This is no ordinary story.It's one of those tales that can be spread out over years. an epic journey with an awesome beginning, and a brilliant end. But no; this one doesn’t involve a yellow umbrella. Kids, this is not the story of how I met your mother.
This, is the story of how I met MY mother.
Well, technically, I met my mother some twenty-two years in a spotlessly clean bright-white hospital room somewhere in the city of Bombay, when the world was actually sepia-hued, and kitsch was contemporary.
The baby’s high pitched wails had rent the corridors of the cold and composed neon-lit ward, raking through like thin, long fingernails on a dusty black board. The silver gleamed, as the surgical knife was raised, and with the finesse and clarity of an orchestra conductor, the doctor did the deed. The cord was cut, and mother and child were separated. The mother was she, the baby was me.
But I was wrong. The story of HIMMM didn’t end there. It went on, gloriously and beautifully. unlike its counterpart which sucked after season three. I, and my sister, for that matter, had been meeting our mother every single day of our life, unaware of all that she had been doing for us. Our clothes were cleaned, our faces washed, and hot delicious food laid out in front of us. We just thought it magically appeared, never giving her the due where she deserved. This note is for her, a woman. A matriarch, a daughter, a wife, an aunt, a sister in law, a sister, a niece, a friend, an agony aunt, an icon, and most importantly, a mother. OUR mother.
Mom. Mummy . Maa. Mum. Amma. Ayee. Mother. We’ve said it once and we are saying it again.
This one’s for you.
Dear Mom,
Today you celebrate fifty fabulous years of your life, tirelessly spent taking care of your family and friends, as a daughter, sister, wife, friend, aunt and ultimately, as a mother.
They might say that a child gives birth to a mother, but rightly so, only a mother can give birth to a child.
now, it’s time for you to sit back and relax, and read on as we celebrate fifty different reasons on why we love you so much :
1. You have always been a friend, philosopher and guide, and we gladly accept it.
2. You see the good in most people, and bring out the best in them
3. For tackling our bad behavior with a smile, and a sigh.
4. For tackling our worst behavior with a few whacks on the back. :)
5. For your pure heart, and the pure ghee you put on the hot rotis you served us for lunch every day when we came back from school, tired and worn out.
6. We know you will always be there for us and we can always count on you for everything, and anything.
7. For being an amazing mother, a loving sister, a caring daughter and a wonderful aunt!, and most of all, a brilliant human being!
8. For all your (occasional) melodrama, which adds some tadka to our lives, and makes Ekta Kapoor awe in amazement, and hold up a pen and paper.
9. For believing in us more than we did ourselves!
10. For believing that Mardi Gras beads were lucky charms.
11. For teaching us the importance of faith, during interviews, exams and otherwise. ;)
12. You can still make good friends - and become best friends with them in a few days!
13. You say you get drunk on one sip of wine,.
14. For being real and not really caring what colour your hair is or if your feet are pedicured.
15. For being the only sports champion in a family of lethargic, “I-don’t-have-a-sngle-athletic-bone-in-my-body” likeminded-folks of a family.
16. You work out 5 days a week. That's 5 days more than everybody else in the family combined. Keep it up!
17. Chocolate cake. Pineapple cake. Marie biscuit cake. Brownies. Mud Pie. Bread and Butter pudding. You can make any pastry chef cry out in amazement.
18. For all the childhood birthday parties where you had to feed our many hungry, cranky, snotty friends, samosa, chips, and a birthday cake piece, apiece.
19. For all the colorful gems you lovingly put on our clown-shaped birthday cakes, arduously baked in the oven, and decorated with the fluffiest of homemade icing, chocolate puffs and cocoa crème.
20. Because you are a terrible liar and cannot keep a secret. That counts for all those failed birthday surprises, or “Don’t-tell-anyone-else-till-I-am-sure” acts.
21. For valuing education - not just for your own kids but even for the less fortunate .
22. Because you do what you can to make a difference.
23. Because you dance, like there’s no tomorrow, even when everyone else is looking.
24. For your bargaining skills.
25. Dal makhani. Rajma. Bhindi. Pasta. And other such awesome things that you can whip up with your eyes closed, making our lunch boxes and tiffins the envy of everyone around us. We still love all those covetous looks.
