The Girl Who Never Stopped Seeing.

She never let a moment in life pass her by, unwitnessed.

As a child, she watched her mother knead dough - pressing the watered flour with all her bodily force concentrated on her palms - the manner in which she often pressed her grandmother's thighs to relieve her of pain. She watched as ma placed a bindi on her forehead, exactly in between her two furrowed brows, her eyes fluttering in the process. She watched as her father embraced ma, while he believed she wasn't looking.

She watched as they were taken to the hospital after the accident, each as close to dead as it is possible while being alive. She noticed her father's blood smeared face as they rushed him to the operating room. She saw her mother's left thigh reduced to a pulp. When her grandmother tried to cover her eyes with her hands, she insisted on seeing. She did not selectively observe - it was the dirty, the unfair, the morbid, the ugly that deserved to be seen as much as the beautiful.

She looked at men and women defecate next to the railway track, when she took that train to Delhi. She saw the invisible people - the ones who sheltered themselves under a flyover; the ones who sat on the pavements stretching their arms out at each passerby; the ones who knocked at the windows of your car at a traffic signal, while you looked away - she looked at them straight in the eye. She didn't always offer help; that wasn't her intention. She merely watched them, acknowledged them, heard them beg and wail, and when the light turned green, she moved on. Often she stood under the street lamp and saw people move like shadows in the dusk.

At nights, she lapsed lucidly into dreams, where she witnessed herself soar, make love with abandon, encounter kindly beasts and ghastly humans. Once she watched her knees as they jerkily advanced one step at a time, while she ran over clear streams and meadows. Once she saw herself running straight up the mountains, defying gravity. Once she helplessly saw herself fall from a precipice. In many, many dreams she found herself each night, and lost herself each morning, as amorphous dreams faded into sunlight - she watched herself slip from the asleep, into the waking.

If moving was her life's vocation, then seeing, was its divine purpose. And so she saw, everything she could see -obsessively, compulsively, uncompromisingly and with retired voyeurism. Till eventually her eyes gave up on her uncanny obsession.

And her life carried on, without purpose, its vocation.

That Summer of Her Dreams.

She kicked off the dusty ground with her feet - where the grass had depleted because of repeatedly being struck against - to launch her make-shift swing in the air. She clasped the rugged rope that fastened the swing to the mango tree with her tiny hands, stretched her little legs together and bent her body backwards to streamline it, in an attempt to make the swing gain momentum.

As she descended, the pit of her stomach sunk and a surge of thrill ran through her chest down her spine. She let the zephyr stroke her soft, fine tresses - pushing the stray strands on her forehead off her face. She observed the ground closing in. Her immediate ascension, just when she speedily approached it, made her body lean ahead and her legs to curl back. As she reached the highest she shut her eyes, and allowed the stray rays of the sun streaming through the fissures of the shady branches fall on her freckled face. A beatific smile spread across her countenance. If she could only open her arms and fly like a bird just then!

She swung back again causing the wind to usher the hair over her face again, as her heart filled with ecstasy and the orchard with her guileless chortle. She breathed in the still, summer air, heavy with the sweet smell of ripe mangoes. In her next ascent she would aim at swinging higher, to try and pluck that bright red and yellow one dangling from one of the lower branches. She could hear her mother's distant voice calling out to her: "Anu...Anuradha...not so high. Come down now, it is time to eat."

But mother's voice was drowned by the loud screech with which the early morning bus came to a halt before the pavement on which she slept. It emitted odious black fumes all over her and made her wake up.

Rude awakening to reality was something she had become used to. There had been worse days. Once a mutt had pissed all over her feet while she was asleep under a flyover. Another time when she had managed to sneak into the swanky metro station to get a good nights' sleep, she had been hit and chased away by a potbellied policeman, who seemed to be devoted to serving his country by keeping her parks and public places clean of her hapless and destitute citizens.

She scratched her tacky, brown hair which had tangled itself in knots with her dirt filled nails. Then, she rubbed her dirt-filled eyes which stuck to each other with her small blackened hands, before she sat up and looked at the bored, sleepy faces peeping through the sealed, misty windows of the air conditioned bus.

