calory, camera and cholesterol

Calorie, camera and cholesterol! If somebody were to ask A about these three, he would say, now a days his life revolves around these three. He of course is aptly joined by Rusha who conjoined these three together to begin with. Between the two of them, I have become the butt of the joke at home.

It is true that i have been chasing them all over home with my new found love for my newly bought camera and poor things when photographed, look as though they have been stalked day and night. really hurried and irritated at times! ha, ha, i am having a really good time though!!

and of course, i have been counting the calories and the cholesterol, both for me and A - and boy, is he going nuts! But he is also loving it, for if i don't keep a check on his eating, etc, he would quickly ask me why was not i checking on him. so it is fun both ways for me!!

Whenever Rusha or Arjun or better still both are at home, A gets this major chance of ganging up against me and mockly complain about how much i was torturing him about his food, how little he gets to eat, etc, etc, etc. and we all have fun!! lots of laughter and fun at home.

we are also doing lots of eating out, watching theatre, shopping, veggie and fish and meat shopping, drinking chai and eating samosa at the Gupshup, planning for more eating out, planning for holidays in the coming months, watching IPL together, and just chlling at home doing absolutely nothing.

Life is blissful. Thank you God.

disconnecting - Loss and fear of it

Death ...



such an ominous word. most are scared of it, it is unknown, full of fantasy and visions. so much has been written, talked about, discoursed with ....



i have been with this word for a while. ever since my divorce proceedings started actually.



Divorce, as per dictionary meaning is



-to separate; cut off

-a judicial declaration dissolving a marriage in whole or in part

-total separation; disunion

-to break the marriage contract between oneself and (one's spouse)



synonyms are dissociate, divide, disconnect, split, disjoin ....



i experienced "real" death for the first time in my divorce proceedings. I have experienced many many physical death before but the experience of what death actually feels like was like a bullet that gets lodged.

It was not simply dissolving the marriage between two people. I was initiating the processing of discontinuing the history of 30 years between two people that was held in a certain way. the disjointing of relationships tween them, around them, in the immediate family, the extended familial structure, the social circle, everything.



it was to put a full stop to something that has been in process .... for many years ....

yes, separating from someone or something is like a death experience. although people remain, the places remain, the memories remain, but not the relationship. Not the way each individual held it in his/her mind.

Sometimes i think for me at least, fear of death, is really fear of separation. fear of divorce, this time from life, from aliveness, from all senses .... unto who knows where.

and strangely enough, i am not really scared of my death, but of death of dear ones.

Death, i feel will take them away for ever, never to come back and they will then just fade into memory, sepia coloured ones.

and i have experienced death many times in my life, through death of near and dear ones, starting at age 3, but never been so anxious about it before.

what does it mean to disjoint from the other? are we ever joined?

and in all these, life, the pulsating life, kicking, alive, screaming, is perhaps slipping through the moments ... tick tock tick tock .....

i am alive, and so are the others, right at this moment. celebrate this moment!

went to my dentist today. he was in a chatty mood. he chatted about his holiday, how being with his happy family gave him a unprecedented sense of contentment that he never experienced before. how he believes today that God may have given him more that he thinks he deserves!

while i was listening to him, a portion of Mahabharata came to mind. there was this question-answer session that happened between Dharamraja and Yudhishthira. one of the questions was "what is the strangest thing in the world'? and Yudhishthira's answer was "every day crores of beings are dying in this world, but the rest of the world continues to behave as though they are going to live for ever".

There is such a truth in this line. I read it many times before, but this time it struck me quite forcefully.

Death! a word that i have been with for a while ......

bell rings ... guests have arrived. will have to write about this some other time.

bye for now!

may 3 2008. 9.56 pm

watching the self is a fascinating pastime or an occupation - whichever way one looks at it! i have been wondering at this idea, well not wondering, but been observing actually.

it seems to me that people in general have two kinds of predispositions. one who have a predisposition of well being, irrespective of their back ground, their personal history, their current context and future. they most times seem to have an ability to be cheerful, to look at the world with wonderment, have a sense of calm and be happy with themselves. so when they meet others, they are usually welcoming, attentive, relaxed and people like to be with them.

and then, there are these other sets of people whose predispositions are to have a sense of non-well being with themselves. no matter where they are, no matter who they are with or what has been the context, these people will have a sense of gloom, a feel of something being incomplete, something missing, a tense body, preoccupations with past and anxieties about the future and most of all, they are not relaxed. and predictably, when they are with people, they are highly vigilant, defensive, preoccupied and other people are often left with doubts both about themselves and these people.

of course, life or people are not as black and white as i have outlined above. there are all kinds of shades in between and people come in all shapes and sizes. but if i were to look a broad pattern of having a sense of well being and having a sense of non well being most of the time, then i would categorise people in this two category.

i fall in the second category. my sense of non well being has always been my companion for as long as i remember. i never questioned it in the past, in fact, i had accepted that as the only way to be.

