This moment is really the “present”

Something seems to have gone off beam with contemporary times. I hear of people all over being pushed into conveyances that travel only the final journey of mortal breathing – burning trains, derailed compartments, crashed flights, Godmen gunned, fire let loose, people killed, kin massacred, its just so all over the place that you cannot neglect it even if you want to. In these small daily sentences that each one of us traverse as we pen down in the superior story of life we all are strained to sit back for a jiffy and deliberate – why all this, how long and what if it is me or my loved ones.

A confession – when something like this happens I stop (at least for a few days) grumbling about life, I stop fighting with my hubby over the petty chores of mundane living and thank him for the greater part that is all so perfectly done, I stop cribbing about my work and workplace, I stop complaining to the Unseen over what I feel is my due. I just thank Him for having given me whatever he deemed good, worthy and necessary. I do not know what He has in store for me and what His plans are. All I can do is trust Him afar all qualm and survive this instant in its entirety. And yes I do still plan, still strive and still better myself but with modesty and submission in His will.

We mortals are unaware or rather consciously ignorant of how ephemeral are the lives we lead. This moment is really the “present”. Live it and love it.

A moment in time..

Life sometimes feels so strangely stagnant – as if you have drawn in a gush of air and are feeling full of life and then the very next moment you are unable to breathe or rather not wanting to. You are crowded by things you love, people you deeply like and yet there is this lingering feeling to break free, to give it up all for a few minutes and just be you. To stand alone in a moment in time when there is neither a past nor a future – the present is all you are living in and all you are living for. It’s a strange amalgamation of emotions – hidden, unexpressed and desired. You do not want to be responsible for anything or anyone. Like that little apostrophe in a life of shoulders and care you crave for a few moments when it could all be numb and yet beyond that tiny pause you could still get back your world just the way you left it.

I am sure all of us will have gone through such pockets of emotions at varying periods in our life. The mundane and the recurring, however nice and coveted that might be, needs a pause. Life needs to escape to the realm of change and difference. It can be your parents visiting you after long, an event, a surprise, an outing, a letter from a good old friend, an uncommon “love you” message from your loved one, a heart to heart chat with your best friend or sister, it can just be anything that gives you a high as if that’s just what you needed to make your day.

Today you are a year and a half, and life so completely revolves around you. From the minute you wake up to the minute I can cradle you to sleep you are the only thing that does rule supreme my heart. Watching you grow from that sweet little baby the doctor held out for me to see, to the young toddler messing around and bullying me all the time, has been one of life’s strangest and sweetest journeys. To be honest I have never lived through anything remotely close to being more difficult and frustrating and yet more fulfilling than this. Nothing in this world that I can feel more “only mine” than you (to be shared with your dad of course). Not a single emotion that I have lived through has been more pure than what I feel for you when I hold you close to my heart and you hold me tight. Feels like I have my world in my arms. Looking back time has just flown by, so much packed into each moment that they cease to feel like minutes anymore. Life keeps changing by the hour. Being a working mom things are a lot lot more hurried that they could ever be. Each second comes with its own demands as if to test me anew. And still when at the end of it all you reach out to me with that sweetest smile on your face world seems to be at a full stop, waiting for the two of us to grant it permission to go on to the sentence beyond….

One day when you have grown up, when you have a world of your own that you are lost in and your dad and I silently sit somewhere at the periphery of it (like our parents sit today) watching you go through the same cycle as we currently do, you will still and always be ALL our world.

From here I have nowhere to go...

I love such roads that take you to a point from where you have nowhere to go. You can only come back. That’s so true of the our mortal journey. It eventually takes you to that point from where we only return back .... in retirement to leisure, in happiness to walk into those still moments of bliss...

Just a passing thought..

Chicken Confused ...

