Airing dirty linen dot blogspot dot you shut up

Finally, and I say this with a quiet sense of misplaced victory, I discovered my boyfriend's blog.

It was an accident. No credit to me. For two months, I've nagged him to stop being a little bitch and give it to me. He likes the sound of that, I'm sure. But nothing I said made him part with the link. I was hurt at the secrecy around a webpage.

I'd ask him, trying to be casual:

So! What do you write about?

Grunt. None of your business.

When will you show it to me?

I don’t know. Depends on your behaviour.

But I am behaving! I'm saying ‘please’! Hear my tone! Doesn't that count? Have you become immune to my charms, my way with words, my big scary eyes, you stupid lumbering fool?

Cut out the drama.

Aaarggh! Alright, fine! Go to hell! I don't want to see your stupid blog! Mine's better anyway!

Ok, I didn't say (all) that. But you get what I mean. This sort of nonsense has carried on for weeks now. We haven’t had the smoothest sail of late. But those issues belong in a different post, if at all. Our modus operandi often regresses into not so much a shut-up, no-YOU-shut up. It’s more, if you ignore me, I’ll zap you with passive aggressive. Then nobody calls. Ego takes over. Time is lost. Resentment festers. Hell freezes over. If you saw us, you wouldn’t necessarily think we’re in a relationship. Sometimes even we get thrown off track. It’s become a joke.

So when after a particularly fun round of intimacy post a week-long fight, when I slimily go across to the computer in his room and find, right at that moment, a white and blue G-talk envelope with [name of the blog] in the subject field pop up and say to me, Hello, I am New Mail That You’re Not Supposed to Read, I feel like the devil. Hah! Game's over, little one. Hand over your soul and keep walking.

Cherry on the icing: seeing his oh-shit!!-don't-you-dare-click-on-that-link expression. Oh, what a glorious moment.

The secrecy wasn't as bad as, let's say, that actor in Mad Men, also GQ's Man of the Year, Jon Hamm, who, on the show, leads a double life. But if you were dating someone who wouldn't part with a blog link, that's a fight, don't you think?

I felt left out.

How can you give Tushar – said in disdainful tone variation 1 -- the link and not me?!

(Tushar is his friend. I don’t mind Tushar. But Tushar is not my friend.)

Lesson of the hour: Disdain = bad move. Rewards = 0.

Another time, I said to him, how would you like it if I played a secret instrument?

(‘pretty sure I meant ‘instrument secretly’).

Pianist wouldn't move: 'Do you?’

No, but that’s not the point! It's not like we need more strain on this relationship!

Yelling didn't help. Tends to make him go quiet.

Ohhh, come on ya, blogs are my thing! You need my feedback. After all, when we're broken up, I won't be able to shove it down your throat as authoritatively!

I begged. He whistled. I thought I made perfect sense. He, let's just say, isn't a big fan of how I put things across – “WHEN we’re broken up? For god’s sake, woman, who talks like that?”

Since the beginning of last month, 'fellow's been writing late into the night, sipping vodka straight from the bottle. Says it helps kill the itch in his throat and eradicates general jumpiness he feels when staring at a blank page. Obviously I dared to click on that link. First impressions: unremarkable grey template, but at least you’ve broadened your widgets and the orange title leaps out. Not bad.

I read nothing. I scrolled, fast-fast. How much have I missed? There are seven posts. Okay…scrolling, predictable, phone review, android, predictable, jazz this, wires that, blah, blah, gadget, gadget, Art Tatum is your god, yes, yes, you miss Sarah Michele Gellar, you want to marry Buffy, magic red bras, phhrbt, next, scroll, mm hmm… A-HA! Jackpot – post that seems to bitch me out.

And so he writes. (Go beyond the thesis that is sentence one, please)

“Why can’t people let go of the things they've been holding onto longer than the things they ask others to let go off, which the latter cling to only because the former are holding onto their things in the first place. HA 41 words in a sentence. An editor’s nightmare, I'm told. That's a little bomb I've left for my girlfriend, with whom I'm currently pissed, to come across when I finally give her this blog's link...She’s a journo and has OCD. Obsessive compulsive disorder. Seriously, I dare you to mispronounce a word in front of her. And I still chase her, I feel like a lost little boy if I don't have the hem of her skirt to hold. Talk about self destructive.”

