Airbound Musings

<If nothing, to prod this sluggish blog into some activity>

Airports always get me thinking – my mind’s whirring and it’s hard to keep my eyes on the page. It’s a sensory overload, watching the plethora of people milling about, their facesliveshistories reflected on vast shiny surfaces. A place so huge that no sound ever fills it except the periodic sterile and well-enunciated announcements (ting, ting:). Everything else just floats about aimlessly – you hear snatches sometimes and they’re always pregnant with so many unknown things.

Tap-tap-tap-tap some of them walk briskly, knowing exactly where to go. Others shuffle along, confused or conversing or just ambling, taking in perhaps the same things as me (Tap. Tap. Tap). The little squeaks that wheelchairs emit – the attendants look hypnotized, as if they wouldn’t notice if the warm piles of bone and wrinkly skin that they were carting along fell off on the way. Everyone’s shoes are clean. Mine aren’t. There’s a girl with bright pink hair. She looks away from everyone who stares – you don’t dye your hair a bright fucking pink without practising in your head the exact sort of nonchalant looking-away that you’ll do. Moments of panic – someone digs in a bag for a possibly misplaced something, someone else is turned away for having too much luggage, or the wrong sort. So many people are afraid of this ominously glinting space – they are impeccably dressed in brand new clothes, they are afraid to ask the stewardess for anything, they are afraid to respond to her perfectly tinted mouth shaping alien noises in a faux-pleasant voice. Others stride past looking glamorously shoddy; it’s a long way to go before one can afford to look shoddy in airports. Of course there’s diversity – there are flights going from everywhere to everywhere. There’ll be Jain monks and emo teens and pink-haired girls. But some things you’ll never see: white cleaning staff; Indians wearing surgical masks (germs, ha!); women with young children looking like they wouldn’t chuck them in a suitcase if they could; young children looking like they’ll stay quiet for the flight.

The whirring winds down. Back to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. And then the flight.

MB1001: Introduction to the Psychosomatomatosociocultelecommunificience of Cinema

(or: Movies are Important, period.)

 ‘Summer was pointless--all I did was watch movies.’

Umm, WHAT?

<The Movie Buff glares in thunderous disapproval>

Ticking movies off a well-prepared list is by no means a bad way to spend one’s time--call it ‘cultural education’, if you will. From campy to classy, from extravagant period dramas to realistic parallel cinema, from musicals to horror -- and musical horror, and horrible musicals, God forbid --each one provides ample food for thought;  modules of a course that refuses to fit into a neat, officious-sounding title. Allow me to expound -- here is a selection of the many, many (manymany) movies I gasped, dozed, jeered, sneered and stared (in utter rapture, mind you) my way through this break:

Za Lou Stories - So romance is not my thing. And I know many who feel the same. If you’re tired of the same old formula, I suggest unconventional romances like ‘Harold and Maude’, ‘Leon the Professional’, ‘Love Me if You Dare’ and ‘Moonrise Kingdom’, where the protagonists are far, far from your typical limpid-eyed lovers.  Also try ‘Romeo+Juliet’-- Baz Luhrman’s typically extravagant and mad adaptation of the Shakespearean classic.

Where People Generally Shoot Or Do Grievous Bodily Harm to One Another- Violence is not a guy thing--not when it defines excellently crafted movies like ‘City of God’ (so brutal you can’t bear to watch, yet so captivating you can’t bear not to),  ‘Reservoir Dogs’ (one word: Tarantino. Check out ‘Kill Bill’ and ‘Deathproof’ before accusing him of gender discrimination), ‘The Big Lebowski’ (two words: Coen brothers), Memento (makes ’Inception’ seem like a Disney movie) and Se7en (you’ll never forget the Seven Cardinal Sins. Ever).

Light Watches - These are movies that people may either see as mindless, or fit for a fun, one-time watch with friends. While movies like ‘Paris, I Love You’ (French precursor to New York, I Love You), We Bought A Zoo’,  ‘About A Boy’ and ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ are actually well-made and enjoyable, I couldn’t help feeling that ‘You Again’, ‘Something’s Gotta Give’ and ‘What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (see Coming-of-Age) were best left unwatched. 

