manmarziyaan - part 1

तेरे रंग विच रंग जावां 
मैं अब अभी 
तेरे संग संग बेह जावां 
मैं अब अभी 
सुनु मैं  तू जो फरमाए 
जैसी तेरी मर्ज़ी 
जिस पासे ले जाए 
जैसी तेरी मर्ज़ी 
सपने वही दिखाए 
जैसी तेरी मर्ज़ी 
मैं से जो तू चाहें 
जैसी तेरी मर्ज़ी 

इश्क़ वाली अर्ज़ियाँ 
मंज़ूर कर दियां 
कर ले घुसतकियाँ 
कर ले मनमर्ज़ियाँ 

~ Jaisi Teri Marzi, Shellee, Manmarziyaan

There is a direct flight from Singapore to Jaipur now. Isn’t that reason enough to book a ticket and fly away to that magical pink city? Maybe or maybe not. She was south indian, but her heart truly lay in the north. Kaveri hit Cntrl + T on her chromebook and opened up a different tab to distract her from that $ 230 return fare to Jaipur. If she lingered on it 5 mins more, her hand would reach into her handbag to get her wallet out and in the next 5 mins that ticket would be booked and she would be ready to fly. But looks like the Jaipur dream was still following her~  a tiny window popped up on the yoga article she was reading and there it was, the Scoot Air ad for SIN-JAI-SIN flashing a bright yellow and orange. Exasperated at it this nonsense compelling advertising, she got up from her couch to go make herself a cup of tea.

She’d recently attended this pottery exhibition and picked up some lovely pieces from a singaporean ceramist : Mud Rock : and her absolute favorite was this grey blue mug that was perfect for a cup of Chai or hot chocolate. There are very few instances in Singapore where one feels like drinking hot chocolate, she knew this mug was going to be used for chai a lot more than anything else. Someone had recently said to her, that we live in times where our attention spans are very very short. People get bored easily, they have multiple screens on them at any given points of time, they’ll be checking their whatsapp on their phones and on their desktops, they’ll more often than not be multi-tasking - basically, very rarely do we do only one thing at a time. This friend of hers told her  : I’ve started practicing the art of focusing on doing just one thing at a time : for eg, when I’m making a cup of tea, I’m only making that cup of tea, I am not checking my phone or cutting vegetables for dinner or putting the clothes to wash. That simple example came back to her as she poured water into her chai pan and lighted the stove, so she decided to put her phone away and only busied herself with the tiny details of making chai : peeling and crushing ginger. Then waiting, as she watched the water boil before adding the ginger in. This was followed by measuring tea leaves in the palm of her hand, and dropping it in when the ginger flavoured water started to boil.

When that first shade of perfection :  that beautiful dark brown with hints of gold : appeared,she started to add the milk in. And then the wait again. It was now time for all the flavour from the ginger to blends in with the aroma of the tea leaves as they unfold in that water-milk mixture. The Chai then starts to raise to the surface, she lowers the flame, the chai simmers and withdraws back down. She raises the flame again to have it come right back up to the brim of the pan, and at that perfect moment when it’s still contained but would overpour the next second, she switches the stove off and covers the pan with a plate to let that magical drink settle before she uses a sieve to pour it into her lovely mug.

That was beautiful, she thinks to herself, all these steps she would most probably have blindly followed without thinking twice about it, as would a robot, unfeelingly. But letting herself slow down and stop and focus her energies into just making that cup of chai was some sort of meditation. Our lives are so starved for a moment of stillness and quiet, that even such a small act of pausing had such an immense impact. She picked up her mug, took a short sip and went towards her living room, smiling to herself. The small joys of life. Chai. Definitely one of them. She hears her Chat ping, and see her father messaging her asking if she were free for a hangout. She says yes and dials in. A chat with mom and dad while she sips on chai, the Saturday Gods seem to be smiling on her today. They speak about the wedding they had been to recently, about how the food was great (Indians always talk about the food at weddings. always) and the decor was very minimal and tastefully done, and how everyone was asking about how their daughter was and that they were expecting to see a wedding invitation soon. How? How do random relatives (or relatives of relatives):

1) expect to be invited to her wedding and

2) blatantly involve themselves with something so private to her and her parents.

It’s not as if she didn’t know the answer to theabove questions. She was Indian enough to know where the “when is your daughter getting married” question was coming from, but having been away from India for a while now, she found that inquisitiveness was more and more a violation of her privacy. Why should it be anyone else’s concern that she was 28 and still unmarried ?

