Come Rain or Shine

This is a work of fiction. The characters and situations are purely imaginary, and any resemblance to people living or dead is purely coincidental and unintended.

You always caught me when I fell, kissed my grazed knees, made it better. We were best friends, but just friends.

You took me to the prom when I couldn’t find another date. I never told you how much I loved you – I couldn’t risk losing my best friend.

All those unsuitable men I met – you always put together the broken pieces of my heart.

I married, had children. They married, had children. You were there for me, though never mine.

I have only a few years left, I want to spend them with you. Together, come rain or shine.


______
Drabble(n) - an extremely short work of fiction exactly one hundred words in length.

Lipsticks in the Conference Room - an extract

Since NaNoWriMo is the primary reason I have been neglecting my blog (work is the primary reason, but NaNo is what is sucking up the little available time I have), I guess it makes sense to share an extract here.

This is the foreword, and to all of you who do not know Hindi, I apologise in advance for the sprinkling of Hindi words I have used- the words may be unintelligible, but the context gives the meaning.

Lipsticks in the Conference Room - Prologue

“Ridiculous, isn’t it? We work in the same office, have lunch together in the cafeteria almost every day, yet find it so difficult to schedule a girlie afternoon out!” Udisha’s striking green eyes glared at each of the other three women in turn as if each of them was personally responsible for ensuring the delay.
“Well, Revathi has been travelling almost constantly. Sonia had to take a couple of days off when her kids were unwell, and I ….”
“Yes, you Malathi”, interrupted Udisha brushing back a stray curl that had worked itself loose from her ponytail. “What about you? Why have you been so grouchy and distant lately?”
Malathi frowned, deep lines creasing her once smooth forehead. “You have no idea what Rohan puts me through. He just gets more and more demanding every day, and nothing I do seems to have any impact on him. I never thought being a single parent would be so difficult.” She buried her face into her palms for a few moments, then looked up. “Frankly, I have no idea how much longer I can take this strain. I feel like I am walking on the edge, and the slightest push will send me tumbling down the cliff.” The dark circles under her eyes were darker than usual, and her nails were bitten short.
Sonia put her hand on Malathi’s shoulder and squeezed gently. “Rohan’s at a funny age, Malathi. He’s starting to discover himself as a person, and the way he can do that is by testing the limits. Don’t let him bug you. And even if he does, don’t show it. This phase too will pass.” Serenity seemed to ooze out of those huge brown eyes, and Malathi gradually felt her confidence returning.
“I really don’t know how you do it, Sonia”, she said, running her fingers through her short, home coloured hair. “Just listening to you makes me feel better.”
A blush crept up Sonia’s fair cheeks. She gave a nervous laugh, “don’t be silly, Malathi. And it’s always easier to give advice than to follow it. Are we going to sit chatting all day, or does anyone even want to order?”
“Yes, let’s order. I am famished.”
“Revathi, looking at you, anybody would think you starve yourself. And yet, you eat more than all of us put together.”
“Nazar mat laga, yaar[1]”, drawled Revathi. “I’m just blessed with great metabolism. When I was younger, I actually had spoonful of ghee[2] every morning, just so I would fill out a little and look less stick like. Now… ”
“And now, if you were just a couple of inches taller, with your figure and all that gorgeous hair, you could pass for a supermodel any day.”
Revathi coloured slightly. “Oh come on. I haven’t seen any supermodels who wears spectacles. Now, can we order? I’m dying for butter chicken and garlic naan. As long as you order that, I am indifferent about everything else.”
“Poke vindaloo?”, asked Malathi with a grin.
“You know I don’t consume anything that has four legs. Stick to the creatures that swim or fly.”
“Come to think of it, I feel like having butter chicken too”, said Udisha after scanning the entire menu. “How about a butter chicken full and Amritsari fish curry? Reckon that would be enough for the four of us?”
“Order something veg for me, please. Maybe a tadka dal or a paneer dish.”
“And since when did you turn vegetarian, Ms. Sonia Bhasin? Have you suddenly turned religious, or is it a new diet?”
“Neither, Malathi dear”, smiled Sonia. “Just that, after their latest bout of jaundice, the kids are only allowed to have steamed or grilled stuff, and it seems selfish of me to hog when they can’t eat any of their favourite stuff.”
“How will they ever come to know?”, asked Udisha. “What they don’t know doesn’t count.”
“They may not know, but I will”, insisted Sonia. “And that is something I can’t live with. Food’s not all that important, is it?”
“It is to me”, said Udisha. “Though I wish it wasn’t. Don’t think I enjoy struggling to control my weight as I now have to?”
“Be like me, Udi. Give up”, said Malathi with a wry laugh. “Things are easier for you after you accept that you are overweight and there is nothing that you can do about it.”
“You may have given up, Sweetie. But I can’t. When I take the saath pheras[3], I want to walk around the fire, not roll around it.”
“I don’t roll”, protested Malathi, but the timely arrival of the waiter prevented the conversation from degenerating into a minor disagreement.