My hubby dear is a true animal lover – he simple loveeeeeeeeeessssssssss them.. He must be one of those rare people on earth who see a lamb and love to just keep looking at it.. the way guys ogle at girls.. he would ogle at chicken, fishes, shrimps and above all goats.. I speculate the list speaks of the nature of his love.. He would then lost in his focused gaze say “That would make an absolutely tasty meal.” J

Given his undying love for food especially non-vegeterian dishes coupled with the fact that I am working and have a one year old kid I have invented a couple of dishes the qualify the “fast to cook and good to eat” tagline. In keeping with the spirit of my cooking recently my mother-in-law taught me something that is a cross between Indian and Chinese and it turned out to be really nice (though I say so myself J ). So thought would share that with all…

Take half a kg of chicken cut into small pieces. Add to it 1 teaspoon Soya sauce, 3 table spoon tomato sauce, 1 table spoon refined oil, little ajino motto, 1 table spoon common chicken masala, little ginger garlic paste, a dash of vinegar and salt to taste. Cut 3-4 large onions in rings and mix with it. Just marinate all together and leave for an hour. Take a pan and heat it sufficiently. Add a teaspoon of oil and smear it on the pan. Add the chicken, close the lid, put it on low flame for 20 minutes. It will cook in its own water. Then remove the lid. Put the pan on high till the water evaporates and the chicken piece are burnt slightly on the outside. That’s it. Enjoy eating.

On small towns...

Abidingly in any “introduce yourself” question I proudly declare “I was born and brought up in the steel city of Rourkela”. I have lived in quite a few of the Indian cities. My first job took me to Pune, higher studies to Mumbai (I still prefer calling it Bombay) and work again to Bangalore. Have lived in Bangalore for quite sometime now, my marriage, the love of my life - my first child, his first birthday… and I continue to breathe on here.. But my heart still dwells in that little quarter of Rourkela which has been synonymous with the happy days of growing up.

Small towns have a cult of their own. The fact that they are small makes them so different from the rest. All faces are known, all paths commonly treaded, shops defined and few, space and room in plenty, life content, ambitions high and living simple. In such places you will not stand long with a motorbike gone kaput – help comes handy. The fact that you are known and recognized makes you want be a better person. Life is sans a lot of hassles like traffic, distance, crowds and malls. Schools are little and all go there. So though within a small community but competition is rather fierce. Space is available in abundance. Roads are all yours. The verdure there is not a thing of the past. You still can bike on those long winding roads and feel the breeze through your hair as you zoom.

As for Rourkela I can go back to it anytime I want, feel the place that still resides in my senses. First to my mind comes the entrance of my little home, the two tall trees that stood there right at the entrance all along ready to welcome all, and the tulsi (basil) plant just below where I would pray every morning before I left for school. The kitchen garden that followed would pride itself with a little bit of everything. Flowers, vegetables, fruits, climbers, basil, mint, whatever you need that little piece of earth had just managed to house it all. Then the staircase to the verandah with a small bench on the side. I can still see maa there sitting quietly with her morning cup of tea and then finally that wooden door that shielded our sweet abode from all outside.

Inside home the sounds that echo in the labyrinth of memory are so different. “Get back to study” was the most commonly heard phrase at home. And we four siblings could do anything but that. Ashim (the second of we four siblings, I being the eldest) was the smartest and the most mischievous. He would always come up with ideas of exploiting the wealth of resources we had – old magazines, sarees, utensils, instruments and above all those “happy hours” when both mom and dad were away at work. We then literally were the “masters of all we survey”..

I can just go and on.. Its like revisiting a time that you love the most.. Running out on time though..

Till I blog again to complete the rest.. Happy reading..

A penny that I could spend on you..

Some people just have a way with words. They say the mundane, the obvious and the known. Yet the way they put it is so not the ordinary and the heard. During my B School days Gulzar had come down for a guest lecture. And between expressions he cited something, the thought of which makes me feel nostalgic even to this day.

 Don’t remember the lines but the thought goes thus:

Each morning the sunrise puts a penny in my little hands, a penny that the common mortal calls a day of life’s anecdote. Each day the penny gets wasted sometime unspent, sometimes wasted, mostly hurried, mostly busy and at other times threadbare. Sometimes it is mundane, sometimes wearied, habitually demanding and always crowded. My penny goes wasted; things that I dream of and are close to gratis remain still not owned or bought.

Someday I hope my wish comes true, all I wish for is a penny, a day that I could spend just on you.

Reborn..

A close friend had commented on my last blog, that it would probably not take another quake to prompt me post my next blog. It took a greater one I guess – someone special entered my life heralding a huge upheaval and turning life completely topsy-turvy.

