Home n alone

My first trip home after moving out and felt like a tourist in d city where i've spent 23 yrs of my life..felt like moving around armed wid a camera...virtual as well as a real one trying to capture images n scenes for posterity...
1) D best part was hovering in d clouds waiting for clearance to land and seeing d festive lights and rocket flares from above...a priceless experience from an amazing vantage point..
2) D car meandering thru' Dharavi crowd on my way home from airport n seeing d chaos of Id n ganpati celebrations in d same gully at the same time...
3)D familarity wid d the public transport and d freedom to go to any place without d choking(n embarassing) task of having to stop n ask for directions or wondering if d auto-wallah is literally taking me for a ride!
4) D clean loos, d fresh bedsheets, Mom's food, d love n warmth of your own home...
Miss u Mumbai..miss u home...

Courage doesnt roar...its d quiet voice that says at the end of day..lets try again tomorrow

Have come across the greatest examples of courage/ determination and resilience over the last few weeks...seeing such people still trying, despite all the pain and agony, despite all d setbacks and still trying to live out another day is truly inspiring..seeing them your problems pale in comparision....
A young Afghani, early 20s, an accidental casualty of a bomb blast..b/l AK and rt arm AE amputation, b/l orchidectomy, diverting colostomy coming for distal cologram...accompanied by his aged father...his father lifting him up so gently, so tenderly, d young guy trying his best with just one capable limb..it was truly heart-rending...
Another young girl..4 yrs..born wid esophageal atresia operated immediately after birth with a gastric transpostion..now coming for a dye study to check for integrity of anastomosis..gone through multiple surgeries..a feeding jejunostomy hanging from one side...yet her Mother explaining to her so patiently, such love, d girl smiling so beatifically and co-operating so well for d test..it was truly touching..incidentally she happened to be a Bahraini citizen...
Another 3 month baby born with high anorectal malformation operated on day 2 of birth with diverting colostomy and now coming for distal cologram to evaluate distal loop and recto-urinary communications..d baby having endured meningits n sepsis and yet fighting on...the parents taking such special care of him..that's resilience 4 u...
I know radiology generally keeps me shielded from direct involvement and yet d limited exposure that i get when these patients come for their tests to our room is enough to leave me profoundly affected, thinking, pondering and then finally blogging..and I wouldn't want it any other way ever..

Happy Friendship Day

Friendshp day! Not that I really need a special day to celebrate friendship..but here's a list of al d gr8 times we had over d last 5.5 yrs! Hope u al remember them as fondly as I do...
1) D creation of BBC..early morning Patho lect in 3rd last row..individual titles and responsibilites delegated in the afternoon FMT lecture...d BBC dictionary, d wierd glossary, d wacky acronyms (ABCD/ LOVE) and our own code language..Psst..
2) The constant leg-pullings, d pathetic pairing ups, d constant punnings and d self-obsession and gossip sessions in d outer section second last corner table :-)
3)D Holi visit to my place..d ball-dancing,d hogging and appreciation of my Mom's culinary skills
4) Late-nite ophthal lectures..less studies, more an opportunity to hang out and for time pass
5) Lunch in KD...last item of d day..mixing up al sabjis wid Sambhavi's universal rice and eating d pan-Indian Khichdi
6) Sundae treat in Dean's lawn :-)
7) D flaring-up of tempers(on my side),ur jokes at my expense d fights, d sulks :-(
8) Gosumag...d making, d cursing, d late nights and driving d printer aunty crazy
9) D Ortho practise session at my place, d final yr practical revisions and d mugging up of all d std and our self-created formats
10) My moans, ur teasings, d anxiety b4 and d celebration after results :-)
11) D visits to sambhavi's place..yummy south Indian food, d movies, d games, etc
12) Shweta n Khushboo for putting up wid me and yet remaining sane and not hating me :-) Thanx for d bday wishes, for al d support especially in internship, thanx for ur acceptance and concern.
13) Shweta..also for all d late night calls, d soul-searching and for sisterly/motherly grandmotherly advice and outlook and insight into my life and others'.
14) Divya... for being such an inspiration, ur sheer brillance and good nature.
15) Varsha..for being d most transparent and genuine person i've met till date
16) Surabhi...for your pearls of wisdom, ur dress sense: owners' pride and neighbours' envy, for being such a dear dear friend
17) Sambhavi..for just being Sam..d one and only...no one can ever take your place in my life...
18) Saumya..for your smile, your sense of humour,sum1 who was closest to me in terms of upbringing,attitude,behenjiness-cum-bitchiness, temparement and moodiness... only u evolved better than me in d 51/2 yrs... :-)
19) Internship..finally learnt to carve our own ways, forge our own paths, seperate out but the memories remain...to be cherished forever.. Thanx for making me a part of your lives..God bless u..
20) D only thing we really missed out was going a trip on our own to sum place...lets hope we can take time from our disparate schedules and do this sum time in d future...looking forward to it and to meeting all of you once again...

