Hi All,
My apologies for the hiatus once again!! Hope you’ve been well. The last few weeks have been absolutely manic, and I hope to get back to routine by the end of this month (*Fingers crossed*). In the meanwhile, do head over here to read my article.
Have a great weekend folks!
…..Pal..
I know I am old when…
1) While filling in any application (even a darn credit card), I have to scroll, and scroll, and scroll a couple of pages down, to reach my ‘Year’ of birth!!! I mean, seriously, it wasn’t that long since I was born, was it?
2) I watch the Idols of our teenage years (SRK or Juhi Chawla) on screen, and realise they have considerably aged!!! So if a young and vivacious’Ghoonghat Ki Aad Se’ Juhi is a comical-looking old woman now, that makes me.. er.. Ok, let’s skip!
3) My kid asks me, ‘Mummy, which is bigger? 4 or 33?’ I reply, with a smile, ’33’. He laughs happily. When I suddenly realise, the ’33’ he is referring to, is … me!!
4) An Alumni meet is planned, and we realise it has been TEN YEARS since we left college! How could T-E-N years have whooshed by??! 🙄 I mean, I don’t know what happened in this decade!
5) For the first 5 years of my career (or say, all 5 years of my career), people who used to report to me were double my age! I used to feel sorry for them. I suddenly realise, in a few years, I will be one of them!!!
6) All the ‘kids’ in the apartment block that my parents live in, greet me with a cheery ‘Hi AUNTY!’. I have gotten quite used to that one. But the next lines are what shock me out of my wits. I ask them ‘How is college?’ and they guffaw and reply ‘Whaaat Aunty! I have been working for 4 years now!’
7) I meet my parents every 6 months or sometimes, more frequently than that. And every time I see them, they seem more ‘sober’ and ‘quieter’ (considering that we are a strange family, in the sense that none of us acts appropriate to our age!!!)
8) I log into Skype to chat with an old friend, and we realise, that it has been 9 years since we saw each other!!! I mean, NINE years is a long, long time.
9) I read this lovely post on ‘decision making’ and the start of a promising career!! I realise I have come a long, long way. I mean, not that I have a career, but it has been a couple of centuries since I was at that juncture of ‘opening my first bank account’ 🙂
10) When you lovely readers read this post, and send me loving ‘Awwws..’ and kind ‘Hugs’, then I’ll feel like a total piece of crap. Aged crap!!
And on that cheerful note :lol:, I wish you all a very happy week ahead!! Live life to the fullest folks. You just don’t realise how Time flies. And very soon, you might be writing a post like this yourselves!!!!
Guess what I found this morning, as I was de-cluttering? This!!!!!
This timeless, gorgeous piece of music by the once-upon-a-time-gorgeous Lucky Ali!! Click this link to listen to the song on Youtube.
I have many lovely memories associated with this song, and with the tape too, so this picture (supposed to be part of my Project 365), warranted a post on its own 🙂
Warning: Long, boring post ahead!
So, this particular song, ‘O Sanam’ is one of my most favourite EVER! It reminds me of freedom, of being carefree and incredibly stupid. But then, such is the beauty of youth, isn’t it? To do whatever you wish to do, without stopping to weigh the consequences!! And to just be exhilarated about nothing!
The first time I heard this song, was when I had joined the mandatory ‘Higher diploma in software engineering’ course at Aptech. Those were times when parents would be mortified if their child was not taking up a ‘campooter course’! And who were touchingly oblivious to the fact that their children who worked overtime stating ‘combined studies’ were busy generating business for the seedy ‘Valentine’s Day flower-vendors’ on the footpath 😉
Anyway, in the computer Lab (where ‘flirting‘ = ‘switching off a girl’s computer to piss her off!’ (Sigh!!)), a friend was evidently SHOCKED when the gang was discussing this song ‘O Sanam’ and I had no clue what it was!! So I went back home, got the song recorded at the local store. Yeah yeah, those were the days, when we used to jot down the names of ‘supposedly trendy’ songs and get it recorded at the local video store, because that was just way cheaper than buying an audio cassette!!! (And while the recording used to be pretty decent, we were also blessed with hearing the ‘recorder’s’ flowery language/cusses/etc. during the ‘in-between’ gaps between songs :-)) I digress again! So, I finally heard the song!! And, to a romantic like moi, that was a sheer piece of heaven!!!
