Category: General

I woke up sweating, last night. It was the same dream again. I was standing in front of the mirror, brushing the knots out of my hair and suddenly she was there, standing behind me.

Stella.

And she was trying to tell me something.

Everyone who knew Stella said that she was quiet, a little eccentric perhaps and definitely, butt ugly. Not surprisingly she was single and seemed to revel in it. About Mary, the opinion was ….who’s she? Oh, that grey person who kinduv hung around Stella? The one who would throw stones at the neighbourhood children if they laughed at her? The one who sometimes forgot to wear shoes?

I encountered Stella in the lift where she took it upon herself to tell me that the people who lived in the building were all ‘pigs’ with no ‘class’ or any sense of ‘decency’ to a poor woman who lived by herself. I gently pointed out the presence of Mary in her life.

‘Who?’ she barked back.

‘Your sister, Mary?’ I don’t know why I framed it as a question since it was a stated fact. Maybe because I felt a little nervous seeing the look on her face. It was an ugly shade of grey.

‘Oh…Mary…she’s not….yeah…yeah.’

She muttered and went her way and that was that. Her name came up every time I bumped into any of the neighbours.

‘Have you heard what Stella’s done?’

That’s how the conversations started. She had tried to stab someone because she felt that he was a ‘very bad man’. She once threw a cup of hot tea at a child who had thrown a cricket ball at her window. She had constant run-ins with the building staff.

Honestly….she was a real pain and no one had the faintest idea how to get rid of her.

The days following our short conversation were busy and rainy. Mould had entered our lives and claimed every unclaimed spot in the building. And with mould came a strange smell which managed to pervade every corner. It was a strangely unsettling time, so no one really noticed that Stella had not been seen in a while. There were no wild displays of temper when the children made a noise while they played in the central courtyard.

Did I say that Stella was a quiet person? Yes, she was but in a strange, wild way. Her personality was loud, compensating for her lack of words. She unsettled me because of a really weird incident that happened about three months after I had moved in. I was returning back from the grocery and had just stepped into the elevator. The doors were just about to close when an unkempt woman elbowed her way in.

I moved back, letting her claim more than her share of space. I just couldn’t stand the musty smell emanating from her. She turned around and looked at me intently. I could feel myself sweating between my thighs as I grew uncomfortable.

The elevator came to a stop at the eighth floor. Her floor. But she didn’t get off. The door opened ever so slowly.

‘I think your floor is this one, right?’ I couldn’t help asking. Her strangeness was driving me crazy.

‘You’re the woman in eleven.’ It was a statement. I nodded my head vigorously and for good measure looked pointedly at my watch.

‘Be careful….stay away from her….otherwise, she’ll get you.’ And with that she left.

I never mentioned that incident to anyone. Not even Ajit. I didn’t want him to worry unnecessarily. Besides, who cares about what she says, I told myself. She’s mad. But the sense of disquiet stayed.

It was just seven months after this that the mould appeared and Stella disappeared.

While there was a general sense of relief among the neighbours, there was still that question of, where’s Stella?

The mould sample was sent to a local lab and they responded back asking for some time to run more tests. But everyone was of the opinion that it needed to be tackled immediately.

Fumigation. Bleaching. Scrubbing. The neighbours were in a frenzy of cleaning. Some complained that their children were getting sneezing fits and watery eyes.

Two weeks of feverish cleaning ensured that the mould had almost gone, though one did suddenly come upon the occasional patch.

And that was that till Toffee the nosy dog from the apartment below, dug up a battered purse which someone remembered was Stella’s. Not surprisingly, all hell broke loose. The police had to be called and they started digging up the place.

To the relief of all, nothing else was found. Just the purse.

Two months after Stella’s no-show it was decided by the building management committee that we should force open her apartment to check if the answer of her mysterious disappearance was somewhere in there. I was part of the group of five who entered and this is what I saw –

Two rooms filled with piles of unwashed laundry.

The kitchen had stuff scattered all around. The fridge had nothing edible in it, just a bottle of jam and some stale bread.

The bathroom sink had brown stains and lots of cracks in it.

In one corner of the apartment there was some mould growing. It was a peculiar shade of brown and orange.

