As we come to the closing of a nine hour drive to Canada, my
body and mind is left with least inclination for a peep into the fitness
center. With a fiery snow storm in the third month of the year, my encounter
with a 'wild' 'winged' Buffalo and a bone chilling gust is far from amusing.
The immigration officer looks sleepy and I look even sleepier with a genuine
worry of how the man of the house is going to keep his eyes open at the seventh
hour behind the wheel. Every time it is the soft and melodious voice of Sonu
Nigam from my collection tempting me to recline my seat and slip into a catnap
that my dad has reiteratively warned me of - Knowing the contagious nature of
this momentary enticement, come what may, it must be avoided to keep my man
awake. What follows is an Akon and later a Ludacris number making me feel helpless
about my legroom which isn't, obviously allowing me to mistake it for a dance
floor! Hats off to Mr. Vasu Mallik's ever strengthening ear drum that by now
has become immune to my constant blabber along with Akon and his 'Sexy Bitch' playing
at two fifty decibels on a repeat mode. Visit to Canada after almost four
months is a welcome change which also blissfully guarantees having to stay with
the husband for next three weeks at a stretch. We check into the hotel, some
sinful platter of Pasta awaits to start with the guilty pleasures, and I doze
off. In my sleep, I meet seven Zombies in a row, (with the touch of a magic
wand which rather resembles the master cutter I use for chopping meat in my Durham
kitchen) who to me, seem like a reflection of our mundane miseries that has taken
a serious toll on our wellbeing. As I get to spend one day each with all the Zombies,
my bewilderments unearth, one after the other.
Monday - We call a country our motherland
where a woman is loathed for turning almost into a whore in the eyes of the
mass since she stands by her cricketer boyfriend through his defeat; contrarily
her presence will go unnoticed and remain far from auspicious even if he makes
a century. Things look brighter for another woman from the same country who is
applauded by the majority for her outrageous propaganda of infidelity in the
name of empowerment of women! It is harrowing to find that our nation weighs
heavier on broadcasting such awareness, yet not much heed is paid to the sexual
abuse of various kinds that a woman faces every single minute - 'Do you sleep
with other men when your husband is at work?' 'Would you like to have the third
child with me as my wife doesn't want a third child?' Power of media??
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The other day I receive a suggestion for adding some
faceless friend into my social networking circle that I, with all my optical
efficiency read as - 'Mauka Loss'. My eyes keep rolling till the other half of
mine jerks me off the trans while driving through a busy traffic that has the
look of the buzzing streets of Toronto. He calls me a little baby who, after
quite lavishly celebrating her kiss of thirties only a few days back still
feels a pang of sheer pain over certain trivial but sensitive issues of the
universe. Hence, seeing an image of the Indian flag imprinted on toilet rolls
that is shining bright as the profile identity for 'Mauka Loss' is disturbing.
Goes without saying, all this happens from fans with unique tastes and choices
across different states and the knowledge of the sport continues to exist at a
minimal measure. Be it Gulli-Danda, Kho Kho or the World Cup Cricket - I
shudder at visualizing what perilous penalty the players deserve for
occasionally failing in their mechanism and being human. Perhaps a pretty
shitty one. Sigh!
