Disturbia

I gaze out of the window absent mindedly thinking whether I'll reach on time.

He's going pretty fast & going by the speed he's going I should be able to catch the train on time.

As it is, I've missed the train and my only chance in joining him is to catch the same train.

As myriad thoughts fill my entire being, the auto i travel in, screeches to a grinding halt.

I get down from the auto to look around.

It's still dark and the clock in the station ticks 4 o clock.

With great difficulty, I read the name of the station....OTTA-PPAALAM...

The moment my brain comprehends what this means, the look on my face turns from relief to horror.

Darn !!! I'm supposed to be in Varkala & here I am in Ottappalam!!!!!!!!!

Damn it !! The auto guy must have gone faster than was really required and I ended up in no man's land.

Horror on my face changes into pure red anger as i turn to look at the auto driver.

And wonder of wonders he's smiling at me, as if mocking the predicament I'm in.

I'm seething with rage as I ask him, "Is this where I wanted u to drop me? Is this y I was ready to pay u triple the meter charge? Have u got no sense at all or are u challenged that u cant understand anything? Now who is gonna be responsible now that I've missed my train? R u gonna drive me all the way to Chennai????"

I utter all gibberish, totally incomprehensible until I get one tight slap across my face.

I see the stars in my head, as u see in cartoons, and I reel backwards to fall on the ground.

It hurts real bad and now I understand how it feels to be hit by a man.

My ego is hurt very badly, more so cos I cant believe that an ordinary auto driver has the audacity to slap ME. I'm too stunned to move. But still conscious.

As the stars inside my head settle down, my eyes adjust their focus to the man standing tall in front of me.

He's tall, about 6 feet at least, fair, well built,no moustache & smiling.

It is the sly smile that unnerves me... as if he's plotting something and I cant seem to understand what it is.

It's the sly, cunning & mocking smile of a fox or rather a hyena which approaches a half dead creature ready to tear it into parts and eat it while it's still alive.

I come back to reality with a jolt, amazed at how my imagination can work overtime in a situation like this.

For the first time in my life, I feel scared & vulnerable.

I have a funny feeling starting to rise up from the pit of my stomach. Fear........

I see him throwing off my bags from the auto. They land with a loud thud, on the railway tracks nearby.

My head is still groggy and I cant seem to process what is happening. My head feels extremely heavy. It must be because of the slap.

I see him take off his khaki shirt & I can see his well toned sweat glistened body in the faint light of the platform lights. Slowly, the realisation of what is going to follow dawns on me.

I've seen this scene so often in the movies.

This is how it starts off, then the girl yells "bachaoo" in her highest pitch, then the villain approaches her, tearing her clothes to bits and doing whatever it is that he intended to do.

This is where the story forks. Either the girl emerges with tattered clothes & bruises on her body, sobbing softly to herself and blaming her fate for what happened or, the hero appears out of nowhere, beats the villain to a pulp and takes off his shirt/coat/whatever to cover her up and they they live happily ever after.

I think of my hero... He must be on the train, the train I was supposed to board. He must have crossed the Kerala border & must be waiting for me, wondering what was taking me so long.

I can actually see what is going to come & I blink and blink to make it all disappear and get back home, but in vain.

I try to get up, but the fall was so severe that I can get up at all. Every part of my body groans in protest, refusing to budge.

Before I realise it, there is this shirtless man on top of me, violating everything a girl feels is her own private self.

I open my mouth to yell, only to be clamped shut by a powerful hand with bulging biceps, like that of a gym instructor. It was almost like he was squeezing life out of me as he clasped his hand on my mouth.

I struggle under his weight helplessly,but that mountain of a man doesn't seem to budge.

My bruised & tattered ego is seething with rage & I try to wriggle out from under him, like a helpless worm wriggles to and forth.

No sound comes out of my throat, but my eyes rest on that sly smile of his, ready to devour me & that fills me with rage again.

I try to push him away, I try to kick him off, I try to bite him, I try to do everything to get him off me, but I end up being more subdued, drained out of strength & unable to move.

As I lie tired & suffocated under the weight of his body, I see my dupatta flying off somewhere into the oblivion.

I can feel my salwar being ripped open, my new salwar.

Suddenly, I can feel the bitterness of the cold morning air just as cloth leaves my body.

