The first day my rommate mentioned the word 'bellies' she left me slightly confused. Something like 'I have a rack for my bellies' ... bellies? stomachs on racks? how violent! Of course it took me a while to understand that these are shoes. Pretty, dainty, shoes.

Shoes are very important. Ask Cinderella.

Sleeping Beauty woke up from her deep sleep after the prince kissed her. She did not kiss him back. She had not brushed.

Also 6 pm in Dilli is like 4 pm in Calcutta. How very amusing! It's still bikel byala when you leave office. The amusement ends when right after shondhyebyala it's dinner time. Very strange.
 

Okay bye.

Stuff that spills out when tubelights stop working.

Okay I was supposed to have finished some pending work by now. But the tubelight in my room just stopped working. I won't be able to read. I won't be able to sleep.  So well ...

On a bright sunny autumn day, when the soft clouds floated in the clear blue sky like small cotton tufts, Bhuto was born. It was that month of the year when Debi Durga visited her earthly abode, four children in tow. Bhuto was the youngest of nine children. His eldest sister's son was born a month before him. It happened like that in the 1950s.

Bhuto's family lived in a village. They weren't poor, in fact, they were quite rich. With several orchards of the choicest fruits--mangoes, jackfruits, litchies, a pond, and many cows--poverty was something they knew nothing about. Bhuto's childhood was a colourful kaleidoscope of memories--learning how to swim with an upturned kolshi (a metal utensil with a narrow neck used for storing water) that would float on water, climbing trees, attending the local school, eating a basketful of mangoes perched upon a tree and in the evenings whispering sweet nothings in the ears of his best friend--Budh,who was the gentlest cow they owned.

Bhuto's father was a doctor. A fact that explained why he had such luck when it came to marriage. His wife Nonibala Devi was the most beautiful woman in that village. Had Bhuto's father been a regular village bumpkin, he would never have won such a beauty as his bride. She served him well. Nine healthy children; six of them boys. No one could complain.

But the female in the house who enjoyed undisputed authority was not Bhuto's mother it was Bhuto's paternal grandmother, Shoshthi Devi. She was a woman of voracious appetite (one large jackfruit would be her breakfast), sharp intellect and an enormous memory that had soaked up all the verses of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata (the compulsory daily ritual of reading aloud the two epics that her daughter-in-law was made to follow had something to do with it perhaps!). When she passed away in her late 90s her grandchildren were running about joking and laughing as her white-haired son assembled her funeral pyre. She was too old to evoke tears. Can anyone grow so old? Should anyone grow so old?

Years later when Bhuto's mother Nonibala would die, in a different house, in a different country, all her six grown-up sons would gather around her, as she would lie peacefully dressed in white, sandalwood smeared on her forehead, surrounded by tuberose flowers--her sons would gather around her and pose for a photograph. Photographs are for creating memories, capturing beauty--but this one captured death and robbed it of its dignity.

Of phones and vegetables.

Looking at the numerous shops in wide-eyed wonder, I was was ambling through the roads of Mussoorie, one winter, long time ago. I was in class 5 and was fascinated by the shops and wanted to buy everything--spoons, combs, shawls--everything. Baba's voice shattered all such grand plans- 'Egulo shob Kolkata tei pawa jay'. 'All these things are easily available in Kolkata.'  He bought a red cutlery set and a woollen cap both of which I guess he thought would not be available in our beloved city. (Parents!)

This dialogue was repeated on every holiday. In Puri my mother wanted to buy a hnari , (a vessel we use to cook rice etc.), now don't ask me why, (this was a woman who brought home a honuman-kola-khachche soft toy from Fonria Pukur). She did get the hnari but not before Baba could grumble - "Ki dorkar chilo? Egulo Kolkata tei pawa jay".

Anyway so basically going somewhere with Baba, and buying something without him grumbling was a rare experience. If you needed the thing then no problem but if it was a thing you want to buy just on a whim then God save you! Buying around 10 kilos of fruits and then washing them and displaying them on a huge dining table in a not-so-huge room is perfectly normal but buying some clothes just like that is what demented people do!

He is lucky enough to find friends who are equally abnormal. One of his friends has a farm somewhere in Baharampur and whenever he comes to Kolkata, we don't shop for a week. He brings a supply of vegetables and fruits that we have trouble storing in the kitchen. Once this friend of his brought this huge bunch of litchies and after displaying them on the dining table, my father expressed his wish to have his photo clicked with the litchies. FINE. I indulged, brought the camera as my mother looked from the kitchen where she was busy admiring brinjals. The woman loves her begun
and if there is an abundant supply at home, rest assured that the goddamned vegetable will be on the menu, sneaking its way into every dish like James Bond, shukto with begun or better still neem-begun, mach with begun, two slices of begun bhaja and some aloo-begun er torkari--till we are ready to scream . . . and then gauging the situation, she camly says "ponka chilo , na banale kharap hoye jeto" (it had pests, so would have rotted had I not cooked it all).

