Music is the answer

I used to own a brown paper covered music book, that had the renderings for a novice carnatic music-learner. And a brown shruti-petti too electronically tuned for my music lessons. And then there were practice sessions with music sir, taalam types, raagams, tyagaraja ulsavams, singing for the sundal during navatrathri and attempts at music competitions ; a different life may be; now that i reminisce. The last time I sang was four years back on a contrasting hot day in the month of november in Boston, for a small diwali gathering. I had unearthed a bhajan I had picked up in school and decided to rake the tune. And since my vocal chords had forgotten to croon, until recently when 100+ minute drives leave – just me and my breathing for company. I sing aloud to break humdrum.

I began by dumping every song we downloaded or owned into the player, followed by audio books (the cell by stephen king caught me unaware on the drive and since I have said no to audio books!), and finally settling with ARR, sudha raghunathan, unni krishnan, yesudas and chitra. I almost always start the ride with MS’s hanuman chalisa that totally reminds me of SVCE on sundry early mornings and then move on to a lot of classical and carnatic renderings. I am, for having not continued my music lessons beyond varnam, have little clue about the particulars of a raagam et all, but have sung along, loving the aalaaps and breathless eees and aaas and moving backwards in time, as I drive forward.

So it is over the last few months that I seemed to realise the void created by lackluster music in our electronic media filled lives. My memories race to power cut evenings in the little street I grew up. My cousin Jo, is the most amazing singer I have known ( As a kid, I used to often hide her paatu book, when she would close her eyes to render a beautiful aalap). So with Jo and Pillus around, the power cuts and buzzing of mosquitoes on sultry summer nights would transform into anthakshari followed by singing mukesh and kishore kumar numbers, all scintillating into a brilliant musical night! Did you just ask yourself, when was the last time you played anthakshari? Yes! thats precisely the music-void I am talking about left by easy access to songs strewn on the web and our own players and pods playing it for us!

It is like, we no longer sing to kindle the music that filled our lives for all the years since we started to hear melody. On a grueling six-hour journey from NYC to Boston, five of us to keep the driver and the passengers sane, took to utilizing our data phones to contention! With 5 i-phones, we began searching for the songs we love and playing one after the other from youtube like a jukebox on a linklist. The songs ranged from 70s to 90s and across various languages; that is the closest I have gotten in recent times to a musical episode! And then of course some fast numbers on my ipod that help me run and the new-found old love for carnatic music on the drive.

Well, I sure hope to convert this party I have had with self, singing out loud as I drive alone. I want to throw an antakshari party without any music system blaring in the background, just so everyone remembers that they were willing to sing and remember lyrics and have a good time. Someday I hope I can separate humans from head-nodding-nanos, at least for a little while. Lets start with wine and end the night with many a croon, hums and drums! You are all invited! 🙂

Waiting for the want to want a child

There have been so many times in the past few months, I had lifted my pen to scribble a few undertones on the above motif only to crumple, trash and crash. It either seemed too personal or too extreme like Liz in Eat Pray Love. Not that I have conquered the emotions or here to share news, far from it; just another attempt at happy diplomacy and hopefully I don’t hurt in the bargain!

I have been on a baby shower, baby birthday galore in the last year. My close friend from back home is a mother of an adorable two-year old and I had marveled at her courage back then, when I was still struggling to fit into marriage (not that I am an expert now). Followed by a lull, suddenly the world around me mushrooming with babies, couples talking of planning; pre-natal preps, post-natal preps, natal preps, a few self-proclaimed love-To-Be-Singles and other who-wants-a-baby-when-you-got-a-career-and-a-LIFE! Let me stop before my head spins into my bare arms.

Keeping aside my views on all the above, for I have none, since it is none of my business anyway and I fit nowhere at the moment, let me digress to a baby shower party. We, a bunch of us, had thrown a babyshower yesterday for a very dear couple, to welcome the first miracle in our close circle of friends. The day had unwound on awesome food (of course!), lots of games interspersed with baby-shower games to embarrass the couple and a final cake and customary awards for the proud to-be-mom and dad.

