My Life 365 - Lost Innocence, Lost Memories

This post is super-special to me. I was trawling through the thousands of pictures I have kept aside that will form the core material for my 365 post-lets when I chanced upon this one. It wasn't in the set of travel pictures, but like I told you at the beginning of Life 365, there are going to be few rules and if there are rules, they will be broken some time or the other.

So this post is about a young man, whose serious eyes stare back at me from a sepia-toned photograph. I chanced upon it this time when I was at home in Kochi. Unlike my mother's family stories, that are amply corroborated by photographs lovingly preserved by my grandmother in an ancient album, Dad's childhood is rather like folklore - passed on strictly through word-of-mouth. But because he is a wonderful raconteur, who is himself in love with all the stories he narrates, he makes it compelling. I strongly feel that he joy that lights up his eyes as he talks about his growing years physically transforms him and gives me a glimpse of what a handful he must have been as a young boy. And through his words, I peek into his childhood. My grandfather, I believe was a stern man, his one photo that I have seen and that now hangs framed in my house matches Dad's description to a T. My grandmother has always looked like about a hundred years old (or maybe that is because I had an overactive imagination as a child). However no amount of the same imagination helps me conjure how she must have looked in her twenties. I guess Dad's family didn't believe in too many pictures or I don't know if any of his older siblings have any photos from those years that they don't believe in going over with us, the next generation.

Dad's childhood and adolescence were always hazy black and white reels of imagination that often moved through my head to the creaking accompaniment of a turning projector. I have visualised from his vivid descriptions the clothes that he wore, the little green stud he had in his ears as a child (he still has pierced ear lobes) and the really long shorts that were probably hand-me-downs from his brothers. To date, I don't know how he looked as a baby or a young boy of under ten. Dad's bonafide images that I carry in my memory begin on one fine day when he was a dashingly handsome man of thirty. The day he married Amma. I don't recollect the number of times I have pored over their wedding pictures and his handsome profile and Amma's demure presence by his side. But by then, he had the look of a worldly, wise man who knew how he was going to conquer the world. I have always been curious about the younger Dad...and that's just what I found, tucked away into a hidden corner of his wallet.

Now, I must confess, I love looking through his wallet to routinely check if he still carries pictures of my mom, me and my sister in it. While mom's picture is rarely moved, mine sometimes goes missing! This time, while I was checking all the hidden nooks of his purse was when I stumbled on the photo. And a freakingly familiar yet unfamiliar face looked back at me ( both sides of my family swear I am a carbon-copy of my father, perhaps that could account for the familiarity in parts too!).. I believe that is his picture taken in Standard Ten. I don't know where it has suddenly appeared from or how he laid his hands on it. Also, no luck with more of his baby pictures, but seeing Dad for the first time as an adolescent made me a bit sad, nostalgic sad.

There are pictures of my sister and I, at just about every stage of our lives. Some have been buried away never to be seen by anyone because we don't want to believe we went through awkward childhoods! Amma too has a fair number of pictures for me to piece together the rest. However, there are none of Dad. None to help me piece together more of his childhood. None of my grandfather in his lighter, less stern moments or my grandmother in her youth. They are all figments of my imagination, not people of flesh and blood, who lived and loved with the same intensity that I do.

So among the thousands and thousands of photographs that I have, stored manually, digitally and otherwise, this photo that I made a copy of with my phone camera is very dear to me. And by sealing it here with a blog-post, I am going to ensure that Dad's childhood also has a written record - it is not just word of mouth or coloured in my imagination alone.

My Life 365 - Stinky, Smelly, NO DURIAN NO

This post might not be pretty but then let's grin and bear through it and maybe we might have great notes to exchange at the end of it.

So I begin with a question - What is an odour that stays with you long after you can smell it no more? The smell of sweat in a packed train? Of damp clothes in monsoons that just refuse to get off dried clothes too? The unbearably nauseating smell of stinky sock after a day spent within a tight shoe? Ok, no more no more..but imagine, if I tell you I have smelt a fruit that's all this and more?? A fruit that looks from the distance like our very own humble jackfruit ( come to think of it, the smell of ripe jackfruit too is a strong smell in my dictionary). But go closer and it turns out to be the vilest smelling fruit on the face of the earth.

