The Tea Pot...

(Friends, I am very sorry for my absence. Last few weeks have been very hectic. The only respite was a week I could manage out of office. I traveled with family from Bangalore to Mumbai and then from Mumbai to Dwarka by train. And finally today I could get some time to write.)


It was around 2 in the night on 24th December. I was traveling towards Dwarka in a train from Mumbai.

Expectedly everyone around was sleeping. Kuhoo and Adi were sleeping on the lower berth. I too was trying to sleep lying on the upper one.

I looked at Kuhoo. She looks more beautiful in slumber, perhaps even more when I can’t touch her. In the start of this month she had complained I was getting too involved in office again.

Actually I was. Therefore I had a taken a week break. It was good time to retrospect and to catch up with life.

I remember our honeymoon trip to Darjeeling when we talked and walked across the hill roads of Darjeeling hand in hand. I had decided to balance my work and life. Since then five years have passed; and I have failed every year though with changing percentage.

In one evening at Chowrasta, Darjeeling, we had stopped for tea. Kuhoo asked me about my priorities in life. Unprepared, I muttered something I don’t remember. Actually I had never thought seriously about anything other than my career plan. She had smiled and told, “Hope you will include me in your priorities”.

And I remember her half-filled eyes when she started telling about her childhood, her likes and dislikes, every little thing she wanted to try but was never allowed, every little dream she wanted to live with but could not pursue, the fantasies and expectations she confined within herself.

Unfortunately a girl child in our society is taught more don’ts than do’s. Behavioral controls are often too futuristic and uncalled for. This may result into lack of confidence and independence. We talked for hours. I promised her the world. She told I was her world.

Today I see some signs of change in myself but she fights for her world to be intact. Sometimes I feign being practical but she wants to live in the dreams I had shown. And her faith in those dreams is so strong that it changes the reality I live in.

During our trip to Dwarka, I could spend good time with Kuhoo. I saw her sometimes in retrospect and sometimes giggling carelessly, sometimes in a quiet long hug and sometimes feeding the sea birds on boat.

I remember Kuhoo telling me once, “I am like a tea-pot. I have more steam inside than what appears at aperture”.

The only resolution I have for New Year is, I will try to bring more smiles to my near and dear ones in this year.

Wish you all a very Happy New Year.