FRISSON

Waiting...

2009-11-15T00:41:00.002+05:30

The waiting is neither pleasant nor unpleasant. It’s like a moment that gets extended and extended and, extended. I have been waiting for a while now… waiting for the séance… waiting for the delayed outburst… waiting to hear him speak… waiting for a good night’s sleep that would eventually answer all my questions. But things do not come to us when we want them the most, although the law of attraction says that they do. He did turn up though, albeit much later and as usual he seemed to be in a hurry, but I could still perceive his darting eyes and an auld and obvious inclination to smile about the mouth, and a vibe full of strong purpose and feeling. Of all the things that were exchanged between us, my waking mind recollects only this one thing that he said:

“The more airs of childish self-importance you give yourself, you will only expose yourself to be the more ridiculed and laughed at!”

Now Playing:: Poocho na yaar kya hua...................Asha & Rafi

Dad, Can I Smoke?

2009-11-06T00:56:00.001+05:30

Dear reader, maybe I’m troubled and need help, but tell me is it that horrible to want to smoke? In fact it has been some days now and I’ve been only wanting to smoke, smoke and smoke…..to the extent that I can almost fancy the taste of tobacco in my mouth, and the smell of smoke on my fingers. Well, these are confessions of a strange order but I can’t help it. I’ve wanted just this one thing to make me happy, but wanting that, have wanted everything else as well! I hardly have a notion of what I might turn into if the rules of discipline were to be suddenly lifted from my daily walk through life.

And perhaps, this wasn’t a mere recording of a dream after all…..and sadly all my dreams tend to produce a world of dirty monochrome in which nothing can possibly happen, except to make the head nod and the eyes heavy with sleep. But even sleeping seems to be a rare occasion these days. I’m sleeping for less than three hours a day now, and the less I sleep, the more I want to indulge in smoking…..and even as I write this, I can smell smoke, boy, its driving me crazy…

Now, there are occasions in our life when we must make something happen, like flinging a splash of color into life, but I’ve simply lost the urge to do that….I would rather flounder into heavy chairs and put the body, mind, and the soul in hibernation, till I gather my scattered wits.

Meanwhile, can I smoke dad?

Now Playing:: Yaad piya ki aaye……………….Shobha Gurtu

Inside the Mirror

2009-10-27T22:47:00.003+05:30

It’s a torture…
Standing naked before the glass
And to face the skin’s mute hungers, and
Watching the slow rise of the body
From a little girl to a woman!
Why the growth? Why the loss of innocence?

But, can any woman be innocent?
Are not all women alike, when you lift
The veils of their weaknesses?
Don’t all women froth with desire
For men more excellent than themselves?
And how the thought of desire breaks the myth!

Innocence and tenderness are reduced to
Mere platonic virtues, and the body in the
Glass stands proud, cold, and triumphant
With an impersonal lust…that darts the skin,
Reminding the body that its essence
Does not lie in virginity!

Now Playing:: Huzoor is kadr………………….Masoom

In Parenthesis

2009-10-23T23:28:00.001+05:30

Some days back this space turned two years old. NO BIG DEAL! After all, it’s the law of nature that things must keep moving. I mean, people and things keep getting older without any special interference as such, and FRISSON too would continue to age irrespective of my active documentation or lazy negligence. I don’t know if I’ve ever told you but blogging for me has always been something that I station in parenthesis and, things written in parenthesis seldom contain any grand theories or notions to attract or interest one deeply and thoroughly! You simply tend to pass over!

Now, coming back to FRISSON, I’ve been able to sort out a few distinct differences between my attitude (in writing) at present and the first year of blogging. It began with the keeping of memories and recording of experiences and all the other furniture that brings out the existing side of an individual. This virtual space became my way of relaxing, of working off my frustrations over my incapabilities, in other words, it became my strange way of compensating for not being a genius. I guess I was living under an illusion that there’re no evidences beyond experiences and in the writing of these experiences, I thought I was simply expressing my existing side, but there’re enough evidences beyond experiences and it takes a while before we get to acknowledge their magnificence!

