For The First Time In A Long Time

The afternoon incident:

It's winter, but an afternoon stroll in the Mumbai suburbs is never a good idea. That is why when Shib suggested we walk back from McDonald's to Lucky Restaurant in Bandra, Sanj and I were a little apprehensive. I've known and loved these girls for more than a decade now, but one can never get used to Shib's eccentricities. Every time she talks Sanj and me into doing something she thinks would be fun, we let out a swear word. And a bad one at that.

We embarked on the journey. We ran in the middle of roads, we sat at petrol pumps to catch our breath and best of all, we gossiped about almost every girl on our Facebook lists, holding each other's hands, not caring who's giving us weird looks. When we almost reached Lucky Restaurant, the worst thing happened. My flip-flop broke! What was to happen next? Sanj and I, the drama queens that we are, started 'Oh-My-God'-ing and fussing, wondering what we're going to do now. There was neither a cobbler, nor a shop that sold footwear in site.

While we were both confusing each other and trying to find a rickshaw, we realised that Shib had gone missing. We started the habitual 'Shib-swearing' when suddenly we saw her coming back with a small Feviquick strip in her hand. What she did then touched me so much that I was dumbfounded for the next whole minute. She walked up straight to me, bent down to pull the flip-flop out of my leg and glued and pressed the torn strap down. Putting the flip-flop back down, she said, smiling, "There you go. It's fixed now." Shib's supposed to be the slow one of the three of us. We would never expect her to be practical or quick enough to do something like that. This is why I knew her action was not a show of her practicality but of her love. I managed to switch my awestruck expression with a thankful one and smiled. And for the first time in a long time, I smiled from the heart.

The evening incident:

For my aunt's two daughters, aged eight and ten, throwing their friends a fun party on the terrace of their building every year around Christmas time has become a ritual. And it's that time of the year again. Every year, the kids choreograph and perform dances on the latest Bollywood songs or merely sing their favourite songs to all their parents, the most encouraging audience. I go every year to help my aunt with the preparations.

The invitee list comprised pretty cute girls in pretty cute dresses. But of all of them, the girl that I was most intrigued by was the seven-year-old Sanjana, suffering from the Down's Syndrome. She's the younger sister of one of my cousins' friends. We were like magnets attracting each other. She, to me, stood as an epitome of innocence and naïvety. Oblivious to the stares she was receiving, she sat in the chair facing me, in one corner of the terrace. Most of what she spoke was incomprehensible. But with her gestures and monosyllables, she animatedly described what she does every morning (I didn't even know why we were talking about it or why she chose to speak to me out of all the people present). It took her twenty minutes to explain, and me twenty-five minutes to understand. My younger sister, who sitting next to me throughout, had witnessed our entire rendez-vous, stood up and walked away, saying, "Dude you have patience!" I could swear it was the positive aura about Sanjana that drew me to her. The fact that she was terribly shy to talk to any other person present made me feel special.

But her attention did waver from me eventually. What caused this was the Dabangg title song that started playing just then. She was suddenly a transformed person. She jumped out of the chair and ran to the side of the terrace where her older sister and my cousins were dancing. The song had reached the chorus by the time she reached there. As soon as she heard the words "Hud Dabangg Dabangg" blast from the speakers, she held the belt of her pant and started moving it à la Salman Khan!! For the second time that day, my jaw dropped wide open and my eyes widened. Her mother explained that she is a huge Salman Khan fan and that every time she hears this song, she starts dancing to it. And that, I thought to myself, is the weird connection that Salman Khan has with his millions of fans of different genders, ages and backgrounds. It made my eyes water. The girl who had been sitting in the corner at a party because she didn't quite get what was going on, had now mixed in the crowd, dancing and laughing. And for the first time in a very long time, I cried, not because I didn't get something my way (which is usually why I cry), but because I'd just realised what being Salman Khan means. What Being Human means.

Just Saying

When I initially made myself an account on this site, I didn't know what to write. Is this blog a personal diary? Is it like the random graffiti in the tiny by-lanes of a huge city which people look and neglect, passing by? I didn't know. My first post was a detailed recitation of the heroic ways of my first boyfriend and how the drama of that era long gone can even beat the story-lines of the daily soaps we see today. So that single post (with initials used for people's names) remained on the blog for long and I told no one about it. But a sly genius who society calls the 'best friend' entered the scene and my blog.

A conversation that started with her saying, "Pooj, I blog now! You should too!", ended with her pulling out of me the fact that I do, actually, have a blog too! I adamantly refused to send her the link to it, fearing the "Oh but you're so much better without him" or "Why do you look down upon yourself so much. You're a 'Fun, Fearless Female', Pooj" talk. She knew my Twitter username (which too I choose not to disclose to friends) and tried it on Blogger.com. And voilà! Now she and her sister are the two of my three followers.

I was so embarrassed that she read what I wrote (despite the fact that I crib to her about such topics every single day of our existence) that I just HAD TO delete the post. So what came up instead was one patriotic poem and one 'pining for him' poem, both very clumsily rhymed. My bad. Well there's gotta be something up on the blog, right? But yesterday I experienced two very emotional events which I knew I would want to share with not just the two or three people I communicate with on a daily basis, but also with a larger audience. I'll talk about that in another post, though. I'm glad I finally know what to talk about here. I'll end this post here. :)