There was no sign of Stella.

‘Shouldn’t we also consider that Mary is missing?’ It was a valid question to which no one had an answer.

‘Mary, who? No one has really seen her.’ Was there a person like that? I had wondered sometimes.

I couldn’t take my eyes off the brown and orange mould on the wall. It formed a strange pattern. Trying to make sense of it I looked at it from all angles and then I saw it…the shape of someone’s hand. Actually, just the palm.

Suddenly, I felt dizzy. But I just couldn’t look away. I swear that the fingers seemed to be writing something. I looked around. Clearly, no one had seen what I was seeing.

And then I saw the words… Stella was here. And so was, Mary!

When my mother died she was a shell of the fiery, domineering, feisty woman that she used to be with all semblance of human-ness plucked out. What was left was an empty carcass that behaved somewhat like a human being. Every time I saw her, a steaming pile of emotions hit me in the face and the only way I could deal with it was not to dwell on them for too long. And like nimble footed elves they scurried away to hide in the recesses and corners of my sub-conscious. Oh, they were quick to hide and stay hidden, but every once in a while one would pop up to let me know that they were not going anywhere, anytime soon.

Leftover emotions, like leftover food have a staleness about them and the odour tends to cling on like sticky cobwebs that leave behind strands. Wading through them can be exhausting. The coiled clusters of emotions that I carried around with me left me defeated and exhausted over the years. They were of no use but I couldn’t get rid of them with a clean, swift stroke like a warrior severing off a gangrenous limb.

Humour is an amazing tool. I’ve used it well occasionally. My mother’s could be biting and sarcastic without intending to evoke laughter. But sometimes it did and I think it surprised her. That’s why her sudden bursts of strange laughter when she was gradually losing herself, unsettled me. Was she really laughing? Did some part of her understand the point of it or was she just echoing the laughter of the others. It was like she was going after an illusion, except that the illusion was what she used to be.

Chasing emotions can be an extreme sport.  Looking into memories, feelings, thoughts…oh, it’s nasty! But it needs to be done. However bloodcurdling the results. I felt the full weight of it all while trying to figure out why my mother gradually devolved from being a human with a life into an entity who just existed. There were days when the guilt was bruising and I could almost smell my deep resentment bordering on the hatred, for her. In this gush of negativity I sometimes caught a whiff of sadness for what could have been and the unfairness of it all.

Watching a person standing at the precipice of a mental downfall is one of the most frightening things. The brain and mind are not in coordination and in the process they leave the person floundering. I stood among the remains of my mother’s fading mind watching her drift through the remaining years of her life on the shoulders of household help with whom she had a relationship that was more hate than love. Her love for all things beautiful remained lost somewhere in the dregs of her destroyed brain cells.

Did they make a valiant effort to be heard?

Maybe.

Perhaps in another life they will come alive again. For now they have gone…with her.

Divining the courses of the lives in the universes is the Revorr, the prime consciousness. It balances, holds together, manipulates and restores events and lives in the surrounding universes. Such is its power that even the force of the wind is tamed and dictated by it and yet, the Revorr by itself is nothing but a breathing, pulsating blob.

The universes don’t really circle around it. They’re scattered in the periphery of the Revorr and occasionally when the magnetic pull is too great one of the universes may hover close by and at such times life there becomes topsy-turvy. It was said that this happened when the rhythmic beat of the Revorr was disrupted by flashes of electric impulses.

The Revorr is older than creation, those who have charted the course of the galaxies, believe so. It holds within it secrets of the cosmos and the carcasses of dead stars. And above all, it has intellect. It’s random moves are not that random after all, it is believed.

Occasionally….very, very occasionally, following a rhythm that only it can hear, the Revorr scatters stardust on those living in the universes.

The Revorr makes it possible for universes to function and holds them together by means of massive magnetic force, the origins of which is not known to anyone. As for the secrets it holds, no one has delved into them, because that would mean delving into the Revorr itself….a task that is absolutely impossible.

