i was naked in my dream last night. but i wouldn’t go by the textbook interpretation of it .. according to which it means fear of exposure .. i think. i had gone for a massage last evening, and i guess it was the peculiar way the masseu played tabla on my bum cheeks that my mind made a note of. because in the dream i was aware of the fact that my bum is naked .. as opposed to i am naked all over. i think i had gone for a walk, naked, with didi. it was NN, delhi, the place where i grew up. and when we reach home, i get worried thinking/knowing that dad is going to shout (i wasn’t sure at whom .. me or mom) that i had gone out naked. i think i also detected my grandmother’s presence in the background. she’s dead.

i remember an interesting incident about my dead grandmother. it was i think mid-90s. i saw my dead grandmother in a dream, and she was asking for kheer (a sweet rice and milk concoction). i told about it to mom in the morning and mom freaked out big time. apparently it has slipped my mom’s mind that the days of shraddh were going in. one generally prays for the dead souls of our ancestors in these days and calls the gyani (sikh priest) home and feeds him. kheer is a main ingredient in that food.

i am looking forward to our little vaccation. we leave tomorrow and will be back by the 3rd .. or 4th. :) yippee….

the weekend was great. awesome! it was so good that its effects were evident in the dizzyness of my eyes till yesterday. i left for the day at 3 in the afternoon because i just couldn’t sit straight. it was a good, very tiring, but really good weekend. piti came over sat morning. we went dancing sat night, and we went dancing sun night. it was good fun. i ate so much .. dosas, gobhi paranthas, kebobs, this yummy paneer and onions Sul made. it-was-a-GOOD-weekend. :)

i am lying quietly
like i always love to
in dilli, in the winters
under a huge, heavy quilt
or a double-layered soft blanket
curled up
like i was in mama’s tummy
motionless
like i was dead
and then i sink
slowly drown
into a sweet
sweet
slumber
ah!
if there is heaven
this is it …

it was PMS afterall.. :)

i am feeling good today. yesterday i was feeling so good that i mailed a ‘i love you’ to veer. i wonder if he got it. :) as i have mentioned already, veer is a very good singer. i love to sing too, and i do, but i am aweful at it, but i do anyways. and i had always wanted to sing with veer. especially this song by kishore and lata ‘teri bindiya re..’. i had a (good) friend once, Mo, who once sang a duet with veer at this little get together. i kept interrupting them, making loud comments and ugly noises. i guess i was jealous. i so did not want veer to sing with her. but sing he did, and so did she, and everybody clapped .. and i huffed and i puffed and wished i could blow the house down ..

good ol’ days .. :) those were good days ..

hrithik roshan would make a very good lord Shiva in a movie. i got thinking about it cos i was thinking about how it’d be nice to be parvati. my fascination for shiva and all .. i was thinking about it last night .. thinking about Him.

my lower back has started hurting, at the base of the spine. i guess i have not been sitting properly on my chair in office. i better start some morning stretch exercises from tomorow. i tried today, but realized that i couldn’t as i had just jumped out of bed. and i didn’t have time to warm-up and stuff since it was already 9. oh God, please wake me up at 6:30 tomorrow morning .. please!!

the weekend started with kabul express. a movie i had been looking forward to. friday night, me and cy. it wasn’t .. bad. could’ve been much better. john abraham is looking good, but, he should attend some acting classes. and somebody should tell the director that a woman, after having travelled all day on the dusty, broken, wild roads of afghanistan cannot have a perfectly made-up face at the end of the day, when they stop for rest near a pond by a huge rock-covered area. ok, so maybe she washed up in the pond and all and applied make-up since she is afterall travelling with 2 good-looking journalists, but … would she .. really? a woman journalist, travelling across war-torn areas to get a good story to sell back home. maybe! there’s this thing john abraham does, tucks the corner of his lips into his cheek, and squints his eyes a bit, in a bit of a phoney looking smile, which seems part sympathy/understanding. that gives him away .. that he is ‘trying’ to act. veer does that .. and i think i did tell him this very same thing. i’ll ask him again if he remembers, and if he’d like to analyse that gesture of his with me. also, the movie editing, the transition from one screen to another could have really used some professional touch. arshad warsi is looking good. he has that basic virtue of an actor, a relaxed demeanor. he’s cool .. even if he’s not. the talib has done a really good job, and he has looked as a pakistani turned talib, cos yes, he really does not have that disgusting, hateful face that i feel all true talibs might have. *God, please forgive me if i am being judgmental*. the afghan was the cutest of them all. :) and at the end of it all, the one common thing about Indians and Pakistanis surfaces yet again .. that they both get along just fine, but hate Pakistan and India, the countries, respectively.