Tuesday - With all the ongoing hullabaloo on Feminism and a
'Vague Empavarment' that talks majorly about the phenomena of 'mera jism',
'mera bheja', 'yon sambandh' - shaadi se
pehle ya shaadi ke baad - meri marzi. Main pyar karoon - purush se, ya nari se
- ya dono se - meri marzi. Oh wait! This is just the prelude! Another
experience is a must share - it is in absence of the other stronger half of
mine last week and its mention worthy that my reaction is till date babyish and
kinda 'ewwwww' towards anything remotely
gory or gross. So is the sight of my own menstrual blood. Sincere apologies for
being explicit, but portrayal of a woman lying in bed stained with her visible
signs of fertility takes me some time to gulp down as a powerful message to the
world. If I have to look at it with the imposed and terribly haunting visual
evidences in support of the woman's demand for freedom of expression (and the
nudge in the ribs of a brutally patriarchal society is left to the reader's
imagination), I would put it like this : I bleed every month. I undergo severe
cramps. I want everyone to take a glance at the fluid that my body secretes
only to remind them of the holiness of the womb that they are born from. My
spirit exalts in enormity when I post such colorful shots of mine changing the
pads soaked in blood with the last few drops left on the rim of the lavatory, only
to re remind you that you must, at all times respect women for the sacrifices
she makes and treasure her existence in your life solely because she is the one
who has chosen you. Need I say more about the degree of my discomfort that
grows manifold soon after that?? That is not all. There are few more candid takes
of the lens those follow so as to throw further light on how this eternal
leakage problem for women makes them superior in their tolerance above the
opposite sex. On a lighter note, the image of a gastronomically delightful suckling
pig with its funny caption reads as - 'I turn grass into bacon. That is my
super power. What is yours?' What
strikes my mind immediately is the trauma of the so called male chauvinistic
pigs on the lam who now onwards will have to legitimately share a larger part
of his 'inheritable' property on divorce with his female counterpart, which
quite conveniently means even a short stint of a week's union will make the
woman eligible to claim 50% of the man's possessions. With the government
passing such lop sided laws, I can visualize a total power reversal in near
future and all that masculine pride running into the perennial plights of a
bondman. Paying the piper? That's women (Super)power!!! Yikes!
Wednesday - A country that breathes free
today owing to a cadged liberation, fails to withstand the forthrightness of a
secular blogger and therefore self-reliably stabs him to death. What
disproportion of justice and prudence when the law of the same country doesn't
shilly-shally to release a player free from accusations of sexual assault as he
must have been indispensable for an extremely important match? How many more
lives to be extinguished to silence till we learn our religious discriminations
well enough?? If their national anthem writer is the same genius who dreamt of unifying
Punjab, Sindhu, Gujrat, Maratha, Dravid, Utkal, and Banga through his poetic
prowess, why can't we strive for erasing such barriers with the considerably
decent amount of intellect that we are gifted with since our evolution from the
primates?? My heart breaks one more time on reading about a four year old child
in Syria, where thousands of innocent lives are gunned down on a regular basis
in pursuit of a dominant Islamic caliphate. Little Hudea is no exception, as
she has already renounced her longing for life and thus brave enough to
surrender to a photographer whose camera she errs to be a gun. The agony in her
eyes and the lost trust in mankind shakes me through and through. My soul feels
trapped within the walls of partisanship. When we admire the wonders of a
sunset or the beauty of the moon, we unanimously extend our gratitude in awe of
that one Creator, who speaks one common language of Love, Acceptance and Truth.
Then why do we have to differentiate ourselves
as the sea from the river, the pond from the lakes when they all contain
water? Give it a thought.
Thursday - Save the Mother Earth from an
illimitable infamy. Foster some sensibilities for the first choice and let heaps
of cash be the second. Do I term it as progressive penchant of Nihilism on the
part of political leaders when they do not find it valid to approve a
cautionary alert on cigarette packets in a country that faces two thousand five
hundred demises per day due to tobacco consumption?? Human lives look to be of
some scanty worth to me in the face of such corrupt and power-loving front-runners
of the society!! What a pity! Oh how can I forget to what extent I feel unsafe
without a muffler wrapped prim and proper around my throat, the monkey cap in
my hand and a bottle of cough syrup in my sack to step out to my balcony and watch
the children play. I hail from a country of overtly emotive as well as
melodramatic jurors who can outlast the warranty of a pair of Paragon slippers (that
I remember my mum buying for the housemaid so that she could beat the incessant
rains of West Bengal and reach at work on time) with their unassailable holier-than-thou
spirit of democracy. The question is - From where do we derive all that
farcical inspiration to applaud the one
and only 'Khaas Aam Aadmi' as our leader who is ready to strip himself naked as
a gesture of Swachch Sharir Abhiyan? Paradoxically, an actor from the same
country has to plough into a mountain of caustic remarks for posing relevantly
bare bodied (but putting his genitals out of sight of course) for the sake of a
fictional character that he plays in a movie that mirrors the prevalent
religious practices out of which we, Hindus, make up a 80% whopping in this
country. The important aspect that we have denied while attacking the makers
and protagonist of PK, is - the bottom line has never been to slam any
religious community in specific, but the misinterpreted notion of religion as a
whole and its preachers who more often than not engage in misguiding us and our
blind faith in God. We love to suffer ourselves in this existential dubiousness
yet we are never able to gather the empathy to stop and think - Had the script
been conceived and produced in the USA, would it not have an inherent Christian
angle to it?? So what is the big deal?
