SNIPPETS ON THE WORLD OF PRIVILEGED CHILDREN

1. My niece Nisha dropped by today. She kept toying with her handkerchief and chewing the inside of her cheek. I asked her, in the exuberant voice an adult is supposed to employ with an eight year old if everything was okay. “Would she like a chocolate?” I wanted to know. “No.” she said rather pensively. I asked her if she had questions. She was full of questions, always.  She looked at me perplexed, as if gauging if I was competent enough to answer her query. She then turned her eyes to the wind-chimes hanging near the window. After sufficient, serious deliberation she asked me, “Akka, what is a riot?”

It was my turn to stare at the wind chimes.

“Where did you learn that word?” I wanted to know.

“Thata asked me to go to my room and closed the door when he was watching T.V in the night. I heard on the T.V. It was noisy.”

“T.V is always noisy Nishu.” I tried to cajole, to divert.

“But yesterday it was noisyyyyyyyyyyy” she emphasized. School hadn’t taught her her adverbs and adjectives yet. “But tell me no akka. What does riot mean?”

“Erm Nisha… Riot is a bad thing. It is when some people hurt some other people just because they are angry.” I managed.

“Chintu Anna pushed me once and I fell. Is he a riot?”

“No no. Chintu anna is not a riot. Riots are when many people get hurt badly.”

“How many people?”

“Many. But it doesn’t matter. Come I’ll give you a chocolate.”

“Can I sleep on the sofa, Akka?”

“Don’t you want to go out and play?”

“No. I didn’t sleep last night. Thata also didn’t sleep. I saw him walk up and down a lot.”

“Hmm. Okay Nishu. You can sleep for a while.”

“Akka if riot comes to our house, will we also be on TV?” she asked.

“I don’t know, Nisha. Why don’t you sleep now? I have some work to do.”

2. “Allari chestunava? (Are you creating any mischief?)”, Chilaka asked Varuni with a twinkle in her eyes.

“Leduuuuuuuuu. Vanta chestunna” (Nooo. I am cooking) Varuni replied, in mock anger. Her anger was followed by a giggle. It always was. Chilaka was the neighbor, Randhir Uncle’s house help and every morning she stopped to speak to Varuni for a few minutes before she went to work. The two houses were divided by a very low wall and Varuni often sat on the wall and played with her kitchen set.

“Varuni! Come inside!”

“Haan Amma, coming!”

Varuni went and stood next to her mother in the kitchen.

“What were you doing Varuni?”

“I was talking to Chilaka. She was asking me about my kitchen set.”

“It’s getting very hot outside Varuni. Play inside the house for a few days. Randhir Uncle doesn’t like it when Chilaka talks to others.”

“Can Chilaka come and play with me?”

“No baby. Chilaka has work to do. Maybe some other day.”

A few days passed. Varuni didn’t play outside. She played by herself in her mother’s bedroom and listened to the hum of the Carnatic music which blarred from the CD player her mother kept playing.

One fine morning, she sauntered out of her house and plucked a few roses from her mother’s garden.

“Ro-se-ss” she said softly to herself, happily. She saw Chilaka walk by across the low wall towards the neighbour’s house. Her face lit up.

“Chilakaaa!” she called out with glee.

“Varu papa.” Chilaka replied “Ela unnavu?” (How are you?)

“Varuni paused to respond and surveyed Chilaka’s face. Her left cheek was red. Not the blooming, bright red of her ro-se-ss but a dull, scaly red.

“What happened to your face?” Varuni asked in telugu.

“Em le. Kindda paddanu.” (I fell down the stairs.)

“Oh sare. Nenu repu kalustanu?” (I’ll meet tomorrow?)

“Nenu repu raanu, papa” (I won’t come tomorrow) Chilaka replied.

Before Varuni could ask more questions, a voice shrieked from the living room of her house.

“Varuuuuu!”

“Coming Amma.” Varuni shrieked back.

Varuni stared back at Chilaka before slowly walking back inside the house.

“Amma, Chilaka’s face was a soft red. Not bright like my roses. She said she fell.”

Varuni’s mother’s face hardened.

“Were you playing outside again?”

“Yes, I got roses.” Varuni replied. “See!”

“Don’t. Randhir uncle doesn’t like it when Chilaka talks to anybody else. I told you this before.”

“Can I ask Randhir uncle to let Chilaka play with me?”

“No Varuni. I said no once. And stay away from Randhir uncle. Just don’t play outside.”

“Amma, did Randhir uncle push Chilaka down? Is that why her face is like that?”

“I don’t know. But I am not friends with Randhir uncle. Neither is your father. And you shouldn’t be too.”

“And Chilaka?”

“What about Chilaka?” she asked her daughter irritably.

“Can I be friends with Chilaka?”

