Mondays

Mondays mean so many different things to different people. For a young mother with wild kids, it's a break from being a full-time mom and her day starts right after the monsters are packed off for school. For me, Mondays mean yearning for Fridays. Were I a full-time novelist, I'm sure Mondays wouldnt mean anything...the deadline would mean everything. For my aged granny, it means a fear of unrealised expectations, of going all the way to come back halfway... of psychos at the other end of a victim trying to lead a normal life. For my mother, it means a busier day than yesterday... and I'm sure she's looking forward to next week already. For my sister, it means a five minute drive to work and an 8-hour hellish day with angry feelings rising from the tips of her hair-roots to the very tip of her toes. She looks forward to six o'clock as weekends just mean Sundays to her. For my dad, Mondays are as briskly gotten over with as possible...although he's had a two-day weekend holiday in a very long time. He's retiring this September...time enough for him to stop manically rushing to and fro.

Mondays are a time for me to get off writing from my heart and employ my brain to work overtime struggling with words.

:)

A smile of contentment. Extremely hard to get. One has to leave at 6:30 pm in the middle of the week and rush back on the route where you get to do the maximum window-shopping sitting back in the rickshaw and sometimes bending forward to get a good look at the sarees displayed in the window. Today I saw this really small shop have a variety of unusual and really beautiful colours that I'd never seen. Mango-orange combination, rose-milk pink on white, the sunniest yellow with a faint embroidery and just a hint of sequins. One's neck can get a bit strained just trying to catch all the colours as the rickshaw speeds by. I love doing that...perfect end to a drab day spent catching all the monotone colours of my PC.

There was also this really lovely breeze that kept tugging at my kurta. I thought it would carry me away the minute I got to a clearer space. Nothing happened, but the mischeivous wind followed me all the way home.

They're in the feelings...the small things...

Roy's story isnt in the big things, its in the small things. The spit bubbles and the Love-in-Tokyos. The fountains and the puffs. The beige coloured shoes where the angry feelings come from. Bottles of bottled youth. Suppressed emotions, anxieties, fears, dreams...all coming together in the same vat of boiling banana jam. Paradise Pickles and Preserves.

I can see shades of my childhood. The movie theatre not the multiplex. The Goldspot, not the Mirinda. The comic books and the abridged classics. The notebooks with my best handwriting at the start of the year and my worst writing towards its end. Summer vacations with cousins and grannies. The heat of the dusty playground bringing more joy and satisfaction than the first drizzle of June, indicating school-time was just around the corner. Pangs to grow up resulted in pangs to go back to the safe womb of childhood, one that insulated you from work, salaries, taxes and hunger to own something you cant afford. From the race of rats.

Roy's brought all those things back with her God of Small Things.