Footprints on Marina Sand

This vast expanse of sand — one end infinity, the other definity. What a quandary that life on both ends call me. My footprints get lost in the sand and many other footprints. The walk to the sea seemed endless.

Staring into the sea I want to be numb. But all I have managed to do is heighten my turmoil. Everywhere I look I see relationships, boy-girl, man-wife, friends, mother-daughter, brother-sister... relationships are everywhere. Just no longer in my life.

The animation of life here amazes me. Who would have thought the sea that everyone is sitting and enjoying had been there adversary on a fateful December morning?

The din of my daily life had been drowned out by the wind. It sings unintelligible haunting melodies in my ears. Somewhere flute music passes by. The watch shows me that it's time to go home. But I don't want to.

The unmarked graveyard of broken shells and unknown dead things remind me of the inevitable end. The definite end of things in life. Things of life. Of pain. Of a felt moment. And it also reminds me of loneliness. Of the fact that in this entire world, one feeling can't be shared with anyone; and everyone bears it like an albatross - desolation.

Snatches of conversation drift to me from all directions. I try to tune them out. Believe it or not. But they are encroaching in on this now-familiar loneliness of mine while I sit with my back turned to civilization.

Maybe this is what MY no man's land is all about.

Artificial lights are coming up as the day steps down to let the night entertain us. This sea doesn't roar. Even if it does it doesn't roar today. It's purring playfully. More like mirthfully. The sand-castles remind me of futility. Of how nothing lasts and yet how everyone tries to keep it 'forever'.

The salt-laden shoebite is a reminder of pain. To be felt anywhere anytime.

A child just wandered into my pointless reverie. The foot-high angel gave me a precious gift. A smile. An unadulterated, I-am-in-awe-of-life smile. And then, it walked away. Leaving behind a trail of dainty footprints reminding me of every little joy. Of how everything is just momentary. Fleeting. Illusioned.

Night Music

Shhh! Whoosh! Splash!
It rained all night.

It’s raining. And I long to be out there. In the rain, to get wet and to let go of all the well-cultivated “civility.” To be one of the elements; to breath in the rain-kissed air. To flashdance in the colourful lightening.

There. The sky just rumbled. Like a baby lion trying it’s first roar. Sound of music. It’s party time out there. I have seen in the movies and read in books. Rains have always been loaded with some or the other sinister meaning. In Frankenstein, In Gone With the Wind, In… but not tonight.

Tonight it seems as if it is a first time lover, who is shy and yet excited to be a part of age-old ritual. It is playful and apprehensive too. Tonight it’s playing night music.

The electricity went bust and yet I am not afraid. Why? Because it isn’t dark. Even though it is well past 10 PM, somehow there is this glow in the sky. And I can see everything. And the occasional lightening are good discotheque-like ambience. The rain is so hard that raindrops keep falling into my room. Now I know why Butch sang “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head…” or Gene Kelly had Singing In The Rain made.

I am reminded of the day when one night I tried to see the moon and found something much more enchanting than that. That night, towards the south-east skies, some clouds had gathered. And there was lightening. Just within that cluster of clouds – there was amazing “natural fireworks.” It was eclectic. Lightening bolts seemed like playing Pin The Tail. And bright oranges, blues, yellows… different colours of flashes adorned the sky. And the most astonishing part was that is was all so quiet. No sound at all.

Words fail me to describe the perfection in that image. Just as words fail me right now to explain what I feel. All my senses are thrown into overdrive. The sensuality of this is so complete. They say perfection is hard to improve on. I say God proves otherwise every time it rains.

The cacophony of rain at present makes me wish all those small things I used to do in those early showers of monsoon in Delhi.

Get dirty. Purposefully jump into muddy pools. Find excuses to go to the terrace and get drenched. Splutter rainwater that rolled down my face. Laugh like silly and then choke on your own laughter.

