My Aamy.....

It’s a huge shock.. My Aamy is no more. She has left this world forever.

I had started to hear more about her when I was doing my graduation. I had been an Anglo kid till then. I never used to read any Malayalam Literature. It was always English. I used to read English, write in English, laugh in English, think in English and even dream in English. But Amy changed it. No, not Aamy. She was Kamala Das for me then. I happened to see some of her English poems, and flat I fell in love with her words… I became an instant admirer. During my post graduation, I was on cloud nine when I had to learn “My Story” as a detailed text (which was not taught in a detailed manner in a conservative convent college). I read and read and embossed each word in my mind. It was my own feelings and frustrations that I saw in her works. I found many answers in her sentences.

My library began to fill with her books. My quest took me to Madhavikutty, and thus to her Malayalam works. I bought two English copies of “My Story”, and a Malayalam copy too. My friends used to laugh at my madness. The fragrance of her ancestral home with the trees and flowers and the pond intoxicated me. The conflicts of hidden emotions and her confession gave me confidence. There was a time when I had tried to see myself in her. She was an Arien, so am I... Shouldn’t we be alike? Her longing for love and her frustrations against the restrictions touched my heart. The musings of a lonely heart triggered my imagination.

I wanted to meet her in person. She had become someone very close to my heart. I started referring her as Aamy, just as her nears and dears did. She was no more a stranger to me. She was my guiding light, my unseen source of confidence. The courage she showed when she had converted herself, and her beloved Krishna to Islam thrilled me. I knew it was for love she did that.

The longing to meet her had intensified. But so was the fear… the fear of disappointment. What if she was a complete different person in real life? So the delay came. And now, when I was all ready to meet her, she left to Pune. One of my friends who is a close friend of her had promised me that once she comes back, he will introduce her to me. I was waiting for that. I was dreaming of making her write a foreword for a book which I will be writing before I disappear from this world.


But now, Aamy is gone.. she left this world without giving me a chance to meet her. I love you Aamy.. You will always remain fresh in my heart.. You will always be my invisible inspiration. You will always be…………..

WHISPERING TIMES…

The last couple of months were really hectic… busy by doing nothing. I have stopped working, and that made me busy in some other ways. I had made a list of things to do after I quit. But I realised that I had more time to read and write when I was working. Sitting at home all day means you are at the beck and call of everyone. I had planned to do more freelancing. I had a long list of to-do-things-at-home, longer than the supermarket bill. I had wanted MY time...

Do I regret quitting my job? No, I don’t think so. I had loved my job. I had a flexible job with an understanding boss close to my home. I had variety in my work. And I had enough money to buy those telephone cards which I need desperately. And I really had time for myself. But… sitting at home… I was doing NOTHING. Somebody gave a little kick on my back and asked me to start again. But still, I was lazing around. The excuse? I have no time. So where did those 24 hours disappear from my life? This lame excuse stopped me from discovering more opportunities.

My laptop was in the garage. I had made it an excuse for not writing. I have a desktop, but I wasn’t able to pen down even a sentence there. Something was tugging me back. Now that I got it back, still I am trying to find some excuse.

Today I have had enough of it. I am tired of being lazy. I am sick of playing solitude in the computer. And the kick I got today was a little harder. I jumped with a start, got on my toes, and started to move. The first step was to call back my muse who had been hiding among a pile of clusters. I cleaned the debris, and out came she with a smile. So now, I am back… Back to my old self… Back to my laptop.. Back with that long list in my hand…..

Cooking Whispers....

“How am I going to cook”, I asked him. My head was exploding with that migraine I get once in a month, as regularly as my chums. “Just put the pain out from your mind”, he said. I almost strangled him.

The thought of cooking always takes me to that edge where I want to throttle the people around me. I like to eat out. I like someone cook delicious food for me. Why strain yourself when you get the same food with much more taste outside? Why waste so much time and effort to make something when all you have to do is go down and buy it? To make our Indian food, to make it exactly like the way his mother makes… it takes a lot of my time. More than that time is spent on deciding what to cook. Two hours of deciding, two hours of shopping, two hours of cooking.. only to be polished off in 10 minutes… and then again an hour of cleaning. I hate peeling, I hate chopping, I hate stirring, I hate grinding, I hate cleaning the mess I make from all these, I hate doing the dishes, I hate cleaning the stove… all I like is the eating part. I have heard many who proclaim that they love to cook. I can’t imagine how they love it! What is there to love? You feel hot, your kitchen will become a mess, and by the time you finish making food and clear the mess you had created, you won’t feel like eating it at all. It is a real pain. When I was young, I used to think how romantic and wonderful it would feel to eat a wholesome home cooked meal prepared with love, and that watching my husband happily chowing down and thanking me in everyway was worth all the work.... but now I know that is just a foolish dream of a silly girl. Whoever had said that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach was the biggest liar ever lived.

