Cancer Vixen’s Life in a metro!

This piece of work is an emotional outburst inspired by Marissa (Cartoonist with New Yorker Times!) and Anurag Basu (Filmaker from Mumbai)

At least now I know that my autobiography will fetch me quite a lot of money! I am almost on the fast-track, soon to have some thing like motorcycle diaries!
There r some lumps in the intestine that are cancerous in nature.
Well my cool attitude did not work! As in Mumbaiiya I would say ‘Phaat gai hai meri’(I am screwed). The day I gotta know about this I was stoned. Different people had different reactions, n today I cannot handle people who love me go through the whole deal of anxiety. And it is first stage and curable. So why worry? On the second layer…..What are my panic points? What if a surgery, not coz of the surgery but the radiotherapy/radiation that will follow!!!! And the several anxieties, I am at the onset of a wonderful worklife, I haven’t lived with parents in a very long time, so haven’t been answerable. I have not earned enough money to have saved so when I get home I am broke! And I have been very active for the last three years, no lulls….l love drinking, smoking and red meat. And all of this is a complete NO! There is still no verdict to sex yet, but one never knows what is the next step in store! And Sash for giving me the brighter side of the story said, think about it, u would be completely detoxified and therefore glowing with inner radiance! Ya Right, even she knew what she was talking about!
So is there practically anything I need to worry about? Yessss! I will be jobless, sick, and may become ugly soon after the radio! Then what? All my x,y,z fashion statements are down the drains  Not that I am some chhammak chhallo but for the presentably cool quotient…. That’s worrisome. My newly done hair colour, my essentially interesting wardrobe… (sniff, sniff) and of course the whole worldview changing. Why was I the chosen one? Seems like I have not had enough!
Ya, I m feeling pathetic, when off late the panic attacks happen and then my mobility is gone for a toss it is bloody depressing!

Life in this city has been like a dream. I guess I will have to give it to Toxic Bachelor and the never ending discussion at a café in Kolkata that does not exist anymore, I had landed in Mumbai. Being in the city under the guidance of whizos like NRG n Mesho was a revelation! Mumbai was raindrained, under tulsi pipe lives were struggling to exist and I land up in the 24 n ½ floors in Marathon Heights n then the next one week I had lived the crème of the city and started my journey into Buddhism. The next living space was a friends place in Navy Nagar and my first brush with the lifeline of Mumbai, the local trains….wow! Even today I am amazed at the number of people who commute. And the trains have been the first traces of all kinds of lives breathing in the same nest, from corporate honchos to ‘apna gulli ka abdul bhai’ everyone travels together. Yes the stark inequality prevails through the first class and the second class. The difference in the full circle is in the second class it’s the smell of body odour, pure, unadulterated and in the first class it is the deodorants and perfumes!

Anyways from there I had started my journey to TISS. Wow the magical two years-people,places, experiences, learnings, lifeskills and transformations in me as a person. It weird how I saw changes and how I learnt there is nothing called right and nothing called wrong. However we might love black and white, greys rule! From outstanding people like Anshu or Rama or stories of Altaf Sir, sparks of Brilliance from Nagraj, Lobo or the engrossing classes of KPJ and the hottest faculty that turned out to be Sam’s bro its just been like a dream. If at one hand I knew Shiva on the other hand I also knew Bharath. Or suddenly in the land of Deonar I found cherry blossom in the drhrt Aj avtaar;If Sam spoke about Quran Sharif I would wonder the concoction of Jihad and the passion in Tarique would reason it out. Very caring seniors or supersweet Juniors, it seems there was nobody who was bad, if there was one Taranga in class there was also one Prakash, if Father Paul had his plethora of knowledge so was Gulrez’s convictions and fire within that made life in Room no XI so exciting. (Well I am so sure I never thought it was so interesting while I sat there). The TPC CSR or envisioning and trying to build up SAHER. The madness during Mumbai Floods or the historic relief work during tsunami…every experience has been for lifetime and I have never for a moment felt stagnated! And the literal travel around India from Kanyakumari to Kashmir life was a roller coaster ride-till the Cancer attacked!

