Ambuscades, Escapades & Accolades

Under bizarre exceptional circumstances unknown to us, we went on a holiday outnumbered by men for the first time. Rishikesh got voted over Jaipur in under a second.
The erudition of my existence dawned on me as the battle slowly began over music, shopping time vs. perpetual passive smoking and incompatible hygiene standards. What was meant to be a great holiday with friends ended up being an experiment on a select sample of men and I intend to disclose some of my findings despite the potential social impact on some lives :)

Leaky to Squeaky-Clean!
Long back breaking bus journeys lead to solace seeking in packets of calorie loaded toxic junk food. Sweaty-sweltering road trips, dirtier-dustier settings and grimier-greasier hands. Mildly repugnant? Everyone’s hands stuck in one packet till the last titbits are licked off and the next packet is hauled out. My fav B&BW sanitizer seemed like a life saver with all those hands in one packet. Who’d imagined I’d be opening Pandora’s Box, what I failed to foresee was the number of hand sanitizers I’d run out of considering the number of times men hop off buses to take a leak.

One loo & one too many people
Guys can start their day at noon (barely recovering from last night’s hangover, sipping on their next beer already), not look beyond the curtains and boast of a splendid holiday.
So once we’re all dolled up, we start waking up the men. I’ve been on many a assassination list through hostel life for the piercing virtues of my voice on a lazy afternoon. Imagine three such voices in chorus! These oblivious,almost lifeless objects could easily be snoring blissfully in the middle of a tsunami. The herculean task of bringing these lifeless objects back to life is a pretty rigorous warm up routine. Shoving opponents twice your size into the forbidden “chamber of water” is more gruelling than wrestling with Yokozuna. Just past that laudable feat you realise their bathing products need to be shipped in…you’d be surprised with the heavy weight exercise opportunity that presents itself before you.
Behold! 2-in-1 gentle extra nourishing shampoo & conditioner, frizz control serum, SPF 60 sunscreen, exfoliating face wash, mild face scrub, anti-friction shaving gel, aloe vera hair gel, black head strips, gentle moisturising cream for men with sensitive skin and…FAIR & HANDSOME(and you wondered who bought those!).We decided to hide my face in indignity than explore this zone further.They’d put any high maintenance woman to shame not enough that leaving toilet seats up, spray peeing and cacophonous bathroom singing are bad enough.So, the second half of the day is spent getting ready as they shriek,“The night is still young”.

Busted!
Contrary to the belief men have that they are born with the GPRS facility genetically tuned into some part of their mammoth brains-Men have no sense of direction, men cant read maps AND what’s worse is that they refuse to ask for directions! Men can ask unknown women for their numbers and unfamiliar men for cigarettes but asking directions is really the lowest I assume that they believe they can stoop. Wonder why we’ve never heard of a man’s instinct…well, that’s because it doesn’t exist. The unexpectedly remarkable result was that we got to a lot more sightseeing between the bathing & drinking.
Garfield’s award for the World’s Laziest
Watching sports on TV endlessly is undeniably a tradition of the lethargic. The lazier than Garfield dogs in AK’s house burn a few calories changing channels from WWE the second AK walks out of the room. Sometimes I wonder if men toss a coin to determine who would take over this noteworthy responsibility. Flipping sports channels are after all the highest level of brain and bodily activity, almost like interactive media-they watch and pretend to be playing too! Talk about being in control,sharing the remote is indeed a possibility very remote. I hand it over the men for that.HA!

Amen. A rather abrupt one at that, but that was a lot of male bashing.

P.S- I owe this to the celebrities featured in this post.
I swear by Almighty God that I will write the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth with a pinch of exaggeration.There IS no smoke without fire.