 

On eight eight zero eight God gifted me and my husband the most precious gift of our lives – our son Chandranshu. All through life I will carry a very lucid memory of that first glimpse of him on the operation table. The doctor said “Look, he is so much like his father”. I had always wished in some secret corner of my heart that I be blessed with a son (now don’t assume I am a sexist, its perfectly fine to have preferences I guess) and he be like his father. Back on my hospital bed my child lay beside me in his cradle. He was some of my choicest dreams metamorphosed into existence – new, cute, thoughtful and amazed. Eyes laden with sleep, little hands attempting to balance, those cute legs lost in an innocent cycling, those cries and shouts asking us to hold him so close.. Parenthood is difficult for sure.. Your life is completely hijacked I should say, revolving round that little soul. All Priorities reprioritize. All planning falls apart. It like living through days where each moment says ‘what man proposes God disposes’  But the intoxication of motherhood just does not cease to charm. Rediscovering yourself, rediscovering your spouse and your relationship.. its a time of discovery and revelation.. As he grows up so do you. Its like living that life again..

 

My child creates for me a whole new world. With him I visit emotions that had never knocked by being, I sense a contentment so true that I can hardly believe that it ever be, a hug so close that I really feel like one.. and after all that I can hardly believe that I gave birth to this infinite piece of bliss and joy.

For the unsung hero of my life

As I comfort my 2 month old in my arms lulling him to sleep, thoughts traverse back in time to days when I was a child. I still remember the warmth of sleeping close to maa, snuggled close to her – secure in the innocent belief that nothing could touch me. What a mother means to us we always know, but it takes to be a mother to realize what she does for you. Those thousand sacrifices that she made for me as if it were her duty, those sleepless nights she went through so that I could dwell in the lap of the sweetest slumber, those days when she went without food cause my cries would not just let her go, every time she closed her eyes in prayer, every time she just told me things would soon be fine and I believed, the so many things that words will truly fall short if I sit to pen them down. So this blog for the unsung hero of my life, without whom I would have never existed and granted existence, without her, I would have never been the person I am today.

Even today, when I am at my worst I rush back to her, seeking the comfort and solace that no one else can give. It is a love beyond expression, a magic beyond miracle, a comfort beyond all manifestation and a truth beyond the truest. The best is, you need not say, she knows it already. It is so true “tujhe sab hai pata meri maa”.

Every morning of my childhood I have woken up to your comforting voice, pressed skirts, cleaned shoes, hot steaming breakfasts and to a ready and comfortable life that you carefully tailored for me. Little did I then realize your toil that went into it. Packing my school bag, getting my homework done, ensuring I was doing well at school, getting me into and out of my playtime mode, I just accepted it was all your due. You did it all and gave me bonus too – nice warm kisses and hugs every time I was cute. As years went by I grew up to be a demanding teenager. Love then was interspersed with chides and discipline, ensuring I stayed on track. Few things that come first when I think of you – you waiting outside my Sambhu tuition with your Luna to ferry me back home in the scorching hot sun, the satisfaction on your face when I read a poem though I know you understood little, you sleeping on the divan next to that center table to ensure I studies late into the night during my entrance, your joy the day I got through Infy, your coming down to REC to pick me back home and the affection with which you took me to Apsara every time I came home. Thank you maa, I may have never said so, but nothing has gone unfelt and unregistered. Do not know if I can become a mother as good as you are, but you definitely are the best.

Love you always.

And My Earth Shook..

Has been a really long time since I last scribbled something on the net. Started my blog-page with a lot of enthusiasm. This I guess will be the case for most of the first time bloggers. However then got busy with the 'busy'ness of life and lost touch of things somewhere midway.

A few days in the past something happened which actually made me consider making a memento out of those handful of moments and post it somewhere, where I could share it with a larger clan – a much larger tribe that shares most of the elements that comprise me and is a part of the same rat race that I too run and survive.

Life has weird and wonderful rules. It gives us a lot to choose from. It lets us choose those zillion ticks of time when we so comfortably immune ourselves from all the deep delving on the true verve that constitutes living. We concrete mortals, then, engage ourselves in the more mundane and daily and, yes definitely, the arguably more obligatory. And then suddenly comes that one moment, when life just happens to us devoid of any choice. And worst of all that moment is so enviably powered to break and undo all rules and possessions that we otherwise so vehemently safeguard.

