Did her dreams stop? - The (not so) short story

Taking of from where we left

It was a little beyond 6 of the morning hour. A warm start to the day in March though things were about to heat up. For Vidya…was rummaging through her things - It was time for her to leave for school but she could not find her pen. Anger was building up inside her - she knew it had to be someone. It was too important a thing for her to have misplaced carelessly. The pen was a gift from her father when she entered class 5 – the threshold to higher secondary and today was the day of her exam. How could she have lost it when she had even preserved the slim cardboard box that came along with it? It lay ensconced wrapped in the cellophane. She had touched it only once careful not to leave any finger prints on its shinny gold exterior.

Amma stood behind her holding the warm brass tumbler of milk with the edge of her duppatta. Common drink your milk and go to school…you will be late for your exam…I will find it and keep it for you when you are away

But amma…I want to write my paper with it. When dada gave it to me he blessed me and told me I would come first in class. Now how will I write my exam and come first. You don’t understand anything amma

She went from corner to corner in that little room which was no more than 10 steps whichever direction you walked. Moving frantically between the almirah… the side of the cot…and her school bag…her trail replicated the movements of an angry buzzing bee who has been disturbed on her hive…waiting to strike back. Sonia her twin watched her silently. Sonia was unusually quiet this morning. If this had been any other day, they would have by now left home bickering and pulling at each other’s plaits. Then as though in a flash of brilliance it struck Vidya.

Soni…bring down your bag from your shoulders…I know it’s in there
No didi… (Sonia called her didi since Vidya had come to the world 3 mins before she could arrive)…I promise I don’t have it

Then bring down your bag…by now Vidya hands were tugging at the shoulder strap testing its resolve to stay in place. Amma helplessly watched the two jostle…careful beta…you will spill the milk…it’s a bad omen…Vidya aren’t you my sensible one...aren't you

Vidya and Sonia would see amma speak in the background…her words filled the air surrounding them though none could permeate their consciousness. If not for the ink blot on Sonia’s bag, this fight would have continued unendingly.

Vidya gulped down her glass of milk…Sonia almost pulling her out of the door. Amma stood there watching the girls run…she stood until all she could see were a pair of plaits swinging in the distance.

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Mama…what are you thinking about…I have been asking you for the past 10 minute…have you seen my pen anywhere....i’m going to miss my bus again today…

Vidya had been standing there still…once again words filled the air….only this time they were her daughters words. Beta…where is the pen I had given you…

Mama…what are you saying…I am asking you about my pen…and you are talking about something else…

Beta… I hope you have not lost it…that pen is special… dada had …

Suhani interrupting…Oh God mama...you and your ancient thoughts and your ancient things…I am getting late…I have taken 20 rupees from your purse; I will buy a new one from jeevat chacha…

Vidya stood by the little window in the kitchen, stroking the money plant that grew out of the kissan jam bottle. 3 stories below, the sweeper created clouds of dust with his vigorous movements. Summer was at its peak, dry dust filled the air and even as early as 7 a.m. the sunlight was stinging! Vidya wondered…the summer was not so harsh two decades back. White sun lit rays raced through empty spaces in the wooden door that formed a shadow of criss cross patterns on the courtyard. Vidya and her sisters hopped on the shadows as Amma dressed the floor with a new coat of cow dung. Those shadows…and the shadows of the past were a cool…safe haven from the stinging sunlight of the day.

The clock played a familiar tune and Shyam yelled in the background….neither were music to her ears. It was 8 and Vidya was not her usual efficient self this morning. Shyam cursed her and left home without his packed lunch. Vidya already knew what to expect of the day ahead. The 8.09 local was definitely out of question. That meant she had to take the 8.19 fast instead….that is only if she was allowed to enter at Dadar…she had some chance of making it to work on time. Else, a late mark on the roster. She had already reached late last Monday since Suhani had to be dropped to school when she had woken up late and missed her school bus. Shyam had refused to drop though the school was a 5 minute walk from the bus stop where Shyam took the 332. Suhani, her brother, Shyam’s parents, the maid - chanda, the kitchen and the running of the house – were all Vidya’s responsibility. If Vidya wanted to work, she was to make sure that she would not fall short of any of his primary duties first.

