A Tweedledee A Tweedledum...
Orange juice and Caribbean rum...
I listen some I talk some...
and I write a lot humpty dum-dum.
yeah i don't make much sense most of the times :P
an attempt to do more than just create a cacophony of mismatched words, abstract lines and mundane phrases (which is probably what i would finally end up with!) from occasional serious issues to regular nonsense (self explanatory) for the smart and the not so abled (affinity being more for the latter) by someone who just marginally manages to escape from being garrulous :P
" Monica: What's that noise you just made? Chandler: Oh that? That's my work laugh. Monica: Your work laugh? Chandler: Yeah, and if you want to survive this party, you'll need to come up with one too."
" Chandler: Okay, I don't sound like some crazed, drunken pirate. Monica: I know you don't. But work Chandler does! "
From: FRIENDS- The One With Chandler's Work Laugh
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Now I have a work laugh too. And a work talk (no talk rather) And a work smile. In fact, I'm living a different person's life at work. And I have no idea why! I'm hoping it will change though...
Anyway, Hi! I am Work Divya. Not an avid blogger apparently. She'll come around. Hopefully, soon.
Such hypocrites I tell you! For the records, I have finally joined Cognizant and am officially a working woman! *taaliyan taaliyan* So anyway, as I was saying, such hypocrites! Who? Well, here's who: I am a straight girl, as in non lesbian (just stating a relevant fact, no revelations). So what do straight girls do? They look at guys; attractive guys most of the time. And that's what I did. I happened to spot one good looking guy in a batch of 270 and well, I used to look at him whenever he was around. I'm pretty sure it wasn't the dreamy 'oh-I-wish-you-were-mine' look; I know better than that! Yeah so well, what's so controversial about that? Don't guys ogle at girls almost ALL the time? Like, duh-huh! But when a girl does it, and it becomes slightly(ok, very :P) obvious, people have to create a big hullabaloo. Suddenly there are friends' of the guys inquiring about the girl as to, 'what kind of a person she is'. Ermm.. a normal heterosexual girl, thank you! Suddenly a whole bunch of the guys' batch mates gang up and act like goons when the girl is around, in an attempt to ridicule her. Suddenly the guy has on the spot bouts of extreme unnecessary attitude. Suddenly everyone in the batch thinks all the girl thinks about is the guy and everything the girl does is an attempt to get to talk to him. Hold it you buncha nincompoops! She's already bored of the guy! Ok, so most of it is just either acts of unconditional immaturity or outcomes of lack of social evolution. But to question the intentions and may I say, integrity of a person just because she (I will not say, he because that circumstance never arises) found someone attractive? That's taking it too far. And why is that it is okay for a guy to check out girls but not vice versa? I don't get it! Such hypocrites I tell you!
I moved in to a new flat last month. It's right on the main road. For the past one month, there has never been a quiet awake moment. It's either the loud share autos, or the blaring Pondi buses or the never ending two wheeler crowd...you get it. But today, as I was sitting in my favourite spot in my room, looking out of the window, I noticed, that one side of the road was filled with vehicles moving away and the other side completely empty. Not a single vehicle, not even a bike coming towards my side. And I noticed that striking resemblance it had to my present life, however cliched that sounds. Today is a bad bad day. So was yesterday. Sukdi left yesterday. Monk-ey has been relocated. Bhai will leave this month. This is a bad bad month. I've been losing my friends for the past one year. One by one, they left; some from the city, some from my life. And there haven't been anyone coming my way. And now suddenly, my best friend, Monk-ey too; and so soon.
I haven't moved out of Chennai; I won't, for a long time. But Chennai, whatever part of it I had come to love, is slowly fading away.
Hello! Nice day, eh? Splendid indeed yeah. Remember those sweet nice things you heard as a child that made you believe the world was a wonderful place? Things your parents/grandparents/forefathers/old wise guy of your family talked about? Well, you know what? I'd like to punch whoever it is who came up with all that shit load of crap so hard in the nose that it comes out of his/her butt hole. 1> Hard work pays: Wrong. If you're lucky; born with that lucky line on your palm your palmist talked about, you win. Else you're a goner. 2> Good things come to those who wait: NO. They don't. People who wait just get squished by people who don't. Or they end up being 40 and single. (No dearie, that's not a good thing!) 3> Nice things happen to nice people: Wrong again. Nice people waste time being nice and miss out on all the fun. So stop being such a pansy, take a deep breath and say fuck off to the next guy who jumps the queue. 4> Everything happens for the good: Ha! I don't even know how this one stood the test of times! God save the next person who quotes this to me :|
No offense to anyone, I don't intend to prove anyone wrong. I'm just thinking aloud. And I'm happy blogging about it. Cuz my parents have definitely had enough of all this gyaan from me.
