The Glitter Boobs Girl and the One from Meerut

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The Glitter Boobs Girl

Itwas the night of Jan 11, 2018, when I first came across the glitter-boobs girl. In a footage shared on Facebook, I saw her walking topless amid a swarm of people, until a man sneaked up on her from behind, grabbed a breast and ran back to sit on the grass nearby. The girl, angry, returned to hit the man. The whole incident seemed to have been caught on camera by an onlooker, and later shared on Facebook, where it went viral and earned the girl her new nickname. You guessed it right — the girl had glitter sprinkled on her otherwise bare chest.

The incident, to me, was too absurd to deserve further thoughts, and the girl one of those bird-brained attention seekers who misuse Western liberalism and reduce feminism to a joke. I moved on. What stuck with me, however, was her anger. She was furious at being groped in public, while in a state that arguably asks for it, and she saw no reason to not act upon her fury then and there. Her total lack of embarrassment was new to my Indian psyche.

The One from Meerut

The next morning greeted me with a morose news headline — ‘Harassed for months, 14-year-old student drops out of tuition to avoid goons, commits suicide later’. The article read as below -

‘Meerut: Tired of being harassed for months together by four men that stalked and misbehaved with her, a 14-year-old in Uttar Pradesh committed suicide by setting herself ablaze.

The student was regularly stalked and harassed by four men — Shobhit, Ankit, Mohit, and Ravi –on her way back home in Bhawanpur, from her tuition classes located in G. She first dropped out of school and then she dropped out of her tuition classes, hoping that the harassment would stop. However, the four accused kept visiting her village to harass her.

Upset with the harassment and finding no other way to stop it, she set herself afire on January 6, the police said. Meerut CMO Ajit Chowdhury told PTI that the girl was rushed to a hospital with 80 percent burn injuries. She died during treatment on Thursday.

Her family has filed a police complaint against the four men claiming that they gang-raped her too recently emboldened by the fact that she couldn’t reveal the details of the incident to her family and chose to ignore the advances by the four grown men.’

Sickening is probably the word you’re looking for.

Unfortunately, such incidents are common in my part of the world. Once upon a time, they brought tears to my eyes. What they now bring instead is a little more fatigue, a grim reminder of my place in the world as a woman. Each time I come across such news, I’ve to put up this little internal fight to resist the thought that the Utopian land of gender equality exists nowhere but in the shared dream of a handful of wishful thinkers like me. I fear that the entire world will soon be claimed back by the sexist, supremacist forces that we thought had been cornered for good, and our sons and daughters will see a future different from the one us egalitarians had dreamt of.

On this particular morning, however, it was not dejection that overwhelmed me, but a sense of despair that refused to die down. This ill-defined restlessness dragged me back to Facebook, and to the page where Miss Madeline Anello-Kitzmiller’s glitter-chest appearance in a music festival in New Zealand continued to stir up hailstorms left, right and center.

The Jury Game

“If you choose to be naked like animals, so expect some animal’s acts”

— “No it’s called men being accountable for being unable to keep their hands to themselves…why am i groped when I’m fully clothed at a concert then dude? …”

“One way to express your “empowerment” — walk naked and expect respect. Feminism in its current form is stupid.”

— “How is that stupid?? There are just breast. Keep your hands to yourself. That’s really that hard??”

“If she doesnt want harrasment, why she goes in a beach without top ? i mean , how psychotic and lame an human can be! MANS ARE NOT ANGELS, some man can digest and resist themselves from teasing naked girls but not ALL! ! i am not saying what happened to her was right, but saying its both a men and women responsibility to be decent atleast for some part of body which is provoking ! but no one is getting the message!”

— “If a man can’t control himself then he shouldn’t be allowed in public … that simple”

“If it was a male revealing himself, we all would’ve cried “indecent exposure”… double standards much…”

— “I’ a male and I can go topless anywhere…”

Note: All of the above quotes are actual comments from Facebook.

Hundreds (if not thousands) of comments had already been posted on the footage, and many of them continued to attract responses. Men and women, conservatives and liberals, the religious and the rebels, all argued with a vengeance. Every opinion, however obvious or absurd it might sound up front, found support and ridicule from a hundred other voices.