Memories have a way of forcing themselves into the present. Memories did not realize that Vidya was already late. Like a stubborn child, they trudged along with her through the morning. Suhani losing her pen had resulted in Vidya losing herself and her morning to her past. I think somehow Vidya was allowing herself to get lost. These were the only comforts she could allow herself. Her home where she had spent most of her growing years was in the vicinity. She would pass by that plot of land which was now home to plaza theatre. It was prime property in the heart of dadar, one of the busiest suburbs in Bombay. Had the 17 families who once lived there owned that property, they would have been sitting on a pot of gold. But the houses had been leased to them for 20 years as part of the rehabilitation exercise for a paltry sum of 25 rupaiyahs. Though Vidya’s life had started 10 years before she arrived with her family at railway colony, Dadar, her years spent there were the most precious memories from her past. Life before that was a hazy vision of Larkana – her place of birth. Her 10 years there had been reduced to just two images in her mind – one of the thick iron chain bolting the door to their ancestral house and the second and the most vivid memory of the time when there was a black out on the train to Karachi.

But more about that another time…Vidya needs to try and make it to the 8.19 and she has just 3 mins to go…

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This story continues here

What is your payoff?

You have been blogging for some months or for the few it could be years...or even if you have joined the bandwagon only recently...you would know that blogging is hard work. You could much rather be sitting on your couch watching tele or experiencing life...outdoor...but instead you sit for hours, glued to your PC, writing...reading....commenting....revisiting. There is surely something that really keeps you going...something that makes you want to wake up and perhaps check your blog first thing in the morning even before you have brushed your teeth!

Do you blog to engage with words...or...ideas?
Or perhaps you like to blog to engage with People
Or Maybe Technology
Or for some of us - even ourselves....

So what is your payoff?

Alright...I know and by now I am sure you have realised too that all this talk was just to get you (in) terested...to hook you in...and ask you one simple question (ok I know i'm making my blog sound like a seedy smoked filled room where people enter and get duped but what the heck) and that is....

WHY DO YOU BLOG?

Tell me why you blog....common tell yourself that too...If I hadnt asked this would you have taken time out to think about this...perhaps not...so out of the sheer goodness of your heart and some consideration for my time...leave a comment or send in a mail. Anonymous comments are welcome too provided there are not asking me to visit a website that will earn me money....

And for the 2 and a half loyal visitors who I have...I know who you are...so dont you escape by just reading my posts and running away...

And whenever i make money using ad sense I promise to give the best commenter some of that booty. So common be a sport....

And if you have forgotten the purpose of this post by now - which I have - scroll up - I wrote it in caps for precisely these forgetfull moments :)

blogs, motivation to blog

Walls of Silence...A Short Story

Vidya was perhaps only 20 when she married Shyaam. They stood beside each other for a third of the day as people bee lined to greet them and hand them large parcels wrapped in blotchy pink and blue paper. Looking doe-eyed, sometimes she would steal a glance at him and see her life beyond. He…completely oblivious of her gesture….engaged his colleagues and friends in banter, asking them to feed themselves heartily before leaving. Their voices drowned in the backdrop of loud music played with the intention of evoking amorous feelings in the couple….sun saiba sun, pyaar ki dhun…maine tujhe chun liya…

They were the last to eat, she looked frail and weighed down with the garlands around her neck and her heavy pallu that pulled her head down with its weight. - When she had seen the saree her aunt had chosen for her nuptials, she could barely hold it and had complained about it to her mom. But the decision was overruled while she was politely explained how she would have to learn to bear the weight of much more in the days to come. Besides, a bride always needs to have her eyes to the ground and the heavy pallu over the head did a marvelous job of ensuring that. Brides who look straight up, are considered impudent remarked the aunt, teaching her the ways of the new adult world she was about to enter. - They were served food on a common dinner plate as shyaam’s sister giggled and rafiq the cameraman insisted on taking shots of them feeding each other. She could barely eat, partly out of excitement and partly fear. Lost in her thoughts she would gaze away at the morsels of food…waiting for her man to put down the spoon and before she knew it, he had put it down only that the morsels had vanished.

