Chiffonesque

Why must everything in my life have a limp denouement, I wonder? Why must the day start off with me having no fever and feeling upbeat? And then why must it end with the fever coming up to me at bedtime, knocking my head and saying, ‘What’s up buddy!’ and crawling under my skin? Why must I be suddenly taken over by healthy hunger pangs that turn to strangling octopus cramps as soon as I help myself to some home-made apple pie? Why must my friends all surface around this time, be generous enough to buy passes for New Year events, and then why must I go all Greta Garbo-like and say, ‘Sorry, mustn’t go out in public.’ I have no friends left, no parties to go to, no possibilities for a quiet gaze at a firework ornamented sky, no chance of hearing lilting laughter and clinking glasses over the Arabian Sea. I have nothing, except a rather cheeky fever and a pusillanimous stomach that just can’t get okay. I have been sullen and contrary since a couple of days when I hadn’t received any get w...

It’s almost the end of December – the time my brother returns home with tales of the sea and sparse presents. Pretty ones for my mother, practical ones for my father, interesting ones for the help in the house, and something he may have got free with a gallon of green ice-cream for me. The last time I spoke with him, which I think was before I changed jobs, he had hinted something about an embalmed grasshopper. It shall be returned promptly with requisite disgust. My brother really does belong to another family. We are just too, umm, what’s that word? ‘normal’ for him. P is strange. By strange, I don’t mean he’s hauntingly sensitive or unfathomably intelligent. He is just weird with the unique ability to be pessimistic about everything. To him, the black hole was perhaps where the Universe was cradled before it waltzed out into the cosmos. If I’m in a store looking at a stunning blouse, he would whisper, ‘Won’t fit.’ If I’m getting coffee and exchange glances with a handsome gentleman,...

This Christmas and New Year’s, I have decided to be selfless. As noble as this aspiration is, I’m not surprised that my dimwitted cousins didn’t understand. ‘I’ll be selfless,’ I say. ‘What does that mean?’, cousin A asks. ‘She’ll be less of herself,’ cousin B replies. Ha ha ha and all that nonsense. Anyway, so I have decided to be selfless. An important step in being selfless is to stop wanting to be right all the time. And what helps stop this is remembering the times we were wrong – and so happy for being proven that way. So, this Christmas, this post, I shall make a list of 5 things or people or situations or beliefs I was wrong about and why my life is more enriched for not being right. At the end of my list, I shall tag a few people who I’d like to list 5 things they have been wrong about and therefore happier. Now, because I have typhoid and a lot of time on my hands, I’ll just put chits with people’s names in a pencil box and pull them out with my eyes closed. But more about th...

The other day I had to collect my reports from the doctor and find out whether I had typhoid or not. I was pretty sure that I didn’t have typhoid because well, I didn’t want to. So, Mom and I went to the doctor’s clinic where I was greeted with a toothless smile. An old man was sitting there in a blue and white sweater and a green monkey cap. He was the only one there and was probably happy to see somebody else, namely me, not my mother. She was scowling because my father had lost his tenth mobile this year. Now, the doctor’s clinic is rather oddly shaped, like a kidney stone or something. It has irregular rooms jutting out and beds pressed against the walls. And because the walls aren’t straight, the beds aren’t straight either. And the people lying on the beds are crooked and the nurses attending to them do it slantingly. Head hurts after a while. We sit down and a nurse materializes from some dark crevice behind us and breathes on Mom’s neck. Since my mother has never been the sort ...

Where I worked in Powai, we had a rather enchanting garden some distance from the office. It had a storyboard sculpt to it complete with dry leaves that scrunched when you tread on them, twigs, gravelly paths, boughs laden with perfumed flowers, and if you observed closely, shrubs with berries too. The best part about this place was that not many people knew about it. A friend brought me here in the newness of June rain. While it rained everywhere else as well, you could imagine that perhaps a different set of clouds burst over this place. Rain was more silvery and cold and you could run through the pebbled paths recklessly. If you chose to be more delirious and wait for Snowhite to come up with some hot chocolate, well, it only meant that you’d caught a head cold and a dangerous case of a wonderland imagination. Both very likely. One day, I wanted to show this place to a friend of mine. So we walked there and were stopped by a guard. ‘You can’t go in’, he told us. ‘Why?’ , I asked. ‘N...