The dream sometimes sneaks up on me when I’m least expecting it. It’s usually the one where I’ve lost my wallet and have no recourse to getting out of the situation that I’m in, but today I had chanced upon a sliver of a memory that was sticking out from under the wardrobe. I tugged at it and found myself falling into what I first thought was a rabbit hole, but turned out to be a vat. It was filled to the brim with memories and I sank like a stone in it.

At first they were like gentle bubbles floating around me. Soothing. Gentle. Happy. I spotted the tall, gorgeous, dark skinned Ambika, who had worked at our place. Her statuesque figure was at odds with her wild giggles. I was buoyed by them for some time as I kept drowning. Much to my amazement, I found that I could turn my neck a full 180 degrees. In the far corner of my peripheral vision I spotted Mrs P. She was so petite and delicate, I remember. She seemed to be doing something strange. I watched as she poured a can of diesel on herself and was scrambling around looking for a match. I screamed out to her but she couldn’t hear me. My voice was drowning in my thought bubbles. No…wait….she was crying. She was not her usual coy and demure self. Why?? What was that sound?

But I had floated on and down. It felt so calming. And quiet. Peaceful. Why were people afraid of old memories? They could be so therapeutic. And then I heard a voice. It was telling me, no, not possible, not by you. I recognized that voice. It had merged with my consciousness. Somewhere deep down I had always responded to it. But now I didn’t want to listen to it saying no, over and over again. It was time to break the hypnotic cadence of that ‘no’. Surely, there was a ‘yes’ hidden somewhere in that ‘no’.

In the midst of the ebb and flow I caught sight of Troy. His cackling laughter and eyes for me only had coloured my early twenties till I was ready to believe that I mattered a lot. In the space time continuum this belief would have been self sustaining if life had not come in the way. Maybe all this was not drowning, but just a steady progress into a parallel universe where the same things happened but the effect that was created did not really matter.

 

At the centre of every great romance lies something tragic. Otherwise, there is no point in calling it a romance. It could instead very well be an affair, or an indiscretion or a dalliance…you get my point. So in the spring of a certain year, I stumbled upon what I then thought was a romance.

Kamal had a thick mop of hair, each curly strand was fiercely coiled, ready to spring forth at a moment’s notice. That still remains my most enduring memory of him. That and the fact that he thought I was worth staring at long and hard, every time I crossed his line of vision. In small town India, by the time a boy hits 20 he is a fully formed raging Romeo with eyes that express hunger either for food or for girls. Nothing subtle. Just plain hunger, openly expressed.

I relished the long glances. The way they slid over the surroundings without taking in anything and then slid back to me. I deliberately hung around waiting for his entire attention to snap back and then lock on to me. It was ego massaging at 800+ megahertz. Only I could feel it and almost hear it. The rising crescendo of his desperate desire to seek me out. Everywhere.

But like all good things, this one too had a wrinkle in it. And it was I. The object of this adoration. All that intensity and being the cynosure of his pent up passion (which my youthful arrogance assumed it was), had left me a wee bit bored. Like a ripe fruit that was borderline decayed, he had fallen into my lap. There could not be anything interesting, after that.

All summer I was pursued, ardently. My every glance, smile, gesture, movement, mood….was studied by those brooding eyes beneath the thick mop of hair. I preened and pirouetted to those glances much to his delight. His gangly looks and the fact that he wore his trousers shorter than his sideburns never really mattered. I was high on life. At eighteen, nothing can be more of an aphrodisiac.

The summer days started getting shorter. The heavy warm air was turning cooler. The hibiscus didn’t seem that radiant and colourful. The season was gradually turning and so were my feelings. The rush was beginning to fade and my sights were set on a horizon that was not too distant, but definitely hard to reach. The boy next door whose presence in the balcony, cigarette casually dangling from between his fingers evoked tingles in the subterranean corners of my mind and body. An entirely new climate of feelings was rising on the horizon.

I’m not apologizing, I would like to state that clearly. Apologies are given by those who doubt their profanities and their badass-ness. I don’t. And I didn’t. Passive, loving looks had become so last season. I was now moving forward towards a different adventure with frictionless ease.

But this one, fell through. The ‘cigarette dangling from his fingers’ guy turned out to be a damp squib. He carried too much baggage…too much arrogance which sat heavily on his slight shoulders. No one should carry so much weight on such a slight frame.

