Chasing the Years of My Life...

"I'm ten years old. My life is half over and I don't even know if I'm black with white stripes or white with black stripes!" - Marty- the Zebra, Madagascar.

So, yet another year has come to pass. I don't grow up anymore; I only grow old. By now, I know a few things with certainty - like eventually you get over almost any crisis in life, no matter how soul-sucking and stupendously indelible it may have seemed at one time. Also, I know which are the things that really matter in life - like fun and friendship.

You were a good year, 26th. I'm almost longing for you to be back. I made amazing new friends, cut my hair, learnt Spanish, learnt how to cook, worked hard, partied harder, danced a little, sang a lot, wrote some, and dreamed many armchair adventures. I went on a vacation to frikkin' China! (Beat that now.) It was a year of reminiscing and forgetting, forgiving even - a year when you pick the pieces of past and reorient your life, little by little. It was the kind of year that gives you hope when you look back upon it.

I think about the past decade often - a succession of revelations. I went through years when I didn't like myself too much. Then through years when I grew comfortable with my imperfections and contradictions. Eventually, I learnt to live with myself. As a corollary, I learnt to live with others.

I learnt that knowing that expectations are traps just doesn't save you from them. And that true freedom lies not in their defiance, but in their righteous fulfillment.

And oh, I thought a great deal about love, of course. I shredded the concept to pieces - analysed it, experimented with it, embraced it, resisted it, condemned it. Once, I surrendered to it and let myself be comforted by it. Once, I simply walked away from it. Once, it was ruthlessly taken away from me. I learnt that it is difficult to move on without achieving closure, but that sometimes you just have to do it. I contemplated the nature of longing and loss and discovered that often one begets the other. And so I learnt to perfect the art of un-possessing, un-belonging; of severing ties and of letting go.

I learnt that you live some moments in life which seem perfect; and that you long to preserve them. I also learnt that these moments seem so perfect only because they are transient and because you cannot frame them inside a snow globe and hold on to them forever. I learnt that memories are one of the surest sources of joy in one's life.

These have been years of reckoning - of growing older and wiser; of growing richer with every experience.

In a few days, I'll have surpassed 26. I never imagined I'd be a 26 year old when I was young, but I had an inkling of what I wanted to feel like when I am a woman.

And today, I feel every bit like the woman I wanted to be.

Seasons of Providence

Fall; October, 2001; Ranchi:

I was returning from my physics tuition class when my "Lady Bird" got a punctured tyre.

The wind was strong, and the evening, dressed in colours of the earth: ochre, brown, yellow; golds and pastels. A bicycle is good company for a stroll on a lovely autumn evening. The trees are mighty and benevolent - they strip themselves off, to carpet the road below with their withered foliage - which crackled underneath my feet, welcoming, as I walked. Dry leaves caught in a wind eddy, danced in circular jubilation before me.

I tried to look ahead, sheltering my eyes with one hand, to see if I could find someone who could direct me to a cycle repair shop. When you're 16, help comes easy. Through the flurry of dust and leaves, I saw the silhouette of a boy approaching. A beautiful boy with a grand smile and mischievous eyes.

He decided to walk me to the shop. We found things to talk about - school, tuition, common friends. My cycle was repaired. I could ride it back home. But we walked instead. Back in the days no one exchanged numbers in small towns. We knew that we'd run into each other again and we did. Let's say, quite often indeed.

I did not know what love at first sight meant, before that evening of fall. And I will not qualify the last statement with anything cynical about growing up and knowing better.

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Winters; November, 2008; Delhi

My first Delhi winter was about to make its way into my life in all its fury. I intended to make good use of the last few days on which I could still flaunt some skin, and wore the little black dress. I hopped into a car with some strange beautiful ladies among whom I had a friend from my dance class, who had invited me over for a night of letting my hair down.

23 is an odd age - lacking in character, lacking in anything which can be considered a significant milestone during a girl's passage to womanhood. I had been in love, been heartbroken and gotten over it, several times already. A harsh winter in a new city can be a lonely time. I wanted someone to keep me warm.

As I stepped out of the car, I realized what a mistake it had been to underestimate the might of a parky November night in Delhi. Men joined us, and one of them noticing my discomfort, offered me his coat. Several vodka shots and car hops later, we landed at a bachelors apartment for some after party.

I hadn't spoken much to the man in question, since I had my eye set on another pretty boy in the group, who disappeared later. I took to a corner in the lobby to get a couple of hours of sleep before sunrise, when I could make my way home. As the effect of the alcohol in my blood wore away, the tip of my nose froze; my toes curled inside the carpet; I drew a cushion close to my chest for warmth and my breath spawned mist before my eyes.

And there he was again - anticipating my needs - offering me a large sweatshirt, a warm quilt and a hot coffee, along with a delightful conversation which continued till day light.

I spent the next year and a half in his T-shirts and sweatshirts.

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Spring; January, 2004; Chennai

This is cheating, you'd say - January isn't spring! But it is the closest you can get to "feeling" spring in hot, hot Madras.

I had left Hyderabad to attend the grand "IIT Saarang" with a huge backpack containing my prettiest dresses and loveliest shoes. (What can I say, I have a thing for nerds.) I eventually reached there only with my handbag, that had only my wallet and my toothbrush. What transpired in between is a story for another time.

I didn't have much hope for finding romance in the next three days, considering I had to manage in a couple of cheap T-Shirts and pajamas that I had picked up from a street-side shop, with whatever little money I had, before making my way to the IIT campus. Strangely, even after literally having lost so much, my spirit was intact. Must be the spring in my veins.