Once I moved away from home, to do my MBA, my mum sent me money to buy myself a ‘walkman’. I dragged a friend along every seedy street in Pune, to find a good, but not too expensive walkman. And this is what I bought for an exorbitant Rs.1100 🙂 It even had a speaker and recorder (AND it still works, after an entire decade!!) We (my roomie, an extra illegal roomie and I – and when I say ‘illegal’ I only mean, this girl, Miss S, was ALWAYS in our room, despite not actually living there, so my landlady used to stare at her, with evident dislike, every time she came home!! And which we conveniently ignored :-)) have listened to many lovely songs on this walkman, and needless to say, O Sanam was one of them!
And the last (please don’t say ‘Phew!’ :-)) memory is that of roaming the streets of Mumbai, at 1 am, in a cab full of friends, that too at the expense of the company for which I worked 😈 I was working on a project, and when my work got over, a bunch of very close friends arrived, we piled into a Taxi, and simply roamed all around Mumbai. 
We went up and down the beach, saw the Hiranandani apartments from afar, and gaped, in awe 🙂 I don’t think any of us even dreamed of owning something like that in our lifetime!!! We were ‘just out of B-school’ and we thought the world of ourselves! And yes, since I was ‘working beyond office hours‘, my noble friends ‘suggested’ I bill the cab fare (which was an enormous Rs.430 :lol:) to the organization, and I very sweetly obliged. I hope none of my ex-colleagues are reading this 😉 And oh yes, I missed telling you, that throughout the drive in the cab, we listened to this tape.
And O Sanam was etched in our memory forever!!
So there, folks. We finally come to the end of the post. Please, do me a favour. Before you shut the computer on my face 😉 do listen to the song. Here:
And, DO SHARE YOUR MEMORIES, with this song, if you would like to 🙂
[Warning: Very long post ahead!]
=============
‘Aunty-ji, Aunty-ji, open the door!’. Loud shrieks woke Mrs Marathe from her daily siesta. She hobbled slowly from the airy balcony, back into the sparsely furnished hall. The clouds were looming into darkness, although it was only 4:00 pm on a hot summer afternoon. By sheer force of habit, Mrs. Marathe peered through the faded looking glass. Satisfied that it was indeed the girls, she unlocked the chains that held the door.
Lavina and Priya barged into the hall, and dashed into their room toward the rear end of the old apartment. Mrs.Marathe followed them but stopped just outside. It was her policy to never enter the rooms of her paying guests, though the children did not mind her gentle presence. ‘Arre, what happened? Sooo arly today? College bund (closed)?’, she enquired.
The girls had pulled several outfits out of the small wooden cupboard and thrown them onto the bed, all quite breathlessly. ‘Sorry Aunty-ji, we forgot to call and tell you earlier’.
‘We are going away!!’ – they yelled in unison. They looked at each other, their cheeks burning pink with excitement.
Mrs.Marathe stood as still as a statue. She looked at the two glowing faces. Of all the paying guests she had had over the last ten years, these were the only girls who had managed to carve themselves, a place in her heart. The others had come from good families too, had had excellent upbringing, but had always treated her as only a landlady, a stranger who hailed from several generations before!
Mrs. Marathe lowered her gaze to the ground, as if to examine the grey-black speckled tiles on the floor, for the first time. At 80, she had finished living almost her entire life. She had married well, had three children, two of which migrated to foreign shores, leaving her behind in their ancestral home. The third had been prompt enough to sell that beautiful house, and send her away to this apartment.
‘This is a residential area, Aai, you can relax here’, he had said. True, this was a beautiful locality in the heart of Pune. Green leafy trees, wide roads, and to complement the stillness, a neighbouring college that buzzed with the lively banter of youth – the sound of distant chattering voices that kept her company through the otherwise quiet day.
Lavina and Priya were students of that same college. Both were in their late teens, came from middle-class backgrounds, and were studious, respectful and very friendly. They had spent many an evening, chatting over a cuppa, in that balcony, Mrs.Marathe sunk in one arm-chair, Lavina perched on the arm-rest, Priya in the other arm-chair.
‘Oh, theek’ Mrs.Marathe whispered slowly, and exited to the balcony. For two reasons. First, it would allow the girls to pack. The second, and real reason being, she did not want her eyes to betray her emotions in front of them. Her eyes had been accustomed to seeing people leave her. Her parents, her husband, children.. infact everyone she had known ever! Except for a handful of friends who, like her, were supposed to enjoy ‘retired life’ in the same neighbourhood. She knew, that at 80, she was supposed to be more ‘in control’ of her emotions than the two teenagers who were at that very moment, excitedly stuffing clothes and shoes into their bags.
‘Rent is high.. I can reduce..’. ‘They want telephone? Or come home late!’ She was already thinking, quite involuntarily, of why the girls were leaving, and how she could convince the girls to stay.
