Things That Bang

Medinapur made news recently when Inspector Attendranth Dutta was set loose by the Maoists in exchange for the tribal women the state had deemed Maoists. Medinapur means a lot to me. I grew up hearing tales about Medinapur - the simple village life, the abundance of animal life, the small golden fish in the ditches that snaked around the fields and the cool interiors of thatched cottages.

I remember asking my mom if I could go to Medinapur and my mom replied with an adamant -No. I was about five at the time and the person who told me magical tales about the village was our resident domestic help, a dimunitive woman who was a child widow and came to work with us when I was a newborn.

I grew up listening to Swarswati's tales; her longing to go back home and when she did go back home laden with bags wearing her colourful cotton saree she returned empty handed and in a white saree.

Every month letters from village came and my mother made me read the letters while Swarswati sat on the floor. I translated the letters that were written by the post man in perfect English. Stuff about snake bites, the destruction or success of crop and the need for money. The letters always asked for money and Swarswati asked mom to send her entire salary to them.

Mom was never for it. I remember mom telling me that once the money was over they wouldn't take care of Swarswati. Mom told her the money should be saved for her old age but for Swarswati the desperate need for money back home was more important than her advancing age.

The day Swarswati finally left for her village with little savings book which had all her savings and my mom with a sad smile told me that the day her money ran out so would her popularity with the relatives.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The next time I met Swarswati she was older, bent, tragic and in a white cotton saree that I so hated. She wanted to return to work but who would hire an old lady who could barely walk.

We talked for a long while. She lived with her brother and his family in Kolkata and he had gone through her savings. Nothing new there. Their land in Medinapur that had been bought with her money was sold by her brother and she never saw a penny of it.

The suppression had gone on but she didn't know any better. She missed the village. She spoke about the fake money I had given her when I was a kid (Monopoly money) that she had used to buy fish and vegetables with. It had been our inside joke.

When Medinapur made news, I remembered Swarswati and her years with us. Her rough hands, her gentle persona and her twinkling eyes when I bought her little trinkets with my pocket money.

Posted by Deepti Lamba at 09:41 PM Stumble It! digg this del.icio.us Fark It | Permalink | Comments () | TrackBacks (0)

Bigg Boss Season 3 on Colors has turned out to be as neurotic as the previous seasons. There are petty food fights, jealousies, personality clashes and hair fall due to dandruff.

Should we even be discussing these megalomaniac celebrities? Some think its a waste of time but these high and mighty personalities fall like pixie dust when it comes to living the mundane lives and scuttle like rats in the Bigg Boss cage. If that isn't interesting, what is?

Two people have been evicted till now - Rakhi Sawant's estranged mother- Jaya Sawant and Kamal Khan, the actor from Deshdrohi.

According to Kamal Khan he went loco at Bigg Boss's house to save the item girl Sherlyn Chopra's scrawny ass. A little tarnish on the knight's shining armour is no biggie in Bigg Bose's house. Kamal knew he was hated by the inmates and didn't seem too eager to hang around and deal with the rat infestation. Sherlyn, however, wanted to be part of the pack so Mr Khan used it to his advantage- leave like a nice bloke and white wash all his past obnoxious behavior at the Bigg Boss's house.

But then again, all the shit he did could be make believe for the hits, right?

However, some things are real like Rohit Verma's incessant need to give in to tears. When Bakhtiyar and Kamal Khan were sent to jail he howled and then a couple of nights later he sniffled when at the Bigg Boss home the inhabitants joked about him cooking and he ran out of the room brawling his eyes out. And no, gays do not behave in this pansy wansy way. He does not represent the gay community. He represents his own cry baby self!

Then there is Bakhtiyar and his sunny irritating wife - Tanaaz Irani who have their Bold and Beautiful love fights happening on Prime Time television just about every second day. Tanaaz, with her bubbling personality is quite a handful. There is only so much sunshine one can take - intense sunny positivity leads to corrosive wilting, sunstroke and death. Beneath all that happy personality is a vicious streak manifested by a cruel tongue. It didn't take her long to bitch about Sherlyn and her hair loss and for Mr Verma (who btw is losing hair as well) nodded and blame it on dandruff.

