Category Archives: Writings

Some people are so hollow that you hope not to talk to them again. All they are interested to know is how much money you earn! As if it is the end of the world! I dont know other societies but Marwaris know just this. Most of them!

Sometime dont feel like meeting relatives cos all they will try to extract is the number (Then I start to wonder shayad koi ladki khoj rahe hain mere liye )

The worst part is that they will not be straight! First question: so how many students.. 2nd Question: What’s the fees.. 3rd: so u are alone?
and then they know enuf “maths” and i am like WTF!

If only life was such an easy calculation! Yeah money is important..

I feel so pathetic when i go to these parties and then see women wear gold ornaments… and feel like this is all they are living for! Some who dont have enuf keep feeling ashamed for no fault of their own.

Dont have a lot to say… but just hope that i dont become one of these people someday!

Seema looked at the baby in the cradle. Its small round eyes could hardly open. The face was red. The wrists and fingers hardly bore any bone! It was all muscles and red skin. The bells on cradle chimed beautifully. It giggled like it wanted to say everything but the joy deep inside did not let it speak a word. The chime she thought was useless there! She just wanted to see him giggle.
She had just returned from her office. The house was all empty. The baby and her. Manoj had probably gone out to the grocer. He would be there anytime soon. She had decided this long back. It was her turn now. She had it in her arms. She closes the gate and moves to the parking area. She puts the baby in the side seat and starts the car. Manoj had still not returned. Wasnt she pleased! She steered her car past Malviya Nagar to the very old looking area behind Sarvapriya Vihar. The fort was here. An old dilapidated one. A sign read “Archeological Survey of India, Protected Monument.” The fort was not a famous one. Probably calling it a fort would sound strange. But then this is what it was. The walls were made of red sandstone, but it had linings of black. One could probably say that the wall was made of black with some linings of red. There were lot of shrubs growing around. Only the passage to the inside was cleared. Probably a lot of kids entered that fort through this path and that prevented the grass growth.
She gets out of the car with the baby. Climbs the couple of stairs that led to the open yard in the center. It was a small place. On one side was an old lady who looked like a beggar woman. Her hairs were all clumsy and her saree’s colours were not at all visible. She ignored the woman and moved to the other side. There she put the baby on the floor and hurried to the outside. The old woman screamed something that she couldn’t hear. She rushed to her car, sits inside and takes a long breath. She just sat in there for some time.
Inside, the old lady had the baby in her arms. She had a smile like any mother would. She kept looking at the baby. Suddenly she realized that it was the young girl who had left this baby here. She rushed outside. The girl was nowhere to be seen. A car stood there but she couldnt see the girl.
In the car, the stereo ran the song “ek bewafa se pyaar kiya… ” Seema’s eyes were remorseless. She hardly thought of anything. She took the car for a drive across Delhi. She crossed the AIIMS flyover, Akbar Road and then the India Gate. She made three full circles of the India Gate and then returned by the same route. She just kept driving for two hours. Probably she did not want to return home so soon.
Her phone rang. Manoj…. She looked at it and smiled. He now knows the pain. A drop of tear fell from her eyes. Just one. As if she drank the remaining like she did the last time. Her throat was heavy. She could not speak. She disconnected the phone. She stopped her car somewhere near Green Park. She closes her eyes. She sees the days when she and Manoj would sit together on the lawns of India gate, Manoj promising her a bright future. Her 19^th birthday, when he sang “gagan se bhee ooncha mera pyar hai” for her. How happy she was! Suddenly the betrayal. She could recalled how Manoj disclosed the secret marriage with Anu, her elder sister. Wasn’t she shattered!
Now she was here. She had no idea if she should call back Manoj. She decided not to.
The beggar woman took the child in her arms. Played with it. She loved the baby giggle. She had her grandchildren. Her son was very hardworking and had left home when he was 17. She lived alone in a shabby house and had almost no reason to live. Chirag, she started calling him. He gave him a new hope to live, a new reason. She wanted to see him grow older and wanted to work for him. The same evening, she went to the old lady at Sarvapriya Vihar, where she used to work 4-5 years back to see if some work was available. She thought the land lady was kind enough to give her work. Now she would be able to feed Chirag. 
Meanwhile, Seema returned home with expected scenes. Anu was there, almost half fainted. She had nothing but tears. She cried like a baby. Her hairs where all messed up. She looked like the beggar woman in the fort. Anu was a girl who lived in Green Park before she got married to Manoj. They fell in love after she met Manoj at college. She had known Seema through Manoj for all this while. Anu was not very ambitious in the worldly sense of the word, but she had seen a great future with Manoj. She wanted to see Abhay as a very successful person. She was already dreaming of the grand children she would have. She had so far built a whole web of the future which included everything one could think of. The whole castle of sand seemed to have turned to dust.
Seema couldn’t look into her eyes. She went upto her and took her face in her hands. She tried to remove the tears but they wouldn’t stop flowing.
Manoj stood there at one end of the room. He was totally shattered. Tears did not flow, but he had lost everything. The police would be here anytime soon. But like most other incidents, this one would also go unnoticed. He had put an advertisement for a lost child in the next day’s newspaper. Seema looked into Manoj’s eyes. She had sympathy for him now, remorse she had none.

