waving back

Because I still feel the need to explain

2011-04-26T21:48:00.002+05:30

There are many reasons I don’t want to seek marriage. Elaborate, wise, articulate reasons that I have had at least 15 years to come up with. (That was the time a life outside the cocoon of school started to look like a clear and present possibility.) The reason to get married, however, is embryonic in comparison. Its most compelling reason for being is biology. Two months after I turned 30, I was ready. Is this my body speaking? Is it my body saying, you’re not invincible, make plans for the future?
I'm late to the club. When friends got married, I laughed, cried and prayed with them, but I never, not once, imagined that I would want that for myself. My 20s were safe from expectations, at least. Now suddenly, I want a permanent member on my team. Not because I want the company, I just want the familiarity. His books, his mug, his smell. We’re planning a. He hates it when I. The first time we. I want someone to start these stories with.
Or maybe I just want someone with whom I can share the massive, chest-crushing fear of the possibility of children. Maybe that’s actually what my body is telling me: go, make more. But my hormones haven’t sent me a baby notice yet. No, I don’t seem to want to birth a baby. I just want one to settle in the crook of my arm. As if babies are ever so neat.
I want a receptacle to pour love into. It’s not a nice way to think of another human being, as a vessel. But maybe it’s not just one human being. Maybe I want two of them, maybe three. Maybe the object needn't be human at all. Maybe I just want to start that dog shelter I've been day-dreaming about since forever. Maybe I simply want to bring something in from the cold, warm it with my ample bosom, fill it to the brim with a stubborn love and send it into the world armed with the knowledge that home is a happy, safe place. And it’s right where you left it.
So do I want a have a child or go back to being a child?
Philosophy is hard. Shaadi.com is simple.

Man of the house

2011-04-17T10:55:00.006+05:30

Jijibhoy thinks he’s a snail and my tiny studio apartment is his shell. He pokes his head out the front door, sniffing cautiously, and at the slightest human intrusion on his peripheral vision, he darts inside, looking out from under the bed. Sometimes when the boys outside are being rambunctious and I can hear them chasing and screaming, I wonder if they are torturing Jijibhoy. But I don’t have to worry, because my little snail never steps out.

When he was little, we wondered if Jijibhoy knew he was a cat. All he saw was us, he even needed nudging to realise he had to pee. (When the kitten is really little, the mother licks his behind to get him to pee. To simulate this action, we dipped cotton in warm water and dabbed him. It worked and was kind of miraculous to behold. First-time mothers are so easy to impress.) He was needy for affection, even if he asserted himself by biting throughout any cuddling. He followed me into the toilet. He jumped up on the kitchen shelf and put his face into my mug of tea. He constantly got between our feet. In other words, he didn’t display any feline grace or intelligence. Did this cat have any idea of his heritage?

We exulted in every little cat-like thing he did as proof that we hadn’t uprooted this creature from his real environment and he wouldn’t, as a consequence, write diasporic novels one day. We took heart every time he chased a piece of string across the floor. Or when he hissed at a Lhasa puppy who was only trying to be friends. And at his uncanny knack for finding the warmest, least convenient part of your body to snuggle against at night. He was a little bit of cat, wrapped in a ball of kitten.

Now, he’s all growed up. Of course, he still leaps out from behind doors, paws splayed, to scare you. And he’s very, very careful with strangers. And people he knows. And stray gusts of wind. But he’s more confident in his cat-itude now. He knows who is. He is a long, muscular, furry cat, who can put out his claws to gain purchase on any surface. He is the chaser of bottle-flies and lizards. He has sharp baby-teeth that he uses to express love early in the morning. He has a raspy tongue that he employs to groom his unkempt human mothers. He is a cat.

But the minute I open that front door, he is a snail again.

Gorgeous pic by Nishat

two things i'd save from a burning building

2006-10-06T17:24:00.000+05:30

flippin out

2006-10-01T21:32:00.000+05:30

when i was younger i read differently; i was not touched by the celebrity of a book. sure some stories/characters were more intimidating than others, but that was personal. there was none of this sparkling aura of bestsellerness about a book back then. in my world, the author wrote this book for me. especially. i could slip into the story as if there was an invisble place the characters had saved just for me. when i joined them, the story became perfect and functional. i fit like a missing cog.

now more and more i come smack up against a wall. me, with all my preconceived notions and prehatched weariness, just can not get between the characters no more. when they take a bend, they have to drag me along like an unweildy punctuation mark.

so i'm back to reading the old favourites, the ones that worked for me. pratchett, ishiguro, wodehouse and back again. should i be worried that they are all british?

"thiruvaruval is mr chips"

2006-09-18T11:46:00.000+05:30

these damn pictures have faded under the wash and rinse of my gaze.

there has been a thaw in relations and he's gone from hiding behind ammamma to announcing my name whenever i walk into the room, and telling me the colour of things. orange butterfly AND yellow butterfly. he has also succeeded in putting the child lock on cartoon network on my tv.

i have no idea what little children are giggling about.

2006-05-02T18:36:00.000+05:30

blogging just plain fell off the list after i decided, mid-feb mid-crises, to leave home and go be a stranger somewhere. and which place did i choose to be new? a city i've visited every summer as a kid and one that is full of the kind of nostalgia that makes you gag. i remember once, when i was utterly spent in the heart area, walking brigade road and trying to keep up my end of some conversation.

i have no idea why i came back, but it doesn't matter because bangalore has been pleasant. not friendly, not kind, but pleasant. it leaves me alone and provides a hot cup of tea on my desk at sarkari intervals, 10am-2pm-5pm. it has the most gorgeous old tree giants to eat up whole stretches of road in cool gulps. and it has flowering trees, right now they are orange and feeling very strongly about the whole thing.

i also met an author who turned out not to be a jerk. i was so surprised i called him a sweetheart to his face. but the way he reacted you'd think he met gushing inarticulate women who haven't read any of his books calling him a sweetheart every other day. i'm reading his latest book right now, god's little soldier. i'm 70percent into it and feeling like an outsider. i can't feel anything for the main characters anymore, they are beginning to piss me off. and i have trouble reconciling the distractededly passionate voice in the book with the shy-contemptuous one i met.

i'm trying to learn kannada so i can mutter effective abuse at the horrible autowallahs here. they are totally unaffected by asshole but i'm shy to ask my landlady what the kannada equivalent is. i also met a tumble of golden retreivers and assorted beauties on my morning walk. people really love their dogs here and i miss mine so much that i lunge shamelessly at other people's pets. most of them are tolerant about it and this morning i was asked if i wanted to take the golden tumble for a walk. that was very brave of the guy, how can he know i'm going to bring them back? i also met angel, a smiling black lab who just walked into my arms and slobbered in a ladylike manner. when i got back home my t-shirt smelt of dog. it's the friendliest smell in the world.

time peece

2006-04-28T11:19:00.000+05:30

oh my god, where have i been! changing cities, changing scenery, changing prejudices for newer sharper keener prejudices, it's been a mental couple of months. MENTAL, i tell you.

sic-making

2006-01-18T15:05:00.000+05:30

the most entertaining section of any newspaper is the career supplement. especially where they tell you how to do well in interviews, how to get along with your coworkers, and how to make the best of an unappreciative boss. interviews are my favouritest, though. earlier the fascination was due to comic relief, or so i thought. but perhaps this has roots in actual need for self-improvement in re my track record with interviews i.e. hilarious.

it doesn't matter what the darker motives are, this is all very good advice. for example, in today's issue, the author informs us on essential social skills in the workplace. listening is one of those skills and although we've heard a lot on the subject, i don't think it's possible to hear enough. so here's how to be a good listener:

it is important to hone one's non-verbal abilities and make encouraging noises, repeating a word or phrase of what is being said, maintaining close eye-contact and referring to what your interlocutor has said. nodding understandingly and appropriate gestures are appreciated too.

close quotes. first of all, who says interlocutor?

secondly, how come nobody ever says, to be a good listener, try listening? it's ridiculous advice, of course, but it's never occured to me that not looking ridiculous was a big concern with career gurus.

nodding understandingly won't make you a better listener, it will just make you a very annoying person. to be a listener, watch intonation. this is confusing because people never intonate what you expect them to intonate, they emphasise different things, accent perplexing syllables. but soon you will stop being confused about these little things and become confused about larger, more important things. you know you have become the best listener you can possibly be when you are one hundred percent bewildered by something your colleague just said. understanding is a whole other kettle of bloated fish. and judging by the current state of everything, we're not there yet.

pour your sugar on me

2006-01-14T02:48:00.000+05:30

i'm not a fussy eater because i couldn't afford to be; we've had some very lunatic people cooking for us. first, my grandmother who was the sweetest accessory after the fact an accident-prone eight-year-old could have, but she used to make something truly vile with overripe bananas. first she'd mash them up and really, do you need to hear more.

then we had shoba who was an amazing cook but she believed in feeding me till i could eat no more. and that is no mean feat. i would come back from school, she'd sit me down and make rotis/dosas, transfering them hot-hot to my plate. endlessly, as in with no end. and i ate because as someone threw into a conversation yesterday, food is love. yeah, baby.

then there was radhamma, who was a jesus freak. when my mom was out of town she would sleep on a mat in our room and wail a prayer of gratitude at the sky for about an hour before she fell asleep. i was scared of her, but she was a great cook and friends still remember her kheema samosas.
then shoba came back and continued to stuff my face. and then she left and we had a succession of mental people who weren't in this for the food.

i don't even remember them because they came and went so quickly. but we ate things that went a long way in shaping my current philosophical disposition; the atrocities included sweet fried balls of idli-pindi (as entrees), dals of various hues, consistencies and potencies that nagamani liked to serve in a pressurecooker, and everything that could be boiled, plus a good many things that did not want to be boiled. ketchup was my only friend.

and, of course, there's my mother, who really is very good, especially with the naadan mutton fry. but she's a fussy cook, so she doesn't do it often.

i cook too and i like what i make. but this does not mean it is good, i will not have you thinking that.

