November 29, 2006

MA...

Once upon a time she was a bubbly pampered sister of three elder brothers, who loved handiwork, going to movies, dressing up, painting, playing pranks and her cats. And then she got married to become a wife at 18. Then one day she had ME and became a mother at 20. A few years later, she eventually had my two younger sisters and added to the list of things she previously was. She became a cook, a dresser, a wiper of our dirty faces, a cleaner of our soiled diapers, a nurse when we were ill, a retriever of thrown socks and uniforms, a finder of our lost shoes, a doer of our homework we couldn’t complete, an insomniac. She was a referee in our toy-wars, a slayer of dragons in our nightmares, the face of angels in all those fairy-tale bed-time stories that she’d read out to us every night before tucking us in bed to sleep. She was the expert innovative chef who had to come up with 1001 tiffin-recipes which could not be repeated very often, a duty-bound guard who would walk us to school and bring us back home, holding the umbrellas to protect us from the sun or the rains and sometimes even carry one of my sisters who would get tired walking. She was a soother of nervous school jitters, a coach to prepare us for our tests and exams, a strict (hate-able) character when we scored poor marks, an adorable rewarder when we passed with flying colors and a sporty leader of girl-scouts.

With each passing day, her talents grew: she became a baker of delicious cakes and cookies, a hygienic competitor of the dirty roadside chaat-wala, an ice-cream vendor who distributed popsicles and ‘milkmaid-kulfis’ not only to us but to all our neighborhood playmates absolutely free-of-cost. She learnt to sew prize-winning costumes for our fancy-dress competitions, compose the best school essays which would score us maximum marks in the whole class, come up with the best ideas for our science exhibition projects and embroider the most beautiful motifs for our hand-work assignments. She would be my transporter, guide and motivator for all those numerous art-competitions that I participated in as a child.

Her body, once which was her own to do with it as she pleased, now belonged to us—she ate for ‘us’ when she was carrying us in her womb, her breasts were the only source of food or life we recognized as infants, her shoulders were used by us to cry upon, her arms to be hugged by whenever we needed her warmth and security, and her lap for us to sit and cuddle upon. Her lips became the kissers and soothers for all our unstoppable boo-hoos and tears, her hips were the carrier of our small, squirmy bundles and her hands our cradle.
She could braid or tie-up our hair in the time most people could only manage to wash their faces. She could bathe, dress, feed and get all the three of us ready for school in half-an-hour flat. And she could smile for us even when she didn’t actually feel like. Her feet were used to walk the house with us in her arms at any hour of the night, if either one of us had a difficult time sleeping due to illness or nightmares. And as we were growing up, she even grew eyes in the back of her head and her hearing became supersonic--lest we should fall into wrong things or wrong people at a wrong age.

Her parents had named her ‘Mina’. Then as she became a mother she had as many aliases as a conman. She became—at various times—Mm, Ma, Ma-ma, Mom, Mommy, Mummy, Mum, Mina-ma (I used to call her that, as if to distinguish her as the special one of the various other moms in the neighborhood, she recalls) and for a brief period of her mental vexation, ‘Mins’ (when we called her that teasingly).

Her free time which might have once been occupied to do things of her interest, were now used to tidy the disorderly jumble of our toys, books, empty chips packets, used plates, empty cans of cold-drinks, a carpet of clutter and chaos and a dwelling of disarray.

Her mind which might have once flourished with egocentric thoughts, were sometimes filled with irrational ideations: “What if they fall out of the bed while I’m in the kitchen?” “What if they choke on their food?” “How safe would they be to get back home after dark from their friends’ birthday party?” “What if they choose the wrong guys as their boyfriends or to get married to?” “Did I say anything to hurt my darlings?” “Am I a good mother?” “How will I know if I’m falling short of anything in bringing them up?” etc… These were some of her insecurities I would overhear her sharing with Dad, once in a while when he was home (my dad had to travel a lot due to the nature of his job and he was hardly home till we grew up).

But for us three sisters, my Ma has been and always will be our ideal icon… even more important and loveable than God himself, coz she’d done something nobody else had ever done for us… accomplished a feat so death-defying and magical that many wouldn’t even attempt doing. She’s the one and only form, face, smell and name of pure and unselfish love I’d ever known. She’s my Ma….

November 24, 2006

A FEW PASSING THOUGHTS....

Sometimes I wonder... how to define a few terms...like 'love'...'happiness'...
how to define a 'color'..... Bottle Green.....Virgin White...
to define an ice-cube finding its way down your back
or how to define a 'heavy heart'....

Can we put everything within the constraints of 26 letters ?
What about the word 'ma'?
There are things in life that escape 'definition'.
Life itself, for instance...

How do we define bitter... tangy... sour...
How to define a mistake... wrong... right...
Ever wonder how it changes with every experience??
For that matter, how do we define 'experience'?