At one corner there were a hundred talented young men and women painting each other's faces - metamorphosing what was human into a motley of characters out of fantasy; at another, vast expanses of the floor lay covered in kaleidoscopic illustrations of Rangoli; further ahead, in the midst of a congregation, a bunch of vivid performers proclaimed social slogans and implored upon people to participate.

As I walked further ahead a bevy of deers bounced past the road, into a meadow of tall-grass, causing its culms to spray white tufts of tiny flowers into the settled air and then quickly disappeared into a thicket.

Spring is so much more of a state of mind, than a season.

I walked far and long - in my dirty jeans - nonchalant towards my disheveled appearance, content with the anonymity, till I reached an auditorium which announced a "Salsa Workshop".

"Hi, I'd like to register."
"Do you have a partner?"
"Umm, nope. Don't know anyone here."
"Dance with me?"

Well, what can I say, I guess nerds have a thing for me too.

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Summer; June 2011; Delhi

At almost 26, you'd think I know something about romance and love and butterflies in the stomach. But I am clueless, still. Not having dated for a whole year, is, going by past experience, quite odd for a girl like me. The seasons have passed me by, markedly lacking in happenstance.

However, I am a summer girl. I like trotting about in skimpy shorts and tank tops. I like crunching up my short hair before I make eye contact with the cute guy at the bar while sipping on a frozen margarita. When it is bright and shiny, I like to be a darling and a flirt. When it is bright and shiny, I am hopeful of providence once again.

By the way, the other day I ran into a very cute guy at the bar. He got my number. We have a date. You never know. ;)

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.

The Girl who Lives behind Picket Fences.

At her best she is shallow; for shallowness is the rightful virtue of women who are darlings. Beautiful women are the burden bearers of all things lovely and ought not to be buoyed down by meaningless depths.

At her worst, she is profound, for intellect never fails her. And she is often at her worst: forever discerning epiphanies while believing none existed; trusting instincts while knowing premonitions were apocryphal; fathoming intensity while assuming sentiments to be delusional; searching for love while fearing vulnerability. She is aware of her contradictions.

She reserves her best for the kinds of you: who she knows she runs the risk of falling for. She reserves her worst only to herself. Indeed she lives behind her picket fences and she has no intention to be understood by you at all.

You'd notice her if she walked past you, though she's not your idea of an ideal beauty. You could spot her wearing a red silk dress in a sweltering summer bazaar, where she would unmindfully look through you and breezily walk past you - leaving you wondering if she'd come alive from the pages of the classic novel you'd been engrossed in. Or you'd see her standing with a bottle of beer in hand, wearing a pair of battered blue jeans that hung limply to her tiny waist, and the hems of which have been worn out by use, at an up-street high-tea party. In fact, you could run into her anywhere - where it appeared as though she didn't belong. And yet if she ever let you meet her eyes, you'd notice her silent pride in her intentional irrelevance.

If you talk to her, you'll ask her why she is single; and she'll ask you if that is a trick question. You'll ask for her number and she will oblige.

You'll think you'd fallen in love with her, but you'd merely have been enamoured by her mysterious ways. And she will never reveal herself to you, or to anyone else, subconsciously striving to keep love at abeyance.
You'll want to hold her. You'll want to spoon against her small frame in a soft bed, shrouded among satin sheets. You'll want to brush the careless strands of hair off her face when you wake up next to her in the morning. You'll want to spend hours sitting next to her under a cherry tree in full bloom, familiarizing her with your hopes and dreams and aspirations - painting for her a vivid future together with you, persuading her of your intentions. She'll hear you out. And true to her shallow self, she'll look into your eyes like she meant for herself to be yours. Maybe she'll even allow herself to love you briefly. Yet she will invite you not behind her picket fence.

And deep inside you'll know that someday her steadfast profundity would get the better of her. And then, she'll look through you unmidfully again and walk past you breezily again - as if she walked back into the pages of the classic novel you'd once been engrossed in. And she will silently pride herself on her irrelevance again, and that of yours.

And in stolid abandon, you'll let her go back behind the picket fence - to the realm of un-belonging, where she belongs.

An Insignificant Incident, that Warrants no Mention. And Yet.

He had stared at the dance floor; for uttering a confounded apology while staring into the eye is a task for the braver to undertake.

He had eventually come around to saying the words, and he had meant them. And I had heard them. "I am sorry" - heard each syllable pronounced coherently, even over the loud pulsating music, along with the other fumbled phrases about the past and things as they used to be; my gaze still affixed unto the blazing red paint on my finger-nails, that rested delicately upon the folds of my satin dress.

And we had looked at each other briefly. And he had tried to study the blankness of my visage to decipher my predicament. Would I forgive him, or would I not care? And in my head, I had wondered: did I remember?

For a split-second, I was reminded of the hurt as it had existed: a memory of a feeling as opposed to the feeling itself. A feeling that had been agonizing and impassioned. A feeling...that had been, but no longer was.

I remembered it, as I would remember an old movie, watched once upon a time: its plot vague and amorphous.

And maybe for a moment I had smiled lightly. Or was that a smirk? My mind had earnestly tried to contemplate a response.

But our moment was lost.

And I had let his apology linger there, among the din of the exulting crowd and the numerous pairs of feet swinging to a popular bollywood number, in ironical silence.

And we had returned our gaze to the cavorting lights on the dance floor.

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.