NEW Delhi…

My newest room in Delhi is actually a garage that my landlady (a sour faced woman who has the same personality as Bindu from ‘Biwi Ho To Aisi’) has turned into a slightly habitable place. When I first came to look at the ‘room’ there was a large steel sink right by the steel Godrej cupboard – I never understood why it was there, and our woman(who caught on to what I was thinking just by studying my expression) gave me a half hour rant about how it was really part of the great “package” (the cooler needed it, I could wash my face, cutlery etc there, it’s always useful, ‘to isme kya hai!’ ). So I didn’t say much and moved in anyway. It was after all, going to be a room that I would have (still have) all to myself, with a neat bathroom and everything. It’s been two weeks now, and I think my experiences will, if anything, make for some writing.

I think the meal times are the most awkward. ‘Aunty’ and her daughter are watching degenerate Delhi home staple TV shows (that I have learnt not to make nasty expressions at over time) when the doorbell rings. The daughter opens the door with a ‘Oh it’s you with the low top’ expression and half grimaces to a very very bright ‘Hi’. The table is all laid out and I can serve myself. There are the three of us. No one utters a word. – Airtel TV has a pause and record feature – and while it’s amazing what technology can do, I still don’t understand why the woman pauses the shows when I come up. So there is an almost meditative silence as I sit to eat, and I feel four pairs of eyes staring at my plate.

Two weeks new, and a great big eater, I’m super freaked out, and about three times more clumsy than I normally am – so the cutlery makes a lot of noise. If I drop a spoon, the lady makes a clicking noise with her tongue. I want to take a huge boulder and throw it on her head (what, that’s how they show anger here) but start to remember little quotes that will allow me to philosophize and get past it. So I hurriedly eat my meal and run back to my little garage.

The mornings are quicker, but more intensely negative. Its breakfast time, I’ve five minutes to eat, and the woman who im pretty sure is NOT a morning person is sitting there in her cheetah print nighty and spreading her sunshine. It’s the time of the day she slots to take up grievances. ‘Beta keep your things on your bed only. The other bed is not yours’; ‘I’m not responsible for your safety’; ‘Why did you take the pass for the talent show if you didn’t come’ ‘ See don’t bring friends to the room, they are not paying me rent’ ‘bass kar kitna ketchup khaye gi’ . I usually nod along and just leave. But as I walk out the gate and leave it open on purpose, I know that the negativity has gotten to me, and right at the start of the day.

Lately when I’ve been about in the city, walking in the market or just sitting at the park in the temple, I begin to wonder what I am doing here! What is it that drove me out of the luxury and warmth of my own home to a crazy land of difficult disagreeable frauds?

The littlest details have me all flared up and paranoid. Fixing my computer is a mammoth task involving a lot of stressful negotiating with thug like repair persons, and I’m more aware of every hundred bucks I spend – and all amidst the onset of my very first job – that has had me do more work in the last three weeks than I have done in three years of college.

I am really on my own, and in a place where the only person who will care enough to really look out for me is me. It’s a feeling that is sometimes empowering and sometimes bewildering – depending on how much responsibility I’ve the courage to take up on a particular day.

For someone who has been the thrower of some quality tantrums all through my childhood and teenage years, I’m having the beginning to an adult life that my mom will do a ‘What you didn’t learn from me, you will learn from life’ dance to.

Not that it is such a bad thing.

And this is what Bindu is like, for all who missed the movie inspite of it being played 254940573829202 million times over the last fifteen years on zee cinema.

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~ by Uthara on July 27, 2010.