thoughts incorporated

Fingers Crossed

2011-12-27T23:57:00.000+05:30

Dakota Skye made me wonder about making choices again.
Was I letting things happen to me? Or was I making things happen?
Same thing whatever.

Sometimes, it looks like a weed caught mid stream in a gush of strong currents.
It sounds like wind howling through a scrawny forest
It feels unnervingly, impatiently exciting, ridiculous, scary and right. All at once.
It's possible.

I might have found Happiness. Involuntarily blessed with something people spend their entire lives searching for.
Lucky me.

Assurance - Reading between lines

2011-12-20T00:26:00.000+05:30

It's funny how I try to figure you by reading things you underline.

Check List

2011-12-08T23:34:00.000+05:30

PS: What we forgot.

Go to the dry cleaner's.
Hunt for a home.
Pick the right shade of red.
Call the packers and movers.
Sign an agreement.
Rent a house.
Lease a life.
Call the packers and movers.
Go to the printer's
The dry cleaner's, the tailor's
Figure routes.
Book tickets.
......................

Fall in love?
I'd like to.
Et tu?

There is beauty in the World, Ka-ching!

2011-12-06T20:19:00.000+05:30

Rural Maharashtra.
October 2011

The Exchange

2011-11-24T00:41:00.001+05:30

Minutes slip. They slide into moments. Moments collide. Seconds spill over. Time reels out of hand.
I gasp for breath.

I don't know why I'm breathing any longer. A part of my soul I have already traded.

Some for your sake, some for yours
Some for his
Some for its
And some for ours.

Was it a good deal?

Don't tell me,
It was rhetorical.

For excuse me!
I'm the one
With no
rhetorical sense.

Wisdom for the Day

2011-09-26T19:59:00.000+05:30

Smile on a Monday morning, because who knows, by the end of the evening you'll be frowning again.

Do not call a spade, a spade.

Mundane conversations with strangers are better than arguments with your mother.

No matter how much you decide you won't let something bother you, it will bother you.

Ignorance is bliss, only for a while.

It all adds up...and the answer is never 42.

It takes more than a happy-songs playlist to put the spring back in your step.

Hopeless as we are, we always peg our hope on Hope.

Give me Hope, Joanna!

I miss

2011-09-25T23:07:00.001+05:30

Driving down roads - crowded or otherwise
Watching countless episodes of a sitcom - back to back
Polishing my silver earrings and bangles
Painting my toe nails
Laughing with my folks
Scanning the piles of books in the pavement shops till the book beckons and finds me
Pink colored bubble gum that came in a pink and blue wrapper. Before Boomer.
Shopping for saris for mom
Drama - in all forms and sizes
Listening to my grandmom's stories
Attending random film fests in the city
The insanity of my hostel days
Not having friends around me all the time
The magic of comforting conversations
Writing, simply.( I seem to resort to boring lists very often these days)
Having time to think, make up, wonder
Talking to you, you, you and you!
The woods
Hmm...appreciation.
Playing hot hands
Reading poetry
Eating out, travelling, eating out, travelling.
Looking at the moon.

Gosh. It's plain and clear, a six day work week is injurious to health.

All in a day's work

2011-09-25T16:09:00.000+05:30

7.30 a.m. Text Received.
"Anther dull, grey, smog filled morning. How far?"
" 10 mins away, but half hour of traffic piled up in front of me. How 'bout a sunny side up with some hash browns?"
" Wt! Why remind me of hash browns n coffee n town when you and I are caught in traffic snarls en route to work?"
" Letssss go!"
"Pch. Duty calls. Let's bunk a working day next week for a scrumptious morning meal."
" Deal. I can't bunk Mon, Wed, Fri absolutely. You?"
"Not Tues, Thurs, Fri.Absolutely NOT"
"Wt the ...!"
"See you in ten. Not the hash browns for another week."

********************************************************
5.20 p.m. Tired, fed up, craving coffee and hash browns.

Day 3. Consecutive Meeting no. 3. At the same spot.
(I Flash a smile 'coz I'm a nice person and oh-so-bored)

(Familiarity could breed friends.And of course it does.)
" Hi!"
"Hey!"
"Late today?"
"Yeah a bit."
"No bus?"
" Not in the last ten minutes."
"Oh!"
(hesitant silence)
"What's your name by the way?"
"Jennifer. And you?"
(incoherent mumble)
"Sorry?"
(a phonic jumble)
(Very apologetically)"How do you spell it?"
"S-h-r-u-g-a-l"
"Ah! Very unusual. What does it mean?"
"It's MY god's name. "
"Oh. Nice."
And the bus arrives. S-h-r-u-g-a-l offers me a seat but no more talk.
Probably 'coz I didn't have a god for my namesake.
But I thank him and his namesake for the seat :-)

****************************************************************
8.00 p.m. En route to the local grocer. Pavement.

Day 2 after a random, brief walk under the umbrella over 2 months ago.

(Again, I smile 'coz I'm a nice person and I'd forgotten familiarity breeds friends.)

"Hiiiiii!"
"Hey."
"Should I call you didi or aunty?"
" Neither, Jennifer. Did you reach school in time for your basket ball practice?"
"Not Basket ball. TT!! Thanks for letting me walk with you that day.
"No problem! Which grade are you in by the way?"
"9th. Don't you stay in Silver Arch?"
"No I don't."
"Can I have your number? I promise I won't give it to anyone.
(puzzled) "Hahaha...but why do you want my number?"
"Arre give na. Ok, you don't want to give? Ok you store mine. Here.And my name is Nikita."
(I feel bad) "Do one thing, I'll give you mine. And you give me a missed call, I'll save it."
"Ok!! Great! I'll add you on FB ha."

Reason no 36286352 why i like my city - It's as easy to pick up and drop a conversation with strangers as with friends.

For no apparent reason

2011-08-28T22:41:00.000+05:30

I have no idea how this is going to write itself out. I don't have the volition to control it. I feel loop-y, i.e. like I'm in a loop. No, it's not a real word. But then, neither is zoot.

Random. Now that is a real word.

Random. [ran-duh'm]
adjective.
proceeding, made or occurring without aim, reason or pattern: This is a random post.

of or characterizing a process of selection in which each item of a set has an equal probability of being chosen: I follow random selection to pick a channel to watch the rubbish on TV.

unknown, unidentified or out of place: I'd like to be the random person who smiles at you in a crowd.

odd and unpredictable in an amusing way: My mean cat is usually out to scratch or bite me, but today, as I type this out, he snuggles into my lap. My cat is so random.

The randomness of being.

I plonk him on the couch.

I'd like to be utterly, absolutely, randomly random.
Some say I am.

It makes life more bearable.
For you and for me.

And my mean cat is back on my lap. May be, for him, the couch is unbearable. It smells of its previous occupant. A very smelly dog, who is now on the mean cat's rug.

Life is very random.
Check.

:)

Note to Self.

2011-07-31T15:43:00.000+05:30

Happiness.

Watching rain drops slide down the huge bus windows forming a transparent veil. They veil me from the traffic clogged roads and make me smile despite everything
The phone buzzing, unexpectedly, the night I can't fall asleep
The smell of sugary, hot adraki chai coming to a boil as I await my ride back home. The chai cascading from one tumbler into another, the chaiwala never missing a beat
An old movie ticket
My cute,fat sausage roll of a dog greeting me good morning with a effusive wag as I roll out of bed
Beatles early in the morning!
Zipping down NH4, wind in hair, song on lips
My book shelf!
The oh-so-lovely aroma of strong filter coffee as my bus swerves past Madras Cafe at King's Circle
The unpredictability of songs on radio, AIR!
Match boxes
Red on my toes
A scrumptious meal with my family
Paycheck!
A smile from a stranger
Having a conversation about nothing as I watch the rain soak the city from my favorite table at Cafe Mondegar. And of course the Juke churns a retro every other minute.Bliss.
Silver.Shoes.Earrings.Bangles.Rings.
Doggy-poggy. Pudding and Pie.

Happiness. It's many things.

What we could do too

2011-04-28T21:06:00.000+05:30

Forgetting Something
Try this—close / your eyes. No, wait, when—if—we see each other / again the first thing we should do is close our eyes—no, / first we should tie our hands to something / solid—bedpost, doorknob—otherwise they (wild birds) / might startle us / awake. Are we forgetting something? What about that / warehouse, the one beside the airport, that room / of black boxes, a man in each box? I hear / if you bring this one into the light he will not stop / crying, if you show this one a photo of his son / his eyes go dead. Turn up / the heat, turn up the song. First thing we should do / if we see each other again is to make / a cage of our bodies—inside we can place / whatever still shines.
- Nick Flynn

A Mood Swing

2011-04-24T13:45:00.000+05:30

You'd blame it on the weather.
The dust, the heat, the noise, the brown.

I'd blame it on you.

A sense of doom.
Nervous anxiety?
Lethargy?

I want a book.
A good book may wash it all away.
The grime, the boredom, the inanity of a day.

Something that makes me forget.

I want a book which would remind me of yellow summers, not brown ones.
Of black roads smeared with tiny, pretty, yellow flowers.
Of huge trees dressed up in fiery, orange Flames of the forest.
Of the sweet smell of mangoes mixed with a tinge of orange.
A dash of cologne and a whiff of nicotine.
Idle banter and insolent laughter.
Match boxes and photographs.
Bus stops and ferry rides.
Cheer.

What's it going to be then, eh?

Food-iee

2011-04-22T22:26:00.001+05:30

I warned you about my sweet tooth!

What songs do.

2011-04-10T00:06:00.000+05:30

You had this on shuffle!

As we live our life of ease
Everyone of us has all we need.

If I could play you a song, it would be by -

So Happy Together

In our yellow submarine.

Sky of blue and sea of green.

:-)

Of this and that

2011-03-08T23:12:00.000+05:30

There are some things I think I will never be able to let go of. One of them is the memory of this shade of sun kissed green.

It stood by the road silently, watching the world go by. Its only friends, the corrugated tin walls and the parched earth.

And my fascination with trees continues. This one - "Droop dead gorgeous"

:-)

Changing the Situation, again

2011-01-15T23:42:00.000+05:30

Dee tells me the rain is my muse. She must be right. I have barely written since the last errant cloud floated out of city limits. They've left the skies a deep shade of blue. It's the shade of blue which reminds me of cold mornings a few years ago, when I'd roll out of bed and walk into a class on Modernist poetry. It remained the same shade of blue when we broke for coffee an hour and a half later. It turned a tone darker when the class finally wrapped up after musing on the "throwness" of our existence. Later we mostly ambled back to our rooms to catch up on lost sleep. Other times we tried to smoke away the throwness of our lives, ashing it in a cheap plastic container. Non-recyclable.

It's strange that the blue should bring back these memories now. Or is it the unfamiliar nip in the city air, which lately greets me with a known familiarity? I don't know. Funny that I thought I'd stubbed it all out.

Anyway, I've realized, jumping up n down doesn't shake the earth off its axis nor does it help change the situation. What changes is the city temperature and the hue of the sky and with it, my situation.Sometimes, plain dreaming helps change the situation.

Try it!

Kelva

2010-11-05T13:31:00.001+05:30

As much as I hate to love the madness and drudgery of Mumbai, I love to speed out of city limits and peer at it from far away. I like seeing the blue of the sky, uninterrupted by upward scrambling skyscrapers. I like watching cattle amble through fields and people bustle through the weekly market. I like seeing the car lap up black, tarry kilometers as I try to pocket and preserve the green, the blue and the brown.

The drive from Mumbai to Kelva Beach is rather long (120kms), but pleasant. Getting onto NH 8 from Thane is quick and smooth in the early morning. The roads are good, but trucks and lorries of all shapes and sizes lord the roads even at this hour. Hues of gray, brown and blue dominate a major leg of the journey. There is little buzz on either side of the Highway. The concrete stares back at you squarely until you turn right at Manor Naka.

The landscape magically changes. Concrete gives way to an expanse of fields and greenery and a faint smell of the sea.

The four lane highway and the rumbling traffic is left behind. A lazier and prettier stretch, lined with trees yawned ahead, in front of us.

We finally reach a sleepy village which is Kelwe (in Marathi). The locals seem to be used to see cars revving down their narrow roads. Vada pav and Chai shops dot the roads at corners. Some new ones seemed to have sprouted recently to sell the Diwali goodies. We see colorful roadside carts selling diyas, rangoli, lanterns and crackers. The village houses carry no garish traces of glitter and other luminous monstrosities as their urban counterparts.

Our car trundles down a very narrow, rough patch and we enter what is called 'Kelva Beach Resort.'

There is nothing good about this resort. Except may be a little bit of aesthetic sense here and there.

The final destination, the beach, sadly too is a let down. There is something distant and unfriendly about the sea here....and the sand doesn't sparkle.

For what it's worth, it was worth all the while. The best thing about the Kelva is definitely the drive and the sights en-route.

Published!

2010-11-02T23:05:00.001+05:30

I believe I'm modest. Quite so.

But I'm taking this one opportunity to be a little immodest.
For shameless self publicity.

(Yes, I can already see some of you out there gawk at my first statement! Hold your tongue!!)

Sharing a link to an article that I wrote, which got published as a cover story in an Indian magazine on School education in India.
http://www.teacherplus.org/cover-story/thinking-about-teach-for-india

Happiness mingled with a small sense of achievement.
Bliss.

