The Metro Honey Bee

I'm just sitting listening to my tunes while my head is resting on the glass side of my seat on the metro. I'm looking straight ahead nonchalantly, at two ladies sitting diagonally opposite to me on my right. Suddenly one lady starts slapping her left arm and the one next to her is pointing out on her arm where a strand of hair or an insect was, I didn't know at the time.

Suddenly the First Lady starts slapping her right arm and then, there in the grey background of the floor of the metro is a darker-than mustard-coloured honey bee just flying. It flew towards the metro door which was on my right side. It flew and probably landed on the floor just chilling, minding its own business. 

The Second Lady who was pointing out the location of the honey bee to the First Lady, frowned and gave a confused look to the honey bee on the grey floor. 

The next second the First Lady got up took two steps on the grey floor of the metro and then the third on the honey bee.

There it was lifeless now, just lying there for the metro cleaning crew to wipe it up in the next cleaning schedule.  And I sat there, wondering why doesn't it deserve any grief and funeral rituals?

It was a living, breathing soul after all.

The scene did attract some stares and looks from the other ladies sitting in the metro compartment but no words or actions. Probably because we were witnesses to a sin many of us have committed at some point in our lives. It felt rather cruel but we've all been guilty of killing a fly, honey bee, cockroaches, mosquitoes at some point in our lives.

We the giants in the small world of insects are criminals and cold blooded murderers and yet we don't mind because they aren't one of our own. Had it been a human killing another of human race the culprit would be behind bars or at least being tried for it.

If we show a little less cruelty and more kindness towards the small world of insects and smaller beings maybe we'll emit some energy and good vibes in our giant world too. 

And maybe we'll not wish our enemies dead, as often as we do.

Let's try? What's the worse that can happen? You'll have to spare a few cockroaches and flies and be a contributor to their growing numbers. But isn't it going to be a good feeling when they go back alive to their small world after a scary visit to the giant world? It's good Karma. :)

Long live the soul of the deep mustard coloured honey bee.

Immortal Tina

Tina returned to Mumbai after ten years. Her purpose was the same as last time, to be immortal.

She got out of the airport after a 22 hour flight from New York. She was surprised at the changes she witnessed while waiting for her cab. Mumbai now had Starbucks, Zara, forever 21, almost all her favourite brands that pulled her to New York ten years back. She got in her Uber with the fishy smell and sweat beads of Mumbai, filling her nose and upper lips, respectively. On the sea link she listened to the same song, which she had 10 years ago; Allah Ke Bande by Kailash Kher.

Seeing the change around, she felt an ache. ‘if this city could change, why couldn’t my scans?’ She wondered.

After passing the transformed South Mumbai and upon reaching the gateway of India, her heart beat faster and the hair on her neck rose. While walking towards the majestic Gateway, looking at families clicking selfies and feeding pigeons, she took out her polaroid image from 2007 and searched for the floor tile where she had etched herself immortal in 2007.

Upon finding the tile, she cleared off the shells and chains that covered her writing. It read, ‘Tina was here and so was her cancer-2007.’

She grabbed the nearest stone she could find and etched, ‘Tina is back and so is her cancer- 2017.’ With her chemo lost hair she clicked another polaroid and kept it in her wallet. Breathing in the fishy smell and wiping off the sweat beads from her upper lip, she smiled and treated herself and the pigeons around her to some bhel.

The Italian Soul Sister

I reached Kalanagar bus stop in Bandra to board the overnight Atmaram Volvo for Goa. It was my first time travelling alone in a bus all the way to Goa without telling my parents that I was doing so. In their mind I was with a group of 11 friends. I was travelling because I wanted to do a solo trip to Goa and also planned to meet my boyfriend, Udit, who was posted in Karwar, which is around four hours away from Goa. 