“Sigh. No baby. Chilaka needs other friends. Her friends will help her. Now come, do you want a kitkat?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WIND-CHIMED GUILT

The breeze which once wafted through the windows hadn’t come by for a few days. As a result, the wind chimes didn’t do their job. Arpita looked up lazily from her journal and focused her eyes on the wind chimes. One of her favorite things to do as a child was to count the number of colours on any specific object and almost instinctively she found herself mouthing “lime green, turquoise, purple” for no one to hear. She found herself wiping the bridge of her sweaty nose as she continued to stare at the colors.

It had been two months since she hadn’t worked. Two months since a new year had dawned on all the same old people. In January, Arpita had lounged without a care in the world. In February, she with some cares of her own, smoked a decent number of cigarettes. As March finally arrived, she had more than some cares of her own. Her perfume for most evenings smelled of Marlboro Reds and with a religious fervor she sat in front of her laptop everyday focusing on everything irrelevant.

“Room saaf toh karlo” her mother goaded as she walked past Arpita’s bedroom door. Kurtas, bras, shorts and scarves tumbled out of her cupboard and arranged a meeting for themselves in one corner. In the other corner, books waited patiently for Arpita to trip over them in the wee hours of the night and break their spines. Old chips packets and sachets of ketchup frolicked on her study table. Arpita had jokingly called the bed “the sane part of her room” for it was the cleanest. Funnily enough, it was her bed where she had spent the most time doing her overthinking, crying and her obsessive journaling.

She wrote the word “hiatus” in her journal and stared at the word. For the last three years of her life, she had taught a course titled “Women of the World” for the second semester students. She would watch them with amusement, as they quoted Woolf and Lorde. She would then gently redirect their puzzled faces to the Jamaica Kincaid text on their desks. Every weekday for the last three years from January to April, she went to bed satisfied that she had done her job right. However right before the onset of 2018, her mornings had become longer. She lay in her bed waiting for the elephant over her chest to get off and got up to light a cigarette. The cigarette stubs in the ashtray had doubled. Work seemed dull and every conversation moved at glacial pace. She barely ate and every night she spent sufficient time wetting the pillow before her tired eyes dropped dead.

Annoyed at not being able to write more than one word, she chucked her journal on to the beanbag. As she pulled the bedsheet over her body, her mother walked in to the room.

“Lunch karlo” she said, almost timidly afraid that her daughter would erupt into something. Arpita nodded and followed her mother to the kitchen embarrassed by her mother’s timidity. She waited as her mother, Alka serve herself and a minute later followed suit. This was invariably their interaction for the day. No more words were exchanged. Plate in hand, Arpita walked back to her bed and turned on the laptop to watch an old episode of the American TV series Scandal as she heard her mother surf channels on the Television in the living room.

“Hall main baitho na, main TV band kardungi” her mother yelled.

“Nahi Maa, kaam hain” Arpita lied irritably.

Her mother didn’t say anything in response. On some days she put up a fight to make the family work, draw her daughter into the family and out of her smoke ridden room. But on most she failed to her daughter’s unwillingness to engage and was dumbfounded by Arpita’s easy lies.

In her room, as Arpita grabbed a plastic cover and dumped her food in it, she heard an old Shashi Kapoor song play on TV. She had made a habit out of skipping lunch mostly because the continual smoking made it difficult for her to eat.

She put the plate next to the pile of chips packets and went back to staring at the wind chimes. “Lime green, turquoise, purple” she said again and felt a strong sense of guilt wash over her. Two months of staying at home had robbed her of her ambition which she prided herself in. On some days the wind chimes mocked the futility of her existence. Today however, she replaced self pity with pensiveness and wondered how her mother had lived this life for as long as she had. Her mother, hadn’t worked since the day she got married. Unlike depression, marriage had robbed her off the same ambition Arpita once possessed.

“Most marriages weren’t very different from prolonged mental illness” Arpita told herself.

Through the fluttering curtains, she saw her mother stare at the TV screen in the living room. Alka’s face had the same expression Arpita had worn over her own since 2018 was born. It fused dejection with a certain appealing innocence which until then only children seem to possess.

Arpita hungrily gulped down her guilt and droopy eyed placed her head on the pillow. When she opened her eyes a couple of hours later, guilt weighed over her chest a lot heavier than the early morning elephant did. Wiping the gunk out of her eyes, she got up and walked out of her room into the kitchen.

“Chai banaya hain” Alka said and sat down on the floor of the kitchen as per usual. Arpita stared at her own chest, daring her guilt to subside. Picking up her tea-cup from the counter, she sat down next to her mother and watched Alka’s expression change to one of surprise.

“Aaj aapke saath chai peeyun?” she asked. Alka’s eyes crinkled with pleasure as she squeezed her daughter’s arm gently.

“Aaj TV pe Dewaar (movie) aa rahi thi.” Her mother said. As the conversation went on Arpita’s guilt floated away and she found her otherwise burning chest at complete ease. The way to combat guilt, Arpita realized, was eerily similar to how depression had to be combated.

With whatever little strength was left. And with every sip of tea, Arpita noticed that there was quite a bit of strength left. For herself and for Alka.

