To the Pedantic Penis

Enough is enough!
This is my space, my life.
I will do whatever I like.
Don't come in my way.
Don't interfere.
Don't tell me I can't.
Keep your pedantic penis to yourself.
If I need any advice,
I'll ask.
Keep out.
Stay away.
I can run the home.
Manage finances.
Light the fire.
Change the bulbs.
Open jars
Mend the car.
Take out the trash.
Also,
Cook,
Read,
Clean,
Do the accounts,
Write cheques.
Wash the dishes,
Lift weights,
Manage children.
Run, drink, smoke.
Climb mountains.
So, take your dirty shoes,
The wet towels.
Your soiled laundry.
Your moods.
Bottles of beer.
Overflowing ashtrays.
And your food critique.
I am done with your ego.
And dare not call my vagina vain.
It's far more liberal,
Than your ideas on the gays.
Or your jokes on blondes.
It's not that I don't love you.
I just love myself more.
As I should.
So, find some other place.
Don't sully my space.
I can manage without your "help".
In fact, if you seek my opinion,
It is you who needs "help"
Not me.
Can you make another person
All by yourself?
Think.

"Travel is Rebellion in its Purest Form"

I must tell you right up that I am  not rich or famous. Also, that I do not have a huge budget to spend on travels. So, if you say that I travel on a shoe string budget, then you will not be wrong.

I do.

I am also not a world wanderer but, I plan to start doing that someday soon.

I must also confess that I do not have an expensive camera to click earth shattering photos. But, what I do have are, a streak of rebellion against anything that smacks of discipline and an eye for beauty. That makes up for lack of expensive equipments.

You are right in thinking that I am not your usual safe job and still life kind of person. I like trying out new things. I am the person who tries taking a different route everyday to reach home.

Believe me. I actually do that.

Often, conservatives label me as a creative person - read quirky here. Their tone suggests that I maybe someone neck deep in debt and sponging off my folks. Believe me, they are actually very far from truth. I work. I work hard and live not very lavishly. But, I fend for myself and do okey!

So, I can safely say that I am a rebel against straight-jacketing. I hate to be put in a pile with others under a complacent label.

I believe that a few risks are necessary in life and one should take them. Travelling is perhaps the safest and the happiest risk that you can take.

I find that when a person is traveling they are different people.

When away from my city, I am not me.

I am free.

Free of any obligations towards anyone I already know. Free of any images or classifications that label me in my world.

I am an unknown and no one expects anything from me except perhaps a smile and some grace.

Whenever I go away from my usual life I feel a lightness of being that is almost physical.

I carry on even on a twisted ankle or with a slight fever.

Actually, I think I get a slight fever every time I plan a travel. I think it is the excitement that does it.

So, when anyone says, "let us go for a weekend trip." I would mostly say, "Yay!" Unless I am bone tired or flooded out.

Sometimes, I do pretend travel as well. Just go around the city I am in and behave like a tourist. I bet a lot of other people do that as well. But, a whole lot do not. And these are the disciplined, straight-laced people who are actually doing their best to save the world while, people like me and my ilk go around loitering and discovering.

Why am I writing this?

It was yesterday when I heard someone say, "travel is rebellion in its purest form!" in the middle of a boring speech, it popped open my sleepy eyes. Believe me before he'd said that, I was dozing on my feet like a horse!

So, that it what it was. Said my mind. Hmmm...

When out on the road, I eat anything, use public washrooms and forget all about sanitizing my hands!

I sing and break into a dance and walk to my heart's content.

I talk to strangers and smile at the locals.

I request strangers to pose for pictures and am often asked to handle unknown cameras to click those family photos of complete unknowns.

I try local food and practically live out of the box - literally and mentally as well.

It makes my heart soar. My adrenaline rush and lips smile involuntarily.

Since I am a self-confessed shoe string budget traveler, I do not have to worry too much about spending. So, that is an even bigger freedom.

The only thing I check is to see that the place I stay in or the road I travel on has enough safety checks. It works for me mostly though it may not for others.

Safety is the only thing that scares me so, I try moving in places that are not too far off the beaten track. A small compromise if you ask me.

I suggest travel as an antidote for most of you. Especially if you are out of stories to tell at parties and get together or just to yourself when you are down and out.

I suggest that you all go out on shoestring budgets if money is a bother and a hindrance just, go on small trips near your city or town. Search the Internet and see if it has the facilities like, safety for women and the elderly, food, doctors, accessibility to public transport, scenic spots that you can just walk up to for free and overall a happy ambiance.

Personally I prefer places not really frequented by tourists but, to each his/ her own. If you like crowds - so be it! But, go. Don't wait for money, right weather or children's long vacations...

Trust me, you will not regret going out. What you may regret is never doing it while you could.

Happy traveling folks!