Writer's block

2010-09-15T22:34:00.002+05:30

"...The school is in a village called Bigha in Burdwan, standing amidst rice fields. It used to be in mud huts earlier. Since after every monsoon half the school would melt away, it has now been built with only bricks, painted red with lush green rice fields all around the school. It is so green even inside the school. When I was walking around the premise, I saw each tree had one name hanging from its branches (there are over a hundred trees within the premise). I asked some children... they said, the names are of children who are in charge of that tree... every child looks after one tree respectively. How wonderful no?

The classes r hexagonal in shape, no furniture, only wooden planks on 5 sides, elevated by two bricks, where children keep their books and TLMs. I attended one class, where EVS, English and Bangla were taught together. I was so fascinated!

And the funnest thing was... an old old van pulled by a motorbike has been converted into a library, literally! Is it any wonder why most children there are so fond of the library n reading?! You may be thinking there is a lot of money involved in all this. I was so surprised to hear and then when I saw I understood... there's minimal expenditure to run the school. I've been wanting to go and stay there for some time... may be sometime next month.[...]"

This, from my reluctant friend who claims she cannot "write". Sorry I took the liberty to put it up here, I had a point to make.

Yes, you can!!

Changing the Situation

2010-09-13T22:09:00.000+05:30

Would incessant jumping help shake the earth off its axis?
Would it?
I wish it would...!!

No Sunlight

2010-08-31T23:42:00.002+05:30

I wake up at 6 a.m.to yet another gray morning.
An hour later I hobble towards the rickshaw stand.
Below the overcast sky, everything wears a brooding look.
Or is it menacing?
...

There is not a rickshaw in sight.
...
May be, it was menacing.
...
Half an hour later, I am seven minutes late for my usual 7:48 CST local.
The bloody F-O-B is throbbing with bodies.
Bodies, bags,umbrellas,fish,vegetable, beggars,peddlers,TCs.
...
It could have been menacing.
...
I'm still on the bloody F-O-B as the 7:54 CST local pulls into the station.
The sea of bodies suddenly gathers more momentum.
Bags jostle against backs, baskets drip over heads, peddlers elbow beggars.
Someone trips over my long, black umbrella.
Aye Maddamm! Dikhta nahi hai kya?
...
It was definitely menacing!
...
Push,pull,nudge,jump.
Miraculously I'm on board the very crowded 7:54 just as it begins to pull out of the station.
...
We hang on to the edge of the bars, like leaves on a bough.
As rain and wind lash us, soaking every possible thing exposed to it,
Co-foot board traveller1, "Umbrella hatao, my raincoat is getting wet."
Co-foot board traveller 2, standing beside traveller 1,
"Pressure mat dalo, you want to push me out of the train kya?
...
Forty five minutes later, I've survived another breezy foot board journey.
I waddle through mucky water strewn with rotting leaves and paper and plastic
The 8:35a.m. bus no.167 is just limping out of the depot.
Gone.
The black clouds have burst open once more, with more vengeance.
...
God! It's so menacing!!
...
Seven hours later, again on the foot board,
Soggy and damp, disheveled and worn out,
I muse about crossing over, switching sides, changing jobs,
About chauffeur driven cars, high heels, expensive cotton,
And the sun.
When will it be out again?

At the Bus stop

2010-08-01T20:02:00.000+05:30

Her face crumpled into a grimace as she skirted the last of the mucky puddles and reached the bus stand.Despite her best efforts, she noticed, her foot was studded with fine brown dots of muck.A fine wind had been blowing since the morning and it had played truant with her hair. Holding on to her umbrella and her printed cotton duppatta, she stood in queue, waiting for the bus.Idly, she went over her day so far.She had skipped breakfast, missed her usual train and was late yet again for work. But seeing the people and places around, always comforted her. She amused herself with inconsequential details.

Her walk from the railway station to the bus stand was delightfully amusing.It was lined with distinct sights and smells. The earthy smell of wet mud fused into the smell of the fat man's Navy Cut smoke, which mingled with the aroma of steamy, crisp vada pav, which finally merged into the fumes of the taxis in the taxi stand. Then there was the bovine cow, just at the steps of the foot over bridge. It was always there, ruminating on cud while commuters hustled past it, making a pit stop only to touch it for a moment and seek its blessings before the lugubrious work day started.

There were many more. But today something else amused her.She quizzically looked around as she heard a Bollywood song playing somewhere in the background. She thought she saw a pair of roving eyes staring at her, from behind a tattered curtain. She had often noticed this shop, but had never cared to look inside. The curtain always religiously veiled the doorway and she had never stood long enough at the bus stand to watch anyone emerge out of the shadows of the room. She tried to catch a glimpse of the interiors, as the curtain slowly moved in the breeze.

Intrigued, she looked skyward. The name board, was a modest work of art. A huge red rose stood between two words, also splashed in red, against a dull white backdrop - "Red Rose." Scrawled in the subscript was "Deshi Daaru Bar." Suddenly a man darted out from the shadows. He was beaming at her, as he walked past the queue at the bus stand and disappeared into the mass of moving bodies on the road.

She smiled to herself as she got on to the 8:20am bus. There was always a new reason to smile in the city.

Breakfast

2010-07-21T21:00:00.000+05:30

He waited for the morning breeze to tease the tattered curtain. Seated on the table right next to the door, he thought "The curtain must sway". His morning rite would remain unfinished, just like the glass in his hand if the bloody curtain did not sway. He looked down at the glass in his hand. It was his third one since the morning. A black blob of something sat on the rim of the dull cut-glass tumbler. He was momentarily disgusted. Luckily, the TV, perched high on a wall somewhere behind him cut into his thoughts. It crooned a soppy Bollywood number, "Tum dil ki dhadkan mein..." His spirited glass and he softly swayed. "How apt!" he thought tapping his fingers to the tune. Of course, he forgot the unwelcome black blobby resident on the rim. He took another sip and began to meditate on the doorway again. He put down his glass as his eye caught a glimpse of the blue umbrella bobbing up and down. It came to a halt at some distance from the doorway. He gazed out, thankful that the curtain was finally swaying.

She looked a little tousled today but that seemed to add to her charm, he thought.Her eyes lingered on something overhead.She stared at it curiously. Or was it a look of amusement? He couldn't tell. He washed down his third glass for the morning, happy that his morning rite was complete. He waited a while before he darted out, past the faded curtain, into the gray morning, smiling.

(Im)modest Proposal

2010-06-12T01:05:00.000+05:30

Spitfire the sweet faced, from the East, thought of me after a after a long time. It was a welcome surprise. "What's happened to your blog?" she said, among other things. I wondered too, what had happened to it? I'm tempted to say "life's like that" with a nine to five job and some more. But that's bull shit.

So Spitfire, I decided to make a feeble attempt to resuscitate it back to life. Thanks for being my muse in a way, you've been good (for a change :P). I dread looking back to see these pages splattered with monochrome. It would be cooler to see something tinged in a hue of pink and yellow, red and green.

During this longish hiatus I missed writing about the first rains that left the city smeared with some more muck and grime.
Of the early morning train ride with raindrops and raingear.
Of the black tarry road which glistens with an unusual radiance.
Of lazy strolls on cobbled sidewalks.
Of cutting chai and piping hot vada pavs
And of course, some of my favorite people.

(I'm sick of all of you leaving my city.)

So if the rains haven't reached you yet, you know where you can find some showers, made more wonderful with chai and me!

Derivatives

2010-04-27T01:27:00.001+05:30

I try to pin it down to mediocrity. Self doubt. Disinterest.
Options: Swirl into a blaze of orange flames. Dissipate into vapor.Mingle with the heavy molecules of humidity.Hang ominously over you like a wretched day in Mumbai.

It might be easier to just pass out.
The heat provides an easy excuse for laziness. And procrastination.
So may be its not mediocrity after all.

Confessions of a compulsive consumer

2010-04-23T22:36:00.000+05:30

The silver on my toe is chipping.

The electric pair of silver mojris carries a wisp of dusty Hyderabadi grandeur. Tired creases on the insoles spill a tale of worn feet.
My electric pair of silver mojris sadly, has lost its sheen.Beyond redemption.

The humidity laden Mumbai air plays truant with the carelessly strewn silver earrings.They've steadily gone from sparkly silver to gray to a dull black.They now face an uncertain, pasty fate...the yearly ablutions with toothpaste and water.
The hundred bucks buckled belt from Causeway now shows it true colors. Unlike the earrings, the silver buckle doesn't metamorphose into something old but pretty. It ungracefully bears orange stains of rust.This orange now slowly spills and spreads all over the white body of the belt. Cancerous.
The silver of the stainless steel cutlery looks dubious.The shiny silver is too shiny. Can it be?
The thin line of mercury in the thermometer is a relief after the shiny silver. It comes closer to the silver of my Hyderabadi mojris.Erstwhile silver of the mojris.

Encased in the tube it looks placid and cool. While the mercury in the city rises I'm tempted to pour out this beautiful, thin strand of mercury.

It is the perfect shade of silver I'd like on my toe.

As always, I'm left a little more saddened at my compulsive consumerist status.

Endlessly

2010-04-08T23:45:00.000+05:30

It begins with a knotty feeling.It's like a black, shadowy, gloomy, distrustful, menacing feeling.
Pit.
Hollow pit.

A nerve strains somewhere in the center of the pit.Then, it slowly starts radiating.
It's an empty sort of gnawing ache.
You want to spit it out, but you're ashamed of what it might look like once it's let out.
You silently choke on it instead.

You wait.
Wait for something
Right
For a knock
A glint
A beam

I had always wondered how it feels to wait for a miracle.

On Doorways

2010-04-06T23:59:00.000+05:30

Jew Town Road,
Fort Cochin

The narrow stone cobbled streets seemed like they had meandered out of a book of illustrated Fairy Tales.Now, black tarred roads stick out only as a unsure memory.Here, feet mostly tread on age old stone, bathed in a film of sand blown over from the thin shoreline.

Every other street corner was splashed with color or bedecked with beads, flowers, clothes or jewels.Resplendent.

In the midst of this extravagance I spotted a humble door way. Welcoming curious feet was a worn out but formerly bright yellow wall. Leading on was a cobbled stone path. Hovering over, cautiously was the blue sky.

Where will it take curious feet?
I have yet to find out.

This is as far as my camera's eye could see.
But does another door always open when one shuts?
Is everything illuminated?

A Catalogue

2010-03-26T19:43:00.002+05:30

Unreasonable

Dominating

Infuriating

Irritating

Illogical

Petty

Obstinate

Annoying

Autocratic

Hypocritical

Nerve-wrecking

I have it in the same measure as you.
Measure for measure.

Walls, now and then

2010-03-03T12:07:00.000+05:30

The car snakes its way around the hill, through the bastis and mandis. We are momentarily distracted by the women in their red,yellow and pink lehengas and silver chudis. A bright sun beam bounces off a metal pot carefully balanced on a woman's head. Our driver squints for a moment. He shifts from the third to the second gear. The car slowly purs up the gradient. Brown stone walls stealthily creep up against the blue of the sky. The pale blue transforms into a dramatic space as battles of yester years peek through the small windows, chiseled out of stone. Mouthfuls of the sky emerge from behind the open windows of the thick fort walls. He tells us it was a city ravaged in the past by pillage, murder and deceit. Every window has a steep decline, going all the way down. Buckets of hot oil were poured down these slopes if an enemy tried to scale the walls to enter. What bloody walls they must have been. Now they stand as a silent relic of the city's past. Mute spectators to the unfolding of a new history.

Speculations anyone?

2010-01-29T22:04:00.000+05:30

"You're still the same! Just as you were in Junior college." She said with no hint of incredulity.
"Really?" I ask, stunned.

Cringe.
Cringe.

Brain doing a mental check:
Should I let my hair down and show her how wild it can get?
Should I rattle off unsavory invectives I've picked up over the years, in different languages?
Should I flash her a packet of goldflake lights?
Or my shiny new credit card?
Try getting her into an argument about Mumbai v/s Bombay or Obama's policies?

She's judged me.
But she tries to be judicious

As an after thought she adds, "No but I'm sure there's lots more up there now." (Pointing to the wonderful brain inside her wonderful head)

"So do you still attend the Music fest in college?" (the college I left five years back)
"No" I say.

It's her turn to cringe now. That's it.I've confirmed her speculation .
I exit, so she can be happy about her judgment.

I wonder why I stopped by to say a hi to her in the first place.

In this country, speculations are a national pastime. Or so I speculate and comfort myself.

Rumblings

2010-01-04T23:43:00.000+05:30

I sit back and stare at the blankness of the white dashboard on my screen. My fingers itch to type something. But I punch in this instead. Words and images whir through the mess that is my head. I momentarily feel like something is going to burst. With a short but loud 'pop'. Petering into a soft fizzle. Nothing happens. I think of a few well rehearsed lines to write, so I could sound grand, or may be profound or may be interesting. I scroll the gray button on my black mouse up and down. Randomly. The bloody auto editor underlines my 'grey' in red and indicates to me I am wrong. I correct it. I spell it as g-r-a-y. The utter blandness of my writing of the past months strikes me. The remarkable insignificance of my words makes me cringe. There's an unusual cold wind rustling the orange curtains in my window.The soft beat of the wind chime does little to drown the noise of the silence around me. I switch on the television just to make sure the noises inside my head become inaudible. The very happy people on Channel V make me cringe a little more. I switch it off. Now i can hear the comfortable breathing of my dog. It is in perfect harmony with his little tummy which goes up and down and up with every breathe. The curtain rustles a little more. This is uncannily cold by my city standards.