And then, there is this intense piercing pain, like a 100 daggers are thrust into you.

It increases & increases until i cant bear it anymore & I feel as if i'm going to burst.

Then, I open my eyes.

My gaze falls on the stand beside my bed, full of umpteen creams, lotions & hair bands.

To my greatest relief, I recognise my room in the apartment I live in.

I feel very tired and mentally drained out. I sit up in bed, trying to recollect what I saw in my dream.

I just saw myself being raped.

And the thought itself fills me with so much anguish that I say Oh God! how could I see something so painful as this?

It's earlier than my usual time; the clock has just struck 8 & I have enough time to make breakfast.

I had my bath only last night so then I don't usually bathe in the morning. But, given the circumstances I woke up in, I felt violated, dirty & in need of a thorough cleansing.

I switch on the geyser to take my bath, make myself my cuppa horlicks and sit in front of the TV watching a gyrating Jyothika on sun music.

Once I finish my horlicks, I take my clothes & rest of my paraphrenelia and proceed to take my bath.

I pour the first mug of hot water on my face and as I close my eyes, I go back to visuals of my dream in a flash.

The feeling of being dirty dominates all other feelings that I had. I don't know y but that's how I felt.

Considering that I had only a dream , I know that this is not a big thing. But, such an incident in just a dream affected me so much that I shudder to think about the hapless women who have been through all this and more. I wonder what they might have felt. Their souls must tattered and bruised beyond any possible recovery. I can now at least relate to how they must have felt.

My dreams are always in 70 mm colour. It is very descriptive & detailed as I see it, but I cant seem to remember the faces of people involved. However, I can remember the settings, 4 eg in this case that the scene was beside a railway station. I cant remember the man's face no matter how hard I try. I think 4 me, he signifies only bad in people which is omnipresent. I still cant remember his face, though i can clearly see his physique.

I'm always struggling in my dreams, for something/someone, to get away from someone/ something so on and so forth.

I woke up painfully disturbed, scarred, feeling dirty and dead. Bathing today was cleansing to me. As if I was trying to wash away whatever was the dirt on me. If I could draw i think i would have drawn the scene, but since I can only write I know that it is a better release 4 me to write it out. I cant really put across my emotions when I woke up & I couldn't believe I was so affected by just a dream.

I think the Ottappalam setting was from my ex-room mate who was 4m that place. I cant figure out how i got this sort of an eloping idea from. I would never have done that in real life. Nor could I understand y the auto guy slapped me cos I didn't say anything bad. I was just angry. I don't think i saw any rape scenes in any of my recent movies & so i cant seem to figure out how the idea evolved. People say that things that haunt ur sub conscious mind translates into dreams. Things/people you yearn for, things left unsaid all this and more can translate into dreams. Small things come together to evolve into a totally different experience.

Phew !! This has been one tiring experience.

Me signing off.

Dress Rehearsal

Scene

The door of the fitting room opened wide to reveal a pair of medium sized bare feet, a pair of well rounded calves which would put the fattest chicken drumsticks to shame, hip rounder than those of females you would see in old ravi varma paintings, waist as slim as a housewife's, well endowed bust further bettered by the deep and wide neckline and a spectacled round face with a questioning look.

A : So what do you think?

N : hmmmmmmm (long one) It's really nice, accentuates your features, a bit on the shorter side. Only problem is you remind me of the girls in c grade mallu skin flicks & I will get you this dress only for bathroom and bedroom wear. You get out of that dress immediately !!!!

A : (deep sigh)

The rotund figure slinks back into the fitting room. Door slams shut.

