Feeling Grey :(

Do you ever wake up hoping something wonderful would happen to you? Hoping you can smile through the day without the hint of doubt? Hoping that the day will finally take you closer to the dreams you've always had?

I do. I woke up this morning with a hope. A hope of something delightful and joyous... bright and vibrant.
And then... even before I could take a grip on the day... Life poured a can of grey over it all.

So I stumbled and fumbled... and retraced my steps faultingly back to my cocoon. To my dreamlike state of quassi-existence.

Only to start a newer dream. Of a newer day...

Love them simply!

Those simple things of life that make my day...

- Getting long mails or long calls from the ones who matter... (the one-liner scraps are a poor substitute) .

- CHOCOLATES. Chocolate pastry, cholocate ice-cream, all varieties of chocolate biscuits, double chocolate fudge cake, chocolate sauce, choco-shakes. Even choco-flavoured lip-gloss. (yeah, they do exist!)

- Going to bed knowing that i don't have to wake up early the next morning.

- That wonderful blend of a little sunshine interspersed with a little rain.

- The colour Purple. With its related shades of Violet and Mauve! A splash of purple (in vision or in thoughts) brighten my day.

- Going through old photographs and old mails. My dormant rediffmail account is my personal attic. I do try to clean it up at times... but then, there are too many memories.

- Coming across a well-formed string of words (a line or a paragraph)... and churning it over n' over in my mind... till I blend my life in those few words. I guess it's a lot like the way a song haunts you for days. For me, it has always been the words.

- Storms. They inspire dreams. And transport me to the Enid Blyton days of Adventures and Lighthouses.

- The First Rain in Summer. And the dreamy  romanticism my mind invariably associates with it.

- Bourborne biscuits with hot coffee.

- Gifts. Wrapped with bright n' glossy papers. With a bow on top. And stickers. Gone are the days of 'brown paper packages'. Today, the packaging matters the most. What's inside is of lesser significance to me.
(This packaging passion is only applicable to material gifts)

- Sandwiches (in any form and content) for Breakfast. With fruit-juice. Or for lunch. And/or Dinner. I can live on them. Happily.

- Knowing I have friends whom I can wake up even in the middle of the night just 'cause I feel like talking to them.

- A good conversation. With someone who talks well and listens well. To what I mean... not merely what I say. (And who knows me well enough not be presumptuous!)

- Waking up and immediately getting back to the book I was reading the last night. Infact, I love waking up to the warmth of an unfinished book.

- Gliding out of sleep at the dead of the night just to watch him sleep peacefully beside me. It's what I love doing bestest. I actually set my alarm clock (in vibration, ofcourse ! ) to wake me up at an uncanny hour... just for those few moments of serene bliss... till I drift back to sleep again. It makes my day... and it makes my life.

... And The Dark Rain

The rainy nights. Once again!

Yeah, it rained incessantly here in Delhi. For no apparent reason whatsoever. And the nights grew gloomy again... with that unwanted chill in the air... and the neighbourhood sunk into the depths of an eerie silence.

Don’t get me wrong. I have absolutely nothing against the Monsoon. Years back, we had forgotten our differences and had formed a promising new friendship... Me and The Rain. And we still hold strong. And that's just the problem.

The drizzle of the Rain brings forth a rush of old memories. Rain-washed Kolkata. The challenge of taking on the waterlogged streets on high heels. My ecstasy over the 'First Rain in Summer' each year. The dream of a rainbow. Cuddling up with an Enid Blyton in a corner of my bed while it rained a bit, blew a bit, shone a bit... and the weather couldn't seem to make up its mind till it was too late for others to make up their's.

The pittar-patter of the raindrops bring with it the aroma of 'Home'. Of Kolkata. Of plans made and plans spoiled. Of friends and fun. Of my bed back home, with lots of pillows all around me. Of silly dreams, worries and excitements... most of which my present life fail to relate to. Of Ma and Baba... and a younger (and much wiser) version of Me in the warmth of my 'COMFORT ZONE'.

So, back to the Present... on a rainy night, at our home in Delhi... in a room which I now call my own... I lay wide awake. Trying to ignore a burden of memories and to wipe off a shower of irrelevant thoughts.

... And maybe I had dozed off for a while, coz I woke up to be Happy again. Joyful with newer dreams. Blissful with newer expectations. With a guy I didnt even know last Monsoon. A guy for whom right now I believe I can lay down a thousand monsoons of my life.

So bring on the Rain and bring on the Thunder... but I was happy again. Back to my natural sunny disposition at the middle of a dead night.

