Monologue to a future daughter

I logged on to facebook this afternoon to be told that it was National Girl Child Day. A couple of hours later, a friend of mine had written a blog post titled 'If I had a daughter, what would I tell her?' and it caught my eye. Thank you Nandhitha, and as promised, for the rest of you, you can visit her writing at http://nandhithahariharan1.wordpress.com/. For want of something better to do on a Friday evening, I decided to give it a shot myself.

As it turns out, this piece is perhaps one of the top contenders on being the most personal and since personal writing calls for a dedication, this is for you, Ma :)

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If I had a daughter, what would I tell her? What would we talk about and what would she remember? Would I talk of the birds and the bees, or the loves and the lies? Of people who stay or those who leave? Of memories that last or others better forgotten? Of lessons taught or those learnt or others just lost in the conquest? If I had a daughter, what would I tell her?

I would tell her to not be afraid; to try and then, perhaps to lose, but to try again. Whether it is jumping the hurdle on the sports field or solving a math problem, whether it is threading a needle or writing a paper, to never get bored of trying. She should not be afraid of loss, of failure, of fear itself. She should open her eyes to the world and her heart to those around her, unmindful of how long they would all last.

I would tell her to trust; trust people, plans and perhaps most of all, herself. She should feel confident of her own abilities, her own person and never be ashamed of smiling at the mirror. She should know what it is to feel special and she should be able to give herself that happiness, for I cannot promise there will always be other people for it. She should trust that as horrendous as it all seems just then, it will all work out because if nothing else, she will make it happen.

I would tell her to be confident; in her abilities, her skill and her image. She should feel beautiful all day, every day. But I know she sure as hell won’t so I would tell her to smile and cherish the people who never fail to remind her.

I would tell her to sing in the bathroom without inhibition, dance in the dark without hesitation and act flawlessly in front of the mirror, with only herself as audience. And if she does all this on stage, I will pat her on the back and kiss her on the forehead and congratulate her, for I know how much it takes.

I would tell her to not hurry love and to look for it in places she never knew existed. She should love her work and her home, her space and her independence, her friends and her family. And when the day comes that The Love comes her way, she should have it in her to give him her all while still remaining her own person, not compromising on what makes her, her.

I would tell her to cherish the people in her life. She should speak with a smile to everyone she meets. She should know the names of the watchmen and housemaids, the drivers and the water boy. She should be grateful for the opportunities that come her way and the people who deliver them to her. She should give credit where it is due yet stand her ground in case of wrong. She should have her girls to gossip with and her guys to be boisterous with, her best friend to open up to and a circle of pleasant faces to offer a smile. And she should give it all (and more) back in return.

I would tell her to choose the voices she lets under the skin. She will have people talking of her height and her weight, her grades and her contests, her skills and her flaws. She will have strangers commenting on her clothes and her body, on how she should act and where she should go and who she should be seen with. She will have a thousand voices dictating the script of her life. She should know who to listen to, who to mute out and who to just humour with a (fake) smile and a (polite) nod.

I would tell her to play like no one is watching, irrespective of what people say of girls on cricket pitches. She should feel the joy of keeping gloves in relation to a tennis racquet, a football in comparison to shooting a three pointer. She should be unafraid of grazed knees and dirty hands, irrespective of how old she is. And every once in a while, I will remind her that her mother still bears the scars of adolescent football.

I would tell her to talk, unafraid and confident. I would tell her to write, uninhibited and free. On those few days, I would tell her to cry like the world was ending and if she asks why, I would tell her that sometimes, the tears wash away the pain and suddenly it all goes away. I would tell her to laugh like no one is listening and if they were, to laugh a little harder and spread the cheer around.

I would tell her that I try, I try very hard to be half the person my mother is. I would tell her stories of her grandmother; of how I was told so many of these things. I will talk of how I was taught to live and to love and to be loved, to accept and be accepted, to comfort and be comforted, to teach and to be taught, to learn and to lead. I would tell her I am the person I am today because of her grandmother and I hope someday, I will be worthy of such emotion.