Coming-of-Age - This is one genre with so many immensely popular and likeable movies that it deserves a list of its own. My personal favourites are ‘Almost Famous’ and ‘Napoleon Dynamite’. You could start with the classic ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Out’ and check out ‘Rushmore’, ‘Terri’ (see Parallel Cinema), ‘Thumbsucker’ (Parallel Cinema yet again) and ‘Superbad’ (beware: Apatowian humour is not for the prudish). Careful ,though: it’s easy to make mistakes like ‘What’s Eating Gilbert Grape’ (as popular as this one is, I wasn’t particularly enamoured of a scrawny and dishevelled Depp looking perpetually constipated--but watch out for a show-stealing young DiCaprio as the autistic younger brother). If you haven’t started wondering whether girls ever do come of age, do so now--this genre seems to have a definite bias. ‘Fish Tank’ (the Parallel people do love the whole ‘growing up’ deal, methinks) is a nice change, but once again, a caveat: this is an explicit movie about the seedy, welfare-supported side of life in UK.

Dramas- As a genre, this is possibly my favourite. Since it’s so vaguely defined, movies could range from Tyrannosaur (bleak, intense exploration of the cult of domestic violence) to Sense and Sensibility (period drama adaptation of Austen novel). Some others that I liked are I’ve Loved You So Long’ (French), The Kids Are All Right (Oscar-winning), Trainspotting (Danny Boyle at his best), Hope Springs (the makers of ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ manage to stay away from heavy-handedness in their treatment of a very mature topic), Precious (hard-hitting, this one), the universally loved Shawshank Redemption and my favourite, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints.  Try to stay away from typical Oscar fodder, though--‘A Beautiful Mind’ is good, but also overrated and shamelessly traitorous to its source material. One exception I’m willing to make is ‘Forrest Gump’.

Parallel Cinema- This is a touchy topic. Most mainstream moviegoers tend to stay away from this sort of filmmaking, but some of the best movies, in my opinion, fall in this category. I’m not talking about movies where some bloke balancing a pot on his head while humming is sold to people labelled ‘metaphysical symbolism’ or some such thing--those are an acquired taste at best, and at worst, shams. There are art films that surprise us by being accessible, and remind us gently of our narrow definitions of entertainment, art and life in general. As much as we all love Spielberg, a great movie doesn’t necessarily need sweeping panoramas and soaring music and a budget that could feed a small nation. Now that I’m done with my rant, you may wish to watch movies like ‘Paper Man’, ‘The Classroom’ (French ‘Entre les Murs’), ‘Fish Tank’ (see Coming-of-Age), ‘Terri’ (‘obese kid learning to accept life’ sounds clichéd, but this one is worth a watch) and ‘The Kid with the Bike’. Finally: ‘Sita Sings the Blues’-- this one will leave you tickled that such an ‘unorthodox’ film could be so much fun.

Old-School-This isn’t a genre, really: there are all sorts of great movies that we miss out on simply because they’re ‘old’. I, for one, took some time to get used to the black and white picture. Start with Chaplin classics like ‘Modern Times’ and ‘The Kid’, wait until you fall in love, and then go on to explore other genres, like screwball comedy (‘Some Like it Hot’, ‘His Girl Friday’), romance (‘Casablanca’), dramas (‘Citizen Kane’, ‘On the Waterfront’) and if you dare, black comedy (‘The Ladykillers’). Two movies that blew my mind are ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ and ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’.

Surreal, Larger-than-Life Stories- These movies fit in everywhere, yet nowhere. They have an element of the surreal, and watching them is a truly sublime experience. ‘Beasts of the Southern Wild’ is a beautiful movie about the overwhelming resilience and personal triumph of a pint-sized girl who’ll stay etched in your thoughts. ‘Apocalypse Now’ is a very well-known Coppola movie that exposes war in all its primeval destructiveness. ‘Into the Wild’ probably belongs to this category, but I tend to think of it as slightly overrated. ‘Cloud Atlas’ might as well be sci-fi, but its epical, time-travelling storyline qualifies it for this label.

Movies After Which You’re Scared to Go to the Toilet Alone- This, mind you, is a generic label for movies ranging from gory ‘Saw’ to creepy, retro ‘House of the Devil’. There are, of course, the classics, like ‘The Exorcist’, ‘The Blair Witch Project’’ and ‘Poltergeist’, but movies like ‘The Vanishing’ (Dutch-French), ‘The Exorcism of Emily Rose’, ‘Let the Right One In’ (Swedish), ‘The Orphanage’ (Spanish), Kairo (Japanese) and ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ will change the way you look at fear and the supernatural.

