The Kite Runner

No book that I have ever read made me feel like crying. Several time a sob rises up my throat as I continue reading the Kite Runner. Perhaps, it is a work that dissolves the abstractness of words like poignance and despondence into hard core truth.

I read this book in the typical European weather. Under the yellow light of the lamp on bedside, on the couch where sunlight filters through the large French window and on the small 4 seater dining where I drink my coffee with some delicious upma.

It is foggy this morning and I have finished my book. I feel foggy too. At loss with words. It is as though I have been to those streets in Afganistan, as though I have met Hasan-seen him grow up into a fine young father. It is as though I am Amir, and I feel like kneeling down and seek forgiveness from my Khuda. It is as though I am Soraya Jaan, waiting for Sohrab to speak. But I cannot be Sohrab, I cannot fathom the depth of sorrow the little one went through.

It is only a story I tell myself, as I choke on tears. But what a story it is!

A bout of ...

She hurried to the toilet and doubled over the pot. She was sure that she was getting sick. But nothing came out of her mouth. She straightened herself looked at her reflection in the little mirror that hung on the opposite wall. Eyes stung from crying, hair a little dishevelled and the tip of her nose, it had gone a little red. It was an adorable nose. Beautiful by the definition of beauty in their caste. Sharp nose, curving ever so gently.

She wiped her tears, which had already dried .Had Avinash not been away for the last few months, she would have wondered if she had gotten pregnant. She crinkled her nose and smiled. It must be the chickpeas that she had for lunch. Not easy to stomach. Specially when you are eating alone. She tried to shoo away loneliness which had again descended in her little house. She hummed a song and moved about wondering when he will come back.

Playing Piya Ghar Aavenge at BollyExclusive.com

Playing Piya Ghar Aavenge at BollyExclusive.com

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A rainbow

A little happy, a little sad. It's like a rainbow.

Sri had said something like that. On a cloudy day like this I wish there were a rainbow.

I wonder quite often, why we forget our past.... "Which place was that?" I read a friend's comment in face book. I try hard myself to figure where exactly the photo was taken. The photo has couple of girls laughing over nothing. It was us in the college days.

Those days... they end up being a sweet remembrance. Past is all but your memory. It is thus I get scared when my memory starts fading. Is it not in my memory that I still am with my past. I wonder why you tell me to live in the present. This moment now will also come back to me when it is past and tomorrow becomes today.

I feel happy to see that people I had loved are happy. But there is a twang of sadness when I see that their memories of me has faded! Do I never occur to you my friend? Have I just become a nice surprise in your inbox, who you would love to respond, amidst the hustle bustle of your present life. And you do end up sending two lines before you sign off for your weekend.

Such is life. You move on. You make new friends. But is it not the same cycle again. The present becomes the past. Newer friends like Sri... and then life goes by and by and takes away your friends. Is life like an ocean that sweeps your precious shells away from the beach in one wave...and yet in another bestows upon you with splendid new treasures!

(currently reading Catalina, Somerset Maugham...that might explain the melancholy, which is accentuated by the European weather...and no new mails :) )

Will you speak?

Flash fiction

(add a sentence and we will carry the story forward...)

"I am tired of my monologues. Will you say something for a change? Just say anything. Any damn thing... Speak, man!". Seema covered her face with her hands and slumped on the couch. Silence rang like a clamor of bells.
(btw going for lunch now... cu)

Why Marry?

There there, I am not starting the annoying debate on marriage. Nor am I pondering upon the reasons of the institution called marriage. ( At this point I am however tempted to ponder why marriage is called an institution anyway). Hmm, let me brush away these distracting thoughts and tell you about this fascinating drama (not the one you are thinking about!). Well, Why Marry, is a drama penned by Williams, Jesse Lynch, 1871-1929.

Snuggled in my bed on the right side (Linus's side of the bed!) on a wet European morning after a good breakfast I nestled my laptop on my lap and began to read, Why Marry. It was not by curiosity that I landed up reading this drama. I was looking up for free reading material and I stumbled upon http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/.

