Chiffonesque

Today I sat stunned before a dark rose. It had turned a deep violet, the colour of a poisoned wound. The petals parched at the touch of a fingertip. It stood old and wise, and yet proud with its petals unfurled and crisp. Now, it wouldn't be stroked or caressed. It had been the fragile chalice; it was now the grave gauntlet. More than the tenderness of a bloom is the pride of a wilt.

If you stretched the imagination long enough, this would be a poem. I wish I could show you the sky right now It's specked with clouds like a jersey cow I saw it through the slats in the busy loo And I thought of calling someone, but who Could I show a moo sky from here It would be different if you were near.. And while I thought and looked and wondered and blinked The cow had gone home - it had been milked.

Yesterday, I was in a very vile mood. I kept snapping at people for no grounded reason. I snapped at J’s watchman when he asked me if I had used the pool (it irked me because I had meant to but had forgotten to bring my swimsuit); I snapped at a rickshaw-guy because he was dozing in the passenger’s seat (this really was unnecessary because I was walking home and had no intention of taking an auto.) I snapped at my boyfriend for being what most humans are at 11:00 p.m. on a Sunday night – sleepy. I snapped and I snapped. Then I made myself some tea and thought about why I behaved so cantankerously – that is, not counting the distinct element of fun in being dour. I traced back the stream of rancid thinking to a small episode with C, J’s daughter. C is three years old and is usually happy to be around me. That could be because of my natural gift of being around children, or it could be because I take genuine interest in her toys. I do not know how half of them operate and have spent many...

Yesterday, I was sent flowers to office. Much like the dream I used to nurture when I watched ‘Return to Eden’ and ‘Dallas’ and ‘Falcon Crest’ and all these dramas where women wore formidable power suits with shoulder pads and Joan Collins disrupted weddings. So, that much was exciting. I was in a meeting trying to explain my lost cause (meaning missed deadline and diffused product specifications) to my boss, when another editor walked in and asked my boss if she could borrow me for a minute. Around that time, my boss would have willingly paid someone to have me off his hand, so he obliged. My editor took me winking and smiling to the reception. I just thought that it was a rather unconventional but sweet way of showing someone the door, but there it was – a huge bouquet with fifty roses. All for me. ‘They’re for you,’ editor winked. ‘Really?’, I muttered. ‘Boyfriend?’, the receptionist asked, moisturizing her hands. ‘Yes’, I mumbled, looking at the note. ‘Aww!’, they tilted their head...

Yesterday was a rather rough day for me. In fact, it was the very first time I was angry and pained to the point of nausea. I had spent an entire evening shouting ‘Fire!’ in a land where people didn’t understand the language. They came by to warm their hands and cursed when the embers singed. They went away angry. And I kept shouting ‘Fire!.’ They came later when there was no danger of being hurt. I wasn’t hurt either. Everything I had was burnt. I calmly collected my cinders and said hello. We were all polite in the dry, slightly pasty drizzle of the ashes. Yesterday, I confronted my worst fear – of being told, ‘Sorry. Don’t know how to tell you this – but you’re this way.’ It’s not a hard thing to take unless, like me, the ‘ this way’ is the only way you’ll ever be. Like the crude compost that will never find itself lining a crystal centerpiece. What I had to offer from a distance were wist-scented lilies; up, close, and personal it was a different story though – brown, mushy, and ...

There is getting fed up and then there is what I’m feeling now. It is being fed up to the point of nausea. I have to interact with human beings every day and multiple times during the day. Painfully, they all behave like me – all have stupid opinions that they think will change the world, and converse only with the hidden agenda of getting other people to agree with them. I am marginally better because I don’t pinch people I disagree with. Actually, in real life, neither do they; but I imagine them to be juvenile enough to pinch one another so that I could be marginally better. Which I am not. However, things are easier to bear because I have just discovered a most excellent coffee at Barista. It’s the new Tiramisu cappuccino – rather flavorful, and not quite as bitter or acidic. In fact, it has the ambrosial whiff of vanilla and a lovely macchiato color. It’s a friendly coffee. You can take a sip and expect the palate to strike up a pleasant conversation with the taste; instead of tho...