The mango orchard of her memories appeared in her dreams often. The girl had been her own age and had a classic name - Anuradha - so much more important sounding than what she was called - Guddi. She had come from Dilli, to spend her vacations at her ancestral home in her village. How Guddi had longingly looked at Anuradha's soft, shiny hair and her Minnie-Mouse shoes, when she had accompanied her mother to their house where her mother cooked and cleaned for wages. How she had longed to be Anuradha and often was, in her dreams.

She had been told that they were both five years old that summer. The following autumn she had run away from home, scared that her mother's man would beat her to death in his state of inebriation after her mother had died of a pernicious disease. It is easy to lose the concept of time, when living on the streets. In the coming autumn, it will be two years since she ran away from her village and came to Dilli. She knew it by keeping track of seasons.

That summer with Anuradha had been the best days of her life. The beautiful city girl had had no qualms in befriending her. She had allowed her to take her turn at the swing. She had told her fascinating stories from her little book of fables - stories of lovely princesses and charming princes; stories of adventures embarked upon by brave travelers. And she had let her eat that divine-tasting fruit freshly plucked from the sprawling tree. Guddi remembered feeling its sweet, squishy pulp squirt into her mouth filling it with its savor and making her smack her lips in delight.

She liked the streets mostly - she was free here, and most days she managed atleast one small meal. But sometimes she missed her mother and sometimes her thoughts returned to that summer of her dreams.

But she quickly cast these thoughts aside. It was a new day. There were things to be done - rags to be picked; palms to be stretched out for alms; food to be foraged for, among the garbage disposed away from the restaurants.

She wondered though, what it was that the bade log - the "big people" - the rich people, dreamed about.

Strawberry Fields Forever.

"We will soon be landing at the Birsa Munda Airport, Ranchi. You are requested to keep your seat belt fastened and keep your mobile phones switched off till the aircraft has come to a halt."
This aircraft is the smallest commercial shuttle I have ever journeyed in. We are barely 25-30 people on board. Ours is the only aircraft in the miniature aerodrome.
When we land, a little stair case, with all of five steps, falls under the aircraft's exit and we alight and walk straight ahead to the small administrative block, which has only one conveyor belt. Pa is waiting for me outside.

I am a closet small town girl, living in a big city. I will always be. Even though I visit my small town once in two years, for a little more than a weekend.
"This is all so cute. Nothing has changed."
My father disagrees. "So many things are different. You will see on your way." And then, in a moment of comical irony, escorts me to our old, antiquated, Maruti 800. He puts on the same old cassette with Manna Dey's beautiful and primitive, classical renditions.
"You hardly ever see this car in Delhi these days. And oh my God Papa, no one listens to cassettes anymore!"
Mumma comes out of the kitchen in delighted anticipation, after having heard that I have arrived. I enliven her in one sweeping embrace. She smells of her signature soap mixed with the aroma of tempered spices; sweet smelling nostalgia. The lentils in the kitchen taste of fond memories. I can never quite get it right, back in Delhi, even if I scrupulously follow her instructions on the recipe.
I immediately leave for the hospital, a few blocks down our government quarter. This is the reason which has drawn me home, after two long years. While parents visit me every couple of months in Delhi, I never really get to see my grandmother. She had been admitted to the hospital two weeks back. She can't sit or walk anymore.
The hospital itself is a castle of the past. I was born in one of the cabins I walked past. When I broke my leg, I sat on a wheelchair right here before the emergency ward. In its corridors, I have walked innumerable times, to visit friends and family, to celebrate and to mourn. The faces of nurses and the staff are familiar. There are no visiting hours. It is all in the family.
=Dadiji does not recognize me at first for she can't see too well. When I tell her it is I, "What happened to your hair?" she asks with concern. I laugh it off.
At above 90, she is at a place where it is difficult to differentiate dreams from memories: a place in transit.
"Your grandfather took me to Japan."
"You never went to Japan, Dadiji." bemused, I remind her. Her eyes widen in defiance, then she fixes her gaze on the sluggishly spinning fan, and squints. "When he was posted in Motihari, he took me to Japan."
"That was Nepal, Dadi." I remind again. "Yes, yes. Nepal." She concedes, reminiscing.
"We also went to America." I tell her only Dadaji went to America, to study at Cornell University. He went on a government scholarship and had to leave her behind.
"Your grandfather was a very good man." He indeed was.
"You should think of getting married. Jawaani to hasi-khushi beet jaati hai, magar budhape mein ek jeewan-saathi zaroori hai." When you're young, the life is full of fun and frolic, but you need a life partner when you grow old.
Pa comes into the cabin. She signals at me, and tells him "I have convinced her, that it is essential that a girl be married off." Then she looks at me intently, as if about to divulge the greatest secret of life.
"A husband, is a husband. Even if he is stupid or a charlatan. No one will do more for you in life, than your mother or your spouse."
This is for the first time that I find someone giving me marriage advice, so utterly endearing.
Pa strokes her forehead and sparse tuft of silver hair with his hands. "You will leave me and go Ma?"
"My mother also left me and went away." she said, smiling, like a sage. A simple reply. I couldn't continue the conversation without feeling a lump rise up my throat.
"I was born to my parents after a lot of prayers and appeal to the Gods." She said. "After three girls and two boys who did not survive. It seems like God sent me with all their quotas for living. I am ready to go, but the pran (life force) refuses to leave my body." The humour hasn't left her.
I tell her I was going home and would come and see her again, later.
"Home? What is this then?" She asks innocently.
"This is hospital, Dadi."

