HELP!!!

This is inevitably important piece of news that I can’t elude to put forth before you all, my ardent readers. I first thought of veiling it under the wraps of immaculately thought over write ups but since it’s you for whom I am writing and should (of Corse), I changed my mind and decided to spill the beans. I am suffering from Writer’s Block. Now if you are reading about this for the first time, no need to panic, you are perfectly normal as this is a new entrant in my dictionary too (I didn’t mean that I am a walking dictionary though). Wikipedia defines Writer’s Block as a condition in which an author loses the ability to produce new work. I may have encountered it before but became fully aware about his constant presence in my brain a couple of days before while watching secret window starring Johnny Depp (why do women find him sexy...please answer me if someone knows it).




The plot revolved around a Successful author Mort Rainey who after discovering about his wife’s affair, procrastinates finalizing a divorce and suffers from writers block, unable to decide how to end his current novel. Well...neither I am going for a divorce nor my boyfriend is cheating on me (I hope not), then what could be the possible reason of my unfortunate suffering? After hours and hours of deep analysing I am still stuck on two words, “Why me”? Please help me find the answer guys!

Getting it all alone.....

This entry was to be titled as “25 ways to be Bhawna Jaimini”, but since there are many more ways to attain the feat (m not bragging guys...it’s actually a feat in literal senses) the entry was scrapped before it took steps towards its threshold and the nomad in me took over the guns. Yes, I found a new companion to share a cup of coffee and quarrellings melancholic times named nomad who was sleeping under heavily fabricated layers of fear and apprehensions.

I went on a 3 day trip to a place called Hubli in Karnataka and by the virtue of being in close proximity to Goa; the state of pleasure fell in my kitty too. Taking a 39 hours journey, miles away from home navigation towards nothing and everything brought whims and grins of past and I felt heavy by a 100 pounds weight of nostalgia. It took me to the time when I was a little kid and journeys meant only trips to my grandparents place in Calcutta, I was never intrigued by the urge of attaining my destinations sometimes even wishing that it never happens to see my face. I always happened to strike a bond with my journey which I find hard to break. And this time the bond stroked with all the powerful chords and I fell in love all over again! With whom? Well ...MYSELF and of course my nomad. My nomad made me do all the things which I would have shrugged off with a grin. From moving with no plans and directions to reaching the airport without the air ticket, only to find out that I was booked on the wrong flight. I think we did it all... not with style though, but with perplexed garnishing of goof ups.

This was my first independent step I took to move an inch closer towards my independent existence which seldom reaches any human entity and I just hope it finds me before I decides to seek comfort in my dependence. And now that I have a new companion too, I may turn out be one of those fortunate ones!

P.S- a very happy winter to all.

Setting Souls in Stones......

We all have been navigating through our lives with plethora of fancies and fantasies which always happen to keep changing or perhaps evolving will be a better word. They travel with us throughout our lives with their intricacies and precarious state of being. Well think about it once whatever we find ourselves doing today, did we ever even stumble upon that thought when we were kids and all we used to do was to try find a way with pencils and crayons which at that time seemed like some weapons of warfare handed over to us. A warfare which was never meant to end for years to come and giving up were words never printed in our petite dictionaries.


   Of all the things my fantasies expected me to become (miss universe catching the top slot) becoming an architect would surely find its name at the end of the list. Studying architecture was some song of la la land sung in a language I thought never existed. Buildings never commanded my contemplation. Be it Taj Mahal or nearby house, all seemed soulless creatures who existed because someone made them to. For me buildings lacked soul. They were simply objects of sheer vulnerability. I could think of the building in a state of pity as I thought of its existence to be in a complete state of mercy. Mercy in the hands of a person known to us as the architect. I could never think of the architect as the creator but a destroyer having no sanity.

   But why did I decide to take up the job of a destroyer. This question still hovers over me as I stand before a building and realises that soon some soulless creation will exist on my mercy too. The question still holds paramount vitality but its parameter have changed. I still think that building lacks ardour and will continue to. But my notions of the creator have surely changed. The creator I feel tries to instil a sense of living soul not into the building but in the eyes of the spectator. I happen to believe that buildings are nothing but spirits of stones hallucinating over the attention it tries to command.

My yearn..My rage..My pain..

It was one those initial days of mine in a new habitat. Sitting in front of a eucalyptus at 2 in the morning, I found myself scribbling my heart overflowing with emotions I never ever stumbled upon before....here they are...


