Of Walls that Speak and Shout

15th August 2008: Wake up, attend mass & flag hoisting ceremony, watch prize distribution kaaryakram for the little Marathi paathshaala affiliated with our church, go home, laze around, eat chicken curry, sleep, wake up, go beaching, come home, eat, sleep.

15th August 2009: Wake up at the crack of dawn, chow down a genormous breakfast with Aditya while hustling him for graphic novels, catch up on conversations with Rehab, head to The Wall Project at Mahim, spend an entire day painting crazy-whacked graffiti on the walls running parallel to the station, have a smash time painting them with crazy-whacked people, experience culinary nirvana with fun company, come home bone-tired, eat, crash out senseless on the bed.

But oh my sainted aunts and uncles, I had fun. On Independence Day too!

Such a happy bunch they were to pose with our motley crew!

I have never ever participated in anything quite like The Wall Project. Not on Independence Day, not ever. Come to think of it, I had never heard of the BMC participating in something like The Wall Project either, EVER.

During those two paint-streaked, madly exciting days I saw and viciously thanked my stars for things like:

The little tots were our ready helpers and willing fellow artists

1. India and Bombay in particular,  is cool enough to think about community efforts like these and actively encourage them.

2. I experienced the BMC, children from the neighboring shanties, social workers, activists, hard core artists, vandals and hit-and-run drivers up close, most of them in their element. Some of these folks turned out to be realities that really bite. The things I saw and the people I experienced meeting and observed that day boggled me.

In Front of my Wall. Top L-R: Jai, me, Aditya, Shirley. Bottom L-R: Idea Smith, Shawn

3. I can haz fun too. Sometimes trudging all the way to that end of town from this end is more than worth it.

4. I am finally getting myself to experience whatever Bombay is throwing my way by way of culture. My last few months in this Burning City are months I am going to experience to their utmost and so far, they are turning out to be utterly fantastic!

5. Best part? I got to go berserk with people like Idea Smith, Rehab, Aditya, Jai, Wanderblah, Shawn, Jhayu, Aniceto, Moksh, Alpana and some more fun people whose names I can’t remember but really loved meeting!

Note: These photos have been clicked by Shirley, Shawn, Jhayu and me (in no particular order).

Our Wall on Day 1 was splattered with the whimsy talents of Alpana, Aditya, Rehab, Vishal and me, with inputs from our neighbor Jai and french fries from Moksh. We made for quite a colorful crew!

Awareness about various issues was a major highlight at The Wall

A Day at the Museum

11 June 2009
12.45 pm

I have never been to a museum alone. I should do it more often.

Ah! The things I am learning about myself with each idle day that passes…

I write this as I rest my tired feet and aching legs in a spartan cafeteria with modern art mumbo jumbo scrawled across it’s walls. Cheese flavored corn puffs and modern art mix and mingle in the caverns of a house dedicated to an ancient culture. A charming paradox.

Museums, churches, bookshops, flea markets, bathrooms, stationery shops… they fascinate me no end.

Artefacts to admire, silences that rush to sooth your mind, words that spill from generous bookshelves, trinkets that hold the soul of a place in them, the nothingness you find in a warm shower or soak, instruments that marvellously make life more efficient… bliss can be found in the most unexpected of places.

So I set out eagerly this morning to pay my repects at the Bahrain National Museum.

Situated on spacious grounds, the entrance is littered with obscurely twisted modern scultpures. A ticket that functions as a postcard granted me entrance to this lovely naturally illuminated building.

After gaping at some beautiful canvases on temporary exhibitions, I chanced upon a black heron lazily enjoying the shade with the coastline of urban Bahrain for a backdrop. A captivating sight, one of those that would look utterly stunning come dusk and night.

Have a look at the photos I managed to capture on my Tumblog. It will give you a better idea of the sights I saw.

I was unable to record the Dilmun wing properly thanks to a tetchy camera. Ancient Bahrain is referered to as Dilmun in records. This wing ended my mid-morning tryst with history- a tad technical (heavy on archeology) but supremely enviable (coins, seals – oh the fascinating variety!).

No trip to a musuem is complete without paying a visit to the souvenir shop and my tired but very willing legs towed me in that direction.

