One day at a time, one day at a time....

"Hi, my name is Jerry and I'm an addict. I've been clean for 89 days. My mind is clearer, and... I think it's getting better. Every day, a little bit. But I wanna talk about this dream I keep having. It always starts with me stealing silverware. Then I go sell it to this guy who I used to know who owned a catering service. Then with the money, I go to this place where I used to buy my drug of choice, and... he's not around. So I go to other spots, right, but for some reason, no one is around. All of Seattle is dry, and then I get that feeling... the dread... and I panic. And I start running, and it's raining, and it gets dark. And then I'm in my old apartment, and I'm thrashing right through it, looking for something I might have stashed away. And I think I'm having a seizure. And then I find a balloon hidden in my suitcase. So there I am... with a bag of junk in one hand, and the money for my next fix in the other... and I feel at total, utter peace. And I wake up. One day at a time. One day at a time. One day at a time. One day at a time. Thank you."

Things We Lost In The Fire

Visions about...

'Do I sleep, do I dream, do I wonder and doubt? Is things what they seem, or is visions about?'"

And then there was the rain.......

I am sorry if I have became the Queen of sad posts the last couple of months. But now I think I have had enough of feeling bad about myself and everything around me. My blog was not all about self pity always. When I first started blogging I think I was a much happier person. I had even tried my hand at fiction for a bit only to revert to writing about the happenings in my life. Sigh! Sometimes when I look back and read about all the drunken escapades and shenanigans and the fun I had in the process of trying to get out of the self made disasters it is so hard to believe that yes that too was me. Was that really me who did all of that? Hahah! Isn’t it weird watching yourself evolve as a person and grow up even if its post 25? 
And so there was this glorious rain and these women who don’t let me be sad for too long, who manage oh so beautifully to disperse all the negativity away. I have had so much fun amidst all the commotion and running around all thanks to my girl friends who came down despite the fact that its middle of the year and no holiday season. I love them for doing so cause they have made the last one month of my life so much more bearable and there was so much to look forward to despite the grief. So there was Batty who comes down right at the beginning and hangs around with me when all the formalities were being attended to. Be it running to the courts, the banks and the post offices she was there by our side. I was so sick of attending to the guests but she wouldn’t bat an eyelid as she served them time and time again and helped my Mum out. My family totally fell in love with her hahah! My younger sister is Batty’s biggest fan as they drove around town looking for shady corners to grab a breather in the middle of all the madness. Non-drivers like me weren’t a part of that ritual. Sigh!
We’d go back to her guest house each evening and I made her travel in autos, buses and all modes of transport but the tram heheh! She said Calcutta reminded her so much of Bombay where she had worked and lived a long long time back. I remembered a time when I wanted to make a life for myself in Bombay and look where I landed up everywhere but in Bombay hahah! Her last evening was when we got some time to ourselves and we went to Someplace Else and had a drink bracing ourselves for whatever was to come our way. We were drenched from head to toe, shivering as we felt really proud of our judicious sense to take a bus instead of a cab only to get caught in the first thundering rain of the season. We ran from under the flyover to the beginning of Park Street looking for a shade and finally just started laughing at ourselves for even trying to avoid the raindrops. We entered Park Hotel looking like a couple of bedraggled crows but with not a care in the world about our appearance. Yeah Batty we have chilled in Calcutta too now besides Pune, Bombay, Chennai, Delhi, Bangalore hehehe!
Then of course there was the celebrated Professor or Fino as we call her who dropped by on Saturday and I was jubilant just seeing her beaming face get out of the big yellow taxi hahah! I could spend quality time her cos it was only us now and the stream of relatives have stopped visiting us. Shikha had come down too so we had a girly time complete with Miss Lemony Pie. I think we landed up at “The Street” every day in the afternoon and those two couldn’t stop taking pictures of the city be it the trams or the Victoria Memorial and the black and white taxis. We went book shopping too as Shikha picked up books for each one of the booklovers. You should have seen the smile on Fino’s face who landed up with a double whammy. Then we met a very cute boy and his cartoonish friend with ringlets and goggle eyes who wouldn’t stop asking me questions until I was compelled to ask him to stop interviewing me hehe!
Fino, Miss Lemony Pie and I even went to Tangra (China Town) for lunch. I wanted her to have a taste of the my beloved Calcutta Chinese food. Though I think Fino only liked the thai soup as she kept sniffling and sneezing with some allergy that is so characteristic of her. A day earlier we had gone to the club for lunch with Ma. It was raining and we were sitting by the golf course just watching the rains and it was the prettiest sight. Fino and I did a round of New Market and after a very longtime I walked around lanes and bylanes in mild drizzle, munching the brownies from Nahoum’s ( Jewish Bakery) showing her the old hotels inhabited by seedy foreigners and drug peddlers. The mustiest bookstores were the biggest and the most exciting discovery of the day. Fino was fascinated by the piping hot scented tea being sold in the clay cups and we gorged on momos in a Tibetean eatery called Momo Plaza. We did Flury’s too as we had a chocolate truffle and tiramisu that tasted divine. Fino even saree shopped with Ma for a saree for her Mum. She settled for a black and white cotton and silk creation as she felt that would be the safest bet considering how choosy the mothers can be about sarees.
Ooops I so forgot to mention there was SMM too who came home visiting me and gifted me a lovely glass ganesha for luck and it did get me luck girl.I wish I could have spent more time with you but alas we were surrounded with people. But again atleast we met up.
So quite an eventful last one month I have had and I miss these whacky friends of mine who come down all the way from Bangalore and Delhi just to make sure I am fine.  I think I am quite alright and yeah I got a job too after all that cribbing and crying I finally landed up with one when I least expected it hahah! Here’s to a new beginning yet again.

