on the path to wisdom

Sound of a peacock calling for his lost love…or plain horny…..still sounds the same in the orange twilight….somewhere a pressure cooker hoots for attention…I am back to the place I call second, no maybe third, home….a confined space I call my own….or a space I like to believe I own….though its not that simple….i am back in the city that nurtured me for five very important years of my life…I thought I was ready for the change…prepared to take this new turn into the old realm…but maybe not so much….i arrived in the afternoon to a dreadfully hot and dusty city…filled with familiar looking unfamiliarity…which I accepted whole hearted…who wouldn’t?....after such a painfully long journey of cursed silence and never ending railway tracks and the recurrent smell of unwashed loos and rust….the heat is comforting, the dust bearable, the money stripping jacks only a fashionable quirk…..but as I climb the familiar steps of the building that was home for two whole years….i am struck by a intense feeling of claustrophobia…….it was the same way I felt as I entered the department, the abode of knowledge….we now know better….but the name remains and the longing for it had lasted too….but suddenly I am struck with a doubt as to whether my life is twirling into a black hole filled with the familiarity of the womb….ask a child, a baby who has seen sunlight whether she longs for her mother’s womb….maybe not….yeah that’s the sense….


So as I walk into my old room…filled with old memories….i am filled with a sense of the new and the old…a yearning to create new memories….a comfort of the old….but I dread the old and that is glued to me like a generous claustrophobia….what on earth am I doing here?....suddenly I feel a rush of not so old memories of life I led not so long now…..of revolving chairs, comfortable apartment I called my own…..of spending five digits every month….i am a student again?...i m now stuck in the lower rungs of four digits….bloody hell!!....the feeling is reinstated as walk along the corridors studded with young women chattering about the maggi they made….chirpy young girls are always a pain…..i was reminded of a conversation where i was told I had the lower end of a bargain when I opted for a loo that was separated from the bedroom I my apartment….i was told I had to give up, maybe on privacy…suddenly that seemed like heaven…..i was back in that place where loos are never free, where the flushes are always out….when that is not the case, you crap with the mortal fear of being barged in by some unsuspecting chirpy young girl….those days when you wake up early so that you can have a decent bath….baths where water overflow till the puddle becomes a stream and the stream a river that swallows every space one calls dry….baths where women compete to create greater rivers…man I am back!!….But new information snippets have replaced the old…”use newspapers for sanitary pads only not for toilet”….i wonder how that works….or ….”please flush after use”….”please do not misuse…”...”please use only the toilets for …” things have not changed in its very essence as the snippets go…we are dirty, we remain…it took me a while to work out the rules behind having geysers serve as liveried sentry men outside every loo instead of being stuck on a wall with wires….eternal handiwork…I am back!!


So after sufficient looing around and chitty-chatting the maids I get out ….no , not from the air-conditioned dump I called office…but from an already sunny sweaty nest I call hostel room….to the road again…humming “here I am on the road again” (bob seger)…on a trip to buy amenities…well so far so good….I toss a few things here, a few things there….you never know what could come handy……… when suddenly as they add up the bill I am struck again by that old dread…calculations…of the need to count the bills before you hand them lest you plough back into a corrupted state of bankruptcy…no, not like the times when you could borrow from friends who earned in 5 digits…but bankruptcy that will lead your way to more moral discourse on savings and the oft told reminder….you are a student now!!!!....yikes….maybe I don’t need that strainer….maybe I can make do with just one spoon….maybe I should quit existing…now that there’s a time for everything…classes, bathing, mess time…time to eat, to obey rules….to be obliged to notify when you want to go out with your friends…I am just grounded for life…
A word about the sumptuous food…..everything in the mess is a variant of the priceless tuber aloooooo…potatoes…humongous looking triangular-cubical pieces float in every recipe for every meal…with its multifarious partners….where do they come up with so many combination beats my culinary skills…maybe they are undercover scientist or mathematicians trying all the possible permutation -combination for potatoes on a contractual basis…maybe they are studying the multiple effects of the tuber on the human brain….hope they find their results soon…Delhi is known for the stewed milky brew they call tea but in this haven it’s a little different…there is a pleasant but nauseating taste of the nectar, water, that has not been boiled enough to be part of the ancient traditional beverage…I got a taste of it the moment I came back from the great conquest…that’s when it struck me…reconciliation.


I reconcile…So I come back to my nest….my head stoop under the weight of wisdom…. and clean my little nest with all the love I can muster…for here is the grandeur of simplicity….of humble ownership on a path to independence….it’s my freedom…dreadful as it maybe…there is still the hope for a brighter future….future filled with new discoveries in a place I am less writhing in discomfort….i have chosen knowledge….hopefully…..and knowledge is power….says someone…and with great power comes great responsibilities…... says another…..so here I am with a lot of responsibilities….hoping never to complain again!!

a letter

this is not how i imagined it...i had plans...big ones...life was in the dumps...i thought i couldn't get worse...so i planned a long trip...i almost thought i planned it all only so i could write a blog on it...obsession i tell you.....but then again.. i lost two jobs and with it my self esteem and my independence and most importantly my laptop...boooohoooo...so no MS word to type a blog and ruminate on it...or to pour my bleeding heart out...well now the trip is over...the job is outta my way...sun has started shining from amidst dark clouds...all that jazz...but nothing to write...no thought to add....i guess thinking is best when you are down and out...

Now life is looking up a bit...my faith is coming back in things i thought i couldn't believe...theres academics, which i tell myself is what i want...oh i made it through another rung of higher education...proud me...there is...ahem...a guy...ahem...well...don't know yet...and i will not utter words lest an evil eye fall upon my endeavours...but yes....there is silver lining behind every dark cloud and so there is faith that i will continue irritating my loving readers with more crap than they can handle....sheesh i sound like a maniac....next thing i am gonna get religious....all yours....me

pilgrims of love

For anonymous admirers...and ratifiers and all personas similar....i am posting here my most dreaded blog...for it seems not like me....but a moment of weakness cause me to spew this not-so-me-like blog writing....i apologise with a quote for those who think it is a case in point.... "far from being one code among many that a culture may utilize for endowing experience with meaning, narrative is a meta-code, a human universal on the basis of which transcultural messages about the nature of a shared reality can be transmitted" ......here is mine....me on a pilgrimage to my past..


I happened to take a journey into the past last night...with old friends...through the tormenting days one called college....torrential lovers....jealous rivals.....confused friends....it was depressing, traumatic, I am scarred for life, yet so nostalgic....today as I discussed my trips again with my colleague....the earlier days of extravagant youthfulness came back to me...the times when you backpacked to the hills without thinking about repercussions.....of secret loves, of little conspiracies.....long time ago, not really all that long...i was in love....or I thought I was....we were young...like fledglings learning to fly....struck by the sight and sounds of a new life....playful, yet so reflective....every move we made, every word we said seemed to have a meaning that could change the course of our life....then there were wasted days...when words were flung with disgust at each othet....arms were wrangled....struggles for an elusive freedom....hot tears....days when my phone was my worst enemy.....cause it always betrayed me...it made me weak....i swore never to call again....but alll to end up shouting anger word over that tempting device, amidst hot tears....all to end the day with the same words....words I swore I'd never repeat...the thought to escape into the hills arose on a dizzy day like that.....no on a daywhen holding hands made theworld around seem blurred......hills of dalai lama....it was a conspiracy...it was a taboo...i was not supposed to do it....i can't begin to count the reasons....parents disapproved, friends would be disgusted, I can't explain the rationale to myself....yet it seemed like the right thing to do....


So into the dark night I escaped with my backpack...and heady with the number of lies I had told that day.....to the world I had created a narrative...a fairy tale....it was risky, I had betrayed the world for one person....trust sometimes can be silly....love sometimes can be foolish...but here I was in a crowded bus-stand holding on to the palms of a man I knew not for long.....but then it signified all that existed ....i felt like Moses holding the ten commandments at mount sinai or Lord siva trailing the globe with the venom in his throat...it was heady yet dangerous.......through the mob we squeezed our way, never once letting go of the grip....sweaty palms searching for something, as if in an act of silent prayer......yet grounded so well....till we boarded that rickety bus that would take us miles away from the world we knew.....all night I shuddered....the cold?....the fear?....or the anticipation of a new beginning....this was not right...nothing was right....there were too many hearts at stake....to many bonds broken just so we could hold hands....but something felt right....deep within I felt whole


The hills were the most beautiful things I had ever seen....winding road that seems to usher you through....deep gorges that kept you close to one another.....snow capped mountain far yonder that made you gasp....apart from the gasping of tired legs.....monasteries, where silence itself was loud....where stooped men chimed the bells and chanted with their beads....like pilgrims we watched in awe as the world beyond rose before our eyes....like the clearing of a cloudy sky...we watched as humble damsels scurried around their business and monks chanted their hymns to the lovely abode where humans seemed to be just one of the tiny cogs in a large wheel of life....the golden Buddha in his sleep seemed to tell us that....torrential rains and ice cold winds seemed to sing them too...i remember, as we climbed up the hills in a place that seemed to be edged of the universe....it poured cats and dogs....we were stuck....the poor umbrella stretching its man-made limits.....fighting the winds to keep us covered....never after have I ever felt the shiver and warmth so distinctly as I stood helpless in the middle of a narrow winding lane in the pouring rain, holding the only person I wanted to be with.....never ever had chaos felt so good.....for I knew when evening cam I would stand at the rooftop and watch the world go to sleep under the comfort of these mountain....i can never forget the sound of my laughter....as I teased myself and my beloved companion in the rain


Every road we walked down, the road back seemed never ending...panting and nauseous...but never for a minute giving up the walk....of quaint restaurants were hot soups and exotic tea seemed to be nectar bracing us against the winds outside....of apple pies and tibetian cuisine....every sight was taken with religious care.....every step taken with the seriousness of a pilgrim in his temple after years of yearning.....every touch was holy....the deity was love and the temple was the snow capped hills....and here we were pilgrims in search for the deity for one last time....