While I was waiting for the bus that was scheduled to arrive at 10:30pm, I was frantically looking around for a female companion who might be travelling by the same bus. I looked around and heard a man asking about the Atmaram bus to Goa. He was waiting with his friend who was travelling to Goa. I walked up to the man and asked him whether he and his friend were travelling by the 10:30pm Volvo. He told me that his friend, Luna from Italy, was travelling to Goa and he was just waiting with her for the bus. He introduced me to Luna and it turned out that it was her first time travelling alone in India by an overnight bus to Goa and she was just as desperately looking for a female traveller to feel safe and reassured. 

That’s how I met my soul sister, Luna Pagani from Verona, Italy. She is shorter than me, must be around five feet two inches, has curly brown hair and wears glasses quite identical to mine. She rolls her own cigarettes, which was very impressive because she took hardly two minutes, by the clock, to roll one cigarette. Our fear of travelling alone is what got us talking, sharing cigarettes and holding bags in turns while the other used the stinky washrooms of the bus stops.

Luna confessed very shyly that her English is not that great and that turned out to be true. It took me several conversations with her at the bus stand to finally understand and comprehend her accent and words. Once we reached Goa and I introduced her to Udit, all three of us travelled together to Palolem beach in South Goa. She kept thanking me and Udit for giving her a ride to Palolem and opened up a lot more once she was assured of the fact that we are ‘genuine people to help her’, as she said. She told us that she was in India for a college project through AISSEC (Association Internationale des Etudiants en Sciences Economiques et Commerciales) which is a global student organisation. Her project was research and teaching children of slums. She finished her project 11 days early and so for the remaining days she planned to travel and Goa was her first trip. Luna is a waitress in Verona and has a boyfriend whom she’s been dating for five months. 

On the drive to Palolem beach, where Luna had booked her stay in a hostel, she kept telling me that she loved the music playing in the car and she will save it on her phone so that when she goes back to Italy she can listen to it and remember India and some ‘special friends’ she made here. I told her that Udit and I constantly fight over the music that will play in the car to which she replied in her Italian accent saying, “You both are too cute, you fight but you also love so much, it’s cute.”

All three of us spent the evening at the Palolem beach, teaching her Hindi words for ‘love’ and she taught us swear words in Italy which Udit and I constantly use with each other even now. After dropping Luna off at the hostel we confirmed the plan for the next day which included showing her Karwar and driving down to Om beach, Gokarna which is in Karnataka. Luna left a text message that night which touched my heart. After spending just few hours with her she felt so close as to wish me goodnight and tell me that she’s glad she met me. 

Luna and I spoke a lot after that and found similarities that made us feel as if fate wanted us to meet. She’s been my soul sister from Italy since then and is eagerly waiting to dance at my wedding soon!

Death for Death- Because it's torture for the family of the deceased to exist knowing that the killer breathes.

The debate of capital punishment and death sentence is a never-ending and an ongoing one for many years now. I still remember the final year of my undergraduate studies when this debate fired up again due to the death sentence of Yakub Memon. I was and still am, all for capital punishment and death sentence. In India a convict is punished by death in the rarest of rare cases and I feel that this needs to be widened a bit more.

A life taken should be punished by a life taken. Although I understand that an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. But I also know how difficult it is to breathe every moment knowing that your loved one has burned to ashes, while the one who got him/ her there, breathes and walks freely.

Being an Army Officer’s daughter I may have some of my opinions clouded and biased because the thought of killing all the ‘bad guys’ and saving my father and his fellow soldiers, was something I was born in. But then I lost my brother in a road accident where the man who rammed his car in my brother’s bike was driving at a speed of 130 km/h in a residential area and that too under the influence of alcohol. Since that day, it aches me every moment, that my brother, who was a very safe and efficient driver lost his life while a drunk, goon, driving recklessly, just for fun or thrill, I don’t know, walks, talks, breathes and exists, while we lead our lives with a constant void.

If the justice system would ask me, what punishment does this culprit deserve? The culprit of changing my life, my parents’ lives and snatching all the moments, dreams and aims, we as a family had, deserves nothing but death.

