Gentle Reminder

Ma can be found (if she gets the chance)

On a swing in a park

Dancing in the rain

Enjoying an ice cream by the road

I wish my inner child is alive

When I reach her age.

Ma can also be found (mostly)

In the kitchen

Cooking for a dozen people effortlessly

Being there for people silently

Facing bad manners gracefully

I will probably

Make different choices.

Ma can love with all her heart

She wears her white hair like a crown

I wish I was as comfortable in my skin

Ma’s garden is always blooming

I wish I was as nurturing.

But in all this taking care

And showing love

She forgets herself

I wish she’d learn something from me

And put herself first

Every now and then.

He said, She said

 Let's go to the end already

For we are all racing to the end anyway

Why go through the daily troubles

If the goal is to have a peaceful sleep

Said he.

Yes, and in so doing

Miss out on all the sights, and love and music

Why close your eyes and ears

If the road is so full of amusements

She said.

Two Years

I complete two years at Accenture today. They say your job is not your life, it's not what defines you. But I can safely say I was never happier at a job. 

Spending two years at a job is a milestone for sure, but somehow it does not feel like it. 

While the world has undergone a sea of change, I feel like my life has never been more tranquil. Right about now, I LOVE my life. 

Some days are better than others for sure, but then again isn't that how life is supposed to be. 

I think this is a very good place and today is a very good day to reflect on my journey. When I first joined I was not very sure if I was a good fit for this role, and I was just about learning the ropes when the entire scheme of domestic life changed. 

Earlier, my day started with getting up and getting my son ready for school and then rushing back, having a quick breakfast and heading towards our individual offices. The nest one or two hours would be spent in our cars, cursing the traffic and listening to mindless radio. The day would rush past and then the evening would see me scrambling to pick Koko up from daycare, getting home and preparing for dinner. So went the days. In a flash a week had gone by. 

But then things changed and I paused. Koko does school in the corner of the room now. There is no traffic and no rush as such. But is it really so?

My learning curve has been amazing, I have learnt so much and really honed the art. I can safely say I have created a space for myself and people know me for what I am and what I do. I am not afraid to say I love my job, because I really do. I am so lucky to be able to be in a position where my decisions can really make a difference in someone's life and at the end of the day, even if I am stretching - if I am able to see that I have made a difference for the better, it makes me a happy person. 

Does it not have it's low days - of course not! Some days I feel like shit, but I have learnt to take it in my stride, and most importantly, today is not that day :)

Aquamarine

 A long time ago when we lived in Ranigunj, we had a neighbour, Pishima. We never really knew her name. Only that she lived alone in the mansion at the end of the road. She was some sort of an invalid, and we had never seen her step out of the house. But she was very kind to us children. Not like the batty old people who would bark at us if our ball entered their yard. She would enjoy our company, often encouraging us to come play in her garden. We liked sitting with her in the soft winter sun. She would sometimes have sherbet made for us. 

She also let us play with her cat. It was more like a stray cat, but she liked Pishima’s house much like the rest of us urchins. The cat had the most alert and mischievous eyes I had ever seen, they were green and blue, something Pishima described as aquamarine. It was a color I had never heard of, much like the many other things she spoke of. It was from her that we first heard of Marie Curie and Shakespeare, we heard about what Niel Armstrong had done, we first saw a globe. She spoke about museums and sculptures. She introduced us to Da Vinci and Michelangelo. We enjoyed our summer vacations sitting and getting regaled by tales of such faraway lands, stories which our families wouldn’t tell us and our schools would never teach. 

Every evening after an afternoon of laborious playing, we would flock around her table as she sat for her tea. She would have her dutiful servant always bring some sort of sweet or savory snack for us. The cat would also sit among us, comfortably curled up on someone’s lap. One of us, I can’t remember who, had named her Neeli. 

That summer break, just when the mangoes had started ripening my aunt came to spend the vacation with my cousin, that bratty Raju. He was always up to something or the other. Either tearing my books, or putting salt in father’s tea or some other mischief. My father who is a very genial man, would never scold anyone, but with Raju he would always lose his cool. But he was the apple of my mother’s eye. My father even gave him his prized silver paper knife with his name engraved because Raju like it so much. 