The stricken path returned to my memories again...made me realise memories are like quicksand....u either stay away or you get sucked in.....i think I am getting sucked in.....somewhere between real and myth.....a narrative of my meaning of what i felt....i always seems to be on the threshold.....an abyss....it all seems a dream now...was I really there...did I hear those words....where there rains....or was it all a dream that my fetish mind made some cold winter night....

madness

Last evening was uneventfully eventful....it was full of alternating realisations of the good, bad and the ugly....it started with my boss snubbing me again......grrrrrr.....immature creatures like the both of us, stuck to deal with each other.........what if my husband is like my boss...blah!....let me start my story......yes,yes I did read other articles in office and was buzzing with thoughts about the lofty theoretical exposition in it (start of a conspiracy theory), when it all happened.....the ill-fated moment I decided to open my inbox and see that unread white patch on the screen.....curiosity kills us all...it did....my enthusiasm....what remains of it and everything....urgh I hate these situations...ok,ok what I am trying to say is that while I was happy ruminating nice thoughts on education and democracy, I happen to see my boss' mail in the inbox......it was my temporary doom...thankfully I was looking forward to meeting a new friend and possible employer...i stomped out of office in disgust at the lack of tact that my current boss showed....and worse my inability to stand up to anyone..... then walked into barista to see a multi-pierced, long haired balding soft spoken man....who spend the whole night playing devil's advocate...with me....job is a far receding dream.....it can happen when fate decides.....is his sophisticated answer in a crude manner...ten minutes into the conversation he pops up the question that was to put me in a self-indulging dilemma for the rest of the night....hmmm.....it was not untrue....he quipped “you are too young to be so cynical”.....”what, its been a year since you started working and you already so cynical?”.....what he is unaware of is that this question haunts me everyday.....everyday I wonder if I am the one making the gross errors.....its me or the external....well i guess i reconcile thinking- its not so black or white....its grey, its how I react to the external....ah, it had to come to me like everything else...self-destructive ego....always my doom...why do I take these things so seriously.....he also said I am prone to stereotyping...me?ME???....wait a second when did ten minutes of engagement warrant a character assassination.....look who is stereotyping....



Ok, having said all that, the man was nice, he promised me a job.....in the yonder horizon but still a job...aite...its difficult...so he is instantly pardoned...after all he speaks my language of engaging with the world, a world out destroy everything in it...self-fulfilling prophecy...the-world-is-out-to-get-you-mode...capitalistic conspiracy.....American conspiracy....manipulation of an educational system to create clones that befit the capitalistic growth....we don't need no education (remember Pink Floyd)....we all come from there and move towards agency and a load of bull...can't comprehend what I am trying to say?... don't worry neither do i!!....well, okay so here was a man meeting me to talk about a prospective job offer..... now judging me in my own language....sweet revenge. This led me into thinking about all the things I do wrong....and have friends that reiterate them...i had to tell thampi....he was one of them....so on an auto, amidst traffic, I screamed my new found theory to a poor thampi boarding the 8 P.M train to the land of mallus...he listened with awe to discoveries....protesting once in a way...if I let him that is(my roomy says I bully him, which is not true, so she mothers him too...hehe)...our similarities ranged from inability to stand boredom, boring friends, taking things too seriously, exclusivity principle....the list went on till both of us couldn't recollect the list....But bullying counsellor counselled about everything....his doomed marriage....his possible mental disabilities....poor boy...has enough troubles of his own...por favor senor/senorita, I am going on forever...(oh that by the way was an indication that I am learning Spanish...now I know why I suck at grammar....lack of structural thought...bloody hell how am I going to do structural linguistics...))



I thought it was over for the night...enough conspiracy theories for a day....but no...i had to drown my sorrows into the darkness of the night...so against the will of my protesting body.....i ventured forth with the rock band star and la enamora into the depth of the night....into that hell hole they might as well have called velocity or acceleration or momentum or inertia....would have made no difference....cause throughout the night a fear captured my already drained brain....last conspiracy theory for the day.....the music, the people, the culture was one of stunted growth....the crowd was almost the same....like an incestuous little tribe of devil worshippers...Lord save them from my wrath!!...everywhere people shook their head in similar salutation to the sound of that music....dikchik dikchik....all in a trance as if possessed by the spirit of the devil himself.....of euphoria....overcome by the pleasure of primal instincts...do I sound like the priest from the Salvation of the Christ sect....Jehovah's victims....if I do that's my intention....that's conspiracy theory...men and women lost to the sound of mollifying repetitive sound...trance, house, whatever....it took me only a few minutes to realise I was shaking my head too.....aaargh!!! I am ruined....my pretentious intellectuality is out....i am exposed to the luring flesh....my eyes get misty, lost in the enveloping smoke......maybe my brain cells were bursting....sheesh...i was soon going to be one of them....a member of the incestuous clan (well I have already been charged of that once before)...i showed signs.....it took me an hour or so to let go of that discomfort and the itch to register this theory on paper...virtual at least....it took me that much time to return to my own full-of-myself-superior self....so at the end of the day after so many glasses of fermented juices I ended up looking pissed more than drunk....i was pissed.....with the pub, with myself....with la enamora, with the rockstar...with his statue of a friend....i came down to planet earth only when I realised how in my moment of intense boredom I failed to notice how drunk la enamora had become....yikes!!! she had to drive me and herself back...poor judgement...i wasn't after all the superior self I imagined...i can't even f**king drive!!!!!!....so I held tight while she giggled her little self back home....never once breathing a sigh of relief...i slept a tight little ball....dreaming bad dreams....but sun rose as if nothing ever happened...that amazes me.

Go Goa

Life has become better all of a sudden...i have been depressed for almost a week now...thoughts muddled....motivation hitting negative scale....emotions have a supersonic frequency...all things contradictory seemed to exist in the same space...result was chaos.....today, something seems lighter....it was the appraisal last evening....i laid my cards down....i learnt something about me....i am extremely candid and honest....i can hide it...but I start looking like a helium balloon...ok,ok the lighter mood is an indicator of the fact that today is the day I should write that much pending blog on my trip to goa...the plan had been brewing for a while...a trip had to be made...people were itching in their seats in the IT sector as well as the development sector..i have been whining for a while...needed that much awaited break...i guess it happens bi-monthly for me ...its not the place that generally makes the differences...its the idea of a trip...the concept...of course place comes after it...we planned it medium this time...take a few days off before the upcoming child marriage...in my terms...wayanad, coorg, dandeli...all the nearby places crossed our sharp radars...till goa popped up as a sudden brain wave to the aero-psycho-nautic's mind...too much of detour for a trip to kannur?....what the hell...goa it is...
Planning ranged back and forth on group mails...routes, mates, abusive substances, beach side shacks, nude beaches...trains, buses, flights...you name it...the scout had begun....secrets, comfort zones...all were thought through before the final decision was made....to much confusion... as to who booked what, who cooked what and who spend for all this....what is ever gona happen...at last one friday evening I left the city on a 6 hour trip to the next metro...b'lore...i shivered the whole night through...partially fearing the fever that was impending, partially just to keep warm....partially worried my bladder might burst...but except for the trailer lorry side tracked on the road, the trip was uneventful....i arrived early morning, before sunrise, with my personal body guard...on to the cool streets of Bengaluru...only to be stuck for an hour at the bus stop....cause our chaddy pal decided to drink the night before.....celebrating some random excuse.....and slept through our billion desperate phone calls and curses....everything was forgotten when at last we saw his sheepish smile...what are these idiotic chaddy pals for anyway....they ditch you and then rescue you...like we do with pet parrots...but like the parrot you still love them only cause they rescued you...so the night in shining armour took us to another knight in sleepy armour...who was such a good host that he started snoozing before I stepped into his lair....but it was roof above our heads alright....the onus was left to the three of us to find spots at his feet or floor....or go anywhere as long as the lion slept peacefully...before snoozing off he warned...no, forbade us from stepping into his kitchen.....which was a small space between the door and the rest of the room.....which seemed dire until later I was told that it was because a lizard in his lair had a sweet tooth and decided to feast in his sugar box....the day was spend without seeing more than a street in b'lore.....cooking, yelling, substance abuse, ravishing mutton...the aero-psycho-nautic lion also turned out be a good cook...talk about versatile friends
Trip to Goa on a bus from B'lore was less eventful....and the trip to our first destination – Morjim Beach...seemed long drawn...we could hardly push our lazy arses down to the beach restaurant...once we plonked there, no live soul could bring us back...so we ate, drank, ate, drank....and chatted as always of old days...childhood in school is all that we really have in common and a few months of renewed friendship...it takes time...for people to bring out their baggages...and as always we slowly opened the pandora's box....then it just kept coming.....as soon as the sun hit the west coast....we hit the beach after a self-imposed-doped-out-afternoon-siesta that every marquezian only dreams of...in our quaint thatched hut near the beach...exotic huh? After hours of faking swimming, drowning, relentlessly facing the waves that seemed intentionally directed to my nostrils...we once again hit the beach restaurant for an all night session of alcohol and jokes and crap and bitching....stories after stories we giggled like little girls (sorry guys)...tripped on each other's idiosyncrasies....that's all we do really!!! followed by a round table conference and debate....one by one people lapsed into a stage popularly known as “passing out”.....common parlance I say...i would rather seeing it as passing slowly into a wonderland of dreams unseen...of breaking orders and tribe rules.....
Next day after a heavy b'fast filled with anal discussions on anal passages...we headed to a place that can only be compared to paradise...palolim....living by the turquoise blue....sea green....expanse...in little coloured huts....precariously built....feeling the sand under our feets at every step....i learnt for once how to walk neck deep into water and let go my ego with every wave....the waves and I reached a compromise...i accepted my minisculity in comparison...let it hit me....push me....drown me....and let me fly...for a brief moment....feeling the gentle sea breeze in my wet hair....and the icy current on my feet....my eyes taking in every bit of green around me....well my buddy chums also saw their bit of green...among the bikini-clad, sparsely populated, receding tourists....lovers who used the thin cover of the green water to explore new dimensions of sexual intercourse....well sheepishly I had my eyes filled too with these rare spotting...the best part was that everyone followed their own whims as to what they wanted to do...so while one turned mermaid through the trip...some were sleeping beauties or sullen gypsies...i used my space to worry less about how I looked and pretend to be more like Halle Berry walking out of the sea in a bond flick...all differences came to a stand still at sun down when all four of us joined hands to hit the next beach shack for another round of sweetly brewed poisons....that gave me wings enough to venture neck deep into sea at midnight....
We encroached spaces and found our niches as time passed....till it reached a point when I decided that I could marry one...hehe who would have thought...now I have plan B ready way before I even organise path for plan A..............heading back....the road was more eventful...no don't get me wrong eventful only in terms of things new and tense....we decided we were travelling to kannur unreserved...adventure began the moment we stepped out of the safe womb of the sea....suddenly I was converted from my image of Halle Berry...to a conservative drunk women to be taken care of by young chivalrous men...and it was true....they were nice chivalrous men...and I was a weakling just set out to doze off...so chivalry felt most appropriate....though I can't figure out the rational of chivalry, I know it felt good....so I reached safe and sound, with a slight hunch back for my old lover's marriage...time went by so fast.....depression took over my thinking for next few days....now I can feel its glow.....life seems all about impressions left from long walks by the beach.

