Personal demons..

A lot of things happened over the last two weeks. Shiney Ahuja (My personal Greek God) raped his maid(I cannot get over this, really!!). India could not even enter the T20 semis. Obama swatted a fly. A lot of people, I personally know, were retrenched in Muscat. Summer vacations officially started in schools. And amidst all this fervent activity, I woke up one morning to find a painful lump in my body. Needless to say all the other attention grabbing headlines just dwindled like an inward spiral through my mind and the lump occupied pride of place.

It was too early to speak out. Early, because I had yet to consult my personal genii.."Google" regarding this, and only then, armoured with a diagnosis as well as a prognosis would I open my mouth. So gently feeling the lump, and taking deep breaths to help evade the panic attacks, I made the morning breakfast.


As soon as I had my escape, I went to the computer, got to the Google screen and typed in as key words - " lump, painful, red" within a fraction of a second, the screen was flooded with sites talking about various cancers. There were listings on cysts and abscesses too, but I gave no importance to those. Cancer is an obsessive word for me and this time I actually had a lump to show for all my fears. further detailed keywords gave further remorseless verdicts.

My condition cannot be explained in words. It will suffice to say that I started hyperventilating. Every few minutes I went to the mirror to check out further aggravation, came back to google some more, went completely into hibernation with the kid's albums and shed a few lonely tears as well. The one friend with whom I could have talked about it was out of town and my cousin was fighting her own demons.

Not a bite went down my throat. Evening saw me headed towards my doctor's chambers. Hubby alongside, absolutely insignificant. What did he know of cancer? All his family ever had was high cholesterol! My family was a different story altogether, name a cancer and we got it!! Finally my name was called and the pleasant smile on the doctor's face was not returned by me. Did not even wish her a good evening. Just plonked myself in front of her and rattled it all. Interspersing every few words with the word Cancer. My voice breaking, my palms sweaty and my mind dizzy with anxiety.

The doctor examined me and smiled. "Its nothing to worry about," she said. "Its just a sub cutaneous abscess". Saying this she patted me and prescribed antibiotics for a week. My husband immediately gave me a look that was supposed to make me feel guilty of having dragged him to the clinic from the all important office, just for a prescription of antibiotics. I returned the look with a smile that said.. nothings been cured yet!!

I did take the antibiotics, researched on abscesses till the wee hours of the dawn, tried to make a connection between cancer and abscess. The stress levels continued to soar, as the antibiotics failed to show any effect on the lump. It grew and the pain increased and a lot of other things including my psyche got hampered.

Four days passed and I was again at the clinic, with a morbid thud in my chest and a reeling brain, I entered the doctor's chamber and insisted on a scan. Again was met by an indulgent smile and another examination. "It just needs to be incised and drained, the antibiotics are not working , so better get it incised, I will refer a surgeon." I almost choked saying, "Please don't hide from me, tell me , it is cancer isn't it?" " No it isn't try not to fret ok." smiled the doctor. The surgeon was referred. The hubby opened his cell to see available dates, I said, "Today, I don't care if the president of the company sacks you for not being available, I have to get it done today." He knew, further discussion was pointless.

Evening came and I was in front of the surgeon, insisting on not going back until the lump was out. Things happened at a fairly fast rate from then, the husband tinkering with his cell, the kids asking whether I will be back alive, the nurses carrying out regulatory tests, the anaesthesist asking for allergies and false tooth. I, grabbing hold of the surgeon and insisting on a biopsy. The surgeon just smiling.

Finally at 9:00 pm I was in the OT. Before passing out the last conversation I had was about cancer and with the anaesthesist. When I regained my sense, I saw just about 15 minutes had passed, and I was drowsy as hell and was being shifted from a stretcher to a bed in the recovery room. The surgeon called my name and the only thing I could say was, "Do a biopsy!"

At 12:30 am that night I came back home. Son was offering to be a very good boy, the daughter was asking whether it hurt, I was being fed chips by one and muffins by the other. My heart was deliriously happy. For the moment I was cured of my nightmare, For the moment I was healthy and devoid of cancer, It was just an abscess after all. The dressings continued and the reports came in giving me a clean chit. Both me and my cousin had won our demons for the time being. we breathed easy till another day when another demon strikes. We got back to joking at our gene pool, and we got back to blogging. We got back to life!!


I know, many of you might not be able to empathise with this write up. But believe me, if the gene pool is the kind I have, fear becomes second nature!

How do you express ANGER??

"Don't you get angry?" Many a times I have been asked this by many a people I have known. Of course I get angry, I mean who doesn't? I am sure even Shri Shri Ravi Shankar of AoL does get angry sometimes. In my case what confounds people is my lack of expression. I cannot for God knows what dumbfounded reason express my anger. I cannot shout or yell or scream or rant, rave, hit..nothing. All I can do is clam up!

