Promises like shoes

“Next time I will …”


“From now on I will never …”




What makes me think I am wiser today than I will be tomorrow?

-From Notes to myself, by Hugh Prather

.. Two days ago I was going on about words that hold me up, and today I'm kicking myself for having forgotten them. Why should I hold myself to old promises of friendship, when the grown-up me knows better than the child who sealed the deal?

How do you move on, when you're still walking around in too-old, too-tight shoes from long ago? Do you drag your feet and walk in misery, or do you squinch up your toes for so long that you lose all feeling in them, and then the shoes feel fine? After a while you might even think you enjoy not having toes anymore, and think those who do are freaks to want to keep them.

Or are you strong enough to rip outgrown, worn shoes off your feet, and walk with the blisters for a while? Do you slip your injured feet right back into another pair, just to hide the ugly wounds, or do you let yourself heal before you slip into a pair you'd like to try?

Like no-one's watching

I'm not sure what to write here. Having spent the greater part of time not sharing words, I'm not sure what it involves to use them as a medium of communication.

Words are understanding, words are fun. Words wrap around and make sense when the world doesn't. They can mean so much or nothing at all. I can stare at a word, fall so deep into it that the alphabets lose meaning. Then re-surface and smile with renewed understanding. Try it with AREA. That was one of my favorites in Math class. Write it down, over and over, mouth the letters, exaggerated. Take it apart- why those four letters, why so many vowels? Where did this word 'area' come from? Imagine Egypt as you calculate the area of a pyramid. What did they call it? What would we call it if we were talking to them? AREA. Fall into it. If it doesn't work with this one, try your favorite word. Tell me what happens :)

Words have power, beyond reckoning. In any language, as long as it touches the heart. My current favorite is a line from Gulzar, "Gin gin taare maine ungli jalayi hai.." - I have burnt my fingers counting the stars. I don't understand what it means, but the words sink in and take hold, and they will let go when I have understood. None of it is my doing, it is their power, their magic. Fall back on words, and see which ones hold you up.

But to get to the point of this post- I'm still fumbling here, trying to communicate with words, through words. And I'm fumbling with a few awards- surprised and touched, that people I like read this blog and even enjoy it! This makes me aware that somewhere, someone might actually read what I write, and I think I have stage(blog?) fright now!:) So, uhm, thank you, you and you !

I think I'll pass this right back to both of you, Neeraja and Perception - for the fantastic writing, lovely ideas, and perfect capacity to always entertain :)
..To Nish, who got me into blogging, with hopes that the lady will write again,
soon ;) And Nidhi- it's such a pleasure to reconnect after the years, even though it's only online for now :)

(The image is shamelessly borrowed from Perception's blog, I didn't know how else to get it on here!)

Would it be against blogger protocol to turn this into a tag and demand a new post from everyone I passed it to? That way there's more to read ;)

The things we do for love!

In my experience, most people in relationships are confused, to a greater or lesser extent. We're brought up for 20 odd years with the idea that we must develop our personalities, be independent, free-thinking individuals, and then somehow we find ourselves in this mess of hormones and expectations of other people and obligations and everything else. If you work your way out, you end up crying over your break-up, single and miserable while everyone around is in happily-ever-after land.
The alternative, of course, is to be brave (or foolish) enough to fight your way through the mess, emerging on the other side with the tag of 'committed/ married'.

Working the kinks out of relationships, dealing with relatives and familial obligations, figuring out how this person you live with can manage to unfailingly forget at least one out of every four items on the grocery list (Feel free to substitute personal annoyance here- I'm sure each of us, man or woman, has our own)
- As if all this weren't crazy enough, we now step into the month of February, with grocery stores covered in pink and red balloons and everywhere you look you see hearts and doves and all the rest of it. When did picking up salad and potatoes begin to necessitate such festivity? I can understand card stores and gift shops, but the produce section?

This year promises to be especially amusing in India- with pink underwear and pink saris battling it out, and the grand proclamation that "India is the land of Lord Krishna and nobody should compete with him in terms of love and relationship."
(I'm already wondering how this man arrived on the planet, or is he claiming to be a direct descendant of the Lord?) To add to the confusion, there is the Pub bharo andolan- which leads to the rather interesting image of the streets of Bombay and Delhi teeming with women of all shapes and sizes, clad in pink saris, clutching images of Lord Krishna to prove that their love is unsurpassed by anyone. I'm waiting for all the pictures to be uploaded as promised here.

Considering that all of this is for a 'festival' that has nothing to do with Indian culture in the first place, I get the feeling poor St. Valentine is probably feeling a little left out right now.

Something like love

A simple time, in a complex country. Where words like love come not as strings attached to relationships, but in a soft unyielding weave of time, tradition, religion, and so much else. Where teenagers fumble with this cloth, and fret, wondering whether this is fabric to be worn with pride, or ripped apart to find that one constant thread that is love.

So lets go back to this simple time. A classroom, like most others in India. February is a pleasant time of the year, in most places. Far from home, twenty or so single boys and girls plan a Valentine's party for themselves. Who needs a boyfriend/ girlfriend, when all this friendly love abounds? A cell phone rings, and one person steps out to answer it.

On to a terrace, sun-warmed cement and brick under bare feet. The smell of dusty earth and neem trees. The conversation is quite typical- how was your day, did you talk to your advisor about that last set of experiments? Yes, and did you get your reports in on time? What plans for the evening? They talk, the boy and the girl, for a little while. Across the warp and weft that separate them, they find the threads that hold them together for the span of this conversation, a few minutes in a late winter evening.

He isn't sure whether to wish her. Will she take it to mean he assumes she's his girlfriend? Should he have sent flowers, or would she get angry if he did? Why hasn't he wished her? Does this mean that he assumes her answer is no? But she really isn't sure. If she wishes him, will he assume its a yes? If you say Happy Valentine's on the phone, isnt that like saying- go enjoy yourself even though you're half a world away from me? So they talk for a while, and hang up. Satisfied with the idea of romance, without the tangles of love.

.. While that's probably not a love story of any kind, it amuses and reassures me to think of it now- A time when love, or something like it, was just as simple as a phone call. No strings attached. And that we were once people like that, who could find and hold the one strand we liked out of that vast, intricate tapestry, even if it was just for a few minutes of a lifetime.