26. For the long head massages and how they magically make aches and pains disappear.
27. Because you love unlimited buffets as much as we do.
28. For all your successes in the stock market - from saas-bahu to Sensex, what a transition!
29. For your marketing skills that could put Steve Jobs and Larry Page to shame.
30. For never stopping learning new things. Who says education ends with college? She doesn’t.
31. For being an adventurer at heart, Kashmir to Kanyakumari, She’s been there all.
32. For loving traveling like it was Rajesh Khanna from the 70s.
33. For loving Facebook like it was Rajesh Khanna from the 70s.
34. Because whenever you can, you forgive and forget, or forget and forgive, in that order.
35. For giving us company on the many walks to Siddhi Vinayak, and walking herself, when any of us had an exam, an interview or even an appointment.
36. for being the most tech-savvy mom around - by being glued to the iPad all the time. And she didn’t know how to switch the computer on, till like a month ago.
37. For force feeding us breakfast every morning, because frankly, breakfast means “to break the fast”.
38. for being the It-girl among your friends; the queen bee of the society clique. You've achieved something that none of us could! We trapaised the lower rungs of the social ladder, after all.
39. The cake may have 50 candles, but you will always be young at heart and in spirit. Ask us, she’s more active than the two of us put together.
40. For trying to read Harry Potter, and reaching all the way up to King’s Cross, just so that she will have something to discuss with us. She never got on the Hogwarts Express, but at least she tried.
41. For listening; even when we had nothing to say.
42. For giving up on her many dreams, including the likes of being a doctor; and a top notch one that too, just so that ours see the light of day.
43. for standing stall, when we felt short. For not caring what people thought, and going out and being herself anyway.
44. For doing all those things that mothers do, day in and day out, but only much better and much cooler.
45. For being so proud of us, and making sure that every merit, and mark is given its due, by telling the whole world about it, or anyone who would listen. Which, by the way, when she is talking, includes the whole world.
46. For actually wanting to know how our day went.
47. For sending us long, arduously typed emails, whilst we were away, telling us that she missed us; without expecting a reply or ten.
48. For trying to improve her English diction; right from pronouncing Luxury to McDonalds; and even pronouncing pronunciation.
49. for dreaming for us, and dreaming big, when we didn't feel like dreaming anymore.
50. For being OUR mother. We are pretty cool at being the best kids, after all. J
This one’s for you, Mom. We might complain, we might groan, we might grumble, and we even might moan. But we love you more than you can ever imagine!
Happy Birthday, enjoy your 50th one. :D
Monday, June 20, 2011
Sunday, May 1, 2011
A Class, apart.
Great stories are made of great beginnings. They usually begin a long time ago, in a place far far away. This one was no different. It began a little less than five years ago, in one of the many city hamlets, the only one without a train station to its name.
Well maybe, it was slightly different.
Somewhere in the sunshine months of 2006, sixty aspiring architects met in a freshly whitewashed classroom, with low ceiling fans, and even lower standards, with great expectations and greater dreams. Dreams; to build bridges and museums, inserts and installations, and curvilinear walls.
We were young, and stupid, resolved to ultimately just make unresolved matchbox buildings.
But we tried our luck nevertheless.
Fifteen days, and a workshop later, we were ready to face the college, if not the world. Sadly, that didn’t last long, and we were broken down brick by brick, bats and closers, of queens and kings.
The five years hence might have been a rollercoaster ride, with a millions ups and downs, but I am sure none of us could ever have thought of better company, to smuggle glasses of bhang in the Varanasi Ghats, or to break into a cemetery in Hampi, to travel in tam tams, and eat tadgolas in Palghar, or dance in the rains in Matheran, to stand guard in the seedier by lanes of Delhi, to wolf whistle with the Chandigarh boys, or to dream collectively about a missed trip to Rajasthan.
We did everything, make up pretentious cubes that defined us, interpreted songs that probably didn’t have any meaning in the first place, and designed inserts in the zoo, when all that the animals needed was to be set free.
