The Cynic

When my TV screen blared the news of the gangrape incident of 16 December, I simply shook my head and changed the channel. When I heard it again on the radio, I tuned into a song instead. My behaviour wasn’t one of apathy towards the girl’s plight but sheer exhaustion. I’d lost count. Rape. Assault. Eve-teasing. A little touching here and there topped with some lewd comments. Over the past few years, as I’ve grown up, I’ve been shocked, angered, frustrated, livid, and then, simply learnt to live with it. I’ve learnt to live with the fact that during the course of every day spent outside home, I will be stared, leered, whistled or commented at, at least once. If its a lucky day, I’ll get away with just a lustful stare. If its not, well, who can tell? I’ve learnt to live with the fact that the ‘City News’ section of my newspaper will, as a rule, bring to me the news of atleast one rape a day, if not more. I’ve learnt, like other girls in Delhi, to live with a sense of un

Meera stared at the back of her drunk husband’s head, as he leaned over the fireplace, turning something over in his hand. She couldn’t see what he was doing, but experience told her it couldn’t be something to look forward to. She took some cautious steps back, and parked herself into a corner of the room, crouched, pulled her sari over her back and waited in silence. *   When she woke up, she was still curled up in the corner farthest away from the fireplace. He was gone. Her worn out red saree lay unravelled to a side. Slowly, gingerly, she made to get up, and her knees buckled. Her head swam and she slumped to the floor, throwing up, gasping. Meera sat there a moment, leaning against the peeling plaster, breathing deeply, eyes shut. She felt lighter. Purged. Was this how it was meant to be? She breathed some more, and this time, her legs lifted her weight. She gathered her saree, and walked to the basin to inspect the damage. The imprint of his thick fingers on her fr

  Stupid Mayans holding us all in suspense. For all we know, it was some loony prehistoric guy who simply got bored midway through his calendar making and decided to leave it at that. Or a sadist, maybe, who thought it would be creepily hilarious to leave his descendents awaiting the ultimate apocalypse—eyes shut, fists clenched, sighing, and all okay bye-byes done and settled, only to find they still had college at 8:59:59 the next day. If its true, though, what a waste of a brilliant life would that be, a December 2012 end would mean I’d have spent all my (conscious) life slogging it off at some padhai centre or the other. Sad. Calls for immediate salvage attempts, running to a four month deadline. 1.        Background Clearance. In the little time that I have on earth, and before the next set of inhabitants arrive, it is essential to wipe off all traces of embarrassing pictures of yours truly, and other textual details. Thus, all the diaries, the letters, the break-up analyses,

Sitting by the roadside, Hira intently watched cars speed by. Tears welled up in his eyes—he would do this often, and it would make him break down every time. He could’ve been in one of those big cars. He could’ve made it big. He could’ve studied hard and married and had beautiful children of his own. He could have. Had God not decided to play around with him. Had his father not taken offence and thrown Hira and his mother out of his little house. Had his mother, his own mother, not have left him in a dump yard to die. Hira was abandoned as a child, unwanted and kicked out of his own parents’ lives. Left to fend for himself in a garbage dump, he was discovered by a group of people—people just like him, who slowly, gradually, taught him about the norms of the cruel world. The world was a sad place for Hira. Because the world didn’t look at him for what he had tried to make of himself—a breadwinner, a diligent worker, a good person, no. The world looked at him for what HE had had no

The other day, in my English literature class, the teacher asked us to enumerate for her a few classics of the language, and while everyone came up with the works of Charles Dickens and Jane Austen and Bernard Shaw and the Bronte sisters, the answer that stood out the most was that of a girl sitting right behind me, who raised her hand sweetly, and came up with the absurdest thing I'd heard.'Ma'am, authors like Nicolas Sparks, they write so well, why don't we call those books classics?' The teacher was stumped. Honestly, so were most of the others in the class. Not at the 'unconventional' question, but at her sheer brainless audacity. A few heads banged down, there were a few exhasperated sighs, and some giggles, and some genuinely chafed whispers wondering what she was doing in a literature class anyway, all in some not-so-polite words. And for that one minute, I felt like I'd found my place in the world. I fit in perfectly with this obnoxiously

