Pearly wisps of the ocean and my left foot's mosquito bite

This mosquito bite on my left foot is distracting me from my train of thought that had sped along so well, just a moment ago. So is the soft jazz music that snakes from the television screen, to the couch where I fidget to kill the pest that is resting on my arms and legs at intervals. Its one of those warm nights where the air is heavy with the sounds of crickets and the humidity that clings to every food of your clothing. I'd like to amend that "warm" into a furnace of a night where the blessing of technology allows the air conditioner to comfort me with an icy rush directed to my face.

I would immerse myself in some cool water outside but my fear of frogs and jumping creatures petrifies me. And the idea of itchy eyebrows is unappealing as the insects that bite find the exposed parts of my body and my lonely swim would surely be ruined. So I remain inside trying to catch that delightful thought that slipped through my fingers like silky sand on a faraway shore. I hate when that happens, when thoughts run off and disappear into a frenzy of noises and pictures.

I digress, my initial thought was actually about traffic and some observations I have made in the past year or so, but this recollection if swimming has washed away all mechanical thoughts in favour of the element I most love. Water, where I am weightless and I can dance without having to bend to the laws controlling gravity. Like I used to when I was very small and took up dancing with ribbons and I would twirl in the air with them, like a bird. At least I felt like a little bird with my long navy ribbon , the same elation that I feel when I dive into the water. Those fractions of a second when you're mid-air and fear of the icy water is juxtaposed with the excitement of sliding through the cool cocoon of blue. It's the shout of joy before you land and the first bubbles of air that escape your lips as you surface that create the most wonderful sensation.

I almost always gasp in shock when people say they hate swimming, granted that people have different hobbies but what contends the soft ripples that dance as you move and sway or the salty curls that form in the jumping waves that make you move as one with the sea? They all link to my inner child and her love if splashing by the seaside with shells collected in buckets. The prettiest or the owns with the most desirable texture stayed in my pocket to hold or display in a tiny wooden box. Beach trips were(and still are) my favourite things to do, sitting on the shore and waiting for the waves to rush up the shore and caress my toes.

The number of times I go to the beach have dwindled to just passing the beach and the expanse of ocean that just just a stones throw from the road I go along every morning. Watching the golden splashes of sun on the calm blue-grey water that only disappeared when the clouds drooped to kiss the morning waters.

My love of water is romanticized with the pearly wisps of childhood laughter that mingle with my never ending awe of the beauty of the sea. And if I come back to my opening, my left foot still itches from that mosquito bite but I don't mind as much anymore.

The Bookworm

There are very few people ( I believe) that have a love affair with books , as I have had .There probably are more than I naively estimate but very few who I've encountered .I come from a family who (mostly) love books and who have nurtured this adoration I have .This obsession with the almost woody scent of the pages bound together is insatiable. It is filled with delighting in older books that are slightly richer in scent with softer pages that have been held before to the crisp scent of just unwrapped and virginal pages of a new book where the ink feels minutely raised off the page. It is the inscription on the front leaf , maybe a birthday wish or the current owner (I always write my name and the year I received the book in a corner of this page) that sprinkles enchantment on the book (still unread) or the nostalgia of buying and experiencing a new story.

I've detailed before how I was introduced to reading but it is how I took to books and the large supply of them , that probably shaped me for the rest of my life . It's strange how all my favourite things to write about tie back to books ,be it the books I find in flea markets or the ones I read with the stain of mulberry still faintly on my fingertips or (this was the most common) the books I voraciously went through on rainy days.

I think everyone knew how much I liked books, because now and then someone would send a book with my mother for me to read or enquire at family events about what I was reading . I don't think I spent any part of my childhood without a book nearby , I stuck to the classics or books that were older because early on I developed a love for the style of writing and the references to a time long past . Little Women , Black Beauty or Great Expectations were regular books I read when I was much younger.

Once ,my uncle brought a box of books (I recall it being from somewhere where the owners where getting rid of old stuff as they were moving) home . They provided some of the nicest company on a winters night , when I sat with them and a heater to spend the night , sometimes only sleeping as I watched the sun rise .The books in that box took a while to get through , all the inscriptions were obviously a bit old or illegible in the faded cursive script .But I read every single one .

The local library was another favourite spot but I would always accrue fines for forgetting to bring a book back (often borrowing piles of books using 3 different cards ) until I had read all the good ones and couldn't find any new tastes to delight my palate .But every Saturday after dancing or piano ( that is another story altogether really) we would go and with my head tilted at 45 degrees I would scour the shelves for something new .Until nothing new took my fancy anymore and I moved to other sources .

