Mr. Foreigner

Lonely corridor, interrupted sunlight,
Lonely girl, something troubling me inside.
I looked up and saw a stranger's face,
Mr. Foreigner smiling as though a best friend.

My heart did a round-off back hand spring,
My lips turned upwards into a smile.
Unfamiliar yet familiar he felt when he said 'Hey',
Mr. Foreigner didn't realize he just made my day.

Living in an age of calculated actions,
Pros and cons prevent acting on impulses.
Not saying 'hi' suddenly being in fashion,
Mr. Foreigner lifted a troubled girl's spirits.

I don't know who and from where he was,
As easily he disappeared as he had come.
In a five second long rendez-vous,
Mr. Foreigner I almost fell for you.

Thank you, Vyomster

There were no sparks that flew
When we first met.
The opposites attracting thing
Hadn't happened yet.

But there was this one time at CO's
November 14, 2004.

To the boys she was the local Megan Fox
Weird girl, she loved that stupid Miffy box.
Thank you for sharing your tiffin with me.
5-foot-8 and hair poker straight
Pooj, just be your whimsical self, she said.
Thank you for always playing pillar to me.

Throw up, whoever thought of
Cooking Pasta in Maggi?
Where's the camera? Laugh and point
At the boy in the red kurti.

Quite a dork she is really
Studying like nobody's business.
One of the few people who know
What to do when I'm in a mess.

Got a best friend all thanks to Chesbo,
November 14, 2004.

To the boys she is the local Megan Fox
To my Jen Aniston she is Couteney Cox.
Thank you for sharing your secrets with me.
5-foot-8 and hair poker straight
Pooj, just be your whimsical self, she said.
Thank you for always playing pillar to me.

Just Yet

I stepped out of the church,
There you were dressed in blue.
Hadn't seen you in a while,
Forgot I'd decided to be mean to you.

Quite a paradox it was really,
Seeing Jesus and Satan in the same frame.
Never having learned to be nasty like you,
I smiled real wide when you called out my name.

Your hair and soul the same old mess,
You're one person I keep trying to forget.
Had hoped I would be famous before we met next,
It's sad I'm not the CEO of Coca Cola just yet.

My naughtiness having always been malice-free,
I never got why you played China to my Tibet.
Wished the news channels helped you keep tabs on me,
But they don't call me the next Barkha Dutt just yet.

Your core competencies and claws drawn out,
When I said 'Arts' you smiled like you just won a bet.
While I'm having a déjà vu, you enjoy your moment,
For you see, I've not won an Oscar just yet.

Our thirty years age difference meaning nothing to you,
On giving me and my girls hell you were set.
The next time we meet you're going to know what I've been up to,
Guess what? Angelina Jolie hasn't adopted me just yet.

Dadarchya Baika

I sat in the window seat in a Borivali-bound fast train leaving from Churchgate station. I was returning home without attending any lectures in college. There had been a problem in the trains due to which I reached forty-five minutes late for college and thus missed my only lecture for the day. Sitting in the train back home now, I put on my headphones and shut my eyes.

About three minutes or a song later, the girl sitting opposite me got up and an old lady took her place. The old lady wore a crumpled purple sari and minimal jewelery. Sitting down, she took her ragged cloth bag on her lap and looked out of the window. Reclining, I shut my eyes, only to open them again when the train stopped at Dadar and all the women already in the compartment mouthed with disdain- "Hmph. Dadarchya baika". The true Drama Queens of the Western Railways, these women, I've concluded, yell and push and shove just for the sake of it. The train always stops for enough time for all of them to get in. But I believe they derive some kind of sadistic pleasure by unnecessarily elbowing each other. It is almost as if they'll be fined if atleast one of them doesn't make a scene each day.

When I opened my eyes to have a look, I noticed that all the women sitting around me were staring at the old lady in the purple sari. Looking ahead, I saw she was crying hysterically. No one seemed to know what to do. I pulled my earphones out of my ears and sat up a little. Staring at the lady, I remembered what my grandmother, our local Mother Teresa, always says, "Whether a person is in physical pain or emotional pain, the one thing that always helps to comfort them is water". Instantly, I drew a bottle of water out of my bag and placed it in the lady's hand. She gave me a rueful yet thankful look and with great speed gulped down two-thirds of the water in the bottle. I was glad that helped her cool down a little.

It was soon time for me to get off the train. I stood up, patting the lady's hand as she handed me back my bottle. Pushing my way through the women who were standing, I wondered if the old lady would be fine for the remainder of her journey or if anyone would even notice, leave alone sympathize with and help her should if she break down again. Suddenly, two ladies who had gotten in at Dadar station, started throwing the worst of Marathi slurs at each other. These swear words, I must add, were more funny than they were insulting and everybody in the compartment was now staring at the protagonists of the pandemonium, some suppressing their laughter and some laughing out loud, unabashedly. No one seemed to know what had happened that made these two start yelling so. I was too staring at them, very amused. Just then, the two turned to look at me, before looking at the old lady in the window. She was smiling now. Stunned as I was, I quickly looked back at the two ladies. They flashed genuine, heartfelt smiles at me. I could swear one of them even winked at me! Another lady who was selling oranges and who had gotten in at Dadar, passed one orange from her basket to the old lady who was no more crying. I was assured now. I got off at Bandra, bemused and laughing, two words in my head- "Dadarchya baika"!

Backup Plan

I sat on the school steps,
Lonely in lunch break.
Last day of tenth grade,
And boy was I scared!

You came and stood in front of me,
Bent down, hands on your knees.
Tucking my hair behind my ear,
You painted quite a picture.

It’s ok for you to freak out today.
It’s ok if you don’t have the future planned yet.
We’ll get through this just fine,
If I be your backup plan and you be mine.

At eighteen, you fail your driving test,
Don’t worry I’ll drive you around baby.
At twenty, your boyfriend throws tantrums,
I’ll go over and make sure he is sorry.
I’ll lend you money if you’re broke and
At thirty, for you I’ll go down on one knee.

I didn’t know what to say,
Suddenly felt so safe.
Didn’t realize I was crying,
Till I saw tears in your eyes.

We sat in silence for a while,
Sunlight finding its way to us.
Your words only yet sinking in,
I turn to you, oh so convinced..

It’s ok for me to freak out today.
It’s ok if I don’t have the future planned yet.
We’ll get through this just fine,
If I be your backup plan and you be mine.

At eighteen, I fail my driving test,
Won’t worry you’ll drive me around baby.
At twenty, my boyfriend throws tantrums,
You’ll go over and make sure he is sorry.
You’ll lend me money if I’m broke and
At thirty, for me you’ll go down on one knee.

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. :)