On a day like today

I’m feeling under the weather today. Uninspiring work days when I shamelessly crave human attention. Medication leaves me staid, oats leaves my tongue dead and I make sure everyone around me has an equally bad time. My family and friends have learnt that the trick is to lionize and empathize, but somehow everyone put together can’t make up for my mommy.
With the very first symptoms come an aborning sense of mommy longing-ness.
I’ve given mine hard enough times while growing up, now that I’m so far away her life doesn’t get any easier.
So on days like today, I call mommy and make small talk on the phone, many times, all day. Puling over trivialities, pining for her attention and she already knows something’s up…“Is it the boss or are you unwell”?
Sigh. My mother thinks these are my only two problems. I must lead a very uncomplicated life.
I call up mommy today, woebegone. The first time I call, she is elated about an old friend she met after ten years who tells her she hasn’t changed one bit. Oh yeah, we can sometimes be vain! I don’t have the heart to dampen her spirits so I fake joy through the conversation.
I get back to work and decide to listen to a song that never fails to uplift my spirits….“I’m a Believer” by The Monkees. It’s the song I’d always wanted, to be dedicated to me. So, now you know!
I listened to it repeatedly, it helped for a while.
I try mommy again in a few hours, this time she leaves me salivating with the lunch menu, halfway through which she launches into a tirade about my inability to peel a potato. This is soooo not the anodyne I was looking for! I excuse myself quickly with a “Boss is hovering around my cubicle” story. Phew!
I want to pour out my deadly disease symptoms to mommy. After a few minutes of wallowing in self pity, I reached for the phone grudgingly, all set to whimper and whine. Fingers crossed and hoping she’ll ask me the million dollar question, “Is it the boss or are you unwell”?
This time she asks me if I have started saving yet! Can you believe my luck?
Then she starts off this whole thing about how she never asks me what I do with paltry salary and it’s about time I stopped shopping. Oh no…now we open an angrier discussion about all the shoes I own.
Mommy sure can burst bubbles or maybe today was just not my day.
Apparently, dwelling on my ailments is not doing me any good either! I feel worse than I did before I started off.
I’m gonna sign off for now and down some chicken soup.
Chick flicks, more chicken soup and few more phone calls. This seems to be my POA for tonight.

Intangible asset?

They'd just picked up his swanky new laptop on a vapid working day after office hours.
It gave him a nosebleed. He doesn't invest in fancy gadgets too often, says he's already spending beyond his means and looks at her accusingly.
She retorts grudgingly, "Mr. Only Son! I have to actually shell out my hard earned money; all you ever do is DDD (Dial Daddy Directly)!"
Her: "This has been one of your most expensive investments, in a long time, no?"
Him: (Very nonchalantly) "Not really…hmmmm"
She thinks to herself, he seems preoccupied and then returns to star gazing and when there are none which is mostly the case she looks at the endless hoardings lining the roads.
A few moments later, he says aridly …"No, it’s you."
She's a little lost…"What is me?” she enquires.
He: "My most extravagant investment by far is you"!
She is gloating half way through the star studded night skies she was only admiring a few minutes ago when he brings her down crashing.
He:"Any idea how much money I've blown up on you?"
For a split second all she could feel was her brain spinning around inside her little skull.
Needless to say, the next fight began right there.
You can't buy love, but you do pay heavily for it.
The Beatles should have known a little better when they were singing,Can’t buy me love!

Dog Days(All puns intended!)

