The Quest For Lassi

 #AmritsarDiaries 

I don't think I will ever learn to lift my own bags. You may think 
it's kinda royal and high maintenance of me but trust me, the only thing it is, is downright annoying. Lugging my only suitcase up and down two flights of stairs to reach platform no.3 seemed to summon up all the strength I had gleaned from the lassi and dal makhani we had had from Kesar da Dhaba the previous night. And that reminds me of our quest. The quest for the best lassi in town. In all of Amritsar, to be honest. 

On our very first day to the foundation school where we were supposed to impart 'education' and do something for the kids, I learnt a few things about a few people. First of all, our cabbie. Our cabbie was called Lucky. (Guess he wasn't so lucky to have us, hee hee!). He looked like he had a couple of kine at his place, and had been fed on their fresh milk since boyhood.

And it turned out he did.

He also turned out to have an ambulance siren for a horn and a skull for a gear head.

Pretty badass, huh?

You wouldn't say so if you saw him. He was so unfailingly polite and incredibly sweet that we liked him at the very outset. Gentle giant was what occurred to me when I saw him.

Then we met the kids at the school and I realized what love and fandom looked like. Primarily love. The kids loved me like no boyfriend ever had. They listened open-mouthed to whatever I had to teach and irrespective of whether they understood much of it, they asked me if I would come the next day. During recess, they would stare at me and whisper among themselves, shake my hand and beam a full set of 28 teeth at me. I had never felt fuller, happier, more loved. Oh yeah, one even tried to take my autograph. Quite an ego boost, I know ;)

Let me now come to the group of three people who I was clubbed with.

One of them was my bestie and roommate. I am calling her N. You know, the BFF kinda person? The one who you think might have been a lost sister at a kumbh mela? Who we strike an immediate companionship with? Who give us the feeling, ‘excuse me, I think we rock’? You know, those quotes about not meeting often and yet being besties somehow, because you start off from wherever you left last time and it seems like you never left? Yep, that's her. From being the rock that absorbed my tears this entire year to being my official beauty expert, she is the elder sister I never had. Thank the HR for doing some things right ;)

The other one, P., was a bubbly perky ball of energy who looked like she was perpetually high. In all the good senses, you know. I knew her from before and I liked her. But there was something she said which touched me to the very core and told me that bro, you have struck gold in here. “Everyone deserves all the good things in life,” she told me on a shopping spree while we were buying Christmas gifts for the kids and I was like, bro, you are the perfect perfect Santa! And lo! She turned out to be THE SANTA. The most secretive Santa ever. Sending us cards and stuff through the hotel guys and we really DIDN’T EVEN KNOW. Till a few days later. Damn. Well, I guess I can safely use the word love for her.

The third member S., was a guy who looked like he would rather not have been clubbed with us because he hung out mostly with the mate from his alma mater and tried to vainly hide the annoyance on his face when I reached the reception a complete hour late on the very first day. Typical yours truly. But he won us over (or we won him over? Or it just seemed so?) with his droolworthy photography skills when he clicked brand new and very many display pictures of us without uttering a single complaint. Did I tell you that he shares with me the talent of falling asleep in the car at the drop of a hat? Well, he had me at SRK and sarsonkekhet when P. and I frolicked about among the mustard flowers and he let us play cliche and ultra-cheesy and mushy songs from DDLJ with nothing more than a smile on his face (which may have been a grimace of resignation but we will let that pass).

Not that it helped my timing much, because we made him wait almost everyday.

You see, time and I have never been on good terms. 

But music and I are. Only in the listening sense, you know. So, I somehow managed to convince my peers that my company was sufferable. I acted like the DJ and gave them a jukebox kinda feeling and suddenly all of us had songs we wanted to re-listen to. And share with each other. Share songs. That's one step already in the friendship department. 

Add taking group classes, soaking in whatever sunlight that filtered through the fog at noon, taking the kids' swings for ourselves, playing games we had last played, like, 12 years ago? and re-playing our school days; and soon we were thick enough to want to go out together. 

