Yaad aa rahi hai!!!!!

1912: Titanic sinks.

1945: Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombed.

1975: Indira Gandhi imposes emergency in India.

2007: Washerwoman at Karve Nagar,my flat goes missing.

Our washerwoman is missing.Its been more than a week now. Dirty clothes lie crumpled in the plastic bucket just outside the door of my room , gathering dust.The wooden racks in the corridor which lovingly held freshly washed shirts and shorts , dripping water onto the floor , now stare at me with empty arms. I lie in my room , staring at the ceiling.Looking at the blades of the fan cutting imperfect circles.Reminds me of how the drier of the fully automatic washing machine at my home used to rotate in those gracious rounds.I hear someone outside.Is she here ? Is she ? I jump out of the bed and step out in the corridor with an eager anticipation.Its a cat , trying to grab something from the dustbin kept outside , in which I had those incredibly shitty non required stuff.She looks at me .My be she wud be gazing me as a silly duffer.I sneak back into the bed and stare the ceiling.My mind drifts off to those days.Seems like yesterday.Covered bodies.Freshly washed clothes smelling of detergents.How happy I was.Used to carelessly fling the dirty pair of jeans in the bucket kept outside.And the next day it would be there.Washed.Neatly ironed.A few burns.But far from a burnt sandwich.

And now.I look at the shorts I am wearing.It a recordbook of my culinary exploits over the last four days.There is this fresh ketchup stain I pasted near the right pocket half an hour ago.Thats what happens when u try to dip a sandwich in a ketchup bowl kept in your lap while trying to catch a "mithun-da" action movie on the computer.They should have told me before mithunda yelled "Ma kasam!!!" so loudly that i spilled the ketchup onto my shorts.Oh , there is also this "Shahi Paneer" gravy stain on the left side.Or is it the cheese that fell from the pizza ? I have to scrape it off and taste it to know the answer.There must be many more footprints of what I ate ,all over my shorts.But I think you are already feeling full.

But the good part is that I dont see any stains on the tee shirt on my body.Because I dont see a tee shirt on my body. When your washerwoman is missing over the last seven days , dignity is something you put on the pillion seat of the scooter of life.Dignity can wait when you dont know what you will wear the next time u step out of the bathroom.Just one light yellow chequed shirt lies in my wardrobe.That can cover me up for tomorrow.Day after tomorrow ? The question threatens me with an future projected scene involving semi nudity in the office.A topless me in the office, though hopefully appreciated by the girls , wont exactly generate a lot of accolades from the seniors.I have to cover my top when going to office.That worries me.

Now the right time comes when I have to do something,obviously I have to do it my own,I have to be a washerman now…putting in the clothes in a lot of water and letting the clothes stay in water for half an hour and then putting in a lot of detergent and then washing them hard and then taking the clothes out and wringing them and then letting them dry.Looks as easy as Bangladesh beating Australia.Oops.Now that they have actually beaten the Aussies, ill change it.
Ill have to come out of this inertia soon.Ill will have to carry out my debut "clothes-washing" innings soon.Otherwise I have an alternative plan.I will wrap around a newspaper.

Listen Miss.washerwoman , I would smile on your sense of absentminded-ness if you burn a gateway through my favorite blue shirt.I would knowingly leave a minimum of five rupees in the hip pocket of every trousers i put in for washing.If i get the time , I will help you in washing on the weekends.I will get you the most wonderful detergents which will keep your hands as soft as a baby's bottom.I will give you extra cash on every diwali , christmas , Ambedkar Jayanti , Guru Nanak Jayanti, Makar Sankranti , Maha Shivratri , Holi and Hanuman Jayanti.

But please come back.I need you.infact all needs you.

Paav Bhaaji

I am starting this post because I don't feel sleepy . I will just type out stuff about my evening. I hope to fall asleep on the keyboard doing it . I hope you too fall asleep reading it . Make sure you don't drool in your sleep . The saliva may screw up your keyboard.

This evening , S***** came to my room . He had to go shopping for some clothes . He asked me to accompany him . I refused and told him I had to work on an assignment of top priority. He promised to pay for my pizza if I went with him . It took me seven seconds to get ready.

So we went to crossword . It's a nice bright bookstore with a lot of books . Middle aged women in khadi kurtas sit around on low stools and pore over books discussing ways to rekindle the fire in married lives . Little kids noisily run around book racks and their mothers threaten to burn their toys if they don't shut up . Young girls are around the fiction racks . I think most people found in a bookstore are fat . Maybe it's because they spend a lot of time sitting and reading books on weight reduction . I picked up 'Tuesdays with Morrie' and went to the billing counter .

