Familiar Stranger

Familiar stranger,
strangely familiar,
the pattern seem to fit when you look,
at it one by one,
yet the picture as a whole,
seems to be so dissonant.
There is a missing link.
There is some unnameable chink.
Its gone.
But left behind a hole,
that can't be filled.
For there was a delicate barrier,
that made strangers friends
and the unfamiliar, familiar.
Now its gone,
leaving behind a stranger
who was once familiar,
But is now just a face
with a smile that reminds me
of a stranger
with whom I was once familiar.

Fee! Fie! Fo! Fum! I smell a strange smell!?!

I know this sounds extremely crazy. But well… smells matter.

 I was having a conversation with a colleague of mine. She came smelling of espresso and I was immediately tempted to have some espresso then and there!

The smell of coffee in the morning is a major wake up call for me. Sometimes I wake up telling myself that, ‘If I wake up now, then I can enjoy my coffee a little longer’.

I have once been woken up by having a mug of coffee put under my nose…. “Ok baby, wake up now! We need to pack up and MOVE!!!” trust me I was up within half a minute. Cold coffee in the morning doesn’t work well you see…!:-)

But other than my favourite smell of coffee, the smell of good food damp earth, rains, mild perfumes – these things draw me out and make me smile.

Some smells are just so comforting – like my mother’s smell. I know that smell. She has smelt that way ever since I remember her. It’s not something I can name, its just there. Comforting and nice. The familiarity of it all makes me smile with a very deep pleasure.

The smell of wet earth reminds me of paper boats I used to make with my sister and let them float on the puddles in the building. It used to be so much fun. We used to see how long the paper boats last. And whose goes furthest…. An innocent version of the all-consuming boat race that we face in our daily life now….

Then there are other smells… the extremely unpleasant smell of the Koovum river as you enter Chennai by train in the morning. Before you reach Madras Central station, you have to cross the Basin Bridge station which has the once beautiful river which is now a gutter and a natural alarm clock – the Koovum river. This river stinks so bad that even in the deepest of slumbers; I wake up and say, ‘Ah! I have reached Chennai!’

Another smell that has always been completely disgusting, yet a part of homecoming to me is the smell of Mahim creek. I think it beats even Koovum. It has a distinctly industrial waste kinda smell along with the various other unnameable organic smells that accost us as soon as we enter this hot, humid and vibrant city of Mumbhai.

After the air conditioned cool air of the airplane and the airport, once you get your baggage and cross customs, you realize that you have a cold or a blocked nose. Once you are in your taxi/auto and steaming in the traffic, you are trying hard to deep breathe and unblock your nose. But once you are near the Mahim creek and you take a deep breath and hey presto! Your nose gets unblocked and you breathe easy….. Or maybe not!

But well… Shah Rukh Khan put it well enough in Dilwale…. ‘In big big cities, such small small things happen senorita!’

Parents, kids and all that jumble, tumble and fuss....

I always thought that it’s a pretty useless and stupid thing to say that a girl becomes a woman only when she becomes a mother. A woman has to take care of home and hearth. The modern woman also wants to have a career, so she should be able to juggle home hearth family (including extended) and career. No compromises. Some allowances are definitely given. But overall, she has to juggle quite a bit. Even if she is the sole breadwinner.

Why should motherhood be an added burden? The nausea, the cravings, the increasing bulk, trips to the loo, the labour pains, then the mass of screaming bundle that comes out from your body, nearly ripping the female body apart. Sigh! Why go through all that kind of pain? What’s the point of it all? India’s population is already hitting the roof. The world’s population is too much. Why do we need to give birth to more kids? More mouths to feed.

Live and let die.

To what end?

