i found it at last. after looking for it for ages …

krishna parat was nice enough to mail it to me, after he read here that i am looking for it.

thanks Krishna.
thanks Krishna … :) *sniff**sniff*

यह कदम�ब का पेड़ !

-स�भद�रा क�मारी चौहान
(1904 - 1948)

mom, i miss you .. everyday.

i feel quite today. quite and nice. actually quite and sleepy. normally how i feel on a relatively free day. and its a beautiful kind of a sleep. the one in which you sink s-l-o-w-l-y. Mmmm…. its 2:50 pm in the afternoon .. far, far away from any bed, surrounded by the clickety-clack of a zillion keyboards all around me …

but i could still sleep. sink s-l-o-w-l-y. Mmmm….

5:32 pm
yumm… i saw this absolutely yummy pic of pasta and pesto. would love to stuff my face with it right now. gobble! gobble! gobble! just look at the garlic chunks in there. i love garlic. there’s this place in delhi, a south-indian joint, in defence colony market. its a sister-concern of sagar. i am forgetting the name now, but its in the same line as swagat. they serve south-indian non-veg food. that place is an absolute must for all those who visit delhi. they have this dish, again apologies for not remembering the name, its huge tiger prawns, sauteed in just some yummy oil and herbs and chopped garlic. and abundant garlic chunks. and when those yummy garlic chunks get crushed between your teeth along with the succulent prawns, you know you have died and gone to heaven. i thank God, for it is only the privileged ones who get to appreciate such pure, unadulterated pleasures in this petty, sad, boring, disgusting life. thank you God! another favorite from that place is a mutton mutha stew (or muthu?) with appams. yum! its mutton cooked (very well) in coconut gravy. appams are steamed rice pancakes .. more like crepes at the edges.

the name of the place is SWAGATH. :) … in defence colony market.

the weekend was awesome. thank you God. i had a great time with Cy and Sul. we were such a happy, cheery family throughout the weekend. even though i slept in the afternoons both the days, which i normally hate as i feel that i wasted precious weekend time, but this time it was great. and it was maybe because sat i slept around 11-1 and sun 1-3. both days enough of the day was left by the time i woke up. and interestingly enough, it didn’t spoil my nights. normally, an afternoon siesta, irrespective of how small it is, plays havoc with my nights. i just can’t sleep till 3, 4 in the morning. but the night’s too were good. just one huge regret though. but this has been a regret of all my life. i didn’t wake up in the morning and exercise. tomorrow! pakka! :)

as much as i enjoy the kick-boxing sessions, i will be discontinuing them this coming month. 3k is a bit much for my budget. i’ll try and practice at home as much as i can. not that i will .. :( .. i will tho put the alarm for 6:30 every morning, like i always do .. put it off and promptly go back to sleep .. like i always do .. :(

i saw omkara last fri. it was pretty good. tho i hate movies where people die in the end, but i liked this one. i wouldn’t call it “entertaining”, but it was good. kareena kapoor, tho i never had any opinion of her, looked pretty good. and the keyword is ‘looked’. konkana sen, as expected, did a pretty good job. saif ali khan could/should have looked a bit dirtier. bipasha basu looked pretty good and very out of place. she looked like they picked her right from the mumbai social scene .. hair, makeup, everything and just dropped her on the sets. i wonder how the director missed something so obvious.

i’ll try and get my hands on othello. there was a copy lying around the house when i was growing up, but i am pretty sure that its not there anymore. we once lost a huge box of books. we were cleaning the cupboards and book shelves and stuff, and put soem books in a big cardboard box and put it outside for a while. when we went out again, the box wasn’t there. that’s delhi for you. you leave anything outside for a while unattended, there is a big chance that it won’t be there after some time. and that box had some pretty good, pretty expensive books. people used to keep telling us that suzy doen’t watch the house. we tried to explain that she is not a “watchdog”, rather she is a dog, just as a species. she was never a “pet”, but a part of the family. i eventually stopped explaining it to people and just nodded my head in agreement.

i need a personal trainer .. for free ..

4:25 pm
in the book ‘agony and ecstacy’ (no, its not porn), michaelangelo (have i spelt that correctly?) says that he looks at a piece/slab of marble and knows that there is a beautiful sculpture dying to come out. all a sculptor needs to do is carve it out. that’s exactly how i feel about my body. beneath all this flab, lies a beautiful, well-sculpted body .. only if a sculptor would take some time out. *sigh*

5:47 pm
i was 20 ..
now i am 30 (+1)
seems like
just yesterday.
how time passes
takes away life
this daily strife

a friend told her that she looks pretty “cool” kicking.

the next time she sees her dreamguy, she quickly takes a stance and kicks the guy nearby.

