Need to be next to you

~ The day I'll buy a string of pearls and the places I'll wear them and who I'll be then - who'll love me, what I'll be reading. I'll be wearing sarees, carrying folders and a bun maybe, heels definitely and have a student stalker who joins me for evening walks on campus.

~ Bling Balis, maybe diamonds, maybe with something written across them and I'll fit right in with the Honslow crowd - noon rave parties in basements et all.

~ And the time I start wearing hats, and loose vests, long threads across my neck, silver chains and carry a jute bag. Chappals and sand. Ocean breeze salty.

~Dungarees, preferably shorts with that dungaree flap, bandanas and shell earrings. Red beads for a red undervest and blue stones for a blue top. Chai just tastes better in the mountains.

I have too many pretty things, which I love.

The last thing on earth I want to do is go shopping for office wear.

The first 27 seconds of High and Dry

There is this boy. Man even, he must be 26 atleast. The first - first memory I have of him is him crying. We had gone on a holiday to Munnar, this place somewhere is south India, very beautiful etc. etc. and we were travelling in our brown Maruti Van. The children (me, this fellow, his brother) were put into the dicki (sister was in Mums lap.) We stopped for a picnic meal and went into the jhadi to pee etc. When we came back there were leeches on the soles of our feet, those slimy mofos got in THROUGH our shoes. Everyone was freaking out, and I remember very clearly, these two howling at the back. I was fascinated by these black crawling creatures and picked them off their feet. That was one.

His name is Tiku, I don't even know his real name - we all had nicknames, Tiku, Mishi, Campu, Trinka, Inu, Manna, Timbo, Shashu, Minnie, Tinnie etc. Recently Campu got married and when the wedding card came, Dad was like - who is this Aashti? Oh Campu? Yes, her only.

We lived in the same colony several times, but the last time, he stayed below, and I don't know how exactly - meeting here and there, once in awhile, we became friends. Needless to say we bonded big time over the gods playing guitar. He said he'd burn a couple of CDs for me, and I never thought much about it, when one day at around 10p.m. - I was in my room? or in the loo? and he rang the bell and someone answered and he left RATM, The Joshua Tree, The Beatles, Radiohead and Nirvana Discography et all on the dining table. Till today, after several heartbreaking hard drive crashes with total and complete music collection loss, I still have these CDs and boot up from them.

There was also a girl, and I could see everything from above, our terrace. He had a little white Maruti 800, and he's reverse with a swerve and zoom off - now this was the time I didn't know how to drive and I was utterly jealous, of the freedom, the erotic pleasure to just get in and drive and drive, anywhere, everywhere. Especially when we had to go for these parties, with Mom and Dad and stay the whole boring time, but he’s come later, as late as possible, just before the food was being served, eat and leave. Anyway, one day he brought a girl back. She was wearing a full length skirt and had sort of wavy longish hair that was left open. The house was locked, he knew that I think, because he went straight back to the servant quarters to get the key from the maid. I saw them go in, come out, get into the car and drive off again. All this I'm remembering now, I didn't even know I had this memory. He’s not that kind of a guy though, damn sharif, really, not at all what you’re thinking, but obviously this registered in my subconscious.

Technically, his brother (Mishi) and I are supposed to be friends, because we're born the same year, gave our boards together and all that, but maybe it's just me but I do not like him. He's plump and thinks he's damn funny and is always, always on the phone/messaging a different girl.

When we went to their place for dinner once, he coolly put alcohol into all our soft drinks. I love how rum can be colourless.

Then we were at this Sangeet, Aashti's only, and it COMPLETELY slipped my mind that he'd be there. So I was lurking behind the bar, trying to stay as far away from the Mehndi person as possible, smiling in what I hope was a pleasant manner, because I wasn't trying to be stuck up honest! He sees me first, he's wearing a corduroy jacket and he does this turn and goes, Oh hello, and I'm like HI! I'm so glad to see you kinda hi, and he said you're looking very pretty, and I dunno, people don't say that very often, so I was like oh, er..ok, thankyou. It was nice, we chatted, I stayed for just like half an hour (because now I'm the ninja who can leave early huzzah!) but I had a good time, was smiley the whole way back.

We once had this conversation about New York. I know we say these cities names over and over again, dreaming, wishing, fantasizing, until they have no meaning anymore, but he was talking about it and saying “I’d really like to go there - from what I've read and heard, for me, it’d be the ultimate.” As ridiculous as this may sound, I really believe him. Because he's a doctor now, and really not the reading type, and I really want to know, what exactly makes him want to go there, and which is the first place he’d visit. I don’t have to think too hard, it’s obviously music related. That much I know.

