A pocketful of memories on Diwali

Attention: What may follow might sound sickeningly mawkish.
So, please grin and bear else brush aside if sounds highly insipid!

Today as Diwali arrives in all its sounds and sparkles, I’m trying to gather my handful of memories. Regardless of the mythological events Ma used to narrate to build up my reverence for day, the day, for me was more of a reaffirmation of the fact that I was with the people I loved most in my life.

Today all those memories I congregated make me miss,

Ma-Papa, for everything.

Mun n Tumps,for being the people they are in my life.

Dadu-Dida, for their unceasing aashirwaad.

Rahul, Shivi, Sri for simply being there, always, no matter how far!

Tiny twinkling diyas, for making my home look the way it would have looked.

Aarti, panchmitra, prasad and kumkum for imparting an air of serenity and completion to our pooja-ghar.

The cloying mishtis and lip-smacking namkeens that would have made Ma miss me(and is making me envy the petu Bachcha Party back home!!)

The cold feel of mehndi on my palms and all the paraphernalia that would go in to making its colour turn out as dark as possible.

The endless trials of Diwali salwar-kameez and the obvious tantrums of it not fitting thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat well, blowing up Ma’s last hidden fuse!

The customary exchange of Diwali-thali’s and mithai dabbas and the by default wish that nobody gives us burfi!!

Papa’s camera, which would have struggled massively for squeezing the entire battalion inside the frame alongwith a generous dose of phooljhadis and anars.

The nosy-little kids in Munirka who would have punctured my eardrums with their never-ending ladi’s.

All the colony aunty’s who would have succeeded in pushing that extra gulab-jamun, very conveniently down my throat.

The entire Dada and Di gang that would have turned up for Kaali-pujo.

Gobbling down Thakur’s mool bhog, 1 in the night.

Scraping off the melted candles on the balcony walls next day, collecting and re-melting the wax to make a “brand new” candle!

These and many more.

For good times don’t last but fond memories do. And I’ll always be glad that I was a part of these lovely moments frozen in time.

Happy Diwali!

Hope

“Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”
-‘Andy’ in the letter he writes to ‘Red’, Shawshank Redemption

Undeniably the above are a tangling of words beautiful for their own succinct description and exactness.

But my unfettered mind still questions the extravagant adoration for hope.

Does being hopelessly hopeful really sound that hopeful? For sometimes hope may be worse than hopelessness.

The silent fall

The cold, tyrant wind ushers me away. Faceless and hollow, I bid a mute farewell.
Disowned from your fruitful embrace, which now stands stark and bare; I wish I could rebel.

Restlessly, I wander with an obscure hope that you express solicitude,
But disappointed by your incipient decline, I lay limp around your roots.

Exhausted and bruised, Iam annihilated beneath thousands of unknown rustling feet,
Woe is me.. perils of your betrayal, you chose my death, it’s unsaid but discrete.

Desolated, I wonder, did you breathe your last? Did you ever come to your end?
Or enclosed within your beguiling scarlet cloak, you didn’t perish but only pretend.

I wonder if you were seeking solitude and concomitant liberty, an appeal you extended without a sound,
And will pray for my decay during the interregnum, until the first blade of grass sprouts from the snow covered ground.

Loving one's job

Browsing through myriad of wonderfully crafted bottles and impeccable floral notes, finally I got a perfume for Ma. I hurriedly stumbled to the Geschenk (gift section) with a hope that I was well in time to get it wrapped.

I expected to get the bottle enclosed within the folds of some shiny gift wrap in a haste and pushed across the table, commodifying the gift and the sentiments attached to it. But I’m glad I was proven wrong. For across the counter, I saw one of the happiest faces in my life, who left me with an inexplicable experience which transcended the real value of the gift.

Despite of the fact that the clock had already struck the closing hours, the lady at the counter abstained herself from compromising on her job. Years of experience reflected as she bestowed a wonderfully crafted look to the gift. How and what she did to make the gift look the way it did , might be of an iota of interest to me few weeks down the lane, but the fact that she did it all with a smile will surely reverberate.

She didn’t “clock-the-time” nor mumbled "Thank God it's Friday!" Her face reflected what she thought about her job. And if I’m to believe in precision guesswork, I would say, she loved every bit of it!

Would a little bit of candid envy hurt? For as compared to her, sometimes I feel my job as a researcher, is no more inspiring than a grindstone in a flour mill.

