Imperfect me

Words disappeared,

where to ? I wonder.

What am I missing?

Where did it go?

That fleeting feeling 

of words streaming.

Rushing, gushing and  

filling my canvas with 

stories around me,

those that ruin me,

and those that happen 

only inside my head.

Suddenly feeling numb

or am I just dumb?

Did all those talks we had

and those we never had

empty me? leaving

a cold you, a colder me.


Explaining that my no is a no,

and making it a maybe-yes,

when I could argue no more.

The talks that we never had,

each time I stunned at my

ignorance of your indifference.



What am I? Why the painful tugs?

Was I hallucinating ?

or was I only dreaming?

What was I even contemplating?

All the whats and the whys

have left me, with wet eyes.


Are you happy now?

Is your sly laugh complete?

after making me all that crazy.

Do I regret it? I wonder.

No, How else would have

I known, that I am better?


That's what I think, after

painful moments pass,

that they were just lessons,

blessings in disguise,

to reveal my stronger self,

to stay as I am ,

the imperfect but complete Me.

Moon and Stars

काश तेरे चेहरे पे 

चेचक के दाग होते 

चाँद तो आप है ही 

सितारे भी साथ होते.

Kash tere Chehre Pe 

Chechak Ke Daag Hote 

Chand to Aap hai hi 

Sitare bhi Saath hote.

"What does this mean? Tell me"

"Who gave you this?", I ask smiling slyly.

"Who else do you think? ", She asks with a beaming proud face slightly shadowed by her coy smile.

"I could guess...", I say, laughing and holding her hands. 

"So you have started exchanging notes too, like all lovers", I say with a big grin.

"Yeah. We have. But look how cruel of him to write this in a language I don't know. Tell me what this is. You know hindi right?"

I smile.

"He says ...he wishes your face has the stains of chicken pox. "

"What?", Her face falls flat and her mouth opens to a big O. "He said that?"

"Wait. Let me complete.", I say, but now I am stressed that she isn't pleased. 

"It's a poem." And moving my face back to the piece of paper I repeat...

"He ...", now she stares right into my eyes her face becoming a little dark, I feel her eyes looking accusingly at me. I fake a confident smile, avert her eyes and reread.

"He wishes your face has the stains of chicken pox. 

The stains would add stars to the moon that you are."

I complete my fatal translation, smiling at her, trying to look my normal self. 

But she is not pleased.

"Is that really what he wrote?"

"Well, it's a beautiful simile isn't it?", I ask her.

"Is he demeaning me? Isn't he pointing out the pock marks on my face? Are they that bad? Am I not looking better than ...", she names several girls known to the two of us.

Her long list really worries me. I am waiting for her to add my name to her list. But thankfully she spares me. She turns her head sadly after a deep breath signalling the end of list. And after a few minutes of silence looks at me and asks, "Are you sure that is what is written?"

I am almost in tears now, and taking my Hindi - Tamil dictionary show her word to word. She halfheartedly believes me.

The silence between us grows and my brain, overthinking and always on duty, starts wondering why my name didn't come up in her list of girls who were not as beautiful as S. And suddenly my evil inner voice laughs hard and tells me, you sadly didn't make it to the list of beauties.

Somehow while several of our conversations remain forgotten, this shayari and our conversation that day still remain etched in my memory. I have checked the meaning several times and I am sure I translated it correctly. But why did it make her angry I know not.

I have always thought it was the most beautiful thing to say. But I also wonder how can stars be present in the moon. Was that simile right? Though not a masterpiece, it was lovely wasn't it? Only now I understand it was not his original work, since it is all over the net. He must have written it from memory, or copied from some book or taken a friend's help.

How could she not see the beauty of it I wonder. There was a poet in her and we both discussed poetry for hours during those days, drooling over words, their usage, their use in other poems, and other similar poems.

Was her pock marks all that was in her mind then and kept her literary taste away? Thinking about it now, wasn't her beauty unique, only because of those light pink marks on her milky face? Weren't they highlighting her face brilliantly. How could that ever be a demeaning thing to say?

Unstable as water...

Some people treat me like their little sister, the pampering, the free advice with loads of love. Ess was one such person and try as I might I don't remember how it all started. Ess had a cousin Rey, and Rey was the typical character that I admired - strong, never complaining, looking from the other person's perspective, having an easy solution for the toughest of issues (is there one? I wonder now, but I was too young then) and very feminine in her looks and charming in the way she walked and talked. I was always awed by the way she carried herself, and would have copied a thing or two from her as well.

