B for Birthdays

No, it was not a 50 shades themed party.

As a child, I was a super excited, high-on-sugar kid waiting to be allotted/warned for something so I can constantly be on my toes. And it felt so right; after all how many times exactly do you get to live? Why waste it! And so, birthdays naturally looked like harmless, hearty occasions where you could dance and celebrate the bejeezus for you being born… until I realized getting old was a thing.

At four, I remember my paa buying me a blue shirt and red pants (Picture Hritik Roshan from his Koi Mil Gaya Item number, only groovier) and a big birthday cap and threw a party where all my friends and cousins were running around, awaiting the cake cutting impatiently. He always thought of me as his son, and so, short hair and trousers soon became my signature style. At one point, I remember Saturday being my favourite day of the week so I could wear my white shirt/pants with plum coloured suspenders to school. I was encouraged to do everything I can do (and be good at it) and it only helped that I detested anything that screamed girly. Until one summer, boobs sprung out and I took a liking to cricket. I was told to ‘drop the ball’ since cricket was only meant for boys. That birthday I learnt that accomplishments too have a gender.

At six, I learnt a new habit (that was sulking, btw!) that hit new heights at my brothers' first birthday party. Suddenly after a little short of five years, them entering my life (together) came as a rather big deal to me. ‘Why they needed more time from my mom’, ‘why their birthday parties were a much bigger affair’, ‘why everyone suddenly found them cute and me weird in a boy cut and a rather new party frock’, my list was endless. That birthday party seemed like the worst day of my life. And yet, as I watched the grown-ups around playing the game of perspective, arguing if my drawing was of a boa constrictor or a hat, there was a rather sweet release in finally understanding the cause of it all. That birthday party, I learnt subjectivity is a thing best left for lovers.

At 16, coming to college felt like coming of age. Well, at least, the teenage part of me felt so. People are super nostalgic about their school life and what not, but for me college was the place where I found my core and learnt to celebrate it too. But one thing in college I particularly enjoyed was observing people, witnessing them as they come to their true self for a flip second, only to get behind their garb of what they think of themselves again. And birthday parties were the best place to do that- The day your vanity submerges into your ego.

This was the year I learnt the concept behind birthdays- that these son of a bitch days are not just for showing your happiness on that person being born but also to mend ways with a friend you haven’t been talking to for ages, to get an excuse to call and check on your ex you promised you won’t ever call again and sometimes, that obligations come packed in all kind of beautiful wrapping papers, and sometimes, just to live up to others’ expectations more than yours out of a birthday. And amidst all of this, I was proud of my sense of objectivity. But as a consequence, love became difficult to hold and another birthday later, I cried my eyes out when empathy and not love was all I could offer to someone’s honest, overwhelming love. 

Turning 18 is hugely overrated. So we won’t talk about that. Instead, at 19, I got what was the best surprise of my life- An understanding on the concept of love in the shape of a series of surprise birthday gifts, each telling a story as I found them. Sometimes, a feeling dies, but a moment continues to live and be passed on with stories. No wonder people fall in love with stories so easy.

At 22, life was giving lemons (sans the soda so I couldn’t even make lemonade out of it) and I found solace in running away from time to time that people called travelling. Finding my own sweet spot only to wonder what’s next. It was in the midst of skepticism and impulsive hope then that I decided to celebrate my third and last birthday of the year away from home and all things familiar.

I picked a city where the lost is never intended to be found, told my office I was getting engaged, and left with little to no expectations for a five-day trip. It was messy, I won’t lie. It had its hiccups and I have never been a very good planner anyway. But there was something very comforting about spending your birthday with strangers who had no idea it were your birthday and cutting an upside down pineapple pastry for a birthday cake with a stranger who didn’t really seem strange after all. And so, on my 23^rd birthday, I learnt the gift of loving thyself, and eventually that charming mess of a city I’ll later have an affair with.

I now live in the same charming mess of a city. Few days before, I celebrated my 27^th birthday. There was nothing remarkable about the day, not that I wanted it to have any. But at night, I slept happily in the awareness of the fact that there are people on earth who are capable of feeling unconditional love and they happen to love me. And with the hope of someday getting comfortable with that, I found my peace.

And for those who couldn't believe my innate sense of groovy fashion was there right from childhood, here you go:

A for Aam ka bantwara

Home is where you're one, no?

“Kyunki aam phalon ka raja hota hai,” my daadu explained with the cutest possible made-up expression to participate in the excitement of kids hovering around him. What followed for the next 20 minutes, I don’t remember particularly, for I was busy in my head absorbing the new-found fact and comparing every possible fruit that was ever dear to me with this now-reclaiming king of fruits.

