Incoherent Verses

Can only see a few metres ahead
Hands in my pockets, feeling the cold right through to my bones,
Misty eyed walking on the usual tar roads I hate.

Few moments of ecstasy
Etched in my mind forever

A little butterfly resting on your toe
Thankful to god for letting me still have you so close

Years of knowing you, until we finally met.
Perhaps it would’ve been better if we never had?

We yearned to talk to each other, our eyes gave everything away
If only we could think of saying something after the hi!
And then ofcourse you brought her along…

Holding my face in your hands, you almost had me there…
But you had to turn out to be a hooligan!

The whole city slept, while we kept each other company
I guess both of us being nocturnal animals wasn’t a reason enough
Thanks for waking me up

Looking up at the tallest one of the trees, I tell him my stories
As he gently nods his head
I wonder what it would be like to be able to stand at his height
If only I could also understand him

Playfully kicking a stone, whistling through the mist
Wondering what tomorrow will bring…

Hello blog buddies! As of this minute I'm just sitting in front of my computer jigging to richie rich and feeling all very happy : ) happy shiny me. So I figured heyyy lets type something down! Spread the shininess!– is that a word – or did I just come with a new one for Mr. Webster?

I gotta admit most of the time I'm really happy it's because of some god damn reason I absolutely have no idea about! Though yes good music and good company to jig with me is the number one way of making me all cheery and chirpy! Swinging (yes, I am talking about the good ol swing we spent many happy hours on as kids) really hard and right when your’re at the top to look up at the sky – I love the whacked feeling you get when you’re on your way down. Hey everyone who loves music – check out nelly furtado’s remixes from her new album- they are absolutely great… right now good ‘ol richie rich is playin on my comp… : ) “ho kudiye aa jaana…” lol – punju remixes rule : )

There are two little pups in my colony – stray- but they got their mommy with them most of the time. They are soo adorable! Felt like taking one home but I figured their mommy might get angry – including mine if you think of it! I love the flick hum tum- is too cuet- bought the dvd home, was fun even watching it again. Most of the stuff it says is quite true – though I don’t agree with the one which says that girls and boys can never be just friends – atleast not by my experience. Though I absolutely love the part when rani wonders why guys always walk ahead of girls- lol – I swear it – me and my girlfriend are always left walking behind, as the guys go striding ahead of us….im sooo waiting for atleast one of them to fall… .lol!

This year Santa came home a whole month earlier! I must have been a really good girl 0: ) First my sister whom I had been missing o so much came home – with a whole lotta goodies. Then one of my mum’s favourite aunt came home – if you can picture goodness, joy and love with a shiny orange duappatta on her head, then you’re very close to actually seeing her in front of you. Then one of my favourite aunts came home – might I add- more goodies : ) after which my sister lands up with a truly awesome job…. : ) you know every time I'm in such a mood I'm reminded of a song I used to sing as a kid – “Count your blessings, name them one by one….and you will keep singing as the days go by!”

I had this blog in my head a few days ago..all vey high pitched and some shit that was screwing my head but I couldn’t sit and get it out of my system coz I had an exam the next day. I'm having exams for a whole month…with breaks of about a day or two, except for this break when I have 4 bloddyy days for an exam that requires studying for just about an evening! : ) I'm through with Paulo coelho’s eleven minutes- dunno how or why but I seem to land up reading his books o so often nowadays. One of the parts mentioned how all of us are way too addicted to pain, made a lotta sense –it's the easiest thing to get depressed or to inflict pain on yourself or escape from life and sit in the corner of your room wallowing in self pity, or in the middle of a crowd and realizing how insignificant you really are. Wounding yourself…pain…in pursuit of pleasure. We all do that don’t we? Silly stupid us.