I have this conviction, it's so real I can't explain it, that I'm walking down this NY street and bump into him and it’s getting to be late evening and we’re both kind of free and we go to this roc nrolla, nyc band playing hub kinda bar. Who knows where that night will take us. It just seems so perfect, I almost don't want to meet him before that.

I know it will happen. I just do. Maybe I've overdosed on the One Hundred Years of Solitude - butterflies following a man, children born with pigtails, and dead people traffic.

Maybe, but it will happen.

Dil pe maat le yaar

Just like that. I know exactly who's sitting beside me also. Bliss.

A vampire or a victim, depends on who's around.

What if all this is not just something that needs to be squashed but a symptom? I owe it to myself, to myself, and I say it again and again till it means nothing.

Pamuk -

In 1970, when I was eighteen, I—like all Turkish children with an interest in books—took to writing poetry. I was painting and studying architecture but the pleasure I took from both was fading away; by night I would smoke cigarettes and write poetry, which I hid from everyone.

Read the rest that causes such restlessness.

Apna Gabo Marquez -

Like many great writers attending college for a subject they despised, García Márquez found that he had absolutely no interest in his studies, and he became something of a consummate slacker. He began to skip classes and neglect both his studies and himself, electing to wander around Bogotá and ride the streetcars, reading poetry instead of law. He ate in cheap cafés, smoked cigarettes, and associated with all the usual suspects: literate socialists, starving artists, and budding journalists.

Makes me laugh.

Well, it's been ten years and maybe more since I first set eyes on you.

Some days I love forums and databases and lists. The fact that I have one dress and unused heels. That people on different continents wish me happy birthday and I teach them how to pronounce one of my several names. Reading on pavements and writing poems in my car - I like that I am that person regardless of whether it amounts to anything or not. Impromptu movies with feet up in lazy boy armchairs - how decadently it pans out for me. I don’t know what PMS is but if it gives me uninterrupted sleep and the license to read in bed the whole day - hell, I’ll take it. I love that Heartbreaker makes me so happy, that blasting music in the morning while having coffee is now routine, albeit morning being 1 p.m. and to think that life will simply carry on this way.

I want to wake up to subterranean sounds, to dew and lawns and a river rumble in the distance. The sharpness, the crispness of a morning that a bungalow invites in. I want to be bored and well dressed and have suitors and bookshelves. I want Buddy to be able to have a bath in the back lawns and run and run till he has a stitch in his side. I want to have a people moving in and out kinda house. Where we sit at the dining table long after lunch with beer, in the afternoon sunshine, talking, dreaming, smoking, drifting - and we retire to write, or have sex, or work or whatever takes our fancy and let the evening take its course.

Archive Mood

Hello children, how goes.

See I is in a benevolent, filled with goodness mood today, maybe it's the latent holiday spirit kicking in; am technically on prep leave, but these are the best days honestly, it's when everything is heightened and you're on your own, on your own, yet you're not.

I love waking up late morning, mid afternoon even, and having late lunch with coffee and opening up my windows and letting the cold still air enter. read the papers(subscribe to 3 plus 2 online - it's awesome, and you begin to recognise good jounalism and the bullshit paid for news for the other stuff), baked some cookies(the first time in this house, and we couldn't find those blender things, the curly ones? which you plug into the blender..so they had sugar grains clearly sticking out, almost like they were diseased or something but taste yummilicious) Then I chatted with twin while her date kept her waiting. Right now I have started reading so many books at the same time it is really getting too much, plus based on my mood I want to re-read, right now it's The God of Small Things though this particular cover-to-cover reread might just be the last, because it's been growing in me, and I for one can't wait for more fiction from this extraordinary writer.

I also have this really pretty diary/notebook. Usually I use only spiral bound ones, with paper size A5, but this is a nice hard bound nightingale one, with gold tinting, and I have reynold pens in 5 colours - green, red, blue, black and pink, and somehow writing with ball pen makes it seem more copious (size of content wise) when it really isn't. I've already reached the february part.

Also, I dont' know what it is, but something's in the air, afternoon chats at the dining table, warm coffee, clean nice smelling sweaters, swishy hair and pretty eyes, make me feel like anything's possible in the world, and all those dreams will come true and it'll all. work. out.

For example, I want to listen to Under Pressure (Queen feat. Bowie version) as opposed Somebody to Love, both capture a mood don't you think?