And then there was Mum and Dad ,who bought me books because I would spend all time at the mall looking through bookshops .and would start reading the new book as soon as we got into the car . It was Dad who suggested many books when I was at a loss and who would talk to me about these books we both read (many times leading to a telling off by my mother and sister who had not been able contribute at all) . I loved those discussions because I felt like a person , not merely a being who was present .It was when no one could say I was wrong for thinking what I thought because they hadn't felt the book as I did .I began to see people a lot better as I didn't expect only good or only malice in everyone .They taught me about the facts of life through the many eyes of people who had lived in different era's or circumstance .

I don't think my father ever handed me a book that had no significant impact on my life .They all did in some way or the other .

I guess I could end by saying that I started reading books to learn about this open ,unknown world around me , but by reading them I soon began to understand the people in my life and how to deal with things better .They showed me how beautiful something as simple as a river in the morning light could be ,or how the smallest dreams could manifest into something much more .

An ode to rainy days

Rainy days are my favourite kind of day, not those half-hearted drizzles or those short bursts of heavy rain. No, those days of steady rain that kiss the grass with a rhythmic patter. They mean springtime as it edges into summer with days ( sometimes a week or two ) of endless , delightful precipitation. Most people moan and complain but I have nothing but happiness on those rainy day?

I associate them with the first time I had hot chocolate , made sickly sweet and too hot (burning my tongue in the process). It was a weekend away in the Drakensburg when I was six ,when sheets of water fell on the poppies that grew in splashes of scarlet around the houses. It rained that whole weekend but I remember being filled with laughter and happiness.

I recall a rainy day that was the the end of a journey for me, it was the first time I consciously registered that I had to start "growing up". It was the final day of primary school ,where (for the first time ) everyone I had known since I was four would scatter and I would probably never see them again. There wouldn't be anymore early morning walks to school to swim as the sun rose above the jacaranda trees, no more knowing everyone and I felt as the safety net was slowly disappearing under me . For so long, I had always been five minutes away from home, I knew where everything was and this was always an unconscious dependence. Anyway I remember the last time I saw many of those people who used to all I had known. It rained the whole afternoon as we cried and laughed together for the last time.

The last goodbyes where we all cried and for that one last time I walked home together with some of them, the last time we sang together. It poured with rain that entire night, I was inconsolable because I was the only one (that I knew of ) who would be going to a high school in the city (a longish drive that I now regard as normal ) so far away from the familiar small town I knew. Heck, my first day of high school was a scary rainy day where I was thrown into a sea of faces who would later become friends and sisters.

I can never regard a day with rain, as something depressive but as a reminder that everything has its place, that even after a season of dryness there is life triggered by those drops of water that fall from the heavens. That even though change comes with a storm, it washes your slate clean.

The Eastern Spectrum : Dubai

True to my nature of being a procrastinator of note , I put off many blogposts that were planned for last year . Rest assured , I did try to write about it , multiple times , in hotels , in the plane , in a coffee shop in Phuket whilst the rain poured outside . So let me condense those posts into two (hopefully) that makes sense however vague it may be .

We spent most of the year planning and getting excited for our trip . During those two weeks I learnt about airports , exchange rates , architecture and how I can sleep anywhere on command whilst traveling the East. Or at least the spectrum of the East . From the slick , modern streets of Dubai to the spice and busy alleyways of Thailand , there was quite a variety of experiences to be had . Different cities were hues that contrasted each other like scarlet and indigo juxtaposed .

After an arduous flight to Dubai ( the exertion being as a result of the fidgety Indian mother who sat in front of me , who pushed her child into another seat and slept across two seats whilst snoring and complaining about the food . This resulted in me {being too polite to say she was causing irritation} not getting much sleep) we arrived at the airport sleepy but excited to have landed .

I'll skip the details of the grumpy man at immigration who's head wrap kept slipping and even forgo the joys of a travellator ( a moving walkway in the airports ) that made one feel as if you were flying over the ground . All that is irrelevant when i think my first glance of the city that was unforgettable . We always imagine destinations before arriving , usually from travel shows or pictures off Google , I imagined a dry busy place full of dust . It was the opposite (still busy however) , a city where every pavement was lined in blossoming flowers and the buildings loomed tall and out of an architects daydreams . A metropolis of glass and steel that blew me away . Every building was a spectacle , as if it was a show where every skyscraper was trying to be the star .

