An Ode for Dolly

D ay has just dawned yet already weary are we
O ver but are the times we have spent down on one knee
L ets laugh at life, at love, at failures and at fate
L ets not waste today waiting always with bated breathe
Y esterday is gone and tomorrow isn't here as yet

On Why I Stopped Writing Poems

A Poem is born in silence
The silence that breeds when one alone in the midst of a crowd

A Poem, she sets free
The heavy thoughts by turning them into mere words

Puts in front of your eyes
On the white page, what you couldn’t quite describe

But knew the Feeling
That was always there, weighing you down

Pulling you down
Into the depths, while you pretended to hide behind your pillow

Underneath your blanket
And wish that you were indistinguishable from the bed

The bed
With the green flowers on a blue field

A Poem
She lets you ramble on and on

About everything
She doesn’t expect courage, neither guarantees salvation

Yet the truth
Comes out every time the pen tattoos the page

Maybe
That’s why I stopped writing poems

Makes me feel naked
Yes, by exposing my thoughts for the world to see

The silence
That once I called my own

Melts away
And I find myself once again, in the same crowd

In the same room
Hiding behind the same pillow, In the same bed

The one
With the green flowers on a blue field

Hugs for Delivery

I am reminded of this French film I once saw, in which the protagonist asks his bed-ridden mother if she feels lonely because of staying alone at home all the time. She questions him back whether he feels less lonely because he is able to sit in the garden, whether he feels less lonely in a crowded departmental store. I guess what she tried to say is that it doesn’t matter who or how many people are around us, loneliness is essentially a self-defined and self-created phenomena.
Now the reason why I was wondering all this was that I spent this entire weekend in bed, half asleep most of the time, trying to fight the bug which I wasn’t sure whether I had or not. Don’t worry, I wasn’t exactly lonely. With my roomy bringing me food and my friends room-delivering hugs (you rock girls!) whenever I needed them, I was one pampered girl. If you are wondering why every time you logged onto FB or gtalk these two days I was there, it’s not because I was stalking someone. It’s just that I didn’t want to get out of bed.
Looking back on a certain time when I really truly had fallen sick and had to spend more than 2 months in bed, I can’t really recall any days when I had been lonely. I definitely wasn’t my usual cheerful (read: hyperactive) self but loneliness wasn’t really a word in my lexicon even back then. And mind you, people had far fewer distractions in those days. No TV (I remember congratulating myself the day I could actually get up and sit in the living room sofa to watch a movie) and definitely no internet.
Well the good thing about being perpetually online these couple of days was that I got to catch up with some old friends I had not spoken to in quite a while. One friend had shifted to Jaipur, another had taken admission in a rival college (grr!) in Gurgaon. One had shifted base to Muscat and had no intentions of coming back any time soon. Better still, two of my friends had decided to tie the knot (yay!) and that had me wishing really badly for an early placement season.
Of the many people I’ve had the privilege of knowing and talking to in this campus, at least a few have complained of loneliness, of feeling alone in this tiny campus that’s bursting at the seams to accommodate 300 odd people. I guess at the end of the day its not about the people you talk to, rather its about the people who are willing to hear you out. And sometimes it need not be a person at all. For some of us, a cup of chai from Bablu is all we need to perk us up after a long day. For others, it used to be a sweet little friend whose pug marks are still there in front of NH. Some people are connected to friends all around the globe with their ability to handle 8 chat windows simultaneously. Some others can regale you with the most esoteric film-noir that even John Huston would have no idea about.
The point I am trying to make is, that we all create our own support systems. And as long as I have my hugs on delivery and my DMB playing loud and sweet, I think I’ll do just fine.

Dr. Strangelove: Or How My Summers Has Been So Far

Written sometime in the month of May. Posted now.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the time for leaving the NCR behind and shifting base to the city of gold. It was the time for attending induction programs in full formals not because the occasion demanded it, but because the AC was too cold. It was the time for hunting around for a PG and then settling in with a kind friend who I had never met before. It was the time for home-made dosas and the cream of vegetable soup from the coffee machine at the office. It was the time for weekend movie marathons at IMAX rather than the customary midnight show at Priya or Saket. It was the time for being blown away by How to Train Your Dragon. It was the time for watching the most number of Hindi movies I have ever seen in a span of 2 months. It was the time for waking up at 7 am, and sometimes at 4 am, instead of 5 minutes before the 10 o’clock class. It was the time for Bombay… sorry Mumbai. It was the time for Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and Delhi. It was the time for the peak hour local trains and the early morning flights. It was the time for living out of a suitcase because unpacking would have taken more time than packing for the next trip. It was the time for buttermilk at Mahim and the Chicken Mayo sandwich at the airport CCD. It was the first time for a barbeque brunch and the last time I’ve messed with Chennai autowallahs out of my own volition. It was the time for dragging an unsuspecting friend to all the women’s wear stores and then filling up on juice rather than food. It was the time for the overfriendly, overhelpful concierge. It was the time for coming back to Bombay, the city with the twinkling street lights. It was the time for taking the midnight taxi back home, without worrying about making it in one piece. It was the time for getting high on alcohol for the first time. It was the time to realize that one man’s RHCP is another man’s Red Hot Chilli Peppers. It was the time for realizing that there is such a thing like “too clean shoes” and that it can be promptly rectified by people jumping on them. It was the time for starting with dinner at 5 Spices and ending it with some dancing at café Mondy’s. It was the time for discovering Natural’s tender coconut ice-cream, the chocolate brownies at Theobroma, the biriyani at Paradise in Hyderabad and the English breakfast at Good Man’s. It was the time for standing in line with the other interns for lunch at the HO. It was the time for realizing (painfully, at that) that just because something is branded, doesn’t mean it’s the best. It was the time to learn how not to shout back. It was the time to learn that there is still a lot to learn.