photographs!

A superstition I read - its unlucky to leave photo frames empty. We now have two frames lying around unused. I suppose for the next decade or so I need not enter myself in any raffle draw with hopes of winning the grand prize. Madam luck has all but packed her bags and proclaimed her departure. She is just hanging on by the last centimeter of my severed sixth finger. But in spite of this I know that the picture frames will remain empty far into the unseen future.

Its not for lack of photographs that the frames are gathering dust. The simple problem is that I hate looking at myself in photos. Till the age of five or six I suppose I liked myself, all my baby pictures are cute and more importantly I seem to have enjoyed smiling in those days. After six years of existence my photos stopped smiling. I suppose a couple of strategical missing tooth might have been the reason for the general funeral demeanor. My tooth did grow back, but not my smile as by then it was not prudent to smile anymore. My teeth outdid themselves in comparison with my lack of growth length or height wise. But of my teeth saga we will digress later.

So I progressed unsmiling wading my way through portraits and landscapes at times solo, at times lost in a large group. Beaches, parks I posed everywhere smiling rarely. Each time I could not bear to look at the snap for more than a second before I pushed the picture away. I would regularly hide away my passport snaps and get new ones in the hope that the next dozen reproductions of my features will turn out to be better than the countless previous ones. But how ever much I comb my hair, powder my face, smile or not smile I would run out the photo shop covering my head in shame. And it continues like so to this day.

 Someone who hates looking at her pictures by natural conclusion should not like look at herself in the mirror as well. But as far back as I can remember whenever I look in the mirror I see only a part of my face. And I am more than happy with small dissected  portions of my face. The whole perimeter of my face never registers. More often than not I tuck a wayward strand of hair behind my ear, flatten my misshapen eyebrows if they are unruly and I walk away happy with myself.

 All of photography nightmares exploded on my wedding day. In search of creativity(not mine) my very expensive photographer had me hugging a coconut tree and gazing dreamily into a distance. No visions of a happily married future life lit up my eyes as he envisioned. I can still recollect the amused smile of a scooter walah passing by. I suffered miserably that day and later when he happily delivered a full page close up version of me hugging the tree as part of my wedding album. If there was an foot of earth that I could call mine, I would have buried my album then and there. But there isn't and I do the next best thing, ignore it. My friends ask for my wedding pictures and I assure them I will send them the link by mail as the album is at home, but it never gets sent.

 The icing on the cake was that one day in Trivandrum when I went to get my passport photo taken. I was ushered in and asked to freshen up if needed. I took great pains and straightened my eyebrows so that they resembled each other and sat facing the camera. The guy fiddled with his cam for a while, made me tilt my head an infinitesimally small millimeter and clicked. Nothing happened. No flash, no click no nothing. Before I could position my head back to my comfortable tilt he said lets try once more and clicked again. No response from the camera forthcoming, he removed the cam and started trying to figure out what was wrong. A couple of adjustments and he was ready again but the camera wouldn't budge. Each time he failed I lost a little more of  the good humor that I stock up when I go have my picture taken. I sat there as a guinea pig for his seven failed attempts when finally at the eighth attempt his camera flashed and one week later I found myself looking into a packet of a dozen very angry looking Lakshmi's with one eyebrow raised. I stuck those pictures on all my forms anyways.

 And so amongst empty walls and dusty picture frames I live happily ever after.

Hope,Want,Wish or Pray

In the middle of the ocean
I long for the desert
Lost in constant waves of motion
To escape unhurt

Stranded in the endless rain
I pray for the sun
There is plenty I have to gain
Plenty left undone

Crowd of voices and smiling faces
I yearn to get away
And when of love there are no traces
Tears run down in dismay

Give me today all my wishes but few
Tomorrow I need to wish anew.

Of bananas and me

There is something about the banana/pazham that is so appealing. Maybe its the colour, or the smell or the fact that if you put out your foot out in all likelihood you would stumble on the million zillion ways we Malayalees use the vazha. When it literally rains bananas you cannot help loving them. I adore the poovans and the all other varities of small bananas. I dont care much for the big nendra pazham but drool over pazha baji and pazham and pappadam. The cousin of the banana called "chiquita" here was my only link to the bananas back home. They were not great, but they werent bad either. But one day Chiquita and I had a quarrel and this is how it started.

I was standing on a ferry, looking out into the ocean and warming my hands already numb with cold when I happened to hear a seemingly innocent conversation. A couple of guys and girls were talking 

Guy1 - I am hungry...

