I'M SEXY AND YOU KNOW IT.

Alicia was born into a rather large joint family that loved living together and spending every minute of the day in each other’s company. She never understood it and had always hated the idea of a whole bunch of people living together all through her childhood. She had always dreamt of running away with her best friend Maggie to some place faraway one day. Maggie and Alicia had always been dreamers, from the day they met. They had so many hopes, aspirations and endless dreams of going to a million places together.

Alicia had one massive problem though, one that she never told anyone about, but Maggie. Alicia thought she had the most beautiful, protruding eyes in the world. She was extremely proud of her big, black eyes and never missed a chance to bat her eyelashes at any of the boys. She also loved her eight long and sexy legs and flaunted them as much as she possibly could. The problem was that she had the misfortune of being one of the hairy ones in the family.  She was a hairy spider and she hated it. It created a tremendous amount of problems in her life, she had always thought. She cursed God every night for what she thought was a fatal flaw in her appearance.

Maggie had always been a good friend to Alicia and spent many days and nights while Alicia whined and cribbed about her hairy problems. Alicia was also secretly jealous of Maggie sometimes. Why didn’t red ants have to deal with these horrible societal problems?  Why couldn’t there be a world in which the hairy spiders were considered the sexy ones? She was tired and fed up of the discrimination she faced in this horrible world. It just wasn’t fair. Her family was supportive of course, considering she had gotten the hairy genes from some ancestor of theirs. However there was nothing they could do to make her feel better. There was nothing anyone could do. There were nights in which she would just give in and succumb to have a life of doom – only because she was a hairy spider. Maggie tried so hard to explain to her that her vanity was getting out of hand and she mustn’t let it affect her self-confidence this much! But Alas. Alicia never understood.

As they grew older, Maggie and Alicia finally reached a stage when they decided that it was time they ran away from home. They were ready to take on what the world had in store for them.  So, they packed up and left their homes and families. They walked and walked and travelled for days and months. They saw the mountains and roads and people and were awed by everything that came their way. They were having a wonderful adventure, one they’d always wanted to have.  One morning they stumbled upon a very friendly spider family. To Alicia’s joy, all the spiders in the family were hairy! They didn’t look at Maggie in the typical judgemental way her family did either! Alicia wondered how this was possible. Alicia and Maggie decided to stay with this spider family for a few days, just to see what it would be like. Soon, they made new friends and were having a brilliant time. What shocked and surprised Alicia the most was that in this spider clan, the hairy spiders weren’t looked down upon! She had never imagined during the entire course of her existence that a world could exist where hairy spiders could be as sexy as the non-hairy ones! But much to her delight, there was! So Maggie and Alicia stayed there for a long time and had a lovely experience, after which they left, in search of more adventure. There was so much out there in the world, waiting for them. 

The Good in the Evil.

"I keep my ideals, my hopes and my dreams, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart."

- Anne Frank

This is one of those quotes that will never fail to send shivers down my spine, every single time I read it, considering the circumstances during which Anne Frank said this. It baffles me to no end and leaves me so flustered because I cannot, for the life of me, understand how she could have felt this way.

This world has always confused me with its odd ways and strange people. Humans, sometimes behave in ways that make me wonder if I’m human too, if I’m one of them. I don’t feel like I am sometimes, because I can’t comprehend our way of life. I can’t figure out the formula.  What I mean is, I can’t seem to be able to put myself in Hitler’s complicated web of a brain and understand what exactly he was thinking when he decided to kill the Jews and put them through concentration camps. Nor will I ever be able to understand how you can still have faith in humanity after hiding in an annexe for two years followed by being put in a concentration camp and being hunted down for being a Jew.

Anne Frank genuinely did believe in humanity though – the good in humanity to be more precise. She believed in the light despite all the darkness that encircled her. She wasn’t afraid to dream and hope for a better life, for a better tomorrow. She wasn’t afraid to hope for happiness and peace. She seemed to have been oblivious to the cruelty, the killing, the insensitivity, the inhumanity all around her, or she just chose to be oblivious. She saw past it. She saw the good in the evil that was tucked in so deep, one would think it didn’t exist. She believed in that good. I wonder if anybody thinks like her today and if there are people like her in the world today. There must be. If there are, then I’ll keep hoping. 

Something about the city

Trips to Calcutta have always been memorable for me. Each and every one them has always been special to me in their own different way. There's just something about the city that charms me and makes me happy in this way no other city does. (It's probably the food.) I'm inevitably always back in Bombay writing sappy, sentimental articles about my trip and posting innumerable photos. I also, always come back bursting with a thousand stories to tell; and to think the friend who I tell these stories to is going to be there with me on the next trip is probably the most exciting thing ever. I cannot possibly put into words how much more special the trip this year is going to be. 

Portraits

A journey

The sound of the pebbles crunching under her feet as she walked, kept her hooked to reality somehow. The wind blew hard, making the dirt fly into her eyes, blinding her momentarily. She walked, undeterred… Her curly hair making swishing sounds as she moved forward in her solitary journey. She felt this overwhelming sense of freedom, something she hadn't felt for an incredibly long time; but it was mingled with a sense of loneliness. The last time she felt this free and uninhibited was probably when she used to play with her two best friends in the field near her home. The memories of all their races and endless games never faded over the years – maybe because she never forgot how happy she was back then.

She promised herself she would be strong and walked faster and deeper into the night, past the silent houses and the sleeping trees, all of which were so familiar to her. She was never afraid of the dark, even when she was a kid. She felt it was the most peaceful, soothing and yet dynamic time of the day. She often used to tell her mother she was going for a walk in the evening and not return for a few hours at a stretch, leaving her mother frenzied with worry. She would wander farther and farther from her home and listen to the owls hooting, various animals calling in the distance while she would sit against her favourite tree. She loved the serene hours spent there...

But, something had changed over the last few months. Something that wasn’t easy for her to overlook. She wondered how her life could change so drastically within a span of just a few months. She was even more baffled about how she could transform so much. She decided to conclude that sometimes, your priorities in life suddenly change, and hers definitely had. She needed answers that her family refused to give her. She needed to not be looked at as a child anymore. She couldn’t go on living in this quiet, peaceful oblivion, like her parents expected. Her mind overflowed with endless streams of questions that had formed over the span of her entire childhood. She had decided that night, after contemplating over what she ought to do for the last few months, that she couldn’t hold them back any longer. It wasn’t just a child’s silly, mindless curiosity anymore. There was more to it and she was old enough to understand that.

So, she walked.