It happened in broad day light at the Hauz Khas – IIT gate traffic signal, opposite to Essex Farm, amidst a heavy Monday evening traffic and right under the nose of 4 traffic cops posted at the signal.

I was on my way back to my residence in Dwarka after finishing a meeting at the Adchini area. If you know the map of that area you’d know that in order to go to Dwarka or Airport from Adchini which is on your left you have to drive till the signal opposite to Mother’s International School and take a U-turn so that landmarks like Essex Farm, Indian Oil petrol pump or Turcoise Cottage are now on your right. Straight ahead is Hauz Khas and on your left is the IIT gate, you take a free left turn for Dwarka / Airport from this point. Free left turn only if the traffic allows, sometimes it doesn’t.

So there I was, a few meters away from the point where I would move my steering wheel towards the left for my ‘free left turn’, graduate the gear from 2^nd to 5^th and hit the outer ring road at 60 kmph, that was the moment when I met him.

Earlier, I had taken the mentioned U-turn, and as I was driving slowly due to extremely heavy traffic I noticed a lean short boy around 16 with a plastic carry bag in hand, walking on the foot path looking straight at me. I felt strange, “Never seen a woman drive? New in Delhi?” I thought and sped up. Few meters ahead the traffic had come to a standstill denying me my ‘free left turn.’ After about ten minutes the jam opened, I shifted gears started moving when I saw a man, in his 20s around 5’7 dark complexion curly hair shabby clothes typical of the traffic signal vendors, coming towards my car from the signal side. I assumed he was selling something, though he was empty handed which I didn’t notice until he came close to my window.

And then a thud! I felt something went under my front right tyre and the man held my window with both his hands and yelled, “kya kiya aap ne mere pair pe gaadi chala di (What did you do, you drove the vehicle on my feet”

Both my front windows were rolled down. On my side it was fully down, on the left it was half way. I was saving fuel and enjoying the evening breeze by not switching on the AC.  Ironic it was.

I was startled. I opened my mouth to yell back, “khud to sadak ke beech mein chal rahe ho, dikhta nahi hai traffic khul gayi hai”

But I barely uttered the full sentence and decided to drive away when he held the window again and fumbled something. I didn’t follow what he said but opened my mouth again to yell back, but before I could say anything the man suddenly started walking away.

I felt extremely strange that he gave up so easily. Anyway, I looked to the front to be on my way. Suddenly I noticed the central lock of my car was open. I had never switched off the ignition so all doors should be locked, but they weren’t.

And that’s when I realized my bag which was sitting on the front seat was gone. It was a jute bag from CSE which had my Dell laptop worth 40k, my wallet containing my Driving License, vehicle registration certificate, PAN card, credit cards, debit cards, Delhi Metro card, CGHS card, Titan watches warranty card etc and Rs. 1000+ in cash.

I was robbed.

In this life, I’d never forget what I felt at that moment and would never be able to fully explain. In a lightening speed I connected the dots. The frame in my mind was split in two and replayed what just happened from two different camera footages. One camera was on me from the point I took the U-turn and the other was on the young boy on the footpath looking at me my car’s open windows.

I recalled that the first guy had actually walked on the foot path along my car briefly and then diagonally crossed the road keeping close to my car and then went ahead. Minutes later, this other man came from the same direction where the previous had gone. While the second guy kept me busy with the fake accident the first guy picked my bag. The second guy had opened the car’s central locking when he kept his hands on my window.

As I try to recall the incident today, I remember frantically standing in the middle of a crazy Monday evening Delhi traffic with every single person honking and swearing at me. For a minute there I wanted to run after the men but they had disappeared into thin air. Then I pulled over and dialed 100. Next, I approached the four traffic cops at the spot and told them what happened.

They all had mixed feelings. They looked blankly at me, UN-interested, confused, and annoyed with ‘not again, not my area of operation’ kind of expressions. It took 45 minutes for the cops to arrive at the spot. In between they called me thrice to understand my exact location. They just couldn’t understand such unknown places in Delhi like IIT gate, Hauz Khas, Adchini etc. “Kaha khare ho mam samajh mein nahi aa raha hai” was what I was told repeatedly. And they were coming from Mehrauli police station.

Finally they arrived. Meanwhile dad, one of dad’s colleague, my cousin, and his friends all arrived. Nothing and nobody helped. What was gone was gone. My only reward was an F.I.R – the must have document for issuance of duplicate license, RC etc. I must admit though that the cops cooperated in detailing the FIR, they reminded me to include everything gone missing, failing which they won’t issue duplicates.

“You know this happened to me once, my sister, my cousin, my friend once” – Stories of Delhi’s Thak Thak Gang and such other thugs using ‘attention diversion’ techniques to rob people started coming out at the Mehrauli police station as I went about the procedures. One cop said his own son was robbed on Noida toll bridge. Others spoke about how they knock on your car windows and ask, “Is that your money on the ground” to divert you.

Most of the Thak Thak Gang members are juveniles and are thoroughly trained in the technique. Indeed they perform their task with amazing perfection and swiftness.

All said and done, I must admit, I am not sure whether to lament my loss or to applaud their thief-ly talents.