Since I was the closest to him in age, it came upon me to keep him entertained in those months. He would accompany me and my friends to Pishima’s house too. Her house was full of curios and one day Raju took something from her house, but just as he was putting it in his pocket Neeli had jumped on him and scratched his hand. He pushed her away and started shouting, “What a wild animal!” 

Pishima quickly came and put some mercurochrome on his injury. But she also knew Neeli would not attack someone just like that. So when she saw a missing miniature canon on her shelf, she quickly took Raju to task. Within a few minutes, he was on the brink of tears and ran back home after replacing the item that he had stolen. 

Needless to say I was very embarrassed and avoided going out to play for the next few days. What would my friends say? My brother is a thief, they must be thinking the same of me. I was surprised how Raju, who was the culprit, strutted around the house like a prized peacock, as if nothing had happened. I knew what a bully he was and was honestly scared to confront him or tell the truth to the parents. I later learnt that he had convinced his mother that Pishima was in fact a strange old crone. Her house full of strangeness was surely not normal, and the mercurochrome she rubbed on him was surely some menacing potion. I eavesdropped my aunt telling the ladies of the neighbourhood about her conviction that Pishima was into black magic. I was furious to know this and went straight to my mother who laughed and took me in her embrace, rubbing my eyes with her saree. She asked me not to worry so much as my aunt would be gone in a few days. She was terribly blind when it came to her son. Also, my mother assured me that everyone knew Pishima all too well to buy into such  tall tales. Who would believe the notion that Pishima was dabbling in occult? I went to Pishima’s the next day and apologized. She and my friends laughed and we played around like nothing had happened. 

With no one believing in his cock and bull story, Raju kept aloof from us and ventured about alone. I was relieved he had found something to do on his own and wasn’t tagging along with me or my friends. He would be roaming all around and return late into the evening. 

I just wished for Raju and my aunt to go away. One day my friends came to call me to go kite flying. I quietly sneaked out of the house before Raju found out. He would surely have come and showed off his skills, which none of us were interested in. As we were out on the streets rushing after our kites, we came upon Pishima’s house. Reeti was the first one who spotted Neeli, or whatever remained of her. There by the gate lay the mangled body, beheaded with a cruelty we could not imagine. We gasped, some of us started crying. We were after all just a group of eight or nine year olds, still untouched by the viciousness of life. A few of us ventured closer, just to check if there was any chance to revive her. Suddenly I noticed a gleaming silver paper knife, with my father’s name engraved on it. I picked it up and ran back to my father, sobbing. Raju and his mother left the very same evening. 

Our parents did not stop us from visiting Pishima anymore. As if a spell had been cast upon them and with them gone, they had snapped back to reality. Next morning as we went into Pishima’s yard and sat beside her, she did not look at us or speak to us, her gaze glassy and transfixed on something far away, we were not sure what exactly. In the morning sun, her eyes shone a tricky shade in between green and blue, almost aquamarine, just like Neeli’s.

Defining “hujug”

 Us Bengalis are a curious and brave race. Me included. Our one extraordinary and defining feature is so extraordinary indeed that it does not even have an equivalent word in English. The Bangla word for it is “hujug”.

Let me try to explain it. We love our people, our friends, our adda, and so many other things which are distinctly ours. Pujo is just one of those things. We are very touchy about the subject and extremely possessive about the details. It really does not matter if you have never been to Calcutta, we assume you would know the difference between Ashtami and Dashami. And hell hath no fury as a Bengali declined a leave request the week of Pujo. 

Once said leave is secured, we begin with our shenanigans which include pandal hopping, egg roll eating, balloon bursting, bhenpu blowing amidst other unmentionables like Tangra sojourns eat al.

But I digress, for I was defining hujug. Digression is also a key tenet of this precious feature. Hujug is the excitable and adventurous part of our collective psyche, which makes us as a people do tremendously stupid things like go out in hordes during an ongoing pandemic, without masks, flouting social distancing  to catch a glimpse of a goddess who we will pray to later on, once we get sick. 

Example Gracias of just some things which instigate, nay nurture our latent hujug:

There is a pandal like Burj Khalifa, certain celebrity will be at certain pandal for the grand opening, this pandal has the grandest chandelier, that pandal has an idol with two lions etc. etc.

Wise men say about Bengalis - The hujug is strong with this one.

