it was wet, windy, cold and dull for over 36 hours without a break, the perfect excuse to snuggle under a 13.5-tog quilt and a nice book to read. but i couldn’t escape my physiotherapy appointment with tatenda at 10 in the morning, so i set out for berkhamstead grudgingly.

i wished the supposed-to-be-one-hour-long appointment would go on till the rain stopped, but 30 minutes into the session, tatenda was already handing me another date and time and telling me to run along. i should have taken her advice seriously, because the only bus that i know runs from berkhamstead to hemel, passed right in front of my eyes.

i whined under my windcheater-hood, dug my numb-with-cold hands deep into my pockets and crossed over to the bus stop anyway. i was trying to read through the thick condensation on the glass-cased bus schedule, when an old lady under an umbrella slowly approached my side of the footpath.

concerned old lady: oh dear, you just missed the bus…
me, surprised at first but smiling at her: hmm i know…i guess it’s another half-hour’s wait now.
old lady, now stopped to talk: awww, where do you have to go?
me: hemel…
old lady: you’ll freeze to death out here in the rain darling…why don’t you start walking in the direction of the next bus stop now…(leans her umbrella between her head and neck and tugs at the sleeve of her own coat to glance at her wristwatch…)
…if you get there in 15 minutes, you’ll get the small bus that will take you home. it’s a longer route but it will get you there. you won’t be very wet i promise…

brightening up at her suggestion, i thanked her as she waved goodbye. then i wondered why she stopped to help, amused by her accent and grateful at the same time. walking in the direction she had pointed, i soon realised she was right about the 15-minute part…because i never seemed to get there! i couldn’t even see clearly behind the curtain of rain and i was thinking of how welcome it was in india…i never carried an umbrella then, or a raincoat, and everytime it rained i would rush to the terrace (be it my office or home) and offer my face to the clouds happily.

the sight of several red lights along the road brought me back to the streets of berkhamstead, and i could finally make out the faint silhouette of a bus stop in the distance, a traffic jam, and cosy people inside bright cafes and dark antique shops nodding their heads and sharing their feelings about the weather. about time i thought, shrinking further into my jacket and looking around for the bus.

two minutes later, there it was! just as she promised, just like the bus from one of forster‘s stories…a small bus appearing through the mist, full of very old and beautiful people aboard, armed with scarves and coats and walking sticks and umbrellas…

it took me over an hour to get to hemel, but the route was a more scenic one. i saw a content woman take her four dogs for a stroll, and a broken down wall of what must have been a castle long ago. the bus stopped for every old person on the road who even lifted his or her hand a little. it stopped for one very old woman who took at least four minutes to wobble to her seat, and it was then i caught the face of the driver in his long concave mirror, his eyes following her to see if she was safe and seated, and comfortable.

that was when something touched me inside, and the rest of the journey was not so cold anymore.

birthdays have always been memorable for me…

i find it difficult to sleep all night, thinking of how the day ahead is going to be. then i wake up early, and trouble everyone within five miles of my sight 🙂

for me, birthdays are sacred. schooldays were when i was always bullied around, but on this day, i wouldn’t care. it was like i was carrying an open secret inside me, brimming with a silent excitement, looking expectantly at teachers and brightening up everytime they wished me a happy birthday with a little kiss on my then-verry-chubby-cheeks. i remember my mother slipping tiny silver payals (anklets) around my feet while she *thought* i was asleep; i remember my father holding my tiny hand and walking me to the nearby temple one misty december afternoon… as years went by, i remember my friends coming home, and then me taking them out when i was working. the gifts were not important, the wishes were, except when it came to one very close friend who once made a grown-up girl carry four white and blue balloons all the way home!

call me shameless, call me greedy, but i make it a point to collect every wish, every small joy, and treasure them all through the year, till the next birthday comes along. i guess kya karen, v are like this only! totally in contrast with praveen, who remembers nothing of his last birthday (which was just two days ago)…

birthdays haven’t been the same since i’ve come to the uk…no sarson ka saag and parrippu pradaman made by amma, no flowers at midnight (praveen prefers gifting the entire plant, but there’s something about fresh flowers no? ;-), not as many wishes as i would like (owing to geographical distances and lack of friends here!)…

but last night i decided that this time would be different. i decided to gather as many wishes as i could, and that i would be happy no matter what i did…after all, it only comes once a year! and guess what? it’s worked!