By Road in India - A photojournal

In the last few years I have done several road trips thanks to a friend and brother who loves to drive and because of my own need to loiter and walk around. Another reason why I started traveling by road is the recent inability of my parents to use public transport due to advanced years.

I love to walk around on roads that have been traveled by a zillion before me. I can walk the length and breadth of the country and not feel too much fatigue unless it is peak Summer! :)

Luckily for me, I am in North India and near the mighty Himalayas.

I love to see sunsets and sunrise from myriad different roads and angles.

I truly believe that India is best traveled by road.

The green and the browns of the fields make up for the most beautiful tapestry.

It is more interesting than railway journeys because people have selectively encroached upon spaces next to the railway lines making them ugly extensions of your cities and their mess.

I am not much of a photographer because I do not possess any expensive cameras or camera phones. However, it does not matter because, India is incredible. I do not know how else to put it. Here a few moments that I wanted to share with the world that have been captured by me and my co-travellers over the last few years:

Jaipur by night

Jaipur at sunrise

Agra - Jahangir's bath tub at Agra Fort

Assembly building at Lucknow

On the Road, Delhi-Jaipur Highway

Chakala (Image courtesy: Barsha Chakraborty) 

Waiting for pizza at Pushkar (Image courtesy: Barsha Chakraborty)

Kangra

Taj Mahal from the Yamuna

Window from the Past, Delhi - Jamali Kamali

Kangra, Young girl

Sunset, Mussoorie (Image courtesy: Vikek Garg)

Monkey business, Lucknow

McLeodganj

Amritsar, Golden Temple

Bhangarh, Ghost Town

Bhangarh, ghost town

Jama Masjid, Delhi with a happy family (Image courtesy: William Buckner)

The momo lady, McLeodganj

Rishikesh, reclining meditation 

Rishikesh, Ganga

Sunrise @ McLeodganj

Mussoorie, Queen of the hills

Inside Bara Imambara, Lucknow

Lucknow evening on the road

Shimla

Taj Mahal, Agra (Image courtesy: Deepayan Basu)

Taj Mahal at dawn

Copyright: All images are personal clicks except for those mentioned in the caption. 

When Music and Lyrics Found me Once More

In the house of lovers, the music never stops, the walls are made of songs and the floor dances.
~ Rumi

If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour!
~ Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

All the poets, mystics and bards cannot be wrong. Music relaxes, soothes and rejuvenates. Right? Yesssss... but only if it is healing and not hurting you. I have been now trying for months to write this piece but, did not know what to say. I know now that I was staring at it from the wrong end. So, I'll write here about not only how I was lost to music and lyrics for years together but also the joy and gratitude when I was found.

There were these close to ten years of my life when I hated music - something I had loved from the time I was a kid - but it did happen - all because it seemed to be a thing my tormentor (seemed to) love and enjoy. It was a reflex that I failed to either understand or acknowledge. I acted delusional, thinking I had outgrown music and poetry. I know. Foolish woman! Right? I agree. But, you have to understand that I was trying too hard.

And then, freedom happened. It took them (music and lyrics) no time at all to return to their rightful places - in my ears, heart and mind.

Those few years when music of any kind gave me headaches and made me want to shout out aloud were strange. I label them weird because it was not music's fault but mine for trying too hard to fit like a square peg in a round hole. It was also the fault of other people in my life for mocking and laughing at my sensibilities and shocking me with their attitude not to mention their 'affected and bad taste' in music or let me be sweet and say 'different,' that was thrust on my face day in and day out. Hammering at my senses, eroding my taste till I thought  all music was noise and poetry was stupid too. Blasphemy? Agreed. But, the raw truth.

Music and lyrics, my dear friend for ages, my companions through adolescence and early adulthood, had not deserted me then even though I had closed my ears and eyes to them and packed them off on an unknown journey. I heard snatches in my mind while travelling or working and more than snatches when cooking and even when reading a good book. But, for years I turned off music and lyrics only listening by mistake an odd Bollywood release quickly turning it off before it got too loud for my senses to bear. Not even Sufi music would sooth me. I sometimes heard music just to blend in. Not really listening but, nursing a headache behind a polite smile. It was a strange phase. It will remain in my mind the phase when I tried to conform. 

Music, I have realized, goes with freedom. If you are free to be happy, free to be sad, free to think your own thoughts, it will become your constant companion but, if someone was laughing at your choices, mocking your valor and I call it valor because it takes guts to try, anything and everything, music flees from the region around your ears. It also flees when trying too hard to be someone else just to make people around happy. They also become alien when you know you cannot love nor are being loved. When life becomes a pyramid of making the 'right choices' to survive - music and lyrics stop making any sense in that world.

But, I don't want to dwell on the time when music had fled my world. No. I want to celebrate the fact that now, we are back together once more and it's been a good two years! Time to clink crystal and say, "Cheers!" to two years of freedom.

