The Travails of Bajji Hunting

My lighter vein is becoming lighter and lighter and fading into oblivion. Therefore this post.

This evening found me and a colleague in a conspiracy. We decided to window-eat ( a gourmand’s version of window shopping).. contrary to popular opinion against woodworms and termites, window-eating is a form of art. It requires culinary skills to identify the ingredients of a succulent sweet hidden under glazed paper and reject it for lack of cardamom. We are experts, believe me.

Of course I am just playing around. The fact is that the evening found us craving for bajjis. Ah! Bajjis. Remember how the slices of potatoes, dipped in orange flour paste, falls into a simmering lake of oil. How they come out golden brown and gleaming, draped in a thin layer of soft and crisp flour, the potatoes slightly bland and fried. The teeth sink into the hot spongy outer layer and bites at the potato in the core. It is another art form altogether discovering what is hidden under the skin of a bajji. Would it be a heavenly potato flake, a succulent layer of onion or a bitter brinjal? You never know until you’re well into it – almost like a relationship.

Therefore, my friend, lifesaver, and chocolate-provider invited me to Mylapore, the land of magical tradition coexisting with mini-skirts and ipods. We had to elude the mammoth lorries, the cluelessly-fast bikers and the U-turn-loving autos. I heard myself swearing at a car that overtook me from the left, landing my forewheel into a pot-hole and subsequently ourselves following suit. Thus, we were suitably absurdified so much so we felt at home.  By the time we reached the land of banana leaves overflowing with bajjis and bondas, I had aggravated my neck pain and my friend’s bottom had lost it capacity for reacting to external stimuli — I knew of this purely by word-of-mouth.

When we parked my bike, we had the helpful onlooker popularly known as anukoola shatru — I don’t know how to translate this word. Someone else can help me out perhaps. This man asked us to push the bike a bit forward, and a bit towards the back, and then to the side and so on before he was convinced that it did not block him from crossing over to the opposite side of the road.

Now I went with her, completely trusting her in matters of food. Of course, if I had forgotten to mention earlier, she sits next to me at work. She was fattening me up with unobtainable food like like Kumbakonam Gulab Jamoons, banana chips — made from the fruit, home-made thenkozhal, and such until the management came thundering down upon us with an order that we should not feed our pet hamsters at our workstations. No rodents allowed and therefore no food allowed at workstation. I even had to forget my plan to put up a picture of Mickey mouse next to me.

Now I was led through alleys and by-lanes by my navigator. We stopped in front of a house where a fat man sat handing food out through the window. The shop next door was selling curious items like karukkaali, naayuruvi, vishwamitrar dharbai, vashishtar dharbai, iyengar kayaru, and samithu. I was completely bewildered. In my usual fashion, my mouth was opening and closing like a goldfish without the speech bubbles. My friend caught me with her ancient marinator eye. I responded with the eyes of terminator’s victim.

In a few minutes, we had hot steaming potato bajjis on our plates. I was gobbling them up with not a care in the world. Absolutely no complaints. My friend went on to eat a plate of bondas and me a plate of idlis, all of these carefully soaked in delectable sambar and coconut chutney. We packed a few bondas for the poor mortals at home. All of these cost us Rs. 34 wonlee.

The spice had begun to sink in on me. I was sounding like a pressure cooker now. Ssss… ssss…. ssss… I went on and on till my friend asked me if I wanted kesari.  We ended up eating jangiris and gulab jamoons at Surya sweets. Finally I came home with a tummy full of happiness.

Fallen

Hate versus Love

I knew that the urge to write would die down before I sailed through all the traffic and reached home.

I go to the seashore nowadays and come back without so much as a glimpse of the sea. I pet some strange dog named Ramu and Lakshmi by two different boys and feel the softness of its velvet ears. I brim with tears on hearing the orphan boy’s story. Yet my own child has told asked me to go away. I have created an orphan out of a child that was given to me wrapped in loneliness.

I stand in the middle of Mount Road waving a cluster of mosquitoes off my face with “A Room of One’s Own”. I cannot read more than two pages of that book at a time. It is punctuated with underplayed anger which angers me in turn.

I watch strangers to see if I can find a familiar face. Sometimes everyone looks like someone I know. Men under helmets are all alike. I am trapped in a spider world.

I remember to be in love. I have half forgotten what love is. Maybe my mind is too full of nothing, to remember love. I star gaze over and over again at the same place though it is devoid of stars.

A dull pain constantly lives on my body and off my body. It has become a friend now. I need someone to put me to sleep. Nobody sings lullabies any more. I still sleep a half sleep.

I am a criminal. All of you should know that I betrayed my friend for which I will be punished till my death. With silence. With absence. With a void. With many many objects that have stories attached to him.

I laugh. I never forget to laugh. Everything makes me laugh the madman’s laughter; The cynic’s laughter; The philosopher’s laughter; The saint’s laughter; Condescending superior laughter. It echoes my own emptiness like a reverberating cavern full of darkness.