As there is a queer glow to the sky, I see the silhouettes of coconut trees swaying – as if squatting away rainwater off them. Though I can’t see the ground from the second floor window, I imagine the water puddles helter-skelter down there.
The utter bliss of the moment is now. The celebration of nature. The stag party of monsoon. And I am melting without being drenched in the rain at all.

The faint perfume of wet earth makes me reel and wish I was out there in the rain. The illuminated clock-hands tell me it’s 11.30. Some residual practicality sends me the message that I have to get to work the next morning. My heart is not into sleep yet though my drowsy eyes and lousy handwriting tell me otherwise. I know I have to sleep to dream of rains. To hope for another rain again. When I would be a part of it. I would be wild and not civil at all. I wish the night would never end.

As if to defy my wish, the sky just flashed mean and also roared so loud I think my ears are scarred for life. And to punctuate the flimsiness of the moment the electricity just came back.

Pinups And Press

This is again one of my older creations – actually a script to a debate I was to attend. I attended the debate but never carried out the script. Thought some one else would want to read it though.

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"MISREPRESENTED, misunderstood and mishandled by misfits," say the woman about the way they are portrayed in the media today. They are nothing more than mere pinups! Some thing that every medium does today - IF YOU HAVE IT, FLAUNT IT!!!

How ironic that on the day of yet another International Women's Day, I as a woman have to stand here and defend and ask for yet another "Room With A View."

The pinups? What pinups may ask the commercialised minds - the media runners. The same ones, which are semi-clad girls on glossy cosmopolitan magazine covers, on the TOI masthead, inside the papers in the advertisement sections - they are THERE!! To be ogled at and to be wanted - by women and men equally.


Here, on this podium I would like to ascertain today that censorship does have a role in fighting the negative portrayal of women. The stereotypes just keep on increasing in number, in the papers – as newsmakers on Page 3. As gender specific unpaid highly publicised celebrities.. the list is exhaustive.


As my fellow team mates have already established the legal aspect of
censorship - the meaning and the application of censorship, I would not go into that detail. But here is a food for thought - all this while we have been crying wolf over freedom of expression, then what about the collective freedom of expression of the disgust at the usage of woman for commercial purpose? What about the freedom of expression of this disgust and hurt that even today a woman HAS TO ASK FOR NOT TO BE REPRESENTED IN SUCH A CALLOUS MANNER.

Freedom of expression aside, what about an individual's right to privacy? What about the society's right to be informed and informed good? Does the media have to make peeping toms out of the public by turning the private life of anyone into a media circus?

We read about the private lives of actors actresses and other celebrities. I am not saying you shouldn't know about it whether Salman Khan ran over sleeping pedestrians or he killed an endangered bird, but the question is do you need to know if he was going out with Somy Ali or Aishwarya Rai? These kinds of publicity is gossip-monging news reporting is an insult to not just the people, written about but also the readers intelligence.

My friend, who spoke before me told you about the adverse effects of any sort of unsolicited inciting and exciting effect shown.. This is where the freedom of expression is put under reasonable restrictions.

And I ask you if it is not proper to prohibit something that is this harmful?

The censorship that I am talking about is that curbs this reporting, this kind of negative reporting. And as a matter of fact, a censorship is required when creative minds go overboard with their creativity and cause unintentional but considerable damage to anyone in general and in particular the women.

Behind Closed Doors

Is it a generic or is it just my family that has a problem with closed doors?

Why I ask is because, except for my brother and I, no one seems to like us sitting at home with doors closed.

Here, at my cousin's place, I have a room to myself. Which should mean that it is My Space. But what it means is this, "Don't sit with the doors locked. Don't do anything inside the room. Don't sit there in the room when someone is home."

"Why do you have to close the door?"

Huh?

This was the same when I was living with my parents. My father removed the bolt of my room itself, because my mother insisted that I shouldn't be allowed to sit in a locked room.

What do they think I do behind closed doors? Have an orgy? Or worse yet - Sit by myself?

