Someday My Writing Will Be Good

I write because it calms me. I write to get my thoughts in order. I write so that I can look back on my past. I write to practice my communication. But when I read what I have written, even a few days later, I cringe at the immaturity of my thoughts and writing. I wonder how I could be so silly. I worry that my writing is a reflection of my shallowness, and depth is what I aspire to.

Words have always been my friends. While I was studying, I loved writing essays and stories as part of my curriculum. My teachers thought I was good. It gave me a quiet confidence in the ability to use the written word to express my feelings, beliefs and arguments. I even made money thanks to this love for writing. It wasn’t big money, but enough to support my dreams for an ambitious future.

Yet, today I feel inadequate. I mock my ability to express myself through writing. I feel insecure about having forgotten how to. The fear of sounding stupid has gripped me for close to four years now. It takes gargantuan effort to fire up the laptop, and even after it’s on, I find something else to do rather than write.

In school grammar, reading and writing as a way to answer specific questions was taught to me. I loved poetry, but I failed to understand most of it. Growing up, I dabbled in music, art and sports but reading was my one constant hobby. Enid Blyton was the voice in my head. Wordsworth was the rhythm in my heart. Agatha Christie was my guide to the human psyche and I was in awe of Fredrick Forsyth’s mind.

Shakespeare was a familiar name, yet I never had access to him. My school libraries never gave much thought to educating our minds with the classics. A standard diet of Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew was what they thought we needed.

I was fortunate to have a father who could rarely be found without a book in his hand. My grandmother once told me that he would ask her to save the newspaper pieces that the groceries came wrapped in. He’d come back from school and smooth out each crumpled piece, devouring the printed wisdom or bit of news. He was poor, and couldn’t buy books, so he would read anything he could lay his hands on.

Baba once took me to the public library in Pen, a sleepy town in Konkan where he was tasked to build a factory. He issued the Wizard of Oz for me and said, “I think you’ll like this one.” I loved it! It took my eight year old self many days to finish the story, but once I was done, I couldn’t stop talking about it. It had blown my mind open. (In that same town, I had once spotted a local woman smoking the local brand of rolled up tobacco. When I recounted this to Baba with a shocked and disapproving expression, he calmly said, “women smoke all the time.”)

A few years later, we moved to Mumbai and Baba finally had a job where he didn’t have to travel all week. When my summer vacation came around, he walked me to the community library in our neighbourhood and handed me a faded pink membership card. He promised to give me the monthly fee of Rs. 30 as long as I promised to keep returning the books on time. And of the three books I was allowed to borrow, one had to be for my little sister. I was probably the only teenager who was walking in and out of that library every couple of days, a smile plastered on my face.

So, reading was a legacy passed on from my father. Writing, not so much. I once tried to write a crime fiction short story for a competition in the Reader’s Digest. I had only jotted down a loose plotline and a couple of introductory pages. When I asked my father what he thought of my writing, he smiled his deep dimpled smile and said it needed more work. I gave up, thinking I could never be as good as Christie anyway.

As the decades flew by, I read so many more books. I wanted to have a well-paying job so that I could buy books, and an inexplicable amount of clothing from Mango. I never got around to owing a shred from the high fashion store, but books, I bought some every month. The more I read, the more inadequate I felt – here were prize winning authors writing legendary fiction and non-fiction, what gave me the idea that I could ever be even close?

But the burning desire to write and be good at it has persisted. My blog was a small flight born out of boredom and surplus time. The subjects interested me, and still do, but I never deemed my ramblings to be of much value. Over the past two years I have signed up for writing courses online. I thought learning the craft, having someone break down the method will boost my abilities. I now have my doubts about that line of thinking.

On some days I read poignant writing that moves me to tears. It is usually about people, relationships, failures and triumphs. I think more than I speak, or write. It makes me believe that when I do share my thoughts someday, they will be just as refined as some of these authors’ are. Until then, I’m practicing every day. And perhaps because of that I may be getting better bit by bit. I hope I am.

The Evening Ritual

The setting sun casts a golden glow, turning the child’s brown hair a glimmering copper. Shadows on the faintly yellow walls of the balcony have a life of their own. The view from their balcony on the eleventh floor is what postcards are made of, that is if people still make postcards.

The mother strains a little to hear the chirping of birds as they return to their nests. The languid calm of the boats floating on the gentle waves of the backwaters signal the close of a hot, humid day. The channel splits into two, one arm snakes away ahead of them and disappears from view behind a thick cover of mangroves while the other flows along their right, and curves gently, far away right under a metal bridge.