If I had a daughter, what would I say? Perhaps I will talk for years - till my hair is white and skin is wrinkled, till I repeat myself and she knows it all by heart, till she has children of her own and then still go on. Or perhaps, I will lead her by the hand and take her to my mother and watch the rest unfold.

That Indian childhood!

When a senior of mine posted this link as her Gmail status message, I opened it simply because I had an hour to kill before lunch and it was only the first day back in college. ’60 Things that Defined Your Childhood in India’, it read and I was a little sceptical. Thanks to the absence of a truly Indian early childhood, I often find (sometimes a little wistfully) that I do not always relate to these lists of memories. Imagine my surprise when most of these looked like pages from my own personal diary.

Over the last few months, a lot of us have been hit with the gap between our self-perception and how the rest of them see us. Just out of high school versus halfway through a post-graduation, just children versus almost adults, ‘we were freshies just yesterday’ versus ‘you are almost final years’ – the contrast hits us all often enough. With this shake-up also comes with it its own sack full of nostalgia and as I sat in my hostel room, thinking of how the curtains needed to be washed and the dust was creeping its way back into the room while distractedly looking at this list, I found myself hit with a tsunami of memories.

This one is to those of you who were around for one or the other of this list, and each of you desi kids who have a list of your own! Here is a quick list of what ran through my mind when I was reading, more for my sake than yours but ah well. :D