I wonder what will calm down my yearn


Will it be the bitter sweet morsel of love?

After the perpetual state of numbing pain

Will it be the long lost association with my hidden mystery?

Or it will continue ever and ever,

Taking my quests to the heights of zenith...



I wonder what will cease the rage in me

Will it be the acquaintance with my new found patience?

Will it be the aching thoughts of Diaspora?

Will it be the isolation discovered from the corpse?

Or it will continue ever and ever and forever

In the search of a utopian world that’s never meant to exist...



I wonder and wonder

I search and search

I look and look

I roam and roam...



But I often forget

It’s my yearn that lights up the fire in me

It’s the rage in me that spark my veiling beauty

It’s the pain that keeps the smile on

My yearn, My rage, My pain...THEY COMPLETE ME...

My Unopened Book Titled-RELIGION

I completed my metamorphosis (or may be its still in the process) in family with sheer paradox views on religion. Growing up with 10 people with different set of beliefs on the same faith made me imbued with a certain frictional force towards any of those. Having a father who never dared to forth his steps towards a place of worship to grandfather with radical and staunch Hindu beliefs made me more and more remorseless about religion. I deliberately eluded the whole connotation of practicing a religion where ever it was possible. Religion for me became an unopened book in some stranded corner. It was not that I wasn’t aware that it existed but was not just willing to accept the fact that it existed somewhere in a parlous state until today when I unknowingly got my hands over this untutored book.

   I was pathetically busy in the hustle and bustle of shifting my room from one floor to another (pathetically because I get crumpled by the whole process of packing my world which I always tend to leave in bits). The wall of my new room were left clean by its previous dweller expect a poster on the wall above my bed. The poster was carrying pictures of goddess Saraswati and goddess Lakshmi (goddesses of knowledge and wealth). The poster depicted nothing and failed to speak any words which it was supposed to say. I had planned to put up my new pictures in the place, and for that the poster had to find another place to appeal by its unknowing beauty which my eyes were not able to spot.

   In iota of a second I decided to pull it down. I propelled my hands to tear down it but a whiff of thought made me stop. Before I could realise what it was, it was gone with a promise of never to return. It was gone forever leaving with me stranded in the middle of the book which I always tried to elope. Now that I have stumbled upon it, will I ever cross it...will I ever overcome the friction....will I ever afloat above it? To answer these questions I have to read the whole book whose remaining pages are missing and altered. Can someone get me a cenetial edition of the book??

Stop Fiddling With My Childhood.......

This post of mine is especially dedicated to all those who grew up eating, drinking, and sleeping on Enid Blyton. For all the folks who identified themselves as one of the famous five and use to pump up the adrenalin with the adventures of the backyard in Liverpool. The matter is serious. The most beautiful gem in the crown called childhood is getting renovated. You know why? Because the present generation duds are born with fatheads who make them impotent enough to take pride in it. Now our ever cleaved “Famous Five” is being rewritten. How did they arrive on such a connotation to do such a despicable act?




   Those trademark Enid Blyton’s one line syrups like “mercy me”, “awful swotter” and of course my favourite “tinker” will soon become homeless and have to find another yellow coloured thing to dwell on. All of these errands are being run to make the text timeless rather than 21st century with no modern slangs. They statement given is itself a paradox. First of all the text is already timeless and is still being read throughout the world. After all who these days can spare time to write for children when just writing an IIT story can fetch you millions. And secondly, the series is set in 1940’s and the slangs exchanged have to have an ardour of the era. Changing the texts is like fiddling with the armour of the book which will leave permanent wounds on the soul and its body.



   I would just like to question the people who came up with this notion of change. Do we also have to change Shakespeare work to make it timeless? Should we expect Marc Anthony to start his speech with, “hey you people.....can you jus lend me your ears for a sometime”? Should we prepare ourselves to visualise Scarlett o Hara in cleavage gobbling Versace gowns? Or else we can have Elizabeth Benet make witty conversations over her blackberry pearl. This is the way we should expect all are classics to look like in the days to come. I know I have exaggerated the whole scenario (but not up to the saturations levels) but tampering with something which has been a perpetual thing of bliss for over centuries makes me go nuts. If you think that you are breeding morons then create pulp made for them, and leave the classics to their being......because you cannot improve on that.