And in one of those odd silences which sometimes fall on blogs, I started to worry about “words”. For, whatever else we may do, we’ll be using words all day and every day, words continue to matter. Words are the vehicle of thoughts and I knew I was reaching nowhere because I was using all the wrong words for locomotion and I was as good as a heap of stones could be. That was when the waiting game began, and when the words came, they came not in masses but mere numbers, and all I could write was poetry, although the prospects of prose continued to seduce me for a long time. But a return to prose has been really painful and uninspiring for poetry tempts me more and more.

Be it prose or poetry, I still lack the gall to speak my mind, letting the truth out only in half explained words and phrases. To me at all events this deposit of vagueness would be preferred more than all other confessions, for it is physical, wholesome, nourishing, and refreshing to the last degree!

Thank you dear reader!

Now Playing:: Wake up Sid (club mix)

Enter

2009-10-20T23:07:00.003+05:30

It’s around two in the afternoon when I return from college. Not a soul seems to be stirring at this hour of siesta. It’s a closely knit colony but, the neighbours would hardly notice even if I get murdered. The first thing that I take notice of, is the huge lock dangling on the front door of the house and a depressing consciousness that comes with the said imagery ,that there’s nobody waiting on the other side to open the door, and worse luck, you play your own guest! I have been returning to a locked up house since the past six years now. You don’t have much of a choice when you’ve working parents and siblings who would rather settle in far away countries than in familiar spaces. Dear reader, I’m unfortunately blessed with so much of privacy that I’ve almost forgotten what it is to be in public and to be social?

But strangely, I manage to leave these anxieties and ill formed depressions at the threshold as undoubtedly the home seems to compensate for everything the moment I enter into its calm confines (although I see enough clutter around). Ah! It’s like visiting the scenes of early youth all over again! I literally throw the bag and the dupatta on the couch (and they remain there, till I collect them very late in the evening, probably when mom’s back from office) before opening the window that would bring the garden alive. The enormity of the garden has struck many and it continues to strike me every time I see it through this window. Although it’s trimmed and maintained, yet it seems to have a hint of a quaint wildness, which could be scary at times. I don’t spend too much of time at this window, especially at this hour, however it remains one of my favorite corners of the house when it “rains”.

Ah! What a bliss it was to read The Mayor of Casterbridge in this corner. As I hung in silence over some of the pages of that great classic, I could feel the garden coming alive, as if Nature too was listening closely to the story of Henchard! Ah! Let me still recall that scene, so that it may breathe fresh life into me and I could live that birthday of passion and romantic pleasure over again!

There’s still a better place in the house and that’s my room, where I presently venture into. Now, solitude, dear readers, makes one fall in love with three things viz. music, books, and thy self. I cannot possibly imagine my life without the first two and although I get wearied of myself on occasions still I cannot resist my own company, and I wouldn’t trade it for any better. Presently, I turn the laptop on (earlier it used to be the PC) and let the music flow. I usually dally between Asha and Lata at this hour, preferably the former in most cases. The volume remains on an all time high as I freshen up. And then, amidst Asha/Lata and the gyrating noise of the ceiling fan I flop into bed. Nothing can exceed the unruffled calmness of this moment as music lulls me into sleep, although I see strange shapes in dreams when alone, still I look forward to these moments every noon.

For more than seventy percent of the day, what I see is what lies inside my room. There are “my stuff”, like a PC which no longer works, a double set of speakers, a laptop (the latest addition), clothes carelessly scattered around, books, books, and more books…they occupy the shelves, half of the bed, whole of my one time study table, and some are packed and kept elsewhere in the house. In one word the room’s gloomy, yet it has put me in some of my best thoughts amidst the worst of clutter. I rarely invite people into this part of my world, for if there’s anything personal in my life, then it’s the solitude of this space, although it has bestowed upon me gifts of no real value. But, it has made me think I’m happy, I can do things I like and people can’t…I think I’m “different”…an expression I hate, yet I cling to it.

