Sister's two are we....alike as blossoms on a tree. - Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

My sis celebrated her bday on a different continent and I am yet to complete making her bday gift. A thought that was penned down as she touched a landmark.

~~~
As kids, the 20s were mature, serious and lifetimes away.
Never imagined ourselves beyond 19. Bliss!!

Today, I can hardly accept being 23 and 25; feels like somebody else.
We never renewed our synapses after 12.

I still want to play hide-seek but this time beat you.
Feel the wind on our hair and turn and share a laugh with you.

Blow bubbles and play an imagined game.
Appreciate a classic and yet howl over cartoons.

Its time for big things, big dreams but I want no big responsibilities.
Glory in being a black sheep and never let monotony take over.

I dont want to be a slave to conventions but master of my destiny.
I want to do one big thing but dont know what.

At 25, there is so much to do and still so little time.
And when you are 25, I feel it too.

It is time for contemplation and also celebration.
Also to make choices...

To either be led into the mainstream or to hold high against the tide.
And when you do what you have to do, I will simply follow you.

-romie ;)

Writer's itch assaults blogosphere.

Alter Ego: So what do you think you have been doing??
Romila: (innocently) Why, just a few blogs.

AE: So why spam inboxes???
R: Just passing around the word.....cousins, uncles, close friends, accquaintaces; who might want to hear from me.

AE: Might......and getting nonsense out of your system into an inbox isnt an option.
R: (meekly) thought would spread the word.

AE: About what..... rocket science??
R: (helplessly wordless)

---

R: But I got some feedback, you know.....
AE: Remember, feedback is not a feature of mass communication. If you want it, here is some: Gmail helps people block pesky mailers.
R: (Gulp!)

AE: Ranting on blogosphere is bad enough.
R: (Hiccup!)

AE: Use winks of spare time at office 'READING'.
R: But....but, I want to write.

AE: To bore people and advertise idiocacy? If you have a compulsive disorder, stick to blogosphere, dont spread it all over cyberspace.
R: (meekly)...okay.

AE: In the impossible case that someone wants to hear from you, there is always the link. Unlikely scene anyways.
R: If you say so.

AE: You sound quick today.
R: Thanks.

-----
Thats all there is folks, thanks for having patiently been with me as I faced the writer's itch. And for all those polite replies. Hereafter its only blogosphere that will have to bear me. Thanks a ton.
goodbye!
romie ;)
http://ourblagh.blogspot.com/

20-20

Fans hanging precariously on medians, gates and window-sills,
Acrobatics outside television showrooms.

Drivers slowed buses to a crawl to read the score
Crackers made feverish sales.

Mysterious illness afflicted office goers who stayed at home,
Brothers' phones disappeared into oblivion

One pal walked into the loo and lo....Sreesanth magicked the wicket.
Lock the lucky fella in the wash room! A divine spot to pray for deliverance.

Women gave up soaps and served curd rice.
the boys needed all the prayers.

Dead silence after the last over,
we were still catching our breath.

And then a wave broke,
My thiruvanmiyur pal mistook it for a tsunami!

Colour, cracker, cheer and cricket bats celebrated.
Team India won 20-20!

;) ;)

Jaiprami never sleeps.....

and conversely it also sleeps through the day!! My home of paradoxes! Early mornings or late nights, someone is awake and someone asleep as fans and television sets sweat it 24x7.

At 4 my grandpa is up - prayers, meditation and silent brooding. Sis has just finished catching up back episodes on pogo and toon disney.

In the next few hours, my aunt and grandma rise in a series and the wheels of the day are set in motion. Thathaya goes back for a small snooze.

Reluctantly little bro joins the early morning vigil....countless entrance tests and horrifying boards lie ahead. By 9, the storm has abated, we are on our way out and peace slowly drifts in. Dreams and deadlines invade madhu's sleep.


She leaves by afternoon and in sometime my grandmum naps after temple, maids, cooking and chores. Our maid flits around entranced, independent and dreamy.... snoozes later in the evening.

