Living in London

I have no clue why people in India ever decide to leave and go to a western country to spend a large portion of their lives.
I mean after staying in US for a year, and right now 2 months in London, my conviction that India is the place or me, is getting cemented.
There are way too many things to consider here. Let me begin with the amount of work one has to do, with domestic help being as costly as half your salary maybe

Every time I get up to do something, ,I need to think on the lines of "how to minimize work, in washing utensils".
Points to consider are:
 -Reuse the spoons
-Just rinse and use the same pan twice for making tea
- every time you finish something, immediately keep it in dishwasher so that there is not a load of stuff left at the end of the day...and all such stunts

and each time I go back to my life in India...the grandeur with which I used to throw every utensil I used back home in India..without a care...that is so much much missed

Then lets come to the medical stuff, I had to get a few tests done, and for that you need to be enrolled in a surgery, which takes a couple of days. I am not sure how someone who comes here fresh manages it, I had a spouse living here for 10+ years, so I could manage faster. Cos if you are not enrolled, private tests cost you a fortune, on the lines o 150 pounds which translates to 15,000 rs. for tests which would hardly take 1000-2000 rs in India.
Then comes getting an appointment, even a bloody blood test which only takes a couple of seconds, takes you a week to get reserved. One of the test is available only after a month..holy f*** shit!
There are some tests which had to be timed in a certain way, which is unpredictable, and if you dont get it right then you may as well wait for a month for the next opportune moment, since the booking always makes it a week to come by..HUH!
And the reports also take a week to come, and they dont even give you the report, just let you know if its good or bad!!

3rd comes the conveyance bit. Someone like me, who does not earn billions, could afford an auto which is so easily available and I can get one as soon as I get down my flat. Never knew something like that could be a luxury in foreign cities. So if you dont drive, your life can be quite hellish and dependent, in this unknown country. The trains and buses and changes can leave you exhausted, unless you are in the heart of the city, which is not affordable by all.

For someone like me, this life seems a struggle!!

And I wish to be back, back for good, to my old India. The haggard, poor, much looked down upon India, which has always given me the wings to fly, and every where else I felt tied.

Amma...

..means Mother

Mother, is not a word, its a kingdom
Ruled by a woman, who becomes God when she becomes a mother, whose territory no man can reach, not even a father

Her smell, is the smell of everything safe and comforting, even when you have grown old
Its only her who can bring back all the memories of your childhood, things you never knew you did, are etched in only her memory
A child unknowingly is always turning to his/her mother...in ways s/he does not know..in ages when they dont even know that they seek their mother everywhere they go..those who have had the privilege of having a mother for most part of their lives..and have been loved by her in every new phase of their life they entered

My grand mother(Ma's Ma) died last month, 19th of September, and I cant believe its already a month

I was preparing to fly away to London the next day and got to know the news early morning..I still recall my mother's voice, who had flown down to be with Amma(As she had been sick for a while and for a week her condition was alarming) "चली गयी अम्मा .." (Amma is gone), and a for a moment I cried like a baby...not for my ties with her, but for all the ties which binds me to her in ways which are difficult to explain.

I was never her favorite grand daughter, from the beginning. I was this spoilt girl, who dint behave like a girl, who would raise her voice and argue over things with her. But with time, we both(I believe) started respecting and admiring each other. Though both of us being little stubborn, would end up not talking to each other for long duration of time.

I postponed my London plans, and since her rites were to be done the next day morning, I just had 40 minutes in hand to book a ticket and get on the flight. I was not sure I would get it, but something in me told me I had to try, to at least make it right this one last time, with her.It would have been a regret of a lifetime, if I could not manage that. But eventually with a bit of struggle and pleading with flight people, as I was little late, I managed to get the flight.

