Train of Thought

Thoughts are like a current. They flow non-stop, and it’s only a moment that you need to get right to grasp them.

But what happens when you let go of every moment that presents itself before you, and then watch it fly out of the window?

Sometimes I find myself holding on to a few thoughts with all my mind because I don’t want to let go. (Ok, this is not some sort of ‘I can’t get over my ex-boyfriend’ kind of sop story). It’s just a sudden lack of time that I’m feeling. The days are longer, yes, but primarily because they start much earlier than they did otherwise, for me. All of a sudden I find myself living a routine that involves very little consideration to my thought processes. Holding on to thoughts, to write about them, becomes a lot more important to me. My last proper entry being some time in July, I believe, when I actually wrote something.

It’s strange how I find myself thinking back to a particular thought or idea that crossed my mind several days back. I keep thinking… what was it? I know it was something really interesting… My solution: Carry always a notebook and a pen, and jot down. Elaborate later.

:)

Ma Home (one out of many…)

Everything’s just been pending on the blog ever since I’ve moved into my own place this August. It’s quite a crazy experience for me, since it’s the first time I’m completely out of a protected environment; from home to a hostel, where everything is provided for, to my aunt’s place, no less than home at any cost, to living on my own with a couple of friends. The first thing I learnt was that you can just move your stuff into a room and call it ‘home’… It totally doesn’t work that way. The only challenge was how to make this place home? Et voila! That’s when I decided to put academics to use… Mood lighting! :) I learnt about that in college. So I went-a-shopping and got these really pretty looking lights that filled the entire room and also gave it a nice cozy character… :)

That’s my cozy corner in the house – my laptop, my roommate’s speakers, a wall and them pretty lights! :)

Next up on the list was ‘doing up the room’ – which included bed covers et al. What better than a crazy black and white stripes? My guitar liked it too!

And this is the view I get while sitting on the bed on a lazy afternoon…

Child’s Play

My recent visit to my niece and nephew when I went back to Delhi this June…

That day she came up to me and said, “Sruti didi, I also want to wear hairband and tie my hair like you”. So I sat and did up her hair just like mine. I don’t know how great she looked, but she seemed pretty happy. And I had my dose of ‘Barbie-doll-games’ at age 21!

Activity-filled that day was. Surya was showing off his new pets to me – lovebirds – and of course showing me that it’s okay to pet the bird. “I’ll show you. No! No! I’ll hold him, otherwise he’ll get scared. You’re a new person; he knows that I’m just playing”. But then he was kind enough to teach me how to hold the bird… which I very apprehensively did. He sat me down and explained the temperament of each bird – there were four – and told me of stories of all of them. :)

My niece’s friend, this girl seemed like the star that afternoon. It was quite a show she put up that afternoon, with all her madness – most delightfully entertaining! While my niece and nephew were a little more than just conscious of my new camera, she just swayed callously across the room as though there was no camera! :)

The sole goal of all games that afternoon was to prevent the brother – the enemy – from climbing the top bunk and throwing tidbits to the floor. Sigh! :)
But in vain, it seemed..

Battling the Rain

This year it’s my first proper encounter with the rain, as opposed to last year where I was in the hostel most of the time in Town – where it hardly ever rained as much as it did in the suburbs. Now that I’m the ’suburban mumbaikar’, I see how people keep the rain off, at home. It’s obvious that you sohuldn’t step out when it’s pissing down, but that’s not where it ends. Totally safe from the rain is when you’re home with windows shut and dirty blue or black plastic sheets put on the outside of the windows so that the rainwater doesn’t come in.

So we mounted acrylic sheets on the grill. And now we just sit by the window sil and enjoy the view! :)

Of Money and Violence

“I am the only kid who steals dollar bills from his mom’s wallet”, he proudly claimed. When I asked why he said, “So that I can buy a lot of violent toys. I keep collecting lots of dollar bills so that I can buy loads of violent toys with them”.
Earlier that day his mum asked him what ‘violent’ means. “Fighting and bashing up”, he replied promptly with a big smile on his face.

It was at that point that I was wondering how creepy it is. If it were just that once that he’d mentioned the ‘violent toys’, I guess I wouldn’t have been that freaked out. The whole day, he kept harping about violent toys and how he loves fighting and making his toys fight. So I asked him, “What about stuff like Lego? Don’t you like playing with Lego?”  His reply pleased me till he actually went on to elaborate on it. “Of course,” he said. “I love playing with Lego. But only the fighting figures – the guns and stuff. The other stuff is really boring”.

We try so hard to keep our kids away from ‘bad company’ and buy them toys so they can pass their time, as opposed to ‘mingling with the wrong crowd’. But the violence does seep in somehow, doesn’t it? Especially at a time like today where we find ourselves surrounded by in-your-face terror attacks. It’s all the more reason to unaccustom the children to the violence, I thought. But obviously, that’s not so. With toys and games aiming at an obsessive destruction, we’re making violence an everyday event.Maybe it’s just my paranoia that sees it as such a big problem, but the ‘fight’ bit of things just finds its way everywhere, especially in the lives of children. From cartoons to toys to glorification of victorious war stories in history books.