Moving on is easy, there is so much work to do. You remain so preoccupied you don’t even have the time to think about anybody or anything. Manoshi certainly had moved on. It was almost a year since he last called. Before leaving Manoshi insisted he returns her book of Oscar Wilde, the one he borrowed long back. She had said with sweet anger, “Dekho, please return my book. I am quite certain we are never going to meet again and then years later I would sing that stupid song ‘mera kuch samaan tumhare paas para hai‘.

Prithvi smiled and said, “Aisa karo, tum pehele gaake sunao. Sing it for me right now.”

Manoshi got damn annoyed, “This is not the time to flirt. You are not leaving any options open for me to get in touch with you. How am I supposed to know when are you back? That’s one of my favorite book…“

“Forget the book, and forget me” Prithvi had said calmly leaving no more space for Manoshi, in the conversation and perhaps in his life.

Suddenly, today on this beautiful sunny breezy morning, he is back after several months of disappearance. They both seemed happy to see each other. He ordered for his favorite coffee and cheese toast for both of them. She was on Facebook via her new Samsung Galaxy Tab.

“New fancy gadget for Twitter eh?” Teased Prithvi. He had never understood Manoshi’s obsession to stay connected on her social networks.

Manoshi kept away her tab and turned towards Prithvi, she was feeling very vulnerable, she wanted to hold Prithvi. She smiled and came closer, nudged his shoulder with her head and then swiftly planted a kiss on his left cheek.

He turned a stern face towards her, “What?” He asked.

“Can we go home and have a drink, please? I have to show you something I’ve been working on at home.” Manoshi asked like a baby asks for a box of chocolates.

He didn’t reply but rose from the sofa attempting to leave. Manoshi held his hands and said, “Where are you going? Don’t go, I promise I won’t insist.”

“Well I was going to clear the bill, so that we could go home, but if you don’t want to…” Prithvi teased again and smiled.

Manoshi blushed. She let go of his hand. As he walked towards the cash counter, she gathered her gadgets, car keys and purse, and waited for him. He took a bit too long to be back, meanwhile she dozed off leaning back on the sofa.

When she woke up, she was alone in her bed. There was no sunny breezy day, no Prithvi. The night was still as dark and her dream was still as painful as ever. A terrible realization that quite contrary to what she thought, she has not moved on. Not even a bit. A realization that whatever she thinks, feels during the day in her conscious state is in complete conflict with her subconscious which only gets revealed via her dreams. She felt helpless for her soul, which speaks to her in her dreams and tells her where it hurts and what it still hopes for, because she knows it is not in her hand to find answers for her eternally longing soul. She knows that he would never know. He would NEVER care.

“Why don’t you just die soul. I have, why don’t you?” Manoshi asked her longing soul.

10,000 Women is a 5 year initiative by Goldman Sachs, the leading global bank, to provide “business and management education to underserved female entrepreneurs in developing and emerging markets. The program is designed to drive greater shared economic growth, leading to stronger healthcare, education and greater prosperity in the communities where it operates.”

The program is being conducted in collaboration with various educational institutions. The much prestigious Indian School of Business and Birla Institute of Management Technology (BIMTECH) are the academic partners for Cohort 17, which is the batch for which I got selected.

Cohort 17 the batch which commenced on 14th January 2012 at BIMTECH consists of 35 women entrepreneur mostly from Delhi / NCR selected out of 139 applications and as luck would have it, I happen to be one of them.

There are three chance events, events for which I never planned, those have completely changed my life and made me who I am and continues to do so - my picking up blogging one fine morning in 2004; The TED India Fellowship; and now this 10,000 women scholarship.

Words fall short as I try to explain how naive and careless I was about this scholarship. How I applied at the last minute with barely any understanding of what it was going to do for me. Words fall short as I try to explain how fortunate I am feeling today at the end of the first module.

The timing of this scholarship couldn’t have been any better.

Samyukta Media was launched in May 2010 and I have taken hundreds of thousands of steps forward and backward since then. It wasn’t until August 2011 that Samyukta Media finally started to make moves and things started to come to shape. A lot changed during this period – a fundamental shift in the market segmentation and two of my childhood friends joined hands as partners. As 2012 knocked on our doors, the three of us with our humble venture, had made wave and set sail but had the unknown waters and tides to be crossed. This training has come as a gush of motivation and confidence at this point of our journey.

To my great delight at the end of every session during these last 7 days I felt I was on the right path with my entrepreneurial journey. I had never felt more motivated and confident of my decisions of becoming a first generation entrepreneur. Many of my fellow entrepreneurs have already started to show interest in Samyukta Media services for their ventures and that makes me even more confident of our services.

And this is just the beginning; there are two more modules to go, each consisting of 7 days of classroom sessions in February and March 2012.  At the end of the 3rd module there would be a business plan competition and we would be given an opportunity to present our business plans in front of a panel of angel investors.

Meeting my fellow entrepreneurs has been inspiring and humbling. Each one of them is doing such interesting work and boy, so much of work. I mean I still wake up and wait for my mom to serve me breakfast and some of these women are managing all ends of their businesses and home single handedly.

