Backing it up...

Life becomes pretty devastating when you, hoping against all hopes to have your data secured, get to know that one wrong download cost you all your work till date and that you were naïve enough not to believe in inventions called “hard disks” then.

In short, I, permanently and irrevocably, lost all my data.

And by “data”, I mean the photographs that I took immense pains to first click, then transfer and compile neatly into albums. 

It still hurts. Thinking of all those faces in the pictures, suddenly I miss my “data” even more.

One good thing I did, though, was upload a select few on FB (FYI, for tagging a zillion faces, FB has barred me from any further tagging).

So this one day I was sulking over my devastated sans-pics life, staring at my cruel laptop’s heartless default desktop background. When I realized I could stand the background no more, I downloaded one of my uploaded pics on FB and set it as my wallpaper.

("THE" wallpaper)

Before I could breathe a sigh of relief seeing the beauty, a revelation occurred.

The faces in the pic seemed happier, including mine, than we actually were at that time, if I remember the moment correctly.

Doesn't it so happen, while you are in that moment, u do not realize how happy it is until it passes. After 6 months, when one fine day you sit defeated and helpless and suddenly set this pic as your laptop’s wallpaper, you say to yourself “You lucky girl! What more do you want from life? Aren’t you lucky enough that you are one of the faces in this happy pic?”

I, once more, understood the importance of these three people in my life.

This one pic is enough for me to forget lamenting over the rest 100000000 lost.

I love you guys more than you can ever come to think.

Once a mother, always a teacher.

Things change. In almost 20 years, things definitely change.

My mother has taught me, one way or the other, throughout my educational life. While in school, she helped me develop interest in mathematics (the subject I still love) and accountancy (without any success).

She would sit both of us, I and my little brother, down and start our daily lessons. We used to be pretty little things then; timid and meek in front of our “seldom-strict-mummy”.

Its been 19 years now that she taught me my first math counting, first English alphabet and hindi alphabet in varna-mala.

As I sit in my room trying to make sense of an HBR article on “Talent Management” now, while inadvertently ending up listening to whats going on in the living room outside, I cant be more nostalgic.

Now instead of us 2, she has 5 kids to teach. Kids as small as a 4-year-old to a 14-year-old.

Our domestic helps must be happy souls now, seeing their children tutored.

And unlike the rich brats (a true generalisation), they are very eager to learn.

Only a deprived knows the feeling of getting.

(My mother with the kids... unawares)

I hear my mother, I hear the same voice I can now recognize from any corner instructing- Shruti, aaj maths aur hindi karna hai. Rahul, Eleven aur seven ki spelling yaad karke sunao. Shivani, ye ghar se karke lana hai.

Listening it over the phone is a different thing than seeing it with my own eyes. Still, when she told me, a month back that she’ll be teaching our helps’ kids, I was inspired.

I reflect back and realize that one thing she has accomplished in her entire life till now is being a Superlative. My mother is a Super-Mummy.

So… things don’t really change in 19 years, do they??

The first 13th.

It so happened when I was at my doc's for the usual refill of my never-ending dosages, while i was home for winter break.
When after consulting with the doc and on being assured that everything was as it had been the last time I saw him- for good or otherwise- I headed to the hospital's apothecary to mix me the medicine as the prescription said.

As the guileless guy on the other side of the counter took my prescription- which has now developed into a mini-diary of sorts- humbly nodding at the seemingly illegible words, as if those words could talk to him, he read out my name like a teacher who wouldn't probably even raise his head on making-out who did a proxy, and turned and opened an almirah which more resembled the mysterious almirah from Narnia, and I saw in it a number of bottles; symmetrical in size and shape, some half-filled, others half-empty, dressed up in different undecipherable codes and what once would have been bright and fresh colored chits.

It was then that this thought cropped up in my mind. Like those small bottles had the huge capacity to be an elixir or poison, concocted accordingly; even the humans are same. We get along with the right mix, and t is an elixir. We meet the wrong ones, and we are doomed, only we never realize and usually cant tell good from bad, sticking to our decisions more adamantly as we progress on our life's graph.

So on this new year, i suddenly have a wish to make.
We must have done a zillion mistakes last year, we are only human. This new year, lets not repeat any of those. Lets make a zillion NEW mistakes.
Lets fall in love again, feel the thrill once more.

Lets be 16 again and this time.... forever.
Happy New Year to all my Loved ones...

Rhythm Divine

Writing a post from the hostel of an IIM was only a dream for me. I had got into an IIM precisely 5 months back but still writing a post could not happen. Largely because I had started believing that my mind and heart had stopped reading between the lines.

Now, blessed with a broken foot and a week-long-complete-bedrest, I have what seems like an entire lifetime to myself. And surprisingly, my judgment of myself was wrong. I can still read between the lines.

Our college is a good 25 mins away from our hostel. And that day, as always we were in a rush to make it to the college bus, only to see that the last bus to leave was more than full. So we got the college van instead. It was one of those rare days for me when I travelled in van, having missed all the buses. And I had hardly interacted with many of the people with whom I was commuting.

