The Year That Was (2010)

The year 2010 was the year where most of my prayers were answered. I love to travel and this year, to my heart’s content travel I did. I love meeting new people and I am happy to say that the people, who have come into my life this year, by design or pure destiny, are some of the bests I have ever met. I made two appearances in the magazine sections of national dailies. I read books, explored Delhi, attended music concerts etc. A more detailed account of my life of the year gone-by follows.

January: Started on a high note. My school time best friend, Garima, gave birth to a baby boy. I took a one month break from my office and joined a new place to see how the work would be. The experiment showed me that the company was not the best place for me to grow in my career so I went back to my old job. The good part about the month was I met some really nice people at EFY, like, Nitin, Manish, Elsa, Sindhiya and Varoon.

February: Mom and I went to Gwalior for a day. My mom found some of her school friends on Facebook. And the whole month was spent just planning her re-union in Jodhpur in March. I joined a group of shutterbugs, Clickcraft, and went for my first photowalk with them to Red Fort.

March: I went to clean the River Yamuna with several other volunteers. I had a test and interview at Oxford University Press. I got the job. Before joining the new office, I went to Jodhpur with my mother to attend her school re-union. We met a lot of my mom’s batch mates, their spouses and their children. I was happy to make a lot of new friends there. A pleasant surprise awaited me. It turns out that one of my friends Harpreet’s (Phodu) father was my mother’s classmate. World is indeed a small place :-) After coming back from the enjoyable weekend trip to Jodhpur, I joined Oxford University Press as an associate editor on the last day of the month.

April: The better part of the month was spent getting familiar with the new work place and people. The evenings gave me enough time to explore Delhi and utilized the opportunity to see the places I had not seen before. My first interview in a newspaper—The Sunday Guardian was published. On the last week of the month, I went to Khajuraho for the editorial workshop conducted by our company. Some of the colleagues had planned an extended holiday to Panna and I joined the troop to have some more fun.

May: More photowalks happened and I met more new people. I also learned a bit more about photography and people’s skill. I had friends over for dinner on a couple of occasions. Realised I do enjoy cooking a lot.

June: My birthday month :-) Posted the 100th post on this blog. Never thought I would be able to. Bought my first Tiffany pendants. Attended the Weirdass Ham-Ateur Night. Life changing experience as I laughed my gut out and enjoyed the company of complete strangers. Spent a lot of time thinking about what I wanted to learn most. Decided it was photography.

July: Joined photography classes. Work was at its peak and I was happy submitting my first set of books as an editor to be published.

August: Published by 500th post on Delhi Photo Diary. More photowalks happened and my circle of friends increased further.

September: Photography classes were mostly theory till September. The highlight of the month was Ganpati Pooja at my place. Friends and family came over and the sabudana vadas I made were a hit :-) Went to the Rail Museum and went shutter-crazy. Finished my first roll of black and white film. Life changing experience: One of my stories was selected to be published in the Chicken Soup for the Indian Friend’s Soul. The book is slated to publish soon.

October: The month was full of festivities. Commonwealth Games were a hit despite all the muck that preceded it. Attended the first hockey match of my life. It was incredible fun. Drove on the highway for the first time. Went to Jaipur and back. Mom, Akshat and Ross accompanied. Highlight: Akshat was proud of my driving skill :-) It was the second time in the year that my interview was published in a national daily. My photograph also occupied space on the paper when Sukalp Sharma from the Financial Express interviewed me about photography.

November: Developed my first prints in the dark room. Thanks to Aditi, my picture was put on the Statesman House building for all of Delhi to see for 15 seconds. I am not sure if anyone saw it on the building or not. But my mom was sure happy to see me smiling on the huge Connaught Place landmark :-)

December: The last month of the year was filled with drama. To my great surprise I attended and enjoyed Anish Kapoor’s exhibition at the National Gallery of Modern Art and the South Asian Bands Festival at the Purana Qila. Plans to go to McLeod Ganj with friends for a weekend had almost failed just 2 days before we were to leave. But I did manage to rescue the plan and instead went with another set of friends. The vacation was everything I wanted it to be and more. My faith in the saying, “everything happens for the best”, was restored and strengthened.

Suffocating Sobs

A 14-year-old girl was crouching in the corner, below the flight of steps. It was the space reserved for the huge broom used to clean cobwebs, especially during Diwali. Burying her face in her knees, she concentrated all her energy into suffocating her sobs.

The April day was just not to her liking. While her friends were eagerly looking forward to the summer vacations and a break from school, she was dreading every minute of the two-month break. The two o’clock sun was harsh as she lugged her heavy school bag and walked from the bus stop to her home. The only thing on her mind was having the delicious sambar-rice her mother had promised her for lunch and watching the re-run of Dekh Bhai Dekh on the local cable TV channel. Over time, she had stoned herself against the sinking feeling of opening the lock on the main door of her house and serving herself cold lumps of rice and sambar or daal.

She had mastered the art of lying to her mother about how she came home, kept her bag in place, washed her face, hands and feet, changed her clothes, warmed her lunch and ate the meal while reading the newspaper. The truth was she reached home tired and bubbling with stories to share with someone. She dumped her bag wherever she felt like, mostly at the foot of the sofa. She washed her hands and then rushed to the kitchen to dump some rice and daal on her plate and then proceeded to carefully lift the remote control of the television, making a mental note of where it was kept. She would then switch on the TV and watch Dekh Bhai Dekh, which she thought showed how ‘happy families’ lived. She would proceed to see the Bold and the Beautiful and Baywatch, shows which her parents had told her were not suitable but all her friends watched. She would start tidying up only 15 minutes prior to her mother’s arrival from office. She would pick her bag up, change her clothes, empty the dishes in the kitchen and in the end she would switch off the TV and place the remote control where she had found it with just 5 minutes left for her mom to return home.

She would then open the newspaper and eagerly wait for her mother. Those final five minutes were the hardest and she usually kept herself calm by trying to decide which school incident she would narrate to her mother first and which story would follow which. She treasured the two hours that she got to spend with her mother every evening almost as much as she enjoyed her time at school. Her friends always teased her because she showed a clear preference for school over her home.

However, lately, her daily ritual had been disturbed quite frequently by her father. His dependence on the bottle had increased and even she, a child of only 14, knew that this spelled only more trouble. He was never in a good mood. He would wake up at odd hours and sleep at even odder ones. His eating habits were erratic and there was no saying what would irritate him and earn her mother and her, his wrath. The two women of the household, best described as ever smiling and good natured, started living a dual life.

Wiping her brow and shifting the heavy school bag on her back she sauntered towards her home just to find that her father had once again had too much to drink. As had become the ritual, he had decided to bunk office even today. Over the last few months, he had begun to vegetate the whole day in front of the television and had taken to the habit of taking huge gulps of neat whisky from the bottle itself. She had once heard him say to his friends, “Water and ice spoil it for me. I like my shirts and drinks neat.”

The man who grunted and opened the door after making her wait for 15 minutes was not her father. He was the drunk devil who replaced her father, unfortunately, very frequently these days. One look at him and she wished school lasted another six hours.

In the evening, the neighbours told her mother that they saw the 14-year-old girl crouching in the corner, below the flight of steps. It was the space reserved for the huge broom used to clean cobwebs, especially during Diwali. Burying her face in her knees, the little girl, it seemed, was concentrating all her energy into suffocating her sobs.