“I’m seeing someone tomorrow.” Revathi’s voice was almost a whisper.
“How do you expect us to hear you if you mumble?”, demanded Udisha. “What was it you said? Sounded like you said you were going to see someone.”
“I am going to be seeing someone tomorrow”, replied Revathi. “Rather, someone’s parents and brother are coming to see me.”
“What?! Seeing as in meeting someone with thoughts of marriage?”, asked Udisha. “I didn’t even know you were in the market.”
“I’m not exactly ‘in’ the market”, said Revathi, emphasizing the word with her fingers. “It’s just that I am not getting any younger, and I don’t exactly have anyone in mind, so I did not disagree when my parents suggested meeting this boy’s parents.”
“But how can you ever go in for an arranged marriage? I mean, how?”
“Nothing wrong with arranged marriages, Udisha”, said Sonia softly. “For all practical purposes, mine was an arranged marriage too. I may have known Hemang and his family for years, but we would never have got married if someone else hadn’t taken the trouble to fix the match.”
“And mine was not an arranged marriage, and we all know how it turned out”, said Malathi.
“Okay, I give up”, said Udisha rolling her eyes. “So, Revathi, when is the wedding?”
“Don’t be silly, yaar. I’m just meeting the family informally tomorrow. It’s not as though anything has been fixed up.”
‘Say whatever you like, Revs. But I know you’ll be married by the end of the year”, predicted Udisha. “Unless someone is both mad and blind, they would snap you up in an instant.”
Revathi hugged her friend, and teased. “Let’s then have a double wedding in December. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
“For you maybe, not for me. I have no intention of getting married so soon.”
“But Udisha, you know Rohit would marry you in a jiffy and you too love him. Why are you being so stubborn about not marrying him?”
“Because I know Rohit better than any of you. If I marry him now, he will insist I move to the US to be with him, and before I know it, he’ll take up a job and settle down there. Now that he knows I will marry him only after he comes back to Bombay, he will take up a job in India after he finishes his course.”
“You may have something there”, admitted Sonia. “Equations do tend to change for the worse after marriage. But are you sure the strange arrangement you have reached is conducive to your relationship?”
“What’s so strange about our arrangement?”, demanded Udisha. “It is extremely practical if you ask me. We are both young and attractive, and it is ridiculous to expect that either of us would lead a monastic existence for two years. Might as well agree that we will each go out with other people if we want to, without getting emotionally involved with them.”
“You are having a good time, Udisha. But is Rohit?”
“That, Revathi, is not the point. The point is that Rohit could have a good time too, if he wanted to. If he chooses not to, that is his problem, not mine.”
“I’m not sure if I would be too happy to know that my partner is screwing around, even if he claims to be emotionally loyal to me”, said Malathi.
“With due respect, Malathi, this is not about you. This is about me”, said Udisha huffly.
“In case you have forgotten, I have been through something very similar. And I can tell you it is not sustainable in the long term.”
Udisha made to answer, but Sonia put a restraining hand on her. “Udisha, whether you want to accept it or not, you are playing with fire. Relationships are fragile things, and anything can happen in a situation like the one you have got the two of you into. Just take care, that’s all we’ll say.”
“Thank you, Sonia Aunty”, said Udisha stiffly.
“Most welcome, Udisha beti”, replied Sonia with a smile. “Bhagwan tujhe sad buddhi de.[4]”
Malathi grinned. “A more un-Aunty looking Aunty I have yet to see”, she said. “With that gorgeous figure and the flawless complexion, who’d say you are a mother of two almost grown up kids?”
“Start coming for a run with me in the morning. I guarantee the years will drop off in no time at all.”
“No way!”, the other three chorused. “I value my sleep far too much to ever put myself through the torture of getting up a minute before I need to.”