Amidst all the fun and a reassurance I have often felt from admiring women who all-enduringly grow larger with life, conversations, not surprisingly, steered to why a baby, when a baby.. et all. And someone decided to drive this point home – You are never really ready to have a baby ever! You simply take a plunge just the way you plunge into marriage when you are not ready for it either! How subtly said and amiable on print, isn’t it? Simply put, if you are to wait for the want to want a child to dawn upon you, you may end up waiting forever! Daunting and relieving at the same time!

So where does that leave many a women like me, who don’t believe in walking down the altar alone and haven’t started their waiting or haven’t even thought about it? Well! That’s not true, I am thinking about it now, amn’t I? Oh well! So many eons ago, I had quipped about marriage being “a propagation of species”… well! My opinion sure has changed for I have survived 1900 days in one without getting into too much trouble (I hope!  🙂 ).  So that is about marriage. What about the next commitment you ask? The one as big as committing to dyeing your hair fiery purple for life!?! Frightening to the bones as it seems at the moment, much so by, the fact that, the two best parents in the world had a tough time handling a tyrant of an incorrigible child like me, what would my unborn child be like? And suddenly the jeer of “how can the world handle another of you?” doesn’t seem so funny anymore. All this keeping aside the “weighing as much as your hubby”, “never losing the baby fat”, “ticking biological clock”, “locked down for life” expletives the super-slim-soccer-moms and feminists throw at you.

So, during my impending trip home, when I will be showered with questions on why not and hope for soon, I am going to redden with ignominy of the situation and the inner-person who fears it all will only gloat further. Or may be.. just may be like the one terrified petrified and stupefied of heights  decides to go for bungee jumping, I may sport a Ron moment from deathly hallows of breaking down your fears and go for the kill. Someday…I say… for now its just the want to wait for the want to want in sight!

When snowed in…

It is but impossible to dislike snow in New England. I, for one, love the snow and the way the world smells in a whitey aura before the snowfall. The past ten days, I spent watching one snowfall after another. Putting aside the grueling dressing-up for snow shoveling and the biting chills, I had a wonderful  winter break and like a student ready to brace the next term, I will be heading to work tomorrow hopefully overcoming Monday blues!

So, the next time you are snowed-in, here is a leaf or two from my book for winter fix –

♣ Invite friends over (especially ones who love to cook!!)

♣ Get enough firewood. Light the fireplace! The warmth simulates conversations other than red wine of course!  (Trust me it works)

♣ Overstock comfort food for a snowy day (Potatoes, icecream, rice, curd, pickle, chips, milk, Nescafe)

♣ Use no-snow-days or no-snow-hours to munch popcorn and catch up on the movies (I watched 3 idiots, up in the air and Sherlock Holmes; and liked then in the order – best, better and good)

♣ Wear all the warm clothes you got, almost like Joey wearing all of Chandler’s. Now head out, brace the wind, the -2 F and erect a 5 ft snowman! Here is the one we made, though I admit he is pretty undernourished!

♣ Get everyone in the house involved for the driveway cleaning; saves you some energy and you get your work done through manual labor in exchange for food and shelter (wicked wink)

♣ Try new recipes but not when it is snowing so hard that the pizza delivery guy cannot be called when the experiment goes haywire.

♣ Play complicated games like RISK through the night, so that at every move you learn a new rule and in the end you have no idea what you are playing for!

♣ When, with Netflix, On Demand, HBO, Star, Cinemax, Encore and all the rest, a group of six cannot come to a movie consensus within one hour, draw a deep breath, and snuggle with a book in a corner.

♣ Lastly, annoy everyone by updating your facebook status every 2 min! And coax the ones beside you to like the status!

So, for the next snow storm that is brewing in the coming weekends, what do you have on mind??

Wishing everyone a wonderful 2010 ahead!

A date with childhood

I fondly remember a time when I would visit the Napier museum park in the heart of Trivandrum; a dome like edifice housed speakers which played chemeen almost incessantly. But I was too young to mind or enjoy it and I would gather a few more my age and make the dome our playground and the slides, see-saws and swings our abode. I would play until I bruised my elbows and knees red or until dusk gave way to dark.

