Psychedelic Slippers

"श्रावणमासी हर्ष मानसी हिरवळ दाटे चोहिकडे , क्षणात येती सरसर शिरवे, क्षणात फिरुनी ऊन पडे " माझा कवितांसोबातच्या आठवणींचा प्रवास इथून सुरु होतो. बालपणीचे कित्येक " Family weekends " आम्ही कवितांसोबत घालवलेले आहेत. "सुवर्ण नौका" अणि "सौंदर्य कुंज" असे  कधी काळी आई-बाबांना (बहुदा) कुठल्यातरी वाचनालयात मिळालेले दोन काव्य संग्रह आमच्यापाशी होते. त्यातल्या कविता बाबा आम्हा सगळ्यांना वाचून दाखवायचे . सहसा जेवणं उरकल्यावर आमची ही मैफिल रंगे. बाबांचा काव्यप्रवास कुठून सुरु झाला नाही ठाऊक पण बाबा कविता फार सुंदर वाचतात . वाचतात काय, बाबा कविता जिवंत करतात . त्यामुळेच हिरव्या गालिछावर डोलणारी फुलराणी मीच आहे , आणि "छानी माझी सोनुकली ती, कुणाकडे ग पहात होती " म्हणत तिला चिडवणारा वारा म्हणजे बाबाच आहेत असे नेहमी वाटायचे.  बाबांनी  उभा केलेला , मर्ढेकरांचा "गणपत वाणी " माझ्या भावाला आणि मला खूपच आवडायचा . ती कविता आम्ही बाबांकडून अनेकदा वाचून घ्यायचो. बालकवींच्या संगे आम्ही  दूर डोंगराच्या पायथ्याशी वसलेल्या पिट...

Gargo is a 2 week chapter in our (me and Charlie) life. An innocuous little pup walked into our door, almost dying and freezing to death.  It was convulsive and severely dehydrated, and we felt it wouldn’t live through the night. But force feeding ORS helped. We got some medicines for it. It took 3 pairs of hands to get them down its throat. Thankfully it lived. And it was as grateful as a loyal dog could be. For the next couple of days, it kept trailing us everywhere. We were forced into an ersatz motherhood. We had a crawling 3 months old, that every couple of hours would nudge either one of us available for food, and then rush to crap and pee.  He wouldn’t let us go out of sight and would start jumping the moment he saw us in the corridor. I must admit, it felt nice to have someone waiting for you at the end of the day, and greet you ever with the same excitement, every single day.  When we headed for breakfast, he would crisscross between our feet happy and gay ...

Many years ago, a male friend quoted, “a girl/woman in a relationship is somehow more attractive to other guys”.  I didn’t really give a thought to it then, it could have been well merely his opinion. But what with guys liking girls who are already with someone else (and vice versa) I thought it wasn’t as simple as that. At a broader, abstract level, we as social creatures, seek conformity in our actions, a kind of acceptance. We are more willing to conform to something that has been already accepted. More than often we conform to social codes, rules, without questioning them because they already have some acceptance for them. We tend to believe that anything that has been accepted should be worth accepting. The other way of looking at it, and this one’s a personal favourite, is the Damsel-in-Distress Syndrome. Okay, there’s no such syndrome really, and I came up with the name, but it fits. So a couple of years ago, I had this friend who thought a girl was driving him nut...

How to come to terms with your past? It’s a question that probably haunts many of us and we choose our own ways. It was a crazy night, last one. We sat talking through it. Whether there was a real need, m not sure, but then it had to be done. I was supposed to start, I wasn’t sure how to, I placed a question. And he drifted ten years back for answers. His journey was detailed, steady, slow. He remembered the good, the bad. He wept. When we build relationships, and when we fight for them, for a long time, the roots go deep. I was smiling. May be I wanted him to feel where those roots are. But he prefers to dump those thoughts away and move on. I am smiling. My story is haphazard. There’s no start or end. I pick up stories from memory and tell him. I am not sad. I can only smile at the pure joy in those moments. I can only smile at his innocence, and feel happy for it. That it was a part of my life, once. I can’t remember the fights, the quibbles. I can remember they happen...

  Photo Courtesy: www.petermichael.com “Fear is a bad thing and unworthy of you” - Jawaharlal Nehru (in a letter to his daughter) I am not a feminist. I am an avowed tomboy. I have been pondering for the past half an hour, over what it means today to be a woman, and my head is now a clutter of thoughts flowing in all directions, and I have to write, to help it settle down in my head.  We all are raised by a set of beliefs, the word belief here not restricted to a certain sect or religion (one could be raised with a belief that one is a princess for that matter) and these beliefs shape the course of our lives. So one is raised to believe that one is a woman, and the other is raised to believe that one is a man and then they both are bogged down by societal definitions of what one should or should not be. Well the differentiation by nature into a man and a woman is purely functional. Something nature chose to do to prevent over abundance for all you care. Like ...

