The perfect welcome

I haven’t seen sunrise so often as I have seen in the last fortnight. Reaching home at 5 am every morning from work and then sitting in the balcony just to see how the sky changes the colours from a dark moonlit sky to a chirpy blue with a lot of white mixed in it. It is hard to look at the sky directly. I guess I am too used to the shades and the tinted glasses of the car. Or rather I am too used to seeing the dark sky where I keep waiting to see the stars.
Yesterday morning I again reached home around 5.30 am and there was chammiya at the gate welcoming me home just as Diana at home would. Chammiya is the street dog I have adopted. She is just too sweet. After meeting her when I walked toward my apartment, there was this morning breeze that welcomed me back to abode. It was nice to know that the breeze, the green hedge and chammiya were happy to have me home. My room always has the traces of my hurried mornings when I am getting late for office. My living room has the traces of the last evening’s episode of FRIENDS that I missed. My housemates must have sat on the beanbags and laughed and adored Joey and Feebe.
I dragged my pink beanbag to the balcony and sat there with a bottle of cold water. Everything around me was so sane and beautiful. Wish life could be the same. No confusions or complications. Just as plain and simple as the blue neat sky, chirpy birds and the breeze.
I have to force myself everyday to leave all this and sleep. And well the newspaper wala helps me to doing that. He is the reason I have to leave the balcony and take refugee in my room from the lechery of this world. And eventually sleep does over power me. What next? Just a repeat of all this!

Pearl Jam's Last Kiss

I was not surprised to see his number flash on my phone, but yes I did have those butterflies when I saw his name. Why was he calling me? What does he want now? Why do I always pick up his phone? Uff… what the hell! I picked up the phone; he apologised and then asked if we could go out drinking. Drinking… sounds good. But drinking with him, for what? What will we talk about, or will we talk at all? I don’t know, which nerve in my body screamed, “YES” and he was here within 10 minutes.
I was the one treating and he had made it very clear from the beginning. I checked my pack of smokes, “I would need them tonight for sure,” I told myself. Standing just a little before my office’s building he was standing with someone with both know. Our ex-colleague Jo. Jo the sweet fellow, did he know about us? Had he known that Spikey and me had dated each other for 6 whole months a year back? Naah… whatever it did not matter now. Because earlier when I used to see him (Spikey), I used to go numb. This is after the break-up. But now when I look at him, he is just a part of the crowd. A crowd that I look at but don’t register a face in my mind. A crowd that walks past me everyday, and yet everyday fails to make an impact on my life.
Spikey has grown a beard, looked drunk already when we met. His car, the car that I chose for him, this car was dirty. Well, I am glad about one thing, I am not an adviser of Maruti Esteem. “I am already a few pegs high!” he said. Well he didn't really have to say that? He looked so lost! “OK” after this we debated about the place where we wanted to drink and finally landed at Café Morrison. After entering the Café he, like always, chose the seat from where he could see the entire place and I could just see him. BORING, and PREDICTABLE! After a point of time, your exs do forget that you used to know him/her some time back. Anyways, I ordered some beer for myself and he ordered single molt on the rocks. I was beating the heat and I really don’t know what was he trying to beat. He spoke to someone and said, "I am not ok." I agree, he did not look ok. But I was too lazy to ask, because by the end of the day after work, I don’t like to tax my brain. Especially not by helping people out! He asked me if I could ask the DJ to play Pearl Jam’s Last Kiss for him. I wanted to scream no, but I thought to myself that the DJ would not even look at him in that condition. And so I requested the DJ.
Crib, crib, crib and more crib. That has been the sole motto of his life. You just have to look interested in listening and he would go on and on about how the life has been mean to him and how he is a gentleman who has never cheated on any of his women and how he can never find the right job.
I was getting bored! Then finally he made me wake up, just like he used to. “She is a Punjabi,” he said pointing out at this girl sitting behind us. I agreed with him, the streaks in her hair, the length of her hair and her ugly slippers attested the thought. But she was not a Punjabi, I chatted with her before she left. Well, then one after the other we scanned the room. He like the girl sitting right behind me. She was pretty, but she was doing the one thing he detests in women – smoking. To me she seemed nice and if he would have stopped being so stubborn about the smoking bit, I might have helped him out in getting to know her. We had also sent her a drink, but she declined. Well finally the Last Kiss was played and Spikey started singing in his usual Santa Claus voice. To which I had to just pray, “Only if I was drunk enough!” anyways it was time to hit the road home. He had to go and meet another friend for more drinks. “We had fun, this was fun!” he said. I agreed! To my delight, I could just think of all the happy cold beer in my stomach and my bed. After winding past some HR registration trucks, we reached my place. The evening that I was dreading would have been about crying, making out, kissing and screaming; finished with, “I am sorry for everything!” from his side. And, “You and me was always a bad idea. But at least now we shall not make this mistake again. Drive safe!” from my side!
Mandy

oscillating thoughts!