The last bit tickled me. Honest and pathetic all at once, different from honestly pathetic, but I live in hope that in cultivating a blogspot home, he will reveal to the world parts of his deeply inaccessible soul, different from deep, inaccessible soul. I'm hazarding a guess that he didn't want to share his link with me because I'm horrible (also honestly pathetic?) and he was terrified that I might puke on his template and, I don’t know, yawn all over his content or something.

The Google envelope was a comment, his first. Really, someone commented? He was like a child, fascinated at seeing a milk tooth placed on his palm. I was Little Miss Complacence, smoking my figurative cigars. Yeaa, good feeling, huh, cub?

Pass me the nail file, love. My turn to whistle.

~

Dear Asshole,

You might think I'm being a petty little (word you used the other day) in NOT linking your URL to mine but think of it as Karma. Maybe in two months if the self consciousness eases off, I will. And you'll get a few measly hits. But that'll be too easy on you. I’ll be like the person who recommended your CV to my boss and you turned out to be a lousy worker.

Make your mistakes. Edit your thoughts. Understand apostrophes. You see, I’m enjoying this too much and I’m concerned about premature success going to your head, like a child TV star, and you turning into a virtual spoilt brat like Darsheel Zafary. And because I'm kind hearted, and not beyond affection, I say this to you, keep writing. And take this with a pinch of salt: you're not dull even in person, but you’re less boring in words.

But just so you know:

a. You were a complete (word I used the other day) in not letting me in for two months.

b. You need an About Me. Baniya, 26, with a labrador, a baby grand and a bakery-- or something that your OCD girlfriend didn't come up with.

c. From those long emails you stopped writing to me a while ago I've known you could string a sentence. Still, it’s nice to be reminded.

~

From his post called ‘Alfie’

Think of a golfer’s swing, the mechanics, the level and relaxed positioning of the shoulders, waist, knees, legs, arms, elbows. The flow of the club as you move it back and forth, how you pivot at the waist, thinking about every tiny detail the instructor told you and you grandly duff the ball. Once, twice, a thousand times. Then, all the conscious thought disappears, all the mechanics become sub conscious, and only the fluidness of your body is in your mind. That’s when you hit the 320 yarder. That’s when you produce that sweet and harmonious sound from your piano, the little inflections in the hand, arm and shoulder become sub conscious, and you suddenly begin to use gravity rather than force the keys. It’s a quest. The nuances of which elude even the most seasoned pianists, who care only about speed and virtuosity. True virtuosity implies perfection in every aspect. And I'll get it someday, peacefully, when I've stopped caring how long it'll take. And I keep playing that one note in the middle of the keyboard, patiently, coaxing the sound to come out.

You know what they say about donkeys...

... that if you don’t play cards around Diwali, you’re born as one in your next life.

I hadn’t heard this till Saturday. Friends my parents’ were hosting a dinner party. I was invited, wasn’t going to go. Not till I was arm twisted – 'threatened' is more apt -- by my mother who used a lethal tone and a few choice words to say – basically, get your butt here. So I arrived, straight from work. Suddenly, two women who got up from the flash table after raking it in – one, adjusting her gorgeous mauve raw silk dupatta -- tell me, separately, after asking why I wasn’t playing.

“Oh you don’t know what you’re missing out on!” And you know what they say...

agle janam mein ghadde paida hoge

Sacchi?

And I thought I had learnt so much about card-playing by simply watching a three-hour game of flash at a friend’s place last Sunday night when only Bhola -- the labrador and I weren’t playing.

Bhola was earlier called Ganpat. But the rabid Hindus in the building took off -- how can you name a dog after a holy elephant? So Bhola, who I called Ganpat to see if he responds – did, his ears perked – and I were the two potential donkeys.

Bhola’s status: in motion, indiscriminately wagging his tail, sniffing people’s glasses and then giving that up to nap on random toes.

My status: sitting on the arm of a sofa, quietly sipping my vodka, observing the seven gung-ho peeps – two married couples, one retired-young-from-the-army-type in a white kurta pajama, his top button stifling his oesophagus and the baniya boyfriend who got very into the whole thing except for when the ants in his chads wouldn’t let him breathe.

Examine the excerpt:

He: Who're you messaging?
Me: I’m not, fucker!
He: Looks away, mumbles 'liar.'

Then I have to show him the gmail compose page on my phone where I’m using my swipe keys to record bits of the conversation I’m privy to -- English, Hindi, Punjabi, pidgin Indian, fosters, bring it on!

