Cider from the old city.

Summers in India were full of apples.
Washed, peeled, sliced.
Apple pulps, apple pies, apple juice, apples with cinnamon.
Apples with Kala Namak.*
Moon-shaped apple pieces, turning yellow inside a round tiffin box made of steel.
Those summer nights, humid and crimson, reeked only of the trees that grew beside the city pipes;
Growing rarer by the day and the granite floors, cooler with the looming monsoon.
Summers in India were full of apples.
Washed, peeled, sliced.

Several years of dust have lathered on, the salt in the air grinding between my canines, grudgingly rubbing-in irritation with my nostalgia.
The old Fiat lies wasted, it's beauty lost on the men that drove her in the 90s.
Those men are fast asleep now, their wives fondly reminiscing old errands.
And I wonder where the apples now grow and the itchy chairpai* now resides;
Home is not home, home is not here.
Without those apples washed, peeled and sliced.

Turning back I see you, examining the vast city from your spot on the terrace, old and savaged and dusty.
The cane chair creaks as you collapse into it, your eyebrows still crinkled from the summer heat.
I tell you that summers are different now, without the apples.
I forget;
You taste of rum.

You are the summer now. 

*Kala Namak : Black Salt.
*Charpai : Small cot made of coir




P.S: I am heavily inspired by Kamala Das, I know. Maybe it makes me less of a writer but my words are drawn only from 'snippets of trivia and nostalgia'. I cannot write well. I am sorry.

Blog Awards.

As you may have noticed, I am going through a severe phase of rant-writing leading to some very un-pleasant reading. Hence, to cover up for that, I thought I might as well appreciate those who DO write well.

So here below, lies a list of people whose writing style I admire, and whose wit, I envy. But most of all, these are the blogs that I have been reading for a long time and who deserve adulation.

And the awards go to,

1) Best Blogger (Nostalgia) : Ink Slinger 

To remind us that the best of fiction and writing is born out of nostalgia.

2) Best Blogger (Humour) : Adha Papad

To remind us of the good times and the bad times and how we can laugh about it five years later.

3) Best Blogger ( Poetry) : Classic Marijuana and Sour Grapes

To remind us of, er, good poetry? 

4) Best Blogger ( Art/ Illustration) : Guess Who

5) Best Blogger ( Personal/ Lists/ Wild child events ;D) : Point Blank and Chaai, Paani, Etc. and Spiced Coffee and the Keyboard.

6) Best Blogger ( Chic-Lit Fiction) : Secrets between us, which unfortunately does not exist anymore.

7) Best Blogger (contemplative non-fiction) : Obscurely Alpha

:)

Prepare a Thank You speech for youself now.

New Header and a New Tumblr.

                                                           














Also, 140 readers, cheers :)
We shall celebrate when 150 comes by.

Dear J.K Rowling,

For nearly a year, I kept postponing reading your book, the first in the series of seven. Maybe because my English wasn't so strong then or I didn't quite understand that the words 'Privet Drive' could be an address so I would just keep staring at the Cover Art.
And then one day, I asked my mother to help me read it and she did. After the first few lines I was already tired of her voice and started on my own.
It has been ten years or more, and I don't believe I will ever be done reading.

You see, I grew up with Harry Potter and his friends.
I practiced every spell with a stick I'd found on the road hoping to be able to lift objects one day.
I radiated hatred everytime Malfoy smirked.
Many a times, I tried speaking my own version of Parseltoungue. Ofcourse, most of it was just 'nee-saw-r-usss-aa' and none of the snakes in the zoos responded. I even tried it out on an earthworm.
I made friends because of Harry Potter. During lunch time at school we would ask each other detailed general  knowledge questions about the books, claiming to be his biggest fans.
Sometimes during the exam days I would be so tired of coursework, I read the books inside the toilet, hoping my father wouldn't catch me reading while I was supposed to solve Math.
And then came the movies.
I remember how wide my Mother smiled at me the first time I saw the poster, mouth wide open and how my sister was so scared during the Chess scene, she peed.
Ofcourse, I grew up and was forced to reconcile with my boring, school-going reality.
There was still one more hope of entering the wizarding world, though.
Working on the sets of Harry Potter. I started dreaming of being the assistant set designer who Rupert Grint happens to fall in love with. :D

But Harry Potter is ending now, an entire decade of magic, obsession and stalking coming to an end.
No more afternoons of sitting and browsing websites like Veritaserum, Mugglenet and the kind with Ness, Di and Metro.
Suddenly I feel so grown up.
This is not just the end of the Potter movies or the entire Harry Potter generation, this is somehow the final stroke of my childhood.

