Author: Shefali Shah

I’m everything and nothing and all that’s in between.

Travelling clothes of sisterhood

Today I have cleaned two wardrobes and removed so many clothes that they could fill up two wardrobes 🤣. Its result oriented and extremely therapeutic and satisfying.

Ive figured a simple logic and I’m actually very very proud of myself for it, if there is something in my cupboard no matter how brand-new it is, if i haven’t worn it for two years, I’m never gonna wear it again so give it away. 😇

Unless it’s kept for sentimental value like my wedding sari or mom’s embroidered napkins she made for the boys when they were born. 😘

So all of the clothes that are out of my wardrobe are now going to staff and more so to my closest friends.

I wonder why Hand me downs are looked down upon?

Infact when nivs, ron , dimple Minal and me used to make a day of it.

And honestly when an elaborate outfit costs you as much as a a fridge why wouldn’t you use it again? I mean you use the fridge every day right? Its durable and reusable.

But let me be clear I don’t buy clothes that cost me a fridge or my kidney. In fact at a point of time my partner in crime @sharmishta godbole and me we had one black dress between us, so whenever either of us had to be presentable and go somewhere we would shuffle it between us. It’s seen new year parties, girls lunches,dress up and stay at home evenings and my award functions. It’s seen us through our thick and thin (shape and life) And if we were both going for the same event we’d ignore the ‘dress up’ code and instead we would ‘dress down’ looking like unkempt, underdressed twins🤣.

That was the time when no designer wanted to dress me. Today it’s changed Thanks to Radhika styling me and also suddenly I’ve garnered respectability🤔.

Some very reputed fashion magazine actually called me a style diva. And that credit goes to pallu sandy,rads. Me and style diva aren’t synonymous trust me. And I’m laughing the loudest.

Ofcourse I buy clothes, the ones I’ll wear all the time, the manta bring repeat repeat till it’s deplete. Some of my kaftans have reduced in height from ankle,To calf,to shirt , to short top length. Thanjs to the pups chewing the edges. Any shorter and I’ll use it as a bandana .Also Im a staunch follower of the Indian house hold art of converting a t-shirt to mop. jfyi sleeves can be used as a head band. I find this whole innovation ingenious. Extremely cutting edge, whilst cutting cloth)

Also @Vaishu and me we both buy two different things we both like so that I can wear what she’s got and vice versa.

Like emotions, pain, hurt , joy, food , laughter, clothes too have to be shared.

It makes me happy to take from my friends and give em mine. And mostly It makes me ridiculously happy that my wardrobe doesn’t look like narnia anymore. 💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻

But with all this sharing and bonding comes one condition….no matter how much I love em I won’t give my old worn out kaftans and I will steal theirs too😝. (There are so many times I’ve gone to my sisters neha,pallu,tarranum worn their kaftan and never had any intent of returning it.😛.

Clothes like friends is comfort for me. Long lived in, memories like hand woven mittens that keep me warm. And occasionally a risqué toe unraveling the weave to look for more. But the mitten will still stretch itself to keep me warm and safe.

Happy anniversary to tolerant us

THEN

  1. Start planning for the anniversary from a month ago
  2. Buy gift for him & me & tell him to gift it to me.
  3. Order his favourite cake.
  4. Chill the Champagne. 2 bottles for the eve & the day of the anniversary.
  5. Write long letters
  6. Do special dinner with flowers & candles to bring in our anniversary. Or
  7. book a table at a special restaurant, get them to make it special.
  8. Get cake with love you written on it.
  9. Chill an expensive champagne, bring out the crystals and clink glasses looking into each other’s eyes
  10. On anniversary have a big party.
  11. Get a beautiful flowy gown.
  12. Bleach face, colour hair, put face mask & dewy make up & get a voluminous blowdry
  13. Look sexy for the party
  14. Call friends & family who have bought us closer
  15. Get one more cake
  16. Raise a toast to eachother promising life long love & togetherness. Odes to each other.
  17. Get everyone to say nice things about us as a couple
  18. Wear sexy lingerie & crash before I hit the bed or land up with my head in the pot puking the cheers out