Face In the Crowd

It was quite late. As she gathered her purse, her backpack and her tote bag containing the empty lunch boxes, she wondered how long it would take to reach home. It’s not like she enjoyed working late. She did not like her work or her co-workers, but no one really does a day job to enjoy themselves. Sometimes you had to work late, else they would take her to be too casual or worse still, insincere. Tara was anything but insincere. In fact she was quite diligent, so much so, that she would finish all her tasks within the stipulated office hours. But alas, such is the way of the world, the real work in any office only begins after the evening tea and smoke break. That’s the time when the networking happens, key projects are allocated and decisions are made as to who would really make it. Tara did not want to fall back, that’s all. She was young and she had dreams of making it big. If staying back for a few extra hours hobnobbing with her self-important superiors was going to get her that, she was ready to do so.

As she stood waiting for the elevator to come, she flicked through her phone doing a reconnaissance of her social media profile. Her cousin was vacationing in Greece. Her best friend just got engaged. Everyone she knew seemed to be having a blast. Such happy faces, and such perfect make up. The ding from the waiting elevator echoed through the empty lobby. When do these people have the time Tara wondered. She could hardly get herself breakfast in the morning before rushing to work. The rest of the day is a blur. She comes back to herself only now when she is heading back to her studio flat where a sitcom and reheated food await her.

The traffic is relatively sparse today. The rains have something to do with it of course. She tried to hail a cab but wouldn’t get any. A dimly lit bus floated towards the kerb and she decided to take it. At this hour, she often took this bus, it was familiar and it was the only option. There was no point waiting any longer. She could take this bus and get off at the Post Office. From there her house was a ten minute walk. The weather was beautiful, with the rain washed winds bringing quite the chill. She wondered if she could take a pretty selfie of herself with the moon and caption it something clever, declaring to the world that she too had a life. The bus was relatively empty, but she didn’t have much choice of seating from the half damaged and half musty seats. She selected one by the window near the exit door, which overlooked the rest of the bus. Sitting in a seat which was against the motion made her a little dizzy, but she didn’t want to walk further down the dark aisle. There were a couple of figures silhouetted in the black and white insides of this moving metal vehicle. She looked out at the moon which was peeping out of the clouds just now. How pretty it looked tonight!

All she wanted to do was get back home and get some sleep. Tomorrow promised to be a long day. The month end days were always like this, the crazy hours, the stress, the coffee, the missed emails, the last minute reports - the rush, and then inevitably the crash. Such is life for Tara, and she enjoyed it. As she looked across the several figures hunched here and there, she recognised a few regulars. There was the old lady who always occupied the seat reserved for the conductor. Tara has watch her do it time and again. She always imagined the lady to be some sour librarian. There was of course the man who loved his crossword. No matter when Tara saw him, he would always have the day’s newspaper folded to the size of the crossword as of that’s the only reason he purchased the newspaper. He was always intent, his pen poised on the edge of an important breakthrough. There was also the man with his headphones. Tara was very amused by his affection for music. She couldn’t remember ever seeing him without his headphones, lost in his own world, drumming his fingers on the seat in front of him. Then there was the man in the pinstripes. He was a slight man, with an intelligent nose and a veritable frown always affixed upon his forehead, as if he was bearing the burden of many. Not to forget the cap, the lone one who sat on the last seat. She had never seen him get up or get off the bus. He was always just a presence at the back, brooding and looking intently, from u der the frayed white cap. Her eyes had met his gaze once or twice before and she had been baffled at how unabashedly he stared at her. So when she saw him there today, Tara avoided looking into his face. But she could feel his eyes on her, studying her very move. 

The bus meandered lazily and Tara almost dozed off to sleep when suddenly her phone rang. Her mother had been calling her incessantly to check whether she had reached home. The spate of assault news had set her colorful imagination in motion. Tara called her back and let her know she will be back home in a couple of minutes. Her mother had just started on how she had read something ugly about a single girl returning home late just in the morning news, when her phone’s battery died. These newspapers will be her death! She silently sighed a sigh of relief when her eyes suddenly caught Mr. White Capstaring at her. She immediately looked down, following years of subconscious training to avoid eye contact with any stranger. But just as suddenly as she had diverted her gaze, something in her pulled her back and looked back at him. He was still looking at her. Or was he looking into nothing? She didn’t think much of it and waited for her stop to come. 