A few minutes of this bizarre read left me grappling to find my own voice. It no longer mattered that Miss Madeline’s glittered assets were of no consequence to me. The world was at loggerheads on my boundaries as a woman, and my perfectly sensible voice suddenly seemed way too fallible. I wondered how the dead girl of Meerut would’ve responded to this conversation.

Was Madeline the answer to the question her death had left upon the world to answer?

A Deathless Question

It took me half a day to find my way through the chaos. Once I did, it became evident that much of the exchange around Madeline’s footage boiled down to one polar question — ‘Can rape or molestation be justified if a woman is less clothed than how the man in question would like her to be?’

In case your mind has already let out an emphatic shout — ‘Obviously not!’, remember that the acceptable limit for less clothed is not in your hands. Remember, when you take away the right of men to teach lecherous women a lesson, you also lose the power to scare the women in your society into wearing attire that suits your sense of propriety. Remember, wet T-shirt contests are a staple of college spring break celebrations at several parts of the world, and the absence of rape threats makes it so much easier for your wayward daughter from following suit.

But if your answer is ‘Yes’ (or any variant of it, like ‘No, unless’ or ‘Of course not, but then’), you empower those four lads whose daily amusement constitutes teasing school-going girls, and who one day decide to teach one girl a lesson for not wearing her dupatta right. You empower a Mukesh Singh who, while on trial for a gang rape and fatal assault that shook the nation, says on record that it was the girl’s fault because being a girl she was out of her home at night. You substantiate the worldview that women are like honey that must be locked away lest they attract flies. You lead to the acceptance of men being seen as creatures of uncontrollable urge and women objects of desire that must either be guarded or preyed on. In my opinion, it is a rather savage view that dehumanizes both genders.

But I Want a Decent World

Let us learn to see indecent exposure as an issue separate from victim blaming.

On a personal level, I believe in decency. My ideal world has no place not only for titillating skin show, but also for flashiness in general, or for cuss words. Men and women there strive to be recognized for what’s inside their skull and under their skin.

But the world need not subscribe to my sense of ideal, or that of yours, or that of preacher X or dictator Y. By all probabilities, your definition of right and that of mine are both products of upbringing and social conditioning. They’re way too narrow to be held up as a yardstick against the world.

In a free world where people are equal and master of their own choices, there are no sex objects, and censorship is an alien term, for people are in charge of their own sexuality. Unfortunately, we’ll not see a free world anytime soon, and the need for humans to control each other is here to stay. In a more practical setting, enforcing decency in public spaces must lie in the premises of the local lawmakers and administration, not a random man (or woman) looking for an excuse to feed his perversity or sense of moral superiority.

What emerges is -

1. If there’s a glitter-boobs girl at your local music festival and she makes you cringe, mutter under your breath and look away. Alternatively, call up the helpline for indecent exposure. However, if you see the girl being forcibly groped, try to stop it.
2. Similarly, if you see a highly inebriated girl exiting your local pub late to enter a car with men only, feel free to be vexed with the girl for having made herself so vulnerable. But you must also feel a concern, and act on it if possible.

‘If this ends in rape, she’ll have deserved it.’ is a very damaging thought.

Men predating on women who’re vulnerable, either due to life situations, immaturity or their own lack of judgment, can never be supported.

Conclusion

All battles, for better or for worse, are fought between people of extremes, and people of balance can only choose their side (okay, they also act to drive sense into the former and temper their views in due course of time!). Between the glitter-boobs girl and the one from Meerut, between their respective worlds, if I’ve to choose one reality for the daughter I don’t yet have, what do you think my choice would be?

Of course, the girl who can’t be shamed into wearing clothes wins hands down over the girl who could be shamed into a lonely, lonely, voiceless death.

And the world that tolerates Madeline’s glittered boobs wins hands down over the one that tolerates rapists.

A Dip of Honey

Source: Pixabay

Originally published at The Creative Cafe.

Fingers rummage through the riotous mess of bed sheets, pillows, a little human with his limbs scattered across three-fourth of the bed, and a large velvety blanket, for the 5.9 inch gadget that substitutes for not only the watch but also the household clock. The sun seeping in through the translucent orange curtains spread honey on the bed. Laze-infused eyes struggle to open. What is the color of extra bedtime on winter mornings? Honey!