I may be down with typhoid now. So until the reports come in and I extend my forced sojourn in Mumbai by ten more days, I loll about in antibiotic haze and think. I have never had typhoid before and usually enjoy excellent health. But no-one who has known me since October 2005 will believe that. It has been my sickest year ever. For the most part, I have been able to get over the illnesses by not taking medicines; but, well, I had to capitulate when my innards wanted to crawl out of my stomach. I still feel badly about taking medicines though. I wish things hadn’t come to that. Oily, greedy pharmaceutical conglomerates having their last laugh…on the way to the bank. Cruel people who jeer at me, ‘So you were boasting about your health, eh? Who’s waking up in cold sweat with cramps now?’ I hate taking medicines. They make me sick. Most people mistake my abstinence from pills for my false bravado, but they don’t know. My throat burns when I swallow a pill and my head throbs like a torn dr...

Last weekend, I saw two movies about kidnapping – Apharan and Ek Ajnabee. The first was set in Bihar and the second in Bangkok. Both were fictitious, although it was easier to believe that of the second flick. I’ll begin with the first movie that I saw. Apharan is based in Bihar around the time kidnappings of rich and famous people were on the rise. In fact, the politicians and the mafia were so thick into it that if you were remotely involved with either, politics or mafia, you could conduct an abduction almost legitimately. Circa this is the story of Ajay Devgan who wants to join the IPS. But due to circumstances, he crosses over to the other side of the law and becomes a kidnapper himself. I watched this movie at Cinemagic, Andheri East. The movie hall is in a dusty, non-descript lane and is usually frequented by other office-goers with last minute plans. Those who come here come with the stout knowledge that they either won’t get tickets anywhere else or they won’t reach the other ...

December’s going to be a stressful month, as it has been since October. Work-wise, that is. In fact, the project I’m working on is in an interesting quandary. The client gets more confused with every bit of information that is provided to him. We try to remedy that by giving more information accompanied with several caveats and disclaimers. This is responded to with equal and opposite frustration, again accompanied with many addendums. In fact, during conference calls, you can hear the fine prints in our voices. Meanwhile, we are working our butts off to cover our asses. (Asses being the slow, plodding and dimwitted personnel – a herd that I am a prized member of) Only to be told that you are slow and therefore, well, umm,..okay. (What can you do to donkeys after you have figured out that that’s the way they are, and that’s the way they’ll stay? Really, what? Bray tell.) So, it was a particularly rough day with bile lining my pancreas or whatever organ they’re associated with. But the...

A vacation sky. Clouds frisked about in a holiday mood. Two apples in an ice-blue bowl engaged in desultory conversation. Ripe: The kitchen seems so quiet today. Sometimes I wonder what goes on inside. Riper: I’ve been there once. The first day I got here, I was slightly green and muddy. So they took me to the kitchen and washed me in the glass sink there. Quite a busy place, that one. Ripe: I can imagine. You have any friends there? Riper: Not really. In the one time that I was there, there was too much going on. Something bubbled here, something else whistled there – and I saw a couple of huge bowls frothing over. But I did meet this one fellow in the sink. Rather handsome. He wasn’t an intense sort of fellow, if you know what I mean. Just smooth, sharp, and steel. He’d got something sticky on the head; so he’d been brought in to be washed clean. Ripe: Same as you. Riper: Same as me. Elsewhere Keefer , the knife, jostled under the spoons and forks until one of them asked him to...

In blinding light, Through frosty mist, Under foggy skies, What can I see? An inflamed moon In ritzy June Skirting the sky With notoriety I see the rain that sang To the indifferent sand And brushed past us all On the sleepy beach I spot the wind that flew And threw the ochre beams Out of our mangled madding reach I see floral spasms On the verdant quilt That calmly assuaged An artist’s guilt All these curtail The callow wail The truculent fright Of my proud delight. It may seem simple And be perceived as true But the things I see Are far from new My vision fails When I look ahead In joy or spirit or empty dread And strangely the things that make me blind Are all the things I’ve left behind This is Hiranandani, Mumbai - where I worked before. Pictures by Mohit Chaturvedi, my colleague who is very proficient in clicking nostalgia. And my favorite - the rain, but of course, and but always.