In the words of the great philosopher Jagger

No, you can't always get what you want

You can't always get what you want

You can't always get what you want

But if you try sometimes, you just might find

You get what you need.

One more time

So, umm, this is the customary birthday post all about this particular birthday. I am starting to get a bit bothered by the amount of these that keep stacking up but well, each year is quite a different experience from the one before, so I dont think they're all that pointless.

There have been quite a few years in the recent past when I've been trying to do the grown-up thing and just stay home having a nice dinner and spending quality time with friends and family. But somehow it always turns into this raucous milestone thing - hey, you're 21 now, let's go get beer! Or, hey, look you earn now - let's go to a fancy place to celebrate.

But this year, for reasons rather beyond my control, I think I shall end up getting the mature birthday that I'd always wished to have. With Piyu's eternal altercation with assorted viruses continuing into this year as well, it's just going to be an intimate dinner at her place after all, with movies on the DVD player and four big bowls of buttered popcorn.

And as against bunking lectures and going out for cake like always, today I woke up bright and early and went to work in the OPD, to examine patients and prescribe for them. It was like every other day at work, but I just felt so much more enthusiastic and cheerful than usual. Which for me is really saying something.

And finally, mum's gift to me was a gorgeous red Kanjeevaram silk saree, almost exactly like the one she has, one I have been coveting for several years. There's something special about the way this is the year that she thinks I am finally old enuff to get one.

Growing up can be a tricky, and sometimes, messy business. You must allow yourself to accept that you will make mistakes, while simultaneously trying to learn from them to avoid making more as you grow older. That is the very essence of lessons learned throughout this particular Psychiatry posting. Mistakes will be made. The way you deal with the fallout makes all the difference. Some people give up and others break down, while there are those that will just get up, brush themselves off and keep up the good fight. Maybe I'll know for sure what kind I am by this time next year.

Whatever the answer to that is, I hope that I'll be alright with it. That's what birthdays are for. We're all growing old all the time, every moment of our lives, inching slowly towards death. But one day every year, all of that catches up with us quite all of a sudden when we're busy chalking up another year of life wrapped up.

Irrespective, introspection must be one of the actual benefits of having a birthday. Like getting free beer from friends is. Boy, it sure feels great to be a grown-up! :D

Lessons in Humanity.

When I was eight years old, my dear Aunt Bhanu had given me a birthday present that was a big box full of five illustrated and abridged versions of classic books. Now these weren't your regular books for kids, not Oliver Twist or Treasure Island or The Prince & The Pauper. These were slightly odd books to be giving to an eight year old. They were Jules Verne's Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and The Journey to the Centre of the Earth, H. G. Wells' The Time Machine, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and of course, my then least favourite - Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

It was reading these books perhaps that ignited my life-long fascination with science-fiction and more-so with morbidity.

I dont think their impact wud have been as great had they been the regular unabridged novels read without illustrations that I acquired in my teens, in my attempt to recapture the sense of wonder I had first felt when reading them.

The illustrations had been singularly excellent, and some scenes just stuck fast in my head. I still remember them as vividly as if I had the pages in front of me, alas, the books are lost to me now. Given away to classmates as grown-up novels took precedence or borrowed by younger cousins and not returned.

My mind's eye returns to me certain images though, and I can imagine them even today, my memory perhaps embellishing on what I had originally seen.

A large tear glistening on the hard brown cheek of the enigmatic Captain Nemo's usually stern, shuttered face as the mysterious young man with a hole in his skull, covered by blood-soaked bandages lay dying on a bunk in the background.

The explorers sailing on makeshift rafts, battling against violent storms, lost in a vast ancient underground sea filled with some magnificent and some monstrous fish.

Count Dracula, his long black cape whipping in the wind as he scared off hungry wolves with a snarl and a wave of a sinewy clawed hand as Jonathan watched wide-eyed from the carriage window.

The Time Traveller, adventurous yet afraid, shrinking from the Morlocks in the dark tunnels, realizing that the menacing creatures are the descendants of the downtrodden working classes of the distant past.

They were all stories that touched something inside my eight-year old heart and moved me to wonder, and sometimes fear.

But Frankenstein perplexed me. I did not know what to make of it. I did not know if I felt sympathetic towards the Creature or repulsed by him. I didnt know if I blamed Viktor Frankenstein or if I pitied him. But the haunting image of the Creature, who having received nothing but beatings and tauntings, longingly looking in through the window at a happy family eating a warm dinner around a simple wooden table, thinking how he would always, always be the outsider, shunned and reviled, lingered uncomfortably in the dark corners of my mind.