The rains had hit this part of the town quite harshly. Some of the bylanes were waterlogged and the drizzling continued. The pace at which the bus was going, she made a rough calculation in her head about how long it would take her to get home and the answer didn’t please her. She fished inside her purse to search for her umbrella. She always kept a small one in there just in case. Tara’s brother often teased her about the amount of things she had in that purse of hers which she actually used and the amount of them under the ‘just in case’ label. There were snack bars, if she got hungry. A small bottle of water, which she always forgot to refill. Once when she was very thirsty and she took a swig, she could swear she saw some algae floating about it. Then there were pens whose caps would invariably come off and poke her like harpoons when she put her unsuspecting hand in, and bills, hundreds of bills and receipts from shopping. Presently she found her small white umbrella with a pink floral motif. She really liked the print and purchased it from an urchin on the pavement outside her office. She held the umbrella with both her hands as a weapon and waited for the bus ride to end.

About half an hour later, her stop arrived and she hurriedly got off without looking back. She clutched her purse and wore the backpack cautiously. She did not want her laptop to soaked in this rain. As the bus rolled away a wave of water splashed on to the pavement ahead of her. The monsoons were particularly harsh to the pedestrians. She started walking, cautiously stepping over bricks which some Good Samaritan had placed so that one doesn’t spoil their shoes. While navigating the treacherous terrain with full concentration, she suddenly saw the bus screech to a halt just a little farther on and a figure leap out of it. Tara had almost reached the fork on the road where she would have to enter her lane, when she unconsciously looked at the figure up ahead on the road approaching her rapidly. The silhouette was wearing a cap. Suddenly Tara felt a knot in her stomach. Why was White Cap here and why was he racing to her? This was not his usual stop. Was he one of those perverted types who chase you down a lonely road and slit your throat? These quiet people can be quite the sociopaths. While her brain wracked with these questions, her body had taken flight. She had forgotten about her laptop getting wet or her shoes getting spoilt. She just had to run to the end of the lane, unlock the gate and enter. The lane was empty like it always was. Even the chai shop was closed because of the rains. On other days there are at least a couple of people there, smoking and making jokes. Even those lewd uncles were welcome today. As she splashed across the street, the muddy water rising up to her shirt, she suddenly realised she would have to stop and hunt for the keys in her massive purse again. If she survived this, Tara promised to switch to a smaller purse and smaller heels.

‘Ma’m’ she could hear a voice behind her steadily gaining on the distance. 

‘Ma’m, please wait’
 
She pretended not to hear and sprinted in full force. Her heel got stuck in a muddy puddle and she fell face first on the concrete road. This is it, she thought. She could have moved to Australia, but she didn’t, she wanted to stay at home. She could have gone bungee jumping with her friends next weekend but she didn’t, because she had to finish a report at work. She could have gone out on a date when Vikrant asked, but she didn’t because there is so much to achieve before getting entangled in romance. She didn’t even speak to her mother properly when she called. She will never speak to her again. May be her mother will just read about her in the papers.

White Cap was here. He looked down at Tara and said, ‘are you alright?’

 Tara pushed herself up and could feel the bruises on her knees and hands.  

“Here let me help yo” he said extending his hand. In his other hand dangled Tara’s tote bag with the empty lunch boxes.

The dreaded cycle

 Every month, there is a particular date which scares me. Around a couple of day ahead of it, I start planning, frequently checking my phone messages and bank account. It’s the day my credit card bill gets generated. I wait for it like a student who has appeared for a test and knows how awfully they have done, they are also very sure which questions they got wrong, so they are almost certain what the ballpark result would be. Yet. 

The morning the bill hits my inbox I am a veritable skunk, spewing stink all over. Why did I have to buy this, or that or the other are the top guilt ridden questions. Let’s face it, I am hopeless at financial planning.  Generally when people make blanket stereotypical statements like women are bad at driving, my voice is the loudest to protest. But when it comes to the stereotype of finances I have to quieter down. I just don’t know where the months keep slipping and so does my money. 

I make plans to keep a check and not make huge purchases or come such. But every now and then something comes up and I am back to square one. When will I learn?

I have tried it all - apps which track your financial pattern, making lists in notebooks, planning out minute expenditures. I start off strong but some day, I slip. Maybe it is that discount on pretty dresses, or the visit to the mall, or that must-get iPad. :(

We’ll, here’s another month almost to the end, I am having that funny feeling in my stomach again. Let’s hope I am better next month. Fingers crossed