Saving the Tiger…

Posted on February 21, 2010 by Guria
….is one of the most dumb ideas one could come up with.

Disclaimer: This is a sarcastic (and rude) post about us. Whoever has been finding some notions of Save Our Tigers Project ridiculous, please do not proceed, as you might not be able to digest what has been written. If you do, the blame lies with you and you alone. As certain Indians also, if you are offended, I can’t help it. So proceed with caution or don’t proceed at all. The author bears no responsibility for wounded egos and short tempers. I wrote it as I saw it. If you can’t take it, don’t read it. And kindly pertain to the subject at hand and do not create issues out of thin air just to fan your own ego.


Who around us doesn’t know, that the number of tigers in our country is pointing towards extinction? Someone with the most minimal knowledge is aware of it. So why the big deal out of it? Yeah, 1411 is a catchy number and we could have done without knowing it. Thank you. And also without the ‘poor little thing’ marketing gimmick for an ad.

Yeah, yeah I know tiger, actually the Royal Bengal Tiger (did you know?) is our National animal, but what can I do?

This sympathy organization just to fool the public, what can I call it but a publicity stunt? What happens if we join up? Nothing. If only, they can procreate and carry baby tigers into the forests, there’s no hope for increasing that number.

I can join up. (Isn’t it free?) But what good will it do? I’ll do not one thing different. Oh yes, I can sympathize. Better yet, I can criticize.

What was the reason behind creating this huge furor over nothing? Make us feel guilty over something that isn’t my concern anyway? (My concern extends only to myself, sometimes to my immediate family and mostly, to make people understand how great I am). 

So, I can snivel around and mark out pointers, enumerating the reasons why the makers of the group as well as the group are dumb. Why their ideas are trash, and nothing will ever actually work and how they are wasting our energy. 

Of course, however I am not available (usually disappear faster than when chased by a tiger) when it is to suggest an alternative to the “foolish ideas and ventures”. It’s not my job. Mine is to criticize what they do (though, however, it isn’t something I could ever do). Actually, why are they making us talk about something in which we had no intention of putting any effort, taking away time from thinking about ourselves.

“Write to policy-makers” — This is India, my darling! You gotta’ be kidding! Who gives a damn (when the high-and-mighty me doesn’t, you really cannot expect the berated-by-me-too policy makers to)! Actually, they are much like me, even though I won’t agree to that again, they do not like being poked in the eye about something that is obvious yet ignored. And like me, they do not care. Like I won’t ever care to take any initiative.

“Blog about it” — As if my space is out for blogging about a public cause. Does it pay? Does it bring readers? Awareness in India through blogging? That’s not really my priority. Yeah, may be there are Westerners in my readership, may be they could pitch in too, but they’d be foolish to care. So please, I’ll save my effort.

“The Government” — And of course, living in India, we always have a ready-made excuse. Our government. After all, everything is their fault. And bashing and abusing them easily hides the fact that we rarely do anything for the country we proclaim to love. Oh, what would have we done if our Government wasn’t so corrupt and lazy? It would have been terrible! It would have been obvious to the most even casual onlooker that we, the people are also corrupt, lazy, all talk-no action, worthless and selfish schmucks who only know to belittle others and do nothing that has no profit in store for them. 

None of us will ever put up money, or take an active role. We’ll not talk about the ideas that are actually achievable, because we won’t shift from our comfortable life-style to implement or even accommodate them. This is not just about Tigers, it extends to everything that requires us to stand together. We have forgotten Aesop’s Fables as children’s stories. “Unity is might” has been lost in the dredges of personal gain and others’ losses. In case of saving tigers, we refuse to stand together, refuse to commend the initiative, just because me, in my all pompous glory, is above it all. Because being noticed becomes easier when I’m standing apart from the crowd questioning or ridiculing what others stand together for, and of course, it makes me feel that I’m smarter than the rest of them. And all for a cause, I don’t even spend two moments of my day on.

The Government, any government has a thousand and one issues (is the number I have used too high?) to resolve. Even if they know the catchy number of ‘1411 only’, documented on a sheet of paper, it just can get lost under a mountain of pending more-important work. Is creating a single voice, loud and clear, demanding something be done right away has any bearing towards saving our tigers from extinction? I’m thick-headed, near-sighted or politically correct enough to ignore that possibility. It goes against my strategy, and my brilliant criticism, you see. Of course, all we have to do is make them, force them even, to create reserves and sanctuaries. That’s it. With the protection that comes with that concept, our tigers will have their own habitat, and no fear of surviving into the next generations.  Ever been to Kanha National Park or Corbett National Park?

But we don’t really care about standing together or talking about issues and causes. Again, It has no profit in store for us. We can criticize and can point out what a futile and lame attempt this is. Why do we care if it succeeds or fails as long as it doesn’t concern us directly? What are we, fools? 

(And we hit closer to home with this last statement, and blissfully remain unaware about it)

N.B. It is always easier to criticize and pick faults, than commend one or several for their actions and initiatives. Learn to live beyond yourself, and support an attempt, a greater cause. And if you cannot agree, cannot support and yet, provide no better solutions than the ones existing, keep shut.