The Durian is largely found in South East Asia - the Singaporeans, Malaysians and their neighbours consider it yummy. My sister-in-law, a Singaporean girl has atleast ten photographs on her facebook profile that look like an Ode to the Durian. Each time she longs for home or goes visiting, her mom would have lovingly set aside store-bought cling-film wrapped boxes of the fruit.

 The first time I smelt it was in Singapore and I kid you not, I was sure someone standing next to me in the fruit bazaar had gone unwashed for about a month after being hit by rotten eggs. The lady at the market was perhaps used to dealing with foreigners and their absolute confusion at the smell surrounding her shop, knowing I was trying to sniff my way out of the dirty smell, she gave me a toothy smile, made a signal of clipping her nose and offered a piece of Durian to me. Unfortunately, there is little evidence of my reaction to the offering.

But if I may explain - I turned a pale shade of yellow, with my eyeballs rolled well into my lids, gasped for breath a few times and ran out of the stall and into fresh air. It took me another five seconds to realise that I had smelt the most offensive fruit that perhaps exists across the world. It took me another five seconds of sane thinking to associate the smell I'd just encountered to the smell of rotten eggs or H2S that often emanated from our chemistry lab in school.

 I am yet to decipher how the South East Asians can make themselves immune to the smell and chow down on the fruit like it is going to run out before they can have their fill. I'm told (again reliably by the sister-in-law )that it is a tastier version of the jackfruit. For someone who can only stand the jackfruit when fried as chips in coconut oil, it is hardly much of a reccomendation!

But idle curiosity the other day borne out of some free time made me google - Why does Durian Smell So Bad? I hadn't typed farther than the Durian when google promptly threw up the suggestion - 'smell so bad?' Bingo! Indeed, that was my question. And the answers made me double up with laughter - one was that 'Because it is the King of the Fruits! Don't girls like bad boys? Well....almost the same theory lol'. The answer chosen as the best however was, The smell is to hinder non-enthusiasts, so the REAL durian-heads have more to eat! The Durian is a very loyalist fruit!!'

Loyalist or no, I must admit I often smirk and shudder when I see the NO DURIAN ALLOWED sign across a number of places in Singapore and Malaysia. That includes public transportation, hotels and even cabs!! :) Do you have a Durian experience to share too??

My Life 365 - The Hunt for Chocolate Nirvana

Now when you are born a 'healthy' girl, chocolate cannot be your best mate or they say? But what do you do if after years of staying away from anything in crinkly, shiny wrappers, you discover goeey brown pools of instant nirvana that are not in packets that can be looked away from but are daintily set to seduce you. This post is for the chocoholics.

I am yet to sign up for the Chocoholics Anonymous, I can still look away if I try hard, but there are days when I can't. The mind is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Every city that I visit, I look for the chocolate confectionery that would stay imprinted in my heart as the sweetest memory of the city - pun was well poorly placed but well-intended!

After thinking long and hard, I came up with two of my all-time favourites - the chocolate and mandarin pomme frites of Amsterdam and profiteroles with cake and otherwise in Turkey. Now this isn't to say that the chocolate crepes with bananas that are available in every lane of Paris does not cut it or that Raymond Blanc's divine creations are not to die for, but remember this is My Life 365 and it is a post-let.

If you ever find yourself in Amsterdam, Prinsengracht is the place to head to. By the canal, you will not miss the Pancake Bakery. Head there for breakfast and devour the chocolate and mandarin pomme frites - they are mini pancakes, dunked in an obscene amount of heavenly Belgian chocolate sauce with succulent mandarins dotting the chocolatey puddly landscape of the deep dish placed before you. Remember to walk or cycle for the rest of the day - if the calories don't kill you, the guilt will. But I guarantee you will die a happy death! Now I kept hunting for my keepsake picture of that debauchery, but I'm hitting a blank, so here's how the Pancake Bakery in Amsterdam looks like. Just in case, you decide to head there!

And quickly to the second favourite - Turkish Profiteroles  at the Cigdem Bakery! They know their business, they have been doing just this since 1961 and they sure know how to whip a mean one that leaves you with little qualms about adding insult to the injury of a not-so-perfect-shape that doubles as your body. The profiteroles that lie in a chocolatey grave with a pista wreath over it leaves you with no qualms as you mutilate it and lick that last bit of chocolate left in the plastic bowl it is served in. And if you are braver, then the profiterole served on a bed of chocolate cake are a must try. Now look at this beauty and tell me if there wasn't a rush of pure lust!