There was apricot with the most perfect blush, there was majestic guava with its sneaky seeds that would trouble you for hours after eating it, and then, of course, there were grapes in all colours and glory. So many of them! But then, the garden at my grandparents’ house was a realm in itself where all fruits could compete for the juicy throne.

Most of my favourite stories from my grandparents’ home revolve around the mango trees- The night it was so hot that we decided to sleep out under the big one, only to wake up with rain and storm and lightening so bright that it may have been our best family photograph till date. The day me and my brothers spent fighting, in its entirety, over the division of mangoes from the garden (Eventually, we each owned a certain type of mango, another solution by daadu). The afternoons I'd spend with relish on rented comic books I devoured along with the kachha ambi picked directly from the trees. The times we would place our charpoy under the tree post afternoon meals to listen to sharbat chacha’s exaggerated stories. Or the time I tried climbing a tree for the first time and had a nap in the wooden, wise arms of one of the oldest lives in the garden.

Right before the storm.

Right after it.

You can’t find any grander entrance than the one to my grandparents’ house back there. The place is nestled right at the feet of some puny and some not-so-puny mountains. Lazily settled between a village and a town, my hometown is everything that would make you feel away from the city life and yet just there.

Two minutes before my home and you can find yourself ogling at the magnificent garden of mangoes and litchis. Take the turn into the locality and I promise every household, no matter how far away they are stretched out (there are farms and puny canals in between most of the houses), would take a peek to find out and give you a shout out if you’re recognized too. Their pets soon follow the suit, of course. 

Hit the gate and there’s a good 600 feet of wedding aisle like green pathway with fields on either sides, directing you to the real entrance to what we call home.  A verandah as big as a society playground and a byre good enough to be our adventure home welcomed you to the rest of the house. But my favourite spot was always the terrace where the night was so purple and the stars so yellow that it looked like I had been colouring my drawing books with a wrong sky all this while.

From the charpoy, under the tree. No filters whatsoever.

On your left, from the verandah.

And amidst all this was Johny. Sitting under the jackfruit tree, Johny loved watching (read scanning) the people approaching and mostly scaring the shit out of them. In my on and off 26 years of summer there, we’ve had chicks and rabbits and cows and buffaloes and baby birds (picked as patients post a storm) and dogs and cats and even tadpoles; but Johny was my favourite out of them all. That weak, slimy-eyed, ferocious son of a bitch almost went to dog heaven as a pup when a jackal picked him once for a nice midnight snack. Thank god for my aunt who did not seem to agree with the jackal about his diet choices, and thus Johny stayed with us.

As little Johny grew up, us kids realized he’s not the usual hungry-for-love dog but rather selective-with-one-and-all kind. He may have been a dog but I often suspected he was a cat’s soul in a dog’s body. His trickery and the art-of-suspicion was no match for ours. Feeding him wasn’t a free pass, one needed to win his love first and foremost. The all-black fur and growl at a moment’s notice didn’t help much either. But once you won the free pass, he was all yours.

However, what we enjoyed most was our non-negotiable yearly ritual. His bathing ceremony. The entire year, Johny came under the hygiene radar none but once- when I would visit home. In a household of 20 members (come summers), I was the only one he listened to, a fact that never failed to put a rather pleased grin on my face. He never allowed anyone to bathe him and depending upon the frequency or rarity of his swimming escapades in the canals, his fur could be a homogenous mixture of sugar, spice and everything nice (Just kidding!).

It needed my brother’s help to pick him up and my firm resolution to have him bathed, because nothing else would work. He always acted rather miffed with me post bathing, which evaporated by the time he dried up, always in all the eagerness to show off his newly cleaned fur and catch a cozy afternoon nap with me. Too much of love always made me feel special and uncomfortable at the same time. And I stayed special and uncomfortable for years to follow. Later, during one of the summers I missed going home, I was casually told on a call that Johny was dead. And just like that, I was ordinary and comfortable once again.

Today, it feels like all this just happened yesterday. Except it didn’t. Ever since daadu died, every little character in my stories evaporated too soon to preserve a proof that they existed. Grandma stayed with us for a long time afterward, so all the cattle and pets were given away or sold. Gone are the malpuas that my daadu cooked specially for me every time I went there, and so is the rental comic store, for who reads comics these days! The lavish farms are now handled by someone else, and sharbat chacha now struggles with an advance stage of parkinson’s and keeps all the stories rather to himself.

The mango trees, however, are still alive. Quiet, but observant. And they still remember everything. Hopefully.

