of love, life, laughter and loss

"Could fulfillment ever be felt as deeply as loss? Romantically she decided that love must surely reside in the gap between desire and fulfillment, in the lack, not the contentment. Love was the ache, the anticipation, the retreat, everything around it but the emotion itself." 
— Kiran Desai (The Inheritance of Loss)




One of the reasons why we crave love, & seek it so desperately, is that love is the only cure for loneliness, & shame, & sorrow. But some feelings sink so deep into the heart that only loneliness can help you find them again. Some truths about yourself are so painful that only shame can help you live with them. And some things are just so sad that only your soul can do the crying for you.
- Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

All Charming…

So what if I can’t be all charming and laugh at all their silly jokes…

Is it so bad to have a mind of my own?

So what if I don’t sit like a lady with my legs carefully folded and hands uptight?

It doesn’t mean that I can’t.

So what if like a child I want to have every toy and yet…there’s a favorite one?

So what if I want to speak what I feel without caring if I am hurting you

You know that you have hurt me too.

So what if I want to talk about the government and the policies that they make?

Does it make me any less feminine?

So what if I walk out of my house in my shorts and with uncombed hair

What if I feel beautiful that way too?

So what if I love in reckless abandon

But once in a while I want to play safe too?

So what if I don’t want to be “proper” all the time

Will the world really come to an end?

Flipping through the pages of an old file I found this “poem” that belonged to my feminist days… J

First I laughed at what I had written and then nostalgia took over…A lot has changed since then but some of it still remains…

To Nani…with love…

For most people childhood is the time they cherish the most. Given a chance they would like to relive that part of their lives. For me, I always thought that it was different. There weren’t many events from my childhood that I could term as ‘phenomenal’ and yet there were some humdrum incidents that are deeply ingrained in the memory.

When I got the news of my nani being in the ICU on the 6^th of june 2010, each one of those ‘humdrum’, mundane events started flashing infront of my eyes. It was a surreal experience. It is said that when a person dies, the events of his life flash before his eyes. But I wasn’t dying, someone else was, had already died perhaps. So what was it? It felt like a part of me was going away and I could not do anything about it. It was flashing infront of me- how she loved to cook for me, how she loved spoiling me with obscene amounts of gifts and money, how she always treated me like her unofficial favorite grandchild.

As everyone in the house rushed to close the doors, giving up their unfinished chores to leave for the hospital, I did the unthinkable. I, an atheist picked the “hanuman chalisa”(a book of prayer for overcoming fear and obstacles). I was ready to believe in god so that nani could live. In between the memories of my childhood with nani in the picture continued to flash before my eyes.

And then it happened.

I was still in the car when my cousin called me to say that nani was no more with us and requested me to maintain my cool infront of my mom. They wanted to delay telling her that her mother had died for as long as possible. My mom could live in hope till then. To know is not always the best and ignorance is at times, the bliss indeed.

God, I loved her so much. It actually hurt physically. It was hard to believe that this could happen. And even though nani was 76 and had lived like a queen all her life she deserved a little more time. She wanted to live. She wanted to see me get married and have kids. It wasn’t fair that she would go just like that. She was suffering from no ailment that could claim her life. The whole thing seemed so unjust.

When I looked at nani that day, she looked unbelievingly young. Her skin had no wrinkles and she lay there calm as though she was taking a nap. I noticed how beautiful she was.

The flashes continued.

She once stitched a pink and golden dress for me which I was so much in love with that I refused to take it off! She thought that I looked pretty in it and her opinion was all that mattered. Me, being the only dusky skinned child among the hordes of my fair skinned cousins, I never saw myself as “beautiful” when I was a kid. But to nani I was the prettiest of them all. I can never forget that. A child can never forget something like that.

Never before in my life had I held a dead body so close to me or seen a funeral pyre. But the body felt alive and pyre was just pieces of wood. Me, my mom, aunts and the married cousins were adorning nani like a bride as per the Hindu traditions as my grandfather mutely watched from a distance. He had stopped talking much a long time back but that day when I looked at my grandfather I knew that he’d never speak again.

The flashes would not leave me alone.

Nani loved celebrating my birthdays with great gusto and I was with her on the first nine birthdays of my life. And last year most unexpectedly I ended up being with her on my 23^rd birthday. Nani was sick and I had gone to see her but she couldn’t stop herself from getting excited about my birthday. She instructed the servants and scolded my mom to get the “preparations” right for my birthday party. And here I was, watching her being taken to the funeral pyre.

I saw her burn and wished that she would get up due to the heat but it did not happen. I could not feel anything as I witnessed that sight. Its unimaginable seeing a person on fire. But it was cathartic too. I had been crying uncontrollably before that but as I saw the flames drowning her and the smoke turning the sky into grey, it calmed me down. It finally occurred to me that this was it.

My nani was a little like me. She loved to dress up and she wanted a little attention. All her illnesses got cured when her five kids and my grandfather stood surrounding her and asking if she was ok. And THAT made her OK!! My ever social, ever loving and ever kind nani pulled everyone towards her for her last rites for one last time.