And this was the draft (enters and itals added later):

Six of spades. Iski begum.
Single card show down.
Top card suite.
Break for seat.
Green is five.
Abe chhhhhapaann tikle!
Red and blue is ten.

Stop it, yaar! Reactions are spoiling the game.
Deal deal deal. Deal simple.
You don't know variations, sit down quietly!

Bholu, kya kar raha hai, baby?

Blind. Blind. Arre. Chaal.
Who's put this in? Five blind. Chaal or blind?
My wife will play for me. Ghar toh isi ke saath jaana hai.

Dekho, jitne laalchi hoge utne hi maroge.
Dus ki chal
I'm blind. You're pack? Aditi? Haha.
Great cards. I'm out. Your turn.
Side show kar le. Let him decide.

Tum Fosters laye ho? Tsk. I don't like Fosters...

Ace hai toh obviously…
If this were a diamond, the game was yours.

Tuborg pucca nahi hai?

Shuffle and deal.
Green gira hai. Blue also on the floor.
Cut. Cut. Deal seven.
I like the way he does it.
Style mat mar.

Baja bajne wala hai mera.
You have a pair?
Let's do a variation.
Three cards of any one colour;
you don't have a joker.
No, no not a mufles.
Revolving jokers really fuck your brain.
Great fun!

Mera dil keh raha hai mein jeetunga.
Don't pack, don’t pack!
Arre?! sadi marzi.

Bluff blind.
I don't want to waste even one rupee on you!
Anyway she's got spades.

Aditi ne sabko duba diya.

Oh le, I'm quits.

Katar juari types, you people are!

Can I take a loan from somebody?
Nahi, nahi I'm going. Have a piece of the cake, at least.

Ok we're playing card, colour, bust.
Can we put the music down?
Tu teen saw le chuka hai mujhse, bees waapas kar!

My paranoid gambler didn't read all of it -- too preoccupied with the cards being dealt and money chips piling up. But just one sentence of gmail type was enough to get his breathing back to normal.

Phew, says the fucker, ran the narrative in my head.

It’s a wonder he didn’t lose, imagining as he probably was that I was sending smut to all the boys in my address book. If you were me, sitting in the company of a mule or two at a cards party, you’d see the irony of being called a donkey.

Winter peek-a-boo: what is that smell?!

It's not raat ki raani, that heavy thing in the air you smelt in an auto on your way home.

It's from the trees with a 'high ground clearance', (Ashoka when it flowers?) more along on straight roads in colonies than on roundabouts of Akbar Road. Lodhi, Jangpura, GK, Connaught Place, Saket, Gurgaon; I've smelt it outside the railway station even. It's in the air in Vasant Vihar. When I walk to my boyfriend's house, it's there. I wish I knew a botanist. Now I'll have to google Trees of Delhi since I can't just call the author, Arundhati Roy's (ex?) husband, Pradip Krishen and have him educate me.

I thought of Nicholas Cage, from City of Angels -- I find I do this often enough for it to no longer be novel -- think of Nicholas Cage in the context of sense. Maybe I should watch that movie again, to know if it was crap and I'm getting carried away by an adolescent memory. Be that as it may, what if he couldn't register this sickening ripeness and needed me to describe this this smell I go on about?

I wouldn't call it putrefied roses, or florists tears or mud and honey. I'd have problems visualising 'with my nose', such concocted irregularities. It's just there.

But I wouldn't want the good actor of puppy dog eyes to be confused about the description of an October whiff I couldn't put across, forget sexify. I'd have to be honest then. Nic, I'm sorry I can't describe to you a smell I haven't made up my mind about.

Maybe the smell is my capsicum, I'd say -- my green bell pepper. Only because about both, I don't know. I can't tell. I haven't decided. But this smell, this it's just there, green, all over the place, racy thing, it's distracting. Capsicum isn't. So much for that.

I roll my window down on certain stretches while driving because I want to breathe it and puke. That's when it'll hit me. That's when Mr Cage might throw me a not bad.

In the real world though, my boyfriend seems impatient, or at least not at all curious. Maybe that's unfair. He's just, simply. not intrigued. Do what you want. Maybe it's how he felt on Sunday about my reaction when he took me to meet 'Sir', his guru, his piano teacher, the person he respects most in the world.