And she smiles again. For a person in so much pain, she smiles quite a lot.
I head home, with a renewed sense of mortality of all things and how that makes life all the more treasured.
Pa wants me to see the new house they have bought, which is still under construction.
"They have made it totally Gurgaon style!" He exclaims with child-like exuberance. "The society has everything. A swimming pool, a jogging trail, a club, and what else....we can see the distant Jagganathpur Temple from our balcony. I dream of the day I would wake up every morning to this auspicious darshan."
I am heartened at his excitement. On the way Pa points out to me the piles of bricks and rubble, that used to be the erstwhile illegal dwellings of the poor, now bulldozed off at the High Court's order. Some people are still sitting and sorting out their paraphernalia among the debris. Some are cooking in open air. The path that takes us off the main road to the site is a congregation of potholes of various sizes. Pa says a pakka road will be constructed there.

I am reminded of early school days, when while riding home in the shabby, old school bus through a particularly rough road patch, we kids would rise up from our seats to enjoy the joyride. At times the bus would plummet over an unusually high speed breaker and for a moment there, we would all stay suspended in mid air, only to hit the floor with a monstrous thud. That was our daily dose of adventure.
I tried to drive Pa's car. It is indeed a sweet little thing, but difficult to maneuver. It has no power steering. Papa drives, clasping the steering wheel tight and forcefully swinging it with both his hands at every turn. I adoringly observe him, while he crinkles his nose and frowns and tut-tuts his way through the path across a meadow, to the construction site. The society is impressive, by the standards of a small town.
"I keep telling him to buy a new car." says Ma. "But he says, what is the use?" I identify the sharp contrast in their attitude, from what I have seen in Delhi's denizens: where a house of two members, prefers to flaunt four big cars, regardless of how many their parking spaces can actually accommodate. Their cars serve the ego, not the purpose.
It's a simpler life, with simpler ambitions: a small house, a small car, good education for the children and a group of loved ones around to spend the old days with.
I tell Mumma that Pa is right. Somethings are better unchanged.
I am saddened at the thought that tomorrow, I will leave it all behind, one more time. Things will not be the same when I come back again. Dadiji may, or may not be among us. In a couple of months Papa will retire. My parents won't be living in the same colony where I grew up: the very lanes of which vividly bring to life old memories, as I walk through them.
In these two days, I have been brought to close quarters with the past again; looked back at life as it was, and consequently, looked ahead at future with nervous anticipation. When you have lived some, you have lost some. When you have lived a lot, you probably have lost quite a bit too: loved ones, homes, possessions and time.

