Musings... Once again...

Another cog in the wheels of this moving world, another inane page in the already dense blogsphere – is that what this page will remain? Will something change in the third blog that I try to create now, in the last three years, and the first two of them already dead, with only a single post to their name? Will I be able to overcome my ever-prevalent laziness? Well, the answers should unfold with time, as I hope to continue to evade the stares of my boss dancing on my head and add some words to this page!

Amen!

With my boss looking at me with the same fiery eyes that his wife looked at him today morning when he burnt her toast, and broke that expensive piece of cutlery of hers, I too will have to serve a burnt toast as in a stale post – a story that I wrote this weekend. Hope that you find it, well, palatable and bearable. Kindly keep your nudges, comments and dollars (well… I don’t mind) coming in! Adieu for now!


As a child, all I could think of was growing up, and the days the life I will enjoy when I grow up. Today when I am one of the grown-ups, I can’t help but think of my childhood. I can’t help but think of the days when I went to the school, in that old wrecked house, and that one class that we had, that one old teacher, and that small group of even smaller friends.

That was long back, because I never studied beyond the fourth standard. I never went to that dusty house or sat on that dusty floor again, in my entire life, after I turned eight. Those memories might be vague but equally vague are those memories of sitting besides the river, and watch it going down to a faraway land, hoping that one day I will take me to a new land, a land where the sun meets it and shines forever. But besides these vague memories I will always clearly remember the time that I spent with my neighbor, my childhood friend, with whom I climbed all those trees, plucked all those mangoes, and oh, the taste of those half ripen ones, these memories will live with me forever.

As there are good memories, there are not so good ones too, the ones of my father torturing my mother, and beating me up whenever I was around, or as soon as he saw me. The helpless pain of my heart when my neighbor was sent away to the city to work and fend for his parents, that twinge will remain forever. Also, cant be forgotten are those memories of the village weddings, when looking at every girl only fuelled my desires to dress like them, to decorate myself like them, while retracting in the shell of my wishful dreams, and brought to the present, in the single torn piece of cloth that I had.

And then I was married, but there were no decorations, an ominous sign of the hell to come. For the next four years, I lived my mother’s life, burning my hands, beaten day in and day out, ravaging my body every moment, and praying to heal it. In the four years, I was dead, my dreams were dead.

But, this morning, I am happy. My dreams are alive again, the dreams that I left four years back in the small dusty village of Badlapur, the wishes that the river Yamuna carried with them to a new world, the starry hopes that my neighbor took with him to the city. Today, I am happy for my tomorrow, when I will never have to burn my hands, and I will never be beaten again, and I will never have to pray to that insensitive non-existent being called God. Today, I am happy for today. I am finally dressed and decorated today, as I always dreamt and wished for. Today, I am indifferent that my forty year old husband breathed his last. But, alas! I will be sati at seventeen!

--- V Viks