He imagines I am happy. Poor fool! I am too sad to be happy and too happy to be sad. I escape having to react. Escape emotions. Sometimes in sleep. Sometimes in crowds. Sometimes in noise. I escape into a choice.

I have grown beautiful. I brush my hair a lot. I wash my face a lot. I was rejected for being unattractive. I see many women who are pretty. Perhaps if I had been like them,then he would not have rejected me. At least a bit like that girl I saw on the road. Had I been like some pretty actress, he might not have discarded me. I am just a bag of organs stitched together; new organ stitched in; heart mended with patchwork and innumerable stitches..

I am just a heap of earth in clods meaningless and unnoticed. Who cares how many nights I spent praying, who knows how many times I cried for a dead dog or a lonely cat, who remembers the nights I spent listening to tales of woe crying my heart out for love, who knows.

I am defined. I am a liar. I am dishonest. I have never played other roles before. I have been categorized. I am a genre.

Nobody remembers the songs I wrote, the feathers I stored between the pages of my book, the tears of blood I shed to water love, the kisses I rained on scrawls of writing, the photographs I embedded in memory for eternity to see, the pain that drenched my pillows at nights, the blood that oozed from my body, the trembling cold, the hours of misery, waiting, the pleading, the slavery, the self-effacing sleeplessness, the thorns that remain stuck to portions of my heart… nobody remembers. Yet, there is one thing that will remain etched in stone. I am a betrayer.

My mistake has outweighted all the love. I have been judged. Dissected. I have been marooned on an island for the savages to eat pieces of me. 

Love has been defeated by hate.

Linguistically yours

Your Dominant Intelligence is Linguistic Intelligence

You are excellent with words and language. You explain yourself well. An elegant speaker, you can converse well with anyone on the fly. You are also good at remembering information and convicing someone of your point of view. A master of creative phrasing and unique words, you enjoy expanding your vocabulary. You would make a fantastic poet, journalist, writer, teacher, lawyer, politician, or translator.

What Kind of Intelligence Do You Have?

My Idea of a Hero

The Highway man – Passion
Hannibal Lecter – Anger
Count Dracula  – Charm
Lucifer – Power
Severus Snape – Revenge
Sherlock Holmes – Intelligence
Shelley – Rebellion
Mr. Darcy – Pride
E.A. Poe – Mystic
Robinson Crusoe – Survivor
John Coffey – Compassion
Theseus – Courage
Odysseus – Determination
Orr - Cleverness 
Milo Minderbender – Charlatan
Prince Myshkin – Equanimity
Kashtanka – Loyalty
Brutus – Conviction
Ekalaiva – Persistence
Karna – Decisiveness
Purushottama (Porus) – Bravery
Vandhiyathevan – Dynamism
Sharada Devi – Abstinence
Kamaraj – Simplicity
Dexter – Cute .. awww (I had to do this..!!) ..lol…

Technorati Tags: Hero

Thoughts of a Lost Youth

While she sat contemplating over the thoughts of a lost youth the sea billowed like the manifestation of a million sighs. A broken vase, scattered feathers, spilled ink and a torn rainbow – thoughts of a lost youth. She remembered she had wanted a child. An unshaped mound of wet clay. An arbitrariness that laughed with dimples. A tenderness that emoted without prejudices. She had wanted a child.

A child meant a little warm breathing kiss. A nimble nakedness. A meaninglessness with wide eyes, waiting to be loved and bathed. A canvas. She had always wanted a child.

A house with terracotta horses and a bronze vessel with floating lotuses. Like the ones in the pseudo designer boutiques where you can only laugh at the reeking opulence. Yet she had wanted those in her home where she would give them meaning. She had wanted a long wooden swing with brass chains and a sleeping man in it. She had wanted to be the woman with a nose ring and anklets peeping from the dark interiors of a dim-lit room; the open roof throwing selected rays of the sun onto the courtyard. She had wanted to brew coffee from roasted beans, the aroma permeating the kitchen. She had wanted to be in that house of a past birth near the well and the karivepilai waving its leaves in the breeze. Near the washing stone and the few shoots of sesame that sprouted from the fertile earth. Near the murungai tree and the baby vaazhai offspring. She wanted to pick tomatoes and pumpkins from the garden and watch the coconut trees sway their heads to the sounds of an ancient veena. Thoughts of a lost youth.

A small boy came her way. He wanted her to buy some sundal. He carried a tin drum indifferently. It resembled the biscuit tins her dad brought back from foreign trips. Those biscuit tins were filled with biscuits shaped like many animals. As a child, she used to imagine she was a carnivore when she ate those biscuits. Now they were available in excess at a certain departmental store with fifteen branches. The boy called her “akka”. What was she to him? What was her father to his? She laughed at this connection.

She remembered that there was a certain contagious epidemic in the city and eating anything at the beach was not a safe proposition. The boy was a child. He placed the tin drum next to her and began digging the sand with bare hands. She said “Yaay! Don’t do that!” The boy grinned sheepishly but continued to pick the sand and rain it through his fingers. She said, “Do you give out sundal with these same hands? It will give everyone a tummy ache.” He continued to grin sheepishly.