LOVE AGAIN & AGAIN…

Love happened again. I had never thought it would. There were bigger plans this time, more material in nature I’d say. Building careers, buying a house, a car, making a life together was in the list. Hardly was there any sign of gigantic promises and bloated ideals. This felt more real even with the paradox of an absent fantasy world. Everything had changed with time. Life had made me what was considered “practical”. Presentations and other team building exercises now kept me busy instead of the extended discussions about my favorite literary characters.

In the midst of strategic marketing and capital budgeting my love life was flourishing on the utilitarian grounds. Cynical one may call me, but unfortunately I was even losing out on the great talent of being fantastically pessimistic and contemptuous. I don’t know if I was kinder or more charitable now but certainly I was less fervent. Whether love had made me more generous is a question I still dwell upon but it certainly had made me more accepting.

S0, speaking of love, I had never felt so contented in a very long time. It was almost unsettling. My inner self was urging for restlessness.

And it came….

Things took a change for the worse all of a sudden, just like that. Like there are natural disasters, there are disasters in a relationship as well and they come unannounced. I did not know I was capable of feeling so much pain. I was always the ‘practical’ one. However, sometimes even the ‘practical’ ones get broken down unless their hearts are made of steel of course. In my case it was just a regular heart!

Recovery was to be the next step. I tried immersing myself in Shantaram, Philip Kotler, corporate blogs and a plethora of movies but it just didn’t seem to work. I feel one of the worst things that can happen to you is when the thought of loving itself starts seeming scary. Once in my graduation, a professor famously said, while teaching Petrachan poetry “what kind of love is it that makes you unhappy?” Me and Farrago had laughed and pondered over at it many a times but suddenly today, the statement started making a lot of sense.

I started wondering that we are always looking for second chances in life; are we ready to give love a second chance? Sure love was a painful enterprise but it brought along the goodies too. Is it bravery, forgiveness, understanding or cowardice that makes us take the decision? These, and a lot more questions troubled me. They still do because I haven’t found the answers yet…

The “Graduate”

18^th March 2010. Today, I became a ‘Graduate, officially that is. The convocation ceremony was supposed to make me feel proud about myself, as I was made to believe. The robes, the hats, the works you know…Guess I was watching too many soaps or movies that I actually thought we might have a “hat’s off” ritual!

Nothing like that happened though. After a few speeches by some renowned (though mundane) personalities in Jesus and Mary’s splendid auditorium we were supposed to collect our degrees from the counter made for each department. As usual me and my friends were late and had to undergo the harassment from the infamously impolite staff at the JMC general office. But I was touched to see a silver lining in the dark cloud of loutishness always present in the general office. A staff, ( I am too frivolous to recall his name) said that “ You guys should have come to collect your degrees in the morning. We had made so much arrangements for you. We had tea and we had samosas. You should have come then”

It strangely pleased me. Somehow it was a nice feeling to be chided because somebody was concerned about me and not because I was lousy or incompetent of something. And this was coming from a JMC staff!!! I don’t know why but from among all the events of the day, I am definitely going to remember this one.

So anyways, I finally got my degree. It did feel good holding it but not as good as I had fancied. There was a sense of deeply rooted nostalgia associated with holding that splendid degree. Delhi University and B.A (hons) English printed in bold letters only reminded me that these two entities (or so I believed them to be) wont be a part of my life like they used to be. I had chosen to delve into the material world. Far from Frankenstein and Louisa I had made a choice to move towards things that “actually mattered”.

Perhaps I had grown up, in the conventional sense maybe. Afterall, I am now a graduate...

An Atheist’s Prayer…

For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory,

of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,

now and ever and unto the ages of ages.

(The Lord’s Prayer)

With every passing day of my life I pray and hope that I don’t get converted from an agnostic to an atheist. Yes, I realize the obvious paradox. But maybe there is something that urges me to become a believer. Maybe it was the way I was brought up. God had His place and it was to be revered. My childhood passed engrossed in the rituals of praying every morning, even more so on Saturdays. It was unquestioning- it was what is termed as blind faith. Then something happened. I grew up.

When I look back (and around) I realize that nothing phenomenally awful happened to me. It was like a gradual transformation. The faith from god started evaporating, just like faith from a lot of other things had evaporated. Blame the hollow ideals that we are fed upon since our cradle!!!

But sometimes, like today I wish that I firmly believed in god. There wouldn’t be this sense of abandonment then. So now, I feel stranded when I have to take an examination that I am clueless about. I feel stranded when I am walking alone on the streets of the rape capital of India. I feel stranded when somebody close to me is lying in coma, fighting for his life. I wish I believed in the mysterious ways of God.

