First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you. ~

Ahem a vice called alcohol. Well think I am the last person who should actually be talking about alcohol considering the fact that I didn’t start drinking until I was quite old. Na I never got drunk during my first few years in college. On the contrary I was the one who hadn't had a drop of alcohol ever. Everyone would be drinking, making merry and be all happy while I was the one who was completely under the iron controls of sanity and my senses would be wide alert doing a double take. All those years I’d wonder what makes my friends act giggly and even mellow after drinking. Strange as it sounds I didn’t even try experimenting as most young college goers would until much later well into my early twenties. However I’d be lying if I do not accept that sometimes I’d actually feel a little out of place because so many inebriated people around you when one is in a solemn state of mind does make you wish that you could feel the same. I’d have a few sips here and a few sips there and make faces like a child does and say "Arghhhhhhh".
But there were intoxicants I did try eventually. On my 20th birthday I got stoned for the first time in my life and wow that was such a hilarious trip I. I can still hear myself screaming “whoopsie daisies” at the top of my voice and the look on the faces of my surprised friends. No one had ever seen me inebriated before. I didn’t hear the end of it for the next few years. After that day I’d smoke up once in a while and enjoy my hiatus to the other world. I remember the craving for anything sweet after we were stoned and also a particular incident when this guy I smoked up with got me chocolate at 1 at night just to satisfy my sweet tooth. Those were heady days; we were students, perennially broke and counting pennies all the time. Maybe it was the state of our minds at that time in our lives that made us want to try weed and the likes of it. I recollect a time when I had one too many a joint and it was a wild, crazy trip when I felt I was flying. I remember distinctly lying on my bed and that uplifted feeling as if the bed was soaring high into the sky like Alladin’s magic carpet ( now I know that it definitely wouldn’t be as much fun as it does look like in the animated film)and I was praying to god so hard saying “Please please I promise not to smoke up for a long long time .”

I didn’t touch weed after that for a while. The next time when I did start smoking up was a hard time in my life when I was trying to put a part of my past behind. Weed was my way out, made me forget those feelings that didn’t seem to go away in the light of the day, feelings that haunted me and made life miserable for me. So I’d smoke a joint everyday at night and go to sleep with this heightened sense of superficial happiness that faded away in the brightness of the morning sunshine and made me feel all hollow and empty from inside. I’d do that day after day, I’d be all cuckoo at night and in the morning I’d be in tears trying to hide my sobs under the quilt. That phase of mine ended too when one fine day I confessed to my Mum about how dejected I was and she took it so well. She asked me to stop and come home for a bit. By the time I came back I was a different person. I realized smoking up was never the answer. I’ve seen too many people destroy their lives due to their addiction to weed. I’ve seen the smartest of men just waste them selves doing substances.

Drinking on the other hand has been amusing. Drunken soiress can be quite comical.Yeah sometimes I do drink a wee bit too much and I am woozy and happy and such a kid. The last party we had just before we graduated was a lively affair and I was so drunk, I’d been drinking with my best friend and her boyfriend and and I was on top of the world, rather the zenith. I gave a peck on the cheek to all the guys in the pub that night needless to say the next afternoon when I bumped into a few of them they had those secret smiles on their faces. I felt sooooo silly. I refrain from acting in such a ridiculous manner now but darn I do fail every once in a while. I have to mention all those phone calls one makes to your loved one(one sided) under the influence of alcohol. Damn in the recent past everytime I have done so all I have heard from the other side of the line is "You are drunk again.Don't drink too much.What is wrong with you? What are you doing with your life?"Huh!Where did that come from? My life is going on mighty fine. Thank you but your concern is totally not needed.I resent him for making me sound like an alcoholic.Men give themselves entirely too much credit.Seriously it isn't always traumatic as they would like to believe. I might be the cocktail queen , what with my fixation with bloody mary's, mojitos and strawberry daiqris in different periods and very recently my love for wine but hell i ain't no alcoholic.

Who can ever forget the drunken singing, the drunken bonding, the confessions et al. It is another story that in the morning one would get up and all of that would appear downright ludicrous hahah! I took a sabbatical from drinking in the middle and apparently I’d become quite spiritless and stodgy according to my roomie. No body is as cute and entertaining ( in a nice way mind you) as me when drunk so I don’t deprive my friends anymore. Cheers to all of you :).

