blue and a promise

you walk on a cloud of innocence. auto rickshaws don't touch the ground.
the bed is a water bed. where you float. your husband is a velvet blanket.
your child a priceless doll. the best job in the world, less than 6 hours of
teaching per week. misty, green campus. faceless colleaugues, whom
you dont even have to meet. the song playing is "yellow".
your mood feels so mellow, you want to scream:
-look i have come through!
-i have made it!
-at last!
-cured!

and even as you speak, you notice the first tremor.
the first stab of the first knife of the month. the pain that begins
somewhere beneath your rib bones and breast. in the place
they call the heart, and you call hell.

coz now its burning, its squeezing tight, its beating loud,
red wings, flapping hard, like a trapped bird, in a closed lift..
soon your fingers will start to shake. your eyes will not focus.
you will try to read, but the words wont make no sense.

they would be so wordless, moving about, all over the page.
you will try to blog, and it will not work.. phone calls & emails
will make you cry, and when you open the door,
you will see the stairway, strewn with the shadows of all your
friends.

black is the only lollipop left for the dead child.
she wants to savor it, till she dies.
she loves it so much, she sees it everywhere.
and everywhere there are ceiling fans looking good in
turquoise duppattas, razor blades so sexy inside
silver tank-tops, gaudy terraces with their long trains
zooming down to granite earth.cocktails that mock
sleep and all those dreams, hallucinations and
visions of the unknown, the metro, rash
buses on the road, path-breaking,
epoch-making accidents.....

you may say i am a dreamer, but i am really
waiting for that moment, when nothing can stop me,
and i give in to all my fantasies to celebrate
myself..

coz i am tired of struggling against this violet
of whirlpools that scatter everything you have..
stopping by road side stalls that sell wisdom...
taking the time off to drink from the cup of my
wine-red tears..
looking for a cure and being asked to hold on,

how long can a balloon bear a safety pin,
and how can you still expect it to bubble
and swell..?

and that is the most magical thing - to add a dash
of white, to this blue blue post ...
slowly i will, this balloon will float again

the clouds will start feeling light again, instead of
hanging heavy on my head, and my baby will
be a song that i love to sing ...
but for the time being, let me give in to The Monster.
let me forget and then learn to do it all over again...
how to make tea, tie my shoelaces, how to breathe..
but this time i promise

when i get better, i will come here and
write about blessed things.
i really do promise.

farzana shaithana

this is the most frustrated mother on earth, writing about the worst kid in the universe - farzana shaithana.

i really do hate you. i want to lock you up, throw you inside a well, i want to hit you so hard, you will remember the pain for days together - i want to so badly hurt you and i mean it when i say that i just dont love you today.  coz sometimes you're so diabolic, so un-believably naughty, demanding, screaming, screeching, running around, refusing, spilling things over, spoiling, untidying, bothering..words cant describe how bad you are..

and me and B, we can clearly see that you are feeling that you can get away with anything, just because we are trying to be nice to you  - you dirty, little fiend.

let me put down some of your punch lines for the sake of posterity (and let the whole world read this and elect me the cruelest woman on earth - as if i care :p)

thus spoke farzana shaithana:

> other children eat, because they are afraid, i eat when I feel like it -
> you better explain why you got angry with me first, after that i will listen to you-
> you scolded me, now i'll not sleep, till you say hundred-times-sorry and massage my feet thousand times-
> all your stories are rotten and bubbles and jina and jaffer and clint died in an accident-
> when i grow up i will never even telephone you once-
> this dress is so out of fashion, how can you ask me to wear it !!!- *when there is only 15 minutes left for the school van to reach
> this dress is too gaudy, i wont even wear it to bed !! - *with only ten minutes left for the school van to come
>i don't wear socks of this color !! - when the school van is waiting outside with its unbearably loud horn -
> you are an idiot and baba is also an idiot and i hate you both-
> NO. I DONT WANT TO-
> AND SO I WILL NOT-
> NEVER-
> NO

what do you do with a child who talks like this? was i like this? no never, i remember myself as so sad, always standing by windows and thinking :)


today we had such a horrible day with this little rascal. i lost control and pinched her hard and she was  threatening to call the the police on me for "hurting little children." says she will go up to a police man and lodge a complaint. i am sure she will do it too.


but i am not even feeling guilty today. i just want to put her in a boarding school or sneak out at night and run away and not be part of this whole thing called family and life and raising kids.

yes i am really not feeling any mother-guilt today worrying that i brought her up badly and that i should have been a better mother. i am fed up of all that bullshit rotten crap.

and hey shaithana, do read this someday and realize what a demon you were, ok !!
and know that today i really feel that you were specially packaged and sent to spoil my otherwise so perfect and idyllic life :))

what is creativity

mmmm... the man who makes 9 to 5 tea, in my college staff room,
standing in a small cramped kitchen area, in an adhoc job for the
past fourteen years, with the FM blaring morbid songs,

sometimes i go in and see him putting in crushed
ginger slices into the tea for the teachers he likes..
they haven't asked for it, he just made it up,
and i am sure he spits into the cups of all those bulldozers -
those big ass mouth nose spectacle professors,
who call out to him like he is a criminal.

and my college-tea-man with those automatic arms,
i see him so angry and irritated these days, something bad
has happened to him, i am sure if he could, he would write
poems and put them in a bottle and let it float in the yamuna..
and one day it would reach his sweetheart, and of course that
day he would be made permanent,

and when he comes to distribute his wedding sweets in the staff room,
the quiet and morose looking teacher in the physics department
would smile at him and say, hey, i was in love with you,
but now its too late, congrats anyways..why not?
and i will come here to write these lines...aren't we all creative?.
what is the big deal, friend, i don't understand..

: x

o god i hate everybody so much i want to be on the street with
words in my cheeks...

its not bones i want to break, stab their hot face,
just this ugly mistake, want to squeeze it into
a mustard seed, and swallow this hate,

and when my disease lies at their  feet

they can say

she was just hot tempered, a barometer,
got up in anger, came down like rain
she was so loving, she was our best friend

and then she went out and called a press conference on truth...

o god what did she do !!!!