It is a great resource! I immediately jumped on the prized collection and after a casual browsing decided upon Why Marry? It is a Pulitzer winner drama. It was a nice read. Simple, honest and dusted with a subtle sprinkle of humor! What really amazed me was the essence of marriage or rather the doubts or the questions that the contemporary youth has. Mostly what bowled me over was the fact that the author was far ahead in time in his thoughts. He had a created a NEW WOMAN. The woman you see walking by or working in the next table... This was the NEW WOMAN at that time.. The challenges that this WOMAN sees in her marriage are portrayed so well in a drama of that era.. Be it a balance between life and work... or unsettling truth such as financial dependence is what a woman must have unless she is willing to give in to the legal prostitution which we call marriage. This is a rather bold statement that the author makes.. I am amazed he could think like this at that time...that era!

You must read the book, because my description is neiher a review nor a synopsis. It is just an instant reaction about certain portions that flash in my mind. It was quite witty when one of the character discloses that when he got married a quarter century ago, he asked his new bride..you like tutty-fruitie... The shy bride turned pink and nodded a YES. For a life time together the couple suffered innumerable helpings of tuttie fruitie because both abhored it and were just not able to say it for the other's sake!

:)

Now a lil bit of an update on VID... Vid is holidaying in Europe...Drinking hot Douwe Egbert choclate, watching the rain shimmer in sun like snow before it touches the ground, wondering if life is actually passing by or standing still and reading a little bit... Also she hopes her spurts of writing continue like the shower in the Netherlands!

Doi..

Hey

Hey!

When I woke up this morning, I was in a strange mood. Yes, I had slept till late and well well well there was this bizarre dream that I woke up with. Is it not strange that people we have known in the past visit us sometimes in our dreams, especially when you thought those people were forgotten or were no longer important to you the way they used to be. Anyways, this is the analysis that I am doing now. In the morning I was smiling. I smiled to myself and wanted to call X who I saw in my dream. I did not really debate whether to reach my phone and dial the number but for an instant I almost decided against calling up. Thinking that I could rather summarize my emotions into a piece writing than calling up. That is because words do me more justice when I write them down. Otherwise in a hurry to express myself I often speak what I did not intend to.. So my dream could become a poem or a story. ... I do not know when I abandoned the thought of writing or simply put moved on from the writer's plane to this normal chatty girl. It was then that i wondered whether call up after a quick shower and may be a breakfast than just right then.

As I did not want to keep mum waiting for me at breakfast I quickly showered and showed up at the breakfast table. After the tall glass of freshly squeezed sweet lime juice and a few soaked almonds I locked myself in solitude. Mom must have thought that I was either feeling too hot given the sultry morning or that I was having a headache. Thats because I generally spend a lot of time with her chitchatting. I do not know how she felt when she saw me unusually quiet and a little lost. When she had goaded me to speak up I just smiled at her. It was then that I had asked her, "Ma, if you know something is bad for you for ex. choclate but you feel tempted to have some, what should you do? Give in to the temptation or forget it?". Since it was at the breakfast table Ma told me that if something would upset my system I should rather refrain. I did not give it too much of a thought, or so it seems like when I analyze the morning conversation.

Inside my room I called up X and mentioned my dream. X did not ask what the dream was like. I somehow felt good about this fact. In the sense that the dignity of my dream remained intact that way. Later, i felt that my ream might not have translated well when i put words to it. It was good the way I had seen it.. like a sequence from a novel that I will write one day.

Cheers,

vid

Tring tring

Ok...so this another one in quick succession...

Sri called up... What an appropriate timing. I was literally all over myself... With all my thoughts translating into words, competing with one other to come out first. and as hard as I tried to be rational and coherent, I told Sri that all the things I wanted to share were equally important and did not come in any sequence per se. So... when I sounded a little understandable I read out the first para of my blog to her. She was glad , I guess.

I feel it wonderful that Sri does not read my blogs. I told her so. And she said, she might some day.. You know with me sitting by her side or just like that... And then she said its much more fun to be with me than to be reading about what I am writing..

