"Papaaa, will you have cold coffeeee?"

My mother has escaped. She has left the building, the city, the heat, and whatever else to go chill with her sister in the hills. My father and I meanwhile are still here, soaking in the solitude, roasting in the heat, and trying to not always keep both air-conditioners running.

In the week my mother is away, I am expected to run the house – “you’re old enough, for Chrissake”-- give instructions and generally see to it that the dusting is done properly. All this is ok. I don’t mind. It makes me feel important.

But our cook doesn’t like me all that much. He tells my mother this every chance he gets; that my brother – baba – is a whole lot more pleasing and temperamentally sound than me – baby. My mother in turn, given the fact that my brother doesn’t live here and is therefore more partial to the notion, agrees with our cook wholeheartedly and will shove this in my face every chance she gets. “See! Even Bahadur thinks you’re always criticising the food in this house!”

Stuff like that.

So by default, it’s bonding time with my father this week. We will do our own thing mostly. I will shoot instructions to the cook. Send for vegetables and create a ruckus about why I wasn’t told there’s no bread for tomorrow. Pa and I will meet mostly at the dinner table; breakfast, if I’m up before he rushes to work in time to find good parking. I’ll ask him a question or two more about his golf game. Did you win or lose? He’ll ask me what article I’m writing this week, how my day was, and to darling, please get some exercise. Start carrying lunch to office, he’ll say. Annoyed that he doesn’t know I sometimes do, I’ll say tsk okay Pa, don’t spoon feed. Three hours later, I’ll feel call him on the pretext of tax papers or some such. Then I’ll feel better about myself. Less mean. I’ll ask if mama called. What news from the hills? We’ll talk about my mother for a bit and then little things, affable things. The price of Tintin comics in his day. About how when the rupee fell, book prices soared to something like thirty bucks a paperback, (deeming them instantly unaffordable). But libraries have their own charm. So maybe we can go pick up some books on Tuesday.

I will offer to lend him White Teeth after I’m done so that he can finish it before mommy returns. And read out some deep quotes to him. “The shit is not the shit (this was Mo’s mantra), the pigeon is the shit.”

He’ll smirk, lower his glasses and ask me who the author is. We’ll have a TV dinner. Maybe catch a rerun of Friends. He’ll get some writing done, and continue to, in peace for a few days, learn the newspapers by heart.

My cute wry voice and hideous template

‘I will fucking rip you apart’ is the URL of a man/ men/syndicate/ blog reviewers called Love Bites.

Crowley introduced me to them and said go for it. So I did. I sent in my blog to be reviewed by the red-bandit brigade. This was a good 8 weeks ago, I think.

School’s over, results are out. Read full verdict here if you like. They said nice things. (I love the comments!) They also said some not very nice things. But with a name that ends with tear you apart, how could I have expected them to not have, right? Still, my heart bled. And since I don’t want anyone to think my blog design is hideous, I shall “revert back” to my old favourite header.

I suppose what I still won’t do is translate Hindi words to English. To write nimboo paani and put lemonade in brackets – I think not! At some stage, I might make my peace with asterisks and footnotes, but go read.

El: baby, the header is not me interviewing someone. I promise. This is just me listening intently to someone! =)

Couple rot and marriage wows

People in the news are remarrying their exes. We talked about this at work today, and discussed whether the odd case was trend enough to warrant further investigation. Sitting around a table, trying to reason the phenomenon (or epidemic, depending on your worldview) one of my colleagues suggested that “maybe people rediscover themselves”.

Everyone laughed.

“Young idealism, I love it!” said one cantankerous hag. Obviously it was a crap reason. Hag had spoken and the story was implausible.

Even after the chatter continued and other topics were moved on to, I think I grudged the woman and stayed offended by this rather brash dismissal of a fairly genuine, if stupid-sounding idea.

Maybe people do rediscover themselves second time around, bitch! How do you know?

I find it sad to have idealism rubbished. Like doom is the only way out. And you’re an idiot for believing otherwise.

It brought back to me a whole bunch of cluttered thoughts.

Like, a few days ago, I had a long talk with a friend I hadn’t spoken to in a while.

“I’m not unhappy..., but we’ve become hostel mates...”

I didn’t push further. This was after all a marriage being spoken about. And even though we have a fairly priceless rapport, and this was voluntary information, the state of someone else’s marriage, and sometimes even a friend’s, is not my business.