She didn’t let her frustration show through her chat with mom and dad, and thankfully they didn’t have yet another proposal from yet another boy for her to evaluate, so they let it be as well and let the topic slide. They spoke about her parent's new additions in the garden, about how their dog was really lonely when they went away for a few days last week, she noted down her mother’s recipe of this mutton dish she was making for dinner, her mother told her to eat well and sleep well : there were dark circles under her eyes  - more such mother-daughter talk and then they said bye and hung up. Chai done, talk done. She switched to the tab that was open next to the Hangout window and saw the Scoot ad again and knew that she was going to go to Jaipur. The chai had decided it.

There is nothing in your life, no decision that a cup of chai can not help resolve. You will know, if not during, definitely after your chai what it’s going to be. It’s exactly what they say about flipping coins : before the coin lands, irrespective of whether it’s heads or tails : while it is still up in the air, you know what option you really truly want, because you’re hoping that’s what the outcome is. With Kaveri, this part of being, this indecisiveness of “what shall i do?”, “shall i or shall i not” was so pronounced that sometimes she couldn’t decide if she should take a shower now or in 30 minutes. Sometimes she wonders how she manages to live her life successfully as an adult when she struggles with these mindless daily decisions. So, the point is, before she even switched off that Hangout with her parents, she knew she wanted to go to Jaipur. She was always very instinctive, and this timesomething in her gut told her that she should go. That she needs to be in Jaipur in January, maybe she wanted to attend the Jaipur Lit fest, or maybe she just wanted to be in the north of india in the winter, maybe she just wanted to see the amer fort just once more, maybe she wanted to stay in that majestic hotel, the oberoi villas. Something, whatever it was, was willing her to go to jaipur and so, she was going to go.

She booked her ticket and was all set to fly out to Jaipur for a 6 day trip end Jan during her Chinese New Year break. Now the exciting part about booking hotels  - she decided to open the Oberoi Hotels site just to check how bad the damage would be if she treated herself to that luxury and after a few clicks, she realises that it’s not that bad at all! She gets a grat deal on that website, and instantly books the property for 6 nights and ends up paying just about 150 SGD more than what she would have paid with her other option.

She shuts her laptop and realises what she has just done : in a matter of exactly 20 minutes, she has booked herself a trip to Jaipur where she knows no one and knows not what she is going to do since the LitFest would be long over anyway and then chuckles, at her own madness.

When the day eventually arrives, she is rushing to finish her work at catch her 8:00PM flight from Changi. The day when you’re due to travel was always so hectic, she is always scrambling to tie up loose ends, make sure her work doesn’t get affected while she is away, she often forgets to eat her meals on such days, and to top it all it decided to pour cats and dogs in singapore that afternoon. The 'can’t see beyond 5 feet , it’s doomsday' kind of rain. She had left her luggage at home, since she wanted to take a shower before heading out. She got home, packed up , took a quick shower and opened her phone to book a cab. GrabTaxi was surging, and she didn’t even have the heart to open Uber. Thankfully, the MRT station from her house was on the East West line and a direct connect to the airport express  - she saved $34 and spent $1.80 on the train instead. She makes a mental note to herself : always take the train for your personal trips, you have no reason NOT to! Thankfully, she had budgeted herself enough time to do that - the roads would anyway be crowded and traffic moving slowly, thanks to the downpour.

Changi Airport, as beautiful as it is in regular non-peak times of the year, during the holidays : it is just absolutely nightmarish, like all other airports of the world. Actually, it’s only nightmarish if you are flying a budget airline and Scoot Air unfortunately happens to be the king of budget in Asia. Thankfully, she is only carrying a carry on and wouldn’t have to go through the horrific queues. She collects her boarding pass from a kiosk and walks through immigration.

No presents to buy for anyone, so she sits at Chutney’s for an amazing cup of filter coffee. Kaveri’s south indian preferences showed up occasionally and food was one such instance : there were few things that the hidden south indian in her enjoyed  : filter coffee (or kaapi as they say), maddur vada, masala dosa, rasam, kesari baath, and karnataka sambhar (which triumphs over tamil/kerala sambhar according to her) were a few of those things. Chutney’s surprised her with their excellent coffee much better than drinking that filtered down teh C that Kiliney Kopitiam serves. She once made the mistake of ordering kaya toast from there and almost gagged at how raw the egg tasted in their kaya, she managed to control her inners and throw the remainder of kaya toast in the bin. And she hated Killiney for making her waste food. Especially Kaya Toast. Blasphemy truly. Why couldn’t they simply open a Toast Box at the airport she wondered? A drink before her travels after she has checked in was a must for her, and frankly, she would prefer the Toast Box Teh C and Toast over anything. Maybe even the filter coffee she had just devoured. But beggars can’t be choosers so Filter coffee it is.