I am not at all a bad cook. I can cook really well. I can cook delicious varieties. Still, I go for easy recipes. And I cook more than enough so that I will have plenty of left overs for the next night too. I have too many secret shortcuts that will help me to spend as little time in the kitchen as possible. If the outcome is tasty, the process doesn’t make a difference. Visiting friends is something I like… not because I can meet them and talk, but because I can close my kitchen that day. Inviting friends is another luxury. Then I have to make only one dish. The rest, arrives from the restaurant…. There are times when I really do feel guilty to my husband. But then the thought of entering the kitchen shoves away all the guilt. I have a kitchen in my house just because it comes with the house.

Cooking, once in a while, is ok. But not every day. I am fine with eating the same dish for a couple of days if it helps me not to enter the kitchen. But these men… they love home made food, but the women like to eat out. I can see the readers in two sides now, one waiting to punch me, and the other, nodding their head, smiling……

Meandering Whispers....

I woke up in the morning, no.. was woken up on that beautiful lazy Friday morning, by a nudge on my ribs from my darling husband, asking for tea. “Why don’t you make it today, for a change? Let me see how your tea tastes”, I grumbled, with two-tonned eyes. Whining about his fate to make a cup of tea, he went… and I rolled back to my slumber. I had always found that lying down with closed eyes after you wake up in the morning is more recharging. It is very difficult to come out from the warm bed… from the warmth of the blanket. It is at that time that memories come and chitchat with me. They swoosh, they swirl, they curl, they drool and make me spin in their web. And some cling.

I am thinking about my dad now. Yesterday was his death anniversary. It has been 23 long years. No, I am not being sentimental. I am past that stage. There was a time when I used to dream of treading untrodden paths holding his hands. But then one day I woke up to realise that those hands will never be there for me. And I survived without him. Wouldn’t say life was easy. To go somewhere, to decide some things… I had been denied many things in life because he was not there. If dad was alive, you could have… but now, NO… was the sentence that was often repeated.

I was a shy child. Sort of standoffish, aloof... I preferred listening to talking. It had always taken me time and energy to find my place in a group. I never talked. While my intellectual brain ripened, my outdoor life got crushed. I wanted to change. I wanted to be accepted in a crowd. I wanted to catch up what I had missed. And I tried to start talking with great difficulty. I tried to gain some energy from outside. But then I realised that talking will gain you more enemies than your silence. Was I trying to impress people with my words? The more I talked, the less control I had over myself. I started to reveal too much of myself. I was slowly becoming a prisoner of my secrets. My silence was a comfort to many. Somewhere along the way I felt that people were getting uncomfortable with my words.

When I overcame my shyness, I became more assertive. I am straightforward. And people found me bold. I have a mentor... a wise, patient, wonderful person who tells me that I am simply beautiful (which I know sounds creepy, still I believe him). He points out my best side which makes me very much proud of myself. The tint of depression which was peeking out in my life has completely disappeared. My world has its own taste, its own fragrance, its own light. The happiness I enjoy now is a song in itself. And I am not going to stop feeling this till my road ends.. or till there is nowhere else to go…………………….

Spying Whispers.........

Devakiamma knew it all! Her eyes and ears were always open. She is the perfect reporter I had ever seen. And she will make even Mata Hari droop her head in shame with her excellent spy work.

“Your daughter was on the phone for one and a half hours, that too a single call”, she would broadcast the moment my mom opened the gate after her shopping. Oh My!! I would be in my room, upstairs, with doors tightly closed. She’d never come up. I would be speaking in my lowest voice my sound box can produce. And she doesn’t know how to tell the time. But those one and a half hours will be accurate. I would be doing just that.

“Her friend came and they were inside the room for a long time”, she would announce on another occasion. Everyone could feel the suspicion dangling out from her voice, and slowly spreading to my mom’s face. For God’s sake, we are not lesbians!! Even though many had doubted us seeing how thick we were, and the hours we would spend inside closed rooms, and on phone… Some had asked us directly too.

“Your husband came and took a piece of old cloth”, would be her another proclamation, this time to me. He might have taken it to clean something, poor fellow! “He was calling someone and making plans to go out”, she said. Now, that was something I liked. I can still remember vividly the look of disbelief on his face when I countered him with this info.

“Your daughter’s bed looks like an elephant had trampled on it”, I heard her telling my mother one day. (As if she was sleeping with someone was left unsaid). Her eyes were full of suspicion. She could hear nothing, and she didn’t see anyone going up. Then how come the bed sheet crumpled so much was her unasked question. I couldn’t help but give her a mysterious smile, which would have surely left her sleepless for at least two or three nights.

No one knew where Devakiamma would be. No one will see her anywhere near. No one could feel her presence. But she sees the whole lot. She hears everything. Who came and when, with what, and talked what, everything she would know. She would know how many calls you made, to whom, and what you were talking about, even if you would be talking in encrypts. My educated cousins would never be able to make heads and tails out of those conversations. But the uneducated illiterate Devakiamma could unlock all the secret codes. And she would keep my mom updated about everyone and everything. No one could take even a stone from my house. Not even a stray dog could enter without her permission. And she is controlling those who are, though 30 plus, unable to utter a word in front of her…

(Dis)Connecting Whispers.....