Tangerine, I was her love, she was my queen

EDIT:: spoilt brat alert, all is back to peachy. no harm, no foul. *grins sheepishly*

It's days like this, that bring up all the fuckedupness in me, I forget, I've forgotten actually how shitty life was, how low I can sink, how horrible I let my days get, and its all coming back to me tonight. It's the kind of day when nothing works. Forget hitting the books and getting some studying done, its ok to have slacker days, but I'm reading The Joke and it's blowing my mind because I love Kundera but I can't even do that properly, the red nail polish on my fingers is distracting, I'm not used to wearing any kind of nail paint. I fucking hate getting up post noon, I like my mornings, but I just can not sleep at night, why why why. It's a day when you feels fat and though your hair is clean its clingy and looks like its sticking to your head about to fall off any minute. It's the day when all the fucking light bulb fuse simultaneously - of the loo, the bedroom and the bedside lamp. And laziness and crankiness. and guilt, because I canceled plans with my grandparents, and I feel horrible and want to take it back and probably will. and I'm tired of this home and not being sure and being nineteen and stuck, and I have a plan, I have a plan but I want to fuck that too tonight. I want to talk to someone, share and it can't work somehow, it's years of bad karma, of appearing offline and saying brb and gtg when I don't have to go anywhere, no one is online, no one will chat.

And even chocolate isn't helping. My fucking teeth and screwed, I can't even chew gum, it all blows up simultaneously. I got myself some chips and coke and was watching Milk in the afternoon, but even that didn't cheer me up. My privilege is pissing me off, I don't even have a real problem.

Excuse me it's just that kind of day.

Usually I love the literary world, last night, I was jumping from one article to another, I couldn't get enough of Saligner 90th birthday tributes, and Joyce Maynard who he lived with but who now lives in Guatemala, and Susan Sontag and so on and so forth, and that world draws me in, and I love reading smart critiques and i love xkcd and a asofterworld, and there's not enough time and the world is so big and expanding and then today happens and while we're at it fuck Israel.

so what do I want? right this moment, as exactly who I am, if alladin appeared, surprise surprise, grant you your wish - right here right now:


1. To go to Sundance film festival - freeze, watch as many (new) films possible, blog about it, wear uggs, the whole shindig.

2. Book myself on the next flight to London and live with my sister, while she goes off to work, walk around, go to all the free places/museums and then go out drinking with her at night.

3. How nice it would be, if I could go just 24 hours, just a day without having to talk to my parents, give them tabs on where I am, what I'm doing, to go out into the city, wander, drive around, do what I want and not be responsible for anyone except myself and not have to account for anything or talk to anyone I don't want to. (will I go to hell for this?)

4. Was at the dentists a couple of days back and he gave me two shots of anesthesia, my lips were numb for hours, weird and wobbly and I was wondering what it would be like to kiss someone with those lips, would've liked to try it out.

My State of Mind

If these days were to be a person, they'd be a lady; with blow dried combed back hair whose been married awhile, but not that long. She still meets old acquaintances who'll say, What's been happening(with you?) and she'll say oh I got married early last year. And there's a secret growing inside her, a secret with feet and a tummy and no one knows and she's bursting to tell him when he gets back.

Or if I was to be a day, I'd be a late thursday afternoon, with water droplets drying off me as an indulgent sun watches over my water splashing. And the icecream cone I'll have before I pick up my things and head into the evening.

And he'd be a saturday dawn, before the twilight rays strike and he crawls into bed, after a night spent devouring a book, such as Prep, with a mug of the last cold dregs of coffee beside him and a crumpled cigarette packet.

A Country Bar Named Johnny B Goode

Places, Food and Books

Lame title aside, some books have a very strong sense of place or food (since it's me we're talking about) associated with them and will forever be locked with each other in ones memory.

All my Enid Blyton memories are very strong, because when I read them I was a) Hugely unpopular in school, I had NO friends, and I mean none, like I used to roam around alone during break and everything and b) We lived in this massive old bungalow with like miles of wilderness on either side (ok not miles but really dense undergrowth type things, and people used to spot snakes on an hourly basis.) All those Fatty mysteries were so real because we had a garage/shed kinda thing just like in the book and I had very strong visuals for the place. This is the same time I used to play Xena with colony friends and set out with laser killer pieces of stick and fight demons and witches that lived around our house.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - I got a day before my chemistry exam in the 7th, think mum or someone had just returned from Delhi and had got that book and a big box of melted choclates for me. Needless to say the book was devoured and I was eating that stciky choclate alongside and you can bet I was too lazy to go wash my icky fingers before turning a page and so my copy was brown finger marks all over, which makes me love it even more.

I remember reading A Suitable Boy after the second term exams in the 10th which I had worked super hard for and before the preboards (which I totally blew.) The parts when Pran is falling for Saeeda Bai and he's hanging around her place is very descriptive and well written. She entertains all these people and they have Shammi kababs and hookahs and there's always music and a singing (rather annoying) parrot remember? So I was reading this part and I was getting major cravings for kababs. As luck would have it, we'd had a big party in our house and there were these kababs in the fridge and omg its bliss when you're reading about something and your mouth is watering and you can satisfy it instantly! Zap it in the microwave and get back into bed..and no one bothers you because you can lock your door and say you're 'studying.' Good times I tell you.