zubin came over late last night with a cake; my wishjar has been a hit and praveen gifted me keri smith‘s activity journal. i pampered myself with a homemade besan+turmeric+rosewater paste followed by a quick shower; cooked one of my favourite dishes that i had never tried before, (and it was yummmm)! somehow i’ve been on the phone with someone or the other since 5:00 am! i spoke for over 40 minutes with my cousin and bhabhi in the US, maasis and mamas called, cousins emailed, and this year i reminded three people (one friend, two colleagues at the pharmacy where i work part-time) that it was my birthday and so they *must* wish me. the friend who i was chatting with online instantly called me from mumbai…

phew! i’ve been having a terrific time, and i’m exhausted, but i still haven’t had enough! so go ahead, do your good deed for the day…i’m still collecting ze wishes 😉

it took a simple-laparoscopy-that-turned-difficult, three incisions on my stomach, eight tablets three-times-a-day, frequent plunges in my blood pressure, and an(other) infection to make me realise how i take my body for granted. i think we all do, sometimes. but this has been a good lesson, perhaps also a practical one…when your body is sick, you are a slave to its demands. no matter how hard you try to run, you will go only as far as your body takes you.

on the brighter side, i have been resting like a baby, cared for and nursed, and i have had the best food in ages (only praveen can make a convincing combination of cabbage and cauliflower sabji)!! i’m still very slow to react, it hurts when i laugh, and i walk like i’m 10-months pregnant (!), but i am recovering fast. thanks to the person who would run away at the very thought of visiting a hospital or a sick friend.

well, not that he had much choice really, but right now, i feel blessed 🙂
touch wood

———————————–

before i hit the bed again this afternoon, i have to write about the one scene that has been on my mind since last week.

…about a dark-skinned father and his little dark-skinned boy.
i was on my way to farringdon station for an interview, and the boy’s quiet preoccupations captured my interest. sitting right next to the glass barrier (which divides the seats and the automatic doors), the boy played with his own reflections, while the father scanned through pages of the metro. when the train stopped at the next tubestation, many commuters got in, some crammed between feet and files, and some leaned against the glass barrier itself, their hands behind them and out of the way. the man leaning against the boy’s glass was bald, white. he had his back to the boy but his hands pressed on to the glass, unaware, revealing a rich white skin and deep red lines where the skin folded.

the little boy was puzzled. he stared back from the glass for a moment, for the reflections he was playing with suddenly vanished. he looked at his father hesitantly, who only continued to browse the paper. slowly he turned to the glass again, and wondered. he was a clever child, for in a minute he slid his little hand around the glass as well, and pressed hard. however hard he pressed though, his hand didn’t turn the shade of white that had awed him at first.

i left the train and the father-and-son, thinking…this must have been the little boy’s first lesson about colours, and one of mine too.

all the rains in june
and one evening, secretly
through the pines
the moon

it’s the middle of november. i don’t know why this koan is going around in my head tonight, but i had to get it out. these days i have been missing my friends more than i usually do…i look out for familiar faces in the town centre, and think up stories about one of them dropping home for a surprise visit. i look out of the window when i’m cooking, hoping to catch a glimpse of a familiar face walking by, so i can run after them and say “hey! it’s me, rads! what’s up?”

maybe i just need to get (even) more active, more creative with my paints (when the walls are done that is). maybe i am really missing talking to my friends…dhaval, malini, deepak, gulnar, ganesh, sanjeev, siy…maybe 3:45 am is not a good time and the pain is not letting me sleep…maybe i need to stop rambling and go to bed anyway.