If any place can claim to be lazier than Goa, it must be Kolkata. The city is lazy in an almost aristocratic manner. The stronghold of the East India Company, Calcutta still retains the regal air. You must drive across the city to see how much of their mark the English left in India. While other imperial strongholds, like Kanpur for example, have given up their regal legacies to time, Kolkata is almost pompous about them. Massive imperial architecture spawns the breadths of the city, it’s almost like you were walking across the streets of India of the 1900’s. The English came and whitewashed the city, and the city decided never to change itself again. There are boards above shops that probably haven’t been touched since they were first placed there. The fonts of those early days are visible everywhere, from shops, street signs to buses. While the rest of India follows a black with yellow stripes norm for taxis, Kolkata is different. The taxis are chubby ambassadors painted brigh...

Everyone of us must have heard/read about the three wise monkeys, cliched in India as "Gandhiji ke teen bandar". To break the popular notion, they aren't Gandhiji ke bandar. If the monkeys had to chose a patron, they'd probably pick Confucius over Gandhi. Unlike the lions in our emblem, these three wise monkeys have their own names (credited to some etymological misinterpretation of course), Mizaru (who sees no evil), Kikazaru (who hears no evil) and Iwazaru (who speaks no evil).They embody a philosophy of living. A philosophy that most strive to live by.  Mizaru is a personal favourite, not simply because the name is much simpler to say, but i find him more intriguing. "See no evil". Three simple words, yet so profound. What do they mean? Does it mean, we blind ourselves to all evil? Or does it mean Bear no evil? The monkey misguides us, we are tempted to ape him. Will evil reduce if we blind ourselves to it? Well our perception of it may change, bu...

Beginnings are difficult. They are slow, and they require you to be patient. You need a push to start with. And then you need to gather yourself up. At times you need to create a ruckus and at others you can just slide in quietly and take place. And then hold your stand. Change is difficult too, cause it doesn’t happen over-night.  You can’t build a conscience in a day, you can’t erase one either. Change is slow, and it requires patience. Habits are too difficult, too difficult to let go, coz letting them go would mean change, a change towards a new beginning and beginnings are difficult. Habits give a sense of stability. You are charting on a known territory... Sudden change is unfamiliar, gradual change gives you an opportunity to condition yourself.  You cannot overthrow a regime overnight... it will only cause chaos. Like transplants, you need ready replacements. Replacements that can gel in , and fit well. But also you need to condition the system to accept...

As a student with some of the best grades in class, I grew up with a lot of dreams. I remember dad always pushing me to dream bigger. I’m sure am not the only one who grew up this way. Since school we are always pushed to perform better (girls, boys alike). Through high-school, college, parents fuss over grades (as we gradually begin to let go of them). Not only academics, personality development is also emphasized upon, you are encouraged to be a part of myriad extra-curricular activities. The general idea is to make you not just academically brilliant, but smart, outspoken and in general an overall genial being. What do you want to be? We hear this question over and over. Then we are bombarded with the big word “career”, and we knock doors in search of career guidance.After all this, when we have graduated and settled with our job we are said to have begun our career, or laid the foundation stone for the rest of our life (in most cases, besides those who plunge back into academics...

"It's in my genes!!!" How often have we used this as an excuse, especially when we don’t want to change something, (be stubborn). It’s an easy way out. Genes are what you are made up of at a micro-micro level and since that’s what you are born with, there’s no way to change it. We use this as an excuse for overweight (underweight), for bad hair, even our moodswings and tempers. But do our genes determine our behavior? We learn, we evolve, when it comes to behaviour, it’s not cause it is somewhere in our genetic makeup but its cause of the way we have grown up to be. There is no gene for chauvinism, neither for ego-centrism, envy, and temper. How we react, respond or behave can be attributed first to our maturity at that point of time, and secondly our past experience. Just like we aren’t born with pre-defined destinies, we aren’t born with pre-defined behavior. A child that grows up seeing quibbles and fights is likely to be short tempered just as a child that grows up...

There comes a time in everyone’s life, when you begin to see the other side… and life as you know it is changed forever. “Marriage” After you’ve grown up to be a certain age, suddenly everyone’s obsessed about marriage. Then begins the “Big Search” from matrimonial sites, to random suggestions from family n friends, you undergo one of the most grueling phases of your life, sometimes even worse than job search. I used to laugh at the old movies where the girl comes with a tea tray in shivering hands to sit coyly in a corner infront of the “ladkewale”… sadly it still happens. I thought times had changed, yes they have, they don’t ask you to sing any more. That’s it …. Rest all, observations, speculation, analysis, goes on just as before. “Wedlock” is reduced to a well calculated choice… like buying a car. 1.        You wanna buy a car, you check up for various models. You check snapshots. 2.        You shortlist some...