Monsoon Magic in Mumbai

Monsoon is definitely the best time to be in Mumbai...especially the transition period between the hot and humid summer (when sweat beads stick to you like wax pellets) and the actual onslaught of heavy, non-stop, pouring rains with the immense water-logging and the incessant cursing and swearing.

The initial build-up and the actual advent of the first rains in Mumbai is so magical and beautiful that it's easy to forget you are in Slumbai and not Mumbai:-)

The clouds darken, the skies lighten, the breeze feels cooler...
The dust seems lazier, beaten to the ground by the relentless summer
The musty smell of wet earth carries through the air, overwhelms you...
overpowers you and then you are left with the palpable sense of anticipation...
The eager countdown waiting for the first drops to fall...

Suddenly, the skies open up, the south west wind blows through, the water-laden clouds give way to yield the slow and steady pitter-patter of raindrops: initially beating a gentle tempo and then quickly changing to a steady, rapid and unending drumming on the face of Mumbai...

Your umbrella quails helplessly and the windcheater bellows out futilely while your jeans get wet,smirched and muddied...
You rush to the nearest shelter and then a quick dart out to catch the first bus/train that you see...
You edge away from the window seats or struggle to slam the windows shut while dodging those sharp needles of rain pricking your face...
You walk on the edge of the road making Olympain jumps to clear the muddy puddles and at the same time avoid being splashed upon by all the speeding motorists...

And just when your mood is about to sour, the rains stop without any warning, a sudden departure, an abrupt closure, leaving the city sparkling clean and the people asking for once more...
Take a bow Rain till we meet again...Mumbai awaits you for an encore.

STATUS UPDATE ( if any1 is interested)

I know there's something seriously wrong with me and/or wid d sex ratio in India when there r more guys than girls scrapping me...:-( where r all d females of d species!!! Seriously missing my gal-friends of GS.

Anyway jokes apart, a week older in LTMMC radio and feeling very wet behind d ears! Have a long way to go but the branch is really very interesting!

No calls yet so life's easy till another 7 days. Will probably start feeling like a true houseman from next Monday onwards. Have managed to survive a week without a relapse of my foot-in-mouth syndrome.

Canteen is cool...always bumping into a couple of batchmates every afternoon-yet to eat alone without a single GSite for company... But d best fun is reserved for when all us radio housemen get free at the same time! As usual i'm d victim of ribbing/leg-pulling :-)

AC is too cool literally...but sooner or later may end up wid d name tag of 'Snuffles' if not careful :-(

Thats all for now. Tc for those who bothered to read this... Cya :-)

Smell

I don't now why do we overlook our organ of olfaction...ask anyone about a favourite memory, you'll get to hear about a sight/a person/ a song/a story but rarely is it associated with or triggered by the sense of smell.

And yet what I would do without my ability to smell? Without smell, there's no taste. Everything seems insipid. Smell is that sense which laces memories subtly on the egdes, gives them character and flavour.

I don't know why I have a lots of smells stored in my mind. Everytime my hair cells catch that odour again, my mind hurtles back to retrieve some old incident that I'd almost forgotten.

Earlier, when staying in my old building, going up in the manual lift with iron grille, I'd try to guess what was cooking in every floor by the smell wafting in! And coming home after college at almost 10 at night, dead tired, my mood would improve in the few seconds before the main door opened, by simply smelling and guessing right what Maa had made for dinner!

