Emtea Time

Before opening my eyes, I knew it was too cold to bathe this morning. Still groggy, I stepped three flights down with a face swollen from the night before. I battled the cold  and stared blank at the world. Standing at the bottom of the staircase I looked to my left. Right. Started walking to the chai shop with two friends who weren't in the mood to take my morning tantrums. We quietly walked down a narrow gali. This gali can not accommodate cars. It allows cycles and motorcycles. These two wheelers dodge pedestrians, who in turn dodge two wheelers. The cycle-human traffic manages to keep the pace fast if not smooth. The lane also accommodates open mouthed fashion shops, shops for clothes, shoes, eye wear, medicines, electrical, atm machines and an insatiable variety of different eating joints. All shops have confused wires hanging loose on top of fashionable pedestrians. Ghetto.

I walked, lost in my mental notes of where to order from next, reviewing wall menus on the way. Like always, I marveled at how much the street had to offer. I admired morning office goers and laughed at unbathed faces. We walked silently. Morning time is not the time for friendship. So, I didn't know what my two friends with their unbathed faces were thinking.

We reached our spot. Our shop. Waited for fresh hot tea to pour out of a spout, into our tiny cups. Bread pakoras fried themselves on the stove. The radio whistled. Bhaiya ji sang. A pleasant hindi voice reminded us of an old song. Three of us, monosyllabic, stood, stared, blank, floating in our thought-less morning thoughts.

Reluctant to make conversation, I quietly watched them sip their tea. As if in slow motion, I imagined sugar and warmth going down their parched throats, in to their empty stomachs. I took a sip myself to reassure that feeling and stared long at their throats. Morning tea does wonders to spinning heads.

I stared long at my friends, letting the radio song simultaneously play in my head. Suddenly I caught myself smiling. Such random thoughts! I looked head down and shook my head. I realized I had been in my emtea time all this while. Useless moments with myself.

Almost shy, I looked at my friends to see if they'd caught me too. They hadn't. They were, of course, floating in their own emtea time.

Frozen Tales

Today my mother came to me very distressed. She said she was guilty of not being a good mother because she has kept the warmest blanket of the house for herself.

Baby its cold outside!

I have a feeling. The cold has frozen my brain. From the inside and the outside.It is a solid mass of hard cold rock with a thick layer of snow on the outside. Enveloping this layer is a semi solid water bag with tiny bubbles of frozen air too cold to move freely. On the extreme outside is a thin layer of ice which can be cracked with a soft poke of the finger. The skull doesn't exist, I think. I can't think actually. Severe weather conditions inside my head have made it a little difficult to make sense of the world. Everything is foggy, smoggy and sleepy.

It has been four years since I last spent substantial time in this wintered city. I am still trying to find traces of November romance in adverse January. Having returned after so long, I am also being returned to some thoughts, theories and experiences which have been timelessly typical to Delhi winters. They are as follows:

1. People who claim to bathe everyday or bathe in cold water are liars.

2. It is very important to spit out the green phlegm that winter cough and cold throws up in your nose and throat. I know it is very cold and you would rather park your ass in your bed and blanket and swallow the mucus back, too lazy to throw it out at the moment. But you just have to battle that feeling  Every Single Time! 

3. Don't feel shy blowing your nose in public. Remember to use paper tissues. No sweater sleeve please.

4. Make use of bonfires. The trick it to light up post midnight. Stand really close facing your palms to it. Once the front half of your body is warmed up, jump around to heat up the back. Switch back when required. Don't try too often or too fast, you may feel dizzy and fall into the bonfire. (remember to trip over the beautiful embers though)

5. Do not try to weigh yourself in the winter. The only way to know your reality is to stand naked on the weighing machine, early in the morning, right after taking a hot water shower. 

Among other things:

6. Cuddle up shady with the person next to you. Body warmth does wonders.

7. Find ways of keeping the toilet pot warm. 

8. Find an electric hot water bottle. Don't share.

8. Fight with your roommates, friends, siblings over hot water they used which you had heated for hours.

9. Count the number of chai/coffee cups you consume in a day.

10.Talk about the cold like you talk about the heat in the summer

11. Curse the sun. Love the sun.

12, Take care of your frozen brain.

13. Enjoy the song:

Psycho in the Summer

Dear Friend, 
You are going psycho in the summer if you consume any of the following on a daily basis:

1. Aam Panna
2. Mango Milk Shake
3. Mango flavored TANG
4. Fruity
5. Cut mangoes with vanilla ice cream
6. Plain cut mangoes
7. Mango Duet ice cream
8. Aam ka achar!