I have seen this - except for in the hostels - people, especially family are paranoid about the concept of closed doors. What is the problem with having closed door. Every one has a private domain. Why not have a physical one too? Inside the room?

I can understand parents being afraid of what might their children (aged 8-15) be doing behind closed doors. And if these children are not tall enough, it might be difficult for them to open the doors. But what about when they have grown? Like now?

Whatever happens behind closed doors, is to be known to parents. I ask where is the logic behind it? Or is it because parents refuse to believe that their children are grown ups?

Like the classic example of my cousin walking in on me in a compromising situation. Just because I was used to closed doors, and he wasn't. He and I both, didn't know where to look and what to say - while being highly embarassed at the situation we were in.

Closed doors for the person inside (like me) gives a sense of security; of personal space. For the person outside it is the classic panic setting in.

For the person inside the fear of closed spaces is called claustrophobia. What is it called for the person outside? Closedoorophobia?

Gone With the Wind

One book that I had always been fascinated with was, is and most probably would be Gone With The Wind.

When I was in college, this book was a part of my popular fiction paper and for some godawful reason, all my classmates named the book G2W. (Don't ask me the logic behind this one. It's been three years and it still beats me!)

But that's not why I am writing this post.

I have read Gone With The Wind two times. One for pleasure reading, the next as the part of my course reading. And throughout my second year, I went around quoting passages or sentences from the book. (This irritated the hell out of my friends because it seemed that I didn't have a life out of this book and maybe they were right too)

My favourite passages were the repertoires between Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler. I would want to take another detour and tell everyone that there wasn't one girl, who hadn't taken this course and didn't have a humungous crush on Rhett Butler (myself included) - his favourite characterisation of himself being that he was a scoundrel.

But maybe I am slipping or my memory isn't as sharp as I thought it is, because I can't remember anything else from the book except for Rhett's famous last lines, "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn." and Scarlett's ever-optimistic classic: "I won't think of it now. I'll go to Tara tomorrow. I'll think of it tomorrow. Tomorrow is another day."

But that's not the point again. The reason why I am writing this is because I am reading the not-so-famous sequel to famous 'G2W' - Scarlett.

Written by Alexandra Ripley, who was "chosen by the Margaret Mitchell estate to write this sequel," this book doesn't contain the fiery, almost-hateful Scarlett from the Gone With The Wind.

Scarlett O'Hara Hamilton Kennedy Butler doesn't resemble the original "green-eyed wench" created by Margaret Mitchell and immortalised by Vivien Leigh in the 1938 classic David Selznick adaptation. It is either that or I never knew much about the original Scarlett. (And I refuse to believe the latter. I have a 36-page presentation to prove otherwise too).

I am barely through the first 75 pages of Scarlett and I already feel let down.

But just because the innate curiosity (yeah the same one that killed the cat), I would bear through my disappointment and the 838 pages and come back with more criticism.

(Hey I sat through the 1024 page of 'G2W' - twice. And I had ample criticism for it then. 838 pages of this should be piece of cake right?)

The Sojourn

For a long time I have known something - last night it was confirmed. I hate train trips.

No matter who is taking it, no matter if it is only for a few hours. I simply hate it.

Last night I went to the Chennai Central to see off my friend. Though I was not alone, two other friends were with me, I just simply couldn't see Vinu smiling and waving to us when the train started moving.

When I reached home and retired for the night, sleep eluded me. The plastic on the mattress kept making strange noises in-tandem with my tossing and turning on it.

I was thinking of the next trip I am supposed to take. The one to Delhi. I had planned to leave in late May. Now it is July. And I still haven't decided to go. I have and yet something keeps me here.

The train journeys are good time to think. To get a better perspective about your future. And when you have THREE days to do so, it is a god-given gift. Right?

Wrong!

The thinking is tiresome and when you are all alone with nothing but strangers to company and you want your best friend to be with you just to tell you it is going to be all alright. It is definitely not a gift.