P.S. Happy Friendship's Day

Being Honest!

I was seated at a roadside cafe and while sipping the most treasured part of my day, cappuccino duet when my eyes went on an article titled “Art of Confession”. My mind propelled itself with its much needed doses of bewitched thoughts and started spinning as fast a table fan. I soon got all impervious to my surroundings, overlooking the article which instigated my much lethal thought process. My mind rustled and went to and fro from all the candid confessions I have or should have done, searching for the best ones to be shared. And here they are..........don’t drop your jaws please.....




1. I fell in love for the first time when I ceased being 6.

I would not be called sordid if I called it a summer romance. He was my partner and we were to tap our feet together on the summer carnival. The song meant for the D-day could not be better than the most cherished track “I am a Barbie girl”. I indeed felt like one. I could never make a clean breast of how much I fantasised about going on a private picnic with him (I was too kiddo like to think about a dinner date).and was reticent about the lovely pair of eyes he was blessed with. It all ended 2 months later and I cried myself to sleep.......until I fell in love again, this time with a boy with pool blue eyes.



2 I stole a copy of Mills and Boons from my mother’s bookshelf.

I had advanced a year into my teens and was skimming through piles of books at Crosswords when a neon coloured shelf grabbed my attention. Why on earth this books store will colour a section in neon shades when the rest had hues of dull brown and yellow?. I went up to take a morsel of the delights lying there and suddenly was confronted by my mother with a stern look on her face. I knew this was fishy. Later that night i carefully scanned all the books and hit the jackpot. From then onwards I knew why it was painted with neon tinges.



3 I was too scrupulous about the tangible existence of Santa.

Though it’s really hurting to admit this one, it is fairly pivotal too. I grew up banking on Santa for all my credulous and illegitimate needs. I was a staunch believer in the fact that Santa does come on the Christmas Eve. My belief came crashing down the year my mother candidly confessed of being my Santa of past 13 years. I can still feel the pain I felt that moment and how I detested her for making the statement. For the first time I was ripped naked of my belief.



4 I was caught red handed while exchanging exam papers with my best friend

So was the pressure the poor kid had to handle. I didn’t score well that year in my maths monthly exam. Unable to cope up with the failure I decided to steal my best friend who scored a 30 on 30. I could not master mind it properly (what would you expect from a 9 year old) and was eventually caught in the process.



5 I was heartbroken when Tom Cruise married Katie Holmes (I really was)

Oh I can never elope out that memory. How crazy I went to hear the wedding was over. Sudden rush of despair ran through my fingers and slowly sped into my blood. I was heartbroken again for the...ehhh...Leave It.! Till the time I grinned over my DVD collection to have barred the pearl harbour DVD to go out of sight. I watched it again for the 11th time and instantly fell in love with Ben Affleck I decided not to pry over his personal life.

Tet-e-tet with Jerks...

It’s been 3 years since my dad whims about me acquiring a new skill to my list of possessions. And I am equally paranoid about the idea of giving up my whimsical navigations via DTC buses. He fails to understand my inclinations towards what I find amusing in the overtly packed buses where sometimes while travelling u can tell in a whiff what the person had eaten in for lunch or sometime u can easily make out the detail of the tiff he had with his wife early that morning. For me these concise voyages (I prefer calling them that) are much more than whiffs and tiffs. They made me acquainted with jerks and jolts of life which I seldom used to encounter.


   I still feel the whiff of the vivid memories of the day I tried to get a scoop of travelling by public transport. Though the circumstances were in prejudice against my act, it could stop me to assay for it. I was 14 then and being that was no mean feat. Notions of PETA and WWF were slowly carving niches into my brain walls which were coated with thick emulsions of lethal connotations. Apart from getting good ranks and holding president badges, saving the environment was high on to my fancy. Publicising the use of public transport could not be done without actually following the path of “Practice what you preach.” so I decided to en route my Olympiad exam on a DTC bus. It was a sunny day in January which brightened my spirits at the threshold of the day itself. I waited for the bus which would have taken me to my desired destination. It arrived 15 minutes later.