Have I told you about the time Andy thought he was dying of rabies?
Andy and I worked together in our first company and barely knew each other, coincidentally we quit around the same time. On our last day, once we got done with the swan songs with no office politics to be a part of anymore Andy graciously offered me a ride back home.
Enroute, to our astonishment we discovered that we were both joining the same company in a few days!
Our employer, then a start up in India was the perfect breeding ground for everything but work with an unfledged set up and no supervision… and that’s when I got to know Andy better.
He’d almost have you believe he was twice his age. He strolled into office every morning with crisp clothes, wearing a staid expression and a blue Tupperware bag which I slobbered over relentlessly.
Andy’s mom is one helluva cook. He would let me have morsels that I could count on the fingers of one hand with enormous difficulty. So, like all good things in the world even those few delightful bites also came at a price.
Andy cant spell.
Not even with spell check, he spells words in ways that don’t even come close to how they are meant to be spelt.
I become Andy’s typist. He rewards me handsomely, in his miserly own way with a few morsels of food and the entire lunch box on Thursdays, that’s the perk!
You see, Thursday is the day Annie cleanses his system.
Unbelievable but true, he actually lives on fruit and fruit juices on Thursdays and that by far was the highlight of my working week. Thank god for Thursdays!
Andy is quite a paradox, self-confidence his forte and paranoia his strength.
Apart from catalyzing my hunger pangs, Andy also loves playing with his roadside doggy “Itchy”.
One mundane evening Andy returns from office to finds out about Itchy’s sudden death.
Andy is brooding over his loss, and trying to collect every last memory of his beloved Itchy and to his horror he realizes that Itchy had given him a big warm lick on an open wound the previous day.
That was their very last “special” memory and that’s when the trouble began.
He spent the next few hours running around his neighborhood investigating Itchy’s death.
It didn’t take too much to convince Andy that Itchy died of rabies.
He looked up the symptoms online for rabies and he realized he possessed all the early symptoms such as nausea, fever and head ache.
Early the next morning the quest for the best rabies specialist begins.
Despite having taken his rabies vaccines as a child, he left his days were numbered.
Four different doctors and four prescriptions later nothing had changed.
To worsen matters, he found himself with the symptoms of the next stages of rabies being diarrhea, severe headaches, fever and extreme shivering.
Andy was born with a beauraucratic spoon is his mouth. With his corrupt contacts Andy got himself an appointment with the President of the Rabies Foundation (Which I now know exists!).
Andy by now was given anti-anxiety pills by his fifth doctor (without exaggeration, really!). The pills were recommended for 4-5 days but Andy was on the pills for two weeks. It gave him a lot of solace.
He slept at work,slept at home and when he was awake he prayed ferverently to the gods for the most peaceful death possible under the circumstances.
The next few days were spent avoiding puddles, dogs, baths and waiting for that moment when he would actually be taken over by hydrophobia and would not be able to even look at water!
“Why, oh god would you want to subject me to this kind of a death even if I have to die..!”.This was the only thought playing on his head all day long.
And before he knew it two months were up and well, rabies hadn’t arrived yet.
He had passed all the tests and was well past the rabies mark.
Andy didn’t have rabies, after all.
He however has gathered enough knowledge on the subject to consider a career in it.
He does not socialize with dogs anymore and has turned vegetarian.
Andy and I don’t work in the same office anymore and despite him napping and malingering in office for the two weeks on anxiety pills, he has been promoted to Manager.
Andy still can’t spell but he now manages to use spell check without too much difficulty.
And, this is the story of how lives change.

The reunion of the sisterhood

Four pairs of feet that dragged in all that dirt...all puns intended.
Fifteen years of friendship.
When we were younger, we were a bigger group; few of us survived transitions between address books and growing up. As we stood there reunited at the airport, hugging, squealing and inspecting each other to see who had changed, I felt like we were still the giggly trio we used to be. Nothing had changed.
With us distance has never been much of a problem. We might not talk every day, but when we did, it more than made up for the times we didn’t.
Diya and I have spent time together at every possible opportunity but Pinkster was visiting after a decade
Like they say, the most defining moments in your life are never planned; this one just went by unplanned despite my obsessive rehearsing. When we met, we just broke into laughter and said to each other in a chorus” You’re just the same”! That was it.
Took me back to the time when I first met Pinkster.
Under the misconception that character profiling was my forte, I instantly decided she was not my type.
Adorable kid, everyone’s favorite and I was always mistaken for a little boy!(Thank you for the fantastic styling mom).She was always prinked up in the prettiest clothes and had so many dolls while I sported the shortest hair and played cricket with the boys. Clearly, I saw no scope for friendship with Barbie.
Fate dragged us together!
We were family friends, our mothers dragged us to the same kitty parties, our brothers were in the same class and played with each other all the time, we went to the same school and somewhere along the line Pinkster and I became friends. Next thing you know Barbie doll is climbing mountains, walls and trees with me and I was playing with dolls, learning to dance and trying to grow my hair!
Soon we became inseparables. I’d wished for a sister all my life but I never imagined we would be soul mates (Except for the time I fell into a stream and she burst out laughing instead of trying to save me!)
When her family moved, I never imagined quite imagined we’d remain best friends for life.
We’ve lasted all these years, shared our worlds and so much more.
The trip somehow made up for all the years we hadn’t been together.
We strolled down memory lane and animatedly dragged each other down amnesia lane to remind us of our not so favorite moments too!
Sluggish Sunday afternoons with lemonade and letting lethargy expands our horizon,
Many grimy hands in one lunch box, puppy fat and nonage pimples,
Swings that took us to the sky, exams that brought us crashing down to reality,
Secret caves, unexplored territories and taboo questions,
Phone conversations in “P” Language, personal journals and secret crushes,
Calling of spirits and the prediction of board grades,
Hangouts, gangs and friendship bands,
Truth or dare, frizzy hair and school fairs,
Punishments, homework and constant states of penury,
The nuns and the nones.
And my talent for remembering absolutely insignificant facts (Still my trademark!)
So that’s what we did for one whole week, reminiscing and reliving every old memory and gossip on who-is-upto-what. Talking late into the night, in different hotel rooms every night.
We made a pact to take this holiday every few years, hopefully with our respective families.
After this trip I’m convinced that nothing can ever come between us. That’s the thing about people you grow up with; no matter how different our lives might end up being we’ll always share that special bond.
One week went by in a jiffy...after a million pictures (imposed on everyone by me), breathtaking views, unexpected rains and unforgettable (most appropriately, for those of you who know!) memories we bid farewell to Himachal.
I returned home with heavy heart, (not to mention the backlog at work) you know how much I despise goodbyes.
Anyways, the good news is that there’ll always be something more to look forward to and more memories that'll last a lifetime.