You do realize reader, that a mind thus constructed should be partially lame or torpid, with all the sensations at a cold rest. However, having said that there’s also a strange feeling of “happiness” dwelling within for reasons probably known and unknown!

Well there are other things that I can document but too much of self indulgence would only result in making this post painfully lengthy and boring, so I better take your leave at this juncture, until I catch you some other time.

Bye.

Now Playing:: Shokhiyon mein ghola jaye……………….Lata & Kishore

Seasons

2009-10-18T20:19:00.002+05:30

Summer’s dead and gone darling,
Shut the world out and come in!
Be the cold ghost of the sun,
Let’s feign heat,
Let’s get cold and numb!

Ever wondered how futile
Love making is in winter?
Where’s the sweat…where’s the
Nudity, darling?
Ah, how they nip and shrink me!

I am bound hither darling
‘cause you love winter,
Where nothing grows, not even
Lust, and all the love’s labour;
So unproductive!

Still, make your move darling,
For the spring’s ruthless and
So is summer. Besides, a
Woman’s body can never find
A better raiment than that of a man’s!

Now Playing:: Beqarar dil tu...................Sulakshana & Kishore

Ah! These Séances...

2009-10-14T00:27:00.002+05:30

Even when manic his rambling chat always made more sense to me than all the sense and sanity that the world could offer. He was giving me the feeling of a caged vastness as he continued to talk without gestures. And, in the dim light of my séance I could see his thoughts running upon his head in a fit of madness. Witnessing his half-seen face and motion in the blinding winter mist I felt a dread…a horror, and for the first time in five years I felt genuinely sorry for him. While a drop or two fell from my eyes, his lips seemed to be shut in the firm fashion of a smile…maddening my brain and numbing all powers except the nerves of anguish and a dull lust for death! No matter what, it was always love for a real person, however transient it may have been…

Now Playing:: Piya baanwri…………………….Asha

The Missing

2009-10-11T22:55:00.001+05:30

Let me still recall them; my
Midnight darlings of early youth.
Men, who had hit my taste,
Smelling of sweat and coffee breaths,
Men who were sweet in the mouth, but
Hacking their way into me, they
Hardly cared to knock!

As I moaned in silence beneath them,
They taught me what passion is…
Oh, let me still recall them! Men,
Who buried their eyes into mine, and
Made me acknowledge the actions of
The bodies…men, who preferred to
Sink, than settle!

They’re family-men today, yet my
Married body longs for their intimacy.
Oh, let me still recall them, for I’ve to go
Home to a man on a dull, tired bed, who
Gets rid of his raiment at the chance brush
Of the legs…oh, if I could only see his eyes, but all
That remains is a swollen organ of release…

P.S: I’ve talked too much, Asha, chalo sing me a song now.

Now Playing:: Jaane kya baat hai…………………Sunny

Inter alia!

2009-10-07T00:28:00.001+05:30

I can feel the idle vein returning upon me, and therefore I subside into my proper element of prose, besides, I missed talking to you, reader. So, tell me how have you been?

As for me, I bunked college today and I don’t think there’s anything much dreadful than being left alone for almost a quarter of an hour in the company of a sensible, well-informed man who is hardly interested in the works of the bard, on whom he wants me to present a paper on! It’s certainly not the prof’s fault that I’m not profiting more. I’m not affecting ignorance, but unfortunately, my brain isn’t spacious enough to oblige high sounding theories and philosophies without aching. It’s like a vulgar illiterate getting caught in a refined medium of communication, without an escape alley, and worse luck, to find all the refinement slowly setting a shop in his own murky system.

Oh boy, that’s precisely the kind of vague literary jargon that our profs expect us to write, and being the ideal student that I am, I’ll surely exhaust the whole fund of antiquity on the blankness, that’s their “faces”! At times however, the puzzling formulas of physics offer a better language of thought than all the words of literature taken together.