English, August is one of my all time favourite books, I read it when we were living in a place so so like Madna it freaked me out a bit, and I got everything he was sayng. I was Agastya man, ofcourse I wasn't stoning back then, it was simple sitting on the fence and liking a book sorta thing.

Oh and for Wodehouse there was this wonderful obscure Gymkhana in some shanty town where them Britsh Bozos used to once live, and the loo/Ladies rest room was HUGE, I mean like the size of a persons house with sofas and reclining chairs, and dim yellow bulbs and mottled mirrors and I loved it. Discovered it really late, when it was about time to leave but I pictured the whole English thing. (argh, we've been studying colonialism and when we take notes instead of writing the British I write BB - British Bastards, oh the latent anger)

Delhi by Khushwant Singh was another book that had a huge impact on me but more than that people remember me reading it. It was the beginning of 11th, when the board results weren't out and everyone's sorta strung out, didn't really feel like studying etc, and our temporary classroom was in some basement type part of the school and I'd sit at the back and read this book, and I didn't really know anyone in my new class expect Puri who ofcourse would be off all over bunking, making new friends, doing his imitations which I'd seen a gazillion times before, and I remember Yadu coming over, reading the blurb and laughing his ass off, because it said, 'back from his whoring days' and guys can never stop finding stuff like that funny. When he sees me today, he usually mentions that book, still reading books about whores? he'll say and I'll laugh like it's really funny because it's sweet no?

Though I don't like to admit it, I've also read all the Shopaholic books(Fly take a bow) and this was the summer before college started and all of a sudden you have to go shopping for a whole bunch of new clothes, and you really need them right, no more uniform to put on sleepily every day. So I would just buy without thinking, oh heady days and then when I became a poor college student who refused to spend more than 15 bucks on lunch I was reading Shopaholic and Sister which had her super frugal sister who hates shopping and kept saving up or was broke and she was totally in sync with my new self!

Zorba the Greek is ofcourse for my fututre travels which I've mentioned earlier in this post.


PS - Is anyone else television blissed as well? New seasons of The Office, How I Met Your Mother, Entourage AND Greys Anatomy. Sigh, life can hardly get better..

Pink carnation and a pickup truck

I like the concept of a notice board. How its sometimes empty, sometimes full and its like a continuous tide of things that happened and will happen and more than anything it’s full of possibility. One stray notice - it can change your whole life. A battered poster, peeking behind a fancy glossy one - someone somewhere thought enough to put it up knowing that someone like you would read it go wherever it was asking you to. It’s a testimony to life almost that things happen and keep happening, and there’s always that option available to you.

It was at one of these poorly attended college things, a dingy room with faux wood furniture and static microphones. He was sitting at the back while she had plonked her bag around the middle spread-eagled over two chairs. After they’re done with the event, they pass a paper around you know, “give us your name and contact number, we’ll get in touch with you if any more such events happen, etc.” He kept his eyes on the piece of torn out register paper as it was passed down from her to him and when it was his turn he quietly saved her name and number on his phone.

It was a maybe, and intuition, nothing more.

And a couple of months later after they’d seen each other here and there, established a common friend and talked a bit; it was time to exchange numbers she asked him for his and gave him a missed call so that he could store her number. When her name flashed on his old nokia 3210 screen, he made a split second decision and told her. She just smiled and turned away.

Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me & My Monk

On some days, it might seem like I have nothing. Depends on how you’re measuring really, because I have all kinds of bolted vaults and secret trunks stored away.

My trust fund is in smiles given and taken and every pair of eyes that look at me first when they enter a room. In books borrowed and lent, in sharing a blessed umbrella in the pouring rain with my left side and his right getting drenched. In phrases like bruising guitar and music that makes you ~feel. It’s in meeting someone and knowing within the hour that you’re going to become friends. It’s in someone saying - you should come, you’ll like it.

Its watching him without him noticing; the way his left hand twists and his elbow sticks out as he writes away furiously. His handwriting that I’ll recognise anywhere. In the inevitably, that you realise in retrospect, of a little crush becoming a friendship, all gained with no personal questions. I probably know every book that’s influenced him but not who he kissed and how many times. I wonder if I got the hard end of the bargain.

It’s when the sea is grey and frightening and I sit in a circle of cigarettes crushed in the sand as my sarong dances in the wind and he shouts to come back under the roof. It’s the times I’ve looked in the mirror and smiled at the person who looks at me secretly, and those times I’ve sat in a changing room and cried, that counts too. It’s the click click click that goes on in my head continuously, and to say it out loud would be to forget it, so I keep writing. The wallpaper of my cerebrum is textured funny with old cds and the black flimsy reels of cassettes, its lined with the doodles at the back of maths registers.

