RUN OR STAY?

So naïve of me to have thought I escaped the rat race when I made my career choice. But I guess there really is no escaping it. I really like academic competition. But I hate having to impress someone, and forever trying to up others in order to land a job. Placement time is the time you really forget why you originally chose to do what you are doing. Everyone around you is in a frenzy – preparing, discussing, plotting – all of that, to land a job. Just any job. And doing all that not knowing why exactly you want the job. Is it the money? Not to everyone, its not. For most, it is just something. All those lofty ideals you started out with just fly out of the window, as you are caught up in all the paranoia around you.  

This is such a bad year to graduate. With so few options, the paranoia is sharpened, and so is the competition. And when you tell your mother you are just disgusted with this whole concept of running the race with everyone else, trying hard to sell yourself and trying to seem just a notch better than the others, she thinks you have no aspirations. And you know that you have already disappointed her enough with your choice of career, and your almost-absolutely disregarding attitude towards money. She has deemed you a lost case. So you know, there is a sense of guilt. There are little ways by which you can appease her – at least appearing for all the placement tests, for instance.

 

I wish there was a way by which you can lead life on your own terms, without having to conform, without having to do things others are doing. I know there is. I wish you didn’t have to buckle to pressure and try to conform. I wish I could just travel and write, (and make money, for Amma’s sake). I wish I could choose to do what I want to do, and be good at it. I wish I could just not write a CV, extolling my achievements and trying to seem like the perfect candidate for the job. But I do have to write a CV – but the least I can do, is not sound pompous, which I think I have managed. 

 

But as I sit here looking at my CV, wondering if it comes across as a little TOO lacklustre, despite the presence of some achievements and strengths I know I possess, I feel like there is someone standing apart from this rat race, in the stands, and laughing at me. I want to be that person.

 

Running away is not always cowardly. Sometimes, it is the most courageous thing to do.  

 

 

Update: I have been placed. And I sort of get to travel and write.

FAR FROM PERFECT

Romantic fools can be nothing but poets. But I can’t rhyme to save my life. As is evident, I haven’t grown up since the age when one thinks poems are poems only if they do rhyme. And my articulation leaves a lot to be desired. I guess that says a lot. So that’s a non-option.

 

Being just romantic is fine. You can remain in your little bubble all your life, romanticize the beautiful sights and refuse to scratch the surface even. If you are lucky, no disillusionment will be big enough or bad enough to permanently break your bubble. But being idealistic, emotional AND romantic is a tough life. The tears are always around to spoil any good intention you may have to create that perfect ideal setting you wish for. Seriously, anyone who is moved to tears at the least ranked in the list of kind gestures needs serious help.

 

I don’t even know if this makes sense. But this is exactly how I feel now. I did warn you – my articulation is nothing to write home about. Zzz.

NORMALCY AMIDST TURMOIL

It was a crazy day. I woke up as usual to go to college, only to realize that it was raining like crazy. Stumbling out of my room, still groggy as hell, I caught Amma staring at the paper. “Bombay hotels have been attacked by terrorists. They just walked in last night and started to fire indiscriminately. Encounter still on”, she said. We stood there staring at each other, then immediately rushed to the TV and turned on NDTV.

 

What I was seeing was straight out of some Hollywood movie. Bombs, shame on the country’s situation, we are quite accustomed to. But we had, until then, only heard of school shootouts in faraway America. But this time, it was our own Mumbai. A group of twenty young men had the entire country in frenzy. And the visuals on TV! There we were, looking at pictures of terrorists caught on CCTV, and unable to do anything about it. I remember staring blankly at the screen incredulously, until I fell asleep, curled up on the sofa.