मैं हू� इक आवाज़
दबी, सहमी, हल�की सी
चादरों‌� कैदहर के नीचे
बाहर, सूखे चने को �ाड़ के पीछे

i, am a voice
suppressed, scared, soft
under the pile of bed-sheets
outside, behind the chickpea bush

वो जो स�नके भी
अनस�नी कर जाता है
सोचता है, आवाज़ नहीं
शायद क�छ हवा का �ौंखा

he, who listens
and still doesn’t
thinks, its not a voice
maybe just a breeze

वो बियाथा रहता है
मै क�छ क�छ कहती रहती हू�
वो ग�नग�नाता, गाता, चला जाता है
मैं बैठी सोचती रहती हू�, क�छ कहती रहती हू�

he keeps sitting
i keep saying something
he hums, sings, keeps going
i sit thinking, saying something

अब सोचती हू�
नहीं, ज़रूरत नहीं
क�छ कहने की
बस उठजाऊ�
चल पड़ दू�
जग जाऊ�

i think now
no, there’s no need
to say something (anything?)
just get up
start walking
wake up

हवा बून�द हो जा�गी

the breeze will turn into a drop

(originally, it was
the breeze will stop)

was surfing and ended up on this blog. this person got tagged and had written all this. i liked it and decided to put it here and type down my thoughts:

I am thinking about: how i’d love it if i don’t need to work. i’d love to try and start baking cakes.

I want to: go shopping.

I wish: to have a huge palace. something like what i saw in the pictures of the palace of the shiekh of UAE, shiekh zayed bin sultan al nahanyan.

I hear: the sound of the sea in my mind, my brain…

I wonder: if dino morea ever wondered about the woman who kept SMSing him.

I regret: having completely wasted the really precious last decade of my life.

I am: .. and yet i am not.

I dance: only in the privacy of my home now, as i am embarassed of my juggling pot-belly.

I sing: all the time irrespective of how many people are covering their ears and looking at me with weird contempt.

I cry: at the thought of breaking a bone.

I make with my hands: just words .. using the keyboard.

I write: stupid things at random. whatever comes to my mind.

I confuse: almost everything with almost everything.

I need: :)

And finally: life goes on …

i really dig pretty moles on soft fair skin. there’s one i particularly remember .. am thinking of right now rather .. a soft, soft neck, and a pretty, pretty mole on it, mid-way between the ear and the neck base .. not in that straight line. *sigh**double-sigh*

i love soft necks in general. there was this one time i remember. a friend of Sm’s gave me a lift on his bike. his neck seemed so soft and tempting that i had to force myself not to bite it, sitting there right behind him, so close to that … that … hmmm… i did tell Sm about it later. he just grinned .. his i-knew-it-you-would grin. :)

6:00 PM
ah! food! the bane of my life. i just had chholey samosa. (chholey is fried chick peas in a thick, spicy gravy; samosa is a deep-fried chickpea flour dumpling stuffed with fried, mashed, spiced potatoes). i feel especially rotten as i had a parantha (fried, multi-layered flat bread) and an omlette in the morning assuring myself that i will not have anything the whole day. and then around noon i had idlis (steamed rice cakes) and potatoes. ah! ah! ah! .. why don’t i just take my tummy out and donate it to an anorexic. why, why O God are you abandoning me now when i need you the most. why don’t you hold my hand o shepheard and guide me to a no-fatty-food path. ah! where did i go wrong. why have you forsaken me o father …

i had that stupid fear again in the morning today. of God! i laughed at something, some people actually, and then felt that it was very mean, arrogant of me to do that, and readily asked for forgiveness. and then i felt it: the fear. of being “punished” for making fun of someone like that. and then i wondered, that if i had asked for forgiveness, because i really meant it, or just because of ‘the fear’. *sigh* … but i really did feel bad. for having laughed like that .. for mocking. judging and mocking. please forgive me.