Goodbye

They say, sometimes goodbye is the only way.
They also say that journeys end in lovers meeting, maybe that’s to console wishful thinkers like me.
Over the years I’ve wept through all my good-byes. They didn’t kill me, but they didn’t make me any stronger either because even now when it comes to a good-bye…I feel my knees wobble, voice tremble and heart-beat out real loud. However, over the years I have mastered the art of controlling the welling-up tears in timings ranging from a meager second to a good few minutes.
I cry a lot. I need no particular reason to cry. Predictably, the only time I don’t cry is when I’m pressurized to cry! At other times let’s just say I believe in cleansing my eyes every now and then and that qualifies as an essential Aswana activity.
I have earned quite a reputation over the years, incidents people will never forget;
Howling when I left the school and friends I had known for ten years of my life.
Teary faced and running after a moving train in true Bollywood spirit, when Pinkster left Wellington for good.
Over the years it’s mostly been sad movies/books/stories…in no particular order…not to mention Heartaches. Deaths. Bad bosses. Friends leaving (!). Fights with best friends. Bouts of delirious illnesses.
One lazy afternoon best friend break the news, he’s been contemplating moving. Really? Across the universe? No way! Before we know it the paper work is done, but there is a good chance the American embassy wont like his face and he’s now of marriageable age and certainly a potential threat!
Apparently they like his face and they don’t mind seeing it for a very long time. So we’re done with the shopping, the bags are packed and weighted, carefully repacked and weighed.
Farewell meals, parting gifts and we’re finally at the airport. I’m hoping for a bomb scare, maybe one that lasts a few months, that’ll be a first! God decided to disapprove the idea.
Final words and hugs. Waving goodbyes through the glass doors and last glances. I so love Bollywood. He doesn’t disappoint me entirely I detect a tear. Real men cry. (I’m gonna get killed for this!)
So we’re walking out of the airport, everyone talking about something vague.
We’re all headed back to our respective homes; I insist I can get home on my own. C’mon!
Its all vague, the entire ride. I settle to watch a movie as soon as I get home. I haven’t shed a tear. This could easily be a new record for me.
He calls before boarding the flight. I’ll miss you he whispers and I mumble back something neither of us understands. He insists I should put the phone down first.
The weekend is over and I’m finally back at work. It’s beginning to dawn on me, that I am the one locked behind in the same monotonous existence.
So while I’m still wallowing in self pity, having an overdose of my favorite anti-depressants (read chocolates)…he’s already calling me from across to world to tell me that I would love NYC.
This is the only time I sense an evil streak in him. He’s human after all. Life goes on and I thought that was my worst good-bye. True…yet.
I lost my grandfather a few months ago. I didn’t really know him too well.
As I walked in through the gate I could feel that my past was finally catching up with me.
Vague childhood memories, mostly in black & white, few times even sepia…after all I’ve made most of my association with this place through pictures.
My grandfather’s house. The house my father and his siblings grew up in, the house my mother stepped into as a shy bride all of twenty, the house where I sang to my grandmother two decades ago….
I spent most of my life being scared of my grandfather, and restricted it to an annual visit over the rest of the years.
We spoke for a few minutes mostly over a meal, I would timidly respond to his questions in my hardly impeccable Malayalam.
True to his military background, he stuck to routine and never once showed any emotion.
I don’t remember ever sitting on his lap, stroking his beard or even laughing with him.
As a child I remember being shouted at for wasting food, climbing trees and playing too close to the well.
Later I was given the disapproving stares mostly for the length of my clothes, my lethargic lazy demeanor lying around reading books all day and my noisy music.
I guess it was his way of showing he cared.
I come from a breed of emotionally suppressed humans. Ever met my father, for that matter even my dear brother…see the pattern here?
I could sing my dad a paean from a loudspeaker on the highest hill in Coonoor for the whole of Nilgiris to hear, if I know my dad he would be melting like a volcano deep inside but all you will ever see is that very impassive expression that I fondly call stony face!
When I heard my Appachen had passed away, I wondered why I didn’t think about spending time with him earlier.
I was always judging him without realizing I had played party to this relationship all along.
I never once told him that I loved him in my own way. I never tried to know him better. I never had a chance to even say a decent goodbye…to my own flesh and blood.
That’s when I realized what’s worse than saying goodbye is not having said goodbye at all.
I always wanted a perfect ending….but I’ve learnt it the hard way…hearts break, dreams shatter, memories fade, regrets wash away…nothing lasts forever…not even the pain.
Goodbye Appachen.