And as I came to terms with life once more, I hastened to clarify, to explain it all to the Rain. And thus to regain our lost bond... once again! The Rain and I...

The White-s and The Red-s

Throughout my adolescence, my favourite novels had told me tales of love... love which invariably culminated in the awesome 'White Weddings'. To me, a blissfully ideal wedding day would've been something like what Meg experienced in The Little Women... a wedding venue arranged in her garden amidst a shower of spring blossoms, handmade white gown and ribbons, bouquets of fresh flowers all around & a hundred crumples in her wedding dress brought about by the hugs of her loved ones... all blended to the perfection of a "moment-turned-eternity"! Such were the dreams of creamy sweet wedding I had grown up with... Dreams which had somehow wiped off my scepticism of Marriage.

Before I was anywhere close to being prepared for such a huge event in my life, I found myself waking up to it. I had tossed and turned the entire night of my wedding eve, while sleep eluded me and unknown emotions filled me up. A discomfort too vibrant to overcome... a sadness too deep to grasp. Yet, veiling it all, was a thrill and a warm happiness... feelings I eagerly held on to.

As the day dawned and the too-bright sunrays streamed into the room, I gave myself time to adjust to it all... and waited to simply Feel the moments. Strangely though, I felt nothing! Every drop of emotion seemed to have deserted me... and I was numbed into a state of peaceful nonchalance. I forced myself out of bed and into a room filled with voices and activities. Voices which didn't register in my brain... activities which I was peacefully unattached to! It was as though I was watching someone else hustle through the various rituals of the day. And thus it rolled on... the day at its slowest possible pace... with me gliding through it in my state of calm 'nothingness'.

And then it was time for me to get dressed for the biggest ocassion of my life. The red wedding saari was draped on me by the wedding dressers. And the moment arrived!
I took one look at the mirror.. And then it finally hit me! There were no comfort of familiar dreamy versions of white gowns and wedding cakes. Instead, the reality of the red glared at me! And for the second time that day, I woke up to my wedding!

The brightness of the Red & Gold jerked me away from the cool fictions... to the urgency of the Living Reality. And just as I woke up to its importance, a rush of feelings attacked me all over again.

A blaring red saari with elaborate sequence work was never my idea of an ideal attire. Yet, a part of me which I never knew existed, surfaced and forced me to go the whole way... and abide by the 'Tradition of the Red'. In a moment, the Rituals, the Wedding, the Bidaai... all became so real... and I ultimately blended to be a part of it.

As I stared at the unfamiliar image of myself in glitters and gold, I understood the alterations I was bringing in into my life. I knew I would be bidding goodbye not only to my hometown, my friends and my family... but also to a part of myself which will be forever lost to me.

I wasn't sad... I wasn't happy... I wasn't excited. Even as I smiled at a crowd of faces around me on my wedding evening, I sought to grasp the core of my self. I had always been able to simplify my feelings in a single string of words : When I'm happy, I dance... When I'm sad I cry. However, on my wedding day, I realized a third truth... there are emotions too deep for reactions. Responsibilities too significant to avoid.

At the end of the longest day of my life so far, I went to the mirror one last time. A new girl stared back at me... and for the first time ever, I felt terribly scared! I did my best to change back into comfortable clothes and redo my hair back to its normal setup - anything to bring back the girl I knew and loved for 27 long years...

Marriage, they had told me, invariably brought forth a hundred alterations in life. I never had any qualms about accepting any such changes... for the one I cared for. But they never told me it even altered the girl who would look back at me from the mirror.

I don't know about the frozen white weddings. I don't even know how far things had changed for Meg. But the Red and Gold weddings are unarguably lifechanging events.

(The changes, however, lasted only till the end of my wedding session. Then, in a smooth alteration of roles, out popped the good ol' ME. And the mirrors grow friendlier once more! But even now, a recollection of those few days of alteration is enough to scare my wits away!)

Potential Energy

... That's precisely what my state of being is, right now!

I wonder...

I wonder why Somerset Maugham always gets judged by his worst works.

I wonder why the literary world is blind towards brilliance.

I wonder why the only Somerset Maugham book available in a fancy bookstore is always 'The Razor's Edge'.

I wonder why everyone's trying to force-feed it to us, when our tastes have already been defined by 'The Fall of Edward Barnard'.

I wonder why Edmund Wilson and the American world is trying to dismiss Maugham as "mediocre".

I wonder why Somerset Maugham has such a low reputation in Britain.

I wonder...