still waters!

This is it! i am right now in a seemingly endless queue for a major life-changing, point-of-turn-in-life moment. i mean i did things which felt totally right. first of all, got a job, then got married, studied for level 2, cleared it, got another job (translation), finished it on time and did it with all my heart in spite of physical, mental, emotional obstacles, got a few more translation assignments, did it with the same aforementioned integrity and dedication,(...now the problem begins...) but i discover people do not have the decency to pay me...as a result i have to quit taking assignments...i have no job...for months i just stay put and do nothing...hoping that once i am back to my country, something will change. But to my utter frustration, my life is just the same only the background has changed. I just need to talk to that woman and ask her when i should come and meet her... It is going to be herculean task to be politeness...

BLAST IT!

the debt

i am going to enjoy writing about this. i have been tormented and tortured while keeping it buried deep within my heart (although confided it only with N). now i want it totally out of my system. i don't want to live with it and breed it so that one day it takes the form of a terrifying grudge. it is the feeling of mild hatred, an extreme sense of betrayal, and shock at being victimized by singularly unprofessional human beings on this earth. they may not be the worst but certainly the worst lot with whom my paths crossed. they are three people: A, J and M in the chronological order of their appearance in my life and in an ascending order of the amount of pain they have inflicted on me. i don't think i shall ever be able to forget it. all three of them did the same thing but it hurt more each time. now this might sound trivial to most people but i do not care what others feel. i worked for someone with all my heart and with the clearest conscience but what did i get out of it. only the knowledge that one should never trust anybody. if this is the way trust is rewarded then one day "trust" will die a very sad death. the "tridevs" or rather, let me call them "trideviyan" have embittered and disillusioned me. it is just too painful to forget it and i just hope i find more courage to stand up, regain my dignity after being pushed by such pettiness and meanness around me.

I just hope Goodness gives me the strength to be extremely successful in life.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now i feel better.

Rain rain go away!

It has started raining even harder... and the everything around me feels gloomier... oh when will it stop raining....

An Afterword

My brief stay in China can be summed up in these three short chapters when ironically 5 1/2 months seemed as frustratingly long as five years. Right now in mumbai where it has been raining continuously for four days, with no one to talk to, nothing much to do, it is like the inertia of the house-arrest mode.

Chapter 3: House Arrest

I got up in the morning feeling extremely cold. There was nothing I could do yet. There was no ration, so I couldn’t make any tea or breakfast. N went to office and I got back to unpacking and arranging. I love arranging stuff- makes me feel I possess control over a lot of things in life, which ironically is never the case. I arranged things, cleaned up a bit and waited for N to be back so that we could go and shop. Utensils, washing powder, utensil cleaner, all in place I was happy to get back to my arranging things. It took me three days to have the kitchen up and running smoothly. But once this was done, there wasn’t much I could do at home so I would go out to take a walk. Everybody on the road looked so busy and important that I felt there was something that was missing in life. People had destinations; they knew where they were going whereas I was totally clueless where I was taking my life and vice versa. I had just cleared an exam for which I had studied really hard and had finished doing a translation job so there was just nothing for me to do. My interests would have a very short life span and the freezing weather would make it even shorter. The weekends would be spent sightseeing Shanghai, eating, fighting, crying, and making up. The weekdays would be spent cooking, washing utensils, clothes, sweeping and wondering what I was doing with my life. Since there would be nobody to talk to I would watch movies. I don’t think I have ever watched so many movies in such a short span.

Chapter 2: Shanghai

The Pudong Airport was huge. Whichever side you look you would get a mirror- in-front- of- the- mirror look and feel and you get this feeling everywhere: malls, super market, at crossroads, gardens, everywhere! We filled up some forms and then got our faces matched with the ones in our passports, got the luggage and went to Shanghai Station by Maglev. The maglev, being the fastest train took us to the aforementioned station in 15 min. From there, we took another train to Songhong station and reached there in 30 min. A taxi was waiting for us (thanks to Tony) and at that time the mothers (mine and N’s) called up. They were told that we had reached safely.