Guy2 - yeah, I could eat anything... I think maybe I have a banana in my bag.

Girl 1 - A banana?? yuck!

Guy1 - Why? dont you like bananas?

Girl 2 - No I dont, I cant stand their smell. Horrible...!

At this point I look around to see that the girl has covered her nose up with her stole and is vigorously shaking her head in disgust over the smell of the imagined banana.

The conversation continues branching off into banana world -

Guy1 - So what about banana bread? 

Guy2 - There must be tons of stuff with bananas in them. Do you mean to say that you dont like any of them?? 

Girl - I am fine with banana bread and all the other stuff with bananas in them. Its just that I don't like to eat a banana on its own. It makes me wanna puke.

Guy1 - So what if your boyfriend had a banana and then he kissed you? 

Girl - I probably wouldn't kiss him!

They exhausted their topic and they moved off. Outwardly nothing had changed but I was never the same again. From that moment on I was not able to eat a banana. Every week Reni regularly tried to convince me to share half of a ripened banana with him. Yet how much ever he tried to coax me I couldn't bring myself to eat one. Everytime I thought of a banana, the image of that girl with her nose all covered up would come into my mind and however hungry I was, my hands never reached out for the banana.

What bothered me the most about this was that I was so easily influenced. Someone just had to vividly describe why she didn't like banana and I was conquered! At first I thought maybe time would help me forget, but some memories cling to you like glue. I was angry at myself for being such a walk over but the damage could not be undone. Lately I have begun to think that all through time, there have been several instances of people being easily influenced by personalities like Hitler and Osama and they have resulted in world wars! I merely stopped eating bananas, no major world history changing event. 

A couple of weeks back during his routinely cry for help to finish off an over ripe banana, I relented to Reni's coaxing and ate half. I neither liked the smell nor the taste and I gulped it down quickly and painfully.

 

But hold on, there is a happy ending to this story. Unknown to me, there was a plantain in the fridge which was once green but had since then become a brownish yellow. Unwilling to throw it away, I peeled it and immediately stood arrested by the familiar nendhra pazham smell. Old taste buds watered in delight and forgetting everything else I made finger licking pazha bajji that day which tasted remotely like the ones back home.

So now I spend my time between prowling for the exact brownish blackish plantain and waiting for that day when a banana crusader whispers in my ear on how delightful bananas are so that I can start eating them again.

whatever

This new year promises
To be what the previous years have been
A hope, a wish
And a silent prayer
That the next year will go easier on me.

I have lost the height on my jumps,
And the width of my smile
The path behind seems long
And the road ahead longer still.

I am walking a tightrope
Of life never ending,
Wobbling and unsteady
Pulled and pushed on all sides
By those whom I call mine.

Of rotations and revolutions.

A recently concluded week, where I was eternally looking at a certain unnatural direction due to a neck sprain led me to a few conclusions - 

• It is not advisable to wash your hair with a stiff neck. A vigorous scalp rubbing using the towel is out of the question. No amount of gentle patting the hair with the towel will get it to dry. I found it out the hard way.

• Never attempt a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle with a sprained neck. Apart from the agony of the neck, you will also be left with an frustrating, incomplete jigsaw puzzle.

• Day 1, hour 1 will get you the most sympathy. Lap it up as by day 3 you are most likely to find someone standing behind you imitating your neck alignment and laughing away merrily. 

• Smile and the battle is lost! Cry and win an ally. I smiled through my pain and therefore received very little empathy.

• The clock never aligns itself to the direction of your restricted vision. And inadvertently your sister asks your for the time.

• Sleep is an impossible act mornings or nights. And in the event that your eyes do close and your breathing relaxes, the smallest twitch will have you awake again in pain.

• In future when in pain, stay away from the person labelled husband. In case of accidental meeting, a fight within five minutes is guaranteed. 

• Things fall down. But things always fall down. The difficulty lies in actually retrieving the fallen object or letting it lie till the able necked person comes to the rescue.

Day 1 was his birthday, but I was pampered like a princess - a double edged sword situation. All you can do is stare into the outer space ( or the general direction of outer space) while he cooks under your instructions.

And how did all this come about? I am still as clueless now as I was then.

telephones part 2

I never return calls. I never message. I dont send forwards on email let alone phones. My mobile was useful to me to the extent of picking up calls and setting my daily alarm. I had deliberately bought the cheapest model from Nokia at that time.