And then suddenly there appeared a twist in the tale and she had a name. Just when I thought that cruising through potential romances was going to be my thing, there appeared the hint of a shadow on the Kamal horizon. I had not really abandoned his adoration completely. It remained in the background, almost like white noise, giving my ego a leg up ever so often.

Her name was ….wait… I forget! Years later when I look back on this sliver of a moment in my life I just remember her face with its vacant look of incomprehension and a smile that revealed a gap in her teeth and very little intelligence. Maybe I was jealous that the focus had shifted from me. Or maybe I felt insulted that I had been replaced by a less worthy person. Whatever it was, the pair of eyes now turned their focus on her and I was history.

I felt deflated, angry, irritated, smug, superior and some other minor emotions that I’m not sure have names, in turns. But youth is extraordinarily selfish and resilient. I leaned hard against my feelings of disappointment till they gave way. And then I stood up, straight. Resolved. Focussed. Stronger. Because the self-pity had been beaten out of me. I figured that I was destined for bigger victories and no gap toothed, vacant faced woman was going to take that away from me.

It has been decades since that moment of awakening. I continue to saunter through the alleyways of life nonchalantly. And occasionally I look back in the hope that I may encounter a pair of piercing eyes under a shock of tight curls. A gentle massage to the ego never really hurt anyone.

 

Six years after knowing V and meeting her frequently, I found out that there were two of her. It was a strange sensation. How often do you come across a scenario like this? Almost, never. But here she was, with another version of herself and I couldn’t help looking at them slack jawed. There was nothing to tell them apart. Except that V wore the scarf I had gifted her last year. It was a lovely shade of aquamarine in silk with knotted edges. I had bought a similar one for me in a shade of burnt orange.

I had met V in not very regular circumstances. We had both signed up for dance classes with Guru Somnath. She was a wiry girl then, with fierce, ink black eyes and a stubborn jaw that stuck out in defiance. Like she was always fighting with the world for her rights. I had asked her about it one summer afternoon as we lay under the shade of a giant mango tree eating cucumber slices. She didn’t deny it. All she said was, ‘I was born because I fought hard to be born. Otherwise, I would not be here.

What a strange answer. I didn’t understand it and it slipped out of my mind as easily as my math lessons. It was not something worth remembering, clearly. Guru Somnath’s dance classes were much sought after and as it happened, he had only one opening. Of course, V and her stubborn jaw won. My timid, half-hearted efforts were swept aside by the force of her desire to be a classical dancer.

I would occasionally go past the dance classes and listen to the thump of 15 pairs of feet as they beat to the rhythm of the teacher’s instructions. There was a wildness to the cadence as if they were answering a call to war. The occasional twinges of jealousy on missing out the opportunity gradually faded away. And we continued to stay friends, till my parents decided to move to another part of town.

Moving away did me good. Away from her pugnaciousness I learnt to tentatively take some steps to developing my own personality. And finally, it emerged. A little frayed at the edges with self doubt. Always seeking approval and most importantly, never willing to take centre stage. Never. And then one bright Saturday afternoon I ran into V at the second hand bookshop. It was the only one in our little town. It had been over a year since I had last seen her. I walked up to her, wearing my new found confidence bravely and said hello.

She turned around, frowned and then turned away.

Strange. I walked up to her and was about to tap her on the shoulder when there was a tap on my shoulder. It was V. And that was when I knew that there were two of them. One stood before me and the other, right behind. All I could do was stare open mouthed. What kind of bizarre in-between world was I trapped in? Ordinarily, I wouldn’t make too much of it, but somehow the threads of her betrayal stretching back to six years seemed like a deception of Macbethian proportions. I edged sideways and eased myself out from between them. Just for a second it felt like one of them was hollow. Not a real person. I didn’t bother to ask her name. It didn’t matter. I gathered up my shredded feelings and left, head held high.

I’ve never been raped. But I have been violated. Emotionally, mentally and physically and it had left in me feelings of powerlessness, defeat and self-loathing that took years to clean. Ask any woman and she will tell you that deep within her is a core made up self-worth and confidence which is protected by a thin crust of empowerment. The crust is so fragile that a simple act of emotional or mental violation can shatter it. And as in any shattered piece, the little slivers that stay hidden are the crucial ones that are needed to rebuild the confidence.

