My Man, My uncle ..You somewhere making music with Angels

Delhi- Shillong Flight Indigo……sleepy and listening to Whitesnake "Here i go again"..this takes me back to my childhood days with this track blasting from the room of my uncle.. i guess it must have been a painful break -up. I was too young to even realize or know what relationships meant.

Relationships are too complicated in my dictionary. the best and the purest relationships is that of a parent and child. However why do we drift from such a beautiful relationship. why do we seek love in the eyes and arms of a total stranger,its crazy. 

I have also been victimized by this so called relationship and i have sung myself to sleep listening to the same song which i grew up listening 20 yrs ago. 

Man these guys  and Coverdale himself are old by now. Well as for my uncle. He had the purest form of relationship first with Music and then the love of his life happened too soon  "ALCOHOL" and she pulled him 6 feet under so fast i guess he himself could have never imagined  the saying " Till DEATH do US PART".

I miss him sometimes as he was the most intelligent amongst the lot. He taught me how to pronounce the words correctly while we both sing along to some of his favourite track " temple of the king"....my version...i guess i was 6..i use to sing like this..."one day in the year when the fox and the fox began to sing...when a strong young man from the rising sun goes into the temple of the great black belt"....hahahahahahahaha i am now laughing remembering how he would smile and take me into his arms toss me in the air and sing in his best falsetto note and i would often look up at him and just smile....he was a stylish guy his shoulder length hair, rugged yet cute face, his mooch ,responsible, lovable….ahhh Those huge poster of Arnold from the movie "Commando" and Sylverster Stallone from the Movie "Rambo", Cindy Crawford, that famous "mole" in her bikini and bridgette bardott  coming out of the water semi clad with the most amazing costume a bikini that voluptuous body that screamed out hot classy and sexy these were the posters that hung on his wall of fame his tiny room now i wonder where did he manage those amazing collection. i have always tried to dig out those amazing piece of art however to no avail i guess they might have gone along with him to a different world. 

I remember how as a child we would try and sneak into his room to go and see those posters and giggle we were obsessed with semi clad women…hahahahahahaha. I miss you Uncle John RIP. He was the first man in my life whom i so adored and loved unconditionally. 

 He was blessed with a unique talent and that was to identify the right kind of music where i have been so lucky that he passed it on to me in a very different way. Those wooden speakers attached with an amp...the two in one tape recorder which later changed to a strikingly red twin cassette made in china player with the most powerful name "RX 100"..I loved that tape recorder and guess what it had the ability to catch the radio stations from across the world. And since my mom was a music buff she was always in the mood to tune into new music stations.

 My uncle o certain saturdays would bring these cassettes which he loved playing....i remember how he would come and bring his friends home to listen to Iron Maiden, Metallica etc and how these guys would sit and head bang and then share a bidi (a poor man's cigar ;)) or two while i sit on my uncle 's lap. I was his favorite lil girl and he was my favorite man.

Then he grew older and along with him the talent started disappearing and he went down in life like a marble sinking in a huge pool. I never knew what happened but he went back to the village met a woman and stayed with her. His coming over to my house was lessened and i would only see him when i go to the village every winter break . The music disappeared from his face, that shine, he suddenly became so old...with only the stench of alcohol coming out of his breath....the last time we met i was almost in high school i ran into his arms and for 30 secs i knew he failed to even register who i was..this was really heart breaking and then when he realized who i was...he asked me" Khyllung (baby) what music are you listening too these days and i smiled and told him.."Skid Row"" and he said i got a new cassette called the best of soft rock....there is nothing as beautiful as rock music!" and he said all this in the best of english...and then he was on his way to the fields...what happened to him...why did he leave his government job...these were things which are still left unanswered...i have tried to ask mom but she just says he made may have made some wrong choice and i wish i was not too busy with work with too many worries he would still be here...The last time we spoke with mom fondly remembering my uncle i told mom...I am sure he would have formed a tight band right now in with the angles...and mom smiled.

I sometimes wish he hadn't die i wish he was there coz he would have made sure that when iron maiden or when deep purple came to India he would have taken me along to watch his favorite band, . I am sure he would still be making music ........Such is the relationship with us and life; we never know when it would change its path...

