moments of glory.

Stupidly, I forgot to bring my support system with me to Scotland.

My three beautiful, leather-bound, gold-embossed dvds of the Extended Editions of The Lord of the Rings, along with my enormous grey-green, dog-eared, watermarked copy of the books.

And about a month into the madness, once the daze wore off, I missed them.

Possibly more than anyone or anything or anywhere else.

But now, thanks to the amazing internet, I have the extended versions of the movies on my computer.

And I kid you not, I cried a little with sheer happiness.

you’ll come back when it’s over, no need to say goodbye

Funnily enough, I spent roughly three months crying over my imminent departure from Chennai when I was 15, about to relocate to Bombay. The change seemed so overwhelming and immense, despite the fact that I’d already come to regard the city as my second home and I was only going to live with family, that crying seemed to be the only way to express all the tumult going on in my head.

Over two years, Bombay seeped into me – a beautiful, intoxicating mixture that, try as I might, I cannot describe. Like I said to a friend when we made a trip there recently, something about the air of the city just makes me happy, the minute I land there. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Bombay really was my Kirrin Island, my holiday home from the age of 4 to 13/14. I saw the same things each time I went there – the museum, the Gateway, the aquarium, the bookstores, the art gallery and the sea – and though moving there did change a lot of things for me, Bombay has become my favourite city in the world.

If you’d asked me, at 15, whether I wanted to come back to Chennai after my 2 years in Bombay, I’d probably have said no. Chennai was never on the cards for me. I assumed I’d be just like my batchmates – applying to far-off, intimidating sounding universities and discussing the respective merits of airline carriers and UK unis vs US unis. Evidently, something up there had other plans, and I very reluctantly packed my bags and wept copiously over having to leave Bombay only to go back to insipid, somnolent Chennai.

Three years changed everything, though. I don’t think I would be the person I am today if I hadn’t come back – and I realize now that I might have ended up very differently if I’d rushed off to the UK immediately after Bombay. Oddly enough, the one place I always thought I would be a child in became the place that threw unanswerable questions at me, the one place that pushed and shoved me onwards, on the road to ‘growing up’.

I’ve found my best friends in Chennai. People without whose opinions I couldn’t live; people who’ve seen me at my worst and my dubious best; people with whom I share a strange, struggling bond. I’d never had a “gang” before I came to Chennai. I’ve always been a nomad, and I suppose I’ll always be one, but something kept us together and I’m infinitely thankful for my people.

I’ve made heinous mistakes here. I’ve fallen in and out of love like a Jack-in-the-box on a sugar high. Up and down, the rollercoaster ride never seemed to stop. Hollywood romance and Victorian wishfulness were my only ideas of love before; I know now, after multiple crashings and burnings perhaps, that love is awkward, funny, unexpected, capricious, and terribly, terribly difficult to feel or express.

Drama. Three years, of never-ending drama; each time, just when I thought things were settling down into a comfortable, cozy sort of routine, somnolent Chennai threw a new, harrowing, confusing, multiple-phone-call inducing nightmare at me. I’ve been ecstatic, confused, disgusted, hollow, sick, cynical, idealistic, deluded and thoroughly astonished. But, of course, I enjoyed every minute of it all, good and bad. Drama is necessary, drama keeps things real, people!

So that’s it then.

The bags are lying on my bed, clothes and shoes, bags and scarves, books, books, books on the floor, on the bed, on the shelves. I feel oddly unreal, putting things into these giant strolleys. I’m going. I’m going!

I’m going to miss home. Bombay may be my city of dreams, but Chennai’s always been just that – Home.

juliet says, hey it’s romeo.

Dream-like, the past floated by.

Then it grew stronger; nebulous forms with ragged edges grew sharp, from blurry to oppressively opaque. Cold, from within and without, flooded the room.

Voices, as if from a far distance echo relentlessly, pleading, coaxing, importuning you to listen, to comprehend and so you do, attempting to fathom meanings that are false.

Sleep is eaten away. The hollowness you buried fills you up once more. You must escape, but you cannot: you are transfixed, despite yourself. You scream, you weep, you fall but still, you listen.

Memories turn treacherous. They hurl themselves against your defences, shattering, tearing, ripping you apart.

Your old, forgotten friends, self-pity, doubt and regret return to your side, forgiving your past neglect.

But now, your voice returns. “No!”, you scream, “Stop!”.

The phantoms pause in their onslaught. “Enough”, you say, firmly.

Slowly, the nightmare withers. Your memories curl up. You blink, and you find yourself alone once more.

Softly, enveloped in sleep, you dream.

there and back again – a shopper’s tale.

At 4.30 am, the Chennai Mail pulled into Chennai Central Station. It carried, among other things and people, two very determined shoppers whose 4 day sojourn in Bombay was solely focused on one thing and one thing only – the purchase of temporarily gratifying goods and services. Now that I’m back and the spoils are laid out on my bed, I’m vaguely embarrassed at the scale of the retail therapy I indulged in.

Bombay is still my favourite city in the world. I’ve seen Chennai, Singapore, London, Paris and Dubai and none of them has had the ability to make me as inexplicably happy as merely the air of Bombay does.

It is a dirty, overcrowded, disturbing, scurrying city, no doubt. But it’s also vibrant, alive and reinvents itself every time you visit.

Where else would you find auto and cab-drivers willing, with a smile, to take you over short distances for ten rupees?

Where else would you be able to bargain with ingenious bead-bangle-bag vendors who try to charm you into spending your money on their ultimately worthless merchandise?

