Tag: reflections

The fellow..

On By Indu PatikkalIn Blessing, Childhood memories, growing up, Happiness, life, mother, parenting, Random thoughts, realizations, schoolLeave a comment

I have written about various people in my life but I don’t think I have ever written about my sibling, my brother younger to me by five years but looks and thinks otherwise. The story of his birth is one of my favorites. When I joined Nursery at Bishop Cotton’s I am supposed to have come home and complained to my parents that every one has a brother or sister except me. And so the stork carried this light skinned baby boy to our house who was the apple of everyone’s eye.

Fast forward few years and like almost every first born I felt my parents were partial to him. The feeling of why I don’t have a brother changed to why do I have a brother, pretty quickly. So amidst favoritism we grew up fighting for the remote, grabbing things, hitting each other, annoying each other, the usual sibling stories. Like most families it was I who took the blame. He was the younger one and I being the older one was supposed to adjust. Our mother had no two rules about who got the beating irrespective of who started the quarrel. She gave it to us equally, like she was watching a tennis match, one here, one there, repeat, with a red plastic spatula.

He didn’t want to compete with anyone in his class at academics, all he wanted was to beat my grades, which he did most times. He developed a passion for basketball just to grow taller than the rest of us at home, we are a short family otherwise.

Although we fought quite a bit my feelings for him took a complete u-turn when my son was born (my older son looks like him by the way). He felt more like a son than my brother. It’s a strange feeling and I mix up their names even. One of my personal achievements that I feel fortunate about is that I was able to support him at various stages to better opportunities. And to me that checks off a major portion of my responsibility of the relationship. At the end of the day your sibling is your pillar of support whose foundation runs deep. There could be a few cracks but those heal magically, your parents already put in pixie dust in the cement.

He is going to rofl reading this, shower me with choicest words, making mincemeat of my emotions, like he always does, I know this. My father too is probably going to read this say brother-sister too much love, wonder when you’ll start fighting.. But the bottom line is that I love him and it’s an amazing blessing from the angels above that we now live a mile apart. The last time we lived under one roof was twenty years ago. Blessed, blessed, blessed!!

Journeys

On By Indu PatikkalIn Random thoughtsLeave a comment

I wanted to travel around the world, always. My commitments to my parents, siblings, family and children held me back from taking off to unknown lands and new people. Today I turn 48 and I am making my first solo trip to distant places. As I board the big plane to Delhi, I think of my yearning to see the Taj Mahal. It was something I wanted to see with the love of my life. Since that plan never materialized, I am starting my journey with the one place I want to see before I die.

It was Diana who gave me the idea of finding a co-traveller on the internet so I didn’t have to make this journey alone. I set up a profile on the findatraveller.com website and waited for a match. This was similar to the matrimony sites but found travelers, not leashes. That is how I found Jay. It was his first time as well visiting the Taj Mahal. He was traveling from Paris to Delhi and the deal was to meet him at Delhi airport. Travel plans were made so we would arrive in Delhi a few hours apart.

I was really looking forward to this trip, a journey through the streets of Delhi followed by a tour of the palaces at Rajasthan. A ten day ordeal. I had packed my cotton clothes to beat the heat and had adviced Jay to do the same. I would wear an orange salwar and Jay said he would meet me at the Air India Lounge. I got there first and sat down browsing my phone waiting for Jay to arrive.

A coupe of hours passed before a pair of shoes planted themselves in front of me. I look up and “Anu?”, he asks.

I stand up as he takes two steps back. I extend my hand which he grabs with a strong hold.

“Yes.. Jay?”, I quip.

“Shall we go?”

“Yeah, let’s go”.

Close the door…

On By Indu PatikkalIn Random thoughtsLeave a comment

At the end of the year

The doors are closing in

There is that little gap

Which will close soon

I need to

Pick my arms and legs

Lift my head

Look forward

And run

Before it closes

Yes

The finger refuses to move

What is this weight

Gluing me to the ground

I want to get up

I want to run

It’s in the mind

It’s all in the mind

Maybe there is no door

Maybe nothing is closing in

It’s probably my mind

Playing games

Stop

Stop now

Set me free

From your vicious circle of thoughts

Set me free from these bonds

From words

Let there be silence

Just silence

Quiet now

There are no arms embracing me

There never will be

Let me close the door

Maybe then

Just for a little while there will be

Solitude…!

A beginning..