The mobile emerges from somewhere. It’s December 24th, 9 AM. I remember reading ‘Neuromancer’ well beyond 1 AM last night, in the hope that a few more pages would help me connect with the strange despondent world of cyberpunk, where humans survive with lab-grown organs and instruments implanted within. Didn’t work. “What is it about the book that you dislike the most?” — Husband had asked yesterday. He’s a die-hard sci-fi fan. I could hardly frame a good reply. It’s difficult to put your finger on what you don’t like about a book (or a movie, or a dress…), to isolate a ‘bug’ that if fixed would set your experience right. “There’s no honey in it. All it tastes of is metal — shiny alloys of the future, or corroded iron bars.” — I now utter in silence, as the day finally pulls me up by hand.

First comes brushing of the teeth. Next comes a glass of warm honey lime juice. I’ve been having it for the last 4 months so that I could shape up by the end of this year. It is now end of this year, and I can’t take pride in my waistline. I check my weight and feed it into an online BMI calculator. 24.4. Bringing it down to 22.9 by Feb 2018 should be easy if I can program my eyes to see chocolate as fresh poop. And there lies the challenge.

I open my fitness app, increment my daily target of steps to 10k from 8k, and set out for a walk. Gotta take the bull by its horns! In the next 90 minutes, a grocery bag with cucumbers, apples and a watermelon finds its way into my hand, and a plain dosa gains access to my stomach. I barely cover 3.5k steps under a fairly strong sun. Not working. I return home miffed.

They have bathed the little human by now. Fresh and clean, neatly combed hair, chirpy as a sparrow and a 100 watt smile, he runs towards me with arms extended. Honey coats my tongue.

Honey.

H o n e y.

It’s the Christmas Eve. Also a Sunday. Honey rules the day. Enormous Santa-s, stupendous Christmas trees, elegant reindeer, sparkling bells and stars have adorned every mall around since the beginning of the month. The streets must be teeming with people today. I’m yet to put up the tree at our home. And I have a cake to bake, though two large store-bought plum cakes await the knife at the altar of our kitchen.

Sleep, unconquerable, world-drowning sleep steals the afternoon. Evening is stolen by homemade cakes and kachori-s, useful career discussions, and breezy, breezy chitter-chatter at a friend’s place some 20–25 minutes drive from ours. Pi, a cute curly-haired one-year old, tries hard to comprehend this intrusion to his home with large, staring eyes, and warms up towards the end. The other little human enjoys foraging through the house in search of more toys. 3 weeks of preschool life have boosted his social confidence.

Does happiness have a color? Oh yes, it’s honey!

The day ends. When do I put up our Christmas decor? When do I unleash the gifted baker in me — the one who baked a large chocolaty piece of brick earlier this week? Tomorrow? Tomorrow then!

Takeaways for 2018 –

- Ambling through supermarkets and having dosa in the name of morning walk amounts to cheating. 

- Continuing with a book you don’t like may not make you like it. It may give you other insights though.

- You’ve had enough chocolates, pastries, and ice creams in life so far. Look up ‘control’ in your English dictionary.

- Make time for many more casual, laid back evenings with friends. Video calls don’t count.

- Feel honey. Savor honey. Let honey rule. Dip life in honey. Dip time in honey. As long life allows you. Hide a spoonful right under your aortic valve to cherish when life cuts off supply.

What else?

Nothing! Come, 2018, let me hug you tight.

100 Days of Doing Nothing

When I do nothing, I often do this with my two-year old! (Pic taken by me on 19-Nov-2017)

On June 29, 2017, I resigned from my job of 7 years. Beyond my student life, I had never before been jobless. The decision came as a shocker to many.

To sum up my professional life thus far, I was offered my first job while in the pre-final year of engineering back in 2005. The offer was from a reputed Indian MNC that focused mostly on providing IT and network technology solutions to the telecommunications industry. I joined work within a month of completing my degree. An enthusiastic learner eager to snatch every opportunity to prove herself, I slogged with the zeal of a worker bee. To make my mark in the roaring world of the Indian IT industry was the dream that fueled my days. 11 years later, I often felt battered.

What went wrong?

Stressors from multiple fronts allied up to corner me.