I’ve been looking for those slivers ever since and even today a few stay adamantly hidden. My crust has taken a lifetime to be built and still remains wobbly. I shudder to think what it must be like for a victim of rape. Can she ever get rid of the feeling of self-loathing ? I think not. Her crust needs to be built on being brave and never blaming herself for any of what happened to her. Because, truth be told, a man who rapes is the lowest of the low and would’ve done what he did regardless of what she was wearing or drinking or simply being at an inconvenient place.

I’ve heard it being suggested that family members or extended family members are most often to blame. I agree. A good part of my emotional and mental violation came from my family members. No, they were not sexual in nature. Instead, they aimed directly at the crust and in the process I spent years trying to feel good about myself and failed miserably. I realize now, in my middle-age, that most of that came from their own feelings of inadequacy and unhappiness. But the harm was inflicted. And sadly, however much you talk yourself to believing otherwise, it sticks on…like a piece of gum. The one sure-fire medication for this is, indifference.

Aah, the joys of being indifferent. When everything is water off a duck’s back. And when there is no guilt in not rushing in to do their bidding. I can’t emphasize enough how light and joyous that feeling is and so therapeutic. It should be bottled and sold!

Violation of the emotions should have a place in the medical books. We women are a carefully balanced pile of emotions and once that balance is skewed it is almost impossible to revert to normal. No, that’s true. If you carefully study a reasonably self-confident woman you will notice that she has the capacity to take on anything and make a success of it. If you dig beneath the core you will notice that she was surrounded by people who told her that she could achieve anything she wanted.

Sounds simple, right? But no, it is not.

So, if you have a sister or a daughter or a mother make sure you never touch that core inside. Instead, work with them on making it stronger. It is not necessary to be vicious to prove any point. And more importantly, making a woman stronger is so much better than stomping her self-confidence and self-love to the ground. Who knows, it may actually make you feeling good about yourself!

 

 

There is a horseback riding adventurer in my genes. He lived, by some accounts, during the time of the First World War or thereabouts. He had a majestic beard, wore rimless glasses and had the spirit of a lion tamer. He lived and loved the land where he made his fortune…Burma. Yes, Burma because that’s what it used to be called in his days. He was the stuff that fireside stories are made of. He was a connoisseur and exporter of precious gems. Legend has it that he could look a gemstone in the eye and tell its pedigree. His love of gemstones had taken him to the wilds of Mogok where he settled down to live a life of trading these liquid orbs of lights in the international market.

By day he was a lawyer. He became one because he intended to be a landowner and needed to be able to study relevant documents without any interpretation that would take away the basic integrity of the words. He was that kind of a man. Whatever he took up he embraced tightly and completely. No half measures for him.

Since he had moved away from a life of urban pleasures to embrace the joys of the rough and tumble of the boonies he needed a family that would suit that life and so it came to pass that he took on another wife. With whom he had children. Generations later, I found this straightforwardness oddly appealing. A wife for the city and a wife for the country, one for each lifestyle. New age political correctness and feminism would’ve come down heavily on him if he had done this in the 21st century. But in the 19th century, things were more fluid and judgements, less overbearing.

Of his three sons from his urban life, one went on to become my grandfather. He was a gentle, unobtrusive soul who gave his sons unquestioned love. It was difficult to relate him in any way to the lusty, bearded man who was his father.

Some time after the First World War had broken out the adventurer sent the best gems in his collection to the Paris gem auctions. The story goes that the ship was blown to bits during gun fire and the shock of the news killed him. The abrupt way his life ended was almost as startling as his beginnings. Till date I’ve not found a trace of him in my genes. Perhaps that incredible appetite for life died with him.

All her life G wanted to be the ultimate party girl. Hanging out with friends who would praise her jewelry and clothes. Tell her how accomplished she is and how perfect is her life. She wanted to have money to spend, a husband who would accompany her to movies and parties. In short, a middle-class life without the usual boundaries. Unfortunately, life and circumstances had other plans and while some of these wishes did come true, they did so fleetingly. For G, this disappointment would scar her life forever.