Tonight, I watched a screening of Danny Boyle's brilliant new play based on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, at the NCPA, and I watched it alone as my erratic schedule and busy weekends wud allow.

I dont really watch movies or plays alone. I enjoy them as the communal experience they were probably meant to be, before home theatre systems and personal computers arrived. I am usually the obnoxious person in the audience who regularly gets shushed by people for whispering too loudly to my friend sitting next to me. So this was my first time watching this play all by myself, in a corner seat at the extreme right of the second row.

And while the staff at NCPA are always and extremely courteous, they seemed to take special care in showing me to my seat, literally walking me to it and asking if I was alright, probably becoz I was a girl who'd showed up all alone. They even seated three delightfully chatty old Parsee ladies next to me!

But perhaps it was appropriate that all my thoughts about this marvellous play were confined to the solitude of my own mind becoz perhaps that's the lesson that I needed to learn from it.

Of course, the play with the fantastic ensemble cast of Jonny Lee Miller as the hard-hearted Frankenstein, Naomi Harris as the compassionate Elizabeth and the always-wonderful Benedict Cumberbatch in a strangely moving performance as Frankenstein's Monster is chock-full of subtle and not-so-subtle messages if you'll look for them.

Everything from the Biblical idea of Original Sin, the onslaught of science in the modern age, the grave consequences of hungering for power without responsibility, the hypocrisy of society, men trying to play God, slavery, love, loneliness, poetry, childhood and its innocence lost to the very nature of the human condition is covered in the sparklingly witty dialogue of the play. And inspite of the frequent ideological heavy-lifting required of it, the lines of dialogue pronounced by the excellent actors crackle with surprising humour and comic whimsy in a way they never did on the page.

The play may be about a lot of things but at its centre lies the relationship between the man and his creation. And how that creation, abandoned by his 'father', is quickly and brutally taught several lessons about humanity and human beings.

We sense every emotion that passes quicksilver-like on the grotesque face of the Creature - his struggle with his newly given life at the beginning of the play, his abandonment by his creator, his pleas for help as he begs for food, his cries of pain as he is mercilessly whipped, his joyful exultation when he watches the first sunrise of his life, his shrinking from a gentle old blind man's touch, his introduction to music and books by this old man who becomes a very obvious father figure, his sonorous recitations of the poetry he comes to adore, his tender longing for a lover, his violent anger at being rejected and taunted by the very people he silently helped, his heart-breaking anguish at being the only one of his kind, and his cynical but truthful observations on mankind are incredibly and brilliantly rendered by Benedict Cumberbatch (whom I loved as Sherlock Holmes on BBC's new series), and it is a bit of a shock when the actor turns up in his natural handsome avatar at the end of the play.

Also in a stunning reversal from the book, the Creature becomes the hero of the story, so much more than the monster that prowled at the shadowy edges of Viktor Frankenstein's rather eventful life. We experience all that happens from the Creature's perspective. And this is probably where the play triumphs most of all. The Creature becomes a mirror that displays all our flaws back to us, ruthlessly and relentlessly. We tell ourselves we're good people and we'd have been better to him had we encountered him, but there's that nagging doubt at the back of our mind.

We realize that we are indeed guilty of all the crimes he accuses mankind of. We are afraid of what we do not understand, we treat with hatred and hostility those who are not like us, we do not keep all our promises, we are cruel, even and especially to those whom we profess to love. We corrupt the innocent, we exploit the weak, we undermine the strong, we despise the truly good.

The Creature, we learn, is born a somewhat gentle soul, a lover of beauty, nature, and poetry, with a tender heart that is capable of kindness to children and love for mankind.

He desires a bride he may love and keep as his own friend and companion. But Frankenstein cannot keep this terrible promise and destroys her. The Creature exacts revenge as he rapes and murders Frankenstein's wife on their wedding night, cynically declaring "Now I am a real man!" to the grief-stricken Frankenstein who chases after him endlessly to finally destroy his creation.

The play ends as the book does at the North Pole, where the Creature admits to Frankenstein that he feels remorse for Elizabeth's death and admits that he always yearned for his creator's love. Frankenstein confesses that he was incapable of loving and that he envied the Creature's ability to feel love, which made him more human than Frankenstein wud ever be.