[1] - Litrerally, 'don't cast the evil eye on me."
[2] - clarified butter, needless to say, incredibly fattening and addictive
[3] - Hindu marriages are sanctified when the couple goes around the sacred fire seven times- term used for the act of marriage
[4] - literally, "may god grant you sense."

A little bit of appreciation

There was this lady on the train the other day. A perfectly good lady. A lady who had a solution to every problem. A lady who had advice for everyone.

"That fan is not working. Do you want a pencil so you can start it. If you press it with a pencil, it starts."

"If you want to start the fan, do it yourself."

"I don't want the fan. I was just telling you how to do it."

"Are you going to eat that orange on the train? I have a polythene bag in which you can dump the peel."

"You mustn't discuss financial details, or make holiday plans in public places. It can be very dangerous". This was to a college going girl who was talking to a friend on the mobile, and who only looked irritated at being disturbed.

She wasn't nasty. Only pushy. Nobody really likes having someone tell them what to do, and yet she just didn't get it.

There was one way and one way alone to stop her. "That's a really beautiful saree you are wearing. You look positively radiant in it", I said. The first part was true, the second was stretching the truth just a little bit.

She beamed. Her smile transformed her face into something really beautiful. And she shut up after that.

A little bit of appreciation is all anyone really wants.

Writing can be dangerous

I could kill whoever got me hooked onto NaNoWriMo (I could also kiss them, and once the thing is finally done, I probably will, but that is a different story). My day is more tightly back than a can of sardines (though I have never personally encountered a can of sardines so would go by what the others say), at least in this month, and it is near impossible to find time to write. The one time that does work for me is the 40 minute train commute to and from office.

And there I was today, sitting in my favourite window seat, scribbling the scene leading up to the first kiss of one of my four protagonists. All my life I have had the ability to relive imaginary scenes involving the people who inhabit my head. So it was today. I could picture beautiful Revathi sitting in a cab wondering how to react to the very obvious advances of her colleague. I have no idea when or how it happened, but at some stage, my face started mirroring the expressions I knew were flitting across Revathi's face. When I looked up to lock my eyes into those of Revathi's colleague, I noticed the person sitting across staring at me. A quick look around showed half the compartment suddenly showing an inordinate amount of interest in something just behind my head.

Why did nobody warn me that writing could be this dangerous!

Or does this happen only to me?

Vote for me

This picture was taken on the day state elections were held in Bombay. The man saw me with my camera and insisted I take his picture. Have yet to figure out what exactly it was that he was trying to show off - definitely not the lack of election mark on his finger.

Borrowing from life

The story I am writing as a part of NaNoWriMo has four rather different women interacting with each other in an office. None of them is me, in looks, temperament or situation, and yet, when I write them, I find episodes from my life working their way into each of their stories.

Is that at all normal? Will they continue to be so different if all of them end up borrowing so generously from my life?

Sorry about the brevity of the post - have been staring at an Excel worksheet for the past five hours, and not only am I cross-eyed, I am also cross brained!