Loving & Missing you Always...

My Biggest Super Hero

Today i am dedicating the following to someone who said how "everything does come to an end"..however before that we have to make sure and work hard to be happy till it lasts....Here it goes...and you know who you are....;)

I have walked this planet a long time, i have been trying to break free; i guess there are few people who think like me. What is that which is holding me back from breaking free and what am i trying to break free from ? I sometimes ask myself. I whine, i cry i seek attention from family and friends however nothing changed. I questioned my purpose of living,and the aura around me was just to heavy for me to sometimes breathe.

Then, everything changed when i happened to meet this amazing human being. I never believed in superheroes nor was i fond of them when i was a child. But now i guess i found my superhero my saviour from anxiety and breaking free. 

My superhero does not have a six pack physique....A big frame and at 6ft he towers over everything else..yet in such a big frame lies a heart of a carefree bird, a mind filled with braincells of geniuses clubbed together. Peace and happiness overflows. Yes,my super hero, Thank you for being who you are because when i say i learnt it does not mean that you taught me the way to live life however watching you run your life has been the biggest example for me for i have learnt so much in this little time  how to find joy, peace and love in every moment that i breathe.

my first encounter with this BIG word JOB

I have always wanted to write a book and i started writing also way back in 2009 right after I read a book written by a friend   Ankush Saikia“ Jet city woman”. I fell in love with his writing and the way he connected me to the surroundings both Delhi and Shillong was beyond my imagination. The words he chose and the feelings  i thought  came straight from the heart and that’s when i decided that i could also write a book about my life which is more like a roller coaster ride and maybe some of my close friends might just go to a book store to buy a copy out of sheer pity..:)or like I know them pick one for free..:)

I started on a cold January night in 2010 and by the next three days i had manage to pull together 6 pages..I thought wow! This is an achievement maybe in another two more months i might have 60 pages and will end the book when I reach the 100 page. But my writing stopped after i fell in lou(love) and it became a yesterday’s dream.

Now i am back and i  feel more like a hypocrite coz I am back to my old love that’s Music and writing and have come to realised that it gives me more pleasure than cleaning my house which I thought i was best at...funny but true i am a cleanliness freak!

So i am not sure if writing a book is really what i can do now .Therefore I have decided to share it here on my blog the little that i wrote. Please excuse the vocab and the words i am just a mere graduate but I hope it makes sense and hope that you guys like it.

Here it goes...............

Years of struggling to know who i am and what I really wanted in Life, Today I realized that there are something’s in life which are better left unanswered.

It’s been a long time since I left my favourite place, the place that has given me a name an identity, my birthright.  My home my Mom and everyone else also my late grandmother whom I so fondly remember every day. I was waiting for my final year result, innocence in the mind, though off course have had many silly relationship encounters but taking out a job in the real world was definitely not in my list of priorities.... A job is not a backstreet boy love ballad which you learn to by heart the lyrics in one hour and sing the next time you see the song on MTV.

A job?????  Do I really have to work??? .

It has never crossed my mind that one day I would need to work hard and try to bring my ends meet.

Growing up and watching too many English movies thanks to the discovery of cable TV. Our small town Shillong has been privileged enough to be in touch with the western world thanks to our parents for encouraging us to watch a lot of English channels. This indeed improved our pronunciation skills as every kid almost knew every dialogue of a movie that was aired on the most favourite movie channel Star movies…. And a routine was made in every home to watch MTV and star movies.

I grew up watching Doordarshan the Indian television network which means reaching out ….. It actually reached out and I remember the time when we had our first television (Disco-the brand ) our small living room was filled with known and unknown faces and even our windows were clogged with faces from the neighbourhood; I remembered an incident that my friend told me that their bed broke when there were too many people sitting together watching the live telecast of the funeral procession of our Late PM Indira Gandhi.

Indeed as years passed by a TV was no longer a luxury but a necessity. I realized that every time I go home and pass by villages along the narrow winding road, I can see that the dish TV of various Co’s sticking out of the tin and thatch roofs… and I wonder is there anymore simplicity left in the world.

The first time I was offered a Job was in Shillong when a BPO Co along with its smartest chosen Hr’s came and recruited 20 odd English speaking people to add more heads to their business in the capital.

