Amble on, love
on the softness of my arm.
what sweetness do you seek,
that lies on my finger-tip?
you tickle me
you make me squirm
can’t you see
I’m not a lump of sugar?
Move on,
pass the grand valley of my palm
and fall off the side;
won’t you please stop bothering me
and jump into my cup of tea?
It is one of those days when everything seems right. I feel totally at peace with myself-I feel beautiful, intelligent, hot, whatnot. Ahem! I am always allowed to exaggerate, right? So, I put on my brightest smile and walk out with a ‘Wait up, all ye good men, for here I come’ look. Well!
Cut to an hour later.
I am in an animated conversation with an acquaintance. You guessed it right, me at my flirtatious best, trying hard to maintain the ‘good impression’ (whatever that means!) he has about me. Suddenly, he gazes into my eyes with a glazed, wistful look. Um, is there something in my eye, dear friend?
He blurts out, Can I consider you to be the little sister I never had?
Yes, yes, my pleasure. Perhaps I should start running around in pigtails and short skirts. It would make the ‘consideration’ so much easier!
It surprises me that this is not the first time I got that statement from a man. I guess it is written all over my face ‘I am little sister material’. I remember, in school, I had a tiny crush on a boy from the tenth. I was in eighth then. I actually talked myself into having a crush on him because he would stare at me with protruding eyes every time we crossed paths. Imagine my utter consternation (and dismay and any other adjective you can think of…you say those are nouns? Adverbs? Oh, just let me be!) when he walked up to me on a bright, hopeful, New Year’s Day with a beautiful card in his hand that said “A very Happy New Year to a sweet sister!”. I rolled my eyes in horror at the very idea! Come on, he could have at least chosen a card without those romantic red roses! Sigh, Men!
Thus began my life, being a ‘sister’. To hordes of ‘bhaiyyas’. .Today, I have at least three of them (Not including my ‘blood’ sibling). I have many waiting in the pipeline, too. Come to think of it, it is not that bad, either. Actually, I feel like running into the arms of one of them right now, crying, Bhaiyyaaa!
Run into their arms and say thanks.
For all their ‘consideration’.
For all that love.
But you now know why I feel depressed on New Year’s Day, don’t you? It is okay, I have learned to cope. When life hands me lemons, I make lemonades!
Big Brother, are you watching too?
Last night, I sat up thinking for a long time. It had a lot to do with my life so far. Many mistakes, yes, many good things too. With the ticking minutes of the clock, my mind wandered to the one question that I always try to answer: Why do I write?[Very Sartre-ish, unfortunately for him!]
As a kid, I wrote of things that I imagined in my head. Poems, essays, mainly stories with a moral. I believed in justice. I wrote about girls who were careless and messy with their things and had to face punishment. In my mind, it was all valid. That I was messy and careless myself, it never struck me. Until somebody older (and wiser) told me “Cut out the holier-than-thou tone…you are not a saint!”. Jolt One.
I stopped writing stories for a while. I only wrote some nice essays and answers in English class. They won the occasional ‘Good’ or ‘Excellent’, but nothing too fancy. Thanks to my teacher, I was introduced to Keats. Thus began my next passion: poetry. I started to read poems, and attempted writing a few. I showed one of my poems to a friend who promptly remarked, “There is no rhyming in the poem!” Jolt Two.
I began to ‘uncategorize’ the things I wrote, telling people “Oh, it is not a poem or a story. Just a series of words that makes sense. To me.” It was funny to see their raised eyebrows. Not everything has to be ‘classified’, right?
I grew up some more, kept writing about whatever I could fancy. I stopped showing it to anyone, though. Keep away, friend or foe! What I write is just for me! For three and a half years, I kept writing, and not showing. My diaries kept growing fatter (I wanted to get fat at that point, so it was ironical). Until I discovered the art of blogging. I knew I would have to put my writing under public scrutiny, but I was fresh with thoughts like ‘One must be open to criticism’ and ‘There is no harm in trying’. I started blogging. I found out there was a breed of people who liked what I wrote. It was nice to know. Until one of my blogger friends remarked, “You don’t seem to do anything apart from reading and writing. I thought doing the same things makes people get better at them. Why is your writing still so bland?” Jolt Three.
Needless to say, I stopped writing for some more time. I tried to discover other things, like painting and singing. I realized I wanted to ‘write’ about those experiences, ultimately. How boring! And so it was, back to Square One.
Jolts one, two and three.
Some people never learn, do they?
Last night, I dreamt of a dog speaking in Telugu to me. He wanted to be my friend. Ahem, now that you know what kind of mental state I am in, you may proceed.
Ever since my uncle’s little one reeled off one nursery rhyme after another when they visited us last week, I have been thinking of my childhood…and the rhymes that we were taught. I remember quite clearly that kindergarten was a sorry state of affairs, at least for me. I regularly stood last in class, once scored a one on twenty-five in mathematics and was pathetic at drawing. All that did not affect me, however.
My only problem was with the rhymes. I have always been an acute feeler(:P..well, well!), and this is what my teachers taught me the very first day:
Jack and Jill went up the hill […]
And Jill came tumbling after…
I remember thinking, “Oh my god! Did she get hurt?”
Then came Humpty Dumpty, who could not be put together. Tragedy had struck big-time. As if this was not enough, they had this:
Oh dear, what can the matter be, oh dear,
What can the matter be,
Johnny’s so late at the fair…
My mind could only think of all the morbid things that could have happened to Johnny. And his wife singing sadly at home, waiting for his lilies and posies and of course, the blue ribbons. For a long time after that, I clung to my Appa like a leech as soon as he came home every evening, screaming, “It’s so nice to see you back home…Good thing you’re not lost!”
I also never understood the sarcasm in this one:
Where are you going to my pretty maid?…
I am going ‘a milking, sir, she said…
May I come with you, my pretty maid?…
Yes, if you please, sir, she said…
What is your fortune, my pretty maid?…
My face is my fortune, sir, she said…
Then I can marry you, my pretty maid…
Nobody asked you, sir, she said…
[Grammar check wants me to change ‘maid’ to ‘house-cleaner’, hehe!].
Imagine this rhyme with the curt reply, just after I was ticked off by the teacher for calling my neighbour a ‘mental’. Talk about double standards! Then came Little Bo-beep, who lost her sheep, and was advised to just leave them alone. Was that how you took care of your loved ones? What if they got into trouble?
My days were getting sadder, indeed. I heaved a huge sigh of relief when they promoted me to standard I (Don’t ask me how! Maybe my skills in learning by heart paid off!).
Rhymes were now relegated to the occasional rainy afternoon.
The sad memories never left me. I was scarred for life, with all the sadness they had fed me, in those tender years of mine.
So now you know why I am in this state of mind.
Peace be to all.
Life is beautiful.
Thanks for reading this!
[P.S: I was not that smart to actually understand those rhymes in KG…It is my mind trying to find an excuse for my para-normal behaviour. All this is a hypothetical projection of how I would felt, how I could have felt, that led to my present state. Now, that is smart! 
].
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