Random Thoughts

Behind the pine trees
Barely visible
Sat a lonely green bench.
Overlooking the golf links
On the other side of the road
And an equally green golf grounds behind.

A bench that I called ours
Where we sat
And shared notes.
Opened thick books
Some notes, pens and pencils
To find answers to those impossible Physics questions.

We walked down the winding roads
A few staircases
And shortcuts down the hills.
Leaving behind the busy town
To sit on that green bench
Where he and I could find some quiet and solve some blessed sums.

There we sat many a times
And over a guava pondered
what we were
and what was to be.
For he did not know where he was going
And neither did I know where I would go.

There we sat one day again
Heads bent over the books.
Between the notes and numbers
He shuffled and shifted
Took a deep breath
And told me he loved me most.

It was so careless
I thought I heard him wrong
I bent over and laughed.
Finding my breath
I looked at him in wonder
And seeing him sombre I knew it was for real.

A few days later
With a clear mind
I sat there on that bench again.
And he stood behind leaning against the back rest
With a forlorn look
Trying to figure the future.

I took time but said ok
And then he smiled
That is all was said.
Our fate was sealed
Is what we thought
And promised to be together.

I wonder who sits on that bench now
Will I find it there?
Like I found it more than a decade ago?
Has it changed?
Has it been coloured?
Or does it sit there green and lonely waiting for someone to come?

I feel like walking those paths again
Between the trees
Up the hill

I feel like sitting on that bench again
A hand distance
Where he sits and I

I feel like sharing a guava again
Between silence and smile
Unsaid words

I feel like walking in the rain again
A careless stride
A wistful thought

I feel like being me again

Current Location: Home

A song
An old novel
A book- mark
A lone rose between the pages

Open windows
Slight drizzle
Soft breeze
Stories from the past

That love
Simple passion
The hurt
Some unanswered questions

This life
The hues
And reminiscences
Things that make rainbows

Current Location: Home

Lame. But I don’t know how else to express myself. Many a story to tell, no words. I have been working like crazy and of late I have realized that I have forgotten how to relax. Life seems to have taken a backward plunge. Then again, maybe it is just a passing phase…

Doors shut.
Quiet anger.
Hassled thoughts.
Suffocated.

Cant hate.
Cant love.
Cant breathe.
Contempt?

Cloudy days.
Dark nights.
Silent scream.
Sleepless.

Life
none the less.
A compromise.

Let me capture the memories before they fade.

Rotti Kallu! What a name!

Excitement was written large all over the place. An office trip with people I like, people I didn’t really bother about, people who were almost invisible and people who sat right next to me but were total strangers. We were all one family though.

The Origami family.

Sethu and Ben spent a sleepless pre-trip night collecting romantic, emotional, Tamil, Malayalam, pelvic thrust, loud, disco and various other kinds of what can be called songs. Their disappointment was boundless when the next day they discovered that the bus had no audio players. Neither did it have any power plug-ins. So all the effort of carrying two laptops were also for nought!!

The bigger challenge was the supposedly 6 hours of journey without any songs to dance to.
So disappointment it was from the word go.

Or on second thoughts maybe not.

The pre-trip night was sleepless for me and Lolo too. Needless to say, because of all the day wears, night wears, trekking wears, evening wears, warm clothes for the chilly night and a pair of shoes each, that went into the poor bag.

We escaped being teased about carrying the largest bag the next morning. After all it was the two of us and hence a larger bag. Ravi and Ashu wondered once or twice about the bigness of the bag. They bought our explanation.

No one noticed though that there was another small bag stuffed with just-in-case wears.
There was a brief pre-trip evening meeting too.

“7:50 sharp the bus leaves. All of you who come in late please find your own means of transport to Rotti Kallu.”

That was Ashu on a serious note.

I guess everyone in Origami listens to a serious Ashu. Aishou was quick to point out that the cut-out time was 7:15 and not 7:50. Ashu predictably contradicted himself.

“7:15 is what I said. Everyone heard right?” And he had this sly smile on his face which is pretty hard to catch, unless you watch him closely and intently.

He is always the heart of all the fun that anyone ever had in Origami. I bet no one would veto that. For the louder ones he has loud on the face jokes. For the subtler ones he has these blink-and-you-miss kinda after-thoughts.

I remember him saying “Dogs pick up fast” when Sanjoy unabashedly said “My dog is a loafer, you know.” And Sanjoy had no clue why me and Lolo laughed.