Television content is just so violent for children. It’s amazing to see small children glued to television watching something that defines a hero who readily bashes up the bad guy. The ‘hero’ is obviously stronger and armed with the better weapons, or equipped with better super powers. The bad guy is bad because he has a gun. But the good guy is better because he has a bigger gun to kill the bad guy with. What kind of twisted logic is that? If I were to merely transport this logic into the context of today, does it translate to ‘the guys with the ak-47s and grenades are bad, but the ones with the nuclear weapons are good’… So what if both are weapons of destruction!

We were heading back home and I took the stairs. He was waiting for the elevator – he had just begun to go in an elevator all by himself and jumped at any opportunity to use the elevator. The elevator was taking pretty long to come down and he was getting a little restless and impatient. He started kicking the wall and punching the elevator switch saying, “So you think you’re pretty strong, eh!” I was completely taken aback.

I guess it was partly because I’d been thinking about it all day yesterday. But it’s not completely untrue, right? After all, he’s just 6 years old!

Flights and Karma

Flights have this tendency to get delayed. This delay is often conspiratorially proportional to your urgency – the bigger the urgency, the more the delay.

My previous episode of a delayed flight timed itself such that at every stage of progress towards home, there was a postponement that kept telling me, “You should’ve just taken a train to Delhi”. Now I’m all set to rush to Bombay for a meeting on Thursday evening and I say, “Ok. Let’s not rush this one, and I’ll reach Bombay on Wednesday night”. But delay jumped out from behind the corner at a time when the flight was just about to take off. We moved from the bay to the runway and a while after waiting to take off, we find ourselves heading back to bay. A few minutes later, the ground staff is seen flashing lights at the wing of the airplane. And the stewardess announces,”Kingfisher regrets the delay caused. One of the passengers has spotted birds in the wing of the airplane and we had to head back to bay”.

I guess it doesn’t matter what airlines you take. Last time it was Indigo and this time it was Kingfisher. It’s just luck that determines how late you’re going to get. Maybe there’s some karmic understanding between the urgency and the delay which translates itself into flight schedules. Who knows!

But at least this delay was for a good cause. And the birds flew happily ever after.

Good Morning!

The last 2-3 days, Aj and I were busy clicking photographs at home with some really good results!

Images and Words

And when I ask him why he likes the song so much, he just looks at me and says there’s something about it. I look back at him and ask, “It’s me, isn’t it? The girl in the song reminds you of me, doesn’t she?”

One step back and a step down, right foot forward and just zoom ahead. A step back up, one right and one forward. The right foot goes forward again, and you zoom ahead. It’s easy to just ram the accelerator and drive past everything, drive away from everything.

Back.
Right.
U.
Straight.
Right.
Left… and straight ahead.

I’m away from it. By now I’m zipping past everything on the fourth gear in my little 4-wheeler. Everything beside me zips past in a blur. The camera tries to focus on one object but the motion is too fast to allow the cameraman to focus on one particular object. Distances are changing. Focuses are changing. Before I know it, I’m 3 kms away from where I started. I look at my watch and it’s been a mere 2 mins ago that I was struggling to get rid of the brakes and just zip forward.

But where have I come? It’s not unknown territory. I’ve come here before. I come here everyday and look at the grey walls that run along it. The grey walls with the glass pieces so nobody gets in, or maybe so that nobody gets out. Barriers, security, blocks… It’s at every opening. But I’ve come here before. I come here everyday. It’s the farthest I’ve gotten. It’s the room I’ve locked myself in, to block out everything else that disturbs me. But I didn’t build this grey wall. It was already there. I didn’t put the pieces of broken glass there. They’ve been there since I knew it. Somewhere Poiccard was running saying he chose nothingness. Did I choose grief?

I found myself seated at a table this afternoon. I wasn’t alone. The sound of the piano was continuously playing in my head… “water can’t cover her memories, and ashes can’t answer her pain…” sang LaBrie to the notes of the piano.

I asked him why he likes the song so much, he just looks at me and says there’s something about it. I look back at him and ask, “It’s me, isn’t it? The girl in the song reminds you of me, doesn’t she?”

“She stares at the ceiling
And tries not to think
And pictures the chain
Shes been trying to link again
But the feeling is gone”

Wait for Sleep – Dream Theater

Randomity revisited

I’m enjoying at home with the family. Mom and I were going through some old photographs the other day, and I found some photographs that I really liked. So here’s me back then!
It’s been 21 years, and I guess I’m still as random and pointless as ever!!

Randomly fooling around with my brother…

 

Being daddy’s sweet little daughter…

 

Being mom’s little happy soul…

 

There’s so much to take back to Bombay when I leave! Photographs are one thing… I want my mom and dad. I really wish I wasn’t 21 and could throw tantrums and get everything I wanted… :)

Sigh.. Wishful thinking is exactly what that is!

The Homecoming

It just gets better everytime! I get to see things that I miss seeing in Bombay…

The confused look on my nana’s face when he saw me enter the room with a camera covering my face…

Mom avoiding the camera in the funniest ways.

My niece and nephew being silly in the cutest possible way!

Thatha smiling and talking, making the best of all that he can hear!

The romantic discourse between my grandparents!

Apu agreeing to drink milk after much coaxing.

Thatha slowly tearing the paper off a chocolate bar…

I’m now counting my days in Delhi with mom and dad and the rest of my family, and hoping against hope that my stay extends longer!