A letter to You...

Dear You,


Do you remember the day we first met? I do.

I was seven years old and so were you. It was the first day of a new term in school. You were the new boy in class and Mrs. L made you sit next to me. I was very angry with you. I had wanted to sit next to Div – the girl I wanted as my newest best friend. For two years, I had tried to attract her attention and she had ignored me. Everyone wanted to be friends with Div and she had smiled at me that day for the first time, which had made me hope that I would be her newest friend. You spoiled that.

You tentatively grinned at me. I turned my head away. You offered me a sugar sprinkled chocolate biscuit in the break. I pulled out a white chalk from my green skirt pocket and drew a shaky white line on the dirty orange desk we had to share and primly told you, “My half, your half – Don’t cross”. You looked so shattered. I ignored you and smiled broadly at Div to try capturing her attention and therefore her friendship. She ignored me. Do you know how much I blamed and hated you at that moment?

Do you remember when we became friends? I don’t.

It was probably after I gave up expecting Div to be my friend. All the boys teased you – teased you for hanging out with a girl. You didn’t care. What an unlikely combination – The oily haired, pig tailed, loud voiced termagant with her brown streaked crumpled white shirt over chalk stained skirt and the polite, well-mannered boy who always wore sparkling white pressed shirts and never had a speck of dirt on his face. I failed Math and Science. You aced the class. The teachers adored you. You were so beautiful. What an unexpected friendship. Tuesday’s child and Wednesday’s child.

Do you remember the day you made me cry? I do.

We were building a castle of sand together in the playground. I wanted the castle to have moats, you didn’t. I ignored you and started to clump sand together making my moat. I never saw you get angry the way you did that day. I don’t know why you did. It was just a moat. So callously, you swept your hand against my moat. I watched my scattered sand in dismay and then looked up at you, hoping to see remorse in your face. But it was not to be. You looked at me defiantly. I lost my temper then. I rose to my knees, leaned forward and beat my arms downwards destroying our castle. I didn’t stop until all that was left were mounds of ruffled sand. I looked up at you; my anger gone, with a gleeful smile. I didn’t expect you to react the way you did that day. You were always so even tempered and placating. But that day, no. Your ears turned pink as did your cheeks. Your face seemed to puff up in rage as you stared at the destroyed remains and my sand coated self. I don’t know what ran in your mind at that moment. You knelt downwards, picking up clumps of sand in your fist and then in one furious moment flung it at my face. I was in shock for a moment as I raised my hands to my face and my eyes covered with sand. And then I started to cry. I cried for the sand in my eyes, I cried for your treating me so bad, I cried for our castle and I cried for the friendship I was going to say goodbye to.

I didn’t speak to you for months. You tried so much. You rubbed away the chalk lines that I started to draw again dividing our desk. You brought me sugar coated coconut biscuits which you knew I loved so much. I wouldn’t touch them. You tried to loan me pencils when I forgot to bring mine. I would stare at my empty notebook rather than touch your pencils. I was so hard and unforgiving.

Do you know when I fell in love with you? I do.

It was the last day of the year. By then Div had chosen me to be her friend. And you had moved on to start playing football with the other boys. That day I was sitting in the playground reading ‘Little Princess’ imagining I was Sarah. You shuffled up to me and cleared your throat to catch my attention. When I looked up frowningly from my book you smiled tentatively. I stared at you blankly. You reached your hand out towards me palm faced upwards. In it lay a tiny bar of soap. I looked at you quizzically. You softly told me, “Sorry. I got this for you to wash your face. For the, for the – sand I threw in it”. I nodded my head and took the soap from your hand and said, “Thank you”. In that moment, all my anger melted away. That was when I fell in love with you.

Do you know when you broke my heart? I do.

You told me in a voice filled with wistful regret, “My father has got a job in Delhi. We leave tomorrow. I will miss you forever”.

Love,
Dee

Valerie's Letter

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2W0-z8EnaM

I know there’s no way I can convince you this is not one of their tricks. But I don’t care. I am me.

My name is Valerie. I don’t think I’ll live much longer, and I wanted to tell someone about my life. This is the only autobiography that I’ll ever write, and – God – I’m writing it on toilet paper.

I was born in Nottingham in 1985. I don’t remember much of those early years. But I do remember the rain. My grandmother owned a farm in Tottlebrook, and she used to tell me that God was in the rain. I passed my eleven plus, and went to a girl’s grammar. It was at school that I met my first girlfriend. Her name was Sarah.

It was her wrists – they were beautiful.

I thought we would love each other forever. I remember our teacher telling us that it was an adolescent phase that people outgrew. Sarah did. I didn’t.

