Chiffonesque

I have a lizard…in my house. (It sounds rather cute when you sing it to the tune ‘We have the whole world….in our hands.’) This is how I found out. I came home one night, inebriated with the joy of a job well done. I chirped merrily outside the door and entered my dark apartment. The willowy frayed white curtain was swaying like a little spectre – the bai had left the window open for…Phantom, I think. Reached and switched on the light and in a voice that sounded like Batman and Cher, went ‘ Yeeowiao .’ I had seen the lizard. It was on the wall behind the rocking chair. It ambled about in the dim light like a little reptilian Lara Croft. Zwap-zwap-zwap went her padded feet and then she looked up. Scaly but supremely confident. I, despite the yelp, stood frozen there like a dork – neither like Cher nor Batman. But someone had to make the first move…and Liz did that. Now, a lizard is despicable enough but one that’s given to sudden movements makes you scream cold murder! Which is rather ...

Here's the thing - I'm a sweet person. Yes, I'm sweet in that bland, no-personality way that the adjective is used - to describe a hubby's bad craft project or a polka-dot T-shirt on a 40 year old woman. I am sweet, see. But sometimes, I'm not. I'm a little bizarre - like a hurtful, zesty, bad karmic weaning. So, here's what my immensely enjoyable doppelganger did tonight. I have this pal who has a patent on sang froid . Nothing ruffles him...and anything that involves me is met with serene detachment. Now, I don't like that. Why be friends when you don't go ballistic on one another, correct? The other day, I asked him - who are your most favorite people in the world? Now, the tone in which the question was asked would suggest (at least to anyone with IQ in the positive quadrant) that it was a leading question. He answers - Mihir, Turab, Shayaan, Neha, Prithvi. 'And...' - Hint 1 Yep, that's about it....I don't get too close to very m...

I love Mumbai. I also loved Bombay. Since it's raining now in Mumbai, just as it had rained in Bombay, I shall write about Mumbai and Mumbai rains. You know how the skies get overcast and a cool zephyr lightly rustles palm trees and glassy smooth lakes? You know how you look up to the skies instinctively scrunching your nose and crinkling your eyes expecting a light drizzle to wet your face? And then, you know, how suddenly - there's no zephyr, no rustling, no poetic drizzle - there's a wham! bam! sploosh! downpour in which you are practically bruised? And if that doesn't hurt you, you step into a waterclogged pothole and have an auto screech two inches from your nose. That is rain in Mumbai. Sigh! Then, of course, there is the sea. You take a walk by the sea. You hope for the high tide because there is nothing as pleasantly disturbing as watching the sea swell and waves roll in steady undulating motions. You look at the curves and wrinkles and bends of the water and yo...

We were all there to see my brother off; my parents, my cook, and his (i.e.- my cook’s, not my brother’s) man-Friday. Bro was flying to Italy to join his ship that would then sail to Tunisia. There he was – wearing a crisp white shirt (my father’s), flat-front charcoal trousers (my uncle’s), excellent shoes (my dad’s again), and shapeless asymmetrical spectacles (his own). I, on the other hand, did not know where Tunisia was. We went in to the visitor’s area and sat down. Cook and his man-Friday started arguing about why the other didn’t just shut up and listen. Father and son were talking about the same thing…and yes, ditto with mother and daughter. Then my brother got up, after I think conceding a position or proving a point, and touched my parent’s feet. It was time for him to go. Cook and man-Friday stopped arguing, shook hands with bro, and told him to eat well. My brother came up to me and gave me this look that only a sister could understand; he’d be having a happy time at Itali...

A crappy crappy day! My mind has just become woolly and I have to interact with dunces from Dunceyard dancing around me waving files and throwing weight and acting self-important. I think I'm ready to pop a blood vessel in the white rage that consumes me. Every time I get up to storm off somewhere, I stub my toe. I'm a big girl now but I've come close to tears at the unfairness of not having a cubicle all to myself. I don't even have a potted plant. Hmm, interesting! A potted plant - I shall call it Evangeline, after Longfellow's poem. BENT like a laboring oar, that toils in the surf of the ocean, Bent, but not broken, by age was the form of the notary public; I'll put some fake earthworms around it and slim, silver streamers every Friday to celebrate the Christmas that is so so far away. Maybe, I'll also tie pieces of colorful rope on each branch so that the fake earthworms can go and hang themselves if the earth gets too much with them. That'll be int...