I got a message 4 am this morning. I was half tempted to read it and half tempted to sleep and ignore it. But then I finally gave in my inquisitiveness and read what someone, who was thinking about me at 4 am, wanted to say. It is always a strange feeling when one gets a call or a message at strange hours. Though my profession is such that I should be prepared for it, but I still get butterflies in my stomach when this happens. It is like remembering how I used to get a message from my ex or how one day we had heard about my baba (granddad) had died. Within seconds I oscillate from now to then. It was from a friend who is worried about his mother’s sickness. I have realised that only a mother’s sickness or insomnia can keep you up all night. I am partially insomniac, soon to master the degree. But sometimes telling a friend that everything is going to be fine soon gets very scary for me. I have a designer friend, whose dad was really ill. I prayed and always cheered her up that one-day uncle will walk home and everything will go back to normal. We all feel good about hearing things that we want to hear from another person. She felt the same way and we spoke everyday. Me motivating her and she getting motivated! Soon she called me to say that uncle is much better and might be discharged from the hospital soon. I was glad! But the very next day I got a message saying that her father had died. I felt cheated, felt like the one who had cheated and could not fight or explain what I felt. The parameters of my good and bad, God and human, love and hate just come and meet at the same point in such situations and like I wrote earlier – I go quiet. Sometimes hide from the world and sometimes hide from myself. I was hiding from her, for making her believe in what I believed in.
I met this friend of mine after 4 months. In those four months I had cursed myself a million times, rehearsed how I would talk to her a trillion times and changed my job. Met her at a party and there she was. A smile that I knew was to hide all those sleepless nights, a smile that I knew was fake but the world bought that, a smile that she wore on her face pretty well. We met and hugged each other for a whole 5 minutes and it seemed like ages of explaining and crying and talking. But we actually had not even spoken a word. We understood everything and there were no sorrys and thank yous pending. I was very proud of that moment. I was proud of the fact that I have a friend who understands my silences. Just like once I had this chemistry with someone. But that’s history and I have a feeling my post is sounding like history as well. Well there is more to write and more to elarn. I just hope my friend’s mother recovers really fast!
Mandy

The year of no words...

It has been almost a year since I wrote a post here. In this very year, I must have still written millions of words about people who make headlines in my paper every day. And yet how I still feel that I haven’t really written what I have wanted to write. Like in this one year, I wanted to so badly write about the urge to question a lot of people for their behaviour. Like the urge to tell everyone about my first ever trip abroad and that too to the city of love – Paris. Like I wanted to write about my ex-housemate and the apprehensions about the new one. And about counting pennies and about my new tattoo. But more than all this I also wanted to write about the silent moments, me the ‘chatter-box’ had in the time that has now become history for me.
A lot of people won’t believe this, especially the ones who know me, but it is true I had so many quiet moments this year that I have started feeling like a stranger trapped in my own body. I go quiet when I am too angry, I go quiet when I am too sad and now I also go quiet when I am not heard in the first go. I know I am not the same, but I have seen people change drastically as well. I have been asked, ‘have you thought of writing as profession?’ and I have also been told, ‘you can not write!’
I still feel the high when I get a pen and an empty sheet in my hands. And I still get tears in my eyes when I read the most powerful words. In this year gone by, I have met a woman who has had an extra-marital relationship with a man I thought is a waste. I know that our society does not accept this, but did I accept it? The woman is my friend and I have seen the man cry for her. But does that justify? It’s over now and she might one day wake up not to think about him. But that I know will come only with another man in her life. People have tried to cross the sea, so that they can’t yell and call each other.
In this year gone by, I have also learnt what freedom is all about. And with freedom come responsibility. After cutting the chains of emotions myself, I have done almost everything. Accept for flying, I have felt the wings and touched the sky. Took bath in the rain after years of longing, have been up till 6 am in the morning without the nagging, have put my head out of a moving car to feel the wind in my hair without the frown. I have walked bare feet, I have soiled my clothes, I have smiled middle of the night to myself in the mirror and I have given way a lot that might not have been approved of.
In the year gone by, I have lost a lot as well. Lost two friends, lost some love in the relationships I have, lost respect for someone I had great regards for and lost a bit of myself each day.
There is more to be written and there is more to be heard, there is more the be smiled at and there is more to yearn, there is more… there is more… there is more… to come!
Mandy