Last Saturday, we had driven to Connecticut only to revisit life of twenty years ago. Tired of eating to distraction and switching channels that played mushy romance movies (it was contentious V day after all), we had decided to take a stroll in the park nearby. The golden winter sun and green air were all that we sought and it had ended up being much more.

What awaited us were swings and play sets that included battle grounds, climbers, slides and ladders; and to top it, they were all unoccupied. It was with enough reluctance that I with S and S occupied the rubber seats of the swings, which had to be squeezed into owing to our bigger bottoms than that of a five year old. Though the initial squeaking of the chains made us wonder if we could be playmates again, we had finally picked up pace and soared higher and higher in enough merry against the cold air.

The guys were quick to mock our childish happiness, only to find the climbers and tubes all the more fun. Gymnastics were tried on the horizontal bars, ropes and ladders climbed in clumsy steps and firefighter poles glided down with adventure like hold. We almost believed that all was done, when N attempted a crawl in the yellow tube only to find himself too stuck to pull out. If it were a cartoon, I am sure he would have wriggled out like a jelly, but in all due regard he finally made it through with peals of laughter all around.

If that wasn’t sufficient, the sliding monkey bar was the toughest of them all. Sz was a champ at it and managed to make the other two six feet-ers cringe for having jested him as small built. While he would make the Tarzan passes with ease, Sd had to be pushed and N simply remained hanging and refusing to let go however hard he tried to move. In all good humor, we had taken over a kids’ world even before we knew it and like all playtimes this one too wound up against a setting sun with relentless laughter and fun.

For we hadn’t had enough I believe, since that explains our excitement at the restaurant table later that evening to find crayons and play booklets left by the previous occupants. Our dinner was marked by drawing classes remembered over napkins brought to life with hills, sunrise, birds, trees, mangoes and houses. With a couple of ‘bad draw-er’ jokes and hot fudge and ice cream, our V day had come to a contented end.

Of all the things that I so dearly miss in this world, I am glad that childhood is unlike them all; for I can never be too old to relive it.

ScrabBlues

ScrabBlues

My life for the past few weeks was a restless wait from one weekend to next; hoping to get some sought after sunshine and enjoy the gelid weather through warm layers of sweaters, walking down the crowded streets with aromatic hot coffee. Ousting the prophecies of global warming and the like, this time around, the characteristic New England winter is here to stay in all its passion and variegation.

It has always amazed me, how nature controls ones life style in this part of the globe; how one acclimatizes to avoid excessive slumber, regulate the diet cycle, keep up gym resolutions, indulge oneself to avoid the pangs of depression the gloomy season can leave on you. It was on one such mission that poker had become customary on cold weekends last winter. This year with the core circle of poker friends strewn around the country, how the winter would unwind is a question mark.

As much as I love the chill and the intermittent snow it brings, finding the lack of daylight at 3 pm can be most difficult part of adapting. To top it is the perfect slowdown of life’s pace that, even the fifty minute drive to the remote theatre playing Om Shanti Om can be accounted as fruitful activity on a winter weekend.

It brings to my mind the science text book of third std., when I had memorized on a sultry warm November of Trivandrum, what people do in winter – wear warm clothes, drink hot soups, sit around a fire after early sunset and play indoor games. As if going by the book, we have been cashing on new adult games of taboo, scrabble and clue for that imperative wintry caffeine fix.

After the reviving of scrabble many years hence, I have also managed to remain hooked to its better alternative; scrabulous on facebook. Here the urge to cheat on cooked up words is carefully denied. And somehow learning a new word seems exciting again and even better when you are winning the game against your worst opponent when you were eight. Though a passing winter amusement, I am sure group games are in, for a while to come.

It is wonderful and intimidating all at the same time, how life is once again coming back in a circle; when games made friends at eight, you move on to teens shunning snakes and ladders as child’s play and as the mellowed tweens (as Div coined it) set in, games keep the friend circle chirpier than three hours of gossip over coffee or a sneaked out night at the club.

Such is the unfinished game of scrabble, when the vowels are too many on your plate, the words are there but not lucrative, you pass the turn, you make the inconspicuous word “on”; but stay yare to find the next best meaning, look up a dictionary; and in the end move on. A move to kick back on the winter blues, a move to keep the group engaged, a move to the next little step of life… all in a cold laid back evening hour.