I guess these days in Origami; no conversation is complete without a mention of Sanjoy. He is all that you don’t want your man to be. A few people may beg to differ I am sure. There are some who worship him, is my guess, or maybe not. He is supposedly creative. That is if he chooses to bestow his highness’ kindness on you and pick up your ‘shitty-limp-void-of-information’ brief (Yes each and every person in the client servicing team is a dork. They don’t know who their clients are. They don’t even know what creatives they are selling to the client) and use his precious brain to cook up something and produce an out of the world idea for the client requirements. Wow!

Ok this is not about him.

He didn’t even come for the trip for fear of being left behind in some deserted street while he answered nature’s call or for the fear of being pushed into a crocodile infested river. These were, by the way, ideas considered seriously a few evenings prior to the trip, in one of the famous Origami drinking sessions.

This is about us and our dear trip.

So finally the D-day was here.

7:00 am and all of us including Ashu were at Origami.

7:15 am some of them started walking to the gate.

7:30 am some of them heard a bus. Wrong one though.

7:35 am Deepa and Lakshmi frantically started calling the Travel Agency. They are usually not late. The bus would be reaching any minute is what they were told.

A couple of false alarms and a few excitements later the boys started unscrewing the beer and wine bottles. After all this is what they actually live for. Drinking!

Cricket bat and a ball came out of the bags and a few of them actually seriously played, forgetting all about the trip.

Meghana and Rahul busied themselves with their camera, clicking away to glory.

8:30 am everyone heaved a sigh of relief. We finally saw the bus at the horizon, slowly coming into view. (read – the bus coughed and chugged its way from the end of Railway Parallel Road)

So we were actually going to Rotti Kallu... I was beginning to think that the whole episode was a farce.

All of us, well almost all of us chose a comfy zone for ourselves. A few of them wanted a better bus. How can one travel in a music system less, AC less bus. To top it all the km reader was kaput. So this bus was a total wreck. Written off by 22 Origami – ites.

Another frenzy of phone calls by Lakshmi Madam and Deepa.

The poor cornered driver had only one escape route – “This is not the actual bus. The actual one is waiting at the bus stand. I was only sent to pick you guys up and drop you at the bus stand.”

Lo and behold a line of buses to choose from at the bus stand. After a bit of I-don’t-know-what’s-happening kind of looks on all 22 faces and a bit of embarking and disembarking off buses the blue bus at the corner was finally pointed out to be the actual bus that was to be Rotti Kallu bound.

It was a little weird though because as we were about to board the bus one, two, three...no four (or were they five?) people alighted groggily from the bus.

We patiently waited as the doors and windows were slid open, the curtains opened to let in some light and clear the night air.

The seats were ugh! But it was ok. I mean who cares about the filthy seats as long as we were going where we wanted to. After all it is the destination that matters most (or did I read somewhere – savour the journey for once you reach the destination it is all over- or maybe I just made it up).

Everyone finally settled in.

Time to go.

Time to go?

Well not really.

The bus would not start. We thought it was another joke until the weird looking just-out-of-bed guy at the wheel announced that the battery was dead. Needed some tweaks, turns and jigs to be revived.
Another frenzy and scurry and we were all out of the bus not knowing if this was the bus or yet another one.
Lakshmi Madam was promptly at her phone screaming at some poor Daisy or Dorin or whatever her name is. She said something in Kannada which sounded like one of her conversations with the client who didn’t pay on time. (She gets to make a collection call when we (read - client servicing executive) have the blessed opportunity to happily give her the phone number of the finance team of some xyz client)

9:30 am and we were still very much in Bangalore and hungry like pigs. Our fabulous plan of stopping over at some exotic locale to have breakfast fell apart.

The cart-walla selling breakfast right next to the bus must have gotten out on the right side of his bed. His lucky day. Very very lucky day.

22 hungry stomachs to feed!

A breakfast of mutton brain, roti and hard boiled eggs.

Yumm!!!

Well the mutton brain was gooey and gross as it sounds. It didn’t go too well down my throat and almost came right out of my mouth. Thankfully I gulped it down faster than it started coming up. So it was mutton brain curry sans the brains, roti and hard boiled eggs for me.

While we ate the boys pushed the bus. Twice in the reverse direction and twice from behind. And voila! The bus chugged to life.

Yippee!!!

The 2nd happy moment of the day. The 1st was when the 1st morsel of food for the day went into my mouth.

