And Today I Am Officially Missing You!

I miss my father today. And yes, the word "officially" is especially appropriate here. I will explain why. All of us have heard "mama's boy" and "daddy's girl" and other such permutations. Now, it's a little confusing in my case. I kind of make a funny category of " mama's girl and daddy's boy". And as it goes, I have never told my dad anything that involves emotion, especially about him. I don't know why he never says that he loves me or misses me and I don't either. And we both know that is just a facade. My mom asks me why I never say "love you" at the end of conversation to my Pa while I tell her that all the time. I do not know! That's just the way it is. I mean "I love you" when I tell him that I studied medieval architecture today (My dad is crazy about architecture). And he says"you laugh just like I do" (And he has a big, loud and open laughter; certainly not a compliment!!) and I know he is missing me. But today I broke our code. I actually called him up and told him " Sometimes I just miss you". There was silence and I thought ha! my luck! After 23 years I finally act like his "girl" and the phone line had to disconnect.

So yes, sometimes I miss my father. I miss being the little girl who sat on the grass while he worked on his plants and asked why flowers get to have different colors while all that leaves get is green! I wonder if he still goes to the beach where we used to walk and pick shells. He used to say to Ma, we are going to pick dreams. Yes, that's how is my father. I miss the times when I would cry in the bathroom because he has always been too strict. "Do it urself", "Don't ask for help" "I don't know about your friends, but you will go alone". That is also my father. Much later when I was arguing with him about something, he had said "The toughest part of being a father is to force those little hands that held your finger and learnt to walk to let go off you, so they can find their own world." I never understood. Most of my "growing up days" memories have my mom in them. My father always was a busy man. But in between his work and my school and 100 other activities, the times we spent were always so ... I don't even know how to put it... formative. It was like my mom carved me out of a stone but my father gave me the wings. In our conversations on the terrace, he would talk about stars and physics and I will ask him "all that is very good, but why are you so stubborn?" He would laugh and say "You are a rebel." I miss all of that. I miss my dad tickle me to wake me up on Sunday mornings. I miss sitting on his lap while he read his newspaper. I remember the times when he taught me to play badminton, how to catch fish (I suck at that!). He spoke to me about birds, about religion and literature, about india and indian politics, about relationships. I miss him when I am low, when I want him to stand by me and say just like he had said 8 yrs ago - "if your powder is dry, trust god!" I miss him when I am happy too. I miss running upto him and say " I did it" for that one nod and "good job" which is worth a million dollar in my world. I miss him when someone calls me "beta" (my dad calls me "babu" which in oriya means "Son"), when someone says "look down and walk" when I trip and fall, when I see a little girl sitting on her dad's soulders in grocery store, when I see a man's strong and confident stride, when I can't remember a word. And I miss him the most on days like today when I know I have done something wrong and I have this miserable need to stand in front of him and say that I am really sorry, I messed up and it will never happen again.

P.S- I got a mail from my dad, which had just this one line - difference between you and me is "sometimes" vs "always". So the phone line f***ed up but yoooo hooo pa heard me !!! *happy me*

A Few Years Ago...

I had to post this. I remember about 4 years ago when my brother called me up almost 100 times on my cell phone till I had to walk out of a class that I was sitting in and take the call. I was so annoyed, but before I could say anything, he said in a very calm voice - "Drop everything you are doing and read this piece. If you don't, you would miss one of the most brilliant piece of reporting ever". Back then I didn't blog. I have remained a big fan of Raj Kamal Jha ever since and would like everyone to read this if not for forming any opinion about the Gujrat issue, but just to appreciate and understand how powerful and moving can genuine reporting be! This is haunted, hungry and has a feel of someone still sobbing in those pages. Everytime I read it I wish, I really wish it weren't real.

I will use one of my favorite one liners for this one -

There is no such religion overriding morality.

-M.K. Gandhi

How much of it is "Jesus" and how much "the holy grail"?

Below is a not-too-grand yet intriguing article that I read on the front page of Times of India (20 Sep ' 06) . Something about the tone of the article made me think how superflous are these out-cries for bigger goals (approved / un-approved?) of various nature that men have concocted and so willingly die or kill for. Strangely some of the quotes by these criminals sound so humane! My conclusion at the end.


Swati Deshpande TNN

Mumbai: “Mazhab ke liye kiya tha. Ab lag raha hain dosto se fasaya gaya hoon,’’ Shahnawaz Qureshi said on Monday, minutes after special judge P D Kode declared him guilty of planting the bomb at Plaza Cinema that exploded and killed 10 innocent people. Speaking perhaps for the first time to a few in the media, he said he did go to Dubai and then from there was taken to some country whose name he did not know. “Gun dikhaya tha, yeh training thodi hain (We were shown guns, that is no training),’’ he claimed. “Maine kuchh nahin kiya (I did not do anything),’’ he started off. Then he said it was his friend, Javed Chikna (absconding accused in the 1993 blasts case), who took him to Dubai, saying “trip marne chal’’. There he “met Tiger Memon along with others’’ and was brainwashed into seeking revenge for the “Babri masjid demolition and the subsequent riots in which many Muslims died’’. “Mazhab ki baat thi. Aapke mazhab ki baat hoti toh aap kya karte (It was an issue of religion. What would you have done)?’’ he asked, revealing that his wife was a “Maharashtrian’’. Speaking in Hindi, he said he used to live in a hutment at the Nargis Dutt Colony at Bandra Reclamation which got burnt twice, once during communal riots and then more recently during an “accidental’’ fire. “My parents died during the trial. My father was a butcher and so was I from childhood at the Deonar abattoir. I never went to school,’’ he added. Qureshi is likely to give his statement before the court on the quantum of sentence on Tuesday. Asgar Mukadam was more philosophical. “Jo usko manzoor hain woh hoga. Mere chahane se kuchh nahin hoga (What god wants will happen, my wishes will make no difference),’’ he said. Having lunch with some of the co-accused, he had told TOI a few days back: “Ab kehne ke liye kya hain (What is there to say now)? I was forced (into the conspiracy), whether you believe it or not.’’ Mukadam was the first accused to get arrested in the case. He was shown as arrested on 18 March 1993, a few days after he was picked up.

