Raincoat.

"Mumbai mein rehena hai madam, toh barish se dosti karni hi paregi" ,a rickshaw puller told me, during one of my first monsoons in the New York of India. When the first few drops fell on the feeble roof of the rickshaw and eventually trickled down to my white kurta fixing me in a tight spot, the poor guy laughed and went on ahead to talk about how Bombay and Monsoons were old lovers who meet every year with their passion only increasing, and that I mustn't have paani puri from Juhu beach no matter how much everyone sings to its fables, because his 11 year old son,Rochu suffered from diarrhea after that. And I went on listening to all of his stories cursing every drop of  water that fell one me, and abusing every walking talking man on road who ogled at my white kurta as if he found heaven in between the water clogged roads and mind-numbing traffic of Bombay. I never liked rain.

My initial reasons of befriending the city were completely different. I came here for matrimony. I was 28, lived in Pune, with paranoid parents who saw their Microsoft-daughter working and earning just well, but had the most probable chances of just doing well at that. And so, a meeting with a boy was fixed and a mid point from both our home towns was selected- Bombay. What happened to that meet, god only knows. He did show up.. to tell me he already had a girlfriend who he planned on running away with. I gave him a thumbs up and we both pooled in for our coffee bill (yes, he was the miser types) and left. He, to elope from Bombay, and I to elope to bombay.. to weave a life in a city that let me smell sweet independence for perhaps the first time in my life and hence, I fell in love. With this very city, and decided to move in here. I was called the kalank of the family, and my parents had to hear a lot from the Gujju community... which was perhaps more important than what their daughter really wanted, and so, my parents only considered their son ; my brother; Adhiraj, as their only off spring, leaving me alone to find my own name,community, and in short- a world of my own.

I was a bright girl. I had done my bit of higher studies, so getting a job wasn't all that difficult, but getting an apartment was.
"Yaha toh ghar mein aane ke liye lakshmi taras jaati hai, lekin sala ghar ka koi theekana hi nahi" ; is a common Bombay joke. And it's true. You might have a fantastic job which pays you quite generously, but  finding an apartment in Bombay is like finding a needle in a hay stack. And believe you me, it's not an exaggeration. So when I found myself a flat tiny enough to squeeze in a bed, a closet, a book-shelf, T.V, and a rug, I treated myself to shots of Vodka down at the local pub, for I had a roof above my head, unlike too many out there in the ironic city of dreams.
So, from there, started a very normal way of getting to know the city, making acquaintances at work, flirting some with interesting men, walking into a friend circle, working hard all week and partying in the weekends. I never got calls from home. I tried calling once or twice, but the response shook me up and made me swear to never call those people family again.

But this story isn't about any of that. This story is about a simple afternoon on a simple day. It was the time for Bombay rains. I was getting back to office from my lunch break when the rain gods decided to reign like angry ghosts. Perfect timing, folks.
 My face screwed up and I struggled to stay not an inch in, not an inch out of a bus stop's roof when a commuter looks at me, and giggled.

" Yes?" I said, annoyance punching every alphabet.
" Not much of a rain person, eh didi?"
"I'm sorry do I know you?"
"Not much of a Bombay person either." he made a statement that fused my bulb.
"Very much a Bombay person. And who are you again?"
"I am pretty much like all these guys running behind buses, drenched in their office attires. Some one who knows how to befriend things I don't like. That's what Bombay teaches you right. Like maybe rain."
"How?"
"Raincoats." ; he said, making my eyes follow his, to a scenery my eyes somehow managed to miss for three long years.

The busiest streets with the most colorful colors, of raincoats, that danced along with the beats of a city that provided them with almost everything, in some tiny way. It provided me with a dream. A dream to realize the pleasure of being on my own.
And that day, it taught me to fight and work out ways to move with things in life parallely that seemed to cross paths no matter what.

All I had to do, was use a raincoat.

-Awaiting feed backs,

Nil.

cokestudio high.