Which also explains the love for wigs by Rohit and scrawny Sherlyn.

Sherlyn Chopra seems to be the only one to feel the desperate need to stay at Bigg Boss's house. She bears the air of a hobo in Bollywood and her entrance into Bigg Boss' home a charity dinner instead of being turned to the soup kitchen. She made a pale reflection of an item girl to Rakhi Sawant. Her days are numbered since the greasy smell of desperation makes her unlikable by the mediocre female bitchie celebrities.

Poonam Dhillion seems to be the only classy 'show piece' amongst the women. Nice people cannot last on Bigg Boss and there are nice people in that corny little rat cage.

There is the comedian Raju Srivastav a good natured soul from Kanpur caught in the melee of personality clashes. He tries to remain out of the war zone and despite his comedy routines and spreading of laughter blends into the background like a pleasant wall flower.

Another talkative soul on the show grunting away is Vindu Dara Singh. If there is anyone who needs a zaaban pe lagam (reign in his tongue) is Mr Singh. His incessant inane conversation could drive any intelligent individual up the wall. But its his gossipy nature which keeps him aboard in that neurotic house.

The one with the most vicious tongue on the show who makes Kamal Khan look like a little runt is Ismail Darbar. Not only does he have ego hassels with most of the inmates but his arrogance on the show makes him a difficult fellow to like.

Then there are the three pretty wall flowers of Bigg Boss. Nice enough women with no outstanding obnoxious trait to help them stand out.

There is Claudia Ciesla - the blond bimbo, Shamita Shetty - Shilpa Shetty's younger sister and Aditi Govitrikar- the doctor turned model. These three babes despite their hot bodies lack the oomph of Rakhi Sawant and are probably too well behaved to leave a lasting mark in the tinsel town.

Bigg Boss is akin to desi Jerry Springer. There is a layer of unreal greasiness to the show that oils our voyeuristic judgemental streak.

Though the show is well into its third season it remains very popular and Amitabh Baachan's presence on the show has the calming influence of Ashok Kumar on Hum Log.

Posted by Deepti Lamba at 06:33 PM Stumble It! digg this del.icio.us Fark It | Permalink | Comments () | TrackBacks (0)

His wrinkled hand touched the knob of the bathroom door and trembled. He was a horny 60 year old bastard lusting after a 36 year old woman. He wasn't getting any and neither was she. They were the only two sex deprived adults in a household where the other two adults, his son and his wife, were getting on probably every other night.

The water fell in the bathroom and he imagined himself in there with her and feelings of shame and lust made a nasty heady cocktail in his mind. He let his body go a long time back. He had a round belly that made him look four months pregnant and his breasts looked as if they had worked double shifts at the breastfeeding factory but these body image issues did not deter him from shamelessly sniffing his daughter in law. He imagined his shaft poking deep within her bushy nether regions and her soft mouth open in a perfect O.

His pecker had come to hate him and turned him into a dirty old man. It had been over ten years since he had sex. Vibha's death had closed the chapter when it came to enjoying female companionship but also irrevocably on his sex life.

Five years later, tragedy struck again when his younger son died of a car accident on the Jaipur highway along with two of his friends.

The car had come into a headlong collision with a truck that had only one working headlight. He turned his mind away from the call that came, the identification of the blood crusted broken bodies, the pyre and the coming of his shell shocked daughter in law to stay with them from Jaipur.

He put his head on the door of the bathroom and remembered how she cried into her pillow late in the night and he stood out side her door letting his tears run down his wrinkled cheeks as well. His other daughter in law saw him standing outside Sheetal's door crying and returned to her room to give her stoic father in law privacy to grieve in peace.