Don't talk like that.

Like what?

Like in the world; it's redundant, and annoying.

Sigh.

Sigh.

We exhale at different times.

He thinks Sir is god. God seems nice enough. He did though remind me of a chap in office who wears his pants too high. Except this one was Goan Christian with a slow Mother Teresa smile. He offered me a beer. I took the orange juice. He asked where I lived. They were going to Landmark to buy some books and CDs. They weren't in a hurry. Sit sit.

He played Misty. Then Arjun played Night and Day. Look, baba, I outed you. Then I asked God if Arjun was a good student. I got Mother Teresa-d again. "Yes, min" -- they say min, not men/man, remember, these beatific Goan Christians -- "he's the only one who can sit down and play something, not like these other exam givers."

Repeat smile. I liked the man. But I'm a slime. I asked, what isn't he good at?

"He's always in a rush. He can't slow down."

That I know. It was one of my earliest issues with him: "When do you do nothing"?

Later, when I brought up our rendezvous with Sir, Arjun seemed dejected -- that I didn't seem to love, worship, adore his Sir as much. "But I liked him!" didn't cut it.

I didn't care about where Sir tied his pants, or how high his cholestrol was, or even too much for his analogy that a music school without teachers is like a bakery without chefs.

"I was surprised you weren't more curious about him", he said to me. "Usually when you know two things about a person you use that to find out ten more."

I took this as a compliment. I was amused. "I believe you just called me a reporter, my friend!"

One sided heh.

Sigh.

Sigh.

Not that the flowering non-creeper on the roads of Delhi is an issue. But why the hell should he get excited about an is it a tree? is it a shrub? is it a...a..ummm? when I can't seem to sustain a level of interest in, like he says, anything that's a big, big part of who I am, such as Sir and the baby grand, and remembering the song goes Night and Day, not for heaven's sake, Day and Night.

Then I zone out. Yes, very good. Next.

I need to go to finishing school to disguise indifference and outright condescension, maybe incorporate in my wardrobe pinafores and learn to flash my 32 like M. Teresa. Maybe. Maybe in Switzerland, where Abhishek Bachchan studied -- what was the point of that, coming back with an accent, putting on weight, marrying ice princess and having the world think your father is bonking your wife? -- they have this tree and people well read enough to tell me what the hell it's called.

I don't like it, I decide -- the smell. But for the yea, yea sneaky feeling that I'm lying to myself. I turn my nose up and frown to myself, what is that smell. I'm obsessed. You can tell. I can see. I breathe so I can smell. I drive past parks and roads that grow this tree and take, like my yoga teacher loves to say, a good lungful of air. I take it in. I make a face. I drive past knowing fully well it's a winter tease, a preview to the full thing, a can't-be-helped, a hmm-nice. I'm guilty of a crush on a smell. Not a bad boy musky overtone. This one's a bit lazy, belongs near a hammock. Sweet, but definitely not chocolate. Savoury with an after taste of clove. So when I ask myself what is that smell, I'd like the name, yes, please. But I'm not asking about a source. I know where you're coming from. I just want to know what you're doing and if you'd prefer to sit in the sun or in the shade.

Good grand child traces family history

"You people are going to have a tough time when I die".

She, my grandmother, meant sorting through heaps of paper work and photographs and things like that.

I asked her to let me take a look, at the photographs. Just so that it's easier for us when you die.

We had this morbid, irreverent thing going. And so my grandmother to show me the albums, the loose photos, whatever is lying around in those old trunks. Let me take a look. I did. And for two days, she had to constantly look away from her knitting to tell me, who is this?, when was this taken? What year? Okay, what decade?

I brought back some photos with me. As a shortcut to scanning them, I took some photos of photos.

My grandmother's grandmother, her dadi.

My grandmother's brother:

The inscription behind this photograph: From an unlucky soldier to his sister, Gian


Sexy people frolick in a pool in Agra. Fifty years later, their granddaughter put the photo up on the Internet.


Check out the hotness that is my granny in the thirties, not her thirties. In the top hat, she's standing with her professor's wife, dressed for a fancy dress competition in class 10.


This one's later. Married with two kids. It's my phone wallpaper and I can't stop swooning. I call it starlet on the rocks.