They hear the train a few seconds before they see it. Both turn their eyes to the bridge in the distance, and wait to catch a glimpse of a speeding train – they know not which end of the bridge the train will spring from. A gentle breeze cools the sweat on their skin, and makes it easy to focus on the beauty of the scene that lays before them. Swaying coconut trees, birds diving into the water to catch their morsels, a fiery pink-orange sky and the silhouettes of boatmen in their crescent-shaped, traditional boats. The faint sound of a prayer call from a mosque across the island adds another layer of charm - a touch of human gratitude. The scene is picturesque and soulful.

And then they see it. Loud clattering accompanies the arrival of the train on the metal bridge. The trusses vibrate, adding to the din the wheels make as the train speeds towards its destination. The boy and his mother hear the bellowing horn, and then the fast paced rhythm of a train on the tracks – chachuk – chachuk – chachuk. It is the fourth or fifth train since afternoon, and every time the little one had rushed to the balcony to catch a glimpse of a retreating metal caterpillar. This time it is a train with a red engine and blue carriages, the dark boxes of the windows move along and create the illusion of a moving filmstrip. The mother sips her ginger tea, she prepares it with as much love as she does the chocolate milk for the child.

The boy dips his glucose biscuit into his tumbler and quickly pulls it out, after hundreds of such biscuits he has mastered the fine art of having the biscuit soak just enough milk before it turns to a soggy blob that will plop into his milk. If some biscuit does make its way into the milk, the boy grimaces, he doesn’t enjoy the altered taste of his beloved chocolate milk, the biscuit adds a pasty taste that just isn’t right. He takes a bite, careful not to topple the balance of a moist biscuit lest it fall onto his shirt. He continues to gaze at the passing train, spying a bit of silver lining the windows of the deep blue carriages. The curved sides of the bridge look just like the ones he builds in his game of Lego. His toy train doesn’t have as many carriages though.

The train chugs off, it only jumps into view for a few seconds before it disappears into the thick urban landscape. The mother brushes the hair out of her son’s left eye, pats him on the head and looks across at the now-empty bridge. There will be one more train soon.

Beauty pagents...sigh

India's Most Desirable, really?

Okay, so this one's a rant.

India's Most Desirable...I want to know who the audience for this show is? (I tried ignoring this show for the past few weeks, but they keep playing repeats and getting in my face!)

The line-up of the "desirables" is made up of fluff bollywood stars who are as green at their job as a toddler at playschool. The host is a yester-year glam doll, who has hitherto been known only for her radical roles in two Rishi Kapoor movies, purrfect diction, flawless whites and uncomfortable, formal tone and style which makes Karan Johar seem endearing in comparison. Yet, she has had a successful run of Rendezvous with some of the biggies of Indian pop culture. So she's not really green. Which is why I expect better from her. The studio audience is filled with teenagers who probably were wetting their nappies when Simiji was hosting that "bare-all" talk show. And it's hosted on a channel that I thought was meant for my kind of entertainment.

Now for the amazing format - a star comes on the show, and Simiji asks our Most Desirable one some well-rehearsed questions. The script has been rehearsed so many times, you can almost hear the pages for the next question turning in their heads. The questions will urge the star to spill some beans on their life - romantic being of foremost importance. The screen behind the two of them will carry loving messages from friends and family, the tarot card reader will appear from behind a turning side-screen and so will a cooktop and oven! So it's not just a chat show you see. Random people from the audience (random, my arse! they all looked like her bodyguards) will show up to sample the cookies baked by out lovely star, or ask embarrassing questions (do they know what embarrassing means?). Of course, our host thinks it's super cool to plug in her show's website as often as possible and an auto rickshaw's horn and a gong are the only way in which the star can answer some really "funny" questions!

It's lame how at every opportunity either the star or the host try to make it seem like they know each other intimately (am sure Simiji knows a lot of these guys intimately, but really, I did expect something better from her than flaunt it on her show). Again, am not sure who will vibe with this since everyone in the studio audience isn't truly aware of Simiji's heydays.

For someone who has seen the Rendezvous series in it's first couple of seasons, I feel really embarrassed by this show. Yes, I am very upset that Star World would want to cater to the MTV generation - don't they already have enough channels dedicated to their whims and fancies? And if you really are competing with the content on those channels, Star World, you're clearly a fish out of water.