   A sudden stride of people engulfed me in their herd and started to run towards the bus. I was quite astonished to see the sudden transformation of people of cricket playing nation to the soccer’s one.
I too ran along and managed to board the bus which was so jammed that it was quite impossible to even move your eyelids (I pensively mean the statement). From shots of trifle jerks, I kept standing hooked to a seat (by no mean I was to get it). in a spurt, the bus took a sharp turn and made the passengers tossed up in the air. I rolled over to the rear end of the bus and fell on my knees. My eyes rummaged through the crowds for my dad but he was nowhere to be found. Disappointed I wanted to break into tears but suddenly it dawned on me that my tears will wipe away my new found companion “FREEDOM”. I was at no cost ready to be parted with it. I stood up without a single tear and moved on.

   I will always thank my first jerk for giving me the morsel of freedom. From that day I have developed an infectious liking to the jerks. They have become a part of me. I always trust their judgments and abide by them.

Good Girl Syndrome.......BEWARE!

Before giving you shots of awareness about this gruesome disease which have afflicted the sorority called girlhood for centuries, I would just like you to make you beware of this malady which I know has developed a base sequence in your moral genes (an apology to all those who didn’t get the privilege to study biology). This disease is not outlandish but has been hovering over our lives from the very first day our umbilical cord was cut. The virus has crept into our DNA and thus makes our lives indispensible without imbued with it.

   I was completely ignorant of the fact that I have been a patient of this disease for so many years until this morning my mother harangued me with one of the most under-rated statements, “you are not a good girl”. And suddenly I discerned and my mind retaliated and started guzzling with events where I have BEEN A GOOD GIRL. In all the anecdotes I could race my mind to, it dawned on me that being a good girl is no less than carrying a baggage which belongs to someone else and to an undivulged place which will never stumble upon our quirky paths. A good girl is a rusty parody of the demands our society has inherited the right to make. A good girl has no rights to leverage upon her own life but a mere reflection of the halcyon lived by someone else. Haven't you have been a patient yourself? I will give you some examples if you certainly don’t feel the virus working on you...



1 you are 11, trying to master the art of behaving in the most effeminate way. You just added a pair of uber-cool turquoise shoes to your ever growing collection and desperately want to wear them to your friend’s party. But since your mother spent a fortune on them, you will not be entitled to make them touch your feet since she wants them to be reserved for her sister’s wedding. You argue and now the virus proliferates and being a GOOD GIRL you give in.!!



2. A bulbous figured cousin of yours is coming over at your place. Your weekend plans went to the dogs and you are still expected to share your little heaven with her, irrespective of the fact that your newly possessed yellow scarf went missing the last time she delivered herself. But don’t you try to forget that you are suffering from the GOOD GIRL SYNDROME, eventually you will agree.



3. You had a woeful day at work. You decide to have some whiskey at a nearby pub. You are just about to quaff it and suddenly a bawdy looking relative of your greets you at the table with his lewd expressions who’s otherwise is a darling at your desk types. Girl, it’s not his fault. Don’t you know just violated a GOOD GIRL norm.



Well well well, now that we have diagnosed the symptoms, it is time to create an antidote for the epidemic breeding on our minds for generations.



P.S. Do we have a GOOD BOY SYNDROME too?
certainly no because even syndromes are prejudiced against poor women!"i stood up"

Don't make development a rare delicacy....!

New Delhi got another non-native gem on its crown on Friday when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh inaugurated the terminal 3 of IGI airport. A peeping inside it can make any delhiite an inch taller and broader. The terminal is seen as a gesture of India’s aspirations set firmly on the global platform whose entrance portico is designed as the Terminal 3. This terminal is well distinguished in many ways. Firstly it stained India’s reputation of prolonged infrastructure projects running out of time and of course budget (do you still have a doubt about why all politicians’ children are Harvard and oxford educated). Secondly it is dubbed as the 6th largest airport terminal in the world when all we have in lists of greatest and largest are population, slums, poverty and........I think I should halt here or else I may deviate from the track on which I am trying to make my article run.

   I too felt all pompous and conceited at this infrastructural marvel being a Delhi person. But my shoulders stooped at the thought of being an Indian. I know I may sound like a heretic but I just cannot exult at this infrastructural epiphany. This terminal is indeed a sign of India’s growing emergence as a global competitor shying away from its previous identity as a third world country but it is making a rusty parody of its former self which was trying to preen the whole nation and not just few favourite children of contemporary India. Though we have developed ourselves to get a customary seat among the elites of the world but have also reserved that place for few so called vestal virgins of the country. Instead of becoming a national street food accessible to people from every corner, growth and development are becoming rare delicacies served in 5 stars to the sophisticated lot.