Rishi is back...cartoons and games before being shooed away for some beauty sleep. Lest he droop over his homework. Aunt arrives and in sometime, she is a zombie. Winks of sleep inbetween chores, policing and communications.

I dont know how she manages to stay half asleep, half awake always.....opening the door like a haggard olive oyl for sis (and me sometimes) at 2; waking up bro with popeye's strength at 5.

Reminds me of the legendary Masai tribe of Africa, who are forever in a state of readiness for war. Even when woken at the dead of the night, in a fraction, they are raring for battle.

The rhythmic cycle of academics and PSUs put against worlds of corporate hunger and media insomnia. India's two worlds in my own microcosm.

I visit the different time zones depending on french classes, physiotherapy, work and late shifts. Omniscient and unapologetic sleep lover.

I only wonder what our visitors and neighbours must think of us.....
lights and music never off.
someone asleep all day long.

Jaiprami never sleeps and also always sleeps.
romie ;)

One story many tales

Fiction oflate seems too slow, removed-from-the-world and surreal.
But fiction - pop, classic, comedy, victorian, indian writing in english and all their sub genres - was once my staple diet, on trains, in classrooms, at the dining table, in the mornings even on board exam days and social gatherings.

Those flights of fantasy, awe and wonder that nothing has yet replaced.

In small compensation I picked up Kim Edwards 'Fire King....' from the office library on a colleague's reference. A collection of short stories, so that I can make atleast one a week.

Those little tales of love, hope and despair got me thinking on so many things that we just blur past in hurried lives. Melancholy and old age.

Sometimes scary, sometimes natural.
Sometimes makes me wonder what my grandparents must be going through.
So many stories to each life so rich.....but no ear to listen.

As I googled, I came across this:
crisp, painful, funny, amusing, but thoughtful.

Great truths about growing old

1. Growing old is mandatory. Growing up is optional.

2. Forget the health food. You need all the preservatives you can get.

3. When you fall down, you wonder what else you can do while you are down there.

4. You're getting old when you know all the answers but nodody bothers to ask you the questions.

5. Time may be a great healer, but it's a lousy beautician.

6. Wisdom comes with age, sometimes age comes alone.

7. You're getting old when you get the same sensation from a rocking chair that you once got from a roller coaster.

Someone once wrote every passing year is just a statistic! Its easy to forget them!
Thats nice to recall now!!
romie ;)

Foodie Fundas

My office is a gastronomic delight as I have already mentioned, but was it traditionally so??
Looks like it.

Yesterday one old associate made a visit....and lo, he arrived arms laden with chocolate bars for everyone!! I instantly took a liking to him.

A few days back another old-timer made an entry armed with 'kalkandu' and yummy prashad! They say he comes often....slurp!

munching a crunchy chocolate,
romie ;)

Smiling all the way!!

The smiley turns 25!

I cant believe that a communication revolution could be so young.
But there it is....dots and curves that speak across a world of languages and cultures.

Linguist David Crystal may bemoan that four languages are dying across the world each day!
But man, look up, there are new ones out here.

Cheers for the 'kolokbok' figure that speaks a myriad emotions!
romie ;)

P.S: Mekie, remember that small piece on emoticons for the school magazine, light years ago!

Mekie says:

The earliest known examples of Q are attributed to Harvey Ball, who devised them in 1963 for a Massachusetts-based insurance firm State Mutual Life Assurance. Ball never made any profit for Q, beyond his initial $45 fee.

Q was popularized in the early 1970s by a pair of brothers, Murray and Bernard Spain, who seized upon it in a campaign to sell novelty items and thus helped Q cement its place in popular culture.

However, Q's present and most commonly used avatar was created by Scott Fahlman, a research professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Department of Computer Science, in a message posted to the CMU computer science general board on 19 September 1982 (11:44) -
exactly 25 years ago.
Identify Q. :-)

;) - I got that and yes our article came in the 15th year of the smiley and it is 13 years since we first met!! Cheers!!!

the many romilas of romila thapar

Romila (0f rustic notes fame) says that she was named after Romila Thapar as well!!
Her father too was inspired by thapar's intellect and perspective. Given the great historian's renown, it looks like there are more of our breed.