**I tried to put it all in one post... but it didn fit in well, so here's the first installment. you might wonder what i am trying to get at by the end.. but please wait til the next one...** If we look back in time, to the days of Rajas and Maharajas, we’ll find many women that stand strong. Then may it be Rani Lakshmibai or Jijabai… not only were they well educated and adept to stand amongst strong men (strong here implying by valour and stature) but they were also very independent women, who took decisions that shaped not only the destinies of their families but history as we know it. Somewhere along time the trend reversed, women took a backstep, and their role in society was diminished to merely home-makers (I am not undermining the task of home-makers here, it is indeed a huge task). Men earned the bread, women served it. It is said education empowers you. In the pre-independence era many prejudices plagued the society, one of them was the social inequality faced...

too many "me"s... i read something hoping for some answers, i ended up with more questions. no its not helping. Its like there are multiple conflicting "you"s ( or should i say "me"s)... and then you search for something inside you there, and you find more "you"s ("me"s) and one moment u can relate to them all, and then next moment they are all different. if we were all created, and if the purpose of life was to get liberated, then why was this whole mess up the way its messed up. its as if u were part of some video game, and the designer kept adding complexities (to just amuse himself??) or may be make it tougher, but then isn it he who s leaving? what if this all is just a "matrix" or something vaguely similar... more like a huge trap, and you just got a find a way out. How does it feel to know that you are just here for the amusement of someone up there... the whole world something like a massive cock-fight... or some biza...

Been a year. I came from a Pond. a tiny little Pond. my Pond you could say. I 'd been there for a long time. Well u don't exactly count days in ponds, ya but long long time. I was born there i guess. No one remembers where they were born anyway. But i was born in Pond. It was huge then, though its tiny now. We lived in West-End; me, mum-dad, and yes my brethren.When we were kids we would swim all over west end, me and bro. We'd explored most of West-End. It had a tiny ridge, that was our favorite hangout. Me n my pals would go there after school. When i was older i was sent to the big school at Central Spring. I hated to be away from West-End. But then i fell in love with Central Spring nevertheless. Here's where i made a hell lot o friends and we roamed the whole of the Pond. The Pond was so huge and beautiful. You could swim whole day and never tire of it. There were these beautiful sea-weeds near the Loop. The loop was this nice lil place where there were these hug...

the inability to think would be a curse you d say, but then thats just the tranquiliser you need, to stop it from exploding. to freeze out the thoughts. To not feel... to not feel your own self living like something you hated, loathed, despised. Something you lived against. To not feel yourself "living" the way life meant to you, or to not even find "life" holding the same "value". to give up life as you knew it for a life the way its presumed to be, just for something thats supposed to be revered above all.... but then you do think, and you cant stop thinking, and that's why being a presumptuous careless bitch is much easier

she stared at the infinitude that stretched beneath her feet, the endless blues that gave wings to her dreams and the promises... promises in sand, promises on the ripples, promises to the dawn... promises to herself; promises of a way a life would be, would be lived, would be felt... and then the confessions, confessions of deep desires, and then the waves resounding the voice back. the voice that made promises, and promises to keep them. he stood by her silently, not wanting to disturb the tranquil figure that stood defiantly in the gushing wind, teasing it with her fragile strength. a fresh gust shook her, he drew closer, sliding his fingers between hers. she smiled. ...the promises, the promise of love, of a life together, of a home, of adventures, of a companionship to be forever. she leaned back on him, he wrapped his arms around her. she smiled back at the sea... a weak smile, one that acknowledges a defeat even before the onset of a battle. " I love him" she whispered...

'Give me your love' said she, 'Give me your dreams' said he 'Give me your pride' said she 'Give me your mind' said he

Hello world, I am here to talk. No not promises, speeches n slogans and stuff of that sort. No just gupshup. Yeah the around the corner “hi! Hello!” stuff. Candle light march? Ahh yes id been on one.i walked with a candle talking about my day, and movies n stuff. No I din’t speak on camera, just to people I knew. Some I met after long. Huge turn out. What opinion? I don’t know what to say. No am not the ‘neta types’. M just a peaceful little person. No I don’t crave for media attention. Ahh yes it would be nice to have your photo in the paper. No but not at such things. No nothing political. I don’t want to be associated with anything remotely political. No pro no against. Yes I do think about it, sometimes when everyone’s talking. No actually not much. Then it passes. Newspaper?? Ya I read. No news channels, unless it some 26/11 or tsunami o world cup coverage. No I don’t read the newspapers, just page 3. It depresses me. Just the headlines sometimes. Just a glance. But I prefer lis...

Patience is a lost virtue...

While graduation marks the end of an epic, it also marks the beginning of a lot of first times, one of the foremost are long distance relationships. The word relationships here not being restricted to the strictly romantic ones. Work, studies, time pull you apart. Sometimes geographical distances are the barrier, sometimes temporal. but what stays is the word distance. and then some day some snaps remind you of some people, you add new people on your phone list, and old ones are phased out. As you age, you have more n more people to keep track off, and trust me this can be an overwhelming task. so here are a few tippers, to save dying LDRs , to preserve the ones, or to build up on em... there are a certain things that need to be understood at the beginning. First "things have changed". That you have moved places is a "fact" neither parties can run away from, so embrace it. Secondly you have moved apart cos of a reason (cause) etc. and that often has more to do with ...