ok, now that i have had my yap, the list of food things that rock my world.
1. that thimble-sized dollop of nutty trufflely creme in which the hazelnut gooes, at the centre of a ferrero rocher. this is the optimum way to snort the stuff: nibble off the outer nut-choc layer. take the wafer cups apart and collect creme in one cup. pick hazelnut and eat. leave the cup, with the creme, in a patch of sunlight for about 5 minutes. scoop out with tongue. heaven is the clogging up of all senses woth chocolate
note: if you eat rochers in one crunch, instead of taking it apart in layers like a normal person, you are sick and unfit to vote.
2. pepperoni pizza with garlic sauce. making pepperoni with chicken, beef, lamb or anything that doesn't oink is also disgusting.
3. cupcakes. all kinds of cupcakes. some people call them muffins. i have nothing against these people.
4. dal rice because there is no better cure for homesickness of the soul. whether your home is an igloo or a walking distance away.
5. fish fry with hot rice. butterfish is good, black pomfret is best, and sardines you can crunch down whole are perfect.
6. qubani ka meeta with cream. i love mumtaz khan's tart, luscious, whole-qubani version, but i also like the synthetic liquified gloop they serve at weddings. they all have the right to live and be eaten. just like you and me.
7. shikampur kebab. also by mumtaz khan, mistress of hyderabad's spices. the only minced meat kebabs i like because they don't dilute the meatiness, while providing a moist flavourful experience every time. jai hind.
8. guavas. this has been my favourite thing to eat while reading since always. a guava doesn't interrupt you with annoying pips or peels that must be peeled. a banana may be a better bookmark but a guava never got accused of unsolicited phallicness.
9. biryani. i hate wasting a whole place on the list for this because really is there any need to state the fact? and nish (who remembered) is right, you do get the bestest kinds at weddings. but i once had a transcendental biryani experience at a restaurant i won't name now because that stroke of brilliance turned out to be a fluke. but oh my god, there were such visions.
10. cup noodles, tangy chicken. there is a wonderful democracy, a factory-processed love about instant noodles. it's like being gently chuffed on the chin by a large peice of machinery.

food is love. and love is sweet poison. so it all works out in the end.

pop-porn

2006-01-06T19:13:00.000+05:30

since we aren't allowed to show people copulating, we find other ways to get off. in telugu movies, beating women up is very popular. this sequence is most effective when she's in a saree, looking very pure and virginal. the guy yanks her about and starts off with some slapping. she falls about, her pallu slipping off. then he grabs her hair - of which she has plenty and it's plaited for maximum grabbing advantage - and whips her about the room, toppling things over. (this works great in the kitchen when there's the additional thrill of her catching fire) the orchestra really gets warmed up now: clattering utensils, woman screaming, four-year-old wailing in the doorway. then the tempo rises and he throws her on the floor, kicking vigorously. by now her saree's more or less given up the half-hearted struggle against immodesty and she's thrashing around in the grip of an orgiastic helplessness. in a while, she goes limp against the floor and he hauls one last kick at her behind before grunting in satisfaction and heading off, nearly ripping the door's hinges in his progress.

in malayalam movies and soaps, women cry. they cry in the most keening, breathless, continuous way imaginable. this sound fairly forms the background score of most of the serials my mom watches every evening. there once was a talk show that was also very big around here, and every week they'd find one woman to sit on the panel and cry. that seemed to be her only contribution to the debate. and it sounded like that mic was lodged up her nose, it caught every ragged breath and sigh. and you know it's porn because of how cynically manufactured the throes are. in movies the man stands around saying nasty things, most likely casting aspersions on her character or threatening to kill her lover. she'll hold her pallu to her face and get into her act. her mother soon joins in. her sister, their maid. large panting women, dripping wet and grunting with the effort of their pose.

a fuck is still just a fuck, but sex repressed is an ugly ugly thing.

puppydog tails

2006-01-03T23:16:00.000+05:30

a dear friend's kid brother just dropped in to say hello after disappearing into the great american beyond for two years. i say kid brother, though he's 23 now and a strapping, confident youth with a receding hairline and a career choice i don't understand that involves the word neural. we were buddies as children and would routinely gang up on his sister who was easily sqeamed.

i've always enjoyed other people's little brothers and often wished i had one of my own. kid brothers have such an appreciation for the truly gross things of life, i've never found that with any other class of human beings. plus, they fight fair and understand the need to keep from grownups important matters. and i was always genuinely fascinated by little-boy obssessions that other people found boring, like their hotwheels collection, their homemade repertoire of synonyms for various mucus derivatives, their highly coloured descriptions of imaginary classroom fights. i understood where they were coming from, and why they had to run to get anywhere, and how completely they can be devasted by the giggles.

there's a curly-haired boy next door who regularly asks if he can pet my dog. unfortunately little boys are beneath mac's notice. vivek hates school, which i understand. (twenty years later and i still remember how school smelled, like packed fear) and every monday morning you can hear the protests in outer space. little boys know that the grey from school buildings can rub off on you and eventually turn you into one of those people that steps over puddles and measures sugar by the teaspoonful.

bookend blog

2006-01-02T22:05:00.000+05:30

it's been a short long year, i remember january and its chill, november and its angst, but not june or its weather. this unrealness of memory is fuelled by the strange seasons. torpid then copious rains, a fierce summer that lingered under the skin for much longer, and a winter that just won't settle. like a finicky hostess with a tablecloth, stretching, smoothing, a tug here, some slack there, but it will still worry her all evening. that lopsided uneven length of cloth represents everything that's wrong with the party. if she could just fix that, all else would click back into place.

why i prefer my favourite writers good and dead

2005-12-23T05:55:00.000+05:30

because then they are less likely to do stupid things that ruin their work. relationships with beloved books are as delirious as they are dogged. you know you'll love them 40 years from now, but it's in the same way that you know you'll love her gorgeous tantrums ten years from now. in the heat of the moment, we say things like forever and always. that's the only excuse really for invoking tiresome eternity: you're hot enough that you can make it work.

what you don't need after you've carefully bound a leaf in book and memory for years and years, till it's only a heart-shaped network of veins, is to find out that it's just a very cunning, synthetic imitation of a leaf. it never breathed, it's never even tasted sap. like plunging your face into a bouquet of plastic lillies. ugh about covers it.

garrison keillor did it for me. i fell more and more in love with every sad, nostalgic, and unfailingly gory tale. but turns out the man is only human. and a dumb little uptight one, at that.

he could still redeem himself, though, if he dropped dead right now.

anticlimate

2005-12-10T02:16:00.000+05:30

december makes feelings of gladness and redundancy. christmas is lovely, hyderabad is lovely around christmas. but then i haven't much to do really. so the whole month feels like that half hour before the year turns. that doomed yet cheerful anticipation. of waiting for something that will last exactly zero seconds and draw out into exactly one word and lots of images you don't have room for.

no wonder we feel kind of stupid when the moment is here. all that stretching, tensing, squinting, and many false starts later: just one curly strip of smoke shaved off a tick-tock-tick. like a hand flung from a carousel, fingertips grazing something cool and green and lost.

se7en

2005-11-25T11:25:00.000+05:30

finally, i am getting my due. so what if i had to beg for it? here goes with the list of seven-things:

Seven things I plan to do
1. swim with dolphins. yes, i know, very chicken-soup-for-the-soul, but they don't even have to be dolphins anymore; belugas, turtles, or even otters will do. or best of all, dory.
2. bake bread. seriously, how cool would that be? i also plan on it being very good bread.
3. be part of a play. especially a part that has to get up on stage and stand in the limelight and speak as though i had something beautiful and true to say.
4. floss. someday this will happen.
5. figure out calculus. i refuse to be intimidated by irrational fears or fractions.
6. pick my battles. there just aren't enough rocks.
7. kick someone in the balls. sooner than later. testicles of the world have some serious backpedalling to do.

Seven things I can't do
1. talk sense to a friend who's feeling impulsive. i will always say, buy it!
2. keep it simple. it's a congenital thing, i cannot cannot cannot get down to brass tacks or pick the grain from the pretty chaff or see articles in their inherent im/balance. it's always diamonds and rust with me.
3. tell a joke to save my life. this is why i only pick jokes that are air-tight, bullet-proof brilliant; jokes that don't really need a middleman.
4. raise a goldfish. they have a fabulous talent for dying around me.
5. tell the difference between those three boys on 'life as we know it'.
6. divide up a tab without feeling the cheek-flaming urge to pay more than my share. yoda says, i soon better learn.
7. not watch the old tom and jerry. the chair could be on fire, wild horses could strain till their shoes melted, amitabh bachchan himself could be in the room, and i'd still be glued. do you remember the one where jerry's nephew sings alouette? the two mouseketeers. can i just please die?

Seven things I say quite often
1. nonsense. this is a recent acquisition thanks to a youngster who clearly has a bad influence on me.
2. can i please eat you up? people usually say no, which is just plain rude.
3. jee-jus. from another young acquaintance and it's more effective when she said it because of her hijab. as for the jee-jus, it's offensive, but i promise, it's never ever in vain.
4. babboo or variations thereof. there are very few problems in the world that cannot be solved with a well-placed variation thereof.
5. shut up. no really, shut up.
6. no! i am very credulous. why, sometimes i've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
7. aww. and i always mean it.

what fun, i want to get on again! i hereby tag bu.
also, yay what fun!

what does a person have to do to get tagged around here?

2005-11-24T06:54:00.000+05:30

seriously, what? i'll do it, however degrading and vile and smelly, i will do it. just please someone, tag me for this seven thing. i could go ahead and do it anyway, but there's no dignity in that. does the world not want to know random things about me in batches of seven? :(

why i weep when i read the onion

2005-11-20T06:12:00.000+05:30

Videk eventually relocated to the garage, where he stood next to his workbench and made patterns in the floor dust with his foot. While doing so, he pondered the fact that achieving his goal of getting laid merely resulted in the birth of another human being who wanted to get laid, too.

followup

2005-11-09T16:30:00.000+05:30

oleman is doing good since he found a way to avoid my father altogether. he doesn't sleep in the garage anymore. well, not much anyway. now he sleeps in the backyard under my window. and he seems to have adjusted well.

this is him being rudely woken by a nosy photographer. notice the blur that is his tail. how can you not love dogs? how is this possible?

and this is him coming over shy.

why write when you can click!

what champions eat for breakfast

2005-10-28T23:53:00.000+05:30

save our sod

2005-10-18T20:20:00.000+05:30

we have two strays who have adopted us, warts and all, and have deigned to share their house with us while they sleep in the garage. they are one black and one white, named oleman and pretty, respectively.

digression: look, it's already been established that i suck at the giving of names. i can never think of some clever personality-based title for a dog. i prefer to name them tommy or chintu and then call them whatever nauseating epithet i devise later. examples of nauseating epithets: all words ending with -inju, all words starting with oosha-. as in, chinju and ooshachinju.

anyway. so we have these two people sleeping in our garage. they bark and keep the burglars at bay, in addition to joining the dog inside in providing ecstatic musical accompaniment to my arrival home. they follow us to the auto-stand and make sure no other dog or cyclist kidnaps us. they make sure the clothes on the line don't hang too close to the ground by systematically tearing up and sleeping on any article of clothing that might be within leaping distance. they also bark at the midnight watchman and the 5am milkman every. single. morning.