Now, I just want to play on my panpipes,
I just want to drink me some wine,
As soon as you’re born, you start dying,
So you might as well have a good time

To You

To the you I knew then

To the you I know now

To the you who made me deliriously happy at 18

To the you I shed tears and tears on

To the you who did not talk to me for 4 very long years

To the you who smiled at me one rainy day

To the you I got to know all over again to my utter surprise

To the you who fell ardently in love with someone who was so dear to both of us

To the you I pined for yet once more

To the both of you who were gloriously happy together

To the you who has this uncanny ability to make an appearnce in my life unannounced

To the you who astounded us all by pulling of no ordinary feat

To the you who is going through a trying time

To the you who is such a child at heart

To the you who is one of those very last one woman men

To the you who giggles at the most inoppurtune moments and thwarts my perfectly silly attempts at trying to make you smile

To the you who deserves all the joy, laughter and sunny days

To the you who can be the man I know you can be

For that you I wish for majestic lights in this dark night

For that you I say a silent prayer

Up, Up and Away

Minty did not want to sleep, not one bit, not at all. But Ma insisted that she slept for the customary 2 hours every afternoon. Poor Ma, the thought that for those two hours her very own, wanton of an elder daughter would be asleep leaving her with a few stolen moments of peace were a haven for her. Minty was irrepressible, a joyous concoction of energy, wit, mischief, and playfulness all rolled into one. All of 8 years old she was a voracious reader and often surprised her mother with her vocabulary and not to forget the seemingly endless questions.

“Ma is Grand Mamma 100 years old?”

“Who told you so Minty?”

“Raghu said that since her hair is as white as Cinderella’s Godmother in the fairy story then she has to be a hundred years old at least.”Ma hid the beginnings of a smile on her face as she turned her face away and replied rather nonchalantly “Yes Minty she is 100 years old.”

“If that’s what makes her happy.” Thought Ma.

It was a hot summer afternoon and Minty couldn’t think of a single reason why Ma would confine her within the four walls of the house when the whole world seemed to be beckoning her outside to come and play with them. If not for Ma she could climb the mulberry tree in the garden that lead to the roof of the garage and sit there all afternoon eating mulberries to her heart’s content, till her lips and hands turned purple with smudges of the violet mulberry juice and make faces at the ugly Pomeranian next door. She loved throwing stones at him and provoking him from the roof, getting a thrill out of the fact that he couldn’t get her and would have to be content barking at her while she did a little dance for him . She could have also run around the neighborhood in the dead of the afternoon when all the grown ups would be enjoying their siesta after a meal of fish curry and rice, and happily ring various door bells in succession and run away. What followed after that like a knee jerk reaction was a unanimous shout sounding like “Minnnnntyyyyyyyyyyyyyy”.

The whole neighbourhood knew Minty. She came down each year to visit her grandmother at her huge and ancient turn of the century house during summer holidays. She breathed life and joy into the 70-year-old mansion that had weathered many a storm and stood at the corner of the road living its twilight years. Grandmamma adored her elder grand child but couldn’t quite comprehend where her restlessness and naughty ideas originated from when neither Minty’s mother or Grandmamma herself had been particularly mischievous as kids. Grandmamma remembered rather proudly about the model little girl she had been except for an aberration here and there, she had always listened to her parents, praying twice a day, wearing sarees as soon as she turned 10 years old and playing houses with the china figurines her father gifted her from his trips to London.

Minty’s best friend was the gardener Nathu’s grandson Raghu. Nathu had worked at the Guha household for years together and Grandmamma was particularly fond of him because he knew just the right way to take tender care of her dahlias and managed growing her favorite green roses every winter. Nathu and Grandmamma shared a history too as they had been playmates when they were children. Grandmamma had been forbidden to play with boys as a child when one day she and Nathu were seen reenacting a wedding scene whilst going round and round an imaginary sacred fire. Grandmamma’s mother had freaked seeing that comical scene and thinking how her somber and solemn husband who had been bestowed with a particularly serious disposition, would react to his only daughter playing with a servant boy. From that day onwards-poor Grandmamma saw Nathu every evening only from her veranda roaming around in the garden all alone, cutting a sorry figure of a little boy missing his playmate while Grandmamma looked longingly at the garden and then at Nathu.

Strangely Minty and Nathu’s grandson Minty forged a friendship when Nathu got Raghu along with him to the house to help him with the chores in the garden. Raghu challenged her to climb the tallest tree in the garden and Minty never said no to such challenges that questioned her ability to outdo boys in any field.

“Of course I can climb that tree. I’ll climb it and show you, I’ll go up, up and away.”

“No you can’t. Girls can’t climb trees. Girls are sissies.”

“Just you wait and see. I’ll go up, up and awayyyyyyyyy.”

Minty followed by Raghu close to her heels frisked along the cobble stoned path and made her way to the jackfruit tree that stood in the middle of the garden towering over all the other trees. She surprised him and the whole household by climbing the highest branch in a matter of minutes and before long there was utter chaos as one of the servants complained to Grandmamma who rushed out to the garden to be greeted by the horrifying sight of Minty who had now been joined by Raghu entertaining the entire army of servants by their acrobatics of jumping from one branch to the other.