I decide to call it a day.
I'll savour the cold, so rare in my city, on my train ride to work tomorrow.

Kerala Diaries Part II

2010-01-01T23:17:00.000+05:30

Some funny sign boards I spotted propped up in different places in the motherland. Within a context or despite one, I think you'd still chortle. No?

Kerala Diaries

2010-01-01T16:24:00.001+05:30

The winding drive through the ghats had made us a little dizzy. As we stepped out of the vehicle a strange mix of smells wafted through the thin mountain air. It was at once sweet, spicy, fragrant, delectable and jerky. A warm shower of yellow orchids hung over our heads. We softly began to tread through what was a Spice Garden in the mountains of Thekkady, in Kerala.

The Spice trail that we were whisked off on was led by an exuberant, dramatic gentleman called Paul. He took us through a long winding tour of a spice garden that grew every conceivable variety of herbs and spices found in the small town of Thekkady and near by Kumily. Though the spice garden was colorful and vibrant with an abundance of heliconias, shoe flowers, balsams, bigonias, dahlias and bougainvillea flowers, this is my favorite shot from the hour long Spice trail.

A lone coconut tree towering through the mass of green, almost touching the blueness of the day sky. There was something about this tree trunk that made me stand around it, and peer at the tree through this angle.I soon realized that, if I cajoled it a little with the might of my palm, the whole tree coyly swayed from one side to another, the palm leaves tingling to the tips.Thin beams of sunlight were caught in the leaves, only to soon fall down as a shimmer.

If only all cajoling was this simple.
:)

Happiness Denominators

2009-12-06T19:27:00.001+05:30

Foot board travel on a fast Mumbai local,
Cool breeze slapping your face,
The noise of the inside is not cacophony for a change,

And a little beer buzzing through your head and veins.

Of course, you remember to hold on to the bars.

Matches

2009-12-03T00:07:00.000+05:30

There are the usual things to remember people and places by, photographs, conversations, bills, tickets, sms-es, souvenirs, letters. That's one way of preserving a memory.

But, aren't there times you wish you could just pack all memories - of the colors, smells, flavour, taste, time, touch, all of it into a box? A tiny little box, out of which you could sieve a memory out, little by little, and savour it in pinches.Sometimes may be a bit of the blueness of the sky. Sometimes maybe the coolness of the naked rock tipped over by the icy cold stream. Sometimes maybe the softness of a nimble fingertip.Or may be the warmth of steam from a cup of coffee which bumps against a numb nose on a cold morning.

I'm living under no illusion.So I'm doing the next best thing I can. I'm collecting match boxes instead.There's one in blue and silver from Shillong, another in black and red from Hyderabad. CB gifted me one, a keep sakes from a trip to Lonavala, and another "Ship" maachis, a souvenir from a nondescript tapri somewhere on NH 4. There's also a hand me down tiny box of wax matches from Himachal.

I'm waiting for more from other people and places.

Those of you coming back to my city this Christmas, you know what to get me :)

Five reasons why I want 2009 to be over

2009-11-30T16:41:00.002+05:30

1. Because someone I know WILL get married!
2. Because then Dee will be only seven months short of crossing over to the other side of 25. Getting older, and shrill-er, but no wiser.
3. Because CB will be out of B school and the C grade campus and get a real job with a big fat pay check. And then henceforth sponsor all my drinks and dining. Did you mention a holiday too?
4. Because I'll have done my little vacation with 4 people who once couldn't stand each other in the same room!
5. Because (fingers crossed) February 2010 spells freedom!

2010. It seems a long way off.
Phew.

An Evening

2009-11-12T21:13:00.000+05:30

One wall of my living room has been broken down to make large french windows and a glass door. This allows for a judicious view of the world outside. The odd days that I am at home, I dislike being indoors between five and seven in the evening. I often get a glimpse of the dark dusk sky invading the blue of the day. As the lamps are lit, the soft yellow of the 40 watts bulbs mingles with the dark blue of the sky outside.All doors and windows are ritualistically closed, to keep the errant mosquitoes out. All this somehow often makes me feel a little somber, and all I want is to be swallowed by a dark, warm blanket.

Today, as I went about with this routine, I unusually heard a lot of noises outside the window. Beyond our compound wall is a small field, with a few trees. Curiously, I peeked out and saw winged creatures swarming around it. The evening sky was full of them, all probably headed back home. Caught in the dull mechanics of urban existence, I often forget this city doesn't have just black crows and noisy pigeons. As I surveyed the sky, it was checkered with birds of different sizes in hues of black, grey, white, brown and even red and pink ! This evening, one tree was particularly abuzz with a flurry of conversations. I've often heard a stray koel or a crow, but this was different. The members of this housing colony were innumerable green winged beings. Their loud, incessant chirping was accompanied with an ocassional angry whosh of a wing, as someone stormed out of the branches, or someone fluttered back home.

The humdrum of the approaching night and the drone of the electric fan was drowned, if only temporarily by their magical conversations. Indecipherable.Magical.

I think I have found reason to be a little less unhappy between five and seven p.m.

Of Trees

2009-11-04T09:18:00.001+05:30

Two trees that two friends sent me :)

Thanks N & T.

Why I like trees

2009-10-31T15:28:00.001+05:30

As a child, I never had a fascination for dolls. I was more happy gazing out of the fourth floor window of my Mumbai flat. It overlooked a long, grey water pipeline and tin roof tops of shanties that lay beyond. The view was not exceptional, except for the orange flames of the Gulmohar trees, which shrouded everything else that lay beyond it,with a fiery veil. This was the view from my bedroom. If I looked out of my living room window, I had another favourite sight. The lone jamun tree which stood at the extreme corner of the car park. It had a fat, brown trunk and overstretched arms...the dark green of the leaves spilling over into the next compound too.

I don't know why I recall these trees now. Except maybe, they remind me of how curious they made me as a child. The Gulmohar tree perplexed me with their cycles of orange and bare. I remember eagerly waiting for the bright green buds to split open and ooze out the red and orange. They stayed on for a whole summer, plastered against the pale blue of the sky. When they were doused by the early June showers, they softly dropped onto the wet mud, only to be swept away into a green wheel barrow the next day.

The jamun tree was another story. It stood like a lone pillar, strong, mighty and glorious. The purple of the berries often stained my skirts, hands and teeth. On quiet summer afternoons, children often crept over the compound wall to throw stones and bring down berries. But there was something more to this tree. It looked different every time I stared hard at it. While it's true that I might have been enamoured by Enid Blyton and her wonderful spiel of faraway trees, this tree often made me wonder. Its mighty trunk and overarching branches convinced me much like Blyton, that there was something magical about it. It was like nothing else I had seen around in my little urban world.

Lately, I've realized that I often doodle trees. I even seem to stop by trees, to keep my palm on a chipping bark. There is a magic which tingles me for moments. I don't know what it is...but it is there.

Watching trees as a kid taught me something. It wasn't just the magic and wonder, it's probably something more...it made me... curious, patient, dreamy? I can't find the right word to say what it taught me, unknowingly. May be for now I'll just call it... hope.

We all live in a yellow submarine!

2009-10-18T20:24:00.000+05:30

Today I heard the song yet again.But this time, it was different.
The citric-sweet smell of oranges and lime did not come wafting back.
Nor did the jaundiced yellow of the walls stick out as a definite memory.
Everything was more a shade of black and white.
Black and white.
It wasn't frosted with nebulous drops of nostalgia anymore,.
Nor entangled in discordant chords of a melody gone wrong.

It's a memory now...not a lingering thought.
Canned. Stored away.
Manufactured, without an expiry date.

It's a B

2009-10-05T16:40:00.000+05:30

I hate the curse of mediocrity...
And weak tea on a rainy morning.

Another Story

2009-10-02T22:22:00.000+05:30

It's a simple story, simply told.
There is nothing extraordinary about 'Wake Up Sid!', except may be that it makes you smile and at more than two points makes us twenty something year olds go "Hey! that's like me!" The understated rush of emotions and the honest portrayal of individual struggles, failures and desires struck a chord with me. Refreshingly, its not another 'love story' that Bollywood seems to churn out by the dozen.You're just watching two different people grow, and the love story creeps in almost unknowingly.

The rain catches you unaware, just like love.
The heavy sea breeze slaps your face.
A tiny colorless drop bursts on your eye lash
You are blinded for a moment

I liked 'Wake Up Sid'. It made me wonder what 'growing up' really means.
It's difficult. But, it's not all that difficult after all. It gives you another story.
Go watch it!

She makes me do things I wouldn't

2009-10-01T14:30:00.003+05:30

She talked. I listened. Always.

Initially she was that girl who could eat my ears off just talking about anything under the sun. Books, dogs, dads, boys, music,food, clothes, love. Our conversations were the stuff chick flicks are made of. I've often wished I could talk like that! Now, she often pauses to complain how I always manage to divulge the last detail from her, without spilling a bean myself. And then she continues her story. It's her disarming, warm banter that still keeps me hooked on to the phone. It's got to the point of endearing :)

We're opposites...she's social, I'm asocial. I like her honesty, when she calls a bat, a bat and me, a bitch. So the other day when she told me about another friend leaving the country, I just mooted an "Oh."
"Call her," she said.
"Why? No," I retorted.

But another minute and another call later, I was talking to this other friend I hadn't spoken to in years. Though just a couple of minutes long, it felt strangely nice to re-connect.

My friend often helps me add a dab of colorful vigor in my otherwise monochromatic day.
She makes me do things I wouldn't otherwise. And for that I am thankful.

Pencil shavings and paper

2009-09-27T22:39:00.003+05:30

The words on the tiny paper seemed to dance to the beat of silence in the room. Fidgeting with the apsara black pencil, her tiny hands burst into a cold sweat. The pencil slipped out, falling onto the mosaic tiles, disturbing the silence. A pair of reprimanding eyes stared at her squarely from the table in the center of the room. She reached for the tiny piece of paper which had been passed on to her, like a fistful of pencil shavings. He had clamped it into her hand. Now, she hastily crumpled it up and slipped it into her pocket. She did not want any roving pair of eyes to stealthily read her little secret. Worry turned into anger. Anger turned into incomprehension. She turned silent.
They behaved like six year olds.

The poor paper was torn into tiny pieces and thrown away with a fistful of pencil shavings. Rubbish-ed.

Pencils gave way to pens and time to memories.

Memories revisited as old acquaintances accidentally met. They spoke of the rooms, the pencils and the people. They talked of how different life is now. They suddenly remembered the paper. Trepid laughter on both ends drowned the awkward silence of the in between years.

They rubbish-ed it once again, as something only six year olds would have done.

After all, the first time he asked her the question they were only six.

the 8:05 fast

2009-09-18T14:44:00.003+05:30

I plug my ears to drown the din of
the bhajjiwalimachiwaliearringwalabhelwalipasscoverwalabutterchakliwali
the blind old man singing for alms,
the grumbling fourth seat passenger trying to squeeze her butt in
the lady whose toe just got pulverized under a fashionwali's high heel sandal
the college girls' parroting
the office women gossiping
the house wife bickering
the mother-in-law nagging
the metallic clatter of the tracks
the noises inside my own head
discordant, many,chaotic.
On board the 8:05 fast

I like to do magic

2009-07-24T12:50:00.004+05:30

"I had draw this picture because "I like to do magic"

Bhuneshwar doesn't like to sit in one place. He doesn't like to listen to stories.
He dislikes it when I tell him 'you could read this book.'
While the rest of the class was eagerly scribbling away, he just shifted from one place to another...clueless. After a little cajoling I managed to get him to bring his pencil to the paper.
At the end of class he handed me this...a piece of paper, with its lower edge folded.
When I open the flap I see the complete picture...It certainly is magical :)
He is just 10.

His story

2009-07-20T15:20:00.004+05:30

He only wanted a story

that would make life a little more liveable, in a city

which could be packed into a match box.

He looks for a new one every tuesday,

among the rusted steel racks stacked with

the smell of yellow secondhand pages.

The noise on the first floor

2009-07-20T14:58:00.002+05:30

I first walked into the school, early on a Monday morning. The school building looked like any other BMC school in Mumbai, save for the innumerable pigeons that greeted me with an infectious flutter at the gate. This school building houses BMC schools in four different mediums of instruction: Marathi, Telugu, Gujarati and English. The first floor houses the English medium initiative undertaken by an NGO that educates community children from the surrounding chawls and bastis.

It was still early when I reached and children were only trickling in to their classrooms. As I walked down the corridor, I was met with warm smiles from women busily going about with brooms, books or stationery in their hands. Slowly, I heard music flowing out of different classrooms. The same women were now in the classrooms, cheerfully welcoming each child as he or she walked in, all set for a new day at school. I was stunned for a few moments as I remembered my own days in school. We were herded into classrooms and quickly silenced as soon as the bell rang. Then we waited for the teacher to make her entry so we could welcome her with our “good morning teacher” in a rising crescendo.

Almost a decade later, here I was faced with the possibility of an entirely new equation between teacher and pupil.

The first floor at this school is never for a moment enveloped by the piercing silence typical to most ‘good’ schools in the country. It is always bursting with curious voices of enquiry. Today, almost eight months later, as I work with the children on the first floor, I rarely miss the silence that my school was enveloped in, always.