*sigh*

on the brighter side…

my wishjar is ready and waiting to be opened.

like all dutiful wives, i have been taking care of my husband and my home with lot of love and care. apart from all the laughter and tears we have had together, for three long years, i have tried to accept the fact that praveen needs to learn about gifts and surprises, and i certainly have been happy with what i already have.

so for our third anniversary next week, i decided to be a leetle more practical instead, and this is what i did:

tore a single a4-size paper into tiny square chits, and wrote a wish on each one of them. these are not wishes for the moon or stars or world peace, but simple wishes for little surprises that go a long way in making me very happy. then i folded them all and dropped them in one of the pringles–dabbas i usually use as piggy banks (complete with a neat hand-made slit for pound-coins or loose change lying around). then i wrote down some basic instructions like “…open the box, slide your hand in and pick out a chit. use it to make my day!”

i know, i know, it’s selfish of me etc etc, but it’s the only way to keep us both happy! for one, it spares him the ordeal of thinking of *what* to buy me and how to surprise me, and then get beaten for getting me something totally un-explainable (like chocolate chip muffins for karva chauth!)…besides, in a way i have forgotten of what wishes i have dropped in the box already, so i still can pretend i am surprised! i also added a note above the box that the wishes are ‘best before’ april 2005, so hopefully, one of us would have learnt something by then …

for now, i am quite excited and i think it will work. will keep you posted so you can try this at your home too 😉

you learn the value of something only when it is taken away from you.

diwali used to be about food, oilbaths and shikakai, new clothes, lots of lamps and kandils, cousins, friends, wearing sarees and visiting temples, food again, distributing sweets to neighbours, meeting everyone in the common colony compound and bursting firecrackers late into the night. but that was in india.

the mothers did the cooking, the fathers did the spending, and we did all the shopping together.

for the past three years diwali has been about solitary attempts to make chaklis and rava laddoos, well-over-20-minute-phone calls to mumbai and kerala where the receiver is being passed around from one relative to the next, all of them wishing we were there too, or complaining about the noise and all the smoke. diwali has been about my mother calling just when the night is filled with the noise of firecrackers, and her asking me: “did you hear that, are you happy now?”

diwali has been about remembering and reliving the celebrations in the years that have passed, about having to choose the heavy and weary everyday-jackets and woolly coats over lovely chudidaars and sarees from home that lie waiting in the wardrobe, about having to light tealights or candles over rows of the traditional diyas–all ‘inside’ the home because it’s either too windy or wet outside, about having to forget about the kandil and firecrackers altogether, and shop not for new clothes but for the sake of tradition.

it has been difficult, trying to be our parents, smiling each time i think of the girl i was like. but i know its the only way to keep diwali alive, and i tell myself at least i am trying.

diwali is also when ramesh uncle celebrates his birthday, and so yesterday i called knowing that the entire family would be getting together. of all the loving uncles i have, ramesh uncle always manages to leave behind words that would have me thinking or happy…they could be any kind of words, his thoughts about the current political situation, something he read in his gujarati newspaper, or his parting words when i touch his feet. more often than not, his blessings are straight from the heart and they always have come true for me…before i set out to work in bangalore, before i went for my first vipassana course, and just before i knew i was going to get married. i wished him a happy birthday yesterday and he asked what i had been up to. i told him that praveen and i were busy renovating our house ourselves for the past three or four months and that these days we had turned into painters…

uncle: bahut achche beta…apne jeevan ke saare khushiyon se paint kar do, deewaron ko jeevan ke rangon se bhar do (very good dear, paint the walls with all the colours and the happiness in your lives…)
me: (smiling already) er…uncle, hum log to lekin white se paint kar rahe hain (…but we have been using white…)

at that point we both laughed and i said white did have all the colours in it, so i would remember his words as we painted the rest of the house.

—————

since we had been visiting the watford hare krishna temple more often this year, praveen and i decided to take a break from the paints and watch the fireworks display they were going to have there at night.

two and a half hours later, as we returned from the temple grounds, freezing from the cold and the long walk back to the carpark, we were both smiling. somehow, the mixed smells of camphor, incense and sandalwood, the picture of a content radha and krishna in their elegant pinks and peacock blues, the cold wadas soggy with chutney and sauce and the hot reviving masala chai, the sight of the firecrackers colouring all the sky above our heads, the smell of the smoke that followed soon after, the cold air and the peace that stuck to our skin and clothes and soul made us feel that its okay… that all this and more had always been there deep within us, and that we could reach it whenever we wished to.