On By Indu PatikkalIn Fiction, Incomplete, Katha - my short stories, love, Random thoughtsLeave a comment

It started with a message on Facebook. He had said ‘Hey’. She didn’t see the message until a couple of hours later. She responded with a ‘hey, whats up?’. With the time difference between the two countries, it was unlikely that he would see her message until the next day. She knew it, yet she checked her messages a couple of times during the day. Why would he message me, she thought. She had been introduced to him a few years ago while she was at Amazon India. There were no notable conversations after that. He smiled at her in hallways and she smiled back while she was there. He was very handsome. She remembered thinking what it would be like to spend an evening with him. Why would he message her after all these years? She checked his Facebook profile and like old wine, age had done wonders to him.

She checked her messages again and saw that he was active 15 minutes ago. But he hadn’t read her message. Why wouldn’t he? Maybe he didn’t open her chat? How did this Facebook Messenger work anyways? It is during these ‘urgent’ moments that you just cannot figure out how simple things work. These dumb apps, they probably change the rules with every update, she mumbled to herself. Why was she perturbed? Why did a message from him rev up her hopes? What hopes? It was just a message. Maybe all he wanted to say was ‘hello’.

She was in a frame of mind where she was open to a relationship. She was seeking one, a fling maybe? Not a fling, what she wanted was somebody to tell her that she was a good person. Someone to appreciate her. Someone to love her, even if it were for a short period of time. It was nothing more for her. She was in and out of relationships, they came and went at no particular interval. This is how she liked to live life, on her own terms, in her own space. She never dated anyone from work, it was almost always a friend’s friend. While it was fun, it lasted. Once the relationship.. acquaintance maybe a better word, got serious, she backed off. She did not want someone to tie her down, she wanted to fly, fly to distant lands, freeze the memories in her camera, and write.

Her tryst with marriage and commitment and relationship had died when she divorced her ex-husband a year after her marriage. It was an arranged marriage. Her ex-husband imagined her to be an obedient, dependent person whom he could keep a leash on. He had no idea what her spirit was like. She didn’t have a choice, her independent self was trapped inside during her growing years. She just dreamt of prince charming and thought she lived in a rosy world with happily ever afters. She grew up during the year of marriage, and slapped herself awake. Once awake, she ran as far as she could from him, from her parents and from everyone she knew, till she landed in the land of freedom.

That is where Anu flapped her wings and soared.

It was not until another two days that Jay sent another message.

 

 

At the movies..

On By Indu PatikkalIn growing up, Random thoughtsLeave a comment

I am a movie buff.. I love everything about the movies, specifically Indian movies. I am that person who will watch a movie in any language reading subtitles in English. Sometimes I watch the movie twice, like a Bahubali, once to read the subtitles and the second time to just watch the magic on screen. I have always watched movies. During childhood it was two movies a weekend via a rented video cassette tape from the video library nearby. Pick them up on Friday and return on Saturday or pick them up on Saturday and return on Monday. My brother got to pick a Mithun Chakraborthy movie while I got to pick a Jayaprada one. As hilarious as it seems now, yes there was a wave of these actors once upon a time. My parents got to pick a Malayalam movie once in a blue moon.

I grew up watching the sanskari-type (Indian culture extravaganza) or the bad guy-good guy type dishum-dishum movies. My brother had an array of toy guns imitating the heroes of these movies, shooting down the villian. Once in college, my mother and I took our craziness to the theatres, buying tickets in black, sitting in the first row, second show, you get the grind. She was my movie-pal.

As I grew out of my last teens, like most other girls my age, I fell into the traps of the lovey-dovey type, dreamy eyes boys, frock clad girls “variety” love stories. An ancient version of today’s chick flick! Meaningful cinema happened somewhere in between where classics like Bharatham, Mr and Mrs Iyer etc crept in. This was when I started watching a lot of Mohanlal movies.

Langauge has never been a barrier to enjoy a story. And well, stories are my thing 🙂. Alaipayuthey steered the way into Tamil, Aparna Sen into Bengali, Kannada was what we spoke at home and went with neighbors to theatres, Malayalam was mother tongue so parents influence, Telugu was from Sagara Sangamam. Every Sunday Doordarshan played a national award winning movie around 1 pm after the news for the hearing impaired. This round lady with heavy lipstick sat in the corner of the TV screen reading the news in sign language. I remember staring at her trying to make sense of sign language. So coming back to movies, Oriya, Marathi, Punjabi, Bengali, Gujarati blah blah movies aired during this time. All of them were award winning and slow, which gave me ample time to read the subtitles. I guess that’s where I picked up the subtitles-reading habit.

