Humour Armour!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 There must be a hidden sense of humour in this.... am quite convinced that there is.... whoever, I have narrated this to.... the reactions have ranged from a grimace, to a smile, to a burst of laughter... and I fail to understand why... so, either my ability to notice and acknowledge humour is lost OR worse still, never had one in the first place...

So, the jest started with my driver who attempted to reverse my new vehicle ( a very expensive one) by looking at the side mirrors... he had seen me accomplish that successfully; and obviously was upset that he found it tough to do so without having to turn his body at an angle of 90 degree, crane his neck over the drivers chair, and (not to forget) quickly calculate the distance between the car and the pillar and the wall. Well, he tried, failed and the result was a depletion in my vitamin M (money)..... the so called 2nd free service was hardly free... the service station welcomed me, the mechanic smiled at me, and my life came to a screeching halt on looking at the bill ... Anyways, this was just the beginning of a day in my life which would seem to unfold unlimited reasons for people around me to giggle.... and I was the only one far from being tickled...

Clearly, I shoudn’t have displayed my ability to reverse my vehicle without having to crane my neck.... If I had adopted the acrobatics that my driver uses day on day, I wouldn’t have been spending so much time in the gym or on those innumerable massages that promised me a slim waistline!!!!! A twist of my waist, a turn of my neck would have ensured a slimmer ME and a FAT pocket.......

AND then I go and narrate it to a colleague who responds with “you mean women can park a car using the mirror?????”..... and that was funny???? Coz the sentence is punctuated with a LAUGH... and so do some of my women colleagues... So, are they laughing at his remark, my depleted bank balance, or at themselves??? I am confused!!!!!!

The point being - there is a framework that we seem to be all operating in... my driver is supposed to be more adept than me, my colleague believes that as a gender there is a WAY in which I will always operate, and myself of course, reacting to a so called bigotry (and I choose to call it bigotry coz it sounds advantageous to me ....)

A series of events... starting with my car, my colleagues reaction and then with a friend who raises an objection at work to the kind of humour that is depicted at an official gathering. .. She was ‘objectified’!!! And the men apologise - ”if you find it insensitive, we apologize”...

IF - the word endorses a hypothetical situation... the event is not hypothetical, the humour is for real, the bigotry is glaring... and the word IF dangles! All hell let loose, leaders upset.... it is the event and the starkness of the bias that one is NOT SUPPOSED to harbour that enrages all... and all efforts made to ensure that the ‘right’ message is flaunted....a series of warnings!!!!! There is laughter at the crass sense of humour and a repleted smile at actions taken and my colleague is beaming - All’s well that End’s well!!! A Shakespearean end to a corporate drama.

And I am all the more confused! What sense am Isupposed to make of this???

There must be some sense in this action ..... Warnings to eradicate bigotry!!!!! Admonitions to ensure that we respect women! And all this done and finally laid to rest with a smile of satisfaction... Judgement given, jury dismissed..... A Hamletian comedy of errors! Imagine, Hamlet voicing ‘to be or not to be’ and his twin miles away trying to just understand the word BE and then attempting to translate it into her every day existence.... one confused between options, the other not sure if there is an option at all...

There was a time when I was aware that there were issues that one dealt with ... and I was then convinced that the issue in such instances was far more fundamental and therefore could not be addressed by speaking TO the event. We had to look at what 'drives' the event - a thought process! There was a time when I thought I knew what the thought process was... today, I don’t....

For an entire race to look at an event and pass a judgement - there must be something that drives them to do so....and this entire race cannot be suffering from myopia .... and if there is a sense of comfort in being myopic, then there must be a sense of humour fraught in it.... a sagacity that I have not been privy to! And, I am calling it a sense of humour as I am convinced that “the next best thing to solving a problem is finding some humour in it” - sayeth Frank A Clark who ministered thousands of people through his one panel newspaper cartoons......

There is a problem...can someone VOICE it for me... and even more fundamentally, find the right words to voice it... and then find the humour in it.... and please even explain it to me... coz I seem to be the only lonely confused sole amongst the laughing souls!!!!!