1. Geometry boxes. One of the few parts of Math that I have consistently liked. My brother was recently asking my father for a replacement when I realised it has been about five years since I touched one. Stood around drawing circles for a few minutes, just for the heck of it. As for Natraj pencils, what ever happened to the constant Natraj vs Apsara battle? Which was sharper, darker and longer lasting? :D
2. The number of people I should have gotten married to already! Why bother with jaadhagam when FLAMES provides us all the answers? The one exception to my self-imposed rule of not scribbling on the last page of a notebook was this relationship counsellor!
3. Rasna! The marker of my Indian summers and Frooti continues to be a favourite on long Indian Railways journeys.
4. Fancy dress parties were the best way to reuse old Halloween costumes. Oops :P
5. Honestly, more for the brother than me. Too vivid memories of jamming a hand into a heavy one.
6. AN ugly Godrej almirah? Whatever happened to the rest? I think I can count off atleast three. The safest space to store anything in the house! And the ones with a mirror were always the fanciest.
7. It just hit me when I saw this on the list that the guy in the ad was actually just acting, that it was a job that he got paid for. For the last fifteen years, he has just been the Onida devil. Yikes. As for the Amul girl, if only we could be as spontaneous and knowledgable, we wouldn’t need to blink when professors catch us off guard with something this morning’s papers!
8. Those lunch boxes! And trying to graduate to more ‘cool’ stuff. And fighting the battle with your mother about what looked good versus what retained heat. Sigh.
9. Tiger Balm. Amruthanjan. Vicks. Iodex. All of them, in every house, serving practically the same purposes. My grandmother swears they are not all the same though. I also fought with her recently for switching from Mysore Sandal. What is Paati’s house without that smell?
10. “Your shoes aren’t white. Two extra rounds” the PT teacher could threaten and hence, they shall be rigorously polished. I can almost picture it – wedged between the sofa and the balcony door, trying to get up without getting wet polish on the floors and walls.
11. Granddad during the summers.
12. There were months when there was an actual wound on my fingers. Not that I ever got particularly good at it. Oh, and playing with a gullible younger sibling and bending the rules to suit your convenience.
13. School excursions from Pollachi to Cochin had us Madrasis belting out Hindi tunes. I don’t think I have ever gotten past the chorus :P
14. I think there is still a badminton racquet languishing above my bookshelf at home. Yellow cover and definitely not Yonex!
15. SO. TRUE.
16. When Sachin Tendulkar himself took a flying kick of the football to land exactly in the goal, how could we not benefit from it? Especially since I still cannot stand Complan. My loyalties took a sabbatical only when Milo started giving us free books. :P
17. Wear the nicest outfit, hand out candy to everyone, sure. But who can forget the power politics of choosing who will come with you to distribute, of figuring out who will get two Eclairs and who three?
18. Still is. I rest my case.
19. Hahahaha.
20. Or, if you are at your grandparents’ house, sit around them as they tell you stories of the Gods or the sages or just yet another smart animal who speaks. Or you sing.
21. The fact that Cadbury Celebrations still gives a pack of Gems never fails to excite me.
22. Hahaha. I was home yesterday when my grandmother told me “Nanna yennai vechhu thalai vaarikko nee. Nanna ve ille ippo!” (“Put some oil and comb your hair nicely. It looks horrid now.”) Some things honestly don’t change.
23. Blue pinafore. Blue and white checked shirt. Dark blue tie with golden letters on them. Blue ribbons. White socks and well-polished shoes. ID cards, hair clips and bicycle shorts. Gearing up for a day at school.
24. And learnt quick reflexes by letting the saatai go at the right time and hopping out of the way of a chakram.
25. This was one of the few I had to skip.
26. Yesssssss. The biggest price that the Metro project has taken is that access to the BC library is now obscure!
27. Yummmmm. All of us have faked our fair share of stomach aches for just one Hajmola. And later, when we could, we have bought it just for the heck of it.
28. And ‘Ham, Cheese, Ham-burger, Sauce, Potato, Chip-chip-chip!’
29. And Limca still remains a tonic to queasiness in the stomach.
30. Whether you knew what they were doing or not, you knew when to cheer and when to gasp. I remember knowing that loooong before I asked how many balls made an over during an Indo-Pak World Cup match.
31. Or just the biscuit, if you weren’t allowed the chai. It was also the safest food in town – no matter where you were, you could eat Marie biscuit without falling sick!
32. ...and the rest of your Indian mythology stories play in your head as panels of detailed sketches with speech bubbles.
33. I still get excited at Toblerone. Every piece of chocolate needed to rationed out with great care. Only the very best behaviour deserved an extra nibble. And younger siblings will get yelled at for taking an extra helping.
34. Parle babbyyy! As for whether it really is the world’s largest selling biscuits or not, no one cared to question.
35. Roads, drains, ponds, thotti, wherever there was more water than usual!
36. Still plead guilty to that one.
37. Bindis and that kumkum paste that used to come in little dishes. My first and last experiment with rouge, that was!
38. Pass.
39. And school also taught me how to make diyas with broken bangles. Never quite used that one again. If only I could remember the rules now! A page number ending with 9 was out, was it? The perfect solution to Zero Period, when you were bored out of your mind but couldn’t make noise.
40. Oh lord, yes. Except I used to like the taste of it :P
41. Hahahaha. Vivid memories of passing lorry guys looking worriedly at us in the school bus, showing off through the window!
42. Even much after I knew the meaning of the word, ‘ambassador’ was always the car!
43. I have always called it Hopscotch but whatever it was, we used to make the most convoluted tasks to complete. Stand on one foot with one hand on your hip while bending to pick up a stone three steps away. And obviously, do not break your head attempting it.
44. Cheeslings? Hostel saviour. The end.
45. Pass on this one, too.
46. Ummm, nope.
47. Nirmaaa! Yes, we all knew the words, still do. The constant companion to particular crazy days in hostel and particularly desperate times when playing Antakshari.
48. Blue colour packet, Anna! Always the favourite.
49. Cricket cards, WWE cards, whatever. Pokemon was always the coolest.
50. Hahaha. Still do. Dad has been meaning to have them converted to CDs for ages.
51. It was 4^th for us. Vivid memory of a friend being the genius who tried to blow air into the pen to get it to work. First class, first day of school and a mouth full of ink.
52. Still have a bunch of mine lying around, filled with the gossip of the season – who was teased with who, who should be teased with who. All of it.
53. Shoes as the crease, sticks as the stumps and no wickets. Flip-flops or best case, barefoot. Yes, I have played gully cricket!
54. One of those rare things that still cost near nothing.
55. Yessss! And that one year when your parents taught you to do it yourself. Rite of passage indeed.
56. Mahaabhaaraaaaaat. The deep, bass voice of Time taking us through the epic saga. Somehow this new one is just too filmy in comparison.
57. “Adhu vandhu, andha second cousin ode wife ode father ode brother’s second son, ma” my grandmother will tell me with a straight face. Worse, we remember it!
58. And then the day you sit straight and your head grazes the ceiling, you know you’ve grown to be a big girl!
59. We still carry ‘glucose dabba’ to strenuous exercise!
60. Independence Day, Republic Day, whatever else. When someone hands you a flag, you pin it to your clothes. The end.