Hmmm...and before I sign off, I can't resist reproducing these quotes that make me chuckle whenever I see them

"Never mind about 1066 William the Conqueror, 1087 William the Second. Such things are not going to affect one's life..but 1932 the Mars Bar, 1936 Maltesers and 1937 the Kit Kat - these dates are milestones in history and should be seared in the memory of every child in the country" - Roald Dahl came up with that heart-felt declaration!!


"Forget love...I'd rather fall in chocolate" ~ some clever soul who didn't want their name mentioned alongside said this, perhaps they did fall in love and chocolate - now that's a double bonanza!! :) 


Signing off in a chocoholic haze after devouring a chocolate baklava ( those are great too, but not as great as the two finalists who got honorary mentions on Life 365)

My Life 365 - The Whirling Dervishes of Istanbul

It is half past two in the morning- thirty seven minutes past two to be precise. I can't sleep and I can't dub it as jet lag. Travelling back from a holiday in a country that is only two and a half hours behind India cannot give you a jet lag. I sense it is a sort of restlessness, a sense of needed to do something that I haven't before. As with many things in life, I'd rather start today than postpone it till tomorrow and there is no better time like now. I'm definitely not getting much sleep for sure. 


So here is what I now propose to do - My Life 365 - As of the first day of May, I aim to start a chronicle. Most days, the posts might be better dubbed as post-lets, tiny vignettes. I shall endeavour to post a photograph along with the post as well. 


Some thoughts will be borrowed, others blue, some old and others new - and no, I'm not on a wedding chronicle mode either... I guess it will shape itself as I proceed. This is a series I aim to complete in 365 days - no more, no less. If there are days when I have a longer story to tell you, I shall continue with my other posts as well. Compulsions are compulsions and this blog is my whipping horse. Some days to soar with the wind wild in my hair, on others to canter. 


Now wouldn't it be really lazy if my first post of My Life 365 was just a statement of intent? So here goes - 


The Whirling Dervishes of Istanbul 

My mind still whirls as I think of that chilly night in Istanbul - when I sat in semi-darkness in a large room along with a few other 'patrons', patiently waiting for the men to arrive. They did shortly after, in their Mevlevi fez caps and sombre black robes, arms crossed as if hiding a secret within. The anticipation by the time they arrived was at a fever pitch, for by then the musicians had struck a rather melancholic note, almost plaintive. You wonder at how much depth of feeling three rather unfamiliar instruments can invoke within you when accompanied by sonorous chants of Sufi poetry in Persian that you may not even comprehend.

I caught the dance of the Dervishes or the Sama ceremony at a hotel in Istanbul. The purists might call it an assault, just the way we Indians often think that Bharatanatyam or Kathak performed at a club as a deliberate degradation of  the respect that the classical dance forms deserve. However, for me, the whirling dervishes were a revelation - an expression of abandonment as the soul and spirit merge with the elevated sense of being - call it God or the Divine Power.

For those, who haven't heard of the Whirling Dervishes- here is some trivia- facts I have gathered and therefore I shall try to be as factually correct as I can. The Mevlevi order is a Sufi sect that originated in Konya in Turkey. Lovers of Sufism flock there to date, to understand the essence and soul of Islam as preached by the Sufis (though the conservative reading of Islam is hardly tolerant of the Sufi inclination towards dance and music), in particular the 13th century poet Rumi. Those that sink into the sea of devotion that Sufism preaches emerge from it as dervishes - at least that's how I imagine it. If you love to know more about these times and ages, I recommend Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red. Pamuk's protagonists are illustrators not dervishes. However, his word sketches of the Istanbul of the bygone era are so evocative that you emerge at the other side wanting to meet his characters - the illustrators and the mystics, the Sufis and their dervishes. I went to watch the dervishes seeking a momentary glimpse into their union with the force that not only enriches them spiritually but also dissolves them into tame submission.

Through the whirling dervishes, I peeked into the rich past of Islamic history that Constantinople, the Istanbul of yore lived out as present. The white skirts of the Dervishes swept me away too on a psychedelic journey. At the end of the performance, when they bowed their heads with their arms crossed in submission, I realised that I was just a humble speck in the massive tapestry of human civilisation - its culture and chronicles.

Faceless Friends, Fleeting Familiarity

What do I call this post? A thought, a musing or the beginning of a debate? You my friends have to decide what this has to be..I shall call it a sneak peek into what my life currently is - a commentary of what I feel and react to...and perhaps, because I am the your regular girl-next-door, this could be the story of many like me.