I shouldn’t miss to mention the umpteen Suraj Barjatiya and Karan Johar type films which I watched over and over again for absolutely no rhyme or reason. A colossal waste of time but pure no brainers, where a dog or a cat or a mouse would win over common sense!!

My young woman years delved into the deeper off-the-shelf romance adventures like Ijaazat, Sindhubairavi etc. Feeling the film became a big thing where I would wake up the next day with a hangover from the film. The characters stayed with me for a few days and that became the yardstick of a good movie. If the characters stayed with me, I had had a wonderful movie experience. There are a few films like Pursuit of Happiness, Life is Beautiful, Fashion, Arjun Reddy, Mahanati, Iti Mrinalini, Mr and Mrs Iyer, Vikram Vedha to name a few; which elevate you to a different level.

Then there is ’96!

The feel the movie created is like it went right into your body and gave your heart a warm squeeze! I don’t think there is a more beautiful and rustic narration of destiny in a movie. It simply says that if two people are not destined to be together, it just will not happen. Period. The subtleties, nuances, every touch has a meaning, every look says more than the words uttered. The music carries you in the sway, like drenching you in a drizzle, like the wine slowly soaking your gut.. like they say in Tamil.. sema feel!!

To life like stories and narrations, cheers always!!

Either left or right…

On By Indu PatikkalIn current affairs, opinion, politics, Random thoughtsLeave a comment

I was driving to work this morning and as I got onto Lamar Blvd, here in Austin, I hit a red light. There were quite a few people on either side of the road waiting to cross the road. As they were crossing, I noticed most of them were in athletic wear, shoes probably taking a walk or jogging. One had airpods, one had a good grade water bottle, Nike shoes, probably branded clothes… My first thought was, I am driving to work and these people are taking a stroll??!! What do they do for a living? Probably retired or telecommute-blessed people… maybe? My morning had been the regular pack three lunch boxes, breakfast, get ready, hit the road, freeway traffic, 45 minutes to get to work… the same old, you know the drill…

The light turns green, my reverie breaks and I drive on. I am on the left turn only lane at the next light waiting for the cars in front of me to drive ahead. There is a long median along the length of the left lane. As I drive into the left lane, there is a man in old dirty clothes, torn here and there, unkept beard growing from everywhere. He has a handwritten sign clamped to this chest which reads ‘need money for food’. He is walking up and down the median, looking at every car passing by. When the light turns red, maybe there will be one or two cars, who will pause their music, roll down the window and pass a one dollar bill. As I am about to turn into Barton Springs Rd, there is another elderly man starting his walk along the median in the hope that he can make one meal today.

This is the world we live in, extreme to its core. Extremism is the order of the day, be it politics, religion, livelihood, opinions. People vote a party into power and the losing party does everything it can to make the government dysfunctional. There is no need for a world war three to ensue, because we are already living in it. Every country has an ongoing war between the ruling political party and opposition. When will you do the country any good? Religion is maligned with extremists and their opinions. A place of worship has become devil’s kitchen – be it the churches where children are abused or the Hindu temples where judiciary and government are poking their nose. Leave the places of worship to the believers. Don’t turn it into a battleground. Media fills us day in and day out with discussions of left and right parties. Media is such a powerful tool, but to them, throw everything at the viewers face, and let the viewer take sides, has become the TRP mantra. They are the catalysts in this war. In this war of blowing up “my extremist opinions”, we’ve killed everything in the process, balance of life – richer are becoming richer, poorer and middle class are well, hanging from somewhere, the forests – literally destroying them to make more money and make the divide even stronger, animals and their habitat because humans are so greedy, they want everything, water – clean drinking water is one of the greatest blessings of our times, air – fart pollution into it as much as you can. When will people start sitting across the table and actually talk to make this a better place? Maybe never! Everyone just wants to make their booty bigger, take sides, switch sides and what not…

I still go back and blame the technology and internet boom, which brought information to our palms but screwed up our minds. I don’t have an opinion is not acceptable anymore, you have to take sides. Everything is becoming more and more binary, either 1 or 0! Well that’s what this entire gamut of technology splurge is based on, the presence of absence of pulses, leaving us humans more inhumane, day by day.

Michael Jackson’s ‘Heal the World’ released in 1991, we are twenty seven years after the fact, governments have changed, people have come and gone, we are simply getting stuck stronger to our extremist thoughts… Now probably there is no point even trying to…