Her life was an empty page now. All the work of rearing her children now finished, she had nothing to do, but ‘relax’. How she hated that word! ‘You’ve worked so hard all your life, Aai. Time for you to take rest now’, they would always say to her. That she lived all by herself, with her nearest relatives living four hours away in Mumbai, hardly made a difference to their stance. She had been too hurt to argue with their logic.
She had gracefully surrendered before the war could even begin. Retired to her little shell, and sported a content smile. Always.
Her three sons would faithfully call her every Sunday. The same, standard questions.
‘How are you, Aai?’
‘How is your health?’
‘Are you taking care of yourself?’
‘We will come to visit you soon, Aai’.
They were loving boys. They had always respected her and her late husband. Always ensured she had a steady source of income.
But they hardly came to visit.
In the two years that Lavina and Priya had lived in her apartment, they had never seen her sons. Never heard of her going to meet them in Mumbai or Dubai either, where they now lived.
‘Arre, I am too old to travel’, Mrs.Marathe would always say, when they broached the subject.
‘Too old’, Mrs.Marathe thought to herself, and stifled a laugh. She laid a wrinkled palm on the jaded edges of the arm-chair and thought to herself.. ‘People envy my restful lifestyle. My slow-paced life. My indulgence in books. The rare afternoon tea parties I have with acquaintances from two generations before them! And whenever I want to DO something.. GO out.. play with my grandchildren here, they say ‘Relax, Aai. Don’t stress’. And I continue to plough through this lonely, lonely life.. this .. this curse’.
Suddenly, someone hugged her knees. Mrs.Marathe looked down to find Lavina crying in front of her. ‘Please don’t cry, Aunty-ji, please don’t’, she pleaded. Priya walked behind her arm-chair and gently placed her arms around Mrs.Marathe’s frail shoulders and gave her a peck on her cheek.
Mrs.Marathe smiled, and touched her cheek. How she longed for her own grandchildren to give her a kiss like that! She touched both her cheeks again, this time. They were wet. Tears were streaming down her pointy chin, and had made her green cotton sari damp where they fell! She instantly covered her face with her knotty palms. And let go of all the emotions that had been binding her heart, like a thick rope around a brittle vine. She shuddered for a few seconds.
‘I don’t want to Relax. I want to Live!!’ she cried.
Lavina and Priya held her close. Suddenly, they were the parents, and Mrs.Marathe, the child – desperately seeking solace.
In about fifteen minutes, Mrs.Marathe had calmed down.
Priya rushed to fetch some cold water. ‘Feeling better, Aunty-ji?’ Lavina asked softly.
‘Yes, my dear. I am sorry! For crying like this. You got frightened?’
‘Not at all’, they cooed. Priya gently stroked her silvery hair. Lavina massaged the frail legs.
Mrs.Marathe looked on at them. What relation were they to her? Neither her children nor grandchildren had displayed so much affection towards her until now. She was suddenly exhausted. ‘I want to take rest’, she whispered.
The girls supported her carefully, into her bedroom, fluffed up her pillows, and eased her onto the bed.
‘Aunty-ji, by the way, will you be OK when we go?’
Mrs.Marathe blinked hard. She suddenly realised, this was what caused the outpour after all. The girls going away from her. The tears had however, drained her of both energy and emotion. ‘Yes, don’t worry’, she replied and smiled faintly.
‘Its only for a week! You know, there was this sudden announcement in College, about a fully sponsored training programme, an entire week – in GOAAAAA!!! And guess what? We BOTH got chosen!!’ The girls looked at each other and grinned. Lavina clapped her hands like a child, who had just been given a lollipop! Priya let out a low whistle.
Mrs.Marathe smiled. The enthusiasm was infectious. Suddenly, she realised. ‘Then, you will come back?’ she asked with barely noticable a tremor of excitement.
‘Ofcourse Aunty-ji!’, they chanted happily.
‘This is our home’, Lavina exclaimed. Mrs.Marathe squinted.
‘She means, like our home’, Priya added quickly, not wanting to irk their already distressed landlady.
Mrs.Marathe laughed. She stretched out her hands towards the girls. They held her palms tightly. Almost as if they were afraid to leave her alone.
‘This IS your home, children. For as long as you want’.
The girls enveloped her in a gentle hug, and rushed to get on with the packing.
=============
[Another para left – will be completed tomorrow 🙂 ]
[P.S: Had written this quite some time back, and was too bored to read and edit… so I leave the job to you 🙂 There must be a lot of language/syntax errors, please do help edit this!]
Writer-z-block 