Than you Jeff

Reading 'A Prisoner of Birth',  helped K word something that she felt for eons but could never pen it with the simplicity she wanted to achieve. today she has - A man's qualification, demeanor and speech does not define his character. 

it's been a common foolhardiness on our part and am still trying to wipe it my conditioning.  For Childmom - who's a prime victim of shortsightedness.

Akimbo in Bombay Rain.

This post comes delayed, very delayed. K ’s mind has become as erratic as the rains. K awaits a cathartic downpour, but all she receives is a plenitude of a trickle.

Rains are magical to Mumbai, they are the witches Morrigan summons every year to protect this Venusian mistress. The smell of the city is like no other, its moods unmatched. Her pendulum nature is quite an addiction.

A walk from Churchgate station to Kala Godha at 8.30 am sipping a cup of hot coffee in a consistent drizzle, gives you a lesson in love. The fragrance of human commotion is visible and forgiven, for the sheer pleasantness of weather. The over looming aroma of coffee and gudan garm; alternating with the sharp smell of cutlets and samosas submerged in fuming palm oil, to the crisp fragrance of freshly baked bread, and somewhere at an unexpected juncture you can smell god in potted mogras.

The wake-up calls from the Koyal, the man who jogs at the oval from 8.15 to 8.45 every day, the septuagenarian on the 3^rd floor of Court View stands from 8 am onwards by the window watching grumpy, sleepy migrants haul their bodies to work every morning.

How can one miss the man who changes his wind-chimes every monsoon? (The earliest I recall was a large bronze sun; a ball of shimmering gold. The next came, long hollow bamboo shoots, making odd khadak, khadak sounds, annoying but familiar to the heart. Presently the aluminum/steel trinket brought from a $1 store has taken over. it hangs in there, on the so called balcony - a testimony of a Chinese worker's craft that made its journey into a South Bombay apartment.

(A walk across the Oval deserves to be a stand-alone experience to be narrated)

The silence in the Quila court corridors is far more pleasant than the joy of justice at vormittag. The Army restaurant, where no defense personnel ever ate, has opened its shutters as a scrunched child labor swabs the floors with hot water. Across the lane, stands a muted, large, beautiful structure with never opened rotted gates. On its broad stone steps, drug addicts, infested with flies sleep away, abandoning the city’s mirth.

As K walks across welcoming the Rhythm house only for its architecture, she nods at a familiar set of brown eyes. He silently stands at the opposite corner, looking at the black horse painted across a pub, named after a whore- house street. He smiles at her, she responds, they talk about a new element that they discovered in the horse that day. ‘It is in motion’ if you observe carefully. She agrees.

They part ways, he heads to the blindingly blue synagogue and she disappears into the opaque beige lanes.

Love Again....

It's fascinating how i never get bored of writing about love and b'bay. Both are phenomenal emotions indeed!

K confesses
~"it just ran its course. It was an act of perfection - complete in it's candor, with a premise and a conclusion. I think we lived it fully.

I have learnt that you can not hold someone’s love against them.
Just as you can not hold your absence of love against you."

Equinox

Often when I think that things can not be worse than they already are. When the dark is only growing darker and that the rays of Ra must have faded away, I think of the dark lord. I know he'll bear the first tear in the morbid skies and spew light; for lies in his heart is the prism of equinox

Randomness from the heart

I need to insulate my nerves, against me.

Poetics of Wisdom

I learnt, when in the final year of Masters, that everything i perceived as original till that moment was, in fact a product of time past. My so called spurts of wisdom, creativity, intelligence and counter catechisms - were in fact already expressed in different and sometimes much better forms. Hence everything that has to be written is already written, even what I’m about to write.

I think thoughts from a borrowed consciousness,
the same that existed before my electronic or paper notebook arrived.

They were captured and then extinguished
like mine will be when the blog dies,
when the book decays.
Then sometime a million years later
when modes of expressions have deferred and differed
someone will think my thoughts
thoughts that were borrowed from a consciousness
before mine.

As Soul sista often teaches me - all expression must be made, irrespective of its audience, devoid of failure or success. Some thoughts are heard soon, some later; some just float for generations and build the rule-book of time.

Once Upon a Time...

She seived the water resting in the hills.
The purity of his mind made it immortal.

