REVERSE GEAR !!!

Just met up with a bunch of spirited Navrachanaites (the school I taught in Baroda) and it brought back a flood of memories…..hence the flashback.

October 2006…..I discovered the elixir to youth and age reversal………

And that the elixir didn’t really come in a 5 gm puny bottle, which made your wallet sweat…..

At Navrachana school, in October, the buzz could generate enough electricity to power the whole of Baroda, however,the same buzz……the very thought of going on a full five days exercursion,with a bunch of 15 yr olds, …was sending jitters down my spine…..especially after all the toe curling tales of teacher torture, that were being narrated in staff rooms and dining hall lunch time sessions by the more X perienced lot.….somehow these stories remain miraculously covered ,throughout the year and pop up only during the times mentioned above…..I had a sneaking suspicion they were to discourage you more than…..

In typical fauji style we had our endless round of briefings……with principal…with students….with the distraught poor travel agent (I pitied him) with parents, who were more nervous and anxious than their children…..and between those of us ‘marked’ for the trip…(for the zillionth time)

There is always a first time and this hopefully is the last…I consoled myself as I boarded the train….
a second round of riots in Gujarat, erupted from a train yet again… only this time, however, the arsenal was… TOOTHPASTE, for the first time in my life I slept with my shoes on…for the casualties kept coming in through the night…..(and they were those who had taken the risk to sleep…!!!)

and yes it was the first time I had stayed away from home {5 whole days}, the first time I didn’t have to cook or make tea, clean the home, make my bed {God bless the Room Service dept.}

Whether the Gujarat and Andhra governments were into any alliance ,was a fact not known, one thing was sure……. these Gujju ambassadors were here for some serious economic reforms. For Navrachana made their presence felt all over Hyderabad, OH! YES, be it Golconda or Salargunj… Ice world or Charminar market, no food or drinks stall was left untouched by their benevolence which managed to create quite an economic stir in the Hyderabad market, and this time, cash flowed straight from Gujarat into Andhra Pradesh.

The trip was truly educational, as I was updated on all the hip and happenings, in and around class…… new friends were discovered while old ties were strengthened…… MP3’s and Ipods served unerringly {even in the loos}. That our children were hardy and possessed stomach’s of steel, was proved beyond doubt by the fact that many of them could survive on coke, chips and five day old theplas.

That October, I know I had turned fifteen again, for my students, never made me feel like an adult… for all of us…. laughed, sang, cried and danced {man… the DJ party left us all a few kg’s lighter} together….

That October… I knew what it was like to be….. mother to a 100 children.
That October they made me realize,I was still 15…just pretending to be 30…..
Thank you Class IX…. (Batch of 2006-2007)
For making me feel fifteen all over again.

still shifting gears

Nadira,the bold and brazen vamp of the yester years ,who lured Raj kapoor and millions of others in mudhe mudhe ke na deekh…mudhe in shri 420……one who reached iconic status with her magical eyes……would beg people to come and visit her and then prolong their stay by offering them food and drinks…said an article in yesterday’s paper…..stardom…success and…….now unasked for Solitude…
Another article….same paper….recognizing signs of depression……another article……doing things for yourself……and a massive one on social networking sites and their accompanying hazards…(if you didn’t know they were hazardous …now you will…!!)
The more we grow in numbers the more we are probably heading towards a lonely planet……
A weekend with an endless list of things to do……didn’t have even a minute to spare, yet called up half a dozen friends and chatted with some more..i love the way the pitch of their voice jumps up…the moment the recognize my voice….I’m sure they have a smile on their faces too (I buried modesty long ago)…made them laugh at some insane jokes, discussed silly things, and gave them all verbal and non verbal signals about how much I missed them……..surprisingly all of them spoke of hectic schedules, that were strangely empty……
Loneliness a word which often we fail to recognize….and push under the bed….in an effort to hide it out of view(for sometime)…

I thought I would take the sabbatical to view life…..people…issues clearly…. I watch people whizzing by from the 11th floor…….but instead ……. see just a blur…… because in the rush to get somewhere…..no one has the time to look up and wave….

Trying desperately to debug my system from this temporary virus…..before it attacks my software called sense of humour……
And if nothing works……..I’m sure the next months' phone bill will……

SHIFTING GEARS !!!!