If you are a 90s kid, how many of these do you relate to?

Here is the list I used:  http://www.buzzfeed.com/regajha/childhood-in-india?bffb

And here is a magically written blog post on a similar subject. I can just never tire of reading this one. http://thepoetryof.wordpress.com/2012/11/29/a-certain-south-indian-childhood/

My day has been made :)

The Stranger returns

December 21, 2012. That was the last time I was on here. Seems a lifetime ago, and yes, once again, I plead forgiveness for the inconsistency that plagues me, if not my entire generation. What may seem like the most obvious platform of expression for a writer of some sort has always seemed to elude me and the months seem to creep between the gaps of my blog posts. So here I am, trying again - this time maybe biting off just as much as I can chew. This year, maybe I will just post things here that I write anyway - in the papers, for myself and my friends so that for those of you who want to read it, there will be one place you can go.

Happy New Year, everyone! And here is one of my personal favourites, The Stranger. Things often look longer on blogs than they really are, so bear with me :)

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I sit here, just as I always have. For how many years, you may ask. I cannot claim to have the answer. As far as the mind can remember, I will say. As long as memory can see. Long before those glassed buildings in that corner came up. Definitely far before that child there was even born. I have been here a while, I sigh. Some may even claim ‘forever’. I look back and realise these tags don’t matter to me. Then and now, recent and forever. Do they change me? Impact my life any? The dent is negligible, insignificant, the impact of a dragonfly on the leaves of a century-old banyan tree from the books of yore.

I know what you think, hurrying past me in all your pointed productivity. You don’t have time for loafers like me. You might even pause to curse under your breath. Just look at him, you will say. All hale and hearty yet blanketed by lethargy. To you, I am a statistic; yet another one of the millions unemployed, the economically dependent you pay to support with your hard-earned money. I know you hate me, despise my existence. I know you won’t miss me when I’m gone. But I watch you. Everyday; as you rush from the train to the cafe for a quick cappuccino, from the taxi to the high rise office buildings that hold you captive. I watch you and I know; know more than you ever will give me credit for.

There, that boy over there. It must be 8:55 in the morning. I know no watch nor have the knowledge to read the dials. Yet, everyday, I hear him mutter into the phone, growling at the person on the other end. Every day, I hear how much every minute means to him, not in the sense of experience and emotion but that one dratted number that sends him sprinting up to the fourteenth floor. “I don’t have time for this! It is four minutes to 9 AM and I will start losing money, fast. You can wait.” I often wonder who this nameless stranger is, begging for the tall, suited middle-aged man’s attention. His wife perhaps? Or his girlfriend, the steamy, secret mistress? Or even an old love, a flame that never quite extinguished to a whisper?

