Thursday, September 13, 2012

How I wish I could talk to her all day,,,,,


They say some people can move mountains with their words. I always disbelieved them. I used to talk to her on a daily basis in person. More on the work related front. One day I happened to talk to her on the mobile. It was really amazing....!
I had never sensed her voice to be so sweet that it could launch a million products. Now I am sort of addicted to her voice. Can't think of talking to anyone else but her.

I just call her, as I can't think of anything else to do. However hard I try not to call, subconsciously my hands dial her number. Always my mind thinks of her. Whenever I call her I am thinking of what she might be doing. As soon as she says something once she picks the call I can judge if she is in the right mood. I can differentiate between the normal Hi, the bored ya tell me, the interesting Hiiiii!!! which sets the tone for a sweet conversation, the Hi Dear, which tells me she is in a jubiliant mood, the softer and slower muttered hi saying someone is around and I should call her later. Her varied uninterested response saying she is not in the right mood now.

As I speak to her I hear the trinkling of the jhumkas in her earrings. It is as though they are the background music caused due to her hearty laugh. The more she laughs the more pleasing they sound. There is something about her voice, which keeps me eternally in raptures. There is subconsciously an effort to make her laugh. An effort to flatter her, compliment her on every small aspect. While talking to her the mind runs amok thinking about her, reminiscing the good times spent with her, the mind paints a colorful happy face of her. Its just that the mind worries when there is a pause in the conversation if she got tired holding the mobile in one of her hands and if she is shifting it to the other hand.

I can sense her moving out of the crowd to talk to me in private. As the winds blow in the hindsight of the conversation I cant help but think of the effect they would be having on her beautiful wavy hair. I hear a lot of people wishing her and I can just assume that she must be balking in all that attention.

She is a demi goddess; anyone who looks at her is usually lost in thought. What effect she has on people is really amazing and I sense a bit of pride somewhere within me which likes to tell others, boss I know her well and want her badly than anything else in life, you better keep off. I can always visualize her playing with her long gold necklace. Her hands can never keep still, they are tapping on something, or playing with the necklace which goes deep down her neck caressing the silk clothes she is wearing, the friction of the gold chain against the silk causes an eerie sensation on her body which results in a small moan in her voice when she talks.

I can feel the mobile slipping on the clear face of hers, so smooth and white and so soft and deft to touch. Just like the face of a new born. Once you touch the skin it just appeals to one so much that involuntarily the hand wants to remain there and enjoy the touch that bit longer.

I am usually at loss of words, in awe of her authority over words, the clarity of her thoughts. I can't help but nod in unison to her views. I am sure when she is talking with such vigor, the large brown orbs in her huge eyes will simultaneously be checking whether anyone is noticing her? Her free hand will surely check on her dress, then her hair and then check whether her sitting posture is all right?

She is confident, well read, has a view on everything under the earth. She is a guide one can fall back on. She is a keen observer whose x-ray eyes sees through anyone's false claims. She plays with the mind, always plays mischievous pranks, plays hard to get. Mocks at one to come and get her.

Just her voice causes my heart to beat faster; just listening to such free flowing sweetness of the laugh causes me to breathe faster. The mouth goes dry in anticipation of what she might say.

She is like the pole star on a new moon night. The only person who I feel is close than any other distant star. The only one who can provide direction to me. The only one I feel is closer to me than anything else under the sun.

I always think is it possible that a voice can give such immense joy? Can a simple voice direct the tides of my emotion just like the moon affects the tidal waves in the night? Can a voice direct my actions? What is it about her voice that I am always engrossed in the finer moments of life and without which life seems meaningless.

I would have loved to tell you more. But sorry I have a call to make... :)

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Hoping they still ply the Double Decker service that takes young princesses around Bangalore to introduce them to their citizens.


     Almost 7-8 years ago, late on a Sunday night Vicky asked me if I could accompany him to kancheepuram. His sister was getting married and we had to shop for her sarees he said. He called at around 11.45 pm saying we will start early in the morning to get there before it gets sunny and humid.