While growing up, I have also been on the other side of the fence where I believed in forgiveness and the belief that only God has the right to take and give life. But as I grew up and saw so many people committing heinous crimes, I started to believe that capital punishment is a justified form of punishment for those criminals and law breakers, who have committed crimes that have changed the victim and the victim’s family’s lives forever. 

My reasons for believing so strongly in taking a life of a human being as a form of punishment are several. 

No human being has the right to take another human being’s life, no matter what the circumstances are, and if one does, then do we really need them to exist in a society where they can just kill someone? A society has rules, and for those violators of these rules we have a justice system. The justice system is not a correctional system, it has to punish the culprits, not only to instil fear in prospective criminals but also to value ‘life’. But when there is no ‘life’ to value, then what’s the punishment for? Taking someone’s life is the most unforgivable and unconscionable sin. The takers of life, need their lives to be taken as well. I have never felt so deeply about capital punishment as I do now, because my blood boils, every time my parents and I have to go to a court hearing and look at the man who drove drunk and reckless and cost my brother’s life. 

I still remember an incident where a 5 year old girl was raped and murdered near my residence in Gurgaon. My first thought of punishment for the rapist and murderer was death. The crime that he committed clearly shows him as incapable of existing and functioning in a society. If he can feel free to rape and murder a 5 year old, then the justice system should feel free to eradicate such monsters from our society to make it a safer place for little girls at least. If even babies aren't safe, what are we headed for then?

I have grown up reading and hearing several terrorist activities that kill hundreds of innocent beings. Armies are deployed to tackle these terrorist organisations and keep their nations' citizens' safe. I have lived in the fear of not knowing whether my father will survive another operation he's embarked upon in the valleys of Jammu and Kashmir. To know that we are sacrificing our nations' sons to defend and keep us safe while there are innocent people dying due to bomb blasts and terrorist attacks, what punishment deems fit to punish those who are killing the innocents?

Nothing but death. How do you expect the survivors or families of the deceased to live with the fact that the ones who changed their lives 180 degrees, still live, breathe and feed even if it is behind bars? It's just not right.

Those who are disturbing peace and the balance in life and the universe, taking matters of life and death in their own hands, need to be given a taste of their own medicine.

Even if terrorists are arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment, it is no news that they end up running their terrorist organisations and rackets from within the jail as well. So, honestly no justice is served till they are punished by death, the same what they did should be done to them.

We know that these are dangerous people committing such heinous acts, and these kind of people cannot be put back into the society for the simple reason, which is safety of others. 

When the Nirbhaya rape case happened in Delhi, I was in class 12, and being a resident of Gurgaon (NCR) we were all really shocked and distressed about the state of affairs in Delhi and NCR when it came to Women’s safety. My brother and I, participated in the candle light march that took place among the residents of Gurgaon, as an extension of the protests that were taking place in Delhi. The kind of discussions and questions that were being raised, the absurd comments by various speakers on television, and eventually the passing away of Nirbhaya, accompanied by the entire juvenile discussion and decision that the court made in favour of one of the rapists, made me extremely angry, thinking of how her parents, her friends are going to breathe and live with the fact that her, rapists are still breathing? 

I started thinking then, of a personal experience of being stalked in the late evening while I was returning from my tuitions, and there was a gang of three ‘Gundas’ who were right behind me, till my mom came to my rescue and I just hopped into her car, absolutely speechless and scared to my wits. And the next day, one of them was riding his bike in semi circles around me and harassing me while I was returning home, again. My friends’ father, a politically active and well networked man, got that guy beaten up and took my brother along to witness the bashing. However, after that my parents and I were even more scared. Fearing an acid attack or worse things that the guy along with his gang, might plot against me, as means of revenge. All of this happened during the time of protests in Delhi in 2012. It made me want to put myself in Nirbhaya’s parents’ shoes, and nothing less than death for all the rapists, seemed even close enough to whatever minimal justice it could serve. While I am completely aware and understand that taking someone’s life isn’t going to bring someone else back, but at least knowing that the perpetrators of such heinous crimes don’t exist anymore, to repeat those acts, and that they and their families have been given the same pain, that one’s own family goes through, it brings at least some solace, because there is nothing worse than knowing that someone who inflicted so much pain upon you and your family, is still alive, breathing and existing, when clearly they don’t deserve it. 

