Rockaby, Rockaby...

Here I am – all dressed up. The gown is almost white but decided to change its mind at the last minute and turn into this pale , old pink. I think its beautiful, and the cloyingly sweet and super irritating saleswoman was right – my shoulders do look divine in strapless. Its strange that I feel this way on my wedding day – I am not elated and ecstatic, (but then I wonder if anyone really is), but I am not nervous or scared either. I am at ease – its almost weird – it’s so not me.

For as long as I have known myself, I have always been the neurotic one, and no matter how much I mediated or however many books I read on Buddhism and Taoism, I could never quite get it – the art of letting it be. Three years ago, I succumbed to the ultimate Jewish indulgence – at 370 dollars an hour, I got to talk about my job, my love hate , mostly hate, relationship with my mother, my indecisive Indian boyfriend, my fetish with protesting, my inability to be on time. It was liberating – how often do you just get to sit in a chair and whine. It may not cleanse your soul, the way meditation is supposed to, but it’s a lot like a good pedicure – luxurious and self-indulgent. Did the shrink cure me of my neurotic behavior – probably not , but as I sat there looking at her plants, and telling her – this perfect stranger – the story of my life, the words gushed out - words which had once crouched in the hidden corners of my stomach – malevolent and dark – tumbled through my body and hurtled off my tongue , and once they were out , they were simply words which dissipated and crumbled into the air as soon as they had been spoken.

Until then I had not realized how much power words can wield – we say them , we hear them ,we think them and then we tuck them away inside ourselves. I say I like cappuccino, and those words linger with me , and nudge me ever so often as I pass by a coffee shop. I said I can’t imagine a life without Sameer – and those words reinforced themselves every time I thought them , and every time I cried for them, and soon they were like steel – words that I couldn’t break out of no matter how hard I tried.

And in a million years, I wouldn’t have imagined the words, “ Abigail Rosenberg and Joshua Steiner.” In a million years, I wouldn’t have imagined the words, “Abby – it won’t kill you to have dinner with him.” In a million years, I wouldn’t have thought of myself as living in Long Island and walking down the aisle with a nice Jewish chemical engineer, with a gently receding hairline and an earnest smile . But here I am. I don’t really have the words to describe the way that I feel, but I don’t think I need any. I will just walk along and allow myself to be surprised.

I am listening to the organ play here comes the bride, but in my head I can hear Shawn Mullin’s lullaby -
Everything's gonna be alright,
Rockaby, Rockaby.

In a New York minute ...(part 3)

A few months after he graduated from Princeton, Sameer met Abigail – she was handing out flyers on the corner of Lexington and 3rd, and he was on his way to an interview. Abby was a flower child with flowing peasant skirts and red hair. She walked into a room like a hurricane, leaving a wreck behind her. She was anti- war, anti-meat, anti-pesticides and chemicals, anti-anti abortionists. Abby was a professional protester – she painted placards, sat in on candlelight vigils; duck taped herself to fellow protestors.

Sameer was not quite sure when he started going out with Abby, but a year and a half later, they were living together in an apartment in New York. Sameer was working in an investment bank on Wall Street, and Abby had taken up a job in a publishing house. Sameer enjoyed Abby’s company and was comforted by her presence. Abby mothered him, and took care of him. When he got the flu, Abby would diligently make him dhal. Although she was a dismal cook, she would painstakingly follow instructions from the recipe book that she had bought from an Indian store in Queens. Abby was the one who introduced Sameer to the bohemian life in New York – hanging out in smoke filled cafes, browsing through small, non-descript art galleries and record stores, and listening to underground grunge bands.

Over the years, Sameer had become very fond of Abby and almost dependent on her. She refilled his acid reflux medicines, she reminded him to call his parents, and she made sure she bought Honey Bunches of Oats – the only kind of cereal Sameer ate. His parents knew of Abby, and though they had tried to express their unhappiness, since they weren’t married, they didn’t really have anything concrete to disapprove. Sameer had also often accompanied Abby to her parents for Passover and Hanukkah. And though Abby’s parents weren’t pleased either, they had grudgingly come to accept Sameer. In fact, Abby’s parents had given up on trying to say anything to her. They had seen her date a tattoo covered biker, they had seen her go bald, and they had stood by , when at the age of eight, she had loudly proclaimed in the middle of the synagogue that she had seen the Rabbi kiss another man.

