All my friendships have begun with food. A deep shared love for some kind of food. (Freud would comment on this.)
Paris, Alanis and I are different. We would never have hung out at the same clubs (if I ever went to a club at all). I would look on perplexed as Alanis hugged the same people every single day for straight 20 seconds as if she hadn’t just met them the day before.
Another friend from my college days, Shade, was made over college vada pav. We marvelled daily at the sheer perfection of college anna’s vada pav. The chutney was so right… so suited to the vada pav that even I, who like my vada pav unadulterated, loved it. Every day we would wander over to the canteen without thought. Order our vada pavs like Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally… “Anna, ek Vada pav, sambar nahin, chutney side mein or ek mirchi bhi.” Etc. We went on to share books, obsessions and a disregard for others.
Shade is now in NZ and I haven’t been back to that Vada Pav. Maybe I will one day.
In
I’ve a friend at work. We have a quid pro quo relationship. I take her home cooked food and she ferries me around in her car as and when she can and I need.
Some of closest friends are also family. There are a lot of jumbled memories of growing up with them so I guess it’s not just about food… but certainly katha dal with talna, negia, labsi, kadi, badi, bhindi, mirchi, kat, teen belan dal, ghee is in our blood. It is the aroma that brings us home from wherever we may be. It is a flavour we are passing on to our kids and it is a spread that means togetherness. It's strange but friends who are as blood as blood love this meal too! hmm.
All relationships are about something basic I guess. So my friendships began with food – one of the base things on Maslow’s pyramid. And since then we’ve just been climbing right to the top of it.
One day:
There is joy in me. A helpless kind. The kind that makes you dig up Bryan Adams and bop in front of the mirror. Then kind that makes you buy lipstick and then pout to see the effect. The kind that I want to rein in because I’m scared to feel something that has no meaning.
There is joy in silliness that all the sense in the world cannot erase. It just comes and laughs inside you like a jester juggling in the midst of the King’s court.
One day and then some:
And then there’s sadness. Just like that. Just that helpless.
There’s something very peculiar about rain. It’s always got its own agenda. The rain that makes you want to snuggle in bed and read a book is distinct from the rain that wants you to snuggle in bed and watch a movie. Then there’s the rain that makes you go into you iTunes and dig out Janet Jackson or some other lost song from the past.
There are days when rain just wants to meet mud and play. The red smell of it draws you to the window and makes you look at a football with lust.
Dull throb rain means to make you as sad as it is. No matter how young or old you are it wants you to remember and pine.
There’s verandah rain and chai rain and sometimes the two go together. Rain that calls for lovemaking plays a softer tune than the one that makes you dance.
Some might think that it’s not the rain but the mind that has feeling. But that’s just silly. It’s a well known fact that Rain is a person and has moods and MPD like the rest of us.
Today Rain is just rain. She’s playing her cards close to the chest and won’t let me in on her plans. So I’m in office. Tomorrow maybe we’ll play hooky.
I feel like writing for
A letter of love to her.
A poem.
A story.
An ode.
A book.
Something that will capture what it means to me that she reads what I write.
That she loves what I write.
That she checks every two days for an update even when I go months without writing.
And I realize as I note these points… that this is more a love letter from her to me than vice a versa.
And I cannot top it with any words.
Blank. That’s right.
Not because I have nothing to say this time.
But because I have too much.
What kind of writer has secrets I ask myself?
Expose yourself
they say
Tell of that time
you
Peed in your pants
Gave 20 desperate calls
Loved and lost
Kissed a woman
Hated your parents
Casually forgot a lover
Wished your dog was dead
Crushed a heart and grinned
Undressed before the mirror
Tell it all
In words
And painful, twisted strokes
In sighs
And anguished murmurs
Laugh as you reveal
Your demented passions
And shallow heart.
You secretive writer
You counterfeit soul
Lie.
They call me.
Strangers
Call me gypsy.
It’s who I’m pretending to be.
Nowadays most often we hear the word tradition in context to religious and cultural practices being hard headedly carried out or defiled- in both cases creating a furore. And in this set meaning on passing on. But I like what tradition means in the present sense. In the now. I like the continuity it symbolizes. It’s like procreating without the hard hours of screaming labour.
Our family has a tradition of spending summer holidays together. The entire Flanagan clan collects at the family home before taking off for a holiday together. Four generations together – children spilling out of bosoms, grandparent throwing tantrums, cousins sharing traumas, one generation misunderstanding the other, lazy days spent hiding under the fan to escape the scorching heat, lazier evenings in a swimming pool and long nights of planned and unplanned adventures. You love, you crib, you enjoy, you say you’re never coming back again, you do come back again, you watch the young ones grow, you avoid your elders, you hug a child close, you try to find a quiet corner, you play cards, you discuss books passionately with your young niece, you kiss each child good night, you mediate in fights between relatives, you wonder how you aren’t deaf yet, you rediscover why you hate and love to be a Flanagan. It is a great tradition.
I want to create many more. I want others to make their own and make me part of their pacts with life.
In the past year, this thing called Life and growing up has taken its toll on a lot of
But I’m rooting for traditions to combat modern life. That’s what they’re supposed to do anyway right… join people together across time and place in a joint activity, feeling and hope?
So here I am making a bunch of traditions. To quote: Some traditions were deliberately invented for one reason or another, often to highlight or enhance the importance of a certain institution. Traditions may also be changed to suit the needs of the day, and the changes can become accepted as a part of the ancient tradition.
I want many, many, many more… with Paris, with Mars and Paris, with Sky, with my home as the centre of a tradition… If it’s Christmas we’re going to
That’s another thought. Everywhere I go I meet people that I like so much that you feel like you’re just making so many friends when you don’t even find time to bond with the one’s you have. There might be a balance to strike but there’s joy in growing a family. And it’s a lovely feeling when someone new seems to meld seamlessly into a circle you’ve already built.
I just want to end on a memory that Paris and I were thinking about yesterday.
It’s the old millennium. Paris and I have just met a month or so ago in college. We’re part of a larger group that hangs out together and movie plans have been made. It’s great. It’s a new youth flick, we’ll be going in a fun large gang, eating pop corn, hooting, going out for dinner, etc. College bonding with people you’re thinking you might be friends with.
And then by the time the day rolled around, everyone dropped out for some reason or another. I don’t remember why.
So there we were, two relative strangers thinking, ‘umm… should I offer to postpone the plan when the whole group can be there and when it’ll be fun?” And we didn’t. We said, “to hell with it… let’s watch a movie.” We went and made fun of a shitty film and found that we didn’t need other people to make a plan fun. In fact we didn’t need other people to make a plan. That was true when we were ‘relative strangers’ and I’m guessing that it will be true now… when we are, for lack of a better word, friends.