• My toddler, in addition to being a very fussy eater, continued waking through nights all through his second year. In India, we co-sleep with our kids until they’re six or more. Two years of chronic sleep deprivation started taking its toll on me.
• On the professional front, for a long time, they expected me to lead production support — which means odd and unplanned working hours to address critical system failures at the client side. Repeated requests for change of role landed me under a workaholic who took glory in massive overcommitment on the team’s behalf.
• My aged, accident-prone father kept slipping deeper into dementia with each passing day and required constant attention.

Every waking moment of my life felt like the rightful property of someone else. The time-division multiplexing that kept me racing from one night of poor sleep to the next failed to factor in ‘me’. Overwhelmed, I gasped for air and lost vision of what I was pursuing.

The decision involved many months of discomfort and panic, for unlike many new mothers in India, quitting wasn’t a natural choice for me. I had never asked anyone for money in the last 11 years. I fulfilled my passions (buying my two-wheeler, laptop or DSLR, completing my Masters’ etc.) with my own paycheck, donated for charity every year, saved prudently, loved a guy who had made an utter mess of his career, was ready to support him for years to come, and when I married (not the guy I just mentioned — he cheated on me), I was particular about sharing all expenses equally with my husband. I equated quitting on the ability to run a family by myself to quitting on my education and my upbringing.

Yet, June 29 happened; and after serving a notice period of 2 months, I walked out of my office premises for the last time in the evening of Aug 24, 2017.

100 days of doing nothing

Bob Dylan once said: “A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.”

It’s Dec 2 today — the 100th day of my career break. In the months before I quit, life hardly allowed me the mental space to ask myself what I wanted to do with my day. A deep fatigue engulfed my thought-threads even while I rested. The last 100 days often made me feel closer to success than my once-fat paychecks could, and that surprises me no end.

So let me take you through my 100 days of doing nothing -

100 days of having my own physical space - A couple of weeks before my last working day, I made available for myself the terrace room of a building close to our home. I was keen to ensure that the entire time freed up by my career break wasn’t lost to the hubbub of daily chores. While this room isn’t particularly beautiful, it guarantees me my own un-intruded space.

Like most other introverts, to be happy, I need to relax. To relax, I need to let go of stress. To let go, I need to cut myself off — for at least a few hours a day.

Seated in a room that is meant for my sole use, facing a window that lets in breeze and rain for my sole skin, in the company of books that await my sole eyes, I’ve come to own my life again. Here I’ve set up the ‘semblance of an office’ where I spend 6 hours a day in a ‘job’ that pays me nothing, yet makes me richer by the hour. I revel in the joy of solitude that I thought had left my life for good.

100 days of being a persistent reader -The last few years saw me leaving jewels of novels like ‘God of Small Things’, ‘The Glass Palace’ and ‘Shadows of the Wind’ halfway through because I had lost the quality of being a patient, persistent reader. I’ve chosen to utilize my newly gained space to remedy this loss.

On the 100th day of my career break, I stand at Page 387/503 of the book ‘My Name Is Red’ by Orhan Pamuk, a Nobel laureate in Literature. Reading through this timeless novel that delves painstakingly into the workings of maneuvering minds has often been a test of patience for me. And yet I’ve stubbornly hung on. Pamuk is going to revive the patient reader I once used to be, and I am going to offer him a nice bouquet in afterlife as a token of gratitude.

100 days of striving to be a consistent writer - Writing brings me closer to who I am, yet seldom did I prioritize it over the ever-urgent melee of activities that consumes years unnoticed.

Of late, I’ve come to realize that poverty of thoughts and words isn’t unpardonable; what’s truly unpardonable is that the last 11 years (before I quit) saw me writing 1.545 pieces per year on an average! In comparison, in the last 100 days, I’ve not only written 12 pieces (including fictions, poems, journal entries, drabbles and memoirs), but also tried to fetch them as many views as possible. I’m happy to see the initial barrier of internal chaos I face while trying to write getting thinner day by day. I presently contribute as a writer to 5 Medium publications and earn my share of applause.