today i question it, i ask myself, what is it that generates this sense of non well being?

i have some answers but all such answers are cliched. i am not interested in looking at the answers as well. But I believe, that for most people, who share this sense of non well being with me would agree that it is a debilitating feeling most of the time, to be in this state. And only sometimes, once in a while, when we are in a state of well being, we are actually breathing more, smiling more, accepting life without being vigilant, able to look at the future without being worried about it and actually being able to enjoy the "moment" - every moment of the present, which is passing away and will never come back to us again.

and on those rare of the rare moments, there is a tremendous feeling of being connected and being one with the earth, with life ---

being one with the insects, the birds, the leaves, the honking cars, the passers by, the passing clouds, the Internet, the TV, the nameless faces, the madness, the ugly, the depression, the manic high, the undesirable and the most beautiful.

only, those very rare moments that i often feel that i am fully alive and i feel grateful.

amitabh bachchan and blogging

mr amitabh bachchan has been writing his blogs lately and they are generating a huge response. today's blog was a one liner, written on his way home to mumbai from london, and it generated a whooping 251 responses, at the time i write this blog.

i was reading through some responses and it is amazing and fascinating to see the kind of emotions he generates in people. there are people from all ages, communities and countries who write to him, some talking about how they grew up watching his film, some talked about how he is an inspiration to their lives, some talked about their lives, some with questions and some with accusations and some with advice and suggestions. but it is totally amazing to see people's response to him.

i have visited amir khan's blog as well. even he does not generate this kind of response.

his writing is articulate, well versed and intelligent.

but the most interesting thing is his anger that comes through. it seems to me that the poised, measured, balanced amitabh is bursting through the seems in the blog, as an angry, anguished and don't really care person who is frank, up close and personal.

i wonder what does he do with this anger and anguish in his day to day life? it is not just a tirade against the media, it is almost the amitabh who does not find an outlet anywhere else, comes out here in the open, with his wit, humour, rawness, pain, perspectives, views and pain. is it his shadow side? i wonder what mr jung would have said?

i have not left any comment on his blog and will not. i feel tired just looking at the number of responses the poor guy has to read, even if he is assisted by a team.

Kalu the cat

exactly 15 days ago, my maid from kolkata called me at 4 p.m to announce that Kalu had passed away, or rather that she was found dead on the roof top in the afternoon. Kalu, my sweet little innocent, wiered Kalu, the cat with a mole on the upper lip and with a hesitant bid for friendship.

She came into our household after being left to die in torrential rain for two days. Rusha rescued her and begged us to keep her with us. She rescued Lalu the smart and pretty cat a day before. Both were of the same age, about two or three days old, wet to the bone, shivering and crying feebly. But they both were to live - with us, to make us happy, teach us many a splendid things with their royal, majestic cat philosophy.

Kalu had black, fawn and white colour on her body, she was always a little plump as she loved her food, her share of fish and rice, which she would relish. long after the cunning Lalu has finished her share, Kalu would sit and finish every little morsel of rice and fish and all the little pieces of catchow lying around.

Kalu had green eyes, they always had suspicion in them but also had curiosity and shyness. If i were sitting in the bedroom, she would come in and would take one halting step towards my lap. then she would perch herself on my lap and then very softly, croak :"meaow" which i guess, meant, "hello there" in her language. which also was a signal for me to pat her on her head, scratch her chin, rub her back, etc. if i forgot to continue, she would nibble at my fingers, first softly and then, if her demands were not heeded to, a little more forcefully. If i yelped, she would look up to my face with an immense expression of hurt, as though saying "what is the fuss all about? it was not that bad, was it?"

what i loved most about Kalu was her capacity to entertain herself. we just had to throw anything at her and she would start playing with it and have fun. it could be a piece of paper, a little red ball, peel of any vegetable, even a green chili would do.

Now that she is gone, it is very difficult to imagine that i will never see those green eyes again, nor that funny wierd face of hers with a mole on her lip, and she would never ever tiptoe inot any of my rooms again.

I guess her time in this world, with us was over. I only hope that she left this world in peace. she was not sick or at least no one knew anything about it. my maid suggested that someone from that house poisoned her. my stomach churned at the thought ..... i fervently hoped she was not.

i am agonised, grieved, sad, angry, depressed - but I hang onto the memory of Kalu and the time she decided to spend with us - her lovely spirit, her loving affectionate nibbling, her curiosity, her desperation and anxiety when both rusha and i left kolkata, her beautiful plump appearance, her love for food, her propensity to get into trouble and utter inability to get out of it .... all of these.

i also feel immensely guilty that i have moved to bangalore five years ago without the pets (two of them have passed away since - only one is left) and i have not been able to do anything. i have blamed lack of infrastructure here and all other kinds of things and i wonder whether there was anything that i could have done.

i remain thus, answerable to you Kalu, to you Pudding and to you Lalu.

and I shall not seek forgiveness.