And I understood the real reason Bhanu Mami had told me it was important that I read this book properly. She had always known that it was Frankenstein who was the real outsider, and not the Creature. But perhaps, this was a lesson I needed to learn in a darkened auditorium, as three hundred other people collectively drew in their breath at the ending. That, in truth, each one of us is all alone, but those of us who can manage to reach out to another person will never really be lonely.

Stay

I am struck today by the full force of the realisation of how important communication really is. How vital it is to reach out to another human being across the ether, to open one's mind unto another's, to share a memory, a feeling, and to receive, in return, an equally heartfelt emotion, an equally poignant memory.

It is so easy to feel lost and lonely in the world. Sometimes, the urge to reach out and touch someone becomes almost irresistible. The comfort to be derived from contact is great.

I cannot have imagined a greater gift than that of language, be it one of words or gestures or smiles or caresses.

The incredible power of sharing an experience will never be underestimated by me again.

Reassurance, when given, if sought, is like an unshakable and adamant support. And tonight, for that much I am grateful.

Grace Kelly

"Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great."

-Nelson Mandela

One of SK's early morning motivational messages.

"Expecting life to treat you well just coz you're a good person is like expecting an angry bull to not charge at you coz you're a vegetarian."

-Unknown

Another one of SK's early morning motivational messages! :D

And this joke,

What do you call a bear that chases after you ravenously, then starts crying and runs away?

Bipolar bear. XD

Exam days wud be oh-so-droll without these messages!

The Cost of Living

So often I run into her in the evenings in Odeon Market, when I dont have the patience to wait at the bus-stop and when I want to walk, when it seems better to spend time with my thoughts alone in a crowd of people than spending it trying to bargain with the laws of physics every time the bus lurches.

She always carries this old tie-n-dye red yellow cotton thaila and walks with that peculiar ramrod-straight-backed gait of hers that I can recognise her from yards away. That is when I break with my ambling and break into a jog to reach her.

"Good Evening, Ma'am!" my standard greeting never shifts to the more informal "Hello!" or even the casual "Evening!" She always smiles, her eyes turning into narrow slits before she replies in that clipped, deep voice I have grown up listening to. "Good Evening, Karishma. It's nice to see you again."

I help her carry her veggies sometimes, but mostly she refuses my offer, casting a pitying glance at my decidedly heavy-looking college bag, that tends to drag my shoulders down. "You really carry all those heavy books to college every day? My God, this generation really studies hard." She says something like that almost every time she notices my bag.

So often we walk back to Pestom Sagar together, I tell her about how I miss the warmth and closeness of school, she tells me about how our junior batches arent as sincere as we were. We both wonder if nostalgia adds dollops of rosiness to our memories of those times. And then we laugh. People here stare at anyone who laughs out loud on the road. We ignore them.

She was telling me today about her son's weird taste in music. "It's these bands. Men scream these pessimistic lyrics into the mic. There is no melody. Only noise. How does that even classify as music?" I laugh when I realise her son is into death metal. "I have to keep up with these trends and all. Otherwise, I wont have anything to say that will be interesting to him. You'll have to teach me about these rockstars, Karishma." We laugh again.

She tells me he's at the London School of Economics now. I smile appreciatively. I am truly impressed. I remember him as the plump pimply boy who walked with his mom to school and who cud barely talk to girls at fifteen without blushing violently. I've only met him a couple times after school but he has transformed into this confident charming young guy who talks about George Orwell and Mithun Chakraborty with the same measure of admiration and awe, well atleast he did in the last conversation I had with him.

But it is his mother I really admire. This woman is my eighth standard science teacher. She's also one of the most intelligent, articulate, liberal women I know. So different from all the other teachers in my school. My school is one of those non-convent, Government-run, English medium schools where Sanskrit is preferred to Hindi and they start every morning with a Saraswati prayer. She never seemed to fit in there. The other teachers wud eat lunch in the teachers' common room and I'd see her seated on the bench in our school grounds eating lunch alone a lot of times. I always thought it was unfair but later she told me she enjoyed eating alone.

Of course, this being that kind of a typical overtly middle-class Central Bombay suburb, everyone knew everyone else's history and no one really approved of hers. I didnt understand at first. But I realised it probably had something to do with the fact that she was the only person I knew who was divorced and raised a child alone.