***

Seckshoo-ality

Article 377.
Quite the rage now (literally--people are enraged). One of those wonderful quaint British Raj things --like a love for Wodehouse--that, I suppose, a powerful sense of nostalgia didn't allow us to change. How droll.

'Carnal intercourse against the order of nature'.
Since it's blatantly obvious that human sexuality is purely a product of nature (ages worth of established traditions of pornography, erotica and cults of sex as a power symbol--catamites, anybody?--as a means of seeking the spiritual and above all, as a means of celebrating pure pleasure notwithstanding), and that 'carnal intercourse' is a very identifiable term (remember when you saw it mentioned in--wait, you wouldn't have if you were reading anything written later than the 19th century), the phrase makes perfect sense in today's accursed times, what with girls running amok, wearing skirts and getting raped and all.

Let us assume that intercourse becomes unnatural when it is: a)Not aimed at procreation and b) Non-consensual.
So any intercourse involving contraception is unnatural.
The original proponents of said gyan -the Church- are on the verge of 'reconsideration'. 
But why, really? It makes perfect sense!Why do we need birth control in India anyway?

See, only if we stand strongly against all this queer-weer stuff will our sanskar be upheld and all. This 377 thing is solid only. Why you want to change?


A far more articulate and sensible rant may be found at The Indian Economist.

The Curious Case of Ambi Coording

Post Saarang B**ching Ltd. Presents  

‘The Rust’

Spons team friend: “Yeah, so we got endless supplies of Coke, ‘Overadvertised Biscuit’ (if you haven’t seen at least ONE 6x6 banner or had ONE flyer thrust upon you, you’ve been living under a rock), a few t-shirts, and a coupla other odds and ends.”

Me: “We got free double-sided tape, b**ch. Yeah, that’s right--FREE! DOUBLE sided!”

There is a very well-defined hierarchy when it comes to the organizing committees of Saarang. Imagine a pyramid. There’s the top crowning pointy bit and the bottom bit. Then there’s the stand holding up the bottom bit. We’re, like, the rust on the stand. To clarify: there are two teams; The Rust--that’s the Ambience team, and The Others--that’s, well, the others.

Ambience, if the Saarang cores wake up to flex-printing, can be done away with entirely. But that has not happened yet, and so we have a team comprising of a few lost souls entrusted with the Kafkaesque task of making artsy props/instalments for a 635-acre expanse (okay, the few acres where the fest goes on). Like moles and <insert name of random unglamorous nocturnal creature>, they work away in some (literally--the lighting sucks) shady corner of SAC while the entire machinery of Saarang whirs away, ignorant of their existence. They spend nights over props that they hope (in vain) are at least visible, and mornings washing glitter off their scalps and scraping paint off their toenails (true story. Also, glitter is EVIL). They attend coord meetings and come out wondering what on earth just happened, when, for example, a) cores throw about statements like ‘all right guys, don’t forget to RSVP your ABCD to the ACP, and do the ERP, yeah?’ and all the others nod in unison and b) someone says ‘…and all thanks to NEURO--awesome macha!’ and you turn and ask your co-coord ‘Wait, we have some bloke called Bureau?’. Amidst a volley of ‘clause 6 of the MoU is a bit iffy, eh?’ and ‘yeah, I’ll seal the deal today with <insert name of random super-appealing brand>’, they try to pass off ‘Fevicol won’t work da, use superglue’. At the end of it all, they seek solace in the odd ‘Yeah, that was pretty, that shiny thing in…wait, where was it?’.

Underdogs or what? At the end of yet another amazing Saarang, The Others are left with the bittersweet hangover of a tough job (reasonably) well accomplished, and The Rust is left with enough of black existential humour to fill a Woody Allen film. Sigh.

Rose

 

The very luxuriance of your petals

that tinge the air with a scent

and grace the earth with a velvety beauty

that has spurred the pens of poets

and the hearts of lovers

stifle your fecundity;

they smother your womb,

they hold your secret in a tight embrace
impervious to enamoured lovers.

And the enigma of your loneliness

beckons the moonlight

to your tears of silent grief,

and they shine

like infinitesimal stars.

Blinded by your beauty,

no one sees those thorns

born of bitterness;

the moonlight looks away.

They call it immortalisation,

but there is a sadness

in being trapped

within that pregnant word: ‘Rose’.