An unplanned walk in the night started us on the quest to find the best lassi in all of Amritsar. And Punjab. And the Punjab in Pakistan (as S. helpfully points out every time we stretch our itinerary to inhuman lengths). Of course, we sampled all the usual places like Brothers, Kesar, Qila Gobindgarh, and the rest of the places people recommend and even went to places that no one recommended. We asked Lucky, the cabbie, if he knew where we would find the best lassi. He mentioned the town hall and we took him to a dhaba just to ascertain which was better- the lassi at the town hall or at the dhaba we were at. Lucky ji though gave us a lovely reply. He had never had lassi outside his home. And well, what could compare with lassi from fresh milk from a cow in your backyard?

Well, I'm not sure if we discovered the best lassi in town, but we found something even better. We found each other and cheesy as it sounds, it is actually sweet. 

Because you see, memories with friends are different from memories with lovers. The latter may be too predictable, may hurt and cause pain, but the first ones are your bulwarks, your support systems and they tide you through the storms in your life.

Let the start of this year be given to friendship and all the good things that come with it!

The Moon and The Star

I have always been enamored by the elements of the universe. The stars, the moon, the planets... I wondered a lot about writing a children's rhyme about it. But then, rhyme is not really my thing, it turns out. So, here goes something, that I think is kind of my thing...

It was like someone had given the moon a voice in addition to craters.

She had started spewing nonsense stuff about how she wanted to look like the star,

how the star’s craters and wounds were better than her own,

how the star was luckier than her just because she could shoot.

She could shoot because she was that kind of a star.

The shooting kind.

The kind of star that could actually afford to scoot closer to him.

To the love of her life.

Image source : ebay

Even though she was badly battered, broken and bruised, she was getting nearer to him with each passing moment.

The moon wished on the star because she knew that the shooting kind of star could grant wishes.

The moon wished for eternal love.

She wished for the kind of love that would last.

The price of love was life.

So, the star shot to the earth.

And died in the arms of her love.

Whereas she, the ill-fated moon, stayed immobile and stationary.

As she was fated to stay forever.

Handicapped by the cruel forces of gravity.

Destined to stay away.

At that exact distance.

Pulling his seas towards her every now and then,

but never really coming closer.

The price of eternity was love.

Two Years Ago

Picture Credits : Sheetanshu Agarwal & Krishna Kumar

I am coming from a far off place. A place called ‘Two Years Ago’ that I no longer recognize because it was so hideously expensive that I incurred a ginormous debt while in there. 
A debt, I had no idea, would cost me lakhs of heartbeats and millions of feelings. 
A debt where the currency was people and the interest went up with the rise in the moments we shared. 
I am coming from Two Years Ago, but at a very slow pace. 
A pace that is slower than time itself, because two years have happened and ended, and I am still there, making my sluggish way forward, trying to reach The Present.

Picture credits: Agrani Punj

Of course, once I do, I will earn all that stuff back, and try to repay the bankers who keep the memories locked in a special account of nostalgia and hurt and all things bittersweet.

Once I reach The Present, I will empty my life of all those events and conversations that make the walk to it so hard.

Once I reach The Present …

I will not spend my nights awake in the classrooms with a motley assortment of people, who came together purely on a stroke of fate, like a package of assorted biscuits on Diwali.

I will not give in to midnight cravings that strike me like thunder and lose a major part of my savings in the night canteen or on sudden trips to Murthal/ India Gate/ Bangla Saheb.

I will not pretend to listen to lectures in class while doing what I do best in life (read daydreaming).

Picture credits: Pixcell, IIFT

I will not celebrate midnight birthdays on campus or spend sleepy-wakeful nights trying to mug up for exams.

I will not watch those puppies grow into mischievous dogs.

I will not click photographs every second day or dance unabashedly at atrium parties.

I will strip my life of all those things and rush to The Present.

Picture credits: Pixcell, IIFT

However…

On second thoughts…

Let me arrive late as usual.

And take my own sweet time to reach. For surely it hasn’t been so long since we were at Two Years Ago, has it?

Six

One.

There was one moment when I wondered if I had done the right thing by filling the form. And there was another moment when I realized that one moment of hesitation was not worth it at all because of course, I had been right. There was only one word for it. Perfect.

Two.