hope you too had a happy diwali 🙂

some days ago, my mother sent me …hundreds of little clay diyas, a box of my old fabric colours, about fifty of my favourite photographs, four chip magazines (called digit since four years, i think), and a brand new non-stick appachetti…all the way from mumbai.

it felt like a forgotten part of me had come back. it reminded me of things i had missed seeing when i was busy looking for myself…dance, music, painting…i wanted to relive those moments that had made time fly, paint away like there was no tomorrow, walk through the pictures i had taken, and just be myself for a while.

all of a sudden, i could think of millions of things to draw and paint, as if the box that arrived by courier that day contained not the terracota items but inspiration herself!

so until late that night, i sketched and shaded and erased and corrected and sketched again, trying to create the sound of dance on my workpad. somehow though, one of the two sketches didn’t seem right, yet it was my favourite. afraid that i might spoil my drawing by painting it (something i have had a reputation for), i left it untouched on the table. yesterday, i picked it up again, decided that perhaps painting it would eventually blur out the flaw that i still couldn’t see…and hunted out my two-year-old but-used-just-once-box-of-made-in-uk-watercolours.

wash after wash, colour blots, streaks and patches and two (or three?) hours later, it was ready. i was quite satisfied, except that something about it still didnt look right. at night i tweaked it a little more with some light and shade effects and left it aside again before putting out the lights. in the morning, i asked praveen if it looked okay now (for he too had agreed that something looked amiss).

five minutes later, we were both laughing. my dancing krishna has two left feet!!

learning of the day: in life and art, there is no [ctrl + z].

once upon a time there was a king who was loved and respected by all his subjects.
this king went out for a walk one day, and a demon grabbed the chance to sit on his throne. the king’s ministers were at once terrified and disgusted with the demon’s appearance, so they all looked away from the throne and decided to ignore him. enraged, the demon began to grow larger and larger, laughed menacingly and growled for their attention.

this left the demon greatly puzzled. suddenly all the king’s ministers too turned towards the demon and as a result, he began to shrink steadily. he grew smaller and smaller until he disappeared totally from the scene…
— old indian myth casually retold by my srilankan yoga teacher, santoshini.

we all have our demons inside us. sometimes we don’t recognise them, and sometimes, we do. sometimes we think if we ignore them long enough they will go away. but they don’t. we are all so wrong.

these days when i’m not painting my clay pots, writing, or learning to breathe, i am looking at my demons.
i think they too are just beginning to notice me now.

i try to capture

the lotus creator
a figure asleep on
the bed of snakes
a long haired woman
seated by his side

my page reeks
of oil paint
guilty,
messy

yellow, peacock blue,
red and green and black
the colours of vishnu
are on my hands

and now they smell
of dove soap.

i have shorter weekends and longer saturdays now…if you know what i mean. and i’m learning about bananas.

for someone who’s always run away from the word ‘medicine’ itself, i’m surprised i enjoy working at the pharmacy (saturdays and alternate weekdays) for four hours a day. it keeps me moving about (much necessary for my backpain, which is why i signed up in the first place), keeps me in constant touch with people of all sorts and sizes, and besides…makes me feel less guilty when i want to impulse-buy a new tshirt or book, or new shoes 😉

the pharmacy here is no different from the ‘chemist’ store we have in india, except that the systems here are …well, totally different. no handwritten prescriptions to start with…everything is typed in on separate sheets of paper. if you’re above 60 or under 16, if you have a tax-exemption certificate, are pregnant or have some kind of medical exemption certificate, you don’t need to pay. for lesser mortals like us who pay the tax regularly for all these mentioned above, there is a charge of �6.40, for every medicine prescribed.

in india, everyone paid for their medicines, and everyone was seen by the doctor. he/she patiently listened to all your woes, health-related or even about how your servant doesn’t turn up on time, and then writes down some medication that usually treats both mind and body. the dispensary i used to visit in thane had someone (i think his name was gaitonde) to dispense medicines just by the door. patients waited to see the doctor outside in the waiting room, they gave their little handwritten chits to the dispenser and waited for their medicine-pudis again. the whole place would smell of bitter tablets, sweet syrupy cough medicine and dettol, and i would watch in fascination as the two hands and ten fingers blurred, breaking whole tablets in half, picking up tiny envelopes to drop the halved tablets in and mixing colourful liquids in amber-colour bottles to take home…all within three minutes or less.

