145. Ghost!

Simplistically put; I just don’t want to leave this world. By the time I will be gone, I will still have so much work to complete. I don’t want to leave without giving love to the people of the World. As a spirit, I would be able to travel far and wide and touch the lives of the less privileged. Wishful thinking but they say that if I desire something passionately enough, I am sure to get it anyhow, dead or alive!

144. Tranquil Waters-III

As they sat there for what seemed like eternity staring at the majestic banyan tree, watching its leaves barely stirring in the whispering breeze, he slowly clasped his right hand around her almost cold left hand and lifted her from her kneeling position. They slowly walked, hand in hand. It was getting dark but there was a power which moved within them to see their way through the trees, as if their souls knew exactly which way to go. A spell of glow-worms lit whichever way they went. They spotted half-blooming Angelicas here and there, bobbing in the breeze and found it a little strange. However, when the same soft breeze touched their skins, all their fears were allayed and they continued walking, slowly. The forest, otherwise heavy with mystery gave them a feel of home. The leaves on the forest floor crackled with a warmth they recognised. This is where they always wanted to be, they thought and by some decree or destiny, here they were. An owl called out! 

Soon enough, they reached the end of the line of trees and they found themselves gently being touched by the warm rays of the sunlight. They were not far from where they wanted to go. Birds chirped cheerily all around them and wild flowers bloomed and danced to an astral tune. The morning breeze was cooler than when they were in the forest. From where they stood on top of the hillock, they could see miles and miles of open spaces; splendid acres of green fields, with the blue sky, bounteously decorated with white clouds in the distance, its reflection in the almost still water, making this whole landscape look like an ethereal, almost surreal image for both of them. They stood there in silence holding onto the magical moment and wishing it to freeze  forever....

143. Lover and Dreamer

Whenever my friend calls me in the morning to ask me, “What are your plans for today?”, I am mildly and slightly perplexed. I would like to give an out-of-the-world-kind-of- answer, pretending that I have this amazing blue-print to become a millionaire in a years time. But then my answer is, “Today, I will do what I love to do throughout the day and I will love what I do.” My answer is again answered with a “Hmmm!”

Well, all my life till now, I have just loved what I have done every second of my day (hmm...not always!) and I have done what I had loved with an unbounded passion. So, everyday has been a holiday, a vacation, a dream-ride for me; whether it’s writing a piece for the papers or my blogs, listening to a song, getting its lyrics and humming it soon after, dressing up, biting into a vegetable burger, working out at the gym, trying a new posture in yoga, designing a totally new ensemble, chilling out with Tirus at a bowling game, hanging onto the phone with my best buddy and talking endlessly about ‘great ideas’ and sometimes-I-wonder-God-knows-what, taking my Mom and Dad out for dinner, not to forget about the way I feel when I am on stage, enacting a role; I feel like a King! And oh, I am so on top of the world when I am anchoring a show. It’s a power only I can feel as I speak each word and look into the eyes of each person in the audience looking back at me. It’s undeniably an exhilarating feeling, probably unmatched with anything so far! Another position which gives me a high is when I am counselling teachers and students. It’s an up close and personal relationship I share with these people who after a two-hour session become my extended family. So far, I have had a wonderful life, peppered with adventure and fun and my answer to what I had done the whole day would be, “I just dreamt!”

142. Rip Van Winkle...

Last night, just before we went to sleep, Tirus made me burst at the seams with some of his martial art stances. There were a whole lot of them and they were simply too good. I especially loved one work-out where he goes round and round in a circle about three times, while pursing his lips and sticking his tongue out at every turn and then doing a 'smash' kick. Then there were the 'lightning jump' and 'super dive'. Then, I had to do this being-beaten-in-the-slow-motion enactment with him, which made him very excited 'cause it's been quite a while since I played crazy with Tirus. It was fun to see him. I asked him where he had learnt all this and he gave me several vague answers, which somehow amused me. Some he learnt from television (I only wonder from which channel), he said, one or two from his cousin and the kicks from his Dad. Wow! I mean where was I when he was learning all this? Am I missing something here? Am I losing out on valuable time with Tirus? Left me thinking quite a bit. I surely don't want to wake up one fine morning and find Tirus all grown up and everything, while I am still locked in that time when I was wishing to play and would have played 'slow-motion' with him!