WRITERS ARE ANNOYING

“Ugh. Everyone is a writer, Anj.” a friend’s scrunched up face informed me a few months. I smirked as I threw her maroon scarf back at her and got off my bed to shut the bedroom door. In the short walk that ensued from the bed to the door, I wondered what exactly her complaint was about. She wasn’t wrong. Every Lea, Pea and Cea added “writer” on their social media bios. The word invariably sat sandwiched between “wanderlust” and “wallflower”. While the word wanderlust bothered me, I could see that there were some perks in being a wallflower. However, the walk now over, I jumped on to the bed and directed my attention to the most important W.

“Yeah, babe. A bunch of people write. Why is that a bad thing though?” I asked innocent faced and scarf handed. She responded that their writing was invariably terrible. I nodded, more vigorously this time. It was unlikely, I thought, that WordPress and Tumblr was going to produce Leo Tolstoi’s anytime soon.

“Plus, writers are annoying.” she added after a brief lull.

The minute that sentence escaped her lips, I wore her initial scrunched up expression over my face.  And munching on bitter almonds, I mulled over the validity of the statement. Why were the good writers annoying? Sure, the bad pen-pushers were irksome because they have inspired in many of us the desire to dance around a bonfire… one made of the pages they’d penned.

On the other hand, to call the good ones annoying would be an understatement no? In my tryst with books alone, the good ones did considerable damage. One wordsmith for instance constructed a character in whom I saw my own future shine, sparkle and then collapse. Another, made me see my people in a light which was less cheery and more unflattering. One more, made me think about the horrors of the world which punched uneven holes in my seemingly cushiony world. They all ganged up on me like high school bullies tend to do and me being the fourteen year old coward that I was, ran away quickly.

So I tried for a while to shift my loyalties to others as books got infuriating. I chucked classics and read some pulp and then squished pulp to move on to fluff and eventually found myself rummaging my newsfeed for online portals which would transport me into another world. With each portal I entered, I left behind a bigger, sadder pile of books and swallowed a new found pill of dullness. Yet the books failed to lure me back beneath their jackets. Sometimes, I stared at them before slowly averting my eyes. “I didn’t need them.” I told myself. I refused to know more about my own world through some blue blooded author who’s probably turned in her grave a bazillion times. That would only infuriate me further. But the dullness stayed on and watched over me as I scrolled through my Newsfeed for the umpteenth time that day.

When I finally grew tired of dullness, the only way I knew how to combat it was to become a pen-pusher myself. And in my venture to construct a spirited world for myself, I was picking up from others’ tales of woe and joy and nostalgia and penning them down ardently. I didn’t run the risk of being careless with their life, but I couldn’t escape being an annoyance. I stomached their annoyance easily because it didn’t last for more than a day. This however still didn’t help with the dullness and as a final resort: I sat down, cursed some and started to write about myself.

And that’s when all hell broke loose and the cauldron really started to bubble.

With each sentence I rewrote about my life, my own insipidness stared back at me. It didn’t matter how careful I was with my language. My musings on the world seemed naïve, my anger seemed bratty and my suffering always, always read trite. No aspect of my life as I knew it held a candle to good fiction. And I started to grow bored of myself. If my life were an Agatha Christie novel, the mystery would be solved before Hercule Poirot walked through the door. Dullness had become the new normal and for the first time in a long time, I wished somebody infuriated me.

My friend and her scrunched up face were not wrong after all. Even the pen pushers we discuss in classrooms fervently were annoying. The characters they constructed could be highly spirited or lacking any flavor. But even the vapidity of nonexistent entities shone brighter than all my reality. To do away with annoyance meant to do away with passion and it made very little sense to bid adieu to annoyance because that meant passion left as well. And I realized as I tugged at her scarf that annoyance wasn’t that bad a thing.

“Oh give it back!” my friend said snapping me out of my reverie as she took her scarf back one last time. “I should take off yo. What are you going to do after I leave?”

“I think I would like to spend some time getting annoyed.” I answered as I pointed to a brand new copy of The Dream of the Celt.

MAY 23, 2019.

10 A.M.

Everything seemed loud and quiet all at once. I cupped my hands and buried my face in them. I then pulled the blanket over me and tried to shut out the voices emanating from my parents’s bedroom. I knew they  had sat in front of the TV this morning. They sipped tea as usual. Appa liked his tea strong with just a few drops of milk. Amma, on the other hand liked her chai sugarless. I had as usual slept in and wasn’t a part of their morning discussions. The previous night, I had spent reading a bunch of articles on mental health, watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and had eventually hit my pillow at seven in the morning.

“He’s won.” Appa’s voice stated. His voice was as even as ever.

A fact had been stated.

“Anyayam idhuz” (This is unfair), Amma quipped unable to say more than that.

“It is what it is.” responded Appa.

Another fact had been stated.

Amma had always been vocal about her disdain for the incumbency. Appa would commence every debate by making it amply clear to us that things weren’t simply black and white, adjectives had no place in debates and most importantly you attack the argument, not the person.