D,

2009-06-21T12:33:00.005+05:30

We've had a summer ritual which we unknowingly observed for the last three years with (almost) religious piety. The gulmohar tree outside the window had burst into a fiery orange. Yesterday the first rains reluctantly trickled down the city and doused the flames of the forest.The sholay of May will soon drop into a puddle of rain water and our summer rite still remains incomplete.

We missed the nine buck train ride for a warm, sunny lunch washed down with cold lemon iced tea, laced with conversations. We've also foregone the ritualistic pattern of scourging our brains and every city guide for a 'new' place to eat at, only to ultimately find ourselves (for the nth time) in our good old favorite joint.

Its pouring in all its splendour now and I can hear a distant rumble of thunder. I will miss hearing you go shrill over the joy that the rain brings you, interjected only by your mutter of how you dislike your feet getting wet. :)

As I tip toe over keechad and jump over potholes, I'll think of you with your long umbrella and your dad's raincoat. Another summer passes by and the city will be washed clean yet again. I hope you won't miss seeing our city soaked to the bone, too much. There will be more scorching summers with renewed rites and rains. Till then I'll drink a glass of deep purple kaala khatta to you, just for old times' sake.

Of that which my Nikon didn't capture.

2009-06-14T13:04:00.007+05:30

His stately moustache seemed to fan out as his pleasant face creased into a smile when I appreciated his taste of music, safely tucked away in his glove compartment. He didn't speak much, but conveyed a sense of happy camaraderie to his co-passengers. After trekking in the Himachal for almost a week, with no mode of conveyance but feet, sitting in a jeep felt surreal and luxurious.

My stay in Solang was drawing to a close and I was doing my best to lap up everything I saw and sensed around me, and lock it all into some crevice of my head. The first two days had been reserved for acclimatization walks around our camp site. Trudging over huge stones, crossing over gushing rivers and gingerly walking a narrow, winding trail, had been anything but easy.

A foot slipped, a hand extended, a sun burn, some more sun block splattered.

A loose stone in the river bed...PLOP! Into the ice cold water! The sock irredeemably wet.

Panting up steep gradients. Power-stops only for sips of water and some more sun block.

Having acquired requisite 'trekking skills,' by day three, we found ourselves at the base camp in Dhundi. At the end of a six hour long trek, we found ourselves at a lovely tented camp site on the banks of the Beas. Bereft of most things that define my consumerist status, (cell phone, my i-pod, television) I didn't feel alone and bored. Life suddenly seemed to be brimming with little. I sincerely felt happy. There is a joy in less.

As the jeep glided down the narrow roads of Solang, with my moustached friend waving one hand to every other passer-by and using the other to deftly steer his vehicle, I wished I could make a mental imprint of everything to the last detail; the mountains, the green, the colorful people, the thin weightless air, the children in white and blue, the wild goats, the cane baskets, the smell of weed, the foot prints in snow, the blue sky, the white stone beds, the steaming hot momos, the quaint bridges, the arduous yet joyful treks, the hot mornings, the sweet tea, the cold nights, the soft tripping feet of the river....

There is a lot that my Nikon did not capture. But they remain...in some crevice.

"And then it seems that happiness, like peace or passion, comes most freely when it isn’t pursued." - Pico Iyer.

6398 ft above sea level

2009-05-15T15:50:00.004+05:30

The perforated funnels of the air conditioning duct had been spitting cold spears all night long. As I absent-mindedly tried to stretch my frozen, numb legs, my knee jerked in pain as it hit the seat in front of me. Squinting open my eyes, I realized that for the last twelve hours I had been inside a ‘luxury’ Volvo bus scrambling up the mountains of Himachal. Moving the curtain on the tainted glass, I saw the dawn sky was still drenched in a deep gray. As the bus revved up its speed, the shadowy moon seemed to change its pallor and merge with the clusters of stars serenading it. In between steep gradients and hair pin bends, I saw the first silhouettes of the mountains. In the fifteen hour up hill road journey from Delhi to Manali, most of the kilometers are lapped up in the night. The break for tea, at five a.m. usually coincides with the mellow yet graceful change of lighting that sets into motion somewhere beyond the mountains. As I stepped out of the hostile chill of the Volvo, my numb fingertips tingled back to life as a breeze with a nip softly blew across.

The long rows of steps of the road side dhaba were beaded with colorful backpackers from the West; some feverishly brushing their teeth at the broken wash basin, some hunched over a cup of warm chai, others covered in a purple haze, sonorously singing Yellow Submarine. Made in aluminum kettles over kerosene stoves and served in glass tumblers, my first cup of tea in the mountains was hot and sweet. Filing back into the bus, we resumed our journey to Manali. As the sun slowly fanned out majestically in the speckless, blue sky, the obscure silhouettes gave way to a resplendent landscape of green, white and brown. Every two miles apart or so were rustic wooden and stone houses built on stilts with sloping roofs and tiny windows. The doorway, usually accessible by a wooden ladder, too was above ground level. Kullu and Manali are dotted with such houses, though nowadays, wood is giving way to cement and bricks. Mostly a hue of brown or red, snuggled in the valley, the houses look cozy with a lazy tail of smoke escaping out of most chimneys.

Kullu, which is forty-five kilometers en route to Manali, is a stopover for adventure sports for most tourists. People flock here for snow sports like skiing in the winters and other adventure sports like white water rafting and zorbiing during the summers. An hour and a half later, the bus finally entered the narrow streets of Manali. The abode of Manu, as the name literally means, no longer wears a demure, sleepy haven look. It is splattered with hotels of all sizes and colors on either sides of the road. Tucked in between the clutter that is the Manali market, are interesting, tiny eating joints and watering holes. Men and women wrapped up in shawls and jackets, sporting canvas shoes with a basket on their back, are a common sight on these streets. The bus arduously carried its bovine bulk through the narrow, crowded streets and finally halted in a bustling depot.

We stepped out to a bunch of eager ‘guides’ animatedly welcoming us to Manali and simultaneously rattling off a string of hotel and sightseeing options, available at affordable rates. So much for a heavenly abode! Before we could be accosted with more offers, we were quickly ferreted out of the bus into jeeps that were waiting to carry us to Solang Valley, situated thirteen kilometers from Manali. The morning sun was warm and a sweet smell of pine wafted through the Himalayan air.

I could already feel the vertigo of lightness.

What's on my calendar?

2009-04-06T12:26:00.007+05:30

Prufrock said,
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?," and, "Do I dare?"
Time to go back and descend the stair.
[...]
Do I dare disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
April?
Is not for decisions.

Henri Bresson “Hyères, France, 1932″

What's it going to be then, eh?

2009-03-31T12:15:00.003+05:30

Philosopher once told me, "It is also about empowerment. Your decision empowers YOU. If you don't decide, someone decides for you. You don't have the power -THEY have the power over you. You are forced (into a position). You have to learn to make that choice.. It is your freedom."

His words come back with a fiery determination to me this morning, as I put down Burgess' Clockwork Orange and got a call from my work place asking me about my commitments for the next academic year. I said I might want to quit. I thought I was finally making a choice. But they said, we could negotiate. We don't want you to quit.
I'm back to square one, I dislike making choices.

But after reading Burgess' book I'm forced to retract my statement. Burgess says, without choice man ceases to be man. It's worth reading the book or watching Kubricks sensationally notorious film for people like us who live in democratic, yet State controlled societes. Choice is important. To the state, like Auden says in "The Unknown Citizen", we are merely a number. With our power of choice taken away, we become mere clockwork orange, like Alex in the book. Some lines from the book that intrigued me:
'Choice,' rumbled a rich deep goloss. I viddied it belonged to the prison charlie. 'He has no real choice, has he? Self interest, fear of physical pain, drove him to that grotesque act of self debasement. His insincerity was clearly to be seen. He ceases to be a wrong doer. He ceases to be a creature capable of moral choice.'
'These are subtleties,' like smiled Dr. Brodsky. 'We are not concerned with motive, with the higher ethics. We are concerned only with cutting down crime-'
'Me, me, me. How about me? Where do I come into all this? Am I like just some animal or dog? Am I just to be like a clock work orange?'
'What's it going to be then, eh?'

Do we care?

2009-03-31T00:12:00.004+05:30

So I finally did what I've wanted to do for a long time now, participate in a car rally! About ten hours of non stop driving and 500 kms later, I don't really know what to feel. Now that I was behind the wheels, speeding down the expressway and winding down ghats, the drive seemed doubly thrilling. When I completed the drive from Mumbai to Lavazza and back, I was ecstatic. Our cars carried big stickers on either side , with our number and a huge ad for Lavazza. But a day later, when I see the campaigns and coverage the event has received in the papers, I feel slightly guilty and highly stupid. Guilty, because I feel like I sold a little part of my soul by participating in a rally that was only ostentatiously to support the cause of Woman's cancer and was really an advertising campaign for Lavazza, the new township coming up near Pune. Stupid, because all the cultural theorizing didn't help me see through this gimmick and my excitement got the better of me.

The media has been creating quite a hype about Lavazza in the last few months. I also have a bunch of pretentious people for relatives who visited the place a few months back and couldn't stop going ga ga over it. After driving through this upcoming township nestled in between seven hills, I am only left feeling sadly overwhelmed at the absolute power man has over everything around him. The isolated five star town reminded me of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Lang In his 1927 film envisions a futuristic city of the 2026AD where man is merely automaton. Lavazza might be an engineering and architectural marvel. But it has left thousands of villagers dislocated without fair compensation and hundreds of trees have been razed off to dig swimming pools and helipads.
The ravaged rocks of the mountain out of which the township is being carved, will have a story written in stone. We'll just be to busy notice.

Musing for March: Every event organized by the TOI is usually a gimmick. It is always a profitable business venture given the velvety gloss of a pertinent social cause.

What to do?

2009-03-27T17:54:00.004+05:30

Its been crazy three weeks cramming in time for the various deadlines that I've been trying to meet on all fronts. My plate has been rather stashed up with a teaching job, a freelancing project with an education firm, my masters program, enrolling for a car rally, figuring out a summer holiday, toying with the idea of starting a small circulating library and beating the Mumbai heat. The result: I haven't had time to look at my brand new inheritance of lovely old books from half a century ago or even contemplate my future career moves.
If there's one thing i dislike greatly, it is making decisions. I know its awefully lucky to be spoilt for choice, but that's one spot I dread being in. So just as I was making my peace about postponing career decisions to a later week, Shorty sent me a mail frigidly titled "freelancer?professor? student of education...?" Attached was an article by Alain De Botton on office culture.An excerpt,

"Watch anyone halfway competent at work and it’s hard to do anything other than respect them. In our age, levels of commitment that in previous societies were devoted to military adventures and religious intoxication have been channelled into numerical, legal and managerial needlework. In the olden days, home used to be the place of kindness and refuge while the workplace was cruel and blunt. Now the equation is often reversed. How politely we tend to behave at work, next to the insults we throw at one another at home, where there is no human resource department to coax us into being more civilised. Nowadays workers have to be “motivated,” meaning they have — more or less — to like their work. So long as workers had only to retrieve stray ears of corn from the threshing-room floor or heave quarried stones up a slope, they could be struck hard and often, with impunity and benefit. But the rules had to be rewritten with the emergence of tasks whose adequate performance required their protagonists to be, to a significant degree, content, rather than simply terrified or resigned. The new figures of authority must involve themselves with childcare centres and, at monthly get-togethers, animatedly ask their subordinates how they are enjoying their jobs so far. Responsible for wrapping the iron fist of authority in a velvet glove is, of course, the human resource department.

Office work distracts us, it focusses our immeasurable anxieties on a few relatively small-scale and achievable goals, it gives us a sense of mastery, it makes us respectably tired, it puts food on the table. It keeps us out of greater trouble. "

Just a few days earlier, I found out that my designation at the place I was freelancing was that of an 'education consultant.' It had a fancy ring to it. But that was it. It was a booming, hollow fancy ring. As I sat on a swivel chair in their air conditioned office, designing 'quality' educational products I realized how 'quality' education can never be produced in the four walls of a capital driven business venture. Adding quality to education needs a human helping hand....no high end multimedia kit can bring that dimension of quality or meaning to education which an ordinary teacher can. Quality education begins and ferments in a classroom.

My work isn't merely distraction. It doesn't put much food on my plate, but I'm happy gorging on the food for thought it often leaves me with. So is the decision made? I don't know.

I'll just have to wait for another academic year to unfold... :)

Some kind of wonderful!

2009-03-17T23:28:00.006+05:30

A wonderful Parsi gentleman unknowingly bequeathed me a treasure. He left me not just his rare collection of books but also pages of his life still fresh with the smell of his memories and the faded blue ink of this fountain pen. I can't wait to write about my Sunday in a garage piled with what I love...old, moth eaten, dusty, mouldy books. It was a heady Sunday well spent losing myself in the cacophony of dusty, old books. He had all the books I've possibly always wanted to own..Kerouac, Flaubert, Ionesco, Waugh, Graham Greene, countless English and American Anthologies, Indian writing, Brecht, Wesker, Chekov, Miller, Fitzgerald! (A catalogue will be up soon). I also found some priceless editions of Life magazine, old editions of the Encounter and the London Literary Magazine. I cannot even begin to tell you about all the books this man had! Right now my room is overflowing with his treasure...here's just a peek from the crime site.

Settling Scores

2009-03-13T23:42:00.003+05:30

These days when my eyes are not blinking, all they see are black, white and red. My calcium deficient nails carry a guilty red smudge every once in while. It doesn't go. The whitener works only on paper.