movie watching

Here's a new habit my roomy and I have developed...watch the weekly movie premiere at Satyam...called “blind date.” Most of you have already heard about it. It affords you to watch a movie premiere before its release the next day but the catch is you are not told which movie is screened..Of course you can make informed guesses in accordance to the releases next day...after which its a partial blind game of probability...you can eliminate on the basis of rating...so my roomy who is our “booker”, okay that is not complicated, she does the online booking and arranging, has developed some fairly complex systems to predict this weekly event. If it is “A” rated then you know it is an English movie, if it is “U/A” then it can be either Tamil, Hindi or English...but then who will want to watch an “U/A” rated English movie, she says...that is not entirely true as I am not averse to animation, fantasies and magical realism...but on an average both of us prefer a serious English movie with a little bit of kissing maybe...so “A” rating is our first preference...
After having been to this auspicious screening three-four times....we realised our luck alternates...first was American gangster, good......then it was Epic movie, yuck!! the worst so far....then came 'there will be blood”, good...and the recent screening last night was “water horse”, so-so, could have been much better...or I have grown old...since my roomy clearly doesn't share my preference for children's movies...I have to do the rating myself...we did give a five minute analysis as to the possible occurrence of our luck...was it our company? Was it just an alternating factor?this is hard to say...since except for the two of us who remain constant, our company has varied from friends to colleague friends to colleagues to just us....so then its probably only the alternating factor...having said that the potential of the next week premiere being good is very high...in all probability an Oscar winning movie....thus every Thursday due to the frequent recurrence of this event now it has become fairly simple to predict conclusively one main component of our dinner- popcorn- buttered, buttered and mixed with these flavours, plain....but popcorn all the same.
Seeing a movie in Chennai takes me to the next diagnosis- the movie watching experience in Chennai ... I cannot conclusively decide whether its my social status improvement or just low cost of tickets at movies halls...but it definitely is better than Delhi!! Yes its still expensive for the masses and promote a sort of elitism without struggle. Having said that, it also has 10/- special offer tickets that our honourable chief minister has offered to the masses...yes a low percentage in comparison to the volume, still a better deal in that sense. Now to differentiate it from the Delhi experience, it is important to enunciate a bit about the latter....


They are huge mega plazas where there are multiple frisking modes....some halls don't let you take your handbags in....it becomes a pain for someone who suddenly decides to watch a movie or someone who is late...most of these mega malls have elaborate décor but no space for the bags of the poor ignorants who come with sometimes expensive bag or bags with expensive contents....you can't carry food in....you try to sneak it in like every responsible citizen in our country...but the guards at the entrance don't just have detectors but mastiff olfactory sensors....so while you try to decipher that strange feeling in your tummy when the uniformed lady casually browsed your private parts, she has already sniffed out the bag of chip and cigarettes. Pitiable state. You are forced to throw them while they evaluate you, with absolute disgust...


Hunger is an instinct that takes over most people while watching a movie in a theatre...as it is an integral part of the modern movie watching scene...it sort of becomes associative...movie begins your mouth waters for a small munch...(remember Pavlov).....you reach a counter that has well elaborated picturesque menus that makes your mouth look more like a slimy pond and stunts your rational thinking....soon you have bought yourself that poisonous liquid they call fountain whatever or something...cause you were told that a combo of that and your fave popcorn came cheaper....you are convinced except that the price is higher by a margin and the drink is more ice, essentially water, than anything else....victim of the new-age corporatism and fanciful brain-fucking experience, you come back to your seat to realise that the air-conditioning has turned your seat and the drink to ice....well it is a marketable deal for a rich guy or girl eager to be close to their companion...otherwise it sucks...All this costs you nothing less that 250...inclusive of taxes and popcorn of course...and the shame of being felt all over (places you never dared touch yourself!!!)...you console yourself thinking its worse at Taj Mahal...where feeling wonder-eyed tourist has become an artful profession.


Chennai is not radically different but prices are lower, nobody frisks you in most places and those who do are partially blind....you can sneak in food or fags by strategically placing it...some even let you in without tickets...of course you need to smile real sweetly....popcorn is way cheaper and there is real butter in it!!! loads of it!!!....its not just a picture outside the popcorn counter...bags of all sorts are allowed or just browsed before letting in...one can take pains to stand in a long morning queue and afford these services for a price of 10/-...movies are a part of everyday living in this part of the country and so the culture varies too...

the known

This is the longest break I have taken from this page. Can't really say I was in hibernation or reflecting on the different modalities my page should take...rather, I was stuck trying to deal with the eventualities of my life and the everydayness of my existence...simply speaking, I have been going mad at work...if there is a moment I wait for, it is one I spend in the company of people I agree with. But as always people I agree with say the same things I say....there is a grandeur in the familiar but there is also a sense of redundancy....of a continuity that distances into terrible discontinuity....to the point where one wonders what effect all this dialogue has...knowing very well unconsciously that all dialogues ultimately have this effect....in spite of this one can't help wondering about the repetition...the realisation dawns that interaction is better with things inanimate....no, not inanimate...but things that do not speak one's language....the interaction is more poignant and effective...the interaction with a book, with a place, with a photograph bring out concrete experiences that simi-lingual animate objects don't bring...root cause is probably as simple as escapism....escaping having to tolerate one more like oneself


After having gone into detail on the importance of the inanimate and recourse in its arms...one still looks for the familiar....yes it is severe contradiction that I am suggesting.....switching between the comfort of one and at once claiming a dislike for it......middle path one knows is knowing the unknown animate ( i didn't take my logic classes for nothing!) but comfort zones prevent the interaction....so here I am planning on taking swimming classes, guitar classes, music classes.....trips to place...of buying a camera....to avoid the known.


Articulation is becoming problematic day by day...I have no thoughts except the ones required for execution of tasks that are remunerated at the end of the month...at the same time I am becoming precisely articulate at that task....if I am asked for a reason I would say I am receding...but I know I am not...I am pretending to...if I recede, with me recedes this blog and all in it...for the blog is nothing but me.....no, a slice of me...


Once again I climbed the steps of that familiar staircase in that familiar city looking for the known....luck might have that the known sensed my arrival and made itself present....a hour of the known was like meeting your soul in hell...if hell be a place of vice pleasures...once again I indulged in the act of love, of self-love (philautia).....I couldn't let go of it...the pleasure was intense...but pleasure is overrated....and like all vice pleasures this slipped once again to redundancy...still when it slipped out my hands I felt nothing but sharp pain...a pain of having lost the known self again...that my friend, hopefully describes the contradictions running through this piece....this pleasure visited me again not so long after the first...the pleasure was intense, so was the loss....but now it worries me if I will lose myself to this pleasure or to this being....

verge of sanity..

