November marks the beginning of the North-West monsoon in Madras. Ominous gray clouds scattered across the sky rumble angrily throughout the day, sporadically letting loose a smattering of drizzle just to prove they can. In the late evening, they really let go. It pours and pours  for about an hour and then the clouds go back to their muttering.

I’ve never enjoyed the monsoons, despite growing up in one of the rainiest cities in the country. While my friends danced about in rain puddles, sailing boats in drains and muddying up their patent leather school shoes, I hid under the awnings and shuddered away from the stinging cold drops. I hated wet straggly hair and clothes clinging to me, the uncomfortable squelch of mud between my toes and the drops hard and fast, like hailstones, hurting my skin. If I did get stuck somewhere and end up getting wet, I would ache to rush home to hot baths and the thick, soft blankets I would bury myself in.

I can understand why people would like the rains, though. Besides the fact that it helps grow our food and replenishes ground water and all that, the rains make things look pretty. Maybe it’s the clouds- the soft, gloomy whiteness of the sky that bathes everything in a cool, gray glow. Maybe it’s the unbearable freshness of green everywhere; plants everywhere bursting with life, as if they were somehow more alive, dancing in the gale.

The rains are also romantic, albeit in an uncomfortable sort of way. They make one think of unrequited love and innocence lost and other broody, depressing things. Once, while wading through knee-deep water outside a railway station in Bombay, I felt exactly such a feeling. It was early evening, there was a slight drizzle, the air was cool, and an auto’s crackly radio was playing an old hindi song; one about lost love and the strange stories of our lives. It was a rich, melancholy feeling, and I felt a wave of of pleasant, poetic, moodiness.

Then, of course, I felt something furry against my foot, in the water. It was a dead rat. Poetic melancholy was instantly replaced by nausea.

I can’t wait for summer. Especially after watching this:

For the hugs on demand, and sometimes not on demand,

For being the only person I could tell the “midnight snack” story,

For all the crazy stories I now have to tell my grandkids,

For backing me up when I need it, and telling me when I’m wrong even if it’s the last thing I want to hear,

For the telephone conversations about nothing at all that never really end,

For the hours spent cloud- gazing in complete silence,

For the last 21 months and 7 days,

Thanks.

*Many happy vibes being sent your way*

In my opinion, there are 3 types of bloggers:

1) The kind that update almost everyday, telling you about the minutiae of their lives.

2) The kind that update regularly, blogging only when something interesting happens or when they feel inspired.

3) The kind that update once in a blue moon, either out of laziness or because they feel they shouldn’t really write unless they have something vital to share with the world.

These categories are independent of the quality of writing. Some people write so well, they manage to make even an ordinary commute as interesting as a voyage to the centre of the Earth (which isn’t that hard to imagine if you’re in a Chennai MRTS in May). And sometimes those once-in-a-blue-moon bloggers will, on their annual post, put up link of a webpage with 15 million pictures of LOLcats.

The point I am trying to make is, I don’t judge blogs based on how often people post on them. People are different, and should have the right to say whatever they want as often as they want to.

However, I do want to make a transition. Up until now, I have been one of those rare bloggers- the kind that barely ever writes and is usually disappointing when she does. It’s not for lack of thoughts, surely; I sometimes have so many thoughts that it feels like my head will explode. I’m just too lazy to put them down in black and white.

So here goes- I WILL write. Not because I think people will read, or to get hits, or to get people to favorably comment on the random, uninspired, insipid rubbish I sometimes write (in fact, if anyone does read the stuff here, please DON’T comment unless you really want to).

I will write because I like it, and because it makes me feel good.

So that’s that then. Decision made (ticks off mental checklist)

A nap looks like a good plan for now.



With Ria gone, it was just the two of us left in the room. We avoided eye contact for a while. I waited until the tension built up, until the point where being silent would take this to the next level of discomfort.

“So…” was the only thing that came to my head. I’m not the world’s most eloquent person.

“So…” he replied. We obviously had much more in common than he claimed we did, when he left.

“I heard about the big story you snagged. Good job.” Damn it all, he was being nice. And trying to be sincere. I didn’t think I could handle much more of this.

“Thanks.” Ok, that came out sounding curter than I expected it to. How does one infuse one word with gratitude, pity, sorrow, anger, and betrayal all at once? It’s not humanly possible.

Long silence. This pause was so pregnant, it would probably propagate the species of pause with twin or triplet pauses.

“Look, I realize we didn’t end things on the best of terms. I also know that this wasn’t your fault. And since we have a similar social circle, we have to get along.” Now he was just making me angry. All pity and sorrow were gone. I can’t get angry, though. I can’t let myself.