 

When I woke up, it was raining even more violently. There was knee deep water outside my house. My grandparents had come over, because their ground-floor apartment was starting to get flooded. There was no power. We were all sitting inside a dark house, and the rain simply had no plans of letting up. There was nothing we could do. There was no way we could know what was going on, in other parts of Madras, and in Mumbai. It was like we were suspended in an alternate universe. The phone was our only link to the real world. Every thirty minutes, we would get a call from some part of the country – either Appa from Bengaluru, Du from Hyderabad, or Manni from Mylapore – to tell us what was happening in Madras and Mumbai. And with every phone call, the situation in either place didn’t seem to be getting better. And we were completely helpless, literally, in the dark. Not that there was anything we could have done had we HAD power and had there been no rains, but atleast you would know what was going on.

 

I knew I had to be out there, trying to figure out what was going on, how many lives the rains had wrecked. After all I was studying to be a journalist, and took my acads really seriously. But that morning, I don’t know what came over me. After hours of wondering whether to go to college or not, I decided to TRY. And try I did: went as far as Ashok Nagar by car, but couldn’t go any further; so I promptly returned home. And for the rest of the day, wondered if I should have tried harder. I knew I should have. I hated being a chicken. I had always wanted to be, you know, the real thing. And I sorely disappointed myself that day.

 

Night fell, and power wasn’t back yet. I couldn’t even read sitting next to the window anymore, and I had slept enough that day. I had to keep myself occupied in order to not feel guilty, but I couldn’t do anything anymore. The air inside my house was melancholic, until Thatha suggested we play Aadu Puli Attam. We sat down with a piece of white chart paper, 3 big betel nuts (the tigers) and bengal gram that made the aadus. I was quite thrilled. It was like when I was young, and Amma, Appa and I would play cards in the darkness. I was quite hooked as Thatha was teaching me, quite oblivious to Ammamma’s constant cursing of the country’s politicians and Amma receiving constant updates on the phone. I played well. We played for over two hours, with me relinquishing just one aadu. And when we finally declared it a draw, it was quite late. The rains were still lashing my windows. And as I stood, watching the deluge on the road beneath my window, I thought of how detached I was. I had a solid roof over my head, the rains weren’t claiming my life, and Bombay seemed so far away, almost as far away as America. And for a few hours there, there was perfect normalcy in MY life, even amidst all that turmoil around me. And that life thereon would continue to be normal for me. And somehow, it didn’t seem right to me to just count my blessings and live life to the fullest then. I was guilty as hell, and had trouble sleeping that night.

 

God bless all those who were saving lives while we sat in the comfort of our homes.

God save our country, where any shred of normalcy is today under threat.

LOOKING BACK, UNABLE TO GO THERE

It’s so amazing how a sense of nostalgia is so not a personal thing. Always, someone else’s nostalgia starts off one’s own trip down memory lane, and in no specific chronology of events.

 

I listened to someone think of old days, and sing the 60s song Paadada paattellam paadavandhal, and what it did to me! I had never listened to that song ever before, but instantly I knew that the original was rendered by PB Srinivas. And that set off a whole string of other things I remembered from when I was little. Some random PB Srinivas song, particularly associated with Calcutta. My guess is Amma and Appa used to listen to it when we were there, because I am able to immediately conjure up my Calcutta living room in my head. The Sivaji-Vyjayantimala song on my amichechan tape that went Nenjil kudi irukum, a song I haven’t listened to since I last played that tape perhaps 15 years ago, whose lyrics I remember even today. Shammi Kapoor’s full throated yahoo and MGR’s swashbuckling heroism on DD. The Liril ad on the tape, and the jingle. Appa’s Abba and BeeGees cassettes. “Raja rajadhi Rajan” from Agni Natshatram, my favourite song as a child. My babbling in the middle of the song in that cassette at home, when I pressed the record button in between. Thatha crooning to me, “Dancing is not hard at all, whether you are big or small. Come and dance with me.” The hand pump that I would have to stop at everyday on my way back from school, and try a hand at. Wading through waist-deep rainwater on Southern Avenue with Mallika Akka. Mallika Akka’s argument with Subhadra on whether the movie star on TV then was Rajesh Khanna or Dev Anand. The sallow skin of my Glo Friends. Ten sets of Memory cards in different colours. The green and white walls at Rukku Athai’s apartment. Watching Aankhen with Ram Anna. The rasagullas he used to give me. Mallika Akka’s roasted-black rings of paavakai. Her black pothi, and my green pothi. The little black moles on her face. The little spots on my Jungle Book tape thanks to overuse. The trees outside Victoria Memorial. Debjani the elephant. Montessori classroom at Sushikshan. Playing Soorpanakha in the class play. Gaurav, Sourav and the little fat girl who played Sita. My ‘Ramayana Illustrated’ book. A tattered set of 12 oil pastels. The Disney colouring book. My favourite pink hairband. That baked hairstyle. Ritika and Ankit. And just so many other things.