The last journey that I took on train was from Kerala to Chennai. Last month. Two weeks ago. And yet it seems so far behind. My uncle was waving to me and I was looking and trying not to cry. Because though I promised them I would come back, I don't know when I would be able to keep my word.

And all through the journey I felt that I should have someone to talk to. I made two 'friends' - Soumya and Annie on the train. Both were going to join their first job and were fresh out of MA. We came to know of our collective liking towards literature and the journey seemed easier.

But till today, I keep expecting them to call or even write a mail. And that never happens.

This sojourn seemed endless and because all of us are simply human, we communicate. We talk and we may or may not make an impact on other people but that is just it right? We are all travellers.

I remember when I was coming to Chennai for this job. I was excited and apprehensive about my first job. And I had called my friends in Delhi to tell them I was going to be a temporary Chennaiite. And the temporarity hasn't yet been over. It's been almost three months since I came here. A lot has happened to me in between. The life that I had before Chennai seems so far behind. And yet I want to keep making those trips to ... somewhere to know if I feel apprehensive about it. Still.

The next one on agenda - the one to Delhi scares me. Lot of reasons. And yet I have to make it. There is no other way around it. And that is what scares me. There is no possibility of a change of plan. I could keep postponing it, but one day I have to go. My life - the old one is still there. My family and my friends are still there. Though I am not, the ghost of the younger Agnostia is still there. She lives among her loved ones.

And what scares me is that the one who is here no longer wishes to be reacquainted with the old self.

Watching Sunrise

To have the daybreak, straight into your eyes, just because the window faces east and doesn't have curtains, on an everyday basis in neither romantic nor interesting

And when the sunrise gazing is imposed upon you when your head the venue of Riverdance and your stomach plans to do a backdraft after repeated churning - It is positively criminal.

Try to sit and watch the sun rise when all you want to do is sleep but you can't do that as you are just too tired - even to sleep. And also because whatever golddust the Sandman might have sprinkled over your eyes, the damn nightcrawlers called mosquitoes snatch it away.

Ways of the world? Or way to the Netherworld?

The Pseudo Living

While reading The Class by Eric Segal, I came across this --

"We took the world as given; cigarettes were twenty-several cents a pack; and gas as much per gallon. Sex came wrapped in rubber and veiled in supernatural scruples - call them chivalry..."

These verses, written by John Updike, made me wonder about the pseudo living.

I wonder, when Updike wrote these lines. Then to what made him write it and then finally to a similar sentiment I had when I was in college.

The opening phrase - "we took the world as given"
We did. We still do. TAKE THE WORLD AS GIVEN. We live as if there is no tomorrow and we brag as if there was no yesterday. We are - all of us - hedonists.

With the BPO culture in full bloom, we celebrate American Independence Day. We have a whole new plethora of holidays. We have a brand new rule book of how to party.
We slog our asses (pardon my french), just to earn that milk money.

We believe in everything that is taught to us. We doubt everything we see. We look for relationships in the virtual world but we forget to work towards them in reality. We are promiscuous in thoughts, but monogamous in action.

We say we live for someone else, I ask, are we living or existing? The fine-line difference between living and existing has been crossed. Or has it not? Are we, still, the fence-sitters?

We look for avenues to run and when we find them , we drag our feet on the road to perdition.

We measured word by word. We looked for meanings in action.

Maybe this is why Updike has said --
"Psychology was in the mind; abstract things grabbed us where we lived; the only thing worth living was the private life; and - last, worst scandal in this charaterization - we did not know we were a generation."

Retribution

This is a poem I had written two years ago; This was a desperate attempt at winning the Self Composed Poetry Recitation competition of my college.

It didn't win. But it did get the Third Prize. I thought I might share it with the world.

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Chilling warm winds, the pallor of doom,
The song is of death, the clouds fly and loom.
Distant flames flicker and fight,
Why is This choir wailing at night?