100 days of learning to accept - I’ve always been fond of to-do lists and periodic personal goals, and the last 100 days weren’t exempted from this ritual. However, this period saw me patiently accepting numerous disruptions to my plans and repeated re-jigs of my deadlines because of reasons beyond my control (illnesses, accidents and theft — to name a few!). While I didn’t stress over the continuous onslaughts to my progress, I didn’t resign either. I learnt to prevail without feeling threatened by uncertainties and saved up my energy for the fights that MUST be fought later.

In a nutshell, in the last 100 days, almost nothing made me feel that my world was crashing, and earlier, every little thing that would go out of the way would make me feel so. When you’re relaxed, you’re secure.

100 days of learning to ask - I learnt to ask my husband to pay my credit card bills without being nagged by the fear of succumbing to gender stereotypes. And this is an exception to who I’ve been as a person all through my adult life.

I asked my mother to look after my toddler while I spent long afternoons in my rented room reading and writing stuff that I certainly could’ve done without. I had my husband take care of him on many nights while I enjoyed long and peaceful sleep in the hall.

Basically, I allowed myself to ask without letting my self-respect be affected by it. For one, it was magically liberating. The only thing I promised myself was that I would remember the support my family extended to me, and that it would not be taken for granted.

100 days of a lot more Mommy time - In the last 100 days, my kid accompanied me for beautiful, leisurely walks. Together we explored neighborhood streets and watched caterpillars cross the road, chameleons change shade and a snail move an inch up along a damp, mossy wall. Our walks didn’t get me late for office, nor did they require me to cut short on my work and return early.

When our domestic help went on a fifteen days’ leave due to medical emergency, I stayed at home full time and invented recipes to suit his picky palate. Project deadlines didn’t make me tear my hair out in distress. We filled notebooks with meaningless doodles of many a color and played with tiny little cars.

I invested days in looking up pre-schools and daycare facilities for him, visiting each of them multiple times to feel the vibes. My son joins a nice little preschool day after tomorrow. I will be there by his side to make his transition happy.

100 days of embracing wishes - I put up the very first set of wall decor in the flat where we moved in 2.5 years ago, and didn’t resort to store-bought options. I instead paid a tribute to the initial years of our marriage when both my husband and I took a fancy to painting, and sorted through those amateurish yet fond expressions of our heart to get the best ones framed. Our walls now have a character.

I accompanied a photographer-friend to old age homes and spent hours listening to the residents narrate the stories of their life.

I planned a simple, homely party for my son’s birthday and enjoyed blowing up every balloon.

Pondicherry Journal: 2 — Frenchness in the Air

Originally published on The Creative Cafe.

Read the first part here.

Heritage building at Goubert Avenue (taken by me on Sep 9, 2013)

Oct 14, 2017 Sat 11:00 PM approx, in a hotel room in Pondy.

Whenever I announce a trip to Pondicherry to my friends and colleagues, there is this one inevitable question that escapes at least one unruly mouth – “What is there in Pondy to see!”

Come to think of it, the chief tourist attractions of the city - the Aurobindo Ashram and the Auroville - are not enough to attract repeat visitors unless the latter take genuine interest in the spiritual heart of the place, i.e. the vision and ideals of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. What is it then that keeps drawing this impatient skeptic to Pondy again and again - the enduring remnants of a bygone era that refuse to be lost in the mists of time, or the triumph of sobriety over flamboyance that her streets perpetually celebrate?

To understand the temperament of the city, dear journal, you need to have a brief background of not only her history but also her ‘physical’ character -

Pondicherry, the capital city of the union territory of Puducherry, was the chief French settlement in India during the period of European colonialism.

“The plan of the city of Pondicherry is based on the French grid pattern and features perpendicular streets. The town is divided into two sections: the French Quarter (Ville Blanche or 'White Town') and the Indian quarter (Ville Noire or 'Black Town'). Many streets retain French names, and villas in French architectural styles are a common sight. In the French quarter, the buildings are typically in French colonial style, with long compounds and stately walls. The Indian quarter consists of houses lined with verandas and with large doors and grilles. These French- and Indian-style houses are preserved from destruction by an organisation named INTACH. The French language can be seen on signs and menus, and heard in Puducherry. Puducherry has residents with French passports...” (Source: Wikipedia)

Am I particularly in love with France as a nation? No Sir. Au contraire, I’ve no clue on what truly differentiates the identity of a Frenchman from that of an Italian, a Belgian or a Swede. But to stumble across a little island of France in your own country – standing solemnly amid a thriving Tamil culture – is another thing altogether.