It’s raining so hard today that someone somewhere is building an Ark..and the naval architect may or may not be a man, may or may not be a Noah, and the Ark may or may not be for couples. But if it does get made, I do hope the vessel serves some tasty treat – like the muffin my colleague got today. She sits opposite me and we exchange pleasantries every morning and insults thereafter. But to give her due credit, she is a generous soul – especially with food she doesn’t like. Here’s what I mean: Generous soul: Hey! Try some cutlet! Translation in reality: It’s bad! Generous soul: Want a piece of cake? Translation in reality: The gateau can bend iron bars. Generous soul: Take some of this chutney with that. Translation in reality: You’ll have better luck with arsenic. But this afternoon it was different. She came traipsing to her seat enveloped in a lovely aroma of vanilla and a grandma-home’s warmth. In her hands was a translucent tiffin box that had, what soon became, the collective ob...

What is brown and round and looks like a potato? A potato What is brown and round and also looks like a potato? A chikoo This is the point I was trying to make at lunch the other day. My colleagues, on the other hand, laughed uproariously and generally shattered any inclination I may have had to drive home my point. You can’t be insulted and persuasive at the same time, you know. Anyhoo, this is how it happened several moons ago. I’m walking to the station after a particularly enlightening day in college. Those were the days when I discovered a new chink in my armor every day. And that, to my innocent, blithe, and adolescent soul was enlightening. So, there I am walking like Charlie Brown, replaying the canteen scene in my head. Pimply boy wearing black Nirvana T-shirt: You are spoilt. You haven’t seen the real world, Mukta. It’s very easy to just talk. Me wearing black: Not true. Why do you think that just because I haven’t seen anyone bleed to death, I haven’t seen life. Each person ...

The other day, a bunch of us were talking about Indian cities and their quirks. Here’s something a colleague of mine remembered that totally cracked me up. She’s from Delhi and has recently moved to Mumbai. The first month that she was here, she noticed that Mumbaiites were rather abrupt in the way they spoke Hindi. Being from Mumbai ourselves, a couple of us couldn’t really understand what she meant. So, she helpfully explained. Suppose someone’s talking to you and you don’t catch what he or she said. A Mumbai person would say, ‘ Kya ?’ as opposed to a Delhiite’s ‘ Kya bola aapne? ’ Okay, so they talk in complete sentences. That’s nice. But then she went on to say that Mumbai’s Hindi (I love the way we personify everything!) has a vocabulary all of its own – and not simply the kind used by the underworld or the ‘ kaanda-batata ’ variety. One evening, she took a rick from Andheri station. The auto fellow, being friendly or bored because he didn’t have a music deck, started making smal...

I work for a software company. It’s very very mainstream. Blood dripping red and MS Windows folder-yellow cubicle panels notwithstanding, ours is a very staid company. We have black ceilings and our pantries have grey steel walls. Men in Black and assorted aliens would find my office suitable for several of their proclivities, but aside from that, we are very regular, very average, very sitting-in (using the phrase as the opposite of ‘standing out’.) People dressed in clothing that homogenize into a sartorial mush walk into the pantry room and take their teas and coffees from the vending machine. I, too, am part of the homogenized mush even though I wear aqua. So, on an overcast Monday, I walk into my pantry and see three bean bags. One is purple, like Barney Flintstone’s Dino; the other is yellow, like a wet post-it, and the third is dark green or dark blue or black. If I didn’t know any better, I’d have thought that my company has been taken over by Cartoon Network. Cartoon Network, ...