I'm settling scores. First I rip them apart and then add it all up.
Yes, paper correction is not an easy, fun task. Its arduously, painstakingly, long, monotonous and exhausting.
(Its one of the things I think I will permanently dislike about my job)

Your story

2009-03-13T23:17:00.005+05:30

Did I tell you?

Today, I walked down the same grey stone curb where you'd rudely pulled me away from the mass of moving bodies and whispered a recipe for magic in my ear. After that we gazed at a red bus stop promising each other, we'd meet again only at a similar bus stop, a year later, when you would have sprouted more hair and me, more wisdom. We laughed at the two pairs of shuffling feet behind the bus stop, one jeans clad, one in a bright yellow chudidar. Then we sat for over an hour at the same place having a lovely conversation about nothing. When I said I have to leave, you nonchalantly muttered 'stay'. I didn't. I took your nonchalance too seriously.

I've wondered a few times if I should have stayed.
On second thoughts, I stop wondering.
You wouldn't have had a story then.

At a station.

2009-03-09T17:31:00.003+05:30

The black beads of her mangalsutra glistened in the light of the noon sun. For a moment her worry knit eyebrows relaxed as her lips creased into a fleeting smile. Sometimes she allowed herself the indulgence of footboard travel, she liked the wind ruffling her hair. The subji she had prepared that morning had turned out to be a little too salty. Varun, her son had complained, as always. Nonetheless it had gone into all three dabbas, Varun's, his father's and her's. They would have the same subji for dinner too, when they all returned home after a long day. She couldn't afford extravagance. As the 1:10 Churchgate local entered Dadar station, she gathered the pleats of her startched cotton sari , held on to her bag and prepared to alight. An arrogant sunbeam caught a thin silver strand in her hair. She swiftly alighted and walked towards the foot over bridge.
Just as the train blew its whistle and inched towards pulling its serpentine self out of the station, a young man came rushing down the bridge steps. In his pin stripe pants and crisp white shirt, he wore the look of a successful professional. There was a rush of heady determination in his gait. With his eyes fixed on the train that threatened to move any moment, he did not see her in his way. He ran, his arms flaying in the air. She tried to dodge him. Unsuccessfully. They collided.
He twirled her around with his flaying arms now enveloping her in a disarming embrace. Neither knew what was happening. The unwarranted, amused stares of curious onlookers broke the spell. He rushed to hop on to his train.
She was still wide eyed with the joyful excitement the twirl had whipped in her. She coyly smiled as a young bride would, trying to hide from the gaze of the amused bootpolishwala, the chaiwala, the paperwala and others . She didn't yell at him or slap him. She only carried the happiness he had unknowingly passed on to her in those brief seconds.

What's on my Calendar

2009-03-06T11:17:00.005+05:30

It's already a week into the month of March and I dont feel particularly resolute about anything. Except, flipping my calender maybe. It's a month when my city begins to scorch under the glare of the sun. The land turns dry and skin just melts. It just forewarns us that yes, "April is the cruelest month." March in my head is a friendlier month. It is a month which(for me) spells sunshine, happiness, color and freedom.
This month my calendar has to remind me of something that makes me go light in the head and happy. As I sat thinking about color and happiness, a film I love flashed before me. I want to bring a spray of color and a dash of life on a mute piece of blank paper. So, my calendar is going to carry a poster of Won Kar Wai's film Chungking Express. Its a film that can just scoop me out of the darkest shell and coax the cynic in me to shut up. The film is a melange of things I love ; food, a soap bar that cries, music, a gritty gun wielding blonde, a towel that weeps, a can that preserves memories, dark alleys, yellow sunshine, a simple girl who dreams, a silly man who whines, lovers who come without an expiry date. Everything about the film is a reaffirmation of life, as it is, a riot of goodness peppered with the bad,sad,mad and ugly.
It is going to be a colorful year, a few clouds, laced with a lot of happy sunshine.
What say?

The Gun Shot

2009-03-05T13:18:00.004+05:30

He softly pushed the stray locks of her hair behind her ear. His hand trembled a little. It wasn't his first time. His fingers had still not gotten used to the coldness of the metallic butt. The delicate curve of the trigger sent a thrilling tingle down his spine. She cast a fleeting glance of uncertainity at him. He gave a weak smile of reassuarance. Then, he softly dabbed the tip of a black felt pen on her lovely ear. He took aim. He squinted in the incandescence of the white light that the mirrors were reflecting. Her eyes were shut in anxious anticipation of a single numbing moment. He inched the barrel closer to the soft cartilage. He tightened the grip of his slender fingers around the trigger. Her eyes were still shut. He pulled the trigger. There was a loud Click. For a brief moment her face crumpled as she winced. It was over. She opened her eyes and smiled. The jewel shone on her now red, left ear lobe. Before leaving, she thanked him and appreciated him for his perfection.

He never told them that even he shut his eyes before every puncture he made. It was always a shot in the dark.

The crooner and his aide.

2009-03-03T21:55:00.003+05:30

We begged and pleaded. Finally he relented. "But you will have to wait for forty five minutes," he thundered. We burst into a toothy grin. We would wait. He lumbered up a wooden staircase and disappeared.It was well past the time for the last order. The smell of vinegar pierced through the warm night air.
A lone couple sat on the corner table, their heads hung in silent meditation over a bowl of noodles. A gentle drone of the electric fan was the only musical accompaniment to the occassional clatter of the cutlery. Vhiner set his lips in a pout. He wanted to go to the outlet of mass manufactured sandwiches, across the street. Papayaflakes had raised her eyebrows in exasperated impatience. She didn't have patience with food or people. Now, she dropped a fork only to stir up the silence.
A short pudgy man suddenly popped up from behind the rather tall counter. He looked around the small restaurant, alarmed. His pixie like ears had tweeked up in fearful anxiety. Seeing us, he recovered. Longlashes flashed him a dramatically heartfelt smile. "We'll get our food faster" she whispered through her teeth.He disappeared behind the counter once again. We turned our backs and resumed our wait.
A few moments later a voice boomed cheerfully from behind the counter, "you like Elvis?" He waved out a couple of cds in one hand and a mike in the other. "YES!" we almost answered in unison.He was elated.
He whisked out his mike and switched on his jukebox. For the next thirty minutes he seranaded us with Elvis' soleful melodies. When Michael, our grumpy waiter finally returned, he too was smiling, a heap of momos stacked up on the plate in his hand. Michael and his boss, the man behind the counter, loved Elvis.
The steaming momos he served us, were soft and delicious.

Everytime a vinegary pungent smell wafts through the air and Elvis croones "Falling in love with you" I fondly remember Michael and his boss. And of course the momos.

I'd like to

2009-02-22T20:29:00.004+05:30

stud your skin
with
a thousand pins
just to hear
you utter
a word.
Perhaps.

Rad is the word!

2009-02-18T16:37:00.001+05:30

My dad is a man of few words. Actually, very few words. But as a kid I picked up every ‘cool’ word from my dad. Somewhere along the way, I grew up, life sped past, telephone call charges soared and gradually conversation seemed to cease. We still have our moments. Just a couple of weeks back, he blew me over at the dinner table. He quoted some lines by Samuel Johnson. And then, some more by Somerset Maugham. Was this my dad?!

In the last few months we’ve started a new practice. Every time he comes back after a trip he pulls out a magazine from his bag, The Week and hands it over to me. I take it and keep it on my desk. Sometimes I flip through it. Mostly it just lies there, till the next fortnight when he brings home a new one. He came back yesterday and handed me a new one. “Do you even read it?” I always thought handing me the magazine was an act of getting rid of the raddi from his room. And in the process if one more person benefited, well, Halleluiah! I mumbled something about how I don’t really like The Week. “Oh you must read “Wicked Word,” its usually good.”

“Wicked Word” ha? I was intrigued. I ran down to my room and turned to ‘Wicked Word,’ a feature that takes a look at the English language in a humorous vein. This one was titled ‘Comings and Groins’. An excerpt from Jayaschandran’s article:
Noam Chomsky teaches universal grammar when he isn’t hitting the White House with a sledgehammer. Very few people understand him. He says babies are born with grammar in their brains. I think they are born with the grammar of the groins. We struggle with grammar because grammarians are frigid and testy. They need spectacles to find their testicles.[…]
Verbs never cease to arouse interest: these are action words, like ‘fornicate’. To fornicate is to have sex that is not adulterous. In the bible, adultery is a sin you commit; there is no commandment against fornication. You don’t commit it- it is no crime, you just do it with delight. Do no mix it with formication, which is a neurological feeling of insects crawling all over the body: just ensure the partner is not a creep. Architects can fornicate at work; the adjective ‘fornicate’ means ‘shaped like an arch’.
The verb ‘ejaculate involves an exclamation. Most men ejaculate in private. It wasn’t so in the past. In novels like “Wuthering Heights” and “Lady Chatterly’s Lover”, characters often ejaculated in public, with their astonished mouths.”

The rest of the article continued in a similar vein. Much like Catherine from Wuthering Heights I ejaculated in joyous surprise. My dad was so cool! He had no qualms handing over a write up liberally strewn with innuendoes/words/ideas/acts that most parents would be squeamish about and squirm away from.

Of course this was my dad!
In between growing up and collecting degrees I’d forgotten how cool my dad was.
He still is.
:)

Khaali Pretensions.

2009-02-13T09:35:00.006+05:30

A cool February evening. Scrap metal gods riding in on cycles. Tall plastic pyramids rising over the art deco buildings. Mobile toilets the city carries on its feet, railway tracks and pavements. Centre stage: a smorgasboard of culture to tingle your senses. Books, plays, films, art, dance and more. A riot of color. A heady mix of pavements, people, pretensions and paisa.

Amidst this cacophony that was the Kala Ghoda Festival, seated on a wooden pedestal was an urban hermit. A grubby beard that ended in colorful rubberbands adorned his rather emaciated face. A Jansport backpack carried the burden of his worldly possessions. His hair was bundled up on the top of his head in a bun. A few stray matted locks hung over his forehead. When he jumped off his pedestal, his pants precariously hung on somewhere in between his waist and feet. He bore a sign. He was giving away something. FREE! The moment I walked up to him he opened his spindly arms in a warm embrace and greeted me with the most cheerful smile I'd seen in weeks.

I din't know him. He din't know me.
I was free hug number 61.
Those were the most honest three seconds of my evening.
It drowned the din of all the pretensions that floated arounded me.

What's on my calendar?

2009-02-02T13:22:00.006+05:30

As I sat wondering what should go up on my calendar for the new month, I tried to guage my mood. I wasn't particularly elated or dejected. That gush of excitement and feverish anticipation of a new year had given way to a placidity that bordered on boredom. The Spartan Tree had lost its sheen. I needed color. The month of hope couldnt fizzle out into a shorter month of complacent acceptance.

That's when I thought of one of my favorite paintings by Waterhouse, "Gather Ye Rosebuds". She's Ophelia. Shakespeare's Ophelia who sings her last song and gives herself to cold waters.

But Waterhouse's Ophelia is different. She's not like Millais' helpless Ophelia who is carried away by drifting waters, with an orgasmic sigh escaping her lips. She's definitely unlike Hughes' demure nymph who looks back at us beseechingly one last time before singing her last song.

She is stunning. She is determined. She is sensual. She is alive.
The rosebuds in her hand spill over....hope spills over. maybe

February: dogged determination?
Two days short of a new month, MNG aka shorty said to me, "we're gonna have a sorted year or atleast a year where we makes leaps towards sortedness..."
Surely Yes :)

Pinter Prattle.

2009-01-29T15:37:00.003+05:30

Harold Pinter’s plays are metaphors for experiences of our own modern, desiccated lives. His plays are like ticking bombs, which pulsate with resonant silences and pound with booming pauses. Typically set in a tiny room of a middle class household, all his plays have ordinary people for protagonists. They are often tormented, troubled and wearied by their existence. His characters cringe, whisper, bark and bellow at each other. But they never talk to each other. Yet conversation is the corner stone of his plays. If conversation ceases, the characters too would cease. Malevolent and sinister, there is often an unknown threat lurking somewhere which is never understood or explained. His characters, almost like dangerous predators struggle for identity and survival. Language morphs into a dangerous weapon and beneath the words there is palpable silence of wrath, fear and power. This style, classic to Pinter is what has today come to be described as ‘Pinteresque’.

This is the legacy Harold Pinter left when he finally succumbed to cancer on 24th December 2008. Born to Jewish parents in London, on 10th October 1930, Pinter was multifaceted; an actor, poet, playwright, director and political activist all rolled into one. He wrote his first play The Room in 1957. The Birthday Party (1957), The Dumb Waiter (1957), The Caretaker (1960), The Homecoming ( 1964), No Man’s Land ( 1974) and Mountain Language (1988) are the most popular among his output of over thirty plays. He is also remembered for the screenplay for films like The Quiller Memorandum (1965) and The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981). Pinter was not just a playwright who wrote to entertain. His career was chequered with controversy. An obvious left sentiment often shows through in most of his works. In later years Pinter became more overtly political and a bitter critic of American policies and acts of war. Pinter’s Nobel Speech of 2005 registers his dissent in clear words, “I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever.”

Pinter, one of the greatest comic writers of recent years, took his comedy very seriously. His plays sometimes abrupt, sometimes funny, often inexplicable unravel the absurdities of our own time by forcing entry into oppressive, closed rooms and indulging in precious little prattle. The result, powerful plays loaded with pauses and exploding with silences. It is little wonder then that Harold Pinter will be best remembered for giving us the ‘Pinteresque’ mode of life and plays.