Pics: The French colonial style buildings lining the boulevards in the White Town (taken by me on Sep 8, 2013)

Let’s take our dinner venue of the day – Hotel Palais de Mahe, a distinguished presence in the street of Rue Bussy in the old French Quarters. As we walked back this evening from the beautiful beachfront known as the Seaside Promenade, I let my impulse walk us to this hotel’s breezy rooftop restaurant and was literally enchanted by the experience.

Now, I’ve been a resident of Bangalore for the last 7 years, and Bangalore is a synonym to chic dining options offering authentic Italian to Japanese to Thai to Continental to coastal Mangalorean and what not. What new experience could this restaurant have sold me that I’m waxing eloquent about it?

Well, hotels in Pondy like Palais de Mahe, Le Dupleix (dined here during our last visit to the city in 2013) or The Richmond (stayed here in 2013) are based out of restored heritage properties. The very experience of walking through the corridors of these French colonial style buildings with splendid architecture patterns and antique furnishings carries you to a different world. The dishes we ordered today (fennel-crusted fish, cinnamon-crusted chicken, ‘lasooni’ fish and coffee) took their own sweet time to arrive and tasted a little too bland; yet the stories whispered to us by the palatial lamps and the heavy wooden doors rendered the relationship between culinary skills and satiated heart almost inconsequential. 

Piku, visibly happy with the lovely bamboo highchair offered to him, showed great interest in the food served. While usually we don’t share restaurant food with this barely twenty-two month old human, I made an exception today on account of the classiness of the place and let him have his fill.

Is it right to associate the show of refinement with hygiene, dear journal? Is the poor guy headed towards trouble? The night will tell. As of now, he sleeps soundly beside his Kindle-reading father, and that little tummy of his looks round and cheerful.

The Seaside Promenade (taken by me on Sep 9, 2013)

I wonder if my parents have dozed off in their room too, or if Ma is busy applying warm compress to her knee to ease the pain. She had to overstretch herself to walk to the Seaside Promenade this evening, while also supporting Bu who keeps faltering in his steps of late. The barely half a kilometer walk left both of them so distressed that I realized once again that the two hard working, able-bodied individuals I grew up with were gone for good. Sometimes I so wish I had a sibling to share my sense of loss with.

Note, my journal, that Piku had his first-ever glance of the sea this evening, and was more excited about the white herons flying overhead than the frothing waves that lay below! And tell me - is a journal supposed to record its events chronologically? Am I messing with your rules?

The Seaside Promenade (taken by me on Oct 14, 2017)

Before it gets messier, let me then quickly record that we reached Hotel Treebo Grace Inn at 2 this afternoon. I had pre-booked the rooms through Expedia (a partner of the travel fare aggregator website TripAdvisor) at a discounted rate, which qualifies it as one of the economic stay options within the White Town. Our rooms here are spacious and well-lit with tasteful décor, and the staff promised us access to their kitchen so that we could get fresh food prepared for Gungun and Piku. The only other thing we could have asked for is in-house dining facilities, but then this location offers a plethora of great eateries within 10 minutes walk, and there’s also this just-okay-ish café-restaurant called ‘La Café Chaplin’ in the adjacent building. This is where we had a very late lunch today.

I’m getting a little groggy now, so bear with me if I tend to ramble, but I wonder if this trip will allow me many hours to stroll along the Promenade and the shaded boulevards of the White Town, just as we did back in 2013. I should probably rein in my hopes early, ‘coz now we have our little fellow with us who’ll have to be fed and cleaned up after several times a day. It’s okay though – part of life.

Talking of ‘hope’, I find the devil occupying my idle mind working surprisingly hard on so many threads of hope even as I write this entry.  For example -

1.       I hope to visit France someday. How will it feel like to set foot in a country whose supposed microcosm evokes such fascination in me?

2.       I hope Pondy continues to preserve her uniqueness for many more decades. Today I came across this article which talks about the lack of sensitivity of authorities towards preserving the age-old mansions of Pondy, as well as the many imminent threats to her slow life. It was only then that I understood the vague discomfort I had felt seeing her streets teeming with people and vehicles while on our way to the beach earlier today. These parts of the city were way quieter when we visited in 2013.