A rose by any other name….

no; a rose is a rose is a rose.

A note on the poem:

It all started with a surprising discovery during a random web-trawl: a rose with too many petals is often rendered infertile; they literally stifle the reproductive parts. The very appendages that are supposed to aid reproduction hinder it! Fascinated, I started writing. What started out as a means of simply exploring the poetic irony in a fact turned out to be something much larger by the time I was done.

So this is about glorifying stereotypes -- nurturing, ever-patient wife; worldly man with an answer to everything; dutiful child who always echoes parents’ wishes-- an endless list of phrases and epithets for everything we see around us. These ideals seem to be tributes to humanity and the roles we play as humans, but in reality, they blot out the individual; the real, unique, definition-defying human in each of us. A rose is, at the end of the day, just a pretty, sweet-smelling flower. But, as is epitomized by Shakespeare’s lines, it has come to gain a massive framework of meanings attached to its name. It is hard to think of a rose as merely a flower these days.

Which brings me to another, seemingly unconnected issue: how language can often trap the speaker, reader or writer. It is the same issue of the burden of intrinsic frameworks of meaning-- this idea was introduced to me by a paper on Gertrude Stein’s ‘Sacred Emily’. It was about how some poets like her sought to question the very foundation of language that imposed rigid meanings on words and restricted our emotions to strict definitions. The author theorized that through her line ‘a rose is a rose is a rose’ (whose meaning is ever-debated), Stein sought to free the rose of all such associations and see it for what it truly was. The author analyzed this from a radical feminist perspective: how the feminist movement sought to subvert the very structure of language that was formed through centuries of patriarchy.

I choose to tie together all of these diverse things with this poem: let us all try to see the world without the crutches that are stereotypes. Perhaps we ought not to allow the beautifying (beatifying?) moonlight to hide the truth of the thorns, however jarring they may be to our concept of soft, aphrodisiac and luscious ‘rose’ness. Sometimes, we should look into the heart of words to see what they truly mean, and not blindly accept all that that idea or word commonly stands for (which makes me recall Arundhati Roy in one of her essays, speaking about how we tend to associate anti-Americanism with pro-terrorism--ah, the places that one is led to by rambling thoughts!)

 I don’t know if I’m making much sense here, but words are all I have; they are my sky, and my dungeon.

The IITM Story

<About my initial experiences as an IITian> 

  Once upon a time, there was a girl who, by the ever-obscure scheming of Lady Luck (that they call an ‘entrance exam’, but we all know how that works), ended up in the hallowed premises of the ‘Academic Vatican’ that is IIT Madras. This is the story of those first few weeks in this brand new world that outshone her entire life until then.

1.       Snow White

   The gates opened, and she entered a vast, verdant world of breathtaking beauty. But those massive, gnarled trees that extended their branches out to the roads as if to grab at passersby (and a very un-fairytale-ish fear of being part of an intellectual minority; but that’s impertinent) ….she was filled with foreboding. This was the arcane Enchanted Forest. But wait! Glimpses of the marvellous creatures  of the wilderness! (aha—of course not you, dear seniors--don’t flatter yourself) She might just survive, after all: she would sing with the birds and dance with the deer and….

uh-oh. The monkeys.

2.        Dorothy

They were everywhere, but their headquarters seemed to be at her hostel. Evil flying monkeys that spat fire and swooped on unsuspecting prey (okay, they snatched water bottles and edibles and the occasional mobile phone, and ransacked rooms left unlocked, but the spirit of fairytale glamour has to be upheld). They had established a reign of terror over the inmates. The bane of the Emerald City. Ugh—the picture wasn’t as rosy as her mind had painted it; would the great Oz prove to be nothing but a myth?

3.       Sleeping Beauty

After a few days of la-la-la-ing with the deer and screaming like the ‘Psycho’ heroine at the monkeys’ antics, classes began. Oz was Oz all right: she was flummoxed by the alien pedagogical and epistemological aspects of the curriculum (it would be very unglamorous to state that the heroine of this story felt like a dumbass). After months of lazing in that ‘in limbo’ space between school and college, all she could think was “ZZZZzzzzz….”

Oh, wait. The glamour factor looms. Fine then: the heroine was pricked by…er…something pricky, and fell into deep, deep slumber……

4.       Me

“TRRRRrrrrinnggg!!!

