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A July Sunday morning.. drenched in rain and laziness. I whispered into her ears… “lets go to Shive, its raining..” She smiled and said okay.
A 1 hour 15 minutes away drive to a small piece of farm land we have bought is our favourite get away from the fast paced city. On a monsoon day the drive is all the more beautiful, with the landscapes changing in shades of green; names of which I don’t even know in my limited vocabulary. We left the house at 7.30 am sharp with the rim zhim happening around us, and a flask of ginger loaded tea tucked in with me.
It was just mother-daughter duo today. Without asking me a word, she connected her phone and began playing Taylor Swift. I have begun to grow to like this singer, though I find myself trying hard to get a hang of the lyrics.. really hard 😀, as the music I find quite repetitive. We are blasting the music from our little car, whose one of the remaining assets still being, “a powerful music system”. The rain is playing hide and seek and we are enjoying it with whatever we are doing along with it – listening to music and driving the car.
As we get out of the city, the greens of the trees, the whites of the clouds, the transparent water of the rains and the smooth breeze all seem to blend in together and do their thing. I look at the expansive sky without any buildings around me, and wonder how she can take in Taylor swift, AR Rehman, Honey Singh and all the varied other sounds and music in together at the same time? How there is so much of inclusiveness in the air …. the same air which gets divided with buildings, concrete roads, instructions and just more words…
We reach our small little patch of land and one room structure that we have just built. Chai goes perfectly well with the surroundings! The pout photos with the awesome background of mountains and waterfalls is being taken by my 14 year old..
We sit on the wall facing the road and the fast moving clouds in the background. We talk about law, music, college, choosing easier vs more difficult options in life and also about ‘men’😀.
We easily spent over an hour there just chatting and absorbing the moment. Then like reiterating the umbilical cord connection, she asks “should we have Wada pav?” .. the very thought that I just had a minute ago! I smiled and said “yes… lets do it”.
As we go the entrance of Shive village, the usual wada pav wala is just frying hot wadas.. We grab 5 from him wrapped in a newspaper. I call this fabricator who owes us some pending work for over 5 months now. He has been evading our phone calls and I finally connect with him and decide to meet him in person. We follow him to his house, and see a little over 1year son, half blind wife and recovering Dinesh who seemed to be not lying about his health situation. I try to take it in writing from him, that he will finish the work in the next 10 days, which he writes with shaking fingers. The anger which I had initially of him not finishing the work for so long, just disappeared … Sunishka was standing next to me as I was getting him to write the signed note for me, which she affirmed was required action to be done by a witness!
As we got back to the car from Dinesh’s house I realised the bag of mango and jamun seeds I had collected through the summer; that I had brought along. I asked Suni if it is going to be Taylor Swift again on the way back, and she confirmed,“ of course”! Though as the music started it was Shilpa Rao singing .. ‘Badla hai sara yu yu yoon’ … from English Vinglish. I smiled and with every beat of the song, we started dispersing the seeds away on the barren but fertile lands of adjoining villages! When the bag was empty… we both had a huge left cheek to right cheek smile and the feel good factor of giving back!
The drive to reality was filled with desi vibes and beats. The rains had almost gone, but the weather was still awesome. We stopped to meet two of our little cats who lay resting at a small forest opposite home. We lost one fellow a year back and we got the other one, this week last year. They both wanted more from life and left us to find the ‘more’. They lay rested there in the medium that would take them from this world to another….
As we bid them farewell, I was telling Suni about the two new snakes my friends had released in this area in the last month. As we spoke, Suni yelled… “snake…” A little fellow just went past her leg in front of her and she had a heightened heart beat, unable to relate how what we just spoke, came to reality 😀 .It was rainy season, and snakes were all out in the open and we were literally were in their house…
Our A Star is covered with a layer of mud and dirt, which now had in it memories of a superb morning of beauty, conversations, driving, music, excitement and .. bonding…
To many more such drives ….:)
I am an individual looking for ways to express myself. With every path and action of living, this undercurrent exists. Nature- both human and environment are my main focus of expressions. With an opinion about read more...
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UP Boards Topper Prachi Nigam was trolled on social media for her facial hair; our obsession with appearance is harsh on young minds.
Prachi Nigam’s photo has been doing the rounds on social media for the right reasons. Well, scratch that- I wish the above statement were true. This 15-year-old girl should ideally be revelling in her spectacular achievement of scoring a whopping 98.05% and topping her tenth-grade boards. But oddly enough, along with her marks, it’s something else that garners more attention – her facial hair.
While the trolls are driving themselves giddy by mocking this girl who hasn’t even completed her school yet, the ones who are taking her side are going one step ahead – they are sharing her photoshopped pictures, sans the facial hair, looking nothing less than a celebrity with captions saying – “Prachi Nigam, ten years later”.
Doctors have already diagnosed her with PCOD in their comments, based on photographic evidence. While we have names for people shamed for their weight – body shaming, for their skin colour- racism, for their age- age shaming, for being a female- sexism, this category of shaming where one faces criticism for their appearance has no name. With that, it also has zero shame attached to it.
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