Reading tales: Pride and Prejudice

When I was little, I had two books that were the size of a pocket square: Black Beauty and Pride and Prejudice. They were my pride and joy because of their size. They weren’t the same size as mom’s books and neither were they weirdly big like my sister’s children’s books. They were a unique size and solely mine. I read P&P multiple times but I couldn’t bring myself to read Black Beauty. Maybe because at the time, I didn’t see the point of reading a book about a horse.

The other side of creativity

Any time I tell someone I’m a writer, I have received one of two questions. It’s either are you published. Or where can I read you. The second question is answered easily enough. I have a blog now and it is the most comprehensive way to read how or what I write. The first question though is always a dart through the gut. 

Night

It is night.
The utensils are clean, and the kitchen has been put to right.
The phone is silent
Even the city beyond her windows is silent…
There is no sound of drill, or horns, or the bustle of people going here, going there.
The only sound in the room is the soft whirring of the AC and the distant strains of club music.
The night…has just started for her.

Midnight blue citrus

I’m sitting in a chair, my legs up on the bed. You hate it when I sit like this. Say it’s bad for my back and hips and gut and legs. When that does not work, you tell me it’ll affect my productivity. A word that never fails to provoke a reaction from me. But right now those words are like whispers in my mind, a conversation we had only yesterday. And the whispers, unlike your voice, are not enough to get me to comply. 

Mind your language

What makes us human? Is it memory? Is it that we have bigger guns? Is it our brain? Maybe it is the fact that we have technology. I have noticed how most of these questions are posed and answered by the SciFi genre. 

Kheer

I have had strange nicknames but one that takes the cake is ‘Ganeshi.’ The nickname, I am told, is an ode to my love for milk and milk products. It is also an ode to the fact that just like Chutuk Binai, any time kheer is made in the house, even if it’s for a festival and we’re not supposed to eat it until the festivities have concluded, I’m always given a taste, in the name of checking if the sugar is fine.

Joys that alu can bestow

If you wish to hear the poem, please scroll down.

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Aao sunao mein tumhe
Alu ki ek prem kahani
Waha tha alu
Aur yaha thi mein
Hum mile jab hum dono the
Ekdum chote se
Nahin jante the ki sabjiya kya hoti hai
Nahin jante the ki ye exotic veggies kis hoor ka naam hai
Broccoli, zucchini, bell peppers
Kuch nahin pata tha.
Sirf ek hi sabji se prem tha
Woh tha…alu.

Icecream

One of my favourite memories from when I was 4-5 years old. I have wanted to talk about it since forever so it’s unsurprising that it came out as a poem. What was surprising was it came out in Hindi. If you don’t want to read, I have recited the poem too. You can scroll down to find the SoundCloud embed.

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School ka akhri din
Prarambh hongi kal se garmi ki chuttiya
Aur homework bhi – pata nahin kyun dete hai homework
Shayad teachers khud bahut kaam karti hongi
Chuttiyo mein ki nahin chahti
Hum bache hasse khele mauj manaye.

Hickory dickory dock

As soon as the hour hand and the minute hand of the clock hug at the midnight mark, an unheard bell goes off inside the mind of Mr. Hickory, the caretaker of the Dickory Dock hotel. It is an unusual hotel, to be sure, and requires a special kind of person to run it. Mr. H is one such person. The Dickory Dock has been in his family for generations and it is not a small feat that out of the seven brothers and sisters, Mr. H was chosen for this honour.

So long, farewell, I have to say goodbye

The first time I realized that being a part of a family that was used to shifting houses, cities and compass directions was a culture in itself was when a cousin was shifting cities for the very first time after having lived in one place for twenty-nine years. The fact that they could not settle into their new city even after six months was mind boggling to me. Especially since I can settle in my immediate surroundings in a week and take maybe a month to settle in a wider context of where I’m living.