Suddenly it reminds me of you. You know that I know that you read me! Is it bletter this way. Or did you ever think like Sri? Did you ever think that being with me would be more fun than just reading me? huh?

Well, it was nice to hear what Sri had to talk about. She remembered how we had run through the Park Street like little children. Oblivion of the traffic and the people passing by. It was great... some moments in life... :)

I thougth of Annie today. I was telling R, how impulsive i used to be. I recalled our Godawari trip. Annie and me drove down all the way just like that. Trekked up the little hill and lay down... The blue sky seemed a little closer than usual... I dont quite remember much but the greenery and the trees... and just lying down...

Hmm... I feel like my old self.. Do we change really? I tell them I have mellowed down.. Does that mean that I have grown boring???? I wonder... Hmmm... it reflects somewhere in the posts that I write, I guess... The reader is looking for something quirky...something crazy... or so I think..

It is good that you who read me, know me through my words and people who know me up close know me as me...as the girl with a hint of kohl in her eyes...and pretty smile ;)

cheers to the lovely night..

vid

No comments!

Well, there have been no comments. But so what! I feel like writing. It is good, is it not!! I don't mean not having comments, but having friends in life! Yes, I have coupla friends finally in Kolkata... You guys know about R and Sri and there are 2 more. But R and Sri both are special. So different yet similar. Both tall and ambitious. Both young and raring to go! R is married, Sri is not. But that hardly matters. We can be ourselves...this chatty girls that we are. Independent, ambitious... dreamers... It is great to see oneself in others. I sometimes think I will grow into a lazy log. Having nothing to do, no challenges to challenge myself... I wonder if I will regress into a typical maadu housewife... something Milanese warned me of long back...

Okay, I am chatty today... I know (smug smile...)... Where should I start?? It was a lazy morning... I woke up at 6 and fell back to sleep snoozing the alarm all the time. My decision to start an exercise routine fell apart as I went back to sleep. Yes, I need to exercise.. I am losing all my flexibility. I wonder now that I used to dance so well... once upon a time!!

Hmmm... in the afternoon after a sumptous lunch that comprised besan ka roti, with kachar ka sabji thrown in and mixed with generous helping of curd and crunchy onions. I loved it. Then I sat down with Anuradha Roy's novel. The author is the daughter of my neighbour.. Well in between the pages sleep found me.

Hmm.... there is a disconnect in thought now... Mom dropped in for a chat. So we were talking for a bit! Now I suddenly remember hearing this wonderful song ... aaoge jab tum sajna... angna phool khilenge... Remember hearing it at the store while shopping with Sri this weekend.

I am soo glad there is good music , good food, good friends... Thank you God!

You can find the lyrics here...

My new friend

R walked inside the cafe. Tall and pretty, the girl clad in black saree was elegant yet girlish. We had met twice before. In both instances we had met during wedding functions. It is strange we made friends or rather acquaintance. It is too early to call it friendship or is it? Being friends is perhaps natural to us. In not time we had exchanged numbers and promised to keep in touch!

How a friend of mine, had long ago told me that it is difficult to make friends as you grow older. I could not comprehend him then, as I do now. On a second thought have not my mom and dad had more relatives than friends? During one particular phase of life, friends seemed to be utmost important. With time things change... we enter newer relationships and there are changes. Sometimes we relocate and we leave friends behind. It has been such a journey for me. Having left my best friend in Kathmandu, I have often wondered that will we share the same connect when I go back. With a change of residential address for both of us and change in marital status quo as well... I wonder if our friendship has survived. It is true we might not be in the same plane. But we might strike off again as pals of yesteryears!

Hmm.. back to R. It was nice meeting her! She is a virgo just like Linus. And shares his birthday too. What more she loves scrabble...so we might just plan a scrabble day some day soon!

:-)

vid

Mumbai to Kolkata

Mumbai is Mumbai. In deed!

My short trip to Mumbai will go down as one of the memorable trips in my life. Of course I met Kritin and we fell instantly in love with each other. By the time Linus came Kritin had made sure that Vid Aunty would tell stories only to him. Linus uncle smiled sheepishly as the three year old followed me every where.