We all create our realities....we believe in a lot of things consciously, subconsciously, unconsciously...its important for our existence....we tell ourselves partial lies to keep us safe....i could liken it to a placenta of our own....we hope these are truths....we put faith in all these truths...its not hypocrisy...its sheer necessity of existence...some of us believe in god (not being politically incorrect, it could be true but this is something one can never prove, which is why it is premised on faith, so believers don't make me a martyr)...everybody has a long list of such belief systems....it can be a social, racial, religious belief system....or personal or pertaining to a group...sexuality...we believe, really believe in these systems...and believe it is truer than that of the “other” person, race, caste, religion, continent.....we kill in the name of our beliefs, which are more or less unfounded...if we disaggregate everything we believe in as true or false, it might fall apart...but one of the essential necessities of sanity is this stronghold on “reality”...the moment you loose grip...you are in the excluded group...outside social understanding...insanity...


Society itself , in my view, can be seen as continuous concentric circles tending closely towards a centre....only, i think, there is no centre but a tendency towards it....its like Dante's Hell....its the circle of exclusion....these circles exclude-include differentially according to time and paradigms...what was once true might now seem irrational...we do not understand why some tribes headhunt....so once homosexuals were severely persecuted....as an element beyond biological being...as a vagary of God's creation...today some parts of the circle have become elastic enough to accept it...no fully though...


Trans-sexual still remain oddly outside some circle as another vagary...forced into prostitution...forced to live behind the curtains of a social stage, as passing actors that provide some sort of amazement in the gaze of viewers....they generate often an emotion of unawareness...fear, hatred, amusement, sympathy....not nonchalance....so this concentric circle i am talking is a theoretical model of the world...it applies similarly to individuals as to societies...you know why i wrote theoretical model, right?...if you don't...it means its a sweeping categorisation, stereotyping...black and white, singular description of the world...something a post-modernist would cringe at...but still essential as a tool for understanding...we live and thrive and think only on such stereotypes...so it doesn't essentially matter!!


Anyway....so beliefs...our unfounded truths on life runs deep into our sense of existence as well as our notions of the next minute...we never doubt them for a minute...like we never question the existence of body...or the truth of what we see...most of us, though prioritise our vision, rely on hearsay.....we live on our perception of others...which is why we can never fully predict another person's behaviour...cause we live on perception (sorry to all the scientists, i don't come from that school)...we can always predict wrong....at seventy, we can predict our spouse wrong....which is why serendipity and surprises are old terms for us....ok...all this talk is to point out that i closely reached the fringes of insanity in the past few days....my notions, my truth were continuously breaking down in front of me....my perception of me was uncannily confirmed...my hopes of untruth were crashed....the four walls around were slowly closing in on me...it is a sense of claustrophobia....when nothing is right...nobody is right....i gave too many people close to me various doses of shocks...my elderly father was scared by the prospects of me suddenly quitting job...it affected his calm...my friends were appalled by my decision to meet a psychotherapist ( no i don't believe in them either, but its fun to pay and talk to a stranger)...i was appalled by behaviour...i was out of my control...i feared dire consequences...of exclusion...of eternal insanity....which i know, have been predicted in my future...then all of a sudden its calm ocean again....and i tried once again to look inside...to see what caused this change...multiplicity of events....but also something as simple as a decision...my untrue truths are once again confirmed...normality is restored....i can now sleep happily in my placenta of beliefs!

knowledge versus knowledge

Today is a fairly easy day...i will tell you why...its a day when bosses are not around....so I thought I should do something that pleases my sensibility....a thought that has been on my mind in the past few years and has come to the forefront....it is the question of education in India....no not India but education, the context just happens to be Indian....so i was sitting in a seminar the other day...a room filled with economists, bankers, social workers...and the presenter asks what was a fairly simple question....how many of you have read Marx??....minority few raised their hands....my eyes only roved to the economists from my institution...not one of them had their hands raised....i was suspicious...is this a devious plan of a lazy student or a problem...so i ask my roomy...didn't you guys do Marx in your course...in the negative came the reply...this, let me say, is an institute that mints eminent economists in the country and the students have not read Marx...yes there are articles of Marx at under-grad level....now this is appalling!!! no its not about economics or Marx...its about how water tight compartments our education streams have become...the designing of courses....its about preferential discourse that regards certain kind of education as superior than others....so in school....science was the way to go....engineering the first preference...followed by a minor class of medicine aspirants...teachers and parents molded the children this way from childhood....so people who flunked or scored badly left the premises for economics or finance...no one ever heard of arts....no alternative choices were even displayed to students to broadly choose from...and surprisingly all those poor performing students who left premises and joined other schools and other streams of education topped their class....



I went through my course thinking...this is crap...i am left-leaning closet Marxist...who complain about the “market phenomenon” not really knowing what that meant....we did a bit of capitalistic theories but did not really pay attention....today i sit in a room with people who have passed out of ace institutions in subjects most evidently considered superior to my stream....and they don't know Marx!....how does an average student with all that course work, swamped in a million tests and personal dilemma ever look at the immense genres of “other” books in the library...at the same time, it is not like we are absolutist or paranoid.....we are a mixed economy with a vibrant left-wing (crappy as they maybe).... how is it that in a mixed economy like ours students are not taught theories of both sides so that they make a wise choice for themselves...its not about socialism or capitalism...Marx or Smith...its about choices within a choice you have made....how does a student make a wise choice to follow the market or work for the rights of the proletariat if everything is left upon the student to undertake....i thought about this...i guess educational system that is currently catering to or rather aimed at creating professionals cannot cater to broader educational topics....like tell a scientist what it means to be a sociologist...wary attempts are made in esteemed institutions....say IIT...but everyone knows its a joke....but in a rush to specialise...in a rush to professionalise we are missing on what a educationalist might call “holistic”.....even worse systems, be as it may....i know for a fact that in a campus like ours that had three streams of social science...one stream couldn't stand the sight of the other....except for a few odd balls...there is a tight compartmentalisation of the jhola carrying cigarette smoking, free-thinking (or so they think!), class bunking lot and the pouring-into-my-books, well dressed, hyper tensed, book fearing corporate aiming lot....they were mutual jokes but not once have there been real efforts at putting two and two together....why not create a porous circle devoid of exclusivity...why not share your strengths with ours....not even office going people often cater to a mixed disciplinary approach...well i don't blame them...people will rip each other and the building off....so at the end of the day why not try creating individuals who at least attempt at understanding the thoughts of the other....simple listening is so hard to muster.....


My school friends ask me...so what are you doing...psychology? Or sometimes it is “whatever that you are doing”......No bugger its philosophy and then sociology...all of them are different streams...but then i realise i make the same mistake...so what are you doing...engineering of course?! Mechanical....no bugger computer science...electronics and communication...its all the same...in the end you are all engineers...yes, but is that right? Do they all value the same, add the same value.....no....i am not paying attention!! Why are we all such well-trained excluders....forget gay rights or transvestite right if education itself is so uptight!!!....is it the system...is it dominant discourse of exclusivity...or is it simply lack of sensitivity....no breathing space for the other..why do we study....to be better people...to earn 5-6 digit salaries....we need to figure this out sooner or later...there is so much information....flakily translated as knowledge...still every time an economist needs an analysis on social impact, they need a new methodology....why not just ask the sociologist? Naah they are too flaky, too qualitative we need numbers....ask the sociologist to quantify their social impact....they rack their brains...we don't know that kinda math...ok why not just ask the economist....no they are numb number crunchers....why this compartmentalisation....who is to blame for it...you, me...or some superior system or some devious politician....or maybe its Bush!!!

the fine balance

Okay this might seem like the limit...stretching my emotion a bit too far...but i guess i have to accept it i am emotional and very much at that....i have active tear glands that well up at the slightest insinuation....OK so here it goes...since i realised i like writing blogs with memories i am continuing and this one has to pioneer it all.....I am listening to the song that made tare zameen pe famous to music listeners...Maa...i remember shedding buckets of tears watching the picturisation of this movie....now i am on my revolving chair soft as a sponge, ready to absorb any sadness around....somewhere feeling guilty that i made my mother sad...my eternal problem with parents is that they don't understand me....especially my mother...and somewhere in this defense i forget the lady who shielded me from the world!! who gave a lot to see me smile....i rationalise my thoughts about her life...i understand her position in the society in all its sociological aspects...but again i forget...i think today is the day for all those forgotten memories...so here it goes...so as a tribute to the movie i saw today and the song....this blog is "all about my mother"...my father is a man of different virtues...and i respect him for that...but my mother is most respected simply cause she was my mom....and the way she balanced life for my sister and me...when we shat in our pants and ran to our studies for the fear that my dad would blast the hell out of us...she calmly watched us...was our ally, alibi...on evening when we sneaked to the living room to watch TV during our study hours....we scurried on all fours to our studies when the lights of a car barely reflected on the windows...she shared our fears...i am one of the rare specimens who can claim the following....first knowledge of sex was with my mother....first conversation on my uterus was with my mother....first input on condoms was from my mother....in fact the first person i asked whether she was using one was her.....i remember her skin turning blood red...but she managed her poise so well......my mother was more open about discussing homosexualism with me than my sister....though at this point i don't share her views on this issue...she was my first string to everything sexual....she knew when i first fell in love...she didn't ask me cause i didn't tell her.....i could boast in school about all information i had on forbidden topics and i could say this with pride...cause my knowledge was not from some magazine, it was from a mother who specialised in zoology....now i realise how well she balanced my dad who showed no signs of recognising us as sexual beings....she made up for it so well....she was...no, is very perceptive and i am scared of her for that...she can tell when i like someone...you can imagine now why its scary...