In my clear opinion, any criminal act, wherein the victim either ends up dead, (whether directly or indirectly), or is harmed in a way that is beyond repair and the victim’s entire life is going to be spent in mental or physical trauma or both, that completely changes the victim’s life (for example, rape victims, acid attack victims, murderers, honour killing cases, criminals involved in human trafficking etc.), such criminals deserve to die. No one has the right to take someone’s life and if they do, then they don’t deserve to live. Plain and simple.

“In a submarine either all come up, or none come up. There is no alternative”

Sitting with a large peg of Old Monk and cigarettes, submariner G Factor doesn’t talk to girls, drink, and smoke or eat non vegetarian food on a Tuesday, in lieu of his Bhagwan Hanuman. If one were to meet G Factor in person, they would see a stout and childlike person, jumping all over the place. Unstoppable is the word for him, not just as a hyper child, but also as a true soldier who’s curious to test all kinds of waters (literally) and push himself constantly.

G Factor hails from a village in Jhunjhunu district, Rajasthan and is the third generation of his family to join the Indian defence forces. His grandfather was in the Army and fought in the 1962, 1965 and 1971 wars. His father was in the Army too along with his brother who is currently a Major in the Army. “I always wanted to join the Army, being an Army brat I was almost born with an aim to join the Army but my stars chose the Navy for me”

After getting commissioned into the Indian Navy in 2011, G Factor went on to become a diver and then a submariner. Why? He doesn’t have a fancy story as to why he became a submariner, his ideas in life are pretty straight forward and clear. He likes something, he goes after and gets it. “I saw the submariner badge on another officer and I wanted one too, so I got it”, laughs G Factor.

Under 100 metres of water, there is no distinction between an officer and a sailor. “Unlike ground duty or ship service, we eat with our sailors, take turns using the same two toilets on board and serve with our sailors. The 90 submariners under the water are all that we have as company. No TVs, no cell phones nothing. It’s one for all and all for one.”

Talking about life in a submarine, G Factor says, “We get sad in life when we see someone else with something that we don’t have. But in a submarine everyone has nothing just each other, so sadness is out of the window, everyone is in as deep waters as you”.

With no complaints about food under water he says, “The food is like the ghar ka khaana. It’s the most important thing for a man to function. If the food going in is good, then you can tread any waters”.

Submarines go more than 200 metres under water and work on sonar i.e. sound navigation and ranging technology. “It is a myth that a submarine can be detected by human voices inside a submarine. It is very difficult to detect sonar under water”.

Unlike a warship, where the Captain goes down with a sinking warship, submarines go down with all. “In a submarine either all come up, or none come up. There is no alternative”, says G Factor.

When asked about the biggest challenge that he faces, G Factor smiles and says, “It’s difficult for a single man in the white uniform and a submariner badge, to keep the ladies away”.

NOTE: The name of the officer has been changed upon request.

What is Learning?

I bunked college today, missed my presentations and assignment submissions, and went on a road trip with my friends from Mumbai to Fort Tikona near Lonavala, Maharashtra. 

I kept thinking of my classmates sitting inside four walls, learning, growing and educating themselves for a professional life ahead. But as I drove towards Lonavala, sitting amongst three Indian Naval officers, listening to their conversations about India, China and US defence forces, I wondered if this isn’t learning as well.

Does education mean attending classes for attendance and feeling pressurised about beating your fellow classmates for a better placement to start a never-ending journey of surviving capitalism?