     Me,  Vicky his sister and mom left early morning at around 7 am. All of us opined that it would be better to take a driver along, so we picked up a driver en route at Hosur and reached Kanchi by around noon.We contacted the people from the guy’s side who were already in Kanchi for their purchasing and ended up in the same shop. 


     The showroom was a huge place with lots of people selecting the sarees. Usually one salesperson would sit in the midst of a group and a few helpers would get bundles of sarees and the salesperson would start displaying them to the everyone and start describing the inherent qualities,elaborating and exaggerating things about the saree trying to allure the buyers.

     I looked around and saw lots of people like us who had traveled from nook and corner of the country just to buy that extra special grand Kanjeevaram saree for the special day.

     Suddenly I spotted a familiar face. Was it her I thought? No it can’t be, is she the person whom I once knew, my god she is so beautiful now I felt. She stood like a damsel in the midst, trying on a beautiful saree with a rich zari. She was looking at the mirror just verifying if it would suit her. She was so beautiful by herself that any dress would look grand on her. Oh my god she has grown so tall and has such a poise to her already majestic presence I thought.

     I for a minute thought if its ok to go and say hi to her, maybe pull her plaits of hair just like I used to  when she was young. I checked to see if she still had that twin plaits of hair, which I used to ridicule her with. I was surprised when I noticed the long bouncy hair she had now. I was still in a state of surprise /disbelief and was trying to remember if she was indeed the person I knew.

     Once I was sure that it was her, I wanted to talk to her badly... It was after so many years that I happened to see her again, so much to catch up with. I checked if anyone I knew was accompanying her. I didn’t see her mom  nor her dad, it seemed that she had come with her fiancĂ©e’s family.

     I was like someone who had suddenly found a lost treasure; I wanted to loudly proclaim that yeah life had taken pity so that I could meet her again. But as always saner and wiser judgment prevailed.

     Though she might still remember me, still I shouldn’t put her to inconvenience I thought. I wasn’t sure if she actually did remember me after all these years.

     Her mannerisms made me realise that she had recognized me; I could notice her occasional glance towards me in the mirror whenever she was trying a new saree by placing it on her body. Trying to find out from me if the dress matched her. Still I was not sure if she had recognised me so once our shopping was done we moved onto a different shop. It was late in the evening when we started for Bangalore. It was raining heavily, in no time Vicky, his sister and mom were fast asleep. I could see the sense of satisfaction on Vicky’s Sister's face. Everyone is tired I thought, I was trying to engage the driver in a conversation lest he succumb to sleep.

     The rain was getting heavier and hence our advance was getting slower. I began to see the downpour and remembered the saying we have in kannada which implies that when you meet a friend after a long time, our first reaction is to mention that it surely will rain today. This I thought was true in my case.

     Looking at the rain I remembered those days. It was in the late eighties that one of my neighbors had a visitor from Hyderabad. She was a school going kid who had studied in residential school all her life. It was her first visit to Bangalore. My neighbors had to rush to their native place for a day due to some emergency and hence asked me if I could take care of the girl till they returned in the evening. I didn’t know what to say, I said fine and invited her to my place. There she was a small girl with a pink top and gray sneakers. She sounded funny with the braces on her dentures. She was so shy and scared. We played snake n ladder, ludo, brainvita and monopoly for a while. In no time she was bored.

     I was scared if she would start crying asking to go back to mom or ask for my neighbors. I asked her if she wanted to go out somewhere. That question brought a big smile on her face. I told her in Bangalore we had a bus on a bus called the double Decker in which only princesses were taken around Bangalore. Even the birds on the big trees used to bow to the princess and that even trees gave way to the princess. The princess could sit on top of the world and look at all her citizens in Bangalore.