I think my relationship with Ess just happened around Rey. While I tried hard to make my presence felt by Rey among her admirers, Ess sought me for company. She was no different from Rey as long as she she stayed silent. Her talks, walks and thoughts were all in complete contrast to Rey. She laughed loudly never the feminine giggle, her pat fell hard on my back, her funny comments and remarks were nothing short of a boy's loud and boisterous one.

Ess was from a troubled family, dystopic it sounds to me now. The chief reason being an alcoholic father. "Usually people with family problems give such reasons", on some occasion Rey told me, "it wasn't that bad. Some men drink. That's all."  I was in school then and never seen drunks in the family. It was despised at.

I was 3 years younger than Ess, and knew a little bit of her love story, her mother's struggle story and lots of advises on how to stay strong and not be perturbed by anyone or anything. "It all comes down to you, how you let things control you. Never lose your reins to anyone else".

The last day I met her was to announce my admission to an Engineering college far down south, to continue life as a boarder. I was all tears that day with everyone assuring it was going to be a great beginning to me, towards my dream. All that stays of those last minutes in my blurry memory, is her holding my hands and patting me.

Life changed, and I hardly had time to think about Ess or Rey. New friends, place, books and know-hows kept me busy and living. It was after 3 years that I received a letter from a friend Em. She was coming to my town to attend a marriage and wanted to meet me. It was start of my vacation and I changed my plan of going home with my college friends to instead meet Em, attend the marriage and then travel back home with her.

While on our way back to Chennai, on the luxury bus, I asked about Rey and Ess.

"Rey is happily married and has a baby girl, 7 months old"

"... and Ess?"

"Her marriage was finalized with the guy she loved."

"What do you mean finalized? When is it happening?", I shout with glee.

Em took a deep breath, "She... she committed suicide."

"What? When? Why? You said the marriage was finalized with the guy she loved. What then?"

"Just a week before the marriage she returned home after watching a movie with him, and her grandmother... You don't know these old ladies, they... they have a sharp tongue."

"What did she say?"

"... can't you wait for one more bloody week? What sort of a woman you are? So desperate for that man? and... you know her, don't you? Ess? She said something and the old woman wouldn't stop either. Things turned too ugly and while she did go back to her room after all the interventions from family and friends, no one imagined she would hang herself that night."

"Hang??? She hanged herself? With the wedding sari?", I asked perplexed.

Em looked at me, right into my eyes. "Kid! You knew her too well...", she says softly, taking my hands into hers, pats gently, and as the bus jerked on turning the highway, tears start flowing through my cheeks and I sobbed endlessly.

A room of my own

Sometimes when I chance to hear friends and fellow readers about being initiated into books by their parents, I wonder if they know they were privileged. To have your parents channelize your reading or writing spirit is privilege indeed compared to carving your own self, your own path, wandering in libraries with no idea of which book or author to choose, making your choices based on what you hear from your teachers. But thinking deeper, I had some privilege too, to listen to name of great authors dropped by my teachers during our classes. 

What can a girl who sits right in the front row do, who can’t relate to her privileged friends who possibly came from happier families and probably found the lectures boring and instead had something more interesting to tell the other kids around them, what else can such a girl do, but walk along with Wordsworth as he watched the solitary Lass reaping or ride along with the Highwayman destined to have his head amputated. What else can she do but watch the brook take her course or the tiger whose eyes shone like red hot coal.

The more I think the more I feel privileged, to have listened to an aunt on how Antonio was trapped by the wretched Shylock, all for his friend Bassanio, and was finally saved by the wits of his paramour, Portia. I remember how stunned I was by her logical thinking. Yes, women impressed me more than men with their attitude. Whatever politics went in to this little drama, what appealed to me was Portia's coolness and grace. She warns before things go wrong and she mends things later too. Men were portrayed meek, they walked straight into the traps like a know-it-all, waiting to be saved and labeled it, manliness.

Of course it was not intended but that is what I felt. And how can I forget 'Taming of the shrew'? After laughing at all that the woman is subjected to, only to accept at the end that the men were one-up to women, it did strike me what was wrong with that woman in the first place? Can't women dream, desire, have opinions? Why should Que Sera accept whatever will be will be? Taming of the shrew is always a winner, there are so many desi versions that go block busters be it drama or movie. 

We are not that cruel any more, we are the civilized lot, we don't whiplash our women, we instead laugh and mock at them. How? We forward jokes that depict women as spendthrifts, who never bother about the financial status of the husband or father, jokes that depict women as fools, who know barely anything about their gadgets. We forward advises on how a woman should treat her in-laws with respect, but we make fun of her parents. I say We, because it is also women who do their part well here, and it hurts more when women do this. Why does it hurt me? Because I live a life that always considered the financial capacity of my father and my husband in mind, I earn, I pay my bills and these jokes spit me on my face.