“See Grandmamma I am going up, up and away.” Minty shouted as she swung from one branch to another.

“Minty and Raghu come down right now at this very moment.”
Grandmamma was appalled by the public spectacle her grand daughter had made of herself.

“But Grandmamma we are having ever so much fun. I don’t wanna come down and nor does Raghu.” Minty looked at Raghu and he nodded in approval.

“Minty please come. God will punish you. Pious little girls do not climb jackfruit trees.” Wailed an exasperated Grandmamma hoping to instill the fear of God in Minty.

“ I am not scared of God. Besides I am sure he’d have fun too climbing this tree with me.”
“Minty come down right now or else Ma won’t let you play for the next 5 days.”
Now that was a possible threat and Minty couldn’t bear the thought of not being able to play for 5 whole days. Her little soul shuddered.

“Okie I’ll come down but only on the condition that you’ll make my favorite rice pudding with cashews and raisins and that you won’t tell Ma a word of this. “

“Yes I shall make the pudding and won’t tell your Ma either.” said a harassed Grandmamma. Minty and Raghu finally made their way down and received a hero’s welcome with shouts and claps as they were united with mother earth . Grandmamma took her grubby little grand child indoors and shooed the servants away asking them to get back to their work. Raghu was sent off home only to receive a thrashing from his nagging mother who had been at her wits end wondering where her son had vanished. Later that night after dinner content in her little world, Minty sat on the steps of the veranda with her bowl of rice pudding trying to find the raisins and cashews. She thought heard she something and she looked up at the sky just in time to see a shooting star zoom across. She smiled and softly whispered into the night “Up up and away.”

MYRIAD OF THOUGHTS

A myriad of thoughts running through my mind. Have to finish writing all these articles before that idiot pounces upon me yet again. I even have to finish drafting those unexciting lease agreements. Why does work seem to increase by leaps and bounds everyday? Wish I didn’t have to do this utterly ridiculous web content writing but I really need the money. I wish my salary was enough to suffice all my needs but sadly it ain’t and so I am compelled to do free lance writing that too content writing. It’s not even remotely close to the sort of writing I’d like to do. I earn peanuts compared to my former college mates and don’t even ask me why. I don’t have any rational answer to that. Oh I got an E Book of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and I am eager to read it but it has got to be at the cost of my eyes. Sigh! I am short sighted. My Mum was aghast when I called her up oh so gleefully in the morning telling her about my latest find only to be lambasted by her yet again saying “You’ll ruin your eyes. As if having bad eyesight wasn’t bad enough and having to sit online 9 hours a day besides all the hours you spend writing and surfing the net wasn’t worse now you wanna read a 638 page book on the desktop. You seem to have made semi blindness of your eyes a personal mission” I kept my mouth shut. I was of the opinion that Ma being the Harry Potter fan that she was would understand my jubilation but it was not to be. Sometimes it is just so pointless arguing with her and trying to make her understand that hell I cannot afford to shell out a thousand bucks in buying the book and that the e book was a boon from heaven. I was looking for this all time favourite quote of mine by Khalil Gibran, I found it all thanks to google. Sometimes I marvel at the amount of information available at the click of a mouse. I can’t imagine how difficult it would be for us to work without google, especially in doing the work I do when I have to sift through information day in and day out google is a blessing.

Very recently I fell in love with Sylvia Plath’s poetry and it is beautiful. Sadly she got all the recognition she had always craved for during her lifetime only after her sordid death. I was intrigued by her life with Ted Hughes . Assia Wevil’s entry into their picture perfect life changed it forever. Sylvia and Assia’s Dance Macabre was tragic. Anyways I am off now. My thoughts don’t seem to be following a particular pattern today.

Damn I have to go to Chandigarh today for arbitration and there was this particularly fun party I was looking forward to and it just happens to be today. I mean every Saturday I call up my house mates and say “Woman I can’t come out tonight since I have so and so work in office.” She doesn’t force me as she knows it is futile and so many of those times I actually sneak out with my college pals to TC or some other place. But this Saturday I actually wanted to go for this fancy dress theme party. [ yeah yeah call me a kidL]I wanted to be a gypsy woman with my colourful skirt bought from Pondicherry and a bandana with tassels and a peasant top. But no now I actually have super important work and I must say life is unfair. Why oh why sometimes does it seems that some people have it so easy while I seem to be running a race against time trying to manage so many things at the same time while I know a couple of people who do nothing but “drink wine and make merry”. No I wouldn’t wanna do just that ever. But sometimes, just sometimes I wish I was born rich. No not cos of the wine but for other dreams, that are oh so dear to my heart, dreams which if actually shape would get me where I want to in life. Yeah but drinking wine along the way definitely wouldn’t hurt ;).

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd

Sigh! I love Pope's poetry. Good Byee people. Hope you have a great weekend.