In fact it had satisfied her craving for a hot drink nevertheless, and so she does what she always does with things she likes : has one more. Again, a very Kaveri thing to do : a pair of trousers that fit perfectly : buy two in different colors, lovely handmade ceramic mugs : buy two in different colors : she doesn’t do it with everything, but for things that call out to her (yes, trousers do speak to her) she gives in. And that filter coffee really called out to her, so she gets one more to go and walks towards her gate : F59 : all the way at the very end of a very long corridor. Thank God for travelators, this is almost half a kilometer away, her cup of steaming hot coffee was over by the time she gets there. Perfect timing though, they wouldn’t have let her take it in anyway. She goes through security, boards her flight and is seated on 6F listening to Ibeyi’s River on her Spotify and it hits her, she was going to Jaipur for nothing at all. The number of times she has done things for nothing at all, would make amazing content for  a small short 100 page book.Either the Scoot Air  remarketing online advertising campaign was really working on a buffoon like her, or she was just listening to the sound of her soul and following it, all the way to Jaipur.

She’d booked a hotel airport pick up, she didn’t want to risk taking cab in the middle of the night especially when the Oberoi property was a bit further away from the city. The representative was waiting for her with a sign board with her name on it. She gives him a warm smile and walks towards him. He responds with a beaming smile of his own : Rajasthani hospitality clubbed with the Oberoi heritage : all that money well spent, she thinks to herself. “Namaste madam, I am Ram Singh” he says with a short bow.  Wow what an utterly original name in this part of the country she thinks to herself, she cuts any sarcasm in her greeting though and thanks him profusely for picking her up at this unGodly hour.

She then looks around and pulls her shawl a little tighter around her, it’s end January and the weather is exactly how she had expected it to be. The kind of cold where you can be comfortable with light warm clothes, a shawl and scarf and maybe socks. It’s perfect weather to sit out in the lawn and enjoy your cup of chai, without the chill reaching your bones and freezing you to immobility. She started to think about that kullad waali chai.

Ram Singhi Ji and Kaveri first ride in silence, then he tries to make polite conversation about her flight, about her stay, about Singapore. And then she asks him in Hindi where in Rajasthan he is from. The fact that she spoke to him in Hindi and that she didn’t have an accent at all, seemed to have eased him tremendously, a little too much  maybe, because for the next 40 mins of their drive, he didn’t stop talking. She initially tried to listen and respond, then feigned interest and murmured in agreement, and eventually pretended to sleep, and maybe also did genuinely doze off for a bit, but her alertness about being in a strange place with an unknown person kicked in and she is wide awake again. She fogs up her breath against the car window and smiles resting her head back on the seat and looking out to the dark blue night. They were in the outskirts of the city, and even from the seat of her car she could gaze up and see a clear sky ridden with stars, stretching over acres of farmland. She lowered her window a bit and a brisk cold air hit her nostrils. The sharpness eased after a few seconds and she could only smell freshness - as though the earth and sky had met far in the horizon and made their own perfume.

When they finally got inside the hotel gates, she sighed a loud sigh, being both happy and sad. She loved long rides, but this time around she was also happy, to be rid of incessant chatter but more importantly happy to finally hit the bed : there was no chance she was going to wake up before 10 am tomorrow morning. “Breakfast will be served from 6-10am”  the friendly receptionist informs her as she helps her check-in - ok, maybe she will sleep in until 9am then. Maybe she could have breakfast and go back to sleep! Kaveri gives herself a mental slap on this thought, and chides herself for being lazy, she didn’t come all the way here to sleep in a hotel bed. But her lazy self comes forth to her rescue : but it’s not any hotel bed, it’s the Oberoi Raj Vilas, garden facing royal room bed. That justifies a lay in.

She thanks Ram Singh Ji, who was patiently waiting they were working on her check-in formalities. After it’s all done, she thanks him again, says a good night, slips him a Rs 500 note and walks behind the call boy who is walking her to her room. She congratulates herself again for booking this magnificent property, it is truly majestic. “Can’t wait to do some yoga in those lovely grounds” she thinks to herself. The room is small, but very royal indeed, it’s almost like being a princess. Almost. She thanks the call boy and shuts the door and very efficiently, unpacks, organises her clothes in the wardrobe, lays out her toiletries in the bathroom and powder room, changes into her night clothes and jumps on the bed. Bliss. This is what it feels like. Lovely white hotel bed sheets, with amazing jaipuri prints on the razai and pillow covers. She rubs on some hand cream, puts a little lip balm on her lips and shuts out the lights and closes her eyes - before she knows it and before small thoughts, worries, plan and concerns begin to cloud her mind, pure tiredness takes over and she drifts off into her blissful jaipuri winter dreams.

...end of part one.