To listen is cool. But what is there to ask? Would any answer surprise? Who is really stupid enough to believe their problems are original? However many problems there may be, aren’t issues similar and somewhere connected? Miscommunication, adultery, boredom, and abuse – doesn’t discord everywhere stem from a rotten yet familiar degree of disrespect? Alright, so we don’t have a failed marriages support group. And you can’t buy handmade paper cards and have the proceeds pay for divorce lawyers. But with two TVs, two cars, two rooms, and multiple single refuges, what is left to do together?

Relationships fascinate me. I love a real romance. And witnessing snatches of an ‘ideal’ marriage is always an inspiration. I remember how when we were in college and my friend lived on the third floor; her mother would see her husband off to work at 9.15 in the morning, everyday. And then with her mug of tea, walk to the window by 9.17 every day, so that by the time he descended the stairs and got into the car, their eyes would meet and she could wave to him.

I remember thinking what a beautiful routine to have. My friend of course was less susceptible to her parents’ shenanigans – her father would speak to her mother 8 times a day out o choice and after being married for 22 years – and she, as a rule was more sickened by the fact that they’d probably had sex the last evening and this was the carry-over mush. But yes, with slight variations, this had always been the see-off routine.

As opposed to another friend who’s parents frequently don’t live in the same city. We never talk about those things. It’s just awkward. And I feel siblings are for this purpose precisely, to talk and bitch among themselves. But it was sad to go through wedding albums, with lovely atypical shots and so many of them, but possibly just three in which every member of the family was in the frame, but that two with the parents at the far ends.

The stories are different, emotions not all be the same. But I find so many of the symptoms similar. Tolstoy and his million-dollar openers -- All happy families resemble one another but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

I don’t know a contradiction.

Bhai mere, we've come a long way

My brother leaves today to go back to his Army way of life. In the month he’s been here, he and I have not fought even once. Not once have we squabbled over the TV remote. There has been no excessive use of magic phrases -- shut up, get out, fuck you. Instead, we have grown to converse. We now say hi to each other. (Sometimes even Goodnight. ) The barking and spewing rabid abuses at each other for no real reason have almost completely stopped.

We still talk rubbish; words for the sake of the sound, reminders of our childhood, noises we used to make, phrases that tickled us, all that. But we no longer bash each other up in between this foolishness. He doesn’t use his strength to overpower me and bend my fingers till they go numb. I don’t shriek for either parent to intervene whenever he yanks my hair. We don’t raise voices and bang on bathroom doors -- dhaad dhaad dhaad! I don’t snap. I don't call him a jobless dodo with no life. We've grown up, looks like. And we're still thick, I'd say, having come around to being relatively normal, behaving rationally, dispensing advice, and discussing love lives and heartbreaks. It’s cool. I like this restrained temper avatar of ours. Zen in our stupidity but the maturity is new.

Here’s a shot of the card I gave the moron on his 25th birthday last year.

(I used a marker to prefix the 2...)

Tsk. I miss him already. Sometimes it's easier to say bye when you're bitter.

*clever headline to come here*

Freestyle: The pomposity in writing

I went for a swim today. Instead of being at work, I was in a bathing suit counting lengths. And only for the second time ever, I had my lenses on while splashing about in a pool that had pigeon feathers floating on the water. I don’t usually mind bits of bird sticking to my cheek when I surface sideways for air, but my lengths-counting went warped because of the damn feathers. And the fact that I was unable to form three coherent well structured sentences in my head was troubling me.

Even when I dried myself off, I was thinking about my inability to get it up, words wise. More so these past few days because I’ve taken time off from work -- To Write. Do you get how self indulgent that is? And not like how a pedicure or good sex is self indulgent. There, at least only one other person is involved. One getting paid, one hopefully enjoying it as much, and sometimes you might easily not tell which was which.

Writing is freaky; for an audience, only more so. And for an audience it always is, otherwise we’d stick to a journal or blog under notes to self, NOT issued in public interest. At the best of times, writing feels like a self defeating exercise. You can’t write the personal stuff, because that’s too good. One imagines that people should, scoff, pay to read you but when they do begin to queue up, a cold feet alert goes off in your silly female brain and we’re back to square one, which, by the way, is shaped an awful lot like a delete button.

And this other thing they advise you – to read, read and read? I’m reading. I’m Alice Munro. And she’s brilliant. Her descriptions are detailed, accurate, observant and true. But it makes me feel lowly, stupid, ignorant and trite.

