The Love That I Will Choose To Keep

Where desires will be throttled, and hearts shall weep,
that is the love I will choose to keep.
When the nights are quiet and the moon hangs low in the sky,
when it's dark enough for the stars to cry,
I imagine I will stand in curious wonder
and give myself in wonderous surrender.

Praha

I miss Prague. Some things more than most.

- Snow outside. A few hares on the football field. All of us in Mr. Ackerman's stifling hot room strumming away on our guitars. Blueberry muffins on the table and hot steaming mugs of hot chocolate. Me, the expert in taking picks out of guitar cavities and the seniors always wanting to attempt "Smells like Teen Spirit" even though we're meant to be perfecting "Scarborough Fair" (Simon and Garfunkel).

- Grossetos. This amazing restaurant off of Dejvice where we'd land up after school and order a pizza each. Followed by grape ice cream with whipped cream. Begimai, the scatterbrain, Ayla, the GAP wearing artist and Eileen, the prim and proper Singaporean with the numerous music lessons. We were so oblivious to everything else but us. I miss them.

- The tennis tournament. Where he turned up to watch and promptly got escorted off the courts for yelling at someone in Russian for dissing on me.

- Phys. Ed. Class and softball. A spectacular catch by anyone's standards ruined by the fact that I threw the ball straight at Sharkey's head in an attempt to get another out. Him lying sprawled on the ground while I sprint for an ice pack and come back to find a frantic Begimai trying to get him to count her fingers.

- The architecture. Beautiful.

Here, There and Everywhere

It was high school. I was ugly. I saw it every day in the mirror before leaving for school. I remember walking down the longest corridor, with sweaty hands clutching a binder tightly to the chest as I tried my best to slink past the group of senior boys without getting noticed. Of course, it was not to be. I was the weird Indian girl, the one who read all the time curled up in secluded corners and ate her lunches alone because she was told Indian food smelled. One of them winked as I walked past and my stomach lurched. It was all I could do to keep from bursting into tears right there and then. I hated them. I guess they didn't like me very much either. It would have been the uncool thing to do.

I began to dread opening my locker. On Valentine's Day everyone had a red carnation sent to them by someone or the other (school initiave) inside their locker. I opened mine to find a bunch of smelly socks and a note which said : you won't notice the smell anyway.
I think I still carry that rage somewhere.

A year later. I had another note. It said: "You're beautiful". I mistrusted it instantly. I imagined a bunch of people were standing around waiting for me to smile before they started jeering. I threw it in the trash. The next day there was a red rose inside. I went to the school counselor to ask her for a lock for my locker becaues someone seemed to know my code. I cried at night. I couldn't understand why someone would mock me so.

What happened afterwards is a blur. I was in love... with the way he felt. I was everything I wanted to be because he could see me that way.
Seven months later.. there was another note: "I don't think you're pretty enough to be mine".
This time I smiled. It was the longest prank anyone had played. You had to give some credit.

I came back to India. Outside my car window a small child held up a rose and grinned. "Aap bahut sundar ho didi". I smiled. I loved my country instantly.

End of the Night

"This is the end, beautiful friend.
It hurts to set you free,
but you'll never follow me.
The end of laughter and soft lies.
The end of nights we tried to die.
This is the... end."

There's pictures of Morrison all around and I smile at the irony. I declare I don't drink and find myself staring moodily into a glass of rum and coke (rum hardly, coke loads) ten minutes later.
There's a boy there with witty banter and sexual innuendos and he makes me laugh.. but then he can never make me smile and that, I suppose is the true test.

I get a polite query about a refill and realise I'd rather just have coke instead. Lots of coke, lots of ice, and lots of lemon. I brood over my second drink and smile at how there used to be someone who would have known that without having to be told.