My youngest son, who is in sixth grade, today professed that he is the odd one out in his class. The grounds? He is the lone one who doesn’t own a cell phone. Likewise, my elder one also stands out, not because he is the only one in class who plays classical violin or who can play the drums.. but because he doesn’t have a laptop. His cell problem had been solved as a birthday gift.

I didn’t have a cell or a laptop ten years ago. But then my memory was sharper, and I had Time. If ever I needed to call anyone, I could go to any phone, and get the number straight from my head. All the numbers, birthdays, anniversaries, and appointments were stored neatly inside my brain. It never got suspended, or the screen never froze. I used to call friends to clear doubts, and visited libraries frequently. I had piles of notes filed neatly. Carbon copies given by friends were a luxury. I used to write pages and pages with a real pen.

When I was in school, using a calculator in maths class was cheating, and you were a queen if you owned one. It was a prescribed medicine to repeat the multiplication tables daily. But now, every device, be it watch, phone, computer (even notebooks and files)… has a calculator tucked in somewhere. No need to think, no need to count on your fingers.. just type the numbers..

I can clearly recall the hours I had spent in the card shops, hunting for the greeting cards for dears and nears. The perfect words to match the perfect picture for the right person was very important. Birthdays, Christmas, New year.. the celebrations became exciting with cards. I used to wait eagerly for that soon-going-to-be-extinct creature called Postman.. Each card and letters you got had a personal touch knitted with love.

With all our modern connectivity, I feel more and more detached from the outer world. I get a wind about my friends through their scraps, without having to talk to them directly. Long descriptive letters written painstakingly to the loved ones became short sms, which one has to think twice to get the real meaning with those short forms. I hate short forms. So it takes me forever to type on that small keypad.

Is communication becoming an afterthought? Something we do when we don’t have anything else to do? Or something that we do together with something else? Talking with your parents while watching television, chatting with eight or ten people at the same time, there’s always some or other kind of distraction.. You never give your full attention to one. The ability just to communicate with someone alone is slowly getting lost.

When was the last time you wrote a long hand written letter? When was the last time you had gone to a shop and bought a greeting card? When was the last time you added or multiplied a four digit number without using a calculator? When was the last time you dialled a phone number without looking at the contact list?

There are times when I wished I could turn the clock back… but then panic grips me. How would I ever able to contact anyone? How would I love the meaning of words? How would I check the movie timings? How would I shop online? How would I clear my doubts? How would I get some recipes and tips? How would I read the newspapers and magazines? How would I know what is happening around me? How would………I survive????????

Random Whispers.......

It’s such a long long time… My ink went on strike. Words flew afar. Thoughts crashed. Mind became standstill. I was worn out… the aftermath of a hard labour. I know not from where to start.. what to write… After the new birth, how can I be my old self?

There were some realisations… and some confusions… I had lost something… but gained another. Which one should I accept? I had loved .. not once, but twice… Shall I go after my love.. or shall I accept the love which came to me? I am happy in the knowledge that I am loved and wanted. No, I am not going to talk again about love.

Today I feel very contented. I had a long walk alone in the rain… and came back saturated. I shrugged off the raindrops and the hurt from my coat. The yellow flowers had bloomed and had fenced the roads. The mere picture of yellow flowers peeping at me makes me happy. It is impossible not to have a smile when you see those yellow flowers dancing in the wind, swaying their heads.. Yellow is the colour of sunshine, the colour of life.. It makes me feel cheerful and bold.

Some things I miss a lot in my life.. The sound of the train, the song of an unseen bird, the flapping of wings, the gust of water from the nearby tap, the tinkling of bells, the cacophony of nature, the creaking bamboos, the swish of an animal’s tail, the song from the temples… These were the morning alarms in my childhood.

For a long time, I had wanted to taste some pure fresh toddy straight from the tree. I had expressed this wish to my husband and cousins, but all were diplomatic in saying, “Of course you can’t!” I got a chance when we went on holidays. While we were roaming near a coconut grove, a friend’s father brought some fresh toddy in an earthen pot, with some seafood. To my untrained palate, it smelled repulsive at first. The fish was too hot. Tears flowed profusely, sweat trickled down my body, but there was no stopping me from sipping and munching. The toddy was sweet. Sweeter was the feelings which followed. I became weightless, and began to float in the air. All I had to do was to spread my hands.. and lo.. there I go… floating, flowing… The world around me was so beautiful… The people looked pretty. The water in the river was so inviting… I wanted to giggle all the time. I was amused when others tapped me on my shoulders and asked me to behave myself. What was wrong in giggling and laughing and floating when life is so beautiful? My intoxication came from inside me. I think toddy has an uncanny way of settling inside the stomach and fermenting there to form a potion that entices and seduces you.

I feel so happy to knock off my to-do-before-I-die list one by one. And I can’t wait for the next one……..