Piper! Here I am..

Lots of posts in my head - I'll try to fit it all in here.

It seems silly but I achieved something I consider to be great. I drove all the way to my maternal grandparents' house in Haryana. And back. The drive can be anything between an hour and a half to two hours depending on traffic. Luckily the roads were empty on Independence Day, and I had good company and great music. Now the big deal about this is that all my life whenever I would go to my grandparents' house, it would seem really far away. Of course that is also because a few years back one could drive across Delhi without spending hours stuck in traffic - and one did not just go off to Gurgaon (Haryana) to watch a film. So with my childhood dream intact of one day driving to this far off place, I felt very good about it.

My one other childhood dream related to driving had to do with driving in the mountains. And the latest one is driving from the east coast to the west coast. I wonder if my brand new '97 model car will survive that!

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Here is me at Baga Beach, Goa :)

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I just came back from lunch with my grandmother. She is quite a character. I resent her for numerous things she has done and said to me and my family, yet thanks to our its-all-about-loving-your-parents family values, I am expected to be civil to her. That being very hard to do, I choose to avoid her as much as I can. It may seem difficult with us living in the same building, but I think I've done a good job till now. Today was probably the fourth time we met in almost three months.

It was me, my mom, and her mom-in-law. What fun!! I always start by thinking that maybe I'm too critical of her - maybe I should give her a chance. She too begins by making me feel for her. And then we all fall down!

She kept chatting with my mom - mostly sharing or trying to extract gossip about family. I ignored while drooling over my chettinad pepper mutton and malabari parantha. After talking about a distant relative's relative committing suicide, and a distant relative's relative tirelessly searching for a bride online, my grandmother somehow landed up on how she has suddenly started remembering her mother since a few days. I look at her - imagining her as some one's daughter - giving her my full attention. My mom suggests she should donate something in her mother's name - it will bring peace to her soul (I'm guessing). Grandmother says that daughters' donations will not reach the mother's soul - it has to be the son's.

And we all fall down.
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My grandmother was one reason I never wanted to speak Punjabi, which is sort of my mother tongue. She being the one speaking the most and only in Punjabi, I never thought of it as a beautiful language. It is only now, when I listen to beautiful and meaningful songs sung in Punjabi that I wish I had learnt how to speak it at that age. One song that is haunting me nowadays is Rabbi's 'Bilquis'. Unfortunately it is not on youtube yet. Here is a part of the song:

Mera naam Bilqis Yakub Rasool (My name is Bilqis Yakub Rasool)
Mujhse hui bas ek hi bhool (I committed just one mistake)
Ki jab dhhundhhte thhe vo Ram ko (That I stood in their way)
To maen kharhi thhi rah mein (When they were looking for Ram)

Pehle ek ne puchha na mujhe kuchh pata thha (First, one asked me but I knew nothing)
Dujey ko bhi mera yehi javab thha (Then another but my answer was the same)
Fir itno ne puchha ki mera ab saval hai ki (Then so many that now I have a question)

Jinhe naaz hai hind par vo kahan the (Where are those who are proud of India)
Jinhe naaz hai vo kahan hain (Where are those who are proud)

With all the chaos in Kashmir today, I have the same question in my mind.