Sameer loved Abby, but it never occurred to him to ask her to marry him. He was so used to the notion of Abby as his girlfriend, he couldn’t really see her as his wife. Sameer was also busy climbing the corporate ladder - working 15 hour days – and it never crossed his mind that Abby might want to marry him – he didn’t think she was the marrying kind. But the thought of marriage had occurred to Abby. Sameer hadn’t noticed that Abby, the 80’s flower child was now the 90’s Cosmo girl. He didn’t notice that her long floral skirts had given way to designer fitted skirts, he didn’t notice that the red head had become a bottle brunette (he did notice, however, when Abby started waxing her legs instead of shaving). Abby was now a senior editor in the publishing house, and on her train-rides back from work she would often read articles on summer’s hottest fashion trends, and 10 ways to get a man to say I do.

One Sunday morning, while they were eating breakfast, Abby casually remarked, “I think we should get married.” Sameer was perplexed. It was not a question but a statement, and since it wasn’t a question – was he even expected to answer? But Abby often spoke that way – “Let’s eat Thai.” “We should get a new couch.” There was never a question mark. Sameer usually ended up saying OK – it was the path of least resistance. Though extremely aggressive and decisive at work, Sameer had never really confronted anyone or anything in his personal life, he had never needed to – he had happily walked down the path that was laid out for him.

Thus far, Sameer’s ambivalence had worked for him – but this time it didn’t. He wasn’t sure what he wanted. While Abby wanted him to marry her, his parents were vehemently opposed to the idea. “We are quite liberal you know. It’s not that she’s American, but she is Jewish,” they said. His mother would call him, sigh, and say in a defeated voice, “Do what you want to do, it’s your life. But remember, your father and I are getting old – and you are the only one we have.” Though Sameer had lived away from his parents for more than a decade, he still found it hard to openly disobey them or disregard their wishes. And while Sameer was struggling to make a decision, Abby had moved out from Alphabet City to Tribeca.

Sameer held Abby’s wedding invitation in his hand, and looked out the window. In the apartment across the street, was an old man watching TV; and in the apartment next to it, he could see an empty dining room with a large cherry wood china cabinet. As he looked at the row of apartments, the windows glowed like Christmas lights, and for the first time he felt alone.

Over the past one year, Sameer’s mother had tried to get him to meet girls – but he had buried himself in his work. His mother had occasionally been quite brutal about it. “You aren’t getting any younger, you know. All the good girls are already taken, and you’ve put on so much weight as well,” she’d remark.

Sameer picked up the phone, and called India. “Ma, It’s me – how are you doing?
“Oh, Sameer, it’s been ages since you called,” his mother replied, though they had spoken only four days ago.
After a few minutes of conversation, his mother made her usual pitch. “Sameer, I met Veena Masi recently . She had come down from Bangalore. There is this girl in Philadelphia – that’s quite close to New York, no.?
“Her name is Manisha, and she is a doctor. Veena Masi says she is a very nice girl, and her family is very well respected in Bangalore,” she continued.
“Uh, Manisha is divorced, but she is very pretty – I saw her photo- you will like her.” “The divorce wasn’t her fault. Veena Masi said that she was married to a really nasty man, “she added as if to justify to herself why she was setting up her son with a divorcee.

And as he had done so often in the past, Sameer succumbed to the path in front of him, and said, “OK.”

Random photograph

 



This is a photograph by Henri Cartier Bresson. I just kind of like it, and also I am trying to experiment with photographs on this blog.