how weird! i was feeling so happy some time back .. for no reason at all. and today i feel sad, very .. melancholic .. no i think sad is the right word … for no reason at all. maybe i over-slept, and now both my brain and my body are tired. plus i think i am over doing the dino morea bit, a bit. i mean, if its meant to happen, it will. but then again, humans didn’t reach the moon just cos they were meant to .. a hell lot of research and effort went in to it. but then again .. what did we gain out of it. nothing really. we still are spinning with our sweet li’l Earth. and we are happy. besides, i had promised myself long back that i will NOT chase after any guy now. all my relationships had started like that, me chasing the guy. they all ended disasterously. a huge waste of both my time and effort (not the first one though .. it was beautiful :)). after all i don’t know dino morea. what if he turns out to be completely different from what he seems. he seems nice. *sigh* … but .. i never was looking at a relationship, when it came to dino morea. i just wanted to see him. .. do him. :) *double-sigh* .. anyways, to each her own.

God! i am thnkful for this beautiful life that i have. its there’s nothing more that i deserve or will have .. i’m cool with it. :) .. and happy.

you know, come to think of it. maybe its that kick-boxing thingie. yesterday again the trainer had made me strain big time. and today, my upper thighs and arms are hurting. maybe that’s why i am feeling low .. a feeling that my brain is interpreting as sadness.

days have been good of late .. the nights too. i feel good most of the times. i have been pretty de-hydrated though since last evening. dunno why. i know i don’t drink lots of water, but i have been like that most of my life. i’ve never been a huge fan of drinking water. though i love water in ever other way..

i have been trying to change the way i have been most of my life. i am trying to “discipline” myself. no, not because of dino morea. for myself. :) 69 kgs is no laughing matter. :( my nice jeans and tops don’t fit anymore. my night life has come to a complete halt cos i don’t have anything to wear. and i refuse to buy clothes that don’t hug me entirely. :(

so i have joined this gym: kick-boxing. no, dats not the name of the gym, but what i do there. its fun most of the times, but at times i feel the trainer overdoes it. the other day, i felt that my head was being put inside a huge iron clamp and is being squeeze by the power of 25 horses. he insists that nothing will happen, that i will feel pukish and stuff and that’s ok. but today i put my foot down. he just squinted his eyes and looked at me. i looked confidently back and said i will not go on. he said “fine”. and then after a while he said at least do some back exercises, they are mild. the moment i hit the floor horizontally, he made me all sorts of crunches. and all that after he’d made me power-walk on the treadmill for 16 minutes. by the end of it all, my legs were so wobbly i felt that i wouldn’t be able to walk back home (its less than a kilometers walk till home from the gym .. or maybe a kilometer, i dunno). but it was aweful. rather awesome .. that i did manage to do some stuff that my brain always refuses my body to do. i so hope to God that i am able to work-out everyday. till now i only wake up to put the alarm off at 6:30 am and go back to sleep, trying hard to remember what i was dreaming.

my dreamlog work has halted cos veer is not correcting the problem that i am facing with my dreamlog. the thing is that i don’t want my dreamlog posts to show on the main page the way they do currently. i’ll remind veer yet again.

but since i am on the topics of dreams, i’ll try and recollect what i saw last night. i don’t remember much though, hardly anything at all. just little bits here and there .. those of the early morning. i dreamt:

a room. yellowish light. people around. family? i think M was ravishing a bowl of mutton. huge succulent pieces. and the big bones from which you can suck the marrow, were broken and the thick tubes of marrow were just hanging to be had. yum! my mouth is watering and all i can think of is having that meat. M gets up, goes somewhere, i go to the bowl, which is on a largish table by the corner of the yellowish room, very much like our bedroom in NN, Delhi. i pick up the bowl and am looking at the thick marrow hanging from the open bone .. and that’s all i can remember. (interestingly, M had promised yummy mutton cooked by her mom when she came back from Mum from her weekend visit. she never got it.)

the next thing i remember is really, really hazy. there was something going on in a big (not too big) ground, covered all around by a waist-high wall, and a stage towards the north, all with curtains and all. now i remember that there was something happening, but now i can’t remember at all, what. all i remember is a short-haired woman, whose name is McCallifer (or McCallister??). she’s a sportswoman (ah! interestingly again, i had watched million dollar baby last night). there’s also a carpet with an interesting pattern on it, which that woman is showing me. there was something else there on the ground that converted into the carpet.

pune, as always in the rains, is beautiful. i love it. :) i am in love ..