My world is the same one that you inhabit, but my human interactions ( and soon you will realise why I use such a technical term) have reduced to a point where it sometimes concerns me... On most days, the only thing that constantly talks to me is the television - left ON most of the time for the prime purpose of talking to me ( not entertaining me, mind you, I rarely even glance at whether news or a show is playing). While I was a busy broadcast journalist, talking televisions were a work hazard or rather a necessity. Now that I work from home, mostly in my pajamas, they are a force of habit and a comforting, familiar presence.

The only face-to-face human contact I have are with my cook, who arrives at sharp 8.15AM in the morning for forty minutes. If I have had a late night working, then all I do is open the door, mumble what she could possibly cook for me and return to my snug bed - she knows her routine pat and does not disturb my sleep but leaves quietly afterwards, shutting the door behind her. My maid comes around 10.30AM, by then I'm up and about and usually already settled on my beanbag with my laptop, wading through the mails that have arrived in the eight hours since I last checked mail! And then there's the poor, long-suffering sister - as if I wasn't enough to weigh her down, her work takes her out of the house by 9 in the morning and only lets her drag her bedraggled self back home late at night, by which time all she wants is to crash. So much for human interactions!

So then does that make me deprived? Not really, most part of my day is lived on the internet. My friends call me garrulous, I can squeeze in ten words in under five seconds. And my vocal chords aren't overworked - my fingers are and my keyboard shows distinct wear and tear. I cry, laugh, pout, leap with joy and love using just a few punctuation symbols - did you know colons, semi-colons and random alphabets could be mirrors to your mood?? :-) ;-) :-)


My emotions and longings, my relationships- love, lust, heart-to-hearts, counselling are all laid-bare over skype, g-chat and what would I do without Facebook?? Funnily for a journalist, the mobile phone is really not my preferred mode for communication. I'd any day choose a skype chat through the laptop over talking for hours on the phone or for that matter living life via SMS. 

My close friends are spread across the country and the world, there are just a few who are in the same city as me, the others are in Delhi, UK and the US - I share more of a virtual relationship with all - thanks to clashing work hours and the physical distance and more importantly, the few hours that now constitute off-hours (for them and for me)!! A number of people who were acquaintances and smile-when-you-run-into-them kind of friends while at school, college or work now know more about me and are in tune with the thoughts running through my head, thanks to my virtual personality. Funnily, the hitch is when they think they know me and are trigger-happy to make value-judgements on how I live my life or relate to my world around me. And that's when the hackles rise, tempers fray and the need to dish out liberal doses of sarcasm tinged with censure takes over. Imagine the irony of life, when your effort at sarcasm rebounds back at you with LoLs( Laugh Out Loud for the lazy typers) and ROFLMAO (Roll On the Floor Laugh My Ass Off!!)  

These days, I have a new love - online games - no gunfights or treasure hunts mind you! But Scrabble and Pictionary and Word Games. Now this is the confession bit, I don't play games on Facebook like a number of my friends. That to me, is too public because Facebook believes in notifying all and sundry what I'm upto. Now I could be jobless and looking for a diversion, but my 'friends', close and otherwise don't need to know that, do they?? So I seek out like-minded strangers, who are willing to play a surreptitious game of Scrabble online with me, on the phone or on the Facebook through a different id..So these days, as soon as I wake up,  I look for Jenny's ping or Slobiiii to come online to play their turn. I don't even know whether they are men or women. It does not matter. These two draw very well, so its easier for me to play Draw Free with them. I don't like Maddox much - very rude when I don't understand the drawings and a spoilsport, who often writes out the word when he/she can't think enough to draw it. But then, in the next round, along with the picture clues, there's often a Sorry that is posted...that is a connect - with a nameless faceless person on the other end of a computer or iPhone. There are a couple of cheats who play Word Games with me too...Aaah..let's not get into that contentious topic!!

That virtual connect makes up for the lack of cousins and aunts and uncles and colleagues and neighbours having a regular stake in my life. These faceless virtual friends are convenient too - antiseptic. If they don't know me, they can't interfere in my life can they?? My interactions are increasingly getting anonymous, however, my private life has never been more in the public eye - thanks to a life lived largely on the internet.

                                                           
Where do I head from here? Where do you head from here??