A-Z

SO what do you do when you want to be regular at it and ace it as well? What do you do when the frequency of your writing escapades are getting lesser than even your ‘that time of the month’? What do you do when the idea of an idea looks so good in your head that you detest anything coming close to it in real life? 

THIS.

Starting over from the scratch. Starting from the A-Z. Trying an attempt to pen down A-Z that matters/mattered/will always matter from Little Wench’s jungle.

Disclaimer: Frequency of the posts would be directly proportional to the endearment of the topic picked or the difficulty of the letter involved.

STAY TUNED.

P.S: Meanwhile, get your groove back with this!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NFIdgK7Qpw

Quickie- Part 2- Self Destruction

Image credit:  A very cool artist with username Kwikdraw on Queeky.

Little by little, inch by inch, I shall feed you more of me. 

Little by little, inch by inch, I will suffocate you with every inch of me.

Time and space will lose their worth, the continuum would spill love and some blood.
Little by little, inch by inch, to live, you must learn not to love too much.

For My Wildflower

So she dreams and then falls asleep,

smoothening the jagged edges of reality.

And after a dark, sulking period

when the night lovingly melts into the arms of the sun

A wildflower is born out of nowhere.

The love that we deserve

Late morning. Stomach is growling to get some breakfast while Shoreline Jellyfish taking her own sweet time to get up.

Little Wench: Okay, there is nothing in the kitchen. What do you guys wanna eat?

(sleepy) Shoreline Jellyfish: We need bread and butter. And since you’re the only one who’s taken a shower already, would you please be a sweetheart and go get it.?

Little Wench: Yeah, sure.

At this, Shoreline Jellyfish curls up and struggles to open her eyes.

Shoreline Jellyfish: Suno!

Little Wench: Yeah?

Shoreline Jellyfish: Now that you’re being a sweetheart, would you do me another favour?

Little Wench: Of course. What is it?

Shoreline Jellyfish: It’s a pretty morning. please thode boobs dikha do!

Wearing a blue t-shirt a little too big for her in front of a window big enough to be called an entrance, she tries to adjust the stuff around her one more time since he’s left- A half read book, a gifted summery dress with ketchup stains from lunch yesterday, a long unfinished to-do list, her old lingerie she loves and a new lip balm she’s not too fond of, that, and a clock lying next to her laptop far too lazy to show up time. It’s a perfect rainy morning!

This is Little Wench’s second morning in the new city, and after a long time she feels like herself again. While trying to finish a project, a line she read yesterday from the book kept popping up in her head to mull over. “Charlie, we all accept the love we think we deserve.”

It’s from a copy of The Perks of Being a Wallflower she’s reading currently that was gifted to the Shoreline Jellyfish by her then boyfriend. Penned by Stephen Chbosky, it has a rather kitschy appeal in the first look itself apart from having Emma Watson on its cover page from the movie adaptation. Yes, that same movie!

As introspective as Charlie is, and as much as he grows with the story; this is hands down the best piece of wisdom he receives within first 25 pages of the book. But can you really measure how much love are you worthy of? And if you can, how do you really know the love you have (or you think you do) is actually your real worth?

 “When I was a kid,” Wench started telling the inquisitive Kuala, “I used to have a separate box where I used to keep all things I got for myself but never used. Reason? I found them too pretty for myself. And so, the pretty earrings mom got me, or the fancy top I bought last summer, or that lovely boy’s lovely handmade cards, all found refuge in that box. Something you so want to have, but not something you think you deserve.” The box may have got lost somewhere in the storage room, but the idea still hasn’t.

We all create this fun-filled, spectacular life frames for ourselves encompassing every quintessential ingredient behind the supposed recipe of being happy- we hang out with the cool crowd, listen to some amazing music that we like (or have seen people liking), we attend some great get-togethers on weekends or have intense discussion about the last book we read that changed your life.

But at the same time, simultaneously, you find yourself fine-tuning every now and then. Whether it’s showing how you like that band a little more than you actually do or picking up that occasional smoke because the party has moved from the table to the smoke room; whether it’s bombastically agreeing with your colleague about that sushi you tried but in reality, played with it more than you could eat or subconsciously letting someone treat you in a way that just isn’t you because well, you like (or worse, love) them.

A week later, somewhere around 3 am, Wench gets to relive this feeling. She’s watching the movie version of the book with her new city’s favourite and a now-cold slice of pizza. She is buzzed with how equally great movie adaptations of great books can be, if treated right…and then the tunnel scene happens.