I've been listening to Cokestudio everywhere and anywhere. When I'm at home/in the bus/auto/walking/bathroom/every night. It gives you a high, believe me when I say it. There's a literal whirlpool of things going on in my life right now, and coke studio is one thing that lets me disconnect and just float away, to some trance that's unreal but extremely pleasant to my mind. I stop thinking.
Anyhow. So,I had an excruciating econ class today. I have it every day, actually, at school. (I thought Micro was going to be fun, bah!) My extra classes for 12th grade are on. It's not even been a week and I feel as drained out as ever. I don't sleep before 3am, I get up at 6:30 am, reach the bus stop by 7:25 (to find out the bus doesn't plan to come till our session formally begins. joy.) , school starts at 8:30, followed by four fifty minute long classes of my subjects. Out of which Econ is thee most intense class ever, it's almost like the teacher would pounce on you if you looked at anything but her face for the next 50 minutes.

Anyhow. Moving away from Board year sadness to usual update- I've been writing like a retard. Which I'm sure all of you have guessed by now, considering I'm updating everyday. Yes, sorry about that. It's just that I have a lot to vent out, and writing is the only way out for me.. I have like, ten drafts saved up on my blogspot. Fiction, mostly. So bear with me.

Summer is finally in. It feels good.. I hate winters. It just makes every thing dull and sad around me, trust me, you don't want to be around me during winters. I'm annoyed all the time. Summer... is good! Summer is street food, sweat, sport, adventure, no comfort zone. Summer is exotic, and that's one thing my life needs right now. I need as much work as I can take, I need to go out and get working on something, I need distraction. And summer just seems perfect for it. It lets one sweat off everything. Everything.

I had a strange weekend. One that I haven't had in a while. I was mostly out with mom and dad, shopping or just generally weekending. It was nice.. for a change, I wasn't out doing anything else or whatever. I was at home reading my spy novel (William Boyd's Restless. Must read) or playing with my niece.

I'm already planning out my vacation. Calcutta is on,for me. My cousin plans to come down to Delhi, and then we'll both fly to Cal together. I can't even tell you how kicked I am about this, we plan to have the wildest time there,with all my party animal cousins who plan to crash too. And besides....... it's Calcutta. The one city that always feels like home. In every way... the people, the streets, the whole damn city!
And a getaway from Delhi is something I really need right now. The earlier, the better. I really need time out from this place.

Now I would have kept on typing since I have absolutely nothing to do, but I'm starved. So adios, I shall go lunch now. Lets see whatever the day has in store for me, cause I'm devoid of a single clue. Maybe I'll crash the Spanish Film festival. No actually, I have too much of econ to do :| Sigh. I guess the Spanish movies will have to wait until after 31st..

Buhbye people, and those of you who tried to call, I'm sorry. My phone's usually in the drawer now. Shall get back to you guys in no time :) But for now, I'm just taking my own sweet time to begin some productive stuff and not worry about anything else.



Something I clicked recently :)

Summer skies, Nil.

P.s- A lot of fiction coming up, so brace yourselves.

When anger fueled her war within.

And as slowly the acoustics of Bibi Sanam Janem started playing, she launched herself into ink and paper. Writing whatever found her vocabulary, all the stories that found her, unleashing the story teller in her... morphing non-ficiton into fiction, once again.
She was angry, she was so angry that the impressions of her writing pressed harder and harder on the back of the parchment. But they took it well, because in all her anger, in all her state of being intimidated and overwhelmed by everything around her, what she wrote thundered with power like an angry ghost, like a reining knight, like the torchbearer of a war within, like a hope that was fighting to be discovered by the blind mortals running in the rat race of emotion.
Beads of sweat slowly appeared on her creased forehead, shy in the beginning, but gathering out finally, stark naked and boldly transparent, acting alibis to the unfair turmoil that built with greater vigour every time, with every word she scratched out, with every full stop she defined. She always knew madness let her write. She always vented everything out while she wrote, and labelled it a fiction, owning up to denial, for her own good.

She wrote every story that hit her. She spoke of every person who managed to catch the attention of a subconscious mind that was floating around the world, gathering bits and pieces of the thousand stories that met the horizon of her storytelling lips every day.
Tonight, she was going to write. And no body was going to stop her.
She felt angry- so angry at the outside world for edging her away, and she yelled back at her parchment- the one faithful listener she always had.