Weaving a diary of words....

I learnt a new word today ... velleity, meaning “a mere wish, unaccompanied by an effort to obtain it”.... And as if there were these amazing linkages that the world has in store for you, the mere word triggered the thought of an uncle of mine who was a palmist and would often read my hand whenever we used to visit his place in Mumbai... and tell us of the wondrous days that was in store for us. I would on my way back as a young girl look at my palms and wonder where the words were written... and back we would go to him again months later and the process would start all over again.... seemingly telling us that the writing on the palm may have changed or perhaps have changed. Was it the soap that I used? A simple question for a 10 year old.... but a question that hasn’t gotten answered as yet.

And today, when I heard the word ‘velleity’, it was like going back to one of those moments when I asked my uncle if I would get all that I wished for (am sure there was something objectified there... and am assuming that a young girl could have limited her wishes then to dolls, books, nail polish... or the like... things would have been different though)... he smiled, and heaved a sigh, (the sigh was more like the puff of cigarette smoke that emanated from his mouth when he would step out to smoke... and all of us would stealthily go to watch him smoke)... well, he heaved a sigh and said “ if you really want something, and want it strongly, the mere power of the desire will get you to your destination”..... I have often wondered what that meant and it was more like those dialogues that you listen to in movies, that stay with you.... some driven with powerful feelings, a few by its potent words, and many a times by the prevailing presence of the artiste...

The feeling of wanting was the same always through the years.... the direction changed though... books, cosmetics, travels, clothes, person / people you longed to be with.... and as always the power of the desire stayed the same....Some desires satiated, some not so .... And one wonders if those insatiated cravings were due to the frailty of its very nature... is there a measurement for it at all? Working in a corporate world, one gets conditioned to measuring everything... or perhaps it is the Indian mind so obsessed with the power of the zero that we get attuned to deal with ambiguities.... unravelling the power of null that plays its central role in all mathematics.... So is the null / the zero / the absence of wanting something so integral to what we term as the SUM of life...

So whether it is the power of the zero, or the knowledge that Velleity exists, guess I have today gained strength from what the late Harivanshrai Bachchan once told his son ...”Man ka ho to achha, man ka na ho, to aur bhee achha”....call it velleity, or not..... I am satiated with what exists and also not exists.... the power of the word I guess... you learn one word and that triggers a range of thoughts .....

2010 - The call of Diana.... the maiden huntress!!

A new-fangled year... a spirited welcome....
A feeling of fresh hope...kindled with moments of yesteryears
looking into a crystal ball speaking of new relationships
Old ones growing wine by the years.... savoured in sips...
New ones brightening elsewhere....waiting to be guzzled...
Diana growing in the shadows.... bigger than self, engulfing, at times slighter
Desiring the innocent strength of Obelix,
Yearning the adventure of Herge,
Wishing the magic of Mandrake,
Lusting for the passion of Phantom.... that sweeps Diana into his cave...
beating the drums of fervour to all hamlets near and far....

be a Diana -
She is the hunted... for she craves...
as well the maiden hunter protecting the wild and the free....
The love of life goes far and beyond....
to family, friends and foe, to manuscripts and melody....
creating and recreating....
Like, words, as Eliot said.... RELATIONSHIPS, that strain, crack and break
under the burden of the tension – born of expectations...
It has slipped, slid, and perished...
decayed with imprecision.... with the demand to confer it a name...
Shrieking voices from the temples scream, scold and mock to give it a name...
Is a name that so important?
The maiden huntress hungers to be free of a name for her affairs...
strained with the expectations of these infinite names....family, friends and foe....
Why is there so much faith in a relationship that craves for a NAME? ...
An assurance in an external, a loyalty for the peripheral.... ???????

SPEND the new day, month, year, decade, a lifetime ...
lifting the insane pattern born from this need for the title....
.... be a hobbit to baptize the scale of the sin nombre ...
blend the unknown, the mysterious namelos.... into the details of your movement....
The templed ugly duckling transforming to a Hans Swan....
wearing the glass shoe that helps us look through at the ground we tread on....
Be the pied piper of your dreams...