We got down the taxi at 11: 30 pm. N was paying the taxi driver and I was shivering with cold. I was later told that it was 2 degree Celsius. The building did not have an elevator and we had 44 kg of luggage with us to be carried all the way to the 5th floor. My heart was over-flowing sympathy for my husband for doing the Herculean task! The house was beautiful with wooden flooring and furniture. We were very hungry and ate soup and maggi in an extremely big vessel.

26th Feb, 2010

We got up around 3 am in the morning and had tea. N finished his toilet thing but my metabolism failed me as it often does on various occasions. It’s a girl thing you know. I can’t be as comfortable with the idea of you know…it is slightly embarrassing. Now I am embarrassing the reader, especially if the reader is female. However, the male readers enjoy such things! Anyways, the enormous luggage was brought down and I expressed a non-verbal gratitude to the thirty-year old elevator! The task of getting an auto-rickshaw at 4: 45 am in the morning had to be done by N and he dutifully did so.

Mumbai, at 4: 45 a.m. looked beautiful. People were already up and working; the dudhwallahs, the newspaperwallahs, the wada-pav wallah, the taxi drivers, the auto-rickshaw drivers and the bus-drivers. The dudhwallah on his cycle, the newspaperwallah counting the no. of newspapers, the taxi-driver doing his puja, the bus-driver smoking; all looked happy and content and at peace with their lives. The whole scenario had a rustic beauty. And the congenital anxiety to catch up with the fast pace of the world that prevails in mumbaikars was probably asleep at this hour. I gently peeped out of the auto-rickshaw, closed my eyes and took in the Mumbai air.

We reached the airport and realized we were too early. The usual baggage screening, the check-in happened after which we filled the immigration form. We got our passports stamped and went in, had the security- check done and sat down wondering what to do with two and half hours on our hands. We ate something, went around the display of expensive stuff one by one. N was utterly disappointed with the airport since it did not have any newspaper.

Finally they announced the departure of our flight. Yes, it was on time!

The airplane was huge, bigger than the domestic one, with toilets downstairs. In a 12 hr long flight, unless it has been hijacked, nothing different from the regular breakfast, lunch, drinks, a bad movie, in-between naps can possibly happen. The sky and clouds looked great and the view of the city just before landing was marvelous.

Shanghai Diary

Chapter One: On my way to China

25th Feb, 2010

I was cooking dinner when I got a call from N saying that we were flying to Shanghai next morning at 8. I was exceptionally calm, considering the fact that I had never been on an international flight and also considering the fact that I am a super-sensitive, nervous, panicky little woman. But, for once things were totally under control. Half of the packing was already done and the rest, the utensils, were neatly laid out on the half-packed bags, which would be packed later when N came home. He came home and told me that we were to go to the TCS office and collect our passports. So at 10 pm both of us walked to the TCS office which looked more like a honeymoon cottage than a serious, corporate IT office. I was standing outside with the watchman when N came out, worried as to why there were three zeros printed on our passports, next to the duration of our stay in China. We immediately got it confirmed from a friend that three zeroes didn’t mean that we would be thrown out of the country, the moment we entered it. On our way back home, we called up both sets of parents and informed them about the suddenness of our voyage. We reached home, and heaved a huge sigh of relief. We ate dinner at 11 pm and finished packing at midnight; at least that was what I thought, because when I unpacked those in Shanghai I was struck with a very enlightening thought about marital life. It is that usually, things are packed by the couple and then re-packed by the husband when the wife goes to sleep. N finally slept having had his usual tour to the fridge for a mid-night snack and after watching the highlights of the cricket match he missed owing to the collection of the passports and the flight tickets.

A short story

There are certain things that cannot be erased from one’s memory even if the actual thing ceases to exist. Memory is a strange thing. It defies time. Time prides itself on rubbing things off one’s consciousness, making the past translucent but Memory pushes time backwards, forcing us to the see and acknowledge the past. This umbilical cord that links us to our past, seeps through our consciousness and brings a nostalgic smile to our faces, probably because that is where most of us live.