No wonder I didn’t want to get out of bed. I seldom did, anyway. But a lackluster debate was irksome. I for one, hadn’t spent the past few days keenly observing the news. Neither had I brooded over it too much. But today, it hit me. Hit, may not be the right word. It dawned on me? No. I guess I knew it was coming. I wasn’t surprised. “There is only one way to put it.” my inner voice squeaked.

It had finally happened.

I got out of bed and walked towards my parents. They sat glued to a green-blue-red-white screen. Appa was polishing his shoes while Amma was tying together a garland of jasmine flowers. They watched me slouch into their room.

Amma looked at me, almost waiting for me to erupt into something. Appa, on the other hand smiled at me pitifully.  I plonked down on the bed and checked my messages. “There is still hope.” Said one friend while another listed out all the expletives he knew. People tweeted on twitter, journos raged, the cheap graphics on every news channel changed numbers as I just sat there on the bed and blinked. I looked down and blinked some more at the floral bed spread. I realized that I felt a lot of a lot but those feelings glimmered somewhere in the distant. The largest democracy in the world and its people had spoken and I truly wished they hadn’t.

“I will narrate this story sixty years from now to my grandchildren.” I told my parents. They continued sipping tea lost in their own reveries. I decided to follow suit and slipped into my own.

“Would I call them the dark times?”

“Maybe the Country would be better then.” I responded to my own query.

“But we wouldn’t be us anymore.” I added on to a conversation I could very well have had with my mother but didn’t. I chose to have it with myself for I didn’t want to hear about how her own people repulsed her and how she felt God and religion was made a mockery of.

God was dead and man had signed away his freedom.

I thought back to every Independence Day I had woken up to as a child. I could distantly hear “Maa Tujhe Salaam” playing in the background and as I stepped out of my house, I saw roads filled with paper flags. My eyes traced the three colours. Saffron.White.Green. I focused on the white and wondered if the colour was ever Indian. There must have been a time before 2014, before 2002, before 1992 when the blank space between saffron and green was filled with meaning. Now for a few decades and especially the last five years, it looked foolishly out of place.

“Shouldn’t you brush?” I snapped out and stared at my mother stupidly.

“Haan, I’ll go.” I said and got up with a sigh.

In the bathroom mirror, my face seemed yellow. I splashed cold water on my face and curled my toes instinctively. My shut eyes went through a kaleidoscope and pried open a thought I had left unanswered. I had told myself that sixty years from now we wouldn’t be us anymore. I of course didn’t know what we would be and I didn’t want to find out. I was however equally puzzled by what we were.

I imagined the voice of a white man going through a list. “To be them,” he said (pointing towards my people and me) “is to have big turbans, funny looking instruments and beautiful monuments.” This white voice of course was kinder than the other voice which was whiter, shriller and in denial of its own history. I felt defeated as I walked in circles, toothbrush in hand.

I gargled and walked out of the bathroom and faced the TV again, breakfast in hand as a commercial ended. I realized half-amused that commercials had told me a lot about what it meant to be Indian. The AMUL advertisement with Smita Patil walking back home with an earthen pot of milk was very Indian. Just like the Athithi Devo Bhava and the MP Tourism commercials were. These commercials, I thought, felt like home belonged to even those who weren’t born here. Yet I laughed- now fully amused- at how home wasn’t the same.

“I am going away to Ireland.” my brother smirked from across the room. I smirked right back. This was still his home. It was homely too, for him. “What have you got to lose?” I wanted to ask but didn’t. I shut my eyes and felt three-hours-of-sleep weariness wash over me. Before my shut eyes, lingered faces of the dead. They had enjoyed their sixty minutes of fame last year and had truly died with the change of the news cycle. The faces lingered a moment longer and were replaced by a cross, a prayer cap, a picture of a brick kiln, then the Ganga filled with plastic bottles, then a broken bloodied penis, then a child’s frock torn, then Mecca Masjid, then India Gate, then the Indian flag. Saffron, first. White next. Green, after. Now back to White.

White. White. White.

A moment passed and I reopened my eyes. Sreenivasan Jain spoke to me about the lie that was “Hindu khatre main hain”. My mother sitting next to me said “Thugs” as she shook her head disappointedly at the Television screen. I muted my shrieking phone and took my first sip of tea for the day.

“Yeah, I agree” I mumbled. I had spent a long time with my own thoughts. They seemed to visit every place but the present. I put down my cup of tea and looked at my mother.

“Amma,” I asked “why do you think they won?”

“Because we aren’t good people.” she said in a tone similar to her husband’s. The last fact for the day had been stated. She picked up her prayer book and walked out of the bedroom. I scrunched my face up at the answer and felt my already arched back tighten even more. Surely, it wasn’t that simple.  People were lied to every day. Fake news danced its way into everyone’s computer screens. They were told the neighbor was the enemy, that welfare was knocking on their doors, that Gandhi’s killer was good, that their religion needed saving and they gobbled it up. Naively, gullibly. That gullibility gave room to fear.