yes, they can be painful little shits sometimes. but then, so can every single person i have ever met. the difference is every single person i ever met isn't being persecuted and shooed at for returning to his bed. and this is exactly the fate that oleman is being visited on by my furious father.

some might say my father has grounds for hostility. this morning oleman tore up both our newspapers in an unprecedented act of humungously pissing my dad off. you don't mess with my dad's newspapers in the morning, this is just not wise. but oleman wasn't to know and as far as he was concerned tearing up newspapers was a pleasant enough occupation while it rained incessantly outside.

so this morning in addition to being sent to buy the 'papers, i also had to promise to Do Something About That Dog. pretty is still allowed because she didn't tear up the 'papers, but oleman is definitely a bad word around our house.

there is no way to keep him out of our house because a. he is oleman! how can i forsake him and b. he can highjump any wall you care to put up. in fact, after his operation (to prevent further puppyfication of the neighbourhood) he escaped pfa's high security dog enclosure by scaling a wall ten feet high. mr dattu, who called to give me the bad news, just couldn't get over this feat and i'm sure he's met his share of wonderdogs over the years.

i am desperately in need of advice. ideally, my father will see the error of his ways and come to love and cherish oleman like i do. but somehow i don't see this happening. oleman, being an old man, will not change his ways because he's heard that proverb about the old dog and new tricks. this means constant shooing will force him (oleman) to sleep next door in the stairway of the brahmin family that hates dogs and does not appreciate their slippers being chewed up.

personally i don't see why people are so fussy about their possessions, but i guess when your guests leave their footwear outside in respect it looks bad to have to return it to them in drool-soaked tatters.

so i have no idea what to do. he is an old dog and carting him off somewhere else, like the blue cross might do, would make him miserable and kill him, i am convinced. on the other hand, if anyone complains to the municipality, they will drag him off and kill him through more direct means.

so what, dear reading public of five, can i do? suggestions are hugely welcome. i know there is a bleeding heart story at every corner in your world today, but this one involves a dog. one of the cleverest i know and the sweetest senile delinquent there ever was.

i'll have what she's having

2005-10-17T02:23:00.000+05:30

anyone seen the new set wet ads? you know, the body cologne that promises to render you 'very very sexy'. i've been watching a lot of tv lately and two ads from the set wet people have me intrigued.

if you haven't seen it, it goes something like this. two guys in two ads slather on large quantities of set wet gel, aided by sexy music and lighting. then they go about their business, only to return to their cubicle/bedroom to find random women orgasming into their headsets or sheets.

the point i think is that these perfumed gels are so damn intoxicatingly hot that female passers-by are drawn by the scent and find themselves climaxing spontaneously, regardless of the scenery. this can be quite embarassing, you would think, to have an overpowering screamer in someone else's cubicle, but the woman doesn't seem to mind.

perhaps she's part of the majority of women worldwide who have so much trouble finding themselves, she's happy to make the discovery anywhere.

but what makes these ads heart-rending is the message they might be sending out to impressionable young boys and girls everywhere. there are not many of them left, it's true, which makes the remaining ones that much more precious. is there a chance that ads like these will lead them to believe in the pervasiveness of the female orgasm? will they grow up thinking a woman is really quite simple to please, given the right perfume/wheels/soft drink/cooking range?

and you know it's not just the ads either, it's movies and music videos and everywhere else. in these setups perfectly hot women seem grateful for any kind of attention and will melt obligingly at the slightest touch or tickle. but then in real life, young boys who reek cologne and drive recklessly find the neighbourhood surprisingly deficient in girls creaming their pants. this must lead to some confusion and lots of tragic sex.

palms up

2005-10-12T04:59:00.000+05:30

she liked girls better. to play, to talk, to laugh. it wasn't her heart that decided this initially, it was her eyes, her cunt, her skin, her salt. they'd been kissed, soured, rumpled and razed.

sex was the opening up of a present, everytime a gift of crisp fuzz and sleeping velvet. legs opening to reveal each time a haze upon the eye, the diaphanous pungency of memory, sheer recall.

later fingers of warmth meet around the skull. and the return is sad, with a surge so deep it washes away the tracks back home. slip, slide, climb, sink. and forget each time that a triangle is three corners rounding in on each other. there is no leaving, the fog has clamps of steel and carries only the anaesthetic of blindness.

so she keeps missing the signs she carved herself. she rises with the tide and rushes against rocks. memory is traded for the fading taste of now. how willingly the trade is made, with childlike villainy the deal struck. if you promise to hide well, i promise never to seek. memory will strain at anything for an imminent morsel of death.

and the now? the moment for which she has erased all possessions, her now is a slip of tissue and muscle, with sticky grabbing hands and shuddering reins. like an eldritch lock with keys of light and shadow, she feels her way in with scrambled senses, an insane voice guides her.
and she knows it's insane because the echoes announce the scream.

the kind of face only a mother could love

2005-10-10T03:36:00.000+05:30

this is mac, who was named that for no sane reason or even any interestingly insane reason. it was just a name, people around liked it. i couldn't care less because i had a dog! a puddle of blackness with sad sad eyes. here, he's trying to sleep and being tolerant of the flash going off in his face. he is a very dignified dog that way.

unclenching

2005-10-08T23:24:00.000+05:30

not writing for this long has been a hibernation, i feel sleepy and stretchy like dough. knead me in, roll me out, and pat me on a cluster of coals. all it will take is a warm nuzzle, and i'll rise like a colonel's drying moustache.

it's good to have the sleep drip off, it's nice to feel the sun on my opening palms, nice to tell the world again of caterpillars pausing nose in the air and of an origami swan's rasping flight. how chameleons melt peacefully on hot concrete and about tight fistfuls of red worms twisting in a monsoon orgy. about invisible provocations only a kitten can see and shifting corridors of wind only a swallow would know.

and this is where thought leaps free of words and words scramble for purchase on the rising slope of a sigh. if i could just put my finger on the heart of this knot, and tie the thoughts in with a doublelooped move. if only they wouldn't sprint so far ahead of the grasp of language. if only they would stick around and play in my lap a while.
a girl can get lonely, out here on a limb.

made my day

2005-10-05T18:36:00.000+05:30

when asked to display her calligraphy skills, my friend's nine-year-old wrote this in her diary:
deepa aunty is one of the funniest peoply i have ever met.

all joined up and curly, it was. as calligraphy, it rocked. as a compliment, it made me overlook for once the aunty. check me out world, i'm funny peoply!

[

2005-08-27T02:28:00.000+05:30

what i want most right now is to want a new thing. a very specific new thing. anoited with legal ink, witnessed by well-fed guests, with compliments from family and friends. and i want the blessed ever after.

as hannibal lecter once said, we begin by wanting what we see. and i see flowers in the doorway, nadaswaram riding the wind, bangles along the shelf, and fear in my friend's eyes. i want that very specific fear, that very precise chill around my heart.

i want to think, am i doing the right thing? is this it? what if i find someone else? someone better?

i want saris spread chaotically over beds. relatives hogging the bathroom. my plans invaded by mysterious convention. i want to be comparing prices on bridal packages. telling my father not to freak out, it will be ok. packing.

everything around stained with haldi, kumkum, chandanam. crisp zari, gold self-consciously new, and the buttercup yellow on the walls still reeking faintly.

important world issues like backpacks left on buses, pesticide drunk by the acre, and diabetes even, temporarily left alone to stew in their juices. for now to be occupied with future photo albums and contents thereof. just that, to operate within the frame of a hired photographer's lens. look happy, be happy, hope.

i want a desire i can colour like this. i want to want this. me and another face in a heart-shaped frame. me and someone sent off together with steel utensils in our luggage. me and a better half and plenty of introductions all around.

it's a simple enough thing, i think, to want to want.]

staying in

2005-08-25T13:02:00.000+05:30

a slow paralysis is taking hold of my arms. joints seem reluctant to unbend and muscles too rigid to spasm. tremors that previously curled around each thought have been duly recorded. markings made, intensity noted. but now the thoughts like every song my neighbour sings at mignight are flattened to the last note. what issues is only a low hum, the primary chord of pleasurelessness.

why isn't there a word for that cessation of pleasure? the way an old happiness rattles, why isn't there a word for that?

death and syntaxes

2005-08-19T15:34:00.000+05:30

the last week has not been a total waste of time even though it was spent in a stupor of unambition, induced by the flu and that extra something brought on by the changing of anti-dep dosage. stunned with the ponderous illumination of mundane activities and their consequences, i retreated into bed and pulled on the covers. and read four books very different from each other.

deciding to switch between milan kundera and stephen king or the story of sybil dorsett and e.l.doctorow was not so much a result of voracious appetites. these are all books i had struggled with for a while and if i hoped to finish them at all, i needed to work with the determination of a miser at a buffet. pleasure had nothing to do with it.

stephen king disappointed with needful things and he took 700 pages over it. but sk and me always make up and this mammoth bore does nothing to put me off his other cheap, efficiently delivered thrills. no, the heartbreak of the week was e.l. doctorow's the waterworks. having read and loved ragtime, i dove into this story with nary a fear. and nothing happened to change my mind for the first couple of chapters. then the ellipses started.

i have no strong feelings toward punctuation and no particular attachment toward any of them. but there occurs one exception to my attitude of grammatical tolerance and this is triggered by excessive use of those three little dots indicating pause.

now excessive exclamation marks - i.e. more than one or more than once - can also make your eyes water but i've never had to endure them in the books i read, 'cept for mad. ellipses are different, and in the waterworks, they are profuse. they start off in a trickle about the third chapter, and by the fifth they're multiplying like so many diseased cells.

the effect is to make the prose scattered and torn like a static-riddled song. no matter how hard i tried to keep right on and ignore these detested entirely unnecessary entities, i could not. as soon as i started to read a sentence, as my eye travelled stringing words in peace, the damn things would descend on the path like three buzzing flies. then again further along the sentence. then again toward its close. somtimes with only four words in between two incidences. it was maddening in a way that punctuation has never been in my life before.

i kept wanting to shake the book by its spine and shed those pestilent ellipses. was there a salvagable story somewhere there? yes, there was, i'm sure. but it was like tatters on a clothesline. a gather of red here, a streaming of blue there, but all in all, insufficient against the reams and reams of twanging nothing.

i should have stopped reading the damn book but couldn't. i felt compelled by some strange and heretofore rare impulse to finish it. to let the author have his say even though he was making such a royal pain of himself. i'm here to tell the world there is no nobility in this. life is too short to have it needlessly prolonged like this.

this little light of mine, part two

2005-07-18T12:14:00.000+05:30

i'm not sure about body-image and men and what the issues are like there, but women talk real nasty to themselves. they will say the most awful things about their bodies. when i was out shopping one day i ran into someone i know trying out clothes. she asked me what i thought of her trousers and we talked about the timeless trial that is finding the right pair. then she says, and you know i find trousers especially difficult to find because i have such a grotesque figure.