The morning after, she woke up in a strange, different house amongst people who were now her family. That space with two and a half rooms housed 5 adults and the two children who were yet to come. Shyaam lived with his parents and his unmarried sister, kamla. For the next 38 years, although much changed in her life, many things remained the same. Each of those 13000 odd mornings she was the first to wake up and get the house in order before rushing off to catch the 8.09 local to VT. The train ride lasted a precious 45 mins. It was in these three quarters of an hour that she could laugh out loud and share her feelings, frustrations and the warm sheera that she had sneakily made for her ‘train friends’. It is here where she could catch a breath of fresh fishy air devoid of judgments and barbs before encountering the humdrum of the day. This morning dose of laugher and later her office ‘fruit club’ would fortify her to face her supervisor, shyaam, kamla and the rest. Evening rides were less fun since it was seldom possible for the friends to co-ordinate their train timings and at the end of a long hard day patience was a rare commodity. An innocent nudge or a push could spiral into the ugliest of catfights.

In the short span of 5 waking hours that she spent at home, shyaam managed to express displeasure about something new each day. If it was not about…why she had stored mangoes in the fridge, it was about the disfigured tooth paste tube! Vidya had learnt to live with this reality and the fact that shyaam drank and smoked at home each day – traits she detested but could do nothing about. What saved her sanity was that on many days she was too tired to feel any emotion. She served her full term at the railway office where she had begun as an intern after her matriculation. Her children, married before her retirement day which she looked forward to having fulfilled her duties as an employee, mother and a wife. Though there was that faint regret of not meeting her train friends and the outside world. Retirement day was big in her life since her colleagues handed her good wishes and an Electric Oven bought with the kitty which people had contributed to generously. The supervisor spoke kind words for a change and they all feasted on hot gulab jamuns and samosas which the peon had ran across the road to fetch just in time for the party.

Post retirement…life was different to say the least. 5 hours of vidya’s existence within the confines of the four walls had stretched to 24. She could only go out to buy veggies once in a few days since the 3 floor climb to her house was not something her aching knees could take more often. Since he would see her home more, Shyaam had found more reasons each day to express his anger and frustration. When he would take an afternoon nap after reading the filmy gossipy magazines he had subscribed to, she would lie there quietly, eyes wide open, asking herself the one question that she had asked herself repeatedly since 1968…she wondered what she was doing wrong, she wondered whether she could do anything that would make him happy? Shyaam blamed her for anything and everything that would wrong….the phone line going dead to the high phone bills owing to their daughter in law’s frequent calls to her mama who lived in Delhi. Vidya could not even ignore his rants. Without anything to distract her, they would ring in her ears all day. Then one day when she went on her regular visit to the vegetable market, she could not find her way back home. She was bewildered since the vegetable vendor was addressing her by some name that seemed unfamiliar to her. Mrs Khana from next door helped her reach home that night. Shyaam lashed out at her for gallivanting in the dark and said it was unbecoming of her to do that at her age. Sometimes she would forget names and faces of people she knew. ‘Have I seen you before…I don’t remember meeting you’ …she had told shyaam’s uncle who was visiting them. Shyaam had put restrictions on her movement out of the house after the incident when she had lost her way home. She grew very quiet and sometimes would call her sister and tell her that she was feeling strange inside but by the end of the call would not remember having such a conversation. Her daughter visited her for 3 days en route their trip to lonavala. That perked her up a bit. After many days, her cheeks looked flushed again. Post he daughters visit, Vidya seemed normal. Quieter than before but not lost. One afternoon while shyaam lay in bed, she opened the door and walked out of her house. She was last spotted by one of their neighbors at VT station. He had tried to talk to her but found that she would not respond. Perhaps that she created a silence around her that no one could penetrate!
alzheimers, story

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Update : Vidya's story does not end here...Did her dreams stop...I was asked...Here is what I had to say

Hypnosis...from 'Stage' to Surgery

A couple of days back, Channel 4, did a 2 hour program on Hypno-surgery. It involves using hypnosis to induce anesthesia instead of the usual way, while performing a surgery. The entire operation was telecast live on TV with a surgeon watching it and commenting about it in the backroom to take the audience through what was happening. The process was smooth, the person being operated upon did not feel any sense of discomfort and the most important thing being – this was for real! Not something staged, no camera tricks, no illusion, and no gimmicks.