I’m not a big expert on love, you’ve realised that, they all have. Love can mean anything, it doesn’t have to do with anybody. Because I think if I was to love someone, or be loved by someone, it would be Agastya Sen. It would mean something to him, it would matter, he’d think about it, and I’d like to be thought about by him. In Madna or wherever. And if I was to be friends with someone, I’d be friends with Ammu because if anyone ever needed someone to talk to, it was her.

So I might not know a lot about real life, but I am an expert when it comes to my life. Right now though, I’m unavailable for comment.

Because you see it might not be much in kilometres but it sure is a lot of millimetres.

The Upside of Wet Jeans

because the most you can expect from perfection is a moment.

pebbleriver.

light even on the cloudiest day.

windscreentrees.

rounding up with my signature shot, the feet. :)

The Opening Ceremony

Watching the Olympic Opening Ceremony filled me with much feeling, somewhere in my toes - a little bit of wonder, of melancholy even. Apart from shouting out the capitals as the delegates of the countries walked by, the whole thing made sense, it seemed right. These were real people; all those countries aren't just coloured jigsaw pieces in an atlas with a short para about their stats. Just seeeing so many different faces each more handsome than the other, a nose from Denmark, blonde hair from Slovakia, a wide smile from the Marshall Islands, a costume from Bahrain, a whole cheering party from Brazil. Face upon face, and in those snatches you can tell -he's gay and she has children, and he must be really popular with the ladies. You realise once more than there are so many, many more people in the world than just Americans, yet beause they control world media, all we see is Americans. A place like Las Vegas is mythologised because of Hollywood, but the rest of world has no big machine to make sketchy movie and bring them to a theatre near you.

The thing is that with an event such as the Olympics, an event so huge and involving so many people, even by virtue of simply witnessing it, you are complicit with its politics. With the fact that Taiwan was introduced as Chinese Taiwan. That Palestine sent their own delegates, so atleast they're recognised, but Tibet isn't. That Pakistan got a huge cheer, because an enemy of your enemy is your friend - or some archaic logic like that. As did Iraq, because we destroyed them and are now content to give them a good natured pat on the back.

Athletes, and sports reflect everything that's right in the world, about the purpose of our bodies, and they don't matter in the long run, they really don't. Watching them wave to the dignitaries from their country on the other side of the bulletproof enclosure mades me wonder, who decides whihc side you're on? Like if you were a princess say, a nominal head, you'd just go from one token event to the other on governement money and wave and smile but what have you REALLY done except be born? These people, they've practiced and worked and worked; they have real accomplishments. It's them I want to see, not faux celebrities. It's them folks doing the lap that are the stars and rightly so. They can wave and smile as much as they want, I'll cheer till I'm hoarse.

It's who we are

I realise now, the value of liking someone. I used to notice the littlest things about him, which maybe had a lot to do with him in particular and not with having a crush in general.

I liked the way his phone was always on vibrate, just like mine and when he’d get a call, he’d say excuse me, I need to take this, and he’d talk and I’d wander off but he’d come back smiling to find me. How long his fingers are as he messages, how he laughs out when he gets a funny SMS. In a picture of him with his girlfriend, I noticed his phone on a table beside him and I grinned widely; a private joke between me and the universe if you will. I liked a lot more about him, his smile that breaks out of nowhere and the curly hair that would flop on his forehead.

And just like that, all those things recede and he becomes just another person I say a quick, walking 'hi' to. It all goes away, and there was no one to mark, it’s significance in my life or his. There's no one to notice it's over. That the little red flag I was holding has been quietly put away.

Those days have passed, and he may have Great Love in his life, he may not, I may, though unlikely. Some girl might notice the same things, might like his hair, might make him cut it. I feel the weight of the beauty, the moment, that brief time that I captured and siphoned, that I pinned like a butterfly on velvet paper and put away in a box. He becomes just that to me, but if I’d told him, maybe it could have been something for him as well. Maybe he'd remember me, tell our story while he's on his second drink...

But see I never wanted anything more, I love my house, my way of things way too much and I’m constantly haranguing to be left alone by the world, and I never succeed and I’m always glad.

Before I met You

It's small things readers, the tiniest of them -

like an extra library card

~like that whole bunch of giggling men hesitating to step on an escalator, and I want those virginities back for myself, and I know, like I've always known, that I'll live somewhere far away from all this.

~if you're not in class, having someone message saying - where are you?

~or driving all the way back home with stoner music on and not being conscious of the fact and when you pull up to park, the spell breaks and you go, how'd I get here?

