you’re a carousel, you’re a wishing well

I feel unaccountably happy every time I listen to this song (‘Everything’ by Michael Buble).

Friday afternoon. Tomorrow’s a busy day, what with one job interview and one general ‘how to make money online’ meeting. Hopefully, from the following week, I will be engaged in more than one scheme through which I will finance my laptop. At twenty years of age, I’ve begun to feel more and more guilty at having to spend my parents’ money on things that have nothing to do with them.

And here’s an abstraction:

Now and then, between those frisson-laded phases of madness and obsession and fixation upon one object, one person outside of oneself for all the most intense sensations of happiness and sadness, you fall into a languorous exploration of things that have nothing (and yet, everything) to do with your immediate emotions. The kind of sanguine contentment that you feel, in this period, feels more relatively valuable to your life than any previously longed for and experienced intensity.

Spending long, lazy days filled with reading and conversation, lunches and dinners with friends who are long past superficial concerns of politesse, conversations to nowhere on the phone and advertisement-worthy evenings with family all the while knowing that your path in life (for the next year, at least) is secure: in the midst of so much, could you feel anything but happy and content, as if nothing could be lacking?

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.

i get high with a little help from my friends

chasing away the hours

Tomorrow’s the last day of college – thank GOD for that. I’m tired of Stella, 7.00 am mornings and listening to (mostly) insipid teachers.

As usual this post is only so that I can kill time and take a break from my essay [on Existentialism and the Absurd in the plays of Sheridan, Shaw and Coward, if you must know] because I can’t write more than 1400 words of garbage and keep going without a break.

Soumya was over last night and we baked into the wee hours of the morning. The result = 1 chocolate pear pie, slightly burnt with a crust that could have done with a tiny bit more sugar but overall, quite enjoyable. We also, in true empowered-single-women style, stayed up watching Love Actually and spying on ex-boyfriends while simultaneously dissing them royally and wondering how we could have ever stooped so low as to bestow ourselves on the aforesaid scum.

Needless to say, we concluded that we ought to save ourselves for more exalted stuff, though Sou still thinks Mr. Darcy is not worth it. I will not give up though, and will continue trying to educate her.

But one thing we agreed on is the strange and arbitrary nature of modern relationships. I mean, one minute you can be so close to someone that you tell them everything, from the act of brushing your teeth to the latest (and unfounded) rumour about your best friend that you can’t tell anyone else because it’d be condemned as bitching…

…and then, one day, you’re bitching about him to your best friend and vowing to never let anyone get that close to you again. It’s quite fascinating to go from intimate to i’d-rather-be-dead-than-see-you-in-the-street.

Ah, the absurdity of life! Let’s all go live in a comedy of manners.

city of sleepless nights

It was a small room. A bookcase crammed to breaking point against one wall, a wooden cupboard, also stuffed till it could hold no more, occupying the second wall. Two years of sleeping on a sofa cum bed and a bathroom so small it could barely hold all the buckets of washing, let alone allow me to shove myself into it.

But best of all, a balcony. A view to die for: miles and miles of buildings, slums, huts, trees, people and beyond it all, the glorious, changeable sea. In the monsoons, you could see the approach of pregnant rain clouds, and, with the threat of rain imminent, we would run out and drag the clothes-stands in before newly washed clothes received a second dousing.

Two years of living out of a minuscule cupboard, a tiny bookcase and nooks and crannies: between pillows, behind the computer and under the dryer.  My  keepsakes jostling for space with wine and vodka  and whisky; papers being blown away over the Bombay skyline every time I neglected to shut the balcony door; waking up to cold, misty mornings and little children screaming bloody murder.

A thunderstorm and a small, scared, warm shape crawling into my bed. Mealtimes that turned into battlegrounds. Reading “Harold and the Purple Crayon” twelve times successively to my darling baby.  Gift-wrapping and gossip, for mammoth birthday parties, sneaking in TV after the kids were packed off to bed, trying to live my own life as much as I could in the middle of this madness. Shopping at Big Bazaar and Linking Road and Colaba Causeway; on the quest for the perfect dress and the perfect shoes.

So much advice, laughter, love and letting loose.

Diets, walking, enforced healthiness – resentment, anger, claustrophobia. But those phases never lasted long. Late night jaunts to Haji Ali Juice Centre or Barista or ice-cream at Worli with the babies. Playing in the garden, revisiting the Disney obsession, long MSN nights, midnight snacking on smoked cheese and crackers and whatnot. Half-adult, half-child – the boundaries were blurred and we rocked back and forth on unfamiliar, bumpy territory that we were all learning to negotiate.

I miss my life there.

I miss waking up to the puddle the rain made next to my bed. The surprises and the masala chai. The love and affection of people whom I can never hope to thank enough for having let me live with them.

I might not have communicated how utterly grateful I am. But suffice it to say, without those years, I would be nothing.