Hmm... so we have grown up to become uncles and aunties ourselves. How quickly time passes by! In deed! My 2 nights, 3 days trip to Mumbai was such. Even before I could assimilate the cosmo culture, I am back to my comfort zone. Mumbai is in deed fast. People are go getters or so it seems. But what stood odd was the lingo. Be it a 'tu jaa naa', or 'jaa yeh rakh de'. Odd in the sense that it does not sound polite. And Kritin too is not untouched by the Mumbaiya style. 'ajeeb haalat hai', as he would have commented! I on the other hand come from the school of thought who believe 'aap' a more suitable pronoun to be used while addressing people. 'Tu', I used to think was reserved for people quite close to you. It is such in Nepali. The three distinct pronouns that our language has as opposed to English's YOU, can be appalling to both a child and an English trying to learn Hindi! Bengali has two pronouns, 'tumi' and 'aapni'. Aapni, is reserved for unknown people and people who you are formally paying respect. Other wise it is tumi!

I read about tweets in the newspaper while I was whiling my time in the Mumbai airport. And I should tell you here, I really liked the Mumbai airport. The one at Kolkata is really small in comparison. No wonder I had to queue up for security check for a long time while departing from Cal.

Okay, another disconnected thought... I was thinking this again on my flight.The first thought was to start writing. Writing a blog post, a story sometime soon and more. The next thought was... who reads it anyway.. So may I request my readers to let me know why you come to my corner and go through my babbling? What do you see in my writing?

I am waiting fellas!

Alone

Sitting alone in my room, I wonder or rather ponder. What exactly being alone means. Does loneliness manifest in the movement of my eyes at the sound of foot steps, anticipating your home coming? Or is it the telltale vacant side of the double bed which seems so ghastly as the night progresses?

Not long ago, I had told somebody that my love is like a wine, rather like a red red wine. It reminds me of the poem, My love is like a red red rose by a Scottish poet, Robert Burns. An aquaintence once remarked, that I should trying falling in love in order to arouse my literary stirrings. It is strange that I recollect that yet another aquaintence a few years ago had hoped that the literary stirrings were purely literal! As I try to not miss you, I wonder if we are actually scared of recieving love? Loving someone is not really hard. All you need to do is forget yourself. Like Radha's love for Krishna. The divine love seeks nothing. It only revels in the company of the beloved. And when the loved one plays hide and seek, the divine love gets intensified.

Love that we often speak of as in between a man and a woman is apparently quite different from divine love. That is what 'they' tell us. What is divine love? Is it not the same foolish emotional devotion that a teenage girl professes for her recent crush? How is it different? That moment, that one moment, it is pure surrender. Hmm, now we are losing the essence of love in the web of words. Words like purity and surrender! Love perhaps is a habit. When my sister had left home for higher studies , it took me several nights before I could adjust to her absence. We used to share a king size double bed. WHen she moved out, I rolled over to her side of the bed. Perhaps in an attempt to fill up the vaccuum.

Is love sweet nothings then? The twitters of love birds that I hear in the morning ( I like to believe they are love birds :-)). Is it why I meaninglessly call you for the umpteenth time, half afraid that I might be annoying you. Love cannot be too big or too complex. It must be simple. It must be a red rose, or a yellow one or just pink. It could be a green leaf, it could be rain.... it could be the coffee I make for you. It could be the integration sums that dad taught me. It could be learning to live life. It could be the strength to look ahead. It could be the sheer creativity to innovate a smilometer to capture your day's smiles!

Missing you Linus,

vid

Drowning ...

Before I close my eyes
And let the waves suck me in,
I wish to feel the same warmth
I wish to feel the heat of love.

The waiter hands me another Margarita,
I wonder if it is I who washes it down my throat
Or is it you who pull the strings
And wash away my poise

I am lost or I have lost
I am not me anymore
I look into the mirror
The hair dresser tells me that the new look is killing.
I wonder if she actually knows that I have been dead for a long while.

I stir in my sleep,
You hold me tenderly,
Pull my cheeks into a smile...
and hands over my shoulder..
Is it only in my dreams that I embrace you??