Well, that was one of my many dress rehearsals. It was a beautiful cream n white satin dress, but the judge clearly said what it reminded him of and no contest. The second was a grey dress which didnt actually do anything for me, but did wonders for his pocket. So we finally bought it because we couldnt find anything else that would fit my hips and his pocket equally well. I was a size large in most brands in India & here sometimes my chest fits but my hips dont and sometimes the other way round. Here I fall in the petite category & fit in most medium sized tops and bottoms. I wasnt quite happy with the the dress or may be i didnt know there were other dresses which could make me happier. So we continued hunting, thanks to my patient half. I found a Calvin Klein Shirt dress which was really smart, but only problem was that i couldnt sit down while i was in it, the buttons would pop open under the stress of my layered fat. In addition the judge said no ways. He sure wasnt a great fan of peeping body parts, specially his emotional half's. And we did find something that made me happier. It was red all over, with black vertical lines which made me look taller than i was. The cloth was thicker than those of most other dresses i had seen, because they didnt openly advertise my intimate wear. And it had this little black lace which could be tied into a bow at the waist. Most importantly, it fitted my hips & his pocket & it didnt remind him of anyone sleazy. So like the cat who got the cream, we took it home. I wore the dress when we went to Balharbour shops, Miami. I've been to a lot of malls, in India and abroad, upscale , downscale, medium scale, all scales, but this was out of this world. The shops housed there reminded me of the fashion week in FTV. Versace, Gucci,YSL,Chanel,De Beers, Armani,Cartier,D&G,Dior,Escada,Fendi,Jimmmy Choo,LAcoste,Louis Vuitton,Prada,Tiffany and what not. I gawked wide mouthed at their exhibits and peered wide eyed into their shops. We didnt muster enough courage to even get into any of those shops. The shoppers who came there looked like they were imported from some ramp in Paris, dressed to the hilt, in fur coats, leather and boots. However, there were a few like us who came there for the sole purpose of proving a point which is that we have gone there & for a photo shoot. If there's one place unfit even for window shopping i guess this was it. The opulence and indulgence of the glitterati who came there was so intimidating that i felt like i was out of place.

Role Play

Well, for a long time i didnt know what to feel when i think of my better half & now i doubt if i feel anything at all. I cook for him, clean his house, wait on him & sleep with him, but does that make me a wife? May be it makes me a glorified maid servant with extra privileges and some perks free. I dont know. I still am emotionally attached to a lot more people than him. If i have a problem or if something is upsetting me, i think of others before i think of him. I get more consolation from people thousands of miles apart than the person who sleeps right next to me. I wonder why. Is it time, is it the circumstances or is it plain magnetism which draw people closer. When u r girlfriend boyfriend why do you buy chocolates/flowers for your gf? Is it because it is the done thing or because you know that she likes flowers and that it will make her happy or is it because people around you tell you that it is the way it is or is it because you love her being happy? Why is it that people celebrate anniversaries? Is it because they cherish the day they married each other or is it because they are doing it cos everybody else did it like it is the done thing? Everything that we do, we do either out of a sense of duty or out of love. Things that you do out of a sense of duty has no emotion attached to it, like doing a job, totally mechanical. Things you do out of love has a lot of care, planning & effort into it. Like I read somewhere, you realise what you had only after you lose it & it is too late to get it back. I still remember my birthday this year. I was quite lonely because i was living alone at that point of time. But, i didnt want a boring birthday , so i bought cake & candles for myself, treated myself to a private dinner & dessert & watched a good movie on tv, all alone. 2 of my very dear friends surprised me with birthday gifts at midnight, something i did not quite expect. Perhaps that was the last birthday i would ever celebrate with friends, with cake cutting at midnight & gifts. If you have a strong desire to relive the past, then it means that you dont love the present as much. I still love my brother a lot, perhaps the only man who can console me at bad times & knock some good sense into me. One bear hug is all it takes to wash away all my sorrow. I still lean on him for support, though we are physically thousands of miles apart. Doesnt it feel great to hear "I'll be there for you" from someone? Sometimes it helps to say it out loud and sometimes it does a lot more to do something equally nice, like a bear hug.

Lost & found

Just a day back I found one of my childhood friends on a popular friends networking site. I wasnt really ecstatic in finding him, but as always felt like "ah! Gotcha". His face hadnt changed a lot because one glance at the profile picture he had posted told me that it was indeed him. We had studied together in 1st std in a small little school, far away from my native. I was notorious there because I was always late for the 1st afternoon period. Reason being that I would play more than the others & finally have to eat lunch with both hands instead of one. So while teacher was out calling the attendance, i would be at the taps trying to wash off lunch leftovers from my face & hands & shirt and wherever else I managed to smear it. I remember him as a very pious guy perhaps because he had "vibhuthi" on his forehaed every single day that he came to school. I also have memories of him as an ardent Ayyappa devotee, because for some reason "ayyappo swamiye" used to come out of him at regular intervals. He was also the class topper in 1st std. I remember this clearly because achan was always pushing me to beat him at school. Besides all these, there is another bigger reason, why I hounded him on networking sites. I have very vivid memories of him getting beaten black and blue by his father, for any number of reasons.