As a woman coming from a family that couldn't guide me in my choice of literature or career, but nevertheless didn't stop my quest either, Virginia Woolf's 'A room of one's own' means more to me than those who come from a better environment. I cannot be snubbed for being a feminist or having an attitude. I worked for this, I was neither offered nor did I grab, I worked to get where I am, I might not have wanted or chosen to be here, but this is my necessity, an absolute one.

... to be continued ...

The emerald spider - I

As I run past the wild trees, dry thorny boughs and twigs get entwined in the lace of my long skirt and dwindle along the path. I keep running slowing down a little to loosen them and throw them away. They make little incisions on my fingers and color the lace red. My speed decreases and I slow down a bit, gasping for breath, my lips are parched, and my dry throat desperately needs water. As my gasps get louder and my throat coughs, I could hear gentle rustles behind me. I try breathing orally, and gathering my long skirt, fit myself into the hollow of the nearby dead tree, and hold down a large leafy branch across to bury me.

There is no trace of the rustles now and I heave a not so loud sigh. Looking up at the sky, I could see dark clouds gathering far north, and a very light drizzle. What a timely respite, where else would I find something to quench my thirst. As the drizzle got heavier, and showers came down the thunderous sky, a spider web started becoming visible right before my eyes. The web getting destroyed in the rain, a huge emerald spider jumped and climbed onto my cheeks.

It was the dirtiest and creepiest thing I had ever seen, and as I lost my balance in the process, my hands let go off the branch that I had been holding to shade from my perpetrators, and the sudden jerk, made a cluster of spiders fall right onto my skirt. As I tried moving to my sides, I found myself tumbling down and my legs go down into the air, and kicked them, only to wake up in my bed.

I was still shivering, and looking up, saw it was already past 9. Feeling hungry, I stepped out of my cozy, cuddly bed, into the kitchen, precisely the place where the refrigerator was housed. As I placed my hands on the door handle, a chubby monstrous hand slapped mine, it was obviously the demon of the house, which blurt out “Brush your teeth”.

Sitting on my cozy couch, with my head resting on my darling monster’s shoulders, I started munching the reheated leftover pizza, and blurt out, “hmmm... irresistible”.

“Me, Darling?”

“No darling, the pizza.”

“Darling, didn’t you see the message I forwarded you yesterday?”

“Wife beating husband jokes?”

“No.”

“Foolish blonde/girlfriend jokes?”

“No.”

“What else then darling?

“The one on MSG in pizzas”

“I don’t read or remember such messages darling. Do you know something? I woke up to the same nasty dream yet again.”

“The one in which you were cooking?”

“No. The one in which you were eating. Stop all your misogyny jokes, and listen. I am talking about the spider dream”.

“In which you are chased”

“Yes”

“Now what about that, don’t you always get that?”

“Yes, I do. I always get that dream. That is why. I doubt if there is some message in that. You see an oft repeated dream, means something; say something like my past life. I told you about my laced long skirt in the dream. Didn’t I?”

“Colonial times?”

“Possible”

“Sweetheart, don’t be so carried away. Don’t think so much. You read so many books, and this seems to be just a side effect. Nothing more”

“Why do I get spiders of all creatures then? And why do I run like that? What do the thorns mean? There is so much of bloodshed.”

“Don’t call that small incision as bloodshed”

“You know what? You don’t understand. Dreams have bigger meanings. And those that are oft repeated definitely have some relation to my past and my future. My previous birth or the one before that or may be the one prior to that.”

“If at all there is any meaning to your oft repeated dream, it could be just that you see, you are not organized properly, your things lie in corners unattended, untouched, there could be spiders around, definitely, and if you don’t organize yourself, you may have to run away from the spiders. True Story. In fact,”

“Don’t be so rude.” I pushed his hands off me, it was then I noticed that his ring finger was nude! I mean the ring was missing.

“Where is the ring?”

“Oh that! I had a severe itch on the ring finger last night and so removed it.”

There were tiny red rash marks on his fingers, and it looked a bit swollen. As I inspected the finger, I could see the swollen part of the finger looked very much like...

“Hey look! This is exactly how the dream spider looked”

“The Emerald one?”

“Yes!”

I tried looking a bit shocked and scared, at his eyes.

“Stop it! Will you?” He said laughing loud, and I couldn’t stop joining him.