     She was excited about it and asked if they would allow her to be the princess for a day and if she could go for a ride in the same. Those days there were quite a few double deckers plying on Bangalore roads, I chose route no 150 between market and shivajinagar. She seemed very excited, happy, elated and satisfied at the end of the journey to cubbonpark. She enjoyed the rides in merry go round, giant wheel etc in cubbon park. She had decided she would buy herself a horse when she was older at the end of the pony ride. She loved the toy train ride and was visibly scared when the train went through the small tunnel. It was almost evening when we started for home, the entire ride had taken a toll on her and she was visibly tired and hungry. I took her to the candy shop to buy her some cotton candy so that she is occupied till we reached home. She was surprised to see cotton candy. She told me it was the first time she was seeing it. I told her that the cotton candy is a very rare sweet. Only very few people in the world can make it to increase her curiosity, she was amazed to see how the guy could just wave the stick in air and create a candy out of nothing. She stomached quite a few cotton candies. She pestered the candy shop fellow enough untill he could make a candy in her favorite color yellow. At the end of the day she was happy and asleep by the time my neighbors returned.

    From then on she used to visit her aunt (my neighbor) every summer. She would eventually bump into me to borrow books. It started of with Tin Tin and Tinkles. Then moved on to Enid blyton, famous five, secret seven, Nancy drew, Hardy Boys etc. And then my neighbors shifted their house, so my lone point of contact with her was lost and she was restrained only to sweet memories.

        We were near hosur when finally the rain subsided. I was back from my thinking and reached bangalore late in the night. It was around noon the next day when I got a call on my mobile. When I answered the call a sweet voice asked if they still took princesses around in Bangalore in Double Deckers to introduce them to their citizens. At the mention of it both of us started laughing. She started her normal barrage of questions. Where are you, what are you doing, etc. I mean here she was calling up after ages but still felt she had the right to question me like this. I could sense the excitement in her voice; there were a lot of things she wanted to talk about, lot of things she had to say. True to the meaning of her name she was speaking sweet. (Priyamvada in Sanskrit means one who speaks sweet always), She started talking like old times that I never bother to call her etc. After a while she told me that she was getting married soon. I said it was evident when I spotted her in Kanchi. Then came her shocking disclosure that she never had been to kanchi and if she wanted any sarees there was a nice shop called Kalanjali in Hyderabad itself which had all the sarees one would ever want to buy.

    I can only say, this girl truly does keep me guessing. I wonder as how fast time flies, I still remember the small tiny scared little girl with pony tails wearing a pink top and gray sneakers on her first visit to Bangalore. I remember vaguely that day all I had spent was ten or twelve rupees. Now Bangalore has grown different and so has she.It is only the sweet memories that remain. But I hope they still ply the Double Decker service that takes young princesses around in Bangalore to introduce them to their citizens.

    Now I want to take my little princess, my daughter on a trip of bangalore, but alas most of the Double Deckers are already history. Other than the kaveri which plies once in a while, can you guys suggest any Double Decker still in service?

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Pop kiss this valentine !!!!

Not very long ago, when I was still studying in college. Every evening I had to take care of a private circulating library. My dad had bought this library for a cousin of mine. He got a job somewhere and my dad kept that going, as he didn’t want to give up what he had started. I used to hate doing that. It used to be open only between 6 and 8.30 in the evening. I used to be really awry to be in the library from 6 to 6.30 by which time my dad would come back from office and relieve me of my duties. Usually we were a big gang of friends then, around 50-60 to be correct. We all used to meet up and loaf all evening on bikes. I could never relate to the library, as it was something I never accepted I would continue. So I would be counting minutes and finding reasons not to go there.


But things were about to change thanks to a lovely damsel.

I used to know her mother who used to come by daily to pick up some film magazines. She was such a sweet lady. One fine day she came along with her mother. She was just like freshness personified. She was arguing with her mother on a novel for great lengths. That was surprising I thought, I used to read a lot of novels myself and was an ardent reader of reader’s digest, which was her personal favorite too. It all started slow but slowly I used to stick around for a little late everyday just to get to meet her. But she always used to come with someone in stow and it looked like her mom always sent her out with a bodyguard of sorts. I never used to bother initially, as I used to be a very shy person and was known to everyone in the area where I stayed as someone very studious and intelligent types. There was an amount of respect in all towards me. So I couldn’t get involved in what all despised.