"The ball is round and the game lasts 90 minutes. This is a fact! Everything else is pure theory."
- "Ron Lola Run" Movie
We are all human and it's just this one world. That is a fact. Everything else (religions, beliefs, philosophies, cults, nations, colors, the you that is seemingly so different from me..) is pure theory!

Relations and Functions

That was a rather long pause in my writing. One of the reason behind my infrequent visits which would be obvious to many is that most of the times I have no agenda; nothing to write about. I won't pretend that I do today, but just feel like posting.

So I spoke to Appu and Ramya the other day (after a while again). Something bothered me about the conversations I had had with them and I was mentioning this to Shuchi. Due to my phenomenal explaning skills, what she got out of that was close to, well, nothing! And now that I was at loss for topics, I slyly (and smartly!) decided to slip this in here in service of Madame Mehta and any one else who cares to read.

I made few very treasured friends during my undergrad years. Though each one of them was different from the other, I almost always found at least one common ground with all of them. Be it fun, career, relationship, fashion, music or anything else, we saw eye-to-eye on some point. To sum it up, I could "relate" to these few people at some level. In fact, if I were to go back again and re-live those days, I am certain I would choose exactly those people as my close friends. We have laughed, cried, fought and made up and before I realized our ways had parted. Indro and I moved to the US. Appu and Ramya started working in Hyderabad. Shuchi joined IIMB. Yashas and Abir were still in school. Rahul was working all over the place with Schlumberger. Our lives had changed form and we accepted it willingly. Three people that I was somewhat in touch with (with varied degrees of frequency) were Shuchi, Appu and Ramya. Indro doesn't count as 1. he lives in the same time zone as I do and 2. he freaks at the slightest mention of "lipstick" and other such girly affair, though I force him into it once in a while and we are digressing!!
So, what I was saying is that I have noticed a gradual change in my conversations with these three girls which is all very real and somewhat unsettling.

Shuchi, inspite of all these years and distance, still remains my closest friend. And we still relate to each other excellently (though she is the one to confirm it). But there certainly has been a change of scene. We talk more about each other's friends, lives, careers now. Earlier most of our conversations used to be around our ideas, opinions about things, our dreams, our fears or just us! The fact that most of the communication is conducted over the telephone and any one session doesn't last more than 25/30 mins could be the reason why we do not end up making conceptual and deeper-than-surface sort of conversations. Though what I am glad about is, there is this comfortable confidence in me that with her, I can pick up that thread sometime. And that is what I lack when it comes to Appu and Ramya. They have been different kinds of friends to me. Appu was always fun. We could go on talking about some random guy, music or painting and stories with happy endings. We did not philosophize, did not calculate right and wrong. Light, breezy and simple. That was her and a part of me. So we stood on that mutual ground and spent nights looking at stars and talking about poetry. And suddenly now, there is a disconnect. We barely speak and when we do, I get a strange feeling that our topics bore each other (rather harsh term to use, but well, we will go with it). Somewhere both of us have moved out of that common land. Our definitions of fun are no more the same. She doesnt talk about music and I do not mention it to her. When I talk of theatre, she seems pre-occupied. She talks of new guys in her life, about some common friends and that she is going home for Durga puja and I feel so utterly lost! I was telling her about my long weekend and mentioned that I went out lounging a number of times and she exclaimed, "you drink?" It's like we don't even know each other (I did not drink in my undergrad and Appu was our hero for that). Literature doesn't interest her any more. I miss the girl who used to be easily happy. Girl, who introduced me to "Madhushala" ; who never judged anyone or anything by a set of rules. But I guess I miss the other girl too. The "me" who could listen to complete nonsense and still revel in it just because it is with a friend. I wish the poised wallstreet head of mine goes away sometime so I can talk about gossip at Barista, bong guys and roommates instead of wine-tasting, oil embargo and picasso. To round it up, what we have is a mismatch in the spectrum of interests. I still love her and I still care for her but somehow I fail to see where she is coming from!
Ramya has always been the delicate bonita of the group. I do not remember her having any other interest than her love life which exists no more. To worsen the case, I have become obscenely impatient with relationship issues. And after all these years, I notice, Ramya has never spoken to me about anything else but that! Our conversations are short and hover around movies that I don't get to watch any more and fashion, of which we have two different definitions. It's like we live in two different worlds and for most part of it, we actually do!!!
Having said all that, all of them will always be my friends. For me that's the beauty of this. I am friends with these girls without an expectation of commonality. We lead different lives; so disparities are bound to surface. But the way these girls make me feel beyond all that is what I value the most. These are all wonderful women who taught me to be friends "even if we change". Go girls!!