When those happy feet frown

Thank god there’s nothing like shoes for the hands. Wait a minute. Before you start thinking that I have probably lost it, let me explain what prompts that statement. As much as I would love to have two happy feet walk me through the day, my experiences with footwear have always been killjoys.

Trips to shoe stores mostly end up in heartbreaks, what with nothing of my size ever available. And luck by chance if I manage to get a pair, it’s no less than a stupendous feat for my puny feet. But then it’s the poor purse that bears the brunt. After all, in such rarest of rare moments, price is the last thing that I can afford to ponder over. Like they say, beggars cannot be choosers. Of course, I make sure pairs that are beyond my budget are beyond my line of vision too.  

The colour, the shape, the feel, the look -- when all of it is just what I have been longing for, it’s that silly size that always cuts me down to size. Those cute, colourful ballerinas, oh how I envy someone else fitting into them. Ask for my size and the standard answer is, “Sorry ma’am, that’s the starting size. We don’t have anything smaller.” Just an inch here, just an inch there and I always miss them by a whisker.

There have been times when the salesmen were generous enough (or was it that they took piety on me) to suggest that they could custom-make one for me. But the rigmarole of the entire process shoos off much of the excitement. Call it a confession, but there have been times when I have taken a causal stroll to the kids footwear section, eyeing the stuff on display, but with a deadpan face that betrays all signs of the curios cat within. It’s a different matter that I never found anything there too, this time the size being too small to fit my feet.

 In fact, I have a lot of these ‘shoestopper’ moments too. No sooner I realize someone’s shoe size could be close to mine (just from the look of it of course), I brazenly walk up to the person to know the source of the pair. Thankfully, such people are always the ones who seem to share my story and hence are more than willing to help me with all the details, from the name of the store, to its address et al.

Probably you got to put yourself in my shoes to know what I really mean. LOL! But most of you wouldn’t ever fit into mine.

When it was all a child’s play

Someone once told me, and aptly so, never let the child in you die. At that time I did not pay much heed to it, but for reasons unknown, the thought lingered in some corner my memory. The little joys of life that peppered my childhood have translated into beautiful memories that I so fondly treasure.

The flights of fantasy at that age knew no bounds. Everything was so intriguing, so fascinating -- the colours of butterflies, the trail of ants, the call of cuckoos -- I had friends in them all.  We didn’t need words to communicate. In our own space and at our own pace we enjoyed each other’s company.  

Tiptoeing to catch dragonflies was a favourite pastime during the summers. There were always one too many, sprinting from one twig to another, disappearing and reappearing in a blink, even before my nimble fingers could nab them. And every time that I managed to get hold of one, I would offer it a blade of grass and watch the fun -- the fragile thing trying to grasp it, nibble on it, all at the same time. Soon I would let it free and set my eyes on another one.

In the sultry, boring summer afternoons, after the drudgery of loaded lessons in school, nothing got me going like the jugalbandi with a cuckoo which I never saw -- despite umpteen attempts to spot her in the dark and deep foliage that surrounded my house. The bird’s two-note call was so piercing and incessant  in the stillness of the noon that I invariably took it upon myself to give her company, matching every note,  making mine sound as real as hers. This would go on till the little birdy would give up on me, at least for the day.

With ants, I had a different equation. I would while away hours watching them carry food, sometimes just a grain of sugar, sometimes a wing of a dead fly, sometimes some biscuit particles. Their team work, co-ordination and relentless effort to stock up food for the winters always amazed me. On my part, the digression would always be in the midst of a brain-racking math problem or a boring history lesson that I had to learn by heart. Thanks to these cute creatures who allowed me a space in their tiny world, my world would cheer up instantly.

There are stories aplenty, of such engaging trivialities that have marked my growing years. I know the child in me has not died. It’s only lying dormant till a chirpy little sparrow comes hopping on its windowpane.   

What’s their words’ worth?

Now this is what I call a verbal diarrhea. The world of news is replete with instance of madcaps pronouncing loud and clear, how inane they are. If words could kill, by now the Delhi rape victim must have died a thousand times over. It doesn't take much to scar one’s sense of dignity, and words do the job like no lethal weapon ever could.

Even as some mindless morons go about suggesting ludicrous ways as to how the victim could have escaped her fate, I wonder why, why at all are we even giving them any publicity? Why are we letting them hog headlines, become page one leads? Why are we allowing them occupy our thoughts, even if in the most detestable manner?