On the bed of the old shabby government hospital, lies this unnamed child. The mother’s dead. Who cares? Its a hospital, people come, if they are lucky get better or else surrender to death.
The middle aged nurse, dressed in white, picks the child, hides her in an old newspaper wrapping. Slips out of the hospital early. Who cares about the child anyways? Reaches home, unwraps the baby, gives her a nice gentle bath. She’s like the moon, gentle, tender and unadulterated. She reaches for her lips, gives her a kiss. Its her baby now. Ramesh sees the smile, and drops of tears. For Sana, married for 12 years without a child, Khushi is a gift of God.

Scene 1:
An old street. An shabbily dressed woman in her 30′s, a baby in her arms. Looks around carefully in the dark of the night. Slips the baby in a fruit basket. She fades in the dark of the night.

Scene 2:
A hospital bed. A nurse dressed in white, a baby in her arms. Looks around carefully. Smiles a bit. Was it real. Slips out of the hospital.

Scene 3:
A Posh House. A rich girl in her teens, a baby in her arms. Looks around carefully. Cold eyes. Drops the baby in her car. Hurries outside. The car stops in an open area. Leaves it in under an old tree.

Scene 4:
A very shabby hut. A poor woman, a baby in her arms. Looks carefully around. Smile on her face. The child is hers.

Scene 5:
A leper. A baby in her arms. Looks carefully around. Drops the child in the well. Tears drop from her eyes. Smile on her face.

The sound of the guns had receded. The hills had gone silent. It sky had no birds. The war had ended. So had the village. Only the punctured houses reminded of something wrong. Twelve mile away on the other side of the hill was a different world. People, mostly women, children and some old men. Some of their eyes couldn’t yet stop flowing once in a while. They were not in their  control, a few children played hide and seek in the same camp. They had no idea why the tears were flowing at all. Probably they did not even know why tears were.
A young girl Rukhsaar, around 18 sat there unmoved. Her eyes were deep, as if they hid a whole world in them. She was fair as most of the other Kashmiri girls. Her face was white. She wore an old robe which covered her almost completely. She had almost no ornaments, as simple as a new born child. Who would she dress for in any case? Both her parents died the previous Sunday when she had gone to fetch water and her house was hit by a shell. She would have died crying that night itself had her neighbor Asma not visited her. She fainted multiple times during that night. The tears had almost dried out. She knew most of the people there. But she hardly talked now, no one did. A week back, the whole village was her own. Its the same people, but the village! She doesnt think that much. The day passed on.
That morning, a young man in his twenties had come to the camp. It was not very common after all. Why would someone want to share the sorrows of others. He was in his mid twenties. A lean tall man. He wore a pagdi, traditional among the shepherds. He did not smile. Hardly gave an expression. He had a flock of 40 sheep. He had been roaming in these forests with the sheep for three days. Yesterday he was in the village. No one lived in the village anymore to tell the story but the houses did. In these three days he had met just 7 people. He saw her in a minute.
All through the day they hardly exchanged an eye contact. Deep within, her heart was throbbing. She could feel her palm beating. Her heart gave the beats that it would when she had first met him. The wait for the night was way too long. The sun did not seem to move all day. She could not share her feelings with anyone around. Finally, the moon was in its full glow. The wolves cried from deep inside the forest. The crickets chirped. The camp was absolutely still. Even the children were asleep. The sky was dark with no stars. It was all open and clear. The moon did not want to hide that night. It wanted to see them. Rukhsaar knew exactly where he was. Her eyes might not have spoken a word but they could see it all. He huddled his sheep moved across the camp passing through it. She stepped out behind the sheep. She was one of them; following the master wherever he led without questioning why. Thee hours later, they were 4 miles from the camp. She stepped out of the sheep. Came closed to him. She smiled for the first time in the last many days. He was here. Gulmarg was here. Summer was here. The flowers in the valley looked at them, the moon did, the stars shone. They sat in the full view of the moon in each others’ arms. The two were tender like the flowers. One flower entangled in another. A new day was to dawn. The valley was now silent. Not the sound of the gun, it was their giggles that filled the Gulmarg sky every evening for many days.