Not the school bell, she tells herself—the alarm clock. She shakes off the warm cocoon of slumber with her blanket; classes begin early today. Things are slowly beginning to fall into place; life in IITM is beginning to make sense: the fire-breathing flying monkeys have reduced to annoying pests, and deer are deer, period. No fairytales here--only great friends, brand new experiences, amazing professors who open doors to new universes each day, and a one-of-a-kind college. 

But the sparkling hope of a ‘happily ever after’ remains.

Monkey Business, or: The Simian Saga

                                                                

    I saw them as I walked towards the hostel. They sat around, surveying the groups of freshies with such an air of propriety that I was compelled to give myself a once-over to ensure presentability. In most normal contexts, the aforesaid is likely to evoke images of strict wardens, matrons and the like.  But ask any inmate of the mad world of IITM and they’ll tell you: “Oh yeah—the monkeys.”

In most hostels, some part of the day is spent by us chasing cockroaches and other pests out of the rooms. In Sharav, however, a large part of the day is spent by monkeys chasing us out of our rooms, following which they nimbly sift through our belongings and make away with anything edible. Some smart ones knock on doors and slide in when we open it expecting a wingmate or roomie. After a couple of unpleasant lessons, we have adopted the policy of asking ‘Man or Monkey?’ before letting anyone in. Lately, they seem to have taken quite a shine to mobile phones; it is a nagging suspicion that they rewire them and use them as walkie-talkies. After co-existing with generations of budding engineers, one can never tell….

   Then there are a few with ‘acquired tastes’—one snatched a tube of face-wash from a hapless freshie and downed its contents in a gulp. Those of us with cosmetic possessions have now learnt to keep an eye out for a particularly ‘fair and lovely’ monkey.

At night, we take turns: either the monkeys create a ruckus outside while we cower in our rooms, sleepless, or we have raucous late-night get-togethers and annoy the sleeping monkeys clinging to our window grills.

   Do not, however, expect any empathy from outsiders on the matter. Unless one sees for oneself, it is impossible to believe of a hostel where people and monkeys live in (questionable) harmony. So don’t tell your friends back home things like “Sorry I couldn’t call you yesterday; a monkey took my phone” (Monkeys? Really? Next time get a better excuse—humph!) or “Dude, there are so many monkeys here!” (What, your hostel-mates are that ugly?)

   Oops…just a sec: someone’s knocking on the door.

“Man or Monkey?”

“Monkey!”

Hahaha….wait.

Vocab from the MA’s is only the next step after walkie-talkies from the techies.

I am NOT opening that door.

A Life On Tip-Toes

 I'M SHORT. I may be clever, dumb, ugly, pretty, fat, thin...but before anything, I'm short. And somehow, everyone, from the makers of shelves to the flowers on trees, refuses to acknowledge the existence of short people. The result? A life spent on tip-toes. I've forgotten the combined feeling of taking something from a height and having my heels on the floor. I've become so used to craning my neck to see stage-shows over the head of The Invariably-And-Annoyingly-Tall Person in front of me that I'm surprised I don't resemble a giraffe already. I'm also used to the feeling of being surrounded by huge things, to the question: 'Wait, you've grown SHORTER??', to people looking down at me, to the incessant pleas of my mother to 'grow taller' (basketball, skipping, hanging myself from the ceiling-not by the neck, I think-the suggestions are endless)....

What irks me, though,  is that so many others are taller than me. It drives me mad, thinking that getting something for them does not involve the Olympian long-jumps that I've perfected over the years. That they get to be the Invariably-And-Annoyingly-Tall Person in front of Perpetually-Pissed-Off Short Persons like me. That they will always have a bird's eye view of the world. That 'tippy-toes', for them, will always be a quaint phrase to read about.

Which is why seeing a tall girl sporting vertiginous heels is the last straw. The violence that such a harmless sight (it isn't as if it's a guy with jeans slung low enough to make it purposeless...but that's another story) inspires in me is frightening. I want to menacingly growl at her: "Don't push your luck, darlin'...." As if their spindly legs and mile-long spines weren't enough! They strut around, these girls, as if they were born in those killer heels, while naturally deprived people like me are forever confined to measly ol' flats due to a total lack of balance. A cocky "I'm proud of my shortness--I don't have to disguise it!" attitude barely hides the pathetic fact that heels would kill me. A fall from one of those things could break my precious-- albeit maddeningly short--legs. The only solace is the image of the Heel-Sporting Gal as an old woman, hobbling along on bunion-ridden feet, with knees worn out from years of trying to support unnaturally inclined legs. And how she'll wistfully stare at an older me, briskly walking past her on well-preserved feet. Ha! Short, but safe--sounds fair enough...