At times I would so like to go and have a good fight. A proper battle of words where all the venom is spewed out. But nothing of that sort happens. What happens is withdrawal from the issue. If a thing or action is making me angry, I can easily withdraw from that place or situation. If the source of anger is closer home, then I just silently stand my ground. Do my daily grind and retire with a somewhat heavy and cluttered heart. But come what may I cannot express my anger in words. Neither can I fight. Hubby feels like he is fighting with a wall, my cousin feels its a 'single child syndrome'. my mom says, "shes the silent kinds", my kids just love this part of me and I just keep trying to put my anger into proper words!!

Anger is a strange emotion for me, I cannot hold on to it for more than a few hours at the most. It just melts away. At times when provoked into a fight, I cannot remember the points that would give me the upper hand, so I stall for thoughts and words and its a miserable situation. A vivid imagination makes me see myself penning my anger and handing out chits in response to a verbal duel..that makes me laugh and I forget the anger.Yes, very strange but very true.

Then again I think what if I had a similar problem expressing my joy, my love, my praise. what then? What if I was inhibited in saying I love you? What if I stalled for words when i had to cheer up my closest friend? and had to write chits to comfort my kids? what then? Its just anger..so be it!! I can deal with that.

Would like to know though what kind of anger expressions do you all have?

The hands that rise in prayer..

A few months back we got a new neighbour. A Syrian couple with two cute boys. They settled down quietly in the flat adjoining ours. The kids of the apartment did try to pull the new boys in to their games, but did not succeed. The boys always smiled but refused to play, remaining watchful and distant. Kids being what they are soon forgot about the two boys who always held their beautiful mother's hands and stood watching the games.

I, being a bit introverted, in person, did not reach out either. I stood at times talking and laughing with the other moms, watching the boys at their games, and she stood as well. So beautiful, so regal, so distant, a few feet away from me. Neither taking the initial step to bridge the gap.

One particular evening I decided to go ahead and talk to her. While we stood in our regular group and chatted, I saw her come quietly and take her usual place in the compound of the apartment, her two boys by her side. I excused myself from my group and went to her. Her beauty, that so far I had admired only from a distance, made me gasp. I am used to the Arabian beauties, but this lady had an unmistakable aura about her. We shook hands and introduced our selves. She politely introduced her boys to me. Beyond that she did not speak nor enquire about anything. I welcomed her to come and join the group telling her that her English was perfect and she would not face a communication problem. It was then that she looked at me with eyes that spelt a million sorrows. Those limpid pools of grey blue eyes seemed to communicate poignancy that did not require any language skill to be understood.

I literally took a step back, Looked at her again. She was still there. But now she was composed and regal once again. The momentary lift of her veil had come down to hide her sorrows from probing eyes. I did not probe further. I came back to my place and did a lot of trivial things, but all through the evening her eyes stayed with me.

Later that night the watchman of our apartment came to collect his wages. On opening the door to him, he said," Madam your neighbour is beating his wife again. Can you hear her cry? See there, again..can you hear him shout?" From the hallway of the apartment the anguished cries for mercy came distinctly to my ears, and so did the sounds of harsh, loud and painful blows. The pain in those eyes, the defeat of spirit and the bonded existence became clear to me. At that moment I desperately wanted to reach out to her, and in that same moment I also realised her staunch need for privacy. The thin veil of pride that she wore each evening would come crumbling down, by my intervention. I let her pride remain, and closed my door. I looked at my husband and kids, and felt the anguish in the adjacent house separated by a lone wall and a society that permits a man to beat his woman without shame, without guilt and without repentance. The hands that rise in prayer 5 times each day also rise to beat another human being, a mother, a wife.

I also realised, maybe for the first time, the sheer physical power a man has, and felt thankful that the men I know have never been tempted to use it in this way.

The city that flows in my veins..

A city I feared as a child. hated as a teenager, and understood as an adult.

Having always lived in small and peaceful cities, Calcutta was a nightmare to me. My fears gripped me as soon as the train pulled into Howrah station. It felt as if the hungry, desperate maddening rush at the platforms would gulp me down and I would choke and drown in its boiling belly. I clung to my mother's Saree for dear life till we were inside a taxi. Even then, I dared not look outside the window. My parents pointed out various sights of the city to me, but all I did was just slide down the seat slowly. The loud voices of the people all around, the beggars, the barely clothed mad woman hitting on our taxi window smiling a toothless, sinister smile, the street fights, the long rallies with men and women shouting slogans and waving red flags were too much for me. We usually went to Calcutta for 15 days in the summer months and then we would head to Patna where my maternal grandparents lived.

