Kohl Night

A pile of clothes on the bed, her bare back is covered by the black dress she chooses to wear. She pulls out the hair stuck in the back of her dress and fluffs them. Looking into her reflection in the mirror, she smiles… retouches her make up and blows a kiss to her self. She slips on the black boots on her fair skin and velvet feet. The zipper gradually covers all the bare feet till the knees. She gets up to leave and her shoes announce her departure. Plop, plop, plop! She loves the attention she gets. She enters the zone of the oblivious, dark and tenebrous. The cowl on her neckline teases every gaping eye. The glow on her hair reflects every color of the light. You can’t help but notice those red lips and a cigarette going in and out of her mouth. The strobes caress her one after the other. The laser aims at her, the disco ball sparkles upon her. The fog hides her. The beams search for her. The music plays for her. The smoke that makes her cigarette turn to ash is also making other eyes burn. Her hair tosses and covers her face and they all yearn to get a glimpse of her… the kohl in her eyes melts and smudges all over her white cheeks. An ogling eye notices the moist eyes. The eyes that were comfortably moist in the dark and shut as the strobe flashed on them… are they trying to say something?

Splash!

The alley is quiet. The air as still as a dead body. A sudden rush of feet breaks the noise in the alley. The heels screech through the silence like they are asking for help. They stutter at the door, panting, the feet confused which direction to take and suddenly they find their destination.

Plop goes one show flying and the other lay listless on the floor on its side. The satin gown falls on the floor and the pin unfurls soft conditioned tresses that bounce on the back. Sudden motion makes them swirl and bounce from side to side. The gasping grows faster and then… SPLASH!

A blob of water that split from the splash drenches the high heels. Hair, float on the surface and shine back the light in the pool. Blue hallo inside the pool, blurred vision distorted by the disturbance in water and tiny sparkling bubbles that carry oxygen. Nothing could wash the tears. The dark blue sky above and the light blue sparkling water beneath had only one string of life obstructing… the one that floats… waiting to find its course.. above or below! Splash… doesn’t wash all there was…

Preeto Singh

That's me! That's not me actually but that's how i have begun to be known as. I have nothing more random than this name attached to me in my life, apart from my thoughts that is... I do not know where this name originated... i do not know why it originated in the first place and i do not know why my name is tweaked to become Preeto singh. But after 8 yrs of this randomness association, i have started living this name and realized how almost everybody calls me by that name.

Two totally disconnected souls who may have met me at totally different instances will have called me by that name. The first time i remember i was 'christened' Preeto Singh by Gaurav Sharma, Sameep Nanda and Ajay Munjal. I guess it was for my punjabi-ness despite of being a maharashtrian. Each of them had given me a name which added upto this rather longish and bizzare 'Preeto Singh Ahluwalia(gaurav) Patpatiya(ajay) Randhawa(nanda)' name which is more bizzare than Eyjafjallajökull* volcano. *(see how cleverly i pasted that weird name coz i couldnt spell it!)

All the people i have met who have ever nicknamed me have called me Preeto Singh and i still fail to know why. My appetite i agree is Punjabi... my looks i don't think are punjabi but i definitely don't think are marathi either... but that doesnt mean i look punjabi. So why this name?

This one time in college in our amphi lecture room, one girl stopped me and asked me...'aap sardarni ho?' cut to - KYA KYA KYA???? nahi... kyon kyon kyon??? Why would a punjabi ask me if i were sardarni? I woke up to my punjabi-ness that day. 

Nicknames to me are your way of remembering people. Nicknames are given to people who become so close to you that you can call them anything and they actually respond to it. For me, i am bad with names. I cannot put faces to names, so i put names to faces. My own nicks and they are usually never related to the actual name. Nannu, Gutdu, Bob, Dhimnee, Monika, Tiny, Aanshubhari, radha rani, ICG, blah and blah... are some nicks i gave to people as opposed to Preeto singh rewarded to me!

Sometimes this name intrigues me, but most times i love it. It oozes closeness, warmth, belongingness of a kind. I don't mind it actually. I have been awarded by several nick names throughout... PP, PH (programming head for non radios), Nunnuji (saujanya: Charu), Martha (saujanya: prateek), Fdeeti (saujanya: Iti), Bossi (saujanya: Safa) etc... but so far the one name that has been unanimously chosen by Nickname gods is Preeto Singh. Nonetheless, I accept this name with an open heart and confused mind!

Resurgence

I am back after a really really long hiatus. While i was away, i have experienced the most diverse emotions one can ever possibly get to experience in a lifetime. I never thought my life would be such a roller coster ride interesting enough to write about. As i write i rewind to the slow september last year when i came back from the film shoot and the world seemed to have stagnated for me. i din't know where i was heading and what i was doing... till i got this tv show with opti.

These bunch of highly creative and funny people i had worked with before were no strangers to me... i was told to write comedy and i failed so badly that i did not attempt ever again hahaha... i knew i couldnt write comedy even though i am funny otherwise... that day i realised its not easy to make people laugh. So i joined the team instead. Since then i have had a blast working on the funniest show on indian tv. Skit after skit i grasped comedy. Each day i grew fonder of the people i worked with. I made friends for life... people with whom i shared the dirtiest jokes with... darkest secrets with and lightest banter with. I felt this warmth after a really long time.

I have met with the most fascinating turns and twists in life during this sabbatical from blogging. I wrote professionally for the first time, i became so broke for a while that i dint have no money to buy food... i got all the money from every where suddenly and vanished suddenly also... i went to manali on a holiday on my hard earned money for 10 blissful days (of which i shall write about separately) and came back enlightened like never before... and the most important resurgence was when a friend of mine opened my eyes to the biggest problem of my life and eased that burden off in a matter of seconds. It was surreal.... like 'why din't you think of this before???' like ' where were you all these days????'

Suddenly my urge for writing has upped manifolds. Suddenly i have realised i CAN write and its always very very humbling to know that so many out there relate to your writing or atleast understand where i come from.

I am back and i shall write more often coz i have too much to share. I want to explore what  my mind beholds!