Before I forget to mention, in big and bold letters, it was written on the two sides and rear of the bus V R SIMPLEY SMART

How apt. The occupants of the bus were simply smart. No doubt.

So finally.

Yes finally (sigh!) we started off for Rotti Kallu...

The journey is yet another story.

Every time we stopped and a few of us got off the bus, there was a head-count before resuming the journey.
“Is everyone on the bus?”

And we would all look at each other mutely, as if waiting for the one not present, to lift up his hand and say “ Nope, am not here. Gimme two minutes and I’ll be right on the bus”

Eh!

Thankfully someone suggested head-count so unless we were all 22 heads in the bus we would not resume the journey.

The girls, excluding Meghana (she wisely chose the almost last seat like the guys, where all the action was), chose the first few seats on the bus. Made ourselves comfortable, so comfortable that within a few minutes Aishou fell asleep with her mouth wide open.

That sent Ben and Sethu scurrying behind the bus looking for a camera.

One of them got a pretty brilliant shot for everyone to laugh at later. Aishou being Aishou shrugged and then screamed and then laughed with the rest of us.

Well Ben and Sethu stuck to the front seat with the girls for reasons known only to them.

In the meanwhile, the back seaters, who by the end of the journey called themselves Team A (short for Team Alcohol I suppose) drank bottles, after bottles after bottles of beer, whisky and rum.

In their bottleness (ok that’s not a word at all. I just invented it for want of a better one) they failed to notice that one of the coke bottles quietly slid out of the seat, bumped its butt against the floor of the bus and punctured itself.

Ben first thought that Lolo peed (really?!!??) and Lolo discovered it was flowing from behind. Ben then followed a wet trail to discover the poor punctured coke bottle lying helplessly there in one corner under the seats.

Ponnappa was the chivalrous one. He instantly reached out and picked up the coke bottle only to be sprinkled by coke. Instinct made him turn it away and Vinay was the worst hit by coke shower followed by the girl in the Maruti car. Ponnappa, in a stint to save Vinay from the merciless shower, held the bottle outside the window only to realise that there was this pretty girl inside the maruti car, getting coke showers as well. What went through the girl’s mind, when the surprise coke shower hit her from the bottle held by a stranger, out of a bus window right above V R SIMPLEY SMART, we will never know...

What followed inside the bus is what everyone will remember though.

A strip tease by Vinay! Obviously because coke-stained-wet-t-shirt is like yuck!

Thankfully, a few photo sessions and whistles and wows later he got into another clean and dry t-shirt (or was it the same one after the coke dried off?)

One huge realisation: Drinking alcohol makes you feel like peeing every one hour. (Oh Really!!)

Every hour we stopped over by some petrol pump, some jungle, some paddy field, some almost deserted road, some dhaba, almost anywhere actually.

I drank only a little water. Careful not to feel like relieving myself on the journey but I guess I was a little too careful. I felt like running to the loo every time they stopped. But none of the stop-overs were appropriate for girls (Ben personally scanned all the stop-overs to decide whether they were appropriate for girls).

I must say, when it comes to peeing guys are the very lucky ones. Whenever and wherever( almost everywhere) they feel like it they can relieve themselves.
Ok that is a little gross.

Coming to the point, they finally found the most appropriate spot for the girls to respond to nature’s call – someone’s banana farm.

A fateful day for the banana farm where we girls happily peed together.

What a relief!

Before I forget, by we girls, I mean Aishou, Deepa, Lakshmi Madam, Meghana, Lolo and me.
I’ll introduce each one of us elaborately some other day.

The rest of the journey was kind of more comfortable after the event at the banana farm
Though I was dying to be at the back seat where the action was, I smugly sat in front for fear of throwing up. Like Lolo I also have this slight motion sickness. So for the earlier part of the journey I was either staring out of the window gazing into nothingness while my ears strained to listen to the fun at the back or dozing off.

I finally took courage to walk to the middle of the bus occupied by the slightly serious, slightly fun gang who looked normal and not nuts like the ones who occupied the last seats of the bus.

They were playing rummy I guess. Well card games don’t appeal to me much. Not as much as a word game or a puzzle or a riddle.

And so I followed Deepa, Aishou and Lolo to the last seats and joined in the game called D.O.N.K.E.Y (rules as usual laid down by Ashu)

Strangely I did not feel pukish. I wisely decided that its all in the head.