But that was not what I intended to write tonight. The main reason for this post was to recommend American Beauty and boy what a movie that was. You may not remember anything of the movie but what remains with you is the smile on Lester’s face (Kevin Spacey). There’s nothing special about the smile except that it reaches his eyes even in death. Perhaps, that’s what maketh a man, a man after all!

Now Playing:: Raah pe rehte hain……………………….Kishore

Brevity

2009-10-04T23:25:00.002+05:30

We always had to hurry, since
He came in between meetings.
A mere monstrous orgasm
Ceased our bodies into a
Single shock of pleasure, and
We would be done for the day!

There wasn’t any place for nudity
For the brevity of the act said it all.
“Why work on expositions and
Common endings, when all that our
Bodies understand is a climax?” he
Would say.

As we advance and exhaust our
Fund of passion and taste the
Pleasures of lust, their spirit
Evaporates, intimacy palls; and nothing
Is left but the phantoms and the
Lifeless shadows of what has been!

Now Playing:: Piya baanwri........................Asha

P.S. Asha, please keep on singing this song until the night comes to an end...

The Bestseller

2009-09-22T23:25:00.001+05:30

I have been pilfering lust all my life;
At times, hiding my body in the dark,
And at times flaunting it like a shameless tart.
There have been occasional sales
In the markets, and before I could bargain,
My body became my book.

As the weight of the flesh kept crushing me,
I celebrated the rare occasion of being
The concubine and the wife. On every
Bridal night as love invariably petered out
Into lust, I began to learn something more
About men and their kind.

Most of them rejected my face, like
The foreword never mattered for a book.
Shrinking further and further down the
Pages, leaving bold and ruthless signatures
On dark climaxes; undaunted by the cold
Phraseology, they made me readable!

Today, the book wrinkles with signatures,
A handful of whom I still retain amidst the
Folds of nostalgia. But, I have lived a contended
Life full of love for lust, never seeking indemnities,
However, a framed PhD in the closet reminds
Me of the price paid for it!

Now Playing:: Jaane do na........................Saagar

The Notebook Poet

2009-09-16T22:48:00.003+05:30

A lonely breath of poetry
Thrashes against me, as I sit for
The umpteenth time, determined
To make a clear work of it.
I wane, stumble, and falter,
Writing a few meager lines;
Surviving on crumbs!

I stop half way down, after
Trying in vain to pump up any
Words, images, notions or apprehensions.
A return to prose beacons, but
The slender digits grow cold and cramped,
Raising a mere prosaic skeleton of some
Mathematical puzzle!

As I break into a nervous sweat
Over the blank unfinished paper, I realize
I cannot write fast enough now, but the
Unhurried movement of my thoughts
Say much more than I can perceive,
And maybe…maybe, I’ve finally become
The notebook poet!

Now Playing:: Dil dhoondta hai......................Bhupinder Singh

Scared at 21!

2009-09-15T22:50:00.003+05:30

I don’t know why parents do it to children? First, they raise us with the concept of ghosts and apparitions, and evil beings, and then they leave us alone to sleep in the dark! Parents probably do not know what they do when they leave kids alone in the dark and, leave them helpless to face the gory manifestations of their own imaginations. I am 21, and perhaps I’m a different kind of a grown-up when I confess frequent nightmares in my sleeping excursions. You’ve no idea reader, what a terrible shaking it is to my nerves; to wake up in the middle of the night with the forehead drenched in sweat, the feeling about for a friendly hand, or a familiar voice, when I let out a muffled scream…and then finding none to soothe me, I bury my head under the pillow, for all the unwholesome hours to come! The night time solitude and the dark have become my hell, as they continue to fashion my prosaic dreams into nightmares, and they’re all geared up to try my childish nerves rather more seriously.

Dear reader, I’m almost ashamed of such a confession when I say hags and devils come to look at me by my bedside; and I do know that they’re indeed a figment of my imagination, but I cannot elude their presence and I continue to fight and grapple with them for my fair share of a blissful sleep!