My friends and I also fondly remember her as the woman who cud say the word "vagina" out loud without looking distinctly uncomfortable like all the other teachers did when they made those silly sex-ed classes compulsory. She was also the one who abolished the dreaded first science period when all of us just wanted to spend the first half an hour discussing the news, or a particular song, or something new we learned in another subject. She is the reason why I began to enjoy science so much in the first place, the one who introduced me to Richard Feynman in tenth standard and Ray Charles on another of these walks home. She is also the one who comforted our fears the morning after 9/11 happened. She was probably the only teacher who treated us as equal human beings and recognised that we needed somebody we cud trust, ask questions of and seek support from, outside our homes.

Everyone always has that one teacher. For me, it is she. And while I cannot write anything that will explain with any measure of eloquence or insight how wonderful I think she is, or how much I owe to her, the least I can do is acknowledge it here.

Today she tells me that she is leaving Pestom Sagar, moving in with her sister who lives in Colaba. I realise that this is pretty much the end of our enjoyable walks. She says she thinks I was one of her best students and that I cud call her whenever I wanted and that her son had started up a facebook account for her. I smile at that last bit.

But I'm still a little sad. Why is she moving away, I ask her. She says her sister's husband passed away a few months ago and that her son was grown up and gone abroad. She was alone and her sister was alone also. She was moving away so she wud have some company. We walk on.

When we reach the gate of her building, she wishes me luck with my exams. I tell her that I shall miss her. And before I can turn away, it bursts out of me.

"Ma'am, was everything worth it?" I am shocked that I have said this to her. I dont finish my thought but she understands what I am asking.

I wonder if I've made her angry or upset. But she merely shakes her head. "Remember, that the most important thing is to always to be true to yourself. Some day, Karishma, you will know the answer of that question for yourself. And until then, nothing anyone says will be enough of an answer for you."

She smiles, and gives me a hug. I walk to my building, making a mental note of the fact that one of these days I have to call her and tell her that she is a rockstar. :)

Wake me up when September ends

"I remember one morning getting up at dawn, there was such a sense of possibility. You know, that feeling? And I remember thinking to myself : So, this is the beginning of happiness. This is where it starts. And of course, there will always be more of it. It never occurred to me then, but it wasn't the beginning. It was happiness. It was that moment. Right then."

Clarissa Vaughn,

The Hours.

Kaleidoscope

Neruda beckoned as my restlessness grew and I happened upon what must be not only the perfect anthem for a Gemini, but the perfect collection of words for anyone who's ever wondered if they're not really who they think they are.

Okay, all this obscure obliqueness aside, here we go -

We are many

Of the many men whom I am, whom we are,

I cannot settle on a single one.

They are lost to me under the cover of clothing

They have departed for another city.

When everything seems to be set

to show me off as a man of intelligence,

the fool I keep concealed on my person

takes over my talk and occupies my mouth.

On other occasions, I am dozing in the midst

of people of some distinction,

and when I summon my courageous self,

a coward completely unknown to me

swaddles my poor skeleton

in a thousand tiny reservations.

When a stately home bursts into flames,

instead of the fireman I summon,

an arsonist bursts on the scene,

and he is I. There is nothing I can do.

What must I do to distinguish myself?

How can I put myself together?

All the books I read

lionize dazzling hero figures,

brimming with self-assurance.

I die with envy of them;

and, in films where bullets fly on the wind,

I am left in envy of the cowboys,

left admiring even the horses.

But when I call upon my DASHING BEING,

out comes the same OLD LAZY SELF,

and so I never know just WHO I AM,

nor how many I am, nor WHO WE WILL BE BEING.

I would be like to be able to touch a bell

and call up my real self, the truly me,

because if I really need my proper self,

I must not allow myself to disappear.

While I am writing, I am far away;

and when I come back, I have already left.

I should like to see if the same thing happens

to other people as it does to me,

to see if as many people are as I am,

and if they seem the same way to themselves.

When this problem has been thoroughly explored,

I am going to school myself so well in things

that, when I try to explain my problems,

I shall speak, not of self, but of geography.

Thus spake Pablo.

The goddess in the rain

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore;
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar,
I love not Man the less, but Nature more...

-Lord Byron,
(from Into the Wild)

Build me up Buttercup

"If you want to be happy, be."

- Leo Tolstoy.