Life in a sweater

I wore the sweater on my journey to Bangalore. It felt nice to wear a sweatshirt. Warm and cosy. Back home, if you're seen wearing one, you've either got fever or you're raving mad.

I've never owned a sweater. Somehow, in Goa, it really isn't necessary. The weather is perfect at 3 in the morning, when you're insane enough to be out or you happen to be between 15 and 30 years old.

Pleasant weather accompanied me on the arduous journey to Kumbalgudu. Of course, I couldn't skip the fact that you have to feel extremely hot in that thing once the clock strikes the wrong side of 12. But I enjoyed the feeling of snuggling up inside the XL, finding my comfort spot in the bus and sleeping away the journey. Besides, when you're slim, it does look kinda cute to wear oversized clothes once in a way. Now that I've piled on the pounds, it makes one look depressingly larger than one actually is.

When you come from a place that does not warrant wearing anything more than shorts and a tee, it becomes sort of exciting to wear a sweater. It's like dressing up for an occasion. You wear that piece of clothing reserved for special occasions. Standing in front of the mirror, you check to see how the collar sits, or the way it falls just above your buns and fits just right over your wrists.

Also, timing is everything when it comes to wearing your sweater. If it's noon and you happen to be in one, you will risk looking like grandpa on his way to the bank. It must be a little chilly with a slight wind whipping around the ears, so you can hug yourself and fall asleep in class. However, if you happen to one of those haunting the streets at some unearthly hour, just your sweatshirt and you will find a certain idiot turned into a human icicle. Warm inner wear is safe. After all, you have to show off that sweater of yours. ;)

I have been living in the World of the Sweatshirt for 4 months now. Been there, done that in the sweatshirt I'm writing this in. One thing I've learnt is to carry more than one sweater when you move away from home to a place far away from the dry cleaners. You're so used to it that you don't realise that you begin to smell 'sweatshirty' even when you aren't wearing one (which is extremely rare). Even your bag emits the sweatshirt aroma: that mouldy-clothes smell mingling with a little bit of sweat, and the dirt and grime of 4 months of walking filthy streets and smokey by-lanes.

The black sweatshirt that I began my journey in has become my second (albeit pretty loose) skin. It has received, most lovingly, the peeling skin, the cookie crumbs, the omnipresent dandruff, and the occasional longing look of someone without one. It's a different question that the someone would prefer to freeze than wear a sweater that hasn't been washed for 16 weeks.

I'm going home....

I'm actually starting to miss home now. All this while, I couldn't have cared. I was away for the first time in my life, but it was fine. I didn't really miss things the way others in the hostel did. I was happy and comfortable. Adjusting to hostel life was easier than I thought. True, noone can sub the guys back home, but this was going to be home for the next few months and I didn't fuss. It really is a nice place to live in.

Maybe the realization that I will be back home in only a month and a half has made me yearn for it all the more. The semester break had to coincide with the Christmas break, didn' t it?! And Christmas is the most enjoyable time in the year, not only because I am Christian, but also because I am Goan. It's one of those festivals everyone celebrates. It's the season everyone waits for-there's parties and dances and food. The weather is really pleasant and perfect for both midnight mass and picnics.

People are reminding each other to book tickets; most already have. I'm travelling by bus and since advance booking doesn't start until 15 days before departure, I'm probably the only one who hasn't got a ticket home. Seats get filled up faster than an alcoholic's glass. What if I don't manage to get a ticket home? What if I've to spend the most amazing time of the year in an empty hostel when everyone at home is celebrating the 'family' festival? I know I'm sounding paranoid, but I guess that's it. I do want to go home and I can't imagine ever spending Christmas alone.

You know, I think I should just shut up. I'm sure to get a ticket. After all, I've passed the buck on that one to my dad. He's going to make sure I get home-not for anything, but to have me enjoy myself. And they do miss me. Mum's already wondering how she's going to manage making Christmas sweets this time. Jonathan's busy with final year and I won't be home until the 21st. I'll miss making the sweets and mum yelling that we aren't allowed to taste them until after mass. I'll miss putting up the tree and painting the paper for the star. Jonathan's going to have to do the deco alone, and I won't be there to whine when we change the cushion covers or clean out the cobwebs. We aren't going to have our regular fights over who's done how much work and then sneak Christmas cookies, bolinhas, and marzipan together.

You know what? I'm going home for 15 days and I know I'm going to stuff all these things into those days. I know J and I will fight, I know I'll put up some deco, I know I'll make cookies and eat them as well, get yelled at and yell back, go for picnics and laze at home, party and exercise....Well then, 48 days and counting.

Idiot box

I spent five minutes trying hard to tie my shoelaces into a bow. At 4 years, it should have been easy. After successfully bunching it up into a semblance of a knot, I skipped out to play.

It was an empty playground, my brother Jonathan and I being the only ones there. Looking back now, I remember, it was the time everyone’s favorite programs ran on TV. It was a ‘small wonder’ that we’d find playmates at 4:30 pm. Most children were staring goggle eyed at the idiot box while we fought to juggle roles for ‘It’.