The fear of low attendance in a diploma course filled me up. Looking out of the window at the infinite greenery, as if right out of my favourite novel Jane Eyre, I tried to put that fear out of my mind and just live that moment. The words of my undergraduate professor, Dr. Colaco, echoed in my head, “Stop existing ladies, and start living.”

The green life all around the four of us took us away to a world where money, career and the world outside couldn’t bother us. We were too immersed in capturing the beauty through our eyes, taking a mental picture of the natural beauty that our country has to offer, exploring hidden architectural gems and trekking our way to the top of Fort Tikona.

On reaching the Fort, the moment we saw the scenic view of Pawna village and Pawna Lake, nothing that our lives were made of, mattered. The connection with Nature and Planet Earth, as the Lord made it, the closeness of four friends panting and laughing, made me forget all my fears and mutter to myself, “It was all worth it, Hina.”

Standing atop Fort Tikona, looking at the lake cutting between two mountains of nothing but green, I realised that whether learning from the words of an experienced professor or learning from your own experiences, learning happens everywhere, every time and every place. However, I know I will not be graded for collecting my own experiences. I will be marked absent for not sitting inside four walls and listening to the experiences of my professors and words on papers, but at least I was present for my present and I have no regrets. 

‘What is learning?’ will remain a question for each individual to answer for themselves. If we seek validation and an answer to this exclusively from others, then we'll never be learners, we'll merely be passers of information.

I will be looked down upon, by my parents and teachers for not doing the minimum that is required of a student: attending classes. I will feel ashamed for extending my long weekend to another weekend and travelling, but will these questions matter a few years from now when I will look back at my trek to Fort Tikona and understand how Shivaji laid his Fort defences? 

No they won’t, because who hasn’t bunked college and missed assignments? 

I’m glad I bunked one form of learning, only for another.

My friends at Fort Tikona, who I will forever be grateful to, for taking me along on a beautiful learning experience. 

"Green Tea Is Supposed To Be Had Hot, Hina."

Dated: 9 August 2017

 I Just made myself a cup of hot green tea.

While waiting for it to cool down a bit,

My lips curl up into a smile

I remember your taunt from just few days back,

“Btw, Green tea is supposed to be had hot, Hina.”

And so I decided to take a walk down our memory lane with some words.

No it’s never easy.

If you want easy, then don’t be serious.

No one writes about the uglies and the dirt,     

It’s always about the pretty and the lurve.

But no, it’s never easy.

You stumble, he falls,

Then you walk ahead, leaving him behind,

But then you walk back, lift him up,

dust off their shoulders and teach them love.

To be loved, you need to love first.

For no one knows what it is,

till they’ve seen it and felt it.

The love most talked about after mother, father, siblings and family,

Is the love of two strangers and unrelated humans.

As strangers we meet, whether as friends,

Students, colleagues, classmates etc.

But no it’s never easy.                                                                                                                                Everything takes time.

Time is what builds and heals

Time is what makes you weak.

Weak in the knees for another

And strong to hold on to,

When your better half is under the weather.

No it’s not been easy.

You’ve been you,

I’ve been me

And we’ve struggled with our pieces,

Trying to figure out where it might fit perfectly.

Till the end of times,

Till death do us part,

Till eternity

Blah blah

These are all words used to express and give structure

To a relationship,

Structure to love

But there is no structure to love.

When it’s love it’s just that.

LOVE.

No definition, no expression

Not easy, and something that stays with you forever.

Because till forever we’ll keep trying to finish the puzzle,

But darling,

Our imperfect pieces will complete the puzzle one day.

And that’s the day

We’ll be sitting on a porch sipping on some green tea

While you taunt me“Green tea is supposed to be had hot, Hina”

And I’ll caress your bald head and say

“U**u, we made it.”

That'll be the day when my cold Green Tea will seem hot enough to you.  (: