"She is too young..."

Me1 (to myself): Well, well, well! It must have been rather an eye-opener, watching me make this report!

Me2 (in reply): No, I’m used to these bouts of brilliance! This is splendid!

Me1: The simple straight forward method never fails, remember!

Me2: And the analysis, particularly impressive!

Me1: The charts and graphs, what do you think?

Me2:  They charm the audience nearly as much as the analysis!

Me1: A well-made strategy report, made with care and attention is one of the most appealing expressions of human ingenuity I know of: a compact, neat, satisfying slice of human intelligence, a pleasure to look at, to  present, to own!

Me2: It beats me, sometimes, why a girl with such a genius, is satisfied to hang around here! With half your brains, one would have a shot at being the president or something!

By this time, we, err..I mean I, arrived at the third floor (that’s where the big guys sit). I cleared my throat and went into the conference hall, well content, looking sharp!

Now, in this hall, many a genius had been insulted, mocked at and jagged with contempt for five hundred years, and the flavour still lingered. The air is always sort of heavy and languorous, if you know what I mean. I don't know if you have ever seen those pictures of dictators with tilted chins and piercing eyes, inflaming the subordinates with fiery words on the slightest occasion! Now, you know what I mean!

Our VP, my boss, who was sitting with a bevy of the company nibs around him, sighted me as I entered and waved to me to join them, but I was too smart for that. I wedged myself in among the standees at the back, some HR guys who had come to ask for an appraisal, I think!

Me1: The essence of strategy on these occasions is to be as far as possible from your boss, ahem!

Me2:  Superb stra…

"Srilakshmi! Are you ready then!"

Yes, of course!

Me1 (to Me2 as a quick note): The initial atmosphere of uncomfortable restraint is only because I’m too well-equipped for this!

Well..

Me (jested with Me2 as a last minute note): There cannot be a thing better than dictate the spending of somebody else’s money! 

I’ve had my embarrassing moments; and in the one that occurred now it came home to me that now I was not talking to myself, as I had imagined, but confiding intimate personal 'gyan' sessions to the august gathering!

I checked myself abruptly, and with a slight decrease of amiability and with a sense of urgency slipped into a brisk incisive style of speech. This one, I had practised in the mirror some six times last night, so it came out effortlessly.

Everyone seemed attentive, and my presentation, rallying after an embarrassing start, was plainly going to be the success that I hoped it to be!

“We must take note of what resources and options are available to us and what is on the horizon. Over the past year we have focused a great deal..”

As I finished the “Thank you so much for your patient hearing,” I was only to trying to look dispassionate and not too impressed with myself.

Suddenly!

“Very opinionated. See…(yada yada),” said another vertical VP, gruffly and without geniality.

Time to correct some misapprehensions, I thought.

“Sir, doling out funds cautiously in small amounts..”

“Nonsense! I don’t know where you got these figures…”

“Not at all. Absolute, cold facts.”

This another VP turning to my boss, “She is too young…”

At the other end of the table, there was a cough, a stir and jerking of the chair on the floor..

I interjected, “No, no..you are going about the matter without precipitation…”

My VP throws me a quelling “it’s okay, cool it now” glance.

“Thank you. I shall mail across the report to all of you.”, I said.

Me (to my boss, almost evangelically): "I wish I could get him to see my point of view"

Boss: "I see your point of view. Even he does! But you see, his own takes up such a lot of the foreground.."(smiles). "Excellent, kid! Real good! Keep it up"

Me1 (to Me2): May be, I’m better off having a stub at being the president or something!

                                                                              ---

P.S:  In the pink coloured nostalgic pages of my blog, I’ve met fabulous people; with fictional names and real. Thanks to all of you for making my blog so really fantastic!

Two lives: Four compounded time frames

Of Ninjas and mood swings

Trrin…
*leaps with the agility, flight and explosion befitting a Ninja in realms of fantasy* (much to my brother’s chagrin)

Me: Hello?

He: Wow. That was quick. Speed of light, eh?

Me: I know!
*Pleased with self, the acknowledgement and appreciation*

He: Only your mood swings can beat this speed, I say!

Me: *click*

Of English literature and monosyllables

Me: There must have been a thought on your mind,
That lay rested on your tongue, when you called.
Wonder how happy it would have made me,
Had it dressed itself into words.

There must have been a thought on your mind,
That remained thinly veiled in its chambers.
Wonder how happy it would have made me,
Had it managed to transcend the fathoms of your mind.

There must have been a thought on your mind,
That will unfold upon you tomorrow or in hundred years,
Wonder how happy it would have made me,
Had you not killed it before it became what it could have been.

He: Sorry

Cellulite bugs and clarion calls

Me: Cellulite bugs are rounding you in little wiggly ripples of cheer! And then your clothes that no longer fit you and million pieces of your self esteem scattered on the floor will belly laugh at you mockingly.
(Ok! I exaggerate!)
*happy to have hurled enough jagged stones of insults to elicit desired response in the form of joining a gym or starving unto six packs and flat-abs*

He: *does cartoon-y mimicry of a clarion*
I’m the most dangerous, intimidating looking, warlord-boyfriend of our times! With every stroke of my punch, I will break multiple heads that stare at you and the strength I will hit with, I tell you!

Happy Onam!

*calls at five in the morning*

Me: Write a poem for me, no!

*Four in the evening, refreshes the office mail nineteen thousand four hundered and thirty second time, waiting for the moment of epiphany*

He: Dark adamant monsoon clouds,
Sway like tiny blades of grass in breeze today,
Drifting away they light up the sky canvas,
And out emerges, painted in most colourful hues,
Nature’s own rangoli to welcome the festive season

Celebrating the deeds of a generous King,
The nature showers us with a generous measure
Of peace and harmony this day
With the most beautiful flowers and songs,
It reminds us that ONAM days are here again!

Aside: Neither of us is Mallu.

Two lives: Eight compounded time frames

I

It was a cozy afternoon of July. The sun was sinking all over the place and all air held a solemn stillness. Down the meandering lanes, in the sultry café at the corner, as the glimmering lane was fading on my eyes, I, absent mindedly, captured you forever in the inky blots of your name all over the paper napkin!

II

All nature smiled. The breeze from the green meadows pleasantly tickled me from underneath my hair, and sang a soothing song in my ears. As we stood there in abashed silence, my roseate glow of hope filled the spaces between your subtle glances that marked the length between romance and Us!

III

Our smiles floated on the just-after-rain breeze and a scarlet blush remained manifested on my cheeks. Neither of us could discover what needed to be said next. For a space of four seconds, we had stared at each other, eye to eye. I could not tell who owned whom in that play of eyes but either concept made me happy!

IV

The moon gazed at me from the steel-blue night sky in a divinely pitying sort of way. I met its gaze and strange things began to happen to my mind; if I wrote to you a letter, penned in love,
inked in desire, I thought, would you feel sated and happy or would you just throw it away!

V

I love you! Will you be mine?

Oh! How I had longed for this moment! I felt such an upward thrust of immense joy that I grounded my feet into the ground because I thought I'd rise, weightless, through the wind.

I grasped the full reality of your words only in the glimmer of love in your gaping eyes, two months later.

VI

In the orange dew laden dawn, we roamed the smooth lawns and sat on rusty benches beneath spreading cedars, where we laughed carefree till time stood still.

VII

In your midnight song, you took me to dream scapes where you painted passion with a luminous brush and weaved me those dulcet dreams. The smiling walls lustily cocooned our world and the windows lowered their eyes in bashfulness.

* * *

VIII

I woke up in the morning with a wonderful happiness pervading my entire being and I sprung lightly out of bed! Everything is emphatically for my best in this best of all possible worlds, I thought. I beamed at myself in the mirror and wished myself;

“Many happy returns of the day!”

As I stood in my balcony, somewhere in the distance sounded the tinkle of bells and from somewhere further, I heard songs from the shrubbery and cooed back in joy!

Happy Birthday, I shouted!

No more!

Sympathy? No. I want no sadness attached to Mumbai. I love its memories.

I vividly remember this early morning bus-ride to school. We had divided ourselves into groups of four and were playing, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” Our team, we had called it ‘Bombay’, had said, “Win battles!” I never challenged this statement since fourth grade. I didn’t, even over the last weekend.

Bombay seems to stand above these dastardly attacks of reproachful helplessness, untouched. Bleeding physically, but untouched in spirit, in soul; tears well in its eyes, but it stares the enemy in his eye with a mocking astonishment at the discovery of his cowardice, at the discovery that his power is only an orchestration of his mind.

There had been premonitory echoes of this currish scheme of the enemy throughout the year, in his half-hinted attempts to shake up the nation, in parts. All along, the nation smiled its characteristic smile, the smile that is a man’s substitute for breaking into tears, a smile of patience, of holding back even under grave provocation.

Holding back is a matter of pointless indulgence now. It is only parochial sentiment. It is a virtue wasted on this enemy.

The nation feels a stab of regret; regret over the million lives lost over its glamorous virtue.

But the seeming corpse has awakened to life and to power, and in an oddly quiet aggression is saying, “No more!”

In the Muslim neighbourhood clustered around Chandni Chowk, from behind the chick-blinds of her window, the widow is saying, “No more!”

Amidst his insistent rattle on ministerial resignations, the non-descript opposition member is saying, “No more!”

The fancy-peddling young rickshaw-wallah who spent too much money on liquor last night is saying, “No more!”

The school girls at the bus-stop, giggling uncontrollably at the prospect of saying something in unison, are saying, “No more!”

The Seth, shooing away the little clustered whirlwinds of flies around sweet-meat on his counter, is saying, “No more!”

The itinerant street vendor, packing berries for the little urchins in twists of paper, is saying, “No more!”

On the CST train platform, the clerk, standing wreathed in smoke, waiting for the 8:10, is saying, “No more!”

The flicker of candles lit to pay tributes to the Hemant Karkares of India, the hope of the hundred million Muslims of India, the prayers of middle-aged ‘satsang’ women, the indignant voices of media reporters, the angry jostling of boys in bus-queues, the force of the teacher’s beating on the knuckles, the restless honking at traffic signals is saying,

“No more!”

---End of an era---

Sensational end of the sensational silence of the nation against terrorism!

What do you see, my Love?

He took me to the sea and asked, “What do you see, my Love?”

“The white surge lifting and falling,” I said.

And he set up the sea to tantalizingly undulate.

It then heaved and halted and hurled and painted a thousand hues.

He tenderly lifted my head and asked, “What do you see, my Love?”

“The clouds floating”, I said.

And he spun an omen of hope in their wispy trails.

They then carved the plaited girl, the majestic lion, the couple locked in love.

He pointed into the morning sky and asked, “What do you see, my Love?”

“A scarlet flame,” I said.

And he lit up its sublime and incomparable splendor.

The Sun then came to be.

He showed me the dickey birds and asked, “What do you see, my Love?”

“Birds flapping their wings,” I said.

And he taught them to fly unscaled heights.

They then flew from steep slopes to rocky piles, into the infinite welkin blue.

He swayed me on the swing and asked, “What you see, my Love?”

“Rivers and trees and cattle,” I said.

And he swayed me again.

I then saw a thousand beautiful dreams, of mirth and passion and love.

He looked into my eyes and asked, “What you see, my Love?”

“The sea, the clouds, the Sun, the birds, the world” I said.

And he blinked mischievously.

I then saw that it was he who made my world!!!

Somerset Maughamly

I laughed to myself awkwardly; the idea that someone thought that I was “average” looking was something too overpowering to be readily assimilated (for me), even when I was thinking about it some millionth time then..

“Do you still look like a famished kid from Somalia? Shucks! You missed ‘even’ the Gold medal..CAT07 and then this! Yea, CAT was bad..who ever thought you’ll not go to IIMA after that brilliant mock CAT season..You are taking CAT again? Girl! You must be having an iron grip on yourself.. Who’d not go bonkers after a disaster like that.. Huh? Pardon?..’bull-terrier's dogged determination’?? Is that what it is called??..Yada yada.. I can’t wait to see you..In two hours then..”

Glad as I am, as a general thing, to see my old friends when they drop in for a chat, I doubted whether I felt equal to that, to hear from this friend of mine. She is a nice girl but a trifle too jumpy for my generally cloistered life. The last time I had met her, she had wound up the evening by embroiling me in a fight with my mother.

“Mummy, if she calls again, tell her..”

At this point, a thunderous ringing of my cell phone interrupted me.

“Where are you? I’m waiting in the coffee bar. I have a surprise for you!”

“Two minutes.” I said.

“Buck up, you lazy thing!”

She was sitting there with a guy and seemed to be in her customary jovial spirits, now as she dashed toward me.

“You look the same.” She shouted springing at me and hitting me on the back.

“This is bad. By Jove, this is bad; you must put on some weight. ”

“Doesn’t she look like a sixth grader?” She said introducing me to that guy.