For joining the Roar to Save Our Tigers, or just for a look-see visit the site here and here. 
For better clarity please visit Avada Kedavra’s blog Stung by the splendor of a crazy thought, the post: Tiger Debate Goes on…

Posted in Causes, India, People and Relationships, Sarcasm | Leave a comment

Riding with the Wave

Posted on February 16, 2010 by Guria
She was sitting by herself, looking out of the window, seeing nothing. A sudden wail broke out somewhere in the house. She looked up slowly, uninterested, towards the open door, stared a few empty seconds, turned to look at the clock on the wall and went back to looking out of the window again. 


Stark despair, tears and loss were nothing new for their family. But she didn’t think she’d have the chance to feel ever again.


A lonely table lay arranged with a steel thali and bowls with the food, lovingly cooked, now, cold.

*******



Attrika married Tarang when she was seventeen and he, twenty-two. A story set in the 1960s, both families were liberal enough to let their kids chase the careers of their dreams but with the only condition that they marry first. Even though it was an arranged marriage- Tarang with his parents had gone to Attrika’s place to choose the bride- it was a match made in heaven. Impossible as it is to believe, the Indian boy and Indian girl who harbored no romantic ideology or even the prospect of marrying for love and not of coming of age, they fell in love almost from the moment they laid their eyes on each other.

Tarang’s wit and quiet demeanor, Attrika’s stable but vivacious zeal and their obvious affection for each other had made the coming together of the two families the biggest occasion in years to come. Tarang was a medical student while Attrika had shyly told her in-laws that she wanted to do a Masters in Economics.

Married-life was a sweet experience for the newly-weds. Tarang and Attrika complemented each other well. They were both intriguing and compelling personalities, with intelligent minds of their own, that made their marriage a practical one as well as romantic. 


But Tarang lacked Attrika’s strength of character, and that was what decided their fates in the end. 


Tarang had the tendency of vacillating between the extremes. Euphoria and Depression. It was only his sweet wife of seventeen who would put a comforting hand on his stooped shoulder and lead him out of his depression; and if necessary, the hand on his shoulder would turn restraining before Tarang could go out of bounds.

They had been married less than a year, and there was bliss in their world. Attrika was now trying to get pregnant, and had got admitted into college for a BA in Economics. Tarang was studying very hard for his medical final exams.


Tarang’s family was an old one with highly educated members but no one was a doctor. From the day Tarang enlisted in med school his family was proud of their son, that their son was going to be the one to bring unparalleled glory to the family name.


Tarang was proud too, but was only too aware of the expectations and hence, the responsibility that came with the adulations. Barely anyone but Attrika was aware of the pressure it created on Tarang at times. The burden of expectations used to raise its ugly head time and again in Tarang’s mind, incapacitating him sometimes, or pushing him to get over with it as soon as possible. And Tarang had come to dread the examinations. But Attrika had changed it to some extent. She could help soothe his nerves, his trepidation and let him focus on what he wanted to be, barring everything else. This time Tarang knew, he would get through, without the mental strain and brilliantly too.


But he had reckoned without the unforeseen. Tarang’s father died shockingly and suddenly a month before his exams. Gloom descended on the family like heavy clouds that would neither rain nor move away. And there was no escape.


Besides the fact that Tarang’s father had died young and unexpectedly, it was the older extended members of the family who blew the tragedy out of proportions. Be it a wedding or a mourning, they relished the chance of being in the limelight, sharing their experiences, advising their younger counterparts. Tarang’s already bereft mother was their target. Instead of sharing or even sympathizing in her grief, they escalated her anguish, describing in most graphic details, her present state of bereavement and widowhood, and the losses that came with the passing of her husband. 


Tarang was helpless, not having ever been the one to take the horse by its reins. He could barely be of any comfort to his mother and would only keep his head down and nod as his elders lectured on. Attrika, on the other hand, built out of something much more stronger would have no compunction in saying into their faces that their “sympathy” was not required. Which eventually turned the sweet bride into a conniving shrew for the family.


But Attrika was least bothered about what her extended in-laws thought about her. Tarang, after his mother, had started being her main concern. Amongst her busy duties as the daughter-in-law, she could barely give time to Tarang but she noticed as Tarang started withdrawing into himself. And Attrika knew the symptoms very well.


One week left to Tarang’s final examinations, and with the house still full of sympathizing relatives, Attrika started making excuses for Tarang, while pushing Tarang into his room, urging him to lock doors when studying.


And the relatives would have none of it. 


“Who is she, Maharani? Doesn’t she understand?!”, exclaimed an uncle.
“Haven’t I said before, don’t ever marry your son to a girl who wants to go to college. Rotten apples all of them. Who has ever heard of a girl wanting to read and learn?” chimed an aunt in her eighties. “Arre, does she have any respect for her father-in-law?! His pyre hasn’t yet cooled and she is turning our son against his duties. These girls, I tell you, will be the end of our heritage!”, added another aunt, conspiratorially and very audibly.


But in the next moment, they would go to “their son” and smile their practiced sad yet proud smile and say. “Your father is looking from above, beta. You make us all proud by becoming a doctor. And then only, your father’s soul will be blessed and he will find peace.”


The times were such that Tarang believed in the after-life, in superstitions and had never considered any alternative. He believed them completely. Attrika knew to prioritize but didn’t dare telling her mother-in-law and husband to stop listening to them.


Two days before his examinations, Tarang called Attrika to their room. In the last few weeks, they had barely made time  to talk to each other. Attrika obediently came into their room, wiping her hands with the pallu of her saree.


“I may not come back”, Tarang said the moment she entered.


Attrika frowned in confusion, “What? Why? What are you talking about?I don’t…”


Tarang put up a hand, and said “You are my wife and you deserve respect. I don’t want you to blame yourself and I want you to know. It is your right to know.” He nodded, as if speaking to himself. Attrika started feeling the first tremors of fear. Tarang continued, “I love you very much, but there are some decisions that are singularly mine. I may be doing you a great injustice but I have no choice.”


Tarang went up to Attrika, put his hands lightly on her shoulder and said, “If I fail the exams, I won’t come back… I won’t be able to live with failure.”


Attrika stared transfixed, as he bent down to lightly touch his lips to hers.


The whole day and the next, Attrika moved around the house like a zombie, and only steal moments with Tarang to shout, plead and rage at him.


“Think of your mother. Will she be able to survive the death of her son?!”
“How can you do this to me? Why did you marry me, only to ruin my life?! You wretch!”
“Everything will be fine, why are you thinking like this? If you don’t pass, you’ll appear again, naa? It’s just an examination for heaven’s sake!!”


But Tarang remained impassive. His mind was made up.


On the day of the examination, in the early morning, when the house was empty and quiet, Tarangs’ mother fed him dahi and prasadam from the mandir and whispered, “Do us proud, my son.” Tarang smiled, touched her feet and hugged his mother tightly, and looked up. His wife was standing a few feet away, expressionless, leaning on the door-jamb with unkempt, wet hair, no jewellery and a red-white saree blowing in the wind, looking sad and breathtakingly beautiful. He smiled lightly. She smiled back, her eyes dry. That was his last memory of her.

*******



Two years later, clad again in a dhoti-kurta, Tarang was getting married, this time to a girl he’d never seen or had cared to. There was a lot of celebrations going on in the house, the baraat was about to leave. Alone in his room, he saw the certificate he had received yesterday, after finally becoming a doctor on his second try, lying on his desk. He opened the drawer and took out the photograph of his first bride and stared at her mischievous, smiling face.


“Why couldn’t you have waited longer? I would have come back! How could I not when I had you, and your spirit with me? Why didn’t you wait? WHY??”


He half-screamed as he often had for the last two years, as his tears dripped onto the black-and-white photograph of the woman he had driven to death.



N.B. Based on a true story. The time-line has been changed. The story should be treated as a work of fiction. 

Title: ‘Taranga‘ means ‘waves‘ in Sanskrit.
On whom the character was based: He lives with his wife and daughter. And he still has her photograph. G.:)
Posted in Creations, Love, Novelette, People and Relationships | Leave a comment

Questions

Posted on February 14, 2010 by Guria


There are some questions that I don’t know the answers to, that hurt me, irk me… 


Why is an Indian always jealous of another Indian’s achievement or accomplishment?

Why is an Indian mostly honored in his own country only after he has received acclaim from abroad?

Why we still look up to the fair-skinned man instead of the brown-skinned when such a choice arises?

Why cannot we be proud of who we are, of our fellow countrymen, of their achievements as our very own? Why can’t we believe in self? 


I always just wonder… “Why?”!!


Posted in India, Observer | Leave a comment

Two Of Me

Posted on February 8, 2010 by Guria
I know that there are two different individuals living in my body. As different from the other as chalk is from cheese. And I don’t know who is stronger.

Don’t you really?

I don’t know which part of me is talking to you, I have no idea what the other part is like. I don’t know who I am. I just have seen a faint shadow flitting across my vision in bright sunlight. I just have felt an anger so unrelated to my elation. I just know there is someone else who can command my body, my blood to run through my veins, my heart to keep beating, my mind to leap to understanding, just like I can. And I don’t know who that is. 

That’s a pity. When I know every single thought you have ever had. 

I have tasted understanding on my lips when I know I’m still stranded knee-deep in oceans of confusion. I have tasted bitter betrayal when the victory was within my grasp. Sometimes there were things I never wanted to do, but I have still done. There were passions in me that I couldn’t enjoy, there was a thirst in me that would never be quenched. Instead there would be a drive in me, that I didn’t know of. And the fervor that would come to me, in my moment of glory, the one that was my own, I would see them ruthlessly obliterated in front of my hopeless eyes. And I didn’t know who he was, who was doing this.

But I know you. I know your every base passion, every thirst you have dreamt of appeasing, every breath that you have spent kindling the hunger waiting to be allayed. I know of every little sojourn you have plotted. And you don’t even know who I am. At least you know, that what you think you want will never happen.

I’m not scared of this other entity in me. But I believe I’m much more powerful than him. But he does befuddle me.

But you should be. Scared. You are more powerful? You could be. The choice is always with you. Power, we’ll see?

I found out everything I could about Spilt Personalities and read cases of Multiple Personalities, but no doctor I’d go to could find, let alone chase away this alien in my body. I wanted to be cured of this demon in me. But demon that didn’t exist for anyone but me??!! No, I don’t have blackouts, there are no periods in my memory that are dark and empty. No, I have no symptoms of forgetting. No one knows that that piece of thing lives on in me. Except him, of course.

Sometimes I really get puzzled, how can someone as intelligent as you be so dumb?! And I share your brain, so no one knows better than me. Split Personality? MPD?! Is that all you could come up with? Slow down, pause and look! I can see you.

***

I was chopping onions in my little kitchen in the only remnant of the divorce settlement, my miniscule apartment. My eyes were watering but my heart was burning and my blood, boiling. The whore had stripped me of everything she could. I think she even minded that I came out of the court-room with the clothes I had on my back. And worse, that she couldn’t touch a penny of the trust fund for my daughter. 

I missed my daughter. But it was best for her to be at my mother’s these six months while ‘my wife’ of a year and seven months and sixteen days took me to the cleaners. But it didn’t mean that I missed my baby any less. And the worst of it all was that the feeling was mutual. I could still remember every conversation we’ve had over long-distance calls, I could visualize her tear-drenched lashes and it took all my will-power not to lash out at the wretched woman for the pain she was causing us. 

Marrying her was the biggest mistake of my life. No, marrying the second time was the biggest mistake of my life. You couldn’t bring back a mother, a lover, a wife, your staunch pillar just by remarrying. Life in the twenty months with the second wife had driven me up the wall. I could feel the patience in me ebbing, my control nearing to snap. I never really appreciated before what murderous intent actually meant. And now, I had started living with it.

All I needed to do was remember the black-and-blue patches on my baby’s pink skin.

A sudden sound broke into my concentration. My muscles tensed, goose-bumps erupted all over my body. It was the front door. And it could be only one person. The whore still had the key.

“Hi darling!” She sauntered in, reeking of a perfume that made my nostrils burn, dressed in the latest fashion that her original status would have never fetched.

‘Did you miss me?’ She trilled, jubilantly. I hadn’t moved a muscle since she had entered the room. The chopping knife was still grasped tightly in my hand.


“You look soo adorable working isn the kitchen, sweetie!” Sugar dripped off her voice as she made herself comfortable in my kitchen, perching on a stool at the counter. I stood expressionless, unmoving still. 

“You know”, she said, looking around, after a pause, “I have developed a liking for this dump, too. What do you think?”

Life pulsed back through my blood releasing me from my immobility. And I snarled and leapt at her. And her preoccupation with theatrics cost her precious seconds as she tried to back away and fell on her back onto the floor. Making her an easy prey for me. And I lifted my left hand to strike her even as she braced herself. And we both froze in the act.

“Daddy, are you home? I want so badly to talk to you. I miss Mommy, but I miss you more. When can I come home, Daddy? Granny says it’s going to be soon. Call me please. I love you.”

And the answering machine whirred as the call ended. 

I stared into her face unthinking and I was completely unaware as a glint of shrewd speculation came back into her eyes.

“Are you sure, you want to do that, darling?”, she intoned softly and sweetly, from the floor. “May be I’ll leave this dump for you after all, because after you hit me, I’ll be the one taking care of that sweet little girl. Ask your lawyer.” And she laughed aloud.

And my vision blurred, replaced by a red haze as I felt my control snapping. As my mind was consumed by the same dogged sense of purpose that precedes murder. This time I raised my right hand above my head. 

I only dimly registered the look in her eyes change from amusement to bewilderment and then to fear and inwardly gloated as I brought down the chopping knife with all my strength right over her heart.

And it paused less than an inch away from her heart. And I couldn’t move my muscle a single bit.

Are you sure this is what you want to do? Is this you? Think of your daughter, of our daughter. Is this her Daddy? Throw it away, let her go, let her take whatever she wants. You don’t want to be a murderer, you don’t want your daughter to be tainted with that, do you? Just let go! There’s more to our life than her petty plotting. She’s afraid enough never to bait you again. Leave every bitter memory behind. Go away. Start afresh. Be the man you were. After all, you have me to combat every Evil that creeps in within you, you still have your family, you have your daughter and you have love. Learn to live again. And be the man you were. That self-assured man who had a single voice of righteousness in his head. 

Posted in Creations, Novelette, People and Relationships | 14 Comments

That Girl I Love

Posted on January 31, 2010 by Guria

I was newly in love with a girl who was scared of the mirror.
A traveller in search for the true meaning of life, I never knew that life was waiting for me right at home.
She was married. And she was happily married. And not to me. But I couldn’t regret that.
Her happiness was evident in the deep dimples on her cheeks that never showed signs of relenting. Her smile would come fast and suddenly, like the sudden bright rays of the sun peeking from behind heavy clouds, and dissipating all gloom. Her smile had that power of illuminating my existence, robbing me of all my despair and grief, and my senses too.
But she never really saw herself in the mirror. She could never understand what I saw in her. Every time she stood before that silvered glass, all she’d see was a thin and lanky girl, with nothing attractive whatsoever, no talents, no looks, nothing.
And I would gape in awe. Sometimes. At other times, I would burst out in anger.
How could she not see what she really was. A brave, beautiful and insightful woman. How easily frustrated she could make me with her denials about herself. And I would become angrier for I couldn’t show her, what she really was, how I beheld her! How I wished I could let her see herself through my eyes. She would never believe that she was beautiful, that I honestly thought so. She didn’t like being praised, she didn’t like being told that she was the light of my life. But she knew I loved her and that’s all she would ever accept from me.
The mystery of it all was that she loved me too. Almost as much as she loved her husband. I knew that. But still it was different. There was something spiritual, almost primal in our strange love story. She couldn’t do without me, like I couldn’t do without her. But there was a difference.
A stark difference in that, that we had never seen each other.
Were we just a figment of our each others’ imaginations? Or did we really exist?
Even if we didn’t, our love did. I know it did. It was written in every word uttered, in every word that spilled out from our hearts. It was there in the mornings when we found solace in each other. It was there in the outraged anger at the injustice towards the other. It was bright in the words we left for the world to see. It was there in how it was us or neither. It was there when we took every single stride together. Her excitement in my achievement, my happiness in hers. Her pride in how I would change the world and my secret pride in how she made the world beautiful. Our co-ordinated actions through out the day, missing the other madly. Our loved shined in every moment that we spent together and away from each other.
But I was a mere human in love with a Goddess, I had my moments of failings too, moments that tarnished the purity of our love. Moments of viciousness, of a murderous intent. Why didn’t I know her first?!
And moments of weakness, when I turned to the other woman in my life. I didn’t love the other as much, but she was there to console, to heal when my love was with her husband. And I capitulated always, out of anger, bitterness and jealousy, and a want for what I didn’t have. Missing her was a pain that made me too human. And impossible to bear!
But she was always there. In my mind, my heart, my soul. This strange world didn’t exist without her.
But I could never have her. And not because she was in love with her husband. There was a much graver problem. An unscalable one. Us. What we were.


P.S. This is a work of fiction. A strange one but still. And should be treated as such.

P.P.S. To Regular Readers- Imagine: If the narrator is actually the writer, then who is the girl? With this in mind, go on read it again! I think the meaning and the gravity of the piece will change remarkably! 😀 Love, G. 😉

P.P.P.S. For those who don’t understand, simply enjoy the post! Others, still need help?? I did say I’ll help! See here! G.:)



Image Courtesy : crunkquotes.com
Posted in Creations, Love, Non-Fiction, Novelette, Passions | Tagged | 28 Comments

Staying Back

Posted on January 22, 2010 by Guria
A Conversation with Self (Indecision?)
“You let them stride forward, let them die
You here to survive or give up in a fight?”
Placatory words or empty threats,
Couldn’t budge him from the resting place.
“There was a duty to be done.”
“Please don’t sing that song,
It had already been sung!
Cowards maybe but they are still alive;
Dead are rejoiced but are unmoving
Remembered today, forgotten the next!”
“It’s a done deal, no going back.”
“Staying where you are will get the medal,
To be adorned over your dead mettle
Handed over to your widow
Nothing but a keepsake for the gone,
And you still want to stay on?”
‘I’d die if I stayed alive when the children cry,
Die of shame of running away,
Die of being a fallen warrior.
I’d rather not breathe knowing what I didn’t
I’d rather be dead knowing I gave my best
Of trying to save mankind, and life!
I will stay back, maybe to die,
But not just with a forgotten honor
Maybe in my last ditch try,
There will be one saved life.”



N.B. People usually don’t understand my poetry, it’s not a problem if you don’t either. 🙂 Love, G.:)

Posted in Creations, People and Relationships, Verses | 22 Comments

Catharsis Part-IV: What a Start to a New Year!

Posted on January 13, 2010 by Guria
Writing a post is not as easy as it was. I mean, I’m jealous of those people who actually have jobs and yet manage to dole out wonderful pieces of write for their blogs. I didn’t write when I had time; blame Facebook. But now that I don’t at all have the time, I miss MM like the pain of an old wound you had gotten so used to.
Last week, the first of the new year, I took a break that I was entitled to for over a year. And what a break it was! Wonderful place, breath-taking scenery, the coolest of weathers (the way I like ’em), engaging company, traveling in fast cars and me running 102˚F temperature. I hated it. And boy, we sure know to pick the trips. No internet connections as usual, evenings were spend playing cards and me under the blankets, as I had a tendency to be blown away by the sporadic gusts of wind. Dad’s mobile web wasn’t working, a bit later neither were the phone calls facilities active, my cousin’s intelligent act of bringing is laptop backfired as the connection there also failed. Top it with trouble in ‘paradise’, thanks to the activities of the hospitable, nice and warm people who go by the name of Maobadi-s! Let’s not go into details about the finer aspects of our trip, and skip over the punctured tyre that couldn’t be changed, failing brakes, melting rubber, my hyper elder cousin, frantic relatives, tiffs back home, power failure, me as weak as a bamboo leaf in a storm, heat stroke at 5˚C weather, my cousin falling ill after me, my uncle with slip-disc, hundreds of cups of tea, broken stone roads, lunch-less short trips and slippery rocks around the waterfall, and let it suffice by saying, it was a memorable week-out with the newbies in traveling by car. Psst, we traveled around 700 kms one way to reach the place, which is at an altitude of 3100m (that was reached in mere 30 kms, with ~30 hairpin loops, needless to say how steep the ghat roads were!)

This week I joined a Project in my Department faculty’s lab. I would have gotten a project anywhere but the only reason behind the decision was the people I know, friends I have working in here already. And fingers crossed, I am enjoying the work, till now. Though I’m  still more ecstatic about getting a day-off today. A friend of mine in the next to next lab asked me whether I was planning to do my PHD from here only, ‘I have no idea why you are working so diligently for a damn project!’, though she didn’t tell me the short-cuts like how to work less for just-a-project, and its difference with projects in PHD. But I agree, always ask a lazy person for the shortest and the most efficient routes and planning of the work. Plus, job-delegation is another of my speciality and it’s good when the other person you are working with thinks less work is equivalent to sacrilege. So, I’m happy with my working conditions.

I am working on yeast genetics and signaling on the interface of MAP Kinase pathways and cell growth. Using deletion mutants of Schizosaccromyces pombe lacking components of MAPK  signaling cascade, I have to over-express cdc25 of cell cycle to see the effect of the same on signaling and cell growth. Routine work till now, let’s see whta happens post-transformation. Previous experiments tell me that I’d better be on my toes.

S. pombe: the fission yeast I’m working with.

But, I decided I want to be a house-wife erm, home-maker with servants at my beck and call and then sleep all day. When I wake up I want to blog, read and play. Though my fiance dashed my hopes saying we’re aren’t going to survive on single salary, just to make sure I work and he dangled the coveted Porsche as a bait over my head. People have this notion I’m brilliant and should be in lab, they just don’t understand I’m expeditious and lazier than them. Anyway, even though I was really pressurized the last few months about having no project in hand, I’m very skeptical about my decision to join the lab. I was having a great time, sleeping and lazing all day long. And the worst part about working is I not only have to get up early in the mornings during winter (it’s pretty cold in Cal), I have to take morning bathes too.


So, not telling my fiance, I’m trying to find options for me that will help me to earn money by staying at home. Suddenly I find Adsense a lucrative and shining path for easy money. Surely, there’s some compensation of having a 100+ followers on my blog even though most are not readers! I wish I could also convert hours spent over Facebook, farming and tweeting into dollars (and spend them as rupees). Or I can even take over the theoretical aspects of the research work while delegating the actual tasks, experiments to others, and being involved only in observations and conclusions. After all, I do love the subject and enjoy it too. I just don’t like the hours I have to keep! So, I am doubtful how good I will be working labs that too in a foreign country while doing my PHD… I guess, I’ll have nothing better to do, and then I remember around $26,000 p.a…. well, that’s incentive enough, I think! At least I won’t be working Saturdays there, they won’t make me!

“Dear God, I promise to make good use of them, just don’t make me work too hard for it”

N.B. To Self: I wrote a post!!! G.:)


Image courtesy: ehow.com; ftp.cs.kuleuven.be; mckeogh.googlepages.com; blogs.poz.com

Posted in Catharsis, Life | 16 Comments

First Snow

Posted on December 23, 2009 by Guria
It was snowing very early in the season. 
Meera hated the snow. For some reason it kept reminding her of the trail of blatant red her drunk mother had left in the white lawn before she had placed herself in the way of the speeding bus. Everything else had blotted out.
Winters and snow had meant she’d be drinking in, and the neighbours witnessing her departure to her place in fair weather with her bottle in hand, spilling along the way.
This was their first Christmas without her. Her and her aunt’s. It took little for her aunt to burst into tears but Meera was secretly glad. Truth be told she didn’t miss the woman who had died. The mother she had loved had died long before that.
Meera silently decorated the tree bringing out the dusty ornaments that hadn’t been used for almost ten years. Her aunt was sitting by herself by the window alternately looking at the snow, and the photograph of her dead sister in her hand.
“She loved the snow, you remember”, she said.
Meera mumbled something incomprehensible. Her aunt didn’t notice.
“It meant that her Meera and she had to go out into the snow, tussle and fight and roll around”, she had a faraway look in her eyes, smiling at a stray memory of the past.
Meera froze in her act of hanging the mistle-toe. She didn’t want to think of the first snow. That it used to be the best time of the year. For her and her mother. 
“Cathy, I don’t want to talk about her. Please, Cathy. Don’t. Why don’t you snap out of it? It’s been a year for God’s sake. Get out of it!”
With every syllable uttered Meera got angrier, “I don’t miss her for one bit. She didn’t when she started drinking. She didn’t when I came away to live with you.”
As expected her aunt started to cry. 
Meera sighed. She should have known better than to harp on that again.
She went to her aunt and crouched in front of her, “I’m sorry, Cathy. I know it hurts you that I didn’t love her, and that I don’t miss her. But I do wonder what she did to deserve so much loyalty from you?” She added with a derisive laugh.
Cathy looked up, her eyes glinting. 
“She gave me back you.”
Meera froze. 
“What are you talking about?”
Her eyes were blazing, Meera saw, not from tears but rage and something else.
“She gave me my daughter.”
Guilt. And Remorse.
“Whaa–aat??”
“I had you when having an illegitimate child still meant living in the dumps, shunned from the society. My sister hid the truth and me from prying eyes, and away from me killing either you or myself. She gave you a place in the society as her own daughter, loved you as such, and let me have you, too”.
Her eyes flashed but her lips quivered, “What do you call that?”
Meera was transfixed. She stared into her aunt’s face seeing nothing.
She was illegitimate. The mother she had known wasn’t her real mother. She couldn’t grasp it. She looked into her aunt’s face. No, not her aunt, her mother. Her biological mother.
She stood up abruptly, and shook her head as if to clear it. 
“Well, she didn’t do a good job after all. I had to fend for myself. The semblance of a family I had was taken away from me. The drunk mother.”
She turned to leave.
“Yes, the drunk mother.” Cathy replied softly, looking down, “Who came to learn that her husband had fathered her sister’s child. Who was hurt and betrayed by every person she had loved. Whose daughter, the centre of her life, albeit unknowingly, chose her biological mother over her… Yes, she was only human.
“It is Christmas-time now but her Christmas was only ever with you. You were her family. God, how the two of you loved the first snow.”


N.B. I understand you may not at all like this piece. But I am writing after a long-long-long time. Just felt like getting off the mark, anew being less choosy and less critical, taking head-on the block that has developed in my mind, that keeps telling me I can’t write worth shit. Whatever your opinions and inputs, however, I gladly value them.  Love, G.:)
Posted in Creations, Love, Novelette, People and Relationships | 35 Comments

Saying Goodbye

Posted on December 15, 2009 by Guria
Would you understand if I said that I’m a mere human? And one of the lesser ones? As much as I tried to scrape my way upwards to make more of myself, to rise above all the small and frivolous things, I always manage to slide back down. I have also cherished dreams of being big, but I never learned to stop feeling with my heart. You can say I don’t have enough scars, yet, that just another hard tap on my nose will fail to bring tears to my eyes.
Petty things still make me jerk up, with widened eyes that crunch with hurt in the next instant, and lower with unwarranted shame. I try to be good, good for not only me, but everyone around me. But it is as if, their failings are all ploughed against me, than them, whose jubilant laughter at my tied hands, make me feel further away from the person I so want to be. All the small things, a small of word of hurt, a sneer, mean little pranks, a loud voice calling me names, a rebuke, I am above them all, aren’t I? But how do they still reach out to me, smack me and make my eyes burn? So finally I give up. I have to leave, I’m leaving for the world of anonymity where I will be alone but content. I will have only me to think about me. 
Expectations are the real culprits, I know that just like you do. But I do not know yet how to stop. How to stop loving, stop expecting? All I can say, I need to leave to stop that hope taking birth in my heart, misinterpreting every gesture, thinking you care. I’m saying goodbye because I am not strong enough to let the current play and take me places of hurt where I never wanted to go. I’m leaving behind people I love, I know, and some may even love me back… but the lure of anonymity, the pull of being free of my own expectations for once overcomes me. I’ll say goodbye till I can come back greater and bigger… above and beyond being hurt, with no hope, loveless and no expectations of anyone. That is what growing up is all about isn’t it? I can’t ever return, only a heartless cynic can.


P.S. Chill, I’m not giving up blogging! 
P.P.S. This is not about me! G.
Posted in Uncategorized | 19 Comments

All in A Day’s work

Posted on December 5, 2009 by Guria

This post has been published by me as a part of the Blog-a-Ton 5; the fifth edition of the online marathon of Bloggers; where we decide and we write. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton.

The first Saturday of every month. It happens like clockwork. Trepidation and excitement rolled into one. Furtively I step around, work and home left behind. Excuses, one after the other, each more feeble than the last. 

“Let it go“, screams my mind. But I am like a dope-deprived addict swaying madly, frantic at even the prospect of what might come, what might be. This time I won’t, I promise myself, chanting over and over again, convincing myself. But as the day dawns, I imagine them working, striving, building, creating. And I sneak out. I am compelled to. 

“You can’t“, sneers the mind, “look at you, a life in front of you, deadlines that will make your future all set, only if you do not digress. You want to give that up for a single day’s recreation?” I turn a deaf ear, I have to, the choice was always made, only I had stopped to delude myself. I will keep trying, have to, no matter what, pushes the stubborn will, and the weakened resolve. 

The first Saturday was here. it was the day for Blog-a-Ton.

I ran over to the venue. It was time. The day had begun.

There was fire all around, glaring and dancing around the huge black boulders. There were stalactites and stalagmites, but black as soot. It was a place made of rocks. Everyone around looked like a square, just like their profiles in Facebook, sitting around. And each one of them had a laptop. I had come empty-handed, nothing with me as yet, just to see how others were doing. They looked up as I entered. 
The Marshal was flexing his muscles, baring his teeth, “You’ll never get my vote, you worthless lump!” 
Madhu, the defending champion, came over and said soothingly, “Of course, you are good. You are the Maverick! But I’m better!!”. He cackled madly.
I couldn’t believe two of my favourite people could say that. Men are cruel, I thought, nearly in tears.
And I bumped into The Solitary Writer, “You wanted to compete with me, eh? Watch me tear you apart!!” I stammered, “You were supposed to be my friend….” But it dissolved into nothingness,as he transformed into something big and green in front of my eyes. When suddenly Shilpa appeared, “Don’t worry girl, don’t mind them, let’s play Farmville.” I actually heard horses neighing and saw reindeers (?) flying. 
But it wasn’t to be. I couldn’t be content, just farming. I went ahead deeper into the cave. The daylight was almost absent there. I saw a very tall lady sitting on her haunches. When she saw me, she stood up. And I cricked my neck trying to look at her, whoa, she was at least 7 feet tall. “You don’t remember me”, she said sadly. “They call me Lambi.” She made to shake my hand, but I was so scared thinking that she will wring my neck, that I ran away. And bumped into my friend Neha, “You were supposed write in my blog, and you are here??”, she screeched. Sid was there (I could see his “Stupidity” name tag) and he doubled over laughing. Pawan was shaking his head, “You were my friend but alas, no more”. Shankar telling me, “I won’t ever let you ride my Ferrari” Anamika crying, “You are a good-for-nothing Bengali”. Dhiman was shaking his head too….
I was now bawling, tears were flowing uncontrolled, unashamed…. everyone hated me…. just because I had no post! 
Suddenly the Marshal tapped on my head and cried in a booming voice (he now resembled Hagrid), “The hour is approaching. You will vanish at 0000 hrs. Be warned….” 
Where had the time gone? I had to write, write for my life. Anything, anything at all. I saw I had a pen in my hand all along, but I couldn’t pry my laptop open. 
Then I saw Avada Kedavra, The West Wind, Roshmi come from behind, they were casting Patronuses, “Don’t worry, keep fighting. We are still here. You can write. Just think”. 
And I thought and thought and thought, darkness was becoming even darker, and I was still thinking, all alone. Every one had gone home. And I started writing about ‘Saving the World’ (!!) with a stick in my hand on the dirt. And it was almost ready. I started running…. The Marshal was laughing jubilantly, as he was pulling the the huge rocks together, with bare hands, closing the gates. And out of nowhere a hand came out, Bharathi (looking something like Rannvijay of MTV Roadies) pulled me in. And now I could submit my post……….

The damned beeping alarm woke me up before I could complete the whole dream, err, nightmare (which was more of a result of Harry Potter, lack of ideas, being not-too-cold, and a very warm quilt) and submit my dratted post. But with it came relief, and the  realisation, the day is just beginning, there’s still time for writing the post. I can stop running around, and there weren’t actually those embarrassing tears. And I will write and submit just to get these scary multiple personalities off my back.

So, all in today’s work : 
  1. Write down the nightmare. 
  2. Apologize to everyone. 
  3. Share laughs?? (Please be lenient)
  4. Get back to my deadlines.
  5. Get a life?
And last I saw, Madhu, Stephen and the Marshal are as nice as ever. All of the characters are still my friends. And Shankar doesn’t have a Ferrari. 🙂 🙂

N.B.  I am grateful that I didn’t dream of each and every one of my blogger-buddies. I don’t think I would have been any shape to write the post then. As it happens, one was one too many! 
The nightmare is partially true. Embellishments are obviously there, but please do NOT be offended (this is supposed to be funny, if you are awake). Or should I say,

“All the characters (not names) are purely fictional, any resemblance to any living person is a product of my over-active imagination, and a sign that I care enough to dream about you (even if it is in a nightmare)“

Lots of Love,

The fellow Blog-a-Tonics who took part in this Blog-a-Ton and links to their respective posts can be checked here. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton.

Posted in BAT, Contests, Laughs | 60 Comments