We stayed in the hub of all this beauty , Downtown Dubai , a stone's throw from the Burj Khalifa (the tallest building in the world at present) which was the centerpiece of this bejeweled metropolis . Words cannot describe how overwhelmed they all left me . It's all so "much" in that city , the malls are huge , the buildings tease the clouds , there were granite tiles on the roads which were mopped , for crying out loud ! Then , just as you think nothing could be more amazing , night slips it's glittering gown on .Everything lights up , the buildings become spectacles of colour and the child within begins to awaken in wonder of all this . It seems as if it were all a dream .

It's hard not to marvel at the metro system ( the whole transport system is actually so incredible and efficient ) as it zipped through the city in a matter of minutes . Another thing that I noticed , was how considerate and polite people were . There was a lot of etiquette involved in everything , from dress codes to areas one could sit on a bus . It was an interesting experience but I welcomed it . The people are also very accommodating and helped us find our way around .

The Gold Souk , wow is pretty much the only word to explain it . There was an excess of gold , diamonds , precious gems ...Everywhere . You felt as if you had bathed in gold , it surrounded every window . From simple chains to a huge , intricate body covering made of gold . Personally , I don't like yellow gold (which there was a lot of ) so it just was too much for my liking . The shock of the souk to a foreigner , is that you feel like you've been dipped in sweet syrup and all the vendors or shopkeepers are flies who can sense this . There is no exaggeration when I say , they swarm . Shouting at you to come to their shop , buy the "good copy " of some branded clothing , to come to their restaurant . It is a weary sort of experience . But fully worth it as you got to see all the different facets of the city .

We spent a lot of time exploring Dubai , going to the Jumeriah Beach Park ( only females were allowed on that park ) where the sand was silky and white , exploring the Dubai Mall ( it was enormous , I think we only went to a tiny portion of it , and that was over 2 days ) going to places of interest and generally doing typically touristy things . The highlight however, was desert bashing .

Desert bashing is basically driving up and down the dunes of the desert in a Land Rover . But that description does no justice at all to the experience . The drive out of the city is about 45 minutes , as you watch the the high rises melt away to reveal a more barren , sandy expanse with occasional caravans of camels moving along the dunes . There were about seven other vehicles with many tourists who (like us ) took pictures of everything . The real fun started when they drove off the road and onto the sand . It's like a roller coaster , up and down and our driver (who was liked playing music quite loudly to enhance the entire thing) often would turn dramatically , making everyone in the vehicle let out a small shout of delight .

Soon after all the dunes had been driven on , we were taken to camp . Here we were greeted with food and an old lady with henna , there were stalls of beverages , camel rides , lots of low tables and cushions (and even a hubbly lounge in the corners ) . A man with a falcon stood amidst the crowd , while a photographer stood by to take a photo . As the night wore on , an Arabian feast was served which was quite tasty .

The real entertainment were the dancers , who performed on the stage in the middle of this camp . A man who spun with multiple stuff skirts that lit up ( he didn't even suggest dizziness after 10 minutes of twirling ) and then the Arabian answer to Kylie Minogue , a belly dancer named Olga (and she looked like a brunette Kylie ) who gyrated and flirted with the audience . She was spellbinding as she glided across the stage . If you looked up , the sky was filled with stars that gleamed like this city which was a jewel of the Emirates .

Those were the highlights of Dubai for me ... What happened in Thailand was more of a culture shock .

The Beauty Ripple

Society has raised many people to believe that we should define beauty and intelligence based on a secular ideal . That to be considered attractive you must be so thin you no longer menstruate .They often tell us that we need to be this ideal to be happy and successful  . But we don't . 

The following is just my own interpretation of how I think this should be challenged on a large scale . All my life , media has idolized those women who have proportions that defy natural limitations . The large breasts , tiny waist , the long silky hair and legs that " go on for miles" .  Basically a hairy ant . Oh I correct myself , hair is deemed something taboo if not on your head . Therefore all my ideas of what beautiful was , never really matched what mattered : me and the people around me . There was never a popular idea that appealed to a short , talkative Indian girl , what could I (and many others like me ) find that was similar to us in pop culture ? 

In history , for ages at a time , society idolized different ( also impossible ) body shaped . The overly sized sculptures of women with almost obese bodies , that symbolized fertility , often occurred in many ancient societies around the world .  The Venus of Willendorf ( found in Austria ) is one such figure with large breasts and a large abdomen , an ideal of beauty at the time .  The Venus de Milo is almost the opposite . It is a Greek sculpture that represented the idea of perfect proportion where all sculptures had similar characteristics and believed in perfection .  Both were considered beautiful . 

