I didn't have to act yesterday. It was effortless. The repartee, the gossip, the banter all came naturally to me.

Naturally and swiftly.

I was easy. I was playful. I responded to the jokes well. And after a long time I could also emote. Yes emote. That's important for me. I cannot talk if I'm not emoting.

The eyes need to be keen. They should also twinkle. In surprise. In glee. In zest. In tantrums.

The eyebrows should move, too. Though not too readily.
And, the smile....It must be distinctive. Adjusting itself to the changing contours of one's talk.

He said I did all of that with aplomb.
Yesterday- when I went to see him, my first among few friends at ACJ.

And that makes it decidedly certain. It is not disdain that I feign up towards other people. It's not delusional either.

I really am not able to gel with every other person. I am alive when I'm with people I like. Like I found this boy in ACJ.

And also this other girl, who now teaches in perhaps some Anganbadi. But with her, it wasn't that regular. We both were taciturn.

But, I'd remember her always. When I write my books, she will even be the protagonist in one of them. She'd be the Lady who walked tall.

He showed me the new motor byke he has bought. I even liked the color. If I were a child, I'd be jealous. I'd make scratches on it and run away.

There's something strange in my physiology. I just cannot eat when I'm not well... Like nothing. Yesterday all that I could take were two tiny helpings of idli.

So until this fever subsides, I have to survive on fresh juices. I feel listless... How embarrassing it was the previous afternoon. I couldn't even push open the glass door. I was such lacking in vigour.

The HR promptly got up and helped.

What would Suneel Nair would have thought?
I can understand. It ended there all.

xxx

I have two more days to spend in Chennai. A couple of batch mates rung me up. They must have learnt it on FB. I'd meet them both. I'd be seeing another friend, who I called up myself.

XXX

What do I want in life?

Maybe a cottage in the meadows, with mammoth trees flanking all around. And I sitting by the side of a big window....

glancing at the streams that retire into the valley... watching the cattle herded into and back from the hills... forgetting myself upon the notes of the cuckoo..and writing about it all..with nobody around..

I, me and a dash of romance..with my thoughts, my words.
The written word is the most powerful expression of love. Self love!

When people have nothing else to become, they become Great. They become Selfless. Some even become Secular.

How our perception changes with time!

I almost muttered that word in exquisite joy..
"Hurrah.." When I landed in Chennai this afternoon...

The dusty roads and the unkempt crowd, the packed trains and the thug auto-wallahs- all of which nauseated mightily- looked suddenly pleasant.. I even liked the weather....which was cool and breezy..

XXX

It's Grandpa's (Nanaji) death anniversary today. And I just delighted myself with Annapurna's mouth-watering fishes..... No, I hadn't yielded to temptation. It was a slip-back.

Nanu had passed away barely months after I was born. He died ABANDONED.

Not that there wasn't anybody around. Nani, mama, mami, mousis all surrounded him like bees surround the jaggery.

But that one person who he loved the most, and in whom lay his very perception of life, was missing. My mom.

She had just left my dad, and hence, she would not be allowed to meet her dying father. Uncles and aunts had all sided with dad, making petty efforts that he won my custody. I still do not know, whether it was the lure of money my dad might have assured, or sibling rivalry at its worst.

Mumma, the Goddess avatar that she is, could have easily silenced them all...But the effort, that one exchange of a verbal duel, might have cost Nanu his life.

Nani was unaware of it all. Her letters, that she would write to my mumma, explaining how critical her father was, and how sorely he longed to see her, never reached her.

The servant was bribed.

They didnt even tell her he was dead. Mom learnt it from others. Rushed to her mother's place to find the body was already taken for cremation.

She afforded a last glimpse of him only at the Samsaan. In a daredevilry that brought her lot of disrepute. An upper cast Hindu woman, that too from an elite family, would not be seen in ghat those days. That was late 1980s. People were hide-bound by convention (Ain't they still?). But who cares when you need to bid adieu to your father. For one last time.

XXX

Will the Goddess put things magically in place tommorow?
I hope, I pray, I protest- that She does.

XXX

Habit truly enlaces us its way. Just three months at home, and I've been speaking Hindi in Chennai.

