100 Paths

This weekend, I had the task of picking up my younger one from a friend’s birthday party at a mall. When I got there, I was unceremoniously dumped with the duty to take home not just my own kid but two others as well. Since my car already had three of us in it (myself, my elder one and the driver), there was no choice but to pile up on top of each other in the backseat.

Giggly and fun-loving as all 13-year-old girls are, the three in the backseat with me began playing on unseemly apps on their various gadgets. One was called ‘The Great Indian Honeymoon’ and involved ‘pleasing the parents-in-law by making an omelette’ and ‘saying the right thing to the husband’ to ensure a good honeymoon. Another was a ‘Fart’ app, which had some 50 different kinds of fart noises to go with pictures of a woman’s butt in different stages of undress.

Now, I haven’t laughed at fart jokes in many years. But this particular app had some really hideous sounds going, and the girls were in splits all over each other. I just could not help joining in the hilarity. The real explosion happened when my elder one, sitting in the front seat, called out while distractedly fiddling around with someone’s Blackberry, “Stop it, guys, you’re so gross, it’s stinking in here.”

When our laughter finally subsided, the girls began to get uncomfortable all squeezed up, but good-naturedly teased one another into better sitting positions, joking about butts, farts and smells. On the 45-minute drive home, I saw examples of friendship, adjustment, innocent joy and guileless playfulness.

Sometimes, it takes a fart or two to bring out the best in us.

(Okay, that does sound gross.)

Today I spent the evening with a mother-daughter duo in my residential complex. I’d only briefly met the mother before, and she was intrigued by me and insisted I stay for tea and tell her daughter, who is about my age, ‘my story’.

I spoke for a long while, and the older woman probed and probed – she was especially curious about the ‘love angle’ of my recent past – while constantly apologizing for her blatant inquisitiveness. Eventually, instead of repeating, “It’s not a problem, my life is an open book,” I decided to illustrate my point.

“You know, aunty,” I said, “a few days ago, a newspaper published a column of mine but did not carry my photograph and the name of my magazine in my profile, as I expected them to. This didn’t bother me, because I now have faith that whatever happens is for the best. Instead, I immediately got thinking about what God wanted me to learn from this.

“And the symbolism cannot be ignored: My content was used but without its packaging. God is telling me, I am not important, my story is. I’ll give you another example. At today’s Buddhist meeting, all of us heard the amazing experience of a woman who’d been through terrible agony watching her disabled daughter in coma for five months and then suffering from cancer herself. And yet she ended her experience saying, ‘I will win, I will win, I will win.’ We may have already forgotten this woman’s name, but we will NEVER forget her story… By sharing her story, her pain and her courage, she has inspired many more lives. Her suffering has become purified and meaningful.

“So please go ahead and enjoy my story and ask me more about it. There’s no point in my being through these experiences if I haven’t touched a few lives by sharing them.” The lady shook my hand for a long moment after I said all that.

So I decided to come home and write it all down. I’m not important. My story is.

My best friend in Delhi (as opposed to my best friend in Mumbai and another one in Kerala) is dear to me not only because of her company, which I love and thrive on, but also because of how she has changed me for the better over the years.

There’s not one aspect of my life that she has not touched and moulded into something deeper and purer. From my attitude towards my relationships, to my understanding of Indian poverty and institutions, to an appreciation for our cultures and traditions, to even my taste in food, my friend P has had a dramatic influence on my life and lifestyle — not consciously of course, but in a subtle, automatic, involuntary way, with neither of us noticing anything going on.

Today, however, I suddenly realised how differently I now view ‘beauty’ because of her. For me, say 10 years ago, a beautiful house meant lots of shiny crystal, leather sofas and gilded mirror finishes. A beautiful outfit meant something boutique-made and expensive. A beautiful piece of jewellery meant rubies and pearls and diamonds and gold. A beautiful woman meant one who wore the latest cut in trousers, had a blow dry, a designer bag and manicured nails. A beautiful man was one who held the door open for a woman and brought home lots of money. A beautiful holiday meant a five-star resort in a popular location with all the luxuries money can buy. A beautiful journey meant one made in an air-conditioned vehicle, preferably business-class, and a snazzy destination at the end of it, with lots of shopping.

But my friend P sees things differently. And now, over six years of knowing her and spending lots of intimate time with her, I see things differently too.

A beautiful house now means one made with love and thought and concern for another, where a well-worn but much-loved wooden cabinet shines radiantly while a shiny steel and glass one pales in comparison; where a child’s butterfly stickers on a wall are more appealing than a synthetic, factory-produced texture; where memories are the only decorations required.

A beautiful outfit now means one made using natural fabrics and age-old traditional weaves and techniques, because we are then encouraging the rural craft industry.

A beautiful piece of jewellery is one that comes with a story – how excited P gets when narrating the tale behind a handmade pair of thread earrings she bought for Rs 40 from a roadside in a Maharashtrian village.

A beautiful woman for me now is one who loves and feels freely, without fear, who is in touch with her inner God, and can lift the burdens of the entire world on her fragile shoulders with a smile – and maybe the company of her girlfriends.

A beautiful man is one who, despite a busy day, can turn the cellphone off when he is with his family; who values human relationships over monetary ones.

A beautiful holiday is one where you learn something new, where you delve into the local culture, weather, clothes, food and people, and end up discovering more about yourself and your loved ones.

And a beautiful journey is one where you come out a different person. Where you fight the demons in your own head and reach out to help others do the same. Where discomfort is only a small price to pay for revealing a sordid truth or a battle against injustice; where the purpose is not to escape reality but to understand it.

All my loved ones have shaped me into who I am. But today I’d like to pay my respect and homage to P, who is not only a friend and soul-mate, but something uniquely more. If beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, then P is my pair of glasses. She’s shown me a different world altogether. I would be short-sighted without her.

He often asks me why I never write about him on my blog.

Because I haven’t yet introduced you to my parents, is one of my excuses – won’t my family mind if I declared you to everyone else but them? Another silly one is, I don’t have the time. The third is a self-question: What would I write about him?

Then today a few things happened.

One. A feeling. That what is, is. And sometimes there’s no right time and every time is right.

Two. A song. I usually listen to mantras in the car, but today I tuned into 92.7, which was playing lovey-dovey old Hindi tracks. And the theme of the day was, ta da, ‘Romance’. “Roop tera mastana, pyaar mera deewana, bhool koi humse na ho jaye…”

It’s happening, the bhool (mistake).

Three. A mail. It was a forward by his friend, which he forwarded to me, a link to this piece. And he never usually sends sweet stuff like this – his forwards are intellectual and rare – so I was quite moved. And mushy.

So here it is. My piece on him. And I am somewhat speechless. I guess that’s what romance does to you in your late thirties – there’s so much to say that you have no words for it.

Love is someone you can talk to for hours, I once said to him a few years ago. Love is also someone you can have meaningful silences with, he replied.

He’s my non-stop conversation. He’s also the meaningful silence. He’s the Man, the God, the beauty, the pleasure, the joy, the discovery in my life. He’s the mirror into which I glance and see the best of myself shine back. He’s my magic wand, my lucky charm. He’s a good man, and he’s my love.

Mauj koi saahil se takraye… e… e… e… 
(The joy finds its shore…)

There, so I said it. Now if I can only ensure no one in my family reads this until they’ve actually met him…