I am yet to meet Romila Thapar though having missed an opportunity when she was in Madras for a lecture last year. But I hope to meet her soon.

Her interview on BBC was riveting: she shattered myths on Indian history and said how ideology is defined and defended for gain. One line that sums it all, "everyone has a view of the past".

I admire her academic persona, her easy dismissal of hindutva critcism and her refusal of the Padma award as she accepts academic honours only.

It is with shame that I accept not reading more of her, save a book on Indian Tales for children, read in 5th standard and Early Indian History (Penguin) in fits and starts.

But I have heard some of her lectures online like this Katz memorial lecture: http://depts.washington.edu/uwch/katz/20042005/romila_thapar.html

Being named after romila thapar always reminds me of my parent's and aunt's great dreams and also that it is possible to assert truth and not give in to power.

I hope to get to know more of the woman who inspired many dads to dream that their daughters will grow up to be like her.

To Romila Thapar and other romilas named after her.
romila ;)

The blog bug and the namesake

Seems like I have already run out of topics.....blogging about blogging!!
Even with a few paltry blogs forwarded amok, I am now announcing myself a blogger.

There was this one blog 'reckless ink' now 'rustic notes'.
I share my name with the author and I have been reading it since college days.

On my recommendation, my colleague and a great mum-blogger read it as well.
Mum blogs are kinda nice, reminding me of my childhood with sis, bro and cousins.

I left a note on rustic notes but was still confused when I received a reply, guess I need some time to adjust to another romila.

Its actually nice in an odd way to know someone by your name......does she have the same pet name, was she named so for the same reason? how do her friends call her? how does she sign her name?

But, I am someone who hastily discarded all those orkut invites of other romilas. But having read reckless ink/rustic notes for a while, I am comfortable with this blogger.

In fact one post that really warmed me up to her was how she tackled errant aunts who pointed at her and kept saying to her "you next, you next" at weddings. Romila in turn would similarly jab them at funerals and say "you next"!

Pure genius!! I am waiting for my turn to try that out. ;)

As a south-Indian, I never met someone who shared my name, atleast on the face.
Named after Romila Thapar, legendary historian who taught and inspired my dad, I have always looked out for people with a similar name, to simply ask them what it meant.

Several sanskrit scholars have given me different meanings, yet I am to find a close-enough root beyond raomila (godess of love), roma (curls/Lakshmi) and ila (earth). I never got to meet a Punjabi scholar though.

I hope this blog pal can tell me the story of her name,
romila ;)

Sunset on a lean week

With mekie calling this a phoenix blog and polite friends sending in smileys.....I am tempted to write about yesterday evening, simply being itself.

The best part of working for a fortnightly are mondays and tuesdays on a lean week......the stories are still still trickling in, book reviews and artsy stuff.

So as one leaves for home by 4.30-5, there is a lightness in the step and the world outside is yellow and mellow. Otherwise one doesnt get to see the evening sun at all, nor the bustle of the evening market.

In an auto down Chintadripet's crowded main street.....scents and smells of an usual evening are immensely pleasurable. Reminiscient of university days down the same route laden with books.

As traffic stands still, my grandmum's childhood memories of the side streets, kite-flying, the old cook, and playing alongside my grandfather take life in the five-feet high smoke.

Back in the present:
a police wallah makes a u-turn on the congested road, bus drivers make way for an old cyclist on a narrow gali. agarbathis for ganesha fail before the fish market; colourful temple stores and flower sellers make brisk business. tumeric and queuing sick patients, flower garlands and tea-boys, 40-kgs of rice balanced on a skinny TVS 50.


Walking down, I make shadow figures, file in step with school kids and look behind hoping my brother would join for an early evening of fighting and pulling each other's leg.

Milk with grandparents; they catch up with the newspaper as I look down on the street. Rudely inquisitive neighbour readies to make a kolam. White poetry on unyeilding black.

I swivel and bask in sunlight streaming down french windows that illuminate my grandpa's junk. It doesnt seem so bad after all. My aunt's smile at an early entry and warm noodles. I curl around a magazine on the terrace, watching the sun set, promises to read forgotten.