A Rant..

2009-01-15T00:52:00.006+05:30

I'm in a madddd mooood.
Mad meaning, fun madddd moood. I want to giggle and laugh riotously! I want to shout "Rubber Chicken" and cascade down with a mass of bodies, hitting ground zero. Every body crashing with peals of laughter.

I want to be mean to De. Crack jokes about how "V is so old" and how bald Mr. Drama is. I want to yell out across the corridor and ask Maddy and Ms.melodrama if they have some food left over. I want to jump over to the other bed and tell Shorty, "Lets watch HIMYM!" I want to look out of the window and see a little fire crackling in the middle of the night, near the stone bench. I want to hurtle invectives at Hipposaurus, only so he returns me the favor and calls me a "fake mallu" who is going to be punished by the Christian God.

I want to sit in a circle with one gold flake light passing around five hands. I want to talk about how daft the VC is and how hot alok is!I want to plop onto a bed with five other ppl around and a couple of budweisers floating!I want to be 5 minutes away from a hot plate of omelette and a steaming cup of tea served on a cold rock at two in the night.

That madness hasn't died. That madness spelt magic.
It still is.

I'm sure there is a fire crackling by the stone bench right now, and a group of mad people recounting such a night that was, just about a year ago.

The Highway Man

2009-01-12T14:33:00.007+05:30

Toll lines in my city are long and tedious. I curse toll lines every time I'm in one. I curse the guy in front of me, I want to hurtle invectives at the guy blasting his horn behind me. I throw an angry scowl at the guy who flags down my car and asks me to cough up the toll.

As I drove down the highway a couple of months back, on a ruddy morning, the radio played an all time favorite number on Bombay..Yeh hai Bombay Meri Jaan. How different my Bombay now looked from those forgotten black and white images of the silver screen. My head was in a twirl and I felt a gush of happiness for no apparent reason. Surprisingly, I noticed that there wasn't a queue at the Toll Station. This was going to be a beautiful day.

As I braked, I suddenly realized how doubly boring it must be for the guy collecting the toll from the passing cars. Everyday he'd have to stand at the same spot, waving down grumpy motorists, handing them the ticket and collecting the money. A mere exchange of paper, both worthless, if not for the legitimacy we give it. Not a word spoken, not a glance cast. If at all words were spoken, they would be angry bursts of "chutta nahin hai" from the motorist or a curt command of "dosra note do" from the toll guy. Didn't he have more reason to complain than a grouchy motorist like me, seated inside a car with music playing?

So that day instead of arrogantly handing out the money, while looking straight ahead at the road, I turned to the mechanical hand that thrust the ticket in my face. I gave him the money, he gave me the ticket. It was well rehearsed. We did it everyday. But today, I gave a small smile and I coughed a thank you. He didn't hear. I whizzed past, just like any other car on the highway. As I drove away, the smile lingered on. I felt good. I felt happy that he was the first person I had greeted that morning. It probably didn't make a difference to him, but it did to me. I felt more human.

Since that day I've been dropping by my thank you at every toll station. Sometimes it goes unheard. Sometimes its just heard. Very often there is a suspicious quizzical expression on his face. Sometimes he looks back with a look of surprise, like he didn't hear it right.Some times, there is a "okay madam."
Today, there was a heartfelt, "you're most welcome, madam."

It probably did make a difference. :)
Random acts of kindness never gone unremitted.

Looking for the Calendar.

2009-01-10T17:56:00.007+05:30

I've never paid attention to my New Year Calendar. It usually finds its way up my wall sometime past February or March, sometimes by chance, sometimes out of pure desperation, often because I'm gifted one.

Another cycle of twelve months has been ushered in, but the ugly miniature calendar of 2008 still clings on to my blue pin board. The month of December vacantly gazes back at me, reminding me of deadlines and doom. I flip back to a few months earlier and I see crammed scheduling, meticulous calculations and illegible scribblings. Punctuated every now and then in this bedlam, are blank white spaces. I wonder what that means. Was it a happy blank or was it a pensive blank? Was it a blank of clarity or was it an unresolved, frightful blank? I can't remember.

I'm weary of forgetting.

This year it ought to be a little different. My calendar must remind me. I'm not entirely sure what would go into making a great calendar. But I do know, I'm bored of ugly numbers squinting at me through square boxes, against a pale white backdrop. I want my calendar to remind me of some thing I like, dislike, ought to like, should care about, should think about,some thing I'd like to do.

I don't want it to be just another year that whizzes past. I want to resolve and remember and carry it over to 2010, without significant memory lapses.

Majoli,The Spartan Tree, Greece.
January : Hope?
Seeing this M said, "Here's to our very own landscapes of hope behind the screen of smoke filled streets."

Strangelove Santa

2008-12-15T23:00:00.006+05:30

I think all I really want to be is articulate. Articulate about emotions. Articulate about feelings. Articulate about love. It feels wonderful when someone articulates to you how much they love. Santa dropped by to show me once again how easy it is to love.

Among the innumerable 'official' mails that flood my mailbox daily was a rather inconspicuous one today, which read "Happy New Year". It was my friend from the lackadaisical land of sun and sand.Her mails are always special. I eagerly open her mails because they are thoughtful, honest and loving. She's my first christmas Santa of the season who brought in the message of love and affection like the three wise men. She wasnt just sending across luke warm Christmas and New Year Wishes. It was a wonderfully touching mail which was sent out to the entire class of the Masters program, spreading the Christmas cheer and her love. She had jotted down something meaningful, nice and honest about each one of us. Santa made my day by telling me i had made a difference to her in some little way. She said, " dear heart! Such a wonderful nature, such a bright mind and such a great sense of style. How blessed I am to know you. Thank you!"I'm sure Santa made a difference to each person on the mailing list by telling them exactly how they made a difference to her. I think Santa is wonderful.

She was deeply affected the first time i said 'lol' to something that had miffed her. Then she didn't yet know what 'lol' meant in sms lingo. When i explained she said, "How can you laugh out loud to that!", rather dismayed. Now she's taught me to use the 'lol' her way. Now, between us, it only reads as 'lots of love.'

It's only i who still resorts to the crumpled, abridged, diluted 'lol', she generously splatters her smses or mails with love. She inspires me to love. Without inhibitions. She unknowingly inspires me to express affectionately, freely, honestly, fearlessly. Her sweeping, uninhibited, gestures and remarks teach me something precious.
Its okay to let someone know you love them. Expressing affectionately is not a mighty task.

It feels wonderful to be blessed with this Santa. Thank You Santa.

The Philosopher

2008-12-07T21:29:00.005+05:30

People colorfully chequer our life. Its temptingly exciting to box people into categories and sort them in our head as types. I'm not wonderfully perceptive. Yet, I love to mentally label people in my head.My life is teeming with people; common,typical, plain, usual,conventional,strange,wierdly wonderful,attached,irreverent, melodramatic, detached, head strong,dont give a damn, cautious, evil, moral, stoic, eccentric, jovial, abusive, secretive, talkative. Its an exhaustive, ecclectic mix! And then there are some people. They zoom into your life and then right out. They just defy every conceivable idea of a type. They're defiant. They're special. They're special because they make a difference. They show you there's another way of living, another way of thinking. Another universe of being. Its rarely that I let people make themselves special to me. Infinitely, secretively special. Immensely special. One just revisited me today, briefly, over text messages.
A few short sentences punctuated a lazy sunday afternoon.An exclamation interjected the long hiatus. A question dispersed the vacuum of time. An answer reassured, things haven't changed. As always it didn't end with a full stop. It never did. He said, "call sometime..."
The cantankerous philosopher crept stealthily into the secret realm and got tagged 'special.' He's been there for a while now and not many have come close to displacing him. He does nothing to make him a worthy 'special'. He's not overtly expressive or caring. He'll never call, but will always say, 'call sometime.' He'll never send a message, but will promptly(almost affectionately) reply to every message. He'll rarely put an arm around you and say 'its going to be alright'. His green eyes, never judging, plainly do the trick. They reassure you.
He loves to talk. He can theorize about the poppy seed, the paratha or the porsche. He can see magic in a pencil top, a well toasted sandwich, a querty keypad or even a stupid cat. He'd like to own a audi or a merc, a rich woman and may be some camels. He likes the idea of a red harem, with a warm homely library, tucked away in some corner. The book shelf, he specifies, has to be of light wood, not encased in glass tombs, but open. He's thrilled at the thought of sitting on a huge heap of silver coins and flinging them in the air, just to hear them jingle.

He quit his corporate job because he wanted to quit selling his soul.

He can thrill you with ideas. He can slowly needle you on to something you never knew existed. He can puncture your zeal with his pessimistic vision. He can soar your dipping spirits with that reassuring smile, black tea and a drag. Special requests from excessively low spirits never go unredeemed, the guitar is strummed and a song is sung. The lazy bugger loves adventure, but it all HAS to be planned! Which bus? From where?Are you sure?What time?Really? Naah...I'll pass. I have to clean up the house.
Sprawled on the stony bench he throws a white beam of light on the tree overhead. He's looking for bats. He has a story. Always. But its rarely about him. You can pour your heart out to him.He'll unravel himself to you only in bits. And as you get to know him, you know there is a lot you have to compromise. Your expectations. Your ego. Your pride. What you share with him is too special to be compromised...for anything.Which is why I will call sometime...

And again we'll talk about the perfect reading room, with the wooden floors, white french windows, a low coffee table, open book shelves and old conversations.

chalk, blackboard and maam'lade.

2008-11-26T22:14:00.004+05:30

Widened eyes, startled mouth. Surprised shriek, "you teach?" Stunned silence. "I teach," i say candidly. Next quizzical question, "they listen to you?" Wonderstruck eyeballs still gaze in disbelief. Without being pompous, i try to diplomatically wiggle out of the situation, " they're very sweet kids...they at least pretend to listen." A rather premeditated remark invariably follows, "oh who wouldn't, with a pretty face like that teaching them." That's when my brain squirms a little, feels like it is floating in a strange yellow gravy and wants to spew some out right at the remark-er. A new one cropped up recently..."What do you wear to work?" ( trust a delhite to come up with that.) If i had an outrageously bold style of dressing that might have been an interesting question. But alas! I'm still waiting for that one person to NOT say to me within the first five mins, in a smug voice, 'OOooh! hot professor!'Why discount the brain completely?
What is so incredulous about a 23 year old female adult teaching in a college? She may be just a couple of years older than her oldest student. She may also be just a novice at the job (the students dont have to know that!). She may..may, also have a pretty face (apparently). But why the surprise, incredulity, disbelief, smirking laugh in head? Its no cake walk trying to get the attention of 70 odd twenty somethings to think seriously about poetry. Its even worse trying to get 100 of them collectively excited to read and comprehend a newspaper clipping. Its a mammoth task to coax ten students to write a letter, review, something, anything.
I returned to college after a two month hiatus. Life sped past me in the two months, but the classrooms, tables, blackboards, staff room and students still remain. As i stepped into a college building stirring with restltess, young energy, buzzing with carefree banter, i felt a gush of happiness. As i stepped foot into the entrance lobby, the guard did a half bow and a swish of a salaam and bellowed 'hello madam.' Walking up the stair case, i was momentarily stunned with the cheery 'goodmorning maam,' from beaming students.
Maam?
Yes its time to switch roles again. Its time to change the shoes and take a bow. The relieved faces of my third years, the playful, pleading, naughty glances of my first years(maam please, free lecture!) and the lovely, comforting, disarming loud hellos and hi's of my second years. To me, it felt like a home coming of sorts. I'm glad to be taken back. Rather eagerly...
A fun term
A great fun term
A meaningful great fun term
A planned meaningful great fun term
I'm adamant about making it happen. I'm adamant about making a lot of things happen. I'm adamant about being adamant. You know when they like you. They know when they like you, why they like. They know when you dont know jack shit. They know when you churn bullshit.
So watch out!
They listen to me when i make sense. I know i dont make sense when i listen to the sounds of a muffled unrest slowly brewing....and rising.
And i switch hats once again...it helps hide the hair that the storm had ruffled.

Baggage

2008-03-02T02:41:00.002+05:30

"Human kind cannot bear very much reality."

- Eliot.

Know?

2008-02-29T19:16:00.002+05:30

"Its funny about identity. You are because your little dog knows you."

- Gertrude Stein.

sounds i miss...

