Scrapping the paint....

Back in Delhi and the two weeks have been faster than life in Mumbai. Clearing the mess at home and getting into the new job seems to be taking a toll on my mind. I complained to myself of not being able to think and look at the mundane things in life with an acute perspective. I thought I lost my wistful lenses and found them as the mess in my home cleared.

As I stood at the doorway watching the ready to paint walls of my room there was interplay of unflattering colors on the wall. The painter had scrapped the old coat for the new paint to last longer. I couldn’t imagine my room was green sometime back or even purple and my mind raced back to the memories associated with each previous coat. I obviously couldn’t remember the details but some thoughts surfaced to make me smile. The house I was trying to fix felt like home.

All of us have several yottabytes of memory from our lives. As we tend to experience more things we “scarp” a part of the memory to accommodate the new one. The unflattering colors may be retained but are hidden with a fresh coat. Good or bad-it is all in the wall.

While “scrapping the paint” we uncover the part of our life we lived and triumphed. Some of us look at it as comfort…I know I do. It is comforting because it is the familiar territory. The criticism, the praise, the smell of the fresh paint has been dealt with. Change sometimes can honestly be a pain in the ass. Sometimes you like things static and it doesn’t bore you to have it that way.

This year has been incredibly twisted. I have had my best and the worst moment the same year. And it’s all a part of the wall (quite literally because of Facebook). When you can’t hold on to things and pray for them to remain static you discover the freedom of choice- to pick the color of your wall.

So with the New Year being right ahead my static self will pick up the paint brush to coat, un-coat.

Love, a certain way…

A certain summer night beneath the blessed star,
In my mind I held your hand, and walked afar
In the mindless chatter, a comfort I discovered again
And a shelter now I build, in the endless rain
There are so many places I want to see, so many in mind
In the chaos I am consoled when I have your shadows to find
When I think of my life without you, I wasn’t all that bad
Just a certain void that made me think of what I didn’t had
You are like the winter quilt, perhaps a hot coffee too
I would feel the bitter cold, but bearing is easier with you
If I were to write a book, I wouldn’t have your dedicated chapter
But your name in every section would only make the tome matter
With all our flaws intact, together we stand complete
If I was a wiz back then, with you I can reach any feat
In the seemingly endless journey, I savor moments anew
But the ones I savor the most, are the ones with you….

Obituary

“My daddy strongest!!”, a young girl in an old Complan commercial screamed at the camera and left a lasting impression on my mind. I always saw my dad as someone who was indeed the strongest in a lot of aspects. Even behind his tears, I could sense an uncanny strength, the strength to suck up to a bad situation and take control. If I inherited something from him, it was the fact that he was a fighter. The first memory to come to my mind when I think of him is the time when he gave his last 200 bucks to an imposter, who pretended to be a beggar. On my questionable look at his generosity to a potentially undeserving man, his answer was “He must need it very badly to come up with a lie like that” and then he paused and said, “Don’t tell your mother”. Despite my higher emotional proximity to my mother, I didn’t tell her. At that moment and to this date I wish I could be half as generous a person as he was. I was really young and had worn a “Churidar” for the first time with all the works. As is the scenario in most Indian households the elders began to rave about how good I looked in the Indian attire. The obvious successive thought was to start planning my marriage. I remember my father snapping immediately and saying “she will marry whenever she pleases. I see her as economically independent and educated before even thinking of something like this”. Obviously, the fact that my relatives were furnishing a bad joke didn’t settle with him. I don’t remember anything else about this day, but my dad’s words still remain in my memory. My father’s anger was rather infamous in the family, so much so that I shuddered at the thought of studying from him. He had the knack of delivering ‘filmy’ dialogues at the onset of a fight. One of his favourites was “I don’t even expect you to give me water when I grow old and ask for it”. Ironically on the day of his cremation, I poured the last drops of water into his mouth. I concluded that indeed God’s sense of timing is sick. As selfish as I am, I am glad that my father died a happy man because of me (and his family). He was proud of my promotion. My mother says (and I believe her) that after my phone call he couldn’t stop laughing and kept telling my mother that I was HIS daughter. My only regret in life would be not being able to meet him and celebrate. I loved him by virtue of being my father and I respected him for the man he was. To me, to my mind, My daddy will always be the strongest.