All I can think now is of Beckett’s “Waiting For Godot” where Didi and Gogo keep waiting for Godot to come. They fight, are desperate and cruel at the same time. They are the subjects of scatological humor. They even try to commit suicide. But they wait for Godot (who might be God for all we know!) to come. Till the very end of the play Godot doesn’t turn up but they keep waiting because there’s no other way out. For them it’s the eternal waiting or death. They choose the waiting because they believe or are perhaps forced to believe. Today, I wish something could force me to believe…

Magic Republic

26th January 2010. Today we celebrated 60 yrs of our being a republic. I really wanted to go to Rajpath today to watch the Independence Day parade; a friend had even offered to take me along. But suddenly I was struck with a terrible nausea and had to cancel my plans. Guess it was not meant to be. The next best option was to switch on the TV and watch India putting an exhibit of its strength to the world. Its amazing how I have watched the Independence Day parade since I was a little child and it still continues to fascinate me. Though I’d like to mention that there have been times in my adolescence when I was disillusioned by all this. But then, a teenager is disillusioned with a lot of things and a patriotic procession is not really on their priority list..!!

So coming back to Rajpath, the sight was mesmerizing, almost poetic. Watching the uniformed men march in the dense Delhi fog, from the confines of my warm living room, I felt proud of being an Indian. There are very few times when Indians actually feel proud of their nationality. It takes such displays of power, victory in cricket matches or triumph over terrorists (who come and kill us in our homes) to feel good about country.

In the midst of all the euphoria surrounding the 60th birthday of our constitution, a few days back I read an article titled “Whose Republic?”
The rhetoric tone instantly caught my attention. I mean seriously whose republic is it anyway? The cynical bandwagon (including me at a lot
of times) have been quick in dismissing the achievements. But come to think of it we are not doing very bad in terms of economic as well as social reforms. Yes, I believe we are slow but even stories in Panchantra on which we’ve been fed, have taught us that slow and steady wins the race. Cant say how true that is though…

Another thing we’ve been taught as a nation is to learn from the mistakes of other even though we’ve seen Amir Khan urging us to learn from our own mistakes and secretly agreed with him. So recently we saw many reputed Indian banks generously bequeathing cheap mortgage loans to people in India despite of witnessing the 2007-08 recessions. Talk of making your own mistakes! But aren’t mistakes a part of our growing up and we sure are growing up as a nation. At 60 we are young, At 60 we are the magic republic…

random house...

Scarlett: Sir, you are no gentleman. Rhett Butler: And you, Miss, are no lady (Gone with the wind)


"She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on. . . .far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day." (Mrs. Dalloway)

"Still, one got over things. Still, life had a way of adding day to day." (Mrs. Dalloway)


"Death was an attempt to communicate; people feeling the impossibility of reaching the centre which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded, one was alone. There was an embrace in death." (Mrs. Dalloway)


With enough courage, you can do without a reputation. (Gone with the wind)

Herein lay the spring of the mechanical art and mystery of educating the reason without stooping to the cultivation of the sentiments and affections. Never wonder. By means of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, settle everything somehow, and never wonder. ( Hard Times)

She seemed glad to see me when I appeared in the kitchen, and by watching her I began to think there was some skill involved in being a girl. ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Boy, when you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody. ~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Chapter 20

"Don't tell me God works in mysterious ways," Yossarian continued, hurtling on over her objection. "There's nothing so mysterious about it. He's not working at all. He's playing. Or else He's forgotten all about us. That's the kind of God you people talk about - a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain?"( catch-22)

Maybe one day I can have a reunion with myself.... Sebastian Bach

An earthy yet very urbane woman was sitting on the railing of her terrace trying to mind her hair which was blowing all over her face in the untamed wind. And me? I was flipping through the pages of Femina, now and then stopping at pages that managed to hold my attention for more than two seconds. I was exhausted, not physically perhaps but the emotional turmoil too sometimes makes you behave like a depressed idiot. As if having ailing grandparents whom you are very attached to in a poignant condition was not enough my train was six hours late! Every second reminded me of the “old” times when returning from my grandparents place used to be a bittersweet moment for me. Bitter because I had to leave them and go back to resume my duties; sweet because they made every moment of my stay diabeteically sugar coated for me. Everything had changed since.

20 minutes later I was sitting in my train compartment scanning faces of the people sitting around me. It wasn’t much crowded. There were two old men discussing politics fiercely and there was a young man reading “3 Mistakes of my life”. I myself had graduated from Femina to “The Argumentative Indian”. Perhaps the young man wanted to enter some kind of intellectual competition because he suddenly ditched his current love for some book written by Jack Welch. My narcissist self wanted to believe that the act was to impress me but even if I had to choose ( no offence to Jack Welch!!) the old duo’s passionate utterings about Marxism was more electrifying.

The journey was going fairly smoothly. My mom was carrying enough food to last us if we undertook an ‘around the world’ trip. Maybe I was so insolently looking down on food because I get it 4 times everyday. Yes I was thinking about the world. About what went beyond FDIs, Strategic Business Units, brands and what not. Yes, this was the time to delve deeper for tomorrow I’d be a part of the same herd which falsely prides itself in being an army.
But that’s ok I guess. We all have the right and the habit of looking for the extraordinary in our otherwise mundane existencess…!!