First it was the Auto-driver. "Eggmore ka kitna loge?"
He, although baffled, sensed it yet. "75 longa" Or, may be it was "Loeinga."

"You Pig.. 75 hota hai yahan se," I muttered in my mind.
50 anna, I copied the Chennai accent.

The Deal was done.

Now at the internet parlour, I tell this man, "Ek ghanta extend kar do." He looks at me. With an expression that suggested: Jab tere ko malum mujhe Hindi nahi aata, tu Hindi kyoun bola.

"I'd like this extened by an hour," I corrected myself.

XXX

IN CHENNAI FROM JULY 26th TO JULY 30th

Will this come?

Or, will this be another fleeting glimpse of false happiness?

That, anyway, the Goddess has to decide.

I'm no longer praying to the Goddess now. I'm confronting her, I'm questioning her. And I'm asking her to be responsive to- what even she would acknowledge is- steadfast loyalty.

She has to.
And, She will.
Eventually.

Only that she wants me to be patient in failure, a situation I hadn't hitherto handled. Because I hadn't hitherto failed. Still, I'd rather defy than yield. I've been passionate about winning all my life. And I love the way I have been. That zealous desire to succeed is what sustains my identity; there is no way i could restrain that....Reduce myself into a diffident being...into the unwarrior-like tortoise that wins not by merit of swiftness, but by the gift of, what the world calls is, "wisdom!"

I have little passion for a win as unimaginative as that. I would rather be the rabbit. And I would not sleep midway, either.

The Goddess has to discern this. She should stop forcing me into being the tortoise, when I don't want to. Who cares if that wins?

I lit diya before the Goddess today. It was not a sudden, isolated gesture, invented to win the bounty of Gods. I have been praying over the years, anyway. While in Chennai, I had put a framed picture of the Goddess in my room, which i worshipped each day.

I dont share the gen-next fixation over an unseen, unknown God, which anyway is borrowed from the Abrhamic concept of faith. Im a descendant of Manu, and I love deifying idols. And unlike what the time journalist has to say, I'll not rot in hell for believing in polytheism.

I pity such monotheists, who at the false or genuine pride of having found a "perfect" god, jibe at others' faith. Some even work to make the idea of unseen, unknown God more tempting, more fashionable. Gennext become their ready consumers.

Im not suggesting one should be necessarily a disciple of Manu. Being a disciple of Adam fulfills the purpose just as well. That's what my religion teaches me, anyway. But this acceptance has to come from other quarters too.

I'm obviously referring to those countries, where Hindu Gods are printed upon the toilet seats.

It's 13th July today... A quiet, rainy day that I spent on my 7th floor apartment.... Watching the Ganga open its bosom to the clouds.... And the fishermen peddling their boats, in awful hurry to get back to the bank..And this lazy afternoon reminding me of days now long bygone.. Vibgyor of indelible moments reappear in silent reveries! It frolics with my heart, it woos me awhile..

But Im the pining lover with only a willow in my hand..

Oh how sorely I miss ACJ!
It's one year exactly..
I'd give away anything for last year's 13th July to be back..

I liked Anonymous 99.
Liked very much indeed.

For a long time, few people had tried to understand me, feel for me, and come across, in the process, as accommodating...Somebody who is ready to be polite despite my mood-swings, my arrogance, the enigma that people say surrounds me, and for all of which, I become a bad person.

I liked him/her. Very nice person.

But a little stupid. If he/she is nice, why would he/she need to become Anonymous 99. Can't blame him, though. It's become a game, already. And people would play it, and have fun.

Leaving me to ponder, get baffled, and guess names. Is it fun for me, too?
I know not.

Is it's he? My infidel friend, who still remains a pal... Despite the infidelity.
Or she? My one time well-wisher, who ditched me for her ping-pong pal?

Look Anonymous 99.
Reveal your gender. That's the least you could do. You are nice person. Live up to that.

XXX

I leave for Delhi today. And I come back day after tommorow morning.

XXX

Life is a journey.
For some, a comfortable one. With lots of merry sojourns...loving friends..Companionship...

Others are sailors, 15th century sailors looking for undiscovered lands- a wicked monster called "fame" inciting them to pursue what they may never find...

But in an era, when Raavan becomes (screen)God, monster are ideal people to enslave ourselves to.