“Yes, I realize that.” Curt, again, but this time, it was intentional.

“You don’t sound very enthusiastic about it.” I can’t get angry. I just can’t. Do not engage. Just leave it be.

“What do you want me to be enthusiastic about, dammit! You were my best friend! My mentor! You were the most important person in my life!” Fuck it, I don’t even care. We may as well have it out. At least this whole ‘situation’ will be decided, one way or another.

“Well, I have feelings too, you know! What was I supposed to think? I taught you everything you knew!” He was angry too. Good. He should be. Atleast I wouldn’t be the only one raging and ranting here.

“So you should be happy for me! I’m sorry they phased you out, but it was time for you to go, you knew it!”

“That job was my life. You took it away from me.” Waves of guilt. How did he manage to go from angry bastard to broken old man so quickly? I felt terrible, yet strangely powerful. And horribly, horribly guilty for feeling like that.

“It’s not my fault. I had to do what I had to do. You taught me that.”

“You had to what you had to do,” he echoed, letting the words settle into the room, like cobwebs in the corners of walls.

Ria walked into the room with the tea. She set the tray on the table and asked, “How much sugar do you take?”

“Two spoons,” we both said simultaneously, avoiding each other’s eyes.

There are times when I wake up, all tousled-haired and sleepy-eyed, open the newspaper while drinking my morning cup of apple juice and am suddenly struck by something that makes me spit out the apple juice, unglue my morning-gunk filled eyes and go- WTF!

This article had that effect on me today morning.And I read it first in the Deccan Chronicle, which didn’t carry the disclaimer made by the ISI later.

Is it just me or is this completely scary? It kind of sounds like General Abbas is saying, “We’ll set you up on a date with Osama, and then, to return the favour, you guys can get us Kashmir!”, and the US will agree, like a reluctant yet secretly eager chick-flick heroine (because everyone knows that at the root of every conflict is sexual tension) and they’ll get married and live happily ever after and India will be left looking like the idiot who let the girl get away.

I’ve never been a big fan of art. When I say ‘art’,  I’m talking specifically about visual art, painting and related mediums. When I was a child, my mother used to love going to the Jehangir Art Gallery and stand around for hours, staring at the paintings and sculptures with a whiny, eight year-old me in tow. Needless to say, they made little or no sense to me. I never understood the expression on her face when she looked at these exhibits; she used to drink them in, as if she was part of the picture, an active participant in it rather than a passive observer.

Despite my distaste for art, I always had a fascination with museums and artefacts or “historical” art, as it were. There was once an exhibit from the British Museum at the National gallery of Modern Art, close to where I stayed. The exhibit was huge, and showcased art and artefacts from all over the world; Egypt, Persia, Greece, Rome, China… I can honestly say I went to look at the exhibit more than seven to eight times. However, even there, it wasn’t the art itself that held my eye, it was more the idea of people, hundreds of years ago and thousands of miles from there, using those silver-filligreed mirrors and playing music on those exquisitely painted musical boxes. That there were people, so different from me, who had lived lives so completely far removed from mine, was what intrigued me about those exhibits.

The only kind of ‘art’ I could honestly say I liked was the kind that I could adorn myself with, the kind that comes with clothes, shoes, jewellery and accessories. Shallow and commercial, yes, but it was the kind of art that served a practical purpose, so I bought into it. I could understand people spending thousands of dollars on a couture dress, but never understood them buying a million dolar painting. As a status symbol, yes, maybe it would look good to have a famous artist’s work hanging on your wall, but I never believed that people could actually derive any personal satisfaction from it. Atleast the dress made you look good, feel better about yourself.

And then, today, a slow day at work, while on an aimless surfing spree, I glanced through the iGoogle home page and saw a section titled ‘Artist of the Day’. There was a painting of the side profile of a blue faced man with a beam coming out of his eye. More out of curiosity than appreciation, I clicked on the ‘Archives’ link, and started browsing through some of the other artists that had been featured there.

I don’t know what it was, maybe it was sleep deprivation, or hunger, or the too-powerful air-conditioning, but suddenly, I knew exactly how my mother felt those many years ago. It was like poetry, or music. The immense skill of some of these artists had managed to capture a mood, a theme, an emotion, through a single frozen frame, a moment in time. Some of the images were so potent, they were almost like a punch in the gut, a shock of recognition, a slap of cold water on the face. I realise I am being quite incoherent, so I shall put up some of the ones I fell in love with, and you can judge for yourselves.

Joshua Flint: The light effects he’s used so effectively capture the atmosphere of the station- quiet, solemn, almost cathedral-like, the people absorbed in themselves as they go about their business. I can almost smell the slightly burnt smell of the railway tracks.