Here are my top 5 fav smells (fav b'coz they are evocative)...

1) The wet earth;the first shower of rains...sensual
2)Freshly washed and laundered bedsheets with the smell of Ariel imbibed into the fabric...delicious
3) The smell associated with new clothes in an AC showroom...tangy, sharp
4)Freshly made, homemade ghee...especially at the part when the black crust is beginning to be formed...yummy
5) A baby, freshly bathed, fed, burped powdered and asleep...homely.

Go out and smell(avoiding the garbage dumps)... Life's beautiful.

P.S. Try reading Radhika Jha's novel 'Smell'.... not necessarily the best neither the latest book on the shelf, but very erotic, very French and very different.

Or its predecessor in a similiar vein-'Perfume' by Patrick Suskind-a somewhat over-the-top read but totally fascinating and evocative when it comes to writing about smell...

Not feeling is worse than not knowing.Or not remembering

A flash, a glimpse, a photo, an image,a smell, a scent, a word,...
At first just a hazy recollection...

And then your neurons going on an overdrive, the rapid flux of ions, the unfolding of synapses,chemical connections made and then broken, circuits switched on and then off, the dregging of the storehouses of memory,the amygdala and the hippocampus working in tandem, firing impulses to the frontal cortex...

A vision, a blur, a 'just on the tip of the tongue feeling'...

And then Voila! The memory flashes LOUD and CLEAR, the vivid remembrance, the EMOTION...

Ah what bliss, what joy, the limbic system. The beloved Papez circuit.

"People might forget what you said. People might forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel"

Ignorance is bliss, so is innocence

I don't know if u've read 'The portrait of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde...a classic novel...it's about how a beautiful young man in a moment of madness makes a desperate wish... lives his life vicariously and still remains forever young, whole and beautiful while his potrait encaptures the true blackness of his soul, mirrors his sins, grows old, ugly, changes its form, hides and then reveals the true colours of Dorian Gray.

A fantastic idea no doubt... the first time he commits a crime, the change that comes over the portrait is not only physical but there's a subtle change in the overall expression-the hardening of heart, the awakening of vice. And what struck me is, the portrait is actually a reflection of the soul and not merely a marker of the passing of time and age-bound changes.

And why am I being so disturbed by it now? I came across an old passport size photo of mine, taken in May 2002 , fresh out of school before going to college and got a recent pic taken 5 days ago. And what bothered me was not the physical changes, the receeding hairline, the dark circles, the tightening of the corners of lips, the pendulous lower lip(the hallmark of self-obsession!), the acne pitmarks...those are to be expected.

But it was my look that surprised me -the wide-eyed, innocent "everbody is nice and everything is all right in this world" expression that shines through...Good God, how could I be so naive? So innocent, so trusting...don't get me wrong...i'm still one of the most credulous and naive people around but the latest pic clearly has this film of cynicism over it, the "who really cares or gives a damn as to what happens look"...having expected too much and having believed too much in the intrinsic goodness of people once upon a time, now I've come to a stage when I don't really have any expectations from anybody...where anything good is just an add-on, a bonus.

And that's what is painful. Not the gain of cynicism, not the loss of naivete' but the loss of innocence...

The joy is in the falling, not in the fall

As cliche's go, Love is blind is the most obvious ever. I think, love is banal too. Being in love is boring. But falling in love is fun...

Eyes seeking out 'the' someone when in a group; the initial flighty exchange of looks, the intense staring down; daring him to break the glance first, the unspoken words, the telepathic communions, the twitch at the corner of your mouth and the unsuccessful stifling of the smile your treacherous lips finally break into.

The inital distance, the physical awareness, near yet far, the unknowingly clumsy and knowingly unseen attempts to breach that gap, the nonchalant fling of arm against your shoulder, the reflex straightening of your back; the slight touch and the sensation down your spine.
The grazing shoulders, the draft of air, the crossed legs, the restless jiggling, toes brushing against leg, the slow shifts in positions and finally the closeness and the gladness the direct contact evokes.

The increased sense of awareness, sharpened senses, clearer mind, heightened memory, every word, sight, sound, touch and smell stored in your mind, the unexpected remembrance and the overwhelming longing associated with it.

The silly doings, the heady days, the dressing ups, the slightest excuse to stay in touch, to hear the voice and to remind of you, the flipping through photos and encounters for a secret meaning, a private thought, an implied feeling, a missed gesture, a hidden emotion, an unsaid word.

The standing on the edge of a precipice, finally letting yourself go, the joy of falling ( in love; into love) , the feeling of weightlessness before you hard crash to the ground and reality. And then you know, love is dead.
Sounds stupid, I know. Romantic? Maybe. Cynical? Probably.
But think about it. Atleast it isn't a lie.

P.S. "Falling in love isn't difficult but when you decide you want to stay together despite all, you know it isn't easy." -Anonymous

In a fey mood (alternative title :15 days to wind up)

Feeling a bit strange...blogging after a year and only 15 days to go before we all wind up...15th 's d d-day when i'd know what direction my life's gonna take...whether its time to go back to books or take the next step forward( most likely it'll be a step backward but that's ok-i'm mentally prepared to deal with it now unlike 3 weeks before)...but right now totally in limbo...can' t study nor can do anything else much...might as well help with the Year Book and enjoy the convocation caravan.

Last year was pretty much hell...my grandfather's sudden death on Diwali night, squabbling co-interns, break-ups, almost every public holiday spent in either EMS or emerge in med ward...gave up almost everything just to get a seat in PG and now i'm not even gonna get that...I can hear the hounds of fate howling...but then right now i'm in "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn" mood. Even if i'm gonna hang by the noose on 15th I can atleast let the rope run long till 11th. And it isn't fair to let one year of internship blight 4 wonderful years in GS!

So 3 cheers for
1) Behenji-cum-Friends...For Sambo (what i'd i've done without u)...she was literally my lifeline in GS...Surabhi n Divya n Varsha...for all the good times and for all the mad times we had!

2) Batchmates-cum-friends...For Shweta for perennially boosting me...for her regular doses of optimism and All iz Well funda...Khushboo(for the good cheer and for her dialogue-'Ab to rona band kar' n thanx for the B'day plans-left to myself i'd have brooded the day away), Swarada for bearing the brunt of being my baju-waali roll no and Sonali for being a complete anti-thesis of me( Babe-quotient, cool, smiles, sleepiness n absent-mindedness)

3) Boys-Rajvilas by virtue of being my batchmate right from 1st to final yr and for his mad-cap antics, Bhavin by virtue of his (unknown to him) 'what goes down must come up' method of conditioning me n making me better myself , Gujju guys (including Jangale n Ankit) for the love-hate relationships,the lethal 'bindass meet brains' cocktail, for your leg-pullings and ur mockeries-atleast i learnt how to laugh at myself! Subbu for being one of the few sane souls among the guys i encountered during internship and Rupesh for being Mr Congeniality.

4) The library-for the books, loud gossips, whispered scandals, couples ( real n potential), meetings, mcqs, and Sshh....

5) Gosumag...had lotsa fun during its making...so thanx Ani and Sambo for letting me come on board.
6) Malvani, EMS and Saphale-the only worthwhile postings of internship
7) The cut-throat competition...Even though i've ended up cutting myself more often rather than cuttting the competition-but then as a Type A i wouldn't know what to do if life was too easy...i mean how can a fish live without water even if the water turns out to be poisoned!

And a few tears for

8) Male co-interns( atleast the ones that I had)-For being pains in the neck, for the throbbing headaches and lost peace of mind.

9) My foot-in-mouth-syndrome- My absolute lack of Diplomacy, my inability to sweet talk with people and the inability to come up with good excuses-no wonder internship was so bad! :-)

10) Secrecy, selfishness n self-centeredness...Sad to say quite a few ppl here do have these traits...something which i think goes against the credo of a behenji or a friend... but then why blame them-After all, in GS and probably in life too, nothing succeeds like success.

And for Me, Myself n Ananya
For being afraid to wear my heart on my sleeve
Coz if it broke, I didn't know how I would grieve
For not leaving the bay and getting into the sea
Not knowing how to swim,didn't set myself free
For being so cowardly now, using words to screen
My fears and for shedding tears on what could have been....