A habitual late to bed person, I had just crept into my bed. It was more than two months since I had been in Jakarta with my husband and yet all of it seemed just like yesterday, time seemed to have just flown by. This again I presume is the case with most newly married couples. I lay down staring at the clock, engrossed in yet one more of those umpteen soliloquies on life. The minute hand of the night clock seemed to lazily crawl to keep pace with its ‘second’ counterpart. It must have been something close to 10 minutes past midnight when I felt the bed trembling. Given the uncommonness of the shivers I woke my husband up, who tired from the day’s occupation was already snoring. Both of us got down onto the floor. Initially dazed, then thoughtful, then anxious and then alarmed he shouted, “ It’s an earthquake “. Panicky with the realization, that we were witnessing an earthquake of quite a magnitude at the 32nd floor of our 39 storeys Service Apartment complex, we moved fast. Our reflex action – grabbed our passports that lay on the table and hand in hand hurried towards the lift. While he kept pressing the lift buttons I watched on helplessly as the floor beneath me shook. Along with us were two others from the house next to ours who were equally disconcerted. The lift arrived and there was barely room for four. We took the lift down. That day it stopped at almost every floor, as there are 3 lifts for roughly 160 apartments in the complex. One could witness desperation on the faces of people who waited for the lift at the floors below when they saw a fully occupied lift and then ran in panicky towards the stairway. All kinds of what ifs visited my psyche in those fifty seconds – yes FIFTY SECONDS, it no longer seemed to me as ‘less than a minute’. I kept wondering ‘What if the cable of the lift snapped’ and yet we could not risk running down 30 floors. I hoped and prayed that the quake stopped before the building succumbed. I could well hear the sound of cracking concrete and the shouts and screams of people running down. I could imagine the pregnant and the elderly and the helplessness that would now be surrounding them. But overwhelmed and stunned faces in that 3by3ft lift was all of the earth that I could now see and that I now shared. I held my husband close – to be as tightly clung to him as possible was all I wanted now, whatever be the outcome, in that instance of time that was ALL that I wanted. The lift was shaking and then suddenly the tremors stopped. By the time we were down at the lobby the quake had closed. Honestly it felt like rebirth - actually it felt much more than anything I could conceive under normal circumstances.

Now I could see all residents down on the streets, all in their bare minimums. The street in front was today more busy with noises than people. Amidst hurried walks people were informing their families back home of the escape, thanks to mobile telephony. Everyone was a bit shaken and feared a quick return to their residence in dread of an aftershock. All stood there discussing and waiting. Soon enough we had people discussing how safe each ones exit strategy had been, who had been the smartest and who was the dumbest of all. People started asking each other for cigarettes. Some had even managed to run down with their beer bottles and were benevolent enough to share a gulp or two with others. Gradually normalcy crept back.

Slowly, in about two hours or so, as the tension receded and smiles started finding room on the faces again, people started walking back. We too hand in hand started walking back home smiling and sharing amid us an undeclared happiness. The place that had threatened sedating our life itself was now again home for us.

And all along that return route all that I kept thinking was - how little we need when the dire beckons and how much we want when it does not. When death comes it bangs without an appointment or a schedule. You never know what lies for you round the next cross. So when walking the streets of life please smile – you never know how long it is destined to last.

With that I remain.
Till my next post happy aspirations and happy walking :)




PS: The report of the quake on CNN can be found at the link
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/08/08/indonesia.quake/index.html

Beneath the manifested..

Have often felt – we are scarcely what we are. Breathing pseudo(s) desperately trying to sheathe and swathe.

We are at all times on stage, riveted to some theater, putting up some act. Flanked by changing masks and attires and lost amid turns of playing the king and the clown, being ‘me’ remains largely unrecalled. Sculptured ‘impromptu expressions’, so called ‘cultured’ conversations, learnt mannerisms, imbibed habits, imposed beliefs, deemed tastes, compulsory passions, benchmarked ‘my aims and ambitions’, and such all else comprises living. And like all else this relentless practice too does make a man perfect – perfecting his knack for demonstrating that he is all bar himself.

Soon enough this wont substitutes, rather it overrides, the natural us. Soon enough we forget and soon enough we believe. And believe so much that most of us do not even think any longer that we could be otherwise. We accept this pretense is us, pretending what, we do not know.

And in this endeavor society connives by sophisticating us with the rules of external conformance. Society diligently scripts a basketful of ‘shoulds’ and ‘must bes’. What behavior is good and what is bad, how to dress and how not to, what to eat and how to, how to pray and when to, how to sit and what is ‘ladylike’ - there is a definition for everything. And we, in this perennial play of life, try abiding by the same with commensurate industry. The more intrinsic inner self stays unattended.

Hence the thought – How true is that which is manifested, and if that is not so true then what is it that lies underneath the manifested….