There is Alpana, the entrepreneur behind the ‘Natural Herbs’ products you are likely to find at the Khadi Gramudyog. She used to be working woman who quit her job for motherhood. She started the present venture during her second innings. Today, her husband has quit his job to join her business. To me that is such an inspirational gender de-constructed family, the so called ‘bread winner’ of the family quitting job to do something where his wife was the show runner.

Then there is Charanjeet of ‘Pacific’ the manufacturer and supplier of travel bags to the top level brands. She used to be a chemistry professor but joined hands with her husband to save this business which was going through a bad time. Today ‘Pacific’ employs over 90 workers in its bag making factory.

Priyanka, the very bubbly yet amazingly strong headed has a passion for creating safe spaces, for her customers as well as her staff. Under her brand ‘One Tree Spaces’ she has freshly launched a real estate consultancy only for women. The urban working women who is either single or lives in a nuclear family, takes her personal decisions on her own and believes in investing  in property rather than gold is her target market. In almost all sessions through the module her business idea have been questioned by professors and by all 34 of us, “Why do you want to restrict your market by catering to only women clients?” Sometimes she struggled with the answer, sometimes she defended her ideas passionately and sometimes she went into deep thinking, but her conviction in her idea was never shaken. I personally think the idea is very relevant and that she should go ahead with the venture.

Then there was our own Carrie Bradshaw of Cohort 17, Dipika aka Cookie who is an Image Consultant. She has spent 7 years in styling and imaging models and wants to now do image consultancy for ordinary people men women alike.  She believes a model would look good at anything he/she wears but it’s us the people who don’t have a size zero who need a bit of style guidance to wear the right dress for the right occasion. So there comes Cookie with her consultancy. Now if she told you, for a certain interview with the angel investor you should carry a Louis Vuitton bag, would you buy a bag just for an interview? No! So she also rents these original bags to you. Check out www.bag4aday.com.

Don’t for a minute think that the women entrepreneurs are all in women-like business. No, we all don’t wear pink laces. There is Manjula who has a factory of hologram labels. Kalpana is the proprietor of a family business of batteries and inverters, now running into the third generation. She is the only women in whole of Uttar Pradesh in this business. Another women from UP was Geeta who supplies broadband connections to all of Moradabad. Ritu is into solar energy, Sangeeta is a female geek who makes software and have been running VR Virtual for 9 years.

Mansi, Priyanka, Geeta, Rashmi, Bela (L to R)

I can do this forever, there are so many of them but I have to stop. And I haven’t even started to talk about our faculty, some of them double Phd holders. More later on these.

The generosity and hospitality offered by the BIMTECH staff and faculty have been overwhelming. The food at the BIMTECH hostel is delicious to say the least and the hostel facilities are far superior than what I expected.

A great start to 2012 for me and Samyukta Media. Amidst all this, literally in the middle of the night a poem from the ‘Last night’ series knocked. Wrote it in both Hindi and English, doesn’t fit into anything I said so far but then that’s me. Allow me to share the English version.

—

Something suddenly woke me up last night
The wind had come to sweep life away
I asked, “what is it that you intend to take”
It said, “all that you have as yours”
Then, there was a new morning, and a changed life.
Everything that was mine was gone.
Except you, your memories.
You, who never were mine.

“Always bid strong goodbyes. Don’t stand and stare. Just say goodbye, give a hug and leave.” Prithvi would always say to Manoshi.

But this morning’s goodbye was rather long. They had spent the whole of yesterday’s evening, night and this morning with each other and the purpose of their meeting was to bid goodbye.

…

Finally, after saying bye to Prithvi, with moist eyes, heavy heart but lighter mind Manoshi got into her car and started to take it out of the parking. She had just put it on back gear and looked up at the rear view mirror when she saw Prithvi in the mirror, walking back towards her car. She shifted the gear back to neutral and rolled down the window glass and wondered why was he coming back.

Prithvi had a sheepish smile on his face. He came close to the window, extended his hands inside and pulled Manoshi towards him and kissed her on the lips.

“He came back to kiss me goodbye for one last time, like it happens in movies!” She thought.

She kept looking at the window where Prithvi stood. He still had that sheepish smile. He was aware that the way he came back was a lot like the last scene of a romantic movie with a happy ending, where the hero finally realizes his love for the heroine and comes back to confess it with a kiss.

But this wasn’t a movie. This was Manoshi once again slipping into a flash dream with her eyes open.

“My books” Prithvi said, breaking her flash dream.

Prithvi had kept his books in the dashboard of her car the previous night. He came back to take them. “Baby, my Books,” Prithvi asked again.

Manoshi blinked, gave an embarrassed smile and took out the books and handed them over.

Prithvi helped her take out the car from the parking. Gave her directions and watched her back. Once it was out of the parking, Manoshi didn’t spend anymore time there, she just drove away while a smiling Prithvi with a flying kiss thrown at her faded away on the rear view mirror.

For many days after this, every time Manoshi looked at the rear view mirror she saw Prithvi’s mesmerizing smile and the flying kiss.

Why don’t we have many such songs or poems? Why is there no female version of a love song like “Chaundvi ka Chaand” or “Chandan sa badan?”

In Abhigyaana Shankuntalam Kalidasa wrote verses after verses in praise of Shakuntala’s physical beauty, which included vivid description of her bossom, waist, bust and other body parts of male sexual gratification. But show me one piece of literature where a woman who is deeply in love praises the man’s body.

There aren’t any such literature because there is shame and taboo associated with a woman singing about lust and passion, a woman desiring the beauty of a man, the touch and warmth of his body.

Filed under: poetry, Proposetry, Random Tagged: man's beauty, woman poetry ]]> http://sanjukta.wordpress.com/2011/11/13/let-a-woman-sing/feed/ 2 28.635308 77.224960 28.635308 77.224960 Let a woman sing sanjukta Let a woman sing http://sanjukta.wordpress.com/2011/09/19/manoshis-story/ http://sanjukta.wordpress.com/2011/09/19/manoshis-story/#comments Mon, 19 Sep 2011 10:58:55 +0000 Sanjukta http://sanjukta.wordpress.com/?p=3345 ]]> [Excerpts from my new book]
[Also part of Manoshi's Story series]

“Are you over and out of love?” He asked Manoshi!

Manoshi wasn’t expecting such a deep question at such an arbitrary time, I mean she had lost the parking ticket and the car papers all in the same evening, her friends were currently busy arguing with the security guards of the hostel gate and he thought that was the best time for some soul searching.

“I don’t know, how can you ask that question just like that. You should’ve given me time to prepare for an answer.” She said it calmly but was restless inside.

He remained silent. She quickly spoke again. She does that a lot, can’t handle silence. “How does it matter? Does it matter?”

“Well we are spending so much time together. I mean…I am a part of this…”

Manoshi’s friends came back to the car and he couldn’t finish what he was saying. I am pretty sure he didn’t know what he was saying. And I think Manoshi knows that too. The conversation on this topic thus interrupted was eventually drowned in rum and smoked away with hash for the night.

I asked her in the morning at our place, “So really, are you over him?”

“No! I am not.” She said. “I love him! To the extent that I can do anything for him. Well, anything that is pragmatically doable for me, I mean I wouldn’t give my life or any thing of that sort. I guess I wouldn’t give him my money either, that sort of love is beyond me. And then I don’t have a lot of money to give anyways. But apart from not being able to give him the only life or the small amount of money I have, I can do anything to make him happy. Ya, I love him to the extent that I feel happy seeing him happy and  I love him for the person he is and the person he wants to be.”

“You stole that line from Jerry Maguire.” I couldn’t help pointing that out.

“I know. Its a good line.” She said with a smile.

“So what now? You want him, you don’t want him? And how come you are sleeping other men…man…either?” I asked her.

“I think I have learnt to not desire him anymore. I have him in my heart, I don’t have to claim him or anything. I have learnt to love him but be detached from him at the same time.”

Manoshi said those lines in a manner as if the thought behind them were still in the oven, she was baking them but they were not quite prepared, she was not so certain if she was saying exactly what she was feeling.

Of course, she can’t hide that sort of ambiguity from me. I know it well enough that she is still confused. And then she said it.

“Here’s the thing. He keeps saying that there is nothing, yet every time he stands a bit too close to me, I feel something. Every time his breathe falls upon my cheek, like the times when we both try to fetch something from the back seat of my car or when we try to whisper in each others ears in the movie hall, every time he touches my fingers while exchanging the cigaret, my heart skips a beat and tells me that touch was different, that he is someone else. Every time he looks into my eyes, my heart tells me there is something about that look. It happened today, it has happened before. What is it? Please help me understand!”

She asked quite helplessly.

I saw his pouted lips and wondered
How would it feel to kiss them?
But I didn’t have a song for his lips.

On our nights I watched him sleep,
Counting the number of moles on his buttery skin,
Marking them as mine, with my kisses.
I ran my fingers through his hair,
Caressed his ears, his neck, his chin,
His throat and chest and stomach.

But a few lines of poetry didn’t come out
For that thing of beauty, that joy forever.

He didn’t love me.
On our days we walked under the sun
We talked about things and places
We got drunk and silly
We drove around the town
Never were we away from each other
Never even for a moment.

But he never held me.
Didn’t love my body, the way I loved his,
Didn’t look into my eyes and bit my lip,
He didn’t desire me.

And so it was easy to say goodbye.

I never loved him,
Now I don’t desire him,
In my heart I already have him.

She, saw him coming.
He, did not see her coming.
And, he hates surprises.

That night when she realized it was time, she, Lali’s mother silently crawled under the gate of that big mansion, she pulled herself through the green lawn in search of a secure place and finally rested under the big corner window sill. The storm thundered and lightening shined on somewhere in the background as if it was just another rainy night, not knowing that a strange fate was going to befall upon Lali, the yet to be born.

She gave birth to 5 of them.

The gardener’s daughter was all of 6 years and 6 times more naughty than kids of her age. Next morning, the sun was happy and shiny, it was the perfect day for the playful kid. As always, she chased the hens and ducks at the nearby fields, she caught the multicolored dragonfly with bare hands tied their wings with a golden string and made helicopter and airplanes of them. Then she spotted the tiny puppies under the window sill. We don’t know where their mother was.

Some kids like to play with puppies but not this kid. Because she always heard her folks saying things like, “stray dogs are real annoyance. Just the other day this little baby was mauled by a herd of stray dogs. We should just keep the town free from so many stray dogs. Dogs are a danger to small kids.”

The kid was worried if her parents found out about the puppies they will be too hard on them, may be they will send them to that scary house she heard of. So she thought of doing something less harsh. She picked up the 5 puppies one by one and dropped them outside the mansion wall, into another vacant plot covered all around by four walls – and as fate would have it – no gates.

“Stay here you puppies, don’t come to our garden ever again.” She said and went about doing her playful things.

When the mother dog came back to the garden to feed her puppies she couldn’t find them. She ran all around the vacant plot barking and sniffing realizing her puppies were there but the walls were too high for her to jump over. For the next few days she kept howling sadly and finally she gave up and left the town.

Meanwhile, the puppies had no one to feed them milk and they were too young to eat anything on their own. They didn’t even know what is food and what is hunger. All of them but one succumbed to death. The last one somehow managed to gather some attention by howling and wailing through the night. One kind woman from the house behind the bush realized the puppy was hungry. She gave the puppy some bread and cheese and fondly called her Lali.

It was peculiar she thought that the puppy was all alone within the four walls without a human touch, she wanted Lali to come out, but then the walls were too high for her to climb and reach Lali. Besides, in the world outside without his mother to protect him, Lali’s life would be in greater danger.

Thus Lali had to stay within the walls. Everyday the old lady would go out on her balcony and throw some bread and cheese, sometimes meat, but never some milk. It was hard to send any liquid food on the other side of the wall. The kind woman ensured Lali wouldn’t die of hunger. About the rains, cold, heat, snakes and other dangers, Lali had to be on his own.

A whole year has passed by, Lali has grown up to be a big and strong dog, big enough to jump over the walls and yet, even today, Lali lives within those four walls. Some 3500 to 4000 sq ft of land covered with thick green grass and kash phul, clear blue sky above the head, kachu gach giving him shelter from rain and scorching sun – this is Lali’s world – all of this all by himself. All day he plays with the butterflies and dragonflies and the grasshopper. The frogs and toads are his best friends, but he doesn’t know another dog or human. He looks over the walls and watches the world passing by. He watches how outside the wall human and dogs co-exist. There, a kid is playing with a cute dog on its way to school, on the other side of the road another kid just threw a stone at a dirty mongrel, at yet another corner a bunch of mongrels are fighting.

Lali observes these but he never feels like jumping over the walls and being a part of them.

The old lady had died. Now other people of the neighborhood make sure Lali has two square meals. Lali has a comfortable life.

Would Lali ever breakthrough?

—

[Note: Men Heterosexual men reading this post may replace the masculine words with feminine to be able to identify with the content. Non-heterosexual women may replace masculine with feminine. The post is inclusive of all gender and sexuality]

In the good old days, when people broke up they used to take a bus, train or plane and leave the city forever, so they won’t ever see each other even by chance. They used to tear off all the diary pages, the snaps, greeting cards and love letters and return all gift items so there would be nothing left in their possession which would remind them of each other. Tech made breakups simpler. Nowadays, you’d just have to hit the delete / remove / unfollow button. I’ll tell you how many times and where.

If it’s a very serious break up and you really don’t wanna see his face ever, I mean never ever, remove him from all your IM clients, Gtalk, Yahoo, Skype, MSN etc. Not just remove but block / ignore him wherever possible. On Gtalk blocking means either of you won’t get to see each other’s availability status. You’d always appear as off line to each other. Sending offline messages also wouldn’t work. On yahoo ignoring an ID means the same thing. That ID won’t be able to send you IMs any more. (But there’s a flip side to this, I’ll come back to it in a while)

Delete his email ID from all mail clients, Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail. If you just don’t want to hear from him, set a filter or tag the mails in such a manner that they are never delivered in your inbox and straightaway gets deleted.

Remove his number from cell phone’s address book. No wait don’t do that. Keep the number so you’d know which calls not to pick. Clear the saved message folders – Inbox, Sent items.

Remove his name from friends list in Hi5, Friendster, Orkut, Ryze, LinkedIN, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter etc. Again whether to just remove / block / ignore or go as far as ‘report abuse’ that depends upon the magnanimity of the break up.

On most of these sites if you block / ignore an user account once that user won’t be able to send you any more scrap, messages, friend request etc any further. So be very sure before doing this. If you ‘report abuse’, future activity of that user on that portal would be in trouble. You can use this as a revenge mechanism.

Leave common domains like common mailing lists of Yahoo / Google groups. If he is a part of any email group, facebook group or page, twitter list that you created or is an admin of or moderate, even better, go ahead remove him from these list. As a revenge mechanism you can also ban him from these list.

Give clear message that its over

Delete the orkut testimonies you wrote for him. Remove yourself from his fan’s list. Remove his blog URL from your blog roll and stop subscribing to his RSS feeds.

Delete everything that might remind you of him. Old blog posts, flickr photos, orkut scraps, clean up your mail box. Delete saved chat conversations.

How to balance your ego

I said earlier there’s a flip side to removing someone from IM contact list. Here’s that. Sometimes after a breakup you might want to keep the option of him saying sorry open. No harm in that, but you sure don’t want your ego to be busted. Do you?

Yahoo comes really handy in doing this, safeguarding your ego I mean. This is what you do.

• Don’t remove him from the list, just stealth settings.
• Go permanently invisible to him for first 4-5 days.
• Then change settings and appear online to him again.
• Next you gotta wait and watch, if after having seen you online, he buzzes you or not. If he cares for you, he would.

On the other hand if you completely remove him from the list, but then feel like going back and adding him again, he’d get an intimation that you want to add him. He’d know you first deleted and now trying to add. Not good for your ego at all.

Similarly, for Gtalk users I suggest don’t remove his ID from the list but block him instead. When you block or unblock some one that person don’t get any notification. But if you remove him from the list and later try to add, he’d get a notification and would have to approve your add request.

So block him for as long as you are really pissed. Then unblock him.

But a major set back to your ego happens when you see him online in a green / available mode and so do you, to him and yet he doesn’t buzz you. In such situation however it is better to remove him but not ignore / block him. If you remove, he can still see you online, but you can’t. So it’s like saying, “I am letting you go but I am right here if you feel like talking buzz me. I won’t initiate from my side for sure.”

I hope those tips helps. In my next post would be writing about how courtship is much more romantic and smooth these days with the IMs and Micro blogging tools like twitter etc. I could have first written the ‘Technology and Courtship’ post but am a pessimist you see. So the Tech and Breakup post came first.

Yesterday she dreamt she had finally found him. He lived in Mars and she in Venus…he had always seen her over the stars…she had always known him over the galaxies. One day she heard a knock on her doors. There was standing an angel, carrying a message from him to her, a message that was lightened up by the glitz of those million star studded galaxies it crossed before reaching her. It had the smell of the flowers that blossomed in his heart when he wrote it…it carried the smile that was there on his lips and the glow that he had in his eyes. She lost herself in that one splendid moment when she took the envelope in her hand…she wanted to sing a song, she wanted to write a poem, she wanted to take a rocket and fly to his planet.

It was ‘to be continued,’ “something nice is going to happen tomorrow,” she thought.

But when tomorrow came reality it her and she wished her life had stopped at yesterday. So she sang,

Let there be no sequel
Life is so much better
if there was no tomorrow,
If there was no after and no before,
If life could be just that
The moment she was living
her heart pounding,
pulse rating higher,
thinking “could this be him?”
Dreaming of her dream again,
hoping “this is him”

Tomorrow, there is no dream
Tomorrow she is suspicious and apprehensive,
Tomorrow is truth, she knows bitter;
Future was never faithful to her present.

Let there be no sequel

Yeah and you even wrote me songs.
I even wrote you songs!

You did everything, you said.
“Took you to Paris and Rome,
holy Ganges and the great wall.”

Yeah and you even made me laugh.
I even made you laugh!
 
I am so cruel, you said,
“What more do you want,” you asked
when I said, “something is missing.”
And you said I broke your heart,
When I left before you woke up.

Now driving down I feel, it’s a bit funny
All you had to do was love.

• User instruction on a pack of tampons, “Not to be used for diarrhea”
• On an iron carton, “Do not iron the clothes which is on your body”
• On a pack of noodles, “Edible content inside, not to be used for knitting”
• And this one is my favorite, on a pack of laxatives, “Please apply for casual leave before consumption.”

It all started when I picked up a pack of eggs from Spencer’s. Not just some ordinary eggs, they were ‘tan shell cage free near organic fresh’ eggs by Keggfarms Pvt. Ltd.

I found the pack very amusing so I read every bit of information that was there on it. On the front side were the words,

‘tan shell cage free near organic fresh’ and ‘safe delicious bright yolks.’

On the back of the carton they had mentioned the diet of the hens that laid those eggs which basically contained “high quality maze, rice, derivatives, soya, sunflower, limestone, vitamins and other organic plant materials.”

Each egg had a security hologram affixed on it and a related message on the carton was,

“Authentic Keggs have a security hologram affixed on each egg.”

Somewhere it also read,

“To prevent misuse destroy box after use.”

The line that amused me the most though was the user instruction on the pack,

“Best enjoyed as half boiled fried poached.”

Now let’s apply logic, do we really need to be told how to best enjoy our eggs? And what is a tan shell, what do they mean by cage free, what would be an unsafe egg or a non delicious egg? Eggs are pretty much just eggs, No?

One doesn’t have to go back too much in time; one doesn’t have to be in her 60s to be nostalgic about how simpler life was. It wasn’t too many years ago when, back there in my ancestral home, every morning we kids used to race to the small farm we had in our backyard. The race was about ‘who would be the first to wake up and release the hens from their cage and gather the eggs they laid.’ We would crawl into their cages and pick up the freshly laid eggs covered in feathers and sometimes smeared with chicken droppings. Our mothers and aunts would then make breakfast with those eggs.

It wasn’t so long ago that my mother had a milk man who would come with a goat to our door step and milk the goat on the spot and sell it to us. (Hey don’t look at me she just wanted to be sure he ain’t mixing any water.) Today on TV, they caution you against buying milk from milkmen. It is advised that you always buy ‘unadulterated‘ milk packaged in ‘authentic’ tetra packs.

Sure development and modernization have to give way to rural life but are we becoming more and more robotic and lacking in common sense in the process? I mean to instruct how best to eat eggs on the carton, isn’t that a bit too much?

We all know it all started when a certain lady sued a certain fast food company for damages because she spilled hot coffee on her lap. Apparently the coffee should have had come with a warning that it was hot or at the least, as it was argued by the winning lawyer, that it was ‘unexpectedly’ hot.

On a pack of American Gardens microwave popcorn they write,

“Open keeping pack away from your face, hot steam inside.”

Do we actually need to be told that something we just took out of the microwave would be hot and that we got to be careful? Is this about being more intelligent or dumb? Is it not true that if we start following instructions for every little small things we would become more and more dependent on somebody else remote controlling our lives? Is it yet another not so great thing we have imported from the west? Why must everything in the world take one common path to doom? Why are the lines distinguishing culture, lifestyle, markets, academics, love all getting blurred?

Sure some of the convergences are for good, like when we import the liberalized culture and lifestyle where men and women are treated equally and homosexuals and transgenders have the same right to unison and establish families or where sex work is legal or when we discard Indian style toilets (which by the way includes the open fields and railway tracks.)

But to imitate every silly or may be not so silly but irrelevant concepts is really not needed. For example we could have lived without replicas of every TV shows that MTV produces or absolutely dumb and uncreative game shows like, ‘Are you smarter than a 5th Grader.’

Perhaps it is just a way of making urban life easier. May be it is targeting at a section of consumers who may have actually no knowledge of how an egg look like when not cooked. Remember that scene from the Hema Malini starrer “Seeta aur Geeta.”

Spoilt dude goes to sabzi mandi and asks a vendor “what is this?” pointing towards a vegetable.

Vendor answers “Baingan”

Dude reacts in surprise, “accha baingan aisa hota hai kya?”

Dude had never before seen a whole uncooked baingan because somebody always did the grocery and cooking  for him.

Whatever it is I think the day isn’t too far when we would have such user instructions and cautionary statements on box of eggs, “Edible content inside. Break shell to eat” or “Break shell carefully, content may spill.”

Possible?

—

Cross posted on Desicritics.

I have been to quite a few of them myself and trust me I am not particularly proud. We go to Jim Corbett National Park in hopes to see Tigers, Gir forest to see Lions, Kaziranga to see Rhinos and so on. Each state, country and continent is famous for one or the other national park or wildlife sanctuary or whatever you call them.

We go all dressed up in track pants and leather jackets, hats and belts and boots. And we carry all sort of fancy bags and rucksacks and water bottles. And of course we shudder at the thought of not being able to bring back evidence of having seen the animal we went to see so we carry cameras and tripods and a whole bag full of lenses and so on.

When we reach the jungle we arm ourselves with all sorts of strategies and plans to ensure that we get to see that animal that we came to see.

First, our tour guides make it sure that we are conditioned to fear the prospect of actually seeing the animal we came to see by narrating to us dramatic stories of how only the night before that deadly animal was seen right next to the quarters we were staying and perhaps how it dragged a calf or a lamb inside the jungle. Then we would be told what not to do to make sure that the animal comes right out of its hiding and dances in front of our safari jeeps and then we would be told what to do if it happens to chase the jeep.

We love to create so much of drama and suspense around the whole deal. We like to think ourselves as great achievers if we manage to get a glimpse of the animal and we feel utterly depressed if the mission fails.

This one time when we went to Jim Corbett our tour guide told us a tigress which has just given birth to 3 cubs can always be seen around the fences with her cubs. And there were these two English guys who shared the dorm with us. They said, “We happen too see the tigress and her cubs more often than we get to see our driver.”

The English men thought he was being funny but we were absolutely heartbroken for we couldn’t understand why such an unforeseen tragedy had befallen upon our fate that the good tigress never seems to be interested in appearing before us?

The way we behave while on the look out is no less funny. Like in Jim Corbett the first day we went all around the dry jungle in a jeep. Our guide kept cautioning us to be quiet lest the tigers get scared and goes into hiding. But we wouldn’t listen. So no tiger luck. But we blamed the terrible noise that the jeep of 1930 model made for the failure and decided to go on an elephant safari the next day.

So there we were on the elephant back all alert and quiet. Our eyes constantly on the look out for the slightest sign – a tail somewhere perhaps or the tip of an ear. Then our guide said, “Look there tiger paws” and we all ‘bend over’ to closely see the great wonder that a tiger paw is and then shuddered at the fact that was being established by such marks – that a tiger just walked by this path. “Look tiger paw, whoa tiger paw” we whispered at each other’s ears.

I mean what is the big deal with a tiger paw. Tigers exist and they have feet and paws and when they walk they leave marks. What are we achieving by taking macro photographs of a tiger paw?

I mean what is this fun we have in ‘ogling’ at the animals. Imagine you are sitting in your living room watching that film popping that corn or gum and a bunch of funny looking creatures pointing at you and saying, “Hey look he is eating pop corn.” And the chorus would go, “Where where? There there. Ah yes, he is eating pop corn. Ooh he is eating pop corn.”

The Human beings on Jungle Safari at Jim Corbett

Don’t animals have right to privacy?

Why must we make these unwanted invasions in their private lives? What is this curiosity for how they walk and what they do on a regular day?

This other time when we were driving down from Ooty to Bangalore near Medikeri there was this whole herd of elephants and all the cars on the road either slowed down or pulled over and every body looked out of the windows and pointed at the elephants saying, “Hey look elephants.”

I couldn’t help doing an imaginary voice over for the one that was standing very close to our car giving a very disgusting look. “Ya I know I am an elephant, enough already now will you move it? Go go keep going you morons! You’d cause a traffic jam. And next time come in a limousine. Am sick of seeing these same old cars you people drive.”

I so could feel for that elephant, really.

And don’t even get me started on what might happen if you actually encounter a really fierce one like a tiger or something. I’ll tell you what happened on that elephant safari in Jim Corbett. After seeing the tiger paws we were convinced that the tiger was somewhere close. Suddenly we heard a roar, a tiger roared. My heart skipped a beat and I begin to enquire from our guide if tigers can climb on elephant’s back. He assured they can’t.

The tiger roared again and we were half dead. We all looked at each other, we looked around and finally we looked at the guide. We were totally bewildered, “Why he is not reacting to the roars?”

Then I noticed and we all smelled simultaneously – the roaring sounds were that of elephant farting. That was the closest we got in our mission of seeing tigers in Jim Corbett.

You see what I am saying. Try thinking from their point of view, you would realize what a silly and dumb activity it is to go looking for wildlife in these national parks.

I guess that would be for today, but before I sign off here’s another crazy thought – I can’t help wondering, why do sausages have such incredible resemblance with a certain part of the male human anatomy?

Do share your wildlife safari experiences.

In this road nothing excites me anymore,
nothing makes me happy,
nothing makes me sad.
I feel numb. Comfortably numb.
Oh dammit did you see,
in this road I lost my creativity.
All the emotions I feel are already made into songs,
this Floyd, that Cobain.

I don’t wanna walk this road no more,
here all I have is broken images, scattered thoughts.
I hallucinate, I see things that signify emptiness.
I see dry leaves, empty desert,
thorny bushes, dry ponds, hungry dogs.
I hear voices in my head,
they are all sad songs, poems,
they all have the same tunes
that of dullness.
Whatever I eat they all taste the same,
that of ocean.

In my sleep I dream I am naked.
Naked in a crowd, sharp eyes on me,
sometimes I try to hide,
sometimes I look straight in their eyes.
It’s my soul I bare,
but all they see is the body.

They come near me,
they touch me poke me turn me around,
lift me up and hang me upside down,
like a freak show on the highway,
they stop by for a while,
some leave too soon, some take time.

This road is not rough,
not worth treading anymore.
This road is perfect, perfection is a sad state of being.
Put the last brick on the wall, creativity ends there.
That last stroke of a brush in a more than perfect frame
is an end to the artist’s imagination.
A book when read and closed puts an end to knowledge,
we stopped learning the day we graduated,
we stopped loving the day we took the vows.

Why do I then want perfect love?
Why do I then run away from crossroads and mazes?
I don’t. I just solve them too soon and they disappear.
It pains when they disappear.
So I don’t bother anymore.

So where do I go from here?
Drift, the world is round anyway.
Alright then, I’ll see you at the end of the world.

There was a freak on the highway. What happened when they saw it? Some just passed by without even noticing, some stopped for a while, stared and wondered but left without going too near. Some were really adventurous, they pulled over, went near, they touched it felt it, spent some time trying to understand. What did you do?

The train is now chugging through the hills, going in and out of tunnels every now and then. Manoshi is tapping her foot to the rhythm of a certain song playing on her MP3 player and she is reading a book. There’s no one else in the compartment. As the train entered a tunnel again, she lifted her eyes from the book and stared at the darkness outside the window. A faint smile appeared on her face while she took a deep breathe in memory of the people who just got off the previous station.

It was a bunch of wonderful happy people who boarded the train some 2 stations back right after the train had taken a major turn. She had a lot of fun with them, she sang, danced, played, they had a band with them which played loud music, they had cameras which flashed every now and then, there were fire works, colors were being splashed around ribbons, shine and shimmer and glitters and so much more.

Now it’s all quiet and lonely, and peaceful. She is in anticipation of the next station.

Here we are
Two near strangers
In each other’s embrace.
The warmth of his breath
around my fragile heart
The strength of his arms
Guarding my vulnerable soul.
His hair brushing against my face,
His feet against my feet,
Lips against my lips,
Fingers crisscrossed.

Love this was not,
A little more than lust may be,
My few nights’ stand.
Lost.