Story of a lost journalist

It’s dark outside Kedaram, a shopping complex I may have gone to twice or thrice in all my years in Trivandrum. But it’s the middle spot we chose to meet, Dan and I. I look at my watch, 19-O- 1. I remember the blog lines in Ruminations – I hate people who do not respect others time. Whew, I feel good I made it. Dan’s name is on my phone now. “I am just parking,” she says. She is new here, in my land. It’s taken me three months just to drag Kweeki (my scooter) and come to see Dan. Why do we always push these things, when they are so easy? I step outside to direct Dan. 10 little steps, after five long years. Was it five or longer? I can’t be sure. There were so many of us back then. Writing and reading, commenting, sharing, making friends and favorites without knowing it. I shared Dan’s blog in mine and called it: Dhanya, good girl n good blog. I don’t know which post of her made Dan a good girl to me, or which words, a friend. But standing outside Kedaram, and waving to a smiling face across the road, I could sense no first meeting anxieties, no first lines to say forming in my head. I wait, happily, for a girl I knew for years.

Dan and me

“Park cheyaan paadupetto?” (Was it difficult to park?) I ask, like an everyday line to an everyday mate. She smiles, she speaks her Thrissur Malayalam. Surprised I know littler of a Trivandrum than her. “This is a part I rarely come to” I get defensive. We take our Kedaram juices. I want more. I want to get her a packet of Trivandrum Bolis she has heard about so much. The Sri Ananthapuri veg restaurant I drag her to has none. But we smell hot dosas and sit for two. She asks: “Weren’t you the one afraid to meet new people?”
“Yes, that’s me. I am,” I smile. “Weren’t you afraid to meet me?” she asks. “No, I never was.”

I am not sure why. I tell her I might have been a little nervous with Ush, another blog friend dear to us both. “But you, I always knew are a paavam”. “I see” she says. Is there in her face, a bit of that proper reservation one has for first time meetings. Am I speaking too much and too casually? I wonder but I go on about a trip I want to make. About how she should make more visits to the city, and that she will like it then.

I wonder now if I let her speak at all. Is that my way of dealing with first time visits? Speak too much and present myself unintelligent and then feel safe. Safe that the cover is gone. They know me now. I remember the first line I told Deepak, after four years of phone and chat conversations. “Nee aano Deepak” Are you Deepak? But that awkwardness went away with our first meeting. I would now see Deepak at a café next to my office with his wife and brother, and say: “Wow chocolate brownie, give me some!” With Dan, the first meeting awkwardness was not there. For me. I don’t know if I created it for her. For some reason, I am finding it easier to be me, the unreserved saying-what-comes-to-mind me, as years pass by. “Behave when you are outside,” my colleague would always murmur when I spin my skirt around and sing absently at the chayakada down our office. I forget to be conscious, I forget to be ashamed. I think I am growing up. Here at last is old age, with my second childhood.

Not quite time for a yearender but just realized I met four of my online friends in person this year. Just came back after meeting Binu Ninan, blog friend for five or six years, and birthday sharer. Last month met Madhavankutty Pillai, online friend for more than a year. A little before that, met Preethi Krishnan, friend from a google group and a rare g-chat. And before that met Roshni Raghavan, email friend for six years!

Problem with meeting online friends is you have become so comfortable having a computer in front of you to talk to them, you feel nervous about actually presenting a real human form for the other. With a real voice and a real face. It’s almost like going on stage. People are expecting something from you, can you give that? It’s not like they expect a star. But years of knowing each other would naturally build an image of what someone is like. What if it shatters with one look at you, one little conversation? When you stutter and stammer and blush for absolutely no reason, wouldn’t they feel terribly disappointed?

I don’t know about the others, but for me, each meeting has been really rewarding. I felt closer to all of them. Felt a better connection. And none of them appeared unsure, they chatted like long-time buddies. Only thing is I haven’t met any of them for a second time, yet. Gulp. Hope the connection was not entirely one-sided :D.

Rosh and Preethi are both really smart women with really strong views about life. I am a lot scared about meeting people I tag as intellectuals but both these girls had made it so easy for me. Good thing about smart people is they know to tone down their smartness to meet the level of those they meet. So Preethi and I chatted three long hours about everything unintellectual in the world. Was no different from talking to an old school friend. Rosh I somehow imagined to have a really tough voice and a tall frame. She turned out to be tiny and squeaky and adorable. But I missed her funny quips, possibly because I didn’t give her time to chat. I was talking non-stop.

With Kutty Pillai, I turned out to be the absolute shy and non-speaking mess I was afraid I’d be. Thankfully I had given him the exact image before. So no surprises there. He was nicer than I expected, I somehow had a grrgrry image of him always looking angry for no reason. Binu Ninan was easily the friends material I could be myself with. Mainly because he laughed at everything I said. I made a major discovery, laughter is the best medicine for shyness. So next time I feel shy I am just going to laugh non-stop. I might need to remember the sound of Manu’s funny car-horn or one of those just-for-laugh gags or else Maverick’s balloon blowing.