 

Maybe all this comes back to the mind so easily, because the mind wants a chance to think of these things. Maybe because of the realization that I can’t have any of it any longer. Calcutta as it was. The pleasure music used to give me. Childhood and its innocence. Mallika Akka. All I am left with is a dusty faded Glo Friend that doesn’t glow anymore, and a cassette labelled ‘Moni’s Advertisements’ that refuses to be played.

A NEW BEGINNING

I’ve been waiting for so long. It had been time, but there was no sign of it. I was wondering just for how long I could go on, feeling as repressed and disconnected as I had been feeling for some time now. There were the occasional showers I enjoyed, but the mood hadn’t set in yet. I felt suffocated.

 

Every morning, I would look up at the skies hopefully. Every oppressive muggy morning was not just tolerated, but welcomed; in anticipation of what might follow. And for the most part, I was disappointed. When it did rain, I was happy, but those weren’t thanks to the monsoons. It was somehow, different.

 

Yesterday, I knew it was going to rain. And like in years past, my instinct did not fail me. I anticipated it at just the right time, and got drenched, according to plan. I got home, changed and waited for the right signs with bated breath. They came. I went to bed an excited girl, and woke up to a glorious morning of soft light, lush leaves and heady mann vaasanai that no amount of concrete can ever repress. The monsoons had arrived.

 

For me, the monsoons are a celebration of freedom, of letting go, of expression without restraint. I am a November girl, and it is at this time of the year in Chennai, that I feel liberated, uninhibited, and almost reborn. Gone are the days when I used to run out on the streets screaming and laughing in the rains, whenever I did not have to be indoors, although I do that often enough now. Today I have grown up, and for reasons that would not have deterred me a few years ago, I have not stepped out to enjoy the first monsoon rains yet. Even doing things in wet clothes has now become an inconvenience, like never before. But the monsoons have the kind of power over me that nothing else does – to elevate me to the heights of sheer ecstasy and pleasure, or to reduce me to a maudlin mass of irrepressible tears. But more than anything, the monsoons remind me of all the things I take for granted, and all the things I have to feel grateful for. The monsoons teach me to thank God for life, and usher in a new beginning for me, a growing-up, where things start to look different, and this happens every year. Ever so often, I have watched the monsoon rains as the drops fall on my face, and it has crossed my head that this was probably what people called Enlightenment. But evidently, it isn’t. It is but a temporary phase that rids me of all the cynicism and disillusionment that have frustrated me. It is that time of the year, when my ideals do not sway, and my faith in the world and its people is reaffirmed. It gives me the strength to tackle anything that might come my way. It is but temporal, and as the banality of life takes over after this magical period of three months, far more superficial things start to demand my attention. But what keeps me going is that the monsoons will come again, unfailingly.

 

The occasional showers at other, inevitably hot times of the year in Chennai are the rare loving smiles that a busy, exacting, strict parent treats you to, now and then. But the monsoons are vacations, a time for togetherness, when the parent forgives and forgets all the disappointments you may have caused, and unconditionally envelopes you in the warmth of his love. He no longer feels the need to be self-controlled or controlling; he just gives. You revel in the physicality of his love, unlike any other time of the year. Suddenly, everything is right again.

 

Tomorrow, if it gets sunny again, I will not fret. For, my new beginning is here already.