I am drawn towards an enquiry into the essence of a "life-well-lived", which in turn confronts me with the question of its authenticity: it is brisk and fragile; an assortment of experiences, good and bad. A sum total of all things you are and will be and will do; the spaces you will occupy; the roads you'll walk down; the people you will love; the heartbreaks you will go through; the stories you will live to tell; the dreams you will conjure for the future and the past you will look back upon, sometimes fondly and at other times, with anguish.
My attention is diverted to the song in loop in my head:
"Let me take you down, cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields. Nothing is real...

And nothing to get hung about."

Notes on a Monday Morning

Waking up is never fun.

I turn off the alarm after it has snoozed for the fifth time. In a futile attempt at elevating my spirits, I let The Beatles croon through my iPod.

"Here comes the Sun...and I say...it's alright."

Right.

Still in my birthday suit, I brew some jasmine green tea; freshen up and put on a robe to collect the newspaper from my terrace. So what happened in the world today? A train caught fire, no one died. Anna Hazare is giving the Government a run for its money. The Middle East and Africa is still broiling with protest and conflict.

The egg I left to boil is ready; the bacon in the microwave is crisp; the juice has been poured in the glass; the bread leaps out of the toaster, as if wanting to startle me.

I am not grumpy. I am jaded. I am not necessarily cribbing. I am solemnly condemning the comforts of a conventionally good life.

I get dressed. I lock the house and walk out. I start the ignition of the car and let out a little sigh before setting the gear on the first and wearily pressing the accelerator.

This is the beginning of a series of groundhog days: life on a repeat mode.

There is a minor accident, instigating an altercation. The man with the small car is livid. The man with the big car is belligerent. The men in the rest of cars are nonchalant, waiting in queues to squeeze their way out through the by-lane to avoid being delayed.

The radio reads my mind; and that of a thousand others.

"Today, I don't feel like doing anything...I just wanna lay in my bed."

India Gate is a delirious flux of vehicles of all sizes, a whirlpool of traffic, as on any other working day. As my hands and legs work involuntarily, yet in perfect coordination, gallivanting my little red car through the traffic, my mind contemplates inconsequential existentialist conundrums.

What am I doing here? What is the purpose of living such a life? How can I do this everyday for the rest of my life?

In a few minutes, I'll be sitting in my plush wooden cabin, with no windows, dismal green carpets, a smell of cheap room-freshner, an AC which makes me miss summers in summertime, and preparing a list of "things to do" for the day, executing them and then striking them off the list.

Intermittently, I will lapse into a day dream about a parallel universe, where I am snorkeling in my polka-dot bikini in a beatific blue lagoon of a remote tropical island, as the sun rises up the horizon, on a Monday morning.

Notes on Strangers on my Couch.

I offer couch to strangers like you. In exchange, you offer stories. It's a fair deal.

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Magda:

You were the first. Trusting you came easy, I guess it was the same for you. I wonder if it is only the prospect of a free shelter and food that brings two strangers from half way across the globe together. Humanity never ceases to amaze me.

You arrived at midnight; when the June's sweltering Delhi day had been lulled to behave. I was amused that you expected me to be, not what I was: a tiny girl, clad in summer shorts and a vest. "Not very Indian", you probably intended to say, but replaced your words carefully with a more polite euphemism: "Independent".

You stayed 4 days. You ate nothing hot and spicy. You refused to carry a cell phone. You insisted on travelling in atrocious DTC buses to Old Delhi. You befriended a strange man in Jama Masjid and accepted his invitation to visit his family. You got scared out of your wits when there was a power cut in his ghetto like home and thought this was the end of your life as you knew it. You smiled and dismissed your fears when the power came back and his sisters most hospitably served you tea and samosas. You visited the Toilet Museum!! (I did not even know that existed!) You came home to narrate to me with most animated gesticulations, each and every moment of your ordeal, with such perspicacity, that I could feel your excitement percolate through my very heart.

You carried only full sleeved shirts because of your preconceived ideas of the conservative India. We shopped at the Sarojini Nagar Market for some more summer-friendly outfits and for the next one hour I pointed out to you every Indian girl who would walk past in a spaghetti strapped top. We watched a movie together. We talked about men, and it was reassuring to know that the experiences with love are uniform across the globe. You later asked me which one I would choose between a man who is a great father, and husband and a man who is a great lover, both exclusive of each other. To which my most honest response was, "I can take care of the kids myself." And we laughed it off for the next ten minutes.