I remember the times when i arrived home with my report card....no i didn't flunk...never did until college....that's a secret only my mom knows....i never flunked but i guess my father had great expectations and so every subject that bordered pass mark were a source of immense anxiety...i would pace furiously outside my dads room...i can't enter....walk back to the kitchen to feed on a bit more sympathy...come back....can't she just sign it for me....”no that's not done”.....OK fine!!!...pace again....”you should have just studied during all that time you slept”, says amma....yea i should have...whats the point...motivation is an age old problem...how do get past this situation...it was life changing it seemed then...i am so screwed...i don't remember how my sister tackled it, she was apparently worse....no not worse in any significant manner just didn't take exams well...she knows better maths than i can ever imagine, she had better grasp of concepts, just that i knew how to pass....she probably was a victim to a cruel mainstream idea of education...i was slimier...i passed...OK OK back to tense state of affairs....so having heard that dose that almost made me piss in my pant.....i come crying back to the kitchen...for more sympathy...whiny dog i was....the clicking of her wedding ring on the chapatti roller is still clear in my head....she watches unjudging as i wash her crispy chapattis under the tap...i know its gross but i hated the feel of flour on my skin..it gave me goosebumps....i wonder what she thought...she just let me be....



There were days when dad went on trips...days we tripped...from rice and well assembled curries suddenly we were on to Maggi and everything in two minute cooking....my mom's day off...late night movies cherry picked for the occasion...chatting till late...11 was very late then....i know we looked forward to those moments every time....now i am happy that in spite of her having to cook at least we afforded her the little break.... she did work her ass off to shape people like me...well i am not what anyone would call perfect daughter but i know i am special....in my own way....i know that in spite of my causeless rebellion i have virtues that one can be glad of...it took me years to realise that....it took strangers to tell me that....but now it just takes a while to realise that my mother balanced us well...i would have had causes to rebel if she didn't...if it wasn't for her scones and yummy evening snack i could have never concentrated on my intense five minute of studying every evening.....if she hadn't kept her mouth shut about me sneaking story books into the study...i couldn't have realised the true value of education.......she was there to calm my palpitating heart at 22 (fyi my sister got married around that time)....she told me that whatever people said or forced them into believing.....at the end of the day they would listen to me...i was so relieved....so what i decided to get married at 30?...that would be bad but if you insist we can't do much....ooof!!...what if i don't get married???... that would be really bad but still we can't force you....OK, OK that's good incentive to get married someday....the same lady suddenly one day becomes socially aggressive...the day she realised that my dad was caving into thoughts that suggested choice of a life partner on your own..."i don't think that good reason for you to just go ahead", she said..."whats wrong with our choice",...i was pissed!!..but it took me a while to notice the contradiction....once again she was balancing....


So yes she doesn't get me...i hear she is worried about me...not from her though....seems like i have too many guy friends....she can't oppose that!!....yes like all parents unable to cope with the monster that they have raised, my mother racks her brains in relentless worry about her prodigal daughter....just like the prodigal daughter racks her post-modern neurotic brain trying to figure out why parents aren't more malleable...or like his parents or her parents?...but its just a hobsons choice....they, especially she, didn't have a choice or chance in shaping me fully according to her wish....i hope you agree that external environment has a huge role in shaping human beings....so i don't have the choice of shaping them according to mine....life would be so boring if you didn't always have that opposite view...maybe not that much but a little at least...but i am learning to view my mother as a human being with hell of a lot of problems but still trying to create meaning in her life and in ours...and she has....and she will always balance life on the rickety side of my ship....


This weekend has been all about my mother.....from the song (mentioned earlier) to the movie by almodovar and talking to my friend about his mother....funny that i haven't still called her....talk about a prodigal daughter!!

things i am made of

It takes someone elses work for one to realise that even they had a vibrant childhood....its sad how one is so stuck in one's present, trying to create meaning out of one's everyday events....life almost seems to revolve around this moment that you forget what you are made of....of the dust gathered from old memories....old thoughts....old emotions...i seemed to have forgotten the days when i used to climb the grandfather mango tree with my cousins....this tree was fashioned for our tiny legs.... wasn't one of those erect structures that one thinks of as a archetype of a tree....it crawled metres through the sand before rising and branching out into its various parts....so at every age a person felt capable of marking their highest point of achievement...that's what i did with my cousins...mark our conquests..those were the days when we were pirates, thieves, robin hood..and this old tree was our only recourse...it was our home, our hiding place...a critical part of our warring schema...it patiently bore our laughter, our secrets, our schemes, our torment on sunny afternoons....when post-lunch siestas were the norm..then there were the bedrooms with wooden windows which when closed could let in nothing but a stream of light with particles floating in its path.....those were days when within a span of five minutes we could change from warring tribes to sophisticated spacemen....i guess it depended more on the elders who changed their minds about our physical locations.....the days when pillows were state of the art technology for spaceships...when my excluded-for many-intrusions cousin made rice and curries in the spaceship while her elders maneuvered its movements with at most finesse.....fighting the aliens-who-threatened-the-planet....days when Bruce lee and Jackie Chan fought together on the same field...defying space and time...and above all the norms of Hollywood.....the themes of our games were of at most seriousness and it cut historical perspectives that would have shocked the most observant post modernist....quantum physics was a tool for our little fingers....when we defied the laws of universe and plunged into open space for a battle with evil intruders from another galaxy....what about the mythical creatures that existed in recesses of the pond in the corner of our compound....that could rise any moment from its deep sleep to threaten our lonely existence....the myths created by us to prevent us from getting a better look....or my grandad's cycle that transformed in our hand into a machine that generated flour or sugar or anything our minds fashioned...when anyone who defied our plans were devious enemies....the days when simple intruders turned into bandits......who became pivotal characters that chartered the course of our heroic epics....
I forget them...i forget how they fashioned me as me....the days when boats ferried me between my maternal and paternal home....i don't even know the name of the water body that connected it....i just remember my fear of the lashing water and my excitement of being in water....i still have that....my friends will tell you the amount i screech when they speed on their bikes but what about the days i pretended to be street hawk (a product of dinner time TV) on my dad's yezdi.....the days when trust was so easy to muster...when one didn't think rationally on what could happen if i fell off or how a dog could jump up against the bike....trust!!
I pretend that i am tormented...maybe its just the thyroid that i avoid checking....but what makes it so difficult to go back to those days when everything in the universe was just a thought away....when it took you two minutes to show your younger cousins that you knew how the world works....i remember the time in school...when i was one those first unlucky girls who entered their puberty before time...the knowledge i was capable of imparting from just three sentences that my mother told me or the one weird unclear line in the science text....opened a world of information for my ignorant friends...now its so difficult to make those claims of wisdom...to sit someone down and impart sacred wisdom....to whisper into the ears of the old grandfather tree all about the ruins in the prisons in India....to pile away gifts that were showered upon you only for your innocence....i am still made of them and i need to realise when times are tough that life wasn't always so torrential or bad...i am made of stuff that only i can retell....its unique to my existence....narratives that are built from my memories...dusty and tainted as it may be....but these are things i am made of.......

cribbing of a pathetic soul

unclear, confused, unlucid, depression, fear, suicidal procrastination are some terms that define me at the moment...i know, a stark contrast to the last post....but you won't believe how fate plays with the lives of unsuspecting victims....so i crack up loudly, chuckle and enthusiastically write a blog on my two days of freedom and i send into virtual space to be exposed to the abyss of reading minds.... fifteen minutes later, life changes....i decide to get out of office to watch the new Hindi sop on Akbar which, i must say has so politically dealt with a political emperor in the most politically wrong manner...there was, in my opinion, the most strategic emperor of the mughal dynasty who married women from different communities only to forge his dynasty, who from the architecture of his forts proved to the world that he was the centre of the universe being squarely and poorly represented as an ardent Muslim who dances to Sufi music...probably true but message that the audience gauge is ridiculously politically wrong....sorry that's personal opinion....anyway getting back to my story on fate...as i decide to leave my boss calls up, gives me the dose for not being prompt (if only she knew that i was someone who took orders from five other people too), demanded a piece on something needed in office....for what good purpose?...one might think this will change the universe or something...heck no it just changes my work time and not even a rusted cog in the organisation will turn by this task....unless of course a miracle happens...but then i don't believe in miracles until they happen so that being out of the question for now.....anyway so that did it!!! ruined my moment, my hour, my weekend!!! well i decided to be disobedient so i did watch the movie, partied till 4 a.m, slept through the day and sat down an hour ago to do the pending work....but i realised i don't have my materials.....its in the office.....now what?.....so here i am stuck with my Sunday crammed with work....there is a slight pain in my gut because of the fear, there is rush of blood to my brain that's making me dizzy cause of the risk i am taking, i am pushing the limits....and guys if you know how scared i am of being reprimanded you will know what i am saying.....but theres also that inbuilt gene to rebel...that intuition that tells me that while i am shitting in my pants thinking of this, the originator of my woes is happily sitting somewhere unaware and probably without the same urgency....though the person did say that she wanted the document by "yesterday", which yesterday was Thursday...talk about classy jibes...so i am stuck here with these mixed emotion waiting for yet another redemptive moment...which last night came to me only after five glasses of cold beer!!!