Struggling through competing priorities, sometimes I question myself, why do I need replace every waking hour of my day with work? I might as well do as little as I can, for as much money as I get, and run back home as early as possible. Additionally, on umpteen occasions I tried solving the equation between my potential and my job, but never reached a L.H.S = R.H.S scenario!

The statistics supporting the numbers, where one lands up with a job synchronous with the individual's skills, might not be significant. I have been witness to the serious repercussions which crop up, being, an overqualified employee getting horrendously bored and an under-qualified employee drawing a highly stressful and aimless career graph.

Professional dissatisfaction makes us withdraw into ourselves and make the least of our opportunities. With no augmentation to our growth as an individual, we work just for the sake of paying our house rent and electricity bills! Which indeed is a very sad situation.

One’s job might not be as fascinating as making music, as much fun as raising a farm or as dreamy as painting. And I might not be able to give a fair verdict on THE ideal job, one that will invariably give you a sense of absolute satisfaction, because I need to figure it out for myself first! But one thing is of prime certainty. If you do, whatever you do, with utmost sincerity and a smile, it will always fetch you happiness as a by-product. And I wish to add, this refers not only to your workplace but any and every job in question.

I remember my dad used to say, "If you’re washing clothes, really wash them!"

A rag-picker or a nurse cleaning bedpans in a hospital might be happier about their work as compared to a high profile technocrat. Our work is as irredeemably discouraging or encouraging as we make it, and how, I got to learn it myself.On my own behalf, I would like to take that first step.

A celebration of life

Viola!! Today, for the first time in my life, I turned in to a 24 year old lady :)

Well..you can say thanks or curse Ma and Papa for the gift of ME to the world!

And I hope I enjoy my yet another 365-day ride around the sun. As for now, I’m doing pretty good,for the simple reason that the candles haven’t cost me more than my cake ;)

Dho dala!!!

Hey did you ever try boiling your clothes??
I just did!!!Hehehahaha..

Factually speaking, kudos to my moronic, lofty washing machine for doing the honors.
The clothes had boiled like hell. So I wouldn’t be surprised if all my white shirts have turned blue and my blue denims have gladly donated their color.

And thanks to my boiling clothes which emitted a foggy-hazy-smoky thing of mysterious composition,I practically hallucinated landing up in swarg when I went to sukhao them!!

Waise..saaaaaaaare keetanu (arre germs baba) mar gaye.

A night and two strangers under the sky

This is my first foray in to the world of poetry.
A potpourri of words, scrambled up in my mind, has made its way into verses. Appraise the profundity else brickbat if it makes zilch sense!




She had no chance to undo what she had already done,
A clandestine act, without dignity and yet no regret, was difficult to pardon.

Startled by his irrefutable voice, she could only manage a monosyllable,
Being with him on a starry, no moon night, seemed just like a fable.

She wanted to break free and run miles away from him,
But defenseless she stood, and let him own her without a whim.

Never been kissed before, she was swamped by her juvenile instinct,
The arch of his body and strength of his ribs made her submit, it was distinct.

The touch of his lips on hers, yes she was naive, she went colorless,
Was it a seal of unrequited love or an inexplicable contempt? she was clueless.

The gripping feel of his skin against hers, concealed her emptiness with passion,
She gave all she had, without any expectation and unconditional devotion.

He left. An empty bed and a battered soul with an un-amendable crack,
Indifferent he was, she knew he would never look back.

The days she walked past the bench, they sat once together under the starlit sky,
She would question the deliberate obscenity of the night, but had no answers to all her why’s.

Plagued by her obsolete and isolated feeling, she let no one else enter her life,
Every night bygone, she choked and paid a silent penance for an unspeakable crime.

But as the days progressed into night and the dusk sprouted into dawn, her conscience confiscated,
She realized that she was loosing herself to someone, who never acknowledged, she existed.

And so it dawned on her, that she should unclasp her life, from his groping memory,
She promised to abandon her sniveling sob and put a halt to her never ending reveries.

Although the night re-iterated in her mind, for it was, a beautiful, immaculate reminiscence,
But she liberated herself from ‘him’ and the suffocating vacuum left behind by his absence.

Her sad, gloomy eyes tainted with tears finally became diaphanously clear,
Her days became a shade happier and the moon glowed in her dark room with an unforeseen sheer.