We designed lean to roofs and pitched roofs in the span of one night, and pitched advertisements for hybrid products in pairs to lean on. We cut soap, wood and our hands, and made thermacol versions of windows that would never be used. We measure drew temples, and homes, and a million other things, in times when all what we needed was to measure draw our own lives. We made pairs, and broke them, gossiped and bitched behind closed doors and closed ears. We self taught ourselves the staircase, and drafted each truss at least twice. We glass traced in bulk without getting caught and created auditoriums out of thin air, or our email inboxes. ;)
We created services portfolios overnight, and made concept models in the car.we wrote in CAPS on tracings, with an aim to fill them up, and sometimes we scrawled on a single page in TOS class, while the notebook was forgotten back home.
We forged and gorged, signed and dined as a class, and paid the price, for both. we compared results and designs, We designed for villages that were happy with the way they were, and got a free TV show out of a site visit, we danced and sang our way through fourth year, and ended those memorable nine months from June to January with a maternity hospital. We spent an entire day in the hot sun as punishment, drinking coffee and tea, secretly happy that classes were cancelled for the day, and spent hours in lectures, staring blankly at the blackboard, trying to figure out what the BM diagram actually meant. we photocopied entire notebooks a week before exams, doodles and all, and memorized answers to problems, we sincerely secret Santa-ed every December, and religiously dressed in red, whites and greens.
We trudged through the fifth, battling every riiiight with a wrong, and every fight with a song. And then it was done, the theses were shut, and the folios were folded.
A class that was a class apart, we say civilizations come and go, both, in our history lessons and otherwise. We made them cry, we made them moan. And more than once, we even made them leave. But newer ones came, and “history” repeated itself.
The last five years may seem like a blur, an amalgamation of submissions and juries, but over these years, we have grown, and we have evolved. We came, we saw and finally, after half a decade of torture, we conquered. The academy might not have taught me what architecture is, and I am not even sure whether ill ever know, but it taught me what friendship is, and for that, I thank you. We are the best, from the rest.
For the last five years well spent, class of ’11, this one’s for you.
Well maybe, it was slightly different.
Somewhere in the sunshine months of 2006, sixty aspiring architects met in a freshly whitewashed classroom, with low ceiling fans, and even lower standards, with great expectations and greater dreams. Dreams; to build bridges and museums, inserts and installations, and curvilinear walls.
We were young, and stupid, resolved to ultimately just make unresolved matchbox buildings.
But we tried our luck nevertheless.
Fifteen days, and a workshop later, we were ready to face the college, if not the world. Sadly, that didn’t last long, and we were broken down brick by brick, bats and closers, of queens and kings.
The five years hence might have been a rollercoaster ride, with a millions ups and downs, but I am sure none of us could ever have thought of better company, to smuggle glasses of bhang in the Varanasi Ghats, or to break into a cemetery in Hampi, to travel in tam tams, and eat tadgolas in Palghar, or dance in the rains in Matheran, to stand guard in the seedier by lanes of Delhi, to wolf whistle with the Chandigarh boys, or to dream collectively about a missed trip to Rajasthan.
We did everything, make up pretentious cubes that defined us, interpreted songs that probably didn’t have any meaning in the first place, and designed inserts in the zoo, when all that the animals needed was to be set free.
We designed lean to roofs and pitched roofs in the span of one night, and pitched advertisements for hybrid products in pairs to lean on. We cut soap, wood and our hands, and made thermacol versions of windows that would never be used. We measure drew temples, and homes, and a million other things, in times when all what we needed was to measure draw our own lives. We made pairs, and broke them, gossiped and bitched behind closed doors and closed ears. We self taught ourselves the staircase, and drafted each truss at least twice. We glass traced in bulk without getting caught and created auditoriums out of thin air, or our email inboxes. ;)
We created services portfolios overnight, and made concept models in the car.we wrote in CAPS on tracings, with an aim to fill them up, and sometimes we scrawled on a single page in TOS class, while the notebook was forgotten back home.
We forged and gorged, signed and dined as a class, and paid the price, for both. we compared results and designs, We designed for villages that were happy with the way they were, and got a free TV show out of a site visit, we danced and sang our way through fourth year, and ended those memorable nine months from June to January with a maternity hospital. We spent an entire day in the hot sun as punishment, drinking coffee and tea, secretly happy that classes were cancelled for the day, and spent hours in lectures, staring blankly at the blackboard, trying to figure out what the BM diagram actually meant. we photocopied entire notebooks a week before exams, doodles and all, and memorized answers to problems, we sincerely secret Santa-ed every December, and religiously dressed in red, whites and greens.
