What’s with me and water?

I am a Piscean, a water sign. Though I am not a good swimmer I love to swim! I just love water and that’s not just because of my zodiac sign but also because there is a lovely quality about water, I feel soothed when it touches my body, I feel incomplete if I don’t take a sip of water every few minutes, when it rains I want to get out in the open,sing aloud and dance to the beats of the rain.

Now that was all about my love for water but little did I know that water can be the cause of much agony to me, not once but twice so far! Two consecutive monsoons and I have had to bear the wrath of water in many painful ways.

In the year 2008 I happened to be a resident of Gurgaon, which thankfully I am not any longer, and much like this monsoon it took its own time to come down and when it rained it poured and like how! It was August 14, 2008 and we had Independence Day celebrations in office. We got done from work at around 3 pm and when we looked out it seemed as if we were in Venice. How was one supposed to drive with all that water on the roads? Nevertheless, I left work as soon as I could lest it got worse. While I was out in the open how I wished I had oars, rowing would have been much better than driving.

It took me about three hours to cover a distance of 6 kms! I was exhausted and wanted to crash but the water Gods had something else in store for me. At I was nearing my society I saw a huge crowd, I got slightly worried, it being a high-rise the first think that struck my Bollywood affected head was that someone might have jumped off their balcony! But it was worse – the rain Gods had been especially kind to my society – it was flooded! And the sight ahead of me was unbelievable – all I could see was only water – dirty, muddy, slushy water! Cars parked in the society were floating, the swimming pool had disappeared, the ground floor was completely submerged and I was stranded outside my society with a car I didn’t know where to park. After finding a suitable parking on the road for my car, I took a rickshaw from the gate to my block inside! Gave the rickshaw driver Rs 100! (Its a pity as to how this unfortunate day was the rickshaw driver’s dream day. They must have earned on that one day as much as they do in a month!) I was still not done; my house happed to be on the nineteenth floor of that up market society. So I climbed, climbed and climbed and was relieved to see the door to my house, but this relief was not there to stay. There was no electricity and water in the taps for the next three days! And I climbed up and down those nineteen floors at least five times in a span of 24 hours!

Well that was last year, it passed and here we are in 2009 when the monsoons were throwing tantrums and the entire city had been praying for it to rain and like any other good citizen I too was. And then on the night of Monday, July 27, 2009 it rained and poured and rained and refused to stop! Rain on that day alone accounted for 53% of rain in Delhi during this monsoon. And this rain had its aftereffects – the next morning was a rather taxing one. Thinking that I had left the issues of water-logging back in Gurgaon’s high-rise up market society and moved to the wide-open region of Delhi which is called Dwarka, I set out for work at my usual time. But no, how could have I got away that easily this monsoon? I have a special relationship with water! The Dwarka underpass was flooded and so much so that people were diving into it for a swim! I was frustrated at the sight. The entire traffic was detoured through two villages ‘Bijwasan’ and ‘Najafgarh’. Apart from the fantastic village tour and a new route to work exploration my car was running on the reserve fuel – which obviously meant no AC. After three and a half excruciating hours of traffic, heat and sticky flies I reached work…obviously exhausted!

I wonder what’s with me and water, but whatever this jinx is about – it has made one thing loud and clear – I am not very fond of water anymore. Period!

On second thoughts, the hot water shower after that long tiring day at work was magical! Huh!

The Magic of Music

As a child my mother used to tell me the story of Tansen and that whenever he sang Raga Megh Malhar it brought down the rains and Raga Deepak it lit up lamps with fire!

When ever I would think about this story I would keep a candle next to me and sing aloud hoping for it to light up but it never did.

This lovely story came back to me this morning while I was driving to work. Radio is my constant companion on the road and as I set out, I tuned on to 102.4 FM AIR FM and my spirits were uplifted when I heard Doris Day singing ‘Que Sara Sara’, and as I sang aloud with beloved Doris I started easing out, the heat didn’t feel that harsh anymore, the slow traffic didn’t bother me at all and the noise outside suddenly didn’t exist anymore! I sang aloud, smiled to myself and remembered school days when our music teacher Miss Sushila would play the guitar and we’d sing this wonderful track with her.