"She expresses best when she writes" ; the world said.

And tonight, she was going to prove them right, and appal them to the violence that fought in her.
Tonight, she was going to fight a battle which was claimed to be lost, but tonight, she'd either win it, or let the bloody night take over her corpses. The corpses of a fighter.

-Nil.

For the last time.

A strong sense of wonder.

My atlas can never be shrugged,

it's always been and will be,

an entourage of faces,

of fragments of conversations floating,

of those million memories that aren't even half,

of what I'll have once my greys show.

My atlas has power,

it has volume,

and it's never solitary..

However,

as my universe expands,

with a few faces vanishing away,

a few I left behind,

and a few that chose to not walk along,

I realize the void,

the void of just that one second in a day,

when that particular face floats before you,

when you think how life would have been,

if only the two held on for a bit more.

Cause no matter how many miles my feet travel,

and how many roads I get lost in,

the threads of those memories,

back in the earliest days of a beautiful friendship,

will float like lilies,

silently echoing my footsteps,

on the transient fate of water.

And I shall walk ahead,

ready to embrace moments as such,

and walk steady,

with them as beautiful closed chapters,

and nothing else.

Dear Judie

Dear Judie,
I don't know where you are, I don't know if you exist. But tonight, I'm going to need you to listen, and you will, because you don't exist.
I've been in a void, my love. A void that seems pleasant and harsh at the same time. I feel free. Liberated. Exhilarated. Alone. But what seems to scare me is the consequences. The repercussions.
Tonight, I remember so many promises. Promises that seemed fatal, if broken back then. But today, today them seem hollow. So damn hollow.. Those promises are floating away to a silent song, leaving me at peace to stand calm and sober, not reaching out to them. Or rather not wanting to reach out to them. I stand alone, and I'm not scared.
Cause after a point of time, it ain't the same people, the same places and the same promises.. because everyone's walkin' honey. Everyone's walkin', and so are you.

I fell in love, Judie. I fell in love with the most amiable man on the face of the Earth. I loved with all my heart with passion lighting our fire. But alas, life happened. And so, the devils of change trickled through the vulnerable labyrinthine lanes of our hearts. Our love broke. And tonight, it feels like such a waste. And yet, my heart's still madly in love with that 18 year old boy who showed me half the world... Judie, I trust people because I believe a little too much in this tiny little 'faith' that resides in a shy corner within me. But it hurts when that faith is exploited, Judie. And that hurt turns into anger which morphs into hate. Isn't love such a paradox?
The strongest bond stone that suddenly grows so cold?
I do hope you've been head over heels about somebody, sometime too, jude.
It's beautiful.

It's midnight here, and I wonder what color the sky might be at your end? Does it rain much? That's another miracle that touches my soul ever so often.
There's something so divine in being a child, isn't it Judie? There's something so merry about scraped knees and muddy shoes. To be able to smile at a stranger without the slightest of fear...aaah, strangers.. we meet again.
Cause that's what we are, innit?
Strangers.

So as the moon outside my window seems just a little bigger tonight, I smile at you, my dear old friend, my old strange friend. Dear Judie, I don't know where you are, I don't know if you exist. But tonight, I'm going to need you to listen, and you will, because you don't exist.........

Yours faithfully,
the strange letter writer.

because i'm the tragedy queen.

SUP.
I should have been on my way to school by now for a trip that was supposed to happen until last night, but oh wait, I guess a particular community feel like sitting on railway lines are going to help that get everything and sort their shit out. SO. The train we guys were supposed to take to Udaipur was cancelled cause they had a bunch of guys sittin' and poopin' over the tracks, not letting the trains to function. THANKS.
THANKS A LOT you godd for nothing losers. I only wish I could smash some sense into your feeble wannabe rebel brains that stupid tactics like these will do nothing but earn you hate (lots of it) from people around the country,and you could count me number one alright.
I had been looking forward to this trip for a long time. I needed a getaway from Delhi. And it was just perfect. No phones. No laptops. Only a bunch of close friends, a good book, a camera and awesome food.
But oh no, I'm the tragedy queen after all. As if my life wasn't screwed up enough already in general with a godzillion things going on in my head that I've been trying to sort out and come to a decision for, NOW that one break that I DID deserve after a whole MONTH of exams has been snatched away.
Oh and to top it all up, I had my results today. All I'd say is 11th grade has been a scary ghost as far as an academic year is concerned and I'm just so glad it's over. I hope it rots and dies in hell and I hope it dies in pain and no peace.

