Wednesday, July 18, 2012

If irony were a hint, I'd be in trouble.

It's been a strange night, not a quiet one in particular, not a silent night. A usual night, with every prerequisite element of normalcy. Except an epiphany; 


If irony were a hint, I'd be in trouble. 


What do you do when a realization of sort awaits you, like a person walking quietly to your door and is about to knock; what do you do when that realization is something you'd want to be hit with later, in future, in good time and when you're a few more days older?
That realization's waiting outside, it's presence has been realized by you, for you can see the hovering shadow of its dense existence outside the door of your acceptance. 

You've had thousands of people nudge you, to think, to consider; some even spelled it out for you-- but you let it go. Why? Because the subject of that realization had dismissed its rationality. It's proof. It's...being.
And you let it go, you asked a valid fact to scoot away, so life would be easy and pleasant for the two of you, without troublesome shenanigans and you'd still be at that safe harbor, with nothing to risk, and everything gained. Almost, every thing gained.


Now, what do you do.....when the very subject of that realization nudges you to rewind and realize in the past, but doesn't ask you to alter the present and yet promises a future?


What do you do, when the only answer whispered through that door is simple; What is meant to be, will be...
While somebody, is waiting, beyond that door?

-Nil. 

Saturday, July 14, 2012

18.

It's official now. If I kill somebody, I go to a proper jail and not the juvenile one.

Yes, I'm officially 18, ladies and gentlemen. I have so much to say about the birthday and the day after that.. starting from a midnight surprise by Vanta, Guina, Mitra, and Dasgupta to a poster on How to Shit, a silver ring (WISH LIST, check!!!!!), a BEATLES mug (!!!) and Vanta's card (:*). Not to mention Nair and Guina's dramatic shenanigans at buying me a dress, the ulterior motives of which were realized later. Nightstay with the girls followed a lunch with my retarded clan of lovely lunatics (very entertaining,mussay.) the next afternoon. After a foot long bill, we made our way to a fort where we well, flopped ourselves and chilled for a while over puns and whatnot.
All of that followed a trip back home, only to leave again with dad to get a new phone ^.^
After that started a nice warm evening dinner at home with three of my chudddy buds and family where Rob managed to startle me yet again (like every year pssshhh) with his present. It was the Flash tee shirt that Sheldon wears in TBBT, something that I wanted since forever but managed to forget about myself cause I thought it was impossible to get it :O Yah. Crazy how he manages such things every year, eh? :)
I got my first Nine West bag from Pishi and a gorgeous green (huge) bag from Debo Da for college. Oh and LOTS of chocolates. Like, lots. Willy Wonka's factory kind, yeah?
And the next day, my friends took me out clubbing for the first time! (the dress, remember?) Apparently, you're not 18 enough until and unless you go clubbing on the night itself =P I cant feel my feet, that's how much we danced. Shivi and Nair, both wrote me letters =') And Piyushsterrr recorded his version of Fix You and sent it to me as an 18th special. :')
Yeah, well. That was a long (LOOOOOOOONG) story cut short. Because in the span of 2 days, so much awesomeness has happened that it'll be slightly ridiculous if I described all of it right now.
And honestly, it'll kind of spoil it. What happens on an 18th, stays in the 18th ;)
I'm blessed, is all.

Year 18 came with a whole lot of revelations, too. Many of my bestest friends weren't around.. (Uhhuh, you know who you guys are.) but it was quite a birthday, nevertheless.
Year 18 has come with a certain expectation, a certain hope, a certain anxiety too, in the back of my head. And well, I'll take it as it comes. What's meant to be, will be.

To all of you who worked so hard despite me being a pessimistic douche the day before my birthday, THANK YOU, really. You guys make life in general worth it. It's been great, it's been bright, it's been perfect, it's been brighter than sunshine. Let the rain fall, I don't care. :)

18, be good to me, alright.

Snippets from the day :)

-Legal and legit,
Nil. :)

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

The right glass.

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The right glass.

Since the past eighteen hours, all I can see in front of my eyes is a man turning away from the jail bars in front of me and walking away, and he’s been walking away the whole night, and I’ve been watching him leave.

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Frenchmen are often celebrated for their impeccable taste in wine, and their sensitivity towards every shape and size of glasses that is made for every taste and brand of liquor. 
Well, Cyril Galtia was a sorry exception, however a perfectly happy one. He had the eyes, nose and nails of a Frenchman. But his body had a tan of the tropics and his soul thrived in a prideful summer house tucked away in Pali Hill, Mumbai; where the man fled to after a mid-life crisis that didn’t promise revelations of any worth.
Cyril Galtia was my husband.

Like most romances, ours was ordinary. And like most couples, we thought it was extraordinary. We lived in that very house in Pali Hill, a house that was a little too immodestly huge for the two of us, the limp gardener, and the cook with a fat bronze wedding ring.
For four people, we were a loud bunch. My husband and I were a little embarrassingly clamorous about our conversations and lord save the neighbours on the occasion of an argument. Our gardener was a pessimist who limped around the house more than the garden, muttering grunts about his Polio stricken childhood and his evil step mother. And our cook, well he was a potbellied jolly man who obsessed over the precision of the things around the house more than the spices in the cooker.