Life was fine. Not the best possible one could ask for, but I was happy. Heck, I was very happy; with the people I loved, doing things I loved. You get the point!
I have a new driver now. My old driver left for some personal reasons and now we have this guy who is new to Chennai and knows nothing about the roads, the routes and the traffic. Anyone who has been to Chennai will know what I mean when I talk about Chennai traffic rules. There ARE no rules. You find your way and go ahead, any way! It is hard to find a vehicle here which does not have at least one dent on it
So our new driver, who is used to roads of Dubai and earlier, Mumbai, is extra cautious about driving, waiting for all the vehicles to pass and going oh-so-slow. I mean, very VERRRRY slow!
It was one such time when he was crawling through the roads of Chennai that I lost my cool. I was returning home from a temple and had to get home and watch a movie. And by the looks of it, I wouldn’t have got to watch the movie for a long time!
‘Anthony! Why are you driving so slowly?? You’re letting all the vehicles pass us! Can’t you go a little faster?’
‘Yes Madame, ok Madame’
A minute passed and 10 cars overtook ours.
‘Anthony!!!’
‘Madame?’
‘A little faster!’
Silence.
‘Do you have something important to attend to, back home Madame?’
‘Not particularly, but it won’t harm anyone to go a little faster, would it?’
‘Madame, how many times have you taken this road?’
‘Loads of times. This was the road I took to college, for 4 years!’
‘How many petrol bunks are there on the way?’
‘2. Why?’
‘Ok. What about temples?’
‘Quite a few, around 4 or 5.’
‘Hmmm… and which is your favourite house on the ECR (east coast road)?’
‘Err… I don’t know… never looked so closely.’
‘Madame! You’ve travelled this road for 4 years! And there are so many beautiful houses on this road. There’s the one with a lot of bougainvilleas, the one next to the Muthappa temple, the one with the high walls surrounding it, the one with the tall trees... and you can’t even think of one?’
I was stunned. I knew Anthony had never been to the ECR before. And yet, he had seen all that I had never cared to see. What was I to do hurrying back home? Watch a movie filmed in some faraway land when I didn’t even know what was there in my own?
And then I was silenced. I saw the old woman selling jasmine strands next to the shop selling home décor and artificial flowers. I saw the women selling fish near the deserted bus stop, yelling at the top of their voices. I saw the lamps flicker at the temple and heard the bells ring. I saw a beautiful house, with a swinging chair in its balcony. It looked like somebody had just left the place; it was still swinging. I saw a woman spanking her kid who was covered in mud or what looked like mud! I saw a bunch of slum kids trailing a foreigner who was trying to dodge them and laughed at the poor lady’s panicked face. I saw a boy and a girl holding hands at the ice cream parlour and that made me smile. I saw a lot of things, and went home and forgot all about the movie.