Fact: I'm officially in 12th grade now.
Another fact: I'M NOT READY FOR IT.

I JUST got over with one round of boards (err a year ago) and now BAM! my final frikkkin boards are here. My parents have already started with the 12th grade-usual-parent-paranoia. My extra classes begin day after,and my formal session starts from 4th April. I plan to go semi-underground this year, cause lets face it- it's either this year or nowhere.

I'm in a morbid mood. (haha humor you?) I plan to do nothing but crash and sleep for as long as I want cause even the thought of 12th- another year of slogging is pissing the flying pig out of me.
I'm going to take my space for some more time, I need to turn into rainbows again, the blehh sad side of me is just really weird for me to handle.

A lot of fiction coming up.. that's practically all I've been doing. Sleeping. Reading. Writing a lot. Watching HIMYM. And going out a bit. Okay, a lot... so this was an update. Now the next posts shall have the stuff I've written over a while.....

I really could kill the railway operators right now.
I WANT TO GO TO UDAIPUR GODAMNIT. Also, I'm looking for some nice writing competitions.. but not really coming across many. If any of you know about any competitions happening, please be kind and let me know?

Now, I shall go eat like a pig.
Bye.
-Nil.

We wish for a world that stays.

We wish for a world that stays.

The end of my feet still hold,

that ugly scar I once prided on,

back in the days when the Earth was flat,

the birds could talk,

and people were all the same.

Back in the days,

when the village school masters ran behind us,

with the sticks that hit the back of our soft palm so often,

and abuses that were retorted among us friends,

when no one was listening...

Our dirty finger nails,

dug in deeper into the earth,

the earth that loved us the same,

and hurt us even more with every fall,

from my father's broken cycle. 

When I and my long lost pal,

relieved ourselves near the tree,

to realize, once we were done,

the the zip of our pants were broken in the haste,

when we walked back home,

with a banana leaf covering our boyhood treasures,

 with a grin, covering our faces,

and laughed harder with our mother's stitches..

We were children,

children of a generation that ended,

once we stepped out of the margins of our ole dusty village,

and stood out as another generation,

among the crowd of a million more generations,

that were lost and found everyday,

on the face of the biggest cities of Earth.

But although we were children,

with dirty half pants,

and torn vests,

our laughter was the loudest,

our joy- the biggest,

our happiness- the simplest,

ourselves- the naivest.

And yet,

there was so much fun in that naivety,

the mangoes were so much more tastier,then.

For we are grown up today,

and still wish for the world to have stayed as it was,

just as we did,

in all our sorrows,

in all our joys,

....all those days.... back then. 

-Nil.

This unfair playground of Faith.

An unfair playground of Faith.

I had first seen him in one of the million street book shops of Paharganj. He had been a faithful customer of all the paperbacks those shops had, and his taste, (which I wasn't very sure of, for I only used to peek at his choice of books) seemed rather.. peculiar. He read Russian literature. From poetry collections by Innokenty Annensky to heavy literature works of Boris Akunin, Pavel, Arkady Averchenko... And I say these names with ease today, but five years back my tongue would've rolled in and tied itself into an ugly bow had  I tried to even mention their spellings, forget actually pronouncing them. But a lot has changed in me, of those, my pronunciation is perhaps one of the most insignificant alterations. 

Ekbal was a master of nine languages. French, Spanish, Urdu, Dutch,Swedish, Hebrew, Bengali,Hindi,Tamil. And back then, his pursuit was Russian. 

Oh, just by the way, he was a Tamilian Muslim. His mind and heart were a beautiful accession of a bit of this and a bit of that from all around the world.. and maybe what charmed me even more was his gorgeous body which was a spread out map of the most interesting tattoos one could ever find. He was an alloy of all cultures in a single body. 

Oh, not to mention his sincere fan craze for Rajnikant... the very blatantly humorous part of him was something I discovered later, with time. 