he would also suggest some home remedies for you to get over the side effects of the medicines he’s just made. and then he would put his big head (along with the nehru-topi) out of the little hole in the wall and call out…”chala, naeeext.”

in the uk everything is different. you have to pray that you fall ill at the right time. that is… anytime between monday noon to wednesday evening. if you were bad in a previous birth, you might fall ill on a thursday morning; when that happens do consider before the receptionist asks you: “is it an emergency or do you want to see the nurse?” if you say you have been having the problem for about a week or two, it’s not an emergency. if you collapse and someone else dials for the ambulance, it is.

if you do say you want to see the doctor (of course, that’s why you called, right?), you will be told to wait and ‘be patient’ until the next monday. if you hurriedly do submit and say okay you don’t mind seeing the nurse, hoping at least you have some medication to see you till the next week, you will only regret it later. because if you don’t belong to any of those exemption-categories, you’ll end up paying both the nurse now and the doctor later, that’s �12.80 for just two medicine-prescriptions.

the doctor will see you for precisely four minutes. if you happen to mention an unrelated health symptom that’s also bothering you, he/she will just ignore or cut you abruptly with an unwelcome smile: “we’ll discuss that some other time,” and hand you the green paper that he’s already printed out.

the pharmacy will be down the street or next door, there are usually three to four dispensers and someone assisting them with the delivery items and the till (sales counter). the store smells of deodorant and coffee, and not tablets and syrups. you get entire strips of medicines you won’t even need perhaps, stapled and packaged into neat crisp paper bags; awkwardly-folded sheets of paper explain why you are taking the medication and another two pages go on to explain the side-effects if you muster up the courage to take them later.

if you do bring back unused medicines they will be thrown into the wastebin. tonics and cough syrups are readymade and can be bought off the shelf, and to counter side-effects you need to buy more medicines after you see the doctor again. (if you are still alive that is.)

now that i am on the other side, what i like about working at the pharmacy are the customers.

…like this 90-year-old woman who walked in slowly on her crutches. she even had all her teeth in and with shaky hands she clutched a pen and asked,”where do i sign, dear?” when i offered to sign for her she insisted she would do it herself! and here i am complaining of my back problem!

…there was this old man of 67, utterly dejected and depressed because his tests for cancer were all negative. “you should be happy,” i said, and felt like handing him a lollipop to cheer him up. but he stood there like a statue, fat tears welling up in his eyes but not rolling down his cheeks.

…sometimes there are strange people who wont tell me what they want, and insist that they’ll see the pharmacist, even if they just need some paracetamol. sometimes they sound rude, like someone did to me today. these, i’m told, are the ‘funny kinds’…the kinds who don’t like asians, if you read between the lines.
hmm, well… *shrug*

…and then there are people who teach you about bananas:
a little boy of three (with his mom) asks for bana-aana-flavoured medicines. we ask him what colours do bananas come in and he thinks and says…”umm, shtawberry, pineapple….ummmm..and bana-aana.”
“really!?” we ask. “and where do they grow?” we ask again and he says, without thinking this time: “oh, they grow in little packets …with stickers on them”!! 🙂

these are the best people i’ve ever seen – the little ones, aged 10 months to four years. they climb on chairs and tables, or cling on to their mothers and try and read out everything that’s on display in the store. they fill the place with laughter and we beg them for more.

it’s a different world altogether, working for a pharmacy in the uk…
when i tell them that in india we rely more on tried and tested home remedies, they look surprised. neither the doctors nor the dispensers have ever heard of the healing properties of turmeric or cumin.

“neem?” they ask, “isn’t that for the dogs that itch?”

my creative-writing-class tutor just called, requesting me to get an extra copy of my homework this evening.

i asked him why, secretly wondering if he was going to pass on my writing to someone senior to have a look at and appreciate, but his reply has left me puzzled. he said it was because i had the softest voice in class and he can never hear me well when i’m reading.

sheeesh! should i feel glad that he took the trouble to call me up and ask me to get an extra copy just so he doesn’t miss out on my story? or should i feel ashamed that i can’t speak loud enough?

🙁