The first few years were like a dream. Husband, wife, a two year old boy and a half a year old girl- happy family. And then the cement factory he worked for closed. Now that she thought of it, then was probably when things had started falling apart. He had to move to a shady place which was a good 8 hour travel from their house. And so Sunita had to stay alone, while her husband visited her every once a week. She worked as a maid servant in the houses nearby- all for her husband and the children. The work was too much for her frail body to take but she thought nothing of it. Her husband had given her a reason to live and she worshiped him. After all, if it wasn’t for him, she would’ve been working in some sleazy brothel. Quite naturally, she didn’t see the signs when he took to drinking in her absence. Or when he started sleeping with another lady in the other town. She did not ask him where he stayed the whole week. Or why was it that every week, he seemed to give her lesser and lesser money for the family’s expenses. She did not once suspect him of dishonesty. Her love for him was beyond all such emotions. Until, when one day he came home fully drunk, swaying from side to side and cursing people she had never heard of. That was the day he had first slapped her and only because she had asked him why he was drunk. He had hit her and kicked her and called her a dirty whore. He had shouted at her and repeated again and again that he should never have married her, that he should have let her rot at her aunt’s or maybe at the place where they had planned to take her. It had made no sense to her then. She still loved him. She said nothing. She could say nothing. But then it became a routine affair. His visits reduced, so did the money. By the time the third child was born, Sunita had to work at three houses. And when on some weekends he did come home, she had to endure the insults and pain. But still she could not bring herself to defy him, to yell back at him. Her love did not stop her anymore, for it was now buried deep under a surfeit of emotions of fear and gratitude. Her duty was obligatory. Her moral self wouldn’t let her shout back at the man who had helped her at the most crucial juncture of her self. She was trapped under her own feelings of liability that forbid her to even bear thoughts against her husband. After all, if not for him, where would she be now? No, she could not say anything against this man who had saved her from peril, not even when she had heard he had not one but two other wives in the other city; not even when he hit her and robbed her off her money; not even when she suspected he had started hating her. She could not be disloyal to her once hero. But now, sitting there at the brink of the dirty stream, she thought of everything she had had to endure. Her eldest son was 16 years old now. She had lived with a man turned monster for the past fourteen years. When he wasn’t around to torture her, she dreamt of him torturing her. Why was she living like that? She had suspected for long now that he was stealing from her and giving it to his other wives and other children. He did not love her anymore. As for her, she didn’t know. Even if there was any love left in her for him, it was too far beneath all the fear and hate she felt for him now. Yes, he had saved her once, but he had enslaved her for a long time now. And she could not bear to make it forever. She was working after all, in fact for the past so many years she had been single handedly managing the household, no help from him. She didn’t need him any longer to drain her money and well being. She remembered her mother had told her once that a woman was incomplete without her man. She had believed that and lived by it for so long. But she could not take it any longer. She had three children to look after, the eldest of whom was already helping her with a little income. She was not alone in the world after all, and she didn’t need him. The sun was out now. It shone with a fierce brightness. She had made up her mind. She felt a small tear run down her cheek, her last minute of weakness she thought. And she felt strangely elated. There was a garbage heap clogged at one side of the stream. She found a long stick and prodded at the heap. She could see the water below, muddy but uncluttered, with an urge to gush ahead. After all these years of self imprisonment within her own endless heap of complex emotions, she had never thought it possible that she would be happy at the thought of leaving him. But she was. Happy. Very happy. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CELEBRATING WOMANHOOD INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY 2009
Apologies for posting this before coming out with the part 2 of Light At The End Of The Tunnel. But, this just had to be posted today. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Life changes so much in just a few months. Sometimes, a few months, is a lot of time. And yet, sometimes when you think of it, those few months would’ve just flown by. -------------------------------------- He left by the 9:30 train. She knew it would happen so. What was she expecting for? A miracle? If so, what? She was the reason he had left, and she knew the story was over. Things were back to how it should have been and they were leading their own separate lives. Yet, it felt weird to her, that he was leaving town. -------------------------------------- She hoped for something to happen. She didn’t know what, but something! No, she didn’t want things to go back; no, that was silly. But was she happy this way? She was ok. And she knew ok would turn into happy, some day. She thought of all those movies she had seen, where the hero would dash into the railway station, at the last minute and proclaim his love for the heroine, just in time. And she smiled, at the goofiness of her thoughts. Yet, she wished for something to happen. But she knew nothing would. --------------------------------------------- And nothing did. He left. And she went to the temple nearby, to pray for them to be happy, leading their own separate lives.