The whole world knows that if you dont call or message someone sooner or later you are not going to get any calls or messages yourself. That is telephone ettiquette. But whether the phone rings or not, I never let the mobile out of my sight. I carried it with me to all meetings where it provided me something to fiddle with when things turned boring. I took it with me those late nights when there was no electricity at home and therefore no light except the small glow on the mobile. I panicked everytime it got lost in the jungle of junk my bag contained. Yet I never called nor messaged.

But yes when you love someone who is on the opposite side of the continent, the mobile is a very useful device to have. However I generally mailed at the end of the day while he called. I guess my aversion to phones in general started early in life when I was asked to pick up the phone and answer to whoever was calling that dad was not at home inspite of the fact that dad was sleeping in the next room.

At this point of time, my trusted mobile sits in one dark corner of the cupboard without charge. On those rare occasions when I need a number it reminds me of the life I used to lead.  No longer do I bother with missed calls or unread messages.

But even without the mobile I am still within the clutches of the telephonic wire monster. My land line with its free calls to India. Unemployed and alone at home, everyone assumes that the landline is my new best friend. I am scolded for not calling relatives back home. "Its free!" they say so whats stopping you? The anti social being in me balks at calling up friends and relatives. I often end up not knowing what to say to the person on the other side. Its so much easier for me if I were to talk directly to another person. For most part I answer the questions that are asked of me and then maybe ask a couple of my own if I remember. If only letter writing were still in vogue.

Telephones and me

I do not like telephones. Having one means you are more accessible to everyone when you would rather be left alone. Right from all the salesmen who try to sell you everything from a bank to a shoe lace to the weirdest of strangers who call you just to pull a prank on you. Several of my girl friends had a list of numbers of these pranksters stored in their mobile phones under names like stranger 1, stranger 2 etc . I too had my pick-me-not numbers.

  One such memorable number was an auto walah. "Auto chetans" generally gave us their number so that we could call them when we needed a ride to office. Being IT they assumed that our wallets were probably stuffed with more than normal non IT folks. [ A popular misconception since most of us had more cards than cash.] So all of us had numbers of a couple of auto chettans who would pick us up in the mornings and drop us off at the office at the same astronomical rates reserved for us. On one occasion when I had several stuff with me to take to office, my friend gave me a number of one such auto chettan. But he turned up really late and we had to take other means to reach office. I called him again and told him in the nicest possible way that since he had been too late we had taken another auto to office. He apologized and reminded me to call him again next time we need a ride.

 That night or rather the next morning around two 'o clock I got a call on my mobile. Its the auto walah's number flashing on my screen. Woken up rudely in the middle of my sleep I couldn't even begin to imagine why he would be calling me at this time. In order to not wake my roomie I picked up the call quickly. The conversation went like this,

Me : elo? [ The first word after being woken up in the middle of a deep sleep is always horribly disfigured]

Autowalah : hello this is me... <some name>

Me : _____ [ thinking of an appropriate response at this insane hour.]

Aw: If you need a ride next time, please dont hesitate to call me.

Me: ok. [I try to deduce from his voice whether he is drunk. But late night my detective skills are not functional]

AW: I am always reachable on this number, just give me 10 min advance notice just in case I have some other  passenger.

Me: mm.. [By now I am awake and angry.]

AW: If you need to reach office please call me. I ....

Since this now sounded like a re telecast of the earlier message I cut the phone. For good measure I kept the phone on silent mode so that I could go back to sleep. Sleep came easy since I had not really contributed anything to the conversation and within minutes I was back in dreamland. No further calls came that night nor did any autos chase me in my dreams.

Next day morning at office the man calls again! Now I was thoroughly exasperated. When I get angry I fume silently. Since this situation demanded quiet a different response I didnt pick up the call. Thankfully, I had a blood boiling in anger kind of a cubicle mate at that time, who also happened to belong to the male gender. So I handed him the phone, explained the situation, sat back and enjoyed the fireworks that followed. 

 I have never been called by that person again. After this incident, whenever an auto chettan gave me his number I diligently fed it into my mobile in order not to disappoint him and make him increase his fare. By the time I left India my mobile was full of 'madhavans' and 'karthikeyans'. Yet whenever I needed to reach office however late or in a hurry I was, I always waited by the road side holding the phone in my other hand and waving frantically at every empty auto that passed.

end of part 1