Today I say go blast the music and dance with yourself and scream into the stillness of the night! Go have a vodka with ice cream, drive really fast with the windows completely down, go dye you hair pink and then come home and go tell mommy how much you love her! Lol – I’m thinking of a line in my pal priyanka’s poem- "...because I like what you teach in the light of the morn: That there are more colours than purple…." Will see you next time with a few more new shades on me…

Tears that tasted of three years of sweat, toil and unceasing perseverance. Fear gnawing at the back of my head that all has been wasted. And why? Why did I allow it all to be wasted? Because I expect things that are just not possible. Things like a large enough area not too far from home to do Tai chi. Sounds simple enough? You have no idea…People got freaked when i tried to do it in the park, its just too wierd for most people. The only area at home large enough for me to practice tai chi is the main hall of my house. A hall surrounded by rooms and very noisy people! So wake up early in the morning right? Wrong, for dad wakes up at 4 in the morning and takes up the hall and does yoga, shav asana most of the time (the position where you basically go to sleep in) and leaves it only at about 9 am. So there are like 20 more hours in the day right? Aye…wrong again- college doesn’t give me much time. You’re not supposed to do tai chi on a full stomach so on my off days, after lunch when everyone leaves the hall alone and goes to sleep, I'm left wishing that I hadn’t eaten so much!

Aye…sounds silly? Hold on this gets better. So evenings before Ekta Kapoor’s gift to the Indian society in the form of saas bahu serials (plain crapped out silly shit loved by way too many people) I have about an hour when the house is almost quiet. Except my mom loves to talk, so irrespective of my numerous pleas to her to stop talking to me, to stop expecting me to respond she just goes on….

After about a year I was way too frustrated, decided it was high time to stop banging my head against this wall. Stopped tai chi. Figured I'll do it once in a month or two so I don’t forget and that’s that. Today I realized I was being stupid I could not allow myself to forget tai chi, hadn’t practiced it since 3 months or so. College is partly to blame, what with our classes going on from 9 to 6. But then it's way too simple to make a list of excuses. So today I told myself I will do tai chi, I won’t mind the people talking to me, and will actually respond in dire situations. I had to do tai chi!

Struggled…hard. Obviously I didn’t remember it but even when I read the steps listed on the paper I drew a blank. Went on trying. Someone came at the door, no one bothered to respond to it. I opened the door, somebody wanting to wish mum happy diwali. Meanwhile I kept trying with the steps in my room. My sister sitting at the computer. I repeat in my head step back and repulse monkey 1…2…3….slant flying…no…slant flying……..noooo…slant flying???

Got it after 5 minutes. Mum came in to tell us about the people who had just come in. I leave for the hall. Start trying again…step back and repulse monkey. Mum starts shouting – it's Diwali and look at this house- it's an absolute mess!! Robin (my sister) it's all your fault, look where you’ve put these DVD’s, whyzzz this table pushed back???ahhhhhhh
It's pushed back because I'm trying to do tai chi here. And we don’t celeberate diwali so stop pretending to!!!- yup that’s me finally venting my frustration out. Three years of hardwork!!!!! Mum’s reply- everyone works hard!!

Breathing hard, tears in my eyes, I felt I would explode. Tried to calm down…continued…raise hands and step up….

The movements came much easier this time, like I had someone guiding me…or probably because I so intensely desired to get them right. Finished it in a while, bowed, pushed the table back in place….

Since when have I started loosing my temper at such an astounding rate? Not a lot but going by my standards… All of a sudden there’s a new me who’s just sick of being nice, working my ass off and allowing myself to be treated as a doormat. First time I realized this was when my pal Aman asked me why I was becoming so aggressive lately. Frankly speaking I was quite taken aback…I thought about it and realized that it was true. But then I like the new me – I like letting people know what I think, having an open two way (hopefully) dialogue. It’s a little confusing because I think I always did speak up for myself when I had to… I may live in my own sweet world most of the time but when the need arises I have always gotten up and held my own – or haven’t I? ayee…maybe I had not been paying sufficient attention…

But the question here is am I loosing my temper more often than I have the liberty too? No.. let’s rephrase that – it is a free world afterall. Why is it that I am loosing my temper o so often nowadays? Why do I feel like people are going to run all over me and thus I need to wear an armour, or keep a sword handy….there that sort of explains it – I’ve been feeling so much more free now – like I’ve shed my armour – and in place I keep my sword handy to lash it out at anybody I feel is going to hurt me….funny- in that case there are a few people I wish I had lashed out my sword at in the past... They got it easy as I hid underneath my armour all this while…

It's like life’s getting jaded. I was reading Anshumani’s blog yesterday and there was this one blog where he was reflecting upon how as a child he used to end up learning so many new things everyday, and as we get older there’s just so little value addition. I feel that everyday, sure I'm learning new things in college, but not about life, people, about things that make life so precious. In a way I've been trying to not learn anything more. I used to love people, still do to quite an extent. The idols I had, crumbled to dust quite a while ago…ayee.. I let people get to me now, I’ve stopped making allowances for people, I’ve allowed myself to wound people with my words…and more the blood this sword tastes, the more readily it leaves it's sheath for the next round of this battle. Ha! Battle… maybe I’m getting a little too dramatic here – life – battle….maybe…it's a long one for sure. Everyday battles…no wonder a walk on the street reminds me of how life tortures the souls of all of us alike…the little beggar girls who threaten me of ‘Shani’ on Saturdays (some superstition that apparently makes people give money to beggars on Saturdays) the old handicapped beggar on his wheelchair, who helped me stop an autorikshaw (I’m serious)… and then there are these little daily triumphs- my grandma climbing the step outside my building without any difficulty… should see the look of triumph on her face. Two weeks back I started taking her out for walks, initially she could barely walk for about 5 minutes, and had a terribly excruciating time with the ups and downs on the road (things I had never paid attention to before)…she’s getting all fit for her upcoming tour to Punjab with her daughter who’ll be coming from US in another few days…

I should start Tai Chi again, should never have stopped. Trouble is it's nice doing it in a nice quiet place…and there is none around. Will find a way round this too...

Was reading Paulo Coelho’s ‘The Pilgrimage’, I wonder if those exercises work? The one about walking real slow for about 20 minutes everyday makes a lot of sense, but what about the ones that are well a little tough to digest… I returned the book back, the old me would’ve tried out atleast a few of that stuff before returning it. I am listening to reason, becoming cynical, becoming like everyone else … aiyee… and so thus I grow?

Shadows of Mine

Flexible thy form, depth thy beauty
A beauty unseen, elusive thine very existence
Grievances of the past, fright for failure of tomorrow
A mirror to our pain
Greater our sorrow, greater thine form
Every tear shed pushes you further into the dark alley
As though you had a purpose
Our sole companion for that walk
Extending thine arms to fold us into
Never to leave us alone
Walking one pace behind to guard all evil
Yet not forgetting all other ends
Contented, you slowly merge into me
For the night is over, and the sun is rising
Helping me face the light boldly
Joining me in the dance of merriment and happiness
But slowly the music shall fade
And we shall walk alone again
Walking with music in our hearts
The music of life that shall never fade.

I am an outcast from the entire ‘community’ system, not by choice but by default. To be more accurate, I don’t really have a community setup around me to be a part of it. I am not religious; hence I do not take part in any of the customs, which by default of birth everybody else does. Except in my case my parents figured all the mayhem around them was due to religions, or more accurately community clashes. Twenty years down the line, the situation remains the same and I understand their point of view, through their progenies they wanted to see a new breed come into existence wherein their only creed would be derived from love of the human race. Thus I don’t have a surname.