So my visits to the hippie town grew from once a week or two, to almost thrice, some times four times a week. And since I was on sabbatical, I had all the time in the world to stalk people. So on a sunny Thursday, Ekbal and I (still strangers) happened to be going through the new set of paperbacks that had arrived in one of our mutually favorite book shop. While I raided all the sections of O'Henry, Eleanor Hallowel, and Pablo Neruda, he practically hopped to the other end of the shop hurrying through every Russian book he could place his hands on. After a considerable amount of time, we both stood to pay for a fortune on old paper that was ever so valuable to us... and I suddenly hear him remark; 

"Doesn't it get bland after a point of time?"

"What does?" 

"English."

And that one answer of a single syllable cracked me into a toothy grin which only widened over the next few years of our friendship.... or whatever you call it, but it definitely not love, yet.

He worked in Microsoft, lived about twenty minutes away from Delhi, and preferred to spend most of his time in Paharganj, The National Museum of Modern Art or any eating joint in the world. He wasn't the intellectual kinds that would go over board even if they saw a leaf falling from a plane and turn it into a blessing from the mighty heaven up above, like the pseudos we come across today with curly long hair and orange kurtas, but he had his intellect all right, and bothered to only keep it to himself. How a solitary bird like him became friends with a social butterfly like me is something only the gods could tell, but to be honest, it's an answer I'd rather not bother with. For that would just spoil the beauty of the amazement that fate could actually bring us, at times. 

So we met up every second day. For drinks, to go dancing, to talk art, to just...... live in the most inexpensive and merry way possible. He explained me his theories. One of which explained his obsession with languages. 

" Misha, it's not about learning up verbs or spellings of a discipline... it's about grasping the fact that the whole point of you breathing today is that you learn. Learn as much as you can about this world because you had a lucky bitch's luck to accidentally fall into it god damn it. You had the luck to see how there isn't a single possible barrier between the human race thanks to languages."

"But I thought languages DO make barriers.. there's a reason why we're a nation of linguistic states, Ekbal." 

"Languages don't make barriers love, uptight power-hungry minds do who don't get any at home."

His humor killed. And I was awed at how he dripped with sarcasm in the most subtle way possible.. but a particular part of him always remained a mystery. His family. I knew they lived in Tamil Nadu, he had a brother Sohail, his parents were well to do and were extremely strict about their religion.. and hence he never really mentioned his friends (me and three more guys from office) as we were all Hindus. I used to find it hypocritical, initially.. but I moved on, and chose to ignore that one fact I should have actually taken up. 

Anyhow, so three years passed and with those three years, passed many nights at each other's apartments, and a silent rope of romance that kept getting longer and longer the closer I pulled it towards me. After four years, we acknowledged things seriously, and wanted to give ourselves a shot. A marriage was decided on. My parents weren't the happiest, but agreed anyhow. They respected my life on my terms, and that was all that I hoped from them.. Ekbal, however, had other plans. He didn't want to involve his family, at all. He was stuck up over the apparent fact that they'd never agree and that I'd see his dead face if they ever found out him marrying a woman of another religion. Another faith.

I had a mind that was of a human. And to that naive mind that was overruled by a whirlpool of emotions, I arrived at insecurity for my exclusion he maintained from his family. And so, I gave him an ultimatum. Either he'd go and at least tell, if not convince his family about me, or we were done. 

Ekbal, my lover that he was, resigned to my dogmatic approach and went off to the South, for my sake, for the sake of a life we wanted so bad.

Five days later, I received a call from his brother Sohail, whispering frantically and crying on phone telling me his elder brother was hit brutally by his father because he wanted to marry a Hindu girl named Misha Malhotra. He was hit by a cane, and finally, one of the hits on his chest led to his death. 

Six days later, I received a call from his Delhi office expressing their condolences of Ekbal's sudden death while travelling. 

They all knew the truth, and yet, sat in their caves like hungry lions hoping to kill another incident of unfairness and stop it from reaching the world.

I hoped to marry Ekbal, on this land that was supposed to belong to anyone and anything that breathed. That hadn't been sold before we were born. That stood firm under our feet when we walked, no matter what specie,color,race,caste or religion we belonged to. 