A day in the life of a nameless, faceless, jobless individual!

She gets up each morning to her Mum urging her to have a cup of tea before she heads out to work. By 8 in the morning she is alone in that empty house that is filled with remnants of her Father’s bygone existence. Has it really been a month that he left them for his happy hunting grounds? She has her bowl of oats and milk and sits online looking for jobs here, there and everywhere. Its almost a routine now. She cannot get herself to read any books cos her mind isn’t at peace. She so hates not working, she so hates being the one whose isn’t moving on unlike the rest. She feels stuck in the most horrible time bubble and keeps waiting for it to burst. But it doesn’t, just doesn’t and by 11 she is in tears again, cursing her luck for having wrecked havoc in her life.
Na she cannot keep up with this so she gets out in the afternoon like she does almost each afternoon when she lands up in Park Street waiting for her girl friend to come meet her so that she could listen to her crib about the lack of eligible bachelors in the city or pre-empting the consequences of possible spinsterhood. For those couple of hours she tries to forget her jobless state and how much she misses how it use to be living before. Now it just seems like a bottomless pit of darkness that enshrouds everything. Happy thoughts have become alien cos sometimes she feels happiness has given up on her. She just wanted live the normal life, do the normal things the normal way. Life wasn’t supposed to be a movie all melodramatic where one looses everything but then it assumed this movie like quality that too a tearjerker. The hardest part was gonna be the comeback though.
She sits in the Oxford Bookstore everyday with a book in her hand listening to old Bengali songs being played in the background and realizes this city revels in nostalgia and times gone by and she had to be here of all the places now. She doesn’t like being home alone in the afternoon hence the trips to Park Street and the endless Metro rides to reach there. She likes travelling by the Metro in the afternoons because its quiet and somehow empty Metro stations always fascinated her, something about being alone in the heart of the earth and the tricks played by the sound of the wind . As a child she’d be enthralled by the colourful graffiti on the walls in the station done by unknown artists who had been commissioned to make the grey and sterile stations look alive.
She is on her way home in the crowded bus when she gets that call. Yeah well maybe there could be that one chance of the bubble bursting. The next day there is a sense of purpose in her. She has to go to the High Court to pick up a book This place hadn’t changed a bit in 6 years. Old Post Office Street is as old and grimy as ever and Emerald House is as green and ugly. Even the lawyers with their black cloaks and blazers look as excited as they use to. Back then when she was interning in one of the law firms even the sight of the sea of black and white irritated her cos she thought she’d never fit in and hell she always wondered where was all that enthusiasm coming from even in that horrible, rainy and moist weather.
Today it was different. She looked around with wonder in her eyes as she saw many running around from the High Court to the District Court or vice versa. Some Court Clerks were getting judgements and documents photo copied while most lawyers were heatedly arguing on some point of law or happily agreeing to each others points of view. Waaahh the Bengalis will never change she thought and smiled to herself. She found the bookshop and asked for Taxmann’s Corporate Laws Manual. She paid the bill and as she took it in her hand she got that thrill that was missing in her life for the last month and a half. She remembered the interviews that were disastrous, the house she left in a hurry, the packing done in 2 hours, coming home and that fateful day at the crematorium when everything changed. She saw her Mum’s smiling face and her sister’s tears when she was saying goodbye. Everything flashed past by and then she remembered how her Dad would call her up when he had a legal query and how she had finally begun to answer some of them before he fell sick. She felt this strange feeling of peace and strength as she opened the book. Oh how she missed it, all of it. She turned around and picked up that form for finally getting enrolled into the Bar. Ah well yeah she was finally one in that sea of black and white.