In 2002 I fell in love with a girl named Christina. That year I came out to my parents. I couldn’t have done it without Chris holding my hand. My father wouldn’t look at me. He told me to go and never come back. My mother said nothing.

I’d only told them the truth. Was that so selfish?
Our integrity sells for so little, but it is all we really have.

It is the very last inch of us.
But within that inch, we are free.

I’d always known what I’d wanted to do with my life, and in 2015 I started my first film: The Salt Flats. It was the most important role of my life. Not because of my career, but because that was how I met Ruth.

The first time we kissed, I knew I never wanted to kiss any other lips but hers again.

We moved to a small flat in London together. She grew scarlet carsons for me in our window box. And our place always smelt of roses. Those were the best years of my life. But America’s war grew worse and worse and eventually came to London.

After that there were no roses anymore. Not for anyone.

I remember how the meaning of words began to change. How unfamiliar words like “collateral” and “rendition” became frightening. Where things like norsefire and the articles of allegiance became powerful, I remember how different became dangerous. I still don’t understand it: why they hate us so much. They took Ruth while she was out buying food. I’ve never cried so hard in my life. It wasn’t long until they came for me.

It seems strange that my life should end in such a terrible place.

But for three years I had roses – and apologized to no-one.

I shall die here.

Every inch of me shall perish.
Every inch. But one.

An inch.

It is small and it is fragile, and it is the only thing in the world worth having.

We must never lose it or give it away. We must never let them take it from us

I hope that - whoever you are - you escape this place. I hope that the world turns, and that things get better.

But what I hope most of all is that you understand what I mean when I tell you that even though I do not know you and even though I may never meet you, laugh with you, cry with you, or kiss you:

I love you.
With all my heart. I love you.

Valerie

The swinging hand

The hand that swings

needs the clapping sound

of the hand that swings

in eager return

When the hand that swings

touches only grim silence

will it with brimming hope

try once - perchance twice?

But when all it feels

is a pregnant stillness

How can you expect

for it to swing again?

THE OTHER KID BORN OF THE SAME BLOOD

I think the most horrific memory I have of my brother is the time I accidently dropped his inkpot.It crashed to the ground from his study table, the ink spreading across the floor. You could have mistaken it for blood if it were not for the colour.I remember feeling shit scared of what he would say.My fear was quite justified.After helping me clean the floor,he made me face the wall and rub my nose against it.Even a hundred apologies did not mollify him.At the end of half an hour when he finally relented and let me off from the wall I had already lost probably 10 layers of my skin.It was his turn to be horrified.Obviously. Dad got to know of the incident and I think blasted my brother.He didn't think the punishment merited the crime. Neither did I.Yet, I still had to go an entire term to school with a tanned brown face and a pinkish white nose. I'm surprised that I don't have the nickname 'Rudolph'.

My brother used to always delight in getting in me into trouble with my aunts and my grandmother. The same as I used to love getting him into trouble with Dad. It helped that Dad was mostly partial towards his younger daughter.There was this one time when my brother and me were eating Dosas at the table and he started sprinking his with Catch salt. Quick to imitate my brother in everything he did, I mimicked his action. No sooner did I begin, he shouted out, " Patti, look at what Deepti is doing!!!". My grandmother quick to support her sensible grandson and berate her scatterbrained grand daughter whacked me across my head and when I said, "But, it was Siddhu who told me to" admonished me for lying about my brother.It was always said by everyone, " I wish Deepti were more like Siddhu. He is sooo 'Samathu'( well behaving ) whereas Deepti is too naughty and always getting into trouble".They never bothered to try find out that quite a few of the scrapes I got into, I was ably led into them by him and while I was left holding the sword he would have long since sprinted away.

I paint a rather devilish,wicked and bullyish picture of my brother don't I? That he was. But I think he was also a lot more than that.

I remember all those times he was around to pull me out of all those terrible scrapes I would get into ( irrespective of whether he got me into them or not!!).The time when I was six and I lit a 50 walah holding it in my hand. He quickly lept, grabbed it out of my hand and threw it away just in the nick of time.He slapped me, but never complained to Dad about it.Or those times when I was eight and he was thirteen and we would travel alone from our grandparent's house to ours by bus ( some 20 kms).When the bus would be crowded, he would find me a seat to sit in and keep an eye on me throughout the journey.

But, more than any other incidents there are three that I will probably never forget.

When we were small,during my birthdays, after the party he would invariably take me to a shop and buy me 'Phantom Ciggaretes' as a birthday gift 'cause they were my favourite sweets.I adored him so much!!

