Most of K's friends are married. That makes her ears ache.
However most recently, she started to observe them, closely. they were not the kind that her mother often hankered about. That attracted her even more, so she dug and dug (to her friends curiosity) till she found the mole she was tagging.
Here it is : 'Marriages, that i have encountered, [being specific is very important. because all crows are not black. (no, i do not expect you to understand the joke.)] have a certain comfortable strangeness and selfishness to them. The 'I' is very much intact in the 'We', the chores divided; the care, mighty pragmatic; and the love, well bargained.'
What a relief!
May 17, 2010
May 13, 2010
'just like that' Gyaan
These are some of k's newest realizations.
# The funny part of being an overtly and inertly emotional freak is that passion and depression are forces that come uninvited.
# Passion lives in the temple of Venus. The Venus woman asks questions, bends the norms and is cursed by Hera, so that nice men with common sense do not excite her.
# “If you love someone, you must be unselfish enough to give them what they want.” - Pierce Brosnon from some film.
# Lovemaking is not over rated. We are in dire need of Kamasutra schools.
# Conversation between Radha (Eunuch) during a Movie scene :
K: Babes, what is the whole funda behind a eunuchs’ clap? Do you practice it?
Radha: (laughing) : Arre, clapping is fun, and yes there is a technique. Par, the best part of the clap is that it instills fear; it scares the lukhas, the mamus and the chokras. It is the only language they understand. The clap is the sound of us – sharp, yet accommodating. It means that if need be – I can protest. Par, this is the way I choose to live.
# Capricorn Rook quoted someone from somewhere “we are scavengers looking for scraps of fulfillment.”
# A drunken Venus woman breaks up with her forlorn lover. 72 hours later, she climbs down her pedestal of respect and calls her lover, who responds, “At CCI, in a meeting, will call you back.”
Pragmatism sucks. Btw the mountain and the valley, K shall one day climb across the mountain.
# Conversation btw K and Mitsu
K: Why don’t you move on, you divorced him three years ago!
Mitsu : There is so much love that I am numbed by the constant pain that I feel. I do not think of things, they live in me. I see him in every man; any man I love will be in his image. Will have his flaws, will make my head fly. I need him not, but I am not over him. I keep thinking of how it would be if we’d never met, and how would it be if we’d never have parted.
K: Love is a poison; it runs in your skin, your breath and your blood. It’s like the dead baby’s ghost that hangs by the umbilical around your throat.
Mitsu: (Laughing) you know, kit, never stop writing.
You were right then, God, I should have shot him!
# The funny part of being an overtly and inertly emotional freak is that passion and depression are forces that come uninvited.
# Passion lives in the temple of Venus. The Venus woman asks questions, bends the norms and is cursed by Hera, so that nice men with common sense do not excite her.
# “If you love someone, you must be unselfish enough to give them what they want.” - Pierce Brosnon from some film.
# Lovemaking is not over rated. We are in dire need of Kamasutra schools.
# Conversation between Radha (Eunuch) during a Movie scene :
K: Babes, what is the whole funda behind a eunuchs’ clap? Do you practice it?
Radha: (laughing) : Arre, clapping is fun, and yes there is a technique. Par, the best part of the clap is that it instills fear; it scares the lukhas, the mamus and the chokras. It is the only language they understand. The clap is the sound of us – sharp, yet accommodating. It means that if need be – I can protest. Par, this is the way I choose to live.
# Capricorn Rook quoted someone from somewhere “we are scavengers looking for scraps of fulfillment.”
# A drunken Venus woman breaks up with her forlorn lover. 72 hours later, she climbs down her pedestal of respect and calls her lover, who responds, “At CCI, in a meeting, will call you back.”
Pragmatism sucks. Btw the mountain and the valley, K shall one day climb across the mountain.
# Conversation btw K and Mitsu
K: Why don’t you move on, you divorced him three years ago!
Mitsu : There is so much love that I am numbed by the constant pain that I feel. I do not think of things, they live in me. I see him in every man; any man I love will be in his image. Will have his flaws, will make my head fly. I need him not, but I am not over him. I keep thinking of how it would be if we’d never met, and how would it be if we’d never have parted.
K: Love is a poison; it runs in your skin, your breath and your blood. It’s like the dead baby’s ghost that hangs by the umbilical around your throat.
Mitsu: (Laughing) you know, kit, never stop writing.
You were right then, God, I should have shot him!
May 12, 2010
Satvic Phirni
K's newest fasciantion is cooking Satvic food which rests on the principles of Ayurveda.