His hair was dry as a shrub. His face had patches of grime. His shirt looked like his father’s, oversized and awkward. His hands were thin and nimble. He wore a black amulet around his neck. His fingers were tiny. She asked him if he went to school. He said he went to school in the mornings. She knew he was lying. She knew he built sand castles, ran errands for his master, sold fish at the auctions, swam in the sea and teased the dogs and chicken all morning. He did not go to school. In fact, he feigned a tummy ache, conjunctivitis, a bruise and a throat ache to not go to school. He was only a child like all other children. She smiled at him.

She suddenly wanted to take this child to the garden where she sat all alone the previous day. To the park where all the children fought for their turn to be on the swing. To the ice cream parlor where the children smeared ice cream on their noses and threw a hundred tantrums. To the big book shop with tiny colorful books for children his age. She wanted to pick him up and cuddle up with him. She wanted to tell him of the years she spent waiting for him. She wanted to plant a kiss on his grimy forehead. She wanted to bathe him in pink bubbly soap and scrub him till he screamed. She wanted to wipe his wet hair with a fluffy towel and powder him with an expensive baby powder. She wanted to make hot paruppu rice and roast potatoes and feed him while they watched Oswald on TV.

She asked him if he would come away with her. “Will you come with me?” she asked. He was worldly wise. Though he was not so old, he knew the pain of disappointments, the laughter of the wicked, the shrewdness of businessmen and the smiles of the cunning. He looked at her and once again flashed the same grin. She could not gauge much out of it.

He was far away from her world. All he could think of was to sell all the sundal and go home with the day’s earnings. All he could think of was the game of street cricket he would play in the lamp light, with his friends. Who he would beat up that evening, how many scars he would have in comparison to Raju, how he would buy a big ship, how he would sell prawns the next day, how his baby sister would tug at his shirt back at home – His head was a jumble of thoughts and sleeplessness. He asked her if she would take some sundal. He seemed to have a refrain, “Akka! Please, ka! I have not sold anything from the morning..” He kept saying this almost involuntarily.

He was bored now. He scratched his head and picked up his tin drum, its contents intact. He spotted some potential customer at a distance and ambled away, leaving her to her thoughts of a lost youth. The sea billowed like the manifestation of a million sighs.

Sunday Morning

This Sunday morning trembles
In silence and languor
A cluster of ants on spilled honey
This Sunday morning wakes up slowly

Utensils don’t clang
Vehicles don’t bustle
Only the birds chirp
Calendarless and happy.

I wake up to steal the calm
With gentle footsteps
I have the morning all for myself
Without the mundane monotony.

I have all the time for Neruda
And the confetti of dreams
I let fly yesterday afternoon
I recline and relapse comfortably

I watch the ants run nimbly
I read somebody’s extrapolations
As a dull enchantment ensnares me
I chuckle to myself and push it off lazily

Adverbs all over the place
Dripping like wet clothes
I dream of my sleeping lover
And his lashes fluttering quietly.
 

Tere Baare Mein – Jagjit Singh

Tere baare mein jab socha nahin thaa
Main tanha thaa magar itna nahin thaa

Teri tasveer se karta thaa baatein
Mere kamre mein aayina nahin thaa
Main tanha thaa magar itna nahin thaa
Tere baare mein jab socha nahin thaa

Samandar ne mujhe pyaasa hi rakha
Main jab sahera mein thaa pyaasa nahin thaa
Main tanha thaa magar itna nahin thaa
Tere baare mein jab socha nahin thaa

Manaane ruthne ke khel mein hum
Bichhad jaayenge ye socha nahin thaa
Main tanha thaa magar itna nahin thaa
Tere baare mein jab socha nahin thaa

Sunaa hai bandh kar li aankhein usne
Kayi raaton se woh soyaa nahin thaa
Main tanha thaa magar itna nahin thaa
Tere baare mein jab socha nahin thaa

Bring back my bonnie to me

My bonnie lies over the ocean
My bonnie lies over the sea
My bonnie lies over the ocean
Oh bring back my bonnie to me

Bring back, bring back
Bring back my Bonnie to me, to me
Bring back, bring back
Bring back my Bonnie to me

Last night as I lay on my pillow
Last night as I lay on my bed
Last night as I lay on my pillow
I dreamed that my bonnie was dead

Bring back, bring back
Bring back my Bonnie to me, to me
Bring back, bring back
Bring back my Bonnie to me

Oh blow ye the winds o’er the ocean
And blow ye the winds o’er the sea
Oh blow ye the winds o’er the ocean
And bring back my bonnie to me

Bring back, bring back
Bring back my Bonnie to me, to me
Bring back, bring back
Bring back my Bonnie to me

To my Silent

“While I pondered on this dangerous but irresistible pastime

I took a heavenly ride through our silence
I knew the moment had arrived
For killing the past and coming back to life

I took a heavenly ride through our silence
I knew the waiting had begun
And I headed straight..into the shining sun”

From: Coming Back to Life by Pink Floyd