Mama,I'm coming home...

I don’t like the cold.
Winter makes me sluggish and often keeps me under the weather.
It’s normally that time of the year when I take my annual leave and head to the unknown. However, this year I made the mistake of making plans with some unreliable friends and ended up at my parent’s home.
My folks couldn’t have been happier, while I discovered and practiced hibernation to some extent.
I hadn’t stayed at home for more than a couple of days after the time I left home for College.
Coonoor has changed a little, or maybe I have. The extended stay at home revived a lot of old memories.
Like your average kid, I daydreamed in class, read every possible piece of literature apart from my school curriculum while I was pretending to be studying, imagined I’d die for my friends, talked endlessly on the phone and believed my parents had no clue what was best for me.
As cliché as it may sound, over the years I’ve sheepishly realized that I was clearly wrong every single time.
On hindsight I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do for most part of my life, but today my problem is that I always know what I want, always.
My brother says that I plan and execute my life meticulously. When he first passed that judgment it really got to me and then I realized that he was right in some sense. I had made up for the lack of focus from my younger days yet stuck to my reputation of radical extremes.
Funnily, when I was younger the only thing I thought I knew was of my conjugal future.
Stereotypical scheme of things….I’d marry a Thomas or Chacko, or a more obnoxious mallu Christian name and name my sons…John, Paul, George and Ringo after the Beatles. Turns out I have changed so much!
All my life I left I never really had a choice.
My dad made most of my decisions and my mom stood by him.
I had the longest hair in comparison to all the boy in the neighborhood and that’s as good as it got, while the girls I knew ran around looking pretty with long locks of hair.
I was forced to play cricket and was never bought a Barbie doll.
I had no choice but to learn to play the guitar over my personal preference towards the piano.
I had to take science group after the 10th grade over my choice to pursue the commerce stream.
Today, the same parents have let me independently take the biggest decisions of my life and my stood by me whatever my decision maybe.
This trip made me realize that living with the parents wasn’t as suffocating as I had anticipated it to be.
I had a laidback holiday, indulging in absolute gluttony and eating every meal like it were my last, exerting myself with postprandial exercises such a channel surfing, text messaging and rummaging through the fridge for in-between meal munchies. I felt like Garfield, the only thing active about me was my imagination. A stark contrast from the routine hectic holiday schedules I set out on year after year.
I enjoyed watching movies and debating with my dad late into the night.
Evening walks and sporadic grocery shopping trips with my mom.
I spent hours poring over old photo albums and rearranging them, listening to some good old music that I grew up with….the salubrious mountain air, the traffic free roads, the spectacular sylvan surroundings-I realized how much I had taken these things for granted all these years.
I felt like a baby and definitely slept like one…i lose track of pretty much everything…until I realized it was time to pack my bags
I felt like a child returning to school after a long summer break. This trip had brought me so close to my parents that I didn’t mind living at home for the rest of my life.
As that realization dawned on me I was shocked at how differently I would have left about this a few months back.
It was finally time for me to leave, I pulled my nebbish self together and tugged at my luggage unwillingly.
My dad called out from the main gate, we were running late.
The drive to Ooty was a blur and I before I knew it I was sitting on a bus to Bangalore after kissing my parents goodbye.
The lights were dimmed and I turned up the volume on my iPod. Coincidentally, the track that was playing was mama, I’m coming home.
Tears streamed down my cheeks and I realized this was the first time in twenty five years that I had cried while leaving home.
Home is truly where the heart is…