But maybe this playground of soil behaved differently to every color, every faith. That's what faith is right? Caste. Obstinacy. Hierarchy. 

Faith isn't love, belief, or a common destination to peace.

And as I dwell upon this satire of Faith that's been defined skies apart from what it originally meant, by us the mighty human race,

I shall hope and pray to unite with Ekbal in heaven... or maybe my bible and his Koran wouldn't allow that alliance... for we belong to different faiths, and our faith doesn't start at the same beginning-birth, or the same end-death.

We're so different. And will always be, as long as we own a mind that manipulates reality into convenience. 

Goodbye, my Ekbal. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Awaiting your feedbacks as usual!

-Nil. 

because we love delhi at 8pm.

Hello there, World.
Howdy?
The sky has changed a great deal at my end, ever since the last time I updated.. And the colors keep shifting, promising me to not be static for a while, and I'm fine with that. I'm fine with that cause right now, all I have is tonnes and tonnes of time. My exams have ended, and now I plan to do nothing but spend time with myself doing the things I like and just relaxing, and just being... if you know what I mean?
I'm taking a huge break. From too many things.. And I hope by the end of it, I clear the fuzzy thoughts in my mind and can conclude to what I'm going to carry on with, and what will I leave behind as a chapter I'd like to close and only remember with the fondest of memories.

Anyhow. Absolutely keeping the senti-maro-lines,
I had a fantastic evening after a bloody long time. So today, after school, I crashed at Remya's. We had an idea of having a completely boring useless evening of sitting at her place, watching movies and eating like hogs... however, the day didn't quite play those cards at all. So I was supposed to go to Jeffrey Archer's book launch today, but then nothing was working out for me, so I had pretty much over ruled the idea of getting there.. but as Remya and I follow the religion of Randomness, we decided we'd go! So we go on google map and try to figure out the way to vasant kunj, trying to figure the patches we'd walk/ use the metro/the rickshaw, parallely our mind is laughing its ass off even at the thought of how ridiculous our Plan of action sounded.....so after a decade of planning and plotting of transport and charges, we end up taking an auto straight to Vasant kunj, cruelly ditching all the adventurous metro rides and yada yada we were planning on :-P
After we got there, we hung around like cows for a bit, went to Mc.Donald's, burped, came out, joined another friend and went ahead to the book launch. The book launch was..........fantastic. Plain fantastic. Lord Jeffery is truly the Lord. Just as his critiques state, the man's a genius.
Out of a crowd of 60-70 fans, Rem and I were the only ones sans a book to be signed by him.. And the weirdest part was,we were fine with it. Rather we were pleased.. cause there was something about just sitting on our seats after the session ended and just stare and muse over the prodigy before us. There's something about quiet memories that we both appreciate :)
So we left.

Once we got out of the mall it was about 7:45.. and it was real quiet and shady :-P But hey we got an auto (for some weird luck, we've been real lucky with transport today, which usually isn't the case) and as we came back sitting in the auto with the wind trying to race our sight and strands of hair to a tough race, all we could talk about is at the end of the day, Delhi's the sweetest thing ever.. no matter how urban it is, sure it gets annoying, but we belong here. And this city's just... magic.

So this was one of the randomest day outs ever, and perhaps the best... after a real long time, I had nothing to worry about and just be a teenager and ....... i just chilled. In thee most honest and literal meaning of the word. And sure, Rem and I are the shaits, it's always fun when we both get together yo girlphraaaaaand ;)

So the next few days, before 12th grade starts, this is going to be my life. I'm going to give myself as much time as I want, and I'm going to live luxury just the way I want it. Be it walking the roads of Delhi with ten bucks in my pocket or sleeping till 2pm and then waking up to sleep again.

Good luck to all you 10 and 12th graders with Boards.. They'll be over soon :)

Now playing: Take five, Dave Brubeck. (the track is legendary)

And now, I shall go watch as many movies as I want and dance around the house like a total retard. (:
And all of you guys out there, let go for a while, breathe free, and smile to what you want to be.
(I didn't intend on the rhyming bit)

- A hope to a much brighter day,
Nil.