Two cabs accommodating laughter and gossip, titbits and tales, texts and the people writing them. Two sauces – red and white, mingling with mouth-watering pasta and eye-watering jokes. With the two arguments over the double cheese pizza and the extra mayo-ed nachos. Two hundred party venues being looked into before homing in on one- the one with the best deal, the best time and of course, the best people.

Three.

Three a.m. meetings where brainstorms would occur at the speed of light and ideas would be debated with religious gusto. Three a.m. confession sessions at the Top of the World where intimacies invited confidences and secrets were traded in the hallowed institute of trade.

Four.

Four thousand emails skyrocketing into the inbox. Four hundred aspirants to be answered to. Four and twenty articles to be written. Four thousand messages to sift through and apprehensions, turmoils and uproars to be contained.    

Five.

Five people sitting side by side in guest lectures, noting down moments and their significance, noting the similar-sounding words like distinguished, esteemed, welcome, campus and leadership, but in essence recording mainly the five million expressions of the ones sitting right next and secretly laughing at their inane comments. Five people taking down notes and one clicking away the five pictures to go with them, but mainly just filing the pictures away in the memory cabinets for flicking through them some time in the future.

Six.

Six we were and six we are. I know that six is the devil’s number. And I think it fits us perfectly well. Because we are devilish. Devilishly good together.  

#ApnaKaumMediaKaum

(The above reference would only be clear when you have spent two years (or even one, for that matter) in the sacrosanct precincts of the Media Committee at IIFT and discovered a kind of religious fervor in the writing of a blog, the organizing of chat meets and of course, TEDx or even answering aspirant queries.)  

Madhouse

It is a brand new year and I was just thinking how to give a new start to this blog. But then I realized that my blog, much like my life, has been a series of fits and starts. Perhaps that is how it is supposed to be.

My writing has been pretty scattered the past year what with verses written on tissue papers, short stories noted on cellphone, and blog posts on the university website. As a result, this space got easily ignored. Now, as I begin the end of my journey at IIFT, I decided to bare my thoughts here on this old space of mine.  

Blood is made of a red substance; they call it haemoglobin.

But madness is made of a substance which they haven’t named yet.

It is made of songs sung tunelessly in the dark streets around Sanjay Van. 

It is made of dreadful PJs that emerge from minds that don’t know how to crack jokes because they haven’t learnt the art of laughter. 

It is made of steel. Steel bars of the benches where we sat for hours that disappeared in the web of time. 

It is made of power banks. Power banks that we snatched from each other because our phones were never fully charged. 

It is made of khakras and theplas that they brought every time they came from home. 

It is made of chairs where we sat and sipped bournvita. 

It is made of crumbs. Crumbs and remains of the rusk biscuits that accompanied the bournvita and the tea. 

It is made of chilli potatoes. Chilli potatoes and paneer tikkas that we ate at buffets where we gorged till food threatened to kill us. 

It is made of hands. Hands and legs which moved in every whichever way when we danced inebriated with laughter in the atrium. 

It is made of wings. The wings of wisdom that we saw everyday as we devoured the sunlight while walking towards the ice cream stall.

Our madness is made of a million things. Bits and pieces. Bits and pieces of rights and wrongs, dread and jubilation, thoughts and sensations. Some tiny and some long. Tiny moments snatched in an eye-roll and long hours spent studying presentations.

They say blood makes you related. 

But they don’t know that madness makes you family.

It's Review Time!

Rain- A Survivor’s Tale

by Sriram Subramanian

(A Critical Review)