Growing up(The Bouleversement in 1986!)

Sibling rivalry is inevitable. The only sure way to avoid it is to have one child.
My parents had no intentions of avoiding it.
Bicker,Banter,Laughter and Love....Sun-kissed and without a worry in the world..we’d climbed every mountain and rolled down every hill!
I dedicate this post to my only sibling (without whom I would have had the most painless and gain-less life!) and to our rather interesting childhood.

Phase One:
October 27, 1986
Life has never been the same ever since I was deprived of my only child status and that was just the beginning. Talk about life changing, and I hadn’t had the slightest presentiment about what destiny had in store!
Being an only child makes you a brat but having a sibling often makes you a victim. I was not even close to being a brat when he arrived!
My nine month long anxiety attack lead to the most hyped entry in the Ambat family history, the most adorable baby in the world had arrived with a wee too much fanfaronade!
My grand mom weeping out of sheer joy, her oldest son finally had a son to carry forward our Syrian Christian lineage and family name for generations to come!
(Grand mom was deeply disappointed when I was born, she so wanted a grandson…years later, the more I started resembling her, vanity got the better of her!)
Back to brother-he hogged the limelight, stole my parents and had me exiled to my grandparent’s place where I lived in absolute denial.

Phase Two:
I wasn’t abandoned by my folks after all but yes, I did return home to share my domestic space with this new entrant, brother. That was the beginning of a short-lived era of rapprochement.
We grew up in Wellington, in a scary antediluvian British bungalow for most part of our growing years.I was on my way out of the cute phase with one foot into the ugly gawky phase (face?) while the little one was basking in undivided attention and getting cuter by the second.
Who would even want to look at a scrawny sere sibling?
I moved on with my vapid life….hiding my precious teeth under the pillow for the tooth fairy, burying my nose in books about mystery solvers and secret castles, discovering the sheer joy of scribbling on walls and finding innovative ways of discarding unwanted vegetables and milk from my staple diet.
Brother starts talking. I don’t understand why parents are so excited! It’s not their first child to speak. Sigh.
Brother, is smooth. I assume he likes girls. It’s one of the first words he coined-Girlie!
I am a girl, that makes me girlie. My name is Aswana. That makes me Asha+girlie.
I’m 25 and the name still sticks. My parents have forgotten they named me Aswana.
Nobody who knows my parents know my real name. My friends came home with me on one of the summer breaks and once we got back to college, even they had forgotten my real name.
Thank you brother!

Phase Three:
He is fast! Brother is up and running. He learnt to walk shortly after.
He’s already a budding sport person. Father is thrilled.
Brother is quite the trencherman; he has been feeding like a shoal of barracuda since birth.
Mother is thrilled.
She looks at me sadly. What do I do with this girl? She looks malnutrition.
Brother lives on only vegetables and swears by curd rice.
For me it was a life defining moment when I first tasted the variety that once walked on four legs or once swam across water bodies somewhere in the world…It was love at first bite!
It is a strong possibility that there was a mix-up at birth. There was a Palakkad Iyer lady who had also given birth in the hospital room across where mom had given birth to brother!