Worth Preserving

I want that moment to exist behind a closed door somewhere and know that I can walk in anytime I need to and anytime I want. With food in the centre and boys on the phone and little babies who turn over and demand to be burped. Where we tell tales over and over again just to have that one last laugh or simply to forget the story. Where certain others lament the lack of maal or the fact that we can't afford it coz people owe us money...In that room we are the three most beautiful people I have come across. I'm thinking it as I take my monkey arms and start measuring them against the milky softness of the baby's. I'm thinking it when I look at beautiful big eyes that somehow look childish all the time and I'm thinking it when I sit, legs stretched out under the table and declare I'm hot simply to hear no one rebuff it.

The boy does a brilliant imitation and I laugh until I there are tears because that image of me is so atrocious that I actually know what he's talking about. Sigh. In that room is where it all falls away and I come to sickening realisations for which the food is in no way responsible. Then the baby becomes the mother with hand motions that remind one of a lotus blossom and it's all warm and fuzzy and sleepy. It's nice. Worth preserving.

So

I remember sand. It was all over the car and on my feet and dress. Mommy sitting in the front seat had it all over her saree and my papa had it in his hair which she laughingly dusted off. Bhai had filled his shoes with it to take some home.

It was my first day at school. I was given 6 chocolates. One for every hour till the driver came to pick me up. They had forgotten I don't like chocolate. I gave each one away.

I woke up to smells of toast and egg and coffee and Nivea. Mommy in the kitchen, bustling, humming, cooking. Papa sitting with his newspaper. I went and sat on his lap and read the headlines out loud.

It's the first day of the rest of my life. It hasn't begun well.

Wishing Lemons

With her glasses perched at the tip of her nose she breathed patches of steam on the tram window. She felt very conscious of the fact that this was the night she was running away. She had passed a frozen river on the way. Had contemplated jumping in, but realised just in time that she couldn't swim. Just in times weren't supposed to save her. It always was for others.

She thought about the man with the wishing lemons. Rows and rows of lemon trees in that beautiful orchard. A beautiful sunset in the background and a summer dress blowing around her knees. She had wondered if her legs looked as nice as people said they did and was glad it was warm enough.

All those lemons - all those wishes. Of course there was the possibility that the mass conversion of all those fruits into jams, marmalade, lemonade, pudding, cake, pies etc. would leave a person feeling quite wretched. A wish would cancel out another just as the taste of one lemon dish would cancel out the taste of another. The lemons left on the trees (those that were meant for others) rotted and fell onto the ground and were a pulpy mass squelching under her feet. They were trees of endless possibilities. It was wishes growing in abundance. A lemon in itself was no good. She thought that man was stupid. He was stupid enough to want to look after an orchard like that all by himself. It was stupid how all his wishes failed to take account of others before them. It was stupid how he didn't try making money off of that never ending source of happiness. When she had told him that he had laughed and kissed her for her stupidity. He told her he'd make her a wish dish. Whatever she liked. He couldn't let her do it for herself. There was always the possibility of her stupidity leading to her wishing the orchard away from him. Even in terms of wish dishing, or dish wishing no one knew what they wanted. If they ever did realise it in their dreams (they equated these with wishes sometimes), it was elusive after they woke up.

So, I'm going home. I think I am. She felt very old. Extremely young and very old at the same time. I think it was the coat. The long black coat, boots, the cold outside with the steam patches on the windows and those eyes with the glasses perched on the nose. She adjusted them and everything fell into focus. My wish dishes would be made of rotten lemons.

Saturday

So, Shani must have been really pissed off yesterday. It must have sat in one of those diamond shaped boxes on my astrological chart and decided to see how far it could jump to wreck as much as possible in as little time as possible. Not it's fault. I'd probably feel that way too if I had to be part of my chart.

I'm waiting for all of it to hit me. I'm waiting for my little fuzzy wisps of happiness to be whisked away by the looming reality of something that I can't see right now.

I would if I could, I shouldn't and I probably won't be able to even if I tried...