i'm not sure what a grotesque figure is but her's didn't look like one. but this is a good, if extreme, example of the kind of things women say. oh god, my legs are so podgy. my pores are visible from outer space. my nose is funny, my toes are knobbly, my hair is a disaster, my neck is too short, and that all-time favorite, i'm so fat.

now fat is a great favorite and there are many ways to use it. i feel fat, i look fat, i am fat, i'm getting fatter, i'm huge, i'm bloated, i'm a blimp. being technically and immodestly fat, i used to be surprised at these declarations. because they always ensue from the mouth of a person who isn't fat at all. you don't see too many fat people moaning about being fat. mostly because we don't like to talk with our mouths full, but also because we think you are mental.

earlier i was perplexed by this verbal accumulation of fat. but now it seems more to me like vanity. like that girl in school who would always top class and then make a scene about how she only got 98% and how her mother would be soo disappointed. people like that should be given a pinch, it's the only civilised solution.

i get how it is satisfying to pile on the ugliness sometimes. but oh my god, woman, get a grip. when did it become ok to be so damn mean to yourself? are we taught to do this as little girls? to constantly seek and magnify weaknesses? do we feel like perhaps we're beginning to feel too good about ourselves and are scared this won't last so puncture it before it gets you? like it will help you stay grounded to focus on the negatives. like you need to reassure someone less magnificent than you and this is your gift to them, the wilful destruction of pretty. but your beauty persists, and so you must too.

or does it scare you so much, your gorgeousness, that you won't look at it till it puts on a cloak and shuffle?

it hasn't caused any heart attacks yet, but i love my body. oh, it could do with some tiny improvement and the way it is now weighs me down more than i will currently admit. i suffer from clinical depression and over the period of one year did a lot of not nice things to my body, including taking a lit cigarette to it over and over and over. it made sense at the time. i've stopped doing it and it still makes sense.

and for all that, i love my body. it feels heavenly under a hot shower, it squirms under the spread of honey (or indeed, the thought of the spread of honey), it allows me to hug, which is crucial to my world domination plans. i'm told it's a good kisser and i know it's made someone very very happy in its time. and i happen to know it has nothing to do with how hot i look in trousers. or how miniscule my butt is or how perky my boobs. because if that's what makes you sexy, then we might as well all pack up and go home and curl up in a corner and die. and if i'm not ready to do that, then not one of you others has any right to be. so there.

this little light of mine, part 1

2005-07-18T12:08:00.000+05:30

if there's one type of show i would most want to be studio audience to - apart from oprah's christmas giving away goodies special - it's her makeover shows. i don't even have to know the people getting made over to cheer with the best of them. i get so swept up in the project, screaming, often sobbing when the person steps out from behind the curtain looking all shy and excited and occasionally even working it - my favorite - in the midst of all that applause and oprah going, oh ma gawd!

makeover shows make me cry harder than any others because i know how powerful it can be to hand someone a new perspective on themselves. it's not easy to fully comprehend how profoundly life-changing a new haircut or better-fitting bra can be. you have to be there. you have to have gotten rid of a habit that like linus' security blanket has followed you around for years and that you don't need any longer. i really do think our defense mechanisms sometimes manifest themselves most stubbornly in how we wear our hair, clothes, makeup. so a makeover can make you feel naked and raw.

when i cut off my hair some years ago, it got the worst response from the world. except for friends, people mostly just gasped and said, what happened to your hair! like it had been in an accident or something. and i would say, it's shorter, that's all.

but that was not all. suddenly i did not have this mass of stuff on my head to carry around and watch out for. i did not have to plait it and washing my hair wasn't such a production. we're talking radical shift here - it went from brushing my hip to tickling my neck. my mother would look at it wonderingly everyday and go, wow it's so short.

as for me, i knew in the flash of my hairdresser's scissors that i would never ever grow my hair again. ever. it was a homecoming.

but you don't have to have chopped off your hair and broken your mother's heart to understand how this feels. any old fashion revelation will do. it has the liberating effect of ripping off a corset. and tearing it to shreds. and burning it and dancing around the fire and jiggling in released glee. to realise you don't need all those layers of cloth. to see you look pretty damn alright in a sleeveless top. to understand that pink looks good on you, so stop fighting it, people.

be told

2005-07-15T02:22:00.000+05:30

you can pick it through the gash, delight in its morbid gleam, smear congealment on fingers and chin.
spread it on tar, scrape a circle that meets imperfect, stub it under toe and still have enough to spear.
but if love teaches you one thing, it's to keep between the lines.

held

2005-07-13T20:06:00.000+05:30

peaches are the flavor of the season and i've been absorbing them at every pore. a peach is soft and sweet, hence meeting the requirements of my recently bereaved gums. while its flesh is all pulpness and amiability, its skin has a itchy coarseness to keep things from getting too monotonous.

does that fit here? to write about a peach, you must become the peach. sour at the teeth, but osmosing sweetness. like every cell in your mouth is playing catch with a palm of sugar. you don't know where the sweetness will spring from next, and that's the beauty of the peach. a clefted globe with fire in the centre, plush silence all around and a surface of velvet fuzz.

would you suspect that wicked prune at the pit to be fertile, much less a prisoner?

ice cream delirium

2005-07-08T21:56:00.000+05:30

yesterday i had four teeth pulled right out of my head. four plus one supernumery growing out of the side of my mouth, like some freak weed.

i was lying on the chair with three men bent over my mouth with masks on. stuff was flying out in a spray, something was dripping down my gums, and a machine went whrrrr. often they would say to me, excellent you are doing very well, as though there is some special skill involved in lying there with your mouth open.

we'll just let that one rest, ok?

the sad thing about being on anesthetic is that you never really have the luxury of being detached although you often have the view. like i could see my blood on the doctor's glove, i could feel the tug of the thread as he sewed, i heard the crack of the bone as it gave way. but i could not just sit back and enjoy the show. while the child inside me went, wow a clean break, and tasteless goo flooding my mouth!, the cynical teenager knew, yeah but man, are you going to pay.

and i did and i did. first i had to tell the autowallah where to take me and through my numbed lips i managed an authoritative, babaka. he understood, miraculously. and also understood my directions along the way. bliffth, dhefth. and then i met nisha who told me a brilliant story about taking harigopalaunty shopping, and i couldn't do justice to it because everytime i laughed it felt like the stitches would tear. that was very sad and i got home in such a foul mood that every door was banged at least twice. i cannot stand pain and i really cannot tolerate discomfort.

so i bled on my pillow but the tears wouldn't come because they weren't convinced this was a special enough occasion. but it was. the doctor told me, you might wake up with a slight trickle of blood in your mouth, but that's nothing to worry about. i don't mind the trickle but the taste is so awful. and it's sickeningly familiar, the taste of blood.

after i held my head up and swallowed, gagging all the while, i would have a few moment's peace and then again, a little pool of salt and cement at the back of my tongue. if i ignored it, it would harden drawing every nerve ending to the back of my throat, sucking so hard in their urgency that my throat started to hurt.

i don't know why the taste of blood should be of shame but it is. if the flow of shame had a consistency, a color, a flavor, it would be this. like tears with memory and heavy steps. all its piquancy dulled with routine. tears gone musty and blooming with rust.

slippery palms

2005-07-05T23:54:00.000+05:30

sometimes your hands get so restless, it's impossible to hold them within the pages of a book. all the time i held respectable employment rainy days like this would make me think well-worn worker-ant thoughts. thoughts involving curling up and with a book and with the steaming coffee. it's sad how handy wistfulness has become. and how evocative its shorthand appears.

i long for things i don't recognise the comfort of. i don't curl up with a book, i prop it at up an unhealthy distance and often hold my feet splayed with concentration. i'm not a happy reader. i'm caffeine-intolerant and rainlight is lousy to read by. so what i really want to do on a rainy day is not to seep into some memorable storyboard, but to oversleep, meet a dear friend, get under bright lights, and play a board game. or watch tv or go to the movies. what i want to do is ignore the rain and have it surprise me everytime i step out.

the rains are a joyful people. if you need any proof of this watch how happily raindrops die on your windshield. they slap and sting and have teeth of silver. they wink at the sun, much to his embarassment, and when pierced by his gaze draw soppy multi-colored nothings on your eye. but colors run in water and that's why you sometimes see segments of rainbows lying misshapen on the road. the rains will destroy anything so long as they can get a poem out of it.

and these are the silver people we sing to. when they come we hold out our hands, necks, tongues. we delight in the slapslapslap while little saplings are flooded out of their homes and little worms coaxed out and trampled under. we're so intoxicated by their perfume, our senses go out of whack. receptors get soggy, mildewed. silverfish in our hair. shake em out and ask yourself this the next time you look out and see crystals suspended in the air, smashing on the street - how can anything so immortally eager to splinter and die hold on to something as finite as your heart.

gorging

2005-07-01T00:15:00.000+05:30

the past 13 days have been a feast. food, music, movies, and soulsistah for sweet sweet company. my best friend is in town and we're in recharge mode because both our batteries had been bled dry in the past nine months.

are you the best friend kind? i always have been. i've had a different best friend every year of school. multiple best friends if my place was changed around during the course of the year. while they lasted they were fun and uncomplicated. then i would move and we'd unclasp hands with a snap. what do they call it, the elasticity of youth.

nobody said what ever happened to us, we don't talk like we used to. and you didn't go and say hello every lunchbell just to be polite. birthdays were forgotten, phone numbers scrambled away from memory, and inside jokes were relegated to polite unbroken dust.

then the grasp became cunning. in college friends broke up from the stream to form eddies. you get caught up and you catch in turn. sitting on our spot on the steps, we understood things and people. we found a lot of things very funny, even without chemical aid. i didn't have a best friend anymore, i had peoples.

but one of those peoples spoke in a tone that occasionally, then more often, broke away from the common frequency. a distraction, like a storm or a crossconnection. so i turned the dial till the voice crackled clear. it said, say that again and say it slower.

she didn't understand everything, which she continues to do to this day. but she listens like i make sense. and she laughs at all the right places. this is very important because sometimes i miss the punchline. we turn each other upside down, inside out, and go through this whole business bassackwards, simply because our internal compasses are both currently petrified.

recharge mode does many things for you. it fills you up and makes you drunk. it lends you a feline instinct for warmth. it condenses all thought process to a drawn and spiritual aah. but slaked thirst has a better memory of drought. and so a keener anticipation of it.

and darling that's the only good thing about missing you; what it weighs in pain, it lacks wholly in imagination. loneliness has no past at all.

