Riddikulus

The spell to get rid of boggarts.

Boggarts are tricky. They assume the shape of your worst fears. With the spell, you turn it into the funniest thing you can think of. The laughter that this ridiculous spectacle will bring forth confuses the boggart, giving you time to escape or lock it up.

That is one rich metaphor. And I can think of so many applications in daily life.

On a day like this

... one should go out in the rain, get cold, come back home and soak feet in warm water and sip coffee and feel the warmth seep back in.
... I think of the school vacation days, home alone, watching DD's special (and boring) vacation programming.
... I feel I shouldn't have sent the child off to school and should instead have slept late and generally had a lazy day with her.
... it is perfect to be soothed by Banana Pancakes.

Nelson Mandela

is no more. His lung infection and long hospitalisation has finally ended and he has departed at 95. Lung trouble which caught him during his decades in jail.

I must have been in 4th or 5th when my school sent letters requesting Mandela's release from jail. Or maybe it was just one letter, I don't remember. The teacher read it out in class, explained who he was and why he was in jail. We all signed the letter. Whether or not that letter made any impact on the decision makers one will never know. It was but one among many many such petitions. But I like the thought that I was also a drop in that ocean of support.

Minion love

You've got to love the minions. Not just for the fact that they are yellow and adorable, but for their nature too.

These are the guys you take lessons in optimism from. There isn't one pessimistic hair on them (well, most of them are bald anyway). Super enthusiastic, game for anything, almost always happy. And even if one is being a little grumpy, he is easily cheered (or distracted).

They love their work and it is a joy to watch them enjoy work. They adore 'big boss' too. Fiercly loyal, they accept anything that comes their way. Give one some anti-gravity potion, he will gulp it down without question, and once he is over the fear of flying, he will float around in the sky with a yawn.

Oh and their crazy love for bananas!

Workplaces and some men

Now that Tarun Tejpal’s sexual harassment is prompting women across the nation to share their own stories of workplace harassment, I want to share mine too. As incidents go, mine was minor. And I recall this incident not with horror, but with a chuckle and some disgust.

My first job. It was a young organization, still experimenting and finding its feet. The employees were like one big family – most of them had been there from scratch. They had been through training and all the nerve racking excitement of a new television channel. A few of us had joined later but had easily fit into the team.

Into this came a new news editor. A priest. A middle aged man with a way of looking at you over his glasses. It was a stare that was part sneer, part mocking, part creepy. Then he started pinching girls. When he looked through copies, he would call them over, question them, and invariably pinch them. The girls took to standing ridiculously far away from his desk, beyond the cubicle partition and such. But he would still get them to his side of the desk. Quite predictably, he picked only those he was sure wouldn’t protest.

And then he decided my turn had come.

He had this way of stealing up behind you and standing right against your chair to read over your shoulders. One such time, he found something to correct in my copy and put his hand out to pinch me. It was a quiet time in the newsroom and my voice cautioning the man rung out loud and clear. Even before I finished my sentence, the man had thrown his hands up in air and jumped back saying, “I didn’t do anything.” And all I had got to was, “Father, don’t”.

A little hell broke loose. The men wanted to know what was going on. The women figured what was going on. Soon I was with the editor, explaining what was happening. The pincher even got an anonymous phone call from someone claiming to be from the women’s commission. (If he had bothered to trace the number, it would have taken him to the office board numbers.) We all had a good laugh over it.

The man’s explanation was that he saw us all as children, and he was only trying to correct us. How professional, no? He also got a very apt new nickname. 

Now, while it seems all funny and worth a laugh, it there is the reality that the incident was not made official. The editor was sympathetic and appropriately enraged at the situation, but he did play it down, parroted the man's line of seeing us as kids, and at the same time agreeing it was unprofessional. In short, diplomatic and dismissive. Small things that add to certain attitudes.

Kathakali

My most favourite kathakali memories are from early childhood. The annual ulsavam at the local temple when we would go, late at night, to sit on sand and watch the grand tales be told in grander style. The smell of the temple -- oil from the lamps, earth, musty sandalwood, a suggestion of incense. Falling asleep from a combination of boredom and fatigue. At the age of 5 or 6, really, there is only so much that you can be interested in a performance that goes on for hours. Returning home at early dawn and being wide awake as soon as I hit the bed.

There was this one time when I woke up to see one of the kathi veshams running through the meagre audience, with a blood curdling scream. Fearsome it was; to me it was magnified by sleep as well. At once awe inspiring and scary.

My uncle always took me to watch the artistes preparing for the show. We often watched through windows as they got their faces painted. I remember watching in wonder as they went from mere mortals to gods. The room would have, neatly hung on the walls, the finery -- the mirrors and clothes. Crowns carefully in a corner. The mild smell of the colours.

Magical times those were.

And then a week ago, against the backdrop of Singapore's glass and chrome highrises, I spent an hour watching the gods again. Surreal as the combination seemed, the magic was still intact.

Things have minds of their own

And they should come with informative labels. At least when there is an Internet of Things, the things should have tags.