   I am at no cost against the string of development taking vicious rounds in the lanes of the cities of India. I am not against becoming the nation endowed with one of the largest airports in the world but we should also should not get over the spell of certitude that we are still the nation housing a quarter of worlds malnutritioned children, we still cannot face the stipulations of our citizens which are guaranteed after every 5 year tenure and are soon buried with shedding leaves of the election season; we are still vying to educate ourselves when the literacy rate is ceased at a mere 62%; we are still put on d no. 84 on the corruption index, way behind countries like Ghana and Bhutan. I can carry on this spree but this will not help. We all are blesses with eyes and ears. so if u are still making merry........I may tag it as pinnacle of optimism.

Right to FOOD!

I met these kids on the sidelines of tarmac while strolling along the lanes of Mumbai.( I was there last week) I immediately froze them into my camera without even a shard of shame cropping up inside my head even when I was ripping them of their privacy. Little did they know that they even possessed some of it like every other person does? The children took no notice of me as they were busy devouring something which did not have enough decorum to get into the realm of foods. I went closer to them to find a footing in their vicinity. The area inhabiting them was a mere squalor with a dilapidated structure trying to find existence at the mercy of the municipal authorities which can anytime lob them off their being.




    I looked into the bowl of these kids to see what they were gulping (their wobbly knees and sunken eyes compelled me to do so) it somehow appeared to me a mixture of some rice and curry. I found a woman who may have been their mother joining them. After cajoling the woman to talk to me the woman told me that they were eating rice with a curry made from chillies and further explained that they eat this food about 3-4 times a week as they are not entitled to take free ration .i asked her the reason and she seemed quite oblivious to it this time not a speck but complete shame engulfed me with its tentacles breaching my soul and mind. There was no point that I could have go on and simply took immediate leave.



    I enquired about the set of conditions these people were a perpetual scrap of. These people are a part of 80 million poor who are living on less than Rs 56 a day in the urban India. Unfortunately they are not entitled to avail schemes initiated by the government of India because of their itinerant nature. But these are very much the citizens of India and are granted all the fundamental rights and complete possession of how and when to implement them. But I feel to exercise the fundamental rights these people may need another right which the constitution framers forgot to subsume in the league of rights “RIGHT TO FOOD”. I rest my case here.

The World that was never mine....

“Every day we have to fight several insecurities which come to our way intertwined with the trials and tribulations this cynical world has to offer.”I read these lines when I was 15 years old and I encountered several dilemmas in gulping down the lines. The lines were wrapped in a cryptic aura which I kept untouched in some remote corners of my mind, not ever wanting to stumble upon it again. I detested the lines even though I couldn’t digest the intricacies of it. The lines depicted a world which was contradictory to the world my mother’s stories and paintings elucidated.




After so many years the lines came rushing back to me from the isolated corners of my mind when my eyes fell upon the newspaper mercilessly showing this picture taken during the Bhopal gas tragedy. The name of the photographer just eloped out of my tiny nutshell, though I am aware of the fact that this was an award winning capture (look at the IRONY).The first glance at this picture made me feel naked knowing that the truth I despised the most has finally dawned upon me. How terribly I wished to elude that moment out of my mind! Now each word of the lines read long back was striking a hard chord causing pain which I feel will linger on till I finally give up the paintings and story world I have always dwelled upon.



While lying on the bed that night my eyes fell upon the painting hanging above the door for the last so many years. Everything has changed in my room except that painting. The painting was a symbol of a revered and utter existence, untouched by insolent facts of life. I suddenly pounced from the bed and reached out to the 25 year old canvas which has shielded my eyes from my very existence. Now it was time to sever it off. While bringing the canvas down, it slipped off my hands with a shrilling crack. My mother came running to my room asking why I was running the errand (it has been 2 years she is asking me to let go off the canvas). I turned to her as a tear rolled from the corner of my left eye, she looked up and left without a word but we both communicated in silence in that iota of eye contact. She was sad, though she was the one who taught me to walk into the world through the canvas



I didn’t sleep that night. A void was created in my wall and in my heart. I felt cheated as I was being ripped away from my world. The world that was never mine........

oops i am a woman...!!!

 The clock hanging above the closet stroked 12


My heart begins to pound as it seemed all wet

I tried to calm myself down, forbidding not succumbing to outside howl

I peeped to see whether I can sneak

The rage in me went on its peak

The one roaming downstairs did it being a man

Then I realised, oops I am a woman!!!