exhilarating fridays

Its friday!!! its that day of the week when everything seems bright and shiny...from the egg dosas and mint chutney in morn to the boring but still a perk sweet in the noon....and satisfying-i-am-getting-out-of-office tea in the eve....the day of the week when work seems like like hurdles in a race that you strive to just complete....its that day of the week when everyone is friendly cause for once you decided to smile and be receptive...that day when you are not brooding over desk work or complaining about the rash uncouth comments you got...but you look forward two whole days of nasty nothings...or maybe productive somethings between long hours of nasty nothing...when substance abuse is at its peak....two days for which you started planning five days ago...theres a dumbtionary party, a trip to kalashetra, long hours of grey anatomy...late mornig...weird eating hours and hopefully a hell of a lot of boose...ah the satisfaction of a friday cannot be translated...its an emotion that can only be vaguely related to....its anticipation of something unusual, of a stressfree moments...oh god i am exhilarated and jumpy...my colleague who complain i don't talk anymore are excited to see me cracking up loudly, being politically incorrect and cracking weird off-the-box comments!!! so i tell them i am blue on a monday....irritated on a tuesday....depressed on a wednesday....numb on a thursday...and then it comes my exhilarating fridays...i know its weird visious circle but atleast theres some release at a juncture...and thats what i look forward to...a bottle of beer, friends, time outs, sleep-in....i takae this moment to thank yahweh the lord of the jews and the christian for creating this world in seven days and declaring his sunday off...so only natural that mere mortals get two off....i thank the colonialist christians who spread this need for rest...i thank the jews for religious following sabbath....i thank the govt for taking forward these age-old norms and lastly and very superficially and extremely suspicious i thank my organisation for declarings these two days off....though i hear rumours, sinister ones at that this might not last and saturday might end up working...woe to the corporate but until then i will spend another wasteful weekend cleaning my soul of the remanance left by this god forsaken world....to read or not to read that is the question...to watch movies or not that is the question...to travel or not that is a good question....to hit on the guys coming for dinner is a superb question...oh so many decision and only a weekend to decide...i wish god was not so omnipotent and had declared five days off after intensively creating the world in three...ok now i am chattering...gotta go...happy weekend comrades...lal salaam

lover's compliments

Don't know much about geology, dono much biology...all i know is that i love you....okay not a coincidence..... it is that day of the year a lot of people look forward to....i hear plans people have made and am aghast...what a gaping distance...here i am telling my boss that i don't know how to create people friendly technological solutions for the website or maro gyaan on equity...so my song is...dono much about equity, dono much about technology...all i know is....ooops now thats the baffling point...what do i know...i clearly know all that i dono....can't say i know much about love cause that is an eternally baffling question in my short life...you do it this way or that you are still lost...or maybe you just did too much that got you confused...commitment crisis...what is that emanicipating relation with the opposite sex (fully presuming that i have an affinity for the same)...is there one? Poooh this is too complicated.....i think somewhere i preferred if it was more rustic like...i am horny...i need to have sex....oooh i have babies....easier than comfort zones and working on relationships........ok, ok you got me...i don't have topic in mind...i don't want to discuss love, life and relationship...i don't have experience in it...though i am bent on setting a track record...i am writing this blog because i want to write...and to write i needed an excuse...i use this as my perfect excuse....frankly i can't perceive living fifty odd years with the same person....its suicidal...aargh... but i also like to see myself getting old with one person.....man i need to take a psychoanalytic test to find out what i really want...i step into so much jargon i can't even convince myself about my priorities....my advice to new lovers and old, on this holy commercial day, is that you have got to work on a relationship like this is the end of the world otherwise guys there are too many distraction in this world that can lead to a abyss...from where coming back to life is a faded question!!
moreover I have made a very exciting discovery...after years of hibernating in relationships i am now getting addicted to singlehood...of course apart from those tiring moments when you want to cry but have no extra pair of shoulders...when you sitting alone with your troubles with no one to talk...when you are crying secretly and it remains a secret....and of course when you wana blow up someone or when you are just plain horny....ok i realise i have given lots of instances...and i know that feeling when you have zillions of friends but still reach a point when talking to no one is comforting....but still these are just phases that passes...it looks like it never will end but it does...painfully but does....so i now understand the theory that buddhism proposes on samsaara...its a fleeting sensation that passes...like an itch...you are sooo conditioned to itch but if you actually sit back and hold it, observe it...it fades away....i am not trivialising but i am saying it will pass...these are for the heart broken ones who hold on tight to everything they thought they owned...havng said all that i also know the masochistic pleasure of holding on to something you can't have....the pleasure derived of sinking deeply into depression...of hiding in a shell like theres no tomorrow...convincing yourself that life is over...pushing yourself to total self contempt so that you never have to try again....pleasure of hurting oneself...i must say that most humans have strong suicidal tendency....to scath their skins in pain...like burning yourself or slowly drowning...most of us adopt this perspective...but great are they who have the capacity...rare as it is...to take things as it comes....to see the bigger picture....to move ahead...so in the most puppy love fashion let me...on this day...pay my respect to these great icons on this planet...but coming coming back to my topic.....singlehood especially after doublehood helps you really understand the premium that could be applied on your time and money...the value of time spend on your own,with friends, with any arbid person....the opportunity to flirt without the need to seek redemption or permission....and most of all the liberty to eat onions....for that matter anything!!

bloggers dilemma

i sat down last night on a moving train to put down thoughts for my beloved blog.....i hate saying this but i think i am destined to write only on this revolving chair....so as the phased out blog mentioned i was put in a dilemma by my oldest reader and therefore my strongest critic....that i was now directing my blog to the readers rather than as a thought process or musing...i was immediately defensive...since it was my travel blog that he commented...i was quick to mention that i am bad at it, generally bad at it...so much for my job with travel magazines!!....anyway it struck me when i saw his hapless expression that i was getting aggressive and that it was unnecessary....afterall me bbeing the expert at microsocial processes shouldn't dishearten my precious handful of reader in the name of the obvious...of course i write because i know there is someone reading it...yes i am nonchalant about their opinion or their opinion of me but hey lets not kid anyone alright....

Did i tell you how i got a chance to apply to metroplus, hindu, bangalore....my dream job in the making...yea its a little "for the masses" but thats where one starts right? i was also quick to realise that i didn't think much about it as they offered a salary that was 1/3rd of my current pay cheque....ok i give in...i have been lured by the glittering coins...in the name of my precious future, in the name of the fat that is constantly haunting me...i have sold my soul to materialistic purposes and lifestyles...but wholly so...cause i also realised in the past few days that it is possible to save...that a human being can live on lesser amounts than i thought....and still have parties and trips to vague destinations...you just need to go with the right people...hehe

tripping on trips...and then falling flat

its been a while....i feel it...as always...in the most pathetic way...i am blue after a long weekend...my tripping started early this week with a "business trip" to mumbai....i love the city...theres perfect anonymity....a sense of freedom...of not caring....of imposing facades both old and new...its groovy....walking down bandra you see faint old building choking beside the new globalised globus...aaah the pleasure...it reminds me of days we chalked out theories on urban designs and how differently an architect views it from a by-stander.....well i was all geared for a professional "checking-in" to a hotel till ol friends turn out of unexpected corners...i think i like ol' friends....they are serendipitous treasures that lurk out at corners...this week was all about that!!!

It is surprising when you meet ol' irresponsible dopeys and see them turn to a organised corporate manager...you never get over it....i didn't....but i took it as it came....i was pleasantly surprised to see men who never took baths...taking one...men who never cleaned their apartments.....competing with mine....and men who literally ate out of the dump cooking for me...what has the world turned to....so after a unexpected pleasant corporate stint in mumbai...i headed for the next metro....bengaluru...still yet to come where old old friends....we literally spend our lives together for twelve whole years....geeeez...that is long!!!

So after much hibernation and hiding behind bushes...i came out....my real self to the bunch i spend half my life with....we an arbid chaotic bunch met up in b'lore....and spend a tiring day in a garrish mall...trying to cope with each other...then we let the road and boose take care of us...i was as always uptight and judgemental...i wouldn't be me if not...it took two shots of sweet smelling white rum to let the world in...then on, it was all in....

so let me start tripping....we left the might city of b'lore at around four...for a short stop at kengeri to meet our host and family....i took the road on the car and on the bike....it sure trips...especially bikes though the fear is the source of my rush....we reached a god forbidden lil town to a more forbidden lil house which we called farmhouse for the kicks...it didn't take us five minutes to start drinking...the spectrum was wide...smokers and drinkers---drinkers----part time drinkers---non drinker and smokers. Think of the wide range of perspectives at the end of all this.....

