You and Me

2 comments Posted by Wordsmith at 12:00 PM

You ask me if I am doing this because I didn't get any other job
You ask me if I like being sadistic and screwing my own career
You politely tell me that recession has affected a lot of people and all of them did find other jobs after a while, and you look pointedly at me
You ask me what my salary was four years back, what my salary was two years back and what my salary is now. I answer politely.
You wonder rather loudly if my chidlren's futures aren't doomed anyway
You ask me HOW i can see any kind of change happening in two years when no significant change has happened in 64 years.
You ask me how me, a compulsive pessismist, can be so optimistic about the lives of random children who would have ended up being criminals anyway
You say with a smirk, "well they would have been terrorists without you, now they will be small time criminals. big difference"
You tell me that my influence can never be so great that it will make the 7 hours that i spend with the children more important than the 17 hours they spend at home with abusive parents in broken homes, living in penury, listening to bad language and looking at people doing terrible things
Me?
I smile and say Sorry and Thank you.
Sorry for you that you can't see what I see
Sorry that you are positive about things like getting a raise, getting an auto, getting a pretty spouse but not positive about what I am extremely positive about
Sorry that you think I am a loser.
and Thank you.
A million times
Because this conversation just makes my resolve stronger
Makes me feel more positive
Makes me want to work so much harder to give my all to these children
Makes me want to work my posterior off, send my kids to college, come back to you in another 6 years and say "in your face bugger"
Makes me want to work harder, just so I can prove you wrong. (I know. I am cheap. And even if I fail I will know that I have tried)
Which wise man first discovered reverse psychology?
R.E.S.P.E.C.T Sir
:)

 

An ode to a ten year old relationship.

2 comments Posted by Wordsmith at 2:54 AM

Chennai and me. We have a special story together. A love story. One which began ten years ago on a hot, humid and oppressive day in April 2001. And like all corny love stories it began with both of us hating the sight of each other and it ends with us professing undying love for each other. Oh well, at least me professing my undying love for Chennai.

I was 14. An enormously stupid, extremely immature, fat and lazy kid. The maximum Tamil I knew was 'pasikardhu' and 'naaye'. The former so I could tell relatives whose houses I visited when I came to Chennai that I was hungry and had to be fed and the latter reserved solely for cousins and the sibling when they cheated while playing UNO. Yes. I was painfully retarded, mentally and socially.
I had never felt the need to know more Tamil, and it was a blessing, as a grin and 'pasikardhu' was the maximum interaction I could have with relatives.

When I moved lock stock and barrel to Chennai in 2001, I hated it. With a fervor that would put the hate Jayalalitha feels for Karunanidhi to shame. I hated the weather. (ermm not that I had lived in Switzerland all along but Gujarat is less humid and has extremely pleasant evening and night temperatures). I hated the people. (Oh, what an Amit I was. 'What? People don't talk Hindi kya? abey yaar. kya yaar'). I hated my parents (I was 14 and at that age you are kind of programmed to hate your folks. It's the done thing. I thought since I was adopted my parents wanted to leave me in Chennai so they could live happily with my elder sister in Jamnagar). I hated the school I had just gotten admission in. (Sri Sankara Vidyashramam. 'nuff said). I hated my classmates. (Conversations like, "Hey yenna di. You are brahmin a? Why you are not wearing pottu. Does your father wear a white thread? Ayyo. You should not sit next to boys or talk to them" made no sense whatsoever to me). I pretty much hated life.

At nights I fantasised about catching a train and running away to Mumbai or something and become a blind beggar. "I hope my parents find me and see me begging on Mumbai station one day. That will teach them a lesson," I used to think. In my defense, I was enormously stupid. Really enormously so. I already mentioned that.

It was a slow transition. From a phase of absolute hatred to tolerance to indifference to a perfunctory like to an absolute and unconditional love for you we have come a long way haven't we Chennai? The 2001 me cannot believe that the 2011 me defends Chennai passionately and argues daily with people who say 'Chennai suxx yaar'.

Dear Chennai, You have given me so much I am not sure how I should start thanking you. You have made me what I am today. I have met all my best friends for life here. I have grown, as a person (ermm mentally and not physically). I am more patient, less short tempered and enjoy the heat so much so that if the mercury goes below 20 degrees I whine. I have found love. I have lost love. I have seen the depths of sorrow and the heights of happiness. Won some battles, lost some. Won some friends, lost few.

From not knowing a word of Tamil to saying, “Naan oru nermayaana pathrigayaalar. Yenna yedai poda paakadhenga” I have come a looooong long way. I can even read now. (Still halfway through mariyada raman in mahathaana kadhaigal)

I know you better the back of my hand. It is my modest boast that I know all the buses to all the routes in the city. From Stanley hospital in Royapuram to crocodile bank trust on ECR I know you. I really do. And the more I knew you the more I loved you. I continue to detest the smell of jasmine and the smell of fresh filter coffee but I identify you with that and tolerate it, just as you tolerate my sudden lapses into Hindi now and then, my odd #kogul jokes and my terrible Tamil pronunciation. I know the temples which give the best sakkarai pongal and the temples which give the best puliyodharai. I know the temples which have the lecherous sastrigal and advice people against going there.

It is here that I went from being a staunch believer who visited the temple every week and prayed every single day to an agnostic who was too scared to deny the existence of God to an almost evangelical atheist. From Sankara Vidyashramam, to engineering to information technology to journalism to a reporter not only have you defined my path from fervently religious to blatantly irreligious but also given me all the education which really matters. I feel a sense of stupid pride when I tell people that all the degrees I have, have been acquired in Chennai.

I love your beaches. They calm me down in ways that it is impossible to express. I have spent hours on your various beaches just staring into the sea and never wanting to leave. I love your kotthu parotta. I love your molagga bhajji and proudly took every new comer to the city to the beach so they could taste your mollaga bhajji. I keep telling people that a city without a sea shore is a city without character. In that sense I am glad I am not going to god awful Delhi or Bleaahhhangalore. I m going to a city which closely resembles you geographically but is light years ahead of you in all other senses. Mumbai. I hope you are half as good to me as Chennai has been.

Chennai. It's amazing how you have grown on me. From wanting to go back every single day to never wanting to leave this place it has been beautiful and wholly satisfying love story.
I love you Chennai and I always will. Hopelessly and compulsively. I go to Mumbai but my heart shall always remain with you. I might have an occasional fling with the city of Mumbai but do know that despite my infidelities I love you the most. My relationship with you will probably be the only long distance relationship I will ever have. One day I shall come back to you for I know that I belong in a city south of the Vindhyas and I hope it is you.

So long Chennai and on this lovely, overcast, rainy yet oppressive day in April 2011, this enormously stupid, slightly immature, rotund and still lazy woman bids you farewell. I haven't changed much have I? But, therein lies your beauty. Despite having changed me for the better in so many ways, you left my core untouched. And THAT is why I belong to you and you belong to me.

 

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A tragedy called Life

2 comments Posted by Wordsmith at 6:02 AM

So I was waiting at the pathology lab in Apollo for my 70 year old grandmother's tumor's biopsy results. Anyone who has ever waited for the results of a biopsy or a bone marrow knows what an awfully tense time it is. You do NOT want it to be cancer. You wish the biopsy has not detected any malignancy. A part of you wishes they would give you the report soon so you can look at the reslt and yet another part wants time to freeze just then so you need not know the result ever and things can just continue the way they are WITHOUT the biopsy results.

So while I was pacing up and down the lab, the 8789743th time thinking all kind of pesimistic thoughts, I saw this young thin, twenty something woman walk in and ask for her report. She was asked to wait as well and we both stood in the crowded lab, two women, tension writ on our faces, silently hoping the report does not contain anything untoward causing us to go into hysterics in the lab. Her eyes meet mine and I smile. She smiles back. At that same instant the woman behind the counter calls our names. Our reports are ready.

She hands us the envelope and it takes everything in me to not rip open the envelope. With slow deliberate movements I open the report and I almost cry with relief as soon as I sight the word "benign". Nothing else in the report makes sense and nothing else needs to. I see the other woman looking at her report in a puzzled manner. Just as she looks up, she meets my eye again and I raise my eye brows, as if asking her what the problem is. I now wish I hadn't done it.

She comes to me and shows me her report and says, "Enna ezhudhirruku nu puriyardha?" (Can you understand what is written here?)

I take the report to read it. The woman's age is 30 and the report reads "acute myeloblastic leukaemia - end stage". For a moment I do not know how to react. I look at the woman who is still perplexed and waiting for me to say something.

I pause for a moment and say, "Ennaku therila.Neenga doctor kitta kelunga" (I do not know. You please ask the doctor)

She smiles and leaves and I feel devastated. In a chance encounter I now know something extremely vital about this woman's life that she herself does not know yet.

I wish there was something I could do, to give this woman more years to her life. She is 30 and married and probably has children and a whole life to look forward to. So many things to do, so many places to go, so many things to achieve. I wish I could give her some years from my life. It was so unfair, it was ridiculous. I do not even want to go into theological discourses now because it has been more than three years since I have rejected the concept of God and religion and have turned into an atheist.

Events in my life in the past one year haven't been what I would call perfect. It has been a very trying time for the me and also for the family. My resilience has been tested again and again and again. I have seen absolute highs and devastating lows and have striven hard to maintain my happy cheerful exterior through it all. It has not been easy and physically, mentally and emotionally it has been very draining and continues to be so. Not one to indulge in any kind of self pity I chose to lock everything that happened into the deep recesses of my memory, never to reach into that chamber again.

Though I have come out of all that has been happened to me a little stronger, a little wiser, I always thought given half a chance I would exchange my life with absolutely anyone's in this world. Always thought everyone I encountered was much happier and led a more normal life than I did. I craved for normalcy and routine.

For a million dollars and all the happiness in the world I would not want to be that woman.

Right when you think you have reached the lowest ebb in your existence, life comes along and gives you some perspective and makes you stronger again.

 

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