She was a poetess, a writer who wrote of her own life and people around her in such a poetic way, which made her life always look larger than life. She also published an assortment of her poems called "नदी पुकारे " (The river calls). Each of her grand parent, who have had little interest in reading and writing can vouch that their first love for writing has come from her.
I still recall that as a kid, in-spite of me not being in her good books, she would never hesitate in appreciating what I wrote, or anything intelligent I said or did. She was unbiased that ways.
I started feeling very proud of her gradually, when by and by I realised that for a person her age, and her era, getting a bachelor's degree and teaching in a college was such a big thing, yet she did it.

Married at an age of 13 years, when she still played with dolls, and going on to finish her studies and then become a lecturer was an achievement for which I guess her husband and my late grandfather should also be commended

She was a mother-in-law at the age of 39 and a grand mother at 41 and then a widow at 47. She lived next 35 years of her life moving round to all her children houses, sometimes feeling loved but many a times she felt like a burden,neglected....cos in our society a woman without a man is made to feel like that. And she being someone who held herself in a very high esteem, would feel that more often than others.

When she felt most dejected, she would sometimes quote this couplet from Bahadur shah zafar "ना  किसी की आँख का नूर हूँ, ना किसी के दिल का करार हूँ " (I am not the light of anyone;s eye, nor solace  for any heart)

For her final journey all her children (my mom, 3 of my aunts and their husbands, her son and his wife) were there, along with some of us grandchildren.

We all sat around her body, the whole night, one last time...talking about her, her humorous nature, her distaste for anything below her level of decency, her desire to be always around people, her idiosyncrasies and her undaunted love. There were times when all of us broke into peals of laughter talking about her, and then the very next moment everyone would go teary eyed.

It felt like we were circling around a huge mammoth mass of sadness, scared to poke it, gently touching it with memories, to sooth our hearts and stopping it from tearing us apart

When her body was taken away, my mom and all my aunts held each other and cried like a baby...and as we grandchildren stood aside and watched them, I thought that losing a mother is a grief only her children would ever know. A space noone can enter, the sadness noone else can fathom. only the ones who are her kids, her babies

She was a woman, quirky, whimsical, stubborn, talented, loving, possessive, disciplined, adorable...sometimes disliked, sometimes looked up-to, sometimes she made some jealous...and much much loved..Amma

I still recall the way she would sometimes ask me, when we met after long
"कुछ कह सु ..." (Share something Su..)
Till we meet again..and share our anecdotes, our loves, our chitchat..once again..like million years before

Its only words..

"Have a a good life, and get what you wish", someone says this when they are about to disappear from your life

"Take care", someone utters this as habit, while leaving you all alone

I hate such ending lines, said so often by people who actually leave you alone
Who are never there with you in your worst moments, but say these "feel good" sentences..which actually makes them feel alright with themselves for the moment

I know its a formality many a times, but sometimes you really want the person who is saying it, to stay back and take care of it all

If I have to take care of myself, you dont need to tell me to do so, I would do it anyways, while knowing I am alone in this
But if you do care, stay back and take care of me
Dont ever ask me to do it all by myself...your asking me does not help me one bit

I do feel & sound like a fanatic sometimes, when it comes to relationships
I make every word count, and I make every single moment etched in my brain, to MEAN something
Meaningless has no space in my arena

I wish I was one of them to say those things, while I meant nothing close to it
I never can, all I have to give someone I leave is emptiness, in words and in feelings
I can never conjure enough great sounding words, to salvage my leaving and going away from someone's life

I am really stuck tonight, to follow the words or to follow the heart
Should my heart swoon at someone saying the right words, of "love", "commitment" et al
Or should my heart listen to the unsaid, and believe its own beats

Cos after all "words are all you have to take my heart away"

Its strange how the words betray you...like they do...with me
I begin to write something and my words fly away...I totally completely forget what is it that I began with

Tonight shall I believe the superficial and esconce myself in the grandeur of the said
Or feel the unsaid from someone, who never had enough words to tell me anything

Love has roots in places you never knew existed in your heart

Can you be you?