Glimpsed once in a fortnight, these evenings are special. I never knew they existed when I got back from college teaching most afternoons.

grinning lazily,
romila ;)

look within: ganesh and auto wallahs vy with each other for space. taken by me

A thousand dreams

Hazaaron Kwaishein Aisi...Ghalib's immortal words on my gmail status aroused many queries. There were better films and not many could relate to this one. So what made it special?

Either the film had many layers or I simply imagined them.... images of reality clashing with idealism; new worlds struggling to take shape; and poetic lyrics that sent heady meanings:

Bavra Mann Dekhne Chala Ek Sapna....
Bavre Se Is Jahan Main Bavra Ek Saath Ho
Is Sayani Bheed Main Bas Haathon Mein Tera Haath Ho

A story of college friends who choose different ways as India is poised for marked transition. Sometimes, many of us can relate to all the three characters: geeta, who doubts idealism but who returns to it ultimately; siddharth, who plunges into the struggle but who has no answers for the violence creeping in; and vikram, who struggles to find his feet in the corrupt system to later embrace it.

The film to me is about a generation I never saw, a generation that I glimpsed now and then..... in professors who recounted with awe the power of student movements; uncles who recounted heady dreams and fiery speeches of their days; the disappointment of a generation whose dreams of a brave new India never took off. And their disdain for those who embraced the corruption and leg-ups.

Today, we hardly speak of them, the generation of the 60s and 70s. They did not know of my grandfather's dream for independence and Nehru but hoped for direction and romantic ideals, sought Indian equivalents to the west's dreams and development.

Their optimism, hopes and ultimate confrontation with reality and compromises is what Hazaaron Kwaishein is to me. I saw in it what my professors and uncles spoke of. Their inspiration and disillusionment and how they then went on with their individual lives powered by academic successes in middle class, pre-liberalisation India.

Surprisingly, I could also relate to the characters, mostly geeta's. Slipping in easily into two worlds: academic and intellectually stimulating dreams; differences and conservatism in a traditional telugu household.

It isn't practical to be ideal, and it is cheap to be material. But we grudgingly respect conviction and struggle, the person who chases his dreams; and also admire the man with the money, even if we wrinkle our nose at the means.

In the film, I smelt the musty dreams that a generation forgot as it embraced the rules of the new world. The struggles for equality, the social worker, the idealism preached in college brushed away.

It was not meant for us, we had to read and debate but do nothing. I grew up in this convenient understanding.

Either all these dreams were there in the film as I knew them in some people, or I simply imagined them. In between the film, the message of confusing and conflicting dreams and worlds was somewhere there or I probably read parahs between the lines.

But somehow in susy's bathroom slippers and cycle, in jerry's awe of student power; in jose's smiles at the trivial issues that centred our lives; in dreams for a new awareness, in books and articles, I saw a period, lost forever.

But the dreams were there....thousands of them. And they hoped as they waited.

Hazaaron Kwaishein Aisi
romila ;)

The Natural Order of Things

My sister was away at Kansas for about a month.....I dont know if I missed her. Too many mixed sibling feelings there. But, as we left for work together today, I had this deep sense of things getting back to normal.

Milk with television,
newpapers strewn in the loo.

Gaze sleepily at the wardrobe for 20 mins;
to pick up whatever hit the floor first.

She hollers as I drown in the bathroom, I pick up her soiled clothes;
the driver waits for an hour yet we dont make it to breakfast.

Hunt for dupattas, call-locate phones buried under cushions;
grab tiffin boxes, carry sandals to the car.

Shower of curses, rain of reminders from haggard grandparents;
And a call enroute to remind of a deserted laptop!

The resigned driver reverses on a one-way,
and a fuming mum hands it over.

Song requests turn little bro a RJ and,
Democracy rues Blues the clear winner!

Locks blow-dried on Spurtank road,
lip-balms tossed across at Mount road.

Clear bags of yesterday's junk at the signal;
scramble for combs in the jam.

Rue over forgotten things as the car skids to a halt;
Narowly escape being run over when hopping dividers.

Mail each other when we get to office,
And the natural order of things are restored!

romie ;)