The Serpent'sTea Cup

Late into the night, I received a call from a friend of mine to announce that a common friend of ours, had just had twins - a boy and a girl. They had baked a huge double-decker cake and had celebrated the event. 

As a friend of mine once asked, 'What is the big excitement in the birth of a child(?) When a virile man and a fertile woman join, conception and birth of a new life are bound to follow... what is the big excitement about it and the need to be congratulating(?!)'

Well, I did agree to him when he told me that. But, this celebration yesterday night was different. This friend of ours was with the merchant navy; newly married, he had to return to the sea to make money for the new expenses they were starting to have. He was in the waters when he heard about his wife being pregnant. The wife had told him that she could take care of the pregnancy as his mother was with her and there was nothing to worry and all he had to do was keep working and send home the money which she promised to save on land for him. The child was born; he couldn't come. His excitement of becoming a father was saved for only the sea to witness. Two years later when he returned, he met his little boy for the first time. He was so excited that he showered all that he earned on the mother and the child. He knew that there was a lifetime ahead and the sea could meet all their needs. After a short break, they knew that he had to return to keep the home running with promises to keep as a provider. This time, it was a five-year contract that he signed. That sacrifice would be worth enough to refurnish the house, spike the bank balance and provide the little luxuries for his loved ones - he thought. He went. 

Everything went smoothly as planned and he received regular photos of new things filling the house - a new car, a new couch, a new set of jewellery... everything that would make his return to land a joy once he landed - after all his life and savings were in his good wife's good hands. 

One day, when he was still in the sea, his mother sent him an SOS and wanted to talk to him. She soon came on a video call with him and showed him the house - it seemed reduced. There was almost nothing - save for the stool left for his mother to sit and weep on. The brilliant wife had skilfully taken off with their son and every bit of investment he had made monetarily. He felt more emotionally drained than financially. He returned.

The house was empty as his mother had shown. She was being taken care of by the neighbours till his return. There was nothing. Everything purchased that he got to see only on the photos were like they never were even there; the bank balance that he was told was his savings was all saved in the woman's name. The car she drove away in, the bags she packed everything into, the child she took away... everything that she said was 'theirs', were now 'her's' to keep. Every woman who does something as vulgar as this must have a family to back her up in such a deal; in this case, it was her father stood by this angel's side - who got a case filed at the police station to keep our man at a distance and a divorce filed at the family court soon after, to seal the deal. Benefit: A daughter to take care of him in his old age with a bag full of free goodies got out of her shrewd investments made with the sweat and blood of another soul. 

When I first met this man, he had just returned from a Tea Shop. It had become his usual routine to go sit there - not for the tea - but to see his son being taken to school on that route in a closed car - who he could see only from a distance. He looked shaken, stirred and sunk - like a ship being rattled in a storm - when he narrated these incidents with his chin on his chest. 

Soon, the nasty divorce battle began; the lawyers fought over the lies, the liars fought alongside the lawyers and finally the judge for whom these battles were not fought for a reason, declared peace and granted at the end the best thing the man had ever received - a divorce. The very same evening, he got married (again) to someone much younger, more beautiful and far more healthier and started a new life cleaning up his dirty slate. This incident made me chuckle at the seaman's unpredictability. Soon, we heard that his new wife had conceived and as things were expected to naturally turnout, delivered twins - doubling his happiness - that like most men, he deserved. 

While talking to him this time, he seemed so calm and collected. He was talking about how busy he is at times that he can't answer the phone like before - times when he would be doing the dishes or changing diapers for the new lives. Life had become calm after the storm and as a sailor knows best, no matter how far a man sails into the deep, he only moves closer to his heart on land.     

So How Far Are You From Home?!

Politics... organizational politics, dirty politics; where cheap, slimy, worthless slithering reptiles crawl; understanding well that they will be unfit to exist anywhere else. Given space, most work hard on trying to figure out how not to work instead of finding ways to work; if only they would invest their time to boost their productivity...