~using a word, a new cuss word and all of a sudden everyone's using it, dingbats

~remebering oh yes, today is tuesday and there must be a new episode of weeds waiting on isohunt.

~the greet of airconditioned air over your sweat rivulets

above all, food and rest.

Because I know what to take seriously and he's not one of them. It's with birds of the same feather, that I can talk aloud, think aloud and that's when I feel the most natural, at my best. It's when people joke around, put you down, reduce everything to 'bookish' or 'quiet' that I feel vacant, not uncomfortable but irrevocably different from them. Becasue I don't want to explain myself.

I want to put a bandaid over my life. My toe nail came off, and all I had to do was put a plaster on it to press it down and let it just be by itself while the new one grows. That's exactly what I want for my life right now. There is too much going on, too quickly and all this that I'm learning, I might just lose it if I don't sit and write it down, or talk, or consolidate it into an opinion, that becomes mine alone and not something I read somewhere.

For that I need a really sticky plaster.

Here I Go Again

You can't decide when you have a good time, when you meet new people, where the day takes you. Some folks you establish are interesting but they may or may not become your friends and that's when I wonder, what do people think of me? That's the only time I'm conscious that, you know, I'm not a vampire and I must have a reflection. Or do I?

So I had this nice morning planned, would wake up, go for a swim, get a haircut and then go meet my lovely friends Shai and Fly. However, due to unforseen circumstances, mainly my stupid ass body sleeping through several alarms, I was fast asleep at the time I was supposed to meet them and had to hurry, hurry, rush, rush as usual. Fuck I hate that, maybe its an inborn rebellion to my fauji-precision-clockwork genes, but I simply cannot be someplace on time. Thing is in the morning, every second counts, and after dinner, one hour here or there makes no difference. Sure you owls would agree.

Anyway, day still went off well. Lunch was good, I love my friends and I also love being alone and sometimes in life you get a perfect balance, and today was such a day. Madonna(because they have the same teeth) also joined us, and he and me have this mutual appreaciation society thing going, we both say nice things about each other and refrain from the other stuff, because he's one of those people that you have obvious and huge differences of opinion with, but that's ok, he is he and I am me, and in the end, I know I can count on him, and I know I'll totally come through for him, if need be and vice versa.

(Oh, but Rohan, no same teeth anymore! :D)

Also, maanged to get my haircut. While coolio dude cut away, in the parlour, there was a lady/woman getting ready for her wedding, full bridal make up, hairdo etc. and sure, she was pretty, with a busty magenta top, red cartoon nails(not even vampish) with rotting brown mehendi (haai, haai) and her friends were fluttering around her, and I'm thinking the last thing I want to do on my wedding day is spend hours in a beauty parluor - you know?

I'm not a big one for days, like I hate birthdays, not because I'm emo or anything, I just hate all the hoo haah and pressure to do something on that day. So what would I do? Let's see, I'd like to wake up without an alarm clock, with sun on my face, and immediately have something chocolate. Then, hit the pool, you know those whole body floats? Yea, float on the water, sun myself, nap whatever, have something to read, this I'll have to plan very carefully, definitely not the newspaper, because I'm sure for the rest of life I'll remember, on page 3 the mcd head something said something about potholes. I'm kooky that way.

When I'm all deliciously wet and the sun is drying the water drops off, have fresh watermelon and grape juice, french fries(oily not deep fried) and maybe chicken-mayo-capsicum sandwiches. Then a rollercoater ride, or several, and paint ball and in the evening we can dress up and go somehwere nice, or do whatever he wants to. But avoid people at all costs. I'd love for my parents to have a big party in their house, with the lawn and fairy lights and everyone can 'congratulate the happy couple' but maybe sometime the week after.

What about you guys?

Incidentally, downloaded lotsa 80s love songs, just because, and have been blasting Can't Fight This feeling(REO Speedwagon), Whitesnake, The Bangles, Cherish (Kool and the Gang) , Dangelo and The Temptaions. heehee, I've also always had this neighbour thing. Like in the previous house we lived in, it was two floors, downstairs people had a lawn and we got a terrace, and this dude, Jha, used to make all his phone conversations from the garden, he'd smoke, talk loudly, and scratch his you-know-what when he thought no one was watching(ewwww I know.) My study table was right next to his window and trust me when I tell you I knew EVERYTHING going on in his life, no kidding, from his friends to his hassles with his parents, to the girlfriend to his job(pilot, waddya expect).

There was a point to this..oh yeah, so like I knew everything about Jha without him having any idea, I have this fantasy that somebodys always listening to the music I play. Almost like I DJ for some invisible folk down below. Don't get me wrong, I play for myself, but maybe someone will have huge overlapping tastes and come searching for my door, and we can hangout and burn CDs for each other and stuff.