This was not the first time that such a procedure was performed using hypnosis as a tool. As far back as the 1800s James Esdaile, a Scottish doctor working in india used it in surgery including amputations.

It has been used widely to help people deal with psychosomatic ailments, deal with behavior that is habitual – like smoking, to overcome phobias, as an aid to forensic investigation, as a motivational tool for sports people or anybody trying to achieve a goal, as a way of inducing a state of relaxation and even in the context of market research in understanding subconscious consumer behavior.

It is a completely safe and natural state to experience, that many of us have experienced involuntarily and unknowingly several times.

And yet when people think about hypnosis, all they can associate with it is stage hypnotism – the kind that involves the hypnotist taking control of his subject and making him behave like a frog or some such pointless application used purely for the purpose of entertainment. One of the reasons for such a strong association could be a lack of awareness about this discipline but another and a stronger reason I would attribute this to is, practitioners who can do so much more with the tool but put it to unethical use, motivated by money or propaganda.

It’s a shame and I hope in the future there is enough serious work done around this tool and written about by the media to make associations between hypnosis and stage entertainment a thing of the past.
hypnosis

Categories: Hypnosis_

Living on the web

Blogs have gained momentum. There are a million new ones out there being created each day and suddenly everyone seems to be blogging. It’s catching fire! In the last 10 days, I have heard blogs being mentioned at least on 4 different occasions on the morning news, the last one talking about a Blooker

So is blogging the next big trend on the world wide web that would stand the test of time and one day stop seeming like a novel activity much like chatting or emailing are today? Or is it a passing fad that eventually people will grow out of? Will blogs meet the same fate as home pages did?

Well, honestly I am no expert on blogging and have started blogging actively only in the recent past - so here I only hope to share my views and by no means speak with any sense of authority on the topic.

My concept of what a blog is has changed dramatically in the last 4 years. When I first heard the word 'blog' about 4 years ago, (at the risk of exposing my ignorance and sounding completely stupid here) I though it was a ‘weird new animal’, of course in my defense I had only heard the word and had no reference to it. Later somebody sat me and explained that it actually stood for web-log and from then until recently I though of it like an online journal – like some one’s journal / diary – only this one was available for viewing. Off late as I have started ‘visiting’ blogs and I like the language that has been created around blogs – I am beginning to feel – it is much more than just a journal.

We ‘visit’ blogs, we don’t just read them.

We leave notes and messages for people on their blogs – ‘hey I haven’t seen you in a while or i need to talk to you urgently, buzz me asap’

We tell people who visit us ‘thanks for stopping by’

If we do not intend to blog, we make our absence know – ‘I won’t be blogging for the next few days. Hope to see you soon’ since you would not want people turn up to your house and find the door locked (did I just say house – I meant site)

Then there are veterans who retire from blogging – much like when we are fed up of social interactions – we become reclusive. And some blogs do see the end of their life.

We even ‘celebrate blog birthdays’ and leave belated wishes when we miss these milestones

Are blogs here to stay? I guess we’ll all know in time but if I were to bet my money on that – I would say they’d stay. Since they have started to fulfill a fundamental human need – the need to connect!

I see life around them and life in them. (And I guess my initial idea of a blog as being something living was not too daft after all). There is one blog title that sums it all for me. It goes ‘I had a life before... now I only have a blog. It would be interesting to observe then, how long blogs live. Measuring blongevity…any takers?
web, blog, social blogging

Category: Blogs_