Friday - With an increasing rate of bans stacking on a country of double
standard, it gets from tough to tougher for an average memory like that of mine
to keep a track on the endless list. Thanks to the status of being a pardesi now
- I do not have to eat more than half of my man's head to get hold of the
forbidden documentary on India's daughter. We watch it legally online in the
States over a bowl of choco therapy topped with some extra whipped cream and
crushed strawberries. Half way through the graphical detailing of the cold
bloodedness of the perpetrator, the demented and defensive lawyers, the
excruciating pain that the victim was subjected to, now survived of her devastated
parents - somewhat benumb a part of my hand urging no more for the next scoop. I feel sorry for Leslee Udwin who has
not been spared of frightful cynicism for calling Indian society sick and ill
fated as it doesn't allow one to express
disappointment at the banning of a real life story that depicts the ferocity of
perpetual perversion and the heinous crimes against women thriving by leaps and
bounds every day in every nook and cranny of our highly regarded Bharat Mata. Being
a juvenile has never been such a boon before, till one gets away with the least
penance for committing the most atrocious felony on the face of this earth. If
there can still be the horrendous customs in certain provinces of India, that
adhere to burning one alive to death for inter cast marriages, if there can be Asian countries like China and Japan where
restaurants serving monkey brains as a
delicacy is considered the most lucrative occupation one can imagine of, and
not barbaric, why banning beef??? Why doesn't the Maharashtra Animal
Preservation Act come up with an embargo on chicken, pork and mutton too? Are
they not living beings? A theocratic state that allows to butcher the female
buffaloes and buffalo calves but when it comes to the gais, they are the ones to
have all the fun! Living outside India, a non beef eater like me is perhaps supposed
to get least affected by the ban. Food is the body of good living, and I love
my pork chops along with the smoky aroma when the man savors a Grilled Steak
With Fresh Mango Salsa. I wouldn't really blame the enraged virtual medium for
mocking the Saffron Brigade since of all burning issues like Poverty, Corruption,
Pollution and Population, which has barely seen any change off late, we make a
hue and cry to reinforce eating or not eating - which to me, is completely a
personal choice. I wonder what might be the consequences of a possible taboo on consuming coconuts too, as
that is best endeared as an embodiment of the Divine force during Satya Narayn
Puja in my house. Holy crap!
Saturday - German Airbus A320, one fifty lives on board, a
co-pilot with recurrent suicidal tendencies, now left in debris after crashing
into the French Alps. As an airline professional, I feel crestfallen about the
deliberate crashes by commercial pilots which are
not unprecedented in history. Similar cases of homicide have occurred in the
past too, and it appears to me that the aviation industry has not been taking it
seriously to cut arbitrary recruiting of and investing in aspiring
pilots with many latent abnormalities
which sooner or later proves to be catastrophic for all. Why? Why can't
the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) guidelines make a formal
psychological test mandatory for each applicant besides gauging out the general
emotional stability of the person which is not sufficient to be the captain of
a ship. Mozambique Airlines in 2013 bears a similitude in the story of the
German Wings crash, an Egypt Air in 1999 devastated in the Atlantic Ocean
killing two hundred and sixteen people, Silk Air in 1997, crashed for a reason
confirmed by the Indonesian authority - all of which trace back to the
ingestion of alcohol and antidepressants. It concerns me deeply when I ponder
over the burgeoning stress on not only on the wing men but all of us who, in
their day to day life fight a battle for survival. Better job benefits, better
perks, and a substantial pension to raise a family. With growing hopes and
ambitions, one eventually foregoes health, personal time, missing out on a lot
more which can never be equalized with a bulky bank balance in order to meet
the requirements of a great life. I don't know what will be the fate of the
unborn child of Andreas Lubitz , but I definitely know that it is a repetitive
Black Day for the humanity by and large.
