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Long long ago, (Four years back to be precise) I was under the delusion that I would write a book someday. I had a theme in my mind and even started writing!! But after all these years, I realised it's not my cup of tea. Here is a bit of what I wrote...

"I care. I love you. I can understand your insecurities. I respect your secrets. I shall never probe into your past. I shall never ask you who was there before me. I understand that you need your space sometimes and that you need to be alone and I shall let you be. I promise, I shall never force you to talk to me when you want to be quiet.


May be there was someone in the distant past who suited your taste better than I do. May be your life belonged to another person some time before I came in. May be there is someone who you will never be able to erase from your memory completely and some song, some fragrance, some gesture will forever remind you of that someone. I shall not insist that you be just mine. In fact, I shall not insist on anything.


I come with rare abilities. I can keep a smile on my face even when I feel like crying. I can laugh at myself and empathise with others. I can think positive even when I know there is no hope. More than anything else, I can love. I am a giver. I can give all I have without expecting anything in return.

You will never find me sobbing on your shoulders because I have always been the one to stroke people's head and lend my shoulders when they need. I will never let you hear a single complaint from me even though I hear my own heart break sometime.

Even after all this, if you want to go, I shall let you go. I shall never try to make you stay no matter how much it hurts me. I will still thank this life for letting me stay close to you even for a short while. I still think I have reasons to smile, I still think I have reasons to be happy...

Just a piece of crap

This is something I wrote long back. Got it today while looking for something else...

Darkness was slowly gnawning at the evening twilight. Birds seemed to have decided to go home long before the nightfall today. An eerie silence filled the place. ''Again it's me and my lonliness,'' she thought.

Standing in the large balcony overlooking the lush green, freshly mowed lawn, she sipped her rather sweet coffee slowly. It was so long back that she had had a good conversation with anyone. It was so long since she went for a music concert. It was so long ago that she lived...

She realised the danger laid in that direction and steered her thoughts away from it and started pacing across the length of the balcony, emptying her mind of all thoughts. She heard a sudden shout from below and upon looking found her maid chasing a stray dog that was trying to soil the garden.

She was amused at them for a while and thought absentmindedly, ''what's the woman's name agian?'' It occured as a simple thought but a full 5 minutes later, she was racking her brains to remember.

She went furious, she could not remember the woman's name! damn! She spoke to the maid everyday, called her by name just an hour back and now she could not remember! She felt helpless after a while and to her horror felt the tears trickle down her face. Her silent tears became soft sobs and before long she was crying hysterically.

Tears unwept for so long, that permanent lump in the throat melting and flowing though the eyes, wetting her cheeks, flowing still down and down and down...

Sweet my child.........

I looked up and looked directly into the eyes of the genius whose face was serious and tensed. I could see the reflection of what he was doing in the glasses he wore and what I saw there horrified me. I was chilled to the bones. This can't be happening, I thought in panic. But there was nothing I could do to stop it. ''What would he say if he knew that I could see?'' I wondered. He probably wouldn't care. I looked for half a minute and closed my eyes shut never to open again. Not as long as I could see what I saw...

''Divya!! Open your eyes!!'' he said, ''and ''look!!!!" Just then I was slowly drifting to a deep, dreamless sleep and in my mind was the vivid image of the blood oozing out of my body as he cut up my utreus- the glimpse of which I caught in his glasses.

''IT'S A BOY!!!! '' and he was dangling my son upside-down. Cesearian was over. The tiny little thing was just scooped up from inside my womb was now bawling at the top of his lungs as though he liked it better in there and did not like being brought to this world! Well, No words in any language can explain what I felt at the moment. I do not even try. It was ecstatic. It was ethereal. My son was born!

''Did you show him to my husband?'' I asked and before I fainted I heard a distant voice of some faceless nurse assuring, ''yes, he is very happy and is concerned about you.''

When I opened my eyes again I was shifted to the ward and there were atleast 10-15 people surrounding my bed. All examining the little fellow and trying to decide whether he looked like his dad or mom. I looked at my flat, wrinkled tummy. My bump was gone! It felt strange and empty, I could not feel the kick I was so accustomed to.

I tried to reach out for my son and screamed as a sharp pain went through my body like electric shock. I could not move an inch of my body. My husband heard me and brought the tiny fellow to me.

I looked at my son. His tiny face, those tiny hands, ears like shells... Eyes wet, emotions overwhelmed, I kissed his tiny feet and whispered in his ears, ''I Love You"

My life and lies at Express!

High on Rushdie

Another book; another journey through some one's childhood. But this one is so different from the 'mockingbird'! After almost a month, I finally finished Salman Rushdie's 'midnight's children' and the book simply haunts.