We trudged through the fifth, battling every riiiight with a wrong, and every fight with a song. And then it was done, the theses were shut, and the folios were folded.
A class that was a class apart, we say civilizations come and go, both, in our history lessons and otherwise. We made them cry, we made them moan. And more than once, we even made them leave. But newer ones came, and “history” repeated itself.
The last five years may seem like a blur, an amalgamation of submissions and juries, but over these years, we have grown, and we have evolved. We came, we saw and finally, after half a decade of torture, we conquered. The academy might not have taught me what architecture is, and I am not even sure whether ill ever know, but it taught me what friendship is, and for that, I thank you. We are the best, from the rest.
For the last five years well spent, class of ’11, this one’s for you.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Layers.
The bread, honey roasted sweet
Golden brown, lined, like a Brazilian tan.
A carve of tomato,
Like a seesaw wedge,
Goes to and fro,
Like a tennis match.
The cucumber crunch,
Like ice to a parched throat.
A smidgeon of sauce
Jalapeños, exotic,
Like the sound it makes in your mouth.
An orgasmic blur of spice and salt.
A slathering of mayonnaise
A sliver of olive
A slice of roast chicken,
Lush and tender.
A cut of meat,
Medium rare.
This ménage de trios
of multigrain, meat and me
Ah, these layers three.
One’s mine, another’s yours.
The third one’s the one the world can’t see.
Golden brown, lined, like a Brazilian tan.
A carve of tomato,
Like a seesaw wedge,
Goes to and fro,
Like a tennis match.
The cucumber crunch,
Like ice to a parched throat.
A smidgeon of sauce
Jalapeños, exotic,
Like the sound it makes in your mouth.
An orgasmic blur of spice and salt.
A slathering of mayonnaise
A sliver of olive
A slice of roast chicken,
Lush and tender.
A cut of meat,
Medium rare.
This ménage de trios
of multigrain, meat and me
Ah, these layers three.
One’s mine, another’s yours.
The third one’s the one the world can’t see.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Ex.
This ecstasy, pure and tainted,
A sheet of white, with a splotch of red.
A single dew drop, on gossamer wings,
A stiletto heel,
cherry flavoured lip gloss,
or platinum plated rings.
It creeps up,
Bit by bit, higher
like mercury brought to boil,
a parasite, a stalagmite,
just a point of desire.
A love drug,
Inhale, dream, repeat,
Hallucinations and helixes,
Of Spirals and lines,
Taken with a long stemmed glass of
Pinot noir or Merlot wine.
Creating paradigms,
Or paradise within
Neither gained, nor lost
Where only fools rush in.
To covet or covert
To digress or regress.
To feel the sparkle,
To see the warmth.
A piece of dark chocolate,
Or silk satin sheets.
A fresh strawberry,
simple lavender sticks,
can it be bound somewhere
between a sonnet of sixty words,
Or an epic of six million?
Or three single words, or maybe nothing at all.
Maybe its just me, or maybe its
You and your gorgeous behaviour,
Does every love story have an end?
Or does every end have a love story?
I love the way I look at you
I love the way I love you.
Its lust, that I am in love with,
Or maybe I lust for love.
Ah, this feeling of misery,
Or ecstacy.
Else maybe it’s just a plain
Case of idiosyncrasy.
A sheet of white, with a splotch of red.
A single dew drop, on gossamer wings,
A stiletto heel,
cherry flavoured lip gloss,
or platinum plated rings.
It creeps up,
Bit by bit, higher
like mercury brought to boil,
a parasite, a stalagmite,
just a point of desire.
A love drug,
Inhale, dream, repeat,
Hallucinations and helixes,
Of Spirals and lines,
Taken with a long stemmed glass of
Pinot noir or Merlot wine.
Creating paradigms,
Or paradise within
Neither gained, nor lost
Where only fools rush in.
To covet or covert
To digress or regress.
To feel the sparkle,
To see the warmth.
A piece of dark chocolate,
Or silk satin sheets.
A fresh strawberry,
simple lavender sticks,
can it be bound somewhere
between a sonnet of sixty words,
Or an epic of six million?
Or three single words, or maybe nothing at all.
Maybe its just me, or maybe its
You and your gorgeous behaviour,
Does every love story have an end?