Randy Hryhorczuk: Realistic, but the signboard makes it vaguely surreal. I like this so much I will probably write about it on my other blog as well.

Pat Rocha: I think this is the one that hit me hardest. When I saw this, it was one of those feelings which make you catch your breath and your eyes prickle. This one picture captures the old man’s entire condition, looking at this one picture- his posture, the rocking chair, the sunlight coming in through the window- every element tells a story. You probably couldn’t put it in words, but in one dazzling moment of clarity, you know everything there is to know about him, just the truth, pure and simple, with no embellishments or frills. It almost makes literature irrelevant.

I realise I probably sound like a complete idiot. I still know nothing about art, nothing about technique and colour and whatever else it is that artists use, but I don’t think I need to, as long as I can enjoy it in my own way.

Nostalgia is a strange emotion. Your mind romanticises the past, glorifies it to the extent that it creates an absolutely new world, one quite different from the actual object of the nostalgia itself. The problem with this is that ultimately, nothing really manages to live up to the airbrushed images in your head.

Up until I was 14, I lived my entire life in a place called Colaba. Colaba is one of those tiny islands that was reclaimed in the early 1900s and is now a part of Southern Mumbai. I used to live on the absolute edge of Colaba, which is almost the southernmost tip of Mumbai. My home was right next to the sea and I had lots of friends and apart from the usual adolescent angst, life was perfect. There were bike rides down the Gateway of India promenade on my shiny purple lady bird and the Taj Mahal hotel where no one I knew ever went, and always had glamorous looking firangs around it. There were pony rides on overly decorated, tired looking horses at Bandstand. There was the chat-walla near Mohini Mansion (one of the residential buidings in the area) who made bhel that made your eyes water and your tongue beg for more. There was Jain stores where you bought Add-Gel pens and brown paper to cover your text books with. There was Sahakari Bhandar, where my grandfather and I used to go and buy groceries, and the little restaurant next to it where we had icecream. There was Radio Club, where my friends and I went swimming in an over-chlorinated pool and played badminton. School was 10 minutes away on the well-worn Kinetic my mother dropped me in on her way to work. There were the Parsi girls at school who I hung out with at Cusrow Baug, where I met  several white-as-milk, hairless Parsi boys that I nursed secret passions for. The cool older kids hung out in a quiet, deserted lane nearby, smoking and having messy love affairs with one another, and us kids practically worshipped them. One of the girls (Pooja) liked me and used to take me shopping at Causeway, helping me pick out clothes and jewellery that would make the boys notice me and bargaining with the shopkeepers for me with dexterity; part lioness, part flirt. She used to take me to Leo’s, which was the ultimate shady joint back then (mostly because it was where all the hippies came and smoked joints, with no fear of consequences); if your parents ever caught you going there, you were so screwed.

The Colaba I grew up in wasn’t “posh” or “hip”. It was a quiet, comfortable place, inhabited mostly by retired government employees, their families and mid-level professionals who had bought homes there back in the 70’s or early 80’s. It had a dilapitated charm, with it’s old, Victorian era buildings; with bougainvillae, slender green creepers growing on blackened bricks, grand arches falling to pieces and terrible plumbing.

I’m staying in Colaba, again for a while, after a period of nearly 7 years. Of course I visited very often in between (my grandfather still lives here), but I haven’t really lived here for a while, all my observations were through taxi or car windows or for barely an hour or so, when I met my friends. Things have changed around here. Colaba now takes itself seriously. There are a bunch of hip new restaurants and pubs, with a variety of pretentious names like ‘Basilico’, ‘Athena’ and ‘Theobroma’. Causeway is now lined with designer boutiques and all the big brands including “Under Colours of Benetton” (a huge showroom dedicated to Benetton underwear).  Leo’s, which used to be comfortable in it’s slightly seedy disreputability now has an inflated head with all its Shantaram fame, and has gotten itself a hugely tacky, pseudo 1920’s type signboard. Even the old RBI building has been taken over by a Ravissant.

Not that these are necessarily bad things. In fact they aren’t. The people who live in Colaba probably love the changes, love that where they live is now one of the most coveted addresses in Mumbai, as anyone would.  I freely admit that I’ve eaten at all those hip joints (Theobroma has the most heavenly desserts) and have regularly frequented Leo’s in its new avatar. I like the new Colaba- it’s trendy and self assured and bursting with activity. It’s just not my Colaba anymore.

Hello.

Mike Testing.

1…2…3…

Check.. CHHHeck…Check..

<clears throat>