41

My very best friend, Anupamaa turned 41 last Saturday.
41 !
I admire her for many reasons, and the thing she did on her birthday added to those reasons.
She got herself a tattoo!
Right across her forearm for all the world to see!
Isn't that cool or what?!

Peelu, Peeli aur Peellum!

This is the third consecutive year that they have visited the clump of trees right outside my window- this pair of orioles.

Orioles!

Flying around the branches, a flutter of bright gold and yellow, not just one, but a pair!

A pair, searching together for a home. A home to start a new family in a city where space happens to be a luxury even for little birds. And yet I imagined them setting forth on this seemingly daunting task with zeal, with a sense of adventure in their hearts, with the kind of excitement that grips you when you embark on a new journey. But at the same time this very zeal made them seem vulnerable. Vulnerable to all the big bad ugly crows out there, to the telephone wires and kite strings.

As I saw them wandering around the branches, a bunch of brightest yellows and black I couldn’t help but be thankful for how lucky I am. I had seen such birds only in wooded areas before and here they were, in my own backyard!

Eurasian Golden Orioles are found in many parts of the world. Those found in Europe are known to fly all the way to Africa in winter. I could not find out if the Indian versions are migrants or not. One website labeled them as Residents while some other site called them summer visitors. So I do not know where these little friends of mine go for the rest of the 8-9 months of the year.

I do not even  know how and when I got attached to these little birds. I didn’t want any harm to come to them. Sometimes I even had wild urges to snatch them from those unsafe surroundings and keep them close to me, away from harm.

And as they flew out of sight every day in the morning I found myself praying. Praying for their safety. Praying that they should come back home when the sun sets. And come they did! As if on cue they arrived as the sun sank in the horizon, settled on some branches and cried out in their distinctive voices. And every single time I rushed to the window and clapped at their return. When it was dark, they flew out somewhere else. I imagined they had a nest on a nearby tree somewhere.

There came a time when I was not at home during evenings when they returned. So I had not been able to see them for a while. But one lucky day I was home and I heard their call. I rushed to the window, this time with my handy cam. The male flew away, but the female lingered. I followed her movements till she almost flew into a sparrow sitting on another branch.

“A sparrow? No, that’s not a sparrow, its too big for a sparrow,” I thought.

“And what is that tinge of yellow on its back and neck?”

And then realisation dawned on me- OH MY GOD!! They had a baby!!! They actually had a baby!!

I felt like a grandmother, as I jumped and clapped around. My dear Peelu and Peeli had a Peellum!  

And so my Peelu, Peeli and Peellum go in search of food everyday, soon they will disperse, and Peellum will grow up and start a family of his/her own.

And I hope they come back next year, for yet another beginning!

(The author wishes to thank a dear friend for naming them :)

Whats the worst that could happen?

I shall not freak out this time, no

I shall not be jittery this time,

No biting nails, 

No pacing around the empty room,

No smsing ppl at unearthly hours 

asking for pep talks,

Afterall, 

zindagi mein kabhi exam 

di nahi hai kya? 

This ain't your first time,

Whats the worst that could happen? 

Of weaving baskets and stitching cultures

The following is an excerpt from a book I am currently reading. The author was what they call an organizer, working on social issues, trying to improve the lives of African Americans residing in Chicago. The author's work was focused on people living in the Altgeld Gardens Public Housing Project which was mainly a black community. Altgeld Gardens was sand witched between a garbage dump, a sewage water treatment plant and the Calumet river, in the waters of which swam fish deformed by the river's toxic waters. The people who lived there happened to be those who had lost their jobs to outsourcing and globalization.
Here is the author talking about jobs lost, lives wasted and cultures crushed:

"...the scene took me back to the markets of Indonesia: the hawkers, the leather workers, the old women chewing betlenut and swatting flies off their fruit with whisk brooms.
I'd always taken such markets for granted, part of the natural order of things. Now though, as I thought about Altgeld...I saw those Djakarta markets for what they really were: fragile precious things... "
"...For how could we go about stitching a culture back together once it was torn? How long might it take in this land of dollars?
Longer than it took a culture to unravel, I suspected. I tried to imagine the Indonesian workers who were now making their way to the sorts of factories that had once sat along the banks of the Calumet river, joining the ranks of wage labor to assemble the radios and sneakers that sold on Michigan Avenue. I imagined those same Indonesian workers ten, twenty years from now, when their factories would have closed down, a consequence of new technology or lower wages in some other part of the globe. And then the bitter discovery that their markets have vanished; that they no longer remember how to weave their own baskets or carve their own furniture or grow their own food; that even if they remember such craft, the forests that gave them wood are now owned by timber interests, the baskets they once wove have been replaced by more durable plastics. The very existence of the factories, the timber interests, the plastics manufacturer, will have rendered their culture obsolete; the values of hard work and individual initiative turn out to have depended on a system of belief that's been scrambled by migration and urbanization and imported TV reruns. Some of them would prosper in this new order. Some would move to America. And the others, millions left behind in Djakarta, or Lagos, or the West Bank, they would settle into their own Atlgeld Gardens, into a deeper despair. "

The author happens to Barack Obama and the excerpt is from his book Dreams from My Father.
It is indeed comforting to know that someone with so much power today has such sensitivity and honesty.

I Have Arrived

It was exactly a year ago...I was anxious about him shifting to Mumbai, I was thrilled from just the prospect of him shifting right here, in my very own city, praying that everything works out well and he comes here...Was so vulnerable then, things happening miles apart decided my mood for the day. I was nothing but a bundle of emotions bouncing around.

Its been a year, yes, and now finally I can talk about it and smile! There is no regret about all that happened, or didn't happen, no qualms about anything. I can talk/blog openly about it and not feel my stomach squirm. Because the period of intense numbness has gone. This numbness caused me to think that whatever happens, just let it happen, I don't give a damn! That I shall not be hurt or sad if some guy in the future doesn't like me back. I slipped into a period of insensitivity to banish all emotions and just be me, plain and bland. I cultivated this numbness so that I could make some kind of protective sphere around me; a sphere that made me feel I am immune to pain.

I shed that protective cocoon today.

I am ready to feel again! I am ready to set forth on another adventure, to take another plunge!

This post is a result of a conversation I had with a friend of mine the other day. It all started when he realised my parents were quite cool about me traveling alone at night. (By night I mean 11.00 to 12.00 pm types). Well first of all let me go on record by saying they are ok with it only if they know who I am with, exactly where I am and why I have gone there and how I intend to come back. If I am with people I don't know too well, the question of me asking them permission to stay out late doesn't arise because I myself usually decide to go home early.

Anyway, so he asked me how safe it is for a girl to travel late night in Mumbai, which made me think. I told him that I have in fact had a few hassles while traveling alone. I didn't elaborate much and I could see he couldn't figure out the extent of these 'hassles", but he certainly seemed shocked and concerned. So I shall elaborate some of these incidents here in this post. Its not easy to talk about them here for all to read but I think I should do this because people must know. When have I ever told a guy friend of mine I had a hard time traveling in the bus or walking on the road? Its always your girl friends you talk to and avoid such conversations with guy friends. Isn't that wrong? They should be made aware of it, in case they aren't already. So here are a few experiences:

Dhakkas: The 'dhakaas' especially on railway staircases, and roads are common, so are in a BEST bus when the driver hits the breaks suddenly. They usually take advantage of the swaying motion of the bus to brush against you.  Another thing they do is, if you are sitting at the outer edge of a BEST seat, while getting off, they brush past you or stand in such a way that the middle of their legs brush your shoulders. 

Name calling: A very common phenomenon, you are called all sorts of things as they pass you by. 

Staring: Urrghh, its one of the sickest! Even if they are sitting ahead of you in a bus, they actually do an almost 180 degree turn and stare at you like you are an animal at a zoo. 