Paul Auster? The one book I accidentally bought in September, and recently finished, The Brooklyn Follies; plain fabulous! I enjoyed it thoroughly. It made me want to know about his writing ‘process’ – where he sits, how he writes, if he ever uses pen/paper, does he shut himself up in a room for eight hours straight? Are all his characters really made up? I want to interview the guy and beg him to admit that all his characters are NOT purely fictional. That Nathan Glass is really him. That all his character resemblances to persons living, dead, and in between galaxies, are in fact, and of course based on anecdotes lifted straight from life. That’ll help. I really think it will. I need a communal sense of failure, an assurance that roadblocks are everywhere and no one is differently abled. The reminder could be my drug.

I loved Meg Cabot. I loved Guy Next Door. But even her style, simple, fun, clever and more colloquial as it is, doesn’t seem an ounce more achievable than those other two book-shelf adorners. Of course, you don’t have to be like them. You can’t even. I can’t. So why bother? But, in all humility, I hadn’t imagined falling even these many degrees short to be such a taxing circumstance.

There is, of course, my copy of new Indian writing, a celebrated anthology, lying mostly untouched because I think poorly of the writing. I am a snob. I think, phhrbt, any ass can do better. And by that logic, but sometimes in spite of, that I can. It’s all a muddle. And then I beat myself up, splashing about in pools wondering what happened. Where did all the paragraphs go? The ones you’re supposed to be proud of? Was there not just an eight-word line here? Are you sure no one will mind? That’s ok to end like this... ?

Appams and the woman-eater

One boy didn’t believe that south Indians eat non-vegetarian grub. And so, a bunch of us, partly to convince him, and partly just for outing’s sake, went to have dinner at Swagath in GK2.

The place has a nicely done-up terrace. And I liked what they’d done with the walls. It does though seem like Delhi has a total of two interior designers because a lot of the places look lovely but similar. Still, with the wind chimes, dim lighting, wooden beams, house plants, big water-spitting fans, cane chairs, there was nothing to criticise. One might even have left a tip for ambience, but well, Nadal won, and that made our tennis-fanatic boy very happy and he wanted to pay. So he paid.

He even wanted company for beer, but with four temporary teetotallers, Punj-man eventually polished off a couple of bottles on his own. You could tell he was buzzed. One more and he’d have been leaning across smacking us all on the mouth as threatened. I liked him. I may not have wanted him to plant one on my face, but there was something warm in his readiness to make a total ass of himself.

Also, entertainment wise, I’ve never heard a man not sound boastful about his women conquests. And this one, who apparently once thought oral sex meant kissing, was open without sounding like too much of an achiever. He very plainly stated his average of 4 women a year.

Others on the table, it is possible, may not have been equally entertained. But men are stupid that way. Sit with four hulks on a dinner table, three of whom are straight, and watch how testosterone dynamics play out. At one point in this statistic-ridden conversation, I felt that my boyfriend wanted to punch face of Casanova. Unless he wanted to punch mine, for being so interested in tales of Casanova.

Little could he have imagined that for the umpteenth time right then and almost reluctantly, I was taken in by the quiet flair with which he lights up. I don’t like clumsy men. One of me is enough. Maybe it’s all the piano playing. Maybe it’s just a complete loss of objectivity on my part. Maybe he’s just the only man I know who can pull off a little timeless style. Fuck it. I had to quickly shake off these rabid, distracting thoughts. The main course had arrived and I still had Playboy Punj to cross question.

So he’s been “active” for five years (only) in which time he’s been through “21 or 22 women.” I decided to believe him. He also said that he counts only those he’s gone the whole hog with. And that it takes a lot of time and patience. And begging, muttered six-footer man to whom I attribute quiet flair.

Yea, so company wise too, dinner wasn’t bad. Appams, vegetable stew, garlic pepper paneer, plus deep fried prawns and meat for the masaharis; didn’t stay for dessert.

But back to that sort of variety in women, you evidently also have to be the driver, and pander to their whims -- his words! He also used ‘pamper’ along with patience, but I didn’t do my investigative-journalism bit well enough to learn how-so. And he denied allegations that his inherent good looks had a role to play in his luck with women. Naaah, I’m fat, he said. Two on the table laughed. Between you and me, he’s more gora than good looking, but the bait had to be flung. And I have to admit, it was refreshing to see a happy bachelor. With all these moping majnus and failed romances at every corner, a little brash Punju-ness worked wonders for my view of the world. It was a good dinner. I got 658 words of writing practice out of it. And Casanova Karan even let me take the doggie bag home.