He waited there under that dark banyan tree surrounded on both sides by open land. It was dark already and he was charmed  by the green eyes. He could see everything around, the squirrel that ran close to his legs reminded him of her walk, the half dried leaves reminded him of how autumn was behind, the green fresh leaves reminded him of his present, the new beginning. The slightly orange looking sky without the sun reminded him of how easy life could be. An old woman still worked in the farm all alone and the three kids played at a distance. Water in the canal around five hundred meters from him. On the other side of the canal was the Taj reminding him of how romantic his life had been recently.
This place was one kilometers from Agra, where he lived. Every day he had waited here at this time to meet her. The enchantress. They would sit there under the banyan tree for a couple of hours before leaving back. He knew she would come. They had been here on every single day for the last one month. Deep inside he was happy. That excitement to meet her was still there even after so many meetings. That feeling of joy, victory and possession ran in his blood. He was thrilled.
It got dark. The orange tinge in the sky had gone. His excitement started turning to anxiety. Suddenly no one was there. The old woman was nowhere to be seen, the kids had all gone. There was nothing but silence. His cycle resting by the banyan tree seemed like dead. Suddenly the banyan tree seemed too old. The leaves looked black and the half dried leaf reminded him of dead leaves! He wanted to run.
He rode on his cycle to the canal. That is where her brother had once seen her with him. It was a silent stream of water. Absolute silence. His life came to a still. He was robbed. He touched her face. She lay there in blood, a dagger in her. Her shirt was red in blood. Her fingers bled. Her eyes looked into his and said nothing. She couldnt move but he could feel her happy in his arms. The eyes closed slowly. He was helpless. He would not leave her. Tears flew from his eyes. They were red. The darkness of the night could not hide the colour of his eyes. He knew this had to end. Blood soaked his shirt, even the stars were not there to weep with him that night. The moon hid under the clouds, as if the whole world had betrayed him. He pulled the dagger out of her and brought slit his wrist, he couldnt feel the pain but saw gush of blood flow through it. The dome of the Taj looked dark, the moon light that kept it visible betrayed it.
The next morning the sun shone on the Taj the way it always did as if to remind that they lived on forever.

I park my car and rush to the flower seller on the footpath. 10 each he said. If i took them all? All yours for 5 each. He packs them and puts them in my car. I hurriedly drive home. She isnt here but her fragrance is. I blush seeing the broken Vase. Tonight is another night.

She doesn’t know that I am here. I pick the flowers one by one remove the stem gently and get the whole room flowered. Jasmines. White and pure. The drops of water make them shine. I love the aura. Nothing comes close to her, but this remind me of her. Time has slowed down. I cant wait for her. She is still not here. Time has stopped. I stand up to the window and look outside. The streets are now empty. Its 9:00 PM and she would have just left her office. I sit on the sofa just near the window. I stand up again, walk around a bit carefully not to step on the flowers, look outside and sit back again. Its 9:24. The large white clock has finally crawled close to 9:30. This agony has passed. She could be here anytime soon. I hurry to lock the gate. I sit on the sofa, on the left wall of the gate, calmly as if not waiting for her at all.

The footsteps break the silence. She was here. She unlocks the flat with her keys, opens the gate. I did not move. She switches on the light, looks around. Her mouth opens up in surprise. I keep looking at her. She smiles. She laughs now. Her lips move. She springs in Joy. I keep looking at her. She had still not spoken a word but I knew what this meant to her. Her giggles ring like bells. She comes towards me and pulls me. I cuddle her in my arms. This was our first anniversary and I had to be here. I knew what this meant for her. We stay like that.

Time could keep running, we had come to a still.

____________________________________________________________________________

PS:
1) Again not a true story.
2) Part II only for the closest friends (too explicit to be posted here )
3) Suddenly I am in love with writing
4) Mazaak mat udana all serious feedbacks and criticisms most welcome

A child cried alone in a basket of fruits. A passer by looked around, seeing none around in this locality of Old Delhi. He called around and hurriedly left the place before someone could see him. Another car passed by, a couple around 40 stopped by, saw the child, waited around and called 101. It was past midnight. Not many lights were on in the houses nearby. The couple picked up the child and cuddled it. It felt as if it was their own child. The hugged it and hurriedly left the place with the child in the car. Probably they did not want the police to take it from them. It was a girl and they did not have one even in 15 years of their marriage. A cute one. One window on the 3rd floor of a wretched house, Neelam kept crying in her old house at GB Road till she finally fell asleep. The most peaceful sleep she ever had. Her daughter wouldnt have to live that life ever.

The cute little girl giggled seeing the old friend, the auto-rickshaw walla just took the dangerous turn, the old woman ]frowned upon by the rich old man in that honda city, the traffic signal, the loud noise from a college fest, the queue of a million cars waiting for the traffic signal, my mom and dad sitting behind me in the car that i drive from my office at hazra to the hotel at Camac Street. Its all happening here. We get down at the famous old Camac Street, park the car get down, take my mom and dad along to see the girl who they think could be a good bride. There’s so much giggling around, so much chatting, people trying to find out and judge both the girl and me. So much facade. We have the hand-shakes a bit of chatting and we are back in the car. Mom and Dad look at me. I smile. We are seated. I look at the seat on my left. You are no more. No one can fill that void. The whole world without you is but empty. They can get someone seated on that seat again, but the emptiness will forever remain.

Real Long time after which i tried writing again. 6-7 years. PS:  a couple of you have asked if this story is real. NO nothing is real about it except the city and the location . I dont own a car and never had a break up or make up