After the song got over, I continued humming it for quite sometime and then thought about the power of music – it definitely didn’t light up candles for me but it did de-stress me, eased the tension I go through everyday on my way to work and got me a few weird looks from people in other cars!

As a child I thought Tansen must have been a magician as I grew up I dismissed this argument totally and called this story a piece of fiction but today I realized how true the story was, Tansen indeed was a magician and music indeed has the power to light up low spirits...

For Navita

“Blessed is He in Whose hand is the kingdom, and He Who has power over all things, Who created death and life that He may try you.”

‘Death’ was a subject which I had in a way always forbidden myself from thinking about. It’s not like I had not witnessed someone dear passing away but just that I chose to keep away from it. As if it were a forbidden territory that I mustn’t even think about. And every time a terrible thought of losing someone I love crossed my mind I would try and push it away with such dexterity I am amazed at.

I was not until the night of February 11, 2009 that I had thought so much about this ‘issue’. I still cannot fathom the reality that someone I have known so closely, someone who I had loved so much and some one with whom I had shared my dreams and thoughts had just gone away…just passed away. Someone who was my age, in fact a few months younger than me had died!

This post is a tribute to Navita. My friend with whom I have grown up, with whom I have spent hours over the telephone, with whom I have shared my thoughts, dreams and feelings.

Navita and I were together in school since class 1, but it was only in Class 3 that we got very friendly. And then there was no looking back! We sat together in class, initially we started addressing each other as ‘partner’ and then from sitting together in class we moved onto sharing lunch and finally secrets. Navita was always much more matured than I was. She had this air of sensibility about her, she knew right from wrong and even though I was seven months older than her I used to feel very secure when she was around…as if I had someone to protect me. She was a tom boy, she liked paying cricket with her colony boys, she collected marbles and loved watching the film ‘Rocky’.

Boarding the school bus after school was always an ordeal, especially when there were more kids trying to push their way into one bus because the second bus was either late or not coming at all.

I remember once when I was just 10 I was trying to push my way into a packed bus that Navita had already boarded, she stretched her hand from inside so I could take it and suddenly the agitated bus conductor pushed me out of the bus. My eyes swelled with tears and Navita got off the bus. She bought me an orange bar and we both set out for the police station to get a FIR lodged about that badly behaved conductor. Obviously nobody in the police took us seriously and wrote nothing but till date when I think of that day, it gives me immense pride in having a friend who cared so much!

It was the same year we were caught cheating in a mental maths test in class. My class-teacher who was extremely cross called us individually and told us that she’ll fail us in the test. I remember she went first and came back smiling, I was waiting outside the classroom again teary and pale. She winked at me and gave me that reassuring smile of hers and it was amazing how quickly my tears vanished and I went in and apologized for the mistake and came back happy.

Navita pampered me like a younger sibling. Every time we would meet she would buy me a chocolate from the school canteen. She loved to see me finish the chocolate, what she loved the most was when I licked every bit of the chocolate off the wrapper…she would fondly call me Laalchi.

We had our own code language and whenever we were in the library where we were forbidden from speaking aloud we would exchange written notes and it was crazy because everything we wrote to each other always seemed so funny that it became difficult to not laugh out loud. On one such day I was down with a terrible cold, Navita wrote something funny on her notebook and showed it to me, I found it so funny that I laughed so hard that there was snot all over my face and to make matters worse, I did not have a handkerchief. It was hilarious, I had to roll up my sweater sleeve and wipe it off. I still remember the next day when she was standing next to me during assembly how she ensured I had changed my sweater. And after this incident till many years later, whenever I was low she would look at me and draw imaginary snot with her finger in a zigzag action over her face.

Navita had this wonderful quality of making me feel happy whenever I was low. She did not ever lecture or council; she just cracked a joke or reminded me of something really funny that was sure to make me laugh.