TODAY-

  1. Remember the date only cause someone else reminded you
  2. Remind spouse
  3. Too late to plan anything
  4. No need for cake. Have some half dead Diwali raisins it’s good enough
  5. No need to write a to do list for home and kids in a letter
  6. Forget dinner. Eat what is cooked
  7. Don’t like it eat maggi
  8. No need for cake found some ice cream we get for the pups
  9. No champagne no crystal. Have beer or gelusil depending on what the intestines choose today
  10. House under renovation no need for party
  11. Go for someone else’s wedding & together laugh at their folly
  12. Bleached face for Tomorrows shoot & someone else’s wedding but face burnt and I look like red brick .
  13. Find sari to complement moneys ass coloured face.
  14. Meet friends at the cost of someone else’s wedding
  15. No cake don’t want diabetes… Oh somebody did sent cakes & flowers, so do hell with diabetes
  16. Get covid test done not for safe sex but for shoot tomorrow
  17. No gift saving for multiple work related rtpcr tests in the future
  18. Raise toast to our survival instincts and resilience and tolerance of each other
  19. Thank god for keeping us covid free and all our nonsense and normalcy, for our ups and downs and still being strong and tolerant of each other and our 4 babies that bind us like super glue
  20. Try not hitting each other’s head off
  21. Await kids zoom call not for the wishes but to see what colour their hair is as of today
  22. Roll eyes send copy cut paste broadcast message of thankyou to all who wished us
  23. Wear worn out night wear and snore away to glory with 2 fluff babies in between us
  24. Put old happy pics (clicked at gun point) for all to see. And a reality check once to remind us of how special each day is in its normalcy
  25. Happy 21st anniversary to us

620 Horse Power

In my mind I’m a formula 1 race driver.

yes I am.

No one estimates The power of speed .

Engine moving at 620 horse power the body of the speed machine balancing on 720kgs of metal. Flying against wind . So powerful it cracks air like a flash of lightning.

One Too fast, one too soon and one tip.

But I’m learning from baby steps Schumacher took driving a go kart vehicle where his helmet barely rose above the steering. My head whizzing at the speed of lightning, body stunted,never matching the flying fire sparks.The helmets futile effort to contain the twists and turns of the mind.

Speed is what I thrive on. The burning of tires not indicating caution but instead indicating thrill. Risk ominous and omnipresent…. Gushing in my veins. Addictive.

Muscle memory now. On Autopilot. But That’s how at times the cars flip over.

I’m moving too fast. Even for my liking. Hopping from one car to another, commanding a different engine each day, reverberating with the whirr so loud I come alive with it. And besides I don’t have a track. I dive into the narnia of uncharted territories of my mind and theirs. Erratic,frenzied,over occupied cluttered and clustered with decisions to make in a blink of an eye. I do, but sometimes the sandstorms that Rise from my fuel cloud my eyes.

I clean up well and I clean up fast. And my sharp look steers me , sometimes not where I need to be.

I’m hopping from form to form. One body to another, all minds and hearts jumbled, luckily not yet an entwined mash of steel.

And Ofcourse then there’s who I was born as. Not acquired not won but just born . The limitations of not being Schumacher .

I’m too flustered to think or eat. A Bike racing at 350 k/mph in the decadent night somewhere within, I can test The metallic fervour.

I clean my tongue aggressively to take of the white coat of comfort leaving a sharp stab of acidic discomfort. Sharpening my mind with unpredictability. Blinded by speed and eyes fogged with intense focus. senses sharp ,electric.

The flag line at the end of the final lap isn’t too far away.

She was one of a kind

She was a hangover

stains of flowers on a bed.

a gash of a broken glass bangle.

silence without sub tittle.

She was the moon rising like pride

secrets entwined.

She was a bitten lip,

a chewed nail,

Smudged ink in an unopened mail.

A cloud that rose from essence sticks

Wisp of hair i couldn’t fix.

She was spices that sting.