Phase Four:
I’m doomed. I have officially crossed the cute phase. It is also sinking in that it looks like brother will never have an ugly akward phase.
Brother is bright. At two and a half he dictates terms to the parents. I don’t know how he manages this but by two and a half we are on the same school bus and yes, he is the cynosure of all eyes and I am his under-aged nanny. Brother realizes he doesn’t like school in a few days, and is going on a one year break, god had answered my prayers. Apparently not, the next one year until his re-entry I am hounded and asked about him by seniors and juniors alike. Brother, I can’t wait to have you back! I like being a nanny to a spokesperson. Brother is back in school. He is the brightest young star. Pretty seniors pull him out of my hold and carry him into class, teachers love him and me, well I am still the wallflower.
Believe me at four its difficult to educate a kid on the principles of sharing. Thank god for small mercies, I didn’t have to share my pink frills and doll houses with the sibling. However, there was a negative side to this as well. I returned home from school every day to a post-war scenario.
My dolls were handicapped and their homes destroyed while the ostensibly peaceful culprit sat looking all guiltless and mother thrilled at how the sweet child amuses himself all alone at home.
I think I hate brother! Now I couldn’t wait for him to start schooling any sooner.

Phase Five:
The stars are changing positions. Muhaha.
To ameliorate my suffering God makes brother human finally.
I believe fervently in god again!
Brother is getting there. He’s learning the art of breaking things.
He loves noises-mainly crashing, shattering, slamming, banging…
This love for noise still remains. You should know by his genres of music.
Like all boys he hasn’t discovered a civil form of communication yet.
His actions speak for him. So little brother here is quite the hector
Having one child makes you a parent; having two makes you a referee!
So my mom doubled up as both.
He lost no opportunity to display his physical strength and my self-preservation instincts kept me close to my mother for a long time.
My vocals took a sharp turn from puling and shrill squeaking to a more profound high pitched screaming and shouting. That year I also landed in the school choir. Coincidence?
Like I said the stars have changed positions.

Phase Six:
My dear sibling brought out the best in me that anyone has ever brought out-my vicious wagging tongue(a weapon that most people still consider my greatest strength!)
I also mastered the art of faking extreme pain every time brother even came close to attacking me while dad was anywhere in the vicinity.
Shortly, I found myself actively involved in dramatics at school.
In reality I honed my acting skills at home, in a very consistent and determined manner and even today attributes to the drama queen in me!
However our childhood did have its rare moments of collective sibling brilliance, like for instance the time we locked mom out of the house and watched cartoons for a really long time, the time when we managed to push a visitor’s bike into a gutter nearby or when we lost our dog during one of the evening walks.
I’m sure people visited our home for sheer entertainment value.
My father loves cricket. It is understandable that my brother play the sport but why me?
I still don’t know but I had spent my entire summer break playing cricket with my brothers and their friends. One of my cousin’s friends thought I was a boy the whole time. I hated him for years. I was not sure why.
I thought I quite liked my tom boy image but I guess I never quite forgot to wear matching hair bands ever since. My brother really got along with that boy. Would you wanna know why!

Phase Seven:
Life is getting even better. Brother is now in the “recalcitrant” phase.
I think the parents like me better. Muhaha.
I don’t get beaten up anymore though I still wag that vicious little tongue of mine at him in moments of absolute joy and sorrow…I can be exceedingly evil and cloyingly sweet too!
Brother is the latest under-cover agent. I soon discovered that he works for himself, I think it’s his latest hobby.
An unusually argus-eyed brother spies on me at school and home, eavesdrops on my phone conversations and reads my diary whenever he can get a hold of it!
He disapproves of my friends, detests my crushes and is the official snitch only now, working full time for the parents.
I can’t wait to leave for college.

Final Phase:
Distance does make the heart grow fonder!
Me leaving to College was the best thing that happened to us, we actually started talking and confiding in the years that followed.
I don’t know when this happened, but somewhere along the way little brother transformed into a fine young man.
Today he’s an accomplished man and holds a dual degree in “Selective Listening”&“Smooth Talking the Parents”.
He sports the a hirsute look , that I totally disapprove.
He takes off on road trips to never land and leaves me to answer paranoid mom.
I occasionally indulge in the extremes…fussing over him or staking him-He hates it both alike!
As long as we have each other we will never run out of fights and I think that will always hold good.
I guess you get the drift!
We still have our indifferences but we have decided to peacefully co-exist all the same.
I love him to bits and I guess there is an ounce of love for me hidden away in some corner of his little heart.

In her shoes?