Right?!

The Parental Paradox

  There's Us, and then there's Them.

It's called 'generation gap', apparently-- seems less like a mere gap and more like a gaping chasm each day. The adults and adolescents of this world share genes, homes and lives, yet belong to different universes. At ginormous functions (that ought to be banned, in my opinion), the  elders are in their element; remembering everybody's (and their father's uncle's sister-in-law's friend's neighbour's dog's) names and knowing just what to say and do and when. And us? We try to hide behind the curtains and pretend to be pillars, scared to death of the unknown faces and the obscure rules of social etiquette that our parents handle so well. When it comes to anything electronic, though, the tables are turned: we seem to be born with perfect knowledge of all that bewilders them. All that has been discussed to death; let's leave it at that. What makes me ponder is their ceaseless talk of 'those days' and 'how lucky you kids are'--are we all that lucky?

So much as whisper about 'new dress' or 'that iPod I wanted', and you'll be treated to a diatribe on the evergreen topic: 'How You Kids Have a Million Things We Didn't and Still Act Like Ungrateful Brats', peppered with anecdotes of 'Two suits of clothes for a whole year' and 'Begging the elders for a week before getting a pencil'. By the sound of it, all our parents lived during the Great Depression. Or the Stone Age, if our demands happen to be a tad on the expensive side. But catch them in a good mood, and the very same people who lament about their bland and austere past wax lyrical about how wonderful it was. I call it 'The Parental Paradox'. Let me expound:

Parents, uncles and aunts seem to have an endless stock of  childhood tales that sound suspiciously like excerpts from Malgudi Days; endless green fields, playing in the rain, joint families, football in the mud, ice lollies from the ice-cream man....life, it seems, was perfect then. It always starts with a sage "Ah, you kids have missed so much! When I was of your age...". These stories entertain me endlessly, mostly because they are as exotic as fairy-tales. It took me years to figure out the single thing that made their childhood so much fun: A sense of wonder. That's it--the very thing that pervaded their childhood and abandoned ours. And the reason for this is the very factor that they cite as a disadvantage: a total lack of luxury.

Take a common example: they had no television, no telephones (let alone cellphones), no plethora of gadgets whose sole purpose was to amuse-- a transistor, at best, was their sole source of entertainment. The result: Outdoor games, improved health, enhanced attention spans, better skills of personal interaction and most importantly: a love for reading and gaining knowledge. Even things we now see as trivial--like the sight of a car or a moving toy--were fascinating 'events'. We can only imagine a life so vibrant, but why? If  sources of wonder are a parameter for a good childhood, then surely we, with our technological marvels, are far better off than them? Nope--our minds have become frozen and unresponsive. Amid the blaring noises, garish images and artificially enhanced surroundings that assail us each moment, nothing short of an apocalypse will catch our attention. A teen who is put off by the sub-standard quality of 3D technology employed in a movie can hardly be expected to gaze in wonder at the vivid hues of a butterfly.

At the end of it all, we are left living mere shells of lives, under the sad impression that we have everything, when we don't even have the simple pleasure of watching the stars in the sky, or smelling a breeze that is scented by flowers and not burnt rubber. Lucky us? I beg to differ.

What do we do then? Call me pessimistic, but my answer is: nothing. Our minds are already inextricably trapped in an unreal world. But there is one last thing we could do: listen to the tales of our elders. And wonder.

"To see a world in a grain of sand,

 And a heaven in a wild flower;

 Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

 And eternity in an hour."

-William Blake

   

  

Clothes-shopping and Purse-dropping

   The last couple of days were spent on burning through two considerably weighty tomes as a means of compensating for two whole years of neglecting my all-time bosom-buddies: books. And this has left me with nothing but an indescribable satisfaction and sense of well-being, similar to the feeling of having eaten a delightful, wholesome meal. Burp.