As children, cable TV was the ‘cool tool’. If you didn’t watch Batman and Robin or know all the names from Scooby-Doo, you weren’t qualified to attend group meetings during recess. Instead of playing Catch-n-cook, the girls would team up and chat about My Little Pony and wish they were Penelope Pitstop, while the boys would try just as hard to perform that most torturous of WWF moves—the ‘sharpshooter’. Everyone in class was familiar with the program schedule of Cartoon Network, all 7 days of the week. It made me feel rather inadequate—something that’s remained with me all along. Teachers tried to make classes interesting by relating things we studied to things that came on the tube. For someone whose set was switched on only for the 5-minute news capsule every morning, I was rather stumped. It doesn’t help either when you’re best friend hosts a ‘Power Rangers’ birthday party and you have no idea who they are!

Contributing to ‘kiddie’ conversation was never that hard. What would children talk about, anyhow? No one found it interesting that I had learned how to spell my parents’ names correctly or knew my house number. Who cared about Goldilocks? Who wondered where the Seven Dwarves went after Snow White moved away?

I don’t know many children in my neighbourhood who pretended to go rafting on the mat in their living room. Fishing with grandpa was a three-person affair: Jonathan, grandpa and I. It didn’t matter to my friends that we’d caught the only catfish we ever did. So what? The Flintstones did it with some oversized turtle, and they lived in the Stone Age!

I wasn’t all that alienated from the set, though. We’d always watch a little bit at granddad’s. Although it was restricted to a maximum of half an hour at a stretch, it was enough to help me survive.

Bon voyage! C'est la vie!!

I love hols. It makes you feel like you've been working so hard and you're getting this much needed break, even though all you've had since whenever has been an unnecessary break. And somehow, you like to plan your little vacation so it goes really well but you end up forgetting half the things you need (like your toothbrush) and taking things you would never need (an extra pair of shorts). But that's the fun. You learn to make do with what you have, including and especially your travelling companions!

Packing for days out is the worst headache. You think you're going to be all organised and lay out your clothes in neat little piles. At the end of day one of your break, it's all one messed up pile anyway. Even when you've kept your things in a zip lock bag labelled "Toiletries", you either leave out the new deo and put in the one that's over, or forget to take the bag altogether. Then you curse yourself, but happily skip to the nearest store, just for the pleasure of buying something from the kind old man you never knew. Or maybe just for the heck of spending the money you saved. After all, the circumstance demands it!

Vacations are the worst thing to happen to people trying to lose weight. Try as you might to compensate for the worst kind of gluttony you've indulged in the night before by taking a walk/run/swim, it has to be that you simply can't fit into your clothes anymore. Some say that's the only way of telling someone's actually enjoyed their holiday. I don't know. When you go someplace you've never seen, wouldn't you rather spend time, on your feet, being the true-blue tourist and check out the place, instead of sitting on that ballooning posterior and watching your day float by?

I've never vacationed in the mountains. It's become one of those 'to-do' things that I always say I'll do, but wonder if I'll ever have enough money for. Positively thinking, I should. But then again, that's not all on my 'to-do' list. There's Europe and the Safari, the Andamans/Lakshadweep, South East Asia and Japan, the Outback, hell the world! Maybe I should marry a millionaire and then vacation on the alimony. He wouldn't be able to stand me for very long anyway! There's another addition to my 'to-do' list!! You even have these absolutely ludicrous lists on hols. Now, what's the point in those? Do what you want. No point in being the bitchy boss you left behind.

I wonder what it'd be like to be on a permanent vacation. Come to think of it, it'll be pretty boring. There's nothing to vacation from. No stress to destress from, no post cards to your colleagues saying "Wish you were here" even when you don't, no summer romances, no tension to lay out on the hammock.....Actually, nothing worth taking a break from. You couldn't possibly have the satisfied sigh that can only be expressed when you're completely relaxed. But then again, who am I to talk?!? I ain't even a working stiff!

Still, I loved my summer hols in school. Even when we didn't go anywhere, we still went to the beach, swam in the cold water, played in the hot sun, caught the golden tan, and ate the best sea food ever. When you're stuck at home, go to the beach. Great company makes a fun vacation. Even if you haven't gone off to some exotic destination, you'll still enjoy yourself. I guess that's what vacations are for, anyway!

I'm waiting. Christmas is two months away. I've already started crossing off the days....

J....

I havent seen him for ages although I've lived with him my entire life. I spent 20 years fighting and hating someone so much I just have to love him......

He's roaming the streets with a crew cut that would grow into to-die-for curls after 6 months. He'd like to be 6 feet and a few pounds heavier while I'm trying hard to lose the reason he calls me "fatty". Yet, I know he's teasing.

I've watched him grow and it's hard to say he's changed. It's also difficult to say he's remained the same. He's the same boy who can't stand his annoying li'l sis, but is the man who knows when its okay for her to wear that dress.