Drinking....small talk...dancing...prancing...puking....crying....sleeping.....orgy?...nah....POLICE RAID!!!......mood change........fear, anger....disgust...compromise...anger..tears....prostitution?? f****rs...settling...joking...revenge...barbequed chicken at day break...this all i can say to explain the night....more exciting for me was listening to the narratives being spun around an event...i could have done a study on the nature of human being to repeat to reorient to reconcile to recreate the past...it seemed like an instinct for existence...to get back to the story....we got out sane the next day...drove 12kms to a remote location...with a beautiful lake that was not so beautiful clse by...apparently we were on the wrong side....after few mundane hours of eating, driving, singing school songs...we split only to meet again for a heavily sentimental drinking.....four brandys down i was screaming my lost rock notes while my fellow drinkers burst into nostalgic tears that i couldn't cope with....as always i love seeing men cry...and as always the realisation struck me that i am inevitably more comfortable with men than women....the tears gives you hope that emotion exists and brash creatures otherwise so insensitive can keep in touch with their emotions...so i stood a pillar amidst pale male tears...wishing i could be a comrade too....but what the helll!! i am me and i am suffering from withdrawal symptoms of warm familiar bodies warmer hugs...and i am blue as usual on a tuesday eve....

opportunities

So as i sit in my secret hiding place...away from the revolving chair and ticking heels....i am suddenly struck with a sense of being...of being here and now....the strange paradox of green trees and tall building towering over my head in stark contrast but seemingly conspiring against me becomes clearer....no thats just paranoia....its not conspiring but a lucid gaze....beneath my worn out chappals were hurrying ants and fallen leaves......strangely acclimatised to the red tiles that fashioned the pathway.....here were creatures of a completely different orientation living in a environment completely different from their natural sense of being and maybe against their will....and here i was full of opportunities ...young vibrant.....maybe greying mentally...a lil worn out but still...fulll of opportunities depressing about my life...what was really lacking.....lack of direction....why the need to drink oneself to sullenness...an inability to face life....china dolls of the new generation...full of talk...full of luxuries .....in a hurry to find out the meaning of life....what about the man working next to me...is he going through the same dilemma....of turbidity.....or did he know his limitations well enough not to feel this way....somewhere i realise...yes i want to chase my dreams...but maybe one is soo smug in ones soft nest to realise that people give up dreams for responsibilities...people don’t develop dreams to avoid this state.....or they hide it well in their placid demeanours....can the chai guy tomorrow become a free lance artist.....he can, he should but will he...what about his wife and kids....most of the population recognise their calling in alliance with their responsibilities...then is it the utter lack of respect for my responsibilities that make me depressed in this otherwise comfort zone.......yes one never be too comfortable about anything...but can everybody afford to do that.....maybe all i am is a young brat with opportunities

An exploration into the recesses

Of TamilNadu.....a mission carried forward to honour my buddy’s new year resolution to travel to different spot close to Chennai for day trips...one is too lethargic to make resolution but it is exciting to help others execute theirs....so after cribbing all night to myself about the hazards of waking up early....but still excited at the prospects of tomorrow...so i was surprised when i woke up fresh after an irritating alarm-call from my friend...poor thing ...doomed is the person who wakes kumbakarna from his...in my case her sleep.....so with an empty stomach and constipated system we started our exploratory journey into the horizon....literally so cause we hardly knew the direction.....so between long stretches and winding roads we stopped at tea shops, pan shops, petrol bunks to ask for direction....my stomach growled for attention but vt’s eyes were set on the goal...reach pulicat/puzhaverkadu
Pulicat is a remote little town...as we entered it premises...we were met with the bustle of everyday activities...my heart sank...there were no signs of a lively tourism nor where there signs of breakfast....Christ!!...well the redeemer did meet us at the banks of the lake in the form of a calm fisherman...devout Christian...whose third query was “so are you Christians too” i kept my silence...like a pretence of lack of knowledge of local languages while my company answered in the negative....after packing some breakfast (which we later realised were scrumptious bits) we left on a boat to the redeemers little hut....introspective and eager not to offend the sentiments of this large hearted fisherman....we silently ate our breakfast in his one roomed hut...listening to the boisterous cackling of the radio....and wondering how on earth these people had sex? (forgot to mention they had a grown daughter, puzzling)...the urban dwellers puzzled and affixed to our notions of sex....we tried to fix a modern rendering of kamasutra in that cramped hut.....attention diversion...the 15/- biriyani had shrimps in them!!! Where on earth did they get these rates from...oooh the brackish waters of the lagoon must be a treasure trove of these crustaceans....so after breakfast and a quick leak in open air...we ventured towards the boat.....

Calm and tending towards boredom...maybe panicking a bit about it...we continued our ride to the pine forested islands....all the while the fisherman explaining to us the routine of his life and the speciality of this place...there are a lot of “bats here” he said...huh....you know bards...huh....it took a while for the urban-diction-oriented-idiot to get the implication towards migratory birds in the region.....so like kids excited at seeing the sea again but ruminating simultaneously at the difference in perspective between a fisherman who dealt with the sea everyday and between tourists who got excited at the waves lashing at them....we slowly gave in to the rough sea....with every wave sighing...that’s wet too!!!i wish i could have taken pictures of my paranoid friend running with the camera held high with every mischievous wave...as expected i was drenched and enjoying...i m funny...i love playing in water but fear the idea of drowning so much so that if a wave lashes against my nose or pushed me off balance i would howl like a kid!!! At this point we missed our large crowd, with whom we travelled last weekend, for one last time .....and we continued thrashing the waves....splendid as always....it never gets old for me...from there on i learned a lot...to row a boat...like a gauche but row all the same...while my friend balanced himself on the edge clicking snaps of “bads”....having spotted the point of continuity betwixt the sea and the lake...oops forgot to mention this place is known for its lagoon....and natural salt lake.... we headed out through the thin entrance into the bouncing sea....all woes were forgotten...ride had become bumpy again...it was bumpy enough untillater that day i rode back on the bumpy road studded with lorries.....wooie, no life jackets!!!...suddenly both of us felt powerful and dangerous...here we were standing erect with locked hands facing the rising waves..facing it like seasoned sailors.....thanks to our redeemer we stopped mid-sea....chatted about life and fishes....saw schools of fish...translated tamil to Malayalam...and tanned under the beaming noon sun....he was particular that we went to the beach which was friendlier and so after much mid-sea excitement we headed for the calm shores to play another two hours in the sea....we amused ourselves by pulling each others legs....and trying to overgrow my fear of drowning....it was later and thanks to our redeemer constant cleanliness drive....he definitely had a OCD for clean sandless boat...i was forced to dipped myself in 2 feet water....there started my swimming lessons.....shared between my friend and the redeemer....i dipped...i opened my eyes....i floated....i let go of my pals hands....i lashed my feet...i moved my hands...then i tried coordinating.....ka-booom...i had learned to swim...punch line...i came, i saw, i conquered.....sheer excitement...directionless swimming....frustrated outpours at lack of movements....body ache....hunger...ravishing biriyani...drying in the afternoon sun....after visiting his hut for a last leak we headed out for the bumpiest, sleepiest ride ever!!.....surprised i didn’t fall off...pissed i lost my cell....happy i was returning to my nest...pleased i made this trip...cheers to the roads ahead!!

movies, theatres, literature, thoughts and me

In all this Monday dilemma i forgot to narrate my weekend to you, probably then you will see why i hate my Mondays!!! So Chennai is celebrating hundred years of Basheer...no, no i am not a hardcore Malayalam literature reader...but yea,yea maybe i read more than many from similar backgrounds....I have had my moments with M.T, O.V , Malayatoor and of course Basheer...As i grew older i have relied more on translations than on originals...having entered the classic space of bourgeiosie english...i know there is a difference but lets concentrate on the essence (pretend its there atleast).....its better than not reading anything is the best argument i can come up with. My most memorable Basheer has been Balyakaalasakhi ( childhood friend) read in early school....so when i heard about the fest from my roomy i was excited as hell...but as always my excitement rarely translates into action...so having missed the initial week i went on to attend the second....a play by a contemporary group....the idea was fabulous though its elaboration lacked the finesse....but that does not mean they don’t deserve the appreciation...well planned, well practised...well delivered...just a little crude but that i guess added only to the homliness....weaving a plot with seven of basheer’s stories and novelettes is not an easy task...to reweave the author’s sentiments....even more difficult...but the best part of the play was the authors presense as a listener, observer, thinker and participant....it was like weaving a thread of how the author felt and thought...i appreciated that the most....to let the audience be partisans to the birth of an idea...of a story....especially when the author has a repute of being magical with his characters...u do wonder where he got the idea from....yes barthes might twist in his grave hearing me speak in this manner after having read him twice and pretending to be the proponent of the “Death of the Author”...but hey i still can’t get over the modernist trivia of knowing the thought process of the man who created this wonderful piece of work...yes i accept it is incomplete without the reader and his interpretation alone adds value to the work of the author...i see a mother-child relation....you mold, give birth but whatever you do the child will grow out of your fencing......its not stand alone...but i can’t help admiring sheer creativity, to envy it...so letting me become a voyeur inspecting the life of the creator was splendid...it arouses the artist in you....to see the objects and people that inspired the author....i wonder if you share my excitement...