bad blood

2005-06-07T23:48:00.000+05:30

it's possible to be excluded from your own body. to walk in late one night, switch on the lights and notice the furniture's been shifted around (if menace had a calling card, that would be it.) the rug of reassuring aches has slid up from the floor and turned into a painting on the wall, a pattern of blue needles, the taste of sharp corners. you turn to the bookshelf for comfort but the ink has all run. and someone's changed the lock on the downstairs door.

while you're out there collecting tricks and cue cards, your body has voted. you are spit out, the weakest link. so you hang out on the front porch and pretend you're picnicing. when neighbours walk past, you lean proprietarily on the railing, clip away at a stray rosebush. to explain your prolonged outdoor stay, you may even paint the house. give it a new look. after all, the outside is still yours. mend, straighten, shine on your sleeve. get used to sleeping under a faraway blanket.

people feel sorry for and occasionally even turned on by a person who lives on her porch. so you might get invited to a house around the corner. you might even make a long holiday of it. revel in the swept corners and refilled salt shakers. after a party someone else empties the ashtrays and stacks up the coasters. of course, someone else also invites the guests. and knows which malevolent hinge needs the weight of a shoulder and a quick unleaning to open. and which fussy piece of plumbing to watch out for. everytime your wrong key scrabbles frantically in the door outside, this strange house tells you, stay out. leave. find your own, leave us be.

you stand outside your own. the lights are on upstairs. they still work. a house sealed from you, though, is a bubble of concrete. if you must get in, you must violate. you can't slip in, no use here for insidious. the hip of its d gets stuck in the door. no, smash a window, tear up the floor. this house needs your violence. and scars only make it that much simpler to find the faultlines next time around. so come on home and let the muscle close over you. when it knots itself tight around a pound of flesh, pay up and tip the postman.

slapping gums

2005-05-27T20:43:00.000+05:30

we play games, my friend and i. we tread a line. we have heartrending talks, carefully managing not to rend anything. our hands are held out, our palms sealed. lines crossed out.

occasionally we wince at the nip of a teething truth on our ankle. it rarely draws blood and, later, it rarely persists. bone breaking through flesh needs contant sucking pressure. and a sharp loving clamp every now and then. but we leave it in ignominious peace and talk only of chewed food. habitual rumination. another enamel soldier surrenders his ridges and draws back.

i'm beginning to think this is a generation disconnected at the hip. we fuck with choreographed abandon and cower at the intrusion of a hug.

witch at the christening

2005-05-17T21:52:00.000+05:30

one of pappa's oldest friends called the other day with some good news. his daughter's wedding's been fixed. a daughter dangerously past the right age, so the news brought relief and joy to everyone that heard it. because of her overripe age though, she is marrying someone with a ten-year-old child and sick cancer-ridden parents. oh, but he is a good match. he belongs to the right caste and sub-caste. he comes with good references. he's well off. he's not keen on her working after the wedding. so.

so her parents have no money. so her dad is hurrying up with his eye operation next month, when her current job will still cover the hospital bills. so they can't afford rent for too long now. and they're the nicest family that ever i met. kind to animals, devoted to friends, generous with all they have. they lit a candle in a faraway church when our missing dog was found. they're almost ridiculously nice. and so incredibly poor.

so i say to pappa: surely, their daughter isn't going to abandon them. i mean, she'll either get a job to support them or get her husband to compensate for the salary she isn't earning. that's only fair.
and my parents reply in unison: but how can he be expected to take care of her parents? why should he?

because she's looking after his, maybe?

nobody talks about this ever when fixing to get married. no one says, yes, that's all very nice and made in heaven, but who pays what bills? and how? why don't we discuss this? because it isn't civilised? isn't romantic, for fuck's sake?

maybe this is just youth's arrogance at the frailities of an infirm protocol. the ringing logic of the fantastically underinformed. i know nothing of being over 35 and not married. i know nothing about being the parent of a 35 and not married. and i know precious little about not talking about money. i talk about it all the time. and it makes me so mad all this tiptoeing around the first thing on everyone's mind and the heaviest weight on their heart.

but i get no satisfaction from this fury. no chest-thumping youthful righteousness to massage the uncertainties away. no triumph at all in the making of this fist.

2005-04-26T21:11:00.000+05:30

what is rbk doing using popeye's personal philosophy to sell its silly puffed-up shoes? is there no decency left in this world? i guess when you're too cool for vowels you're also too cool for SUCH A THING AS SHAME

freudian blip

2005-04-11T21:48:00.000+05:30

a kind of reconfiguration is in progress. bits of wires, their ends bitten and exposed, are being sucked apart from old nodes and applied to new ones. this way the next time energy flows, it will strike at the right circuit, in the right measure. so i'll absorb less, and reflect more. sigh less and blink more. most tinfoil loyalties can be blown away with a blink.

you ain't never caught no rabbit and you ain't no fren' oh mine

recently had a dark-as-a-ditch dream about having gotten a lobotomy. in the dream, the skull was carved open neatly and the operation - to cure depression - was carried out successfully with the insertion of a coin-sized electricity-discharge thingie, within the folds of the brain. the only hitch being, after the operation, the head was to be kept vertical at all times, or the top would roll off.

you know how you're playing the And What Does This Mean game even in your dreams?

the immediate association was, emily dickinson. If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.

but nothing in the current reading material fits this descrip. the five senses haven't reported anything fantastic either, lately. if to be inspired is to be alive, then i'm being jiggled out of an urn, bored to bits.

if it isn't poetry, it must be lack of. like remembering the meter and forgetting the rhyme. the rise and fall, the dip and drawl, the whisper and squall, but not the goddamn words

gorgeousness and gorgeosity

2005-04-09T18:49:00.000+05:30

thanks to nothing working out the way i planned it today, i found myself with aching feet and a heavy heart at an old books' exhibition at the ymca. and there i found:
south of the border, west of the sun, murakami
and a most lovely hardback copy of the corrections, franzen

now, not only do i have two beautiful books to read and reread, respectively, but i also have them in exactly the condition i love. they're not hot off the press, with pages that crackle and sharp corners. they've aged, gone soft, and the wait upon the shelf has sweetened them. they have a more satisfying weight now. bricks of my fortress, i love them so.

why i love garrison keillor

2005-04-01T06:44:00.000+05:30

because he's funny in a way i can't understand.

with most writers you see where the humour comes from. in some horrible cases, you note the impending punchline for so long, it makes your stomach hurt and your bones groan. but even with the genius, out-of-the-blue variety of nailing the funny, you can see the tracks. eventually.

but keillor i cannot figure out. he writes peices about falling and being tall falling. about his mother's sneezes. about porches and the first time your son comes home with mud from a foreign land on his shoes. all reported in the same, unhurried tone. seeing, telling, seeing, telling.

he reminds me of ishiguro, in how completely he can transport you to a world where you question nothing, believe everything. a dreamworld where images are all. you are a child, led along by the hand, looking around curiously, but content to keep moving. you don't know where you're going and you don't care. you trust.

it's a world that notes the steel in the smile, the appetite in the glance, the composure in the crumpled. all without doubt, without cynicism. the eyes observe with the patience of a tree. people, incidents being observed are uncoloured by the author's presence. insight without intrusion. and there's never just one insight. and they're not all comfortable. but you accept.

and the funniness. unlaboured. funny people work at it, they all, without exception, do. which is why they are all, without exception, insecure. laughter is a cruel thing to be addicted to. keillor tries too. but his efforts are directed elsewhere. prior to a glimpse of the insanely hilarious, there's no tightening of grip, no quickening of breath, no pause for effect. he just lets the joke happen whenever it's ready. and it happens all over the place.

the village voice says this about gk. his "writing has the silvery slip of running water, so graceful and easy it’s hard to believe it can carry so much that is jagged and unresolved. His integrity lies in his not smoothing away those rough edges in the swift current of his prose; they’re bruisingly, sometimes cuttingly there."

reading him is like listening to the radio. it's a delicious giving up of control. and a delicious giving in to the voice.

flying by the seat of my pants

2005-03-29T15:42:00.000+05:30

as of 1pm today, i'm partially in charge of vidya, my 28-year-old sister. her full-time nurse has gone to fetch the replacement, this happens once every 6 months. for about five days we're left to ourselves. four adults, one of whom is two-and-a-half year old. and a fussy eater with a strange sense of humour.

currently she's very amused at the sight of her clod of a sister trying to assume responsibility. we did quite well for a while, when she was still reeling from the shock of seeing me up before 5pm. physiotherapy, a change of clothes, and medicines all on time. by the time we got to lunch i was feeling relieved and at peace with the world and my neighbour. and then suddenly she stops eating. just like that.

it was like trying to feed a wall. i tried cunning, hiding the rice under a piece of pappadum. i tried the element of surprise, sneaking in a spoonful when she was distracted by something funny that i had just said. i even - and i'm not proud of this - lied through my teeth, telling her it was all uperi when really it was also rice.

but she's had more experience at this than me. so i gave up, telling myself that she did eat enough. i don't fuss too much about food, i think she'll eat when she's hungry. but this sudden shutting of mouth as though it was filled with concrete alarms me.

the next few days, i am certain, will be filled with similar incidents. i'm going to get the royal substitute-teacher treatment. my tentative grip, anxious gaze and desperate attempts at humour will give me away. it's no use speaking sternly, i suck at that. my mother is slightly better at this because when faced with mutiny, she can say with perfect conviction things like: fine, then sit here all night. sleep in the bathroom, if you want.

i, on the other hand, am too scared she will.

what would i do without you?