PS: my fingers are itching to SMS dino morea .. but i am forcing them fist not to … patience! patience!

its raining beautifully today. i just spent an hour on the terrace watching the rain and it seemed like just 20 mins or so. we have a weird kind of a terrace where i work. the water gets logged even at the slightest hint of rain, and right now it looks like a pool. all around the seating area, which is protected by a raised brick-work, some 6 inches above the terrace floor. so its just awesome. standing there, surrounded by a layer of water, watching the rain hit the water and form a million ripples all at once. its beautiful.

and i am feeling light and happy. i had been pretty depressed for some time cos i wanted to buy the house i am living in right now. i just realized that its ok if i don’t. so i have given up the idea .. at least for now .. and am feeling much better now. for one, buying that house would have meant paying monthly EMIs through my nose. it would’ve wrecked havoc on my lifestyle. so at least for now, with a promise to save (more), i have decided to post-pone the idea of buying a house for another year or so. the only sad fact is that the owner might sell it soon. we’ll have to move then. :( i love this place …

i had also started work on a fictional account some days back. it came out very well. but then i got tired and went to sleep, and then duly forgot about it. when yesterday i opened the file again, i had completely forgotten where the story was going. felt bad about that.

i haven’t composed any verses of late. so i wonder if after considerable mutation, my muse has eventually given up on me. my poor muse .. my poor, poor muse. i miss you. please come back..

today, for a moment (just one tiny moment), i felt like a dog, running fast after a speeding car. i have no idea what i will do if it stops.

i am happy today. :) for no reason at all. i like being happy this way. for no reason at all. i have noticed that i am happier, much happier, when i am happy for no reason at all. but i am very skeptical about such days. because of something that had happened long back on a happy day like this.

it was a tuesday. that day too i was happy. generally smiling at everyone. writing power mails to the senior management. shooting out great ideas. saying loud hellos to people while walking confidently across the office. and then i got a call. suzy had been attacked by a dog. i knew the dog that had attacked suzy. i knew it was bad. mom was crying hysterically in the background. veer was telling my hurriedly what had happened. there was intense trauma and fear in his voice. mom was hysterical. suzy was bleeding pretty bad. i kept the fone down, shot a mail to my boss and ran out of the office, to reach the clinic where veer and mom were taking suzy. its a long, long drive from Noida, where i was working, to the vet’s in south delhi. took me about an hour in the auto. by the time i reached, suzy had been bandaged, and mom and veer were standing just outside with suzy. she was really cranky. i ran towards her, and wanted to hug her. but she just snarled. but we were all glad that its over. the doctor had bandaged the deep wound and had given her loads of injections for any possible infections. we came back home.

suzy died the following Sunday early morning, around 5 am. i’ll never forget that night .. and the day before that. and i’ll never forget that saturday morning, when the short in time but painfully long in feeling story of her final moments began.

i woke up pretty late (usual back then). it was a bitter cold winter morning, a saturday. and the first thing i noticed (and i remember it so clearly) was that suzy was sitting in a corner of the room, a pretty bare corner .. and she looked different.

she looked pale, much thinner, and sick. now that i think back, she had this sick, greyish-white aura about her. i got off my bed in panic. suzy always loved cosy beds. and since the attack, we were making sure that she gets tucked in nicely under warm blankets. delhi winters are killers. that friday night, i remember tucking her in, by my side. so i was really shocked to see her so remote from the all the warmth and the family looking like she’d given up. i jumped towards her and tried to pull her towards the blankets, or at least till her seat which was cosy. but she resisted. she even felt cold. her skin, her fine coat had already started looking and feeling dead. after that she was mostly motionless, didn’t eat, didn’t go out. around the afternoon we got ready to take her to the vet again. i think she was getting daily injections. she wouldn’t get up. i tried to drag her, and pulled hard on her chain. when we stepped out of the house, on the verandah, she pottied, a pretty solid lump, and then just collapsed. veer looked scared. but i was hopeful. she was breathing. somehow, i had strong faith in modern medicine and i was sure that all we needed to do was tak her to the vet’s and then she will be alright. the doctor there will save her. but when we reached the clinic, it was a completely different story. at times i wonder if things would have been different if the clinic had been a different place that day when we reached there. though i always sweared by that place, but that day, i completely lost faith, and henceforth find them very shallow, very devoid of the care and understanding they pride themselves on. that clinic, that “organization” for the “welfare of animals”. there was just one doctor. young, and really stressed out. trying really, really hard to cope. with us, another dog had come in and he needed an emeregency operation. he had swallowed a chicken bone or something and it was stuck in his throat. and then there was suzy, just lying there in my arms .. almost motionless. i waited patiently for the doctor to sow up that dog on the operation table. when suzy’s turn came, i laid her down on the table and she pucked. a really stinky, black puke. the doctor gave her an injection and said that she might not make it. i couldn’t believe my ears. by now, her breathing had become heavier. veer and me were stunned, we were desperate. we stopped on the way and bought some fish. i put the fish under suzy’s nose. no reaction. we decided that we’ll go home and cook sone fish soup. maybe some hot fish fumes will stir her somehow. on the way i remembered about another vet, so we raced towards Noida. after wasting a good hour searching for that vet’s clinic, we headed back towards home. there was a clinic near our place too. we went there. the doctor took one look at her and said that she won’t make it. he also told us that she is not able to breath because her lungs have “frozen” due to the cold. i felt like an ass .. thinking that i should’ve put suzy under hot water the moment i saw her so cold in the morning. there was nothing left to do. we came home. i made fish soup and put in the kettle, so i could direct the hot fish smelling steam towards her nose. nothing. she didn’t move, just looked .. sadly. then, we just waited. just sat there and waited. around 5:30 in the morning, the sad sunday morning, i noticed something different. her body looked different. although she had been still for a long time, now she seemed stone still. i picked up her mouth in my hands .. and i knew. her mouth was slightly open, and stiff. her eyes, the brown eyes that i will never forget, had glazed over. i woke veer up, and then mom. mom cried. we just sat there.