One of the worst is when they don't touch you at all, but touch themselves. While sitting beside you in a bus if they have a bag or something, they can easily hide the fact from the rest of the passengers that their zipper is down. This incident has happened so many times that I have lost count. That's the reason why most women would kill to sit on the "Ladies Seat" in a bus, since it ensures that the passenger next to you will almost certainly be a woman.

I suppose the scariest time was when I was traveling in a train from Andheri to CST, I had to catch another train from CST to go to Amboli for a college excursion. It was about 8.30 pm and since I was traveling in the opposite direction of the rush hour crowd (which travels from CST to up North like Andheri)  the train wasn't crowded. So at Sandhurst road the train compartment completely emptied except me so that I was the sole occupant. Some guy got in, sat on the next row, pulled down his zipper and...

Even though I was not touched physically, (THANK GOD FOR THAT) it was the scariest and sickest train ride I have ever been on.  

I remember very well that mom had advised me against traveling to CST alone, because the train will not be crowded, and hence, unsafe.The rest of my college friends were going to meet at Dadar and would proceed to travel together from there to CSTvia Central Line. But since I live in Andheri I had a direct train to CST via Hrbour Line I decided not to meet them at Dadar.  I think this happens to be the only time I didn't heed mom's advice. She has always known which is the safest route since she must have gone through all this herself. I have made a note in my mind to always consult her and learn from her experiences. 

I can guarantee each and every girl has gone through a harrowing experience such as this, or sadly, worse than these, unless she travels only by private transport. 

I have noticed that most of these situations have arisen either in broad day light or during evening, not necessarily late night. But this does not in any way prove that traveling by night is safer or something, simply because the frequency by which we have travelled by night is less than in usual rush hours, so the two cannot be compared. 

Another thing I have noticed is that such incidents occur, surprisingly, when you wear salwaar kameez, with most of your body covered. Jeans and tops don't elicit such reactions as much as a salwaar kameez does. I don't really know why, but one possibility is you seem more vulnerable in Indian clothes whereas western clothes somewhere in the deep recesses of their minds make you seem independent and harder to dominate. Its just a theory, I dunno. 

Anyway, that's all I suppose. And let me go on record that neither of my girl friends or I have been daunted by it as such, we have grown up in such a world, have taken it in our stride and have learnt to walk on the streets, occasionally raising our voices and teaching the assholes a lesson.

I got drunk for the first time during the New Year's party. Well, I had been high before, on my birthday treat for instance, but it lasted for only a few minutes. I only had an uncontrolled fit of laughter at that time, that’s all. But this new year’s I was high for hours.  Don’t really know what I did during that period, but I remember that I blabbered a lot, tried to dance but couldn’t because if I moved too much it hurt my head. Then my best friend and I moved aimlessly from room to room arm in arm and talked crap. At some point we ended up in the balcony where we slumped and cried. I don’t know why exactly I cried, but I think I saw her crying and I joined her. I sent some random sms-es to people wishing them a happy new year and telling them I was drunk. Then I received an  sms from a good friend of mine. He happens to be my ex’s room mate. So I replied back wishing him a happy new year and telling him I was drunk and asking him how my ex is. After that I happily fell off to sleep.

Urrghhh why did I do that? Why did I have to send that sms? I felt amazingly stupid when I was back in my senses. We don't talk about my ex ususally, and I didn't feel good about inquiring about him out of the blue. And I hope I haven’t spoilt my friendship with my good friend. 

I didn’t feel alright at all the next day. So I have realized getting drunk is not for me. It gives you this feeling of shallow, meaningless purposelessness the next morning which has just put me off the whole thing. I don’t want to be drunk again, not anytime soon anyway. I don’t regret doing it though, since being talli was one of those things for me that I wanted to do at least once in my life (that list also includes bungee jumping, paragliding among other things J ) . But now that I have done it, I’m not keen on doing it again.