“We can’t blame people for being scared. Can we?” I said out loud. The bedroom was empty. I sighed for the second time that day. And for the umpteenth time, I answered my own thought: this time more certain of my emotions. They weren’t distant anymore.

“The truth was there to see. The enemy walked in and out of the Lok Sabha, the Supreme Court, the Legislative Assemblies. Welfare lied buried with the lingering faces of the dead. Gandhi died a second death today. So did Nehru and Ambedkar. The Hindu died too, a multiple times. As for the others? They were already killed.”

The truth then hit me. I felt its slow, powerful punch. It had dawned on me like the sun which made my insomniac eyes crinkle with displeasure.  The truth had prevailed and Amma was right. The answer was really that simple. I felt the overwhelming need to punch back as I mindlessly got my laptop out of its bag.

I turned it on and stared at an empty word document dumbly. I knew that thoughts and words was all I had left. Words however felt meek in the face of green-blue-red-white screens and never ending thoughts about “not good” people. My only way to punch back was to sit in front of a screen, curse a lot and word it all out.

At the end of three painstaking hours, I had finally punched back.

The Apparition

As he sat by the huge window in his living room, John heard the pitter-patter of the rain drops clash against Maria’s heels as she walked out of the garden, into the street.  He turned to look at the electric clock and almost as if on cue, smiled to himself.

9:11 AM.

Maria left at 9:10 every morning, punctual as ever. “Helen was right.” thought John. Helen’s voice- clear as a bell- reverberated in his temples.

“In all that she does and doesn’t John, she takes after you.” Helen would say.

Since the last one week, right after Maria left for work, John spent a few hours thinking about the same things, in the exact same order. It always started with his daughter Maria, her way of life, its unnerving similarity to the way he had lived up until then and finally, Helen. It always ended with Helen and left him feeling motionless. He knew that while happiness didn’t trigger many thoughts, grief prompted the same notions over and over again.

John, looking away from the clock (which now read 10:09 AM) got up and peered out of the window. The forlorn garden, full of silt derided him. The shades of green which peaked out from amidst the slush, seemed to mirror his grief but also taunt him at the same time. “Helen would have hated this.” John thought. Before she fell terribly sick, his wife used to tend to the garden judiciously each day. Roses of all colors popped cheerfully. The row of tomato plants sat cushiony next to the herbs beneath the Bougainvillea.

Maria often joked and said that her mother was like Helen of Troy. Except her Helen, was the woman who launched a thousand plants. Helen would just smile, acknowledging Maria and John’s allied interests. When Helen fell really sick, she had converted her bedroom into an indoor garden. She had very little energy and whatever was left of it, she spent it walking around the room, watering her plants. The garden: inside and out; had withered away two weeks after Helen did.

John looked away from the garden, got up and walked into his study. Deciding to snap out of his pensive mood, he picked up the dusty book lying on his table. The Selected works of Ezra Pound: Volume one, it read. He flipped the pages and read one poem.

“the apparition of the faces in a crowd,

petals on a wet, black, bough.”

John shut the book and placed it back on the table, admitting defeat, accepting pensiveness. He walked out of the house quickly and went into the garden. Everywhere he looked, he saw his wife’s apparition tending to the now, non-existent flowers, plucking thyme and rosemary for a Sunday lunch, sitting on the creaky rocking chair, sipping her tea. He recollected the lines to the poem as he felt a foul taste creep up in his mouth. The poem suited Helen just fine, he thought.

Throughout their marriage, Helen had complied and John took her compliance unquestioningly. But he now knew that what he saw was more than compliance; it was a sign of sorrowful defeat. She knew him to be a cold workaholic and he knew her to be docile and that’s all they ever knew of each other. Their entire marriage was a transaction; bartering intimacy and communication for what they called peace.  Peace for them did not stem from mutual understanding of each other’s sorrows, but from him choosing to ignore her raging demons as she suppressed them over and over again.

He had failed Helen. There was no doubt about it. He had messed up and had not made any effort to change things. But what saddened him more than his failure was that Maria was a classic case of history repeating itself in a similar vein and he did not know quite how to undo history. The fear was not that she would simply escape love. He feared that over a period of time, she would start to hate herself, potently out of guilt. “Guilt not succeeded by action is just hatred of one’s own self. “ John told the Bougainvillae and watched Helen’s apparition smile sadly back at him.

For the umpteenth time that week as he walked back into his house, John wished that in all she did and didn’t do, Maria had taken after Helen.

Much chatter about Sexism.

“That’s rich!” Saha scoffed at her father as she crossed the room and took her scarf off. She plonked herself down on the sofa and glared at her father. It was difficult to make out the expression on the patriarch’s face. It seemed to be the start of perplexity and the end of anger; or maybe an unsavory mix of both. Not that Saha cared really. If there was one thing she hated more than sexism, it was the justification of it.