P.S. The sketch is my poor representation of a Kesey masterpiece!

Now Playing:: Chanda re…………………Hamsika Iyer

The Two Kinds

2009-09-11T23:12:00.000+05:30

This time the faces and frames
Are much younger. A package of
Juvenile intelligence and
Testosterone has been flooding
The jungle, but “Where are all the men?”
I wonder!

The men sit apart, dreaming about
Fair skin and generous bosoms.
They hardly notice my brown skinned
Body or my college girl’s breasts, but
I loiter around them anyway. One of
Them induces a small talk, and my

Body goes numb with fear and frenzy.
A carnal frenzy that strips me naked
In my thoughts, and the image of
Two entwined private bodies
Begin to loom larger. Someone from
The younger lot hands me a note,

On which is scribbled,
“I love you!” Meanwhile, the man in
Conversation draws me closer and
Whispers, “I wanna make love to you!”
I know not which “love” to choose, but
How long can one resist temptation?

Now Playing:: Hum kis gali ja rahe hain....................Atif

A Defiling Parody!

2009-09-09T23:52:00.001+05:30

When he opens my lazy legs,
What does he see there?
Hunger?
Pouring his spittle into
My burning mouth,
What does he feel?
Lust?

Performing the auld motions
Of intimacy, what does he expect?
Passion?
And finally, cushioning his
Fall against my breasts,
What does he pull off?
Catharsis?

I moan too.
But what do I feign?
Ecstasy or hurt?
Oh, what a parody we
Make of the routine, and
Slander it more by calling,
“Love-Making!”

Now Playing:: Breathless...........................The Corrs

Perhaps!

2009-09-03T20:43:00.002+05:30

Perhaps he was always there on the other side, but his appearance was different from what I had anticipated from seeing him before. He stood at a distance, and in the dim light of my séance, I could see a strange wildness in his aspect, a dusky obscurity; he was silent like he had always been. Here, was the proof and touchstone of all my cogitations, drenched in the cold dank drops of dew, stretching his hand and asking me to join him!

This is the man, whom I hide from the society, but I can’t help it, he always had a hunger for eternity! But, it has ceased to matter any longer, I’ll be joining him sooner or later, but until then, I need others for survival. He agrees too and says that his life was comparatively a dream; but it was a mere dream of infinity and death; no resurrections or judgments will ever come his way. It’s a romance in these degenerate days, and you are not to resist it, he adds.

But this is not to my purpose. For once I want to turn the tables around and get him into the human business of “guilt”! You’re crazy and stupid, he says, how else the demand of something which you know to be false in your waking sense, come to affect me at all?

I am not to disbelieve him; after all there is no canon to judge my séance!

Now Playing:: Woh shaam kuch…………………Kishore

The Namesake!

2009-08-26T22:55:00.001+05:30

I don’t mind when
You explore my contours.
I don’t mind when
You slash your way in.
I don’t mind when
You leave tokens of lust on my body.
I don’t mind when
You leave your flavor
In every nook and cranny of
My being!

I don’t mind
Any of these darling.
But, I do mind darling,
I do mind…
I do mind, when you
Take my name!
I don’t claim autonomy
I hate it!
Let me save some face darling,
Don’t let people know me
By my name!

Now Playing:: Yaad…………………………Shehzad Roy

Why?

2009-08-25T22:08:00.002+05:30

On most nights the need
To feign is paramount, after all
Not all bodies speak the
Same language!

And when he’s done,
I saunter into the streets,
Applying my knuckles to
Other people’s doors.

Turned out like a dog
I retreat to the river bank,
Where I hear strange, wild
Men come to take refuge at nights.

They lure me with their
Occult theories and practices
Involving the gracious business of
The bodies. I, turn in!

The morning-after, neighbours find me
Helpless, like a worm by the way side,
Crushed, bleeding lifeless. They ask me,
“why”?...“why”?