The second was when I was three and he was eight.We were playing Holi in our apartment complex when I suddenly felt a shooting pain in my stomach. I pointed at another kid and tugging at my brother's kurta told him,"Anna, my stomach is paining.That boy he shot me". The boy in question was probably twenty feet away,just staring at us and by no stretch of anyone's imagination could have wielded a gun that could have sprayed me from that far away! Yet , my brother just to comfort me and stop me from being unhappy pointed his pichkari in that guy's direction and sprayed it a couple of times in the air and said, "There, now I have shot him too". Reminds me of that Surf Excel brother and sister ad.

The last one is the time when I probably had lost my calculator for the umpteenth time when I was in college.I was terrified of what my Dad would say.I was certain I was going to get screwed. I decided to ask my bro for a loan to buy a new one. He gave me this disgusted look and asked me, " why don't you just ask dad? He will blast you but will definitely get you a new one". When I told him that it was the second calculator I had lost in a year, he gave me this dry look and said "No. Why don't you just learn to face your stupidity?".A couple of hours later and a million under the breath raves and rants against my brother for being so insensitive, I found a brand new calculator lying on my desk and a short lecture on being more careful. I was amazed, yet touched.Never found the right words to thank him.

My brother is one of the most contradictory persons I have ever met. The birthdays I would ask him for a gift, he would tell me to get lost. Yet on the birthdays in which I didn't remind him off, I would find a gift lying on my study table and an indifferent, "Ah, Happy Birthday".

My brother has never been one for words. He would probably give me a disgusted look if I were ever to ask him if he cared about me. We don't really have anything to talk to each other about. I think its years since we had a decent conversation with each other.When we do talk our conversation is quite stilted and formal. Any stranger would be quite justified in thinking that we were just acquaintances if they were to overhear the kind of conversations we have.Yet none of it has ever really mattered to me. Because no conversation, no honeyed words of love, no hugs and kisses can replace what I do know that I have from my brother. Despite our indifference towards each other, I do know that I have someone I can always depend on when I'm stuck in a quagmire of shit.

P.S

Hey Bro! I know you never read my blogs. I probably will as usual get you a shirt or a music CD for your birthday the way I always have.But this is a special dedication to you for our 22.5 years of being bro and sis!! Happy Birthday, April 19th!!

MY LIFE AS A FRESHER :( AKA THE OMINOUS THREE 'O' THEORY (Courtesy :Megha )

The other day my Dad called out of the blue in the middle of the day and asked me ,"What are you doing?". Not wanting to befuddle him with technical lingo ( *ahem,ahem* , I liked using that.., but do not pledge to its accuracy), I replied, " Nothing much, Dad".To which he said " Oh? On the bench are you?". Quick to rise was my anger. My dad's remark was not particulary accurate. True, the work I do is nothing mind boggling but I was most certainly not on the 'Bench' as my dad put it.

A couple of days ago my brother in law ( ha!! The lucky soul who got to marry my sis!!) asked me, " So what's up at work?". Brutally honest I replied, " Don't keep asking me that question. The work I do is extremely monotonous". Then I hit the nail on the head! Eureka, I thought and then exclaimed to him " You know what? I am nothing more than an overqualified, overpaid, overworked data entry operator".And that precisely sums up my job.
Explaining the adjectives,

Overqualified - Data entry operators do not require a Bachelors in Computer Science and Engineering ( alas, also with a First Class with Distinction) !!

Overpaid - Have you heard of typists earning 17 K a month?????? :0

Overworked - I don't know the meaning of 9 - 5. My company expects me to log in an average of 9.5 hours a week : ( :( .And that is just on paper. Reality could quite easily stretch those hours!!

Therein I discover my true worth in the industry!!

UNROMANTIC BE DAMNED!!

My sister is currently in a rather worthwhile quest. She hunts every nook and cranny for her long remembered - less encountered friends to invite to her wedding which is in February. Her visit to Bangalore serves the dual purpose of spending time with her beloved younger sister and distributing invitations.

The other day I accompanied her when she met up with her friend and his wife. The four of us went out for a coffee and tiffin at a place called Brindavan Hotel at MG Road. One of those typically Southie restaurants with long acrylic wood tables and identical chairs with fans running high above in the ceiling and waiters with those funny caps on their heads, matching their uniforms and a small sized towel slung on one shoulder. Get the pitcure?