I have always wondered, as most of us do at some point in our lives, about the motivational force behind human actions. Why do we do what we do? I stumbled upon the answer, one day when I went to a library and took a book which compiled the contemplations of Jiddu Krishnamurty. Krishnamurty says, we, at the very core of our beings, are empty. And the realization of this emptiness is extremely dangerous to our existential health. And therefore, in order to escape this emptiness, we attach ourselves to the world outside of us, whether it is people, work, house-work, writing, children, marriage, etc. He says we cannot be empty; we cannot not ‘be’ something. We have to fill ourselves with some substance. Emptiness doesn’t make sense. And making sense is very important to us. I realized this when I was fresh out of college and was being rejected by several companies and several prospective husbands. I was forced to return to the nothingness of my existence.

I was at the zenith of my depression when I got a call from a company telling me that I have got a job. Suddenly life made sense. The hollowness started disappearing and I felt as if I was getting filled with something. I wondered what this ‘something’ was which made me feel ‘important’ to myself. After a few days, I realized that that ‘something’ was ‘reason’- a reason for my existence; a purpose to live for; a goal to accomplish. I heaved a sigh of relief and looked back at my past. My past was smiling and I smiled back and thanked it for making me realize the importance of ‘meaning’ in my life.

One thing I have come to realize in these few years of my life is that, however far we move in time, we keep exchanging looks with our past. We refuse to let go of it. It is like a parent who has made things possible for us. It has enabled us to move forward into the future.

But I always wonder why we make these trips to the past. What is there that we can’t afford to forget and keep going back to it, making sure it is still there? And as I write this, I realize it is probably because there is a story. There is a story that deserves to be told and deserves to be listened to. And probably that is why we write; etching the past on the present, lest we defeat ourselves by simply forgetting all about it. Writing is like leaving our traces behind us. An appeal to see life the way we saw it. And in this conflict of memory and time, a story is born; a story which we would like to tell our children and children of our children.

The story, I keep going back to, is the story of the house I lived in for the first twenty years of my life. It was a huge bungalow, standing proudly among other proud houses, at the shores of one of the busiest streets in the town. In front of it stood a humble post- office; a quaint old building that looked more like a house. I liked going there to buy stamps for my grandfather. There were three windows with an iron net on it and a small window inside from where one could pay the cash and take the postal stamps. I would always wonder what was on the other side of the iron net. On the right there was a small wooden plank, on which sat a blue- colored bottle of adhesive with a black cap. The contents of the blue bottle would always be diluted, so that the bottle never saw the face of a dustbin. And I am sure if I made an actual trip to the post-office someday, I would still find it there. I do not know why, but I never wrote letters to anybody and now with the internet I really wish I had. But I still cherish the memory of going to the post-office, buying stamps or a post-card for my grand-parents and posting it. It would give me immense pleasure as a child to put the letter into the red post box and then waiting for the big red van that would come at the end of the day to collect all the letters in the post-box. I would often wait for it on the terrace and when the big red van would come and take away all the letters, it would give me an extreme sense of achievement and a smile on my face.

The house, lined with Ashoka trees had a small gate with my grandfather’s initials on it, both in English and in Marathi. On front of it there was a small garden. The house had more doors than people in it. The main door was made of iron with a letter-box in it. The door was slightly bent in some parts and was re-painted now and anon. There was a veranda with a framed poster of two tigers and a sofa-set, and which gave you the view of the drawing room. The drawing room had four doors. One that took you to the kitchen, the other to the veranda and two other that would take you to the garden. Then the small dev-ghar and a swing on which my great-grandmother would sit and read the Bhagwat Gita. I and my cousin would play with her scanty hair; she would tie a bun and we would untie it. She was cutest thing on earth. She was bent and always wore a nine-yard sari. She had absolutely no teeth and wore spectacles. My parents’ and my uncle-aunt’s room was upstairs and there was a huge terrace. A room was built on it later on, which was occupied by me and my sisters. The terrace was still huge even after the room was built. There was another quaint little room on the ground floor. It was the store-room. We used to store wheat, and rice in the tall aluminum boxes. It was later modified and the store-room was shifted to one part of the room and a curtain was put to separate it from the rest. The remaining part was the study room of my cousin. She used to study so hard and did so well in exams that I was inspired to study there for my board exams. I used to love that room. There was another room just next to that which was my brother’s room. That room was almost outside the house, near the garage. It was a funny little room. My brother’s friends would often come there and would play the bongo and guitar and old English songs.