Where else would you be able to see the sea, no matter how far from the shore you are, at all times, just when you really want to see it?

You can lose yourself in the maze of people and streets, walk paths that are centuries old, be struck by the incongruity of Gothic architecture in the middle of a dirty side-street, haggle over old books of poetry on the street, feel the wind and the rain whirl around you even as life continues to go on, undaunted. Bombay is a perfect melange of old and new; wherever you think history has been wiped out by glass and steel, you’ll see it peeping around a corner, reminding you that the city has stood and will stand long after you are gone.

Just as it should.

where’s home, if not here?

It’s going to be a long one, so brace yourselves.

So when Soumya said, about three months ago, that we should go to Gokarna, we weren’t sure such a place existed. I mean, who’s heard of Gokarna?

Apparently, as we learnt on our trip, a whole bunch of pilgrims and potheads have.

After a hot and sticky sleeper class train ride to Mangalore, at the end of which I was seriously revising my romanticised notions of train journeys, we roamed the platform for a bit, attempting to find our connecting train to Gokarna. This was the first instance of the Indian Railways attempting to confuse us – the ticket said Madgaon Express, but the train had decided to go to a mysterious place named Verna instead. So we pottered about aimlessly, as we are wont to do, and finally decided to hedge our bets, take the porter’s word for it, and board the train.

After three more hotter and stickier hours squished together, we managed to clamber off the train when it stopped at Gokarna Road station, which looked anything but promising. Clutching our (okay, just my) heavy burdens, we found an eager cab driver who seemed to know exactly where to take us. Of course, we spent the cab ride arguing about the possibility of us being taken somewhere to be raped, or mugged, and decided the six of us could easily take the puny cab driver.

Luckily, our self-defence skills were not necessary after all, since the cab driver dutifully took us to a rather seedy looking Hotel Gokarna International, which Shilpa insisted on informing us (at least fifty times during the trip), is run by two brothers who are happy to pass the time of day. We caught no glimpse of these two brothers, which was probably good for them, since their hotel had a serious electricity problem and NON-FUNCTIONAL TOILETS! Oh horror of horrors!

Gokarna though, made up for its lack of facilities with its gorgeous, untouched beaches and absurdly cheap food, even though we visited it when it wasn’t in ’season’. Veer Ganga, as Virangna was christened by the Indian Railways, was unhappy about the lack of weed, especially because we kept smelling it, but despite being patently un-stoned, we had fun. Ridiculous auto drivers, cheap beer, beautiful beaches, very long walks and competitive games of Monopoly and cards made Gokarna seem quite lovely, after all.

A long cab ride later, most of which was spent in arguing whether we were actually on the way to Coorg or not, whether it could be called a hill station or not and the respective merits of the name ‘East End’ and ‘West End’ hotel, we arrived in Madikeri with a sick Shilpa. The cottage in Coorg was everything that Hotel Gokarna International had not been – as Veer Gangu put it, “a home away from home”. Literally.

The most important observation we made about Coorg was, however, that Coorgi men are the most lecherous lot in the world. We did not let that deter us, of course, the strong independent women that we are, and we braved the leching in order to find grocery supplies: we were going to make savoury and chocolate pancakes. The first evening was very homey: Gangu, Lakshmi, Parna and I playing cards, Shilu asleep, Soumya cooking in the kitchen, etc.

The next day was more exciting: we roamed the district, made nuisances of ourselves everywhere and were stared at intensely. After such a long day of seeing every possible site of interest in Coorg (including a pointless Raja’s Seat, which seemed like a happy version of the generic Suicide Point and a Shiva temple that our driver seemed keen to show us) and taking many cheesy photos, we returned home to, well, cook our favourite dinner – Maggi! – and watch Wicker Park, which was quickly pronounced irritating and predictable by everyone.

Shilu was well by now, but it was Parna’s turn to be sick. We clambered onto a bus going to Mysore after much perambulating, and settled ourselves near the driver. A mostly uneventful bus journey later, we arrived at Mysore bus station where we escaped death by speeding bus multiple times before we were safely out, and in this utterly strange restaurant called “Gufha” which seemed modelled on a second-rate Scary House type place. After ‘lingering’ over our food to kill time, we finally made it to the very clean Mysore station, only to find that the Railways had outwitted us again, and the train was 45 minutes late.

Lakshmi and Shilu provided entertainment by singing shady Shah Rukh Khan songs, while we sipped on sugar-less coffee until the train arrived. Three hours after we were safely ensconced in compartment S 6, we had to make a 1 am run across the Bangalore station platform in order to find compartment S 13, to which we incomprehensibly had to shift. Saddled with monster bags and a sick Parna, we ran back and forth trying to find the damn thing, before someone kindly told us that S 13 was illogically set apart from the other sleeper coaches, all way in front of the AC ones. Heart-thudding running, shrieking and pushing and shoving, Lakshmi leaping onto the train because it made a noise and much yelling at idiot people standing in the doorway were just some of the ways in which we made our presence felt.

After such an adventurous trip, it was only fitting that we enjoyed 6 odd hours of sleep on the train, waking up to be in Madras.

Things we learnt:

- Shilpa’s aunt “is a big lioness”
- Soumya can make thunderous noises
- Veer Ganga is destined to be on MTV
- One can play Speed by oneself and be amused
- Lakshmi can speak (and sing) in Hindi when necessary
- “Underwears are healthy for you” – a billboard.

Don’t steal my feminine thunder!

VSSALA.