Transform the hunter and the hunted.... to the seeker and the sought
By the nature of your essence...
Beyond the name.... the species....
...thus breathing SIMPLE life into even more SIMPLER love...
a thought, an idea, an ambition born from the quintessential self....
AMEN too ALL that we wake up with a smile for... and therefore LIVE....

Hallucinating Reality...!

I took that stroll of mine.... at the desired time of my day when darkness has shrouded the world.... listening to Omar’s Passage into Midnight... swinging my hand like it was making love to the strings of a violin.... I love this time of mine....it’s like standing perpetually under a mistletoe kissing the sweetness of one’s own existence... my walk through the forest of my thoughts.... wondering over the remnants of all that happened during the day... and how I pained to pen it down to words... not all the time can one do it...


And it is that moment that I had relived that exact day when I had seen Dr Flake and Ms Hide in one of those crazy excursions I had taken... a sojourn with unknown acquaintances, a tent in the forest, trekking through unknown terrain and it was on one such trip that I met this guy.... the exhaustion of the trek that was trying to die out in the midst of a bonfire and with people trying to drown their fatigue in spirit and music.... sitting leaning against the bark of an old tree... the light against him... just the shadow of a silhouette.... a muscular body, the one that women would just want to look so longingly at and give those very silent sighs ...

I walked up to this shadow, wine in hand, hoping to strike up that conversation... which I hoped would satiate one’s curiosity... just those simple questions of who are u... what do u do... do u live in (hopefully the city where I live...etc etc....) ... and with that hope walked up to him.... and said the proverbial hi.... he looked up from his glass (realized that he had been staring at the still liquid floating in his glass for a while).... and smiled... stood up and came out of the shadows.... it was like a blessing emerging... that one single moment of happiness that one searches for.... it was the pair of eyes that had captured that instantaneous moment of satisfaction that we yearn for.... a pair that I had never ever seen before... deep, silent, pacifying and loving.... it was a sight that would take away the fatigue of the day.... eyes that u would implore to have touch every sensation of your being.... just sampling the check you out look!!!

The conversation went on for a while... more a monologue.... with me doing the talking and his eyes and lips usually in synchronicity nodding away in agreement or just smiling in disagreement.... it wasn’t the need to listen to my own voice that made me continue speaking as much as to watch that smile that would gush into his eyes making my whole world dance.... sensing the slightest of sensations.... feeling the earth revolve, the slight so slow movement, the slight crackling of the bonfire which was on its way of dying out... the touch of that slight doggamer that grazed through my hand earlier that morning... a web I just didn’t see but the slightest of its glue that I felt....

I stopped suddenly, turned, and walked away... fully aware of the abruptness of the halt.... my ears were blistering ... for no reason whatsoever... I walked away abashed and ashamed.... “Isn’t he something? Did he make your heart pound; I see your ears are searing..... Well, that is the effect he has on all”... a voice whispered into my ear... I turned to see this little lady looking up at me.... and despite her slight stature and demeanour she had managed to whisper these so comforting words right into my ear....

These are those well defined moments that occur in one’s lifetime.... a flash when someone from the world of homo sapiens includes you in the race and the very fact of inclusion disbars you from festering any adversarial feelings towards humanity.... I looked at her relieved and strained and said “yes ... there is something magnetic about him....and I wonder what?”..... She smiled, took my hand seated me on a tree trunk that seemed to have been put there at that very moment for me.... it was like being in touch with your roots.... ironically!!! “Well, he is a lesbian....and that is the reason he has this effect on you!”....

Funny are the ways of the human language....”Gay you mean... !”..... “No, I meant a lesbian....” and she smiled....”do you recall how he introduced himself...? What did he say was his name?” I pressed the rewind button... reeling back moments of my talking to him...”hi,” he had said” “I am Flake Anna Hide”.... and not for one moment had it struck me as being different... a guy with a girl’s name.....”U mean he is a girl trapped in a man’s body? I don’t understand....!”