Those 15 days seemed like eternity to me. More so because the moment we set foot in this city, Baba was transformed. I almost became secondary to him. He was always going somewhere or the other. He was rejuvenated here. I guess I also saw Calcutta as my competitor. Not that he did not ask me to go along with him, but I was too scared to travel in that city and preferred to remain at home. I counted days when we would catch the train to Patna. I sulked and clammed up and remained an unfriendly and snobbish little girl to my relatives in that city.

Whether I liked Calcutta or not, did not matter at all, as every year the trips continued. By the time I reached my teens, I got used to the mobs at the stations and on the roads. I also got used to the dirt and the stark poverty. I resented the narrow lanes which had me, a rickshaw, a diseased dog and a skinny cat and at times even a cow together at one single point in time, with just me being the uncomfortable one. I walked the roads worrying that a running bus would at any moment spray the immensely dirty sewerage water, that had logged the streets onto me. My skin crawled each time a beggar sitting on the footpath would touch me and ask for food or money. I could never shoo them away, neither offer them anything, but the faces haunted me at nights.

The city dwarfed me. I remained an outsider who marked each day on the calender waiting for the 15 days to get over. I often heard Baba say, "you can't escape loving this city, someday you will understand its spirit, that day you will never be able to say no to Calcutta. This city lives, it has a life." I just about managed to bear the comment and hurriedly got into my train for Patna. leaving him behind in the city of his rejuvenation. As the train moved out slowly, his wave would be my focal point and I would deliberately make myself feel that the horrendous and bad mannered crowd of Calcutta was enveloping my Baba and taking him away. Even then I knew it was a silly thing for me to think, but such was the hatred for the city.

As fate would have it, as an adult, I had to come and live in this very city. There was no Baba now, but his love for the city made me take my first step towards getting to understand it. I had just started my career. The office and the home being on either ends of the city, ensured that I travel the entire length of this city twice everyday. The crowded buses gave me anxiety attacks to begin with, and yet my ears perked up at the wit of the people. The trademark one liners and repartees of the bangali were scattered like gems every where. Till then I had thought wit belonged to the elite. As days passed, warmth was added to the wit. I came across the genuine warmth that this city has. The only city probably in our country that has time to stop and give a detailed direction route to a complete stranger, that too on a scrap of paper. The only city where a phuchka walah will look at a kid and ask if she would like to take home some phuchkas for her old grandma. who probably is too old to come all the way, adding that he would give it for free. the city with its theaters and book shops was something I was discovering for the first time.

The second hand bookstores that abound here were my paradise. At any given excuse, I would head for them. Spending hours here and being offered cha(tea) and a stool to sit so that i can peacefully browse through their treasure. Not only this, the stall owners were extremely knowledgeable about their products and were happy to discuss authors and books at length without even once giving the impression that I needed to make a purchase. It was always a smiling "come again" that they said as I left their stall.

The Red road with its beautiful greens and the majestic Victoria Memorial soothed the tiredness out of my eyes. The old world charm of The Esplanade and the Chowringee made me reluctantly fall in love with the city. Park street with its lights and happy bustling people made me proud I belonged here. The various homes of Mother Teresa humbled me. The city of trams and the first metro, the city of cobbled streets and horse mounted traffic police, the city that napped in the afternoons and had about 3 bandhs each month, the city with dreams washed in the Ganges and the city of indefatigable spirit. I still hated the station, but had started loving the rest. This was a city that would never leave me alone, it would walk towards me and poke me, nudge me, share with me its troubles and encourage me to do the same. This city can never be indifferent, and neither could I.

I just took a tiny step towards it and Calcutta in turn embraced me for life!!

Through my eyes..

He was a lot of things to a lot of people. To me he was Baba. Never could call him anything else. My earliest memories of him are those of him taking me to school everyday. Hand in hand we went admiring flowers and turning each cloud into a particular character. The walk to the school always felt too short.

As I grew up, he was my playmate, my riding horse, my mannequin, my patient, my student, my confidant. My childhood days were filled to the brim by his jokes and by his songs.

As an adolescent, I shared his dreams. His vivid imagery brought many an illusive and abstract notion to perfect form. His laughter was my joy. He accepted my limited talent in the subject of his choice- Mathematics. I never realised for a very long time that as my private tutor, I had the most sought after professor of Engineering at one of the most reputed colleges of our country. He always came down to my level and made maths tolerable for me.

His romanticism, love of books and people, craze for films, adda, unbelievably child like joy at spooking me and my cousins in the dark, passion for football and rabindrasangeet, his story telling, his enthusiastic praise, all find an echo in me today. So does his contentment and peace.