She strutted into the room with an aborning sense of anxiety. After all she was here on a self imposed torture to dissect the room of the so called supernal stranger she would love to hate.
“So this is her sanctum”, she mused to herself.
She seemed girly, yet not entirely. The room was done in shades of pink and blue-not quite stereotype and the colors did go surprisingly well together.
I wonder what type she would fall into, it had a strange stasis.
It suggested that she bordered dangerously between being a girl’s girl and a guy’s girl…..maybe little more of a girl’s girl.
The room was strewn with cushions, way too many infact…a side table on one corner of the room by the bed lodged a bedside lamp and a pile of books mostly clichéd best sellers, few books on Indian as well as world history and a bunch of travel journals. Your conventional reader-maybe voracious, maybe not!
A lone figure of Garfield confirmed that she didn’t hate stuffed toys but she sure loved Garfield and the donkey from Shrek. Cliché again!
The inbuilt shelf in the wall housed photo albums and some nonage baggage (teenage scrap books and dog-eared year books!)
Girlie girlie girlie!
She examined the bangle stand disdainfully; it was a mélange of every possible color in the world flirting with each other…not her type definitely!
She was so not like her and that made it maybe easier to dislike her even more!
Maybe...maybe,there just might be the slightest chance that they could be friends in another life in another world.
In the middle of this extensive examination she caught a glance of herself in the mirror across the room,
And admired what she saw, and she knew a lot men would agree. Few vain moments later her eyes ran across the room evasively again.
Finally they eyes rested on the shoe rack…they had a pair of floaters and two sneakers that were lost in an array of neatly arranged varicolored shoes.
Some had large heels, some tiny and few were flat…the wide spectrum of shoes brought about the obvious conclusion that there was a shoe fetish of sorts.
She had seen women who could boast of larger and far better collections but the owner of the room was definitely fond of shoes.
What else was she like? She mulled over that thought as she maundered about the room.
Her large kohl adorned doe eyes swept across the room a last few times and her gaze finally lingered on a photograph.
It was a picture of him and “her”.
Tears stained the floor invisibly and washed everything else out of sight.
“What did she have that I didn’t?” The only question playing on her mind as she ran out of the room sobbing.
She wasn’t sure if she hated her but in a vague moment of clarity she was sure about one thing…she was sure she wanted to be in “her” shoes…only so that she could be with him.

All I want!

I want an antiquarian cottage on a knoll, far from the maddening crowds to call my home,
I want to wake up to the smell of freshly brewed coffee wafting into the room and sunshine on my face,
I want to sit on the porch, stare at the bright blue sky and smell the wild flowers in spring,
I want to run after my pup as he chases a fleeting cloud across our lawn,
I want to go on the longest drive after the rains with the strongest wind against my face,
I want that granddad I’d always wished for, who will tell me stories of our glorious past and the freedom fights,
I want to look at black and white picture of strangers with stranger expressions called ancestors,
I want to laugh so hard that I end up with tears in my eyes for no particular reason,
I want to roll on the grass and have a feather tickle my ear,
I want to eat with my hands and let out a subtle burp,
I want to have a delectable meal not feeling guilty I binged,
I want to travel to strange lands and embrace the differences and similarities,
I want to bust those occasional-turned-frequent pimples on my face and end up with no scars,
I want to splatter in the rain and not catch a cold,
I want a shoulder to lean on and a laced hanky to snort into when a sad movie ends,
I want to dabble in paint and lose myself in my favorite song,
I want to watch a ladybug sun bathe and a rainbow disappear,
I want to hear the leaves rustle and the wind blow,
I want to go on an endless walk holding the hand that’ll never let go,
I want to capture the happiest moments and the loveliest sights and treasure them in a photo,
I want to scribble on recyclable paper with bright blue ink in my father’s fountain pen,
I want to whimper and whine about problems that are not mine,
I want to see the sun go down and the moon come up,
I want to count the stars in the night sky and name the prettiest one after my grand mom,
I want to be hugged and told I’m loved
I want my mommy to kiss my scraped knees and bruises away,
I want to wear my warmest sweater and be tucked into bed
I want to fall asleep with a book in my arm, a pink quilt on my back and the happiest dream over my head.
But most of all I want to be four again.
That’s all I want!