A blue boy made a tear in its karma.

The blue boy was forbidden from heaven.
The blue boy was worshipped by man.

Why Hera and Aphrodite can't be friends

K is a woman in her late 20’s, who drinks a triple shot of espresso with lime juice.

J is a woman who bakes cakes.

K never baked a cake, a cookie or made a sandwich for him.

J was his nurse, friend, mother, sister, back-up date, cleaner, et al.

K was the woman who strolled in and out of his bedroom, never halting at the kitchen or the drawing room.

J was the quintessential ‘good girl’

K was just a ‘girl having a good time’.

Almost half a decade later, K very unwittingly bumped into her at the lights and chandelier store. She did secretly want to bump into her, but probably with a speeding car!

J was standing there critically appreciating a tiny piece of wall lighting that K thought was unpraktisch. Her halo was the unchanged, silky hair, every strand in place. Sans crease churidaar draped with a south cotton dupatta. Perfectly color coordinated shoes and bag.

Contrasting her sanitized demeanor; K looked like a jamboree: Her wild her left loose, silver hoops dangling from her lobes; denim capris, white and blue floral shirt, her awkwardly matched brown Baggit tote with beige ACG’s – were incomparable even with her shadow.

K was about to suck in her breath and rush out without purchasing her ‘best buy’ light fixture; when J turned! K swelled her bosom, sucked in her paunch and just like a ‘blast from the past, greeted her. Pleasantries were exchanged.

J’s accompanist, an olderly lady, (who was shown no recognition for staring at K), remarked – “Isn’t she the one ‘the hustler’ was screwing behind your back?” I appreciated both – her galls and my restrain.

J: “Ya, K, I've never asked you how it felt to be the second woman?”

K: “Well, it was fantastic, almost Utopian! You get the perks, without the brunt. So tell me how does it feel being a successful human dishwasher?

J: “Ohhh, the famous caustic tongue! He had forewarned me. However, I am his wife now. We tied a knot last year. I wanted to invite you, but he never let me post it through. He didn’t want you there! He said, ‘He did not want to face his mistake.’ Do you know what that means K?

K (smirking at the jerk): “I bless you for your ignorance, and for what you have. It is something I could never live with…”

K turned to leave and as the guard opened the door, J yelled – “What is it that you could never live with?”

Him.

Freedom from oder Freedom to....

Section 377 was repealed today by the Indian law. Thereby, granting freedom for every Indian citizen to choose her/ his sexuality. Today is a celebration of sorts - after a long grueling battle with the law, we now need to look at other aspects of homosexual and alternative sexuality.

We are now free from arrests, assaults and abuses. Will this freedom translate into the freedom to live peacefully? Will we stop socially assaulting people for their choices? Will violence in gay and lesbian relationships decrease?

A step is taken; a ladder is yet to be built. We need to use this freedom to make the world around us a better place to live.

The Other Side of Singleton

In the mood to complain:

K has always loved her coveted ‘single-and-emancipated’ status, however, there are times when she is at war with herself.

~ Times when friends can't make it to a planned pre-scheduled event, coz the hubby is out of town or mother-in-law is visiting or worse, the baby is sick.

~ Times when on an outstation holiday, she is compelled to share the spare bedroom with their nosy-parker kids.

~ Times when she sits at the tail end of the dinner table coz all the couples sit together.

~ Times when she baby sits really ill mannered screaming toddlers that she would gladly push down a flight of stairs, ( if she were guilt free).

~ Times when she is searing with anger at the cunning with which they cut her out from her plan. Poor K then makes them a meal, or checks on the house help, or just watches TV till they are ‘fully satisfied’.

~ K also does enough amount of lying for them, especially if either of them shops beyond the stipulated limit. It is to be understood that the extra is ‘gifted’ by her! The scene changes as partners complain about why they were not gifted or why was I spoiling their partner!

~ Times when her easy life, appears flippant and unstable for the married town whores.

~ Times when they criticize her for not having their problems and hence the lack of seriousness towards them.

~ Times when she is dragged into ‘him v/s her’ fight and she can not refuse to take sides. And when she does, K gets clearly blamed for the entire argument!

~ Friends don’t remain friends once they get married – they just become married people.