And on that note I stop with a ho ho ho and a merry Christmas to y’all 🙂

Hearing about the death of someone you knew long ago, but not having touch with for years, is strange. I came to know my English teacher Miss Irene Mary, passed away yesterday. When Jen called to tell me this, I said “iooooo”. But after that, when I called to pass the message to others, I was impatient to know more, not ready to understand that it would be a shock for them as it was for me.

From the moment of hearing the news, I have been searching desperately for some memories with her, trying to create in mind, some images from the past. The first line that comes to mind is “1999 March.”
She used to say these words every so often ever since she became our class teacher in class 9, enjoying the gasps she got in response. She was talking about the time we will write our board exam.

One time she called me to give me my paper and said “My dear, you write absolute rubbish. Take care of what you write.” The way she said it, I didn’t feel bad at all. Besides the important thing was I passed.

Once, I wanted to go home in the noon cause I was not well. My mom came to pick me and Irene teacher came down to talk to her. Mom was wearing a black salwar and I was worried if Irene teacher would consider it proper that a 14 year old’s Mom was wearing salwars. The next term, for our exam, I wrote an essay about ‘Clothes’. With some weird idea of justifying my fears, I wrote that clothes had to be chosen according to age and it would be very funny for a very old woman to wear short skirts or frocks. I got very poor marks for the essay. Guess she was purer in her thoughts than I was.

A couple of more scenes with my classmate Radha and teacher, and then some visuals of her sitting in her chair and reading Midsummer Nights Dreams, about sums up my memories of her. In less than 10 years, I have lost so much from my school memories.

Today as I sat in church listening to her funeral mass, I was going through my school days, somehow making petty confessions to myself, for some of the things I have thought or done at school (like the clothes essay). I thought of totally irrelevant insignificant things like this: once I was swinging with my feet on the school gates. There were these two girls from another division (A division girls we used to call them, we were C). One of our teachers – Shiny teacher – passed wearing a skirt – outside the school (school didn’t allow skirts for teachers). Suddenly, one of the A division girls said “Do you know how old she is?” I said “24-25 I guess” (thinking it was a really grown-up age). “Hah 24 my foot. She is much older, girl!” I was surprised and amused, thinking that this might have been the first and only conversation I had with this girl.

I saw many of my teachers there – Sofi teacher, Suma teacher (remembered Suma teacher and Irene teacher – Malayalam and English teachers – covering their heads in Suma teacher’s sari tail one hot day in the sun and laughing together. Ros, my best friend, pointed this to me and said “ayodaaa so cuteeee”), Anita teacher, Shiny teacher, Geetha teacher (Economics teacher… my friend DU once told me: She teaches about population explosion and has three kids!)… Couldnt talk to any of them… but their faces from 10 years ago were fast filling my mind.

I saw Sandra, who I barely talked to, but who used to be a popular figure back in school – she was one year my senior. She used to be so slim and now she has put on a lot that it is hard to recognise her. I remembered her second last window seat in bus… and her cracking voice and her braces and her uniform skirt (looked real cute on her that it made her a favorite among juniors), and her dancing to “Saturday night I feel the air is getting hot…”. I used to be a last seater in bus, but I was so quiet I dont think she’d know me.

Random memories kept scrolling through my mind, throughout the mass. I stood up when they prayed and sat down later, with the rest of them, not aware of what was happening. I wouldn’t have minded staying when they took her coffin out to the cemetery and would have waited till end of day – how could anyone be bored when old memories in blue and white check skirts and navy blue ribbons, just kept flashing scene after scene in front of me… better than any movie you could think of.

And then I thought… all those faces that came then. Ros or Radha or Irene Teacher – where was Ros? Where was radha? Where was Irene teacher now? Where was all that I thought was important in my life, back then? Why did I never think of all those important things all these years – did I not even know that I didn’t have them anymore? Or that they were not important anymore?

And then of course dramatic visions. I imagine her coming to see all of us grieve. Invisible of course. She stands there in front of me, looking – scrutinising – through those tiny eyes – each and every one of us – with a soft little smile on her lips, and her forefinger on her chin. She then walked out through one of the doors, and just flew away. It was such a lovely picture – my tiny little teacher in the sky. I hope no one thought it weird that I was smiling at a funeral.

It was time to see her. I saw her relatives cry as they kissed her for one final time. I thought, she has so many people to mourn her death even when she was unmarried. So maybe, I wouldn’t be too lonely in my death bed.
I saw her hands covered in white gloves clutching a cross tightly. I saw just a little of her face through the white veil. And I swallowed a lump. I don’t know if it was of sadness and loss of the teacher, or of the times I will never get back…