And what ensured was a tale that I had never ever heard before.... a tale that is impossible to believe in..... that left me wondering of the varying impossibilities of the human psyche... and the fear of delving deep into anyone’s or for that matter one’s own psyche.... a person with 2 personalities.... one as a man and the other as a woman.... it sounds absurd but true... I just cannot recall his name beyond Flake right now... this was a Dr Flake and Ms Hide.... a lady most of the times hiding in the shadows of a Flake.... he had moved through life with these 2 personalities... coexisting beautifully ... appealing to people the way HE needed to.... and one would wonder at times who he really was.... who was the overriding personality... was it the guy or the girl....

There could be a lot of psychoanalyses that one could possibly do on this... the what and the why.... however; at that moment when I was told about the truth (or was it the truth?) just one thought struck me.... what is it about him that attracted me the most...his male demeanour or his just so soft and deep eyes.... whatever it was, the feeling was that of making out.... so often women talk about the times when they make out with their loved and not so loved ones... of the magical and the not so magical moments...guess the magical moments when one is touched the way one wants to be.... and at times I wonder if it is really true that only a woman knows how another woman should be touched? Somehow, I thought ...’I guess not’... he had touched my existence just the way I had wanted him to...

Embarrassed by these thoughts I moved on... wondering on the shreds of human nature... you touch a human being and what you get is a small flake of it... the little that you know and have reached out to.... and when you meet the person again, it’s something different again... like a snake that sloughs off its skin and grows a new one.... is it a new being all together? One really wonders..... and what’s more intriguing is the impact that one event has on you... and the ripple effect it creates.... the linking of unrelated moments... as if we WANT to link them.... and somehow somewhere in that moment of truth when I had recognized the ambivalence of Dr Flake and Ms Hide, was ingrained my moment of understanding my self mate... (as against a soul mate which recognizes the existence of the other... the self mate in love with oneself!)

It was all about a person struggling to work through innumerable and inane priorities.... we prioritise our work, ourselves, our needs, our work life.... and somewhere hidden amidst all of that was the need of the person to look at things as they are... as the self wishes it to be.... Flake and Hide had managed to sift through the myriad moments of a perfectly routine day seeking solace in the immediate of that self that was supreme at that moment in time... so, if Flake was the power, it was the strong man.... and if Hide decided to come forth, it was the softness that burst out... both blending in one being.... the world saw it as schizophrenia... a disorder.... I see it as the sub conscious self enabling a person to deal with all that one desires ... just at THAT moment in time – power and submissiveness, strength and gentleness ... all of the yin and yang rolled into one....

“If we talk to God, its prayer... if God talks to us its schizophrenia!?” one wonders of the irony of this statement..... And Flake Hide had been diagnosed Schizophrenic!!!! And it was as if at that precise moment I felt God talking to me... the schizophrenia in me surfacing.... a man walking through the night in pitch darkness bursting his torch through the wilderness lightened a small part of an overgrown shrub; and as if destiny just then would so have it.... the headlights of a passing vehicle cloaked it with a beam.... Life was such I guess when we see moments of reality wearing the veil of truth peering at us through those small fissures, unveiling the paramecium disparities between one another in our lives...and then we see them all fused together revealing the so called bigger picture, the whole being.... Moments of schizophrenia!!!! Listening to the sound of the fission in our fusions....

The story of Flake and Hide was all encompassing the reality of each of our existence.... MY existence.... the real me or us revealing in its most vulnerable, soft and weak moments ....to our alter egos and to our self and soul mates... dancing through together hallucinating each other’s reality....

'Love is Blind...' - a breathtaking sentiment

The heat of warm water snuggling down your throat
A feeling of affection like the touch of a finger stroking a bare neck....
Thrusting a feeling that surge out in a raging form... flowing through the strokes....
Imagining the fondles through the flashes that one captures in those quintessential moments
Where the eye searches for the source
And then satisfied of its continued presence re-confides to darkness...