The rest of the journey was not what one would call a treat to the bum. With all the pot holes and gravels on the road our bums barely touched the seat.

The journey ended with Ashu teaching all of us recite some Tullu must-learn gibberish, after all we were to holiday on Tullu land. I wonder if those words really meant something. (and after all these days Ponnappa remembers all the words perfectly. What a memory I say!)

After 8 long hours, around 5:30 in the evening we finally alighted – tired, dusty, bug-bitten, and hungry yet full of josh and anticipation for what awaited us at Rotti Kallu....

What followed is yet another story....

Jyoti’s been telling me since ages to read Paulo Coelho. She says my style of writing is like his.

I am flattered, yet I never felt like picking up one from the stacks. At most I would pass by those Paulo Coelho novels on the Landmark stacks and reach out for one of them, and then decide against it. Honestly the covers never appealed to me. The sound of Alchemist(thats how its spelled I guess) is still repelling. Feels like some old dark, depressed story of some forlorn years...

And if I write like him then definitely his books would be depressing.

All I have scribbled so far, with the intention of turning them into a biography one day (don’t know who would bother to read them), are about heart-breaks and lost love....

I guess all love stories are the same be it a happy ending one or a sad one.
There is a boy, there is a girl, there is love, there is magic in the moments they spend together and then there is separation and heart-breaks. Else there is a happy wedding and then...

And then who wants to know what follows...

Ok, now this is about yesterday. The 26^th of August ’09.

Waiting for sis to finish her meeting, I walked in to Landmark, thinking to myself that as usual I’d either pick up a Tin Tin or an Asterix and settle down in one corner. I ruled out Calvin and Hobbes because I didn’t want to imagine and smile at Calvin's imagination (they otherwise feel authentic and nice though, and make me laugh).

And then I could not find those stacks...they re-shuffled the entire display. That’s how Besides the river Piedra I sat down and wept, happened.

The title was, sort of, captivating (because it was a sentence, unlike Alchemist) and I turned the page and read the same sentence again... hmmm not bad... then read the whole prologue and then walked to the billing counter and bought it.... I thought to myself that I need to record this before I start reading the book. So here I am writing after a long long time, recording a historic moment in my life

Beside the river Piedra I sat down and wept....

PS: Its the 3rd of Sept today and there are 2 more hours until tomorrow.... I have'nt had the time to touch the book... its quietly adorning our living room racks. Hopefully this weekend I'll have sometime to read... and thats called wishful thinking...

Looks like its been 36 weeks.... 36 weeks since I have been here.

And how these weeks passed?

I have no clue.

Seems like it was the New Year’s Day only yesterday.

Life’s been busy - celebrating Christmas at home after 4 years, heartbreak coz of having to return to my life here, meeting targets, dealing sensitively with clients, subduing anger that almost made me feel like beating the life out of this client or that over and over again, squeezing out of impossible situations and bitching about creepy creatures....

And time simply flew.

The other day I dreamt and on impulse I keyed in a message just in time to catch him leave. Yeah just to catch him leave. Feels like I am living on the edge. Old fears seems to haunt sometimes. What can I possibly do? I am just a by-stander.

I realized last evening how difficult it is to write about someone, when there is no passion…. The writers muse as they put it…. He is no muse. He is a real guy in flesh and blood and there is nothing extra ordinary about him. He is just another guy. And to put into words what he is to me is not easy….

There actually is nothing much to say. Yet I choose to write about him. Maybe there’s some kind of magic happening here or maybe not.

We simply met because he was there and I was there at the same place, the same time. Were we destined to meet? A difficult question. I simply don’t know. And never really pondered over it because it never crossed my mind to think if we were destined to meet and if there was any purpose to meeting him at all.

He was just there and that’s all. Or was it?

Silent and calm. His smile would melt your heart. For once it set me thinking if he was this tender person who would fall apart with a single chaff of wind…

I was wrong.

He withstood the storm and came out of it scathed yet strong.

The lady chose to simply walk out on him. Maybe because he was too boring for her. Maybe too predictable. He was too good to be true – always loyal, ever caring. And he never stopped loving either.