She had a painful habit of introducing me to all and sundry like that.

“You haven’t changed.” I said. “Even my introduction!”

She frowned. The guy laughed at my joke. She frowned again.

“This is him. The pride of my life. Companion of joys and sorrows.”

This guy was looking at me.

“Surprised to find me committed? What? Take my word. Go and jump the dock yourself. Give up this “single” business. I look on you ‘single’ girls as excrescences on the social system. You are a menace. All you do is upset really happy couples.”

“The needle, do what it will, must obey the law of magnetism and turn to the North.” She said, poking her guy not to ogle me.

“You are a menace.”

“You still look like a sixth grader, but!” She continued and her cell phone buzzed.

She was out of the café and on her way upstairs. I was left to entertain the guy. So far his share in the conversation had been confined to a rather dazed smile which was apparently his chief form of expression. I was conscious of feeling a benevolent pity for him. (If I had been the guy, I would have preferred to get committed to a volcano.)

“You were the topper in your school?” said the object of my commiseration, breaking the silence.

“Yes.”

He leaned forward with shining eyes.

“I’m yet to see a girl more beautiful than you. I know this is bad manners and I must not be saying this. But there is something about you that makes every other girl in this café faded and insignificant.”

I saw a change in his expression, before I could react. It was as crudely abrupt as if he had thrown a switch.

He said to her (she had just come), his voice jarringly offensive by being completely casual.

“Your friend is really beautiful.”

She looked taken aback.

I was reminded of a line from Somerset Maugham’s “The Luncheon”.

But I have had my revenge at last. I do not believe that I am a vindictive (wo)man, but when the immortal gods take a hand in the matter it is pardonable to observe the result with complacency.

A ceaseless flow of conversation poured in a droning monotone, rest of the meeting and I kept laughing to myself, awkwardly, feeling very Somerset Maughamly.

Chweet nothings

The wind was frolicking around me like a playful puppy, snuggling in my open hair and blowing my tresses. I was laughing happily at the little girls in my street who were playing curious games of their own invention. I was in a particularly good mood today, like I had been on all the other days of last two months, much to the surprise and suspicion of my mother. I was going to the coffee shop across my street to meet an old friend of mine.

An old man who happened to want to cross the road like me, was waiting alongside. He also happened to think that I’m extremely pretty and that the ‘proud little tilt’ on my head suited me. At least that’s what he told me. I must’ve given him a frighten(ed)ingly contemptuous glance because he laughed very loudly and even told me that he was harmless. Taxicabs full of couples rolled by every minute. A man grinned at a flitting colleague, and she had smiled back at him.

“Did you notice that?”, the flirty old man asked me.

“Well, as a matter of absolute fact, I, as it were, didn’t.” I said curtly. He laughed again and rather loudly.

“You did and you turned pink, my lady”, he said.

I had, actually, even wobbled in my tracks. The sight of couples, especially shy-shy ones, did this to me, now a days, and I, who had begun to weave a rose-tinted romance, lost track of what the old man was saying.

When I finally broke off from the labyrinth of ‘his’ colourful reverie, I heard the old man, and it seemed like he had asked me something and that he was pretty interested in what I had got to say in reply.

“Eh?”, I asked almost suspiciously, now. I was starting to feel that he belonged to the kind of old men/men that believed, every damsel has a love story and that she was only too willing to waive the formalities in return for their ear and advice on matters of her love.

“Did this remind you of him?” he asked, barefacedly.

“I think this is perfectly unbecoming of you, Sir.” I said, irked by his rather cheeky manner and by the restraints of the modern traffic rules. Old men, even normal ones, scare me, anyway, and this one seemed particularly incorrigible.

“No.” I said as if to end the conversation and looked at the large traffic policeman in a way so as to suggest to the old man that it is perfectly foul to converse with a pretty girl at a signal point and that in a space of thirty seconds, I could end his silly fun.

Much to my chagrin, he continued “It did, it did” and somehow the manner in which he said this almost amused me and I smiled.

A little boy had just come, for alms. “Get away,” the old man said. I stopped the boy, ruffled his hair, gave him a twenty rupee note, bought for him a heart-shaped balloon, and two of them for myself.

I waved the balloons at the old man. “It did, it did and thanks for noticing”, I said and I ran off aimlessly, sprightly like in a world of springtime and flowers and laughing brooks, in spite of 8 seconds remaining on the traffic light timer..