I wake up with dark circles under my eyes
Was it the drink, I wonder..
When you pull me close
"Your kohl has smudged" you say.

No more of your games
No more empty gazes driving through the wall
No more trying to make sense out of this wordy world
It is just me who is bobbing her head ...

Have I drowned... or am I drowning
I wonder , as I order yet another drink.

I want to be a ...

how would life be, if I were a log! Hmm... I would lie the whole day in bright sun. I wouldn't care if the air conditioner were on or not... I would not sweat!!

If I were a log, I wouldn't fall in love. A log afterl all is a fallen tree! How could that which is already fallen still fall further!!!

Sometimes the devil pokes out its head. My lazy mind doesn't even bother to shoo it away. I ask him, what is it that you want. Mischief!, he says with a gleam in his eyes.

What if I transport you back in time, when you were still young and fancied falling in love? The devil asks.

I look at him unfazed. With time definition of love has changed, dear devil (no resemblance with IPL's dare devils, mind you!). What once kept me preoccupied has become a different philosophy. If I go back to the time, I see a young reckless driver, talking to an illusive lover while driving her car alone.... With the fast change in time, I see the driver in me has disappeared. I avoid driving. I do not enjoy it anymore. Is there any correlation between driving and being in love? Or any covariance..hee hee

Glossary:
std deviation of x X standar deviation of y X correlation xy= Covariance

Another one in quick succession

This is going to be a quick, curt and quirky post...

So my dear Ankils and Auntijis...if you are reading my blog..kindly stop reading at this point... I regret I ever disclosed to the relative world of mine (know what I mean... :P) that I have a miniscule presence in the web. Well, then you lose the whole damn point.... Minkoo do not use foul language... Damn! I never knew damn was foul... (pls note... my pet name is not Minkoo :P)

Hoping that I have pissed off the clan of write good feel good relatives, let me move to a pungent world.... What is pungent really? The smell of Hydrogen Sulphide in the chemistry lab...??? That is the memory of a time gone by... God... how I hated Chemistry...organic chemistry to be more specific..

So, why does the world have to be perfect... I sometimes wonder if perfect is actually beautiful? I ask myself is not perfection an obsession? Imperfectness is natural... Wear a pajama and a loose t...let your hair hang loosely on your shoulders... don't bother if your brows have been done... or your upperlips (damn! why was I born a girl....men dont shave their chests, do they? then why bother with eyebrows!!!!!!!! ) Why bother that you are looking great while all you want to do is enjoy that movie that you were dying to see.... I sometimes wonder if certain people have only one parameter in life... 'gotta look good!'

what about gotta feel crazy.? I sometimes wonder why i am this good girl... is it how we ought to be once we grow... okay let me state the obvious... once we grow old!
Need to smile when you should...laugh politely when you should... bear boring company when you should.... GOD!

Am I cribbing? Hmm...that should be the surest sign of getting old...or is it about getting creative... a satisfied soul seldom writes... unless there is some restlessness the fingers do not click on the keyboard....

I think of it now... I have not told Sri that I blog... Or I would have an avid reader (another avid reader, as I would like to believe!!! ;) :) ) .... Sri...has she been introduced yet? Okay, let me tell you all, vid has a friend called Sri... She is another crazy soul...so obviously we get along well... She doesnt think i am 'proper proper' probably because she doesnt know me from skool... she thinks i am this pagal pagal girl....(girl..not woman...aha) ...

More on Sri later...

good night for today...and thanks Susant for reminding me that I have a blog!!

Signs of growing old

It has been a long long time that I have made a list. A list of crazy things??? Well, well well.... Vid is no longer crazy... thats because she is growing wise...grr did somebody say old!!!!!!!!!! :D



okay top 10 signs:

1. Birthdays become a chore. It is another day when you are eating out!

2. You catch the smell of tobacco on a teenager and realize that you have passed the phase when you could have fagged..

3. You look for straight cut relaxed fit jeans and prefer them anyday over skin hugging trousers.

4. You have very few single friends... And you tell them tragedy in love is a state of being high..a magnificient stupor that few experience!