Drenched saris that cling.

She was an Unapologetic spill of wine

A shiver down my spine.

She was all things I’ll never forget

She was just one of her kind.

‘Is it too soon???’

Has anyone faced this dilemma? The perennial question of ‘is it too soon?’

We meet people. And without any reason,logic or explanation with some we just click. Like a switch goes on.

There isn’t much shared. No life altering conversations. No synch of thoughts. No earth shattering feelings. Not enough time or interaction beyond basics. But there’s a shift.

Ofcourse you know it’s temporary, limited interactions enveloped in courtesies and polite conversations. But there’s a look that lingers just that wee bit longer. There’s a crack of an unintended laugh. A thrown away word or line, meaning nothing, unannounced tentativeness and unexpected silence.

No there’s no ‘And they lived happily ever after.’ Thats extremely over rated. Ever after is only till this moment,this week,this month,this project or till this (train) journey wraps.

Some do stay in touch but mostly even with best intentions moving on is an expected.

So what do you do. Do you make that effort to connect, even if whatever it is is nascent with no predicteds.

Do you take a leap of faith and express, even if it’s politically incorrect, even if it’s overstepping cordiality and flirting on probability.

Or hold back and pass each day with formalities. Skimming facades of what everyone sees and everyone shows.

Or Do you make the most of ‘NOW’? Do you break that ice with a honest ‘I want to know.And I want to tell’.

Sharing details which may not even matter but those that lead to a superfluous flow of potent connect. in NOW and HERE. Only that is entirety.

Imagine if you take time to move from ‘hi, hello , glad to meet you’ to ‘do you feel it too?’ It’ll take eons of ‘WHAT IF’s’. And honestly we don’t have that much time.

So what to do? Keep lingering on the prologue and never read The book? Waiting for the other to reach out (mostly that may not happen because probably even they are waiting for the same from you) And you live wondering what happened then. Or rather what could’ve?

Or you dive in foolishly and become a part of their story. Albeit A short story but still…..

Such a pity to let go of what could have been just because I wasn’t careless enough.

Hair raising lessons of a lesser knowing parent!!!

Learnt pretty early in life to avoid scissors and razor near children’s hair. Particularly if held in my hand.

Eg-Namaste London. We were in London. VIPul on a day off decided I was to give him a trim cause Salina in London are very expensive (everything is) and cutting non existent 20 had a half hair wasn’t worth the money. So he sat in the tub his back to me, me perched on the edge of the tub behind him armed with a electric buzzer and infrong of us on the other edge of the tub sat our two little boys waiting to see the show of their life time…. it was so cute, happy faces, happy family, all surrounding head (pun intended) of family sitting on the edge of a tub in a warm and cozy huddle oblivious to the cold outside, making for the cutest family picture ever. Until I switched on the buzzer(on the lowest ) and run it from the nape of the victims neck to the mid of his head. dunno why but the buzzer had decided to shave off a fat strip of hair off his head. I froze staring at the reverse Mohawk not really knowing how to salvage it. It was pretty uneventful from them on. Kids saw my expression, vipul saw their expression and realised the only option was to forego whatever was left on his head.

I shaved him bald and he didn’t have to waste a penny on haircut shampoo or conditioner. All was good in the shah world.

Kids haircuts were a different story that ideally should have been with me minus arms. Mine or electric. Snipping a ear was of Ofcourse my concern but the hair, oh the hair. Soft Curly locks…..

They weren’t too happy sitting in a barbers /stylist chair. So both boys ka mundan was done by us at home. First I did not want to cut their hair let alone shave it. But wasn’t interested in ritualistic discussions with inlaws. Too boring. Anyway. It was almost a 4 hour long process for each. Not done together but a year apart.

It was our own little ceremony. Little Aryaman (then in a year a repeat with little Maurya) I Played music gave them crayons , and let them colour walls while vipul shaved Aryamans hair. Bit by bit, section by section. Carefully. Showering the lill one in between to wash the hair irritating his neck and bare torso. Powdering and continuing again. Not a nick,not a scratch,not a cry. Proud father for achieving a difficult feat. Sad mommy cleaning those soft swirls of cappuccino hair. A happy beaming baby not recognising himself. And white walls coloured with a vibgyor of crazy lines and wild imagination.