Soldiers of Life, a regiment of Fate;
Two of the army, His second mate.
Similarly different both of them were;
Warring with Destiny, were these soldiers.


The taller of the two, called himself Lou,
Had a loving wife and daughters two.
The significant other, known as Beau -
No misnomer, as handsome to tow.


Willful and comfy, in life, Lou was
Had no legs - but a good heart.
Crossroads he faced at every turn;
'Cause ebbing pyres forever burn.


Bitter and resentful had been Beau.
Savage love had scathed him so.
He dreamt of cliffs and stormy precipice,
Withering roses and silence entice.

Lou had plans to die an old man;
Beau, though, from life, always ran.
Lou never saw his winter arrive;
Beau wanted no seasoned reason to survive.


Incestuous Earth, today swallows Lou.
On a cloudy day of mist and dew.
Bugles call, as the mighty fall
Candles, passing bells, bearers of pall?


Beau had died a longtime back.
Didn't get a burial, as decay did lack
Wailing choirs timeless in his head.
Sunken heart, bleeding faith, hope dead.


Lou lies low; Beau standing so.
Ichor in Lou being had fed to Beau.
Beau had in him, no tenderness mild.
And daylight, to his doorsteps, brought a child.

Why I like Chennai

Three months ago I came to Chennai, much the same manner. I hadn’t planned to stay. Three weeks of internship at the New Indian Express and run to Delhi – run home.

But that didn’t happen. I got a job and well I liked Chennai too. For a person, who thought that she will not like any other city after Delhi, Chennai came as a surprise.

The foremost emotion I feel for Chennai is gratitude. It helped me get out of morosity. It gave me shelter when I was running away from my past. The second reason is that after Kottayam, Chennai actually seems like a city. Kottayam was Sleepy Hollow with no understanding whatsoever of 'city'. It was a town and a small one at that. After living for 10 months there, Chennai was a welcome respite.

You might want to ask me that I don't even know the language or the city, but still I like it - why? It gives me sea. I absolutely love the sea. And Chennai has that. That’s reason number three. Then this city gave me my job. How can I not like it? If you ask me if I will live here longer... maybe.. I don't know. I already am thinking of leaving. Three months , and that is that. I would be back in Delhi. Why?? I don't know. Seems like I feel suffocated if I am anywhere else other than saddi dilli.

I mean it is a metro but also there is something really soothing and sincere about it. The MTC buses remind me a lot of the DTCs up there in Delhi. The Central is still a lot of British.. For that matter the Anna Salai area is also old Victorian architecture, old buildings and fledgling modernity; seems like people here are in a dilemma - whether to step across the threshold of tradition and familiar, into the world of unpredictables.

The bus rides in the morning are enjoyable. Not much rush (at least in the ones that I take) and women with fresh "mullapoo" (mallipoo in Tamil) in their head - the smell of which is something soothing. Chennai is not fast paced - so unlike Delhi and from what I gathered from my friends’ description - Mumbai. But it is very much a metro. Not cosmopolitan metro but a laidback industrious metro.

For The Ghost Who Sweats

Though I am not so regular on the blog circles, I thought this is necessary for a person (me) who made me believe in humans and people again.

I thought long and hard about what to write, so that me would want to read it too – then it struck me – rains. And incidentally, it was raining a while ago.

Though I was cooped up inside the office, the sound of water thrashing the windows, the smell of damp earth wafting through to your senses made me want to go out and get drenched to the soul – in the Chennai rain.

There was a time, when I went to Marina Beach, when I sat at the shore, wanting to scream my anguish out but couldn’t. Call me a coward or call me lazy, I just sat there till the last remnants of evening light set on the other end of the majestic buildings that line the road near Marina.

I wrote furiously, what I still don’t know; maybe I would post it on my blog one of these days. As I was writing, I wanted it to rain. But then again I didn’t want it to happen; because rain would mean getting wet and consequently answering questions by my family, whom I hadn’t told I was at Marina.