Hmm..too many movies.

Steady Hands Take The Wheel

It was my market than our market. I like how some things that were mine, we now share, including friends. Baristas and neighbourhood store owners who earlier recognised me, not recognise him as well. Even the guy who checks the air in the tyres at the petrol pump.

We drive by that market, everyday now, becasue to get to any arterial place really, crossing that choked road is the only way out.

There’s a dressed up crowd that hangs around the pubs and outside the theatre. Girls with their hair in sheets below their shoulders, with outfits to match their bags, who wear pin pointy boots no matter what the season. Guys wearing those t-shirts you get, you know? the ones that have a skin coloured extension of cloth under the noraml t-shirt to give the impression that the entire arm is tattooed? Flashing 10 rupee diamond studs in their ears and caked hair on their head.

Further back, beneath the tree and the circular cemented area, next to the cigarette stalls where I go to get polo, is a different sort of crowd. The girls have backpacks and is it just me or is their hair curlier? Tied up carelessly or the tangles let loose, glinting nose pins, dangling silver earrings, wearing washed out cotton kurtas, or maybe a black band t-shirt with a matching belt. They chat placidly, smoke comfortably and laugh occasionally.

Me, I don’t dress up, am a books and chai kinda girl, sure I’d love a bar with loud music as much as the next person, but tis just not my thing...yet. I will have shots and give in and dance to Usher and wear a Penny Lane faux-fur coat with a hoodie and pub hop. Someday, those times will come for me.

What a granny, he says, but he’s not much better.

At the front of the market, near the car park, boys and girls get out of big cars, their school bags stuffed with their uniforms and they're so self conscious of their outfit; it's not fair, to make them choose that one t-shirt that represents them the most, to wear on the day their exams get over and they hangout.

And African men, lots and lots of young African men, are they sons of diplomats then or sons of housekeepers? Does it matter? Which countries are they from, I wonder as I lock eyes with every one of them, Mozambique?(Maputo, my brain automatically says) Somalia? (Mogadishu) Niger?( Niamey) Guinea Bissau or The Guinea? Mali or Mauritania or indeed Malawi? Congo or the Democratic Republic of Congo? The Gold Coast or the Ivory Coast? Zambia or Zaire, now the infamous Central African Republic. Tunisisa or Tanzania? Maybe Morocco, though I doubt it.

I’m sure I’ll have tonnes of things to say to them, if we get past the accent, that mammoth effort of a simple smile and hello. It doesn't matter that we're on the same sidewalk, because their continent travels with them. That's the size of the distance between us.

The odds that one of them has just finished reading Franny and Zooey like I have, and listed down the family tree – Seymour, Buddy, Boo Boo, the twins (Walt and Waker), Zachary (Zooey) and Franny in their notebooks..How high is that possibility?

We shall never know, because we can cross each other several times, but I'm just driving past, sitting passenger to steady hands on the wheel.

Egregia Cum Laude, with outstanding praise

I like being an older sister, though I think I'm the Queen of Inappropriate. Sisters birthday, her friends came over, still in their natal teens, and they wanted to watch a movie so I gave them Superbad, which is funny but full of dicks and lubes and porn bla bla ~ not a very good idea and got her Twister, so yea, kinda off the mark but the thing is, that awkwardness between boys and girls is so wonderful when you're on the outside, and my head is clicking every 2 minutes with something to jot down and write about later. It's a treasure trove of a minefield.

You know readers, I have this thing for younger guys, that sounds most crude and Michael Jackson-ish but I don't mean it in a paedophilic, robbing the cradle or even romantic/sexual way. I dunno, I just hit it off with them and we get along really well. My younger and only cousin brother is awesome fun, and at first it used to be only me who'd joke about with him, rile him up a bit, sit on his head about pokemon cards and things like that, but now he's growing older and has started reading, and actually wants to chat about life and Yossarian and girls and stuff, all the way fom Sydney, which makes me :)

Then there's this other boy, who's a family friend, and when they come down from America, God that accent is exhausting, half the time I'm straining my ear to understand what they're saying and by the end of their holiday I'm watching what I say because I end up sounding like them and when was a developing second hand Indian-American accent ever not jarring? I like that boy though, he's quiet and nice and dresses in all Black and used to be into Blink 182.

And the latest edition that triggered this train of analysis, is that leetle boy from Singapore, who's not quite so leetle because his favourite drink is a Blowjob(Baileys, whipped cream, some such) But see he studies in the American school there and so he had an American accent and now that the summer is over and him having been around us everyday, it's worn down to a Kal Penn type of accent in Van Wilder, heehee.