But one night they heard him cry out loudly and they stepped of their room to see their shell shocked father standing in the dark corridor with Sheetal. His son switched on the light and gasped. Sheetal had shaved her waist length hair and the warm yellow light of the cheap Chinese bulbs pooled against her clean bald head. She glared at her flabbergasted brother in law and his wife.

She held out her dead husband's electric razor which Gaurav, her brother in law, took and they watched her walk back to her room and lock the door. Gaurav shook his head and returned to his room, grumbling about midnight dramas were getting on his nerves.

His wife, Sonam, put a solicitous hand on her father in law's arm and asked him if he needed anything. He shook his head, told her gruffly that she was a good daughter and went back to his room. Sonam felt like his daughter but not Sheetal with her baleful eyes and cold silences.

Gaurav and Sonam bounced back from the tragedy within a year since the birth of their son came as a balm to their arid souls. There was laughter in the house again but Sheetal remained somewhat aloof and in a world of her own. She doted on the little one, cradled him in her arms and showered him with baby gifts but interaction with the family was cut and dried as if she was roomie sharing space with them and nothing more.

Sheetal found a job and left in the morning and returned in the evenings. She shared household duties with Sonam like a automaton, served dinner, held the baby for a while and then promptly left for her room. Sonam shook her head, Gaurav shook his head and so did he while the cherub slept in his withered arms.

The pattern was shattered when Sheetal had bought a friend unannounced home for dinner. Her name was Bina and she was the antithesis of quiet Sheetal. Over dinner she ribbed Sheetal for her cool exterior and her soft beating heart for she willingly took up the work of an ill colleague and time and again stood up to their mean spirited boss. Bina filled the silence in all its cold pockets with her incessant chatter. She praised Sonam's cooking skills, said Gaurav was a thoughtful father and him- she looked intently in his quiet old brown eyes and told him that Sheetal thought he was the father she wished she had instead of that cold brute who left her mother.

His lips had trembled in response and he let his eyes slide over his silent daughter in law who refused to meet his eyes and trailed narrow lanes between her pooris and subzi. Her hair had started growing back – the fuzzy black had given way to a shaggy mop that she had neglected to style. He felt something twist in his heart and his chest tightened. He cleared his throat, nodded and gruffly asked for his pooris.

Sheetal never bought Bina back home again but the family were heartened to hear Bina's perky voice ask for Sheetal on the phone. They took it as a sign that Sheetal was beginning to pick up the threads of her life but they gave her space. They all had gotten used to her morbid self absorption but unlike his son and his wife he now found himself noticing small things about Sheetal. Like that crisp Monday morning when she finally moved on from wearing flat shoes to heels, when she began to wear more shapely blouses instead of the baggy sacks she used to wear to work and he remembered when his pecker moved a little when he finally saw the pink lipstick on her lips.

Part of him was heartened that she had finally begun to move on and part of him hated himself zealously for the reaction that came from a place he thought was long dead. He couldn't sleep the night his pecker came alive. Next morning he had a hard on because his widowed daughter in law painted her lips in front of him. He was a pathetic old bastard.

The tightened muscle felt good in all its 9 inch glory but his conscious tore him into pieces. She gave an absentminded smile to her little makeshift family and left for work. Sonam asked whether he was willing to hold the wailing two year old while she collected the dishes? He nodded and she plonked the frisky one year old on his lap and he gently moved the boy away from his boner and placed him on the floor next to him. It was all so wrong and yet felt good. He felt like a young man and as his boner shrivelled up and nestled back against his enlarged balls he told himself no harm had come. It was the way of men to hide the lust and dike the destruction it could deluge on those men loved best.

Five years of lusting and pining for a woman who thought of him as her father had made him feel like a teenager having wet dreams about a woman he knew he could never have. And the romance of it sang in his blood. He lay against his hard pillow and had fantasies of her, he gave in to desire once in a week and cleaned himself up with tissues later and made sure he never looked at her for too long when others were around.

He caressed the door behind which she took her bath. Five years had passed and she was a changed woman and he a changed man. Death had done that to them. He straightened his back and told himself to be a man and knocked on the door. The sound of water running stopped and a hesitant yes answered his knock.