Oh, and then, over there! A young couple, smartly dressed and ready to dazzle. They have their hands locked into a habitual embrace, more for stability than comfort. I wonder how many days it has been since they stopped thinking about it, stopped walking by themselves but stopped noticing each other’s company at the same time? Each nose is buried into a smartphone, the free hand tapping away furiously, probably setting up half a dozen appointments, bringing them one step closer to paying their half of this month’s rent. They reach the junction. They must part ways. A quick peck on the cheek and a fleeting smile and then, the second hand flurries into action as well. No harm done, no time lost, no ill feelings.

Once in a while, not too rarely, I see a little girl. Even now, as I close my eyes, I can see her in front of me, wearing that cheery summer dress of blueberries and raspberries, clutching on tightly to a helium balloon that perhaps her dad bought her on his way to work. She stands on the pavement, her eyes glazed by a look of awe and amazement. She seems overwhelmed. I would be too if I spent hours staring at weird briefcases and weirder knees; some clothes, others waxed but all hurried. Her eyes slowly widen and if I watch carefully, I can see them swim, first wading and then drowning in her own tears. She seems lost and most often she is. She looks up. Mommy, she calls, waiting for a helping hand and a protective shove. Mommy doesn’t materialize, her mind probably already preoccupied by more pressing matters of meetings to reschedule and clients to please.

As the world goes by me, I sit in my corner. I’m sure you’ve seen me. I’m the one in front of your favourite coffee shop, the one you have to pass by to cross that busy junction to work, the one who sits against your school wall inconveniencing you when you are rushing to class. You must have seen me, my glazed eyes and matted hair, my worn clothes and holey shoes. You must have heard me ask for a penny in change, a minute of your time, a kind word to spare. You remember that hurried look of pity you threw? The glance dripping with detached sympathy and masked condescension? Yes, that was to me.

Sometimes, just sometimes, I feel like reaching out just an inch more. I feel like grabbing the hem of your clothes and get you to stop for just a minute. Enough of the meetings, I feel like crying. Enough of the deadlines and the appointments, of the to-do lists and the commitments. Enough, enough, enough. Now, you will listen.

You think I am a loafer, a liability. You think you can judge me, standing atop the pedestal of your perfect life. I’m the muck you ignore, the backdrop to your life. The broken tiles on the pavement, the remnants of yesterday’s construction project and me – you describe us all in the same breath. We are the dark underbelly to your spotlight, the pungent odour to your potpourri. Yet, sometimes I feel like calling out to you and reminding you. We think as well and we see, often more than you do.

Do you know what it feels to live amongst the waste of the ‘better’ and the ‘greater’? Does your soul know the all-pervading sense of numbness that creeps in with decades of invisibility? Does your body know what it means to not be able to move for want of somewhere to go? Has your tongue ever craved just one piece of bread that wasn’t touched by another’s lips, either man or beast? I didn’t think so. Yet, every time you walk by, I want to pull on that hem and ask anyway. So you will know too.

You think I am a loafer and I probably am. I don’t fit into your world and unlike you, I don’t try. I will not stand in front of the mirror every morning, holding ties against my shirt, wondering whether stripes or stars are the way to go. I will not forget to kiss my wife goodbye in a hurry to escape peak hour traffic. I will not miss my daughter’s first stage appearance because I was overseas on a business meeting. I will not shush my children at the dinner table to hear the eight o’ clock news speaking of the Sensex. I will not be that person and hence, I am the loafer.

I am the man at every corner. I know that deep down, in those few seconds of calm and quiet, you think of me; of who I am and what I do and how I got here. I know you wonder what it is like to be me. The next morning, you will rush by me just the same but you will throw me a small smile, almost like a secret just for the two of us. Just at that moment, I will know some more. I will know that you thought of me yesterday, and you thought a kindly thought.

You wonder who I am and today, I will tell you. I am the unknown whose tendrils are a little too close. I am the strangeness that disrupts your ease. I am the imperfection in this facade of a perfect world. I am the stranger who is a little too familiar, the man you wish you didn’t know.

But rest easy, little one. You do not know me. It is I who knows you. Each of you, for to me, you are all the same.