the weekend was weird. i was weirdly sad/tired? .. felt this weird dark heaviness kinda thing in the air. Shm said maybe its PMS, but my M is pretty far off. i think it was just stress. i had spent most part of the last week in office, away from my darling baby .. i guess that must’ve depressed me somewhere deep down, that came up when i did have time to sit and relax on the weekend.

last night’s dream has been erased out of my mind by a hurried waking up at 10 and running to the shower knowing that i had a meeting in office at 11. remember just bits and pieces of it.

i clearly remember a dog, eminem, a big daddy kinda guy with a club, and a murder and then running away from the murder scene. there was water everywhere, like we were in a torrential rain zone.

there was a backyard, and that’s where the dog is. i run after the dog, in ankle length water, calling it. it runs a bit ahead, and sits down flat on the ground, all underwater. under the clear film of crystal clear water i can see it lying down with its eyes open, the way dogs just look at you when they are just lying down. i think i wonder if/how it can breathe.

then i am talking to that big, daddy kinda guy, he has light colored hair. he is showing me a picture of that dog, propped by a wall on a cabinet kinda thing at right. the dog’s bum is towards the camera. and the dog’s bumhole is huge, like a TV. and i can see inside the dog clearly. as a matter of fact, all dogs around there are like that.

anyways some stuff happened then that i can’t remember. i remember a long conversation. then eminem comes, or someone who looks a lot like him. an argument happens .. (a father-son kinds) then someone gets killed. i think that big daddy gets angry and kills someone and then i remember running … in the ankle-deep water.

oh yes, i also remember standing and talking to a woman who is wearing this dress that has a dupatta that has squarish blocks stuck to it with velcro. i maybe brush past her or something, and one of teh thing drops and she frets. i pick it up and stick it back, along with a couple of others that fall in the process of hre fretting.

the beautiful shore,
the soft, brown, sand
the tall, green, coconut tree tops
swaying with the soft breeze
how i wish
that it wasn’t just
an imagined fantasy
at the tip of my pen..

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i had an interesting dream last night. though, as always i again remember only bits and pieces. i remember remembering substantial parts of it in the morning when i had just woken up to the 9 am alarm bell i had set to remind me of mom and dad’s anniversary. now the dream:

i am on a railway station. (i distinctly remember a railway station and then being in a train in a dream i had long back. i wonder if it is symbolic .. the railways.) and i think we (me and friends, though i don’t think i know them in this life, there’s also a 40-ish woman somewhere) are going somewhere, an outing most probably, on a train. its our train, all of it, and its bogies are more like cargo containers, that look like they are made of plasticine. there are about 5-6 such container/bogies and i distincly remember the colors brownish burgundy and brown. the “train” is just entering the station and i am running alongside, on the platform, with the knowledge in my head that we need to fill the “containers” with supplies. especially the last container, that is round and looks more like those huge cement mixers, but this one’s mouth is pointing up, towards the sky. and i think that 40-ish woman is tellig me to fill that round container with water. i think she is standing on the platform on the other side of the tracks. i enter the station building, and that woman is asking me if i know this station, and i tell her of course, this is the pune station and that i have been here a lot of times. and suddenly i realize that its completely different from how i remember pune station. pune station is black, and this one is white. creamy white. so clean and the walls so smooth. i look around and i see a board that reads ‘pune chhavani’ (cantonment), and i go, “oooo!!! no wonder..”. i then take a turn into the station and see a track there also. but this track is different. its a smooth steel way kind of a thing, steel plates joined together. and i wonder how a train manages to run on a track like that. i figure that since its so smooth and all, the train just maybe slides, the smooth white narrow walls keeping it in line. i remember i am trying to run on that smooth steel but am not able to. my right leg is twisted. i can’t remember now if it was twisted at the knee or the foot, but it’s twisted and its not letting me run properly. anyways, i think i go up a flight of stairs and i reach this .. restaurant kind of a thing. its deserted, save for the owner, a cleaning boy and there’s a third person i think i didn’t see properly. the guy/owner is about 27-30 yrs old and is wearing a decent, ironed, half-sleeved collared white shirt. he or the cleaner boy is dancing thinking that there’re no customers around and that there won’t be any. i don’t remember if i asked for water. i remember looking at the floor, which is a white and black dots cool marble slabs and that the place is well lit. i think its a beautiful place, and it’ll do great if only the guy would make it look/run better. i don’t remember getting out of the place. the next i remember is that i am back on the platform, running in the opposite direction of our train, i reach the end, and look back to find that the last, big, round container is already full of a kind of a thick liquid. its a dark maroon slush made of some liquid and tiny beads. and i am telling whoever that its already full, we don’t need water.