Children born at the stroke of midnight of August 15, 1947... The significance of the date binding them to the history without them playing any role in it...

The dreams and the reality, truth and myths, prophesies and predictions, unwept tears and untold confessions, guilt and pride... phew! From childhood fantasies to Indo-Pak partition; From Jantar-Mantar to post-independence India, Rushdie takes you through the labyrinth of all human emotions.

The book just persistently nags you day and night till you finish it and leaves you feeling bewildered and surprisingly empty once you are done reading it. Well I don't have more to say about a book that is so widely popular!

To kill a mockingbird...

Nothing else tastes good for a while after I finish a particularly good book. I can't pick up anything to read for some time. When I finally finished 'To Kill A Mocking Bird' by Harper Lee and closed the book last night, it was almost 1 am and my eyes hurt. But I just could not go to sleep for a very long time.

A week back, I plunged into the book and was lost and transported to another world that was vaguely familiar. A world that comprised innocence and insecurities of childhood, fun of school days, father-the role model... A feeling of something like sadness, but not entirely so, lingered long after I finished the book. An inexplicable sense of loss engulfed me.

I always prefer reading books to watching movies. According to me, when you read something, you have the exclusive privilege to imagine everything explained in the book. You can imagine the places and details how you want them to be. Characters in the book come out alive in your mind. It becomes much more real and much more personal.

'To Kill A Mocking Bird' is one such book which takes you through the journey of childhood of a brother and sister in a small town in Alabama. Having grown up in one such small town myself, I could relate to every word of it. My imagination took wings, I became the little girl in the book that transported me back to my childhood. The experience was so real!

I mused for a while on the title of the book, how true! mockingbirds don't harm you in any way. They sing and fill your ears with the melody of their music, make you happy, lift your spirit and it's indeed sin to kill these songbirds...

It rains memories...

It's pouring. Again. Rains always stir powerful emotions in me. Rains always bring back memories from my childhood, my school, my mother and father, old granny, a pair of damp socks, those carefree days...

Mom wanted me to study in a good, English medium school. So I and a small group of other kids with like-minded parents were enrolled into this school which was about 25 kms from my home. We had to travel up and down by bus that used to be so packed that we kids became invisible after boarding. We had yearly passes and hence even if we managed to 'catch' a seat, we had to get up and let the elders sit. So we stood with our huge school bags that weighed no less than a kilo.

Schools always start on June 1 after the 2-month-long summer vacations - a time when rains lash mercilessly. When it rains it pours in the sleepy little town amid Western Ghats where I come from.

Till class 5, I wore raincoat to the school. I would climb the bus hitching up my raincoat in one hand and carrying my lunch pack in the other, trying to balance. Other passengers would sulk at the very sight of us kids. We were oblivious to the water we sprinkled on people as we passed by them and to the fact that our bags got inevitably stuck when we tried to move, we just wriggled our way through the overcrowded bus pulling our bags along, attracting 'ooooohhhs' and 'awwwwwws' and 'ooooouchs' from people who then cursed us loudly.

As a kid I always craved for one of those stylish umbrellas. Every year I pestered mom to buy me one. She just wouldn't listen. She thought I wasn't old enough to handle umbrellas, beat it! And all I got was lousy raincoats year after year which mom would button up and warn me not to remove till I was safely inside the school.

My bus always reached just 4-5 minutes prior to my school time. I never wanted to cross our PT miss, a rather stern woman, by reaching late for the prayers. So I would start running the moment I got down. The geometry box inside my school bag made a rhythmic jingling sound as I ran.

Panting and puffing I would reach school just in time for prayers and struggle to remove my multi-buttoned raincoat. Phew! those rainy days...! Occasionally it rained so much that the school authorities anticipated danger and declared holiday! We celebrated then. Any excuse to skip school was welcome.

Walking in rain was fun (with our raincoats on of course!) water clogged everywhere filling up the pot holes and we would deliberately step on them as hard as possible splashing water on each other. We ran and chased each other to the discomfort of the vehicles on road who honked in panic as we ran haphazardly.

Mom would give me hot milk and biscuits as soon as I reached home. I always begged her to add a few drops of coffee from her own steaming coffee mug which she refused most of the time. ''I will drink coffee regularly when I'm as old as mom,'' I would think. It wasn't that I was fond of coffee, I just wanted to imitate the elders.

We had to be satisfied playing indoor games like carom board and chess (So boring!) as elders never let us go out during rainy season to play meaningful(!) games like 'coco' or 'kabaddi' which involved a lot of running and chasing around.

How I wish I could rewind my life and re-visit those days...

As I grew up I left for Mysore for studies and then to Bangalore for work. But when first showers of rains starts appearing, wherever I am, I always make excuses to go home for that is the only place which can quench my thirst for rains!