2007-02-26T21:32:00.000+05:30

The metallic clang of the beautiful bronze bell signalling recess at school.The primitive sonorous ring of our ancient telephone.The painful screeching noise issuing forth from contact between the chalk and blackboard.The coaxing loving whine my favourite dog would court me with.The slow trickle of dirty water flowing down the steps of our narrow building corridors every once in a while the bai washed them.The little musical prelude that was played before "aamchi maati aamchi maanse"(or something like that) everyday on DD1. The looooong wistful siren which was sounded everyday at 6:30am for the Raymond factory workers as a cue to the end of yet another ardous shift and the dawning of yet another morning. The mellifluous notes of the bagpipe and the thudd of the drums which serenaded us every sports day. The piercing blow of the whistle which marked the beginning of every mass drill exercise. The loud bang with which my fourth floor home doors kept banging with every monsoon.The slight swish with which the cream curtains lazily swayed during warm summers. The sudden static and black and white shower of dots the TV would burst into every once in a while. The incessant kicks which were used to cajole my mum's first bike and then its slow sputtering to life..only to die out in a minute. The slight scratchy notes jumping from the letters being scribbled with apsara pencil in my notebook. The muffled sound of my smiley eraser incessently erasing digits from my maths book. The rattle of the spoon in my steel tiffin as my lunch basket swayed with every stride. The choked and suppresed bursts of laughter when we saw for the first time an anatomy of the human body in the fourth standard science text.
The terrifying buzz of deadening silence.The rustle of a new christmas dress.The echo of girly laughter resounding through labrinthine stone corridors. The corny rigtone of my first cell phone.The chaotic clatter of peak hour traffic jams.The humdrum voice of the lady cackling over the speakers at railway stations.The slow chugging of the local train as it approaches its destination.The rife voices of the vendors aboard a 6:11 fast. The haggard voices of working women.The joyful banter of idle college girls. The flirty whistles of roadside romeos.The swoosh of the broom as the early morning BMC worker sweeps the VT subway. The doodhwalla,the machiwalla,the pav walla,the bhaandiwalla and their bellowing cries. The plethora of audible,muffled,inaudible sounds which continue to resonate in some crevice of my memory....even if they die out in my city. I miss it all.

A Brief Interlude.

2007-02-04T21:27:00.000+05:30

Three days three nights seventy two hours.
Well spent?bummed around bummed around bummed around some more.
Two movies one sitcom and some more pop corn.
Coffee caffeine,cherry flavored haze,sugared confectionaries,sinful cocoa and tantalizing grape.
Pyromaniacs,felinophobics,crazy non-acrophobics,Ulysees addicts,nocturnal night watchers.

My world is bizzare and colourful.A melange of the most unlikely.I live on an island dissevered from the insanity of the norm.We revel in a sanity most uncommon.Warped sleeping cycles,uncanny standards of dedication to work and (in)sensitivity to fellow mates apart we also take time off to look after the canines and felines.We swear by the four bucks coffee,four bucks donuts and navy cuts.Smelly loos and insipid food are surely not the silver lining.They are very forgetable.But the third floor gatherings,the insane play readings,the incongrous carol singing,the late night chillings,unearthly hour food binging,gossiping,speculating,bitching,sleeping;it could be mistaken for a two year party.But wait.We also slog for aeons on assignments,presentations and dissertations.(we actually spend hours on Bibliographies and punctuations)Life is a voyage with intermittent parties happening here and there.We crib we cry.We waste we worry and then hurry.But the night air soothes us, the bonfires warm us.And I wouldnt want to exchange this little world for anything better..well at least not for the time being.Cheers to the Wierdos who make my island boisterous fun and liveable!After all, in hindsight, the weekend was not badly spent.

an account

2007-02-02T23:23:00.000+05:30

stale cold air.closed blackened windows.lazily rotating fan.sonorous voice echoing through the the stuffed room.restless mind wandering.suddenly scuttling spider across the whitewashed wall.scuffling feet at the strike of four.gray evening sky.steaming aromatic coffee spurting out of the yellow machine.lazy stroll in the well pruned garden.lounging under the huge tree pointlessly.trying to discuss important people.restless mind wandering.sauntering back to the grayer confines of a ten by ten space.lazy body lazy mind lazy being.hey beelzebub!wasted being wasted hour wasted day.piercing yell.frantic scream.albino lizard crawling across the cream wall.tail swishes,swishes swiiiiishes.stops.sits.stationary.irked out.monotony.boredom.change.welcome.grab bag n some bucks.hop into black and yellow bug.manouvers through clogged roads.halts.short queue.fat man.my turn.no change. no change.aisle seat.happy.time to kill.time stands still.spot a sale.books books n booksscatteredpiledstackedarranged.rummaging.finding.buying.happy.time to scoot.seated not so comfortably.annoying feet groping in the dark.muffled voices.searching hands.finally settled.rolling.soundcameraaction.darkness.stale cold air.closed blackened doors.happiness sadness naach gaana love joy natak.phew.over.cool night air.cheerful bright street lights.nice walk across the town.food coffee icecream chocolate gossip vanilla choco chips pastry.beautiful glowing full moon.monotony forgotten.recharged.revitalized.happy.stuffed.think this should be done everyday.wish it could be so.wish many things could be.wish wish wish wishwash.streets deserted.time fleeting.pack up pack up.rick shaw!rickshaw!good night good night.one and a half metre charges.damn!

REASONS WHY I HATE COFFEE SHOPS.

2007-01-28T18:50:00.000+05:30

1.Because they don’t serve kaapi..but caawfee.
2.Because they don’t serve water but just caawfee.(even if you order a chicken crosissant.)
3.Because their chicken croissants usually suck.
4.Because they promise to serve with a smile failing which you get your coffee FREE!
5.Because they never do smile. And when you point to that big advertisement on their cool purple wall they flash a fake, obnoxious toothy grin.
6.Because they play lousy music.
7.Because my friends dedicate this lousy music to each other.
8.Because chirpy teens and annoying couples hog the huge couch for long periods of time, oblivious to large groups in dire need of that kind of space.
9.Because No matter which state, city or metropolis; the topography of these coffee shops rarely undergoes alteration. They are always purple, orange or mocha.
10.Because I have a problem with the word “hanging out.”
11.Because I once got asked out in a coffee shop.
12.Because I’m bored of all the coffee shops.
13Because I think tea is any day a better beverage than coffee.
14.Because I still continue going to coffee shops.

PS: this outburst has nothing to do with the fact that I turned a year older and suddenly seem to have gained a more mature perspective on life. Next up might be why I hate malls.

Transcendence...ephemeral, fleeting,attainable?

2006-12-02T23:12:00.000+05:30

Have you ever contemplated the darkness of a tunnel?? The probing minds which must have transgressed its limitless ness? The groping hands which must have searched its boundless ness? The aspiring hearts which must have plunged into its nihilism?

She encountered the end of the abyss.She touched ground zero.She is the darkness.

She has no golden halo.Just a probing mind, a groping hand and an aspiring heart.She lives in the mortal fear of the dark.Of the other groping hand which wants to touch her, the inquisitive mind which wants to penetrate through her, the overwhelmed heart which wants to possess her.

She lives a life of feared desires, fettered wishes and un expressed feelings.She should breakfree...soon.Before the last grains of sands of time slip and pass through her nimble fingers, returning to the dust, at the end of the abyss.

Bored?

2006-07-26T22:58:00.000+05:30

Boredom.Its a strange thing.Sometimes when life is zipping past you at an unstoppable pace you hope and wish for moments of boredom. Boredom can be a good comforting break from the tenacious grip of our mechanical existance.Soothing and therapeutic for frayed nerves and numbed mind.
But that is essentially "sometimes".Normally Boredom can strike you at the most unexpected times. Or is it just me? I've felt it innumerable times..Right in the middle of reading a Newspaper or a captivating thriller, watching a romantic mush-flick or Friends, talking to my friend or even eating the yummiest food.Have you never felt that overpowering urge which compels and cajoles you into just chucking everything? When you yearn for that one moment of stasis which can just let things be the way they are? Stiffened,static,paralysed,irreversible??
Boredom I have figured is very rarely a palliative.It is a lethal arsenal which more than often is destructive.It makes you lugubrious and sore, unproductive and disturbed.I hate being bored. Boredom for me encompasses not only being bored with things or activities, but taste,variety and even people.Boredom with things may make you realise how limited you are in skill and interests. But boredom with the world only reinforces my faith in solitude. Man is a social animal..for most part of my life I'll play the part of the animal, for the rest of it let me just be.

Current mood:embittered for no apparent reason.

Horizons

2006-07-04T21:01:00.000+05:30

I feel like I've lived a lifetime
I stand at the threshold of another..
I see it unfolding on the palm of my hand.
Like Sybil I'd want to squiggle in all the sand that i can
Can all my memories, seal all my friendships and obliterate all by-gone pain.
But memories dont leave you friends rarely forget you and a trifle pain always remains.
All that is exactly what makes life worth living again and over again.
And who says you live life just once...its a different life at every new turn, in every new book, in every new face, in every new friend.
Its a new day with every new sunrise and i stare longingly...into the far horizons.

How Rakhi got kissed got wild and lost the little life she had!

2006-06-21T23:40:00.000+05:30

Applauses haven't sounded yet again.Accolades haven't rung all over again! But our (in)famous "the new hot thing" "the sizzling beauty" "THE ITEM GIRL" has not done us proud again! They always manage to make it to the headlines...for all the wrong reasons of course.

Whether it was Shefali zaariwala or Deepal shaw...a splash in the tabloids is essential every now and then.How else will we remain "hooked" on to them? After all we are the aam junta..n public memory is short lived ...very short. After Shilpa Shetty hurt public sentiments down south with her vulgarly draped sari..Apni mumbai ki gori probably felt sidelined and lacklustre. So what better way to penetrate back into the fading memory of us privileged viewers??

Of course its the tried and tested formula...erupt a sensational scandal..touch the public sentiment where it hurts the most and then create a ruckus about Indian morality and ethics. So what better chord to touch rather than the aeons old "abla naari" sentiment. Rakhi Sawants a pro..she's outdone her fellow "items". A little mud might be splashed around but she's confident of emerging out of the shutterbug smooch episode unharmed...quite as the sati savitri. After all as she defiantly proclaims.."I am an innocent Indian woman and no one can attack my dignity like that"

Does she even merit dignity? Well some women's organizations seem to think so,after all she is the "new Indian woman", the face of the modern India. Why then is the Maharastra government banning her shows all over the state? Well may be they'd rather that Mika perform. But the whole incident is quite ridiculous. Rakhi Sawant can bare it all on screen for hundreds of viewers and she cant handle a moronical man at a party and keep her dignity with herself.But alas..how can that be? She has to get her sheen back..her image has to be revitalised for us!

And of course the reservations,oil hikes and govt policy changes are trivial and inconsequential. Rakhi with her plunging necklines,Mika with his macho looks and Tiger with his flexed muscles are our heros for the day. Well thats what the papers seems to endorse..why else would they waste realms n realms of paper on the trysts of these insignificant earthlings from never neverland??

Till then we shall just wait and watch if Mika n Tiger ever do go to meet Rakhi and her mommy for chai...I'm sure the papers will be there to catch the moment when they kiss and make up. Now isnt that Front page Headlines material!!!

IMAGINE...?!

2006-06-17T22:16:00.000+05:30

i cant imagine...im imaginatively handicapped.

i wonder why i cant imagine.what does it take to imagine? a creative wandering mind? a free restless spirit? or intelligence? formulaic intelligence? two plus two is always four..or can it be something more or something less?

i try to be a free falling leaf...but am sucked to the vortex by that force which you call gravity...

it lends me no sense of temerity but leaves me crumpled with a sense of futility

i try to be a shining star...but im left faded in the glory of the blazing sun..

i try to be the lily of the valley but am left withered in the pulchritude of the orchid..

i try to be something and am left overpowered by the vast void of nothing..

i cant be you...i cant be her..i cant be the orphan i cant be the urchin

i cant be something you want to see

i can show you the world through my eyes,it may be tainted,it may be lies
i can resurrect a new world from these fragments
entwined enriched woven by my imagination..
the orphan may be happpy the urchin may be rich
i can show you what you would want to see.
deploy my observations employ my deductions.
shrinking my imagination to mere reduction?

imagine?

but what is the use?

tickles your senses, goads your wishes

shatters reality? mystifies eternity?

i can spur my imagination and create a mighty din

but i have to be me before i am you, her or him.

and if i do imagine about the world at large what will you be left with?

ramblings , musings rantings...nothing but my ruminations.

imagination is but a worm...

im happy with just my ruminations..

im not selfish im not depraved..

im just human with nothing much to rave

and all these faults i know i'll carry right into my grave.

(state of mind: stubbornly incorrigible)

Concoctions on a Highway.

2006-06-02T15:57:00.000+05:30

Zeus’ wand struck the pouting cloud
The firmament gurgitated with a howl
He ripped open it’s treasure cove
And battered the city with crystal drops
Hespera reached out for her resplendent veil
Clothing the evening in a fatal black.
Zephyr conspired to float it adrift
But the cascading army stayed on by Jove’s grit.

A million crystals splattered onto the parched ground
Turning the dusty gray into a star spangled black
Motor chariots trudged along the gleaming asphalt
The amber, ruby and emerald came to a halt.
Each crystal a golden drop now suspended…Only to drop burst scatter....forever.. ended

Names and more..

2006-05-30T17:46:00.000+05:30

So some posts ago i elucidated how preposterous names could get back home.Now seriously i wasnt "trying" to be funny. All that was true!So now as the ultimate stamp of authenticity i would like to draw your(yess yess u 2/3 jobless souls) kind attention to a not-so-new party of my acclaimed homeland. It is lovingly Accronymed and called DIC(K). Not even DIC-K but DIC(K) I always thought of it as Tom-Dick and Harry...but to actually christen a party!!I'm not being perverted or insolent. I genuinely find it an unworthy accronym for the party. What is more paradoxical is what it stands for...kudos to the father n son for surviving the elections miserably.