3.       I hope Piku continues to show curiosity towards new food, and grows up to be a person rich in taste and unrestricted in range. I hope he becomes my foodie-mate as we together explore new restaurants (so that I can leave Sourav in peace on his bed along with his Kindle and laptop). But what if Piku takes on his father? Well, Mama will just have to reach back to her solitary walker/eater hat that has been gaining dust for some time. On some days, I can probably join the father-son duo to binge watch ‘Stranger Things Season 13’ or the Miyazaki animations he is surely going to love… Will these guys turn play station addicts as well?

4.       I hope the cyclonic rains that have ravaged Bangalore today continue to spare Pondy.

5.       I hope the world turns fairer and people overcome the need to see religion as something unquestionable.

6.       I hope…

Did you say it’s my moral duty to retire for the day? Honestly?

Hmmph… Okay then, dear journal, see you soon.

Zzzzzzzz…

The Bookworm

Source: Flickr

There lives a bookworm at my home,

He reads of spaceships, gnome, genome,

Potatoes are his choicest dish,

Accompanied with steak or fish.

And when he plans a rare day-out,

To the old bookshop he heads out,

Sometimes I too tag along,

Some books smell like ancient song.

He buys me pastries and donut,

And grabs a coffee steaming hot,

At the corner of a café calm,

Books adorn his happy palm.

On weekends what does bookworm do?

He cuts all ties with his shoe,

A blanket, pillow, cozy bed,

He’d read away the whole weekend.

The bookworm loves to write as well,

His pen is like a kite in sail,

Across the threads of time and space,

His thoughts gallop to build a maze.

On birthdays he will buy you books,

Anniversaries? Why, more books!

Oceans of words, or sky maybe,

His heart is never too heavy.

My bookworm is a daddy now,

His specs shake under baby’s paw,

Books stare at him, so does the boy,

They laugh out loud and play with toy.

But baby’s growing really fast,

Soon the books will shed their dust,

We’ll curl up then, all us three,

And read and write like skylarks free!

Originally published in Lit Up.

Pondicherry Journal: 1 — The Road to Pondy

Originally published on The Creative Cafe.

Co-travelers (Taken by me on Oct 14, 2017 near Krishnagiri)

Oct 14, 2017 Sat 10:00 AM approx, on the way from Bangalore to Pondy.

In Bengali, ‘ghumiye kaada’ is an often-used phrase. It roughly translates to ‘sleeping as mud’ -which probably sounds ludicrous to uninitiated ears. But at this moment no other construct of words would better apply to Piku. Dear journal, my son turns two in a couple of months, and it’s his first road trip out of the city. Cozy in his hooded sweatshirt with stripes of red and white, grey lounge pants and a pair of striped pink socks, Piku is in a sleep so deep that he seems unconscious, somewhat like the formless mud that splatters all over unless contained in a vessel. I, his vessel, have gathered him carefully between my arms, chest and thighs.

My co-travelers in this journey are also the closest of my co-travelers in the journey of life.

Seated beside me in the back of our four-year old Hyundai i10 is my mother. Physically in her early sixties and mentally somewhere around an indomitable forty, Ma hasn’t let her recent knee pain stand in the way of the trip. Drifting between light slumber, chit-chat and munching on the light snacks I stocked up for the trip, her eyes look breezy and cheerful. She has awaited this trip for more than a year.

Sourav, my husband of six years and friend of fifteen, is driving the car. A man of great calm, he has so far resisted the temptation to exceed 80 km/hr on his very first beyond-city-limits highway drive, and is allowing every other car to overtake us with absolute chill.

The front passenger seat is occupied by my father. Seventy and rapidly slipping deeper into the mazes of vascular dementia, Bu (as I call him) had to be coaxed to join us. Fortunately, he doesn’t look too unhappy as of now as he sits taking in the splendid view of the hills and greenery scattered all along the stretch of road between Krishnagiri and Sengam.

These are the pillars of my life. It’s not that we’ve always been a close-knit family; one could rather say that in response to circumstances, we’ve learnt to cross the gaps between (and the silent voids within) us to extend hands of support to each other, so that we may all stay afloat in the elusive pursuit of meaningful existence.