In fact, the sheer profanity of their thoughts leads me to think if it’s all a publicity gimmick. After all, at a time when the nation is on the boil on an issue that has jolted a collective conscience, such rhetorical disasters cannot be dismissed as naive opinions. And when they come from people who are pied pipers in their own right and bask in their exalted space, there has to be a purpose, probably a ploy at play. And if this is their way of hitting the headlines, someone’s got to draw the line for them.  For characters like these, bad publicity is good enough. Isn't it obvious that these men are riding on someone’s pain to garner quick fame, even if it means getting infamously famous? What befuddles me further is the brazen manner in which they squarely put the blame on the media, each one of them, every single time, for supposedly misinterpreting their wise words.

One speaks of Lakshman rekha, another of marriage as a contract and yet another of how to evoke brotherly love in a man when threatened with rape. Even as I shudder at the thought of more such priceless pearls of wisdom tumbling out of blockheads worth a place in a museum, I increasingly seem to understand why they say silence is golden.     

Greetings without cards

When you can tweet, scribble on walls, or simply touch the send button, why put pen on paper. At the risk of sounding outdated, I must say I do miss the once-upon-a-time year-end ritual of posting and receiving greeting cards. The mountains, the rivers, the flowers, the rising sun, birds on the far horizon  -- the glossy greeting cards were more like envelopes full of hopes and good wishes landing at your door steps.

I remember during my growing years, this season, I would eagerly wait for the postman every afternoon. With bag-loads of inland letters, postcards and greeting cards he would go cycling around town, dropping messages that travelled countless miles, stamped and sealed for long journeys. In the pleasantly warm, wintery afternoons, my ears would be all perked up, what if I missed the messenger pass by. 

Envelopes of different hues, cards of different shapes and sizes; it always felt so special that someone had actually taken that much of effort, spared that much of time to pick up the right one from rows full of them, personalized a note, made sure to put the address right and then post it on time, all of this just to spread a smile.  

Hand-made cards were much in vogue among school friends. A lot of the stuff that we learnt in our SUPW (socially useful productive work) classes would come in handy. On a creative high, we would unleash the Wordsworths and Shakespeares in us to express our deepest of thoughts in words.

Today, I so often miss those little moments that made life so beautiful. I still have a lot of those cards and hold them so dear. Whenever I mange to escape from the crazy maze of life, I turn to them, read them, feel them, go back in time with them. And every time, even before I know, there’s a smile on my lips and tears in my eyes.

Are we safe in their thoughts?

She was tall and slender, her complexion like that of a few drops of vermilion in milk. Smart and confident she looked to be in absolute control of life.  With a decent education and a well-paying job, she painted a picture of what every middle-class girl probably dreams of.  At an age when life is a sea of opportunities and dreams are like mounds of wet clay shaping into something beautiful, she came upon as a subtle inspiration. Fresh out of high school and into campus life, I was only beginning to explore the world on my own terms. Cocooned in the comforts of a loving family for years, I never spared a thought on how cruel reality could be. Always believed what met my eyes, often bought what people said. So I believed her story too, after all it met my eyes.

But soon I learned what you see is not what you believe, all the time, today I feel, probably most of the time. Behind her don’t-mess-with me-yet-affable demeanor, there was a poignant tale of torture, trauma and trials. The dark held much terror for her.  Yet again in a phase of life when I saw companionship as a blessing (be it in the form of a lover or a husband, the so called better-half), I learned about the bitter half --- the bitter-half of this picture-perfect story, the bitter half of how my beliefs were losing ground. The woman who comfortably stood tall in an otherwise predominantly man’s world found herself biting the dust within the four walls of her home – day in and day out.

Initiated into an arranged marriage after all checks in place, nothing should have possibly gone wrong. But nothing really went right. Mouthful of expletives and abhorrent abuse charred her sense of dignity to the last bit and the beastly hands seemed to have ugly minds of their own. Battered and bruised on the inside, she tried to put up a brave front, but only till her neighbours decided to speak up, speak up before the worst happens.  They informed her parents of the brutality their daughter was being subjected to. The same people who had refused to listen to their daughter when she tried to explain what she was going through, finally sat up and took notice. Thank heavens, at least someone managed to knock sense into them.

Today, when I see the fate of a 23-year-old gang rape victim from Delhi, I ponder even harder and reality stings even stronger. The girl in this case was devoured by vultures in the guise of men, men who by their heinous act not only ruined her body, but also jolted the psyche of the entire womankind. This time it was in a public space and that too in the country’s capital. Her plight was someone's pleasure, her pain someone's gain. She bore the brunt of being born a woman.  Despite the stiff fight she put up for 13-odd days, her body wilted. After all it was only as much as she could take -- mentally, physically and emotionally.

The two incidents don’t relate, except that they are tales of torture and brutality --- at different levels and of different degrees.  The moot point is: It’s not about whether a woman is safe in her home or in public space. It’s more about whether a woman is safe in every man’s thought. Many might ask, is it ever possible?  I ask, is it really impossible?