Lesser said, it is not less often that I wonder how interesting life would be if it were a little slower like in the good old days of my great granddad who perhaps toiled in the fields and the sweat at the end of the day would do to show the work rather than some silly result from an administered performance appraisal; and when HR management was seen by the way people would drop in the next day at the door for work even without having to sign a lumpy contract; and the care shown by the grandma who would make the snacks and tea for their break-time munch was seen as good enough to retain the proletariat rather than a carrot at the end of the stick the management holds out to the ever-greedy, ever-needy generation today that tries to grab it till the end of their career-precisely the way it was intended to be.

Today, I look at the speed at which the world runs for my children and am unsurprizingly amazed. A father who goes to work early and too busy focusing on what to do when he gets there that the morning drifts off just as early as it started; by late evening he gets back and with saddles of work removed after running around like a panting labour-horse,  hardly finds the strength or the energy to hug his kids; The mother who gets to know all about the dirtier side of the world through the little window of the apartment and the newspaper that is thrown in through it and who quite understandably protects the children like a jailer protects his territory; The children who perhaps made no mistake to be born in this God-forsaken, devil-breeding, "I-Hate-This" place that makes me wonder... "Why the f*$k am I here?!" in the first place.

Just as a friend to many, is a friend to none, a place that belongs to everybody belongs to none. This mixed feeling of purposelessness to exist in a particular place is often shadowed by our unjustified reason to blame it on the future of the kids which we seldom realize is destroyed rather than created. It is tempting to say, "Home sweet home is the answer"... yet again, too far and hardly reached, with identities changed and hardly recognized, home too is redefined as the place where one finds love is... It is our greed, greed for power, status, recognition, and to run-away and start fresh as a stranger in a distant land, to be free and feel liberated that makes us lose more than we could possibly gain and to end up earning to go back from where we started even if it has to begin right from the scratch. And at times, a pragmatic reminder of reality and a shaken yet not stirred dash of utopia with a sprinkle of idealism is all the concoction one needs to stay dazed in a busy, pointless world; nothing matters any more and life is just a drag to bear till the end of the grave...

3 Photos Of A Classical Traditional Home

Tradition can't get better than this. A chair in a silent corner by a window with a classical mat-curtain on the side and a small, multi-purpose table upfront which usually becomes a coffee table, table for keeping reading accessories including the everyday newspaper that is changed sincerely every morning and also often becomes a foot rest when resting at times. This is a corner usually preferred and often made and taken by elders just the way they want it, like the character they emanate... silent, reserved and in their own complacent world. Miss this?! 

This is another classic-the wooden swing left to hang from the ceiling suspended with iron chains which too are artistically yet sturdily made. Usually made from a single block of wood, this is where people like to spend a quite evening, swinging lightly-back and forth-just like the waves of thoughts that come and go in their minds when they are on it. People usually have a very strong sense of attachment to these pieces from a bygone era and claim their spot in it no matter how old they get. This usually turns out into a swing for the middle aged, cot for the elderly and a piece every sibling fights for once the house needs to be dismantled after its time. This is almost like a trophy hanging in the house that swings like a pendulum-a reminder of time and a witness to everything that has passed time right in front of it. This is a classic example of how characters get personified in the inanimate.  

This is a wonder carefully arranged and tackled sensibly. The giant cot with pillars that give it an ethnic yet robust look, the store-trunk at the base of the cot made of solid wood that also turns into a seater at times, the corner stool with a smart book rack beneath it, a dressing mirror on another corner and last yet not the least, a carefully decked up mattress that seems to be breathing a comfortable call to come and rest peacefully. This is space personified and personalized. This could easily become anyone's heaven at the end of the day. If Freud were alive, he would have found this a sexual den with figurative imagery. "Why not?" I shall ask then. No matter what, the more you look into it and the more you begin to like it, the more creative you get in a dreamy bedroom like this. What better place than this for ideas to emerge?! 

p.c: some old snaps I had collected while planning a home, don't know who clicked it anyway, thanks buddy