The rains would have washed away my tears along with it. If I had been drenched in it. I could have consoled myself that the skies were crying along with me. But as usual, being the agnostic I am, rains didn’t materialise. Though the skies were a brilliant myriad of colours.

Me, or whatever your name is, have you ever tried imagining some thing to happen, and yet, when it actually happens you are not happy with it?

Me, I hope you are not tired of reading this. Because there are two states of existence for me – extreme privation and then joy, which I try to find in everything I do.

So, I wait for a comment on my contribution to the rains, and yet not “chase” them.

Walk among Equals

Few weeks ago, on a humid breezeless Chennai evening, I had to catch a bus to get back to a place temporarily called "home".

There were people around me whom I didn't know; yet I felt at peace. One of the crowd. There was no sun though I felt the heat emanating out of the tarred road, it felt as if the road was trying to breathe its heat out. A heated teapot put under a stream of water to cool.

I could feel the sweat tricking down my spine, tickling me and giving me a chill. Minutes went by and I checked my watch again, and saw that a quarter of an hour had passed, though it seemed to me that I had been standing there for more than two hours.

The wait was long and I started counting backwards from 543. At 437, I stopped. I couldn't count either ways. It seemed that my mind went blank. No thought. No sensation. I looked around and it registered in my head that there was a Higginbothams' opposite to the bus-stop.

I started walking towards the big white building made majestic by glass doors and artificial lights. The honking auto brought me out of the reverie and I walked back tiredly to the solace of the waiting shed. I still stared at the big building and saw a inconspicous 1844 written in green, on top of the building - like an ugly git on a pasty face.

There was nothing to do and I had lost the count too, so I stared at the building opposite and I read "Associated Printers" written in blue on a small white rusting board. It was a neighbour to the Higginbothams'. Those two seemed to me to be like the Prince and the Pauper. Like a haughty giant standing sneering down on a miserable dwarf. I felt empathetic with the rusting board.

The sweat had glued my salwar-kameez to me. I felt invisible eyes on my person, felt as if some unknown unseen hands were groping me. I shook my head forcefully and I realised that the heat was bearing down on my brains. I took out the water-bottle I carry with me to find the water was still cold from the freezing air-conditioned room I sat in. I swigged noisily.

Minutes later the bus, which would take me home, came. The bus was so full that I could barely step in. With all the body odours and sweats surrounding me, I felt nauseated.

Bodies rubbed against me. Someone was leaning so strongly on to me, that I could feel his groin pressing into the small of my back. moved a little to my right and a woman's handbag pressed into my stomach. I tried moving back and the groin pressed in harder. ... it was a war-dance of a loser. I was the loser.

About ten minutes later, I found some breathing space - near to the driver and the engine. It felt like I was gasping in a dragon's breath, it was hot and smelly and sticky. I couldn't move. I was pinned to myself by the disgruntled force called Human Sea.

It seemed the heat was making me see things, or rather feel things that were not there.

Or maybe they were. Who knows???

A hand roving on my back. A finger grazing my nape. An elbow poking my side. A heavy sigh in my ear.

I couldn't even turn to establish whether the assaulter was one or different persons. Or a figment of my imagination.

Then suddenly I found myself at the door of the bus and a gust of wind, caused by the moving bus, brought me back: to where, from where, I don't know.

The moments went by. It seemed that I was stuck in a time-warp.

And then suddenly someone said Mehta Nagar.

"Erangamatte??"

"Vazhithaa. Eranganam."

I said in the Tamil I didn't know. And then it was all over. The humid air outside the bus was more welcome that a rain on a parched day. My dupatta had twisted chokingly around my neck and wrapped itself around my stomach.

The descent was a gay affair. I descended the bus and felt like kissing the first person I saw. Thankfully, the urge subsided as soon as it had come. Or else, I would have kissed a pretty 12-year-old girl.