My over bushy eyebrows haranguing me all the way

I asked my unwaxed hands not to follow it anyway

Visits to the salons seemed boring

The pain accompanying too is soaring

I wish to avoid this testimony,

Wanting it to be a part of some sacred epiphany

As those hunks can elude it as being men

I realised, oops I am a woman



It’s been an hour since I yelled my guts out to a gadget

Sceptics par amounting as I will ever had it

I think I severely repel technology

As it doesn’t gel well with my biology

I want to save all gizmos into my brain account

But it simply shows an error, refusing to crack and sound

I want to look into those techno savvy men

Then I realised, oops I am a woman



Reds yellows blues and greens

None of them could help me preen

I got stuck with a tuxedo and a hipster

The mirror gazed like a bedtime story monster

Fashion faux pas is on its way

And yet again I have the same thing to say

By the virtue of being a woman

I can only.......oops I am a woman

I Wish I Could Be As Beautiful As She Is.....She Is My Mother....

I was quite relieved to reach the railway station on Sunday morning. Though the homecoming is always cherished and celebrated but this homecoming had a big sliced pineapple on an already delicious cake (finding this quirky? Not to worry as I don’t like cherries and chocolates). Mother’s day was the reason perhaps.

     I don’t remember the first time I did something special for my mom on mother’s day but I surely remember all the special pains she has taken all these years to make me and my life special and gifted. From reading me bedtime stories to spending hours in deciding menu for my next day luncheon, from selecting the best piece of garment in the shack of thousands( what a stark and stubborn baby I have always been) to answering the most inane of the questions, from staying awake with me the whole night before results to crying my tears out on my failures.......she has done it all and I know that even if her ritualistic haranguing of us in bed may seem an age old thing and will continue to adore our mornings, she must have sneaked in our rooms at night to amble around a bit and get herself assured that we are all fine.


    I am not writing this piece to thank my mom or tell her stories about how gratefully overwhelmed I am to have her in my life. I just want to say that her years of selfless service have not gone in vain. This may not be listed on her resume but I assure her to put it on her tombstone. I remember the time when I was 14 and I said this to mother,” I love you mom, but I don’t want to be like you”. I said these lines when I was finding my way with selfdom and any small comparison used to put me on fire. I chased it everywhere but today at 18 I realise that it lies nowhere but in the womb of my mom.

   Today I would just like to say to my beautiful mom,” I love you my mom and this is all which matters all the way”.



Happy mother’s day!

Here it comes....

No matter how much I strive for it, eventually I am bound to fail in all my vague attempts of being steady in updating my blog. This must have been the hundredth time when I am whining about the fact of my.......??? I don’t have any word for it now. My whining and cribbing over my failed attempts will continue and unfortunately I couldn’t care less. All I can care about is about my 'ME' series whose sequel has been postponed for a while now. So here it comes.....


I had harped about a magical thing 'ME' which i discovered while travelling back to my hostel on the railway platform (I guess if the railway department doesn’t have a go, I may join the likes of Columbus and Amerigo). There was something more than just names and faces in the magazine i was skimming through. Those faces were telling stories which till 18 I never heard or perhaps never wanted to hear or better comprehend.Gazing at those faces it occurred that my years of shero(I am not a staunch feminist though) worship went in vain as I failed to look at the real shero who stands in the mirror......ME.

Those were not perfect face sporting Angelina’s pout or Megan’s figure, nor were they cashing Indra Nooyi’s pay check but all they have was the belief of being just oneself and loving yourself .It occurred to me that this world is not cynical but our perception is. Why is it so that we are so afraid of our imperfections? Why can’t we love ourselves just for the person we are and not a person we want to be? We have to assimilate the art of loving ourselves in spite of the slightly dilated left eye, a big forehead, and flab on the abdomen, boring black eyes or maybe even a scar somewhere which may evoke some painful memories.

So friends forty years down the line our hair will turn grey, the face will fade like a winter’s moon and the walk will be half buffalo and half duck. Sitting in a room and surrounded by our children and grandchildren, we will be asked to narrate tales of our lives and experience and then something will strike at our heads and we will discern that all these years only one thing has followed......ME.

All i want is........to be ME!!!

