The rose colored shades

We both had a pair. Large retro frames, our rose colored shades. It was a love affair, all of seven ages and four months. She had glorious long hair, billowing down to her waist . The first few stages are hazy in my mind. All I remember is that we were born together once. It was the age of innocence.

After that I remember only memories of us lying on our bed. Her eyes always tilted towards the sky,  whispering poems. Sometimes she sang famous verses and sometimes a made up ramble of jumbled feelings.

She had questions I had no answers to. But still she never hesitated to ask. She asked me if she could be a mother but not a wife.  She asked me if she could be a wife and a child. She asked me if she could be nobody. She asked me if she could be my wife. And in all this, did I mention I was mute but she heard me louder than I ever heard her speak. She asked me if I was her's. She asked me if she could be my wife.

My lips moved in a melancholic dance but not a word did they utter. Not a sigh of soothing relief, not a whimper, not a scream. And like this when we had passed many ages just lying on our bed, one day she made up her mind. I knew not what moment, had I noticed I would have done something. But with really brave hands, and an ominous sleigh of hand, she took off her rose shades. Before I knew she looked around and then turned her gaze. For the first time I saw them. Her eyes were large and set in a deep shade of pain. And when she looked into mine, her gaze couldn't penetrate my rose coloured haze. And so before I knew she merged into thin air. Vanish - like a childish magic game. She was gone.

And then I realized lying half dead. What was gone was a part of me. Her voice echoed in my dreams. I was haunted and there was no escape. So in a second I decided to do the same. But my sleigh of hand didn't know the routine and instead into my heart a dagger it did press. The red circle over my heart grew bigger and bigger until finally there was a whimper. I froze with my eyes strained towards the sky and saw her smiling at me through my rose colored shades.

And tomorrow we shall shoot the famous "3-5". We shall either survive it or not.

This thing between you and me

It's bluish purple. It's vast and intense.
It has no shape, no name, no religion.
It lives between you and me.
More on my side than yours.
It is the bastard of the world.
Fatherless mongrel, fruit of none.
Glows in the dark and in sunshine.
Sometimes beautiful, sometimes grotesque.
This thing between you and me,
one day will go away.
This thing between you and me will die.
I know.

Nightmare, rainy New York day, sunset at 3:30pm and the weight of impending deadlines. Back in India I would light a Classic Mild and go out for coffee with my friend. Right now, I'd just talk to myself = blog, roll tobacco, smoke it and get back to work. Does this make me feel better? I sure hope so.

The Dishwashing Nightmare

We all have had a string of housemaids while in India. And then when some of us moved to the United States we became our very own Housemaids. The queen of the kitchen and the toilet bowl, this interesting transition is alien to those back home, fooled by the glamorous Facebook photo updates from the Malibu beaches and the Brooklyn Bridges. That woman smiling with her million-dollar-software-engineer husband at Brooklyn Bridge was just scrubbing her newly acquired American non-stick with Ajax Super Strong Lime two hours ago. That was probably when you were getting your hair blow-dried and fabulous at the local salon for five hundred bucks. That's ten dollar for our Brooklyn Bridge lady. And the only thing she's getting for that much money here is her next order of Ajax super strong lime 40 ounce pack from amazon.

You are contemplating between Karim's biryani or Rajinder's chicken tikka for dinner. She is deciding whether to launder or to pack tomorrow's lunch. You decide both and enjoy a delicious dinner with friends or lovers or family. She decides laundry first and then tomorrow's lunch. Suddenly you realize, damn, I forgot the reshmi kabab. She remembers, damn, I forgot to clear out the kitchen. Ouch, that reshmi kabab was a dreadful miss.

Mrs. Malibu beach on the other hand or shall I say other coast is having a fancy dinner party with her other Indian friends at her place. Her newly acquired four hundred dollar Pottery Barn couch, spruced up with cushions dressed with mom-in-law-made crochet covers, is the center piece of the evening. Of course she and her husband spent all of friday night building that from scratch when Mr. Malibu got a frightful sprain in the back that murdered the prospects of any other kind of heavy workouts for the rest of the nights to follow. She tagged the photo "our new couch" under the album "LA Life". Then she tagged her entire gang of family and friends over different tiny corner's of the body of her priced possession. So, when you were checking out that picture, relaxing on your equally fabulous free-home-delivered-and-built couch, leaving a comment on her picture and wondering why it wasn't yours, she was loading her dishwasher with the aftermath of her dinner party and staring at the cycle timer with exhausted eyes.

The Facebook myth of the "American Dream Accentuated" gets fucked up when you get here, fall for the charming beauty of America, the luxury of choosing from a hundred and fifty brands of everything when suddenly your decaf medium roasted Jamaican coffee mug, low fat skimmed milk yogurt serving dish and mildly sweetened organic honey coated cereal bowl from the previous day come tumbling over you like a great tsunami wave and hit you on your head. Well then all you can do is smile, load the dishwasher and fool yourself with how the Ajax Super Strong Lime dishwashing liquid smells just a little bit sweeter than good old Vim Bar.

The beginning...

She was an ordinary girl fighting the same battles as everybody else. She was trying to find herself. She was trying to be somebody worthwhile. She was doing all this while she was living in two countries together. With a whole future lying in front of her at America she had friends, family and loved ones in India. She may have travelled many many miles away from her homeland but was she ever able to leave it?

Her pc was still set on India time while her wrist watch was ticking along the Eastern time. Life may have separated her from where she belonged but her heart, her mind never allowed that to happen. And what was really so wrong about living in two countries together? It wasn't like cheating or anything. It's not even a matter of switching on and off. The two spaces perfectly co-existed for her. Mere physical presence was not everything.

Giving up on one thing for a new pursuit was not for her. Why couldn't she love two places at the same time. Why couldn't she have what she had and have some more? This was not a dilemma, not some sort of psychosis. This was a fact. She was living and loving two countries together.