Now Playing:: Naam ghum jayega………………………….Kinaara

The Virgin!

2009-08-18T23:30:00.000+05:30

She keeps stretching her
One dimensional nudity,
On sheets of white, waiting
For long hours for
The hallucinations to end,
For the limbs of the man
To recede, but she still feels
Them reaching out for her!

The calm of fulfillment keeps
Eluding her forever. Love becomes
Sex and sex becomes love, and
Both defile each other again and
Again.

She beats her sorry breasts
For a moment, her tongue tastes
Blood oozing from a pair of
Parched lips, and lust keeps
Eating her to the point of
Nausea.

What’s the point in having
The devices, she thinks?
When she has so few places
To hasten to?

Now Playing:Ek baat kahoon……………..Golmaal

Face Off!

2009-08-13T19:57:00.001+05:30

No, it stood upon its own merits fairly. There it was. It was his mark, his token; that which he was known by.

P.S. But, most faces, involving notions, are hard enough to render; it is too much to expect me to translate a sound, a face, and give an elegant version to a jingle. I am not Ayn Rand!

Now Playing:: Phir wohi raat hai.......................Kishore

One-Oh-One!

2009-07-07T14:54:00.001+05:30

Tell me reader, what is it that you do when you’ve all the time in the world just for yourself? You know, times like when you feel as if you’re passing out of Time into Eternity and all! Ok, now don’t even bother to answer that one for; these are precisely the moments when you feel as if your head is running upon you in your madness, as much almost as on another person, who seems to be the more immediate cause of your frenzy, than your dear self! So did you make anything out of the above documented so-called sagacious stuff? Ha, obviously “no”, so let’s quit our mutual “idiot wonder” and talk something “light”!

Well talking of something “light”, reminds me of my blogging journey, which to inform you has reached its first milestone of a hundred posts, and with this one the count gets to one-oh-one! Thank you dear reader for frequenting this space of eternally recurring madness and so crammed of incoherent thinking (that’s because at times even I do not understand what I indite), you know it’s more like a mad rush of thoughts having an orgasm! But it’s marvelous how this freedom of thought operates and most blogs I realize are indeed ‘confessions’, albeit prompted by different themes.

Do confess, fellow bloggers, but confess fairly, cautiously, more in a self-pleasing manner, and a naturalness that should not seem strange to you, or else insensibly your visitors will become fewer in number, and will come less frequently.

I do wanna write more reader but somewhere I lost the punch and there’s hardly a point in writing in so rambling and inconclusive a manner, so I better take your leave for now.

Until then……..

Now Playing:: Meherbaan............Ada

The Flamboyance of Lust II

2009-07-06T13:17:00.000+05:30

Do not knock,
Walk right in.
Recline in my bean bag,
Or fall back against me, and
Wait, while I do
What I think proper to please you,
The innocent-little things,
The imagined-the expected.

You think of all
Those women whom
You had wished to know, but
For once
Explore the wide wilderness
Of a young girl;
She’ll make you small and
Edible.

For centuries your Kind
Has been clinging to
Famished nipples,
‘married for eleven years’, you say,
And you still wonder
What nakedness is?
Oh! And you do notice
The couple next door!

But, none thought of love!

Now Playing:: Rimjhim gire sawan……………Kishore

The Flamboyance of Lust!

2009-06-23T22:27:00.000+05:30

The Indian sun and the summer heat,
Vital heat;
I know sensuality lures irresistibly.
What are you waiting for, silly?
Look at me,
I walk out of the bathroom,
No raiment on.
Don’t wait for the sun to set;
Its noon, a time for wild love.
Come, make your move darling!

Quit playing with my hands,
You know my mind’s racing
Towards love.
Crucify love into sex.
The buzzing sound of the coolers
Will drown our moans,
Wait no more darling!

Oh, this theatre of enervation,
This vestibule of unresolved tensions,
Oh, the flamboyance of lust!
And, you talk of love darling, when
I offer you lust, and a fall-into
Heat, sweat, weariness
And nudity!