Family is an amazingly resilient social construct — time has taught me.

For the sake of maintaining records, let me also introduce to you the route we’re on. According to the discussions on travel forums, the two most popular routes to drive to Pondicherry from Bangalore (without night halt) are the following –

1. Bangalore-Hosur-Krishnagiri-Sengam-Thiruvannamalai-Thindivanam-Pondicherry (320 km).

2. Bangalore-Hosur-Krishnagiri-Vellore-Arcott-Cheyur-Tindivanam-Pondicherry (377 km)

Posts dated 2015 and earlier report potholes near Thiruvannamalai on route 1 — which is also the shortest of all routes. Half-hoping that the road conditions may have improved by now, Sourav favored this one over the widely praised route 2 for our onward journey. We started amid a drizzle at 6:30 AM in the morning, halted at a restaurant near Krishnagiri around 8, started again at around 9:30 and so far the road has been excellent. Google Map expects us to reach our destination by 1:30 PM, though we don’t really mind being slowed down a little by a short stretch of bad road as long as the cyclonic rains forecasted in yesterday’s news do not hit us en route.

Our breakfast venue of the day (Taken by me on Oct 14, 2017)

At the risk of sounding promotional, I will make a special mention of this restaurant where we stopped for breakfast. It is named Hotel Saravana Bhavan Classic, is sufficiently well-maintained, serves its dishes (mostly South Indian delicacies) steaming hot, offers the tastiest chutneys and sambar I’ve tasted in a long time, has a huge parking space and most importantly, offers several washrooms for men and women which are clean and usable. The site also offers an unhindered view of many layers of rocky hillocks stretched across a wide horizon with no hoardings or high-rises to block your gaze. After freshening up and finishing with our breakfast, we spent quite a few minutes lazing around under the soft morning sun and taking snaps before we got back into the car.

Piku was alert for over an hour since he woke up halfway through our breakfast. Delighted at the sight of the hillocks, he insisted on calling them ‘flower’ instead of ‘pahar’, the Bengali word for mountains and hills. Repeated attempts to correct him resulted in long-drawn negotiations with both parties, soon frustrated, settling temporarily for the middle ground of ‘power’. The debate was also cut short by a sudden shift of attention to wheels, my son’s perennial obsession. We had by then joined the queue for light motor vehicles at a multi-lane toll booth, and the great assemblage of wheels all around him (attached to their vehicles, of course, but who cares about them!) set him absolutely berserk. It is easy to feed Piku while he is distracted. Stories of mama wheels and baby wheels on all sorts of misadventures were eagerly gulped down along with milk, banana and biscuits before the kid fell asleep once again.

You see, when you’re parent to a fussy eater, little else gives you more relief than seeing your kid eat. Our last two long trips with Piku, both to our hometown Kolkata and each involving three weeks of stay, were marked by acute stress as our son, a baby then, refused solids for days and weeks and ended up losing considerable weight by the time we returned home. The primary reason we chose Pondicherry as our holiday destination this time was to be able to relax. We’ve planned a stay of three nights at Hotel Treebo Grace Inn in the beautiful White Town (also known as the French Quarter), and that’s a span short enough for us to afford not to worry even if Piku doesn’t eat well. Besides, all of us have visited Pondy earlier — me twice, Sourav five times, Bu twice and Ma once. This takes off the pressure to cover the sightseeing points. And lastly, the city is modern and equipped enough to address medical emergencies if any were to arise during our stay there. Because Bu is prone to accidental falls, that’s a possibility we cannot rule out.

Personally, all I want to do in the next three days is to stroll along the Promenade Beach, try out French cuisines with unpronounceable names, breath in the grace and calm of this former French colony that cares to preserve its old world charm, and witness the blossoming of a bond between two tiny humans, Piku and Gungun, who’ll be meeting each other for the very first time tomorrow.

Let me save up the introduction to Gungun for one of my next few entries. And meanwhile, I will share some chocolates and munchies with Bu. His dementia makes it hard for him to keep track of time, and from his vague and yet persistent questions on distance and time I can sense his growing impatience with the long road.

No more now. Sincerely hope that Pondy will allow me a quiet little corner for the one more entry today.

So long, dear journal…