Before you left, you thanked me for dispelling the stereotypes you harboured about India and for accommodating you. I never thanked you for opening my eyes to the world around me.

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Kang Kang:

Your season was the rains. How I wished I had spent more time with you. As Murphy would have it, you had to endure the worst conditions: the pouring rain not allowing you to explore as much as you'd probably desired to, the plumbing and water condition at home going wrong and my being occupied with work mostly. But I never sensed you regretting your choice of staying with me instead of a hostel/hotel.

You stayed 5 days. We talked over breakfast mostly. You loved the milk shake that I prepared and asked me for its recipe. You took a train to Bangalore, but e-mailed me later to inform me that you got off the train at some quaint old South-Indian town that I forget the name of, to go to an ashram, which you overheard some people talk about on the train.

You are an English teacher in China, and yet you struggled to convince me of the earnestness of your gratitude. "Thank you very much dear, we Chinese people are not very good at expressing ourselves." You did just fine.

It is only much later, after I visited China, that I noticed how different you seemed to be from the rest of your kind; from the majority in China who like structure and avoid risks, who refuse to connect with people who are "different".

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Katie:

When we met, we were both warding off the same demons. You tackled them by embracing a real adventure, and I by embracing escapism. You spent four months travelling all over South East Asia: Laos, Vietnam, Nepal, Thailand and then India.

We talked while we painted our nails a bright shade of blue. We treated ourselves to ice-cream at India Gate at midnight. We rolled our eyes at the inane and bizarre attempts of Indian men at propositioning exotic women. We ate kebabs at Khan Market and you told me about your little vacation romance with a hapless young, rockstar-of-a-lad from Nepal. And I shared with you the curious incident of my life which involved falling in love with a Nepalese man. At the thought of romance, we mused, and at the loss of it, we bonded.

We rub shoulders sometimes on our Facebook walls. We don't interact much, other than "liking" a picture or status of either, once in a while. But when you went back, you left me a message: "My toe is still blue from when we painted our nails together, and so a part of you is still with me here in San Francisco."

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Mirko:

I could have fallen in love with you. I did, a little bit. And I know, you did too, a little bit. You were every bit the arrogant German I'd heard of. Your experience with India had been awful, and I believe you weren't lying when you said that I was the most "fun" part of your Indian trip.

You called me the crazy little Indian girl. You thought it stupendous that I would work for hours at a stretch and could still be dressed up and about to go out at night. We danced all of Saturday night. We got lost driving around in the labyrinths of central Delhi in the wee hours, with no regrets. You tested my Spanish speaking skills and teased me like an old pal.

I convinced you against going to the Taj Mahal with a weird Indian man you met through Couchsurfing. (Somehow all weird men have found their way to Couchsurfing). My bad. But in my defence, he was indeed quite a weirdo. Now I see that I had put up my most judgmental glasses on, while you were around. The strange man showed up at my door at 5 a.m. to pick you up for Agra. You told him you won't go.

Well, as it turned out, you traveled to Agra on your own, in a passenger train, and made it to the main gate just in time for it to be shut down for the day; you were denied the wondrous sight. Karma bites, I know. But hey, bad experiences make for wonderful stories.

An hour before you left, you got us a bottle of red wine. We trespassed my neighbour's terrace, climbed on top of my roof and balanced ourselves on the parapet. We drank wine and giggled incredulously about your little Indian (mis)adventure. We never kissed.

Before you left, you said: "If two people meet once in life, there is a 95% probability that they would meet again." I wondered where you got your statistics from and hoped you got them right. We said goodbye. We catch a fleeting glimpse of each other's life on our virtual walls; our interaction limited to "pokes" that we surreptitiously throw at each other on Facebook.

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You are all a lot more than strangers, a little more than acquaintances, but a little lesser than friends.

Through your experiences, I have vicariously trekked the Annapurna Ranges; been lost in Egyptian desserts; taught English to street kids in a quaint, old Tamilian town; attended the Burning Man.

Through your eyes, I have seen a little more. Through your adventures, I have lived a little more. In your company, I have reveled a little more.

