Pinku-Enchanted Life

I started out in life with some dreams, a couple of aspirations and a few vague goals of how I wanted to live life. There were some do’s and don’t in my list of things like am sure everyone has. The most important of these was an attempt to live an honest, uncomplicated life. Honest not in the Gandhian sense of telling the truth no matter what rather in being able to openly do what I wanted to do. One thing I have always hated is the need for camouflage. I never wanted to be the prettiest, the best, the wealthiest all I wanted was contentment and the opportunity to be happy and make those around me happy in whatever small measure I could. Now at the much experienced age of thirty when I survey the scene around me all I find is a Mahabharat like battlefield littered with the carcasses of my dreams, aspirations, well intentioned actions and my goals …my goals are nowhere to be found. They abandoned the field long back, stealthily, leaving me to fend for myself as best as I could. I have

Woman: I miss you so much it’s difficult to carry on... Man: yes, I know you do, I miss you too. Woman: No you don’t atleast not the way I do. For me your absence feels like a gaping whole in the center of my being and whatever I may do or wherever I am I feel this empty space besides me, within me. Man: I understand all that but listen there are so many things you could do to keep yourself busy that will take your mind off me. Read, paint, listen to music, go out, catch a movie or a play, concentrate on your work you hold a responsible position. Woman: Why don’t you understand? I do all that, I also move things around the house, re-do my wardrobe for the umpteenth time, make friends with the neighborhood children and look out of the window at the neighbours but your non-presence still irks. Its like a toothache always there and no matter what you do, say or see it never leaves your side. Man: Sweets, you are being unreasonable, why can’t you enjoy life as it is and whenever we are tog

A friend asked me to post something on Women's Day which speaks about the harassments meted out to women on the roads, in public and not so public places. I promised to do so before the 8th Of March (Women's day) but like the equality of the sexes the post too was late in coming. Not because there wasn’t anything to write but because there was far too much of it. I wondered what and how shall I write about this oft written about topic that would make it stand out in the clutter of all the articles all of you must have read on the subject especially over the past week. (Writer's vanity you see, one would rather be remembered than forgotten). Bra burning feminists wrote, men posing as friends of women wrote, men who really are wrote, victims wrote or atleast someone wrote for them, so did those who had won victories major or minor. Politicians wrote, academicians wrote. What then was left for me to say? Cite yet another story of watching a woman being whistled at or her dupat

The more things change the more they remain the same so say those who have seen it all. Oh! But what thrill the planning for it, the anticipation of it and the final confrontation with it, gives. The regular tends to be so boring. Change brings on a rush of adrenaline, heart pumping faster, cheeks glowing, and concentration levels high. I could swear it’s the best exercise to stay in shape both mentally and physically, just go in for a change. Change what you ask? Change anything. Change the way your sitting room looks. Change your haircut. Change the route you take back from work or to it. What the heck! Change the job. Exchange your pink lipstick for a cherry red one or vice versa. Followed football on the tele all your life? Go out and play it with the neighborhood kids today. And if its pouring so much the better. Do whatever, but do something. Change something around you. Maybe buy bright yellow sunflowers instead of the regulation red roses for your beloved. The world thrives o

Did you read about the mermaid in that tale of yore and wonder what it would feel like to play and live in the waves in a big castle below the ocean? I did. I always had a fascination for water, lots of it. Free flowing, moving, without bounds and with unknown depths, holding so many secrets within its bosom. Having never learnt how to swim never dampened my spirits and the first glimpse of a big water body always brought on but one reaction to throw myself in it and let the water hold me up. Growing up in an industrial town bereft of even a swimming pool let along huge stretches of water these desires bubbled away beneath the surface much like underground streams. Alive but invisible. That is all in the past at age 29 I have finally experienced water. Water in its most mighty, life giving, limitless form…the sea. Not knowing how to react to it, I walked out to the beach to confront this huge moving entity. Stretching to the horizon and beyond. It was all that I had dreamt off and more

It’s that time of the year again. Pull a curtain over the past prepare for the future discard the old adapt to the new. Some do it like a duty, like putting out the garbage with no thoughts involved. Some do it meticulously like threading a needle a thought, an idea at a time all in the right sequence. Some party away the night Get up midday with a hangover so bad the new year just seems like a blight Some spend the wee hours ensconced in the arms of loved ones reliving the past, envisioning the future. Some are in the company of the TV wondering whether the phone would ring and someone would remember to wish them too. Which of these were you?

The cycle was again creaking too loudly, Sawant Singh cursed under his breath and got off it. It wouldn’t do to disturb Shikha, his daughter in law’s siesta otherwise his supper of two rotis and a little dal would again be the casualty. Already this week he had gone without food twice, once for forgetting to buy salt at the local market and then again for having fallen off to sleep after an unusually hard day. So he picked up the bicycle and moved with it slowly to the far wall of the garage. For the umpteenth time he cursed his deceased wife for his ill fortune. Had she not hurried to meet the other Lord and deemed it fit to stay on and serve her earthly master he would not have to face such indignity in this old age. To him it was almost an insult that Lajjo who had never retired for the night without pressing his tired limbs should decide to call it a day while he was still alive and in need of a million small ministrations. He wasn’t as cowed down always, there was a time when not