Is a 'kiss' the mere brush of lips?
How long should it last? And how long does it actually last??
Is a 'smile' the mere upturn of the corners of the lips?
Does a sunset actually end when the sun sets?
Does 'pregnancy' last only for 9 months?
How long should our birthdays be?

How much would you pay to adopt a child if you can’t have one of your own?
How much would you pay to be a child again?
How much would you pay to get back your native home which is still under dispute?
What about that '80s studio picture of dad, ma and you?
Do you have a clear conscience?
How much would you pay to have one?
...and how much would you sell ‘that’ conscience for?

Does a 3day 2night vacation last for only 3days and 2nights?
Does a 'kodak moment' last for only 1/500th of a second?
Is 'Love Story' only a 2-hour story book?

How much time is too much time?
Sometimes, a half-hour bubble-bath can seem like an entire evening...
a 3-hour happy dream like a whole year....
a warm hug like a lifetime...
The first morning cuppa tea...perfect bliss...

Does life's most precious moments come with bar-codes?
Or fluctuate on a daily basis??

It might be the red balloon for your child priced at Rs 10,
a wedding cake for your best friend priced at Rs 10,000,
Or a 2-carat solitaire ring priced at Rs 5,00,000...
but considering it's on your left ring-finger, how much would you sell it for ?

November 13, 2006

MY LI'L SIS

Whether we shared this 'special connection' through genetics or the heart, only my sister and nobody else can understand the complex, deep and dynamic relationship that we both shared with each other as we journeyed together through the various stages of our lives.

The first time when I remember visiting the hospital to see my newly born sister, I pestered my dad to buy me some clips, ribbons and 'kajal' for her. I remember being quite dissapointed on seeing her so small and the thought of waiting for her to grow up to be able to play with me. My younger sister would usually look upto me when we were very young and growing up, following my every step and every act. She was my little doll, my playmate and my baby, who I used to make sit on my lap while I rode my tri-cycle all around the house. Sometimes I used to drop her down from my lap while overspeeding and then get very scared when she cried turning crimson and blue. As she was three years younger to me, she was just around a year old when I started going to school and I remember my parents buying her a same school-bag, crayons, pencil-box, tiffin-box and a water-bottle, as mine. When I used to do my homework, she would sit by me scribbling some weird nothings onto the blank pages of her notebook, pretending to be doing her homework as well and she picked up all my nursery-rhymes and multiple-tables by heart, long before she even went to school. While I used to tolerate her tagging along after my footsteps, I remember getting very annoyed when she used to wear the same clothes as me when we got ready to go out. (I don't know why, but my parents always got us both similar dresses with a little change in the colours sometimes). Now when I think of it, I imagine we might have looked very cute actually in the same kind of clothes, but that time it was utmostly annoying to see that tiny exact replica of mine in the same get-up and all. I was the shy, dumb one and she was smarter and naughtier. Whenever we used to get chocolates from our parents or guests or relatives, I used to save mine in the refrigerator to take it to school the next day, while she used to devour hers immediately and finish mine as well without my knowledge, leaving the cover intact in the fridge. Sometimes she would beat me up when we fought and fearing of the punishment that she would have to face, before I could react, she would start crying and the scenerio got portrayed reversely infront of the parents.

But I used to be overtly protective about her and kept a strict eye over her at school and anywhere else around the neighbourhood. I would usually help her face the schoolyard bully, do her homework and meet up with her teachers for any mischief or prank she would play at school. I would help her show the neighbourhood boys that girls can wrestle or ride the bicycle as well as any boy can. She helped me learn how to ride the bicycle holding it from behind and running along with me as I learnt to paddle and balance and I helped her recover the cycle when she hit an old lady on the street and ran back home scared, leaving the cycle there. When we were very little, ma used to walk us to school and fetch us back, but as we grew up, we both used to go and come back from school together. We would make greeting cards secretly during our study-time and sell them to our friends at school for pocket money to buy those dirty road-side chaat or ice-candies near our school, which we were not allowed. Of-course these intimate little secrets of ours were never revealed to anyone, not even to our parents... This, and our walks to the neighbourhood veterinary-centre every weekend to buy eggs, bonded us together and we got our first lessons in dealing with money, shop-keepers, purchase, profits and losses.

There were times when we both had our childhood crushes on the same 'heroes' and as we grew up, I provided 'wise counsel' during her first real crush and a subsequent comfort after a so called 'break-up'. We used to share everything.... from our first love-letters to the day-to-day happenings of our school days, year after year and the time I first joinned college, she had a fair idea of what college life was all about with all its intricate details. I tried to provide the best tips when she applied her first make-up and played an expert consultant for her first sports-bra. Now maybe I'll be playing the main designer for her wedding trousseaus. She on the other hand, is the expert counsellor I would turn to whenever I needed an opinion more sane, matured and wiser than my own. And we would both give-and-take, go hand-in-hand and see each other through in most of our growing up period.