“What exactly are you angry about?” asked Vimal, the patriarch in question. He knew his daughter meant business and he was already wary of the transaction which would follow. But Saha wouldn’t let go so easily. Not before she made her pitch, laid out her wares and shut the deal down.

“You cannot talk to Nanamma like that. I’ll say this once, Pa. It is not concern. Not really, not at all. It’s condescension masquerading as concern and you don’t see it. You don’t have to talk on her behalf.”

“I am tired. Can we have this conversation tomorrow?” he retorted.

“Sure. My sound mind will prevail tomorrow. But then again, so will your privilege. Good night.”

“Okay wait. That’s below the belt.” The expression now on his face was one of anger and anger alone. If anything, it got only more unsavory. “I don’t quite know what you mean but this is no way to talk to your father. You say things which are meant to hurt, don’t you?” Vimal asked.

“I am sorry. But what you did was not cool. Not a wee bit.” She took a deep breath and let out an exasperated laugh. “Do you really not see what’s wrong? You told your mother that she wouldn’t understand the movie I suggested we watch, just because it was in English.”

“That’s what you’re angry about?!” Vimal laughed. “Let’s be honest. She wouldn’t understand and I am not mocking her. It’s just not a skill she possesses.”

“Its Pride and Prejudice, goddamit! She’s been reading the book for a month now, Pa! She has a notebook where she makes notes. A dictionary and a thesaurus which she refers to every two hours and she now has started reading The Great Gatsby! She does this because she wants to learn, because she couldn’t! And she couldn’t because you and Chinnanna were in school! Why is this so difficult to understand. Its English, isn’t it?! You got her to Chennai because you wanted to take care of her. Is this how you do it?!” Saha snapped.

Silence followed. Vimal did the most intelligent thing, any man in his position could do. He blinked. Twice. The truth was he didn’t know what his mother did through the day. He never thought about it. He assumed his wife and she would sit talking about this and that. He tried to say something but his voice had gone for a walk. He looked at his wife who looked back, pityingly. She then turned to her daughter and measured her words carefully.

“Saha, you’ll get it when you’re older. That what men mean when they say they want to take care of their mother. They mean they expect their wives to do it.”

“This just keeps getting richer and richer, doesn’t it Pa?” smirked Saha.

“Okay don’t gang up on me now!” Vimal responded. His voice had come back quicker than he thought it would. “Also from when is it okay for a child to speak to her father like this?” He realized however, that though he was sure of the words he uttered, his voice had become meeker.

“Vimal,” Kriti said cajolingly. “ Amma was widowed when she was 22. That’s Saha’s age. She studied alongside you and Prakhar. She got a job and till date lives off her pension. She’s a proud woman. You tell me she’s orthodox, I’ll take it. But don’t talk to her, or about her like she is a nitwit. That’s not concern. That’s cruel. And if your daughter is right, she’s right.”

“Also, I know I can be cutting and I am sorry about that. But I don’t talk to you like you are stupid.” said Saha gently. “Even when you actually are.” She added even more softly.

Saha walked again and sat down next to her mother. Her mother and she; both looked at each other and sighed. Vimal knew the sigh meant more than annoyance, more than anger. It was disappointment. Disappointment hung in the air for a while and Vimal felt his 6 feet self shrinking by the second.

“Let’s call it a night.” Kriti said, sensing her husband’s embarrassment. “We’ve yelled enough for a lifetime.”

“That’s what we say always.” mumbled Saha.

They all got into their respective beds, silently. But no one fell asleep soon that night. All three heads mulled over something completely different, so removed and yet so similar, so intertwined. Kriti wondered if the potential failure of what her daughter called “feminism” would leave Saha bitter. Saha thought about the twisted, vile ways in which privilege worked. Vimal, however pondered over the most important question of all. One that he had mulled over before and would do so even after.

“Did he know the women in his family? Did he know women at all?”

Wind in the Hair nonchalance.

“Haan, so the plan is to travel to the multitude of villages in India and go around learning various crafts from the localites of that village.” R said nonchalantly as she continued crushing weed with her right hand. Her left hand held a beer bottle which continually made its way to her mouth.

“Righhhttt.” A replied, taking it in. She was all for her friend’s free spirited “wind in my hair” lifestyle. But she could never imagine doing what she did. It seemed too uncertain.

“Look I love travelling,” A said “But this is all over the place. It’s scary.  How do you just up and leave to a place without planning? Does it not terrify you?” A asked.

“No. If anything, it excites me. It’s a rush. And I know it sounds reckless but it actually is the sanest thing I have ever done. I feel normal. I am in form.”

A mulled over her life and how it had changed in the last couple of years. She was a research scholar. She enjoyed it. She was working on Dickens and how his influencing the English common law affected the Indian legal system in turn. Things were good. But for her, things were also pretty normal. Routine. If she had learnt anything from her conversation with R, it was that normal did not always qualify as good. If anything, for R they were two very different things. In spite of knowing that, she still found this lifestyle of her friend’s flippant.