So they're just much easier to talk to and to laugh with and sometimes they'll say these really insightful things about me, which make me wonder, what exactly is it that they think of me. He said the other day, "You pretend to be stupid but actually aren't." Hmm..

But it isn't strictly a elder sister-ish relationship, you know what I mean? All I'm saying is several years down the line, when we're all grown up, we might run into each other in some airport lounge somehwhere and who knows what can happen? That possibilty is always open you know..

/wink.
/subtle.
/ok enough.

Don't be surprised if I love you for all that you are

Dear V,


Because I have been watching badly made, pseudo-gothic Japanese movies with End of the World scenarios and male leads I can't tell apart; as gorillas spew out chomped human guts and people all over plan what they'll do on their last day on earth, I think of you.

Because I'm reading the greatest war novel of all time and Erich Maria Remarque writes, "Franz is dying and what if he were to open his mouth and cry out! But he only weeps, his head turned aside. He does not speak of his mother or his brothers and sisters. He says nothing; all that lies behind him; he is entirely alone with his little life of nineteen years, and cries because it leaves him." I think of you.

Because all I really have is ardor, its my only ammunition, my only protection. You keep me company up and down on that wretched train even though you're somewhere else.

Because you are my fantasy, my best case scenario, my triumph if you will, therefore I can only love you when I can't have you. For the rest of the world, I have other toys lined up.

Because you say, you like music without lyrics, but Chris and Eddie could wake me up from the dead. Even then, unwittingly, music which has been mine and mine alone, now reminds me of you.

Becasue it was always about me, and it didn't matter where you were, and that's why I can decide it's over. Because, these things aren't tangible and that's why they'll count as currency. It'll find you someday, all these things that went on in my head because of you, and maybe for a little while when you're down, it'll cheer you up, make you smile. And for that brief time, I would have finally found a place in your life.

~

Dear El,
I wish you'd shut the fuck up. And I really wish you'd stop writing for the sake of it, for trying to make yourself feel something just because you've read maybe 10 books more than the others. There's no need to be so smug about it. To be so antisocial. You've milked whatever we had to death and I really think it's time you moved on and accepted that you're bored and alone and verging on boring.
Find your own life please and stop trying to channel some of mine. I don't need your obsessive wheedling, it's not nice you know.
V.
ps - and stop memorising everything I say.

Glory Days, pass me by.

Life is peachy folks, spiffy, bathed in sun streaming in through the clouds. Reminds me of that last month of school before the summer holidays, when I was 11 or something. For all my life and all of hers, my mother has worked and I've always reached home before she has, as in there was never a reception committee waiting at the bus stop like other kids, thangod. That summer though, she'd taken a month off, and when I'd get home, my icky uniform shirt stuck to my back with sweat, my heavy tearing bag full of useless books that I'd carry around including a fat dictionary, my hair all puffed up and hairband dangling along to one side, she'd answer the door.

The house would be cool for starters, the curtains would be drawn against the afternon sunlight and mum would give us first cold water, then food, which we'd actually sit at the table and have and not in front of the TV. Then watermelon, and an afternoon nap after. Ah, the all-is-right-with-the-world feeling.

In the holidays, she'd leave before we were awake, and when I did get up and go to brush my teeth, I'd see a big fat lipstick mark on my cheek, because you know, she kissed us goodbye.

Anway, joy is hibernating. It's staying at home and watching three seasons of weeds in a row. Fantastic I tell you. An american TV show you never knew existed and turns out to be so goddamn clever. That my friends is utopia, with no one bothering me, and becasue I'm only listening to these characters smack talking, in my head I start talking like them. And when I meet people in real life I can't think of anything to say to them except, um...I'm watching Weeds.

Right so some guys are just plain sexy, they have this charm that you can't define, can't catch or bottle, like Sloan you know, on Greys Anatomy, very irrestible, even when they aren't saying anything, you just keep looking a them and Justin Kirk (or Andy on Weeds) is one such fellow.

What else? Cooking Chocolate. That's the thing to eat. As mentioned earlier, nada oven, nada baking, so all supplies are going into tummy as raw material. Personally, I think cooking choclate is the real stuff, far superior than any wrapped thing I've had, tis not too sweet, plus its a proper huge slab and I've been gnawing away at it.

Favourite line these days - "that's a bit too populist for my taste." Speaking of which was watching 'left of centre' on VH1 which is supposed to be the original sidestream stuff, I hardly think Nine Inch Nails or Kasabian can be called offbeat, LCD soundsystem maybe. Besides everyone knows that them emo and indie kids are making the most money now.


In parting, I like the word exponential, not in maths(idiotic exponential differetiation) but like exponential growth in blog traffic. hee :D