Hello friends......here I am back to my space again after sabbatical of about a month I took for god knows what. Although I may say that the over spilling work on my desk, workstation and all the tit bits of places I tend to visit averted me to pay a visit to the cafe and post the stuff. But since I have my own laptop now, it leaves me with one excuse less I give for seldom updating.


But these sabbaticals I take are always for good (at least I feel so) just as my new tag line. Isn’t it unconventional? No matter what ever u guys say or feel about it, I just love it. It didn’t pop out of my filled to the brim head. There is a story behind it. I discovered these lines about 2 weeks ago when I was going back to my hostel and was getting hysterical about waiting for the train which showed no interest in following up the schedules. Once again books came to my rescue and I quickly found my way to the nearest bookstall. Though I was carrying enough stuff to gulp down, my resistance towards books comes down to zero at the very sight of a bookshop. After a long battle on the prices (desperately wished I carried my mother’s bargain gene at that very moment) I settled myself with a copy of fountainhead by Ayn Rand and Femina. I immediately treated myself with a space to sit in the overflowing platform (believe me it was indeed a treat) and got caught in the prejudice attached to magazine reading. During the course of turning and twisting I felt the sensations of euphoria and despair both.

These sensations made be prowl on the platform aimlessly and i felt like a bride who was trying too hard to hush something up. Then I realised I needed something to vent this or else it would have given my mother nightmares who was accompanying me. That something came in form of a pen which by default always happens to be in my handbag. (Yes yes I do carry one). I took the pen out and it made its way to back cover of the magazine as desperately as it was just dying for it. Then the words came through its .5 nib “all I want is......to be me”.

“Me” was never such a powerful word before the way it was the very moment. You must be wondering what it was that made such an incredible impact. So guys for that you will have to wait for the next part of this ‘me’ series.

P.S. A very happy women’s day to all the important and also the unimportant women in my life ( wishing you because you are women). Go out and celebrate this day and dedicate it just to yourself. And please don’t commit a blunder of going out with a guy. (Though I am not a bra burning feminist but can surely be on this day)

Broken Dreams........

I was skimming through the pages of the new edition of India Today yesterday as I had nothing in my bookshelf which could have comforted me after the erratic schedule of the day which kept me on my toes( I ll tell the story some other day). The issue was concentrating on all the major events which affected our country and its people in past 30 years. I am not fond of reading magazines; I only buy them to feel envious enough of the svelte and slim models. I carry this notion that this activity may trigger my will to shed that extra flab which is currently giving me nightmares.




Suddenly I found my eyes glued to the page featuring the happenings of the year 1994. A wave of nostalgia pushed me back into the past lanes where I was just a nymph coming out of the cocoon to fall into the lines of a caterpillar. Colourful and vibrant wings were out of sight and unimaginable. The page featured glimpses of Aishwarya Rai and Sushmita Sen flashing those rehearsed smiles with gleaming diamonds on their heads. It stirred the pieces of bitter sweet memories lying in some remote corner of my heart.

I can never forget that day when I first fought the rage inside me. I was about 3 at that time, rowdy cranky and naughty. My mother still cribs about the sleepless night I used to give her. It was a sunny bright morning I woke up to. I hated to get up in the morning (I still do). I was still grappling with partially open eyes when the newspaper lying over the petite corner beside my cosy bed caught my attention. The front page was carrying the news of Sushmita Sen wining the miss universe title, becoming the first Indian woman to carve that niche. I couldn’t read at that time; no 3 year old can do so. But I instantly got attracted to those pictures like a magnet to an iron bar. Later that day I quietly sneaked into my mother’s bedroom and spent hours scrutinising every inch of my face in front of the mirror. I even wore my mothers mauve stilettos to walk like those poised and beautiful girls do on TV. Somewhere inside the seed of the dream of holding that crown with hands on mouth awe pose was sown inside me.



Today I when I look back I have to admit that the seed sown could not grow into a tree because of the genetic seeds I m carrying (you ll understand only if u have studied biology). I am currently all content with the pace and directions of my life. But shards of a broken dream sometimes make me go all shrivelled up inside like a nut. Yesterday when I told my mother about my long lost dream, she said,” there are few things which appeal to us only from a distance. Nothing can be compared to the moon and the milky twilight it illuminates but if you try to go near it, all the beauty and the charm seem like false fables. It sounded good to my ears but couldn’t reach out to my heart which still refuses to junk off those pieces.