  
The last couple of hours were spent in air-conditioned, perpetually brand-new-looking 'boutiques' (places where we pay not just for the clothes we buy, but for the elaborate displays, the shiny tiles, the cleaner who keeps them looking that way, the bugging salesgirls who look better dressed than you are, the uniforms that keep them looking that way, etc.etc.) shopping for clothes. And this seemingly simple (and purportedly enjoyable) activity has left me with a crack-a-lacking headache that could only have been my sensible brain trying to break out of my skull in order to escape from the sheer torture. Blech.

 
 My phobia of clothes' shops shares its origins with my phobia of beauty parlours; namely, my Mom. These are, arguably, her two favourite places on earth. She is one of those women who take pride in looking well-groomed. Don't get me wrong; I have only respect for their flawless taste in haute couture and make-up and their firm (and indisputable) belief that they deserve nothing less. But I fail to understand why they have absolutely no qualms about doling out the moolah in truckloads for this purpose when there are a million other causes crying out for a bit of funding. Why do these persons spend eye-popping amounts on, say, reducing the almost imperceptible darkness around their eyes, when a tenth of the value could save lives? I'm sure a charity box is an infinitely more deserving candidate than a minuscule tube of some elixir of dubious effectiveness.

  
Most people, including my mother, shrug off the verbal version of the above 'righteous rant' with an annoyed 'Oh, you won't understand--you aren't fit to be a girl!'  Thus silenced, I would simply (sullenly) watch my mother spending HUGE (in my opinion) quantities-- both in terms  of money and time-- on clothes, cosmetics and the like. Years of silently witnessing (mom often forces me to accompany her) such atrocities have caused my disagreement to insidiously morph into a full-blown terror of being trapped in a ready-mades' store or a saloon for more than an hour. My complete lack of fashion-sense only adds to my utter bewilderment upon seeing the massive piles of clothes (or the massive, unflatteringly near-nude, green/purple-faced women, as the case may be) assaulting my eyes everywhere.

 It is this person who was, today, forced to undertake the task of buying clothes for none other than.... my MOM. Yes, yes, you may now snicker about poetic justice and irony and blah.

  
Anyway, we (me, uncle, aunt) were leaving the third shop or so (none of the endless rows of clothes in these places seemed to fit my mom's exacting description of what I should buy), when amid the mild  throbbing in my head that warned of an imminent headache, rang an alarm: WHERE IS YOUR PURSE??

 Uh-oh. I stared in despair at my empty hand, within which my purse--containing a lot of money and my cell--was supposed to snugly nestle. Search parties were despatched immediately, and I dashed about like a freaked-out goose, trying to get my famously 'absent' mind to remember where I had left the darned thing. The reel of images (of my parents sticking a skewer through me and slowly roasting me over a spit) that goes through my head didn't help. At all. That's when I heard it: the faint tinkling of my ringtone from somewhere among the mind-boggling array of garments. I found myself identifying with the last person I expected to: The rouge-cheeked, scarlet-lipped, amply-endowed heroine of some campy movie who hears the call of her beloved as she despairingly searches the green meadow. My joyful run towards the source of the sound might as well have been in slow motion, accompanied by a triumphant background score. And there it was: hidden beneath a revolting pile of clothes. Aaaahhh....the relief.

 As we headed towards the car, with me sheepishly grinning under my uncle's and aunt's scorching looks, I realized that the whole rigmarole had sped up the onset of a headache of gargantuan proportions.

 
 I remember seeing a lot of brightly coloured little tags and boards happily announcing a million different offers and discounts, like so many beacons of the generosity  and pure intent of the sellers (go ahead; call me a fool, but you simply can't look at those perky little things and still have the heart to brand them as desperate traps for gullible buyers). At the end of it all, though, all I'm left with is a considerably lighter (and nearly lost) purse, a blinding headache, and a fresh addition to my (long) list of 'Traumatic Sartorial and Cosmetic Experiences'.