In a New York minute ...(part 2)

Sameer grew up as a privileged only child in a sprawling colonial house in the middle of Lutyen’s Delhi. As a little boy, he was escorted to school by two mustached men who called him, “Sameer baba”. When he was twelve, he was sent off to Woodstock - a boarding school in Mussorie, where he met other boys who were also used to being called “Baba.” Sameer’s story was a familiar one – he went to college in St Stephens, Delhi and for a while he worked in his father’s friend’s firm where he toyed with the idea of taking the civil service exam (something his father wanted him to do), he played with the idea of starting his own business and, briefly, he entertained the idea of being an artist- but it was an idea that sounded ridiculous even to him. He ended up finally going to graduate school in the US - it was a decision that appealed to both him and his parents. Sameer was excited at the prospect of living in another country, and his parents were quite pleased about the fact that their son had been accepted at an Ivy League school – Princeton.

But when Sameer landed in the US, his excitement quickly evaporated. While the university was beautiful and imposing, and he was walking in the same halls that many Nobel laureates had walked down, Princeton didn’t impress him. It was a quaint little town that was trying desperately to be Cambridge, England – but the truth was - it wasn’t. It was a sleepy, preppy town with pretty houses, a canal and an ice cream shop called Thomas Sweets. What bothered Sameer most was the fact that it was so quiet – having lived with crowds of people everywhere – it was hard to reconcile to the lack of noise and chaos.

In those early moths, he spent a lot of time in the library being nostalgic about his life in India. In India, he was ‘Sameer baba’ and people waited on him hand and foot; but here he was a nobody who had to do his own laundry – worse yet, he was that Indian guy who didn’t quite fit in. He often though about his grandmother – she had been the only one who had been upset at the idea that he was going to be studying in the US. She doted on her grandson – for Aruna, Sameer had been the one on whom she had showered all her affections. Sameer thought fondly of all those winter afternoons, when he had sat in the verandah with his head on his grandmother’s lap. As the sun gently warmed his face, he would listen to his grandmother tell him stories of Hindu gods - Vishnu, Shiva, Durga and Ganga. One of his favorite stories had been that of Vishnu’s second incarnation as Kurma, the tortoise – when at the churning of the ocean, he offered his back as a pivot on which to rest the Mount Madera that was being used as the churning stick. He was fascinated by the idea that a tiny tortoise was at the bottom of this mighty ocean -- out of which emerged the Moon, a nymph called Rambha, Parijata - the celestial wishing tree, Surabhi - the cow of plenty, Airavata – the white elephant, and Amrit -the elixir of life.

At times, on grey rainy days, he thought of Savita. She had clearly not been his type – she was a little too dark, she didn’t have the sing-song voice that convent school educated girls had, and though he hated to admit this to himself – but Savita was not in same social strata as he was – she was from the wrong side of the tracks. And yet, he was irresistibly drawn to her. He had been with a few girls before – girls who did meet his eligibility criteria – but none of them had exuded the sensuality that Savita had. And Savita was surprisingly intelligent. In the literary club meetings, she often just sat quietly listening to others, but when she did speak in her shy, halting way – she spoke as if she had not just analyzed the book, but had known and felt the characters deeply. And he remembered the way she smiled – it would start as a tiny spark at the corner of her lips, and then spread slowly through her face like a forest fire.

In a New York minute ...(part 1)

“Hey mister, do you have a cigarette?” “Hey, I ‘m speaking to you mister”
The ageless, faceless, nameless man who sat on the corner of the street engulfed in a big dark blue coat had asked him this question for the last six years. The man had sat there in the mornings, as people rushed past to the subway station, and made their ways to banks and boutiques and delis, and he had been there in the evenings when they rushed back again to go the gym, to take their kids for ballet class, to feed their cat, to make dinner, to watch TV. And he had sat there as the sweltering summers gave way to the frostiness of New York winters. In the past, Sameer had often stopped to give him a cigarette and sometimes money, but as the years went by the man had just become a distant voice that he heard while he waited for the lights to turn green.

It had been a tough day for Sameer. He had made an aggressive, speculative investment that had not turned out the way he had hoped, and though risk and loss was integral to the hedge fund business, not winning his bets was still something that irked him. But then, it was precisely his instinct to win that had made his boutique hedge fund so successful. His fund had even managed to stay afloat through the stock market crash that had taken down bigger names. Sameer had come to New York in the early 1990s, and in the span of ten years he had made his way to the top of the corporate ladder. This is what he loved about the city – the opportunities it offered to make it big. He felt driven by the energy, the greed for power and the hunger for success.

He walked past the art galleries, and the coffee shops to his apartment in a red brick row house on Avenue B in Alphabet city – the trendier part of East Village. It had once been a slum, and then it had been a bohemian hang out for writers and artists. And when writers and artists flock to a place, yuppies are not far behind – and now this was a yuppfied neighborhood that still had a little bit a of bohemian, quaint coffee shop charm. Ironically enough, the real artists and writers were driven out because they could no longer afford the place. Alphabet street got its names from Avenue A, B, C and D . East village wisdom has it - Avenue A, you're Alright, Avenue B, you're Brave., Avenue C, you're Crazy , Avenue D, you're Dead.

Sameer picked up his mail from the hallway, and walked up the stairs to his 3 bedroom apartment which had sunny yellow walls that were adorned the by the artwork of up and coming artists. Despite the fact that he lived alone, the apartment was well-kept . Modern and antique furniture were put together in a casual way – a casualness that had been carefully arranged. He went to the kicthen, and opened his mail. It was the usual assortment of bank statements, bills, discount coupons , and then he saw an envelope with a hand written address on it. He rarely got any personal mail, except from his mother in India. He tore open the envelope, and pulled out a card. On expensive ivory paper, in gold letters were the words, “You are warmly invited to the wedding celebration of Abigail Rosenberg and Joshua Stiener. “

Rain on me …a monsoon tale in three acts. (Act 3)

After Savita’s eldest sister had got married, Sarita, her other sister, fell in love with the neighbor’ son and was also set to tie the knot. Her parents were keen to get both their younger daughters married off at one go – her father realized that he could not afford the expense of three weddings. So they stared hunting high and low for a suitable boy for Savita.

She sat through umpteen interviews, and patiently answered questions about her hobbies. She dressed up in her mothers’ favorite green chiffon sari, and she sat contritely with her eyes lowered to the appropriate level of docility. By the time, Rakesh and his family came to visit, she had lost track of the names and faces. It was all a blur.

“You should marry him,” her mother urged. “ He has got a steady job, and comes from a good family. What else do you want? “ she said. “ You can’t expect to get an engineer like your sister you know,” said another aunt who was still peeved at the fact that her elder sister had married an engineer while her own daughter had not. And so, at the age of 21 she was married and was Mrs Savita Sehgal.

Rakesh was eight years her senior. He was not a handsome man, nor was he a man of many words. And while he spoke little, he smiled even less. But Rakesh was not particularly unkind or unpleasant. He was hardworking, reliable, and prudent, and had turned out to be just the kind of husband her parents had hoped for. Even as a young couple, they had not shared any passion – they had not indulged in any giggly lovemaking nor had they had any loud fights that the neighbors could overhear. Savita could still remember the awkwardness of their honeymoon.

They had gone to Shimla, and as she looked out of the window to see the little train pull into the station, images of Nitu Singh and Rishi Kapoor cavorting in the hills flitted through her mind. As the train halted, her dream sequence was rudely interrupted as well. Here she was on her honeymoon with her husband and her mother-in-law. They got rooms in a hotel that was strangely called Seaside View though there was no sea or lake for miles around, her mother-in-law was in the adjoining room, and all through the night she lay uncomfortably awake beside her snoring husband.

Soon after their marriage, Savita and Rakesh got a flat of their own in a colony that at that time was considered to be in the outskirts of the city. She had hoped that the space would allow them to get closer, but Rakesh continued to be aloof and spoke in monosyllables. On the weekends, he buried himself behind the newspaper and occasionally commented about cricket. After they got cable TV, he became addicted to the soaps and stayed awake late at night to watch a show called MTV Grind.

But Savita couldn’t really complain. Rakesh did what a good husband was supposed to do – he was earning well, and had even bought a car. He didn’t drink or smoke or gamble, and he never really shouted or got angry at Savita. The only thing that he was not able to do was give her children. They had tried several options, and consulted many doctors. It had come as a rude shock to Rakesh’s mother that the fault lay in her son, and not in the womb of her daughter-in-law. But once she had reconciled to that, Savita’s relationship with her mother-in-law improved dramatically. But Rakesh’s inability to procreate drove them further apart. And while they had never shared any emotional or physical chemistry, even the perfunctory rituals that a man and wife share were gradually abandoned.

Two years ago, Rakesh had had a mild heart attack. The doctor had warned him that if he didn’t change his eating habits or sedentary lifestyle, things could get serious. For a few days after Rakesh returned from hospital, Savita tried to cook healthy and encourage her husband to go for walks with her, but they soon slid back into old familiar ways.

And then it happened.

Savita usually took a bath in the late afternoon after she finished dusting, and cooking and doing all the housework. On the weekends, she would eat lunch with Rakesh and while he took an afternoon nap, she would read a few pages of a book, and then take a long bath. This was the favorite part of her day - leisurely and self-indulgent.

This was a Saturday, and she had been reading a book that everyone was talking about - 'God of Small Things'. As she undressed and got ready to take a bath, she though about going to Kerala. She wished she could travel more. She looked at herself in the mirror. For a woman of 35, she looked quite young – almost like she was nineteen. Her face was still so young, but her body had filled out. She was no longer skinny, and her skin had ripened into a velvety brown. She placed her palm against her stomach and felt her breath come in and go. She thought of Estha and Rahel – the ‘two egg twins’ from the book – and wondered what it would be like to have something growing inside her.

Suddenly, she heard gurgling sounds coming from the bedroom. She threw a towel around herself, and rushed out. Rakesh was flailing and writhing about like a fish that has been pulled out of water. Savita rushed to the medicine cabinet to get the pills that the doctor had said she should use in a situation like this. Her hands wavered, she turned around and saw Rakesh's face contorting, she felt her breath rise and fall - she felt like she is standing in the path of a might river. She let go of the pills, and the waters rushed forth with all their force and fury taking her in the flow.

******************

Most of the guests have left. Her sisters and her mother-in-law are sleeping in the next room. Savita looks at the bed that now lies empty. She tries to imagine Rakesh sleeping there, but already she finds it hard to conjure his image. What did he smell like, what did he taste like?

She walks over to the balcony, and feels the cool moistness on her skin, and she can
feel the rain only a heartbeat away. She smells a familiar muskiness in the air, and she feels an old familiar longing returning – a longing from an ancient forgotten night.

At first there are just a few drops of water, and as the drops get sucked into the dry dreary earth, a wonderfully sharp smell wafts up. She hears a sudden loud clap of thunder, and she stretches her arm out with the palm facing upwards - waiting to catch the rain.

Rain on me …a monsoon tale in three acts. (Act 2)

As a young girl, Savita had been skinny and not quite the fairest of them all. She had two elder sisters and a younger brother. By the time she was born, her parents were yearning for a son and had been barely able conceal their disappointment at having yet another daughter. Her eldest sister, Suneeta, was a traditional Indian beauty, and her parents were quite confident of finding a good husband for her. Her other sister, Sarita, was effervescent and bubbly, and while she was not very pretty or demure, she was the life of the party and despite the fact that she was constantly getting into trouble with her pranks, nobody could really dislike her. Her younger brother, Sunil, was obviously the apple of everybody’s eyes – her grandparents doted on him, by the virtue of the fact that he was a boy. Somehow Savita had always felt a little left out – and though she not particularly ill treated or neglected – she never felt that she had the affections of her family the way her other siblings did.

In college, Savita had begun taking an interest in literature and poetry. She had read almost the entire collection of Premchand, and even though, she had not been very fluent in English, she had begun reading Shakespeare and Tolstoy. One of her favorite books was Nabokov’s Lolita. She had felt a little naughty reading it – the book had created a stir for its portrayal of a young girl as a seductress. In reading the book, Savita had discovered the tiny hidden corners of her own sexuality – and unknown to her, she was filled with a secret longing – a longing that burned through her flesh into her soul.

In the middle of her second year in college, Savita joined a writers club. Most of the members of the club were earnest looking young men and women, and for some reason most of the men had beards. Over cups of tea, they discussed a new book or politics. While Savita never really participated in these discussions, she enjoyed the ambience – an ambience that was filled with the headiness of youth and idealism. It was also a welcome break from her life at home, which revolved mostly around her elder sister’s impending wedding to an engineer. Her mother was filled with pride and excitement that her eldest daughter had snagged such a good catch, and was gleefully enjoying the fact that she was the envy of all her relatives and neighbors.

In one of the evenings, as Savita listened to Vinod and Ismail talk about communal politics, she felt someone pull up a chair next to her. She didn’t turn around to look, but she smelt the muskiness with a gentle intake of her breath. It was Sameer. She had never spoken to him, but watched him wistfully from afar as he laughed and smiled in carefree guileless way. Sameer was the treasurer of the writers club, and he was one of the few people in the group who drove a car. His father was a powerful bureaucrat in the Indian Administrative Service, and he had studied in prestigious English medium schools. He had an easygoing boyish charm, and most of the girls she knew had a crush on him, and most of the guys wanted to be like him.

Savita took a small breath again, inhaling the wonderful muskiness. It was not the sweet, cheap, cloying smell that hung around her brother, or all other men she knew. This was refined, expensive, subtle and sophisticated. For Savita, Sameer was like Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. Before she knew it, the discussion on the tyranny of religion was over, and people were beginning to leave. Savita stood up as well, and she realized that her dupatta was stuck under Sameer’s chair. “Oh, I am so sorry, “ he said, as Sameer lifted the chair and pulled Savita’s duppatta. Savita was too flustered to say anything, but she smiled. A smile that was so unsure of itself, and yet so full of promise.

Savita and Samir kept bumping into each other at the weekly meetings, and while they exchanged polite greetings and occasionally spoke to each other about the books they had read and the authors they liked, they rarely had conversations with each other for more than a few minutes, though it was not for the lack of trying on Samir’s part. But Savita was strangely hesitant and scared. She found it hard to believe that someone like him should like someone like her.

One night, the group had a particularly prolonged and heated debate about where Indira Gandhi was taking the country. It was well past seven, and it was raining heavily outside. Savita glanced at her watch and jumped up realizing that she was about to miss the last bus home. As she stood in the door way trying to open her umbrella, Sameer walked up to her and said, “Maybe, I can drop you home. Its raining quite heavily and its getting dark” Savita was silent, and she continued fumbling with her umbrella. “Give it up, “said Sameer with that easy going laugh she liked so much. The two of them ran towards the car covering their heads with their hands, as if the web of flesh and skin was strong enough to withstand the ferocity of the monsoon rain.

Rain on me …a monsoon tale in three acts. (Act 1)

It was close to five in the evening, and the skies were overcast. The air was so heavy and thick – you could almost slice it with a knife. Savita made her way wearily past the hawkers, as she felt the humidity seep through her, dragging her down slowly. She heard a wave of voices wash over her. “Tomatoes, just six for a kilo, just six for a kilo”. “Mangoes, Dasari mangoes.” “Memsahib, come here, what do you need. I’ll give you a good deal?”

She went through the motions of haggling with the vegetable hawkers, scrutinizing the potatoes and brinjals to make sure that they weren’t spoilt. It was like an elaborate play that unfurled every evening. Hawkers with vegetables and fruits and utensils gathered near the street opposite her colony, and husbands who were returning from their offices, and wives who were stepping out of their homes milled around. There were all familiar faces, and there were all familiar conversations. “Mrs. Sharma, I haven’t seen you in such a long time. I heard that you weren’t feeling well, hope everything is OK?” asked Mrs Parekh though they lived in the same building just two floors apart. Mrs Dwivedi invariably told all who were willing to listen about her son who lived in America, and Mr Rastogi constantly complained about how expensive everything was these days.

Savita sweated profusely as she climbed the stairs with her load of groceries. They lived on the fourth floor of the building which was the top most floor, and buildings with less than five floors were not allowed to have lifts – a law that was a source of much consternation for her. She stopped at the landings, and waited to catch her breath and wiped her lips with corner of her sari pallu which was already limp and soggy, though it had been freshly starched when she had taken it out earlier in the afternoon.

When she finally reached her flat, she switched on the fan and plunked herself on the sofa before she started putting away the groceries in the refrigerator. She made some tea for herself and her husband, and went into the bedroom to wake up her husband Rakesh. She saw him lying there with his eyes closed and his mouth wide open. Savita watched him closely – his skin was coarse and leathery, and though he was just a little over forty, lines crisscrossed his face. He didn’t look old but he didn’t look young either. In fact, Rakesh’s face rarely ever revealed anything – and after fourteen years of marriage, she still wasn’t sure what she thought of him or how she felt about him.

“Tea is ready,” she said in a voice that sounded like she was afraid to wake him up. When he didn’t answer, she just left the cup of tea on the bedside table and left the room.”

**************************************

People spoke in hushed voices around her, and she felt as if she were swathed in a sea of white. In the distance, she heard people moaning and crying. So, this is what death is like, she thought. She almost felt like she was watching a movie - afloat and removed - it was also eerily tranquil, like the lull before the storm.

“Savita, are you sure you don’t want to eat anything?” her sister asked. Suddenly, she was woken out of her reverie. “No, I don’t think so,” she replied. Savita scanned the room, and heard people whispering to each other about the death of her husband, Rakesh.
.
“Poor thing, she must be in shock. She can’t even seem to cry.”

“Mr Sehgal was such a nice man, I don’t know how this could have happened – it was so sudden. I heard that Savita returned from the market, and tried to wake him up for tea, when she saw that he was dead.”

“Didn’t he have a heart attack two years as well. It just goes to show, that life is so unpredictable. “

“Oh yes, life is uncertain. And I really should not eat those oily samosas anymore. I think I should start keeping a tab on this cholesterol velesterol thing.”

“I feel so bad for Savita – she doesn’t even have any children – I don’t know what she’ll do.”

“Well, from what I have heard, at least she won’t have to worry about money – she now owns this house, and Rakesh invested quite wisely.”

“Look at how well he has done for himself – when they came here, he had nothing. He was just a clerk at the Bank; ten years later he had bought this house, a Maruti car. It’s really quite remarkable.”

“Mrs Bhatia was telling me that he took a lot of bribes though. I mean see his house, I don’t know how a man who earns a mediocre salary could buy these big fancy brass lamps and marble statues?”

In the center of the room, was a large photograph of Rakesh and his younger brother, two sisters and Rakesh’s mother were sitting next to it. Rakesh’s mother was wailing audibly and swaying back and forth saying, "Hai, Bhagvan”


It had been three days since Rakesh’s death. This was the fourth day, when family and friend gathered to pay their last respects. In the opposite end of the room, sat an elderly man, who was reciting verses from the Gita. These verses were meant to comfort the mourners as they reaffirmed the immortality of the soul. Every few minutes, the man would pause to explain the meaning of the verses. “As Arjuna confronts his fears about death on the battlefield, Lord Krishna, his charioteer and mentor, says, ‘Never was there a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor all these kings; nor in the future shall anyone of us cease to be’,” he intoned.

here goes...

It all started here . A night that was gently lit as people walked through the streets enjoying the first slight chill in the air. I looked around me , and while everything looked beautiful and almost festive, I felt a sharp pain at the sudden change of seasons....it had snuck up on me unexpectedly and caught me unawares...so here I was in the middle of this beautiful night, quite unsure what to do with myself.

I am also not sure what I'll do with this blog, or why I am writing this . I using this blog to try and weave a story - I don't know how or where this story will end - but maybe I'll just go with the flow....and see how things turn out.