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...

on the road to El Dorado

So i lived in a house with a father who loved mysteries...who would point to the sky and spot moving objects with colourful lights, on clear nights when power cuts were the norm...he would look at me with a sparkle in his eyes and say " amu come, come here" and i would inevitably, like all the times before, be carried away by his fascination...i would run up to him and look eagerly in the direction he pointed....and up in the wide expanse...between the black sky and twinkling stars would be an unknown light...is it possible!!...but as all well-brought-up-rationalist kids..i would go..nah thats a satellite or a night flight...but my dad would insist....point out height difference or colour difference to prove that it was a UFO.....spying on earth through the night sky....aliens from some unknown galaxy...can they see me?....nah its a satellite!!

For years and years these were the stories that filled the half-hour span of darkness when our nuclear family sat together watching the clear night sky....there was always too much of disbelief....but the stories continued persistently...its almost ingrained in my soul...what about the lights or the life beyond, the event horizon, the patterns seen on the fields or the sightings of unknown creature with big eyes...too many evidence just like the faithful saw god evrywhere...years moved but the stories continued in its various hues...or rather in accordance to my old man's whims....then came the holy grail (mind you, years before dan brown or that crap)....the gospel according to judas and thomas..the lost gospels....lost years of jesus youth....the Gita, the Buddists on himalayas....it still continues.....he never realised how much i was being influenced...how much beyond the garb of cynicism i believed him....

one such mystifying story was this settlement built of gold for which the Spanish searched high and low...the El dorado....According to my old man it wasn't that this place was hidden from the spanish but more a mysterious disappearence of this otherwise visible structure from the view of the white man...who had come with the mission to loot....me thinks maybe the sun god had darkened the great andes so that the shadows fell upon the huge structure....a sanctuary built to honour and worship the sun god...a fertile high point from where one could see and own the world...my old man even thought that it was not ordinary people who lived there but aliens....their unknowability being translated into godliness.....the belief then goes that the whites found the fruits of knowledge...of corn, tomato and potato...from this land..and that these seeds were in fact not one that belonged to this planet but of some other...if one is not too wrong...for the longest time the christians in north america protested against corn as the fruit of the devil, if devil can be just a pagan or the unknown or just an alien from outer space...it makes sense...i am sure you have seen movies like the children of the corn....i'd say corny rather...whatever....coming back to the topic....it was nutritious and the fruits had an appealing bright colour...well the devil won for now more than a majority of the citizens of the US of A have these in their daily diet...they are the ketchup country...the magic seeds once sown by aliens/devil/peruvians like a doctrine widespread has seeped into the arteries of all the devout and others alike.....


So today as i looked with fascination once again at the pictures of Machu pichu...the lost city of the incan civilization....i was reminded of the old stories...of el dorado..of the mystery of the hidden city on top of the mountain....the city of the sun god...city so fertile that it is probable to even think that it was the sun god's harem.....there are structures to prove they worshipped the female...if you know what i mean... or maybe sun was a goddess...so abundant....the land of exotic fruits...the structure so mysteriously created...stone upon stone with not so much as an adhesive to hold them...more that 2000mts from sea level...how did it reach there...thousands of men working in the night to create an abode for the gods......so secretively stored until another white came along to cheat the natives of their secret...woe be to that man who let down a civilization by telling on it...woe be to the spanish conquerors!!! but i guess thats a lie cause i plan to go to the city soon...to discover the treasure lost somewhere....and i couldn't have gone there if he hadn't told on them....but what happened to the incas?

please visit http://www.andeantravelweb.com/peru/gallery/photos_machu_picchu_peru_01.html

the inward eyes

So it always works best for me to look inward....maybe because i always had the tendency or because i learnt philosophy and fellana-shellana...for the same reason every where i go, everything i do, its about the personal experience, the feeling, the emotion...it added to some redundant function of sensitivity that didn't actually reach out to people but reach out to concepts of people. when i joined work, it was always what am i doing here, how am i doing it...blah, blah...its called i think the antakarana...if i remember right...it lead to (if and only if the self is elimin ated) to Brahman...don't question me on what that is...anyway recently life had become boring with the only thing to do all day long being this stupid inward business...this blog itself is representative of that nature of mine...and i clearly recognise this moment is all about that...but well the future seems to hold much for me ,all of a sudden...and there is no time to look inward...no reflection...just go with the flow...in the long run it might result in a person neither here nor there....but suddenly it feels so relieving not to be able to look inward...no time to do any of that...life has become simpler...i can fit myself into a larger picture...i am not a rock sticking outward in a well aligned cliff...yes iconoclasm must become recessive...seeking for difference and change might slow down...but i think it is a good break. good break from the boredom...from the eternal cringing at the thought of your life trajectory...now its all about everything will fall into place and i like everyone will fit into some graphic design (not the godly types) but some type or the other....so lets toast to the transient freedom in my life.