G came from almost impoverished circumstances. Her father had passed away suddenly leaving the family penniless…. a fact she always romanticized so that it would help her to cope better. She was barely seventeen, at the cusp of an adulthood that seemed shorn of all hope. Academic skills were not her forte, while anything else was out of the question because money was always in very short supply. The only way out, as in most families in such situations, was a good marriage. G was good looking, lively, happy and eager to take on the world, except that she was unprepared about how to.

Marriage was an adventure and she took to it. Wholeheartedly at first and then when the cracks began to appear she started retreating. The fights, the foul language, the bitterness and the eventual disgust evolved and grew till it completely engulfed her. Misery, loneliness and depression leached away all feelings till what was left behind was a shell. Through it all she blamed him. With every fibre of her being, she blamed him. For reducing her to this.

It was when her mind started to give way that she decided that this would be her revenge. A revenge so insidious that it would poison his every living, breathing moment and even if he wanted to, there would be no escape.

And so her mind started slipping away. The doctors called it a form of dementia. A woman who had loved life to the hilt, enjoyed dressing up and going out was now restricted to a small corner of her home. And he suffered through it all with her because that was what she willed him to do. He continued to cling on to life by a wisp of a thread. A frail, weak-minded and frightened man who could not break away. He could feel himself suffocating and dying slowly…brain cell by brain cell. Just like he had killed her passion for life with his overbearing negativity.

Yet he loved her. Finally she was fully dependent on him. She was incapable of defying him because he had killed her spirit. Now he could love her in his way. He talked to her. Referred to her in his conversations. Checked on her. All he got in response was grunts and wild rants. But it didn’t bother him.

The dysfunctional relationship continues. As he dies bit by bit, she continues on. A woman with no functioning brain cell willing him to live on. Occasionally, her eyes betray the hint of something. Feelings? A vicious pleasure in denying him both life and death? Every breath she takes now is a breath taken away from him and that will continue till she decides that he has paid enough.

The perfect revenge, indeed.

The mind is a cluttered up place where stray thoughts, half-remembered insults and little bubbles of happiness jostle for space. A gossamer thin veil of forgetfulness covers this randomness. Lately I’ve wondered if it is possible to bring some order to it with new age design thinking.

A recent article said that design is at the core of commercial successes. Terms like user-centric, informed design rattled around in my already cluttered mind and I figured that it was time I thought about bringing order to the untidiness. The first to go out would be the half-remembered the insults. Surprisingly, when I did a deep dive and turned some of them over to look under all I found was a little bit of myself trapped in there struggling to get out. Like the time a parent insulted me in front of a dear friend. I freed the hurt and watched it fly away dragging a strange little tail behind it. Hmmm…wonder if that was informed design!

I found that the stray thoughts had piled up and sitting in a corner weighing down more important things like, the name of the cute guy who had sworn that he would never get over his crush for me as long as he lived! I took a shovel to the stray pile. Broken down like that some of them just disappeared into nothingness, some of them which were weighing down my sense of self-worth on closer look vanished into thin air ….can’t believe that they had contributed to so many bad dreams over the years. This design thinking thing was quite amazing, my pixie voice squeaked into my head.

The bubbles of happy thoughts I decided needed no re-touching or re-designing. The times when I had keeled over with laughter at silly jokes and incidents which didn’t mean anything to anyone except to me and to those who had been in that laughter zone deserved to be pushed to the top of the pile. Maybe that’s what informed design meant. It informed me that a sliver of a happy thought was balanced precariously on top of the clutter and that’s where it would stay. Hey, I was getting good at it!!

I had poked around for so long that the gossamer thin veil was now in shreds. Good…because it was just an inconvenience that had far outlived its purpose. It had been there because growing up I needed to be sheltered. Now I was ready to re-design and no veils were needed. I shook out the dust from all those thoughts and memories, held them up to the light and realized that what I had been keeping a tight lid on all these years was just some ghosts. Now that I had de-fanged them the clutter was gone. For good.

Design thinking was helping me to de-risk development. Who said that I didn’t understand management terms!!