“Doesn’t it make more sense to get a degree? Get your masters in media, for instance and then travel and write about handicrafts in India?”

“Why?” asked R. “I just want to learn these crafts. For myself. I may blog about them. But that’s all. That suffices.” She finished crushing the weed and handed the rolling paper to A.

“I just don’t know how practical all of this is. That’s all.” A said. She opened her mouth to say something else but decided to just work on rolling the joint. For all their love and affection for each other, their views clashed. Periodically.

“Practicality is often an excuse. It is an excuse to either not pursue your dreams or hold yourself to high standards.” responded R.

“I love my research. I love Literature and I know at the end of it I will teach. It is practical. It grants me comfort.”

R smiled, knowingly. “You pursued literature because you love it. Not because it’s practical. Also, practical people do not take gap years because they dislike academia. But you did. You didn’t make a choice because its practical. You made it because it felt right. It was right.”

In response, A lit the joint and smoked. One, two, three. She passed it on to R. As she saw R smoke, she realized that in a few minutes from now she wouldn’t make sense of a whole lot of things. But right at that minute, before she got buzzed she was happy she knew R. In R’s world, things were simple and uncomplicated. It was a world without Kantian philosophy and Tolstoian Drama. But it was just. And that mattered. A lot.

 

*to R.R, happy birthday. Stay happy!

THE WRITER’S BLOCK

Flustered, Chetana tapped her blue ink pen repeatedly on the table. She then drummed her fingers on the laptop. The pages in her notebook were clean and the pen was unused. The word document on the laptop was plain. Not a word had been written in the past two hours. The ones which were typed out had been deleted. Chetana felt a familiar irritability rise within her. It was all too much.

“Bloody fucking hell.” Chetana muttered as she got up from her chair irritably, startling her roommate.

“Could you for the love of god, stop doing that?” yelled Athira, the roommate in question. She had put up with Chetana’s hand-drumming for a year now but she was taken aback every time the woman jumped of her chair like a jackrabbit. That’s where she drew the line.

“I can’t write Athira! I’ve spent two weeks! It’s just selfish. There is an expiry date on writing about just oneself. And guess what? I’ve crossed it!”

Athira rolled her eyes as she put down her copy of Culture and Anarchy.

“It’s okay to write about oneself.” she said patiently.

“Yeah right!” Chetana snapped. She ran her fingers through the top shelf of her cupboard.

“Great! Are we out of cigarettes too now? ”

“I don’t know. I don’t smoke.”

“Ah found one.” replied Chetana, half- happily. The other half still visibly annoyed.

She sat at the edge of her bed and lit a cigarette. She knew Athira disapproved of smoking in the bedroom. But she was too caught up in her writer’s block to pay attention to her roommate.

“So much for not wanting to be selfish.” thought Athira. But she decided against saying that and sat next to the disgruntled writer.

“You want to talk about it?”

“About what?”

“About why you are hell bent on being a French movie cliché who smokes when she cannot write. Nicotine doesn’t help you become a better writer, you know.”

“Neither does persistence.” replied Chetana bitterly. “You want to see what I’ve written in the last few months? Poems about me and how I feel and how “oh so sad” my life is. I am bored of myself. It all sounds like a wannabe Sylvia Plath.”

“That’s okay. You can try again.”

“I did! I tried for two weeks. I tried writing about caste, about poverty, communal riots, about gas leaks, even. I’ve got nothing! It all is too childish, too shallow and too ivory-tower intellectual at the same goddamn time.”

“Okay, I am confused.” said Athira “What is wrong with writing about yourself? You are real, you exist. You have problems. You are not entirely privileged either, by the way. You make it sound like you are not important enough.”

Chetana took a couple of drags and sighed.

“There is a stop gap on how long one can keep looking at them self as a victim. It’s easy to play the victim. If I am the victim, I have no privilege no? I will over a period of time be unwilling to look at the victimization I perpetuate. ”

“THAT is absurd. See, here’s the thing Chetana. What’s true of you, is true of other people around you. The problems you face are as real as others problems are. That’s where you have to start. The rest, will follow. At the most, you can complain that you are limited and that your narratives are very homogenous.”

“I don’t like being limited.” Chetana replied almost immediately.

“Well,” smiled Athira “it’s better than not writing at all. Besides, it makes a lot more sense to write about yourself properly than to write poorly about a social issue.”

Chetana frowned. “Are you saying I shouldn’t write about others?”

“No.” replied Athira. “I am saying that you can and you should write about other people and eventually you will. But that does not mean that you shouldn’t be writing about yourself. There is no reason to invalidate your pain to empathize with that of others.”

“I guess…..” replied Chetana, unsure.

“It takes time, love. You’ve got to keep trying. Until then, it’s a long game of patience.”

“Yeah. I know you’re right. Thank you. I’ll try again tomorrow.”

“No problem. And now could you please light your next cigarette in the balcony? ”

Chetana laughed.