5. You have more relatives than friends!!

6. You wonder what to blog about? No crushes to rant on... no more meaningless chatter... no fictitious star or GOD who would smoke grass...

7. You struggle to list out points after you reach the 6th point.

8. Blank

9 Blank

10 Blank :P :)


A toast to my readers,

Thanks for having checked up on me after all..

vid

Adding some spice

Tadka laga!!

Hmmm.. as JB (my once upon a pal in Switzerland) used to say, a majestic marriage has made Vid quite unimaginative. So, I took stock of my life today and realized that it needed a tadka! So, here is a little imaginative story... ;-)

What's a life without heartaches, at least it is quite boring for a budding writer. Heartaches give you immense material for creativity, trust me! When the tummy is comfortably full, all one can do is doze away! Well, to feel the pangs the tummy needs to be empty... a contended heart can write no poems...

Anyways, let me try to add some spice, for my dear readers. Yesterday evening I looked in the corner of my heart. I shuffled about to see if there remained the love that I had stashed away a loooong time ago. Hmm.. the telephone wire lay ripped apart...the connection is gone, the poet sadly realized. Ah! those were the days when the lover in me would behold the world in tears and promise that this love shall last me a life time. And when the spring has come, and I make an attempt to clean the kabad I find broken records! I am not a great listener of music, but there was a time when life seemed to be a beautiful song. Young and reckless, the heart would keep falling in and out of love. But now like a wine in cellar, my love is resting undisturbed, maturing day by day... Ah, Linus don't you feel lucky!! Hmm..

So, despite myself...despite the mellowed, and matured.... yet sensuous and subtle , I pick up a shred of what seems a broken heart and examine it. The love seems to have seeped away from the shattered piece. Should I let him know, I muse. Imagine calling your ex beau to tell him, that there is no connection anymore. Who would do it? Someone, who would dream of going bungee jumping, or a bored writer who has no other spice to stir up a delicious story! No, cooking up stories mind you!

As soon as I flipped open my 3 year old Moto razer, I realized I had not fed the number corresponding with that broken heart. Hmmm...

"hellooooooooo"

"hmmm...., tune mera number feed kar rakha hai?"

"kaun bol raha hai???"


ooops...wrong number!!

I hang up hurriedly and decide to take up culinary classes in stead of giving writing a shot. Mom calls me in the kitchen and asks tadka daal or plain daal..

Since I have a sore throat you know what happens to the tadka!

It's been a long long time

It has indeed been a long time, that I have written something for myself. So, what am I implying- ghost writing or blogging as a profession! Ahem, it is the latter which is occupying me at the moment!

So, let us connect to each other from where we had left! My dear reader, I am thankful to you that you manage to pull me out of my hibernation time and again. That you bear with me even when I (regularly) let down the promises of writing regularly!

Now, that I have decided to finally write for myself again, I feel free! This is a strange freedom! I do not know what I will write. I wonder if I can still pen down stories that tug the heart. I ask myself if I still have that curious writer in me, who will pick up the story of the chai wallah at the entrance of passport office in Kolkata. Can I spin a story around the chai wallah and his nod to the security guard standing in the window of first floor of the passport office indicating that the person sipping his chai has paid for more than the tea and should be allowed to jump the queue. Can I start a story called 'gate pass' as they call it there! Can I write about Mohmad who I met in front of the passport office. Mohmad who looked like a young ruffian but promised that my file would be dug out if i could pick the tab for some chai pani!

Hmm, okay so that was my ramble from my tiring to and fros to the passport office. However, I scented a story there. The way the chai wallah threw in a cup ful of sugar in the boiling tea. The way a little boy sat near his stall eating daal bhat. The way an old lady sat on a stool selling passport forms. The dalals (brokers) moving to and fro fishing for a customer.

There must be more material for a story... But well isn't it wonderful to see a story in there. I wonder if I will be able to describe you the long queues, the impolite gatekeeper shooing away the crowd, the noise, the hustle bustle, the anxiety and more!

Hoping to write some more tomorrow!