Forgetting about the report card, not mentioning about a PTA meet, hiding answer papers because

he got only 48 in math & not 50. They sure didnt believe in sparing the rod or spoiling the child. Of course I have had my share of beatings & slaps both publicly and privately, but achan was never a tyrant, he was much easier to deal with. After 1st std we parted ways, he went to a boys school & I was sent to a convent. We used to visit their place once in a while so we were also invited for their house warming. I can clearly remember that the house was beside a canal or something. But by then, we were both grown up and had lost that innocence binds children irrespective of sex. When you are 12 or so, there this distinct charaterisation of boyish stuff and girly things. So we never cared about each other, after all he had his friends & I had mine. Years passed, and now i see him again and all those memories come flooding. I am yet to ask what is happening with him, though I feel it might be the same old routine. Sometimes i feel that all the friendships i had in school never withstood the test of time. They just withered away or simply gave way to stronger more fruitful bonds.

Of hugs, kisses & emotions

I come from a fairly emotional family which believes in expression of emotions quite plainly. When i was small my father used to say, "How will I know that you love me, unless you say so or do things that show that love?". He's right, no point hoarding all that love in your heart & not do anything about it or say nothing about it. I still remember how my brother & I used to jump at him, crawling all over him like monkeys, overjoyed when he came home on friday nights after his week long tour. When I became a big girl, i used to stand on the side, watching my brother do the same, perhaps sad that i could no longer do it. Hugs and kisses meant everything to me. Showing love physically is still an important way of expression for me. Perhaps that is why when some great tragedy befalls someone and you dont find words to console, it does wonders just to hug and cry with them. It does much more than any amount of words could possibly do. But, when you have friends of the opposite sex, sometimes our minds are too narrow to see reason or emotion behind the physicality. It is easier to hug a girl who is an acquaintance than to hug a guy who is your best friend. I cant understand how people can bottle their emotions up. I have a friend who I can relate to as someone with "supressed" emotions & I realised a lot of it depends on the upbringing also. A long time back when i was onsite in a very cold country with even colder people, there was this couple who stayed in the same building as me, who taught me the basics of how live in that place. His pregnant wife was not very literate & so there was no common language between the two of us. But we managed with my really bad hindi & her even worse english. once when they took me to a nearby shopping mall, i still remember how she held my hand on that cold night. It was a very small gesture but i've not forgotten how it made me feel. Small things make a big difference. When amma was in hospital for her hysterectomy & achan was having his chemotherapy, I was the bystander for amma. One sunday i came home to get fresh clothes & in the amount of time that i was at home, i changed the bedsheets & made tea for him. I remember him telling me that it felt like having a woman in the house & that the tea tasted like payasam. I know that he didnt have the sense of taste much, but the thought behind the act made the sweetness i guess. On the day of my wedding, amma & I had a very small private crying session in the privacy of our bedroom. As we hugged each other and sobbed, we were both relieved that the great groom hunting ordeal was finally over, a sense of relief flooded over us. As luck would have it, I married into a family which had zilch emotions, very matter of fact & normal all the time. If you had to plot a emotional graph, it would just be a straight horizontal line, while mine would go up and down and wherever it pleased. For his kind of upbringing, my better half has fared better i guess. He left no stone unturned to please me in our brief but sweet courtship, flooding me with surprises like flowers & chocolates & many more. When we were about to leave, i had this long session of hugging & kissing every aunt, uncle & cousin good bye, while he & his family simply nodded at each other. It totally stumped me that people could be so emotionless. As long as he wasnt so with me, i didnt have room to complain. i could not see the bond between siblings or the bond between mother & children, in fact there seemed to be no bond at all or probably i couldnt see if there was. Amma could immediately sense trouble if I spoke less, because I always clamped up when i was disturbed. He's also learning the tricks now. In 2 months time, i feel that we have progressed beyond monosyllables. People see the change in him post marriage and are surprised. Well, if the change is for good then why not.