Sunday - Weekend is here. My wait comes to an end also the
last official discourse as the other half is about to drop off the hand held
device assuring me of next two days of tranquility. I breathe freedom
everywhere without that ear-splitting alarm pushing my man out of bed to start
his morning briefing with the team. I feel harmony all over deterring myself
from the preparations of a monstrous Monday when 4 am awaits him to set off for
a business trip. We decide to celebrate, and he promises to take me to a Caribbean
joint for my favorite cocktail. The man is in the shower and I, with all my
artful precision engross myself into drawing the edges of those winged eyes
until someone starts pounding on the door. With every knock of a second the
intensity perhaps touches a rhythmic relativity sprouting from the growing
frustration of this anonymous soul. It slips from frying pan to fire when the
land phone joins too and the result is a cacophony while the man continues to
enjoy a soothing drizzle. By the time I abandon my eye liner brush and make a
quick move towards the entrance of the apartment to find out what it is all
about, an utter quietude steps in. The anonymous identity vanishes in the thin
air. Only a couple of days later to my solace,
I find the maintenance has been addressed with a grave complaint of water
seeping through the internal pipe of my vanity counter which is by default
muddling in my neighbor's vicinity below one floor. Thereby, he assumedly
climbs up a floor above to discuss the issue with us whereas it could have been
more expedient to directly contact the department that could actually bring him
a faster relief from this unpleasant situation. It's 8 pm, the man is getting ready and we are
off to Bahama Breeze.
I meet a considerably impressive hostess to attend me and
escort to a table for two. The man reaches soon after parking the vehicle and orders
my best loved Bahama Rita to be accompanied by a sumptuous platter of Skillet
Simmered Jerk Shrimp. We can not ignore another Indian family sitting next to us
who very robustly starts some profound research on the two glasses that arrive
us. I minutely observe the expressions on my man's face which suggest nothing
other than downright displeasure. He looks uncomfortable and unusually reserved
at the loud rounds of laughter coupled with few dull-witted jokes that start
deafening us. 'Arrey yaar, is drink mein to daroo se zyada barf hai. Ek tukda
nimbu ka aur ek slice santre ka bhi hai. Kya baat hai'! It begins to get even
more annoying when I realize, that there are remarks yet to come. My other half
fully turns his face towards the ongoing birthday celebration of a gang of
youngsters at the bar and I purposefully start taking larger sips having to
spend more time with the straw, fiddling it in and around whatever ingredient comprises my drink. To my
astonishment, the ladies and adolescents in the group join him too in their
quest for discovering every tiny detail about what we are wearing, how old we
look, and last but not the least, which part of the world we seem to come from.
Perhaps a short dinner dress, that too beneath an English long coat at a pub in
the First World Country does not go down well with some of the Indians even
today, hence, the exposed parts of my
legs seem to be the unfortunate topic of their conference now. I keep checking
on the husband if he is alright or would like to change the table. He calls the
server, who being unable to bring the
manager for reporting of the ruckus that was on, is embarrassed, and offers us
another private table. Quite hilariously, the morons get to notice something is
cooking up here. The more my protector moves on the verge of losing his cool, I
try my level best to pacify him with some distraction of irrelevant references
to next day's lunch menu, the sizes of the Shrimp, the anorexic waitress
carrying a salver heftier than her, the musician getting hopelessly fainter
before he winds up for the day - and so on and so forth. As we get up and start
walking towards our new dinner venue awaiting us, I get to hear - 'Dekha na,
uth ke chale gaye dono! Sharam aani chahiye tum logon ko'. Our server is
immensely compassionate and tries to make us feel better with continuous apologies.
Disappointing as it may have been on the part of an American diner, that it had
to receive my not so positive words on the comment card for proffering me with one
of those rare repulsive experiences in relation to the Mango People in a land
flowing with milk and honey; who will never let you down with their consistency
in maintaining a disrepute primarily for the repugnant deportment towards their
fellow men. Likewise, my UP bhaiya acquaintance might have shown some signs of
being a gentleman had we been sitting somewhere in India? Here is the ironical
pertinence that E.M Foster states in 'A Passage To India' as - ''God has put
us on earth to love our neighbors and to show it, and He is omnipresent, even
in India, to see how we are succeeding.”
The alarm rings and another Monday beckons. As I help the
husband in the accuracy of his navy Blue tie, he asks me what time do we meet
for lunch. My reply goes - After I recover. 'From'? - He enquires. I say - The
Seven Zombies.
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