 -- I digress... where were we ? yes, Baba and litchies. So I got the camera and was ready to click and through the lens I saw a grown-up man smiling like a silly kid pointing at the litchies. I asked "Is it necessary to point?' 'Yes! My friend has brought litchies, this is what friendship is...you all won't understand ...now click.' (Of course I won't ... we are a screwed up lot who buy cups of coffee for 100 bucks and don't send kilos of fruits to each other's house--how would we know!)

Something about buying useless things like clothes irks my father which now that I think of it, is good--great in fact. Because he is convinced that he looks good in two colours--red and yellow. After various shocking episodes of him bringing home shirts of both these hues, now only my mother and I shop for him.


So on one birthday, I decided that I need a new phone. I wanted a particularly expensive model and that was supposed to be my birthday gift. I don't know what sort of a miracle happened and he agreed. In reality I never expected him to. But he insisted that we walk to the store (which is at walking distance but I take an auto... actually once I took an auto and realised that the distance is embarrassingly short so I got off a little further than the intended stop.) So we walked to the store and I got my expensive phone (earlier I owned a black and white Nokia so EVERYTHING was more expensive than that!) and we waked back. He was not grumbling but his face was swollen... like Akbar's flaring nostrils in Mughal-e-Azam. I knew what he was thinking-his first salary was perhaps half the phone's value, some families survive on that amount, he was perhaps spoiling his daughter rotten, how did he EVER agree to it... and so on. So on that day I told myself that until the day comes when the phone just falls apart and fails to come together again--I will continue to use it. (I loved it ...but that was secondary.) My resolve was strengthened further when during a family gathering someone spotted this phone and asked me the price, I innocently revealed it and the concerned relative pinched her sister in a not-so-subtle way... (look-how-kaku-is-spoiling-her was the subtext of that pinch I guess!)... And that's why my darling I am not changing my phone, I am not buying those 'smart' phones, those touch-screen phones. I am happy with my dinosaur-age relic.

The last bit was all that I wanted to say when I started writing but you see my first class-teacher was damn right when she had said -- "she is very talkative".


Bye

Sugar and spice and all things nice

At times when I take the metro to work I cross this bakery, located right across the Iskcon mandir. I look at the bakery with its shining door amidst the squalid surroundings and my mind conjures up images of a delightful chocolate cake, cheese sticks and other goodies ... for a few seconds the music of the earphones die. Then I cross the shop and the spell is broken.


My room has one window with a long blue curtain, it is never opened, because ... I really don't know why. Once I tried and was hit by a dust storm and I never tried again. A part of the window is blocked out by a piece of wood, that's where the rented AC will fit in another month or so. The point is that throughout the whole day little or no sunshine enters my room. So this particular Saturday, having spent a good amount of the day in bed, I decided to take a walk to that bakery.


Dodging autos and cycles, which were being driven by people who had sworn to bump me off the road, I reached the bakery--Golden Fiesta. Bikes and vans blocked the entry, squeezing through them was not an option so somehow managed to find a gap. Inside there was everything that I could possible ask for... cakes, pastries, bread, chocolate sticks, low-fat milk coffee (shoot me if I ever drink that!), eclairs and what-not. Having ordered two savoury puffs and one pastry to be packed, I took a walk around the store, trying my best to ignore the two aunties who were ordering dozens of cakes.


It's not the best cake-shop in town, it's definitely not the best cake-shop I have been to but all the same it's a shop full of bread and cake that brought back memories of days when I happily walked inside Kookie Jar, bought a loaf of bread and returned home happy,  the day my heart did a dance seeing the bright pink box with a golden "flury's" scribbled on it, the day when I bunked a disastrous French exam and went to the French Loaf instead and gleefully shared coffee and cake with my partner in crime and of the day when a crazy friend dragged me to a cake shop called Rouge, in a god-forsaken part of the city where I had the most amazing red velvet cupcake packed in a beautiful box.


At times it's bags, at times it's a book but today... today I am happy with my cake.

FB ALBUMS

I spend a good amount of my very precious weekend browsing through people's albums on FB, looking, gaping, laughing and then kicking myself for being such an ass. Here are my favourite ones!

I me mahself: One album. One face. One particular angle. 300 something photos. Need I say more?

Mah new job: Congratulations. We are happy for you. You have joined the bandwagon of individuals who earn their own living. But (Surprise! Surprise!) you're NOT the first one in the world to do so. Your parents have done it... and they did not have the time to click pics of--mah desk,mah computer, mah coffee mug and mah god-knows-what-else!

Mah wedding: Some albums are nice, sweet. Some overdo the "sweet" bit. Seriously if it's been a while ... and you've been married for quite sometime but your DP is still that of you and your partner's cheek-to-cheek photo then the cover pic should be that of Digene.. we'll need it!


Also sick of moshari hata salwars, anarkalis, red/orange pants, babies, ugly wedding makeup.

Okay bye.

Jumping Jack

Remember that scene from Salaam Namaste where a very pregnant Preity Zinta craves a dessert and Saif gets it for her. I too have a craving but not for a dessert. For my city.