Sports Photography

I’ve always been fascinated by Sports Photography, and ever since I acquired my new SLR, I have been itching to try my hand at it. My dream finally came true this weekend, at a Corporate Football Tournament organized by my organization to generate revenue and publicity.

Of the thousand plus frames that I shot, barely a dozen captured a decisive moment, but given the fact that it was my first attempt, I was more than happy that I managed to capture even that many.

Here’s a sequence of a foiled attempt at a penalty kick.

Here’s another of a successful attempt at the goal.

And here’s me capturing all the action-

Tango

This is a work of fiction. The characters and situations are purely imaginary, and any resemblance to people living or dead is purely coincidental and unintended.

Our bodies belong together, our rhythm is one.
You touch me, the air sizzles. You pull me towards yourself, the mercury soars. My legs slide up your body, electricity is generated. We twirl, the world gasps.
Since our first dance, I have never been able to dance with anyone else. On the dance floor, we are pure unadulterated passion.

Looking at us, can anyone tell that you abandoned me when I was carrying your child? That if not for the money we make through our dancing, I would cheerfully stick a knife into your back and tango at your funeral?

______
Drabble(n) - an extremely short work of fiction exactly one hundred words in length.

The Chirstmas Play

When I first saw the script for the X-mas play that my not yet four year old was supposed to act in, I was not at all sure if he would be able to do it. In itself, the lines were not too long- my son, for one, can cheerfully rattle off stories much longer without missing a single work. But the words were new, and a teeny bit complicated, and performing on stage was a new experience.

One evening was all it took to teach my son the lines "An Angel told us a Saviour is born. And I have come to see Baby Jesus." But even after two long rehersals, he hadn't figured out the cues, and was refusing to raise his voice louder than a mumble.

The other Moms were pushing their kids to do enact the lines and to say them with emotion, but that I was reluctant to do. After all, my son was not a puppet who would perform when the right strings were pulled.

Two days before the play, the mothers pushed for one last rehersal. I refused. I was not going to take a day off to ferry my kid to a practice which I knew was not going to have the slightest impact on my son's performance.

On the day of the play, my son lived up to my expectations - he refused to say the lines, and just stood there looking sulky till I took pity on his and wisked him off the stage.

Was I disappointed? Well, I'll be kidding if I say I was not. But I am not as disappointed as I would have been had I expected him to deliver his lines, even if quite hesitantly.

As for the other kids- individually, and collectively, they looked lovely. But I would be exaggerating if I say that any of them performed to their true potential. Exposure is a great thing to have, but is it absolutely necessary to set our kids up for failure?

Progress on NaNoWriMo-No

At the start of the month, I had blogged about why I was not taking up the NaNoWriMo challenge. What I implied, but failed to mention explicitly was the fact that I was going to write as much as I could during the month, and to continue to do so till something was finished.

There had been this vague idea for a chick-lit novel which I was pretty sure I could develop further. One character I was sure about, the rest I started thinking about in the last days of November. Since November 1 was a Sunday, I managed to get about a thousand words written. I wrote on the train while commuting to work, I wrote myself to sleep instead of reading as I normally do. By the end of the week, I had managed to touch the magical 5 k mark (nothing I have written before came anywhere near that).

Geek that I am, I decided to celebrate by treating myself to a couple of graphs that tracked my progress.

I had two PTMs to attend yesterday, so took the day off. Managed to get a fair bit of writing done, and hit the 25% mark. By NaNoWriMo standards, not good at all - half the month gone, and only a quarter of the way to the 50k mark - but it is much more than I ever thought I would write. As per my current projections (current rate of writing, extrapolated to estimated size of work - I did tell you I was a geek, didn't I?) I'll finish between end-December and early-January. I know those projections are meaningless, because if I manage to keep up with my blog posts for the rest of the month, I would be pleasantly surprised.

BUT, finish the novel I am now determined to do, and isn't that wonderful in itself? Once I do, I can finally start calling myself a Writer!

And as of five minutes back, the story even has a tentative name - Lipsticks in the Board Room - takes no imagination to figure out where the story is set.