I wanted to write something sensible for my second post. I owed it to it…..but all sense eludes you, when one is faced with exigencies of the M kind. For in every woman’s life the four M’s play a major role in marking her life’s milestones.MENSES,MEN,MAIDS AND MENOPAUSE……The first and the fourth should be accepted as nature’s gifts ……the second deserves analysis at length, but it’s the third M that unfortunately is a force of nature which one feels helpless to deal with !!!!
So the weekend was ruined, when the maid decided to call it a day(err two days)…… I prayed for her return.... relentlessly, I dashed to the door every time the bell rang, and even personalized her no. on my cell with a different ring tone…..(YES SHE HAS A CELL)
The dilemma was between sitting down to write and attacking a precipice of utensils which screamed for attention…finally I decide to follow my head….put the FM radio …on a volume generally non permissible by Brigade millennium standards…..and did the dishes ….strangely all the stations seemed to playing CHUK DE….CHUK DE INDIA…goading me on ….

I was grateful Mohan wasn’t at home ,for one, he has become absolutely immune to mundane household emergencies like no maid, no water ,no electricity…..and second ,he would have suggested some insane brilliant idea like turning a blind eye, ear and nose to the squalor and would have coaxed me to watch a movie with him, which would have irked me to a point of no return…..I guess it was his lucky day!!!!……and Anshul behaved intelligently by avoiding interaction…as he felt that somehow his languor reminded me of the maid less situation even more….
My fingers are all wrinkled up, after the close encounters of the watery kind. I kicked myself for procrastinating when I should have done the utensils long,long back .
I kicked myself for not having procured tickets for a play I had been waiting to watch....... the entire month.

Have come to the following conclusions………

Treat your maid well….for with, and in her, rests the peace of the entire house hold.

Tickets to a good play, like good men, never remain available for long…
grab them before someone else does….!!

first gear

TO B(log) or not TO B(log)

It must have been about 7-8 months back when I accidently stumbled upon ‘The Blog’, while trying to locate a long lost friend. A quick trip to the dictionary and a few discreet inquires (shockingly) revealed that the phenomenon was in fact a decade old…. (Nothing new for me… one who remains in the dark ages of the technological time line, most of the time)

What amazed me was the fact, that people wanted to put up ‘personal trivia for public display '(quote exact words told to a friend) and since then have been looking for a definitive answer to why people blog……

Do people write to express or they express to be read……..can one write naturally without pretense knowing fully well the fact that their emotions are put up on the world’s display window…..sorry to be so cynical but, the questions are but natural for any new born…..(reference…late entry into blogging).
Call it peer pressure or e pressure, a sudden spontaneous overflow of feelings ……ahem…..creativity (I know that’s Mr. Wordsworth’s), or may be just a desire to connect and reach across with words, which are informative, inspiring and (sometimes !!) intuitive. Pardon me if I’m metaphorically incorrect, but the blog seems to be ones ‘creative virtual offspring’ …..you conceive the posts (sometimes) in seconds, see a part of you in it….proudly watch it growing…….recommend it to others…….(they way parents flaunt their kids’ newly developed developmental skills)…compare it ….…and of course expect people to compliment(comment on)…it.
Well, time went by and the inevitable happened….I steadily and unquestionably got addicted to reading about the private and the not so private ‘lively…lifely’ details of friends and strangers and have to admit ,marvelled at peoples' ability to transform feelings and experiences into words ……
The desire to peep into the lives of friends through their blogs is indeed addictive………the pressure to comment intelligently…….challenging, but, above all the desire to stay connected and communicate is alluring!
Yes, I have been pretty skeptical and apprehensive about writing one of my own, despite words of encouragement offered by friends…..to join the league…!!!BLOGGERS INC!
for one…… revelation doesn’t come naturally to me…..especially when expressed in the written form. Probably like they say, when you lose one of your senses the others become stronger…..antonym(ically) true….for the excess of verbal gaffe….has induced the above mentioned deficiency ….second and most important…..the Macbethian dagger(read pressure) of being an English teacher looms large over me……for I confess(and my students will agree) that words don’t come easily ,I thrive on Gulzar ,Nida Fazli,Shakespeare,Hemmingway and Rushdie and O Henry and Maupassant, but possess no ability to create magical lines of either prose or verse, and often wobble when writing, supported by the crutches of a dictionary and now of MS word.
But, can and will write with honesty and simplicity……candidly and probably in language that’s as plain Jane as ME!!!
Apprehensive and unsure…am still looking for reasons as to why people blog….
Till I can find substantial, raison d'être that can put me at rest…have succumbed to bloggers’ pressure
For it is better to have written and expressed than not to have written at all…...