The Diwalis and Holis were the most delightful time in the house. During Diwali, all the kids, total six of us would be woken up by our mothers who would already be up by 3 and cooking. My grandmother would play a very sweet marathi song on the tape recorder, while the mothers would apply oil and besan to the kids. After that we would take bath and burst fire-crackers. I, like a scared mouse would run away each time my cousin would burst a fire-cracker. After our enthusiasm would fade away, we would retire to the TV room and watch movies eating ‘chakali’. In the afternoon I would think about my vacation home-work but I would kick that thought aside telling myself that there were 9 more days to worry about it.

Holis would be absolute fun with the neighbors coming in and on every holi, we would have a fixed menu of idli and dosa. It used to be wonderful. The applying of oil in hair, one day prior to holi; my father coming home from the factory with his face motley with colors; going out with him to buy colors; always thinking of wearing white clothes on holi and would never be permitted to do so; making the mischievous plans to put color on my brother when he was asleep; to make water balloons in the bathroom with my cousins; to forget all about the final exams due in April and going to school with pride, green ears and pink faces.

The commencement of the summer vacation would be the anticipation of it on the penultimate day of the exams. The last day of the exam would never turn out to be as good as it was imagined. On the last day of school and also on the first day of school, I would always promise myself that this time my copies (C.W. and H.W.) would be complete but I would always fail to keep my promise. Every year, there would be one subject where I had to borrow someone’s notebook and copy notes. The smell of raw mangoes, the realization that there was no school tomorrow, going for walks early in the morning with my grandfather and cousin, taking bath with cold water would announce the augment of summer vacation. There was a huge cooler in my grandfather’s room. Tiger, my dog, would love to sit under it to ward off the cruel summer waves. During the vacations, I and my cousin would follow a ritual. On every alternate day, I and my cousin would ask for 50 paisa to our mothers to buy a chocolate called rajmalai. We would go to the park, play and when we would be tired we would open rajmalai and happily relish it. The evenings would be spent waiting for the Kulfiwala and the nights were spent on the terrace and going to sleep looking at the beautiful moon and stars. Those were the moments completely surrendered to the present moment. There was no nostalgia of the past and no anticipation of the future: only the happy, elusive present moment.

A week before the school would start; I and my mother would go the school to pay fees and to get a list of books to be bought. That was the part I enjoyed most of going to school: buying new books, the brown paper, the labels; it was as if I was given one more chance to straighten things up, to make a fresh start in life. But towards the end of the term, I would again be struggling with mathematics and history, wishing never having to go to school.

As I grew up, Tiger grew older and sicker. The Ashoka trees grew taller, the small garden turned into two lawns, a pond on the left with fish and tortoise and a lotus flower. The lawn near the pond had two swings. The one-storied house turned into a two-storied one, got repainted into light green color and its name which was simply engraved on the wall, now was written in a huge font with steel plates on the tallest and most visible part of the terrace. The small gate now turned into two gates: one small for people to come and go, and a big one for the second-hand fiat to come and be parked into the garage. The kitchen turned into a huge kitchen and dining room with marble flooring; the small ‘devghar’ was now a beautifully marbled temple. My grandparents and parents and uncle-aunt had newer wardrobes, and newly painted bedrooms. Another thing that was growing silently was the debt. The debts finally grew so big that the house was unable to bear the weight of it and started crumbling slowly. It cracked and gave the family the deepest wound when two members of the family passed away in a car accident. Having seen the death of its children, the house shattered, but was still firm with dignity. There was still some strength left in it which enabled it to stand for an year until it became inevitable for the family to desert it. The house lost its charm and led a meaningless existence until after a few years, it was bulldozed into nothingness; it became a vast flat ground.

I looked at the empty piece of land and realized this is what death must look like- ‘nothing’. This is our fate; to disappear completely from the face of the world. I realized that all things come to an end, just like this story that will now come to its humble end. But T.S. Eliot says, “To make an end is to make a beginning”. By writing this story, I have attempted to bring back the ghost-like memory of my house which had been haunting me ever since its death to the present and by reading it, dear reader, you will have made it alive. Dear reader, you are the “beginning” of this “end”.