My roomie left for the weekend, her home is just a 4-hour journey by train. To mock my pain, God sent a close pal from Kolkata to this city during the weekend, and we met just before she boarded the flight to Kolkata and I took an auto back to my PG.

In other news, I made the blunder of watching Contagion on a Saturday afternoon. Film's nice and all but you don't want to spend your Saturday watching doctors cutting open the top of Gweneth Paltrow's head and you definitely don't want to watch Kate Winslet dying of some disease before you grasp what exactly she's doing in the film. hmm but worth a watch. Watch it okay? good.

I have also brought home a number of books from the World Book Fair knowing quite well that there are several in my cupboard still waiting to be read and also knowing quite well that I generally don't read beyond 2-5 pages from Monday to Friday. On weekends either I am reading a manuscript with terror in my heart ... afraid that I will let go of some stupid typo and discover it at a stage when it can't be rescued. My career, chosen after much deliberation and an effort to combine what I love with a job that pays me enough so I don't have to beg... has left me with very little time to do what I love. Read. I read at office but all those books just staring at me with their mournful eyes in my cupboard--I ignore. Quite sad.

I joined an aerobics class. While some friends (so-called friends) will jump to the conclusion that this is a sincere effort to reduce the waistline and boost my chances of getting a life-partner, let me tell you it is a very reluctant effort to save my neck from collapsing after I torture it for more than 10-12 hours a day by doing nothing except sitting, staring at the screen or lying down and staring the screen.  Huge probability of me developing adventitious roots or a tail - depends on what you prefer-Botany or Zoology.

The classes are very very entertaining. There are two instructors. Apes. Long hair with a "spring" in their step. They have only one motto in life -- to make people jump. SO I jump. Which would have been fine if I didn't have to bother about the view but they have very thoughtfully placed wall-to-wall mirrors so that we can see ourselves jump. Nice. Thankfully others in the class are -- an overweight aunty, a sweet punjabi woman and my roomie who does not have bones and is slim.

When I am sick and tired of looking at myself, and seeing every ounce of fat bouncing up and down in an effort to reach the firmament and be a part of some royal constellation of fat globules shining in the sky (if it sounds vulgar then thank your stars that you don't actually have to see it!) , I look at others and seeing them in the same plight I feel comforted.  And the icing on the cake is the music. Once while walking back home my roomie was singing this song...weird lyrics by a gentleman called Honey Singh (the nurse had looked at him in the delivery room and said "Honey Sing...") ... okay so I asked her what song this was and she gave a hopeless gasp and replied that few minutes ago we were jumping to that song... OKAY, equally incredulous I countered that what we jumped to were more akin to bongo drums and whatever it was there were no lyrics involved. The discussion ended. We were tired and hungry. Phew.

Oh did you know that shahi paneer in this part of the world is RED and not WHITE?

Okay bye.

A couple of months in this city and I have realized Home is where the fart is. You won't understand if you stay alone and enjoy the pleasure of farting as and when you like.

No I am not going to continue on that gross note.  So ...

Autos. 

They continue to entertain. 

At about 9.40 am. I am listening to music and trying my best to ignore the blast of cold air that's freezing my face. When...

Autowalla: Sholay picture dekhi hain?

Me: haan kyu?

Autowalla: Us mein double role kiska hain?

Me: kya? ... silence ... pata nahin.

Autowalla:  Sikke ka. (loud guffaw)  kisiko malum nahi...chahe jisko bhi pucho.

Who needs earphones...

Parents

After demanding a recital of my daily diet my mother hands over the phone to my father, who, upon hearing that my roomie is a cleanliness freak asks me whether she is having any problems adjusting with me. I had to remind him whose father he is. (Scandalizing!)

Work

Was going okay till I found a photo on my desk early one morning. A photo from a book launch. There were  5 people in the photo including me and the 4 humans apart from me occupied 50 per cent of the photo-space, rest of it was my territory. If all this fat were Helium, you'd see me as a gloriously inflated gas balloon waving at you from the Delhi-sky. 

Food

The funny thing is my roomie prefers to have ice-cream in winter as they don't melt. The not-so-funny thing is that I fall for that logic and hop down the stairs to get chocolate ice-cream at 9pm from the guy right across the street who by the way also sells mumphali. Huh.

PG

The fact that you may reach home and find that there's no water and that people will just say that and continue doing whatever they were doing calmly was not what I had ever imagined. Anyway so far I have been quite lucky. Have edible food, adequate space and a gem of a room-mate.

No this place is not home. I miss my friends, I miss those silent moments browsing books,  the loud chuckles in the restaurants and cafes, and debating for 15 minutes with Baba about who should make the evening tea. 

Yes the place is cold, commercial, rape-capital and whatever else you want to say  and yes every time I walk down a road alone I imagine the worst whenever a bike approaches but---I don't know at which precise moment it started---there's a tiny part of me that feels bad when someone criticizes the city. That does not mean that I'm not spending at least a few moments every single day planning my next visit to Kolkata. Home.