the scene changes. i am in a boat, with M. :)

we are sitting towards the back of the boat, like one would sit on a 2nd floor balcony. M’s friends are on the boat and one of them is driving the boat. he’s going pretty fast on the water turning here and turning there. i get a bit worried and say something to that guy, but M reassures me and asks me to relax. we both sit back again, i think on some kind of pool chairs. two guys appear on the river/water, apparently following our boat on some kind of skies. they are just having fun, shouting vaguely and making gestures at us. one blows me a kiss. he’s wearing a striped round necked t-shirt, which i think is torn and hanging losely on his right side. I blow a kiss back, with two joined fingers, thinking that he’ll never be able to catch up. he does, i feel worry, and suddenly he has climbed the edge standing just outside the boat on maybe a ledge or something. then he takes off his shirt and exposes his chest that has this set of beautifully round, fair breasts, with pretty, pink, erect, half a centimeter long, thin nipples. he smiles and lets go of the boat and disappears as we are moving fast. me and M giggle really hard like little girls.

in the next scene, we are in a (bed)room. i am lying down on a big bed and M is lying on my arm, and there’s another guy with us and we are all generally talking casually like a bunch of friends. then that guy pretends that he is tired and lies down, and he quietly squeezes my hand behind M’s back. i clearly remember feeling my heart skip a bit. i lie quietly, consciously not moving my hand. its the hand of the arm on which M is lying. then M says something and laughs and hugs me and i laugh and i tell her that maybe we are titilating that guy. then M goes and that guy says that we should plan a trip together. and then he shows me this picture of a guy who he says is a very good friend of his and that he’d be happy to meet me. the guy in the picture looked good.

__________________________________________

that guy in the room i think looked like saurav ganguly. and today in the morning, i saw saurav ganguly’s pic on the front page of TOI.

zindagi pyaar ki do chaar ghadi hoti hai
chahey jitni bhi ho ye umra badi hoti hai ..

life is love’s 2-4 moments
irrespective of how long it lasts, it’s a long/big/enough life ..

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i could never pronounce fling correctly. i always call it flinj-h. just as S noted just now, “what an irony! you never pronounce it right .. irrespective of how many you have”. love you S. :)

love you too piti. :)

Cy, you too love. :))

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its 11:40 at night. i am sitting in office, waiting for a person to finish work. i’ll then upload the stuff and go home. though really sleepy, i am not really feeling very .. disgusted or sickly pathetic like i do when i am physically very tired. for one, this work that has been keeping me busy for last so many days now is really enjoyable. storyboarding. telling people how to do what. i’ve always loved doing that .. :)

i had clear dreams last night also. i was in the NN house, where i grew up, and everyone else is there too, mom, didi, veer, even daddy. mom was fretting over some clothes of mine .. it was a pretty, striped green top. and then i remember getting off the bed (we were in the bedroom) leaving the room in a foul mood.

then i remember being on the road, near the moolchand fly-over in delhi, getting in an auto, realizing it’ll cost me a lot of money, asking the auto guy to stop, getting off the auto and going back to the bus stand by the side of the road.