2005-03-29T04:52:00.000+05:30

it's the season of doing without. i've made some old resolutions and have no real reason to believe they'll hold this time around. except that i really need them to.

things i'm doing without:
1. rice=starch=not so good for me
2. talking. my kindly ear's flown south for the winter, where she will be by herself and take baths standing in a tub. besides, i talk, i've found, expecting instant relief. when really i should just talk. can't just talk. ergo, not talking.
3. eating with distractions. in front of the tv, in front of a book, in front of theonion.com. no more.

this last one is proving to be the most difficult. but i welcome difficulties at this point. the funnest part, i remember, of playing house was the making up of random rules. wipe your feet before you come in, go to bed at 8, eat what's on your plate. rules that you recognise as dumb and mysterious, hence grown-up. somehow though, rules are tougher to follow when you see the logic behind them.

the unbearable lightness of being a puppy

2005-03-27T19:09:00.000+05:30

if there's a sweeter sight in the world than a puppy rolling about in tall grass i haven't seen it today

this, here, now

2005-03-26T08:44:00.000+05:30

choosing life is not the hope-drenched, sunny eyed, firm-footed move it's sometimes made out to be. rats deserting a sinking ship get bad press. the captain who went down with his ship is a honourable man. we will make movies about him, and that moment when he decides to hold on to the sea princess, his breath growing dearer by the second, is shot through with incandescence. they disappear into the far blue, graceful, entwined, dead. he held his baby, and she took him down. the poem, it just writes itself.

the rats, on the other hand, are vermin. they eat precious supplies, bore through linen, shit on larder shelves, and scurry about guiltily. they make veiny, transculent babies and occasionally eat them. their tails are an unacceptable length of gross, and their eyes are beady and shifty, and all those other words that novelists find so useful.

the thought that these dirty little bags of disease actually want to go on living is despicable to us. that they would swarm about covering corridors and stairs like a grey, writhing carpet is just so infuriating. after all that the poor ship did for them, gave them a place to scavenge, keep warm, breedbreedbreed, this is how they repay her. they run away when she needs help the most. the ocean's pouring in gleefully, splintering floors, storming through hinges. oh, why won't the rats do something? organise rafts, radio for help, play violins, something.

there are times when you need to go away to stay alive. and it isn't pretty. it isn't easy. sometimes it isn't even legal. you get called names. bastard. slut. coward.

nobody gives him a hand when a husband of sixteen years looks into the tired eyes of his wife, sleep-deprived from mourning her seventh miscarriage, vulnerable in her torn housecoat, ridden with self-doubt and the smell of greasy dinner, and says, it's over i'm leaving. a mother who up and leaves her daughter after the girl's second attempt at suicide, is not going to have a prayer said for her come sunday morning. except maybe to condemn her wretched soul. war epics aren't inspired by the scaredshitless men who ran away from the battlefield, jumping over carcasses and thinking, glad i'm not him.

they should have stayed. organised rafts, radioed for help, played violins, something.

those rats, they die too. the poor dumb fucks, where did they think they were running to?

if you asked them, they'd say, squeak keek, keek. not to, from.

back

2005-03-25T02:24:00.000+05:30

psychologists who would know say that just as a person commits the act of suicide - pops the 30th pill, kicks off the chair, dives into that black sheet, rests his head wearily on the steering wheel - his will to live sharpens to the keenest edge. not so much life flashing before your eyes, then, but its receding headlights. come back, i've changed my mind.

last week, when i was being blinded by logic and deafened by epiphanies - seriously they were going off like those siren rockets on diwali night - i looked at my blog and thought: enough. i don't want another indulgence cluttering up my life. besides, this is crap. god, i can't stand to look at it. off with your head.

i love a good bit of drama in the afternoon, don't you?

but i was serious. and i clicked on that tab that said 'delete this blog', expecting blogger.com to beg me to reconsider my decision. are you sure you want to delete? are you sure you're sure? but blogger is no ms office, and just like that it was gone, poof.

it felt good. then horrible. then not so bad. i felt liberated. then empty. then restless. i said pah a lot.

but i had made a decision, and this time i would not budge. this is good for you, deepa. no worrying about your stupid writing (groan). no worrying about how bloodyawful clumsy it sounds (groaner). no worrying about whether this makes any sense to anybody (let us please not go there). less to worry about, life will perch lightly on the tip of your nose.

but who wants a light life? what's going to keep me from floating away, turning somersaults in the sky, being lectured by geese?

so am back. my stomach pumped, my neck hard-collared, my lungs cleared, my brow mopped. and i had to re-post all that archive stuff for the same reason that people need to put up old pictures on unfamiliar walls.

centrefuge

2005-03-25T01:36:00.000+05:30

do you remember spinning around as a child? it usually starts off with a slow circle or two. then faster and faster. not so much because you're enjoying the repetitive scenery, but you sense that if you stop, you'll feel giddy and sick. so it's important to outrun the giddiness. you know that this will only make it worse when you finally do stop. but for now, in the centre of this blurred circle, you're safe.

a pleasant walk, a pleasant talk, along the briny beach

2005-03-25T01:33:00.000+05:30

there is something captivating about stupidity. for one thing, it's so beautifully simple. utter idiocy like inherent genius is characterised by its straight pure lines and unblemished ridges. i try not to get sucked into an argument with persons in their idiot-phase. they dither so convincingly.

i've worked myself into a knot over this. a tight, wet-shoelace knot. this is why i should never argue. it's so distressing, to argue. especially with prejudices. i know it's stupid, i know it isn't worth losing my ragged peace over, but before i know it i've burst a vein and tumbled into the pit. now i'm covered in jelly and the sides of this damn tub are slippery and i'm sticky and cranky and on the brink of tears. oh, the ugliness of it all.

but then there's another kind of person. she loves to argue. in her tempestous youth, she practically founded the If You Can't Convince Them, Confuse Them school of thought. now she's mellowed out and wisened gracefully. but she can still dam the most strident stream of red-blooded ism with a well-placed and devastating, hmm.

and frustratingly often she's "in that frame of mind when she want to defy something, although she doesn't know what to defy." but this person i'm crazy about. which goes to show you how very full of shit i am. and how very very smitten.

you see, charm always gets me. charm, the philosophical equivalent of asking nicely. of nudging a length of blue through the eye of a needle. of glinting warmly at a pat of butter as you slice through it. of curling up in a lap and purring commands of stainless steel. of pattering softly, endlessly for centuries upon a rock, till it cracks itself open in its eagerness to please.

the movies

2005-03-25T01:32:00.000+05:30

for a whole year i reviewed movies for a website. english, hindi and telugu films. good, bad, but mostly ugly films. i've rarely had people agree with me but i've often had them show genuine concern for my career prospects. "have you considered any other line of work? why not leave the reviewing to qualified folks?"

being of unbalanced mind, i freaked out everytime something like this got said. which it did almost every week. but i kept at the reviewing. not because i thought i was getting better. or because i enjoyed watching movies for free. or even because i'm a masochist (i'm not). i just kept at it because it was my job. and if the guy signing my check was still signing it every month, then bring on the movies.

another reason was i love going to the movies. this is not the same as loving the movies. it has much more to do with popcorn and cola slush. on tv or cd i don't enjoy a movie as much, it usually requires summoning up of the appropriate mood. also since i mostly watch sitcoms, i have the attention span of a hummingbird on steroids when it comes to a full-length feature.

the problem with reviewing is that most of the time i either liked the film or didn't. most of the time, i didn't. this is because most movies are crap. at least the ones that release here, in hyderabad, are crap. films today have sharper, more coherent publicity campaigns than they do scripts. most people cannot act. the ones that can have not enough screen presence. the ones with screen presence get no decent roles. the ones with decent roles have hatchetmen for directors.

sometimes a really terrible film will become a huge hit. while seabiscuit disappears from the theatres in less than a week. i loved that sappy film so. it had three underdogs and william h macy. and nobody went to see it. godzilla, however, ran for three months. in all three languages too. chipkali ke nana hai, chipkali ke hai sasur

we feel so strongly about our films. and our triggers are all so different. telugu film audiences for example go beserk over some really unlikely heroes. what they look for in their leading man is staying power. someone who's been around for years and years. if jackie shroff was a southie hero, he'd have at least one temple to his name by now. in their leading ladies they look for unrestrained voluptousness. a female presence in a telugu film is more of a background detail, so while people do have preferences, they're not too attached to their women.

hindi film audiences in hyderabad love shah rukh khan and aishwarya rai. and lots of fast-paced songs. never mind the kissing. and never mind karan razdan. they also love really bad comedy. toilet humor is a big hit in hindi films here.

english movies that do really well have to be either action or comedy. or passion of the christ. or titanic. or godzilla. big. we like our english movies big.

so i'm glad i quit. i miss the adoring public though. to be told your work sucks by harassed-sounding strangers gives life a timbre of violence that it now lacks.

pat

2005-03-25T01:31:00.000+05:30

swift judgments are quick and painless. and so complete. you know them by their non-messiness. like a piece of food regurgitated whole. plop. wipe. you're ready to go.

these usually occur for me late at night. the collected details of the day churn uneasily and out pops a theory of utter might. some experience of past epiphanies makes me wary of such clean truth. but, god, it's so irresistable.

last night's notion: gay people can be homophobes too.

i was so relieved when that shot out of the darkness as i let myself through the back door. it was 2.30 am and because the day had been largely perplexing, it felt so good to have this wisdom delivered to me so effortlessly. there you go, now stop worrying your pretty little head about it.

how the theory went: gay people can be homophobes too. not just the ones in denial of their homosexuality. but even the apparently 'out' caste need not be accepting of gayness. perhaps for some it's a wretched declaration, wrung out of sheer helplessness. there's no way in hell they could pass off for straight (they know because they've tried), so, yes, i'm gay. there, are you happy? perhaps they're mad. because it isn't easy and they have no choice. that tends to suck. perhaps they're snobbish about how tough they've had it and think every gay individual deserves to suffer like they have. perhaps and on and on

obviously the charm of this idea hasn't died. i'm still pretty sweet on it. but it was so easypeasy. plus i'm unromantic in my caution of paradoxes. especially tart ones that wait till 2.30 am to surface and smirk. when i'm most vulnerable to easypeasy.

on the whole i prefer my theories regular i.e. bilious, painful, and with an aftertaste that lurks forever. the kind that burn a trail, punctured with misleading signs, rattling potholes, and upsidedown maps. how can you trust a journey you don't remember?

brazen

2005-03-25T01:30:00.000+05:30

on my bleary-eyed, cold-cheeked walk with mac every morning, i see a tree. she's tall, for a flowering tree. with sinews as tightly wound as a neem. she stretches solemnly to the second floor of her home, where she bursts into a mist of yellow.

this must be her season because she's never looked as radiant. and yellow is her tongue. she brandishes it like she just invented the colour. she might have too, because you haven't seen yellow, you haven't known yellow until you've seen it like this. before it was married off (happily) to red, green and black, this was yellow. and this was its purpose: to be gently buttered by the rays of a sleepy sun, and drip warmth all day on dry, gaping eyes.

she defies you to come closer and say hello. you've had a sip of gorgeous, dare you put your glass down and subject it to scrutiny? if you saw, for a serendipitous second, sunlight filtered through the wing of a dragonfly, would you stay to see how light splits? or would you trace iridescent veins? would you hold your breath and fill your cup? or suspend wonder till you've had a good look?

so i walk up to her, storing away the yellow where wordsworth kept his daffodils. and looking, looking, looking instead. at the few leaves, a feeble attempt at green, carelessly strung around her neck. at the virile expanse of brown, like dry mud, that tethers her to the ground. at the flowers she drops continuously, melting even before they hit the earth. bruised by air on their way down.