Nowadays , it is the look of synthetic beauty that strives to tell the younger generation that they simply are not good enough . That we need to eat less , be taller , emaciated and only then , will we be beautiful . Yes , there are new trends of using pus sized models and promoting new ideals of " pretty " . But they do so little to help when there are about 50 television shows about changing your outfit to change your life , or plastic surgery shows to say that you aren't perfect as you are , you should change . It would be a welcome change to see a beauty pageant with girls who weren't stereotypically pretty or to see The Most Beautiful Woman in the World be someone who didn't have fake breasts . Something that isn't Ideal . 

  It does not help that many adults encourage this form of thinking . Often , I encounter older people ( often relatives ) who will tell a little girl ( who is a perfectly healthy and pretty child) that she needs to go on a diet because she is getting fat or that she must stay out of the sun or she will get dark . And yet , no one challenges them ( I'm prevented from saying something particularly caustic by my mother who believes very much in maintaining respect for ones elders . I do concede  that respect is important but it is a 2 way street . ) ( also I've been told that in the same breath by those people and therefore also cannot be rude because , again , my mother is a force of nature I wouldn't contend with , but who would rather tell them off herself in a polite manner ... Thus defeating the purpose of it all ) . My parents feel that I take those comments far too seriously , that the little cousin will be fine because they don't know what I know  . People think she'll be ok but ...  But she won't . I know because I was her once . 

And now this gets all too personal when I intended to be very argumentative and objective ... But yes , I was that little girl once too . I think it was around my eleventh or twelfth birthdays when someone said , " You've gotten fat hey , shame you're so pretty otherwise ."  and if memory serves me correctly it was the same set of people who keep doing it now . It may have been just that as a catalyst and many other things that did contribute but for a long , long time after , I grew to hate myself . I hated that I wasn't tiny and fair . It grew to be something that may or may not have been an eating disorder at the time but I would starve myself and then eat and then purge ( and oh no , I sound like a headcase but that's what happened for about a year or so , erratically) and cry . Because I wasn't what society wanted to see . I was a bookworm , who liked to talk , who was short and who had curves . I cried a lot during that time because I didn't understand why . I didn't know why I wanted to look different because before that , I was happy with me . I was happy with who I was . This may be far too confessional but I think that because it happened a long while ago ,it doesn't hurt as much to talk about why I get angry when people tell my little 7 year old cousin that she is fat and that I want to tell them just how disgusted I feel because of their words . They make me want to be excessively brutal with my words so they understand the impact if their narrow minds on an impressionable child . 

I cry every time I revisit that because it's like it happened yesterday . I cry because I wish more was done to show young girls and young women that they are beautiful , that they are in fact more than just a face . You say that we are a civilized and modern society , tell me how ? Tell me how when such narrow views are placed on one of the the most undefinable things in the universe : beauty . The fact that we are alive , is a thing of beauty . When we see a plant grow , we should see how intricate and dynamic a group of cells form the basis of our food chains .  We should find our own ideas of beauty , not what is on the cover of the latest magazine that is dictated by a small group of people who never leave their hotels or villa's . 

If we said , to the next girl or woman we saw , that they are beautiful beings , that they are worth something  , maybe we could begin to change a life , that a life can impact the people around them . And if the ripples are big enough , we could impact our society as a whole . 

Finding A Suitable Boy ... And no , this isn't about an actual boy. But about my first love

Not everyone remembers how or where they found their favourite book , some don't even know what that book is . It's that one book you could read over and over again but never tire  of the story that rests in it's soft pages.   For me , it was when I was 11 in Grade 6 ( being a  December baby , I spend most years being the last to hit the appropriate age for my grade  )  and the book that became my most beloved was "A Suitable Boy " by Vikram Seth  . A heavy and large novel that often (as the author warned in the poem that was on the front pages ) I did sprain my wrists many times carrying the immense volume around. 

I recall finding the book , hidden amongst the various papers and files of old electricity bills and family photographs . High up in a cupboard in the kitchen , one that I could reach by getting onto the cold counter and holding tightly onto the bars of the window , all the bric-a-brac that couldn't be thrown away or stored elsewhere had lain dormant for a while . Now to understand why I had ascended to the heights of this cupboard , it must be stated that I was searching for a comic book I thought I had lost . I had an insatiable appetite for Archie comics , at that age it was to read something not so serious . They had taken pride of place among my classics and books about war or history or something altogether too depressing when one needed a laugh . So I went on a hunt to find a few that I thought had disappeared . 