Often our friends would come over for drinks, and jokes about our marriage would fly around the lounge. About how in the world did a mid-life crisis stricken Frenchman fall in love with an Indian woman half his age, about how all an old lad like him needed was a coquette like me, and how I’d run away with all his money someday once his arms aren’t strong enough and his wrinkles older than the day before. It was controversy among his friends initially; eventually it was all in good humour. His parents were long dead, and he had a sister who was leading a blissful life of a hippie in New Delhi.

Cyril was a loud Indian man stuck in the body and with the surname of a Frenchman. He ate more spices than my stomach could ever hold and he licked every end of his fingers only after which would his meal be complete and would he be content. 
I remember this one particular night during one of our weekend get together, I saw Cyril sip on beer from a wine glass. I jibed at him in a friendly way about how the first and the last thing that was expected out of a man from Paris, such as himself, was to at least ensure the appropriate glass for his liquor, and his response came after a hiccup or two; “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.
The response was apparently a revolutionary one for it was the butt of every punch line for the next few parties and it had everybody rolling in fits of laughter, except our poor cook perhaps who broke accidentally broke a china dish in anger and almost barked at Cyril about the specificity of everything in life, and how it was just as much of a sin to have liquor from the wrong glass as it was to encourage blasphemy. All our senses were a few drinks behind, so the cook was shouted at rudely and he scoot away into the kitchen, left alone to entertain his Obsessive Compulsive Disorder baggage! 

Perhaps it is because we had such an ordinary life that everything seems like a blur, and just one night comes to my mind when I think about Cyril. April 15th, was it. It was another of those weekend parties at our house, and it was a particularly drunk night. Cyril was annoyed at the gardener all day for he had ruined the rug from Kashmir in the corner most room by leaving mud stains on it. Work wasn’t all that great either; he had lost a client to another agent.
It was about 8 in the evening when he asked me to get him a drink, to perk up his mood since the guests started coming in. I was a little agitated due to a heated argument we had earlier during the day (and so were the neighbours), so when the cook handed me Cyril’s glass of red wine, it almost slipped. Another stain would have made its way on another Kashmiri rug had I not grabbed the lower end of the glass firmly, I had thought; relieved.
I took Cyril’s drink to him and eventually, he slipped his fingers into mine. We walked around the lounge joining our friends in-between conversations and puns when I noticed a rather unusual guest; It was Mr.Bomfry from two blocks away who was a regular recipient of our chain email invites for the get-togethers, however he chose to never come and wasn’t quite a man in our grid. Cyril and I walked upto him and told him how kind it was for him to join us that evening and all he did was nod at us and the man went back to his sushi.



Other than that, the evening proceeded perfectly with Cyril sipping on beer from a wine glass for cheap thrills and I kept teasing him loudly yet again about how an inappropriate Frenchman like him shouldn’t be given any alcohol. So I didn’t find it too odd when Cyril vanished into our bedroom for over twenty minutes, however I did find it odd when I got a text from Cyril saying; "Bedrum, pliss”. He never misspelled words and most definitely hadn’t called me to the bedroom while the house was full of guests… nevertheless, I did find it rather romantic and I opened the bedroom door with a playful coquettish smile…
And that smile stayed, frozen.

Cyril lay staggered next to the bed, the right side of his head blood read and his left wrist slit with strange words scratched with glass on his still arm which held the broken end of a wine glass. 
Cyril was dead.
Eventually a friend walked in and found me sitting next to the dead body with cold eyes and the broken glass in my hand. Eventually, everybody found us.
The police was called, and suddenly from humorous jokes, I actually became the coquettish woman half his age who wanted to kill him and run away with his money. The broken end of the glass that was the source of the strange scribbles on his arm had strong finger prints of mine, only nobody knew that was because the glass had almost slipped from my hand earlier in the evening. And the scribbles only accentuated the allegations of my so-called deranged doing;

“YOO MUST DRINK FROM D RITE GLASS. BEER NOT FROM THIN GLASS CYRIL”

I had nothing to say. I was accused of being the obsessive wife who nagged about his habits, I was called a cheap money hungry woman who ran behind a man double her age for ulterior motives, apparently I had a lover tucked away somewhere, I was supposedly mentally sick with OCD… and all such allegations were crafted by our “friends” who got drunk every weekend at our house.
The police found my gold chain broken and lying a few meters away from Cyril’s body with hints of blood, they found a single earring and a fat ring which were found in the periphery of the body. 

The fingerprints were mine, the scratches on his arms were my words, only misspelled. And my shocked silence that went on for days didn’t help. I was deaf and dumb throughout my trial, I hadn’t spoken a word. I was sentenced to be locked away in jail for 13 years and I hadn’t spoken a word.

I hadn’t spoken a word until yesterday when my cook came to drop my tiffin and I noticed his ring finger holding the jail bars… it had a fair band of bare skin around a tanned hand, and I realized his fat bronze ring was gone. Only then did I remember the police finding a fat bronze ring from the room, that lay very close to Cyril’s dead body. When he saw me staring at his finger in shock while realization finally hit me, he said; 

“Cyril should have used the right glass, madam.”

And he turned around and walked away.
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-Nil.