The joy of caring for someone who depends totally on you. Someone whom you know from when they were completely helpless, completely dependent on you. Someone who looks up to you. Literally and figuratively. A little bag of joy, happiness, tears and poo – just waiting for you to cuddle up to it and re-live your own childhood. Refresh the innocence that we seem to have forgotten in our world of adults. Become children to get a fresh new perspective of this jaded cynical world we live in. Marvel at the innocence that is yet to be found. They inject a shot of pure, unadulterated joy into our cynical world.

Being a parent is such a unique job. You grow with your child. You learn about toys and baby products, and as they become a little older, you learn the new kiddie channels and cartoons that are available in the market. Then about schools, syllabuses, exams and latest trends and fashions. Childhood jealousies, joys and happiness.  

Parents take up the role of mentor and friend. Parents are no longer the rulebook or the guideline index by which kids g row up. This generation of parents has begun to realize that kids need them not only as a guiding force, but also as a friend. At least most that I know, have J.

They end up doubling up as friends and parents. Encouraging their kids to talk, share and communicate with them as well as righting their wrongs and teaching them a better or maybe their way of looking at things.

When we become parents, its strange, we become kids and parents both at the same time. Guess kids are born just to bring the out the children in us.

A walk on the clouds...

If the world were to be upside down,

then we would walk on clouds,

Have sky scrapers poking out of a grey green sky

It will rain fruits and flowers,

leaves and dust.

There will be cold showers at your feet.

Everytime you look down,

you can see rainbows.

If the world were upside down,

Just imagine,

we would walk on our heads

and think on our feet!!!

:)

Chalk & Cheese

Chalk met cheese one day.
Said cheese to chalk,
Strange are circumstances!
How is it that we meet and speak?
Replied Chalk,
Indeed! I agree.
So let me return to the blackboard's side.
Why don't you get back to the 'fridge?

Ushering the new...

The Old are dying away. The 21st century is in its first decade, and the weaning of the old from the new has begun. Nature has taken over and the new cycle has begun. Like peeling of the skin is painful at first, it does reveal the new, fresh clean skin underneath. But the process is,nevertheless, painful.
My grandfather told me before his death that the old are unproductive. But I disagree. The old are our moral support. A link. You feel a certain continuity.
There is guidance. There is someone to look up to. Someone to tell you when you are wrong.
Now we have to totter on our own feet and find our way in the darkness.
The gloom made deeper since we never thought that death would so suddenly pull our loved ones, our iconic leaders away so quickly, so suddenly. There is no time to gasp for breath.
This year started with the double deaths of my grandparents. 10 days after each other, they simply left us all alone. Then my ailing aunt passed away suddenly enough. That is on my personal front. The year started with deaths. One after the other.
Steve Jobs died last week on the 6th of October . Now Jagjit Singh died this morning.
Steve Jobs was a great innovator and a great marketeer. He knew that publicity of any kind is good publicity. The superb combination of innovative products and controversy courting publicity made Apple and him the forefront of technological advancement.
Jagjit Singh was a wonderful singer. He brough ghazals to the common man. His heart rending renditions and poetic ethos conveyed itself through his voice and made anyone who listened to his songs go into another plane. Albeit a pretty gloomy and sad one. But there is happiness and sorrow - his tended to be more sorrowful.
One has to give allowance to personal tragedies. Losing ones teenage son to a road accident makes you eligible for such sorrowful songs. Enjoying them is our choice. His songs were more philosophical and tended to convey the message that though sadness comes, we have to trudge the load and move on... life is such.
A beautiful message.
I suppose there is a lot of wealth in this message. We need to move on. We need to make newer icons and learn from our predecessors. In this Aquarian age, where we are lucky enough to be the radicals we want to be. Let us shrug the useless old ways, but take on the meaningful values they left behind and build our future on such ideals that help us make ourselves and our world better.
Like Steve Jobs said, “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
After all, Nature and Change deserve...
Respect!! 

Noise of Silence

Silence
A language that's filled
with wordless everythings.
It is filled with all things
but
Silence....
Sift through the noise of silence,
listen to the magic of silence.