He waited for her a long time. And then he realized that she was no longer with him but with another man. And he was left with no choice. So he walked away… Dreams shattered. Confidence rocked. Heart broken! It took him a lot of strength to walk straight. He shut himself in and starved for a few days. But that was not how his life was meant to be. Maybe he would turn back one day and look at her but for now he had to return home and gather his life from where he left it…

Through those strange nights of staying awake and speaking with faceless people, he would be there silently watching, unaffected by the harsh words and the swearing and the ‘kick some asses’ flying around.
He took challenges to his stride. All tough situations were dealt with finesse. I use this word because no other word so perfectly describes the way he spoke his way out of difficult situation and made the other person agree with him.

He was this pensive man who seemed so deep in thoughts most of the time. A philosopher maybe.

After a few cordial hi’s and bye’s and some smiling at each other when our paths crossed, he finally decided to pay me a visit. It was the day I first tried my hand at cooking biryani, some four years ago. I was there busily trying to get the recipe right and put in the correct amount of ingredients when he knocked… I was more shocked than surprised. Reason – I least expected him to come knocking at my door. He sat there silently. There was very less to talk about. And I am sure I amused him with my non-stop blabbering and cooking at the same time… and I am sure I shocked him even more when I asked him to taste whatever was the outcome of the elaborate recipe. Yet he ate it all without complaining and even appreciated the food, with an amused smile though… and the smile said it all…

He was the man who tasted my first ever biryani.

It was a heart to heart talk at the end of it all….
After a bruised heart and a long silence I finally found a kind soul to listen to me. I must point out though, that he usually fell asleep at the other end of the phone…

Lets hang up and catch some sleep – I’d say and he would want to talk some more… and in the middle of some story he would go mute. He made it a point to either profusely apologize the next night or deny completely that he ever slept off on the phone…

I gradually discovered that it was easy to tease him and make him blush. His ears would turn red and he would smile a suppressed smile. I also discovered that he was a man with emotions as well, not as pensive…but composed all the time…

I feel calm when his thoughts cross my heart. He is the kind of man who would silently listen and quietly understand. Even when he differs, he agrees to differ!

He is the perfect guy to fall in love with, get married to and settle down to a normal eventless life and rest assured that he’d be there forever taking care and loving you.

I do not know how to end this story… or is it a story at all? Some reminiscence…a peek into the past… a story that would continue for sometime…for as long as we continue saying hi and sharing some tits bits of life…

I keep complaining that A has no sense of responsibility. He does not have the decency to keep promises. He is not honest. He shrugs off duties assigned to him like dust. Most of all he'd say he'd be there and he would NEVER be there. There'd be more important things to attend to... more important commitments...

He is the typical city guy.

Life in the city is so cluttered and cramped. 24 hours aint enough to eat, drink, smoke, work, complain, bitch and have multiple affairs.
As soon as its time to hit the bed, its time to wake up again... Sigh!!!
And amongst all these very important, cant-miss-the-deadline, cant-stop-to-take-a-breath thingies, we forget to retrospect on our lives.
Friends and foes are placed on the same platform. As life goes on people become islands.. and when its time to slow down and give way to the next generation, they are left all alone, confused. They see a stranger in the mirror.

There are innumerable number of A's here in the city where i live. The 'I am the dude' A, the 'know it all' A, the 'over confident' A, the 'i-lie-but-thats-diplomacy' A etc etc. What goes on behind their over confident mask is what i could never conclude.

Of late I have realised that its so easy to complain and judge , to be a by-stander and comment on what other people do and say.

And yesterday with some shock I realised that I have become one of the A's.

She told me he was upset. And why? Because I missed out on being honest. I failed to see that they are friends and I could be myself. They would not mind and they would never turn their backs on me.

I have become indecisive. I find it hard to utter the truth. And most of all I have become diplomatic even with friends!!!

This scares me. I guess am walking the 'city' direction. I am walking the wrong path.

I want to retain my sanity. I want to face myself in the mirror each morning, recognise the person in there and smile.

Hence a silent promise...

hazel eyes,
golden curls,
tinkering voice..
laugh like she will never cease.

she looks,
you melt.
love or compassion?
its all an utter confusion.

come closer.
she looks,
and looks through you.
she smiles and smiles to herself.

tears.
forlorn look.
her eyes 'glitter'...
with thousands of stories untold..

played.
took pleasure.
trodded forbidden zones,
discovered hidden treasures.

freedom new-found.
friends likewise
at youth
played its own music divine.

she thinks.
she regrets?
young she was,
as she is not today.

life that was,
life that is now.
time lost
in between lust and true love .

she cries
yet she laughs.
for the days that are left,
sunlight she tries to gather.