There is certain softness to darkness,....
Like the feel of satin, the momentous blending in its enormity...
a sanctuary in reaching out the known someone with eyes shut...
a self assurance of being loved in an sightless presence
a refuge for a selfish love reciprocated with selfish irresistibleness

Darkness.... a time which helps you comprehend need behind the act
The reason for the need and thereby the self himself....
Have spent hours through the darkness with and without the source
Attempting to appreciate the uniqueness of that self
Reading a logic in the actions

Life has been with him a series of soft dark moments
Believing in each other’s selves in moments of high and not so high
in times of low and responding to its depths....
and thereby creating one another

I have grown in this night.... there is a certain softness in this night,
with the stars all shining out....
the irony of this felt in a hot day afternoon....

My Time Tells....!

The clock on the wall and the watch on the wrist
all telling time... of time telling moments
an occasion, an instance ... a spell!!
The moment when a vision becomes a picture
the picture a being, and the being a kiss...
the gentlest of touch ... a moment in time...
the kiss... like the ticking of a micro second

Time is a feeling... an mood that sets an event in motion
a sentiment that expresses reactions...
a sensation... of numbing and tinkling of nerves
The time of conception, labour, birth and death... all moments of feeling....
Capturing the rest... happiness, love, sadness,.... love....
Only Time can Tell..... the feelings of one and all...

I am looking through the diary of my thoughts...and think through the decades...
the times I have loved, not so loved, being loved and not so much so...
And ecapsulated in all these feelings are those innumerable tick tock moments
maturing me from one second to the other....
The moments in me have grown... and therefore ME!!!

Swaying with the Wind.... with Ashleys' and Butlers'!

It doesn’t take that too long a time to figure out that life has changed unless someone doesn’t really want to recognize it... though of course it pre-empts the fact that knowledge exists.... it was one such evening.... walking through a slightly chilly breeze; the slight nip in the air, hair let loose, with music flowing into my ears blocking every external sound out and watching the slimmer than the real shadow in front of me.... there was a slight rain, droplets and then dropulets.... One wonders if they are all related... maybe yes... they need to be.... at least that is what Eliot said! In the End was my Beginning!!!

The walk was crisp, brisk initially a tiredness wearing in slowly with the decrease of the pace... so was life.... it had worn itself out and it was time to wear a new one! One wonders if we can wear a new one in the absence of death.... the not so spiritual me asking this question often; maybe one can... the walk was torn between varying maybes!

It was the walk that one usually takes round the place you live... round and round... life goes in circles like this evening walk of mine.... reliving the days moments of happiness and sadness blended into one coming back in different packages instilling nostalgia!! How different was yesterday from today? Not just the walk... but the days as well.... maybe tomorrow will be different... my favourite word... tomorrow... its yet another day! Hopefully, I will meet my Clark Gable then!

Life is about that one long string of nostalgic moments...weird but true.... looking for autobiographical moments in television serials, intelligent conversations, emotional discussions ... it’s like being stuck at a traffic signal, u get the green ,drive a few feet and then get stuck again! U move slowly for some time, speed a bit when the lane gets better and then get a signal again! This goes on ...relationship after relationship after relationship.... it’s like walking into a store and being asked to display all your wares... the fun is showing all that you have the expensive and the not so expensive one... and THEN the person walks away...let me look at another store... “Will come back after having tried somewhere else”.... it’s the price, the colour, the commodity!!!!! Always, the relationship shopped as commodities!! They usually come back.... its settling for the achievable and leaving an (un)settling moment to be born....

And it is at this time that I keep wondering... I am walking now with both my feet on the ground! Thinking through my feeling... Literally, maybe figuratively I am not... always thought its best to be on cloud 9; or at least a few feet above the ground... not wanting to get someone else to sweep me off my feet... or should I just keep waiting?

Guess the walk has come to its natural end... life’s full circle... I got to go back! And take that one thought into bed that ‘when people come together, they need to stay together’.... (I know I read that somewhere... wonder where?) It’s the time of the day when I tell myself safely secure in my Tara taking an oath that I will never ever go emotionally hungry again.... waiting to field through the tomorrow....

It’s the light at the end of the tunnel for me!!!