He cleared his throat and spoke “Beta! Giresh will be here soon. He called and said the movie will start in half an hour. You better get ready fast.”

“Yes Babuji!” there was excitement in her voice. She had slowly thawed since her boss steam rolled into her life. The same obnoxious mean spirited slave driver of a boss fell for the iron willed Sheela and proposed marriage.

He stepped away from the bathroom and went into the living room and picked up the newspaper and blindly stared at image of a politician giving a toothy smile with a fat marigold garland around his thick neck. Minutes ticked by and there were sounds of horns blaring and the door bell ringing.

His grandson spilled inside with his school bag and mother behind him. They both wore big smile and behind them walked in Giresh. Tall, young vibrant Giresh juggling flowers and gifts for the family.

Sonam gave a girlish laugh “Babuji, you have to tell Giresh not to bring us gifts every time he comes over. He is spoiling Anil. He pulled in right behind us and got Anil all excited.”

Anil gave a toothy smile, his teeth were already stained with chocolate and Giresh put the gold Rocher wrapper in his pocket and strode over to his side and handed him a small sleek rectangular box and said “I thought of you when I saw this.”

He gave a weak smile and opened the wrapping and saw a Mont Blanc pen in it. His pecker felt puny and bullied in front of Giresh. He sighed and sat back and gave a weak smile “There really wasn't any need Giresh.”

Giresh shrugged and his eyes looked beyond the living room. His eyes lit up when he saw Sheela walk into the room and like Giresh's eyes his eyes too took in her silky shoulder length hair, the easy smile and the skip in her step.

“Time to go? We have a dinner reservation.” Giresh took her arm and she nodded.

They began to walk out. Anil like an incorrigible spaniel crowded around the two and they both gave him a tight good bye hug and Sonam behind them teased Giresh to bring her sister in law back home in it and no naughty business till they got married.

Giresh ribbed back that he respected the traditions of the family and had utmost respect for Babuji.

Giresh's words made him feel like a wriggling worm on a fisherman's pole. He remained seated on the leather couch with a stained smile on his face.

The car on the driveway started and he felt like crying as if his favourite toy had been taken away. His heart broke and he wiped his tears.

The door opened again, he raised his eyes and watched her in walk towards him in her vibrant red silk top and figure hugging jeans. She had come a long way from the grieving widow to a woman willing to love again.

She stood before him for a minute then bent down and touched his feet and softly said “Thank you Babuji.”

He touched her head and replied “Be happy, that is all that I ask.”

She stood up , flicked away the tears and left the house.

He sighed, picked up the paper and began to read. His pecker on the other hand wailed its horny existence.

Posted by Deepti Lamba at 08:13 PM Stumble It! digg this del.icio.us Fark It | Permalink | Comments () | TrackBacks (0)

Love is blind but marriage is an eye opener- anonymous

People fall in love all the time and then just like that they hand in their divorce papers within a few days (in Britney Spears' case the next day), a few months or few years. Sometimes people who've been in live in relationships for over decades throw in the towel once they get hitched. I know people who hold back wedding gifts till the couple cross the first year of marriage. Call it a clever strategy or lack of faith in romance and happily ever afters.

But there cannot be happily ever afters in marriages. Are there 24/7 happy relationships? We fight with our siblings, our friends and even our parents so isn't it natural that we would bicker with our spouses as well?

Yet, I am the first one to say get out of the relationship before you stab each other with kitchen knives as if re-enacting the War Of The Roses. When love sours it brings out the worst in us. We say and do things that would make even our mothers who proclaim they know us best say - my kid wouldn't be smelling his wife's underwear for her office spouse's sperm?!

Okay, I am exaggerating but you catch my drift people in curdled relationships bring out the worst in each other and yet we say - hey buddy, tried a therapist? Stay together for the kids, Stay together for the money, just frikking stay together to save the institution of marriage!