141..........Had a farm, eyaa, eyai o!!

“Cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck!” My pet hen would come through the backyard leading to the veranda near the kitchen and stand next to me, looking up at me with her head cocked to one side. I would pick her up, hold her close to me and gently stroke her feathers and speak to her in a soft crooning voice, “Oh, my little baby. Come I will place you in your nest.” And she would close her eyes in my affectionate gesture. My pet hen, whom I could never really give a proper name to and I, as a little girl used to share a relationship I probably cannot describe in words. My love for her and her equal reciprocation has somehow made my neighbours think I needed ‘help’. But this regularity in her clucking before she laid the egg and after, I placing her in the straw nest I made for her was a routine I could never afford to do without, even though people thought I had lost my marbles. The bond was too strong for me to heed anyone’s sarcastic comments. She stayed with us for several years till one day Dad called me up in Shillong to say that she died of an unknown disease, when the floods came. And she was the same hen my uncle got for us to savour, when I was spending my summer holidays with Dad.  

Dad, being the artist he is, was the most sought after in his department when he was serving with the government and he used to be a regular at the Trade Fairs in Delhi, more so because he designed tableaus and also the Assam pavilion. Once from his return to Guwahati from one of the several trade fairs, we were surprised and shocked too to see that he had got a monkey in a medium sized cage. Mom was like, “Why on Earth have you got a monkey? What’s wrong with you?” Dad, nonchalant as usual, carefully placed the cage in a safe corner of the back-yard and said in an authoritative voice, “I had to get him ‘cause he was abandoned at the Trade Fair. I couldn’t leave him to die. He will stay with us from now on.” Over several years, the petrified monkey from the first night, Molu, as we started to call him, became a part of the family. We spent a lot of time in front of his cage as this was the first time we actually had an animal, supposed to be in a natural environment, as a pet. We were apprehensive about letting him out lest some stray dog attacked him. So, Molu stayed inside the cage and entertained us endlessly with his antics. He would eat, drink, do his potty inside the cage and Dad would use a hose pipe to clean his cage and give Molu a shower. Molu loved Dad like anything but somewhat had a strained relationship with me. But anyhow, I loved him and his ‘monkey’ acts enormously. Even Mom started loving Molu after a point of time and would make balls of rice for him, which she passed through an opening in the cage while he looked up at her adoringly. However, after a couple of years, one fine morning, Mom announced, a little more than sternly that Molu must go back to his natural settings, maybe in a zoo and find his own mate. I had no scope to protest. The day he was taken by a person from the zoo, Molu held onto Dad’s legs and pleaded in long and short squeals not to let him go. Mom was sitting in the veranda, crying, while I with tears rolling down my cheeks implored, begged, cried with all my life not to let Molu go. Sooner than I thought, the man from the zoo decided to put an end to the dramatics in front of him and roughly pulled Molu and shoved him even more roughly into a gunny bag, placid faced and left the place quickly, leaving the three of us to fend with our emotions!

Apart from these pets, I have had many dogs. Jinny, a blondie, with long flapper ears and a tail which fanned my face and a cross between God-knows-what, was a pup I bought from a small Khasi boy in Shillong, who just wanted some pocket money. Jinny gave birth to Jerry and I got both of them to Guwahati till one day, Jinny was ‘dog-napped’ by one of my good friends in the neighbourhood. I had met her later but I never got back to my warm old self with her again! Rocky was a pup off the street, who grew possessive about me over the four years he stayed with us. However, one fine morning, he disappeared never to return again.

The two pigeons my aunt gave me stayed for a couple of months in the boxes my Dad built for them but flew off one day. I guess they had other plans in mind.

So now, Tirus wants a pet ever since I have been telling him endless stories of my pets. At the slightest pretext, he would adopt any animal, no, insect that came his way (read that as mosquitoes, spiders, house-flies, grass-hoppers, lady-birds, beetles and I am yet to know what else is next in his list). The last time I was out of town, my heart broke when I got back and heard Tirus’ story about John Cena, his pea moth caterpillar who died in the little dental floss plastic box after five days, refusing to eat cabbage leaves. Tirus bid adieu with respect when he dug a small hole in the ground and covered John Cena with the soil.