An ambulance on the roads blaring away always scared me stiff, till the day he said ,"An ambulance takes the critical to the hospital in a jiffy so that they can get well and return home". My perspective towards the white van changed that day. I learnt, amongst a lot of things the pleasure of laughing with others rather than at others from him. I also learnt how to hide silly tears while watching a tearjerker and mushy Hindi film!! Yes, the trick was simple, to get out of the room just a few seconds before the film ended, I do it every time, works like magic!!


I loved him and everything associated with him. But it was short lived, maybe even if I had a complete life time it would still be short. I also understand that for every child, the pain of losing a parent is heart wrenching. I saw the suffering till it was unbearable. Eventually I prayed for his release, I let him go to a cloud we had booked for him. 16 years have passed today since I bid farewell, and yet the oozing wound stays just below the skin.

Life has moved on, and has brought many a pleasure in its course. But in every moment of utter joy, I miss his presence. I wish he had seen my kids, I wish he had played with them. Today as my kids joined their hands in silent prayer before his picture, I believed it reached the solitary cloud that still looks out for me over the desert sky.

A river and A storm...

At times I wonder, if it is possible for a mother to love one child a little less than the other. Its really a question that keeps coming back to me. Maybe because I am an only child, or maybe because my mind has nothing better to do. Whatever the reason, this question does nag me.

Both my kids are so different. The daughter- sincere, loving, open.. a chocolate that I can't ever have enough of. The son- a master story teller, always in motion, a brat with a smile to die for and a laugh that resonates throughout my house. He is my coffee, my daily stimulant. I can unwind with my daughter, relax in her company, read a book, share a moment, draw pictures together or just lie in bed listening to her talk softly about her day. I am perpetually on my toes with my son. Relax is probably a word he and I can't use when we are together. He pushes me to my limits. Every time I feel I have him in my grasp, he manages to climb the branch just above my reach.

Apparently for everybody who knows this family, I am partial to my daughter. Obviously, because all they see me do is shout my life out at my son. I am either running after him, or threatening him, or lashing out at his untidy work. I myself am not sure. Its true that life is easy with Toshali and quite difficult with Soumya. Its also true that after a long day when my son sleeps peacefully, he evokes emotions that are beyond words. If I admire sincerity in one, I have to admit that I admire boundless energy in the other.

Both are my eyes, both are my dreams. One a river flowing gently, the other a ship on high seas. Is it possible to love a dream less? I still am looking for answers.

End of Innocence...

She was all of 18. In college. Had recently lost her Dad. An autumn leaf. She loved to read. Had always liked poetry. Too sheltered an upbringing. Suddenly on her own with her rose tints still on. Her world had revolved around her dad. She was getting to know her mom. She clung to his memories. She lived in a dream. She continued her love for poetry. A whimsical girl not ready to be real.

He was 32. A charmer. A poet. A lost soul. Married with a kid. An accomplished wife - lively, beautiful and ambitious.

He was looking for validation. She was looking for love. She put his words and him on a pedestal. She did not see right from wrong. She did not want to believe in conventions. She was in love. Love knows no bars at 18. She felt like a rebel. She felt he needed her. She believed his marriage was coming apart. She was ready to give up all.

He was cautious. He was playing. He was proving a point to his wife. He was rising from the ashes of his insecurity. He wanted it all. She wanted just love. She fought with her mother. she called her practical, devoid of emotions, a robot without feelings. She didn't care that her mother had no more tears to shed. She was too full of her love. Love can be selfish, it can be all consuming, it can be ruthless, it can also be timid, double edged, sneering.

An ordinary day. A phone call. Not from him. But a friend. News that her calls to him are the joke of the office. He plays recorded phone conversations for all to listen. He massages his ego. He flaunts the love of a young girl carelessly on his sleeve. He feels like a man. She talks to him on this. He evades her. He has no answers. Her tints come crashing. For the first time she looks at the sun. for the first time she allows her eyes to get used to the blinding light of truth. She feels used and cheap. She feels dirty and exploited. She feels alone and lost.

One last meeting. She has to start afresh. She needs no answers, no justifications. She just needs closure. failing steps to a house that was once so dear. The bell that often was rung in joy, today rings in its shrill pitch. The face that was so loved, today stands devoid of its charm. An ordinary man. A thunderous slap. A flood of tears, Raging eyes. Silence and the door closes. An era closes too. Innocence is lost at the wrong door. A lesson for life.

A very common tale. But the hurt is real. The saddest part being that she was no kid. The story cannot be therefore categorized under the various forms of abuse. The story is afloat for the readers to decide. She was 18 and he was 32.