Well her friends were very nice. A very sweet, not long married couple who seemed to talk lots and laugh even more. There I was, unusually silent, observing thier conversation when something the husband said absolutely got my gall!@!@*!! My sister was telling them " I wont take much of your time. You guys can make it to a quiet and romantic dinner for two after this at some good restaurant" when the husband replied " chae!!chae!! We never go out like that and all Ramya. We both are very unromantic. We are not into such romantic outings ". I was quite tempted to at that moment hit him in the eye and say " Speak for yourself, dude!!!". I was quite stunned at the assumption he just made that his wife would not like any romantic gestures. Give me a break! I doubt there is any girl who would not like her guy to get just a tad bit romantic atleast on occasions. A girl who does not like to be taken out for dinner and to use the quite familiar phrase 'wined and dined'. Newly married at that!

At that instant, I couldn't help but wonder.Are there really a lot of guys who actually presume that a girl does not like to be wooed? That a little bit of caring would be too amiss?? If there are,all I can think of telling them is "How presumptious can you get in just assuming that a girl would like things to be completely prosaic as you do??"Doesn't it strike them that the girl might secretly long for ( yet never admit) a little bit of that extra hint of caring?

Unromantic Husbands be damned!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME !!

I'ts my Birthday today. I turn twenty two. But somehow the thought does not leave me one bit excited. Somehow I can't fathom anything special. To be honest I find the day quite depressing.
When i was a kid I had an obsession for birthdays. November 6th was always the most exciting day of my life. I used to adore the attention, the fun and most importantly the gifts. When the day passed and it turned November 7th , I would immediately start a countdown to my next birthday. My dad and brother always said that 'Deepti has 365 friends for 365 birthdyas'.I think as a kid I probably lived for birthdays. Especially mine.

I would have those traditional birthday parties with a cake, streamers and balloons decking the house, a new dress and lots of friends and relatives bearing gifts for me, :) I remember this one instance where I refused to allow a cousin of mine to my party because he had not brought any present for me. I was like 'Giri! Don't you know that you are supposed to bring the birthday girl a gift? I can't allow you to my party'. Quite the precocious one, wasn't I?
My brother would in the night take me for a walk and buy me a pack of phantom sweet cigarettes ( I adored that stuff!!) as a birthday gift. And I would be so thrilled!It would be the final icing to a wonderful day.
Once you grow older the way you celebrate them turns different. Now its more of going out for lunch and dinner with friends and family. Its still enjoyable but so much more sober. Lacks the adrenalin surge and the excitement that traditional birthday parties with gallons of presents would offer. That wonderful feeling of being the most important person in the world that day.

Anyway, Happy Birthday to me.

THE CRACK ON MY WALL

There is a crack on my wall. It’s not a small crack and it’s not the only one. But this particular crack seldom fails to get on my nerves. I had it painted once. But it would not be deterred. Within a couple of months the paint on it flaked and it appeared again. What makes it even more irksome is that it has some gibberish scrawled across it. I did not scribble on that wall. It was my nephew. A boy, I think, who fancies himself to be Pablo Picasso creating ‘Guernica’. It was four years ago, when in a burst of inspiration he decided to decorate (or was that desecrate?) the wall. I was sorely tempted to box his ears. Unfortunately, the fact that my cousin sister, his mother was also staying with us then made me desist. I was not too keen to have my ears boxed, which is what would have happened if I had succumbed to temptation.

I deviate. I was talking about the crack on the wall, not about the scribbling on it. Remember the earthquake that hit Chennai some years ago? No one died. No buildings fell. Actually, nothing happened. It was more the novelty, of being an earthquake in Chennai that made it hit the news. Well, that day I was lying on my bed reading a novel when suddenly my bed started to shake. For a second I thought I was hallucinating. Then I sat up and stared at the walls. Realized that the walls were trembling too! My reflex action is not too reflexive. It behaves more like an afterthought. After a few seconds of contemplating whether or not to crawl under the bed, I remembered that my grandmother was in the house too. So I went to her room and there she was, sitting on the bed, her fists clenched together, white as a sheet. When she saw me, she immediately asked “Is it just me? Or do you feel it too?” She was petrified that this was the sign of impending death. My grandmother was 92 back then. So I can’t really blame her for thinking so. I said “No Patti, It’s an earthquake”. She said “Oh, ok. Fine. “. I could see the colour seeping back into her face.

Once the tremors stopped and I decided it was quite safe I went to my balcony. I live in the second floor. I could see almost every person from my apartments standing on the road. I could hear them discussing the earthquake each one interjecting the other. Exclamations of horror, secretly tinged with excitement. I watched them for a few seconds wondering what they found so fascinating about the earthquake that they had to; en masse gather to discuss it for so long (It was more than an hour that they stood there for). Later I would rue my stupidity. Aren’t everyone supposed to get out of high rise buildings the microsecond they feel an earthquake?