One fine day after she returned a book I found a pink sheet of paper, the ones used in writing pads and it was carefully placed so that it would be noticed and it was smeared with an expensive fragrance. I thought maybe she had used it as a bookmarker and I kept it aside and returned it to her the next day. She quickly said it was not hers, I could notice a speck of fear in her innocent eyes. She was worried if the gardener of her house who used to accompany her noticed it. I was perturbed by her answer, but again found one more of those in the book she returned that day. They kept on coming for a week and I had a collection of those in no time. Every day I saw her it was as if her eyes were trying to ask something and she wanted to say something. But thanks to the bodyguard it was just too much to comprehend in too less time with too much of information crisscrossing through the eyes. She just said even walls have ears in a very low voice and left.

That night I took them all home, I didn’t know what to do with empty sheets of paper, but her voice kept ringing in my ears “Even walls have ears”, then it suddenly struck to me that she was trying the old method of writing letters. I used a candle and lo behold there were the letters in front of me written in soap and visible only to me and destroyed as soon as I read them.

She was really doing a great job, playing well within her limited options still managing to send a letter to me. I was amazed at her thinking and really flabbergasted at her repertoire and choice of words.

Then we switched to the books style. She would mark the words in the book with a pencil and I would have another book with the answer. The ingenuity of the approach broached very well. I was having fun at doing such things. All of a sudden I started waiting for the response and was taking pains to write the answer etc.

Still we couldn’t meet and talk anywhere, we both used to find time to talk to each other at the Indian institute of world culture library. We would visit the library there over the weekends and behind those book shelves get some private time for each other.

She used to cook things, get me things she cooked for me to taste. Life was at its magical best thanks to her fondness and beautiful presence.

In early 1994 she sent me a coded message, it read across 20 pages, a character in every page and once I could write it down it read, “will you be my valentine“

I really didn’t know what it meant, I had to go through a lot of friends and read quite a bit of literature to realize what she said.

We both planned to go out on a outing for a day. She had lied at her place about a special class in the morning. We decided to meet near the railway station.

I was there early in the morning; she came there a bit later. She was wearing her favourite Levis jeans and a white top. She had presumably had a head bath and her hair was still wet. So the first valentine was a trip to mysore. We had a gala time together.

There was no fear as we didn’t know anyone and there wasn’t the constant fear that we might bump into someone we know. That is still in my memory as it were yesterday; it was as though she had kept all her passion and emotion pent up, which was just to be released on that day. Sitting next to her on the door of the train, seeing all those paddy and sugarcane fields pass by, I was filled with joy that was unknown and unheard of till then. I had never believed that a person could matter so much that just by her presence someone can weave magic that is pleasant and one wouldn’t want to end. We were like long last pals who didn’t want the day to end. She was a lethal combination of good looks backed with loads of trust, simple yet elegant, lovely yet mature, in sum total she was answer to all questions.

During our times we didn’t know much about valentines, didn’t have access to communication methods like people have today. A lot of communication was through the eyes, reading between the lines, all sounds classical now, but still I am nostalgic about those times. Wish they had continued the same way. Now everyone is accessible on their mobiles, asking someone out is just an sms away and families are far more liberal and broad minded. But given a chance one would love to go back to those times. But for her maybe I would never have learnt to read the eyes, communicate using the eyes nor comprehend happiness or sadness just by observing people. She taught me so much. So when last week one of my friends said I was highly intuitive I remembered the reason I tend to be intuitive. So its valid when I thank her for making me what I am today.

She always used to talk a lot about valentines… She had read in a mills and boon about a long lasting sensuous kiss which the author had termed a pop kiss. When the guy kisses the girl, the kiss is so sensual that her left leg goes up pop in the air. She said one can make out just by looking at the girl, a blushing face, a face red with the lovely pain on the lips and eyes which still want to close to relish the experience…

I don’t know if she ever got a pop kiss but I would hope and wish all my friends get to experience a pop kiss this valentines.