The same was a copy cut repeat with Maurya after a year.

As they grew older haircuts took different turns, salons, styles I could experiment with (which I knew wouldn’t be my privilege for much longer) and normally I don’t care attitude of the kids. Sometimes they did, wanted the lightning Sign or spikes or buzz cuts on the sides and mop on top.

As expected and pretty soon I wasn’t the one to take them for cuts and each time they went i braced myself for who walked in the door that day. David, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Messi or Malinga. And once 2 humans with flat straight curtain of hair on their face walked into the house. But nothing shocked me anymore.

Until (20 days so. Was reeling under shock to share this now) my pups were send for a trim by Aryaman. Sent not taken. First step towards disaster. All haircuts should be under Parental guidance. Anyway I came home from work waiting for the pups to come from the spa. All soft and fluffy and pristine white paws spelling like fresh warmth and pure love. They potter pattered in and we all froze. This time it was froze at minus 3800 degree. They had gone as wolves and come back as ratatouilles. It was a disaster of epic proportions. This wasn’t a trim it was exactly what the salon didn’t understand. Poor babies looked like a hybrid of an emu, rat, with a bush of a tail and a mask of a husky.

And it affected them more than it had affected vipul. Their Maine their pride shaved to an inch and a half.

But my babies are swelling up again, hair by hair… like all members of the shah family survives all hair and tgere experiments.

Love all to 20 all!!!!

20years is a long time. Very long time For “and they lived happily ever after” A long time filled with a million moments. Of love and respect, connection, compassion and togetherness, of passion and poetry(in motion. A 17 and a 18yr old). It’s much much more…..

But also of volcanic eruptions, and intense storms. About disagreements and arguments. fights,screaming matches, silent treatment, negotiations, differences. Not being able to see each other’s pov… its celebrating immense intense love every moment since our boys were born To blaming the other for the kids follies. A divide demarcating the good parent from the bad parent.

Sometimes its also about giving up, questioning “how blind could love be”

It’s about farting and digging your nose unabashedly. Cracking jokes at others cost, getting annoyed and coming back with a snide remark.

Sometimes were flawless and others flawed.

Sometimes were a conjoined pillar of strength and other times were battered shoes and crushed self esteem.

Sometimes it was a match of passion and calm. Over excited and bored. Over expressive and cool as a cucumber. There’s no doubt indescribable attachment but there were times of detachment too.

There were times and then there were times, of immaturity and then of complete maturity and growth together. Holding hands may not be not so often but we got each other’s back every single living day. There were times Snd then there were times……..

20 years of good, Very good and not so good, all in a single package that like most things in life didn’t have a guarantee of working beyond a few year and yet after 20 years…..we still work!!!!

From love all to 20 all…….That’s a great score!

STOP

A repeat of the last gruesome memory eroded with the scalpels of new. Each time the same prayers, the same screams of anger, the same humiliation, cry of helplessness and the same violation.

Each nerve of my body shreded, I lay uprooted from my being , stripped off my intestines and sense of self.

The next time the same horror, this time my skin burnt, charred for life, scared for ever. Like my insides.

This time my spine that held me tall broken into fragments of my once existent pride. My tongue that had many stories to tell is lost words forever now, scraped are the stories I wove .

Cut, torn , pricked,prodded, beaten broken, and battered.

My blood, my life giving, life saving blood drained out of me leaving behind clots of my resilience I held on to with crushed fingers and crushed hope.

Violated , destroyed, finished in mind body and soul i still fought to hold on, breath again, stand tall, heal the mutilation, speak again and fight. Fight for my life, for my dignity, my right and for justice.

But….. I withered, rotting within myself . A mere reminisce of who i used to be.I died.

I died

Hoping the demonic heads are destroyed before they rise to annihilate yet another me.

STOP