The green, green grass of home

No more suitcases and missing tickets. Hello, travels are over. I’m back in Delhi, Gurgaon even, and as of yesterday, one gymnastics event of the commonwealth games down. Clever New Zealand chick did her one minute twenty second routine to a Hindi Song – chand sifarish. The desi audience roared! The three Indians contestants didn’t stand a chance, prancing around like school-level amateurs. Not a patch on the much more graceful Aussies, English, Canadians, Malaysian and other bendy, fair-skinned peeps. Still, tick mark done -- "Of course I saw the commonwealth games"!

Till last Wednesday though, the games were not on my mind. My holiday wasn’t over. The second leg was just beginning. I was sitting in a train, yawning, going to Dehradun in the Shatabadi that leaves at 6.50 a m from the only superficially-spruced-up New Delhi Railway Station – all for the games, of course.

Having been in my seat for five hours, and done with reading Michael Foley’s The Age of Absurdity (addictive), I look out of the window. I know the landscape. I know it like I know my intuition. I know we’re warm, growing hot, about to reach Doon. I’m happy, inwardly aah-ing at mango trees, familiar hills, those flat grey stones of river beds and the acres of Lantana growing wild, all whizzing past. Journey getting over and brimming with this sense of wellness – heightened because I could see clearer with my brand new, high-index myopic glasses -- I plugged in the ipod and listened to Tom Jones, Elvis and Merle Haggard sing the same song again and again, like it was written for me.

The old home town looks the same

As I step down from the train

And there to meet me is my Mama and Papa

Down the road I look and there runs Mary

Hair of gold and lips like cherries

It’s good to touch the green, green grass of home

Yes they’ll all come to meet me on reaching, smiling sweetly

It’s good to touch the green, green grass of home

Of course no Mama, Papa or Mary with lips of cherries showed up. I was, after all, going to visit my grandparents. They now have walking sticks. But before I could dwell on that, from zero connectivity on my phone to suddenly all three strong signal bars, I got a text.

What are you doing back so soon from the shire, Frodo?

Had a middle earth of my own to get to, Gollum.

When this little exchange took place, I knew I’d use it somewhere.

~

New Zealand got over as quickly as it was meant to -- under a week, lots of photos and no jet lag. Probably because I was too charged up for the next bit of my holiday, to this Dehradun of mine, to this middle earth of my own as I called it in reply to that text from a person who has the gift of timely cross references.

Dehradun, for me, means my grandparent’s home in Rajpur. It’s not the most fun place. I have no friends there. There’s nothing to do. But being as it is total rehab for the soul -- sit in the garden and read to your heart’s content, it is my favourite place to romanticise. A chunk of my imagination is rooted in that home. If a shrink told me to visualise a happy place, I wouldn’t have to think hard. All over my head, I have disorganised post-its with smells and sounds of that house, of screen doors opening and banging shut, people walking on the gravel driveway, crazy day time insects in the bushes, the pressure cooker in the kitchen, light switches, summer koels, the thip thip thip sound of bare feet on cold cement –it’s all there, filed in my brain, glued inside my ears.



Only a couple of days old, this was the first house I was brought to. My grandmother’s brother, Amar mama ji, who I mentioned in a blog post when he died – had strung mango leaves on the door to welcome the baby girl, the youngest of his sister’s four grand kids.

I was brought back every year for the summer. My brother and I had to spend two-two hours in the morning doing holiday homework. Half the Enid Blytons we read were in those hours, hidden between tall math registers, the cardboard covers of which would smell like cow dung.

In the afternoons, while the household slept, we would ‘explore’ the garden, run around in the lawn, and play with rusted gardening tools. We’d even go to the dank, unfriendly, mildewed basement, open up creaky trunks, dig out old clothes and permanently borrow yellowed Archie comics that belonged to older cousins. Sometimes we would play scrabble. When that got too slow, we would pick fights and silently try to kill each other. This could be the phase when we were constantly being told off by our mother: Stop playing to the gallery!

One afternoon, when fellow gallery player and I were short of amusement, but with, strangely enough, a new cassette player at our disposal, I hatched a plan to record the snores of our siesta-obsessed family. My brother thought we’d get caught. His pansy protest was overruled – I was a bossy child. And so, a pair of buck-toothed brats, equipped with a black humming device, proceeded to hover first over their grandparents’ bed, then tip-toed bare foot to their parents’ room, and recorded for a full few minutes, the breathing and the flapping, the throaty crescendo and relaxed lows of their family’s vibrating tonsils.

