The Rebelle blog

Such a calm, contented day today. Like every year, when this day comes there is an excitement, barrage of good wishes from friends and family and the quiet celebration with my loved ones. Last year was a lockdown birthday and so is this year. I am full of gratitude for good health, and peace of mind. I have had the means to indulge my spirits in Art and Poetry, conversations with some of my constant friends since forever. What more could I ask?  And, yet like every year, I think of my ambitions, my desires and goals and everything that I wish to accomplish with the same fervour. April comes and goes too soon. It marks a time that gives me reason to go ahead, something about the excruciating long lazy hot days puts everything else in perspective. I wouldn't have pegged myself a seasonal person, but I am. My moods aggravate and elevate with the change in seasons. Perhaps I am so since childhood but only understanding being like this in my adulthood. Funny and amusing that as I go bac...

It's been a while to have engaged with my thoughts here. The humdrum of life and tapping keys here finally comes together again today on a Saturday. As I kept searching for a journal to pen down my thoughts, a look at the calendar took me back in time. I went through a meeting with my friends after a long year since the pandemic forced us down to be isolated. And then, last night I had a rather surreal dream where I met one of my oldest friends since college and it was such an exuberant meet where she appeared out of sight somehow. Then, came another friend that I just don't get to talk to anymore. It's strange how my morning turned out to reminisce about them and then I read some beautiful verses on pale pink flowers dashing through my screen.  This summer is making me feel the serenity of time. The heat is almost unbearable but there's art and poetry to engulf with and I am leaving no stone unturned to get together my senses in enjoying these moments. Text conversatio...

It all began with a wedding. My friend was getting married in Kerala over a lavish 5-day ceremony last year in May. I had never been to Kerala and jumped the opportunity to attend the wedding. I bought a one-way ticket, to begin with. Little did I know that not only my stay at the wedding festivities make me fall in love with the places I was at but make me want to travel more. I met two friends of the groom who were from Poland and on their very first visit to Kerala. We decided to travel together on the train; I was going to Kochi, they were going to Allepey. We hit it off really well through the journey, talking about poetry and cities, movies, and music. Midway through the train travel when the Ticket Collector approached them, they decided to abandon their Allepey plan and join me in staying at Kochi and exploring the city. Thus, began the Kochi sojourn for three girls without a map, without an itinerary. We landed up at 3pm at Kochi and went for a stroll around 5. The evenin...

1998- what an amazing year! That was the year we moved to Mumbai. Everything was new for me. I remember my very first visit to Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum and meeting a painter there. She signed a photo of one of her paintings displayed in the gallery there. I was a wide-eyed 10- year old girl in awe of all the new sights in front of me. We also visited the Nehru Planetarium and Chowpatty on my first Mumbai visit. But, most of all, what I remember from that year is the introduction to some amazing kid movies I had the opportunity to see on TV. Earlier, before moving to Mumbai, I wasn't much interested in movies or TV and also, there was a limited access to DD programs.  Star Movies, I believe, broadcasted kid movies on Sundays. I watched The Parent Trap, Father of the Bride, Honey I shrunk the kids, Richie Rich on a Sunday movie marathon that spanned weeks. I vividly remember being glued to the TV set and still recall visuals of the light and colors from these movies. The s...

It's close to midnight, raining, the tenants living upstairs are creating some ruckus and here I am, pondering over my disastrous cupcake kitchen adventure from the evening. My head hurts badly with a splitting pain throughout my temples and perhaps, I need to pay a visit to my ENT doctor tomorrow. Each year, at least once I suffer from these splitting headaches which are usually only warning me about my ear infections. I am a very healthy person. I seldom miss appointments or work assignments or social commitments due to sickness. But that's because I am really scared of illness and the pain that follows it. As a kid, most of my doctor visits were due to ear infections only. For the past couple of years, I have been relatively healthy and fit with no major or minor sicknesses ever, not even cold or fever that warranted a visit from me to the doctor.  Last Sunday, I was travelling through a mountain pass in my car and happened to witness a magical moonlit night that seem...