In my bag went a camel fridge magnets (I madly collect them), a chine plate (exquisite but very touristy) and a bookmark (colorful), all displaying the tag Bahrain rather prominently (this is a requisite, most tourists would agree). A word of advice though: You would have a better pick of souvenirs at the Duty Free section in Bahrain airport. The prices are pretty much the same and the choice is staggering.

A camelia plucked from the sparse but green landscape completeted my quest for undderstanding the local culture. I returned happy, satiated and more aware of the sweet-smelling, beige and ochre country with an achingly sweet-tooth called Bahrain.

1.20 am

Mamma Mia! I got the ‘Giving Away’ Song.

What do you when you come across a movie that gives you a delightful glow all over and makes you grin from start to finish?

Well, you go right ahead and grin with complete and utter abandon and savor the warm buttery feeling. That’s what you do.

You enjoy it without a thought for anything else going around you or for anyone around you for that matter.

That’s what I did while watching Mamma Mia. Grinned like a loon and lost myself in some welcome nostalgia. Dancing Queen, Mamma Mia, Honey Honey, Chiquitita… these were songs that colored many a picnic and school performance for me. Add a wedding theme to the entire package and I was done for.

To find a movie that has me enthralled from start to end is a rare thing. Unless I am watching it in a movie theatre, it is difficult to peg me down to the seat for most films. Which is why I think I ought to count this one as special.

Abba has been around for a long time now and all through my growing years, uncles, aunts and cousins would somehow resurrect a Dancing Queen or Voulez-Vous at some get-together or another (on tape or with conky singing).

A lot of pyjama parties in college got jiggied up with Take a Chance on Me, Mamma Mia et al and my best friends would string along a ditty or two quite sensationally, mind you.

I am quite sure they will end up doing the same for the bachelorette party as well. Incidentally, the hen party Sophie’s friends throw her in the film make me relish the thought of my own and rub my hands in anticipation.

Another thing I ought to be thanking the film for is for finally giving me the father and daughter dance song- the ‘Giving Away’ song as we Bombay Catholics like to put it. Counted as one of the main dances the bride has to dance to during the reception, the father-daughter dance is special, signalling the final farewell a dad can bid for his little girl (the mom has her chance when she bids the bride from the childhood home).

I have watched this particular dance a number of times at a number of weddings and as my own looms closer, I know it will be every bit as special for me as I had always envisioned it to be. My dad is no great dancer and neither can he swing me around like a fine gentleman.

But like every other father of the bride, I do know that he will want to Freeze the Picture and remember me as the little, sniffling ragamuffin he bid his first goodbye to when I went off to school for the first time. I hated every second that was spent slicking my boy-cut hair down and every gleam of my new shoes that morning. He still managed to click a photograph of me though and everytime I look at it now, I grin.

This time, it is not school I shall be leaving the home for, but to a new life. It is the great unknown, sure; but this time, I shall have years of love and advice and all the freedom he dusted the growing years of my life with.

For that, I am forever greatful.

The picture may not be frozen, but my goodbye shall hardly be graced with an absent-minded smile.

P.S: Incidentally, if you thought this was a review of the movie, I am sorry to disappoint. It’s what the movie made me feel and what it made me think of with regards to my own wedding. That’s what this blog is about in the end. So I am glad you understand and even gladder you stuck on so far to the Plan “W”.

The Strange Words in my Mind

10th June 2009
12.25 am Bahrain Time

It bothers me at times, how the strangest things have a way finding me in my corner of the planet. There I go lost in the maze I call my mind, not a care in the world and half the time unaware of what’s happening around me (yes, no accidents so far) and .bang. strange things happen. Usually in a steady staccato of occurrences.

Words, or more specifically the written word, have always held a fascination for me. I could sit reading a particularly evocative line for an hour, for the simple fact that it moved me enough to let me feel things more vividly than a mere visual would. The writers and poets I consider gods and goddesses are usually most people’s demi-gods.

It hardly matters to me.

I am more concerned with, nay, in pursuit of the emotions the words awaken in me. Awaken in me enough to want me to gulp hard and savor each breath of air that keeps me alive. Alive enough to feel each emotion conveyed in a few words or a few pages- whatever may be the case.

Weavers of words exist a dime-a-dozen, weaving their cottony thoughts to create the fine linen most people enjoy wearing and feel comfortable in. I may very well be one of them.