Ingredients:
Rice – one medium sized bowl
Rock sugar – 4-5 medium sized rocks
Fresh Cows Milk – 1 liter
Almonds – 10
Raisins (yellow sultanas) – 10
Kersar – 6-7 strands
Cardamom powder – 1/4th tea spoon
Nutmeg powder – 1/6th tea spoon
Turmeric - 1/6th tea spoon
Earthen pots – 8
Procedure:
~ Lightly roast rice grains.
~ Wash and soak rice, almonds and raisins separately in water over night.
~ Boil Milk and add Rock sugar and turmeric.
~ Steam Rice in a pressure cooker, adding milk instead of water.
~ Once the rice is soft and breakable, add it to the boiling milk.
~ Season the milk with chopped raisins, Nutmeg, Kesar and Cardamom.
~ Once the mixture is thick and of porridge consistency, pour it in earthen pots.
~ Garnish with slivers of peeled almonds.
Serve chilled
Ingredients:
Rice – one medium sized bowl
Rock sugar – 4-5 medium sized rocks
Fresh Cows Milk – 1 liter
Almonds – 10
Raisins (yellow sultanas) – 10
Kersar – 6-7 strands
Cardamom powder – 1/4th tea spoon
Nutmeg powder – 1/6th tea spoon
Turmeric - 1/6th tea spoon
Earthen pots – 8
Procedure:
~ Lightly roast rice grains.
~ Wash and soak rice, almonds and raisins separately in water over night.
~ Boil Milk and add Rock sugar and turmeric.
~ Steam Rice in a pressure cooker, adding milk instead of water.
~ Once the rice is soft and breakable, add it to the boiling milk.
~ Season the milk with chopped raisins, Nutmeg, Kesar and Cardamom.
~ Once the mixture is thick and of porridge consistency, pour it in earthen pots.
~ Garnish with slivers of peeled almonds.
Serve chilled
Apr 25, 2010
Apr 10, 2010
The Plight of Mrs. Bennet
Parents, rather mothers are a kind that few really understand. The worse kinds are the Mrs. Bennets’ of the world. In the Indian scenario, to have your daughter married to the most right person within the parameters of your value system is their numero uno crises.
For someone who has been ‘put up on the marriage market’ and has a trillion reasons to either be turned down or to turn down; the deal is quite simple, walking away. Can Mrs. Bennet do that? Unfortunately, she can not. I have mocked at her just like everyone else. Called her a drama queen, a gold digger, a castist and more. It was in a brief moment today, when my phone sang that I realized how wrong I have been. No denying she is all of that but there is more to the obnoxious nonsense. It is sadness, paternal love, and insecurity. She lived through times and juggled between families, siblings, in-laws. She knew that love had little to do with life post marriage. However, she’d never been in love. 55 years. No love. There is care, of course, and there is need – and it is her only argument against love, when it comes to the ‘stickability’ of marriage.
There was a resume, she liked for the status of a potential son-in-law. The horoscope matched to the T, the boy was from the supremely pious Brahmin family, tall, fair, handsome, lived in Uptown Bombay, and had a flourishing career as a doctor. The pluses were multiplied once she learned that he could sing; that he called at odd hours to sing to her daughter, and that he was seemingly in love with her. K being herself, restrained. She found the singing a bit annoying (one song is fine; six at a go, are not.) It was pestering to tell a man in his early thirties to hang up at 3am because she was in no mood to listen to a gazal or a Sufi story. His megalomania of his talents and credentials was driving her overboard. Initially it was funny that he addressed himself as a Dr. Soandso is calling you or Dr. Soandso will now sing a song for you. My dismissal was dismissed quite briskly, calling his irate behavior ‘romantic’. Likewise was my luncheon experience was dismissed too – “you are so sarcastic, so what he chose the restaurant you do not like? So what if he wanted to share your soup or coffee into ‘one-by-two’? So what if he does not use a perfume? So what if he ordered all by himself, maybe he is not used to a woman’s company? Burping is a natural phenomenon and so is farting. Maybe, he is unwell! So what if he made you walk till his patient’s house. Maybe he wanted more time with you! So what if he uses fowl language and has a perpetual cringe? Don’t knit pick. Men change after marriage, he will too. You could teach him all the table manners and personal etiquette!
Once the parents met, the cardboard mantle collapsed. The Uptown house was a shanty. The garb was cheap smelly polyester. His parents, house and him sitting there (with a pot full of attitude) were below average and stank of miserliness. Mrs. Bennet dressed in her Kanjiveram, K in raw silk, and Loud mouth who decided to accompany us in order to provide a neutral unbiased judgment was dressed in linen.