_____________________________________________

song i am listening to right now: aaj mausam bada beyimaan hai, by mohammed rafi. its sounding really nice :) .. his voice has a soothing effect on tired shoulders.

aao mujhsey pyaar karo
merey sapno ko sakaar karo
sadiyon se pyasa munn mera
meri ***** ka uddhar karo

my dream last night:

i am trying to get a tattoo on the back of my left hand, left to the base of the thumb. but the tattoo woman is not getting what i am saying. its a kind of a Sun image i want, but she’s made three dots, something like the Orion’s belt, and i am trying to tell her that its wrong, and the 3 dots need to be in one line. then i go to this other tattoo artist, a woman again, and the next thing i remember is that she has already half drawn a black cadillac through the length of the top of my rigth arm. and i am telling her that i want it on the inside of the arm and that too just between the elbow and the underarm.

we had a beautiful sunday picnic. me, Cy, and a friend. the peace, the quiet, the stillness .. towards the day end, Cy was planning to make that shaded place where we were sitting, home. it was a serene river bank, and a large part of it, not deep at all. i and Cy went into the water and just enjoyed the cool water around our legs. i was still for sometime having made Cy sit on a stone in the water. and then i felt something on my toe. i looked down and saw that a tiny fish was as if kissing my foot. i know, i know, it was nibbling it trying to bite, but it really fet more like a kiss. now if i was in the amazon and that was a pirahna, then well … :) .. but i loved it.

one small thing i remember about last night’s dream. cy was wearing a very, very pretty little white dress, edged with lace. spaghetti straps and just covering her bum.
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i just had a yummy chocolate cake literally floating in chocolate sauce. i love chocolate cakes. though the restaurant menu listed it down as truffle, it was a layered chocolate cake.

i recently realized that shamsher means a sword .. how apt. though this one is in confused, lost hands .. and the kavach is long gone. the beautiful protective covering thrown somewhere off a cliff in the throes of passion .. passions that proved so redundant later ..

sometimes it seems so true .. that people’s personalities are reflected by their names. not always, definitely not always, sometimes.

btw, the cast off kavach didn’t sink. it floated in the sea and reached a beautiful island. it lies on the soft, white sands under the soft summery sun now. :)

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she said: my love is not for free

he said: so how much will you charge to climb my tree

she said: hmm .. well, lessee

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thehra paani
thehrey paani mein tairtey kann
un kanno mein bus jaoon mein
ik kann hee bun jaoon mein

door
kshitij pe tairata wo jahaz
us jahaz
mein hongey loag
kahan ja rahein hein wo
ik doosri duniya mein shayad
un logon mein
ek bun jaoon mein
us doosri duniya mein
bus jaoon mein

chal mun
kahin door chalein
baithey-baithey
paanv thuk gaye hein
ab chal ke
dard ko choor karein