The day finally came when the world anointed me the chosen one, the warrior against all odds I was no longer considered a baby in the family, I was for the first time in my life considered an adult a bread earner.

I could see the look in my mom that she was losing her favourite daughter the love of her life to something called a Job.

She knew that I was finally a grown up and would be far from her sight and her mentoring, though she has managed to maintain strict scrutiny all the while through the best mode of communication called the mobile phone.

 I was on my first flight alone without a family member and was out there to fend for my own life with 25 k in my pocket I was left stranded in my own world…..Like a compass without a pointer and was very scared at every step that I took.

I was with a bunch of these grown up wannabe’s and the twinkle in our eyes said it all that we were so looking forward to march forward and trample any damn obstacle … The scared and anxiety look was soon masked with the “Yes we can do it” look… and it so reminded me of the famous poetry by Lord Tennyson “Half a league Half a league Half a league Onwards all in the valley of death rode the six hundred”. Little did I know that when would set foot on the grounds of the capital I would have to live two lives?  Like the star sign of the Gemini …Funny but it’s true.

When the Plane finally Landed I was welcome by a strange sense in the air the hot air was blowing against my face and I said to myself if this was not hell then where would hell be I was referring to the climate not knowing that in fact this was the entry to the real hell which I was going to stroll for a long time

I was not really acquainted with the metro life because I never travelled much as a child and when I was growing up the only place we would often visit was Calcutta which was very close to my home.

The d day finally arrived when I entered the Premises of my workplace and we were asked to sit and wait till the HR people would come and take us to our respective training room. After an hour long wait a familiar face passed  me by and I realized it was the handsome hunk HR who recruited me and had asked me out for a date during the interview back home, reason for asking out not my looks or my physique but for the traditional attire that drape around my thin and frail tiny structure. He smiled at me and then said are we all ready?? There were more than a 100 strange faces all lost in their own world however masked by the excitement and the joy of being told that we were a bunch of Lucky people who have been chosen to do the job of solving big problems of Uncle Sam’s own people.

Day 1: We were taken to a hotel conference room and soon the room was filled with people of different genres. I was more busy checking the many people in the room and a friend of mine who came together from Shillong ,we were discussing at look how all these people from various states and background have filled the room and yes I must agree there was a lot of stench coming from the room not the smell of socks but the stench of racism ….

There were these Top shots from the Co who were there at the platform and a woman started taking roll calls of all the people and asking each one of us to introduce ourselves.

When the Orientation that’s what they termed the boring session to be was happening I realized that I was in the midst of an ocean of heads nodding to whatever the baldy bear  was blabbering with a  fake American accent . I was more lost caused I never realized that Indian Citizen residing in India were also allowed to speak in a foreign accent. I was in awe of the entire situation and could not believe my ears and eyes a Brown man without an NRI (Non resident Indian) tag could form words and then spit them out in long sentences along with an accent Wow!

The first day got over with a lot of joy and more excitement…..and also the thought of getting paid at the end of the month for just sitting and being introduced to new things in life what could I have asked for.  Wow I thought this is life…the hot weather did not bother me because the excitement was more than the thoughts or the feel of the heat.

I come from a place that has never used a fan forget an air-conditioning device… We were blessed with natural ac the cool breeze the soft sunrays that touch your feet in the afternoon the green hills and trees in every corner. The capital was a tandoor a furnace.

The best part of a BPO is the one month training period which in their term was also known as the honeymoon period. The first day of training was spent in a beautiful clean room with a batch of  18 people thankfully I had 3 guys from my same town and we were very excited. and  Suddenly! a small built female (our VnA trainer ) walked and with a very thick American accent said Yellow everybody wassup! I almost fell off my chair . and we smiled at her and said fine thank you ma’am. The moment we said ma’am she raised her voice and said common no sir’s and Ma’am because in the YOU-ESS we address each other by names  or last names it makes the working environment more relax and transparent . That was another thing I learned about the American culture apart from the prom nights culture or the one night stands that we saw in movies. I thought yes this is where I want to be … Being cool and speaking a foreign accent as if it were another scrabble game which I love to win

To be continued.....