Well the icing on the cake is still not here...on Sunday after a hectic Saturday (about which i will write in my next blog ) they screened “mathilukkal”....like every other malayalee, i have also watched the movie on many occasions but i wanted to watch it again., not because i thought it was superb but i wanted to go with a certain awareness and perspective which i have not had before.. to view it as a true story of the author, to see it as a work of the director, to see how it was made....and i did...the sensation was different...you notice the frames, you try to analyse its symbolic meaning.....you start identifying mamootty with basheer, quite unconsciously....cherry topping was the conversation with adoor post-movie screening!!! What is more refreshing than the director’s perspective of the movie....again barthes may you rest in peace...it is a wonder to listen to the thought process of another person.....just like talking to a photographer asking him why he chose a frame...of course most of us amateurs don’t have profound reasons or we just have an instinct.....But a trained artist will tell you the angle, the scene, its significance...if you are deeper the symbolic content of the your signifier.....if this process happens to a shot, the significance is mre elaborate....so simple things like why a five second shot of light bulb or an otherwise redundant looking shot of the author trying to catch a moth on the wall is elaborated to you from the author/director’s perspective.....glorious...slightly, no highly sycophantic and purposely voyeuristic but thats okay.....i am no genious to thwart it anywayssssss.....emotions depicted through metaphoric images and statements....detailed shots of the subject....might earn the repute of being dragging but it brings out the character awesomely....so watching a scene where the character basher stands outside his cell and looks with slightly parted lips (signifying not just nonchalance but a temporary dumbness, apparently also an indication at the authors mental imbalance) are captured by very few directors and very few mainstream actors let themselves be shot in this fashion....you never see a character while seeing shahrukh flick...you only see the star...i guess thats the difference between a superstar and an actor!!! lack of metamorphosis into the character.....Anyway after these few insights into the mind of the authors in the likeness of basheer and adoor....we went to ente keralam to empty our wallets and fill our tummies with almost authentic mallu cuisine....yumm i was satiated...this is called overall well being....but i think i spoke too soon.... it also put that germ of doubt once again into my ever vulnerable mind....where am i ? well acknowledging multiple truths is the facet of everyones life so for the time being, i shall hold my peace and return to my revolving chair....

monday blues

Mondays are bad days, days when you feel that the next weekend is never going to arrive, days when you wish your weekends were a tad bit longer or atleast more productive.. The endless mails piling in your inbox waiting to be read.....the loathful ticking of the clock announcing as always that you are getting late for an endless day of nonsense...of doing things you don’t believe....of severe nostalgia of having spend two great days...of seeing the same old faces and wondering when i’ll get used to their language....when i will get their wavelength....but hoping against the tide that i don’t loose ....of the endless faux pas that are going to be committed...worst is the realisation that this motivates you very little and the faux pas are actually a result of your subconscious need not to get used to this lifestyle....eternally its a doubt boggling my mind...is it that this place doesn’t appeal to me as i know it doesn’t to many or is it this kind of living....this way of being....do i want to be somewhere else and if so where?? So between this endless questioning and emptiness i made a decision that i will stick to this for a while...to be practical ...to earn some dough...to be able to do what i want....just do what one has to do....but again the question nags me....would i have been more efficient if i was in a scenario that suited my temperament...oh this Monday blues always pull me down with it.....i should quit this instant before i quit this job!!

unfinished

Words are flying out like endless rain into a paper cup
They slither while they pass
They slip away across the universe
Pools of sorrow waves of joy are drifting thorough my open mind
Possessing and caressing me
Jai guru deva om
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world

(Beatles- Across the universe)

untitled

its been a bad day....please don't take a picture..its been a bad day...rem surrounds the room as i sit like a sloth in front of my computer...what a wasteful day.....a bright holiday in the middle week but what do i do instead...sleep and sleep...well also watched an old classic....i remember in college wanting to watch it for its symbolic contents....today i couldn't differentiate any profound matter except for masses of flesh all over the place....oh the movie is caligula....if you ask me to explain the movie in a line i'd say...its fleshy and gory....it was soooo full of naked flesh that i had nightmare during my afternoon siesta.....also made me feel more like a sloth for being lazy, for putting on a lot of slothy weight...suddenly i am repulsed by the excess flesh...i feel i might soon become a mass of red meat rotting in an immovable state...arrrgh!!! so by evening i had enough reasons to go out for a walk do some pending work, get myself enrolled for yoga...hope i keep the dates.....life can be so depressing if you refuse to ignite enough passion in you to even get out of ones nest....all my plans of theatre, music, learning an instrument, learning a laguage has gone down the drain...whats the excuse...don't have no dough...but theres always enough to eat cheesy italian,have extra beer, meaty dinners....ah if only one was more passionate than a constant regretter....threshold boredom will soon be crossed...then i will get my ass off this chair and all chair...whether they revolve or not!!!

synchrony

its been a weird day....theres been a lack of synchrony...critical lack of coordination...between the two sides of my brain.....on the one side i am all excited about last day's trip...i am tripping on it...but something seems incomplete....i waited all morning to write that last blog....like the Lady Muse was pushing to it but now that i have written it..it seems mechanical and incomplete...just like i feel today...theres excitement in the insides but on the outside people complain that i look "phased-out"...is it that sense of incompletion...the fear of losing the moments that felt really good but might never come back again...am i getting nostalgic before its time....am i missing my gang of boys....most of them are leaving for different corners of the world..maybe its irretreivable pain of losing the past and never having a future...its missing a certain kind of living succulently mixed with an incompletion ofemotions...i still don't know what i really want to say...its clearly constipated and i shouldn't kill the time of my precious few readers but wait for days to pass so the fog clears...as my friend says its the moral at the end of the story thats missing...but maybe theres no moral but a carefully strung thread of happy experiences....oh, bullshit again...bye

like a sleepy blue ocean, you fill up my senses, come fill me again

Me and my gang of men went on a road trip....to pondichery....yea sorry its not a long ass india tour or something but still.....it was special...irrespective of the fact that the gang of men don't differentiate me and them as female and male, i' d like to do that for comfort.....i was excited, a tad bit worried about the trip as my cultivated habit of living it in the thick of things especially in"menly" things had rusted with the years, but not beyond retrieval, once again as years before in college i was subject to conversation that centred around what one could call "below the belt". farting, mastrubating, sodomy...name it....though the discomfort initially shown in all their eyes making me feel a bit guilty for the formality, i had to push it to think that comfort is a zone of interaction one mutually creates overtime...and i can proudly say the levels were more or less crossed....i also learned about my weird nature of being restricted like ass-never-used to becoming someting of a i don't care where my ass is...its always been this way....so i let my hair down to incorporate the jokes that otherwise feminists would cringe at..... cause i know thats how it goes....you can't trace epistemology and power of discourse when it is coming at you at the speed of light or when you are tightly stuck to your seats hoping they will never get comfortable enough to fart on your face...


So we reached the beach side town of mahabs in the eve, a perfect time to chill and after much debate we went to my fave place, the bob marley restaurant, no they don't serve scrumptuous seafood or french/italian cuisine...its chilled beer and whatever they muster from the market made in a style you can call "their-own"...but its a quiant little hut on a the beach in a quiant lil town...has its exotic value that cannot be related...well it didn't take me this long (as the explanation took) to get high within this exotic hut.....conversation was now a steady stream of sweet nothings and holy cussing....i am told at some point i swayed enough to think i was a mermaid...i say good progress from my old status of a fish monger.....that day went in long hours of gulping beer....

our early plan for the next day...which was to hit the road before sunrise to the french colony was disturbed by more snorring.....happy sleep....but to be jolted by a ride to the sea on a boat was worth the wait......in our bright life jackets, a lil to gawky and funny......we faced the waves lashing at us with a might i never fathomed.....the thrill reached its peak when when we were pointed out the submerged temples....soon like kids we wove stories of treasures and of sharks....yea we are a bunch who watched too much of commercial mainstream jump-out-of-your-seats movies.....jumping into water was not as easy as i thought....the sense of drowning , the uncertainity of drowning, the water in your lungs and my specific incapacity to have my feet grounded...for a moment i panicked....i could get lost in the waves or sink in the depths......it took me a while to realise that panic itself was the rock on your feet, it pulls you down...took a moment to meditate, to relax..afterall i am surrounded by belief laden chivalrous men...i can't stray too far...so with an ounce of fear, two cups of love of water....and a bucket of trust in my fate and my companions....i enjoyed every moment of bouyancy in water....like a fish but not with finesse i floated in water...of course my hands gripped the men next to me ....i needed protection too!! these are moment i wish there was neither male nor female...no social inhibition....when clothes become an inhibiting factor but socialising have long acquainted you with the art of being modest...

I thought that was thrilling until i decided to hitch a ride, with an ol friend, as a pillion rider on his bike......now i can't decide which was more life shaping the unknowable expanse of the sea or the whizzing wind threatening to blow me off the bike...my fear of water was cured, my fear of speed was numbed as the bike sped no whizzed within the range of 100-120 kmph.....but hey i conquered....my heart stopped at several junctures but i can't help the head rush of having conquered another fear within the span of two hours.....well not really conquered for life but for now....

Trip got mellower as we crossed to the next town...once again i found myself, someone who is otherwise likely to fall for something of this fashion, cynical about the exclusive settlement of architects at auroville...unnecessarily i realise..... for the philosophy was not unthought of at one point in my life...its probably the cynicism of my stages that make me so cynical about its external manifestation...a world trying to escape the real world...pretending to cut out the noise from the outside...but yes it can be a hub of creativity....if one thinks that the brain can function in a shell ..and creativity is sparred by this exclusivity...ok,ok i don't know what i am talking about. I think theres more to learn from the sea and the beach than from structures...lame but will try to pretend thats personal philosophy that is profound...cause i am sensual enough to enjoy my dip in the water and eternallly conquering that sense of fear....so yes the trip was for me all about breaking thin barriers slowly, as time went by...with friends, with oneself, with the elements....with liquor too...i can't write anymore cause there are too many thoughts that cannot at once be processed to words...or maybe i don't have the thoughts but an urge to think that i have thoughts...