I don't meet my cousin often. He's in the movie business and is currently 'struggling'. This means that he has to go through the commerce versus art dilemma every time he decides to take up a job. The dilemma is particularly sharp because he's often out of money, unwell, threatened by his landlord, disillusioned with the idea of merit taking credit, and won't take help from family. He wants to direct a movie someday, and one thing I can vouch for - that guy can tell a story. We usually go to this church in Bandra and light a couple of candles at the Basilica. While I pray, he often looks into the distance where the sky meets the sea. After that we usually walk on the promenade and talk about how the world does not recognize our worth. Once we were talking about our respective professions and he told me that a director's job is simply about borrowing memories. "Of course not", I argued. "He also dips into his own experiences and searches his im...

Last night I came home from a one hour invigorating walk by the sea. Took off my shoes, switched on the AC and put a bowl of fresh jasmines soaked in cold water in front of it. As the light fragrance filled the air of my small but cute studio appartment, I decided to wash up and make dinner. Didn't want anything too fancy or complicated. So toasted a couple of slices of brown bread, smeared it with butter, drizzled a bit of lightly melted honey, and had it with chilled mangoes. It was so good that I actually ate my supper in silence. The mangoes were cool and sweet with just a hint of tartness that served as a reminder that they weren't canned. And the bread - well, they were toasted to perfection. Dark honey mixed with yellow butter on crisp brown bread sure looks beautiful. I decided that someday I would upholster the seats in my library with silk of that color. Then lied down on my sofa, switched on the TV and settled down to watch a good-looking albeit dumb sitcom. It was t...

Think: the silent speed of a shooting star Think: the fractured beauty of a broken sea shell Think: cold flame Think: dark before dawn Think: crouch before leap Think: quiet grace and dignity Think: a steed's noble gait Think: deft and quick Think: unhurried and deep Think: scaffold Think: dagger Think: ocean Think: Pyrammid Think: Randeep Hooda in D I missed the first 15 minutes of the movie. Saw Randeep, and found in him Charles Darnay, the lawyer in Tale of Two Cities; sitting in the courtroom with dishevelled hair and curious eyes. Body reposed in strong, feline indolence. He would later stand up and argue for a lost cause....and win. Howard Roark, the architect in Ayn Rand's 'Fountainhead'; walking with certitude to the judge's table, submitting his folder with his drawings, his eyes mirroring the truth of his sprit, and simply saying, in response to his adversary's noisy arguments, 'The defence rests.' Bagheera of Jungle Book, carefully waiting beh...

I have no recollection of what I had read or written for the very first time in my life. I have a sneaky suspicion that one of the first books that was read to me had a picture of a big bear with red tassels hanging from his front paws - he didn't walk on all fours. But as far as what I first read on my own - the first string of sentence that made sense to me - that, I have forgotten. This, however, I don't worry too much about. After all, it was really long ago and I've put it down to be a bright but ephemeral star in my 'shifting landscape of childhood.'* I wish I could find that scrap where I wrote my first coherent sentence. What was it? Was it 'An apple is red?' Did I write that I wasn't blase about the truth that an apple is indeedy red. Perhaps it was something else, like 'My name is Mukta.' Maybe the first sentence I formed was an assertion of my unformed identity - something I would use later on in life to introduce myself to friends, se...

Serendipity and books have shaped my taste in music. I have chanced upon these songs while living one more ordinary day. Perhaps, I read the lyrics on a website, perhaps I heard about this song at a cafe from an old lady sitting next to me, perhaps a pal recommended it strongly. These songs are my favorite because the first time I heard them, I smiled in wonder. (Umm, I'll list more than 5 since I'm not tagging anyone else.) 1. Tujhse Naaraz Nahin Zindagi, Hairaan Hoon Mai from 'Masoom' - Had read a little bit of the lyrics translated in English in Upmananyu Chatterjee's, 'English, August'. Agastya Sen goes to a small dhaaba reminiscing of things that were and he hears this song, raspy and scratched, on a cheap radio. 'I am not angry with you, Life, just amazed.' Got curious and heard this number and found myself nodding, 'My sentiments exactly.' 2. Jaane Kya Hoga Raama Re from 'Kaante' - Was fidgeting with my popcorn while this song...