 

The Weird Inhabitants of My House

   Okay, first things first: this isn’t about the entertaining eccentricities of my colourful kith and kin. Not that it wouldn’t make for thoroughly enjoyable writing; no, I abstain from detailing the idiosyncrasies of my various relatives due to the nagging fear that one of them may read this article and come after me with a machete. So the said weird inhabitants aren’t people in the general sense of the word- although the only difference seems to be that people can talk, and they can’t (which, by the way, qualifies them as infinitely better co-inhabitants). I’m talking about the various creatures that are insensitively labelled as ‘vermin’ by us. And there really is no dearth for such creatures in my home in Kerala. Sit in a room and stare around, and it’s like watching the Animal Planet in 3D- Keralites will know what I’m talking about. And what better season than monsoon for these ‘guests’ to seek refuge in the warm and dry recesses of a house? So when you are a bored-out-of-your-brains teen left to her own devices and have nothing but formidable (and untouched) piles of holiday homework for company, these perky pests seem like friendly companions. And so, here’s a list of the interesting acquaintances I made during the holidays:

          The Lovelorn Lizard 

            They’re everywhere, these lizards. But they don’t care for humans—the way they stare at you from the walls, it’s like you’re the mannerless intruder in their house. They’re so aloof that my disgusted ‘gaaaahhh!’ upon seeing them soon simmered down to a grudging ‘humph!’; really, after all my histrionics, you’d expect them to freeze in terror in the least! Nope. Not a chance. They just go about dropping their tails like Cinderella dropped her glass slippers (although I must say Prince Charming will be more likely to pick up the latter), and snapping up anything with wings. So I was, naturally, mildly flattered when one of them took quite a shine to me. It keeps staring at me from behind the clock, with tiny beady eyes. Our eyes meet each time I look at the time…even as I write this. Okay, dude, this is getting creepy….go eat some moths or something.

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        The Cat that gives me The Eye 

             There’s a snow-white feline femme fatale on our terrace. And she has a super-sweet kitten who snuggles up in one of the old boxes lying around.  Even when I know I’m supposed to be ploughing through Maths at the study table put out on the terrace, I can’t help stopping every now and then (and every other now and then) to stare at her and the kitty. Each time I come closer and peer at the adorable ball of fur that is young enough to still be tinged with a newborn pink, Mom (who is always stretched out beside the kitten, reminding me of Cleopatra languorously reclining on her gilded divan) lifts up her head, and stares at me with her witchy green eyes. At first, she seems to warn “Don’t even think about it, Weird Psycho!” But when she sees that all I do is stare back apologetically (I know it’s creepy, ma’am, but your kid is CUTE!), she lazily rests her head on her perfect paws and continues to doze, as if to say, “Like, whatever”.

      

       The Friendly Neighbor, Spiderman 

            It’s hard to think that there’s anything friendly about a black, hairy spider as big as your hand, I know. For most people, it’s nightmarish. But strangely enough, as he scuttles across the walls late at night when I’m the only one awake in the house, watching movies, I feel oddly comforted. Really, when there are bloody, rotten zombies lunging at you from within the screen, and nothing but darkness and scary noises outside, a burly spider on your side feels safe.

     

       The Napping Gnat 

           Come nightfall, and a plethora of insects of all shapes and sizes crowd around the flickering tube-lights. If you happen to be studying beneath one of them, your book becomes a ramp for this crawling cavalcade, and it is a welcome distraction from the mind-numbing boredom of reading through textbooks. During one such parade, one bright bug caught my attention. Although hardly bigger than the full-stops in my book, he seemed hell-bent on reading the lesson along with me. I watched with curiosity as he wove in and out of the lines of text with considerably more enthusiasm than me. But I soon discovered how like-minded we were when he slowed down after the first paragraph, and came to a complete halt in the middle of the third. I wasn’t surprised: if a few lines of academic information can numb our famously complex and massive brains, imagine what it can do to the minuscule mind of a bug. From sheer exhaustion, the tiny thing had fallen asleep. And so, after gently nudging him towards a margin with my finger, I too, lay down my head on the pages of the book, and followed suit. (This was only after weighing the possibility that he may wake up and crawl into my ear, and deciding that textbook-induced sleep was way too deep for that).

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       Peeping Tom Toady 

            As usual, I got into the bathroom, and was about to turn on the shower when I realized I was staring at a fat toad who, sitting on the faucet, was giving me a look that said, “Hullo, I got here first!” Let’s just say that if humans could move as fast as I did then, we wouldn’t have needed machines. But I was rather brave, if I do say so myself- only after I got out of the bathroom, and the possibility of the toad leaping off the faucet and onto my face occurred to me, did I scream my head off.

    Now, as I look around me and see these miniature minions of monsoon (how’s that for a tongue twister?) clinging onto the walls, crawling on the floor, hovering around the lights and unfortunately, floating in my cooling cup of tea (yuk), I wonder if they’re all looking at me and thinking “Whoa, this is just like watching Human Planet in 3D!”