You are also a summer psycho is you do any of the following:

1. Enter the ATM for a quick AC blast when your friend has to withdraw money
2. Only travel by the Red AC bus and Delhi Metro
3. Make tan patterns on your feet and arms (with wrist watches, half/no sleeve tshirts, shoe straps etc)
4. Wear socks and gloves to prevent a tan
5. Enthusiastically wake up in the middle of the night to fill water in your cooler.
6. Go for a swim knowing very well that you'll bang into a zillion people in the pool
7. Constantly crib about how hot it is (Ha! You do the same in the winter)

Do me a favor. Listen to this. You'll feel better :)

Love

Summer Psychoanalyst

Things you can do in Bombay and not in Delhi

1. You can sit by the sea at the end of the day.

2. You can sit by the sea and vent all your frustrations

3. If you have nothing to do you can just sit by the sea

4. You can sit by the sea, have bhutta, chai, chuski and kulfi and not blow up money at an expensive restaurant.

5. You can sit by the sea and talk/ not talk for hours

6. You can sit by the sea, feel the wind in your hair and watch the waves go crazy

7. You can sit by the sea and make memories

Yes the sea makes you cheesey!

PS. Of course you can do this in any other city which has the sea but not Delhi

For four years now

I have been asked a zillion times:

Do you like Delhi more or Bombay?

And every time I just want to say

GET OVER IT GUYS!

Hair and Care

Now that I look like a boy (which I'm thoroughly enjoying) I can't help but notice other girls who have short hair too. But the problem is...where are they? I've known/seen so many women with short/fun hairdos, why can't I find them when I'm consciously looking for them?

I spent my day travelling in the metro (I'm a proud owner of the metro smart card now! All these years I was only an unsure visitor to the city, hence never bought one). I woke up in the morning and decided to let go of the rude autos and only walk or metro it to the places I had to visit. So on this busy day I did Hauz Khas to Chattarpur. Chattarpur to Rajiv Chowk. Rajiv Chowk to Hauz Khas and then back two times! I really traveled! In the ladies compartment. And saw soo many pretty women. Hundreds of them!

But not one girl with short hair.

I know they are there. But why in such minority? I wonder if I'll ever be in a place where all women have short or no hair. And the ones with long hair are stared at, looked upon with suspicion, judged for possibly being heterosexual. How many women can let go of that length, not bother to straighten, curl or blow dry, not own bands and clips - and just live a life where length, volume or quality of hair didn't matter, where hair was not associated with notions of beauty, where family members didn't freak out at the thought of a potentially marriageable girl looking like a boy!

I must confess, it took me a long time to convince myself to cut my hair this short. Some of my friends (and even random acquaintances!) are still recovering from it. Some tried to talk me out of it, saying it won't suit my big face, the shape of my head is not good, that I wont look graceful etc etc etc. Why such discomfort! Its only hair right? It will grow! Or maybe it wont. You will cut it, colour it, go bald, go patchy, go stripey! Do anything!!! Whats the big deal?

I think I want to do a study on this. People and their association with women's hair.

Coin Baba

Reluctant to brave the cold, I decided to spend a few more minutes in the warmth of my quilt. As I lay quite in my bed, I heard someone make a jarring sound with our iron gate outside. My mum calmly but quickly attended to her visitor and was back to her kitchen within seconds. It was a Saturday.

Every Saturday of our childhood, a man dressed like a baba - long hair, rudrakshed neck, overgrown beard, kajaled eyes, orange robes (or so I think) - used to come to our colony, to each and every doorstep on the ground floor, and scream 'Jai Shani Dev!!!'. My brother and I would promptly get up, borrow coins from our grandfather and run outside to meet our visitor. We would climb on to our grilled iron gate, careful to never open it, and pass our tiny hands through the narrow black grills to drop the silver coins in an open container he held out at us. It was filled with yellow-mustard oil. We would stare fascinated as the coins cut through the oil and settled at the bottom to join other coins and distorted figures with vermilion marks all over them. He would then chant some mantras in a cryptic language and move to the next door.

We did this every single Saturday. We never waited for him. But we always knew he'd come. He did. For years. I always wondered if he went back home and spent an afternoon cleaning the coins to give to his children. I also wondered if he reused the  mustard oil week after week.

Its been soon many years since I saw him. 

So when I heard the iron gate beat again this Saturday. I asked my mother if it was the same baba. She told me his daughter comes to collect the coins these days.
Coin baba died.