Sincerely,
A

The man who danced the Funky Chicken.

Very few would say "Good morning, Sir!" with a handshake so firm and a smile as wide as your's.
Very few would do the Chicken Dance in front of their own bosses.
Very few would be so kind and forgiving, even though I would argue that you ought to fight them out more.
Very few would sacrifice their own career and education for family, however subjective the word 'family' may be.

But then again, you are an extremely weird man.
If you can, do forgive me for those years I mistook your frustration to be your anger. I was in my teens, going through the usual hormonal phase and I may have said things that were hurtful, even insensitive. My sister was only a kid and I feel responsible for her behavior towards you, as well. For most part, I think I may have played a great role in the image that she has had of you in her head and I am trying, slowly, to shed it off.
I know I owe you a real apology, not just a blog one but do try and understand that I will need more time and ofcourse, courage.
Trying times will fade and money will flow again, I'm sure. Maybe then we will reconcile and clear out all the differences. Until that day, I hope you will wait.
I hope in due time, you will feel less ashamed of my work, my views on faith and this blog, being so radically different from what you may have expected when I was born.
I hope you understand that my sister and I, we have grown. We do not blame you, nor wish to fight. We don't even want a bigger house to live in. We want to make up for the past and lost time.

Dear father, you are a good man, one of the best we have come across. You have taught us a lot about money, suffering and sacrifice by not saying much at all.

(Comments shall not be entertained for this post. And that includes sending me long consoling messages on facebook about the post. When I disable comments, it is for a reason which you should respect.)

Chaddi, Swami, Tiger and Blacky. In THAT order.

So I had never been fond of dogs, or even animals for that matter. I mean, I did care about tigers dying and animals losing their habitat amongst other bigger concerns but I never really connected with them personally.
Especially pigeons.
Ew pigeons. To me they were just these nymphos reproducing all the time and pooping over my beloved balcony and AC.
When I came to Bangalore for college, the first few weeks were very hormonal for me.
I don't open up so soon and might come off as prudish or even boring at first, so it was quite obvious that I hadn't made so many friends. I say friends, because even though I was on good terms with everyone and was friendly, I was hardly the kind they would invite to booze parties and downtown trips.
So basically I was just being transient.
Anyway so in the second week we were doing a lot of rough sketches. So I and Yori, a bong from Shantinketan went out onto the streets of our beloved Yelahanka to sketch random trees, walls, people etc.

While I was drawing, Yori shrieked suddenly. Given my slow reflexs, I turned around and found a small, clean dog. He didn't move or run away from me when I turned and I didn't shout on seeing him.
It was at that moment I saw how unnatural that dog seemed. He had human eyes. It was as if he was observing me while I sketched, with genuine interest.
I let him stay and watch me.
Later I snuggled him because he was clean and ofcourse, soft.
As the months passed by, I made new friends. Friends who started inviting me. To their homes, to their hostel mess, to their parties.
I chanced upon some very er, human dogs there, in SFS colony.
When the doors to the bungalow were open, they would make themselves at home, sit in front of the TV and not move at all. On the days we were high or just happy, we made them wear birthday hats and they said nothing.
Of all the dogs, I chanced upon one ,which I found endearingly handsome. And more so, because I found he had been named 'Chaddi' of all the things. So we bonded over our common love for the kitsch name.
I still don't care about animals so much. And pigeons, ew.
But this one, this Chaddi and Swaminathan and Tiger and Blacky, they are just so human.

I'll make an exception for them.
I miss them and cannot wait to get back and teach them how to high-five.

Unat and I, with Swami on his birthday.

Weasley is NOT our King.

He is our God.
In Weasley, we trust.





P.S: Fred and George, time and again I have found myself reminding myself to be a little more like you. In the past one-two years I had forgotten about the two of you, throwing you away as fiction gets thrown out of the window every once in a while. But suddenly today, years after growing out of my Harry Potter phase, I feel the need to call you real, laugh at the jokes you cracked, marvel at your intelligence and maybe even mourn for your loss. Slightly.

I will hug you both in my dreams tonight, I promise.
It has been long since I last dreamt of Harry Potter, indeed.


P.P.S: A Harry Potter related, childhood memory post may follow so please bear with my fangirlishness.