The past one year was dotted with moments of depression. Wave after wave of panic, fear and anxiety hit us, as we realised that this was it. Our last few days together. That in a matter of mere months we were to step out of the place we’d called home for the past 14 years, out into that big, bad world of college admissions and jobs and incessant slogging. Hysterical laughter led to tears, then depression, then desperation and sad sighs. Crazy games, never touched after class IV, came back with a bang, and suddenly 12th standard students were running around playing ‘vish-amrit’ and fighting over whether ‘bhaalu’ was an acceptable animal in ‘Name-Place-Animal-Thing’. Songs were sung and dedicated to each other. Every lunch eaten in the second period became more special, every bit relished with an increasing sense of satisfaction. The one trip to Corbett as enjoyed as if everyone was facing a life-sentence back in Delhi. Every party became crazier, every dance more uncontrollable. I lo

Somewhere towards the end of last month, India celebrated Maha Shivratri. Daddy to the most loved God of Hindu mythology, Ganesha, and no less loved himself, Shiva is said to be the coolest of the mighty Brahma-Vishnu-Mahesh trio. Easily invokable. Easily bribed. Fun loving and rather offbeat. And while he probably celebrated his birthday peacefully up there at his snowy Kailash Parbat residence, his  mortal devotees down here took it upon themselves to throw him (and themselves, while they were at it) a wild, wild birthday bash. And so I was jolted out of my bed at 4 a.m., because apparently that's when the hosts decided to begin. Begin they did. And that's when I realised that it was much too loud. That they had erected loudspeakers across the colony on every second electric pole. That I was in for trouble. Happy Budday, Shivjee , I thought bleakly. There was no point trying to sleep, and so I sat up and waited for it to end. I'm no music critic, really, but I can t

Like everyone around me, I, too, was vying for a rendezvous with the political queen of the season, Mamata Bannerjee. Although Mamata didi herself was too busy with her 'work', I got lucky and bagged a date with her very loyal maid of twelve years, Shanta. "So tell me about her," I said. "Not about Mamata the politician! Ofcourse there she pretty much  has it all under control. The UPA has been rendered virtually useless, as Congress wriggles and twitches and squirms to find some way, some way to get through with the reforms it wants to pass. Mamata, on the other hand, gleefully watches them try their hardest. No, tell me more about Mamata the person. What is she like at home? What does she do on her time off?" Her favourite pastime, Shanta informs me darkly, is watching her keeda jar. "Kedda jar?!" "Keeda jar shaab, keeda jar," she said darkly. "She has all these wriggly worms collected from all over the country. She carries

“How did she..?” “She had cancer.” “Oh...I’m so sorry!” I smiled. Sorry. Sometimes I felt envious of people merely for having this great comfort. They could be sorry about Suhana’s death. Just how sorry could I be? About having seen my best friend of fourteen years die? * It was seven months ago when Suhana’s first reports came in. Diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, terminal stage. By the end of two months, she stopped attending school—the constant chemotherapy having taken its toll on her general health. Her sleek, long, brown hair had begun to fall off in large clumps. Many nights, she would call me and cry and obsess about how her hair was going, “It's coming out in fistfuls and I don’t know what to do!” She would cry incessantly, and I would console her for hours on end. Every time I met her, she looked a little worse—the dark circles, the fatigue, the recurring nausea. I know she knew that she wouldn’t live much longer—but I also realized that she lived on my persistent

"Zoya, why don't you wear those green danglers of mine? I think they'll go perfectly well with your lehenga!" Zoya beamed at her mother. She had always adored those earrings! So dainty, so delicate, she thought. And Ammi is right; they'll look gorgeous with my dress. Zoya pulled out the earrings from under the mattress of the bed she shared with her mother. Her mother smiled as she put them on and examined herself in the mirror. "Ammi! These earrings looked so much better when you wore them. Why don't you wear them anymore?" The smile drained off Amina Rehman's face. Often such innocent questions sting your heart more than anything else in the world. And the pain is unbearable. Zoya's father and Amina's husband Shauqat Rehman had died fighting the Pakistani forces in the war of Kargil. He had laid down his life trying to save two of his subordinates- Kashmiri Lal and Tej Chand. While the duo survived, Shaukat took the enemy bullet in his