been the next Aishwarya Rai, if only she had been to Mumbai long enough to be noticed. The shots, where my face looks all teeth or the lead in my pants is displayed obnoxiously, would never see the daylight-hehehohohohahaha *devilish laughter*.

It is anyways an established fact that no one looks half as bad as their driver’s license picture and half as good as their Facebook/blogger profile one. Now if only I had more idea about photo-shop or more sense to handle pictures apart from just cropping them, I would be giving sleepless nights to others than being subjected to them! My biggest woes on many days when I am looking super sexy for a change, is that I am not being shot like that I mean not with a bullet yaar, though God, please let me die presentable! I often pray that the day dear Death visits, let me be blessed to have my dying wish granted already-have my eyebrows and waxing in order and hair freshly washed and by that age include facial, face lifts, etc too! Otherwise it just might me the worst funeral I have ever attended.

When I look at fashion bloggers getting clicked away to glory looking so model-ish, my little heart aches a little more. Sigh! Wish I had great photographers in my life too and a decent camera that makes me look illegally beautiful-matlab so beautiful that it should be illegal to watch without desiring me. I am conveniently forgetting the third requisite of a figured body for the beautiful part to come true, but then I never claim to have the best of memories to figure out such nitty gritties. My only photographer is my husband, who when asked to do the honours, makes the saddest of yester years’ Rajendra Kumar face don’t ask me who he is-Google him and you’d know just how sad as though an inexplicable tragedy has occurred with his wife. I feel as if I am taking him round Hitler’s gallows, such a let’s-get-it-finished-fast expression he has.

In fact he would wear one of these looks:

1. Constipated and clenched angry and thereby making me reflect the same.

2. Lost Puppy who would fidget so much with the camera before clicking that my smile would slowly start transforming into a tired grimace.

3. Clumsy and clicking pictures without giving me a moment to decide how to pose, so that half the outcomes would have my one eye closed or lips open in a scream, giving unwarranted directions or hands half raised in air to settle that lock of hair strategically. Needless to say when I peer into the result and look up to him to express my dissatisfaction, I somehow paranormally behold an image of a volcano about to burst and let the urge pass! Point of this big fat paragraph-I look much better than what my pictures show or do I?

Last year after some enlightenment that-it is not the person being clicked that’s important for a good image rather the camera is, I managed to summon my hitherto latent courage to argue with my beloved over why we need a more expensive camera with better megapixels and zoom yes, I sounded all techie because whenever I do that, it is so much more scary than global warming that he almost always gives in sooner than usual for obvious reasons. Simply put-our 3.2 megapixels is not doing justice to our appearance. I managed to make him dish out some thousands to get a Sony DSC-WX1 with 10.2 megapixels, G lens and 5 optical zoom yes, they dupe you with such high sounding stuff that while signing the cheque, you feel you just bought the camera that is fit for the red carpet alone.

I returned home all smug and bubbly holding in both my hands the camera box as lovingly as one would hold his newly born. However, after the pictures were clicked and I saw them on my laptop my disappointed countenance probably resulted in me getting my first worry wrinkle.

“But it is making me look the same????????” I partly whined and partly shrieked.  

“What did you expect, it would suck out ten kilos from your frame, diminish the tired lines, blur the pimple spots, turn the grey on your head into black and even your teeth?”

Offended I got defensive, “Haaaaw, that’s not fair...I have no grey yet.”

“Huh, is that ALL you noticed in my question? I give up. No new camera now for ten years hence.”

I hate it when beloved gets all honest-y, minus diplomacy.

Needless to say, I make him pay for it too with a Touch-me-not issued, so that he quotes from thereafter, “Honesty is the costliest policy!”

Alas, now I have stopped practising my surreal O-that is making a Rekha like...er...Kareena like O with my lips to signify the oomph factor or having one hand raising my ruffled hair up and the other on my waist look. I know I badly need better/tolerable poses, but at least get me these two materialized first and rest my childhood aspirations to peace. Philhaal, I can see another O forming on my beloved’s face-more like OMG as I am relating to him what I am writing! Sigh!

So I am stuck with my older but not old enough camera, something just like me! Please pray for me- that someone somewhere reading this gets inspired to do a photo shoot with his own paid make-up artist and inspired enough to not charge me for it, except just ask for my smile. I am already giving the biggest monkey grin to him. Amen!