The Star World audience is a savvy, urbane lot, they don't care for patched together shows that try to be a little bit of everything. Yes, we love our cinema, but we also pick our cinema. And look at how that has evolved. Why can't TV content rise above the ordinary, take existing formats to the next level or even try to touch a genuine chord? If you can't produce original content that can engage audiences, stick to the tried and tested method - bring us great content from the developed markets. But whatever you do, please, be true to your audience.

Unless you're actually abandoning us and chasing the haloed "youth of India"!

Of new journeys

The lottery ticket stall, the fruit seller and the medicine man with his strange bottles of Ayurveda cures - are they just the backdrop to my story? Am new here, and I can get away with just observing. I tell myself am soaking in the atmosphere. A stranger speaks near me, to me in a foreign tongue. A friendly hardware store owner who speaks Hindi points us to the shops that will hold the knick-knacks we're looking for. We're setting up house - again!

Moving from Mumbai to Goa was the easy one. Goa has always been my favourite place to be ever since I first stumbled onto it. Well, yes, I dint discover it, I know. But I went there at a time when I was discovering a lot of new things about myself. When I was just growing into this person I have become. It was in the third term of my post-graduate studies and it was a difficult time. Goa just took me in, and was warm and welcoming. I was with old friends, exploring a whole new way of life. So yeah, Goa was like coming home after being at sea for a long long time.

Moving to Kerala has been different, as we drove past Karnataka into Kerala, the signboards began to read a language that I knew not. And that's when it hit me, I was really far away from home after a really long time. Well the last time was way back in the summer of 2007 when I made my first trip out of the country, to France. That was exciting, I knew I had only 9 days to enjoy all the new experiences. Here, am staying for a year at least.

It's a beautiful place, peaceful and relaxing - God's Own Country.

I adore the shops here with their wooden boxes of fresh produce on display and the feel of a world where technology is not going to dull the feeling of being alive. The backwaters of rivers spring up when you least expect them and the sound and smell of nature fills up your senses. Am looking forward to picking up some Malayalam, learning to cook a few authentic recipes and cruising along the backwaters. Am a little intimidated, but am looking forward to soon becoming a part of this quaint little town where I live.

Until it's time to pack up and move again. To a new place, to new people.

Of a new life.

Wife. Small word, big meaning. One syllable. Seems so much longer, heavier, deeper.

Am new to this world. Of wives I mean. And am just being slowly led in. Does a husband's world seem as daunting? Wives as mothers, daughters, daughter-in-laws, wives and friends. Wife as a chef, housekeeper, manager, teacher, lover, counselor and laundromat. Working wives as employees and bosses, leaders and followers, the doers and the ones getting it done.

Wives living up to expectations - familial, social, personal.

And amongst all this, the recurring question - who am I?
Does taking on this new identity make me lose mine so far? Or does it just alter it slightly? Does it add a texture or a nuance? Or does it take over my life?

The seemingly small change of a name, don't in-laws get how it takes away all that is mine and fills the hole with all that am supposed to be? A sort of a blueprint for a house no one asked me if I wanted to build.

Wives move homes, change cities, wake up in a strange new bed with a strange new way of welcoming the day. They give up living with people they have loved all their lives and embrace new ones. New ones who claim they're parents and we're daughters, but when push comes to shove, how come the husbands don't get asked the same questions? How come their words carry more weight than ours? How come everything else being equal, they still get the bigger piece of the pie? You know what I mean.

And it's all supposed to be what we are supposed to expect. If my new parents treat me better than an average Indian girl's am supposed to be grateful for that. Thanking the Gods for giving me better than the rest. But really, why can't it be the norm?

Why do mums of boys still ask us if we can cook? Why do we have to recognise their underwear on a stand? Why do we have to keep track of how many rotis they prefer? And why do we have to toe the line?

Is that why after years of living together, families split up? Is that why women lose their sense of what's reasonable and what's absurd? Is that why I keep striving to remind myself, of me?

topsy turvy

you love a differently-abled child twice as much. you hold on tighter when you know you have to let go. you run faster, when you know you've missed the bus. you walk taller, when you know you're the little person in the room. you give it one last shot when you know you've lost the game. the world feels sunnier, when you're headed into a storm. you speed up when you don't really want to go there. you eat apples, when your doctor's too handsome. you watch romantic movies when you're out of love. sometimes, you just do contradictory things to make yourself feel better, usually about something that you cant do anything about. when you're feeling helpless, and you know what you're expected to do, you just want to do things that go against that expectation. just to feel like you're still the one in control.