The novel revolves around the life and times of a man who is in conflict with his past and his present. He challenges the forces of nature and long-standing conventions, loses badly, learns his lessons and starts over. As the subtitle suggests appropriately, the story is about a survivor, a person who goes through all the trials of fire and emerges purified. It touches upon a number of issues, starting with the problems of a northerner marrying a Marathi girl as the protagonist does. It beautifully captures the way a language can alter the status of a person. The protagonist despite his love of all things Maharashtrian is not able to express his fidelity and loyalty to the community due to the fact that he does not know the language. It expresses aptly how language barriers create family rifts. The book starts with the relationship dynamics in Jai’s family and highlights the entrenched blind faith in certain traditions and personalities like the great astrologer Pandit Borkar whose prediction sets the wheels of events turning and effectively begins the novel plot in earnest. What follows is a story of a man walking on a tightrope of his dreams and others’ expectations, trying desperately to establish himself, walking in his virtuous father’s footsteps and keeping everyone happy. An atheist, he tempts fate by openly declaring his intentions to thwart the great Borkar’s predictions of hard times in the near future and swears to build a bungalow for his wife, Sarika. He ignores her intuitive feelings when she tells him to pause and warns him repeatedly regarding opportunistic friends. But inebriated with the will to succeed at any cost and heady with the lucrative big business deal he lands up, Jai ignores Sarika’s misgivings.

What results is his complete collapse when not just his client breaks the deal, but he has to file for bankruptcy when his business partner and long-time friend turns into a venomous foe. All these difficult times are worsened by his father’s death leaving behind three thick diaries that take Jai on a soul-searching journey back to his past. His demons start resurfacing and skeletons begin crawling out of his past closet turning his mind around and creating a miasma of guilt around him, a whirlpool which he is not able to escape and eventually gets sucked into.

The adventures of Jai when his business crumbles and he takes to the streets takes the reader to the grimy underbelly of the city of Pune and unveils the tragic fates of those who make their living on the streets. It also exposes the political drama that goes behind the scenes of an election.

Various themes sprout up in the novel at different times, for instance, the Marathi pride and fierce sense of belonging towards their own community, the ambition of politicians, a mother’s blind love, misplaced anger, infidelity and so on. Jai’s father-in-law is the father figure in this book, the man who is able to view everything with an unbiased perspective and provides sane advice to anyone who needs it.

Jai’s past deals with a crucial social matter of how rumors can ruin a person’s life. The reception of a sibling by a child has been sensitively portrayed in the novel. In fact, Jai’s story of Sunny is the crux of the plot and a prime mover in his upbringing, his relations with his father and the major cause of his leaving his hometown. The author has carefully threaded this delicate issue into the book, taking into account honest, unbarred feelings and giving them voice in an effort to understand and learn the nuances of such a touchy matter. 

The thing about the characters was that they were predictable. The good thing was that they could be easily identified with. A bit of unreality crept into the story at times, when the protagonist takes to the street and farm life easily, giving it a very movie-ish feel. But there is an element of unconventionality in the plot when Jai’s difficult decision with Ashok bears no fruit and he is relegated to unknown parts of the country because of his own decision never to meet Sarika. The reader is kept wanting for the two star-crossed lovers to meet but is tormented for quite sometime. The jewel on the crown is the worldview of the holy man who wanders into the village where Jai has settled and shakes him out of his torpor, giving him the peace of mind he had been seeking so long. 

False friends, hypocritical relations, critical naysayers, hurt beloved, tormented protagonist- all the major elements of a potboiler combine in this book with the burning concerns of the age what with corruption, domination of females, plight of the slum-dwellers, the dirt of politics, and the state that the country is in to give it a contemporary fast-paced feel.

The novel moves through the political centres of the city of Pune to the smelly dilapidated hovels beneath the flyovers to tranquil farmlands seamlessly telling many tales in a natural voice of a common man who abides by the rules, is moderately ambitious, dogged by guilt due to his past and wants to transform his life.

Some incredible life lessons emerge suitably in the final chapter where Jai finally gets his salvation from the honeyed words of a great man, who in some beautiful and powerful lines, explains accurately what life is all about. It is beautiful to note the role of rain in this novel. At the outset of the novel, Jai prayed for the rains to be delayed as opposed to the majority of the population for whom rain was a blessing in disguise. As rotten luck would have it, it rained cats and dogs soon after and life took a severe downturn for him. However, the end of the novel shows how Jai reconciled with his lot, forgave himself, reconciled himself to the harsh realities of life and ultimately came to love the rains.      

***

Here is the link to buy it online :)

https://www.amazon.in/Rain-Survivors-Tale-Subramanian-Sriram/dp/9385854119

The Rapunzel Story

“They have silver in their hair, gold in their heart… and magic in their hands.”