flowers, they say, have complicated sex lives. heavy with pollen, skirts spread seductively, they describe a perfect dark-centred pucker. and inside strains a tongue of clear nectar. all this sex appeal and they still have to pout. and sway. and damn near wink.

it's enough to make anyone sigh.

i'm amazed that you can stand up straight

2005-03-25T01:26:00.000+05:30

contempt is old currency 'round here. it speaks all languages. it comes in small, handy denominations. it commands an exchange rate that obliterates the competition.

crisp, sharp-edged notes of new hurt. pliant, much-handled yet servicable, papers folded along familiar creases. shiny coins that can buy you a song of fresh pain. the jukebox swallows, blinks, stands aside.

knowing doesn't change a thing. forewarned is forewarned, not much else. you can duck behind a desk, pull the covers over your head, get under the bed. it don't matter, the stain is upon you. rubbing at it only grinds it in deeper. sink and swim.

who was it that said money doesn't have to talk, it listens? ah yes, pratchett. it listens. ear to the ground, finger on the pulse, muzzle at the jugular. half of a good fight is letting your opponent beat himself. the rest is familiarity. and its bastard spawn, contempt.

everybody needs a bosom for a pillow

2005-03-25T01:24:00.000+05:30

puppies play a complicated game of twister in search of the perfect pocket of warmth. as soon as they find it, they fall asleep. it doesn't matter if they're almost upside down and have someone's bottom pressed to their nose. sleep swallows them in a smooth gulp. you could watch them all day. eight of them. precious preemies too. they dream of milk, their tongues curled around an invisible teat, their paws marking slow circles in the air.

sometimes the mother will sit by me and watch them too. she isn't motivated by sentiment, i'm sure. so it must be something like concern. anyone pee or have the runs? any licking required? any bees or wasps around? no? ok, my work here is done. see you guys around.

i wish i could be as charmingly detached.

some people say they have vivid memories of being in the womb. maybe they don't really. perhaps they just have a very real idea of what it must feel like. which might suggest a very real urge to revisit. and not leave. wishful thinking really. in times of stress, imagine you're in the womb. fed on blood, clothed in membrane, sung to sleep by a heartbeat. a body wrapped around your every need. such complete convenience.

perhaps some people just wish more vividly than others. so vividly in fact that the wish is imbibed by the body. the want absorbed. a daydream doesn't occur in a bubble overhead, it shudders in the marrow. a fantasy isn't created, it's remembered.

dog

2005-03-25T01:20:00.000+05:30

(this had to happen sooner or later: the dog blog. inspired by the litter of puppies under our coconut tree. right now they're resting between meals. meals is taking five under my window, looking disillusioned with motherhood, while her children grunt softly and lie dreaming in a heap.)

mac is a black dog. one of the blackest. so he scares people and makes little girls cry. because apart from being black, he is also big and has a white grin. nandini, yesterday's little girl, saw right away that this was a dangerous dog. and though she was told repeatedly that he wouldn't do "anything", she, knowing better, continued to scream every shade of blue.

he is dangerous. not because he'll bite; it wouldn't occur to him. not because he'll scratch or paw; that's reserved for early morning declarations of love. not because he drools buckets; like an old golden retriever i used to know, who even had his own towel and a mopping service. no, mac's problem is quite different. he has little or no awareness of his size. and he will try to get on your lap. if you're standing up, he'll aim for the shoulders.

also, he will whack you continuously with his otter-tail, try to lick your face, all the while regaling you with warm dog breath. once the initial pleasantries are done, he will sit at your feet and watch intently as you transport food to your mouth. then, he will put his paw on your knee, begging for a scratch behind the ear. this will soon extend to a belly-rub. and the minute you stop, the paw is back on your knee. very few people appreciate this kind of neurotic need for affection.

dogs are like bottomless pits when it comes to love. and food. this is also true of some dog-lovers. we once knew a dog named lucky, who was found dying in a patch of sun outside a temple, crows pecking at her eyes. she was taken home to a bath and an obscene amount of love. also, she was fed a small planet. in her later years, visitors to the house often mistook the dog for a bolster with a tail. she'd never been known to refuse a snack. or a belly-rub.

some people like their dogs to do tricks. i've personally not had much luck with tricks; all the dogs we've ever had have been extremely individualistic. the most self-possessed dog i've ever met was rufus. a basset hound with deeply reproachful eyes, and ears that had to be tied up on his head when he ate. erykah badu-style.

rufus once auditioned for a hush puppies ad, during the course of which he ate seven packets of biscuits and refused to do a single thing they asked him to. he would not sit. he would not stay. and he most definitely would not look soulfully at a pair of shoes. they might have lucked out if they stuck a piece of sandpaper on the loafers; rufus had a purple passion for sandpaper and 50-rupee notes.

our neighbourhood has lots of dogs. they each belong to a different gang, and they're cool, and tough. some of them are friendly. and when i go for a walk in the morning, four of them escort me to the park. in return all they ask for is to be allowed to jump up on me and unplug my walkman. one of them is a hairless little thing, with oily skin, scabs all over, and chocolate-cake eyes. she gets so excited when she's petted that she can't stand still and squeals endlessly. soon she'll settle down and melt slowly under your palm for as long as you let her.

waiting at the bus-stop

2005-03-25T01:19:00.000+05:30

i took the bus today. an hour and a half it took me to reach where i had to get. that's twice as long as usual. i walked a hot smoky distance to the stop, waited a really long time, got a thorough once over from a tired looking lady with insatiable eyes, and waited some more at a second stop a mere 2kms away from the first. it was the most together i felt all day. at one with the solitude of the masses and at once alive to the echoes inside.

waiting for a bus is one of the most carefree activities a frantic world offers us. it is such a simple thing. all that is asked of you is repose. to wait patiently for a certain number to show up on the top of your coughing chariot. control has been temporarily surrendered, so you needn't worry about whether you are making the best possible use of your time or if there isn't something else you should be doing. we are not used to this sudden suspension of expectation. so people fidget with their phones, go over their biology diagrams, spit and scratch in search of meaning, and read the antiquated bus schedule again.

but if you are in for the long haul, like i was today, your body soon catches up. you try and get comfortable using small, economical movements so as not to make unneccessary human contact. you lean against a pole. if you were younger you might have clutched it to your chest instead, swinging closely, and tasting the rust in your nose. or you dust off a bit of the pavement and sit down, carefully arranging your bag and things about you. feeling like an old woman with a precious bunch of keys.

or you might prefer to stay standing. set your feet a little apart, arrange your shoulders for maximum comfort, and weave your fingers into a cradle just under your chest. like you were about to recite a poem in school. some people sit on the bench, but that's usually a recreational spot. for boyfriend-girlfriends and vendors with jasmine to thread.

then there are the creative souls. they perch on that metal barrier in front of the bench, meant only to be leant on. on this they sit and swing their legs. it looks like fun. but it can be dangerous. once i saw a schoolgirl overcome with mirth at something her friend said. one minute she was turning pink and leaning back, and the next her pale legs and green panties were waving forlornly in the air. i didn't laugh because i suspected there was a moral in it for me.

of course, a busstop is far from a place of idyll charm. the eyes never stop looking for that ride out of here. once it arrives we turn back into purposeful soldiers with elbows of iron. but for a while there you were spectator, and someone else was holding the remote.

doing time

2005-03-25T01:18:00.000+05:30

the worst thing about boredom isn't that it is paralysing. or that it is destructive. or that it is, inspite of all that, comfortable. the absolute worst part about boredom is that it won't let you play. i can't think of a more horrifying way to stay in the moment. sentenced for a second is worse than sentenced to life. because eternity is benevolent, but the minute hand keeps score.

still

2005-03-25T01:16:00.000+05:30

what i looked forward to most was the not talking. being around people, and not talking to them. how lovely. look down at all times, be self-effacing, get left alone. without that sucking pressure in your ears forcing you to say something.

and sit everyday. for 12 hours. that's a long time to observe your breath, even if it is a riveting object. and it's a long time to see with your skin, to absorb sensation and see it sleep. to note when an itch arises and to observe how very much you want to scratch it. to look at pain and say, hmm how interesting, i wonder how long it will last.

when you sit on the floor for long periods of time, without stretching your legs or rubbing your toes together, you get numb. it's like your legs, from the knees down, are trying to cleave to the cold floor and become part of it. blood carries with it awareness of touch, and the blood is trapped. your calves, ankles and soles feel like the faintly remembered stations of a phantom limb. oh good, you're thinking, numbness is all right. numbness i can live with.

then, in the centre of the cottony silence of your knee, there knocks the tread of a pulse. has the blood, sneaky fiend, found a way to flow after all? no, this can't be blood. blood is warmth, blood is relief. whereas this growing area of feeling is anything but welcome. this is not blood, this is the steady trickle of hurt.

the sum total of: the sinking of metal teeth in your temples, the ache that ambles up and down your back, the vicious twists of a cramping muscle. all the little hurts from all over your body fill up slowly in the pit of your stomach, where fear lives. an uneasy liquid, soon calmed, then distilled. sharp, clear, citric, it trickles down your leg. stopping, drop after pregnant drop, at the centre of your knee.

i can do this, i can do this.

in 30 minutes, you go from bovine meditator to blotch of screaming red. your entire body is a throb of pain. nothing exists but the knowing of this endless rhythm. no, that's not true. you don't know the pain at all. a pigeon getting sucked into a plane's engine knows nothing of aerodynamics. she only knows her own scream, it fills her tiny skull.

it filled mine. observe, they said. don't react, observe. how how how?

but strangely, you do. just like you seize upon the most arbitary detail in moments of great stress-the magnified weave of fabric, the smell of tar, the humidity of someone's breath on your wrist-you notice the slow shrinking of your mind. and the one thought that it curls around. mine was, run.

stretch. get up. quit. run. run. run.

it doesn't help to know that being trapped makes you mad. but you see that you're not angry with the bars, you're angry with the solidity of its hostage. the dumb weight of the calves. the helpless thereness of the ankle. the crumpled anguish of the toes.

stillness is not contentment. stillness is not peace. stillness is endless violence.

still like the door of a coffin. still like a poised scalpel. still like the string on a guitar. and taut like silences drawn.

new

2005-03-25T01:15:00.000+05:30

not enough is said about the wonder that is falling out of love. no dizzy songs, no recognition from hallmark, no poetic twirl, swish or piroutte. why not, i wonder.

it can be just as intoxicating, just as conducive a spirit to stupid regrettable acts, just as awesomely new. the butterflies have moved from being trapped in your stomach to flying in between your fingers, in that mad giddy insect way of theirs. the ache eases up around your heart and surfaces on your soles, forcing you to walk, walk, walk. the acid of anger and tension drips off the eyebrows and dissipates in mid-rant. how nice to have your rage back.