Sex and a whole lot like that!

These are just some baap of random thoughts/observations concerning/alluding to sex or lack/need/desire/madness of it and a whole lot like that kinda topics!

So bachcha log, please don’t read this and if you must then please don’t blame me later for not giving you spice enough!

•         I often share posts of bloggers I like on my Facebook page and generally my friends log do read trusting my taste and instincts god help and bless them all. However, when recently I put up a link to a post entitled ‘porn nights’ there were more “likes” and comments than ever before hmmmmmm...acha ji-wink, wink, even though ironically there wasn’t any actual porn or even a whiff of it anywhere. Just the title was enough to generate curiosity and thereby clicks. Even my own most famous posts have been those with double meanings and hints of titillation do you sniff some inane pride there? so much that I have to physically stop my dainty right hand with my super dainty left hand, from typing more of just that stuff. Pooooooint is-sex sells!

•            Like it or not, believe it or not, we are a bunch of sex starved voyeuristic lot no matter how many times we rattle the bed post in the cosy confines of our homes. We by which I am generalizing and in no way stating my personal preferences get thrilled still by watching hot lip-locks on screen or hearing about whose wife was caught in bed with whom. Complete crass shows like Big Boss, evoke such mass interest because the public is waiting with bated breath to hear someone abuse another in unfathomable terms or falter from the moralistic path into a fling. A hot item number ensures saleability of music and the movie no matter how crappy the content is. Katrina and John Abrahim still rule vast dingy corners of human imagination though they can ‘not-act’ the pants off anyone. Rahul Gandhi never mind masses calling him baba...he can be many’s baby;-) is the preferred politician among the youth for he is relatively sexier looking than the rest of the one-foot-in-grave or mouth-drenched-in-tobacco lot alright, maybe I am speaking for myself here, but isn’t he really?

•            Recently a dear friend of mine was very annoyed when he went to his bank for his usual dealings. Upon questioning why, he said that they had changed his Relationship Manager to a GUY and that was most disagreeable for him, as from the last twenty years of his ‘relationship’ with the bank, he had pretty and even passable, marginally pretty females, more ready to oblige than otherwise for business of course. Another dear friend of mine does not like female instructors at the gym for she feels they do not have the understanding of the body as a male instructor does. And in my many years of discerning people and their drift, I know better than to ask them to explain their weird surmise.

•             Why, sexier people do have greater chances of being hired than the ordinary dorks! And sometimes greater chances of being fired too. In my quest for maids came a damsel of a regular height and standard weight, except the top half of her body, just below the neck was inexplicably super bestowed, accentuated more hideously by the clingy kurta that she wore. So while I spoke to her, despite all my normal tendencies, please don’t raise that eyebrow...do I still need to convince the masses of THAT? I would inevitably find my eyes juxtaposed to those humungous things that would be called breasts in normal human understanding. My god, I was wondering, did she accidently take in those injections that is rumoured to be used on mini watermelons to make them ripen into the most giant ones on the shelves in a day? And I said ‘no thank you, I don’t want you toppling over with my daughter just because the 2/3^rd of your top half might not be able to handle the rest of the 1/3^rd of the weight below’.

•            It also is true that whatever we try to smother emerges out more strongly than ever. Tell your teenage daughter to stay away from boys and surely she’d be adventurous enough to commence on that very path to know ‘why’.  Create a hullaballoo about hot scenes in a movie and indisputably it would have more than the regular takers, wanting to satiate some urge or the other, if not just the curious one. Like I remember how a whole bunch of us friends and even many other ‘selective movie goers’ also, thronged the theatres for the movie Love, Sex and Dhokha although it boasted of no star cast or anything else, except what the title sheepishly hinted at. Neha Dhupia would forever be remembered, not for any movie that she was a part of, but for a simple quote she made, “Only Shahrukh and sex sells in Indian movies!”

•            Most boys do not begin as “men” unless circumstances make them promiscuous. This I realised post my blog article on ‘My Understanding of Men and Women’ where men have been cruelly stereotyped as solely driven by their libido I am sorry, please don’t take a morcha against me to ban me or something, I do love your specie at the end of the day. There a dear blogger Anshul remarked that he did not find many traces of himself or perhaps he just had to grow up to be a “man”. Bless you for being such a nice munda, bringing hope for my despairing sisterhood not yours obviously. Like always Anshul, even your comments give me food for thought; forget about your posts which are like a sinful banquet by those standards.