Dinner party

After I got married, I knew I'd have to play hostess at some point or the other, but that it would come so soon & that too for so many people was something i did not expect. We hosted a dinner party for my hubby's ex-roomies. They were 7 in all, 7 full grown males & I dreaded to think of their even bigger appetites. As it is I'm very nervous about cooking for guests, more so when they are all men because you never know how much they will all eat. I'm petrified of that fact that the food may not be enough for us all. We started off by afternoon, though we planned to start in the morning itself. He was a bigger help than i envisioned & gradually i burdened him with more work than i had decided to give him. He cut up onions in the chopper, cut up beans into teeny weeny pieces for me, peeled the skin off the chicken drumsticks we bought & sampled all the items which i thought were ready for the table. So we ended up with rice (lots of it, only because of my above said fear) chicken curry, fish roast made from tilapia fillets(i believe this is my masterpiece),sambar(kerala style) beans thoran, cabbage mizhukkuperatti & salad. The boys were far from being punctual, landed exactly an hour late. We offered a variety of drinks wine/beer/juice & chips to go with it. To everyone's good fortune, we had a movie called "The Gods must be crazy" & we all started watching that. Everyone enjoyed the food, especially the fish & the sambar. I thought of my appachi who had painstakingly made the powder for me for my first US trip. Ice cream was offered as dessert with the option of chocolate sauce to go with it. Though we did not expect them to get us anything, to our surprise, they got us a blender, 2 greeting cards, a TARGET gift card & chocolates. They couldn't have been more perfect in their roles as guests. This taught me never to underestimate people, sometimes the most surprising behavior comes out of people you least expect it from.

A Special Day

I had totally forgotten about this day, November 2nd and it was too late when i remembered. Had I been with the company I started off with, I would have completed 5 years of professional life in the software industry with an MNC. Of course, I do have my counterparts in the same place probably savoring the day and the memories. 5 years ago on a cold winter, I started my career in Mumbai, the city of dreams. City of dreams indeed it was, giving me the only one thing i never had in my entire life, FREEDOM. When i look back, i cannot but wonder at my courage in giving it a go. And go it did, never stopping once. I admit that i changed somewhat in my personality and outlook when i was in college. And changed a bit more after I started working. Like one of my friends remarked, change is one thing that is constant about me. People have this annoying habit of getting used to the person you were some 10years ago. They never account for variable change & in most cases cannot digest that change. It is so confusing when everybody says you changed & you get confused because you who people thought they knew, was not you. It was what they wanted you to be, like a bird not having the space to spread its wings. When you are no longer bound by rules & stereotypes, you tend to discover the real you. It's sad when you realize that you didnt know yourself to start with. I did not know anyone when i landed there with my uncle who was my guardian and he had to see to it that I got settled. I dont think i made any friends till the point we moved to a flat nearby. I think i was queer & weird & strange & definitely an introvert. When i look back i know that Mumbai was the best thing that could have happened to me at that point of time. I made a friendship which is very fruitful & still have great memories of us. She changed me in more ways than one, like smoothening the sharp edges. She gave me the courage to try out new things & more importantly let go & just live. I dont think i would have had the guts to go out at 9 in the night in my home town. But here we were, admiring Queen's necklace at midnight, eating roast corn seasoned with lime juice & salt & pepper. Life was never so beautiful nor was freedom so exhilarating. Office didnt mean much more than a place where you'd get money if you did the right things. When we are small, our parents would frequently ask this question " What do you want to b when you grow up?". Being grown up seemed a distant dream & I always thought i should have money of my own, no matter how little, or by what means, but something to call my own, from the sweat of my brow. Like everybody else, i too made some money out of my onsite stint, but that money is very close to my heart because of the pain, anguish, sorrow & loneliness i ad to endure to make that money. Bangalore was in no way comparable to Mumbai, mainly because the people who made that difference were no longer there. After a while, you realize that you need to settle down, make sacrifices, be with your family more & everything else fades into the background. Nothing else seemed more important. And then there came a phase when everyone I knew was getting hooked/committed/married & then after a while they started having kids while here I was still in the same old place. I had this vision of how we all started off in kindergarten & then one by one people graduated to primary school , upper primary & high school & finally passed out, while I was still on alphabets in kindergarten. Like they say every dog has a day & mine came too albeit late. here I was, married to someone abroad (well, it was my secret dream) but jobless. at every point in life, you need to choose between one thing and another. What ifs & buts seem to be omnipresent in every nook & corner of life. I miss having a job now, miss having my own money to spend, miss my independence. I miss having to wake up in the morning, whiz around the house trying to get ready on time & everything else that come with an office life. On the flip side, I have a husband who loves me for what I am, i have all the time in the world to simply unwind or relax or cook & also for my idle useless mind to be a devil's workshop. His b'day is coming up next month & I regret being so dependent on him, so much that I cannot give him a surprise gift. I cannot possibly get him anything because he will have to get it for himself. Every birthday that I was extensively involved with, after I had a job, had a lot of thought & effort and it did happen though by then the wedding was fixed. God has a strange way of getting things done & looks like he has a plan for everybody.