He likes women. Just like all other straight guys do. Yet, he hasn't been in a relationship longer than two months. He lives on practicality and that is something women don't seem to understand. "Commitment" does not exist for him. He has his reasons....Zaha Hadid is the woman in his life.

It follows then that he loves design. He loves cars. He loves to design cars. He's studying to be an architect. Suffocated by professors who think square when he sees round, who see Byzantine or Gothic when he sees post modern and deconstruction. Aesthetics does not follow rules. Feasibility does. The Palm Islands are intelligent design; the Acropolis, a masterpiece.

Now I know it's possible for a guy to wear colours other than white, black, dark blue, dark green and grey. His favorite colour is green. Different shades of green.....Red is good, so is orange. Yellow too. Pink....depends! He's the guy who decides whether something looks good on me or not. The guy who'll tell me that I need to dress up once in a way.....

I'm sure he wanted a brother. So he said when I asked him. I was about 15 then; he 16. He'd gotten a new set of friends, was partying every other week, "hanging out". I was sitting at home reading a book or out playing street badminton. Oh the shame, the embarrassment!!

Ask him now and he'll deny that he'd wished for a brother. Maybe he did. Maybe he didn't. But I know he loves me all the same. For all the shit I do. All the shit I get him into. All the shit I get him out of. The shit we face together.....

It doesn't help one bit that I don't have him to talk to. Or that he writes four lines once a week in reply to the essays I write every day. He tells me he doesn't miss me, that I'm an idiot to forget my data cable at home, and that I need to get a life.That's why I miss him. Mum says that's why he misses me......He says he'll buy me my first car. I want a Lamborghini Gallardo!

He's the only person I'll believe. The only one I can tell has been lying and who can tell I've been lying. And he will never lie to me.

God was painting today....

God was painting today.

He cried. At the inhumanity of humanity. His tears fell free, in a torrent of raindrops. The earth collected them in her lap. The butterflies and frogs came out to console Him. So, He took out His easel and His palette and began to paint.

I saw the white fluff first. It blossomed. An outpour of Love for His child. Soon, He threw light from behind and I saw the silver lining that lights up gloomy days. He wanted to tell me He loves me. Maybe that's why He used pink. It crept out from behind His cloud and then, to supplement the truth, He splashed a bit of the brightest blue I've ever seen.

Green came next. That bluey-green that only God can create. He took me home through the clouds; back to a time when I played on the beach, and mum showed me the colours of the setting sun. I turned to see a cottony cloud of ivory plastered in the sky. Grey at the bottom, white surf on top. Innocence.

Click, snap went the shutters. Catch it on camera. God was telling me the story of His love through the sky. How could I join them in this ridiculous circus? I wanted to fly to the Heavens, run away from reality, spend the rest of infinity in that psychedelic explosion of colour.

So, He stopped. The sky turned blue and white and grey. He brought me back to where I am. There's a time and place for everything. I watched as He teased me with the swimming clouds, still blushing pink from the touch of His brush. I was home for a while. I feel a little closer to Him now that He's shown me He's always around - in the trees, the birds, the insects, the animals, the clouds, the sky....

God was painting today. He was painting for me.

Hotel IIJNM....(Happy Birthday, Shilpa!!)

On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair.
Warm smell of colitas rising up through the air.
Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light.
My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim
I had to stop for the night.

There she stood in the doorway, I heard the mission bell.
I was thinking to myself this could be Heaven or this could be Hell.
Then she lit up a candle, and she showed me the way.
There were voices down the corridor,
I thought I heard them say,

Welcome to the Hostel IIJNM
Such a lovely place (such a lovely place)
Many a room at the Hostel IIJNM
Any time of year (any time of year)
You can find us here.

Her mind is differently twisted, she got no Mercedes Benz.
She got just one pretty boy, who's her special friend.
How they dance in the courtyard, sweet Mallu sweat.
Some dance to remember, some dance to forget.

So I call Mr. Noel. I said, "please bring me my wine."
He said, " We don't allow that spirit here since 1999."
But still those voices are calling from far away.
Wake you up in the middle of the night, just to hear us say.

Welcome to the Hostel IIJNM
Such a lovely place (such a lovely place)
Many a room at the Hostel IIJNM
Any time of year (any time of year)
You can find us here.

Stars on the ceiling. Large khodez, no ice.
And she said, "We are all just prisoners here,
Of Kanchan's devise."
And in Abraham's chambers, where they gathered for the feast.
Stab it with their steely knives,
But they just cant kill the beast.

Last thing I remember, I was running for the door.
Had to find the passage back to the place I was before.
"Relax," said the nightman, "We are programmed to receive.
You can check out any time you like.
But you can never leave."
____________________________________________________________________

Please note: It was both, Sohini and I who modified the lyrics 5 minutes before going to the mess and publicly embarrasing not just ourselves, but a very "messed-up" Shilpa as well.