Of-course the picture was not always rosy and there were fights... those dreadfully bitter cat-and-dog fights we had in the middle of the night over the switching 'on' or 'off' of the light, or over whose turn it was to make the bed, or over who had worn whose clothes how many times.. These fights sometimes got so bad that our parents had to wake up and intervene in the middle of the night or they would get so worse that we would not talk to each other for days. We would fight for so many silly things that I can't even imagine now why we did. But when you share the same room, the same bed, the same study-table, the same bathroom and so many other things, how long can you not speak to each other? Then we used to patch up and start talking as long-lost friends, only to pick up yet another fight for some other silly reason. But no matter how much we fought or said hateable things to each other, we would stand by each other and do everything in our possibilities to protect each other from any external person or a difficult situation. We would see each other through our good-days, not-so-good-days and those bad-hair-days.

With time, we separated and started living in different places far away from each other due to our educational and career requirements. But we still keep abreast of the latest everyday happenings in each of our lives through calls, texts and visits. While we may not live under the same roof any more, act in the same manner or even get along without an occasional spat when I go home for a vacation, but I also can't think of nothing else which creates a more wild, wacky, poignant, special and lasting bond than our sisterhood.

Yes, she is my little sister who is all grown up now... my friend, my confidante and the life-saviour who helped me buoy through some of the toughest times of my life....

November 03, 2006

CODENAME : JEANS 13

I had met her some five years back in my previous organisation through a common friend and we clicked from the moment we had met. She too was from my native place and her birthday was just a couple of days before mine. Being of the same age and star-sign, we had lots of things common in our natures and in our likes and dislikes. And we used to hang around together most of the times, especially to all our nocturnal parties after work, our three common guy-friends in tow.

She was just like me--impulsive, headstrong and very bluntly to the point. She feeded my number on her mobile as 'MY ASSAMESE FRIEND' and I feeded hers as 'JEANS 13', though I strongly believe now that feeding her name as 'XENA-The Warrior Princess' would have been more appropriate, her real name being JEENA.

She's a totally BINDAAS person and literally a human-rash of a friend to me, who wants to keep abreast of every latest thing happening in my life. She would need every painstaking detail about every single one of my boyfriends or dates--where we went, what we ate, what we talked about, how many times he blinked, EVERYTHING! (But I don't mind it, because it's sometimes nice to share these kind of stuff with your close friends and have them involved in your life's happenings.) After I'm done choking out every grudging detail, she'll proceed to tell me what I said right, what I did wrong, what she thought I should have done and what I must absolutely do the next time. Most of the times there would be grains of truth and genuine concern in what she says. But sometimes when I'm not feeling my polite self, I would go, "Sod off B**CH, Puhleeez. That's a load of crap" and hang up. Of course she is more likely to return me the favour twice as much at every possible opportunity after that. Very seldom but there are times when she asks for my advice but more often than not, she would tell me the gory details of her ventures. But if I don't completely agree with what she's saying or tell her like I truely feel like it is, she would absolutely lose her cool and she'll go on a rant about how wrong I am and that I don't know anything and that I'm always trying to take someone else's side. She sometimes even goes to the extent of accusing me of being judgemental or being jealous of her. But most of the times I take it in a good spirit.

Incidentally, such an incident happened just a few months back before our birthdays. She was very annoyed at a certain situation, and when I tried to show her the picture as it seemed to me, she could not take it and slammed the phone down on me. Next morning she sms-ed but somehow things got very ugly and obviously, I couldn't stop myself from adding some of my own venom. We had a bitter cat-fight through sms-s as I was about to sit for an examination and we ended up showing each other our bitchi-est sides. My relationship with her suddenly seemed to be a real chore if I had to mind what I am saying to her, all because of her fragile ego and her incredible self-absorbance and annoying sensitivity. So we stopped talking to each other. We did not even call each other up on our birthdays, we were both so mad at each other then. Her birthday comes first, so I wished her through an e-card. She did exactly the same thing. This got me more annoyed because she did not even come up with anything original. She was still copying my act. Then nobody said anything and we both went to a deep freezing zone.

This Diwali, she made the first move. By then, I was missing her-- being with her and sharing our spicy life-stories, and I tried to figure out why we had gone to such a bitter extent with such a simple difference of opinion. On the eve of Diwali however, she wished me through an sms to which I replied back on a light note which I'm sure must have brought a smile on her face (or atleast that was what I intended). I sms-ed trying to initiate conversations and how to broach the topic and also prepared myself for a brush-off. But with re-inforced positive feelings that I still had about our friendship, she must have found it difficult to resist my overtures. Neither of us apologised or said sorry till we met last weekend, but I did encourage her to mouth the string of her favourite abuses to me when we first spoke over the phone and returned the favour with pleasure.

Thus, the good cheer thawed the differences that had cropped up between the two of us, and it seemed like the festive time was the best time to get my buddy back in my life again...