Here’s what the Bard thought, wrote, and became famous for: Some people are born great, some achieve greatness, while some others have greatness thrust upon them. I have been thrust with greatness. For no fault of mine. I didn’t ask for it, I didn’t allude to any ambition of harboring it, I got it. It’s just the way it is. While others scrambled for it, passed notes, talked to seniors for pushing applications, elbowed discreetly, murmured, winked, nudged, scraped, I did nothing. I went about whistling ‘Happy Birthday to you’ in Spanish (rather easy because you don’t need to know the language), I tipped and tapped my keyboard like a pixie in Olysbarry farm, showed off my ‘Space Impact’ score to three people, and I got it. I got thrusted…with greatness. And many people in office didn’t like that. No, they didn’t. This is how it all began… I come lumbering to my desk and start the computer. A couple of people are standing near it, gossiping. I smile a hello and enter my password. Rejecte...

A person is known by the company that keeps her. So, that gets me chewing my lip in office. Presenting the assortments that umber my office space: 1. There is one guy who is the human equivalent of the Microsoft spell-check. His eyebrows get all squiggly when I say something he wants to dismiss. Like the other day, I was telling Z and J about Lokhandwala and 4 and a 1/2 bungalows. His eyebrows became ‘Ernie the earthworm’ and he said, ‘I’ve lived in Versova all my life and I’ve only heard about Chaar bangla and Saat bangla. ’ Everyone laughed at me while he smirked and sharpened a pencil. 2. There is another guy, SM, who hangs around my desk cracking PJs before he leaves work. The other day, I told him, ‘ Let’s go someplace for dinner.’ ‘You mean, like, for food?’, he asks. 3. Z, my colleague and roomie looks me over in the canteen. ‘You are not wheatish.’ ‘No?’ ‘You’re more like corn.’ ‘Oh?’ ‘Yes, you’re corny.’ 4. Then there’s S who’s like a cowboy poet. He walks in with vengef...

My roomie and I have been working very late hours. And plodding through the graveyard shift does affect the mussed cerebrum, as we have found out lately. We usually write a note to our bai asking her to cook for us. These instructions are written in italicized Hindi with calypso spellings. Oddly enough, our bai understands. Of course, sometimes there is occasion for wry humor. Like when we told her to make four chapattis and had written 4 in Hindi. She read our four as eight in English. My roomie and I had a big lunch that day. Or like the time both of us decided to eat more leafy vegetables. We often discuss herbivorous victuals when we’re on the terrace gazing at broccoli-like tree-tops. The next day, we wrote to our bai asking her to make palak (spinach). She prepared it and kept a turmeric dusted note, ‘That was methi .’ I don’t think she was familiar with smileys, but if you looked closely, you could see a yellow stained curve. Today, my roomie and I get home to find some fresh v...

I went to school at a time when strange people were called 'Samples'. 'Sample' was, in fact, more than a trivial dismissal of snuffers who got singing tiffin boxes. It was a very sturdy social construct that rose above gender and class differences. Of course, I went to a school where the only gender was female and the only class was middle. But then, if one were to use a reductionist perspective, (and who doesn’t), 'Sample' was a nail that usually hit odd heads pretty often. And it was cheerfully accurate. In fact, a testimony to its dogged endurance is how people, despite learning new words, will slip in 'Sample' calling ever so frequently. I Two ten year old girls are punished at P.T. The thin one who doesn't like being punished wants water from the flask kept nearby. The tubby one who hates P.T. is taking the opportunity to follow dust motes swimming across a sun beam. 'You want water?', thin one asks, offering the flask. 'Not from tha...

When I was ten, I visited Egypt. Our hotel room in Cairo overlooked the pyramids. While my parents unpacked and my brother scarfed the camel-milk toffees on the pillows, I looked through the picture windows. There, within reach, the sun shone down upon three monuments that symbolized all that was haunting, timeless, and fearful. The Pyramids, to my ten year old mind that wanted to be a writer, seemed to whisper curses. One that I heard with my back to the world was: 'Someday, when you find your story, words will fail you.' It has been several decades since. I will never forget the Pyramids. It is not possible. To me, pyramids are the accursed paradox. They damn you to forget and then tease you to remember. No-one but me will understand what I'm writing about now. Because I'm writing in the last gasp of the victim who's about to name her murderer. Today, I was traveling through the Vashi highway. A man lay sprawled in the middle of the road with steel utensils thrown...