The billing girl at the counter looked at the big whacy quote stating “Monday is the worst day to spent 1/7 of ur whole life” on the front of my black sweatshirt and gave me a smile . I think she liked my sober taste only abt weekend . And as I went away , she again smiled at me . I could feel it . It wasn't the 'please visit again' smile every customer gets . I think she liked me in a cute way . If you work at Crossword and met that handsome n cute guy in the black sweatshirt with such a whacky quote, just know that I still think about you.

We got out and we went into a reebok store . S***** kept checking out the price tags of all the stuff there . He made a peculiar whooshing sound with his breath every time he did that . I think it translates into 'Why dont I have a rich dad who is into smuggling ?' . I did not have to buy anything . So I was pretty relaxed and tried on all the caps while he went around looking for something which had the price of a matchbox . He bought a pair of orange shorts finally . Reebok people don't have the right marketing guys . It is a blunder to have that dark skin guy at the billing counter . I felt a strange creepy chill the way he smiled at me . I know gud looking(Oh come on!! Guys don’t relate it with some bhopali sort of stuff) cute guys are the prime targets for these kinda men. I will never go to that store again.

Then we went to food court to eat something . Never trust anyone . Just do not . People promise to pay for your pizza and back out then . And you can't do a thing because they have already bought the obscenely orange shorts and got your company while doing it . It is a hard world . And then you realise you it is harder . I was not even carrying much money and had to settle for pav bhaji . I wanted to empty the ketchup sachet in S*****’s nose . But a descent guy is not required to play such cheap pranks on such public places(After all the accha insaan in me ,wake up) just fill someone's nostrils with ketchup and not be beaten thereafter . I controlled my anger.

On our way back in the cab , S*****’s girlfriend called up . I screamed 'Don't touch me S***** !' followed by 'Leave me honey !' in the most girly voice I can put on . He spent the rest of the call explaining to his girlfriend there was no girl around him . You don't give me a pizza . I tear apart your love life .Fair and simple.

It's past five in the morning now . But I still dont feel sleepy. I think I will start reading 'Anything for you mam’m' now . The book reminds me of the billing counter girl . I think I should visit crossword on the 14th Feb .

Little sinshine!!!!

My family is a "small dreams" family.And this has been inherited by me.My idea of a perfect day at the age of 50 is taking out my cute wife and two cute-er and little-er kids to a comedy movie , laugh a lot with them , throw popcorn at people , sing loudly with the songs in the movie , then go to a little cosy restaurent for dinner , spill a lot of food , laugh a lot , drop things in each other's glasses when they aint looking , and then sneak home without paying the bill.I do not know if I will get that "potato-dropping-window -glass-shattering" salary , and to be as honest as a lie detector machine , I do not care.

Being in an Software Professional assures me that I will attain good standard of financial status , that I would not need to sell my wife's "mangalsootra" and my daughter's barbie collection to buy dinner.All I want is a nice and simple life.Where nobody cries much , and even if they do , there are always people to offer a nice smelling handkerchief.And it is this simplicity and innocence which the world seems to be losing.Looks like a little dream of an innocent smile is becoming too much to ask for.

Three months back somewhere in the newspaper I read about that a 13 year old girl was raped somewhere in rural area of Pune.Raped before her parents ,by four men.She was the daughter of a domestic help.She went to school , class VIII.Maybe she would have had dinner a few hours before being raped.Maybe her mother would have prepared her favorite dish as dinner.She would have enjoyed eating it , then maybe she would have studied a little.Studied some english lesson maybe.Then her mother would have finished the household chores and mother and daughter would have chatted.Chatted about her classes at school that day , imitating with glee the strange pronunciation of her south indian Maths teacher , expressing her difficulty with Physics to her illiterate mother , maybe asking her mother to get a new pair of socks the next day. Then she would have slept.

And at 4 in the morning , four men drag her out of bed , push her to the floor , and rape her brutally as her gagged and tied mother and father watch helplessly.Watch their little girl undergo something she is too young to understand.They watch all the moments , the moment their daughter took her first step , the moment she stepped into her school for the first time , the moment she made her first "chappati" , the moment she used her pocket money to buy flowers on her mother's birthday , they watch all these moments heartlessly trampled by four men.

Is it foolish to dream and hope in such a world ? I say this to myself and my friends , but is life really beautiful ? All I want is a life bathed in a little bit of sunshine , but is the darkness too much ?