Source: DesiComments.com

Or at least in my grandmother’s hands. This is not just because every dish she prepared made my taste buds go ‘this is nirvana!’ or even the simplest tea she brewed was so much better than any I ever had so far. It was because her hands worked magic on my hair. Every afternoon when I came home from school, I would get over with my ablutions, and before mother could place my bowl of rice in front of me, I was off to see grandma in her room, where she sat caressing her tresses with oil. My grandma had luscious, beautiful, wondrous, jet-black hair. She loved to tell me her story of her Rapunzel-like long hair and how when granddad’s parents came to see her, the first thing that amazed them about her was her hair. They asked not one question after that. And just like that, their marriage was settled.

“They liked your hair so much that they wedded their son to you?” I had asked incredulously.

“Absolutely!” Grandma had answered with that beautiful laugh of hers and the familiar twinkle of her eyes. “In those days, one’s hair was one’s pride.”

“It still is.” I had said. “But hardly anyone has the kind of black hair that you do.”

But it was evident why that was the case. Grandma oiled her hair daily, not missing even a single day. And that is what she had done to me as well. Every afternoon, I would sit in front of her, my arms around my knees and my mane spread out. Grandma would then run her old veined hands over my hair. First slowly, and then with a little emphasis to ensure that every strand of my hair got the massage and nutrition it needed. She took care of her hair like a plant, watering (oiling) it, and helping it grow by nurturing it carefully.  No wonder I too had long, black and shiny hair. Not just because of my genes, but because Grandma had put so much effort into caring for my hair.

She always insisted on coconut oil. She said it was the best oil for one’s hair.

“What if my hair is oily or say, dry and flaky? Isn’t there supposed to be different types of oil for different types of hair?” I would ask when I entered adolescence and saw my peers doing all kinds of things to their hair and feeling just a little bit left out.

“Coconut oil is the best.” She would say with a finality that no one could contest. Parachute was her constant. And consequently, our staple.   

***

“Come on everyone! Be seated quickly!” I ordered.

Mom, dad, grandpa, my little brother, uncle, aunty and their two daughters were all seated as per my instructions. We were going to witness something today.

“What is it? Will you tell us?” everyone was asking.

“Just wait and watch.” I said and switched on the video.

On came all the snaps that we had taken at different times in our life - right from when we were tiny tots to weddings, birthdays, celebrations, occasions all the way to our current year. There were also photos from times much before we were born.

“Who is that?” My cousin exclaimed at a black and white photograph of a beautiful woman with long black hair that reached her knees.

“That is your grandmother, kid.” Grandpa said fondly, a tear escaping his eye. “This was the picture I had taken of her when we got married.”

Everyone gasped in surprise.

“How did you arrange these pictures? They look ancient! And so beautiful.” Mom lauded my efforts, making me blush.

“This picture relived all those moments again.” Grandpa said a little sadly.

It had been three years since Grandma had left for her heavenly abode. I still remember how we used to celebrate Grandparents’ Day when Grandma was alive, with all due ceremony, cake and music and good food…

But ever since grandma’s demise, this had seen a cessation. There was no more celebration, no more cakes, no more laughter, no more good times on this wonderful day.

But this time, I was determined to celebrate Grandparents’ day. Because I am sure that's what grandma would have wanted. Because she would have liked to see us together and happy. Because it was simply the time to #LoveJatao.

So, I had done all I could to gather our fondest memories and to relive all our cherished times.

I rushed to the kitchen and brought out a tray. In memory of Grandma, I had arranged a cake, with ‘To our favorite Rapunzel and her Prince’ etched on it in lovely pink icing.

Grandpa had tears in his eyes. As I fed him a piece, I'm sure I heard grandma’s beautiful laugh somewhere. She was still with us.

***

Happy Grandparents' Day!
Hope you cherish these moments with your grandparents forever!

***

#LoveJatao #ParachuteAdvansed #BlogAdda

I look forward to hear from you how would you celebrate Grandparents Day. Do share a selfie with your grandparents on Sept. 10, 2017 on Twitter or Facebook with #LoveJatao & tag @blogadda to win a goodie from Parachute Advansed.

http://www.parachuteadvansed.com/complete-care/