from age 0 to about 8, i grew up in a place called double-storey in lajpat nagar, new delhi. it was a row of narrow houses, with another row on the first floor on top of the row below. and hence the name double-storey. four such rows were constructed forming a squarish block. the upper row of houses shared a common long balcony and also the toilets at both ends of the row. though now people have constructed private toilets in their homes. in my dream, we were in a place like that. it was a beautiful dream. i was in a happy place. i was happy, at peace .. happy. it started with night time. everybody getting ready for bed. i was talking to a current colleague of mine on phone strolling up and down the house row on the ground floor. the houses were on my right. there was some sort of a stone structure on the left .. maybe a waist high wall. i am not sure. from that view it seemed that the houses structure and the small wall are made of big bricks and the design is such that the bricks are showing. the guy on fone was insisting that he is nearby and that i should come over for a “chit-chat”, and i was resisting saying that i hadn’t even brushed my teeth (i remember feeling yucky in the mouth), besides it was too late and that i needed to hit bed. i saw a couple of other current colleagues who apparently lived in an upper storey apartment. they all seemed drunk, and a couple of them were hanging out in the window, and i guess i told this to the guy i was talking to on the phone. i was wearing what i wear every night, my shorts and singlet. i then reach up to where we apparently stay on the first floor, and there’s didi, veer, and cy. its one big spacious room, with a large bed and we all sleep in it together. there are some crowded cupboards and drawers around. its a well-lit room. the wide door, i think facing west, has whitish, printed curtains on them, beyond which one can see the common balcony like the aisleway. the next morning, N auntie (a close friend of my dad’s from UAE) comes to our wide open door, with curtains flowing a bit to the soft breeze, all ready to go to work, does some small talk, says bye and leaves like she’s going to work. from the balcony the landscape is somewhat like UAE. i clearly remember we are all happy, me, veer, and didi. and then i tell veer to keep an eye on cy and make sure that she doesn’t go out. and then i show him this mall some distance away from our building and tell him that its an awesome place and that i’d really like to take him there. i look towards his face and ask him if he’ll be able to manage that distance. he looks smilingly in the direction i am pointing and says we’ll see. didi’s moving about in the room doing something to some clothes .. i could feel cy around too .. we are all happy ..

veer just emailed this:

Here I sit
Broken-hearted
Came to shit
But only farted

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the weekend was hectic, but good. really, really good. v’d gone to M’bai for M’s party. it was on a boat. though initially i got really sick and swore to myself that i will never step on a boat again, i had so much fun eventually that i think i haven’t had so much fun in ages. i was really sick initially when the boat sarted moving and rocking to the rhythmn of the sea. my tummy felt weird. cy started protesting also and wanted to get off the boat right then and there. i guess maybe we’d stuffed ourselves with the starters like crazy. and they were yummy starters. especially the succulent slices of grilled paneer with thick onion pieces and the batter-fried fish fingers. y-u-m!! and the chocolate cake was good too. but thankfully, before i started looking out for a place to puke over, M called for everyone to go hit the dancefloor. the dancefloor was on a lower level of the boat, so i guess that helped. cos as soon as we hit the dancefloor, my tummy was alright and i completely forgot if i was ever feeling sick. same with cy. we both pounced on the dancefloor like animals. and the music was awesome. the dj really knew the mood of the crowd and kept up with it. thanks M, for the fabulous time. :)

the next morning we went over to piti’s place. S was there too. S had come down from dilli for a friend’s wedding. it was so nice to be together again. the 3 of us and our baby. :) miss you so much guys. S left for dilli by noon, and in the evening me, piti, and cy went for casino royale. i think i should devote a separate post for the movie. wow! i think its the first bond movie i have enjoyed so thoroughly. and daniel craig has looked so G-O-O-D. edible! yum! mouth watering. slurp! slurp! beautiful movie. everything about that movie is awesome, especially the chase scene in the beginning. the numbering itself is so cool. when he turns and shoots and the bond signature circle and design appear with that music. awesome!! cy sat and watched the entire movie open mouthed. oww!! her sweet, li’l golu mouth. muah!! she even kept asking me questions like what’s that happening? is she going to die? is that the bad guy? .. we had great FUN.

had a weird dream last night. of being surrounded by ghosts/demons. as usual, didn’t document it soon enough and now can’t remember anything. i remember being scared though.

this morning i saw a really sad picture of a beautiful blue train being burnt. the burning train .. *sigh* really sad. these stupid, idiot rioters destroying public property, our property, your property, my property. for a moment i felt that they should be all shot on sight. i think its a very effective way of handling riots, especially on such occassions when there was no reasonable cause for such widespread destruction (and i really don’t care if someone somewhere was deeply “hurt” by whatever, nothing justifies so much of redundant destruction of public property). just shoot the aholes on sight. target their legs or something ..

it was such a beautiful, new train. it must’ve cost so much to built it. so much of my money, our money, the public’s money … and all those buses and cabs and autos that also got torched or broken. why? apparently, half of them weren’t even aware of why it all started. they just picked stones and any weapons they could find when they saw the mob and tagged along. how pathetic.