Sleepless Idle mind

Well, it was one of those nights when i could not sleep even as my better half's snoring tried so hard to rock me to sleep. In moments such as these i think of a lot of things & it's fascinating to observe how one thought leads to another and by the time you realize that you are conjuring up things way beyond your imagination, you might have reached some bizzare point. I thought of my mother, thought of my brother who was down with fever & then realized I was half way across the globe & thoughts were the only things that took me to them, this fast. May be there are a lot of people who would give everything to swap places with me. What exactly is life? When i was in school, everybody said the biggest thing in your life was your matriculation. Now after that was over, it seemed like getting into a professional course was to be the aim in life. After you pass out, it's a job that is most important, and then a marriage or promotion or an onsite trip or kids or whatever. At every point in your life, there is this something you need to achieve because others who were there before you have already done it. The focus shifts from time to time. It will be the same when i have kids & they go through the same grind, if not the exact same things. Ultimately, we all die & do we think of what is it that we did that others also did. Well, i dont think so. Probably we will think of our loved ones, regret something we should/should not have done. Memories and feelings make life or so i feel. you cannot possibly forget the way people made you feel, be it happiness or sorrow or anger. As i lay sleepless, i thought of my friend who lost his sister in an accident. Is there a greater sorrow than to lose a sibling ? May be there is but to imagine loss of someone who grew up with you, fought with you, cried with you, ate stolen candy with you, is something beyond my imagination. I saw a movie today which described your spouse as someone you meet in the journey of life. And it is just a way of life that you love each other because that is how it is meant to be. Your sibling is different or perhaps i think differently.To each, his own. Like some wise guy said, you can live without anybody in this whole world. It is just that we adjust ourselves to their absence. At the end of the day, no one can replace anyone else & it is unfair to try and recreate something you had with someone, with another person.

The Much married me !!

For those of you who don't know me, i can tell you that for a very long time in my life i thought that there would never be a man like a central figure in my life, a man most women would call husband. As destiny would have it, it did happen. To be very honest i'm just a decent looking girl, not the 'purrfect' matrimonial material as most men would aspire for. I had already gotten ready to get married to any tom,dick & harry. I didn't have any dreams to start with because it never materialized for me all my life & what more could it bring except despair. He didn't exactly sweep me off my feet nor did i fall in love headfirst, but yes I thought with my brain & decided that it was the best bargain i could get. Probably I was getting much more than what i would have dreamt of, that is if I had the courage to dream. My family says I've mellowed down a little bit from the single me to the married me. Perhaps I've become more caring and considerate. My brother is astounded by how I wait on him or feed him or carry his dishes or enquire each and every thing about his needs. Isn't that what a wife does for a husband? the bad part is that he now wants to get married so that he can have someone to carry the dishes for him, probably go upstairs to get his cell or whatever if he is too lazy to do so. What a wrong reason to get married !! Even now I don't think the feeling has totally sunk in. Sometimes i feel like I'm playing house with a friend whom i consider a little bit more than a friend. Well, i think your husband should be your friend first and everything else later. For a long time in my lonely existence, which was worse in the past 1 year or so, i craved for a permanent male presence ( read marriage) and when it finally happened, I didn't know what to feel, what next?? Well, more when the drama unfolds.....

why this name ??

well my brother calls me stupid cow when his love for me goes beyond boundaries and hence i thought what could be a more fitting tribute to the name than to name the blog in the name of this love.....