But to be revered and savored are those who produce fine silk and compel you to wear it without even a hint of persuasion.

As silk slides against the skin and makes you feel like the most enchanting being in the world there is, so do these words flow against the mind, rendering you a stranger to your own world but a brilliant observer of it.

I have nothing but my words to stand testament to the strange things that happen to me.

But today, words fail me. Or rather, I have failed them…

Thank you for sticking until the end of this horrendous rambling. I know I did not want to.

12.50 am Bahrain Time.

P.S: Coincidentally, today happens to be very similar to the day I penned this down.

The One Ring.

10th June ‘09
11.48 pm Bahrain Time

Something unexpected happened today.

I found the One Ring.

In a little nondescript jewellery shop, tucked away untidily between a big jewellery shop and a bigger jewellery showroom. The shop was so tiny that I have already forgotten its name.

All I can remember is the little band of yellow gold with a strip of rhodium running down the middle and having some of the most perfect striations embossed upon it.

The instant that I saw it, I wanted it.

Just to affirm my decision, I was taken into a few more ordinary showrooms.

Quite hopeless.

I wanted that band and no other would do. A prominently masculine design and one I was initially set against for my own wedding band, I loved it enough to want it on my own finger forever.

For the few moments I held that ring in my palm, I forgot a lot of unpleasant things. Things that had me frowning for nearly two days.

I forgot the unpleasantness of choosing wedding bands without my intended. I forgot my despair at not finding the right bauble to go with my gown, I forgot my escalating need for my mom that I was beginning to experience. Everything. Forgotten.

I found the One Ring.

It was not generic. It was not ordinary.. It was not old-fashioned.

It was unusual. It was romantic. It would turn out to be symbolic. It was stunning.

It was Ours.

12.06 am

The Perfect Ring. Again.

Yes, there was a post out here yesterday.

For reason’s beyond your’s or mine ken, this particular plan has been exterminated. So shoo on, the show is over for now.

Of Charming Teachers and Charming them…

6th June 2009
1.36pm (Bahrian time)

It’s an empty house I have come home to today. The sunlight is swishing in through the French windows this afternoon, unlike it’s angry barge a few days back.

For some reason, I am experiencing more fascinating things in the morning than in the evening out here in Bahrain.

This can be rather distressing for a person who is chummier with the night than the day.

An experience is an experience though. New, revealing and most often a delicious surprise. One mustn’t complain.

My morning began at utterly ungodly hour (6am) and I had to set out in godlier trimmings to do the pretty for a gaggle of women known to be formidable.

I set out to meet Melroy’s teachers today.

As one is bound to feel about an encounter with the keepers of enlightenment, I was raggedly nervous.

By the end of the morning, I found myself to be daughter-in-law to around 30 odd women!

While my paragon of a fiance is by no means a saint, he has apparently endeared himself to around two dozen lovely, intelligent women.

Jealous is me? Nope. Startled is I more like.

It is a good thing charm can be switched on and off, but what is even better is that the only woman He bothers to completely exclude from his aura of dazzlement is me.

I would be utterly disgruntled with Him were it otherwise. A women should never be too easy to please. Not with her lover .

1.45pm

Charming Encounters of the Arabic Kind

4th June 2009
1.55pm

Naseer was the first Bahraini to speak with me.

On the street, with half dozen eggs in his hand and a sweet smile on his face (that reminded me of my little cousin Aaron).

As I stepped out of an optical store, a bit dejected at my seventh failed attempt at finding the right glasses for me, this man asks me, “Why so sad?”

Just like that. With traffic cruising down the street and heat whipping the pavement.

It took me a moment to snap out of my daze and realize that he was talking to me. I smiled at him apologetically (for the lacking smile?) and told him about my dilemma.

He simply shrugged and said, “Dont’ be sad.”

I was charmed. A complete stranger, halting me in the middle of the street and telling me matter-of-factly to not be sad and in the same moment inviting me for the lunch he would be soon cooking for his friends.

He couldn’t understand my name and yet asked me if I found his dress strange (he was garbed traditionally) and if I liked it.

He could very well be dallying with a strange girl who looked exactly like how a strange girl to his country would look- a bit lost, a bit dazzled and carrying that ubiquitous mark of the average tourist- a dangling camera.