Anyway, I deviate. The reason I mentioned (Didn’t it seem longer than mentioning?) the earthquake was that I believe that it was this earthquake that caused the crack to form on the wall. The crack I so detest.

I FIND YOU BORING - PART ONE

Sometimes in life you end up meeting people whom you long to have a conversation with. Long to smile at, laugh with and share ideas and beliefs. So first you start with those ‘looks’ along corridors, canteens or bus-stops. Once you know for sure that the other person knows you exist, you proceed to tentative smiles, quickly look aside turning to the person next to you as if absorbed into some deep conversation that you are apparently carrying out with them. Yet, mostly abstracted, you pay scant attention to the conversation and through the corner of your eye watch the person as they pass by. After this routine gets established you accompany the smile with a ‘hi’. That would be the point where you know you could start to call the person an acquaintance and probably a friend.

Slowly as weeks drift by, you start to exchange pleasantries and then phone numbers. On reaching this juncture, you feel a dart of pleasure go through you. You say to yourself, at last we can be friends. (This Para comes with the statutory warning that until here you come from a rather cloistered environment where ready smiles and speeches in the absence of introduction would in all likelihood brand you a flirt even though all you desired was friendship! If you directly reached the final stage please skip to the second Para treating the first as quite invisible.)

After such a promising beginning, where the seeds of friendship were well planted and nurtured by you, you would expect the friendship to blossom into something –special. But have you noticed that not all friendships which start exceedingly well proceed with all the smoothness you expect of it. I do not refer to rough rides. Friendship without argument would be like eating nothing but sweets for your meal. Beyond a point it makes you want to puke. I refer to 'conversation'. The connection between minds. The sharing of ideals, beliefs or probably even the most mundane occurrences in your daily life ( irrespective of whether you agree or disagree). They portray the signs of a good friendship, if not superlative.

Yet there are a few friendships in which you struggle for conversation. You desperately hunt in the deepest crevices of your mind, hoping to find things to say, cover those blanks that enter in the conversation. Deep inside you wonder, ‘Am I boring the other person? Does she/he think I am tedious?’. Stop. The overused cliché states ‘It takes two hands to clap’. Reality states that it takes two people to make an interesting conversation. Start thinking. Does not the fact that you struggle for words to fill the occasion suggest that the other person is filling it no better? Does not the fact that you find the conversation unsatisfying imply that neither is the other person succeeding in keeping YOU riveted? So ask yourself when you face this.

Am I really boring or is the other person boring me?

WHEN FRIENDS LEAVE....

Last night, a very close friend of mine- Anu, left to do her M.S in the U.S. A frequently occurring phenomenon, nothing unusual about it, I know. Yet I can’t help but feel a little bit lost. No more when I am bored can I just pick up the phone, dial her number and talk endlessly, just meaningful nothings. Gone are the sleep-overs, theatre visits, restaurants, gang get tog ethers, private conversations, laughter and tears. It’s all going to be purely virtual. She and I have known each other for sixteen years. We studied in the same school right from Ist standard and continued our entwined lives in the same college.

What makes her leaving more painful is that those twelve years together in school, did nothing to make us close. Yeah, we were friends. I do not deny it. But, were yesterday a reflection of four years ago, when she was leaving for her boarding and we said our last byes, I could easily have said,” Bye! Have a good time the next few years”, turned away and walked off unaffected. Instead, as she left, when we said our last byes my heart could not but will her as she walked away to turn around and wave again hoping for one last bye and a wave. And when she did, hope again for another last bye right until she disappeared from all our sights.

I shall miss her. Miss all the things we did together. But what truly makes me feel low is a fear. A fear of whether things will really be the same when she comes back. In those last few moments when we all exchanged those last statements of ‘promise you will mail regularly, don’t dare forget, scan all photos you take there” all that kept running in my mind was “What if she slowly forgets to mail back? What if the new friends she makes might not be too nice? What if distance in miles leads to a distance in our minds? What if she changes and will no more be that amazing mixture of wise beyond her years, yet charmingly innocent?” .A thousand ‘Ifs’ that were running through my head, a thousand ‘Ifs’ unanswered. Only time can answer these questions. And time is a cruel mate who makes you wait and at the end of it all wont necessarily give you the answers you would want from it.

In the end, during those final hugs and farewells unable to contain myself, I burst out and told her, “Just one thing I want from you. Please don’t ever change. Come back the same person”. And when we all walked off, everyone of us were silent and had no words to say. Yet, we knew exactly what the other was thinking about. ’Anu’.