The scene starts at a fast pace as they enter the tunnel driving together. The wind is unabashed and at the same time caressing Sam as she decides to stand on her open truck. The music merges with the setting, the characters and with you. And you are with people you love, people who know the real you, the weird you, and people who love you for it. And there Wench had her moment of epiphany.

As hard as it sounds to believe, your worth is much more than those approving nods, those frequent self-doubts and definitely more than those clichéd moments where you ‘need’ to participate because you’d be obviously weird if you didn’t.

As for deserving the love, Wench always has the option to fall back upon cheesecakes and clove mix until it’s figured.

Why you NO hangout with me in Hauz Khas.?

I

It is the place where things in contradiction come together to have a fleeting love affair. It is easily the most posh 'village' you could ever find. People smoke. People smoke up. People cuddle. People chat up. People jog on the beaten tracks, trying to beat their last record. People saunter holding hands pushing every second to its maximum duration.

II

Hauz Khas Fort: It is the unofficial hub of numerous band practices and countless love stories every few steps. Quietly embracing Sufi, Rock or even Indie-pop together; the old, humble Hauz Khas Fort practically lives as many dreams as each of the members in those bands, all of those couples.

Trying to find the right note with them. Trying to have their love, their music etched onto the partly ruined walls here.

A cat just has nine lives to live.

III

“But why do I always have to go along with someone or to meet someone? What’s wrong with wanting to go hangout by yourself?” complained Little Wench.

“Why do you always have to ask questions that have no answers?” fretted her mother.

As she passes the barricade, an impish grin fights its way to her lips as Little Wench tries rather hard to suppress it. This is not the first time she’s coming here, after all. She’s been here on a date. She’s covered an interview here.  She’s bunked office to just be here. She’s worked here. Heck, she’s even had a life-is-finished day here. So today, deciding to spend some time with Hauz Khas, herself and a rustic copy of The Journals of Sylvia Plath on a last minute whim doesn’t sound fancy at all. And yet, she’s excited.

“Walking is too much madam. You so thin! Give me only Rs. 40 and I will take you to Hauz Khas village in a jiffy.”

IV

I see this dog having claimed what’s possibly the best spot in the entire fort/lake area. It’s a beautiful pedestal just beyond the iron-rod boundary set for ‘common’ people. It’s an olive-sized spot facing the warm sunshine, balmy lake and a sharp edge on a substantial height.

And the dog is there. His indifference is appealing to the point of becoming a masochist. Just for that instant when you gaze at him, waiting to be ignored. People amusingly walk past him; photographers try to find their ‘the shot’ in him. And he overlooks them all. Like a dude!

V

“Excuse me?”

“Yes?”

“What is best to visit/do in hauz khas?” *pause* “I am a tourist, you see.”

“Ermm. You really wanna know?”

“Yeah, of course!”

"Well, I suppose I could tell you a couple of things; like how Elma’s Bakery, one of the most popular eateries is to be savoured for its interiors and crockery, not the menu. Or how despite the quality food, the best thing about Naivedyam still remains the free rasam drink ritual as soon as you settle down."

"Or how not many people like to visit/maintain the sanctity of the beautiful-in-ruins Hauz Khas Fort accommodating the entire lake; but are more than willing to pay overpriced rates for usual menu at a restaurant having a section ‘facing the lake’. Or rather, a tiny part of it."

"I could also show you that it’s easy to spot a self-contained, happy junkie and a tight-holding-by-the-waist, happy couple in the same blink of the eye. How the dogs here know more than they show. How food here is some of the most soul-fulfilling activities (yes, it’s more of an activity here). But I would rather tell you to go ahead and find out for yourself."

For one main reason why you keep coming back to Hauz is because it offers a unique piece of its own to you. And to each of its visitors.

A new concept cafe to try while on your way back from Hauz Khas Village!

Their feedback wall! :-)

VI

You wouldn’t even notice that construction worker until you look too closely. A highly ordinary, reedy body rhythming with the circular motion he was making on the wall using his heavily tanned left hand, while balancing on the conspicuously wobbly stool. He’s humming a folk tune as he pastes the freshly prepared pastel coloured cement solution his wife is holding standing next to him.

Adjusting her ghunghat every now and then while holding the stool in between every time it shakes a little. Next to her, stands their child, hardly 3 years of age. Holding her pallu, the kid stands there while watching bunch of kids play in the heap of sand and cement couple of steps away. He has a bandage tied on his forehead, with blood stains on one side.

How did the child get hurt? Is this a frequent occurrence whilst at the site? Do they pay the wife too for spending half her day working with him or is that a complimentary service for the contractor? Does the family live here as well? If they do, is this a safe environment for the child? But then, can they afford to even think about it?

The wall is not even half done as yet.