Naseer could very well be a psycopath (as some nice people I know would be prompt to point out).

But in the middle of a hot Bahraini morning, with no particular aim or route in mind and only my mental jukebox and a camera for company- Naseer seemed like a friendly chap.

I really should have clicked a pic with him. I really hope his lunch turned out “Mashallah”.

2.10 pm

Nana, Goodbye.

3rd June 2009
4.30 pm

I have quite forgotten the feeling of holding a pen and actually using it to pen down the thoughts I think onto a lined page.

My diary, if it had a life, would be quite chuffed with all the attention I am lavishing on it.

While I wish I were sitting in a ramshackle cafe, surrounded by the bitter smells of Arabic coffee and the swarthy but handsome locals, I am writing this in the living room of a cozy house away from home.

The only exotic scents surrounding me are the ones the attar-lady doused me with earlier in the day. Daffodil, sunflower, musk, jasmine, vanilla… I smell as enchanting as the foreign women I admire on the streets.

There is sunlight bursting in angrily from the french windows and I am sprawled across a strange bed in a stranger house.

This day will forever be remembered as the day my grandmother was laid to her final rest.

Yes, I lost my Nana yesterday.

Yesterday, as I was greeting shining, happy faces at the airport, my one and only grandma was experiencing the last few hours of her human life.

Yesterday, as I was yawning my tired mind through the never-ending mass, my powerful Nana breathed her last struggled breath.

It has still not sinked in. This death.

It is difficult accepting such a sudden grab for an unsuspecting life from the great unknown called Death. I suspect it will not be any easier on my stubborn mind even after I return to the home named after her.

Yesterday, I lost the first strong woman I ever knew, bootlegger, master seamstress, harsh sartorialist and the only grandmother I knew well enough to call Nana.

Goodbyes are never easy.

3rd June 2009
4.45 pm

Phyre takes Flight

June 2, 2009.
3:40pm IST.

As I pen this down, I am hurtling through a blue sky in a absolutely magical ride at around 940kms/hour. All I can see around me is a white haze. All I can see below me are fluffy white clouds. Clouds one could very well imagine to be goose down, whipped cream, cotton candy or a hundred different things that feel equally comforting and feel just as lovely.

Airplanes are, without a doubt, one of the coolest things invented by mankind. As the plane I was strapped in taxied before takeoff on the runway, I saw an airplane take flight. It was the first time I had seen a sight like that with my own two eyes.

Graceful, powerful and in an odd way, divine. It was magnificent.

From then on, until the time I finally gathered my wits to pen this down, my mouth had been frozen into a muoue of awe and wonder.

Yes, it is my first flight. And yes, it stole my breath away. Literally.

As the plane slowly lifted off the runway, I felt nothing but for a wild sense of exhileration and gratitude. My first trip to someplace unkown in a transport I had never before experienced was happening alone.

I had the window seat. Heck, I had the entire row of seats. It was my own private strip in a flight almost filled with people.

So in my solitude, I grinned and exclaimed all I could. Mad and freely. My muoue slowly transformed into a gape as the aircraft slowly gained momentum and geared up for the fastest zoom-off I have known. A L O N E.

The runway soon became a strip under me and then a dull slash. The buildings became little dots and then spots. The murky brown seas gave way to turquoise waters and soon Bombay- the land I was born in and roamed around in for more than twenty years was little more than an inconsequential speck. Gone.

I am now further from home than I have been at any other point of my life. The three old biddies travelling with me make up my entire connection with my hometown. My cellphone has been switched off. There is no internet to while away time with either.

All I have is a borrowed pen, an old diary, some luggage, too many mangoes, my altitude-soaked thoughts and faint strains of “Katherine Kiss Me” drifting through my mind.

This is, without a doubt, one of the most exciting things to have ever happened to me in a long, long time. Far from being disgruntled (as I initially was) about making my first flight alone, I am happy and humming. Not a bad twist in my plight if I might say so.

What is even crazier in fact,  is that my first trip in an aircraft made for an unusual and unexpected anniversary present. The anniversary of four years of the start of my wild and passionate affair with a unique man.

Happy Anniversary Melroy. And for the man that you are, Thank You.

June 2, 2009.
4:10pm IST.