So I used to be in the North of India as a child, to be precise till I was about 9 years old. My dad being in a government service has to cope with transfers, and so I landed up leading the next 8 years in Chennai- down south. I lost contact with my relatives, I lost fluency with Punjabi (when I left the north I had still been in the stage where I was only picking up the language) and became an alien to my own family. I used to believe Nathanpur (my maternal grandparents home) to be my home, no matter where I went I always came back to it. It was a huge Haveli, sort of like a fortress, with innumerable number of rooms, many lavishly decorated, with servants all around, sort of like a palace almost. There was a water tank within it that functioned as a swimming pool for all of us,leading onto the servant quarters. Huge spaces, three families within. Winters would find everyone out on charpai’s (beds- made of ropes tied together, supported by a wooden frame) basking in the warmth of the sun. Two huge dogs. In the summers Darji (my grand father) would get swings tied up in the veranda’s, I would always go behind him asking for khati meethi goli’s (as i grew up i learnt these to be vitamins!) and he would always call me his Beeba Putar (beloved son – it's a habit of sardar’s to refer to their children using the male gender). This whole haveli was surrounded by sugarcane fields, all owned by my Darji. A ten minute walk through the fields took us to the orchard, that’s the point my mama used to always turn back from.

I went there twice during my Chennai stay. I could not go when Darji passed away, was having my boards exams if I remember correctly. Went back two years ago, I couldn’t even recognise it. The old mud road had been replaced by the regular roads characteristic of our towns and cities- tar, not too smooth, not too rough, tar. As far my sight could go, there were square shaped brick houses. Bricks and tar. No sugarcane fields, no orchards, no Darji. Family feuds, natural occurrence when rich brats, who’ve never had to really work, get a chance at getting more money. More walls. The brothers sold everything, the haveli remains. There’s a highway being built right next to it, people will be able to access Dehradun so much more easily now…they call it development- more tar in place of absolute heaven. I sat at the same window sill where I used to sit and watch the bullock carts roll by as mum and my Beeji (grandmom) chatted in the kitchen…only this time I had turned away my face from the family because they were expressing their happiness at having disposed off all of the fields. That’s when I realized that this place never was mine to have taken the liberty of considering this as my home. All because my mom had been a daughter and not a son in the family, wonder if the reverse would have made any difference.


I never belonged in Chennai. The contrast between the south and the north of India is tremendous, almost like two different countries. Came back, loved to hear people speak in Hindi, loved to hear the little boys with their dholkies (drums) come and play inside the busses, loved to finally understand the comments boys made when they were ‘line marofying’ – everything will change but the breed of road side Romeos will never perish!

We don’t celebrate any festival. All days are the same for us. Remember we’re not religious, and considering all festivals being a by-product of religions, there is no time of the year when we really celebrate. I came to north, looking for a home; only to realize that there was no such thing as home, no such community that I really belong to.

So here I am, my only religion being work. My dad worked right through the week, so that is all I know that one has to do in life. Nothing else really matters. And so I live my life.

Started writing this because today there was a kirtan being organised by my masi (mum’s sister) as it is Darji’s death anniversary today. I couldn’t go for it as at the last moment we were called in by the college for sessions to prepare us for the upcoming placements. I thought I would still make it in time, missed mama by like 15 minutes. Felt so terrible. I've just never been there for you Darji...don’t know Punjabi, cut my hair, sat and watched as the world you made was molested and torn away. Just the same, I hope you knew I always loved you; I always wanted to talk to you more, to know you better…

So forgive me as I don’t know how to play this game, I don’t know its rules, n I'm through getting bruised… I'm not the only fish in this pond anyways, eh? Why don’t you go play while I make up my own little games in my warped little head. Call me cold or be nicer and call me queer. Come say hi and talk to me, but don’t make your moves, and take me to be retard if I pick up the cards when I'm expected to roll the dice. No, and don’t play the same game at the same time with me and my best friend- it's absolutely outrageous, or maybe I've understood the rules all wrong again?

Just when I made up my mind that it's ok to be me, who’re you to come from nowhere and instruct me to grow up. No I will not be a grown up – if that word implies that I will have to smile when you crack a stupid joke, and not when the wind blows on my face. And how many of you will keep coming to scrutinize me, judge me, and then turn away when you find a prettier version of my sex pass by you.

So no I will not play. So please I beg you and all the other fellas who damn well will keep following to leave me alone, and not make me feel like a nincompoop. I have no respect for these games, so anyone who does really want to know me, then go ahead and find out and not rely on tried and trusted methods. Though if you’ll follow my advice, then it really is best to allow me to live in my world, and just let me be.