A Day in my Life

Woken up by the alarm, I rush to the kitchen to switch on the stove and warm my frozen hands. Making tea is more out of need than out of habit in 2 deg C in Shanghai. Breakfast made and served to my husband, I say a shivering ‘good-bye’ to him at 8: 30 a.m. In the company of wooden furniture, kitchen, washing machine, unwashed utensils, my laptop, my books, and the internet it feels colder than usual. So, after having bathed and dressed in a muffler, two sweaters, two pairs of socks and hand-gloves, I lock myself in the bedroom with the heater, too engrossed in warming myself to realize I am “tip-toeing on the surface of life”.

It is afternoon and the temperature is comfortably warm. I amuse myself with a movie. And then, around 4 in the evening, I muster all my strength to step out of the cozy warmth of the room and go to the horrid coldness of the kitchen to wash vessels. But once I am half-way through the vessels, the temperature is such that I can afford to think. I become engulfed with the thoughts of what my life means to me and what I am doing with it. I deliberately cook slowly so that I have some more time to ponder on my life. Sometimes, my body would have a life and a mind of its own; totally disconnected with my mind. And at times, I would just sit and stare outside the window at the immaculate and clean streets in the misty cold weather, the naked trees; people calling for taxis, the policeman with his bike, children crossing the roads, the teenagers walking together, the quiet and brooding middle-aged women, the cheerful new mothers with their babies…Suddenly, I realize how banal my life has become and how overwhelmingly distressful it is becoming by each passing moment. It is as if I am sleep-walking through life. There is nothing to “do”. There is no one to talk to. I am tired of being stared at whenever I go for a walk. There is nothing that would make me quit thinking about my life and make me want to ‘live’ it. What does it mean: this nothingness that surrounds me? Is it a cue for me to start something afresh; to find my meaning in something else? Each moment passes incessantly in front of me without touching me and without acknowledging my existence. When will I find myself? When will I be happy? I am restless, eager, almost panting looking for myself. Almost automatically, I switch on my laptop and click on Microsoft Word. I click open a fresh page and start typing… What I do not know, but there seems to be an urge to pour something out. It feels as if my heart is filled to the brim and has no space in it to accommodate the ‘something’ that has suddenly appeared at its doorsteps. I have to let it out. I am suffocated, breathless, impatient, thirsty, crying…I type and type…anything and everything… senseless and mad…it is just words, words and words…I type and type…something and nothing…its just words. Words…words slow me down, they make me stop, they make me look around, make me see the obvious and the unseen, the street, the trees, the children, the women, the birds, the beautiful sky, the sun behind the clouds, the kitchen, the furniture, the vessels, my laptop, my books, my wonderful husband. I stop. I close my eyes. I feel my life around me. I feel the peace, the calm and the silence. I open my eyes and realize that I have finally come home to myself: happy and at peace with my life.

Dear Blog

I stumbled upon you, dear blog. I had no idea you still existed..I was looking for something/ someone and suddenly i saw you. You are my reflection, similar and yet different. When i suddenly bumped into you, i thought i was looking at a totally different person. Just as someone wandering comes upon a mirror and thinks he/she is looking at someone else. It is strange that something so similar can look so different when viewed unexpectedly.

But anyways, first things first, an apology. I am very sorry for neglecting you. But I have my own reasons for doing so. 

Why?

Well, writing a blog had been suggested to me by quite a few friends of mine, who thought that since i don't talk much i may be writing.. But writing is just not my forte. Out of loneliness, i had created a blog, but whenever i would write something, i would feel as if i was being watched while undressing. I felt uncomfortable and so decided to write in Japanese, but then that was way too ambitious..Although, i know one day i will be proficient enough to write my blog in Japanese..

I did write in Japanese, but didn't feel very honest about it. It didn't come naturally to me and then i completely forgot about it. A lot of things that took place in my life could also be held responsible for that, but then i don't want to accuse them. I guess, the urge to express myself was missing, and 'the fear of being watched' prevented me from writing..

I guess i started writing, because i just felt like it!!!