Oh, we were so tickled! Every time the snores would peak, we’d launch into mute hysterics. At tea time, we played samples of our ingenious bravado back to the well-rested adults and, woo hoo!, didn’t get whacked. End result being, today, somewhere, in our collective childhood trash, on a tape pretentiously titled 'English Numbers' or 'Assorted - 1', there is a Side A or a Side B that begins with a low-quality recording of indiscernible whistling sounds.

And then I get asked, ‘but what’re you going to do in Doon for a week’?

True. There’s nothing to do in Doon but live that Italian phrase in “Eat, Pray, Dud”, as my friend called it -- the sweetness of doing nothing: Dolce Far Niente. But I hadn’t been back to Doon in at least four years. Last time around, the whole family was here, my parents, my aunt -- Masi and her husband, my cousin, her husband, their kid – my niece. My brother wasn’t, but we’re supposed to be grown-ups now. No recording snores. Behave yourselves!

The highlight of that trip, beside much family togetherness, blah blah, was making shampoo from reetha (soap nut) and later, driving up to Mussorie, with my uncle to call on Ruskin Bond for coffee who is from the same school as him. I remember the red sweat shirt I had on, the power steering jeep I was allowed to drive, and how glossy my hair felt. I’m telling you, reetha rocks! So does Mussorie when it’s not littered with tourists. I tried making shampoo back in Delhi, and it wasn’t the same. It’s the power of the hills.

~

This trip was on my own. It was short. Five days. Similar to the one I made back in college, first year. Back then there was a ten day strike on in Univ, so I came away. My grandfather, along with my aunt, also visiting then, thrashed me at Scrabble every evening – “there’s no word as bra, it’s brassiere!” We didn’t play this time. My aunt wasn’t visiting. And when I brought up Scrabble with my grandfather, he said pata nahin kahan pada hai- don’t know where the board lying. So instead, we sat, ate fruit, and watched the news and hourly updates of the commonwealth games, volume turned up so that my grandmother could hear as well.


They’re both 89, she a few months older. My grandfather – Bawa, as I call him -- is now hunch backed and too slow to go for the long walks he used to so enjoy. So, 5 pm onwards, he wears his walking shoes and just sits. This breaks my grandmother’s heart. "Hai, Nunu, I feel so bad watching Gian..." She told me that. She calls me that. I’m so glad I went.

~

My grandmother – Nanu, as I call her -- being brought up Shimla-side, speaks a mixture of pahadi Hindi and old Punjabi. I hear names of places such as Kothad and Spatu in her stories of back when people rode tongas and her mother hadn’t yet died. Sometimes Nanu sings strange folksy tunes. I ask her if she makes them up. She looks at me like someone from a generation to whom sarcasm is as alien as MS word.

Na’an ke kar hoi aaun,

Mota tedha hoi aaun,

Aandare jo tu bhi khaiayan

This is phonetically reproduced, even though I could ask any of my Punjabi speaking homies to correct me. For all these years, I’ve heard her sing this ditty to her grand kids, I’ve thought I got the gist, but only this time did I bother to ask, “Nanu, what does this mean?”

Allow me to paraphrase.

So, once upon a time, a tiger accosted a kid in the forest and said, I'm going to eat you. Kid said hang on a moment, let me first go to my grandmother's house (na’an ke kar) and get fat (mota tedha), then on my way back, you can eat me. True to his word, kid came back, but in the time he’d been at his na'an ke kar, he grew so bloody big and fat that the tiger backed off.

Moral of the story: eat. When at granny’s, eat more. There’s no such thing as I can’t or I’m full or No, thank you or Stop it!. So, whenever I refused a second helping, she would hum the strains: na’an ke kar hoi aaun...

Little bit like those pink post-it notes, na’an ka kar has been stuck in my head for a week now.

Mind your language

Everyone in Kiwi land says yea. Not like you and I say yea. Not as a hurried substitute for an actual yes. But a real tongue-gliding, prolonged, filler-for-actual-words diphthongy eyyyea...

In phonetics, a diphthong, or , (also gliding vowel) (from Greek δίφθογγος, diphthongos, literally "two sounds" or "two tones") is a contour vowel—that is, a unitary vowel that changes quality during its pronunciation, or "glides", with a smooth movement of the tongue from one articulation to ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diphthong

Definitions such as these are why I flunked out of Linguistics but eyyyea...