I am the quintessential armchair traveler. Someday, I will take myself out of this armchair, and I hope the 5% chance of not meeting you ever again, does not get the better of me.

How 'bout that ever elusive kudo?

One of the reasons I haven't been writing is that I never intended for this blog to be a "quick-update-about-how-cool-my-life-is" kind of a blog. So this post makes me feel like I'm cheating on my ideologies, since I am going to be giving you snippets of all that transpired while I have been away.

But I promise that I have a point. That is, if you have the patience to stick with me till the end.

I have been singing. And making new friends. A song brings people together like a dance never can. While a dance may say "I'm into you" or "we get along well". I song together says "I like you" or "I feel you". And really, nothing makes me happier than singing out loud. It started with my landing up at TC, for a beer after work on a certain Thursday. They had karaoke going on, and I got hooked. Since then, I have been living my life, one Thursday at a time. So, one Thursday I'm Alicia "Off-keys", the next I'm "Lady Marmalade", yet another time I'm tutoring everyone to "walk like an Egyptian". If you happen to be in TC on a given Thursday, look up the small girl with a loud voice.

I have been working hard and partying harder. Literally. Even though it came at a cost of sleepless nights and I am pretty sure that at one point of time I had more Red Bull running through my veins than blood. I also got a much awaited appraisal. I am a sucker for good beginnings and I have a good feeling about 2011.

The hair's growing out. As someone commented earlier on my post, maybe I'm making peace with my life now.

I'm back on Facebook. *sigh* I know, let's not get started on that. But it was good to know that I was missed.

I haven't yet met anyone special, but then I haven't been trying awfully hard at it either. Not that companionship is not desirable, but it seems to require such a tremendous amount of effort to "pick up" a new relationship, that I have sort of put my hand off and grown out of it. So I haven't been asking for anyone's number, and I haven't been allowing small talk to reach a stage where a man asks for my number. And that is such a relief.

China was great. No; that is an understatement: it was abso-fuckin-lutely awesome! In fact it was like "the small cherry on top of the regular cherry on top of the sundae of awesomeness" (as Barney Stinson would have put it.). Okay, that was lame. But lame can be true. Right? It was good to ultimately take the vagabond out of the armchair. Beijing deserves a post all to itself, so I will save it for another time.

I have almost nailed that elusive feeling of belonging to Delhi. Almost there, I mean. Though the escapist in me is trying hard to convince me against planting flowers in my terrace, I bought new furniture; at least. I can almost call Delhi as home, though not just yet.

Bottomline: I am happy.

This is where I begin to have a problem.

I can't do "happy" anymore without feeling guilty, or fearful, or panicky.
There was a time; I am not sure how long back, but it feels like eternity; when I believed that I deserved to be happy. That life owed me all such.

So since when did I start touching wood every time life gave me a little treat? Since when did I start holding myself back every time my heart began to swell with exhilaration? Since when did the feeling of contentment in life inevitably start giving way to the mean reds? And since when did I start believing that no "ever after" would ever follow my "happily"?

To my mind it doesn't make sense to have too much of something you are so scared of losing: too much love; too much joy. Too much of anything that makes me want to touch wood immediately thereafter.

Have I become wiser or just cynical? Or is it plain paranoia?

Or have I simply lost that loving feeling?

10 Things I Hate About Being 25.

(...or the advent of quarter life crisis.)

1. The disconcerting realization that "generation gap", like global warming, is a real phenomenon.

2. Having to consider whether the man you've become a little interested in, is younger to you or older, as opposed to earlier, when the only consideration was, whether he is single or taken.

3. Calling them "men" now, not "boys" or "guys". Sigh.

4. Sighing more often than before.

5. Self dependence is (pretty much like capitalism) a necessary evil of the adult life.

6. Every body around being so married and all, these days. And people thinking it is okay to ask "So? When are you getting married?"

7. The feeling of running out of time.

8. Having to take care of cooking gas, electricity bills and house repairs.

9. Missing the feeling of butterflies in stomach that came with being infatuated.

10. Bargaining with parents for deadlines as to the number of years you will be "allowed" to remain a bachelorette.

Let's face it, there is something very panicky about being on the other side of the quarter.