Yes, by this time it’s up here, I’ll be up flying away from this land which is more than my own. I belong here and the madness and the wisdom I know will pull me back. And yes, M too – the best thing that happened to me here!
Till then please Mumbai, be what you are and yes take care of my baby too! It kills me to leave you, but the irony is you teach me to live everyday!
I have nothing to say as I walk away,
Re-birth they say,
I nod.
I am not leaving, just walking away a bit only to return to live a life, the seeds of which you’ve sown in my eyes! Don’t cry, for there’s a part of me, that’s you and I carry that along in the glint of my smile.
“We miss when we remember, we remember when we forget, habits just live on through breath – you are the habit called LIFE, Mumbai!!!”
Back again soon. Till then, Bhalo Theko* majha** Mumbai
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* – Stay Well (Bengali)
** – My (Marathi)
The irony is Tamanna and I, never met on Tuesdays! Tuesdays and Thursdays used to be the most difficult days of the week for they were her counselling days. Tantrums, cajoling, temper shoots, love musings a mix of all was needed to see through these two days with A (her BMC counsellor) and today as I spend the last Tuesday here, I am suddenly gripped with a strange nostalgia, of whether I fared well in this test of mentorship, for remember I wasn’t a mother?
T’s mythophobia scared me beyond my wits. It wasn’t those sudden unearthing of events that make me gape in wonder that unnerved me, it was the extent of damage they were causing to her psyche that was the major concern. While we struggled through our lives and the emotional baggage we both carried the most important thing that I sought to make her understand that there was a fine line of distinction between lies and imagination. And that while the latter was healthy the former was a strict NO!
To explain her the difference I introduced her to Calvin and Hobbes and tried to unearth before her the power of imagination and that how Calvin never really ‘lied’. I tried to tell her that lies meant her trying to show her own self as someone she’s not. I succeeded at times when she told me the truth about cheating in a ‘maths’ test one day to score the highest and then I failed when her teacher asked me if she really had a cousin in US who was seeking to sending a her Wii for her birthday?
When she once cooked up stories about her trip-in-dreams to Iggatpuri I asked her if she really did this to fit in to a group or whether she was really uncomfortable in being in the skin she was in? In her innocent defensive mechanism she said that she found it ‘fun’ to cook stories. And so as I indulged in pretend play of ‘Teacher Student’ with her somewhere I realised that her very back ground troubled her. She liked to remain in a dream world where everything was exactly opposite. Where people spoke differently, wore different kinds of clothes and had a different lifestyle. She wanted the world to see her as someone she was not. Only because she had this image in her head that that life was ‘fun’.
While this was her ‘imaginative’ mind, the problem lay in her incessant lying to her classmates about her social conditions, about her background and the type of lifestyle she indulged into. She once lied to her teacher that her Marathi marks were poor because everyone only spoke in English at home!
One year and T taught me patience, taught me how difficult it is to maintain a strict face when your child cries but you know you have to be strong to teach her right and wrong. And that though later you’ll crave to pick her in your arms and cajole her saying it’s ok, you will not, instead you’ll just wonder and wonder that how it is not ok!
I couldn’t cure her fully that I would ramble about it here, but suddenly I felt to note down these thoughts? Why today? Maybe because all of a sudden as I stand to leave T and go I am gripped with this sense of self analysis on whether I have been too strict at times? Whether I have lost out on the fun play aspect with her and taken her childish follies too seriously? Whether I have been a paranoid pseudo-mother who was too motivated to do things right?
It’s not that I never had fun, I remember spinning a ‘why butterflies don’t get wet’ tale for her in the most imaginative way while people around me either quit saying they have full faith in my power of imagination or Googled the scientific reason for me to spill out?
It’s just that I am indulging in a self critique today. As I sat in the bus I struggled with this analysis and spoke to the two people I always talk to in my head – GM and Y! But then something else comforted me too and that brought me to actually write this to be frank!
Packing and moving on you discover things which you think are long lost! I discovered my old tattered copy of kiddie Gita today, the one which is ear-marked with all of GM’s favourite teachings. As I smiled and ruffled the pages I stopped at where Krishna says that lies are ok if they are to save your skin, but the moment you lie and that hurts anyone emotionally or physically, even if it’s in your unknown being, know that you have sinned?
I just sought to save T from hurting others and in turn her own self in the long run, GM. So guess you wouldn’t be too disappointed with me, right? I just wanted to make her understand that it’s important that she turns out to be a person whom people accept and love for what she is and for not what she pretends to be, for then she would be lying about her own identity. What would be worse than a self identity crisis, right GM?
T, I hope when I am back from my ‘tour’ (yes she thinks I am off for another office tour, but yes a long one!), I find you as a person who’s happy and confident and loves her own reflection in the mirror!
Loads of Love and Wishes
There’s a problem in bringing up kids with high level of imagination (all eyes at me please and not at the door – there’s no diva who’s set to appear. DQ is in front of you! 
) – or so my mother bantered and I smirked. But that was ONLY before Tamanna came into my life. Now I bow down to the power of imagination and in fact dread each time her counselor calls me. “I say a little prayer for you myself” before I pick up the calls and then I leave it on my cuppa of Green Tea to go through the escapades of photo shoots and expensive parlor visits to do her hair (the Barbie way) – when in reality she was in a special class!
Guess this time the morning tea session with Ma is going to be a long one.
Today as I type this, I smile when I think about the session I am to have tomorrow with Ma about Tamanna. I am sure she’s again going to giggle about my “monsters under the bed’ episodes! Being a typical Calvin, I thoroughly believed that there were indeed monsters under my bed each night. The difference was that instead of a father telling re-assuring stories to put a child to sleep (as imagined by Watterson) I had a sister who gladly did the opposite to keep me awake as she snored! And since my parents had the rule that I couldn’t step down from the bed after lights were put off, as I could do was clutch my Hobbes near and wonder if the monsters were done with their dinner, or whether they were making plans to attack me and whether they really had glowing eyes with X-ray vision!
For long I have believed in this story – refused to peep under beds at night and somehow deep down my alter ego still mocks me for believing in this fear. According to her I hate beds (yes I do!) and have none at my place mainly because I am still scared of invisible monsters! (No!!! it’s not true )
Paah! I wag my tongue at her and walk away only to come back and sit by the mirror and tell her profoundly yesterday and indeed I am still scared of monsters, but unfortunately they are no longer invisible. After growing up they come in all shapes and sizes. They differ in forms, patterns and come wrapped up in all sorts – like through a DVD (Exorcism of Emily Rose) or even as a face that still makes me break out in sweat and tears – fear and heartbreak are fast friends in this part of the wall.
Monsters do not shape us but, they stay to shape the walls around us. I haven’t met a single man/woman who doesn’t come with the baggage, the problem is we don’t know when and how to shed it. Trudging along we become so habituated carrying that load, we slouch into an ‘accepted’ zone. Though we know that doors might open and the baggage can be dropped we fear about the times when the opposite might happen and the already existing load becomes too much to handle!
Standing from a neutral perspective it’s easy to say to loosen up, but then again when you have been tightly bound for a long time and the ropes don’t eat into your skin anymore, how so you react to discourses about pain and free times?
Letting go doesn’t always mean putting life back to where it was. Such a principal only works in the legal agreements I vet for my clients. It in reality means letting go a part of you completely – so that it vanishes and a new set of prejudices take its place, which you counsel yourself as the necessary evil to keep you going.
I see my friends – fleeting social butterflies hopping from one party to other, changing arms like summer apparels and nod when they say that this is the best life a girl can have. Then why do you cry after 4 drinks I ask one of them, why are your eyes moist when after that drag of “grass” you should be on a ride to ecstasy? She mumbles something about loneliness and a run away youth she’s trying to grasp, before she pukes all over the floor and passes out. Her beau for the evening likes an ‘easy going’ life and hence is mesmerized in some other nectar dipped neck!
I see epitomes of stability and smile into the mirror – I was there to once! Life would be perfect with a job, house, happy spouse and adorable kids! Now the order is all jumbled up as I see a close one battling divorce when the ‘irreparable breakdown of marriage’ cause baffles her more than it baffles her family court judge! The kids I see hug each other to sleep – occasionally asking her if divorce actually stands to be a sort of punishment for naughty kids! She on the other hand Google(s), attends counseling camps and is confident that time will heal everything and that she doesn’t need men in her life!
I see myself and a lot around that resembles me. I overwork, I exhaust fearing that tomorrow I might again blame myself for not doing what I should have done – like I do for each thing that didn’t turn out the way I wanted (irrespective of the real reason behind it!). I am too critical about my own self, but I don’t take judgments about my own self from others. I have a “I am what I am’ defense ready when anyone tries to hold up the mirror and I have a “I survived when he/she/the opportunity was not there right” line ready to pick myself up and “move on”.
But, the truth is that in reality we are all monster stricken individuals, who refuse to see that with time monsters do not vanish and life doesn’t become ok but that we put up walls which we think monsters can’t climb. But then for some like me they do and sit quietly under the bed, and just when I think I am ready to take the plunge they shake the bed and make me run back to the clove in the middle. And I snuggle up with Hobbes and tell myself, I am all ok here, all alone. When, we are never alone – the monsters are watching!
Have you ever felt there are monsters under your bed? Or if you are grown up (unlike me) do have skeletons in your cup board which refuse to let you put on your best dress and look pretty?
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnujO3SCGBE]
I must have met you in the womb,
And I know I’ll carry a part of you to the tomb…
It amazes me the way you engulf me at each break of dawn,
You make me so vulnerable that even at my mightiest I’m the weakest fawn.
You make me flush, you make me blush,
You clog my senses without the adrenalin gush.
They say there’s a way to love you – the elite way,
When you must be a flutter never heard during the day.
But then when have they known the orgasmic pleasure of letting know of you aloud,
There’s is a sadistic joy you find – kissing me in public, as my cheeks flush and the nerves pound!
They see you with me and bless me,
The young stop to see you harassing me with glee.
You leave me in a mess, I curse you with all my might,
They say all things I should do to keep you at bay, but nothing works right!
No matter what, no matter how – I think I shall give into fate,
That I have to live with you around – surviving with a pinch of hate.
But one thing is sure you are the only one that can make the ‘butterfly me’ freeze,
And that’s why this is an Ode to you my dearest Sneeze!