As we started, first thing was to turn the music on. “Beete lamhe…” was the song that played. Expecting some local songs, we were happily surprised to find regular “our” songs playing and what ensued was a magical trance. Many of us sang along, while some chose to hum and the rest stared out the window.

It was then that I realized something. All of us came from different parts of the country, and so belonged to different cultures, had different childhood (and some adult too) experiences, motivations and yet aspired to achieve a common goal.

The music, on the outside, was the same to everyone. But to each one of us, it meant an entirely different world. However, the underlying emotion was same- love, belonging, passion.

I assumed, knowing whatever little I knew of them, that while one of them thought of their CAT scores and getting a better college, another one might probably be thinking of her ailing pet back home and how she won’t be able to see it anymore. While one thought of a handsome summer placement and the life ahead of him, another one relived the song thinking of his love.

And what was I thinking? I was only too mesmerized and occupied with this thought to think of anything else.

It is amazing how one simple thing as music means so differently to different people. And because of this, it stops being simple.

All that Matters

All the time, we call life “queer”. Actually, its us who make life and so, WE are queer.
Just the other day, yet another incident (actually a couple of them) opened my eyes to a new kind of queerness of life.

To give a quick background, the home that I lived in for the first 13 years of my existence is in the vicinity of the grad college that I would attend much later. also, from my home, across the road, was the kindergarten school I went to.
I happened to visit my college to collect some documents from a friend who once used to be my closest. Everybody thought we were going out because we were so inseparable.
I can not recognize this friend now. After trying to get through on phone for 15 mins, I got to hear a simple “ok”. Still I wasn’t perturbed. Everybody has a bad day. The final blow came when he, on seeing me, handed over the things and without even looking straight at me once, let his “”new BFFs”” do the talking. I felt so suffocated that I left without any more ceremonies.

On my way back I stopped at a store very near to my old house. From across the road, I saw an old lady (really old), carrying 2 kids’ bags on her shoulders with 2 children holding each hand of hers. Even today she looked just the same. The last time I saw her, probably 15 years back, was on her grand-daughter’s wedding. The sight brought back so many fond memories and I invariably drifted back to when I was a small girl, in KG. She, my “maasi” (mother-like) would fetch me from home, walk me to school, feed me the lunch and got me back home. Sometimes when I was tired or sleepy from the day’s activities, she would carry me in her arms. And here she was today, walking yet another KG kid. As she crossed the road and came to my side, I walked towards her, apprehensive whether she’d recognize me (at her age, I know I wouldn’t be able to). But I only needed to remind her my name and the house I lived in and she knew me. I really had difficulty talking with choked throat and her voice broke me down.

In that instant, I wanted everything best to happen to her. I wanted to do something for her.
She asked me about my family and bhaai. I was so happy that she remembered them.

And when the children beside her started wailing, I knew it was time to go.
She blessed me with all the success and happiness in the world.

And I… I took home a very big lesson.

In Bits and "Peace"s

I stood there, facing the horizon.
The waves... large and small, came in a fixed pattern.

A pattern that God has set, a perfect paradigm.
The grandeur of Yan, the silent and never-ending depth of Yin.

I felt i was a part of this paradigm. I, in a way, felt complete.
Here was a thing of beauty, truly a Joy forever, that'd never deplete.

Nature, sure, has its own way of teaching mankind a lesson.
We've "progressed" from apes to humans to giants, the callousness just doesn't seem to lessen.

BUT

Miles and ages away, I stood there. Facing the horizon.
I was at peace with myself. My soul had sought satisfaction.

...

22 seconds

This post was born on a traffic signal.

It was a family wedding and as I, along with my family, left our expensive new home, sat in the expensive new car, all of us clad in expensive new clothes, I fought the urge to throw away my heels and run barefoot back home, tears streaming down my cheeks.

Next moment I saw myself staring out the window at something, anything that could momentarily cheer me up. But even the billboards and hoardings and signboards refused to oblige and we continued the seemingly endless journey in morbid silence. Such had been the scene at home for God-knows-whatth time and was likely to continue for God-knows-how-long.

Then came the traffic signal… and a smile crept to my lips.

We were at the very crossing where stood our ex-home, as the traffic light showed red. Everything here was still the same and yet so different.

My eyes remained open as I played the scene when I first learnt to drive a scooter and had a wounded knee and a broken scooter. The scar remains.

I played the scene when in summers we’d dip mangoes in buckets of water to cool them off and in our dirtiest best clothes, ate those crouched on the bathroom floor.

Now we are served neatly diced pieces of mangoes, to be eaten with forks.

I saw the drawing room where the 4 of us sat laughing and chatting over the precious serving of butterscotch ice-cream.

The thing remains untouched for days now.

I also saw my mother getting our sweaters and woolens some sun before putting them in a huge silver trunk, along with naphthalene balls wrapped in thin cloth tied together with thread.
And as she did all this, I saw us kids fighting to slip our thin hands from the gaps and sliding the latch as we rushed to her after school, dressed in carelessly worn ties and hair.
The exam time.
How on the day of our last exam having been allowed to watch tv till 9 seemed like the best thing about the exams getting over.

All this played right in front of my eyes as I saw that the traffic light, like in those days, still turned green for only 22 seconds.