The city is my dream, after TISS I got my first job in a microfinance consultancy firm, and breathed the first cheque! It was my ticket o complete freedom! It was an interesting learning and of course the emotional attachment of the first job. And people there, boy the variation is indeed stunning. The shade card would often go undefined for lack of words. But I had quit thinking it was not what I wanted to do when Point of View came my way, Bishakha is a super boss to work with. Rukmini and Pratiksha are amazing colleagues and u don’t even feel like its work, it seems fun at its best!
Right from the late night films to sitting by bandstand or Nariman Point, to Totos, 80s, Shack or Mondy’s or the amazing eateries in the city where few of them are like second home kitchen.
I cannot ever imagine the kind of friends I have met in that city. I met my soulmate in Mumbai, someone who has made me redefine life. She is just too special for me and I know I do not need words anymore for her. Dumbhead whose passion towards his goals have inspired me time and again, Fukcr whose zeal to live life midst greys is phenomenal. Munzu- the loyal communist buddy. Soulmediamate who has been my fighting spirit; And the several others who I will define in detail in my autobiography sometime! Someone like Satish who is friend with all the wise thoughts; sweetheart Ruchi and a very warm friend in Ashish (I still can’t believe what I had heard about him even before I met him, I can laugh my head off about that.) or one Rajeev who is an absolute darling! Rajesh, with whom I can speak tons of nonsense and still make sense. I met someone like Arjun Ray, who is a virtual stranger to me n yet it seems that we have been bumchums. There was Tiktiki with whom I did spend hours by sea discussing every lesser mortal’s existence. And also in tit bits of life meeting every single person has been a delight, absolute delight!

And of course I cannot ever even put in words meeting the quirk est feeling in a Mumbai pub. I mean I dunno how we walked by the Worli sea face or Bandstand or even from On the Platter to TISS when any distance seemed less for us. The Lint chocolates wrapped in the sweet nothings and travelling all the way to tell me today ‘u made me run around for good two months by acting busy’, swthrt I swear I was pretty busy;), synthetic thoughts was the sweetest revelation. It was also another revelation of an old relationship suddenly going out of the window, and I still have not figured out why my closest confidante vanished into oblivion.
Anyways, Quirk is the most wonderful thing that happened to me, it’s like taming the wild sea. With him I have learnt to enjoy silence and serenity. As individuals we are very different; he is the complacent, matured and level headed one, I have always been more spontaneous, wild, mad house. I still do not know how I got there; I do not know what attracted me to him. I do not know how on earth I gave up my treasured singleton status! Well however much I want to blame Sam n Dembla for it, its just the quirky charm that I fell for. And look at me today, I am actually committed, I am actually not into man-management anymore and most importantly I am much contended. Also life in the metro has been so memorable because of him. The whole aspect of some crisis would be dealt better because he would b around. At the same time I have completely smelt and absorbed freedom because of him. I never thought I could manage certain things n my own but I did, just because I took it on my ego trip and ha to prove it to him! On the other hand I have to be feeling really triumphant about the fact that this guy understands the need for space (I guess I was overjoyed when I understood that he understands the concept of space) and also that he is not an MCP or a patriarch. Its weird that he is probably the only man other than TB with whom the man-woman equation has not occurred! We have also seen our share of sunrise, flamingo sky and crescent moon at the same time we have also dealt with mundane realities of dal chawaal, no money at the end of the month and bills.
The concept of being together has reached a very matured level. We have our own issues, mostly because of other people’s precedence in life at different points (and often people we cannot ignore) but I do not know how having him around just takes care of everything. It is quite something as a revelation but the finer feminine sensibilities in me have been actualized probably for the first time with Quirk. Sunrise since the morning in December 2005 is especially beautiful. Or maybe its beauty awed me because I witnessed it after a long time. I crave to absorb beauty every moment -- completely soak up the aesthetic and have it pulsate through my veins, I want to wake up to the softer dawn forever and begin life in the arms of a dreamy reality called Quirk!

Ya now I know what it means again! While I was weaving such dreams and it was tuning into fine holistic embroidery the bacteria attacked.
So now after trying to fight the real estate boom, the terrible traffic, the awesome combination of Page 3 parties and Campaigns in Dharavi or finally finding the job that is 110% satisfying, I am now having to deal with movers and packers, biopsy reports, Tata Memorial Cabins and worried family and friends. In every practical sense being at Home is the obvious thing but I do not have a date to come back to Mumbai, I will not have things to do lists every Monday mornings and weekends will not be a complete delight!
Ok lets be fair, I am hoping to strike a fair deal ----.

I-the Cancer Vixen (cv)- Hey I will abide by all that’s prescribed and instructed

Cancer Bacterium (cb)- So? Your life do whatevr you want, dun worry we will not kill you

Cv – you dun understand I am gonna leave Mumbai, n life is gonna become very dull

Cb- so? You should have thot about this earlier and not invited us

Cv- grrr…. I ddn invite you guys, comeon

Cb- well babe lets jus accept it, you were plaintively irresistible for us

Cv- u dun understand…. I am losing out on a lot of stuff in life

Cb- (breaks into cocky laughter) poor you, lets see what can be done!

Cv- dun ya worry, I wouldn’t give you guys so much of a liberty and will throw you out of your habitat today!

Cb- ya babe, lets hope for the best.

And thus the cancer vixen left Mumbai and all that made life in this metro soooo vry special. Series of medication, strong medicines, and almost no good food to eat is gonna be what her life will be all about but I am hoping that she gets to come back. And as for me, Love you Mumbai and see you soon darling, keep the heart beating, the trains running and lives living, till we meet again,soon.

20th June 2007
19.45 hrs.