Just one word of caution to whoever is reading this: Please take it as a very serious sign when you turn your back to music and start thinking it is noise because it is perhaps the first alarm set off together by your head and heart that things are wrong. Very wrong. Just run from the situation and back to music and lyrics because therein lies your salvation.

Be happy always and dance when you are cooking or walking on a lonely road because you are never alone with music and lyrics playing in your head. 

With my heartfelt thanks to Tagore who put me to sleep with his wonderful music every night throughout my crazy and difficult adolescent years.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6srT3VWSzRk

Les Misérables, the Movie (2012)

Watched Les Misérables (2012) last night. I had been hoarding the DVD for a while now. Had a feeling it would be a great experience. I sat glued to the screen mostly with a hand on my heart for the entire length of the film. The tears came and went and dried up on their own...
Anyone who says stars cannot act or great stories cannot move when presented in different formats is simply ignorant. I was touched, awed and inspired in equal measures once again by Hollywood's ability to strive for excellence and bring something new to the table. In this case a musical version of the beloved French  literature classic.
It was a delight to watch so many good actors come together and create a magical performance that blew the mind to bits. I am not going to use the word 'great' here and damn myself because, if you ask me, the film worked because of the seamless effort of the ensemble cast, the direction, the music and the excellent camerawork, the sets, the lights, the angles and the seemingly ageless story...
Hats off to my favorites, Anne Hathaway and Helena Bonham Carter they simply shone through and how effortlessly! One tore my heart to pieces selling off first her hair, then her teeth and finally her body to send money to unscrupulous couple taking care of her born-out-of-wedlock child.
The mark of great literature is that it never dates. Fantine could have been a damned woman, in any age, a single mother with no special skills to earn money. An abandoned and fallen woman with a young girl child who she has to leave behind to shelter her from life's ability to mock and thrash. She exists among us - dying, bleeding ans selling herself bit by bit till she has nothing to sell but her soul and finally her dreams!
The other, was delightful as always as the con woman stealing and pilfering at every step. No one can surpass Helena in enacting the strange and the weird with an exception to Johnny Depp but, he wasn't here to support her though Sacha Baron Cohen did a great job matching her stroke for stroke.
Hugh Jackman my favorite paranormal icon was so nuanced and restrained as Jean Valjean a character straight out of literary cannons that could have easily overshadowed everyone given the strength of the author-backed character. But, he came across as no hero but a victim of circumstances. A damned and desperate man throughout his life - in incarceration and also when out of the prison, he spends his life grasping at freedom and watching it slip though his fingers each time he thinks he finally has it. He came across a different person at each stage of his life and his eyes spoke volumes.
Valjean was the narrator of an extraordinary story and Jackman stayed true to that - not overwhelming, nor heroic (as we are used to seeing Jackman) - but, just as Jean Valjean would have been if he could have jumped out of the book. The restrain in his character was also necessary because Jean Valjean is a tormented man of God! He is scared but, his fears are not for himself but, for those he is responsible for.
Russell Crowe seemed lacking and because his portrayal had received critical flack all through last year, I paid some attention to his Javert. Javert was painted black by Victor Hugo. There wasn't much Crowe could do with Javert because he is a mean and one-dimensional soul. Though I felt Crowe tried his best. His final scene where Javert, unable to reconcile to the truth that he had been wrongly hunting down all his life, a compassionate man whose greatest crime was that he had stolen bread for his hungry nephew, commits suicide by jumping into Seine, reminded me of the scene from Shakespeare's Hamlet where the prince encounters his father's ghost and starts walking down the path of madness. A soliloquy is very tricky to carry and he does it pretty well though Jackman pulls off better ones mostly because he repertoire allowed him a host of emotions while Crowe's did not. Add to this that Crowe's presence cannot be ignored even if his character keeps on like a nag and sticks out like a sore thumb. I think he triumphs with the portrayal because that's how the character is in the book.
For someone like me, struggling to get in touch with their real self to rise above their Karma, this is a definite watch. The story of the damned convict Jean Valjean and his strong faith and compassion is sure to strike a chord as it did with me.
It also brought back memories of school summer vacations and me reading the story of the desperate and lost man stealing silverware from the church and the young men taking the road to Revolution that led to sure death. It is a story that wraps in too much, God, Revolution, Freedom, Love (so many kinds of it), Dreams, Hope, Hatred, Desire (for Victory and for Glory) and a host of other situations and emotions that make it a difficult read and if you are not in the correct frame of mind, also a difficult movie to watch. But, watch it you must - just do it at the right time - when you find yourself asking the most important question of your life, "why was I sent on Earth?"
While you ponder that, here is an excerpt from a song from the movie that points to the heart of the story:
"There was a time when men were kind,
When their voices were soft
And their words inviting.
There was a time when love was blind
And the world was a song
And the song was exciting.
There was a time...
Then it all went wrong..."