It must've been summer , because I remember the day being chilly and cloudy skies that threatened to dampen the freshly cut grass in the neighbours yard . So I dragged a chair over to the cupboard(being my last resort as nowhere else yielded success ) and climbed up . I love the smell of paper, old paper to be specific . Not that musty scent but that warm aroma that seems to smell like sharpened pencils , so this cupboard was filled with these smells and also of the glittering  pine-cone smell of Christmas decorations that were in a box in the corner . Well I used to think it glittered as the tinsel peeped out of the box . I digress , anyway , so I sifted through the cupboard with one hand (the other clinging to the window bar like a monkey of sorts ) and after a long time I noticed a thick book I had ignored for a while . I had read one or two other books that my father (who is also a voracious reader) had left up there , but they were Charles Dickens or Thomas Hardy . Not really what I was looking for , but nevertheless I hauled this large book out . The cover was of a river and a boat with two silhouettes on it and the pages were the most delicate and thin I have ever felt . Almost see through and incredibly smooth, the ink stood out dark and rich to the touch. I should have read it immediately ... But I didn't . 

Instead I read a bleak drama about a woman who decided to move ahead in life and mine gold after her husband died ... And then I re-read Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw ( My Fair Lady in theatre ) and eventually I got to reading this book that would keep in enthralled for days on end . I've learned that the beauty of a good book , is not merely the first page ( because I will never just read the first page ) but the first two or three chapters . However , this book had a first page that leaped  out at me .. And soon I was taken to a wedding in India .. 

That is the mark of a great book . I won't dwell on the rest of the book because there's too much and it's too real to be boiled down into a quick summation. At its core is a love story , not completely atypical but not your cookie-cutter boy-meets-girl . There are extracts I will read in isolation or maybe I have a whim to relive the entire book . Invariably it is the latter . 

I'm not saying , "Go read it !!" because all taste does differ (however I highly recommend it ) but find a book , any book , that you can read again and again , finding something new each time . And find a book that speaks to your core , regardless of how abstract the relation may be.  The solace of a good book surpasses any other distraction when you most need to find comfort , 

Flea market melee

I seem to be a cathartic blogger and will therefore follow this trend because , well it's what I do best really . As previously mentioned , I harbor a special affection for my maternal grandparents who took care ( and still do ) of my little sister and I , I feel that this is a result of the plethora of memories they created with me especially . I've mentioned my Appa before , but his wife (and my dear grandmother ) Ma has not been as present in these stories . 

Her hands have always been the hardest working and the softest to hold , they fed and nurtured my infant wiles and threatened to tell my mother ( but seldom did ) if we misbehaved . She is a seamstress and her hands created many dresses that mark milestones in my life . From the dress at my christening that draped  my newborn skin to the playsuits that were muddied . And most recently an exquisite dress for my sixteenth ... Something only she would know how to make because she's one of the few people who understand me . They all mark little stitches in my life , and her presence there . 

So , Ma used to sew lots of dresses and sell them at a Flea market on Sundays , a common anecdote of my father's is that on the day I was born ( my uncle who manned the stall that day ) they had never sold as much before . It is usually followed by jokes of my adventures in this flea market . For as long as I remember , I would wake up in the early hours of morning to go with my grandparents and watch the empty lot slowly rise into a little metropolis of tents and gazebos . I think memories of this time are most firmly illustrated by food , of the steam rising and filling the already humid air with a whirlwind of aroma . The chewy corn sprinkled with masala that always gave me a slight tummy ache but was a welcome treat , of the hot slap chips ( my father often jokes that I was bluffed by the chips to wake up so early) smothered in cheap ( but often the tastiest ) tomato sauce that was presented in a paper packet almost transparent with oil . And funnily enough , the umbrella shaped ice cream made by a lady who died long before I began to appreciate the delicate flavours  presented in her icy cones . It was a lime and strawberry that was my favorite , and I sometimes long for that old sensation . 

It was in flea markets where I first fell in love  with books . Appa used to buy me Archie comic books and copies of second hand books . My copy of Black Beauty was ( and for some reason I remember this with precise clarity )  purchased on the same day I was bought a baby doll who had a lemon knitted dress ( who you could feed and she peed water ) from an old flame-haired woman who had no front teeth . That and many books and Garfield comic books were bought from this woman and I still have them lurking in the shelves .  My love of books has extended throughout my life and in many ways I must thank those stalls with piles of books with yellowed pages . 

The reason I was reminded of these events was that today , I went to a craft flea market and saw all these things , almost unchanged ( just a different time and place ) . We need to revisit things more , the tiny things that could revive old joys ( and yes I do acknowledge that I've previously regretted losing some old joys but things like this always live on for me ) . To see the colours and hear the vendors offering you a good deal and the omnipresent music from a stall that stocks CD's no one listens to  . These are all the ingredients that make me smile . And they remind me of how special my Ma is to me , for taking me to the flea market .