“No.” she replied. “I’m done being the French movie cliché for the day.”

 

*to Athira and Arvind.

 

THIS IS WHERE CONVERSATIONS COME TO DIE.

“You’re back late. “ said the roommate

“Yeah I know. We just got talking. We met up after a long time.” she replied.

“Huh, what did you talk about?”

“Oh, just give me 20 minutes. I need to change.”

She walked into her room and shut the door. She had met a friend after a really long time. Something nagged her. What had they spoken about after all? About how much their other friends had changed? About how people who once were endearing were now annoying? About how much we dislike that one particular quality- the very specific one about a friend’s ex? And about how time flies by?

Time does fly by. The conversations however she realized were still the same. It was tragic that in her mid twenties she had nothing more to speak about than just people. She spoke some about politics and some about books she had read and movies she had watched. But it more often than not always boiled down to people. She enjoyed gossip. It was fun and she made it a point to not be mean spirited. But every conversation, she realized had those moments of silence.

Pause. Did you hear he’s engaged? (gossip some)

Pause. Did you hear she quit her job? (gossip some more)

Pause.

And in those moments of pause- which lasted not more than ten seconds- it hit her. She didn’t mind the superficiality as much. She knew her fellow beings well enough to know that their superficiality wasn’t harmful. But something else bothered her. In those ten seconds, she found that she was bored of herself and because she wasn’t very well read and had no particular hobbies to speak of, she gave in. The silence cut louder than the boredom. And so she’d start again. Gossip was but an escape from the acute realization that one was quite boring themselves.

Why was she so dull? Why was everyone around her so dull? She wanted to surprise herself. She wanted others to surprise her and she, them. THAT, made sense. But it also was very difficult. Not because she sought some perverse pleasure out of bitching about others, but because it all boiled down to literally nothing.

“I could try more actively to converse better.” she said to herself, skeptically. Could she? “It almost seemed like gossip was where conversations came to, right before they died.”

She changed out of her jeans and slipped into a pair of cotton shorts and went out into the hall.

“Haan so, what did you guys talk about? “asked the roommate.

“Oh you know, this and that.” She replied.

 

*to NR Suresh who once told me that “a bored person is a boring person”.

Nothing important at all

“Nidarapoleda?” enquired her Mother possibly for the third time that week as Chetana walked down the stairs, clearly devoid of sleep.

“Ledu. I couldn’t sleep.” she replied curtly. She opened the door to the fridge hoping her mother wouldn’t ask her what she did all night. She was tired of lying. The fact that she was good at it didn’t do much for her.

“Sare. Don’t listen to me.” her mother started.

“Amma, not now.” She pleaded.

“How do you plan on getting better if you don’t get sleep? I read that people with depression need good sleep and a routine. You have neither.”

Chetana rolled her eyes and embarked to her room. It was pointless. She didn’t understand how her mother read only those things online which supported her belief. This was the same woman who thought therapy was unimportant and the anti-depressants were some sort of scam by doctors.

But in a way, her mother understood her. She didn’t ask too many questions when she knew Chetana didn’t want to answer. She would leave her alone for the most part when it was obvious that Chetana didn’t feel garrulous.

Pouring herself a glass of water she sat down and stared at the fat volume of “Alice in Wonderland.” She loved the book as a child. She didn’t understand its brilliance back then but it fascinated her. She even remembered watching the movie all by herself one evening. She was a happy kid. Well, sort off.

She forced herself out of her reverie and switched on her phone. Her phone buzzed some 20 odd times and her inbox was full. She smiled, cynically.

“Most people have friends. I collect them” She thought. It wasn’t untrue. She had gotten close to a host of people over the past few years. She didn’t regret it. Infact she wouldn’t have made it if it wasn’t for most of them.But she knew that her downward spiral had kinda sorta fucked up her communication with some of them.

Most of the messages enquired after her health. “Was she okay? Was she going to do anything drastic? Did she eat? Did she take her pills? How much did she cry that day?”

She held her breath. What could she say?

“Well I am not as bad as I was.” She mumbled.

She punched a “Hey. I’m fine. Just tired. Shall meet soon.” and sent it to all of them.

She walked to the bathroom and stared at herself and with a somewhat resolute look on her face, told herself that she had made up her mind.

“It’s been a year. You are better. Not completely. But you will get there. You do not need to rely on any of them. You have a doctor who’s helping you out. And most of them don’t know what to say. They probably think they’ve done their time. Sometimes, they don’t even say the right thing. Which is fine. They don’t know what it’s like.  You’ll pull through. And you don’t have to care about how they perceive this change. You don’t have to care about how they precieve you at all.Just do it right. Slowly. You’ll be fine.”

Convinced that she had convinced herself, she climbed on to the bed and felt her arched back relax. “Oh the sun’s come out. It’s not scary anymore.” she thought to herself. Tucking herself into the sheets, she played some meditation music and slowly drifted off sleep.

*to peace and nonchalance.