I don't claim to be blemishless
But I can only claim...
That I would give you my darkness, for the darkest in me
The pure dirt, for the dirtiest in me
Never the impure dust

But if you give me white lies, for the black in you
I would smudge my dark, and my dark would rot in me
Into a rotten quagmire, which would make me, unrecognisable to you
And bring this US down

Cos its only the dark shared, in its truest form, in us
Which can ever bring us to light...!

A single lie destroys a whole reputation of integrity

I don't do well with lies. How small or big they are
And also moulding a truth, blatantly staring at your face, into small piles of lies so that the whole big pile is a big lie, yet the person doing it considers everything as SMALL

whats the problem with some people to not state the obvious, and degenrate into lies, when it is so much easier and better to just blurt the truth and get done with it?

Honesty can be so beautiful.
Some people just shine, and we know its the blatant honesty in them which gives them an aura

you dont need to be the best..just be honest...to be a greater person than who you are right now..even if the honesty affects you badly

the pathetic attempts to hide the obvious, the pain to stand by a lie(which would not even matter in the long run of life) ,gives a certain ugliness to people, beyond their imagination

Some people lie for nothing, like these:

“I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible.”  

" A liar knows that he is a liar, but one who speaks mere portions of truth in order to deceive is a craftsman of destruction."

"I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you" - Nietzsche

"It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one" - George Washington

The moment you drop your guards, the moment your face falls, and then shines with the truth,
there is a bit of me that becomes yours, and there is a bit of you that becomes mine

In that moment of truth, we own each other..thats the only way to own and be owned
Every lie is a separation, a killing of something which could have been

"I step into the harsh light of the truth,  because when you stand in that light
You make self right, you find forgiveness
you find happiness, you find love"~ One Tree Hill

His antics and my heart

 He comes near me and sits quietly, tired from playing in the playgroud
Very unlikely for him to be so low, given his high energy levels, at all times

I tell him I need to go, for some work
And he, inspite of his low energy, squeaks "नहीं, तुम मत जाओ " (No, you don't go)

My love for him finds its roots, and I stay back for a few minutes, all the while trying to distract him with something
"I will get you more mentos (his favorite toffee)"
And for once he is not excited, his face shows his disinterest and he does not smile

"Show me your drawings, what did you draw today"
His governess shows me, while he unwillingly and half heartedly participates
And the very next moment he is back to "Don't go please"

Sometimes your heart just fills with love, and saddens at the same time.
With all the premonitions...
The future of him growing up and growing apart,
Me going out of his life..
All that in just that moment of sweetness, when he so wants me around him

I try again to take his mind off my going away, while I attempt tp quietly slip out

"Look at this song on TV, its so nice..your favorite"
 "When this song finishes, then you can go"..he tries to bargain, and looks up at me..to delay my going

And I love him a little more..if thats possible!

I tell him "I am just going to Sony world(a place near his house) and come back soon"
And his face lightens up

He goes to the couch and lies down face flat
I ask him "whats wrong?"
He says "निन्नी आ रही है "(I am sleepy)..and he really looks so tired and sleepy

I ask him to give me a hug,he opens his arms and as I hug him he says softly
"You are goign to Sony world na? Go to and come back soon!"

I just wish he forgets that I promised to come back, and is cheerful once he wakes up..which am sure he would be

My guilt of lying to him, weighs me down...

Oh the million ways this heart can break!

Empty heart

Sometimes the heart is completely empty

You try to fill it, with all the notions of happiness

With things like : Count your blessings, reckon your achievements

But the walls of your heart reject each and all of those ideas, like mismatched blood

Or is it that some people are just made like that? Their DNA rejects drips of sanity and happiness?
They can only filter out grief, absurditiies of heart, malfunctioning of brain

A forlorn, miserable identity carved into their system, unknown to them

I tried making happiness complete me
But what made me whole, was the emptiness of it all