room101

2005-03-25T01:14:00.000+05:30

blackandwhite cinema is of another world. it's classic. poignant. spooky.

back when doordarshan reigned supreme, old obscure hindi films would find their way to the late night slots, along with steamy french movies and subtitled, depressing kannada ones. one such hindi film was about a princess who wouldn't smile. the king tried everything - jesters, clowns, animals with tricks. and yet she sat there, wrapped in monochrome gloom.

at this point in the proceedings, as the line of laugh-makers were working their way to the royal mehfil, a cold finger ran down the spine.

the scene went something like this, with no variations at all: business in the royal court, presumably comic. the assembled citizenry, including king, queen and punkah-boy, laugh in hearty staccato fashion. synchronised turn of necks to look at gloomy princess. upon seeing gloom still in place, dejected, yet synchronised, hanging of heads.

this went on for a goodly bit, till i turned off the tv in terror. me, whom boredom had disciplined to sit through any color of tripe, through all languages of incomprehension. i turned off the tv and read a book.

in color it might not have been so creepy, but in b&w it slayed. sometimes, on sleepless, empty afternoons, i can see that courtroom and its people laughing without any trace of mirth, in traditional ha-ha-ha motif, in desperation, in SYNC.

if the year was orwell's 1984, and i was caught drawing a mustache on big brother's handsome and noble visage, they would haul me into room 101 and play this scene endlessly. in the meanwhile, i would feel the tiny nails of large, flesh-colored, translucent lizards bellying their way toward my inner thigh. and a jar of honey would be poured down the back of my shirt, to inch slowly s-t-i-c-k-i-l-y into my armpits and lick deep into the folds of my waist.

liquid

2005-03-25T01:12:00.000+05:30

dreams are like images colored on water's surface. each time you dip in to recall a detail, you distort the shape of the experience. when you are still sleeping and analysis is redundant, the picture is elastic, but clear. it expands, contracts, rises and falls, but holds onto its centre. when you sleep, you watch the picture from under, through leagues of murkiness, so its meaning is everchanging but irrefutable. like the rays that filter weakly past the initial depths.

but your waking breaks the image and you rise colored. on first surfacing, when the paint is fresh upon the skin, you understand the dream like you never will later. as the day wears on and the colors evaporate, you're not so sure. so you turn around and look at the water's surface to see a torn canvas, already fading in the sunlight.

and then each time you attempt to straighten an edge, patch pieces into coherence, you rob the picture of its color. they come off on your fingers and escape in a whiff of memories into the muddle of the day. sometimes they return, but by then they're so infused with smells of the city and punctured beyond recognition with darts of analysis, that they aren't free creatures of sleep anymore. just weary travellers trying to find their way home.

allow them a free pass through your brain, let them slide bumpily down the spine, permit a cautious circling of the navel, before they totter briefly on the tip of your tongue.

the last laugh

2005-03-25T01:10:00.000+05:30

words are wild. they don't care about you or what you're trying to say. they exist complete and self-fulfilled. sometimes they like to amuse themselves, and that's when they adhere, in such large numbers, to people like me.

people like me have a fatal fascination for implements of magic. and we learn soon enough that there isn't a magic as compulsive as a string of words, tied end to end, and pulled incessantly out of a gaping gullet. we discover this fascination in repose, while the world sleeps, while the summer sun bends to its will the shaggy heads of asoka trees. we read, read, read. till the world swims around us, and words pop out, without warning, in a bubble over previously mundane articles - knife (gleam), tar road (molten), ice cubes (tinkle), sofa (sink), ladle (soup), and so on (etc.)

as with all love affairs, the beginning is bewildering, then blissful. we can't keep your hands off the beloved and nothing turns us off. not even the sorry books that accompany her. bring em on, bring em all on. then turn around and leave us be. close the door behind you.

soon we get more picky. about the books that is; we're just as smitten by the unit of storytelling. big words, small words, words with hyphens, words that follow other words. prime words, that rhyme with nothing but themselves. heavy words, that threaten to tip the whole sentence over unless balanced quickly with airy verbs. lazy words, that just sit there no matter how many furious nudges they get from conscientious conjunctions.

then there are other words.

ones with hidden barbs. smug. ones with fat jolly elbows. ribald. ones that pause unnaturally in between. punc-tilious. ones that are inconveniently apt, sounding so pretentiously arty. juxtapose. ones that sound like the action they describe. gulp. ones that can be spelt in a song. onomatopoeia (to old macdonald had a farm...p-o-e-i-a) foreign words. concerto. rendezvous. cummerbund!

the next stop on route crippling addiction is in-tone-ation. some words are better than others at saying what they mean because they incorporate into their selves syllables of precise aim. prePOSterous conveys not only contempt at an idea, but also some of the sputtering rage it causes. SWirl is the shape of milk as it's stirred into black coffee. LANguid dozes in a hammock, its fingers trailing in the sand.

and slowly, as we, the charmed, begin to look up from the books and increasingly onto a blank page, the magic states its price. much like the chemical trigger in the brain that commands eat! another one develops that demands write! only this time there's no heady rush, no wilful intoxication, no rigorous bliss. this time you're behind the curtains and you can see the strings, pulleys and cogs that make it all go. the nubile magician's assitants eye you in disdain. the rabbit nips your finger, the dove poops in your hair, and you notice that the confetti is recycled, swept up after every show.

not so pretty, and here you must stay. you must learn not only the act, but also the magician's flourish. you must perfect the performance, and break in the dancing shoes. the words lie in your hand, guileless and reproachful as putty. your mouth is dry, your brain groans at yet another regurgitated line. abracadabra and hokus-pokus. pick a card, any card and think of a number from 1 to 100.

and yet, despite how inadequate you feel, despite the way self-doubt scurries through the brain, and despite the tricks that don't come out right, you are always here. trying to make up in dusty confetti, what you lack in stage presence. pulling words around you in comfort against the draughts of slience. effacing frantically everything that sounds wrong, or worse, (oh much worse) contrived. hoping every night that the spotlight will wash away your tremble, the microphone smooth out your stutter.

but the audience misses nothing. and the words laugh hardest of all.

s&g

2005-03-25T01:09:00.000+05:30

soul and groove. sugar and ginger. simmer and grieve. simon and garfunkel.

each song has a time of day. iris, for example, sounds sexy any time of noon, but if you really must know the song - fill it in your cup, swirl it around, let it run over your teeth and feel the sun set down your throat - then you must listen to iris at 3am, after your eyes have soaked in the darkness and learnt to swim. that is when the song really hums and shakes itself all over you.

the best time for simon and garfunkel is similarly specific to the quality of light available. you don't want to flood the room with color; a song like scarborough fair might be too shy to step out. but try listening to this faraway lover's hymn with the light softened to a dull peach, then watch as the song tiptoes around the room, turning darkness to glass and dust to pigments of rose.

the 59th street bridge song (feelin' groovy) might have you fooled as a morning song. but evenings are really the best time to feel groovy, because that is when you start to think of death, swollen ankles and the commute home. this is also the best time to talk to lamp-posts because they've heard a fair number of good stories by the evening. if you have a secret, don't tell it to a bird.

the boxer is a good song to listen to on your way to work. the image of an ugly bruiser in red shorts and torn boxing gloves finding comfort at the breast of a tired whore will hopefully remind you of the devastating effects of kindness and a hug. and that heroes crumble easy.

mrs. robinson is for to listen to as you drive, maybe afer lunch. primarily because it's such a good song to wait in traffic to. as you will the light to turn green, and that vein in your temple starts its slow scream, it helps to hear the voice of such cheerful doom. you have no say in anything, your fate is controlled not by big brother as much as big sister, the starched matron of holy authority from one flew over the cuckoo's nest. straitjacket with a fur collar.

not all songs fit as neatly within the 24-hour day. el condor pasa (if i could) is a rainy day song. sure, it also works in drier climes, but that's sort of like eating a muffin without coffee. lovely, but you crave something to wash it down with.

why write?

2005-03-25T01:08:00.000+05:30

why write? when you can just as easily not write?

why write when you can read? why write when you can talk? why write when you can watch a movie? why write when you can fly a kite? download a song? eat a fruit? walk your dog? play a game?

why write when the words are so unwilling? like an unruly class of kindergarteners who refuse to make a circle. why write when the ideas are so hazy? and probably ultimately dumb anyway. why write when the head aches, the blood is languid, and the spine unbends only enough to glance at the clock above? why write when all you've said before has refused to stay silent and raises a clamour that makes your toe curl?

[for to be able to write, the extremities must be untroubled and at rest] why write when you have nothing to say goddammit?

because you can't stare at a work of creation for long, no matter how delightfully it thrums within the skull. after the long gaze comes the retreat. and that is when you write. you write all the way home, so the trail of crumbs will lead you back some day. you write all the things you cannot say because you were interrupted, chided, repressed. you write down an idea because it's restless to use its legs, never mind that they're spindly and weak.

you write so you can mark this day, this instant, this quicksilver of belief, before it runs away laughing. you write because a movie is even at its slowest a rush of color and light which doesn't care if that hole in the dark is a yawn or a gape.

because the song is nice but wears out, strawberries are not in season, the leash has knotted around itself and solitaire is an inbetween sport, to play while you're tapping your foot.

because you know that kindergarteners can be bribed, the headache is an old friend, blood can be sloshed awake, and the spine arched into acquiescence. you also know that the clamour of the past can be soothed to sleep by the steady scritchetyscratch of a new page.

and besides, you can't fly a kite.

All right, I’ll go. But you can’t make me have a good time.

2005-03-25T00:33:00.000+05:30

It’s true, you can’t.

If there’s one thing I’ve know through every tantrum I ever threw, every fit I ever pitched, every time I got dressed grumpily, it’s this – you can’t make me have a good time. It’s a comforting thought.

There comes a time too early in your life when you realize that your will will not be done. The only way to deal with this is to do it with extremely bad grace. Be surly. Be unpleasant. Drop things and don’t pick them up. Take up more space than you need. Snap at people trying to cheer you up. Don’t smile for longer than absolutely necessary. Be icy. Yeah.

If the world was a graffiti board, what would your inscription read? Often I think about things like this. And the best I’ve come up with is – I wasn’t here. I’m not a morbid person and I don’t have a death-wish (sometimes I wish I did, some focus would be nice). But the way I go through life is walking backwards, erasing my tracks. I’m convinced they are bad tracks and I hate that they ruin the nice clean ridges in the sand. But once you start walking you’re going to leave tracks. I have some trouble with this concept.

This is too long for a first post. What will you think of me? I was going to do something shy, self-conscious and short. Like me. But then what’s the point of having another identity exactly like the old one?