I was going through my diary entries from last year and found the following lines written on one of the pages. 'Summer days I remember The Sultry melanch' I don't quite recall now why I have left that word incomplete and where do these lines belong. I have never left anything unfinished and this is really a mystery to me. The first two entries on the diary page are lines from Dylan Thomas and T.S. Eliot. It's quite strange to be honest. I have googled a very many combinations of these incomplete lines but nothing has turned up so far. I am not sure if this is a poem or a verse. Aah! I wish I could just go back to last year when i was writing it and finish the lines. I get quite restless if I can't decipher a puzzle. And this is nothing short of a mystery. I suppose its time hasn't come yet. Someday I will know what words come next to melancholy. Right now I feel what Virginia Woolf once felt. I wish it were possible. Things come to such a...

Everything that announces the onset of summer is here. There are watermelon mounds arranged everywhere in the market, the Gulmohar has started blooming its red blossoms prominently, the plants on my mother's garden sill have started flowering with a rage of colours and birds are making their nests on our Air conditioning unit. The hot, sticky summer nights are here and I have been gorging on ice creams almost daily. My mother has stacked our refrigerator with different flavours of home-made cold syrups. Hot nights are making people go for long walks post dinner in my town which is nice since this way everyone gets to meet each other. The mornings are still a bit cooler than the daytime but the poor ducklings in the lake prefer to stay in water and have stopped moving around the jogging track around the lake. I miss their familiar greetings on my morning jogs by the lakeside. Summer brings nostalgia too, esp, visiting my grandparents home during school holidays. Now that I hav...

My friend, Deepa teaches at an Architecture College and we always discuss academics and students. Thus, one fine Tuesday March morning, I landed up in her college to be a Guest Lecturer for her third year Humanities class. I had never addressed a class formally before and was quite anxious about the response of the students. Like some calm reverie, I set foot in the class, was introduced and began my talk. It was a wonderful 2 hour session with a 15 minute break. The students were attentive and quite responsive. Once I felt comfortable talking to them, we had a great discussion on cities and city dwellers. While I was lecturing them on Urban Planning and Mumbai Metropolitan Region, they seemed very eager to visit the heritage villages pocketed in Girgaon, Bandra and Mazgaon. Dee took this idea forward and now after a month, we have a group of students from the same class who will attend a heritage walk with Dee and  me. It feels great to have culminated an idea into such an e...

Just read this on the internet. Something that I had been meaning to write about too. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Memories... they are potent things... because they never leave us. Even when the people we shared them with cease to exist, memories remain... etched in the deepest corners of our soul. Sometimes they are our source of comfort and other times the reason behind our joy. We often reflect on them when thinking about the lessons learnt in life and every now and again, a memory has the power to completely transform us. But memories can be harsh too. They can haunt you, mock you, break your heart into a million pieces and remind you of all you had and what you lost. But can you really destroy or rewrite memories? No, of course you can't... just like you can't erase them from your mind. ------------------------------------------...

"At night we will set our poems  adrift in ginger ale bottles  each with a clamshell rudder  each with a piggyback spider" -Maxine Kumin Today is the last day of June and there's no rain yet. The Earth is parched with the farmer's dry brow, and the heat refuses to heal the chapped lips. The gods are angry, and his children lay awake at night to sleep forever, till dawn, leaving behind those they created to battle everyday deaths. And I read poetry, trying to figure out the melancholy that leads its way to my heart. There are weddings happening in the square near where I live, and people dance to music, all frolic, brightly dressed, laden with jewellery, crackers bursting in the hot sun,  remains of leftover food lying around, and stray dogs sleeping in the shade of roadside trees. All makes for a depressing sight, and heart-breaking too. The man who sells flowers sits in a corner on a nearby pavement, busy rolling the jasmine, kewda and frangipani flowers...