It was the wee hours of the morning. The sun was just rising and it was still dark. That beautiful time at the start of the day when people woke up to look at the face of their loved one lying beside them, waking up to the chirping of early morning birds that sung sweet tunes of love into the light breeze that carried the mild fragrance of blooming flowers. It was that beautiful hour when any normal person, if awake, would feel blessed for everything that he had in life, especially for that special person. All but for one woman; she sat by the side of the dirty old stream under the bridge, all alone, with a dead look on her face. No, she had no special someone to thank God for. Sitting there, despite the foul smell of rotting garbage from the stream, Sunita felt strangely better than staying in that dingy hut of hers- The hut where she was held captive by her own inhibitions. But what other option did she have? She looked at the dirty waters of the stream, stagnant, the floating rubbish making it move sluggishly. She closed her eyes and the events of the previous night came rushing back to her. She had had just a moment to look into those brown eyes of the man whom she had once loved; who, until a few years ago was her everything, her hero, her savior, the reason she was alive, her God. She could scarcely stand up, shivering and whimpering in front of her husband, seething, his eyes bloodshot, bellowing at her. She had hardly had time to move, when his hand had come hard upon her, sending her smashing down to the floor, face down. Her head hurt and her cheeks burned but he had not been satisfied. He was shouting like a mad man, dragging her by the hair as she tried hard not to scream and wake up her three kids. What if he did the same to them too? Her nose had started bleeding and she was slowly beginning to lose consciousness. Maybe it was the blood, or perhaps the copious amounts of liquor in him had taken its toll because he had left then and gone to sleep under the only creaking fan in the tattered hut. She had then huddled up in a corner and cried, not too loud, lest he should wake and beat her up again, lest she woke up the kids from their peaceful dreams. She cried the whole night until finally, at some point, she drifted off to sleep. And now she sat there thinking of all the dreadful things he had done to her. She thought of all those times he had beat her, stamped her, snatched away her hard earned money only to return unstable and violent in the night, his head full of brutal and perverse thoughts that only alcohol could induce. When had it all started? For there was a time, she had loved him. There was a time she had seen love and kindness in those brown eyes. But now she was living with a fiend whom she did not love, who scared her, who had betrayed her, who had enslaved her forever. Sunita was 14 years old when she had fled with her brown eyed hero who used to work in a tea shop next to where she stayed with her step aunt. He was around five years elder to her and was always full of stories that he heard from the workers who came to the tea shop. He used to tell her that he wanted to run away from there one day and go to the city that his worker friends so often spoke about. She was mesmerized by his descriptions of the magical place he called city. She was fascinated by his words, his voice and the way his brown eyes widened with excitement when he talked of his plans. She hadn’t been in love with him then, or perhaps she was; she didn’t know. It mattered little now. She remembered the night that she had overheard her step-aunt talk to a big burly man who had come to the house. She had heard only snippets of the conversation ‘….yes grown enough… just the right amount… not bad looking… good money… pick her up in two days’. Sunita was old enough to understand what the conversation had meant. And she had known there was only one person who could help her right then. And so she had fled, with her brown eyed boy in the middle of the night. He was tall and strong and she had a feeling of utmost safety when she was with him. She was in awe of her hero, who seemed to have it all planned out. It had been difficult, the first few weeks but she knew all was well. She was living with the man she loved and who loved her back. At least, it seemed so at first. (to be contd...)
Me: Kangaroo… repeat after me, Can-ga-ru… starts with a K! Kid: Eye yo… teacher you know nothing! It’s Gangaa-roo! Me: : | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Me: c for? Kid: errr… Me: carrot. C for carrot Kid: c for carrot. Me: g for?? Kid: errr… Me: g for gate... ok? Kid: yes teacher (with an oh-so-sweet smile) Me: e for?? Kid: idli? Me: no. Elephant! Now tell me, c for? Kid: c for sun, g for jug (yet another sweet smile) Me: sigh… ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For a long time now I’ve wanted to blog about what’s keeping me busy of late. I am volunteering at the Olcott Memorial High School, a non profit charitable organization (I had posted about it earlier here) and I absolutely LOVE it :) I had started off with fund raising work which involved traveling, marketing and lots of ECS forms. Now, I teach. Yep!! I have around 250 of my very own students who call me teacher! :D well, at least, most of them do! The 7th and 8th stds don’t though... they think I’m not old enough to look teacher-ish :| I’m a multi specialty teacher :P -> Math/ Computer/ English… how cool am I! :P *wink wink* And NOW I know what my teachers had to go through with brats like us! But even when the students are yelling at the top of their voices, pleading with you to let them go to the toilet (8 at a time!), pulling at your salwar, running around the place, complaining about another student (but teacher, he hit me first!) and what not… they are still adorable (mmm… except for when the little ones get a cold… that can get eeewww!) and the kind of respect and admiration they have for a teacher is worth it all :) Plus it’s a great experience to work with such an organization and to interact with the students. Anyway, so that’s what I’ve been up to… and I also need to make a special mention of the headmistress here… Mrs. Lakshmi Suryanarayanan… Oh. My. God. What an amazing woman! There are very very VERY few people like her! Think I’ll keep my reason for a next post… there’s so much I can talk about the school and what all I’ve learnt from the place. I’m so happy I decided to volunteer there :)