i am pretty skeptical of happy days since then. somehow don’t like it anymore, when i feel so happy for no reason at all.

today is raksha bandhan. and i didn’t get veer a rakhi. :( sorry veer. there’s no excuse.

once when i was a li’l baby my mom laid me besides veer (he must be aroud 6) and went out to talk to a neighbour for a while. i rolled off the bed and would have fallen off if not for veer who in a split second trying to catch hold of me caught hold of my dress. i was hanging there, off the edge of the bed, in mid-air, saved by poor 6 year old veer’s small, yet obviously strong grip for god only knows how long, before mom came and rescued me.

that laid a foundation of our relationship and he’s done this all our lives. :)

when we landed on the delhi airport, i missed pune. i missed ‘home’. i missed the rains and esp the cool breeze when our bodies eased onto a warm tarmac. we reached veer’s place drenched in sweat. its weird. how emotions change. though i’ve never wanted to live in delhi, but after just 4 days, i felt that i wanted to spend some more time here. sat, sun, mon, tue, went past us like roaring waters of a flooded river (Sul’s words). wed morning, when i woke Cy up to get her ready, she howled and screamed and prayed and begged. and argued that there are good schools in delhi and that that should not be the reason for us to go back. it took me a good 30 mins of sitting with her, talking to her, reminding her of her tv, her almirah, her table and chair, and clothes, the pool she loves and eventually of M, who i told her hadn’t eaten since we left as she can’t cook and is waiting for Sul to get back and cook for her. that softened her eyes. and though still reluctantly, she let Sul take her to the bathroom for a bath. in those 4 days i had falled in love with the shower in veer’s home. such a full-bodied, abundant shower, yet it hit the body so softly. i love showers. once in bangalore, we had gone swimming in, i think, the ashoka hotel. the shower there was so perfect and so nicely hot that i spent a good hour just standing under it, letting it hit my back, my body, my face. not really caring that Sm was waiting outside, i was enjoying it so much. and when i came out, i saw that Sm had just walked out too, wrapped in a towel, all wet and red-eyed. we both looked at each other and smiled, knowing that we both had shared the same beautiful moments, as if together, sharing the same sense of such complete satisfaction and content. its definitely the small things in life that make everything so worth it.

we returned to pune with a sad, heavy heart. i went out on the balcony and looked over at the pool, like i always do. but something had changed. the joy that leapt out of my heart everytime i stood there seemed missing. i missed delhi, i missed veer, i wish i had spent more time playing with Vas. and i terribly regretted not being able to go to sarojini nagar or lajpat nagar. i had planned to buy shoes for Cy from South Ex. *sigh*

days are becoming even more depressing here in pune. its been raining like crazy here. it was pouring all day yesterday. i felt so caged. i hope the mood and everything else changes soon.

ahhh!!! the dilli trip was G-O-O-D. :0)

it seems unbelievable. that just last sunday we were in delhi. it all seems like a dream now. a dream with such distinct, beautiful memories that i feel i can touch them.