As time passed we distanced, our class sections changed, she made new friends and we did not spend as much time as we used to. But we knew we were there for each other. School was over and I moved to a different school for class XI and XII. But as luck had it we were back for graduation in the same college. Things had changed now, our subjects were different, our friends were different but we caught up every now and then only to realize that we were still the best of friends like we were back in school.

In 2004, after graduation I moved to Delhi and she to Bangalore, we got involved in our own lives, but we called each other on our birthdays. The last time I spoke to her was on her birthday October 12, 2008 when she had turned 25. We spoke for a long time, after a very long time. I told her about my life, we fondly remembered school days, talked about family, common friends their whereabouts and such like. Then I asked her about marriage and she said “I don’t see myself getting married for the next five years…there’s so much more to do.” Little did we know that she won’t even live to wish me on my birthday which was just five months away.

Navita died in a road accident on February 11, 2009 in Bangalore. She was cremated in Chandigarh on February 12 where I saw her after five years, lying stiff, cold and lifeless. She looked grown-up, her hair had grown long but her face was the same…calm and comforting. I regretted not having told her how much I missed the good old school days, I regretted not having told her how much I loved her, I regretted not having called her out-of-turn, when it wasn’t her birthday, and told her that even though I didn’t call her everyday, as I did when we were in school, I often thought about her.

And everything came back to me so vividly, every prank we played together, every moment we spent together, the way she laughed, her hand-writing – the stiff, erect, alphabets neatly placed together, her favourite song, film, colour, her love for animals…it was all reeling in my head like a film I had grown up watching.

Though Navita is not around any longer her memories will always stay with me. She was like God’s angel sent here to give happiness to whoever she met and I think I am so lucky I got to be a part of God’s blessing for as long as she was here.

“You make the night to pass into the day and You make the day to pass into the night, and You bring forth the living from the dead and You give sustenance to whom You please without measure.”

The power of the Almighty

“He has created the heavens and the earth with the truth; He makes the night cover the day and makes the day overtake the night, and He has made the sun and the moon subservient; each one runs on to an assigned term; now surely He is the Mighty, the Great Forgiver.” – The Koran, (Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini)

These were Mariam’s last thoughts before she was about to be executed and these are the thoughts that have lingered on in my mind ever since I’ve closed the book. Who is God? A question which has become much of a cliché…a thought that crosses my mind every time I say my morning prayers, every time I wish for something to happen, every time I leave the safe confines of my home, every time I look at his picture, stuck on my car’s dashboard, while driving or every time I believe.

‘He makes the night cover the day and makes the day overtake the night’ strange as it may seem when really thought about but there is a magical force that is leading the day into night and then night into day. In our mundane lives we forget to pause and admire the beauty in something as minor as this transformation of day into night and night into day. We forget to stand and feel the breeze that brings about a magical calmness if we really feel it.

‘He has made the sun and the moon subservient; each one runs on to an assigned term’ Imagine if the sun and the moon were to disobey? Imagine if the Sun feels under the weather one day and decides not to come out at all? Alarms will ring off like they do every morning and we will begin a new day by drawing open the curtains to see it’s still dark. Then thinking it’s strange yet without comprehending the enormity of the situation set out for work at 8 am with the car headlights on in full beam. Then reach the work place and forget about it all till the next morning when the sun is being obstinate and refusing to come out yet again. Maybe that’s when we will pause and realize the power of the Almighty?

He is the Mighty, the Great Forgiver just like parents God too is very forgiving. We take liberty with parents, hurt them, do things against their wishes and when the damage cannot be undone we are taken back by them in an embrace where it seems the mistake was never committed. God too has a short memory, He only waits for us to run back into his arms and the worse passes away so quickly. And just like parents He shows us ways of repairing the damage we have done.

It is this faith in an invisible power that makes me believe that I am being looked after, that I am not alone and that everything that is happening is for the good, it’s all well planned.

“Behind every trial and every sorrow that He makes us shoulder, God has a reason.” – The Koran