And the cherry on the cake is that those who do dish out these platitudes are the ones who enjoy stable marriages. A woman with a broken jaw certainly wouldn't insist marriages are made in heaven or a man with nagging hag be the happiest best man at his buddy's wedding.

But things needn't be that extreme either to part ways. Sometimes people grow apart, drift away and realise that the person living next to them is a complete stranger and rue the phantom years spent together.

So why do we tell people to hang on to dead beat relationships? Why do they stay in dead beat relationships?

I still believe one has to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince but there can be no happily ever afters since he is a frog under that charming skin and you out of sheer desperation to get married kissed the tenth or the twentieth froggie with a baggage full of expectations that curtailed any hopes of that hazy death to us part deal!

Posted by Deepti Lamba at 10:38 PM Stumble It! digg this del.icio.us Fark It | Permalink | Comments () | TrackBacks (0)

I am now half way through the second half of my novel and part of me has already decided that my baby will not be accepted in the print world and its best I show my baby to the online world where I am most comfortable. It matters little to me that I could finally say that I am a 'published print' writer when someone asks me the uncomfortable question - so what do you do? Or have my relatives tell their relatives and friends that they have a writer in the family as if by that connotation they too would become famous.

Getting tons of money due to my writing would be good as would a villa somewhere in Brussels, but those are pipe dreams. Not all of us can reach the heights of Salman Rushdie, Stephen King, Steven Erickson and though the list of successful writers is never ending, the list of those who slip by into oblivion precedes the lucky ones who reach the skies and have hordes rushing to book stores to read their work.

I don't envy these giants. Fact is, I wish them success since reading is a dying activity and publishing houses don't make as much money as they used to. People don't read any more. Somehow people are now suffering from mass ADD. Everything is quick fix- be it entertainment, food and even sex. Leisure activities like putting your legs up to read and letting the day roll by is indulged by few. And for this reason alone I am grateful to J.K Rowling. She got many youngsters hooked to reading. She's been a life saver for most of us writers.

Publishing houses are known to be picky when it comes to accepting new authors and even if a book does get published what an average author makes barely covers a month's rent. Not everyone gets the 6 or even 5 digit advances. It is a well known fact that most authors cannot live by weaving stories. A day job is a necessity if one doesn't want to suffer for art's sake or sell their kidney.

In the online world, however, it is easier. There are no letters of rejection and there are sites available which publish works of all types of genres and their readership is into hundreds if not thousands as is the case with ASSTR. Even Amazon has woken up to the potential of online publishing.

There are also sites like Smashwords where the writer can either give his book away for free or set the price of his book which can be then downloaded. Smashwords now powers the Sony Publisher Portal, increasing their reach many-fold. Further enhancing the appeal of electronic publishing, Tina Brown's Daily Beast has launched a new imprint in collaboration with Perseus Publishing, Beast Books, that will roll into print writers from the Daily Beast on a faster timeline (months) than that typically promised by traditional publishing houses. Published authors like Cory Doctorow are open enough to give away their books, while still achieving success with print publishing.

Of course there are many writers who aren't inclined to follow this new path and would rather see some concrete proof of their toil and then then there are lazy nut jobs like me who like living in the online world and find readers even in hard to reach places like Multan or Rwanda. I've had readers mailing me from all over the world and I get both hate and fan mail.

This is the high I've been living on for past five years without needing a print publisher to give me my fix and if one happens to be a regular on social networking sites, word reaches out even faster.

Do I need the money? Yes, of course, I do but the likelihood of getting there via print media seems pretty dim, and as I meet more online gods of the written word, the less I am inclined to want to be creating just another book lying in some dusty corner of a second hand bookstore. I have better chances of reaching out to thousands via the online world.

Would I still write a cover letter and send my manuscript to the big publishing houses or let the world have it for free? I guess I will know once I finish my novel. Until then its a whole lot of dreaming and hogwash.

Posted by Deepti Lamba at 12:10 AM Stumble It! digg this del.icio.us Fark It | Permalink | Comments () | TrackBacks (0)