Jigsaw

Jigsaw

As a school go-er at six, in the freezing Patna winter, looking atleast five times me in three layers of warm clothes laden over a Vicks smothered chest for that perfect warmth; I was a naïve child, who half-sheepishly yet happily traveled the scooter ride on a standing ticket between appa’s protective arms, looking like little red riding hood with the red scarf wrapping my head and ears from the cold-prone winds and the water bottle garlanding my neck.

Often the pictures of me taken back then, with the mushroom hair cut and innocent smiles make me wonder if living life as little ‘divu’ was the best part of the past twenty-something years. My thoughts coast at the play-room, the storage hub of our flat with three balconies (a Dr.Bhishnudev Prasad owned building on Patna Main road), where I had created an immure world of me and my modest dolls, who would come to life in the puerile dramas I enacted with my kitchen sets. I was a contented child much to my parents’ relief, who could dwell for hours playing mother, teacher, soldier to the torpid, docile playmates.

I had learnt to amuse myself and in the process shared the perfect affiliation with self. As years went by, my playmates were replaced with books, paintings and jigsaw puzzles. As more years went by, the relationship extended to friends, good friends and best friends. Life’s rapport with self had almost dwindled away as a teenager and by the time I was twenty, spending time on my own was next to impracticable.

I, at now, at twenty-something, often spend a good many hours, bundled in books, fending for errands, attempting to cook, traveling to shop, listening to tunes while I run the treadmill. It makes me question if the little ‘divu’ had survived and was that autonomous me governing life all over again? Suddenly living as the stereotype independent working woman seems like the strewn jigsaw puzzle pieces, which I am trying to fit together, trying them on to make that complete picture, little by little each day.

I recall the jigsaw puzzle of puppies I knew by heart and fixed it almost ten times in fifteen minutes. I smile at the sardonic reality, when puzzles that seemed an effortless child’s play at eight are blurred veracities at twenty-something, when the pieces that fit the perfect life are yet so hard to find and when you do find them they are harder to fit!

Are we ready for a round of poker??

Are we ready for a round of poker??

My earliest experience with playing cards was that, they were taboo when grandparents were around in the house. Card games were meant for the un-couth and considered synonymous to gambling. However, over the years, cards had turned out to be the best form of recreation when cousins got together over a lazy afternoon after a heavy meal until the evening coffee and snacks. Games varied from rummy to ass to bluff and many a little monkeyshines that went along with it; but poker was an absolute NO-NO.

It was not until a few months back that I was introduced to the game of poker by my friends in Boston. We had watched the game being played with heavy stakes at the casino in Connecticut, which seemed like an engaging sport?! We of course didn’t have the money, valor or foolhardiness to try our hand then, but over one cold afternoon in the cozy room on the fifth floor of Huntington Avenue, we had indulged in playing the forbidden sport to capacity and frivolity! However the bids have never grown beyond the color chips that the poker pack accompanies. Ever since, no outing or coffee meet or movie meet or a just-for-the-sake meet has gone without a round of poker.

What is it that makes a game of poker, so special that even after 8 months of 10 people playing it at least twice a week doesn’t make it boring?? Is the infinite supply of coffee, chips, salsa that often accompany the fun?? Is it the indefinite possibilities of the game that no two plays are ever the same and for once permutation and combination actually makes sense?? Is it the colorful money and materialistic you that plays?? Is it the only sane thing a group can get involved to kill time??? Or is it the people who you play with and the shenanigans that make poker-time a memorable one???

I wonder why these questions ever pop up within me, when I do look forward to some good-humoured poker every weekend with my good friends and share many a joke over the hot cup of coffee; As I sit back and flip my two cards and glance at my depleting coin stack and yet proclaim to raise the bid, I stifle a smile to make the perfect ‘poker-face’ and sneak a peak into my friend’s cards – I realize that life wouldn’t be any good without a bunch of pals to horse around, make perfect sense of every non-sense, laugh at instances that don’t seem to make sense later, to share your child-likeness and tom-foolery and above all to make even an intriguing game like poker seem of no avail without the perfect friend-circle!! J