Life is a cruel mockingbird darling,
You are a man, and
I, a woman,
What else are we made for darling?

Now Playing:: Agar tum na hote…………….Kishore

Nostalgic Deceptions

2009-06-16T21:01:00.001+05:30

You want to forget, but you cannot. Someday it will be buried deep, but it will not be forgotten. The earliest impressions keep burning into you, in spite of all the resistance and experience; maybe there are more skins that are yet to be peeled off. To say the truth, its time, the thing were gone. The humor of the thing ( some things tend to be humorous when recollected after a considerable length of time ), if there was ever much in it, is pretty well exhausted and it would be vain to drag it any further. I am now at liberty to confess but I realize that even confessions are intelligent in nature, and that my confessions should be natural in a self-pleasing quaintness, than intend to affect a naturalness that should be strange to me. You see, I’ll have to continue living with myself in spite of the confessions!

p.s: And yet to every bad there is a worse……..lets wait and watch….

Now Playing:: Raat ka shauk hai………………Guru

The Mistress, Part 1

2009-04-29T22:30:00.002+05:30

Honestly, readers, I am in no hurry to begin this story, indeed it isn’t a story, but a mere observation of this blogger, connected with that interesting time of the early 90s, when I was about seven or eight, trying to learn the ways in which society functions and expects us to function, and more importantly, that there can be relationships out of the wed-lock, apparently, one which society condemns, and that the world isn’t just ‘husband, wife, son, daughter’, and other names of the relations that issues out of the primary ones, but there are a million other relationships that flutter our brains for a moment or longer, because we’re too ill-equipped to understand the mechanism in which the adult world functions!

As long as I can remember, it was in 93 when we had shifted to this house, and although I cannot recall everything in its entirety, but the thing that makes the years of 93-95 worth a blog post is because those were the years that saw my association with The Mistress.

The earliest impressions which I received in this matter, are certainly not attended with anything painful, or very humiliating, but are in the nature comical in the recalling, but it is difficult to keep the account distinct without blending.

Since we were the new arrivals our immediate neighboring aunty began to brief mom about the other families in the colony, which I guess was some kind of ploy to focus attention on house number 6 (opposite to ours) where the Mistress used to stay with her daughter. I bet she had spiced up the details because nobody ever knew anything about the mistress, it all depended upon the speaker who altered the details as and when he required and presented it as creatively and appealingly as possible, and as it turned out we kept hearing different stories about her in the course of two years.

At that age I could never understand what made the women hostile towards her but the fact that they so incessantly bitched about her generated enough interest in me and I longed to meet this woman. She rarely ventured out of the house but I would occasionally catch glimpses of her strolling in the garden or when we went to the local temple and all. I still remember it was diwali of 93 when I saw both the mother and daughter lighting those little earthen lamps and then silently closing the doors on the noise of the outside world. My mother somehow pitied on their lives but she was primarily a wife and no wife ever takes sides with a mistress! Even then mom had nothing against her and by the spring of 94 we saw mom trading varieties of hibiscus plants with the mistress, which in a subdued manner led to afternoon gossips amongst the other aunties. Having sensed this, mom grew careful of her dealings with the mistress and she was glad that she was working as that kept her away from home for most part of the day, a sure respite from the gossip-sessions.

And then the summer of 94 saw me at the door step of the mistress holding a bag of mangoes from the twin mango trees of our garden. It was then that I actually ‘saw’ her. Man, I can never forget that face. She looked like some actress straight out of the silver screen and with that big bindi-like the one that Bengali women wear, she had that whole artistic appeal in her, enough to make you fall in love with her. Presently, she pulled my cheeks and invited me in and before I could take notice of things around me, I was feeding on biscuits, sweets and Rasna. (hey we all remember rasna don’t we?)

Well, readers, the story’s not over yet and the remainder will be posted ASAP……

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