Wish Upon a Star

I like to think of myself as a dreamer. I have a tendency to get lost in my own world and think for hours on end and dream and imagine and conjure up little fairy tales with real people and real things in my life forming the plot. Ever since I have been a child I remember thinking of something or the other that would glamorize my pretty average life. I still have that. Now of course, it’s a little bit more practical. Now I think about studying, doing well, getting a well paying job, sending my parents on five star cruises, that kind of thing. They’re still huge dreams though. Every time the magnitude of what I want from life hits me and I wonder if it’s ok. I know life isn’t a fairytale. The world is a messed up place because there are numerous people out there who for whatever sadistic satisfaction it gives them like to tell people that nothing is easy, that Santa Claus doesn’t exist, that the tooth fairy is actually just your parents putting money under your pillow and throwing your precious tooth away. The whole exercise is futile. People grow up and eventually find out these things on their own. What’s the point of ruining it for them when they need it the most?

My point is that if life is so hard and difficult to manage, people should just let me see that on my own. I’m not ok with the worldly perceptions ruining my fledgling hopes and dreams because at any given point of time there are people more experienced and wiser than me walking around on the face of this planet. I’m ok with them. They seem to be ok with me. However, I don’t wish to be mollycoddled. I like to believe I’m a person who can work things out for herself. The experiences which have made me believe that about myself are few but still very strong impressions of my childhood.

I couldn’t ride a bicycle. I just couldn’t balance and my mother would come back from work and take me to practice but I just couldn’t keep myself from toppling over. My best friend at that age, a boy from my colony would run alongside me yelling out all the encouraging things children of that age say but I just wouldn’t be able to ride it. It used to bother me that everyone could do it and I couldn’t. Then one day, I remember it was Holi. In the afternoon everyone gathered in the colony to have lunch. My parents stood with a couple of my relatives while I wandered around with my bunch of friends waiting for lunch to start. It was then that I spotted my brother’s bicycle propped up against the park wall. Instinctively, I knew I could do it this time. So I walked over and carefully wheeled it away from any obstacles. My brother’s friends pointed it out to him “woh dekh teri behen teri cycle le ja rahi hai.” He just shrugged went back to playing “kucch nahin hota, use chalani nahin aati.” It was then that I started pedaling and because I’d imagined and dreamed of doing it all along I could do it well and fast and with perfect balance. I still remember my dad’s face when I came and faced him. He was smiling. Out of all the people standing there he was the only one whose face showed that I wasn’t about to bang into any shins. That day I had lunch on my bicycle, with my mother feeding me a few morsels here and there whenever I pedaled close enough. I spent the whole day on that little yellow BMX and it was beautiful. I’ll never forget that bicycle. It was absolutely perfect. I was heartbroken when it was stolen one day and I rode many bicycles after that and owned a couple as well but that was one bicycle which if I could have I would have saved for my kids.

I’m still smiling at that image of me - around 8 years old and wearing one of those frocks (uncomfortable contraptions which I hated but was forced to wear because Indians are very weird when it comes to dressing their children). I taught myself to whistle, to blow chewing gum bubbles and to skip with a skipping rope. I climbed trees, ran faster than any boy in the colony and wasn’t scared of anyone. It was a beautiful childhood. Sure, I didn’t really care about Santa Claus or anything but I think I was able to do all those things because people didn’t bother me or care about me to pay much attention to what I was doing. There was no one telling me I couldn’t so I did.

I never once thought that I would grow up to be a little bit of a cynic myself. I never imagined that when I would look at stars and wish upon them, my focus wouldn’t be that the wish would come true. I would instead be madly hoping that someone would be out there, listening to my wish and at least deliberating upon it if not making it come true.

The thought came to me today when I was sitting on my roof staring at the skies and singing to myself. I realized it doesn’t matter which star you pick to wish to or if you yell your thoughts out to the skies. All that matters is what you wish for and how much you want it. Whether you deserve it or not, is for the stars to decide.