It’s a Girl!

IPL…yes, me too!

Well, I tried. I really did. I hid, I ran, I did everything I could to escape the IPL monster. But no matter how hard I tried, it eventually caught up with me after two seasons and swallowed me in its big mean branded teeth (Ranging from Adidas to Goa Pan Masala!).
But that doesn’t go to say that IPL is a bad thing, necessariy. After all, it did make me angrily swith off the TV last night when Mumbai Indians lost the cup (yes, I even ended up taking sides…dont judge me!).
But nevertheless, I’ll try to make the best of the situation and finally, voluntarily, submit myself to the monster. By this, I mean that I have seen enough matches to provide my very own set of comments on the teams (well if Navjot Singh Siddhu can, so can I!). So here goes!
Mumbai Indians: Sachin! Sachin! Sach…..no wait! POLLARD! POLLARD! POLLARD!
Deccan Chargers: Who?
Chennai Super Kings: They should have won another cup- IPL’s biggest fashion disaster uniform!
Royal Challengers Bangalore: Yawn……I mean seriously bored-to-death-test-match-in-T20-yawn!
Kolkata Knight Riders: I guess they would play better if SRK was actually on the team..
Delhi Daredevils: Ok bye!
Rajasthan Royals: Crass Quotient- Shilpa Shetty
Punjab Kings XI: What’s the point?!

NC and the Art of Vehicle Non-Maintenance

It is a known and proven fact that a camp without disasters doesn’t quite feel like a camp. We almost look forward to the stuff that isn’t on the itinerary. But this time, we didn’t know what we were asking for.

I have limited knowledge about the anatomy of an automobile. But the vehicles we hired for the North East camp this year made sure I got a crash course in atleast naming some of the monsters that slept in the depths of its engines. From time to time, the parts of our vehicles made their presence felt by bursting, leaking, tearing, blowing off or just mysteriously coming to a standstill.

Also, as if it were a small mercy (or not!) the Motor Gods granted us, not all of this happened on the same day. It happened every day. Once the radiator blew, another day something was wrong with the gasket. Our tyre goddess had lawfully wedded the puncture god in the mountains of Mizoram and there was no telling if we ever had a brake in the first place.

Beyond a point we realized there was no point in worrying about the performance of our glorious vehicles. If they broke down, we walked when possible or just waited. When there was a biker who crashed into our bus (and escaped with surprisingly less injury) the first aid wallahs of the group hopped out to attend to his wounds without batting an eyelid. It was as though we were here to learn about the highway disasters.

But things eventually got better. Not that the vehicles worked fine, but we didn’t just pay that much attention anymore. Somewhere in the spirit of things on an NC camp, getting cranky doesn’t fit in. even those who made a few feeble attempts at complaining eventually gave up.

And in the same spirit of things, we learnt the biggest lessons of these camps. That long forgotten lesson of kindergarten. We learnt to share and adjust and squeeze in. we learnt to inconvenience ourselves just a little, and just be happy campers.

Forgiveness

I sat there for a long time. Unable to move. Unwilling to move. It was dark now and the rain was beating down harder. I cold wind was blowing. I knew the porch roof had leaks. It would be all wet now. He knocked again…

“Please! I beg of you! Please let me in. Help!”

I felt dark. Like someone switched off the lights inside me. And it all came back again. I didn’t remember if I had cried back then. In retrospect, maybe I did. It was all hazy and yet, painfully clear. It seemed to be very cold in those days, even in the summers. I would often be alone in the afternoons, when others kids would be asleep. Their mothers wouldn’t let them out to play.

I would sit about listlessly, with the few toys that my mother would get on the way back from work. Cheap china-made dolls from stalls by the roadside. I never really remembered when it first started happening. All I could remember was the touch. The raw, hideous touch of his hands. I probably didn’t know what was happening, but there was instinct, the most primal there was, which told me it was wrong.

He came back often, sometimes several times the same day. I would try to run away, but he would always stop me. There was a smell of dust on him. Dust and alcohol. And despite his stupor, he was always to strong for me.

I could still smell the dust in nightmares sometimes. Now I could hear the howling wind…

“Let me in!”, he cried again. I could hear the pain in his voice. “I’m bleeding! Please!”

It was this voice, this very voice that I would dread. It was a voice that would change a lot too. When my mother came home, often late at night, he would be sweet. He m\would make sure the alcohol wore off. Sometimes he would even bathe. He would be clean. I never felt the same way in those days. I would wash myself, my clothes, several times. I would spend hours in the bathroom at a time. It was only less time that I had to face him. Despite my blurred memory, what I could remember best, or worst, was this dull pain. It was a pain in my heart. Beneath my little ribs, a nine-year-old heart used to cringe, squeal and throb with that dull pain.

“I’m in pain! Please listen to me…let me in…it’s…hurting….They stabbed me….took everything away….i can’t go anywhere…please let me come in….only for a few hours. I’ll go away”. His voice broke in through the cold shrieking of the wind.

I now stood with my back to the door. I couldn’t bring myself to forget. My mother come to know eventually, when she came home early. What happened after that, I didn’t know. She sent me to my room. I sat there for a long time. Trying to listen to the muffled noises outside. Then she came back and let me out. We never spoke about it. I discovered he had left with his things, never to come back, till now.

“I will die here if you don’t help me.” His voice was feeble now, almost like a polite request, like he was asking for more tea, please.

For one small moment, I don’t know what happened. I don’t know why, I don’t know how, I turned around and opened the door. The cold wind came in with the smell of dust and alcohol…

The Insult after the Injury

After I fell down the stairs with a fairly loud thud-thuda-thud-thud sound and got up with a reasonable amount of muck all over my hands and behind and the limp induced by the heel mentioned before, a very concerned woman asks, “Did it hurt?”

Ouch

The colour of my heel (which I hurt this morning by falling down the stairs at Santacruz station) has now turned an exquisite shade of Magenta, after spending most of the morning being deep purple, and is reminiscent of Aamir Khan’s eye in Dil Chahta Hai…

Moonlight

I see the moon every night, as he chugs along the train with me

He used to remind me of you, when you weren’t around

But today he seems to read my mind and refuses to smile at me

Half hearted he shines in the sky, hiding behind a cloudy veil.

The moon is incomplete tonight, just like my thoughts

I decide now and in a flash,

And delete the memories and lose everything with the click of a button

How I hate technology…

It needed to be done long ago, long before I ever started thinking

But it didn’t; because you didn’t believe me

I often said it would end, and often I warned you,

You refused to believe me and denied my fears

It’s happening now; less to you than me

But maybe you were right, because there never was anything to end

Maybe I made up that pretty illusion…

I hung on to it with all my heart, only to watch it die away in the moonlight

I feel happy now, happy to cut myself away

The cut might hurt, but only for a few days…

There is no cure, but to cry myself to sleep tonight,

And wake up tomorrow and talk to you

To you it will seem the same and nothing will have changed

We’ll meet months later, smile politely, ask how we are

We’ll even share a cursory embrace

You will never know, of tonight

Again I saw the moon tonight, as he chugged along the train with me

I thought of all this and smiled at the moon,

But he refused to smile back at me.