For instance: "Spoon. Globetrotter. Will disappear if not kept an eye on." Or, "Knife. Impulsive. Will take its own course even if user is careful." And "Socks. Flitter. Will be found with partner other than own." (Though that's all moralistic and judgmental. But they do that. All the time.)

Yeah I have an opinion and it's strong

Back in journalism school, a professor started his first class with the insight that opinions are like assholes; everyone has one. And that was still a time when everyone didn't go around airing it.

Now though, I am overwhelmed with the opinion bombardment that happens on a daily basis. It is a noise that makes me shrink back and pack away my own opinions far back in the mind. At the end of a day, you have read so many strong opinions, or opinionated articles, that it is exhausting. And it is all being shouted. There is no subtlety anymore, it seems.

Well, what does my opinion matter? I write a secret blog, after all. :)

Rain

If water takes the shape of that which contains it, rain takes the mood of those who are in it.

In a good mood, the rain is romance, it's time for hot tea and samosa, for steaming coffee and a book. Else it is gloom, it darkens the clouds in your mind. At other times, it's a dampner, it delays you, you curse.

But one way or the other, it inspires emotions. You can't stay passive to it. Hmm. Maybe I should speak only for myself.

Moments in songs and 'delete'

Songs have a way of capturing a particular moment in memory. Not it's lyrics, nor the melody, but the moment it played. Sometimes a tangible memory -- a place, a face, a day perhaps. Sometimes, it is the memory of an emotion. And that can often cause heartbreaking nostalgia.

There are songs that bring me the memory of being deliriously happy. It's all summer day and brightness in life. Blue-skied mornings on which the song had played and I had hummed along in sheer bliss. Now, the very first notes of the song bring such a wretched yearning to go back to that delirium that I can't bear the song.

I am yet to associate sorrow to a song. Or perhaps I have just erased those from memory.

Talking of erase, I've realised people hardly use that word anymore. They use 'delete'. Like they have forgotten the time before computer keyboards. In fact, when I realised the prevalence of 'delete' in everyday conversations, it took me a long while to recall the words we had before we had delete.

The Little Prince and his sunsets

All day I have been thinking about the Little Prince and what he said about sunsets. Here's the passage:

But on your tiny little planet, all you needed to do was to move your chair a few steps. And you could watch the twilight falling whenever you felt like it.
"One day, I watched the sun setting forty-four times," you told me. And a little later you added: "You know... when one is so terribly sad, one loves sunsets..."
"The day you watched those forty-four sunsets, were you that sad?" I asked.
But the little prince made no reply.

Breaks my heart, the melancholy in those lines.

New in town

It has now been two and a half months since we moved here. It is so different when you wander about a place as a tourist and when you actually live there. Last year, on the four-day vacation, I found the city too tended-to, too protected, too manicured. That opinion hasn't changed. But I didn't need much time in understanding why people love it here.

I mailed home thus about my first impressions of the city:

On the face of it, this city has everything to be loved. Plenty of trees, a climate that makes rain on a daily basis, public transport that works like a dream. But there is still something... probably the unrealness of it all. The trees are tamed, they stand in a line. Everywhere. Much like the people who queue up for everything. The quietness of the impeccable parks. The lights in the night. The glitz and richness in everything around. Even the rain seems to follow a certain discipline and decorum.
But that said, there is the other side of the coin. Everything works like clockwork, you don't have to fight your way out everyday in buses or trains or supermarket queues, clean broad footpaths, trees everywhere.
I compare it to the many food courts here. Brightly lit, glass counters, large colourful displays and photographs, white plates, tables chairs and floors. Clean and sparkly at first sight. But invariably, under the table is grime of leftover food squashed into a paste, makes you pull your feet up in horror. The city is also sure to have that underbelly. Just that it is well hidden. 

Recently, there was a night festival in town, only on weekends, going from 7 pm to 2 am. I took the child and went, and we wandered happily among the crowds, looking at performances, installations and lights. We were out till nearly 10, and then took a train and a bus back home. Without once feeling threatened, without having to be wary, without being worried. It was surreal, especially since the mind had been buzzing with the latest gang-rape news from home -- a young photojournalist in an abandoned mill in Mumbai where she had gone with her male colleague for an assignment, where the guy got tied by a belt and the girl was forced down by five men with a broken bottle, at 6 in the evening.

Another new one

It has been three years since I last blogged. And I never really thought I would try blogging again. In fact, I thought the very concept of blogs would be dead by now.

But recently, I have felt this need to share -- not in the way that one shares on FB, but to a way smaller audience. In fact, no audience at all would be superb.

So why blog, why not just write? See, sometimes I want to just put down a link, a song, maybe a  story I read online, because that may be what is currently taking up all mindspace. Something I get stuck on for days or hours. These are not things I want to share with all my 444 friends on FB. But I sure do want to keep a record of it somewhere.

Maybe blogs do still have a purpose, huh.

Anyway, in the last one year, I moved from Bangalore to Kochi and then to Singapore. I now regret that I did not put on record my rediscovery of my hometown. The difference between the city I grew up in and the city I came back to. Now, I don't want to regret having not recorded my discovery of this new city I am in.
Anyway, I don't know how long this new burst of blogging energy will last, but there will be at least a couple of posts :)