Post the fiasco, btw my cackles and Loud mouth’s remarks, Mrs. Bennet’s silence turned to tears. She could not contain her desperation and her ‘shoving off’ of her beloved child into the arms of a crude, sloppy ape with manboobs. As we tried to cajole her, she uttered something that broke us evenly:
“Mrs. Bennet: Why is it supposed to be so? Why could he have no manners? Why did his family need to be so crass? Why was his mother not dressed for the occasion? Is it imperative for a mother to be blind in order to find happiness for her child? How many things do I have to let go, to know that the potential son-in-law will take care of my baby daughter? How much do I need to feed into the families’ treasury and how much do I have to educate you and make you beautiful, in order for them to treat you like a princess and not a golden hen? K, as a mother, I am falling every minute; I’m failing to give you a husband who would be everything your father is and more. I’m failing to digest and let off of all petty things that I know will hurt you in future. When I see you, I see myself, at 28, I was running behind you, helping you strengthen your legs. How can I today send you off with a wobbly crutch? I’m failing, and I want you to forgive me for putting us through this.”
Mar 31, 2010
Conversation
Kal Kid: Are you from the community?
K: Why?
Kal Kid: You don't look like one.
K: (Chuckle) Is it so?
Kal Kid: Could i ask you something?
K: For sure.
Kal Kid: How can I distinguish a lesbian from a woman?
K: Look for the Horns.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Red Eye: So how long have you been associated with Lesbian rights?
K: More than a decade now.
Red Eye: So you have a girl friend?
K: No. I have a boyfriend.
Red Eye's jaw drops. Silence fills the air and K holds her laughter with all her might.
K: Why?
Kal Kid: You don't look like one.
K: (Chuckle) Is it so?
Kal Kid: Could i ask you something?
K: For sure.
Kal Kid: How can I distinguish a lesbian from a woman?
K: Look for the Horns.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Red Eye: So how long have you been associated with Lesbian rights?
K: More than a decade now.
Red Eye: So you have a girl friend?
K: No. I have a boyfriend.
Red Eye's jaw drops. Silence fills the air and K holds her laughter with all her might.
Man, Woman and The Other
Well. (‘Well’ is the safest way to start a piece of writing. It gives one an impression of the writer being in a perennial thinking process on the topic.)
This is an open forum and in praise of Ricky Martin being Gay. Whatever. The whole LGBTI (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex) bandwagon is going gagagaga about it with large bronze trumpets with pink ribbons!
Why the celebration of the other? Who is the other? What makes them so special? Why are Hetrosexuals curious about them, to the extent of being offensive? Why make jokes about the Other? Is the other responsible for its treatment as the 'other'?
Why do some people end up as their sexuality? Is it that we have failed to educate ourselves? That we no more realize that branding people and even us for an inch of our identity is a humongous synecdochical mistake. A golden haired woman becomes ‘blonde’ by the definition of what a blonde is theatrically characterized, Sardars become ‘stupid’, Maharastrians become ‘Ghatis’, and so it becomes of the sexual side, Gays become ‘gays’ (a small slice from the ‘other’ category)!
The worse part of sexual choice is that you cease to become anything other than your sexual identity; you cease to be human, forget being a man.
Today I am writing from the Other side. (As writers, it is a bit easier to walk in many shoes, to dissolve into another emotion, mingle in a territory, as if it was your habitat, little amphibious, we writers are. The truth is, in our twisted mind, we vicariously live many lives, walk in many skins, become many people.)
“We are not perfect. At the most, we are intriguing. And the fun part ends there. Like you, we made our choices and are living them out. Then, what is it to not be a heterosexual? It is to be not common, to be not a million people. It is to be free, free to choose, choose to be me, or a thousand other things, even free to choose to be a heterosexual. Sexuality, you see, is fluid and individualistic. So who are we? Gays, Bi, trans…? We are more, more than our chosen sexualities, more than your clichés of them, more than our professions, more than our projected quirks, more than our casts, more than our religion, more than our colors; just as you are more than everything you portray.”
This post is dedicated to you, as much as it attempts to celebrate queerness. It is for you, to look, smile and carry on with life after you’ve witnessed a rainbow. We are the colors of the rainbow, you and I – the pink and the purple.
Mar 29, 2010
Ornate Love
Love is always adorned, complicated and ostentatious. It can not be otherwise.
And it is wonderful when people are in love. it is often the only time when they are most accepting, generous, forgiving, brave and utterly selfless. Mind you, it lasts briefly, but it shows us what we are capable of.
Oyster Seeker, I shall be punctual.
Mar 22, 2010
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