There are innumerable things that amuse me about Kerala.Politics is almost a religion to every adult there. And not being religious is not cool.Ignorance is sacrilege.The newspaper is not far behind the Bible.Every friendly tea shop discussion is a sermon. And participation in locally organized political rallies and processions is as crucial as the Sunday Mass. And if you thought that it was just a male bastion..you are grossly mistaken. Women are as ardent political enthusiasts as men. What seems to be emerging now is a much awaited new wave of feminine awakening where the "house wife" is also a member of Kudumbashri. A panchayat level organization exclusively for and by women. I'd only read how political awakening is essential at the grass root levels. Its no myth...the seed has sprouted and the roots have spread.They cant nip away the blade now.

Kerala not just Gods own country....my country.

(sycophanting??? next post shall most certainly be kerala bashing!)

2006-05-04T21:13:00.000+05:30

The Annual exodus to the "native land" beckons me....
Eagerly??? not so eager? i dont know.
But I shall be back to fill this space with refreshing words of rain kissed mornings and lush green trees , sparkling streams and wet soaked mud....and all those little things I forget to even notice in my mechanical urban existance.

Bleak and Blue

2006-05-02T22:55:00.000+05:30

"Some day after we have mastered the air , the winds the tide and gravity,we will harness for God the energies of love.And then for the second time in the history of the world man will have discovered fire."
Teilhard De Chardin

The day seems close enough....we've soared the skies, skimmed the seas ,defied gravity.
Yet those stark reminders..denying our mastership...tsunamis, Katrinas and other moments of depravity.
The day seems close enough..yet the promise of love remains unfulfilled.
Man may have discovered it a first and a second time but he's extinguished it himself...time and again. It just needs to be re-ignited...cant you see?? not re- discovered!
We will harness for God and Man the energies of love.

Whats the NAME of the game??

2006-04-30T22:03:00.000+05:30

Hi! Whats your name?

So whats in a NAME? Isnt it just another four lettered noun of the English language? Quite inconsequential from a linguist's point of view.But not so for the individual.A name most often is the most vital element of one's personality.Constituting your sense of selfhood and identity. It could add to ur persona or diminish it. Ok so now that i have tried to establish some kind of seriousness i shall stop sounding like a self help manual. Basically your name is Quite important..its what the world out there knows you and calls you by! And you dont really want to feel embarassed everytime you hear it echoing through the stale air of a crowded local or through the pristine air of old mountains(eg:Echo point of any Hill station is an outstanding possiblity)

So considering we live by this "name" from well almost the beginning of our being till the day we are shoved into the grave why should others be given the cumbersome responsibilty of "Christening" us for life? I ask this not because I dont like my own name...but have come across quite a few funny unlikely names.

Tom and Harry are fine..but Dick? Goldilocks and Snow White were bad enough so now why Sona,Heera,Ruby, Amber and Sparkles? Ok i know these are matters of personal choice..but LESBIA?????
What were they thinking? My sister often used to speak about a Lesbia who kept getting into trouble in school and her name would invariably cackle over the PA system every alternate day much to the amusement of other students.
Ok so there is atleast variety here unlike in my land down south where every second person could very well be a Biju,Shiju,Shiny,Shijy or Aby.
Chacko for the Dad and Ammu for the mom are nice but Chaamu for the son???Unlikely you might think but a frequent fad I'd say.So this way nice names merge into hybrids :
Timothy+Shijy=Tijy
Susan+Andrew=Ansu

Depressing? Wait there is more..how about Peenu and Gifty?I'm just hoping Peenu darling falls in love with a Esther so that their childs name metamorphosises into a Peter. Else if Gifty were to wed him..their child in all probabilty can be named "Petty" or worse still "Pity"

Worse still are cases when nice names turn out to have not so favourable meanings. Now who would have thought Jenny actually means a female donkey?I have decided..when the mantle of naming the child is thrust on my not so strong mind/shoulders..i shall definitely google it before I zero down on one!

Contemplating...change?

2006-04-30T21:39:00.000+05:30

Blog world!!I'm missing it of late. why do i feel like i have orphaned my blog?
I hate the few recent posts. I've stumbled upon a new discovery.Like how some people work best under pressure.. I think i write my best when I'm depressed,sad,gloomy,whiny and extremely pre occupied(read exams around the corner) That of course doesnt mean my pieces of writing are supreme works of art...i just feel a whole lot more satisfied by those posts than others written just to occupy cyber space.Catharsis!

So I'm considering...changing my gloomy melancholic style of writing..to something more witty,slap stick,of the moment rather than pondering the pointless past. So should i turn this blog into a "ma quotidienne vie" journal or should i post excerpts from books I'm reading.. or better still excerpts from chat rooms??Fun n frolic in my life never exactly translate into easy flowing words. But melancholy finds it way into my written thoughts so fluidly.Why is that so?
There i go again....

Now slap slap whack! This is the height of stupidity! I actually have a problem with not having a problem in life right now.How silly....ok this is it.My next post shall be an attempt to discover the funny bone in me.(dont laugh mon hypocrite lecteur!)

Funny Quirk a friend made:Though our life seems to be going in circles lets not try and walk in circles. But i do hope this circle remains round....Lol
(now isnt a circle always round?well i always sucked at geometry...)

Withdrawal impossible!

2006-04-25T22:52:00.000+05:30

I'm addicted! I dont like this!I'm loving it..but I hate loving it!

The "it" refers to this not so new bug called networking on these various networking sites!They are quite parasitic. First i refrained from joining them..that dint last long..never does work when your inbox is flooded with eager requests. and hey im just human..and so I gave in to the newest fad in the cyber world!
To begin with..it wasnt all that exciting..then the world caught on. communities sprang up..forums evolved never to cease churning out opinions. Now my inbox began to be flooded like never before. I dont know if Im complaining..cause I quite like seeing new mails which say someones scribbled me a message or left a new mail. The someone did not really matter as long as I had something new to read! See I told you its parasitic!
What is the point?? Spending.. no a more appropraite term would be "wasting" so much time on writing an impressive profile?? Then putting on a nice cute pic where you look your bestest. And then joining these innumerable communities you may never even cast a second glance on later.And whom do you connect with? "Friends" of now then and never before or never again!

May be I've got the whole concept wrong. MAy be Im not really good at "keeping in touch" and hence would rather be of the other herd and rant. But seriously Im still attracted by these wide reaching all encompassing kinda e-network worlds. Who knows i just might glean something worthwhile out of this futile yet entertaining exercise...sometime in the distant future.

As of now...they are quite amusing and entertaining. One of my profiles states I hate hypocrisy. I know this post is reeking the stench of the same..but I just cant help hating to love it nor loving to hate it! If anyone can set my muddled up state right..kindly help!

As of now..I'll just go peek in to my inbox and look for new messages :))

oui! hypocrite ecriveur!

Regret..

2006-04-16T20:17:00.000+05:30

OK.
I've tried to bring in change.
But I hate the way my blog looks now!

Looks more boring than ever.

The best thing would be to stop ranting and go read something better.

Pending yet: Winds of Change...

CARPE DIEM(trying to)

2006-04-16T18:53:00.000+05:30

Its back to the beginning...world without end.

nothing apocalyptic about it...i just like sounding like an oracle(thats obviously coz im not even ever getting close to being one. )

Today's Easter. But it doesn't feel like "Easter". How is Easter supposed to feel? I dont know...Thats coz I've never really known how Easter's supposed to feel. May be I should really observe Lent next year and may be I'll feel a little differently.

So what is the point behind this rambling?

As always... I dont know!

I'm terribly bored.

Of?

Everything.

Beginning with this Blog. Its starting to look "faded" and "worn out" to my eyes.

Monotony is setting in again.

I need a new whisp of refreshing breeze to sweep away this stasis and gently bring in something.....

unknown... pure.... unseen.... nouvelle....

Anew... to rejuvenate my lethargic spirit.

I guess I have to make a beginning yet again.

And so it shall be.

I think Im going to start with the blog

A new face it shall don!

ETRE-Je suis

2006-04-02T19:18:00.000+05:30

I am me
But i have not always been me.
Then who am i?

The innocent infant mewling at birth
The ignorant toddler blissful in mirth?
The young school girl all neat and tidy
The dutiful daughter to her daddy?

The elder sister
Who teaches you nothing sinister
The faithful friend
"There for you" to break borrow or bend?

i've been i for aeons now
A construct you've imposed not endowed
i'm tired off playing the part of "i"
i'm not "I" any longer can't you see why?

No longer in your shadow(you know, but chose to ignore)
My wings have sprouted they are raring to go.
Let go!

i have been "you" for so long
But now I want to be me.
Let me be.
No more a voice of gray uncertainity
But of my own self and sureity.

Et Vous?

2006-03-31T21:26:00.000+05:30

Does it ever happen to you
You have titles but no themes
You have ideas but no content
Your head throbbing with thoughts
But your hand paralysed without words??

Your mind whirring in a daze....
All memories effaced..
Does it??

cCIRCLEDd

2006-03-27T23:31:00.000+05:30

Some days just dont start right. The alarm goes off alright you wake up alright but then you dont end up doing anything good out of those hours of sacrificed sleep. At least i rarely do. After being jarred out of my not so peaceful sleep I ended up dozing on top of my books. Every night I promise myself never to wake up early before an exam but i just always end up waking up dull and early. So now sleeping over books has become an accepted essential ritual.

The daily dose of sleep done today i needed an extended half an hour which was spent curled up in bed. By that time morning had dawned. I had read two lines about Marxist criticism and slept for one and a half hours. All I was now left with was now an hour and about five answers to revise. Not happening! So two answers are done as i think rest can be done in the car on the way to my exam centre. A hurried breakfast which just added to the butterflies trouble in my stomach. Im out of my house by 9.Peace! thats what even i thought. But wait. The day just had to get bad. So the roads are choked.The highway was full of vehicles. No way Im reaching my centre by road on time. So I was forced to take the crowded not-an-inch-to-place-your-foot trains that are sooo popular in my city!Travelling in these monstrous compartments in peak hours is my ultimate nightmare come true!But it had to be done. So there goes my huge plans of revising those answers. after a stiffling half an our of partial nervous breakdown in the crammed confines of the stupid local i set foot on the much dreaded not so commuter friendly station. But thankfully this time i reached the destination without goofing up. a huge sigh of relief!

With all my mounting unexpected bout of worries the plan of revising answers obvioulsy was thrown out of the train window. Jittery hands and tumultous mind were thankfully calmed before the paper. And as if a reward for all my pains and worries my paper went fine! i managed to do the prosody!!And it was right!!And the poetry was quite inane....im sure they picked it off one of these blogs...hey wait..we write better stuff than that.Ok moment of glory has passed. Its been a good day. All those surprising good luck wishes are really working! Im on a high! Most days that never start right often end right...mostly.

WAITING..(not) FOR GODOT

2006-03-23T13:53:00.000+05:30

gobbledy gook
frampold
chatmate
bulrp blurp surlp

its just the beginning of an end
im already boredddddd
beyond wordssss
in fact it is the "words" that are driving me mad!!
i need a break from these holidays.
come monday and i can once again
experience the sheer ecstasy of putting away
one more huge overflowing seamless file of notes!!
monday blues?? not anymore for me!
at least tentatively.

LITerally speaking..

2006-03-16T19:47:00.000+05:30

the count downs begun.
four days to go. and times zipping past.
i think an hour no longer has 60 minutes.
hmm..thats not really possible.

anyway procrastination seems to be creeping in slowly. words and sentences seem to be floating all over. things are not really that bad. i guess im just building it up to that. now look what you've done Mr Milton with your grand elevated style of the epic. and hey Mr Pope you too are just adding to that with your super inflated view of the world. egadd!!am i turning into a 17th century neoclassic freak?

while Pope and Milton continue to dazzle me with their magic ...and Shakespeare persists on evoking the latent sublime in me...Eliot only confirms my fragmented disillusioned vision with his "heap of modern images" of a cumbersome world. why Eliot why?? this world isnt that bad a place to be in! really...each coffee spoon you measured out is coated with a kiss of sugar too..not just pain.

i am happy. i am sad. i dont know what to feel now that iv reached the end of yet another horizon...i will just patiently wait for a new golden sunrise.

so long Pope!
so long Milton!
and hey Eliot.....
thanks for reminding ...but..
"hurry up please. its time"

RAIN DROPS....

2006-03-09T18:28:00.000+05:30

the month of March. Now thats the month when things just start getting heated up in my part of the world. So ideally today like any other day in march should have seen temperatures soaring high with the sun beaming over us earthlings in all its glorious fury. But wait! A very very unexpected sight or rather sound rudely shook me out of my sleep early this morning. roaring tumultous thunder!!!! was it for real?? well apparently it was not just a morning dream..the rain gods seemed impatient to unleash their quelling clouds on us!

the floods seem like just yesterday and my life just seems to be propelling forward with amazing momentum.its just rapidly spinning past! but im not complaining.

going back to the unexpected but not really unsolicited sudden spell of rains.
a beautiful morning to wake up to. the sky was a little overcast but the refreshing look that evrything around me donned more than compensated for the gloominess. the very best was the wet smell of mud. thats my favourite thing about the rains.
next i love to watch the little droplets of rain precariously settled onto leaves and petals, ceasing to exist the moment you try to scoop them up into your palm.
the sun tried to assert its radiance in the skies for some time only to be cloaked by the grey clouds by noon.
its dusk now....the morning glory seems to have been replaced by a brooding melancholy.everything is soaked in the wetness of the virginal rains.those little drops of rain have lost their shimmer.

i know why. dont worry verdure the wind whispers that they aren't going to blow the grey clouds away..they are here to stay..at least a while.till your green soul is enlivened again.