A testimony of a fan

Being brought up in Shillong and growing in a household where i have seen my uncles pouring down gallons of beer down their lustrous hair and screaming their lungs to sing like plant and coverdale..and a single mother who brings home cassettes like ACDC and rainbow..Led Zepp ...so i am no stranger to noise.however with time it changed to backstreet boys,boyzone etc the list goes on and on.... blushing while singing along to their mushy tracks

Then i became a woman and i realized that there is more to John Mayer, Jack Jhonson, fleetwod mac, JJ cale so i decided to go old school again.searched for bands like Nazareth, rainbow, Iron Maiden, Whitesnake, Bad English and many more till i found my sanctuary in a lot more heavier noise than the usual.

My all time favorite would be Megadeth. then Delhi happened and here i was shocked and amazed...PANTERA? really? SLAYER?? SEX PISTOLS?? ACDC??? Really... these were the bands whose posters i saw at an early age pasted on the walls of my Uncles room (RIP John Uncle death caused by the damn bottle).

I fell in love with Heavy metal but had very little time to express my love as i was involved in stupid time consuming relationships and fell in and out of Louuu which proved nothing but a big pain in my ass. 

Yes i had been in love maybe for the first time and when things did not work out like a Loser i was devastated i lost every reason to live and i was empty from the inside but having too many responsibilities i knew what i had to do... but did not know where to start.Then Ranti Nasha seeped into my life and here i am writing a small piece sharing and showing my gratitude to the greatest band in the universe.

Life maybe in the past few months i would have said is a bitch...but now i am proud to say that i am ALIVE and hell Yeah and m standing tall.

The band i would like to pay tribute 2 at the moment is our very own Bhayanak Maut,who at a time when nothing seems to be worth living or listening too and when my first love (Music) almost died along with me..somehow there was this track that was lying there untouched in the longest time in my phone...the track is called "Ranti nasha" which i still dont know what it means... but for all i know it saved me and i listened to this beautiful track more than 20 times in a day . Id start my day with a prayer and then the normal daily routine of preparing myself to go to the corporate battle field. Ye in spite of all of this there was Ranti Nasha every step of the way.

The energy that flowed through me the first time i had ever listened to the track with a worn out paper whose lyrics i downloaded from work was beyond imagination...i was kinda like possesed i just felt sudden rush of energy within me and for the first time in a long time i said YES! i am going to kick every body's ass. I am no carpet.. and no one messes around. It was Ranti nasha  still is ...in the metro, Ranti nasha in the auto, And sometimes when i listen other BM tracks (to be honest i just have 5 tracks ) especially when i get down frm the metro at the Malviya Nagar metro station (my stop) i so wanna stick out my tongue and the devil horn and say out loud..........

"One day- I rise i maim i kill i thrill

 Stand tall - this will not change"

I would like to thank you for your music.

I have been a fan right from the year 2008 when a colleague and a friend  of mine Sangam Gesha introduced me to your band, however the daily chores kept me away from listening to your music more often but now u guys are so much part of my life that your music just plays in my lappy  my phone my mind....All the time...\m/

Thank you Bhayanak Maut

God Bless

saturday 14th september 2013

I don't remember when did i start to learn the alphabets and when did i realize that alphabets were going to be a part of my life. I would like to take this opportunity and thank my mom or whosoever taught me the ABC's and here i am writing on my very own Blog....excitement all the way to the fluids in my veins.

There were a lot of trees which were brought down because of me as i have thrown a lot of papers pencils and rubbers ( This is what we generally termed an Eraser funny but true).in that dust bin from a very long time. Then i learnt the art of holding and writing with a so called Ink pen or a more sophisticated or correct term a "fountain pen" those endless  ink stains that were left on our school uniforms our books our desk everywhere.

Now when i look back i realize that life itself is like an ink pen. It leaves a mark where ever we make a wrong decision and even if we try to scribble that wrong word or sentence there is no way we can go back and make it look normal again.

the question that bothers me most is why isn't there a magic eraser that helps us erase that wrong decisions we made. I remember watching the movie "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind for the first time and i never understood till the time i watched it again to only realize that there are more people like me who wished for that magic eraser.