Or does every end have a love story?
I love the way I look at you
I love the way I love you.
Its lust, that I am in love with,
Or maybe I lust for love.
Ah, this feeling of misery,
Or ecstacy.
Else maybe it’s just a plain
Case of idiosyncrasy.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Closet, space
Come into my parlour, said the spider to the fly.
The spider was my closet, the fly was I.
Layers of memories, stashed into space
A ménage de trois of times,
When I was stashed across space.
A sweatshirt of a grad school never visited,
A crumpled love note,
A long forgotten lust list
All dull and bland
Seven cutters with their blades missing,
The unsettling plastic rust.
A paper bag, from a time long gone,
Residual memories,, seems like an eon.
A biscuit box from Harrods,
With stones from the sea.
Letters from someone,
Name and address withheld.
A dozen pencil stubs, worn out and dark
Translated into words, over crumpled love notes.
The lone vodka bottle, empty and drained,
Murky memories of times ,hazy and strained.
The baby book, with pictures of circa past,
When the world was black and white,
Or spotted and sepia.
A pin from Paris,
Another from Rome,
And a broken crystal that
Hung around at home.
Spectacles, that I use,
When I don’t want to see,
A watch box, that doesn’t tell the time,
Stuck in space,
like superglue slime.
A coke bottle with coke,
Where coke isn’t coke.
Colour pencils all wrong,
Where green is blue
And red is brown.
A checklist that doesn’t matter,
With points that make no sense,
A mixed tape,
With old love songs gone blank,
A rubber tarantula,
And a plastic snake.
Two sets of playing cards,
Without the king of hearts.
My architectural instruments,
Tattered and astray.
A dozen old diaries,
With entries until May.
Nothing more for me here,
All distant memories, these.
i close the door shut,
To my mind, and I am free,
With a broken promise to mom,
To clean thee.
The spider was my closet, the fly was I.
Layers of memories, stashed into space
A ménage de trois of times,
When I was stashed across space.
A sweatshirt of a grad school never visited,
A crumpled love note,
A long forgotten lust list
All dull and bland
Seven cutters with their blades missing,
The unsettling plastic rust.
A paper bag, from a time long gone,
Residual memories,, seems like an eon.
A biscuit box from Harrods,
With stones from the sea.
Letters from someone,
Name and address withheld.
A dozen pencil stubs, worn out and dark
Translated into words, over crumpled love notes.
The lone vodka bottle, empty and drained,
Murky memories of times ,hazy and strained.
The baby book, with pictures of circa past,
When the world was black and white,
Or spotted and sepia.
A pin from Paris,
Another from Rome,
And a broken crystal that
Hung around at home.
Spectacles, that I use,
When I don’t want to see,
A watch box, that doesn’t tell the time,
Stuck in space,
like superglue slime.
A coke bottle with coke,
Where coke isn’t coke.
Colour pencils all wrong,
Where green is blue
And red is brown.
A checklist that doesn’t matter,
With points that make no sense,
A mixed tape,
With old love songs gone blank,
A rubber tarantula,
And a plastic snake.
Two sets of playing cards,
Without the king of hearts.
My architectural instruments,
Tattered and astray.
A dozen old diaries,
With entries until May.
Nothing more for me here,
All distant memories, these.
i close the door shut,
To my mind, and I am free,
With a broken promise to mom,
To clean thee.
Friday, January 21, 2011
the lust list.
A talk with D,
A day for me,
A poker face,
With a mask I choose,
The perfect game,
Where I never lose.
A thousand words a week,
A pint a day.
People who listen,
To what I have to say.
A glass half full
A gorgeous half,
And one more chance to hear
A’s infectious laugh.
A walk with B,
A May with Di,
An SLR,
For far away things to see.
A lust list,
To be sorely missed.
And all the things money can buy,
Not just the gist.
A day for me,
A poker face,
With a mask I choose,
The perfect game,
Where I never lose.
A thousand words a week,
A pint a day.
People who listen,
To what I have to say.
A glass half full
A gorgeous half,
And one more chance to hear
A’s infectious laugh.
A walk with B,
A May with Di,
An SLR,
For far away things to see.
A lust list,
To be sorely missed.
And all the things money can buy,
Not just the gist.
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