Finally, I got Tirus a fish tank, with around ten different fishes. Initially, he would  spend hours naming the fishes with his cousin and then getting all mixed up with the names after a couple of days. After a year and a half, there’s just one fish left in the tank but Tirus makes sure to regularly change the water and feed it morning and evening. However, now Tirus wants to have a chameleon soon. I am perplexed! Having pets was never so worrisome and complex than now when Tirus wants to domesticate living things which were ‘alien’ to me as pets when I was a kid. 

140. Nani: I love you!

Tirus just got back from a holiday at my parents’ place. He told me that he had the most exciting and adventurous time ever at his grand-parents’ home (that’s his version every time he goes to stay there). He would wake up late, brush, then sit quietly in the veranda, while sipping a cup of warm milk Mom would have got him and stare dreamily into space (forever!), till Mom called him for breakfast. His excitement knows no bounds as his Nani prepares something special for him every day and for each meal (chicken roast being his favourite!). And then, after breakfast, it’s either watering the plants, just running around the whole house and also standing below the trees in the backyard to see how many mangoes have ripened, looking at birds his Nana would be showing or just quietly sitting in a corner of the house and colouring away or playing his video game. In between all this, Nani would call him to see how she’s going about with a recipe.  And all the while, he would be smothered with endless love from his Nani, who constantly kept a watchful eye on her grandson lest he got hurt, or an insect bit him or if he was having his juice on time. And Tirus would reciprocate by hugging his Nani around the waist while she was working. Tirus extended his holiday by calling me up every day for several days and saying, “Mom, can I stay back today too, please?”

Flashback to Nagaon, several years ago, when I was a little girl! Every winter holidays, Mom, Dad and I would travel to my Nani’s place from Guwahati. I never got to see Nana and I really miss him when Mom used to tell me about what a loving person he was. I wished then that I met him. We would have had so much fun! Anyway, but Nani was great! I remember the first thing she would do when I ran through the red-floored living room, the dining room and then the long cemented veranda, was to hug me close to her and kiss me on my cheeks and mumble a blessing. And I would keep hugging her for a while and feel the warmth of her body, which would be draped around in a white cotton mekhela-sador (the traditional two-piece Assamese ensemble). And after that, it would be just gay abandon. My cousins would come over and we would run around like crazy in the huge compound. We would play hide-n-seek, robbers and policeman, marbles, cricket and what not. We would eat freshly picked berries while we sat on the steps of the veranda. There would be endless stories we would share about school, friends, studies, art and lots more. And all the while Nani had only one thing in mind; what to cook for us. She would come up with the most deliciously prepared meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I especially remember her pounded rice cakes cooked in an earthen pan over a fairly huge fire of her artistically crafted double stove moulded out of clay. The crunchy rice cakes would again be intricately laced on the sides with animals and birds, which Nani would deftly design with the swift movement of her hands, while she poured the batter into the pan. And when she put the piping hot rice cakes on my plate, I would be over the moon to see different shapes of animals. This again she served with clarified butter and sugar. What a heavenly taste! I have never really got over that special breakfast and I still look for Nani’s magic if perchance I get to eat rice cakes anywhere. But no one and nothing can replace what she gave me. Nani gave me endless amounts of love; memories I still cherish and hold close to my heart just like I want Tirus to have memories of his Nani!

139. Promises to Keep!

I wonder what Dad would have done if I had not bound him with the promise never to put a cigarette to his lips again. I simply told him, “From tomorrow onwards, Dad, let’s smoke together. I am sure that would make you happy?” Dad was petrified of his daughter getting into this deadly habit and hasn’t touched a cigarette since then. But he is sick now, terribly sick and the doc says it was because of his smoking habit as a young man.

But before Dad gave up smoking, every 31^st of December at 12am, I would make him promise to quit smoking and he would sincerely nod his head in affirmation. His loud exclamation of, “From today onwards, I quit smoking”, makes me smile in sheer happiness. However, a couple of days later, when I find a familiar smell in the veranda, I know for sure that Dad is smoking on the sly again. It saddened me but I was helpless till I found the smart solution of ‘smoking together’.

However, these days when I tell my friends to quit smoking and reprimand them for breaking a promise they made a couple of months back, the only thing they tell me with aplomb, “Promises are meant to be broken.” But let me tell you that today, no right thinking woman likes a man with a cigarette in his hands. It’s no longer a manly thing to do. Promises are meant to be kept. It feels great to be committed for a reason.....