   

         Anyways, I then realised that although most men would say that there is    no man who does not have sex on his mind in his relation with a woman, I almost began to beg to differ. There are still boys who want to fall in love with one girl whom they’d eventually settle down with, dream of eternal love and bed hopping is just not their game though this variety is under a serious threat of extinction and such specimens are already declared as endangered species, fiercely guarded by the owners like Kohinoor Heeras. It’s easier to find tiger’s milk than them! Or perhaps, they are yet to become men- these tendencies surface even in the boy next door, more so in the middle ages, as a cynically wise dear friend says, when you realise that you gave up the best part of your twenties believing in ideals like those of teenage girls-even the teenage girls don’t think like that anymore, he says. 

•             Recent cases of celeb infidelities have made headlines everywhere. People scrunch their noses in disdain at the Strauss-Kahn saga, from Tiger Woods okay, his tally more than anything else makes him so outrageous to Ryan Giggs and Gordon Ramsay. Actors like Charlie Sheen and Hugh Grant have ruled the roost more so with their sexual escapades. While I am in no way defending polygamy, I do sometimes feel how difficult it must be in show biz to continue tightening your leash around the flimsy slippery corners of conscience. It is okay for us lesser mortals to sit comfy in our not-so-glamorous or powerful arenas we don’t have to bear faces of a Hrithik or a Kareena, within breathing distance every day, crooning love lullaby to us and then test our god damn moralities We just have to raise an accusing finger at those who reach unfathomable heights through the sheer beauty of their countenances and body or swoon-worthy talent. It is so pleasurable to pick faults in others whereby you make an assertion of a lack of them in you, without having to say it in so many words.

I mean come on, if I were a Bill Clinton and sexy females thronging me would flirt and make passes, I would be too abnormally human to let it pass without retorting suitably back, especially after the world known established fact of my gift of gab. And no one counts the 101 times he may have resisted but the one time he could not dodge no puns intended he was crucified. Sometimes it becomes difficult to realise when the blurring lines of harmless flirting have crossed over. So before we burn their effigies, let us at least put ourselves in their shoes oh how we’d love that, won’t we?

Ranbir Kapoor is accused of being philandering. Hell! When women like Deepika Padukone, Katrina Kaif and the recent bevy of beauties associated with the Casanova, cling on him or they spend days and nights in locales that only the dreamiest of fairy tales could boast of, it should not really come as a surprise with his kind of charm. I don’t know how Sachin Tendulkar and Shahrukh have managed to not create such headlines but then do we really know the truth always?

Ordinary mortals attached to their families and living in a closer knit set ups have really no excuse to stray but the stars...they are stars after all, beyond reach and part of their appeal is the hype around them!

All I am saying here is that you can’t beat the drums about being loyal and moral till your morality has been suitably tested by something which is difficult to resist. When Vishwamitra can give in, the rest of the men are also only humans!

•          While I am not being judgemental in the above cases, I would really like to jump the bandwagon in another one. In this age of internet relationships, it is easy getting hooked and easier still is assuring privacy with a person even though it may not be “touch”-phone like easy physical. While there may be chat rooms and the likes catering to such needs of individuals, it is sad how the youth is prone to blind faith or stupid thrill of exchanging nude pictures of themselves, with such non-chalance. I try to keep an open mind in most cases and think from the other’s point of view before being driven to conclusions yet I do believe that here one needs to be a whole lot more cautious of what is sacredly hers even after trusting the other to the point of obsession.

The younger lot are more confused than ever about their own preferences and loyalty because in relationships like these, they give too much of themselves too soon and then are extremely disillusioned if it does not work out. Sexual experimentation is worse when you are ignorant of the real world and worst still if you are on the internet, speaking from a girl’s point of view. From a man’s side-How can you let go of the belief in your loyal streaks because of a couple of failed internet relationships and convince yourself that you might not have it in you to not stray and thereby stray with the most guiltless of conscience?  

Enough! So much of sex talk is making me sexy oh how I wish it was THAT easy!

So until next time when I make more sense...stay sexy! :-)